The few studies that analyze the impact of a combined strategy of innovation and corporate social responsibility on firm performance mostly focus on financial performance. In contrast, the current study considers the simultaneous impact of technological innovations and CSR on firm growth, which provides a measure of medium-term economic performance. With a sample of 213 firms and a two-step procedure, this study reveals the differentiated effects of strategic versus responsive CSR behavior on the two technological innovation types, as well as (...) the effects of the two innovation types on growth. The findings thus indicate that firms with strategic CSR achieve growth through both their product and their process innovations. (shrink)

Other than the ligation of the aortic arch vessels, extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR) and thoraco-abdominal normothermic regional ­perfusion (TA-NRP) in donation after circulatory...

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have had extraordinary successes in classifying photographic images of objects and are often described as the best models of biological vision. This conclusion is largely based on three sets of findings: (1) DNNs are more accurate than any other model in classifying images taken from various datasets, (2) DNNs do the best job in predicting the pattern of human errors in classifying objects taken from various behavioral datasets, and (3) DNNs do the best job in predicting (...) brain signals in response to images taken from various brain datasets (e.g., single cell responses or fMRI data). However, these behavioral and brain datasets do not test hypotheses regarding what features are contributing to good predictions and we show that the predictions may be mediated by DNNs that share little overlap with biological vision. More problematically, we show that DNNs account for almost no results from psychological research. This contradicts the common claim that DNNs are good, let alone the best, models of human object recognition. We argue that theorists interested in developing biologically plausible models of human vision need to direct their attention to explaining psychological findings. More generally, theorists need to build models that explain the results of experiments that manipulate independent variables designed to test hypotheses rather than compete on making the best predictions. We conclude by briefly summarizing various promising modeling approaches that focus on psychological data. (shrink)

Recent arguments claim that behavioral science has focused – to its detriment – on the individual over the system when construing behavioral interventions. In this commentary, we argue that tackling economic inequality using both framings in tandem is invaluable. By studying individuals who have overcome inequality, “positive deviants,” and the system limitations they navigate, we offer potentially greater policy solutions.

On several key issues we agree with the commentators. Perhaps most importantly, everyone seems to agree that psychology has an important role to play in building better models of human vision, and (most) everyone agrees (including us) that deep neural networks (DNNs) will play an important role in modelling human vision going forward. But there are also disagreements about what models are for, how DNN–human correspondences should be evaluated, the value of alternative modelling approaches, and impact of marketing hype in (...) the literature. In our view, these latter issues are contributing to many unjustified claims regarding DNN–human correspondences in vision and other domains of cognition. We explore all these issues in this response. (shrink)

Food - what we eat, how much we eat, how it is produced and prepared, and its cultural and ecological significance- is an increasingly significant topic not only for scholars but for all of us. Theology on the Menu is the first systematic and historical assessment of Christian attitudes to food and its role in shaping Christian identity. David Grumett and Rachel Muers unfold a fascinating history of feasting and fasting, food regulations and resistance to regulation, the (...) symbolism attached to particular foods, the relationship between diet and doctrine, and how food has shaped inter-religious encounters. Everyone interested in Christian approaches to food and diet or seeking to understand how theology can engage fruitfully with everyday life will find this book a stimulus and an inspiration. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to uncover the meaning of holy feigning in the late-antique Christian text the Apophthegmata Patrum, or Sayings of the Desert Fathers [and Mothers]. Whereas stories in this text depict demonic feigning as a regular occurrence (demons often appearing in the guise of a fellow desert dweller), what I call ‘holy feigning’ depicts one desert Christian expressing empathy for the situation of another – and helping the other to change. By looking at two (...) stories that are paradigmatic of holy feigning, I show that exemplary deceptive behaviour, though explicitly defying the otherwise consistent rhetoric of ‘radical self-honesty’ in the Apophthegmata Patrum, paradoxically marks out the person who feigns as holy, discerning and imitative of Christ. In this article, I offer several suggestions for accounting for this seeming contradiction in the desert literature and propose how a spirituality of holy feigning might remain meaningful to readers of this literature today. (shrink)

Priest, poet and broadcaster Rachel Mann believes the world is charged with a divine spark. She explains how in our encounters with what she terms 'the spectres of God', one can become at peace with limitation, precariousness, lack of certainty, and one's fragility and fractures - and at the same time find in divine fragility the hope of the world. Drawing on her own experiences, in three short chapters (on the body, on love, and on time) Mann explores how (...) God invites us, repeatedly, to live in a rich three-dimensional mystery that subverts the depressing flat-earth of modern life. (shrink)

Children who are introduced to God, through attending church or having loved ones who speak often about God, often have a lot of questions, including this ever-popular one: What is God like? The late Rachel Held Evans loved the Bible and loved showing God's love through the words and pictures found in that ancient text. Through these pictures from the Bible, children see that God is like a shepherd, God is like a star, God is like a gardener, God (...) is like the wind, and more. God is a comforter and support. (shrink)

Retributivism—the idea that wrongdoers should be “paid back” for their wicked deeds—fits naturally with many people’s feelings. They find it deeply satisfying when murderers and rapists “get what they have coming,” and they are infuriated when villains “get away with it.” But others dismiss these feelings as primitive and unenlightened. Sometimes the complaint takes a religious form. The desire for revenge, it is said, should be resisted by those who believe in Christian charity. After all, Jesus himself rejected the (...) rule of “an eye for an eye,”2 and St. Paul underscored the point, saying that we should not “return evil for evil” but we should “overcome evil with good.”3 To those who adopt this way of thinking, whether on secular or religious grounds, vengeance cannot be an acceptable motive for action. This objection is, for the most part, misguided. The idea that wrongdoers should be “paid back” for their wickedness is not merely a demand for primitive vengeance. It is.. (shrink)

Historically, Judeo-Christian doctrine has been used to justify the mistreatment of nonhuman animals through the “dominion” view of human superiority. Linzey and others have questioned this perspective, suggesting that critical tenets of religion, and particularly Christianity, support the ethical treatment of other animals by defining dominion as stewardship. This article considers how framing and networks help explain the complex relationship between religion and support for animal rights. We offer ways in which social networks and framing might inform the beliefs (...) and behaviors of religious individuals who support animal rights as well as the strategies of the animal rights movement intended to appeal to such individuals. (shrink)

The question of responsibility to future generations is a distinctively modern ethical problem, which exposes the limits of many modern ethical frameworks. I argue for the theological importance of this ‘limit’, and of the question of responsibility to future generations, drawing on the ultimate/penultimate conceptuality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. Responsibility to future generations calls for detailed attention to a given situation, in the light of its openness to a future not within our control; and action for the sake of future (...) generations requires a suspension of one’s own judgement on that action. Christian ethics can take responsibility to future generations seriously while (and indeed through) maintaining a critique of attempts to orient action towards an innerworldly future utopia. (shrink)

Natural and supernatural explanations are used to interpret the same events in a number of predictable and universal ways. Yet little is known about how variation in diverse cultural ecologies influences how people integrate natural and supernatural explanations. Here, we examine explanatory coexistence in three existentially arousing domains of human thought: illness, death, and human origins using qualitative data from interviews conducted in Tanna, Vanuatu. Vanuatu, a Melanesian archipelago, provides a cultural context ideal for examining variation in explanatory coexistence due (...) to the lack of industrialization and the relatively recent introduction of Christianity and Western education. We argue for the integration of interdisciplinary methodologies from cognitive science and anthropology to inform research on explanatory coexistence. (shrink)

Theological ethics, particularly Christian theological ethics, is very well-equipped both to treat the interests and needs of future generations as a genuine and pressing concern – and also to evade some of the questions they pose about temporality, by appealing to judgement beyond history. Phenomenological approaches to the question of future generations are important as a counterbalance to this tendency in theological ethics, insofar as they force us to remain with, and wrestle with, the relation to future persons as (...) future. In this article I show that drawing on phenomenological approaches, in order to attend to temporality, produces an account of justice and responsibility to future generations that is more adequate theologically, as well as ethically. Attending to how the other, the future and the imperative of justice interrelate yields an approach to theological ethics that does not need to assume for the ethicist the God’s-eye view – the view from outside time, narrative or interpersonal encounter – and that is thus able to grapple with the core questions raised by bringing future generations into ethics. (shrink)

The initial problem for feminist Jewish theology has been its very definition as theology. Whereas, from its beginning, Christian feminism has defined the transformation of theology as a major goal, the nature and boundaries of the Jewish feminist project have been more amorphous. In part, this is because the theological tradition to which Christian feminists react is highly systematized. The nature and methodology of theology are more open questions in Judaism. Biblical and rabbinic Judaisms embody a variety of (...) theologies in narrative, prayer, law, and textual exegesis. While in every period of postbiblical Judaism there have been influential theologies utilizing philosophical forms and categories, there is no standard way of systematizing their Jewish content. That is because Jewish philosophical theologies serve dual purposes. (shrink)

The idea that some things are fine in theory, but do not work in practice, was already an “old saying” when Kant wrote about it in 1793. Kant, who was annoyed that a man named Garve had criticized his ethical theory on this ground, responded by pointing out that there is always a gap between theory and practice. Theory provides general rules but it cannot tell us how to apply them--for that, practical judgment is needed. “[T]he general rule,” said Kant, (...) “must be supplemented by an act of judgement whereby the practitioner distinguishes instances where the rule applies from those where it does not.” This means that those who lack judgment might be helpless, even though they know a lot of theory. “There are doctors and lawyers,” Kant explains, “who did well during their schooling but who do not know how to act when asked to give advice.” The point is especially important for the kind of absolutist ethic that Kant defends. Kant held that moral rules have no exceptions; on his way of thinking, we may never lie, we may never break a promise, and so on. This is a clear example of an ethic that seems not to work in practice, for sensible people recognize that in extreme circumstances even very serious rules may have to be broken. But the “gap” that Kant identifies has often been exploited to soften the impact of such harsh precepts. Traditional Christian ethics, for example, says (like Kant) that suicide is always wrong; but because judgment is required to determine which acts count as suicide, casuists have been able to excuse various sorts of self-destruction (and, not coincidentally, avoid consigning the deceased to hellfire) by classifying them as something else. Thus the hero who sacrifices herself to save others is not a suicide, nor is the man who kills himself while blind with grief, as he lacks the required rational intention. It might be thought that such gaps could be closed by adding further principles to the theory--for example, principles that specify more closely what counts as suicide.... (shrink)

The classic programme of conceptual engineering (Cappelen, Herman. 2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Eklund, Matti. 2021. “Conceptual Engineering.” In The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, edited by Justin Khoo, and Rachel Sterken, 15–30. London: Routledge) envisages a two-stage ameliorating process. First, we assess ‘F’ and determine what the term should express. Second, we bring it about that ‘F’ expresses what it should express. The second stage gives rise to (...) a practical challenge: the implementation challenge. Engineering advocates need to explain by what means they can implement specific conceptual changes in the natural language shared by a community – a feat Herman Cappelen (2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020; “Conceptual Engineering: The Master Argument.” In Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, edited by Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen, and David Plunkett, 132–151. Oxford: Oxford University Press) argues to be beyond our understanding and control both on an externalist and on an internalist meta-semantics. I devise a new answer to the implementation challenge. Enlisting the influential theory of social norms by Cristina Bicchieri, I argue that engineering social norms in Bicchieri’s technical sense amounts to an effective, specific, and feasible means to implement specific conceptual change, at least on internalist premises. I also argue that Bicchieri’s social norms are an essential addition to the more familiar conventions and moral norms when it comes to conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Domestic violence is endemic across Latin America. It is legitimated by patriarchal Christian theologies and widespread gender inequality. Drawing on the work of women theologians and activists working in Argentina, Uruguay and elsewhere, this article explores women's networks of resistance against violence. These include public and legal acknowledgement of domestic violence; the transmission of life-affirming values; pastoral support in the denouncement of violence; and the development of open and fluid household structures.

We present readings, by Jewish, Christian and Muslim women scholars, of `difficult' texts from three scriptural traditions, viz. Ephesians 5.21-33, Sura' 4.32-35 and Genesis 30.1-26. All three texts concern marriage and point in different ways to the erasure of women's significance or agency, and we ask what happens when women read such texts as scripture. Our readings were developed in conversation with one another, following the developing practice of `Scriptural Reasoning', and they suggest ways in which the texts and (...) their feminist readers can `correct' and challenge each other. We propose that feminist biblical hermeneutics and inter-traditional scriptural reasoning can be mutually informative, with both practices seeking to take embodied difference seriously and to allow unresolved critical questions to arise in reading. (shrink)

The classic programme of conceptual engineering (Cappelen, Herman. 2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Eklund, Matti. 2021. “Conceptual Engineering.” In The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, edited by Justin Khoo, and Rachel Sterken, 15–30. London: Routledge) envisages a two-stage ameliorating process. First, we assess ‘F’ and determine what the term should express. Second, we bring it about that ‘F’ expresses what it should express. The second stage gives rise to (...) a practical challenge: the implementation challenge. Engineering advocates need to explain by what means they can implement specific conceptual changes in the natural language shared by a community – a feat Herman Cappelen (2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020; “Conceptual Engineering: The Master Argument.” In Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, edited by Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen, and David Plunkett, 132–151. Oxford: Oxford University Press) argues to be beyond our understanding and control both on an externalist and on an internalist meta-semantics. I devise a new answer to the implementation challenge. Enlisting the influential theory of social norms by Cristina Bicchieri, I argue that engineering social norms in Bicchieri's technical sense amounts to an effective, specific, and feasible means to implement specific conceptual change, at least on internalist premises. I also argue that Bicchieri's social norms are an essential addition to the more familiar conventions and moral norms when it comes to conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Infertility is one of the key themes in the Old Testament narrative. This infertility was experienced by the Israelite matriarchs Sarai, Rebekah and Rachel as well as several other women. This article argues that the concept infertility has given rise to injustice and discrimination, especially against women. For this reason, a constructive and a contextual dialogue between the biblical context and the context of the present is required to offer a new understanding and a liberating spirit to women and (...) men. It is crucial because there is a traditional assumption that infertility is a disgrace and misfortune for a family. The inability to have children can create problems in the home, such as divorce or polygamy for the sake of having children. Infertility constitutes a severe problem for couples in a culture that emphasises the importance of producing descendants.CONTRIBUTION: This article offers a theological contribution from the Old Testament as a critique of the culture in terms of how infertile women are treated, that is, infertility as God's grace. Also, this article offers a Christian theological understanding of the handling of infertility in an Indonesian context. It aims to redefine infertility and bring each couple to the realisation that the plight of infertility or having no children should no longer be seen as a burden for a couple but rather as part of God's grace for their lives. (shrink)

In this article, I take up Uri McMillan’s work in Embodied Avatars to rethink the subject–object relationship in women’s preaching. In performance art, the subject fashions herself into an object. I stretch the performance art genre to include preachers Rachel Baker, Jarena Lee, and Florence Spearing Randolph, arguing that these women have strategically performed objecthood to navigate gendered and racialized constraints in Christian proclamation. Examining these three women preachers through the lens of performing objecthood opens up theological understandings (...) of how the Spirit works in a world marked by social sin. Contrary to theologians who describe submission to the Spirit as self-effacement, I show how submission to the Spirit can counter worldly authorities, while enabling women preachers to transform perceptions of gender and race in a liberative way. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:714 BOOK REVIEWS The End of Life. By JAMES RACHELS. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. 204. The rise of advanced medical technologies, especially life-sustaining ones, has brought to center stage the hioethical issues which arise in acute and long-term care contexts. Especially pressing have been problems about the nature and permissibility of euthanasia. Roughly speaking, there are two major views about euthanasia. The traditional view holds that it (...) is wrong intentionally to kill an innocent human being, hut that, given certain circumstances, it is permissible to withhold or withdraw treatment and allow a patient to die. A more radical view, embraced by groups like the Hemlock Society and the Society for the Right to Die, denies that there is a morally significant distinction between passive and active euthanasia. Further, mercy killing, assisted suicide, and the like are permissible. James Rachels's hook is the most articulate expression of the radical view. The work contains 'ten chapters which can he broken down into l:wo main sections. In chapters one through four, Rachels draws a distinction between what he calls biographical and biological life, and he maintains that, whereas ithe traditional view places emphasis on the latter, the former is what should he considered in euthanasia cases. In chapters five through ten, the distinction between active and passive euthanasia is analyzed. Rachels argues that ithere is no distinction between the two and that euthanasia is permissible in certain circumstances. Chapter one traces the rise of the traditional view in the west from 1the Greeks and Romans to the development of Christanity. According to Rachels, the Greeks and Romans allowed aotive euthanasia-infanticide, suicide-in some cases, because they believed that life held little value apart from the chance of a meaningful or happy existence. But the coming of Christianity caused the traditional doctrine to arise. Until Augustine, the Church taught ·that all killing was wrong. But Christendom during Augustine's time made a politically expedient decision to change its views in 1the face of pressure from the state. The Church adopted the position that all taking of innocent human life was wrong. Two observations should be made here. First, Rachels would have a difficult time proving that the Church changed its views for reasons of political expediency. He makes no attempt to analyze the theological aspects of the situation during Augustine's time, e.g. the shift from a premillenial to an amillenial eschatology with a concomitant change in how the two kingdoms should he related, Second, and more importantly, Rachels discussion of 1the Greeks and Romans contains a serious BOOK REVIEWS 715 omission which is quite revealing in light of later chapters. He does not distinguish happiness and the good life in its formal and material aspects. For many Greek and Roman thinkers, e.g. Aristotle, happiness was more than a mere formal principle. It contained substantive content, viz. the progressive embodiment of intellectual and moral virtues. For Rachels, the good life is whatever an individual finds to be in his own best interests. Chapter.two focuses on the sanctity of life. After surveying eastern views (all life is equally sacred, including that of insects), Rachels criticizes the sanctity-of-life view. As it is expressed in Christianity, this view, as understood by Rachels, holds that all human life is sacred merely because it is biological human life. Being homo sapiens is what gives value to human life. According to Rachels, this is a mistaken understanding of why life is valuable. The sanctity of life should he construed as protecting biographical life, not mere biological life. One's life has value from tlie individual's point of view because he has a biographical life; that is, he can pursue interests and goals that are important to him. The importance of being alive is derivative from the importance of having a life. The traditional view, says Rachels, has lost sight of the point of the rule against killing. H we fail to ask for the purpose of a moral rule, we may sometimes fulfill its letter by going against its spirit. For example, we are taught to drive on,the right side of the road. But if we... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Spiritually Bilingual:Buddhist Christians and the Process of Dual Religious BelongingJonathan HomrighausenSociologists studying convert Buddhism in America have found that a surprisingly large number of Buddhists also identify as Christian.1 However, little empirical literature examines these Buddhist-Christian “dual religious belongers.”2 This study aims to fill that gap. Based on extensive interviews with eight self-identified “Buddhist Christians” of varying levels of doctrinal and experiential understanding, this study examines the (...) conversion process of these dual belongers and how they combine these religious traditions. Building on Michael von Brück’s contention that one’s first religion is like a mother tongue, I compare taking on a second religious tradition to learning a second language.3 As practitioners become more “fluent” in the second religion, they differentiate the two religions more clearly while combining them more seamlessly in their daily lives.methodologyThis study employs grounded theory and a qualitative, inductive methodology. Grounded theory is designed to elucidate the dynamic changes involved in a social process, with rich descriptions of categories and explanations for variations between different people’s experiences.4 While the use of qualitative methods with a small sample size means that my results have little statistical significance, such methods have been used in recent research on conversion and dual belonging and yield deep theoretical insight.5Eight participants for this study were solicited via word of mouth, personal acquaintance, and posting in a Buddhist-Christian Yahoo Group. In particular, I focused on Buddhist-Catholic practitioners to limit my sample group. Interviews were conducted and recorded in person or on the phone over a three-month period in fall, 2011. Interviews were open-ended, each lasting from sixty to ninety minutes. Several participants later received a draft of the paper to ensure they felt adequately represented; five participants responded. Names of participants have been changed for [End Page 57] confidentiality. To complement these interviews, I also incorporate written accounts of Buddhist-Christian conversion from both Catholic and Protestant authors.6participants’ backgroundsIt can be difficult to define Buddhist identity in the West, as many people who regularly practice meditation in a sangha do not self-identify as Buddhist.7 This study focuses on those who both practice Buddhist and Christian spirituality and belong to religious groups of both traditions. The eight participants have a range of religious expertise and commitment to both traditions. In terms of Catholic identity, six are laypeople (one in a secular religious order), one a priest, and one a nun. Three participants are theology professors. Seven have been Catholics from birth. One spent a decade living in a Buddhist monastery, two of them are roshis, and five give Buddhist teaching or meditation instruction formally. Seven of them practice various forms of Ch’an or Zen, while one practices Tibetan Buddhism.Cathy went not from Catholicism to Buddhism, but from Buddhism to Catholicism. A former Mormon and Unitarian, she began learning meditation at a Ch’an temple. This Ch’an temple normally only reached out to the Chinese community, but there was a Taiwanese nun there who wanted to reach out to non-Chinese community members. After practicing there for a few years, Cathy moved to another location, where she could not find any sangha that fit her needs. After attending Mass with a friend, she decided to become Catholic because she needed a community. It was not a hard transition for Cathy, who described feeling in meditation “some kind of entity, whether you call it God or Creator or atomic process.” She was confirmed as a Catholic in 2011.Rachel has been a nun for fifty years and a practicing Zen Buddhist for thirty, ten of those years living and working in a Zen monastery in the mountains of California. She described feeling an emptiness in her faith, a lack of practical knowledge of how to attain the spiritual goals that her Catholic tradition had for her. After hearing Zen teacher Cheri Huber speak at a conference, she took Huber on as her teacher. She has facilitated meditation workshops for many years. Though meditation instruction is not her full-time ministry, “meditation is my life … so in a sense... (shrink)

This paper provides an introductory review of the theory of judgment aggregation. It introduces the paradoxes of majority voting that originally motivated the field, explains several key results on the impossibility of propositionwise judgment aggregation, presents a pedagogical proof of one of those results, discusses escape routes from the impossibility and relates judgment aggregation to some other salient aggregation problems, such as preference aggregation, abstract aggregation and probability aggregation. The present illustrative rather than exhaustive review is intended to give readers (...) new to the field of judgment aggregation a sense of this rapidly growing research area. (shrink)

Este trabajo despliega la pertenencia “específica” o “más propia” de ciertas maneras del ser (p.e. existencia, ser-a-la-mano) a ciertos entes, tema que Heidegger menciona, pero no profundiza. La exposición se articula en cuatro pasos. Primero, se aclara la confusa con-ceptualidad de las maneras del ser. Segundo, se indaga el vínculo entre las maneras del ser y los entes, considerando a ambos como fenómenos y mostrando en ello la imposibilidad de captar este vínculo y la consecuente pertenencia específica según un “subjetivismo” (...) u “objetivismo”. Tercero, se acredita la propuesta principal de esta investigación, a saber, el rasgo fenoménico, ni subjetivo ni objetivo, de la pertenencia específica de las maneras del ser a los entes y la posibilidad de su modificabilidad. Cuarto, se aborda el existir preteoré-tico del Dasein en cuanto el suelo analítico en que se explicita hermenéutico-fenomenológicamente la pertenencia específica y su modificabilidad. (shrink)

A joke is amusing if and only if it’s fitting to be amused by it; an act is regrettable if and only if it’s fitting to regret it. Many philosophers accept these biconditionals and hold that analogous ones obtain between a wide range of additional evaluative properties and the fittingness of corresponding responses. Call these the _fit–value biconditionals_. The biconditionals give us a systematic way of recognizing the role of fit in our ethical practices; they also serve as the bedrock (...) of various metaethical projects, such as fitting-attitude analysis of value and the ‘fittingness first’ approach. Yet despite the importance of the biconditionals, there is very little discussion of their proper interpretation. This paper argues that any plausible interpretation of the fit_–_value biconditionals must disarm several kinds of apparent counterexample. For instance, that an achievement is pride-worthy doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to take pride in it because the achievement might not be mine or that of anyone close to me; that a joke is amusing doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to be amused by it for six straight months; and that a person is loveable doesn’t imply it is fitting for me to love him romantically because that person might be my sibling. We consider possible responses to such counterexamples and develop what we consider the most promising interpretation of the biconditionals. The upshot is that certain widespread assumptions about fit and its relation to value and reasons should be reconsidered. (shrink)

Les sciences sociales contemporaines se caractérisent par un abandon de la quête d’une véritable connaissance a priori non-relativiste. D’une part, les méthodes quantitatives et le positivisme méthodologique rejettent en général la possibilité de l’acquisition de ce type de savoir. D’autre part, les méthodes qualitatives et les approches herméneutiques, lorsqu’elles ne cherchent pas explicitement à obtenir des connaissances a posteriori, se caractérisent généralement par un apriorisme sceptique selon lequel l’adoption de n’importe quelle perspective ou cadre théorique est considérée valable. Cet article (...) propose d’évaluer trois perspectives différentes sur la possibilité de la connaissance a priori en sciences sociales, c’est-à-dire celles de François Simiand (critique de l’apriorisme), Ludwig von Mises (partisan de l’apriorisme praxéologique) et de Georg Simmel (initiateur d’un apriorisme formaliste). Cette évaluation comparative permet de mettre en évidence la portée et les limites de l’apriorisme en ce qui a trait à l’acquisition de connaissances en sciences sociales. Elle permet, en dernière analyse, de rendre à l’apriorisme ses lettres de noblesse et d’ainsi faciliter son éventuel retour sous une forme qui échapperait au relativisme actuel. (shrink)