A growing body of research suggests that follower perceptions of ethical leadership are associated with beneficial follower outcomes. However, some empirical researchers have found contradictory results. In this study, we use social learning and social exchange theories to test the relationship between ethical leadership and follower work outcomes. Our results suggest that ethical leadership is related positively to numerous follower outcomes such as perceptions of leader interactional fairness and follower ethical behavior. Furthermore, we explore how ethical leadership relates to and (...) is different from other leadership styles such as transformational and transactional leadership. Results suggest that ethical leadership is positively associated with transformational leadership and the contingent reward dimension of transactional leadership. With respect to the moderators, our results show mixed evidence for publication bias. Finally, geographical locations of study samples moderated some of the relationships between ethical leadership and follower outcomes, and employee samples from public sector organizations showed stronger mean corrected correlations for ethical leadership–follower outcome relationships. (shrink)

In biobanks, a broader model of consent is often used and justified by a range of different strategies that make reference to the potential benefits brought by the research it will facilitate combined with the low level of risk involved (provided adequate measures are in place to protect privacy and confidentiality) or a questioning of the centrality of the notion of informed consent. Against this, it has been suggested that the lack of specific information about particular uses of the samples (...) means that such consent cannot be fully autonomous and so is unethical. My answer to the title question is a definite ‘yes’. Broad consent can be informed consent and is justified by appeal to the principle of respect for autonomy. Indeed, I will suggest that the distinction between the various kinds of consent is not a distinction between kinds of consent but between the kinds of choice a person makes. When an individual makes a choice (of any kind) it is important that they do so according to the standards of informed consent and consistent with the choice that they are making. (shrink)

Using a single spin-1 object as an example, we discuss a recent approach to quantum entanglement. [A.A. Klyachko and A.S. Shumovsky, J. Phys: Conf. Series 36, 87 (2006), E-print quant-ph/0512213]. The key idea of the approach consists in presetting of basic observables in the very definition of quantum system. Specification of basic observables defines the dynamic symmetry of the system. Entangled states of the system are then interpreted as states with maximal amount of uncertainty of all basic observables. The approach (...) gives purely physical picture of entanglement. In particular, it separates principle physical properties of entanglement from inessential. Within the model example under consideration, we show relativity of entanglement with respect to dynamic symmetry and argue existence of single-particle entanglement. A number of physical examples are considered. (shrink)

In recent years, a particular doctrine about forms of life has come to be associated with Wittgenstein's name by followers and critics of his philosophy alike. It is not a doctrine which Wittgenstein espoused or even, given his understanding of philosophy, one which he could have accepted; nor is it worthy of acceptance on its own merits. I shall here outline the standard interpretation of Wittgenstein's remarks on forms of life, consider the textual basis for such a reading of Wittgenstein, (...) present a more consistent reading of the texts, place the problem of forms of life within a wider philosophical context, and show the ways in which it is indeed possible to say that a form of life is wrong. In the process, I shall note some important similarities between Wittgenstein's actual position, Quine's analysis of scientific knowledge, and Hans-Georg Gadamer's claims about the fusion of horizons. (shrink)

It is bad news to find out that one's cognitive or perceptual faculties are defective. Furthermore, it’s not always transparent how one ought to revise one's beliefs in light of such news. Two sorts of news should be distinguished. On the one hand, there is news that a faculty is unreliable -- that it doesn't track the truth particularly well. On the other hand, there is news that a faculty is anti-reliable -- that it tends to go positively wrong. These (...) two sorts of news call for extremely different responses. We provide accounts of these responses, and prove bounds on the degree to which one can reasonably count oneself as mistaken about a given subject matter. (shrink)

This article will rework the classical question ‘Can a machine think?’ into a more specific problem: ‘Can a machine think anything new?’ It will consider traditional computational tasks such as prediction and decision-making, so as to investigate whether the instrumentality of these operations can be understood in terms of the creation of novel thought. By addressing philosophical and technoscientific attempts to mechanise thought on the one hand, and the philosophical and cultural critique of these attempts on the other, I will (...) argue that computation’s epistemic productions should be assessed vis-à-vis the logico-mathematical specificity of formal axiomatic systems. Such an assessment requires us to conceive automated modes of thought in such a way as to supersede the hope that machines might replicate human cognitive faculties, and to thereby acknowledge a form of onto-epistemological autonomy in automated ‘thinking’ processes. This involves moving beyond the view that machines might merely simulate humans. Machine thought should be seen as dramatically alien to human thought, and to the dimension of lived experience upon which the latter is predicated. Having stepped outside the simulative paradigm, the question ‘Can a machine think anything new?’ can then be reformulated. One should ask whether novel behaviour in computing might come not from the breaking of mechanical rules, but from following them: from doing what computers do already, and not what we might think they should be doing if we wanted them to imitate us. (shrink)

This article will rework the classical question ‘Can a machine think?’ into a more specific problem: ‘Can a machine think anything new?’ It will consider traditional computational tasks such as prediction and decision-making, so as to investigate whether the instrumentality of these operations can be understood in terms of the creation of novel thought. By addressing philosophical and technoscientific attempts to mechanise thought on the one hand, and the philosophical and cultural critique of these attempts on the other, I will (...) argue that computation’s epistemic productions should be assessed vis-à-vis the logico-mathematical specificity of formal axiomatic systems. Such an assessment requires us to conceive automated modes of thought in such a way as to supersede the hope that machines might replicate human cognitive faculties, and to thereby acknowledge a form of onto-epistemological autonomy in automated ‘thinking’ processes. This involves moving beyond the view that machines might merely simulate humans. Machine thought should be seen as dramatically alien to human thought, and to the dimension of lived experience upon which the latter is predicated. Having stepped outside the simulative paradigm, the question ‘Can a machine think anything new?’ can then be reformulated. One should ask whether novel behaviour in computing might come not from the breaking of mechanical rules, but from following them: from doing what computers do already, and not what we might think they should be doing if we wanted them to imitate us. (shrink)

The field of rhetoric provides unique frameworks and tools for understanding the role of language in moral reasoning and corruption. Drawing on a discursive understanding of the self, we focus on how the rhetoric of conversations constructs and shapes our moral reasoning and moral behavior. Using rhetorical appeals and a moral development framework, we construct three propositions that use variation in the rhetoric of conversations to identify and predict corruption. We discuss some of the implications of our model.

Classical (Bayesian) probability (CP) theory has led to an influential research tradition for modeling cognitive processes. Cognitive scientists have been trained to work with CP principles for so long that it is hard even to imagine alternative ways to formalize probabilities. However, in physics, quantum probability (QP) theory has been the dominant probabilistic approach for nearly 100 years. Could QP theory provide us with any advantages in cognitive modeling as well? Note first that both CP and QP theory share the (...) fundamental assumption that it is possible to model cognition on the basis of formal, probabilistic principles. But why consider a QP approach? The answers are that (1) there are many well-established empirical findings (e.g., from the influential Tversky, Kahneman research tradition) that are hard to reconcile with CP principles; and (2) these same findings have natural and straightforward explanations with quantum principles. In QP theory, probabilistic assessment is often strongly context- and order-dependent, individual states can be superposition states (that are impossible to associate with specific values), and composite systems can be entangled (they cannot be decomposed into their subsystems). All these characteristics appear perplexing from a classical perspective. However, our thesis is that they provide a more accurate and powerful account of certain cognitive processes. We first introduce QP theory and illustrate its application with psychological examples. We then review empirical findings that motivate the use of quantum theory in cognitive theory, but also discuss ways in which QP and CP theories converge. Finally, we consider the implications of a QP theory approach to cognition for human rationality. (shrink)

I defend the following version of the ought-implies-can principle: (OIC) by virtue of conceptual necessity, an agent at a given time has an (objective, pro tanto) obligation to do only what the agent at that time has the ability and opportunity to do. In short, obligations correspond to ability plus opportunity. My argument has three premises: (1) obligations correspond to reasons for action; (2) reasons for action correspond to potential actions; (3) potential actions correspond to ability plus opportunity. In the (...) bulk of the paper I address six objections to OIC: three objections based on putative counterexamples, and three objections based on arguments to the effect that OIC conflicts with the is/ought thesis, the possibility of hard determinism, and the denial of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

This white paper aims to identify an open problem in 'Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality' -namely whether quantum theory and special relativity are formally compatible-, to indicate what the underlying issues are, and put forward ideas about how the problem might be addressed.

To commence any answer to the question “Can democracy promote the general welfare?” requires attention to the meaning of “general welfare.” If this term is drained of all significance by being defined as “whatever the political decision process determines it to be,” then there is no content to the question. The meaning of the term can be restored only by classifying possible outcomes of democratic political processes into two sets – those that are general in application over all citizens and (...) those that are discriminatory. (shrink)

Scott Williams’s Latin Social model of the Trinity holds that the trinitarian persons have between them a single set of divine mental powers and a single set of divine mental acts. He claims, nevertheless, that on his view the persons are able to use indexical pronouns such as “I.” This claim is examined and is found to be mistaken.

Wittgenstein's Tractatus contains a wide range of profound insights into the nature of logic and language – insights which will survive the particular theories of the Tractatus and seem to me to mark definitive and unassailable landmarks in our understanding of some of the deepest questions of philosophy. And yet alongside these insights there is a theory of the nature of the relation between language and reality which appears both to be impossible to work out in detail in a way (...) which is completely satisfactory, and to be bizarre and incredible. I am referring to the so-called logical atomism of the Tractatus. The main outlines of this theory at least are clear and familiar: there are elementary propositions which gain their sense from being models of possible states of affairs; such propositions are configurations of names of simple objects, signifying that those simples are analogously configured; every proposition has its sense through being analysable as a truth-functional compound of elementary propositions, thus deriving its sense from the sense of the elementary propositions when this view is taken in conjunction with the idea that the sense of a proposition is completely specified by specifying its truth-conditions. In this way the Tractatus incorporates in its working out a philosophical system analogous to the classical philosophical systems of Leibniz or Spinoza which are regarded by many people, in a sense rightly, as the prehistoric monsters of philosophy which are not to be studied as living organisms, but studied as the curiosities of human thought. And we may here agree that in the end we must simply reject a philosophy which incorporates such features as its postulation of simple eternal objects, or of a possibility of an analysis of a proposition which was presented as a pre-condition for the propositions that we ordinarily utter to make sense, and yet the specific form of which we are unaware of, and so on. (shrink)

To later generations, much of the moral philosophy of the twentieth century will look like a struggle to escape from utilitarianism. We seem to succeed in disproving one utilitarian doctrine, only to find ourselves caught in the grip of another. I believe that this is because a basic feature of the consequentialist outlook still pervades and distorts our thinking: the view that the business of morality is to bring something about . Too often, the rest of us have pitched our (...) protests as if we were merely objecting to the utilitarian account of what the moral agent ought to bring about or how he ought to do it. Deontological considerations have been characterized as “side constraints,” as if they were essentially restrictions on ways to realize ends. More importantly, moral philosophers have persistently assumed that the primal scene of morality is a scene in which someone does something to or for someone else. This is the same mistake that children make about another primal scene. The primal scene of morality, I will argue, is not one in which I do something to you or you do something to me, but one in which we do something together. The subject matter of morality is not what we should bring about, but how we should relate to one another. If only Rawls has succeeded in escaping utilitarianism, it is because only Rawls has fully grasped this point. His primal scene, the original position, is one in which a group of people must make a decision together. Their task is to find the reasons they can share. (shrink)

l. There is an antinomy in Hare's thought between Ought-Implies-Can and No-Indicatives-from-Imperatives. It cannot be resolved by drawing a distinction between implication and entailment. 2. Luther resolved this antinomy in the l6th century, but to understand his solution, we need to understand his problem. He thought the necessity of Divine foreknowledge removed contingency from human acts, thus making it impossible for sinners to do otherwise than sin. 3. Erasmus objected (on behalf of Free Will) that this violates Ought-Implies-Can which he (...) supported with Hare-style ordinary language arguments. 4. Luther a) pointed out the antinomy and b) resolved it by undermining the prescriptivist arguments for Ought-Implies-Can. 5. We can reinforce Luther's argument with an example due to David Lewis. 6. Whatever its merits as a moral principle, Ought-Implies-Can is not a logical truth and should not be included in deontic logics. Most deontic logics, and maybe the discipline itself, should therefore be abandoned. 7. Could it be that Ought-Conversationally-Implies-Can? Yes - in some contexts. But a) even if these contexts are central to the evolution of Ought, the implication is not built into the semantics of the word; b) nor is the parallel implication built into the semantics of orders; and c) in some cases Ought conversationally implies Can, only because Ought-Implies-Can is a background moral belief. d) Points a) and b) suggest a criticism of prescriptivism - that Oughts do not entail imperatives but that the relation is one of conversational implicature. 8. If Ought-Implies-Can is treated as a moral principle, Erasmus' argument for Free Will can be revived (given his Christian assumptions). But it does not 'prove' Pelagianism as Luther supposed. A semi-Pelagian alternative is available. (shrink)

When healthcare professionals feel constrained from acting in a patient’s best interests, moral distress ensues. The resulting negative sequelae of burnout, poor retention rates, and ultimately poor patient care are well recognized across healthcare providers. Yet an appreciation of how particular disciplines, including physicians, come to be “constrained” in their actions is still lacking. This paper will examine how the application of shared decision-making may contribute to the experience of moral distress for physicians and why such distress may go under-recognized. (...) Appreciation of these dynamics may assist in cross-discipline sensitivity, enabling more constructive dialogue and collaboration. (shrink)

If time travel is possible, presumably so is my shooting my younger self ; then apparently I can kill him – I can commit retrosuicide. But if I were to kill him I would not exist to shoot him, so how can I kill him? The standard solution to this paradox understands ability as compossibility with the relevant facts and points to an equivocation about which facts are relevant: my killing YS is compossible with his proximity but not with his (...) survival, so I can kill him if facts like his survival are irrelevant but I cannot if they are relevant. I identify a lacuna in this solution, namely its reliance without argument on the hidden assumption that my killing YS is possible: if it is impossible, it is not compossible with anything. I argue that this lacuna is important, and I sketch a different solution to the paradox. (shrink)

People have concerns, and ethicists often respond to them with philosophical arguments. But can conceptual constructions properly address fears and anxieties? It is argued in this paper that while it is possible to voice, clarify, create and—to a certain extent—tackle concerns by arguments, more concrete practices, choices, and actions are normally needed to produce proper responses to people’s worries. While logical inconsistencies and empirical errors can legitimately be exposed by arguments, the situation is considerably less clear when it comes to (...) moral, cultural, and emotional norms, values, and expectations. (shrink)

Edouard Machery argues that many traditional philosophical questions are beyond our capacity to answer. Answering them seems to require using the method of cases, a method that involves testing answers to philosophical questions against what we think about real or imagined cases. The problem, according to Machery, is that this method has proved unreliable ; what we think about these kinds of cases is both problematically heterogeneous and volatile. His bold solution: abandon the method of cases altogether and with it (...) many of the questions that we have come to associate with philosophy itself. Many of the critical responses to Machery’s book have focused on whether empirical work on judgements about philosophical cases supports his claim that the method of cases is unreliable. Our problem with these responses is that they accept that reliability is the right way to frame empirically informed concerns about the method of cases, and we think that it is not. The reason is simple: the kind of unreliability thesis that Machery needs proves to be empirically intractable, at least by anything like the current methods used by experimental philosophers, or so we shall argue here. While we have empirical grounds for thinking that unreliability arguments don’t give us reason to abandon the method of cases, we do think that there are empirical grounds for thinking that it needs to be reformed. There are other standards that we expect our methods to meet beyond mere reliability, especially standards of practical rationality, which are too often forgotten in metaphilosophical discussions that tend to focus exclusively on epistemological considerations. Methodological considerations, after all, are not just matters of epistemic normativity, but practical rationality as well. What’s more, considerations of practical rationality become particularly important when we move from the kind of extreme scepticism that Machery endorses to the kind of progressive reformation that we think should be pursued. And so we conclude by arguing that thinking about philosophical inquiry in terms of standards of practical rationality allows us both to better understand what kinds of problems recent empirical work on philosophical cognition raises for the method of cases and also how that work can point the way to reforming it. (shrink)

Listening to someone from some distance in a crowded room you may experience the following phenomenon: when looking at them speak, you may both hear and see where the source of the sounds is; but when your eyes are turned elsewhere, you may no longer be able to detect exactly where the voice must be coming from. With your eyes again fixed on the speaker, and the movement of her lips a clear sense of the source of the sound will (...) return. This ‘ventriloquist’ effect reflects the ways in which visual cognition can dominate auditory perception. And this phenomenological observation is one what you can verify or disconfirm in your own case just by the slightest reflection on what it is like for you to listen to someone with or without visual contact with them. (shrink)

Determines the implications of Christian religious conviction for moral conduct through extensive philosophical inquiry into an incident involving an ethical ...

Since the enactment of the first Hong Kong bilingual ordinance in 1989, tremendous effort and resources have been put to translating English legal documents into Chinese. Long before the implementation of bilingual legislation, the provision of interpreting services has remained an entrenched practice in the courtrooms of Hong Kong. This study has adopted a corpora approach to re-examine what seems to be reasonable and routine practices of the bilingual, legal system, the impacts of bilingual legislation, translation, and interpretation on trial (...) proceedings. Results generated from the corpus show the problems of anglicized Chinese translation of the Sexual Offences Ordinance under the British Common Law system; and interpreters’ performance which is intricately bound by the discourse practices of the legal professionals as well as the ideology of the bilingual legal system in Hong Kong. (shrink)

We consider the problem of extending a (complete) order over a set to its power set. The extension axioms we consider generate orderings over sets according to their expected utilities induced by some assignment of utilities over alternatives and probability distributions over sets. The model we propose gives a general and unified exposition of expected utility consistent extensions whilst it allows to emphasize various subtleties, the effects of which seem to be underestimated – particularly in the literature on strategy-proof social (...) choice correspondences. (shrink)

Anti-behaviorist arguments against the validity of the Turing Test as a sufficient condition for attributing intelligence are based on a memorizing machine, which has recorded within it responses to every possible Turing Test interaction of up to a fixed length. The mere possibility of such a machine is claimed to be enough to invalidate the Turing Test. I consider the nomological possibility of memorizing machines, and how long a Turing Test they can pass. I replicate my previous analysis of this (...) critical Turing Test length based on the age of the universe, show how considerations of communication time shorten that estimate and allow eliminating the sole remaining contingent assumption, and argue that the bound is so short that it is incompatible with the very notion of the Turing Test. I conclude that the memorizing machine objection to the Turing Test as a sufficient condition for attributing intelligence is invalid. (shrink)

Insights from contemporary psychology can illuminate the common psychological processes that facilitate unethical decision making. I will illustrate several of these processes and describe steps that may be taken to reduce or eliminate the undesirable consequences of these processes. A generic problem with these processes is that they are totally invisible to decision makers – i. e., decision makers are convinced that their decisions are ethically and managerially sound.

We regularly wield powers that, upon close scrutiny, appear remarkably magical. By sheer exercise of will, we bring into existence things that have never existed before. With but a nod, we effect the disappearance of things that have long served as barriers to the actions of others. And, by mere resolve, we generate things that pose significant obstacles to others' exercise of liberty. What is the nature of these things that we create and destroy by our mere decision to do (...) so? The answer: the rights and obligations of others. And by what seemingly magical means do we alter these rights and obligations? By making promises and issuing or revoking consent When we make promises, we generate obligations for ourselves, and when we give consent, we create rights for others. Since the rights and obligations that are affected by means of promising and consenting largely define the boundaries of permissible action, our exercise of these seemingly magical powers can significantly affect the lives and liberties of others. (shrink)

The compliance-based approach and the integrity approach have been the mainstream responses to corporate scandals. This paper proposes that, despite each approach comprising necessary elements, neither offers a comprehensive solution. Compliance and integrity, far from being mutually exclusive, reinforce each other. Working together, in a correct relationship, they build a harmonized system that yields positive synergies and which also advocates prudence. It enables the generation of a culture of compliance that tends to minimize the technical and ethical errors in decision (...) making. In order to explore an applied harmonized approach, we analyze the audit committee, a specific and broadly accepted regulatory instrument. Formed by non-executive members, regulation requires these members to be dedicated, qualified, and independent as a guarantee of efficiency. We show how the compound of those elements produces positive effects in a context of solid governance. We conclude that it is the strong relationship between efficiency and prudence, in the creation of a culture of compliance, which enables the minimization of errors. (shrink)

In this paper I assess Gopnik and Meltzoff's developmental psychology of science as a contribution to the understanding of scientific development. I focus on two specific aspects of Gopnik and Meltzoff's approach: the relation between their views and recapitulationist views of ontogeny and phylogeny in biology, and their overall conception of cognition as a set of veridical processes. First, I discuss several issues that arise from their appeal to evolutionary biology, focusing specifically on the role of distinctions between ontogeny and (...) phylogeny when appealing to biology for theoretical support. Second, I argue that to presuppose that cognition is veridical or "truth-tropic" can compromise attempts to understand scientific cognition both throughout history and in the present. Finally, I briefly sketch an evolutionary approach to understanding scientific development that contrasts with Gopnik and Meltzoff's. (shrink)

Idealism and relativism were designed to assess different ethical ideological views. Their relation with attitudes toward a variety of outgroups has not been previously studied. Understanding how concerns over ethical principles and consequences are related to prejudiced attitudes could provide some insight into these constructs and into the nature of prejudice. In two studies totaling 311 participants, participants completed measures on ethical ideologies, right-wing authoritarianism, and attitudes toward various outgroups. The differential predictive validities of ethical ideologies, in comparison to right-wing (...) authoritarianism, on prejudicial attitudes toward dangerous, derogated, and dissident outgroup members were examined. We found that both idealism and relativism contributed to predicting attitudes regarding outgroup members, over and above right-wing authoritarianism. As such, people’s personal moral standards and code of conduct for dealing with interpersonal problems and transgressions can partly explain their negative attitudes toward outgroup members. More research is required to determine the unique influence of ethical ideologies over other constructs previously shown to predict prejudice. (shrink)

In his paper titled ‘Against “measurement” ’ [Physics World 3(8), 33–40 [1990]], Bell criticised arguments that use the concept of measurement to justify the statistical interpretation of quantum theory. Among these was the text of Gottfried [Quantum Mechanics (Benjamin, New York, [1966])]. Gottfried has replied to this criticism, claiming to show that, for systems with both continuous and discrete degrees of freedom, the statistical interpretation for the discrete variables is implied by requiring that the continuous variables are described classically. In (...) the present paper, Gottfried’s argument is criticised. It is suggested that he takes over aspects of classical physics which are in conflict with the classical limit of the Schrödinger equation. He incorrectly assumes that, in the output from a Stern-Gerlach apparatus, the wave-function of any ion is restricted to one or another of the beams. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 6, June 2020, Page 35-37.

Bundle theory reduces particulars to bundles of properties. Bundle theorists have been working to explain individuation within an ontology of repeatable properties, but the outcomes are not satisfactory. Even the trope approach toward properties is not capable of establishing individuation. This article argues that bundle theorists are wrong in searching for individuators within the bundles of properties. Rather, indi­viduation should be established within ontologically more fundamental level of events. Events, with their spatial and temporal character, enable us to individuate the (...) bundles of properties involved and this is one of the reasons for the superiority of bundle theory to other competitive theories of substance. (shrink)

The pleasures experienced by boys and men who work and play closely with technology have important implications for both gender and technology. This article presents empirical evidence on the topic from two studies: one of hobbyist “robot builders” who build machines for the U.K. television program Robot Wars, the other of professional software developers working in a large U.S. corporation. In spite of the obvious differences between these two groups, they experience strikingly similar pleasures—in creating technologies, in their skills and (...) knowledge, and in their intimacy and comfort with technology. The authors discuss available gender-based analyses of men’s pleasures in technology, drawing on the empirical material to both challenge and extend these analyses. The authors suggest, tentatively, that technology is a gender-authentic and gender-available avenue for those men who particularly crave certainty because technology appears more certain, easier to understand, and easier to master than other worlds they inhabit. (shrink)

McCarthy, Homan, and Rozier’s presentation of theological anthropology and its contribution to secular bioethics suffers from three primary limitations. First, the article re...

In his article ‘Saints and Heroes’, Urmson argues that traditional moral theories allow at most for a threefold classification of actions in terms of their worth, and that they are therefore unsatisfactory. Since the conclusion of his argument has led to the widespread use of the term ‘acts of supererogation’, and since I do not believe that such acts exist, I propose to argue that the actions with which he is concerned not only can, but should, be contained within the (...) traditional classification. (shrink)