This case study focuses on Roger Boisjoly's attempt to prevent the launch of the Challenger and subsequent quest to set the record straight despite negative consequences. Boisjoly's experiences before and after the Challenger disaster raise numerous ethical issues that are integral to any explanation of the disaster and applicable to other management situations. Underlying all these issues, however, is the problematic relationship between individual and organizational responsibility. In analyzing this fundamental issue, this paper has two objectives: first, to demonstrate the (...) extent to which the ethical ambiguity that permeates the relationship between individual and organizational responsibility contributed to the Challenger disaster; second, to reclaim the meaning and importance of individual responsibility within the diluting context of large organizations. (shrink)

'China, by her resources and her population, is capable of being the greatest power in the world after the United States.' Bertrand Russell, The Problem of China In 1920 the philosopher Bertrand Russell spent a year in China as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Beijing, where his lectures on mathematical logic enthralled students and listeners, including Mao Tse Tung, who attended some of Russell's talks. Written at a time when China was largely regarded by the (...) West as backward and weak, The Problem of China sees Russell rise above the prejudices of his era and presciently assess China's past, present and future. Russell brings his analytical and insightful eye to bear on some fundamental aspects of China's history and politics, cautioning China against adopting a purely Western model of social and economic development, which he regarded as characterized by a combination of greed and militarism. Beginning with an overview of nineteenth-century Chinese history and considering China's relations with Japan and Russia, Russell then contrasts Chinese civilization with Western. He devotes a fascinating chapter to the character of the Chinese, which he argues is complex but ultimately defined by a 'pacific temper'. With uncanny foresight, Russell predicts China's resurgence, but only if it is able to establish an orderly government, promote industrial development under Chinese control and foster the spread of education. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new introduction by Bernard Linsky. (shrink)

This book, originally entitled _Why Men Fight_, is generally seen as the fullest expression of Russell's political philosophy. Russell argues that after the experience of the Great War the individualistic approach of traditional liberalism has reached its limits. Political theory must be based on the motivated forces of creativity and impulse rather than on competition. Both are best fostered in the family, in education, and in religion - each of which Russell proceeds to discuss. The ideas expressed (...) in _Principles of Social Reconstruction_ have greatly contributed to Russell's fame as a social critic and anti-war activist. The new introduction by Richard Rempel locates them in the context of Russell's other writings and show that neither his ideas nor his language have lost their force and topicality over the years. (shrink)

This book, originally entitled _Why Men Fight_, is generally seen as the fullest expression of Russell's political philosophy. Russell argues that after the experience of the Great War the individualistic approach of traditional liberalism has reached its limits. Political theory must be based on the motivated forces of creativity and impulse rather than on competition. Both are best fostered in the family, in education, and in religion - each of which Russell proceeds to discuss. The ideas expressed (...) in _Principles of Social Reconstruction_ have greatly contributed to Russell's fame as a social critic and anti-war activist. The new introduction by Richard Rempel locates them in the context of Russell's other writings and show that neither his ideas nor his language have lost their force and topicality over the years. (shrink)

This paper examines one of Russell’s views, held about the turn of the century, found in a short, unpublished manuscript entitled “Do Differences Differ?”. This work was one of Russell’s early attempts to focus solely on the issue of whether relations were universal or specific relations. Written before The Principles of Mathematics, the manuscript can serve as a step toward that work. To provide a framework for our discussion, we look at aspects of his yet earlier views on (...) this matter. In discussion of the manuscript itself, the present paper divides “Do Differences Differ?” into four distinct parts, discusses some issues and problems with its view, and ends with four distinct responses by Russell to its view. (shrink)

This article proposes a novel justification for privacy rights based on the relationship between privacy and the democratic devices of voting and deliberation. Through an epistemic conception of democracy, I show that privacy, defined as epistemic inaccessibility, justifies a reliance on the vote as the voluntary mechanism of revealing citizen preferences, even in the face of theoretically more responsive methods. Respecting the inaccessibility of citizens' views ensures that democratic governments remain reliant on, rather than merely responsive to, the wills of (...) their citizens. In addition, spaces of epistemic inaccessibility both motivate a basic form of deliberation between citizens and foster healthy deliberative practices by blunting the potentially corrosive effects of publicity. Privacy can thus be seen as a presupposition of core democratic institutions, and not just as an individual right possessed by members of a liberal‐democratic polity. This new conceptualization provides a powerful additional justification for privacy rights and suggests an alternative approach to enacting privacy‐protective measures. (shrink)

Abstract:Concepts of the everyday typically correlate with the normal and regular, while narratives of climate change are structured by predictions that exceed the normal. Since extreme events of climate change are not assimilable into the everyday, their destabilizing effects heighten destructive feedback loops mediated through fear. Developing psychic and social resilience necessary for re-routing climate change predictions from their direst outcomes thus requires transformed relations to the everyday. After analyzing how a default conception of the everyday hinders existential adaptation, I (...) draw on Jean-Luc Nancy, Alfred North Whitehead, and William James to develop a concept of the everyday that emphasizes precarity, multiplicity, and creativity as better fostering social and psychic resilience amidst destabilization. This different concept of the everyday is necessary for learning how to live meaningful daily lives not predicated on an illusion that all is well or the fantasy that climate change can be resolved through a perpetuation of current norms of the everyday. (shrink)

Browne 1 (this issue ) argues that what may appear to be a benevolent practice-disclosing the sex of a fetus to expecting parents who wish to know-is in fact an epistemically problematic and, as a result, ethically questionable medical practice. Browne worries that not only will the disclosure of fetal sex encourage sex-selective abortions (an issue we will not take up here), but also that it will convey a misleading and pernicious message about the relationship between sex and gender. More (...) specifically, she contends that the practice of disclosure is problematic because (1) it purports to establish the gender of the developing baby based on information about the baby's sex, whereas this is not a warranted inference because while sex is determined by biological factors, gender is determined by social factors and (2) it conflates (biological) sex with (social) gender or encourages such conflation or reduction and thereby promotes 'essentialistic' thinking about gender that is closely linked to sexism and social injustice. If (1) is true, then disclosing fetal sex amounts to misinforming or misleading prospective parents-and since misinforming patients is wrong, the act of disclosing is also wrong. However, beyond the wrongs of misinforming patients, the practice also perpetuates the harms associated with a rigidly gendered society through endorsing the message in (2), thus lending the authority of the medical profession to the gender-essentialist ideas that have underpinned, and continue to drive, sexism and social injustice. This analysis leads Browne to recommend that clinicians be prohibited from informing parents about the sex of their developing fetus. -/- We agree with Browne that gender essentialism-the notion that 'femaleness' and 'maleness' carve out distinct natural classes with innate, immutable properties-is not only a false metaphysical thesis, but also a pernicious idea insofar as the sexist attitudes it fosters motivate policies that systematically violate the human rights of women, as well as those of the LGBTQ community. However, we do not think that the disclosure of fetal sex misinforms prospective parents about the gender of their baby, nor do we believe that such disclosure presupposes or promotes gender essentialism properly understood. (shrink)

In this book, Winton Bastes discusses the relationships between freedom, progress, and human flourishing. Bates asserts that freedom enables individuals to flourish in different ways without colliding, fosters progress, allows for a growth of opportunities, and supports personal development by enabling individuals to exercise self-direction.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Being the Right Kind of Parent:Conceiving PeopleCamisha Russell (bio)Daniel Groll's Conceiving People makes one central claim regarding the ethics of using egg or sperm donations to create a child (that one intends to parent): "[P]arents should use an open donor because doing so puts their resulting child in a good position to satisfy the child's likely future interest in having genetic knowledge" (Groll 2021, 12, original italics).Amid myriad (...) thorny ethical questions surrounding assisted reproduction, Groll's decision to focus on a choice that intended parents in need of donor gametes must make before their future child is even conceived—a choice that is typically taken very seriously—makes a lot of sense. The question is live, rarely completely determined as a matter of policy or law, and, as Groll demonstrates, important to most donor-conceived people (and therefore to the families of which they are a part). For this increasing number of individuals and families, a cultural shift in how we think about open versus anonymous donors would have a significant (and as Groll argues, positive) impact.Groll's carefully built argument is important not only for the paths of ethical reasoning that it highlights, but for those common rationales it gently but firmly sets aside (e.g., the donor-conceived person's medical need to know their genetic history or the idea that knowledge of one's genetic origins is the best or only way to truly know oneself). Groll's work is attentive to the types of relationships that foster the emotional health of families, and it's grounded in the experiences and desires articulated by donor-conceived people themselves. For this reader, these are the book's greatest strengths, along with the fact that Groll is often quite funny in his examples, which makes the examples highly relatable.Of course, the challenge for philosophers in writing books of ethical importance for "laypeople" is to offer something an average educated adult can understand while addressing the more technical theoretical issues that matter to ethicists. I would expect Groll's text to satisfy ethicists because his definitions and distinctions are scrupulously clear, and he engages the existing philosophical literature well. As for laypeople, there are surely a few moments in which they will find themselves in the theoretical weeds, so to speak, but Groll has [End Page 193] successfully made the book largely modular, such that they should get a lot from just reading the chapters of direct interest (Groll 2021, 29).Chapter 2, "Keeping Secrets," is essential for intended parents seeking ethical guidance. Groll notes that professional opinion on donor conception has shifted from seeing nondisclosure of a child's donor-conceived status as a moral requirement (to protect privacy and avoid family stigma) to recommending disclosure. He then reviews standard arguments for disclosure: (1) the "profound importance" of known genetic origins to health identity formation, (2) the medical importance of knowing to whom you are (and are not) genetically related, and (3) the harm that keeping secrets can do to family members and family functioning. While Groll agrees with the latter two arguments, he introduces and emphasizes a new argument: the Intimacy argument, in which he convincingly argues that keeping a child's genetic origins secret "violates norms of intimacy by creating distance between parents and children that is at odds with the demands of intimacy in the parent-child relationship" (Groll 2021, 44, original italics). Though, in many ways, this chapter's argument is separate from the central argument for the use of open donors constructed in the rest of the book, I find it compelling and wonder whether it could hold up more of the open donor argument, placing less weight on the Significant Interest view that Groll introduces in the next chapter (and the concerns regarding bionormativity that emerge from that view).In the third chapter, Groll moves from disclosure to the information that's available to be disclosed. That is, it is one thing to commit to telling a child they were donor-conceived after conception. It is another to commit before conception to choosing a donor willing to be known to the future child when... (shrink)

The roots of social ecology are embedded in the fertile soil that was the Hawkesbury Diploma in Rural Extension, first offered in 1970, at what was then known as Hawkesbury Agricultural College and now the University of Western Sydney. The program changed its title to Graduate Diploma in Extension in 1974, and again in 1982, to Graduate Diploma in Social Communication. During this period the key features of the program remained the same: it was always highly experiential; it overtly fostered (...) the learner's growth in self esteem; and it espoused the goal of measuring learning against a yardstick of social relevance. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell boldly declared that all religions were “both untrue and harmful.” His concerns went beyond the historical inaccuracies of particular scriptures; he regarded even the fundamental beliefs, in God or eternal souls, as unfounded and implausible. And the church, he thought, had no final authority over morals, especially with its superstitious taboos. But apart from questioning its tenets, Russell wished to further expose religion as a dangerous social force – one that fostered anti‐intellectual thinking and discriminated against (...) its dissenters. For these reasons and more, he poured scorn on the holy institutions that were part of almost every society. But beneath that scorn, oddly, he had an ardent admiration of religious feelings or sentiments – a seriousness about life and a concern for universal good. But whether he continued to see those feelings as “religious” is a matter of some debate. (shrink)

Studies on rational conjecture, inference, and reckoning.

Bernard Williams identifies Hume as “in some ways an archetypal reconciler” who, nevertheless, displays “a striking resistance to some of the central tenets of what [Williams calls] ‘morality’”. This assessment, it is argued, is generally correct. There are, however, some significant points of difference in their views concerning moral responsibility. This includes Williams’s view that a naturalistic project of the kind that Hume pursues is of limited value when it comes to making sense of “morality’s” illusions about responsibility and blame. (...) It is, Williams maintains, only when we consider moral responsibility in genealogical terms, which gives attention to the importance of culture and history, that we can find a way of exposing the various prejudices and illusions of “the morality system”. Nevertheless, despite these differences, what Hume and Williams share is a fundamental commitment to provide a more “truthful” and “realistic” understanding of moral responsibility and our human ethical predicament. (shrink)

In 1962, the philosopher Richard Taylor used six commonly accepted presuppositions to imply that human beings have no control over the future. David Foster Wallace not only took issue with Taylor's method, which, according to him, scrambled the relations of logic, language, and the physical world, but also noted a semantic trick at the heart of Taylor's argument. _Fate, Time, and Language_ presents Wallace's brilliant critique of Taylor's work. Written long before the publication of his fiction and essays, Wallace's (...) thesis reveals his great skepticism of abstract thinking made to function as a negation of something more genuine and real. He was especially suspicious of certain paradigms of thought-the cerebral aestheticism of modernism, the clever gimmickry of postmodernism-that abandoned "the very old traditional human verities that have to do with spirituality and emotion and community." As Wallace rises to meet the challenge to free will presented by Taylor, we witness the developing perspective of this major novelist, along with his struggle to establish solid logical ground for his convictions. This volume, edited by Steven M. Cahn and Maureen Eckert, reproduces Taylor's original article and other works on fatalism cited by Wallace. James Ryerson's introduction connects Wallace's early philosophical work to the themes and explorations of his later fiction, and Jay Garfield supplies a critical biographical epilogue. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch offers a distinctive conception of moral psychology. She suggests that to develop a moral psychology is to develop what she calls a soul-picture; different philosophical moral psychologies are, as she puts it, “rival soul-pictures.” In this paper I clarify Murdoch’s generic notion of “soul-picture,” the genus of which, for example, Aristotle’s, Kant’s, Nietzsche’s, and Murdoch’s constitute rival species. Are all philosophical moral psychologies soul-pictures? If not, what are the criteria that a moral psychology must meet in order to (...) qualify as a soul-picture? I propose five key dimensions. A soul-picture provides a picture of the soul or self that is 1) holistic, 2) value-rich and psychologically realistic (for Murdoch these are intertwined), 3) reflexive, 4) therapeutic and 5) the articulation of which makes use of imaginative language. (shrink)

The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) is widely regarded as the greatest and most significant English-speaking philosopher and often seen as having had the most influence on the way philosophy is practiced today in the West. His reputation is based not only on the quality of his philosophical thought but also on the breadth and scope of his writings, which ranged over metaphysics, epistemology, morals, politics, religion, and aesthetics. The Handbook's 38 newly commissioned chapters are divided into six parts: Central (...) Themes; Metaphysics and Epistemology; Passion, Morality and Politics; Aesthetics, History, and Economics; Religion; Hume and the Enlightenment; and After Hume. The volume also features an introduction from editor Paul Russell and a chapter on Hume's biography. (shrink)

John Foster addresses the question: what is it to perceive a physical object? He rejects the view that we perceive such objects directly, and argues for a new version of the traditional empiricist account, which locates the immediate objects of perception in the mind. But this account seems to imply that we do not perceive physical objects at all. Foster offers a surprising solution, which involves embracing an idealist view of the physical world.

Bertrand Russell was one of the greatest logicians since Aristotle, and one of the most important philosophers of the past two hundred years. As we approach the 125th anniversary of the Nobel laureate's birth, his works continue to spark debate, resounding with unmatched timeliness and power. The Problems of Philosophy, one of the most popular works in Russell's prolific collection of writings, has become core reading in philosophy. Clear and accessible, this little book is an intelligible and stimulating (...) guide to those problems of philosophy which often mistakenly lead to its status as too lofty and abstruse for the lay mind. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics, steering the reader through his famous 1910 distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description," and introducing important theories of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Hume, Locke, Plato, and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike.With a new introduction by John Perry, this valuable work is a perfect introduction to the field and will continue to stimulate philosophical discussion as it has done for nearly forty years. (shrink)

The art of rational conjecture.--The art of drawing inferences.--The art of reckoning.

The Problems of Philosophy is a 1912 book by Bertrand Russell, in which Russell attempts to create a brief and accessible guide to the problems of philosophy. Focusing on problems he believes will provoke positive and constructive discussion, Russell concentrates on knowledge rather than metaphysics: If it is uncertain that external objects exist, how can we then have knowledge of them but by probability. There is no reason to doubt the existence of external objects simply because of (...) sense data. Russell guides the reader through his famous 1910 distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description and introduces important theories of Plato, Aristotle, René Descartes, David Hume, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and others to lay the foundation for philosophical inquiry by general readers and scholars alike. "In the following pages I have confined myself in the main to those problems of philosophy in regard to which I thought it possible to say something positive and constructive, since merely negative criticism seemed out of place. For this reason, theory of knowledge occupies a larger space than metaphysics in the present volume, and some topics much discussed by philosophers are treated very briefly, if at all. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell is concerned in this book with the foundations of knowledge. He approaches his subject through a discussion of language, the relationships of truth to experience and an investigation into how knowledge of the structure of language helps our understanding of the structure of the world. This edition includes a new introduction by Thomas Baldwin, Clare College, Cambridge.

This anthology is a thorough introduction to classic literature for those who have not yet experienced these literary masterworks. For those who have known and loved these works in the past, this is an invitation to reunite with old friends in a fresh new format. From Shakespeare's finesse to Oscar Wilde's wit, this unique collection brings together works as diverse and influential as The Pilgrim's Progress and Othello. As an anthology that invites readers to immerse themselves in the masterpieces of (...) the literary giants, it is must-have addition to any library. (shrink)

This brilliant and controversial work investigates the relationship between 'individual' and 'scientific' knowledge.

On a remarkably thin base of evidence – largely the spectral analysis of points of light – astronomers possess, or appear to possess, an abundance of knowledge about the structure and history of the universe. We likewise know more than might even have been imagined a few centuries ago about the nature of physical matter, about the mechanisms of life, about the ancient past. Enormous theoretical and methodological ingenuity has been required to obtain such knowledge; it does not invite easy (...) discovery by the untutored. It may seem odd, then, that we have so little scientific knowledge of what lies closest at hand, apparently ripe for easy discovery, and of greatest importance for our quality of life: our own conscious experience – our sensory experiences and pains, for example, our inner speech and imagery, our felt emotion. Scientists know quite a bit about human visual capacities and the brain processes involved in vision, much less about the subjective experience of seeing; a fair bit about the physiology of emotion, almost nothing about its phenomenology. Philosophers began in earnest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to describe and classify our patterns of conscious experience. John Locke, for instance, divided experienced “ideas” into those that arise from sensation and those that arise from reflection, and he began to classify them into. (shrink)

Academic literature addressing the topic of business ethics has paid little attention to cross-cultural studies of business ethics. Uncertainty exists concerning the effect of culture on ethical beliefs. The purpose of this research is to compare the ethical beliefs of managers operating in South Africa and Australia. Responses of 52 managers to a series of ethical scenarios were sought. Results indicate that despite differences in socio-cultural and political factors there are no statistically significant differences between the two groups regarding their (...) own ethical beliefs. Results thus support the view that culture has little or no impact on ethical beliefs. (shrink)

This book urges educational institutions to contemplate the harm they have caused to individual and society by their tragic suppression of the energy essential to the flowering of the mind's full potential. No more strident and uncompromising a voice is to be found on this topic than Whitehead's, in _The Aims of Education and Other Essays_. Walker's interpretation of these essays is set in a story of the lives of several teachers, education students, parents, and a professor. Whitehead's presence is (...) conjured among them as an uncomfortable and challenging gadfly. The philosophic depth is made widely accessible through the conversational language of imaginary journals and dialogues. This strategy also enables Walker to demonstrate the neglected power of dialogic pedagogy, and to suggest its centrality in the realization of Whiteheadian aims. The dialogues show a group of people curiously energized by an inquiry in which their stereotypical foundations are crumbling under the combined impact of focused dialogue and the brilliance of Whitehead's counterpoint. Their creative vitality of mind is shaken out of the narcosis of ingrained routines and secondhand ideas, and they discover the forgotten power of revitalizing outlook and action with an individual discernment of meaning, importance, and truth. They have immediately experienced the very quality of mind and its manner of cultivation Whitehead insists upon. This is intelligence enriching life with its full and interweaving spectrum of intellectual, aesthetic, ethical, and spiritual sensitivities. (shrink)

_'Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and acheived fewer results than any other branch of learning... I believe that the time has now arrived when this unsatisfactory state of affairs can be brought to an end'_ - _Bertrand Russell_ So begins _Our Knowledge of the Eternal World_, Bertrand Russell's classic attempt to show by means of examples, the nature, capacity and limitations of the logico-analytical method in philosophy.

John Foster presents a penetrating investigation into the question: what is it to perceive a physical object? Is perceptual contact with a physical object, he asks, something fundamental, or does it break down into further factors? If the latter, what are these factors, and how do they combine to secure the contact? For most of the book, Foster addressed these questions in the framework of a realist view of the physical world. But the arguments which thereby unfold - (...) arguments which undermine direct realism and establish a version of the sense-datum theory - lead to the conclusion that we do no perceive physical objects at all. The only way to avoid this conclusion is by abandoning physical realism for a form of idealism, and this is the option which Foster finally embraces. The Nature of Perception makes an important contrbution to the ongoing debate: it sheds fresh light on the traditional issues, and breathes new life into positions which most current philosophers assumeto be dead. (shrink)

Sales professionals have been frequent targets of ethical criticism. This paper reports on a survey on ethics of sales professionals in South Africa. The results revealed salespeoples views on controversial sales practices that involve direct monetary consequences; on practices that adversely affect customers, employers and competitors; and on sales peoples sensitization of ethical issues. Stealing from a competitor at a trade show was viewed as the most unethical of the scenarios, while phone sabotage and lying to a customer were held (...) to be the next most unethical scenarios. Analysis of the results lead to a discussion of the implications for sales management. Ethical perceptions were affected by financial considerations. Marketing and Sales Managers will have to review their approach to training in sales ethics as well as how sales professionals implement the market driven approach. (shrink)

An unabridged edition with updated footnotes and layout, to include: Recent Criticisms of "Consciousness" - Instinct and Habit - Desire and Feeling - Influence of Past History on Present Occurrences in Living Organisms - Psychological and Physical Causal Laws - Introspection - The Definition of Perception - Sensations and Images - Memory - Words and Meaning - General Ideas and Thought - Belief - Truth and Falsehood - Emotions and Will - Characteristics of Mental Phenomena.