Several authors have recently suggested that moral factors and norms `encroach' on the epistemic, and because of salient parallels to pragmatic encroachment views in epistemology, these suggestions have been dubbed `moral encroachment views'. This paper distinguishes between variants of the moral encroachment thesis, pointing out how they address different problems, are motivated by different considerations, and are not all subject to the same objections. It also explores how the family of moral encroachment views compare to classical pragmatic encroachment accounts.

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN BUSINESS ETHICS, 6E introduces readers to business ethics by focusing on the influence of market mechanisms and social values on workplace norms. And because business is increasingly a global enterprise, this edition emphasizes the role of ethics both at home and abroad.

I was first taken to Mr Gurdjieff's flat at a time very different from the present. Paris during the war, under German occupation, was in the grip of the ...

A dual-language edition presenting Descartes's original Latin text of his greatest work, with a facing-page authoritative English translation.

I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than ...

Economic development approaches are increasingly entailing local geographic scales and encouraging the mobilization and organization of territorial actors given local conditions and resources. Lebanon is a country facing frequent uncertainty with recent economic and social difficulties. Its popular cuisine may play a key role in its development and that of its rural space. In fact, that cuisine incorporates a traditional cultural practice called “Mouneh” which consists of preserved pantry foods, historically used to ensure household nutrition. Today, rural food cooperatives are (...) engaging in that practice using agricultural produce from local farmers and are employing women. Despite strong internal and external challenges, they remain attractive actors as their principles of collective benefit, participation and democracy form a strong link with sustainable development goals. This study transversally analyzes the status of food cooperatives in a major agricultural region in Lebanon, the Bekaa valley. Findings mainly quantified size and production and provided a mapped representation of the spatial dependencies on local farmers versus urban markets for trade. With 75% women members and firm reputation in authenticity, food cooperatives in the Bekaa specifically and Lebanon generally are also extensively supported by donors but are being labeled as donor-dependent. Yet, cooperatives are localized in a largely agricultural territory with sufficient evidence of differentiation that could potentially be valorized. Hence, with optimal framing, regulation and networking of cooperatives, one can assume a protection of culinary heritage is possible with scalable contribution to food security and needed local development given major recent setbacks. (shrink)

Hydrogen is troublesome in any periodic table classification. This being so it may as well be placed in a position that confers desirable attributes to the arrangement of the elements, while notionally recognising its lineage to the group 1 alkali metals and the group 17 halogens. Since the noble gases bridge the halogens and the alkali metals, and hydrogen encompasses the transition from the alkali metals to the halogens, there is more to the idea of hydrogen over helium. (Meyer 1870, (...) p. 357) (Proust 1927, p. 559). (shrink)

Yoga et spiritualité est le témoignage émerveillé mais lucide d'un voyageur en quête des valeurs essentielles. Bien avant que ne déferle sur l'Occident désorienté la mode de la route et du périple oriental, Arnaud Desjardins a voulu délaisser les voies touristiques afin d'écouter battre le coeur de l'Inde. C'est cette pulsation qu'il tente ici de nous livrer, la face cachée d'une Inde encore fervente, enracinée dans les millénaires de tradition. L'auteur procède du même coup à une mise au point et (...) aide ses lecteurs à se frayer un chemin à travers le fatras d'idées reçues, de contresens et de présupposés à propos du "Yoga" et des "mystiques orientales". Carnet de bord essentiel pour comprendre le cheminement intérieur d'Arnaud Desjardins, cet ouvrage donne quelques clefs fondamentales et constitue un document limpide sur une société bien mal connue de nous, et aujourd'hui plus que jamais menacée. (shrink)

Maître Eckhart affirme dans son oeuvre latine (Commentaire au saint Évangile selon Jean) et dans sa prédication vernaculaire (Sermon allemand 08) son désir d’exposer par les outils de la physique les vérités révélées auxquelles il convient d’adhérer par la foi. Un tel programme exégétique a de quoi surprendre autant le lecteur des traités et sermons allemands qui, pour des raisons que rend évidentes l’histoire de sa réception, s’attend à trouver sous la plume du Thuringien une mystique, pensée aussi spéculative que (...) supra-rationnelle ; que le lecteur de l’oeuvre latine, qui pourrait s’attendre à trouver chez un dominicain du tournant des xiiie et xive siècles une forme de thomisme se refusant à toute tentative de rendre connaissables par la raison les mystères que révèlent les Écritures. Envisagée sérieusement, cette ambition d’expliquer la Révélation par les outils de la physique, science théorétique philosophique, pose donc au lecteur de Maître Eckhart un réel problème herméneutique dans la mesure où elle appelle une réflexion approfondie sur les limites de la connaissance humaine et sur la nature du savoir scientifique. En proposant une reconstruction de l’épistémologie procurant son cadre à la pensée eckhartienne, cette étude se veut l’occasion d’un nouvel éclairage de thèses bien connues de sa « mystique », qui permette de comprendre de quelle manière la conceptualité (méta-)physique de l’aristotélisme s’articule à la Révélation biblique pour rendre intelligible la nature et la surnature, ainsi que les rapports causaux les unissant l’une à l’autre. (shrink)

Despite the burgeoning interest in new and more complex accounts of the organism-environment dyad by biologists and philosophers, little attention has been paid in the resulting discussions to the history of these ideas and to their deployment in disciplines outside biology—especially in the social sciences. Even in biology and philosophy, there is a lack of detailed conceptual models of the organism-environment relationship. This volume is designed to fill these lacunae by providing the first multidisciplinary discussion of the topic of organism-environment (...) interaction. It brings together scholars from history, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, medicine, and biology to discuss the common focus of their work: entangled life, or the complex interaction of organisms and environments. (shrink)

In “Spandrels,” Gould and Lewontin criticized what they took to be an all-too-common conviction, namely, that adaptation to current environments determines organic form. They stressed instead the importance of history. In this paper, we elaborate upon their concerns by appealing to other writings in which those issues are treated in greater detail. Gould and Lewontin’s combined emphasis on history was three-fold. First, evolution by natural selection does not start from scratch, but always refashions preexisting forms. Second, preexisting forms are refashioned (...) by the selection of whatever mutational variations happen to arise: the historical order of mutations needs to be taken into account. Third, the order of environments and selection pressures also needs to be taken into account. (shrink)

The Meditations, one of the key texts of Western philosophy, is the most widely studied of all Descartes' writings. This authoritative translation by John Cottingham, taken from the much acclaimed three-volume Cambridge edition of the Philosophical Writings of Descartes, is based upon the best available texts and presents Descartes' central metaphysical writings in clear, readable modern English. As well as the complete text of the Meditations, the reader will find a thematic abridgement of the Objections and Replies (which were originally (...) published with the Meditations) containing Descartes' replies to his critics. These extracts, specially selected for the present volume, indicate the main philosophical difficulties which occurred to Descartes' contemporaries and show how Descartes developed and clarified his arguments in response. This edition contains a new comprehensive introduction to Descartes' philosophy by John Cottingham and the classic introductory essay on the Meditations by Bernard Williams. (shrink)

While many recognize that rigid historical and compositional goals are inadequate in a world where climate and other global systems are undergoing unprecedented changes, others contend that promoting ecosystem services and functions encourages practices that can ultimately lower the bar of ecological management. These worries are foregrounded in discussions about Novel Ecosystems (NEs); where some researchers and conservationists claim that NEs provide a license to trash nature as long as some ecosystem services are provided. This criticism arises from what we (...) call the " anything goes " problem created by the release of historical conditions. After explaining the notion of NE, we identify numerous substantive motivations for worrying about the anything-goes-problem and then go on to show the problem can be solved by correcting two mistaken assumptions. In short, we argue that the problem is a product of adopting an overly sparse functional perspective and one that assumes an unrealistically high degree of convergence in the trajectories of natural processes. Our analysis illuminates why such assumptions are unwarranted. Finally, we further argue that adopting an appropriate ethical framework is essential to overcoming the anything-goes-problem and suggest that a certain virtue ethics conception of ecological management provides useful resources for framing and resolving the problem. (shrink)

I argue that inferences from highly probabilifying racial generalizations are not solely objectionable because acting on such inferences would be problematic, or they violate a moral norm, but because they violate a distinctively epistemic norm. They involve accepting a proposition when, given the costs of a mistake, one is not adequately justified in doing so. First I sketch an account of the nature of adequate justification—practical adequacy with respect to eliminating the ~p possibilities from one’s epistemic statespace. Second, I argue (...) that inferences based on demographic generalizations tend to disproportionately expose group members to the risks associated with mistakenly assuming stereotypical propositions, and so magnify the wrong involved in relying on such inferences without adequate justification. (shrink)

I argue that the offense generation pattern of slurring terms parallels that of impoliteness behaviors, and is best explained by appeal to similar purely pragmatic mechanisms. In choosing to use a slurring term rather than its neutral counterpart, the speaker signals that she endorses the term. Such an endorsement warrants offense, and consequently slurs generate offense whenever a speaker's use demonstrates a contrastive preference for the slurring term. Since this explanation comes at low theoretical cost and imposes few constraints on (...) an account of the semantics of slurs, this suggests that we should not require semantic accounts to provide an independent explanation of the offense profile. (shrink)

Desde o ano de 1643, Descartes (1596-1650) e a princesa Elizabeth (1618-1680) já trocavam cartas a respeito da geometria, da metafísica e até da física cartesiana. Todavia, no ano de 1645, por conta de um grave estado melancólico da princesa, houve uma intensa correspondência entre ambos. À princípio, o debate se mantinha em torno das condições especificas da princesa. O tema central girava em torno de questões fisiológicas e morais (ou psicofisiológicas). À medida, porém, em que a troca de correspondência (...) se intensificava, o debate ia tornando-se cada vez mais teórico, passando pela discussão da Vida Beata, de Sêneca, até forçar Descartes a apresentar os primeiros esboços de sua própria concepção moral. Dessa troca de correspondência, escolhemos duas cartas de setembro de 1645: uma do filósofo a Elizabeth (carta CDIII) e outra da princesa a Descartes carta (CDVI). (shrink)

In Descartes's Meditations, one of the key texts of Western philosophy, the thinker rejects all his former beliefs in the quest for new certainties. Discovering his own existence as a thinking entity in the very exercise of doubt, he goes on to prove the existence of God, who guarantees his clear and distinct ideas as a means of access to the truth. He develops new conceptions of body and mind, capable of serving as foundations for the new science of nature. (...) Subsequent philosophy has grappled with Descartes's legacy, questioning many of its conclusions and even his basic approach, but his arguments set the agenda for many of the greatest philosophical thinkers, and their fascination endures.This new translation includes the Third and Fourth Objections and Replies in full, and a selection from the rest of Descartes's exchanges with contemporaries that helped to shape and expound his philosophy. (shrink)

Revonsuo proposed an intriguing and detailed evolutionary theory of dreams which stipulates that the biological function of dreaming is to simulate threatening events and to rehearse threat avoidance behaviors. The goal of the present study was to test this theory using a sample of 212 recurrent dreams that was scored using a slightly expanded version of the DreamThreat rating scale. Six of the eight hypotheses tested were supported. Among the positive findings, 66% of the recurrent dream reports contained one or (...) more threats, the threats tended to be dangerous and aimed at the dreamer, and when facing a threat, the dreamer tended to take defensive or evasive actions that were possible and reasonable. However, less than 15% of the recurrent dreams depicted realistic and probable situations critical for one’s physical survival or reproductive success and the dreamer rarely succeeded in fleeing the threat despite important and appropriate efforts. The findings thus provide mixed support for the threat simulation theory. (shrink)

Biologists in the last 50 years have increasingly emphasized the role of historical contingency in explaining the distribution and dynamics of biological systems. However, recent work in philosophy of biology has shown that historical contingency carries various interpretations and that we are still lacking a general understanding of historicity, i.e., a framework from which to interpret why and to what extent history matters in biological processes. Building from examples and analyses of the long-term experimental evolution (LTEE) project, this paper argues (...) that historicity possess three essential conditions: (1) multiple possible pasts, (2) multiple possible outcomes at a given instant, and (3) a relationship of causal dependence between these two sets. These criteria can be further specified in two general forms of historicity: dependence on initial conditions and path dependence. More attention is devoted to developing a rigorous account of the latter, which captures the type of historicity displayed by stochastic processes. This paper also highlights that it is often more productive to adopt an instant-relative approach and think in terms of degree of historicity instead of trying to maintain a rigid and absolute dichotomy between historical and ahistorical (completely convergent) processes. (shrink)

When mental health professionals or social workers are confronted with a suicidal individual, one approach is to use all means to delay the act of suicide until the desire for death subsides. Encouraging someone to delay suicide while bypassing the individual’s practical reasons for suicide can lead to irrational postponement, which equates to procrastinating suicide. Causing someone to procrastinate in this manner poses a risk of disrespecting the person as a rational agent. However, is it even possible to irrationally delay (...) one’s own act of suicide? Additionally, isn’t it beneficial to do so? The aim of the manuscript is to explore the possibility and value of using procrastination in managing suicidal individuals. First, I will argue that procrastination of a suicide intent is possible, which makes inducing this state of mind in people morally problematic. Second, I will argue that there is no intrinsic value in procrastination, although it does have instrumental value. Procrastination holds instrumental value for individuals who delay an irrational act of suicide. Furthermore, procrastination is valuable for clinical psychology, not by making people irrationally delay suicide but for assessing suicide risk. (shrink)

Quel autre genie que celui de Descartes, pere de toute notre metaphysique moderne, pouvait concevoir le fondement reel de toute la science humaine sur le fait primitif de conscience ou de l'existence du moi pensant, comme sur sa base unique, la seule vraie et solide; quel autre pouvait reconnaitre le caractere de l'evidence, ce criterium de toute certitude, dans un petit nombre d'idees premieres, elementaires et simples, donnees a l'ame humaine comme une lumiere qui l'eclaire d'abord sur elle-meme, avant de (...) lui reveler les autres existences? Maine de Biran, Nouvelles considerations sur les rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, oeuvres, t. IX, Vrin, 1990, p. 108. (shrink)

Molecules are transferred to lysosomes, the major, acid pH, digestive compartment in eukaryotic cells, by a complex series of pathways that converge at a late endosome/prelysosomal compartment. Here, we discuss the relationship between this compartment and the lysosome. We propose that lysosomes are maintained within cells by a repeated series of kiss and run, transient fusion and fission processes with the late endosome/prelysosome compartment. Directionality to these processes may be conferred by pH gradients and retrieval mechanisms. The future challenge in (...) testing this and any other proposed hypothesis for lysosomal biogenesis will be the establishment of molecular mechanisms. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Almost thirty years after its initial use in the Brundtland Report, the concept of “sustainability” has become ubiquitous within business, with virtually every company division across a broad range of industries developing “sustainable” models and practices. While the original Brundtland idea of sustainable development has the potential to do much good in guiding business practice, this potential is being undermined by the systematic misuse, misunderstanding, and flawed application of the concept in many business settings. Under the guise of sustainability, business (...) is being asked to do both less than and more than what should be required by a commitment to sustainable development. As a result, serious ethical and practical questions go unanswered, questions that must be addressed before sustainability can become a meaningful business strategy. This address situates sustainable business within its original context of sustainable development and argues against attempts to convert sustainability either into a narrow concept of risk management or into a broad concept of social responsibility. It then lays out a sustainability research agenda that helps us understand how to create businesses that can meet present and future needs without jeopardizing future generations via the destruction of the biosphere. (shrink)

Theory of Literature was originally published in 1949. It is not a textbook introducing the young to the elements of literary appreciation nor a survey of the techniques employed in scholarly research. The authors have sought to unite "poetics" (or literary theory) and "criticism" (evaluation of literature) with "scholarship" ("research") and "literary history" (the "dynamics"of literature, in contrast to the "statics" of theory and criticism).

This essay examines the claim “path dependence entails irreversibility” from the point of view of evolutionary biology. I argue that evolutionary irreversibility possesses many faces, sometimes conflicting with path dependence. I propose an account of path dependence that does not rely on irreversibility and explains why it more naturally coexists with the notion of (contingent) irreversibility developed by the Belgian paleontologist Louis Dollo. However, I argue that we should not conceive of this relationship as necessary.

Some, but not all, of the mistakes a person makes when acting in apparently necessary self-defense are reasonable: we take them not to violate the rights of the apparent aggressor. I argue that this is explained by duties grounded in agents' entitlements to a fair distribution of the risk of suffering unjust harm. I suggest that the content of these duties is filled in by a social signaling norm, and offer some moral constraints on the form such a norm can (...) take. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the relevance and interconnection of two forms of historicity in ecological restoration, namely historical fidelity and path dependence. Historical fidelity is the practice of attempting to restore an ecological system to some sort of idealized past condition. Path dependence occurs when a system can evolve in alternative local equilibria, and that the order and timing of the events that follow from the initial state influence which equilibrium is reached. Using theoretical examples and case studies, the following analysis (...) shows that path dependence can seriously impinge the feasibility of historical fidelity, thus reinforcing the idea that restoration ecology needs to move away from a rigid reliance on historical fidelity and is sometimes justified to endorse an interventionist agenda. Yet, contra recent criticisms, I argue that ecological restoration, directed by prudential and evidence-based reasoning, should maintain historical fidelity as one of its guiding objectives. (shrink)

This paper takes the form of a reflective dialogue between three teachers of business ethics working in different continents. Originating as a conference debate, it takes as its theme the notion of ideological ‘neutrality’ and the role of the business ethics teacher. A position statement outlines an argument for ‘restraint’ as a modern day Aristotleian mean to protect student academic freedom. Two responses follow. The first of these provides a moderate advocacy position based on Socratic principles. The second response outlines (...) the notion of teaching as a relational process necessitating delayed disclosure and moral courage on the part of the teacher. The paper concludes with a brief reflection by the author of the position statement. (shrink)

Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly able to leverage crime statistics to make risk predictions for particular individuals, employing a form of inference that some condemn as violating the right to be “treated as an individual.” I suggest that the right encodes agents’ entitlement to a fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of the rule of law. Rather than precluding statistical prediction, it requires that citizens be able to anticipate which variables will be used as predictors and act intentionally to avoid (...) them. Furthermore, it condemns reliance on various indexes of distributive injustice, or unchosen properties, as evidence of law-breaking. (shrink)

A Egmond, le 16 avril 1648, un peu moins de deux ans avant sa mort, Descartes s'entretient avec un étudiant hollandais en théologie, Frans Burman. Le jeune homme de vingt ans présente au philosophe de courts extraits de ses principales oeuvres publiées (Méditations métaphysiques, Principes de la philosophie, Discours de la méthode) que l'auteur en personne se charge d'expliquer, répondant aussi aux objections de son interlocuteur. Ce texte possède donc un statut décisif dans le corpus cartésien car il s'agit d'un (...) commentaire des points les plus délicats de la philosophie de Descartes par lui-même. Ce faisant, il ne se contente pas de répéter ce qu'il a déjà écrit sur le doute, la connaissance sensible, l'existence de Dieu, le mouvement de la matière ou encore la santé du corps, il ne cesse au contraire d'approfondir, de nuancer, voire de transformer les thèses sur lesquelles il est interrogé. Ce texte interdit ainsi de faire de la pensée de Descartes une "doctrine" stable et immuable. Il donne plutôt à voir de manière éclatante une pensée en marche, celle d'un philosophe majeur et reconnu qui accepte pourtant de remettre sur la table de travail les points essentiels d'une oeuvre déjà constituée en fonction des questions précises qui lui sont posées. Bien plus qu'un simple résumé de sa philosophie, cet Entretien montre l'inlassable exigence de l'effort de la pensée cartésienne à la conquête de sa propre clarté. (shrink)

This paper offers directions for the continuing dialogue between business ethicists and environmental philosophers. I argue that a theory of corporate social responsibility must be consistent with, if not derived from, a model of sustainable economics rather than the prevailing neoclassical model of market economics. I use environmental examples to critique both classical and neoclassical models of corporate social responsibility and sketch the alternative model of sustainable development. After describing some implications of this model at the level of individual firms (...) and industries, I offer an ethical justification of the sustainability alternative that is derived from the same values that underlie traditional market economics. (shrink)

The overarching goal in the seventh edition of this text remains what it was for the first edition: "to provide a clear, concise, and reasonably comprehensive introductory survey of the ethical choices available to us in business." This book arose from the challenges encountered in my own teaching of business ethics. Over the years I have taught business ethics in many settings and with many formats. I sometimes relied on an anthology of readings, other times I emphasized case studies.