Can Competition Ever be Fair? Challenging the Standard Prejudice

In this paper, we challenge the usual argument which says that competition is a fair mechanism because it ranks individuals according to their relative preferences between effort and leisure. This argument, we claim, is very insufficient as a justification of fairness in competition, and we show that it does not stand up to scrutiny once various dynamic aspects of competition are taken into account. Once the sequential unfolding of competition is taken into account, competition turns out to be unfair even if the usual fairness argument is upheld. We distinguish between two notions of fairness, which we call U-fairness, where U stands for the usual fairness notion, and S-fairness, where S stands for the sequential aspect of competition. The sequential unfairness of competition, we argue, comprises two usually neglected aspects connected with losses of freedom: first of all, there is an eclipse of preferences in the sense that even perfectly calculating competitors do not carry out a trade-off between effort and ranking; and second, competitive dynamics leads to single-mindedness because the constraints on the competitors choices always operate in the sense of increased competitiveness and, therefore, in the direction of an increased effort requirements. We argue (1) that competition is S-unfair even if it is U-fair, (2) that as S-unfairness increases, the ethical relevance of U-fairness itself vanishes, so that (3) by focusing as they usually do on U-fairness alone, economists neglect a deeper aspect of unfairness.     

Lying and intersubjective truth: A communication based approach to understanding lying

This project was undertaken as a response to a perceived deficiency regarding the role of communication in a large block of the phenomenological discourse on lying. The arguments presented here attempt to make the communication process an explicit, rather than an implicit component of this discussion. First, a lie is explained as a communicative act that is identified by making a simple comparison between two contradictory realities, the reality presented by the lie, and some sort of true reality. Existing discussions of lying are examined and judged to be deficient because they limit their explanations of this true reality to subjective and objective standards of truth. Intersubjectivity is presented as an alternative truth standard, and it is argued that lies can only be discovered and understood through a process of interpretation or negotiation (dialogue) by human interactants.     

Suffering without subjectivity

This paper argues that it is possible for suffering to occur in the absence of phenomenal consciousness – in the absence of a certain sort of experiential subjectivity, that is. (Phenomenal consciousness is the property that some mental states possess, when it is like something to undergo them, or when they have subjective feels, or possess qualia.) So even if theories of phenomenal consciousness that would withhold such consciousness from most species of non-human animal are correct, this neednt mean that those animals dont suffer, and arent appropriate objects of sympathy and concern.     

Simmel on Happiness

The article gives an overview of Simmel's thought on happiness between the 1890s and 1918. The focus is on the effects of Simmel's general orientation towards the Lebensphilosophie, especially via his reception of Nietzsche. Throughout his writings Simmel displays a distance against traditional views of happiness as an aim of action. Within the framework of Lebensphilosophie happiness becomes a quality of essentially lived life (or, following Nietzsche, heightened life). As a consequence, Simmel's concept of happiness tends to emphasize connotations of felicity, and can therefore be interpreted as a modern, secularized variant of traditional beatitudo.     

Internationalizing 360-Degree Feedback: Are Subordinate Ratings Comparable?

ABSTRACT: This study addressed whether 360-degree feedback ratings made by subordinates are equivalent across national cultures (Great Britain, Hong Kong, Japan, U.S.). Employees ratings of their leaders were collected via a companys existing 360-degree feedback survey. A two-factor baseline model was developed using exploratory factor analysis and tested across cultures utilizing confirmatory factor analysis techniques. Results revealed differences in factor form, suggesting that the constructs underlying the survey and their relationship to the survey items differed across cultures. These results emphasize the need for multinational companies to use caution when transporting human resources practices, such as 360-degree feedback, to international locations.The author would like to express appreciation to Alice Stuhlmacher for her valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. This research was conducted as part of the authors doctoral dissertation. Portions of this article were presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, April 2002.     

Formulation of Policy and Strategy in Developing Creativity Education in Four Asian Chinese Societies: A Policy Analysis

The present study sought to compare and contrast educational policies on creativity education in four Asian Chinese societies, namely mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. It establishes five criteria on creativity education policy, including policies regarding legislation on creativity education, definitions of creativity, standard implementation, explicit identification of special populations of creative students, and creativity education in the community. Among the four societies, Taiwan has an official document — the White Paper on Creative Education published in 2003 — whereas in Hong Kong and Singapore, creativity has been identified as an ability to be nurtured in students of all levels in their national curriculum reform. In mainland China, innovation is regarded as a synonym for creativity. Definitions of creativity have at times not been clearly defined, although multiple levels of creativity development (individual, school, societal, industrial, and cultural) have been discussed in Taiwan. In Hong Kong, creativity has been defined as a generic skill in various key learning areas (e.g., language education, mathematics education, science education, etc.) in the school curriculum. In Singapore, creativity is a learning outcome to be developed in students. None of these societies use standard creativity assessment tests as evidence of creative competence in students. When creativity has entered the central stage in the curriculum reform and creativity education is made available to every student, efforts have been made to identify highly creative students and provide them enrichment opportunities, mainly using performance assessments and performance in creativity competitions in these societies. But mainland China, Hong Kong, and Singapore do not sufficiently emphasize creativity education in the larger community.     

Husserl and Nagel on subjectivity and the limits of physical objectivity

Thomas Nagel argues that the subjective character of mind inevitably eludes philosophical efforts to incorporate the mental into a single, complete, physically objective view of the world. Nagel sees contemporary philosophy as caught on the horns of a dilemma – one either follows phenomenology in making all objective phenomena subjective, or one follows physicalism in making all subjective phenomena objective. He contends that both approaches lead to different but equally untenable forms of idealism and suggests that we currently lack the forms of understanding required to tackle the question of how to relate the subjective and objective aspects of experience. This paper draws a number of positive comparisons between Nagel's position on subjectivity and that of the later Husserl. It is argued that Nagel is wrong to dismiss phenomenology as idealist, thus clearing the way for a plausible Husserlian interpretation of his position. Husserl's more developed treatment of the relationships between subjectivity and objectivity can be employed to clarify, strengthen and elaborate Nagel's claims in a number of ways. However, the comparison also serves to show that Nagel does not go far enough in his critique of physical objectivism. The paper concludes by remarking on the continuing relevance of some central Husserlian themes as a critique of and positive alternative to deeply sedimented objectivist assumptions currently prevalent in Anglo-American philosophy.     

Natural deduction rules for English

A system of natural deduction rules is proposed for an idealized form of English. The rules presuppose a sharp distinction between proper names and such expressions as the c, a (an) c, some c, any c, and every c, where c represents a common noun. These latter expressions are called quantifiers, and other expressions of the form that c or that c itself, are called quantified terms. Introduction and elimination rules are presented for any, every, some, a (an), and the, and also for any which, every which, and so on, as well as rules for some other concepts. One outcome of these rules is that Every man loves some woman is implied by, but does not imply, Some woman is loved by every man, since the latter is taken to mean the same as Some woman is loved by all men. Also, Jack knows which woman came is implied by Some woman is known by Jack to have come, but not by Jack knows that some woman came.     

False Consensus and Adolescent Peer Contagion: Examining Discrepancies between Perceptions and Actual Reported Levels of Friends’ Deviant and Health Risk Behaviors

Adolescents perceptions of their friends behavior strongly predict adolescents own behavior, however, these perceptions often are erroneous. This study examined correlates of discrepancies between adolescents perceptions and friends reports of behavior. A total of 120 11th-grade adolescents provided data regarding their engagement in deviant and health risk behaviors, as well as their perceptions of the behavior of their best friend, as identified through sociometric assessment. Data from friends own report were used to calculate discrepancy measures of adolescents overestimations and estimation errors (absolute value of discrepancies) of friends behavior. Adolescents also completed a measure of friendship quality, and a sociometric assessment yielding measures of peer acceptance/rejection and aggression. Findings revealed that adolescents peer rejection and aggression were associated with greater overestimations of friends behavior. This effect was partially mediated by adolescents own behavior, consistent with a false consensus effect. Low levels of positive friendship quality were significantly associated with estimation errors, but not overestimations specifically.     

Finitude and Hume’s Principle

The paper formulates and proves a strengthening of Freges Theorem, which states that axioms for second-order arithmetic are derivable in second-order logic from Humes Principle, which itself says that the number of Fs is the same as the number ofGs just in case the Fs and Gs are equinumerous. The improvement consists in restricting this claim to finite concepts, so that nothing is claimed about the circumstances under which infinite concepts have the same number. Finite Humes Principle also suffices for the derivation of axioms for arithmetic and, indeed, is equivalent to a version of them, in the presence of Freges definitions of the primitive expressions of the language of arithmetic. The philosophical significance of this result is also discussed.     

Family-of-Origin Predictors of Hostile Conflict in Early Marriage*

This study used data from 367 married couples to examine the relationship between select family-of-origin variables measured during engagement and hostile marital conflict measured 4–7 years later. Each spouse completed family-of-origin measures from the PREParation for Marriage questionnaire during their engagement. Four to seven years later, they completed a measure of hostile marital conflict involving insults, name calling, unwillingness to listen, and lack of emotional involvement. Wives mother–child relationship and the quality of parental discipline, as well as the husbands perceived quality of their parents marriage, were predictive of wives perception of hostile conflict in their marriages. Only wives quality of parental discipline was predictive of husbands perception of hostile marital conflict. Implications for premarital counseling and marital therapy are discussed.This is a revised version of a poster presented at the Annual Conference of the National Council on Family Relations, Irvine, California, November, 1999.     

Parent–child relationships during the divorce process; from attachment theory and intergenerational perspective

This study examined four possible predictors of parental satisfaction in the first year after divorce: Attachment style, parenting style, perception of own parents parenting, and the ex-spouses assessment of the quality of the parents parenting. Findings among 49 divorced couples showed that the mothers satisfaction was anchored in themselves and their behavior, fathers satisfaction in their perceptions of their mothers and ex-wives. Among mothers, the less dismissing their attachment style and the greater the centrality of the child in their parenting style, the more satisfaction they tended to report. Among fathers, greater satisfaction was predicted by more education, perception of their own mother as less overprotective, and their perception of their ex-wifes approval of the quality of their fathering.     

Spiritual Beliefs and Barriers Among Managed Care Practitioners

Purpose: Ninety percent of American adults believe in God and 82% pray weekly. A majority wants their physicians to address spirituality during their health care visit. However, clinicians incorporate spiritual discussion in less than 20% of visits. Our objectives were to measure clinician beliefs and identify perceived barriers to integrating spirituality into patient care in a statewide, primary care, managed care group. Methods: Practitioners completed a 30-item survey including demographics and religious involvement (DUREL), spirituality in patient care (SPC), and barriers (BAR). We analyzed data using frequencies, means, standard deviations, and ANOVA. Findings: Clinicians had a range of religious denominations (67% Christian, 14% Jewish, 11% Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist, 8% agnostic), were 57% female and 24% had training in spirituality. Sixty-six percent reported experiencing the divine. Ninety-five percent felt that a patients spiritual outlook was important to handling health difficulties and 68% percent agreed that addressing spirituality was part of the physicians role. Ninety-five percent of our managed care group noted 8lack of time as an important barrier, lack of training was indicated by 69%, and 21% cited fear of response from administration. Conclusions: Managed care practitioners in a time constrained setting were spiritual themselves and believed this to be important to patients. Respondents indicated barriers of time and training to implementing these beliefs. Comparing responses from our group to those in other published surveys on clinician spirituality, we find similar concerns. Clinician education may overcome these barriers and improve ability to more fully meet their patients expressed needs regarding spirituality and beliefs.*This material has previously been presented as an abstract at the Culture and End of Life Conference, Association of Medical Colleges Spirituality, Kansas City, MO, September 12–14, 2002.Project supported by the Foundation for Spirituality in Medicine, Baltimore, MD     

Contextualism and the Skeptic: Comments on Engel

Mylan Engels paper (2004) is divided into two parts: a negative part, criticizing the costs of contextualism and a constructive part proposing a noncontextualist resolution of the skeptical problem. I will only address the constructive part here. The constructive part is composed of three elements: (i) a reconstruction or reformulation of the original skeptical argument, which draws on the notion of epistemic possibility (e-possibility), (ii) a distinction between two senses of knowledge (and two corresponding kinds of e-possibility): fallibilistic and infallibilistic, and (iii) an argument which tries to hoist the skeptic by their own petard, namely the closure principle (CP). As I will argue, there are two ways to understand Engels anti-skeptical argument. Only in one interpretation does the argument depend on the proposed reconstruction of the skeptical argument in terms of e-possibility. But this version of the argument is unsound. More importantly, the skeptic has a strong prima facie objection at her disposal, which applies to both interpretations of the argument. If this objection is valid, Engels argument does not hold. But once it is invalidated, his argument is superfluous.     

The Dancing Philosopher

This excerpt from Kenneth Kings essay, The Dancing Philosopher, traces its genesis from Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra (a work that greatly impacted Isadora Duncans founding of modern dance) that, in tandem with the emerging technology of the writing machine (typewriter), camera and kinetoscope (cinematography), conjoined the kinetropic and lexigraphemic to inaugurate the kinetic cogito. Maurice Merleau-Pontys phenomenological exposition of corporeality further amplified the reflexive potential of movement and the philosophical understanding of kinesthesia, and King cites as well the technosophic synergy of John Cages and Merce Cunninghams long artistic collaboration that furthered the frontier of a mind-body epistemic.     

Tarski and the Metalinguistic Liar

I offer an interpretation of a familiar, but poorly understood portion of Tarskis work on truth – bringing to light a number of unnoticed aspects of Tarskis work. A serious misreading of this part of Tarski to be found in Scott Soames Understanding Truth is treated in detail. Soamesreading vies with the textual evidence, and would make Tarskis position inconsistent in an unsubtle way. I show that Soames does not finally have a coherent interpretation of Tarski. This is unfortunate, since Soames ultimately arrogates to himself a key position that he has denied to Tarski and which is rightfully Tarskis own.     

Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology: What’s the Question?

Alvin Plantingas Warranted Christian Belief is without questionone of the central texts of the Reformed epistemology movement. Critiques of Plantingas defence have been both multiple and varied. As varied as these responses are, however, it is my contention that many of them amount to the same thing. It is the purpose of this paper to offer an overview of the main lines of attack that have been directed as Plantingas project, and thereafter to show how many, if not most, of these objections can be understood as versions or aspects of the same criticism, what I call the Inadequacy Thesis.     

Mathematical quantum theory I: Random ultrafilters as hidden variables

The basic purpose of this essay, the first of an intended pair, is to interpret standard von Neumann quantum theory in a framework of iterated measure algebraic truth for mathematical (and thus mathematical-physical) assertions — a framework, that is, in which the truth-values for such assertions are elements of iterated boolean measure-algebras (cf. Sections 2.2.9, 5.2.1–5.2.6 and 5.3 below).The essay itself employs constructions of Takeuti's boolean-valued analysis (whose origins lay in work of Scott, Solovay, Krauss and others) to provide a metamathematical interpretation of ideas sometimes considered disparate, heuristic, or simply ill-defined: the collapse of the wave function, for example; Everett's many worlds'-construal of quantum measurement; and a natural product space of contextual (nonlocal) hidden variables.More precisely, these constructions permit us to write down a category-theoretically natural correlation between ideal outcomes of quantum measurements u of a universal wave function, and possible worlds of an Everett-Wheeler-like many-worlds-theory.The universal wave function, first, is simply a pure state of the Hilbert space (L ₂([0, 1]) ^M in a model M an appropriate mathematical-physical theory T, where T includes enough set-theory to derive all the analysis needed for von Neumann-algebraic formulations of quantum theory.The worlds of this framework can then be given a genuine model-theoretic construal: they are random models M(u) determined by M-random elements u of the unit interval [0, 1], where M is again a fixed model of T.Each choice of a fixed basis for a Hilbert space H in a model of M of T then assigns ideal spectral values for observables A on H (random ultrafilters on the range of A regarded as a projection-valued measure) to such M-random reals u. If is the universal Lebesgue measure-algebra on [0, 1], these assignments are interrelated by the spectral functional calculus with value 1 in the boolean extension (V( )) ^M , and therefore in each M(u).Finally, each such M-random u also generates a corresponding extension M(u) of M, in which ideal outcomes of measurements of all observables A in states are determined by the assignments just mentioned from the random spectral values u for the universal position-observable on L ₂([0, 1]) in M.At the suggestion of the essay's referee, I plan to draw on its ideas in the projected sequel to examine more recent modal and decoherence-interpretations of quantum theory, as well as Schrödinger's traditional construal of time-evolution. A preliminary account of the latter — an obvious prerequisite for any serious many-worlds-theory, given that Everett's original intention was to integrate time-evolution and wave-function collapse — is sketched briefly in Section 5.3. The basic idea is to apply results from the theory of iterated measure-algebras to reinterpret time-ordered processes of measurements (determined, for example, by a given Hamiltonian observable H in M) as individual measurements in somewhat more complexly defined extensions M(u) of M.In plainer English: if one takes a little care to distinguish boolean- from measure-algebraic tensor-products of the universal measure-algebra L, one can reinterpret formal time-evolution so that it becomes internal to the universal random models M(u).     

A Principled Solution to Fitch’s Paradox

To save antirealism from Fitchs Paradox, Tennant has proposed to restrict the scope of the antirealist principle that all truths are knowable to truths that can be consistently assumed to be known. Although the proposal solves the paradox, it has been accused of doing so in an ad hoc manner. This paper argues that, first, for all Tennant has shown, the accusation is just; second, a restriction of the antirealist principle apparently weaker than Tennants yields a non-ad hoc solution to Fitchs Paradox; and third, the alternative is only apparently weaker than, and even provably equivalent to, Tennants. It is thereby shown that the latter is not ad hoc after all.     

The history of philosophy in contemporary philosophy: The view from Germany

Conclusion I have frequently mentioned objective problems and topics in the preceding sections. But what exactly is the force of objective here? As my remarks should have made clear I have been using objective to contrast with purely historical. A purely historical approach never gets beyond reproduction, commentary, and interpretation. I call an approach objective when it involves a philosopher who advances his own theses and claims.This minimal understanding of objectivity (in the context of my remarks in this paper) by no means implies that there are problems and topics, systems of concepts, methods, and similar factors that are eternal, completely independent of the contingencies of history (of philosophy, of the sciences), that are not relative to a language, to a logic, to a model, etc. Indeed whether there are problems, etc., in just this absolute, atemporal sense is itself a question for systematic philosophy. It seems clear that the formulation of a problem can only take place against a cognitive background of some sort and within some conceptual scheme.³⁴ Such an assumption is made by most if not all analytic philosophers. But the fact that a philosophical tradition recognizes conceptual schemes does not make it a purely historical, non-objective philosophy, in the sense already introduced and described. A philosopher who explicitly accepts a certain conceptual scheme proceeds in an entirely objective and systematic (and not purely historical) manner when, within this framework, he formulates his own theses.This paper is the text of a talk. the title is due to Barry Smith.