By Jerome Rothenberg. Contributions by Steven Clay, Rodney Phillips.

Most contemporary theorists regard the traditional thesis that perception is essentially conscious as just another armchair edict to be abandoned in the wake of empirical discovery. Here I reconsider this dramatic departure from tradition. My aim is not to recapture our prelapsarian confidence that perception is inevitably conscious (though much I say might be recruited to that cause). Instead, I want to problematize the now ubiquitous belief in unconscious perception. The paper divides into two parts. Part One is more purely (...) philosophical. It explains how standard arguments for unconscious perception rely on contentious background assumptions concerning the relation between ordinary perception and the explanatory constructs of scientific psychology. Part Two, in contrast, offers detailed engagement with relevant empirical work. It exposes how, even setting aside the concerns identified in Part One, a dilemma confronts the believer in unconscious perception. This dilemma arises because ordinary perception is an individual-level state or occurrence, yet criteria sufficiently stringent to guarantee that a putatively perceptual state is unconscious vitiate the grounds for its attribution to the individual. The dilemma foments a hypothesis, namely that the conditions for genuine, individual-level perception are sufficient conditions for perceptual consciousness. The viability of this hypothesis should unnerve anyone who thinks unconscious perception is simply an empirical given. (shrink)

You want to see the concert, but don’t want to take a long drive (even though the concert is far away). Such *strongly conflicting desire ascriptions* are, I show, wrongly predicted incompatible by standard semantics. I then object to possible solutions, and give my own, based on *some-things-considered desire*. Considering the fun of the concert, but ignoring the drive, you want to see the concert; considering the boredom of the drive, but ignoring the concert, you don’t want to take the (...) drive. (shrink)

Eavesdropping judgments (judgments about truth, retraction, and consistency across contexts) about epistemic modals have been used in recent years to argue for a radical thesis: that truth is assessment-relative. We argue that judgments for 'I think that p' pattern in strikingly similar ways to judgments for 'Might p' and 'Probably p'. We argue for this by replicating three major experiments involving the latter and adding a condition with the form 'I think that p', showing that subjects respond in the same (...) way to 'thinks' as to modals. This poses a serious challenge to relativist treatments of the modal judgments, since a relativist treatment of the corresponding 'thinks' judgments is totally implausible, so if a unified account of the phenomena is to be found, it cannot be a relativist one. We briefly sketch how a unified account might look. (shrink)

The capacity for representing and reasoning over sets of possibilities, or modal cognition, supports diverse kinds of high-level judgments: causal reasoning, moral judgment, language comprehension, and more. Prior research on modal cognition asks how humans explicitly and deliberatively reason about what is possible but has not investigated whether or how people have a default, implicit representation of which events are possible. We present three studies that characterize the role of implicit representations of possibility in cognition. Collectively, these studies differentiate explicit (...) reasoning about possibilities from default implicit representations, demonstrate that human adults often default to treating immoral and irrational events as impossible, and provide a case study of high-level cognitive judgments relying on default implicit representations of possibility rather than explicit deliberation. (shrink)

To properly understand behavior, we must obtain both ultimate and proximate explanations. Put briefly, ultimate explanations are concerned with why a behavior exists, and proximate explanations are concerned with how it works. These two types of explanation are complementary and the distinction is critical to evolutionary explanation. We are concerned that they have become conflated in some areas of the evolutionary literature on human behavior. This article brings attention to these issues. We focus on three specific areas: the evolution of (...) cooperation, transmitted culture, and epigenetics. We do this to avoid confusion and wasted effort—dangers that are particularly acute in interdisciplinary research. Throughout this article, we suggest ways in which misunderstanding may be avoided in the future. (shrink)

Niche construction refers to the activities of organisms that bring about changes in their environments, many of which are evolutionarily and ecologically consequential. Advocates of niche construction theory (NCT) believe that standard evolutionary theory fails to recognize the full importance of niche construction, and consequently propose a novel view of evolution, in which niche construction and its legacy over time (ecological inheritance) are described as evolutionary processes, equivalent in importance to natural selection. Here, we subject NCT to critical evaluation, in (...) the form of a collaboration between one prominent advocate of NCT, and a team of skeptics. We discuss whether niche construction is an evolutionary process, whether NCT obscures or clarifies how natural selection leads to organismal adaptation, and whether niche construction and natural selection are of equivalent explanatory importance. We also consider whether the literature that promotes NCT overstates the significance of niche construction, whether it is internally coherent, and whether it accurately portrays standard evolutionary theory. Our disagreements reflect a wider dispute within evolutionary theory over whether the neo-Darwinian synthesis is in need of reformulation, as well as different usages of some key terms (e.g., evolutionary process). (shrink)

Critics have long complained that naive realism cannot adequately account for perceptual illusion. This complaint has a tendency to ally itself with the aspersion that naive realism is hopelessly out of touch with vision science. Here I offer a partial reply to both complaint and aspersion. I do so by showing how careful reflection on a simple, empirically grounded model of illusion reveals heterodox ways of thinking about familiar illusions which are quite congenial to the naive realist.

This project evaluates the impact of the National Science Foundation's policy to promote education in the responsible conduct of research. To determine whether this policy resulted in meaningful RCR educational experiences, our study examined the instructional plans developed by individual universities in response to the mandate. Using a sample of 108 U.S. institutions classified as Carnegie “very high research activity”, we analyzed all publicly available NSF RCR training plans in light of the consensus best practices in RCR education that were (...) known at the time the policy was implemented. We found that fewer than half of universities developed plans that incorporated at least some of the best practices. More specifically, only 31% of universities had content and requirements that differed by career stage, only 1% of universities had content and requirements that differed by discipline; and only 18% of universities required some face-to-face engagement from all classes of trainees. Indeed, some schools simply provided hand-outs to their undergraduate students. Most universities had plans that could be satisfied with online programs such as the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative's RCR modules. The NSF policy requires universities to develop RCR training plans, but provides no guidelines or requirements for the format, scope, content, duration, or frequency of the training, and does not hold universities accountable for their training plans. Our study shows that this vaguely worded policy, and lack of accountability, has not produced meaningful educational experiences for most of the undergraduate students, graduate students, and post-doctoral trainees funded by the NSF. (shrink)

Corporate engagements with pressing environmental challenges focus on expanding the role of the market, seeking opportunities for growth and developing technologies to manage better environmental resources. Such approaches have proved ineffective. I suggest that a lack of meaningful response to ecological degradation and climate change is inevitable within a capitalist system underpinned by a logics of appropriation and an instrumental rationality that views the planet as a means to achieve economic ends. For ecofeminism, these logics are promulgated through sets of (...) hierarchical and interrelated dualisms which define the human in opposition to the realm of “nature”. This has led to the resilience of ecosystems, social reciprocity and care being unvalued or undervalued. An ecofeminist, care-sensitive ethics is proposed that focuses on the interconnections between human and nonhuman nature and on affective engagements with the living world. A practical morality is developed that sees the self not as atomized nor as self-optimizing, but as a self in relationship. Such an ethics is necessary to motivate action to contest capitalism’s binary thinking, evident within corporate environmentalism, which has re-made the web of life in ways that are not conducive to planetary flourishing. (shrink)

An emerging body of research recognizes the importance of the past and history for corporate social responsibility scholarship and practice. However, the meanings that scholars and practitioners can ascribe to the past and history differ fundamentally, posing challenges to the integration of history and CSR thinking. This essay reviews diverse approaches and proposes a broad conceptualization of the relationship between the past, history, and CSR. We suggest historical CSR as an umbrella term that comprises three distinct theoretical perspectives. The “past-of-CSR” (...) perspective is concerned with the history of CSR and business ethics as a set of concepts and practices. The “past-in-CSR” perspective involves employing empirical historical research to substantiate and elaborate CSR concepts and theories. Finally, the “past-as-CSR” perspective seeks to understand the past as a living, yet contested, facet of current organizations, influencing contemporary perceptions of corporate and managerial responsibility. We then elaborate on conceptual issues and paths that may prove useful for future research. In all, this essay and the thematic symposium it precedes strive to deepen and broaden the salience of the past and history for thinking about business ethics and business responsibilities. (shrink)

I argue that we can visually perceive others as seeing agents. I start by characterizing perceptual processes as those that are causally controlled by proximal stimuli. I then distinguish between various forms of visual perspective-taking, before presenting evidence that most of them come in perceptual varieties. In doing so, I clarify and defend the view that some forms of visual perspective-taking are “automatic”—a view that has been marshalled in support of dual-process accounts of mindreading.

This volume is the direct result of a conference in which a number of leading researchers from the fields of artificial intelligence and biology gathered to ...

When Ken Malone investigates a case of something causing mental static across the United States, he is teleported to a world that doesn't exist.

This paper suggests that empirical educational research has not, on the whole, been treated well by philosophers of education. A variety of criticisms have been offered, ranging from triviality, conceptual confusion and the impossibility of empirically studying normative processes. Furthermore, many of those who criticise, or dismiss, empirical research do so without subjecting any specific examples to careful scholarly scrutiny. It is suggested that both philosophy of education, and the empirical research enterprise, stand to profit if philosophers pay more attention (...) to real cases—and this attention is especially important at present, when research funding is being based on spurious scientistic criteria such as the use of ‘gold standard’ randomised experimental research designs. (shrink)

Many analyses of belief in the soul ignore the soul in the words. Dislocations of concepts occur when words are divorced from their normal implications. The ‘soul’ is sometimes the dislocated utterer of such words. Pictures, including pictures of the soul leaving the body, may mislead us by suggesting applications which they, in fact, do not have. But pictures of the soul may enter people's lives as desires for a temporal eternity. Contrasting conceptions of immortality and eternal life depend on (...) a willingness to say farewell to life. Atheistic denials of temporal eternities, do not appreciate these other possibilities. (shrink)

Authors frequently refer to gene-based selection in biological evolution, the reaction of the immune system to antigens, and operant learning as exemplifying selection processes in the same sense of this term. However, as obvious as this claim may seem on the surface, setting out an account of “selection” that is general enough to incorporate all three of these processes without becoming so general as to be vacuous is far from easy. In this target article, we set out such a general (...) account of selection to see how well it accommodates these very different sorts of selection. The three fundamental elements of this account are replication, variation, and environmental interaction. For selection to occur, these three processes must be related in a very specific way. In particular, replication must alternate with environmental interaction so that any changes that occur in replication are passed on differentially because of environmental interaction. One of the main differences among the three sorts of selection that we investigate concerns the role of organisms. In traditional biological evolution, organisms play a central role with respect to environmental interaction. Although environmental interaction can occur at other levels of the organizational hierarchy, organisms are the primary focus of environmental interaction. In the functioning of the immune system, organisms function as containers. The interactions that result in selection of antibodies during a lifetime are between entities (antibodies and antigens) contained within the organism. Resulting changes in the immune system of one organism are not passed on to later organisms. Nor are changes in operant behavior resulting from behavioral selection passed on to later organisms. But operant behavior is not contained in the organism because most of the interactions that lead to differential replication include parts of the world outside the organism. Changes in the organism's nervous system are the effects of those interactions. The role of genes also varies in these three systems. Biological evolution is gene-based (i.e., genes are the primary replicators). Genes play very different roles in operant behavior and the immune system. However, in all three systems, iteration is central. All three selection processes are also incredibly wasteful and inefficient. They can generate complexity and novelty primarily because they are so wasteful and inefficient. Key Words: evolution; immunology; interaction; operant behavior; operant learning; replication; selection; variation. (shrink)

How must experience of time be structured in time? In particular, does the following principle, which I will call inheritance, hold: for any temporal property apparently presented in perceptual experience, experience itself has that same temporal property. For instance, if I hear Paul McCartney singing ‘Hey Jude’, must my auditory experience of the ‘Hey’ itself precede my auditory experience of the ‘Jude’, or can the temporal order of these experiences come apart from the order the words are experienced as having? (...) A number of recent authors (Phillips Experience and Time, ‘The Temporal Structure of Experience’, Soteriou ‘Perceiving Events’, Hoerl ‘“A Succession of Feelings, in and of Itself, is Not a Feeling of Succession”’, Rashbrook) claim, to paraphrase Martin (399), that inheritance best characterises how our temporal experience seems to initial reflective intuition. For this reason, Phillips takes the principle to form part of our naïve view of temporal experience. An opposing group of theorists object that inheritance is subject to empirical counter-example. This article surveys such challenges. Section 2 considers Grush's case against inheritance based on postdiction. Section 3 examines Watzl's anti-inheritance argument based on silencing effects. Finally, Section 4 explores a number of alleged counter-examples proposed by Lee (‘Temporal Experience and the Temporal Structure of Experience’). Section 1 provides essential background to the debate. (shrink)

We generalize an observation made by Goldblatt in "Diodorean modality in Minkowski spacetime" by proving that each -dimensional integral spacetime frame equipped with Robb's irreflexive `after' relation determines a unique temporal logic. Our main result is that, unlike -dimensional spacetime where, as Goldblatt has shown, the Diodorean modal logic is the same for each frame , in the case of -dimensional integral spacetime, the frame determines a unique Diodorean modal logic.

Highlights: -/- • -/- Proposes forward-looking approach to studying climate collapse risks. • -/- Suggests diminishing returns on climate adaptation as a collapse mechanism. • -/- Suggests strategies for sustainable adaptation pathways in face of climate change. • -/- Illustrates analysis with examples of small island states and global food security. -/- Abstract: -/- This article proposes a forward-looking approach to studying societal collapse risks related to climate change. Such an approach should indicate how to study emerging collapse risks and (...) suggest strategies for adapting to them. Our approach is based on three postulates that facilitate a forward-looking approach: (1) collapse, if it occurred, would be a lengthy process rather than an abrupt event; (2) significant collapse risks already exist in some places; and (3) diminishing returns on adaptation to intensifying climate impacts are a key driver of collapse risks. The first two postulates suggests that collapse risks can be studied in process, while the third points to strategies for adaptation pathways that avoid unsustainable diminishing returns. Applying diminishing returns to climate change adaptation, rather than sociopolitical complexity or resource extraction, is also a novel theoretical contribution to collapse literature. [Open access]. (shrink)

Communication is a fundamentally interactive phenomenon. Evolutionary biology recognises this fact in its definition of communication, in which signals are those actions that cause reactions, and where both action and reaction are designed for that reason. Where only one or the other is designed then the behaviours are classed as either cues or coercion. Since mutually dependent behaviours are unlikely to emerge simultaneously, the symmetry inherent in these definitions gives rise to a prediction that communication will only emerge if cues (...) or coercive behaviours do so first. They will then be co-opted for communication. A range of case studies, from animal signalling, evolutionary robotics, comparative psychology, and evolutionary linguistics are used to test this prediction. The first three are found to be supportive. However in the Embodied Communication Game, a recent experimental approach to the emergence of communication between adult humans, communication emerges even when cues or coerced behaviours are not possible. This suggests that humans are exceptional in this regard. It is argued that the reason for this is the degree to which we are able and compelled to read and interpret the behaviour of others in intentional terms. (shrink)

Many transnational corporations and international organizations have embraced corporate social responsibility to address criticisms of working and environmental conditions at subcontractors' factories. While CSR 'codes of conduct' are easy to draft, supplier compliance has been elusive. Even third-party monitoring has proven an incomplete solution. This article proposes that an alteration in the supply chain's governance, from an arms-length market model to a collaborative partnership, often will be necessary to effectuate CSR. The market model forces contractors to focus on price and (...) delivery as they compete for the lead firm's business, rendering CSR observance secondary, at best. A collaborative partnership where the lead firm gives select suppliers secure product orders and other benefits removes disincentives and adds incentives for CSR compliance. In time, the suppliers' CSR habit should shift their business philosophy toward pursuing CSR as an end in itself, regardless of buyer incentives and monitoring. This article examines these hypotheses in the context of the athletic footwear sector with Nike, Inc. and its suppliers as the specific case study. The data collected and conclusions reached offer strategies for advancing CSR beyond the superficial and often ineffectual 'code of conduct' stage. (shrink)

The context of compliance creates special challenges for research ethics education. It can serve as a positive force in promoting research integrity because it forces academic institutions to provide research ethics training, and it forces some people to complete research ethics training. However, when compliance mandates create patchwork coverage with inconsistent requirements, they can have the paradoxical effect of trivializing the very thing they intend to promote. After providing a background on research ethics education mandates from US federal funding agencies, (...) I review the way in which academic institutions tend to respond to these mandates and I explore the impact of these compliance requirements on the goals of research ethics education. Finally, I consider recent calls to harmonize federal agency requirements, and close by sharing the way in which we are trying to harmonize the requirements at my own institution. (shrink)

Astory is an instruction manual of sorts, containing rules for the manufacture of fictional objects. Consider the opening sentence from E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia: "Though it was nearly a year since her husband's death, Emmeline Lucas still wore the deepest and most uncompromising mourning."1 As the sentence does not describe someone who exists, it does not press a truth claim that could be substantiated by observing the person in question. Instead, it is an invitation to construction: the reader (...) is presented with guidelines for what he or she is to imagine. These guidelines do not fully determine what is imagined, since the exact shape and constitution of what a... (shrink)

Contractualist moral theories are often criticized on the grounds that they have counterintuitive implications for moral status. In this paper I attempt to provide a comprehensive answer to the question: What forms of contractualism face this problem, and how serious is the problem? To do this I develop a classification of different kinds of contractualist theory, based on philosophical motivation.

Science begins with mystery. What causes lightning? How did this mold stop bacterial growth? Why do we age? Arguably, the two greatest mysteries are the cosmos and consciousness—the vast world out there and the vibrant world within. Scientists captivated by one can be called to study the other, seduced by the thought that these mysteries are connected. Science writer George Musser’s book Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation reviews their progress: Can physics unlock the mystery of consciousness? Does consciousness underlie (...) fundamental physics? (shrink)

Metaphysics as a human enterprise is for ever called upon to vindicate its claim to be entitled “knowledge.” Sometimes the challenge is issued in the name of irritated common sense. Sometimes metaphysics is relegated into insignificance by a supercilious estheticism. Sometimes metaphysics is excommunicated for daring to trespass on the holy domain of religion. Here its death sentence is pronounced by an all-embracing scepticism, and there by the confident faith in the universal adequacy and exclusive validity of the methods of (...) science. The attacks on metaphysics throughout the ages have been so numerous and so severe that one would expect the victim to have expired long ago. Yet the inextinguishable will-to-live exhibited by metaphysics has been as remarkable a phenomenon as the perennial tenacity of her would-be executioners. And although the bells have been tolled many times for metaphysics, she is still able to announce with Mark Twain that the rumours of her demise have been slightly exaggerated. In the long run, history seems to reveal a singular indocility with respect to the arguments of the enemies of metaphysics, and as Gilson has pointed out, one of the lessons to be derived from the study of the history of philosophy is that metaphysics always buries its undertakers. (shrink)

Many contemporary discussions of forgiveness assume forgiveness is fundamentally admirable. Examining Aristotle’s account, however, demonstrates that there is a tension between desert and forgiveness that is often overlooked in contemporary discussions. Through examining the neglected concept of sungnōmē, which forestalls blame, I conclude that Aristotelian blame is justified only on grounds of fairness. This conclusion is evidence that Aristotelian blame is not merely an instrumental or descriptive tool, but rather a way of holding agents morally accountable. Through examining the emphasis (...) Aristotle places on the role of blame and its role in maintaining honor, I show that forgiveness is incompatible with Aristotle’s account because when the victim decides to forgive, she lets go of blame on grounds other than desert. For Aristotle, when she does so, she accepts less than she is worth, and so forgiving a wrongdoer undermines the victim’s honor. As a result, Aristotle rejects forgiveness as positively vicious. Aristotle’s response to the tension is to reject forgiveness as positively vicious since it involves accepting less than what one deserves. -/- In my dissertation, I resolve this impasse by both defending the value of forgiveness and seeking to resolve the tension by explaining why we can choose to forgive without undermining our own honor. Contra Aristotle, I argue that cultivating the disposition to be forgiving is part of flourishing individual and communal life. The choice to let go what of one deserves, however, need not mean that honor is relinquished. Instead, I defend an alternative account of honor in which honor lies not in demanding what is deserved but instead in committing to the consistent pursuit of the good. On this account, honor is related to the ongoing commitment to a coherent and compelling identity rooted in seeing ethical values as central to the conception of one’s self, rather than outwardly-mediated Aristotelian honor. Honor is thus bound up in commitment to the good life generally, and does not rely on getting what one deserves. My account thus reconciles Aristotelian blame with forgiveness, demonstrates what is valuable about honor, and why it is still worth pursuing in our modern world. (shrink)

Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the eternal return of the same exhibits the preoccupations and limitations of his middle and late periods. It situates Nietzsche in the grand narrative of the history of the misunderstanding of being that Heidegger was striving to map. Yet it thereby neglects the question of the primordiality and insuperability of mood that was a focus of Being and Time and The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. It does not acknowledge the alternative ontological path pursued by (...) Nietzsche’s engagement with a world and time grounded in joy. This article attempts to defend Nietzsche by means of an appeal to the early Heidegger. (shrink)

This article provides a framework by way of introduction to the special section, ‘The Urban Problematic II’. It introduces a new selection of papers contributing to the continuing project of interrogating concepts, processes and practices associated with contemporary forms of urban life. The article focuses in particular on the problem of infrastructure in relation to questions of urban politics and especially remarks on the emergence of a kind of thinking in which the separation of notions of material infrastructure from those (...) of the social or cultural sphere can no longer be usefully maintained. The essays in the section cumulatively address the issue of an emergent hybridity of urban elements: the virtual and the material, the social and the technical, the political and the instrumental, the vertical and the horizontal. The spectacle of contemporary political activism and dissent emerges in the transformation of social and urban space. (shrink)

What is art? Marcel Duchamp made this question pertinent when he developed his : ordinary, manufactured objects that he presented as art. In this paper, I use pragmatics to argue that, if we accept that art is a form of communication, from artist to audience, then Duchamp was correct to claim that anything can be art, so long as it is presented as such.

This chapter makes the argument for both the practicality and impracticality of philosophy as it relates to liberal education. An exploration of the history of science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveals that a study of philosophy cultivates a skill set of logic and critical thinking that are crucial for those who study science and mathematics. It also situates philosophy as a unifying discipline for liberal education and STEM studies (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). The study of philosophy also (...) is impractical, as is liberal education, in that it does not prepare students for any specific profession. But it is this impracticality that makes philosophy, and liberal education, central to its identity and value: it creates an individual who is more empathic, open-minded, and self-aware that would not be possible if philosophy and liberal education were subordinated to some practical goal. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper is a preliminary attempt to better understand the concept of legitimacy in stakeholder theory. The normative component of stakeholder theory plays a central role in the concept of legitimacy. Though the elaboration of legitimacy contained herein applies generally to all “normative cores” this paper relies on Phillips’s principle of stakeholder fairness and therefore begins with a brief description of this work. This is followed by a discussion of the importance of legitimacy to stakeholder theory as well as (...) the general ambiguity of the term. A distinction is then drawn between normative and derivative legitimacy. Reference to this distinction helps distinguish between a relationship with the organization based on direct moral obligation and one based on the power to help or harm the organization. It is concluded that stakeholders who retain the ability to affect the organization arelegitimate(derivatively), but that this legitimacy is derived from the moral obligation owed other (normative) stakeholders and that the two sorts of legitimacy are importantly different from one another. An example of the normative/derivative distinction at work in managerial decision making is elaborated upon and managerial and research implications are then suggested. (shrink)

"This book is D.Z. Phillips' systematic attempt to discuss the problem of evil. He argues that the problem is inextricably linked to our conception of God. In an effort to distinguish between logical and existential problems of evil, that inheritance offers us distorted accounts of God's omnipotence and will. In his interlude, Phillips argues that, as a result, God is ridiculed out of existence, and found unfit to plead before the bar of decency. However, Phillips elucidates a (...) neglected tradition in which we reach a different understanding of God's presence amidst suffering, and addresses the ultimate question of how God can be said to be with those who are crushed by life's afflictions." "An ideal text for students of philosophy, religious studies and theology, but also for anyone who reflects seriously on the danger of adding to human evils by the way in which we write and think about them."--Jacket. (shrink)

Annual reports are an important element in the genre of corporate public discourse. The reporting practices mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for all publicly traded corporations are intended to render the annual reports a legitimate and trustworthy medium through which management communicates information related to the financial performance of the firm. The following discussion represents an inaugural attempt to investigate the ethical characteristics of the discourse found in corporate annual reports using Habermas' principles of communicative action. In preparing (...) the Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) portion of the report, managers are charged with providing narrative information for investors and other interested third parties relevant to assessing the firm's financial condition. Previous rhetorical studies of the narrative portions of annual reports argue that they serve as means for both legitimate and distorted communication. We investigate this communication medium through the lens of Habermas' norms for communicative action, which require communicators to be comprehensible, truthful, sincere, and legitimate. The study represents an initial attempt to operationalization Habermas' principles of communicative action and to employ a methodology that facilitates their application to research within a business context. From one perspective, consistent with agency theory as specified by neoclassical economics, it would seem that firms anticipating worse-than-expected financial performance would be less likely to exhibit the Habermasian principles necessary for undistorted communication because they would attempt to strategically influence the message being communicated about the firm's financial position. Instead, employing rhetorical analysis software, Diction 5.0, we found that firms expecting both good and bad earnings surprises exhibited a higher level of communicative action than a composite average firm. Although preliminary in nature, our findings suggest that firms anticipating large earnings surprises, either high or low, use the narrative portion of the annual report as a vehicle through which to communicate information about managements' veracity and trustworthiness as well as the firm's financial position. (shrink)