Marx says of alienated labor that it does not “belong” to the worker, that it issues in a product that does not belong to her, and that it is unfulfilling, unfree, egoistically motivated, and inhuman. He seems to think, moreover, that the first of these features grounds all the others. All of these features seem quite independent, however: they can come apart; they share no obvious common cause or explanation; and if they often occur together, this seems accidental. It is (...) not clear, then, how Marx’s concept of alienated labor could possess the strong unity that he takes it to have. This article defends a reinterpretation of the concept that explains this unity. The various features of alienated labor, the article argues, all follow from a single, hitherto underappreciated feature of its formal motivational structure: the fact that such labor is motivated not by its product but by an incentive. (shrink)

The thesis that mental content is normative is ambiguous and has many forms. This article deals only with the thesis that normativity is connected to our mental attitudes rather than with the content of the attitudes, and more specifically with the view that it is connected to belief. A number of writers have proposed various versions of a ‘norm of truth’ attached to belief. I examine various versions of this claim, and defend it against recent criticisms according to which this (...) norm lacks normative force, that it violates the principle that ‘ought implies can,’ and that it is viciously circular. I defend the view that we should distinguish the statement of the objective norm and the way it is regulated, and that this distinction can answer most of the criticisms of the norm of truth for belief. (shrink)

This field study investigated the relationship between strategic human resource management, internal environmental concern, organizational citizenship behavior for the environment, and environmental performance. The originality of the present research was to link human resource management and environmental management in the Chinese context. Data consisted of 151 matched questionnaires from top management team members, chief executive officers, and frontline workers. The main results indicate that organizational citizenship behavior for the environment fully mediates the relationship between strategic human resource management and environmental (...) performance, and that internal environmental concern moderates the effect of strategic human resource management on organizational citizenship behavior for the environment. (shrink)

Ritualized behavior, intuitively recognizable by its stereotypy, rigidity, repetition, and apparent lack of rational motivation, is found in a variety of life conditions, customs, and everyday practices: in cultural rituals, whether religious or non-religious; in many children's complicated routines; in the pathology of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD); in normal adults around certain stages of the life-cycle, birthing in particular. Combining evidence from evolutionary anthropology, neuropsychology and neuroimaging, we propose an explanation of ritualized behavior in terms of an evolved Precaution System geared (...) to the detection of and reaction to inferred threats to fitness. This system, distinct from fear-systems geared to respond to manifest danger, includes a repertoire of clues for potential danger as well as a repertoire of species-typical precautions. In OCD pathology, this system does not supply a negative feedback to the appraisal of potential threats, resulting in doubts about the proper performance of precautions, and repetition of action. Also, anxiety levels focus the attention on low-level gestural units of behavior rather than on the goal-related higher-level units normally used in parsing the action-flow. Normally automatized actions are submitted to cognitive control. This “swamps” working memory, an effect of which is a temporary relief from intrusions but also their long-term strengthening. Normal activation of this Precaution System explains intrusions and ritual behaviors in normal adults. Gradual calibration of the system occurs through childhood rituals. Cultural mimicry of this system's normal input makes cultural rituals attention-grabbing and compelling. A number of empirical predictions follow from this synthetic model. (Published Online February 8 2007) Key Words: childhood ritual; compulsion; event boundaries; evolutionary psychology; obsessive-compulsive disorder; ritual; thought intrusion. (shrink)

This article discusses the relation between empirical and normative approaches in bioethics. The issue of dwarf tossing, while admittedly unusual, is chosen as a point of departure because it challenges the reader to look with fresh eyes upon several central bioethical themes, including human dignity, autonomy, and the protection of vulnerable people. After an overview of current approaches to the integration of empirical and normative ethics, we consider five ways that the empirical and normative can be brought together to speak (...) to the problem of dwarf tossing: prescriptive applied ethics, theoretical ethics, critical applied ethics, particularist ethics and integrated empirical ethics. We defend a position of critical applied ethics that allows for a two-way relation between empirical and normative theories. Against efforts fully to integrate the normative and the empirical into one synthesis, we propose that the two should stand in tension and relation to one another. The approach we endorse acknowledges that a social practice can and should be judged both by the gathering of empirical data and by normative ethics. Critical applied ethics uses a five stage process that includes: (a) determination of the problem, (b) description of the problem, (c) empirical study of effects and alternatives, (d) normative weighing and (e) evaluation of the effects of a decision. In each stage, we explore the perspective from both the empirical (sociological) and the normative ethical point of view. We conclude by applying our five-stage critical applied ethics to the example of dwarf tossing. (shrink)

Ownership is universal and ubiquitous in human societies, yet the psychology underpinning ownership intuitions is generally not described in a coherent and computationally tractable manner. Ownership intuitions are commonly assumed to derive from culturally transmitted social norms, or from a mentally represented implicit theory. While the social norms account is entirelyad hoc, the mental theory requires prior assumptions about possession and ownership that must be explained. Here I propose such an explanation, arguing that the intuitions result from the interaction of (...) two cognitive systems. One of these handles competitive interactions for the possession of resources observed in many species including humans. The other handles mutually beneficial cooperation between agents, as observed in communal sharing, collective action and trade. Together, these systems attend to specific cues in the environment, and produce definite intuitions such as “this is hers,” “that is not mine.” This computational model provides an explanation for ownership intuitions, not just in straightforward cases of property, but also in disputed ownership (squatters, indigenous rights), historical changes (abolition of slavery), as well as apparently marginal cases, such as the questions, whether people own their seats on the bus, or their places in a queue, and how people understand “cultural appropriation” and slavery. In contrast to some previous theories, the model is empirically testable and free ofad hocstipulations. (shrink)

How might good work – skilled, autonomous work which affords workers opportunities for meaningful social cooperation in decent conditions – be made available to all? I evaluate five commonly advanced strategies: an unregulated labor market, egalitarian redistribution of resources, state regulation, collective bargaining, and workplace democracy. Each, I argue, has significant limitations. An unregulated labor market ignores workers' unduly weak bargaining power vis-à-vis employers. Egalitarian redistribution alone fails to solve this problem due to distinctive and endemic imperfections of labor markets. (...) Direct state regulation is insufficiently context-sensitive and insufficiently dynamic in the face of technological and other developments. Collective bargaining gives workers only indirect and sometimes costly influence over their working conditions. And workplace democracy leaves workers vulnerable to collective action problems induced by competition between firms. I argue, however, that these strategies can be complemented in a promising way by ‘syndicalist economic democracy’: direct worker participation in the government of the economy, largely specific to particular occupations or economic sectors but above the level of the individual workplace. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between perceived co-worker support, commitment to colleagues, job satisfaction, intention to help others, and pro-environmental behavior with the emphasis on eco-helping, with a view to determining the extent to which peer relationships encourage employees to engage in pro-environmental behaviors at work. This paper is framed by adopting social exchange theory through the lens of ethics of care. Data from a sample of 449 employees showed that receiving support from peers triggers (...) an exchange process that encourages eco-helping among colleagues. The implications of the findings are discussed in the light of the social exchange literature. (shrink)

The domain of “folk-economics” consists in explicit beliefs about the economy held by laypeople, untrained in economics, about such topics as, for example, the causes of the wealth of nations, the benefits or drawbacks of markets and international trade, the effects of regulation, the origins of inequality, the connection between work and wages, the economic consequences of immigration, or the possible causes of unemployment. These beliefs are crucial in forming people's political beliefs and in shaping their reception of different policies. (...) Yet, they often conflict with elementary principles of economic theory and are often described as the consequences of ignorance, irrationality, or specific biases. As we will argue, these past perspectives fail to predict the particular contents of popular folk-economic beliefs and, as a result, there is no systematic study of the cognitive factors involved in their emergence and cultural success. Here we propose that the cultural success of particular beliefs about the economy is predictable if we consider the influence of specialized, largely automatic inference systems that evolved as adaptations to ancestral human small-scale sociality. These systems, for which there is independent evidence, include free-rider detection, fairness-based partner choice, ownership intuitions, coalitional psychology, and more. Information about modern mass-market conditions activates these specific inference systems, resulting in particular intuitions, for example, that impersonal transactions are dangerous or that international trade is a zero-sum game. These intuitions in turn make specific policy proposals more likely than others to become intuitively compelling, and, as a consequence, exert a crucial influence on political choices. (shrink)

Sosa takes epistemic normativity to be kind of performance normativity: a belief is correct because a believer sets a positive value to truth as an aim and performs aptly and adroitly. I object to this teleological picture that beliefs are not performances, and that epistemic reasons or beliefs cannot be balanced against practical reasons. Although the picture fits the nature of inquiry, it does not fit the normative nature of believing, which has to be conceived along distinct lines.

I defend a necessary condition of local autonomy inspired by Aristotle and Marx. One does something autonomously, I argue, only if one does it for its own sake and not for the sake of further ends alone. I show that this idea steers an attractive middle path between the subjectivism of Dworkin- and Frankfurt-style theories of autonomy on the one hand and the objectivism of Raz-style theories on the other. By doing so, it vindicates and explains two important pieces of (...) common sense of which those theories struggle to make sense. First, it explains how external sources of compulsion, such as coercion by other people and duress by unfavorable circumstances, can compromise the autonomy of an activity. Second, it explains this by articulating the sense in which to act autonomously is to do what one really or truly wants to do, and the correlative sense in which to do something unfreely is instead to be forced or necessitated to do it. At the same time, my proposal brings into view distinctive species of external unfreedom beyond the traditional paradigm cases of coercion and duress. Most importantly, it implies that toil—labor which is not valued intrinsically but is done purely on account of its instrumental necessity—is essentially unfree. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to provoke a debate on the management of social issues building on the analysis of a well known illegal organization, namely theSicilian Mafia. According to the analytical framework provided by Gambetta (1993), the Sicilian Mafia could be considered as a business on its own dealing a specific commodity: the ‘protection of people’. That approach of ‘Mafia as a corporation’ allows investigating the social responsibility of that organization and the way the Mafia managed its key (...) stakeholders. As we will argue, the recent spate of corporate scandals reveals the risk of normal corporations turning into a Mafia type of organization. One of the key drivers of those scandals is the overstretched instrumental interpretation of a corporation's societal responsibilities. By caricaturing and perverting some established practices of the mainstream approach to CSR perspective, we will demonstrate the potential pathologies of a CSR approach that is mainly based on the neoliberal foundation of individual and organizational self-interest. (shrink)

Ageing brings together biological, personal, and social horizons. Attempts to reduce it or to privilege one of these dimensions over the others fail to fully capture the phenomenon. The temporality of ageing presents an irreducible complexity. It is the inextricable intertwinement of three temporalities, three rhythms on different scales: biological time, personal-narrative time, and historical time. In all these dimensions something is of crucial concern: time and temporality. Yet, many philosophers who have thought about time (even those who take seriously (...) the lived experience of temporality) have paid little attention to ageing. Drawing from Heidegger, Scheler, and Schutz, this paper argues that ageing is an irreducible complex of different temporalities where one encounters the historicity of the world through a process of losing touch with it. (shrink)

How do people detect mental dysfunction? What is the influence of cultural models of dysfunction on this detection process? The detection process as such is not usually researched as it falls between the domains of cross-cultural psychiatry and anthropological ethno-psychiatry . I provide a general model for this “missing link” between behavior and cultural models, grounded in empirical evidence for intuitive psychology. Normal adult minds entertain specific intuitive expectations about mental function and behavior, and by implication they infer that specific (...) kinds of behavior are the result of underlying dysfunction. This suggests that there is a “catalogue” of possible behaviors that trigger that intuition, hence a limited catalogue of possible symptoms that feed into culturally specific folk-understandings of mental disorder. It also suggests that some mental dysfunctions, as they do not clearly violate principles of intuitive psychology, are “invisible” to folk-understandings. This perspective allows us to understand the cultural stability and spread of particular views of madness. It also suggests why certain types of mental disorder are invisible to folk-understandings. (shrink)

Antisemitism is on the rise. Recently, discussions have considered so-called “no-go zones for Jews” (city areas Jews should avoid to reduce the likelihood of being attacked). In this context and drawing from attribution theory, we examined if news consumers perceive a Jewish hate crime victim as partly responsible for being attacked when news coverage explicitly emphasizes that the victim displayed religious symbols (kippah) in a certain inner-city location. We conducted a quota-based survey experiment (N = 392) in Germany (4 groups, (...) between-subjects design) and randomly exposed participants to news coverage about an anti-Semitic attack. The article either emphasized that the Jewish victim displayed religious symbols (kippah) or not, and highlighted the specific location of the attack (Berlin synagogue vs. deprived inner-city district of Berlin). Moderated mediation analysis suggested that participants perceived the victim’s behavior to be more provocative when the news article highlighted that the victim displayed religious symbols and when the attack occurred in a deprived Berlin district. Yet, effects were only detected for individuals with low (vs. high) levels of education. Perceived provocativeness in turn increased victim blaming indicating that some individuals indirectly regarded the Jewish victim to be partly responsible for being attacked. (shrink)

The diversity of interpretations of Aristotle’s treatment of chance and luck springs from an apparent contradiction between the claims that “chance events are for the sake of something” and that “chance events are not for the sake of their outcome.” Chance seems to entail the denial of an end. Yet Aristotle systematically refers it to what is for the sake of an end. This paper suggests that, in order to give an account of chance, a reference to “per accidens causes” (...) is not sufficient. Chance occurs as a parody of teleology; it is a“for-no-purpose” that looks like a purpose. The notion of “irony” is suggested as a way of accounting for a situation that keeps an ambiguity open. The fact that chance is thought of in relation to teleology does not mean that it is “reappropriated” by teleology. Rather,chance reveals a hiatus that betrays the limitation of a language concerned with substances to account for events. (shrink)

La figure de l'individu, qui a dominé la philosophie et les sciences sociales au cours des trois dernières décennies, semble à bout de souffle. Partout, singuliers et collectifs cherchent à dépasser la simple adaptation au monde fluide imposé par le capitalisme mondialisé et à redevenir les agents de leur propre vie. Au nord comme au sud, un immense désir de subjectivation est en train de gagner nos sociétés. Pourtant, la figure du sujet reste confuse. Longtemps identifiée à une entité naturelle, (...) hors de l'histoire, elle pâtit aujourd'hui également des représentations, tout aussi néfastes, qui concluent de l'historicité radicale du sujet à sa relativité éthique et politique, voire à son inexistence. Ce livre reprend, à la racine, la réflexion sur les relations entre sujet et histoire, en y réintroduisant une tradition oubliée, sinon refoulée par la philosophie : celle qui commence avec Humboldt, se poursuit chez Saussure, Benveniste et Meschonnic. En définissant le langage comme activité et comme mise en circulation de puissances poétiques, cette tradition fournit les bases d'une nouvelle anthropologie historique du sujet. (shrink)

This paper is meant to provide a theoretical contribution to the Business and Society field, in line with Pasquero proposition (1996) to develop a constructivist research agenda on Business and Society issues, i.e. an agenda accounting for the dynamics and the socio-cognitive construction of CSR and stakeholder concepts. Among the different theoretical perspectives that may be good candidates to overcome several difficulties related to that lack in the B&S field, wepropose that some of Michel Callon’s sociological works are of particular (...) value. By bringing together those two traditionally separated areas of research, we will try to show how Callon’s concepts may shed new light on B&S traditional research issues, by answering, reformulating research questions or opening new research directions. (shrink)

Plutôt que de rouvrir l'éternel débat entre tenants d'une histoire analytique de la philosophie et tenants d'une approche « authentiquement historique », il vaut mieux se demander si les premiers sont réellement condamnés à la trahison historique, et les seconds à la myopie historique. La démarche consistant à aborder le passé de la philosophie d'aval en amont est compatible avec une fidélité historique dès lors qu'on est prêt à reconnaître que ce ne sont pas seulement des textes qui se transmettent (...) à l'intérieur d'une tradition, mais des arguments, et que ceux-ci peuvent passer d'une tradition à l'autre. Instead of reopening the eternal debate between the partisans of an « analytical » approach to the history of philosophy and the partisans of an « genuinely historical » approach, let us rather ask ourselves whether the former are necessarily condemned to betray history and the latter condemned to historical myopia. Approaching the past of philosophy from downstream to upstream is compatible with a fidelity to history once we acknowledge the fact that not only texts, but also arguments are passed on within a tradition and outside it. (shrink)

This paper proposes a biosemiotic conception of theories, as non-intentional organic theories, which is based on an analysis and comparison of philosopher Norwood Russell Hanson’s account of theories and zoologist Jakob von Uexküll’s theory of organisms. It is argued that Hanson’s proposals about scientific theories and their relation to observation are semiotic in nature and that there exists a correspondence between Hanson’s depiction of the relationship between theories, observation, and reality and von Uexküll’s views on the relationship between organisms and (...) their environments. This correspondence supports an account of theories that depicts them as organic extensions of our perceptual physiology. Among the epistemological consequences of this account are the following: The kind of correspondence that is established through theories between a subject and reality is related rather to a subject’s actions than to a faithful representation of every aspect of the world, it suggests a strong emphasis on the creative aspects of knowledge acquisition, and it urges a reassessment of the evolutionary epistemology of theories. (shrink)

The current literature on environmental sustainability acknowledges that habits are often shaped in private life and that experiences with environmental activities in a non-work setting positively influence environmental behaviors in the work domain. However, the conditions that lead individuals to behave responsibly at work based on their environmental commitment outside the workplace remain poorly understood. We address this issue by pursuing two objectives. First, we outline archetypes of environmental behavior on and off the job and classify individuals into four profiles: (...) Apathetic, Conformist, Citizen and Enthusiast. Second, we examine a set of organizational and psychological variables that explain the likelihood of behaving in accordance with the principles of an archetype in terms of pro-environmental behavior at work. Our findings show that supervisory support, job self-efficacy and affective commitment increase the likelihood of being green at work but that environmental management practices do not. The results differ according to the profiles identified, allowing a better understanding of employees’ commitment to environmental sustainability. We conclude the paper by discussing the theoretical and managerial implications of our findings. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce que l'humain? ou comment deux savants assez philosophes et un philosophe assez savant reviennent sur la distinction classique entre nature et culture. Notre tradition culturelle posait une barrière quasiment étanche entre l'animal et l'humain. Nous savons aujourd'hui que nous partageons avec nos cousins les plus récents l'immense majorité de notre matériel génétique. Alors qu'est-ce qui spécifie l'humain? Trois réponses venues de trois disciplines : la neurobiologie, en un va et vient entre sciences cognitives et biologie du système nerveux, la (...) paléoanthropologie, à la charnière de la théorie de l'évolution et de la préhistoire, et la philosophie. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Aristotle’s discussion of PNC in Metaphysics Gamma and argues that the argument operates at three different levels: ontological, doxastic, and semantic through the invocation of three philosophical personae: the first one can only state what is otherwise unprovable, the second one can only confirm that we should trust PNC, the third one denies PNC and must be silenced. Aristotle cannot prove what is beyond proof. This situation results in a fundamental ambiguity in the figure of the (...) philosopher. The Metaphysics is written from the standpoint of an investigative thinker who admits her puzzlement before a question that will forever remain open and imagines another philosopher who has achieved a god-like insight into the first principles of all things. The path from the first figure to the second one, however, remains an enigmatic leap. (shrink)

L'expression de nos émotions est-elle la même d'une langue à l'autre? À partir d'un large éventail de langues présentes continents, cet ouvrage témoigne de la grande variété des modalités d'expression des émotions, en fonction des codes culturels de différentes sociétés à tradition écrite ou orale. Les situations envisagées ici vont de la communication orale spontanée dans des contextes divers aux récits en passant par la création théâtrale et la poésie. S'appuyant sur ces sources multiples, l'ouvrage expose les procédés lexicaux grammaticaux, (...) métaphoriques et discursifs ou encore les représentations graphiques mis en oeuvre pour exprimer les émotions. (shrink)

This essay addresses the following questions: How does the meta-sensory function of koine aisthesis relate to its other functions? How can a meta-level arise from the immanence of sensation? Can we give an account of meta-sensation that doesn’t assume a transcendental plane? My contention is that the representationalist model doesn’t apply to Aristotle and that Aristotle offers an alternative that is worth exploring. I propose to interpret the meta-sensory power of the koine aisthesis in terms of the sensing of the (...) limits of perception. The sensing of the limit of sensation is the sensing of sensation itself qua potentiality as exemplified by Aristotle’s observations on the experience of seeing darkness or hearing silence. If it is so, sensing-that-I-sense doesn’t require an appeal to a transcendent faculty and arises from the immanent experience of sensation itself. (shrink)

Exposé présenté lors de la journée d'études CRAL-EHESS par Christophe Corbier, Marielle Macé et Esteban Buch, « Histoire du rythme, histoire des rythmes » – Paris – 12 décembre 2014. - Philosophie – Nouvel article.

The master argument posits a metaphysical thesis: Diodorus does away with Aristotle’s dunamis understood as a power simultaneously oriented toward being and non-being and proclaims that possibilities that fail to actualize are simply nothing. My contention is that this claim is not a mere application of Diodorus’ contribution to modal logic. Rather, Diodorus creates an ontologico-temporal concept of possibility and impossibility. Diodorus envisions the future as the past that the future will become. Since what will have been can never be (...) the accomplishment of a possibility that did not obtain, and since the future is destined to become past, any futural possibility that doesn’t actualize is neither futural nor even possible. (shrink)

This paper examines the “pluralist” conception of truth defended by Crispin Wright, and stresses its difficulties and its dangerous flirtation with relativsm. A solution to these difficulties, which Wright himself contemplates, consists in embracing a functionalist theory of truth, according to which truth is a kind of formal property “realised” differently in various domains. But this view, it is argued, does not get rid of the difficulties of pluralism. It is then argued that we have to accept that truth is (...) one, not many, and a kind of realism about truth, on an epistemological basis. (shrink)

Identifying objects as members of ontological domains activates category-specific processes. There is evidence that these processes include particular ways of “tracking” substances and could do all the “tracking” necessary for concept acquisition. There may be no functional need or evolutionary scenario for a general tracking capacity of the kind described by Millikan.

Classical ethology encourages a causal approach to animal behaviour, using Tinbergen's four questions concerning evolution, function, mechanism and development of behaviour. It sets aside the study of mental processes, which could otherwise help to unify our picture of the relationships between animal and environment. Here the steps in research focused on the psychological meaning of a peculiar behaviour in the mouse — carrying its tail — and what this implies regarding the mouse's cognitive world are given. Initial empirical observations suggested (...) epistemic choices concerning space and object notions in the mouse; this led us to go beyond the first stage in exploring the significance of this behaviour. Later experiments showed the limitations of an explanation based on a cause-effect relationship. An interpretative model integrating a phenomenological conceptual framework is proposed. (shrink)