In this paper, I build on Wittgenstein’s metaphor of a toolbox to introduce the metaphor of ‘tool confusion’ – how differing conceptual constructs may be applied, or misapplied, to one another and the effect that such applications have on the advancement of management theory. Moving beyond metaphor, I investigate a theory of management through two specific philosophical lenses (Popper and Lyotard). This analysis tests both the theory and the philosophies with regard to how each philosophy may be applied as a (...) tool to advance theory towards more effective application. Preliminary conclusions confirm that the application of partial philosophies is not as useful as the application of complete philosophies. Deeper contemplation, however, suggests that there is no upper limit to the completeness of philosophies. Thus, the problem of completeness is inescapable. In place of completeness, I explore the use of perceptual tools that are more specific, foundational and concise. Engaging in a second investigation, I use structures of logic (circular, linear, branching and co-causal) to investigate the subject theory. This investigation suggests at least two important insights relating to the structure of theory and the fuzziness of theory. Combined, these investigations and related conversations suggest rigorous methods for advancing theories and a more normative role for the philosophy of management that will support the accelerated advancement of management theory and practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I build on Wittgenstein’s metaphor of a toolbox to introduce the metaphor of ‘tool confusion’ – how differing conceptual constructs may be applied, or misapplied, to one another and the effect that such applications have on the advancement of management theory. Moving beyond metaphor, I investigate a theory of management through two specific philosophical lenses (Popper and Lyotard). This analysis tests both the theory and the philosophies with regard to how each philosophy may be applied as a (...) tool to advance theory towards more effective application. Preliminary conclusions confirm that the application of partial philosophies is not as useful as the application of complete philosophies. Deeper contemplation, however, suggests that there is no upper limit to the completeness of philosophies. Thus, the problem of completeness is inescapable. In place of completeness, I explore the use of perceptual tools that are more specific, foundational and concise. Engaging in a second investigation, I use structures of logic (circular, linear, branching and co-causal) to investigate the subject theory. This investigation suggests at least two important insights relating to the structure of theory and the fuzziness of theory. Combined, these investigations and related conversations suggest rigorous methods for advancing theories and a more normative role for the philosophy of management that will support the accelerated advancement of management theory and practice. (shrink)

When we start with the wrong question, no matter how good an answer we get, it won’t give us the results we want. Rather than joining the throngs who are asking, When will this economic crisis be over? Jim Wallis says the right question to ask is How will this crisis change us? The worst thing we can do now, Wallis tells us, is to go back to normal. Normal is what got us into this situation. We need (...) a new normal, and this economic crisis is an invitation to discover what that means. Some of the principles Wallis unpacks for our new normal are . . . • Spending money we don’t have for things we don’t need is a bad foundation for an economy or a family. • It’s time to stop keeping up with the Joneses and start making sure the Joneses are okay. • The values of commercials and billboards are not the things we want to teach our children. • Care for the poor is not just a moral duty but is critical for the common good. • A healthy society is a balanced society in which markets, the government, and our communities all play a role. • The operating principle of God’s economy says that there is enough if we share it. • And much, much more . . . In the pages of this book, Wallis provides us with a moral compass for this new economy—one that will guide us on Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street. Embracing a New Economy Getting back to "the way things were" is not an option. It is time we take our economic uncertainty and use it to find some moral clarity. Too often we have been ruled by the maxims that greed is good, it’s all about me, and I want it now. Those can be challenged only with some of our oldest and best values—enough is enough, we are in it together, and thinking not just for tomorrow but for future generations. Jim Wallis shows that the solution to our problems will be found only as individuals, families, friends, churches, mosques, synagogues, and entire communities wrestle with the question of values together. (shrink)

Sickle cell disease is an autosomal recessive hemoglobinopathy found mainly in populations of African and Mediterranean descent, including approximately 100,000 Americans. It is also very common in Spanish-speaking regions of Central America, South America, and parts of the Caribbean, in Saudi Arabia, and in India and Sri Lanka. The disorder is characterized most commonly by lifelong recurrent unpredictable vaso-occlusive pain that may be disabling, and by chronic tissue damage and organ dysfunction. There are several genotypes of the disease. Although SCD (...) pain frequency generally varies between genotypes, it also varies between subjects even within genotype. It may worsen from childhood to adulthood. It may vary by gender. Its location, timing, and severity may be unpredictable.Until recently, pain in SCD had been characterized as episodes that were acute, periodic, and relatively rare. Crises were viewed as usually associated with hospitalization. Many patients utilized hospital or emergency care for pain once per year or less, so painful episodes in SCD were called vaso-occlusive “crises.”. (shrink)

This article explores the ethical principles of prescribing in Sickle Cell Disease. The first two sections of the article provide detailed scientific justification for the last section of the manuscript, which explores and discusses the ethical principles.

The central claim of this paper is that the culture of entitlement in education is incoherent to the extent to which it rejects: concepts of educational achievement. It gives an account of some of the conceptual features of achievement and educational achievement, and argues that although educational and academic achievement are closely linked with each other they are distinct. It tries to show why academic practices are central in our conceptions of the value of educational achievement. In terms of the (...) concept of epistemological access it argues that the agency of the learner is necessary to educational access, and, hence, educational achievement, but that the culture of entitlement in education has a strong tendency to deny this. The paper tries to show in what ways the culture of entitlement presupposes the concept of educational achievement. (shrink)

Democracy is often said to rest on some form of deeper argument, some self-understanding amongst people as belonging to a common political community. This paper explores this issue in the situation of South Africa. The policies of Apartheid have left a legacy of a morally fractured society with little by way of a shared moral discourse, and the paper raises the question of whether the concepts of democracy and community which emerged out of educational struggles in South Africa might provide (...) a basis for the development of a shared moral discourse. The answer provided in the paper is that, although such concepts cannot provide the basis for democracy at a national level, they do provide some hints of how schools might contribute to the emergence of a shared moral discourse, and, thus, the starting point for building a unified political community. (shrink)

This edition of Marcel's inspiring Homo Viator has been updated to includle fifty-seven pages of new material available for the first time in English, making this the first English-language edition to conform to the standard French edition. Here, Christianity's foremost existentialist of the twentieth century gives us a prodigious personal insight on `man on the way' that will reinforce and commend our own pilgrimages in hope. "Homo Viator - "Homo Viator - or as Marcel calls him, `itinerate man' - is (...) an outstanding example of the philosophy concerned, not with technical problems, but with the urgent problems of man. Marcel talks to our condition, emphasizing our urgent need of hope, thus discovering beyond the lack of stability the values on which we may depend. "A subtle mind, a dramatist as well as a philosopher, close to the texture of human experience, he goes far beyond current platitudes to show that our Western tradition contains living truths that are as essential to our contemporary life as they were to our ancestors when they discovered them." - Eliseo Vivas "The theme of Marcel's Homo Viator is close to the center of all preoccupations: man in his pilgrim condition. With great virtuosity in the use of his own philosophical method, he probes into interpersonal relations and the threat to ethical values. Marcel excels here in his concrete analyses of the attitude of hope, the family community in its temporal and supratemporal aspects, and the forgotten virtue of personal fidelity." - James Collins. (shrink)

In this book, distinguished French philosopher Pierre Manent addresses a wide range of subjects, including the Machiavellian origins of modernity, Tocqueville's analysis of democracy, the political role of Christianity, the nature of totalitarianism, and the future of the nation-state. As a whole, the book constitutes a meditation on the nature of modern freedom and the permanent discontents which accompany it. Modern Liberty and its Discontents is both an important contribution to an understanding of modern society, and a significant contribution to (...) political philosophy in its own right. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Myth, Truth and Literature: Towards a True Post-ModernismJames SeatonMyth, Truth and Literature: Towards a True Post-Modernism, by Colin Falck; xix & 208 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition, 1994, $59.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.Colin Falck has written a book that seeks to bind a critique of postmodernism to a plan for salvaging what is best about it. He wants to devise “a true post-modernism,” because until now the (...) movement’s goal has been “the Abolition of Reality.”The critique is the stronger part of the book. Falck offers several reasons why the currently fashionable versions of postmodernism are unsatisfactory. Identifying it with “post-Saussurian theory” (p. xiii), Falck traces the fundamental mistake of postmodernism back to Saussure’s rejection of one linguistic theory in favor of another, sliding from the view that language is based on “the baptismal labeling of some kind of already-differentiated and pre-baptismally identifiable item of the world’s contents” (p. 22) to seeing it “as a disembodied and contextless process” (p. 11). To Falck, though, the notion that a rejection of the first requires an acceptance of the second seems “entirely fallacious.” And yet “the whole internally interdependent substructure of post-Saussurian literary theory” depends upon the unexamined assumption that the two are inextricable.Falck finds other instances in which poststructuralists leap from true but trivial premises to otherwise unsupported conclusions. Jacques Derrida, for example, moves from an uncontroversial rejection of theories about “fully-experienced ‘presence’” (p. 21) to the very different issue of the priority of speech over writing. The goal of such non sequiturs is “in effect the Abolition of Reality” (p. 31).Such abolitions are always subject to the refutation Samuel Johnson made to Berkeley’s idealism. Kicking a stone, he vindicated the materiality of the external world. Now any textbook will point out that Johnson’s gesture was not an argument, but Falck argues that gestures do indeed possess philosophical significance. Speech is prior to writing because it is in speech and the gestures that accompany it that the location of language within “our necessary embodiedness” (p. 115) is most evident. Exploring the implications of the thesis that “all knowledge must be based in bodily awareness” (p. 119) along lines suggested by Merleau-Ponty among others, Falck argues that any satisfying account of language and, especially, literature must take account of dimensions of experience that contemporary theory peremptorily dismisses with the slogan “Nothing outside the text!”Although Falck’s refutation of postmodernism is telling and effective, it parallels the critique offered by other critics, such as John Ellis in Against Deconstruction. The true originality of his book lies in its admirably straightforward call to take up again the project of English and German Romanticism. For [End Page 264] Falck “the essential function of the literary text is one of revelation or disclosure” (p. 90). Myth, Truth and Literature argues that literature can reveal truths otherwise inexpressible through the use of myth. The romantic revival that he calls for will, however, also be a true postmodernism, because it will share the postmodernist rejection of transcendence in favor of “the essentially Romantic, but philosophically profound, recognition of the necessarily embodied and located nature of all human experiencing” (p. 84). Considering Romanticism “the third great advent of spirituality to the Western world” (p. 140) after Hellenic paganism and Christianity, Falck looks forward to a postmodernist literature that will reaffirm the truths of paganism while avoiding the “imaginative exclusiveness” of Christianity.One may share Falck’s refusal to accept postmodernism’s Abolition of Reality and yet have serious doubts about his proposed alternative. A reconsideration of the theories of Friedrich Schlegel and Samuel Taylor Coleridge offers more hope for literary criticism than an acceptance of the dominance of postmodernism and cultural studies, but it is not clear that Falck’s version of romanticism avoids the pitfalls of the contemporary approaches he rightly criticizes.He may not attempt to abolish reality, but Falck does seem to neglect the lessons of contemporary history. He opens his book by asserting that “romanticism looks forward to Marxism, psychoanalysis, and to every significant modern attempt to persuade men to take... (shrink)

"This is an excellent textbook on Neoplatonism which gives the reader a very concise and lucid overview of the basic doctrines and leading thinkers of the last great philosophy to emerge before the Christianization of the Roman Empire. I’ve no doubt that my students next semester will benefit from the analyses contained in the book. The contents of the chapters are very informative and adequately place developments in their socio-cultural context." --Michael B. Simmons, Auburn University at Montgomery.

In this article, I consider a set of contextual questions related to the social and economic influences on the construction and use of Capernaum’s great limestone synagogue, and ask what these influences might tell us about Jewish–Christian relations in this village during the fifth and sixth centuries CE. After a survey of current scholarship, I address issues of method and engage in the interpretation of the relevant primary sources, some of which have only very recently been discov­ered, while others have (...) been overlooked in discussion of the question, or are deserving of reinterpret­ation. Building upon previous proposals, and in places revising them, I argue that we should see a dynamic interplay at work between local and non-local sources of funding for the synagogue and an intensely interactive and relational setting for the town’s Jews and Christians. (shrink)

The current financial reporting environment, with its increasing use of accounting estimates, including fair value estimates, suggests that unethical accounting estimates may be a growing concern. This paper provides explanations and empirical evidence for why some types of accounting estimates in financial reporting may promote a form of ethical blindness. These types of ethical blindness can have an escalating effect that corrupts not only an individual or organization but also the accounting profession and the public interest it serves. Ethical blindness (...) in the standards of professional accountants may be a factor in the extent of misreporting, and may have taken on new urgency as a result of the proposals to change the conceptual framework for financial reporting using international standards. The social consequences for users of financial statements can be huge. The acquittal of former Nortel executives on fraud charges related to accounting manipulations is viewed by many as legitimizing accounting gamesmanship. This decision illustrates that the courts may not be the best place to deal with ethical reporting issues. The courts may be relied on for only the most egregious unethical conduct and, even then, the accounting profession is ill equipped to assist the legal system in prosecuting accounting fraud unless the standards have been clarified. We argue that the problem of unethical reporting should be addressed by the accounting profession itself, preferably as a key part of the conceptual framework that supports accounting and auditing standards, and the codes of ethical conduct that underpin the professionalism of accountants. (shrink)

Marxists expand the mode of production concept to make room for family forms, situating them in the daily and generational production of labour power. Family forms are active elements in the constitution and development of modes of production, above all because they are central to the production of people and their capacities for work, compliance and resistance. Our focus is on the turnover phase of the cycle when offspring reach adulthood, marry, join or form households, and begin to procreate, while (...) their parents retire and die. (shrink)

Calls into question the 'bedrock' reality of spacetime, examines the idea of alternative realities founded on different sorts of consciousness, and explores concepts of being and non-being in religious traditions.

Background: International developments suggest that providing clinical ethics services to help clinicians negotiate ethical issues that arise in clinical practice is beneficial and reflects best practice in promoting high ethical standards and patient-centered care. The aim of this study was to explore the needs and experiences of clinical staff members to inform the development of future clinical ethics support. Methods: Health professionals at a large regional health service completed an online survey containing questions about the frequency of ethical and legal (...) issues encountered in clinical practice, the type of situations that gave rise to the ethical and/or legal uncertainty or concern, how clinicians currently address these issues, and what support would be welcome. Results: The survey was completed by 369 staff members, including 61% with more than 10 years in the profession and 51% in nursing/midwifery. Two-thirds (66%) indicated they often considered ethical implications of their clinical decisions, and half (49%) often considered the legal implications. More than half (58%) were often/occasionally concerned about the ethically right thing to do. Patient requests for borderline treatment (47%), staff disagreements about patient care (48%), and patients declining recommended treatment (54%) were the most frequent reasons given for ethical or legal uncertainty. Sixty-nine percent of respondents indicated that the way their department addressed ethical issues could be improved and 85% agreed that there is a need for more discussion on ethical issues. The majority (82%) of respondents had encountered ethically challenging clinical situations where additional support would have helped. Common approaches to issues were discussion with colleagues/supervisor (91.1%), discussion at handover/group forums (50.8%), and consultation with guidelines/protocols (60.9%). Conclusions: A majority of clinical staff members surveyed have encountered ethically/legally challenging cases daily for which they have often sought additional advice. This study indicates that many clinical staff members would welcome some form of additional clinical ethics support including advice and education. (shrink)

euroscience of Rule-Guided Behavior brings together, for the first time, the experiments and theories that have created the new science of rules. Rules are central to human behavior, but until now the field of neuroscience lacked a synthetic approach to understanding them. How are rules learned, retrieved from memory, maintained in consciousness and implemented? How are they used to solve problems and select among actions and activities? How are the various levels of rules represented in the brain, ranging from simple (...) conditional ones if a traffic light turns red, then stop to rules and strategies of such sophistication that they defy description? And how do brain regions interact to produce rule-guided behavior? These are among the most fundamental questions facing neuroscience, but until recently there was relatively little progress in answering them. It was difficult to probe brain mechanisms in humans, and expert opinion held that animals lacked the capacity for such high-level behavior. However, rapid progress in neuroimaging technology has allowed investigators to explore brain mechanisms in humans, while increasingly sophisticated behavioral methods have revealed that animals can and do use high-level rules to control their behavior. The resulting explosion of information has led to a new science of rules, but it has also produced a plethora of overlapping ideas and terminology and a field sorely in need of synthesis. In this book, Silvia Bunge and Jonathan Wallis bring together the worlds leading cognitive and systems neuroscientists to explain the most recent research on rule-guided behavior. Their work covers a wide range of disciplines and methods, including neuropsychology, functional magnetic resonance imaging, neurophysiology, electroencephalography, neuropharmacology, near-infrared spectroscopy, and transcranial magnetic stimulation. This unprecedented synthesis is a must-read for anyone interested in how complex behavior is controlled and organized by the brain. (shrink)

Bargaining games have played a prominent role in modeling the evolution of social conventions. Previous models assumed that agents must choose from a predetermined set of strategies. I present a new model of two agents learning in bargaining games in which new strategies must be invented and reinforced. I study the efficiency and fairness of the model outcomes. The outcomes are somewhat efficient, but a significant part of the resource is wasted nonetheless. I implement two forms of forgetting, and restrictions (...) to the set of strategies that can be invented. (shrink)

The debate over the central issue confronted in Closing--the role of the university and the liberal arts in the United States--has become increasingly urgent and contentious. The goal of this collection of essays is to consider what we can learn about the dilemmas confronting American culture through a consideration of both The Closing of the American Mind and the debate it has aroused. The contributors differ among themselves as to the validity of both the diagnoses and the solutions Bloom offers, (...) yet they do not engage in "Bloom-bashing" or hero-worship. The goal of the book is to place the debate over Closing into the larger context than can be achieved in a book review format. To provide the historical perspective that has been missing in the controversy over Bloom, included in this volume is Christopher Lasch's "The Great Experiment: Where Did it Go Wrong?" Also included are essays by other leading critics: John K. Roth, Frank Caucci, William K. Buckley, Milton R. Stern, Susan Bourgeois, Margaret C. Jones, Daniel Zins, Kenneth Alan Hovey, Bonnie A. Hain, John Peacock, Patricia L. Lundberg, Peter Siedlecki, Mark W. Roche, William Thickstun, Lorraine Clark, and Gerald Graff. This volume of essays does much to illuminate the issue surrounding The Closing of the American Mind. (shrink)

The relative importance of the Jones’ [Jones, T. M.: 1991, Academy of Management Review 16(2), 366–395] six components of moral intensity was measured using a conjoint experimental design. The most important components influencing ethical perceptions were: probability of effect, magnitude of consequences, and temporal immediacy. Contrary to previous research, overall social consensus was not an important factor. However, consumers exhibit distinctly different patterns in ethical evaluation, and for approximately 15% of respondents social consensus was the most important dimension.

General epistemic polarization arises when the beliefs of a population grow further apart, in particular when all agents update on the same evidence. Epistemic factionalization arises when the beliefs grow further apart, but different beliefs also become correlated across the population. I present a model of how factionalization can emerge in a population of ideally rational agents. This kind of factionalization is driven by probabilistic relations between beliefs, with background beliefs shaping how the agents’ beliefs evolve in the light of (...) new evidence. Moreover, I show that in such a model, the only possible outcomes from updating on identical evidence are general convergence or factionalization. Beliefs cannot spread out in all directions: if the beliefs overall polarize, then it must result in factionalization. (shrink)

The present study describes the development of an ongoing and systematic index to measure consumers’ sentiments towards business ethical practices. The Business Ethics Index (BEI) is based on the well established measurements of consumer sentiments, namely the ICS (Index of Consumer Sentiment) and CBCCI (Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index). The BEI is comprised of 4 measurements representing the dimensions of “personal-vicarious” and “past-future.” Data from 503 telephone interviews were used to calculate a BEI of 107. This indicates an overall positive (...) consumer sentiment towards the ethical behavior of business. Future calculations of the BEI are planned which will allow for the estimation of the latent dynamics of trends in consumer sentiments toward American business ethics. (shrink)

The present study expands the systematic measurement of consumers’ sentiments towards business ethical practices to the international arena. Data for the Business Ethics Index (BEI) were gathered in three countries of the European Union (UK, Germany, Spain). The Germans were the most pessimistic while the British were the most optimistic about the future ethical behaviour of businesses.

In this paper I criticize the most significant recent examples of the practical knowledge analysis of knowledge-how in the philosophical literature: David Carr [1979, Mind, 88, 394–409; 1981a, American Philosophical Quarterly, 18, 53–61; 1981b, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 15(1), 87–96] and Stanley & Williamson [2001, Journal of Philosophy, 98(8), 411–444]. I stress the importance of know-how in our contemporary understanding of the mind, and offer the beginnings of a treatment of know-how capable of providing insight in to the use (...) of know-how in contemporary cognitive science. Specifically, I claim that Carr’s necessary conditions for know-how fail to capture the distinction he himself draws between ability and knowing-how. Moreover, Carr ties knowing-how to conscious intent, and to an explicit knowledge of procedural rules. I argue that both moves are mistakes, which together render Carr’s theory an inadequate account both of common ascriptions of knowledge-how and of widely accepted ascriptions of knowledge-how within explanations in cognitive science. Finally, I note that Carr’s conditions fail to capture intuitions (heshares) regarding the ascription of know-how to persons lacking ability. I then consider the position advocated by Stanley & Williamson (2001), which seems avoid Carr’s commitments to conscious intent and explicit knowledge while still maintaining that “knowledge-how is simply a species of knowledge-that" (Stanley & Williamson, 2001, p. 411). I argue that Stanley and Williamson’s attempt to frame a reductionist view that avoids consciously occurrent beliefs during exercises of knowledge-how and explicit knowledge of procedural rules is both empirically implausible and explanatorily vacuous. In criticizing these theories I challenge the presuppositions of the most pervasive response to Ryle in the philosophic literature, what might be described as “the received view." I also establish several facts about knowing-how. First, neither conscious intent nor explicit representation (much less conscious representation) of procedural rules are necessary for knowing-how given the theory of cognition current in cognitive science. I argue that the discussed analyses fail to capture the necessary conditions for knowledge-how because know-how requires the instantiation of an ability and of the capacities necessary for exploiting an ability—not conscious awareness of purpose or explicit knowledge of rules. Second, one must understand knowledge-how as task-specific, i.e., as presupposing certain underlying conditions. Conceiving of know-how as task-specific allows one to understand ascriptions of know-how in the absence of ability as counterfactual ascriptions based upon underlying competence. (shrink)

The Business Ethics Index (BEI), measuring consumer perceptions of ethical business behavior, was extended to four ex-communist countries (Russia, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria). For Bulgaria, the two past dimensions are on the negative side of the scale. However, Bulgarians seem to be optimistic for the future ethical behavior of businesses. The same optimism about the future is observed for all four countries with Romania having the highest scores. Three hypotheses are proposed for the unusually high scores of the past ethical (...) perceptions expressed by Russians. (shrink)