IntroductionResponsible investment, in which environmental, social and governance considerations are incorporated into investment decision making, is a potentially powerful tool for increasing corporate accountability and improving corporate practices to address broad societal challenges. Whilst the RI sector is growing, there is limited understanding of the extent to which pressing social issues, such as obesity and unhealthy population diets, are incorporated within RI decision making. This study aimed to investigate the extent to which obesity prevention and population nutrition are considered by (...) Australian institutional investors engaged in responsible investment.MethodsA desk-based review was conducted of investment approaches of prominent Australian asset managers and superannuation funds identified as engaged in responsible investment. Relevant information on the incorporation of ESG issues related to obesity and population nutrition was extracted for each investor, drawing on websites, published policy documents and annual reports. Strategies were categorized as: negative/exclusionary screening; positive/best-in-class screening; norms-based screening; ESG integration; sustainability-themed investing; impact/community investing; and corporate engagement and shareholder action. These strategies were compared across investors and by themes related to obesity and population nutrition.ResultsEighteen of the 35 investors indicated that they applied investment strategies that considered issues related to obesity and population nutrition. The most commonly identified strategy was ESG integration, followed by sustainability-themed investing, and positive screening. The ways in which obesity and population nutrition were considered as part of these approaches included relatively high-level general health considerations, considerations around the healthiness of food company product portfolios, and consideration of specific company nutrition policies and practices. The specificity and depth to which RI strategies were disclosed varied.ConclusionThere is significant potential for investment decisions to contribute to efforts to address key social issues, such as obesity and unhealthy diets. Some institutional investors in Australia have recognized the potential importance of incorporating obesity- and population nutrition-related issues into decision-making processes. However, the extent to which these considerations translate into investment decisions and their impact on companies in the food sector warrant further exploration. (shrink)

Investments by the global finance sector contribute to industrial-scale agriculture along with its harmful environmental impacts, making their actions significant in supporting or opposing sustainable food systems transformation. Previous research has shown that institutional investors identify animal agriculture as an important consideration with respect to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues regarding sustainable food systems. This study aimed to explore ways in which so-called ‘responsible’ investors in Australia consider risks related to animal agriculture, and whether existing ESG metrics are ‘fit-for-purpose’ (...) for assessing issues related to sustainable animal agriculture. Nineteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with responsible investors and relevant non-government organisations (NGOs) in Australia. We found that the responsible investment sector lacked mechanisms to recognise the inter-connections between animal agriculture and multiple environmental and social outcomes. Furthermore, we found that investors largely focused on ‘techno’ solutions to the impacts of animal agriculture, such as alternative proteins, through a ‘single issue’ lens. They rarely made connections to other relevant ‘food systems’ issues, such as health. We conclude that holistic approaches are needed to monitor and assess the impacts of animal agriculture in the investment sector and suggest that integrated ‘food systems’ metrics will be necessary to inform these approaches. (shrink)

In this essay, I look at some extraordinary actors who never got their due—actors who had distinguished careers, but never won an Academy Award for acting. I review the work of: Joseph Cotten; Orson Welles; Edward G. Robinson; Cary Grant; James Mason; Richard Burton; Claude Rains; Alan Ladd: Robert Mitchum; and Fred MacMurray. In each case, I explore the actor’s best work, what made his acting outstanding, and offer possible explanations why he was not so honored.

Cascades of Grace was formed within the United Reformed Church through Global and Intercultural Ministries to network and empower Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic women in the churches. In the article, two of the founding members describe the formation of the group, and their own experiences in URC and other churches, and in candidating for ministry.

Um dos grandes problemas postos pelo tema dos direitos humanos à filosofia é, entre outros, o de sua fundamentação filosófica. No pano de fundo deste debate, surgem questões específicas: como se pode fundamentar/justificar filosoficamente a exigência de reconhecimento aos direitos humanos? Neste estudo, procuro abordar, de modo direto, o núcleo argumentativo sobre o qual está estruturada da proposta de Höffe. Para ele, os direitos humanos têm uma profunda relação com a noção de justiça. O conceito de justiça, na sua concepção, (...) deve ser entendido fundamentalmente como troca. Embora o conceito pareça demasiado simples, ele oferece uma série de dificuldades no que se refere à sua fundamentação. (shrink)

This reissue of Richard Robinson's classic volume on Aristotle's Politics contains his clear and accurate translation of, and commentary on, books III and IV, brought up to date by a supplementary essay and new bibliography by David Keyt. This is the ideal companion to study these important books of a classic text in the history of political philosophy.

After yeast cells commit to the cell cycle in a process called START, genes required for DNA synthesis are expressed in late G1. Periodicity is mediated by a hexameric sequence, known as a MCB element, present in all DNA synthesis gene promoters. A complex that specifically binds MCBs has been identified. One polypeptide in the MCB complex is Swi6, a transcription factor that together with Swi4 also binds G1 cyclin promoters and participates in a positive feedback loop at START. The (...) finding that Swi6 is directly involved in both START and DNA synthesis gene control suggest a model in which Swi6, activated through its participation in START, serves as the central transcription factor in coordinating late G1 gene expression. The mechanism may be conserved in all eukaryotic cells. (shrink)

The responses of a convenience sample of 83 secondary preservice and preeducation students in three university classes were compared to each other and to a national sample of 1,492 adults on a national poll of science knowledge. The results of the data analyses using simple ANOVA and two-tailed t tests indicated that preservice secondary science teachers in a secondary science methods class are significantly more science literate than preeducation majors and the na tional sample. They were not significantly more science (...) literate than preservice and in-service science teachers in an environmental science methods class. Chemistry majors were significantly more science lit erate than other science and health majors. Additional comparisons between males and females, graduates and undergraduates, and older and younger (younger than 28) students indicated males, graduates, and older students are significantly more science literate than females, undergraduates, and younger students. (shrink)

Ethical topics are attractive starting points for philosophical enquiry with children who must live and learn together in classrooms that accommodate a plurality of values. However the appealing familiarity, practicality and accessibility of certain ethical topics can obscure the challenges such sessions present to teachers and their students. The teacher’s role as facilitator of philosophical enquiry requires her to encourage open-ended, conceptually-focused dialogue, fuelled by questioning that, for the most part, ‘doesn’t offer any new ideas or information to the group (...) but simply attempts to make visible, clarify, or connect what has already emerged’. Even where a facilitator does introduce new information, ideas, questions, or lines of enquiry, these contributions are not designed to lead the class to a particular conclusion. The facilitator typically assumes a ‘self-effacing non-judgemental, and neutral role’ with regards to the verdicts reached by the children, intervening only where it will challenge the class to work harder and not to advance her own position. However the teacher also embodies the often-unarticulated role of ethical instructor. In this role she must inform, guide, praise, promote, encourage, incentivise, reward, uphold and police conventional standards of good character and conduct. When we examine these two roles in context as this paper does, we begin to feel the pull. How can a teacher create space in which ethical norms can be challenged – even rejected – in the spirit of intellectually vigorous philosophical enquiry whilst simultaneously upholding and reinforcing them as non-negotiable expectations? The paper argues that the tension between the roles of ‘teacher-as-philosophical-facilitator’ and ‘teacher-as-ethical-instructor’ is not intractable, in fact when acknowledged and better understood, the apparently competing demands of these roles can be dissolved leading to an enriched ethical education for children. (shrink)

This article discusses issues relevant to recent efforts to increase veterinary reporting of cases of animal mistreatment in the USA. These issues include mandatory vs. voluntary reporting, client confidentiality obligations, the legal definitions of animal cruelty, abuse, and neglect in state laws, ethical conflicts between a veterinarian's obligations to animals and clients, perceived vs. real barriers to reporting, the circumstances under which a veterinarian is likely to encounter animal mistreatment in practice, and the lack of accepted diagnostic criteria for the (...) "battered pet.". (shrink)

As the detrimental effects of human agency loom large in the ‘Anthropocene’, theologians and philosophers have called for restraint by invoking the concept of kenosis. Although a ‘self-emptying’ form of life helps to counter the ways that humans are increasingly driving other species to extinction, we argue that such calls are often compromised by relying on notions of the Creator’s own attenuated or self-limited agency. They therefore trade in a competitive construal that is susceptible to the tendency of human agency (...) to either displace, or project itself upon, all other agencies, inadvertently perpetuating the ‘human epoch’. In their place, we critically develop the new direction in kenotic theology that speaks of divine self-realization in history through ‘deep incarnation’. Our constructive proposal argues for a more thoroughgoing recognition of both the transcendence of divine agency and, as a corollary, the diverse agencies of our fellow creatures. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a modal system called ∏ (Pi), characterizing it both axiomatically and algebraically, the latter being in terms of structures called π-algebras (pi-algebras). Pi-algebras are a natural generalization of Boolean algebras with operators – a generalization in which equality is replaced by congruence in the characterizing conditions. The resulting system of modal logic is "sub- Lewis", in the sense that it is properly contained in the weakest Lewis system, S1.

To be a philosopher of science means, among other things, to have an account of what scientific explanation is, or, at the very least, to have a response to various accounts of scientific explanation on offer from other philosophies of science while earnestly working toward what one hopes will be one’s own, original account. One presumption clearly and often lying behind such work is that science provides two kinds of knowledge. There is propositional knowledge, “knowledge that” or “knowledge what,” and (...) there is some other kind of knowledge, something beyond propositional knowledge, usually called “knowing why.” We can know that the moon will have such a phase at this or that time, that home sales will always slump following a rise in interest rates, or that probably no two snowflakes are the same shape, without knowing why the moon will have that phase, home sales will fall as interest rates rise, or no two snowflakes have the same shape. But science, so the common contemporary presumption continues, fills in the missing knowledge — it tells us why. How science does this, when it can’t, and what the nature of this sort of knowledge is are precisely the issues that separate theorists of explanation. There are, of course, deflationary views of explanation, which reduce explanation to other properties or eliminate explanation altogether , but these are a decided minority. The vast majority of the work on scientific explanation takes itself to be addressing a certain, distinct, kind of knowledge. This is, moreover, a familiar and introductory point made in philosophical discussions of explanation. I rehearse it here because it has a role to play later, in my discussion of Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim’s 1948 article, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation”. (shrink)

This introductory chapter surveys some basic findings on primate evolution and the evolution of mind; examines socially transmitted traditions in relation to the concept of culture; recounts the sources of evidence regarding the evolution of mind and culture; charts the history of evolutionary approaches to mind and behavior since Darwin; reviews several prominent theoretical syntheses concerning the evolution of the human mind and behavior; and, along the way, introduces the specific questions examined in the individual chapters.

The quantitative experimental scientific psychology that became prominent by the turn of the twentieth century grew from three main areas of intellectual inquiry. First and most directly, it arose out of the traditional psychology of the philosophy curriculum, as expressed in theories of mind and cognition. Second, it adopted the attitudes of the new natural philosophy of the scientific revolution, attitudes of empirically driven causal analysis and exact observation and experimentation. Third, it drew upon investigations of the senses. Natural philosophical (...) disciplines such as optics and acoustics treated the functioning of the senses. Optics, in particular, had from antiquity comprised a complete theory of vision, combining the physics, physiology, psychology, metaphysics, and epistemology of vision, using mathematical techniques where feasible. Within medicine, sensory physiology examined anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Philosophical psychology had long examined the senses as mental capacities connected with cognition and knowledge, and such discussions also heeded the new attitudes of natural philosophy. This chapter first examines the early relations of psychology to biology and characterizes various eighteenth-century loci of psychological thought. It then pursues nineteenth-century developments in Germany and Britain that culminate in the “new” psychology of the 1860s and 1870s. (shrink)

This chapter challenges the view that psychology emerged from philosophy about 1900, when each found its own proper sphere with little relation to the other. It begins by considering the notion of a discipline, defined as a distinct branch of learning. Psychology has been a discipline from the time of Aristotle, though with a wider ambit, to include phenomena of both life and mind. Empirical psychology in a narrower sense arose in the eighteenth century, through the application (in Britain and (...) elsewhere) of the observational attitudes of the physical and life sciences to mental phenomena. The experimental psychology of the latter nineteenth century was a transformation of this empirical psychology, although the British version was characterized by new theoretical conceptions (including evolutionary ideas) as well as new empirical techniques. After surveying psychology in and out of universities in this period, the chapter reviews a taxonomy of “schools” of psychology from 1923. Notice of anti-psychological attitudes in British philosophy before and after 1900 is balanced by considering positive conceptions of psychology’s role in connection with epistemology and the problem of the external world. (shrink)