THE APPLICATION OF CONSISTENCY OF TREATMENT IN DISMISSALS FOR MISCONDUCT

Fairness in employment necessitates that the employer apply consistent disciplinary standards in the workplace, so that employees who commit the same or similar disciplinary infraction are treated equally. The Code of Good Practice: Dismissal (in Schedule 8 of the Labour Relations Act 55 of 1995) sets out a range of guidelines to be applied by the employer before a decision to dismiss an employer may be taken. It seeks to protect employees from arbitrary action by the employer in order to achieve a measure of employment justice. Employers must therefore apply the rules of the workplace consistently by effecting discipline against all employees accountable for similar misconduct, and also by applying the same sanction for similar infractions. The principle of consistent treatment of employees is referred to as the “parity principle”. It provides that employees who participate in the same or similar wrongdoing, with no distinguishing factors from one case to another, should be penalized in the same way. The foundation of the principle lies in the notion that similar cases must be treated in a similar fashion. It is based on the principle of reasonableness in that fairness in the workplace requires the application of reasonable rules, and not arbitrary or irrational opinions of the employer. Reasonable rules will reflect generality and equality and invariably lead to legal certainty, and a failure by the employer to apply those standards consistently may lead to a finding that the employer acted unfairly in dismissal disputes. In addition to the requirement of consistency, an employer is required to consider a range of other factors before taking the decision to dismiss an employee. These include the gravity of the misconduct; the nature of the work performed by the employee; the circumstances under which the infraction occurred; and the employee’s personal circumstances which may relate to the previous disciplinary record of the employee; his/her length of service and the employee’s personal circumstances. The consideration of these circumstances often leads to a tension between applying the requirement of consistency on the one hand, and the need to take into account the specific circumstances of the employee and circumstances of the misconduct. This comment explores the different approaches adopted by the courts in determining whether or not inconsistent treatment by the employer justifies a finding that the dismissal of an employee was unfair in view of the obligation to take into account the other factors required in the Code. These issues often arise in circumstances where an employee is dismissed by an employer and claims that the employer acted unfairly because other employees were given less severe sanctions for the same or similar misconduct. In deciding the fairness of the matter, the courts have drawn a distinction between individual misconduct and collective misconduct. Historical inconsistency is generally applied in cases of individual misconduct, whilst contemporaneous inconsistency is applied in circumstances of collective misconduct.

Cognitive Enhancement

According to the parity principle, the means whereby an agent intervenes in his or her mind, or the minds of others, is irrelevant when it comes to assessing the moral status of the intervention: what matters is how the intervention affects the agent. This chapter sets out the case for the parity principle, before defending it from recent objections due to Christoph Bublitz and Reinhard Merkel. Bublitz and Merkel argue that direct interventions bypass agents’ psychological capacities and therefore produce states over which agents have less control and which are less reflective of who they genuinely are. I argue that indirect interventions that are processed psychologically may be no less destructive of control or of the degree to which the resulting states are reflective of the agent and, further, that direct interventions may be morally unproblematic. Given that right now and for the foreseeable future indirect interventions threaten our autonomy far more often and far more deeply than direct, the distinction between direct and indirect interventions doesn’t even provide a useful heuristic for assessing when an intervention into the mind/brain is problematic.

AFTER PARITY. A MIXED METHODS STUDY ON GENDER BIAS IN THE VOLUME OF MEDIA COVERAGE OF ELECTORAL CAMPAIGNS

The absence of gender bias in the media coverage of political campaigns is one of the elements of the much sought after political participation of women. In this respect, Mexico is an interesting case as its legal framework has transitioned in a few years to include a mandated parity principle. In this study, we examine the relationship between the volume of coverage and gender to determine if there were gender differences in the radio coverage of local elections in Mexico (2012-2015). Findings show lower average shares of coverage for women after the increase in female candidates mandated by the parity principle. Semi-structured interviews conducted with journalists and former candidates suggest that the gender bias may reflect adverse attitudes towards female newcomers benefitted by the parity law, and gender differences in campaign resources, candidate placement criteria, and candidates’ political experience.

Embodied AI beyond Embodied Cognition and Enactivism

Over the last three decades, the rise of embodied cognition (EC) articulated in various schools (or versions) of embodied, embedded, extended and enacted cognition (Gallagher’s 4E) has offered AI a way out of traditional computationalism—an approach (or an understanding) loosely referred to as embodied AI. This view has split into various branches ranging from a weak form on the brink of functionalism (loosely represented by Clarks’ parity principle) to a strong form (often corresponding to autopoietic-friendly enactivism) suggesting that body–world interactions constitute cognition. From an ontological perspective, however, constitution is a problematic notion with no obvious empirical or technical advantages. This paper discusses the ontological issues of these two approaches in regard to embodied AI and its ontological commitments: circularity, epiphenomenalism, mentalism, and disguised dualism. The paper also outlines an even more radical approach that may offer some ontological advantages. The new approach, called the mind-object identity, is then briefly compared with sensorimotor direct realism and with the embodied identity theory.

Building Inner Tools

Andy Clark has convincingly argued that the tools that we as humans recruit become integrated parts of an extended cognitive system that includes us as just one component. In this chapter, a Reversed Parity Principle is outlined, which can be used to show how humans can “hack” their own minds in order to build inner mental tools, thus changing our existing cognitive abilities in yet another way. The Reversed Parity Principle (RRP) invites a perspectival shift that is potentially as illuminating as the extended mind shift. Whereas extended mind arguments invite us to think of ourselves as broader, wider, and larger than we might otherwise, the RPP invites us to consider the strangeness and otherness that lies within what would normally be considered to be “us.”