Using evidence from experimental psychology, some social psychologists, moral philosophers and organizational scholars claim that character traits do not exist and, hence, that the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics is empirically inadequate and should dispose of the notion of character to accommodate the empirical evidence. In this paper, I systematically address the debate between dispositionalists and situationists about the existence, status and properties of character traits and their manifestations in human behavior, with the ultimate goal of responding to the question (...) whether virtue ethicists need to abandon the very enterprise of building a character-based moral theory in business ethics and organizational behavior. In the course of this paper, I shall defend the claim that the situationist argument relies on a misinterpretation of the experimental evidence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:To have a virtue is to possess a certain kind of trait of character that is appropriate in pursuing the moral good at which the virtue aims. Human beings are assumed to be capable of attaining those traits. Yet, a number of scholars are skeptical about the very existence of such character traits. They claim a sizable amount of empirical evidence in their support. This article is concerned with the existence and explanatory power of character as a way to assess (...) the possibility of achieving moral virtue, with particular attention paid to business context. I aim to unsettle the so-called situationist challenge to virtue ethics. In the course of this article, I shall defend four claims, namely, that virtues are more than just behavioral dispositions, that at least some virtues may not be unitary traits, that psychologists cannot infer virtues from overt behavior, and that the situationist data do not account for the observational equivalence of traits. Since it rests on a misconception of what virtue is, the situationist objection remains unconvincing. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The language of virtue is gaining wider appreciation in the philosophical, psychological, and management literatures. Ethicists and social scientists aim to integrate normative and empirical approaches into a new “science of virtue.” But, I submit, they are talking past each other; they hold radically different notions of what a virtue is. In this paper, I shall examine two conflicting conceptions of virtue, what I call the reductive and the non-reductive accounts of virtue. I shall critically study them and argue that (...) the non-reductive view is the best philosophical account of virtue and the only one that can account for the way we talk about virtue in business and in everyday life. We can only understand what it means to act virtuously through the examination of the attitudes, beliefs, desires, and inclinations of the virtuous agent. I shall illustrate the differences between the reductive and non-reductive accounts by considering the virtue of gratitude. (shrink)

The most popular measure of corporate reputation is the ranking of the most admired companies. But what exactly do we admire in people and firms of good reputation? This article is about the ethical dimension of corporate reputation. It integrates the trait approach in personality psychology and philosophical ethics to the study of reputation and related concepts as a way to account for the discontinuities between reputation at the individual and corporate levels under conditions of uncertainty. Through an examination of (...) the distinction between perceptions and grounding of reputation, the article also sheds light on the explanatory power of reputation concepts and critically appraises the possibility of character and organizational virtue. (shrink)

The orthodox account of the morality of war holds that the responsibility for resorting to war rests on the state’s political authorities and the responsibility for how the war is waged rests only on the state’s army and, thus, business firms have no special obligations in wartime. The purpose of this article is to reconsider the ethical responsibilities of business firms in wartime. I defend the claim that a plausible standard of liability in war must integrate the degree of the (...) agent’s contributions to posing an unjust threat, the nature of agent's behavior, and his/her intentions. If these premises are correct, it follows that the moral obligations of civilians and business corporations are fundamentally altered by war. Taking into consideration their relative contributions to the war effort, a taxonomy of business firms is developed. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is widely recognized as one of three major approaches in contemporary moral philosophy and arguably the most influential normative theory in business ethics. Despite its rich pedigree in Western and Eastern philosophy, most work in contemporary virtue ethics is part of the Western tradition. The purpose of this Thematic Symposium is to foster dialogue between Western and Eastern conceptions of virtue in business and engage them with questions about the nature, justification, and content of the virtues in each (...) tradition. This Editorial offers a brief introduction to the problem, a summary of Western and Eastern varieties of virtue ethics, an overview of the six articles included in this Thematic Symposium, and a section with five common themes for further exploration and future collaborative research. (shrink)

This paper aims to integrate recent research on collective agency, corporate moral personhood, and corporate citizenship to answer the question of how corporations and corporate officers should respond to greater social expectations about the role of business in society. The central thesis advanced in this paper is twofold. First, the right answers to questions about corporate purpose and social responsibility depend on what the right conception of the firm is. Different conceptions of the firm will yield conflicting accounts of corporate (...) purpose and responsibilities. Second, a normative theory of the firm can serve as a moral framework to make trade-offs and adjudicate competing stakeholder demands when decisions cannot be redescribed as win–win situations. By integrating the literature on the ontological status of collectives, the morality of corporate agents, and the responsibilities of business, this paper contributes a unique approach to defining what a person is, what the firm is, and, consequently, who has responsibilities (and what sort of responsibilities) to whom. (shrink)

In 1994, the Argentine Inland Revenue service investigated a case of suspected tax evasion that became more newsworthy when it was discovered that $37 million bribes were paid by IBM Argentina, the subsidiary of Armonk, New York-based International Business Machines Corp. The bribes were paid to Argentine government officials to land a $250 million contract to modernize the state-owned Banco de la Nación Argentina, which was and still is the country’s largest bank. The IBM IN ARGENTINA series introduce the legal (...) and ethical dilemmas that managers face when the moral standards at the host country appear to be lower than at those at home and highlight the consequences that managers may suffer when they perform illegal/immoral activities on behalf of the firm. Intended audience, teaching objectives, research methods, and sample questions are briefly discussed in this summary. (shrink)

The dominant academic paradigm and the main inspiration of anticorruption policies is the economic theory of corruption, according to which anticorruption policies should be focused on raising the costs associated with corrupt behavior. In this article, I provide three reasons to explain why anticorruption interventions in organizations inspired by the economic theory of corruption frequently fail. I contribute to the current literature by integrating the literature on constructive deviance, on personality psychology, and on managerial biases in ethical decision-making into the (...) study of corruption and into the design and implementation of anticorruption interventions. Research propositions are advanced. Research and practice implications are discussed. (shrink)

This article is about the relationship between business and ethics in academic research. The purpose of this investigation is to examine the status of the separation and the integration theses. In the course of this article, I defend the claim that neither separation nor integration is entirely accurate; indeed they are both potentially confusing to our audience. A strategy of reconciliation of normative and descriptive approaches is proposed. The reconciliation project does not entail synthesizing or dividing prescriptive and empirical approaches, (...) but rather respecting the identity of both inquiries, while recognizing the limitations they place on each other. The research agenda of the reconciliation project is discussed. (shrink)

Class, race and gender are three of the most salient factors in society. They determine to an important extent the opportunities we have, e.g. to access public.

When reasoning about dependence relations, philosophers often rely on gradualist assumptions, according to which abrupt changes in a phenomenon of interest can result only from abrupt changes in the low-level phenomena on which it depends. These assumptions, while strictly correct if the dependence relation in question can be expressed by continuous dynamical equations, should be handled with care: very often the descriptively relevant property of a dynamical system connecting high- and low-level phenomena is not its instantaneous behaviour but its stable (...) fixed points (those in the vicinity of which it spends most of the time, after comparatively short transitory periods), and stable fixed points can change abruptly as a result of infinitesimal changes of the low-level phenomenon. We illustrate this potential gradualist trap by showing that Chalmers’ fading qualia argument falls into it. (shrink)

Em analogia com outras discriminações, como o racismo ou o sexismo, o especismo é concebido como uma forma de discriminação moral com base na espécie. Em grande medida, a discussão contemporânea sobre a importância moral dos animais surgiu e desenvolveu-se em torno da crítica e da defesa do especismo. Este artigo oferece uma visão da discussão filosófica contemporânea sobre o especismo. Após uma breve introdução, apresenta-se uma definição de especismo e caracterizam-se vários tipos de especismo, sendo o Antropocentrismo o mais (...) relevante. Depois, expõe-se um argumento proeminente contra o Antropocentrismo: o argumento dos casos marginais. Por fim, algumas posições antropocêntricas são criticamente discutidas. (shrink)

v. 1. Propedêutica filosófia. v. 2. Ontognoseologia juridica.

En este texto se trata de pensar el proyecto que Foucault inició con el análisis de la parrhesía. Se aborda ese problema en relación a otros dos elementos de su obra: la reflexión sobre la función de los intelectuales y sus escritos sobre la noción de crítica. Desde esa perspectiva trataré de mostrar que las investigaciones sobre la parrhesía reflejan el intento de pensar una nueva política de la verdad.

A presente obra trata, de forma inigualável, das preliminares ao estudo da teoria tridimensional do direito, examinando a Filosofia e a Ciência do Direito, as dimensões da experiência jurídica, a posição do tridimensionalismo jurídico concreto, a dialética de complementaridade, o personalismo e o historicismo axiológico, as estruturas e os modelos do Direito no processo cultural e a visão integral do mundo jurídico.

Representations are not only used in our folk-psychological explanations of behaviour, but are also fruitfully postulated, for example, in cognitive science. The mainstream view in cognitive science maintains that our mind is a representational system. This popular view requires an understanding of the nature of the entities they are postulating. Teleosemantic theories face this challenge, unpacking the normativity in the relation of representation by appealing to the teleological function of the representing state. It has been argued that, if intentionality is (...) to be explained in teleological terms, then the function of a state cannot depend on its phylogenetical history, given the metaphysical possibility of a duplicate of an intentional being that lacks an evolutionary history. In this paper, I present a method to produce, according to our current knowledge in genetic engineering, human-like individuals who are not the product of natural selection in the required sense. This variation will be used to shed light on the main replies that have been offered in the literature to the Swampman thought experiment. I argue that these replies are not satisfactory: representations should better not depend on natural selection. I conclude that a non-etiological notion of function is to be preferred for characterizing the relation of representation. (shrink)

Explaining agency is a significant challenge for those who are interested in the sciences of the mind, and non-representationalists are no exception to this. Even though both ecological psychologists and enactivists agree that agency is to be explained by focusing on the relation between the organism and the environment, they have approached it by focusing on different aspects of the organism-environment relation. In this paper, I offer a suggestion for a radical embodied account of agency that combines ecological psychology with (...) recent trends in enactive cognitive science. According to this proposal, while enactivism focuses primarily on describing how our acquired sensorimotor schemes and habits mutually equilibrate, affecting our tendency to act upon some affordances instead of others, ecological psychology focuses on studying how perceptual information contributes to the actualization of the sensorimotor schemes and habits without mediating representations, inferences, and computations. The paper concludes by briefly exploring how this ecological-enactive theory of agency can account for how socio-cultural norms shape human agency. (shrink)

Digital COVID certificates are a novel public health policy to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. These immunity certificates aim to incentivize vaccination and to deny international travel or access to essential spaces to those who are unable to prove that they are not infectious. In this article, we start by describing immunity certificates and highlighting their differences from vaccination certificates. Then, we focus on the ethical, legal, and social issues involved in their use, namely autonomy and consent, data protection, equity, and (...) international mobility from a global fairness perspective. The main conclusion of our analysis is that digital COVID certificates are only acceptable if they meet certain conditions: that they should not process personal data beyond what is strictly necessary for the aimed goals, that equal access to them should be guaranteed, and that they should not restrict people’s autonomy to access places where contagion is unlikely. We conclude that, if such conditions are guaranteed, digital COVID certificates could contribute to mitigating some of the most severe socioeconomic consequences of the pandemic. (shrink)

This paper aims to analyse how the discourse of CEO letters and other factors influence community involvement and Social Licence to Operate (SLO) in the mining industry. The analysis is based on qualitative information disclosed in sustainability reports and CEO letters from 32 mining firms. Content analysis was undertaken to obtain data for the study, and then a regression analysis and a multiple correspondence analysis were used to test the hypotheses defined in the study. The results indicate that the CEO (...) discourse influences how a firm expresses the importance of gaining its SLO, the philanthropic activities in which companies become involved and the destinations of the investments in the communities in which they operate. The results also show changes in the discourse between 2011 and 2015, which are, in part, explained by the difficult situation experienced by the sector during this period. The paper contributes to the Corporate Social Responsibility literature by integrating different theories from this field into the SLO framework. The analysis carried out and the results obtained are useful for both CEOs and Sustainability Managers, especially in managing their relationships with the communities where they operate or intend to operate. (shrink)

The traditional approach in cognitive sciences holds that cognition is a matter of manipulating abstract symbols followingcertain rules. According to this view, the body is merely an input/output device, which allows the computationalsystem—the brain—to acquire new input data by means of the senses and to act in the environment following its com-mands. In opposition to this classical view, defenders of embodied cognition (EC) stress the relevance of the body inwhich the cognitive agent is embedded in their explanation of cognitive processes. (...) From a representationalist frameworkregarding our conscious experience, in this article, I will offer a novel argument in favor of EC and show that cognitionconstitutively—and no merely causally—depends upon body activity beyond that in the brain. In particular, I will arguethat in order to solve the problem derived from the empirical evidence in favor of the possibility of shifted spectrum,representationalist should endorse the view that experiences concern its subject: the content of experience isde se.Ishow that this claim perfectly matches the phenomenological observation and helps explaining the subjective characterof the experience. Furthermore, I argue that entertaining this kind of representation constitutively depends on bodilyactivity. Consequently, insofar as cognition depends on consciousness, it is embodied. (shrink)

Despite the emergence of computer games as a dominant cultural industry, we know little or nothing about the ethics of computer games. Considerations of the morality of computer games seldom go beyond intermittent portrayals of them in the mass media as training devices for teenage serial killers. In this first scholarly exploration of the subject, Miguel Sicart addresses broader issues about the ethics of games, the ethics of playing the games, and the ethical responsibilities of game designers. He argues (...) that computer games are ethical objects, that computer game players are ethical agents, and that the ethics of computer games should be seen as a complex network of responsibilities and moral duties. Players should not be considered passive amoral creatures; they reflect, relate, and create with ethical minds. The games they play are ethical systems, with rules that create gameworlds with values at play. Drawing on concepts from philosophy and game studies, Sicart proposes a framework for analyzing the ethics of computer games as both designed objects and player experiences. After presenting his core theoretical arguments and offering a general theory for understanding computer game ethics, Sicart offers case studies examining single-player games, multiplayer games, and online gameworlds from an ethical perspective. He explores issues raised by unethical content in computer games and its possible effect on players and offers a synthesis of design theory and ethics that could be used as both analytical tool and inspiration in the creation of ethical gameplay. (shrink)

En Los Cuatro Acuerdos, un éxito de ventas en todo el mundo, don Miguel Ruiz revelaba cómo el proceso de educación, o «domesticación», nos hace olvidar nuestra sabiduría innata. A lo largo de la vida establecemos muchos acuerdos que van en nuestra contra y nos causan un sufrimiento innecesario. Los Cuatro Acuerdos nos ayudan a romper estos acuerdos limitadores y a substituirlos por otros que nos aportan libertad, felicidad y amor. Ahora don Miguel Ruiz, junto con su hijo (...) don Jose Ruiz, nos ofrece una nueva perspectiva de Los Cuatro Acuerdos y un acuerdo nuevo y poderoso para transformar nuestra vida en nuestro cielo personal: el quinto acuerdo. El Quinto Acuerdo nos permite adquirir una conciencia más profunda del poder del yo verdadero y recuperar la autenticidad con la que nacimos. En esta absorbente continuación del libro que ha cambiado la vida de millones de personas de todo el mundo, se nos recuerda el mejor regalo que podemos hacernos: la libertad de ser quienes realmente somos. Más sobre el libro Imagínate llevando una vida totalmente nueva: una vida en la que eres libre de ser quien realmente eres. Ya no te riges por lo que los demás piensan de ti. Imagínate viviendo sin juzgarte a ti mismo ni juzgar a los demás, sin temer ser juzgado. Te aceptas tal como eres y aceptas a los demás tal como son. Imagínate viviendo sin estar en conflicto contigo ni con la gente. Te respetas a ti mismo y a los demás, y a cambio ellos te respetan a ti. Imagínate viviendo sin miedo a expresarte ni a explorar la vida. Vives sin temor, sin culparte, sin avergonzarte, sin arrepentirte. Imagínate que te encanta ser como eres. Te gusta tu cuerpo tal como es, te gustan tus emociones tal como son. Imagínate siendo tú mismo. Eres feliz y disfrutas verdaderamente de tu vida. ¡Imagínate viviendo con esta clase de libertad personal! Esta manera de vivir es completamente posible. Otros lo han conseguido y tú también lo harás. Sólo necesitas hacer de los Cinco Acuerdos tu estilo de vida y pronto vivirás tu sueño personal del cielo. (shrink)

The well-known distinction between access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness has moved away from the conceptual domain into the empirical one, and the debate now is focused on whether the neural mechanisms of cognitive access are constitutive of the neural correlate of phenomenal consciousness. In this paper, I want to analyze the consequences that a negative reply to this question has for the cognitive phenomenology thesis – roughly the claim that there is a “proprietary” phenomenology of thoughts. If the mechanisms responsible (...) for cognitive access can be disentangled from the mechanisms that give rise to phenomenology in the case of perception and emotion, then the same disentanglement is to be expected in the case of thoughts. This, in turn, presents, as I argue, a challenge to the cognitive phenomenology thesis: either there are thoughts with cognitive phenomenology we lack cognitive access to or there are good reasons to doubt that there is such a thing as cognitive phenomenology. I discuss a... (shrink)

La literatura especializada ha solido reproducir la distinción scheleriana entre “actos” y “funciones” sin aventurar, por lo general, una justificación teórica satisfactoria de la misma; la cual tampoco es ofrecida con claridad por el fenomenólogo muniqués. En este artículo propongo una interpretación de dichos conceptos que ayude a clarificarlos y que haga comprensible su diferenciación. Se comprobará que la distinción entre acto y función es de importancia decisiva para la antropología filosófica y, en particular, para el contraste entre el “mundo” (...) (Welt) de la persona humana y el “entorno” (Umwelt) del animal. Como contribución al tratamiento de tales cuestiones, plenamente vigentes un siglo después de la muerte de Scheler, me permito introducir el concepto adicional de “mera función”. (shrink)

Presents advice on how to gain personal freedom by following the wisdom of the Toltecs.

Why computer games can be ethical, how players use their ethical values in gameplay, and the implications for game design.

En la Ciencia de la lógica, Hegel toma distancia del sistema axiomático por diversas razones. En el presente trabajo, me propongo estudiar dichas razones y evaluar qué podemos aprender sobre la Lógica en función de esta discusión con la axiomática. Mostraré que Hegel toma distancia de la axiomática por (1) el carácter relativo de sus axiomas; (2) el carácter unidireccional de su inferencia; (3) el carácter limitado de la forma judicativa; (4) la arbitrariedad de sus definiciones y la suposición de (...) la dicotomía forma y contenido. Todo esto mostrará la inadecuación del método axiomático para la Lógica y revelará que la autoindagación de la razón exige suponer un condicionamiento multidireccional que evite el regreso al infinito y que permita pensar lo absoluto bajo una dinámica no lineal; además se advertirá la necesidad de recurrir a la forma del silogismo así como admitir una codeterminación de forma y contenido. (shrink)

Miembro de la generaci n de el Viejo Topo, Morey se ha formado en el rigor de la filosof a, de la que es catedr tico en la Universidad de Barcelona. el presente libro es una novela de corte experimental acerca de la errancia y el peregrinaje sin destino a que nos somete la paradoja de vivir o ser vividos.

A strikingly original work, Friends of Interpretable Objects re-anchors aesthetics in the object of attention even as it redefines the practice, processes, ...

This article develops a constructive criticism of methodological conventionalism. Methodological conventionalism asserts that standards of inductive risk ought to be justified in virtue of their ability to facilitate coordination in a research community. On that view, industry bias occurs when conventional methodological standards are violated to foster industry preferences. The underlying account of scientific conventionality, however, is problematically incomplete. Conventions may be justified in virtue of their coordinative functions, but often qualify for posterior empirical criticism as research advances. Accordingly, industry (...) bias does not only threaten existing conventions but may impede their empirically warranted improvement if they align with industry preferences. My empiricist account of standards of inductive risk avoids such a problem by asserting that conventional justification can be pragmatically warranted but has, in principle, only a provisional status. Methodological conventions, therefore, should not only be defended from preference-based infringements on their coordinative function but ought to be subjected to empirical criticism. (shrink)

Phenomenology in medicine’s main contribution is to present a first-person narrative of illness, in an effort to aid medicine in reaching an accurate disease diagnosis and establishing a personal relationship with patients whose lived experience changes dramatically when severe disease and disabling condition is confirmed. Once disease is diagnosed, the lived experience of illness is reconstructed into a living-with-disease narrative that medicine’s biological approach has widely neglected. Key concepts like health, sickness, illness, disease and the clinical encounter are being diversely (...) and ambiguously used, leading to distortions in socio-medical practices such as medicalization, pharmaceuticalization, emphasis on surveillance medicine. Current definitions of these concepts as employed in phenomenology of medicine are revised, concluding that more stringent semantics ought to reinforce an empirical phenomenological or postphenomenological approach. (shrink)

A principios de los años 80 se desató en Francia una polémica conocida como «el silencio de los intelectuales». En este texto abordaremos la singular postura de Michel Foucault al respecto. Para ello realizaremos una doble operación. Por un lado, planteamos la hipótesis siguiente: se pueden encontrar los fundamentos que sostienen su posición en los análisis que realizó sobre la parrhesía a partir de los años 80. En segundo lugar, realizaremos un recorrido por autores como Lyotard y Blanchot, quienes intervinieron (...) en dicha polémica con conocidos escritos, para mostrar las particularidades de la apuesta de Foucault. De esta manera, pretendemos, no solamente mostrar su original aportación al problema, sino señalar los desplazamientos respecto a la crítica del intelectual que había elaborado durante los años 70. (shrink)

Authoritative and comprehensive interpretation of the Scottish philosopher's writings on religion.