This paper describes differences in two perspectives on the idea of virtue as a theoretical foundation for positive organizational ethics (POE). The virtue ethics perspective is grounded in the philosophical tradition, has classical roots, and focuses attention on virtue as a property of character. The positive social science perspective is a recent movement (e.g., positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship) that has implications for POE. The positive social science movement operationalizes virtue through an empirical lens that emphasizes virtuous behaviors. From (...) a virtue ethics perspective, a behaviorally based account of virtue is a weak theory of virtue. Observations are suggested for integrating the two perspectives. First, virtue should always be understood as an excellence and is often an optimal point between extreme dysfunctions on continuum of potential states. Second, an empirical exploration of virtue needs to account for character and context. Finally, the properties of organization-level virtue need to be further specified and explored. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

There are over 800 seventh to tenth grade students at the College d’Enseignment Generale (CEG) School in Azové, Benin. Like most children in the developing world, these students lack access to clean water and basic sanitation facilities. These students suffer from parasitic infection and health ailments which could be directly offset with short term aid to supply water and medical aid. Promoting proper sanitation and providing the technology to implement water and wastewater treatment in the community will decrease childhood and (...) maternal disease and mortality rates in Azové. However, these measures may take several years to implement and will require a significant investment in the infrastructure of the school. Is it ethical to spend $10,000 towards the long-term goals of providing water and sanitation to the students of CEG Azové, compared to spending the same amount on short-term relief efforts? (shrink)

Perhaps the least controversial area of F.H. Bradley's writings relates to his views on punishment. Commentators universally recognize Bradley's theory of punishment as a retributivist theory of punishment. This article challenges the received wisdom. I argue that Bradley does not endorse retributivism as commonly understood. Instead, he defends the view that punishment is non-retributivist and serves the end of societal maintenance. Moreover, Bradley defends this view consistently from Ethical Studies to later work on punishment. Instead of (...) holding a theory of punishment largely unique amongst British Idealists of his time, Bradley's views on punishment are far more consistent than previously thought. (shrink)

In his magnum opus, Process and Reality, Alfred North Whitehead claims a special affinity to Oxford philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley. McHenry clarifies exactly how much of Whitehead's metaphysics is influenced by and accords with the main principles of Bradley's absolute idealism. He argues that many of Whitehead's doctrines cannot be understood without an adequate understanding of Bradley, in terms of both affinities and contrasts. He evaluates the arguments between them and explores several important connections with William James, (...) Josiah Royce, George Santayana, Bertrand Russell, and Charles Hartshorne. (shrink)

In his magnum opus, Process and Reality, Alfred North Whitehead claims a special affinity to Oxford philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley. McHenry clarifies exactly how much of Whitehead's metaphysics is influenced by and accords with the main principles of Bradley's "absolute idealism." He argues that many of Whitehead's doctrines cannot be understood without an adequate understanding of Bradley, in terms of both affinities and contrasts. He evaluates the arguments between them and explores several important connections with William James, (...) Josiah Royce, George Santayana, Bertrand Russell, and Charles Hartshorne. (shrink)

T. H. Green was a leading member of the British Idealist movement, which adopted the continental philosophy of Hegel and Kant while rejecting utilitarianism. As well as being a prominent philosopher, Green was an influential educational reformer and an active member of the Liberal party. Green's writings can be placed into three categories: religion, philosophy and politics. This work was the most complete statement of Green's philosophy, although it remained unfinished at his death. Edited by A. C. Bradley, a (...) former student and brother of Green's fellow Idealist F. H. Bradley, the book, which contains four parts, was published posthumously in 1883. Like other Idealists, Green criticised empiricism for creating an unnecessary dualism between thought and the real. (shrink)

Whitehead and Bradley both constructed philosophies of experience based upon feeling, in opposition to theories of scientific materialism. For Bradley reality is ultimately timeless, while for Whitehead reality is process. In the end Whitehead thought his philosophy could be understood as a transformation of absolute idealism in terms of the realities of process. He did not start out thinking this, although the affinities between idealism and process is greatest in the original version of Science and the Modern World. (...) The underlying substantial activity, particularly as characterized by its modes, the definite events of the world, could be considered as a dynamic, temporalized conception of the all-inclusive Absolute. Bradley's Wolf-eating-Lamb as a qualification of the Absolute could be seen as a particular event constituting one mode of the substantial activity, despite Whitehead's later emphatic objections. (shrink)

At first sight it seems strange to compare Whitehead and Bradley. They were Englishmen and metaphysicians, and they were born within 15 years of one another. But they seem to belong to different eras, for though Whitehead’s fame as a logician belongs to the early years of this century it was only gradually — long after Bradley’s death — that he came to be regarded as a major metaphysician. And in almost every respect they seem to clash.

Sorely needed by scholars of nineteenth-century philosophy is a researdh bibliography on Francis Herbert Bradley. The existent bibliographic tools presently available on Bradley are very incomplete, inaccurate, and outdated, making them valueless for serious philosophical research on this very important contemporary philosopher. Every major book, review, doctoral dissertation, article, and note is cited exactly and completely. Approximately a thousand different citations are given indicating the tremendous influence Bradley's thought had on subsequent thinkers and movements. It is no (...) minor thinker who could influence deeply a Russell, James, or Whitehead. Like Plotinus before'him, Bradley's place in philosophy has not been fully appreciated because of the artificial divisions of philosophy proposed by its historians. In any event, this bibliography is offered to scholars whose interests are English Idealism in general and Bradley's philosophic contributions in particular. (shrink)

As leadership discourses in higher education are increasingly being mediated online, texts previously reserved for staff are now being made available in the public domain. As such, these texts become accessible for study, critique and evaluation. Additionally, discourses previously confined to the written domain are now increasingly multimodal. Thus, an approach is required that is capable of relating detailed, complex multimodal discourse analyses to broader sociocultural perspectives to account for the complex meaning-making practices that operate in online leadership discourses. For (...) this purpose, a digital multimodal discourse approach is proposed and illustrated via a small-scale case study of the online leadership discourse of an Australian university. The analysis of two short video texts demonstrates how a digital multimodal discourse perspective facilitates the identification of key multimodal systems used for meaning-making in online communication, how meaning arises through combinations of semiotic choices, and how the results of multimodal discourse analysis using digital technology can reveal larger sociocultural patterns – in this case, divergent leadership styles and approaches as reflected in online discourse, at a time of immense change within the higher education sector. (shrink)

A version of Bradley's regress can be endorsed in an effort to address the problem of the unity of states of affairs or facts, thereby arriving at a doctrine that I have called fact infinitism . A consequence of it is the denial of the thesis, WF, that all chains of ontological dependence are well-founded or grounded. Cameron has recently rejected fact infinitism by arguing that WF, albeit not necessarily true, is however contingently true. Here fact infinitism is supported (...) by showing that Cameron's argument for the contingent truth of WF is unsuccessful. (shrink)

Bradley is often described as an Anglo-Hegelian, and hence it is assumed that his doctrines derive from Hegel. It is true that his first two works ‘The Presuppositions of Critical History’ and Ethical Studies are heavily influenced by Hegel. The Principles of Logic is much less so: it certainly contains a number of both laudatory and critical references to Hegel, but the whole design of the book is completely unrelated to his treatment of logic. Appearance and Reality seems to (...) me not to be Hegelian at all. The interesting logical discussions occur in the Principles, and it is here that we can find points of comparison between Bradley and Frege and Russell. This is in part because all three were agreed that it was impossible to account for logic by reference to psychology. Bradley's doctrine of internal relations first emerges in this context, though it is given a more metaphysical interpretation in the subsequent Appearance and Reality. However, most who have talked of internal relations have taken their view from the latter work, and have found the doctrine either confused or silly. This quotation from Appearance and Reality seems to bring out all that is objectionable in the view: And if you could have a perfect relational knowledge of the world, you could go on from the nature of red-hairedness to these other characters which qualify it, and you could from the nature of red-hairedness reconstruct all the red-haired men. In such perfect knowledge you could start internally from any one character in the Universe, and you could from that pass to the rest…For example, a red-haired man who knew himself utterly would and must, starting from within, go on to know everyone else who had red hair, and he would not know himself until he knew them. But, as things are, he does not know how or why he himself has red hair, nor how and why a different man is also the same in that point, and therefore, because he does not know the ground, the how and why, of his relation to other men, it remains for him relatively external, contingent, and fortuitous. But there is really no mere externality except in his ignorance. (shrink)

A version of Bradley's regress can be endorsed in an effort to address the problem of the unity of states of affairs or facts, thereby arriving at a doctrine that I have called fact infinitism. A consequence of it is the denial of the thesis, WF, that all chains of ontological dependence are well‐founded or grounded. Cameron has recently rejected fact infinitism by arguing that WF, albeit not necessarily true, is however contingently true. Here fact infinitism is supported by (...) showing that Cameron's argument for the contingent truth of WF is unsuccessful. (shrink)

When making decisions, people naturally face uncertainty about the potential consequences of their actions due in part to limits in their capacity to represent, evaluate or deliberate. Nonetheless, they aim to make the best decisions possible. In Decision Theory with a Human Face, Richard Bradley develops new theories of agency and rational decision-making, offering guidance on how 'real' agents who are aware of their bounds should represent the uncertainty they face, how they should revise their opinions as a result (...) of experience and how they should make decisions when lacking full awareness of, or precise opinions on relevant contingencies. He engages with the strengths and flaws of Bayesian reasoning, and presents clear and comprehensive explorations of key issues in decision theory, from belief and desire to semantics and learning. His book draws on philosophy, economics, decision science and psychology, and will appeal to readers in all of these disciplines. (shrink)

Semantic pathology is most widely recognized in the liar paradox, where an apparent inconsistency arises in ‘‘liar sentences’’ and their ilk. But the phenomenon of semantic pathology also manifests a sibling symptom—an apparent indeterminacy—which, while not largely discussed (save for the occasional nod to ‘‘truthteller sentences’’), is just as pervasive as, and exactly parallels, the symptom of inconsistency. Moreover, certain ‘‘dual symptom’’ cases, which we call naysayers, exhibit both inconsistency and indeterminacy and also manifest a higher-order indeterminacy between them. In (...) this paper, we explore and lay out the full, broader extent of semantic pathology. We then turn to the best-known attempts to diagnose and treat the phenomenon: consistentist approaches, proposed by Alfred Tarski and Saul Kripke, and an inconsistentist approach, originally presented by Graham Priest and dubbed ‘‘dialetheism’’. We explain the basic elements of each view and argue that each fails to provide an adequate way of dealing with the full extent of semantic pathology. We conclude that a new kind of approach is required and briefly sketch the pretense-based view that we favor. (shrink)

In this book, Bradley Armour-Garb and James A. Woodbridge distinguish various species of fictionalism, locating and defending their own version of philosophical fictionalism. Addressing semantic and philosophical puzzles that arise from ordinary language, they consider such issues as the problem of non-being, plural identity claims, mental-attitude ascriptions, meaning attributions, and truth-talk. They consider 'deflationism about truth', explaining why deflationists should be fictionalists, and show how their philosophical fictionalist account of truth-talk underwrites a dissolution of the Liar Paradox and its (...) kin. They further explore the semantic notions of reference and predicate-satisfaction, showing how philosophical fictionalism can also resolve puzzles that these notions appear to present. Their critical examination of fictionalist approaches in philosophy, together with the development and application of their own brand of philosophical fictionalism, will be of great interest to scholars and upper-level students of philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophical logic, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and linguistics. (shrink)

This volume is a serious attempt to open up the subject of European philosophy of science to real thought, and provide the structural basis for the interdisciplinary development of its specialist fields, but also to provoke reflection on the idea of ‘European philosophy of science’. This efforts should foster a contemporaneous reflection on what might be meant by philosophy of science in Europe and European philosophy of science, and how in fact awareness of it could assist philosophers interpret and motivate (...) their research through a stronger collective identity. The overarching aim is to set the background for a collaborative project organising, systematising, and ultimately forging an identity for, European philosophy of science by creating research structures and developing research networks across Europe to promote its development. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley was the foremost philosopher of the British Idealist school, which came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century. Bradley, who was a life fellow of Merton College, Oxford, was influenced by Hegel, and also reacted against utilitarianism. He was recognised during his lifetime as one of the greatest intellectuals of his generation and was the first philosopher to receive the Order of Merit, in 1924. His work is considered to have been important (...) to the formation of analytic philosophy. In metaphysics, he rejected pluralism and realism, and believed that English philosophy needed to deal systematically with first principles. This work, first published in 1893, is divided into two parts: 'Appearance' deals with exposing the contradictions that Bradley believed are hidden in our everyday conceptions of the world; and in 'Reality', he builds his positive account of reality and considers possible objections to it. (shrink)