The rationalism in Anil Gupta’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Empiricism and Experience</Emphasis>

In these comments I briefly discuss three aspects of the empiricist account of the epistemic role of experience that Anil Gupta develops in his Empiricism and Experience. First, I discuss the motivations Gupta offers for the claim that the given in experience should be regarded as reliable. Second, I discuss two different ways of conceiving of the epistemic significance of the phenomenology of experience. And third, I discuss whether Gupta’s account is able to deliver the anti-skeptical results he intends it to. I close by suggesting that, once fully fleshed out, Gupta’s account is best understood in terms of the fusion of certain core ideas within both the empiricist and the rationalist traditions.     

The paradox of the question

What is the best question to ask an omniscient being? The question is intriguing; is it also paradoxical? We discuss several versions of what Ned Markosian calls “the paradox of the question” and suggest solutions to each of those puzzles. We then offer some practical advice about what do if you ever have the opportunity to query an omniscient being.     

HOW LEADER–MEMBER EXCHANGE INFLUENCES EFFECTIVE WORK BEHAVIORS: SOCIAL EXCHANGE AND INTERNAL–EXTERNAL EFFICACY PERSPECTIVES

In this article, we propose and test an integrative theory of leader–member exchange (LMX) that extends our understanding of the mechanisms affecting LMX and important organizational outcomes. We argue that LMX enhances job performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) through 2 sets of processes. As a result of a social exchange process, high LMX managers encourage reciprocal obligations. These obligations are manifested as subordinate commitment to their supervisors. This commitment, in turn, prompts more OCBs and higher job performance. Through a second process, high LMX supervisors enhance their subordinates’ self‐efficacy and means efficacy, thereby improving job performance. Results of a field study support our predictions. Theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

LEADERSHIP IN ACTION TEAMS: TEAM LEADER AND MEMBERS’ AUTHENTICITY,AUTHENTICITY STRENGTH,AND TEAM OUTCOMES

A field study was conducted with 47 Army action teams spanning 9 weeks to assess the influence of team leader authenticity on team authenticity and team outcomes. Results showed that team leader authenticity at Time 1 predicted teamwork behavior and team productivity at Time 3, with these relationships mediated by team authenticity at Time 2. We further explored the moderating role of authenticity strength in the team authenticity–teamwork behavior relationship. Team authenticity interacted with authenticity strength such that the team authenticity–teamwork behavior relationship was stronger when authenticity strength was higher rather than lower. Implications of these findings for theories of shared leadership, team leadership, and authentic leadership are discussed.     

Moral principles as moral dispositions

What are moral principles? In particular, what are moral principles of the sort that (if they exist) ground moral obligations or—at the very least—particular moral truths? I argue that we can fruitfully conceive of such principles as real, irreducibly dispositional properties of individual persons (agents and patients) that are responsible for and thereby explain the moral properties of (e.g.) agents and actions. Such moral dispositions (or moral powers) are apt to be the metaphysical grounds of moral obligations and of particular truths about what is morally permissible, impermissible, etc. Moreover, they can do other things that moral principles are supposed to do: explain the phenomena “falling within their scope,” support counterfactuals, and ground moral necessities, “necessary connections” between obligating reasons and obligations. And they are apt to be the truthmakers for moral laws, or “lawlike” moral generalizations.     

Lucky agents,big and little: should size really matter?

This essay critically examines Alfred R. Mele’s attempt to solve a problem for libertarianism that he calls the problem of present luck. Many have thought that the traditional libertarian belief in basically free acts (where the latter are any free A-ings that occur at times at which the past up to that time and the laws of nature are consistent with the agent’s not A-ing at that time) entail that the acts are due to luck at the time of the act (present luck) rather than to the kind of agent control required for genuinely free, morally responsible action. While libertarians frequently have tried to rebut the claim that basically free acts are due to present luck, Mele argues for the daring thesis that they should embrace present luck rather than try to explain it away. His strategy is to argue that the assumption of present luck in the decisions of very young children (or “little agents”) does not preclude us from attributing to them a small amount of moral responsibility and that this makes it possible to conceive of moral development as a gradual process in which as the frequency of the indeterministically caused free actions increases, the agents take on greater and greater moral responsibility. In this paper I give several possible reconstructions of Mele’s argument and analyze in detail why none of them succeeds.     

On the meaning of the question “How fast does time pass?”

In this paper I distinguish interpretations of the question ``How fast does time pass?’’ that are important for the debate over the reality of objective becoming from interpretations that are not. Then I discuss how one theory that incorporates objective becoming—the moving spotlight theory of time—answers this question. It turns out that there are several ways to formulate the moving spotlight theory of time. One formulation says that time passes but it makes no sense to ask how fast; another formulation says that time passes at one second per supersecond; and a third says that time passes at one second per second. I defend the intelligibility of this final version of the theory.