Since at least the 1938 publication of Hans Reichenbach’s Experience and Predication , there has been widespread agreement that, when discussing the beliefs that people have, it is important to distinguish contexts of discovery and contexts of justification. Traditionally, when one conflates the two contexts, the result is a “genetic fallacy”. This paper examines genealogical critiques and addresses the question of whether such critiques are fallacious and, if so, whether this vitiates their usefulness. The paper concludes that while there may (...) be one or more senses in which genealogical critiques are fallacious, this does not vitiate their value. (shrink)

This paper develops and tests a model of fingerpointing behaviors that board members experience because of regulatory reforms. We present the partial results of a large study of 138 board members on 54 publicly traded boards in the United States. We found that recent governance reforms that mandate increased accountability of board members are associated with less board cohesion and thatlower board cohesion is associated with fingerpointing behaviors. These findings suggest that the stages of institutionalization following regulatory shock falter when (...) negative group behaviors develop under scrutiny. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor begins chapter one of The Language of Thought with two claims. The first claim is that “[T]he only psychological models of cognitive processes that seem remotely plausible represent such processes as computational.” The second claim is that “[C]omputation presupposes a medium of computation: a representational system.” Together these two claims suggest one of the central theses of many contemporary representationalist theories of mind, viz. that the only remotely plausible psychology that could succeed in explaining the intentionally characterized abilities (...) and activities of sentient creatures must refer to computationally related representations. Although “[R]emotely plausible theories are”, according to Fodor, “better than no theories at all”, representationalism is not universally regarded as a “remotely plausible theory”. In what follows I will consider what many people believe to be a significant problem facing representationalism. I will then examine two different ways that this problem can be resolved, one based on the writings of Daniel Dennett, the other on ideas found in the later writings of Wittgenstein. I will conclude that although the resolution based on Dennett’s writings fails, a resolution based on ideas found in the later writings of Wittgenstein succeeds. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor begins chapter one of The Language of Thought with two claims. The first claim is that “[T]he only psychological models of cognitive processes that seem remotely plausible represent such processes as computational.” The second claim is that “[C]omputation presupposes a medium of computation: a representational system.” Together these two claims suggest one of the central theses of many contemporary representationalist theories of mind, viz. that the only remotely plausible psychology that could succeed in explaining the intentionally characterized abilities (...) and activities of sentient creatures must refer to computationally related representations. Although “[R]emotely plausible theories are”, according to Fodor, “better than no theories at all”, representationalism is not universally regarded as a “remotely plausible theory”. In what follows I will consider what many people believe to be a significant problem facing representationalism. I will then examine two different ways that this problem can be resolved, one based on the writings of Daniel Dennett, the other on ideas found in the later writings of Wittgenstein. I will conclude that although the resolution based on Dennett’s writings fails, a resolution based on ideas found in the later writings of Wittgenstein succeeds. (shrink)

It typically taken for granted that agents can be morally responsible for such things as, for example, the death of the victim and the capture of the murderer in the sense that one may be blameworthy or praiseworthy for such things. The primary task of a theory of moral responsibility, it is thought, is to specify the appropriate relationship one must stand to such things in order to be morally responsible for them. I argue that this common approach is problematic (...) because it attempts to explain the way in which an agent can be morally responsible for something that is external to her, the agent. Since, I argue, everything that matters for moral responsibility is internal to the agent, the accounts that emerge from this approach are committed to a particular form of moral luck. Instead, we should reject this form of moral luck, and with it, the possibility of moral responsibility for objects external to the agent. We are, I argue, morally responsible only for our inner willings. Thus, a form of internalism about moral responsibility is defended. (shrink)

Many of those working on moral responsibility assume that "once blameworthy, always blameworthy." They believe that blameworthiness is like diamonds: it is forever. We argue that blameworthiness is not forever; rather, it can diminish through time. We begin by showing that the view that blameworthiness is forever is best understood as the claim that personal identity is sufficient for diachronic blameworthiness. We argue that this view should be rejected because it entails that blameworthiness for past action is completely divorced from (...) the distinctive psychological features of the person at the later time. This is because on none of the leading accounts of personal identity does identity require the preservation of any distinctive psychological features, but merely requires some form of continuity. The claim that blameworthiness is forever should therefore be rejected. We then sketch an account of blameworthiness over time, and consider two objections. (shrink)

We consider extensions of Peano arithmetic suitable for doing some of nonstandard analysis, in which there is a predicate N(x) for an elementary initial segment, along with axiom schemes approximating ω 1 -saturation. We prove that such systems have the same proof-theoretic strength as their natural analogues in second order arithmetic. We close by presenting an even stronger extension of Peano arithmetic, which is equivalent to ZF for arithmetic statements.

Some accounts of moral responsibility hold that an agent's responsibility is completely determined by some aspect of the agent's mental life at the time of action. For example, some hold that an agent is responsible if and only if there is an appropriate mesh among the agent's particular psychological elements. It is often objected that the particular features of the agent's mental life to which these theorists appeal (such as a particular structure or mesh) are not necessary for responsibility. This (...) is because there appear to be cases in which an agent acts at an earlier time which causes her to lack the appropriate psychological features at some later time and yet, intuitively, she is responsible at that later .. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between synchronic responsibility (SR) and diachronic responsibility (DR). SR concerns an agent’s responsibility for an act at the time of the action, while DR concerns an agent’s responsibility for an act at some later time. While most theorists implicitly assume that DR is a straightforward matter of personal identity, I argue instead that it is grounded in psychological connectedness. I discuss the implications this distinction has for the concepts of apology, forgiveness, and punishment as well as the (...) way in which this distinction can be used to defend quality of will accounts of responsibility against objections involving psychological manipulation. I argue that the intuition that a manipulated agent is not responsible can be explained by appeal to the conditions of DR and, as such, does not unproblematically shed light on the conditions of SR. (shrink)

Many theorists have found the notion of forgiveness to be paradoxical, for it is thought that only the blameworthy can be appropriately forgiven but that the blameworthy are appropriately blamed not forgiven. Some have appealed to the notion of repentance to resolve this tension. But others have objected that such a response is explanatorily inadequate in the sense that it merely stipulates and names a solution leaving the transformative power of repentance unexplained. Worse still, others have objected that such a (...) response cannot succeed because no amount of repentance can render the blameworthy not blameworthy. I argue that this latter objection is based on a mistaken assumption, the acknowledgement of which has the power to resolve the paradox in a way that meets the explanatory adequacy challenge, and, more generally, has significant implications with which any full theory of forgiveness must engage. (shrink)

Abstract:The term stakeholder is a powerful one. This is due, to a significant degree, to its conceptual breadth. The term means different things to different people and hence evokes praise or scorn from a wide variety of scholars and practitioners. Such breadth of interpretation, though one of stakeholder theory’s greatest strengths, is also one of its most prominent theoretical liabilities. The goal of the current paper is like that of a controlled burn that clears away some of the underbrush of (...) misinterpretation in the hope of denying easy fuel to the critical conflagration that would raze the theory. We aim to narrow its technical meaning for greater facility of use in management and organizational studies. By elaborating a number of common misinterpretations – critical and friendly – of the theory, we hope to render a stronger and more convincing theory as a starting place for future research. (shrink)

The problem of moral luck arises due to a particular tension in our thought. On the one hand, we seem readily inclined to endorse the principle that moral responsibility, that is, one’s praiseworthiness or blameworthiness, cannot be affected by luck, that is, by factors over which one lacks control. But, when we examine our actual practices, we find that our moral judgments are highly sensitive to luck. This resulting tension between principle and practice is the problem of moral luck, and (...) an attempt to solve this problem is an attempt to resolve this tension. The article first explains the traditional characterization of the problem and reviews three general strategies in responding to it. It is then argued that we should characterize the problem in a slightly broader way. This refocusing turns out to have significant methodological implications. (shrink)

Building on Peter French’s important work, this chapter draws three distinctions that arise in the context of attributions of moral responsibility, understood as the extent to which an agent is blameworthy or praiseworthy. First, the subject of an attribution of responsibility may be an individual agent or a collective agent. Second, the object of the responsibility attribution may be an individual action (or consequence) or a collective action (or consequence). The third distinction concerns the temporal dimension of the responsibility attribution. (...) Sometimes responsibility for an action is attributed to an agent at the time of the action. At other times responsibility for an action is attributed to an agent sometime after the action has taken place. Taken together, these three binary distinctions yield eight types of responsibility attribution. It is argued that a collective agent’s responsibility for a past collective act is properly understood on the same theoretical model as is an individual’s responsibility for a past individual act. While most assume that responsibility over time is a straightforward matter of identity over time, it is argued that instead this is a matter of psychological or attitudinal connectedness. The possibility is considered that this relation also grounds attributions involving an asymmetry between subject and object, such as individual responsibility for past collective action, but a skeptical worry is raised that such attributions entail an unpalatable form of moral luck and should therefore be rejected. (shrink)

This innovative text is psychologically informed, both in its diagnosis of inferential errors, and in teaching students how to watch out for and work around their natural intellectual blind spots. It also incorporates insights from epistemology and philosophy of science that are indispensable for learning how to evaluate premises. The result is a hands-on primer for real world critical thinking. The authors bring a fresh approach to the traditional challenges of a critical thinking course: effectively explaining the nature of validity, (...) assessing deductive arguments, reconstructing, identifying and diagramming arguments, and causal and probabilistic inference. Additionally, they discuss in detail, important, frequently neglected topics, including testimony, including the evaluation of news and other information sources, the nature and credibility of science, rhetoric, and dialectical argumentation. The treatment of probability uses frequency trees and a frequency approach more generally, and argument reconstruction is taught using argument maps; these methods have been shown to improve students’ reasoning and argument evaluation. (shrink)

Manipulation arguments are commonly deployed to raise problems for compatibilist theories of responsibility. These arguments proceed by asking us to reflect on an agent who has been manipulated to perform some (typically bad) action but who still meets the compatibilist conditions of responsibility. The incompatibilist argues that it is intuitive that the agent in such a case is not responsible even though she met the compatibilist conditions. Thus, it is argued, the compatibilist has not provided conditions sufficient for responsibility. Patrick (...) Todd has recently argued that incompatibilists have taken on a heavier dialectical burden than is necessary. Todd argues that incompatibilists need not argue that an agent in a manipulation case is not at all responsible, but only that her responsibility is mitigated in order to refute compatibilism. Hannah Tierney has responded to Todd’s argument by arguing that a compatibilist can admit that manipulation mitigates responsibility without eliminating it. I argue that Tierney’s response is unsuccessful on its own terms. But, I argue, Todd’s argument can be resisted by way of a parallel counter-argument for compatibilism. I argue that Todd’s argument for incompatibilism is no more powerful than my argument for compatibilism. And since Todd’s manipulation argument is offered as an objection to compatibilism, this amounts to a victory for the compatibilist; the objection is defused. (shrink)

In this paper we consider some axiomatic systems of set theory related to the system NF (New Foundations) of Quine. In particular we discuss the possible relations of cardinality between a finite set x and its subset class SC(x) = {y | y ∩ x} and also between x and its unit set class USC(x) = {{y} | y ε x}. Specker [5] has shown that in NF the cardinal of a finite set x can never be the same as (...) the cardinal of SC(x). (shrink)

Although separated by the centuries, Anselm and Hegel represent two different developments of the ontological proof. This book guides the reader through an exploration of the perplexing ontological argument from a well-balanced analysis of the works of two significant, yet polar opposite thinkers, Anselm and Hegel.

While the history of philosophy has traditionally given scant attention to food and the ethics of eating, in the last few decades the subject of food ethics has emerged as a major topic, encompassing a wide array of issues, including labor justice, public health, social inequity, animal rights and environmental ethics. This handbook provides a much needed philosophical analysis of the ethical implications of the need to eat and the role that food plays in social, cultural and political life. Unlike (...) other books on the topic, this text integrates traditional approaches to the subject with cutting edge research in order to set a new agenda for philosophical discussions of food ethics. The Routledge Handbook of Food Ethics is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over 35 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into 7 parts: the phenomenology of food gender and food food and cultural diversity liberty, choice and food policy food and the environment farming and eating other animals food justice Essential reading for students and researchers in food ethics, it is also an invaluable resource for those in related disciplines such as environmental ethics and bioethics. (shrink)

Although a great deal of literature has looked at how individuals respond to stigma, far less has been written about how professional groups address challenges to their self-perception as abiding by clear moral standards. In this paper, we ask how professional group members maintain a positive self-perception in the face of moral stigma. Drawing on pragmatic and cultural sociology, we claim that professional communities hold narratives that link various aspects of the work their members perform with specific understanding of the (...) common good. These narratives allow professionals to maintain a shared view of their work as benefitting society and to perceive themselves as moral individuals. As a case study, we focus on the advertising industry, which has long been stigmatized as complicit in exploitative capitalist mechanisms and cultural degradation. We draw on nine total months of fieldwork and seventy-four interviews across three US advertising agencies. We find that advertising practitioners use narratives to present their work as contributing to the common good, depicting themselves as moral individuals who care about others in the process. We analyze three prevalent narratives: the account-driven narrative, which links moral virtue to caring for clients; the creative-driven narrative, which ties caring to the production of meaningful advertisements; and the strategic-driven narrative, which sees caring in finding meaningful relationships for consumers and brands. (shrink)

In most penal systems, success is punished more than failure. For example, murder is punished more severely than attempted murder. But success or failure is often determined by luck. It thus appears that punishment is allotted on the basis of arbitrary factors. The problem of criminal attempts is the question of how to best resolve this apparent tension. One particularly sophisticated attempt at resolution, first developed by David Lewis, holds that such differential punishment is not unjust when understood as a (...) natural penal lottery. What is most interesting about this view is that it does not appear to involve a commitment to resultant moral luck. I argue that the natural penal lottery fails to deliver justice. Upon analysis, it carries the same implication that it sought to avoid—namely, a commitment to resultant moral luck. I then argue that there can be, in principle, no penal lottery that delivers justice, natural or otherwise. (shrink)

Intersectional feminist scholars emphasize how overlapping systems of oppression structure gender inequality, but in focusing on the gendered, classed, and racialized bases of stratification, many often overlook disability as an important social category in determining economic outcomes. This is a significant omission given that disability severely limits opportunities and contributes to cumulative disadvantage. We draw from feminist disability and intersectional theories to account for how disability intersects with gender, race, and education to produce economic insecurity. The findings from our analyses (...) of 2015 American Community Survey data provide strong empirical support for hierarchies of disadvantage, where women and racial minority groups with disabilities and less education experience the highest poverty levels, report the lowest total income, and have a greater reliance on sources outside the labor market for economic security. By taking disability into account, our study demonstrates how these multiple characteristics lead to overlapping oppressions that become embedded and reproduced within the larger social structure. (shrink)

A common feature of much recent work done in a variety of disciplines is the foregrounding of embodiment. Thinking in terms of a situated body however, brings up a complex problem which has often been overlooked: the re-importation of a kind of metaphysics of the body or a covert idealism, which stubbornly persists in many such discussions. This is seen in treatments ofthe body as a mediation or as a site for inscription of socio-cultural codings. We will briefly show how (...) even such an influential account ofritualization practices, that of Catherine Bell, shows traces of these problems. The corrective strategy to such conceptions is a properly situational ontology as suggested by Merleau-Ponty's later philosophy and Tim Ingolds critical work on environments. (shrink)

In this article we revisit the notion of stakeholder responsibility as a way to highlight the role that stakeholders have in creating anethical business context. We argue for modifying the prevailing focus on corporate responsibility to stakeholders, and giving more serious attention to the importance of stakeholder responsibility—to firms, and to other stakeholders who are part of the collective enterprise. We elaborate why stakeholder responsibility matters, and suggest how making stakeholder responsibility a central focus of academics and practitioners can redefine (...) the interaction between firms and stakeholders and ultimately enhance business excellence. (shrink)

We conduct an experiment with 459 nonprofessional investors to examine whether they evaluate companies differently based on management’s stated purpose for undertaking corporate social responsibility activities in the presence versus absence of a company-specific negative event. Specifically, we vary whether or not management intends to achieve financial returns from CSR activities in addition to promoting social good. We address investors’ decision processes by investigating whether their judgments are mediated by perceptions of future cash flows and/or the underlying ethical culture of (...) the company. Results show that absent a negative event, investment judgments are stronger when CSR activities are intended to achieve financial returns, through expectations of higher future cash flows. However, when a negative event occurs, we find a moderating effect of independent assurance of CSR disclosures. When disclosures are not assured, investors prefer CSR undertaken only for societal benefit, mediated by perceptions of a stronger ethical culture. However, when disclosures are assured, ethical culture is viewed similarly regardless of management’s intention to achieve financial returns from CSR activities. This suggests that management’s willingness to obtain independent assurance on disclosures is viewed as a positive ethical signal. Thus, assurance complements disclosure of CSR activities by contributing to protection against the impact of negative events. (shrink)

It is commonly held that agents can be blameworthy only for acts that are morally wrong. But the claim, when combined with a plausible assumption about wrongness, leads to an implausible view about blameworthiness. The claim should be rejected. Agents can be blameworthy for acts that are not morally wrong. We will take up the claim in terms of three initially appealing, but jointly inconsistent propositions. The significance of noting the inconsistency is motivated by a consideration of a number of (...) theorists who have held, or at least flirted with, all three propositions. The best way to resolve the inconsistency is to reject the claim that blameworthiness requires wrongness. There are good reasons to conclude that a different relation between blameworthiness and wrongness can garner more intuitive support than the alternatives. (shrink)

Using the lenses of both biblical and process theology, this essay explores the ways in which sacrament and church are inextricably bound with one another. By paying special attention to the seriousness with which Whiteheadian thought takes events in space and time, the essay develops a sacramentally focused ecclesiology that is radically embodied in the realm of occasions.

Several strands of contemporary cognitive science and its philosophy have emerged in recent decades that emphasize the role of action in cognition, resting their explanations on the embodiment of cognitive agents, and their embedding in richly structured environments. Despite their growing influence, many foundational questions remain unresolved or underexplored for this cluster of proposals, especially questions of how they can be extended beyond straightforwardly visuomotor cognitive capacities, and what constraints the commitment of embodiment places on the ontology of explanations. This (...) special issue aims to contribute to these foundational debates by drawing on important precursors to embodied cognition in mid-twentieth century gestalt psychology, its immediate successor ecological psychology, and their dialectical counterpart, phenomenology. Gestalt psychologists and phenomenologists wrestled with many of the same foundational questions that still haunt us today, in a manner that seems refreshing in hindsight, and poised to contribute constructively to contemporary debate. Looking back on this history reveals deep commonalities across competing embodied approaches, exposing fundamental tensions that remain unresolved, but also paving the way to a more ecumenical and conciliatory embodied cognitive science. (shrink)

Michael Walzer is one of the most distinguished political philosophers and social critics of this century. His ideas have had great import and influence in political philosophy and political discussion, yet very few of his ideas have been incorporated explicitly into the business ethics literature. We argue that Walzer’s work provides an important conceptual canvas for business ethics scholars that has not been adequately explored. Scholars in business ethics often borrow from political theory and philosophy to generate new insights and (...) develop new substantive contributions. Many valuable theoretical resources are already used extensively—particularly Aristotle, Kant, Marx and a variety of utilitarian philosophers. Walzer offers another set of resources to bring to the conversation of what business ethics is and how business ethicists add value. This paper provides an opportunity to delve further into Walzer’s writings, particularly themes that are tied to business ethics, and to illustrate how his ideas can be extended to reshape our understanding of the field and develop new perspectives on ethical issues in commerce. (shrink)

There is a long and distinguished history of ethical thought in both business and medicine dating back to ancient times. Yet, the emergence of distinct academic disciplines ("business ethics" and "bioethics") which are also tied to broader social movements is a very recent phenomenon. In spite of the apparent affinities that would seem to emerge from this connection, many have argued that the differences between business and medicine make any constructive interaction between business ethics and bioethics minimal. Indeed, little has (...) been done to specifically examine the potential for collaboration and interdisciplinary research. This paper argues that there is considerable potential for constructive interaction between these two movements based on three major arguments: that the differences between medicine and business have been exaggerated, that both the fields face a number of urgent problems that are common to each, and that the model of bioethics can serve as a useful guide for business ethicists. (shrink)

There is a long and distinguished history of ethical thought in both business and medicine dating back to ancient times. Yet, the emergence of distinct academic disciplines [“business ethics” and “bioethics”) which are also tied to broader social movements is a very recent phenomenon. In spite of the apparent affinities that would seem to emerge from this connection, many have argued that the differences between business and medicine make any constructive interaction between business ethics and bioethics minimal. Indeed, little has (...) been done to specifically examine the potential for collaboration and interdisciplinary research. This paper argues that there is considerable potential for constructive interaction between these two movements based on three major arguments: that the differences between medicine and business have been exaggerated, that both fields face a number of urgent problems that are common to each, and that the model of bioethics can serve as a useful guide for business ethicists. (shrink)