According to a widely credited model in the business ethics literature, ethical decisions are a function of two kinds of factors, personal(individual) and situational, and these factors interact with each other. According to a contrary view of decision making that is widely held in some areas of business research, individuals’ decisions about ethical issues (and subsequent actions) are purely a function of their self-interest.The laboratory experiment reported in this paper provides a test of the person-situation interactionist model, using the (...) general theoretical and experimental framework used in the experimental economics literature. One individual and two situational factors relating to moral intensity were examined which may influence decisions to misrepresent information in the course of business activities.The individual and one situational variable were significantly related to participants’ actions. The interactions among individual andsituation variables were not individually significant, although the model including interactions had a much higher level of statistical significance. Gender was significant, both directly and in interaction with moral development, suggesting that it may be worthy of further examination. (shrink)

According to a widely credited model in the business ethics literature, ethical decisions are a function of two kinds of factors, personal(individual) and situational, and these factors interact with each other. According to a contrary view of decision making that is widely held in some areas of business research, individuals’ decisions about ethical issues (and subsequent actions) are purely a function of their self-interest.The laboratory experiment reported in this paper provides a test of the person-situation interactionist model, using the (...) general theoretical and experimental framework used in the experimental economics literature. One individual and two situational factors relating to moral intensity were examined which may influence decisions to misrepresent information in the course of business activities.The individual and one situational variable were significantly related to participants’ actions. The interactions among individual andsituation variables were not individually significant, although the model including interactions had a much higher level of statistical significance. Gender was significant, both directly and in interaction with moral development, suggesting that it may be worthy of further examination. (shrink)

The moral ideology of banking and insurance employees in Spain was examined along with supervisor role modeling and ethics-related policies and procedures for their association with ethical behavioral intent. In addition to main effects, we found evidence supporting that the person–situation interactionist perspective in supervisor role modeling had a stronger positive relationship with ethical intention among employees with relativist moral ideology. Also as hypothesized, formal ethical polices and procedures were positively related to ethical intention among those with universal (...) beliefs, but the relationship was much weaker among relativists. Thus, firms wishing to optimally promote ethical attitudes and behavior must tailor their organization-based initiatives to the individual characteristics of their employees. (shrink)

This chapter aims to expand the body of empirical literature considered relevant to virtue theory beyond the burned-over districts that are the situationist challenges to virtue ethics and epistemology. We thus raise a rather simple-sounding question: why doesn’t virtue epistemology have an account of intelligence? In the first section, we sketch the history and present state of the person-situation debate to argue for the importance of an interactionist framework in bringing psychological research in general, and intelligence research in particular, (...) to bear on questions of virtue. In Section 2, we discuss the history and present state of intelligence research to argue for its relevance to virtue epistemology. In Section 3, we argue that intelligence sits uneasily in both responsibilist and reliabilist virtue frameworks, which suggests that a new approach to virtue epistemology is needed. We conclude by placing intelligence within a new interactionist framework. (shrink)

The so-called person?situation debate in psychology, which pits internal, personality-based explanations of behavior against external, environment or situation-based explanations seems headed for a resolution that will somehow include elements of both perspectives. These two alternative views of human behavior have also been applied to that subset of human behavior thought of as leadership, and in this domain a rapprochement also seems well underway. In the domain of ethical leadership, however, especially as applied to military misconduct, public discussion of such events (...) is dominated by strictly situation-based explanations, while institutional developments within the military are showing signs of integration, paralleling developments in the broader academic domain. The public discussion of such events thus lags behind the approach to ethical conduct in war taken by the military, which increasingly integrates personal and situational factors in the moral and ethical development of soldiers and leaders. Potential consequences of overreliance on situationist approaches to military ethics are discussed. (shrink)

This article puts forward solutions to some of the ethical and legal dilemmas posed in the current discussion on how to program crash algorithms in autonomous or self-driving cars. The first part of the paper defines the scope of the problem in the criminal legal field, and the next section gives a critical analysis of the proposal to always prioritise the interest of the occupant of the vehicle in situations with conflict of interests. The principle of minimizing social damage as (...) a model for configuring self-driving cars is examined in the third section. Despite its apparent plausibility, within the framework of a liberal legal system that recognises humans as free agents who have rights and responsibilities, maximizing the function of social utility does not justify harmful interference into a person’s legal sphere. Therefore, in the fourth part, the author argues the need to program the crash algorithms of autonomous cars based on a deontological understanding of the system of justifications in criminal law. The solution to the dilemma lies in a prior analysis of the legal positions of all agents involved in the conflict, from a perspective of the principles of autonomy and solidarity as the core of the system of justifications. (shrink)

The article focuses on a currently hot debate in contemporary ethics that takes place between so-called situationists and the advocates of virtue ethics. The fundamental assumption made by virtue ethics is that developing and perfecting one’s moral character or moral virtues warrants one’s morally good action. Situationists claim that this assumption contradicts the results of the latest empirical studies. From this observation, they conclude that virtue ethics is based on an empirically inadequate moral psychology.In the first part of the article, (...) I present the conceptions of virtue and moral character developed in response to the situationist criticism. I show to which degree these conceptions differ from the classical, so-called global approach in virtue ethics In the second part, based on the references to the latest empirical studies in social and cognitive psychology, I argue, against the situationist objection, that the classical notion of virtue meets the requirement of empirical adequacy. I mainly resort to the interactionist theory of personality by W. Mischel, R. Baumeister’s studies over self-control, D. Kahneman's conception of two-processual mind, and the studies over automatized processes by J. Bargh. (shrink)

Health services internationally struggle to ensure health care is “person-centered” (or similar). In part, this is because there are many interpretations of “person-centered care” (and near synonyms), some of which seem unrealistic for some patients or situations and obscure the intrinsic value of patients’ experiences of health care delivery. The general concern behind calls for person-centered care is an ethical one: Patients should be “treated as persons.” We made novel use of insights from the capabilities approach to characterize person-centered (...) care as care that recognizes and cultivates the capabilities associated with the concept of persons. This characterization unifies key features from previous characterisations and can render person-centered care applicable to diverse patients and situations. By tying person-centered care to intrinsically valuable capability outcomes, it incorporates a requirement for responsiveness to individuals and explains why person-centered care is required independently of any contribution it may make to health gain. (shrink)

This article focuses on the situational and psychological approach that can enhance the effectiveness of the protection of endangered judges, prosecutors, and investigators. The idea was raised that risk assessment and the implementation of security would be more effective if the situation is viewed in a different way from the ordinary approach. The phenomenological view allows for a larger interpretation, which includes personal and external factors.

In some situations, we attribute intentional mental states to a person despite their inability to articulate the contents in question: these are implicit mental states. Attributions of implicit mental states raise certain philosophical challenges related to rationality, concept possession, and privileged access. In the philosophical literature, there are two distinct strategies for addressing these challenges, depending on whether the content attributions are personal-level or subpersonal-level. This paper explores the difference between personal-level and subpersonal-level approaches to implicit mental state attribution and (...) investigates the relationship between the two approaches. It concludes by highlighting the methodological and metaphilosophical commitments which can result in different perspectives on the relative priority of personal-level and subpersonal-level theories. (shrink)

Multinational corporations face a litany of challenges regarding ethical decision-making as they traverse new variables in each country they operate in. Presented here is a new approach to ethical decision-making research for multinational corporations with the inclusion of moral virtues, national culture, and a feedback mechanism. The new proposed model builds off of the existing work by Trevino’s Person-Situated Interactionist Model. Hofstede’s work on individual national culture characteristics is used to move the conversation forward by explaining the relationships (...) between individual moderators in Trevino’s model and the effect of national culture on them. The new proposed model recommends the inclusion of moral virtues, with honesty and integrity as examples, as individual moderators in the decision-making process based on previous work. It contributes to the literature by introducing moral virtues into traditional ethical decision-making process models and introduces a new variable with a feedback mechanism for future learning. The paper concludes with recommendations for the future direction of research for ethical decision-making models for multinational organizations. (shrink)

The article proposes a framework utilizing the Person–Organization fit approach to facilitate spirituality in the workplace. The article argues that spirituality can be described on a continuum varying from low to high at both individual and organizational levels. The interaction of the two continuums is then used to suggest a model to facilitate workplace spirituality. Thus, the approach is to first consider the interaction of person and situation factors and then depending on the compatibility of these two factors, (...) look for specific ways to facilitate spirituality at work. Various suggestions and examples are included to illustrate the practical implementation of our recommendations. (shrink)

Health services internationally struggle to ensure health care is “person-centered” (or similar). In part, this is because there are many interpretations of “person-centered care” (and near synonyms), some of which seem unrealistic for some patients or situations and obscure the intrinsic value of patients’ experiences of health care delivery. The general concern behind calls for person-centered care is an ethical one: Patients should be “treated as persons.” We made novel use of insights from the capabilities approach to characterize person-centered (...) care as care that recognizes and cultivates the capabilities associated with the concept of persons. This characterization unifies key features from previous characterisations and can render person-centered care applicable to diverse patients and situations. By tying person-centered care to intrinsically valuable capability outcomes, it incorporates a requirement for responsiveness to individuals and explains why person-centered care is required independently of any contribution it may make to health gain. (shrink)

Drug abuse has been and continues to be, a common social issue worldwide, yet the efficiency of widely adopted sweeping speech for anti-drug campaigns has proven inefficient. To provide students with a safe and efficient learning situation related to drug refusal skills, we used a novel approach rooted in a serious learning game and concept map during a brief extracurricular period to help students understand drugs and their negative effects. The proposed game-based situational learning system allowed all students to (...) participate simultaneously and individually in multiple scenarios of drug temptation posed by peers and classmates to practice responding and refusing drugs in school and community settings. Moreover, to explore whether different personality traits result in different anti-drug responses, we used a serious game to conduct an anti-drug experiment on 53 junior middle school students aged 13–15. Each participant’s decision-making process was recorded in the serious game as behavioral patterns for lag sequential analysis. The outcomes revealed seven behavioral patterns including differentiation, acceptance, effective and ineffective responses, effective and ineffective solution-seeking, and failure to refuse. The GSEQ which is a computer program for analyzing sequential observational data was used. The results indicated the following: Neuroticism was performed at a relatively low level under the guidance of a concept map. “Neuroticism” was associated with the lowest risk of accepting drugs. Students with “openness to experiences” were at high risk of accepting drugs. Almost all personality behavioral transition diagrams showed that failure to refuse drugs was followed by inefficient seeking of help and inefficient refusal. These findings provide reference points for designing adaptive anti-drug education programs. (shrink)

Going through reproductive experiences (especially pregnancy and childbirth) in contemporary Western societies almost inevitably involves interaction with medical practitioners and various medical technologies in institutional context. This has important consequences for women as embodied subjects. A critical appraisal of these consequences—coming dominantly from feminist scholarship—relied on a problematic theory of both technology and the subject, which are in contemporary approaches no longer considered as given, coherent and well individualized wholes, but as complex constellations that are locally situated and that can (...) only be described empirically. In this study, we will be relying on the developments in phenomenological theory to reconceptualize women as technologically mediated embodied subjects and on the new paradigms in philosophy of technology and STS to reconstruct medical technology as situated—with the aim of reconceptualizing their relationship and exploring different possibilities for the mediating role of medical technology. It will be argued that technologization of female reproductive processes and alienating consequences for women are not necessary or directly interrelated. The role of technology varies from case to case and depends mainly on the nontechnological and relational aspects of institutional context, in which medical practitioners play a decisive role. (shrink)

Interactionism has emerged as a promising approach to moral character in the wake of the situationist challenge and the character-situation debate. This paper will consider whether interactionism is troubled by a familiar problem from the philosophy of mind: the coupling-constitution or causal-constitution fallacy. In relation to character, this issue pertains to whether the external factors featured in interactionist models are partly constitutive of the agent’s character, or whether they merely play a causal role. In contrast to some other (...) interactionist theorists, I argue that interactionism doesn’t need to make distinctions regarding causation and constitution, and would be better off without attempting to do so. Making such claims would only add metaphysical baggage to interactionism that won’t aid in its goal of providing an empirically adequate moral psychology of character. Interactionists are thus better off evading the C-C fallacy challenge, rather than attempting to meet it head-on. (shrink)

The object of the research of this article is the modern philosophical discourse on the problem of identity of personality. The subject of the study is the substantial approach of R. Swinburne and his place in this discourse. The author analyzes R. Swinburne's approach and, in particular, its main advantages – the ability to solve the problem of personality reduplication. However, as the author of the article shows, the substantive approach itself is not devoid of vulnerabilities. First (...) of all, he is vulnerable to criticism using the verification principle. Swinburne believes that his approach is not consistent only with a strong version of the verification principle. However, as the author of this article shows, even a weak version of the verification principle is a problem for Swinburne's substantive approach. The author presents his own alternative to the substantial approach for overcoming the reduplication argument and interpreting hypothetical situations associated with it. Such an alternative is the perdurant theory of personality. The article presents a study in the field of the history of modern analytical philosophy. Therefore, the key research method used is historical and philosophical. In particular, the study used a textual analysis of the works of philosophers, first of all, R. Swinburne, according to several sources, a reconstruction of his views was carried out. The article also uses the method of comparative analysis, in particular, a comparison of empiricist approaches and a substantive approach to the problem of identity of personality is made. The article is devoted to the substantial concept of identity of R. Swinburne's personality. Despite the fact that this concept represents an important alternative to solving the problem of identity, it has not been studied much, especially in the Russian history of philosophy. The novelty of the article also lies in a detailed analysis of the verification counterargument in relation to the substantive approach. The author of the article also presents his own alternative to the substantial approach, which allows overcoming the indicated difficulties. As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that the substantial approach only partially solves the problem of asynchronous identity of personality, and is most vulnerable to criticism with the help of the verification argument. (shrink)

Social anxiety disorder has been widely recognised as one of the most commonly diagnosed mental disorders. Individuals with social anxiety disorder experience difficulties during social interactions that are essential in the regular functioning of daily routines; perpetually motivating research into the aetiology, maintenance and treatment methods. Traditionally, social and clinical neuroscience studies incorporated protocols testing one participant at a time. However, it has been recently suggested that such protocols are unable to directly assess social interaction performance, which can be revealed (...) by testing multiple individuals simultaneously. The principle of two-person neuroscience highlights the interpersonal aspect of social interactions that observes behaviour and brain activity from both constituents of the interaction, rather than analysing on an individual level or an individual observation of a social situation. Therefore, two-person neuroscience could be a promising direction for assessment and intervention of the social anxiety disorder. In this paper, we propose a novel paradigm which integrates two-person neuroscience in a neurofeedback protocol. Neurofeedback and interbrain synchrony, a branch of two-person neuroscience, are discussed in their own capacities for their relationship with social anxiety disorder and relevance to the paradigm. The newly proposed paradigm sets out to assess the social interaction performance using interbrain synchrony between interacting individuals, and to employ a multi-user neurofeedback protocol for intervention of the social anxiety. (shrink)

In this article, I provide an argument against the idea that public hate-speech events are harmful because they cause a discrete, traceable and harmful change in one’s propositional attitudes. To do so, I identify the essential conceptual architecture of public hate-speech situations, I assess existing arguments for the direct and indirect harm of public hate speech and I propose a novel way to approach public hate-speech situations: a maieutic approach. On this perspective, public hate-speech events do not cause (...) changes in propositional attitudes, but rather, if successful, either such events bring a person’s latent propositional attitudes into clear consciousness, or they play with propositional attitudes speakers and their audience had prior to the public hate-speech situation. (shrink)

This article portrays the unique aspects of ethics education in a multicultural, multireligious and conflict-based atmosphere among Jewish and Arab nursing students in Jerusalem, Israel. It discusses the principles and the methods used for rising above this tension and dealing with this complicated situation, based on Yoder's `bridging' method. An example is used of Jewish and Arab students together implementing two projects in 2008, when the faculty decided to co-operate with communities in East Jerusalem, the Arab side of the city. (...) The students took it upon themselves to chaperon the teachers who came to watch them at work, translate, and facilitate interaction with a guarded and suspicious community. This approach could also be relevant to less extreme conditions in any inter-religious environment when trying to produce graduates with a strong ethical awareness. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The article presents a descriptive characteristic of the functioning of a person’s attitude to oneself, the formation of self-awareness through a combination of one’s emotional and creative features with the components of attitude toward oneself, which allows one to study in depth the process of formation and development of a mature, adapted personality._ Theoretical basis._ The existing variety of scientific approaches makes it difficult to systematize the aspect under study and prevents the formation of a clear structure of a (...) person’s attitude toward oneself. The study of self-consciousness of the personality remains relevant in connection with a wide range of issues related to the development of knowledge of the mechanisms that act as internal determinants of the individual originality of the personality’s life realization. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is as follows: the principles of determinism of mental phenomena, the activity concept of self-consciousness, the provision on the regulative function of emotions in activity, the concept of creative activity and ideas about the personality’s creative characteristics. _Originality__._ The author supplemented and expanded knowledge about the phenomenon of self-attitude, the mechanisms of its formation and features of determination based on the systematization of thematic issues; the idea of the determination of attitude toward oneself, in particular, by personal and situational factors, in the context of its functioning in the conditions of activity with creative elements has been further developed._ Conclusions._ Attitude toward oneself, emotional and creative features of the personality have a common problematic aspect with regard to their nature of interaction and the necessity for the expediency of their unification as a subject of interaction with the world. (shrink)

What influence did Josiah Royce's academic work (1913-1917) have on the development of classical Symbolic Interactionist thought? And which philosophical influences shaped Royce's social and philosophical thought? This book provides a holistic approach to Royce's academic work and the social philosophy that shaped Symbolic Interactionist theory. By critically evaluating the works of Royce, this book reveals how his ideas and social philosophy made significant contributions to both Symbolic Interactionist thought and sociological theory. Situating his contributions within (...) a socio-historical time frame, Royce's social philosophy is compared and contrasted to the major concepts of George Herbert Mead (Mind, Self, and Society) and Herbert Blumer's core synthesized components of classical symbolic interactionist thought (Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method). Thus, demonstrating that Royce's later academic works closely resemble not only the basic ideas of Mead but also have a strong correspondence with Blumer's synthesis of the three basic premises and eight root images that outline the theoretical core of Symbolic Interactionist thought. For those looking to investigate or discover new aspects of symbolic interactionist theory from a classical viewpoint, this book offers a unique insight into an American philosopher whose contribution to the development of Symbolic Interactionism has been largely unnoticed. (shrink)

This article argues that standard models of person-centred care (PCC) and shared decision making (SDM) rely on simplistic, often unrealistic assumptions of patient capacities that entail that PCC/SDM might have detrimental effects in many applications. We suggest a complementary PCC/SDM approach to ensure that patients are able to execute rational decisions taken jointly with care professionals when performing self-care. Illustrated by concrete examples from a study of adolescent diabetes care, we suggest a combination of moral and psychological considerations to (...) support the claim that standard PCC/SDM threatens to systematically undermine its own goals. This threat is due to a tension between the ethical requirements of SDM in ideal circumstances and more long-term needs actualized by the context of self-care handled by patients with limited capacities for taking responsibility and adhere to their own rational decisions. To improve this situation, we suggest a counseling, self-care, adherence approach to PCC/SDM, where more attention is given to how treatment goals are internalized by patients, how patients perceive choice situations, and what emotional feedback patients are given. This focus may involve less of a concentration on autonomous and rational clinical decision making otherwise stressed in standard PCC/SDM advocacy. (shrink)

Since its inception some fifty years ago, cognitive science has seen a number of sea changes. Perhaps the best known is the development of connectionist models of cognition as an alternative to classical, symbol-based approaches. A more recent - and increasingly influential - trend is that of dynamical-systems-based, ecologically oriented models of the mind. Researchers suggest that a full understanding of the mind will require systematic study of the dynamics of interaction between mind, body, and world. Some argue that this (...) new orientation calls for a revolutionary new metaphysics of mind, according to which mental states and processes, and even persons, literally extend into the environment. This book is a guide to this movement in cognitive science. Each chapter tackles either a specific area of empirical research or specific sector of the conceptual foundation underlying this research. (shrink)

Building from an interactionist view of ethics, this study sought to integrate individual and contextual factors for understanding ethical perceptions in teams. Given the proximal nature of team members, this study specifically explored how individuals comparatively evaluate their own ethical behaviors and team members’ ethical behaviors to arrive at a perception of ethical person–group fit within a team. Grounding our theoretical arguments in relational schemas theory, we demonstrate that interpersonal ethical perceptions can have distal impacts on perceptions of team (...) functioning. The results support the hypotheses that a perceived ethical incongruence between the self and other team members negatively influenced perceptions of relationship conflict and ultimately information sharing. By exploring individual and team level aspects of ethics concurrently, we contribute to a deeper understanding of contextual forces in ethics through an interactionist approach. (shrink)

In daily academic life, students are exposed to a wide range of potentially stressful situations which could negatively affect their academic achievement and their health. Among the factors that could be weakened by academic stress, attention has been paid to expectations of self-efficacy, which are considered one of the most important determinants for student engagement, persistence, and academic success. From a proactive perspective, research on academic stress has emphasized the importance of coping strategies in preventing harmful consequences. In recent years, (...) there has been a growing interest in discovering the extent to which individuals are able to combine different coping strategies and the adaptive consequences this flexibility entails. However, studies using this person-centered approach are still scarce in the academic context. On that basis, this current study had two objectives: (a) to examine the existence of different profiles of university students based on how they combined different approach coping strategies (positive reappraisal, support seeking, and planning); and (b) to determine the existence of differences in general expectations of self-efficacy between those coping profiles. 1072 university students participated in the study. The coping profiles were determined by Latent Profile Analysis (LPA). The differences in the self-efficacy variable were determined using ANCOVA, with gender, university year, and degree type as covariates. Four approach coping profiles were identified: (a) low generalized use of approach coping strategies; (b) predominance of social approach coping approaches; (c) predominance of cognitive approach coping approaches; (d) high generalized use of approach coping strategies. The profile that showed that a greater combination of the three strategies was related to higher general self-efficacy expectations, and vice versa. These results suggest that encouraging flexibility in coping strategies would help to improve university students’ self-efficacy. (shrink)

This paper aims to expand the range of empirical work relevant to the extended cognition debates. First, I trace the historical development of the person-situation debate in social and personality psychology and the extended cognition debate in the philosophy of mind. Next, I highlight some instructive similarities between the two and consider possible objections to my comparison. I then argue that the resolution of the person-situation debate in terms of interactionism lends support for an analogously interactionist conception of extended (...) cognition. I argue that this interactionism might necessitate a shift away from the dominant agent-artifact paradigm toward an agent–agent paradigm. If this is right, then social and personality psychology—the discipline(s) that developed from the person-situation debate—opens a whole new range of empirical considerations for extended cognition theorists which align with Clark & Chalmers original vision of agents themselves as spread into the world. (shrink)

Despite the widespread agreement that the ontology of the marketing discipline is exchange, marketing ethics researchers have largely adopted a monadic viewpoint of ethical decision making. In this research, an interactionist approach is adopted in order to introduce a dyadic perspective of un/ethical decision making. The dyadic model includes each channel member's individual, situational and decision process factors linked by relationalism, an emerging paradigm in marketing channels. Relationalism is represented as a discriminating variable between perceived ethical dilemma and (...) decision behaviour. Finally, a number of theoretical propositions are presented and future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

In Consciousness and Persons: Unity and Identity, Michael Tye takes on the thorny issue of the unity of consciousness and answers these important questions: What exactly is the unity of consciousness? Can a single person have a divided consciousness? What is a single person? Tye argues that unity is a fundamental part of human consciousness -- something so basic to everyday experience that it is easy to overlook. For example, when we hear the sound of waves crashing on a beach (...) and at the same time see a red warning flag, there is an overall unity to our experience; the sound and the red shape are presented together in our consciousness. Similarly, when we undergo a succession of thoughts as we think something through, there is an experience of succession that unifies the thoughts into a conscious whole. But, Tye shows, consciousness is not always unified. Split-brain subjects, whose corpus callosum has been severed, are usually taken to have a divided or disunified consciousness. Their behavior in certain situations implies that they have lost the unity normal human subjects take for granted; it is sometimes even supposed that a split-brain subject is really two persons.Tye begins his account by proposing an account of the unity of experience at a single time; this account is extended over the succeeding chapters to cover bodily sensations at a single time and perceptual experience, bodily sensations, conscious thoughts, and felt moods at a single time. Tye follows these chapters with a discussion of the unity of experience through time. Turning to the split-brain phenomenon, he proposes an account of the mental life of split-brain subjects and argues that certain facts about these subjects offer support for his theory of unity. Finally, addressing the topic of the nature of persons and personal identity, Tye finds the two great historical accounts -- the ego theory and the bundle theory -- lacking and he makes an alternative proposal. He includes an appendix on the general representational approach to consciousness and its many varieties, because of the relevance of representationalism to the theory of unity being adanced. (shrink)

It is suggested that there is a syndrome of reactions elicited by stimuli people define as obscene and that these reactions can be explained within a symbolic interactionist framework. More specifically, it is argued that they are reactions to the denial or destruction of a person's ability to achieve and/or maintain an identity that is socially acceptable to him within a particular situation.

People display recognizably characteristic behavioral patterns across time and situations, with a given degree of regularity. These patterns may justify the attribution of personality traits. It is arguably the commonsense view that the proper explanation of these behavioral regularities is given by intrinsic properties of the agent’s psychology. In this paper, I argue for an externalistic view of the causal basis of personality-characteristic behaviors. According to the externalistic view, the relevant behavioral regularities are better understood as the result of a (...) systematic interaction between features internal to the agent and environmental-situational factors. Moreover, if the premise is granted that people are typically able to exercise a certain degree of control over the environmental-situational conditions they find themselves in, the resulting picture is of active sort of externalism, as people may at times engage in selection and manipulation of environmental-situational conditions as a way of managing their own behavioral tendencies. (shrink)

[Commentary on Kwong-loi Shun, “Anger, Compassion, and the Distinction between First and Third Person” Australasian Philosophical Review 6.1 (Issue theme: Moral psychology— Insights from Chinese Philosophy), forthcoming.] -/- In maintaining that gratitude fails to reflect a perspectival distinction based on whether the grateful agent is the direct beneficiary of the benefactor’s good will, Kwong-loi Shun suggests that gratitude might be felt to benefactors for benefits bestowed to strangers. With an eye toward understanding the form that gratitude might take on this (...) kind of view, I consider two mutually exclusive ways of unpacking this proposal in the context of Shun’s other commitments. On the first (expansive) approach, responses of grateful reciprocation are extended to persons who presently receive only our approval or approbation. The expansive route, however, entails treating gratitude and its negative counterpart asymmetrically, for reasons that are nonobvious. On the second (restrictive) approach, gratitude in effect collapses into approval, and our interpersonal practices are rid not only of angry payback (of the sort associated with resentment), but also of the 'positive payback' presently associated with gratitude. The restrictive route, however, excises from our practices features of gratitude that have considerable interpersonal value. (shrink)

For caregivers of minimally communicative individuals, providing support in the absence of clearly meaningful responses is ethically fraught. We conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data from caregivers of individuals who are minimally communicative, including persons with advanced dementia and individuals in disorders of consciousness. Our analysis led to two central claims: (1) Personhood is a threshold concept that is situated, relational, and dynamic and (2) in circumstances in which personhood is difficult to judge, caregivers can “fill the gap” to (...) reach the threshold through a repertoire of strategies. Because personhood is in part an attribution from others, a situational loss of personhood does not preclude restoration, nor does it eliminate moral status. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to explore situations experienced by 12 health-care providers working in two nursing homes. Individual interviews, using a narrative approach, were conducted. A phenomenological–hermeneutical method, developed for researching life experiences, was applied in the analysis. The findings showed that good care situations are experienced when the time culture is flexible, the carers act in a sovereign time rhythm, not mentioning clock time or time as a stress factor. The results are discussed in terms of (...) anthropological and sociological theory: time as event and action and flexible time cultures. Care settings for persons with dementia represent many challenges, such as a heavy workload and time strain. Time ethics is a construction, understanding time used in caring for persons suffering from dementia, which involves a mature, responsible and flexible nursing approach to these patients. (shrink)

This paper explores the situated body by briefly surveying the historical studies of effect and of affect which converge in current work on attention. This common approach to the situated body through attention prompted the coining of a more inclusive term, Effect, to indicate the situated body's mode of observation. Examples from the work of artist-turned-architects, Arakawa and Gins, will be discussed to show how architectural environments can act as heuristic tools that allow the situated body to research its (...) own conditions. Rather than isolating effect from affect, observer from subject, organism from environment, Arakawa and Gins' work optimises the use of situated complexity in the study of the site of person. By constructing surrounding in which to observe and learn about the shape of awareness, their procedural architecture suggests ways in which the interaction of top-down conceptual knowledge and bottom-up perceptual learning may construct possibilities in emergent rather than programmatic ways. (shrink)

Software piracy has become recognized as a major problem for the software industry and for business. One research approach that has provided a theoretical framework for studying software piracy has been to place the illegal copying of software within the domain of ethical decision making assumes that a person must be able to recognize software piracy as a moral issue. A person who fails to recognize a moral issue will fail to employ moral decision making schemata. There is substantial (...) evidence that many individuals do not perceive software piracy to be an ethical problem. This paper applies social exchange theory, in particular equity theory, to predict the influence of situational factors on subjects' intentions to participate in software piracy. Consistent with the predictions of equity theory this study found that input and outcome situational variables significantly effect a person's intentions to commit software piracy. (shrink)

Due to the increasingly heterogeneous trajectories of aging, gerontology requires theoretical models and empirical methods that can meaningfully, reliably, and precisely describe, explain, and predict causes and effects within the aging process, considering particular contexts and situations. Human behavior occurs in contexts; nevertheless, situational changes are often neglected in context-based behavior research. This article follows the tradition of environmental gerontology research based on Lawton’s Person-Environment-Interaction model and the theoretical developments of recent years. The authors discuss that, despite an explicit time (...) component, current P-E models could be strengthened by focusing on detecting P-E interactions in various everyday situations. Enhancing Lawton’s original formula via a situationally based component not only changes the theoretical perspectives on the interplay between person and environment but also demands new data collection approaches in empirical environmental research. Those approaches are discussed through the example of collecting mobile data with smartphones. Future research should include the situational dimension to investigate the complex nature of person environment interactions. (shrink)

A comparative method of studying the biological bases of personality compares human trait dimensions with likely animal models in terms of genetic determination and common biological correlates. The approach is applied to the trait of sensation seeking, which is defined on the human level by a questionnaire, reports of experience, and observations of behavior, and on the animal level by general activity, behavior in novel situations, and certain types of naturalistic behavior in animal colonies. Moderately high genetic determination has (...) been found for human sensation seeking, and marked strain differences in rodents have been found in open-field behavior that may be related to basic differences in brain neurochemistry. Agonistic and sociable behaviors in both animals and humans and the trait measure of sensation seeking in humans have been related to certain common biological correlates such as gonadal hormones, monoamine oxidase (MAO), and augmenting of the cortical evoked potential.The monoamine systems in the rodent brain are involved in general activity, exploratory behavior, emotionality, socialization, dominance, sexual and consummately behaviors, and intracranial self-stimulation. Preliminary studies have related norepinephrine and enzymes involved in its production and degradation to human sensation seeking. A model is suggested that relates mood, behavioral activity, sociability, and clinical states to activity of the central catecholamine neurotransmitters and to neuroregulators and other transmitters that act in opposite ways on behavior or stabilize activity in the arousal systems. Stimulation and behavioral activity act on the catecholamine systems in a brain–behavior feedback loop. At optimal levels of catecholamine systems activity (CSA) mood is positive and activity and sociability are adaptive. At very low or very high levels of CSA mood is dysphoric, activity is restricted or stereotyped, and the organism is unsocial or aggressively antisocial. Novelty, in the absence of threat, may be rewarding through activation of noradrenergic neurons. (shrink)

In this paper we use the concept of the person to examine person‐centred dialogue and show how person‐centred dialogue is different from and significantly more than transfer of information, which is the dominant notion in health care. A further motivation for the study is that although person‐centredness as an idea has a strong heritage in nursing and the broader healthcare discourse, person‐centred conversation is usually discussed as a distinct and unitary approach to communication, primarily related to the philosophy of (...) dialogue—the philosophy of Martin Buber. In this paper we start with the concept of person to critically reflect on theoretical perspectives on communication to understand person‐centred conversations in the context of nursing and health. We position the concept of the person through the use of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy and follow by distinguishing four theoretical perspectives on communication before reflecting on the relevance of each of these for person‐centred communication. These perspectives are: a linear view of communication as transfer of information, communication as a relation in the sense of philosophy of dialogue, practice‐based communication on constructionist grounds, and communication as a practice to create social community. In relation to the concept of the person, we do not find transfer of information relevant as a theoretical underpinning for person‐centred conversations. From the other three perspectives that are relevant we distinguish five types of person‐centred conversations pertinent to nursing and health: problem identifying conversations, instructive conversations, guiding and supportive conversations, caring and existential conversations, and therapeutic conversations. Through this analysis it is argued that person‐centred communication and conversations are substantially different to transfer of information. We also discuss the significance of communication adjusted to specific situations, including emphasis on how we speak in relation to the aim or topic of a conversation. (shrink)

Personalized medicine aims to tailor disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to individuals on the basis of their genes, lifestyle and environments. Patient and interest organizations may potentially play an important role in the realization of PM. This paper investigates the views and perspectives on PM of a variety of PIOs. Semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted among leading representatives of 13 PIOs located in Europe and North-America. The data collected were analysed using a conventional content analysis approach. The PIO representatives (...) supported the realization of PM but feared that many financial, structural and organizational challenges may delay its realization. They encouraged strategies to modernize drug licencing mechanisms, develop research and data sharing infrastructures, and educate patients and health care professionals in PM. Notably, they emphasized the importance of developing PM in an equitable way and taking into consideration the patients’ needs, values and personal situation. Despite varying levels of awareness regarding PM, the PIO representatives expressed willingness to engage in the PM agenda and recommended that PIOs work closely with policy-makers to design PM in a way that truly addresses the needs and concerns of patients. PIOs have the potential to become central drivers of the PM agenda. Collaborations should be further developed between PIOs, researchers, drug developers and health care authorities. (shrink)

Theories of personal identity in the tradition of John Locke and Derek Parfit emphasize the importance of psychological continuity and the abilities to think, to remember and to make rational choices as a basic criterion for personhood. As a consequence, persons with severe dementia are threatened to lose the status of persons. Such concepts, however, are situated within a dualistic framework, in which the body is regarded as a mere vehicle of the person, or a carrier of the brain as (...) the organ of mental faculties. Based on the phenomenology of embodiment, this paper elaborates a different approach to personal identity in dementia. In this perspective, selfhood is primarily constituted by pre-reflective self-awareness and the body memory of an individual, which consists in the embodiment and enactment of familiar habits, practices and preferences. After describing the different types of body memory, the paper develops a phenomenology of dementia as a loss of reflexivity and meta-perspective. This is contrasted with the preservation of individual forms of body memory even in the later stages of the illness. The ethical consequences of an embodied approach to dementia are outlined. A final look is given to narrativistic and constructionist concepts of the self in dementia. (shrink)

This paper intends to expose and analyze the arguments of philosopher Julián Marías regarding the problem of ethics of the human person, from the approach of human life and the metaphysical anthropology. A member of the “School of Madrid”, his thinking has been inspired by the philosophy of Ortega y Gasset. This paper seeks to recover that influence’s context, to introduce the main concepts of its theoretical model, and to present their considerations about life as a projective, biographical argument, (...) an installation of the circumstances and mundane situations, as ways of constructing the person. (shrink)

This paper examines three programmatic responses to the problem of cognitive bias: virtue epistemology, epistemic paternalism, and epistemic collectivism. Each of these programmes focuses on asinglelevel of epistemic analysis: virtue theorists on individuals, paternalists on environments, and collectivists on groups. I argue that this is a mistake in light of the fact that cognitive biases arise frominteractionsbetween these three domains. Consequently, epistemologists should spend less time defending these programmes, and more timecoordinatingthem. This paper offers empirically based arguments for the (...) class='Hi'>interactionist approach, and contends that its adoption is an essential step for minimizing bias in empirical science. (shrink)

The possibility of a human head transplant poses unprecedented philosophical and neuroethical questions. Principal among them are the personal identity of the resultant individual, her metaphysical and social status: Who will she be and how should the “new” person be treated - morally, legally and socially - given that she incorporates characteristics of two distinct, previously unrelated individuals, and possess both old and new physical, psychological, and social experiences that would not have been available without the transplant? We contend that (...) this situation challenges linguistic conventions and conceptual binaries, and calls into question the major philosophical approaches to personal identity: animalism and reductionism. We examine these views critically vis-a-vis head transplantation and conclude that they fail to provide an adequate account of the identity of the resultant individual because both neglect the key role of embodiment for personal identity. We maintain that embodiment is central to personal identity and a radical alteration of the body will also radically alter that person, making her a different person. Consequently, a human head transplant will result in an individual partly continuous with the head/brain, and partly continuous with the body donor. We conclude that the resultant person would be different from both the individual whose head was transplanted and the one to whose body the “new” head is attached. (shrink)

Habits are the topic of a venerable history of research that extends back to antiquity, yet they were originally disregarded by the cognitive sciences. They started to become the focus of interdisciplinary research in the 1990s, but since then there has been a stalemate between those who approach habits as a kind of bodily automatism or as a kind of mindful action. This implicit mind-body dualism is ready to be overcome with the rise of interest in embodied, embedded, extended, (...) and enactive (4E) cognition. We review the enactive approach and highlight how it moves beyond the traditional stalemate by integrating both autonomy and sense-making into its theory of agency. It defines a habit as an adaptive, precarious, and self-sustaining network of neural, bodily, and interactive processes that generate dynamical sensorimotor patterns. Habits constitute a central source of normativity for the agent. We identify a potential shortcoming of this enactive account with respect to bad habits, since self-maintenance of a habit would always be intrinsically good. Nevertheless, this is only a problem if, following the mainstream perspective on habits, we treat habits as isolated modules. The enactive approach replaces this atomism with a view of habits as constituting an interdependent whole on whose overall viability the individual habits depend. Accordingly, we propose to define a bad habit as one whose expression, while positive for itself, significantly impairs a person’s well-being by overruling the expression of other situationally relevant habits. We end by considering implications of this concept of bad habit for psychological and psychiatric research, in particular with respect to addiction research. (shrink)

Women heard another person state attitudes that were either in high agreement or high disagreement with their own attitudes. The potency of an approach-avoidance dependent variable was compared with traditional dependent variables for this situation, ratings of inter-personal attraction. Eighty-five percent of those hearing high agreement volunteered to return to the laboratory to continue participation in the study at a later time. Nobody who heard high disagreement volunteered to return. This difference between the two treatment conditions was considerably greater (...) than the difference for ratings of attractiveness. It was concluded that the increased potency of the approach-avoidance measure came from its importance to the subjects and that approach-avoidance would be a good measure to use in comparing different predictions from the several theoretical positions that attempt to account for the effects of agreement and disagreement. (shrink)

Solomon argues that, although recent research in social psychology has important implications for business ethics, it does not undermine an approach that stresses virtue ethics. However, he underestimates the empirical threat to virtue ethics, and his a priori claim that empirical research cannot overturn our ordinary moral psychology is overstated. His appeal to seemingly obvious differences in character traits between people simply illustrates the fundamental attribution error. His suggestion that the Milgram and Darley and Batson experiments have to do (...) with such character traits as obedience and punctuality cannot help to explain the relevant differences in the way people behave in different situations. His appeal to personality theory fails, because, as an intellectual academic discipline, personality theory is in shambles, mainly because it has been concerned with conceptions of personality rather than with what is true about personality. Solomon’s rejection of Doris’s claims about the fragmentation of character is at odds with the received view in social psychology. Finally, he is mistaken to think that rejecting virtue ethics implies rejecting free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)