In this article we argue for the importance of studying interdisciplinary collaborations by focusing on the role that good choice and design of model-building frameworks and strategies can play overcoming the inherent difficulties of collaborative research. We provide an empirical study of particular collaborations between economists and ecologists in resource economics. We discuss various features of how models are put together for interdisciplinary collaboration in these cases and show how the use of a coupled-model framework in this case to coordinate (...) and combine background models from ecology and economics provided particular collaborative affordances and clear collaborative gain. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of strategic conversations in corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy formation. The authors suggest that explicitly engaging stakeholders in the CSR strategy-making process, through the mechanism of strategic conversations, will minimize future stakeholder concerns and enhance CSR strategy making. In addition, suggestions for future research are offered to enable a better understanding of effective strategic conversation processes in CSR strategy making and the resulting performance outcomes.

This paper is a response to Ray's recent proposal that the intellectual property rights attached to potentially life saving/life sustaining innovations should become public goods in cases where markets are either unable or unwilling to pay for the creation of the intellectual property. Using a free market approach to innovation based on Western moral philosophy, we suggest that treating intellectually protected life saving/life sustaining innovations as public goods will likely reduce social welfare over the long term.

This study focuses on the managerial issue of should social enterprises become more marketing oriented. It adapts the Kohli et al. MARKOR marketing orientation scale to measure the adoption of marketing by SEs. The items capture Vincentian-based values to leverage business in service to the poor as a measure of a Vincentian marketing orientation. A VMO is an organisational wide value-driven philosophy of management that focuses a SE on meeting its objectives by adopting a more marketing orientated approach to serve (...) the needy and poor in a just and sustainable manner. SEs that exhibit a VMO seek to understand and respond to both the needs of their beneficiaries and stakeholders. They are constantly generating, disseminating, and responding to environmental, beneficiary, and stakeholder information and develop their business propositions to more effectively and efficiently meet the needs of the poor, while guided by a philosophy of leveraging business for social good. This study of SEs in Australia found that a VMO is strongly and positively correlated with social, economic, and environmental performance. These findings suggest that SEs may benefit by leveraging marketing capabilities to better serve their beneficiaries and stakeholders. (shrink)

Descartes's achievement is a radical reversal of the order of knowing, a subjectivism that places knowledge of the mind ahead of knowledge of material things, ...

In 1772, Kant outlined the new problem of his critical period in terms of four possible “ways” of understanding the agreement of knowledge with its object. This study expands Kant’s terse descriptions of these ways, examining why he rejected them. Apart from clarifying the historical context in which Kant saw his own achievement (the Fifth Way), the chief benefits of exploring the historical background of Way Two, in particular, are that it (1) explains the puzzling intuitus originarius/intellectus archetypus dichotomy, and (...) (2) casts doubt on the received idea that Kant broke with the traditional theocentric model of cognition. (shrink)

RésuméLa critique kantienne de la psychologie rationnelle est une expérience de pensée visant ni un individu ni une école, mais une tendance de la raison humaine à « hypostasier » la condition intellectuelle suprême d'une connaissance quelconque (le « Je pense ») en connaissance du « moi ». Cette tendance implique une circularité qui est également la cible des critiques transcendantales bien plus familières qui visent Locke et Hume. De même qu'un nouveau type de cercle (dit « de niveau »), (...) cet article propose une conception des arguments transcendantaux différente de celle présupposée dans la plupart des débats contemporains sur l'empirisme, le naturalisme et le fondationnalisme cartésien. (shrink)

Corporate reputation is an intangible asset that is related to marketing and financial performance. The social, economic, and global environment of the 1990'shas resulted in environmental performance becoming an increasingly important component of a company'sreputation. This paper explores the relationship between reputation, environmental performance, and financial performance, and looks at the contingencies that impact environmental policy making.

St. Augustine, pictured by Western painters holding in his hand his heart blazing with passionate love, consistently and repeatedly insisted―from his earliest writings until close to his death―that the essential characteristic of God is “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Yet he also insisted on the doctrines of original sin and everlasting punishment for the massa damnata. This article will not explore the rationale or semantics of his arguments, nor the detail and nuance of the doctrines of predestination and perseverance. (...) Rather, I seek to understand, from Augustine’s last writings, how he reconciled his strong conviction that God is love with doctrines requiring belief in a God who determined the fate of individuals to eternal reward or punishment “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4), a God indifferent to individuals’ actions, struggles, or longings. My primary interest is not on Augustine’s ability to render these two apparently opposing ideas of God intellectually compatible, but rather on his feeling, gathered from his last sermons, as he approached death. In brief, how could Augustine love the God in whom he believed? (shrink)

Against those commentators who consider Kant’s explicit reference to Copernicus’s heliocentric reversal either grossly misleading or simply irrelevant to the revolution in philosophy carried out in the Critique of Pure Reason, it is argued in this paper that Kant’s transcendental idealist inversion of the familiar standpoint of realism and sound common sense fully justifies the talk of a ‘Copernican revolution,’ even if Kant himself never used the expression. It is not just the dominant ‘moving spectator’ motif (or transcendental turn) of (...) the Preface that has to do with Copernicus; both the immediately following ‘crucial experiment’ motif (on the distinction between appearances and things in themselves) and the ‘critical’ motif (regarding self-knowledge and the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments) confirm the aptness of the Copernican analogy. Still, some commentators have stretched the analogy too far; the final section of the paper attempts to determine just how far it may reasonably be said to go. (shrink)

Against those commentators who consider Kant’s explicit reference to Copernicus’s heliocentric reversal either grossly misleading or simply irrelevant to the revolution in philosophy carried out in the Critique of Pure Reason, it is argued in this paper that Kant’s transcendental idealist inversion of the familiar standpoint of realism and sound common sense fully justifies the talk of a ‘Copernican revolution,’ even if Kant himself never used the expression. It is not just the dominant ‘moving spectator’ motif (or transcendental turn) of (...) the Preface that has to do with Copernicus; both the immediately following ‘crucial experiment’ motif (on the distinction between appearances and things in themselves) and the ‘critical’ motif (regarding self-knowledge and the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments) confirm the aptness of the Copernican analogy. Still, some commentators have stretched the analogy too far; the final section of the paper attempts to determine just how far it may reasonably be said to go. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction; The Intuitive, the Discursive, and the Ratiocinative; The Order of Intuition; Analytic and Synthetic Method; Method and the Mathematical Ideal; Universal Mathematics, Metaphysics, and Physics; Conclusion; Acknowledgments; Notes References and Further Reading.

In this book philosophers, scholars of religion, and activists address the theme of responsibility. Barbara Darling-Smith brings together an enlightening collection of essays that analyze the ethics of responsibility, its relational nature, and its global struggle.

The analytic method by which Descartes discovered the first principle of his philosophy—cogito, ergo sum—is a unique cognitive process of direct insight and nonlogical inference. It differs markedly from inductive as well as deductive procedures, but also from older models of the direct noetic apprehension of first principles, notably those of Plato and Aristotle. However, a critical examination of Descartes’s argument for the innateness of the idea of God shows that there are serious obstacles in the way of his employment (...) of the analytic method of discovery to reach this or any other conclusion about ideas that do not fall within the scope of ordinary human experience. (shrink)

St. Augustine’s commitment to the doctrine of predestination did not change from the early days of his ministry in the mid-390s to his last writings and sermons, shortly before his death in 430 CE. Two genres of Augustine’s late communications address his teachings on predestination: First, his treatises, including De praedestinatione sanctorum and De dono perseuerantiae (CE 427–428); second—and of greater interest for this article—his often-overlooked mature and late sermons. Although treatises and sermons were contemporaneous, Augustine’s purposes differ in each. (...) Against arguments that “the beginning of faith is of ourselves,” in treatises, Augustine relied heavily on scriptural proof-texts to support his contention that God both foreknew and foreordained individuals’ eternal destiny. The first intent of his sermons, however, was not to present scriptural authority for the doctrine, but to encourage his listeners’ belief by helping them discern God’s activity within themselves. Certainly, his congregation was attracted by the hope of eternal life and by the fear of eternal punishment, yet their present affections and actions also mattered in substantial ways that Augustine’s doctrinal writings do not fully describe. We must look to his sermons, that is, to his (in-person) conversations with fellow members of Christ’s body, if we are to recognize his attentiveness to the urgency of the present. (shrink)

Beyond the Centaur questions the accuracy and usefulness of the virtually unquestioned ancient consensus that persons are composed of unequally valued, hierarchically stacked antagonistic components, usually soul or mind and body. Part I explores the gradual historical development of this notion of person. Part II consists of a thought experiment, examining an understanding of persons, not as stacked components, but as intelligent bodies -- one entity. It explores how a new understanding of persons can affect in important and fruitful ways (...) how we live: how we move, feel, think, believe, and die. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: The analytic method by which Descartes established the first principle of his philosophy is a unique cognitive process of direct insight and non-logical inference that differs markedly from the deductive model of noetic apprehension long associated with seventeenth-century rationalism. In this paper, it is shown that the same analytic process is at work in the Third Meditation proof of the innateness of the idea of God, where, however, there are serious doubts about its legitimacy.

By moving beyond traditional aesthetic categories (beauty, the sublime, the religious), Eco-Aesthetics takes an inter-disciplinary approach bridging the arts, humanities and social sciences and explores what aesthetics might mean in the 21st century. It is one in a series of new, radical aesthetics promoting debate, confronting convention and formulating alternative ways of thinking about art practice. There is no doubt that the social and environmental spheres are interconnected but can art and artists really make a difference to the global environmental (...) crisis? Can art practice meaningfully contribute to the development of sustainable lifestyles? Malcolm Miles explores the strands of eco-art, eco-aesthetics and contemporary aesthetic theories, offering timely critiques of consumerism and globalisation and, ultimately, offers a possible formulation of an engaged eco-aesthetic for the early 21st century. (shrink)