Here’s a bit of French and Greek to introduce this post:
παρρησία (La parrêsia), étymologiquement, c’est le fait de tout dire (franchise, ouverture de parole, ouverture d’esprit, ouverture de langage, liberté de parole)... C’est l’ouverture qui fait qu’on dit, qu’on dit ce qu’on a à dire, qu’on dit ce qu’on a envie de dire, qu’on dit ce qu’on pense pouvoir dire, parce que c’est nécessaire, parce que c’est utile, parce que c’est vrai. The Francophone and Francophile might recognize the quote as a definition of the Greek word παρρησία (parrhesia) by the philosopher Michel Foucault, whose influence has gone past the disciplinary confines of philosophy, to affect the study of psychology, sociology, political science, criminology, and even business! His discourses on parrhesia are an example of the especially French research method (see Camus and Sissyphus, Sartre and Orestes, even Teilhard de Chardin and Omega) of taking a concept or figure from ancient classical Greco-Roman culture, and using it as a basis, lens, or springboard to study contemporary phenomena or inspire modern innovations. Foucault’s definition goes something like this: Parrhesia, etymologically, is the act of speaking out fully (frankness, openness of speech, openness of spirit, openness of language, freedom of speech)... it is the openness to say what one has to say, to say what one desires, to say what one thinks, because it is necessary, because it is useful, because it is the truth. Thus, this blog post combines all the themes that inspire this site, including philology, history, and, by way of ethics, which is one of its branches, philosophy. Just from the title and the introduction, which features three languages (Greek, French, English), one can readily see the connection with philology, the study of languages, and how it affects or is affected by history and culture. As will be quite obvious by the second or third paragraph, much of this post deals with business history, albeit the seamier side thereof. However, ultimately, this post is about ethics, a branch of philosophy much akin to the process of critical thinking, which is choosing or deciding that which is good or true. Hence, let us proceed from the philological, to the historical, and conclude with the ethical. In a recent paper on accounting history, a research field which is surprisingly generous in its use of Foucauldian ideas, the concept of parrhesia was used to contextualize the heroic whistleblowing of professional and academic accountants in order to expose corporate wrongdoing, from bribery to financial statement fraud. The article, written to provide accounting professors some historical vignettes by which they could introduce, contextualize, and illustrate various accounting, auditing, and business law topics, and also to encourage and inspire their students to emulate such good examples, featured figures from the accounting world exercising parrhesia, speaking truth to power, putting themselves at risk in order to criticize and expose illegal and abusive business practices. Many of the historical anecdotes date from the relatively recent past, the turn of the 21st century, when accounting scandals involving such firms as Enron and Worldcom brought about a flurry of reform in the accounting and finance world that hopefully will lead to progressively better and more honest corporate reporting. However, two decades into this century, it appears that the parrhesiastic focus has shifted away from accounting fraud to yet another abusive and illegal business practice: corporate corruption. That is, in recent years, the whistleblowers have begun to call out instances of bribery by businesses, particularly in overseas transactions. In the US, "whistleblower reports to the Securities Exchange Commission have surged" and in May 2021, $28 million was awarded to a whistleblower who provided information that led to the 10th largest anti-corruption action in US FCPA history. This occurs in the context of the Biden administration's emphasis against corruption as a core national security interest. The picture outside the US is less sanguine. Despite having an OECD anti-bribery treaty written at least in part as a response to the US FCPA, there appears to be a surge in corruption and bribery-related activity, particularly in the UK and the newer, smaller EU countries. Perhaps this is why the EU has issued a directive for member states to establish whistleblower protection laws, although compliance is varied, and in some countries, stalled. Of course, absent legal protections and reward mechanisms, the parrhesiast, following Foucault's formulation, must make the decision himself/herself. The syllogism would go something like this: Major: Tell the awful truth if it is useful, necessary, and factual. Minor: Reporting the truth about an actual bribery or corrupt act is useful and necessary Conclusion... It's easy to determine what should be done when following the rules of critical thinking. What might be harder is summoning the courage to do it. Fortuna audaces iuvat.
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You may be surprised to learn just how old international business and global trade is. As early as 3,000 BC, some 5,000 years ago, communities in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) were trading with those in the Indus Valley (modern Pakistan and India). The distance between these regions is over 3,000 miles, greater than that between LA and New York City, or between London and Rome. But this is not the only early example of international trade. Many of you may be familiar with the interesting historical and religious figure King Solomon, who lived around 900 BC. According to the Bible (Chronicles, Chapter 2) he amassed 40,000 pounds of gold in his royal treasury, worth around $800 billion. This fortune dwarfs that of the richest person in the world, Amazon Inc.’s Jeff Bezos, who “only” has $185 billion as of 2020. Solomon’s wealth was amassed by the establishment of trading centers in ancient Israel that catered to merchants coming from as far away as Syria, Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, and the Hittite Empire (modern Turkey).
However, even longer running international trade networks, in terms of distance and longevity, were a pair of parallel routes that ran from west to east. These were the overland Silk Road in the north, and its maritime counterpart, the Spice Route, in the south. As their names imply, these routes served to supply Europe with silk from China, and spices from India and Southeast Asia, although many more types of commodities were also exchanged. Both these trade routes existed for almost a millennium, from the time of Alexander the Great (300 BC) to the rise of Islam (600 AD). Though these trade routes did not go around the world (an honor reserved for the Spanish Galleon Trade which we’ll be talking about later), they served to link several different empires and nations together. Thus, Chinese silks and Malaysian black pepper were enjoyed by wealthy Romans, while Greek and Roman coins, and Italian wine made their way as far as India. How did the Spice Route come about? Remember that part of the Spice Route, one that linked Mesopotamia and its principal cities such as Babylon and Sumer with various cities in the Indus Valley, had already been established as early as 3,000 BC. When the Greeks under Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Achaemenid Empire in 300 BC, the stage was set for this network to be extended further to the west. After his death, Alexander’s successors, principally the generals Seleucus and Ptolemy, divided his empire between them. Though Seleucus and Ptolemy were political rivals, because of their common Greek background, they and their descendants were able to establish kingdoms with a common Hellenistic (mixed Asian and Greek) culture. This allowed their subjects to cooperate with one another to a very great extent, particualrly in matters of trade. The ensuing Greek Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties thus came to control an expanded network of trade linking Egypt in the west, Mesopotamia and Persia in the middle, and the Indian Subcontinent in the east. The Seleucid dynasty had consolidated and developed the eastern end of the Spice Route, by establishing ports in the Persian Gulf, such as Charax (now in Iraq), Dioskorida (now in modern Yemen), and Tilus (now Bahrain). Meanwhile, the Ptolemaic dynasty had developed the western end, by building and improving various Nile and Red Sea ports. However, it was only when the Romans took over the entire Ptolemaic kingdom and a substantial portion of the Seleucid kingdom in the decades leading up to 1 AD that direct maritime trade between west and east truly intensified. With the establishment of Roman rule, a single, stable, strong administration enforcing law and order throughout the Spice Route caused the volume of trade to increase from but a few ships a year to over 100. The three main Roman ports involved with eastern trade were all in the province of Roman Egypt. These were Arsinoe on the Nile River, which was connected by an artificial canal to the Red Sea ports of Berenice and Myos Hormos. On the eastern end of the Spice Route were the various ports of Barbaricum (modern Karachi in Pakistan), Sounagoura (central Bangladesh) Barygaza (in Gujarat, India), Muziris (in Kerala, India) and Korkai, Kaveripattinam and Arikamedu on the southern tip of India. By the time of Augustus up to 120 ships were setting sail every year from Myos Hormos to India. Rome imported Indian tigers, rhinoceros, elephants, and serpents to use for circus shows. Roman women also wore Indian Ocean pearls and used a supply of herbs, spices, and sugar for food. India was thus the recipient of large amounts of Roman gold during this time. So much gold was used for this trade, that the Roman writer Pliny the Elder complained about the drain of coins and precious metals to India. Besides gold and silver, the Indians also received frankincense, glass containers, and wine from the Romans in exchange for their goods. The 3rd century, however, saw a crisis period in the Roman Empire, with external pressure from German tribes and a resurgent Persian Empire at the frontiers, and from plagues, hyper-inflation, and revolts of military commanders within its borders. With the weakening of Roman central authority, law and order broke down, and trade declined over the next two centuries. Finally, shortly after 600 AD, the Arabs established and rapidly expanded their empire, ultimately conquering vast swathes of territory from the Roman, Persians, and Indians. With the capture of Roman Egypt, the direct maritime trade between west and east ended, although within the borders of the Arab Empire, which stretched from Southern Spain to Pakistan, trade would continue to flourish through the Islamic Golden Age, which lasted until about 1300 AD. The northern parallel to the maritime Spice Route was the overland Silk Road. Like the Spice Route, the Silk Road reached its maximum extent and experienced its greatest volume of activity after much more ancient, pre-existing versions of it were consolidated, administered, and policed by the great empires that it linked. The predecessor of the Silk Road was the Eurasian Steppe Trail. It extended from the eastern part of the Danube River in Hungary to the western edge of the Korean Peninsula. The name “steppe” denotes a relatively flat, semi-desert region, with some grass or shrubs growing in it. It was thus a place which gave rise to nomadic, mounted peoples who would drive their livestock back and forth along its length. The nomads that lived along the Steppe Trail evolved a culture of long distance travel and trade, as they could not depend on the dry, hard soil to grow all they needed to live. Among these nomadic tribes were a people known as the Scythians, whose territory straddled the Steppe Trail. Such was the extent of trade on the Steppe Road even in its earliest days that the tomb of a Scythian prince who was buried near Stuttgart, Germany, some time in the 6th century BC, was found to contain Greek bronzes and Chinese silk. The Steppe Trail began to evolve into the much longer, more widely travelled, more commercially active Silk Road with the expansion of the Greek empire of Alexander the Great into Central Asia, around 300 BC. As discussed earlier, Alexander’s conquests, which spread from the Mediterranean, through the territories of the former Achaemenid Persian empire, and into Pakistan and India, set the stage for a culturally united realm that stretched from west to east. While it is true that this Hellenistic Greek world would fragment politically at Alexander’s death, the subjects of his successors would participate in trade networks that spread across these successor states. And while this network didn’t exactly extend all the way into China, it came very close. A Greek city , Alexandria Eskate, was founded in what is now Tajikistan, just over the mountain pass from China’s Xinjiang province. It was up to the Chinese to close the gap, and create a truly integrated Silk Road that linked the Mediterranean to China and the Far East. Around 130 BCE, China’s Emperor Han Wu, whose conquests brought China’s frontiers to their maximum extent, and is therefore an Asian counterpart to Alexander the Great, sent an ambassador Zhang Qian, to the western frontiers of the empire. Zhang established contact with the Greek settlers in Alexandria Eskate, and sent a report back to Emperor Wu about the rich prospects for trade with the west. In particular, he noted the tall and powerful horses that ranged in Greek Central Asia, which were of great importance in equipping their cavalry. Thus the Silk Road essentially came into being from the 1st century BC, following efforts by China to send embassies to the Greeks and also to subdue barbarian tribes on the eastern end of the route. Just as it was with the Spice Route, the Silk Road, having first being established many centuries before, then expanded significantly during the Hellenistic Age following Alexander the Great’s death, reached its peak in the Roman era. After the Roman conquest of Seleucid and Ptolemaic territories, which culminated in 30 BC, regular communications and trade between China, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe blossomed on an unprecedented scale. The newly conquered Hellenistic kingdoms included large portions of the Silk Road, and these were inherited by the Roman Empire. It must be noted that not all of the Silk Road was under Roman control, as the middle part was in the territory of the Persian Arsacid Empire, which reconquered a large part of of the land that had been taken by Alexander the Great from the Persians centuries before. It was under these circumstances that around 100 AD, a travelling party led by the Romanized Greek, Maës Titianus was able to go from Hierapolis, a city in Roman Asia Minor (modern Turkey) all the way to Tashkurgan in China’s Xinjiang region in order to measure the distance (about 3000 miles), map the landscape, and establish tighter trade relations. Following this, affluent citizens of the Roman Empire would enjoy new luxuries, particularly Chinese silk. In exchange, the Chinese received glassware, manufactured mainly in Roman Egypt, where raw materials for glass such as natron salt were most widely available, or in Roman Syria or Northern Italy, where the technique of glassblowing originated and reached its highest refinement, respectively. Thus, Roman-style glassware was discovered as far as Gyeongju, capital of the Silla kingdom in Korea. However, starting in the 3rd century, and continuing through the next 500 years, the trade along the Silk Road steadily diminished, due to several developments. These included the weakening of the Roman Empire, the discovery in the West of the secret behind silk-making, and the Islamic conquests. The same military and economic crises that began in the 3rd century, and from which the Roman Empire never completely recovered, disrupted trade activity along the overland Silk Road just as much as it did along the maritime Spice Trade. Over the next century, the Empire would be divided into Western and Eastern halves, with the first quickly succumbing to invasion, and the latter, referred to as the Byzantine Empire, surviving for another 11 centuries thereafter. It was from the Byzantine Empire that two Nestorian Christian monks were sent by the Emperor Justinian (ruled 527 – 565) along the Silk Road to China, in order to steal the secrets of silk-making technology. Returning with both knowledge of the process and even silkworm eggs, this was the genesis of a Western, domestic silk-making industry that further diminished the desire for trade along the Silk Road. As with the sea-going Spice Route, as the Arabs established and rapidly expanded their empire into former Roman, Persian, and even Chinese territory shortly after 600 AD, the direct overland trade between West and East along the Silk Road all but ended, although a lively trade along the Silk Road among merchants from the Islamic world continued. However, there was a brief span of a couple of centuries (1200s to 1300s) when the Mongols were able to conquer almost the entire swathe of land occupied by the Silk Road as well as China itself, and as they were more willing to allow travel from European Christendom to pass through their territory than were the Arabs, trade momentarily revived. It was during this relatively brief time period that the Italian Marco Polo made his fabled journey to China along the Silk Road. What have become of the Spice Route and Silk Road today? Discovery of a route across the Atlantic led not only to the discovery of the Americas and the Pacific Ocean, but also of an alternate route from West to East. Thus, activity on these ancient trade networks was reduced. These developments set the stage for the first truly global trade network comprised of the Galleon Route linking Manila to Acapulco, then after a brief overland trek through New Spain (present day Mexico, Panama, and Colombia), continuing from ports such as Veracruz, Portobelo, and Cartagena on through Havana and ultimately to Seville in Spain. Nevertheless, trade along the Spice Route and Silk Road has never truly disappeared. And in recent years, a New Silk Road, partly comprised of what is currently the longest rail line in the world, runs from Yiwu in the Chinese province of Zhejiang to Madrid, Spain. This modern iteration of the Silk Road crosses China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Poland, Germany, France, and Spain, and links important commercial and industrial cities along the way. The past seems to be replaying into the future. We’ve seen so far that deductive critical thinking is easy when you’re sure the premises are true. But what do we do when we are not confident that the premises are sound? The solution is the other type of critical thinking, induction.
As we have seen earlier, the major premise is basically a statement of what is true or should be done about a group of things. Often, the major premise has been established by common knowledge, local tradition, or by law. But if this group of things is something of which we have no prior knowledge, then we have to use induction to gain that knowledge, in other words, to establish our major premise. Induction is the process of determining what is true about a group of things by looking at some examples of them. Statisticians, who have invented many ways by which induction may be done, refer to the big group that we want to know more about as the data population, the examples made up of a small subset of the big group as the data sample, and the process of using mathematics or graphics to infer things about the population by examining the sample as data analysis. Whether you use quantitative measures such as means, medians, modes, or regression statistics, or rely on the type of charts and pictures referred to as graphical exploratory data analysis, all these techniques, whether simple or complex, quantitative or graphical, all have the same goal: find out what is true about a group by looking at some examples of them. At this point you may be asking yourselves, how many of these examples do we need in the data sample before we can confidently establish anything about the larger group that makes up our data population? Statisticians believe that it depends on several factors, including the diversity and size of the population. If the data population is homogeneous, made up of items that are all alike, then your data sample needs but a few examples, or maybe even just one, to enable you to infer the characteristics of the data population. But if the data population is heterogeneous, made up of many dissimilar items, then a larger data sample, or a stratified sample, one which includes an example from each type of item found in the data population, would be needed. The larger the proportion of the population that is included in the sample, the more confident you can be that the inductive conclusion you infer is true. If the population is small enough, one might conceivably include all of the people or items in the population in the sample, in which case your induction method would be called a census (which by the way is where the Census Bureau gets its name, since their job is to find out about everyone in the country, whether by interviewing them or by using information from databases). Of course, if the population is large, you might have to content yourself with including just a subset in the sample. Therefore, your inductions may be based on samples with just a few or very many items chosen from the population, depending on what you know or assume to know about the population. We saw some examples of deduction being used in business functions, such as business law, finance, and marketing. What business related examples can we find using induction? Well, there are several situations in business where induction is commonly used to determine what is true of certain populations of people or things. In marketing, field studies and surveys are conducted wherein volunteers or random groups of people are interviewed or given tests (e.g. “taste tests” of sodas, etc.) so that based on the responses of these samples, the attitudes of the general population to potential new products may be determined. And in information systems, there is a process called data mining, wherein the data collected in databases is reviewed and analyzed in order to determine the characteristics of those people or phenomena whose records make up the database, and make predictions about them or formulate strategies and policies to deal with them. Critical thinking can be performed with a combination of deduction and induction, where the inductive process is imbedded within a deductive syllogism is that is called the “feedback loop.” In production operations, which is a branch of management, batches of goods produced by a factory are selected from the total production output to see whether the selected items have defects. Based on the findings, adjustments to the production process may be made, such as repairing the factory equipment or retraining the assembly line workers. This procedure is called the feedback loop because the information gathered by sampling batches of goods (an inductive procedure) is “fed back” to the managers of the factory, and based on what they find, they make decisions (deductively) to improve the manufacturing process. Because this happens continuously, as production goes on within the factory, it is essentially a never ending cycle or “loop.” The major premise is: “If the batch of manufactured goods has any (or many) defective items, adjust the manufacturing process.” The minor premise will state either: “This latest batch of goods has (many) defective items,” or “This latest batch of goods has no (few) defective items.” The conclusion will be either a decision to make adjustments to the production process, or to leave it alone, because “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” However, you will notice that the minor premise itself is something that needs to be determined. This is done by sampling the latest batch of goods, and by testing one or a few of them, deciding what is true of the minor premise. Thus, we see that depending on what we already know, or need to know, we can determine what is true or what should be done by using deduction, induction, or a combination of the two. The Breakfast Buffet, Corporate Personhood, and Some Other Examples of Deductive Critical Thinking10/1/2020 Recall from a previous post that critical thinking is the mental process of making a choice or a decision. Recall furthermore that the ancients realized that there are really only two ways to make them: deduction and induction. The focus of this post is deduction. Deduction means making a choice or decision based on what you already know to be true, or based on what is generally considered to be correct or ethical. In practice, deductive reasoning takes the form of what is called a “syllogism,” which in Greek (συλλογισμός) means “to bring together in order to think or reason.” Thus, in this post we will discuss some examples of deductive, syllogistic, ratiocination, or critical thinking. Many of the examples will be of great professional importance, including a wide-ranging series of legal rulings that changed profoundly both business practice and society. But the first example will be personal and prosaic, a demonstration of deduction in deciding what to eat for breakfast. Have you had your breakfast today? Your mother has probably told you that "breakfast feeds the brain," and while she probably meant that in the calorific and nutritive sense, in this post it will be true in the sense that it provides us food for thought, as we ponder the process of deductive critical thinking. If you’re like most people, you occasionally want something sweet to go with your morning coffee. So, assuming it’s one of those mornings when you feel a sweet treat is in order, you might perform the following simple deductive exercise. Remember, critical thinking, by definition, is thinking in order to make a choice, and that’s what you’re about to do. On the breakfast buffet are three alternatives, a tray of scrambled eggs, a tray of sausage patties, and a tray of doughnuts. You would perform the following three syllogistic deductions to make that choice. First, you would consider the scrambled eggs. You remember that in general, scrambled eggs are bland (major premise). You take a look at the first tray. You are sure that the fluffy, shiny, yellow mounds inside it are definitely scrambled eggs (minor premise). You conclude that item from tray one would not be sweet, and you choose to move on. Next, you look at the tray of sausage patties. You are quite sure that sausages are salty (major premise), the brown, crumbly, greasy discs in the second tray are sausage patties (minor premise), and that nothing in the tray would please your sweet tooth (conclusion), and walk on. Finally, you peruse the third tray. You know that doughnuts are sweet inside and out (major premise), you are quite satisfied that the third tray with its fat, sticky, multicolored rings, is full of doughnuts (minor premise), and you conclude that these are sweet. You have found the right choice for breakfast. Yes, as amazing as it sounds, you did three syllogisms in your brain in the first half-minute you spent in the cafeteria. As mentioned earlier, all normal human beings are expert critical thinkers. If anyone tells you that you are unable to think critically, then he has insulted you by denying your humanity. Punch him in the gut… or maybe just invite him to breakfast. We have seen how critical thinking using deduction can be relevant to everyday decisions that make our lives just a bit more pleasant. But history shows many of the landmark legal decisions that affect our professional lives and business operations were the result of syllogistic thinking. Several examples of legal syllogistic deduction are related to a series of important Supreme Court Decisions that extended the 14th Amendment to different groups of people. As you may remember from your civics classes, the 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War, to establish the rights of former slaves. But what is often forgotten is that throughout the next century, there would be several cases brought before the Supreme Court that ultimately established the rights of other groups of people, by concluding that these particular groups were like the former slaves (and like other free-born citizens of the US), and entitled to various basic rights. The process by which the Supreme Court reached these decisions was essentially syllogistic. The major premise was that, as written into the Constitution and the 14th Amendment, all free-born citizens and ex-slaves were entitled to certain basic rights. Then, over the period of a hundred years or so, the Supreme Court decided whether other groups of people could be considered like the free-born citizens and ex-slaves, and therefore worthy of these rights as well. In other words, the syllogism they considered was 1) Major Premise: “All people deserve to have certain rights;” 2) Minor Premise: “Group X (or Y, or Z, etc.) are people,” and 3) Conclusion: “Group X (or Y, or Z) deserve to have these rights.” Group X, etc. turned out to be women, immigrants, bastard children, and even incorporated businesses. No, we often don’t think of big business to be a disadvantaged group like those previously mentioned, but under the legal doctrine of “corporate personhood” they were acknowledged to have the same rights as other people, essentially through the same deductive process described above. What are some examples of business decisions where deductive reasoning is used? Of course there are all sorts business professionals who use deductive reasoning to aid in their critical thinking! One of the most basic business functions is sales and marketing. In fact, generating revenue by making sales to customers or providing services to clients is considered a necessary activity for any firm. In order to implement the revenue cycle effectively, a business person must choose what products or services to present to which particular set of customers or clients. These choices are often made by deductive reasoning. Consider the online ads that you see on the Web. They often vary with the particular site you are viewing. If you are viewing a sports-oriented website, you may notice ads for athletic equipment or health and performance enhancing supplements. This is because the online marketing professionals behind these ads have deductively reached conclusions about what products to push to certain classes of Web surfers. In this first example, the deductive syllogism goes something like this: Sports fans are interested in buying athletic equipment and performance supplements (major premise). Viewers of sports sites are sports fans (minor premise). Viewers of sports sites would be interested in sports equipment and supplements, and it would generate lots of sales if these products were pitched to them online (conclusion). Here’s another example from the economics and finance realm. Many finance professionals are involved with choosing how to invest their company’s or clients’ money in a variety of stocks and bonds. For example, treasurers or CFOs (chief financial officers), one of their many important tasks is to decide what to do with a firm’s extra cash. Yes, having enough cash to pay off bills, plus a little extra for unexpected emergencies is good, but too much cash is suboptimal. That would mean that the cash is sitting in a bank account (or worse a company safe) earning little or no interest. It would be better if extra cash, in excess of the amount needed for bills and emergencies, were invested in stocks and bonds (collectively referred to as financial securities) that appreciate in value and generate dividend and interest income which are typically greater than the amount earned by a savings account or time deposit. Furthermore, financial advisers and portfolio managers are concerned with the task of selecting financial securities for various clients. At times, these financial professionals will pick or recommend to their clients stocks of certain companies based on what is known about various categories of stock and their relationship to the economy. For example, there is a class of stocks called cyclical stocks. These stocks tend to increase in value when the economy does well, and they include stocks of firms in the travel, construction, auto, household appliances, and luxury retail business. This is because people tend to travel, buy or upgrade their homes, purchase new vehicles and appliances, or splurge on luxury goods when times are good. Countercyclical stocks do well when the economy is doing badly. They include stocks of fast food chains, discount stores, and liquor manufacturers. During tough economic times a financial professional might select or recommend the stock of a beer brewery by following this syllogism: Countercyclical stocks will increase in value when the economy is not doing well (major premise), the stocks of brewing companies are countercyclical (minor premise), and so during tough times stock of a brewer will appreciate, and should be a good investment (conclusion). Thus, we have seen how critical thinking using deduction can be useful in both our personal and professional lives. Deductive reasoning based on what we know to be true or appropriate about general categories of people, phenomena, or events relevant (major premises), how specific individuals or instances are related to these larger categories (minor premises), will lead us to a rational conclusion or decision that makes our lives easier or more successful. WELCOME! This post is meant to give the reader an idea of the topics and issues that will be discussed in this blog. Indeed, many who read the title of this blog might be scratching their heads, and puzzling over what it means. What exactly is the relationship among business (both the practice thereof and the pedagogy for it), the humanities, and critical thinking? For that matter, what exactly comprises the humanities, and what precisely constitutes critical thinking?
This first blog post will attempt to answer these questions, and in doing so, will hopefully lay the foundation that supports, contextualizes, and explains the essence of all other future blog posts. I will answer each question in reverse order, starting with a definition of critical thinking, then follow with a description of subjects that are categorized under the humanities, and finally, tie everything together to the practice and pedagogy of business. Critical thinking is the mental process of making a choice or decision. In fact, the word "critical" comes from the Greek word κρῐτῐκός and the related Latin word criticus which both mean "capable of judging or deciding." All normal human beings, from infancy to toddlerhood, through adulthood and old age are actually expert critical thinkers, because we make choices and decisions every moment of everyday, most of which result in a positive outcome, as attested by our surviving day to day. We all engage in critical thinking every time we choose one option from several alternatives, or every time we decide if something is true or false, good or bad, better or worse, etc. However, just because we have done something many times for a very long time is no guarantee that we will always do it well, or that we will obtain a good outcome. Every now and then, we take the wrong exit off the highway, and end up late to our destination.Once in a while we'll take a risk on a deli salad, and spend the next day with a bad digestion.Therefore, it is a good idea to analyze and evaluate our critical thinking processes in order to maximize (but not necessarily guarantee) our chances of making the right choice and reaching the right decision. But, if critical thinking is basically what we do in order to choose an alternative or make a decision, aren’t there almost as many specific ways to choose or decide as there are choices or decisions to make in our lives? It seems so, but believe it or not, all of these different ways fit into just one of two categories. Yes, you read it right, as profoundly important and complex as the choices and decisions we face will be, there are really only two ways to make them. These are called 1) deduction and 2) induction. Depending on what choices or decisions we make, and what data, time, energy, and other resources are available, it may be more appropriate to use deduction or induction. Deduction (sometimes called ratiocination) means making a choice or decision based on what you already know to be true, or based on what is generally considered to be correct or ethical. According to the Greek philosopher Aristotle and ancient thinkers like the Roman statesmen Cicero and Boethius, all deductive reasoning takes the form of what is called a “syllogism,” or συλλογισμός, which in Greek means “to bring together in order to think or reason.” This phrase implies that we can deduce our choice or decision, that is, we can do our critical thinking, by “bringing together” known or accepted scientific theories, widely held moral beliefs, or duly constituted laws in order to choose what to do, or decide whether something is true or false, or determine what is good or bad. Specifically, a syllogism "brings together" three items: 1) a major premise, 2) a minor premise, and 3) a conclusion. You could say that the major and minor premises are the facts, theories, or laws that have been “brought together” in order to reach the conclusion. The major premise states what is true or proper about a certain group of people, events, or things. The minor premise states that the specific person, event, or thing that is the main focus of your specific choice or decision belongs to the general category named in the major premise. Finally, the conclusion (that is the choice or decision you make) regarding the person, event, or thing named in the minor premise follows naturally from “bringing together” what is known about the general category (major premise) and what is known about the particular instance (minor premise). In future posts, watch out for famous or frequently performed examples of deductive, syllogistic thinking in both everyday life and business. We'll be analyzing these through the prism of syllogisms, see why the choices made might be reasonable, and in some cases, point out why the syllogism was faulty, and why the decision made ultimately wrong. Induction, on the other hand, is the process of determining what is true about a group of things by looking at some examples of them. Aristotle says it is gaining knowledge of the universal by experience of the singular. Statisticians, who have invented many ways by which induction may be done, refer to the big group that we want to know more about as the data population. They refer to the examples made up of a small subset of the big group as the data sample. The way by which these examples are identified and recorded is referred to as the research method. Finally, the process of using mathematics or graphics to infer things about the population by examining the data sample is called the data analysis. At this point you may be asking yourselves, “How many of these examples do we need to have in the data sample before we can confidently establish anything about the larger group that makes up our data population?” Statisticians believe that it depends on several factors, including the diversity and size of the population. If the data population is homogeneous, made up of items that are all alike, then your data sample needs but a few examples, or maybe even just one, to enable you to infer the characteristics of the data population. But if the data population is heterogeneous, made up of many dissimilar items, then a larger data sample, or a stratified sample, one which includes an example from each type of item found in the data population, would be needed. The larger the proportion of the population that is included in the sample, the more confident you can be that the inductive conclusion you infer is true. As with deduction future posts will feature very common and highly consequential decision based on inductive thinking. We'll discuss how decisions were reached via a research method that selected and recorded a representative sample, and subsequent use of the appropriate mode of data analysis. Now, let's turn our attention to the concept of the humanities. The word "humanities" is derived from the Latin phrase "studia humanitatis," meaning the study of all things related to human endeavor. Obviously, that;s a very big subject, but over time it has come to mean specifically the combination of three subjects: philosophy ("love of wisdom" or the way humans think in order to determine what is true or good, and ultimately to become wise), philology ("love of words," the way humans communicate and express ideas via language and literature), and history (from which comes the word "story," a chronicling and analysis of human experience and endeavor.) You probably can already see how the humanities, particularly the part of it that is philosophy, is related to critical thinking. Future posts will further explore the connection, and discuss specific types of philosophical thought corresponding to different applications of critical thinking. Philology is also related because the way one thinks and knows is highly dependent on the words one uses, and the meanings one ascribes to these words. Furthermore, the best critical thinking is much less useful if it can't be communicated clearly and compellingly. The posts that you'll find here related to philology will feature a variety of topics. You may have already noticed that this post explains many concepts by pointing out how the words expressing them originated or evolved, what's called etymology. Many future posts will use the same approach to defining, explaining, or analyzing other concepts or issues. A number of posts that perhaps many of you will find interesting will feature translations of pertinent works from one language into another, just so one gets the subtle nuances of meaning that are lost if one views ideas only through one linguistic lens . And finally, all future posts will have some relevance to business practices, past and present, and discuss them from a philosophical, philological, or historical standpoint. Hopefully, this unconventional perspective, which is unconstrained by the narrow frontiers of a functional business discipline, will provide a broader, richer, and more universally engaging treatment of the topics. Happy reading! |
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AuthorGreetings to you all! I'm Prof FAB, and I teach various business courses at the undergraduate and master's level at a university in the Southwestern United States. My blog talks about various topics, concepts, and perspectives grounded in the humanities, which inform the way we study and practice business. Archives |