Yujia Song

Marta Benenti’s book, Expressiveness: Perception and Emotions in the Experience of Expressive Objects aims to answer the question, “what does the experience of expressive inanimate objects amount to?” The task is part conceptual (i.e., what does it mean for us to have an expressive experience of an inanimate object?) and part empirical (i.e., what does this experience involve? What makes it possible?). In this review, I draw on insights from the aesthetics literature to consider Benenti’s treatment of both the conceptual and empirical questions. My discussion focuses on three issues: (a) whether core affect is sufficient for differentiating expressive qualities from other kinds of affective qualities; (b) whether our expressive experience is importantly different for different kinds of objects; and (c) whether objects can be expressive of things other than emotions.

In this paper, we caution against a sort of naive trust in science, which assumes that normative standards of scientific inquiry are upheld except in rare cases of fraud or research misconduct. Since scientists are subject to the norms and practices of the institutions that support their work, we need to look beyond individuals’ behavior to examine the institutional contexts that shape the practice of science. This paper probes into two central aspects of the scientific institution as they play out in the U.S.—peer review and grant funding. We argue that problems more pervasive and intractable than outright fraud threaten to undermine trust in science. The push for positive results by journals and funding agencies alike, coupled with institutional pressures to publish, entails a serious misalignment of goals for scientists—the kind of efficiency needed to maximize positive outputs comes at the expense of the time, effort, and discipline that good science calls for.

The COVID-19 pandemic shocked the global economy, with numerous companies suffering losses and shutting down. However, some companies proved to be resilient, being able to sustain their economic performance despite the pandemic. The study aims to explain the sustainable economic performance of companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The relationships between empowering leadership, innovative work behavior, organizational readiness to change, and sustainable economic performance were assessed. The data were collected via an online questionnaire from January 2021 to March 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia. The respondents were Russian companies’ employees holding management positions, competent to objectively assess organizational circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 337 was used in the analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with maximum likelihood estimation was conducted using SPSS AMOS. The structural model was tested with standardized parameter estimates, standard errors, and p-values calculated. The findings of the study suggest that innovative work behavior and organizational readiness to learn have a direct influence on sustainable economic performance. The findings also suggest that empowering leadership impacts innovative work behavior but not sustainable economic performance. The mediation analysis indicates that innovative work behavior is a mediator between empowering leadership and sustainable economic performance, whereas organizational readiness to learn is not a moderator. The study adds to the leadership and sustainability body of knowledge and contributes to the research on the COVID-19 pandemic in the organizational context

This paper gives a new and richer account of open-mindedness as a moral virtue. I argue that the main problem with existing accounts is that they derive the moral value of open-mindedness entirely from the epistemic role it plays in moral thought. This view is overly intellectualist. I argue that open-mindedness as a moral virtue promotes our flourishing alongside others in ways that are quite independent of its role in correcting our beliefs. I close my discussion by distinguishing open-mindedness from what some might consider its equivalent: empathy and tolerance.

A growing interest across disciplines in the nature of empathy has sparked a debate over the place of empathy in morality. Proponents are eager to capitalize on the apparent close connection between empathy and altruism, while critics point to serious problems in our exercise of empathy - we are naturally biased, empathize too much or too little, and prone to making all sorts of mistakes in empathizing. The proponents have a promising response, that it is not empathy simpliciter, but empathy in some “proper” form, that does the work they claim for it. This paper aims to propose a cautiously optimistic position for the proponent by rethinking the suggested approach. I argue that empathy plays two important roles in morality, one epistemic and the other relational, but the proponent must be careful not to exaggerate the contribution that empathy, even in its “proper” form, can make to our moral life