LDSP 395 Excellent Thinkers Exam 1

Theory

Explanation for observations of the natural world; verified or supported by many scientists

EX: Earth’s magnetic field is generated by a conducting fluid in the core

Law

Description of a regularity or phenomenon

EX: Gravity

Hypothesis

A proposed explanation for a phenomenon, an educated guess about why something is occurring, is one scientist rather than many scientists

EX: Sun will die in 7.5 billion years

What are the 5 Major Theories of LDSP

(1) Great man theory

(2) Situational and Contingency theories

(3) Functional LDSP theory

(4) Transactional and Transformational theories of LDSP

(5) Participative LDSP theory

Great man theory

• AKA trait theory

• Central idea: Good leaders are born

• Critiques: Some of these qualities are developed, not made - there is no set of traits shared across leaders

• Centrally involves personality and behaviors of the leader

Situational and Contingency Theories

• Created in response to Great man, in recognition that there was no one profile

• Situations as the salient feature of LDSP

• Critiques: all or nothing thinking rarely offers a complete explanation

• centrally involves situations

Functional Leadership Theory

• Functional assessments of what makes a leader effective

• Value of leader examined with respect to group cohesion and effectiveness in instrumental terms (achievement of objectives)

• Includes coaching subordinates, motivating others, organizing activities

• about directing and coordinating the work of group members

Transactional theories of leadership

• AKA Management

• built around an exchange of success and rewards

• sometimes considered a lazy style of leadership

• assumes people only act for rewards

Transformational theories of leadership

• Based on concern for employees, shaping a vision

• About motivating and influencing a group toward accomplishing its goals

Participative Leadership theory

• AKA democratic leadership theory

• Makes participants feel engaged and motivated

• consequence is that it can make leaders appear weak or unnecessary, not get the best outcomes

• About creating conditions for a team to be effective or achieve some end

Leadership

is a process, not a position. it is a complex phenomenon involving the leader, followers, and situation

What LDSP is not

• not necessarily subordinate, hierarchical, or involving downward influence

• not necessarily rational

• Leaders are not necessarily a certain personality type

Science

• set of knowledge often discipline-specific

• state of capacity to demonstrate

Art

• making or doing

• productive

• state of capacity to make something, involving a true course of reasoning

Rhetoric

Three primary ways to persuade, Logos, Ethos, and pathos

Logos

Appeal to reason (logic) is a way of persuading an audience with reason, using facts and figures

Ethos

Appeal to the authority and reputation of the speaker

Pathos

Appeal to emotion, a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response to an impassioned plea or a convincing story

LDSP myths

(1) Good leadership is all common sense

(2) Leaders are born, not made

(3) The only school you learn leadership from is the school of hard knocks

Followership Characteristics

(1) Often negative connotations

(2) Considered a secondary topic, after leadership

(3) Scholarship more recent

(4) but this consideration of followership as secondary is changing

What are the big 5

(1) Openness

(2) Conscientiousness

(3) Extraversion

(4) Agreeableness

(5) Neuroticism

Introversion

Trait of being less engaged, motivated and energized by the possibilities for reward that surround them; fatigued by high levels of stimulation

Extroversion

Energized by stimulation and social engagement

What is the difference between Introversion and Extroversion

a function of nervous system responses to stimulation

Introversion should NOT be confused with

• being not outgoing

• introspection

• awkwardness

• shyness, social anxiety

• misanthropy

• narcissism

• selfish with your time

Followership

A process whereby an individual or individuals accept the influence of others to accomplish a common goal

• not necessarily hierarchical and often involves a power differential between the leader and the follower

Role-based followership

Focus is on formal and informal positions and expectations for those positions. You look at how well someone fulfills that role

Relational-based

Followership is “co-created” by leader and follower, focus is on behaviors and attempts to influence, not on roles

What are the 4 Typologies

(1) The Zalenznik Typology

(2) The Kelly Typology

(3) The Chaleff Typology

(4) The Kellerman Typology

Zaleznik Typology

• A matrix reflecting one’s posture toward leaders

• Influenced by psychoanalytic theory

• Breakdown in comm among authority figures and subordinates

• Compulsive, Impulsive, Withdrawn, and Masochistic

The Kelly Typology

• Most widely-regarded typology

• Emphasizes the motivations of followers and follower behaviors

• Two dimensions - critical thinking and active participation

• Alienated followers, Exemplary followers, passive followers, conformist followers, and pragmatist followers

The Chaleff Typology

• Formed after learning of Nazi atrocities - wanted to learn more about why followers complied

• Wanted to prevent bad followership from happening

• it is prescriptive

• followers need courage - the courage to support and the courage to challenge

• Implementer, partner, resource, and individualist

The Kellerman Typology

• Developed from her experience as a political scientist

• central intuition: importance of followers underestimated; importance of leaders overestimated

• Followers differentiated in terms of one dimension - level of engagement

• isolate, bystander, participant, activist, and diehard

Perspectives of followership

(1) Followers get the job done

(2) Followers work in the best interest of the org mission

(3) Followers challenge leaders

(4) Followers support the leader

(5) Followers learn from leaders

Intellectual virtues

excellent habits of mind

Normative ethics

there is only one ultimate criterion of moral conduct, whether it is a single rule or a set of principles; three major approaches deontology, virtue ethics, and consequentialism

Deontology

• Emphasis on duties or rules

• Judge the morality on the basis of the choices made, not the end results

• Is opposed to consequentialism

Consequentialism

Actions are to be morally assessed only on the basis of their consequences, or the states of affairs they bring about

Virtue Ethics

• Emphasizes the virtues, or moral character - stable qualities of your person

• To be a good person is to have certain qualities and perform certain actions and not to have certain qualities or perform certain actions

Who is the father of virtue ethics?

Aristotle

Intellectual virtues

Character traits of excellent thinkers, where such thinking extends not just to getting truth, knowledge, and understanding, but also to our keeping and sharing them

Knowledge

Justified beliefs that depend on the subject, or only exist in relation to us

Truth

Justified beliefs that are in fact true; are subject-independent; hold whether we recognize it or not

Understanding

Recognition of the importance or value of something

Intellectual virtues are NOT

• faculties

• talents

• skills

What are intellectual virtues

Good dispositions involving our thoughts, motives, and actions in relation to truth, knowledge, and understanding. there are 3 components thinking, motivational, and action

Thinking component

Virtuous thinkers value knowledge, think fitting thoughts, relevant to a given virtue; believe knowledge, truth, and understanding are worth keeping and sharing

Motivational Component

Virtuous thinkers desire true beliefs, want to avoid falsehood and ignorance, are motivated by knowledge (rather than praise)

Action (Behavioral) Component

Virtuous thinkers act to gain, keep, and share truth, knowledge, and understanding

Kings definition of Intellectual virtues

Aim at truth, knowledge, and understanding having a positive orientation toward these things

Kings definition of Moral Virtues

do not have intellectual aims

King Believes

• intellectual virtues are NOT just for academics or intellectuals by for all of us

• people desire the truth, we ask questions starting from childhood

Someone with a great deal of knowledge but a bad character

Eric Schwitzgebel Study - Cheeseburger Ethicists

Open-Mindedness

This person is characteristically willing and able to transcend a default cognitive standpoint in order to take up or take seriously the merits of a distinct cognitive standpoint

• vice of deficiency → Closed-mindedness

• vice of excess → Indiscriminateness

Echo Chambers

Socially isolated places in which only one side of an issue may be heard, people more or less say the same things

EX: Plato’s cave

Firmness

• Domain/sphere of activity: maintaining our perspective

• vice of deficiency: spinelessness

• vice of excess: rigidity/dogmatism

Fair-Mindedness

• the virtue of fairness as it applies to our knowledge-seeking, keeping, and sharing activities

• rooted in fairness, justice - helping not harming

• giving to each their due

• protecting their freedom, not excluding them from opportunities, not discriminating or persecuting based on race, gender, or religion

• Good motives

Intellectual Charity

• the virtue beyond fair-mindedness (the excess)

• you can only have too little fair-mindedness, not too much. A high threshold of fair-mindedness is intellectual charity

• in intellectual activities, do to others as you would have done to you

What are informal fallacies

Other defects in the content of the argument, fallacies of irrelevance

Fallacies of irrelevance

The premises are psychologically relevant, but not logically relevant to the conclusion

What are the Fallacies of Irrelevance

• Ad hominem

• Strawman

• Ad baculum

• Ad populum

• Ad misericordiam

• Ad ignorantium

• Red herring

Ad Hominem

• its a logical fallacy that involves a personal attack rather than addressing the argument itself

• it is an attempt to discredit the view by discrediting the speaker

• it is a critique irrelevant to the argument

Abusive Ad Hominem

the person’s character is attacked

Circumstantial Ad Hominem

Occurs when it is in the person’s self-interest for the argument or statement to be true

Tu Quoque

means “you, too” it is intended to discredit a person’s argument because their own actions or views contradict the argument they are putting forward

Strawman

Is a logical fallacy that occurs when a person argues against a misrepresentation of an opponent’s argument rather than the actual argument itself. in effect, the person is building a false argument that is easier to knock down than the actual argument

Ad Baculum Fallacy

Fear of force → the fallacy committed when one appeals to force or the threat of force to bring about the acceptance of a conclusion

derives its strength from an appeal to human timidity or fear and is a fallacy when the appeal is not logically related to the claim being made. The emotion resulting from a threat is used to cause agreement with the purported conclusion of the argument

Ad Populum

an appeal to the people → an attempt to persuade a people or group by appealing to the desire to be accepted or valued by others

• snob appeal → the privileged people are dong this

• band wagon → join the masses

Ad Misericordiam Fallacy

appeal to pity, the attempt to support a conclusion merely by evoking pity in one’s audience

Ad Ignorantiam Fallacy

Involves either (a) the claim that a statement is true simply because it hasn’t been proven false, or (b) the claim that a statement is false simply because it hasn’t been proven true

Red Herring (Ignoratio Elenchi Fallacy)

the premises of the argument are logically unrelated to the conclusion, typically the speaker is trying to distract or divert attention away from the topic at hand

What did Noam Chomsky Write

The Responsibility of Intellectuals

Noam Chomsky

• father of modern linguistics

• the idea of a universal grammar, which underlies all human speech and is based in the innate structure of the mind/brain

• language as uniquely human

What is the historical context of the intellectuals responsibility

the Vietnam war

What does Chomsky ask

To what extent are intellectuals responsible for the atrocities of the war

Chomsky says ….

• intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions

• they are provided the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us

Emerson

• led the transcendentalist movement

• belief that logic and reason are incapable of explaining fundamental mysteries of human existence

• humans have infinite potential and should strive for big things

• formal religion of the time period (puritanism) is stiffing

• saw nature and gods as inseparable

The American Scholar

• Speech given by Emerson

• Clarified the role and responsibilities of the American intellectual in society

What is the role of the American scholar?

To strive to be independent, self-reliant, and guided by their own intuition and judgment, they should reject the European tradition of blindly accepting authority and instead seek to embrace new ideas and perspectives

What are the duties of a Scholar

(1) to communicate the noblest thoughts and feelings to the public

(2) to be independent, courageous, and original in thinking and acting

(3) to demonstrate that the spirit of America is not timid and imitative

Charette

A meeting in which all stakeholders in a project attempt to resolve conflicts and map solutions. Works through empathy

Ann Atwater

Activist for black rights and for poverty as well as housing crisis

CP Ellis

Civil rights activist and member of KK - helped Atwater desegregate schools they had the same financial struggles