ABSTRACT Unexpected but vivid and compelling memories are a wide‐spread experience in late life. The experience has often been described in literature, and in recent years has been the object of extensive gerontological research under the label ‘life review’. Such memories often include a reversal of judgment about a past act, relationship, event, etc. What earlier was judged to be so is, in the retrospect of late life, judged not to have been so after all. This presents a question: which (...) judgment—the earlier or the later—has better epistemological credentials in such cases? Some obvious possible answers are considered and rejected. It would seem that the issue is not resolvable on epistemological grounds. A parallel dilemma seems to appear in other dimensions of experience. An example from aesthetic experience is briefly considered. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline some of the connections between the literatures of organizational storytelling, spirituality in the workplace, organizational culture, and authentic leadership. We suggest that leader storytelling that integrates a moral and spiritual component can transform an organizational culture so members of the organization begin to feel connected to a larger community and a higher purpose. We specifically discuss how leader role modeling in authentic storytelling is essential in developing an ethically and spiritually based organizational culture. However, we (...) also acknowledge a potential dark side to leader storytelling. Implications for authentic storytelling research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Over the past fifteen years there has been a considerable amount of debate concerning what theoretical population dynamic models tell us about the nature of natural selection and drift. On the causal interpretation, these models describe the causes of population change. On the statistical interpretation, the models of population dynamics models specify statistical parameters that explain, predict, and quantify changes in population structure, without identifying the causes of those changes. Selection and drift are part of a statistical description of population (...) change; they are not discrete, apportionable causes. Our objective here is to provide a definitive statement of the statistical position, so as to allay some confusions in the current literature. We outline four commitments that are central to statisticalism. They are: 1. Natural Selection is a higher order effect; 2. Trait fitness is primitive; 3. Modern Synthesis (MS)-models are substrate neutral; 4. MS-selection and drift are model-relative. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis provoked an organizational ethics dilemma: how to develop ethical pandemic policy while upholding our organizational mission to deliver relationship- and patient-centered care. Tasked with producing a recommendation about whether healthcare workers and essential personnel should receive priority access to limited medical resources during the pandemic, the bioethics department and survey and interview methodologists at our institution implemented a deliberative approach that included the perspectives of healthcare professionals and patient stakeholders in the policy development process. Involving (...) the community more, not less, during a crisis required balancing the need to act quickly to garner stakeholder perspectives, uncertainty about the extent and duration of the pandemic, and disagreement among ethicists about the most ethically supportable way to allocate scarce resources. This article explains the process undertaken to garner stakeholder input as it relates to organizational ethics, recounts the stakeholder perspectives shared and how they informed the triage policy developed, and offers suggestions for how other organizations may integrate stakeholder involvement in ethical decision-making as well as directions for future research and public health work. (shrink)

I argue that some perceptual experiences are vague. To do so, I identify a characteristic feature of vagueness and show that some perceptual experiences have this feature. These include blurry experiences, experiences of color under low lighting, and experiences of number, as in the case of the speckled hen. The conclusion that these experiences are vague has two noteworthy consequences. First, it presses us to see whether and how existing theories of vagueness can be extended to perceptual experience. Second, it (...) sheds light on several puzzles in the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

Ethics training has been highlighted as essential for building and fostering business ethics in organizations. National and international trends show that over 40% of businesses have some form of business ethics training. We use data collected from 199 firms to examine the presence of ethics training in top Canadian companies and found that the presence varied by region and firm size, and that the Canadian average (35%) lags other countries.

In evolutionary biology changes in population structure are explained by citing trait fitness distribution. I distinguish three interpretations of fitness explanations—the Two‐Factor Model, the Single‐Factor Model, and the Statistical Interpretation—and argue for the last of these. These interpretations differ in their degrees of causal commitment. The first two hold that trait fitness distribution causes population change. Trait fitness explanations, according to these interpretations, are causal explanations. The last maintains that trait fitness distribution correlates with population change but does not cause (...) it. My defense of the Statistical Interpretation relies on a distinctive feature of causation. Causes conform to the Sure Thing Principle. Trait fitness distributions, I argue, do not. *Received July 2009; revised October 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy/Institute for the History, Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, Victoria College, 91 Charles Street West, Toronto, ON M5S 1K7, Canada; e‐mail: denis[email protected]. (shrink)

This paper explores how sustainability has been integrated into and communicated in Canadian Master’s of Business Administration programs. We content analyzed university, business school, and MBA program mission and values statements; communicated strategic priorities; and relevant academic calendar content, as well as sustainability rankings and select media depictions of sustainable MBA programs and practices. We explore the potential for greenwashing practices in relation to the integration of sustainability in business education. We found some evidence of a decoupling between university and/or (...) business school mission and claims, and MBA policies and practices. We conclude with a discussion of our findings, study limitations and some relevant implications for academia. (shrink)

How people react emotionally to the positive or negative events that they experience in their lives depends in part on whether particular outcomes are perceived to be deserved or undeserved. For ex...

A simple propositional operator is introduced which generalizes pairwise equivalence and occurs widely in mathematics. Attention is focused on a replacement theorem for this notion of generalized equivalence and its use in producing further generalized equivalences.

Whenever justification of classroom punishment has been attempted it has usually been on grounds that punishment acts either appropriately pedagogically, teaching students how to behave morally, or is a necessary evil that enables the practical running of the school so that it may carry out its educational business. By itself the first justification leaves punishment in schools as only an extension of wider social attitudes about the virtue of punishing perceived moral wrongdoing, rather than providing any distinct argument for punishment (...) specific to the special circumstances of the school. By highlighting an entanglement between the moral and the conventional, and between discipline and punishment, within the context of the school, I shall argue that the essentially contested nature of education and its purpose, and the related question of the school’s suitability as a venue for it, means that the school’s most promising defence of its use of punishment—that punishment of students might somehow be necessary for enabling the important educative business of the school—becomes undone. Schooling and education are not necessarily synonymous, and as schools provide only one vision of education—and this vision is contestable—then upholding the business of any one school in order for it to achieve its particular unsettled and disputed purpose is not a morally sufficient reason to coerce a student’s compliance through regimes of ‘harm intended as harm’. (shrink)

Psychological individualism is motivated by two taxonomic principles: (i) that psychological states are individuated by their causal powers, and (ii) that causal powers supervene upon intrinsic physiological state. I distinguish two interpretations of individualism--the 'orthodox' and the 'alternative'--each of which is consistent with these motivating principles. I argue that the alternative interpretation is legitimately individualistic on the grounds that it accurately reflects the actual taxonomic practices of bona fide individualistic sciences. The classification of homeobox genes in developmental genetics provides an (...) illustration. When applied to the taxonomy of psychological kinds, alternative individualism has some surprising consequences. In particular, externalist taxonomies of thought are consistent with the alternative interpretation, and hence consistent with individualism. I conclude, on this basis, that the individualism/externalism dispute which has long preoccupied philosophy of psychology is an empty one. (shrink)

According to a prominent view of evolutionary theory, natural selection and the processes of development compete for explanatory relevance. Natural selection theory explains the evolution of biological form insofar as it is adaptive. Development is relevant to the explanation of form only insofar as it constrains the adaptation-promoting effects of selection. I argue that this view of evolutionary theory is erroneous. I outline an alternative, according to which natural selection explains adaptive evolution by appeal to the statistical structure of populations, (...) and development explains the causes of adaptive evolution at the level of individuals. Only together can a statistical theory of selection and a mechanical theory of development explain why populations of organisms comprise individuals that are adapted to their conditions of existence. (shrink)

Objections to functional explanations of awareness assert that although functional systems may be adequate to explain behavior, including verbal behavior consisting of assertions of awareness by an individual, they cannot provide for the existence of phenomenal awareness. In this paper, a theory of awareness is proposed that counters this assertion by incorporating two advances: (1) a formal definition of representation, expressed in a functional notation: Newell's Representation Law, and 2) the introduction of real time into the analysis of awareness. This (...) leads to the definition of phenomenal awareness as existing whenever an object contains an autonomously updated configuration satisfying the Representation Law with respect to some aspects of its environment. The relational aspect of the Representation Law permits the development of multiple levels of awareness, which provides for the existence of illusions and hallucinations, and permits the identification of a new measure, accuracy of awareness . The relational perspective also permits the incorporation of referential concepts into the framework. Qualia can then be identified with referentially opaque elements of awareness. The functional form of the Representation Law is linked to neurophysiology and the underlying phenomena of chemistry and physics by phenomena involving activity-dependent connectivity. (shrink)