While many studies have investigated the ethical perceptions, ideologies and value systems of the Chinese, few studies have focused on mainland China, and even fewer have examined regional differences within China. This study examines the factor structure of Forsyth's (1980) Ethics Position Questionnaire in a sample of managers from the PRC. According to Forsyth, individual differences in Relativism and Idealism influence judgements of moral issues (Forsyth, 1980). In a sample of 115 managers, results show that two similar constructs to those (...) described by Forsyth do exist in the Chinese sample. However the precise interpretation of the item groupings through a Chinese perspective, may reveal some discrete areas of difference in the labelling of these constructs. The study also finds that managers in the South of China scored significantly higher in Idealism than managers in the North. Results are presented and implications for future research are discussed. (shrink)

The primary aim of this book is to understand how seemings relate to justification and whether some version of dogmatism or phenomenal conservatism can be sustained. It also addresses a number of other issues, including the nature of seemings, cognitive penetration, Bayesianism, and the epistemology of morality and disagreement.

In this article, we explore the implications of opposing domains theory for developing ethical leaders. Opposing domains theory highlights a neurological tension between analytic reasoning and socioemotional reasoning. Specifically, when we engage in analytic reasoning, we suppress our ability to engage in socioemotional reasoning and vice versa. In this article, we bring together the domains of neuroscience, psychology, and ethics, to inform our theorizing around ethical leadership. We propose that a key issue for ethical leadership is achieving a healthy balance (...) between analytic reasoning and socioemotional reasoning. We argue that organizational culture often encourages too heavy a reliance on nonemotional forms of reasoning to arrive at moral judgments. As a result, leaders run the risk of suppressing their ability to pay attention to the human side of moral dilemmas and, in doing so, dehumanize colleagues, particularly subordinates, and clients. (shrink)

v. 1. Tucker's life and writings -- v. 2. Essays on various subjects of taste, morals, and national policy -- v. 3. A voyage to the moon -- v. 4. Essays, moral and metaphysical.

Although the condition known as synaesthesia is currently undergoing a scientific resurgence, to date the literature has largely focused on the heterogeneous nature of synaesthesia across individuals. In order to provide a better understanding of synaesthesia, however, general characteristics need to be investigated. Synaesthetic experiences are often described as occurring ‘internally’ or in the ‘mind’s eye’, which is remarkably similar to how we would describe our experience of visual mental imagery. We assessed the role of visual imagery in synaesthesia by (...) sampling a large group of synaesthetes and found that they report experiencing more vivid mental images than controls. These findings have important implications for our general understanding of synaesthesia and, in particular, emphasize the need to control for visual imagery in behavioural and neuroimaging paradigms. (shrink)

It is natural to think that many of our beliefs are rational because they are based on seemings, or on the way things seem. This is especially clear in the case of perception. Many of our mathematical, moral, and memory beliefs also appear to be based on seemings. In each of these cases, it is natural to think that our beliefs are not only based on a seeming, but also that they are rationally based on these seemings—at least assuming there (...) is no relevant counterevidence. This piece is an introduction to a volume dedicated to the question of what the connection is between seemings and justified belief: under what conditions, if any, can a seeming justify its content? (shrink)

Blood donation is broadly understood to be a public and altruistic act. However, new theories of citizenship and subjectivity suggest that the individual and embodied qualities of blood also need to be taken into account when examining donation. This article examines the relationship between public and private elements of blood donation. Donating blood is not an entirely public act, and does not provide an entirely impersonal resource. The embodied self is integral to public practices, and, equally, public domains are important (...) to the constitution of private spaces. However, this study shows that recognition of the individuality of blood is often cast in moral terms. The exclusion of already marginalized people from donating blood presents a risk of further marginalization. If blood donation is understood to be a civic practice open to everyone, then it becomes too easy to see those who cannot donate as non-citizens. New vocabularies of difference are needed. It is an ongoing necessity that altruistic donors are valued; it is also important that those who cannot donate are not punished by this process of valuing. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the dominant contemporary accounts of forgiving do not capture what forgiving most centrally is. I spend the first parts of the paper trying to elucidate what it is that these accounts miss about forgiving, and to explain why I think they miss it. I spend the latter parts of the paper suggesting an alternative, which I call “the charity account.” This account draws much of its theoretical framing from the work of Thomas Aquinas, presenting (...) forgiving as something importantly volitional and essentially loving. (shrink)

It may seem that epistemic and practical rationality weigh reasons differently, because ties in practical rationality tend to generate permissions and ties in epistemic rationality tend to generate a requirement to withhold judgment. I argue that epistemic and practical rationality weigh reasons in the same way, but they have different "default biases". Practical rationality is biased toward every option being permissible whereas epistemic rationality is biased toward withholding judgment's being required.

Alterations to cognitive function are often reported with depression and anxiety symptoms, yet few studies have examined the same associations with mental well-being. This study examined the association between mental well-being, depression and anxiety symptoms and cognitive function in 1502 healthy adult monozygotic and dizygotic twins, and the shared/unique contribution of genetic and environmental variance. Using linear mixed models, mental well-being was positively associated with sustained attention, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, motor coordination and working memory, whereas depression and anxiety symptoms were (...) associated with poorer sustained attention, inhibition, cognitive flexibility and executive function. Bivariate twin modelling showed well-being shared a small environmental correlation with motor coordination and a small genetic correlation with working memory. Trivariate twin modelling showed well-being shared a small genetic correlation with inhibition, whereas depression and anxiety symptoms shared a small environmental correlation with inhibition. The remaining variance was mostly driven by unique G and/or E variance. Overall, well-being and depression and anxiety symptoms show both independent and shared relationships with cognitive functions but this is largely attributable to unique G or E variance and small shared G/E variance between pairs of variables. (shrink)

Volume one. History -- volume two. Philosophy -- volume three. Religion -- volume four. Translations.

Can we ever justly critique the norms and practices of another culture? When activists or policy-makers decide that one culture’s traditional practice is harmful and needs to be eradicated, does it matter whether they are members of that culture? Given the history of imperialism, many argue that any critique of another culture’s practices must be internal. Others argue that we can appeal to a universal standard of human well-being to determine whether or not a particular practice is legitimate or whether (...) it should be eradicated. In this paper, I use the FGC eradication campaigns of the 1980s to show that the internal/external divide is complicated by the inter-connectedness of these debates on the international level. As the line blurs between internal and external criticism and interventions, new questions emerge about the representativeness of global institutions. (shrink)

The average British fourteen-year-old watches a great deal of TV. He helps to spend a quarter of a million pounds on pop records every Saturday. Like the rest of us he is beset by advertisements. As an adult he is virtually certain to read mass-circulation daily and Sunday newspapers. This is his mental world. The modern teacher wants to bring this world to the classroom but if he merely tries the Old Testament prophet stance and says its all corrupt, he (...) will be written off a hopelessly out of touch. But if he can take a neutral position, he can get his pupils first to discuss, then to understand and finally to discriminate. Mr Tucker's book will help this process. The plan of his book if simple: he takes the mass media one by one, gives first some understanding of their organisation, characteristics, aims and methods and then gives practical suggestions for class-work on them. (shrink)

A critical study of the philosophy and political practice of the Czech dissident movement Charter 77. Aviezer Tucker examines how the political philosophy of Jan Patocka (1907–1977), founder of Charter 77, influenced the thinking and political leadership of Vaclav Havel as dissident and president. Presents the first serious treatment of Havel as philosopher and Patocka as a political thinker. Through the Charter 77 dissident movement in Czechoslovakia, opponents of communism based their civil struggle for human rights on philosophic foundations, (...) and members of the Charter 77 later led the Velvet Revolution. After Patocka's self-sacrifice in 1977, Vaclav Havel emerged a strong philosophical and political force, and he continued to apply Patocka's philosophy in order to understand the human condition under late communism and the meaning of dissidence. However, the political/philosophical orientation of the Charter 77 movement failed to provide President Havel with an adequate basis for comprehending and responding to the extraordinary political and economic problems of the postcommunist period. In his discussion of Havel's presidency and the eventual corruption of the Velvet Revolution, Tucker demonstrates that the weaknesses in Charter 77 member's understanding of modernity, which did not matter while they were dissidents, seriously harmed their ability to function in a modern democratic system. Within this context, Tucker also examines Havel's recent attempt to topple the democratic but corrupt government in 1997–1998. The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patocka to Havel will be of interest to students of philosophy and politics, scholars and students of Slavic studies, and historians, as well as anyone fascinated by the nature of dissidence. (shrink)

Amidst the many voices clamoring to interpret the environmental crisis, some of the most important are the voices of religious traditions. Long before modernity's industrialism began the rape of Earth, premodern religious and philosophical traditions mediated to untold generations the wisdom of living as a part of nature. These traditions can illuminate and empower wiser ways of postmodern living. The original writings of Worldviews and Ecology creatively present and interpret worldviews of major religious and philosophical traditions on how humans can (...) live more sustainably on a fragile planet. Contributors include Charlene Spretnak, Larry Rasmussen, Noel Brown, Jay McDaniel, Tu Wei-Ming, Thomas Berry, David Ray Griffin, J. Baird Callicott, Eric Katz, Roger E. Timm, Robert A. White, Christopher Key Chapple, Brian Swimme, Brian Brown, Michael Tobias, Ralph Metzner, George Sessions, and Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. Insights from traditions as diverse as Jain, Jewish, ecofeminist, deep ecology, Christian, Hindu, Bahai, and Whiteheadian will interest all who seek an honest analysis of what religious and philosophical traditions have to say to a modernity whose consciousness and conscience seems tragically narrow, the source of attitudes that imperil the biosphere. (shrink)

Police and authorities have increasingly adopted "command and control" strategies to the policing of intentionally peaceful protest crowds. These strategies work to close down access to a physical space in which a protest is to occur and thus in turn they effectively restrict the capacity of a citizen to engage in the democratic right of peaceful protest.

: Heidegger describes Dasein as subject to a constant pressure to bring its intentional performances into agreement with those of its peers and thence with a generic description of ‘what one [das Man] does’, called Dasein's conformism. I argue that extant accounts of this pressure, which appeal to the essential social embeddedness of intentional performance, fail to account for both the scope and modal force of the demand to act as one does. I propose that we can better understand the (...) role of das Man in Heidegger's account of intentional agency by exploiting a structural similarity between ‘Dasein’ and the familiar notion of epistemic capacity, or a power of knowledge. The result is an account that locates the source of das Man's authority not in our social nature but in our shared aspiration to ontological understanding. (shrink)

Fast and accurate recognition of teammates is crucial in contexts as varied as fast-moving sports, the military, and law enforcement engagements; misrecognition can result in lost scoring opportunities in sport or friendly fire in combat contexts. Initial studies on teammate recognition in sport suggests that athletes are adept at this perceptual ability but still susceptible to errors. The purpose of the current proof-of-concept study was to explore the trainability of teammate recognition from very brief exposure to vision of the whole-body (...) form and motion of a previously unknown individual. Participants were divided into three groups: a 4-week training group who were also the actors for the test and training footage, a 2-week training group, and a no-training group. Findings revealed significant differences between the training groups and their improvement from the pre-to post-test on Response Accuracy and Movement Time. The current study found the best performance in the 4-week Training group. The biggest improvement was found in the 2-week training group, whilst no significant improvement was made in the Control group. These results suggest that training was effective, but also indicate that having initially performed the movements as actors may have led to improvements in baseline testing and ultimately the best results, thus physical performance of skills combined with video-based training may reduce the amount of time needed to improve teammate identification. (shrink)

The Transmission of the Avesta. Edited by Alberto Cantera. Iranica, vol. 20. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012. Pp. xx + 552, 34 illustrations, 48 tables, 18 diagrams. €116.

This paper develops an approach to analysing the importance of anticipations of the future on present actions in the lives of mental health service users, for whom sensing stability in the future is important as part of the recovery process. The work of Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead is drawn upon to argue that temporality is understood spatially, and that past and future experience only exist in relation to their shaping of present activity. This process is produced spatially rather (...) than chronologically. Drawing on empirical work with community mental health service users the paper focuses on the home space as a key site for organising space in anticipation of future life. This involves analysing accounts of home making in which we see the role of anticipatory futures in the ordering of domestic space. The paper concludes by arguing that home spaces are a key site related to ongoing psychological well being, and that analysis of such spaces is important in terms of highlighting practices through which service users attempt to ‘make the future’. . (shrink)

Century has requested me to answer for his readers. I comply; but, to be frank, I find it a difficult task. If the editor or one of his contributors had only suggested a reason why I should be anything other than an Anarchist, I am sure I should have no difficulty in disputing the argument. And does not this very fact, after all, furnish in itself the best of all reasons why I should be an Anarchist – namely, the impossibility (...) of discovering any good reason for being anything else? To show the invalidity of the claims of State Socialism, Nationalism, Communism, Single taxism, the prevailing capitalism, and all the numerous forms of Archism existing or proposed, is at the same blow to show the validity of the claims of Anarchism. Archism once denied, only Anarchism can be affirmed. That is a matter of logic. (shrink)

Spinoza's contributions to a theory of global justice.

The Neo-Moorean Deduction (I have a hand, so I am not a brain-in-a-vat) and the Zebra Deduction (the creature is a zebra, so isn’t a cleverly disguised mule) are notorious. Crispin Wright, Martin Davies, Fred Dretske, and Brian McLaughlin, among others, argue that these deductions are instances of transmission failure. That is, they argue that these deductions cannot transmit justification to their conclusions. I contend, however, that the notoriety of these deductions is undeserved. My strategy is to clarify, attack, defend, (...) and apply. I clarify what transmission and transmission failure really are, thereby exposing two questionable but quotidian assumptions. I attack existing views of transmission failure, especially those of Crispin Wright. I defend a permissive view of transmission failure, one which holds that deductions of a certain kind fail to transmit only because of premise circularity. Finally, I apply this account to the Neo-Moorean and Zebra Deductions and show that, given my permissive view, these deductions transmit in an intuitively acceptable way—at least if either a certain type of circularity is benign or a certain view of perceptual justification is false. (shrink)

An early conference paper version of "The Inferences of Common Causes Reduced to Common Origins," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, volume 81, June 2020, 105-115.

This is explained in a new introduction that goes beyond the interpretative enterprise of the rest of the book to assess Marx in relation to contemporary ...