The present article deals with issues of social recognition in the global and transnational environment. It deals with the issue of solidarity, a form of recognition that has no adequate parallel beyond nation state borders and manifests itself mainly in the transnational economy. We focus on the articulation of the extraterritorial recognition of social rights-holders at the international and transnational levels of justice. It is clear that conditions in developing countries do not allow the people there to express disapproval in (...) ways that are typical for Western societies. We stress that states should strengthen their influence in global and transnational organizations and equally that the media should improve its informative role and should provide information on what is happening in developing parts of the world. (shrink)

Evidence from functional neuroimaging of the human brain indicates that information about salient properties of an object¿such as what it looks like, how it moves, and how it is used¿is stored in sensory and motor systems active when that information was acquired. As a result, object concepts belonging to different categories like animals and tools are represented in partially distinct, sensory- and motor property-based neural networks. This suggests that object concepts are not explicitly represented, but rather emerge from weighted activity (...) within property-based brain regions. However, some property-based regions seem to show a categorical organization, thus providing evidence consistent with category-based, domain-specific formulations as well.Acronyms and DefinitionsBiological motion: motion of animate agents characterized by highly flexible, fully articulated motion vectors, in contrast to the rigid, unarticulated motion vectors associated with most tools.Category-specific disorder: a relatively greater impairment in retrieving information about members of one superordinate object category (e.g., animals) as compared with other categories following brain injury or diseaseIPS: intraparietal sulcusLO: lateral occipital cortexObject concept: memory representations of a class or category of objects. Necessary for numerous cognitive functions including identifying an object as a member of a specific category and drawing inferences about object propertiespMTG: posterior middle temporal gyruspSTS: posterior superior temporal sulcusRepetition suppression: decreased neural response associated with repeated presentation of an identical, or a semantically/conceptually related, stimulusSD: semantic dementiaSemantic memory: a large division of long-term memory containing knowledge about the world including facts, ideas, beliefs, and conceptsSemantic priming: a short-lasting facilitation in processing a stimulus due to the prior presentation of a semantically related stimulusTMS: transcranial magnetic stimulationVPMC: ventral premotor cortex. (shrink)

Earlier in this century, many philosophers of science (for example, Rudolf Carnap) drew a fairly sharp distinction between theory and observation, between theoretical terms like 'mass' and 'electron', and observation terms like 'measures three meters in length' and 'is _2° Celsius'. By simply looking at our instruments we can ascertain what numbers our measurements yield. Creatures like mass are different: we determine mass by calculation; we never directly observe a mass. Nor an electron: this term is introduced in order to (...) explain what we observe. This (once standard) distinction between theory and observation was eventually found to be wanting. First, if the distinction holds, it is difficult to see what can characterize the relationship between theory :md observation. How can theoretical terms explain that which is itself in no way theorized? The second point leads out of the first: are not the instruments that provide us with observational material themselves creatures of theory? Is it really possible to have an observation language that is entirely barren of theory? The theory-Iadenness of observation languages is now an accept ed feature of the logic of science. Many regard such dependence of observation on theory as a virtue. If our instruments of observation do not derive their meaning from theories, whence comes that meaning? Surely - in science - we have nothing else but theories to tell us what to try to observe. (shrink)

Drosophila flies began to be used in the study of species evolution during the late 1930s. The geneticists Natasha Sivertzeva-Dobzhansky and Elizabeth Reed pioneered this work in the United States, and María Monclús conducted similar studies in Spain. The research they carried out with their husbands enabled Drosophila population genetics to take off and reveals a genealogy of women geneticists grounded in mutual inspiration. Their work also shows that women were present in population genetics from the beginning, although their contributions (...) have previously remained unacknowledged. The similarities between their research biographies also illustrate their position in a genealogy of partnerships working on Drosophila genetics. (shrink)

This article discusses the new reproductive technology of egg freezing in the context of existing literature on gender, medicalization, and infertility. What is unique about this technology is its use by women who are not currently infertile but who may anticipate a future diagnosis. This circumstance gives rise to a new ontological category of “anticipated infertility.” The author draws on participant observation and a qualitative analysis of scientific, mainstream, and marketing literature to identify and compare the representation of two different (...) candidates for egg freezing: women with cancer and healthy young women. Although both populations experience anticipated infertility, their dichotomous portrayals as appropriate candidates are demonstrative of gender norms linking women to motherhood. Egg freezing is a concise illustration of how the medicalization of women’s bodies and bodily processes masks a host of cultural anxieties about aging, illness, reproduction, and risk. (shrink)

Die vier Studien dieses Bandes behandeln alle das Problem, wie sich ein gutes Leben zu einem moralisch guten Leben verhält. Jede untersucht dieses Verhältnis von einer anderen Seite her; jede führt auf ihre Weise zu dem Schluß, daß der Zusammenhang zwischen dem Guten und dem moralisch Guten weder als letztendliche Identität noch als begriffliche Priorität einer der beiden Komponenten verstanden werden darf. Zusammen bilden sie den Entwurf einer praktischen Philosophie, die die Begriffe des individuellen Guten und des moralisch Richtigen als (...) interdependente Grundbegriffe versteht. (shrink)

Wie wollen wir leben und wie können wir unserem Leben Sinn geben angesichts der drängenden Krisen der Gegenwart? Wie können solche Fragen überhaupt beantwortet werden, wenn eine säkulare Kultur scheinbar nur Antworten auf Fragen nach dem „wie?“, nicht aber nach dem „wozu?“ erlaubt. Martin Kolmar deutet im vorliegenden Buch die gegenwärtigen und bevorstehenden Krisen, allen voran die Klimakrise, als Krise der westlichen Denk- und Wahrnehmungsweisen und versucht einen Ausweg daraus aufzuzeigen. Dazu beginnt er mit einer Analyse westlicher Vorstellungswelten aus (...) der Perspektive des „Erhabenen“. Es zeigt sich, dass das „Erhabene“ als Grenzerfahrung überraschende und relevante neue Perspektiven auf die Gegenwart öffnet und zugleich einen Weg zu einer säkularen, rationalen Form der Sinnerfahrung erkennbar macht. Das Besondere dieses Buches ist die Verknüpfung philosophischer und gesellschafts- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Forschung mit Erkenntnissen der Psychologie und der Neurowissenschaft. Es zeigt auf, dass traditionelle Vorstellungen des „Guten Lebens“ und der Verortung der eigenen Existenz als Teil der Natur, mit moderner Forschung korrespondieren. Ist man bereit, sich hierauf einzulassen, stellt insbesondere die Bedrohung durch die Klimakrise nicht nur ein mögliches Katastrophenszenario und eine große technologische Herausforderung dar, sondern eine Chance für ein besseres Leben, welches aus einer anderen Haltung ihm gegenüber resultiert. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been recently conceptualized and studied as a political phenomenon. Most debates in this scholarship have thus far focused on normative issues. Less attention has been paid to the explanatory potential of CSR research grounded in political theory and philosophy. In this article, we conduct a pragmatist reading of political scholarship on CSR and seek to deploy existing knowledge for research pursuing political explanation. We argue that the political ontologies that underlie scholarship on CSR can be (...) used to transform normative and descriptive research also for explanatory uses. We show how ontologies vary in terms of potential research objects and scopes of political explanation, and argue that the main types of political-ontological stances adopted in scholarship on CSR, foundational and post-foundational stances, offer explanatory analysis of different schematic guidelines. Our pragmatist reading of previous research and an empirical case illustration of political explanation of change in corporate responsibility in the biofuel industry demonstrate the opportunities, limitations, and challenges different political-ontological commitments provide for political explanation. (shrink)

Abstract: Several critics of contextualism claim that this view cannot consistently maintain its advertised neutrality between skepticism and anti-skepticism. Some critics contend that contextualists are forced to side with the skeptic, since any defense of contextualism unavoidably puts in place the skeptic's high requirements for knowledge; others hold that the contextualists' claim to have knowledge of what their own view entails forces them to reject the skeptic's knowledge denial. I show that these arguments misconstrue the role of context in contextualism, (...) and explain how we are to understand the contextualist's proposed agreement with both the skeptic's knowledge denial and the anti-skeptic's knowledge attribution. (shrink)

This article develops an ecological framework for understanding collective action. This is contrasted with approaches familiar from the collective intentionality debate, which treat individuals (with collective intentions) as fundamental units of collective action. Instead, we turn to social ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory and argue that they provide a promising framework for understanding collectives as the central unit in collective action. However, we submit that these approaches do not yet appreciate enough the relevance of social identities for collective action. (...) To analyze this aspect, we build on key insights from social identity theory and synthesize it with embodied and ecological accounts of perception and action. This results in the proposal of two new types of affordances. For an individual who enacts her "embodied social identity" of being a member of a particular collective, there can be what we call embodied social identity affordances. Moreover, when several individuals dynamically interact with each other against the background of their embodied social identities, this might lead to the emergence of a collective, which we understand as a dynamically constituted and ecologically situated perception-action system consisting of several individuals enacting relevant embodied social identity affordances. Building on previous work in social ecological psychology, we suggest that there can be genuine collective affordances, that is, affordances whose subject is not an individual, but a collective. (shrink)

From the early 1790s until after the turn of the century, a very productive but also controversial exchange took place between Reinhold and Fichte. Though many key aspects of post-Kantian philosophy were discussed, the philosophical confrontation between Reinhold and Fichte is most instructive for the understanding of post-Kantian philosophy. The exchange started when Fichte published his verdict on Reinhold's Elementarphilosophie and disapproved of its fundamental principle. In 1794 Fichte challenged Reinhold by presenting his Wissenschaftslehre. Reinhold was not convinced of Fichte's (...) foundation of philosophy at first, but announced that he accepted the Wissenschaftslehre in 1797. While Reinhold and Fichte officially collaborated in the following three years, tensions concerning fundamental questions were still present. When Reinhold adopted Rational Realism, his relation to Fichte deteriorated and the exchange between the two finally ended. The contributions in the present collection focus on the central systematic issues at the different stages of the confrontation between Fichte and Reinhold, thereby illuminating questions that are essential to the understanding of the evolution of post-Kantian German philosophy. (shrink)

We investigate the relationship between the dark triad personality traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) of managers and the practice of reporting manipulation using a primary survey of 837 professionals working in accounting and finance departments. We find that (a) managers who exhibit dark personality traits are associated with a higher prevalence of fraudulent accounting practices in their accounting and finance departments and (b) traditional risk management mechanisms are only partially effective in mitigating this effect. Internal audits are effective in curtailing (...) the negative behavior of managers with dark triad traits only if these internal audits are outsourced and performed by independent external personnel but not if they are conducted by internal personnel. This suggests that managers with dark triad traits are able to manipulate other employees quite effectively. Consequently, having external personnel perform the auditing task provides a safeguard against such unethical practices and manipulation. This finding has strong practical implications, as it provides support for outsourcing internal audits rather than keeping them in-house. (shrink)

Linguistic interaction between two people is the fundamental form of communication, yet almost all research in language use focuses on isolated speakers and listeners. In this innovative work, Garrod and Pickering extend the scope of psycholinguistics beyond individuals by introducing communication as a social activity. Drawing on psychological, linguistic, philosophical and sociological research, they expand their theory that alignment across individuals is the basis of communication, through the model of a 'shared workspace account'. In this workspace, interlocutors are actors who (...) jointly manipulate and control the interaction and develop similar representations of both language and social context, in order to achieve communicative success. The book also explores dialogue within groups, technologies, as well as the role of culture more generally. Providing a new understanding of cognitive representation, this trailblazing work will be highly influential in the fields of linguistics, psychology and cognitive linguistics. (shrink)

Philosophy underwent a corresponding theatrical shift in the modern era, most importantly through the work of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus.

The idea that the changing entropy of a system is relevant to explaining why we know more about the system's past than about its future has been criticized on several fronts. This paper assesses the criticisms and clarifies the epistemology of the inference problem. It deploys a Markov process model to investigate the relationship between entropy and temporally asymmetric inference.

To assess the merits and demerits of the content of Culp’s educational programme, the paper does three things: First, it discusses whether Culp’s defence against conceivable objections manages to effectively dispel the charge of cosmopolitan arrogance. Second, it spells out one implication of epistemic modesty, which Culp considers a core competence to be imparted by citizenship education. Third, it reflects upon the tricky task of motivating individuals to comply with the demands of justice. Taken together, the paper argues that Culp’s (...) case is impressively strong but nevertheless tends to suffer from a rationalist constriction. It does not leave sufficient room for tradition in private life and public reasoning. This rationalist constriction is problematic from a normative philosophical, and especially a practice-oriented viewpoint. (shrink)

In his treatment of a Kantian concept of moral freedom, Schiller argues for two kinds of freedom: freedom in the spirit of autonomous practical reason and freedom in which man is considered a mixed (sensual and rational) being. It is apparent that Schiller is on a Reinholdian path. He follows Reinhold’s theory of free will in conceiving of moral freedom primarily as the capacity to decide between the material drive as a sensible, self-interested drive and the formal drive as a (...) rational, unselfish drive. But it is also obvious that Schiller modifies Reinhold’s results in order to obtain a concept of aesthetic freedom. This project is important in view of a deeper understanding of the concept of aesthetic consciousness but is of little use in achieving a better understanding of the concept of moral freedom. (shrink)

We study generalizations of Dodd parameters and establish their fine structural properties in Jensen extender models with λ-indexing. These properties are one of the key tools in various combinatorial constructions, such as constructions of square sequences and morasses.

A mainstay of stakeholder management is the belief that firms create value when they invest more time, money, and attention to stakeholders than is necessary for the immediate transaction. This tendency to repeat interactions with the same set of stakeholders fosters what we call stakeholder friction. Stakeholder friction is a term for the collection of social, legal, and economic forces leading firms to prioritize and reinvest in current stakeholders. For many stakeholder scholars, such friction is close to universally beneficial, but (...) the associated costs—to both the firm and legitimate stakeholders—have been underspecified. Failure to account for the effects of stakeholder friction can cause managers to under-allocate attention and value to some legitimate stakeholders and to over-allocate attention and value to current stakeholders. We examine the concept of stakeholder friction and elaborate on three exemplar sources of friction prominent in the stakeholder literature. This is followed by an analysis of investments in stakeholder relationships and a consideration of the implications of stakeholder friction on the ability of firms to prioritize stakeholders. The tendency to reinvest in current stakeholders has, in addition to the oft-discussed benefits, a predictable downside. (shrink)

The saying reads, "The waking have a single cosmos in common," i.e., a single world-shape in which they take part in common. By this is already expressed what the later moral philosopher Plutarch, who preserved the fragment for us, pointed to in his interpretation: in sleep each turns away from the common cosmos and turns to something which belongs to him alone, something thus which he does not and cannot share with any other. That Heracleitus himself, on the contrary, understood (...) this less as the sleep of an individual, including the sphere of dreams, than as a cosmos, one among numberless fleeting world-shapes, in no way corresponds to what we know of his teachings. (shrink)

Besieged by ongoing economic crises, global health emergencies, geopolitical instabilities, ecological devastation, and growing political resentments, the intractable nature of the problems that configure the present has never loomed larger or more darkly. But what, indeed, is a problem? Problematising the modern image that treats problems as obstacles to be overcome by the progress of technoscientific knowledge and policy, this introductory article lays the groundwork for a generative conceptualisation of problems. Reweaving intercontinental connections between traditions of French philosophy and American (...) pragmatism, it proffers a conception of the problematic as a mode of existence that is irreducible to the subjective, the methodological, or the epistemological. Problems go all the way down and up, requiring nothing less than an art of metamorphosis capable of engendering processes of creation, invention, and transformation in whose hold bodies and practices, knowledges and lives, thoughts and worlds, are done and undone, made and remade. (shrink)

A new explanation of the relation between schooling and work in the democratic, advanced industrial state emerges from this study that rejects both traditional views and the more recent Marxian perspective. Traditional views consider schools as autonomous institutions that are able to pursue the goals of equality and social mobility irrespective of the inequalities of capitalist society; the Marxian perspective views schools as serving the role of producing wage-labor for capitalistic exploitation. The authors suggest that the shortcomings of both views (...) are rooted in the fact that they do not recognize the true functions of the democratic, capitalist state. The state is seen as an arena for struggle between forces pushing for egalitarian, democratic reforms and those seeking to use the resources of the state for private capital accumulation. Depending on which side has primacy at the moment, schools will reflect one set of goals over the other. However, victory is never complete, and the tide of battle has shifted back and forth historically. The authors develop this theory through interpreting the dynamic relation between U.S. schools and the workplace. Based on this approach, they predict changes in both schooling and work as well as the forms that future conflicts between the contending forces are likely to take. (shrink)

Prior research has demonstrated a strong relationship between team performance and team members’ team efficacy beliefs and perceptions of social integration. Performing well increases the feelings of collective ability that comprise team efficacy and the feelings of psychological connectedness that make up social integration, while performing poorly erodes them. In this article, we draw from the social cognitive base of ethical leadership theory to argue that ethical leadership moderates the relationship between team performance and team efficacy beliefs, and between team (...) performance and social integration, such that these important team attitudes are buffered against the negative effects of poor performance when leaders act ethically. Alternatively, when leaders act less ethically, team efficacy and social integration break down following poor performance. We test our hypotheses in a field study of U.S. military teams actively engaged in competition. The data support our arguments. We find that ethical leadership weakens the relationships among team performance and team efficacy and social integration, respectively, such that ethical leaders preserve team efficacy and social integration when their teams do not perform well. (shrink)

Additional theorizing about mathematical practice is needed in order to ground appeals to truly useful notions of the virtues in mathematics. This paper aims to contribute to this theorizing, first, by characterizing mathematical practice as being epistemic and “objectual” in the sense of Knorr Cetina The practice turn in contemporary theory, Routledge, London, 2001). Then, it elaborates a MacIntyrean framework for extracting conceptions of the virtues related to mathematical practice so understood. Finally, it makes the case that Wittgenstein’s methodology for (...) examining mathematics and its practice is the most appropriate one to use for the actual investigation of mathematical practice within this MacIntyrean framework. At each stage of thinking through mathematical practice by these means, places where new virtue-theoretic questions are opened up for investigation are noted and briefly explored. (shrink)

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 78, Issue 1, Page 101-105, Winter 2020.

The phenomenon of altruism extends from the biological realm to the human sociocultural realm. This article sketches a coherent outline of multiple types of altruism of progressively increasing scope that span these two realms and are grounded in an ever-expanding sense of “self.” Discussion of this framework notes difficulties associated with altruism at different levels. It links scientific ideas about the evolution of cooperation and about hierarchical order to perennial philosophical and religious concerns. It offers a conceptual background for inquiry (...) into societal challenges that call for altruistic behavior, especially the challenge of environmental and social sustainability. (shrink)

Morality and mental health are now inseparably linked in our view of character. Alcoholics are sick, yet they are punished for drunk driving. Drug addicts are criminals, but their punishment can be court ordered therapy. The line between character flaws and personality disorders has become fuzzy, with even the seven deadly sins seen as mental disorders. In addition to pathologizing wrong-doing, we also psychologize virtue; self-respect becomes self-esteem, integrity becomes psychological integration, and responsibility becomes maturity. Moral advice is now sought (...) primarily from psychologists and therapists rather than philosophers or theologians. This book asks: are we replacing morality with therapy, in potentially confused and dangerous ways, or are we creatively integrating morality and mental health? According to the book, it's a little bit of both. It surveys the ways in which morality and mental health are related, touching on practical concerns like love and work, self-respect and self-fulfillment, guilt and depression, crime and violence, and addictions. Terming this integrative development “the therapeutic trend in ethics,” the book uses examples from popular culture, various moral controversies, and draws on line of thought that includes Plato, the Stoics, Freud, Nietzsche, and contemporary psychotherapeutic theories. The book develops some interesting conclusions, among them that sound morality is indeed healthy, and that moral values are inevitably embedded in our conceptions of mental health. In the end, the book shows how both morality and mental health are inextricably intertwined in our pursuit of a meaningful life. (shrink)