It is widely maintained that self-interested rationality is a matter of maximizing one's own good or well-being. Rationality more generally is also frequently characterized in maximizing terms: the rational thing to do in any decision context is whatever is best in terms of one's interests or will lead to the greatest preference-satisfaction, My dissertation consists of three independent papers that challenge this orthodoxy by lending support to "satisficing," the idea that it is rational to prefer what is good enough. In (...) the first I argue that the preferences frequently displayed in the Allais Paradox can not be reconciled with expected utility maximizing and therefore must be construed in satisficing terms. To the extent that common sense is an important touchstone for theory choice, this lends support to satisficing. In the second, I argue more directly for satisficing by claiming that satisficing is the best way to deal with the different temporal perspectives available to human beings. In the third, I argue that supererogation, the idea that options which are not optimal can nonetheless be morally or rationally acceptable, depends on "optional reasons," I claim, further, that the criticisms of the very idea of optional reasons are not compelling. I also include an appendix which addresses Derek Parfit's challenge to prudential rationality. (shrink)

This research replicates Weber's 1995 study of a large financial services firm that found that ethical subclimates exist within multi-departmental organizations, are influenced by the function of the department and the stakeholders served, and are relatively stable over time. Relying upon theoretical models developed by Thompson (1967) and Victor and Cullen (1998), hypotheses are developed that predict the ethical subclimate decision-making dimensions and type for diverse departments within a large steel manufacturing firm and that these ethical subclimate types will be (...) stable across the two periods of time when the data were collected. Employees were surveyed in 1995 and again in 1999 using Victor and Cullen's Ethical Climate Questionnaire. Response rates of 88 and 94 percent were achieved. Contrary to Weber's findings, our results imply that, in both samples, ethical subclimates may be determined by the strength of an organization's overall ethical climate, rather than the department's function. However, we did find support for Weber's earlier contention that these subclimates are relatively stable. Our results also suggest that differences may exist across industries, that is when comparing a large steel manufacturer, as we did in our study, with a large financial services organization, as Weber did in his 1995 study. (shrink)

Organisations have implemented intensive home-based teleworking in response to global COVID-19 lockdowns and other pandemic-related restrictions. Financial pressures are driving organisations to continue intensive teleworking after the pandemic. Understanding employees’ teleworking inclinations post COVID-19, and how these inclinations are influenced by different factors, is important to ensure any future, more permanent changes to teleworking policies are sustainable for both employees and organisations. This study, therefore, investigated the relationships between the context of home-based teleworking during the pandemic, productivity perceptions during home-based (...) teleworking, and employees’ future teleworking inclinations beyond the pandemic. Specifically, the study examined whether pandemic-teleworking conditions related to the job, and the physical and social environments at home, influenced employees’ FTI, and if perceptions of improved or reduced productivity mediated these relationships. Data were collected during April and May 2020 with a cross-sectional online survey of teleworkers in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and other countries during the first COVID-19 lockdowns. Reported FTI were mixed. Most participants reported wanting to telework more post-pandemic compared to before the pandemic; however, 18% wanted to telework less. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that some teleworking conditions were positively associated with FTI. Other teleworking conditions were not associated with FTI. Perceived changes in productivity mediated the relationship between work privacy fit and FTI. Findings highlight the role of work privacy fit and job demands in influencing pandemic productivity perceptions and teleworking inclinations post-pandemic. Results raise questions about the suitability and sustainability of home-based teleworking for all staff. As organisations plan to increase the proportion of teleworking post-pandemic, this study suggests there is a need to support employees who perceived their productivity to be poor while home-working during the pandemic. (shrink)

Appropriate concerns about cost and unequal access to healthcare have resulted in the creation of powerful managed networks seeking to share the risks of high healthcare costs among plans, providers, and patients. Much to their credit, these managed networks have slowed the rise in healthcare spending by as much as 44% in markets with high HMO penetration. However, whether these savings will materially improve access and quality remains to be seen.

Philosophical Pragmatism and International Relations bridges the gap between philosophical pragmatism and international relations, two disciplinary perspectives that together shed light on how to advance the study and conduct of foreign affairs. Authors in this collection discuss a broad range of issues, from policy relevance to peacekeeping operations, with an eye to understanding how this distinctly American philosophy, pragmatism, can improve both international relations research and foreign policy practice.

This paper presents the development andvalidation of new measurement tools to exploreself-efficacy toward service and toward civicparticipation. We developed and administereda survey to 851 students in an AACSB-accreditedcollege of business at a comprehensive publicuniversity located in the Midwest. Traditionalscale development methodologies plusconfirmatory factor analysis and simultaneousfactor analysis in several populations wereused to analyze both a primary sample and aholdback sample. Results strongly support thevalidity and reliability of the surveyinstrument. Future use for the instrumentincludes verification of the effectiveness ofpedagogies designed to (...) increase self-efficacytoward service and motivation for civicparticipation in business students. (shrink)

O livro Infocracia. Digitalização e a crise da democracia, do filósofo sul-coreano Byung-Chul Han, traduzido por Gabriel Salvi Philipson e publicado pela Editora Vozes em 2022, retoma e aprofunda alguns dos problemas característicos do pensamento do autor tratados em obras anteriores, particularmente ligados à crítica das novas configurações da vida e da subjetividade na sociedade da informação. Suas publicações podem ser lidas como uma radiografia da contemporaneidade, um dos motivos, associado ao seu estilo de escrita, para a celebridade do autor (...) e o sucesso de venda dos seus livros [...]. (shrink)

A moral kantiana recebe de Hegel a crítica de se constituir um "vazio formalismo', onde o Imperativo Categórico não passa de uma 'indeterminação abstrata'. O debate entre os dois autores pretende recolocar os objetivos fundamentais de cada um e demonstrar a necessidade de sua complementariedade no que se refere a uma avaliação global do agir humano do ponto de vista moral.

This article has three aims. The first is to give a partial explication of the concept of unification. My explication will be partial because I confine myself to unification of particular events, because I do not consider events of a quantitative nature, and discuss only deductive cases. The second aim is to analyze how unification can be reached. My third aim is to show that unification is an intellectual benefit. Instead of being an intellectual benefit unification could be an intellectual (...) harm, i.e., a state of mind we should try to avoid by all means. By calling unification an intellectual benefit, we claim that this form of understanding has an intrinsic value for us. I argue that unification really has this alleged intrinsic value. (shrink)

O estabelecimento de um paralelismo entre razão teórica e razão prática permite explicitar o âmbito de cada uma delas. A restrição do uso da razão assegura, por um lado, o caminho seguro da ciência e mostra, por outro lado, que há um uso prático da razão - a moral, isto é, que ela pode determinar imediatamente à vontade.

O artigo tem por objetivo investigar a particular relação que se estabelece entre a temática do início da filosofia – que é de extrema importância para toda a “escola fenomenológica de Freiburg” – e a concepção da essência da filosofia tal como desenvolvida especificamente no pensamento de Martin Heidegger e Eugen Fink. A partir da reinterpretação e radicalização operadas em relação à abordagem estabelecida pela fenomenologia husserliana, mostraremos como a figura de Husserl se impõe tanto como pano de fundo quanto (...) como alvo polêmico das reflexões de Heidegger e Fink. Assim, se o primeiro desenvolve uma concepção da filosofia como práxis radical de um “outro” pensamento, que procede por tentativas e experimentações, o segundo transforma a fenomenologia husserliana no sentido de uma filosofia da liberdade. (shrink)

A dialética hegeliana não pode ser entendidaapenas como método ou instrumento depensar, mas também como conteúdo pensado. Apolítica é o desdobramento ou concretização doprincípio da liberdade enquanto fio condutor e organizadordas estruturas jurídicas e sociais, dentrode um processo dialético.

O objetivo do artigo é explorar as conexões entre o problema da morte, o conceito de ideia e a tese da indestrutibilidade do nosso ser com a morte, em Schopenhauer. Como ponto de partida, é apresentada a crítica de Schopenhauer à compreensão empírica da morte como passagem ao não-ser. Passa-se, então às considerações do filósofo sobre a indestrutibilidade do nosso ser com a morte, por meio do destaque às suas considerações sobre o caráter de coisa, vinculado à sua intepretação das (...) ideias como formas eternas. Após discorrer pontualmente a respeito do sentido desta noção na filosofia platônica, são apresentados os principais elementos que configuram a apropriação schopenhaueriana da teoria platônica das ideias tendo em vista exclusivamente o problema elegido, qual seja, a morte e a indestrutibilidade do nosso ser. (shrink)

Editorial do dossiê Técnica, tecnologia e educação em Heidegger e Simondon.

The main results of the present paper are the following theorems: 1. There is no e ∈ ω such that for any A, B ⊆ ω, SA = Wmath image is simple in A, and if A′ [TRIPLE BOND]TB′, then SA =* SB. 2 There is an e ∈ ω such that for any A, B ⊆ ω, MA = We is incomplete maximal in A, and if A =* B, then MA [TRIPLE BOND]TMB.

Editorial para o dossiê Nietzsche e a Educação.

Um Estado democrático de Direito fundamenta suas bases em princípios de justiça universalizáveis. Aplicados a uma Constituição, objetivam-se nos direitos e liberdades fundamentais dos cidadãos. O dever de obedecer a leis injustas, a desobediência civil e a objeção de consciência pressupõem senso de justiça e uma concepção do bem, capacidades morais de uma “pessoa ética”. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Direitos fundamentais. Justiça. Constituição. Desobediência civil. ABSTRACT A democratic State of law puts its bases on principles of justice capable of universal validity. Applied (...) to a constitution, such principles are objectivied in the fundamental rights and liberties of the citizens. The duty of obeying unjust laws, civil disobedience and consciousness objection presuppose a sense of justice and a conception of the good, that is, moral capacities of an “ethical person”. KEY WORDS – Fundamental rights. Justice. Constitution. Civil desobedience. (shrink)

La publicación de "Una Teoría de la Justicia" de J. Rawls ha provocado un intenso debate entre liberales y comunitaristas, especialmente en lo que respecta al tema de la prioridad de lo justo con respecto a las concepciones del bien. La importancia dada al contexto de una comunidad, con miras a la construcción de una teoría de la justicia, ha sido objeto de mucha controversia. Se considera irrelevante para los liberales y fundamental para los comunitaristas. El propósito de este artículo (...) es entrar en esta discusión e investigar las bases del comunitarismo, o más precisamente, señalar que la Filosofía del Derecho de Hegel puede considerarse una anticipación de estas bases. Su concepción ético-política de la Constitución es la mayor prueba de ello. Para cumplir con este objetivo, es necesario explicar la idea de la libertad como principio orientador de toda estructura jurídica, política y social. Esto incluye presentar el derecho abstracto, la moralidad y, especialmente, la eticidad como formas de concretización de ella. La sustancialidad ética se discute como la fuente de inspiración del comunitarismo. La indicación de una concepción ético-política de la Constitución y su relación con la comunidad prepolítica es el argumento central de esta influencia. (shrink)

Editorial para o dossiê Nietzsche e a Educação.

Biological modalities, i.e., biologically possible, impossible, or necessary states of affairs have not received much attention from philosophers. Yet, it is widely agreed that there are biological constraints on physically possible states of affairs, such that not everything that is physically possible is also biologically possible, even if everything that is biologically possible is also physically possible. Furthermore, biologists use concepts that appear to be modal in nature, such as the concept of evolvability in evolutionary developmental biology, or “evo-devo.” The (...) present chapter investigates what kind of modality underlies the concept of evolvability. This concept tries to capture the capacity of an organism or a lineage to sustain genetic changes that enable it to evolve or to evolve adaptively. The basic idea of the proposed approach is to construe evolvability as a kind of accessibility in a modal space. The difficult part is to specify this modal space and the relevant accessibility relation. While there may not be a general way of defining such a relation, there exist model systems for which it is possible, e.g., evolving small RNAs. The modal space in such cases turns out to be quite distinct from those constructed by philosophers, e.g., David Lewis’s similarity metric for possible worlds. Even though the biological case examined here is quite special, attending to the way in which biological possibilities are modeled in this case harbors some general lessons about biological modalities, in particular their dependence on the explanatory goals of the models modeling modality. (shrink)

For more than 20 years, research has proven the beneficial effect of natural frequencies when it comes to solving Bayesian reasoning tasks (Gigerenzer & Hoffrage, 1995). In a recent meta-analysis, McDowell & Jacobs (2017) showed that presenting a task in natural frequency format increases performance rates to 24% compared to only 4% when the same task is presented in probability format. Nevertheless, on average three quarters of participants in their meta-analysis failed to obtain the correct solution for such a task (...) in frequency format. In this paper, we present an empirical study on what participants typically do wrong when confronted with natural frequencies. We found that many of them did not actually use natural frequencies for their calculations, but translated them back into complicated probabilities instead. This switch from the intuitive presentation format to a less intuitive calculation format will be discussed within the framework of psychological theories (e.g., the Einstellung effect). (shrink)

In this chapter I propose to understand the current paradigm shift in biology as the origination of a biology of subjects. A description of living beings as experiencing selves has the potential to transform the current mechanistic approach of biology into an embodied-hermeneutic one, culminating in a poetics of nature. We are at the right moment for that: The findings of complex systems research, autopoiesis theory, and evolutionary developmental biology are converging into a picture where the living can not longer (...) be described in terms of causal mechanisms (as is, e. g., the Watson-Crick “central dogma”). Instead, organisms bring forth themselves physically and thereby generate a hermeneutic standpoint, interpreting external and internal stimuli interfering with their auto-creation according to embodied values. This can be observed empirically during embryonic develoment, where genetic instructions do not act as orders, but rather as perturbations being interpreted by an auto-maintaining developmental centre. The notion of organic subjectivity opens the living realm to a hermeneutic perspective. Since any encounter has a meaning and is interpreted accordingly, it creates a perspective of innerness or self. This self experiences all external and internal stimuli as values. The innerness is coextensive with the material dimensions of biochemical processes as their other, or symbolic, side. By this process the subjective perspective of organisms is open to other’s experience. Meaning and value become visible, as they are generated in material, embodied form. Instead of being separate from nature as pure “mind” or “language”, man shares with any other being the same “conditio vitae” of experienced meaning and expressive feeling. (shrink)

A Filosofia do Direito de Hegel trata da Ideia da Liberdade e suas formas de concretização. É a expressão do exercício efetivo da autonomia da “pessoa do direito” enquanto capacidade jurídica. Isso inclui o direito de propriedade e do contrato; o direito da vontade moral, enquanto trata das condições da responsabilidade subjetiva; e as mediações da eticidade, enquanto desenvolve o exercício da autonomia nas instituições sociais: a família, as corporações e o Estado.

The Author replies to a review recently published by Franco Gori in the journal Augustinianum. The point of disagreement advanced by the Author is the basic hypothesis which she finds in Gori’s essay, according to which textual variants in De vocatione omnium gentium go back to the author himself, i.e., to Prosper of Aquitaine.