Taking a Sartrean existentialist viewpoint towards business ethics, in particular, concerning the question of the nature of businesspersons’ moral character, provides for a dramatically distinct set of reflections from those afforded by the received view on character, namely that of Aristotelian-based virtue ethics. Insofar as Sartre’s philosophy places human freedom at center stage, I argue that the authenticity with which a businessperson approaches moral situations depends on the degree of consciousness he or she has of the various choices at stake. (...) Finally, I consider some practical changes in business ethics education, managerial decision-making, and business organizations that Sartrean reflections might prompt. (shrink)

The article aims to provide a standpoint from which to critically address two broad concerns. The first concern surrounds a naïve view of mindfulness, which takes it as a given that it is a good thing to cultivate mindfulness and attendant qualities like compassion because these virtues are key to improving the quality of life and bettering effective decisionmaking within business. Yet the virtue of mindfulness has roots in religious and spiritual traditions, and the virtue of compassion is complex and (...) contextual; neither of these virtues operate in a vacuum. Nor do they function independently from other virtues and values. Reasonable people of goodwill possessing the virtues of mindfulness and compassion in good measure, may nevertheless strongly disagree about what the compassionate, mindful thing to do is, particularly in a business setting. It is, moreover, conceivable that intensively cultivating mindfulness and compassion could lead one to reject altogether the “dog-eat dog” culture of competitive business that draws upon selective features of mindfulness meditation that lie in the corporate comfort zone yet which are not especially countercultural from a religious or spiritual vantage point. The second concern is that Western virtue-based business ethics is largely confined to academic philosophical theories. As such, virtue-driven business ethics is often more centered around developing theoretical wisdom than developing “hard core” practical wisdom earned through yoga asanas, meditation, chanting, and breathing, whereas for contemplative practices the reverse is the case, with practical wisdom emphasized over theoretical wisdom. Accordingly, the article examines prospects for cross-fertilization between, on the one hand, mindfulness and compassion interpreted as virtues in Eastern contemplative practices, and on the other hand, mindfulness and compassion as interpreted within Western virtue-oriented business ethics. Illuminating a pathway for such interpretative cross-pollination calls for an appropriate conceptual frame of reference that the article organizes around a set of interconnected themes. The first theme is that mindfulness and compassion represent key virtues within contemplative practices. This indicates a promising touchpoint between Eastern and Western traditions: their respective focus upon character, inner states, intrinsic motivation, and self-improvement toward ethicality in the world. The second theme is that such virtues in Eastern contemplative practices, as well as character traits integral to Western virtue-oriented approaches, denote contested “normative-interpretive” concepts that engage philosophical debate rather than indisputable empirical-criterial concepts that can be taken at face-value. The third theme advocates moving beyond behaviorist and neuropsychological accounts of virtue, approaching character traits of Eastern contemplative practice and Western virtue ethics through nonscientific inquiry into normative interpretive questions concerning such virtues. This supports debate over competing views of the nature, purpose, cultivation, and cultural context of mindfulness, compassion, and other virtues – issues arising as mindfulness enters the business management sphere -- to be conducted on normative grounds. With the background conceptual framework established, the article presents key points about the prospects for cross-fertilization between virtue ethics and contemplative practice, and why it matters, with reference to business ethics. (shrink)

In the aftermath of scandals such as those at Enron and WorldCom, there is a growing suspicion of the corporate world. For this reason it is more important than ever for firms to maintain a good reputation. In Building Reputational Capital, Kevin T. Jackson offers a practical guide to taking the high road--the only path that leads to lasting success. Based on extensive research and real-world experience, Building Reputational Capital reveals basic principles of integrity and fairness with which (...) firms can build an enduring reputation. More than image, a firm's reputation is a form of capital often neglected in the boardroom and overlooked in conventional analyses of financial statements. Speaking directly to the work experience of real people in practical business settings, Jackson couples each principle with straightforward actions that drive management systems, and he provides tested strategies--from downsizing techniques to e-commerce tips--that cultivate the hidden power of a good reputation. He outlines the advantages of a superior reputation, describes the vital role the firm's leader must play, offers ways to build and protect your reputation on the Internet, and shows how to rescue your reputation once disaster hits. Perhaps most important, he shows how to strike the right balance of virtues like authenticity, honesty, responsibility, and stewardship of the environment, employees, and the economy. Highlighted with real-life success stories--from giants like Hewlett-Packard to small firms like Thanksgiving Coffee Company, Building Reputational Capital offers a simple but effective guide for executives, managers, entrepreneurs, legal professionals, and corporate consultants. (shrink)

Spirituality, in the broad sense, provides a deeper foundation for principles of international business ethics than legalistic, command-based ethics programs. Spiritual-based principles and values are presupposed and endorsed by established legal and ethical principles for international business. Identifying such spiritual-based principles and values requires the exercise of moral imagination and an openness to values embraced by the world's religions. Once identified, a new realm of moral freedom is attained for multinational corporations which may help them move beyond an "ethics for (...) sale" orientation. (shrink)

This article challenges an argument from Tom Donaldson''s recent bookThe Ethics of International Business with a claim that distributive justice, deemed in many circles to impose a duty of mutual aid on individuals and nations, establishes a basis for holding multinational corporations to such a duty as well. The root idea I advocate is that Rawls'' theory of justice can be deployed — beyond its original intent yet in line with its spirit — to underwrite aprima facie obligation of international (...) business to render aid to ameliorate suffering on behalf of the inhabitants of developing countries in which they operate. (shrink)

Business and music, when at their best, embody virtuosity. This article presents the concept of virtuosity in music as an analogue for deepening understanding of, and for cultivating, virtuosity in business. Among the advantages of undertaking the comparison is the assistance it provides in envisioning business in a new light, a task especially called for in a climate of disillusionment with economic institutions and economic actors.

In the absence of any institution for imposing legal liability on global business, the idea of instituting a cosmopolitan court for international corporate offenses is advocated. The proposal is then critically examined and defended in light of a number of key objections. Having both civil and criminal jurisdiction, such a tribunal could benefit domestic and international legal systems, multinational corporations, and victims of transnational and international corporate misdeeds. By laying down minimal global standards of corporate liability, resolving conflicts between the (...) regulatory activities of national legal systems, and affording redress for aggrieved parties in countries with inadequate legal infrastructures, the tribunal would promote the objectives of compensatory, distributive, procedural and retributive justice at the global level. Moreover, the court would assist corporations by translating compliance with minimum ethical standards to the bottom line. Ethical corporations will gain competitive advantage relative to unscrupulous firms, since the latter'ss activities will be sanctioned. The international community need not leave obedience to basic norms up to the voluntary good-will and discretion of multinational firms. (shrink)

Sustainability has been gaining recognition as an innovative pathway for general learning from early childhood to higher education. This article advances acura personalis, or care for the entire person, approach for integrating sustainability into the domain of business management education. Such an approach centers on fostering higher-order dispositions including creativity, critical moral awareness, existential authenticity, excellence, relatedness, and overall well-being and thus constitutes a broader, deep ecological alternative to received scientistic and quantitatively controlled programs.

The article posits the concept of economy of mutuality as an intellectual mediation space for shifts in emphasis between market and social structures within economic theory and practice. Economy of mutuality, it is contended, provides an alternative frame of reference to the dichotomy of market economy and social economy, for inquiry about what business is for and what values it presupposes and creates. The article centers around the objective of gaining a broadened understanding of business so as to include not (...) just market economy, but social enterprise and social economy. In pursuit of this objective, a range of various archetypes of business enterprise are considered in light of higher ends of economic life. The highest telos of business encompassing all such archetypes, it is argued, is founded on reciprocity and integral human development. The article concludes that, compared to market economy per se, economy of mutuality provides a better conceptual framework for business in undertaking the challenges of sustainability. (shrink)

The recent global financial crisis raises pressing issues that are not exclusively economic. The health of the economy, Kevin T. Jackson contends, reflects the moral health of the wider culture: ethics must be considered along with economics to understand world markets, especially now that globalization and other forces have increasingly complicated the regulation of transnational corporate conduct. Virtuosity in Business calls on businesspeople and ethicists to expand their thinking by stressing the profound relevance of philosophy to business and (...) economics. Virtuosity in Business shows that ethics has been the overriding problem for business and that it is the only enduring solution. Drawing on a variety of philosophical sources, including Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Jackson applies the concept of virtue to the competitive realm of the marketplace. Virtuosity, in all realms of human endeavor, is not merely a display of technical skill or adherence to conventional norms. The invisible law of virtuosity, which discourages misconduct and rewards good corporate citizenship, guides ethical firms and wise entrepreneurs toward greater success by playing a constructive part in the human enterprise. A pioneering work in the contemporary philosophy of business, Virtuosity in Business revivifies business ethics to address concerns arising from the global financial crisis, such as restoration of faith in the market, respect for human rights, and environmental sustainability. (shrink)

Competing schools of contemporary jurisprudence can be “internationalized” to elucidate special problems in interpreting obligations of multinational firms under emergent corporate and international codes. An “integrity” model proves superior to a relativist conception of international business precepts. An integrity jurisprudence provides a coherent vision of a globaI rule-of-law and ethics-of-principle for the world community’s rights correlative to MNC obligations while accomodating the indeterminate and contestable nature of interpretations of such textually-based directives.

Many ethical issues facing managers of multinational corporations are polycentric problems. That is, they involve a number of distinct centers -- each of which define rights and obligations of a multiplicity of affected parties -- and resolving matters around one center typically creates unpredictable repercussions around one or more of the other centers. Polycentricity is a normative phenomenon especially unsuited for adjudication, often requiring recourse to alternative processes of contract (or reciprocal adjustment) and managerial direction. This study explores how such (...) concerns about the limits of adjudication (and its various moral counterparts) apply to international decisionmaking connected to human rights obligations of multinational companies. The focus is on ethical problems such as controlling child labor in LDCs such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan; setting wages in developing countries like Honduras; and conducting business transactions with rights-violating regimes, such as the governments of Nigeria and Myanmar. (shrink)

The paper introduces a virtue-theoretic critique of recent “prosocial” revisions of shareholder primacy. The paper aims at widening the scope of virtue-based business ethics beyond its nearly exclusive focus on the character and virtue of managers, employees, and organizations. In contrast to MacIntyre-inspired research, the paper takes a “good intentions” approach that looks squarely at shareholders, regarding them as real people (not algorithms or institutions) occupying distinctive roles as principals of firms who are, ideally, virtuous moral agents. It is argued (...) that virtue ethics can play a part in questioning normative features of shareholder primacy and the objective function of the firm. Probing deeper than prudential and instrumental concerns, the paper poses normative questions about interpreting shareholder motivations: what _ought_ shareholders to prefer/want/desire?; _ought_ shareholders to desire profit maximization versus profit satisficing?; _ought_ shareholders to prefer other, prosocial goals, alongside of wealth?; should self-interested motivation in profit-seeking be considered virtuous? To lend focus, the paper taps Hart and Zingales’ recently revised “pro-social” version of shareholder primacy, as well as Munger and Russell’s analysis of “virtuous profit-seekers,” as normative frames of reference. Doing so enables a critical engagement with their respective accounts from the standpoint of virtue theory. Taking a “virtuous shareholders” perspective provides an aretaic standpoint, one that is appropriate, given that shareholders care about matters of justice and the common good. Shareholders are not simply concerned about making money. Hence it is the moral intentions and motivations of ideally virtuous shareholders which ought to modulate the profit-seeking activities of shareholders in accordance with maximizing their welfare. (shrink)

This article presents moral jurisprudence theory as a systematic approach to business ethics that analogizes core problems of the field to related problems in law. Adapting theoretical approaches from contemporary philosophy of law, the article develops a decision-making method for business ethics.

This book examines alternative philosophical conceptions of legal interpretation as a way of making sense of international human rights as they bear on government and multinational business activities. Today the dominant philosophies of law pertaining to rights interpretation are positivism, realism, and law-as-integrity.

This article asks whether a “law-as-integrity” approach to human rights adjudication provides a theoretical framework within which to make sense of authoritative regional interpretations of basic human rights for the global community. To focus analysis, I consider U.S. court interpretations of international human rights as an interpretive context. I argue that, with appropriate modification so as to include the world community as a “community of principle” for purposes of human rights adjudication, the law-as-integrity perspective permits disputes surrounding the legality of (...) human rights to revolve around competing interpretive claims backed up by justifying legal theories, rather than as ideological battles external to a juridical philosophy of rights. (shrink)

The paper links philosophical reflection with business-and-society considerations concerning a culture of compassion for economic life. The initial part of the paper explores the philosophical genealogy of the concept of compassion, revealing it as a primordial feature of the human condition, albeit a feature subject to a variety of interpretations. In the analysis, the paper highlights several tensions attending alternative interpretations of the concept of compassion that appear across ancient, medieval, modern, and postmodern treatments in the Western philosophical tradition. The (...) paper then proceeds to extend some of these interpretative perspectives on compassion into contemporary economic life, focusing on hybrid social enterprise. The paper concludes that compassion can constitute a motivation and inspiration for seeking pro-social entrepreneurial business solutions in our deeply divided and profoundly needy world. (shrink)

Although music is commonly conceived of as a humanities, in a wider sense, music is a spiritually infused business – a profession redolent of priceless eternal illumination and beauty. Hence the stories of the life and work of great composers and performers are, in a profound sense, stories about businesspeople of a peculiarly enlightened and noble ilk, dedicated to the creation and perpetuation of an enduring form of incorporeal wealth that I shall designate as sapiential capital. It is notable that (...) whereas some renowned composers are not necessarily deemed to be financial successes as measured within the span of their own mortal lifetimes, the (financial and nonfinancial) heritage of their work for posterity can be colossal. Thus, seen from augmented temporal, spiritual, non-egoistic, and non-materialistic vantage points, many great musicians were (and still are) monumental successes – both qua their humanities legacies and qua their business endeavors. The thrust of the paper is to draw spiritually significant insights that are pertinent for businesspeople aspiring to venture beyond the secular confines of conventional business life attached to materialistic norms and values. The study seeks to examine – from a faith and spirituality standpoint – interdisciplinary linkages between music-qua-humanities and music-qua-business that point to higher purposes and meanings for business life and beyond. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes two facets of mindfulness for servant leadership of B-Corporations, which is an emerging form of social enterprise. One facet concerns inner states and motivations for leading business for non-instrumental reasons. This facet encompasses an ethics-in-practice dimension alongside of merely theoretical approaches, a dimension well suited for leadership of B-Corps, whose governance structure places ethics and sustainability at the center of the non-instrumental quest for the creation of social value and respect for human rights by business enterprises. The (...) motivation for care of the mindful servant leader matches the investors’ expectations of social impact for the firm. The other facet concerns leadership decisions and actions fulfilling the mission of B-Corporations in creating social value alongside of economic value for a broad spectrum of stakeholders. Concerning this second facet, mindfulness is vitally involved in that servant leaders pay attention to the whole business and its explicit social benefit, not just this or that element of the firm’s operations. The chapter advances two arguments. The first argument—tied to the first facet—posits that the virtue of mindfulness contributes a key element of non-instrumental motivation for leadership generally missing from extant leadership approaches. The second argument—tied to the second facet—addresses the decision-making side of mindfulness. It asserts that the virtue of mindfulness is especially poised to equip servant leadership for the B-Corporation movement for two vital challenges: balancing demands from multiple stakeholders; and assimilating multiple criteria and values—both financial and non-financial. (shrink)

Modern economics deploys the concept of time-value as if it were a descriptive, empirically-verifiable objective property of the sort studied by natural science in its investigation of the natural world. In particular, economics frames efficiency as a core feature of time-value understood in a purportedly descriptive sense. Economic time-value is stripped of its normative quality, and held up for scientific investigation and brute factual description of the sort associated with criterial and natural-kind concepts. As such, economics deploys the conceptual devices (...) such as the “time-value of money” in its quest to objectively ascertain in a purportedly morally-neutral fashion behaviors that are favorable to capital efficiency maximization. Yet, as the paper shows, economics thus removes the relation of efficiency to time-value from the realm of normative choice – that is, from the realm of contested interpretive concepts. (shrink)

Establishing a cosmopolitan ethical culture for a multinational company requires special effort above and beyond that needed for standard domestic ethics initiatives. This articles discusses some of the perils and prospects involved in international corporate ethics programs, and recommends some key guiding principles.

Permissivism is the thesis that, for some body of evidence and a proposition p, there is more than one rational doxastic attitude any agent with that evidence can take toward p. Proponents of uniqueness deny permissivism, maintaining that every body of evidence always determines a single rational doxastic attitude. In this paper, we explore the debate between permissivism and uniqueness about evidence, outlining some of the major arguments on each side. We then consider how permissivism can be understood as an (...) underdetermination thesis, and show how this moves the debate forward in fruitful ways: in distinguishing between different types of permissivism, in dispelling classic objections to permissivism, and in shedding light on the relationship between permissivism and evidentialism. (shrink)

What attitude should philosophers take toward their favorite philosophical theories? I argue that the answer is belief and middling to low credence. I begin by discussing why disagreement has motivated the view that we cannot rationally believe our philosophical theories. Then, I show why considerations from disagreement actually better support my view. I provide two additional arguments for my view: the first concerns roles for belief and credence and the second explains why believing one’s philosophical theories is superior to accepting (...) them. I close by addressing objections, including implications my view has for the Lockean thesis, the view that there is a normative connection between belief and high credence. (shrink)

Traditional theistic arguments conclude that God exists. Pragmatic theistic arguments, by contrast, conclude that you ought to believe in God. The two most famous pragmatic theistic arguments are put forth by Blaise Pascal (1662) and William James (1896). Pragmatic arguments for theism can be summarized as follows: believing in God has significant benefits, and these benefits aren’t available for the unbeliever. Thus, you should believe in, or ‘wager on’, God. This article distinguishes between various kinds of theistic wagers, including finite (...) vs. infinite wagers, premortem vs. postmortem wagers, and doxastic vs. acceptance wagers. Then, we’ll turn to the epistemic-pragmatic distinction, and discusses the nuances of James’ argument, and how views like epistemic permissivism and epistemic consequentialism provide unique “hybrid” wagers. Finally, we’ll cover outstanding objections and responses. (shrink)

edition (unseen), $12.95. traditions, bringing into being new modes of understanding. Paper Anthropology, and particularly ethnography, is torn between two quests, one to capture the diversity of social life and the other to discover universal principles structuring that diversity. Jackson examines these quests within the context of ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on the relationship between ethnographers and the people they study. He is concerned with defining the anthropological project as something more than the projection of the anthropologist's traditions and concerns (...) onto an alien culture. Rather, he would have the project open a genuine dialogue between people from different cultures or Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Credences are similar to levels of confidence, represented as a value on the [0,1] interval. This chapter sheds light on questions about credence, including its relationship to full belief, with an eye toward the empirical relevance of credence. First, I’ll provide a brief epistemological history of credence and lay out some of the main theories of the nature of credence. Then, I’ll provide an overview of the main views on how credences relate to full beliefs. Finally, I’ll turn to the (...) empirical, and suggest some ways that cognitive science does and could answer questions about credence, such as what credences one has, how credences relate to beliefs, and the extent to which we can control our credences. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman’s famous principle of Clutter Avoidance commands that “one should not clutter one’s mind with trivialities". Many epistemologists have been inclined to accept Harman’s principle, or something like it. This is significant because the principle appears to have robust implications for our overall picture of epistemic normativity. Jane Friedman (2018) has recently argued that one potential implication is that there are no genuine purely evidential norms on belief revision. In this paper, we present some new objections to a suitably (...) formulated version of the clutter principle qua norm on belief revision. Moreover, we argue that the clutter principle is best understood as a norm on non-doxastic stages of inquiry. In our view, it is a norm of asking and considering questions rather than a norm of settling on an answer to a question by forming a belief. (shrink)

This paper develops a problem for conciliationism that is structurally similar to the self-undermining problem but which is immune to most of the solutions offered against it. A popular objection to conciliationism is that it undermines itself. Given the current disagreement among philosophers about conciliationism, conciliationism seems to require rejecting conciliationism. Adam Elga (2010) has influentially argued that this shows that conciliationism is an incoherent method. By recommending its own rejection, conciliationism recommends multiple, incompatible responses to the same body of (...) experience. Many have offered solutions to this problem, including Elga himself. However, there is another undermining problem. When a peer disagrees about their own peerhood, conciliationism can require the rejection of the peer’s peerhood. The result is that conciliationism recommends two incompatible responses to the same body of experience in a way that parallels the original self-undermining problem. But since many, if not all, of the proposed solutions to the original undermining problem depend on distinctive characteristics of conciliationism undermining itself, they cannot apply to a peer undermining themself. I illustrate this by dividing the solutions that have been offered against the self-undermining problem into two categories: self-exempting solutions and non-exempting solutions. I then show how the proposed solutions under each type do not extend to the peer-undermining problem. If that is right, then conciliationism is faced with a more difficult undermining problem than has been so far acknowledged. (shrink)

An important and engaging book on a key argument in contemporary debates about free will and moral responsibility.

Propelled by his own vengeance, N'Jadaka transforms into Erik Killmonger, CIA operative: a master of the weapons wielded by a colonial global empire, who wields these weapons himself in a quest to destroy the system that has oppressed people of color since ships set sail for the Caribbean over 500 years ago. Lorde, a Black lesbian feminist, was critiquing white feminism, suggesting that it failed to dismantle white supremacy (and she was doing this in the 1970s). Yet, her famous words (...) – “For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house” – get reinterpreted through Killmonger, who has mastered the art of global colonial capitalism. Even Wakanda, whose power is greater than all the tools of the master's house put together, doesn't dismantle it. Wakanda sits on the world council but does nothing about colonial oppression. (shrink)

Although several important methodologies implicitly assume the truth of epistemic conservatism, the view that holding a belief confers some measure of justification on the belief, recent criticisms have led some to conclude that epistemic conservatism is an implausible view. That conclusion is mistaken. In this article, I propose a new formulation of epistemic conservatism that is not susceptible to the criticisms leveled at earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism. In addition to withstanding these criticisms, this formulation of epistemic conservatism has several (...) benefits. First, this formulation has the benefits of earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism, that is to say it makes sense of our intuitions about justification in regard to both memory beliefs and beliefs for which we have forgotten our evidence. Second, it provides a good way of responding to the skeptic’s challenge concerning the possibility of possessing knowledge of the external world posed by the Alternative Hypotheses argument. Third, it provides responses to both forms of a new skeptical problem plaguing basic knowledge structure theories, the Problem of Easy Knowledge formulated by Stewart Cohen. I argue that given the many benefits of this formulation of epistemic conservatism and the fact that it is not vulnerable to the criticisms that undermine earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism, this formulation of epistemic conservatism is a plausible view to maintain. (shrink)

Alfred Mele's deflationary account of self-deception has frequently been criticised for being unable to explain the “tension” inherent in self-deception. These critics maintain that rival theories can better account for this tension, such as theories which suppose self-deceivers to have contradictory beliefs. However, there are two ways in which the tension idea has been understood. In this article, it is argued that on one such understanding, Mele's deflationism can account for this tension better than its rivals, but only if we (...) reconceptualize the self-deceiver's attitude in terms of unwarranted degrees of conviction rather than unwarranted belief. This new way of viewing the self-deceiver's attitude will be informed by observations on experimental work done on the biasing influence of desire on belief, which suggests that self-deceivers don’t manage to fully convince themselves of what they want to be true. On another way in which this tension has been understood, this account would not manage so well, since on this understanding the self-deceiver is best interpreted as knowing, but wishing to avoid, the truth. However, it is argued that we are under no obligation to account for this since it is a characteristic of a different phenomenon than self-deception, namely, escapism. (shrink)

Matthew McGrath has recently challenged all theories that allow for immediate perceptual justification. This challenge comes by way of arguing for what he calls the “Looks View” of visual justification, which entails that our visual beliefs that are allegedly immediately justified are in fact mediately justified based on our independent beliefs about the looks of things. This paper shows that McGrath’s arguments are unsound or, at the very least, that they do not cause genuine concern for the species of dogmatism (...) called “Phenomenal Explanationism”, recently introduced and defended by Kevin McCain and Luca Moretti. (shrink)

What can we learn about management ethics from other cultures and societies? In this textbook, cross-cultural management theory is applied and made relevant to management ethics. To help the reader understand different approaches that global businesses can take to operate successfully and ethically, there are chapters focusing on specific countries and regions. As well as giving the wider geographical, political and cultural contexts, the book includes numerous examples in every chapter to help the reader critique universal assumptions of what is (...) ethical. By taking a closer look at the way we view other cultures and their values, the author challenges us to rethink commonly held assumptions and approaches in cross-cultural management, and to apply a more critical approach. (shrink)

On at least one of its uses, ‘higher-order evidence’ refers to evidence about what opinions are rationalized by your evidence. This chapter surveys the foundational epistemological questions raised by such evidence, the methods that have proven useful for answering them, and the potential consequences and applications of such answers.

Mistaken identities : the task of thinking in dark times -- Radical empiricism and the little things of life -- The witch as a category and as a person -- The new materialisms -- Words and deeds -- Critique of cultural fundamentalism -- Existential scarcity and ethical sensibility -- Identification and description : an essay on metaphor -- Islam and identity among the Kuranko -- In defense of existential anthropology.

Much of the excitement about virtual reality and its potential for things like entertainment, art, education, and activism is its ability to generate experiences that are powerfully immersive. However, discussions of VR tend to invoke the notion of immersive experience without subjecting it to closer scrutiny; and discussions often take it for granted that immersive experience is a single unified phenomenon. Against this, we argue that there are four distinct types or aspects of immersive experience that should be distinguished: representational (...) immersion, which corresponds roughly to what is sometimes called “psychological presence”; participatory immersion, which is related to the interactive aspects of VR experience; affective immersion, which has to do with the subject’s emotional relation to the experience; and narrative immersion, which captures the phenomenon of being caught up in the flow of events experienced. We argue that this four-way distinction helps us understand the powerfully immersive character of VR, while also recognizing its continuity with the immersion we experience with media such as novels, films, and music. We also argue that the account of immersion we offer here lets us better understand the connection between VR and empathy, charting a middle course between extreme enthusiasts who view VR as the ultimate “empathy machine” and extreme skeptics who argue that this attitude is misguided. (shrink)