This paper aims to contribute to the present debate about business ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that the Journal of Business Ethics is hosting. Numerous contributions argued theoretical frameworks and taxonomies of CSR practices. The authors want to ground in this knowledge and provide further evidence about how companies adopt CSR practices to address stakeholders’ claims and consolidate their trust. Evidence was provided by a longitudinal case study about an Italian food company that is one of the largest producers (...) of baby food. This company reshaped its corporate strategy along three decades through the adoption of CSR practices in order to win stakeholders’ trust about food safety and supply chain behaviour. The empirical exercise was informed by a literature review of the relevant contributions in terms of CSR business practices and levels of efforts to adopt them. In light of this review, the authors adopted for the research framework the taxonomy of business practices proposed by Spiller (2000, “Ethical Business and Investment: A Model for Business and Society”, Journal of Business Ethics 27, 149-160) and the levels of commitment towards CSR proposed by Stahl and Grigsby (1997, Strategic Management; Total Quality & Global Competition (Blackwell, Oxford)). The main findings are discussed in order to argue theoretical implications and identify further areas of research and debate. (shrink)

This study sheds new light on why healthcare organisations are having difficulty responding to the growing pressure from stakeholders to proactively address their responsibility to deliver high-quality services without harming the environment. Basing our work on past research on stakeholder pressure and environmental barriers, we conceptualise and empirically test the effect of the interplay between stakeholder pressure and internal barriers on healthcare organisations’ adoption of proactive environmental strategies. To test the proposed hypotheses, a survey was carried out among medical directors (...) of Italian healthcare organisations in 2012. Our results show that the lack of commitment to environmental issues within the organisation represents the main barrier to healthcare organisations’ implementing PESs. Furthermore, the difficulties in evaluating the impacts of advanced environmental practices negatively moderate the influence of stakeholders on developing PESs. Our findings contribute to extending previous knowledge on PESs in two ways: focusing on the healthcare sector, our study investigates the phenomenon in a research context that has been largely overlooked in the sustainability literature; and cross-cutting previous research on stakeholder pressure and internal barriers, the study conceptualises and tests a more complete framework for understanding the adoption of PESs. (shrink)

If well-designed, the results of a Randomised Clinical Trial can justify a causal claim between treatment and effect in the study population; however, additional information might be needed to carry over this result to another population. RCTs have been criticized exactly on grounds of failing to provide this sort of information Evidence, inference and enquiry. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011), as well as to black-box important details regarding the mechanisms underpinning the causal law instantiated by the RCT result. On (...) the other side, so-called In Silico Clinical Trials face the same criticisms addressed against standard modelling and simulation techniques, and cannot be equated to experiments Philosophy of molecular medicine: foundational issues in research and practice, Routledge, New York, 2017; Parker in Synthese 169:483–496, 2009; Parke in Philos Sci 81:516–536, 2014; Diez Roux in Am J Epidemiol 181:100–102, 2015 and related discussions in Frigg and Reiss in Synthese 169:593–613, 2009; Winsberg in Synthese 169:575–592, 2009; Beisbart and Norton in Int Stud Philos Sci 26:403–422, 2012). We undertake a formal analysis of both methods in order to identify their distinct contribution to causal inference in the clinical setting. Britton et al.’s study :E2098–E2105, 2013) on the impact of ion current variability on cardiac electrophysiology is used for illustrative purposes. We deduce that, by predicting variability through interpolation, ISCTs aid with problems regarding extrapolation of RCTs results, and therefore in assessing their external validity. Furthermore, ISCTs can be said to encode “thick” causal knowledge —as opposed to “thin” difference-making information inferred from RCTs. Hence, ISCTs and RCTs cannot replace one another but rather, they are complementary in that the former provide information about the determinants of variability of causal effects, while the latter can, under certain conditions, establish causality in the first place. (shrink)

In the last decade, robustness has been extensively mentioned and discussed in biology as well as in the philosophy of the life sciences. Nevertheless, from both fields, someone has affirmed that this debate has resulted in more semantic confusion than in semantic clearness. Starting from this claim, we wish to offer a sort of prima facie map of the different usages of the term. In this manner we would intend to predispose a sort of “semantic platform” which could be exploited (...) by those who wish to discuss or simply use it. We do this by starting from a core distinction between the robustness of representations, which is a philosophy of science issue, and the representations of robustness, which instead pertains to science. We illustrate our proposal with examples from biology, physics and mathematics. (shrink)

Epigenetic research has brought several important technological achievements, including identifying epigenetic clocks and signatures, and developing epigenetic editing. The potential military applications of such technologies we discuss are stratifying soldiers’ health, exposure to trauma using epigenetic testing, information about biological clocks, confirming child soldiers’ minor status using epigenetic clocks, and inducing epigenetic modifications in soldiers. These uses could become a reality. This article presents a comprehensive literature review, and analysis by interdisciplinary experts of the scientific, legal, ethical, and societal issues (...) surrounding epigenetics and the military. Notwithstanding the potential benefit from these applications, our findings indicate that the current lack of scientific validation for epigenetic technologies suggests a careful scientific review and the establishment of a robust governance framework before consideration for use in the military. In this article, we highlight general concerns about the application of epigenetic technologies in the military context, especially discrimination and data privacy issues if soldiers are used as research subjects. We also highlight the potential of epigenetic clocks to support child soldiers’ rights and ethical questions about using epigenetic engineering for soldiers’ enhancement and conclude with considerations for an ethical framework for epigenetic applications in the military, defense, and security contexts. (shrink)

This research note offers a contextual overview of the printing history of Johann Blaeu’s 1646 octavo edition of Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis (ibp). The note examines the printing process of the last edition that was prepared while Grotius was still alive, though it was published after his death. The note also sheds light on the theological dimension of some readers’ annotations, and concludes by discussing the impact this edition had on the modern versions of the text.

Les designers et théoriciens Ezio Manzini et Virginia Tassinari répondent à la question posée par le titre du dossier, Design is the answer, but what was the question? Si, d’une part, se pose la question de l’impact social et politique du design et de sa responsabilité dans les changements sociaux, de l’autre s’impose une réflexion sur les modes d’action du design et sur les fondements de cette action. Dans cette perspective, Manzini met en avant les pratiques d’ engendrement et d’ (...) engagement comme stratégies d’action communes et communautaires, alors que Tassinari explique comment la définition du designing (plus que du design) comme une action politique nécessite une remise en question du cadre épistémologique qui la fonde. (shrink)

Our goal in this paper is to establish a set of criteria for understanding the meaning and sources of attributing (un)fairness to AI algorithms. To do so, we first establish that (un)fairness, like other normative notions, can be understood in a proper primary sense and in secondary senses derived by analogy. We argue that AI algorithms cannot be said to be (un)fair in the proper sense due to a set of criteria related to normativity and agency. However, we demonstrate how (...) and why AI algorithms can be qualified as (un)fair by analogy and explore the sources of this (un)fairness and the associated problems of responsibility assignment. We conclude that more user-driven AI approaches could alleviate some of these difficulties. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Principles of Biomedical Ethics. By Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress.

This is the fourth instalment of our census and study of the reception of the first nine editions of De iure belli ac pacis. Here we focus on the two versions that Johannes Janssonius issued in 1632, one with a copy of Mare liberum attached to it. This report outlines the place of the 1632 Janssonius edition in the context of his long-running rivalry with the printer Willem Blaeu and his firm. It then explores the typographical differences between the two (...) issues, their causes, and their significance for our understanding of the reception of the text. Finally, it provides the preliminary results of the census concerning the circulation and provenance of the fifty-three copies of this edition that we have found. We hope that this research note on the preliminary results will attract interest in this edition and that readers will kindly inform us of further copies. (shrink)

This article provides new information on the printing and readership history of the fifth edition of De iure belli ac pacis. Building on our earlier research on the way that the dispute between Willem Janszoon Blaeu and Johannes Janssonius influenced the publication of the 1631 edition of the text, this article studies how Blaeu harnessed his position to make the 1632 edition more reputable than the earlier version published by his rival. The article considers how, over four centuries, readers have (...) appreciated the quality of the production and three engaged with the text for radically different ends: Remigius Faesch, Baron von Boineburg, and Wendell Phillips. The article draws attention to the changes and continuities in reading and annotation patterns and offers preliminary insights into the themes that these influential readers focused on. We hope that it will inspire readers to bring further copies to our attention. (shrink)

This work investigates the relationship between goals and mitigation behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. Study 1 identified goals ascribed to following and violating mitigation-related indications. Study 2 investigated the structure of and link between COVID-related goals and behaviors in a large community sample. Our results showed substantial relationships between goals and behaviors. Goals were best described by a bi-dimensional structure, whereas behaviors clustered into a three-component structure. Hierarchical multiple regressions demonstrated the incremental validity of goals in the prediction (...) of behaviors. Network analysis suggested that goals imbued with social content were more directly related to both risky and preventive behaviors. Motivational aspects emerged as important contributors to the organization of behaviors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

This article constitutes the sixth instalment in our series on the census and study of the reception of the first nine editions of De iure belli ac pacis. This edition has long held a prominent place in studies and editions of Grotius’s work since it was the last published during his lifetime. The report first outlines the genesis of the edition in the context of Grotius’s relationship with Johann Blaeu (1596–1673) and Cornelius Blaeu (1610–1642), who had recently inherited the Blaeu (...) print firm from their father Willem. It then elucidates a number of crucial ways in which the 1642 edition differed from the five previous editions, especially via the addition of an extensive new series of annotations to ibp and a separate set addressed to the Epistle of Philemon. Finally, it concludes by providing the preliminary results of the census concerning the one hundred and twenty-one copies we have found. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze how the so-called ‘pedagogy of work’ attempts to answer the challenges of unemployment and job insecurity characterizing the labor market in contemporary society. The authors reflect on the concepts of nihilist pedagogies and the ‘end of work’ by distinguishing two approaches: an active and a passive nihilist pedagogy. The passive approach, based on resignation, is opposed to an active attitude in which labor pedagogy offers tools to address current challenges. The authors support the idea that (...) pedagogy as a human-improving science cannot adopt the position of passive nihilism in interpreting work in contemporary society. To better understand the dynamics related to job insecurity and corrective solutions by pedagogy, the authors analyzed the thoughts of three contemporary philosophers: Zygmunt Bauman, Jeremy Rifkin, and Dominique Méda. These authors redefined the concept of work in connection with the transformations because of globalization, the advent of new communication technologies, and digital work. These changes have redefined not only the concept of work but also the models of work pedagogy in the Western world: capitalism and Marxism. Considering the current challenges, the pedagogy of work needs to be rethought, starting from the problem of employability and focusing on the new occupations in demand in the Internet age. By integrating ideas on interpreting work from the theories of Bauman, Rifkin, and Méda, it is possible to propose a pedagogy of work in the age of change and to outline possible values of education inspired by it. (shrink)

This article aims to examine sociality’s multipolar and intentional structure beyond an inter-subjectivist perspective; beyond the view that the social world consists of only subjects and their interaction. The article is divided into four sections. First, I present Benoist’s critique of mainstream inter-subjectivist accounts of phenomenology. Second, I introduce Husserl’s concept of Gemeingeist and provide a preliminary definition of it as a “substrate of habits.” Third, I focus on the sociological and ontological sources of Benoist’s critique, specifically Descombes’ reassessment of (...) Hartmann’s distinction between objective and objectified mind. Finally, I revise my preliminary Husserlian definition of “common mind” drawing both from the distinction between objective and objectified mind and Benoist’s account of habituation as a two-sided correlative phenomenon. Although he often tends to phrase his account in intersubjectivist terms, Husserl’s phenomenology offers valuable tools to address the multipolar structure of sociality, which does not only consist of subjects in their interactions, but foremost, in the way the human mind is embedded in institutions and extended in a range of objects that bear social meaning and that guide and bind human life to an extent that is unique among social animals. (shrink)

In Emanuel Adler's distinctive constructivist approach to international relations theory, international practices evolve in tandem with collective knowledge of the material and social worlds. This book - comprising a selection of his journal publications, a new introduction and three previously unpublished articles - points IR constructivism in a novel direction, characterized as 'communitarian'. Adler's synthesis does not herald the end of the nation-state; nor does it suggest that agency is unimportant in international life. Rather, it argues that what mediates between (...) individual and state agency and social structures are communities of practice, which are the wellspring and repositories of collective meanings and social practices. The concept of communities of practice casts new light on epistemic communities and security communities, helping to explain why certain ideas congeal into human practices and others do not, and which social mechanisms can facilitate the emergence of normatively better communities. (shrink)

Many recent definitions of lying are based on the notion of what is said. This paper argues that says-based definitions of lying cannot account for lies involving non-literal speech, such as metaphor, hyperbole, loose use or irony. It proposes that lies should instead be defined in terms of assertion, where what is asserted need not coincide with what is said. And it points to possible implications this outcome might have for the ethics of lying.

Narcissism is a truly Janusian phenomenon, consisting of both narcissistic grandiosity, exhibitionism, admiration-seeking, boldness, and dominance on the one hand, and narcissistic vulnerability, introversion, withdrawal, hypersensitivity, and anxiety on the other hand. While there is broad consensus that these two seemingly contradictory faces of narcissism can be empirically discerned and have different implications for psychological functioning and mental health, there is not yet agreement on whether grandiose and vulnerable narcissism should be regarded as independent traits or as two manifestations of (...) one personality trait. Previous research indicates that both views hold true when the level of grandiosity is considered a moderating factor: while grandiose and vulnerable narcissism are largely unrelated in the range of normal personality variation, they are correlated in the range of high grandiosity ( Jauk et al., 2017b ). Here, we replicate and extend this work in an independent sample ( N = 891) using a more comprehensive narcissism inventory grounded in a new trifurcated model of narcissism. The trifurcated model partitions narcissism into three main personality dimensions: agentic extraversion, antagonism, and neuroticism. We found a significant breakpoint in the association between narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability at 75% cumulative frequency of grandiosity. While grandiosity and vulnerability are unrelated below this breakpoint ( r = 0.02), they are strongly correlated above ( r = 0.45). In the lower range of grandiose narcissism, grandiosity draws more upon agentic extraversion and is largely associated with mental health. In the upper range, however, grandiosity is more strongly linked to antagonism and is substantially associated with fear, negative affect, and depression. These findings provide evidence for the view that grandiose and vulnerable narcissism are distinct traits at lower levels of grandiosity, but blend into an antagonistic core with signs of psychological maladjustment at higher levels. Implications for research on narcissism as a personality trait, as well as clinical practice, are discussed. (shrink)

In arguing against a supposed ambiguity, philosophers often rely on the zeugma test. In an application of the zeugma test, a supposedly ambiguous expression is placed in a sentence in which several of its supposed meanings are forced together. If the resulting sentence sounds zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence for ambiguity; if it does not sound zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence against ambiguity. The aim of this article is to show that arguments based on the second direction of (...) the test are misguided: ambiguous expressions, and in particular philosophically contested ones, do not reliably lead to zeugmaticity, so an absence of zeugmaticity provides no meaningful evidence for an absence of ambiguity. (shrink)

One of the main challenges for computational legal research is drawing up innovative heuristics to derive actionable knowledge from legal documents. While a large part of the research has been so far devoted to the extraction of purely legal information, less attention has been paid to seeking out in the texts the clues of more complex entities: legally relevant facts whose detection requires to link and interpret, as a unified whole, legal information and results of empirical analyses. This paper presents (...) an ongoing research that points in this direction, trying to devise new ways to support public prosecutors in assessing the dangerousness of individuals and groups under investigation, an activity that precisely relies on the cross-sectional evaluation of legal and empirical data. A knowledge mining strategy will be outlined that lines up, into a single metaheuristic model, information extraction, network-based inference, machine learning and visual analytics. We will focus, in particular, on the integration of graph-based inference and machine learning methods used both to support classification tasks and to explore new forms of man-machine cooperation. Experiments made involving public prosecutors from the Italian Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate and using data from real investigations have not only shown the potentialities of our approach but also offered an opportunity to reflect on the role we could assign to AI when thinking about the future of legal science and practice. (shrink)

It is widely held that all lies are assertions: the traditional definition of lying entails that, in order to lie, speakers have to assert something they believe to be false. It is also widely held that assertion contrasts with presupposition and, in particular, that one cannot assert something by presupposing it. Together, these views imply that speakers cannot lie with presuppositions—a view that Andreas Stokke has recently explicitly defended. The aim of this paper is to argue that speakers can lie (...) with presuppositions, and to discuss some of the implications this outcome has for current research on lying, assertion and presupposition. (shrink)

This article aims at contributing to the discussion about the relationships between ICT, computer science and policy-making by focusing on agent-based social simulation. Enabled, from a technical point of view, by the developments of Distributed Artificial Intelligence in the 1990s and by the features of the object-oriented programming paradigm, agent-based social simulations are a tool for the analysis of social dynamics that can be used also to support the design and the evaluation of public policies. After a brief description of (...) social simulation paradigm and of its impact on social sciences, the paper presents a simple agent-based model devised to analyze, even if in a very abstract way, a phenomenon that can rouse the interest of legal scientists: the interplay between damaging behaviors, punishment and social mechanisms of learning and imitation. Our goal is to show how agent-based simulation can be used not only to illuminate basic mechanisms underlying social phenomena but also to reflect, in an innovative way, on how society can deal with them. (shrink)

The distinction between lying and mere misleading is commonly tied to the distinction between saying and conversationally implicating. Many definitions of lying are based on the idea that liars say something they believe to be false, while misleaders put forward a believed-false conversational implicature. The aim of this paper is to motivate, spell out, and defend an alternative approach, on which lying and misleading differ in terms of commitment: liars, but not misleaders, commit themselves to something they believe to be (...) false. This approach entails that lying and misleading involve speech-acts of different force. While lying requires the committal speech-act of asserting, misleading involves the non-committal speech-act of suggesting. The approach leads to a broader definition of lying that can account for lies that are told while speaking non-literally or with the help of presuppositions, and it allows for a parallel definition of misleading, which so far is lacking in the debate. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Copredication, as exhibited by sentences such as ‘That book is heavy but informative,’ is commonly seen as a phenomenon that is tied to sentences featuring polysemous expressions. David Liebesman and Ofra Magidor have recently attacked this view by arguing that ‘book’ has a single context-sensitive sense. The first aim of the present paper is to show that Liebesman and Magidor are wrong to claim that ‘book’ is univocal, but that they may nonetheless be right to question that copredication requires (...) polysemy. Its second aim is to consider implications of this result for the debates on copredication and on semantic variability. (shrink)

We analyze recent criticisms of the use of hyperreal probabilities as expressed by Pruss, Easwaran, Parker, and Williamson. We show that the alleged arbitrariness of hyperreal fields can be avoided by working in the Kanovei–Shelah model or in saturated models. We argue that some of the objections to hyperreal probabilities arise from hidden biases that favor Archimedean models. We discuss the advantage of the hyperreals over transferless fields with infinitesimals. In Paper II we analyze two underdetermination theorems by Pruss and (...) show that they hinge upon parasitic external hyperreal-valued measures, whereas internal hyperfinite measures are not underdetermined. (shrink)

Recently, biologists have argued that data - driven biology fosters a new scientific methodology; namely, one that is irreducible to traditional methodologies of molecular biology defined as the discovery strategies elucidated by mechanistic philosophy. Here I show how data - driven studies can be included into the traditional mechanistic approach in two respects. On the one hand, some studies provide eliminative inferential procedures to prioritize and develop mechanistic hypotheses. On the other, different studies play an exploratory role in providing useful (...) generalizations to complement the procedure of prioritization. Overall this paper aims to shed light on the structure of contemporary research in molecular biology. (shrink)

Drawing on evolutionary epistemology, process ontology, and a social-cognition approach, this book suggests cognitive evolution, an evolutionary-constructivist social and normative theory of change and stability of international social orders. It argues that practices and their background knowledge survive preferentially, communities of practice serve as their vehicle, and social orders evolve. As an evolutionary theory of world ordering, which does not borrow from the natural sciences, it explains why certain configurations of practices organize and govern social orders epistemically and normatively, and (...) why and how these configurations evolve from one social order to another. Suggesting a multiple and overlapping international social orders' approach, the book uses three running cases of contested orders - Europe's contemporary social order, the cyberspace order, and the corporate order - to illustrate the theory. Based on the concepts of common humanity and epistemological security, the author also submits a normative theory of better practices and of bounded progress. (shrink)

Sometimes speakers try to lie and inadvertently assert something true. Subjectivists about lying hold that such speakers are lying despite telling the truth. Objectivists hold that such speakers are not lying: they try to lie but fail. The first aim of this paper is to point to novel cases supporting subjectivism that do not involve speakers inadvertently asserting something true. Its second aim is to use these and other cases to explore the distinction between lying and trying to lie. Which (...) factors can thwart an attempt at lying? In which situations do we judge that a speaker has tried to lie but failed? Attending to these questions not only offers insights into the act of lying, but also helps to scrutinise the objectivist strategy of explaining away intuitions about apparent cases of lying while telling the truth. (shrink)

Four ethical values — maximizing benefits, treating equally, promoting and rewarding instrumental value, and giving priority to the worst off — yield six specific recommendations for allocating medical resources in the Covid-19 pandemic: maximize benefits; prioritize health workers; do not allocate on a first-come, first-served basis; be responsive to evidence; recognize research participation; and apply the same principles to all Covid-19 and non–Covid-19 patients.

ABSTRACTA probability model is underdetermined when there is no rational reason to assign a particular infinitesimal value as the probability of single events. Pruss claims that hyperreal probabilities are underdetermined. The claim is based upon external hyperreal-valued measures. We show that internal hyperfinite measures are not underdetermined. The importance of internality stems from the fact that Robinson’s transfer principle only applies to internal entities. We also evaluate the claim that transferless ordered fields may have advantages over hyperreals in probabilistic modeling. (...) We show that probabilities developed over such fields are less expressive than hyperreal probabilities. (shrink)

Adler and Barnett demonstrate how changes occurring in international politics create the nostalgia of security communities, a concept made prominent by Karl Deutsch nearly forty years ago.

A groundbreaking classic of contemporary philosophy for the first time in English translation Between 1961 and 1970, Emanuele Severino was subjected to a thorough investigation by the Vatican Inquisition. The “fundamental incompatibility” identified between his thought and Christian doctrine ejected him from his position as Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University in Milan. The Essence of Nihilism, published in 1972, was the first book to follow his expulsion, and it established Severino’s preeminent position within the the constellation of (...) contemporary philosophy. In this groundbreaking and classic book—now for the first time available in English—Severino reinterprets the history of Western philosophy as the unfolding of “the greatest folly,” that is, of the belief that “things come out of nothing and fall back into nothing.” According to Severino, such a typically Western understanding of reality has resulted in a conviction that there is a radical “nothingness” to existence. In turn, this justifies the treatment of the world as an object of exploitation, degradation and destruction. To move beyond Western nihilism, suggests Severino, we must first of all “return to Parmenides.” Joining forces with the most venerable of Greek philosophers, Severino confutes nihilism’s “path of night”, and develops a new philosophy grounded on the principle of the eternity of reality and of every single existent thing. (shrink)

Emanuele Avallone, Patrice Bergeron, Dominique Laperle, Michael Quisinsky, Philippe Roy-Lysencourt et Karim Schelkens.

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes Victoria's new Mental Health Act 2014 came into operation on 1st July 2014. Corresponding with international standards, the new Act aims to strengthen the human rights of persons with mental illness. This is supported by the inclusion of a recovery framework which promotes a collaborative treatment approach, procedures that reduce the duration of compulsory treatment, as well as better mental health service oversight and safeguards. This article analyses and highlights these reforms from a human rights perspective.