L'inscription inédite d'Ambracie, qui est ici publiée, fait connaître le règlement frontalier entre les deux cités qui est intervenu après la destruction de l'Épire par Paul-Émile en 167 avant J.-C. Elle comprend le texte d'arbitrage entre Ambraciotes et Charadrites, puis les dispositions pratiques prises pour le bornage et le texte du serment. Elle permet de résoudre bien des problèmes de géographie historique : le fleuve Aphas est le Louros, Horraon — Horreum chez Tite-Live — est localisé dans le beau site (...) archéologique voisin d'Ammotopos, Charadros à Palaia Philippias. La délimitation frontalière peut être reconstituée et fait penser à celles qu'Ambracie tente de régler, à la même époque, avec ses voisins Athamanes et Acarnaniens. Le document permet d'identifier le grand temple archaïque dégagé à Arta comme étant celui d'Apollon Sôter et souligne les relations étroites entretenues avec l'Élide et la Thessalie ; il renseigne sur les institutions des deux cités et complète le calendrier épirote. (shrink)

The link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and competitiveness has been examined mainly at the business level. The purpose of this paper is to improve conceptual understanding and provide empirical evidence on the link between CSR and competitiveness at the national level. We draw on an eclectic-synthetic framework of international economics, strategic management and CSR literatures to explore conceptually whether and how CSR can impact on the competitiveness of nations, and test our hypotheses empirically with a sample of 19 developed (...) countries over a 6-year period. Our evidence suggests that CSR can make a significant positive contribution to national competitiveness, as measured by national living standards. We also find that countries with a relatively low innovation record can benefit more, as compared to highly innovative countries, by implementing nationwide CSR-based positioning strategies. (shrink)

Abstract I challenge the view that, in cases where time for deliberation is not an issue, instrumental rationality precludes myopic planning. I show where there is room for instrumentally rational myopic planning, and then argue that such planning is possible not only in theory, it is something human beings can and do engage in. The possibility of such planning has, however, been disregarded, and this disregard has skewed related debates concerning instrumental rationality.

L’ouvrage s’inscrit dans une tentative, inaugurée par les travaux de B. Bourgeois et F. Fischbach, de lire Hegel et Schelling à titre d’égalité en envisageant la philosophie post-kantienne non pas comme un progrès linéaire, mais comme champ de virtualités qui ont aujourd’hui un sens autant généalogique que conceptuel. L’auteur revient ainsi à un moment historico-philosophique où « sous la triple influence de Herder, de Kant et de la Révolution française », l’histoire devient « une question pr...

When we fail to achieve our goals, procrastination is often the culprit. But how exactly is procrastination to be understood? This edited volume integrates the problem of procrastination into philosophical inquiry, exploring the relationship of procrastination to agency, rationality, and ethics--topics that philosophy is well-suited to address.

Empathy is essential in story comprehension as it requires understanding of the emotions and intentions of the characters. We evaluated the sensitivity of an emotional perspective-taking task using Aesop’s Fables in relation to empathy. Participants (N = 301) were presented with 15 short fables and were asked to rate the intensity of the emotions they would feel (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, joy, trust, and anticipation) by adopting the perspective of one of the characters (offender, victim) or the observer’s perspective. (...) A data-driven approach revealed that participants’ responses were aligned with the characters’ intentions, suggesting successful emotional perspective-taking. Participants sympathized with the victim rather than the offender, demonstrating affective sharing processes. Further, participants with higher empathy scores exhibited stronger negative emotions from the victim’s perspective, independently of their level of distress. Our task was not influenced by gender effects. We suggest that the Aesop’s Fables task could provide an indirect instrument to study empathy. (shrink)

This study examines whether and how female board directors may affect corporate social performance (CSP) by drawing on social role theory and feminist ethics literature. The empirical analysis, based on a sample of 126 firms drawn from the S&P500 group of companies over a 5-year period, suggests that board gender diversity (BGD) significantly affects CSP. However, this impact depends on the social performance metric under investigation. In particular, more gender diverse boards exert stronger influence on CSP metrics focusing on ‘negative’ (...) business practices, such as the ‘concerns’ dimension of the Kinder Lydenberg Domini, Inc. (KLD) ratings. This is because such CSP ratings have the potential to induce higher levels of ‘empathic caring’, which strongly appeals to female directors. Hence, this study reveals further hidden connections in the BGD–CSP link which have important implications for managers, nongovernmental organisations and socially responsible investors. (shrink)

A variety of strategies have been used to oppose the influential Humean thesis that all of an agent’s reasons for action are provided by the agent’s current wants. Among these strategies is the attempt to show that it is a conceptual truth that reasons for action are non-relative. I introduce the notion of a basic reason- giving consideration and show that the non-relativity thesis can be understood as a corollary of the more fundamental thesis that basic reason-giving considerations are generalizable. (...) I then consider the relationship between the generalizability thesis and the Humean thesis that all of an agent’s reasons for action are provided by the agent’s current wants. I argue that, contrary to a common assumption, there is a subtle and clearly motivated version of the Humean thesis that does not deny, and so is not threatened by, the generalizability thesis. (shrink)

We present a graduate science ethics course that connects cases from the historical record to present realities and practices in the areas of social responsibility, authorship, and human/animal experimentation. This content is delivered with mixed methods, including films, debates, blogging, and practicum; even the instructional team is mixed, including a historian of science and a research scientist. What really unites all of the course’s components is the experiential aspect: from acting in historical debates to participating in the current scientific enterprise. (...) The course aims to change the students’ culture into one deeply devoted to the science ethics cause. To measure the sought after cultural change, we developed and validated a relevant questionnaire. Results of this questionnaire from students who took the course, demonstrate that the course had the intended effect on them. Furthermore, results of this questionnaire from controls indicate the need for cultural change in that cohort. All these quantitative results are reinforced by qualitative outcomes. (shrink)

Constant risk to the confidentiality, integrity and the availability of information in our everyday lives and work has increased the need for responsible use and handling of information. Security education is becoming an integral part of any undergraduate curriculum in computer science and information systems. The evolving role of security in this digital era makes it nontrivial to decide the appropriate topics that need to be covered during the course duration in a way that all aspects of security deployment are (...) examined. The only approach to this challenge is to use student-oriented learning strategies to encourage the students not only to recognize relationships between concepts and comprehend the underlying structure of what is being learned but also expose them to methods where they are responsible for their own independent learning. The current study examines the experiences gained in COMP-431 Computer Security, a senior-level undergraduate computer security course using such methods, with an emphasis on the students’ reactions, perceptions, and experiences as well as the educator’s role in the teaching and learning process. (shrink)

I reclaim the patristic Christological use of perichoresis, by showing how in bringing together different entities, such as God and Nature, and looking at them in unity as the one person of Christ, we can acknowledge the perichoresis between divine and human, divine and nature. Christological perichoresis supports the idea that the whole creation is included in God’s recreated cosmos, in response to the redeeming power of Christ who entered the web of life as a creature. The Christological reading of (...) perichoresis can be an original contribution which supports my ecofeminist Christian view. Christological perichoresis, as the divine form of contextualization, can enable us to follow Christ’s steps to contextualize by taking our own contexts seriously. Human contextualization can only be a witness of divine contextualization. (shrink)

Plato defined the primal dualism of reality: its division into the invisible eternal realm of thought and the unshaped matrix of the visible temporal realm of corporeality. The hierarchy of mind over body is reflected in the hierarchy of male over female, of human over animals, and in the class hierarchy of rulers over workers. Plato adds the alienation from body and earth, as the lowest level of cosmic hierarchy. The interrelatedness and interdependence of all cosmic beings uncover the dualism: (...) soul/body. The idea of creatio ex nihilo promotes the desecration of the created world, lying at the root of the eco-crisis. The patristic idea of creation ‘ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων’ [‘out of non-being’] refers to what in God is envisaged as the pre-ontological nihil from which all proceed, deconstructing the dualism of a spiritual and a materialistic cosmos. (shrink)

I discern in Greek myths of the goddess Athena traces of the idea of domination of mind over senses, and that men were seen as superior to women because of their naturally ruling mind. The Athenian, Platonic, androcentric, hierarchical worldview saw women as physically inferior to men. Behind courageous, wise Athena, lies Plato’s dualistic philosophy of reason, and the ideology of control. We must make a distinction between a dualistic philosophy and a holistic approach to reality. Ancient goddess Hestia’s inextinguishable (...) flame as energy of all life extended to the entire world can be read as symbolizing the interrelatedness of all life. (shrink)

How can state authority be legitimised in reference to the idea of human dignity? Jacob Weinrib offers a response to this question in his book Dimensions of Dignity. 1 The book uses elements of soc...

It is commonly held that rational preferences must be acyclic. There have, however, been cases that have been put forward as counterexamples to this view. This paper focuses on the following question: If the counterexamples are compelling and rational preferences can be cyclic, what should we conclude about the presumed acyclicity of the “better than” relation? Building on some revisionary suggestions concerning acyclicity and betterness, I make a case for hanging on to the presumption that “better than” is acyclic even (...) if “is rationally preferred to” is not. As I explain, the divergence my view makes room for does not threaten to make “better than” judgments less relevant to choice than judgments about rational preference. To the contrary, it makes them more relevant. Toward the end of the paper, I extend my results to the relation “is morally better than” in light of the possibility that there might be moral preferability cycles. (shrink)

During an interview on human rights in a TV programme, the interviewer all of a sudden said that, so far as he could understand, I was establishing a connection between philosophy and torture, and asked me what this connection was. I was shocked.In a couple of seconds I tried to guess how he could have come to such a conclusion. My response was: there is no connection between philosophy and torture, still when you look at the fact of torture with (...) philosophical-ethical knowledge, you can realize that torture does not damage, nor ‘degrade’, the human dignity of the victim of torture, as is usually accepted – e.g. in the formulation of the title of the ‘Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment’. It causes damage to the human dignity of the person who tortures. We protect or damage human dignity, but our own human dignity, by what we do and not by what we suffer, since we are responsible for what we do and not for what others do to us. What we do, or refrain from doing, depends on each of us, i.e. acting in accordance with human dignity in our relations with other human beings is a problem in our ethical relation with ourselves, in spite of the fact that our actions are directed to somebody else. (shrink)

Two main but discrepant tendencies characterize the intellectual climate of our world at the turn of the century. We promote, on the one hand, “respect for human rights,” i.e. for certain universal norms, but on the other hand, equally promote “respect to all cultures,”which are differentiated among themselves by their different world-views and their parochial norms. Not rarely do we see that the demands that such parochial norms bring are contradictory to those of human rights.

Words, as well as ways of behavior, can be the objects of value judgments. The term ‘rational’ is such a word: to be rational is to be good. This is probably why, as a reaction to ‘western rationality’, people began to speak of many ‘rationalities’, a claim propounded by postmodernists. Rather than dwelling on the historical developments that led to such a claim, the author looks at concepts relevant to the colloquium ‘The encounter between rationalities’ (on which this issue of (...) Diogenes is based), within their intellectual framework: the modernist–postmodernist debate. (shrink)

Dreadful and dreaded outcomes are sometimes brought about via the accumulation of individually trivial effects. Think about inching toward terrible health or toward an environmental disaster. In some such cases, the outcome is seen as unacceptable but is still gradually realized via an extended sequence of moves each of which is trivial in terms of its impact on the health or environment of those involved. Cases of this sort are not only practically challenging, they are theoretically challenging as well. For, (...) they raise puzzling complications concerning the assessment of conduct. In particular, given cases of this sort, we seem forced to conclude that, sometimes, each current doing in an extended sequence of moves can be correctly assessed as permissible (relative to a certain set of concerns) even though the sequence foreseeably leads to an outcome that is unacceptable (relative to that same set of concerns) and even though acceptable outcomes are available. And this seems paradoxical. I argue that this (apparent) puzzle glosses over complications associated with action individuation and units of agency. Reflection on these complications makes it clear that in cases of the sort that have given rise to the puzzle, there is an accurate way of seeing what is being done at various particular moments that clearly brings out the tight connection between a current doing and non-trivial damage that is to be expected (and is indeed bound to occur if the doing is completed without a hitch). (shrink)

Procrastination is frustrating. Because the procrastinator's frustration is self-imposed, procrastination can also be quite puzzling. I consider attempts at explaining, or explaining away, what appear to be genuine cases of procrastination. According to the position that I propose and defend, genuine procrastination exists and is supported by preference loops, which can be either stable or evanescent.

The core argument in favor of the view that immorality is a natural defect for human beings, which has been developed by Foot, assumes that if justice and compassion have important functions in human survival and reproduction, then injustice and cruelty are natural defects in human beings. But this ignores possibilities and results that cannot reasonably be ignored. Multiple and mixed naturally sound types can and do occur in nature. Moreover, research in the life sciences suggests that at least some (...) bad human behaviors, traits, or strategies are selected for and continue to have important survival-and-reproduction-related functions in human life. All this fits poorly with the position that immorality is a natural defect for human beings. Emerging as much more plausible is the competing view that, for human beings, natural soundness sometimes supports behaviors, traits, or strategies that conflict with (any ideal that can plausibly be called) moral goodness. (shrink)

Sometimes a series of choices do not serve one's concerns well even though each choice in the series seems perfectly well suited to serving one's concerns. In such cases, one has a dynamic choice problem. Otherwise put, one has a problem related to the fact that one's choices are spread out over time. This survey reviews some of the challenging choice situations and problematic preference structures that can prompt dynamic choice problems. It also reviews some proposed solutions, and explains how (...) some familiar but potentially puzzling phenomena — including, for example, self-destructive addictive behavior and dangerous environmental destruction — have been illuminated by dynamic choice theory. (shrink)

It is often supposed that, given two potential objects of choice X and Y, a specific set of circumstances, and a specific choosing agent, one of the following must be true: (1) opting for X is a better choice than opting for Y, (2) opting for Y is a better choice than opting for X, or (3) opting for X and opting for Y are exactly equally good choices. My aim in this paper is to show how some philosophical insights (...) concerning color perception can illuminate the possibility of two options, X and Y, being such that, even given a specific set of circumstances and a specific choosing agent, none of (1), (2), or (3) holds, but X and Y are positively related to one another as “on a par.”. (shrink)

I show, building on Warren Quinn's puzzle of the self-torturer, that destructive conduct with respect to the environment can flourish even in the absence of interpersonal conflicts. As Quinn's puzzle makes apparent, in cases where individually negligible effects are involved, an agent, whether it be an individual or a unified collective, can be led down a course of destruction simply as a result of following its informed and perfectly understandable but intransitive preferences. This is relevant with respect to environmental ethics, (...) since environmental damage is often the result of the accumulation of individually negligible effects. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of incomparability. It first focuses on a challenge to the small-improvement argument for incomparability and then turns to some seemingly more promising, “huge-improvement” variations on the argument. After considering an important complication, it is argued that, whether or not options can be strictly incomparable, there is room for cases beyond not just classic cases of trichotomous comparability but even beyond cases involving options that, though not trichotomously comparable, are still comparable as both positive, or both (...) negative, or, even if indeterminate, both fairly neutral. In the relevant further cases, at least one option that combines a positive feature and a negative feature is not positive, negative, neutral, or even fairly neutral. To the extent that comparability is revealed as applicable in such cases, skepticism about incomparability can persist, but its significance is reduced by the revelation of how little comparability requires. (shrink)

I examine current models of self-destructive addictive behaviour, and argue that there is an important place for Ulysses contracts in coping with addictive behaviour that stems from certain problematic preference structures. Given the relevant preference structures, interference based on a Ulysses contract need not involve questionably favouring an agent’s past preferences over her current preferences, but can actually be justified in terms of the agent’s current concerns and commitments.

This book seeks to fill a void in contemporary aesthetics scholarship by considering the cognitive features that make the aesthetic and artistic worthy of philosophical study. Aesthetic cognition has been largely abandoned by analytical philosophy, which instead tends to focus its attention on the ‘non-exhibited’ properties of artwork or issues concerning semantic and syntactic structure. The Cognitive Basis of Aesthetics innovatively seeks to correct the marginalization of aesthetics in analytical philosophy by reinterpreting aesthetic cognition through an integration of Ernst Cassirer’s (...) philosophy of symbolic forms with Paul Crowther’s theory of imagination and philosophy of art. This integration has three important outcomes: 1) it explains why the aesthetic and artistic constitute a unique form of knowledge; 2) it shows the role this plays in the formation of aesthetics as a discipline; and 3) it describes why aesthetic cognition is so deeply engaging. This book’s unique theoretical approach engages with important works of visual, conceptual, and digital art, as well as literature, music, and theatre. (shrink)

This paper focuses on a puzzling but familiar strategy for coping with procrastination that has not yet been analyzed in the literature on that topic. The strategy involves leveraging control. In employing the strategy, we take advantage of the possibility that poor self-control can be a local trait rather than a robust character trait.

This paper draws a distinction between two closely related conceptions of 'preference' that is of great significance relative to a set of interrelated debates in rational choice theory. The distinction is particularly illuminating in relation to the idea that there is a rational defect inherent in individuals with intransitive preferences and, relatedly, in democratic collectives. I use the distinction to show that things are more complicated than they seem.

The puzzle of the self-torturer raises intriguing questions concerning rationality, cyclic preferences, and resoluteness. Interestingly, what makes the case puzzling has not been clearly pinpointed. The puzzle, it seems, is that a series of rational choices foreseeably leads the self-torturer to an option that serves his preferences worse than the one with which he started. But this is a very misleading way of casting the puzzle. I pinpoint the real puzzle of the self-torturer and, in the process, reveal a neglected (...) but crucial dimension of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

This paper discusses the nature and limits of player embodiment within digital games. We identify a convergence between everyday bodily actions and activity within digital environments, and a trend towards incorporating natural forms of movement into gaming worlds through mimetic control devices. We examine recent literature in the area of immersion and presence in digital gaming; Calleja’s (2011) recent Player Involvement Model of gaming is discussed and found to rely on a probematic notion of embodiment as 'incorporation'. We go on (...) to further reflect on the nature of player involvement in digital gaming environments by applying insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. It is argued that digital embodiment differs so significantly from primordial embodiment that any idea of total immersion is simply fantasy. We subsequently argue that digital game media nonetheless provide us with unique opportunities for exploring the nature of distinctively human forms of embodiment, and so we need more complete and more reliable phenomenological descriptions of the experiences associated with computer games. (shrink)

It is natural to assume that we would not be willing to compromise the environment if the conveniences and luxuries thereby gained did not have a substantial positive impact on our happiness. But there is room for skepticism and, in particular, for the thesis that we are compromising the environment to no avail in that our conveniences and luxuries are not having a significant impact on our happiness, making the costs incurred for them a waste. One way of defending the (...) no-avail thesis fits neatly with what I will call the exalted view , according to which the key to human happiness lies in the mental (or spiritual) realm rather than in the material realm. After considering this familiar approach to defending the no-avail thesis, I sketch out a very different approach—one that will, I hope, appeal to those who have doubts about the familiar line of defense. The alternative and novel approach builds on a strand of empirical research on (self-reports concerning) happiness that suggests that we are, in a way, quite shallow, and that our happiness depends on whether we are keeping up with the Joneses. I call this view concerning happiness the worldly view . My reasoning suggests that even if the current rift between exalted pictures of human nature and happiness, on the one hand, and worldly pictures of human nature and happiness, on the other, cannot be repaired, it need not hinder agreement on the plausibility of the no-avail thesis; rather, with the rift come two different routes to the same thesis. I conclude that we should take the no-avail thesis very seriously, and that evidence that we are shallow materialists need not be bad news for the environment(alist). (shrink)

Discussion of temptation has figured prominently in recent debates concerning instrumental rationality. In light of some particularly interesting cases in which giving in to temptation involves acting in accordance with one’s current evaluative rankings, two lines of thought have been developed: one appeals to the possibility of deviating from a well-grounded resolution, and the other appeals to the possibility of being insufficiently responsive to the prospect of future regret. But the current appeals to resolutions and regret and some of the (...) verdicts provided face some serious challenges. Building on recent work concerning instrumental rationality, and delving into some important complications concerning human psychology, I revisit the relevant cases of temptation and analyze them in a way that puts resolutions, rational failure, and regret in their proper places. In the process, I highlight and explain the significance of the neglected fact that resolutions can introduce effective anchor points, which can serve agents faced with temptation well, even if the resolutions are abandoned. (shrink)

This edited volume starts in on the task of integrating the problem of procrastination into philosophical inquiry.