Conducting empirical research on gender in medical ethics is a challenge from a theoretical as well as a practical point of view. It still has to be clarified how gender aspects can be integrated without sustaining gender stereotypes. The developmental psychologist Carol Gilligan was among the first to question ethics from a gendered point of view. The notion of care introduced by her challenged conventional developmental psychology as well as moral philosophy. Gilligan was criticised, however, because her concept of ‘two (...) different voices’ may reinforce gender stereotypes. Moreover, although Gilligan stressed relatedness, this is not reflected in her own empirical approach, which still focuses on individual moral reflection. Concepts from social psychology can help overcome both problems. Social categories like gender shape moral identity and moral decisions. If morality is understood as being lived through actions of persons in social relationships, gender becomes a helpful category of moral analysis. Our findings will provide a conceptual basis for the question how empirical research in medical ethics can successfully embrace a gendered perspective. (shrink)

Companies increasingly recognize the importance of communicating corporate social responsibility including their engagement toward employees, the community, the environment and other stakeholder groups to attract applicants. The positive findings on the effect of CSR on applicants’ reactions are commonly based on the assumption that companies send a clear signal about their commitment to CSR. However, communication is always contextualized and has become more ambiguous through the increased availability of information online. External stakeholders including actual and potential applicants are confronted with (...) inconsistencies between the way companies communicate CSR activities and their overall CSR performance. Drawing on signaling theory, this article raises the question of how the interaction between strong CSR communication and low CSR performance influences organizational attractiveness. We propose that low CSR performance dampens the effect of CSR communication on organizational attractiveness. Hence, the inconsistency between CSR communication and CSR performance decreases organizational attractiveness. To test our hypotheses, we scraped 67,189 posts published on corporate Facebook career pages by 58 Fortune 500 companies from the time they began their respective career page until June 2018. Surprisingly, our results show that a low CSR performance strengthens the effect of CSR communication on organizational attractiveness. Thus, inconsistencies between CSR communication and CSR performance seem to lead to positive evaluations among applicants. (shrink)

Orientation: This study investigated the influence of authentic leadership on employee flourishing while considering the potential mediating effect of trust in the organization and organizational support as underlying mechanisms in an uncertain setting.Research purpose: To examine the relationship between authentic leadership and employee flourishing by evaluating the indirect effect of organizational support and trust in the organization as potential mediators.Motivation for the study: An authentic leadership approach, organizational support, and trust in the organization may influence the flourishing of employees in (...) uncertain times. Increasing the comprehension of the possible interaction effect of organizational support and trust in the organization in the relationship between authentic leadership and employee flourishing may improve individual and organizational efficiency.Research approach/design and method: A quantitative, cross-sectional survey design was applied in this study. The sample comprised 314 employees in a noteworthy South African steel manufacturing entity. The Authentic Leadership Inventory, Workplace Trust Survey, Flourishing-at-Work Scale, and the Job Demands-Resources Scale were administered.Main findings: The findings of this study suggest that authentic leadership was a significant predictor of employee flourishing through organizational support and trust in the organization.Practical/managerial implications: This research illuminates the potential value-adding contribution of an authentic leadership style in promoting a trust-filled relationship between team members and their organization and the support they experience from their employer. Despite the prevailing precarious context, working under the mentioned conditions might result in the increased flourishing of employees.Contribution/value-add: The analyses of the mentioned relationships might assist businesses in optimizing the resources required to improve employee and organizational performance. Additionally, the exploration of organizational support in conjunction with organizational trust raises our understanding of the possible influence these elements can have in enhancing employee flourishing in the workplace. (shrink)

This book develops a new Wittgenstein interpretation called Wittgenstein’s Metametaphysics. The basic idea is that one major strand in Wittgenstein’s early and later philosophy can be described as undermining the dichotomy between realism and idealism. The aim of this book is to contribute to a better understanding of the relation between language and reality and to open up avenues of dialogue to overcome deep divides in the research literature. In the course of developing a comprehensive and in-depth interpretation, the author (...) provides fresh and original analyses of the latest issues in Wittgenstein scholarship and gives new answers to both major exegetical and philosophical problems. This makes the book an illuminating study for scholars and advanced students alike. (shrink)

The relative strengths of first-order theories axiomatized by transfinite induction, for ordinals less-than 0, and formulas restricted in quantifier complexity, is determined. This is done, in part, by describing the provably recursive functions of such theories. Upper bounds for the provably recursive functions are obtained using model-theoretic techniques. A variety of additional results that come as an application of such techniques are mentioned.

[Publisher's description:] When can we be morally responsible for our behavior? Is it fair to blame people for actions that are determined by heredity and environment? Can we be responsible for the actions of relatives or members of our community? In this provocative book, Tamler Sommers concludes that there are no objectively correct answers to these questions. Drawing on research in anthropology, psychology, and a host of other disciplines, Sommers argues that cross-cultural variation raises serious problems for theories that propose (...) universally applicable conditions for moral responsibility. He then develops a new way of thinking about responsibility that takes cultural diversity into account. -/- Relative Justice is a novel and accessible contribution to the ancient debate over free will and moral responsibility. Sommers provides a thorough examination of the methodology employed by contemporary philosophers in the debate and a challenge to Western assumptions about individual autonomy and its connection to moral desert. (shrink)

Language learning requires linguistic input, but several studies have found that knowledge of second language rules does not seem to improve with more language exposure. One reason for this is that previous studies did not factor out variation due to the different rules tested. To examine this issue, we reanalyzed grammaticality judgment scores in Flege, Yeni-Komshian, and Liu's study of L2 learners using rule-related predictors and found that, in addition to the overall drop in performance due to a sensitive period, (...) L2 knowledge increased with years of input. Knowledge of different grammar rules was negatively associated with input frequency of those rules. To better understand these effects, we modeled the results using a connectionist model that was trained using Korean as a first language and then English as an L2. To explain the sensitive period in L2 learning, the model's learning rate was reduced in an age-related manner. By assigning different learning rates for syntax and lexical learning, we were able to model the difference between early and late L2 learners in input sensitivity. The model's learning mechanism allowed transfer between the L1 and L2, and this helped to explain the differences between different rules in the grammaticality judgment task. This work demonstrates that an L1 model of learning and processing can be adapted to provide an explicit account of how the input and the sensitive period interact in L2 learning. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article offers a re-contextualization of the Positivism Dispute between the Frankfurt School and advocates of empirical sociology in the German sociological profession between 1954 and 1970. Investigating the reasons why the German Sociological Association convened in Tübingen in October 1961, it assigns a more peripheral role to Karl Popper and this now famous seminar. Focusing instead on the debate among German sociologists from the mid-1950s which prompted the convention of the seminar and the invitation for Popper to speak, the (...) article maintains that philosophy of history was the central concern of the Positivism Dispute. In this debate, members of the Frankfurt School emphasized contingency in history and society, while sociologists such as René König, Helmut Schelsky, Ralf Dahrendorf, and Arnold Gehlen advocated sociology as the empirical study of ‘given’ social facts. By doing so the article questions the narrative of the Positivism Dispute advanced by Karl Popper and some of his followers, as well as interpretations which have focused on debates during the aftermath of the Tübingen seminar in the 1960s. (shrink)

A naturalistic scheme of primitive conceptual representations is proposed using the statistical measure of mutual information. It is argued that a concept represents, not the class of objects that caused its tokening, but the class of objects that is most likely to have caused it (had it been tokened), as specified by the statistical measure of mutual information. This solves the problem of misrepresentation which plagues causal accounts, by taking the representation relation to be determined via ordinal relationships between conditional (...) probabilities. The scheme can deal with statistical biases and does not rely on arbitrary criteria. Implications for the theory of meaning and semantic content are addressed. (shrink)

Jenseits von Gut und Böse ist ein Werk, mit dem Nietzsche einen neuen Ton fand, um so die „Philosophie der Zukunft“ zu initiieren. Es untergräbt gewohnte Gewissheiten in fundamentalphilosophischer, religiöser, moralischer und politischer Hinsicht. Zugleich verspricht es, die Perspektiven, das Leben der Leser grundlegend zu verändern. Signalbegriffe wie „Wille zur Macht“ und „Sklaven-Moral“ dürfen nicht als feste Lehren missverstanden werden.

The standardised randomised clinical trial (RCT) has been exceedingly popular in medical research, economics, and practical policy making. Recently, RCTs have faced criticism. First, it has been argued by John Worrall that we cannot be certain that our sample is not atypical with regard to possible confounding factors. I will argue that at least in the case of medical research, we know enough about the relevant causal mechanisms to be justified to ignore a number of factors we have good reason (...) not to expect to be disruptive. I will also argue against an argument provided by Nancy Cartwright and Eileen Munro that RCTs should not be taken to deductively infer probabilistic causal claims, but ampliatively. The paper will end on a discussion of evidence hierarchies and a defence of the stance of evidence-based medicine that RCTs are the best available method to assess a treatment’s efficacy. (shrink)

My thesis in this paper is: the modern concept of laws of motion—qua dynamical laws—emerges in 18th-century mechanics. The driving factor for it was the need to extend mechanics beyond the centroid theories of the late-1600s. The enabling result behind it was the rise of differential equations. -/- In consequence, by the mid-1700s we see a deep shift in the form and status of laws of motion. The shift is among the critical inflection points where early modern mechanics turns into (...) classical mechanics as we know it. Previously, laws of motion had been channels for truth and reference into mechanics. By 1750, the laws lose these features. Instead, now they just assert equalities between functions; and serve just to entail (differential) equations of motion for particular mechanical setups. This creates two philosophical problems. First, it’s unclear what counts as evidence for the laws of motion in the Enlightenment. Second, it’s a mystery whether these laws retain any notion of causality. That subverts the early-modern dictum that physics is a science of causes. (shrink)

I argue that the key dynamical concepts and laws of Newton's Principia never gained a solid foothold in Germany before Kant in the 1750s. I explain this absence as due to Leibniz. Thus I make a case for a robust Leibnizian legacy for Enlightenment science, and I solve what Jonathan Israel called “a meaningful historical problem on its own,” viz. the slow and hesitant reception of Newton in pre-Kantian Germany.

This Element analyzes Kant's metaphysics and epistemology of the exact science of nature. It explains his theory of true motion and ontology of matter. In addition, it reconstructs the patterns of evidential reasoning behind Kant's foundational doctrines.

Much early modern metaphysics grew with an eye to the new science of its time, but few figures took it as seriously as Emilie du Châtelet. Happily, her oeuvre is now attracting close, renewed attention, and so the time is ripe for looking into her metaphysical foundation for empirical theory. Accordingly, I move here to do just that. I establish two conclusions. First, du Châtelet's basic metaphysics is a robust realism. Idealist strands, while they exist, are confined to non-basic regimes. (...) Second, her substance realism seems internally coherent, so her foundational project appears successful.I have two aims in this paper. Historically, I show that du Châtelet's main source of inspiration was Christian... (shrink)

abstractThe paper explores a new interpretation of the consequentializing project. Three prominent interpretations are criticized for neglecting the explanatory dimension of moral theories. Instead...

ABSTRACT In this paper, I propose a variant of a Humean account of laws called "Open Future Humeanism", which holds that since the laws supervene partly on future events, there are at any instant infinitely many possible future courses of events. I argue that if one wants to take the openness of the future that OFH proposes ontologically serious, then OFH is best represented within a growing block view of time. I further discuss some of OFH's problems which stem from (...) the fact that in this view, there are no laws as long as time progresses. These problems can be solved by adding a temporal operator to the laws, so that at any instant, we get a set of tensed laws which held up to and including that instant. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the philosophical sources of some of the criticisms made in the second half of the 20th century to the practices and the main assumptions of historiography. In particular, the influence of the writings by Nietzsche dedicated to European Historicism on the renewed concept of history which is imposed in the twentieth century from the thought of Heidegger and Foucault. The divergent concepts of historical time and existential temporality, as well as those of (...) narrative unity and continuity of historical events, are the concepts that mainly fall under the critical scrutiny of these thinkers. Archaeological investigations that Foucault devotes to institutions and procedures of the European past are mentioned as examples of the critical review of traditional historiography. (shrink)

This article focuses on the renouncement of possessions in Matthew 19:16–30 in terms of three related questions. Firstly, it asks if the renouncement of possessions was, according to Matthew, a general requirement for following Jesus or for membership of the Matthean community. Secondly, it investigates if this requirement did not lead to a distinction within the Matthean community between those who adhered to a stricter ethic of Jesus and those who did not? Finally it enquiries as to what would have (...) compelled followers of Jesus or members of the latter Matthean community to comply with it? The article concludes that at least some of the followers of Jesus are depicted by Matthew as having renounced their possessions as a sign of their unconditional commitment to him. The Matthean community could thus have been a two-tiered community comprised of virtuosi who had renounced all their possessions, as was demanded of the rich young man, and those who had not. The renouncement of their possessions could have been part of their initiation into the Matthean community and have been motivated by the promise of an incomparable eschatological reward. It further appears that while not all who were considered to be followers of Jesus had surrendered their possessions, all would share in God’s eschatological reward if they provided hospitality to those who did. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFreethought was a transnational movement that developed particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, spreading across Europe and other world regions and promoting new models for society. The present article proposes an investigation of the contours and developments of the freethought movement in Romania before World War I. This is an important area of research given that most analyses performed to date have considered only the Western world and not the Eastern European context.Our intention is to elucidate to (...) what extent the European models influenced this movement and to uncover their impact on the Romanian society of the time. The paper highlights the criticisms of the clerics upon freethought, showing that the development of this current in Romania as a national movement represented not simply imitation of the European models, but an adaptation of those models to Romanian realities. The Romanian freethinkers can be seen trying to develop some of the most radical ideas of those times, in connection with the European trends. (shrink)

1. Lewis White Beck describes Kant as engaging in a ‘two-front war’ against the rationalists and empiricists in an attempt to solve the problems of epistemology. Both groups, according to Kant, were mistaken in believing that there is but one ultimate source or faculty of knowledge. Discuss critically Kant’s attack on these two positions with particular reference to the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements and Kant’s notion of synthetic a priori judgements. To what extent do you think that the (...) distinction between these three kinds of judgements is valid? In your response you should refer to the arguments by Quine (‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’) and Strawson/Grice. (shrink)

The aim of our commentary is to strengthen Cowan's proposal for an inherent capacity limitation in STM by suggesting a neurobiological mechanism based on competitive networks and nonlinear oscillations that avoids some of the shortcomings of the scheme discussed in the target article (Lisman & Idiart 1995).

Relational egalitarianism, the view that social equality is fundamentally about equal relationships, has a problem addressing intergenerational justice. Specifically, how can we have any relationship, egalitarian or otherwise, with people that we do not overlap with temporally? I argue that the problem is even greater than that since we do not overlap in many other relevant ways, and are not in relationships with most of our temporal peers either. If relational equality relies on actual relationships, it cannot succeed as an (...) account of justice. However, we stand in certain social relations to one another, less direct than relationships, that might connect us, in an egalitarian fashion, to many more people than the ones with whom we have relationships. If this account, or one like it, cannot succeed, however, we may have to give up on relational egalitarianism altogether. (shrink)

I aim to alleviate the pessimism with which some philosophers regard the 'objective attitude', thereby removing a particular obstacle which P.F. Strawson and others have placed in the way of more widespread scepticism about moral responsibility. First, I describe what I consider the objective attitude to be, and then address concerns about this raised by Susan Wolf. Next, I argue that aspects of certain attitudes commonly thought to be opposed to the objective attitude are in fact compatible with it. Finally, (...) I examine the prospects of someone who wishes to adopt the objective attitude permanently. In response to philosophers who claim that this would be psychologically impossible, I argue that our commitment to attitudes that presuppose moral responsibility can soften and fade, often without our noticing it. (shrink)