Knowing Thyself

ruffin_darden ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 93-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leda Cosmides ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cheater Detection ◽  
True Diversity ◽  
Cognitive Foundations ◽  
Diversity In The Workplace

“Ought” cannot be derived from “is,” so why should facts about human nature be of interest to business ethicists? In this article, we discuss why the nature of human nature is relevant to anyone wishing to create a more just and humane workplace and society. We begin by presenting evolutionary psychology as a research framework, and then present three examples of research that illuminate various evolved cognitive programs. The first involves the cognitive foundations of trade, including a neurocognitive mechanism specialized for a form of moral reasoning: cheater detection. The second involves the moral sentiments triggered by participating in collective actions, which are relevant to organizational behavior. The third involves the evolved programs whereby our minds socially construct groups, and how these can be harnessed to reduce racism and foster true diversity in the workplace. In each case, we discuss how what has been learned about these evolved programs might inform the study and practice of business ethics.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Lewens
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Potential Functions ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The Third ◽  
Current State ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Compare And Contrast

Many evolutionary theorists have enthusiastically embraced human nature, but large numbers of evolutionists have also rejected it. It is also important to recognize the nuanced views on human nature that come from the side of the social sciences. This introduction provides an overview of the current state of the human nature debate, from the anti-essentialist consensus to the possibility of a Gray’s Anatomy of human psychology. Three potential functions for the notion of species nature are identified. The first is diagnostic, assigning an organism to the correct species. The second is species-comparative, allowing us to compare and contrast different species. The third function is contrastive, establishing human nature as a foil for human culture. The Introduction concludes with a brief synopsis of each chapter.

scholarly journals Review of The Natural and the Human: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1739-1841 [by Stephen Gaukroger]

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Abou-Nemeh
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Human Science ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Scientific Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Third ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Oxford University Press

This compelling and erudite book examines the emergence of the human sciences in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and explores the rise of sensibility in studies of human nature and behavior. The Natural and the Human is the third installment of Stephen Gaukroger’s massive project that investigates the ways in which scientific values were consolidated into a dominant program of inquiry and shaped notions of modernity in the West from the thirteenth century onward. (The first two volumes, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture and The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility, were published by Oxford University Press in 2006 and 2010, respectively.) <br>

Environmental Justice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dirk Hanschel ◽  
Elizabeth Steyn
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Moving Target ◽  
World Views ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
The Third ◽  
Ontological Sense

This chapter deals with the evolving quest to attain environmental justice. It demonstrates that there are many facets and manifestations of environmental justice—a concept that sits at the junction of legal doctrine and anthropological realities. Amalgamating these two perspectives permits us to capture examples of such injustices and to analyse how law responds to them. This investigation into environmental justice adopts a three-pronged approach. The first section, ‘The meaning and origins of “environmental justice”’, contemplates the emergence and rise of the environmental justice movement, as well as disruptions and innovations in the ontological sense of the concept itself. The second section, ‘Litigating environmental justice’, lays out concrete facets of environmental justice from a classic anthropocentric viewpoint in a schematically organized format. Four dimensions of environmental justice litigation are delineated. In the third part of the chapter, ‘Expanding environmental justice’, we consider more holistic or ecocentric applications of environmental justice, most notably Indigenous world views and the potential recognition of the rights of nature. We conclude that environmental justice is a moving target—it can mean different things to different people in different contexts, and is constantly adapting to new realities. As topics such as climate change or loss of biodiversity show, the human–nature relationship is, indeed, among the most pressing issues of our time. Environmental justice is, therefore, likely to gain even more importance in the coming decades, and further interdisciplinary research will be required to understand what that justice may entail in very concrete and variegated circumstances.

The Tension Between Human and Cyborg Ethics

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-35
Author(s):  
Anne Gerdes
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Decision Processes ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Regulatory Body ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Human Costs

This article makes no argument against progress but stresses the importance of making it with foresight. The connection between biotechnology, treatment, and enhancement is discussed, stating the need for regulation. Next, the ideas of transhumanism are presented as a framework for an examination of our human condition and it is illustrated that cyborgs will possibly develop other values than Homo sapiens. Thus, the second part of the article discusses what it means to be an ethical being from the perspective of Francis Fukuyama’s ideas of the importance of human nature to our humanity, and further elaborated on by bringing attention to the significance of the vulnerability to moral reasoning. Furthermore, the article suggests a near connection between embodiment and morality. In the light of this assumption, one can ask about ethical values and democratic cohesion in a world with sub-cultures of cyborgs. Thus, John Rawls’ theory of justice is introduced as a framework for reflections about inter-human costs of a posthuman condition. It is concluded that science need democratic regulation, in order to avoid technocratic decision processes, and guidelines for a regulatory body is given.

Teaching Biopolitics in a Professional Curriculum

1986 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick G. O'Hara
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Public Organizations ◽  
Public Administrators ◽  
Graduate Study ◽  
Graduate Teaching ◽  
Decision Making Processes

This article considers the ways in which teachers of public administration can address biopolitical issues within an established professional curriculum. The author distinguishes between the teleological and instrumental aspects of a belief system, holding that biobehavioral explanation can be pedagogically useful and can provide public administrators with a model for assessing and responding to workplace phenomena. The article proposes that undergraduate and graduate teaching impose different standards on an instructor seeking to introduce biobehavioral and biostructural concepts. The different standards arise out of the explicit and focused career instrumentality of graduate study in public administration, as well as age graded differences in receptivity to particular propositions about human nature. Finally, this article details some ways in which biobehavioral explanation can be introduced in organizational behavior classes and in classes that consider the structure of public organizations and their decision-making processes.

Three new species of chydorid cladocerans of subfamily Aloninae (Branchipoda: Anomopoda: Chydoridae) from Brazil

Zootaxa ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2390 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARTEM Y. SINEV ◽  
LOURDES M. A. ELMOOR-LOUREIRO
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
The Body ◽  
Basal Segment ◽  
The Third ◽  
Australian Species ◽  
True Diversity ◽  
Three New Species ◽  
Head Pores ◽  
Lateral Head ◽  
South Brazil

Three new species of Aloninae cladocera from Central and South Brazil are described. Two of them, Acroperus tupinamba sp. n. and Alona yara sp. n., were previously recorded from the area as European taxa Acroperus harpae (Baird, 1834) and Alona quadrangularis (O.F. Müller, 1776), respectively. Acroperus tupinamba differs from the other species of Acroperus in smaller size, long posterior setae of the valves, shorter and wider postabdomen, short setules near the base of postabdominal claw, long apical spines of antenna, and peculiar morphology of limb IV exopodite. Alona yara differs from A. quadrangularis and A. kolweizii Van Damme & Dumont, 2008 in the number of ventral setules on ventral face of limb I, from A. boliviana Sinev et Coronel, 2006 in the shape of the body and postabdomen, narrow labral keel, and absence of projections on epipodites IV–V. The third new species, Celsinotum candango sp.n. differs from all other species of the genus in proportions of postabdomen. It differs from Australian species (C. hypsophilum Frey, 1991, C parooensis Frey, 1991, and C. platamoides Frey, 1991) in a less developed dorsal keel, lateral head pores located close to midline, longer spine on basal segment of antennal exopodite, and in the presence of extremely large projections on exopodites IV–V. Celsinotum candango differs from Brazilian C. laticaudatum Smirnov & Santos-Silva, 1995 in a shorter spine on basal segment of antenna exopodite, in the shape of postabdomen and in morphology of postabdominal denticles. At present, Aloninae fauna of Brazil includes 35 species, and true diversity is undoubtedly higher, with more new species to be expected in the country.

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