In this paper we explore quarantining as a more ethical method for delimiting the spread of Hate Speech via online social media platforms. Currently, companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google generally respondreactivelyto such material: offensive messages that have already been posted are reviewed by human moderators if complaints from users are received. The offensive posts are onlysubsequentlyremoved if the complaints are upheld; therefore, they still cause the recipients psychological harm. In addition, this approach has frequently been criticised for delimiting freedom (...) of expression, since it requires the service providers to elaborate and implement censorship regimes. In the last few years, an emerging generation of automatic Hate Speech detection systems has started to offer new strategies for dealing with this particular kind of offensive online material. Anticipating the future efficacy of such systems, the present article advocates an approach to online Hate Speech detection that is analogous to the quarantining of malicious computer software. If a given post is automatically classified as being harmful in a reliable manner, then it can be temporarily quarantined, and the direct recipients can receive an alert, which protects them from the harmful content in the first instance. The quarantining framework is an example of more ethical online safety technology that can be extended to the handling of Hate Speech. Crucially, it provides flexible options for obtaining a more justifiable balance between freedom of expression and appropriate censorship. (shrink)

Recuperating the sibling -- Sibling logic -- Fraternity and revolution -- The shadows of fraternity -- Economizing desire : the sibling (in) law -- Genealogical sciences -- Living languages : comparative philology and evolution -- The east comes home : race and religion.

In "The Subtle Body," Stefanie Syman tells the surprising story of yoga's transformation from a centuries-old spiritual discipline to a multibillion-dollar American industry.

This book offers an innovative defense of Wilfrid Sellar's notion of ideal truth. Sellars adopts two attractive ideas about truth: the pragmatist idea that the concept of truth cannot be understood independently from the norms and practices we find ourselves with and the realist idea that there is one ultimate truth about how the world is. Sellars is thus committed both to an immanent notion of truth and an ideal notion of truth. This book discusses these countervailing tendencies and tries (...) to reconcile them. The author's defense of Sellars's notion of truth minimizes problematic commitments while still being recognizably rooted in Sellars's texts. Additionally, the author defends several innovative claims with respect to Sellars's thinking, for example, about the relative unimportance of his controversial concept of pictorial adequacy and about the neglected significance of considerations concerning context-sensitive expressions in his thought. Wilfrid Sellars on Truth will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Wilfrid Sellars, pragmatism, and questions about truth, naturalism, and scientific realism. (shrink)

Makerspaces and hacklabs are believed to encourage a positive attitude towards gaining computer skills. Within these communities for peer production, citizens can apply cutting-edge technologies in DIY projects. In recent decades, mushrooming makerspaces and hacklabs were embraced by the tech industry and governments alike. Feminist makerspaces and hacklabs, however, as they are centred around a queer feminist agenda, have raised eyebrows. In order to foster diversity in tech development, they create safer spaces for self-expression. Here, feminist laymen*, makers, designers, artists (...) and tinkerers experiment with open-source hardware and software. Art and design projects emerging from feminist hacklabs focus on issues of representation and democratic participation in digital media, as well as on ways of reclaiming one’s own body. This article tries to unpack how, after an exhibition on sexual health norms, a feminist hacklab was attacked by local right-wing and conservative politicians. The attack resulted in the defunding of the feminist hacklab. But it also started a transformation process within the collective, as members became aware of critical interferences of diffracting marginalisations. The crisis triggered a discussion on how each member was threatened to very different degrees; for example, there was more at stake for members depending on their legal status in the country. The right-wing and conservative campaign against the feminist hacklab damaged the initiative, but at the same time it pushed the collective to generate increased vehemence and resilience. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is institutional change and the changing role of business in Germany. Back in the 1980s, the German institutional framework was characterized by implicit mandatory and obligatory regulations that set a clear context for responsible corporate behavior. Today, this framework has eroded and given way to a situation in which corporations explicitly and voluntarily take responsibility for social issues. This shift from implicit to explicit corporate social responsibility is an indication of a major institutional change epitomized (...) by the deconstruction of ‘old’ and the reconstruction of ‘new’ institutions. In the course of this change, corporations, state actors, and civil society organizations compete for their ideas and interests in what we call a fight for myths. The paper traces this fight for myths and the changing understanding of corporate responsibility in Germany. (shrink)

Response to Don Baxter, Don Garrett and Jennifer Marusic regarding my book Imagined Causes: Hume's Conception of Objects; initially delivered at the 2016 Hume Conference in Sydney, Australia as part of the Author Meets Critics session.

Cet article cherche à reconstituer la thèse de Christian Wolff sur l’évidence (Deutlichkeit) des principes métaphysiques, dans un article de 1729 sur les « Notions directrices et le véritable usage de la première science », qui offre une référence centrale (et méconnue aujourd’hui) aux répondants du concours de 1762-1763, dont Kant. Wolff affirme en effet que la métaphysique est susceptible d’une certitude égale voire supérieure à celle des mathématiques et qu’elle diffuse cette certitude à travers toutes les autres disciplines ; (...) c’est cette thèse forte qu’il s’agira précisément de questionner en 1763. Une lecture plus attentive de l’article de Wolff permet d’en dégager certaines prémisses. La thèse de Wolff sur la certitude mathématique de la métaphysique est fondée sur un renversement de l’ordre de priorité entre métaphysique (ontologie) et mathématiques. Selon Wolff qui, dans son débat avec les mathématiques, s’appuie notamment sur la géométrie euclidienne, ce sont des notions métaphysiques qui fondent la validité des règles mathématiques et logiques. Des notions comme « identité », « chose », « possibilité », etc., possèdent en effet un statut « directeur » ou méthodique, dirigeant l’esprit sur le chemin de la connaissance et, sous une forme systématisée, composent une ontologie moderne et « architectonique ». La restitution de ce cadre permet de mieux voir la continuité méthodologique entre Wolff et Kant. En effet, même si Kant conteste la validité de quelques-uns de ces concepts, les modalités de leur systématisation et l’équation entre science architectonique et ontologie, sa Recherche sur l’évidence des principes s’inscrit à l’intérieur du programme, esquissé par Wolff, de la fondation d’une métaphysique architectonique contenant un tableau de concepts directeurs. De ce point de vue, Kant s’avère plus tributaire de la méthode wolffienne qu’il n’est supposé communément, et leur débat gagne en profondeur. (shrink)

My paper is concerned with the relation between ought-statements and intentions in Wilfrid Sellars’s philosophy. According to an entrenched view in Sellars scholarship, Sellars considers ought-statements as expressions of we-intentions. The aim of my paper is to question this reading and to propose an alternative. According to this alternative reading of Sellars, ought-statements are metalinguistic statements about the implication relations between intentions. I show that the entrenched understanding faces many unacknowledged problems and generates incompatibilities with Sellars’s commitments about intentions. I (...) argue that the alternative account can help to resolve these problems. A second reason in support of the alternative understanding of Sellars is provided by historical considerations. I argue that my alternative account can be discerned in Sellars’s most developed views about intentions and ought-statements. I also discuss problems and questions which the alternative reading itself faces. (shrink)

Religious naturalism is distinct from supernatural religion largely because of metaphysical minimalism. Certain varieties of religious naturalism are more minimalist than others, however, and some even eschew metaphysics altogether. But is anything lost in that process? To determine metaphysics’ degree of relevance to religious function, I compare the soteriology of the “ontologically reticent” Minimalist Vision of Jerome Stone to that of the ontologically rich Religion of Nature of Donald Crosby. I demonstrate that for these varieties of religious naturalism: (1) metaphysics (...) influences soteriology; (2) metaphysical minimalism limits soteriological potential; and (3) metaphysics enhances soteriological potential. These conclusions lead me to assert the relevance of metaphysics to religious function, specifically for these varieties of religious naturalism, as well as to urge investigation into religious experience and quality as they may relate to metaphysics. (shrink)

Centered on the collection of pre-conquest antiquities formed by Miguel Garcés, a Puno landowner and antiquary, this article studies the creole antiquarian landscape of the Southern Andes over the late 1800s and early 1900s. Historians have commonly taken the fact that many of the area's private collections were later sold to museums abroad as a testament to this antiquarian landscape's fragility and precariousness. This article argues that the collections' very volatility, dissolution, and mobility also, somewhat paradoxically, contributed to their centrality. (...) Indeed, many of these collections from “provincial” Peruvian and Bolivian localities would leave a decisive mark on the period's most visible museums of Americana in metropolitan centers—by their sheer scale and number, but also through their composition, prestige, and aesthetic appeal. The article thus contributes to an ongoing rethinking of the histories of anthropology and archaeology more broadly—by making visible Hispanic American contributions and the ways in which they were subsumed by, and constitutive of, the very “core” of these fields. The Southern Andes, the article holds, ought to be seen in many ways as a center, not a periphery, of Americanist learning, collecting, and display. (shrink)

This book provides the first comprehensive account of Hume’s conception of objects in Book I of the Treatise. What, according to Hume, are objects? Ideas? Impressions? Mind-independent objects? All three? None of the above? Through a close textual analysis, I show that Hume thought that objects are imagined ideas. However, I argue that he struggled with two accounts of how and when we imagine such ideas. On the one hand, Hume believed that we always and universally imagine that objects are (...) the causes of our perceptions. On the other hand, he thought that we only imagine such causes when we reach a “philosophical” level of thought. This tension manifests itself in Hume’s account of personal identity; a tension that, I argue, Hume acknowledges in the Appendix to the Treatise. As a result of presenting a detailed account of Hume’s conception of objects, we are forced to accommodate new interpretations of, at least, Hume’s notions of belief, personal identity, justification and causality. (shrink)

In "Beyond the Myth of the Myth: A Kantian Theory of Non-Conceptual Content", Robert Hanna argues for a very strong kind of non-conceptualism, and claims that this kind of non-conceptualism originally has been developed by Kant. But according to "Kant's Non-Conceptualism, Rogue Objects and the Gap in the B Deduction", Kant's non-conceptualism poses a serious problem for his argument for the objective validity of the categories, namely the problem that there is a gap in the B Deduction. This gap is (...) that the B Deduction goes through only if conceptualism is true, but Kant is a non-conceptualist. In this paper I argue, contrary to what Hanna claims, that there is not a gap in the B Deduction. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 37, Issue 1, pp 61 - 94 Interchanges between political, juridical and theological thought in the early modern period have been studied extensively during the past decades. Less light has been cast on the corresponding interrelations between politico-juridical thought and biblical hermeneutics. However, this issue deserves some attention, too, as the following case study on Hugo Grotius wants to show by pointing to the mutual adjustment of juridical, theological and biblical arguments in the progress of the core (...) semantics of Grotius’s natural law theory from _De iure praedae_ to _De iure belli ac pacis._. (shrink)

When, in 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten added a new discipline to the philosophical system, he not only founded modern aesthetics but also contributed to shaping the modern concept of art or 'fine art'. In The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment, Stefanie Buchenau offers a rich analysis and reconstruction of the origins of this new discipline in its wider context of German Enlightenment philosophy. Present-day scholars commonly regard Baumgarten's views as an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics, (...) but Buchenau argues that Baumgarten defended a consistent and original project which must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the art of invention. Her book offers new perspectives on Kantian aesthetics and beauty in art and science. (shrink)

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, new anatomical investigations of the brain and the nervous system, together with a renewed interest in comparative anatomy, allowed doctors and philosophers to ground their theories on sense perception, the emergence of human intelligence, and the soul/body relationship in modern science. They investigated the anatomical structures and the physiological processes underlying the rise, differentiation, and articulation of human cognitive activities, and looked for the “anatomical roots” of the specificity of human intelligence when compared (...) to other forms of animal sensibility. This edited volume focuses on medical and philosophical debates on human intelligence and animal perception in the early modern age, providing fresh insights into the influence of medical discourse on the rise of modern philosophical anthropology. Contributions from distinguished historians of philosophy and medicine focus on sixteenth-century zoological, psychological, and embryological discourses on man; the impact of mechanism and comparative anatomy on philosophical conceptions of body and soul; and the key status of sensibility in the medical and philosophical enlightenment. (shrink)

Despite decades of research, morphogenesis along the various body axes remains one of the major mysteries in developmental biology. A milestone in the field was the realisation that a set of closely related regulators, called Hox genes, specifies the identity of body segments along the anterior–posterior (AP) axis in most animals. Hox genes have been highly conserved throughout metazoan evolution and code for homeodomain‐containing transcription factors. Thus, they exert their function mainly through activation or repression of downstream genes. However, while (...) much is known about Hox gene structure and molecular function, only a few target genes have been identified and studied in detail. Our knowledge of Hox downstream genes is therefore far from complete and consequently Hox‐controlled morphogenesis is still poorly understood. Genome‐wide approaches have facilitated the identification of large numbers of Hox downstream genes both in Drosophila and vertebrates, and represent a crucial step towards a comprehensive understanding of how Hox proteins drive morphological diversification. In this review, we focus on the role of Hox genes in shaping segmental morphologies along the AP axis in Drosophila, discuss some of the conclusions drawn from analyses of large target gene sets and highlight methods that could be used to gain a more thorough understanding of Hox molecular function. In addition, the mechanisms of Hox target gene regulation are considered with special emphasis on recent findings and their implications for Hox protein specificity in the context of the whole organism. BioEssays 30:965–979, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The New Atheist movement has been called “fundamentalist” in its allegiance to science. While true that New Atheism is remarkable among the various historical formations of atheism for its championing of the sciences, it is not fundamentalist. Where it does share a resemblance to Christian fundamentalism is in their respective attachments to a salvific epistemology either of science or of faith. For New Atheists, science “saves” as it provides order against chaos. This paper focuses on the writings of the New (...) Atheist Sam Harris, drawing attention not just to the ordering function of science generally but also the ways in which Harris deploys science to engulf 1) morality, 2) the Buddhist belief that the self is an illusion, and 3) Buddhist practices of meditation. This study illuminates some affective potencies of science (or other potential epistemologies) as an ordering, and therefore “salvific,” way of navigating the world. (shrink)

RESUMO O escopo da pesquisa é a análise de 1142b 17-28 da “Ética Nicomaqueia”, trecho em que Aristóteles disserta sobre a correção, tendo em vista que a boa deliberação é uma espécie de correção. A passagem não é clara e sugere que: i) na boa deliberação, a moralidade restringe-se aos fins, cabendo aos meios apenas a característica de serem eficazes na obtenção dos fins; ou que ii) na boa deliberação, a moralidade recai sobre meios e sobre fins pois, com a (...) expressão “usar os meios corretos na obtenção do fim”, Aristóteles estaria incluindo o critério moral dos meios como condição necessária à boa deliberação. Opto por “i)” e defendo que a boa deliberação consiste tão somente em uma habilidade exitosa na obtenção de um fim bom, habilidade que leva em conta o que é melhor, mais fácil, mais eficaz, feita em tempo oportuno. ABSTRACT The scope of research is the analysis of “Nicomachean Ethics”, section 1142b 17-28, a passage in which Aristotle discusses the correction, since good deliberation is a kind of correction. The passage is not clear and suggests that: i) in good deliberation, morality is restricted to the ends, the means having only the characteristic of being effective in attaining the ends; or that ii) in good deliberation, morality pertains to means and ends since, in the expression "to use the right means in obtaining the end", Aristotle seems to include the moral criterion of means as a necessary condition for good deliberation. I opt for “i)” and argue that good deliberation consists only in a successful ability to attain a good end, a skill that takes into account what is better, easier, more effective, done in a timely manner. (shrink)

The events surrounding the ‘Arab Spring’ have attracted an enormous amount of attention by the international press as well as on social media platforms, especially in its initial phase in early 2011. This article investigates how violent and forceful actions during the ‘Arab Revolutions’ were conceptualised linguistically by incorporating notions of Cognitive Semantics in a critical comparative study of press reports and Twitter posts. Focus is placed specifically on combining Talmy’s theory of Force Dynamics with methods of Critical Discourse Studies (...) in order to investigate diverging forms of schematisation of forceful interactions among protest participants. The most frequently recurring opposing force-dynamic patterns identified are defying a hindrance, prevailing stability and causation of action as well as inaction. Notable differences may be observed between mass media and social media in regard to the representation of dynamic power relations between police and protesters. (shrink)

in kant’s account of cognition, Eric Watkins and Marcus Willaschek distinguish between a ‘broad’ and ‘narrow’ sense of Kant’s use of the term ‘cognition.’ Every “conscious representation that represents an object” counts as a cognition, taken in the broad sense.1 Every “conscious representation of a given object and of its general features” counts as a cognition in the narrow sense.2 In the case of finite beings, they argue, cognition in the narrow sense must fulfill two conditions: First, the object must (...) be given, since cognition must actually latch onto an object, and intuition satisfies that condition insofar as it immediately relates to the object represented in the intuition.... (shrink)

Stefanie Buchenau | : Johann Georg Sulzer participe d’une tradition allemande et wolffienne qui conjugue réflexion épistémologique et esthétique. L’originalité de Sulzer au sein de cette tradition consiste à développer un nouveau modèle de la connaissance comme contemplation. Selon ce modèle spéculatif qui emprunte des éléments à l’esthétique de Du Bos, la distance et l’extériorité du spectateur par rapport à son objet est loin d’être le réquisit d’une bonne vision. Celle-ci dépend tout au contraire de l’appartenance du spectateur au (...) monde qu’il contemple, de sa réceptivité, de sa sensibilité et de son humanité. Car l’âme ne peut déployer son activité de pensée qu’à condition de s’attacher d’abord à son objet : un tel attachement est la condition de son détachement. La mise en place de ce nouveau modèle spéculatif répond à l’injonction de Mérian qui est de repenser la conscience ou l’aperception à partir d’un sentiment a posteriori. Car « l’oeil ne se voit pas voir », et l’aperception primitive, cet acte par lequel l’esprit se pense, lui échappe. Il éprouve néanmoins des sentiments — de plaisir et de déplaisir — qui le contraignent à faire retour sur lui-même et sur son état d’être affecté ; des sentiments dont Sulzer considère qu’ils ancrent sa connaissance dans la réalité et lui permettent de la rapporter à soi-même. C’est ainsi qu’au fil des mémoires académiques des années 1750 à 1770, Sulzer élabore une nouvelle conception tripartite des facultés, et une distinction entre domaines théorique et pratique qui marquera la philosophie de Kant. Ce débat au sein de l’Académie berlinoise au sujet de la connaissance de soi donne une nouvelle orientation anthropologique à la philosophie allemande de la seconde moitié du xviiie siècle. | : Johann Georg Sulzer belongs to a German and Wolffian tradition that closely associates theory of knowledge and aesthetics. Sulzer’s originality within this tradition consists in introducing a new model of contemplation. This model borrows elements from Du Bos and leads him to revise the traditional paradigms of cognition and self-cognition : more than the spectator’s distance and exteriority to her object, good vision requires her involvement and inclusion into the world she contemplates, that is her receptivity, sensibility and humanity. For her soul cannot unfold its activity unless it is attached to its object. Such attachment is the condition of its detachment. Sulzer elaborates his model of speculation in response to issues recently raised by his colleague Merian within the Berlin academy. Merian had emphasized the necessity to rethink consciousness or apperception on the basis of some posteriori feeling. For “the eye does not see itself seeing” and the primitive apperception, the act of thinking itself, necessarily escapes the soul’s aperception : it nonetheless has feelings — of pleasure and displeasure — which make the soul reflect on itself and its state of affection ; For Sulzer, these feelings are what grounds knowledge in reality and establishes a relation to the self. In his writings from the 1750’ies to the 1770’ies Sulzer develops these insights and elaborates a new division of faculties and of the theoretical vs. practical that will shape Kant’s psychology and philosophy. This debate within the Berlin academy confers a new anthropological orientation to the German philosophy of the second 18th century. (shrink)

The principle of sustainability contains two objectives of justice regarding the conservation and use of ecosystems and their services : global justice between different people of the present generation ; justice between people of different generations. Three hypotheses about their relationship — independency, facilitation and rivalry — are held in the political and scientific sustainability discourse. Applying the method of qualitative content analysis to important political documents and the scientific literature, we reveal six determinants underlying the different hypotheses: quantity and (...) quality of ecosystem services, population development, substitutability of ecosystem services, technological progress, institutions and political restrictions. (shrink)

The current use of the term ‘Human Enhancement’ implies that it is a modern, new phenomenon in which, for the first time in history, humans are able to break through their god or nature-given bodily limits thanks to the application of new technologies. The debate about the legitimation of ‘HE’, the selection of methods permitted, and the scope and purpose of these modern enhancement technologies has been dominated by ethical considerations, and has highlighted problems with the definition of the relevant (...) norms. For example, ‘HE’ always presupposes that the current state of the ‘natural human’ or ‘healthy’ body is defined in opposition to an ‘artificial human’ or ‘diseased or disabled’ body, and also desirable technologies and methods are not but should be defined on the basis of objective, universally accepted criteria. All these definitions are, however, linked to socio-cultural norms and ideals, which can vary over time and between cultures. It is therefore impossible to arrive at a universal, durable definition of ‘enhancement’ that can be shared and understood globally, and will remain permanently valid. This discussion note contrasts the terms ‘HE’ and ‘Body Modification’ , and their respective strengths and weaknesses. ‘BM’ is a neutral term that is capable of encompassing every kind of modification, be it cultural, physical, psychological or neurological, is not limited to certain techniques and is not reliant on normative sub-definitions . In the light of this analysis, it is proposed that the term ‘HE’ be replaced with ‘BM’ in order to allow a neutral, unprejudiced discussion to take place. (shrink)

This paper presents Christian Wolff’s argument on the evidence of metaphysical principles as expounded in his article Directive notions and the true use of the first science (1729). This article was a central and yet forgotten reference for those who responded to the 1762/1763 academy questions such as Kant. Wolff here asserts that metaphysics has a kind of certainty that is equal or even superior to mathematics and that it communicates such certainty to the remaining sciences. It is this Wolffian (...) thesis that Kant attacked in 1763. A closer reading allows to acknowledge more philosophical premises of Wolff’s argument. Wolff’s thesis on the mathematical certainty of metaphysics inverts the former order of priorities between metaphysics (ontology) and mathematics. According to Wolff (who here seemed to be influenced by Euclides’ geometry), metaphysical notions are at the foundation of mathematical and logical rules. Notions such as “identity”, “thing”, “possibility” etc. have a “directive” or methodical status : they direct the mind searching the truth. Together, these notions constitute a modern and “architectonic” ontology. This framework shows the methodological continuity between Wolff and Kant. Even though Kant contested the form of Wolff’s system, his response still formed part of the general program sketched by Wolff. Kant still attempted to found some kind of architectonic metaphysics containing a table of directive concepts. From this viewpoint, Kant owes more to Wolff than what has been commonly assumed, and the deep and complex debate between the two thinkers calls for more attention. (shrink)

Johanna Charlotte Unzer (1725–1782), born Ziegler, is the author of the first metaphysical treatise intended specifically for women. In the preface of this treatise, published in 1751, she justifies her ‘unhabitual’ enterprise, emphasizing that her intention is not to instruct but only to please her female readership. A closer glance, however, reveals a genuine philosophical intention and an active participation in the debate on popular philosophy and aesthetics in Halle. Challenging an all-too narrow and all-too mathematical conception of practical philosophy, (...) Unzer advocates a dynamic model of philosophy as a love of wisdom, and a philosophy of beauty, poetry, and aesthetics. Fundamentally, these are ancient and mostly Platonic ideas, and among her intellectual circle Unzer stands out as a modern Diotima. But on account of their distinctively modern premises, these ideas likewise take a particularly modern shape, and they illustrate a certain Platonic reversal incipient in Wolffianism itself. (shrink)

Spoken language is an innate ability of the human being and represents the most widespread mode of social communication. The ability to share concepts, intentions and feelings, and also to respond to what others are feeling/saying is crucial during social interactions. A growing body of evidence suggests that language evolved from manual gestures, gradually incorporating motor acts with vocal elements. In this evolutionary context, the human mirror mechanism (MM) would permit the passage from “doing something” to “communicating it to someone (...) else.” In this perspective, the MM would mediate semantic processes being involved in both the execution and in the understanding of messages expressed by words or gestures. Thus, the recognition of action related words would activate somatosensory regions, reflecting the semantic grounding of these symbols in action information. Here, the role of the sensorimotor cortex and in general of the human MM on both language perception and understanding is addressed, focusing on recent studies on the integration between symbolic gestures and speech. We conclude documenting some evidence about MM in coding also the emotional aspects conveyed by manual, facial and body signals during communication, and how they act in concert with language to modulate other’s message comprehension and behavior, in line with an “embodied” and integrated view of social interaction. (shrink)

By Hume's own account, his most ambitious project, the Treatise on Human Nature, was a notoriously immature undertaking, choked with immutable difficulties.1 Perhaps as a result of this immaturity, and perhaps because, as Kant suggests above, Hume is perpetually misread, his view on objects remains obscured. What are they? Are they ideas? Impressions? Mindindependent objects? All three? None of the above? To date, scholars have not provided a unified, much less exhaustive, answer to these questions. Rather, four somewhat fragmented interpretations (...) have been circulating in the literature. We may characterize them 2 as follows: 1.) The phenomenonalist reading, where objects are... (shrink)

When companies engage in corporate philanthropy, they can donate to a number of causes supporting a variety of issues, thus establishing cause portfolios. This research examines how the focus of a cause portfolio affects company evaluations. Results from an experiment show that when a company donates a small amount of money, consumers have lower evaluations of a company when the cause portfolio is focused (i.e., supports one issue) versus diverse (i.e., supports many issues). This is because the focused (vs. diverse) (...) portfolio is perceived to have a weaker impact to society. We provide additional evidence of this effect using a data set of Fortune 500 companies’ foundations, showing that cause portfolios are more likely to result in lower stakeholder evaluations when focused (vs. diverse). Again, we find that donation amount alleviates the difference between focused and diverse portfolios. The findings hold important implications for the company’s management of cause portfolios. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars is usually read as claiming that only the unobservable, theoretical objects which science would postulate at the ideal end of inquiry are real. Against this, Willem deVries has suggested that we can develop a notion of practical reality in the context of Sellars's philosophy which would pertain primarily to commonsense objects. I use deVries's suggestion as a foil to clarify Sellars's own commitments about the practical. I show that the notion of practical reality is not necessary to secure (...) the ultimate legitimacy of practical concepts. We can retreat to the less committed notion of practical truth. I argue that the notion of practical truth may not be sufficient to ensure that ultimately legitimate practical concepts are commonsense concepts in Sellars's framework. Nevertheless, deVries's suggestion highlights that Sellars's vision of an ultimate conceptual system may have been richer than is often thought. (shrink)