and Overview- and Overview- I: Physics, Emergence, and Complex Systems- Free Will, Physics, Biology, and the Brain- Human Freedom "Emergence"- Top-Down Causation and the Human Brain- Top-Down Causation and Autonomy in Complex Systems- Toward a Complementary Neuroscience: Metastable Coordination Dynamics of the Brain- II: Volition and Consciousness: Are They Illusions?- Physiology of Volition- How We Recognize Our Own Actions- Volition and the Function of Consciousness- III: Broader Understandings of Volition and Consciousness- Conscious Willing and the Emerging Sciences of Brain and Behavior- Contemplative Neuroscience as an Approach to Volitional Consciousness- Free Will Top-Down Control in the Brain- Thinking beyond the Bereitschaftspotential: Consciousness of Self and Others as a Necessary Condition for Change- IV: Human Implications of the Debate- Criminal Responsibility, Free Will, and Neuroscience- Law, Responsibility, and the Brain- The Controversy over Brain Research

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Downward causation and the neurobiology of free will

This paper revisits the issue of gender stereotypes in sales professions given new views of what makes for effective sales performance and sales management. Women's continued disadvantaged position in the sales profession is documented, and the role of gender role stereotypes in sustaining this situation in the profession is examined. The paper then turns to the newly emerging, ostensibly "pro-female", view of sales. This emphasises the importance of building and sustaining relationships – qualities that women have traditionally been stereotyped as "good" at. Despite the positive emphasis accorded to women's skills in this new sales landscape, the ethical problems which arise from constructing this debate around the issue of gender are explored. In particular, the extent to which the view of women as "good at relationships" constitutes a stereotype is examined, and the value of this stereotype for redressing women's disadvantaged position from the perspectives of justice and utility is set out. In the final part of the paper we look at potential avenues for future theory and research which may help bring into focus a new view of gender role stereotypes in sales.

Revisiting Gender Role Stereotyping in the Sales Profession

This thesis explores the contribution of social protection to building an inclusive state in the post-conflict democratic era in Nepal. A grounded theory methodology is used to understand the roles of different actors including development partners, civil servants, politicians, the private sector, trade unions, journalists, academics and how recipients of five government funded cash transfers perceive these funds and view their own sense of citizenship.What emerges from the research is insights into how structural and practised forms of exclusion are reproduced, and changed, and the roles of the different actors involved.

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Social inclusion and social protection in Nepal

Developing Positive Action Policies: Learning from the Experiences of Europe and North America

While the concept ‘justice’ undergirds every discourse on affirmative action, its meaning is feverishly contested with contradictory definitions wielded as battling swords in a zero sum struggle over the distribution of scarce material resources and symbolic goods. In part, the issues have become even more important since the number of states that have now embarked on affirmative action policies have been growing and the results have been diverse. Affirmative action policies have occurred most frequently in internally heterogeneous societies marked by deep ethno-cultural divisions in which one ethnic community has tended to dominate the rest. To overcome inequalities and ingrained segmental prejudices in these multi-ethnic countries that witnessed over the years the cementing of advantages and privileges among certain ethnic groups has been the primary aim of affirmative action policies. Upheavals and ongoing conflicts have generally dogged these experiences, attesting to some successful societal ...

Social justice and affirmative action

a week goes by but that the subject of Affirmative Action does not come up. Whether in the guise of reverse discrimination, preferential hiring, non-traditional casting, quotas, goals and time tables, minority scholarships, or race-norming, the issue confronts us as a terribly perplexing problem. Last summer's Actor's Equity debacle over the casting of the British actor, Jonathan Pryce, as a Eurasian in Miss Saigon; Assistant Secretary of Education Michael Williams' judgement that Minority Scholarships are unconstitutional; the "Civil Rights Bill of 1991," reversing recent decisions of the Supreme Court which constrain preferential hiring practices; the demand that Harvard Law School hire a black female professor; grade stipends for black students at Pennsylvania State University and other schools; the revelations of race norming in state employment agencies; as well as debates over quotas, underutilization guidelines, and diversity in employment; all testify to the importance of this subject for contemporary society. There is something salutary as well as terribly tragic inherent in this problem. The salutary aspect is the fact that our society has shown itself committed to eliminating unjust discrimination. Even in the heart of Dixie there is a recognition of the injustice of racial discrimination. Both sides of the affirmative action debate have good will and appeal to moral principles. Both sides are attempting to bring about a better society, one which is color blind, but they differ profoundly on the morally proper means to accomplish that goal. And this is just the tragedy of the situation: good people on both sides

The moral status of affirmative action

In his recent article, "Kierkegaard on belief, faith and explanation,"1 David Wisdo argues that I have fundamentally misconstrued Kierkegaard's notion of faith. Specifically, he makes three charges against my interpretation of Kierkegaard's concept of faith in my book The Logic of Subjectivity (henceforth referred to as LS): (1) My claim that Kierkegaard is a volitionalist is fundamentally misguided, since I interpret this in a strong sense and Qimacus only holds it in a weak sense; (2) My interpretation of Kierkegaard's concept of faith as involving the will is false, since faith is a miracle, excluding the will; and (3) my claim that Kierkegaard is giving a philosophical explanation of faith is misguided since "Kierkegaard rejects any philosophical explanation which purports to explain the acquisition of faith" (p. 96). Wisdo 's criticisms are important and our disagreements have more than incidental significance. They go to the very heart of Kierkegaard's interpretation and represent two diametrically opposed views on the nature of Kierkegaard's work, his work representing a long tradition of American Kierkegaard scholarship represented by Paul Holmer, Louis Mackey, and Josiah Thompson which emphasizes the anti-intellectual element in Kierkegaard's thought, denying that Kierkegaard has put forward a Christian philosophy (unless it be a philosophy about why there should be no Christian philosophy). My view lies in a more European tradition

Kierkegaard on faith and freedom

Do animal rights entail moral nihilism

. The problem of freedom of the will and determinism is one of the most intriguing and difficult in the whole area of philosophy. It constuutes a paradox. If we look at ourselves, at our ability to deliberate and make moral choices, it seems obvious that we are free. On the other hand, if we look at what we believe about causality (i.e., that every event and thing must have a cause), then it appears that we do not have free wills but are determined. Thus we seem to have inconsistent beliefs. In this paper I set forth and analyze the major contemporary arguments for free will and determinism as well as for compatibilism, the position that tries to combine insights from both theories. I end with a brief conclusion regarding my assessment of the status of the arguments.

Louis P. Pojman

Papers

The moral status of affirmative action

Kierkegaard on faith and freedom

Do animal rights entail moral nihilism

Freedom and determinism: a contemporary discussion

A Critique of Holyer's Volitionalism