An original interpretation of Merleau-Ponty on subjectivity, drawing from and challenging both the continental and analytic traditions.

This paper addresses issues of agency and self-identity on the basis of a phenomenology of embodiment. It considers a tension in accounts of embodiment between, on the one hand, the body as the locus of subjectivity, lived experience, and agency, and, on the other hand, the body as constructed, as the site where discursive regimes of power are inscribed. In exploring this tension I consider Frantz Fanon’s and Sarah Ahmed’s phenomenological accounts of racism to illustrate the ways in which social (...) power and violence come to be implicated in these conflicts within our embodied identities. I also consider Foucauldian “power” in relation to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of “institution.” I argue that only the phenomenological concept of institution, by drawing our attention to the ambiguities of lived embodiment, succeeds in offering us resources for thinking about the interplay between passivity and agency in the life of the subject, and, in particular, about a form of agency not wholly reducible to the effects of power. (shrink)

This book offers a bold challenge to modern liberal ethics by exposing its inability to confront the inexorable advance of technology. Contemporary books on technology generally fall into three categories: those that offer optimist projections of a glorious future, those that provide radical critiques of specific techniques, and those that express alarm about the dehumanizing effects of a culture dominated by technology. The End of Ethics in a Technological Society offers a deeper assessment of the modern West's commitment to technological (...) progress. It argues that modern technology, ethics, and politics are all expressions of the enlightenment view that there are no principles of truth or goodness higher than the free human will. Technological advances are, on this view, merely extensions of the range of human freedom. Modern ethics thus fails to give voice to our often inchoate moral intuition that, in the realm of techno science, some possibilities simply ought not to be pursued. The authors develop their challenge by examining typical ethical approaches to such urgent contemporary concerns as environmental degradation, nuclear energy, high tech militarism, and fetal genetic testing. They relate our social crises to the transformation of ethics that has taken place as technology has become the house in which we all live. (shrink)

This collection is the first extended investigation of the relation between time and memory in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s thought as a whole as well as the first to explore in depth the significance of his concept of institution. It brings the French phenomenologist’s views on the self and ontology into contemporary focus. Time, Memory, Institution argues that the self is not a self-contained or self-determining identity, as such, but is gathered out of a radical openness to what is not self, and (...) that it gathers itself in a time that is not merely a given dimension, but folds back upon, gathers, and institutes itself. Access to previously unavailable texts, in particular Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and expression, has presented scholars with new resources for thinking about time, memory, and history. These essays represent the best of this new direction in scholarship; they deepen our understanding of self and world in relation to time and memory; and they give occasion to reexamine Merleau-Ponty’s contribution and relevance to contemporary Continental philosophy. This volume is essential reading for scholars of phenomenology and French philosophy, as well as for the many readers across the arts, humanities, and social sciences who continue to draw insight and inspiration from Merleau-Ponty. Contributors: Elizabeth Behnke, Edward Casey, Véronique Fóti, Donald Landes, Kirsten Jacobson, Galen Johnson, Michael Kelly, Scott Marratto, Glen Mazis, Caterina Rea, John Russon, Robert Vallier, and Bernhard Waldenfels. (shrink)

This paper responds to five critics (Eva Buddeberg, Scott Marratto, Michael Naas, Janna Thompson, and Jason Wirth) and their commentaries on my Taking Turns with the Earth. Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Intergenerational Justice (Stanford University Press, 2018). In relation to the book’s argument, my response seeks to clarify and elaborate the role of indigenous philosophies; the meaning and value of the concept of earth; the ontology-ethics interface and the emergence of normativity with birth and death; the practical feasibility and (...) motivational force of the book’s proposals for conceptualizing justice for future generations, namely asymmetrical reciprocity and taking turns; and the role of democratic institutions for justice between generations in view of the global capitalist economy. (shrink)

What is law (and why should we care)? -- Crazy little thing called "law" -- Austin's sanction theory -- Hart and the rule of recognition -- How to do things with plans -- The making of a legal system -- What law is -- Legal reasoning and judicial decision making -- Hard cases -- Theoretical disagreements -- Dworkin and distrust -- The economy of trust -- The interpretation of plans -- The value of legality.

_Matters of Mind_ examines the mind-body problem. It offers a chapter by chapter analysis of debates surrounding the problem, including visual experience, consciousness and the problem of Zombies and Ghosts. It will prove invaluable for those interested in epistemology, philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

This article presents the results of a study that investigated the roles that religiosity and ones money ethic play in determining consumer attitudes/beliefs in various situations regarding questionable consumer practices. One dimension of religiosity – intrinsic religiousness – was studied. Four separate dimensions of a money ethic scale were initially examined, but only one was used in the final analyses. Results indicated that both intrinsic religiousness and one’s money ethic were significant determinants of most types of consumer ethical beliefs.

I argue that our knowledge of the world's causal structure does not generate a sound argument for physicalism. This undermines the popular view that physicalism is the only scientifically respectable worldview.

This study compares college students with other adults in terms of the Muncy–Vitell (1992) consumer ethics scale. Further, the study updates the Muncy–Vitell consumer ethics scale with modifications that include rewording and the addition of new items. These new items can be grouped into three distinct categories – (1) downloading/buying counterfeit goods, (2) recycling/environmental awareness and (3) doing the right thing/doing good. The study also compares these two groups in terms of their attitude toward business. Results show that there is (...) indeed a significant difference between these two groups in terms of ethical perceptions, but not in terms of the “recycling” items and the “doing good” items. There was also little difference between the groups in terms of their attitude toward business indicating that attitude toward business does not explain their different ethical perspectives. (shrink)

Normative pragmatics can bridge the differences between dialectical and rhetorical theories in a way that saves the central insights of both. Normative pragmatics calls attention to how the manifest strategic design of a message produces interpretive effects and interactional consequences. Argumentative analysis of messages should begin with the manifest persuasive rationale they communicate. But not all persuasive inducements should be treated as arguments. Arguments express with a special pragmatic force propositions where those propositions stand in particular inferential relations to one (...) another. Normative pragmatics provides a framework within which varieties of propositional inference and pragmatic force may be kept straight. Normative pragmatics conceptualizes argumentative effectiveness in a way that integrates notions of rhetorical strategy and rhetorical situation with dialectical norms and procedures for reasonable deliberation. Strategic effectiveness should be seen in terms of maximizing the chances that claims and arguments will be reasonably evaluated, whether or not they are accepted. Procedural rationality should be seen in terms of adjustment to the demands of concrete circumstances. Two types of adjustment are illustrated: rhetorical strategies for framing the conditions for dialectical deliberation and rhetorical strategies for making do with limitations to dialectical deliberation. (shrink)

This article presents the results of an exploratory study that investigated the role that religiosity plays in determining consumer attitudes/beliefs in various situations regarding questionable consumer practices. Two dimensions of religiosity – intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness – were studied. Results indicated that an intrinsic religiousness was a significant determinant of consumer ethical beliefs, but extrinsic religiousness was not related to those beliefs.

This two country study examines the effect of corporate ethical values and enforcement of a code of ethics on perceptions of the role of ethics in the overall success of the firm. Additionally, the impact of organizational commitment and of individual variables such as ethical idealism and relativism was examined. The rationale for examining the perceived importance of the role of ethics in this manner is to determine the extent to which the organization itself can influence employee perceptions regarding ethics (...) and social responsibility. Results indicate that all of the variables tested, except relativism, impacted upon one’s perceptions of the importance of ethics and social responsibility. Perceptions of the importance of ethics and social responsibility also varied depending upon country of residence with the U.S. sample having somewhat higher perceptions concerning the importance of ethics and social responsibility than their counterparts in Spain. Furthermore, when comparing the two samples, the U.S. sample had significantly higher corporate ethical values, greater enforcement of ethical codes, less organizational commitment and both lower idealism and relativism. (shrink)

Propositional attitudes, like believing and asserting, are relations between agents and propositions. Agents are individuals who do the believing and asserting; propositions are things that are believed and asserted. Propositional attitude ascriptions are sentences that ascribe propositional attitudes to agents. For example, a propositional attitude ascription α believes, or asserts, that S is true iff the referent of a bears the relation of believing, or asserting, to the proposition expressed by s. The questions I will address have to do with (...) the precise nature of propositions, and the attitudes, like belief, that we bear to them.I will assume both that propositions are the semantic contents of sentences, and that the proposition expressed by a sentence is a structured complex made up of the semantic contents of the parts of the sentences that express it. (shrink)

The treatment in what follows of the politics of hegemony is not per se one of Gramsci, or Laclau or of Stuart Hall's earlier work. At stake is something that encompasses a more general regime of power that will be developed throughout the length of this: what might be called 'extensive politics'. What I will try to show is that such extensive power or such an extensive politics is being progressively displaced by a politics of intensity. I will trace the (...) shift from hegemony or extensive politics to such an intensive politics in terms of: 1) a transition to an ontological regime of power, from a regime that in important respects is 'epistemological', 2) a shift in power from the hegemonic mode of 'power over' to an intensive notion of power from within (including domination from within) and power as generative force, 3) a shift from power and politics in terms of normativity to a regime of power much more based in what can be understood as a 'facticity'. This points to a general transition from norm to fact in politics. From hegemonic norm to what we will see are intensive facts. The fourth section will look at this shift through a change from an extensive (and hegemonic) regime of representation to an intensive regime of communications. (shrink)

The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity have different direct and indirect effects on the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity plays a role in counterbalancing the (...) negative impact of extrinsic religiosity on the internalization of moral identity. Further, intrinsic religiosity also counterbalances the negative and indirect impact of extrinsic religiosity on symbolization of moral identity via self-control. Lastly, self-control does not play a mediating role in the impact of religiosity on the internalization dimension of moral identity. We conclude that this study presents important findings that advance our understanding of the antecedents of moral identity, and that these results may have implications for the understanding of ethical decision-making. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 148-168, March 2022.

Some philosophers defend the view that epistemic agents believe by lending credence. Others defend the view that such agents lend credence by believing. It can strongly appear that the disagreement between them is notational, that nothing of substance turns on whether we are agents of one sort or the other. But that is demonstrably not so. Only one of these types of epistemic agent, at most, could manifest a human-like configuration of attitudes; and it turns out that not both types (...) of agent are possible. (shrink)

What follows is a taxonomy of arguments that regresses of inferential justification are vicious. They fall out into four general classes: conceptual arguments from incompleteness, conceptual arguments from arbitrariness, ought-implies-can arguments from human quantitative incapacities, and ought-implies can arguments from human qualitative incapacities. They fail with a developed theory of "infinitism" consistent with valuational pluralism and modest epistemic foundationalism.

The nocebo effect, a phenomenon whereby learning about the possible side effects of a medical treatment increases the likelihood that one will suffer these side effects, continues to challenge physicians and ethicists. If a physician fully informs her patient as to the potential side effects of a medicine that may produce nocebogenic effects, which is usually conceived of as being a requirement associated with the duty to respect autonomy, she risks increasing the likelihood that her patient will experience these side (...) effects and therefore suffer (unnecessary) harm, a violation of the duty of nonmaleficence. If, on the other hand, she intentionally withholds side effect information in an effort to protect her patient from suffering unnecessary harm from side effects, which is consistent with the duty of nonmaleficence, she violates the duty to respect patient autonomy. In this paper, the author discusses several previous attempts to deal with the nocebo effect and explains their weaknesses. He then proposes a means of managing the nocebo effect and argues that it does not share the weaknesses found in previous approaches. He concludes with a discussion of a simple, yet practical tool that might help clinicians manage the tension resulting from the nocebo effect. (shrink)

According to directionalism, non-symmetric relations are distinct from their converses. Kit Fine (2000) argues that the directionalist faces a dilemma; they must either (i) reject the principle Uniqueness, which states that no completion (fact, state of affairs, or proposition) is a completion of more than one relation, or (ii) reject the principle Identity, which states that each completion of a relation is identical to a completion of its converse (e.g., Dante’s loving Bice is identical to Bice’s being loved by Dante). (...) Fine’s argument has been regarded as a decisive blow to directionalism. But new strategies for replying to it can be developed with the tools of the postmodal metaphysician, who is comfortable individuating relations and their completions hyperintensionally, allowing for necessary connections between distinct entities, and making use of hyperintensional notions like essence and grounding. In what follows, I develop postmodal strategies for denying both horns of Fine’s dilemma, concluding that the postmodal directionalist need not be concerned with Fine’s argument. (shrink)

The present study uses cross‐cultural samples of marketing practitioners from two European Union (EU) nations (the United Kingdom and Spain) and China to examine the relationships between moral intensity, personal moral philosophies and ethical decision making. Additionally, cross‐cultural comparisons were made regarding intentions, personal moral philosophies and moral intensity. Results indicate that both samples tend to use the perceived harm construct (e.g. magnitude of consequences, probability of effect, temporal immediacy and concentration of effect) to determine intentions in situations involving ethical (...) issues. However, social consensus tends to be situation‐specific for both groups and proximity seems not to be used at all when making decisions in situations involving ethics. As for personal moral philosophies, idealism is only used by the EU sample; however, for both samples, the use of relativism depends upon the specific situation. (shrink)

I investigate the normative status of an unexamined category of emotions: ‘lyrical’ emotions about the transience of things. Lyrical emotions are often accused of sentimentality—a charge that expresses the idea that they are unfitting responses to their objects. However, when we test the merits of that charge using the standard model of emotion evaluation, a surprising problem emerges: it turns out that we cannot make normative distinctions between episodes of such feelings. Instead, it seems that lyrical emotions are always fitting. (...) Although this claim is counterintuitive, the price of denying it is to hold that such emotions are never fitting—an equally strange result. If this is correct, then the commonplace discourse of sentimentality surrounding lyrical emotions lacks normative moorings. (shrink)

Why We Argue : A Guide to Political Disagreement in an Age of Unreason presents an accessible and engaging introduction to the theory of argument, with special emphasis on the way argument works in public political debate. The authors develop a view according to which proper argument is necessary for one's individual cognitive health; this insight is then expanded to the collective health of one's society. Proper argumentation, then, is seen to play a central role in a well-functioning democracy. Written (...) in a lively style and filled with examples drawn from the real world of contemporary politics, and questions following each chapter to encourage discussion, Why We Argue reads like a guide for the participation in, and maintenance of, modern democracy. An excellent student resource for courses in critical thinking, political philosophy, and related fields, Why We Argue is an important contribution to reasoned debate. What's New in the Second Edition: Updated examples throughout the book, including examples from the 2016 U.S. election and first years of the Trump presidency; Expanded coverage of dialectical fallacies, including coverage of new types of fallacies and of sites where such fallacies thrive ; Revised For Further Thought questions and definitions of Key Terms, included at the end of each chapter; The addition of five new chapters: Deep Disagreement Argument by Analogy Argument between the Ads The Owl of Minerva Argumentative Responsibility and Repair. (shrink)

This research examines the most important historical, political, economic, social, cultural, and religious factors before, during, and after the reign of Communism in Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 2021 and their effect on the extreme increase in atheism and decrease in Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism, in the present-day Czech Republic. It devotes special attention to the role of the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii) and the changing policies of the Holy See vis-à-vis this Church, examining these policies' impact on the continuing (...) decline of Roman Catholicism in the Czech Republic after the collapse of Communism. The article also deals with Pope Pius XII's Secret Mandates of 1948-1950, the Second Vatican Council, and the Holy See's Ostpolitik. Scholars, who previously relied only on the views of the Czechs, blame the unprecedented drop in Christianity, the near-total destruction of the Catholic Church, and the rise in atheism on the Czechoslovak communist government's four decades of totalitarianism. Although the increase in atheism and decrease in Christianity were substantial during the era of Communism from 1948 to 1989, our data indicate that the decline in Christianity, particularly the historically predominating Roman Catholicism, did not commence with the 1948 communist coup d’état but traces its origins to the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the conclusion of WWI and the establishment of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1918. What's more, this research shows that the most significant and unprecedented steep deterioration of the Christian Faith, namely Roman Catholicism, did not occur during the era of Communism but only after the Czechoslovak communist government collapsed in 1989. This massive decay did not happen even during the most extraordinary communist persecution of the Catholic Church during the era of Stalinism in Czechoslovakia. This research further finds that the Holy See's ill-advised policies and systematic, sustained, and prevalent failures in leadership, guidance, and teachings are responsible for the near destruction of the Roman Catholic Church and especially the end destruction of the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii), in the Czech and Slovak Republics after the fall of Communism. These failures furthermore contributed to the Czech Republic, the historical lands of Bohemia and Moravia that once were in the center of Christendom, degenerating into the most atheist country in Europe and the world today. (shrink)

I argue against a Disjunctive approach to visual experience. I then critique three 'common-factor' views: Qualia Theory, Intentionalism and Sense-Date Theory. The latter two are combined to form Intentional Trope Theory; and that view is defended.

Potts (2005) and many subsequent works have argued that the semantic content of appositive (non-restrictive) relative clauses, e.g., the underlined material in John, who nearly killed a woman with his car, visited her in the hospital, must be in some way separate from the content of the rest of the sentence, i.e., from at-issue content. At the same time, there is mounting evidence from various anaphoric processes that the two kinds of content must be integrated into a single, incrementally evolving (...) semantic representation. The challenge is how to reconcile this informational separation with these pervasive anaphoric connections. We propose a dynamic semantic account that accomplishes this by taking appositive and at-issue content to involve two different kinds of updates to the Context Set (CS). Treating the context set as a distinguished propositional variable, pcs, we argue that appositives directly impose their content on the CS by eliminating possible values assigned to pcs. In contrast, we treat at-issue assertions as introducing a new propositional dref and proposing that pcs be updated with its content, subject to addressee's response. In addition to capturing the behavior of appositives in discourse, we show that the account can be extended to capture the projection of appositive content past various sentential operators. (shrink)

Suicide has long been the subject of philosophical, literary, theological and cultural–historical inquiry. But despite the diversity of disciplinary and methodological approaches that have been brought to bear in the study of suicide, we argue that the formal study of suicide, that is, suicidology, is characterized by intellectual, organizational and professional values that distinguish it from other ways of thinking and knowing. Further, we suggest that considering suicidology as a “social practice” offers ways to usefully conceptualize its epistemological, philosophical and (...) practical norms. This study develops the idea of suicidology as a social practice and considers the implications for research, practice and public discourse. (shrink)

Given increasing ethical problems in business, many organizations have tried to control these problems by institutionalizing ethics such as by creating new ethics positions and formulating and enforcing codes of ethics. In this study, the impact of implicit and explicit forms of institutionalization of ethics on job satisfaction, esprit de corps, and organizational commitment for marketing professionals is investigated. Additionally, the influence of organizational socialization, ethical relativism, and age relative to each of the above organizational climate constructs is examined. Results (...) indicate that at least one of the forms of institutionalization of ethics is a significant determinant of all three organizational climate constructs. However, while organizational socialization is a significant determinant of all three organizational climate variables, relativism is only significant in determining organizational commitment (in a negative direction) and age is only significant in determining job satisfaction. (shrink)

Consider the claims that representations of physical laws are intersubjective, and that they ultimately provide the foundation for all other intersubjective knowledge. Those claims, as well as the deeper philosophical commitments that justify them, constitute rare points of agreement between the Marburg School neo-Kantians Paul Natorp and Ernst Cassirer and their positivist rival, Ernst Mach. This is surprising, since Natorp and Cassirer are both often at pains to distinguish their theories of natural scientific knowledge from positivist views like Mach’s, and (...) often from Mach’s views in particular. Thus the very fact of this agreement between the Marburg School neo-Kantians and their positivist stalking horse points to a deep current of ideas that runs beneath the whole of the post-Kantian intellectual context they shared. (shrink)

This article critically interrogates contemporary forms of addiction medicine that are portrayed by policy-makers as providing a ‘rational’ or politically neutral approach to dealing with drug use and related social problems. In particular, it examines the historical origins of the biological facts that are today understood to provide a foundation for contemporary understandings of addiction as a ‘disease of the brain’. Drawing upon classic and contemporary work on ‘styles of thought’, it documents how, in the period between the mid-1960s and (...) the mid-1970s, such facts emerged in relation to new neurobiological styles of explaining and managing social problems associated with drug abuse, and an alliance between a relatively marginal group of researchers and American policy-makers who were launching the ‘War on Drugs’. Beyond illustrating the political and material conditions necessary for the rise of addiction neuroscience, the article highlights the productivity of neurobiological thought styles, by focusing on the new biological objects, treatments and hopes that have emerged within the field of addiction studies over the last several decades. (shrink)

History of science and philosophy of science have experienced a somewhat turbulent relationship over the last century. At times it has been said that philosophy needs history, or that history needs philosophy. Very occasionally, something entirely new is said to need them both. Often, however, their relationship is seen as little more than a marriage of convenience. This article explores that marriage by analyzing the citations of over 7,000 historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science. The data reveal that a small (...) but tightly-knit bridge does exist between the disciplines, and raises suggestions about how to understand that bridge in a more nuanced fashion. (shrink)

Presents wide-ranging and up-to-date interpretations of the Zhuangzi, the Daoist classic and one of the most elusive works ever written.

Social epidemiology has made a powerful case that health determined not just by individual-level factors such as our genetic make-up, access to medical services, or lifestyle choices, but also by social conditions, including the economy, law, and culture. Indeed, at the level of populations, evidence suggests that these “structural” factors are thepredominantinfluences on health. Legal scholars in public health, including those in the health and human rights movement, have contended that human rights, laws, and legal practices are powerfully linked to (...) health. Social epidemiology and health-oriented legal scholarship are complementary in their focus and their research needs. Legal scholarship has identified plausible ways in which legal and human rights factors could be influencing health, but empirical evidence has been limited. (shrink)

I develop a Latin Social model of the Trinity that is an extension of my previous article on indexicals and the Trinity. I focus on the theological desideratum of the necessity of the divine persons’ unity of action. After giving my account of this, I compare it with Swinburne’s and Hasker’s social models and Leftow’s non-social model. I argue that their accounts of the divine persons’ unity of action are theologically unsatisfactory and that this unsatisfactoriness derives from a modern conception (...) of personhood according to which distinct and incommunicable intellectual acts and volitional acts are necessary conditions for one’s being a person. I argue that the Latin Social model is preferable to the modern-personhood models because it is simpler in explanatory economy with regard to securing the necessity of the divine persons’ unity of action. (shrink)

Why We Argue : A Guide to Political Disagreement presents an accessible and engaging introduction to the theory of argument, with special emphasis on the way argument works in public political debate. The authors develop a view according to which proper argument is necessary for one’s individual cognitive health; this insight is then expanded to the collective health of one’s society. Proper argumentation, then, is seen to play a central role in a well-functioning democracy. Written in a lively style and (...) filled with examples drawn from the real world of contemporary politics, and questions following each chapter to encourage discussion, Why We Argue : A Guide to Political Disagreement reads like a guide for the participation in, and maintenance of, modern democracy. An excellent student resource for courses in critical thinking, political philosophy, and related fields, Why We Argue : A Guide to Political Disagreement is an important contribution to reasoned debate. (shrink)

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, in Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, assert that rejecting the use nudges is ‘pointless’ because ‘[i]n many cases, some kind of nudge is inevitable’. Schlomo Cohen makes a similar claim. He asserts that in certain situations surgeons cannot avoid nudging patients either toward or away from consenting to surgical interventions. Cohen concludes that in these situations, nudging patients toward consenting to surgical interventions is uncriticizable or morally permissible. I call this argument: The (...) Unavoidability Argument. In this essay, I will respond to Cohen's use of the unavoidability argument in support of using nudges during the process of informed consent. Specifically, I argue that many so-called ‘unavoidable nudges’ are, in fact, avoidable. Although my argument is directed toward Cohen's use of the unavoidability argument, it is applicable to the unavoidability argument more generally. (shrink)

Ludwig von Mises’s methodological apriorism is frequently attributed to the broader Austrian School of economics, of which, of course, Mises was a prominent member. However, there is considerable controversy concerning the meaning of Mises’s various attempts to justify his apriorism. There are prima facie inconsistencies within and across Mises’s methodological writings that engender massive confusion in the secondary literature. This confusion is aggravated by the fact that Mises’s apriorism cannot be straightforwardly interpreted as an artifact of his historical milieu. Indeed, (...) the two prevailing families of interpretation both treat Mises’s apriorism as radically anachronistic, albeit in different senses. According to “extreme” interpretations, Mises’s apriorism reflects an epistemology several decades, if not centuries, beyond its expiration date. According to “moderate” interpretations, however, Mises’s apriorism anticipates ideas that would not appear in the epistemological literature for several decades to come. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that Mises’s actual methodological beliefs are not reflected in his writings, that Mises either obfuscated or exaggerated his methodological position, for whatever reasons, making it seem more radical than it was in fact. I conclude that we have no idea what justification Mises actually intended when he asserted the a priori nature of the fundamental propositions of economics. If this is right, then, whatever method(s) they follow, Austrian economists cannot (deliberately) follow Mises’s apriorism. (shrink)

In this article, we review the psychology of hero development and hero worship. We propose that heroes and hero narratives fulfill important cognitive and emotional needs, including the need for wisdom, meaning, hope, inspiration, and growth. We propose a framework called the heroic leadership dynamic to explain how need-based heroism shifts over time, from our initial attraction to heroes to later retention or repudiation of heroes. Central to the HLD is idea that hero narratives fulfill both epistemic and energizing functions. (...) Hero stories provide epistemic benefits by providing scripts for prosocial action, by revealing fundamental truths about human existence, by unpacking life paradoxes, and by cultivating emotional intelligence. To energize us, heroes promote moral elevation, heal psychic wounds, inspire psychological growth, and exude charisma. We discuss the implications of our framework for theory and research on heroism, leadership processes, and positive psychology. (shrink)