The papers collected in this issue address different topics at play in the contemporary debate on positive feeling and emotion by virtue of both their primary function in everyday life and their embedded structure. Within this issue, specific attention has been given to the intertwining of positive feeling and ethical issues according to different approaches whose goals consist in providing a description and clarification of the phenomena in question. The contributions gathered here give us a clear idea of the variety (...) and possible nuances that define positive feelings and, with them, of the complexity of our lives and reality. Specifically, they concretely show the degree to which the quality of an experience depends on the agent-environment relationship, the benefits we can derive from certain positive experiences, and the extent to which the valence of an emotion can affect our moral life. (shrink)

Riassunto: Il presente studio intende mostrare la natura specifica del cognitivismo emotivo proposto da Franz Brentano. In maniera più o meno evidente, la teoria del valore delineata da Brentano ha ricoperto un ruolo di primaria importanza nel dibattito assiologico-etico di fine Ottocento e inizio Novecento ed è ampiamente discussa anche all’interno del dibattito contemporaneo. Nel contributo vengono richiamati gli aspetti generali di tale teoria soffermandosi sulla nozione di “rappresentazione intuitiva” intesa come modalità che permette di conoscere ciò che giusto e (...) ciò che è ingiusto. Si passa dunque a discutere l’accezione brentaniana di “preferibilità intrinseca”, rilevando, in sede di conclusione, che l’effettiva centralità e attualità della teoria brentaniana sono conseguenza diretta della sua intrinseca natura “non univoca”. Parole chiave: Franz Brentano; Valore; Emozione; Cognitivismo emotivo; Presentazione intuitiva Franz Brentano and Emotional Cognitivism: This essay aims to describe the specific nature of the emotional cognitivism sketched out by Franz Brentano. Indeed in a more or less direct way the value-theory he developed has played a key-role both within the ethical-axiological debate at the turn of the 20th century and in contemporary debate. In this paper I describe the general traits of Brentano’s value-theory focusing primarily on his account of concrete intuitive presentation insofar as it allows us to acknowledge what it is right and wrong. Then I discuss Brentano’s characterization of “intrinsic preferability” and conclude by arguing that the historical-philosophical prominence and relevance of this value-account may be sought in its “not univocal nature”. Keywords: Franz Brentano; Value; Emotion; Emotional Cognitivism; Intuitive Presentation. (shrink)

In this paper I provide an ecological, Schelerian-based description of the aesthetic experience that, without being exhaustive, may account for its complexity, perspective character and stratifications. Aesthetic enjoyment, aesthetic object and the creative process of the artistic type are all specific and necessary moments of an experience – an aesthetic experience – shared by different experiential “individuals”, who also contribute to its formation process. The content of this experience grows and develops in conformity with its own laws, like a living (...) being so to speak, able, as such, to turn its own gaze to the others’ gaze at the same time as they turn to it. In other words, I will deal with the dynamics of the artist’s interactions with the spectator, of those of the spectator with the artist and of those of both with the work of art, which, created by the artist, or rather, “brought to light” by the artist, becomes an object– a quasi-sujet in Dufrennian terms – unique to the spectator. In this context, I will try to rehabilitate the axiological virtues of beauty, not in the sense of a metaphysics of beauty, but in a sense nearer to our experiences of “seeing something in a new light”. (shrink)

At the time of the fragile Weimar Republic, when the crisis of parliamentary democracy was accompanied by a “frightening massification of life” and of public opinion, Scheler posed a challenge: How to achieve a cultural and spiritual transformation that can contribute to a true rebirth of Germany and Europe? If this renaissance is to be achieved, Germany and Europe must be examined as a whole, and the ideas underlying their institutions must be renewed. Cosmopolitanism and the age of integration – (...) for example the integration of rationalism, which has traditionally characterized Europe, and irrationalism, of which the “revolt of pulsions” is, according to Scheler, an eloquent testimony – impose this renewal. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the possible “costs and benefits” of a Freudian-inspired sublimation from a Schelerian perspective, with particular attention to the problem of Bildung. (shrink)

This paper discusses possible forms of loss or weakness of the ability to interact with others and the ways in which this arises. In particular, in the context of socio-affective knowledge and related failures, it focuses on certain deficits that primarily involve the body. The article aims to show that the “destiny” of our inner drives and our lives—the specific solutions to which they are forced in their vicissitudes—is less “blind” than it appears, leaving (albeit minimal) margins of escape, also (...) because it has a relational connotation. Starting from Bernhard Waldenfels’s recent work on the relationship between phenomenology and psychoanalysis, in which this question is addressed from a phenomenological-responsive point of view, this article reflects on the problem by establishing a comparison between Waldenfels’s philosophy and Max Scheler’s phenomenology of values. Beyond the differences that their approaches to the problem of relational deficits present, Waldenfels and Scheler can be put in fruitful dialogue with each other, starting from their common interest in Freudian psychoanalysis. Within this framework, it is possible to evaluate, adopting Scheler’s point of view, both a methodological aspect and a psychological presupposition of Freud’s ontogenesis of sympathy and love: associationism. From this perspective, Freud reveals himself in part as an heir to British empiricism. I will argue that, with and beyond Freud, the human being is not reducible to a mere sum of blind sensations or blind drives and that for both at least certain forms of inability to interact with others are derivative—deformations of normal responsivity and aberrations of normal pulsional-(relational) life—rather than originary phenomena. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty. Une conception de l’empathie non centrée sur le sujet?Cet article étudie l’émergence du terme « empathie » dans les textes de Merleau-Ponty. Il souligne que le concept n’est pas avant tout présenté comme une catégorie épistémologique, remettant en question si et comment nous pouvons éventuellement connaître les autres. Au contraire, il est conçu comme une catégorie ontologique, pour dire notre appartenance à une nature commune. De ce point de vue, il propose une façon sensible pour comprendre les autres, basée (...) sur une proximité et un partage physiques.Mais, avec des références à l’actuel débat, le texte suggère que, dans les réflexions du phénoménologue français, il est possible de trouver un paradigme qui n’est pas centré sur une conception subjective de l’empathie – c’est a dire qu’il s’agit d’un paradigme qui ne suppose pas toujours une projection subjective de ma sensibilité sur celle des autres. Plutôt, il peut à la fois consister en un sentiment commun, prépersonnel, qui constitue l’arrière-plan de nos sensibilités conscientes, et aussi proceder de l’autre être humain à moi, alors que souvent je sens et comprendre moi-même par differentiation des autres personnes, qui s’imposent sur mes sentiments et sur mes mots.Merleau-Ponty. A Conception of Empathy not centered on the Subject?This paper investigates the emergence of the term “empathy” in Merleau-Ponty’s texts. It points out that the concept is not primarly introduced as an epistemological category, questioning if and how eventually we can know the others. On the contrary it is meant as an ontological category, in order to say our belonging to a common nature. From this point of view he proposes a sensible way to understanding the others, based on a bodily closeness and sharing.But, with references to the current debate, the text suggests that in the reflections of the French phenomenologist it is possible to find a not subjectively centered paradigm for understandig empathy – that is a paradigm which does not always presuppose a subjective projection of my sensibility on that of the other ones. It can rather both consist in a common, prepersonal feeling, costituting the background of our conscious sensitivities, and proceed from the other human being to me, so that I often feel and understand myself by differing from the other individuals, who impose themselves on my senses and on my words. (shrink)

The first work to offer a comprehensive pragmatist anthropology focusing on sensibility, habits, and human experience as contingently yet irreversibly enlanguaged.

Recent discussions in the philosophy of biology have brought into question some fundamental assumptions regarding evolutionary processes, natural selection in particular. Some authors argue that natural selection is nothing but a population-level, statistical consequence of lower-level events (Matthen and Ariew [2002]; Walsh et al. [2002]). On this view, natural selection itself does not involve forces. Other authors reject this purely statistical, population-level account for an individual-level, causal account of natural selection (Bouchard and Rosenberg [2004]). I argue that each of these (...) positions is right in one way, but wrong in another; natural selection indeed takes place at the level of populations, but it is a causal process nonetheless. (shrink)

The latter half of the twentieth century has been marked by debates in evolutionary biology over the relative significance of natural selection and random drift: the so-called “neutralist/selectionist” debates. Yet John Beatty has argued that it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish the concept of random drift from the concept of natural selection, a claim that has been accepted by many philosophers of biology. If this claim is correct, then the neutralist/selectionist debates seem at best futile, and at worst, (...) meaningless. I reexamine the issues that Beatty raises, and argue that random drift and natural selection, conceived as processes, can be distinguished from one another. (shrink)

Even if Peirce were well understood and there existed· general agreement among Peirce scholars on what he meant by his semiotics, or philosophy of signs, the undertaking of this book-wliich intends to establish a theoretical foundation for a new approach to understanding the interrelations of law, economics, and politics against referent systems of value-would be a risky venture. But since such general agreement on Peirce's work is lacking, one's sense of adventure in ideas requires further qualification. Indeed, the proverbial nerve (...) for failure must in any case be attendant. If one succeeds, one has introduced for further inquiry the strong possibility that should our social systems of law, economics, and politics---our means of interpersonal transaction as a whole-be understood against the theoretical back ground of a dynamic, "motion-picture" universe that is continually becoming, that is infinitely developing and changing in response to genuinely novel elements that emerge as existents, then the basic concepts of rights, resources, and reality take on new dimensions of meaning in correspondence with n-dimensional, infinite value judgments or truth-like beliefs which one holds. If such a view, as Peirce maintained, were possible and tenable not only for philosophy but as the basis for action and interaction in the world of human experience and practical affairs, one would readily say that risk taking is a small price for the realization of such possibility. (shrink)

Biologists studying ecology and evolution use the term “population” in many different ways. Yet little philosophical analysis of the concept has been done, either by biologists or philosophers, in contrast to the voluminous literature on the concept of “species.” This is in spite of the fact that “population” is arguably a far more central concept in ecological and evolutionary studies than “species” is. The fact that such a central concept has been employed in so many different ways is potentially problematic (...) for the reason that inconsistent usages (especially when the usage has not been made explicit) might lead to false controversies in which disputants are simply talking past one another. However, the inconsistent usages are not the only, or even the most important reason to examine the concept. If any set of organisms is legitimately called a “population,” selection and drift processes become purely arbitrary, too. Moreover, key ecological variables, such as abundance and distribution, depend on a nonarbitrary way of identifying populations. I sketch the beginnings of a population concept, drawing inspiration from the Ghiselin-Hull individuality thesis, and show why some alternative approaches are nonstarters. (shrink)

Several scholars have highlighted the importance of examining moral disengagement in understanding aggression and deviant conduct across different contexts. The present study investigates the role of MD as a specific social-cognitive construct that, in the organizational context, may intervene in the process leading from stressors to counterproductive work behavior. Assuming the theoretical framework of the stressor-emotion model of CWB, we hypothesized that MD mediates, at least partially, the relation between negative emotions in reaction to perceived stressors and CWB by promoting (...) or justifying aggressive responses to frustrating situations or events. In a sample of 1,147 Italian workers, we tested a structural equations model. The results support our hypothesis: the more workers experienced negative emotions in response to stressors, the more they morally disengaged and, in turn, enacted CWB. (shrink)

This article extends property-owning democracy to the digital realm and introduces “data-owning democracy,” a new political economic regime characterized by the wide distribution of data as capital among citizens. Drawing on republican theory and acknowledging data's unique role in the digital economy, it proposes a two-tier model that combines different modes of data ownership and corresponding rights. The first layer of “data-owning democracy” is characterized by a digital public infrastructure that enables citizens to collectively generate data and have a say (...) in how their citizen data are used. In the second layer, individuals automatically receive machine-readable copies of their data whenever they are generated—a slightly more advanced form of the European Union's existing right to data portability (Art. 20). With its focus on empowerment, data-owning democracy is designed to be complementary to existing data protection regulations. It also illustrates how political theory more broadly, and republican theory specifically, can be instructive for specifying the normative components of a new political economy dealing with questions of empowerment and digital rights. (shrink)

This paper aims to illustrate one of the primary goals of the philosophy of biology⎯namely, the examination of central concepts in biological theory and practice⎯through an analysis of the concepts of population and metapopulation in evolutionary biology and ecology. I will first provide a brief background for my analysis, followed by a characterization of my proposed concepts: the causal interactionist concepts of population and metapopulation. I will then illustrate how the concepts apply to six cases that differ in their population (...) structure; this analysis will also serve to flesh out and defend the concepts a bit more. Finally, I will respond to some possible questions that my analysis may have raised and then conclude briefly. (shrink)

The literature has suggested that to understand the diffusion of unethical conduct in the workplace, it is important to investigate the underlying processes sustaining engagement in misbehaviour and to study what occurs during vocational education. Drawing on social-cognitive theory, in this study, we longitudinally examined the role of two opposite dimensions of the self-regulatory moral system, regulatory self-efficacy and moral disengagement, in influencing academic cheating behaviour. In addition, in line with the theories highlighting the bidirectional relationship between cognitive processes and (...) behaviour, we aimed to also examine the reciprocal influence of behaviour on these dimensions over time. Overall, no previous studies have examined the longitudinal interplay between these variables. The sample included 866 nursing students who were assessed three times annually from the beginning of their vocational education. The findings from a cross-lagged model confirmed that regulatory self-efficacy and moral disengagement have opposite influences on cheating behaviour, that regulatory self-efficacy negatively influences not only the engagement in misconduct but also the justification mechanisms that allow the divorce between moral standards and action, and that moral disengagement and cheating behaviour reciprocally support each other over time. Specifically, not only did moral disengagement influence cheating behaviour even when controlling for its prior levels, but also cheating behaviour affected moral disengagement one year later, controlling for its prior levels. These findings suggest that recourse to wrongdoing could gradually lead to further normalising this kind of behaviour and morally desensitising individuals to misconduct. (shrink)

It is well known that John Dewey was very far from embracing the traditional idea of cognition as something happening inside one’s own mind and consisting in a pictorial representation of the alleged purely external reality out there. His position was largely convergent with enactivist accounts of cognition as something based in life and consisting in human actions within a natural environment. The paper considers Dewey’s conception of cognition by focusing on its potential contributions to the current debate with enactivism. (...) It claims that Dewey’s anti-substantial, continuistic, and emergentistic conception of the mind as a typically human conduct pulls the rug out of the idea of cognition as representation, as well as pushes the current discussion towards a serious reconsideration of representationalist assumptions about conceptuality and language. The paper emphasises that Dewey—differently from enactivists—frames the role of cognition within experience: he argues that cognition concerns those intermediate phases of our experiences of the world which are characterised by an indeterminate or troubled situation, because he claims that human beings’ interactions with their own environment are qualitatively richer and broader than cognition, including as they do many different and intertwined modes of experience. Finally, the author suggests that a coherent development of Dewey’s lines of thought should avoid rigid distinctions and hierarchies between lower and higher degrees of cognition in humans, which are still maintained in certain forms of radical enactivism. Differently, we should consider the impact of the cultural and broadly linguistic configuration of the human–environment even on perception, motor action, and affective sensibility. (shrink)

Biologists and philosophers have offered differing concepts of biological race. That is, they have offered different candidates for what a biological correlate of race might be; for example, races might be subspecies, clades, lineages, ecotypes, or genetic clusters. One thing that is striking about each of these proposals is that they all depend on a concept of population. Indeed, some authors have explicitly characterized races in terms of populations. However, including the concept of population into concepts of race raises three (...) puzzles, all having to do with time. In this paper, I extend the causal interactionist population concept (CIPC) by introducing some simple assumptions about how to understand populations through time. These assumptions help to shed light on the three puzzles, and in the process show that if we want to understand races in terms of populations, we will need to revise our concept(s) of race. (shrink)

Biologists and philosophers have been extremely pessimistic about the possibility of demonstrating random drift in nature, particularly when it comes to distinguishing random drift from natural selection. However, examination of a historical case-Maxime Lamotte's study of natural populations of the land snail, Cepaea nemoralis in the 1950s - shows that while some pessimism is warranted, it has been overstated. Indeed, by describing a unique signature for drift and showing that this signature obtained in the populations under study, Lamotte was able (...) to make a good case for a significant role for drift. It may be difficult to disentangle the causes of drift and selection acting in a population, but it is not impossible. (shrink)

When philosophers of physics explore the nature of chance, they usually look to quantum mechanics. When philosophers of biology explore the nature of chance, they usually look to microevolutionary phenomena, such as mutation or random drift. What has been largely overlooked is the role of chance in macroevolution. The stochastic models of paleobiology employ conceptions of chance that are similar to those at the microevolutionary level, yet different from the conceptions of chance often associated with quantum mechanics and Laplacean determinism.

Evolutionary theory (ET) is teeming with probabilities. Probabilities exist at all levels: the level of mutation, the level of microevolution, and the level of macroevolution. This uncontroversial claim raises a number of contentious issues. For example, is the evolutionary process (as opposed to the theory) indeterministic, or is it deterministic? Philosophers of biology have taken different sides on this issue. Millstein (1997) has argued that we are not currently able answer this question, and that even scientific realists ought to remain (...) agnostic concerning the determinism or indeterminism of evolutionary processes. If this argument is correct, it suggests that, whatever we take probabilities in ET to be, they must be consistent with either determinism or indeterminism. This raises some interesting philosophical questions: How should we understand the probabilities used in ET? In other words, what is meant by saying that a certain evolutionary change is more or less probable? Which interpretation of probability is the most appropriate for ET? I argue that the probabilities used in ET are objective in a realist sense, if not in an indeterministic sense. Furthermore, there are a number of interpretations of probability that are objective and would be consistent with ET under determinism or indeterminism. However, I argue that evolutionary probabilities are best understood as propensities of population-level kinds. (shrink)

I argue that the propensity interpretation of fitness, properly understood, not only solves the explanatory circularity problem and the mismatch problem, but can also withstand the Pandora’s box full of problems that have been thrown at it. Fitness is the propensity (i.e., probabilistic ability, based on heritable physical traits) for organisms or types of organisms to survive and reproduce in particular environments and in particular populations for a specified number of generations; if greater than one generation, “reproduction” includes descendants of (...) descendants. Fitness values can be described in terms of distributions of propensities to produce varying number of offspring and can be modeled for any number of generations using computer simulations, thus providing both predictive power and a means for comparing the fitness of different phenotypes. Fitness is a causal concept, most notably at the population level, where fitness differences are causally responsible for differences in reproductive success. Relative fitness is ultimately what matters for natural selection. (shrink)

In all disciplines there are specifiable basic concepts, our universes of discourse, which define special areas of inquiry. Semiotics is that 'science of sciences' which inquires into all processes of inquiry, and which seeks to discover methods of inquiry. Peirce held that semiotics was to be the method of methods. An account of semiotic method should distinguish between the way the term 'sign' is used in semiotics and the various ways this term was meant in nearly all the traditional disciplines. (...) In this monograph Roberta Kevelson minutely explores Charles S. Peirce's method of methods. (shrink)

I respond to Brandon's (2005) criticisms of my earlier (2002) essay. I argue that (1) biologists are inconsistent in their use of the terms 'selection' and 'drift' -- vacillating between 'process' and 'outcome' -- but that the process-oriented definitions I defend make better sense of the neutralist/selectionist debate; (2) Brandon's purported demonstration that there is no qualitative difference between drift and selection as processes begs the question against my account; and (3) biologists (e.g., Kimura) have argued for genuinely neutral variants. (...) Whether any such variants actually exist is an empirical question. However, the philosophical question at hand is conceptual, not empirical. (shrink)

The “land community” (or “biotic community”) that features centrally in Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic has typically been equated with the concept of “ecosystem.” Moreover, some have challenged this central Leopoldean concept given the multitude of meanings of the term “ecosystem” and the changes the term has undergone since Leopold’s time (see, e.g., Shrader-Frechette 1996). Even one of Leopold’s primary defenders, J. Baird Callicott, asserts that there are difficulties in identifying the boundaries of ecosystems and suggests that we recognize that their (...) boundaries are determined by scientific questions ecologists pose (Callicott 2013). I argue that we need to rethink Leopold’s concept of land community in the following ways. First, we should recognize that Leopold’s views are not identical to those of his contemporaries (e.g., Clements, Elton), although they resemble those of some subsequent ecologists, including some of our contemporaries (e.g., O’Neill 2001, Post et al. 2007, Hastings and Gross 2012). Second, the land community concept does not map cleanly onto the concept of “ecosystem”; it also incorporates elements of the “community” concept in community ecology by emphasizing the interactions between organisms and not just the matter/energy flow of the ecosystem concept. Third, the boundary question can be illuminated by considering some of the recent literature on the nature of biological individuals (in particular, Odenbaugh 2007; Hamilton, Smith, and Haber 2009; Millstein 2009), focusing on concentrations of causal relations as determinative of the boundaries of the land community qua individual. There are challenges to be worked out, particularly when the interactions of community members do not map cleanly onto matter/energy flows, but I argue that these challenges can be resolved. The result is a defensible land community concept that is ontologically robust enough to be a locus of moral obligation while being consistent with contemporary ecological theory and practice. (shrink)

In this paper, I present the idea of “enlanguaged experience” as a radicalization of the Pragmatists’ approach to the continuity between language and experience in the human world as a concept that can provide a significant contribution to the current debate within Enactivism. The first part of the paper explores some new conceptual tools recently developed by enactivist scholarship, namely linguistic bodies, enlanguaged affordances, and languaging. In the second part, the notion of enlanguaged experience is introduced as involving two main (...) interrelated ideas. The first is the idea that human experience is contingently, yet irreversibly, embedded from each person’s birth within contexts made up of linguistic practices that contribute to continuously redefining what happens. Consequently, the development of individuals’ motor, perceptual, affective, selective, and cognitive capacities does not take place in a silent vacuum, but in a context of linguistic practices that are already there: such practices already operate in, and are shared by, the human groups in which individuals begin their experiences. The second key idea is that enlanguaged experience implies the claim that humans primarily meet language as part of their experience of the world, rather than as an independent system of words and grammar. In the third part of the paper, I argue that the conception of human experience as enlanguaged can fruitfully contribute to the enactivist debate, particularly with reference to three main points: firstly, the idea of a circular continuity, which is to say the claim that the advent of language in human life caused a re-configuration of previously existing forms of sensibility both ontogenetically and phylogenetically; secondly, an ecological view of language, according to which humans find themselves embedded in already operating linguistic practices and habits that are a constitutive part of their naturally social world; and, thirdly, a richer view of language “in the wild”, capable of retrieving the qualitative, affective, or aesthetic components of human enlanguaged experience. (shrink)

The capability approach developed by Amartya Sen focuses on the enhancement of people’s capabilities, i.e. their real freedom to choose a life course they have reason to value. Applying the CA to the organizational context, the focus of human resource management is transformed, shifting away from the needs of the organization to the freedoms of the individual. This shift happens also inside the so-called ‘liberated companies,’ firms with an organizational form that allows employees the complete freedom, along with the responsibility, (...) to take any actions they decide are best. In this paper we show the contribution of the capability approach for management and for organizational ethics by focusing on this innovative model of ‘liberated companies.’. (shrink)

I examine the use of the term function in Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, invoked as (1) the healthy functioning of the land community, which is dependent on (2) the maintenance of the characteristic functions of populations that are parts of the land community. The latter can be understood as referring to interactions between species that are the products of coevolution (such as parasite-host, predator-prey) and, thus, in terms of the “selected effect” account of function. The performance of these functions under (...) certain conditions maintain what Leopold took to be the healthy functioning of a land community. (shrink)

This chapter reconstructs the classical pragmatists’ position on human emotions, by assuming an original inquiring approach. It considers James’s, Dewey’s and Mead’s conceptions as contributions to an open theoretical laboratory in which the suggestions and unresolved difficulties presented by James were first discussed and developed by Dewey and then, immediately afterward, reconsidered and further articulated by Mead. At the same time, the paper develops a constant comparison with current contributions on this subject, coming from the most advanced trends in so-called (...) “4E cognition” studies. The chapter highlights some of the most relevant theses derived from the pragmatist debate, such as the continuity between bodily and mental aspects, as well as emotion and cognition, sensitiveness and appraisal. It shows the possibility of articulating this discourse by distinguishing between emotions and the pervasive aesthetic, qualitative and affective aspects of our experience. Furthermore, it focuses on the social dimension of emotions conceived as basic forms of gestural communication. Many interesting convergences are emphasized that derive from the abovementioned comparison, while Mead’s insight into a primary social configuration of emotions is presented in its enduring relevance for current inquiries in affective neurosciences. (shrink)

Alexander Rosenberg (1994) claims that the omniscient viewpoint of the evolutionary process would have no need for the concept of random drift. However, his argument fails to take into account all of the processes which are considered to be instances of random drift. A consideration of these processes shows that random drift is not eliminable even given a position of omniscience. Furthermore, Rosenberg must take these processes into account in order to support his claims that evolution is deterministic and that (...) evolutionary biology is an instrumental science. (shrink)

Background: Ethics is a founding component of the nursing profession; however, nurses sometimes find it difficult to constantly adhere to the required ethical standards. There is limited knowledge about the factors that cause a committed nurse to violate standards; moral disengagement, originally developed by Bandura, is an essential variable to consider. Research objectives: This study aimed at developing and validating a nursing moral disengagement scale and investigated how moral disengagement is associated with counterproductive and citizenship behaviour at work. Research design: (...) The research comprised a qualitative study and a quantitative study, combining a cross-validation approach and a structural equation model. Participants and research context: A total of 60 Italian nurses (63% female) involved in clinical work and enrolled as students in a postgraduate master’s programme took part in the qualitative study. In 2012, the researchers recruited 434 nurses (76% female) from different Italian hospitals using a convenience sampling method to take part in the quantitative study. Ethical considerations: All the organisations involved and the university gave ethical approval; all respondents participated on a voluntary basis and did not receive any form of compensation. Findings: The nursing moral disengagement scale comprised a total of 22 items. Results attested the mono-dimensionality of the scale and its good psychometric properties. In addition, results highlighted a significant association between moral disengagement and both counterproductive and citizenship behaviours. Discussion: Results showed that nurses sometimes resort to moral disengagement in their daily practice, bypassing moral and ethical codes that would normally prevent them from enacting behaviours that violate their norms and protocols. Conclusion: The nursing moral disengagement scale can complement personnel monitoring and assessment procedures already in place and provide additional information to nursing management for designing interventions aimed at increasing compliance with ethical codes by improving the quality of the nurses’ work environment. (shrink)

Genetic drift (variously called “random drift”, “random genetic drift”, or sometimes just “drift”) has been a source of ongoing controversy within the philosophy of biology and evolutionary biology communities, to the extent that even the question of what drift is has become controversial. There seems to be agreement that drift is a chance (or probabilistic or statistical) element within population genetics and within evolutionary biology more generally, and that the term “random” isn’t invoking indeterminism or any technical mathematical meaning, but (...) that’s about where agreement ends. Yet genetic drift models are a staple topic in population genetics textbooks and research, with genetic drift described as one of the main factors of evolution alongside selection, mutation, and migration. Some claim that genetic drift has played a major role in evolution (particularly molecular evolution), while others claim it to be minor. This article examines these and other controversies. -/- In order to break through the logjam of competing definitions of drift, this entry begins with a brief history of the concept, before examining various philosophical claims about the proper characterization of drift and whether it can be distinguished from natural selection; the relation of drift to debates over statisticalism; whether drift can be detected empirically and if so, how; and the proper understanding of drift as a model and as a (purported) law. (shrink)

Current corporate systems risk generating inequality among workers, insofar as they concentrate only on economic results by favoring, through the incentive and award system, only what can be seen, produced, and measured. As such, these systems are unable to recognize workers’ agapic behaviors – similar to the ones considered in organizational citizenship behavior literature – that cannot be quantified, i.e. workers’ generosity, humanity, kindness, compassion, help for others and mercy. Although these types of behaviors may appear unproductive or irrational, they (...) create symbols of belonging to the company and social cohesion. This article claims that beyond focusing on reward systems, companies should recognize agapic behaviors to increase workers’ intrinsic motivation. These behavioral attitudes allow fraternal relationships -as conceived in the Civil Economy tradition- to arise within organizations; moreover, they contribute to advancing new managerial practical implications in the humanistic management field. (shrink)

Elsewhere, I defend the “causal interactionist population concept” (CIPC). Here I further defend the CIPC by showing how it clarifies another concept that biologists grapple with, namely, environment. Should we understand selection as ranging only over homogeneous environments or, alternatively, as ranging over any habitat area we choose to study? I argue instead that the boundaries of the population dictate the range of the environment, whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, over which selection operates. Thus, understanding the concept of population helps us (...) to understand concepts of selective environment, exemplifying the importance of the CIPC to other concepts and debates. (shrink)

This manuscript describes a pilot study in ethics education employing a problem-based learning approach to the study of novel, complex, ethically fraught, unavoidably public, and unavoidably divisive policy problems, called “fractious problems,” in bioscience and biotechnology. Diverse graduate and professional students from four US institutions and disciplines spanning science, engineering, humanities, social science, law, and medicine analyzed fractious problems employing “navigational skills” tailored to the distinctive features of these problems. The students presented their results to policymakers, stakeholders, experts, and members (...) of the public. This approach may provide a model for educating future bioscientists and bioengineers so that they can meaningfully contribute to the social understanding and resolution of challenging policy problems generated by their work. (shrink)

Recent research has shown that, although still on a limited scale, the teaching of business ethics in UK higher education has been increasing in recent years. This paper reports on a postal questionnaire survey conducted to investigate the extent to which ethical issues are covered in the teaching of management accounting in higher education. The principal findings are that the majority of management accounting lecturers in the British Isles do not incorporate ethics. About a third of the respondents to the (...) survey do address ethical issues, although about half of those say they do so only implicitly. Various factors underlying the findings and prospects for the future are discussed. (shrink)

Over the past two decades there has been a great deal of research conducted into the question of gender differences in ethical decision making in organisations. Much of this has been based on questionnaire surveys, typically asking respondents (often students, sometimes professionals) to judge the moral acceptability of actions as described in short cases or vignettes. Overall the results seem inconclusive, although what differences have been noted tend to show women as 'more ethical' than men. The authors of this paper (...) believe that attention should be paid to the insight, from Carol Gilligan and others, that women are more inclined than men to subscribe to an 'ethic of care', and that once this perspective is adopted a pattern is discernible. In a critical examination of previous research we pay particular attention to the detailed content of cases used in surveys, and the statistical analysis of findings. We advocate greater reflection on the results of quantitative surveys and sensitivity to different possible interpretations of findings. This we do with our own exploratory study, conducted with UK undergraduate students of accounting, the findings from which seem to support the original hypothesis that where a 'care' orientation is invited, women do indeed react differently to business ethics issues than do men. (shrink)

The status of population genetics has become hotly debated among biologists and philosophers of biology. Many seem to view population genetics as relatively unchanged since the Modern Synthesis and have argued that subjects such as development were left out of the Synthesis. Some have called for an extended evolutionary synthesis or for recognizing the insignificance of population genetics. Yet others such as Michael Lynch have defended population genetics, declaring "nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of population genetics" (...) (a twist on Dobzhansky's famous slogan that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution"). Missing from this discussion is the use of population genetics to shed light on ecology and vice versa, beginning in the 1940s and continuing until the present day. I highlight some of that history through an overview of traditions such as ecological genetics and population biology, followed by a slightly more in-depth look at a contemporary study of the endangered California Tiger Salamander. I argue that population genetics is a powerful and useful tool that continues to be used and modified, even if it isn't required for all evolutionary explanations or doesn't incorporate all the causal factors of evolution. (shrink)

Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic, an extremely influential view in environmental ethics and conservation biology, is committed to the claim that interdependence between humans, other species, and abiotic entities plays a central role in our ethical responsibilities. Thus, a robust understanding of “interdependence” is necessary for evaluating the viability of the Land Ethic and related views, including ecological ones. I characterize and defend a Leopoldian concept of “interdependence,” arguing that it ought to include both negative and positive causal relations. I also (...) show that strength and type of interdependence can vary with time, space, and context. (shrink)

In the recent philosophical literature, two questions have arisen concerning the status of natural selection: (1) Is it a population-level phenomenon, or is it an organism-level phenomenon? (2) Is it a causal process, or is it a purely statistical summary of lower-level processes? In an earlier work (Millstein, Br J Philos Sci, 57(4):627–653, 2006), I argue that natural selection should be understood as a population-level causal process, rather than a purely statistical population-level summation of lower-level processes or as an organism-level (...) causal process. In a 2009 essay entitled “Productivity, relevance, and natural selection,” Stuart Glennan argues in reply that natural selection is produced by causal pro- cesses operating at the level of individual organisms, but he maintains that there is no causal productivity at the population level. However, there are, he claims, many population-level properties that are causally relevant to the dynamics of evolution- ary processes. Glennan’s claims rely on a causal pluralism that holds that there are two types of causes: causal production and causal relevance. Without calling into question Glennan’s causal pluralism or his claims concerning the causal relevance of natural selection, I argue that natural selection does in fact exhibit causal production at the population level. It is true that natural selection does not fit with accounts of mechanisms that involve decomposition of wholes into parts, such as Glennan’s own. However, it does fit with causal production accounts that do not require decomposition, such as Salmon’s Mark Transmission account, given the extent to which populations act as interacting “objects” in the process of natural selection. (shrink)