Philosophy Meets the Social Sciences: The Nature of Humanity in the Public Arena

o Using a base of philosophical athropology, this article suggests that an ethical analysis of persuasion must include not just the logic human response, but culture and experience as well. The authors propose potential maxims for ethical behavior in advertising and public relations and applies them to two case studies, political advertising and the Bridgestone/Firestone controversy. Communications scholars have generally approached persuasion through epistemology and communications theory. In the first case, establishing the actual effects of the persuasion process has proved to be impossible. Uncertainties remain over the variables that directly influence behavior, and the explicit degree of influence of advertising and public relations stimuli is unknown. Since the beginnings of the culture of consumption in the 1920s, advertising's critics, and the majority of its practitioners, have alleged its " ability to influence us directly to buy particular products or brands " and " to shape the consumption agenda; however, because of the complex environment in which advertising operates, there is often no clear-cut proof of either the presence or absence of these effects on the thinking and/or behavior of individuals " (Rotzoll, 2001, pp. 128, 151). Even with the more sophisticated methodologies today, controversies will continue if epistemology is our framework for understanding the responsibility of public relations practitioners. In terms of mainstream communications theory, information and propaganda (news and persuasion) are considered two qualitatively different domains. Historically the purpose of the news media has been to discover truth, to present factual evidence on which the public can base its decisions. Information in the news is considered vital to informed public opin