This chapter advances understanding of person–environment misfit by framing it through self-regulation theory and goal hierarchies. The authors argue that misfit reflects a discrepancy between internal standards and external conditions, and that people are motivated to reduce such discrepancies through cognitive, affective, and behavioural regulation. Integrating self-regulation and person–environment fit research, the chapter develops a hierarchical model that distinguishes misfit at three levels: top (value or ideological incongruence), middle (interpersonal and relational dissimilarity), and bottom (skill or task mismatch). Each level (...) elicits distinct forms of self-regulatory response, from sensemaking and identity negotiation to interpersonal adjustment and task adaptation. The authors demonstrate that misfit is not inherently negative but may generate constructive outcomes, such as innovation or learning, depending on its level and content. By mapping misfit within a goal hierarchy, the chapter provides a unifying framework linking individual motivation, emotion, and behaviour to environmental correspondence. This approach explains why some employees endure, reinterpret, or even embrace misfit while others disengage or exit. Overall, it contributes a theoretically integrative perspective that connects multilevel experiences of misfit with fundamental self-regulatory processes shaping work attitudes and outcomes. (shrink)

The debate surrounding eliminative materialism, and the role of empiricism more broadly, has been one of the more prominent philosophical debates of the last half-century. But too often what is at stake in this debate has been left implicit. This essay surveys the rhetoric of two participants in this debate, Paul Churchland and Thomas Nagel, on the question of whether or not scientific explanations will do away with the need for nonscientific descriptions. Both philosophers talk about this possibility in language (...) reminiscent of revolutionary politics. These authors do not see eliminative materialism merely as an idea to be evaluated, but a revolution to be welcomed or quashed. After surveying their rhetoric, the paper turns to the work of four philosophers—G.E.M. Anscombe, Peter Winch, Paul Holmer, and G.H. von Wright—to suggest that there is within Wittgensteinian tradition a ‘nonrevolutionary’ approach to the question of eliminative materialism. (shrink)

In his book, The Principles of Mathematics , the young Bertrand Russell abandoned the common-sense notion that the whole must be greater than its part, and argued that wholes and their parts can be similar, e.g. where both are infinite series, the one being a sub-series of the other. He also rejected the popular view that the idea of an infinite number is self-contradictory, and that an infinite set or collection is an impossibility. In this paper, I intend to (...) re-examine Russell's wisdom in doing both these things, and see if it might not have made more sense, and caused his enterprise fewer problems, if he had simply stuck to our commonplace ideas. To this end, I shall also be considering his treatment of certain paradoxes that he claims can only be resolved by the abandonment of the above notions, as well as certain others which his theories appear to have generated. (shrink)

The monumental works of Bertrand Russell and Louis Couturat have set a firm pattern of interpretation which many follow in their approach to the Philosophy of Leibniz. In the Preface to the second edition of The Philosophy of Leibniz, Russell reaffirms his contention that “Leibniz’s philosophy was almost entirely derived from his logic”. He welcomes the support provided in Couturat’s La Logique de Leibniz. Russell remarks “No candid reader—can doubt that Leibniz’s metaphysic was derived by him from (...) the subject-predicate logic. This appears, for example, from the paper ‘Primae Veritates’ where all the main doctrines of the Monadology are deduced, with terse logical rigor from the premises; ‘Always therefore the predicate or consequent adheres in the subject or antecedent, and in this fact consists the nature of truth in general—But this is true in every affirmative truth, universal or singular, necessary or contingent’.” Referring further to Couturat, he points out that in his book the “Principle of Sufficient Reason” and “The Identity of Indiscernibles” are “expressly deduced—from the analytic character of all true propositions”. In short, Russell is contending that in formulating his metaphysics Leibniz used the rigorous methods of deductive logic and employed “models” drawn from logic to construct his “picture of reality”, i.e. his metaphysics. (shrink)

Plato’s Socrates is often thought to hold that wisdom or virtue is sufficient for happiness, and Euthydemus 278-282 is often taken to be the locus classicus for this sufficiency thesis in Plato’s dialogues. But this view is misguided: Not only does Socrates here fail to argue for, assert, or even implicitly assume the sufficiency thesis, but the thesis turns out to be hard to square with the argument he does give. I argue for an interpretation of the passage that explains (...) the central importance of wisdom for Socrates without committing him to the sufficiency thesis. The result is that the Euthydemus displays a plausible but distinctively Socratic argument for making the pursuit of wisdom the central concern of one’s life. (shrink)

In De Interpretatione 6-9, Aristotle considers three logical principles: the principle of bivalence, the law of excluded middle, and the rule of contradictory pairs (according to which of any contradictory pair of statements, exactly one is true and the other false). Surprisingly, Aristotle accepts none of these without qualification. I offer a coherent interpretation of these chapters as a whole, while focusing special attention on two sorts of statements that are of particular interest to Aristotle: universal statements not made universally (...) and future particular statements. With respect to the former, I argue that Aristotle takes them to be indeterminate and so to violate the rule of contradictory pairs. With respect to the latter, the subject of the much discussed ninth chapter, I argue that the rule of contradictory pairs, and not the principle of bivalence, is the focus of Aristotle's refutation. Nevertheless, Aristotle rejects bivalence for future particular statements. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a novel argument against the claim that classical genetics is being reduced to molecular genetics. Specifically, I demonstrate that reductionists must subscribe to the unargued and problematic thesis that molecular genetics is 'independent' of classical genetics. I also argue that several standard antireductionist positions can be faulted for unnecessarily conceding the Independence Thesis to the reductionists. In place of a 'tale of two sciences', I offer a 'heroic' stance that denies classical genetics is being reduced, (...) yet sees classical and molecular genetics as fundamentally unified. (shrink)

Are people at bottom motivated entirely by self-interest? Or do they act only sometimes out of self-interest, and sometimes for other reasons—say, to help out a friend for her own sake, with no expectation of being benefitted in return? Scholars have often thought they could discern in the works of classical Greek thinkers a commitment to psychological egoism, the thesis that one is motivated to act only by considerations of the expected benefits and harms that will accrue to oneself. For (...) instance, a host of influential interpreters have taken Plato to be wedded to psychological egoism throughout his corpus. Often, the commitment is thought to run so deep that Plato rarely, if ever, manages to articulate it explicitly, let alone to examine it critically and defend it. That kind of approach obviously invites challenges, and lately there has been a small but growing resistance to the egoistic interpretation of Plato. The challenges are especially welcome given the general lack of support for psychological egoism in the present intellectual climate: egoistic readings have increasingly seemed to imply a crippling weakness in the Platonic system. (shrink)

There is a widely accepted view that one cannot reconstruct the views of the historical Socrates. The reason offered is that the two authors (Plato and Xenophon) whose literary works about Socrates have survived portray the intellectual commitments of character Socrates in fundamentally divergent ways. We challenge this by looking at one of the most fundamental of the supposed divergences—the idea that Plato’s Socrates rejects the common moral doctrine of helping friends and harming enemies while Xenophon’s Socrates openly endorses it. (...) In a comprehensive review of the evidence from Xenophon, we argue that things are not as they have seemed to readers of Xenophon’s work, and that Xenophon’s Socrates does not endorse without qualification the idea of harming enemies. Indeed, he completely rejects cases of retaliatory harm (the very cases with which Plato’s Socrates is centrally concerned) and allows for harm only in certain cases of self-defense (e.g., in warfare). Plato’s Socrates and Xenophon’s are not at all as far apart as it has seemed. (shrink)

In the Phaedo, Socrates offers recommendations for living a philosophical life. We argue that those recommendations can be properly understood only in light of Socrates’ account of the soul’s true nature, considered separately from the body. Embodiment causes the soul to diverge from its proper end, the pursuit of knowledge. Bodily pleasures, pains, and desires divert the soul to other ends, distract its attention away from knowledge, and deceive it about what is true. Socrates’ recommended solutions to these obstacles are (...) diverse, reflecting the complexities of human psychology. He recommends avoidance of bodily experiences in many cases as well as reevaluation of the importance of the body, but he doesn’t recommend either the wholesale rejection or embrace of the bodily. We are our souls but, like it or not, we are temporarily embodied, and what happens to the body is thereby experienced by us. Socrates thus exhorts us to live in a way that recognizes both our temporary humanity and our lasting, true nature. Only so can we best pursue knowledge. (shrink)

I argue that the problem of religious luck posed by Zagzebski poses a problem for the theory of hell proposed by Buckareff and Plug, according to which God adopts an open-door policy toward those in hell. Though escapism is not open to many of the criticisms Zagzebski raises against potential solutions to the problem of luck, escapism fails to solve the problem: it merely pushes luck forward into the afterlife. I suggest a hybrid solution to the problem which combines escapism (...) and the claim that God gives enough grace to those in hell to cancel out any bad moral luck. (shrink)

Since the late nineteenth century, Xenophon’s portrayal of Socrates has often been dismissed as the work of a dullard who failed to understand Socrates and whose writings mainly consist of an incoherent assemblage of barely disguised borrowings from the other Socratic writers. We resist the traditional characterization of Xenophon by examining in detail one of the longest chapters from Xenophon’s main Socratic work. It portrays a protreptic conversation between Socrates and a talented young man named ‘Euthydemus’. Scholars typically hold that (...) there is no unity to the conversation and that it shifts topics repeatedly in more or less random fashion. We argue that the conversation is carefully structured so as to bring out the relations among the main doctrines informing Socrates’ moral outlook, and that the chapter as a whole can thus be understood as a primer in Socrates’ moral philosophy. They key to appreciating the unity of the chapter is to grasp the idea of a connection between norms of justice and personal well-being—the very same connection that informed the argument of Plato’s Hippias Minor. (shrink)

At _Philebus_ 59d10–64c4, Socrates offers a recipe for the good life. His recipe reveals pure knowledge as the most important ingredient. Not only is pure knowledge valuable on its own, but it must be present for the other ingredients to make their own distinctive contributions to the good life. It determines which other ingredients are to be included, and in what manner and what amounts. The passage thus prepares the way for knowledge, and particularly pure knowledge, to be ranked ahead (...) of pleasure as most responsible for the good life. (shrink)

Jeder Gegenstand oder jedes Ereignis, inbezug auf die das Tier ein Gebaren zeigt, wird als “valent” bezeichnet, es wird gesagt, dass sie „Valenz” besitzen. Auf Grund der Analyse einer Experimentaluntersuchung vonF. Brock über die „Umwelt” des EinsiedlerkrebsesPagurus arrosor wird gezeigt, dass diese „Valenz” sich auf die Bedürfnisse des Tiers und die Beachtung durch das Tier bezieht. Die Folgerungen des Begriffs der „Valenz” werden entwickelt und die Notwendigkeit wird erwiesen, das Gebaren der Tiere in seiner Bezogenheit auf ihre eigenen Merkwelten, nicht (...) auf die unsrige, zu betrachten.L'auteur dit de chaque objet ou de chaque événement par rapport auquel l'animal montre du „behaviour”, qu'il est „valent”, qu'il possède de la „valence”. En se basant sur l'analyse des recherches expérimentales deF. Brock sur le „Umwelt” de l'hermitePagurus arrosor, l'auteur démontre que la „valence” est relative aux besoins de l'animal et à l'attention de la part de l'animal. Il développe ensuite les conséquences diverses que l'idée de „valence” implique et il prouve qu'il est nécessaire d'observer le „behaviour” de l'animal par rapport à sa propre perception et non pas par rapport à la nôtre. (shrink)

This handbook provides detailed philosophical analysis of the life and thought of Socrates across fifteen in-depth chapters. Each chapter engages with a central aspect of the rich tradition of Socratic studies and, after surveying the state of scholarship, points the way forward to new directions of interpretation. A leading team of scholars present dynamic readings of Socrates, extracted from the historical context of Plato's dialogues, covering elenchus, irony, ignorance, definitions, pedagogy, friendship, politics and the daemon. Building on these core Socratic (...) topics, this edition includes new accounts of Socrates in the work of philosopher and historian, Xenophon, the comic playwright, Aristophanes, as well as important scholarship on topics such as emotions, the afterlife, motivational intellectualism and virtue intellectualism. Fully revised and updated, the Bloomsbury Handbook of Socrates elucidates the complex landscape of Socratic thought and interpretation. (shrink)

Two studies examined the possibility that instruction in psychological methodology is committed to a philosophy of science, logical positivism, that is not adequately acknowledged and is empirically problematic. Study 1 suggested that psychology departments had more courses in methodology than corresponding physics departments, and psychology departments were far more likely to offer an introductory course in general methodology. Study 2 suggested that psychology had more introductory general methods textbooks than did physics. Both studies suggested psychology still presents itself as the (...) kind of science that was defined by logical positivism. Study 2 suggested psychology does this only implicitly in its texts and without acknowledging problematic features of that philosophy. Psychology methods texts commonly justified the importance of the scientific method by describing human cognitive fallibilities without cautioning that these same fallibilities could be seen alternatively as showing the problematic nature of the positivistic conception of scientific methodology. In several regards, texts conformed to Fleck's notion of “textbook science” and to Kuhn's description of science texts as “tourist brochures.” It was cautioned that an implicit appeal by psychology to logical positivism contradicts its claim that its methods and data are objective, transparent, and little influenced by philosophy, logic divorced from data, or authority. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)