Many previous studies have documented the detrimental effects of social loafing on others (_inter_personal impacts) at the between-person level. However, social loafing may carry underappreciated _intra_personal functional effects at the within-person level. Our research develops a novel theoretical framework to investigate _when_ and _how_ engaging in social loafing enhances one’s job performance. Drawing on the effort-recovery model and moral cleansing theory, we propose that social loafing may improve subsequent job performance by enhancing recovery and guilt. Specifically, we argue that among (...) employees who experience higher job demands or have higher moral identity, social loafing in the morning enhances their job performance in the afternoon by facilitating recovery or guilt in the morning. Two-wave daily data collected across ten consecutive workdays using the experience sampling method (ESM) supports this model. We discuss how this research identifies a functional basis for social loafing and provides implications for research and practice. (shrink)

This book brings together twenty-three distinctive and influential essays on ancient moral philosophy--including several published here for the first time--by the distinguished philosopher and classical scholar John Cooper.

Knowledge, Nature, and the Good brings together some of John Cooper's most important works on ancient philosophy. In thirteen chapters that represent an ideal companion to the author's influential Reason and Emotion, Cooper addresses a wide range of topics and periods--from Hippocratic medical theory and Plato's epistemology and moral philosophy, to Aristotle's physics and metaphysics, academic scepticism, and the cosmology, moral psychology, and ethical theory of the ancient Stoics.Almost half of the pieces appear here for the first time or (...) are presented in newly expanded, extensively revised versions. Many stand at the cutting edge of research into ancient ethics and moral psychology. Other chapters, dating from as far back as 1970, are classics of philosophical scholarship on antiquity that continue to play a prominent role in current teaching and scholarship in the field. All of the chapters are distinctive for the way that, whatever the particular topic being pursued, they attempt to understand the ancient philosophers' views in philosophical terms drawn from the ancient philosophical tradition itself.Through engaging creatively and philosophically with the ancient texts, these essays aim to make ancient philosophical perspectives freshly available to contemporary philosophers and philosophy students, in all their fascinating inventiveness, originality, and deep philosophical merit. This book will be treasured by philosophers, classicists, students of philosophy and classics, those in other disciplines with an interest in ancient philosophy, and anyone who seeks to understand philosophy in philosophical terms. (shrink)

Stephen Law developed a challenge to theism, known as the evil-god challenge (Law (2010) ). The evil-god challenge to theism is to explain why the theist’s responses to the problem of evil are any better than the diabolist’s – who believes in a supremely evil god – rejoinders to the problem of good, when all the theist’s ploys (theodicy, sceptical theism, etc.) can be parodied by the diabolist. In the first part of this article, I extend the evil-god challenge by (...) showing that additional theist replies to the problem of evil (more theodicies, the privation view of evil, and others) also may be appropriated, with just as much plausibility, in support of the diabolist position. In the second part of the article, I defend the evil-god challenge against several objections. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor argues that the massive modularity thesis – the claim that (human) cognition is wholly served by domain specific, autonomous computational devices, i.e., modules – is a priori incoherent, self-defeating. The thesis suffers from what Fodor dubs the input problem: the function of a given module (proprietarily understood) in a wholly modular system presupposes non-modular processes. It will be argued that massive modularity suffers from no such a priori problem. Fodor, however, also offers what he describes as a really (...) real input problem (i.e., an empirical one). It will be suggested that this problem is real enough, but it does not selectively strike down massive modularity – it is a problem for everyone. (shrink)

This is an encyclopedia article about epistemic closure principles. The article explains what they are, their various philosophical uses, how they are argued for or against, and provides an overview of the related literature.

Most content externalists concede that even if externalism is compatible with the thesis that one has authoritative self-knowledge of thought contents, it is incompatible with the stronger claim that one is always able to tell by introspection whether two of one’s thought tokens have the same, or different, content. If one lacks such authoritative discriminative self-knowledge of thought contents, it would seem that brute logical error – non-culpable logical error – is possible. Some philosophers, such as Paul Boghossian, have argued (...) that this would present a big problem for externalism, forcing the externalist to overhaul our norms of rationality. I consider several externalist strategies to block this possibly unhappy epistemological consequence, but I argue that they all fail. (shrink)

The Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility (PRESOR) instrument was developed in the United States by Singhapakdi et al. (1996b) as a reliable and valid scale to measure the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility in achieving organizational effectiveness. This study was carried out to confirm the factorial structure of the instrument and to assess its reliability and validity for use in Hong Kong, the finance and service heart of the Asia-Pacific region and a culture with clear differences (...) in ethical attitudes and perceptions from those of the United States. Constructive replication of the exploratory factor analytic procedure of the original study with a representative sample of Hong Kong managers failed to support the hypothesized scale structure but instead suggested a different, two-factor, structure. Confirmatory factor analysis defined the alternative model which comprised two interpretable, negatively intercorrelated factorial scales, "Importance of ethics and social responsibility" and "Subordination of ethics and social responsibility in the achievement of organizational effectiveness". The model showed a high level of goodness-of-fit for the population and the two subscales, comprised of five items and four items respectively, were shown to have acceptable internal consistency reliability. Correlational and multiple regression analysis showed highly significant levels of association with the ethical ideology dimensions of the EPQ (Forsyth, 1980), used in the validation of the original scale, and with two ethical philosophy subscales derived from the ATBEQ (Preble and Reichel, 1988). The instrument is short, easily administered, is psychometrically sound and has considerable potential in the study of the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility in the achievement of organizational effectiveness. (shrink)

John Maynard Smith was the founder of evolutionary game theory. He has also been the major influence on the direction of this field, which now pervades behavioural ecology and evolutionary biology. In its original formulation the theory had three components: a set of strategies, a payoff structure, and a concept of evolutionary stability. These three key components are still the basis of the theory, but what is assumed about each component is often different to the original assumptions. We review (...) modern approaches to these components. We emphasis that if a game is considered in isolation, and arbitrary payoffs are assumed, then the payoffs may not be consistent with other components of the system which are not modelled. Modelling the whole system, including not only the focal game, but also the future behaviour of the players and the behaviour of other population members, allows a consistent model to be constructed. We illustrate this in the case of two models of parental care, showing how linking a focal game to other aspects of the system alters what is predicted. (shrink)

Deprivation accounts of death's badness, such as Feldman’s (1992), that purport to avoid questionable life-death comparatives Silverstein warns against (1980) by comparing only the values of various alternative life-wholes, implicitly depend upon assigning greater comparative value to periods of these life-wholes (for the person who lives) than is assigned to periods when the person is not alive, and thus are simply special cases of the problematic life-death comparative. Life-death comparatives undermine any deprivation account if (1) there is no way things (...) are (good or bad) for one who does not exist, and (2) values are comparative in the way specified by VC. Rejecting VC is not an option for the standard deprivation account, since this account uses VC to show that since continued life is good for the person who continues to live, death must be worse for that person. The non-standard deprivation account, dubbed by McMahan the reconciliation strategy, does not employ VC, but it also fails to vindicate common sense attitudes towards matters of life and death, and is in the main a capitulation to the Epicurean position. The remaining option for one who wishes to defend the view that death is typically bad for the person who dies is to directly target the Epicurean starting point, that things cannot be good or bad for a person when he does not exist. (shrink)

Sharon Ryan (2000) argues against one epistemic closure principle but defends another one. I argue that the phenomenon of blameless propositional recognition failure provides a counter-example to this closure principle. I suggest a revision to the closure principle to make it immune to this sort of counter-example.

On Sartre's own admission, his account of the emotions discloses them as functional. As such, the emotions aim to serve a particular purpose for which he provides the phenomenology. Sartre's phenomenology discloses consciousness as being-in-the-world in two ways, actually as having two worlds. One is a deterministic world, the other magical. Emotion is the drop from the deterministic world to the magical. In order for emotion to perform the function Sartre has in mind it performs, it is crucial there be (...) a certain tension between the deterministic world and the magical world. I argue that given what Sartre himself says about the magical world, the necessary tension can never arise; hence, no functional thesis of emotion is possible if it is formed along Sartre's lines. (shrink)

Greta Gaard, Tucson, AZ, The University of Arizona Press, 2007, ix +211 pp., paper, $17.95, ISBN: 978-0-8165-2576-8 Roger Paden, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2007, xiii +209 pp., paper, $26.95, ISB...

Prinz (Perceptual the Mind: Concepts and Their Perceptual Basis, MIT Press, 2002) presents a new species of concept empiricism, under which concepts are off-line long-term memory networks of representations that are ‘copies’ of perceptual representations – proxytypes. An apparent obstacle to any such empiricism is the prevailing nativism of generative linguistics. The paper critically assesses Prinz’s attempt to overcome this obstacle. The paper argues that, prima facie, proxytypes are as incapable of accounting for the structure of the linguistic mind as (...) are the more traditional species of empiricism. This position is then confirmed by looking in detail at two suggestions (one derived from recent connectionist research) from Prinz of how certain aspects of syntactic structure might be accommodated by the proxytype theory. It is shown that the suggestions fail to come to terms with both the data and theory of contemporary linguistics. (shrink)

The Prudent Investor Rule creates a potential ethical dilemma for investment advisors selling over-the-counter financial products issued by their firms. The "opportunity" to defraud investors using complex, over-the-counter derivative securities designed for client-specific risk management is much higher than for exchange traded securities. This paper emphasizes the ethical responsibility held by trustees and their organizations to eliminate potential conflict of interests through internal control and monitoring. Independent evaluations of the performance of investment advisors and independent appraisals of complex over-the-counter securities (...) are important in reducing the risks of conflicts of interest. Recent lessons learned from the corporate ethics crisis and requirements of the 2002 Sarbanes Oxley Act would suggest that conflict of interest must be eliminated with third party validation of derivative pricing. By performing due diligence and validation, the trustee is able to satisfy the requirements under the Prudent Investor Rule. (shrink)

A key political-strategic question facing those aiming to foster environmental action is, When and how do environmental concerns resonate widely with citizens? This question invites reflection upon the rhetoric of “sacrifice,” especially as often deployed within wealthy consumer societies. This rhetoric has become a political sticking point that often entangles environmental discourse in a false dichotomy between sacrifice and self-interest and thereby constrains the political imaginary. By challenging this dichotomy we can draw attention to the ubiquity of notions of sacrifice (...) in everyday life, thereby defusing its ability to shut down ambitious proposals for action. We might use this insight to reorient talk about sacrifice in a manner that expands our imaginary and opens up broader possibilities for democratic change. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to give a coherent account of the different perspectives on science and technology that are normally studied under various disciplinary heads such as philosophy of science, sociology of science and science policy. It is intended for students embarking on courses in these subjects and assumes no special knowledge of any science. It is written in a direct and simple style, and technical language is introduced very sparingly. As various perspectives are sketched out in this (...) book, the reader moves towards a consistent conception of contemporary science as a rapidly changing social institution that has already grown out of its traditional forms and plays a central role in society at large. It will appeal to students in a wide range of scientific disciplines and complement well Professor Ziman's earlier books. (shrink)

Jacob (history, New School for Social Research) proposes that the science of the 17th and 18th centuries was eventually accepted because it was made compatible with larger political and economic interests. A celebration of the recently concluded 33 volume edition of the Collected works of John Stuart Mill, produced over a period of nearly 30 years, the last 20 under the guiding genius (and hand) of general editor Robson. Following a tributary history of the project itself, essays cover Mill's (...) career as a thinker and as a bureaucrat and public servant, exploring the effects of the various milieu--domestic, political, administrative, religious, and cultural--in which he moved. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

In this book John Ziman seeks the answers to crucial questions facing scientists who need to change the direction of their careers.

Malthus' theological ideas were most clearly presented in the final two chapters of the first edition of his Essay on the Principle of Population. They can be classified under eight main headings. He admitted that the pressure of population causes much misery and evil, but he did not accept that this in any way impugned the benevolence of the Creator. He situated the population problem within the general context of the problem of evil, and argued that population pressure is permitted (...) and ordained by the Creator as a means of stimulating mankind to attain a higher good. He opposed the traditional Christian notion that this world is a state of trial, with population pressure being one aspect of that trial. He believed that this notion of a state of trial is inconsistent with the notion of an omniscient Creator, and that it is therefore necessary to reject the notion of a state of trial in order to save the notion of Divine omniscience. Instead of viewing this world as a state of trial, he viewed it ‘as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mindr. This notion of the growth of mind is the central aspect of Malthus' theology. He expressed doubts about the omnipotence of the Creator, arguing that God did not have the power to create perfect human beings instantaneously, but required a certain process or a certain time to form beings with ‘exalted qualities of mind’. Malthus seemed to argue that Divine omnipotence and Divine benevolence are incompatible – because a truly benevolent creator would not have subjected mankind to the miseries of this world if He had the power to create a perfect world. Malthus was prepared to sacrifice the notion of Divine omnipotence in order to save the notion of Divine benevolence. He saw the principle of population as part of the Divine plan for the replenishment of the earth, i.e. its full cultivation and peopling. His attitude to worldly pleasures and comforts was distinctly unpuritanical, and leaning towards hedonism. His ethics were world-enhancing, rather than world-denying and retreatist. He gave a naturalistic interpretation of the Biblical doctrine of original sin, describing original sin as the original state of torpor and sluggishness of every human being at the moment of birth. The purpose of the principle of population, and of the other difficulties encountered in life, is to stimulate man to raise himself out of this original state. Finally, Malthus' theology included the doctrine of annihilationism , according to which eternal life is not an essential part of the human soul at birth, but is granted only to those who attain during life on earth an adequate growth of mind. The others are, at death, not condemned to eternal suffering, but are annihilated, body and soul. (shrink)

So, on 22 July 1865, under the title ‘Philosophy and Punch’, did England's premier comic weekly greet the election of J. S. Mill as MP for Westminster. Mill held his seat for only one term, until the general election of 1868, when his Whig-Liberal colleague Robert Wellesley Grosvenor was re-elected, but Mill was replaced by the loser in 1865, the Conservative W. H. Smith, Jr., who, though he never went to sea, became the ruler of the Queen's navy. The reasons (...) for that reversal have engaged the attention of many, including Mill himself; I should like to introduce into the discussion material from an ignored source, the comic weeklies, which took a continued and close look at Mill's behaviour during his parliamentary years. While this evidence generally does not disconfirm earlier judgments—including my own— it does more than merely add to the induction. First, it shows how different political stances led journals to focus on different aspects of Mill's parliamentary career, and to adopt different rhetorical strategies in portraying him in picture and word. Second, it demonstrates how the hardening of party allegiances during the parliament of 1865–68, which accelerated in the preparatory campaigns for the general election of 1868, affected Mill adversely. Third, it suggests strongly that it was not his ‘crotchets’ or ‘whims’, especially women's suffrage and proportional representation, that damaged his chances for re-election, but his advocacy of causes unpopular with the majority of Liberals as well as with Conservatives. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently revived the study of the ancient Greek topics of virtue and the virtues—justice, honesty, temperance, friendship, courage, and so on as qualities of mind and character belonging to individual people. But one issue at the center of Greek moral theory seems to have dropped out of consideration. This is the question of the unity of virtue, the unity of the virtues. Must anyone who has one of these qualities have others of them as well, indeed all of (...) them—all the ones that really do deserve to be counted as virtues? Even further, is there really no set of distinct and separate virtuous qualities at all, but at bottom only a single one—so that the person who has this single condition of “virtue” is entitled also to the further descriptions “honest” and “well-controlled” and “just” and “friendly” and “courageous” and “fostering” and “supportive,” and so on, as distinguishable aspects or immediate effects of his unitary “virtue”? (shrink)

Why believe in the findings of science? John Ziman argues that scientific knowledge is not uniformly reliable, but rather like a map representing a country we cannot visit. He shows how science has many elements, including alongside its experiments and formulae the language and logic, patterns and preconceptions, facts and fantasies used to illustrate and express its findings. These elements are variously combined by scientists in their explanations of the material world as it lies outside our everyday experience. (...) class='Hi'>John Ziman’s book offers at once a valuably clear account and a radically challenging investigation of the credibility of scientific knowledge, searching widely across a range of disciplines for evidence about the perceptions, paradigms and analogies on which all our understanding depends. (shrink)

Scientists and 'anti-scientists' alike need a more realistic image of science. The traditional mode of research, academic science, is not just a 'method': it is a distinctive culture, whose members win esteem and employment by making public their findings. Fierce competition for credibility is strictly regulated by established practices such as peer review. Highly specialized international communities of independent experts form spontaneously and generate the type of knowledge we call 'scientific' - systematic, theoretical, empirically-tested, quantitative, and so on. Ziman shows (...) that these familiar 'philosophical' features of scientific knowledge are inseparable from the ordinary cognitive capabilities and peculiar social relationships of its producers. This wide-angled close-up of the natural and human sciences recognizes their unique value, whilst revealing the limits of their rationality, reliability, and universal applicability. It also shows how, for better or worse, the new 'post-academic' research culture of teamwork, accountability, etc. is changing these supposedly eternal philosophical characteristics. (shrink)

Do we know what we're doing, and why? Psychological research seems to suggest not: reflection and self-awareness are surprisingly uncommon and inaccurate. John M. Doris presents a new account of agency and responsibility, which reconciles our understanding of ourselves as moral agents with empirical work on the unconscious mind.

This book is a provocative contribution to contemporary ethical theory challenging foundational conceptions of character that date back to Aristotle. John Doris draws on behavioral science, especially social psychology, to argue that we misattribute the causes of behavior to personality traits and other fixed aspects of character rather than to the situational context. More often than not it is the situation not the nature of the personality that really counts. The author elaborates the philosophical consequences of this research for (...) a whole array of ethical theories and shows that, once rid of the misleading conception of motivation, moral psychology can support more robust ethical theories and more humane ethical practices. (shrink)

Research suggests that institutions affect the levels of corruption in a country. We take these arguments a step further and examine whether it is the presence of inclusive institutions and/or the credible and consistent implementation of institutions that matter, as regards corruption. We use a novel approach to theoretically conceptualise and empirically operationalise institutions along two analytically distinct dimensions: the nature of the institutions (the de jure dimension), and the extent to which they are credibly and consistently implemented over time (...) (the de facto dimension), using a panel dataset for 148 countries covering 2012 to 2018. We find that formal institutions are most effective in reducing corruption when the rules are credibly and consistently implemented. Furthermore, this effect appears to operate differently at different levels of national income. The nature of the formal institutions appears important across income levels, but particularly so at the upper middle income level, while the credible and consistent implementation of these institutions is primarily influential at upper middle income levels. We explain why this may be the case and elaborate on the policy implications. (shrink)

With an inside view from an expert in the field and a clear and engaging writing style, Asian Philosophies, Seventh Edition invites students and professors to think along with the great minds of the Asian traditions. Eminent scholar and teacher John M. Koller has devoted his life to understanding and explaining Asian thought and practice. He wrote this text to give students access to the rich philosophical and religious ideas of both South and East Asia. New to this seventh (...) edition: Added material on Confucianism, including focused coverage of (1) the Analects and society and (2) ren and nature; Additional information on Theravada Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism as well as new in-depth coverage of ecological attitudes in Buddhism; Expanded coverage of ecological attitudes in all of the Asian traditions; Brief excerpts from primary sources to help better explain the key concepts; Added timelines for essential texts in each tradition; Improved Glossary and Pronunciation Guide; Additional text boxes, to help students quickly understand key ideas, texts, and concepts; Updated Further Reading sections. (shrink)

In this 1976 volume, Professor Ziman paints a broad picture of science, and of its relations to the world in general. He sets the scene by the historical development of scientific research as a profession, the growth of scientific technologies out of the useful arts, the sources of invention and technical innovation, and the advent of Big Science. He then discusses the economics of research and development, the connections between science and war, the nature of science policy and the moral (...) dilemmas of social responsibility in science. Each topic is introduced by reference to easily understandable particular examples, with a large number of illustrations chosen to bring out the concreteness and reality of science as a human activity. Professor Ziman gives a chapter-by-chapter list of suggested topics for oral and written discussion, intended to provoke critical, sceptical attitudes to simplified solutions to real issues, and comments briefly on relevant books and other sources. (shrink)