While the technical aspects of engineering are emphasized in education and industry, the ethical aspects are, in some ways, just as vital. Engineering instructors should teach undergraduates about their ethical responsibilities in the realm of engineering. Students would then be more likely to grasp their responsibilities as professionals. For many students, undergraduate study is a time of growth and change, with their ethical development just beginning to take shape. In this study, we aim to understand the progression of ethical development (...) for engineering undergraduate students and identify key factors that may contribute to their development. To help us assess ethical development, we deployed in Fall 2020 a survey to undergraduate engineering students at two universities; the survey entailed the Defining Issues Test-2 (DIT-2). The DIT-2 evaluates ethical development based on Kohlberg’s theory of moral development; the test recognizes three levels of morality—preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. This study evaluates the associations between students’ university and class year and their Personal Interest, Maintaining Norms, and N2 scores. We utilized the results of a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to address the following research question: _Is a student’s ethical development associated with their university and class year?_ The results of the analysis reveal that students’ ethical development appear to differ between universities and to lie along a continuum, changing from first-year students to seniors of engineering undergraduate study. (shrink)

Engineering ethics can be divided into three spheres, namely the technical, the professional, and the social. Ideally, engineering students should engage with all three spheres of ethics, but the literature suggests that this might not be the case. How do engineering students engage with the three spheres of engineering ethics during a global pandemic? The COVID-19 pandemic represents a dramatic and ongoing real-world challenge affecting many students personally. This research explores the extent to which engineering students engage with each sphere (...) of engineering ethics by examining how engineering students understand their roles in addressing the pandemic and its implications. We conducted a survey with undergraduate engineering students (n = 410) at a university in the Midwest. Qualitative analysis suggests that there was low engagement with both social ethics and professional ethics among respondents, while there was higher engagement with technical ethics. Quantitative analysis suggests that non-conservative engineering students from less wealthy families in our study show higher engagement with technical ethics as compared to conservative engineering students from less wealthy families. Non-conservative engineering students from wealthy families, however, show similar engagement with technical ethics as compared to conservative engineering students from wealthy families. In addition, engineering students from both wealthy and less wealthy families show higher engagement with technical ethics if they reside in urban areas as compared to engineering students from both wealthy and less wealthy families in non-urban areas. In addition, the difference in terms of engagement with technical ethics between non-urban engineering students from less wealthy families and urban engineering students from less wealthy families is larger than the difference in terms of engagement with technical ethics between non-urban engineering students from wealthy families and urban engineering students from wealthy families. Further investigation will be needed to explain these findings. However, qualitative results confirm that, despite the potential for the pandemic to encourage engagement with all three spheres of ethics, there continues to be low engagement with ethics beyond the technical level. (shrink)

As the crisis around Covid-19 evolves, it becomes clear that there are numerous negative side-effects of the lockdown strategies implemented by many countries. Currently, more evidence becomes available that the lockdowns may have more negative effects than positive effects. For instance, many measures taken in a lockdown aimed at protecting human life may compromise the immune system, and purpose in life, especially of vulnerable groups. This leads to the paradoxical situation of compromising the immune system and physical and mental health (...) of many people, including the ones we aim to protect. Also, it is expected that hundreds of millions of people will die from hunger and postponed medical treatments. Other side effects include financial insecurity of billions of people, physical and mental health problems, and increased inequalities. The economic and health repercussions of the crisis will be falling disproportionately on young workers, low-income families and women, and thus exacerbate existing inequalities. As the virus outbreak and media coverage spread fear and anxiety, superstition, cognitive dissonance reduction and conspiracy theories are ways to find meaning and reduce anxiety. These behavioral aspects may play a role in the continuance of lockdown decisions. Based on theories regarding agnotology (i.e. the ways ignorance or doubt about certain topics is created by means of withholding or presenting information in a certain way), social influence, superstition and stress and coping, I seek to explain the social and behavioral aspects of human behavior in times of crises. Both the Covid-19 crisis itself as well as the resulting economic and (mental) health crisis are global problems that may require global solutions. I present a model of drivers and outcomes of lockdown behaviors and offer suggestions and a tool to counteract the negative psychological effects by means of online life crafting therapeutic writing interventions. (shrink)

I argue for an account of grasping, or understanding that, on which we grasp via a higher-order mental act of Husserlian fulfillment. Fulfillment is the act of matching up the objects of our phenomenally presentational experiences with those of our phenomenally representational thought. Grasping-by-fulfilling is importantly different from standard epistemic aims, in part because it is phenomenal rather than inferential. (I endorse Bourget’s 2017 arguments to that effect.) I show that grasping-by-fulfilling cannot be a species of propositional knowledge or belief, (...) and that it is not essentially connected to justification. I motivate a revisionary epistemology on which achieving propositional knowledge and coming to grasp are dual epistemic aims. My account makes sense of a common occurrence—that we are often unmoved to act on our beliefs until we come to phenomenally experience them in some way. It also explains puzzling features of human inquiry. (shrink)

I explore the view that metaphysics is essentially imaginative. I argue that the central goal of metaphysics on this view is understanding, not truth. Metaphysics-as-essentially-imaginative provides novel answers to challenges to both the value and epistemic status of metaphysics.

Logical realism is the view that there is logical structure in the world. I argue that, if logical realism is true, then we are deeply ignorant of that logical structure: either we can’t know which of our logical concepts accurately capture it, or none of our logical concepts accurately capture it at all. I don’t suggest abandoning logical realism, but instead discuss how realists should adjust their methodology in the face of this ignorance.

Many philosophers take purportedly logical cases of ground ) to be obvious cases, and indeed such cases have been used to motivate the existence of and importance of ground. I argue against this. I do so by motivating two kinds of semantic determination relations. Intuitions of logical ground track these semantic relations. Moreover, our knowledge of semantics for first order logic can explain why we have such intuitions. And, I argue, neither semantic relation can be a species of ground even (...) on a quite broad conception of what ground is. Hence, without a positive argument for taking so-called ‘logical ground’ to be something distinct from a semantic determination relation, we should cease treating logical cases as cases of ground. (shrink)

Abstract‘Logical Realism’ is taken to mean many different things. I argue that if reality has a privileged structure, then a view I call metaphysical logical realism is true. The view says that, first, there is ‘One True Logic’; second, that the One True Logic is made true by the mind‐and‐language‐independent world; and third, that the mind‐and‐language‐independent world makes it the case that the One True Logic is better than any other logic at capturing the structure of reality. Along the way, (...) I discuss a few alternatives, and clarify two distinct kinds of metaphysical logical realism. (shrink)

In his Heretical Essays, Jan Patočka introduces the concept of the solidarity of the shaken. He argues that it emerges in the conditions of political violence—the frontline experience. Moreover, Patočka brings into discussion the puzzling concepts of day, night, metanoia and sacrifice, which only further problematise the idea. Researching how other thinkers have examined the phenomenon of the frontline experience, it becomes obvious that Patočka did not invent the obscure vocabulary ex nihilo. Concepts such as frontline experience, sacrifice and the (...) metaphors of the day and night were commonly used by thinkers in the inter-war and post-war eras in their examination of community. This study aims to reconstruct the idea of the solidarity of the shaken as contextualized within a broader scholarly debate on the concept of community. Through the critical dialogue between Patočka’s works and the works of Ernst Jünger and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, this study will portray how Patočka, in his discourse on the frontline experience, follows the usual pattern of overcoming one’s individuality, transcending and opening up to the constitution of solidarity. This paper will argue that Patočka defined the solidarity of the shaken in an attempt to revive the positive aspects of a community and break with the regressive uses to which it was put in the twentieth century. (shrink)

Through Deleuze’s conception of truth as becoming the paper discusses his relationship to Platonism. In his analysis Deleuze focuses on Plato’s Sophistes, in which Plato unwillingly subverts the very hierarchy of the world order, which he himself created. Deleuze sees the Platonic search for truth as taking place in the sphere of immanence. In the person of a sophist he goes after the simulacrum, i.e. an appearance, which subverts the rigorous hierarchy of the Platonic world. In his Logique du sens (...) Deleuze suggests that following Plato the other searchers for truth are also traveling in the sphere of immanence. Thus the truth found in the “logic of surface” is their becoming others. The paper examines the reasons, why Deleuze attaches importance to this becoming, which subverts the hierarchy of the “logic of depth” inaugurated by Platonism. (shrink)

I first quickly outline what I think grasping is, and suggest that it is both among our basic aims of inquiry and not essentially tied to belief, justification, or knowledge. Then, I briefly look at some places in the metaphysics of science in which it looks like our aim of grasping and our aim in knowing—or perhaps more specifically in knowing the explanations for things—might seem to conflict. I will use this conflict to support a broader view: sometimes, we might (...) develop philosophical views or theories—and even endorse them—in order to better grasp them, regardless of whether we genuinely believe them, or are justified in so doing. At other times, we may be aiming at propositional knowledge. These aims can come apart, and perhaps even systematically come apart. A pluralism about the value of those aims doesn’t entail an “anything goes” attitude with respect to how we think about what philosophical views to put forward, defend, or endorse, however—far from it. Instead, it suggests that what counts as a virtue of a philosophical theory depends on our aims in espousing it. If philosophers have distinct aims at the meta-level, it will be hard for them to engage in joint theory evaluation at the first-order level. At least all three of theoretical virtues, evaluative judgments of philosophical views, and what attitudes we ought to have towards the views we ourselves espouse will vary according to our guiding metaphilosophical aims. (shrink)

Even his peers called Locke's political philosophy “The ABC of Politics“: not only does he clarify why one should exit the state of nature (government guarantees protection of life, freedom, and wealth) but also what a good government has to provide. A government should protect individuals from assaults of fellow citizens, other countries, and itself. Locke also shows how to put limits to the power of political institutions: by division of powers, by law, by neutral judges, and by making people (...) trust their government -- and having the right to revolt when their trust is betrayed. This book provides a cooperative commentary to all important topics of Locke's "Two Treatises". With entries by Wolfgang von Leyden, Bernd Ludwig, Peter Niesen, Francis Oakley, Birger P. Priddat, Michaela Rehm, Michael Schefczyk, Ludwig Siep, A. John Simmons, und Simone Zurbuchen. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to advance research on CSR beyond the stalemate of economic versus ethical models by providing an alternative perspective integrating existing views and allowing for more shared dialog and research in the field. It is suggested that we move beyond making a normative case for ethical models and practices of CSR by moving beyond the question of how to manage organizational self-interest toward the question of how accurate current conceptions of the organizational self seem to (...) be. Specifically, it is proposed that CSR is not a question of how self-interested the corporation should be, but how this self is defined. Economic and ethical models of CSR are not models of opposition but exist on a continuum between egoic and post-egoic, illusory and authentic conceptions of the organizational self. This means that moving from one to the other is not a question of adopting different paradigms but rather of moving from illusion and dysfunction to authenticity and functionality, from pathology to health. (shrink)

Aufgrund der Dominanz eines okonomistisch verengten Rationalitatsideals wird Vertrauen zunehmend als Reputationskalkul oder quasi-vertragliche Kreditbeziehung definiert. MIchaela I. ABdelhamid zeigt: Was hier als "Vertrauen" bezeichnet wird, soll vielmehr der Wertschopfung sowie der Legitimation strategischer Entscheidungen, Sanktionen und Abhangigkeitsverhaltnisse dienen. MIt verstandlichen Analysen und Begriffsscharfungen bietet sie die Grundlage, um die Probleme solcher Inszenierungen erkennen oder auch die Gegenstande sogenannter Vertrauenskrisen reflektieren zu konnen.

This article discusses the integration of principle-based ethics into business ethics education. It explains how several pedagogical innovations were successfully undertaken in over 20 business ethics courses taught since 2018 to enhance active student engagement with a principle-based ethical framework central to decision making in the complex environment that many organizations face on a day-to-day basis. The teaching initiatives used include case-based projects and discussions, a personal code of ethics developed by each student, and an arts-inspired presentation as well as (...) a student integrity and citizenship rubric assessing students’ ethical conduct throughout each course. To date, this approach to principle-based ethics education seems to deliver very promising results. (shrink)

This article investigates Madison Smartt Bell’s Haitian trilogy as a neocaptivity narrative that combines in new ways the conventions of the slave narrative and the Barbary captivity narrative. Furthermore, it examines the culture-crossing of the character of Doctor Hébert in the course of the successful slave uprising of Saint Domingue. Captivity, I argue, constitutes the central theme and structuring device and also triggers Hébert’s culture-crossing in a reversed Hegelian master-slave dialectic that needs to be read together with Riau’s enslavement. Lacking (...) the social recognition of a free subject, Riau attains his independent self-consciousness through physical resistance and Saint-Domingue’s distinct black culture. Whereas Hébert learns to actively resist slavery as he crosses over into the Haitian society. In their struggles, both undergo the three phases of rites of passage. (shrink)

Agrobiodiversity is an evident outcome of a long-lasting human–nature relationship, as the continuous use, conservation and management of crops has resulted in biological as well as cultural diversity of seeds and breeds. This paper aims to understand the interlocking of formal and informal seed supply routes by considering the dynamic flow of seeds within networks across the intersections of gender, ethnicity and age in South India as social categories structuring human–nature relations. This changing relationship under formal and informal institutional settings (...) has consequences on performance for men and women in rice seed systems. Undertaking an empirical analysis of the organization of seed management and exchange, we seek to shed light on the gendered organization of agrobiodiversity as a social network. The study builds on Net-Map interviews conducted in 2012, embedded in the larger BioDIVA project in the district of Wayanad in Kerala, India. Based on network analysis, the interactive method employed has enabled identification of important actors in the seed system and the characteristics of their relationships. We look into the gendered structure of information exchange regarding seed varieties and actual seed transactions, while also examining clusters of actors collaborating regarding seed supply. Finally, we identify the institutional gap concerning seed sources left by formal and informal institutions, like the availability of varieties. We show how informal and formal seed systems coexist and overlap due to actors moving between systems and argue that the degree and areas of overlap are shaped by gendered human–nature relations. (shrink)

This article explores the emerging intersections between the shift towards higher quality food consumption in China and Chinese investment in overseas farmland. Based on an ethnographic study of a Chinese company acquiring one of Australia’s largest dairy farms, the article argues that the linkage between imported Australian milk and perceptions of safety and quality has served as a powerful driver of Chinese investment in overseas farmland—a linkage that has largely been overlooked by literature on China’s role in the global land (...) rush. Drawing on the notion of ‘quality imaginaries’, the paper shows how images of Australian farmland as natural, pure, and geographically isolated have been mobilized by the investor company to position itself as provider of fresh, premium milk in the Chinese market. While such place-based qualities constitute a prized advantage, ironically, they also present a looming risk as the investor company struggles to reconcile fresh milk’s perishability with the farm’s location at the ‘edge of the world’. Thus, the case study not only demonstrates how cultural meanings tied to food and eating shape the ways in which investors imagine land’s affordances and possibilities but also draws attention to land’s materiality as a factor that both facilitates and destabilizes investment in farmland. (shrink)

The concept of Galilean Idealization is based on a pragmatically grounded relation between universes of so-called real and idealized entities. The concept was developed in the course of a critical discussion of different explications of the concept of idealization (e.g. by W. F. Barr, C. G. Hempel and L. Nowak), these being attempts to specify sufficient syntactic and semantic criterions for idealization. But this line of argument shall not be followed here. Instead, first the concept of Pragmatic Idealization, and as (...) its special case the Galilean one, is presented (1.) and certain aspects of the application of an idealized theory are discussed (2.). Then, working within the Strucuralist View of theories, definitions of the idealized variants of the diachronic theory-element and theory-net are presented (3.). (shrink)

I argue that, in order for us to be justified in believing that two theories are metaphysically equivalent, we must be able to conceive of them as unified into a single theory, which says nothing over and above either of them. I propose one natural way of precisifying this condition, and show that the quantifier variantist cannot meet it. I suggest that the quantifier variantist cannot meet the more general condition either, and argue that this gives the metaphysical realist a (...) way to rule out theses like quantifier variance without appealing to fundamentality, grounding, or "levels" of reality. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Ancient Portraits Socratic Narratives and Other Ancient Images Summary Postantique Images Socrates as Wise Man Moralizing Tales The Death of Socrates Socrates and the Erotic Conclusion.

What holds a society together? Is it sufficient if a state relies on the citizens’ law-abidance only? Rousseau mistrusts a purely legal foundation of the state and searches for a bond that ties the citizens to it emotionally. The author aims to show that the civil religion Rousseau presents in the “Social Contract” is his answer to that problem. She focuses on the artificiality of civil religion which for Rousseau needs to be the product of the citizens’ will, inseparable from (...) society’s rational construction by means of the social contract. It is shown that in spite of the voluntarist positing of civil religion’s contents, Rousseau has to presuppose a theistic profession of faith: civil religion cannot produce any faith itself and therefore needs to be the beneficiary of an already existing faith of the individuals that has to be imported into the public sphere. (shrink)

The paper offers a systematic analysis of the phenomenon of civil religion. It reconstructs its historical preconditions and explains that civil religion is advocated when a pluralist society seems about to lose a traditional religion or ideology perceived as former guarantor of social stability. Civil religion is then propagated as a means to create a new equilibrium. The text aims to clarify that this notion is based on the idea that morality depends on religion. The conclusion is that the morality (...) civil religion strives to promote needs to be non-universalist in order to meet civil religion’s purpose, namely to foster unity within a specific community. (shrink)

Bidirectional deep brain stimulation (DBS) platforms have enabled a surge in hours of recordings in naturalistic environments, allowing further insight into neurological and psychiatric disease states. However, high amplitude, high frequency stimulation generates artifacts that contaminate neural signals and hinder our ability to interpret the data. This is especially true in psychiatric disorders, for which high amplitude stimulation is commonly applied to deep brain structures where the native neural activity is miniscule in comparison. Here, we characterized artifact sources in recordings (...) from a bidirectional DBS platform, the Medtronic Summit RC + S, with the goal of optimizing recording configurations to improve signal to noise ratio (SNR). Data were collected from three subjects in a clinical trial of DBS for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Stimulation was provided bilaterally to the ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS) using two independent implantable neurostimulators. We first manipulated DBS amplitude within safe limits (2–5.3 mA) to characterize the impact of stimulation artifacts on neural recordings. We found that high amplitude stimulation produces slew overflow, defined as exceeding the rate of change that the analog to digital converter can accurately measure. Overflow led to expanded spectral distortion of the stimulation artifact, with a six fold increase in the bandwidth of the 150.6 Hz stimulation artifact from 147–153 to 140–180 Hz. By increasing sense blank values during high amplitude stimulation, we reduced overflow by as much as 30% and improved artifact distortion, reducing the bandwidth from 140–180 Hz artifact to 147–153 Hz. We also identified artifacts that shifted in frequency through modulation of telemetry parameters. We found that telemetry ratio changes led to predictable shifts in the center-frequencies of the associated artifacts, allowing us to proactively shift the artifacts outside of our frequency range of interest. Overall, the artifact characterization methods and results described here enable increased data interpretability and unconstrained biomarker exploration using data collected from bidirectional DBS devices. (shrink)

Machiavellians are often seen as manipulative people who contribute negatively to teams and ventures. However, recent work has shown that Machiavellians can also cooperate and act in pro-social ways in a team context. Thus, some aspects of Machiavellianism might be conducive for teams and team members’ intentions to start a business venture. Most studies in this area have failed to (a) assess the effect of Machiavellianism at the team level, (b) take into account the dimensional nature of Machiavellianism, and (c) (...) assess moderators of these effects. We propose that the combination of Machiavellianism and resilience in teams predict team entrepreneurial intentions (EI). Moreover, we propose that different team level dimensions of Machiavellianism (amoral manipulation, desire for status, desire for control, distrust of others) are differentially related to EI. More specifically, we expect at the team level that amoral manipulation and desire for status are positively related to changes in EI (as teams high on these dimensions feel that they can use unethical practices that give them an advantage in being successful), whereas desire for control and distrust of others should be negatively related to changes in EI (as entrepreneurial teams usually work in less structured situations and need to closely work together). Furthermore, all sub-dimensions of Machiavellianism should interact positively with team resilience as resilience acts as a buffer that protects teams from potential negative effects of Machiavellianism. In a multi-wave study among newly formed teams engaged in entrepreneurship projects, controlling for psychopathy and narcissism, we found partial support for our hypotheses. Results supported our expectations for the “amoral manipulation” and “desire for control” sub-dimensions, but not for the “desire for status” and the “distrust of others” sub-dimensions of Machiavellianism, with distrust of others showing unexpectedly opposite effects. This study contributes to the literature by looking at the dimensions of Machiavellianism at the level of entrepreneurial teams in conjunction with the more positive team characteristic, resilience. Our results indicate that the relationship between Machiavellianism and EI is more complex than previously hypothesized, as the sub-dimensions are sometimes positively and sometimes negatively related to entrepreneurial intentions and interact with team-level resilience. (shrink)

In Koriat's paper ''The Feeling of Knowing: Some Metatheoretical Implications for Consciousness and Control,'' he asserts that the feeling of knowing straddles the implicit and explicit, and that these conscious feelings enter into a conscious control process that is necessary for controlled behavior. This assertion allows him to make many speculations on the nature of consciousness itself. We agree that feelings of knowing are produced through a monitoring of one's knowledge, and that this monitoring can affect the control of behavior (...) such as whether or not to search memory for an answer. Further, we believe that monitoring of performance with a strategy can also affect cognition control and strategy selection; however, we also believe that frequently this monitoring and control occurs without conscious awareness. Feeling of knowing has received an inordinate amount of attention because it lies behind the highly recognizable tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon that represents one of the rare cases of conscious monitoring. There are other feelings of knowing which are much more common and are not accompanied by conscious awareness. These are evident in the early selection of a strategy for answering a problem. In our view, the research on feeling of knowing will not resolve the question of whether consciousness is merely epiphenomenal. (shrink)