Recent research suggests that committing to corporate social responsibility (CSR) can induce moral licensing among employees, resulting in unethical behaviors. We extend this line of research and develop a theoretical framework to study how CSR influences managerial decision-making in crisis management. We test this theory in the context of product recall remediation. We examine under what circumstances CSR induces morally consistent or morally dubious recall remedial decisions and factors moderating this effect. We focus on two product recall remedial decisions that (...) differ in ambiguity—full versus partial compensation and proactive versus passive recall. We predict and show that a company’s strong prior CSR performance increases the likelihood of full compensation but decreases the likelihood of a proactive recall. This finding suggests that CSR can induce moral licensing behavior at the highest corporate level when a decision is morally difficult to diagnose. Further analysis reveals that consumer harm and institutional ownership moderate the relationship between CSR and these two remediation strategies. Together, our findings provide important insights into when CSR leads to moral licensing in crisis remediation and how the link can be mitigated, and thus shed light on when CSR yields consistent and meaningful ethical business decisions. (shrink)

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

The process-dissociation procedure was used to estimate the influence of spatial and form-based processing in the Simon task. Subjects made manual responses to the direction of arrows . The results provide evidence that the form and spatial location of a single stimulus can have functionally independent effects on performance. They also indicate the existence of two kinds of automaticity—an associative component that reflects prior S-R mappings and a nonassociative component that reflects the correspondence between stimulus and response codes.

The latest offering in the highly successful Oxford Readings in Philosophy series, The Philosophy of Action features contributions from twelve leading figures in the field, including: Robert Audi, Michael Bratman, Donald Davidson, Wayne Davis, Harry Frankfurt, Carl Ginet, Gilbert Harman, Jennifer Hornsby, Jaegwon Kim, Hugh McCann, Paul Moser, and Brian O'Shaughnessy. Alfred Mele provides an introductory essay on the topics chosen and the questions they deal with. Topics addressed include intention, reasons for action, and the nature and explanation (...) of internal action. A selective bibliography is included as a guide to further reading. Comprehensive and up-to-date, this collection provides an accessible and stimulating introduction for readers interested in the philosophy of action, the philosophy of mind, and moral philosophy. (shrink)

Whitehead's magnum opus is as important as it is difficult. It is the only work in which his metaphysical ideas are stated systematically and completely, and his metaphysics are the heart of his philosophical system as a whole.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Choice and Virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics ALFRED R. MELE COM~rNTATORS ON THr Nicomachean Ethics (NE) have long been laboring under the influence of a serious misunderstanding of one of the key terms in Aristotle's moral philosophy and theory of action. This term is prohairesis (choice), the importance of which is indicated by Aristotle's assertions that choice is the proximate efficient cause of action (NE 6. 1139a31--32) (...) and that in which "the essential elements of virtue and character" lie (NE 8. x163a2'~-23). The accepted view is that Aristotle employs two importantly different notions of choice in the NE, one on which the term refers exclusively to means or things which are pros (toward, related to)' ends and another on which it does not have this reference? This "two notion" interpretation is motivated by the following three considerations: i. Aristotle's good or virtuous agent is said (NE 2. 11o5a28-33, cf. NE 6. 1144ax8-2o ) to choose actions for their own sakes; but, according to the This paper is derived in part from a chapter of my doctoral dissertation, which was submitted to the University of Michigan in January of 1979. 1 would like to express my gratitttde to the chairman of my dissertation committee, Nicholas P. White, for his comments and criticisms on the relevant sections during the preparation of my dissertation and to theJHP's anonymous reviewers for their helpful criticisms and queries. ' It has often been pointed out that things which are pros an end are not necessarily "means," in the ordinary sense of the word. E.g., constituents of an end are pros the end, but they are not means to it. See, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics, Book 6, trans. Leonard H. G. Greenwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19o9), pp. 46-47, 53ff.: and John M. Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 1o-22. ' Among the many proponents of this "two notion" interpretation are William D. Ross and Donald J. Allan. See Ross, Aristotle, 5th ed. (London: Methuen, t953), p. 2oo. See Allan, The Philosophy of Aristotle, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 197o), p. 132; idem, "Aristotle 's Account of the Origin of Moral Principles," Xlth International Congress of Philosophy 12 (1953):124; idem, "The Practical Syllogism," in Autour d'Aristote, Studies for A. Mansion (Louvain : Publications Universitaires, 1955). Richard Sorabji, in "Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue" (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 74 l t973-74]:t t6), says that he has noticed sixteen commentators who take this view. [4o5] 406 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY so-called formal account of prohairesis (NE 3. 2-3, 6. 2), the object of choice is what has been decided upon by deliberation (bouleuais), and what is decided upon by deliberation is a "means" to an end. 2. Aristotle says that choice is "closely bound up with virtue" and "discriminates characters better than actions do" (1 1t lb5; cf. t i lob3t, 1117a 5, 1163a22, 1t64bi); but commentators argue that these claims about choice are false unless choice is "of ends." 3. Though Aristotle holds that the impetuous akrat~s (incontinent agent) does not deliberate (e.g., t 152a 18-19), he says that the akrat~s' choice is good (1152ax5--17; cf. l l51a5-- 7, 29--32); and this appears to contradict his position in Book 3 that the object of choice is what is decided upon by deliberation, s In this paper I shall show that only one (philosophically significant) notion ofprohairesis is employed in the NE, namely, the notion developed in the "formal account" of deliberation and choice (3- 2-3, 6. 2), according to which choice is specifically of things which are pros ends. This point has several interesting applications. For example, it makes it easier to find in Aristotle (as I shall briefly explain) a comprehensive theory of practical reasoning or inference rather than several unconnected accounts of what practical inference is like in different types of cases; and it is helpful in clarifying what is involved in the evaluation of character on Aristotle's view (see Sec. ~). However, though I do think that the main point to be made... (shrink)

Donald Winch completes the intellectual history of political economy begun in Riches and Poverty. A major theme addressed in both volumes is the 'bitter argument between economists and human beings' provoked by Britain's industrial revolution. Winch takes the argument from Mill's contributions to the 'condition-of-England' debate in 1848 through to the work on economic wellbeing of Alfred Marshall. The writings of major figures of the period are examined in a sequence of interlinked essays that ends with consideration of (...) the twentieth-century fate of the debate between utilitarians and romantics in the hands of Leavis, Williams and Thompson. Donald Winch is one of Britain's most distinguished historians of ideas, and Wealth and Life brings to fruition a long-standing interest in the history of those intellectual pursuits that have shaped the understanding of Britain as an industrial society, and continue to influence cultural responses to the moral questions posed by economic life. (shrink)

A civic science curriculum is advocated. We discuss practical mechanisms for (and highlight the possible benefits of) addressing the relationship between scientific knowledge and civic responsibility coextensively with rigorous scientific content. As a strategy, we suggest an in-course treatment of well known (and relevant) historical and contemporary controversies among scientists over science policy or the use of sciences. The scientific content of the course is used to understand the controversy and to inform the debate while allowing students to see the (...) role of scientists in shaping public perceptions of science and the value of scientific inquiry, discoveries and technology in society. The examples of the activism of Linus Pauling, Alfred Nobel and Joseph Rotblat as scientists and engaged citizens are cited. We discuss the role of science professors in informing the social conscience of students and consider ways in which a treatment of the function of science in society may find, coherently, a meaningful space in a science curriculum at the college level. Strategies for helping students to recognize early the crucial contributions that science can make in informing public policy and global governance are discussed. (shrink)

The basic subject matter of the philosophy of action is a pair of questions: (1) What are actions? (2) How are actions to be explained? The questions call, respectively, for a theory of the nature of action and a theory of the explanation of actions. Donald Davidson has articulated and defended influential answers to both questions. Those answers are the primary focus of this chapter.

This article scrutinizes in detail much of the extant historiography on the controversy between biometricians and Mendelians, considering in particular how this controversy is related to the evolutionary synthesis. While the historiographic critique concentrates on William Provine’s standard account, it also extends to the proposal by Donald MacKenzie and Barry Barnes. What Provine and these sociologists of scientific knowledge have in common is a set of unquestioned assumptions about the nature of Darwinism, about William Bateson’s anti-Darwinism, and about the (...) very idea of an evolutionary “synthesis.” While these assumptions make for a compelling history of the synthesis, they engender an endemically asymmetrical perspective and bias historiography toward the mere confirmation of antecedent expectations, which renders the years from 1859 to 1929 an age of ignorance and misunderstanding. In contrast, a return to what was probably the original meaning of evolutionary “synthesis” allows for a symmetrical account. It yields an appreciation of the positive contributions made both by Mendelians and biometricians to the gradual development of Darwinism. The article concludes with a synopsis of this alternative account. (shrink)

The literature on motivated irrationality has two primary foci: action and belief. This article explores two of the central topics falling under this rubric: akratic action (action exhibiting so-called weakness of will or deficient self-control) and motivationally biased belief (including self-deception). Among other matters, this article offers a resolution of Donald Davidson's worry about the explanation of irrationality. When agents act akratically, they act for reasons, and in central cases, they make rational judgments about what it is best to (...) do. The rationality required for that is in place. However, to the extent to which their actions are at odds with these judgments, they act irrationally. Motivationally biased believers test hypotheses and believe on the basis of evidence. Again there is a background of rationality. But owing to the influence of motivation, they violate general standards of epistemic rationality. (shrink)

This essay is a comparative study of two rationalists in as far as they differ in their understanding of the nature of Reason. It is an essay written from the point of view of Alfred North Whitehead’s process metaphysics, an essay which, while remaining almost completely free of Whitehead’s confusing and complex technical vocabulary, explicates and defends Whitehead’s conception of Reason by focusing on just those points where Whitehead deviates from the position taken by a second contemporary rationalist, Brand (...) Blanshard. The title of the essay refers to Whitehead’s use of the symbols “Plato” and “Ulysses” to personify what he views as the two aspects of Reason. Blanshard is familiar with Whitehead’s position and has briskly attacked Whitehead’s use of the symbol “Ulysses.” The full import of the symbol “Ulysses” is not, however, immediately apparent in those places where Whitehead uses it and it is my deep suspicion that Blanshard, and undoubtedly many other readers of Whitehead, fail fully to grasp the import of this symbol because they do not see that it derives its power in large part from its relationship to Whitehead’s somewhat obscure account of the nature of propositions and how they function in the world. Therefore Part I of this paper both explicates the doctrine of propositions held by Whitehead and interprets the meaning of the symbol “Ulysses” in the light of that explication. Part II turns polemical and argues simultaneously for the soundness of Whitehead’s view of the nature of Reason and the inadequacy of Blanshard’s alternative position. (shrink)

Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous. Although each option has its (...) advocates, most theorists have sought a middle way that accommodates both the common-sense view of mind and the metaphysical conviction about the physical world. This volume presents a collection of new, specially written essays by a diverse group of philosophers, each of whom is widely known for defending a particular conception of minds and their place in nature. Contributors include Robert Audi, Lynne Rudder Baker, Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Fred Dretske, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ruth Garrett Millikan, H. W. Noonan, Philip Pettit, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Van Gulick. (shrink)

Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behavior have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical domain as causally autonomous. Although each option has its (...) advocates, most theorists have sought a middle way that accommodates both the common-sense view of mind and the metaphysical conviction about the physical world. This volume presents a collection of new, specially written essays by a diverse group of philosophers, each of whom is widely known for defending a particular conception of minds and their place in nature. Contributors include Robert Audi, Lynne Rudder Baker, Tyler Burge, Donald Davidson, Fred Dretske, Ted Honderich, Jennifer Hornsby, Frank Jackson, Jaegwon Kim, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ruth Garrett Millikan, H. W. Noonan, Philip Pettit, Ernest Sosa, and Robert Van Gulick. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the view according to which human actions are explained teleologically and, therefore, all causal accounts of action explanation are, in a sense, rivals. This view is referred to here as “anticausalist teleologism” (AT). Teleological explanations of human actions are explanations in terms of aims, goals, or purposes of human agents. After providing some background on AT, an objection raised by Mele to a proposal George Wilson makes in developing his version of AT is presented and dissected. Scott (...) Sehon’s recent reply to Mele’s objection is then presented, after which, Donald Davidson’s challenge to anticausalists about action explanation comes next. In conclusion, this chapter presents a reply to this challenge proposed by Sehon, which is explained in detail. (shrink)

A central notion in Donald Davidson's philosophy of mind and action is "rationalization," a species of causal explanation designed in part to reveal the point or purpose of the explananda. An analogue of this notion - noninstrumental rationalization - merits serious attention. I develop an account of this species of rationalization and display its utility in explaining the production of certain desires and of motivationally biased beliefs.

Is there good reason to worry about celebrity involvement in democratic politics? The rise of celebrity politicians such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky has led political theorists and commentators to worry that the role of expertise in democratic politics has been undermined. According to one recent critique, celebrities possess a significant degree of epistemic power that is unconnected to appropriate expertise. This presents a problem both for deliberative and epistemic theories of democratic legitimacy, which ignore this form of (...) power, and for real existing democracies attempting to meet the standards of legitimacy set out by these theories. But do these critiques apply to democratic elitism? In this paper, we argue that recognition of celebrity epistemic power in fact represents a valuable resource for supporting the legitimacy and practice of democratic elitism, though these benefits do come with certain risks to which elite theories are particularly vulnerable. (shrink)

Must a rational ass equidistant from two equally attractive bales of hay starve for lack of a reason to prefer one bale to the other? Must a human being faced with a comparable, explicitly motivational, tie fail to pursue either option? Surely, one suspects, some practical resolution is possible. Surely, ties of either sort need not result in death or paralysis. But why? Donald Davidson has suggested that, in the human case, resolution depends upon the tie’s being broken---upon the (...) agent’s coming to want to perform some action more than she wants to perform any genuine alternative. However, practical resolution is possible, I argue, even while the tie remains intact. This has significant implications for the theory of motivation. Most importantly, not all states that move us to action need be understood as moving us to A in virtue of their incorporating preponderant motivation to A. (shrink)

Must a rational ass equidistant from two equally attractive bales of hay starve for lack of a reason to prefer one bale to the other? Must a human being faced with a comparable, explicitly motivational, tie fail to pursue either option? Surely, one suspects, some practical resolution is possible. Surely, ties of either sort need not result in death or paralysis. But why? Donald Davidson has suggested that, in the human case, resolution depends upon the tie’s being broken---upon the (...) agent’s coming to want to perform some action more than she wants to perform any genuine alternative. However, practical resolution is possible, I argue, even while the tie remains intact. This has significant implications for the theory of motivation. Most importantly, not all states that move us to action need be understood as moving us to A in virtue of their incorporating preponderant motivation to A. (shrink)

David Pears's recent essay, "How Easy is Akrasia?, '' is, in significant part, a refutation of an argument against the possibility of a certain sort of incontinent action. The kind of incontinent action in question is, in Pears's words, "underivative brazen akrasia, which is commonly taken to be akrasia with the fault located between the last line of an agent's reasoning and his action" (p. 40). The argument which he attacks is attributed to Donald Davidson. The purpose of this (...) note is, not to quarrel with Pears, but rather to supplement his interesting essay. In Section I, drawing upon some of Davidson's views on intending and unconditional practical judgments, I construct a stronger argument for the impossibility of the type of akratic action at issue than the one which Pears refutes. In Section II, I explain why even the stronger argument fails and sketch out some implications of its failure for a causal theory of action. (shrink)

Investigates the connection between motivation and reasons for action. It begins with a sketch of Donald Davidson's influential version of the view that reasons for action are states of mind. It then undermines some criticisms of a broadly Davidsonian view of action explanation, including objections by Rosalind Hursthouse and T. M. Scanlon. Finally, it builds a theoretical bridge between work on its central topic by two groups of theorists: those guided primarily by a concern with the evaluation of actions (...) or their agents, and those primarily guided instead by an interest in the explanation of intentional actions. Motivational and normative notions of reasons for action are distinguished. (shrink)

William James and Alfred North Whitehead strongly rejected materialism as a metaphysical option. While James lived and wrote only up to the beginning of the revolution in physics that brought to the fore fundamentally different theories such as quantum theory and the special and general theories of relativity, Whitehead, as an accomplished mathematician, was readily conversant with these new developments. Since their respective times, however, much innovation and refinement of theories in physics and other natural sciences has taken place. (...) With these later developments, conceptions of matter and its capabilities have undergone far-reaching explicit and implicit changes. A consequence of these... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 153-156 [Access article in PDF] JHI 2000 Donald R. Kelley It was just sixty years ago that this Journal first made its appearance. Two hundred thirty-nine issues later it continues in a world transformed by war, overpopulation, cultural shocks, scientific and technological transformations, globalization, the avalanche of information produced by electronic exchange, and "the acceleration of just about everything." Yet (...) despite these factors and the strains of postmodernism and cultural alterity, 1 it has not entirely lost touch with its intellectual innocence, faith in humanistic learning, and reliance on enlightened reason. This continuity itself may seem something of a novelty in an age of distrust of history and "rage against reason," but for some of us it reflects the critical spirit and intellectual context out of which such ostensibly subversive attitudes emerge, and reemerge. To some extent, moreover, the diversity of opinions about intellectual traditions is the result of specializations, and special interests, which have changed the climate of opinion since the time of Arthur O. Lovejoy, principal founder of the JHI. Lovejoy's vision was super- as well as inter-disciplinary; that is, he intended to include in the agenda of "history of ideas" particular areas of history of philosophy, literature, art, science, social science, etc., as well as the larger intellectual and cultural areas into which these disciplinary histories extend. 2 These days, however, all these disciplinary traditions have their own more specialized journals and do not need to seek a vehicle in publications of more general interest. What remains then, for the most part, is the interdisciplinary arena in which larger questions of human experience should be posed--and for Lovejoy, as for so many epigones and critics, the main "larger question" is not only one of value but also of specifically historical inquiry. 3 [End Page 153]The first issue of the JHI appeared under the editorship of Lovejoy (with Philip Wiener, who did most of the editorial work, as "managing editor"), assisted by a committee that included two historians, three philosophers, four literary scholars, and one political theorist; namely, Crane Brinton, Gilbert Chinard, Morris Cohen, Francis Coker, Richard McKeon, Perry Miller, Marjory Nicolson, J. H. Randall, J. Salwyn Schapiro, and Louis Wright. The first volume featured contributions from each of these, including Wiener, except for Miller (vol. 2), Shapiro (vol. 3), McKeon (vol. 8), and Coker. 4 During the first five years there were also reviews of books by Dilthey (by Horace L. Friess), Croce (Schapiro), Mannheim (Randall), Perry Miller (Herbert W. Schneider), Van Wyck Brooks (Miller) and Alfred Kazin (F. O. Matthiessen). In this period the disciplinary distribution of articles was not markedly different from that of the past five years, nor was the ranking of fields by number of submissions. 5 Most important, the original interdisciplinary thrust of Lovejoy's agenda, if not his attachment to the spiritualist currency of "unit-ideas," has survived growing specialization.At first the history of ideas was pursued largely in the shadow of the history of philosophy; for in this field, according to Lovejoy, "is to be found the common seed-plot, the locus of initial manifestation in writing, of the greater number of the more fundamental and pervasive ideas, and especially of the ruling preconceptions, which manifest themselves in other regions of intellectual history." 6 Lovejoy's concern was always with concepts, especially "-isms," and yet in some ways he anticipated the "linguistic turn" of the later years of this century, pointing out in particular "the role of semantic shifts, ambiguities, and confusions, in the history of thought and taste," for "nearly all of the great catchwords have been equivocal--or rather, multivocal." 7 If ideas could be given stable definitions, they were nonetheless often, in the context of language, in conflict, even in the mind of a single thinker; for such was the "anomaly of knowledge." 8 So Lovejoy was at pains to distinguish the various meanings of [End Page 154] catch-words like "nature," "perfectibility," "romanticism," "progress," and "pragmatism," not to mention more inflammatory terms of wartime ideological debate.But... (shrink)

Child’s aim is to defend a pair of ideas in the philosophy of mind—"interpretationism" and "causalism"—and, especially, to establish their compatibility. "What is essential for interpretationism is the claim that thought is, in its nature, interpretable" ; "interpretability is a necessary condition for thought". Regarding belief, "the interpretationist thought is that we can give an account of the circumstances under which it is true that S believes that p by considering the circumstances under which S could be interpreted as believing (...) that p, on the basis of what she says and does". Causalism is the idea that causation is central both to psychological explanation and to mental content. Thus, causalists hold, for example, that proper explanations of agents’ actions in terms of the reasons for which they acted are causal explanations, that perception is a causal process, and that the contents of our thoughts hinge on our causal histories. Both ideas are prominent in Donald Davidson’s work, which receives substantial attention in this book. (shrink)

How should pragmatists respond to and contribute to the resolution of one of America's greatest and most enduring problems? Given that the most important thinkers of the pragmatist movement—Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead—said little about the problem of race, how does their distinctly American way of thinking confront the hardship and brutality that characterizes the experience of many African Americans in this country? In 12 thoughtful and provocative essays, contemporary American pragmatists connect ideas with (...) action and theory with practice to come to terms with this seemingly intractable problem. Exploring themes such as racism and social change, the value of the concept of race, the role of education in ameliorating racism, and the place of democracy in dealing with the tragedy of race, the voices gathered in this volume consider how pragmatism can focus new attention on the problem of race. Contributors are Michael Eldridge, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Judith M. Green, D. Micah Hester, Donald F. Koch, Bill E. Lawson, David E. McClean, Gregory F. Pappas, Scott L. Pratt, Alfred E. Prettyman, John R. Shook, Paul C. Taylor, and Cornel West. (shrink)

This volume explores the range of Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy and his relevance to contemporary philosophical traditions.

Inclusive, non-elitist art spaces are mounted by remarkably talented, creative individuals. Alfred Stieglitz and Donald Judd were two such individuals. Stieglitz's space was an intimate urban art gallery in Manhattan while Judd's space in Marfa, Texas was expansive, isolated, and rural. Aside from sharing the usual characteristics of the very creative, both were charismatic, physically attractive, intelligent men who held forceful visions about art. Unlike most of their peers, they had the capacity to write well and speak convincingly. (...) Their resolute confidence and aesthetic competencies enabled them to attract and hold astute colleagues. Last they had the necessary expertise and connections to obtain resources required to maintain their vision. (shrink)