The global spread of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices is widely explained in institutional-isomorphic terms: Corporations worldwide adopt CSR in reaction to isomorphic pressures exerted on them by a pro-CSR global environment, including normative calls for CSR, activist targeting, civil regulation frameworks, and educational activities. By contrast, this article considers the proactive agency of corporations in CSR diffusion, which is informed by nonmarket strategies that seek to instrumentally reshape the political and social environment of corporations. Applying a “channels-of-diffusion” perspective, we (...) show that in the initial phase of CSR’s transnational diffusion—as exemplified by the cases of Venezuela (1962-1967) and Britain (1977-1981)—CSR traveled through learning exchanges between business elite “exporters” and “importers” whose engagement in diffusion addressed crisis-enhanced political threats and opportunities in the receiving country. The focal agents established national CSR business associations, which disseminated among local corporations CSR practices adapted to confront the challenges at hand. We identify the features of such “business-led cross-national diffusions of CSR”; formulate propositions regarding their conditions, dynamics, and effects; and suggest that further research of this mode of diffusion would advance a more nuanced and balanced understanding of CSR’s globalization. (shrink)

Scholars studying the global diffusion of “corporate social responsibility” (CSR) practices and the associated rise of privatized forms of economic governance have tended to shift attention away from the role of corporations in motivating these processes to the one played by nonbusiness forces seeking social control of corporations. We bring corporate power back in by turning the spotlight to the agency of business classes, the business entities capable of pursuing transcorporate, societal-level, macro-political endeavors. Building on a comparative investigation of two (...) of the world’s earliest mass CSR adoptions, in postwar Venezuela and Britain, we argue that business classes responding to anti-capitalist challenges were the original diffusers of CSR practices and, interrelatedly, promoters of CSR-based, privatized forms of regulation and governance. Organized by peak business associations, the purpose of these “business-class CSR mobilizations” was to weaken the state in its relation to corporations and increase the control of business over social trends. We discuss the contribution of our historical perspective and analytical approach to a more complete and balanced picture of the global rise of CSR in late capitalism. (shrink)

In the early days of the second wave of the women's movement, women on the liberal end of the feminist spectrum began to work together on issues of equity in economics and education. They developed strategies for lobbying for legislation and administrative regulations affecting women and began to build political networks through which they could accomplish reforms. Women associated with the Women's Equity Action League played an important part in this process and, in so doing, shaped or even transformed their (...) own careers. (shrink)

Expressivism in logic is the view that logical vocabulary plays a primarily expressive role: that is, that logical vocabulary makes perspicuous in the object language structural features of inference and incompatibility (Brandom, 1994, 2008). I present a precise, technical criterion of expressivity for a logic (§2). I next present a logic that meets that criterion (§3). I further explore some interesting features of that logic: first, a representation theorem for capturing other logics (§3.1), and next some novel logical vocabulary for (...) expressing structural features of inference (§4). (shrink)

There is widespread agreement among large segments of western society that we are living in a period of hard times. At first glance such a belief might seem exceedingly odd. After all, persons in western society find themselves living in a time of unprecedented material abundance. Hunger and disease, evils all too familiar to the members of earlier generations, although far from eradicated from modern life, are plainly on the wane. Persons alive today can look forward to healthier, longer, and (...) more comfortable lives than those of their grand parents. Nevertheless, the feeling that life today is especially difficult is rampant in government, in the media, in popular books, and in academic circles. Western society is perceived in many quarters as wracked by crises of all sorts-of faith, of power, of authority, of social turmoil, of declining quality in workmanship and products, and of a general intellectual malaise afflicting both those on the Left and the Right. A tone of crisis permeates the language of public life. Editorials in major newspapers are full of dire warnings about the dangers of unbridled egoism, avarice and greed, and the risks and horrors of pollution, overpopulation, the arms race, crime, and indulgent lifestyles. (shrink)

Abstract Daniel H. H. Ingalls referred to Gaudap?da's M?nd?kya K?rik?, a very early Advaita text, as ? ... the most puzzling perhaps, of all Sanskrit philosophical texts?. This article shows that some of the philosophical quandaries associated with this text are the result of inappropriately imposing a graphic and prose model of textuality upon a text composed in the k?rik? (memorial verse) genre and in an oral cultural context. Developing a model of textuality consistent with the literary genre and (...) cultural context, the article is not only able to resolve some of the philosophical problems associated with the text, but also raises the possibility that this inappropriate hermeneutical process has contributed to mislabelling Gaudap?da as an idealist. (shrink)

We consider Kaplan's two main theories of demonstrative reference, that it is determined by intention, and that it is determined by a demonstration. The first, though showing genuine insight into the sort of private concerns relevant, is shown to fail due to circularity. The second, though it brings out clearly the more public factors relevant, fails because of vacuity. I advance a new theory, explaining demonstrative reference in terms of the closeness of match of the demonstrative utterance to the (...) facts, given the way the parties concerned are likely to think about it. (shrink)

Both of the books reviewed here are anthologies edited by philosophers, intended for use in undergraduate “ethics of eating” classes taught under the auspices of philosophy departments; I review them as a teacher of such a class. The Pojman anthology is rather outdated, and not recommended. The Kaplan anthology, by contrast, would be a valuable starting point or addition to such a class, though it could not carry the class on its own.

Many theories of the de dicto / de re ambiguity for quantifiers and descriptions follow the tradition started by Kaplan and Lewis in that they make use of notions that are epistemic in nature, such as the notion of acquaintance. This may create the impression that the question about de re in affitude report semantics should always be resolved by looking at the reported affitude; if the latter qualifies as de re according to some epistemological criteria, then also the (...) affitude report may be true de re. The present paper aims to provide an argument to the contrary. The argument proceeds in several steps. First, we point out the existence of a wide range of de re readings (mostly already known from the literature), some of which do not target referential or quantificational expressions at all. Second, we show that the existing analyses either give wrong predictions for such cases, or are incomplete, or at least inelegant. Third, we offer a new analysis (which, as it turns out, has predecessors not united by any single tradition) whose main ingredient is the observation that the right predictions result from modifying the Context Set of the conversation in certain intuitive ways before the affitude report is added to the Common Ground. This is the semantic contribution of the paper. The philosophical upshot is that the reasons for an affitude report being de re at least in some cases have little to do with the grounds on which the corresponding mental state - the affitude itself - qualifies as de re. We also speculate as to how the proposed analysis, which divorces de re'ness from epistemic rapport, may be extended onto more traditional cases. (shrink)

This reply to Oleg Domanov’s target paper is not concerned with the technicalities of the proposed approach. Rather, I discuss the fruitfulness of the underlying ideas in dealing with Quine’s famous “double vision” scenario, for which the approach is designed. I point out some key ingredients of Domanov’s proposal: (a) context dependence of propositional attitude ascription (and ascribability); (b) replacement of individuals with finer-grained entities for reference and quantification, such as Kaplan’s “vivid names”, Frege and Yalcin’s senses or Percus (...) and Sauerland’s concept generators; and (c) using the apparatus of cross-identification functions. I show that those ingredients were already present in a body of work preceding the target paper. On the other hand, there are known problems related to the fact that sometimes the choice of the pertinent mode of presentation depends on the choices associated with quantifiers higher in the syntactic tree. No account based on manipulations with the global context, such as Domanov’s in its current form, can handle them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya ed. by Daniel Raveh and Elise Coquereau-SaoumaMuzaffar Ali (bio)The Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya. Edited by Daniel Raveh and Elise Coquereau-Saouma. London: Routledge, 2023. Pp. xiii+ 263. Hardcover £120, isbn 978-0-367-70981-5. Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya (KCB) is more than the seminal essay, "Svaraj in Ideas," through which academicians, politicians, postcolonial/decolonial thinkers and too often philosophers usually identify and (...) fossilize him. That, in my opinion, is the characteristic message of this volume. The message attains significance when calls for decolonization result in the sacrifice of actual philosophical legacy and resources to 'mere polity talk'. KCB, and with him other philosophers, need to be rescued from this 'mere polity talk', and the current volume rightly navigates in that direction. Setting the tone, The Making of Contemporary Indian Philosophy: Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya states that KCB is a significant yet unsung piece in the "jigsaw puzzle" of contemporary Indian philosophy (CIP). It rightly acknowledges KCB as the father of CIP, a distinct-yet-neglected genre of Indian philosophy "that draws on both classical Indian philosophical sources and Western materials, old and new" (p. 3). With a focus on KCB, the volume attempts to get back to and deliberate on the spectrum of his philosophy with two aims: a) To rediscover the philosophical significance and novelty of his philosophy where the classics of Indian philosophy and the modern avatars of European philosophy are made to speak to each other, and, b) To re-turn the attention of a global philosophical landscape that remains dominated by classical Indian philosophy and modern Western philosophy towards the present, "the now," of Indian philosophy in CIP, which was set in motion by KCB at the beginning of the twentieth century. The volume is divided into five sections. The first section, "Entrée" includes Daniel Raveh's "Introduction" and Daya Krishna's essay on KCB. Raveh's introduction classifies KCB's philosophy under three rubrics of decolonization (Svaraj), philosophical reflections (KCB's series of studies), and independent essays (conceptualizations). It also offers a synoptic reading of available literature on KCB, so that the reader can situate his philosophy within the multifaceted discourses that need to be recognized, reconfigured and revisited. Daya Krishna's essay is based on his two separate books so that a joint overview of KCB's notion of subject-object and the three Absolutes can be offered to the reader. The second section, "Lexicography" has three essays where the contributors [End Page 1] investigate, analyse or study a particular concept from KCB's philosophy. Elise Coquereau-Souma's essay focuses on the absence of a specific definition of "demand" in KCB's entire project. To unravel the implications of the concept of demand in KCB, she argues that it, "instigates the movement of KCB's method" (p. 49) to study, understand, and realise the domain of the experiential. Nir Feinberg's contribution underlines given-ness as felt-fact (p. 72) in KCB's contemporary commentary on Śaṅkara's theory of māyā. Feinberg argues that KCB innovatively explores the possibility of understanding the reality of the world (otherwise illusory) through the category of feeling, and that knowledge and facts have a limited application to eliminate this feeling of reality. Dor Miller's essay focuses on the concept of rasa in KCB's philosophy. Miller argues that KCB considers rasa as a "feeling par excellence" that needs to be understood, examined and studied in consonance with other human feelings. KCB thus classifies feelings into "'direct,' 'sympathetic,' and 'contemplative'" (p. 80). The aesthetic experience of reality, Miller tells us, becomes possible through the contemplative feeling whose subject is "impersonal, or universal" (p. 89). Miller claims that KCB's interpretation of rasa via the realm of contemplative feelings transcends the traditional commentarial paradigms of rasa and may offer a remedy to some contemporary anxieties of rasa theorists, especially those raised by Mukund Lath. The third section, "Philosophical Junctions," includes four contributions and starts with Stephen Kaplan's chapter on KCB's three Absolutes and four aspects of negation. Kaplan is interested in understanding whether a mapping between KCB's fourfold theory... (shrink)

We argue that dynamical and mathematical models in systems and cognitive neuro- science explain (rather than redescribe) a phenomenon only if there is a plausible mapping between elements in the model and elements in the mechanism for the phe- nomenon. We demonstrate how this model-to-mechanism-mapping constraint, when satisfied, endows a model with explanatory force with respect to the phenomenon to be explained. Several paradigmatic models including the Haken-Kelso-Bunz model of bimanual coordination and the difference-of-Gaussians model of visual receptive fields are (...) explored. (shrink)

La obra de Nicolás Gómez Dávila ha sido leída presuponiendo su desconexión frente a la producción filosófica local del pasado. Esa presuposición ha pasado por alto la existencia de posibles vínculos entre las tesis de la filosofía del derecho en De iure y la reflexión sobre el lenguaje y la tradición presente en el ensayo de Miguel Antonio Caro titulado “Del uso en sus relaciones con el lenguaje”. Este artículo explora los posibles vínculos entre ambos ensayos, a partir de (i) (...) la similitud entre la concepción horaciana del lenguaje presente en la obra de Caro y las tesis de De iure, (ii) las correspondencias entre los esquemas metodológicos y valorativos, derivados de aquella concepción, presentes en ambas obras, y (iii) las similitudes y diferencias de su conservatismo político. (shrink)

Advocates of extended cognition argue that the boundaries of cognition span brain, body, and environment. Critics maintain that cognitive processes are confined to a boundary centered on the individual. All participants to this debate require a criterion for distinguishing what is internal to cognition from what is external. Yet none of the available proposals are completely successful. I offer a new account, the mutual manipulability account, according to which cognitive boundaries are determined by relationships of mutual manipulability between the properties (...) and activities of putative components and the overall behavior of the cognitive mechanism in which they figure. Among its main advantages, this criterion is capable of (a) distinguishing components of cognition from causal background conditions and lower-level correlates, and (b) showing how the core hypothesis of extended cognition can serve as a legitimate empirical hypothesis amenable to experimental test and confirmation. Conceiving the debate in these terms transforms the current clash over extended cognition into a substantive empirical debate resolvable on the basis of evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience. (shrink)

This issue contains a book symposium on Anneli Jefferson’s book, Are mental disorders brain disorders?. It is a delight that the symposium brings together a variety of perspectives from philosopher...

Peirce’s anti-psychologism hinges on two main assumptions. First, logic and psychology belong to two separate disciplines – respectively, the normative sciences and the experimental sciences. Second, externalism must be understood as a crucial and inescapable epistemological criterion. The introspectionist illusion, according to which individuals have direct and epistemologically flawless access to their own internal states, should be dismissed. As Colapietro (2003) and Calcaterra (2006) observe, Peirce’s standpoint is far different from the Kantian classical account of anti-psychologism. This original take on (...) anti-psychologism leaves room for a functional distinction between logic and psychology, emerging from a semiotic and communicative continuity. This means that psychology, unlike logic as a formal doctrine of signs, will be epistemologically appropriate for dealing with internal psychological states, on the condition that this inquiry be focused on the communicative processes through which these internal states are expressed and conveyed. Such a Peircean account of anti-psychologism forms the epistemological background of this paper. My goal is to show how Peirce’s approach to communication and semiosis can be applied in order to discuss a specific psychological theory, in this case, attachment theory. Specifically, I propose employing Giovanni Maddalena’s Peircean distinction between complete and incomplete gestures (Maddalena 2015) to account for the distinction between secure, dismissing and preoccupied attachment patterns. To this end, I will be discussing three different measurements of attachment: the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI, George, Kaplan & Main 1985), the Adult Attachment Projection (AAP, George & West 2006), and the Patient Attachment Coding System (PACS, Talia, Miller-Bottome & Daniel 2015). Throughout this discussion, I will examine the connection between the semiotic and phenomenological category of completeness, and the psychological category of security. This connection involves an interesting normative import, which I briefly discuss in the conclusions. (shrink)

Based on a creative use of the phenomenological method, we argue that a close examination of the temporality of objects reveals the future as genuinely open. Without aiming to decide the matter of phenomenological realism, we suggest that this method can be used to investigate the mode of being of objects in their own temporality. By bracketing the anticipatory structure of experience, one can get a sense of objects’ temporality as independent of consciousness. This contributes to the current Realism versus (...) Idealism debates, but it does so without taking sides. The starting point is neither an analysis of pure consciousness, nor attempts to describe objects in-themselves, but the idea that things can be phenomenologically grasped through the difference between their temporality and our own. By being methodically “open to the future,” one can become aware of the sui generis temporality of objects as different from the temporality shaped by our anticipation. (shrink)

Orthodox Probabilists hold that an inquirer ought to harbor a precise degree of confidence in each hypothesis about which she is concerned. Modest Probabilism is one of a family doctrines inspired by the thought that Orthodox Probabilists are thereby demanding that an inquirer effect a precision that is often unwarranted by her evidence. The purpose of this essay is (i) to explain the particular way in which Modest Probabilism answers to this thought, and (ii) to address an alleged counterexample to (...) Modest Probabilism meant to offer proof that Modest Probabilism is no better than its orthodox predecessor at avoiding unwarranted precision. (shrink)

Merchant and Rockness (1994, p. 92) characterize earnings management as "probably the most important ethical issue facing the accounting profession" and provide initial evidence of the ethical judgments of various organizational members. The current study extends their work by examining the extent to which an individual''s ethically-related judgments in response to earnings management activities are associated with the individual''s role.In an experimental study, evening MBA students read three hypothetical scenarios involving a manager engaging in earnings management. The scenarios involved a (...) gain from an operating activity, a gain from an accounting activity, and a loss from an accounting activity. Before reading the cases, however, participants were randomly assigned to one of three roles: a shareholder, another manager from the company who is unfamiliar with the manager in the case, or another manager from the company who is familiar with the manager in the case. Following each case, participants made four ethically related judgments. (shrink)

La flexibilidad y la mercantilización de lo espiritual ¿son aspectos característicos de la cultura contemporánea? Centrado en los casos de Alemania, Inglaterra y Francia, el artículo detalla cómo el romanticismo literario se articula como un movimiento pionero de la espiritualidad flexible, proceso que se entrelaza con su rol seminal en la formación del campo literario moderno. El crecimiento económico y demográfico sostenidos en Europa desde el s. XV, así como la alfabetización impulsada por el protestantismo, construyen un moderno público lector (...) que da pie —durante el s. XVIII— a la revolución y diversificación de la lectura, lo que promueve la difusión de incipientes tendencias modernas (ciencia, Ilustración, prensa). Oponiéndose parcialmente a estas tendencias y extendiendo la diversificación de lo impreso, surge la tendencia romántica. Sus autores flexibilizan la espiritualidad más allá de las convenciones religiosas de la época —y aportan a la formación del campo literario— (1) caracterizando el desencanto y otras formas de malestar moderno; (2) multiplicando el lenguaje imaginario-trascendente; (3) brindando connotaciones metafísicas al genio artístico; (4) promoviendo la autonomía y libertad expresiva del arte. La evidencia indica que el mercado fue una condición histórica básica para la EF. Se sugiere que esta flexibilidad se muestra como una adaptación de la espiritualidad a las circunstancias empíricas de la modernidad, la cual conlleva nuevas necesidades de sentido y una mayor capacidad para divergir de los relatos religiosos tradicionales. (shrink)

We present numerous natural algebraic examples without the so-called Canonical Base Property (CBP). We prove that every commutative unitary ring of finite Morley rank without finite-index proper ideals satisfies the CBP if and only if it is a field, a ring of positive characteristic or a finite direct product of these. In addition, we construct a CM-trivial commutative local ring with a finite residue field without the CBP. Furthermore, we also show that finite-dimensional non-associative algebras over an algebraically closed field (...) of characteristic [Formula: see text] give rise to triangular rings without the CBP. This also applies to Baudisch’s [Formula: see text]-step nilpotent Lie algebras, which yields the existence of a [Formula: see text]-step nilpotent group of finite Morley rank whose theory, in the pure language of groups, is CM-trivial and does not satisfy the CBP. (shrink)

There is much effort nowadays to protect communication networks against different cybersecurity attacks (which are more and more sophisticated) that look for systems’ vulnerabilities they could exploit for malicious purposes. Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) are popular tools to detect and classify such attacks, most of them based on ML models. However, ML-based NIDSs cannot be trained by feeding them with network traffic data as it is. Thus, a Feature Engineering (FE) process plays a crucial role transforming network traffic raw (...) data onto derived one suitable for ML models. In this work, we study the effects of applying one such FE technique in different ways on the performance of two ML models (linear and non-linear) and their selected features. This the Feature as a Counter approach. The derived observations are computed from either with the same number of raw samples, (batch-based approaches) or by aggregating them by time intervals (timestamp-based approach). Results show that there is no significant differences between the proposed approaches neither in the performance of the models nor in the selected features that validate our proposal making it feasible to be widely used as a standard FE method. (shrink)

This article develops a hermeneutic study of Heidegger’s text The Word of Nietzsche: “God is Dead”. We attempt to read Heidegger’s remarks in the context of the “period of transition” that, according to Nietzsche, is occurring in the history of western thought and culture. This essay unfolds in the following manner: beginning with Heidegger’s contention that Nietzsche’s philosophy is the “fulfilment” of Platonism, we go over the problem of nihilism in relation to the metaphysics of the will to power, which (...) for Heidegger requires revising Cartesian subjectivity in search of a new ontology. Heidegger’s critique of modernity encompasses a narrative that goes from “Plato” to “Nietzsche”, leading to a reconsideration of the notions of art and truth. Finally, we attempt to interpret the meaning of the “madman’s lament” voicing the passing of God. (shrink)

En el contexto de ofrecer lógicas alternativas que lidien no trivialmente con paradojas semánticas y superen a la vez la objeción de incoherencia que se alza habitualmente contra ellas, el BA-Plan propone una definición de lógica en el sentido de secuencia infinita de nociones de consecuencia que especifica estándares de validez para el nivel inferencial y para los metainferenciales. El presente trabajo argumenta que si se admite la conveniencia de esta definición de lógica es posible desacoplar la noción de coherencia (...) entre estándares de validez de la noción de uniformidad entre estándares de validez. (shrink)

This article discusses the concept of joint attention and the different skills underlying its development. Research in developmental psychology clearly states that the development of skills to understand, manipulate and coordinate attentional behavior plays a pivotal role for imitation, social cognition and the development of language. However, beside the fact that joint attention has recently received an increasing interest in the robotics community, existing models concentrate only on partial and isolated elements of these phenomena. In the line of Tomasello’s research, (...) we argue that joint attention is much more than simultaneous looking because it implies a shared intentional relation to the world. This requires skills for attention detection, attention manipulation, social coordination and, most importantly, intentional understanding. After defining joint attention and its challenges, the current state-of-the-art of robotic and computational models relevant for this issue is discussed in relation to a developmental timeline drawn from results in child studies. From this survey, we identify open issues and challenges that still need to be addressed to understand the development of the various aspects of joint attention and conclude with the potential contribution of robotic models. (shrink)

New Threats to Freedom In the twentieth century, free people faced a number of mortal threats,ranging from despotism, fascism, and communism to the looming menace of global terrorism. While the struggle against some of these overt dangers continues, some insidious new threats seem to have slipped past our intellectual defenses. These often unchallenged threats are quietly eroding our hard-won freedoms and, in some cases, are widely accepted as beneficial. In New Threats to Freedom, editor and author Adam Bellow has assembled (...) an all-star lineup of innovative thinkers to challenge these insidious new threats. Some leap into already raging debates on issues such as Sharia law in the West, the rise of transnationalism, and the regulatory state. Others turn their attention to less obvious threats, such as the dogma of fairness, the failed promises of the blogosphere, and the triumph of behavioral psychology. These threats are very real and very urgent, yet this collection avoids projecting an air of doom and gloom. Rather, it provides a blueprint for intellectual resistance so that modern defenders of liberty may better understand their enemies, more effectively fight to preserve the meaning of freedom, and more surely carry its light to a new generation. What are the new threats to freedom? when has authority not claimed, when imposing trammels and curbs on liberty, that it does so for a wider good and a greater happiness?” —Christopher Hitchens “The regulatory state amounts to a regressive tax that penalizes small independent producers and protects the status quo.” —Max Borders “Europe tends to favor stability over democracy, America democracy over stability.” —Daniel Hannan “The value of free expression is perceived to be at odds with goals that were considered ‘more important,’ like inclusiveness, diversity, nondiscrimination, and tolerance.” —Greg Lukianoff “The masses cannot ultimately be free: only the individual can be.” —Robert D. Kaplan “That old bugbear of postwar sociology—the mob-self—is now a reality. In a participatory/popularity culture, the freedom to think and act for ourselves becomes harder and harder to achieve.” —Lee Siegel “As traditional marriage declines, the ranks of single women are growing, and increasingly these women are substituting the security of a husband with the security of the state.” —Jessica Gavora “Ending the freedom to fail is a mean-spirited attack on the freedom to succeed.” —Michael Goodwin “The only solution to the new threats to American press freedom lies in organized resistance.” —Katherine Mangu-Ward “The new behaviorism isn’t interested in protecting people’s freedom to choose; on the contrary, its core principle is the idea that only by allowing an expert elite to limit choice can individuals learn to break their bad habits.” —Christine Rosen “There’s a world of Travis Bickles out there, and they’re not driving cabs. They’re reading blogs.” —Ron Rosenbaum “The first amendment ensures not that speech will be fair, but that it will be free. It cannot be both.” —David Mamet Join the conversation about these issues at www.newthreatstofreedom.com. (shrink)

J. L. Austin famously thought that facts about the circumstances in which it is ordinarily appropriate and reasonable to make claims to knowledge have a great bearing on the propriety of a philosophical account of knowledge. His major criticism of the epistemological doctrines about which he wrote was precisely that they lacked fidelity to our ordinary linguistic practices. In The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Barry Stroud argues that Austin was misguided: it is one thing for it to be inappropriate under (...) ordinary circumstances to deny that someone knows that P, another thing for it to be true that she knows that P. Thus, to the philosophical enterprise of determining which knowledge attributions are true, Austin’s form of criticism is beside the point. I argue that, attractive though it may be, this response to Austin badly underestimates the force of his sort of criticism. (shrink)

Phylogenetic information is often necessary to distinguish between evolutionary scenarios. Recently, some prominent proponents of evolutionary psychology have acknowledged this, and have claimed that such evidence has in fact been brought to bear on adaptive hypotheses involving complex human psychological traits. Were this possible, it would be a valuable source of evidence regarding hypothesized adaptive traits in humans. However, the structure of the Hominidae family makes this difficult or impossible. For many traits of interest, the closest extant relatives to the (...) human species are too phenotypically different from humans for such methods to provide meaningful data. While phylogenetic information can be useful for testing adaptive hypotheses in humans, these generally involve traits that are (a) not widely shared in the species or (b) fairly widely shared in the Hominidae family, and hence likely of a lower order of complexity than the sorts of traits evolutionary psychology has so far been interested in. (shrink)