The last decade has witnessed the emergence of a paradox perspective on corporate sustainability. By explicitly acknowledging tensions between different desirable, yet interdependent and conflicting sustainability objectives, a paradox perspective enables decision makers to achieve competing sustainability objectives simultaneously and creates leeway for superior business contributions to sustainable development. In stark contrast to the business case logic, a paradox perspective does not establish emphasize business considerations over concerns for environmental protection and social well-being at the societal level. In order to (...) contribute to the consolidation of this emergent field of research, we offer a definition of the paradox perspective on corporate sustainability and a framework to delineate its descriptive, instrumental, and normative aspects. This framework clarifies the paradox perspective’s contents and its implications for research and practice. We use the framework to map the contributions to this thematic symposium on paradoxes in sustainability and to propose questions for future research. (shrink)

The article introduces and defends the Nomological Account of ground, a reductive account of the notion of metaphysical explanation in terms of the laws of metaphysics. The paper presents three desiderata that a theory of ground should meet: it should explain the modal force of ground, the generality of ground, and the interplay between ground and certain mereological notions. The bulk of the paper develops the Nomological Account and argues that it meets the three desiderata. The Nomological Account relies on (...) two central notions: the notion of a ‘law of metaphysics’ and the notion of ‘determination via the laws’. The paper offers the constructional conception of the laws of metaphysics, on which the metaphysical laws are general principles that characterize construction–operations such as composition, constitution, or set-formation. The role of determination in the account is explained and some reductive approaches to the notion are sketched. The case for the Nomological Account presented in this article is also a case for the laws of metaphysics. Since the Nomological Account offers a promising approach to metaphysical explanation we should take the laws of metaphysics seriously. (shrink)

The paper explores a deductive-nomological account of metaphysical explanation: some truths metaphysically explain, or ground, another truth just in case the laws of metaphysics determine the latter truth on the basis of the former. I develop and motivate a specific conception of metaphysical laws, on which they are general rules that regulate the existence and features of derivative entities. I propose an analysis of the notion of ‘determination via the laws’, based on a restricted form of logical entailment. I argue (...) that the DN-account of ground can be defended against the well-known objections to the DN-approach to scientific explanation. The goal of the paper is to show that the DN-account of metaphysical explanation is a well-motivated and defensible theory. (shrink)

Are acts of violence performed in virtual environments ever morally wrong, even when no other persons are affected? While some such acts surely reflect deficient moral character, I focus on the moral rightness or wrongness of acts. Typically it’s thought that, on Kant’s moral theory, an act of virtual violence is morally wrong (i.e., violate the Categorical Imperative) only if the act mistreats another person. But I argue that, on Kant’s moral theory, some acts of virtual violence can be morally (...) wrong, even when no other persons or their avatars are affected. First, I explain why many have thought that, in general on Kant’s moral theory, virtual acts affecting no other persons or their avatars can’t violate the Categorical Imperative. For there are real world acts that clearly do, but it seems that when we consider the same sorts of acts done alone in a virtual environment, they don’t violate the Categorical Imperative, because no others persons were involved. But then, how could any virtual acts like these, that affect no other persons or their avatars, violate the Categorical Imperative? I then argue that there indeed can be such cases of morally wrong virtual acts—some due to an actor’s having erroneous beliefs about morally relevant facts, and others due not to error, but to the actor’s intention leaving out morally relevant facts while immersed in a virtual environment. I conclude by considering some implications of my arguments for both our present technological context as well as the future. (shrink)

Leibniz accepts causal independence, the claim that no created substance can causally interact with any other. And Leibniz needs causal independence to be true, since his well-known pre-established harmony is premised upon it. So, what is Leibniz’s argument for causal independence? Sometimes he claims that causal interaction between substances is superfluous. Sometimes he claims that it would require the transfer of accidents, and that this is impossible. But when Leibniz finds himself under sustained pressure to defend causal independence, those are (...) not the reasons that he marshals in its defense. Instead, deep into his long correspondence with Burchard de Volder, he gives a different sort of argument, one that has gone nearly unnoticed by commentators and has not yet been properly understood. In part, this is because the argument develops slowly over four years of correspondence. It emerges in early 1704, but it is formulated tersely and appears murky unless understood in light of Leibniz and De Volder’s tangled exchanges. There Leibniz argues that, on his distinctive ontology of an infinity of created substances, no two created substances could possibly causally interact, for roughly the same reasons that some Cartesians like De Volder deny interaction between minds and bodies on their substance dualist ontology. In this paper I draw out this lost argument, explain it and the metaphysics on which Leibniz builds it, and untangle Leibniz and De Volder’s exchanges concerning causation from which this argument results. (shrink)

In this longitudinal study, we explore the co-evolution of the cognitive complexity of the CEO of Puma, Jochen Zeitz, and his view and initiatives on sustainability. Our purpose was to explore how the changes in a leader’s mindset relate to his/her views and actions on sustainability. In contrast to previous studies, we adopt an in-depth longitudinal case study approach to capture the role of leaders’ cognitive complexity in the context of corporate sustainability. By understanding the cognitive development of Zeitz as (...) leader of Puma, we provide an important step toward understanding the co-evolution of leaders’ cognitive complexity and proactive corporate sustainability initiatives over time. Our findings show that as he developed a more complex mindset that also included non-business lenses, Zeitz developed a more inclusive understanding of sustainability and adopted proactive initiatives that went beyond business-as-usual. Our study also demonstrates that a longitudinal perspective can offer valuable insights for a better understanding of how individuals and their interactions affect and are affected by an organization’s strategies and performance, in corporate sustainability and beyond. (shrink)

We discuss various implications of some radical anti-representationalist views of cognition and what they have to offer with regard to the naturalization of intentionality and the explanation of cognitive phenomena. Our focus is on recent arguments from proponents of enactive views of cognition to the effect that basic cognition is intentional but not representational and that cognition is co-extensive with life. We focus on lower rather than higher forms of cognition, namely the question regarding the intentional and representational nature of (...) cognition found in organisms simpler than human beings, because enactivists do not deny that more sophisticated cognitive phenomena are representational and involve content. After introducing the debate on the naturalization of intentionality, we briefly review different varieties of enactivism and introduce their central claims. In Sect. 4 we turn to radical enactivism in order to focus on the arguments for a thoroughly non-representational, enactive account of perception and basic cognition. In particular, we discuss three major issues: First, what is supposed to replace the representational analysis of perception in a radical-enactive explanation of perception? How does the enactive explanation of perception compare to the best scientific work on the neuroscience of perception? Second, what is—on an enactive account—the function of neural processing in the brain for the generation of perception if not to produce representations? This question is especially pressing since one implication of autopoietic enactivism is that even the simplest organisms, i.e. single-celled organisms, have cognitive capacities. Since they lack brains and nervous systems, enactivists must specify the unique contribution of the brain and nervous system in those animals who have them. In Sect. 5, we evaluate the advantages of an autopoietic–enactive approach to the naturalization of intentionality and end with a suggestion how cognition may relate to intentionality and representation. (shrink)

From ‘connecting the dots’ and finding ‘the needle in the haystack’ to predictive policing and data mining for counterinsurgency, security professionals have increasingly adopted the language and methods of computing for the purposes of prediction. Digital devices and big data appear to offer answers to a wide array of problems of (in)security by promising insights into unknown futures. This article investigates the transformation of prediction today by placing it within governmental apparatuses of discipline, biopower and big data. Unlike disciplinary and (...) biopolitical governmentality, we argue that prediction with big data is underpinned by the production of a different time/space of ‘between-ness’. The digital mode of prediction with big data reconfigures how we are governed today, which we illustrate through an analysis of how predictive policing actualizes between-ness as hotspots and near-real-time decisions. (shrink)

The presence of various mechanisms of non-genetic inheritance is one of the main problems for current evolutionary theory according to several critics. Sufficient empirical and conceptual reasons exist to take this claim seriously, but there is little consensus on the implications of multiple inheritance systems for evolutionary processes. Here we use the Price Equation as a starting point for a discussion of the differences between four recently proposed categories of inheritance systems; genetic, epigenetic, behavioral and symbolic. Specifically, we address how (...) the components of the Price Equation encompass different non-genetic systems of inheritance in an attempt to clarify how the different systems are conceptually related. We conclude that the four classes of inheritance systems do not form distinct clusters with respect to their effect on the rate and direction of phenotypic change from one generation to the next in the absence or presence of selection. Instead, our analyses suggest that different inheritance systems can share features that are conceptually very similar, but that their implications for adaptive evolution nevertheless differ substantially as a result of differences in their ability to couple selection and inheritance. (shrink)

In recent years, more and more people have become attracted by the idea that the imagination should play a central role in explaining our knowledge of what is possible and necessary and what would be the case if things were different from how they actually are. The biggest challenge for this account is to explain how the imagination can be restricted in such a way that it can play this epistemic role, for there are certainly also unrestricted uses of the (...) imagination in which it fails to yield the requisite knowledge. In this paper, I inquire how Kant’s account of the imagination could inspire the contemporary debate at this point. I first give an overview about Kant’s account of the imagination and its different roles for our cognition of the real world. I then show that some recent attempts to separate the epistemically valuable uses of the imagination from the epistemically worthless ones bear some striking similarities to Kant’s ideas about how the imagination helps us to get insight into metaphysical possibility. By discussing what Kant says about the method of a priori imaginative construction in the case of concepts such as that of matter and that of disembodied minds, I also point to those aspects of his view which make his views really distinct from all contemporary accounts, but which he himself thought bear the greatest potential of making the imagination a source of modal knowledge. (shrink)

This paper builds off the Our Data Ourselves research project, which examined ways of understanding and reclaiming the data that young people produce on smartphone devices. Here we explore the growing usage and centrality of mobiles in the lives of young people, questioning what data-making possibilities exist if users can either uncover and/or capture what data controllers such as Facebook monetize and share about themselves with third-parties. We outline the MobileMiner, an app we created to consider how gaining access to (...) one’s own data not only augments the agency of the individual but of the collective user. Finally, we discuss the data making that transpired during our hackathon. Such interventions in the enclosed processes of datafication are meant as a preliminary investigation into the possibilities that arise when young people are given back the data which they are normally structurally precluded from accessing. (shrink)

This introductory textbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the main issues in contemporary philosophy of social cognition. It explains and critically discusses each of the key philosophical answers to the captivating question of how we understand the mental life of other sentient creatures. Key Features: · Clearly and fully describes the major theoretical approaches to the understanding of other people’s minds. · Suggests the major advantages and limitations of each approach, indicating how they differ as well as the (...) ideas they have in common. · Tests each philosophical theory against the best available empirical data from psychology, neuroscience and psychopathology. · Includes suggestions for additional reading and practice study questions at the end of each chapter. Philosophy of Social Cognition is essential reading for all undergraduate and graduate students taking introductory courses on social cognition. It is also ideal for courses on cognitive neuroscience, social psychology and sociological theory. (shrink)

Medieval authors generally agreed that we have the freedom to choose among alternative possibilities. But most medieval authors also thought that there are situations in which one cannot do otherwise, not even will otherwise. They also thought when willing necessarily, the will remains free. The questions, then, are what grounds the necessity or contingency of the will’s acts, and – since freedom is not defined by the ability to choose – what belongs to the essential character of freedom, the ratio (...) libertatis. This article studies medieval theories of freedom without choice from William of Auxerre to William of Ockham and their background in Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux. (shrink)

BackgroundHealth behavior change is among the top recommendations for improving health of patients with lifestyle-related chronic diseases. An array of behavior change techniques have been developed to support behavior change initiation and maintenance. These BCTs often show limited success when they are not informed by theory, leading to a mismatch between the intention of the BCT and patients’ needs or expectations. Previous studies have identified a number of resources which patients may require to initiate and maintain health behavior change. Indeed, (...) not yet well established is how BCTs address these resources, i.e., the functional mechanisms of BCTs.PurposeProvide a theoretical framework of the functional mechanisms of BCTs for developing and implementing successful interventions for health behavior change.MethodsConceptual review, including literature analysis and synthesis as well as conceptualization of a new model based on the synthesis.ResultsThrough the integration of dual-process models as well as reward and motivation proceeding, i.e., affective, emotional, or intuitive neurobiological cues, into the rational framework of rather linear cognitive or task-related decision progress, we categorize previously identified resources into three distinct sets: external, internal reflective, and internal affective resources. Based on this triad, we classify BCTs according to their functional mechanisms into facilitating, boosting, and nudging. Consequently, we present a simplified Behavior Change Resource Model that is centered on patients’ resources.ConclusionThe model can be applied to develop health behavior change interventions, which promote engagement and empowerment. Future studies should aim at testing the applicability and practicality of the BCRM. (shrink)

Scientificity is essentially methodology. The use of information technology as methodological instruments in science has been increasing for decades, this raises the question: Does this transform science? This question is the subject of the Special Issue in Minds and Machines “The epistemological significance of methods in computer simulation and machine learning”. We show that there is a technological change in this area that has three methodological and epistemic consequences: methodological opacity, reproducibility issues, and altered forms of justification.

Purpose – Ubiquitous computing and “big data” have been widely recognized as requiring new concepts of privacy and new mechanisms to protect it. While improved concepts of privacy have been suggested, the paper aims to argue that people acting in full conformity to those privacy norms still can infringe the privacy of others in the context of ubiquitous computing and “big data”. Design/methodology/approach – New threats to privacy are described. Helen Nissenbaum's concept of “privacy as contextual integrity” is reviewed concerning (...) its capability to grasp these problems. The argument is based on the assumption that the technologies work, persons are fully informed and capable of deciding according to advanced privacy considerations. Findings – Big data and ubiquitous computing enable privacy threats for persons whose data are only indirectly involved and even for persons about whom no data have been collected and processed. Those new problems are intrinsic to the functionality of these new technologies and need to be addressed on a social and political level. Furthermore, a concept of data minimization in terms of the quality of the data is proposed. Originality/value – The use of personal data as a threat to the privacy of others is established. This new perspective is used to reassess and recontextualize Helen Nissenbaum's concept of privacy. Data minimization in terms of quality of data is proposed as a new concept. (shrink)

1. Samantha Matherne’s book Cassirer is, other than its publication in the series Routledge Philosophers might suggest, not simply an introductory volume. It is perhaps the best overall account of...

We introduce several new variants of the dice experiment by Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi :525–547, 2013) to investigate measures to reduce lying. Hypotheses on the relative performance of these treatments are derived from a straightforward theoretical model. In line with previous research, we find that groups of two subjects lied at least to the same extent as individuals—even in a novel treatment where we assigned to one subject the role of being the other’s monitor. However, we find that our participants hardly (...) lied if they do not benefit and only others do, even if they were in a reciprocal relationship. Thus, we conclude that collaboration on lying mostly happens for personal gain. To mitigate selfish lying, an honesty oath which aims to increase moral awareness turned out to be effective. (shrink)

The dominant position in current debates on the mind-body problem is some version of physicalism, according to which the mind is reducible to the brain and mental phenomena are ultimately explainable in physical terms. But there seems to be an explanatory gap between physicalistic descriptions of neuronal processes and the subjectivity of conscious experience. Some dualists conclude that, therefore, consciousness must be ontologically distinct from any physical properties or entities. This article introduces and argues for a different perspective on these (...) issues, namely, an epistemological dualism - a nonreductive position which is neither a version of physicalism nor an ontological dualism. It is argued that Kant holds this epistemological dualism implicitly as a consequence of his critical epistemology. On the one hand, he stresses the explanatory gap between the mental and the physical. On the basis of his theory of subjectivity set out in the Transcendental Deduction, Kant provides an explanation for why the gap cannot be closed empirically, as the physicalist promises. On the other hand, in his criticism of Descartes’ dualism in the Paralogismschapter, Kant argues that an ontological conclusion on the basis of this epistemological gap is unjustified even though physicalism is explanatory inadequate to account for consciousness. Thus, this epistemological dualism can be seen as an original third way between physicalist reductionism and ontological dualism. (shrink)

Notwithstanding the success of conventional field trials for vaccines against COVID-19, human challenge trials that could obtain more information about these and about other vaccines and further strategies against it are about to start in the UK. One critique of COVID-19 HCTs is their distinct paucity of information on crucial population groups. For safety reasons, these HCTs will exclude candidate participants of advanced age or with comorbidities that worsen COVID-19, yet a vaccine should protect such populations. We turn this cliché (...) on its head. The truth is that either an HCT or a field trial has intrinsic generalisability limitations, that an HCT can expedite protection of high-risk participants even without challenging them with the virus, and that an important route to obtaining results generalisable to high-risk groups under either strategy is facilitated by HCTs. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

In a recent review article published in this journal, Hansen and Schaltegger discuss the architecture of sustainability balanced scorecards. They link the architecture of SBSCs to the maturity of the value system of a firm as well as to the proactiveness of a firm’s sustainability strategy. We contend that this argument is flawed and that the architecture of SBSC does not matter since—irrespective of their architecture—SBSCs are ill-suited to achieve substantive corporate contributions to sustainability. First, we assess the SBSC against (...) three fundamental conditions for an effective management of corporate sustainability—the generation of positive outcomes at the societal level, the consideration of complexities and tensions, and the integration of heterogeneous and competing logics—to show that the SBSC is diametrically opposed to the complex and multi-facetted nature of corporate sustainability and ill-suited to achieve transformational change of for-profit organisations towards sustainability. Second, we address the question whether architecture of the SBSC matters and find that it is a fallacy to believe that the architecture of SBSCs can address this fundamental misfit. Rather, our argument reveals that irrespective of its architecture the SBSC is not a suitable tool for achieving strategic change for sustainability beyond incrementalism because it is deeply rooted in the idea of aligning sustainability with established core business routines. We propose that the emerging integrative view on corporate sustainability offers a more promising route for scholars and practitioners who are truly concerned with a deep transformation of private firms towards more sustainability. (shrink)

Broken trust elicits two types of responses: On the one hand, an epistemic response: How could I be so mistaken? How can I learn to trust more appropriately? On the other hand, a moral response: How could you deceive me so deeply and hurt me so profoundly? Even though the response in a given case may be more epistemically or morally emphasized, their interrelation raises two theoretically challenging questions: (1) How can a unity of the epistemic and normative dimensions of (...) trust be reflected in theories; thus far, these dimensions tend to diverge in predominant approaches that model trust either epistemically or normatively (e.g. evidential vs. assurance view). (2) How can it be understood that it is constitutive of trust that it can be broken, and that it is constitutive of trust that there is no risk in the very essence of trusting. The present paper proposes a response to these two questions. (shrink)

To which extent is it justified to adopt Kant as a godfather of cognitive science? To prepare the stage for an answer of this question, we need to set aside Kant’s general transcendental approach to the mind which is radically anti-empiricist and instead turn our attention to his specific topics and claims regarding the mind which are often not focus of Kant’s epistemological investigations. If someone is willing to take this stance, it turns out that there are many bridges connecting (...) Kant with contemporary cognitive science. We investigate possible bridges suggested in the literature between some of Kant’s central claims about consciousness, mental content, and functions of mind, and some specific treatments of these topics in contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science. While doing so, we offer additional arguments for some proposed bridges, reconstruct others and completely destroy still other bridges by demonstrating that some suggested links between Kant and cognitive science remain only apparent. (shrink)

The introduction to the volume and the overview of the idea of naturalizing the mind.

This article seeks to address what the work of Catherine Malabou can offer to the thinking and understanding of history. Characterizing Malabou’s intellectual project as a meditation on the relation between history and possible knowledge, it situates the philosopher’s work in the tradition of historical epistemology. It will be argued that, in its engagement with philosophical and (neuro)biological theories of plasticity and epigenesis, the historical constitution of Malabou’s philosophical system problematizes the practical and ontological difficulty behind any commitment to a (...) historically bounded knowledge of what here will be called, following Heidegger and Foucault, ‘pure finitude’. The article concludes by suggesting that, if placed alongside the work of intellectual historian Quentin Skinner, Malabou’s historical epistemology makes a decisive and useful contribution to contemporary debates regarding historical method by underscoring the (neuro)biological rooting of persistent epistemic gaps between historical understanding and experience. (shrink)

Debates on new technologies commonly seem to be irrational. In an even higher degree this might be true for the expectations that are evoked by recent biotechnologies. A typical constellation is like this: While A expresses fears concerning a new technology, those fears are taken up to be absurd by B. And while B criticizes that A?s scenarios lack a realistic basis, A complains about not being taken serious. Thus the conflicting parties accuse each other of behaving irrational or even (...) malicious. This article deals with this mutual suspicion of irrationality and provides an explanation focusing on structural reasons for conflicts of that kind. An explanation is reached on the basis of a model that describes the genesis of expectations regarding technological potentials. These expectations are concerned with the anticipation that a technology has the power to fundamentally change our life. Based on this model a different examination of discourses on technologies is possible: The existence of structurally different levels of communication about technology is demonstrated - plus that the levels themselves can stay undiscovered by the conflicting groups due to structural reasons. And as the levels in communication remain concealed the impression of a slippery slope of rationality prevails. nema. (shrink)

Blumenberg has sometimes described his work as a phenomenology of history. The connection between history and phenomenology is particularly striking in the context of Blumenberg’s contributions to the philosophy of technology. In the course of his analysis of Husserl’s Krisis, Blumenberg develops, as my contribution aims to show, a conception of history in which complete technologization leads to a perfected lifeworld. Blumenberg formulates this partly explicitly within the framework of a three-stage model of history, but there are also implicit insights (...) in Blumenberg’s texts that seem to work with such a structuring of history. (shrink)

The decision to initiate a Bible translation project in any community has profound implications. In logistical terms, Bible translation projects can be expensive and taxing on their donors, initiators and other stakeholders. However, they can also have positive transformative effects on the communities that benefit from the translation. Therefore, the decision to translate should be carefully considered. In many cases, a rapid appraisal survey is conducted to determine the remaining Bible translation needs in a given situation. This article assessed the (...) validity of rapid appraisal surveys using the Yaawo context of Mozambique as a case study and cautions against their use when performed in isolation. A new model is proposed based on the object metaphor of a beaded necklace that, although it involves more time and resources, will result in a more appropriate response to the needs for Bible translation in each context. Supplementing the beaded necklace model for determining Bible translation needs, insights from narrative frame theory are highlighted as they were applied recently to the complex Yaawo context in Mozambique. These insights are presented to demonstrate that initiating a Bible translation project is not just a sociolinguistic decision but a contextual one as well.Contribution: The translation of the Bible is a complex process. This article demonstrates that narrative framing is a useful tool for managing the complexity around a new Bible translation project by offering a new model for stakeholders and initiators to assess and manage the context of a new Bible translation situation. (shrink)