The paper distinguishes two versions of the guise of the good in Anscombe’s Intention and raises some doubts about Francesco Orsi’s recent proposal for how these two versions hang together. While Orsi’s interpretation of the two versions are separately insightful and illuminating, Orsi’s “Anscombean argument” for connecting Anscombe’s two versions of the guise of the good is at odds with Anscombe’s own approach.

I argue that the accounts of inference recently presented (in this journal) by Paul Boghossian, John Broome, and Crispin Wright are unsatisfactory. I proceed in two steps: First, in Sects. 1 and 2, I argue that we should not accept what Boghossian calls the “Taking Condition on inference” as a condition of adequacy for accounts of inference. I present a different condition of adequacy and argue that it is superior to the one offered by Boghossian. More precisely, I point out (...) that there is an analog of Moore’s Paradox for inference; and I suggest that explaining this phenomenon is a condition of adequacy for accounts of inference. Boghossian’s Taking Condition derives its plausibility from the fact that it apparently explains the analog of Moore’s Paradox. Second, in Sect. 3, I show that neither Boghossian’s, nor Broome’s, nor Wright’s account of inference meets my condition of adequacy. I distinguish two kinds of mistake one is likely to make if one does not focus on my condition of adequacy; and I argue that all three—Boghossian, Broome, and Wright—make at least one of these mistakes. (shrink)

The paper presents a truth-maker semantics for Strict/Tolerant Logic (ST), which is the currently most popular logic among advocates of the non-transitive approach to paradoxes. Besides being interesting in itself, the truth-maker presentation of ST offers a new perspective on the recently discovered hierarchy of meta-inferences that, according to some, generalizes the idea behind ST. While fascinating from a mathematical perspective, there is no agreement on the philosophical significance of this hierarchy. I aim to show that there is no clear (...) philosophical significance of meta-inferences above the first level. (shrink)

This book presents a philosophical conception of logic -- "logical expressivism"-- according to which the role of logic is to make explicit reason relations, which are often neither monotonic nor transitive. It reveals new perspectives on inferential roles, sequent calculi, representation, truthmakers, and many extant logical theories.

In this article, I argue that conventional reasoning on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is based on the assumption of a liberal market economy in the context of a nation state. I build on the study of Scherer and Palazzo (Acad Manage Rev 32(4):1096-1120, 2007), developing a number of criteria to identify elements of liberal philosophy in the ongoing CSR debate. I discuss their occurrence in the CSR literature in detail and reflect on the implications, taking into account the emerging political (...) reading of the firm. I conclude that the apolitical framework in the mainstream CSR literature has to be overcome since it does not reflect recent changes in the socio-economic conditions for economic actors in a globalizing world. (shrink)

This article seeks to contribute to the discussion of how the gender gap in foreign and security policy issues can be explained by examining how early the gender differences manifest themselves. All told, 251 Swedish children between the ages of six and nine were interviewed about their views on foreign aid, refugee policy, weapons exports, armed resistance, self-defense, and concern or fear about the outbreak of war. Opinion differences between boys and girls were then compared to the differences between adult (...) men and women. The results showed that the differences between boys and girls were very small or nonexistent. Only in the question of fear about the outbreak of war did girls differ significantly from boys, displaying a much higher degree of worry. In the conclusion, these results are discussed in relation to different theories about the causes of the gender gap in foreign policy issues. (shrink)

The term ‚consumption‘ includes the use of material and non-material goods. For some decades it has been successfully employed by several scientific disciplines to examine causal relationships between the various life styles and the respective historical circumstances. This paper applies the term to the way texts, prestige-goods and social rules are used in different situations. As case studies serve the ‚oriental‘ texts included in the „Iliad“, the Lydian goods as they are differently estimated by Sappho and Xenophanes, and the way (...) how Theognis interprets social rules. Starting from the principle of the ‚relativity of the best‘, as it can be detected in the Homeric epics, various types of consumption are discerned to give way for circumscribing the leeway open for creating individual lifestyles. (shrink)

Within the philosophy of religion, there are several different views on what to consider the discipline’s most fundamental topic. The answer that you offer at the meta-level is often more important than the concrete answers you, in the next stage, offer to that question which you have identified as the question to attend to. The identification serves, namely, as a hermeneutical principle for understanding and addressing other topics within the discipline. As regards analytic Anglo-American philosophy of religion, there has, for (...) a long time, been a general agreement that the fundamental topic that philosophers of religion should attend to is God’s existence.... (shrink)

Several cognitive accounts of human communication argue for a language-independent, prelinguistic basis of human communication and language. The current study provides evidence for the universality of a prelinguistic gestural basis for human communication. We used a standardized, semi-natural elicitation procedure in seven very different cultures around the world to test for the existence of preverbal pointing in infants and their caregivers. Results were that by 10–14 months of age, infants and their caregivers pointed in all cultures in the same basic (...) situation with similar frequencies and the same proto-typical morphology of the extended index finger. Infants’ pointing was best predicted by age and caregiver pointing, but not by cultural group. Further analyses revealed a strong relation between the temporal unfolding of caregivers’ and infants’ pointing events, uncovering a structure of early prelinguistic gestural conversation. Findings support the existence of a gestural, language-independent universal of human communication that forms a culturally shared, prelinguistic basis for diversified linguistic communication. (shrink)

The metaphysical question of what determines the contents of fictive utterances is closely related to the epistemological question of how audiences identify the.

Some think that logic concerns the “laws of truth”; others that logic concerns the “laws of thought.” This paper presents a way to reconcile both views by building a bridge between truth-maker theory, à la Fine, and normative bilateralism, à la Restall and Ripley. The paper suggests a novel way of understanding consequence in truth-maker theory and shows that this allows us to identify a common structure shared by truth-maker theory and normative bilateralism. We can thus transfer ideas from normative (...) bilateralism to truth-maker theory, such as non-transitive solutions to paradox, and vice versa, such as notions of factual equivalence and containment. (shrink)

Organizations routinely make choices when addressing conflicting stakes of their stakeholders. As stakeholder theory continues to mature, scholars continue to seek ways to make it more usable, yet proponents continue to debate its legitimacy. Various scholarly attempts to ground stakeholder theory have not narrowed down this debate. We draw from the work of Juergen Habermas to theoretically advance stakeholder theory, and to provide practical examples to illustrate our approach. Specifically, we apply Habermas’ language-pragmatic approach to extend stakeholder theory by advancing (...) seven sets of normative axioms. We conclude that a deliberative approach, with its focus on the conditions of legitimation and deliberative democracy, has the potential to become a cornerstone of stakeholder theory. The need for global stakeholder discourse and its internalization in corporate structures and institutions is exemplified by a multitude of CSR and stakeholder initiatives that have mushroomed in response to global risk scenarios such as climate change, nuclear warfare, or terrorism. Further research may help to build a functioning global governance system in order to provide guidance for management in the 21st century. (shrink)

While scientific inquiry crucially relies on the extraction of patterns from data, we still have a far from perfect understanding of the metaphysics of patterns—and, in particular, of what makes a pattern real. In this paper we derive a criterion of real-patternhood from the notion of conditional Kolmogorov complexity. The resulting account belongs to the philosophical tradition, initiated by Dennett :27–51, 1991), that links real-patternhood to data compressibility, but is simpler and formally more perspicuous than other proposals previously defended in (...) the literature. It also successfully enforces a non-redundancy principle, suggested by Ladyman and Ross, that aims to exclude from real-patternhood those patterns that can be ignored without loss of information about the target dataset, and which their own account fails to enforce. (shrink)

The paper presents teleo-inferentialism, which is a novel meta-semantic theory that combines advantages of teleosemantics and normative inferentialism. Like normative inferentialism, teleo-inferentialism holds that contents are individuated by the norms that govern inferences in which they occur. This allows teleo-inferentialism to account for sophisticated concepts. Like teleosemantics, teleo-inferentialism explains conceptual norms in a naturalistically acceptable way by appeal to the broadly biological well-functioning of our innate capacities. As a test-case for teleo-inferentialism, I discuss how the view handles Kripkenstein-style meaning skepticism.

I argue that recent attempts to show that meaning and content are not normative fail. The two most important arguments anti-normativists have presented are what I call the ‘argument from constitution’ and the ‘argument from guidance’. Both of these arguments suffer from the same basic problem: they overlook the possibility of focusing on assessability by norms, rather than compliance with norms or guidance by norms. Moreover, I argue that the anti-normativists arguments fail even if we ignore this basic problem. Thus, (...) we have not been given good reasons to think that normativism is false. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of deontic normativity in terms of attributive goodness. An action is permissible for S in C just in case there is a good practical inference available to S in C that results in S performing (or intending to perform) the action. The standards of goodness for practical inferences are determined by what is a good or bad exercise of the human capacity of practical reason, which is an attributive (and not a deontic) assessment.

I argue that logic is unlike science in its methodology, thus rejecting anti-exceptionalism about logic. Logic has a mathematical and a philosophical part. In its mathematical part, the methodology of logic is like that of mathematics, and no need to choose between theories arises in that part. In its philosophical part, the methodology of logic is like that of philosophy. Philosophy and mathematics are both unlike the empirical sciences in their methodology. So logic is unlike the empirical sciences in its (...) methodology. I end by looking at disagreements about the liar paradox as an example. (shrink)

En este artículo proponemos que el examen del concepto de demostración de Oswaldo Chateaubriand en los capítulos 19, 20 y 21 de la Parte II de Logical Forms incluye aspectos retóricos y dialécticos .In this paper we argue that Oswaldo Chateaubriand’s conception of proof, in chapters 19, 20, and 21 of Part II of Logical Forms, incorporates rhetorical aspects , and dialectical aspects.

After giving some contextual information, we propose an analysis of music and meaning in the song “The Garden,” as performed by the rock group Einstürzende Neubauten in the official video from the 1996 release of the album Ende Neu. We present a semiotic blending model of the narrative content of the song and of its imagery, partly determined by the structure and character of the music. Finally, we add a view of the apocalyptic perspective of some comparable creations.

Vom Finden zum Machen bietet die erste ausführliche Diskussion über die Beziehung zwischen Marxismus und Pragmatismus. Diese beiden Philosophien der Praxis sind nicht unvereinbar, und eine Analyse ihrer Beziehung hilft, beide besser zu verstehen. Im Rahmen eines transatlantischen theoretischen Dialogs werden in diesem Buch Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen diesen Philosophien erörtert. Es handelt sich um eine interdisziplinäre Studie, die Philosophie, amerikanische und europäische Geistesgeschichte und Literaturwissenschaft zusammenführt. Schulenbergs Buch zeigt, dass der Versuch, die Dialektik von Marxismus und Pragmatismus zu erhellen, (...) ein guter Ausgangspunkt ist, wenn wir das unvollendete Projekt der Etablierung einer wirklich postmetaphysischen Kultur weiterführen wollen. Das Buch bietet detaillierte Diskussionen über Sidney Hook, Georg Lukács, Theodor W. Adorno, Fredric Jameson, W.E.B. Du Bois, John Dewey, Richard Rorty und Jacques Rancière. (shrink)

Some philosophers have recently argued that there are no diachronic norms of epistemic rationality, that is, that there are no norms regarding how you should change your attitudes over time. I argue that this is wrong on the grounds that there are norms governing reasoning.

Abstract The paper explores responses to an inconsistent quartet of theses regarding rule-following. In addressing this inconsistent quartet, two lines of thought pull in opposite directions. On the one hand, it can seem that rule-following cannot require acts that shape or guide themselves or acts that require infinitely many similar acts. On the other hand, rule-following seems to require that we are responsible for our acts of rule-following in a special way. It is difficult to see how these thoughts can (...) be coherently combined. (shrink)

By the end of the Second World War the advancing allied forces discovered a new nerve gas in Germany. It was called Tabun. Codenamed GA, it was found to be extremely toxic. British experts were immediately dispatched to examine the agent. On arrival, they discovered that German scientists had also developed even more toxic nerve agents, including Sarin, known as GB. The first organized testing of Sarin on humans began in October 1951 at Porton Down in Wiltshire, Britain's biochemical warfare (...) establishment since the First World War. In February 1953, volunteer number 562 experienced the first recorded serious adverse reaction. Testing continued. Two months later, on April 27, six subjects were given 300 milligrams of Sarin. One of the volunteers, a man named Kelly, suffered serious ill effects, fell into a coma, but then recovered. Although asked by their superiors to reduce the amount tested to the “lowest range of dosage”—which would have been somewhere in the region of 10–15 milligrams—Porton's scientists continued their tests with a “lower” dosage, reducing it from 300 to 200 milligrams. (shrink)

I am presenting a sequent calculus that extends a nonmonotonic consequence relation over an atomic language to a logically complex language. The system is in line with two guiding philosophical ideas: (i) logical inferentialism and (ii) logical expressivism. The extension defined by the sequent rules is conservative. The conditional tracks the consequence relation and negation tracks incoherence. Besides the ordinary propositional connectives, the sequent calculus introduces a new kind of modal operator that marks implications that hold monotonically. Transitivity fails, but (...) for good reasons. Intuitionism and classical logic can easily be recovered from the system. (shrink)

While many of Elizabeth Anscombe’s philosophical views are well-known (e.g. her views on practical knowledge or consequentialism), little has been written on her philosophical method, i.e., on her way of doing philosophy. This is unfortunate, for two reasons: First, the failure to understand Anscombe’s method is a major stumbling block for many of her readers. Second, and more importantly, we can still learn a lot from Anscombe’s way of doing philosophy: Her view differs considerably from current alternatives in metaphilosophy. Here (...) we want to begin to fill this lacuna. -/- REPRINT IN: John Haldane (ed.) (2019): The Life and Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe. (St. Andrews Studies in Philosophy.) Imprint Academic: Exeter: 42-61. (shrink)

Moral disengagement was initially conceptualized as a process through which people reconstrue unethical behaviors, with the effect of deactivating self-sanctions and thereby clearing the way for ethical transgressions. Our article challenges how researchers now conceptualize moral disengagement. The current literature is overly liberal, in that it mixes two related but distinct constructs—process moral disengagement and the propensity to morally disengage—creating ambiguity in the findings. It is overly conservative, as it adopts a challengeable classification scheme of “four points in moral self-regulation” (...) and perpetuates defining moral disengagement via a set of eight psychological mechanisms, narrowing our understanding of the phenomenon. To address these problems, we propose to define process moral disengagement intensionally (specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for correct application of the term) as intrapsychic cognitive reasoning processes through which people selectively reconstrue a moral judgment “behavior B by actor A is morally wrong” and shift it toward becoming “behavior B is not morally wrong” or “actor A is not responsible for behavior B.” This definition achieves disambiguation and increased concept clarity. We leverage the definition to motivate a classification scheme for psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement along two dimensions—reconstruing morality and reconstruing agency—and to initiate an open inventory of psychological mechanisms that specify how process moral disengagement operates. (shrink)

Pragmatism is a humanist philosophy that tells an antifoundationalist and antirepresentationalist story of progress and emancipation. While most theoretical approaches since the 1960s have radically rejected the humanist legacy, in pragmatism a particular understanding of humanism has persisted. This persistence of humanism is of the utmost importance, since one can only grasp the unique contemporary significance of pragmatism when one appreciates how pragmatism, humanism, anti-authoritarianism, and postmetaphysics are interlinked, and how this link has gained in importance after the exhaustion of (...) antihumanist theories. This essay combines the endeavor to elucidate the idea of a pragmatist humanism with a discussion of the relationship between pragmatism and aesthetic form. The essay is divided into three parts. While the first part explains why pragmatism is a humanist philosophy, the second part discusses why most pragmatists have been unwilling to consider the significance of form. It develops the central idea that Dewey’s naturalist aesthetics does not offer a convincing conception of form. The final part advances the argument that a pragmatist humanism that refuses to historicize the concept of form and is reluctant to regard the act of form-giving as a kind of poetic agency weakens its own position. (shrink)

Hegemonic masculinity is a concept that has been of central concern in gender research on different masculinities. However, with the exception of the pioneering work of Wajcman, it has not been widely discussed in relation to studies of science and technology. In this article, which mainly draws on anthropological fieldwork among car and motor mechanics in Penang, Malaysia, a certain form of hegemonic masculinity, based on an intimate embodied interaction with machines, is being discussed. Such a masculinity is furthermore founded (...) on an anthropomorphization of the man-machine relationship in which the machines are transformed into subjects in what might be termed a masculine technical sociability. In such a sociability, machines are understood as a means of a performative and embodied communication enabling masculine homosocial bonding linkages. (shrink)

I argue against abductivism about logic, which is the view that rational theory choice in logic happens by abduction. Abduction cannot serve as a neutral arbiter in many foundational disputes in logic because, in order to use abduction, one must first identify the relevant data. Which data one deems relevant depends on what I call one's conception of logic. One's conception of logic is, however, not independent of one's views regarding many of the foundational disputes that one may hope to (...) solve by abduction. (shrink)