In “On Referring” Peter Strawson pointed out that incomplete descriptions pose a problem for Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions. Howard Wettstein and Michael Devitt appealed to incomplete descriptions to argue, first, that Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions fails, and second, that Donnellan’s referential/attributive distinction has semantic bite. Stephen Neale has defended Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions against Wettstein’s and Devitt’s objections. In this paper, my aim is twofold. First, I rebut Neale’s objections to Wettstein’s and Devitt’s argument and argue that (...) Neale’s attempt to provide an account of referential descriptions within a Russellian framework fails. Second, contra Devitt and Wettstein, I argue that the problem posed by incomplete descriptions shows that Donnellan was right in believing that referential descriptions refer even if the definite description fits nothing. (shrink)

We review from a historical and a didactic point of view the Equivalence Principle, which was considered by Einstein as the corner stone of his new theory of Gravitation: the General Relativity. Before and after the enormous success of his theory, this principle was the subject of studies and discussions. Still today, after more than one century, the debate about its interpretation, application and generalization is very fertile. Einstein soon understood the revolutionary significance of his idea and defined it as (...) “the happiest thought of my life”. (shrink)

In bargaining and negotiations, should one make the first offer or wait for the opponent to do so? Practitioners support the idea that moving first in bargaining is a mistake, while researchers find strong evidence that first-movers benefit from an anchoring effect. This paper addresses these issues from a theoretical perspective for the first time in the literature. It is found that first-movers benefit from a strategic advantage, while second-movers benefit from an information advantage. Therefore, the existence of first- and (...) second-mover advantages depends crucially on the relative strength of these two effects. In line with the experimental literature, first-mover advantages are more prevalent, but second-mover advantages appear in very reasonable and realistic bargaining situations. Among other results, it is found that second-mover advantages require the existence of high-types and differences in individuals’ preferences. The results also suggest a systematic first-mover advantage in contexts of great ambiguity, in which the anchoring effect of the first offer becomes the driving force. (shrink)

The paper considers the "GR-desideratum", that is, the way general relativity implements general covariance, diffeomorphism invariance, and background independence. Two cases are discussed where 5-dimensional generalizations of general relativity run into interpretational troubles when the GR-desideratum is forced upon them. It is shown how the conceptual problems dissolve when such a desideratum is relaxed. In the end, it is suggested that a similar strategy might mitigate some major issues such as the problem of time or the embedding of quantum non-locality (...) into relativistic spacetimes. (shrink)

This article serves as an introduction to the collection of papers in this monographic issue on "What the European tradition can teach about Corporate Social Responsibility" and presents the rationale and the main hypotheses of the project. We maintain that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an ethical concept, that the demands for socially responsible actions have been around since before the Industrial Revolution and that companies have responded to them, especially in Europe, and that the content of CSR has evolved (...) over time, depending on historical, cultural, political, and socio-economic drivers and particular conditions in different countries and also at different points in time. Therefore, there is not — and probably cannot be — a unique, precise definition of CSR: one global standard for CSR is unlikely. (shrink)

INCONTINENCE, HONOURING SUNK COSTS AND RATIONALITY According to a basic principle of rationality, the decision to engage in a course of action should be determined solely by the analysis of its consequences. Thus, considerations associated with previous use of resources should have no bearing on an agent’s decision-making process. Frequently, however, agents persist carrying on an activity they themselves judge to be nonoptimal under the circumstances because they have already allocated resources to that activity. When this is the case, agents (...) are said to be honouring sunk costs. Honouring sunk costs is thus typically viewed as irrational economic behaviour. Two striking findings of the psychological literature on the sunk cost effect are that it is, in general, not lessened by having taken previously courses in economics, and that agents who did take such courses and that do honour sunk costs seem to be frequently aware of a cognitive dissonance in their behaviour. Davidson’s account of the possibility conditions of incontinent action renders continent action materially unfeasible. The very idea of incontinent action becomes thus a hollow one. I’ll present an alternative description of these possibility conditions that renders continent action materially feasible, and both, continent and incontinent action, cognitively plausible. In a nutshell, my proposal rests upon the drawing of an essential cognitive contrast between explicit processes of deliberative reasoning and lower level heuristic procedures. I conclude the paper arguing that my redescription of incontinent action accounts for the above mentioned cognitive dissonance effect better than the alternatives and that viewing at least an important subset of behaviours of honouring sunk costs as incontinent actions will enable us to consider them as peculiar manifestations of a more general and meaningful pattern in human behaviour. (shrink)

O objetivo deste texto é pensar sobre as relações entre Vico e Rousseau e suas respectivas perspectivas sobre o estatuto da linguagem, da retórica e da sociedade.

La finalidad de este artículo es explicar, mediante algunos testimonios significativos, de qué manera penetra en España el aristotelismo y cómo esta penetración del nuevo pensamiento aristotélico en Europa pone de manifiesto un permanente conflicto entre Edad Media y Renacimiento, fundamentalmente en España, donde el redescubrimiento y uso de las autoridades antiguas constituye a menudo un importante problema teórico. El autor muestra alguna de estas dificultades en varios dominios (filosofía, ciencia, literatura).

Luis Jiménez Moreno murió en octubre de 2007 a los 77 años de edad. Durante los últimos 30 años perteneció a la Universidad Complutense, de la que llegó a ser catedrático. Había estudiado en Salamanca, Roma, Valencia y Munich. Su tesis doctoral sobre el pensamiento antropológico de Nietzsche fue dirigida por Aranguren. Fue catedrático de instituto en Andújar, Ávila y Badalona, y profesor de universidad en Barcelona y Madrid. El presente artículo recoge los datos fundamentales de su vida, así como (...) toda su obra dividida en libros, artículos, ensayos, conferencias, ponencias y comunicaciones en congresos, seminarios, simposios, reuniones científicas, etc. (shrink)

We give a presentation of Post algebras of ordern+1 (n1) asn+1 bounded Wajsberg algebras with an additional constant, and we show that a Wajsberg algebra admits a P-algebra reduct if and only if it isn+1 bounded.