•  217
    Philosophy Is Not a Science
    The New York Times 1. 2012.
    The intellectual culture of scientism clouds our understanding of science itself. What’s more, it eclipses alternative ways of knowing — chiefly the philosophical — that can actually yield greater certainty than the scientific. While science and philosophy do at times overlap, they are fundamentally different approaches to understanding. So philosophers should not add to the conceptual confusion that subsumes all knowledge into science. Rather, we should underscore the fact that various discipli…Read more
  •  44
    A popular positivistic line of thinking seems to be cropping up again, declaring that the sciences are on the verge of a paradigmatic shift. One that will merge science and philosophy to finally answer all the great big questions once and for all. Questions such as What is life? What is consciousness? What makes individuals who they are? Why does our universe seem fine-tuned for our existence? How did it all begin? While such questions are undoubtedly important, the truth is, they are essentiall…Read more
  •  135
    The simulation hypothesis can reinforce a cynical dismissal of human potential. This attitude can allow online platform designers to rationalize employing manipulative neuromarketing techniques to control user decisions. We point to cognitive boosting techniques at both user and designer levels to build critical reflection and mindfulness.
  •  124
    Avoiding Anthropomoralism
    Between the Species 27 (1). 2024.
    The Montreal Declaration on Animal Exploitation, which has been endorsed by hundreds of influential academic ethicists, calls for establishing a vegan economy by banning what it refers to as all unnecessary animal suffering, including fishing. It does so by appeal to the moral principle of equal consideration of comparable interests. I argue that this principle is misapplied by discounting morally relevant cognitive capacities of self-conscious and volitional personhood as distinguished from mer…Read more
  •  439
    Beyond the Brave New Nudge: Activating Ethical Reflection Over Behavioral Reaction
    with Kristian Myrseth and David Balkin
    Academy of Management Perspectives 37 (4): 297-313. 2023.
    Behavioral intervention techniques leveraging reactive responses have gained popularity as tools for promoting ethical behavior. Choice architects, for example, design and present default opt-out options to nudge individuals into accepting preselected choices deemed beneficial to both the decision-maker and society. Such interventions can also employ mild financial incentives or affective triggers including joy, fear, empathy, social pressure, and reputational rewards. We argue, however, that et…Read more
  •  1
    Altruism’s Moral Heuristics
    In Deborah C. Poff & Alex C. Michalos (eds.), Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics, Springer Verlag. pp. 83-87. 2021.
  •  3
    Moral Self-Awareness
    In Deborah C. Poff & Alex C. Michalos (eds.), Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics, Springer Verlag. pp. 1375-1380. 2021.
  •  415
    The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the extent to which economies in the developed and developing world rely on gig workers to perform essential tasks such as health care, personal transport, food and package delivery, and ad hoc tasking services. As a result, workers who provide such services are no longer perceived as mere low-skilled laborers, but as essential workers who fulfill a crucial role in society. The newly elevated moral and economic status of these workers increases consumer dema…Read more
  •  108
    Another Thing to Worry About
    Boston Globe 20 (1). 2022.
    Use of the word “worry” is on the rise. Does that reflect our anxious time — or make it worse?
  •  377
    Michael Goldhaber, who popularized the term the attention economy, said of the US Capitol insurrection: “It felt like an expression of a world in which everyone is desperately seeking their own audience and fracturing reality in the process. I only see that accelerating.” If we don’t do something about this, American democracy may not survive. For when there is no longer any common ground of evidence and reason, history shows that misinformation will eventually overwhelm public discourse and aut…Read more
  •  180
    Compassion As a Means to Freedom
    The Humanist 59 (4): 35-39. 1999.
    To pursue the cultivation of a compassionate disposition is often perceived as an external demand, constraining one's individual freedom. Some might think of it as a necessary burden for the benefit of society, while others may exercise it only in the most convenient occasions. This most common view is gravely impoverished. Compassion is in fact a cognitive disposition with a certain historical life that actually frees us from our own perceptive constraints.
  •  166
    The Interstellar Stakes Against God
    The Humanist 1 6-8. 2015.
    Pope Francis takes the Big Bang as supplying empirical evidence for God’s existence, going so far as to credit God’s will as the force behind natural selection. So if natural selection is the emanation of divine will, then so too is what Richard Dawkins calls the “selfish gene” underlying it. The trouble is that the natural forces of self-interest may win out over the better angels of our nature, spelling disaster for the human species—and the planet sustaining it. For the drive of individual se…Read more
  •  191
    ITM's No-Tolerance Sexual Harassment Policy
    Sage Business Cases. 2018.
    This case study takes place in the context of a large corporate technology services firm. It explores the question of what constitutes sexual harassment as well as how best to draft a no-tolerance policy. The scenario examines behaviors that may or may not be considered illegal, the responsibility of all employees to foster a harassment-free environment, and what an effective no-tolerance policy might look like that minimizes possible conflicts of interest. Students are given an opportunity to r…Read more
  •  320
    This case study takes place in the context of a small urban supermarket chain. It examines the extent to which such firms should work to lower food waste on sustainability and human rights grounds. The scenario examines structural inefficiencies along the supply chain from food production to consumption, asking students to consider what power supermarkets have to correct these inefficiencies, and what ethical responsibility this may create for them to do so. Government regulations written to enc…Read more
  •  20163
    This case takes place in the context of a small to medium-sized retail clothing firm. It examines the latest trends in social media marketing technology and the potential ethical issues regarding privacy infringement and behavioral control of teenagers and young adults that such technology presents. The scenario invites students to consider how much, if at all, such marketing practices should be resisted going forward.
  •  873
    Reframing the Purpose of Business Education: Crowding-in a Culture of Moral Self-Awareness
    with Tanusree Jain
    Journal of Management Inquiry 31 (1): 15-29. 2022.
    Numerous high-profile ethics scandals, rising inequality, and the detrimental effects of climate change dramatically underscore the need for business schools to instill a commitment to social purpose in their students. At the same time, the rising financial burden of education, increasing competition in the education space, and overreliance on graduates’ financial success as the accepted metric of quality have reinforced an instrumentalist climate. These conflicting aims between social and finan…Read more
  •  690
    Capitalism After Covid: How the pandemic might inspire a more virtuous economy
    The Philosophers' Magazine 2 (89): 12-15. 2020.
    Today, dramatically increasing economic inequality, imminent climatological calamity, and a global pandemic now place the timeless debate over capitalism into stark relief. Though many seek to pin the blame on capitalism’s excesses, they would do well to recall the historical record of socialism’s deficiencies, namely, stifling innovation, lumbering inefficiency, and stagnation. Fortunately, our moral psychology affords a middle way between these two extremes. For while economic incentives have …Read more
  •  488
    Uncovering the Moral Heuristics of Altruism: A Philosophical Scale
    with Kyle Emich and Benjamin M. Cole
    PLoS ONE 15 (3). 2020.
    Extant research suggests that individuals employ traditional moral heuristics to support their observed altruistic behavior; yet findings have largely been limited to inductive extrapolation and rely on relatively few traditional frames in so doing, namely, deontology in organizational behavior and virtue theory in law and economics. Given that these and competing moral frames such as utilitarianism can manifest as identical behavior, we develop a moral framing instrument—the Philosophical Moral…Read more
  •  381
    A Ghost Workers' Bill of Rights: How to Establish a Fair and Safe Gig Work Platform
    with David Balkin and Ramiro Montealegre
    California Management Review 62 (2). 2020.
    Many of us assume that all the free editing and sorting of online content we ordinarily rely on is carried out by AI algorithms — not human persons. Yet in fact, that is often not the case. This is because human workers remain cheaper, quicker, and more reliable than AI for performing myriad tasks where the right answer turns on ineffable contextual criteria too subtle for algorithms to yet decode. The output of this work is then used for machine learning purposes to generate algorithms construc…Read more
  •  873
    AI Can Help Us Live More Deliberately
    MIT Sloan Management Review 60 (4). 2019.
    Our rapidly increasing reliance on frictionless AI interactions may increase cognitive and emotional distance, thereby letting our adaptive resilience slacken and our ethical virtues atrophy from disuse. Many trends already well underway involve the offloading of cognitive, emotional, and ethical labor to AI software in myriad social, civil, personal, and professional contexts. Gradually, we may lose the inclination and capacity to engage in critically reflective thought, making us more cognitiv…Read more
  •  45
    A Fair Wage? Capping Executive Compensation
    Journal of Business Ethics Education 7 129-139. 2010.
    This case study highlights some of the latest research on setting executive compensation at ethical levels. The board of directors of Spade’s, a mid-size U.S. hardware chain, considers altering the pay package of its incoming CEO to best align his interests with those of shareholders and stakeholders. Students are invited to consider various options on current trends, which seem attractive and convincing on the surface, but might present certain risks over the longer term. Five compensation comp…Read more
  •  284
    Ideation and Appropriation: Wittgenstein on Intellectual Property
    Law and Critique 12 (2): 185-199. 2001.
    This paper provides a critique of the contemporary notion of intellectual property based on the consequences of Wittgenstein's “private language argument”. The reticence commonly felt toward recent applications of patent law, e.g., sports moves, is held to expose erroneous metaphysical assumptions inherent in the spirit of current IP legislation. It is argued that the modern conception of intellectual property as a kind of natural right, stems from the mistaken internalist or Augustinian picture…Read more
  •  38
    Notre etude se concentre principalement sur la "seconde philosophie" de Wittgenstein pour developper d'avantage le theme deja central depuis sa "premiere philosophie", selon lequel l'ethique et l'esthetique sont transcendentales. Nous etudions ainsi les relations entre l'esthetique, la signification et la valeur en reempruntant la methode de l'analyse linguistique par experiences de pensee, dont wittgenstein se servait pour devoiler les erreurs fatales du projet positiviste. Nous montrons que ce…Read more
  •  302
    Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Ethical Value
    Ethic@ - An International Journal for Moral Philosophy 5 (1): 91-102. 2006.
    This paper develops Wittgenstein’s view of how experiences of ethical value contribute to our understanding of the world. Such experiences occur when we perceive certain intrinsic attributes of a particular being, object, or location as valuable irrespective of any concern for personal gain. It is shown that experiences of ethical value essentially involve a characteristic ‘listening’ to the ongoing transformations and actualizations of a given form of life—literally or metaphorically speaking. …Read more
  •  544
    Expanding the Motivations for Altruism: A Philosophical Perspective
    Journal of Organizational Behavior 34 (8). 2013.
    We argue that attempts to extrapolate moral motives for non-egoistic behavior in organizational behavior often interpret results empathically or deontically, while leaving other moral motivational frames, such as the utilitarian and virtue ethical, under-examined. We encourage the creation of experimental measures to distinguish various philosophical frames.
  •  814
    From Homo-economicus to Homo-virtus: A System-Theoretic Model for Raising Moral Self-Awareness
    with Benjamin M. Cole
    Journal of Business Ethics 155 (1): 191-205. 2019.
    There is growing concern that a global economic system fueled predominately by financial incentives may not maximize human flourishing and social welfare externalities. If so, this presents a challenge of how to get economic actors to adopt a more virtuous motivational mindset. Relying on historical, psychological, and philosophical research, we show how such a mindset can be instilled. First, we demonstrate that historically, financial self-interest has never in fact been the only guiding motiv…Read more
  •  213
    Wittgenstein and the Challenge of Global Ethics
    In Claus Dierksmeier, Michael Pirson, Wolfgang Amann, Heiko Spitzeck & Ernst von Kimakowitz (eds.), Humanistic Ethics in the Age of Globality, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 210-22. 2011.
    This paper describes Wittgenstein's pre-theoretical transcendentalist conception of ethics and the challenge it presents for the kind of global cosmopolitan perspective required of any multinational social responsibility strategy. It is argued that this challenge can be overcome through establishing a sense of solidarity with all stakeholders via a corporate social compact rooted in what Wittgenstein refers to as spontaneous agreement and sympathy. Contemporary examples of successful strategies …Read more