While research has focused on financial and social goals in impact investing, we add to the limited research that focuses on how individuals manage identity multiplicity, defined as three or more role identities. Based on our qualitative study of Christian impact investors, we develop a model of identity multiplicity work, explaining how individuals manage their multiple role identities to reduce identity tensions during the process of impact investing. We find individuals engaged in an interactive, ongoing three-step process of identity multiplicity (...) work: prioritizing one of their salient identities, managing their identity multiplicity interrelationships, and reinforcing their prioritized identity. Investors generally prioritized an identity that was neither financial nor social, but rather religious. We also find this identity work implemented through three novel mechanisms: shadowing, one identity casts a shadow over another thereby enabling the simultaneous pursuit of related goals; distinguishing, all identities are retained and at least a minimum threshold of role expectations are met; and surrendering, partial sacrificing of goals of one identity in favor of another identity based on an individual’s self-reflective importance of the role. Our findings offer new insights to multiple identities, impact investing and business ethics literatures. (shrink)

Much recent work on the ethics of new biomedical technologies is committed to hidden, contestable views about the nature of biological reality. This selection of essays by Tim Lewens explores and scrutinises these biological foundations, and includes work on human enhancement, synthetic biology, and justice in healthcare decision-making.

Sperm, eggs and embryos are made up of more than genes, and there are indications that changes to non‐genetic structures in these elements of the germline can also be inherited. It is, therefore, a mistake to treat phrases like ‘germline inheritance’ and ‘genetic inheritance’ as simple synonyms, and bioethical discussion should expand its focus beyond alterations to the genome when considering the ethics of germline modification. Moreover, additional research on non‐genetic inheritance draws attention to a variety of means whereby differences (...) can be inherited in offspring generations that do not rely on differences in germline structures. Research on these diverse forms of inheritance challenges the notion that there is some special form of ethical concern that falls on germline interventions in general, and on interventions to the nuclear genome within the germline in particular. (shrink)

Drawing on the author's recent bookEthics for a Broken World, this article explores the philosophical implications of the fact that climate change – or something like it – might lead to abroken worldwhere resources are insufficient to meet everyone's basic needs, and where our affluent way of life is no longer an option. It argues that the broken world has an impact, not only on applied ethics, but also on moral theory. It then explores that impact. The article first argues (...) that the broken world creates severe difficulties for both libertarians and contractualists. It then explores the impact of the broken world on utilitarianism – and especially on reflective equilibrium arguments for rule-utilitarianism. The article concludes that, while such arguments may still be viable, the form of rule-utilitarianism that results will be less moderate and less liberal than contemporary rule-utilitarians might hope. (shrink)

Consider the sentence 'This sentence is not true'. It seems that the sentence can be neither true nor not true, on pain of contradiction. Certain notorious paradoxes like this have bedevilled philosophical theories of truth. Tim Maudlin presents an original account of logic and semantics which deals with these paradoxes, and allows him to set out a new theory of truth-values and the norms governing claims about truth. All philosophers interested in logic and language will find Truth and Paradox a (...) stimulating read. (shrink)

This paper presents hitherto unpublished writings of Kurt Gödel concerning logical, epistemological, theological, and physical antinomies, which he generally considered as “the most interesting facts in modern logic,” and which he used as a basis for his famous metamathematical results. After investigating different perspectives on the notion of the logical structure of the antinomies and presenting two “antinomies of the intensional,” a new kind of paradox closely related to Gödel’s ontological proof for the existence of God is introduced and completed (...) by a compilation of further theological antinomies. Finally, after a presentation of unpublished general philosophical remarks concerning the antinomies, Gödel’s type-theoretic variant of Leibniz’Monadology, discovered in his notes on the foundations of quantum mechanics, is examined. Most of the material presented here has been transcribed from the Gabelsberger shorthand system for the first time. (shrink)

In some cases, you may release someone from some obligation they have to you. For instance, you may release them from a promise they made to you, or an obligation to repay money they have borrowed from you. But most take it as clear that, if you have an obligation to someone else, you cannot in any way release yourself from that obligation. I shall argue the contrary. The issue is important because one standard problem for the idea of having (...) duties to oneself relies on the impossibility of self-release. The argument is that a duty to oneself would be a duty from which one could release oneself, but that this is an absurdity, and so there can be no duties to oneself. This argument is to be rejected because a duty from which one can release oneself is perfectly possible, and such release occurs quite properly from time to time. (shrink)

Books into Ideas uses a Philosophy for Children approach to encourage thinking in young learners. It clearly explains how facilitators can set up a Community of INquiry within the classroom and teach questioning techniques at all levels of thinking. There are detailed notes on how to use 15 picture books.

Provides the means for an in-depth collaborative inquiry into scientific concepts, the nature of science, the ethical implications of science and the links between science and students' everyday lives. The first section discusses the theoretical basis for the approach used, citing relevant research, while the second presents a wide range of 15 purpose written stories to read and discuss with a class.

The four tenets of the Strong Program are compatible with a scientific realism founded on an externalist epistemology. Such an epistemology allows that appropriate norms of rationality may differ from time to time, and from community to community, and thereby enables the realist to embrace strong forms of the ‘symmetry principle’. It also suggests a fruitful collaborative research program in externalist social epistemology. Some of what the Edinburgh School says about truth can also be accepted. But the realist should reject (...) the School's argument for the claim that there is no distinction between being rational and being locally accepted as rational, which seems to rest on a kind of epistemological internalism. Introducing the Strong Program Realism and the four tenets A stronger reading of symmetry Conflict and cooperation A note on discovery and justification Relativism and realism Truth Points of contention: the restriction of explanatory contrasts Points of contention: standards of rationality. (shrink)

This article analyses individual level support for a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) using the European Social Survey. At the country level, support is highest in South and Central Eastern Europe, but variation does not otherwise seem to follow established differences between varieties of capitalisms or welfare state regimes. At the individual level, findings are broadly in line with the expectations of the political economy literature. Left-leaning individuals facing high labour market risk and/or on low incomes are more supportive of a (...) BIG, whereas current union members are less likely to support a BIG, consistent with the insider-outsider literature. However, when controlling for confounding variables, union membership is not statistically significant, suggesting that it is not membership per se, but the characteristics of unionised workers that make them less supportive. In many countries, a coalition between centrist and left-leaning individuals therefore seems most promising, but its political feasibility depends on whether enough union members are favourable to a BIG and on the level of opposition from high income and/or conservative parts of the electorate. (shrink)

Michael and has argued that species have intrinsic essences. This paper rebuts Devitt’s arguments, but in so doing it shores up the anti-essentialist consensus in two ways that have more general interest. First, species membership can be explanatory even when species have no essences; that is, Tamsin’s membership of the tiger species can explain her stripyness, without this committing us to any further claim about essential properties of tigers. Second, even the views of species that appear most congenial to essentialism—namely (...) phenetic and genotypic cluster accounts—do not entail strong forms of intrinsic essentialism. (shrink)

The UK-based deliberations that led up to the legalisation of two new ‘mitochondrial donation’ techniques in 2015, and which continued after that time as regulatory details were determined, featured a division of advisory labour that is common when decisions are made about new technologies. An expert panel was convened by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, charged with assessing the scientific and technical aspects of these techniques. Meanwhile, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics addressed the ethical issues. While this division of (...) labour was undertaken in the name of thoroughness, I argue here that it can have the unintended consequence that hybrid questions that simultaneously involve ethical and technical aspects—especially questions about where to set evidential thresholds for the acceptance of new technology—do not receive enough attention. (shrink)

Pt. I. Wittgenstein. Introduction -- Short biography -- Pt. II. Philosophy. Wittgenstein and philosophy -- Wittgenstein's later philosophy -- Pt. III. Theology. Wittgenstein and theology -- Wittgenstein and the theologian -- Wittgenstein in theological practice -- Explanations, doubt and redemption.

Philosophers have nothing to lose, and much to gain, by paying close attention to developments in the natural sciences. This insight amounts to a case for a tempered, eclectic naturalism. But the case for naturalism is often overstated. We should not overestimate the heuristic benefits of close attention to scientists’ claims, nor should we give up on traditional “armchair” philosophical methods. We should not draw solely on the natural sciences (at the expense of the humanities) when seeking to enrich and (...) discipline our philosophical theorising. Finally, philosophers should not shy away from criticising some scientists’ claims, at the same time as they learn from others. (shrink)

Conservativity in generalized quantifiers is linked to presupposition filtering, under a propositions-as-types analysis extended with dependent quantifiers. That analysis is underpinned by modeltheoretically interpretable proofs which inhabit propositions they prove, thereby providing objects for quantification and hooks for anaphora.

Alex Mesoudi’s book shows cultural evolution to be a mature field, which has already illuminated many instances of cultural change. Mesoudi’s presentation of the discipline nonetheless invites three objections. First, the culture concept it makes use of is not clearly defined; second, Mesoudi’s historical argument which looks back to the modern synthesis in order to predict an analogous synthesis in the social sciences is flawed; third, Mesoudi’s understanding of the positions held by leading figures within social science is shaky.

In late August 2012, artist Paul Thomas and philosopher Timothy Morton took a stroll up and down King Street in Newtown, Sydney. They took photographs. If you walk too slowly down the street, you find yourself caught in the honey of aesthetic zones emitted by thousands and thousands of beings. If you want to get from A to B, you had better hurry up. Is there any space between anything? Do we not, when we look for such a space, encounter (...) a plenitude of other things —a slice of plaster, an old vinyl record, a flattened piece of aluminum, painted metal surfaces, nameless interstitial powder, the reflection of sky, some letters of the alphabet, roughened concrete. Between what we take to be things there exist other things, as if the universe were jammed with entities like clowns in a crowded Expressionist painting. An abyss of things that emanates from them, not a yawning void that threatens to engulf them, but a sunlit nothingness filled with dust that seems to spray out of them like dry mist sparkling with firefly swarms. In these so-called spaces, we encounter the work of causality. Look: someone painted over this crack, some sunlight rippled in a mirage, a hole appeared. When we look for causes and effects, we don't encounter a basement of efficiently whirring machinery. Rather, we encounter these in-between spaces, where we had not thought to look. What we see are stage hands moving the scenery about—they are doing it in plain sight, the best place to hide, right in front of you, in the place we call the aesthetic dimension . In Tibetan Buddhism these spaces are called bardo , which just means the between. There is no such thing as a moment of your life that is not a between, according to this view. There is the between of living. There is the between of dying. There is the between of the transition between lives. There is the between of dreaming. There is the between of meditation. There is the between of two humans holding cameras walking down a street in Sydney. The between of two buildings, a space bursting with objects as if a billion jack in the boxes had exploded at once. Some of the lids are stuck, sometimes a nose bursts out and the hinge won't open any further; at other times, the jack in the box flies right out and pulps against the wall on the opposite side of the room. Time opens up. Each surface is a poem about the past. A myriad stories begin to proliferate, as if a thing were a crisscrossing of books, a whole library of them, each page whispering parts of paragraphs and broken pieces of word. The stories tell us things—they are quite literal, look, this guy painted part of this wall, then they came and stripped off the panel and touched up the holes. Form is the past. When you look at appearance, you are looking at the past. Where is the present? And essence is the future. The hints of unknown, unseen things, the absolute impossibility of grasping everything about this plastic pipe, the way photons entering the camera lens obey a speed limit and splash onto receptors, going into and out of coherence. At the electronic level, it's quite clear that causality is aesthetic. I can't see an electron without deflecting it. Everything is a refrigerator with a light on—or off—inside. For me, for you, for this arrangement of tiles sandwiched between a door and a slab of marble. To a photon, an electron is a refrigerator with a closed door, and a light that might be on—or off—inside. How can you know whether the light is on inside? Why, you open the door of course. But then you are looking at the past. You never see the light in the refrigerator before you open the door. This future is not a predictable future that is a specific number of now-points away. You will never reach it. You will never be able to sneak up from the side and see through the refrigerator. Nor can a photon see through the refrigerator of an electron. Nor can paint see through the refrigerator of this plastic pipe. You take a photo—click—the past appears, another open refrigerator. But the thing you have just made, the photograph, the graphing of the photons—it is another thing, another story. You can read the words, but the meaning always eludes you. It always lurks just off the edge of the sentence, just at the very edge of this ragged slice of paint, just at the edge of this building, between this one and that one. Thousands of secrets, everywhere. Masks that lie and tell the truth at the same time: this pink paint is not blue paint, that's true. But the thing, the thing in itself, that paint sliding off a brush onto that pipe—it is nowhere to be seen, like a light behind a closed door. When you walk too slowly down the street, you start walking into millions of levels of pastness, levels emitted not just by the humans or the dogs and cats, but also by this garbage can, this mottled pink surface pockmarked with nail holes. You walk surrounded by as many futures as there are things. You walk, or rather you occupy a peculiar shifting ground of nowness, created by the relative motion of the past sliding against the future, not touching. You begin to realize that the present does not exist. A thing is a train station where one train is always arriving and one train is always leaving. Hundreds of train stations everywhere, hundreds of relative motions. The idea of a universal, regular, atomic sequence of instants that contains everything is absolutely ludicrous, the philosophers have known this for thousands of years, and to hide the absurdity, to get from A to B, Houston to Sydney, crossing the International Date Line without too much laughter, you have embedded piezoelectric devices in as many pieces of hardware as possible, devices in which quartz talks to electrons, making train stations where the trains seem to run on time. When you walk too slowly down the street, you begin to realize that Zeno had a point. You can seemingly divide each moment, each step, infinitesimally. So perhaps there are no moments, no steps. Or perhaps time is not a box that everything goes in. Perhaps time is, as Einstein argued after all, a way that things send out ripples. Where one house touches another house, there arise hundreds of things, hundreds of meeting places (Old English thing , meeting place). Hundreds of times. I have a thing for you. Come over here, let's do a thing. Stay in the sunlight and shadow between worlds, in the sunlit canyon between this building and that building. See how paint touches this pipe, caressing then leaving, no one will notice if a surface is left exposed, not quite filled in. See how shadows are reflected in pale cream glass—see the luminous abyss of causality spreading out before your very eyes, right in front of security. All kinds of beautiful crimes are committed right here, and as American cars keep telling you, and you never notice, OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. They are here, or rather, here is them, and now is them. Kissing in the shadow. Tim Morton Rice University. (shrink)

A small minority of biologists, psychologists and philosophers have recently tried to show, in various ways, that evolutionary psychology is of relevance to politics and to policy makers. Two widely accepted arguments still suffice (with only a little tweaking) to dismiss such attempts to forge a link between evolution and policy. The first denies the link between adaptation and fixity, the second denies that ‘adaptive thinking’ is of strong heuristic benefit. Finally, the silence of many evolutionary explanations with respect to (...) developmental mechanisms should also make us suspicious of the relevance of evolutionary psychology to matters of policy. (shrink)

The pheneticist philosophy holds that biological taxa are clusters of entities united by a form of all-things-considered resemblance. This view of taxonomy has come in for almost universal criticism from philosophers, and has received little praise from biologists, over the past 30 years or so. This article defends a modest pheneticism, understood as part of a pluralist view of taxonomy. First, phenetic approaches to taxonomy are alive and well in biological practice, especially in the areas of microbiology and botany. Second, (...) the pheneticist notion of overall similarity is defensible, and is implicitly endorsed even by those (such as Quine) usually implicated in attacks on similarity. Third, there are limited biological domains within which pheneticism’s conception of species as kinds (rather than heterogeneous individuals) remains applicable. (shrink)

In this paper, we try to confront Robert Audis moral epistemology, namely his intuitionism, based on the concept of a self-evident moral proposition, with two main problems: disagreement and dogmatism within moral discourse. Although Audi can meet those classical objections in his theory, we think that some problems remain. We proceed – after an introduction – in five sections in order to pursue this end. After a short introductory section, we first reconstruct the classical intuitionist moral epistemology. We then discuss (...) the dogmatism and the disagreement objection and, in doing so, introduce Audi’s own version of a moral epistemology. After having proposed that the disagreement objection concerns an explanatory problem, we discuss a second version, namely disagreement as a problem of rationality. In the fourth section we present a third version, disagreement as a problem of moral discourse, understood as an intersubjective enterprise. In the fifth section we propose a solution to disagreement situations of this kind. (shrink)

Valuation is portrayed here as a dynamic and interactive process, not a static notion linked to willingness to pay. Valuation through economic measures can be built upon by creating trusting and legitimising procedures of stakeholder negotiation and mediation. This is a familiar practice in the US, but it is only beginning to be recognised as an environmental management tool in the UK. The introduction of strategic environmental and landuse appraisal plans for shorelines, estuaries, river catchments and rural landscapes, combined with (...) the mobilisation of protest around landuse proposals that are not seemingly justified on the basis of 'need' suggest that a more legitimate participatory form of democracy is required to reveal valuation through consensual negotiation. (shrink)

Evoking the old saying that ‘children should be seen and not heard’, Jana Mohr Lone’s new book presents a powerful case for not merely hearing—but more, for 'listening' 'to' - children. Lone is the Executive Director of PLATO—the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization affiliated with the University of Washington, Seattle (one of the leading forces for philosophy in schools in the USA)—and has been involved in bringing philosophical discussion into schools for over 25 years. She brings all this experience to (...) bear in this book. Before taking a good look at the book, I note that the publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, seems to have produced quite a few books in the philosophy in schools field recently, including Lone’s previous book 'The Philosophical Child', and a series edited by Tom Wartenberg. That a major publisher is interested in producing such books is a welcome sign indeed. (shrink)

Events and situations are represented by strings of temporally ordered observations, on the basis of which the events and situations are recognized. Allen’s basic interval relations are derived from superposing strings that mark interval boundaries, and Kamp’s event structures are constructed as projective limits of strings. Observations are generalized to temporal propositions, leading to event-types that classify event-instances. Working with sets of strings built from temporal propositions, we obtain natural notions of bounded entailment from set inclusions. These inclusions are decidable (...) if the sets are accepted by finite automata. (shrink)

A reply to the lead article by Matthew Lipman: "Philosophy for Children: Some Assumptions and Implications", which discxusses the relation between Jürgen Habermas' discourse ethics and Philosophy for Children.

In response to Hand’s paper, I undertake three tasks. Firstly, I believe that his characterisation of the theory and practice of Community of Inquiry facilitation does not take account of approaches to indoctrination and the idea of philosophical self-effacement that can lessen his worries. Secondly, I will argue that Hand makes some sharp cuts—particularly between justified, controversial and unjustified moral standards—that do not stand up to scrutiny, and that he unnecessarily narrows the scope of moral inquiry. Finally, I will explore (...) the practicalities of these considerations. How should we approach the idea of directive teaching in training facilitators? What should moral inquiry cover? In doing so, I see much of value in Hand’s approach, but also recommend some modifications. (shrink)

Das Buch eröffnet mit Hans Blumenberg und Paul Ricœur einen Problemhorizont hermeneutischen Geschichtsdenkens: Die Frage, wie die Geschichte angesichts ihrer Diskontinuität in der Moderne noch zu denken sein kann, irritiert immer auch die eigene Identität und provoziert ein Denken von Geschichte und Identität, das sich möglichen Revisionen gegenüber offen zeigt. Und es erlaubt eine immer wieder neue Aneignung und Interpretation des Selbst in Auseinandersetzung mit der eigenen Kultur, Geschichte und Wirklichkeit.