The study objective is to understand the perception of truthfulness among business managers as practiced in organizations, the critical situations that test their truthfulness, and their responses to such situations. A qualitative approach involving conventional content analysis was adopted to address the research objectives. The results indicate that managers carry a conventional and altered view of truthfulness. While the conventional view encourages them to expect perfection and righteousness in the workplace, the altered view convinces them that small compromises resulting in (...) a gain, lies to avoid interference, and dishonesty in response to non-transparency in management, are acceptable and judicious. Target pressure, coercion to conceal the fact, taking leave, or working from home tested the truthfulness of managers apart from incentives and promotion aspirations. To respond, business managers choose to fight, succumb, or cope by being diplomatic. The study provides meaningful implications for new employee orientation and management education. (shrink)

Natural scientists have proposed that humankind has entered a new geologic epoch. Termed the “Anthropocene,” this new reality revolves around the central role of human activity in multiple Earth ecosystems. That challenge requires a rethinking of social science explanations of organization and environment relationships. In this article, we discuss the need to politicize institutional theory as a means understanding “Anthropocene Society,” and in turn what that resultant society means for the Anthropocene in the natural environment. We modify the constitutive elements (...) of institutional orders and a set of main change mechanisms to explore three scenarios around which future Anthropocene Societies might be built—Collapsing Systems, Market Rules, and Cultural Re-Enlightenment. Simultaneously, we use observations from the Anthropocene to expose limitations in present institutional theory and propose extensions to remedy them. Overall, this article challenges organizational scholars to consider a new paradigm under which research in environmental sustainability and social sustainability takes place. (shrink)

There is a growing body of writing, for instance from the nursing profession, espousing an approach to ethics based on care. I suggest that this approach is hopelessly vague and that the vagueness is due to an inadequate analysis of the concept of care. An analysis of 'care' and related terms suggests that care is morally neutral. Caring is not good in itself, but only when it is for the right things and expressed in the right way. 'Caring' ethics assumes (...) wrongly that caring is good, thus it can tell us neither what constitutes those right things, nor what constitutes the right way. (shrink)

This volume collects P. M. S. Hacker's papers on Wittgenstein and related themes written over the last decade. Hacker provides comparative studies of a range of topics--including Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychology, conception of grammar, and treatment of intentionality--and defends his own Wittgensteinian conception of philosophy.

The present article addresses the logic of the sphere, or the Sphere Model of Consciousness developed by Patrizio Paoletti over three decades of research. M.E.D. Ed., 2002; Flussi, territori, luogo II. M.E.D. Ed., 2002; Fare il punto nave. M.E.D. Ed., 2005; In: Proceedings conference at Leslie and Susan Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center. Bar Ilan University. Faculty of Neuroscience, Israel, 2007; Osservazione—Quaderni di Pedagogia per il Terzo Millennio, Ed. 3P, 2011; Mediazione—Quaderni di Pedagogia per il Terzo Millennio, Ed. 3P, 2011). (...) The SMC model has been experimentally applied in the educational field and lies at the base of neuroscientific and psychoeducational research conducted by the Paoletti Foundation. In recent years, it has been studied by several researchers in the field of neuroscience. Following a logical-mathematical introduction regarding the properties of the spherical shape, we illustrate for the first time the structuring of the model and its neural foundations. We emphasize the central space of the sphere, defined by the geometric model and highlight its descriptive and heuristic properties in relation to the study of consciousness. Finally, we present educational applications of the model, particularly with respect to the center of the sphere, defined in the current context as the “place of pre-existence.”. (shrink)

The figure of Peter the Tomb, various aspects of his life and activity, as well as the era called by his name, have long been the subject of study by numerous scholars, comprehensive and meticulous research. It is enough to mention the works of M.Grushevsky, A.Zhukovsky, V.Klimov, A.Kolodny, V.Nichik, O.Sarapin, L.Filipovich and V.Shevchenko, in which the phenomenon of the metropolitan, his spiritual and religious dominant, is thoroughly and thoroughly explained, the influence of P. Mogila's heritage on the past and present. (...) And yet it is impossible to talk about the exhaustiveness of this topic, because such inexhaustibility is dictated by the very universe of its multidimensional activity. This is what determines the relevance of the proposed article. And this, in turn, gives rise to reflections on the need for scientific innovative understanding of religious philosophy as a constant basis of thinking of Petro Mohyla, which, in particular, was reflected in his "Notebook", which is still a little-studied phenomenon of Ukrainian spiritual culture, for the first time it saw the world only in 1995, more than 60 years after its invention by M. Grushevsky. This work, like all narratives on the spiritual and religious themes that make up it, is an integral part of the metropolitan's religious and philosophical heritage. (shrink)

Evolutionary change occurs most often through the modification of pre-existing structures. What were the pre-existing circuits in our primate ancestors that paved the way for human language, and how did they change in the lineages leading to our present condition? Among the neural modifications that were critical for human language, there are two of special interest: The origin and evolution of the remarkably rich conceptual world that humans share to the exclusion of other primates, and the origin of neural circuitry (...) that underlies various sequential and hierarchical aspects of language, as utilized for example in syntax and word morphology. The fossil record of brain evolution and the archaeological record provide intriguing clues about these processes. (shrink)

Multidisciplinary healthcare committees meet regularly to discuss patients’ candidacy for emerging functional neurosurgical procedures, such as Deep Brain Stimulation . Through debate and discussion around the surgical candidacy of particular patients, functional neurosurgery programs begin to mold practice and policy supported both by scientific evidence and clear value choices. These neurosurgical decisions have special considerations not found in non-neurologic committees. The professional time used to resolve these conflicts provides opportunities for the emergence of careful, ethical practices simultaneous with the expansion (...) of therapy applications. (shrink)

Several cases which have been considered by the courts in recent years have highlighted the legal dilemmas facing doctors whose decisions result in the ending of a patient's life. This paper considers the case of Dr Cox, who was convicted of attempting to murder one of his patients, and explores the roles of motive, diminished responsibility and consent in cases of "mercy killing". The Cox decision is compared to that of Tony Bland and Janet Johnstone, in which the patients were (...) in a persistent vegetative state. In all three cases, the doctors believed that their patients' quality of life was so poor that their continued existence was of no benefit to them, and decided that their lives should not be unduly prolonged, yet the doctor who was prosecuted was the one whose dying patient had requested that her death be hastened. The paper examines the law's seemingly contradictory approaches to such cases. (shrink)

Many enhancement technologies are distributed by healthcare professionals—by physicians—who are held to the Hippocratic Oath and the goals of medicine. While the ethics of enhancement has been widely discussed with regard to the social justice, humanism, morals and normative values of these interventions, their place in medicine has not attracted a great deal of attention. This paper investigates the potential for enhancement technologies to fulfil the goals of medicine, arguing that they play a role in promoting the health of individuals, (...) and thus, an unavoidable place in medicine. It also warns of potential dangers, suggesting a set of guidelines to initiate conversations regarding the role and responsibilities of physicians practising in an era of enhancement. (shrink)

Integrated information theory (IIT) is a candidate theory of consciousness that highlights the role of complex interactions between parts of a system as the basis of consciousness – and, due to its general information-theoretic formulation, is capable of making statements about consciousness in neural and non-neural systems alike. Here, we argue that a system radically different to a human brain, host to complex physiological and functional structures capable of integrating information, can be found in the meristems and vascular system of (...) higher plants. Following a pragmatic and ontologically innocent approach, neither taking for granted that plants are conscious nor dismissing the possibility that they are, we argue that the time is ripe to apply analysis tools inspired by IIT to plants, taking advantage of recent developments in both plant imaging and information theory. We introduce and discuss the relevant literature, and pro information and integration in plant behaviour, assessing the plausibility of plant sentience. If successful, these experiments could position plants as the next frontier in consciousness science, and urge us to rethink our perspectives on consciousness, how to measure it, and its prevalence amongst living beings. (shrink)

Having thought out the Enlightenment project of individualism, privacy, and autonomy to its end, Anglo-American ethical theory now finds itself unable to respond to the collapse of community in which the practices justified by this project have resulted. In the place of reasonable deliberation about the goals to be chosen and the means to them, we now, it seems, have only what MacIntyre has aptly called “interminable debate” among “rival” positions, debate in which each party merely contends with the others (...) for its own advantage. And this circumstance MacIntyre himself seems unable to escape despite his best efforts. In further elaborating Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutical reception of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and Hegel, and in referring simultaneously to Edmund Burke’s parallel political rhetoric, among other tradition-oriented arguments in the English language, this book seeks a recollection of shared ethical principles, a recollection which alone, it is argued, might prevent the devolution of discussion into war with words and make possible some measure of consensus, however provisional and shadowed by dissent it will be. (shrink)

The expressivist account of knowledge attributions, while claiming that these attributions are nonfactual, also typically holds that they retain a factual component. This factual component involves the attribution of a belief. The aim of this work is to show that considerations analogous to those motivating an expressivist account of knowledge attributions can be applied to belief attributions. As a consequence, we claim that expressivists should not treat the so-called factual component as such. The phenomenon we focus on to claim that (...) belief attributions are non-factual is that of normative doxastic disagreement. We show through several examples that this kind of disagreement is analogous to that of the epistemic kind. The result will be a doxastic expressivism. Finally, we answer some objections that our doxastic expressivism could seem to face. (shrink)