scholarly journals Thought Experiments and Philosophy in Organizational Research

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 263178772094252
Author(s):  
Martin Kornberger ◽  
Saku Mantere

Organization theory seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand, there are arguments that the field is too preoccupied with theory, leaving its work abstract and practically irrelevant. On the other hand, there are arguments that the field is overly empirical and too methods-driven, which hampers the creation of ideas that resonate with constituencies beyond the organization studies community. How to resolve this apparent conundrum? In this essay we argue that neither more theorizing nor more forensic data-driven work might address the problem; rather, and perhaps surprisingly, we propose that a philosophical stance might offer a remedy. The aim of this essay is (1) to explore thought experiments as a genuine philosophical method that is designed to develop promising ideas and concepts and (2) to reflect on how such conceptual work can help shape organization theory to be conceptually more stimulating and practically more relevant. We argue that this particular kind of conceptual work has been and should continue to be one of the hallmarks of organization theory. Thus thought experiments represent a valuable methodological extension of our toolkit as they provide crucial devices triggering transformations in thought and practice.

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-135
Author(s):  
Igor Berestov

We analyze contemporary thought experiments with some Zeno objects and infinity machines. On the one hand, we continue to analyze the examples from Hawthorne, 2000, pointing out the incompleteness of our comprehension of the examples from this paper. On the other hand, using a mode of reasoning associated with that of Hawthorne, 2000, we show how Zeno of Elea’s Dichotomy can be made immune to its traditional refutation.


2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 80-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dietmar H. Heidemann

In the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel states that ‘philosophy … contains the sceptical as a moment within itself — specifically as the dialectical moment’ (§81, Addition 2), and that ‘scepticism’ as ‘the dialectical moment itself is an essential one in the affirmative Science’ (§78). On the one hand, the connection between scepticism and dialectic is obvious. Hegel claims that scepticism is a problem that cannot be just removed from the philosophical agenda by knock-down anti-sceptical arguments. Scepticism intrinsically belongs to philosophical thinking; that is to say, it plays a constructive role in philosophical thinking. On the other hand, scepticism has to be construed as the view according to which we cannot know whether our beliefs are true, i.e., scepticism plays a destructive role in philosophy no matter what. It is particularly this role that clashes with Hegel's claim of having established a philosophical system of true cognition of the entirety of reality. In the following I argue that for Hegel the constructive and the destructive role of scepticism are reconcilable. I specifically argue that it is dialectic that makes both consistent since scepticism is a constitutive element of dialectic.In order to show in what sense scepticism is an intrinsic feature of dialectic I begin by sketching Hegel's early view of scepticism specifically with respect to logic and metaphysics. The young Hegel construes logic as a philosophical method of human cognition that inevitably results in ‘sceptical’ consequences in that it illustrates the finiteness of human understanding. By doing so, logic not only nullifies finite understanding but also introduces to metaphysics, i.e., the true philosophical science of the absolute.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franco Masciandaro

The principal aim of this study is to participate in the current renewed discourse on the meaning of friendship, initiated in 1994 by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida with his Politics of Friendship, by combining the philosophical method of inquiry with the hermeneutical approach to poetic representations of friendship in the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, and the Decameron. It examines friendship not only as the unique love between two persons based on familiarity and proximity, but as the love for the one who is far away, the stranger, for this is a natural extension of the implicit love of the distant other, of the other-as-stranger – what Emmanuel Levinas has called "the infinity of the Other" – which is concealed in our friend, and which, in the words of Maurice Blanchot, puts us "authentically in relation" with him or her.


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 1084
Author(s):  
Stefano Garlaschi ◽  
Anna Fochesato ◽  
Anna Tovo

Recent technological and computational advances have enabled the collection of data at an unprecedented rate. On the one hand, the large amount of data suddenly available has opened up new opportunities for new data-driven research but, on the other hand, it has brought into light new obstacles and challenges related to storage and analysis limits. Here, we strengthen an upscaling approach borrowed from theoretical ecology that allows us to infer with small errors relevant patterns of a dataset in its entirety, although only a limited fraction of it has been analysed. In particular we show that, after reducing the input amount of information on the system under study, by applying our framework it is still possible to recover two statistical patterns of interest of the entire dataset. Tested against big ecological, human activity and genomics data, our framework was successful in the reconstruction of global statistics related to both the number of types and their abundances while starting from limited presence/absence information on small random samples of the datasets. These results pave the way for future applications of our procedure in different life science contexts, from social activities to natural ecosystems.


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 15-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birgit Ludwig ◽  
Daniel König ◽  
Nestor D. Kapusta ◽  
Victor Blüml ◽  
Georg Dorffner ◽  
...  

Abstract Methods of suicide have received considerable attention in suicide research. The common approach to differentiate methods of suicide is the classification into “violent” versus “non-violent” method. Interestingly, since the proposition of this dichotomous differentiation, no further efforts have been made to question the validity of such a classification of suicides. This study aimed to challenge the traditional separation into “violent” and “non-violent” suicides by generating a cluster analysis with a data-driven, machine learning approach. In a retrospective analysis, data on all officially confirmed suicides (N = 77,894) in Austria between 1970 and 2016 were assessed. Based on a defined distance metric between distributions of suicides over age group and month of the year, a standard hierarchical clustering method was performed with the five most frequent suicide methods. In cluster analysis, poisoning emerged as distinct from all other methods – both in the entire sample as well as in the male subsample. Violent suicides could be further divided into sub-clusters: hanging, shooting, and drowning on the one hand and jumping on the other hand. In the female sample, two different clusters were revealed – hanging and drowning on the one hand and jumping, poisoning, and shooting on the other. Our data-driven results in this large epidemiological study confirmed the traditional dichotomization of suicide methods into “violent” and “non-violent” methods, but on closer inspection “violent methods” can be further divided into sub-clusters and a different cluster pattern could be identified for women, requiring further research to support these refined suicide phenotypes.


2000 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-44
Author(s):  
Tünde Éva Polonyi

A két- és többnyelvuek információtárolása és  feldolgozása vitatott téma: egyes kutatók szerint ez olyan kognitív alrendszerek segítségével történik, amelyek tartalmazzák az emlékezeti képzeteket is és beszélt nyelveikkel állnak kapcsolatban, viszont funkcionálisan függetlenek egymástól (a függetlenség hipotézise); egy másik modell szerint (az egymástól való függés hipotézise) a különálló lingvisztikai rendszerek funkcionálisan kötodnek egy olyan közös fogalmi rendszerhez, ami egyben a megosztott memóriatároló is. Kísérletem célja az volt, hogy egyetlen vizsgálatban, különbözo bevésési stratégiákat és elohívási feladatokat alkalmazva olyan teljesítménymintákat mérjek fel, amelyeket egyik vagy másik modell alátámasztására szoktak felhozni; ezenkívül a fejlodési hipotézist is vizsgálom.Magyar–román–angol háromnyelvuek vettek részt a vizsgálatban két csoportba osztva. Hipotézisem szerint az angolt nehézkesebben beszélok teljesítménye egy adatvezérlésu szókiegészítési feladatnál a függetlenégi hipotézist kell hogy alátámassza, azonban eredményeim azt mutatták, hogy az adat vezérlésu és fogalmi vezérlésu feldolgozás itt együtt jelentkezik; a szabad felidézési feladat ered ményei a nyelvtol való függetlenség hipotézisét támasztották alá, a felismerési feladat eredményei pedig szintén a két típusú feldolgozás kombinációját mutatták. Az angolt folyékonyabban beszélo alanyok esetében nem találtam szignifikáns különbségeket a különbözo bevésési stratégiák között, ami újabb bizonyítékot jelent Kroll és Stewart (1994) modellje mellett. A nehézkesebben beszélo háromnyelvuek tehát a lexikális- és fogalmi közvetítés kombinációját mutatták, és csak a gyakorlott beszélokre jellemzo a tiszta fogalmi közvetítés. Általános következtetésem az, hogy a leghasznosabb kutatási paradigma egy olyan transzfer-központú szemlélet lenne, amelyben a megorzési próbákon való teljesítmény olyan mértékben javul, amilyen mértékben a teszt által megkövetelt eljárások megismétlik a bevésési eljárásokat.Bilinguals’ information-representation and -processing is a controversial theme among psycholinguists: According to some researchers bilinguals have cognitive subsystems linked to their known languages, which include the memory stores, as well, but they are functionally independent from each other (independence position). On the other hand, the interdependence position maintain that bilinguals represent words in a supralinguistic code, possibly based on the meanings of the words, that is independent of the language in which the words occurred. According to the developmental hypothesis second language learners start only with lexical associations, but gradually develop direct links between the second language lexicon and concepts.The aims of my study were: 1) to measure performance patterns, which are usually taken to reflect the one or the other model, in one experiment, using different retrieval tasks under identical encoding conditions; 2) to examine the developmental hypothesis by using less fluent and more fluent trilinguals.        The subjects of my study were Hungarian–Romanian–English trilinguals, divided into two groups. According to my hypothesis, in the case of the less fluently speakers of English, a mostly data-driven task such as word fragment completion would depend on the matching of language at study and test, thus supporting the independence hypothesis. However, my results showed that in the case of this task both the data-driven and conceptually-driven processing is present: not only the language of study was important, but the increasing elaborate processing during study, as well. The results of the free recall task, as predicted, revealed evidence for interdependence effects. Finally, the recognition task showed again the combination of the two kind of processing: data-driven and conceptually-driven processing. The more fluent subjects, in turn, could face all the conditions and all the tasks almost equally well, suggesting that they mediate their languages entirely conceptually. In sum, we can tell that in the mind of the multilingual words are organised on the basis of meaning, not language. At very early stage of language acquisition, however, language specific cues intrude, even when subjects are concentrating upon meaning.My general conclusion is that the most useful research paradigm would be a transfer appropriate approach, according to which the performance on the retention tasks benefit to the extent to which procedures demanded by the task repeat those employed during encoding.


Author(s):  
Jesús Zavala-Ruiz

The intention of this chapter is twofold. On the one hand, I illustrate the complexity of the small software organization, because it is not a reduced version of a large company. Rather, it has very important advantages and challenges. Then, I use organization studies as a multi-disciplinary and multi-paradigmatic link between disciplines, able to reconcile those distinct visions. On the other hand, I open the discussion on the state of crisis affecting software engineering as a discipline. For that, I try to sensitize the reader to the facts surrounding this crisis, but also to the most promising alternative, which is the redefinition of software engineering as a discipline. One of the possible options for that paradigmatic change requires a multi-disciplinary orientation because their positivist roots and the adoption of a constructivist ontology and epistemology facilitating the inclusion of visions non-qualified for a systematic, disciplined and quantitative approach. My position is that only by opening up this discussion is it possible to begin transforming and consolidating software engineering as a strengthened and more terrain-attached discipline because of its powerful theoretical and practical explanatory capacity.


Organization ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Kenny ◽  
Marianna Fotaki

In this article, we propose a new way of approaching the topic of ethics for management and organization theory. We build on recent developments within critical organization studies that focus on the question of what kind of ethics is possible in organizational contexts that are inevitably beset by difference. Addressing this ‘ethics of difference’, we propose a turn to feminist theory, in which the topic has long been debated but which has been underutilized in organization theory until very recently. Specifically, we draw on the work of Bracha Ettinger to re-think and extend existing understandings. Inspired by gender studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy and art, Ettinger’s work has been celebrated for its revolutionary re-theorization of subjectivity. Drawing on a feminist ethics of the body inspired by psychoanalysis, she presents a concept of ‘trans-subjectivity’. In this, subjectivity is defined by connectedness, co-existence and compassion towards the other, and is grounded in what Ettinger terms the ‘matrixial borderspace’. An ethics of organization derived from the concept of the matrixial suggests that a different kind of ethical relation with the Other is possible. In this article, we demonstrate this through examining the issue of gender in the workplace. We conclude by outlining the implications of this perspective for rethinking ethics, embodiment and gender, and in particular for the development of a corporeal ethics for organization studies.


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marga Reimer

Recent experimental studies appear to discredit Gricean accounts of irony and metaphor. I argue that appearances are decidedly misleading here and that Gricean accounts of these figures of speech are actually confirmed by the studies in question. However, my primary aim is not so much to defend Gricean accounts of irony and metaphor as it is to motivate two related points: one substantive and one methodological. The substantive point concerns something Grice suggests in his brief remarks on irony: that the interpretation of an ironical (vs. metaphorical) utterance requires two distinct applications of second-order theory of mind (ToM). I argue that such a view has considerable explanatory power. It can explain an intuitive contrast between irony and metaphor, some interesting data on the ToM abilities of patients with schizophrenia, and some intuitive similarities between irony on the one hand and hyperbole and meiosis on the other. The methodological point concerns the relationship between the empirical psychologist’s (or experimental philosopher’s) experimental studies and the armchair philosopher’s thought-experiments. I suggest that the credibility of an experimentally supported claim is enhanced when it captures the reflective judgments captured in the armchair philosopher’s thought-experiments.


2017 ◽  
pp. 259-288
Author(s):  
Christian Schneider

Frédéric Bastiat was a great economist1 and writer, but most of all, he deserves everlasting fame as an educator. His 1850 essay «The Broken Window»2 teaches an unforgettable lesson. Unforgettable, on the one hand, because it is humiliating: humiliating to realize that one had not grasped an idea so simple yet so crucial for a basic understanding of economics. Unforgettable, on the other hand, be-cause once we have learned to «turn the mind’s eye to those hid-den consequences of human actions, which the bodily eye does not see» (Bastiat [1850] 2011a, 43), an intriguing journey of discovery begins. It has rightly been called «the one lesson»3 to which all economics can be reduced: to think through not only the visible and immediate consequences of human action and interaction, but also the unseen effects: those which are not yet seen, and those which will never be seen because they would follow only from an alternative course of action.4 Another sign of Bastiat’s excellence is that he was the first econ-omist to make extensive use of thought experiments with one or a few actors only, named, and sometimes ridiculed as, «Robinson Crusoe economics». In the imaginary laboratory of the desert is-land, we are free to set arbitrary conditions. In particular, we can construct the simplest version of any problem, where the essential features stand out most clearly. Simple scenarios, as Henry Hazlitt ([1946] 2008, 91) notes, «are ridiculed most by those who most need them, who fail to understand the particular principle illustrated even in this simple form, or who lose track of that principle com-pletely when they come to examine the bewildering complications of a great modern economic society». These complications can be mastered best by extending the analysis step by step from one ac-tor to a higher number, until real-world complexity is sufficiently approximated.5 When Bastiat was writing his last work That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen, he was suffering from a terminal illness closing in on him. We can only speculate what form it might have taken and how much more he could have achieved, had he been granted more time. But what is obvious in the work he did is the importance of Crusoe scenarios and of that which remains unseen. The thought experiments presented in what follows merely com-bine these two ideas. Thus, this essay is deeply inspired by Basti-at’s way of thinking, and hopes to do honor to his inspiration.


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