Humean instrumentalism is the view that all of one’s reasons for action are ultimately grounded in one’s antecedent desires, whatever those happen to be. According to this view, what determines which actions are rational is ultimately what the agent wants or desires, while the role of rational deliberation is to inform the agent about how to best gratify these desires. In this paper I aim to weaken commitment to Humean instrumentalism by showing that (a) the main supporting argument for HI (...) fails and that (b) Humean instrumentalism conflicts with a very plausible principle of practical rationality. (shrink)

I argue that Moorean theories of value have a difficult time accommodating the resonance requirement, that is, the platitude that we should value what’s valuable, while a sophisticated reflective endorsement theory of value and the resonance requirement are perfectly consistent. To this extent, a sophisticated reflective endorsement theory has a significant advantage over the Moorean approach. The reflective endorsement theory that I endorse emphasizes systematic exposure to possible sources of satisfaction, as well as a similarity principle of practical rationality.

The logic of ‘being informed’ gives a formal analysis of a cognitive state that does not coincide with either belief, or knowledge. To Floridi, who first proposed the formal analysis, the latter is supported by the fact that unlike knowledge or belief, being informed is a factive, but not a reflective state. This paper takes a closer look at the formal analysis itself, provides a pure and an applied semantics for the logic of being informed, and tries to find out (...) to what extent the formal analysis can contribute to an information-based epistemology. (shrink)

Hybrid languages are expansions of propositional modal languages which can refer to worlds. The use of strong hybrid languages dates back to at least [Pri67], but recent work has focussed on a more constrained system called $\mathscr{H}$. We show in detail that $\mathscr{H}$ is modally natural. We begin by studying its expressivity, and provide model theoretic characterizations and a syntactic characterization. The key result to emerge is that $\mathscr{H}$ corresponds to the fragment of first-order logic which is invariant for generated (...) submodels. We then show that $\mathscr{H}$ enjoys interpolation, provide counterexamples for its finite variable fragments, and show that weak interpolation holds for the sublanguage $\mathscr{H}$. Finally, we provide complexity results for $\mathscr{H}$ and other fragments and variants, and sharpen known undecidability results for $\mathscr{H}$. (shrink)

This paper explores themethodological consequences of AmericanPragmatism for the social sciences. It alsocriticises some rival perspectives onmethodology of social research, in particularfalsificationist, realist and someanti-naturalist views. It is argued thatAmerican Pragmatism shows striking affinitieswith the genealogical method of history and thereflexive turn in cultural anthropology. It isalso argued that Pragmatism forces us to thinkdifferently about the relationship betweentheory and empirical research.

This article sets out the basic principles of a new theory of intellectual interventions centred round the notion of positioning. Intellectual interventions are seen as ways in which intellectuals locate themselves in the socio-political and intellectual field, thereby also positioning others. The existing contributions to the study of intellectuals often take the self-concepts or dispositions of intellectuals to be fixed, and they tend to focus on the causes and motivations behind intellectual interventions. Challenging this perspective, the theory proposed substitutes a (...) vocabulary of effects for the existing vocabulary of intentions and causes: rather than speculating on the sociological determinants or purposes that underlie an intellectual intervention, this theory explores its effects for the symbolic and institutional recognition of the author(s) and for the diffusion of the ideas propagated. (shrink)

Essays exploring a rich intersection between phenomenology and idealism with contemporary relevance.

The starting point of this paper is a version of intra-theoretical pluralism that was recently proposed by Hjortland [2013]. In a first move, I use synonymy-relations to formulate an intuitively compelling objection against Hjortland's claim that, if one uses a single calculus to characterise the consequence relations of the paraconsistent logic LP and the paracomplete logic K3, one immediately obtains multiple consequence relations for a single language and hence a reply to the Quinean charge of meaning variance. In a second (...) move, I explain how a natural generalisation of the notion of synonymy can be used to counter this objection, but I also show how the solution can be turned into an equally devastating ‘one logic after all’ type of objection. Finally, I propose the general diagnosis that these problems could only arise in the presence of conceptual distinctions that are too coarse to accommodate coherent pluralist theses. T.. (shrink)

The control of action has traditionally been described as "automatic". In particular, movement control may occur without conscious awareness, in contrast to normal visual perception. Studies on rapid visuomotor adjustment of reaching movements following a target shift have played a large part in introducing such distinctions. We suggest that previous studies of the relation between motor performance and perceptual awareness have confounded two separate dissociations. These are: (a) the distinction between motoric and perceptual representations, and (b) an orthogonal distinction between (...) conscious and unconscious processes. To articulate these differences more clearly, we propose a new measure of motor awareness, based on subjects' ability to reproduce the spatial details of reaching movements they have just made. Here we focus on the dissociation between motor awareness and perceptual awareness that may occur when subjects make rapid visuomotor adjustments to reaching movements following a target shift. In experiment 1, motor awareness was dissociated from perceptual awareness of a target shift during reaching movement. Participants' reproduction of movement endpoints following visuomotor adjustment was independent of whether they saw the target shift or not. Experiment 2 replicated this result, and further showed that neither motor awareness nor motor performance were disrupted by TMS over the parietal cortex. The neural mechanisms underlying motor awareness, and the implications for theories of consciousness, are discussed. (shrink)

In the domain of ontology design as well as in Knowledge Representation, modeling universals is a challenging problem.Most approaches that have addressed this problem rely on Description Logics (DLs) but many difficulties remain, due to under-constrained representation which reduces the inferences that can be drawn and further causes problems in expressiveness. In mathematical logic and program checking, type theories have proved to be appealing but, so far they have not been applied in the formalization of ontologies. To bridge this gap, (...) we present in this paper a theory for representing ontologies in a dependently typed framework which relies on strong formal foundations including both a constructive logic and a functional type system. The language of this theory defines in a precise way what ontological primitives such as classes, relations, properties, etc., and thereof roles, are. The first part of the paper details how these primitives are defined and used within the theory. In a second part, we focus on the formalization of the role primitive. A review of significant role properties leads to the specification of a role profile and most of the remaining work details through numerous examples, how the proposed theory is able to fully satisfy this profile. It is demonstrated that dependent types can model several non-trivial aspects of roles including a formal solution for generalization hierarchies, identity criteria for roles and other contributions. A discussion is given on how the theory is able to cope with many of the constraints inherent in a good role representation. (shrink)

The central role of corporate leaders in setting the ethical tone for their organization is widely accepted. Four well known former CEOs are profiled to illustrate how their managerial ethical leadership not only influenced their firms but also the practice of business. Insights are drawn from their writings and speeches as well as other sources which examine demonstrated leadership abilities. Their behavior not only provides examples of leadership but also is exemplary from an ethical point of view. The article concludes (...) with five common themes that describe these individuals and the essence of managerial ethical leadership. (shrink)

Social entrepreneurship activity continues to surge tremendously in market and economic systems around the world. Yet, social entrepreneurship theory and understanding lag far behind its practice. For instance, the nature of the entrepreneurial discovery phenomenon, a critical area of inquiry in general entrepreneurship theory, receives no attention in the specific context of social entrepreneurship. To address the gap, we conceptualize social entrepreneurial discovery based on an extension of corporate social responsibility into social entrepreneurship contexts. We develop a model that emphasizes (...) mobilization and timing as underpinnings of social entrepreneurial discovery and offer distinct conceptual aspects and theoretic propositions instrumental to future social entrepreneurship research. (shrink)

This paper reports on the findings of the third in a series of surveys of large U.S.-based and multinational corporations on their ethics statements. Focusing on four types – values statement, corporate credo, code of ethics and Internet privacy policy – we find growth in the use of these statements over the last decade. We discuss the external communication of these statements, including the avenues that are now used for promotion and their intended audiences. The paper concludes with a number (...) of research issues to be addressed. (shrink)

This article is one of the first sociological explorations of power struggles between intellectuals where matters of life and death are literally at stake. It counters the prevailing tendency within sociology to study intellectuals within confined academic institutions where power struggles are limited to matters of symbolic and institutional recognition. This study explores the conflict between collaborationist and Resistance intellectuals at the end of the Second World War in France, and it focuses in particular on the purge of collaborationist intellectuals (...) which culminated in several high profile trials. This article shows that the arguments and meta-arguments put forward in these trials led to broader intellectual debates outside the courtroom. These debates not only centred on the notion of the writer’s responsibility, but also dealt with anxieties about the disintegrative forces of modern society. Whereas collaborationist intellectuals portrayed their writing as either separate from politics or rescuing a defunct or degenerate nation, Resistance intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre were keen to portray collaborators as outsiders, both socially and sexually, lacking in social integration and subservient to a strong external force. The Resistance intellectuals saw the notion of individual responsibility not as antithetical but as integral to the remaking of the French nation, and this concept would become the cornerstone of the reshaping of the intellectual landscape in the post-war era in France. (shrink)

What constitutes better schooling for today's youth? In 1984 educational theorist Theodore R. Sizer formulated nine Common Principles to answer this question and launched The Coalition of Essential Schools, an organization of schools attempting to change their own structure, curriculum, pedagogy, and power relations according to Sizer's Principles. This important book, the first comprehensive look at Coalition schools, charts the course of reform at eight charter member schools. The Coalition now counts over 900 private, parochial, public, urban, suburban, and rural (...) secondary schools among its affiliates nationwide. Donna E. Muncey and Patrick J. McQuillan, experts in anthropology as well as education, conducted a five-year ethnographic study to understand what happened in Coalition schools. The authors looked at curricular and pedagogical developments; how changes affected individual students, teachers, administrators, and other school personnel; and how American cultural beliefs influenced efforts to change. The schools' reform experiences differed: some efforts were sustained when others stalled, change divided some faculties while others found a sense of shared purpose, and the principals of some schools facilitated change while others clearly inhibited it. This compelling book, written for all who are concerned with education in America, offers a wealth of insights into the complexities of change efforts in individual schools and in classrooms. (shrink)

This commentary is a reflection on a collaboration with the artist Rossella Biscotti and comments on how artistic research and logico-mathematical methods can be used to contribute to the development of critical perspectives on contemporary data practices.

Leftist political theory remains trapped between two dominant conceptions of sovereignty: the liberal conception of popular sovereignty and the decisionist conception of sovereignty as the power to declare a state of exception. This essay offers a historical critique of the liberal and decisionist conceptions of sovereignty and develops a descriptive theory of aristocratic sovereignty, which is more suited to the history and the needs of radical political theory and praxis. By tracing the genealogy of sovereignty through early modern European political (...) thought to the founding of the United States, this essay reveals the debilitating shortcoming of notions of sovereignty derived from both Carl Schmitt and the liberal tradition and provides a basis for a distinctively radical analysis of the sovereign aristocracy in Amerika. (shrink)

New natural law theory holds that the basic moral principles are prescriptions to pursue the goods to which our nature orients us. Since God is the author of our nature and intelligence, these moral principles are part of his plan for creation. These principles can be known prior to knowing that God exists and prior to knowing that they are in fact directives from him. Nevertheless, since God’s plan includes our active cooperation, morally good acts cooperate with God’s providence, and (...) morally bad acts substitute one’s subjective preference for God’s truth. Thus natural law principles direct us to a unified ultimate end, namely, the fulfillment of God’s plan. Therefore God and our relationship with him have a central place in NNLT. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to the ongoing debate about whether Kant is a conceptualist or a non-conceptualist, by criticizing Hannah Ginsborg’s conceptualist interpretation found in her “Was Kant a nonconceptualist?”. Ginsborg’s conceptualist interpretation places important focus on imaginative synthesis. According to Ginsborg, our being conscious of imaginative synthesis is an essential element of such processes and it is our consciousness that confers intentionality to synthesized representations. In this article, I undermine Ginsborg’s account by offering several passages (...) that challenge its central tenets. Then, I develop and argue for an interpretation of imaginative synthesis that respects the passages used against Ginsborg. In short, I think the original text supports an account of synthesis such that the manifold of intuitions produced by our faculty of sensibility is unconsciously synthetically unified by the imagination. It is important to note that while the interpretation I offer here does not decisively support a conceptualist or non-conceptualist interpretation of Kant, it is nevertheless favorable to both the content and state non-conceptualist readings and unfavorable to the Ginsborgian conceptualist reading; this is because my interpretation shows that the mere fact of imaginative synthesis does not itself entail conceptualism, as Ginsborg maintains. (shrink)

This paper explores the history of two central categories of ancient Indian moral philosophy: trivarga and puruṣārtha. After an exhaustive analysis of the textual evidence from the earliest times until the middle of the first millennium CE, the paper concludes that the classificatory term trivarga requires an implicit referent and that its reference is artha in the sense of things that are beneficial. The term puruṣārtha, furthermore, is an elaboration of artha as the referent of trivarga: something that is beneficial (...) to a human being. The term artha in the compound puruṣārtha does not mean aim or goal, even though that meaning may occasionally seep into it in actual usage especially in later texts. Within this compound artha has the same meaning it has in Mīmāṃsā and Kauṭilya: something that is beneficial, as opposed to anartha: something that is detrimental. The expression puruṣārtha is rare with reference to the trivarga in the early literature until at least the middle of the first millennium CE. Its absence in the comprehensive lexicon, the Amarakośa, which records the trivarga and caturvarga, shows its marginal status in the Sanskrit vocabulary relating to trivarga. For the authors of the ancient Indian texts, the three concepts—dharma,artha,kāma—comprehended by trivarga do not constitute goals or aims of human life, as they are so often depicted in modern scholarship. They represent three major domains of human activities and pursuits that are beneficial to persons who perform them. (shrink)

The fine editions of the Aristotelian Commentary Series make available long out-of-print commentaries of St. Thomas on Aristotle. Each volume has the full text of Aristotle with Bekker numbers, followed by the commentary of St. Thomas, cross-referenced using an easily accessible mode of referring to Aristotle in the Commentary. Each volume is beautifully printed and bound using the finest materials. All copies are printed on acid-free paper and Smyth sewn. They will last.

Ecofeminist philosophy and literary theory need mutually to enhance each other's critical praxis. Ecofeminism provides the grounding necessary to turn the Bakhtinian dialogic method into a critical theory applicable to all of one's lived experience, while dialogics provides a method for advancing the application of ecofeminist thought in terms of literature, the other as speaking subject, and the interanimation of human and nonhuman aspects of nature. In the first part of this paper the benefits of dialogics to feminism and ecofeminism (...) are explored; in the second part dialogics as method is detailed; in the third part literary examples are discussed from a dialogical ecofeminist perspective. (shrink)

Beginning with a critique of the Enlightenment human/nature dualism, this essay argues for a new conception of human agency based on culturopoeia and an application of an ecofeminist dialogic method for analysing human-nature relationships, with the idea of volitional interdependence replacing ideas of free will and determinism. Further, it posits that we need to replace the alienational model of otherness based on a psychoanalytic model with a relational model of anotherness based on an ecological model, and concludes by encouraging attention (...) to developing bioregional natured cultures in place of nation states and multinational corporations. (shrink)

I first ask what it is to make up a story. In order to answer that question, I give existence and identity conditions for stories. I argue that a story exists whenever there is some narrative content that has intentionally been made accessible. I argue that stories are abstract types, individuated by the conditions that must be met by something in order to be a properly formed token of the type. However, I also argue that the truth of our story (...) identity attributions---sentences like, "Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings is the same story as JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings''---are relative to their context of use, so that the same attribution of identity might be true in one context or false in another because of a change in what's being said about the works in the differing contexts. From those existence and identity conditions, I draw the conclusions that story is best understood to be a phase sortal of some abstract types, and that what it is to make up a story is to identify a type of narrative representation and its content, such that the content is neither based on actual events nor on the content of other stories to an objectionable degree. In chapter 2, I ask what it is for a story to be complete. I argue for the general meta-thesis I call "Completion Pluralism", viz. that there are many kinds of artwork completeness, many corresponding senses of 'complete', and no kind of artwork completeness is objectively more important than any other. I give a pair of arguments against those who would deny Completion Pluralism, endorsing Completion Monism instead. First, I show how Monistic analyses of the one (or one most important) kind of artwork completeness fail. I also show that each Monistic theory's failure is contingent on the assumption of Completion Monism: the denial of Completion Monism dissolves each argument against the extensional adequacy of extant theories of artwork completeness. I argue that this is all best explained by the idea that Completion Pluralism is true. Second, I argue that Completion Pluralism fits best with the variety of interests that we bring to questions about artwork completeness: there is no single or overriding concern we have when we want to know whether an artwork is complete. We shouldn't expect completeness to be a single sort of thing, then. I show how to put Completion Pluralism to work by identifying different kinds of artwork completeness in artworks. Finally, I introduce a new kind of completeness particular to stories, what I call "narrative completion", and show how it's distinct from other kinds of completeness discussed. In chapter 3, I argue that the distinction between fictional and non-fictional stories is the degree to which stories are made-up. In short, a fictional story is a made-up story. I first provide a couple desiderata for thinking about theories of fiction, then show how the two most popular extant theories of fiction---the prop theory and the genre theory---fall short in meeting one or more of those desiderata to some extent. I then show how the theory that fictions are made-up stories better meets the desiderata, using my account of what it is to make up a story from chapter 1. I turn to explicitly ontological matters in chapter 4. Addressing the question of what stories are, I show that both the theses that they are eternal and immutable and that they are created and historical seem plausible for independent reasons. I discuss a schema of an argument some philosophers who hold to the latter view (those I call "Creationists") attempt to give for their view. However, I show how those who hold to the view that stories are eternal and immutable ("Platonists") can account for all the same appearances as the Creationists, usually at least as well and sometimes with a better accounting. Similar, deductive arguments for Platonism will give rise to similar responses from the Creationist, however. In the end, then, the style of argument in particular is unlikely to advance the discussion much. Finally, I attempt to advance the discussion by building an abductive case for Platonism. First, I vindicate a particular metaontological methodology for the debate at hand, a methodology that allows for "revisionary" outcomes in our ontologies of art objects. Second, I build a case for Platonism by arguing that it best explains a number of features of stories discussed in the previous chapters. Moreover, I argue that Creationism is committed to an implausible account of how some abstract objects come into existence. Given the combination of those facts, I argue that we should prefer Platonism to Creationism. (shrink)

If you are among those who remember the thrill of the first satellites--even more so if you are not--you need to read this book."--Robert P. Kirshner, author of "The Extravagant Universe" "Patrick McCray has produced a gem!

Humility is a vital aspect of political discussion, social media and self-help, whilst recent empirical research has linked humility to improved well-being, open-mindedness and increased accuracy in assessing persuasive messages. It is also a topic central to research and discussion in philosophy, applied ethics and religious studies. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Humility is the first collection to present a comprehensive overview the philosophy of humility, whilst also covering important interdisciplinary topics. Comprising forty-one chapters by an international team of (...) contributors, the Handbook is divided into seven parts: Theories of Humility The Ethics of Humility The Politics of Humility Humility in Religious Thought The Epistemology of Humility The Psychology of Humility Humility: Applications to the Social World. Essential reading for students and researchers in ethics, epistemology, political philosophy, and philosophy of mind and psychology, this Handbook will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religious studies and law. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the intersections between Hegel’s aesthetics lec- tures and translation theory and praxis, with reference to the French-Italian translation project Hegel Art Net. Against the background of the historical recon- struction that sees Hegel repeatedly confronted with the fruition and production of translations, we intend to examine the hermeneutic, philological and political challenges that a translator of the aesthetics Nachschriften encounters today, following the “philological turn” of the 1990s and the publication of new sources documenting Hegel’s (...) Berlin lectures on the philosophy of art. (shrink)

A reprint of the Library of Liberal Arts edition of 1965. Croce's Guide presents one of the clearest and strongest defenses of the intuitive nature of art in Western philosophical thought.

The contributors to The Moral of the Story, all preeminent political theorists, are unified by their concern with the instructive power of great literature. This thought-provoking combination of essays explores the polyvalent moral and political impact of classic world literatures on public ethics through the study of some of its major figures-including Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Jane Austen, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Robert Penn Warren, and Dostoevsky. Positing the uniqueness of literature's ability to promote dialogue on salient moral and intellectual virtues, (...) editor Henry T. Edmonson III has culled together a wide-ranging exploration of such fundamental concerns as the abuse of authority, the nature of good leadership, the significance of "middle class virtues" and the needs of adolescents. This collection reinvigorates the study of classic literature as an endeavor that is not only personally intellectually satisfying, but also an inimitable and unique way to enrich public discourse. (shrink)