According to deontic justice theory, individuals often feel principled moral obligations to uphold norms of justice. That is, standards of justice can be valued for their own sake, even apart from serving self-interested goals. While a growing body of evidence in business ethics supports the notion of deontic justice, skepticism remains. This hesitation results, at least in part, from the absence of a coherent framework for explaining how individuals produce and experience deontic justice. To address this need, we argue that (...) a compelling, yet still missing, step is to gain further understanding into the underlying neural and psychological mechanisms of deontic justice. Here, we advance a theoretical model that disentangles three key processes of deontic justice: The use of justice rules to assess events, cognitive empathy, and affective empathy. Together with reviewing neural systems supporting these processes, broader implications of our model for business ethics scholarship are discussed. (shrink)

The emergence of a conception of the marketing firm (Foxall, 1999a) conceived within behavioral psychology and based on a corresponding model of consumer choice, (Foxall, 1990/2004) permits an assessment of the levels of behavioral and organizational analysis amenable to neuroscientific examination. This paper explores the ways in which the bilateral contingencies that link the marketing firm with its consumerate allow appropriate levels of organizational neuroscientific analysis to be specified. Having described the concept of the marketing firm and the (...) model of consumer behavior on which it is based, the paper analyzes bilateral contingencies at the levels of (i) market exchange, (ii) emotional reward, and (iii) neuroeconomics. Market exchange emerges as a level of analysis that lends itself predominantly to the explanation of firm—consumerate interactions in terms of the super-personal level of reinforcing and punishing contingencies: the marketing firm can be treated as a contextual or operant system in its own right. However, the emotional reward and neuroeconomic levels of analysis should be confined to the personal level of analysis represented by individual managers on the one hand and individual consumers on the other. This also entails a level of abstraction but it is one that can be satisfactorily handled in terms of the concept of bilateral contingency. (shrink)

Understanding and improving how organizations work and are managed is the object of management research and practice, and this topic is of longstanding interest in the academia and in society at large. More recently, the contribution that the study of the brain could make to, notably, our understanding of decisions, emotional reactions, and behaviors has led to the emergence of the field of “organizational neuroscience”. Within the field of management, organizational neuroscience seeks to explore linkages between (...) neuroscience research, theories, and methods and management research. Its primary goal is to incorporate findings on the cognitive processes underlying the thoughts, behaviors and attitudes of organizational actors in order to better inform management theories, and to assist in understanding, predicting and improving these behaviors in the workplace. As a result, we have seen in the last decade a flurry of research projects and publications in organizational neuroscience, as well as novel or rejuvenated innovations around neuromarketing, neuroleadership, and cognitive enhancement in the work place, to name a few. However, research and practical applications in organizational neuroscience pose profound ethical challenges about, for example, organizational responsibility in the responsible use of scientific innovation. Drawing on recent debates in the field, and in response to upcoming ethical challenges of organization neuroscience, this book introduces “organizational neuroethics” as an emerging interdisciplinary field that addresses the ethics of organizational neuroscience research and applications, as well as the neuroscience of organizational ethics. The first part focuses on the ethics of organizational neuroscience and several chapters tackle the ethics of neuromarketing or neuroleadership and discuss the ethical issues associated with neuroenhancement practice in the workplace. The second part of the book addresses cutting-edge topics in the neuroscience of organizational ethics. Written by international experts in the fields of management, neuroscience, ethics, and social science, this book will be of prime interest to practitioners, researchers and students in the various fields concerned with improving management research and practices, as well as organizational ethics. (shrink)

This paper reports findings from a nationally representative sample of working adults to quantify how a culture trust improves business performance. Analysis of the national sample showed that organizational trust and alignment with the company’s purpose are associated with higher employee incomes, longer job tenure, greater job satisfaction, less chronic stress, improved satisfaction with life, and higher productivity. Employees working the highest quartile of organizational trust had average incomes 10.3% higher those working in the middle quartile of trust (...) indicating that trust increases productivity. In order to demonstrate the causal effect of trust on business performance, we created an intervention to increase organizational trust in a division facing high job turnover at a large online retailer. The intervention increased organizational trust by 6% and this improved job retention by 1%. These studies show that management practices that increase organizational trust have salubrious effects on business performance. (shrink)

The interest to connect results of neuroscientific research to educational contexts has increasingly grown in recent years. Actors from neuroscience and education show the explicit intention to approach each other. Still, issues and debates exist in the relation between them. This paper aims to bring to the fore one such specific issue that is not only relevant to be mindful of, but also raises questions of an organisational and pedagogical nature. The issue concerns the possible occurrences of conceptual confusion (...) on the bridge from neuroscience to education. I present this paper as a thought experiment that hopes to make public not only the respective issue, but also some of its related questions, such as ‘neuroprofessionalisation’ and ‘relevant knowledge for educational actors’. In doing so, I attempt to make the issue and its questions a concern of ours, and invite readers to join in a collective and vivid conversation about it. (shrink)

Rethinking organizational ethics training -- Moral intuition: advances in moral psychology and neuroscience -- The social intuitionist model -- Communication and the new organizational ethics -- How cultur(ing) works -- Pluralistic moral ignorance and spirals of silent misdirection -- Here-and-now ethics talk in the workplace -- Sensemaking and identity: what to expect from moral reasoning -- Substituting here-and-now ethics talk -- Organizational learning and organizational communication -- From individual moral intuition to organizational moral learning (...) -- Organizing for moral mindfulness -- Stories of organizational moral learning and ignorance -- Communication practices for managing moral mindfulness. (shrink)

The domain of organizational neuroscience increasingly influences leadership research and practice in terms of both selection and interventions. The dominant view is that the use of neuroscientific theories and methods offers better and refined predictions of what constitutes good leadership. What has been omitted so far, however, is a deeper engagement with ethical theories. This engagement is imperative as it helps problematize a great deal of the current advocacy around organizational neuroscience. In this article, we draw (...) upon John Stuart Mill’s Theory of Utility as a theoretical framework to this end. Our discussion reveals several negative psychological and physical side-effects, which undermine the prevailing view that neuroscientific methods can be used without risk at work. We discuss the theoretical and practical ramifications of our analysis. (shrink)

I develop a multilevel, holistic view of persons, emphasizing embodiment, emotions, consciousness, and the social self. In successive sections I draw from six sources: 1. Theology. The biblical understanding of the unitary, embodied, social self gave way in classical Christianity to a body‐soul dualism, but it has been recovered by many recent theologians. 2. Neuroscience. Research has shown the localization of mental functions in regions of the brain, the interaction of cognition and emotion, and the importance of social interaction (...) in evolutionary history and child development. 3. Artificial intelligence. Some forms of robotics use embodied systems that learn by interacting with their environment, but the possibilities for emotion, socialization, and consciousness in robots remain problematic. 4. Relations between levels. Concepts that can help us relate studies of neurons and persons include the hierarchy of levels, the communication of information, thebehavior of dynamic systems, and epistemological and ontological emergence. 5. Philosophy of mind. Two‐aspect theories of the mind‐brain relation offer an alternative between the extremes of eliminative materialism and the thesis that consciousness is irreducible. 6. Process philosophy. I suggest that process thought provides a coherent philosophical framework in which these themes can be brought together. It combines dipolar monism with organizational pluralism, and it emphasizes embodiment, emotions, a hierarchy oflevels, and the social character of selfhood. (shrink)

An autobiographical account of a formative experience -- Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms -- Art and science as supplementing forms -- The parting of the ways and the divide in organizational theory -- Cassirer in the light of neuroscience -- Bringing Cassirer into organizations -- The institution as a symbolic form.

Whereas most branches of neuroscience are thought to provide mechanistic explanations, systems neuroscience is not. Two reasons are traditionally cited in support of this conclusion. First, systems neuroscientists rarely, if ever, rely on the dual strategies of decomposition and localization. Second, they typically emphasize organizational properties over the properties of individual components. In this paper, I argue that neither reason is conclusive: researchers might rely on alternative strategies for mechanism discovery, and focusing on organization is often appropriate (...) and consistent with the norms of mechanistic explanation. Thus, many explanations in systems neuroscience can also be viewed as mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hermeneutics, Neuroscience and PsychiatryMichael T. H. Wong, MBBS, MD, MA, MDiv, PhD, FRCPsych, FRANZCP, FHKAM (bio)Hermeneutic practice in mental health has been a theme in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology (PPP) since its very beginnings. In this essay I argue that hermeneutics, the theory and practice of interpretation, promotes therapeutic interaction between mental health professionals, patients and their family.Why does this patient present in such a way at this (...) particular point in time? The distressing symptoms are there. The changes in behavior are obvious. Impairments of functions are hurting. A mental illness clearly runs in the family. There were early losses of loved ones, physical abuse at home, bullying by peers and self-medication with drugs and alcohol. Three in four adults with a mental illness first experienced that before they turned 24. The brain goes through major reorganization during adolescence and early adulthood. If synaptic pruning went wrong, psychoses emerged. When stresses activated the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis the elevated cortisol level impacted the size and function of the hippocampus and amygdala in the genetically vulnerable; anxiety, depression, bipolar, and personality disorders developed. The patient needs a voice/language to describe all these experiences and events and the psychiatrist needs a discourse to make sense of them.Eisenberg laments the swings between "brainlessness" and "mindlessness" in psychiatry. Engel argues for a "biopsychosocial" discourse. The major challenge for psychiatry is how to organize clinical information of different nature (categories, dimensions, narratives; i.e., objective vs. subjective, personal vs. interpersonal) into a coherent and comprehensible account for us all. Mental illnesses are not only neuropsychiatric spectrum disorders but also dysfunctions of social relationship and environmental/ecological adaptation. Psychiatry as a clinical neuroscience per se lacks the semantics to address the rich interactions between the physical, psychological, social, cultural, and spiritual in the illness experience of our patients. Explanation in the diagnostic formulation (objective scientific discourse on cause and effect) and understanding in the patient narrative (subjective ordinary everyday discourse on significance and meaning) are irreducible to each other (Wong, 2018). They instead interact with one another to achieve an integrative formulation, not through merging different discourses into a single assertion/monologue but via the dialectic/dialogue of "explaining more in order to understand better," as Ricoeur puts it, and between "the whole and the parts," as Schleiermacher highlights.This "therapeutic hermeneutic circle" of "explanation vs understanding" and "the whole vs the parts" includes symptoms behavior function and life events. It correlates between bio-psychosociocultural-spiritual dimensions/perspectives and does not reduce them to any particular/single [End Page 13] stance. The whole integrates the parts and the parts enrich the whole. It explains but does not explain away. It understands through an articulation of meaning and significance. This discourse is a multilayered (bio-psycho-social-cultural-spiritual) personal narrative that formulates diagnosis and care in a correlative (linking different voices/discourses) and non-reductive (no particular voice/discourse is prejudiced against) manner that is comprehensible to us all (Wong, 2021).PPP will be an excellent forum for discussing clinical hermeneutics in the future. In this digital era of social media and virtual reality, hermeneutics has the never-ending task to tackle the unprecedented challenges to meaning illness and health posed by polarizing discourses.Michael T. H. Wong Michael T.H. Wong, MBBS, MD, MA, MDiv, PhD, FRCPsych, FRANZCP, FHKAM, is Hon Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry, School of Clinical Medicine, LKS Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, HKSAR, China. Michael is Chair, Section of Philosophy & Humanities in Psychiatry, World Psychiatric Association. He is an Organizational Partner & International Lead with The Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice in Health and Social Care, St Catherine's College Oxford. He is Advisor to the Chinese Health Foundation of Australia.ReferencesWong M. T. H. (2018). Ricoeur and the third discourse of the person: From philosophy and neuroscience to psychiatry and theology. London: Lexington Books. Google ScholarWong, M. T. H. (2021). Values, meanings, hermeneutics and mental health. In Stoyanov, D., Fulford, K. M. W. F., Stanghellini, G., Van Staden, W., & Wong, M. TH. (Eds.), International perspectives in values-based mental health practice: Case studies and commentaries (pp. 341–349... (shrink)

This paper examines the explanatory distinctness of wiring optimization models in neuroscience. Wiring optimization models aim to represent the organizational features of neural and brain systems as optimal (or near-optimal) solutions to wiring optimization problems. My claim is that that wiring optimization models provide design explanations. In particular, they support ideal interventions on the decision variables of the relevant design problem and assess the impact of such interventions on the viability of the target system.

Recent research in computational neuroscience has demonstrated that we now possess the ability to simulate neural systems in significant detail and on a large scale. Simulations on the scale of a human brain have recently been reported. The ability to simulate entire brains (or significant portions thereof) would be a revolutionary scientific advance, with substantial benefits for brain science. However, the prospect of whole-brain simulation comes with a set of new and unique ethical questions. In the present paper, we (...) briefly outline certain of those problems and emphasize the need to begin considering the ethical aspects of computational neuroscience. (shrink)

The notion of “hierarchy” is one of the most commonly posited organizational principles in systems neuroscience. To this date, however, it has received little philosophical analysis. This is unfortunate, because the general concept of hierarchy ranges over two approaches with distinct empirical commitments, and whose conceptual relations remain unclear. We call the first approach the “representational hierarchy” view, which posits that an anatomical hierarchy of feed-forward, feed-back, and lateral connections underlies a signal processing hierarchy of input-output relations. Because (...) the representational hierarchy view holds that unimodal sensory representations are subsequently elaborated into more categorical and rule-based ones, it is committed to an increasing degree of abstraction along the hierarchy. The second view, which we call “topological hierarchy", is not committed to different representational functions or degrees of abstraction at different levels. Topological approaches instead posit that the hierarchical level of a part of the brain depends on how central it is to the pattern of connections in the system. Based on the current evidence, we argue that three conceptual relations between the two approaches are possible: topological hierarchies could substantiate the traditional representational hierarchy, conflict with it, or contribute to a plurality of approaches needed to understand the organization of the brain. By articulating each of these possibilities, our analysis attempts to open a conceptual space in which further neuroscientific and philosophical reasoning about neural hierarchy can proceed. (shrink)

Phenomenology and physiology become commensurable through a self-organizational physiology and an "enactive" view of consciousness. Self-organizing processes appropriate and replace their own needed substrata, rather than merely being caused by interacting components. Biochemists apply this notion to the living/nonliving distinction. An enactive approach sees consciousness as actively executed by an agent rather than passively reacting to stimuli. Perception does not result from mere stimulation of brain areas by sensory impulses; unless motivated organismic purposes first anticipate and "look for" emotionally (...) relevant.stimuli, brain-sensory processing is not accompanied by perceptual consciousness. To see a soccer ball requires looking for it in the right place. The sell-organizing, emotionally motivated agent instigates this looking-for activity. (shrink)

This paper examines the explanatory distinctness of wiring optimization models in neuroscience. Wiring optimization models aim to represent the organizational features of neural and brain systems as optimal (or near-optimal) solutions to wiring optimization problems. My claim is that that wiring optimization models provide design explanations. In particular, they support ideal interventions on the decision variables of the relevant design problem and assess the impact of such interventions on the viability of the target system.

Cognition and behavior are the result of neural processes occurring at multiple levels of organization. Synthetic computational approaches are capable of bridging the gaps between multiple organizational levels and contribute to our understanding of how neural structures give rise to specific dynamical states. Such approaches are indispensable for formulating the theoretical foundations of cognitive neuroscience.

The Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) program of the Human Genome Project stands as a model for how to organize bioethical inquiry for a rapidly changing field. Neuroscience has experienced significant growth in recent years and there is increasing interest in organizing critical reflection on this field, as evidenced by the creation of “neuroethics.” A nascent framework for reflection on the implications of neuroscience is emerging but significant work remains, given the pace and scope of neuroscientific developments. (...) The adoption of an ELSI program, modeled on that of the ELSI program of the Human Genome Project, promises a way for neuroscience to meet important organizational, educational, and policy objectives. Review of recent criticisms of the HGP ELSI program suggests that an ELSI program for neuroscience would face certain obstacles. Those interested in a neuroscience ELSI program will need to develop appropriate resources to overcome these obstacles. (shrink)

Experiments in cognitive neuroscience build a setup whose set of controlled stimuli and rules elicits a cognitive process in a participant. This setup requires researchers to decide the value of quite a few parameters along several dimensions. We call ‘’contextual factors’’ the parameters often assumed not to change the cognitive process elicited and are free to vary across the experiment’s repetitions. Against this assumption, empirical evidence shows that many of these contextual factors can significantly influence cognitive performance. Nevertheless, it (...) is not entirely clear what it means for a cognitive phenomenon to be context-sensitive and how to identify context-sensitivity experimentally. We claim that a phenomenon can be context-sensitive either because it is only triggered within a specific context or because different contexts change its manifestation conditions. Assessing which of these forms of context-sensitivity is present in a given phenomenon requires a criterion for individuating it across contextual variations. We argue that some inter-level experiments that, within the mechanistic approach to explanation, are required to identify relations of constitutive relevance between a phenomenon and a mechanism, are also necessary for individuating the phenomenon across its contextual variations. We articulate a criterion according to which behavioral variations across contexts indicate different phenomena if and only if the mechanistic activities, components and/or organizational properties recruited in each context are different. We support this approach by showing how it is applied in paradigmatic studies addressing cognitive performance differences resulting from contextual variations of task features, such as stimulus type and response modality. Finally, we address the challenge that a form of context-sensitivity possessed by the so-called ‘multifunctional mechanisms’ is incompatible with our proposal because it entails that the same mechanism can be recruited in different contexts to produce different phenomena. We examine key cases of multifunctionality and argue that they are consistent with our proposal because a single mechanism can have different components, activities and/or organizational properties in different contexts. Thus, these modifications may not affect the identity of a mechanism, and they could explain how it produced different phenomena in those contexts. (shrink)

The paper explores the topic of organizational routines from a philosophical vantage point to see how the philosophy of action may help improve its understanding in organizational research. The main goal is to show the distinctive complexity of the intentional picture of routines. In this respect, the paper clarifies the interrelations between psychological habits and routines and describes similarities and differences between them. It also highlights the special place of mindfulness as a psycho-cognitive mechanism of action meta-control in (...) intentional explanations of routine complexity. (shrink)

This paper addresses concerns raised recently by Datteri (Biol Philos 24:301–324, 2009) and Craver (Philos Sci 77(5):840–851, 2010) about the use of brain-extending prosthetics in experimental neuroscience. Since the operation of the implant induces plastic changes in neural circuits, it is reasonable to worry that operational knowledge of the hybrid system will not be an accurate basis for generalisation when modelling the unextended brain. I argue, however, that Datteri’s no-plasticity constraint unwittingly rules out numerous experimental paradigms in behavioural and (...) systems neuroscience which also elicit neural plasticity. Furthermore, I propose that Datteri and Craver’s arguments concerning the limitations of prosthetic modelling in basic neuroscience, as opposed to neuroengineering, rests on too narrow a view of the ways models in neuroscience should be evaluated, and that a more pluralist approach is needed. I distinguish organisational validity of models from mechanistic validity. I argue that while prosthetic models may be deficient in the latter of these explanatory virtues because of neuroplasticity, they excel in the former since organisational validity tracks the extent to which a model captures coding principles that are invariant with plasticity. Changing the brain, I conclude, is one viable route towards explaining the brain. (shrink)

In developed countries, companies are now substantially reliant on the skills and abilities of their leaders to tackle a variety of complex issues. There is a growing consensus that leadership development training and assessment methods should adopt more holistic methodologies, including those associated with the emotional and neuroendocrine aspects of learning. Recent research into the assessment of leadership competencies has proposed the use of objective methods and measurements based on neuroscience. One of the challenges to be faced in the (...) development of a performance-based methodology to measure leadership skills is how to generate real-life situations with triggers that allow us to study management competencies under controlled laboratory conditions. A way to address this question is to take advantage of virtual environments to recreate real-life situations that might arise in performance-based assessments. We propose virtual reality (VR) as a very promising tool to observe various leadership related behavioral patterns during dynamic, complex and realistic situations. By seamlessly embedding assessment methods into virtual learning environments, VR can provide objective assessment methods with high ecological validity. VR also holds unlimited opportunities for leadership training providing subjects with intelligent tutoring systems that adapts situations in real time according to the observed behaviors. (shrink)

In this paper, we conceptually explore the role of empathy as a connectedness organising mechanism. We expand ideas underlying positive organisational scholarship and examine leading-edge studies from neuroscience and quantum physics that give support to our claims. The perspective we propose has profound implications regarding how we organise and how we manage. First, we argue that empathy enhances connectedness through the unconscious sharing of neuro-pathways that dissolves the barriers between self and other. This sharing encourages the integration of affective (...) and cognitive consciousness which facilitates the ability to find common ground for solution building. Second, empathy enhances connectedness through altruistic action. In giving to others, feelings of joy and harmony are activated. This in turn allows personal freedom to be enriched and transcendence from the rational ego-self is reduced to develop a more expansive, integrated and enlightened state underlying connectedness. Finally, empathy enhances connectedness which results in sharing the quantum field of coherence where there is little separation between self and other. This means living beyond self-interest in a coherent world based upon interdependent wholeness rather than atomization and separation. Empathy allows us to find that state of coherent connectedness. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, network-focused approaches have become highly popular in diverse fields of biology, including neuroscience, ecology, molecular biology and genetics. While the network approach continues to grow very rapidly, some of its conceptual and methodological aspects still require a programmatic foundation. This challenge particularly concerns the question of whether a generalized account of explanatory, organisational and descriptive levels of networks can be applied universally across biological sciences. Consequently, the central focus of this theme issue will be (...) on the definition, motivation and application of key concepts in biological network science, such as levels, hierarchies, and explanatory directionality. A unification will be achieved by formulating norms for delimiting the distinctively network-topological class of explanations that connect general as well as very specific biological research questions. The impact of this theme issue is broad and encompassing, as it is highly interdisciplinary and opens a uniquely normative perspective on the foundational aspects of network-based explanations and modelling. This theme issue is intended to become a landmark publication for practical research as well as funding policy decisions, by unifying network approaches in biological sciences in terms of fundamental concepts and informing the public understanding of the network science. (shrink)

Over the last decades, network-based approaches have become highly popular in diverse fields of biology, including neuroscience, ecology, molecular biology and genetics. While these approaches continue to grow very rapidly, some of their conceptual and methodological aspects still require a programmatic foundation. This challenge particularly concerns the question of whether a generalized account of explanatory, organisational and descriptive levels of networks can be applied universally across biological sciences. To this end, this highly interdisciplinary theme issue focuses on the definition, (...) motivation and application of key concepts in biological network science, such as explanatory power of distinctively network explanations, network levels, and network hierarchies. (shrink)

The article presupposes that the term “spirituality”, originally proper to the theological literature, no longer belongs only to this field, and is now widely used in different areas of knowledge. The essay also says that, even within the theological and religious studies, there has never been clarity as to the meaning of “spirituality”, which eventually became a vague and imprecise term, invoked in different situations and in need of a deeper theoretical reflection able to point its history, its development and (...) multiple applications. The vagueness around this concept is increased when “spirituality” is used along with the expression “non-religious”, causing more difficulties of understanding even in the field of religious studies. After delving into these conceptual challenges, the article points to the need for a comprehensive review of the literature in order to identify similarities with other areas of knowledge in recent decades that have progressively absorbed this concept, particularly the fields of arts, psychology, business administration, organizational studies, neuroscience and health sciences. At the end, the article offers challenges and suggestions for the development of the studies around this theme among researches of Religious Sciences in Brazil that privilege interdisciplinary approaches in their research. (shrink)

Advances in neuroscience have revolutionized our understanding of the central nervous system. Neuroimaging technologies, in particular, have begun to reveal the complex anatomical, physiological, biochemical, genetic, and molecular organizational structure of the organ at the center of that system: the human brain. More recently, neuroimaging technologies have enabled the investigation of normal brain function and are being used to gain important new insights into the mechanisms behind many neuropsychiatric disorders. This research has implications for psychiatric diagnosis, treatment, and (...) risk assessment. However, with some exceptions, neuroimaging is still a research tool—not ready for use in clinical psychiatry. (shrink)

The study of Social Issues in Management (SIM) has exhausted its primary analytic framework based on corporate social performance (social science), business ethics (philosophy), and stakeholder theory (organizational science), and needs to move to a new paradigmatic level based on the natural sciences. Doing so would expand research horizons to include cosmological perspectives (astrophysics), evolutionary theory (biology, genetics, ecology), and non-sectarian spirituality concepts (theological naturalism, cognitive neuroscience). Absent this shift, SIM studies risk increasing irrelevance for scholars and business (...) practitioners. (shrink)

Wegner, Giuliano, and Hertel (1985) defined the notion of a transactive memory system (TMS) as a group level memory system that “involves the operation of the memory systems of the individuals and the processes of communication that occur within the group (p. 191). Those processes are the collaborative procedures (“transactions”) by which groups encode, store, and retrieve information that is distributed among their members. Over the past 25+ years, the conception of a TMS has progressively garnered an increased interest among (...) social and organizational psychologists, communication scholars, and management theorists (Ren & Argote 2011). But there remains considerable disagreement about how exactly Wegner’s appeal to group memory should be understood. My goal in this paper is contribute to this debate, by articulating more clearly the value of conceptualizing groups as TMSs. This value, I argue, consists in providing us with a blueprint for how to explain group memory in terms of collective information-processing mechanisms. Collective information-processing mechanisms are dependent on, and interact with, the brain-bound information-processing of individuals, but cannot be reduced to the latter. In my analysis, I lean on extant accounts of mechanistic explanation in the philosophy of science (Bechtel & Richardson 1993; Machamer, Darden, & Craver 2000; Wimsatt 2007) that have been used to analyze the explanatory practices of psychology and cognitive neuroscience (Bechtel 2008, 2009). Based on my reconstruction of Wegner’s conceptualization of a TMS, I argue that the reality of emergent group cognition is compatible with its mechanistic explanation. More generally, my analysis shows that group cognition cannot be reduced to individual cognition, while avoiding the false dilemma between “wholism” and “nothing but-ism” which has hampered traditional construals of the “group mind” thesis (Allport 1968). (shrink)

In this article, we argue that contemporary biomedicine is shaped by two, seemingly incommensurable, organizational logics, the ‘regime of truth’ and the ‘regime of hope’. We articulate their features by drawing on debates sparked by the recent clinical trial of a new approach to the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease. We also argue that the ‘self’ is configured in the very same process whereby these two organizational logics interlock and become mutually dependent, so that the ‘self’ might be said (...) to be the effect of a ‘parasitic’ relationship between the regimes of ‘truth’ and ‘hope’. We then bring these two arguments to bear on the contrasting views of the relationship between embodiment and political subjectivity articulated by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, on the one hand, and Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose, on the other hand. (shrink)

An introduction to category theory as a rigorous, flexible, and coherent modeling language that can be used across the sciences. Category theory was invented in the 1940s to unify and synthesize different areas in mathematics, and it has proven remarkably successful in enabling powerful communication between disparate fields and subfields within mathematics. This book shows that category theory can be useful outside of mathematics as a rigorous, flexible, and coherent modeling language throughout the sciences. Information is inherently dynamic; the same (...) ideas can be organized and reorganized in countless ways, and the ability to translate between such organizational structures is becoming increasingly important in the sciences. Category theory offers a unifying framework for information modeling that can facilitate the translation of knowledge between disciplines. Written in an engaging and straightforward style, and assuming little background in mathematics, the book is rigorous but accessible to non-mathematicians. Using databases as an entry to category theory, it begins with sets and functions, then introduces the reader to notions that are fundamental in mathematics: monoids, groups, orders, and graphs—categories in disguise. After explaining the “big three” concepts of category theory—categories, functors, and natural transformations—the book covers other topics, including limits, colimits, functor categories, sheaves, monads, and operads. The book explains category theory by examples and exercises rather than focusing on theorems and proofs. It includes more than 300 exercises, with solutions. Category Theory for the Sciences is intended to create a bridge between the vast array of mathematical concepts used by mathematicians and the models and frameworks of such scientific disciplines as computation, neuroscience, and physics. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the implications of opposing domains theory for developing ethical leaders. Opposing domains theory highlights a neurological tension between analytic reasoning and socioemotional reasoning. Specifically, when we engage in analytic reasoning, we suppress our ability to engage in socioemotional reasoning and vice versa. In this article, we bring together the domains of neuroscience, psychology, and ethics, to inform our theorizing around ethical leadership. We propose that a key issue for ethical leadership is achieving a healthy (...) balance between analytic reasoning and socioemotional reasoning. We argue that organizational culture often encourages too heavy a reliance on nonemotional forms of reasoning to arrive at moral judgments. As a result, leaders run the risk of suppressing their ability to pay attention to the human side of moral dilemmas and, in doing so, dehumanize colleagues, particularly subordinates, and clients. (shrink)

Drawing on insights from evolutionary psychology and modern neuroscience, this paper highlights propositions about human nature that have far reaching consequences, when applied to leadership. We specifically examine the main factors of human survival and extend them to a model for leadership in the twenty-first century. The discussion concludes with an outlook on the organizational and structural conditions that would allow for better and more balanced leadership.

The relationship between topological explanation and mechanistic explanation is unclear. Most philosophers agree that at least some topological explanations are mechanistic explanations. The crucial question is how to make sense of this claim. Zednik (Philos Psychol 32(1):23–51, 2019) argues that topological explanations are mechanistic if they (i) describe mechanism sketches that (ii) pick out organizational properties of mechanisms. While we agree with Zednik’s conclusion, we critically discuss Zednik’s account and show that it fails as a general account of how (...) and when topological explanations are mechanistic. First, if topological explanations were just mechanism sketches, this implies that they could be enriched by replacing topological terms with mechanistic detail. This, however, conflicts how topological explanations are used in scientific practice. Second, Zednik’s account fails to show how topological properties can be organizational properties of mechanisms that have a place in mechanistic explanation. The core issue is that Zednik’s account ignores that topological properties often are _global_ properties while mechanistic explanantia refer to _local_ properties. We demonstrate how these problems can be solved by a recent account of mechanistic completeness (Craver and Kaplan in Br J Philos Sci 71(1):287–319, 2020; Kohár and Krickel in Calzavarini and Viola (eds) Neural mechanisms—new challenges in the philosophy of neuroscience, Springer, New York, 2021) and use a multilayer network model of Alzheimer’s Disease to illustrate this. (shrink)

One important way in which neuroscience, particularly neuroanatomy, contributes to cognitive science is by providing a model of the brain's architecture, which, in turn, can be utilized as a guide to the architecture of cognition. This project assumes commitment to a view, now well established, that different mental processes, such as perceiving and remembering, employ different parts of the brain (where part is loosely construed so as not to exclude entities which may themselves be composite). These parts may differ (...) according to their internal organizational structure, information processing capacities, and degree of informational connectivity with other parts. Later I will present an example of research in visual processing where researchers are currently attempting to realize the heuristic potential of the brain's architecture in order to understand cognitive organization. Of prior importance, however, is an understanding of how neuroscientists decipher the architecture of the brain itself. This task of mapping the brain, of carving it up into distinct areas, is not as straightforward as one might think. There are, for example, several different criteria by which one might fix a given boundary between brain regions. Below, I not only highlight some of the more interesting facets of brain mapping research but also elaborate on why such research is of interest to cognitive scientists. (shrink)

Many people have an aptitude for religious experience and spirituality but don't know how to develop this or take it further. Modern societies offer little assistance, and traditional religions are overly preoccupied with their own organizational survival. Minding the Self: Jungian meditations on contemporary spirituality offers suggestions for individual spiritual development in our modern and post-modern times. Here, Murray Stein argues that C.G. Jung and depth psychology provide guidance and the foundation for a new kind of modern spirituality.Murray Stein (...) explores the problem of spirituality within the cultural context of modernity and offers a way forward without relapsing into traditional or mythological modes of consciousness. Chapters work towards finding the proper vessel for contemporary spirituality and dealing with the ethical issues that crop up along the way. Stein shows how it is an individual path but not an isolationist one, often using many resources borrowed from a variety of religious traditions: it is a way of symbol, dream and experiences of the numinous with hints of transcendence as these come into personal awareness. Minding the Self: Jungian meditations on contemporary spirituality uses research from a wide variety of fields, such as dream-work and the neuroscience of the sleeping brain, clinical experience in Jungian psychoanalysis, anthropology, ethics, Zen Buddhism, Jung's writings and the recently published Red Book. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, Jungian scholars, undergraduates, graduate and post-graduate students and anyone with an interest in modern spirituality. (shrink)

Improvisation informs a vast array of human activity, from creative practices in art, dance, music, and literature to everyday conversation and the relationships to natural and built environments that surround and sustain us. The two volumes of the Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies gather scholarship on improvisation from an immense range of perspectives, with contributions from more than sixty scholars working in architecture, anthropology, art history, computer science, cognitive science, cultural studies, dance, economics, education, ethnomusicology, film, gender studies, history, (...) linguistics, literary theory, musicology, neuroscience, new media, organizational science, performance studies, philosophy, popular music studies, psychology, science and technology studies, sociology, and sound art, among others. (shrink)

The relationship between brain and mind has been extensively explored through the developments within neuroscience over the last decade. However, the ontological status of mind has remained fairly problematic due to the inability to explain all features of the mind through the brain. This inability has been considered largely due to partial knowledge of the brain. It is claimed that once we gain complete knowledge of the brain, all features of the mind would be explained adequately. However, a challenge (...) to such a position is downward causation: How do we explain the causal power that mental states exert over brain activities? If we agree that downward causation occurs, then to what extent could a sole explanation of brain activities account for our behaviour? (For they would in themselves be conditioned by the mental states which are left unexplained). This dissertation is an attempt to understand relation between brain and mind through the concept of emergence, placed in the context of complex systems approach. This will create a space to account for the causal power of mental states. The complex systems approach says that as the complexity of a system increases, we witness the emergence of novel qualities and after a certain threshold (of complexity), the emergence of a novel structure. When the body (and correspondingly, brain) reaches a certain level of complexity, the mind emerges. The brain is a complex system from which the mind emerges. The brain, consisting of billions of neurons interacting with each other, regulates the body placed in the environment. The interaction of neurons (local interactions involving self-organization) result in dynamical brain signatures (global synergy). Such signatures are correlative to mental states. Mind is the process of a living organism embodying an intentional stance. This object could be the subject itself or another distinct from the subject. With the emergence of mind, the causal powers of brain are conditioned by the mind. Such a conditioning is evident through the causal efficacy of mental states. While the brain is minimal condition for the mind to emerge, the mind in itself is embedded (showcased/explicated/manifested) throughout the body. The mind is a process that belongs to body-as-a-whole with the novel quality of intentionality. A preliminary to understanding this relation is its metaphysical inclination. A large portion of the history of philosophy of mind has advocated a metaphysics of entities where the mind and body have been seen as two entities with distinct essences. However, such attribution of entity-ship does not take into account the processual nature of these existents (that they are essentially dependent on their environment for their existence and sustenance). Thus, the category of processual unity has been introduced which sought to account for existent as emergent wholes that move towards a stable equilibrium through self-organization. By considering existents to be processual unities, we can account for their identity as a whole-in-itself (what has been called organizational closure) and also for their processual nature. The brain is a component of the body which is a complex system and is representative of the body’s stance in the world. The brain, consisting of billions of neurons interacting with each other, regulates the body placed in the environment. The interaction of neurons (local interactions involving self-organization) result in dynamical brain signatures (global synergy). Such signatures are correlative to mental states. These mental states in turn condition the brain patterns, that allows the embodying of mental states. Thus, the three-way process of the representation of body in the world by the brain, the emergence of mental state through dynamic brain patterns and the reciprocal causal power on the brain patterns by the mental states marks embodiment. The relation between brain, body and mind can be outlined as follows: A. There are complex interactions in the brain. These interactions are representative of the body’s stance in the world and are present in form of dynamical brain signatures. B. The dynamical brain signatures lead to emergence of mind as a process. The mental state has causal power which conditions the brain. C. The brain conditioned by causal power of the mind carries out embodiment of the mind throughout the body. In the dissertation, an exposition on relation between brain and mind through complex system approach is followed by a brief on relation between body and mind. The radical embodiment approach adopts the nonlinear dynamic systems theory to understand relation of brain, body and mind. It states a shift from mapping of cognitive states onto Neural Correlates of Consciousness to their mapping through dynamic brain signatures. Every mental state is embedded throughout the body. The dissertation explores the three features of consciousness, intentionality and qualia. These have previously formed a challenge within a dualistic framework and the dissertation intends to show a direction in which they can be accounted for, within the complex systems approach and radical embodiment viewpoint. After a certain threshold of the rate of production of cell assemblies is bypassed, we become conscious of the representation itself. This leads to emergence of phenomenal states. Qualia is the qualitative character of such states, which belong to the body-as-a-whole and for this reason, cannot be reduced to properties of any of the components from which it emerges (the dynamic brain signatures) or in which it is embodied (the body and its individual parts) alone. Intentionality is the novel property of mind of moving towards a certain set of attractors where attractors refer to the states that the system prefers (which would positively contribute to its fitness). The scope of this dissertation is to delineate the relation of brain to the mind and unravel some persistent troubles of philosophy of mind within such delineation. The types of components and their relation within the mind preceded by a thorough study of how the mind is embodied is an area yet to be extensively explored in the coming works. (shrink)

Improvisation informs a vast array of human activity, from creative practices in art, dance, music, and literature to everyday conversation and the relationships to natural and built environments that surround and sustain us. The two volumes of the Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies gather scholarship on improvisation from an immense range of perspectives, with contributions from more than sixty scholars working in architecture, anthropology, art history, computer science, cognitive science, cultural studies, dance, economics, education, ethnomusicology, film, gender studies, history, (...) linguistics, literary theory, musicology, neuroscience, new media, organizational science, performance studies, philosophy, popular music studies, psychology, science and technology studies, sociology, and sound art, among others. (shrink)

Physicians, nurses, and other clinicians readily acknowledge being troubled by encounters with patients who trigger moral judgments. For decades social scientists have noted that moral judgment of patients is pervasive, occurring not only in egregious and criminal cases but also in everyday situations in which appraisals of patients' social worth and culpability are routine. There is scant literature, however, on the actual prevalence and dynamics of moral judgment in healthcare. The indirect evidence available suggests that moral appraisals function via a (...) complex calculus that reflects variation in patient characteristics, clinician characteristics, task, and organizational factors. The full impact of moral judgment on healthcare relationships, patient outcomes, and clinicians' own well-being is yet unknown. The paucity of attention to moral judgment, despite its significance for patient-centered care, communication, empathy, professionalism, healthcare education, stereotyping, and outcome disparities, represents a blind spot that merits explanation and repair. New methodologies in social psychology and neuroscience have yielded models for how moral judgment operates in healthcare and how research in this area should proceed. Clinicians, educators, and researchers would do well to recognize both the legitimate and illegitimate moral appraisals that are apt to occur in healthcare settings. (shrink)

Mirror neuron activation (MNA) has been applied to number of business ethics contexts including marketing, charitable giving, organizational connectedness, and leadership. Unfortunately, the business literature has often ignored research in philosophy and psychology which can provide insight into the application of mirror neurons to business contexts and other disciplines. I will argue that the use of mirror neurons to support business decisions cannot be established solely on the existence of neural activation as it requires higher level cognitive functions that (...) go beyond biological reductionism. But research into MNA does support their use in basic motor action understanding which is below the level of mental and psychological attributions. The corollary supports a dual-process model. On the one hand, mirror neurons are an automatic and unconscious process by which we understand human movement and, on the other hand, there is a cognitive system by which we understand action in terms of situational specifics and mental states. (shrink)

In contemporary human brain mapping, it is commonly assumed that the “mind is what the brain does”. Based on that assumption, task-based imaging studies of the last three decades measured differences in brain activity that are thought to reflect the exercise of human mental capacities (e.g., perception, attention, memory). With the advancement of resting state studies, tractography and graph theory in the last decade, however, it became possible to study human brain connectivity without relying on cognitive tasks or constructs. It (...) therefore is currently an open question whether the assumption that “the mind is what the brain does” is an indispensable working hypothesis in human brain mapping. This paper argues that the hypothesis is, in fact, dispensable. If it is dropped, researchers can “meet the brain on its own terms” by searching for new, more adequate concepts to describe human brain organization. Neuroscientists can establish such concepts by conducting exploratory experiments that do not test particular cognitive hypotheses. The paper provides a systematic account of exploratory neuroscientific research that would allow researchers to form new concepts and formulate general principles of brain connectivity, and to combine connectivity studies with manipulation methods to identify neural entities in the brain. These research strategies would be most fruitful if applied to the mesoscopic scale of neuronal assemblies, since the organizational principles at this scale are currently largely unknown. This could help researchers to link microscopic and macroscopic evidence to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the human brain. The paper concludes by comparing this account of exploratory neuroscientific experiments to recent proposals for large-scale, discovery-based studies of human brain connectivity. (shrink)

Background: Moral decision-making consists of a complex process requiring individuals to evaluate potential consequences of personal and social decisions, including applied organizational contexts.Methods: This research aims to investigate the behavioral (offer responses and reaction times, RTs) and electrophysiological (EEG) correlates underlying moral decision-making during three different choice conditions (professional fit, company fit, and social fit) and offers (fair, unfair, and neutral).Results: An increase of delta and theta frontal activity (related to emotional behavior and processes) and beta frontal and central (...) activity (linked to cognitive and attentional processes) was found. A left beta, delta, and theta frontal activity was observed for fair offers in professional fit conditions, while increased right frontal delta and theta activity was found in response to unfair offers in company fit conditions. Also, an increase of left delta and theta parietal activity for unfair offers in social fit condition was detected. Finally, higher accepted responses were found for fair and neutral offers in professional and social fit conditions, with increased RTs for unfair offers suggesting decisions’ cognitive load and complexity.Conclusions: By revealing a greater involvement of left and right frontal areas in decision-making processes based on choices and offers, personal interest evaluations and emotional values, and of parietal areas in more prosocial and altruistic moral behavior, current findings provide information about the neural and behavioral correlates underlying company moral behavior. (shrink)

This article proposes a moderated mediation model of emotional dissonance. In the model, emotional leadership negatively affects emotional dissonance, which, in turn, negatively affects helping behavior. Furthermore, the negative effect of emotional dissonance is assumed to be moderated by work-family conflict. Direct effects from both emotional leadership and work-family conflict to helping other behavior are also considered. Previous studies have neglected the mechanism of emotional dissonance, but this paper fills the gap with a moderated mediation model of emotional dissonance. This (...) article not only provides an incremental contribution to the emotional dissonance literature but also suggests means by which companies might enhance employe helping behaviors in order to achieve greater organizational efficiency. (shrink)

Measuring outcomes using quantitative analytic methods is the hallmark of scientific research in healthcare. For clinical ethics support services (CESS), tangible outcome metrics are lacking and literature examining CESS quality is limited to evaluation of single cases or the influence on individual healthcare professional’s perceptions or behaviour. This represents an enormous barrier to implementing and evaluating ethics initiatives to improve quality. In this context, Kok _et al_ propose a theoretical framework for how moral case deliberation (MCD) can drive quality at (...) an organisational-level, termed _morisprudence_ 1. By offering mechanistic insights into how MCD can lead to organisational learning and quality improvement (QI), they provide a roadmap for actionable items to measure quality. As conceptualised, _morisprudence_ follows accumulation of organisational practical wisdom from a repertoire of ‘paradigmatic’ MCDs, aiding identification of patterns of morally important features. Here, there are parallels between healthcare professionals’ clinical judgement, where past experience... (shrink)

This is a book that we would enthusiastically recommend to those who unconditionally believe in the epistemologically or politically unproblematic character of organisational research. Carl Rhodes, once an employee of the Boston Consulting Group, now researcher at the University of Technology, Sydney, has written a small yet important book about academic writing on organisation. It has appeared in a small but interesting collection called Advances in Organization Studies that is edited by Stewart Clegg and Alfred Kieser and published by John (...) Benjamins. Rhodes’ book resonates well with developed traditions in narrative and storytelling approaches to management and organisation studies. Such traditions have approached organisational knowledge from a narrative perspective1 and used narrative and literary methods to understand organisations.2 More specifically, Rhodes both draws on and contributes to an understanding of the relationship between narrative and power3 and to using multiple interpretations and representations in research.4 However, although we would argue that it is possible to identify Rhodes’ position in the field, ‘summing up’ in his own terms what he has to say is not easy. His central point seems to be that conclusively singular representations, perhaps including the one that we give here, are problematical from both an ethical and political perspective. One may be tempted to discard this as yet another postmodernist frivolity, but we would suggest that what writers and researchers in organisation studies, and the social sciences more generally, might get from this work is an increased sensitivity to the ethics of their writing practices. We intend in this review essay not so much to provide the reader with a neat survey of Rhodes’ book as to build further on some of its ideas. And in doing so, we will highlight its philosophical underpinnings not only because we think that these are especially interesting for the readers of this journal but also because we think that some of them are problematical. We have tried to provide a fairly neutral reconstruction of Rhodes’ argument in the first three sections below, and from the fourth section onwards — ‘authorless writing’ — we question some of Rhodes’ assumptions and ideas. While we are enthused by the questions raised in this book and indeed by the way the overall argument is presented, we will also claim that in places he seems to succumb to an anti-realist and anti-authoritarian position that we regard as unnecessarily radical. (shrink)