The Philosophical Scandal of the Wrong Kind of Religious Disagreement

I argue for the following four theses: (1) The Dread Thesis: human beings should fear having false religious beliefs concerning some religious doctrines; (2) The Radical Uncertainty Thesis: we, namely most human beings in our culture at our time, are in a situation where we have to commit ourselves on the truth or falsity of some propositions of ultimate importance; (3) The Radical Choice Thesis: considerations of expected loss or gain do not always provide guidance as to how to commit ourselves on matters of religious doctrine that are both radically uncertain and of ultimate importance; (4) The Scandal Thesis: radical choice on matters of ultimate importance is neither good nor inevitable, but due to the collective failure of philosophers of religion. Then I consider some inadequate responses: playing the faith card; contra-Pascalian decision theory; spiritual chauvinism; that faith presupposes uncertainty; the older pachyderm; irony, subjectivity, relativism and non-cognitivism; tainted truth; and muddling through. Finally I submit that the way forward is quite simply to become better philosophers.

Disagreement and Dispute

In this paper, I will trace a distinction between two different ways of thinking about doxastic conflicts. The first way emphasises what is going on at the level of semantics, when two subjects disagree by uttering certain sentences or accepting certain contents. The second way emphasises some aspects that are epistemic in kind, which concern what subjects are rationally required to do whenever they disagree with someone. The semantics-oriented and epistemically-oriented notions will serve for the purpose of assessing some aspects of the debate that revolves around the notions of disagreement on matters of inclination. These aspects include: (i) the idea that disagreements in areas of inclination are somehow defective (Egan 2010); (ii) the idea that Relativism makes disagreement epistemically insignificant (Carter 2013); (iii) the idea that there can be faultless disagreements in which faultlessness is epistemic in kind (Schafer 2011).     

The Servant Leadership Survey: Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Measure

Purpose  

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and validation of a multi-dimensional instrument to measure servant leadership.     

The Impact of Organizational Culture on Attraction and Recruitment of Job Applicants

Purpose  

This research examined how job pursuit and application decisions of male and female job applicants are impacted by beliefs about the organization’s culture.     

Relationship Quality and Purchase Intention and Behavior: The Moderating Impact of Relationship Strength

Purpose  

The purpose of this study was to investigate the link between perceived relationship quality, purchase intention and behavior, and the moderating role of relationship strength.     

Escalation of Commitment: The Effect of Number and Attractiveness of Available Investment Alternatives

Purpose  

The purpose of this study was to examine the hypothesis that decision difficulty increases the likelihood of commitment to a failing project (escalation). The hypothesis was based on findings regarding status quo bias. Three aspects of decision difficulty were tested: equivalence of options, option set size and attractiveness structure of the alternatives.     

Emotional Exhaustion Among Employees Without Social or Client Contact: The Key Role of Nonstandard Work Schedules

Purpose  

The current study examines emotional exhaustion and its predictors among employees without social or client contact on multiple nonstandard shifts.     

The relationship between numerical mapping abilities,maths achievement and socioeconomic status in 4- and 5-year-old children

Background

Early numeracy skills are associated with academic and life-long outcomes. Children from low-income backgrounds typically have poorer maths outcomes, and their learning can already be disadvantaged before they begin formal schooling. Understanding the relationship between the skills that support the acquisition of early maths skills could scaffold maths learning and improve life chances.

Aims

The present study aimed to examine how the ability of children from different SES backgrounds to map between symbolic (Arabic numerals) and non-symbolic (dot arrays) at two difficulty ratios related to their math performance.

Sample

Participants were 398 children in their first year of formal schooling (Mean age = 60 months), and 75% were from low SES backgrounds.

Method

The children completed symbolic to non-symbolic and non-symbolic to symbolic mapping tasks at two difficulty ratios (1:2; 2:3) plus standardized maths tasks.

Results

The results showed that all the children performed better for symbolic to non-symbolic mapping and when the ratio was 1:2. Mapping task performance was significantly related to maths task achievement, but low-SES children showed significantly lower performance on all tasks.

Conclusion

The results suggest that mapping tasks could be a useful way to identify children at risk of low maths attainment.     

The ethics of clinical innovation in psychopharmacology: Challenging traditional bioethics

Objective  

To assess the scientific and ethical basis for clinical innovation in psychopharmacology.     

Millennials and the World of Work: The Impact of Obesity on Health and Productivity

Purpose  

Thirty states now report one in three children between 10–17 years of age are either overweight or obese. This disturbing trend will have lasting implications for our children, specifically those known as the Millennial generation born between 1982 and 1993.     

The Effect of Terminologies on Attitudes Toward Advertisements and Brands: Consumer Product Knowledge as a Moderator

Purpose  

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between advertisement terminology and consumer product knowledge in the attitudes toward advertisements and brands.     

The Multidimensional Nature of Continuance Commitment: Commitment Owing to Economic Exchanges Versus Lack of Employment Alternatives

Purpose  

The purpose of this investigation was to develop a multidimensional measure of continuance organizational commitment, specifying dimensions for continuance commitment based on the perception of beneficial economic exchanges versus the perception of low job alternatives.     

A Multilevel Investigation of Missing Links Between Transformational Leadership and Task Performance: The Mediating Roles of Perceived Person-Job fit and Person-Organization Fit

Purpose  

This study explores whether follower perceived need-supply (N-S) job fit, demand-ability (D-A) job fit, and person-organization (P-O) fit mediate the relationships between individual-level, unit-level transformational leadership (TFL), and follower task performance.     

The Effectiveness of Self-Managed Work Teams in Government Organizations

Purpose  

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of self-managed work teams in government organizations. The article discussed three distinct indicators to organizational effectiveness: participant satisfaction, goal attainment, and system resources.     

The Alignment of Measures and Constructs in Organizational Research: The Case of Testing Measurement Models of Creativity

Purpose  

Organizational creativity research has a curious misalignment between construct definitions and measurement model specifications—definitions embrace multiple facets, but empirical measures do not. The purpose of this study was to examine potential measurement model misspecification in organizational creativity research. We compare whether creativity is best assessed as a unidimensional common latent construct model with reflective indicators or as a multi-dimensional composite latent construct model with formative indicators.     

The experience of counselling for UK egg providers

Objective

The aim of this study was to address current gaps in knowledge regarding the appropriateness and quality of counselling provided to egg donors in the UK.

Methods

The present study used a cross-sectional, qualitative design. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 29 UK egg donors to explore their experiences of egg donation and the counselling received.

Results

Of the 29 participants, 24 had received counselling. The remaining five did not receive counselling because they were either not accepted as a donor (n = 4) or were offered, but chose not to take up the session (n = 1). The findings are presented in relation to five themes: feeling supported via counselling; feeling well-informed; welcoming an individualised approach; the counselling setting; and thinking about the future.

Conclusion

Egg donors in this study had varying experiences of counselling offered to them as part of the egg donation process in the UK.

Implications

The findings indicate that there are some aspects of counselling in the UK that could be improved, including the routine offering of counselling throughout the egg donation process and the tailoring of counselling to meet egg donors' individual needs.     

How Benefit Information and Demographics Influence Employee Recruiting in Mexico

Purpose  

To examine the impact of benefit information in recruitment advertisements on job pursuit intentions.     

Intuition, Inference, and Rational Disagreement in Ethics

This paper defends a moderate intuitionism by extending a version of that view previously put forward and responding to some significant objections to it that have been posed in recent years. The notion of intuition is clarified, and various kinds of intuition are distinguished and interconnected. These include doxastic intuitions and intuitive seemings. The concept of inference is also clarified. In that light, the possibility of non-inferential intuitive justification is explained in relation to both singular moral judgments, which intuitionists do not take to be self-evident, and basic moral principles, which they typically do take to be self-evident in a sense explicated in the paper. This explanation is accomplished in part by drawing some analogies between moral and perceptual judgments in the light of a developmental conception of knowledge. The final section of the paper presents a partial account of rational disagreement and indicates how the kind of intuitionist view defended can allow for rational disagreement between apparent epistemic peers.

The ethics of everyday practice in primary medical care: responding to social health inequities

Background  

Social and structural inequities shape health and illness; they are an everyday presence within the doctor-patient encounter yet, there is limited ethical guidance on what individual physicians should do. This paper draws on a study that explored how doctors and their professional associations ought to respond to the issue of social health inequities.     

Effects of Retail Store Image Attractiveness and Self-Evaluated Job Performance on Employee Retention

Purpose  

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of store image attractiveness and self-evaluated job performance on internal job satisfaction and organizational commitment.