A consciência dos animais é um tema marginal na história da filosofia ocidental. Algunsautores, no entanto, aventuraram-se em desbravar a temática. O mais paradigmático representantedessa tradição, René Descartes, erigia nos anos de 1630 um debate acerca da insensibilidade animalque perduraria por toda a modernidade. Quatro séculos mais tarde, o filósofo alemão Hans Jonasdesignaria a ciência materialista como a herdeira mais bem-sucedida do dualismo cartesiano. QueDescartes tenha exercido tamanha influência sobre a ciência moderna, contudo, não é um pontopacífico. Teria Jonas recorrido (...) em uma leitura equivocada de Descartes ao atribuir ao filósofo francês apaternidade do materialismo? A fim de responder essa indagação, realiza-se uma pesquisa bibliográficade caráter analítico, cujas fontes principais giram em torno dos textos cartesianos, bem como da análisejonasiana do dualismo. Desse modo, o presente artigo analisa a visão jonasiana da tese da bestamáquina através de um escrutínio de sua argumentação e das referências diretas dos escritos deDescartes. (shrink)

As últimas décadas têm testemunhado uma profusão de teorias filosóficas que buscam reconhecer a moralidade de uma categoria tradicionalmente compreendida como neutra: os animais. Destituída de qualquer valor, a existência não-humana senciente foi deixada de lado por grandes nomes da ética ocidental (de Aristóteles a Kant), cujas teorias colocava-os, muitas vezes, sob o mesmo status de mera matéria destituída de vida. Contudo, desde o século XVIII, sobretudo na Inglaterra, os animais passaram a fazer parte do escopo compreendido por um sem-número (...) de teorias éticas comprometidas com o desafio de lidar com a problemática relação imposta entre humanos e animais. Partindo de um postulado comum – um agente é moralmente relevante se dispõe do maquinário biológico necessário para a produção de sensações agradáveis ou desagradáveis – tais percepções falham em reconhecer a existência de outros seres carentes de proteção moral: as árvores, plantas e uma infinidade de organismos com sistema nervoso central particularmente rudimentar para entrar dentro do cálculo utilitarista, cuja existência encontra-se igualmente ameaçada pelo poder de ação humana. Tendo esse desafio como norte, o presente artigo busca, a partir da teoria ética de Hans Jonas voltada aos animais, uma alternativa de proteção da vida extra-humana e da biosfera. Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica de caráter analítico, cuja fonte principal circula, sobretudo, em torno de duas grandes obras do filósofo: O Princípio Vida e O Princípio Responsabilidade. Assim sendo, pergunta-se: em que medida a teoria da responsabilidade jonasiana oferece fundamentos para pensar uma teoria ética para os animais não-humanos, ao mesmo tempo que não exclui da esfera moral outros seres vivos? Tal problemática certamente precisa operar sob a perspectiva de uma filosofia da natureza, para então estabelecer um alicerce teórico sobre o qual se possa construir uma ética animal. Para tanto, o texto divide-se em três seções: a) primeiro analisa-se a pertença humana no reino natural, possibilitada, segundo Jonas, graças ao sucesso do darwinismo enquanto narrativa descritiva da realidade biológica; b) passa-se então para uma análise da ontologia da natureza de Jonas compreendendo desde a mais primitiva existência unicelular ao mais desenvolvido degrau da vida animal; c) para então desembocar em uma teoria ética da responsabilidade que compreenda tanto a existência humana, quanto a não-humana. Em seu degrau ascendente de valor, a vida reivindica uma responsabilidade em determinados níveis, tendo a existência animal, com o dramático aparecimento das sensações, mobilidade, medo e desejo, uma reivindicação mais ampla em relação aos modos mais primitivos de manifestação da vida. (shrink)

La doctrine matrimoniale de l’Eglise catholique a cessé de centrer juridiquement le mariage sur la seule procréation. Le Concile Vatican II – et le Code actuel qui le traduit en langage canonique – considère que le mariage est la formation d’un couple – et l’état de vie qui en résulte pour lui – où le consentement inaugural des époux est sous-tendu par une intention de créer une communauté profonde de vie et d’amour conjugal, exclusive et perpétuelle, ouverte sur le bien (...) des conjoints et sur la procréation - éducation des enfants. Au moment des noces, chacun des futurs doit avoir la capacité psychique de donner un consentement valide, dans un discernement fait d’une connaissance critique de la nature du mariage, de ses droits et devoirs essentiels, et d’une liberté interne qui permet le choix délibéré de l’état matrimonial et du mariage concrètement célébré. Parmi les causes susceptibles de provoquer une incapacité psychique de donner un consentement matrimoniel valide, il faut compter ce que la psychiatrie appelle une immaturité affective. (shrink)

From the book: What is to be done with political ecology? Nothing. What is to be done? Political ecology!

Technology is always limited to the realm of means, while morality is supposed to deal with ends. In this theoretical article about comparing those two regimes of enunciation, it is argued that technology is on the contrary characterized by the `ends of means' that is the impossibility of being limited to tools; technical artefacts are never tools if what is meant by this is a transmission of function in a mastered way. Once this modification of the meaning of technology is (...) accepted, then it is possible to relate technology, in a totally different way, to morality which is not about values, but about the exploration of ends. (shrink)

Research teams have made considerable progress in treating absolute uterine factor infertility through uterus transplantation, though studies have differed on the choice of either deceased or living donors. While researchers continue to analyze the medical feasibility of both approaches, little attention has been paid to the ethics of using deceased versus living donors as well as the protections that must be in place for each. Both types of uterus donation also pose unique regulatory challenges, including how to allocate donated organs; (...) whether the donor / donor's family has any rights to the uterus and resulting child; how to manage contact between the donor / donor's family, recipient, and resulting child; and how to track outcomes moving forward. (shrink)

German classicist's monumental study of the origins of European thought in Greek literature and philosophy.

Abstract: The standard picture of rationality requires that the agent acts so as to realize her most preferred alternative in the light of her own desires and beliefs. However, there are circumstances where such an agent can predict that she will act against her preferences. The story of Ulysses and the Sirens is the paradigmatic example of such cases. In those circumstances the orthodoxy requires the agent to be ‘sophisticated’. That is to say, she should take into account her expected (...) future choices and prevent her future self to act in certain ways. She should ‘bind’ herself to a certain course of action. This is a form of causal commitment. It is generally recognized that this form of self-commitment is the only one that is available to a rational agent. Rational commitment, where the agent gives herself a reason to act in a certain way rather than making herself act in that way, is considered not feasible. In this paper, I question this verdict. I sketch the broad outlines of a model of rational commitment, which takes as its starting point Michael Bratman’s ‘planning theory’ of intention. There are two important objections against this theory (one by John Broome and one by the Dutch philosopher Govert den Hartogh.) Both criticisms claim that such a theory is a form of ‘bootstrapping’ reasons for action into existence. In the remainder of the paper, I will defend the theory against these objections. This way, I hope to establish that defending the feasibility of rational commitment is not an obvious mistake. (shrink)

In a series of papers, 137–158; 1994, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 23, 61–74, 1999) Fine develops his hylomorphic theory of embodiments. In this article, we supply a formal semantics for this theory that is adequate to the principles laid down for it in. In Section 1, we lay out the theory of embodiments as Fine presents it. In Section 2, we argue on Cantorian grounds that the theory needs to be stabilized, and sketch some ways forward, discussing various choice points (...) in modeling the view. In Section 3, we develop a formal semantics for the theory of embodiments by constructing embodiments in stages and restricting the domain of the second-order quantifiers. In Section 4 we give a few illustrative examples to show how the models deliver Finean hylomorphic consequences. In Section 5, we prove that Fine’s principles are sound with respect to this semantics. In Section 6 we present some inexpressibility results concerning Fine’s various notions of parthood and show that in our formal semantics these notions are all expressible using a single mereological primitive. In Section 7, we prove several mereological results stemming from the model theory, showing that the mereology is surprisingly robust. In Section 8, we draw some philosophical lessons from the formal semantics, and in particular respond to Koslicki’s main objection to Fine’s theory. In the appendix we present proofs of the inexpressibility results of Section 6. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze some disagreements about scientific ontology as cases of disagreement between epistemic peers. I maintain that the particularities of these cases are better understood if epistemic peerhood is relativized to a perspective-like index of epistemic goals and values. Taking the debate on the metaphysics of laws of nature as a case study, I explore the limits and possibilities of a trans-perspective assessment of positions regarding scientific ontology.

Biology and politics have always been permeable to one another, trading metaphors back and forth. This is nowhere more blatant than when people claim to talk about ‘the planet’ as a whole. James Lovelock’s concept of Gaia has often been interpreted as a godlike figure. By reviewing in some detail a critical assessment of Lovelock’s Gaia by one scientist, Toby Tyrrell, the paper tries to map out why it is so difficult for natural as well as social scientists not to (...) confuse Gaia with some sort of Providence. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a constructive solution to Frege's puzzle (largely limited to the mathematical context) based on type theory. Two ways in which an equality statement may be said to have cognitive significance are distinguished. One concerns the mode of presentation of the equality, the other its mode of proof. Frege's distinction between sense and reference, which emphasizes the former aspect, cannot adequately explain the cognitive significance of equality statements unless a clear identity criterion for (...) senses is provided. It is argued that providing a solution based on proofs is more satisfactory from the standpoint of constructive semantics. (shrink)

On the classical understanding, an agent is fully excused for an action if and only if performing this action was a case of faultless wrongdoing. A major motivation for this view is the apparent existence of paradigmatic types of excusing considerations, affecting fault but not wrongness. I show that three such considerations, ignorance, duress and compulsion, can be shown to have direct bearing on the permissibility of actions. The appeal to distinctly identifiable excusing considerations thus does not stand up to (...) closer scrutiny, undermining the classical view and giving us reason to seek alternative ways of drawing the justification/excuse distinction. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Are there different sizes of infinity? That is, are there infinite sets of different sizes? This is one of the most natural questions that one can ask about the infinite. But it is of course generally taken to be settled by mathematical results, such as Cantor’s theorem, to the effect that there are infinite sets without bijections between them. These results settle the question, given an almost universally accepted principle relating size to the existence of functions. The principle is: for (...) any sets A and B, if A is the same size as B, then there is a bijection from A to B. The aim of the paper, however, is to argue that this question is in fact wide open: to argue that we are not in a position to know the answer, because we are not in one to know the principle. The aim, that is, is to argue that for all we know there is only one size of infinity. (shrink)

Are there ‘self-referential’ propositions? That is, propositions that say of themselves that they have a certain property, such as that of being false. There can seem reason to doubt that there are. At the same time, there are a number of reasons why it matters. For suppose that there are indeed no such propositions. One might then hope that while paradoxes such as the Liar show that many plausible principles about sentences must be given up, no such fate will befall (...) principles about propositions. But the existence of self-referential propositions would dash such hopes. Further, the existence of such propositions would also seem to challenge the widespread claim that Liar sentences fail to express propositions. The aim of this paper is thus to settle the question–at least given an assumption. In particular, I argue that if propositions are structured, then self-referential propositions exist. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of Molyneux's problem within contemporary philosophy of mind tend to characterize the problem as primarily concerned with the role innately known principles, amodal spatial concepts, and rational cognitive faculties play in our perceptual lives. Indeed, for broadly similar reasons, rationalists have generally advocated an affirmative answer, while empiricists have generally advocated a negative one, to the question Molyneux posed after presenting his famous thought experiment. This historical characterization of the dialectic, however, somewhat obscures the role Molyneux's problem has (...) played in spawning debates within the empiricist tradition. Fortunately, the differences between various empiricist accounts have been widely recognized and discussed among historians of philosophy working on the topic. The focus of the present essay is to develop an interpretation of John Locke's views on Molyneux's problem that best coheres with his other views on human understanding as well as with the predominant scientific opinion about the nature of perception during the period in which he lived. (shrink)

Political enunciation remains an enigma as long as it is considered from the standpoint of information transfer. It remains as unintelligible as religious talk. The paper explores the specificty of this regime and especially the strange link it has with the canonical definition of enunciation in linguistics and semiotics. The ‘political circle’ is reconstituted and thus also the reasons why a ‘transparent’ or ‘rational'political speech act destroys the very conditions of group formation.

En una serie de trabajos, Pablo Melogno sienta las bases para la formulación de criterios racionales de elección entre teorías inconmensurables procurando compatibilizar la noción kuhniana de inconmensurabilidad con reconstrucciones racionalistas de los procesos de cambio teórico. Uno de los ejes de ese proyecto se enfoca en los aspectos semánticos de la inconmensurabilidad, en particular, en el desarrollo de una semántica histórica que relativiza los alcances del holismo semántico. En el presente trabajo, profundizo y extiendo el proyecto de Melogno considerando (...) aspectos diversos de las teorías híbridas de la referencia. (shrink)

This chapter intervenes in recent debates in Kant scholarship about the possibility of a general logical alien. Such an alien is a thinker whose laws of thinking violate ours. She is third-personal as she is radically unlike us. Proponents of the constitutive reading of Kant’s conception of general logic accordingly suggest that Kant rules out the possibility of such an alien as unthinkable. I add to this an often-overlooked element in Kant’s thinking: there is reason to think that he grants—and (...) in fact presupposes—the possibility of a transcendental logical alien. Such an alien is a knower whose laws of experience purport to violate ours. She is first-personal as she is radically like us. In other words, she is us, insofar as we are alienated from ourselves and our experience. I go on to draw an analogy between her, a dogmatist, and another transcendental alien, an evil agent. Just as a dogmatist is alienated from her (our) experiential laws, an evil agent is alienated from her (our) moral law. These forms of theoretical and practical self-conceit require self-knowledge in the form of a critique of speculative or practical reason. In bringing this point out, I aim to shift from the question of whether logical laws constitute our thinking to the question of whether grasping our experiential and moral laws as our laws constitutes our reason. (shrink)

In this paper, I revisit Frege's theory of sense and reference in the constructive setting of the meaning explanations of type theory, extending and sharpening a program–value analysis of sense and reference proposed by Martin-Löf building on previous work of Dummett. I propose a computational identity criterion for senses and argue that it validates what I see as the most plausible interpretation of Frege's equipollence principle for both sentences and singular terms. Before doing so, I examine Frege's implementation of his (...) theory of sense and reference in the logical framework of Grundgesetze, his doctrine of truth values, and views on sameness of sense as equipollence of assertions. (shrink)

The development of science studies has an important message for political theory. This message has not yet been fully articulated. It seems that the science studies field is often considered as the extension of politics to science. In reality, case studies show that it is a redefinition of politics that we are witnessing in the laboratories. To the political representatives should be added the scientific representatives. Thanks to a book by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, it is possible to reconstruct (...) the origin of this divide between the two sets of representatives. A definition of modernism is offered. Then the article explains how to interpret the shift to "nonmodernism, " that is, a historical period when the two branches of politics get together again. (shrink)

The notion of a proposition is central to philosophy. But it is subject to paradoxes. A natural response is a hierarchical account and, ever since Russell proposed his theory of types in 1908, this has been the strategy of choice. But in this paper I raise a problem for such accounts. While this does not seem to have been recognized before, it would seem to render existing such accounts inadequate. The main purpose of the paper, however, is to provide a (...) new hierarchical account that solves the problem. (shrink)

This paper discusses the prospects of a comprehensive philosophical account of promising that relies centrally on the notion of trust. I lay out the core idea behind the Trust View, showing how it convincingly explains the normative contours and the unique value of our promissory practice. I then sketch three distinct options of how the Trust View can explain the normativity of promises. First, an effect based-view, second, a view drawing on a wider norm demanding respect to those whom one (...) has invited to something, and finally, as a new suggestion, a Normative Interest View. This view holds that promising is a normative power that serves our interest in facilitating or enabling the relationship of trust between promisor and promisee. I argue that only those embracing the third view can fully account for the distinctive obligation that results from the giving of a valid promise in all cases. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that blameworthiness is epistemically constrained. If one lacks sufficient epistemic access to the fact that some action harms another, then one cannot be blamed for harming. Acceptance of an epistemic condition for blameworthiness can give rise to a worry, however: could agents ever successfully evade blameworthiness by deliberately stunting their epistemic position? I discuss a particularly worrisome version of such epistemic shirking, in which agents pre-emptively seek to avoid access to potentially morally relevant facts. As Roy (...) Sorensen and Jan Willem Wieland have argued, we seem to be faced with a potentially troubling regress when trying to explain what goes wrong in such situations. I argue that the solution to this so-called Shirker Problem is not to be found in complicated and demanding anti-shirking-principles with universal scope and potentially self-reflexive content. Instead, careful consideration of the necessary motivational make-up of genuine shirkers reveals their ignorance to lack the necessary depth to be exculpatory. Since shirkers by definition react to the possibility of the revelation of morally relevant facts with acts of epistemic self-limitation, they necessarily prove guilty of a form of culpable moral recklessness. Epistemic shirking thus does not pose a worrisome problem for ethical theory. (shrink)

Working on the assumption that ideas are embedded in socio-technical arrangements which actualize them, this essay sheds light on the way the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC) achieves the Lisbon strategic goal: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world . Rather than framing the issue in utilitarian terms, it focuses attention on quantified indicators, comparable statistics and common targets resulting from the increasing practice of intergovernmental benchmarking, in order to tackle the following questions: how does (...) the OMC go about co-ordinating Member States through the benchmarking of national policies? And to what extent does this managerial device impact the path of European construction? Beyond the ideological and discursive construction of the competitive imperative, this technology of government transforms it into an indefinite discipline (Foucault) which constantly urges decision-makers to hit the top of the charts. This contribution thus argues that the practice of intergovernmental benchmarking is far from being neutral in purpose and effect. On the contrary, it lays the foundation for building a competitive Europe which unites Member States through competition. (shrink)

Most of us spend a significant portion of our lives learning, practising, and performing a wide range of skills. Many of us also have a great amount of control over which skills we learn and develop. From choices as significant as career pursuits to those as minor as how we spend our weeknight leisure time, we exercise a great amount of agency over what we know and what we can do. In this paper we argue, using a framework first developed (...) by Carbonell (2013) that in many real-world circumstances we have moral obligations to develop some skills rather than others. (shrink)

The term “race,” and the concept it refers to, namely genetically different human populations in the world, is one of the most intellectually and emotionally charged in society, and in science as well. This article focuses on how human beings recognize individual faces of their own versus another “racial group,” and the term “face race” is used in the context of visual recognition, as traditionally done in the scientific literature. The article reviews the well-known phenomenon that people have greater difficulty (...) distinguishing and recognizing individual faces from a different human population, or “race,” than their own. Experience-based holistic accounts encompass and extend most other proposals, such as a more densely clustered organization of other-race faces in an internal face-space centered on a “norm,” and it leads to a number of interesting predictions about the processing of same race and other-race faces. (shrink)

Kripke [1975] gives a formal theory of truth based on Kleene's strong evaluation scheme. It is probably the most important and influential that has yet been given—at least since Tarski. However, it has been argued that this theory has a problem with generalized quantifiers such as All—that is, All ϕs are ψ—or Most. Specifically, it has been argued that such quantifiers preclude the existence of just the sort of language that Kripke aims to deliver—one that contains its own truth predicate. (...) In this paper I solve the problem by showing how Kleene's strong scheme, and Kripke's theory based on it, can in a natural way be extended to accommodate the full range of generalized quantifiers. (shrink)

The author of the present paper argues that while trying to explain the institutional success of the science and its broad social impact, it is worth throwing aside the arguments concerning the universal traits of human nature, changes in the human mentality, or transformation of the culture and civilization, such as the development of capitalism or bureaucratic power. In the 16th century no new man emerged, and no mutants with overgrown brains work in modern laboratories. So one must also reject (...) the Great Divide between the cultures of the scientific and pre-scientific and replace it with multiple, uncertain and unexpected ‘not-so-great divides’, which can be described in meticulous anthropological studies. Although the achievements of science are certainly spectacular, and the gap between scientific practice and other areas of activity is so obvious, this does not mean that one must look for the \"great\" reasons behind this situation. One should rather focus on quite down-to-earth practices and tools used by scientists. A significant part of their activities can be described by referring to the craft of writing, reading and transforming of various types of inscriptions (records), and broadly understood visualization – their combining, performing, interpreting, confronting, comparing, shifting, shuffling etc. The important role of these tools and methods is especially visible in situations of scientific controversy. It is so because scientific controversies are won by the one able to muster on the spot the largest number of well aligned and faithful allies, and the technology of writing, printing and visualizing play a special role in mobilizing them. These are necessary to ensure that certain factors can be mobile – easy to move from place to place, and yet, immutable – not undergoing deformation as a result of the movement. This way, scientists are able to not only diffuse different types of factors relevant to the dispute and the process of constituting science, but also concentrate them in the centers of calculation, where, through accumulation, one can take actions not available elsewhere. (shrink)

This article proposes a way of doing type theory informally, assuming a cubical style of reasoning. It can thus be viewed as a first step toward a cubical alternative to the program of informalization of type theory carried out in the homotopy type theory book for dependent type theory augmented with axioms for univalence and higher inductive types. We adopt a cartesian cubical type theory proposed by Angiuli, Brunerie, Coquand, Favonia, Harper, and Licata as the implicit foundation, confining our presentation (...) to elementary results such as function extensionality, the derivation of weak connections and path induction, the groupoid structure of types, and the Eckmman–Hilton duality. (shrink)

L'origine dell'anima umana secondo Dante.--La dottrina d'Alberto Magno sull'Inchoatio formae.--Alberto Magno e san Tommaso.--La posizione di Alberto Magno di fronte all'averroismo.--L'anima umana secondo Sigieri.--Anima e corpo nel pensiero di san Tommaso.--L'aristotelismo della scolastica e i francescani.--Individualità e immortalità nell'averroismo e nel tomismo.

The use of Requirements at Runtime (RRT) is an emerging research area. Many methods and frameworks that make use of requirements models during software execution can be found in the literature. How...

Game theory is the systematic study of interdependent rational choice. It should be distinguished from decision theory, the systematic study of individual (practical and epistemic) choice in parametric contexts (i.e., where the agent is choosing or deliberating independently of other agents). Decision theory has several applications to ethics (see Dreier 2004; Mele and Rawlings 2004). Game theory may be used to explain, to predict, and to evaluate human behavior in contexts where the outcome of action depends on what several agents (...) choose to do and where their choices depend on what others choose to do. (See the entry on game theory) Game theory consequently is relevant to ethics, and it is used in moral and political philosophy in a variety of ways. We shall concentrate on the influence and use of game theory in ethics and those parts of political theory involving norms or principles of justice, ignoring questions about political and legal institutions on the one hand and questions about issues dealing with moral virtues on the other. (shrink)

Theories of well-being that I call “loving-the-good” claim that one intrinsically benefits if and only if one loves what is objectively good. For these views, well-being comes to be when the correct connection between world and mind obtains. Intuitively, ill-being is the opposite of well-being. I explore the resources of loving-the-good views to explain ill-being, especially whether they can do so and also meet the theoretical virtues of continuity and unity. Continuity is met when ill-being theory mirrors the well-being theory. (...) Unity is met when all instances of a phenomenon are given the same kind of explanation. I argue that, strikingly, the key insight of loving-the-good theories of well-being does not seem plausible for ill-being. A consequence is that loving-the-good theories face significant problems to meet continuity. I examine alternatives for these views to meet unity. I argue that plausible explanations of ill-being do not meet unity either. (shrink)

This paper discusses three generic types or ways of understanding the common good found in the literature, and then describes the implications of the integral common good for seven key practices of humanistic management. In particular, compared to conventional management, an approach to humanistic management based on the integral common good tends to: 1) have institutional mission and vision statements that are developed by multiple stakeholders that emphasize social and ecological well-being ahead of financial well-being; 2) have a strategic orientation (...) that emphasizes collaboration, “minimizer” and “transformer” generic strategies, a Radical Resource Based View, and uses Porter’s five forces as a way to foster collaboration; 3) structure organizations based on experimentation, sensitization, dignification, and participation ; 4) develop control systems based on value loops that seek to enhance the flourishing of multiple stakeholders; 5) emphasize multi-directional multi-stakeholder communication; 6) invite all stakeholders to participate in making decisions, including developing and choosing alternatives; 7) foster leadership based on socialized power, a focus on SMART 2.0 goals, a desire to ensure everyone is treated fairly, and an emphasis on relationships that nurture community and the integral common good. Implications for research and teaching are discussed. (shrink)

David Lewis’ Convention has been a major source of inspiration for philosophers and social scientists alike for the analysis of norms. In this essay, I demonstrate its usefulness for the analysis of some moral norms. At the same time, conventionalism with regards to moral norms has attracted sustained criticism. I discuss three major strands of criticism and propose how these can be met. First, I discuss the criticism that Lewis conventions analyze norms in situations with no conflict of interest, whereas (...) most, if not all, moral norms deal with situations with conflicting interests. This criticism can be answered by showing that conventions can emerge in those contexts as well. Secondly, I discuss the objection that this type of conventionalism, inspired by Lewis, presents moral norms as fundamentally contingent, whereas most, if not all, moral norms are not. However, such critics fail to appreciate that conventions are not radically contingent. Moreover, if one distinguishes the question as to why an individual should comply with a norm from the question whether the norm in question itself can be justified, a core element of the complaint of contingency disappears. The third objection to conventionalism concerns the way in which conventionalists justify norms. I argue that reflection upon the way in which according to Lewis norms are justified reveals a fundamental tension in his theory. Possible solutions to this tension all have in common that the complaint of contingency returns in some form. Therefore, this third complaint cannot be avoided altogether. (shrink)

Recent events and popularized stereotypes call into question the ethics of salesperson behaviors. Although prior research demonstrates that salespeople’s emotional exhaustion can have negative consequences for several job outcomes, little is known about the factors that can mitigate such relationships—particularly the relationship between emotional exhaustion and ethical behavior. To remedy this knowledge gap, we draw from self-control theory to propose a novel theoretical framework and develop hypotheses. These hypotheses are tested on a unique dataset consisting of survey data collected from (...) 123 matched business-to-business salesperson–manager dyads. The findings reveal that emotional exhaustion is negatively associated with sales performance, emotional exhaustion is negatively associated with ethical behaviors, ethical behaviors are positively associated with sales performance, ethical behaviors mediate emotional exhaustion’s negative effect on sales performance, perceived supervisor support attenuates the negative association between emotional exhaustion and ethical behaviors, and contrary to expectations, grit strengthens the negative association between emotional exhaustion and ethical behaviors. As we show here, perceived supervisor support may attenuate the undesirable effects of emotional exhaustion on ethical behaviors and sales performance. The article’s broader contribution thus lies in its suggestion that managers pay special attention to these factors. Moreover, factors such as grit can have unexpected and undesirable influences; therefore, we draw attention to the importance of scrutinizing these interactions, even when the factors involved are almost universally touted as beneficial. Theoretical and practical implications of the research are discussed. (shrink)