More and more companies are developing corporate social responsibility -related programs which imply strategic and organizational changes. This article focuses on a public utility organization, the Groupe La Poste, in which CSR issues and practices are linked to its specific mission as a public service, thus defining and explicitly structuring its CSR programs. We explore the following research questions: Why did the Groupe La Poste formulate explicitly its CSR program? What is the content of this program and how it is (...) perceived by managers? To provide answers to these questions, we have developed a conceptual framework based on a literature review linking CSR to strategic and organizational change and we apply it to the Groupe La Poste. The analysis shows a progressive convergence between strategic and CSR trajectories and sheds light into how an organization can progressively integrate CSR as a central part of its strategic plan. It confirms the role of central dimensions that support the integration of CSR programs within the organization. CSR-related mission and vision aim at orienting the organization toward sustainability and responsibility. CSR-related principles and policies transpose vision and mission into commitments and guide the implementation and adoption of responsible behavior while CSR-related shared values underlie the whole program. (shrink)

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period (...) – its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound. Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward. (shrink)

A number of authors argue that while species are evolutionary units, individuals and real entities, higher taxa are not. I argue that drawing the divide between species and higher taxa along such lines has not been successful. Common conceptions of evolutionary units either include or exclude both types of taxa. Most species, like all higher taxa, are not individuals, but historical entities. Furthermore, higher taxa are neither more nor less real than species. None of this implies that there is no (...) distinction between species and higher taxa; the point is that such a distinction is more subtle than many authors have claimed. (shrink)

Is GDP a good proxy for social welfare? Building on economic theory, this book confirms that it is not, but also that most alternatives to it share its basic flaw, i.e., a focus on specific aspects of people's lives without sufficiently taking account of people's values and goals. A better approach is possible.

This paper re-examines the welfare economics of risk. It singles out a class of criteria, the “expected equally-distributed equivalent”, as the unique class which avoids serious drawbacks of existing approaches. Such criteria behave like ex-post criteria when the final statistical distribution of wellbeing is known ex ante, and like ex-ante criteria when risk generates no inequality. The paper also provides a new result on the tension between inequality aversion and respect of individual ex ante preferences, in the vein of Harsanyi’s (...) aggregation theorem. (shrink)

Rosenberg has recently argued that explanations supplied by (what he calls) functional biology are mere promissory notes for macromolecular adaptive explanations. Rosenberg's arguments currently constitute one of the most substantial challenges to the autonomy, irreducibility, and indispensability of the explanations supplied by functional biology. My responses to Rosenberg's arguments will generate a novel account of the autonomy of functional biology. This account will turn on the relations between counterfactuals, scientific explanations, and natural laws. Crucially, in their treatment of the laws' (...) relation to counterfactuals, Rosenberg's arguments beg the question against the autonomy of functional biology. This relation is considerably more subtle than is suggested by familiar slogans such as Laws support counterfactuals; accidents don't. (shrink)

has offered a lovely example to motivate the intuition that a successful prediction has a kind of confirmatory significance that an accommodation lacks. This paper scrutinizes Maher's example. It argues that once the example is tweaked, the intuitive difference there between prediction and accommodation disappears. This suggests that the apparent superiority of prediction to accommodation is actually a side effect of an important difference between the hypotheses that tend to arise in each case.

Why do forces compose according to the parallelogram of forces? This question has been controversial; it is one episode in a longstanding, fundamental dispute regarding which facts are not to be explained dynamically. If the parallelogram law is explained statically, then the laws of statics are separate from and “transcend” the laws of dynamics. Alternatively, if the parallelogram law is explained dynamically, then statical laws become mere corollaries to the dynamical laws. I shall attempt to trace the history of this (...) controversy in order to identify what it would be for one or the other of these rival views to be correct. I shall argue that various familiar accounts of natural law not only make it difficult to see what the point of this dispute could have been, but also improperly foreclose some serious scientific options. I will sketch an alternative account of laws that helps us to understand what this dispute was all about. (shrink)

. A typical textbook explanation of a rocket’s motion when its engine is fired appeals to momentum conservation: the rocket accelerates forward because its exhaust accelerates rearward and the system’s momentum must be conserved. This paper examines how this explanation works, considering three challenges it faces. First, the explanation does not proceed by describing the forces causing the rocket’s motion. Second, the rocket’s motion has a causal-mechanical explanation involving those forces. Third, if momentum conservation and the rearward motion of the (...) rocket’s exhaust explain why the rocket accelerates forward, then presumably momentum conservation and the rocket’s forward motion likewise explain why the rocket emits exhaust rearward. Explanatory circularity threatens to follow from this pair of explanations. This paper examines how the conservation-law explanation works and how it is compatible with the causal-mechanical explanation. The paper argues that these two explanations do not explain precisely the same fact relative to the same contrast class. The paper interprets the two conservation-law explanations as non-causal and argues that they yield no explanatory circularity. (shrink)

Philosophy of Science: An Anthology assembles some of the finest papers in the philosophy of science since 1945, showcasing enduring classics alongside important and innovative recent work. Introductions by the editor highlight connections between selections, and contextualize the articles Nine sections address topics at the heart of philosophy of science, including realism and the character of scientific theories, scientific explanations and laws of nature, singular casusation, and the metaphysical implications of modern physics Provides an authoritative and accessible overview of the (...) field. (shrink)

In this article we present a new approach to practical artificial intelligence (AI) ethics in heavy industry, which was developed in the context of an EU Horizons 2020 multi partner project. We begin with a review of the concept of Industry 4.0, discussing the limitations of the concept, and of iterative categorization of heavy industry generally, for a practical human centered ethical approach. We then proceed to an overview of actual and potential AI ethics approaches to heavy industry, suggesting that (...) current approaches with their emphasis on broad high-level principles are not well suited to AI ethics for industry. From there we outline our own approach in two sections. The first suggests tailoring ethics to the time and space situation of the shop floor level worker from the ground up, including giving specific and evolving ethical recommendations. The second describes the ethicist’s role as an ethical supervisor immersed in the development process and interpreting between industrial and technological (tech) development partners. In presenting our approach we draw heavily on our own experiences in applying the method in the Use Cases of our project, as examples of what can be done. (shrink)

Historians of science have long believed that Abraham Trembley’s celebrity and impact were attributable chiefly to the incredible regenerative phenomena demonstrated by the polyp, which he discovered in 1744, and to the new experimental method he devised to investigate them. This essay shows that experimental method alone cannot account for Trembley’s success and influence; nor are the marvels of the polyp sufficient to explain its scientific and cultural impact. Experimental method was but one element in a new conception of the (...) laboratory that called for both experimental and para‐experimental skills whose public availability depended on a new style of communication. The strategy of generosity that led Trembley to dispatch polyps everywhere enabled experimental naturalist laboratories to spread throughout Europe, and the free circulation of living objects for scientific research led practitioners to establish an experimental field distinct from mechanical physics. Scholars reacted to the marvels of the polyp by strengthening the boundaries between the public and academic spheres and, in consequence, opened a space for new standards in both scientific work and the production of celebrity.… comme l’Auteur de l’Histoire des Polypes, il a passé de plein vol à l’immortalité.—Julien Offrey de La Mettrie … comme l’Auteur de l’Histoire des Polypes, il a passé de plein vol à l’immortalité.—Julien Offrey de La Mettrie. (shrink)

Many writers claim that human kinds are significantly different from biological and natural kinds. Some suggest that humans kinds are unique because social structures are essential for the etiology of human kinds. Others argue that human cultural evolution is decidedly different from other forms of evolution. In this paper I suggest that the gulf between humans and our biological relatives is not as wide as some argue. There is a taxonomic difference between human and nonhuman organisms, but such factors as (...) social structure and cultural evolution do not distinguish us from many other organisms. (shrink)

Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages offers scholars of Dante's Divine Comedy an integral understanding of the political, philosophical, and religious context of the medieval masterwork. First penned in French by Ernest L. Fortin, one of America's foremost thinkers in the fields of philosophy and theology, Dissidence et philosophie au moyen-%ge brings to light the complexity of Dante's thought and art, and its relation to the central themes of Western civilization. Available in English for the first time through this (...) superb translation by Marc A. LePain, Dissent and Philosophy will make a supremely important contribution to the discussion of Dante as poet, theologian, and philosopher. (shrink)

The beauty of electricity, or of any other force, is not that the power is mysterious and unexpected, touching every sense at unawares in turn, but that it is under law... Michael Faraday, Wheatstone's Electric Telegraph's Relation to Science (being an argument in favour of the full recognition of Science as a branch of Education), 1854.

Plus que jamais, le souverainisme, parfois opposé au mondialisme, est au cœur des polémiques contemporaines qui mettent en jeu l'avenir de notre civilisation. Ces courants de pensée souterrains structurent l'action des politiques contemporains, traversant tout le spectre des clivages, de la droite à la gauche. Pour permettre au lecteur de mieux comprendre, ce livre étudie les soubassements philosophiques et historiques profonds du souverainisme. Il montre en quoi ce dernier est une vision complète du monde, de la place de l'homme dans (...) l'univers, et qu'il est loin d'être un simple sentiment de nostalgie surannée. Ce livre propose une reconstruction des identités: celle d'une nation, celle des corps intermédiaires et celle de la personne, en particulier celle de notre identité personnelle, culturelle, et plus dérangeant, sexuelle. Il repousse le danger létal de la mentalité 'woke.' Il propose enfin une aventure humaine. Il fait connaitre l'état d'esprit d'une communauté d'hommes et de femmes, qui doivent s'unir afin de constituer une force politique porteuse de renouveau. Il vous exposera des solutions politiques, sociales, culturelles et économiques concrètes, montrant que le souverainisme est un atout battant aisément le progressisme face aux défis du monde moderne. Lorsque vous aurez lu ce livre, vous comprendrez comment le souverainisme reconstruit patiemment les liens brisés de l'humanisme et souhaiterez faire partie des hommes et des femmes accomplis, porteurs de ce renouveau politique."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Rawls's burdens of judgment are a list of factors that explain why reasonable persons in a diverse society are likely to hold different, often incompatible, conceptions of the good. According to Charles Larmore, the burdens of judgment satisfy political liberalism's ambition of supporting liberal political principles through a minimalist moral conception. By using the burdens, we ground liberal politics in the modest notion of reasonable disagreement, avoiding reliance on controversial comprehensive notions such as autonomy, individuality, skepticism about the good, or (...) value pluralism. In this paper I argue that the burdens of judgment cannot provide adequate support for liberal political principles unless they are read in a way that comports with Kymlicka's modest version of autonomy liberalism. As it renounces fallibilism, political liberalism's moral minimalism can be manipulated in a way that reconciles it with decidedly illiberal results. The only way to avoid this problem is to recognize that the justification of liberal principles cannot be detached from notions of fallibilism and critical reflection about the good. Ultimately, political liberalism's emphasis on moral minimalism deprives it of the conceptual resources it needs to deal with contemporary controversies concerning the defence and clarification of liberal policies. (shrink)

Freedom of expression is often treated as a right held by speakers, with hearers holding only a derivative right to receive expression. Roger Shiner in particular argues that we should recognize hearers rights. However, Larry Alexander argues that, if there is a moral right of freedom of expression, it is most plausibly a hearer's right to receive expression, not a speaker's right. I argue that hearers have a basic (or original) right to receive a speaker's expression, one that stands alongside (...) a speaker's right to express herself. The hearer's right to receive is no less fundamental than the speaker's right to express and, contra Alexander, the hearer's right is not more fundamental than that of the speaker. As a consequence, both Shiner's case against freedom of commercial expression and Alexander's case against so-called Track Two freedom of expression jurisprudence are weakened. (shrink)

Work-family conflict has been examined quite often in human resources management and industrial/organizational psychology literature. Numerous statistics show that the magnitude of this employment issue will continue to grow. As employees attempt to balance work demands and family responsibilities, organizations will have to decide to what extent they will go to minimize this conflict. Research has identified numerous negative consequences of work-family stressors for organizations, for employees and for employees' families. There are however many options to reduce this strain, each (...) with advantages and disadvantages. An ethical analysis, from a virtue ethics perspective, is applied to this timely issue to present an alternative view in addressing this critical business decision. In addition, a strong connection between the virtue ethics analysis and a well-known management theory is given to provide a foundation for managerial implications for resolving work-family conflict. (shrink)

In this paper, we provide a general setting under which results of normalization of proof trees such as, for instance, the logicality result in equational reasoning and the cut-elimination property in sequent or natural deduction calculi, can be unified and generalized. This is achieved by giving simple conditions which are sufficient to ensure that such normalization results hold, and which can be automatically checked since they are syntactical. These conditions are based on basic properties of elementary combinations of inference rules (...) which ensure that the induced global proof tree transformation processes do terminate. (shrink)

L’auteur aborde l’approche synchronique en histoire des idées et développe la théorie du discours social qu’il a exposée dans nombre de ses livres en tant qu’analyse en totalité en coupe synchronique de ce qui s’écrit et se diffuse dans un état de société. Il définit dans le cadre de cette problématique les notions fondamentales d’hégémonie discursive, de topographie, d’interdiscursivité et de sociogramme notamment.

The question of whether relics which were part of the historical body of Jesus could exist, arose in the first decades of the 12th century, as the monks of St. Medard des Soissons claimed to have a tooth of Jesus. Based on historical and theological reasoning it seemed to Guibert of Nogent impossible that this kind of relic could exist or that they could mediate the redemption which Christ attained on the Cross. According to him, the prize of salvation could (...) only be mediated through the eucharist. Guibert perceived a twofold mediality of the eucharist which at the same time reprents the holy body of Christ and mediates salvation. This medial dimension of the eucharist is denoted with the term figura. Since the Second Eucharist Debate and as a result of the criticism of Berengar of Tours the term figura became precarious. The discussion between Berengar and his opponents such as Durandus of Troarn, Guitmund of Adversa, Alger of Liège about the term figura can be viewed as a debate concerning mediality. (shrink)

This article aims to explore the consequences of including Ottoman studies in the larger field of imperial studies. It strives to combine a close reading of the Ottoman imperial epithets with considerations of how the Ottomans may contribute to theorizing empire as a model. In particular, the article engages in a discussion of whether the "sublime sultanate" developed into a colonial pattern of empire over its final century of existence. As it turns out, the Ottoman practice of administration did not (...) come down to a simulacrum of European colonialism; the article points instead to a semiotics of empire that took its cue from a multidimensional logic of governmentality. Accordingly, archival idiosyncrasies are taken to imply the contrary of an Ottoman exceptionalism. They serve rather to highlight that concepts carry with them a vast repertoire of meanings to be activated in practice. (shrink)

What has compelled Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and abroad to promote a positive image of Ottomans and Turks while they deny the Armenian genocide and the existence of anti-Semitism in Turkey? The dominant historical narrative is that Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 were embraced by the Ottoman Empire, and then later, protected from the Nazis during WWII. If we believe that Turks and Jews have lived in harmony for so long, then it is hard for us to (...) accept that the Turks could have committed genocide against the Armenians. In this article, the author confronts these convictions and circumstances to reflect on what moral responsibility the descendants of the victims of one genocide have to the descendants of victims of another. Baer delves into the history of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to tease out the origin of these many tangled truths. He aims to bring about reconciliation between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, not only to face inconvenient historical facts, but to confront it and come to terms with it. By looking at the complexities of interreligious relations, Holocaust denial, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and confronting some long-standing historical stereotypes, the author sets out to tell a new history that goes against Turkish antisemitism and admits to the Armenian genocide. (shrink)