This chapter examines cultural issues related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) as practiced by German firms operating in Poland. Recognizing the interdependence of a corporation’s social and financial performance, the chapter attempts to analyze how German firms can increase profit through good social performance. However, implementing CSR measures requires detailed knowledge of Polish society and culture. Behavior and attitudes must be considered to understand a company’s CSR target group andachieve the desired financial return from investments in CSR. The authors characterize (...) the most profitable types of CSR initiatives available to firms operating in Poland. (shrink)

The human sciences—including psychology, anthropology, and social theory—are widely held to have been born during the eighteenth century. This first full-length, English-language study of the Enlightenment sciences of humans explores the sources, context, and effects of this major intellectual development. The book argues that the most fundamental inspiration for the Enlightenment was the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Natural philosophers from Copernicus to Newton had created a magisterial science of nature based on the realization that the physical world operated (...) according to orderly, discoverable laws. Eighteenth-century thinkers sought to cap this achievement with a science of _human_ nature. Belief in the existence of laws governing human will and emotion; social change; and politics, economics, and medicine suffused the writings of such disparate figures as Hume, Kant, and Adam Smith and formed the basis of the new sciences. A work of remarkable cross-disciplinary scholarship, this volume illuminates the origins of the human sciences and offers a new view of the Enlightenment that highlights the period's subtle social theory, awareness of ambiguity, and sympathy for historical and cultural difference. (shrink)

This essay sets forth the decisive notions and postulates of process philosophy in Process Philosophy and Social Thought, edited by John B. Cobb, Jr. and W. Widick Schroeder. After commenting on the circumstances in which process philosophy came to be a major option among philosophical theologians, I provide some amplification of those notions and postulates. Then, selecting material from the eighteen articles in the volume, I offer several critical assessments of the process viewpoint and its relation to science and to (...) the contemporary call for liberation. (shrink)

Would personal immortality have any value for one so endowed? An affirmative answer would seem so obvious to some that they might be tempted to go so far as to claim that immortality is a condition of life's having any value at all. The claim that immortality is a necessary condition for the meaningfulness of life seems untenable. What, however, of the claim that immortality is a sufficient condition for the meaningfulness of life? Though some might hold this to be (...) the characteristic religious view, this is certainly disputable. Thus McTaggart reminds us, for instance, that ‘Buddhism... holds immortality to be the natural state of man, from which only the most perfect can escape.’ I want to argue that we can imagine variants of personal immortality which would not be valuable and hence immortality in itself cannot be a sufficient condition for value. What is required for the meaningfulness of life is that life exhibit certain valuable qualities. But then the endless exhibition of these qualities is not only unnecessary for the meaningfulness of life, but the endlessness of a life can even devalue those qualities that would make valuable a single, bounded life. (shrink)

Traditional Western conceptions of immortality characteristically presume that we come into existence at a particular time , live out our earthly span and then die. According to some, our death may then be followed by a deathless post-mortem existence. In other words, it is assumed that we are born only once and die only once; and that – at least on some accounts – we are future-sempiternal creatures. The Western secular tradition affirms at least ; the Western religious tradition – (...) Christianity, Judaism, Islam – generally affirms both and . The Indian tradition, however, typically denies both and . That is, it maintains both that we all have pre-existed beginninglessly, and that we have lived many times before and must live many times again in this world. The Indian picture, then, is that we have died and been reborn innumerable times previous to this life and we will be reborn many times in the future. This is sometimes called the Indian belief in reincarnation. The difficulty with this usage is that the term ‘reincarnation’ suggests a belief in an immortal soul that transmigrates or reincarnates. However Buddhism, while affirming rebirth, specifically denies the existence of an eternal soul. Thus the term ‘rebirth’ is preferable for referring to the generally espoused Indian doctrine. (shrink)

Brown, Roy W The International Panel on Climate Change issued its second-last full report in 2007. The experts hoped at that time that, provided sufficient measures were taken soon enough to reduce CO2 emissions, it should be possible to limit global warming to just 2 degrees Celsius over the coming century. But over the past five years and despite the economic downturn, the effects of global warming have been accelerating and the experts' predictions, no doubt mindful of the massive political (...) opposition to their message, were quite simply too optimistic. In this article I summarise the evidence that the consequences of global warming will be devastating within the lifetimes of most people alive today. (shrink)

"This philosophical study offers a representation of the logical structure of classical Hindu ethics and argues for the availability of at least the core of this ethical system to Westerners."--Page [4] Cover.

This wide-ranging introduction to classical Indian philosophy is philosophically rigorous without being too technical for beginners. Through detailed explorations of the full range of Indian philosophical concerns, including some metaphilosophical issues, it provides readers with non-Western perspectives on central areas of philosophy, including epistemology, logic, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of religion. Chapters are structured thematically, with each including suggestions for further reading. This provides readers with an informed overview, whilst enabling them to focus on particular topics if (...) needed. Translated Sanskrit texts are accompanied by authorial explanations and contextualizations, giving the reader an understanding of the argumentative context and philosophical style of Indian texts. A detailed glossary and a guide to Sanskrit pronunciation equip readers with the tools needed for reading and understanding Sanskrit terms and names. The book will be an essential resource for both beginners and advanced students of philosophy and Asian studies. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with Indian Yogācāra philosophers’ treatment of the problem of other minds in the face of a threatened collapse into solipsism suggested by Vasubandhu’s epistemological argument for idealism. I discuss the attempts of Dharmakīrti and Ratnakīrti to address this issue, concluding that Dharmakīrti is best seen as addressing the epistemological problem of other minds and Ratnakīrti as addressing the conceptual problem of other minds.

INTRODUCTION In The World as Will and Representation Schopenhauer writes: Death is the real inspiring genius or Musagetes of philosophy, and for this reason ...

In this essay I defend both the individual plausibility and conjoint consistency of two theses. One is the Intentionality Thesis: that all mental states are intentional . The other is the Self-Awareness Thesis: that if a subject is aware of an object, then the subject is also aware of being aware of that object. I begin by arguing for the individual prima facie plausibility of both theses. I then go on to consider a regress argument to the effect that the (...) two theses are incompatible. I discuss three responses to that argument, and defend one of them. (shrink)

One familiar philosophical use of the term ‘evil’ just contrasts it with ‘good’, i.e., something is an evil if it is a bad thing, one of life’s “minuses.” This is the sense of ‘evil’ that is used in posing the traditional theological problem of evil, though it is customary there to distinguish between moral evils and natural evils. Moral evils are those bad things that are caused by moral agents; natural evils are those bad things that are not caused by (...) moral agents. Since the existence of evils of both sorts is usually taken to be indubitable, the problem of evil is then construed as the problem of how to square their existence with the existence of an all-powerful and benevolent God. (shrink)

One familiar philosophical use of the term ‘evil’ just contrasts it with ‘good’, i.e., something is an evil if it is a bad thing, one of life’s “minuses.” This is the sense of ‘evil’ that is used in posing the traditional theological problem of evil, though it is customary there to distinguish between moral evils and natural evils. Moral evils are those bad things that are caused by moral agents; natural evils are those bad things that are not caused by (...) moral agents. Since the existence of evils of both sorts is usually taken to be indubitable, the problem of evil is then construed as the problem of how to square their existence with the existence of an all-powerful and benevolent God. (shrink)

Naiyāyikas are fond of a slogan, which often appears as a kind of motto in their texts: "Whatever exists is knowable and nameable." What does this mean? Is it true? The first part of this essay offers a brief explication of this important Nyāya thesis; the second part argues that, given certain plausible assumptions, the thesis is demonstrably false.

Questions about the meaning of life have traditionally been regarded as being of particular concern to philosophers. It is sometimes complained that contemporary analytic philosophy fails to address such questions, but there do exist illuminating recent discussions of these questions by analytic philosophers.1Perhaps what lurks behind the complaint is a feeling that these discussions are insufficiently close to actual living situations and hence often seem rather thin and bland compared with the vivid portrayals of such situations in autobiography or fiction. (...) I therefore want to focus on two works by Tolstoy—one autobiographical, one fictional—and try to see what philosophical lessons can be learned from them, particularly with regard to questions about the relation of death to the meaning of life. (shrink)

We have compared two different laser-induced optical light traps for their utility in moving organelles within living animal cells and walled fungal cells. The first trap employed a continuous wave neodymium-yttrium aluminum garnet laser at a wavelength of 1.06 micron. A second trap was constructed using a titanium-sapphire laser tunable from 700 to 1000 nm. With the latter trap we were able to achieve much stronger traps with less laser power and without damage to either mitochondria or spindles. Chromosomes and (...) nuclei were easily displaced, nucleoli were separated and moved far away from interphase nuclei, and Woronin bodies were removed from septa. In comparison, these manipulations were not possible with the Nd-YAG laser-induced trap. The optical force trap induced by the tunable titanium-sapphire laser should find wide application in experimental cell biology because the wavelength can be selected for maximization of force production and minimization of energy absorption which leads to unwanted cell damage. (shrink)

The publication of Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons in 1984 revived and reshaped the debate on personal identity in Western philosophy. Not only does Parfit argue forcefully and ingeniously for a revisionary Reductionist theory of persons and their diachronic identity, but he also draws radical normative inferences from such a theory. Along the way he also mentions Indian Buddhist parallels to his own Reductionist theory. Some of these parallels are explored here, while particular attention is also paid to the supposed (...) normative implications of Reductionism. (shrink)

What have modern Buddhist ethicists to say about abortion and is there anything to be learned from it? A number of writers have suggested that Buddhism (particularly Japanese Buddhism) does indeed have something important to offer here: a response to the dilemma of abortion that is a 'middle way' between the pro-choice and pro-life extremes that have polarised the western debate. I discuss what this suggestion might amount to and present a defence of its plausibility.

The lack of interest in history in ancient India has often been noted and contrasted with the situation in China and the West. Notwithstanding the vast body of Indian literature in other fields, there is a remarkable dearth of historical writing in the period before the Muslim conquest and an associated indifference to historiography. Various explanations have been offered for this curious phenomenon, some of which appeal to the supposed currency of certain Indian philosophical theories. This essay critically examines such (...) "philosophical explanations."I argue that it is not true that there was no history in ancient India, and it is not surprising that there was no developed historiography or scientific history. It is both true and surprising that there was no real importance attached to history in ancient India. An adequate philosophical explanation for this historical phenomenon, however, is not to be found in appeals to the influence of indigenous metaphysical theories about time and the self. A much more plausible philosophical explanation appeals instead to certain features of classical Indian epistemology. (shrink)

Philosophers of language and linguists need to be wary of generalizing from too small a sample of natural languages. They also need to be wary of neglecting possible insights from philosophical traditions that have focused on natural languages other than the most familiar Western ones. Take, for example, classical Indian philosophy, where philosophical concerns with language were very much involved with the early development of Sanskrit linguistics. Indian philosophers and linguists frequently discussed more general issues about semantics, often in ways (...) that are both similar to and interestingly different from Western philosophers.One such issue is the problem of sentential unity: what is the relation of our understanding of the meaning of a sentence to our understanding of the meaning of the words that compose it? If words have meanings, why is the meaning of a sentence not just the meaning of the words that compose it? A challenging Indian response is that of the grammarian and philosopher Bhartṛhari (fifth-century), who advocated for a kind of sentence-holism according to which words are unreal and sentence-meaning is primary. (shrink)

Damien and John Keown claim that there is important common ground between Buddhism and Christianity on the issue of euthanasia and that both traditions oppose it for similar reasons in order to espouse a "sanctity of life" position. I argue that the appearance of consensus is partly created by their failure to specify clearly enough certain key notions in the argument: particularly Buddhism, euthanasia and the sanctity of life. Once this is done, the Keowns' central claims can be seen to (...) be either false or only restrictedly true. (shrink)

Associated with the successful development of computer technology has been an increasing acceptance of computational theories of the mind. But such theories also seem to close the gap between ourselves and machines, threatening traditional notions of our special value as non-physical conscious minds. Prima facie, Sāmkhya-Yoga - the oldest school of classical Indian philosophy, with its dualism between purusa and prakrti - seems a case in point. However, Sāmkhya-Yoga dualism is not straightforwardly a mind-body dualism and in order to understand (...) exactly where it stands on the mind-body problem we need a more nuanced characterisation of that problem than is usual. Once this is done, it seems that Sāmkhya-Yoga may well be able to accommodate the most plausible parts of the computational theory of mind. (shrink)

A thought that we all entertain at some time or other is that the course of our lives might have been very different from the way they in fact have been, with the consequence that we might have been rather different sorts of persons than we actually are. A less common, but prima facie intelligible thought is that we might never have existed at all, though someone rather like us did. Arguably, any plausible theory of personal identity should be able (...) to accommodate both possibilities. Certain currently popular Reductionist theories of personal identity, however, seem to be deficient in precisely this respect. This paper explores some Reductionist responses to that challenge. (shrink)

There is an apparent tension between two familiar platitudes about the meaning of life: (i) that 'meaning' in this context means 'value', and (ii) that such meaning might be ineffable. I suggest a way of trying to bring these two claims together by focusing on an ideal of a meaningful life that fuses both the axiological and semantic senses of 'significant'. This in turn allows for the possibility that the full significance of a life might be ineffable not because its (...) axiological significance is ineffable, but because its semantic significance is ineffable in virtue of the signification relation itself being unsignifiable. I then explore to what degree this claim about signification can be adequately defended. (shrink)

The modern environmental movement has a tradition of respect for indigenous cultures and many environmentalists believe that there are important ecological lessons to be learned from studying the traditional life styles of indigenous peoples. More recently, however, some environmentalists have become more sceptical. This scepticism has been sharpened by current concerns with the cause of indigenous rights. Indigenous peoples have repeatedly insisted on their rights to pursue traditional practices or to develop their lands, even when the exercise of these rights (...) has implications in conflict with environmentalist values. These conflicts highlight some important questions in environmental ethics, particularly about the degree to which global environmental justice should be constrained by therecognition of indigenous rights. I explore some of these issues and argue for the relevance of the “capability approach” to environmental justice. (shrink)

Associated with the successful development of computer technology has been an increasing acceptance of computational theories of the mind. But such theories also seem to close the gap between ourselves and machines, threatening traditional notions of our special value as non-physical conscious minds. Prima facie, Sāmkhya-Yoga - the oldest school of classical Indian philosophy, with its dualism between purusa ('self', 'consciousness') and prakrti ('nature', 'matter') - seems a case in point. However, Sāmkhya-Yoga dualism is not straightforwardly a mind-body dualism and (...) in order to understand exactly where it stands on the mind-body problem we need a more nuanced characterisation of that problem than is usual. Once this is done, it seems that Sāmkhya-Yoga may well be able to accommodate the most plausible parts of the computational theory of mind. (shrink)

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.