A recent French reform has revised the legal definition of the corporation. In essence, the law stipulates that the corporation must be run with due regard to the social and environmental impacts of its activity. It also introduces the notion of raison d’être and affords the possibility for any corporation to assign social or environmental purposes to itself, defined in its by-laws. This reform is similar to recent reforms in the UK and the US, but is based on an original (...) and distinctive theoretical argument. The aim of our article is to analyze the fundamental tenets of this reform and their implications for the theory of the corporation. It shows that the new law is based on a new positive definition of the enterprise as not only an economic organization or a productive entity, but more fundamentally a space for innovative collective action. We argue that this view of the enterprise challenges our conceptualization of the corporation in two important ways. First, it shows that the traditional theories overlook the activities of the enterprise and their related impacts, and that the corporation is not necessarily the appropriate legal vehicle for the innovative enterprise. Second, it suggests that the stipulation of the enterprise’s purpose or raison d’être in the corporate by-laws can provide new promising legal foundations for corporate responsibility. (shrink)

Theories of scientific rationality typically pertain to belief. In this paper, the author argues that we should expand our focus to include motivations as well as belief. An economic model is used to evaluate whether science is best served by scientists motivated only by truth, only by credit, or by both truth and credit. In many, but not all, situations, scientists motivated by both truth and credit should be judged as the most rational scientists.

There are at least three well-known accounts of value and evaluations which assign a central role to emotions. There is first of all the emotivist view, according to which evaluations express or manifest emotional states or attitudes but have no truth values. Second is the dispositionalist view, according to which to possess a value or axiological property is to be capable of provoking or to be likely to provoke emotional responses in subjects characterised in certain ways. Third, there is an (...) epistemology of values that is sometimes invoked by the naïve realist. If the naïve realist is one for whom evaluations are made true by the possession by objects of monadic, mind-independent axiological properties, then one natural question is: What sort of cognitive access do we have to such properties? These value properties, the realist may say, are properties we come to know of by virtue of our emotions. Emotions, he may say, present value properties to us. One variant of this view is the claim that values are the "formal objects" of emotions. Closely related to these claims is the view that our emotions are appropriate to value properties, or not. Indignation and injustice, it is sometimes said, are related in one or more of these three ways. (shrink)

In seeking to explain the evolution of social cooperation, many scholars are using increasingly complex game-theoretic models. These complexities often model readily observable features of human and animal populations. In the case of previous games analyzed in the literature, these modifications have had radical effects on the stability and efficiency properties of the models. We will analyze the effect of adding spatial structure to two communication games: the Lewis Sender-Receiver game and a modified Stag Hunt game. For the Stag Hunt, (...) we find that the results depart strikingly from previous models. In all cases, the departures increase the explanatory value of the models for social phenomena. (shrink)

In recent years, many scholars have suggested that the Baldwin effect may play an important role in the evolution of language. However, the Baldwin effect is a multifaceted and controversial process and the assessment of its connection with language is difficult without a formal model. This paper provides a first step in this direction. We examine a game-theoretic model of the interaction between plasticity and evolution in the context of a simple language game. Additionally, we describe three distinct aspects of (...) the Baldwin effect: the Simpson– Baldwin effect, the Baldwin expediting effect and the Baldwin optimizing effect. We find that a simple model of the evolution of language lends theoretical plausibility to the existence of the Simpson– Baldwin and the Baldwin optimizing effects in this arena, but not the Baldwin expediting effect. (shrink)

Most research on metaphors that construe time as motion (motion metaphors of time) has focused on the question of whether it is the times or the person experiencing them (ego) that moves. This paper focuses on the equally important distinction between metaphors that locate times relative to ego (the ego-based metaphors Moving Ego and Moving Time) and a metaphor that locates times relative to other times (sequence is relative position on a path). Rather than a single abstract target domain TIME, (...) these two kinds of temporal metaphor metaphorize different kinds of temporal concept—perspective-specific vs. perspective-neutral temporal concepts. Recognition of this distinction enhances the explanatory potential of conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). An example involves the interaction of deixis and the temporal reference crosslinguistically of vocabulary with the spatial meanings in-front and behind. More generally, this approach refines our ability to describe the temporal concepts involved in motion metaphors of time. Such temporal concepts are present not only in the target domains, but also in the source domains of motion metaphors of time, where we find space-to-time metonymy, which may play a role in motivating the metaphors. In order to distinguish such metonymy from metaphor, we need to characterize metaphor as a mapping across frames rather than domains. (shrink)

In his review of Eddie Glaude's Exodus! “Politics, Racial Solidarity, Exodus!” Robert Gooding-Williams argues that, despite sympathizing with Glaude's conception of racial solidarity, he finds that “Glaude's approach to racial solidarity is not pragmatic enough, precisely because the myth of the essential black subject still haunts it, its claims to the contrary notwithstanding.” This article challenges Gooding-Williams's reading of Exodus!, demonstrating that despite his grasp of Glaude's conceptual map, he misses precisely what is at stake for Glaude's pragmatic notion of (...) racial solidarity. Understanding what is at stake for Glaude's conception of racial solidarity, one sees how the subtlety of his pragmatism actually resists any lingering essentialism. However, this article concludes by showing that despite Glaude's evasion of Gooding-Williams's charge, it is his emphasis on the Deweyan language of “problem solving” that courts the criticism in the first place. To circumvent the potential for misunderstanding, this article emphasizes a “negotiation of social practices” as an alternative to Glaude's emphasis on the language of “problem solving activity.”. (shrink)

This paper explicates a Marxian theory of management that suggests that the social relation to be managed in capitalism is the separation of the political from the economic. While it is commonly understood that this must be an active process of management taken up on behalf of modern capitalist states, this paper suggests that the market mechanism itself also assumes this role without the active intervention of any managerial direction. The intensive expansion of the market facilitates a management function of (...) subverting the political deliberation which challenges the political-economic separation that could otherwise be expected in neoliberal restructuring. Both the changing nature of consumption and the growth of the small business sector are cited as examples of ways in which neoliberalism reproduces itself in the presence of social contradiction but in the absence of any actively planned strategy of management to deal with those contradictions. (shrink)

This book is concerned with how we should think and act in our work, leisure activities, and time utilization in order to achieve flourishing lives. The scope papers range from general theoretical considerations of the value, e.g. 'What is a balanced life?', to specific types of considerations, e.g. 'How should we cope with the effects of work on moral decision-making?'.

Traditional critical thinking courses introduce students to tools for analyzing and evaluating arguments and reasoning. There are, however, good reasons to think that those courses fail to motivate students to make full use of those tools. It is this motivational problem that is the focus of the present paper. In what follows, I present several proposals for overcoming student resistance to the discipline of critical thinking. I offer a three-step strategy for challenging students’ presumption of competency regarding critical thinking, thereby (...) motivating them to embrace the tools we offer. I also sketch how this strategy can be applied in sections of a critical thinking course. (shrink)

This paper considers the extent to which the notion of truthmaking can play a substantive role in defining physicalism. While a truthmaking-based approach to physicalism is prima facie attractive, there is some reason to doubt that truthmaking can do much work when it comes to understanding physicalism, and perhaps austere metaphysical frameworks in general. First, despite promising to dispense with higher-level properties and states, truthmaking appears to make little progress on issues concerning higher-level items and how they are related to (...) how things are physically. Second, it seems that truthmaking-based approaches to physicalism will have a difficult time addressing the status of truthmaking itself without, in effect, appealing to the resources of alternative ways of conceptualizing physicalism. (shrink)

The Evidence Thesis is the intuitively plausible principle that in order to know that p one must base her belief that p on adequate evidence. Despite the plausibility of this principle, Andrew Moon (2012) has recently argued that the principle is false. Moon’s argument consists of presenting what he takes to be a clear instance of knowledge and arguing that the subject in the case does not have this knowledge on the basis of any evidence. I argue that Moon’s example (...) fails to be a genuine counterexample to the Evidence Thesis. (shrink)

Conversations about art often include broad statements about the stature of artists. Such statements raise questions about the best way to look at the bodies of work of artists. Like individual works of art, bodies of work are artistic objects worthy of appreciation. Through the body of work, we are better able to engage the aspects of creativity that require a long-term perspective. This long-term perspective allows us to look for a range of aesthetic qualities not readily evident in individual (...) works of art. Looking at bodies of work also helps us to appreciate artistic accomplishments unfolding over a lifetime. (shrink)

Poverty tours - actual visits as well as literary and cinematic versions - are characterized as morally controversial trips and condemned in the press as voyeuristic endeavors. In this collaborative essay, we draw from personal experience, legal expertise, and phenomenological philosophy and introduce a conceptual taxonomy that clarifies the circumstances in which observing others has been construed as an immoral use of the gaze. We appeal to this taxonomy to determine which observational circumstances are relevant to the poverty tourism debate. (...) While we do not defend all or even most poverty tourism practices, we do conclude that categorical condemnation of poverty tourism is unjustified. (shrink)

Freedom of information requests are increasingly used in sociology, criminology and other social science disciplines to examine government practices and processes. University ethical review boards in Canada have not typically subjected researchers’ FOI requests to independent review, although this may be changing in the United Kingdom and Australia, reflective of what Haggerty calls ‘ethics creep’. Here we present four arguments for why FOI requests in the social sciences should not be subject to formal ethical review by ERBs. These four arguments (...) are: existing, rigorous bureaucratic vetting; double jeopardy; infringement of citizenship rights; and unsuitable ethics paradigm. In the discussion, we reflect on the implications of our analysis for literature on ethical review and qualitative research, and for literature on FOI and government transparency. (shrink)

This article explores, in the French context, an aspect of what Terence McLaughlin (1991) has described in an unpublished paper as the ‘dilemma of substantiality’ faced by any school system endeavouring to promote neutrality. In France, in order that the public or common school be genuinely open to all students, not only is the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols forbidden but so too is any direct teaching of religion. The cultural consequences resulting from this prohibition have led to the mandating (...) of cross-curricular teaching about religion. This article aims to show that the civic principles (la laïcité) on which this teaching is based pose in an acute and problematic form the ‘dilemma of substantiality’. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 5, June 2020, Page 18-20.

This book explores and examines current topics and issues in teacher education through the lens of eight practicing teachers. Their voices add a new perspective on the effectiveness and practicality of current trends and reforms in teacher education.

In this paper I identify a new group of aesthetic norms, which I call norms of cultivation. Judgments of taste are often accompanied by forecasts or expectations about future aesthetic satisfaction. When we find something beautiful, we expect to find it beautiful in the future. Forecasting is at play in all sorts of aesthetically motivated behavior. Yet psychologists have observed an unreliability in such forecasts. As a result of forecasting error, what we take as our taste can be an unreliable (...) guide in our aesthetic lives. Compensating for the unreliability of taste are norms of cultivation, implicit rules for engaging objects, such as avoiding overexposure to favored objects or exposure under unfavorable conditions. Norms of cultivation help to regularize aesthetic experience, mitigating unreliability in forecasts, and fostering the ongoing stability and coherence of taste. (shrink)

Our lives are filled with aesthetic choices, that is, choices of objects for aesthetic experience. Choice is crucial to having a fulfilling aesthetic life. Our immediate satisfaction and long term flourishing require the ability to generate rewarding aesthetic opportunities. A good aesthetic life is one of good aesthetic choices. Given the centrality of choice to a good aesthetic life, aesthetic theory is in need of an account of choice. However, aesthetic choice has gone unexamined. This paper considers how choice helps (...) to make us who we are as aesthetic persons. I situate aesthetic choice within debates in contemporary choice theory. The paper also examines whether the recommenders on websites like Amazon or Netflix pose a risk to our aesthetic flourishing. Aesthetic choice is mostly constructive and conditional, in other words, ad hoc and easily influenced. Aesthetic choices tend to be small choices, with low stakes and relaxed deliberation. The effect of our choices is cumulative, and the import of individual choices is best judged by seeing them in the context of other choices, especially the plans to which they belong. (shrink)

The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal Test is one of the oldest, most frequently used, multiple-choice critical-thinking tests on the market in business, government, and legal settings for purposes of hiring and promotion. I demonstrate, however, that the test has serious construct-validity issues, stemming primarily from its ambiguous, unclear, misleading, and sometimes mysterious instructions, which have remained unaltered for decades. Erroneously scored items further diminish the test’s validity. As a result, having enhanced knowledge of formal and informal logic could well result (...) in test subjects receiving lower scores on the test. That’s not how things should work for a CT assessment test. (shrink)

'This volume will make a lasting contribution to how we address the dilemmas that human rights theory and practice encounter - for instance, between democracy and human rights, negative and positive rights, or individual and group rights. Philosophers have become indispensable to lawyers' arguments about why human rights matter, and how they must be interpreted: this book superbly illustrates why.' - Olivier De Schutter, University of Louvain, Belgium and United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food.

In this dissertation, I defend an interpretation of the methodological development of transcendental philosophy from Kant's first Critique to Fichte's later Jena-period Wissenschaftslehre. Both Kant and Fichte claim that experience is founded upon certain a priori subjective structures and capacities. However, I argue that the methodology of Kant's first Critique includes a number of assumptions and explicit doctrines that limit his ability to explain experience. The chief problem of Kant's theory of method is, I claim, his distinction between the methods (...) of philosophy and mathematics, whereby the method of construction is limited to mathematics. I argue that Fichte attempts to solve Kant's problem by expanding the method of construction to philosophy itself. As a method, construction has two aspects. First, the task of the philosopher is to reconstruct discursively the spontaneous process whereby subjectivity is self-constructing. By "self-construction," I refer to a functional structure wherein subjectivity is the achievement of a range of proto-conscious, primitive mental activities. Second, the method of the philosopher is similar to the method of geometric construction, viz., the postulation of a task to be completed regarding which one---beginning from putatively self-evident resources---creatively and imaginatively seeks out a solution. Fichte turns to construction since there is no algorithm for philosophical reflection and he revises Kant's important doctrines regarding intellectual intuition and the productive imagination. However, though Fichte's solution to Kant's problem is promising, the notion of construction itself generates a number of problems. (shrink)