XLRI, in association with a few Tata Group companies, established the XLRI-JRD Tata Foundation in Business Ethics in 1991 to mark their long-standing commitment and contribution to business ethics in India. The foundation seeks to address this by publicly affirming the urgent need for ethics in business and the need to bring about a conducive culture in which it can thrive.

The tapestry of human behaviour in the marketplace today is turbulent, unpredictable, and chaotic. Yet it is also so diverse, rich and global that it presents a rare ethical and moral opportunity, and challenge, to out-behave competition and create enduring value. This is corporate ethics for corporate advantage. Corporate Ethics for Turbulent Markets: The Market Context of Executive Decisions focuses on the HOW of doing business - the economic, social, ethical, moral and spiritual values we bring to our business ventures (...) - and how thereby we impact the world. The book focuses on the LEMS (legality, ethicality, morality, and spirituality) technique that we submit as a prescriptive benchmarking tool for all corporate thinking, deliberation, explanation, evaluation, choices, strategic implementation, accountability and moral responsibility. It demonstrates that by going beyond the legal obligation (legality) to do the "right thing" (ethicality), to do the "right thing rightly" (morality), and doing the "right thing rightly and for the right intentions" (spirituality), we can create a sure strategy for good decision making and implementation that can heal the world from its current addictions to corporate fraud in all its evil forms. Envisioning a moral reawakening, this book will challenge business students and executives alike to re-evaluate the moral justification of business choices, decisions, actions and their consequences. LEMS as a four-dimensional cross-checking skill for all that we think, do, become and be takes time and patience but it can surely heal an otherwise divided and broken world.--back cover. (shrink)

Professor Oswald Szemerényi's Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, first published in 1970, remains the standard introduction to comparative Indo-European linguistics. It is available here in English for the first time, in a revised, enlarged, and updated fifth edition. The introductory section presents a general survey of the principles of diachronic-comparative linguistics, and the remainder of the book is a thorough and detailed analysis, according to those principles, of the phonological and morphological structure of the Indo-European group of languages. Each (...) section of the book has a detailed bibliography, so that the student can progress from the general overview to a more detailed examination of particular topics. (shrink)

Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politically legitimate deliberative outcome. In principle, both ideals are mutually coherent. If the information needed for a correct deliberative (...) outcome is distributed among agents, then maximising participation increases information diversity. But both ideals can also be in tension. If participants lack competence or are prone to biases, a correct deliberative outcome requires limiting participation. The central question for public argumentation, therefore, is how to strike a balance between both ideals. Rather than advocating a preferred normative framework, our main purpose is to illustrate the complexity of this theme. (shrink)

A Lost Book from J. Oswald Sanders Now Re-Released with a Beautiful New Cover "The complex strains and problems which the Christian encounters in the contemporary world find their answer, not in tranquilizers or stimulants, but in a correct understanding and application of scriptural principles." -J. Oswald Sanders, from the introduction J. Oswald Sanders (best known for his book Spiritual Leadership, which has sold over a million copies), touched hundreds of thousands of lives in his lifetime and (...) continues to inspire Christians today. His books Spiritual Leadership, Spiritual Maturity, and The Incomparable Christ are beloved and well-read to this day. But there are two of his books that readers haven’t had access to in over 30 years. A Spiritual Clinic is one of them. Life wears on us, we go through seasons of fatigue, strain and tension that take their toll, and we can easily fall into apathy. Sanders prescribes a powerful tonic of scriptural principles that lead to recovery and growth. For anyone who feels worn out from their Christian life and could use a little spiritual doctoring, A Spiritual Clinic is for you. (shrink)

Professor Oswald Szemerényi's Einführung in die vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft, first published in 1970, remains the standard introduction to comparative Indo-European linguistics. It is available here in English for the first time, in a revised, enlarged, and updated fifth edition. The introductory section presents a general survey of the principles of diachronic-comparative linguistics, and the remainder of the book is a thorough and detailed analysis, according to those principles, of the phonological and morphological structure of the Indo-European group of languages. Each (...) section of the book has a detailed bibliography, so that the student can progress from the general overview to a more detailed examination of particular topics. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

The two brothers Julius and Adolf Hurwitz were born in the middle of the nineteenth century in a small town near Hanover (not far from Göttingen). Already during their schooldays, the two of them became acquainted with mathematical problems and both started to study mathematics, but while the younger brother Adolf turned out to be extremely successful in his research, the elder brother and his work seem to be almost forgotten. This paper examines the lives and works of the two (...) brothers with particular emphasis on the contributions of Julius Hurwitz, and the subsequent reception of their research. It deals with the development of an arithmetical theory for complex continued fractions by Julius and Adolf Hurwitz around 1890 and its rediscovery in the twentieth century. (shrink)

According to Ayer, philosophy is an activity of analysis, not a means to truth. First principles and metaphysical truths can neither be established or denied byphilosophical enquiry. He tried to prove that verifibility (whether a proposition can be shown to be true or false) was the key principle of philosophical methodology.

When, in 1979, A. J. Ayer was asked for an evaluation of his youthful Language, Truth and Logic (LTL), he replied: ‘I suppose the most important of the defects was that nearly all of it was false’. Like many of the claims in the book itself, this verdict is open to question. What was wrong with LTL was not so much that what it said was false, but that it presented philosophical issues in an excessively simple and aggressive way. Yet (...) it was just this quality that put the book and its author on the philosophical map, ensuring for them an important place in the history of twentieth-century philosophy. LTL presented a challenge to traditional ways of doing philosophy, the reverberations of which are still evident today. (shrink)

When, in 1979, A. J. Ayer was asked for an evaluation of his youthful Language, Truth and Logic (LTL), he replied: ‘I suppose the most important of the defects was that nearly all of it was false’. Like many of the claims in the book itself, this verdict is open to question. What was wrong with LTL was not so much that what it said was false, but that it presented philosophical issues in an excessively simple and aggressive way. Yet (...) it was just this quality that put the book and its author on the philosophical map, ensuring for them an important place in the history of twentieth-century philosophy. LTL presented a challenge to traditional ways of doing philosophy, the reverberations of which are still evident today. (shrink)

Most arguments for moral vegetarianism rely on the premise that non-human animals can suffer. In this paper I evaluate problems that arise from Peter Carruthers’ Higher-Order Thought theory of consciousness. I argue that, even if we assume that these problems cannot be overcome, it does not follow that we should not subscribe to moral vegetarianism. I conclude that we should act as if non-human animals have subjective experiences for moral reasons, even if we cannot be certain that they do.

L'article lit la pensée de Mausbach et Nell-Breuning de façon constructive de façon à explorer la base théologique d'une éthique sociale productive. La transcendance divine est continuellement engagée dans l'histoire des hommes; par ailleurs, le développement et l'engagement des hommes dans l'histoire glorifient Dieu. Le discernement des valeurs et la doctrine de la loi naturelle rendent possible l'oeuvre de la justice. Une perspective trinitaire sur le discernement favorise l'initiative, l'engagement dans le monde, et la découverte. Les réalisations du commonweal introduisent (...) la ressemblance divine dans la société. Au milieu des conflits, la volonté manifeste un engagement souple, dirigé eschatologiquement. L'amour spécifie la justice sociale et libère; il établit ainsi un cadre civique. La révérence vis-à-vis de l'altérité divine fonde la tolérance active qui est l'expression obligée de l'amour en vue de la collaboration qui est nécessaire aujourd'hui. Cette éthique sociale fondée sur des catégories théologiques contribue à la mission chrétienne dans des sociétés complexes et turbulentes. (shrink)

Although to what extent Oswald Spengler served as a forerunner or precursor of National Socialism remains controversial, scholars unanimously agree that he was a virulent antidemocratic thinker. Indeed, the mere mentioning of his name immediately conjures up among students of German political philosophy associations of intense antidemocratic sentiment. The epithet of virulent opponent of democracy is certainly well-deserved for the period in his political-philosophical development when he was famous, spanning 1919, the year the heated controversy surrounding his major work (...) The Decline of the West erupted, to his untimely death in 1936. Yet what about the little-known, but important phase in the evolution of Spengler's political thought, the years immediately before the shocking military collapse of Imperial Germany and the outbreak of socialist revolution in the fall of 1918 aroused the hostility of the entire right against Germany's first democracy? These were years when Spengler, as an unknown private scholar industriously composing his chef-d'oeuvre, was politically inactive. Was Spengler passionately anti-democratic before he became an embittered man? The following investigation of this rather obscure but important period in his thought, which draws heavily upon his private papers in the Spengler Archives, surprisingly reveals that he was not vehemently antidemocratic during this time and was, in fact, a cynical and opportunistic conservative advocate of the idea of the quasi-democratization of the Second Reich. Spengler scholars, it should be noted, including among others Anton Mirko Koktanek, Gilbert Merlio, H. Stuart Hughes, Klemens von Klemperer, Horst Moller, Walter Struve and Detlef Felken, do not argue this novel position as they are not of the opinion that any significant changes in his attitude towards democratization in Germany took place in his intellectual career. (shrink)

*This is a project I hope to come back to one day. It stalled, a bit, on the absence of a positive theory of update I could be satisfied with* When should we believe a indicative conditional, and how much confidence in it should we have? Here’s one proposal: one supposes actual the antecedent; and sees under that supposition what credence attaches to the consequent. Thus we suppose that Oswald did not shot Kennedy; and note that under this assumption, (...) Kennedy was assassinated by someone other than Oswald. Thus we are highly confident in the indicative: if Oswald did not kill Kennedy, someone else did. (shrink)

Ardley aims to assist the re-discovery of James Oswald, Scottish common sense philosopher, Moderate churchman, and author of the two-volume Appeal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion. He also makes surprising claims about Oswald's merits as a philosopher, and about the place Oswald merits in the history of philosophy. He writes that Oswald, "more than most writers of the eighteenth century, had things of the first order to put forward", that he was "one of the (...) most gifted moral writers of his age", and that he was "the most discerning of the Scots trio [Reid, Beattie, Oswald]". He views Oswald as a staunch defender of the "philosophia perennis" and thus as standing squarely, if unwittingly, in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. And he takes Oswald to anticipate such disparate writers as Adam Smith, Burke and de Maistre, Maritain and Garrigou-Lagrange, and Kierkegaard. (shrink)

This paper sets forth a familiar theme, that science essentially consists of two interdependent episodes, one imaginative, the other critical. Hypotheses and other imaginative conjectures are the initial stage of scientific inquiry because they provide the incentive to seek the truth and a clue as to where to find it. But scientific conjectures must be subject to critical examination and empirical testing. There is a dialogue between the two episodes; observations made to test a hypothesis are the inspiration for new (...) conjectures. Inductive generalizations may also inspire hypotheses, but cannot validate them. A hypothesis is empirically tested by ascertaining whether or not predictions about the world of experience deduced from the hypothesis agree with what is actually observed. This has been appropriately considered the 'criterion of demarcation' that distinguishes science from other knowledge. But scientific hypotheses must satisfy other tests as well, e.g., whether they have explanatory value and further understanding. I briefly explore such issues as verifiability and falsifiability, empirical content and truthfulness, contingency and certainty, fact and theory, error and fraud. Science like any human activity is subject to error and to the foibles and other failings of human beings. But severe attempts of empirical falsification and other trials yield knowledge that stands the test of time and provides a foothold for further knowledge. Moreover, scientists have developed social mechanisms, such as peer review and publication, to evaluate their work. Because the research of scientists depends on the validity of previous knowledge, it is of great consequence that they discern valid from invalid knowledge and thus scientists are inclined to transcend ideology, nationality, friendship, monetary interest and other prejudices when the mettle of scientific knowledge is at stake. I use historical examples to illustrate some relevant aspects of scientific practice: its success (Mendel), misrepresentation (Darwin), ideological abuse (Lysenko), arrogant violation of the requirement of testing (Koch), theory replacement (Priestly and Lavoisier, Newton and Einstein), and the indispensability of context (Oswald Avery and Alfred Wegener). (shrink)

David Lewis has argued that there must be a difference between indicative and counterfactual conditionals beyond an indication of truth-value commitments. He cites the following contrast to show this: If Oswald did not shoot Kennedy, then someone else did. If Oswald had not shot Kennedy, then someone else would have. In response, it is shown that this difference is better explained by shifts in context. Keep context fixed, the contrast disappears. EG: If Oswald was not the one (...) who shot Kennedy, then someone else was. If Oswald had not been the one who shot Kennedy, then someone else would have been. (shrink)

A successful blending of extensive historical documentation with close systematic argument exhibiting the coherence and substance of this Scottish philosophical movement. By starting with the Common Sense criticism of the sceptical strain in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, Grave vividly conveys the philosophic context and orientation of this school. The main protagonist is Thomas Reid, although the roles of Stewart, Oswald, Beattie, and others, are also explained. By resisting the temptation of writing the history of Common Sense philosophy through the (...) spectacles of the contemporary ordinary language philosophy, Grave shows that the claims as well as the perplexities of an appeal to common sense have a complex history. A cogent and comprehensive discussion of a movement that has both historical and philosophic interest for philosophy today.--R. J. B. (shrink)

Bede's Ecclesiastical History is the most important single source for early medieval English history. Without it, we would be able to say very little about the conversion of the English to Christianity, or the nature of England before the Viking Age. Bede wrote for his contemporaries, not for a later audience, and it is only by an examination of the work itself that we can assess how best to approach it as a historical source. N.J. Higham shows, through a close (...) reading of the text, what light the Ecclesiastical History throws on the history of the period and especially on those characters from seventh- and early eighth-century England whom Bede either heroized, such as his own bishop, Acca, and kings Oswald and Edwin, or villainized, most obviously the British king Cædwalla but also Oswiu, Oswald's brother. In (Re-)Reading Bede, N.J. Higham offers a fresh approach to how we should engage with this great work of history. He focuses particularly on Bede's purposes in writing it, its internal structure, the political and social context in which it was composed and the cultural values it betrays, remembering always that our own approach to Bede has been influenced to a very great extent by the various ways in which he has been both used, as a source, and commemorated, as man and saint, across the last 1,300 years. (shrink)

The criterion of truth is the measure of the truthfulness and reliability of our knowledge. It is also the basis for determining the correctness of our concepts and how much our perceptions, ideas, and concepts accord with objective reality. Idealism holds to the idea that the criterion of truth does not involve the integration between theory as created by human intelligence and objective reality, but rather that the criterion of truth involves the "clarity and correctness" of perception, viewpoints, and concepts (...) by the subject. For instance, the Machists 1 think that the criterion of truth is experience, however, they neither interpret experience from a materialistic viewpoint, nor view experience as the result of humans interacting with nature as they reform it. The Machists view experience as a summary of perceptions and as the subjective experience of humans. In this sense, perception must be tested by perception itself. In attempting to escape the trap of solipsism , they proposed "collective experience" as the criterion of truth. According to such a view, anything that involves "common significance," that is, anything acknowledged by everyone, is the truth. Lenin exposed the absurdity of idealist theory by pointing out that by following the view of "socially formed experience" it is very easy to consider as normal the most absurd and farcical notions, such as ghosts, for such beliefs are also a form of human "experience." Religion also possesses a "common significance," for innumerable people believe in ghosts and miracles, etc. Nevertheless, religion does not become the truth because of this. The concept of the "criterion of truth" held by the Machists played a dominant role in modern bourgeois philosophy. Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Dewey, along with other reactionaries in philosophy all denied scientific criteria. They would rather that the masses remain ignorant of how to understand and determine the truth. (shrink)

In the field of economic policy, recommendations by members of the Austrian school of economics are opposed to the popular demands and statements made by most priests and other religious authorities. On the other hand, in the field of theory, the methodological individualism of the Austrians allows an easier dialogue with religious traditions respectful of free will. The influential writings of Mateo Liberatore, S.J. and Oswald von Nell-Breuning S.J, can help foster the dialogue between economists that promote market based (...) solutions and Judeo-Christian moral-philosophers. Part of Liberatore and Nell-Breunings analysis shows a good understanding of economics. But other aspects of their work also reveal misconceptions, and a radical difference in how they use and understand certain termsDans le champ de la politique économique, les recommandations des membres de l’école de l’économie Autrichienne sont opposées aux exigences populaires et aux affirmations faites par nombre de prêtres et autres autorités religieuses. D’un autre côté, dans le champ de la théorie, l’individualisme méthodo-logique des Autrichiens permet un dialogue plus souple avec les traditions religieuses respectueuses de la libre volonté. Les écrits influents du Père Mateo Liberatore et du Père Oswald von Nell-Breuning peuvent promouvoir le dialogue entre les économistes qui sont partisans des solutions marchandes et les philosophes de la morale Judéo-Chrétienne. Une partie des analyses de Liberatore et de Nell-Breuning montre une bonne compréhension de la science économique. Mais d’autres aspects de leur travail révèlent cependant des idées fausses, et une différence radicale dans la manière dont ils utilisent et comprennent certains termes. (shrink)

The divine attributes of omniscience and omnipotence have faced objections to their very consistency. Such objections rely on reasoning parallel to semantic paradoxes such as the Liar or to set-theoretic paradoxes like Russell's paradox. With the advent of paraconsistent logics, dialetheism—the view that some contradictions are true—became a major player in the search for a solution to such paradoxes. This paper explores whether dialetheism, armed with the tools of paraconsistent logics, has the resources to respond to the objections levelled against (...) the divine attributes. (shrink)

We investigated how people interpret conditionals and how stable their interpretation is over a long series of trials. Participants were shown the colored patterns on each side of a six-sided die, and were asked how sure they were that a conditional holds of the side landing upwards when the die is randomly thrown. Participants were presented with 71 trials consisting of all combinations of binary dimensions of shape (e.g., circles and squares) and color (e.g., blue and red) painted onto the (...) sides of each die. In two experiments (N1 = 66, N2 = 65), the conditional event was the dominant interpretation, followed by conjunction, and material conditional responses were negligible. In both experiments, the percentage of participants giving a conditional event response increased from around 40% at the beginning of the task to nearly 80% at the end, with most participants shifting from a conjunction interpretation. The shift was moderated by the order of shape and color in each conditional’s antecedent and consequent: participants were more likely to shift if the antecedent referred to a color. In Experiment 2 we collected response times: conditional event interpretations took longer to process than conjunction interpretations (mean difference 500 ms). We discuss implications of our results for mental models theory and probabilistic theories of reasoning. (shrink)

This book outlines the realist and pluralist philosophy of John Anderson, Australia's most original thinker. His teaching at Sydney University and his arti6es have deeply influenced Australian intellectual life. Several main themes run through his work, but Anderson never gave an overall account of his views. This is remedied here: exhibiting the range of Anderson's thought from logic, epistemology and theory of mind, to language and social theory, this volume sketches realism as a systematic philosophical position, while showing something of (...) the history of ideas in Australia. (shrink)

"The philosophical works of A. J. Ayer": p. [334]-341. Bibliography: p. [343]-346. Includes indexes.