Whereas there are many publications in which argumentation quality has been defined by argumentation theorists, considerably less research attention has been paid to lay people’s considerations regarding argument quality. Considerations about strong and weak argumentation are relevant because they can be compared with actual persuasive success. Argumentation theorists’ conceptions have to some extent been shown to be compatible with actual effectiveness, but for lay people such compatibility has yet to be determined. This study experimentally investigated lay people’s expectations about the (...) persuasiveness of anecdotal, statistical, causal, and expert evidence, and compared these expectations with the actual persuasiveness of these evidence types. Dutch and French participants (N = 174) ranked four types of evidence in terms of their expected persuasiveness for eight different claims. Both cultural groups expected statistical evidence to be the most persuasive type of evidence to other people, followed by expert, causal, and, finally, anecdotal evidence. A comparison of these rankings with the results of Hornikx and Hoeken (Communication Monographs 74, 443–463, 2007, Study 1) on the actual persuasiveness of the same evidence types reveals that people’s expectations are generally accurate: How relatively persuasive they expect evidence types to be often corresponded with their actual persuasiveness. (shrink)

This paper introduces a receiver who perceives ambiguity in a binary model of Bayesian persuasion. The sender has a well-defined prior, while the receiver considers an interval of priors and maximizes a convex combination of worst and best expected payoffs. We characterize the sender’s optimal signal and find that the receiver’s payoff differences across states given each action, play a fundamental role in the characterization and the comparative statics. If the sender’s preferred action is the least sensitive one, then (...) the sender’s equilibrium payoff, as well as the sender’s preferred degree of receiver ambiguity, is increasing in the receiver’s pessimism. We document a tendency for ambiguity-sensitive receivers to be more difficult to persuade. (shrink)

This paper develops the view that in arguing informally individuals construct a dual representation in which there is a coupling of arguments and the structure of the qualitative (mental) causal model to which these refer. Invited to consider a future possibility, individuals generate a causal model and mentally simulate the consequences of certain actions. Their arguments refer to the causal paths in the model. Correspondingly, faced with specific arguments about a policy option they generate a model with particular causal paths (...) and mentally simulate the outcomes. The results of Experiment 1 are consistent with this notion. Decisions on the percentage of funds to be allocated to genetically modified (GM) crop research depended on the structure of the arguments elicited in response to imagining a future state of affairs. Specifically, the presence of a dissuasive argument eliminated the impact of any persuasive argument. The non-monotonic properties of everyday informal argument can then be seen as a corollary of change to causal structure in the model. The dual representation view predicts that the impact of a dissuasive argument will depend on the structure of the causal model. Experiment 2 tested and confirmed this prediction by requiring individuals to judge the relative persuasiveness of two cases referring either to a model with two independent causal paths or to a model in which one causal path depended on the other. In contrast to Experiment 1, prior opinion on GM crop research did not affect allocation decisions. An advisory role in contrast to a participant role may encourage a more decontextualised mode of thinking. According to the dual representation view, ease of mental simulation should exert wide-ranging effects on judgements and the rhetoric of arguments should also be important. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of these expectations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Persuasion and RhetoricThomas M. ConleyPersuasion and Rhetoric. Carlo Michelstaedter. Translated with an introduction and commentary by Russell Scott Valentino, Cinzia Sartini Blum, and David J. Depew : New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Pp. 178. $32.50, hardcover.Readers of this book will not find much in it about the "persuasion" and "rhetoric" they might expect to read about in this journal. Nor will they find in it the Appendici (...) Critiche that appear in the original text, Michelstaedter's thesis entitled I concetti di persuasione e rettorica [sic] in Platone e Aristotele, which he submitted to the Faculty of Letters in Florence in 1910. But the version printed here by the editors (hereafter "VBD," as there is no indication of who did what) will no doubt appeal to those who dislike Plato and Aristotle, have the idea that something better can be found in the Presocratics, and claim allegiance to such philosophers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the Heidegger of Being and Time; for this is a book about the problem of attaining a sort of existential "authenticity" and not, in my view, "one of the most trenchant and influential studies in modern rhetoric," as the liner notes claim. To be sure, Persuasione e rettorica has been the subject of decades of contentious scholarship in Italy. But most of that scholarship (and that displayed in the headnotes provided by VBD) concerns the sources of Michelstaedter's ideas and his true debt to the likes of Parmenides and Heraclitus, both of whom figure significantly in his worldview."Persuasione"—and I use the Italian here to avoid confusion—might best be understood to mean a sort of self-possession, being at one with oneself and with the world, or what I called before "authenticity." Michelstaedter himself never makes an effort to define it, for to do that would be to turn it into the sort of abstraction that Michelstaedter opposes. Defining things, as we learn from the Appendici, is the sort of thing philosophers like Aristotle and Hegel do in an act of bad faith or delusion. "Persuasione" is, by contrast, something lived, not understood—or, more precisely, it is a state to which true philosophers (Parmenides and Socrates, for instance) aspire with the full understanding that, like the limit approached asymptotically by an hyperbola (see 48, 109), it can never be attained. That understanding was replaced by the false consciousness represented by the "rettorica" taught by the Sophists and Plato (along with his disciple, Aristotle), and continues to the present day. This account is hinted at in the "Historical Example" allegory of the present text (77–84); but is more fully "documented" in a section of the long Appendix 2, "Note alla triste historia" (107–56 in the 1972 Raschini edition), entitled "La decadenza" (129–35). [End Page 170]"Rettorica," then, is the name Michelstaedter gives to the whole range of ingenious linguistic devices we use to convince ourselves that we are satisfied, fulfilled, secure in our selves and in the world—i.e., "persuaded"—when we are only suffering from a delusion created by language itself. It is rettorica that gives rise to "commonplaces" that masquerade as true understanding, to the impostures of "science" in the name of "objectivity" (see 89–95), to technology and machines, to "education" (110–11, 148–52), and indeed to every manifestation of bourgeois ideology (see the "dialogue" at 104–6, for instance). Rettorica is a kind of hypocrisy, deception, and (self-) flattery; an instrument of "the community of the wicked" (100, 143), a collection of "ornaments of the darkness" (e.g., 137, 139).The problem we face in acknowledging all this is, of course, that the attempt to articulate it has to be done in language; and language, by its very nature in all its semantic and syntactic elements (the point of Appendix 1, Raschini, 103–6), subverts true "persuasione." How can one "speak truth to authenticity," so to speak, when one begins by "giving a name to" its contrary, "rettorica"?"Trenchant," in any event, is hardly the right term to describe Persuasion and Rhetoric. "Mordant" or "plangent" might be closer to the mark. And as for its influence on "modern rhetoric... (shrink)

As a part of religious discourse, Christian sermons are a “…persuasive discourse par excellence”. This is more pronounced in the Christian Prosperity Gospel, a system of thought and belief in which preachers The word preacher and speaker are used interchangeably in this paper. attempt to convince audiences to donate to their churches with the expectation that God will reward them with health and wealth. Previous research shows that the use of metaphors and metonymies pervade CPG sermons but an explanation on (...) the mechanisms through which they persuade is rarer. With this in mind and viewing CPG sermons from their persuasive angle; this paper sets out to investigate how metaphors and metonymies are used for persuasion purposes in televised sermons presented in the Gĩkũyũ language Gĩkũyũ is the language of the Agĩkũyũ who are largely found in central Kenya as well as in some other parts of the country. It is a Bantu language classified as a Zone E language by Guthrie. According to the 2019, Population and Housing Census, the gĩkũyũ is the largest tribe in Kenya at 8,148,668 individuals. The community has dominated in televangelism but the position is changing due to the proliferation of many vernacular television stations.. The data is drawn from authentic televised sermons. The findings indicate that metaphors and metonymies engender persuasion in sermons by affecting the perceived altruism and trustworthiness of a speaker in a sermon. This is done by means of manipulating various forms of distance suggested in the Media Proximization Approach. Metaphor is found to affect the axiological, epistemic, temporal and emotional distances while metonymy affects the axiological and spatial distances to activate certain pragmatic presuppositions which make them persuasive in a covert way. (shrink)

If we [women] have not stopped rape, we have redefined it, we have faced it, and we have set up the structures to deal with it for ourselves.[T]he definition of rape, which has in the past always been understood to mean the use of violence or the threat of it to force sex upon an unwilling woman, is now being broadened to include a whole range of sexual relations that have never before in all of human experience been regarded as (...) rape.In 1989 the philosopher and self-described feminist Christina Sommers published a short essay — ‘an opinion piece,’ she called it — that was eventually developed into and published as a philosophical article. In this essay Sommers criticized ‘feminist philosophers’ for being ‘oddly unsympathetic to the women whom they claim to represent.’ Specifically, Sommers accused these philosophers of ignoring the ‘values of the average woman’ and of being caught up in an ‘ideological fervor.’ To emphasize her point that the so-called feminist philosophers have lost touch with ‘the average woman,’ Sommers wrote that ‘One must nevertheless expect that many women will continue to swoon at the sight of Rhett Butler carrying Scarlett O'Hara up the stairs to a fate undreamt of in feminist philosophy.’. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Credibility, Persuasiveness, and EffectivenessPatricia A. King (bio)Since the early 1970s, complex ethical, social, legal, and scientific controversies generated by biomedicine have been referred to governmentally created commissions, committees, boards, and panels that are commonly referred to as “ethics” committees. The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments is the most recent example of such a group. Although it is too early to know the full impact of the Committee’s (...) work, it is important to reflect on aspects of its deliberations that shed light on the public policy role of ethics bodies. Specifically, I will reflect on matters that go to the credibility, persuasiveness, and effectiveness of these committees.The point should be made at the outset that these ethics committees are, first and foremost, public policy groups. Governmentally created bodies of all types, including ethics committees, are established to provide pragmatic advice to governments about specific problems and controversies or to complete specified tasks on behalf of governments. What distinguishes ethics committees from other advisory groups is that the issues assigned to them are presumed to be primarily ethical, as opposed to, say, economic, in nature. It is expected that ethical analyses and premises will play a significant, albeit not exclusive, role in the committee’s deliberations. 1 As with other advisory groups, the primary responsibility of ethics committees is to respond to the branches of government that were instrumental in their creation as well as to the public at large. Since political concerns undoubtedly play a role in the creation of these groups, it is understandable that political concerns have some impact on the committee’s work. Thus, ethics committees are generally cognizant of the need to ensure that their processes and substantive conclusions are credible, persuasive, and effective.In my experience, members of ethics commissions understand the need to offer principled arguments that are factually accurate to justify their recommendations and conclusions. They also appreciate the need for consensus and rightly worry about disagreement among members. I believe, however, that committee members are less attentive than they should be to the social and political contexts in which they operate. This is not surprising. Members of these committees, and often their staffs as well, are typically experts drawn from the academy. [End Page 313] Scholars traditionally offer advice or influence policy through articles and scholarly work undertaken individually or in cooperation with like-minded individuals who do not need to be persuaded about the merits of a specific position. Moreover, scholarly articles are often pitched at a level of abstraction that may be of limited utility in the context of concrete decision making.Scholarly efforts are important. Particularly in bioethics, these scholarly efforts often have furnished the conceptual frameworks that are critical to the efforts of those who grapple with complex matters, the appropriate resolution of which pose moral disagreement and genuine perplexity. Policy formulation by its very nature, however, requires more. Attention must be paid to competing moral and social frameworks. Logical, rational arguments and risk/benefit assessments are important, but emotion, passion and values grounded in experience also demand consideration. Policy formulation as a result can be a quite messy process.Members of the academy are often uncomfortable in this environment. Pursuing the messy details can be threatening and at times at odds with values that academics prize highly. I believe this discomfort was evident in the reluctance of several Advisory Committee members to obtain security clearances that were required in order to see classified material related to the Committee’s work. Secrecy may have seemed at odds with cherished values of openness. As a result the perusal of classified materials was left to those with clearances. Fortunately, the Committee was successful in having relevant information declassified so all committee members read and deliberated about the same information. Committees needing to see more contemporaneous classified information might not be so fortunate.Ethics commission members correctly worry about disagreement. The ability to reach consensus helps to give recommendations a compelling quality. Morris Abram, chairman of the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, makes this point powerfully. He states that “a commission requires agreement that is as... (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s conception of ‘persuasion’, understood as the persuader’s attempt to modify the persuadee’s certainties, has been recently misinterpreted by some scholars. For Persichetti has overlooked the fact that one cannot persuade unintentionally, while Marconi and Perissinotto have not only taken for granted that persuasion consists in the mere transfer of a world-picture or set of certainties to an individual even when she has not alternative or different certainties, but also that education is restricted to persuading or transmitting certainties. After clarifying (...) these misinterpretations, among others, I argue that persuasion is not used for teaching certainties at the outset, but for modifying them when they do not fit the ones expected by the persuader. If it is agreed that education partly consists in transmitting a world-picture, then persuasion constitutes a necessary resource for educators. Lastly, I provide a set of guidelines for teachers to draw attention to the basic aspects of persuasion that they should consider in the classroom. (shrink)

We present a theory of sequential information processing in persuasion. It extends assumptions of the heuristic-systematic model, in particular the idea that information encountered early in a persuasion situation may affect the processing of subsequent information. SIP also builds on the abstraction from content-related dichotomies in accord with the parametric unimodel of social judgment. SIP features one constitutional axiom and three main postulates: Persuasion is the sequential processing of information that is relevant to judgment formation. Inferences drawn from initial information (...) may bias the processing of subsequent information if they are either activated rules or valence expectations that are relevant to the subsequent information. Inferences drawn from initial information are resistant to change. Thus, the interpretation of subsequent information is assimilated to inferences drawn from the initial information. Or, if assimilation is impossible, contrast effects occur. The overall effect of a persuasion attempt corresponds to the recipient’s judgment at the moment the processing of information is terminated. We illustrate how our predictions for assimilation and contrast effects may be tested by presenting results from an experiment in which we presented exactly the same arguments but varied the processing sequence. We discuss theoretical and applied implications of sequence effects for persuasion phenomena, as well as challenges for further research developing and testing the theory. (shrink)

This article concentrates on Hobbes's inference from the passions to the inevitability of war in the state of nature, asking how this could be expected to persuade. The inference gets some support from experience but also from its position in a certain kind of science.

Narrative persuasion, i.e. the impact of narratives on beliefs, behaviors and attitudes, and the mechanisms underpinning endorsement of conspiracy theories have both drawn substantial attention from social scientists. Yet, to date these two fields have evolved separately, and to our knowledge no study has empirically examined the impact of conspiracy narratives on real-world conspiracy beliefs. In a first study, we exposed a group of participants (n = 37) to an X-Files episode before asking them to fill in a questionnaire related (...) to their narrative experience and conspiracy beliefs. A control group (n = 41) had to answer the conspiracy beliefs items before watching the episode. Based on past findings of both the aforementioned lines of research, we hypothesized that the experimental group would show greater endorsement of conspiracy beliefs, an effect expected to be mediated by identification to the episodes’ characters. We furthermore hypothesized that identification would be associated with cognitive elaboration of the narrative information. The first two hypotheses were disproved since no narrative persuasion effect was observed. In a second study, we sought to replicate these results in a larger sample (n = 166). No persuasive effect was found in the new data and a bayesian meta-analysis of the two studies strongly supports the absence of a positive effect of exposure to narrative material on endorsement of conspiracy theories. In both studies, a significant relation between conspiracy mentality and enjoyment was observed. In the second study, this relation was fully mediated by two dimensions of perceived realism, i.e., plausibility and narrative consistency. We discuss our results, based on theoretical models of narrative persuasion and compare our studies with previous narrative persuasion studies. Implications of these results for future research are also discussed. (shrink)

In practice, more and more companies are using warmth appeals in their advertisements, but not all warmth appeals can bring the expected results. Grounded in social perception, we propose that consumers’ inferences and behavioral intentions stemming from warmth appeals in advertising are moderated by brand concepts. Specifically, warmth appeal decreases competence inferences and, in turn, behavioral intentions toward the self-enhancement brands. However, it increases warmth inferences and, in turn, behavioral intentions toward self-transcendence brands. We tested our hypotheses through two (...) experimental studies. Experiment 1 demonstrated that for self-enhancement brands, warmth appeals in advertisements decreased brand attitudes and purchase intentions; for self-transcendence brands, warmth appeals in advertisements increased brand attitudes and purchase intentions. Experiment 2 showed further evidence to the proposed effect and tested the mediating effects of warmth perception and competence perception. This research provides significant implications for advertising strategies. (shrink)

Commercial genetic testing offered over the internet, known as direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC GT), currently is under ethical attack. A common critique aims at the limited validation of the tests as well as the risk of psycho-social stress or adaption of incorrect behavior by users triggered by misleading health information. Here, we examine in detail the specific role of advertising communication of DTC GT companies from a medical ethical perspective. Our argumentative analysis departs from the starting point that DTC GT (...) operates at the intersection of two different contexts: medicine on the one hand and the market on the other. Both fields differ strongly with regard to their standards of communication practices and the underlying normative assumptions regarding autonomy and responsibility. Following a short review of the ethical contexts of medical and commercial communication, we provide case examples for persuasive messages of DTC GT websites and briefly analyze their design with a multi-modal approach to illustrate some of their problematic implications. We observe three main aspects in DTC GT advertising communication: (1) the use of material suggesting medical professional legitimacy as a trust-establishing tool, (2) the suggestion of empowerment as a benefit of using DTC GT services and (3) the narrative of responsibility as a persuasive appeal to a moral self-conception. While strengthening and respecting the autonomy of a patient is the focus in medical communication, specifically genetic counselling, persuasive communication is the normal mode in marketing of consumer goods, presuming an autonomous, rational, independent consumer. This creates tension in the context of DTC GT regarding the expectation and normative assessment of communication strategies. Our analysis can even the ground for a better understanding of ethical problems associated with intersections of medical and commercial communication and point to perspectives of analysis of DTC GT advertising. (shrink)

This book aims to develop a sophisticated understanding of propaganda. It begins with a brief history of early Western propaganda, including Ancient Greek classical theories of rhetoric and the art of persuasion, and traces its development through the Christian era, the rise of the nation-state, World War I, Nazism, and Communism. The core of the book examines the ethical implications of various forms of persuasion, not only hate propaganda but also insidious elements of more generally acceptable communication such as advertising, (...) public relations, and government information, setting these in the context of freedom of expression. Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion examines the art of persuasion but it also hopes to establish a "self-defense" resistance to propaganda. As Jacques Ellul warned in 1980, any new technology enters into an already existing class system and can be expected to develop in a way favourable to the dominant interests of that system. The merger of AOL and Time-Warner confirms the likelihood of corporate interests dominating the future of the Internet, but the Internet has also opened up new possibilities for a politically effective counter-culture, as was demonstrated at the meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in late 1999 and numerous similar gatherings since. (shrink)

Quantum cognition in decision making is a recent and rapidly growing field. In this paper, we develop an expected utility theory in a context of non-classical uncertainty. We replace the classical state space with a Hilbert space which allows introducing the concept of quantum lottery. Within that framework, we formulate axioms on preferences over quantum lotteries to establish a representation theorem. We show that demanding the consistency of choice behavior conditional on new information is equivalent to the von Neumann–Lüders (...) postulate applied to beliefs. A dynamically consistent quantum-like agent may violate dynamic recursive consistency, however. This feature suggests interesting applications in behavioral economics as we illustrate in an example of persuasion. (shrink)

Objective: Persuasive messages regarding fruit and vegetable consumption often meet defensive reactions from recipients, which may lower message effectiveness. Individual differences in emotion regulation and gender are expected to predict these reactions. In the working memory account of persuasion, inducing voluntary eye movements during the processing of the auditory persuasive information might prevent defensiveness and thereby increase message effectiveness.Methods: Participants in two independently recruited samples from the general population listened to a negatively framed auditory persuasive message advocating fruit and (...) vegetable consumption. Half of them were asked to keep following a regularly moving stimulus on their screen with their eyes. At pretest, the individual differences of cognitive self-affirmation inclination and gender were assessed to predict defensive reactions.Results: In Study 1, induced eye movements significantly increased self-reported consumption after 2 weeks when CSAI was low, but only in males, as indicated by a significant three-way interaction. With negative self-evaluative emotions as dependent variable, this three-way interaction was also significant, suggesting that induced eye movements prevented defensiveness in low CSAI males. Study 2 did not assess consumption but replicated the latter three-way interaction.Conclusion: The studies replicated our earlier findings regarding the moderating effects of individual differences in emotion regulation on persuasion, but they also revealed gender differences in persuasion that are related to the working memory. The working memory account of persuasion provides new theoretical as well as practical angles on persuasion to target individuals in persuasion to increase fruit and vegetable consumption. (shrink)

Relationships between self-ratings and expectations of an ideal U.S. president, were studied in 43 men drawn from a university setting in the eastern coast of the U.S.A. The men first rated themselves on personality variables, life choices (agentic and communal), peacefulness, spirituality, and morality. Then they were presented with a vignette requesting that they describe an ideal U.S. president on inventories measuring personality variables, life choices, peacefulness, spirituality, and morality. For the rating of the ideal U.S. president, they also were (...) asked to respond to a 20 item questionnaire that was a composite of several factors on organization and leadership, morality, spirituality, and peacefulness. The respondents belonged to one of seven different political persuasions, similar in some ways to different cultures. Self-ratings of the men and expectations of the president were highly correlated for extraversion, openness, trait morality, agentic and communal life choices. However, no significant correlations were found between the self-ratings and expectations of the president for neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, peacefulness, nor state morality. The men were also presented with vignettes for the ideal physician and ideal automechanic and asked to rate each of them on the inventory items. Overall, the U.S. President was rated as more neurotic and immoral in terms of ingrained ideas of right and wrong, but also as more caring for others, transcendent, seeking goodness and truth, forgiving, cooperative, and most concerned with matters of justice and mercy, and more concerned with both agentic (power-seeking) and communal (community-minded) life choices than were either the ideal physician or ideal automechanic. The ideal physician was rated as highest in extra-version, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and overall peacefulness, and lowest in neuroticism. The ideal automechanic was rated as highest in state or situational immorality, and lowest in both agentic (power-seeking, business-mindedness) and communal (community-mindedness) life choices, and also lowest in caring for others well-being, transcendence, seeking goodness and truth, forgiveness and cooperation, being concerned with justice and mercy, overall expectations, overall spirituality, and overall organization and leadership. In general, the self-ratings were significantly related to ratings/expectations, of the U.S. President, ideal physician, and ideal automechanic. The men seemed to identify more with the automechanic than with the present or physician. (shrink)

Happy people often fail to elaborate on persuasive arguments, while people in sad moods tend to scrutinise messages in greater detail. According to some motivational accounts, however, happy people will elaborate a message if they believe it might maintain their positive mood. The present research extends this reasoning by demonstrating that happy people will elaborate arguments from message presenters that convey positive hedonic attributes (i.e., source likeability). In a pilot study, we show that happy people believe persuasive messages from a (...) likeable source will be mood maintaining. The results of Study 1 demonstrate that these expectancies have important message-processing implications. In Study 1, sad participants elaborated arguments from both likeable and dislikeable sources, while happy participants only elaborated arguments from a likeable source. Consistent with motivational explanation of these effects, in Study 2, happy participants elaborated arguments from a likeable source when not distracted, but used likeability as a heuristic when distracted with a cognitive-load manipulation. Implications of these results for understanding the effects of mood on processing strategy, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

This article explores a framework for analyses of what has variously been termed the ‘implied’, ‘imagined’, ‘virtual’ or ‘putative’ reader/addressee – the effect by which ostensibly ‘monologic’ texts, such as news media commentary, political pronouncements and academic essays project particular attitudes, beliefs and expectations on to the reader/addressee. The framework is demonstrated in being applied to an examination of the construal of putative addressee positioning in a selection of mass media texts concerned with the Israeli military’s invasion of Gaza in (...) 2014. The framework is novel in the way in which it mobilises the account of the options for dialogistic positioning offered by the appraisal-framework literature, combined with some insights from Toulmin’s notion of the argumentative ‘warrant’. Conclusions are offered as to how such analyses of the readers being ‘written into the text’ can extend insights into the rhetorical workings of such texts and their ideological functionality in naturalising particular value positions. (shrink)

Corporate malpractice and malfeasance on an unprecedented scale have brought ethical issues to the fore and accentuated demands from activists, governments, and the public for greater corporate social responsibility (CSR). The predominant response of researchers and policymakers has been to focus on the external impact of business operations and the merits of regulation or persuasion in achieving more responsible practice in these areas. In this article, we focus on a less well explored aspect of CSR, namely the evaluation of an (...) organization's CSR activities by its internal stakeholders (i.e., employees). Salient CSR literature is reviewed to differentiate between CSR and ethical business practice (EBP), conceptualizing the latter as the internal manifestation of CSR as represented by an organization's values and vision, strategy and policy, systems and procedures, and people management practices. This article assesses organizational espousal of EBP in three ways: how successfully it is communicated to employees, how closely espousal aligns with employee expectation, and how this evaluation impacts on employee commitment. Our research approach aligns with and extends previous work in this area that identifies the likelihood of a “false consensus bias” by managers in assuming congruence between organization espousal of EBP and employee expectation. A conceptual model is offered to explain possible employee responses to an organization's EBP. This relates organization espousal of EBP to employee assessment of its salience to identify three positions on commitment that employees can adopt—abrogated, continuance, and affective commitment—together with their likely behavioral implications. The analysis generates a series of research questions and related areas of exploration to empirically test the conceptual model. (shrink)

ObjectiveWhile nudges are increasingly utilized in public policy settings, their potential threat to autonomous choice is the topic of heated debate. Regardless of the actual effects of nudges on autonomy, the mere perception of nudges as autonomy threatening by the general public or policy makers could negatively influence nudge acceptability. The present online studies examined how people expect nudges to affect their perception of autonomy.MethodsIn the first study, participants were presented with a hypothetical choice that employed either a default nudge, (...) direct persuasion, or no persuasion, to steer to the desired choice. The presented influence technique was explained before participants reported their expected autonomy, as well as their expected choice satisfaction. Study 2 involved a replication of Study 1 with an additional social norm nudge condition. In Study 3, the explanation of how choice had been influenced was omitted.ResultsWhile participants expected the default nudge to violate autonomy, they had no such expectations for social norm nudges. Omitting the explanation that most people are unaware of nudges influencing their choice, reduced the negative impact of nudges on expected autonomy.ConclusionEffects of nudges on expectations of autonomy differ by type of nudge. Negative expectations are primarily driven by the explanation that decision makers are often unaware of nudges. (shrink)

There are at least two plausible generalisations of subjective expected utility (SEU) theory: cumulative prospect theory (which relaxes the independence axiom) and Levi’s decision theory (which relaxes at least ordering). These theories call for a re-assessment of the minimal requirements of rational choice. Here, I consider how an analysis of sequential decision making contributes to this assessment. I criticise Hammond’s (Economica 44(176):337–350, 1977; Econ Philos 4:292–297, 1988a; Risk, decision and rationality, 1988b; Theory Decis 25:25–78, 1988c) ‘consequentialist’ argument for the (...) SEU preference axioms, but go on to formulate a related diachronic-Dutch-book-style’ argument that better achieves Hammond’s aims. Some deny the importance of Dutch-book sure losses, however, in which case, Seidenfeld’s (Econ Philos 4:267–290, 1988a) argument that distinguishes between theories that relax independence and those that relax ordering is relevant. I unravel Seidenfeld’s argument in light of the various criticisms of it and show that the crux of the argument is somewhat different and much more persuasive than what others have taken it to be; the critical issue is the modelling of future choices between ‘indifferent’ decision-tree branches in the sequential setting. Finally, I consider how Seidenfeld’s conclusions might nonetheless be resisted. (shrink)

In a beautiful recent essay, the philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong explains the reasons for his departure from evangelical Christianity, the religious culture in which he was brought up. Sinnot-Armstrong contrasts the interpretive methods used by good philosophers and fundamentalist believers: Good philosophers face objections and uncertainties. They follow where arguments lead, even when their conclusions are surprising and disturbing. Intellectual honesty is also required of scholars who interpret philosophical texts. If I had distorted Kant’s view to make him reach a conclusion (...) that I preferred, then my philosophy professor would have failed me. The contrast with religious reasoning is stark. My Christian friends seemed happy to hide serious problems in the Bible and in their arguments. They preferred comfort to intellectual honesty. I couldn’t. To what extent can we, historians of philosophy, claim the virtue of intellectual honesty? Speaking frankly, I do not find the practice criticized by Sinnot-Armstrong’s philosophy professor rare or unusual at all. We very frequently distort the views of past philosophers in order to reach the conclusions we prefer. We just call it “Charitable Interpretation.” In this essay, I discuss and criticize the logic behind so-called charitable interpretations in the history of philosophy. This phenomenon is ubiquitous and is not at all restricted to a particular philosophical strand or ideology. Analytic philosophers and post-modernists, Marxists, liberals, secularists, and fundamentalists, we all engage in the very same domestication project. Even more disturbing than the sheer ideological pervasiveness of this phenomenon is the fact that, on many occasions, superb philosophers and historians take part in this fairly childish endeavor. In the first part of this essay, I discuss the general logic of charitable interpretations in the history of philosophy, mostly by addressing discussions in metaphysics and epistemology. In the second part, I focus on the somewhat less noticed use of charitable interpretations in the study of political philosophy, and point out the quintessential role ideology plays in these discussions. In both parts, I concentrate mostly on the interpretation of Spinoza’s thought. I do so not because I have special fondness for Spinoza (“guilty as charged,” I admit), but because Spinoza is such a beast (and may I add, an enchanting beast) and attracts a disproportionate share of the domestication efforts from historians and philosophers of all creeds and persuasions. In the third and final part of the paper, I will begin to outline an alternative methodology, which suggests that past philosophers can be most relevant to our current philosophical discussion, to the extent that they provide us with well-motivated challenges to our common-sense beliefs. Such challenges have the invaluable virtue of being able to undermine our most fundamental and secure beliefs, and force us to engage with the most fundamental questions. What more can we expect from good philosophy? (shrink)

"The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark." As an English corset-maker's son, Thomas Paine was expected to spend his life sewing women's underwear. But as a teenager, Thomas dared to change his destiny, enduring years of struggle until a meeting with Benjamin Franklin brought Thomas to America in 1774-and into the American Revolution. Within fourteen months, Thomas would unleash the persuasive power of the written word in Common Sense-a brash wake-up call that rallied the American people to declare (...) independence against the mightiest empire in the world. This fascinating and extensively researched biography, based on numerous primary sources, will immerse readers in Thomas Paine's inspiring journey of courage, failure, and resilience that led a penniless immigrant to change the world with his words. (shrink)

This volume is by no means out of place for a reader in the twenty first century as resemblances between the age of the machine and our own digital age are surprisingly numerous, particularly with reference to the patterns of intellectual response to unprecedented stimuli. The worrisome parallelisms and analogues are purposefully kept off stage for the imaginative audience to complement the plot of the real drama of the Industrial Revolution as it was witnessed by such imaginative medievalist 'knights' as (...) Carlyle, Cobbett, Southey, Pugin, Ruskin and Morris, intelligent thinkers who performed the universal 'type' rather than the subjective or egocentric in so far as their intellectual responses to the discrepancy between two dissimilar epochs was concerned. The reader is, therefore, expected to be engaged with the arguments of the 'neo-feudal', the 'moral-aesthetic' and the utopian 'social-aesthetic' arguments at the core of the book both imaginatively and intellectually. On the first level, he is requested to shuttle between two centuries separated by the length of a different century. On the second, however, he is expected not only to appreciate the artistically excellent literary works of prominent belletrists, but also to examine the clever polemics they developed as methods of treatment and persuasion aiming at a solution of the social and psychological problems that arose from the incongruity between the present and the past, with specific references to such significant concepts as those of time, history, progress and authority which are examined against the superheated touchstones of democratization, liberty, laissez-faire ethics, mechanization, poverty and social protest in the industrial city. (shrink)

Predictable polarization is everywhere: we can often predict how people’s opinions, including our own, will shift over time. Extant theories either neglect the fact that we can predict our own polarization, or explain it through irrational mechanisms. They needn’t. Empirical studies suggest that polarization is predictable when evidence is ambiguous, that is, when the rational response is not obvious. I show how Bayesians should model such ambiguity and then prove that—assuming rational updates are those which obey the value of evidence—ambiguity (...) is necessary and sufficient for the rationality of predictable polarization. The main theoretical result is that there can be a series of such updates, each of which is individually expected to make you more accurate, but which together will predictably polarize you. Polarization results from asymmetric increases in accuracy. This mechanism is not only theoretically possible, but empirically plausible. I argue that cognitive search—searching a cognitively accessible space for a particular item—often yields asymmetrically ambiguous evidence, I present an experiment supporting its polarizing effects, and I use simulations to show how it can explain two of the core causes of polarization: confirmation bias and the group polarization effect. (shrink)

Many of our most urgent contemporary issues-demagoguery, disinformation, white ethno-nationalism-compel us to take opinions seriously. And social media has taught us that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But what constitutes an opinion, and how do those definitions change? In "Entitled Opinions: Doxa After Digitality," Caddie Alford has fashioned an expansive and affirmative theory of opinions for the age of social media. To address these issues, "Entitled Opinions" recuperates the ancient Greek term for opinion: doxa. While doxa is often (...) translated as "opinion" or "belief," the term originally harbored many other connotations, such as fame, reputation, and expectations. These shadings complicate simplistic notions of what opinions are and what they can do. Just as digitality has transformed what constitutes "truth," so too has social media transformed the very notion of opinions. In the context of social media, opinions are now seen as ill-informed preferences that divide people from one another. "Doxa" and its interpretive contexts help shed some of the baggage associated with opinions while signaling more useful lines of inquiry. Repurposing "doxa" recovers the nuance and rhetorical utility of opinions while attempting to make sense of how opinions are trafficked in social media. Commonplace imperatives such as "he tells it like it is" or newer, digital imperatives such as #BlackLivesMatter may seem straightforward on the surface, but haptics, emoji, and "like" buttons betray and lay bare collective assumptions about how opinions in the digital realm function. "Entitled Opinions" argues that because doxa are the virtual tickets to participation in online culture and politics more broadly, social media and opinion have become synonymous. Thus, it is all the more crucial that we scrutinize the interfaces, platforms, coding, syntax, and network architecture that determine how persuasion operates, how reputations sway, and what moments are deemed Instaworthy or worth remembering. In a world that says, "don't read the comments," this book reads the comments, so to speak, taking content that could be thrown away for any number of reasons and alchemizing judgments into implications. Each chapter in the book draws together key rhetorical concepts, current scholarship on opinions, and digital media entanglements. The first chapter lays out one of the book's more critical takeaways: while "opinion" gets reflexively figured in an opinion/fact binary, social media has shown that it is imperative to think and operate in terms of a spectrum of opinions, from reputable to less reputable. These gradations are multifaceted and susceptible to interventions-in the past, those interventions were experts; today, those interventions are algorithms. Each subsequent chapter illuminates opinions in terms of humanistic inquiries that speak to a diverse range of audiences: sociality; infrastructure; bodies; time; and, finally, invention. These chapters put opinions into conversation with algorithms, infrastructure, the rise of digital illiteracy, virality, and digital activism to highlight the digital constraints placed on opinions as well as the creative and evasive ways opinions exceed those constraints. Social media tricks us into thinking opinions are straightforward, isolating, and universal. "Entitled Opinions," however, suggests ways for social media users recuperate and reclaim the place of opinions in the digital sphere. (shrink)

With the help of medicine and technology we are living longer than ever before. As human life spans have increased, the moral and political issues surrounding longevity have become more complex. Should we desire to live as long as possible? What are the social ramifications of longer lives? How does a longer life span change the way we think about the value of our lives and about death and dying? Christine Overall offers a clear and intelligent discussion of the philosophical (...) and cultural issues surrounding this difficult and often emotionally charged issue. Her book is unique in its comprehensive presentation and evaluation of the arguments—both ancient and contemporary—for and against prolonging life. It also proposes a progressive social policy for responding to dramatic increases in life expectancy. Writing from a feminist perspective, Overall highlights the ways that our biases about race, class, and gender have affected our views of elderly people and longevity, and her policy recommendations represent an effort to overcome these biases. She also covers the arguments surrounding the question of the "duty to die" and includes a provocative discussion of immortality. After judiciously weighing the benefits and the risks of prolonging human life, Overall persuasively concludes that the length of life does matter and that its duration can make a difference to the quality and value of our lives. Her book will be an essential guide as we consider our social responsibilities, the meaning of human life, and the prospects of living longer. (shrink)

Most economists believe capitalism is a compromise with selfish human nature. As Adam Smith put it, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." Capitalism works better than socialism, according to this thinking, only because we are not kind and generous enough to make socialism work. If we were saints, we would be socialists. In Why Not Capitalism ?, Jason Brennan attacks (...) this widely held belief, arguing that capitalism would remain the best system even if we were morally perfect. Even in an ideal world, private property and free markets would be the best way to promote mutual cooperation, social justice, harmony, and prosperity. Socialists seek to capture the moral high ground by showing that ideal socialism is morally superior to realistic capitalism. But, Brennan responds, ideal capitalism is superior to ideal socialism, and so capitalism beats socialism at every level. Clearly, engagingly, and at times provocatively written, Why Not Capitalism? will cause readers of all political persuasions to re-evaluate where they stand vis-à-vis economic priorities and systems—as they exist now and as they might be improved in the future. (shrink)

How is the burden of proof to be distributed among individuals who are involved in resolving a particular issue? Under what conditions should the burden of proof be distributed unevenly? We distinguish attitudinal from dialectical burdens and argue that these questions should be answered differently, depending on which is in play. One has an attitudinal burden with respect to some proposition when one is required to possess sufficient evidence for it. One has a dialectical burden with respect to some proposition (...) when one is required to provide supporting arguments for it as part of a deliberative process. We show that the attitudinal burden with respect to certain propositions is unevenly distributed in some deliberative contexts, but in all of these contexts, establishing the degree of support for the proposition is merely a means to some other deliberative end, such as action guidance, or persuasion. By contrast, uneven distributions of the dialectical burden regularly further the aims of deliberation, even in contexts where the quest for truth is the sole deliberative aim, rather than merely a means to some different deliberative end. We argue that our distinction between these two burdens resolves puzzles about unevenness that have been raised in the literature. (shrink)

As a gynecologic surgeon with a focus on infertility, I frequently hold complex discussions with patients, exploring with them the risks and benefits of surgical options. In the past, we physicians may have expected our patients to simply defer to our expertise and choose from the options we presented. In our contemporary era, however, patients frequently request options not favored by their physicians and even some they've found themselves online. In reproductive endocrinology and infertility, the range of options that (...) may be offered or that patients may themselves seek out is continuously widening. Physicians certainly seek to find the option that will result in the best outcome for their patients, but the information to guide us in achieving the best outcome can be vague or conflicting. Add to this the financial and emotional pressures bearing on patients seeking assisted reproduction. In this essay, I explore the extent to which clinicians in reproductive medicine should follow patient requests with which they disagree or instead try to persuade the patient to do something else or simply refuse outright to meet the request. And if persuasion is to be used, what would be legitimate methods? Clearly, coercion is unacceptable, but the line between persuasion and coercion can be elusive. At what point can or should clinicians resist such requests—and to what degree? (shrink)

Prior research on ethics codes has suggested, but rarely tested, the effects of code design alternatives on the impact of codes. This study considers whether the presence of explanatory rationales and descriptions of sanctions in ethics codes affects recipients'' responses to a code. Theories of organizational justice and persuasive communication support an expectation that rationales and sanctions will be positively related to code recipients'' recall of code content and perceptions of organizational justice. Content recall is an obvious precondition of code (...) compliance; justice perceptions have multiple implications for the attitudes and actions of organizational members. Results show that explanatory rationales are associated with a statistically significant increase in perceptions of organizational procedural justice, but that rationales and sanctions generally show no relationship to distributive justice perceptions and accurate content recall. These results suggest that common prescriptions regarding ethics code design are of uncertain value apart from further research which unearths the relationships among the intended and perceived purposes of codes, the organizational settings in which they are applied, and a wide variety of code designs. (shrink)

Zetetic norms govern our acts of inquiry. Epistemic norms govern our beliefs and acts of belief formation. Recently, Jane Friedman (2020) has defended that we should think of these norms as conforming a single normative domain: epistemology should take a zetetic turn. Though this unification project implies a substantive re-elaboration of our traditional epistemic norms, Friedman argues that the reasons supporting the turn are robust enough to warrant its revisionary implications. In this paper, I suggest we should read Friedman’s proposal (...) as a dilemma. Either we believe the zetetic turn is well-motivated and undertake the task of looking for the proper revision of our traditional epistemic norms, or we take the revisionary implications of the turn to be unacceptable, in which case our challenge is to show why a zetetic epistemology is not a well-motivated project after all. After presenting this dilemma, I make a case for endorsing its second horn by presenting a two-pronged argument against Friedman’s project. First, I show that the revisionary implications of the zetetic turn are more far-reaching than expected. Second, I defend that the most persuasive reasons for endorsing the turn are not strong enough to support it. Taken together, these considerations speak against accepting the zetetic turn and the revisionary implications that come with it. (shrink)

Scientists and historians have often presumed that the divide between biochemistry and molecular biology is fundamentally epistemological.100 The historiography of molecular biology as promulgated by Max Delbrück's phage disciples similarly emphasizes inherent differences between the archaic tradition of biochemistry and the approach of phage geneticists, the ur molecular biologists. A historical analysis of the development of both disciplines at Berkeley mitigates against accepting predestined differences, and underscores the similarities between the postwar development of biochemistry and the emergence of molecular biology (...) as a university discipline. Stanley's image of postwar biochemistry, with its focus on viruses as key experimental systems, and its preference for following macromolecular structure over metabolism pathways, traced the outline of molecular biology in 1950.Changes in the postwar political economy of research universities enabled the proliferation of disciplines such as microbiology, biochemistry, biophysics, immunology, and molecular biology in universities rather than in medical schools and agricultural colleges. These disciplines were predominantly concerned with investigating life at the subcellular level-research that during the 1930s had often entailed collaboration with physicists and chemists. The interdisciplinary efforts of the 1930s (many fostered by the Rockefeller Foundation) yielded a host of new tools and reagents that were standardized and mass-produced for laboratories after World War II. This commercial infrastructure enabled “basic” researchers in biochemistry and molecular biology in the 1950s and 1960s to become more independent from physics and chemistry (although they were practicing a physicochemical biology), as well as from the agricultural and medical schools that had previously housed or sponsored such research. In turn, the disciplines increasingly required their practitioners to have specialized graduate training, rather than admitting interlopers from the physical sciences.These general transitions toward greater autonomy for biochemistry and allied disciplines should not mask the important particularities of these developments on each campus. At the University of Caliornia at Berkeley, agriculture had provided, with medicine, significant sponsorship for biochemistry. The proximity of Lawrence and his cyclotrons supported the early development of Berkeley as a center for the biological uses of radioisotopes, particularly in studies of metabolism and photosynthesis. Stanley arrived to establish his department and virus institute before large-scale federal funding of biomedical research was in place, and he courted the state of California for substantial backing by promising both national prominence in the life sciences and virus research pertinent to agriculture and public health. Stanley's venture benefited significantly from the expansion of California's economy after World War II, and his mobilization against viral diseases resonated with the concerns of the Cold War, which fueled the state's rapid growth. The scientific prominence of contemporary developments at Caltech and Stanford invites the historical examination of the significance of postwar biochemistry and molecular biology within the political and cultural economy of the Golden State.In 1950, Stanley presented a persuasive picture of the power of biochemistry to refurbish life science at Berkeley while answering fundamental questions about life and infection. In the words of one Rockefeller Foundation officer,There seems little doubt in [my] mind that as a personality Stanley will be well able to dominate the other personalities on the Berkeley campus and will be able to drive his dream through to completion, which, incidentally, leaves Dr. Hubert [sic] Evans and the whole ineffective Life Sciences building in the somewhat peculiar position of being by-passed by much of the truly modern biochemistry and biophysics research that will be carried out at Berkeley. Furthermore, it seems likely that Dr. S's show will throw Dr. John Lawrence's Biophysics Department strongly in the shade both figuratively and literally, but should make the University of California pre-eminent not only in physics but in biochemistry as well.101Stanley, Sproul, Weaver, and this officer (William Loomis) all testified to a perceptible postwar opportunity to capitalize on public support for biological research that relied on the technologies from physics and chemistry without being captive to them, and that addressed issues of medicine and agriculture without being institutionally subservient. What is striking, given the expectation by many that Stanley would ‘be able to drive his dream through to completion,” was that in fact he did not. Biochemists who had succeeded in making their expertise valued in specialized niches were resistant to giving up their affiliations to joint Stanley's “liberated” organization. Stanley's failure was not simply due to institutional factors: researchers as well as Rockefeller Foundation officers faulted him for his lack of scientific imagination, which made it difficult for him to gain credibility in leading the field. Moreover, many biochemists did not share Stanley's commitment to viruses as the key material for the “new biochemistry.”In the end, Stanley's free-standing department did become a first-rate department of biochemistry, but only after freeing itself from Stanley's leadership and his single-minded devotion to viruses. Nonetheless, the falling-out with the Berkeley biochemists was rapidly followed by the establishment of a Department of Molecular Biology, attesting to the unabating economic and institutional possibilities for an authoritative “general biology” (or two, for that matter) to take hold. In each case, following Stanley's dream sheds light on how the possible and the real shaped the (re)formation of biochemistry and molecular biology as postwar life sciences. (shrink)

If the ultimate purpose of ethical argument is to persuade people to act a certain way, the point of doing business ethics is to persuade others about what constitutes proper ethical behavior. Given that teleological perspective, the role of the business ethicist is to be an orator or rhetorician. Further, since one cannot expect more certitude than the subject warrants, from Aristotle’s perspective, while rhetoric is the most persuasive means of arguing, it is not scientific demonstration. Rhetoric uses examples and (...) enthymemes. Such an approach answers the postmodern claim that ethical argument cannot lead to certitude and shows how the use of rhetoric helps avoid relativism and leads to more effective persuasion. According to Aristotle, rhetoric involves gaining truth with a “rough and general sketch.” This rhetorical approach allows the listener to “see as” the persuader sees, by attending to aspects of our shared experience and language. This mirrors insights of Kant’s reflexive judgment in his third critique as well as the later Wittgenstein, who compares ethics to aesthetics. (shrink)

When a severely suffering dying patient is deeply sedated, and this sedated condition is meant to continue until his death, the doctor involved often decides to abstain from artificially administering fluids. For this dual procedure almost all guidelines require that the patient should not have a life expectancy beyond a stipulated maximum of days (4–14). The reason obviously is that in case of a longer life-expectancy the patient may die from dehydration rather than from his lethal illness. But no guideline (...) tells us how we should describe the dual procedure in case of a longer life-expectancy. Many arguments have been advanced why we should not consider it to be a form of homicide, that is, ending the life of the patient (with or without his request). I argue that none of these arguments, taken separately or jointly, is persuasive. When a commission, even one that is not itself life-shortening, foreseeably renders a person unable to undo the life-shortening effects of another, simultaneous omission, the commission and the omission together should be acknowledged to kill her. I discuss the legal and ethical implications of this conclusion. (shrink)

If the ultimate purpose of ethical argument is to persuade people to act a certain way, the point of doing business ethics is to persuade others about what constitutes proper ethical behavior. Given that teleological perspective, the role of the business ethicist is to be an orator or rhetorician. Further, since one cannot expect more certitude than the subject warrants, from Aristotle’s perspective, while rhetoric is the most persuasive means of arguing, it is not scientific demonstration. Rhetoric uses examples and (...) enthymemes. Such an approach answers the postmodern claim that ethical argument cannot lead to certitude and shows how the use of rhetoric helps avoid relativism and leads to more effective persuasion. According to Aristotle, rhetoric involves gaining truth with a “rough and general sketch.” This rhetorical approach allows the listener to “see as” the persuader sees, by attending to aspects of our shared experience and language. This mirrors insights of Kant’s reflexive judgment in his third critique as well as the later Wittgenstein, who compares ethics to aesthetics. (shrink)

Several thinkers have expressed the view that the central nostrums of neoliberalism, including self-reliance, personal responsibility and individual risk, have become part of the “common sense” fabric of everyday life. My paper argues that Erich Fromm’s idea of social character offers a comprehensive and persuasive answer to this question. While some have sought the answer to this conundrum in Foucault’s notion of governmentality, I argue that, by itself, this answer is not sufficient. What is significant about the notion of social (...) character, I claim, is that it manages to unify “top-down” approaches like governmentality focused on ideas and policy, with “bottom-up” approaches focused on how the insights of day to day experience are mediated through culture. Adapting this theory to neoliberalism, I argue, means that the “common sense” nature of neoliberalism, and the lack of a reckoning for its massive economic failure, are explicable through the formation of a neoliberal social character, by means of which experiential processes align with cultural meanings and, subsequently, fuse with social expectations. (shrink)

Science is a collaborative effort to produce knowledge. Scientists thus must assess what information is trustworthy and who is a competent and honest source and partner. Facing the problem of trust, we can expect scientists to be vigilant. In response to their peers’ vigilance scientists will provide reasons, not only to convince their colleagues to adopt their practices or beliefs, but also to demonstrate that their beliefs and practices are justified. By justifying their beliefs and practices, scientists also justify themselves. (...) Reasons in science thus do not only function as tools of persuasion but also to manage reputation. This analysis strongly suggests that science constitutes a moral system, which has implications for the study and philosophy of science. (shrink)

One of the societal problems in a new influenza pandemic will be how to use the scarce medical resources that are available for prevention and treatment, and what medical, epidemiological and ethical justifications can be given for the choices that have to be made. Many things may become scarce: personal protective equipment, antiviral drugs, hospital beds, mechanical ventilation, vaccination, etc. In this paper I discuss two general ethical principles for priority setting (utility and equity) and explain how these principles will (...) often point in diverging directions. Moreover, each of these principles can be understood in different, again often competing, ways. Notwithstanding these controversies and conflicts, in the context of pandemic response there are at least some points of convergence: several policies can be justified by appeal to different ethical principles and theories. Convergence may be found with respect to a focus on saving the most lives (instead of other aggregative accounts); giving priority antiviral prophylaxis and therapy for life-saving pandemic responders; and, partly depending on epidemiology of the pandemic, to prioritise vaccination of children. Although decision-making about access to intensive care will involve choices with immediate tragic implications, the ethical complexity of these choices is relatively modest (although decisions will not be easy): there are persuasive moral reasons for giving priority to patients who are expected to benefit most within the shortest time. Finally, in the last section I tentatively argue that constraints on people’s freedom, as necessary for an effective public health approach, may support giving somewhat more weight to saving the most lives, than to concerns of equity. (shrink)

In adopting a deontological lens to assess message ethicality, this study identifies and explicates the ethical dimensions of fast food advertising through five principles of the TARES framework of persuasion ethics. In moral weight, fast food—with its high calories and low nutritional value—is negatively prejudiced. A deontological-ethical perspective, by focusing on the quality of the advertising message, shifts the focus from the product to a more measured deliberation about the moral responsibility of fast food advertisers to reposition them as moral (...) agents who are accountable for their messages. A content analysis of 380 television and print ads for fast food in Singapore shows that few ads met the TARES's expectations. Ads targeting children and teenagers are associated with lower message ethicality than ads targeting adults and the general audience, lending empirical support to the literature critical of fast food advertising's insidious approach of targeting the young. (shrink)

John Gray, much influenced by Isaiah Berlin and building on work by the late John Rees and the late Fred Berger, has recently stated three ‘fatal’ objections which virtually all analysts seem to find persuasive against John Stuart Mill's classic doctrine of liberty. First, Gray thinks it ‘an obvious objection to Mill's project that conceptions of harm vary with competing moral outlooks, so that no Principle of Liberty whose application turns on judgements about harm can expect to resolve disputes between (...) exponents of opposed moral perspectives’. Even if we overlook Mill's strange silence in the matter and supply him with a reasonable definition of harm, it remains clear that the liberty principle ‘is not, and cannot be, the very simple principle Mill sought’. For ‘Mill's principle is in its very nature radically incomplete. It tells us what we may not do, but not what we ought to do.’ To know when liberty should in fact be restrained, ‘we must look to other principles—chiefly the Principle of Utility itself’. But if general utility alone can ‘tell us how much liberty may be given up for how much harm-prevention’, then ‘there can be no question of adherence to [an] exceptionless principle such as Mill's Principle of Liberty’. Thus, even if we believe that Mill's version of utilitarianism is coherent, his judgements about the regulation of conduct must depend on a highly complex and controversial moral doctrine. (shrink)

This essay presents a contextualist defense of the role of narrative and metaphor in the articulation of environmental ethical theories. Both the intelligibility and persuasiveness of ecocentric concepts and arguments presuppose that proponents of these ideas can connect with the narratives and metaphors guiding the expectations and interpretations of their audiences. Too often objectivist presuppositions prevent the full contextualization of environmental ethical arguments. The result is a disembodied environmental discourse with diminished influence on citizens and policy makers. This essay (...) is a pragmatist call for more philosophical attention to locating speakers, audiences, and meanings in more intelligible "discursive spaces." © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. (shrink)

Can visual thinking be a means of discovery in elementary analysis, as well as a means of illustration and a stimulus to discovery? The answer to the corresponding question for geometry and arithmetic seems to be ‘yes’ (Giaquinto [1992], [1993]), and so a positive answer might be expected for elementary analysis too. But I argue here that only in a severely restricted range of cases can visual thinking be a means of discovery in analysis. Examination of persuasive visual routes (...) to two simple theorems (Rolle, Bolzano) shows that they are not ways of discovering the theorems; the type of visual thinking involved can never be used to discover analytic theorems of a certain generality. The hypothesis that visual thinking is never a means of discovering the existence or nature of the limit of some infinite process is considered, and a likely counter-example is set out. It is still possible that restricted theorems can be discovered visually: an example from Littlewood is examined in detail and not found wanting. Even when visual thinking is not a means of discovery it can provide the idea for a proof in a direct way; an example is presented (Intermediate Value Theorem). In conclusion: it may be possible to discover theorems in elementary real analysis by visual means, but only theorems of a restricted kind; however, visual thinking in analysis can be very useful in other ways. (shrink)