Accidental Truth and Accidental Justification

The presence of accidentality in a subject's holding a belief is generally thought to be incompatible with that belief7apos;s being an instance of know-ledge. Epistemologists have tended to focus on the accidentality of the truth of a belief. I argue (a) that it is also possible that there be accidentality in the justification of a belief, and (b) that the consequences of this type of accidentality are potentially much more harmful than accidentality only in the truth of a belief.     

Workplace violence and workplace aggression: Evidence on their relative frequency and potential causes

Recent news reports have focused attention on dramatic instances of workplace violence—extreme acts of aggression in work settings. It is suggested here that such actions, while both tragic and frightening, are only a small part of a much larger problem of workplace aggression—efforts by individuals to harm others with whom they work or the organizations in which they are employed. The present study investigated two major hypotheses with respect to such aggression: 1) contrary to what media reports suggest, most aggression occurring in work settings is verbal, indirect, and passive rather than physical, direct, and active; 2) recent changes in many organizations (e.g., downsizing, increased workforce diversity) have generated conditions that may contribute to the occurrence of workplace aggression. A survey of 178 employed persons provided partial support for both predictions. Verbal and passive forms of aggression were rated as more frequent by participants than physical and active forms of aggression. In addition, the greater the extent to which several changes had occurred recently in participants' organizations, the greater the incidence of workplace aggression they reported. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Social roles and the moral judgement of acts and omissions

Three experiments investigated how moral judgements of harmful acts and omissions are affected by information about social roles. Subjects were given vignettes in which the relationship between an actor and victim was varied along the dimensions of solidarity (e.g. friends versus strangers) and hierachy (e.g. superior versus equal; the terms are from Hamilton & Sanders, 1981). Subjects were asked to judge the morality of the actor in each case, both for a harmful omission (e.g. intentionally withholding the truth) and for an equivalent act (e.g. actively lying). Subjects judged the behaviour worse in the act than the omission. Judgements were also affected by role relationships. The act–omission difference was also greater in the low-responsibility roles. Responses to the high-responsibility roles seem to reflect in a consequentialist perspective, focusing on outcomes rather than prohibitions.     

Temporal Fictionalism for a Timeless World

Current debate in the metaphysics of time ordinarily assumes that we should be realists about time. Recently, however, a number of physicists and philosophers of physics have proposed that time will play no role in a completed theory of quantum gravity. This paper defends fictionalism about temporal thought, on the supposition that our world is timeless. We argue that, in the face of timeless physical theories, realism about temporal thought is unsustainable: some kind of anti-realism must be adopted. We go on to provide an argument against eliminativism about temporal thought. While it doesn't follow from this argument that fictionalism about temporal thought is true, we suggest that this nonetheless shows that fictionalism should be regarded as the preferred view.     

Shame and Shamelessness

What is the relation between shame and shamelessness? It may seem obvious: shamelessness is simply the absence of shame. But on reflection, it becomes clear that the story is considerably more complicated. Michelle Mason's intriguing "On Shamelessness" prompts such reflection (albeit unintentionally). Mason argues that we should be mindful of the "moral importance of shame" and "unapologetic in its defense" (403), and she does so via an examination of shamelessness and an argument to the effect that shamelessness is (with some exceptions) a moral fault. The tacit assumption is that insofar as shamelessness is a moral fault, the value of shame is vindicated. I challenge that assumption.