Sandra B. Rosenthal

The Empirical-Normative Split in Business Ethics: A Pragmatic Alternative

The empirical-normative split in business ethics is another manifestation of the fact-value problem that has existed between science and philosophy for several centuries. This paper explores classical American pragmatisms understanding of the fact-value distinction, showing how it offers a different way of understanding the empirical business ethics-normative business ethics issue. Unfolding the pragmatic perspective on this issue involves a focus on its understanding of both the nature of empirical inquiry and the nature of normative inquiry.

Pragmatism and phenomenology : a philosophic encounter

In the philosophic world today, pragmatism and phenomenology can be found standing at a crossroad. Though each has arrived there via divergent paths and for very different reasons, the direction that each takes in the future may be significantly influenced by the suggestions the other has to offer. The intention of this book is to parallel the two positions in such a way that basic points of convergence and divergence are noted and accounted for in terms of their systematic significance. Each position is presented in such a manner that philosophers engrossed in one movement can enter into the other in a way which allows a real encounter to develop.

Toward a New Understanding of Moral Pluralism

The current literature in business ethics is tending toward an unacknowledged moral pluralism, with all the problems this position entails. An adequate moral pluralism cannot be achieved by a synthesis of existing theoretical alternatives for moral action. Rather, what is needed is a radical reconstruction of the understanding of the moral situation that undercuts some of the traditional dichotomies, provides a solid philosophical grounding which is inherently pluralistic, and offers a new understanding of what it is to think morally. The philosophical position of American pragmatism, as briefly sketched in this paper, offers one such possible reconstruction.

Theoretical Foundations of Public Policy A Pragmatic Perspective

Many theoretical developments in the business and society field do not pay enough attention to the policy environment in which business functions and through which corporate behavior is largely shaped to respond to social problems. Part of this problem may be due to the lack of a firm philosophical foundation for public policy providing legitimacy for the concept in relation to the market system. American pragmatism offers such a foundation and overcomes many of the tensions between the market and public policy by puffing the concept of the individual and community in proper perspective.

THE SPIRITUAL CORPORATION: A PRAGMATIC PERSPECTIVE

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in a developing school of thought called spirituality in business. While this movement houses a diversity of particular viewpoints and definitions of spirituality, they are all attempting in one way or another to articulate a sacred attitude toward life which can be separated from any theistic beliefs. However, the various characterizations found in the current literature converge in a general understanding of spirituality (distinct from religions beliefs) as informing a sense of right and wrong and permeating one’s mode of existing in the world. Spirituality generally centers upon a desire by individuals to be their best, to help others be their best, and to feel a sense of connectedness with others and a sense of sacredness in their actions and in the world. Thus, spirituality involve a pervasive mode of behavior or mode of action that displays concerns with bettering oneself and others in the context of community and involves a sense of sacredness that extends to the world in general.

Technology and Business: Rethinking the Moral Dilemma

In a market economy, the corporation is the primary institution through which new technologies are introduced. And the corporation, being primarily interested in economic goals, may ask very limited questions about the safety and workability of a particular technology. This viewpoint causes problems which manifest themselves in many cases where the concerns of engineers and technicians in corporations about decisions relating to a particular technology clash with managers prone to overlooking these concerns in favor of organizational interests. The problem can be seen as a structural one that is inherent in the capitalistic system. It can also be seen as an organizational or policy problem that requires changes in the organization to give engineers more authority in decision-making or to facilitate whistle-blowing on the part of engineers or technicians. In this paper, we take the view that problems surrounding the misuse of technology lie in a lack of understanding of technologys inherently social and moral dimensions. Technology creates a moral situation, and this situation should provide the context for decision-making. Technology is also experimental, and everyone involved with introducing a particular technology needs to ask the question as to whether a real life experiment is warranted. Finally, technology demands a moral sensibility which recognizes that business interests and technological interests alike need to be understood in the network of concrete relational contexts in which they are embedded.

Ethics, economics, and service: Changing cultural perspectives

Financial services, the media, and health care are each considered to be a service industry, but recently have become more dominated by economic concerns. This change is part of a larger perception concerning the nature of “the economic system”, one which can be viewed from successive conceptual shifts among three major moral perspectives by which economic concerns gradually gained an independent stature. A present emerging moral paradigm can restore the economic system to the rich relational context from which it has been falsely and destructively abstracted, showing that neither “the economic system” nor the institutions embedded within it can be separated from humanistic and service concerns.

Plant citing and environmental conflict: A case study

This paper is based on a case study involving construction of a new petrochemical plant near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the controversy surrounding its location. The paper will explore ethical issues raised by this plant, utilizing a pragmatic perspective that differs from traditional ethical frameworks. In developing and exploring the implications of this case, the complexities of its moral dimensions will be discussed, as well as the way the insights of classical American pragmatism provide a useful orientation for trying to come to grips with these complexities.

Contemporary Perspectives and the Functioning of Trace

The notion of trace has taken on a central role in contemporary philosophy and religious thought, bringing it to the fore in the understanding of both the living present and language. Traces are constitutive of signs in the same way that the protentions and retentions as traces are constitutive of the living present. And the different understandings by various thinkers of the role of traces in the living present demand different understandings of the role of trace in signs. Thus Derrida’s view of trace in relation to the living present and to sign will be found to differ essentially from the shared view presented by Mead’s pragmatic and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective, in accordance with their different understandings of the constitution of the living present. In clarifying this relation, however, it will prove beneficial for the sake of clarity to procede, at least initially, from trace in signs to trace in the living present which governs the former.

Mead and Merleau-Ponty: Meaning, Perception, and Behavior

Mead’s pragmatic focus on habit as the foundation of meaning is usually viewed in sharp contrast with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological examination of meaning within experience. The explicit focus of each philosopher’s position, however, is latent within that of the other. And, nowhere is this more manifest than in their similar understandings of the relation between the meanings which inform human perception and the structure of human behavior. The ensuing discussion will take up first Mead’s understanding of this relation.