Following the global financial crisis, banks have become more regulated to advance ethical sales cultures throughout the sector. Based on case studies of three retail banks, we find that they construct the ‘appropriate advisor’ in different ways. Inspired by Bakhtin’s work on ethics, we propose a vocabulary of relational ethics centered on the ‘answerable self.’ We argue that this vocabulary is apt for studying and discussing how organizations advance ethical sales cultures in ways that instead of encouraging value congruence and (...) alignment allow for ethical openness. In such cultures, employees—as moral agents—are morally questioning, critically self-reflexive, and answerable for their own actions toward others in their social relationships. Our paper makes three theoretical contributions, namely, problematizing the idea of cultural alignment and value congruence, demonstrating that identity regulation can both comprise and support the ‘answerable self,’ and advancing our understanding of the interdependence of ethical openness and ethical closure in fostering ethical sales cultures. (shrink)

There is an important division in the human mind between perception and reasoning. We reason from information that we have already, but perception is a means of taking in new information. Susanna Siegel argues that these two aspects of the mind become deeply intertwined when beliefs, fears, desires, or prejudice influence what we perceive.

What do we see? We are visually conscious of colors and shapes, but are we also visually conscious of complex properties such as being John Malkovich? In this book, Susanna Siegel develops a framework for understanding the contents of visual experience, and argues that these contents involve all sorts of complex properties. Siegel starts by analyzing the notion of the contents of experience, and by arguing that theorists of all stripes should accept that experiences have contents. She then introduces (...) a method for discovering the contents of experience: the method of phenomenal contrast. This method relies only minimally on introspection, and allows rigorous support for claims about experience. She then applies the method to make the case that we are conscious of many kinds of properties, of all sorts of causal properties, and of many other complex properties. She goes on to use the method to help analyze difficult questions about our consciousness of objects and their role in the contents of experience, and to reconceptualize the distinction between perception and sensation. Siegel's results are important for many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. They are also important for the psychology and cognitive neuroscience of vision. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 2, Page 434-453, March 2022.

There is an important division in the human mind between perception and reasoning. We reason from information that we have already, but perception is a means of taking in new information. Susanna Siegel argues that these two aspects of the mind become deeply intertwined when beliefs, fears, desires, or prejudice influence what we perceive.

This article addresses some ambiguities and normative problems with the concept of mature care in professional relationships and in health care priorities. Mature care has recently been introduced in the literature on care ethics as an alternative to prevailing altruistic conceptions of care. The essence of mature care is an emphasis on reciprocity, where the mature agent has the ability to balance the concerns of self with those of others and act from a principle of not causing harm. Our basic (...) claim is that the prevailing concept of mature care does not capture the real nature of professional relationships and role obligations in health care. As the focus of attention in professional care is and must be the patient’s particular medical and care needs, such care must principally be altruistic. Furthermore, we argue that mature care cannot adequately address moral conflict in health care without accepting some more principle-based approaches and a richer notion of partiality. (shrink)

Student teachers’ experiences of professional ethics, as lived practice, need to be visualized and verbalized to support their ability to develop an ethical practice. The aim of this article is to discuss the lived experiences of professional ethics from beginning teachers’ internship, based on a phenomenological study. Some of the essential meanings are interpreted in relation to the tension between responsibility and accountability that is emerging from neoliberal influences in teacher education. Inspired by Reflective Life World Research, interviews were conducted (...) with student teachers specializing in preschool and elementary school. The empirical data was analyzed in order to determine the meanings that constitute the lived experience of professional ethics for early career teachers. By identifying the implications of professional ethics in neoliberal times, teacher educators can more easily observe and communicate the manifestations this has for teaching. Discussions and observations of professional ethics can stimulate student teachers’ learning as part of teacher education discourse. (shrink)

Women and men respond differently to mock news stories about new developments in science and technology, with women associating more risk and less benefit than do men with reported developments overall. Interview data were used to construct a survey instrument designed to probe for differences in underlying attitudes that might explain this outcome. Results from administration of the questionnaire reveal that women are more likely than men to agree with "antiscience" statements. The assertion that women and men can be thought (...) of as members of distinct cultures is invoked to provide a theoretical explanation for the data. (shrink)

This article examines the problems of forming the technological competence of various scientists. In the process of training future specialists in various industries, the authors propose methods and means for the formation of technological competence: the introduction of a special course into the educational process, which is aimed at developing the professionally important qualities of a specialist; application of gaming technology and project method in the classroom in special disciplines; passing by students of industrial practice; creating a portfolio.

During the Covid-19 outbreak in March 2020, all Norwegian primary schools got closed down, and both pupils and teachers had to move the school home. This challenged the established teacher role and led to changes in teachers' teaching practices. The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of the teacher, concretized as the teacher's teaching practice in the time of homeschooling. In order to shed light on the teachers' teaching practice we take as our starting point interviews with (...) teachers and texts from the pupils in primary school collected during the period of home schooling. In light of this material, as well as Gert Biesta's distinction between ‘learning from’ and ‘being taught by’ we discuss how the teacher's role and teaching practice in the home school can be understood. (shrink)

RESUMO: No centro da filosofia de Kwame A. Appiah encontra-se a questão da identidade. Partindo do conceito da liberdade de Mill, ele considera a criação de uma identidade pessoal, no sentido de individualidade particular, uma tarefa permanente - como projeto individual. Nesse contexto, os planos de vida não devem ser concebidos como genericamente rigorosos, mas sim incoerentes e muitas vezes mutantes. Com isso, a identidade não se deve entender como algo fixo e cerrado, porém, como uma espécie de mosaico de (...) vários elementos que se encontram em reprogramação contínua - como formação híbrida. A construção da identidade encerra a narração de histórias de vida, tanto individual como coletiva. Os respectivos elementos podem recorrer a diferentes experiências transculturais, consoante a história coletiva e a história de vida do indivíduo. Assim, a transculturalidade é importante, não só para identidades coletivas, como também sempre em nível de identidade pessoal. O filósofo africano Achille Mbembe alude ao nomadismo do ser humano e à imersão e dispersão culturais associadas que se deixam ler como processos da transculturalidade. Na arte africana contemporânea, esses processos da formação da identidade refletem-se no transcultural. Como exemplos, devem ser apresentados os artistas Edson Chagas, Kehinde Wiley, Yinka Shonibare e Romuald Hazoumè, com obras selecionadas.ABSTRACT: The issue of identity is at the heart of Kwame Appiah's philosophy. Taking Mill's concept of liberty as his starting point, he views the development of a personal identity in the sense of a particular individuality as an ongoing task - as an individual project. In this context, life plans should not be understood as strictly linear but rather as disparate and continuously changing. Identity is thus not something which is fixed and closed but rather similar to a mosaic, consisting of various elements which are always shifting - a hybrid entity. The construction of identity includes the telling of life stories, both of a collective and of a personal nature. When doing so, each element may refer to diverse, transcultural experiences in keeping with the history of the collective and the life story of the individual. Transculturality is thus of significance not only for collective identities but also always on the level of personal identity. The African philosopher Achille Mbembe speaks of human nomadism and the associated cultural immersion and dispersion, which can be interpreted as transcultural processes. These processes of identity formation are reflected in the transculturality of contemporary African art. Selected works of artists Edson Chargas, Kehinde Wiley, Yinka Shonibare and Romuald Hazoumè will be presented as examples of this. (shrink)

Michel Foucault gilt als einer der wichtigsten Philosophen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Marita Rainsborough untersucht die aktuelle Relevanz seiner Philosophie unter Bezug auf die post- und dekolonialen Theorien von Mbembe, Bhabha und Mignolo im globalen Kontext. Dabei bezieht sie auch die Philosophie von Judith Butler und Byung-Chul Han sowie den Neuen Realismus in ihre kritische Lektüre mit ein und macht die bislang in der Rezeption vernachlässigten philosophischen Bezüge zu Bloch und Kant stark. Mit der Betrachtung des Subjekts zwischen Wissen, Macht, (...) Ethik und Ästhetik ergeben sich so eine Gesamtschau des Foucault'schen Werkes sowie neue Aspekte für die philosophische Auseinandersetzung mit diesem französischen Klassiker. (shrink)

Interkultureller Austausch geht von der Gleichwertigkeit der Kulturen aus und ist vom Gedanken des produktiven Dialogs, der gegenseitigen Anregung und der Korrektur bestimmt. Ein solcher Dialog mit Immanuel Kant und Michel Foucault bietet eine anregende Perspektive auf die afrikanische Philosophie. Marita Rainsborough untersucht vor diesem Hintergrund die Auseinandersetzung afrikanischer Philosophen wie Anthony Appiah und Achille Mbembe mit philosophischen Grundfragen. Ihre Visionen einer afrikanischen Zukunft machen deutlich, dass sich akute Probleme wie Machtmissbrauch und Menschenrechtsverletzungen - unter Berücksichtigung der lokalen Besonderheiten (...) - nur im globalen Kontext lösen lassen. (shrink)

Sometimes different partitions of the same space each seem to divide that space into propositions that call for equal epistemic treatment. Famously, equal treatment in the form of equal point-valued credence leads to incoherence. Some have argued that equal treatment in the form of equal interval-valued credence solves the puzzle. This paper shows that, once we rule out intervals with extreme endpoints, this proposal also leads to incoherence.

Noting the pervasiveness of the adoption of "responsibility" as a core ideal of neoliberal governance, the contributors to Competing Responsibilities challenge contemporary understandings and critiques of that concept in political, social, and ethical life. They reveal that neoliberalism's reification of the responsible subject masks the myriad forms of individual and collective responsibility that people engage with in their everyday lives, from accountability, self-sufficiency, and prudence to care, obligation, and culpability. The essays—which combine social theory with ethnographic research from Europe, North (...) America, Africa, and New Zealand—address a wide range of topics, including critiques of corporate social responsibility practices; the relationships between public and private responsibilities in the context of state violence; the tension between calls on individuals and imperatives to groups to prevent the transmission of HIV; audit culture; and how health is cast as a citizenship issue. Competing Responsibilities allows for the examination of modes of responsibility that extend, challenge, or coexist with the neoliberal focus on the individual cultivation of the self. Contributors Barry D. Adam, Elizabeth Anne Davis, Filippa Lentzos, Jessica Robbins-Ruszkowski, Nikolas Rose, Rosalind Shaw, Cris Shore, Jessica M. Smith, Susanna Trnka, Catherine Trundle, Jarrett Zigon. (shrink)

This paper defends a principle I call Equal Treatment, according to which the rationality of a belief is determined in precisely the same way as the rationality of any other state. For example, if wearing a raincoat is rational just in case doing so maximizes expected value, then believing some proposition P is rational just in case doing so maximizes expected value. This contrasts with the popular view that the rationality of belief is determined by evidential support. It also contrasts (...) with the common idea that in the case of belief, there are two different incommensurable senses of rationality, one of which is distinctively epistemic. I present considerations that favor Equal Treatment over these two alternatives, reply to objections, and criticize some arguments for Evidentialism. I also show how Equal Treatment opens the door to a distinctive kind of response to skepticism. (shrink)

My replies to Errol Lord, Adam Pautz, and Peter Railton's commentaries on The Rationality of Perception (2017).

Perception grounds demonstrative reference, yields singular thoughts, and fixes the reference of singular terms. Moreover, perception provides us with knowledge of particulars in our environment and justifies singular thoughts about particulars. How does perception play these cognitive and epistemic roles in our lives? I address this question by exploring the fundamental nature of perceptual experience. I argue that perceptual states are constituted by particulars and discuss epistemic, ontological, psychologistic, and semantic approaches to account for perceptual particularity.

I argue that any account of perceptual experience should satisfy the following two desiderata. First, it should account for the particularity of perceptual experience, that is, it should account for the mind-independent object of an experience making a difference to individuating the experience. Second, it should explain the possibility that perceptual relations to distinct environments could yield subjectively indistinguishable experiences. Relational views of perceptual experience can easily satisfy the first but not the second desideratum. Representational views can easily satisfy the (...) second but not the first desideratum. I argue that to satisfy both desiderata perceptual experience is best conceived of as fundamentally both relational and representational. I develop a view of perceptual experience that synthesizes the virtues of relationalism and representationalism, by arguing that perceptual content is constituted by potentially gappy de re modes of presentation. (shrink)

In this article we analyse the ideas of outstanding Armenian thinker of X century Gregory of Narek and their connection with ideas of V. Potter. The power of Narek as a remedy for diseases is explained also by the viewpoint of Word Remedy.

This article draws attention to a self-created survey designed for the purposes and needs of an empirical study for a dissertation on emotional intelligence and burnout in psychiatric practice. The survey was used as part of a complex research methodology including standardized tests. The information obtained and the results of the survey are intended to describe the profile of employees in the same organization in psychiatric practice at the time of the study. The questions are focused on the following aspects: (...) subjective perception of the respondents regarding their work; leisure activities, annual leave and the attitude towards it, sports, healthy eating, and influence of the pandemic situation on emotions. (shrink)

Those who model doxastic states with a set of probability functions, rather than a single function, face a pressing challenge: can they provide a plausible decision theory compatible with their view? Adam Elga and others claim that they cannot, and that the set of functions model should be rejected for this reason. This paper aims to answer this challenge. The key insight is that the set of functions model can be seen as an instance of the supervaluationist approach to vagueness (...) more generally. We can then generate our decision theory by applying the general supervaluationist semantics to decision-theoretic claims. The result: if an action is permissible according to all functions in the set, it’s determinately permissible; if impermissible according to all, determinately impermissible; and – crucially – if permissible according to some, but not all, it’s indeterminate whether it’s permissible. This proposal handles with ease some difficult cases ) on which alternative decision theories falter. One reason this view has been overlooked in the literature thus far is that all parties to the debate presuppose that an acceptable decision theory must classify each action as either permissible or impermissible. But I will argue that this thought is misguided. Seeing the set of functions model as an instance of supervaluationism provides a compelling motivation for the claim that there can be indeterminacy in the rationality of some actions. (shrink)

Perception is our key to the world. It plays at least three different roles in our lives. It justifies beliefs and provides us with knowledge of our environment. It brings about conscious mental states. It converts informational input, such as light and sound waves, into representations of invariant features in our environment. Corresponding to these three roles, there are at least three fundamental questions that have motivated the study of perception. How does perception justify beliefs and yield knowledge of our (...) environment? How does perception bring about conscious mental states? How does a perceptual system accomplish the feat of converting varying informational input into mental representations of invariant features in our environment? -/- This book presents a unified account of the phenomenological and epistemological role of perception that is informed by empirical research. So it develops an account of perception that provides an answer to the first two questions, while being sensitive to scientific accounts that address the third question. The key idea is that perception is constituted by employing perceptual capacities - for example the capacity to discriminate instances of red from instances of blue. Perceptual content, consciousness, and evidence are each analyzed in terms of this basic property of perception. Employing perceptual capacities constitutes phenomenal character as well as perceptual content. The primacy of employing perceptual capacities in perception over their derivative employment in hallucination and illusion grounds the epistemic force of perceptual experience. In this way, the book provides a unified account of perceptual content, consciousness, and evidence. (shrink)

Perceptions guide our actions and provide us with evidence of the world around us. Illusions and hallucinations can mislead us: they may prompt as to act in ways that do not mesh with the world around us and they may lead us to form false beliefs about that world. The capacity view provides an account of evidence that does justice to these two facts. It shows in virtue of what illusions and hallucinations mislead us and prompt us to act. Moreover, (...) it shows in virtue of what we are in a better epistemic position when we perceive than when we hallucination. In this paper, I develop the capacity view, that is, the view that perceptual experience has epistemic force in virtue of the epistemic and metaphysical primacy of the perceptual capacities employed in perception. By grounding the epistemic force of experience in facts about the metaphysical structure of experience, the capacity view is not only an externalist view, but moreover a naturalistic view of the epistemology of perceptual experience. So it is an externalist and naturalistic alternative to reliabilism. I discuss the repercussions of this view for the justification of beliefs and the epistemic transparency of mental states, as well as, familiar problem cases. (shrink)

Increasing public knowledge of science is a widely recognized goal, but what that knowledge might consist of is rarely unpacked. Existing measures of science literacy tend to focus on textbook knowledge of science. Yet constructing a meaningful list of facts, even facts in application, is not only difficult but less than satisfying as an indicator of what people actually know—or need to know—as citizens. Revisiting this concept from a more sociological perspective yields a rather different concept that is here termed (...) “critical science literacy.” The implications of this reconsideration for thinking about citizen perspectives, for the work of science journalists and other professional interpreters, and for the design and evaluation of new approaches to science communication are explored. (shrink)

Feminist debates on pornography have relied on articulations of affect, from anti-pornography rhetoric of grief, anger and disgust to anti-anti-pornography claims to enjoyment and pleasure. The complexity of reading, the interpenetration of affect and analysis, experience and interpretation tend to become effaced in arguments both for and against pornography. This article argues for the necessity of moving beyond the affective range of disgust versus pleasure in feminist studies of pornography. Drawing on theorizations of reading and affect, particularly Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s (...) discussion of ‘paranoid’ and ‘reparative’ reading, it investigates the possibilities of analysing commercial email porn spam without reducing the outcome to the literal and the self-evident. This involves taking seriously the power of pornographic texts to move their readers, scholars included. Since affective encounters with porn are ambivalent and often contradictory, their status as basis of knowledge over pornography remains highly unstable. (shrink)

Siegel and Byrne debate whether perceptual experiences present rich properties or exclusively thin properties.

Can perceptual experiences be states of uncertainty? We might expect them to be, if the perceptual processes from which they're generated, as well as the behaviors they help produce, take account of probabilistic information. Yet it has long been presumed that perceptual experiences purport to tell us about our environment, without hedging or qualifying. Against this long-standing view, I argue that perceptual experiences may well occasionally be states of uncertainty, but that they are never probabilistically structured. I criticize a powerful (...) line of reasoning that we should expect perceptual experience to be probabilistic, given their interfaces with unconscious probabilistic information, with behavior responsive to it, and with credences. (shrink)

Evidentialists and Pragmatists about reasons for belief have long been in dialectical stalemate. However, recent times have seen a new wave of Evidentialists who claim to provide arguments for their view which should be persuasive even to someone initially inclined toward Pragmatism. This paper reveals a central flaw in this New Evidentialist project: their arguments rely on overly demanding necessary conditions for a consideration to count as a genuine reason. In particular, their conditions rule out the possibility of pragmatic reasons (...) for action. Since the existence of genuine pragmatic reasons for action is common ground between the Evidentialist and the Pragmatist, this problem for the New Evidentialist arguments is fatal. The upshot is that the deadlock between these two positions is restored: neither side can claim to be in possession of an argument that could convince the other. As it happens, I myself favor Pragmatism about reasons for belief, and although I don't claim to be able to convince a committed Evidentialist, I do make a prima facie case for Pragmatism by describing particular scenarios in which it seems to be true. I then go on to develop my own preferred version of the view: Robust Pragmatism, according to which a consideration never constitutes a reason for believing a proposition purely in virtue of being evidence for it. (shrink)

A number of Bayesians claim that, if one has no evidence relevant to a proposition P, then one's credence in P should be spread over the interval [0, 1]. Against this, I argue: first, that it is inconsistent with plausible claims about comparative levels of confidence; second, that it precludes inductive learning in certain cases. Two motivations for the view are considered and rejected. A discussion of alternatives leads to the conjecture that there is an in-principle limitation on formal representations (...) of belief: they cannot be both fully accurate and maximally specific. (shrink)

In part one I present a positive argument for the claim that philosophical argument can rationally overturn common sense. It is widely agreed that science can overturn common sense. But every scientific argument, I argue, relies on philosophical assumptions. If the scientific argument succeeds, then its philosophical assumptions must be more worthy of belief than the common sense proposition under attack. But this means there could be a philosophical argument against common sense, each of whose premises is just as worthy (...) of belief as the scientist’s philosophical assumptions. If so, then the purely philosophical argument will also succeed. In part two I consider three motivations, each of which comprises a distinct philosophical methodology, for the opposing view: (1) the Moorean idea that common sense enjoys greater plausibility than philosophy; (2) case judgments should trump general principles; (3) reflective equilibrium and conservatism. I argue that all three motivations fail. (shrink)

This paper proposes that the question “What should I believe?” is to be answered in the same way as the question “What should I do?,” a view I call Equal Treatment. After clarifying the relevant sense of “should,” I point out advantages that Equal Treatment has over both simple and subtle evidentialist alternatives, including versions that distinguish what one should believe from what one should get oneself to believe. I then discuss views on which there is a distinctively epistemic sense (...) of should. Next I reply to an objection which alleges that non-evidential considerations cannot serve as reasons for which one believes. I then situate Equal Treatment in a broader theoretical framework, discussing connections to rationality, justification, knowledge, and theoretical vs. practical reasoning. Finally, I show how Equal Treatment has important implications for a wide variety of issues, including the status of religious belief, philosophical skepticism, racial profiling and gender stereotyping, and certain issues in psychology, such as depressive realism and positive illusions. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 1, Page 3-18, January 2022.

I am deeply indebted to Alex Byrne, Jonathan Cohen and Matthew McGrath for their careful, constructive, and penetrating comments on The Unity of Perception and I am grateful for the opportunity to clarify my view further.

El trabajo desarrolla una crítica y una propuesta sobre el uso de la calificación de vulnerable desde una perspectiva de género. A partir de un análisis crítico del concepto de autonomía clásica, se propone como científicamente más productiva la noción de autonomía relacional, que se considera más apta para explicar las acciones humanas reales, de personas no idealizadas, y se revela capaz de dar sentido al caso de las acciones relativamente constreñidas. Desde esta perspectiva se aborda el análisis de algunos (...) casos reales de aplicación del derecho donde la calificación de vulnerabilidad aplicada al contexto se muestra útil para identificar un espacio de derecho positivo perjudicial para las mujeres o las minorías. (shrink)