Using the lens of positive organizational ethics, we theorized that empathy affects decisions in ethical dilemmas that concern the well-being of not only the organization but also other stakeholders. We hypothesized and found that empathetic managers were less likely to comply with requests by an authority figure to cut the wages of their employees than were non-empathetic managers. However, when an authority figure requested to hold wages constant, empathy did not affect wage cut decisions. These findings imply that empathy can (...) serve as a safeguard for ethical decision making in organizations during trying times without generally undermining organizational effectiveness. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research. (shrink)

An important part of friendships are the so-called special obligations generated by them. Friends owe things to each other that they do not owe to strangers. While such special obligations are an important part of our everyday practice, they raise several philosophical questions. These questions include the status of special obligations (are such obligations sui generis or is it possible to reduce them to general moral principles?), the source of such special obligations (what grounds special obligations of friendship?), and the (...) content of special obligations (what is the content of special obligations of friendship?). This chapter gives an overview of some of the most important positions in the literature with regard to these questions. (shrink)

The Colombian-born photographer and artist Guadalupe Ruiz has undertaken a project to document the social and economic inequity in her native city of Bogotá. She explores six houses from the city's six different taxation classes whose residents range from extremely affluent to impoverished. By taking photographs of apartments and streetscapes, whole interiors and single pieces of furniture, Ruiz creates a cohesive and multilayered portrait of the city as a whole. She also examines personal and decorative objects, such as family portraits (...) and Catholic icons found in both slums and luxurious villas, and highlights the differences and some surprising cultural parallels between socioeconomic classes. Guadalupe Ruiz— Bogotá D. C. is a subtle, thought-provoking examination of urban life and includes over a hundred stunning images arranged by neighborhood. A map of the neighborhoods and a complementary essay are included to provide context for Ruiz's impressive photographs. Text in English, French, Spanish, and German. (shrink)

Immigrants now compose approximately 12 of the population of the United States and a sizable proportion of the workforce. Yet in contrast to research on other traditionally under-represented groups (e.g., women, African Americans), there are relatively few studies on issues related to being an immigrant in the U.S. workforce. This study examined English-only workplace policies, focusing on reactions to business justifications – explanations that justify managerial decisions as business necessities – for these policies. We contrasted the reactions of individuals coming (...) from immigrant families, where at least one parent was an immigrant to the U.S., with those of persons from non-immigrant families. Results of an experiment indicated that business justifications were successful in influencing the attitudes of non-immigrants toward the English-only policies, but did not influence the attitudes of individuals from immigrant families. Probing the reasons for this effect, a thought-listing protocol suggested that non-immigrants mentioned more of the business benefits of the English-only policy than did individuals from immigrant families. Further, business justifications for the English-only policy led individuals from immigrant families, but not those from non-immigrant families, to view the organization as being less ethical and less concerned with the welfare of its workers. The implications of messages from management being understood differently by different demographic groups are discussed. (shrink)

En este trabajo sobre los pensadores novohispanos Alonso de la Veracruz y Tomás de Mercado se seguirá la argumentación de un tema escasamente explorado: el papel fundacional de la ley natural y su interpretabilidad a través de la ley humana. Se mostrará que ambos autores, basados en las tradiciones salamantinas del siglo XVI, introducen un método que afirmaría la validez de la ley natural y, al mismo tiempo, permitir aplicaciones diversas de los parámetros normativos de la ley humana. Esto es (...) posible, como lo sostiene Veracruz en su crítica al diezmo para los pueblos indígenas, cuando la ley natural tenga que reinterpretarse a partir de hechos sociales concretos o cuando, como en el caso de Mercado, la ley humana sea congruente con la ley natural y, no obstante, tenga que desacatarse para evitar perjuicios personales o públicos en el plano comercial. (shrink)

Culture is a concept that is claimed these days as the last authority for appeal in most discussions on human affairs and as the ultimate cause of important differences among people: “[C]ulture is the sole source of the validity of a moral right or rule”1 Only culture seems to be conclusive for almost all of what men are and what they do. Culture is what we collectively create but, at the same time, what we are determined by; we are our (...) own masters and at the same time slaves of our own creations. The culture that is so decisive today, however, is not a universal culture common to everyone but the concrete culture of each society2 here and now. Thus the culture that is concretely relevant to us today is plural. Pluralism in the present understanding may not necessarily trouble Christians, but the relativism that accompanies it does. More alarming, however, is cultural determinism that seriously discourages Christian efforts for evangelism and, especially, foreign mission. (shrink)

The rapid growth of Korean churches and the conflict-ridden Korean society may serve to illustrate how evangelists should face critical socio-political issues. The Korean experience seems to indicate that evangelists are most effective when they concentrate their entire efforts on preaching “Jesus Christ and Him Crucified” alone. Believers in general, however, should be keenly interested in such issues as human rights and social justice, not only for their own sake but also for the sake of effective future evangelism. The Church's (...) involvement in these issues gives a favourable impression of Christianity, which in turn facilitates evangelism. (shrink)

To what extent do aesthetic taste and our interest in the arts constitute who we are? In this paper, we present a series of empirical findings that suggest an Aesthetic Self Effect supporting the claim that our aesthetic engagements are a central component of our identity. Counterfactual changes in aesthetic preferences, for example, moving from liking classical music to liking pop, are perceived as altering us as a person. The Aesthetic Self Effect is as strong as the impact of moral (...) changes, such as altering political partisanship or religious orientation, and significantly stronger than for other categories of taste, such as food preferences. Using a multidimensional scaling technique to map perceived aesthetic similarities among musical genres, we determined that aesthetic distances between genres correlate highly with the perceived difference in identity. Further studies generalize the Aesthetic Self Effect beyond the musical domain: general changes in visual art preferences, for example from more traditional to abstract art, also elicited a strong Self Effect. Exploring the breadth of this effect we also found an Anaesthetic Self Effect. That is, hypothetical changes from aesthetic indifference to caring about music, art, or beauty are judged to have a significant impact on identity. This effect on identity is stronger for aesthetic fields compared to leisure activities, such as hiking or playing video games. Across our studies, the Anaesthetic Self Effect turns out to be stronger than the Aesthetic Self Effect. Taken together, we found evidence for a link between aesthetics and identity: we are aesthetic selves. When our tastes in music and the arts or our aesthetic interests change we take these to be transformative changes. (shrink)

This article makes a contribution to debates in recognition theory by expanding the taxonomy of (mis-)recognition in the economic sphere. It argues that doing justice to the variety of ways in which recognition is engaged in economic relationships requires: (1) taking into consideration not just the recognition principle of esteem, but also (various aspects of) need and respect; (2) distinguishing a productive from a consumptive dimension with regards to each principle of recognition (need, esteem and respect); and (3) identifying the (...) specific economic relationship at stake (e.g. between consumers and producers, or between employers and employees). In this way, we can account for the diversity of demands for recognition made in the economic sphere, explain what underpins them, and bring structure into these diverse phenomena. What is more, this expanded taxonomy is a useful tool for social pathology theorists, who should appreciate the full range of variants of misrecognition when diagnosing pathologies of misrecognition in the economic sphere. (shrink)

Climate change poses a serious problem for established ethical theories. There is no dearth of literature on the subject of climate ethics that break down the complexity of the issue, thereby enabling one to arrive at partial conclusions such as: 'historical justice demands us to do this...' or 'intergenerational justice demands us to do that...'. In contrast, this article attempts to face up to this complexity, that is: to end with a synthesis of the arguments into what can be considered (...) to be the most reasonable and fairest approach to the politics of climate change on a global scale. A significant part of the paper is devoted to the questions whether or not a) historical emissions and b) population changes are relevant to how emissions rights should be distributed. I discuss the merits and drawbacks of each perspective and briefly outline the normative justifications. (shrink)

Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics introduces the reader to new perspectives on Indian philosophy based on philological research within the last twenty years. Concentrating on topics such as perception, inference, skepticism, consciousness, self, mind, and universals, some of the most notable scholars working in classical Indian philosophy today examine core epistemological and metaphysical issues. Philosophical theories and arguments from a comprehensive range of Indian philosophical traditions (including the Nyaya, Mimamsa, Saiva, Vedanta, Samkhya, Jain, Buddhist, materialist and skeptical traditions, as well as (...) some 20th century thought) are covered. The contributors to this volume approach the topics from both a philosophical and a philological perspective. They demonstrate the importance of the subject matter for an understanding of Indian thought in general and they highlight its wider philosophical significance. By developing an appreciation of classical Indian philosophy in its own terms, set against the background of its unique assumptions and historical and cultural development, Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics is an invaluable guide to the current state of scholarship on Indian philosophy. It is a timely and much-needed reference resource, the first of its kind. (shrink)

Two kinds of membrane contacts in the vertebrate lens are described. Fiber gap junctions are domains where small molecules can pass between lens cells. Membrane structures of ball‐and‐socket type interlock adjacent lens fibers and thus contribute to the structural integrity of the lens. Both of these membrane contacts appear crucial for the maintenance of lens transparency.

The intercellular junctions connecting the cytoplasms of fibre cells in the mammalian lens have until recently been regarded as a class of junction which is fundamentally different from that of the gap junctions in other organs. Recent observations, however, suggest that the lens junctions fit protein topology predictions common for all gap junctions. While the homologous peptide portions are predicted to form the channels, the divergent peptide portions of the gap junction polypeptides may adapt channel activity to the special tissue (...) requirements. (shrink)

There has been a long tradition of characterizing man as the animal that is capable of propositional language. However, the remarkable ability of using pictures also only belongs to human beings. Both faculties however depend conceptually on the ability to refer to absent situations by means of sign acts called 'context building'. The paper investigates the combined roles of quasi-pictorial sign acts and proto-assertive sign acts in the situation of initial context building, which, in the context of “concept-genetic” considerations, aims (...) for a philosophical explanation of the anthropological functon of pictures and their relation to imagination. (shrink)

We define aesthetic emotions as emotions that underlie the evaluative assessment of artworks. They are separated from the wider class of art-elicited emotions. Aesthetic emotions historically have been characterized as calm, as lacking specific patterns of embodiment, and as being a sui generis kind of pleasure. We reject those views and argue that there is a plurality of aesthetic emotions contributing to praise. After presenting a general account of the nature of emotions, we analyze twelve positive aesthetic emotions in four (...) different categories: emotions of pleasure, contemplation, amazement, and respect. The emotions that we identify in each category, including feelings of fluency, intrigue, wonder, and adoration, have been widely neglected both within aesthetics and in emotion research more broadly. (shrink)

The non‐self theory is one of the cornerstones of Buddhist philosophy. This chapter examines this theory and discusses some of the issues it raises for Western philosophy of mind, in particular for the problem of free will. In the first part, it traces the non‐self theory through several formulations, focusing on different Buddhist texts. In the second part, it analyzes some of the similarities and dissimilarities of the non‐self theory with discussions of the mind‐body problem and the free will problem (...) in Western philosophy. (shrink)

This paper argues that the still-emerging paradigm of situated cognition requires a more systematic perspective on media to capture the enculturation of the human mind. By virtue of being media, cultural artifacts present central experiential models of the world for our embodied minds to latch onto. The paper identifies references to external media within embodied, extended, enactive, and predictive approaches to cognition, which remain underdeveloped in terms of the profound impact that media have on our mind. To grasp this impact, (...) I propose an enactive account of media that is based on expansive habits as media-structured, embodied ways of bringing forth meaning and new domains of values. We apply such habits, for instance, when seeing a picture or perceiving a movie. They become established through a process of reciprocal adaptation between media artifacts and organisms and define the range of viable actions within such a media ecology. Within an artifactual habit, we then become attuned to a specific media work that engages us. Both the plurality of habits and the dynamical adjustments within a habit require a more flexible neural architecture than is addressed by classical cognitive neuroscience. To detail how neural and media processes interlock, I will introduce the concept of neuromediality and discuss radical predictive processing accounts that could contribute to the externalization of the mind by treating media themselves as generative models of the world. After a short primer on general media theory, I discuss media examples in three domains: pictures and moving images; digital media; architecture and the built environment. This discussion demonstrates the need for a new cognitive media theory based on enactive artifactual habits—one that will help us gain perspective on the continuous re-mediation of our mind. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that the division between manas and atman in Nyaya philosophy can be interpreted in the light of Western discussions about irrationality. In Western philosophy irrationality has been explained by postulating a divided mind. This helps to account for a generally rational mind that is nevertheless sometimes prone to irrationality. I argue that the division of the mind bears similarities to the division between manas and tman. Looking at the arguments of the Naiy yikas Gautama and (...) V tsy yana for the existence of a permanent self, I do not find any of them convincing in the light of Buddhist criticism. However, by arguing for the division between manas and tman, the Naiy yikas have inadvertently provided their strongest argument for the existence of a self because they have managed to account for irrationality. (shrink)

"I cannot recommend this book highly enough!" Is this statement true or have I succeeded in lavishing enough praise on this book by writing this statement, making this statement in fact false? This is one way in which Adamson and Ganeri explain the view of the Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna that everything is empty. Nāgārjuna has to defend himself against the objection that if everything is "empty" then this surely also applies to his own view. He famously argues that he does (...) not have a thesis and provides the "silence" analogy, which I want to illustrate using my own example: if there is too much off-topic... (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss the significance of upam na in the Ny yas tra as a source of knowledge and its role in understanding and learning about the world. Some philosophers, particularly Buddhists, have argued that upam na is reducible to inference. I am going to defend the Ny ya view that upam na is in fact a fundamental source of knowledge which plays a significant role in teaching and learning. In fact, I am going to argue that (...) by introducing upam na as a pram a the Naiy yikas accounted for the way humans acquire certain types of knowledge. Finally, I will highlight the similarities between the role of upam na in the Ny yas tra and some of Wittgenstein's remarks on family resemblance and proof. (shrink)

This book explores the significance of implicit understandings and tacit expectations of the parties to different kinds of contractual agreements.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Occupy Religion:Theology of the Multitude and Interreligious DialogueJoerg RiegerOne of the big questions for the present is how to bring the different liberation movements together. The different liberation theologies, as is well known, have addressed various forms of oppression along the lines of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and other factors. What is it that brings us together without erasing our differences? This question has important implications for interreligious (...) dialogue, as we shall see.In our book Occupy Religion Kwok Pui-lan and I use the term “multitude” to reflect on unity and difference.1 This term, made prominent by political scientists and philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,2 has deep roots in our theological traditions. Several decades ago, Korean Minjung theology noted the prominence of the notion of the multitude (this is how the term minjung can be translated into English) in the Bible. In the Gospels, the so-called ochlos (the Greek term for the masses or the common people) does not describe only the ones who are the recipients of Jesus’ transformative ministry; the ochlos also describes the participants in it and the agents of change. In addition, our Latin American colleagues have highlighted the importance of Greek term laos in the biblical traditions, which is also used to designate the common people rather than the elites.There is a distinct difference between the Greek notions of democracy and laocracy or ochlocracy. Democracy describes the rule of the demos, which is constituted by the elite citizens of a city-state. Lower-class citizens, women, and slaves are not part of this rule. Laocracy and ochlocracy, on the other hand, describe the rule of the common people, including the proverbial “least of these” of which Jesus speaks frequently. These common people include all those who have been and are being marginalized on the basis of their gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class. In the ministry of Jesus, which is informed by the ministry of Moses, Miriam, Hannah, and the prophets, the common people are organized and become agents. God values their diverse contributions to life. In the world of laocracy and ochlocracy, there are different ways of being productive in the community, and all of them are acknowledged and needed. As Hardt and Negri remind us, the multitude is not the uniform entity of what has often [End Page 167] been called “the people” in various nationalisms or fascisms. Neither is the multitude the undifferentiated mass or the mob.3What brings the various liberation movements together, therefore, is not uniformity or a request to surrender difference. What brings us together is “deep solidarity,” the recognition that we are all in the same boat under the conditions of global capitalism.4 This insight is related to the topic of class, which has consistently been pushed underground in the United States but which has recently reemerged in the context of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The now-familiar notion of the 99 percent versus the 1 percent is a reminder that the majority of people are benefitting less and less from the neoliberal market economy. This includes even members of the middle class, as they have seen their retirement accounts dwindle, their job security take ever-more severe hits, their benefits erode, and their political power fade. Furthermore, the aspects of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity are closely linked to class, as they all increase the disadvantages of people in the neoliberal market economy, thus boosting the reality of deep solidarity. Deep solidarity ties together members of the 99 percent across the lines of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity, and it thrives on difference, as they can now work together and make use of their various opportunities and gifts.Deep solidarity differs from conventional ideas of solidarity, which were often based on the idea that those who are privileged place themselves on the side of those without privilege. While it is still possible for members of the 1 percent to place themselves on the side of the 99 percent, the majority of us are now part of the 99 percent, and thus belong to classes that have something to gain from liberation. Class struggle, as... (shrink)

According to an editor of The Economist, the world produced, in the years since World War II, seven times more goods than throughout all history. This is well appreciated by lay people, but has hardly affected social scientists. They do not have the conceptual apparatus for understanding accelerated material-technical change and its meaning for people's personal lives, for their ways of relating to them-selves and to the outside world. Of course, a great deal of speculation about emerging life forms in (...) industrialised societies exists and social scientists with a futuristic bend have projected their diverse visions upon public debates, ranging from thc Efficient Hedonism of "post-industrialist' society a la Daniel Bell to the “Responsible Convivialism” of 'post-materialist" critics such as Fritz Schumacher. Competing images of the coming "services society" or "self-service society" share a central concern: the ongoing relation between tile spheres of large organisations and personal lifestyles, between salaried work arid private consumption. They also share a eel-tau' implausibility: few people recognize themselves in either projection. And they sham ubiquitous reference to "technology", without accounting for it in real terms. A good diagnostic of what is actually happening seems to me to be Jonathan Gershuny, who sees a drift toward a particular type of self-service economy: a quite radical shift in the mode of provision of social services, as he calls it, based on new kinds of consumer technologies. Industrialization used to be partial, but is becoming total fast. This process obviously has many facets, the one I am interested in here is the intrusion of modern technology into spheres of life which in the past have been relatively little dependent on it. (shrink)