Managers often ask why their firm should have an ethics program, especially if no one has complained about unethical behavior. The pursuit of business ethics can cost money, they say. It can lose sales to less scrupulous competitors and can drain management time and energy. But as Harvard business professor Francis Aguilar points out, ethics scandals (such as over Beech-Nut's erzatz "apple juice" or Sears's padded car repair bills) can severely damage a firm, with punishing legal penalties, bad (...) publicity, and irreparably injured customer relations. Equally important if less obvious, unethical behavior can undermine a firm's organizational spirit. On the other hand, Aguilar argues, in a well run firm, ethical programs can actually enhance corporate performance, strengthening the company at every level and supercharging employee risk taking and innovation. In Managing Corporate Ethics, Aguilar shows managers how to create ethical programs within their organizations that not only discourage large-scale wrongdoing, but can contribute substantially to the achievement of corporate excellence. Aguilar's program is down-to-earth and comprehensive, and based on his extensive research on highly successful, ethical companies, both large and small. He recommends action on three fronts: first, get senior management to provide effective ethical leadership; second, set up an ethics program that promotes concern for the interests of people affected by the firm's operations and that provides safeguards against corrupting business pressures; and third, staff the company with ethical people and surround the organization with ethical advisors (including legal, financial, accounting, tax, and marketing consultants). To illuminate this three-step program, Aguilar incorporates the lessons learned in his in-depth study of ten prominent firms with proven successful ethics programs--among them Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Nucor Steel, Cray Research, ServiceMaster, and Texas Instruments. He examines Lincoln Electric's attention to compensation and job security to ensure quality products and to reduce the pressure or temptation to act unethically. He shows how General Mills, while pushing product line managers to compete aggressively, uses corporate staff units to guard against illegal or unacceptable claims (testing cake recipes, for example, to see if a product's quality fails under the less-than-perfect conditions of a normal kitchen). And he details how Armstrong World Industries uses pep talks, inspirational stories, role models, and ready access to management to promote ethical standards among employees. Throughout, Aguilar demonstrates convincingly that an ethical program pays dividends: that employees, suppliers, customers, and the community at large know when they are being treated in a positive and constructive manner, and are likely to respond in kind. Packed with real life examples of successful (and failed) ethical programs, Managing Corporate Ethics is a valuable roadmap to an often overlooked source of business success. (shrink)

Short Arguments: Some General Rules Arguments begin by marshaling reasons and organizing them in a clear and fair way. Chapter I offers general rules for ...

Taking a refreshingly hands-on approach to introductory ethics, A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox provides students with a set of tools to help them understand and make a constructive difference in real-life moral controversies. Thoroughly optimistic, it invites students to approach ethical issues with a reconstructive intent, making room for more and better options than the traditional "pro" and "con" positions that have grown up around tough problems like abortion and animal rights. Ideal for introductory and applied ethics courses, this unique (...) text does not treat ethics as a purely academic, historical, or theoretical subject, but as a wide-ranging and ongoing set of challenges that calls for multiple and interwoven kinds of intelligence. It covers the skills that are most vital to making real progress in ethics, including paying careful attention to the values at stake on all sides of an issue; looking for creative opportunities within difficult problems; critical-thinking skills such as defining key terms and making sure to judge similar cases alike; and learning how to engage in constructive dialogue. Instructors can readily use the experiential and applied activities inspired by this "toolbox" of practical skills to design an interactive and collaborative ethics course. Students can carry these essential skills directly from this book into such projects as campaigning for environmental awareness and staffing local homeless shelters. In addition to his own discussion, Weston includes gripping and provocative short selections from essayists, activists, and philosophers, and also cites his own students. Extensive "Exercises and Notes" sections end each chapter, and a detailed appendix offers instructors advice on how to use the Toolbox in the classroom. (shrink)

A Practical Companion to Ethics, Fourth Edition, is a concise and accessible introduction to the basic attitudes and skills that make ethics work, like thinking for oneself, creative and integrative problem-solving, and keeping an open mind. This unique volume illuminates the broad kinds of practical intelligence required in moral judgment, complementing the narrower theoretical considerations that often dominate ethics courses. The optimistic tone and brisk pace of the narrative provide an entertaining and intelligent guide to "everyday" morality. The fourth edition (...) features a new chapter on ethical theories; significantly revised and expanded chapters on conflicts of value and creative problem- solving in ethics; and a new concluding chapter on "Making a Difference, " which explains how students can incorporate ethical thinking and practice into their daily lives. (shrink)

Résumé éditeur : "Nous avons perdu les deux repères qui permettaient autrefois de nous définir entre les dieux et les bêtes. Nous ne savons plus qui nous sommes, nous autres humains. De nouvelles utopies en naissent. D'un côté, le post-humanisme prétend nier notre animalité et faire de nous des dieux promis à l'immortalité par les vertus de la technique. D'un autre côté, l'animalisme veut faire de nous des animaux comme les autres et inviter les autres animaux à faire partie de (...) notre communauté morale. Alors forgeons une nouvelle utopie à notre mesure. Ne cherchons plus à nier les frontières naturelles - celles qui nous séparent des dieux ou des animaux - et défendons un humanisme conséquent, c'est-à-dire un cosmopolitisme sans frontières.". (shrink)

The method of reflective equilibrium starts with a set of initial judgments about some subject matter and refines that set to arrive at an improved philosophical worldview. However, the method faces two, trenchant objections. The Garbage-In, Garbage-Out Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled reason to rely on some inputs to the method rather than others and putting garbage-in assures you of getting garbage-out. The Circularity Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled, (...) non-circular way of sorting whatever is put into the method. The moves required to avoid both objections are instructive. Reflective equilibrium requires a meta-justification, and we offer one that appeals to the epistemic goods that underwrite a view known as phenomenal conservatism. Reflective equilibrium calls on us to start with what seems most likely to be true and to alter that collection of judgments in the ways that seem most likely to get us to the truth. Proceeding in this way is epistemically defensible and unavoidable. Hence, reflective equilibrium is not just good, it’s phenomenal. (shrink)

The method of reflective equilibrium starts with a set of initial judgments about some subject matter and refines that set to arrive at an improved philosophical worldview. However, the method faces two, trenchant objections. The Garbage-In, Garbage-Out Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled reason to rely on some inputs to the method rather than others and putting garbage-in assures you of getting garbage-out. The Circularity Objection argues that reflective equilibrium fails because it has no principled, (...) non-circular way of sorting whatever is put into the method. The moves required to avoid both objections are instructive. Reflective equilibrium requires a meta-justification, and we offer one that appeals to the epistemic goods that underwrite a view known as phenomenal conservatism. Reflective equilibrium calls on us to start with what seems most likely to be true and to alter that collection of judgments in the ways that seem most likely to get us to the truth. Proceeding in this way is epistemically defensible and unavoidable. Hence, reflective equilibrium is not just good, it’s phenomenal. (shrink)

Items were generated to explore the factorial structure of a construct of fundamentalism worded appropriately for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Results suggested three underlying dimensions: External versus Internal Authority, Fixed versus Malleable Religion, and Worldly Rejection versus Worldly Affirmation. The three dimensions indicate that religious fundamentalism is a personal orientation that asserts a supra-human locus of moral authority, context unbound truth, and the appreciation of the sacred over the worldly components of experience. The 15-item, 3-dimension solution was evaluated across Mexican (...) and American samples. Fit indexes point out the viability of the new inventory across these two samples henceforward referred to as the Multi-Dimensional Fundamentalism Inventory. Additional validity tests supported that the new inventory was negatively correlated with participants’ integrative complexity in a religious domain–specific way. (shrink)

Knowledge implies the presence of a positive relation between a person and a fact. Factual ignorance, on the other hand, implies the absence of some positive relation between a person and a fact. The two most influential views of ignorance hold that what is lacking in cases of factual ignorance is knowledge or true belief, but these accounts fail to explain a number of basic facts about ignorance. In their place, we propose a novel and systematic defense of the view (...) that factual ignorance is the absence of awareness, an account that both comes apart from the dominant views and overcomes their deficiencies. Given the important role that ignorance plays in moral and legal theory and our understanding of various epistemic injustices, a precise and theoretically unproblematic account of the nature of ignorance is important not only for normative epistemology, but also for law, ethics, and applied epistemology. (shrink)

Given the significant exculpatory power that ignorance has when it comes to moral, legal, and epistemic transgressions, it is important to have an accurate understanding of the concept of ignorance. According to the Standard View of factual ignorance, a person is ignorant that p whenever they do not know that p, while on the New View, a person is ignorant that p whenever they do not truly believe that p. On their own though, neither of these accounts explains how ignorance (...) can often be a degreed notion—how we can sometimes be slightly ignorant, quite ignorant, or completely ignorant that p. In this paper, I will argue that there is a route for advocates of the Standard View and the New View to accommodate the gradability of ignorance. On the view I defend, ‘ignorant’ picks out everyone that is ignorant to some degree, making it possible that ignorance can be both degreed and characterized as a lack of knowledge or true belief. Even though we can be ignorant to a greater or lesser extent, the only way to avoid being ignorant that p is to know or truly believe. (shrink)

Teaching philosophy of education offers us a chance to apply the familiar Socratic dialectic to ourselves. But it is very seldom taught in this spirit, if taught at all. Perhaps we fear that such a course would be impossibly self‐referential. This paper argues, however, that precisely this kind of self‐reference could be its strength. I outline a course of this sort, based upon a number of iterations I have taught over the past few years. A range of different classroom styles (...) are enacted and examined for their hidden assumptions about teaching, learning, and knowledge. (shrink)

Kertesz created some of the most acclaimed photographs of the twentieth century, and the J. Paul Getty Museum is fortunate to own a wide selection of his work. This volume - the first in the Museum's new In Focus series, which is devoted to photographers whose work is particularly well represented in the Getty - presents a handsome selection from the 164 Kertesz photographs in the Museum's collection. The photographs are accompanied by commentaries by Weston Naef, the Getty's Curator (...) of Photographs. (shrink)

Illustrations include selections from Atget's signature views of Paris, Stieglitz's portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe, Weston's distinctive nudes, and Arbus's images of women.

This is an illustrated volume that takes readers on a tour through Yosemite Valley from the view at Inspiration Point to the panorama high above the valley at Glacier Point, all from the perspective of one of Yosemite's first surveyors.

Discusses the life and work of the nineteenth century landscape photographer, presenting a selection of photographs of the American West taken between 1858 and 1891.

Three volumes from the Getty Museum's popular In Focus series are packaged together here, offering a handsome set of books on these important photographers: André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy, and Man Ray. All born in Europe, each photographer journeyed to the United States and made important contributions to the medium. The volume on Kertész presents the Getty Museum's holdings of his work from his Budapest, Paris, and New York periods, while the images in the book on Bauhaus teacher Moholy-Nagy include his (...) pioneering photomontages and camera-less "photograms." The Man Ray volume presents his inventive photographs taken in New York, Paris, and Los Angeles, including portraits and nudes, and his experimental work with Rayographs and solarization. Each volume in the In Focus series contains approximately fifty photographs, with commentaries, an introduction, a chronology, and a transcription of a colloquium on the photographer's life and work. (shrink)

Showcases the museum's collection of the avant-garde photographer's work.

A discussion of the pioneers of the first decades of photography, along with essays on early collectors and patents.

Although CEO commitment is recognized as being crucial to organizational diversity efforts, we know little about how CEOs signal their priorities and mobilize key organizational actors to implement diversity management. We tested an integrative model in which CEO beliefs about diversity were theorized to predict the implementation of organizational diversity practices through two consecutive mediating steps—via greater CEO engagement in pro-diversity behavior, and in turn, higher perceived CEO commitment by their HR manager. In this model, we also proposed a moderating (...) effect such that when CEOs have less positive beliefs about diversity, CEOs espousing higher moral values will display greater pro-diversity behavior. Results supported the proposed model. Taken together, our findings indicate that a CEO’s words and actions alone are not sufficient for the implementation of diversity management practices. HR managers must view their CEOs as being committed to workplace diversity in order for diversity management practices to be implemented. (shrink)

Studies of the association between wealth and fertility in industrial populations have a rich history in the evolutionary literature, and they have been used to argue both for and against a behavioral ecological approach to explaining human variability. We consider that there are strong arguments in favor of measuring fertility (and proxies thereof) in industrial populations, not least because of the wide availability of large-scale secondary databases. Such data sources bring challenges as well as advantages, however. The purpose of this (...) article is to illustrate these by examining the association between wealth and reproductive success in the United States, using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979. We conduct a broad-based exploratory analysis of the relationship between wealth and fertility, employing both cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches, and multiple measures of both wealth (income and net worth) and fertility (lifetime reproductive success and transitions to first, second and third births). We highlight the kinds of decisions that have to be made regarding sample selection, along with the selection and construction of explanatory variables and control measures. Based on our analyses, we find a positive effect of both income and net worth on fertility for men, which is more pronounced for white men and for transitions to first and second births. Income tends to have a negative effect on fertility for women, while net worth is more likely to positively predict fertility. Different reproductive strategies among different groups within the same population highlight the complexity of the reproductive ecology of industrial societies. These results differ in a number of respects from other analyses using the same database. We suggest this reflects the impossibility of producing a definitive analysis, rather than a failure to identify the “correct” analytical strategy. Finally, we discuss how these findings inform us about (mal)adaptive decision-making. (shrink)

Is fertility relevant to evolutionary analyses conducted in modern industrial societies? This question has been the subject of a highly contentious debate, beginning in the late 1980s and continuing to this day. Researchers in both evolutionary and social sciences have argued that the measurement of fitness-related traits (e.g., fertility) offers little insight into evolutionary processes, on the grounds that modern industrial environments differ so greatly from those of our ancestral past that our behavior can no longer be expected to be (...) adaptive. In contrast, we argue that fertility measurements in industrial society are essential for a complete evolutionary analysis: in particular, such data can provide evidence for any putative adaptive mismatch between ancestral environments and those of the present day, and they can provide insight into the selection pressures currently operating on contemporary populations. Having made this positive case, we then go on to discuss some challenges of fertility-related analyses among industrialized populations, particularly those that involve large-scale databases. These include “researcher degrees of freedom” (i.e., the choices made about which variables to analyze and how) and the different biases that may exist in such data. Despite these concerns, large datasets from multiple populations represent an excellent opportunity to test evolutionary hypotheses in great detail, enriching the evolutionary understanding of human behavior. (shrink)

Inspired by the practice of dialogue in ancient philosophical schools, the Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL) Project at the University of Notre Dame has sought to put dialogue back at the center of philosophical pedagogy. Impromptu philosophical dialogue, however, can be challenging for students who are new to philosophy. Anticipating this challenge, the Project has created a series of manuals to help instructors conduct dialogue groups with novice philosophy students. Using these guidelines, we incorporated PWOL-style dialogue groups into (...) our Spring 2021 course “The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender” with the hope that, through having conversations about these challenging topics, our students would both be able to practice having philosophical dialogues as well as form their views on race and gender in light of contributions from their diverse peers. This article examines several strategies for how instructors can seek to incorporate similar dialogues into their own introductory classroom. (shrink)

Daniel Bensaïd was prominent among the revolutionary thinkers and activists who emerged from the mass insurgency of the 1960s, a period in which anti-capitalist organisers had genuine social weight grounded in connections to broad layers of the working class and radical movements. As the neoliberal offensive developed, working-class and allied movements experienced crucial defeats that marginalised anti-capitalist theory and practice. Bensaïd developed a unique theoretical analysis of radical mobilising during the neoliberal period, at once grounded in the history of revolutionary (...) organising and audaciously open-ended in assessing the impact of capitalist restructuring and the employers’ offensive. The basis of his theoretical renewal lay in a new approach to understanding temporality that undercut any sense of socialist inevitability, and a commitment to revolutionary pluralism that was crucially located in the political sphere. (shrink)

"A Workbook for Arguments" builds on Anthony Weston's "Rulebook for Arguments" to provide a complete textbook for a course in critical thinking or informal logic. "Workbook" includes: The entire text of "Rulebook," supplemented with extensive further explanations and exercises. Homework exercises adapted from a wide range of arguments from newspapers, philosophical texts, literature, movies, videos, and other sources. Practical advice to help students succeed when applying the "Rulebook's" rules to the examples in the homework exercises. Suggestions for further practice, (...) outlining activities that students can do by themselves or with classmates to improve their skills. Detailed instructions for in-class activities and take-home assignments designed to engage students. An appendix on mapping arguments, giving students a solid introduction to this vital skill in constructing complex and multi-step arguments and evaluating them. Model answers to odd-numbered problems, including commentaries on the strengths and weaknesses of selected sample answers and further discussion of some of the substantive intellectual, philosophical, or ethical issues they raise. (shrink)

An ethics-based epistemology is necessary for environmental philosophy—a sharply different approach from the epistemology-based ethics that the field has inherited, mostly implicitly, from mainstream ethics. In this paper, we try to uncover this inherited epistemology and point toward an alternative. In section two, we outline a general contrast between an ethics-based epistemology and an epistemology-based ethics. In section three, we examine the relationship between ethics and epistemology in an ethics-based epistemology, drawing extensively on examples from indigenous cultures. We briefly explore (...) several striking implications of an ethics-based epistemology in sections four and five. (shrink)