This paper provides an exploratory comparative assessment of the institutional pressures influencing corporate social responsibility in a developed country, UK, vs. a developing country, Brazil, based on a survey of different actors. Information on sustainability concerns, organizational strategies and mechanisms of pressure was collected through interviews with environmental regulatory agencies, financial institutions, media and non-governmental organizations. Our results confirm that the more advanced awareness and CSR responsiveness in the UK is a consequence of a predominance of coercive and normative forces (...) on the organizational field. The institutional forces tend to build a Brazilian organizational field that is relational based and risk intensive. The findings lend support to the view that CSR responses are unlikely to be easily transformed into uniform standardized practices across the globe. This paper contributes to a collective understanding of the organizational field and a common template for CSR in the context of developed and developing countries. (shrink)

Tesis doctoral presentada en el departament de Lògica Història i Filosofia de la Ciencia de la Universitat de Barcelona per optar al títol de Doctor en Filosofia.

Reponse to Peter Milne (2005)'s argument agaist maximalism about truthmaking.

This wide-ranging collection of essays contains eighteen original articles by authors representing some of the most important recent work on Wittgenstein. It deals with questions pertaining to both the interpretation and application of Wittgenstein s thought and the editing of his works. Regarding the latter, it also addresses issues concerning scholarly electronic publishing. The collection is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction which lays out the content and arguments of each contribution. Contributors: Knut Erik Tranoy, Lars Hertzberg, Georg Henrik von Wright, (...) Marie McGinn, Cora Diamond, James Conant, David G. Stern, Eike von Savigny, P.M.S. Hacker, Hans-Johann Glock, Allan Janik, Kristof Nyiri, Antonia Soulez, Brian McGuinness, Anthony Kenny, Joachim Schulte, Herbert Hrachovec, Cameron McEwen.". (shrink)

My aim is to defend a peculiar epistemic version of the particularity thesis, which results from a sui generis combination of what I call the ‘singular relational view’ and what I call the ‘relativistic content view.’ Particulars are not represented as part of putative singular content. Instead, we are perceptually acquainted with them in the relevant sense that experience puts us in direct perceptual contact with them. And the content of experience is best modeled as a propositional function, that is, (...) the content of a complex predicate that is true or false only relative to some circumstances of evaluation. (shrink)

Ethical principles are fundamental for the exercise of any profession. Portuguese psychologists have waited for 30 years for professional validation. This paper will define the Portuguese psychologists’ ethical principles, with a universal view as a starting point and then an adaptation to the cultural and professional reality in Portugal. The level of acceptability of these principles will be ascertained in a later paper.

Treatise on the theory of Advaita Vedanta philosophy.

Intersectionality is the notion that concerns the complexity of the experiences of individuals in virtue of their belonging to multiple socially significant categories. One of its main insights is that the way society is structured around categories such as gender, race, sexuality, class, etc., produces distinctive and specific forms of discrimination and privilege for groups in the intersections. In this paper, we suggest conceiving intersectionality as a general metaphysical framework wherein specific claims to the effect that the experiences of discrimination (...) of Black women, among others, can be fruitfully formulated and examined. The main claim is that intersectional experiences emerge from the conjunction of social categories when social structures make them relevant vis-à-vis discrimination and privilege. We then argue that our view has three main virtues: metaphysical neutrality, explanatory flexibility and methodological openness. Explaining these virtues will allow us to contrast our proposal with alternatives from the recent literature. (shrink)

One thousand four-hundred thirty Portuguese psychologists answered a questionnaire that had been designed in order to ascertain the level of acceptability of a set of proposed ethical principles, which subsequently served as a basis for the Portuguese Psychologists’ Ethics Code. On the one hand, the results show that, as expected, the ethical principles rated high on the evaluation scale. On the other hand, the results also highlighted the need for a formal regulation of the practice of psychology in Portugal, especially (...) in view of participants’ noticeable failure to recognize the importance of the principle of professional integrity. The responsibility of psychologists in modern societies is huge. As such, the large number of different training programs in Portugal, and the implied lack of a strong professional identity, is a cause of concern. The creation of a professional association allows an external identification of the profession in terms of aims and methods. The main goal of such an association is to promote public trust and enhance public demand. The results also indicate that training and experience lead to a higher valorization of ethical principles, and this is an insight that will be of great importance to the professional practice of psychology. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a new reading of transcendental idealism. For a start, I endorse Allison’s rejection of the traditional so-called two-world view and, hence, of Guyer and Van Cleve’s ontological phenomenalism. But following Allais, I also reject Allison’s metaphysical deflacionism: transcendental idealism is metaphysically committed to the existence of things in themselves, noumena in the negative sense. Nevertheless, in opposition to Allais, I take Kant’s claim that appearances are “mere representations” inside our minds seriously. In the empirical sense, (...) appearances are the undetermined object of our sensible intuition. Yet, in the transcendental sense, appearances are nothing but the mind-dependent way that noumena manifest inside our minds and, hence, our mind-dependent way of knowing the mind-independent reality in itself (epistemological phenomenalism). (shrink)

The article engages with feminist care theories and practices of community building in the context of armed conflict. Based on an ethnographic study of the security concerns of Israeli citizens living in the Gaza Envelope and their positions regarding the siege on Gaza, we find that in this region, vernacular security is closely linked with care, social reproduction and communitarianism. Communitarian ethics is intertwined with separatist, state-centred discourses on national ‘trauma and resilience’. In this context, Jewish-Israeli women care for their (...) own communities as a way to ensure survival and civilian resilience. They generally disengage from moral dilemmas concerning the suffering of Palestinians. On a deeper level, the practice of security as care combines the hegemonic Israeli security paradigm of women’s soldierhood with an institutional and cultural obsession with trauma-oriented activities. Showing strong ethno-nationalist identifications, these women tend to overlook and even support the state’s violent siege on Gaza, which is seen as a zero-sum game. We conclude that the gendered dimensions of communitarian ethics in Israel are relevant for understanding the limitations and challenges of contemporary cosmopolitan feminism and a global politics of care. (shrink)

The development of social media technology makes it easy for people to access information about religious knowledge. Anyone can learn the religion from social media, one of them is Youtube. This phenomenon seems to force young Nahdlatul Ulama _kiai _such as Gus Baha, Gus Miftah, and Gus Muwafiq to be adaptive and familiar to social media like Youtube. It makes them close to being called millennial _kiai_. This paper used a phenomenological approach based on observations on Youtube that examines the (...) educational interaction of millennial kiai in carrying out the process of Islamic proselytization and creating a role model of social education that they do. The educational interaction carried out by millennial _kiai_ on Youtube is very effective in attracting the interest of citizens. The number of their viewers is between four to eight million in one year. The number of videos viewed is around one hundred editions. Whereas the role model of millennial social education of _kiai_ is analyzed through Bandura theory which starts through a process of stimulus, observation, then processed in mental cognitive, then creates motivation so that demands a response by giving likes and subscribing comments. The response is the beginning of constant behavior change. (shrink)

This paper analyses the role of foreign and local companies in shaping Brazilian positions on global sustainability. It deals with an empirical investigation of CSR practices of firms from the electronics, food, and personal care sectors in response to pressures of 'market' and 'non-market' stakeholders. The results demonstrate that CSR decisions by foreign and local firms are triggered by organisational considerations and anticipated economic gains. The degree of implementation of CSR activities by foreign firms is more advanced than that of (...) local firms. The survey also confirms the hypothesis that market stakeholders exert pressure on companies and positively influence CSR. Non-market stakeholders seem to have a minor effect on corporate social responsibility decisions. We conclude that the institutional environment is a critical determinant of the extent to which the dialogue between stakeholders and companies leads to the attainment of sustainable development. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy; Muslim theology; Islam; doctrines.

On the fundamentals of Hindu philosophy and doctrines.

On the propagation and preaching in Islam against evil deeds and on the process of accountability in Islam.

The paper explores the important but neglected field of primary schoolchildren's attitudes towards the environment using a specifically designed scale in Arabic and English. It reports attitude differences towards the environment and three domains -- pollution, waste and animals and plants -- according to nationality and gender. Overall the findings show that environmental education programmes produce only slightly positive attitudes. Consideration is given to the further research required to enhance such programmes.

Literature; hermeneutics; theory, etc.; history and criticism.