In 1731, Filippo Argelati printed for the first time the complete works of the Modenese historian Carlo Sigonio. Intended originally as an edition in five volumes, the collection was augmented by a sixth volume after the discovery in Rome of previously unknown manuscripts of Sigonio. Among the new papers were four sets of ecclesiastical censures which had been secretly directed in the 1580s against four of Sigonio’s works, and, with them, Sigonio’s responses to the papal authorities. According to Argelati, the (...) censures and Sigonio’s responses were found in two manuscripts, one from the vatican Library and the other from the city of Bologna. Until now, the veracity of Argelati’s account has never been questioned. Yet, while there is no doubt about the authenticity of the censures, which are attested also by eight other sixteenth-century manuscripts, Sigonio’s replies do raise doubts, as three-quarters of them are known only from Argelati’s edition of his works. The present article investigates the sources used by the author of the replies. This new evidence clearly proves that, in fact, the replies were written centuries after Sigonio’s death, probably in the same period as Argelati’s edition. In turn, this supports the hypothesis that Sigonio’s works were employed as an instrument to oppose the Roman Church’s political claims, in the jurisdictional debate between the papacy and the empire in the early eighteenth century. (shrink)

En este trabajo se revisa la relación del teniente coronel Jorge Manuel Osinde con Juan Domingo Perón atendiendo al rol que cumplió como agente de control estatal y represor en el primer período peronista y luego como custodio del movimiento, desde el exilio a la vuelta al poder del ex presidente. A partir de ello intentamos repensar acerca de las continuidades de prácticas represivas estatales o paraestatales en gobiernos incluso democráticos, en la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Sobre todo, se (...) intenta percibir la transformación que el concepto de enemigo político asumió dentro del movimiento peronista, mientras que este se ampliaba ideológicamente hacia una izquierda revolucionaria o una izquierda nacional. Se observa cómo desde la perspectiva de uno de los cuadros más leales al peronismo como Osinde, el enemigo sospechoso será perseguido primero por un antiperonismo caracterizado difusamente como propio de “agentes comunistas” (aun cuando se tratara de radicales, socialistas, o incluso comunistas) y más tarde por infiltrados o agentes externos/extraños al movimiento. El caso de Osinde, a nuestro juicio, aporta a la comprensión de la marcialidad, es decir la imbricación entre conductas militares, prácticas policiales y lealtades políticas, como una de las características sobresalientes del conglomerado de la ortodoxia peronista, a posteriori identificado como “derecha peronista” por los historiadores. (shrink)

In epistemology, the concept of knowledge is of distinctive interest. This fact is also reflected in the discussion of epistemic value, which focuses to a large extend on the value problem of knowledge. This discussion suggests that knowledge has an outstanding value among epistemic standings because its value exceeds the value of its constitutive parts. I will argue that the value of knowledge is not outstanding by presenting epistemic standings of checking, transferring knowledge, and proving in court, whose values exceed (...) the value of knowledge in certain contexts. Moreover, the values of these other epistemic standings do not always rely on the value of knowledge. In terms of value, knowledge is not an outstanding epistemic concept. Hence, in terms of value we cannot find support for the privileged position that knowledge enjoys in epistemology. (shrink)

Hassin recently proposed the “Yes It Can” (YIC) principle to describe the division of labor between conscious and unconscious processes in human cognition. According to this principle, unconscious processes can carry out every fundamental high-level cognitive function that conscious processes can perform. In our commentary, we argue that the author presents an overly idealized review of the literature in support of the YIC principle. Furthermore, we point out that the dissimilar trends observed in social and cognitive psychology, with respect to (...) published evidence of strong unconscious effects, can better be explained by the way how awareness is defined and measured in both research fields. Finally, we show that the experimental paradigm chosen by Hassin to rule out remaining objections against the YIC principle is unsuited to verify the new default notion that all high-level cognitive functions can unfold unconsciously. (shrink)

The 1927 Solvay conference was perhaps the most important meeting in the history of quantum theory. Contrary to popular belief, the interpretation of quantum theory was not settled at this conference, and no consensus was reached. Instead, a range of sharply conflicting views were presented and extensively discussed, including de Broglie's pilot-wave theory, Born and Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, and Schrödinger's wave mechanics. Today, there is no longer an established or dominant interpretation of quantum theory, so it is important to re-evaluate (...) the historical sources and keep the interpretation debate open. This book contains a complete translation of the original proceedings, with background essays on the three main interpretations of quantum theory presented at the conference, and an extensive analysis of the lectures and discussions in the light of current research in the foundations of quantum theory. The proceedings contain much unexpected material, including extensive discussions of de Broglie's pilot-wave theory (which de Broglie presented for a many-body system), and a theory of 'quantum mechanics' apparently lacking in wave function collapse or fundamental time evolution. This book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in physics and in the history and philosophy of quantum theory. (shrink)

Modern society is challenged by a loss of efficiency in national governance systems values, and lifestyles. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse builds upon a conception of organizational legitimacy that does not appropriately reflect these changes. The problems arise from the a-political role of the corporation in the concepts of cognitive and pragmatic legitimacy, which are based on compliance to national law and on relatively homogeneous and stable societal expectations on the one hand and widely accepted rhetoric assuming that all members (...) of society benefit from capitalist production on the other. We therefore propose a fundamental shift to moral legitimacy, from an output and power oriented approach to an input related and discursive concept of legitimacy. This shift creates a new basis of legitimacy and involves organizations in processes of active justification vis-à-vis society rather than simply responding to the demands of powerful groups. We consider this a step towards the politicization of the corporation and attempt to re-embed the debate on corporate legitimacy into its broader context of political theory, while reflecting the recent turn from a liberal to a deliberative concept of democracy. (shrink)

New technologies have the potential to severely “challenge” or “disrupt” not only our established social practices but our most fundamental concepts and distinctions like person versus object, nature versus artificial or being dead versus being alive. But does this disruption also change these concepts? Or does it merely change our operationalizations and applications of the same concepts? In this paper, I argue that instead of focusing on individual conceptual change, philosophers of socially disruptive technologies (SDTs) should think about conceptual change (...) as a change in a network of interrelated concepts. What really generates a potential social disruption are changes of inferential relations between concepts – whether or not this entails a change of the respective individual concepts. Philosophers of socially disruptive technologies are therefore in the privileged position of being able to avoid commitments regarding the individuation of individual concepts. -/- . (shrink)

The goal of this paper was to investigate whether and how a firm that engages in different kinds of corporate social performance can create a favorable corporate reputation among its stakeholders, and as a result achieve a good financial performance. Building on stakeholder theory, we distinguish two types of reputation—reputation among public stakeholders and reputation among financial stakeholders. We argue that CSP activities affect these two reputations differently. In addition, we empirically test the relationship among different types of CSP, reputation (...) among public and financial stakeholders, and financial performance. Our results suggest that Carroll’s four types of CSP affect financial performance differently, and their effects are mediated by reputation among public and financial stakeholders. Our findings provide guidelines for managers on choosing to emphasize certain CSP aspects in their communication, depending on the specific stakeholder group they are targeting. (shrink)

Polysemy has only recently entered the debate on semantic minimalism and contextualism. This is surprising considering that the key linguistic examples discussed in the debate, such as ‘John cut the grass’ or ‘The leaf is green’ appear to be prime examples of polysemy. Moreover, François Recanati recently argued that the mere existence of polysemy falsi!es semantic minimalism and supports radical contextualism. The aim of this paper is to discuss how the minimalism-contextualism debate relates to polysemy. This connection turns out to (...) be far from clear-cut. This is partly due to the fact that the term ‘polysemy’ is used in a number of different ways in the literature, which will be reviewed in this paper. Finally, I discuss and reject Recanati’s claim that the existence of polysemy supports radical contextualism against moderate versions and semantic minimalism. I show that minimalism has a number of plausible options to account for polysemy. (shrink)

Many models of (un)ethical decision making assume that people decide rationally and are in principle able to evaluate their decisions from a moral point of view. However, people might behave unethically without being aware of it. They are ethically blind. Adopting a sensemaking approach, we argue that ethical blindness results from a complex interplay between individual sensemaking activities and context factors.

This paper provides a thorough analysis of two often informally stated claims. First, successful argumentation in the sense of persuasive argumentation requires agreement between the interlocutors about the rationality of arguments. Second, a general agreement about rationality of arguments cannot itself be established via argumentation, since such an attempt leads to an infinite meta‐regress. Hence, agreement about the rationality of arguments is a precondition for successful argumentation. As the paper argues, these plausible claims hold under the assumption that interlocutors are (...) subjectively rational and follow their own standards of rationality when engaging in argumentation. (shrink)

The debate about the appropriate standards for upstream corporate social responsibility of multinational corporations has been on the public and academic agenda for some three decades. The debate originally focused narrowly on “contract responsibility” of MNCs for monitoring of upstream contractors for “sweatshop” working conditions violating employee rights. The authors argue that the MNC upstream responsibility debate has shifted qualitatively over time to “full producer responsibility” involving an expansion from “contract responsibility” in three distinct dimensions. First, there is an expansion (...) of scope from working conditions to human rights and social and environmental impacts broadly defined. Second, there is expansion in depth of this broader responsibility to the whole upstream supply chain without regard to contracting status. Upstream responsibility now includes all suppliers, including direct contractors and the chain of suppliers to such contractors. Finally, the change in CSR scope and depth has led to an evolution of CSR management practice. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a structural analysis of the problems related to the easy knowledge problem. The easy knowledge problem is well known. If we accept that we can have basic knowledge via a source without having any prior knowledge about the reliability or accuracy of this source, then we can acquire knowledge about the reliability or accuracy of this source too easily via information delivered by the source. Rejecting any kind of basic knowledge, however, leads into an infinite (...) regress and, plausibly, to skepticism. The article argues that the third alternative, accepting basic knowledge but rejecting easy knowledge, entails closure failure. This is obviously the case for deductive bootstrapping, but, notably, the problem also arises for inductive bootstrapping. Hence, the set of problems related to the easy knowledge problem has the structure of a trilemma. We are forced to accept easy knowledge, closure failure, or skepticism. (shrink)

That bootstrapping and Moorean reasoning fail to instantiate persuasive argumentation is an often informally presented but not systematically developed view. In this paper, I will argue that this unpersuasiveness is not determined by principles of justification transmission but by two straightforward principles of rationality, understood as a concept of internal coherence. First, it is rational for S to believe the conclusion of an argument because of the argument, only if S believes sufficiently many premises of the argument. Second, if S (...) doubts that a source O is reliable and believes that information i is delivered by O, then S rationally suspends judgment about the truth of i. This paper aims to accomplish two tasks. First, it provides a thorough analysis of why bootstrapping argumentation is not an instance of rational persuasion. Second, it contains a more general theory about preconditions and limits of persuasive argumentation. (shrink)

Studies link involuntary outpatient commitment with improved patient outcomes, fueling debate on its ethical justification. This study compares inpatient utilization for committed outpatients in the 1990s with those who were not under outpatient civil commitment orders. Findings reveal committed outpatients had higher utilization of inpatient services and restraint episodes prior to their commitment compared with a control group. Committed outpatients also were more likely to have been on discharge status at the time of admission, have been admitted involuntarily under emergency (...) legal procedures, and have had a greater number of admissions and hospital days prior to their commitment. Following commitment, patients had fewer hospitalizations, shorter lengths of stay, fewer seclusion episodes and hours, and fewer restraint episodes and hours. Findings are discussed within the context of parens patriae and therapeutic jurisprudence, and support medical and public policy justifications for ethical uses of outpatient civil commitment laws for seriously mentally ill patients. (shrink)

Modal knowledge accounts that are based on standards possible-worlds semantics face well-known problems when it comes to knowledge of necessities. Beliefs in necessities are trivially sensitive and safe and, therefore, trivially constitute knowledge according to these accounts. In this paper, I will first argue that existing solutions to this necessity problem, which accept standard possible-worlds semantics, are unsatisfactory. In order to solve the necessity problem, I will utilize an unorthodox account of counterfactuals, as proposed by Nolan, on which we also (...) consider impossible worlds. Nolan’s account for counterpossibles delivers the intuitively correct result for sensitivity i.e. S’s belief is sensitive in intuitive cases of knowledge of necessities and insensitive in intuitive cases of knowledge failure. However, we acquire the same plausible result for safety only if we reject his strangeness of impossibility condition and accept the modal closeness of impossible worlds. In this case, the necessity problem can be analogously solved for sensitivity and safety. For some, such non-moderate accounts might come at too high a cost. In this respect, sensitivity is better off than safety when it comes to knowing necessities. (shrink)

I discuss Edouard Machery’s claim that philosophers and psychologists when using the term ‘concept’ are really theorizing about different things. This view is not new, but it has never been developed or defended in detail. Once spelled out, we can see that Machery is right that the psychological literature uses a different notion of concept. However, Machery fails to acknowledge that the two notions are not only compatible but complementary. This fits more with the traditional view according to which philosophers (...) and psychologists are merely interested in different aspects of the same kind. The main aim of this paper is then to show how precisely the two notions of ‘concept’ relate. Distinguishing them resolves the long-standing debate on whether concepts can be prototypes and allows me to formulate success conditions of a theory of categorization that are independent of the success conditions of a theory of concepts. (shrink)

This book is primarily about checking and only derivatively about knowing. Checking is a very common concept for describing a subject’s epistemic goals and actions. Surprisingly, there has been no philosophical attention paid to the notion of checking. In Part I, I develop a sensitivity account of checking. To be more explicit, I analyze the internalist and externalist components of the epistemic action of checking which include the intentions of the checking subject and the necessary externalist features of the method (...) used. Crucially, successfully checking whether p is true requires using a method that is sensitive with respect to p, i.e. a method that would not indicate that p, if p were false. In Part II, I use the distinction between knowing and checking to explain central puzzles about knowledge, particularly puzzles centering on knowledge closure, puzzles concerning bootstrapping and the skeptical puzzle. Moreover, the book clarifies a dispute about modal epistemology, concerning the application of the sensitivity principle. By arguing that sensitivity is necessary for checking but not knowing, I explain where our persisting intuitions about sensitivity have their place in epistemology. (shrink)

Guido Adlers Studie über den Stil in der Musik bietet einen tiefgehenden Einblick in die musikalischen Strömungen vom Mittelalter bis zur Renaissance. Für alle, die ein tiefes Verständnis der Entwicklung von Europas Musikgeschichte gewinnen möchten. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, (...) you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The question of the moral acceptability of infertility treatment to HIV positive persons raises a number of interesting ethical points regarding the responsibility of the infertility specialist for the outcome of his or her actions. The analysis of the physician’s responsibility is conducted within the framework of accomplice liability. The physician is a collaborator in the parental project of the principals—that is, the intentional parents. Both causal contribution and intention are considered as elements of complicity. It is concluded that a (...) two per cent risk of vertical transmission when the woman is HIV positive is insufficient to blame the infertility specialist who helps her to conceive. Helping an infertile HIV positive infertile couple to have a child does not constitute reckless behaviour. When the couple is fertile, infertility treatment is directed at risk reduction and falls under the physician’s obligation to act in the best interests of his patients. (shrink)

In public political deliberation, people will err and lie in accordance with definite patterns. Such discourse failure results from behavior that is both instrumentally and epistemically rational. The deliberative practices of a liberal democracy cannot be improved so as to overcome the tendency for rational citizens to believe and say things at odds with reliable propositions of social science. The theory has several corollaries. One is that much contemporary political philosophy can be seen as an unsuccessful attempt to vindicate, on (...) symbolic and moral grounds, the forms that discourse failure take on in public political deliberation. Another is that deliberative practices cannot be rescued even on non-epistemic grounds, such as social peace, impartiality, participation, and equality. To alleviate discourse failure, this book proposes to reduce the scope of majoritarian politics and enlarge markets. (shrink)

The proof paradox results from conflicting intuitions concerning different types of fallible evidence in a court of law. We accept fallible individual evidence but reject fallible statistical evidence even when the conditional probability that the defendant is guilty given the evidence is the same, a seeming inconsistency. This paper defends a solution to the proof paradox, building on a sensitivity account of checking and settling a question. The proposed sensitivity account of legal proof not only requires sensitivity simpliciter but sensitivity (...) of each relevant step of the proof procedure and/or sensitivity concerning all relevant alternatives. This account avoids problems that have been identified for other sensitivity views of legal proof. Moreover, it is argued that sensitivity, rather than safety, is the crucial modal condition for legal proof. It is, finally, shown that the provided account can fruitfully support very different existing views on the relationship between knowledge and legal proof. (shrink)

Interference phenomena are a well-known and crucial feature of quantum mechanics, the two-slit experiment providing a standard example. There are situations, however, in which interference effects are (artificially or spontaneously) suppressed. We shall need to make precise what this means, but the theory of decoherence is the study of (spontaneous) interactions between a system and its environment that lead to such suppression of interference. This study includes detailed modelling of system-environment interactions, derivation of equations (‘master equations’) for the (reduced) state (...) of the system, discussion of time-scales etc. A discussion of the concept of suppression of interference and a simplified survey of the theory is given in Section 2, emphasising features that will be relevant to the following discussion (and restricted to standard non-relativistic particle quantum mechanics.[1] A partially overlapping field is that of decoherent histories, which proceeds from an abstract definition of loss of interference, but which we shall not be considering in any detail. (shrink)

Abstract:We discuss the role that transnational corporations (TNCs) should play in developing global governance, creating a framework of rules and regulations for the global economy. The central issue is whether TNCs should provide global rules and guarantee individual citizenship rights, or instead focus on maximizing profits. First, we describe the problems arising from the globalization process that affect the relationship between public rules and private firms. Next we consider the position of economic and management theories in relation to the social (...) responsibility of the firm. We argue that instrumental stakeholder theory and business and society research can only partially solve the global governance issue, and that more recent concepts of corporate citizenship and republican business ethics deliver theoretically and practically helpful, fresh insights. However, even these need further development, especially with regard to the legitimacy of corporate political activity. (shrink)

This paper provides a reinterpretation of some of the most influential skeptical arguments, Agrippa’s trilemma, meta-regress arguments, and Cartesian external world skepticism. These skeptical arguments are reasonably regarded as unsound arguments about the extent of our knowledge. However, reinterpretations of these arguments tell us something significant about the preconditions and limits of persuasive argumentation. These results contribute to the ongoing debates about the nature and resolvability of deep disagreement. The variety of skeptical arguments shows that we must distinguish different types (...) of deep disagreement. Moreover, the reinterpretation of skeptical arguments elucidates that deep disagreement cannot be resolved via argumentation. (shrink)

The discussion about deep disagreement has gained significant momentum in the last several years. This discussion often relies on the intuition that deep disagreement is, in some sense, rationally irresolvable. In this paper, I will provide a theory of rationally irresolvable disagreement. Such a theory is interesting in its own right, since it conflicts with the view that rational attitudes and procedures are paradigmatic tools for resolving disagreement. Moreover, I will suggest replacing discussions about deep disagreement with an analysis of (...) rationally irresolvable disagreement, since this notion can be more clearly defined than deep disagreement and captures the basic intuitions underlying deep disagreement. I will first motivate this project by critically assessing the current debate about deep disagreement. I then detail the notions of rationality and resolvable disagreement which are crucial for a suitable theory of rationally irresolvable disagreement before sketching various instances of rationally irresolvable disagreement. Finally, I argue for replacing theories of deep disagreement with theories of rationally irresolvable disagreement, an approach that has significant advantages over existing theories of deep disagreement which focus on hinge propositions or fundamental epistemic principles. (shrink)

It is largely assumed that conceptual engineering is essentially about revising, introducing, or eliminating representational devices, in particular the intension and extension of words and concepts. However, tying conceptual engineering too closely to representations is risky. Not everyone endorses the notion of representation as theoretically helpful or even real. Not everyone thinks that concepts or meanings should be understood in terms of the notion of representation. Does this mean that conceptual engineering is not interesting or relevant for these skeptics? In (...) this paper, I motivate and propose a non-representationalist construal of conceptual engineering. I argue that conceptual engineers can be understood as primarily engineering linguistic entitlements and commitments rather than representational devices. Note that this account is non-representationalist, but explicitly not anti-representationalist. Representations may play a significant role when it comes to justifying and completing commitment engineering projects. (shrink)

Tobacco companies have started to position themselves as good corporate citizens. The effort towards CSR engagement in the tobacco industry is not only heavily criticized by anti-tobacco NGOs. Some opponents such as the the World Health Organization have even categorically questioned the possibility of social responsibility in the tobacco industry. The paper will demonstrate that the deep distrust towards tobacco companies is linked to the lethal character of their products and the dubious behavior of their representatives in recent decades. As (...) a result, tobacco companies are not in the CSR business in the strict sense. Key aspects of mainstream CSR theory and practice such as corporate philanthropy, stakeholder collaboration, CSR reporting and self-regulation, are demonstrated to be ineffective or even counterproductive in the tobacco industry. Building upon the terminology used in the leadership literature, the paper proposes to differentiate between transactional and transformational CSR arguing that tobacco companies can only operate on a transactional level. As a consequence, corporate responsibility in the tobacco industry is based upon a much thinner approach to CSR and has to be conceptualized with a focus on transactional integrity across the tobacco supply chain. (shrink)

Recent evidence suggests that participants without extensive training in philosophy (so-called lay people) have difficulties responding consistently when confronted with Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine thought experiment. For example, some of the participants who reject the experience machine for themselves would still advise a stranger to enter the machine permanently. This and similar findings have been interpreted as evidence for implicit biases that prevent lay people from making rational decisions about whether the experience machine is preferable to real life, which might (...) have consequences for one of the strongest objections to philosophical hedonism (the view that pleasure is the only intrinsic value). Against this consequence, it has been argued that expert philosophers are immune to such biases (the so-called expertise defense). In this paper, I report empirical evidence against this expertise defense. (shrink)

Discrimination is a central epistemic capacity but typically, theories of discrimination only use discrimination as a vehicle for analyzing knowledge. This paper aims at developing a self-contained theory of discrimination. Internalist theories of discrimination fail since there is no compelling correlation between discriminatory capacities and experiences. Moreover, statistical reliabilist theories are also flawed. Only a modal theory of discrimination is promising. Versions of sensitivity and adherence that take particular alternatives into account provide necessary and sufficient conditions on discrimination. Safety in (...) contrast is not sufficient for discrimination as there are cases of safety that are clearly instances of discrimination failure. The developed account of discrimination between objects will be extended to discrimination between kinds and between types. (shrink)

Given the explanatory stalemate between ‘embedded’ (EMB) and ‘extended’ (EXT) cognition, various authors have proposed normative and moral arguments in favour of EXT. According to what we call the “extended cognition moral narrative” (EXT-MN) (Cassinadri, 2022), we should embrace EXT and dismiss EMB, because the former leads to morally preferable consequences with respect to the latter. In this article we argue that two arguments following the EXT moral narrative are flawed. In Sect. 2.1 and 2.2, we present respectively King (2016) (...) and Vold’s (2018) ‘argument from assessment of capacities’ (AAC) and Clowes (2013), Farina and Lavazza’s (2022a) ‘cognitive diminishment argument’ (CDA). The AAC states that we should embrace EXT over EMB since the former is better at attributing cognitive credit to individuals with learning disabilities who use assistive tools to complete their learning tasks, thus avoiding their marginalisation. The CDA states that EMB implies a morally undesirable picture of the agent in terms of cognitive diminishment. In Sect. 3, we clarify and criticise the underlying assumptions of the AAC and CDA: the “cognitive credit assumption”, the “marginalisation assumption” and, more generally, an ableist conception of disabled agency. In Sect. 3.1, we discuss the role of moto-perceptual skills and metacognitive credit involved in complex cases of tool-use, to demonstrate that the EXT-MN is uninformative in addressing these cases. To conclude, in Sect. 4 we argue that AAC and CDA fail to present EXT as descriptively and normatively superior to EMB. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 5, May 2022.