This paper aims to analyze one of the highest achievements of humankind, the classical tragedy, via the application of the heuristic paradigm proposed by Aristotle in his Physics, the fourfold determination of the concept of cause. This scientific methodology – one of the most effective viatica for a comprehensive response to the question of the nature of an object – informs the inquiry into the universal nature of tragedy, its hypercomplexity and hence its ethical and human relevance. Firstly, the concept (...) of tragedy is dissected into its four causes – material, formal, efficient and final; given that the object of research is at the same time tragedy in general and this specific tragedy , each cause is subdivided in two, a distal one and a proximal one . Then, the methodology of the four causes is applied to the formal cause alone, the tragic conflict, in an attempt to better understand tragedy’s quiddity. The results of this more specific causal determination are finally applied to the four causes of tragedy, supporting the hypothesis of a close relationship between hybris, amartia, tragic conflict and education of the phronesis. (shrink)

The Amazon rainforest is one of the most important topics of transnational activism. Based on the assumption that the consumption of timber in the Northern hemisphere is largely responsible for deforestation, campaigners have focused on the global timber trade. From a strategy of boycotting tropical timber in the 1980s, environmentalists shifted their approach to one influenced by a discourse on ‘sustainable development’ in the 1990s. Believing that they could persuade loggers to use less predatory practices, the mainstream NGOs developed a (...) certification scheme in association with timber companies known as the FSC – Forest Stewardship Council. Since then, the NGOs have gained influence over international policies. The focus on the so-called ‘Amazon forestry vocation’, however, may lead to doubtful results when sustainability of local societies and ecosystems is considered. This article discusses some dimensions of the new Amazon policies that are driven by a global market perspective and which may consequently render local and diverse cultures invisible. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that subliminally presented stimuli accelerate or delay responses afforded by supraliminally presented stimuli. Our experiments extend these findings by showing that unconscious stimuli even affect free choices between responses. Thus, actions that are phenomenally experienced as freely chosen are influenced without the actor becoming aware of the manipulation. However, the unconscious influence is limited to a response bias, as participants chose the primed response only in up to 60% of the trials. LRP data in free choice (...) trials indicate that the prime was not ineffective in trials in which participants chose the non-primed response as then it delayed performance of the incongruently primed response. (shrink)

This book develops the view that meaningful work is central in human flourishing. The author defends a pluralistic account of what makes work meaningful, arguing that work can be meaningful in virtue of developing capabilities, supporting virtues, providing a purpose, or integrating elements of a worker's life.

Andrea Falcon's work is guided by the exegetical ideal of recreating the mind of Aristotle and his distinctive conception of the theoretical enterprise. In this concise exploration of the significance of the celestial world for Aristotle's science of nature, Falcon investigates the source of discontinuity between celestial and sublunary natures and argues that the conviction that the natural world exhibits unity without uniformity is the ultimate reason for Aristotle's claim that the heavens are made of a special body, unique (...) to them. This book presents Aristotle as a totally engaged, systematic investigator whose ultimate concern was to integrate his distinct investigations into a coherent interpretation of the world we live in, all the while mindful of human limitations to what can be known. Falcon reads in Aristotle the ambition of an extraordinarily curious mind and the confidence that that ambition has been largely fulfilled. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to consider two of the most popular arguments offered in support of the view that emotions do not cause actions. One argument suggests that emotions come after actions and therefore cannot cause them. The other argument suggests that emotions are not necessarily followed by actions and therefore cannot cause them. I argue that neither of these two arguments is compelling. At the same time, some of the concerns of causation skeptics can help us (...) better understand what a theory of the causal connection between emotions and actions should explain. (shrink)

Perceptions of a firm’s stance on corporate social responsibility (CSR) are influenced by its corporate marketing efforts including branding, reputation building, and communications. The current research examines CSR from the consumer’s perspective, focusing on antecedents and consequences of perceived CSR. The findings strongly support the fact that particular cues, namely perceived financial performance and perceived quality of ethics statements, influence perceived CSR which in turn impacts perceptions of corporate reputation, consumer trust, and loyalty. Both consumer trust and loyalty were also (...) found to reduce the perceived risk that consumers experience in buying and using products. From these significant findings, we draw several conclusions and implications, including the importance of enhancing firm focus toward its ethical commitment and long-term reputation. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the literature on conceptual change by engaging in direct theoretical and empirical comparison of contrasting views. We take up the question of whether naïve physical ideas are coherent or fragmented, building specifically on recent work supporting claims of coherence with respect to the concept of force by Ioannides and Vosniadou [Ioannides, C., & Vosniadou, C. (2002). The changing meanings of force. Cognitive Science Quarterly 2, 5–61]. We first engage in a theoretical inquiry on the (...) nature of coherence and fragmentation, concluding that these terms are not well‐defined, and proposing a set of issues that may be better specified. The issues have to do with contextuality, which concerns the range of contexts in which a concept (meaning, model, theory) applies, and relational structure, which is how elements of a concept (meaning, model, or theory) relate to one another. We further propose an enhanced theoretical and empirical accountability for what and how much one needs to say in order to have specified a concept. Vague specification of the meaning of a concept can lead to many kinds of difficulties.Empirically, we conducted two studies. A study patterned closely on Ioannides and Vosniadou's work (which we call a quasi‐replication) failed to confirm their operationalizations of “coherent.” An extension study, based on a more encompassing specification of the concept of force, showed three kinds of results: (1) Subjects attend to more features than mentioned by Ioannides and Vosniadou, and they changed answers systematically based on these features; (2)We found substantial differences in the way subjects thought about the new contexts we asked about, which undermined claims for homogeneity within even the category of subjects (having one particular meaning associated with “force”) that best survived our quasi‐replication; (3) We found much reasoning of subjects about forces that cannot be accounted for by the meanings specified by Ioannides and Vosniadou. All in all, we argue that, with a greater attention to contextuality and with an appropriately broad specification of the meaning of a concept like force, Ioannides and Vosniadou's claims to have demonstrated coherence seem strongly undermined. Students' ideas are not random and chaotic; but neither are they simply described and strongly systematic. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The subject of musical emotions has emerged only recently as a major area of research. While much work in this area offers fascinating insights to musicological research, assumptions about the nature of emotional experience seem to remain committed to appraisal, representations, and a rule-based or information-processing model of cognition. Over the past three decades alternative ‘embodied’ and ‘enactive’ models of mind have challenged this approach by emphasising the self-organising aspects of cognition, often describing it as an ongoing process of dynamic (...) interactivity between an organism and its environment. More recently, this perspective has been applied to the study of emotion in general, opening up interesting new possibilities for theory and research. This new approach, however, has received rather limited attention in musical contexts. With this in mind, we critically review the history of music and emotion studies, arguing that many existing theories offer only limited views of what musical-emotional experience entails. We then attempt to provide preliminary grounding for an alternative perspective on music and emotion based on the enactive/dynamic systems approach to the study of mind. (shrink)

In his book The Culmination, Pippin leaves no doubt that he still thinks that German Idealism has achieved a level of understanding and radicality that makes its proponents the best conversational partners to develop an understanding of what philosophy is about. It is the question of the very possibility of understanding that comes to be at the center of their writings and informs every page. Yet this radicality is now seen in a different light. It is now conceived as a (...) culmination, not of an understanding that comes to itself but of a misunderstanding that informs, unavoidably, Western philosophical tradition as a whole. The resources for the idea that there is something fundamentally wrong in the conception of what it is to be a being that is able to know anything at all Pippin finds most vividly and forcefully articulated in Heidegger. I will argue that there is something profoundly true about Pippin's idea that, at the bottom of any knowledge we have of ourselves and the world, there is something that Heidegger calls Stimmung, which is essentially non‐discursive. However, I will argue that to defend the latter thought, one has to read Heidegger's notion of Stimmung in a more radical way than Pippin seems to be willing to. (shrink)

Is logic masculine? Is women's lack of interest in the "hard core" philosophical disciplines of formal logic and semantics symptomatic of an inadequacy linked to sex? Is the failure of women to excel in pure mathematics and mathematical science a function of their inability to think rationally? Andrea Nye undermines the assumptions that inform these questions, assumptions such as: logic is unitary, logic is independenet of concrete human relations, and logic transcends historical circumstances as well as gender. In a (...) series of studies of the logics of historical figures--Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Abelard, Ockham, and Frege--she traces the changing interrelationships between logical innovation and oppressive speech strategies, showing that logic is not transcendent truth but abstract forms of language spoken by men, whether Greek ruling citizens, or scientists. (shrink)

We argue that there are three coherent, nontrivial notions of basic-ness: conceptual basic-ness, biological basic-ness, and psychological basic-ness. There is considerable evidence for conceptually basic emotion categories (e.g., “anger,” “fear”). These categories do not designate biologically basic emotions, but some forms of anger, fear, and so on that are biologically basic in a sense we will specify. Finally, two notions of psychological basic-ness are distinguished, and the evidence for them is evaluated. The framework we offer acknowledges the force of some (...) of the objections to basic emotion theory whilst demonstrating that the notion of a basic emotion, once properly reformulated, is still of scientific value. (shrink)

One important mode of philosophical expression from the end of the Hellenistic period and into Late Antiquity was the philosophical commentary. During this time Plato and Aristotle were regarded as philosophical authorities and their works were subject to intense study. This entry offers a concise account of how the revival of interest in the philosophy of Aristotle that took place towards the end of the Hellenistic period eventually developed into a new literary production: the philosophical commentary. It also follows the (...) commentary tradition into Late Antiquity in order to account for the vitality and richness of this tradition. The reader should keep in mind that the study of Aristotle in the form of the commentary did not mean the cessation of genuine philosophical thought. Quite the contrary: authors customarily used the commentary format not only to expound the works of Aristotle, but also as a vehicle for original philosophical theorizing. One consequence of this approach was that, at least at the beginning, the return to the works of Aristotle did not involve the.. (shrink)

Follows Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland as they travel together in South America and then go their separate ways, in the process illustrating two very different ways of understanding humanity's place in the natural world.

In this paper, I take a fresh look at Husserl's key distinction between objectifying and non‐objectifying acts, which roughly amounts to a distinction between presentational and evaluative experiences. My goal is to provide a clear and unified reconstruction of Husserl's argument for the thesis that non‐objectifying acts are necessarily founded in objectifying acts, a thesis that is highly controversial in and beyond Husserlian scholarship. In the first section, I reconstruct Husserl's view in the Logical Investigations, according to which only objectifying (...) acts establish an independent intentional relation to their objects, and argue that it is justified by the positing function of objectifying acts. In the second section, I address two problematic interpretations of this view and, after criticizing them, I present what I take to be Husserl's core argument for his position. In the third section, I turn to the revision of the view of the Logical Investigations that Husserl proposes in the wake of his transcendental turn, especially in Ideas I and II. On Husserl's revised view, all acts are objectifying, including emotional acts [Gemütsakte]. This revision has led scholars to consider Husserl's view aporetic. I propose an alternative interpretation that dispels the purported aporia. I conclude with some remarks on the costs and benefits of my reading, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of Husserl's view in general. (shrink)

The name of Aëtius is linked to a compendium of physical opinions discovered and reconstructed by Hermann Diels in his Doxographi Graeci (Berlin 1879). Diels was able to show that a very complex doxographical tradition derives from a single work to be dated to the first century CE, which he attributed to an otherwise unknown person called Aëtius. Diels' reconstruction of this lost work provided the basis for his immensely influential collection of fragments, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin 1903). Diels' (...) discovery and reconstruction is currently being re-examined by Jaap Mansfeld and David Runia in a multi-volume editorial project entitled Aëtiana. The first volume of Aëtiana appeared in 1997.1 That volume deals with the hypothesis that a number of later authors derived their doxographical information from a common source to be identified with a work composed in about 100 CE by Aëtius. The upshot is that the Aëtius-hypothesis is sound but is also in need of revision and refinement. This second volume carries forward the investigation begun in the first volume. It is divided into two parts. The first part consists of a structural analysis of the compendium, and the second offers a reconstruction of its best preserved section, namely book 2. (shrink)

Does the recent publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks require a re-evaluation of his thought? In the present text we will deal with this question and reach the conclusion that a change of theoretical perspective on Heidegger’s work is indeed justified. The franker and less cautious style of the Black Notebooks puts in the foreground stances that were already known, but were previously relegated to the background: it becomes possible thereby to establish that Heidegger’s philosophical views host a significant lot of (...) unwarranted prejudices, which are incorporated in his picture of the ‘history of being’. We argue that in his process of radical questioning Heidegger progressively drops all available rational methods and epistemic criteria, and that this paves the way to the unwitting reception of personal prejudices in his theoretical frame: Heidegger knowingly abandons all the theoretical instruments that could enable him to discriminate between deeply felt prejudices and proper philosophical intuitions. We conclude our analysis by proposing some criticisms that should be acceptable also to scholars sympathetic with Heidegger’s thought. Heidegger’s vindication of an ‘erratic’ way of thinking, where the journey is more qualifying than the result, turns out to be incompatible with the assertiveness of the many unjustified claims disseminated across the Black Notebooks. Moreover, Heidegger wants to show the narrowness of an overwhelmingly dialectical and argumentative attitude, while his late style of thinking unwittingly discredits an alternative philosophical style, that widely appeals to a ‘principle of charity’ in the collaboration between author and reader. (shrink)