This paper develops a meta-theory of business based on virtue theory which links the concept of virtues, the common good, and the dynamic economy into a unifying and comprehensive theory of business. Traditional theories and models of business have outlived their usefulness as they are unable to adequately explain social reality. Virtue theory shows firms that pursue ethically-driven strategies can realise a greater profit potential than those firms who currently use profit-driven strategies. The theory expounds that the business of business (...) is ethical business and that the crises that business and society face today are crises of leadership and ethics. The issues of leadership and corporate social responsibility are discussed in the context of the proposed theory. (shrink)

Despite the expansion of the regulatory state, we continue to witness widespread unethical practices across society. This paper addresses these challenges of ethical failure, misalignment, and dissonance by developing a conceptual framework that provides an explicit basis for understanding virtuousness and the common good directed toward the goal of eudaimonia or human flourishing. While much of the literature on virtuousness has focused on the organization, this paper uses a more comprehensive understanding that also incorporates the agent and the economy examined (...) through their relational order. The common good provides direction for guiding behavior of all the various stakeholders and the context for understanding virtuousness, while it is through virtuousness that the common good is effectively realized. Virtuousness and the common good are therefore in effect ‘two sides of the same coin.’ This paper develops a virtuousness–common good conceptual framework which explores the basis for harmonizing the goals of the individual, organization, and the economy. (shrink)

This paper discusses the philosophical argument and the application of the Triple Font Theory for moral evaluation of human acts and attempts to integrate the conceptual components of major moral theories into a systematic internally consistent decision-making model that is theoretically driven. The paper incorporates concepts such as formal and material cooperation and the Principle of Double Effect into the theoretical framework. It also advances the thesis that virtue theory ought to be included in any adequate justification of morality and (...) the need to integrate or coordinate notions of virtue into various act-oriented or principles-based ethics. The TFT offers a comprehensive and practical approach to ethical decision-making and is a useful alternative embedded in traditional wisdom. This paper provides a more general framework of the TFT than traditionally presented. Practical judgment is shown to play a constitute role in providing a guide for right action and is the “glue” that integrates the various components of the TFT. (shrink)

This paper discusses corporate governance issues from a compliance viewpoint. It makes a distinction between legal and ethical compliance mechanisms and shows that the former has clearly proven to be inadequate as it lacks the moral firepower to restore confidence and the ability to build trust. The concepts of freedom of indifference and freedom for excellence provide a theoretical basis for explaining why legal compliance mechanisms are insufficient in dealing with fraudulent practices and may not be addressing the real and (...) fundamental issues that inspire ethical behavior. The tendency to overemphasize legal compliance mechanisms may result in an attempt to substitute accountability for responsibility and may also result in an attempt to legislate morality which consequently leads to legal absolutism. The current environment of failures of corporate responsibility are not only failures of legal compliance, but more fundamentally failures to do the right (ethical) thing. (shrink)

Several recent studies and initiatives have emphasized the importance of a strong ethical organizational DNA (ODNA) to create and promote an effective corporate governance culture of trust, integrity and intellectual honesty. This paper highlights the drawbacks of an excessively heavy reliance on rules-based approaches that increase the cost of doing business, overshadow essential elements of good corporate governance, create a culture of dependency, and can result in legal absolutism. The paper makes the case that the way forward for effective corporate (...) governance is to strike an optimal balance between rules-based and principles-based approaches. The recent corporate scandals have demonstrated that the ethical ODNA is critical to the driving force and basis of legal and regulatory requirements. Effective governance means adhering to ethical principles, not merely complying with rules, and is a crucial guardian of a firm’s reputation and integrity. It is through an effective corporate governance program (that is, one that optimally captures and integrates the appropriate aspects of rules-based and principles-based approaches, and identifies and assesses the related risks) that an organization can reconfigure its ODNA for improved performance. Focusing on the ethical ODNA as the basis of new governance measures provides an opportunity to develop a competitive advantage as it represents a potential source of differentiation, strengthens the relationship with all stakeholders of the organization by building a culture of trust and integrity, and re-instills investor confidence. This paper employs dialectical reasoning that links the ODNA through principles-driven rules in developing a risks-based approach. A comparison from a risk assessment perspective between rules-based and principles-based approaches is presented. Although there have been few applications employing dialectical reasoning in business research, this methodology can be extremely useful in isolating ethical issues and integrating them into the business process. The risks-based approach captures the benefits of both rules-based and principles-based approaches, and incorporates trust-based principles such␣as solidarity, subsidiarity and covenantal relationships. (shrink)

Every academic endeavour rests ultimately on a particular assumption of human nature. Two views of human nature are compared and contrasted: (1) a utilitarian naturalistic humanism which holds essentially the view that human nature is materialistic, and (2) an Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law/virtue ethics humanism which holds the view that human nature is both materialistic and spiritualistic. This paper argues that the latter view better captures and explains the metaphysical realities of human nature. In addition, the role of virtues and its (...) applications in management practice are presented. Organisational policy mechanisms and managerial implications will depend on which view of human nature one adopts. The failure to integrate the virtues and natural law ethical principles into management practice threatens the stability and survival of the firm since they are required to correct the dysfunctional aspects and ethical deficits of the current business philosophy. (shrink)

Contributed papers presented at a seminar organized by Department of Philosophy, Budge Budge College.

The Book Discusses The Problems Raised By The Classical Systems Like Carvaka, Jain, Buddhism, Nyaya, Vaisesika, Samkhya, Yoga, Purva Mimamsa And Vedanta. It Establishes Epistemological, Metaphysical And Axiological Significance Of Indian Philosophy, Offering A Unique Insight.

Critical interpretation of philosophies of Śaṅkarācārya and Gautama Buddha.

This paper measures the effectiveness of a professional ethics course using the MacIntyrean Philosophical Approach which incorporates virtues, narrative, tradition, and community. There has been limited empirical work using this framework in which the emphasis has been on ‘thick descriptions’ created through narrative, mainly the case methodology. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no attempt to quantify the constructs of the MPA which is one of the contributions of our paper. Our approach is the first to use (...) a mixed method approach in applying the MPA and utilizes ten virtues captured in the Moral Competency Inventory, developed by Lennick et al., to measure virtues at the personal and social levels. Data were collected from eighty-nine students and analyzed using various multivariate techniques including Exploratory Factor Analysis, MANOVA and Structural Equation Modeling. The results were also triangulated with self-reflective essays that were analysed using content analysis. The findings showed that students’ virtues were higher after exposure to the MPA which confirmed that it had a significant and positive impact on the delivery of the professional ethics course. (shrink)

We define humility as the ability to realistically assess one’s limitations and strengths. Unlike other moral virtues, humility has been found distinctively difficult to acquire. Our paper makes two significant contributions. Although the role and importance of humility have been clearly established in the literature, our paper is the first to empirically test a theoretically-posited inter-relationship between humility and the moral virtues. Our paper empirically tests this relationship, specifically between humility and the social virtues with the personal virtues acting as (...) a mediator. The second contribution of our paper is to present the design and delivery of a humility-embedded pedagogical teaching and learning approach using a professional ethics course. Essentially, we are suggesting a methodology that make ethics education more effective. We follow Sims and Felton : 297–312, 2006) analytical framework that incorporates targeted learning outcomes, environment, processes, and experience facilitated through a student-led pedagogical approach. We utilize the concept of “critical consciousness”, developed by Jagger and Volkman : 177–185, 2013), which is captured through the mechanisms of a Student Learning Portfolio and a Process-Oriented-Guided-Enquiry approach. Both these mechanisms incorporate critical self-reflection and the application of knowledge derived from experience. Our findings have significant implications for the effective teaching of ethics, and more generally for business and management education. (shrink)

Several authors have argued that virtue ethics needs to adopt a more realistic moral psychology in proposing a more effective way for teaching and learning. In response to this appeal, our paper explores the development of an Imaginative Virtue Ethics Transportation-Transcendental Experiential Approach based on the Aristotelian-Thomistic Mind–Body Theory. It also appears that many educators who use an Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue ethics as a teaching and learning platform may be unaware of the theoretical underpinnings especially with regards to the understanding of (...) the phantasmata. A theoretical framework is developed that links the virtues with transcendentals thereby strengthening the virtue epistemological system within an Aristotelian-Thomistic anthropology using the psychological concept of transportation. Specifically, the framework links the virtues to the acting for the ultimate end of human existence defined as the participation in the transcendentals which gives the virtues its normativity and meaning. A narrative example is presented to illustrate the approach which can applied to different epistemological anthropologies depending on the focus of the lesson plan. Qualitative feedback over a ten year period validates the theory in the knowledge acquisition and practice of the relational order of the virtues to existential meaning. We conclude with some practical suggestion to help improve and strengthen the mind–body conduits by appropriating an environment that would be conducive to producing phantasmata to promote integral human development through the virtues. (shrink)

All Arts In India Owe Their Roots To The Theoretical Structure Developed By Bharatamuni In His Celebrated Work Natyasastra. His Theory Of Beauty Is Known As The Theory Of Rasa. The Present Volume Has Shown How The Insight Of Bharata Was Developed By The Classical Scholars From Abhinavagupta To Jagannatha Who Propounded The Theories With Names Like Rasa, Alamkara, Riti, Vakrokti, Dhvani Etc. To Employ The Theory Of Beauty From Natya (Drama) To Kavya (Poetry).

Autobiographical reminiscences of an Indic philosopher.

Autobiography of an Indian philosopher and his views on Indian philosophy.

Global constitutionalism : positivism and international law -- International trade law : theories and practices in negotiations -- Making rules in the WTO : negotiations from Doha to Bali -- North-South controversy : developed and developing countries in the WTO -- Self-determination and minority rights under international law -- Human right : the interlocutor of global constitutionalism -- Asian approaches to international law -- The future of international law.

The nature and relationships between Law and State -- Law making, its sources and the role of State -- Law, legal systems, and legal families : synchronizing in the Globalized World -- Fundamental legal concepts : the distinctive features of law -- Constitutional law : the Supreme Law of the land -- Criminal law : State's authority in defining and penalizing crimes -- Torts : making people responsible & civilized -- Civil law and proceedings : public and private law -- (...) Law for doing business : the role of state and market -- Justice : the goal of political society -- The Rule of Law : foundation of modern political society -- Human rights and the state : grounds for personal and institutional relationships -- International trade : the centerpiece of growth and international relations -- Law, Globalization and international relations. (shrink)

In this benchmark five-volume study, originally published between 1922 and 1955, Surendranath Dasgupta examines the principal schools of thought that define Indian philosophy. A unifying force greater than art, literature, religion, or science, Professor Dasgupta describes philosophy as the most important achievement of Indian thought, arguing that an understanding of its history is necessary to appreciate the significance and potentialities of India's complex culture. Volume V is the last volume of Professor Dasgupta's work. He had finished the manuscript at the (...) time of his death, late in 1952. His widow, Dr Surama Dasgupta, saw it through to publication, and prefaced the book with an account of her husband's life-work. The volume contains an examination of the literature of southern Saivism, Vira-Saivism, the philosophy of Srikantha, the Saiva philosophy in the Puranas, and Saiva philosophy in some important texts. (shrink)

Contributed articles with special reference to India.

Seeing, Doing, and Knowing is an original and comprehensive philosophical treatment of sense perception as it is currently investigated by cognitive neuroscientists. Its central theme is the task-oriented specialization of sensory systems across the biological domain. Sensory systems are automatic sorting machines; they engage in a process of classification. Human vision sorts and orders external objects in terms of a specialized, proprietary scheme of categories - colours, shapes, speeds and directions of movement, etc. This 'Sensory Classification Thesis' implies that sensation (...) is not a naturally caused image from which an organism must infer the state of the world beyond; it is more like an internal communication, a signal concerning the state of the world issued by a sensory system, in accordance with internal conventions, for the use of an organism's other systems. This is why sensory states are both easily understood and persuasive.Sensory classification schemes are purpose-built to serve the knowledge-gathering and pragmatic needs of particular types of organisms. They are specialized: a bee or a bird does not see exactly what a human does. The Sensory Classification Thesis helps clarify this specialization in perceptual content and supports a new form of realism about the deliverances of sensation: 'Pluralistic Realism' is based on the idea that sensory systems coevolve with an organism's other systems; they are not simply moulded to the external world. The last part of the book deals with reference in vision. Cognitive scientists now believe that vision guides the limbs by means of a subsystem that links up with the objects of physical manipulation in ways that bypass sensory categories. In a novel extension of this theory, Matthen argues that 'motion-guiding vision' is integrated with sensory classification in conscious vision. This accounts for the quasi-demonstrative form of visual states: 'This particular object is red', and so on. He uses this idea to cast new light on the nature of perceptual objects, pictorial representation, and the visual representation of space. (shrink)

A recent special issue in the Journal of Business Ethics gathered together a variety of papers addressing the challenges of putting virtue ethics into practice :563–565, 2013). The editors prefaced their outline of the various papers with the assertion that exploring the practical dimension of virtue ethics can help business leaders discover their proper place in working for a better world, as individuals and within the family, the business community and society in general :563–565, 2013). Scholars are yet to explore (...) the role of virtuous organisational leaders in the pursuit of Eudaimonia. This paper is a qualitative study which considered company directors’ self-understandings in light of a virtue ethics conceptual framework. The aim of the study is to explore whether virtue ethics rather than deontology and consequentialism is a better vehicle for expressing directors’ self-understandings about their ideals and role. (shrink)

A hitherto neglected form of explanation is explored, especially its role in population genetics. “Statistically abstractive explanation” (SA explanation) mandates the suppression of factors probabilistically relevant to an explanandum when these factors are extraneous to the theoretical project being pursued. When these factors are suppressed, the explanandum is rendered uncertain. But this uncertainty traces to the theoretically constrained character of SA explanation, not to any real indeterminacy. Random genetic drift is an artifact of such uncertainty, and it is therefore wrong (...) to reify it as a cause of evolution or as a process in its own right. *Received July 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, 170 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5R 2M8, Canada; e‐mail: mohan[email protected]. (shrink)

How do fitness and natural selection relate to other evolutionary factors like architectural constraint, mode of reproduction, and drift? In one way of thinking, drawn from Newtonian dynamics, fitness is one force driving evolutionary change and added to other factors. In another, drawn from statistical thermodynamics, it is a statistical trend that manifests itself in natural selection histories. It is argued that the first model is incoherent, the second appropriate; a hierarchical realization model is proposed as a basis for a (...) statistical treatment. It emerges that natural selection does not cause evolution; it just is evolution. The theory incorporates relations of statistical correlation, but not the kind of causation found in fundamental physical processes. (shrink)

This paper presents a new account of aesthetic pleasure, according to which it is a distinct psychological structure marked by a characteristic self-reinforcing motivation. Pleasure figures in the appreciation of an object in two ways: In the short run, when we are in contact with particular artefacts on particular occasions, aesthetic pleasure motivates engagement and keeps it running smoothly—it may do this despite the fact that the object we engagement is aversive in some ways. Over longer periods, it plays a (...) critical role in shaping how we engage with objects to get this kind of pleasure from them. This account is yoked to a broadly functional understanding of art: it is not the nature of the object that makes it art, but the nature of the response that it is designed to elicit. The view does not, however, rest on individual psychology alone, as some other functional accounts do. Crucially, it is argued that shared cultural context is a key determinant of the pleasure we derive from aesthetic artefacts. The pleasure of art is always communal and communicative. (shrink)

Throughout this research, imposing the training of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to play tic-tac-toe bored game, by training the ANN to play the tic-tac-toe logic using the set of mathematical combination of the sequences that could be played by the system and using both the Gradient Descent Algorithm explicitly and the Elimination theory rules implicitly. And so on the system should be able to produce imunate amalgamations to solve every state within the game course to make better of results (...) of winnings or getting draw. (shrink)

Perceptions "present" objects as red, as round, etc.-- in general as possessing some property. This is the "perceptual content" of the title, And the article attempts to answer the following question: what is a materialistically adequate basis for assigning content to what are, after all, neurophysiological states of biological organisms? The thesis is that a state is a perception that presents its object as "F" if the "biological function" of the state is to detect the presence of objects that are (...) "F". The theory contrasts with causal/informational theories, and with internalist theories, for example those which assign content on the basis of introspected feel. Its advantages are that it permits perceptual error while at the same time allowing content to be expressed in terms of external properties. The argument of the paper is illustrated throughout by examples from biology and computational psychology. (shrink)

Memory seems intuitively to consist in the preservation of some proposition (in the case of semantic memory) or sensory image (in the case of episodic memory). However, this intuition faces fatal difficulties. Semantic memory has to be updated to reflect the passage of time: it is not just preservation. And episodic memory can occur in a format (the observer perspective) in which the remembered image is different from the original sensory image. These difficulties indicate that memory cannot be preserved content. (...) It is proposed that what is preserved in memory isan underlying "trace", and that in every act of remembering, memorial content is reconstructed from the preserved trace. (shrink)

Perception has been for philosophers in the last few decades an area of compelling interest and intense investigation. Developments in contemporary cognitive science and neuroscience has thrown up new information about the brain and new conceptions of how sensory information is processed and used. These new conceptions offer philosophers opportunities for reconceptualising the senses--what they tell us, how we use them, and the nature of the knowledge they give us. Today, the philosophy of perception resonates with ideas that had not (...) even been articulated in the 1970s and 1980s. This Handbook is a survey by leading philosophical thinkers of contemporary issues and new thinking in philosophy of perception. It includes sections on the history of the subject, introductions to contemporary issues in the epistemology, ontology and aesthetics of perception, treatments of the individual sense modalities and of the things we perceive by means of them, and a consideration of how perceptual information is integrated and consolidated. New analytic tools and applications to other areas of philosophy are discussed in depth. Each of the entries is written by a leading expert, some collaborating with younger figures; each seeks to introduce the reader to a broad range of issues. All contain new ideas on the topics covered; together they demonstrate the vigour and innovative zeal of a young field. (shrink)

We have argued elsewhere that: (A) Natural selection is not a cause of evolution. (B) A resolution-of-forces (or vector addition) model does not provide us with a proper understanding of how natural selection combines with other evolutionary influences. These propositions have come in for criticism recently, and here we clarify and defend them. We do so within the broad framework of our own “hierarchical realization model” of how evolutionary influences combine.

How many senses do humans possess? Five external senses, as most cultures have it—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste? Should proprioception, kinaesthesia, thirst, and pain be included, under the rubric bodily sense? What about the perception of time and the sense of number? Such questions reduce to two. 1. How do we distinguish a sense from other sorts of information-receiving faculties? 2. By what principle do we distinguish the senses? Aristotle discussed these questions in the De Anima. H. P. Grice (...) revived them in 1967. More recently, they have taken on fresh interest as a result of a collection of essays edited by Fiona Macpherson. This entry reviews some approaches to these questions and advances some new ideas for the reader’s consideration. It proposes that the senses constitute an integrated learning system, membership in which answers question 1. It also proposes that the modalities can be distinguished from one another in two ways, by the means of information pick-up and by the kinds of activity that a perceiver undertakes to make use of them. (shrink)

What is color? What is color vision? Most philosophers answer by reference to humans: to human color qualia, or to the environmental properties or "quality spaces" perceived by humans. It is argued, with reference to empirical findings concerning comparative color vision and the evolution of color vision, that all such attempts are mistaken. An adequate definition of color vision must eschew reference to its outputs in the human cognition and refer only to inputs: color vision consists in the use of (...) wavelength discrimination in the construction of visual representations. A color quality is one that is generated from such processing. (shrink)

Because culture plays a role in determining the aesthetic merit of a work of art, intrinsically similar works can have different aesthetic merit when assessed in different cultures. This paper argues that a form of aesthetic hedonism is best placed to account for this relativity of aesthetic value. This form of hedonism is based on a functional account of aesthetic pleasure, according to which it motivates and enables mental engagement with artworks, and an account of pleasure-learning, in which it reinforces (...) the appreciation of culture specific ways of engaging with art. (shrink)

What colour does a white wall look in the pinkish light of the late afternoon? Philosophers disagree: they hold variously that it looks pink, white, both, and no colour at all. A new approach is offered. After reviewing the dispute, a reinterpretation of perceptual constancy is offered. In accordance with this reinterpretation, it is argued that perceptual features such as color must always be predicated of perceptual objects. Thus, it might be that in pinkish light, the wall looks white and (...) the light looks pink. The paper concludes by discussing some criteria for object identification in perceptual states. (shrink)