This article presents a study of corporate-stakeholder relationships using an empirical technique called Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess company "best practices" with respect to five primary stakeholders at an industry level of analysis. Five key stakeholder domains are considered: community relations, employee relations, environment, customer (product category), and stockholders (financial performance). These data reflect the relationships between companies and these five primary stakeholders; these relationships are considered to be important elements of corporate social performance. About 15% of companies, on (...) average, are found to be operating at the multidimensional "best practices frontier" that DEA establishes. Differences in treatment of stakeholders within industries and between industries are observed. (shrink)

In the seventeenth century the microscope opened up a new world of observation, and, according to Catherine Wilson, profoundly revised the thinking of scientists and philosophers alike. The interior of nature, once closed off to both sympathetic intuition and direct perception, was now accessible with the help of optical instruments. The microscope led to a conception of science as an objective, procedure-driven mode of inquiry and renewed interest in atomism and mechanism. Focusing on the earliest forays into microscopical research, (...) from 1620 to 1720, this book provides us with both a compelling technological history and a lively assessment of the new knowledge that helped launch philosophy into the modern era. Wilson argues that the discovery of the microworld--and the apparent role of living animalcula in generation, contagion, and disease--presented metaphysicians with the task of reconciling the ubiquity of life with human-centered theological systems. It was also a source of problems for philosophers concerned with essences, qualities, and the limits of human knowledge, whose positions are echoed in current debates about realism and instrument-mediated knowledge. Covering the contributions of pioneering microscopists (Leeuwenhoek, Swammerdam, Malpighi, Grew, and Hooke) and the work of philosophers interested in the microworld (Bacon, Descartes, Leibniz, Malebranche, Locke, and Berkeley), she challenges historians who view the abstract sciences as the sole catalyst of the Scientific Revolution as she stresses the importance of observational and experimental science to the modern intellect. (shrink)

This landmark study examines the role played by the rediscovery of the writings of the ancient atomists, Epicurus and Lucretius, in the articulation of the major philosophical systems of the seventeenth century, and, more broadly, their influence on the evolution of natural science and moral and political philosophy. The target of sustained and trenchant philosophical criticism by Cicero, and of opprobrium by the Christian Fathers of the early Church, for its unflinching commitment to the absence of divine supervision and the (...) finitude of life, the Epicurean philosophy surfaced again in the period of the Scientific Revolution, when it displaced scholastic Aristotelianism. Both modern social contract theory and utilitarianism in ethics were grounded in its tenets. Catherine Wilson shows how the distinctive Epicurean image of the natural and social worlds took hold in philosophy, and how it is an acknowledged, and often unacknowledged presence in the writings of Descartes, Gassendi, Hobbes, Boyle, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley. With chapters devoted to Epicurean physics and cosmology, the corpuscularian or "mechanical" philosophy, the question of the mortality of the soul, the grounds of political authority, the contested nature of the experimental philosophy, sensuality, curiosity, and the role of pleasure and utility in ethics, the author makes a persuasive case for the significance of materialism in seventeenth-century philosophy without underestimating the depth and significance of the opposition to it, and for its continued importance in the contemporary world. Lucretius's great poem, On the Nature of Things, supplies the frame of reference for this deeply-researched inquiry into the origins of modern philosophy. (shrink)

In many diagrams one seems to perceive necessity – one sees not only that something is so, but that it must be so. That conflicts with a certain empiricism largely taken for granted in contemporary philosophy, which believes perception is not capable of such feats. The reason for this belief is often thought well-summarized in Hume's maxim: ‘there are no necessary connections between distinct existences’. It is also thought that even if there were such necessities, perception is too passive or (...) localized a faculty to register them. We defend the perception of necessity against such Humeanism, drawing on examples from mathematics. (shrink)

At the center of Catherine's Malabou's study of Hegel is a defense of Hegel's relation to time and the future. While many readers, following Kojève, have taken Hegel to be announcing the end of history, Malabou finds a more supple impulse, open to the new, the unexpected. She takes as her guiding thread the concept of “plasticity,” and shows how Hegel's dialectic—introducing the sculptor's art into philosophy—is motivated by the desire for transformation. Malabou is a canny and faithful reader, (...) and allows her classic “maître” to speak, if not against his own grain, at least against a tradition too attached to closure and system. Malabou's Hegel is a “plastic” thinker, not a nostalgic metaphysician. (shrink)

This paper offers both a criticism of and a novel alternative perspective on current ontologies that take race to be something that is either static and wholly evident at one’s birth or preformed prior to it. In it I survey and critically assess six of the most popular conceptions of race, concluding with an outline of my own suggestion for an alternative account. I suggest that race can be best understood in terms of one’s experience of his or her body, (...) one’s interactions with other individuals, and one’s experiences within particular cultures and societies. This embeddedness of human experience has been left out of most discussions of race which tie race to a set of characteristics (either biologically or sociologically defined). To rectify this omission, I articulate what I call the “physiosocial” view of race. This emphasizes the situatedness of human experience, the reciprocal and dynamic nature of the racial identities of individuals and groups. Approaching racial identity in this way entails a union of two historically uncomfortable partners: biological and sociological conceptions of race. If successful, this philosophical stance may illuminate the process of racial self-ascription as well as provide an explanation for the potential changeability of an individual’s racial identity at different times and at different places. (shrink)

This unique book challenges the traditional distinction between eros, the love found in Greek thought, and agape, the love characteristic of Christianity. Focusing on a number of classic texts, including Plato's Symposium and Lysis, Aristotle's Ethics and Metaphysics,, and famous passages in Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, Dionysius the Areopagite, Plotinus, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, the author shows that Plato's account of eros is not founded on self-interest. In this way, she restores the place of erotic love as a Christian motif, (...) and unravels some longstanding confusions in philosophical discussions of love. (shrink)

There is an analogy between Timaeus's act of describing a world in words and the demiurge's task of making a world of matter. This analogy implies a parallel between language as a system of reproducing ideas in words, and the world, which reproduces reality in particular things. Authority lies in the creation of a likeness in words of the eternal Forms. The Forms serve as paradigms both for the physical world created by the demiurge, and for the world in discourse (...) created by Timaeus: his discourse gains its validity not from faithfulness to the way things appear, or the way particular things 'actually happened', but in virtue of its attempt to express in words a likeness of the perfect and eternal reality. There are implications for Plato's philosophy of language, and for the relation between words and things (words do not depict or name things but can be used to construct worlds in a parallel way to the manner in which things construct worlds, both worlds being modelled on one common world of ideas). The match between world and discourse is because of their common pictorial relation (likeness) to an independent model. (shrink)

Preparers of financial statements are in a position to manipulate the view of economic reality presented in those statements to interested parties. This paper examines two principal categories of manipulative behaviour. The term macro-manipulation is used to describe the lobbying of regulators to persuade them to produce regulation that is more favourable to the interests of preparers. Micro-manipulation describes the management of accounting figures to produce a biased view at the entity level. Both categories of manipulation can be viewed as (...) attempts at creativity by financial statement preparers. The paper analyses two cases of manipulation. First, it describes a recent case of significant and successful lobbying against the accounting regulator in the USA. The second case examines some recent Spanish earnings manipulation to demonstrate the effects of biased reporting at the entity level. Both types of creativity are considered in an ethical context. The paper concludes that the manipulations described in it can be regarded as morally reprehensible. They are not fair to users, they involve an unjust exercise of power, and they tend to weaken the authority of accounting regulators. (shrink)

The book is about three things. First, how Ancient thinkers perceived humans as like or unlike other animals; second about the justification for taking a humane attitude towards natural things; and third about how moral claims count as true, and how they can be discovered or acquired. Was Aristotle was right to see continuity in the psychological functions of animal and human souls? The question cannot be settled without taking a moral stance. As we can either focus on continuity or (...) on discontinuities, how should natural science draw the boundaries? Moral agents act and react in a world that they see under a certain description, and there is no value free science that can settle what is the correct description. This book asks us to think about where moral justification could come from, and suggests that the supposed ‘moral status’ of the object cannot provide the answer. For the moral status of the object is a product of our own imagination, and once we see that, we also see that there remains the question where we ought to have the will to see it. Furthermore, since the perception of moral truth involves the development of imagination and will, the means to attain it will be better served by engagement with poetry and literature than with enquiries that seek to exclude the engagement of the imagination, or any appeal to the beauty of nature or the love of one's fellow creatures. (shrink)

A study of Hippolytus of Rome and his treatment of Presocratic Philosophy, used as a case study to argue against the use of collections of fragments and in favour of the idea of reading "embedded texts" with attention to the interpretation and interests of the quoting author. A study of methodology in early Greek Philosophy. Includes novel interpretations of Heraclitus and Empedocles, and an argument for the unity of Empedocles's poem.

The most important things in this seminal paper are (a) showing that the first part of the chapter is only setting up the aporia and does not provide the solution; (b) showing that the rest of the chapter provides the material for resolving the aporia; (c) showing that the question is not about how we perceive that we perceive, but how we can distinguish between seeing and hearing—how we are aware that we are seeing rather than hearing; (c) showing that (...) this is reducible to how we are aware that a colour is not a sound, and how we perceive the unity of objects that present themselves under more than one sense-modality. Hence the remainder of De anima 3.2 presents both the materials for the solution (actuality of sense and sensed object are one thing) and the solution (there is a common perceiver who receives the input from several senses and can unite them and also differentiate). De anima 3.2 is not about perceiving that we perceive, nor about reflexive self-awareness. The problems of interpretation and of the unity of the chapter are resolved once we see that the topic is how we can tell the difference between input from different sense modalities, how we distinguish between white things and sweet things, or between seeing and hearing, and how we perceive objects as a unity when they present themselves to separate senses. (shrink)

Analyse le lien entre le discours du philosophe E. Levinas et l'idée de Dieu qui sous-tend sa pensée. Parmi les thèmes abordés : la création, la prophétie, le temps, la sainteté.

This article first examines pervasive present‐day attitudes toward humility before turning to Thomas Aquinas and Zhu Xi for their more positive treatments of this disposition. It then considers their ideas about how humility is related to our human limitations, before surveying how they think it should be expressed in our relationships with our neighbours. The article looks at what Thomas and Zhu have to say about excessive pride in rulers before closing in the Conclusion with some thoughts about the viability (...) of humility as a virtue for the strong, and its especial importance in contemporary politics. (shrink)

The spillovers in knowledge among largely college-educated workers were among the key reasons for the impressive degree of economic growth and spread of entrepreneurship in the United States during the 1990s. Prior 'industrial policies' in the 1970s and 1980s did not advance growth because these were based on outmoded large manufacturing models. Zoltan Acs and Catherine Armington use a knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship to explain new firm formation rates in regional economies during the 1990s period and beyond. The (...) fastest-growing regions are those that have the highest rates of new firm formation, and which are not dominated by large businesses. The authors of this text also find support for the thesis that knowledge spillovers move across industries and are not confined within a single industry. As a result, they suggest, regional policies to encourage and sustain growth should focus on entrepreneurship among other factors. (shrink)

Previous research indicates that birth order is a strong predictor of familial sentiments, with middleborns less family-oriented than first- or last-borns. In this research, effects of sex and birth order on the actual frequency of contact with maternal and paternal kin were examined in two studies. In Study 1, one hundred and forty undergraduates completed a questionnaire relating to the amount of time they spent in contact with specific relatives, while in Study 2, one hundred and twelve undergraduates completed the (...) same questionnaire with the addition of two questions relating to the subjects’ parents’ birth orders. Subjects were more likely to have frequent contact with maternal, as opposed to paternal, kin and women experienced more frequent contact than men with relatives in general. The birth order of subjects did not appear to have a significant influence on contact but the birth order of the subjects’ parents did, with the offspring of middleborn mothers having relatively little contact with maternal grandparents and the offspring of middleborn fathers having relatively little contact with paternal grandparents. These sex and birth order differences are discussed in relation to possible differences in how women and men use kinship ties and in terms of how birth order may influence parental solicitude. (shrink)

The intact nervous system has an exquisite ability to modulate the activity of multiple muscles acting at one or more joints to produce an enormous range of actions. Seemingly simple tasks, such as reaching for an object or walking, in fact rely on very complex spatial and temporal patterns of muscle activations. Neurological disorders such as stroke and focal dystonia affect the ability to coordinate multi-joint movements. This article reviews the state of the art of research of muscle synergies in (...) the intact and damaged nervous system, their implications for recovery and rehabilitation, and proposes avenues for research aimed at restoring the nervous system’s ability to control movement. (shrink)

I argue that philosophy was naturally conceived and written in verse, not prose, in the early years of philosophy, and that prose writing would be the exception not the norm. I argue that philosophers developed their ideas in verse and did not repackage ideas and thoughts first formulated in non-poetic genres, so there is no adaptation or modification involved in "putting it into poetry". This also means that the content and the form are interdependent, and the poetic details are part (...) of the message, and integral to understanding the philosophy. In both Parmenides and Empedocles there are interesting patterns of linearity and circularity in the composition which mimic and reinforce the message in the poem, which is a philosophical message about, respectively, linear journeys and cosmic cycles. (shrink)

Previous studies (Salmon 1999; Salmon and Daly 1998) have found that sex and birth order are strong predictors of familial sentiments. Middleborns tend to be less family-oriented than firstborns or lastborns, while sex differences seem to focus on the utility of kin in certain domains. If this is a reflection of middleborns receiving a lesser degree of support from kin (particularly in terms of parental investment), are middleborns turning to reciprocal alliances outside the family, becoming friendship specialists? Are there comparable (...) birth order differences with respect to mating strategies? In this study, the impact of birth order on attitudes toward family, friends, and mating were examined. Two hundred and forty-five undergraduates completed a questionnaire relating to their attitudes toward friends and family as well as some aspects of mating behavior. Birth order did have a significant impact in several areas. Middleborns expressed more positive views toward friends and less positive opinions of family in general. They were less inclined to help family in need than firstborns or lastborns. Mating strategies also appeared to be influenced by birth order, most notably in the area of infidelity, with middleborns being the least likely birth order to cheat on a sexual partner. (shrink)

Evidence that placebo acupuncture is an effective treatment for chronic pain presents a puzzle: how do placebo needles appearing to patients to penetrate the body, but instead sitting on the skin’s surface in the manner of a tactile stimulus, evoke a healing response? Previous accounts of ritual touch healing in which patients often described enhanced touch sensations suggest an embodied healing mechanism. In this qualitative study, we asked a subset of patients in a singleblind randomized trial in irritable bowel syndrome (...) to describe their treatment experiences while undergoing placebo treament. Analysis focused on patients’ unprompted descriptions of any enhanced touch sensations and any significance patients assigned to the sensations. We found in 5/6 cases, patients associated sensations including “warmth” and “tingling” with treatment efficacy. The conclusion offers a “neurophenomenological” account of the placebo effect by considering dynamic effects of attentional filtering on early sensory cortices, possibly underlying the phenomenology of placebo acupuncture. (shrink)

This brief but ambitious book explores our relationship with nature through the imagery we use when we talk about Mother Nature. Employing the critical tools of religious studies, psychology, and gender studies, Catherine M. Roach examines the various manifestations of nature as "mother" and what that idea implies for the way we approach the natural world. Part One, "Nature as Good Mother," discusses the notion that nature is, or is like, a beneficent and nurturing mother who provides and maintains (...) life. In studying the "green" slogan "Love Your Mother," Roach questions the effects—for women and for the environment—of imputing female gender to nature. She asks us to look at the associations that "motherhood" and "mothering" carry within a culture still shaped by patriarchy. She notes the danger of such an apparently pro-environmental slogan if "mother" evokes the bountiful, self-sacrificing provider who herself requires no care. Part Two, "Nature as Bad Mother," looks at the contrary notion of nature as a violent, threatening, and wrathful mother. This image arises most often when humans and technology are depicted as masters of unruly nature. Here Roach draws on theological reflection to analyze this ambivalence toward nature manifested in a fantasy that casts humans as gods. She explores the contributions of eco-theology and eco-psychology to a "heart of darkness" perspective. Finally, Part Three, "Nature as Hurt Mother," looks at possibilities and pitfalls of environmental healing inherent in the image of nature as a mother we have wounded and now seek to heal. (shrink)

Diodorus Siculus was notoriously inconsistent in his statements about the terminal date of his survey of history, the Bibliotheca Historica. In the ‘table of contents’ which he included in the general preface to the whole work, written apparently when he was preparing his manuscript for publication , he specifically names the year 60/59 as the last year of his narrative. Elsewhere, however, he not only gives a figure for the period of history encompassed by his work which would bring it (...) down to 46/5, but he also on several occasions expresses the intention of including within his narrative some account of Julius Caesar's activities in Gaul, which implies a terminal date later than c. 52 B.C. How can this discrepancy be explained? The most economical hypothesis would be that Diodorus set out at first to compose a work that should go down to 46/5, but at some later stage in the composition changed his mind, and set back his terminus to 60/59. His originally intended terminus was most likely the triple triumph of Julius Caesar, whom Diodorus clearly admired beyond all other contemporary leaders. The decision in favour of an earlier terminus will have been due either to simple fatigue or to disillusionment with the course followed by Caesar's heir after 44 b.c. and anxiety about the dangers of dealing with events of a too recent and controversial past. (shrink)

This paper describes many connections between the wisdom literature of the Ancient Greeks and the work of contemporary scholars, intellectuals and professionals in many fields. Whether or not they use the word nous to refer to the highest power of the human soul, I show that their views converge on the existence of such a power. The paper begins with a brief summary of Greek educational texts, including Greek mythology, Homer, tragedy, and Plato’s dialogues, showing that they are designed to (...) educate the power of mind. Usually without realizing it, many later schools of thought can be shown to come to conclusions that are consistent with the insights of one school of thought or cultural practice among the Ancient Greeks. Many other ancient cultures also had a holistic view of the cosmos, the human soul, and the best human life. (shrink)

This is a collection of original and soul-searching interviews with contemporary spiritual social activists.

Augustine’s _Confessions_ is one of the most significant works of Western culture. Cast as a long, impassioned conversation with God, it is intertwined with passages of life-narrative and with key theological and philosophical insights. It is enduringly popular, and justly so. The Routledge Guidebook to Augustine’s Confessions is an engaging introduction to this spiritually creative and intellectually original work. This guidebook is organized by themes: the importance of language creation and the sensible world memory, time and the self the afterlife (...) of the Confessions. Written for readers approaching the _Confessions_ for the first time, this guidebook addresses the literary, philosophical, historical and theological complexities of the work in a clear and accessible way. Excerpts in both Latin and English from this seminal work are included throughout the book to provide a close examination of both the autobiographical and theoretical content within the _Confessions. _. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that the desire for a thin female physique and its pathological expression in eating disorders result from a social pressure for thinness. However, such widespread behavior may be better understood not merely as the result of arbitrary social pressure, but as an exaggerated expression of behavior that may have once been adaptive. The reproductive suppression hypothesis suggests that natural selection shaped a mechanism for adjusting female reproduction to socioecological conditions by altering the amount of body fat. (...) In modern Western culture, social and ecological cues, which would have signaled the need for temporary postponement of reproduction in ancestral environments, may now be experienced to an unprecedented intensity and duration. (shrink)

Why is it that we watch _Mad Men_ and think it represents a period? Flashes of patterned wallpaper, whiskey neat, babies born that are never mentioned, contact lining for kitchen drawers, Ayn Rand, polaroids, skinny ties, Hilton hotels, Walter Cronkite, and a time when Don Draper can ask ‘What do women want?’ and dry old Roger Sterling can reply ‘Who Cares?’ This essay explores the embrace of period detail in _Mad Men_ finding it to be both loving and fetishistic, and (...) belonging, like all period film, to the politics of the present. (shrink)

The examples Hume relies on in _Treatise_ I.iv.2 raise questions about the role of contrariety in experience as it affects belief in the objects of perception.

Belief is a species of mere conception, and is modifiable, rather than bivalent (believing or disbelieving). The attendant-impression theory of transformation of conception into belief expresses the moral dimension of one and the same thing, of which the manner-of-conception (without attendant impression) theory of the transformation refers to the epistemic dimension of that same thing. These two aspects of the transformation of conception into belief point to an ambiguity in Hume's use of the term IDEA: as act and as content. (...) The act of conception, its content, and the pedigree of that content are all mutually indeterminate. The imagination conceives, constructs contents, and transforms conception into belief. The foundation of the role of mere conception in belief is the mind's "native situation of indifference", which makes it possible for Hume to account not only for warranted but also unwarranted belief. Hume is interested not only in what should actuate the soul but what does so in fact. Hume's real innovation lies in a theory of belief unburdened by traditional representation and in the effects rather than the external foundations of certitude. (shrink)

Symptôme psychosomatique de la condition pécheresse de l’âme humaine, processus d’usure naturel et progressif de la machinerie psychique ou corporelle, propriété exclusive du monde des corps ou lieu de la ligature obligée de l’intellect au corps, la fatigue traverse la littérature philosophique et théologique médiévale. Les divers traitements de la fatigue peuvent à leur tour valoir comme symptômes pour différencier les approches anthropologiques médiévales. Cet article en présente quatre figures: l’anthropologie du danger élaborée par Augustin, le diagnostic médical grec et (...) arabe dont Constantin l’Africain est le passeur au xi e siècle, et les lectures de la psychologie d’Aristote par Albert le Grand et Thomas d’Aquin au xiii e siècle. (shrink)

Les âgés et leurs familles sont souvent confrontés aux problématiques liées à l’entrée en institution. La séparation, le deuil du domicile réactivent des problématiques œdipiennes ou préœdipiennes qu’il est parfois difficile d’élaborer. Simultanément les établissements accueillant des personnes âgées dépendantes se trouvent entraînés dans des représentations idéales du soin qui les mettent en conflit avec les familles. Dans de telles situations le psychologue peut se trouver tiraillé entre le sujet âgé, sa famille et le personnel de l’établissement. L’article s’appuie sur (...) la théorisation d’Anzieu à propos des enveloppes familiales et plus largement sur les théories psychanalytiques prenant en compte les groupes et les institutions et montre en quoi elles sont particulièrement pertinentes pour la compréhension de telles situations. Considérer la dimension de groupe, qu’elle concerne les familles ou les institutions, peut donner aux psychologues des outils de compréhension et d’élaboration de ces situations. (shrink)