The financial sector has seen a transformation towards ‘sustainable’ finance particularly in Europe, driven also by unprecedented regulatory reforms. At the same time, many are sceptical about the real impact of these reforms, fearing that they are triggering a paradoxical financialisation of sustainability. Building on recent research on institutional logics and institutional fields formation, we examine changes in the EU regulatory dynamics as characterised by shifts in framing the relationship between sustainability and finance. Deploying a longitudinal approach, consisting of archival (...) data and semi-structured interviews, we explore the development of EU sustainable finance regulation as an extended, interactive and contested process. Specifically, we suggest that regulatory dynamics depend on the hybrid configuration of the social constituencies supporting sustainable finance reforms and on shifts in the overall prevalence of the financial logic in society. Our paper sheds light on the inherent contradictions and limitations of sustainable finance as a means for transformative sustainability reforms. (shrink)

Whether firms in transition economies undertake corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important research topic in business ethics. Applying the middle-status conformity perspective, this study uses listed companies in the transition economy of China from 2010 to 2020 to assess the influence of social status on CSR conformity. The empirical findings revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between social status and CSR conformity. That is, firms with low- or high-level status were less inclined to adopt CSR practices than the firms with (...) a more middling status. Moreover, performance expectation gaps strengthened, while managerial ability flattened, the aforementioned inverted U-shaped relationship. This study sheds new light on the complicated motives for firms in transition economies to adopt CSR practices and further substantiates the boundary conditions of the curvilinear relationship between social status and CSR conformity. (shrink)

It is a well-established fact that we tend to underestimate our susceptibility to cognitive bias on account of overconfidence, and thereby often fail to listen to intellectual advice aimed at reducing such bias. This is the problem of intellectual deference. The present paper considers this problem in contexts where educators attempt to teach students how to avoid bias for purposes of instilling epistemic virtues. It is argued that recent research in social psychology suggests that we can come to terms with (...) this problem in two steps, the second of which involves educators communicating their intellectual advice in a procedurally just manner. The components of the relevant form of procedural justice are specified and related to Miranda Fricker and David Coady’s notions of epistemic justice. Finally, a series of objections are considered and responded to. (shrink)

In this book, Canadian scholar David Geoffrey Smith reflects on over thirty years of research and teaching in the human sciences, including education. Written between 1986 and 2018, the essays are organized around three themes: Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences; The Poststructuralist Turn; Globalization and Its Discontents; East/West Encounters and the Search for Wisdom. As a historical guide through the defining discourses in the human sciences, this volume could well serve as an introductory text for graduate students in education (...) and other cognate disciplines like nursing, recreation and cultural studies. The writing can be described as a form of meditative praxis, while the emphasis on interculturality addresses issues in literacy, pedagogy, politics, critical thinking, teacher education, and cultural healing from a geopolitical perspective, drawing on insights from both Western and Eastern traditions and the author's personal experience of being born in China and raised in Central Africa (Northern Rhodesia/Zambia). (shrink)

David Keyt presents a clear and accurate new translation of the the fifth and sixth books of Aristotle's Politics, together with a philosophical and historical commentary. The Politics is a key document in Western political thought; it raises and discusses many political issues, theoretical and practical, which are still widely debated today. The major topics of these two books are equality, democracy, tyranny, revolution, and reform.

David Houston Jones builds a bridge between practices conventionally understood as forensic, such as crime scene investigation, and the broader field of activity which the forensic now designates, for example performance and installation art, as well as photography. Contemporary work in these areas responds both to forensic evidence, including crime scene photography, and to some of the assumptions underpinning its consumption. It asks how we look, and in whose name, foregrounding and scrutinising the enduring presence of voyeurism in visual (...) media and instituting new forms of ethical engagement. Such work responds to the object-oriented culture associated with the forensic and offers a reassessment of the relationship of human voice and material evidence. It displays an enduring debt to the discursive model of testimony which has so far been insufficiently recognised, and which forms the basis for a new ethical understanding of the forensic. Jones's analysis brings this methodology to bear upon a strand of contemporary visual activity which has the power to significantly redefine our understandings of the production, analysis and deployment of evidence. Artists examined include Forensic Architecture, Simon Norfolk, Melanie Pullen, Angela Strassheim, John Gerrard, Julian Charrière, Trevor Paglen, Laura Poitras and Sophie Ristelhueber. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, literary studies, modern languages, photography and critical theory. (shrink)

David Levine and Mathew Bowker explore cultural and political trends organized around the conviction that the world we live in is a dangerous place to be, that it is dominated by hate and destruction, and that in it our primary task is to survive by carrying on a life-long struggle against hostile forces. Their method involves the analysis of public fantasies to reveal their hidden meanings. The central fantasy explored is the fantasy of a destroyed world, which appears most (...) commonly in the form of post-apocalyptic and dystopian narratives. Their special concern in the book is with defenses against the painful consequences of the dominance of this fantasy in the inner world, especially defenses involving the use of guilt to assure that something can be done to repair the destroyed world. Topics explored include: the formation of internal fortresses and their projection into the world outside, forms of guilt including bystander guilt and survivor guilt, the loss of and search for home, and manic forms of reparation. (shrink)

The orphaned son of an Anglican clergyman, David Hartley was originally destined for holy orders. Declining to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, he turned to medicine and science yet remained a religious believer. This, his most significant work, provides a rigorous analysis of human nature, blending philosophy, psychology and theology. First published in two volumes in 1749, Observations on Man is notable for being based on the doctrine of the association of ideas. It greatly influenced scientists, theologians, social reformers (...) and poets: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who named his eldest son after Hartley, had his portrait painted while holding a copy. In Volume 1, Hartley utilises Newtonian science in his observations. He presents a theory of 'vibrations', explaining how the elements of the nerves and brain interact as a result of stimulation, creating 'associations' and emotions. (shrink)

What is the cultural value of illegal works that violate the copyrights of popular fiction? Why do they persist despite clear and stringent intellectual property laws? Drawing on the disciplines of new media, law, and literary studies, Illegal Literature suggests that extralegal works such as fan fiction are critical to a system that spurs the evolution of culture. Reconsidering voices relegated to the cultural periphery, David S. Roh shows how infrastructure--in the form of legal policy and network distribution--slows or (...) accelerates the rate of change. He analyzes the relationship between intellectual property rights and American literature in two recent copyright disputes. And, in comparing American fan fiction and Japanese dojinshi, he illustrates how infrastructure and legal climates detract from or encourage fledgling creativity. Illegal Literature fills a crucial gap between the scholarly and the popular by closely examining several modes of marginalized cultural production. Roh makes the case for protecting an environment conducive to literary heresy, the articulation of an accretive rather than solitary authorial genius, and the idea that letting go rather than holding on is important to a generative creative process. In a media ecology inundated by unauthorized materials, Illegal Literature argues that the proliferation of unsanctioned texts may actually benefit literary and cultural development. (shrink)

Edited in hypertext by Andrew Chrucky. Reprinted with the permission of Professor David Rosenthal. Editor's Note: Due to the limitation of current hypertext, the following conventions have been used. In general, if an expression has some mark over it, that mark is placed as a prefix to the expression. All Greek characters are rendered by their names. Subscripts are placed in parentheses as concatenated suffixes: thus, e.g., HO is the chemical formula for water. Sellars' dot quotes are expressed by (...) bold periods. (shrink)

Assorted fruit from forty years' writing, these essays by David Braybrooke discuss (in Part One of the book) a variety of concrete, practical topics that ethical concerns bring into politics: people's interests; their needs as well as their preferences; their work and their commitment to work; their participation in politics and in other group activities. Essays follow on the justice with which theme matters are arranged for and on the common good in which they are consolidated. Justice here inspires (...) a 'departures' approach, which moves from agreement on departures from commutative justice to agreement on measures of distributive justice needed to forestall such departures. Another essay (first published here) radically undermines the odd but entrenched belief that utilitarianism classically licenced, even prescribed, systematically sacrificing the happiness of some people to give others greater pleasure. Part II and Part III of the book concentrate upon the subject of settled social rules, which are devices for securing the objectives treated in Part I. Part II shows that rules are ubiquitous in ethics, since there are no virtues without rules, just as there are no (justified) rules; without virtues. Part Two also shows that rules are as ubiquitous in social phenomena as the causal regularities sought by one school of social science. Part III captures the dialectic of history at least in part by a logical analysis of changes in rules following the onset of quandaries. It then considers how political choices can be both prudent, by keeping within duly considered incremental limits, and yet imaginative enough to escape the recent embarrassments generated by social choice theory. Characteristically versatile in topic and style, Braybrooke offers original light on all theme subjects. One reader has commented, ' His] prose is elegant and always a pleasure to read. Some of the pieces are nothing short of brilliant.' Which did the reader have in mind? Readers may differ (they already have) on just which pieces they would rank highest. (shrink)

Citizens in the contemporary world have become alienated from politics because they conceive of it as an instrumental activity. David Antonini argues that Hannah Arendt's thought can help us recover meaningful political experience: a distinct experience of politics in which citizens can speak and act together.

Why does agency-the capacity to make choices and to act in the world-matter to us? Why is it meaningful that our intentions have effects in the world, that they reflect our sense of identity, that they embody what we value? David Kyuman Kim addresses these crucial questions by uncovering the political, moral, philosophical, and religious dimensions of human agency. Through a critical engagement with the work of theorists such as Judith Butler, Charles Taylor, and Stanley Cavell, Kim argues that (...) late modern and postmodern agency is found most effectively at work in what he calls "projects of regenerating agency" or critical and strategic responses to loss. Agency as melancholic freedom begins and endures, Kim maintains, through the moral and psychic losses associated with a broad range of experiences, including the moral identities shaped by secularized modernity and the multifold forms of alienation experienced by those who suffer the indignities of racial, gender, class, and sexuality discrimination and oppression. Kim calls for renewing the sense of urgency in our political and moral engagements by seeing agency as a vocation, where the aspiration for self-transformation and the human need for hope are fundamental concerns. (shrink)

In this uniquely and timely collection, David LaRocca offers us a thoughtful reminder that the very possibility and urgent task of thinking, of our acting and judging, ethics and politics, rests upon a willing exposure to an aspect of our everyday and ordinary experience that is hard to grasp and eludes most, perhaps all, epistemic criteria. Metaphysicians, mystics, and moral perfectionists of all stripes have called this 'the transcendental', thus risking the fatal misunderstanding that this means only 'the transcendent', (...) leading to the dualist assumption that we are citizens of two separate (earthly and heavenly) cities or (phenomenal and noumenal) worlds. Yet the truth is far more simple, if much harder to accept and then also live by. We are what we are, here and now. Yet we're not, therefore, irrevocably bound by what thus is said 'to be' -- much less by the proverbial powers that will always be -- in what we can still further imagine and aim or hope for, against the odds, as it were. In this brilliantly edited and introduced anthology, LaRocca presents us with the broadest selection of authors, philosophers, visionaries, and artists, who have expressed this simple, difficult truth and freedom in the most profound and varied ways."--Hent de Vries's review, p. [i]. (shrink)

Wars have played a momentous role in shaping the course of human history. The ever-present specter of conflict has made it an enduring topic of interest in popular culture, and many movies, from Hollywood blockbusters to independent films, have sought to show the complexities and horrors of war on-screen. In The Philosophy of War Films, David LaRocca compiles a series of essays by prominent scholars that examine the impact of representing war in film and the influence that cinematic images (...) of battle have on human consciousness, belief, and action. The contributors explore a variety of topics, including the aesthetics of war as portrayed on-screen, the effect war has on personal identity, and the ethical problems presented by war. Drawing upon analyses of iconic and critically acclaimed war films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998), Rescue Dawn (2006), Restrepo (2010), and Zero Dark Thirty (2012), this volume's examination of the genre creates new ways of thinking about the philosophy of war. A fascinating look at the manner in which combat and its aftermath are depicted cinematically, The Philosophy of War Films is a timely and engaging read for any philosopher, filmmaker, reader, or viewer who desires a deeper understanding of war and its representation in popular culture. (shrink)

In Science, Order and Creativity, David Bohm and F. David Peat argue that science has lost its way in recent years and needs to go beyond a narrow and fragmented view of nature and embrace a wider holistic view that restores the importance of creativity and communication for all humanity - not just scientists. The result of a close collaboration by one of the 20th century's greatest physicists and thinkers, David Bohm, with leading science writer F. (...) class='Hi'>David Peat, provides a rare combination of profound reflection and clear exposition that can be appreciated by anyone concerned with science and its importance in our lives. This new edition includes a new preface and an extended additional chapter by Peat which draws upon further discussions with David Bohm before the latter's death in 1992. A fascinating diagnosis and considered proposal for a cure for science's ills, it is also very accessible entry point to the work of David Bohm. Bohm and Peat contend that science has lost its bearings in the last century in favour of a narrow, abstracted, fragmented approach to nature and reality. Tracing the history of science, Bohm and Peat offer intriguing new insights into how scientific theories come into being, how to eliminate blocks of creativity and how science can lead to a deeper understanding of society, the human condition and the human mind itself. (shrink)

The material reprinted in this two-volume set, first published in 1989, covers the first eighty-five years in responses to George Berkeley’s writings. David Berman identifies several key waves of eighteenth-century criticism surrounding Berkeley’s philosophies, ranging from hostile and discounted, to valued and defended. The first volume includes an account of the life of Berkeley by J. Murray and key responses from 1711 to 1748, whilst the second volume covers the years between 1745 and 1796. This fascinating reissue illustrates the (...) breadth and diversity of the early reaction to Berkeley’s philosophies, and will help students and academics form a clear image of both Berkeley’s work and his reputation through the eyes of his contemporaries. (shrink)

Milan, David An atheist and his christian friend are engaged in cordial conversation. The latter is taken aback and is rather indignant when his atheist friend declaims, 'On this question of the existence of god I believe that our respective positions are much closer than you imagine'. The Christian's firm riposte is that, by definition, such a harmony of viewpoints is impossible. Unfazed, his non-believing friend offers a thoughtful defence of his claim. He begins, 'You know that, since time (...) immemorial, humankind has taken unto itself all manner of gods, and that almost all of these tribal deities have long since vanished into obscurity.'. (shrink)

Is something true because we believe it to be so or because it is true? How can a culturally bound community achieve scientific knowledge when values, attitudes, and desires shape its beliefs? In this book an eminent philosopher considers various schools of thought on the nature of truth. David Weissman argues that truth exists in the correspondence between statement and fact: what can be said about our world can be measured against a reality that has a character and existence (...) independent of any property we ascribe to it. Weissman begins by evaluating the transcendental paradigm of Kant that has exercised enormous influence in the development of Western thought over the past two hundred years. He develops his critique of the Kantian model, in which value judgments underlie the perception or construction of truth, asserting that it is seriously flawed because it renders a determination of truth impossible. Weissman examines various value-driven perspectives on truth developed by such philosophers as Foucault, Derrida, and Rorty, for whom truth is only the set of affirmations, principles, and procedures sanctioned by power and value. However, says Weissman, truth is the required adjunct to desire. Knowing who we are, where we have been, and the consequences of what we have done is the essential preparation for choosing what to do next. We must respect the integrity of a world we have not made and find our way within it with the help of attitudes and desires that have been informed by truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 161 2) You wish him to become what he is not, and no longer to be what he is now (literally: what he is now, no longer to be [283d 2-3]). 3) You wish for his death, since you wish him no longer to be (283d 5-6). The obvious way of dealing with this argument is to make precisely the distinction made by the author of (...) the Dissoi Logoi at V, 15: we should say to Dionysodorus, "Your conclusion that the friends of Cleinias wish for his death is the result of an illegitimate step: you went from 'you wish him not to be ignorant' to 'you wish him not to be'. To have made this step is to have ignored the distinction between existence with respect to some particular thing, i.e., ignorance, and existence in general." (A later critic might point out to Dionysodorus that he has confused the copulative and existential uses of the verb "to be.") It now becomes possible to return to the question, which of the two formulations, (a) or (b), does the author of the Dissoi Logoi presuppose? On the basis of the Euthydemus passage, it seems likely that he presupposed both. The conclusion of Dionysodorus' argument is (b), that Cleinias does not exist, but his conclusion is based upon (a) that Cleinias both is (ignorant) and is not (wise). The Euthydemus passage shows clearly that the words "if someone denies that the man exists" are considerably less of a non sequitur than might first appear. CONCLUSmN. The fallacy-solving distinction of Dissoi Logoi, u 15 was probably understood by Plato~ although not clearly formulated until Aristotle. How is this fact to be assimilated? Is the Dissoi Logoi (or at least this section) much later than has hitherto been presupposed? Or have scholars simply failed to credit its author with this important distinction? Until we have additional studies of the treatise, further discussion would be premature. ROSAMOND KENT SPRAGUE University o] South Carolina HUME'S A LETTER FROM A GENTLEMAN, A REVIEW NOTE In his biography of David Hume, E. C. Mossner notes that on May 21, 1745 there appeared in two Edinburgh newspapers the following advertisement: This Day will be published, and sold by the Booksellersin Town, A LETTER from a Gentlemanto his Friend at Edinburgh: containing some Observations on a Specimenof the PrinciplesconcerningRELIGION and MORALITY, said to be maintain 'd in a Booklately published,intituled, A Treatiseo] Human Nature, &c.I This Letter, Mossner discloses, was sent by David Hume to his friend Henry Home (later Lord Kames), and its publication was, he suggests, the "last 7A later passagein the Euthydemus, 293b ft.,in whichSocratesuses obstructive tactics when the sophistswish to movefrom "knowingx" to "knowingsimpliciter" seems to me to point in this direction.See R. K. Sprague,Plato's Use o] Fallacy (London, 1962),22-23, and passim on secundumquid. 1See The Li]e o] David Hume (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd., 1954), pp. 153162,esp.p. 160. 162 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY frantic effort" by Hume's friends to stem the rising opposition to his appointment to the vacant chair of Ethics and Pneumatical Philosophy at Edinburgh University. Mossner was obliged to report further, however, not only that this effort had been in vain, but also that what "may well constitute an important document in the further interpretation of some aspects of the Treatise" has "never been located." z Now a copy of the Letter has been located. It was purchased from a Birmingham bookseller in December, 1966, by the National Library of Scotland. And, with admirable celerity, a facsimile edition of it has been published by the Edinburgh University Press. Adding still further to the value of this important discovery is the accompanying Introduction which describes the events, parties, and personalities which occasioned the Letter. The editors tell us that John Pringle first offered to resign his chair of philosophy in June, 1744, two years after he had taken leave to accept the position of Physician-General to the British forces in Flanders. He sent his offer to John Coutts, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and Courts, in turn, suggested to Hume that he apply. Had Pringle not delayed... (shrink)

There Is an Alternative: Economic Democracy and Participatory Economics, A Debate.

The Next American Revolution? Reflections on Gar Alperovitz, What Then Must We Do?

Virtue ethics is one of the three normative approaches to ethics. It foregrounds the virtues or moral character of the individual and can be contrasted with approaches that focus on duties or rules, as in deontological ethics, or on the consequences of actions, as in consequentialism. Virtue Ethics are different from deontological and consequentialist ethical forms. They are related to dispositions. Dispositions, as inner states, precede, condition and have some influence over actions. A disposition is a character type, an habituation, (...) a state of preparation or readiness and a tendency to act in a specified way. Two further issues are relevant to the conception of virtue ethics: notions of causality and free will. The reason why these two notions are important is that in the first case the identification and conceptualisation of the virtues requires a theory of knowledge and of being and the identification of a relationship between the two, including a notion of causation; and in the second case, any ethical theory requires a theory of intention. (shrink)

SummaryOne form of the principle of the identity of indiscernibles asserts that for any two distinct entities it is necessarily the case that there is a description which distinguishes between them, in that it applies to one but not to the other. In this paper it is argued that this form of the principle is false. The argument is based upon the nature of language, in particular the need for ostensive definition of terms which are not verbally definable. It is (...) concluded that the identity of indiscernibles, in its linguistic form, requires a power of discrimination which no language could possess. Other versions of the principle, however, formulated in terms of properties rather than descriptions, are unaffected by the argument and may well be true. (shrink)

In letter 7.24 Pliny provides his readers with a character sketch of the elderly matriarch of a distinguished and wealthy Italian family-Ummidia Quadratilla. Ummidia passed her later years as a fan of the theater; specifically, "she had pantomimes." Pliny disapproves of the shows presented by these performers, and he chastises Ummidia for her interest in pantomime. In fact he views her conduct as symptomatic of a vice among women in general: "I have heard that she herself used to relax her (...) mind with checkers or watch her pantomimes, as women do in the idleness of their sex." We should not be surprised by these comments; there was a tradition of ambivalence among the Romans toward the professions of the theater, and when women became involved with these professions, the ambivalence could turn to contempt. Given the general disposition of Roman males toward pantomime and women, modern readers should not so readily accept Pliny's assessment. By training her slaves as pantomimes, Ummidia was greatly increasing their value. From numerous ancient sources we know that the monetary value of slaves trained in the theatrical professions was among the highest accorded any slave. Moreover, because of Ummidia's endowment of a theater in her native Casinum and the performance of Ummidia's pantomimes in public games, we might say that she was the manager of a small "theatrical empire." Finally, because of the great interest in pantomime on the part of the masses and the desire of the upper classes, including members of various imperial families, to soothe these masses with games, control of popular pantomimes might have given Ummidia access to limited political power. (shrink)

In this response, I examine the ambiguity about the status of Membership Categorization Device Analysis in the work of Harvey Sacks. The ‘five guiding principles’ of MCDA that Stokoe enunciates serve as a crucial guide to future research. In what follows, I give some further examples of data analysis which, I believe, supports both her strong and weaker claims.

Neuropsychiatry integrates neuroscience and clinical pathophysiology of the human brain-mind interface. Kalisch et al. provide an important advance with a clear, quantitative, unified neuropsychiatric model of resilience, a crucial adaptive response to adversity. They highlight positive appraisal style, describing underlying neural circuitry and mechanisms. This provides a foundation for the development of biomarkers and targeted therapeutics across the range of neuropsychiatric disorders.

This article represents a preliminary attempt to conceptualize the relationship between technology and global inequality, using a political economy of the world-system perspective. Despite the crucial role that technical innovation and adaptation play in the process of international development, many macroanalyses of social change focus little explicit attention on technology. Only neoevolutionary theory discusses its role in long-term social change, and then in ways that miss some key dimensions. The author argues that technology is a social product designed to fit (...) the needs of the rich and powerful. In the contemporary world, it is usually produced by a highly organized research and development industry, often explicitly linked to military- industrial complexes. Rhetoric about increased globalization notwithstanding, technology is a key resource in the present capitalist world-economy that is very unevenly dtstributed, with the advanced industrial "core" states controlling technological innovation and dissemination. Even newly industrializing countries like South Korea, which many consider technologically sophisticated, experience profound technological dependence, limiting their prospects for truly autonomous economic growth. Differential control of technology and techno logical innovation is a defining trait of global inequality in the late twentieth century. (shrink)