John Lemos defends an indeterministic weightings model of libertarian free will that is a variant of event-causal libertarian views. Many argue that these views are susceptible to the luck problem: an agent’s directly free choices are too luck infected for the agent to be morally responsible for them. The weightings model supposedly escapes this problem largely because in this model an agent’s reasons for choices do not come with pre-established values. Rather, an agent performs intentional acts of weighting that contribute (...) to the value she assigns to her reasons. Decisions that are consequences of weightings are, thus, under the agent’s control and not subject to luck. In a recent paper, I argued that despite its weighting component, Lemos’s model succumbs to the luck problem. Lemos rejoins that my criticisms are based on misunderstandings and confusions. I deflect the charge of misperception and explain why the weightings model remains susceptible to the luck problem. (shrink)

Recently, Neil Levy has proposed that an agent can acquire freedom‐relevant agential abilities by virtue of the conditions in which she finds herself, and in this way, can be thought of as partially constituted by those conditions. This can be so even if the agent is completely ignorant of the relevant environmental conditions, and even if these conditions play no causal role in what the agent does. Drawing upon these resources, Levy argues that Frankfurt‐style examples are not cogent. In this (...) paper, we explain why his argument fails. (shrink)

This book explores the epistemic or knowledge requirement of moral responsibility. Haji argues that an agent can be blamed (or praised) only if the agent harbors a belief that the action in question is wrong (or right or obligatory). Defending the importance of an "authenticity" condition when evaluating moral responsibility, Haji holds that one cannot be morally responsible for an action unless the action issues from sources (like desires or beliefs) that are truly the agent's own. Engaging crucial (...) arguments in moral theory to elaborate his views on moral responsibility, Haji addresses as well fascinating, underexamined topics such as assigning blame across an intercultural gap and the relevance of unconscious or dream thoughts when evaluating responsibility. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine the usefulness of spirituality and aesthetics for generating new perspectives and understandings with regard to business ethics. Using an interpretive mixed‐methods approach, data were collected through an online survey of 223 respondents and focus group interviews with 20 participants. Analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data suggests that the presence of aesthetic spirituality and religious spirituality, along with the factors of optimism, contentment, making a difference and interconnectedness, are significantly associated with ethical (...) practice in the workplace. These factors may be focused upon when considering the ethical climate of organizations. Although this research does not support universal conclusions, the relationship between ethics, spirituality and aesthetics identified in the Australian services sector might be replicated elsewhere. (shrink)

The robustness of a system indicates its ability to withstand disturbances while maintaining its properties, performance, and efficiency. There are plenty of studies on the robustness of air transport networks in the literature. However, few works consider its mesoscopic organization. Building on the recently introduced component structure, we explore the impact of targeted attacks on the weighted world air transportation network on its components. Indeed, it contains five local components covering different regions and one global component linking these regions. We (...) investigate targeted attacks based on influential weighted centrality measures. Results show that the local components gradually separate from the world air transportation network as the fraction of removed airports grows. The weighted betweenness attack removes fewer top airports to isolate the regions compared to its alternatives. Furthermore, it is still convenient to travel locally in the separate areas. In contrast, strength and PageRank attacks need to target more airports to split the network. However, they are more disruptive. Indeed, the size of the isolated local components reduces drastically, so it becomes more challenging to travel locally. Looking at the world air transportation network through its component structure reveals a new viewpoint on its resilence. It opens new perspectives to design more efficient attacks. (shrink)

Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 4, Page 799-811, August 2022.

An agent who is the victim of covert and nonconstraining control is unaware of being controlled and controllers get their way by manipulating the victims so that they willingly do what the controllers desire. Our primary objective is to argue that if cases of CNC manipulation undermine compatibilist accounts of the sort of control required for moral responsibility, they also undermine various agent‐causal and non‐agent‐causal libertarian accounts as well.

The role of freedom in assigning moral responsibility is one of the deepest problems in metaphysics and moral theory. _Incompatibilism’s Allure_ provides original analysis of the principal arguments for incompatibilism. Ishtiyaque Haji incisively examines the consequence argument, the direct argument, the deontic argument, the manipulation argument, the impossibility argument and the luck objection. He introduces the most important contemporary discussions in a manner accessible to advanced undergraduates, but also suited to professional philosophers. The result is a unique and compelling (...) account for incompatibilism’s continuing allure. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to examine the usefulness of spirituality and aesthetics for generating new perspectives and understandings with regard to business ethics. Using an interpretive mixed-methods approach, data were collected through an online survey of 223 respondents and focus group interviews with 20 participants. Analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data suggests that the presence of aesthetic spirituality and religious spirituality, along with the factors of optimism, contentment, making a difference and interconnectedness, are significantly associated with ethical (...) practice in the workplace. These factors may be focused upon when considering the ethical climate of organizations. Although this research does not support universal conclusions, the relationship between ethics, spirituality and aesthetics identified in the Australian services sector might be replicated elsewhere. (shrink)

This study is a socio-pragmatic analysis of persuasive strategies used by the participants in “al-ittijāh al-muʿākis”, “The Opposite Direction”, on the Al-­Jazeera TV channel. An ethnographic approach was adopted in the research; the analysis focused on the use of politeness strategies and face-saving and face-­threatening interactions in order to find out their persuasive factors. I observe that religious citations, prophetic sayings, proverbs, and metaphor are used predominantly by the participants in communicating various political issues. I argue that the persuasiveness of (...) these rhetorical strategies stems from their aesthetic influence in establishing moral credibility and in evoking emotional responses. I also argue that these rhetorical strategies are speech acts that indirectly provoke responses and/or aim at saving the speakers’ and/or addressees’ face. The study concludes that persuasiveness is facilitated in part by transferring socio-pragmatic meanings through the use of some politeness and figurative devices such as honorific modes, metaphors and proverbs. (shrink)

Determinism is, roughly, the thesis that facts about the past and the laws of nature entail all truths. A venerable, age-old dilemma concerning responsibility distils to this: if either determinism is true or it is not true, we lack "responsibility-grounding" control. Either determinism is true or it is not true. So, we lack responsibility-grounding control. Deprived of such control, no one is ever morally responsible for anything. A number of the freshly-minted essays in this collection address aspects of this dilemma. (...) Responding to the horn that determinism undermines the freedom that responsibility (or moral obligation) requires, the freedom to do otherwise, some papers in this collection debate the merits of Frankfurt-style examples that purport to show that one can be responsible despite lacking alternatives. Responding to the horn that indeterminism implies luck or randomness, other papers discuss the strengths or shortcomings of libertarian free will or control. Also included in this collection are essays on the freedom requirements of moral obligation, forgiveness and free will, a "desert-free" conception of free will, and vicarious legal and moral responsibility. The authors of the essays in this volume are philosophers who have made significant contributions to debates in free will, moral responsibility, moral obligation, the reactive attitudes, philosophy of action, and philosophical psychology, and include John Martin Fischer, Robert Kane, Michael McKenna, Alfred Mele, and Derk Pereboom. (shrink)

Something is subject to luck if it is beyond our control. In Luck's Mischief, Haji argues that owing frequently to precluding our being able to otherwise, luck limits both the range of what is morally obligatory for us and things for which we are morally responsible.

This book addresses a dilemma concerning freedom and moral obligation (obligation, right and wrong). If determinism is true, then no one has control over one's actions. If indeterminism is true, then no one has control over their actions. But it is morally obligatory, right or wrong for one to perform some action only if one has control over it. Hence, no one ever performs an action that is morally obligatory, right or wrong. The author defends the view that this dilemma (...) can be evaded but not in a way traditional compatibilists about freedom and moral responsibility will find congenial. For moral obligation is indeed incompatible with determinism but not with indeterminism. He concludes with an argument to the effect that, if determinism is true and no action is morally obligatory, right or wrong, then our world would be considerably morally impoverished as several sorts of moral appraisal would be unjustified. (shrink)

BackgroundDescriptive studies examining publication rates and citation counts demonstrate a geographic skew toward high-income countries (HIC), and research from low- or middle-income countries (LMICs) is generally underrepresented. This has been suggested to be due in part to reviewers’ and editors’ preference toward HIC sources; however, in the absence of controlled studies, it is impossible to assert whether there is bias or whether variations in the quality or relevance of the articles being reviewed explains the geographic divide. This study synthesizes the (...) evidence from randomized and controlled studies that explore geographic bias in the peer review process.MethodsA systematic review was conducted to identify research studies that explicitly explore the role of geographic bias in the assessment of the quality of research articles. Only randomized and controlled studies were included in the review. Five databases were searched to locate relevant articles. A narrative synthesis of included articles was performed to identify common findings.ResultsThe systematic literature search yielded 3501 titles from which 12 full texts were reviewed, and a further eight were identified through searching reference lists of the full texts. Of these articles, only three were randomized and controlled studies that examined variants of geographic bias. One study found that abstracts attributed to HIC sources elicited a higher review score regarding relevance of the research and likelihood to recommend the research to a colleague, than did abstracts attributed to LIC sources. Another study found that the predicted odds of acceptance for a submission to a computer science conference were statistically significantly higher for submissions from a “Top University.” Two of the studies showed the presence of geographic bias between articles from “high” or “low” prestige institutions.ConclusionsTwo of the three included studies identified that geographic bias in some form was impacting on peer review; however, further robust, experimental evidence is needed to adequately inform practice surrounding this topic. Reviewers and researchers should nonetheless be aware of whether author and institutional characteristics are interfering in their judgement of research. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: In today’s world of increased awareness regarding the concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate governance (CG), many firms in the developed countries consider noncompliance with CSR and CG standards as an important source of risk to their reputations with stakeholders. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the corporate social responsibility disclosure (CSRD) index and corporate factors, namely, board size, board independence, board meetings, CEO duality, a firm’s size, leverage, profitability and age. (...) This is the first known study in the case of Saudi Arabia to use the GRI 4th edition indicators to construct the CSRD index and evaluate Saudi listed firms. Results: The results show that profitability and size factor have positive and significant association with CSR disclosure in listed Saudi firms. While CG characteristics have no impact on CSR disclosure except board independence which has a negative impact. Conclusion: The average of CSRD index among Saudi firms is too low, it is about 11% that means Saudi firms disclose 11% of the information that they have to provide for stockholders according to GRI guidelines. Furthermore, the study concludes that the most polluted sectors “Ener. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate the relatively neglected and under-theorized area of ethical mindsets in the Australian services sector. Employing a mixed-methods approach, quantitative data was collected through online survey of 66 items and qualitative data was collected by focus group interviews with 20 participants. An analysis of the survey data suggests that ethical mindsets exist, and the qualitative analysis allowed the identified components to be refined. This research potentially adds to developing business ethics literature about ethical (...) mindsets and contributes to the methodological debate about the efficacy of online surveys and the mixed-methods approach. (shrink)

This paper seeks to determine the extent of anti-corruption information disclosure in the sustainability reports originating from Gulf countries. Focus primarily on the fight against corruption, this study utilizes a deeply-rooted content analysis technique of corporate sustainability reporting, covering 66 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) firms during 2014. Strengthened by the application of institutional theory, insight into the results points to a state of limited maturity regarding the disclosure of anti-corruption procedures in the region. More specifically, the results highlight the compliance (...) in the reporting of conduct code, while reporting information on whistle-blowing was significantly less in comparison. Firms in Qatar and UAE ultimately release better informed reports; inclusive of detailed information on internal anti-corruption practices. (shrink)

To have free will with respect to an act is to have the ability both to perform and to refrain from performing it. In this book, Ishtiyaque Haji argues that no one can have practical reasons of a certain sort - "objective reasons" - to perform some act unless one has free will regarding that act.

In this engaging, highly instructive, well-written, and carefully constructed work, Bernstein inquires into the qualities that confer moral patienthood on an individual. To be a moral patient is to be an individual deserving of moral consideration ; and to be so deserving requires that the individual have a “welfare” in that it must be capable of being made better or worse off. An individual qualifies as a moral patient if and only if it has a welfare. In the first part (...) of the two-part book, Bernstein discusses three theories of personal welfare—three ways of conceiving how individuals can be made better or worse off—that yield three different conceptions of moral patienthood. (shrink)

An ideal of education is to ensure that our children develop into autonomous critical thinkers. The ‘indoctrination objection’, however, calls into question whether education, aimed at cultivating autonomous critical thinkers, is possible. The core of the concern is that since the young child lacks even modest capacities for assessing reasons, the constituent components of critical thinking have to be indoctrinated if there is to be any hope of the child's attaining the ideal. Our primary objective is to defuse this objection. (...) We argue, first, that even if the indoctrination objection can be dealt with at the level of beliefs by an account that distinguishes between beliefs instilled in the child at the non‐rational stage that are indoctrinative and those that are non‐indoctrinative, there can be non‐autonomous ‘proto critical thinkers’ who lack autonomy with respect to the requisite motivational components. We then ask what must be added to the account to ensure that proto critical thinkers develop into autonomous ones. We suggest that motivational elements, even if instilled at a stage at which the child has insufficiently developed cognitive capacities, can be ‘truly the child's own’ only relationally: the autonomous motivational elements are ones with respect to which the future child is self‐governing. (shrink)

Externalism is the view that facts about one's history or past in the external world that bear on the acquisition of one's responsibility-grounding psychological elements are pertinent to whether one's actions are free and, hence, pertinent to whether one can be morally responsible for them. Internalism is the thesis that the conditions of moral responsibility can be specified independently of facts about how the person acquired her responsibility-grounding psychological elements. In this paper we defend a position that navigates between externalism (...) and internalism: moral responsibility does not require that one have a past but it does require that one not have certain kinds of past. (shrink)

It has been argued that all compatibilist accounts of free action and moral responsibility succumb to the manipulation problem: evil neurologists or their like may manipulate an agent, in the absence of the agent's awareness of being so manipulated, so that when the agent performs an action, requirements of the compatibilist contender at issue are satisfied. But intuitively, the agent is not responsible for the action. We propose that the manipulation problem be construed as a problem of deviance. In troubling (...) cases of manipulation, psychological elements such as desires and beliefs, among other things, are acquired via causal routes that are deviant relative to causal routes deemed normal or baseline. We develop and defend rudiments of a baseline that is acceptable independently of whether one has compatibilist or incompatibilist leanings. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to provide a framework that might be used to tackle the multifaceted challenges facing humanity, which are increasing in seriousness and complexity. The Millennium Project had identified such challenges, and over time periods until and including 2050, which pose the question, how would societies cope with these challenges averting any disastrous results? contemplating the suggested ethical principles, and the three central beliefs of “end-based”, “rule-based” and “care-based”. In some cases, individuals might not be blamed to think (...) that “it is only a miracle” that might save humanity. Design/methodology/approach This paper, through the use of literature review, intends to provide an insight into these challenges, the suggested ethical principles and the three central beliefs, providing brief overview of the concept “miracle” leading to discussion on ethical mindsets, its components and their dimensions. Findings Concluding with framework for the way forward tackling these challenges. Research limitations/implications The limitation of this paper might lie in the fact that it is only a conceptual paper, but it calls on researchers to conduct further research using the suggested framework. Originality/value This might seem to be forward thinking, but it is a call for researchers to conduct more research in this area, and for governments to fund such research, to allow for the establishment of a method to refine the mindsets of individuals around the world to change into “ethical”, and thus, the world becomes better equipped to face and reduce the challenges and threats that are being faced by the world. (shrink)

The author first argues against the view that an agent is morally blameworthy for performing an action only if it is morally wrong for that agent to perform that action. The author then proposes a replacement for this view whose gist is summarized in the principle: an agent S is morally blameworthy for performing action A only if S has the belief that it is wrong for her to do A and this belief plays an appropriate role in S’s Aing. (...) He focuses on explicating the role an agent’s belief that a prospective action, A, of hers is wrong must play in the production of her A-ing in order that she be blameworthy for A-ing. Towards this end, the author makes use of cases involving akrasia and self-deception. (shrink)

In their paper ‘Designing AI for mental health diagnosis: challenges from sub-Saharan African value-laden judgements on mental health disorders’, Ugar and Malele focused on the challenges and considerations surrounding the design and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies for diagnosing mental health disorders in South Africa. Although the authors recognise the application of AI and ML in healthcare, they put forward the challenges, particularly in adopting Wakefield’s hybrid theory, where elements of naturalism and normativism are combined (...) in defining mental disorders. They argue that a generic or universally designed AI or ML would not be appropriate in countries with strong and varied local contexts. Hence, they believe that current and future AI developers should consider the cultural nuances, value systems and contextual factors in designing and implementing AI technologies for mental health diagnosis in Africa. When the authors argue that a universal definition of mental health may not be appropriate in Africa, we would like to offer something in contrast. If nomenclature like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can be widely accepted, why does AI, which relies on these codes, encounter scepticism? Recognising the significant influence of culture on all aspects of patient care in psychiatry, the DSM-IV introduced the …. (shrink)

Key elements of Randolph Clarke's libertarian account of freedom that requires both agent-causation and non-deterministic event-causation in the production of free action is assessed with an eye toward determining whether agent-causal accounts can accommodate the truth of judgments of moral obligation.

There are no moral obligations: either it is determined in advance what we will do, or it is not. But any action not in our control cannot be obligatory for us. Hence, regardless of whether our actions are determined to occur, nothing is obligatory. This conclusion has important implications for conceptions of moral responsibility and free will.

I motivate a dilemma to show that nothing can be obligatory for anyone regardless of whether determinism or indeterminism is true. The deterministic horn, to which prime attention is directed, exploits the thesis that obligation requires freedom to do otherwise. Since determinism precludes such freedom, it precludes obligation too. The indeterministic horn allows for freedom to do otherwise but assumes the burden of addressing whether indeterministically caused choices or actions are too much of a matter of luck to be obligatory (...) for anyone. I critically discuss a response to the deterministic horn that invokes the distinction between alternatives compatible with determinism and those incompatible with determinism. (shrink)

In this paper, I restrict discussion to cases of psychopathy in which it is assumed that psychopaths who satisfy epistemic requirements of responsibility, including the requirement that one is culpable for an action only if one performs it in light of the belief that one is doing wrong, can and do perform actions they take to be immoral or illegal. I argue that in such cases, the well-documented emotional impairment of psychopaths fails to subvert moral culpability. In particular, it does (...) not undermine the sort of control required for moral blameworthiness and, hence, assuming all other conditions of responsibility have been met, the psychopaths of concern are indeed culpable for their behavior. Drawing, however, from certain lessons regarding the effects of coercion on responsibility, I propose that emotional impairment is a factor that should abate, perhaps even significantly, negative reaction to or treatment of such agents. (shrink)

abstract An appeal to children's authenticity is widespread in major debates in the philosophy of education. However, no evident uniform conception of authenticity informs the dialectic. We begin with examples that confirm this multiplicity. We then uncover a common strand that unifies these seemingly differing conceptions: authenticity is exemplified by motivational elements, such as the agent's desires, when these elements are, in a manner to be explicated, ‘truly the agent's own’. It is this view of authenticity that is the mainstay (...) of a predicament in the philosophy of education: if education entails intentional instilment of certain motivational elements in the child but such intentional moulding, in the absence of the agent's consent, is generally incompatible with authenticity, how is an authentic education possible? We respond by developing a relational account of authenticity that denies that motivational elements are authentic in their own right; they are authentic only relative to ensuring certain ends. (shrink)