What kind of inquiry is management science? This paper compares two accounts — realist-oriented and constructivist-oriented — and proposes a third position. The realist view that scientific inquiry seeks knowledge of realities independent and outside of the knowing process is set against the constructivist view that scientific theorising creates accounts which develop our discourses without claiming knowledge of ‘deeper’ realities. It argues that ultimately we have no way of resolving this long-standing dispute. To move beyond the impasse it proposes a (...) trusting constructivist position, arguing that responsible theorising requires that inquirers develop discursive accountability and that the process of inquiry matters as much as its content. Finally it explores what such a view of accountability would mean for the relationship between scientists or ‘professionals’ and users of their research findings in organisations. (shrink)

What kind of inquiry is management science? This paper compares two accounts — realist-oriented and constructivist-oriented — and proposes a third position. The realist view that scientific inquiry seeks knowledge of realities independent and outside of the knowing process is set against the constructivist view that scientific theorising creates accounts which develop our discourses without claiming knowledge of ‘deeper’ realities. It argues that ultimately we have no way of resolving this long-standing dispute. To move beyond the impasse it proposes a (...) trusting constructivist position, arguing that responsible theorising requires that inquirers develop discursive accountability and that the process of inquiry matters as much as its content. Finally it explores what such a view of accountability would mean for the relationship between scientists or ‘professionals’ and users of their research findings in organisations. (shrink)

The project review as outlined in this article explores the questions: What is transformative research and what is transformation as far as the community stakeholders are concerned? To what extent has the transformative research achieved its intended outcomes? The Bokamoso project (founded by Lesego Serolong as facilitator and investor) is an integrated development project designed to create employment and to enable the community to learn while they make a living through a diverse range of farming activities. The participatory research as (...) discussed here is part of the University of South Africa’s research and community engagement programme, and is set in a remote, arid zone. This research coupled with community engagement aims to transform lives and create opportunities by enhancing their participation in education, training and employment creation. The project (which has been running since 2015) supports indigenous ways of being, knowing and doing and has succeeded in enabling the farmers trained through Bokamoso to be less dependent on social benefits (government grants). (shrink)

En la Universidad Médica “Carlos J. Finlay”, se realiza una intervención educativa con el objetivo de valorar la concepción y aplicación de un programa para un curso de preparación de metodólogos en correspondencia con sus funciones en condiciones de universalización de las Ciencias Médicas de Camagüey, en el periodo de septiembre de 2005 a junio de 2007. Se emplean diferentes métodos investigativos: los teóricos, así como la técnica de discusión grupal, permitió diseñar el programa del curso para la preparación de (...) metodólogos en condiciones de universalización y los empíricos, la obtención de algunos datos de interés acerca de los metodólogos que reciben el curso y sus valoraciones en relación con el mismo. Se constata que la preparación pedagógica y experiencia en el desempeño es insuficiente para asumir el rol de metodólogo y valoran de muy importantes los contenidos desarrollados, los métodos y formas organizativas concebidas, por lo que se concluye que el programa del curso cumple con las expectativas del metodólogo al estar diseñado teniendo en cuenta las funciones que estos desempeñan y sus necesidades sentidas A study was carried out about the intervention in education developed to increase teacher's methodological preparation under their new functions due to the fresh conditions of learning within the community applied to medicine training and education in Camagüey. It was carried out in the period of September 2005 to June 2007. Different research methods were used: the theoretical ones and the technique for group discussion help to design the course syllabus and the assessment for those teachers that received the course. It was verified that the methodological preparation and performance experience are insufficient to play their role; but they value as very important the contents, the methods and the organization of the course. The authors conclude that the course meets the expectations of training, because it was designed keeping in mind the teachers' functions and their necessities. (shrink)

"Williams's masterful translation satisfies (at last!) a long-standing need. There are lots of good translations of Augustine's great work, but until now we have been forced to choose between those that strive to replicate in English something of the majesty and beauty of Augustine's Latin style and those that opt instead to convey the careful precision of his philosophical terminology and argumentation. Finally, Williams has succeeded in capturing both sides of Augustine's mind in a richly evocative, impeccably reliable, elegantly readable (...) presentation of one of the most impressive achievements in Western thought--Augustine's Confessions." --Scott MacDonald, Professor of Philosophy and Norma K. Regan Professor in Christian Studies, Cornell University. (shrink)

There is a growing interest in how people conceptualise the legal domain for the purpose of legal knowledge systems. In this paper we discuss four such conceptualisations (referred to as ontologies): McCarty's language for legal discourse, Stamper's norma formalism, Valente's functional ontology of law, and the ontology of Van Kralingen and Visser. We present criteria for a comparison of the ontologies and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the ontologies in relation to these criteria. Moreover, we critically review the (...) criteria. (shrink)

El trabajo ofrece una reconstrucción de aquello que la dogmática del derecho penal denomina una “tentativa inacabada”, cuya estructura es analizada a partir de premisas obtenidas de la filosofía de la acción. El argumento se centra en demostrar por qué y cómo la así llamada “resolución-al-hecho”, en cuanto presupuesto de tal forma de tentativa, ha de ser caracterizada como una intención previa, a través de cuya formación el agente adquiere el compromiso práctico de ejecutar u omitir una acción de cierta (...) índole. El objetivo así perseguido consiste en identificar las condiciones de las cuales depende que una tentativa inacabada pueda ser constitutiva de un quebrantamiento de la misma norma quebrantada por el autor del respectivo delito consumado. (shrink)

Las normas del Derecho Internacional Humanitario establecen límites al uso de los medios y métodos de combate en el desarrollo de las hostilidades. Si bien en su origen el DIH no fue elaborado teniendo en cuenta los desafíos planteados por el desarrollo de la inteligencia artificial en ese contexto, es una realidad que en la actualidad la evolución de esta inteligencia, los algoritmos y su aplicación militar emergente constituyen un desafío a la luz de las normas humanitarias. Ese desafío comprende (...) tres ámbitos fundamentales: el técnico, el legal y el ético. Si bien se puede decir que la IA, en la etapa actual de desarrollo, permite que un programa computerizado basado en algoritmos realice ciertas tareas en un entorno complejo e incierto, a menudo con mayor precisión que los seres humanos, también debemos destacar que no hay tecnología que haga que una máquina se comporte como un ser humano, quien puede determinar si una acción es lícita o ilícita y decidir no continuar con lo programado, teniendo como objetivo primordial la protección de las víctimas. Los Estados deben adoptar regímenes de verificación, prueba y monitoreo como parte del proceso para determinar e imponer limitaciones o prohibiciones de acuerdo a los principios esenciales de distinción y proporcionalidad que el DIH establece en la utilización de armas durante los conflictos armados internacionales o no internacionales. Tanto desde una perspectiva legal como ética el ser humano está en el centro de esta problemática, ya que la responsabilidad por el uso de la fuerza no puede transferirse a sistemas de armas o algoritmos, y sigue siendo una responsabilidad humana. (shrink)

Con el objeto de dar cuenta de la dinámica del derecho, Alchourrón y Bulygin distinguen los conceptos de sistema jurídico y de orden jurídico. El primero hace referencia a un conjunto de enunciados que contiene todas sus consecuencias deductivas, entre las cuales hay normas cuyo contenido son actos coactivos. Se trata de una entidad estática. El orden jurídico, por su parte, es concebido como una secuencia de sistemas jurídicos enlazados por algún criterio de legalidad o validez, y conserva su identidad (...) a través de los cambios producidos por la sanción o derogación de normas. Es mi propósito presentar argumentos tendientes a sostener que la noción de orden jurídico no es adecuada para los fines que se propone y, además, su postulación, con el sentido que le atribuyen los autores, resulta innecesaria. Aiming to account for the dynamic nature of law, the Argentinian philosophers Carlos Alchourrón and Eugenio Bulygin discriminate the concepts of legal system and legal order. The first makes reference to a set of statements that includes all their deductive consequences, among which there are norms that prescribe coercive acts. It is a static entity. legal order, on the other hand, is conceived as a sequence of legal systems connected by some criterion of legal validity and keeps its identity through the changes produced by the passing or abrogation of laws. The aim of this paper is to present arguments leading to support that the notion of legal order is inadequate for its declared purpose and, furthermore, its conception, with the meaning the authors assign to it, is unnecessary. (shrink)

El objeto principal de este trabajo consiste en discutir una propuesta de C. Alchourrón y A. Martino para hacer frente al problema de la fundamentación de la lógica deóntica, planteado por el dilema de Jørgensen. La propuesta criticada se basa en la idea de que no existe obstáculo alguno en compatibilizar la idea de que las normas carecen de valor de verdad con la idea de que poseen una lógica, una vez que se renuncia al "prejuicio filosófico" de que es (...) indispensable caracterizar semánticamente las relaciones y propiedades lógicas y se explica la lógica a partir de la noción abstracta de consecuencia, desligándola de las nociones de verdad y falsedad. Sostienen que el significado de los operadores deónticos, al igual que el de los términos lógicos en la deducción natural, puede quedar totalmente expresado una vez que se explicita su uso mediante reglas de introducción y eliminación. Para ilustrar su propuesta, pretenden ofrecer una fundamentación puramente sintáctica de la lógica deóntica standard. Mis críticas se centran en tres puntos: a) no utilizan auténticas reglas de introducción para los operadores deónticos; b) no derivan la lógica deóntica standard como pretenden haber hecho, y c) no se establecen criterios para relacionar las fórmulas del cálculo con el lenguaje normativo ordinario, con lo que no existen razones para considerar que se trata de una lógica deóntica. Defiendo la idea de que, a los fines de fundamentar semánticamente la lógica deóntica, sólo es necesario que existan interpretaciones admisibles que atribuyan valores de verdad a las normas, y que este requisito es cumplido por la semántica usual de la lógica deóntica standard, con lo que el dilema de Jørgensen resulta ser un seudoproblema. In this paper I discuss a proposal from C. Alchourrón and A. Martino with which they try to face the problem posed to the foundation of deontic logic by Jørgensen' s dilemma. Their proposal is based on the idea that there is no problem at all in compatibilizing the fact that norms lack truth values with their possession of a logic, once it is denied that it is absolutely necessary to offer a semantic characterization of logical properties and relations, and the abstract notion of consequence is taken as primitive. They claim that the meaning of deontic operators, like that of logical terms in natural deduction, is completely expressed through their use, which is explained by means of rules of introduction and elimination. As an illustration, they present a calculus with which they intend to offer a foundation for standard deontic logic. I make three objections: a) They don' t use real rules of introduction for deontic operators; b) They don' t have derived standard deontic logic as they claim; c) There are no criteria for relating the formulas with ordinary normative discourse; so there are no reasons for considering their calculus as a deontic logic. I claim that, in order to give a semantical foundation to deontic logic it is only necessary that there are admissible interpretations that assign truth values to norms, and that this requisite is satisfied by the usual semantic of standard deontic logic. I conclude that Jørgensen' s dilemma is a pseudoproblem. (shrink)

He then proceeds with an examination of the picture theory developed by Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Goodman, and concludes with an examination of Patricia Churchland, Ruth Millikan, Robert Cummins, and Mark Rollins. The use of the historical development of representationalism to pose a central problem in contemporary cognitive science is unique.

Part of the Studies in Crime and Public Policy series, this book, written by one of the top philosophers of punishment, examines the main trends in penal theorizing over the past three decades. Duff asks what can justify criminal punishment, and then explores the legitimacy of actual practices by examining what would count as adequate justification for them. Duff argues that a "communicative conception of punishment," which he presents as a third way between consequentialist and retributive theories, offers the most (...) fruitful way of understanding punishment's meaning and justification. Duff addresses such questions as how much sentences should be constrained by proportionality requirements; what modalities of punishment best communicate their intended meaning; and what decisionmaking procedures he envisions. This book will appeal to criminologists, philosophers, and others interested in theories of punishment. (shrink)

En su inicio, el empirismo ha querido ser, en una época de profundas dudas y cambio:como ha sido la Época Moderna, una honesta crítica a los argumentos presentados por el racionalismo, según el cual se debía poner el fundamento del conocimiento en algunas verdade: innatas. La propuesta del empirismo hizo descansair esta esperanza en los datos fidedignos de la impresiones o experiencias sensofiales. En este artículo se analiza la concepción de idea que empleaba John Locke y sus argumentos para desautorizar, (...) una tras otra, las razones del innatismo. No obstante, en el ámbito moral, sigue manteniendo una luz de la naturaleza, ínsita em los hombres, que es recta norma para la razón., para quienes buscan conocetrla. De todos modos, que da establecido, con el empirismo de Locke, que explicar el conocimiento de una cosa implica explicar el origen que el hombre tiene de esse conocimiento, revalidando el valor de la investigación humana y de la historicidad del conocimiento. (shrink)

Epistemic decision theorists aim to justify Bayesian norms by arguing that these norms further the goal of epistemic accuracy—having beliefs that are as close as possible to the truth. The standard defense of Probabilism appeals to accuracy dominance: for every belief state that violates the probability calculus, there is some probabilistic belief state that is more accurate, come what may. The standard defense of Conditionalization, on the other hand, appeals to expected accuracy: before the evidence is in, one should expect (...) to do better by conditionalizing than by following any other rule. We present a new argument for Conditionalization that appeals to accuracy‐dominance, rather than expected accuracy. Our argument suggests that Conditionalization is a rule of coherence: plans that conflict with Conditionalization don't just prescribe bad responses to the evidence; they also give rise to inconsistent attitudes. (shrink)

After distinguishing different species of Legal Moralism I outline and defend a modest, positive Legal Moralism, according to which we have good reason to criminalize some type of conduct if it constitutes a public wrong. Some of the central elements of the argument will be: the need to remember that the criminal law is a political, not a moral practice, and therefore that in asking what kinds of conduct we have good reason to criminalize, we must begin not with the (...) entire realm of wrongdoing, but with conduct falling within the public realm of our civic life; the need to look at the different processes of criminalization, and to ask what kinds of consideration can properly figure in those processes; the need to attend to the relationship, and the essential differences, between criminal law and other modes of legal regulation. (shrink)

How can a system of criminal punishment be justified? In particular can it be justified if the moral demand that we respect each other as autonomous moral agents is taken seriously? Traditional attempts to justify punishment as a deterrent or as retribution fail, but Duff suggests that punishment can be understood as a communicative attempt to bring a wrong-doer to repent her crime. This account is supported by discussions of moral blame, of penance, of the nature of the law's demands, (...) and of the proper meaning and purpose of the criminal process of trial and verdict: it deals both with the ideals that should inform a system of criminal law and the extent to which those ideals are actualised in existing institutions and practices. The conclusion is pessimistic: punishment cannot be justified within our legal system; and this gap between the ideal and the actual presents us with serious moral dilemmas. (shrink)

I begin by discussing the ways in which a would-be blamer's own prior conduct towards the person he seeks to blame can undermine his standing to blame her. This provides the basis for an examination of a particular kind of 'bar to trial' in the criminal law – of ways in which a state or a polity's right to put a defendant on trial can be undermined by the prior misconduct of the state or its officials. The examination of this (...) often neglected legal phenomenon illuminates some central features of the criminal law and the criminal process, and some of the preconditions for the legitimacy of the criminal law in a liberal republic. (shrink)

The reputation Theologoumena Arithmeticae has acquired is largely that of being an odd, and frequently opaque, compilation of arithmological lore. As a sourcebook for this aspect of the Pythagorean tradition it is, of course, invaluable. However, its poor reputation is increased, and its historical value lessened, by the depredations time has wrought on the text. ThA was never great prose: it is a compilation, largely from the lost Theologoumena Arithmeticae of Nicomachus of Gerasa and from Anatolius' Peri Dekados; and the (...) text which cannot be safely or conjecturally assigned to these two sources often reads like little more than the written-up notes of some student. However, the treatise contains passages of considerable lucidity, within the context of its peculiar framework. (shrink)

The reputation Theologoumena Arithmeticae has acquired is largely that of being an odd, and frequently opaque, compilation of arithmological lore. As a sourcebook for this aspect of the Pythagorean tradition it is, of course, invaluable. However, its poor reputation is increased, and its historical value lessened, by the depredations time has wrought on the text. ThA was never great prose: it is a compilation, largely from the lost Theologoumena Arithmeticae of Nicomachus of Gerasa and from Anatolius' Peri Dekados; and the (...) text which cannot be safely or conjecturally assigned to these two sources often reads like little more than the written-up notes of some student. However, the treatise contains passages of considerable lucidity, within the context of its peculiar framework. (shrink)

Certainly the most elaborate single extant monument of Renaissance French prose literature, Michel de Montaigne's "Essais" presents a subject matter that often discusses and analyzes concepts of language in general as well as language as a vehicle of its own expression. This study addresses the author's exploration of the dedalus of language as he ambles and rambles its roads, streets, and alleys; draws the portrait of his philosophy of language or philology; and concludes his affirmative and positivistic attitude toward language (...) and its literary application or the art and artistry of literature. The great Renaissance humanist's depiction of language in the "Essais" is analyzed in this book on the basis of its division among intellectual, moral, and aesthetic aspects. This threefold reduction, finding its derivation in the critical work of Aristotle, Auerbach, and Bowen, is also related to the few particular and the important general critical studies of Montaigne and his vision and use, creation and re-creation of language. (shrink)

Aim To study the views of people in a largely Muslim country, Kuwait, of the acceptability of a life-ending action such as physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Method 330 Kuwaiti university students judged the acceptability of PAS in 36 scenarios composed of all combinations of four factors: the patient's age (35, 60 or 85 years); the level of incurability of the illness (completely incurable vs extremely difficult to cure); the type of suffering (extreme physical pain or complete dependence) and the extent to (...) which the patient requests a life-ending procedure, euthanasia or PAS (no request, some form of request, repeated requests). In all scenarios, the patients were women who were receiving the best possible care. The ratings were subjected to cluster analysis and analyses of variance. Results Five clusters were found. For 44%, PAS was always very unacceptable, no matter what the circumstances. For 23%, it was unacceptable, but less so if the patient was older or requested it repeatedly. For 16%, it was unacceptable if the patient was young but was acceptable if the patient was elderly. For 5%, it was unacceptable if the patient had extreme pain but was acceptable if completely dependent. For 11%, it was unacceptable if the patient did not request it but acceptable if she did. Conclusion The majority of the Kuwaiti university students opposed PAS either categorically or with a slight variation according to circumstances. Nonetheless, a minority approved of PAS in some cases, particularly when the patient was elderly. (shrink)

We can gain fresh insights into aspects of criminal liability by focusing first on the prior topic of criminal responsibility, and on the relational dimensions of responsibility: responsibility is responsibility for something, to someone. We are criminally responsible as citizens, to our fellow citizens, for committing 'public' wrongs: I discuss the difficulty of giving determinate content to this idea of public wrongs, and the way in which, whereas moral responsibility is typically strict, criminal responsibility is not. Finally, I explore the (...) grounds on which defendants might deny that they are criminally responsible before the courts that seek to try them. (shrink)

After an initial discussion (§i) of what a theory of criminal law might amount to, I sketch (§ii) the proper aims of a liberal, republican criminal law, and discuss (§§iii–iv) two central features of such a criminal law: that it deals with public wrongs, and provides for those who perpetrate such wrongs to be called to public account. §v explains why a liberal republic should maintain such a system of criminal law, and §vi tackles the issue of criminalization—of how we (...) should determine the proper scope of the criminal law. (shrink)

Gender discrimination and sexual harassment of female police officers by their male counterparts remain areas of liability where police departments appeared to have failed to effectively confront the nagging issues. However, the appreciable level of research conducted on these issues in the global North has not been matched by the South, where issues bordering on sexual violence have cultural underpinnings. Drawing from the case of the Nigeria Police Force, feminist analysis was used to explore the lived reality of 43 female (...) officers in a qualitative study. Participants expressed distress in abiding by structural discriminatory regulations against female officers which include non-admittance of married women into the force, forbidding unmarried officers from getting pregnant, and a stipulated minimum of three-year work period before a female officer can marry. Findings also indicated that participants suffer a variety of sexual harassment, intimidation, and, violence from their male colleagues, while they feel constrained in reporting their victimization. Important policy and practical implications requiring the Nigerian police to address hegemonic masculinity and promote gender equality were provided. (shrink)

Taking as its starting point Miri Gur-Arye’s critical discussion of a legal duty to report crime, this paper sketches an idealising conception of a democratic republic whose citizens could be expected to recognise a civic responsibility to report crime, in order to assist the enterprise of a criminal law that is their common law. After explaining why they should recognise such a responsibility, what its scope should be, and how it should be exercised, and noting that that civic responsibility must (...) include a responsibility to report one’s own crimes; it discusses whether that civic responsibility could ground at least a limited legal duty to report certain types of crime. It then turns to the question of whether a civic responsibility to assist the criminal law’s enterprise of bringing wrongdoers to account could include a responsibility to arrest suspected or known offenders if the police cannot or will not do so—a responsibility to make a citizen’s arrest, and the legal power to discharge that responsibility: how far should citizens feel entitled, or duty-bound, thus to ‘take the law into their own hands’? (shrink)

In this article, we consider two independently appealing theories—the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience—and argue that at least one is false. The Growing-Block view is a theory about the nature of time. It says that past and present things exist, while future things do not, and the passage of time consists in new things coming into existence. Humean Supervenience is a theory about the nature of entities like laws, nomological possibility, counterfactuals, dispositions, causation, and chance. It says that none of (...) these entities are fundamental, since if they were, this would entail the existence of irreducible necessary connections between matters of fact. Instead, these entities supervene on a fundamental, non-nomological ‘Humean mosaic’ of property instances at spacetime points. We will further explain and motivate the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience in Sects. 2 and 3, but first, we turn to our master argument. (shrink)

Gordon's emphasizes that the process of prosecution is crucial to the idea of crime. One who commits a public wrong is properly called to public account for it, and the criminal trial constitutes such a public calling to account. The state is the proper prosecutor of crimes: since a crime is ‘our’ wrong, rather than only the victim's wrong, it is appropriate that we should prosecute it, collectively. The case is not simply V the victim, or P the plaintiff, against (...) D the defendant. It is brought, as the Americans properly have it, by ‘the People’, or by ‘the Commonwealth’, against the defendant. This is a useful way in which to think about crimes and criminalisation. This chapter tries to develop this conception of public wrongs a little further, which also involves complicating it more than a little. It works from a version of liberal communitarianism that rejects the metaphysical version of the individualist's ‘unencumbered self’; but the account sketched here should be compatible with all but the most radically individualist kinds of liberal theory. (shrink)