The goal of this study was to introduce a model explaining how managers' attitudes, subjective norms, attributions, and the individualism-collectivism cultural dimension affect the way managers' deal with employee bribery in organizations. Twenty-six internal and external attributions related to bribery were identified through a series of structured interviews with 65 subject matter experts. These attributions, together with the other variables in the model, were evaluated by 354 Ecuadorian managers. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that attitudes and external attributions significantly predicted (...) managers' intentions to discipline employees who accepted a bribe. In addition, external attributions mediated the relationship between individualism-collectivism and intent to discipline corrupt employees. Implications for the management of bribery in Latin American organizations are discussed. (shrink)

Alfred I. Tauber (ed.), Organism and the Origins of Self. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. xix + 384 pp., US$ 110.00 (US$ 25.00 paperback). This is a fascinating book based on a 1990 symposium at Boston University. It promises to change the way one conceives of the organism. The authors start from different specializations but provide a most tantalizing feast of ideas. Richard Lewontin commences the book with a strange foreword. Lewontin submits that the concern with the "self and (...) private identity in modern biology is ... only one manifestation of the ideology of individualism that is a shibboleth of our particular [bourgeois] form of social organization" (p. xix). If this is the case, the reader should stop reading the book and ask for her money back. But I advise patience. Tauber's introduction is a mixture of the history of the medical notion of disease and the advocacy of a dialectical concept of the self as the interpenetration of part and whole. Tauber highlights Elie Metchnikoff's appealing idea of phagocytosis as just one form of the active organism striving to attain harmony among competing cells. (shrink)

Confucianism conceives of persons as being necessarily interdependent, defining personhood in terms of the various roles one embodies and that are established by the relationships basic to one's life. By way of contrast, the Western philosophical tradition has predominantly defined persons in terms of intrinsic characteristics not thought to depend on others. This more strictly and explicitly individualistic concept of personhood contrasts with the Confucian idea that one becomes a person because of others; where one is never a person independently (...) or in and of oneself but develops into one only in community. This article surveys some differences between Confucian and Western ideas of self and their connection to ethics mainly in light of the relational self of the Confucian Analects and Mencius . A Philosophy Compass article called Confucianism and Ethics in the Western Philosophical Tradition II: A Comparative Analysis of Personhood will follow, that examines how the more individualistic way of conceiving of personhood in the West has had moral and political implications that differ, and even conflict, with those of Confucianism. (shrink)

This study proposes and tests a model that integrates culture, attitudes, subjective norms, and attributions into a theoretical framework that explains tolerance toward nepotism in a Latin American country. The participants were 202 Ecuadorian middle and upper managers. The results suggested that attitudes, subjective norms, and attributions significantly predict managerial intention to discipline those employees who favored a family member when hiring. Furthermore, subjective norms and internal attributions mediated the relationship between culture and intentions to discipline employees who engaged in (...) nepotistic acts. Our findings highlight the need to implement culture-congruent HR practices to effect mission-driven changes in talent management practices. (shrink)

Epistemology needs a social branch to complement its traditional, ‘individualist’ branch. Like its individualist sister, social epistemology would be an evaluative enterprise. It would assess (actual and possible) social practices in terms of their propensities to promote or inhibit knowledge, where knowledge is understood in the sense of true belief. Social epistemology should examine the practices of many types of players, as well as technological and institutional structures: speakers, hearers, gate-keepers of communication (e.g., editors, publishers, referees), communication technologies and their (...) applications, and legal and economic arrangements that influence the epistemic quality of public speech. A mixture of analytical tools should be employed to assess practices in terms of their likely knowledge outcomes, tools that include Bayesian probability theory, economic theory, and empirical inquiry. (shrink)

In Against Individualism, Henry Rosemont argues against a contemporary Western concept of self that takes rational autonomy to be the “core” of what it means to be a person. Rational autonomy is thought to be the only essential feature of this core self, endowing us with an independent existence and moral framework to act accordingly—as independent, rational, autonomous individuals. In marked contrast, and drawing from the Analects of Confucius, Rosemont defines personhood as consisting of social roles and their correlative (...) responsibilities. We are persons relationally, only in virtue of the roles that interdependently connect us to each other. Rosemont holds that the independent self is a chimera that leads to a problematic ethic where our connection to others is undermined instead of seen as central to who we are and how we should treat others. I argue that social roles are also chimeras that are constructed instead of metaphysically given. That is, while we are essentially social, how this plays out is variable and contingent. Moreover, I argue that we are essentially self-aware subjects—or embodied selves—whose personal experience is uniquely our own and inescapably filled with otherness. Both individualizing and socializing aspects of self are necessary as well as interdependent; moreover, favouring one over the other has both positive and negative consequences. (shrink)

Virtues are acquirable, so if intellectual humility is a virtue, it’s acquirable. But there is something deeply problematic—perhaps even paradoxical—about aiming to be intellectually humble. Drawing on Edward Slingerland’s analysis of the paradoxical virtue of wu-wei in Trying Not To Try (New York: Crown, 2014), we argue for an anti-individualistic conception of the trait, concluding that one’s intellectual humility depends upon the intellectual humility of others. Slingerland defines wu-wei as the “dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person (...) who is optimally active and effective” (Trying Not to Try, 7). Someone who embodies wu-wei inspires implicit trust, so it is beneficial to appear wu-wei. This has led to an arms race between faking wu-wei on the one hand and detecting fakery on the other. Likewise, there are many benefits to being (or seeming to be) intellectually humble. But someone who makes conscious, strategic efforts to appear intellectually humble is ipso facto not intellectually humble. Following Slingerland’s lead, we argue that there are several strategies one might pursue to acquire genuine intellectual humility, and all of these involve commitment to shared social or epistemic values, combined with receptivity to feedback from others, who must in turn have and manifest relevant intellectual virtues. In other words, other people and shared values are partial bearers of a given individual’s intellectual humility. If this is on the right track, then acquiring intellectual humility demands epistemic anti-individualism. (shrink)

The author draws on arguments from contemporary philosophy of mind to provide an argument for sociological collectivism. This argument for nonreductive individualism accepts that only individuals exist but rejects methodological individualism. In Part I, the author presents the argument for nonreductive individualism by working through the implications of supervenience, multiple realizability, and wild disjunction in some detail. In Part II, he extends the argument to provide a defense for social causal laws, and this account of social causation (...) does not require any commitment to intentionality or agency on the part of individuals. (shrink)

Popper holds to the unity of scientific method: any differences between natural and social science are a product of theory, not a pretheoretical premise. Distin guishing instead pure and applied generalizing sciences, Popper focuses on the different role of laws in each. In generalizing social science, our tools are the logic of the situation, including the rationality principle, and unintended conse quences. Situations contain individuals, but also social entities not reducible to individuals: conspiracy theory is the extreme form of (...) class='Hi'>individualism. Action in situations has unintended consequences. Both social and natural laws may be required to explain outcomes. The fate of Popper's ideas is a case study in the logic of the situation. Professional philosophers of social science lean toward individualism and a priorism (either intuitionist or rational choice). There are social and political explanations of this outcome, but little critical engagement with Popper's ideas. (shrink)

The issue is whether Christianity, of its nature, would seek to prevent a justifiable breach of confidentiality or could endorse it, under certain circumstances, as the act which is fundamentally more loving or more truthful. The individualistic nature of Western Christianity is noted. The Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is used to show Christian support for dynamic rather than literal truth telling, and for awareness of the contexts and power relations within which persons stand.

In his defence of emergence, David Elder-Vass assumes that my hermeneutic position represents a form of individualism. Although a common reading of my position, the claim that I am in individualist is incorrect; I, too, recognize the centrality of collective phenomena to social reality. In fact, there is a close convergence between emergence and the hermeneutic sociology I advocate. However, there also remains an important divide between us. Despite his care to avoid reification, Edler-Vass descends into ontological dualism, conceptualizing (...) society in terms of structure and agency. (shrink)

The objective of this research is to find the meeting point between the second precept of Pancasila and the global ethics of Kung. The article also discusses the value of the second precept of Pancasila as found in the global ethics. This research is intended to recognise human rights as the convergence of the second sila (principle) of Pancasila, namely, 'a just and civilised humanity' with Hans Kung's global ethics. The method used in this research is a literature study containing (...) relevant theories. The second principle of Pancasila, Kemanusiaan yang Adil dan Beradab, is the basis for understanding the life of humanity, unity and justice in Indonesia and becomes the basis for humans to understand themselves and others. CONTRIBUTION: This research offers significant insights into the value of human rights as a meeting point between the second sila of Pancasila and Hans Kung's global ethics. The second sila of Pancasila and Hans Kung's global ethics emphasise that everyone has rights. Human rights do not contradict with the typical Indonesian culture of deliberation and mutual cooperation, because the second principle of Pancasila, namely, a just and civilised humanity, is the basis for ensuring human rights. The Constitution of Indonesia of 1945, article 27 paragraph 1 also guarantees human rights. Human rights do not encourage individualism; instead, they protect individuals and groups. Human rights are not meant to promote egoism, but they help to maintain solidarity among people and ensure the well-being of society. They are a means to respect human dignity and protect the weak. (shrink)

American psychologist and pragmatist philosopher James (1842- 1910) is generally considered too individualistic to have had any interest in politics, but Miller argues that political concerns were in fact central to his intellectual work. He finds in James a theorist of action, explores the complexities of his theory, and related his thought to Miller's own experience as a political activist and scholar. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The contemporary debate on collective intentionality in analytic philosophy has lasted several decades, but questions concerning the nature of ‘we’ and the relation between the individual and the community are obviously far older. We can find a particularly rich discussion in early phenomenology. Indeed, while starting out with an interest in the individual mind, phenomenologists began their exploration of dyadic forms of interpersonal relations shortly before the start of World War I and were already deeply engaged in extensive analyses of (...) collective forms of intentionality a few years later. A distinctive feature of the phenomenological contribution was its exploration of the relation between the first- and second-person singular and the first-person plural perspectives. How are I, you, and we intertwined? The aim of this paper is to present some core insights from this early debate. (shrink)

The research analyzes the social ontology of the American philosopher B. Epstein. Social ontology studies the nature of the social world: what are its main elements and how they come together. There are different theories in modern social ontology: the theory of structuration, the theory of communicative action, social constructivism, critical realism. B. Epstein opposes psychological theories of social ontology and ontological individualism in explaining the social world. B. Epstein distinguishes between ontological questions about the social world and causal (...) relationships between events. The initial category of social ontology for American philosopher is a social fact. To establish a social fact, two actions are necessary: to give an ontological explanation of the existing social fact and to find facts that determine the conditions necessary for a social fact. Accordingly, B. Epstein distinguishes between two projects: the project of the foundation of a social fact and the project of fixing a social fact. The project of the foundation of a social fact provides an ontological explanation of a social fact, studies the conditions for the presence of social facts. The fixation project explores what gives rise to the conditions of the basis for social facts. The ground relation and the fixation relation are not causal relationships. A social fact must have diachronic constituent elements, which is, in particular, a test of social theory for truth. The article also discusses the theory of social facts by J. Serle. The theory of J. Serle B. Epstein refers to a psychological concept based on the collective acceptance of certain rules by the community. This position does not seem to be entirely correct, since J. Searle, in understanding the nature of a social fact, relies on social institutions, and the fact itself refers to institutional facts. (shrink)

The features of J. Brodsky’s lyricism, which are caused by intellectual dominant of his consciousness, are explored in the article. Intellect here is understood as ‘directed thinking‘ ; in artistic version it is described as project-reflexive thinking. The article gives basic characteristics of the poet’s consciousness, which caused maximum closeness between biographic and poetic ‘Me‘, striving for alienation from the world and self-discipline in spiritual development. The connection between attitude towards the world and its’ artistic realization is observed. Brodsky’s way (...) of thinking is noted for its abstractness of goal, for its insight of integrity of existence and non-existence. But this way of thinking is realized as decoding of material signs of manifestation of holism. (shrink)

While the idea of art as self-expression can sound old-fashioned, it remains widespread—especially if the relevant ‘selves’ can be social collectives, not just individual artists. But self-expression can collapse into individualistic or anthropocentric self-involvement. And compelling successor ideals for artists are not obvious. In this light, I develop a counter-ideal of creative receptivity to basic features of the external world, or artistic objectivity. Objective artists are not trying to express themselves or reach collective self-knowledge. However, they are also not disinterested (...) or emotionless. They can be unmoved by personal feelings and human concerns, but they are still receptive—just attuned to the more elemental forces that creatively inspire them. I elaborate this ideal in dialogue with John Ruskin’s influential critique of the pathetic fallacy. By contextualizing Ruskin’s view vis-à-vis Romantic and Modernist poetics, post-Kantian aesthetics, modern environmental art, and contemporary theories of expressiveness, I show how it indirectly motivates my account. (shrink)

Theories of children's developing understanding of mind tend to emphasize either individualistic processes of theory formation, maturation, or introspection, or the process of enculturation. However, such theories must be able to account for the accumulating evidence of the role of social interaction in the development of social understanding. We propose an alternative account, according to which the development of children's social understanding occurs within triadic interaction involving the child's experience of the world as well as communicative interaction with others about (...) their experience and beliefs (Chapman 1991; 1999). It is through such triadic interaction that children gradually construct knowledge of the world as well as knowledge of other people. We contend that the extent and nature of the social interaction children experience will influence the development of children's social understanding. Increased opportunity to engage in cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states should facilitate the development of social understanding. We review evidence suggesting that children's understanding of mind develops gradually in the context of social interaction. Therefore, we need a theory of development in this area that accords a fundamental role to social interaction, yet does not assume that children simply adopt socially available knowledge but rather that children construct an understanding of mind within social interaction. Key Words: language; Piaget; social interaction; theories of mind; Vygotsky; Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This paper argues against an individualist challenge to the possibility of corporate apologies. According to this challenge, corporations always and only act through their members; thus they are not the sorts of entities that can apologize. Consequently there can be no corporate apologies. Against this challenge, this paper argues that even if corporate acts can be analyzed as acts by individuals within certain relationships, there can still be corporate apologies. This paper offers a noneliminative individualist account of such apologies. The (...) paper also responds to various substantive objections to the possibility of such apologies. (shrink)

In the article, the organic principle of the Euroasian philosophy is studied. The organic principle acts as a basis of special style of thinking and a certain methodology of scientific knowledge here. The Euroasian methodology of studying of development of society allows establishing of the nature of communications between social processes and the phenomena of wildlife. In the article, the most important components of the Euroasian organic principle of thinking are shown: special terminology and possibilities of its application for the (...) description and forecasting of the social phenomena. Prerequisites of change of the style of thinking dominating in modern science are also noted. The author considers advantages of the organic principle of the Euroasian methodology in solution of national political, social-economic and cultural problems and in possible prospects of its use for formation of scientific methodology. The organic principle of thinking creates complex idea of reality, which can appear before us new, party unknown earlier. Lack of division of sensual experience and ‘pure reason‘, irrational and rational in organic thinking is unconditional advantage of organic approach. Organic principle presented by the Euroasian philosophical organization of the beginning of the twentieth century and continued by Lev Gumilev in the theory of ethnogenesis acts as alternative developed in the west of one-dimensional, mechanistic methodology. It can be told with confidence that owning all of variety of intellectual traditions is necessary for the modern humankind to become capable to realize global ecological threats and negative consequences of influence of culture in which ethics of individualism prevails. (shrink)

This article explains how li 禮 or ‘ritual propriety’ is the ‘body language’ of ren 仁 or the authentic expression of our humanity. Li and ren are interdependent aspects of a larger creative human way (rendao 仁道) that can be conceptually distinguished as follows: li refers to the ritualized social form of appropriate conduct and ren to the more general, authentically human spirit this expresses. Li is the social instrument for self-cultivation and the vehicle of harmonious human interaction. More, li (...) must mean something that is effectively communicated to others for an authentic, human (ren) interaction to occur. Li is the body language of ren in being the ritual vehicle for its’ expression; however, li is underdetermined by ren and so must be distinguished from it in on further grounds: authentic human activity must not just be equivocated with social convention because conclusively establishing whether a particular action is li (or is a truly ren action) is impossible. As a result, li is often confused with social power and privilege that is easier to empirically identify than ren conduct is, but this is a mistake since li has to express ren or it is not li at all. The inescapable ambiguity of li – an ambiguity that attaches to any language – can be critiqued by the Western view that sees something ‘essential’ to the ‘self,’ and that makes one a ‘self’ in and of oneself and not in a way that depends on others. I show that such Western individualism – while resting on a fundamentally different way of thinking of being a person and living a good life – does not reduce Confucian ritual to being an instrument for social discrimination and subordination. My argument is indebted to twentieth-century philosophy of language in the West that offered the idea that some words are actions. (shrink)

Epistemology has had a strongly individualist orientation, at least since Descartes. Knowledge, for Descartes, starts with the fact of one’s own thinking and with oneself as subject of that thinking. Whatever else can be known, it must be known by inference from one’s own mental contents. Achieving such knowledge is an individual, rather than a collective, enterprise. Descartes’s successors largely followed this lead, so the history of epistemology, down to our own time, has been a predominantly individualist affair.

This Philosophy Compass article continues the comparison between Confucian and mainstream Western views of personhood and their connection with ethics begun in Confucianism and Ethics in the Western Philosophical Tradition I: Fundamental Concepts , by focusing on the Western self conceived as an independent agent with moral and political rights. More specifically, the present article briefly accounts for how the more strictly and explicitly individualistic notion of self dominating Western philosophy has developed, leading up to a recent debate in modern (...) Western rights theory between Herbert Fingarette and Henry Rosemont, Jr., two contemporary Western philosophers who are both steeped in Confucian thought as well as moral and political philosophy. This discussion elucidates how Confucianism can be compared to, and even contrasted with some basic principles of modern Western rights theory and the more individualistic view of self they entail. In the end, a new view of personhood and "free will"? is offered that synthesizes insights from the Confucian treatment of persons as being essentially interdependent with the Western treatment of persons as being essentially independent. (shrink)

In this comparative survey of 191 Egyptian and 92 U.S. executives, we explore the relationship between national culture and ethical decision-making within the context of business. Using Reidenbach and Robin’s (1988) multi-criteria ethics instrument, we examine how differences on two of Hofstede’s national culture dimensions, individualism/collectivism, and power distance, are related to the manner in which business practitioners make ethical decisions. Egypt and the U.S. provide an interesting comparison because of the extreme differences in their economies and related business (...) development. Our results indicate that respondents from the U.S, individualistic and low in power distance, were likely to view the decision making outcome in ethics scenarios as more unethical than the more collectivistic and high power distance Egyptians, when applying ethical criteria based on justice, utilitarianism, relativism, and (contrary to our predictions) egoism. However, we also found that both Egyptians and Americans rely on justice, utilitarianism, and relativism in predicting their intentions to behave ethically, and that Americans substitute egoism for justice, when the behavioral intentions of peers are examined. (shrink)

The perspectives of the dominant Western ethical theories, have dominated the concepts of autonomy and informed consent for many years. Recently this dominant understanding has been challenged by ethics of care which, although, also emanates from the West presents a more nuanced concept: relational autonomy, which is more faithful to our human experience. By paying particular attention to relational autonomy, particularity and Process approach to ethical deliberations in ethics of care, this paper seeks to construct a concept of informed consent (...) from the perspective of ethics of care which is here called relational autonomy-in-informed consent (RAIC). Thus, providing a broader theoretical basis for informed consent beyond the usual theoretical perspectives that are particularly Western. Care ethics provides such a broader basis because it appeals to a global perspective that encompasses lessons from other cultures, and this will help to enrich the current ideas of bioethics principles of autonomy and informed consent. This objective will be achieved by exploring the ethics of care emphasis on relationships based on a universal experience of caring; and by contrasting its concept of autonomy as relational with the understanding of autonomy in the approaches of the dominant moral theories that reflect rational, individualistic, and rights-oriented autonomy of the American liberalism. (shrink)

This study investigates the relationship between intention to behave ethically and gender within the context of national culture. Using Reidenbach and Robin's measures of the ethical dimensions of justice and utilitarianism in a sample of business students from three different countries, we found that gender is significantly related to the respondents' intention to behave ethically. Women relied on both justice as well as utilitarianism when making moral decisions. By contrast, men relied only on justice, and did not rely on utilitarianism (...) when faced with the same ethical issues. Further, women's intention to behave was contextual, significantly affected by two national culture dimensions (uncertainty avoidance and individualism), whereas men's decisions were more universal, and not related to national culture dimensions. (shrink)

In the history of western philosophy, people were often encouraged to seek knowledge by starting from their own minds and proceeding in a highly individualistic spirit. In recent contemporary philosophy, by contrast, there is a movement toward Social Epistemology, which urges people to seek knowledge from what others know. However, in selected fields some people are experts while others are laypersons. It is natural for self-acknowledged laypersons to seek help from the experts. But who, exactly, are the experts? Many people (...) claiming to be experts are not the real thing. How can laypersons identify genuine experts? This essay explores the problems that arise, pointing out some of the mistakes that can be made and how to avoid them. (shrink)

The cross-cultural literature is reviewed and integrated together with attitude theories, thereby outlining a model through which certain values influence the intervening variables that ultimately lead managers to tolerate employee bribery. The case of Latin America is employed to illustrate how regionally dominant cultural values may shape managers' attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, which in turn affect tolerance of employee bribery. A series of research propositions and practical recommendations are derived from the model.

Sanford C. Goldberg argues that a proper account of the communication of knowledge through speech has anti-individualistic implications for both epistemology and the philosophy of mind and language. In Part I he offers a novel argument for anti-individualism about mind and language, the view that the contents of one's thoughts and the meanings of one's words depend for their individuation on one's social and natural environment. In Part II he discusses the epistemic dimension of knowledge communication, arguing that the (...) epistemic characteristics of communication-based beliefs depend on features of the cognitive and linguistic acts of the subject's social peers. In acknowledging an ineliminable social dimension to mind, language, and the epistemic categories of knowledge, justification, and rationality, his book develops fundamental links between externalism in the philosophy of mind and language, on the one hand, and externalism is epistemology, on the other. (shrink)

The thesis of methodological individualism in social science is commonly divided into two different claims—explanatory individualism and ontological individualism. Ontological individualism is the thesis that facts about individuals exhaustively determine social facts. Initially taken to be a claim about the identity of groups with sets of individuals or their properties, ontological individualism has more recently been understood as a global supervenience claim. While explanatory individualism has remained controversial, ontological individualism thus understood is almost (...) universally accepted. In this paper I argue that ontological individualism is false. Only if the thesis is weakened to the point that it is equivalent to physicalism can it be true, but then it fails to be a thesis about the determination of social facts by facts about individual persons. Even when individualistic facts are expanded to include people’s local environments and practices, I shall argue, those still underdetermine the social facts that obtain. If true, this has implications for explanation as well as ontology. I first consider arguments against the local supervenience of social facts on facts about individuals, correcting some flaws in existing arguments and affirming that local supervenience fails for a broad set of social properties. I subsequently apply a similar approach to defeat a particularly weak form of global supervenience, and consider potential responses. Finally, I explore why it is that people have taken ontological individualism to be true. (shrink)

In the 17th century, ‘reflexivity’ was coined as a new term for introspection and self-awareness. It thus was poised to serve the instrumental function of combating skepticism by asserting a knowing self. In this Cartesian paradigm, introspection ends in an entity of self-identity. An alternate interpretation recognized how an infinite regress of reflexivity would render ‘the self’ elusive, if not unknowable. Reflexivity in this latter mode was rediscovered by post-Kantian philosophers, most notably Hegel, who defined the self in its self-reflective (...) encounter with an other, and whose full articulation would occur at the final culmination of Reason's evolution. In the rising tide of 19th-century individualism, Emerson and Kierkegaard formulated constructions both in debt to, and in opposition against, Hegelian metaphysics. For each, although employing distinct strategies of self-consciousness, ‘the self’ reached its apogee through divine encounter. Characterized by personal responsibility and individual choice, their philosophies would later be subsumed by secular existentialists committed to defining moral individualism and asserting the possibilities for human freedom and selfauthentication. (shrink)

Political science is divided between methodological individualists, who seek to explain political phenomena by reference to individuals and their interactions, and holists (or nonreductionists), who consider some higher-level social entities or properties such as states, institutions, or cultures ontologically or causally significant. We propose a reconciliation between these two perspectives, building on related work in philosophy. After laying out a taxonomy of different variants of each view, we observe that (i) although political phenomena result from underlying individual attitudes and behavior, (...) individual-level descriptions do not always capture all explanatorily salient properties, and (ii) nonreductionistic explanations are mandated when social regularities are robust to changes in their individual-level realization. We characterize the dividing line between phenomena requiring nonreductionistic explanation and phenomena permitting individualistic explanation and give examples from the study of ethnic conflicts, social-network theory, and international-relations theory. (shrink)

In this paper I address an important question concerning the nature of visual content: are the contents of human visual states and experiences exhaustively fixed or determined (in the non-causal sense) by our intrinsic physical properties? The individualist answers this question affirmatively. I will argue that such an answer is mistaken. A common anti-individualist or externalist tactic is to attempt to construct a twin scenario involving humanoid duplicates who are embedded in environments that diverge in such a way that it (...) appears to be necessary to attribute divergent contents to their respective visual states. In the first half of the paper I discuss some of the twin scenarios that are prominent in the literature and argue that they fail to undermine individualism. Indeed I argue that due to important facts about our internal workings, a convincing externalist twin scenario involving humanoid protagonists cannot be constructed. However, I argue that such a result does not conclusively establish an individualist thesis and that in order to settle the question at issue it is necessary to construct an independently motivated theory of visual content. I attempt to do this in the second half of the paper by developing a theory at the core of which is the idea that the contents of our visual states and experiences are determined by the causal powers vis-. (shrink)

Solipsism, Individualism and Cognitive Science [1] "Artificial Intelligence cannot ignore philosophy" - John McCarthy I shall challenge the claim that Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence, or GOFAI is solipsistic while more recent neural or "brain-style" approaches to AI are not. After distinguishing GOFAI from connectionism, I will first show that GOFAI is not committed to solipsism but rather to what is more properly called individualism.

Jerry Fodor argues for individualism and for narrow content by way of rejecting an argument based on the conceptual connections between reason-properties and action-properties. In this paper I show that Fodor’s argument fails. He is right that there is a New Logical Connections Argument to be made, and that it does show that water thoughts and XYZ thoughts are not different causal powers with respect to intentional properties of behaviors. However, the New Logical Connections Argument also shows that they (...) are not causal powers at all with respect to intentional properties ofbehaviors, and so Fodor’s argument to individualism and narrow content is unsound. Along the way I show that Fodor’s version of the New Logical Connections argument has serious problems of overkill. (shrink)

I argue that there are liberal reasons to reject what I call “Global Individualism”, which is the conjunction of two views strongly associated with liberalism: moral individualism and social individualism. According to the first view, all moral properties are reducible to individual moral properties. The second holds that the social world is composed only of individual agents. My argument has the following structure: after suggesting that Global Individualism does not misrepresent liberalism, I draw on some recent (...) insights in social ontology to show that it is inconsistent with the satisfaction of an important liberal principle related to the protection of individual rights over time. As I hold, to solve this problem we need to accept group agents acting as moral agents, which in turn commits us to the weaker notion of normative individualism (a view that is consistent with the existence of some group moral properties). I conclude with the suggestion that even this solution is costly for liberalism, for the conjunction of group moral agency and normative individualism makes the latter unstable and compels liberals to a much less individualistic stance than expected. (shrink)

I will discuss two opposed conceptions of the nature of the self and indicate the shortcomings of each approach, in order to go on to show something about self-involvement and singularity that is often overlooked. The two opposed conceptions deal with the self in different ways because they also deal differently with the relation between consciousness and the self as such. In the first conception, this relation remains external: reflection is not of the same order as the self and, conversely, (...) the self is something that always falls outside of reflection, something against which a position can be occupied and a (critical) distance taken. Here, the self is an object whose nature does not in the least affect the nature of reflection. To the contrary, the ego must explicitly identify with that object if there is to be any trace of a connection with it at all. I will refer to this position as that of individualism. (shrink)

Individualism in psychology is the view that mental states must be individuated so as to be intrinsic to particular individuals. This view has been thought to impose an intuitive and plausible constraint on explanation in psychology. The dissertation is a sustained examination of individualism, especially with respect to its role in psychological explanation. My particular interest is in showing that individualism is not a constraint on psychology which follows from either psychology's scientific nature, or from the nature (...) of causation or materialism. ;Apart from an extended introduction in which I explain why individualism is both a substantive and plausible constraint on taxonomy and explanation in psychology, the dissertation has three parts. The aim of Part One is to reconstruct and critically discuss three influential, recent arguments for individualism: an a priori argument , a empirical argument , and a methodological argument. I argue that each of these arguments is unsound and should be rejected. In an Appendix to Chapter 2 I argue that individualism does not follow from the causal theory of properties. ;In Part Two I turn to examine individualism itself. The aim of this part of the dissertation is to address the view that psychological kinds and explanations which are not individualistic cannot be part of an adequate account of mental causation. Chapter 5 both responds to particular charges that have been made about denials of individualism, and articulates and criticizes a central intuition about the local nature of causation from which individualism has sometimes been thought to follow. Chapter 6 focusses on folk psychology and attempts to show how one can view folk psychological explanation as unproblematically causal even though it is not individualistic. ;In Part Three I develop a core case against individualism using the concepts of causal depth and theoretical appropriateness, concepts which form the basis for two constraints on good causal explanations. I argue that individualism should be rejected because individualistic explanations of behavior, including individualistic psychological explanations, are not always the causally deepest or most theoretically appropriate explanations available. (shrink)

Brian Loar has argued that the well-known arguments against individualism in the philosophy of mind are insufficient because they rely on the assumption that that-clauses uniquely capture psychological content. He tried to show that this is not the use of that-clauses in philosophical psychology. I argue that he does not succeed in his argument. That-clauses sometimes capture psychological content, if our system of mental ascription is to be workable at all. I argue further that individualism tends to be (...) at odds with a requirement of intersubjective shareability of contents and that Loar is alternative conception of psychological content is beset with difficulties. (shrink)

Given the recent ethics scandals in the United States, there has been a renewed focus on understanding the antecedents to ethical decision-making in the research literature. Since ethical norms and standards of behavior are not universally consistent, an individual’s choice of referent may exert a large influence on his/her ethical decision-making. This study used a social identity theory lens to empirically examine the relative influence of the macro- and micro-level variables of national culture and peers on an individual’s intention to (...) behave ethically. Our sample consisted of respondents from Germany, Italy, and Japan. The results indicated that both national culture and peers were found to act as significant referents in ethical decision-making dilemmas. Although peers exerted a much stronger influence on an individual’s ethical decision-making, the impact of peers varied depending on the national culture levels of individualism and power distance. (shrink)

China’s business sector has been described as facing serious ethical challenges, including corruption and bribery, distributive injustice, environmental pollution, and misspending of public funds. Unethical decision-making in business represents a potentially destabilizing force for government, business, and society. Recent calls for research that is detailed, nuanced, contemporary, and context-specific on the effects of Asian national business systems on ethical business practices, according to Pereira et al. (2017), are particularly relevant for countries including China that possess the entanglement of a “multiplexity”-multiple (...) business systems co-existing within the same economy reliant on ethics and institutional trust for effective functioning, as discussed by Witt and Redding (2013). To this end, we conduct exploratory research investigating the relationship among Confucian values, Hofstede’s national culture, and ethical decision-making within a business context in China. Using data collected from 550 Chinese MBA students and business executives, results indicate that although both Confucian values and Hofstede’s national culture dimensions are associated with the use of egoism and justice in ethical decision-making scenarios, differential patterns emerged in these relationships. Confucian values were more predictive of outcomes. Of particular interest were the relationships between Confucian values and ethical criteria of yi and justice as well as li and zhi with egoism. Results suggest if the goal is enhancing institutional trust through an increased use of more principled justice-oriented ethics in business in China, an emphasis should be placed on yi (righteousness), coupled with a deemphasis on hierarchy and tradition in the form of li (ritual propriety) and zhi (wisdom). Including love of learning (haoxue), trust (xin), a long-term orientation, and individualistic messages oriented towards family and self-sufficiency may also strengthen overall ethical decision-making for SMEs, MNCs, and SOEs in navigating a multiplexity environment. (shrink)