Abstract:There is good reason to take a virtue-based approach to business ethics. Moral principles are fairly useful in assessing actions, but understanding how moral people behave and how they become moral requires reference to virtues, some of which are important in business. We must go beyond virtues and refer to character, of which virtues are components, to grasp the relationship between moral assessment and psychological explanation. Virtues and other character traits are closely related to (in technical terms, they supervene on) (...) personality traits postulated by personality psychologists. They may therefore be featured in respectable psychological explanations. But good character fits no familiar psychological pattern. A person of good character is sufficiently self-aware and rational that his or her virtues are not accompanied by the vices that psychologists find usually associated with them. A course in business ethics can help develop this self-awareness, which a good life in business requires. (shrink)

It may be nearly impossible to use standard principles to make a decision about a complex ethical case. The best decision, say virtue ethicists in the Aristotelian tradition, is often one that is made by a person of good character who knows the salient facts of the case and can frame the situation appropriately. In this respect ethical decisions and strategic decisions are similar. Rationality plays a role in good ethical decision-making, but virtue ethicists emphasize the importance of intuitions and (...) emotions as well.Virtue ethics suggests a reconciliation of the factual and the normative. Virtues may explain as well as justify actions. The same is true of other psychological states and events. That psychological terms have normative implications does not render them useless in explanation. As Aristotle does not distinguish cleanly between the normative and empirical, so many moral philosophers today reject the is-ought dichotomy. They are prepared to learn from economists, psychologists, and other empirical scientists who offer information about the nature of the good life and of values. Social psychologists who study community or corporate culture suggest a close relationship between organizational and ethical features, much as Aristotle saw a close relationship between politics and ethics. We should infer from all this that in business ethics there is good reason for philosophers and organization scholars to work closely together. (shrink)

Many authors have posited an “object file” system, which underlies perceptual selection and tracking of objects. Several have proposed that this system internalizes principles specifying what counts as an object and relies on them during tracking. Here I consider a popular view on which the object file system is tuned to entities that satisfy principles of three-dimensionality, cohesion, and boundedness. I argue that the evidence gathered in support of this view is consistent with a more permissive view on which object (...) files select and track according to well-known perceptual organization criteria. Further evidence supplies positive support for the permissive view. (shrink)

Behaviorism is consistent with the assumptions of perfect competition, with the homo economicus model, and with a form of ethics that enshrines market-based notions of utility, justice, and rights and encourages rational maximizing. Economics and business courses foster this deficient form of ethics, assuming an overriding desire for money, which, according to MacIntyre and Aristotle, crowds out the associative virtues. These beliefs, often associated with Taylor and Friedman, lead to such practices as incentive compensation, which would be effective only if (...) employees were homines economici and thus rational in the sense of knowing how to satisfy whatever desires they have. Against Davidson’s view that psychology cannot be a natural science, Aristotle believes that there can be a teleological, if not exact, science of behavior. Aristotle believes that emotions and objectives may be rational or irrational. But rationality—phronesis, practical wisdom—is not a matter of applying algorithms. Doris questions whether character generates the first premises of an agent’s practical syllogisms, while Haidt has argued that we often act on emotions rather than on the basis of the reasons that we claim motivate us. Aristotle agrees that many people are not virtuous and that weakness of the will is a common occurrence, and he agrees that emotion drives actions. But if you are virtuous, your emotions and desires support your rationality. Aristotle gives us reason to reject the notion that people are homines economici and to treat them as rational deliberators, in part by creating an appropriate culture. The claim that it is in the nature of human beings to deliberate rationally is in part aspirational, but also in part scientific—in Aristotle’s modest sense. (shrink)

When aristotle identifies form with substance he may have sufficiently refuted heraclitus' contention that we cannot step into the same river twice, But he is left with two problems: (1) how an object can have matter but be identical to its essence and different from its matter; and (2) there are some questions about the conditions for identity of a substance across time. (staff).

Christopher McMahon links political theory and business ethics and thereby takes the latter to a new level of philosophical sophistication. McMahon argues that legitimate authority, political or managerial, characteristically preempts certain of one’s judgments, so that one may reasonably submit to a directive to do something that contravenes one’s principles. Authoritative preemption does not involve weighing reasons pro and con, as one who is considering breaking a promise must do: it disqualifies competing considerations.

We typically test norms with reference to their usefulness in dealing with social problems and issues, though sometimes we use hypernorms to evaluate them. The hypernorms that we find most acceptable do not guide action in the way local norms do. They do, however, raise challenging questions that we should ask in evaluating any practice and its associated norms. In this respect, they differ from the principles associated with traditional, as opposed to modern, morality. As societies become more alike, in (...) part as a result of globalization, they will face increasingly similar problems. Then their local norms will be more similar, and they will be more likely to share hypernorms. Insofar as we can agree to try to justify our hypernorms, we are likely to converge on the hypernorms characteristic of modern rather than traditional morality. But people are often attached to their old norms and so are not very good at seeing how hypernorms raise questions that challenge the old norms. Here moral imagination should aid in the adjustment process. A system of democratic capitalism is hospitable to a good kind of moral convergence. (shrink)

Since its inception, experimental social psychology has arguably been of two minds about the nature and role of theory. Contemporary social psychology's experimental approach has been strongly informed by the “nomological-deductive” approach of Carl Hempel in tandem with the “hypothetico-deducive” approach of Karl Popper. Social psychology's commitment to this hybrid model of science has produced at least two serious obstacles to more fruitful theorizing about human experience: the problem of situational specificity, and the manifest impossibility of formulating meaningful general laws (...) of human social behavior. It is argued that a social psychology based on the search for this kind of lawfulness, under the auspices of either a strict or loose interpretation of the largely Hempelian model, is ultimately unworkable. An alternative approach to social psychology that is attentive both to the need for understanding individual situations and behaviors and to the need for generalized understanding of actual human behaviors is offered. This approach is grounded in the hermeneutic tradition. (shrink)

Interest in the metaphysics and logic of possible worlds goes back at least as far as Aristotle, but few books address the history of these important concepts. This volume offers new essays on the theories about the logical modalities held by leading philosophers from Aristotle in ancient Greece to Rudolf Carnap in the twentieth century. The story begins with an illuminating discussion of Aristotle's views on the connection between logic and metaphysics, continues through the Stoic and mediaeval traditions, and then (...) moves to the early modern period with particular attention to Locke and Leibniz. The views of Kant, Peirce, C. I. Lewis and Carnap complete the volume. Many of the essays illuminate the connection between the historical figures studied, and recent or current work in the philosophy of modality. The result is a rich and wide-ranging picture of the history of the logical modalities. (shrink)

The manuscript of Andocides' speechOn the Mysteriescontains a series of documentary inserts culminating in the decrees of Patroclides, Tisamenus and Demophantus. These decrees seem to fit their historical context and they are presented at length, with at least a few of the formalities that we would expect to find in the official record. Modern commentators have relied upon them as substantially genuine, allowing for the usual errors in transmission, but now their authenticity is contested. A close reading by Mirko Canevaro (...) and Edward Harris rejects all three of these documents as products of feckless ‘forgery’. Alan Sommerstein responded with a strong defence of Demophantus' decree, and Mogens Hansen has recently defended Patroclides' decree and Tisamenus' as well. On many points the defenders are persuasive, but the sceptics make a good case, and so it seems reasonable to reconsider how these documents took shape. (shrink)

Aristotelian naturalism is a good vantage point from which to consider the moral implications of evolution. Sociobiologists err in arguing that evolution is the basis for morality: not all or only moral features and institutions are selected for. Nor does the longevity of an institution argue for its moral status. On the other hand, facts about human capacities can have implications concerning human obligations, as Aristotle suggests. Aristotle’s eudaimonistic approach to ethics suggests that the notion of interests is far subtler (...) than many have realized, and leaves open the possibility that cooperativeness may be adaptive, virtuous, and a good thing for the agent. Lawrence and Nohria argue along remarkably similar lines, and they provide evidence against those who would question the existence of character. But promising as the Aristotelian approach is, it seems to give an inadequate account of our moral responsibility to those who are not members of our community. (shrink)

Examines the assumption of hedonism that lies at the core of many social constructionist accounts of human interaction, and illustrates how it precludes an adequate understanding of agency, morality, and intimacy. The implications of such a hedonism are discussed, and a possible alternative to this hedonism which would allow for a more adequate account of agency, morality, and intimacy is briefly explored. It is argued that if social constructionism is going to come to grips with morality and agency it must (...) abandon explanations that invoke the necessary causation of metaphysical abstractions such as hedonism. In order to successfully accomplish this task, social constructionist accounts of human motivation and action must take into account the moral obligation to others that is intimately associated with becoming a person. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Serving as a philosopher, the author has revealed the excesses of the movement which became that of American legal realism, detected the genuine objectives of the movement, & shown the meaning of these objectives in the broader context of a theory of justice.