Quantitative researchers often discuss research ethics as if specific ethical problems can be reduced to abstract normative logics (e.g., virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology). Such approaches overlook how values are embedded in every aspect of quantitative methods, including ‘observations,’ ‘facts,’ and notions of ‘objectivity.’ We describe how quantitative research practices, concepts, discourses, and their objects/subjects of study have always been value-laden, from the invention of statistics and probability in the 1600s to their subsequent adoption as a logic made to appear as (...) if it exists prior to, and separate from, ethics and values. This logic, which was embraced in the Academy of Management from the 1960s, casts management researchers as ethical agents who ought to know about a reality conceptualized as naturally existing in the image of statistics and probability (replete with ‘constructs’), while overlooking that S&P logic and practices, which researchers made for themselves, have an appreciable role in making the world appear this way. We introduce a different way to conceptualize reality and ethics, wherein the process of scientific inquiry itself requires an examination of its own practices and commitments. Instead of resorting to decontextualized notions of ‘rigor’ and its ‘best practices,’ quantitative researchers can adopt more purposeful ways to reason about the ethics and relevance of their methods and their science. We end by considering implications for addressing ‘post truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ problems as collective concerns, wherein it is actually the pluralistic nature of description that makes defending a collectively valuable version of reality so important and urgent. (shrink)

This dissertation examines Spinoza's position regarding the relationship of the individual to the community and to other individuals in the context of a particular reading of Spinoza's metaphysics as holistic. By the term "holistic metaphysics," I refer to a view of reality as a unified whole rather than as a collection of entirely separate parts. The latter I call a "reductionistic metaphysics." If a reductionistic metaphysics tends to see individuals as essentially separate and only secondarily relational, a holistic metaphysics pictures (...) individuals as primarily relational and only by means of their relations capable of any meaningful "separateness" from other individuals. The reading advanced here concludes that Spinoza holds that individuals cannot ultimately be separated from the larger environment and network of relationships of which they are always a part. This dissertation concludes with brief set of reflections on the potential implications of this "relational" understanding of individuals in the realms of morals and politics. How Spinoza might view the issue of "universal health care" in the context of his holistic metaphysics is singled out for specific consideration. (shrink)

How coherent is Descartes' conception of vacuum in the Principles? Descartes' arguments attacking the possibility of vacuum are difficult to read and to understand because they reply to several distinct threads of discussion. I separate two strands that have received little careful attention: the scholastic topic of annihilation of space, particularly represented in Albert of Saxony, and the physical arguments concerning vacuum in Galileo that are also continued after the publication of the Principles in Pascal. The distinctness of the two (...) sorts of opponent accounts for Descartes' odd habit of summarily declaring vacuum "contradictory" in some contexts, while providing extended conceptual and physical arguments meant to establish its "impossibility" in others. In several passages late in the Principles, Descartes also considers the physical ramifications of "empty space," including a discussion of the appearance of a star, were an empty space situated at the center of the celestial vortex. I argue that the discussion allows for a sensible conception of space with extension, but without matter, quite adequate to the physical discussions of vacuum among Descartes' contemporaries. (shrink)