Scientific realism does not view theoretical terms as mere instruments of experimental predictions; it grants referential status to natural kind terms with 'epistemic access' and view scientific theories and terms as corresponding to physical phenomena and entities which exist independently of observation, and as thereby being the source of objective -approximate and not absolute- knowledge of the physical realm. As a result, scientific realism is accused of ontologising the unobservables. Against this charge, scientific realism posits the idea of the dialectical (...) relation between theoretical terms referring to the unobservables and scientific methods. The second argument made by realism is the ‘no miracle’ thesis. These arguments stand challenged by the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The aim of the paper is to examine the relevance of the two arguments of scientific realism in countering the idea that the existence of quantum states in the microphysical world renders realism obsolete. (shrink)

The socialization process in knowledge management has been in discussion for more than a decade, and most research has focused on socialization among employees in developing organizational knowledge. But this article tries to explore the socialization aspect in customer knowledge management in a customer-centric industry, retail using social media. The case study of a leading Indian retailer is implemented using netnography, a research technique that draws data from computer-mediated communication channels. The communications of the retailer to and from customers through (...) Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare are collected, codified and analysed. The findings explored the customer knowledge gaps in the social media interactions, based on which a CKG model was developed. The study gives a new insight for retailers which can be used to evaluate their strategies using customer knowledge from social media apart from customer relationship management and personal interactions. The information t... (shrink)

In normative decision theory, the weight of an uncertain event in a decision is governed solely by the probability of the event. A large body of empirical research suggests that a single notion of probability does not accurately capture peoples' reactions to uncertainty. As early as the 1920s, Knight made the distinction between cases where probabilities are known and where probabilities are unknown. We distinguish another case –- the unknowable uncertainty –- where the missing information is unavailable to all. We (...) propose that missing information influences the attractiveness of a bet contingent upon an uncertain event, especially when the information is available to someone else. We demonstrate that the unknowable uncertainty –- falls in preference somewhere in between the known and the known uncertainty. (shrink)

We experimentally investigate the disposition of decision makers to use case-based reasoning as suggested by Hume and formalized by case-based decision theory. Our subjects face a monopoly decision problem about which they have very limited information. Information is presented in a manner which makes similarity judgements according to the feature matching model of Tversky plausible. We provide subjects a “history” of cases. In the 2×2\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$2\times 2$$\end{document} between-subject design, we vary whether information (...) about the current market is given and whether immediate feedback about obtained profits is provided. The results provide support for the predictions of case-based decision theory, particularly when no immediate feedback is provided. (shrink)

An ongoing debate in the United States relating to COVID-19 features the purported tension between containing the coronavirus to save lives or opening the economy to sustain livelihoods, with ethical overtones on both sides. Proponents of opening the economy argue that sustaining livelihoods should be prioritized over virus containment, with ethicists asking, “What about the risk to human life?” Defendants of restricting the spread of the virus endorse saving lives through virus containment but contend with the ethical concern “What about (...) people’s livelihoods and individual freedoms?” A commonly held belief is that political ideology drives these differential preferences: liberals are more focused on saving lives, whereas conservatives favor sustaining livelihoods with no additional government intervention in the free-market economy. We examine these lay beliefs among US residents in four studies and find that economic system justification (ESJ), an ideology that defends the prevailing economic system when under threat, is a reliable psychological predictor beyond political ideology. Specifically, compared to those who scored low on ESJ, people who scored high on ESJ judged China as more justified in downplaying the spread of virus to protect its interest in the global free-market economy, supported in-person over online learning, viewed shelter in place as less desirable, and perceived the opening of the Texas economy as more legitimate. We also find that multiple psychological mechanisms might be at work—resistance to market interventions, perceived legitimacy of opening the economy, perceived seriousness of the health crisis, and violation of human rights. (shrink)

Marchetti offers a revisionist account of James's contribution to moral thought in the light of his pragmatic conception of philosophical activity. He sketches a composite picture of a Jamesian approach to ethics revolving around the key notion and practice of a therapeutic critique of one's ordinary moral convictions and style of moral reasoning.

I examine the foundations of a just society using the lens of decision theory. The conception of just society is from an individual’s viewpoint: where would I rather live if I have an equal chance of being any individual? Three alternative designs for a just society are examined. These are: laissez-faire, maximin and social minimum. Two assumptions about human nature clarify the distinction among three societies. The first assumption is that a representative individual’s utility function is concave. The second assumption (...) recognizes that redistribution to achieve equality reduces total wealth. A rational individual would prefer a society where one is free to maximize one’s expected utility. A social minimum that includes both the provision of essential human needs and equality of opportunity (education, healthcare, access to capital) for a flourishing life emerges as a candidate solution for the basic structure of society. (shrink)

In normative decision theory, the weight of an uncertain event in a decision is governed solely by the probability of the event. A large body of empirical research suggests that a single notion of probability does not accurately capture peoples' reactions to uncertainty. As early as the 1920s, Knight made the distinction between cases where probabilities are known and where probabilities are unknown. We distinguish another case –- the unknowable uncertainty –- where the missing information is unavailable to all. We (...) propose that missing information influences the attractiveness of a bet contingent upon an uncertain event, especially when the information is available to someone else. We demonstrate that the unknowable uncertainty –- falls in preference somewhere in between the known and the known uncertainty. (shrink)

The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the birth of two distinct philosophical schools in Europe: analytic philosophy and phenomenology. The history of 20th-century philosophy is often written as an account of the development of one or both of these schools, as well as their overt or covert mutual hostility. What is often left out of this history, however, is the relationship between the two European schools and a third significant philosophical event: the birth and development of pragmatism, the indigenous (...) philosophical movement of the United States. Through a careful analysis of seminal figures and central texts, this book explores the mutual intellectual influences, convergences, and differences between these three revolutionary philosophical traditions. The essays in this volume aim to show the central role that pragmatism played in the development of philosophical thought at the turn of the twentieth century, widen our understanding of a seminal point in the history of philosophy, and shed light on the ways in which these three schools of thought continue to shape the theoretical agenda of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Covers the major aspects of James's thought, from his early influences to his legacy, with over 40 chapters by an outstanding roster of international contributors. An indispensable resource for anyone studying and researching James's philosophy.

This paper presents an alternative concept of excellence in business, which builds upon the conventional notion of excellence as being in harmony with profit. Although the notion of an enduring harmony (or what we call the convergence thesis) between long-term profit and excellence is favoured by many thinkers, the premise neglects the disruptive force of the autonomous pursuit of excellence in theory and constrains it in practice. Further, autonomous excellence, a key condition of a genuine practice, is structurally weakened by (...) the fact that businesses are heavily reliant on market approval to sustain themselves, irreversibly damaging their status as genuine practices. We argue that the autonomous pursuit of excellence requires not only recognizing but also actively strengthening a contingent relationship between internal and external goods, so that internal goods such as the excellence of the product can achieve maximum autonomy from the pressures of external goods. Such a risk-oriented approach may appear antagonistic to business but finds expression in the insight of key business visionaries such as Steve Jobs and Henry Ford that major technological advancements rarely find themselves in consonance with existing market standards and thus require a courageous break from 'market excellence'. (shrink)

The present issue of the EJPAP hosts a symposium on the theme of Pragmatist Ethics: Theory and Practice, exploring the many ways in which the contribution of pragmatism to moral philosophy and the moral life has been thought of and argued for. In particular, the symposium explores the distinctive nature, reaches, and limits of a pragmatist mindset in moral matters: the plurality of voices represented showcases the extent of approaches possible, within pragmatism, to the very question of how m...

This study tries to check the degree of basic human values among management professionals in India with considerable cultural and linguistic differences and how it varies across the different demographic influences. We have checked the impact of demographic variables like gender, age, education, type of organisation, place of residence, and work experience on basic human values. Hypotheses testing were conducted using MANOVA. It was inferred that the perception regarding the degree of basic human values differs among different management professionals based (...) on their age, gender, education, type of organisation, and place of residence. Surprisingly, the work experience of the person does not have a significant influence on basic human values. Consequently, we imply that the demographics of an individual carve their basic human values. The findings and inferences of the proposed study will be of great importance to policymakers and recruiting managers to fetch the right candidate. (shrink)

In a bid to curb the spread of COVID-19 in 2020, several countries implemented lockdown procedures to varying degrees. This article sought to examine the extent to which country-level strictness, as measured by the Government Response Stringency Index, moderated the relationship between certain cultural dimensions and estimates of national innovation. Data on 84 countries were collated for Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, and from the Global Innovation Index. Owing to the robust relationships between innovation and the dimensions of uncertainty avoidance, power distance, (...) and individualism, these were used in moderation analyses. In general, power distance was inversely related to innovation, whereas individualism was directly related to it. Results indicated that collectivist and high power distance countries showed lower innovation, irrespective of levels of government stringency as a response to COVID-19. On the other hand, among individualistic and low power distance countries, lower innovation was associated with increased stringency. Higher innovation was observed when such countries had a less severe government response. The dimension of uncertainty avoidance was not significantly associated with innovation at the country level. The implications of lockdowns on general innovation, its inputs, and outputs are discussed in the context of cultural dimensions and country-level policies. (shrink)

This paper argues that a proper evaluation of the notion of efficiency in business ethics requires that we separate efficiency qua human good from the originally value-neutral sense of the term. The adverse consequences of hyper-efficiency consist in paradoxically causing greater inefficiencies (‘perversity’) as well as a negative impact on the human capacities to pursue various forms of excellence (‘jeopardy’). In contrast to its negative consequences, the precious good of efficiency can be formulated in terms of Alasdair MacIntyre’s influential practice-institution (...) framework. The paper proposes that efficiency be defined in terms of the kind of success towards which it aims; while it never quite reaches the status of an internal good, efficiency fluctuates between being an external good proper and what we call a paradoxical good, with attributes of both internal and external goods. The archetype of a paradoxical good is the good of success qua victory in the domain of sports, which shares attributes of internal goods (since it is defined as a necessary and desirable goal by the practice itself) and external goods (since victory for one implies the defeat of another, a zero-sum logic). The paper fleshes out the consequences of this paradox in MacIntyre’s framework by proposing a three-stage model of success and efficiency for various practices. (shrink)

In what follows I shall investigate how the notions of truth and invention inform our moral life. In particular, I will show how this idea has been explored by William James in his seminal essay The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life (MPML), by far his most clear-cut piece of moral philosophy. I will claim that the dialectics of the essay cannot be apprehended independently from the understanding of the moral psychology and epistemology James elaborates in his writings on pragmatism (...) and the philosophy of mind. In fact, once framed in the relevant perspective, the essay conveys a very different and more radical position that the one usually acknowledged. In MPML James engages in an inquiry into the nature of moral thought and its ability to meet the difficulties of the moral life it should address. The essay criticizes a certain image of moral reflection by questioning its underlying assumptions about the nature of mindedness and the place of truth in the moral life. I shall thus articulate the discussion of James’ essay along two directions, one methodological and one substantive. They are, respectively, the anti-foundational and anti-theoretical character of moral reflection, and the rethinking of the relationship we have with our interiority that is relevant for ethics as informed by the notion of truth. (shrink)

There is considerable consensus on the idea that Aristotelian virtue ethics advocates moral realism. In numerous works, the well-known business ethicist Edwin Hartman grapples with reconciling the unitary vision of life that a particular kind of moral realism advocates and the pluralist respect for diverse cultures and belief systems that comprise our world. This paper closely follows Hartman's efforts to reconcile his liberal values with his guarded support for Aristotelian moral realism. We argue that the realist interpretation of Aristotle's function (...) argument can be employed to strengthen Hartman's critique of the concept of Homo economicus, which is often posited by its proponents and critics alike as the only viable position for a business manager. Drawing from Aristotle, the paper posits a novel notion of species-excellence as the ultimate telos of human life and an objective basis for a critique of Homo economicus. (shrink)

This paper argues that business ethics would enhance its relevance if it is ceases to be a moralizing discourse and instead becomes a mediating discourse between conflicting and multiple interests. Yet business ethics can be relevant as a mediating discourse only if it acknowledges the “embedded” nature of market. To clarify this point, the paper draws from Freeman’s theory of narrative cores, Rehg’s Problem-based Approach and De George’s vision of business ethics as an interdisciplinary field composed of descriptive, managerial and (...) normative components. Finally, we argue for the relevance of the case study, whose juxtaposition of “bi-polar” or irreconcilable dichotomies makes it a vital pedagogical tool for our proposed reconfiguration of business ethics as an interdisciplinary, mediating field of enquiry. (shrink)

We seek to understand how third-party observers respond to allegations of sexual transgressions, whether their responses vary and if so why, how they determine perpetrator sanctions, who is more forgiving of them, and what is the psychological mechanism underlying this preference. We draw on one dimension of Hofstede's theory of cultural orientations—power distance belief, and one dimension of Haidt's work on moral reasoning—moral decoupling. Results from three studies on recent real-life cases—those pertaining to Harvey Weinstein, Brett Kavanaugh, and Peter Martins—reveal (...) interesting, consistent, and dramatic findings pertaining to these research questions. Specifically, compared to observers who endorse a low power distance belief, high PDB observers selectively suspend judgments of culpability and express higher evaluations of the alleged perpetrators, are significantly more forgiving of them, convey a lower preference for naming and shaming them, and consider the alleged transgressions as less serious. These outcomes are predicated on the psychological mechanism of moral decoupling. Both high and low PDB respondents decouple the perpetrators’ competence and morality. However, high PDB observers gauge the actions of the perpetrators by emphasizing competence, while low PDB observers gauge their actions by emphasizing morality. (shrink)

The initial online publication contained a typesetting mistake. The original article has been corrected.

The collection by Sparrow and Hutchinson gathers together philosophers and sociologists to discuss the ever fascinating yet surprisingly underplayed theme of habit: its history and place in the western philosophical tradition, from the ancients to the contemporary scene. A collection such as this has been long overdue, and surprisingly so, given the centrality of habits in our understanding and organization of ourselves and of the world. We human beings are in fact complex bundles of habits embodied in practices. Hence, our (...) limits and possibilities are at least partially governed by the way in which we habituate, dishabituate, and re-habituate ourselves. Although their presence is widely... (shrink)

The editors of this collection aim to fill a notable gap in the scholarship on Gilles Deleuze, pragmatism, and their reciprocal relations. This task is approached along two main lines, corresponding roughly to the volume’s two parts: on the one hand, by reconstructing Deleuze’s direct or potential engagements with classical pragmatism, while on the other hand by investigating the real or virtual exchanges between Deleuze’s rich philosophical production and most contemporary varieties of pragmatism. As the editors explain in their useful (...) stage-setting introduction to the volume, it is a telling fact that, despite Deleuze’s deep interest in pragmatism and an overlapping of concerns and themes, no work has yet... (shrink)

In this article I address a number of issues raised by Colin Koopman, Alex Livingston, and Michael Slater to my reading of James’s ethics as defended in my 2015 book having to do with, in turn, the relationship between ethics and politics, ethics and psychological types, and ethics and religion. In accounting for these charges, I vindicate and further qualify my interpretation of James as a moral therapist.

It is not uncommon, when reading and writing about philosophical traditions, to be highly selective. Especially so when the tradition under review has been contested among its friends and foes alike since its very beginning. This has surely been, and still is, the case with pragmatism, where depending on the narrative spun we would have very different figures foregrounded or rather eclipsed. One might well speak of pragmatisms in the plural, as the Peirceans, the Jamesians, the Deweyeans, and...

1. In his compelling article American Pragmatism: The Conflict of Narratives, Richard Bernstein quotes a perceptive line by Alasdair MacIntyre that goes [A] tradition not only embodies the narrative of an argument, but is only recovered by an argumentative retelling of that narrative which will itself be in conflict with other argumentative retellings. Bernstein, in the essay mentioned, works through MacIntyre’s passage in order to “engage in the ‘argumentative retelling’ of a metanarrative –...

Richard J. Bernstein has left us on July 4, 2022. Tributes and events celebrating his life and thought continue a year on. Dick, as he encouraged people to address him, was a most humble, gifted, and generous scholar, and his teachings illuminated the minds of many generations. His civil passion as well as his love for life pervaded his writings, within and without philosophy. His need for understanding and intellectual curiosity were never an arid self-serving exercise, but rather the expres...

Far from offering a comprehensive overview or a definitive statement of James’s philosophical style, the aim of this entry is to articulate the intertwinement of James’s unique way of writing and lecturing with his reflection on, and thus his use of, style. I shall take James’s writings on pragmatism as exemplary. In these metaphilosophical works we find articulated a picture of philosophy as a critical, transformative activity, one in which the way one expresses oneself gets itself rubricated as a central (...) philosophical issue. In his characterization of pragmatism as a philosophical method, and consistently with his understanding of philosophical activity as a practice of reflective engagement with oneself, James offers his readers sophisticated and yet intimate instructions rather than prescriptions or descriptions dressed in a specialized, dry language. James is surely not the sole author who professed a close relationship between what is said, how it is said, and why it is so said along precisely these lines—Nietzsche and Wittgenstein are other notable examples. In what follows, I aim at depicting James’s distinctive way of formulating this insight and putting it to work. (shrink)

Because of his unwavering commitment to fight disciplinary and mental closure, William James is an author who has invited scholars from the most disparate fields to review aspects of his eclectic and far-reaching body of work. Not only philosophers, psychologists, historians of medicine and religion, but also artists, political theorists, and social activists have productively engaged James’s rich and variegated writings with the goal to reconstructing seminal portions of our intellectual, cu...

Jeremy Carrette is one of the most interesting contemporary scholars writing on James’s philosophy of religious experience. In the present volume the author expands and deepens the scope of his previous researches by investigating the epistemological and metaphysical dimensions of James’s work on religion. The resulting interpretation is an sophisticated and ambitious one: Carrette argues that most accounts of James’s writings on religion—and of his thought as a whole—have been vitiated by a “disciplinary closure” which conceals James’s unbroken effort to (...) “sustain a conversation across the disciplinary spaces of philosophy, psychology and the study of religion” . Contrary to this approach, Carrette claims how .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Le etiche della virtù. La riflessione contemporanea a partire da Hume by Alessio VaccariSarin MarchettiAlessio Vaccari. Le etiche della virtù. La riflessione contemporanea a partire da Hume. Firenze : Le Lettere, 2012. Pp. 320. ISBN 9788860876324, Paper, €29.00.Alessio Vaccari’s volume represents a major achievement in Hume scholarship as well as in contemporary reflection on philosophical ethics. Le etiche della virtù. La riflessione contemporanea a partire da Hume (Virtue (...) Ethics: From Hume Onwards) will be of much value to both historians of moral philosophy and contemporary ethicists who are versed in the ongoing discussions over the nature and point of moral thought. In an intellectual landscape dominated by a legalistic conception of ethics, Vaccari’s investigation is a historiographically committed and theoretically inspired inquiry into (and re-evaluation of) the health of and current regard for the paradigm of the virtues. On the one hand, the author is interested in challenging the influential narrative—voiced by Elizabeth Anscombe (1958) and Alasdair MacIntyre (1981)—according to which modern moral philosophy has been characterized by the most unfortunate eclipse of the language of the virtues; on the other, he aims at reconstructing an effective, viable understanding of virtue ethics along those Humean lines best suited to address the distinctive difficulties facing our contemporary progressive societies. (The challenge of environmental sustainability and future generations is taken as exemplary.) Against Anscombe and MacIntyre, and following the lesson of Jerome B. Schneewind (1990 Jerome B. Schneewind (1998), Vaccari argues that in the post-Enlightenment moral debate, we have not paid enough attention to distinctively modern articulations of the central features of [End Page 123] virtue ethics, including the cultivation of one’s character as a prime moral goal, an enriched understanding of the qualitative dimension and intrinsic value of human happiness, and the acknowledgement of the moral significance of both personal and social relationships for the realization of the good.These historiographical and theoretical concerns represent two sides of the same coin, as Vaccari compellingly argues that the oversight (if not disregard) of the typically modern conception of the virtues finely elaborated by Hume in his works—partly reprised and further refined by John Stuart Mill—deprives us of precious analytical resources to resolve some general impasses that are features of contemporary moral reflection (for example, the demandingness of duty based ethics and the limits of impartial accounts of moral principles) as well as the tensions internal to virtue ethics, especially of neo-Aristotelean and neo-Kantian sorts, (for example, their conflicting pictures of the virtuous agent and the experiential unsoundness of their accounts of the stabilization of moral responses). Humean virtue ethics is depicted, in the first instance, as a radical approach to—and style of—moral philosophy: descriptive and yet normative, explicative without being prescriptive. It is thus Vaccari’s claim that by re-discovering neglected and yet central aspects of Hume’s practical philosophy, illuminated by Mill’s romantic utilitarianism and contrasted to both Kant’s rationalism and (partly) Nietzsche’s perfectionism, we would gain access to a fresh conceptual possibility about how best to reflect on the moral life. This operation also opens up a fertile space for a metaphilosophical investigation of the very character and stakes of moral thought itself, whose lack of reflexivity upon its philosophical credentials is often at the basis of the aforementioned difficulties.The two tasks are brilliantly coordinated, resulting in a volume that is a gold mine of both historical and speculative details that provide a critical store of intellectual resources for thinking through these issues. Besides firmly mastering the primary sources, Vaccari digests an impressive body of secondary literature, which is clearly explained and skillfully assessed. Targeted at scholars of Hume and virtue ethics, Le etiche della virtù is highly recommended for advanced undergraduate courses as well as for graduate seminars both on the history of modern moral philosophy and on contemporary meta-ethics and normative ethics. An English translation of the volume would surely widen its audience and boost its circulation.The volume comprises a preface, five chapters, and an exhaustive bibliography. In the preface, Vaccari sets the stage for his defense of a sentimentalist version of virtue... (shrink)