In explaining the outcome of the 2016 EU referendum in the United Kingdom, can theories emphasizing the importance of economic factors be reconciled with the fact that many people appeared to vote against their economic self-interest? This article approaches this puzzle through case study research that draws on fieldwork and a process of reciprocal knowledge exchange with local communities in five local authorities in England and Wales. It argues that the Leave vote can be attributed partly to political discontent associated (...) with trajectories of relative economic decline and deindustrialization. Building on the growing literature about the role of narratives and discourses in navigating uncertainty, it contends that these localized economic experiences, interpreted through local-level narratives, paved the way for local-level discourses of resilience and nationwide optimistic messaging about the economic impacts of Brexit to resonate. Local and national-level discourses discounting the potential economic costs of leaving the European Union played a crucial role in giving precise, somewhat paradoxical, political content to the sense of discontent. The article contributes to the growing focus on place and community in understanding political behavior and invites further research on local discourses linking macro-level trajectories and micro-level voting decisions. (shrink)

When confronted with an ethical dilemma, most of us like to think we would stand up for our principles. But we are not as ethical as we think we are. In Blind Spots, leading business ethicists Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel examine the ways we overestimate our ability to do what is right and how we act unethically without meaning to. From the collapse of Enron and corruption in the tobacco industry, to sales of the defective Ford Pinto, the downfall (...) of Bernard Madoff, and the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the authors investigate the nature of ethical failures in the business world and beyond, and illustrate how we can become more ethical, bridging the gap between who we are and who we want to be. Explaining why traditional approaches to ethics don't work, the book considers how blind spots like ethical fading--the removal of ethics from the decision--making process--have led to tragedies and scandals such as the Challenger space shuttle disaster, steroid use in Major League Baseball, the crash in the financial markets, and the energy crisis. The authors demonstrate how ethical standards shift, how we neglect to notice and act on the unethical behavior of others, and how compliance initiatives can actually promote unethical behavior. They argue that scandals will continue to emerge unless such approaches take into account the psychology of individuals faced with ethical dilemmas. Distinguishing our "should self" from our "want self", the authors point out ethical sinkholes that create questionable actions. Suggesting innovative individual and group tactics for improving human judgment, Blind Spots shows us how to secure a place for ethics in our workplaces, institutions, and daily lives. (shrink)

The book "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" is an engaging criticism of cognitive neuroscience from the perspective of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of ordinary language. The authors' main claim is that assertions like "the brain sees" and "the left hemisphere thinks" are integral to cognitive neuroscience but that they are meaningless because they commit the mereological fallacy—ascribing to parts of humans, properties that make sense to predicate only of whole humans. The authors claim that this fallacy is at the heart of Cartesian (...) dualism, implying that current cognitive neuroscientists are Cartesian dualists. Against this claim, we argue that the fallacy cannot be committed within Cartesian dualism either, for this doctrine does not allow for an intelligible way of asserting that a soul is part of a human being. Also, the authors' Aristotelian essentialistic outlook is at odds with their Wittgensteinian stance, and we were unconvinced by their case against explanatory reductionism. Finally, although their Wittgensteinian stance is congenial with radical behaviorism, their separation between philosophy and science seems less so because it is based on a view of philosophy as a priori. The authors' emphasis on the a priori, however, does not necessarily commit them to rationalism if it is restricted to conceptual or analytical truths. (shrink)

The way that the questions of our symposium are framed causes me some concern. At a general level this is for three reasons. First there is a principle of statutory interpretation – Expressio unius...

Within psychology, the thought of L. Wittgenstein tends to be confused with that of the behaviorists and social constructionists. However, by considering the manner in which Wittgenstein's thought might be used to address the question of responsibility, one will find that the positions taken by the behaviorists and social constructionists differ substantially from the position taken by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein, like the behaviorists and social constructionists, repudiates the Cartesian 'mind' or 'inner,' and thus demonstrates how responsibility can be assigned. But unlike (...) the behaviorists and social constructionists who struggle with deterministic and relativistic explanations, Wittgenstein maintains a view of human beings which allows responsibility to be assigned without compromising the nature of that responsibility. Wittgenstein thus brings one back to that ordinary understanding of men in which it is possible and makes sense to hold men responsible for their actions. He thereby stands apart from the behaviorists and social constructionists. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

It is a standard feature of the BSA and its variants that systematizations of the world competing to be the best must be expressed in the same language. This paper argues that such single language privileging is problematic because it enhances the objection that the BSA is insufficiently objective, and it breaks the parallel between the BSA and scientific practice by not letting laws and basic kinds be identified/discovered together. A solution to these problems and the ones that prompt single (...) language privileging is proposed in the form of privileging the best system competition. (shrink)

Chaque science comprend des jugements ayant trait à Fa venir, non seulement par la formation de „types abstraits“ et de lois (ce qu’on a appelé la „prévision“), mais par des „prédictions“ concrètes, impliquées dans chaque loi scientifique. Les jugements hypothétiques et catégoriques (prévisions et prédictions) exercent, dans le développement des sciences, une influence mutuelle les uns sur les autres. — A l’encontre de la conception traditionnelle, H. est d’avis que la prévision scientifique est facilitée si elle porte plutôt sur des (...) objets pour lesquels la volonté joue un rôle que si elle porte sur la nature hors de l’homme. La prédiction sociologique sera d’autant plus exacte que les événements historiques perdront le caractère de faits provenant d’un mécanisme aveugle et seront en réalité l’oeuvre de la liberté de l’homme.Every science utilizes judgments which embody prediction of the future : this is so, not only in the construction of „abstract types“ and laws (prévision) but also of concrete predictions (prédiction) which are implicated in such laws. Hypothetical and categorical judgments mutually influence each other in the progress of science. H. argues in opposition to the traditional conception, that scientific prediction is less difficult and more reliable in such fields where human freedom plays a role, than in nature external to man. Sociological prediction, will thus become more perfect the more readily social events lose their blind and mechanistic character, and the more they become the works of a rational condition of free man. (shrink)

Indigenous cultures have an immanentist ontological basis, as opposed to the largely Western ontology of transcendence. We explore the implications for this assertion in the different ways that technological artifacts can be seen to articulate with human and non-human bodies in extended ecologies. Our method is one of an Indigenous critique of modernity, which aims iconoclastically to deflate the faith, hope and idealism often invested in technologies. Our (counter) examples emerge from the TV series Bush Mechanics, where practical skills are (...) articulated with blackfella magical powers. These illustrate how bush ecologies are vastly different from suburban car cultures, such that what really matters in people’s coarticulations with machines is now open to philosophical speculation via an Indigenous critique of Western modernity. (Indigenous) powers of immanence can be opposed to (Western) powers of transcendence, we argue, through disclosure of the operations of the ecologies that sustain them. (shrink)

This paper develops a critique of the concept of ‘ethical identity’ as this has been used recently to distinguish between ‘cynical’ and ‘authentic’ forms of corporate responsibility. Taking as our starting point Levinas’ demanding view of responsibility as ‘following the assignation of responsibility for my neighbour’, we use a case study of a packaging company—PackCo—to argue that a concern with being seen and/or seeing oneself as responsible should not be confused with actual responsibility. Our analysis of the case points first (...) to the allure of programmes of strategic corporate responsibility and the ways in which, through identification, they can provide a tacit form of moral sanction to managers in their aggressive pursuit of profit. It then contrasts the responses of different managers to negative staff feedback to illustrate the difference between managers’ attempts to defend their identity of being ‘responsible’ managers, and responsible conduct itself. The paper concludes that a potent danger of programmes of corporate responsibility is that they allow managers to deceive not just others, but also themselves in relation to the exercise of responsibility. (shrink)