In the present essay we explore a form of linguistic witchery (Wittgenstein) aimed at forging a sense of unity from incompatible visions of reality—namely, the formation of oxymoronic hybrids.

Two prevailing paradigms explain the diversity of sex-determining modes in reptiles. Many researchers, particularly those who study reptiles, consider genetic and environmental sex-determining mechanisms to be fundamentally different, and that one can be demonstrated experimentally to the exclusion of the other. Other researchers, principally those who take a broader taxonomic perspective, argue that no clear boundaries exist between them. Indeed, we argue that genetic and environmental sex determination in reptiles should be seen as a continuum of states represented by species (...) whose sex is determined primarily by genotype, species where genetic and environmental mechanisms coexist and interact in lesser or greater measure to bring about sex phenotypes, and species where sex is determined primarily by environment. To do otherwise limits the scope of investigations into the transition between the two and reduces opportunities to use studies of reptiles to advance understanding of vertebrate sex determination generally. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Early life stress precedes alterations to neuro-immune activation, which may mediate an increased risk for stress-related psychiatric disorders, potentially through alterations of central kynurenine pathway metabolites, the latter being relatively unexplored. We hypothesized that ELS in a non-human primate model would lead to a reduction of neuroprotective and increases of neurotoxic KP metabolites. Twelve adult female bonnet macaques reared under conditions of maternal variable foraging demand were compared to 27 age- and weight-matched non-VFD-exposed female controls. Baseline behavioral observations of social (...) affiliation were taken over a 12-week period followed by the first cerebrospinal fluid sample. Subjects were then either exposed to a 12-week repeated separation paradigm or assigned to a “no-RSP” condition followed by a second CSF. We used high-performance liquid chromatography for kynurenine, tryptophan, 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid, kynurenic acid, and anthranilic acid as a proxy for quinolinic acid determination. At baseline, social affiliation scores were reduced in VFD-reared versus control subjects. CSF log KYNA and log KYNA/KYN ratio were lower in VFD-reared versus control subjects. CSF log KYNA/KYN was positively correlated with CSF log ANTH in VFD only. Controlling for log KYNA/KYN, log ANTH was elevated in VFD-reared subjects versus controls. CSF log KYNA/KYN obtained post-RSP was positively correlated with mean social affiliation scores during RSP, specifically in VFD. ELS is associated with a reduced neuroprotective and increased neurotoxic pathway products. That the two contrasting processes are paradoxically correlated following ELS suggests a cross-talk between two opposing KP enzymatic systems. (shrink)

Literature addressing organizational ethical behavior has focused intensely on cognitive moral development, and more recently the automatic and natural moral inclinations. Research addressing the incapacity for moral reasoning, such as psychopathy, is rarely addressed in organizational behavior. Our first aim is to develop a construct definition for functional psychopathy that is appropriate for organizational science and theoretically consistent with the extensive previous clinical and criminal research in this field. Second, we apply two versions of a scale not previously used in (...) business research relative to moral judgments. This scale is a self-reported measure of functional psychopathy and is useful for its relationships with ethically relevant business decisions. Further, we examine which factors emerge as having the highest relationship with ethical decision making. Third, we seek to advance the usefulness of this construct by more precisely placing psychopathy within its nomological network. With these goals in mind, a combined sample of business school seniors participated in three studies. Findings indicate a significant influence of psychopathy over a range of ethically relevant business decisions, as well as negative correlations with factors of the Moral Approbation and the Moral Awareness scales. We conclude with directions for future research and considerations for practice. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to augment the business values literature by building upon research that claims individual value frames are subject to hierarchical re-scaling, value redefinition, and value removal or induction. In contrast to the person-organization cultural fit approach of value congruence, we postulate that the cognitive discomforts resulting from just-world needs, self-identity completion and self-concept maintenance, as moderated by contextual and dispositional variables, are resolved through the selection and accentuation of legitimating and justifying values that ultimately cast (...) the nature of the world as fair, complete central self-identities, and affirm the self. Research and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

An Introduction to Business Ethics explores the issues of individual and corporate responsibility in business, and integrates many contemporary and classic ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's rationale for supporting the development and approval of BiDil for heart failure specifically in black patients was based on under-powered, post hoc subgroup analyses of two relatively old trials , which were further complicated by substantial covariate imbalances between racial groups. Indeed, the only statistically significant difference observed between black and white patients was found without any adjustment for potential confounders in samples that were unlikely to have been adequately randomized. Meanwhile, because the accepted (...) baseline therapy for heart failure has substantially improved since these trials took place, their results cannot be combined with data from the more recent trial amongst black patients alone. There is therefore little scientific evidence to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients, and the FDA's rationale fails to consider the ethical consequences of recognizing racial categories as valid markers of innate biological difference, and permitting the development of group-specific therapies that are subject to commercial incentives rather than scientific evidence or therapeutic imperatives. This paper reviews the limitations in the scientific evidence used to support the approval of BiDil only for use in black patients; calls for further analysis of the V-HeFT I and II data which might clarify whether responses to H-I vary by race; and evaluates the consequences of commercial incentives to develop racialized medicines. We recommend that the FDA revise the procedures they use to examine applications for race-based therapies to ensure that these are based on robust scientific claims and do not undermine the aims of the 1992 Revitalization Act. (shrink)

In this paper our aim is to augment the value-congruency literature by demonstrating the dynamics of business value structures. The relationship between cognitive discomforts and value restructuring is examined by applying self-affirmation theory. Subjects (N = 115) were randomly assigned either to the treatment group (n = 69) or control group (n = 46). Those subjects in the treatment group were tasked with deciding between two different organizational re-structuring options that involved downsizing. The values of job-entitlement, and obligations to the (...) disadvantaged shifted in emphasis in a direction that legitimated and justified the lay-off decision. The value of economic nationalism remained unchanged. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This paper explores how whiteness as the transcendental norm shapes the meaning structure of Black-being-in-the-world. If home is a place, a site, a dwelling of acceptance, where one is allowed to feel safe, to relax, to let one’s guard down, then being Black in white supremacist America is anathema to being at home for Black people. Indeed, to be Black is to be a stranger, something “strange,” “scary,” “dangerous,” an “outsider.” To be Black within white America belies what it means (...) to dwell, to reside, to rest. In other words, one’s sense of racialized Black embodiment remains on guard, unsettled, hyperalert. Phenomenologically, there is a profound sense of alienation, where one’s racialized body is ostracized and shunned. On this score, I examine, within the mundane context of an elevator, how the dynamics of intersubjectivity and sociality are strained through the dynamics of the white gaze. The white gaze, among other things, functions to police the meaning of the Black body and attempts to de-subjectify Black embodiment. In this way, the only real perspective is white. Black bodies are deemed devoid of a perspective on the world as there is no subjectivity, no sense of agential meaning making. One might say that Black people, on this view, constitute an essence, a typified mode of being. Unlike the existentialist thesis where existence precedes essence, Black people are locked into an objecthood, a fungible and fixed essence. This racial and racist myth is what, for Schutz, would collapse the importance that he places on intersubjectivity and sociality. Indeed, within this paper, I delineate the threatening, necro-political dimensions of whiteness that I experienced after writing the well-known article “Dear White America.” That experience cemented, for me, and for many other readers, what it means to occupy the residence of whiteness, an abode that can take one’s life in the blink of an eye. The experience of the racialized stranger means walking a tightrope, a precarious situation where one flirts with death, where one’s body is deemed hypersexual, inferior, frightening, and monstrous. Based upon this construction, the white body is deemed the site of virtue, safety, deliverer, protector of all things white and pure. Think here of “the white man’s burden” or the idea of “white manifest destiny.” Stain, blemish, taint, and defilement are indelible markers of the stranger. And based upon the logics of racial purity, one must extinguish the “vermin,” the “criminals,” the “rapists.” While I don’t explore this within the paper, Schutz scholars will immediately recognize the genocidal implications of what would have been at stake for Schutz had he not escaped Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic gaze and his Anschluss of Austria. My sense is that Schutz would have understood not just the horrors of white racism but would appreciate the necessity of theorizing the need to rethink home as existentially capacious and intersubjectively vibrant. I conclude this paper by thinking through the concept of “breakdown”, delineating its spatial, phenomenological, and subjectively embodied implications. Breakdown, as I use the term, upends forms of white racialized habituation, creating possible embodied psychic space for what I term un-suturing, which involves undoing the machinations of white safety in the face of alterity, where the stranger invokes wonder and self-critique. (shrink)

This anthology brings together many of the more significant contributions to Cartesian scholarship, some of which reach far back as the 1930s. Altogether, there are well over 100 detailed analyses and discussions of salient aspects of Descartes' Promethean legacy. Because Descartes intended his system to embrace not only philosophy but also a complete scientific corpus, this collection covers both philosophical issues and scientific views: Volume 1 is devoted to questions of Cartesian Method and epistemology; Volumes 2 and 3 concentrate on (...) his metaphysics; and Volume 4 discusses Descartes' scientific views and achievements. The lucidity and originality of the essays, a number of which are already classics of Cartesian scholarship, will ensure that this anthology becomes a standard in Cartesian philosophy. An invaluable resource, Rene;e Descartes provides a large variety of introductions, analyses, criticisms, and appraisals of the problems which preoccupied Descartes and the solutions he propounded. (shrink)

For fifty years, Willard Van Orman Quine's books and articles have stimulated intense debate in the fields of logic and the philosophy of language. Many scholars in fact, regard Quine as the greatest living English-speaking philosopher; yet his views remain widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. This book provides the first major explication and defense of Quine's systematic philosophy and is ideally suited for use as a required or supplementary text in a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy and (...) linguistics.The book explores the far-reaching implications of Quine's views on language for contemporary analytic philosophy. It is unique in providing a lucid and rich description and reconstruction of the historical context from which Quine's work grew, focusing in particular on the role that Russell and Wittgenstein played in shaping the problems inherited by Quine. It presents Quine's difficult later views in an accessible fashion, bringing out as no other study has the very radical nature of his position. One of the book's highlights is its careful examination and assessment of Tarski's theory of truth as it relates to the traditions of Russell and Wittgenstein and to Quine's own philosophy.George D. Romanos took his Ph.D. in philosophy under George D. W. Berry and Paul T. Sagal at Boston University. This book grew out of his dissertation with the active criticism and support of Quine himself. (shrink)

The Consequentialist Scale (Robinson, 2012) [89] assesses the endorsement of consequentialist and deontological moral beliefs. This study empirically investigated the application of the Greek translation of the Consequentialist Scale in a sample of native Greek speakers. Specifically, 415 native Greek speakers completed the questionnaire. To uncover the underlying structure of the 10 items in the Consequentialist Scale, an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted. The results revealed a three-factor solution, where the deontology factor exhibited the same structure as the original (...) work by Robinson (2012) [89], while the original consequentialism factor split into two separate factors. Significant Pearson's r correlations were observed between age and responses to the Consequentialist Scale. Separate EFAs were conducted for two age groups based on a medial split: younger (36 years old or less) and older (more than 36 years old). Interestingly, the younger group exhibited a two-factor solution with the same structure as the original work, while the older group showed a three-factor solution. A hierarchical k-means cluster analysis revealed that the cluster of participants who scored higher in deontology compared to consequentialism primarily consisted of older participants, whereas the two other clusters comprised of younger participants exhibited the reverse pattern. Neither gender nor previous experience with philosophy significantly affected scores on the Consequentialist Scale. Overall, our study provides evidence that the Consequentialist Scale is suitable for use in the Greek population. (shrink)

This essay is meant to shed light on a discourse that spans centuries and includes different voices. To be aware of such trans-textual resonances can add a level of historical understanding to the reading of philosophical texts. Specifically, we intend to demonstrate how the notion of the ineffable Dao 道, prominently expressed in the Daodejing 道德經, informs a long discourse on incongruent names in distinction to a mainstream paradigm that demands congruity between names and what they designate. Thereby, we trace (...) the development of the idea of the ineffable Dao quite differently from modern mystical interpretations. We show how, in an early Chinese context, it first gives rise to a sociopolitical critique of the incongruity underlying socially constructed names in the Zhuangzi 莊子, then to a discourse on the incongruity between moral virtues and names in Xuanxue 玄學 philosophy, and eventually to Sengzhao’s 僧肇 claim that a perceived congruence of names with things does not entail actual congruence between names and reality. (shrink)

Georges J. D. Moyal - Deux notes sur l' «imparfaite science» du geometre athee - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 277-300 Deux notes sur l'« imparfaite science » du géomètre athée Georges J. D. Moyal Deux questions. La Ve Méditation de Descartes vise à démontrer que l'existence d'un Dieu vérace est la condition nécessaire de toute science. En effet, Descartes y écrit ceci : « . . . je remarque que la (...) certitude de toutes les autres choses en dépend si absolument [sc. de l'existence de Dieu], que sans cette connaissance il est impossible de pouvoir jamais rien savoir parfaitement. » Ce qui le mène, bien entendu, d'abord à reconnaître que « . . . si j'ignorais qu'il y eût un Dieu [ . . . ] je n'aurais jamais une vraie et certaine science d'aucune chose que ce soit, mais seulement de vagues et inconstantes opinions » et par là même, à refuser ensuite cette parfaite science au géomètre athée : « Or, qu'un athée puisse connaître clairement que les trois angles d'un triangle sont égaux à deux droits, je ne le nie pas ; mais je maintiens seulement qu'il ne le connaît pas par une vraie et certaine science, parce que toute connaissance qui peut être rendue douteuse ne doit pas être appelée science . . . » Il faut reconnaître qu'il y a à nos yeux, aujourd'hui, quelque chose de surprenant à ce que le géomètre athée se voie ainsi refuser cette parfaite science.. (shrink)

What is the significance of hermeneutics at the intersections of ethics, politics and the arts and humanities? In this book, George -/- - Discusses how hermeneutics offers ways to develop an ethics - Makes the case for the relevance of contemporary hermeneutics for current scholarly discussions of responsibility within continental European philosophy - Contributes a new, ethically inflected approach to current debate within post-Gadamerian hermeneutics - Extends his analysis to the practice of living and covers animals, art, literature and (...) translation -/- Few topics have received broader attention within contemporary philosophy than that of responsibility. Theodore George makes a novel case for a distinctive sense of responsibility at stake in the hermeneutical experiences of understanding and interpretation. -/- George argues for the significance of this hermeneutical responsibility in the context of our relations with things, animals and others, as well as political solidarity and the formation of solidarities through the arts, literature and translation. (shrink)

L'absence d'une analyse quelconque du concept de vérité a de quoi surprendre dans un discours qui se propose de dire à quelles conditions s'obtient cette vérité. C'est pourtant bien de cette carence que souffrent les Méditations. A l'exception d'une brève allusion, dans la Cinquième Méditation, attribuable d'ailleurs à Clerselier, et dans une traduction remaniée par lui mais non approuvée par Descartes, le mot « vérité » n'y est défini nulle part.

Contrairement à ce que peut suggérer l ’ expression de lumière naturelle lorsqu ’ il en est question, le cogito n ’ est pas une vérité de la raison. La raison est révoquée en doute au moment où il survient et ne saurait donc en assurer la vérité. Ce rôle est dévolu à la réflexivité de l ’ acte par lequel la pensée se constitue son propre objet lorsqu ’ elle affirme Je suis : immédiatement accessible à elle-même, c ’ (...) est une chose dans le monde, et par conséquent un existant, qu ’ elle saisit ainsi, non pas une représentation. Le cogito est ainsi inextricablement impliqué dans un acte certes, mais cet acte n ’ est pas le performatif qu ’ a voulu en faire Hintikka. La proposition qui l ’ exprime s ’ apparente en fait à une contingente : selon l ’ analyse ici proposée, il lui est en effet possible d ’ être fausse. (shrink)

Il est une question fondamentale dont il semble pourtant qu’elle n’ait pas été posée: celle de savoir ce qui fait que le cogito soit effectivement un principe métaphysique, c’est-à-dire une vérité première. Il semble aussi que ce qui d’ordinaire tient lieu de réponse à cette question dans l’esprit des lecteurs de Descartes, c’est le sentiment vague qu’il s’agit là de la première vérité qui surgisse après la dévastation laissée par le doute universel de la Première Méditation, ou peut-être qui surgisse (...) au cœur de ce doute, puisque le doute ne s’autodétruit que pour faire place à ego sumOr s’en tenir à cela pour justifier le statut de principe métaphysique du cogito, c’est confondre priorité chronologique et primauté métaphysique ou épistémique: en effet, qu’y aurait-il dans le seul fait de se présenter ainsi qui assure que le cogito doive fonder d’autres connaissances, d’éventuelles sciences? Qu’est-ce qui empêcherait aussi qu’il ne soit lui-même assujetti à d’autres connaissances, plus fondamentales, et dont le méditant ne se serait peut-être pas encore aperçu? Il est vrai que cette confusion est compréhensible, puisque la primauté métaphysique du cogito coïncide effectivement avec sa priorité dans l’ordre des connaissancesMais dans le doute ambiant, celle-ci n’est en réalité qu’un effet de celle-là, et le simple fait de constater l’une ne revient pas à être assuré de l’autre. Il ne peut s’agir donc que d’une coïncidence, et la question se pose dès lors de savoir comment se traduit sa primauté, c’est-à-dire comment doivent se concevoir ses rapports avec le reste de nos éventuelles connaissances. (shrink)

Si elles ne manquent pas de bienveillance, les Quatrièmes Objections formulées par Antoine Arnauld comptent parmi les plus rigoureuses et les plus pénétrantes qui aient été opposées aux Méditations de Descartes. On sait d'ailleurs en quelle haute et chaleureuse estime Descartes tint, dès lors, le jeune théologien.

Le seul fait qu'il surgisse après que tout a été révoqué en doute ne suffit pas à faire du cogito-plus précisément, de ego sum - un principe métaphysique, une vérité première: la chose doit être démontrée. Or cette démonstration est bien là, dans la II e Méditation. Elle se fait en deux temps: y participent (a) l'expérience du morceau de cire et (b) le bref recours à l'imagination (AT VII, 27-28; IX/1, 21-22) par lequel Descartes vise à déterminer s'il est (...) davantage qu'une res cogitans. Ainsi s'explique la rémanence dans le texte de cette tentative que Descartes qualifie d' «erreur», et qui aura pu paraître redondante à ses lecteurs. (shrink)

A biogenetic structural explanation is offered for the cross‐culturally common mystical experience called portalling, the experience of moving from one reality to another via a tunnel, door, aperture, hole, or the like. The experience may be evoked in shamanistic and meditative practice by concentration upon a portalling device (mirror, mandala, labyrinth, skrying bowl, pool of water, etc.). Realization of the portalling experience is shown to be fundamental to the phenomenology underlying multiple reality cosmologies in traditional cultures and is explained in (...) terms of radical re‐entrainment of the neurological systems mediating experience in the brain. Phenomenological experiments with mirror portalling devices from both the Tibetan and the Tsimshian religious traditions are reported. (shrink)

If the task of a post-Cartesian psychoanalysis is understood as one of exploring the patterns of emotional experience that organize subjective life, one can recognize that this task is pursued within a framework of delimiting assumptions concerning the ontology of the person. In this paper, we discuss these assumptions as they have emerged in the thinking of four major philosophers on whom we have drawn: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Martin Heidegger. Our purpose in what follows is to (...) describe essential ideas of these various thinkers and to identify the formative personal contexts within which their key insights into human life took form. By psychologically contextualizing philosophical assumptions, we hope to make progress toward discerning the particularization of scope that may be associated with these assumptions, and hence to begin a further opening up of the horizons of understanding that inevitably encircle psychoanalytic inquiry. (shrink)

Some recent discussions of corporate loyalty have found it misguided, while others see it as crucial for financial success. Thereis also disagreement over the nature of loyalty. This article analyzes the concept of loyalty, arguing that it is neither a duty nor a virtue(although it has overlaps with those categories), but a passion related to various virtues (and vices). Contrary to standard accounts ofcapitalism, loyalty does not necessarily oppose self-interest. Furthermore, corporations can and should be communities, andinsofar as they are, (...) they are proper objects for loyalty. If corporations are not communities, then loyalty to them cannot exist. (shrink)

In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we created and implemented from November 2020 to February 2021 a monthly educational pilot program of philosophical management of stress based on Science, Humanism and Epicurean Pragmatism, which was offered to employees of 26 municipalities in the Prefecture of Attica, Greece. The program named “Philosophical Distress Management Operation System” (Philo.Di.M.O.S.) is novel and unique in its kind, as it combines a certain Greek philosophical tradition (Epicurean) that concurs with modern scientific knowledge. The (...) program was designed to be implemented in a period of crisis; therefore, it used a fast-paced, easy to learn and practice philosophical approach to stress management, based on cognitive psychotherapy. The philosophical approach to stress management has the advantage that it can be offered to most people, regardless of age and educational level. The pilot program was effective in achieving its objectives, shown by statistical comparisons of the trainees’ responses to anonymous questionnaires before and after the month-long training. The successful Philo.Di.M.O.S. program, thus, based on a solid scientific and philosophical basis, offers a paradigm of stress management during crises and could be useful in Greece and internationally. (shrink)

A senior level capstone design experience has been developed and offered with a particular emphasis on many of the professional issues raised in Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) Engineering Criterion IV. The course has sought to develop student awareness of the ethical foundation of the engineering profession, the global and societal framework within which engineers practice, and the environmental impact on engineering. The capstone design course also focused upon improving the technical communications skills of the graduating senior class (...) with both extensive instruction in writing and multiple workshops dealing with the art of making an effective oral presentation. The effectiveness of the design course was assessed using Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating training programs. (shrink)

The Fifth Element (1997) is a French science-fiction film in English, directed and co-written by Luc Besson. The title and the plot of the film refer to a central notion of Greek philosophy, that is, pemptousia, or quintessence. Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and others, were convinced that all natural beings – in fact, nature itself – consist in four primary imperishable elements or essences (ousiai), i.e., fire, earth, water, and air. To these four, Aristotle added aether, a (...) fifth essence (pemptousia). The introduction of aether gave birth to a great tradition in late Antique and Medieval philosophy, and eventually it came to signify not an additional primary element, but the core-essence of all beings, their fundamental ontological structure. Besson’s film draws its inspiration on this philosophical tradition but its cinematographic rendering of the concept of Quintessence is typical of the contemporaneous views on the core characteristics of matters. The modernity that stimulates the film is equally anti-transcendentalist and anti-essentialist. Thus, the fifth element of the film is existentially personified and genderized making the traditional philosophical significance of the term to be adjusted by modernity in an immanent and temporal context where in addition aesthetics plays a crucial role. (shrink)