Cultural diversity is an increasingly important phenomenon that affects not only social and political harmony but also the cohesion and efficiency of organisations. The problems that firms have with regard to managing cultural diversity have been abundantly studied in recent decades from the perspectives of management theory and moral philosophy, but there are still open questions that require deeper reflection and broader empirical analysis. Managing cultural diversity in organisations is of prime importance because it involves harmonising different values, beliefs, credos (...) and customs, and, in essence, human identity. Taking into consideration these cultural differences and harmonising them is a human rights issue and a central dimension of corporate social responsibility. Here we are going to focus on theoretical reflection about the ideas that lie behind corporate policies and organisational initiatives that deal with cultural diversity. The aim of our paper is twofold: to present a critical reflection on the ideology of tolerance, and propose an ideology of respect for dealing with cultural diversity. We start by presenting the plurality of interpretations of the concept of ideology, and justify its applicability to the field of cultural diversity. We then reflect on the differences between “tolerance” and “respect” and identifying the practical implications for managing cultural diversity. And finally, we propose a culture of respect that goes beyond tolerance and complements and legitimizes the “business case” perspective for managing cultural diversity in companies. The ideology of respect is based on the Kantian tradition and on the discursive approach where rational dialogue and argumentation are considered the legitimate process for creating a culture of intercultural respect. From this theoretical discussion of the key philosophical concepts we can suggest some general principles for managing cultural diversity in organisations. (shrink)

We argue that, given that the act of eating is rational and relational, it should also be an educational issue dealing with society and environment, politics and health, tastes and trends, as well as genetic and epigenetic factors. This hypothesis arises from a particular theory of the human act and an anthropological approach based on the philosophical speculations of MacIntyre and Aristotle. We argue that eating choices are “hybrids of freedom,” rationality, and unconscious and environmental elements. Finally, we suggest that (...) people have to change their habits in order to transform the human way of acting, since every human act can change the human essence and vice versa. (shrink)

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) research presents unique problems for research ethics committees which must be considered in some detail. Applying conventional research techniques to CAM raises a number of issues which ethics committees may find challenging. CAM is widely available and this will have a substantial effect on any proposed research strategy as so many individuals will have pre-existing opinions about these treatments. Whilst many complementary therapies may eventually be ‘validated’ by appropriate clinical trial methodologies other research methods could (...) be more appropriate in the early stages of a research strategy, particularly in view of the widespread availability in both the public and private sectors. Safety, efficacy, cost-effectiveness and patient preference also need evaluation; and these cannot be adequately assessed through double blind randomised placebo controlled trials. If the research question is clear, then thoughtful and often innovative evaluative processes can be designed to answer the socially and clinically relevant issues posed by this area of medicine. There are a number of agencies and organizations available to offer advice to ethics committees in this newly emerging field of CAM research including CAM Strategy Research and Development (CAM STRAND), the Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH) and the Research Council for Complementary Medicine (RCCM). (shrink)

During its century-long unfolding, spreading in numerous directions, Husserlian phenomenology while loosening inner articulations, has nevertheless maintained a somewhat consistent profile. As we see in this collection, the numerous conceptions and theories advanced in the various phases of reinterpretations have remained identifiable with phenomenology. What conveys this consistency in virtue of which innumerable types of inquiry-scientific, social, artistic, literary – may consider themselves phenomenological? Is it not the quintessence of the phenomenological quest, namely our seeking to reach the very foundations (...) of reality at all its constitutive levels by pursuing its logos? Inquiring into the logos of the phenomenological quest we discover, indeed, all the main constitutive spheres of reality and of the human subject involved in it, and concurrently, the logos itself comes to light in the radiation of its force (Tymieniecka). Papers by: Kristana Arp, Gary Backhaus, Mafalda Blanc, Piotr Blaszczyk, Manuel Bremer, Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield, Peter Abumhenre Egbe, Jesus Adrian Escudero, Wayne Froman, Jorge Garcia-Gomez, David Grunberg, Dasuke Kamei, Arion Kelkel, Filip Kolen, Tze-wan Kwan, Leonard Lawlor, Grahame Lock, Nancy Mardas, Nikolay Milkov, Cezary J. Olbromski, Helena De Preester, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Gertrudis Van de Vijver, Luca Vanzago, Anatoly Zotov. (shrink)

This work describes the perceptions that Industrial Engineering students have regarding Colombian firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. It also explores the incidence of gender, academic level, work experience and entrepreneurial intention on students’ vision. A survey with 70 CSR practices was designed based on previous research. Practices were grouped in ten dimensions: shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, stakeholders, ethics, environment, legal, human rights and society. A representative sample of 142 students was used. Results show that students perceive a higher commitment (...) of Colombian companies with the shareholders dimension, while a lower with the society, ethics and environmental CSR practices. Work experience and entrepreneurial intention are the only variables affecting the identified perceptions. Thus, as they gain experience, their perceptions become more favorable. On the other hand, potential entrepreneurs have a more critical view on the companies’ commitment. Additionally, the fact that the academic level does not impact students’ perceptions constitutes a challenge for the academic program, since it is expected that this will affect the vision of future engineers. This is the first study that evaluates perceptions of Industrial Engineering students, who, given their object of study, will be responsible for designing and managing production processes in organizations of the future. Results respond to a specific context (students at a Colombian public university), therefore further research to explore the subject is recommended. (shrink)

A la luz de la propuesta arendtiana de espacio público, en este artículo se analiza uno de los conceptos que más interés está despertando en el contexto de la llamada filosofía política continental: lo común. Desde una revisión comparada con la obra de C. Laval y P. Dardot enfrento los siguientes interrogantes: ¿Qué perspectivas abre la obra arendtiana en la actual reflexión sobre lo común como principio político articulador? ¿Qué nuevas cuestiones suscita la idea de espacio público como comunidad política (...) de Arendt al confrontarla con la propuesta de lo común? (shrink)

Este artículo es un intento de dilucidación y delimitación historiográfico-conceptual que pretende aportar un enfoque alternativo a los estudios sobre la teoría política realista. Mi propósito es presentar un bosquejo del sentido histórico del concepto de realismo político situándolo en los contextos de la Realpolitik alemana y de la escuela realista de las relaciones internacionales. De este modo, pretendo mostrar las relaciones contextuales del realismo político, la localización de su antagonismo con el liberalismo y la invención retrospectiva de una tradición (...) realista como resultado de una serie de apropiaciones intelectuales y políticas. This article is a historiographical and conceptual attempt of clarification and delimitation to offer an alternative view to the studies of the realist political theory. I pretend to put forward an outline of the historical sense of the concept of political realism, placing it on the contexts of German Realpolitik and the realist school of international relations. Thus, I pretend to show the contextual relations of political realism, the location of its antagonism against liberalism and the retrospective invention of a realist tradition as a result of a set of intellectual and political additions. (shrink)

En este artículo se argumenta que el poder de juzgar es una capacidad fundamental para pensar la política. La relevancia de tal capacidad radica en que la estructura y función de los juicios reflexionantes, tal como son leídos por hannah Arendt a partir de la Crítica del Juicio kantiana, nos permiten explicar el difícil equilibrio entre los juicios compartidos en las comunidades y la posibilidad de la crítica.

As English Studies researchers and teachers, our experience has shown that there continues to exist an urgent need to incorporate gender as a reading tool of literary texts to foster a non-discriminatory and equality perspective. Given the many advances in gender equality that have been achieved as well as the rising backlash against such progressive moves that spread through Europe, our proposal is based on the “queerification of the classroom”, a notion defined as a transgressive initiative that effectively and systematically (...) incorporates the deconstruction of normativity and fosters resistance to socially constructed assumptions about normativity and deviance. (shrink)

Reduced forms such as the pronoun he provide little information about their intended meaning compared to more elaborate descriptions such as the lead singer of Coldplay. Listeners must therefore use contextual information to recover their meaning. Across languages, there appears to be a trade‐off between the informativity of a form and the prominence of its referent. For example, Italian adults generally interpret informationally empty null pronouns as in the sentence Corre (meaning “He/She/It runs”) as referring to the most prominent referent (...) in the discourse, and more informative overt pronouns (e.g., lui in Lui corre, “He runs”) as referring to less prominent referents. Although children acquiring Italian are known to experience difficulties interpreting pronouns, it is unclear how they acquire this division of pragmatic labor between null and overt subject pronouns, and how this relates to the development of their cognitive capacities. Here we show that cognitive development can account for the general interpretation patterns displayed by Italian‐speaking children and adults. Using experimental studies and computational simulations in a framework modeling bounded‐rational behavior, we argue that null pronoun interpretation is influenced by working memory capacity and thus appears to depend on discourse context, whereas overt pronoun interpretation is influenced by processing speed, suggesting that listeners must reason about the speaker's choices. Our results demonstrate that cognitive capacities may constrain the acquisition of linguistic forms and their meanings in various ways. The novel predictions generated by the computational simulations point out several directions for future research. (shrink)

This is a unique, groundbreaking collection of autobiographical essays by leading women in philosophy. It provides a glimpse at the experiences of the generation that witnessed, and helped create, the remarkable advances now evident for women in the field.

orbit and far beyond it. Indeed, the immense, painstaking, indefatigable and ever-improving effort of Husserl to find ever-deeper and more reliable foundations for the philosophical enterprise (as well as his constant critical re-thinking and perfecting of the approach and so called "method" in order to perform this task and thus cover in this source-excavation an ever more far-reaching groundwork) stands out and maintains itself as an inepuisable reservoir for philosophical reflec tion in which all the above-mentioned work has either its (...) core or its source. In fact, in his undertaking to re-think the entire philosophical enterprise as such and to recreate philosophy upon what he sought to be at least a satisfactorily legitimated basis, Husserl, through his already systematised and "authorized" work, and his courses, and later on in his spontaneous reflection (which did not find its way into a definitive corpus but was nevertheless sufficiently coherent with his previously established body of thought to be considered a continuation of it), uncovers perspectives upon the universe of man and projects their new philosophical thematisation that brings together all the attempts by philosophers (e. g., Merleau-Ponty, who drew upon this material and found there his own inspiration) who succeeded him with foundational intentions; it also gives a core of philosophical ideas and insights for the youngergenerationofphilosophers today. (shrink)

This paper presents a new view of logical pluralism. This pluralism takes into account how the logical connectives shift, depending on the context in which they occur. Using the Question-Under-Discussion Framework as formulated by Craige Roberts, I identify the contextual factor that is responsible for this shift. I then provide an account of the meanings of the logical connectives which can accommodate this factor. Finally, I suggest that this new pluralism has a certain Carnapian flavour. Questions about the meanings of (...) the connectives or the best logic outside of a specified context are not legitimate questions. (shrink)

Concepts stand at the centre of human cognition. We use concepts in categorizing objects and events in the world, in reasoning and action, and in social interaction. It is therefore not surprising that the study of concepts constitutes a central area of research in philosophy and psychology, yet only recently have the two disciplines developed greater interaction. Recent experiments in psychology that test the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning have found a great deal of variation, across individuals and (...) cultures, in categorization behaviour. Meanwhile, philosophers of language and mind have investigated the semantic properties of concepts, and how concepts are related to linguistic meaning and linguistic communication. A key motivation behind this was the idea that concepts must be shared across individuals and cultures. With the dawn of experimental philosophy, the proposal that the experimental data from psychology lacks relevance to semantics is increasingly difficult to defend. -/- This volume brings together leading psychologists and philosophers to advance the interdisciplinary debate on the role of concepts in categorizing and reasoning, the relationship between concepts and linguistic meaning and communication, the challenges conceptual variation poses to communication, and the social and political effects of conceptual change. (shrink)

Civility is often treated as an essential virtue in liberal democracies that promise to protect diversity as well as active disagreement in the public sphere. Yet the fear that our tolerant society faces a crisis of incivility is gaining ground. Politicians and public intellectuals call for "more civility" as the solution--but is civility really a virtue? Or is it something more sinister--a covert demand for conformity that silences dissent? Mere Civility sheds light on this tension in contemporary political theory and (...) practice by examining similar appeals to civility in early modern debates about religious toleration. In seventeenth-century England, figures as different as Roger Williams, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke could agree that some restraint on the wars of words and "persecution of the tongue" between sectarians would be required; and yet, they recognized that the prosecution of incivility was often difficult to distinguish from persecution.--. (shrink)

We are logical pluralists who hold that the right logic is dependent on the domain of investigation; different logics for different mathematical theories. The purpose of this article is to explore the ramifications for our pluralism concerning normativity. Is there any normative role for logic, once we give up its universality? We discuss Florian Steingerger’s “Frege and Carnap on the Normativity of Logic” as a source for possible types of normativity, and then turn to our own proposal, which postulates that (...) various logics are constitutive for thought within particular practices, but none are constitutive for thought as such. (shrink)

Duty of candour legislation was introduced in Scotland in 2018. However, literature and experience of duty of candour when applied to infection control incidents/outbreaks is scarce. We describe clinician and parental perspectives with regard to duty of candour and communication during a significant infection control incident in a haemato-oncology ward of a children’s hospital. Based on the learning from this incident, we make recommendations for duty of candour and communication to patients and families during future infection control incidents. These include (...) the need to consider a crisis management approach, the importance of not underestimating psychological harm in incidents of a prolonged duration and embedding the existing legislation pertaining to the rights of the child. (shrink)

The problem of fair machine learning has drawn much attention over the last few years and the bulk of offered solutions are, in principle, empirical. However, algorithmic fairness also raises important conceptual issues that would fail to be addressed if one relies entirely on empirical considerations. Herein, I will argue that the current debate has developed an empirical framework that has brought important contributions to the development of algorithmic decision-making, such as new techniques to discover and prevent discrimination, additional assessment (...) criteria, and analyses of the interaction between fairness and predictive accuracy. However, the same framework has also suggested higher-order issues regarding the translation of fairness into metrics and quantifiable trade-offs. Although the tools which have been developed so far are essential to address discrimination encoded in data and algorithms, their integration into society elicits key questions such as: What kind of assumptions and decisions underlies the empirical framework? How do the results of the empirical approach penetrate public debate? What kind of reflection and deliberation should stakeholders have over available fairness metrics? I will outline the empirical approach to fair machine learning, i.e. how the problem is framed and addressed, and suggest that there are important non-empirical issues that should be tackled. While this work will focus on the problem of algorithmic fairness, the lesson can extend to other conceptual problems in the analysis of algorithmic decision-making such as privacy and explainability. (shrink)