Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Two distinct and perhaps mutually exclusive understandings of utilitarianism have emerged in the ethics literature. Utilitarianism is typically regarded as an approach to determine ethicality by focusing on whether or not actions produce the greater good, but has also been conceptualized as a set of traits to which individuals might be predisposed. This paper is designed to clarify the meaning and implications of such utilitarian traits as “results-oriented,” “innovative,” and “a winner.” Although the Janus-headed model of ethical theory from which (...) these traits emerged had been acknowledged by its developer as possibly misrepresenting typical views of utilitarianism, much research using these traits appears to have been conducted without clear recognition of this. If the conceptual foundation underpinning hypothesis development is disconnected from the measure used to test them, then little support for relevant predictions should emerge. A review of the literature which featured utilitarian traits generally confirmed this. This paper also explored the origins and emergence of these traits and suggested that existing evidence that these measure utilitarian ethical predispositions is not especially persuasive. Understanding what utilitarian traits do not assess is critical in order for knowledge about this potentially useful measure to advance. (shrink)

This study examined some ethical implications of two different individual competitive orientations. Winning is crucially important in hypercompetitiveness , whereas a personal development (PD) perspective considers competition as a means to self-discovery and self-improvement. In a sample of 263 senior-level undergraduate business students, survey results suggested that hypercompetitiveness was generally associated with “poor ethics” and PD competitiveness was linked with “high ethics”. For example, hypercompetitive individuals generally saw nothing wrong with self-interested gain at the expense of others, but PD competitors (...) viewed such activities as largely inappropriate. Hypercompetitive people also tended to be highly Machiavellian but not ethically idealistic. In contrast, PD competitors tended to be ethically idealistic but not Machiavellian. Managers that are interested in both high ethics and high functioning work groups may wish to consider the potential importance of attempting to channel hypercompetitive tendencies into PD directions. (shrink)

Knowledge about ethical judgments has not advanced appreciably after decades of research. Such research, however, has rarely addressed the possible importance of the content of such judgments; that is, the material appearing in the brief vignettes or scenarios on which survey respondents base their evaluations. Indeed, this content has seemed an afterthought in most investigations. This paper closely examined the vast array of vignettes that have appeared in relevant research in an effort to reduce this proliferation to a more concise (...) set of overarching vignette themes. Six generic themes emerged from this process, labeled here as Dilemma, Classic, Conspiracy, Sophie’s Choice, Runaway Trolley, and Whistle Blowing. Each of these themes is characterized by a unique combination of four key factors that include the extent of protagonist personal benefit from relevant vignette activities and victim salience in vignette descriptions. Theme identification enabled inherent ambiguities in vignettes that threaten construct validity to come into sharp focus, provided clues regarding appropriate vignette construction, and may help to make sense of patterns of empirical findings that heretofore have seemed difficult to explain. (shrink)

Jones (1990) described ten workplace behaviors of a dubious ethical nature and determined that the hierarchical position adopted by respondents influenced the perceived acceptability of these behaviors. This measure seems promising, and therefore the purpose of this investigation is two-fold: (1) to explore further the psychometric properties of these ten items; and (2) to examine the role of individual difference variables as correlates of perceived acceptability. In two samples of working people, the Jones items were found to be internally consistent, (...) not obviously subject to range restriction, modestly related to social desirability, largely orthogonal to age and managerial status, but clearly linked with Machiavellianism. The nature of the linkage between perceived acceptability and both sex and the Protestant work ethic differed across the two studies, which underscores the need for future research. Two additional variables worth investigating in such research may be locus of control and equity sensitivity. (shrink)

The construct of cognitive moral development seemingly has powerful practical relevance in many areas of life. Nonetheless, moral reasoning seems of marginal relevance at best in the context of business ethics. Simply put, moral reasoning measurement indices are often only weakly related to many other apparently pertinent variables, and such findings cast doubt upon the construct validity of cognitive moral development. Many such unexpectedly weak relationships, however, may stem from two largely unrecognized methodological artifacts. The first artifact is an almost (...) total reliance on the P index of the Defining Issues Test (DIT) designed to assess moral development even when this index may be inappropriate in a particular context. A second artifact that seems particularly salient in the context of attitudes toward authority involves a not always appropriate reliance on samples that include respondents whose moral reasoning is uncoupled from their action choices. These artifacts may restrict the amount of variance explained in observed relationships, and thus constrain the potential for moral reasoning to understand and explain behavior and attitudes relevant in the context of business ethics. Researchers are urged to use DIT D scores (in addition to P scores) in specific situations, and to examine relationships among high DIT U scorers whose moral reasoning is tightly coupled with their action choices. The application of these guidelines may have profound implications for advancing our fundamental understanding of moral reasoning, and of increasing its relevance to business ethics. (shrink)

Two contrasting types of individuals were each predicted to agree, for different reasons, that conventional ethical standards of society need not be upheld if organizational interests appear to demand otherwise. The hypotheses were investigated using questionnaire responses from two samples (employed and student, total N=308). Clear support was obtained for the prediction that individuals inclined toward self-interest and behavior counter to conventional standards would agree with the preceding position. Partial support was obtained for the hypothesis that individuals who simply feel (...) obligated to support an employing organization would also agree. While the latter's perspective may be somewhat narrow or perhaps even cynical, they do not seem to reflect the self-interest profile of the first group. This study also extends the groundbreaking work of Froelich and Kottke by exploring individual difference correlates of their promising ethics scale assessing the extent of agreement that organizational interests legitimately supersede more conventional ethical standards. (shrink)

In an article published recently in theJournal of Business Ethics, Vitellet al. (1991) found that elderly respondents scored surprisingly high on a measure of Machiavellianism. This paper offers an alternative explanation for this unexpected result — it may be an artifact of the survey format employed — and recommends additional research to help clarify the issues raised by Vitell and his colleagues.

Investigations into ethical judgments generally seem fuzzy as to the relevant research domain. We first attempted to clarify the construct and determine domain parameters. This attempt required addressing difficulties associated with pinpointing relevant literature, most notably the varied nomenclature used to refer to ethical judgments (individual evaluations of actions’ ethicality). Given this variation in construct nomenclature and the difficulties it presented in identifying pertinent focal studies, we elected to focus on research that cited papers featuring prominent and often-used measures of (...) ethical judgments (primarily, but not exclusively, the Multidimensional Ethics Scale). Our review of these studies indicated a preponderance of inferences and conclusions unwarranted by empirical evidence (likely attributable at least partly to inconsistent nomenclature). Moreover, ethical judgments related consistently to few respondent characteristics or any other variables, emergent relationships may not always be especially meaningful, and much research seems inclined to repetition of already verified findings. Although we concluded that knowledge about ethical judgments seems not to have advanced appreciably after decades of investigation, we suggested a possible path forward that focuses on the content of what is actually being judged as reflected in the myriad of vignettes used in the literature to elicit judgments. (shrink)

Moral reasoning typically relates unexpectedly weakly with both Machiavellianism and authoritarianism. Although researchers often explain this by pointing to apparent shortcomings in both the construct and the measure of moral reasoning, such explanations are questionable given the many instances of support for hypotheses involving moral reasoning using the same construct and measure. As these latter cannot only sometimes be flawed, we explored the possible influence of moral reasoning index choice on observed results by using multiple indices available in the Defining (...) Issues Test. In a sample of 201 employed persons surveyed in 1998, with results reported for the first time, advanced moral reasoners tended to be neither Machiavellian nor authoritarian. However, the specific moral reasoning index employed was critical to detecting these hypothesized inverse relationships. Specifically, we proposed that currently unavailable D scores would be the relevant index for examining inverse relationships with Machiavellianism and that P scores would be most appropriate in the context of inverse relationships with authoritarianism, particularly among persons inclined to utilize their characteristic moral reasoning. We extrapolate the conceptual logic underpinning such relationships, and suggest that appropriate index choice flows from this logic and is essential to hypothesis testing across a broad array of constructs. Future research could adopt this logic to examine relationships involving constructs with implications similar to those found in Machiavellianism and authoritarianism. (shrink)

Two distinct and perhaps mutually exclusive understandings of utilitarianism have emerged in the ethics literature. Utilitarianism is typically regarded as an approach to determine ethicality by focusing on whether or not actions produce the greater good, but has also been conceptualized as a set of traits to which individuals might be predisposed. This paper is designed to clarify the meaning and implications of such utilitarian traits as “results-oriented,” “innovative,” and “a winner.” Although the Janus-headed model of ethical theory from which (...) these traits emerged had been acknowledged by its developer as possibly misrepresenting typical views of utilitarianism, much research using these traits appears to have been conducted without clear recognition of this. If the conceptual foundation underpinning hypothesis development is disconnected from the measure used to test them, then little support for relevant predictions should emerge. A review of the literature which featured utilitarian traits generally confirmed this. This paper also explored the origins and emergence of these traits and suggested that existing evidence that these measure utilitarian ethical predispositions is not especially persuasive. Understanding what utilitarian traits do not assess is critical in order for knowledge about this potentially useful measure to advance. (shrink)

Individuals who disagree that organizational interests legitimately supersede those of the wider society may experience conflict between their personal standards of ethics and those demanded by an employing organization, a conflict that is well documented. An additional question is whether or not individuals capable of complex moral reasoning experience greater conflict than those reasoning at a less developed level. This question was first positioned in a theoretical framework and then investigated using 115 survey responses from a student sample. Correlational analysis (...) and hierarchical regression indicated that individuals scoring high on the Defining Issues Test measure of Kohlberg's stages of moral development experienced significantly greater workplace ethical conflict than low scorers. The finding that complex moral reasoners perceive greater conflict between their personal standards and typical organizational demands raises the issue of what reasoning orientation is rewarded in organizations. Individuals capable of complex moral reasoning may be likely to leave traditional organizations due to high conflict but more ethically friendly organizations for complex reasoners seem unlikely unless these people occupy influential positions. (shrink)

Ethics and associated values influence not only managerial behavior but also managerial success (England and Lee, 1973). Gender socialization theory hypothesizes gender differences in ethics variables whether or not individuals are full time employees; occupational socialization hypothesizes gender similarity in employees. The conflicting hypotheses were investigated using questionnaire responses from a sample of 308 individuals. Analysis of variance and hierarchical regression yielded unexpected results. Although no significant gender differences emerged in individuals lacking full time employment, significant differences existed between employed (...) women and men, with women appearing more ethical. While occupational socialization predicts an interaction between employment status and gender, these group differences were opposite to those predicted. An implication for the two theories and the current conflicting research support is that these commonly used theories may be of limited usefulness. Some alternative concepts are proposed. (shrink)

Some researchers interested in assessing moral reasoning among business practitioners or students have developed their own vignettes or scenarios set in business contexts, based on assumptions that the situations presented in the often-used Defining Issues Test (DIT) will somehow be inappropriate for these specific types of respondents. This paper is the first to examine in depth both the actual details contained in these business-oriented scenarios and empirical findings emerging from them. Among this paper’s conclusions are: (1) assumptions underpinning the presumed (...) superiority of business-oriented vignettes have yet to be tested; (2) the DIT possesses considerable advantages unavailable in alternative measures; (3) many business-oriented scenarios have underlying Dilemma themes that seem inherently ambiguous and thus of questionable relevance for assessing moral reasoning; (4) these scenarios have no obvious equivalent in the DIT and thus cannot definitively be placed under the umbrella of the latter’s demonstrated construct validity; and (5) meaningful empirical findings have not clearly emerged from investigations using business-oriented vignettes. In light of these conclusions, we recommend that investigators interested in moral reasoning advance knowledge in a coherent and unified way by using the DIT that seems entirely appropriate for use among respondents with business experience or training. Although alternative measures may have value for assessing ethical judgments, evidence of their validity as a measure of moral reasoning is lacking. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of ethics instruction, religiosity, and intelligence on cheating behavior. A sample of 230 upper level, undergraduate business students had the opportunity to increase their chances of winning money in an experimental situation by falsely reporting their task performance. In general, the results indicate that students who attended worship services more frequently were less likely to cheat than those who attended worship services less frequently, but that students who had taken a course in business ethics were (...) no less likely to cheat than students who had not taken such a course. However, the results do indicate that the extent to which taking a business ethics course influenced cheating behavior was moderated by the religiosity and intelligence of the individual student. In particular, while students who were highly religious were unlikely to cheat whether or not they had taken a business ethics course, students who were not highly religious demonstrated less cheating if they had taken a business ethics course. In addition, the extent of cheating among highly intelligent students was significantly reduced if such students had taken a course in business ethics. Likewise, individuals who were highly intelligent displayed significantly less cheating if they were also highly religious. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

This study examined whether undergraduate students’ perceptions regarding the acceptability of cheating were influenced by the amount of ethics instruction the students had received and/or by their personality. The results, from a sample of 230 upper-level undergraduate students, indicated that simply taking a business ethics course did not have a significant influence on students’ views regarding cheating. On the other hand, Machiavellianism was positively related to perceiving that two forms of cheating were acceptable. Moreover, in testing for moderating relationships, the (...) results indicated that the extent to which taking a business ethics course influenced attitudes varied substantially across individuals. Specifically, taking a course in business ethics did result in students who scored lower on Machiavellianism holding even more negative views regarding certain forms of cheating. In addition, individuals with higher grade point averages (GPAs) who had taken a course in business ethics were also less accepting of certain forms of cheating than individuals with similar GPAs who had not taken the business ethics course. The implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

As I write this, in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical caxc. The suffering and death that are occurring there now axe not inevitable, 1101; unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond Lhe capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to (...) very small proportions. The decisions arid actions of human beings can prevent this kind of suffering. Unfortunately, human beings have not made the necessary decisions. At the individual level, people have, with very few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any signihczmt way. Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds; they have not written t0 their parliamentaxy representatives demanding increased government assistance; they have not demonstrated in the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward providing thc refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs. At thc government level, no govcrmmcnt has given the sort of massive aid that would enable the refugees to survive fm: more than a few days. Britain, for instance, has given rather more than most countries. It has, to date, given £14,750,000. For comparative purposes, B1~itain’s share of thc nonreccverabla development costs of the Anglo-French Concorde project is already in excess of £275,000,000, and on present estimates will reach £440,000,¤00. The implication is that the British government values a supersonic transport more than thirty times as.. (shrink)

This paper argues that a set of questioning attitudes are among the foundations of human and animal minds. While both verbal questioning and states of curiosity are generally explained in terms of metacognitive desires for knowledge or true belief, I argue that each is better explained by a prelinguistic sui generis type of mental attitude of questioning. I review a range of considerations in support of such a proposal and improve on previous characterizations of the nature of these attitudes. I (...) then broaden their explanatory scope to include a number of forms of exploratory search. The paper has three main goals: to characterize the nature of the questioning attitudes, outlining their causal role and type of content; to argue that they are fundamental components of the mind, being widespread among animals and not constructed during ontogeny out of other attitudes; and to suggest that they explain a great deal more behavior than one might think. (shrink)

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"—our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals—inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them. In Animal Liberation, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today’s "factory farms" and product-testing procedures—destroying the spurious justifications behind them, and offering alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. (...) An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike. (shrink)

We propose a solution to the problem of logical omniscience in what we take to be its fundamental version: as concerning arbitrary agents and the knowledge attitude per se. Our logic of knowledge is a spin-off from a general theory of thick content, whereby the content of a sentence has two components: an intension, taking care of truth conditions; and a topic, taking care of subject matter. We present a list of plausible logical validities and invalidities for the logic of (...) knowledge per se for arbitrary agents, and isolate three explanatory factors for them: the topic-sensitivity of content; the fragmentation of knowledge states; the defeasibility of knowledge acquisition. We then present a novel dynamic epistemic logic that yields precisely the desired validities and invalidities, for which we provide expressivity and completeness results. We contrast this with related systems and address possible objections. (shrink)

Single-premise epistemic closure is the principle that: if one is in an evidential position to know that P where P entails Q, then one is in an evidential position to know that Q. In this paper, I defend the viability of opposition to closure. A key task for such an opponent is to precisely formulate a restricted closure principle that remains true to the motivations for abandoning unrestricted closure but does not endorse particularly egregious instances of closure violation. I focus (...) on two brands of epistemic theory that naturally incorporate closure restrictions. The first type holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant question. The second holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant topic. For each approach, I offer a formalization of a leading theory from the literature and use this formalization to evaluate the theory’s adequacy in terms of a precise set of desiderata. I conclude that neither theory succeeds in meeting these desiderata, casting doubt on the viability of the underlying approaches. Finally, I offer a novel variant of the topic-sensitive approach that fares better. (shrink)

Introduction These essays have been written over a period of about ten years and have already been published separately in various places. ...

I lay out the framework for my theory of sensory imagination in “Imagining as a guide to possibility.” Sensory imagining involves mental imagery , and crucially, in describing the content of imagining, I distinguish between qualitative content and assigned content. Qualitative content derives from the mental image itself; for visual imaginings, it is what is “pictured.” For example, visually imagine the Philadelphia Eagles defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers to win their first Super Bowl. You picture the greenness of the field and (...) the football’s brown oblong shape. Some of what you imagine isn’t explicitly pictured, however. That it is Sunday, that it is the Super Bowl: these facts are assigned. (shrink)

Political decisions have the potential to greatly impact our lives. Think of decisions in relation to abortion or climate change, for example. This makes political legitimacy an important normative concern. But what makes political decisions legitimate? Are they legitimate in virtue of having support from the citizens? Democratic conceptions of political legitimacy answer in the affirmative. Such conceptions righly highlight that legitimate political decision-making must be sensitive to disagreements among the citizens. But what if democratic decisions fail to track what (...) there is most reason to do? What if a democratically elected government fails to take measures necessary to protect its population from threats related to climate change? Peter argues that the legitimacy of political decisions doesn't just depend on respect for the citizens' will; and defends a novel hybrid conception of political legitimacy, called the Epistemic Accountability conception. According to this conception, political legitimacy also depends on how political decision-making responds to evidence for what there is most reason to do. Grounds for Political Legitmacy starts with an overview of the main ways in which philosophers have thought about political legitimacy, and identifies the epistemic accountability conception as an overlooked alternative. It then develops the epistemic accountability conception of political legitimacy and discusses its implications for legitimate political decision-making. Considering the norms that should govern political debate, it examines the role of experts in politics, and probes the responsibilities of democratically elected political leaders and as well as of citizens. (shrink)

In at least some cases of justified perceptual belief, our perceptual experience itself, as opposed to beliefs about it, evidences and thereby justifies our belief. While the phenomenon is common, it is also mysterious. There are good reasons to think that perceptions cannot justify beliefs directly, and there is a significant challenge in explaining how they do. After explaining just how direct perceptual justification is mysterious, I considerMichael Huemers (Skepticism and the Veil of Perception, 2001) and Bill Brewers (Perception and (...) Reason, 1999) recent, but radically different, attempts to eliminate it. I argue that both are unsuccessful, though a consideration of their mistakes deepens our appreciation of the mystery. (shrink)

This book offers a reassessment of the political philosophy of the British Idealists, a group of once influential and now neglected nineteenth-century Hegelian philosophers, whose work has been much misunderstood. Peter Nicholson focuses on F. H. Bradley's idea of morality and moral philosophy; T. H. Green's theory of the Common Good, of the social nature of rights, of freedom, and of state interference; and Bernard Bosanquet's notorious theory of the General Will. By examining the arguments offered by the Idealists (...) and by their critics the author is able to penetrate the deep layers of hostile comment laid down by several generations of later writers and to show that these ideas, once properly understood, are not only defensible but interesting and important. (shrink)

In the Western world it is usually taken as given that we all want happiness, and our educational arrangements tacitly acknowledge this. Happiness, Hope, and Despair argues, however, that education has an important role to play in deepening our understanding of suffering and despair as well as happiness and joy. Education can be uncomfortable, unpredictable, and unsettling; it can lead to greater uncertainty and unhappiness. Drawing on the work of Søren Kierkegaard, Miguel de Unamuno, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Simone Weil, Paulo Freire, (...) and others, Peter Roberts shows why these features of educational life need not be feared; to the contrary, they can be seen as a source of hope and human fulfilment. After years of negotiating an education system dominated by the language of competition, performance, and economic advancement, students and teachers often long for something different; they seek not just measurable success but also opportunities to ask searching questions of themselves and the world they encounter. Happiness, Hope, and Despair makes an important contribution toward meeting this need. It fosters a rethinking of the nature, purpose, and value of education, and opens up possibilities for further scholarly and professional inquiry. (shrink)

This book presents and evaluates the late philosophy (Spätphilosophie) of F. W. J. Schelling (1775-1854) across a wide range of issues, ranging from relation between pure thinking and being, to the philosophy of mythology and religion, to the philosophy of history, to questions concerning the philosophy of nature and freedom. Simultaneously, it discusses Hegel's treatment of similar issues, and systematically compares the two thinkers. This is the first time, in an English-language publication, that these two major German Idealists have been (...) compared in such detail along such a broad front. The book begins with three chapters exploring the development of Schelling's thinking concerning transcendental philosophy, nature and teleology, human freedom, and the theory of history, from his earliest publications up to his middle years. Against this background, the book then presents Schelling's distinction between "positive" and "negative" philosophy, the defining mark of his late philosophy. It explores his theory of pure a priori thinking (negative philosophy), and his account of the transition from negative to positive philosophy. The major components of Schelling's positive philosophy, including his conception of "un-pre-thinkable being", and his theories of mythology and revelation, are then discussed. Throughout, a comparative assessment of Hegel's approach similar issues is sustained. Schelling emerges as a philosopher who traced his own highly distinctive path through the thicket of problems bequeathed by Kant, and whose systematic responses to these problems still merit serious consideration as alternatives to those of Hegel. (shrink)

Our topic is the theory of topics. My goal is to clarify and evaluate three competing traditions: what I call the way-based approach, the atom-based approach, and the subject-predicate approach. I develop criteria for adequacy using robust linguistic intuitions that feature prominently in the literature. Then I evaluate the extent to which various existing theories satisfy these constraints. I conclude that recent theories due to Parry, Perry, Lewis, and Yablo do not meet the constraints in total. I then introduce the (...) issue-based theory—a novel and natural entry in the atom-based tradition that meets our constraints. In a coda, I categorize a recent theory from Fine as atom-based, and contrast it to the issue-based theory, concluding that they are evenly matched, relative to our main criteria of adequacy. I offer tentative reasons to nevertheless favour the issue-based theory. (shrink)

This is the first volume of a projected three-volume set on the subject of innateness. The extent to which the mind is innate is one of the central questions in the human sciences, with important implications for many surrounding debates. By bringing together the top nativist scholars in philosophy, psychology, and allied disciplines these volumes provide a comprehensive assessment of nativist thought and a definitive reference point for future nativist inquiry. The Innate Mind: Structure and Content, concerns the fundamental architecture (...) of the mind, addressing such question as: What capacities, processes, representations, biases, and connections are innate? How do these innate elements feed into a story about the development of our mature cognitive capacities, and which of them are shared with other members of the animal kingdom? The editors have provided an introduction giving some of the background to debates about innateness and introducing each of the subsequent essays, as well as a consolidated bibliography that will be a valuable reference resource for all those interested in this area. The volume will be of great importance to all researchers and students interested in the fundamental nature and powers of the human mind. Together, the three volumes in the series will provide the most intensive and richly cross-disciplinary investigation of nativism ever undertaken. They point the way toward a synthesis of nativist work that promises to provide a new understanding of our minds and their place in the natural order. (shrink)

Epistemic defeat is standardly understood in either evidentialist or responsibilist terms. The seminal treatment of defeat is an evidentialist one, due to John Pollock, who famously distinguishes between undercutting and rebutting defeaters. More recently, an orthogonal distinction due to Jennifer Lackey has become widely endorsed, between so-called doxastic (or psychological) and normative defeaters. We think that neither doxastic nor normative defeaters, as Lackey understands them, exist. Both of Lackey’s categories of defeat derive from implausible assumptions about epistemic responsibility. Although Pollock’s (...) evidentialist view is superior, the evidentialism per se can be purged from it, leaving a general structure of defeat that can be incorporated in a reliabilist theory that is neither evidentialist nor responsibilist in any way. (shrink)

In the mid-seventeenth century a movement of self-styled experimental philosophers emerged in Britain. Originating in the discipline of natural philosophy amongst Fellows of the fledgling Royal Society of London, it soon spread to medicine and by the eighteenth century had impacted moral and political philosophy and even aesthetics. Early modern experimental philosophers gave epistemic priority to observation and experiment over theorising and speculation. They decried the use of hypotheses and system-building without recourse to experiment and, in some quarters, developed a (...) philosophy of experiment. The movement spread to the Netherlands and France in the early eighteenth century and later impacted Germany. Its important role in early modern philosophy was subsequently eclipsed by the widespread adoption of the Kantian historiography of modern philosophy, which emphasised the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and had no place for the historical phenomenon of early modern experimental philosophy. The re-emergence of interest in early modern experimental philosophy roughly coincided with the development of contemporary x-phi and there are some important similarities between the two. (shrink)

Explores how to identify future-proof science. Peter Vickers takes a transdisciplinary approach in his analysis of 'scientific fact' in order to defend science against potentially dangerous scepticism.

An introduction to the life and work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida.

Truthmaker theorists hold that propositions about higher-level entities (e.g. the proposition that there is a heap of sand) are often made true by lower-level entities (e.g. by facts about the configuration of fundamental particles). This generates a problem: what should we say about these higher-level entities? On the one hand, they must exist (since there are true propositions about them), on the other hand, it seems that they are completely superfluous and should be banished for reasons of ontological parsimony. Some (...) truthmaker theorists—most prominently David Armstrong—have tried to solve this puzzle by arguing that these entities are ‘an ontological free lunch’, i.e. real existents that are still ‘no addition of being’. This answer is prima facie attractive, but I argue in this paper that the standard approaches to truthmaking—modal theories and grounding theories—are unable to vindicate the doctrine of the ontological free lunch, and thus fail to solve the problem of higher-level entities. Fortunately, there is a non-standard account of truthmaking available, the reductive explanation account, which succeeds where the standard approaches fail. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the extent to which claims of massive modular organization of the mind (espoused by some members of the evolutionary psychology research program) are consistent with the main elements of the simple heuristics research program. A number of potential sources of conflict between the two programs are investigated and defused. However, the simple heuristics program turns out to undermine one of the main arguments offered in support of massive modularity, at least as the latter is generally understood by (...) philosophers. So one result of the argument will be to force us to re-examine the way in which the notion of modularity in cognitive science should best be characterized, if the thesis of massive modularity isn’t to be abandoned altogether. What is at stake in this discussion, is whether there is a well-motivated notion of ‘module’ such that we have good reason to think that the human mind must be massively modular in its organization. I shall be arguing (in the end) that there is. (shrink)

This essential introduction to the philosopher and his thought, combines passages from Wittgenstein with detailed interpretation. Hacker leads us into a world of philosophical investigation in which "to smell a rat is ever so much easier than to trap it". Wittgenstein defined humans as language-using creatures. The role of philosophy is to ask questions which reveal the limits and nature of language. Taking the expression, description and observation of pain as examples, Hacker explores the ingenuity with which Wittgenstein identified the (...) rules and set the limits of language. (shrink)

It was pointed out, first by Robert Stalnaker, then also by Andy Egan, that David Lewis’s model of centered-worlds contents has undesired consequences for communication of de se contents. The recent years have seen a number of attempts to save the model by amending it to handle de se communication. Proposals include the appeal to sequences of individuals in the centers, to ersatz classical propositions, and to operations of “re-centering”. The authors are Dilip Ninan and Stephan Torre, Sarah Moss and (...) Max Kölbel, and Alan Gibbard and Clas Weber. The present paper discusses these attempts. The conclusion is that they fail. (shrink)

One can rightly say of Peter Sloterdijk that each of his essays and lectures is also an unwritten book. That is why the texts presented here, which sketch a philosophical physiognomy of Martin Heidegger, should also be characterized as a collected renunciation of exhaustiveness. In order to situate Heidegger's thought in the history of ideas and problems, Peter Sloterdijk approaches Heidegger's work with questions such as: If Western philosophy emerged from the spirit of the polis, what are we (...) to make of the philosophical suitability of a man who never made a secret of his stubborn attachment to rural life? Is there a provincial truth of which the cosmopolitan city knows nothing? Is there a truth in country roads and cabins that would be able to undermine the universities with their standardized languages and globally influential discourses? From where does this odd professor speak, when from his professorial chair in Freiburg he claims to inquire into what lies beyond the history of Western metaphysics? Sloterdijk also considers several other crucial twentieth-century thinkers who provide some needed contrast for the philosophical physiognomy of Martin Heidegger. A consideration of Niklas Luhmann as a kind of contemporary version of the Devil's Advocate, a provocative critical interpretation of Theodor Adorno's philosophy that focuses on its theological underpinnings and which also includes reflections on the philosophical significance of hyperbole, and a short sketch of the pessimistic thought of Emil Cioran all round out and deepen Sloterdijk's attempts to think with, against, and beyond Heidegger. Finally, in essays such as "Domestication of Being" and the "Rules for the Human Park," which incited an international controversy around the time of its publication and has been translated afresh for this volume, Sloterdijk develops some of his most intriguing and important ideas on anthropogenesis, humanism, technology, and genetic engineering. (shrink)

A range of seemingly unrelated problems at the forefront of controversy about consciousness, language, and vision, among others, have a deep connection with one another that has gone unnoticed. This book suggests that this mistake arises not from what is put into a theory but rather from what is missing.

Framed by the theory of evolution, this volume offers a new understanding of the mechanisms by which we transfer information from narrative make-believe to real life. Ranging across game theory and philosophy of science, as well as poetics and aesthetics, Peter Swirski explains how literary fictions perform as a systematic tool of enquiry, driven by thought experiments. Crucially, he argues for a continuum between the cognitive tools employed by scientists, philosophers, and scholars or writers of fiction."--Jacket.

These new studies of Wittgenstein's Tractatus represent a significant step beyond recent polemical debate.