1st World Congress on Logic, Chance, and Money

Speaker: Maíra de Cinque, University Canada West

This talk explores the fundamental difference between humanistic logic and business logic. Despite the common belief that humanistic ethics is hierarchically above business ethics - represented in the demand for social responsibility of business - they are irreducible games.

Departing from the Greek concept of ethos as character, or guiding beliefs of a person, community or system, the idea here is to show how each of the spheres operates with its specific rules and principles, emphasizing the contrasting role of chance in each of the games. While humanism tends to minimize the importance of chance, disregarding the impact of randomness throughout an individual's life, in health and wealth for instance, businesses operate under the assumption that chance is decisive and should be accounted for.

While humanism obliterates chance by supposing an initial equality that should be kept at all costs, business ethics departs from an inherent competitiveness and attributes a monetary value for the undertaken risks.

This talk is based on a Wittgensteinian analysis and will examine a scene in The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock is asked to show mercy to Antonio. In court, the judge explicitly marks the difference between the two games, one that had been agreed upon between the two parties and a supposedly broader, and hierarchically superior, one that is not demanded by the law, but by the heart or, one might say, by God. The reference to the Shakespearean play shows how the condemnation of usury and the requirement for fairness in a christian/western/humanistic context often contradicts the rules of the game we play when in business mode.