In exploring corporate perceptions of the business case for supplier diversity, this paper reports on a cross-national study of large purchasing organisations that had introduced, or were in the process of introducing, purchasing initiatives aimed at ethnic minority businesses. The research investigates how LPOs portray the benefits of this form of socially responsible purchasing and suggests a business case construct based on four component elements. It also highlights a number of contextual factors that appear to have shaped business case rationales. (...) The paper concludes with a discussion of issues of cost and contingent influences affecting SD programmes and points to possible areas for future research. (shrink)

We have two aims in this paper. The first is to provide the reader with a critical guide to recent work on relativity and persistence by Balashov, Gilmore and others. Much of this work investigates whether endurantism can be sustained in the context of relativity. Several arguments have been advanced that aim to show that it cannot. We find these unpersuasive, and will add our own criticisms to those we review. Our second aim, which complements the first, is to demarcate (...) the most defensible form of relativistic endurantism. A recurring theme of this paper is that even those philosophers who do worry about relativity have not taken it seriously enough. (shrink)

The neonatologist was describing the dire situation, the complexity of the fetus's anomalies, and the options—comfort care, some resuscitation—and finished by saying, “We would not recommend ECMO …” “We would not recommend” is a curious phrase. There is something ambiguous, very nebulous about it, something passive, noncommittal, maybe even deflective. As a bioethics researcher, I wondered how this phrase is interpreted, how it influences parents' moral deliberation over their options.

Stories in which a hero defeats a semi-human ogre occur much more frequently in unrelated cultures than chance alone can account for. This claim is supported by a discussion of folk-tales from 20 cultures and an examination of the folk-tales from a random sample of 44 cultures. The tendency to tell these stories must, therefore, have its source in the innate human nature discussed by evolutionary psychologists. This essay argues that these stories reinforce innate positive biases in the perception of (...) self and ingroup and negative biases in the perception of outgroups. (shrink)

I explain why Fernando Ferreira's interesting formal result does not threaten the bilateralist account of the sense of the connectives.

An intro. to Didaktic (the heart of thinking about teaching/teacher educ in Germany) for English-speaking readers, drawing on a range of writings assoc. w/ this tradition. Throws light on assumptions, characteristics, & weaknesses of curriculum thought.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 119-135MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Evaluating Klossowski's Le BaphometIan JamesLiterature, under historical conditions which are not simply linguistic, has come to occupy a place which is always open to a kind of subversive juridicity. [...] This subversive juridicity supposes that self-identity is never assured or reassuring.—Jacques Derrida, "Préjugés: Devant la loi"The ControversyOn 14 June 1965, Roger Caillois resigned from the jury of the prestigious Prix des Critiques. (...) His resignation was provoked by the majority decision of the jury to award the critics' prize that year to Klossowski's final novel, Le Baphomet.1 Le Baphomet, a singular, Walter Scott-inspired tale about the Knights Templar, is set, initially at least, at the beginning of the fourteenth century just before the dissolution of the Templar Order at the behest of the then French king, Philippe Le Bel. After the historical prologue the action is transferred to a seemingly atemporal sphere, where the disembodied souls of the former Knights Templar await the moment when the Last Judgment will be pronounced and they will be reunited once more with their earthly bodies. The setting, tone, and style are at first gothic, but with the appearance of the disembodied spirit of Saint Teresa of Avila baroque elements begin to dominate and to mix with evocations of Masonic and esoteric ritual, Gnostic heresy, and theological but also philosophical discussion. These are accompanied by the appearance of Philippe le Bel himself and the figure of Friedrich Nietzsche, the "Antichrist," initially in the form of an anteater. With its unorthodox and often archaic vocabulary and syntax and, after the historical prologue, its discontinuous and fantastical narrative presentation, in which the boundaries between persons and identities appear permeable and insecure, Le Baphomet engages the reader in a textual experience that can be both baffling and obscure. It is also a work that can appear to lack any intellectual or formal coherence, one whose multiplicity and evident complexity may seem to promise rich possibilities of interpretation and literary value but whose narrative disorder and stylistic singularity can ultimately leave the reader frustrated with the sense of having been exposed to something of a literary mess.This, at least, was the view of Roger Caillois when he resigned in protest at the decision of the Prix des Critiques jury to confer its honor on Klossowski's novel. Caillois was himself a singular writer whose work can be situated at the intersection of a [End Page 119][Begin Page 120]number of disciplines, including mythology, sociology, aesthetics, biology, and literary criticism. He had known Klossowski since 1936, when they collaborated along with Georges Bataille and others in the antifascist avant-garde grouping Contre-Attaque and then later, again with Bataille, on the review Acéphale and in the Collège de sociologie.2 Defending his resignation from the Prix des Critiques jury a few days after the event, Caillois published an article in Le Monde in which he drew attention to what he saw as Le Baphomet's primary weakness: its poor formal organization and in particular what he perceived as its stylistic insufficiency and grammatical inaccuracy.3 Perhaps with the desire to avoid accusations of prudery or Puritanism he denied that the content of the work was the cause of his disapproval. The infatuation of certain Knights Templar with an adolescent page, Ogier de Beaséant, oblique references to possible acts of sodomy, together with the stylized description of scenes involving mutilation, penetration, and ejaculation are all elements of the narrative. On the content of the work Caillois writes: "Some may see in this a novelistic exposé of an original and subtle theology, others only mystico-pederastic rubbish. For a literary prize I hold solely to the literary value of a work." According to Caillois the content of such a work may be interesting or absurd depending on one's tastes but has nothing to do with its literary value. The invocation of literary value, here, necessarily implies a set of criteria for the judgment of the standing of a work... (shrink)

The image of philosophy -- The relational universe -- Generic science -- Thinking bodies.

Despite US policy documents which recommend that in areas of environmental risk, interaction between scientific experts and the public move beyond the so-called “Decide, Announce, and Defend model,” many current public involvement policies still do not guarantee meaningful public participation. In response to this problem, various attempts have been made to define what counts as sufficient or meaningful participation and free informed consent from those affected. Though defining “meaningfulness” is a complex task, this paper explores one under-examined dimension that concerns (...) the relationship between consent and the idea that citizens should be sufficiently informed: epistemic capacity. This paper will look at some of the work on meaningful participation and consent, give a definition of epistemic capacity, and argue that only a community with sufficient epistemic capacity can have the understanding and competence to give informed enough consent and thus participate meaningfully. (shrink)

This book investigates theories of interpretation and meaning in Renaissance jurisprudence.

The dissertation's primary task is to discern to what extent the investigations contained in Aristotle's Metaphysics conform to the model of science developed in the Posterior Analytics. It concludes that the Metaphysics substantially follows the model of the Analytics in studying the causes and attributes of a specific nature, although it makes significant departures especially in its conception of the principles of being and substance. ;Two introductory chapters discuss respectively Aristotle's conception of science in the Analytics and the problems one (...) is likely to face in attempting to apply this conception to the Metaphysics . Chapter 3 clarifies the meaning of the phrase "science of being qua being" by reference to the Posterior Analytics, and introduces the concept of pro&d13;v 3&d3;n equivocity. Chapter 4 considers the role of dialectic in metaphysics with particular reference to the principle of noncontradiction. Chapter 5 argues that the second part of Meta. 4.2 introduces a demonstrative science of the per se attributes of being and unity. ;Chapter 6 introduces the investigation into the principles and causes of being and reviews the aporias about the principles . Chapter 7 offers a hypothesis to explain Aristotle's identification of the science of being with first philosophy. The last two chapters argue that Aristotle is pursuing this investigation in the central books of Melaphysics, but his pursuit of the investigation there is incomplete. ;This interpretation provides an alternative to those of T. H. Irwin and Walter Leszl, who argue that metaphysics is a second-order discipline and not a science after the model of the Analytics. It finds explicit support in recent work by Robert Bolton and Alan Code, while widening the range of issues to include the attributes of being and the importance of first philosophy for understanding the nature of being. It supports many of the conclusions of Joseph Owens's, Urbain Dhondt's, and Frede and Patzig's work on the object of metaphysics. There are also substantial discussions of the contributions of G. E. L. Owen, J. G. Stevenson, Theodore Scaltsas, and John Thorp. (shrink)

This article considers the objection to abortion that a woman who voluntarily engages in sexual activity is responsible for her fetus and so cannot have an abortion. The conclusion argued for is that the conceptions of responsibility that can ground the objection that are considered do not necessitate a requirement on the part of a pregnant woman to carry her pregnancy to term. Thus, the iterations of the responsibility objection presented cannot be used to curtail reproductive choice.

In treating human nature as a ‘moral entity’, imposed by God for reasons into which man could have no direct insight, Samuel Pufendorf reconfigured the architecture of natural law thought in a fundamental way. For this meant that rather than deducing norms from a nature in which they had been embedded by God and could be discerned by self-reflective reason, man had to derive them by observing the requirements of the exigent condition in which he happened to find himself; and (...) it further meant that such observation would be gathered via erudite citation of humanist authorities, rather than from philosophical reflection or introspection. As a result of this reconstruction, Pufendorfian natural law was opened to the normative structure of historically existing juridical-constitutional orders, for which it supplied both a propaedeutic and an abstract rationale. At the same time, however, theological and philosophical forms of natural law, based on normative moral anthropologies, continued unabated, this giving rise to a partitioning of the field into an introspective philosophy of law, and an observational legal humanism. (shrink)

I compare three sorts of case in which philosophers have argued that we cannot assert the Law of Excluded Middle for statements of identity. Adherents of Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis deny that Excluded Middle holds for statements saying that an infinitesimal is identical with zero. Derek Parfit contended that, in certain sci-fi scenarios, the Law does not hold for some statements of personal identity. He also claimed that it fails for the statement ‘England in 1065 was the same nation as England (...) in 1067’. I argue that none of these cases poses a serious threat to Excluded Middle. My analysis of the last example casts doubt on the principle of the Determinacy of Distinctness. While David Wiggins's ‘conceptualist realism’ provides a metaphysics which can dispense with that principle, it leaves no house-room for infinitesimals. (shrink)

This paper examines recent communitarian writing about the market. Much of this work explains the loss of community in our times as a result of the expansion of the market and market values. As the market has invaded other domains, such as family andneighborhood, relationships there have become infected by the instability and transience that characterize market relations. Centralto this critique of the market is the view that the market is unable to sustain lasting commitments. This paper tests this hypothesis (...) byexamining the fate of the family—the paradigmatic case of commitment—in three separate historical periods when market orcommercial values were especially dominant. It then extends the analysis to two other component institutions of community—voluntaryand charitable activities. Finally, it examines institutions where so-called market values should presumably hold unchallenged sway,namely in the work place and the marketplace. The paper finds that communitarian values appear to thrive in market society. Instead ofbeing a juggernaut the market may be an endangered species. (shrink)

We examine a definition of the mutual information of two reals proposed by Levin in [5]. The mutual information iswhereK is the prefix-free Kolmogorov complexity. A realAis said to have finite self-information ifI is finite. We give a construction for a perfect Π10class of reals with this property, which settles some open questions posed by Hirschfeldt and Weber. The construction produces a perfect set of reals withK≤+KA+f for any given Δ20fwith a particularly nice approximation and for a specific choice of (...) f it can also be used to produce a perfect Π10set of reals that are low for effective Hausdorff dimension and effective packing dimension. The construction can be further adapted to produce a single perfect set of reals that satisfyK≤+KA+f for allfin a ‘nice’ class of Δ20functions which includes all Δ20orders. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Reading W.K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief” in evidentialist terms is standard. However, evidentialist accounts face several longstanding interpretive issues over the Shipowner Story and Clifford’s Motto. This article defends an evidentialist reading. But what distinguishes it from others is that it interprets “The Ethics of Belief” according to Clifford’s “first principle of natural ethics”, a principle he articulates in prior writings, and which comes down to social trust. I reorient Clifford’s evidentialism by returning to his core moral principle and (...) argue that doing so can establish coherence across Clifford’s writings on ethics and can help resolve the relevant interpretive issues. (shrink)

Skeptical theists assume that that God may be thought justified in his actions and permissions through the consequences to which those actions and permissions lead. They also assume that we may not be aware of all the goods and evils there are, so we may not always be able to discern the reasons that justify God's actions and permissions. On this basis, they conclude that we should be skeptical about any claim to know what it would be evil for God (...) to do or permit. I argue that this conclusion poses certain epistemic challenges for theism. First, it seems to undermine arguments from design. And second, it seems to undermine the presumption that God could not be a deceiver because deception is something that it would be evil for God to do. (shrink)

(2008). Religion, Sexual Orientation, and School Policy: How the Christian Right Frames Its Arguments. Educational Studies: Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 29-44.

Many have wondered about the similarity in name of American critical realism and the movement of the same name begun by Roy Bhaskar. The figure of Maurice Mandelbaum complicates the relationship, not only due to his career bridging the two movements but also Mandelbaum's concern not only with traditional concerns of American critical realism (epistemology and philosophy of science) but the nature of society, the nature of social explanation, and naturalism. This volume reflects both on Mandelbaum's own career and the (...) relation of his thought to Bhaskar's critical realism. By examining Mandelbaum's commitments to phenomenology within critical realism, as well as his goal to enlighten social scientific and above all historiographical categories, it is possible to see how Mandelbaum went beyond the scientific realism of his predecessors. At the same time, a fruitful comparison with Bhaskar's and others' thought is undertaken by examining mandelbaum's solutions to the problems of the ontology of sociology and social laws, the dynamics of cultural change and the overriding master narratives that govern late capitalism. By explaining Mandelbaum's scrupulous attempt to address the horrors of the twentieth century, it is possible to appreciate his significance for the twenty-first. A timely and important book, Maurice Mandelbaum and American Critical Realism is essential reading for all serious students of critical realism and twentieth century philosophy. (shrink)

Using the 1991 police beating of Rodney King as case study, this paper draws on Husserlian phenomenology to establish a coherentist account of knowledge as situated with respect to its concrete circumstances of production. I take as my point of departure Gail Weiss's phenomenological investigation into the jury's assessment of evidence in the "Rodney King incident," and in particular, her interest in Husserl's conception of the "horizon" as a structure of consciousness that mediates what is present in perceptual awareness. Making (...) use of Anthony Steinbock's work on Husserlian phenomenological method — drawn from his extensive study of Husserl's unpublished manuscripts — I develop an epistemological framework that treats knowledge claims as inextricably bound to the horizons of meaning from which they arise, and provides standards of epistemic responsibility pertaining to an agent's "framing" of evidence. (shrink)

The combination of Heideggerian metaphysics and advanced mathematics in Alain Badiou’s Being and Event presents a unique challenge to modern commentary. Badiou’s metaphysical axe-grinding makes his work uninteresting to mathematical logicians, while the humanities scholars who wield his axes often have little grasp of the mathematics on which they are supposed to have been honed. This lacuna helps to explain why Being and Event has been dismissed by some as ‘fashionable nonsense’ and praised by others as “one of the most (...) significant texts in recent European thought”. In proposing to fill this gap I offer an account of how Badiou uses mathematics as an allegorical symbolism for Heideggerian metaphysics, while simultaneously effecting a formalist transposition of this metaphysics. At the centre of this account sits a series of paradoxes that play a structuring role in Being and Event, and function as spiritual exercises for those undergoing initiation into an elite intellectual subculture. (shrink)

This paper argues for the inclusion of ethnography as a research methodology for understanding the effects of public health policy. To do this, the implementation of DOTS (Directly Observed Therapy, Short-course) is explored in the context of Nepal. A brief history of DOTS and its implementation in Nepal is outlined, and the way it has been represented by those within the Nepal Tuberculosis Programme (NTP) is described. This is followed by an outline of the research done in relation to this, (...) and the ethnographic methods used. These ethnographic data are then interpreted and analysed in relation to two specific areas of concern. Firstly, the effects around the epidemiological uses of is explored; it is argued that a tightening of the definitional categories so necessary for the programme to be stabilized for comparative purposes has profound material effects in marginalizing some from treatment. Secondly, the paper examines some of the implications and effects relating to the way that the component was implemented. The discussion explores how current debate on DOTS has been played out in some medical journals. It argues for the importance of ethnography as a method for understanding certain questions that cannot be answered by particular, and increasingly dominant, research ideologies informed by randomized controlled trials. This raises important issues about the nature of in debates on the relationship of research to policy. (shrink)

This paper considers a distinction between two types of politics developed by Michael Oakeshott in his book The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism and argues that the theoretical framework proposed supplies an illuminating and productive perspective for examining the notion of political extremism. These positions are linked to two other important aspects of his work, namely his account of 'enterprise' and 'civil' association and his differentiation between abstract philosophical entities and concrete political situations. There is also a (...) discussion of the idea of 'perfectionism' which is central to the politics offaith. The paper concludes with a consideration of some of the implications for political education arising from this analysis. (shrink)