One of the hardest parts of being a leader is handling disagreements about values. The skills required to do this are increasingly important in polarized societies where there is pressure for businesses and organizations to have a sense of purpose and "do the right thing." Our book helps readers address these challenges. To do this, we don''t give a simplistic cookie-cutter recipe for what is right and wrong. Rather, we guide readers on a journey to rigorously explore their values and (...) better understand the values of others. We discuss the human psychology that drives conflicts over values as well as the philosophical frameworks that have guided people for millennia. We provide strategies, based in research from psychology and the behavioral sciences, whichthat readers can use to implement their values in their lives and their organizations. Topics covered include moral intuitions, self-serving biases, situational pressures, social norms, the role of business in society, consequentialism/utilitarianism, motives, perspective-taking, justice, fairness, and liberty. (shrink)

This book challenges the view that bad beliefs - beliefs that blatantly conflict with easily available evidence - can largely be explained by widespread irrationality, instead arguing that ordinary people are rational agents whose beliefs are the result of their rational response to the evidence they're presented with.

The Taming of the True poses a broad challenge to realist views of meaning and truth that have been prominent in recent philosophy. Neil Tennant argues compellingly that every truth is knowable, and that an effective logical system can be based on this principle. He lays the foundations for global semantic anti-realism and extends its consequences from the philosophy of mathematics and logic to the theory of meaning, metaphysics, and epistemology.

Abstract The typical explanation of an event or process which attracts the label ‘conspiracy theory’ is an explanation that conflicts with the account advanced by the relevant epistemic authorities. I argue that both for the layperson and for the intellectual, it is almost never rational to accept such a conspiracy theory. Knowledge is not merely shallowly social, in the manner recognized by social epistemology, it is also constitutively social: many kinds of knowledge only become accessible thanks to the agent's embedding (...) in an environment that includes other epistemic agents. Moreover, advances in knowledge typically require ongoing immersion in this social environment. But the intellectual who embraces a conspiracy theory risks cutting herself off from this environment, and therefore epistemically disabling herself. Embracing a conspiracy theory therefore places at risk the ability to engage in genuine enquiry, including the enquiry needed properly to evaluate the conspiracy theory. (shrink)

McKenna’s critique (rather than criticisms) of idealized approaches to epistemology is an important contribution to the literature. In this brief discussion, I set out his main concerns about more idealized approaches, within and beyond social epistemology, before turning to some issues I think he neglects. I suggest that it’s important to pay attention to the prestige hierarchy in philosophy, and to how that hierarchy can serve ideological purposes. The greater prestige of more abstract approaches plays a role in determining what (...) issues and what voices we attend to. (shrink)

On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as “one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers.” Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. In this masterly biography, Neil Gross explores the path of Rorty’s thought over the decades in order to trace the intellectual and professional journey that led him to that (...) prominence. The child of a pair of leftist writers who worried that their precocious son “wasn’t rebellious enough,” Rorty enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen. There he came under the tutelage of polymath Richard McKeon, whose catholic approach to philosophical systems would profoundly influence Rorty’s own thought. Doctoral work at Yale led to Rorty’s landing a job at Princeton, where his colleagues were primarily analytic philosophers. With a series of publications in the 1960s, Rorty quickly established himself as a strong thinker in that tradition—but by the late 1970s Rorty had eschewed the idea of objective truth altogether, urging philosophers to take a “relaxed attitude” toward the question of logical rigor. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, he argued that philosophers should instead open themselves up to multiple methods of thought and sources of knowledge—an approach that would culminate in the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature , one of the most seminal and controversial philosophical works of our time. In clear and compelling fashion, Gross sets that surprising shift in Rorty’s thought in the context of his life and social experiences, revealing the many disparate influences that contribute to the making of knowledge. As much a book about the growth of ideas as it is a biography of a philosopher, Richard Rorty will provide readers with a fresh understanding of both the man and the course of twentieth-century thought. (shrink)

How may we characterize the intrinsic structure of physical quantities such as mass, length, or electric charge? This article shows that group-theoretic methods—specifically, the notion of a free and transitive group action—provide an elegant way of characterizing the structure of scalar quantities, and uses this to give an intrinsic treatment of vector quantities. It also gives a general account of how different scalar or vector quantities may be algebraically combined with one another. Finally, it uses this apparatus to give a (...) simple intrinsic treatment of Newtonian gravitation. (shrink)

PurposeA significant volume of philosophical literature produced by Indian academic philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century can be placed under the rubric of ‘Śaṁkara and X’, where X is Hegel, or a German or a British philosopher who had commented on, elaborated or critiqued the Hegelian system. We will explore in this essay the philosophical significance of Hegel-influenced systems as an intellectual conduit for these Indo-European conceptual encounters, and highlight how for some Indian philosophers the British variations (...) on Hegelian systems were both a point of entry into debates over ‘idealism’ and ‘realism’ in contemporary European philosophy and an occasion for defending Advaita against the charge of propounding a doctrine of world illusionism.MethodologyOur study of the philosophical enquiries of A.C. Mukerji, P.T. Raju, and S.N.L. Shrivastava indicates that they developed distinctive styles of engaging with Hegelian idealisms as they reconfigured certain aspects of the classical Advaita of Śaṁkara through contemporary vocabulary.Result and ConclusionThese appropriations of Hegelian idioms can be placed under three overlapping styles: Mukerji was partly involved in locating Advaita in an intermediate conceptual space between, on the one hand, Kantian agnosticism and, on the other hand, Hegelian absolutism; Raju and Shrivastava presented Advaitic thought as the fulfilment of certain insights of Hegel and F.H. Bradley; and the interrogations of Hegel’s ‘idealism’ provided several Indian academic philosophers with a hermeneutic opportunity to revisit the vexed question of whether the ‘idealism’ of Śaṁkara reduces the phenomenal world, structured by māyā, to a bundle of ideas. (shrink)

What is posthumanism and why does it matter? This book offers an introduction to the ways in which humanism's belief in the natural supremacy of the Family of Man has been called into question at different moments and from different theoretical positions. What is the relationship between posthumanism and technology? Can posthumanism have a politics—postcolonial or feminist? Are postmodernism and poststructuralism posthumanist? What happens when critical theory meets Hollywood cinema? What links posthumanism to science fiction. Posthumanism addresses these and other (...) questions in an attempt to come to terms with one of the most pressing issues facing contemporary society. (shrink)

Seeking to better understand how nonprofit organizations (NPOs) manage hybridity, we investigated what distinguishes NPOs that combine multiple logics in productive and unproductive ways. We collected and analyzed data from six case studies of NPOs delivering social services in Australia. Our findings reveal that organizational members of NPOs take a _perspective_ on their hybrid nature which comprises four elements: motivational framing, actor engagement, resourcing attitude, and governance orientation. NPOs that combine multiple logics in productive and unproductive ways, respectively, are distinguished (...) by (1) a compelling or confused motivational framing for combining logics; (2) actors having active and shared, or passive and isolated, engagement with multiple logics; (3) attitudes toward resourcing multiple logics that are either coherent or competitive; and (4) a governance orientation toward multiple logics as opportunities to leverage or problems to resist. Our findings contribute to the literature by deepening understanding of the interplay between complex constellations of multiple logics in NPOs, including religious and professional logics. We also develop a model of organizational perspectives on hybridity and their implications for distinguishing NPOs that productively harness tensions between logics. (shrink)

We can infer moral conclusions from nonmoral evidence using a three-step procedure. First, we distinguish the processes generating belief so that their reliability in generating true belief is statistically predictable. Second, we assess the processes’ reliability, perhaps by observing how frequently they generate true nonmoral belief or logically inconsistent beliefs. Third, we adjust our credence in moral propositions in light of the truth ratios of the processes generating beliefs in them. This inferential route involves empirically discovering truths of the form (...) “Process P, which generates belief in moral proposition M, has truth ratio T", and using them to discover probabilities for moral propositions. The inferential route is noncircular, and progress along it is driven fundamentally by induction. (shrink)

By 20 October 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had amended its Emergency Use Authorizations for immunocompetent adults who previously received the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. For the 2-dose Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, the FDA permitted a single booster dose for adults aged 65 years or older and adults aged 18 to 64 years at high-risk for severe COVID-19 or at high risk for occupational or institutional COVID-19 exposure. For the single-dose Johnson & Johnson (...) vaccine, the FDA permitted a single booster dose for all adults aged 18 or older. These eligibility schemes were endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shortly after FDA approval. (shrink)

Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman.

A survey of the key arguments that have been developed for and against the rationality of belief in reincarnation shows that often the central dispute is not over what the ‘data’ are but how to assess the ‘data’ from specific metaphysical–hermeneutical horizons. By examining some of these arguments formulated by Hindu thinkers as well as their critiques – from the perspectives of metaphysical naturalism and Christian theology – we argue that one of the reasons why these debates remain intractable is (...) that the ‘theory’ is underdetermined by the ‘data’, so that more than one set of the latter can be regarded as adequate explanations of the former. (shrink)

While Gandhi and Ambedkar hold similar standpoints on the relation between religious orderings of the world and shapes of social existence, they sharply diverge, on certain occasions, regarding the question of what the crucial terms ‘caste’ and varņa refer to, so that they often seem to be talking past each other. Gandhi sought to cut through various traditional forms of Hindu socio-religious practices and develop a Hinduism which is grounded in the values of universal peace, love and benevolence. Ambedkar too (...) rejected aspects of familiar historical varieties of Buddhism and configured a new vehicle whose goals were to be more specifically material than spiritual. However, while both Gandhi and Ambedkar thus sought to uncover the revitalizing impulses of religious ideals, they operated with different imaginations of the type of polity that would emerge from this social reconstruction. For Gandhi, the reinvigorated socio-religious whole would be structured by an ideal notion of varņa in which there would b... (shrink)

Informed consent is a central topic in contemporary biomedical ethics. Yet attempts to set defensible and feasible standards for consenting have led to persistent difficulties. In Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics Neil Manson and Onora O'Neill set debates about informed consent in medicine and research in a fresh light. They show why informed consent cannot be fully specific or fully explicit, and why more specific consent is not always ethically better. They argue that consent needs distinctive communicative transactions, by (...) which other obligations, prohibitions, and rights can be waived or set aside in controlled and specific ways. Their book offers a coherent, wide-ranging and practical account of the role of consent in biomedicine which will be valuable to readers working in a range of areas in bioethics, medicine and law. (shrink)

Most philosophers think that phenomenal consciousness underlies, or at any rate makes a large contribution, to moral considerability. This paper argues that many such accounts invoke question-begging arguments. Moreover, they’re unable to explain apparent differences in moral status across and within different species. In the light of these problems, I argue that we ought to take very seriously a view according to which moral considerability is grounded in functional properties. Phenomenal consciousness may be sufficient for having a moral value, but (...) it may not be necessary, and it may contribute relatively little to our overall considerability. (shrink)

Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi discussed corporate responsibility and business ethics over several decades of the twentieth century. His views are still influential in modern India. In this paper, we highlight Gandhi’s cross-level CR framework, which operates at institutional, organizational, and individual levels. We also outline how the Tata Group, one of India’s largest conglomerates, has historically applied and continues to utilize Gandhi’s concept of trusteeship. We then compare Gandhi’s framework to modern notions of stakeholder and stewardship management. We conclude that (...) trusteeship has strong potential to help firms and their stakeholders achieve shared value by considering the interactions between individual, organizational, and institutional factors, and paying attention to a range of multi-level stakeholder obligations. (shrink)

A study of Hindu engagements with violence which have been structured by scriptural themes reveals that violence has been regulated, enacted, resisted, negated or denied in complex ways. Disputes based on Vedic orthodoxy were channeled, in classical India, through the mythical frameworks of gods clashing with demons, and later in the medieval centuries this template was extended to the Muslim foreigners who threatened the Brahmanical socio-religious orders. In the modern period, the electoral mechanisms of colonial modernity spurred Hindu anxieties about (...) a weakened nation which would die out in the face of Muslim solidarity, and various Hindu organizations began to increasingly draw on motifs from the Vedas, Bhagavad-gītā, and other texts to speak of a martial Hindu nation. These two moments—the articulation of the boundaries of the robust Hindu nation and the projection of the Muslim as the enemy lurking at the gates—have been integral to the shaping of Hindu cultural nationalism by several key thinkers and political activists. Thus, the forms of violence associated with Hindu universes should be placed within their dynamic socio-historical contexts where Hindus have interpreted, engaged with, and acted on a range of scriptural texts both to generate violent solidarities and to speak of peace. A study of these phenomena alongside some Christian theological attempts to legitimize, valorize or transcend violence from within scriptural horizons points to the complex conceptual terrain encompassed by the conjunction in “religion and violence.”. (shrink)

This article explores some of the understandings of “science” that are often employed in the literature on “science and Eastern religions.” These understandings crucially shape the raging debates between the avid proponents and the keen detractors of the thesis that Eastern forms of spirituality are uniquely able to subsume the sciences into their metaphysical–axiological horizons. More specifically, the author discusses some of the proposed relations between “science” and “Eastern religions” by highlighting three themes: the relation between science and metaphysics, the (...) relation between science and experience, and the European origins of science. The analysis of these relations requires a methodological inquiry into some of the culturally freighted valences of “science,” “metaphysics,” and “experience.”. (shrink)

Traditionally, the problem of evil, in its various formulations, has been one of the strongest objections against perfect being theism. In the voluminous literature on this problem, the motif of evil has usually been discussed with respect to human flourishing. In recent decades more focused attention has been paid to animal suffering and the philosophical problems that such suffering poses for perfect being theists. However, this growing body of literature, in Anglo-American philosophical milieus, is largely aimed at sketching a specifically (...) Christian or Christianity-inflected theodicy that would reconcile animal suffering with the existence of an omni-God. In contrast, there are few, if any, systematic attempts to put forth a Hindu theodicy that aims to offer morally justifiable reasons that God has for allowing animal suffering. In this article, we address this scholarly lacuna by illustrating how a Hindu perfect being theist might respond to the problem of animal suffering. (shrink)

This introductory text points to some of the diverse tapestries of Hindu worldviews where scriptural revelation, logical argumentation, embodied affectivity, moral reasoning, and aesthetic cultivation constitute densely interwoven conceptual threads.

The book is a thematic study of Tagore's conceptual project of harmonizing the one and its many across several fields such as spirituality, aesthetics, social existence, and others.

We shall examine some conceptual tensions in Hick’s ‘pluralism’ in the light of S. Radhakrishnan’s reformulation of classical Advaita. Hick himself often quoted Radhakrishnan’s translations from the Hindu scriptures in support of his own claims about divine ineffability, transformative experience and religious pluralism. However, while Hick developed these themes partly through an adaptation of Kantian epistemology, Radhakrishnan derived them ultimately from Śaṁkara, and these two distinctive points of origin lead to somewhat different types of reconstruction of the diversity of world (...) religions. Our argument will highlight the point that Radhakrishnan is not a ‘pluralist’ in terms of Hick’s understanding of the Real. The Advaitin ultimate, while it too like Hick’s Real cannot be encapsulated by human categories, is, however, not strongly ineffable, because some substantive descriptions, according to the Advaitic tradition, are more accurate than others. Our comparative analysis will reveal that they differ because they are located in two somewhat divergent metaphysical schemes. In turn, we will be able to revisit, through this dialogue between Hick and Radhakrishnan, the intensely vexed question of whether Hick’s version of pluralism is in fact a form of covert exclusivism. (shrink)

Parents play a critical role in their child’s personal development and day-to-day experiences. However, as digital technologies are increasingly embedded in most New Zealand children’s everyday life activities parents face the task of ensuring their child’s online safety. To do so, they need to understand the way their child engages with and through these tools and make sense of the rapidly changing, and more technically complex, nature of digital devices. This presents a digital parenting dilemma: maximising children’s online opportunities while (...) minimising online risks and potential harm. This factsheet presents evidence about digital parenting in New Zealand based on nationally representative data collected from parents, caregivers and whānau and their children aged 9-17. It uses measures from the Global Kids Online project to explore the prevalence of different practices used by New Zealand parents to influence or mediate children’s internet use. (shrink)

Disputes over territory are a major contributing factor to the disruption of international relations. We believe that a cumulative, integrated, and continuously updated resource providing information about such disputes in an easily accessible form would be of benefit to intelligence analysts, military strategists, political scientists, and also to historians and others concerned with international disputes. We propose an ontology-based strategy for creating such a resource. The resource will contain information about territorial disputes, arguments for and against claims pertaining to sovereignty, (...) proffered evidence for such claims, political and military motives (overt or hidden), and associated conflicts. Our approach is designed to address several issues surrounding the representation of geopolitical conflict, including the tracking and individuation of disputes and the validation of disseminated information. (shrink)

Multiverse Views in set theory advocate the claim that there are many universes of sets, no-one of which is canonical, and have risen to prominence over the last few years. One motivating factor is that such positions are often argued to account very elegantly for technical practice. While there is much discussion of the technical aspects of these views, in this paper I analyse a radical form of Multiversism on largely philosophical grounds. Of particular importance will be an account of (...) reference on the Multiversist conception, and the relativism that it implies. I argue that analysis of this central issue in the Philosophy of Mathematics indicates that Radical Multiversism must be algebraic, and cannot be viewed as an attempt to provide an account of reference without a softening of the position. (shrink)

Essays devoted to the work of the late Neil Wilson, Canadian philosopher and contributor to the field of semantic analysis that emerged from the fusion of logic, pragmatism, and ontology. Many of the essays in this volume take their initial inspiration from Wilson's seminal work Substances Without Substrata.

An account of how a rational agent should revise beliefs in the light of new evidence.

A vital point of dispute within both classical Indian thought and contemporary analytic ontology is the following: which facts are brute so that they are, so to speak, beyond any need of civilizing through logical transformations, conceptual revisions, or linguistic reformulations? In this article, we discuss certain strands of the debate in these fields with two central purposes in mind. Firstly, we shall argue that metaphysical debates are seemingly interminable partly because disputing parties carve up the ontological landscape in such (...) a manner that what one party views as primitive, basic, or fundamental is regarded by an opponent as derivative, imagined, or constructed and vice versa. Second, unlike debates over these themes in contemporary analytic ontology, the classical Indian counterparts were usually located within a soteriological context, where it was claimed that an individual should develop meditative praxis on the way towards the goal of ultimate liberation. While it might seem that one could appeal to “experience” in this manner to settle the debate over whether universals were fundamental ingredients of the fabric of reality or merely conceptual artefacts, we shall argue that this approach is complicated by the fact that aspirants in these traditions would interpret their experiences in accordance with their doctrinal schemes. Therefore, the question of whether or not this appeal succeeds leads us to an ongoing dispute in religious epistemology over whether experiences are completely “constructed” by doctrinal context. (shrink)