Abstract:During recent years, the principle and practice of employment-at-will have been under attack. While progress has been made in eroding the practice, the principle still governs the philosophical assumptions underlying employment practices in the United States, and, indeed, EAW has been promulgated as one of the ways to address economic ills in other countries. This paper will briefly review the major critiques of EAW. Given the failure of these arguments to erode the underpinnings of EAW, we shall suggest new avenues (...) for approaching employment issues to achieve the desirable goal of employee dignity and respect. (shrink)

This article presents a response to Richard Rorty's paper "Is Philosophy Relevant to Business Ethics?" The author questions Rorty's views on the depreciation of the role of philosophy in applied ethics, and outlines four reasons why philosophy retains its relevance. The author addresses the role of moral reasoning in the development of the moral imagination. The author also concludes that humans have the means necessary to make moral progress and are capable of moral reasoning, and need only to develop a (...) strong moral imagination. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se estudia la crítica que ha formulado al liberalismo el filósofo canadiense Charles Taylor. Se plantea en el trabajo la hipótesis de que dicha crítica se sustenta en una filosofía de carácter comunitarista, la que puede servir de base a un proyecto de convivencia social distinto al liberal. Como parte de ese planteamiento, se expone la posición de Taylor frente al debate que durante los últimos veinte años, aproximadamente, se ha venido desarrollando entre filósofos liberales y (...) comunitarios, especialmente en el mundo anglosajón. A partir de una visión general sobre esa discusión, se analizan aspectos centrales del pensamiento tayloriano. (shrink)

This paper presents the design, simulation, and experimental verification of the fractional-order multiscroll Lü chaotic system. We base them on op-amp-based approximations of fractional-order integrators and saturated series of nonlinear functions. The integrators are first-order active realizations tuned to reduce the inaccuracy of the frequency response. By an exponential curve fitting, we got a convenient design equation for realizing fractional-order integrators of orders from 0.1 to 0.95. The results include simulations in SPICE of the mathematical description and the electronic implementation (...) and experimental measurements that confirm them. Monte Carlo and sensitivity tests revealed a robust realization. Contrary to its passive counterparts, the suggested realizations significantly reduce design and implementation efforts by favoring resistors and capacitors with commercial values and reducing hardware requirements. (shrink)

Language and facticity in Heidegger’s lecture of Saint Augustine. The phenomenological analysis of the Confessions of Saint Augustine gave to Heidegger the opportunity to radicalize the deconstruction of the theoretical path do God and to discover the factical life under the “formal indication” of “the historical”. In Book X of the Confessions Heidegger found an authentic experience of temporality, breaking down with the cosmological concept of time characteristic of Greek philosophy and of metaphysical tradition. The confrontation with such an experience (...) is inscribed in Heidegger’s interpretation of the augustinian concept “cura’‘, that Heidegger will incorporate in Sein und Zeit, as an “existential” accountable for the whole Daseins’s existential structure. So, the phenomenological description of “care”, in the double modality of authenticity or unauthenticity in the Freiburger Vorlesung de 1921 will also lead the heideggerian’s investigation in Sein und Zeit in the direction of the ambiguity of both Daseins’s existence, which moves back and forward, and of Dasein’s language, which swings between Rede und Gerede. (shrink)

In Sein und Zeit, the Dasein, thrown in the world by Geworfenheit and relaunched by Entwurf (projection) into the future, experiences itself as a “Self”. This exercise of existence cannot escape the critique of solipsism. However, paragraph 29 — about the existentiale of Befindlichkeit — opens an access way to the Other, which later will be ceaselessly explored by Heidegger, after having found the Stimmungen of the Greek beginning in Holderlin’s poetry and the Grund Stimmungen of “the night of the (...) gods” and of the forgetfulness of being of our time. Not until the fifties and the mystical experience of the fourfold (das Geviert) will Heidegger find the possibility of transmuting the experience of the Other from a πόλεμος into a being-in-harmony (stimmen). This unique path of affectivity, asserted in paragraph 29 of Sein und Zeit, will enable Heidegger to reach an essential way of working out the question of Otherness, that only right now we may be starting to understand. (shrink)

One of the distinctive features of Anna Julia Cooper’s political philosophy and philosophy of education is the frequency with which she uses corporeal and organicist imagery to support her analyses...

Talking about the possibility or impossibility annihilation of nature by man, is in the end an endless polemic for the unsustainable use of natural resources implies the annihilation of humanity itself, and also, insofar every individual imaginary, as an ideal, contains the notion of self-preservation.However, the fact is that in our day such possibility achieved a high degree of probability. Therefore, we ask ourselves: how did that happen? In this work, we shall discuss this problem through Schelling’s notion of self-positing (...) of the Geist as uncon ditional freedom. Firstly seeking to clarify the reasons why we have come to an impasse in our day, we will present the difficulty Schelling faced in considering the I as the principle in the System of Transcendental Idealism. Then we show the passage to his philosophy of identity as an attempt to show how the individual of empirical consciousness can be free and at the same time establishes an universal-historical relationship, valid for the whole diversity of finite consciousnesses. In a third moment, we will present his notion of Abfall (“Philosophy and Religion”) through which the author demonstrates how the particular intuits the universal. Finally, taking into account the dialectic of the imagination implicit in the notion of Abfall, we will attempt to point a guiding direction on the issue of preservation of nature and therefore of man. (shrink)

In the 2nd half of the XVIlth century the Pósito of Murcia was a resource of credit used by the Town Council to help finance their own chronic detlcit or sorne other property more endangered. However, it was not only the main institution of the town who profit from the resources which were available to buy wheat: Sorne of the Councillors (Regidores), the Administrator or several people related to the Pósito got somehow a treatmenl of advanlage under lhe form of (...) credit. In other ocasions, as in the fluctuation in the raising of the wheat price, il was the Pósito the recipient of loans from Councillors, the oligarchy or private citizens. (shrink)

Eighteenth-century scientist-turned-theologian Emanuel Swedenborg had a deep understanding of the nature of reality that resonates both with mystical traditions and with artists and poets. In this volume, philosopher José Antonio Antón-Pacheco explores Swedenborg's views on heaven, angels, primordial language, and the spiritual history of humanity, in the process linking Swedenborg's thought to that of Jorge Luis Borges, Soren Kirkegaard, Henry Corbin, and Ibn 'Arabi, among others.

The ways in which knowledge relates to power have been much discussed in radical education theory. New emphasis on the role of gender and the growing debate about subjectivity have deepened the discussion, while making it more complex. In Getting Smart , Patti Lather makes use of her unique integration of feminism and postmodernism into critical education theory to address some of the most vital questions facing education researchers and teachers.

Introduction to the Institutional Logics Perspective -- Precursors to the Institutional Logics Perspective -- Defining the Inter-institutional System -- The Emergence, Stability and Change of the Inter-institutional System -- Micro-Foundations of Institutional Logics -- The Dynamics of Organizational Practices and Identities -- The Emergence and Evolution of Field-Level Logics -- Implications for Future Research.

In Frege's Conception of Logic Patricia A. Blanchette explores the relationship between Gottlob Frege's understanding of conceptual analysis and his understanding of logic.

This paper examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture in two large international CPA firms, auditors'' personal values and the ethical orientation that those values dictate, and judgments in ethical dilemmas typical of those that accountants face. Using an experimental task consisting of multiple judgments designed to vary in "moral intensity" (Jones, 1991), and unique as well as tried-and-true approaches to variable measurements, this study examined the judgments of more than three hundred participants in our study. ANCOVA and path analysis (...) results indicate that: (1) Ethical judgments in situations of high moral intensity are affected by personal values and by environmental variables, such as the professional code of conduct (direct and indirect effects) and previous ethics instruction (direct effect only). (2) Corporate ethical culture, and a relatively strong firm rules-orientation, affect auditors'' idealism but not relativism, and therefore indirectly affect ethical judgments. Jones'' (1991) moral intensity argument is supported: differences in the characteristics of specific judgment tasks apparently result in different decision processes. (shrink)

Habit and Embodiment in Merleau-PontyIntroductionMerleau-Ponty (French phenomenological philosopher, born in 1908 and deceased in 1961) refers to habit in various passages of his Phenomenology of Perception as a relevant issue in his philosophical and phenomenological position. Through his exploration of this issue he explains both the pre-reflexive character that our original linkage with the world has, as well as the kind of “understanding” that our body develops with regard to the world. These two characteristics of human existence bear a close (...) relation with the vision of an embodied mind sustained by Gallagher and Zahavi in their work The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science. Merleau-Ponty uses concepts like those of the lived or own body and of lived space in order to emphasize, from a first-person perspective, the co-penetration that exists between subject and world.Gallagher and Zahavi have regained the experience of phenomenology, especially that of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, to contribute to the development of the cognitive sciences. Via the phenomenological approach to the reality of habit, a new understanding of the body becomes possible for us, such that it becomes characterized “as subject, as experiencer, as agent”, and at the same time we can understand “the way the body structures our experience” (Gallagher and Zahavi, 2008). Additionally, the idea of a pre-reflexive understanding is conceived of by these authors... (shrink)

In Emotions and Reasons, Patricia Greenspan offers an evaluative theory of emotion that assigns emotion a role of its own in the justification of action. She analyzes emotions as states of object-directed affect with evaluative propositional content possibly falling short of belief and held in mind by generalized comfort or discomfort.

Husserl’s writings on sociality have received increasing attention in recent years. Despite this growing interest, Husserl’s reflections on the specific role of communication remain underexplored. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by reconstructing the various ways in which Husserl draws systematic connections between communication and communalization. As will become clear, Husserl’s analysis converges with much more recent ideas defended by Margaret Gilbert and Naomi Eilan.

Abstract:In this work, we consider the essence of human freedom as a living link among the forces of the individuation process thought aesthetically; that is, because human understanding is synthetic, imagination can elaborate a whole world that is not linked to conceptual knowledge. Precisely because of that, we can find a way of relationship between ourselves and the environment that is not binary, such as when we ask ourselves whether the emission of carbon gas resulting from our human intervention is (...) harmful to the environment or not. To do so, we will initially outline the meaning of the symbolic (Sinnbild) in Schelling. Then, we will see how Schelling reaches the material conditions of objectification for an extra-theoretical synthesis by which, in a single move, the universe is immediately given. Finally, we turn to the specificity of human freedom and the dual nature of the I, which allows us to understand that the possibility of our human freedom does not consist in being able to choose between good and evil; rather, its possibility consists in a capacity (Vermögen) for good and evil. (shrink)

Introduction : schizoanalysis, digital screens and new brain circuits -- Schizoid minds, delirium cinema and powers of machines of the invisible -- Illusionary perception and powers of the false -- Surveillance screens and powers of affect -- Signs of time : meta/physics of the brain-screen -- Degrees of belief : epistemology of probabilities -- Powers of creation : aesthetics of material-force -- The open archive : cinema as world-memory -- Divine in(ter)vention : micropolitics and resistance -- Logistics of perception 2.0 (...) : multiple screens as affective weapons -- Conclusion : the neuro-image : brain-screens from the future. (shrink)