Using classical American pragmatism, the authors provide a philosophical framework for rethinking the nature of the corporation--how it is embedded in its natural, technological, cultural, and international environments, emphasizing throughout its pervasive relational and moral dimensions. They explore the relationship of this framework to other contemporary business ethics perspectives, as well as its implications for moral leadership in business and business education.

INTRODUCTION In the philosophic world today, and especially within the context of the emerging American scene, pragmatism and phenomenology can each ...

Introduction CLASSICAL American pragmatism represents a historical period in American philosophy, spanning a particular time frame and including the ...

Mead and Merleau-Ponty each portray the perceptual field as a field of spatially and temporally located, ontologically "thick" or resisting objects which are essentially related to the horizon of world, which allow for the very structure of the sensing which gives access to them, and whose manner of emergence undercuts the problematics of the subject-object split. This essay surveys this perceptual field as a focus for eliciting their more fundamental shared understanding of the dimensions of human activity which underlie its (...) emergence. (shrink)

This work runs counter to the traditional interpretations of Peirce's philosophy by eliciting an inherent strand of pragmatic pluralism that is embedded in the very core of his thought and that weaves his various doctrines into a systematic ...

Unites George Herbert Mead and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in a shared rejection of substance philosophy as well as spectator theory of knowledge, in favor of a focus on the ultimacy of temporal process and the constitutive function of social praxis.

C. I. Lewis was one of the most important thinkers of his generation. In this book, Sandra B. Rosenthal explores Lewis’s philosophical vision, and links his thought to the traditions of classical American pragmatism. Tracing Lewis’s influences, she explains the central concepts informing his thinking and how he developed a unique and practical vision of the human experience. She shows how Lewis contributed to the enrichment and expansion of pragmatism, opening new paths of constructive dialogue with other traditions. This (...) book will become a standard reference for readers who want to know more about one of American philosophy’s most distinguished minds. (shrink)

This article debates the possibility that social work as a profession can, if it is not vigilant to the underlying premises of social development, contribute to the promotion of social injustice towards the same people it sets out to empower by unwittingly depleting and destroying the environment. Social development with its strong focus on economic development is driven mainly by modernity as a worldview. Values from this view underline aspects such as the natural environment as resource, economic growth and domination (...) over nature. Although some definitions of social development might include the concept of sustainability, thereby implying that the environment is an important issue, this level of work does not require social workers to practise from an eco-spiritual or a deep ecological point of departure. An eco-spiritual social work approach is harnessed to try and explain social work's contribution to the critical issue of the survival of all species. Guidelines and possible actions from an eco-spiritual social work approach are indicated for a shift from that of fitting in with modernity to one of sustainability and participation in the creativity of the environment. (shrink)

One of the seemingly dominant traits of pragmatic thought is its “antimetaphysical” attitude. And, indeed, the general methodology of pragmatism may seem by its very nature to exclude the possibility of speculative philosophy, for any pragmatic metaphysics must be at once faithful to the limits of meaningfulness and knowledge imposed by a pragmatic epistemology and in harmony with the scientific spirit of pragmatic philosophy in general. The following essay will examine a pragmatic methodology for metaphysics as it emerges when the (...) philosophies of C. S. Peirce and C. I. Lewis are used for mutual clarification. It is not here held that all pragmatists would accept the methodology which will emerge from such a mutual clarification; neither is it held that no pragmatists other than Peirce or Lewis would accept it. Moreover, it is not held that either Peirce or Lewis consciously embraced it in its entirety. This, however, is not to say that the present procedure is arbitrary, for it is justifiable by the intelligibility of the methodology of metaphysics which emerges and the usefulness of this methodology in clarifying the systematic consistency of epistemology and metaphysics in a pragmatically oriented philosophy. Indeed, according to the basic doctrines of pragmatism, no other justification can be offered for this or any interpretive schema. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Biographical Note The A Priori The Rejection of Phenomenalism The Given in Experience Temporality and Process.

In the last few years, some attempts have been made to overcome the disparity between environmental ethics and business ethics. However, as the situation now stands the various positions in business ethics have not incorporated any well-developed theoretical foundation for environmental issues, and conversely, environmental ethics is failing to capture an audience that could profit greatly from utilizing its theoretical insights and research. In this paper, we attempt to provide a unified conceptual framework for business ethics and environmental ethics that (...) can further the dialogue that has recently begun, perhaps bringing it to a deeper theoretical level. (shrink)

The conflicts arising between the pedagogical preferences of the fields of instructional design and technology (IDT) and social foundations of education are substantial. This conflict is primarily one of pedagogical values separating the Social Foundations with its emphasis on critical and creative thinking and the presumption of value and theory neutrality inherent in IDT. This is a serious issue because, increasingly, educators use IDT models to translate Social Foundations courses with social justice and equity outcomes into online formats. Much is (...) lost. This article offers a discussion of the theoretical grounding of IDT (task-analysis) versus social foundations in regards to implications for the instructional social organization of online social foundations classrooms. This article uses the notion of signature pedagogy to describe sociocultural literacies as a basic tenet in social foundations of education. By doing so, it is demonstrated how these important theoretical positions are currently playing out in online instruction and space, to extend their relevance by introducing newer concepts such as Digital Cartesianism and copresence, and to provide a concrete example of what these concerns look like in the current push towards digital formats. In the current context of the use of electronic, social, communication, and mobile technologies in education, we find a new site to continue challenging the assumed neutrality of the technological model for education. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship of pierce's philosophy to idealism and realism in an attempt to show how such a relationship yields both a tool for bringing to light important distinctions and an obstacle which stands in the way of understanding his own unique position as one providing a distinctive metaphysics of pragmatism. The broad outlines of such an emerging pragmatic metaphysics are examined and interrelated.

The uprootedness of experience from its ontological embeddedness in a natural world is at the core of much contemporary philosophy which, like pragmatism, aims to reject foundationalism in all its forms. All hold positions that, in varying ways, there is a bedrock basis on which to build an edifice of knowledge, something objective that justifies rational arguments concerning what is the single best position for making available or picturing the structure of reality as it exists independently of our various contextually (...) set inquiries. There can be no non-perspectival framework within which differences—social, moral, scientific, etc.—can be evaluated and resolved. These positions may, like pragmatism, focus on the .. (shrink)