When do companies deserve moral credit for doing what is right? This question concerns the positive side of corporate moral responsibility, the negative side of which is the more commonly discussed issue of when companies are blameworthy for doing what is wrong. I offer a broadly functionalist account of how companies can act from morally creditworthy motives, which defuses the following Strawsonian challenge to the claim that they can: morally creditworthy motivation involves being guided by attitudes of “goodwill” for others, (...) and these attitudes involve affect and/or phenomenal consciousness, which corporate agents cannot maintain. In response, I show that what matters about being guided by attitudes of goodwill is being directly concerned for others in one’s practical deliberation. Companies can achieve this direct concern through their decision-making procedures without affect or phenomenal consciousness. I also explore how a company’s moral creditworthiness, or lack thereof, should shape stakeholders’ relationship with it. (shrink)

Are hierarchical arrangements in the workplace, including the employer-employee relationship, consistent with the ideal of relating to one another as moral equals? With this question at its core, this volume of essays by leading moral and political philosophers explores ideas about justice in the workplace, contributing to both political philosophy and business ethics. Relational egalitarians propose that the ideal of equality is primarily an ideal of social relationships and view the equality of social relationships as having priority over the distributive (...) arrangements. Yet contemporary workplaces are characterized by hierarchical employer-employee relationships. The essays push discussions of the relational egalitarian tradition in new directions, helping to show its promise and its limits. They address pressing concerns at a time of widening inequality and rapid changes in the nature of work. (shrink)

Andreas Schmidt argues that ethicists have misplaced moral qualms about nudges insofar as their worries are about whether nudges treat us as rational agents, because nudges can enhance our rational agency. I think that Schmidt is right that nudges often enhance our rational agency; in fact, we can carry his conclusion further: nudges often enhance our self-governing agency, too. But this does not alleviate our worries that nudges fail to treat us as rational. This is shown by disambiguating two conceptions (...) of treating-as-rational. The more plausible conception of treating-as-rational undermines Schmidt’s case that nudges often treat us as rational. (shrink)

We are moral equals, but in virtue of what? The most plausible answers to this question have pointed to our higher agential capacities, but we vary in the degrees to which we possess those capacities. How could they ground our equal moral standing, then? This chapter argues that they do so only indirectly. Our moral equality is most directly grounded in a social practice of equality, a practice that serves the purpose of mitigating our tendencies toward control and domination that (...) interpreters of Rousseau call “inflamed amour-propre.” We qualify as participants in this practice of equality by possessing certain agential capacities, but it is our participation in the practice, and not the capacities themselves, that makes us moral equals. This chapter thus proposes moving from a capacity-based to practice-based view of moral equality. Doing so avoids problems for other accounts that, like the one defended here, ignore (above a threshold) the varying degrees to which we possess the pertinent agential capacities, such as Ian Carter’s account of “opacity respect.”​. (shrink)

To deserve credit for doing what is morally right, we must act from the right kinds of motives. Acting from the right kinds of motives involves responding both to the morally relevant reasons, by acting on these considerations, and to the morally relevant individuals, by being guided by appropriate attitudes of regard for them. Recent theories of the right kinds of motives have tended to prioritize responding to moral reasons. I develop a theory that instead prioritizes responding to individuals (through (...) appropriate attitudes of regard for them) and argue that it better accounts for the basic features of the right kinds of motives – what we most fundamentally care about in judging whether persons deserve moral credit. (shrink)

A central reason to worry that managers should not use nudges to influence employees is that doing so fails to treat employees as _rational_ and/or _autonomous_ (RA). Recent nudge defenders have marshaled a powerful line of response against this worry: in general, nudges treat us as the kind of RA agents we are, because nudges are apt to enhance our limited capacities for RA agency by improving our decision-making environments. Applied to managerial nudges, this would mean that when managers nudge (...) their employees, they generally bolster their employees’ limited RA agency and, thus, treat employees as the kinds of RA agents they are. My aim is to vindicate a qualified version of the initial worry from the nudge-defender response and, as a result, provide a clearer, more plausible framework for evaluating managerial nudges than what nudge critics have previously given. I do this, first, by showing how nudge defenders rely on equivocation between two different senses of “treating someone as RA.” The _value-preserving_ notion that supports the nudge-defender prescription to protect and enhance RA capacities is different from the _authority-recognizing_ notion that underwrites the initial worry about nudging. Second, I argue that the authority-recognizing notion of treating someone as RA implies that managerial nudges treat employees as RA just when the nudges are compatible with relating to employees as equals. Third, I explain how, to determine when managerial nudges are compatible with relating to employees as equals, we need to consider how employees surrender aspects of their equal, agency-grounded authority to managers. (shrink)

How important is it for managers to have the “nice” virtues of modesty, civility, and humility? While recent scholarship has tended to focus on the organizational consequences of leaders having or lacking these traits, I want to address the prior, deeper question of whether and how these traits are intrinsically morally important. I argue that certain aspects of modesty, civility, and humility have intrinsic importance as the virtues of relational equality – the attitudes and dispositions by which we relate as (...) moral equals. I provide a novel account of the normative grounds of the virtues of relational equality and develop a corresponding framework for how these virtues can be enacted by managers. The virtues are grounded in the value of opposing objectionable forms of social hierarchy, which requires social norms that grant all persons the same personal authority over their lives and interactions. I show how this view of virtue contrasts with prevailing Aristotelian, Personalist, and Smithian views in business ethics. I then explain how, for managers, sustaining and enacting the virtues of relational equality involves a distinctive cluster of role-specific traits: respect for employees’ equal personal authority, a commitment to express such respect, and a disposition to give equal weight and deference to employees’ relevant interests. (shrink)

Why does respect for persons involves accepting that persons have responsibilities, and not just authority, for their lives and interactions? I show how we can answer this question with a role-based view: respect for persons is an attitude of recognizing others for a social role they occupy. To fill in a role-based view, we need to describe the practice into which the pertinent role figures. To do this, my account draws on the Rousseauian idea of inflamed amour-propre. Roughly, respect for (...) persons is an attitude of recognizing persons for the role they occupy in a social practice that helps solve the problem of inflamed amour-propre. (shrink)

There is a puzzle about the very possibility of foreseen but unintended side effects, and solving this puzzle requires us to revise our basic picture of the structure of practical deliberation. The puzzle is that, while it seems that we can rationally foresee, but not intend, bringing about foreseen side effects, it also seems that we rationally must decide to bring about foreseen side effects and that we intend to do whatever we decide to do. I propose solving this puzzle (...) by rejecting the idea that we intend to do whatever we decide to do. My solution involves taking account of the underappreciated role that qualified intentions play in deliberation. I also argue that this solution fares better than those that instead reject the idea that we rationally must decide to bring about foreseen side effects, for these solutions are committed to rejecting the even more compelling idea that decisions rationally serve as the conclusions of practical deliberation. (shrink)

Unjustifiably expecting a higher form of regard from others than one deserves is a familiar vice; call it the “vanity-vice.” How serious of a vice is it? Rousseau claims that it is uniquely morally dangerous. I show how Rousseau’s claim is true of only one form of the vanity-vice. I first develop an account of dangerous vices that takes seriously Rousseau’s concern about the anti-egalitarian vices associated with inflamed amour-propre. I then apply two, cross-cutting distinctions in vanity: a distinction in (...) whether one cares about the correctness of one’s expectations of high regard, and a distinction in the kind of high regard one expects. When we do not care about the correctness of our inflated expectations of regard, and when the unduly high regard we expect is authority-recognizing deference, we manifest a form of vanity that is uniquely dangerous, what I call “entitled smugness.”. (shrink)

As anyone who has ever seriously attempted to analyze the semantico-epistemological status of scientific theories has soon discovered, it is not easy to reconcile the belief that theoretical terms have genuine cognitive properties with the empiricist tenet that all knowledge derives from experience. Even if it be granted that knowledge can originate in experience without being about experience, it still remains to develop a coherent metalinguistic account of the truth-conditions of theoretical propositions and the designata of denotative expressions in the (...) theory language. In a recent article, “On the use of Hilbert's e-operator in scientific theories” [1], Carnap has broadened his analysis of theories to include provision for the referential properties of individual theoretical terms. But while his account focuses more closely than ever upon the fundamental semantical problems of a theory language, his specific proposals amount to a repudiation of the very logical empiricism which he has so strongly championed these many years. In what follows, I use Carnap's notation and terminology throughout. (shrink)

To speak of human rights in the twenty-first century is to speak of proportionality. Proportionality has been received into the constitutional doctrine of courts in continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, South Africa, and the United States, as well as the jurisprudence of treaty-based legal systems such as the European Convention on Human Rights. Proportionality provides a common analytical framework for resolving the great moral and political questions confronting political communities. But behind the singular appeal to proportionality (...) lurks a range of different understandings. This volume brings together many of the world's leading constitutional theorists - proponents and critics of proportionality - to debate the merits of proportionality, the nature of rights, the practice of judicial review, and moral and legal reasoning. Their essays provide important new perspectives on this leading doctrine in human rights law. (shrink)

From text to action -- Park fiction, ala plastica, and dialogue -- The risk of diversity -- Programmatic multiplicity -- Art theory and the post-structuralist canon -- Lessons in futility -- Enclosure acts -- The twelfth seat and the mirrored ceiling -- The atelier as workshop -- Labor, praxis, and representation -- The divided and incomplete subject of yesterday -- Memories of development -- The limits of ethical capitalism -- The art of the locality -- Blindness and insight -- The (...) invention of the public -- The boulevards of the inner city -- Park fiction : desire, resistance, and complicity -- A culture of needles : project row houses in Houston. (shrink)

The concept of measuring inconsistency in information was developed by John Grant in a 1978 paper in the context of first-order logic. For more than 20 years very little was done in this area until in the early 2000s a number of AI researchers started to formulate new inconsistency measures primarily in the context of propositional logic knowledge bases. The aim of this volume is to survey what has been done so far, to expand inconsistency measurement to other formalisms, (...) to connect it with related topics, and to provide ideas for further research in a topic that is particularly relevant now in view of the many inconsistencies in the massive amount of information available. The book contains 11 chapters. The first chapter, by John Grant, gives his original motivation for starting this field, explains why it was formulated in a highly mathematical manner, presents important material that was omitted from the original paper, and provides ideas about the use of dimensions in measuring inconsistency. The second chapter, by Matthias Thimm, is a survey that covers most of the research on inconsistency measures up to 2017. The other 9 chapters, all by experts either in inconsistency measures, or in the topic under consideration, or both, connect inconsistency measures with argumentation, disjunctive logic programming, fuzzy logic systems, modal logics, multiset representation, paraconsistent consequence, probabilistic logic, relational databases, and spatio-temporal databases."-- back cover. (shrink)

George GrantÑphilosopher, conservative, Canadian nationalist, ChristianÑwas one of Canada’s most significant thinkers, and the author of Lament for a Nation, Technology and Empire, and English-Speaking Justice. Admirers and critics of the author will welcome these compelling essays about society’s traditional values in a technological age.

This chapter contains sections titled: On Definition Theories of Gaming A Definition of Videogames.

Efforts to bare the psychonomic nature of the semantic reference (representation) relation have been remarkably scanty; in fact, the only contemporary account developed with any care is the one proposed by Osgood. However, not even Osgood has looked deeply at the difficulties that beset any attempt to analyze reference in terms of common effects appropriately shared by a symbol and its significate.

It is widely agreed among philosophers of science today that no formal pattern can possibly be found in the origins of scientific theory. There is no such thing as a "logic of discovery," insists this view--a scientific hypothesis is susceptible to methodological critique only in its relation to empirical consequences derived after the hypothesis itself has emerged through a spontaneous creative inspiration. Yet confronted with the tautly directed thrust of theory-building as actually practiced at the cutting edge of scientific research, (...) this romantic denial of method in the genesis of ideas takes on the appearance of myth. It is the contention of this article that as empirical data ramify in logical complexity, they deposit a hard sediment of theory according to a standard inductive pattern so primitively compelling that it must be recognized as one of the primary forms of inferential thought. This process, here called "ontological induction," is a distillation out of unwieldly observed regularities of more conceptually tractable states hypothesized to underlie them, and is the wellspring of our beliefs in theoretical entities. Previous failure to recognize this pattern of induction has undoubtedly been in substantial measure a result of inadequate attention to the structural details of scientific propositions; for in order to exhibit the nature of ontological induction clearly, it is first necessary to make extended forays through sparsely explored methodological terrain--notably, the nature of scientific "variables," the logical form of "laws," and the type-hierarchy of scientific concepts. (shrink)

E. L. Grant Watson, an English field naturalist, zoologist, and one of England's best-loved nature writers, spent a lifetime trying to bring nature and consciousness into a unified, holistic vision that would establish meaning in the world without losing wonder. The questions raised by facts of nature inexplicable in terms of conventional theories, together with insights gained from a reading of Jung--as well as by a study of early Christian gnostic literature and the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner--brought him to (...) an imaginative perception of living things based on the conviction of the presence in all things of a spiritual reality. "Love is of man, but wisdom is of nature, and there are times when it almost seems that the author's secret--as perhaps it will one day be the secret of a reformed scientific method--is to stand aside and let the wisdom of nature herself speak through him. "-Owen Barfield. (shrink)

Faculty members in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines are typically expected to pursue grant funding and publish to support their research or teaching agendas. Providing effective professional development programs on grant preparation and management and on research publications is crucial. This study shares the design and implementation of such a program for Native STEM faculty from two tribal colleges and one public, non-tribal, Ph.D. granting institution during a 3-year period. The overall development and implementation of the program (...) is centered on the six R’s Indigenous framework – Respect, Relationship, Representation, Relevance, Responsibility, and Reciprocity. The role of NAF-STEM and their interactions with the program, as members of the community formed by their participation, impacted the program. Their practices and the program co-emerged over time, each providing structure and meaning for the other. Through such reciprocity, NAF-STEM and the program research team continually refined the program through their mutual engagement. They took on the shared responsibility of the program while they participated in and shaped its practices. The process and results of formative and summative assessment and the impact of COVID-19 on the program are reported. Results of the program offer lessons on the implementation of six R’s framework in professional development at institutions of higher education. (shrink)

Subjunctive conditionals have their uses, but constituting the meaning of dispositional predicates is not one of them. More germane is the analysis of dispositions in terms of "bases"--except that past efforts to maintain an ontic gap between dispositions and their bases, while not wholly misguided, have failed to appreciate the semantic birthright of dispositional concepts as a species of theoretical construct in primitive science.

The recent spate of books and articles reflecting on the question of evil might make one forget that the question of just what constitutes goodness is no less urgent or perplexing. Everyone wants to think of him- or herself as good. But what does a good life look like? And how do people become good? Are there multiple, competing possibilities for what counts as a good life, all equally worthy? Or, is there a unified and transcendent conception of the good (...) that should guide our judgment of the possibilities? What does a good life look like when it is guided by God? How is a good life involved with the lives of others? And, finally, how good is good enough? These questions are the focus of _In Search of Goodness_, the product of a year-long conversation about goodness. The eight essays in this volume challenge the dichotomies that usually govern how goodness has been discussed in the past: altruism versus egoism; reason versus emotion; or moral choice versus moral character. Instead, the contributors seek to expand the terms of the discussion by coming at goodness from a variety of perspectives: psychological, philosophic, literary, religious, and political. In each case, they emphasize the lived realities and particulars of moral phenomena, taking up examples and illustrations from life, literature, and film. From Achilles and Billy Budd, to Oskar Schindler and Shel Silverstein’s _The Giving Tree_, to Iris Murdoch and the citizens of Flagstaff, Arizona, readers will find a wealth of thought-provoking insights to help them better understand this most basic, but complex, element of human life and happiness. (shrink)

During the battle of Iwo Jima in June 1944, Private First Class Jackylin Harold Lucas and three other U.S. Marines came under attack while making their way along a ravine. Upon seeing two grenades thrown near the soldiers, Lucas dove onto one grenade and pulled the other under his body, saving his companions from serious injury or death. Lucas survived, but his injuries were so grave that his companions left him for dead. Lucas’s act was one of spectacular and nearly (...) suicidal altruism. What does such an act show us about our nature and the human capacity for good and evil? Perhaps it offers a window onto our true nature—a nature ultimately good, though susceptible to corrupting influences. Or perhaps it seems extraordinary precisely because we are greedy and violent by nature but can, in rare instances, rise above those instincts. Questions about what human nature is and how we can learn about it are difficult to answer. They are difficult not just because humans are complex creatures whose behavior is deeply embedded in the cultural environment that they are a part of, but also because it is not obvious what a concept of human nature is supposed to do or what it is for. The concept of human nature is often used as a normative concept, one that can serve as a guide to action, showing us how we ought to behave. Less commonplace is an approach that seeks a descriptive account of human nature, one that characterizes what humans do and are disposed to do. I argue in this essay that the normative and descriptive approaches are at odds and that we should not expect a single concept of human nature to play both roles. Furthermore, there are deep problems with normative accounts. They often ignore or contradict the contemporary scientific worldview, and they often merely reflect biases about how we ought to be and what we ought to do. Human nature in this sense becomes politicized and serves in arguments about the moral status of issues like homosexuality, abortion, or biomedical enhancement. Because of the problems inherent in normative notions of human nature, I offer a descriptive alternative. My alternative attempts to align the scientific study of the human with human nature. (shrink)

One of the most prominent African American intellectuals of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois continues to influence the understanding of race relations in the United States. In this deeply personal introduction to the man and his ideas, esteemed scholar Carl A. Grant reflects on how Du Bois's work has illuminated his own life practices as a Black student, teacher, assistant principal, and professor. Sharing the story of a brilliant man's life contribution to teaching about race and (...) the ideologies and methodologies of racism in education and social and political thought, Grant begins his narrative with a broad overview of Du Bois's life and scholarship, before turning more specifically to Du Bois's theory of an educational system. The book concludes with an examination of Du Bois's curriculum model, predicated upon the work of the NAACP, the Harlem Renaissance, and Du Bois's own writings, as well as a discussion of the lasting legacy of Du Bois's educational and social theory in the present day. Ideal for graduate-level courses in curriculum theory, educational foundations, and education history, Du Bois and Education provides an in-depth examination of Du Bois's scholarship, social criticism, and political thought as they relate to his educational theory. (shrink)

This study examines the outcomes of a four-year faculty learning community (FLC) that aimed to transform departmental ethics curriculum by supporting Earth Sciences faculty members as they ethically inquired into their teaching of ethics and refined existing courses in alignment with an Integrated Community-Engaged Learning and Ethical Reflection (ICELER) framework. We present ethnographic case studies that unpack processes through which three faculty members transformed undergraduate courses. We assembled case studies by triangulating interview data, course artifacts, and faculty reflections. We examine (...) how faculty (1) built awareness around teaching ethics, (2) took responsibility for and made judgments about teaching ethics, (3) experimented by designing and implementing ICELER-inspired courses, and (4) interrogated the outcomes of their ethics teaching, utilizing findings to enhance awareness and revise courses. The paper closes by introducing a model detailing how instructors inquire into ethics teaching and how model components might inspire future educational practice and research. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explain why creativity is an artistic merit. Artworks and non-artworks can both be creative. But creativity does not help make many other creative things good of their kind. A creative explanation is not a better explanation in virtue of being creative. Why, then, is a creative artwork a better artwork in virtue of being creative? Understanding this will give us a better understanding of the nature of artistic merit. The approach adopted in this (...) paper is as follows. First, I say what creativity is and what an artistic merit is. Second, I identify reasons to doubt that creativity is an artistic merit. A good explanation of the merit of creativity should address these doubts. Third, I develop a theory of artistic merit that appeals to the final value of acting excellently – for example, virtuously or skilfully. Finally, I argue that this enables us to explain why creativity is an artistic merit. This account also enables us to argue that artistic merits give some things final value, and not merely instrumental value. It also provides reason to believe that ethical qualities of artworks enhance their artistic merit for the same reason creativity does. (shrink)

This stuff is everywhere -- The damage that it does -- On weasel words -- Building your own bullshitometer -- Noble monkeys: where we all came from -- The wonderful power of woo -- Bugs, bodies: mysteries of medicine -- Implacable foes of reason: the antivaxers -- No hoax: the truth about climate change -- That isn't exactly how it went: faking history -- Coprolite claims: faking archaeology -- All the news that's fit to fake.

Examines how the animal/human divide has influenced power dynamics. The division of life into animal and human is one of the fundamental schisms found within political societies. Ironically, given the immense influence of the animal/human divide, especially upon power dynamics, the discipline in charge of theorizing and studying power—political science and theory—has had little to say about the animal/human. This book seeks to amend this vast oversight. Acknowledging the complexity of the changing differences between animals and humans, the contributors explore (...) such topics as Marx, Freud, the animal, and civilization; dog breeding, racism, and democracy; the meaningful silences of animals; how sovereignty reconfigures the animal/human; and the paradoxical struggles against being dehumanized among immigrant workers in a slaughterhouse. Political Theory and the Animal/Human Relationship is necessary reading for anyone who wants to understand how power has been influenced by the animal/human divide, and what we can do about it. (shrink)

In _Beyond the Sovereign Self_ Grant H. Kester continues the critique of aesthetic autonomy begun in _The Sovereign Self_, showing how socially engaged art provides an alternative aesthetic with greater possibilities for critical practice. Instead of grounding art in its distance from the social, Kester shows how socially engaged art, developed in conjunction with forms of social or political resistance, encourages the creative capacity required for collective political transformation. Among others, Kester analyzes the work of conceptual artist Adrian Piper, (...) experimental practices associated with the escrache tradition in Argentina, and indigenous Canadian artists such as Nadia Myer and Michèle Taïna Audette, showing how socially engaged art catalyzes forms of resistance that operate beyond the institutional art world. From the Americas and Europe to Iran and South Africa, Kester presents a historical genealogy of recent engaged art practices rooted in a deep history of cultural production, beginning with nineteenth-century political struggles and continuing into contemporary anticolonial resistance and other social movements. (shrink)

This open access book is a systematic update of the philosophical and scientific foundations of the biopsychosocial model of health, disease and healthcare. First proposed by George Engel 40 years ago, the Biopsychosocial Model is much cited in healthcare settings worldwide, but has been increasingly criticised for being vague, lacking in content, and in need of reworking in the light of recent developments. The book confronts the rapid changes to psychological science, neuroscience, healthcare, and philosophy that have occurred since the (...) model was first proposed and addresses key issues such as the model’s scientific basis, clinical utility, and philosophical coherence. The authors conceptualise biology and the psychosocial as in the same ontological space, interlinked by systems of communication-based regulatory control which constitute a new kind of causation. These are distinguished from physical and chemical laws, most clearly because they can break down, thus providing the basis for difference between health and disease. This work offers an urgent update to the model’s scientific and philosophical foundations, providing a new and coherent account of causal interactions between the biological, the psychological and social. (shrink)

Peculiar Attunements places the recent turn to affect into conversation with a parallel movement in European music theory of the eighteenth century. During that time the affects--or passions, as they were also called--formed a vital component of a mimetic model of the arts. Eighteenth-century critics held that artworks imitated or copied the natural world in order to produce copies of the affects in their beholders. But music caused a problem for such theories, since it wasn't apparent that musical tones could (...) imitate anything with any dependability, beyond the rare thunderclap or birdcall. Struggling to articulate how it was that music managed to move its auditors without imitation, certain theorists developed a new affect theory crafted especially for music, postulating that music's physical materiality as sound vibrated the nerves of listeners and attuned them to the affects through sympathetic resonance. This was a theory of affective attunement that bypassed the entire structure of representation, offering a non-discursive, corporeal alternative. It is a pendant to contemporary theories of affect, and one from which they have much to learn. Inflecting our current intellectual moment through eighteenth-century music theory and aesthetics, this book offers a reassessment of affect theory's common systems and processes. It offers a new way of thinking through affect dialectically, drawing attention to patterns and problems in affect theory that we have been given to repeating. Finally, taking a cue from eighteenth-century theory, it gives renewed attention to the objects that generate affects in subjects. (shrink)