This edition of the early diaries of Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970), which are housed in the Carnap estate at the University of Pittsburgh, was published in two volumes by Felix Meiner Verlag Hamburg in 2021 and 2022. These are also the first two volumes of the Meiner Edition Schriften aus dem Nachlass von Rudolf Carnap. The title of these two volumes is succinctly Rudolf Carnap. Tagebücher (Rudolf Carnap. Diaries), supplemented by the respective indication of the volume. Volume 1 (approx. 600 pages) (...) comprises the diaries from 1908 to 1919, Volume 2 (approx. 900 pages) those from 1920 to 1935. With these volumes, the diaries of one of the central thinkers of the Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism become accessible to a wider circle of researchers and interested parties. While the diaries were previously only partially accessible, they have now for the first time been released in their entirety in the form of a proper text-critical edition. The editor is Christian Damböck with the collaboration of Brigitte Arden, Roman Jordan, Brigitte Parakenings and Lois M. Rendl. Text transcriptions of the originals, which Carnap had written in shorthand, served as the basis for the edition. The transcription was done by Brigitte Parakenings and Brigitte Arden, further editing by Lois M. Rendl and Roman Jordan. (shrink)

Un commerce intime, tantot exalte, tantot inavouable, entre l'oeuvre de Proust et celles de Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Deleuze ou Barthes se joue au coeur des annees 1950-1970, au moment ou sont renouvelees les facons d'envisager la production theorique. Si le romancier les a particulierement captives, c'est que son oeuvre venait amplifier ou heurter non seulement leur pratique reflexive, mais le sens meme de leur existence et de leur engagement dans l'ecriture. Du roman au traite, de la vie de l'un a la (...) vie de l'autre, nait une etrange erotique des pensees, ou se creent des partages sereins, des negociations passionnees, des appariements effrayants. Trafics de Proust opere un enfoncement dans la duree longue de ces echanges, de ces prets sur gages et de ces resiliations. Son enjeu est de rendre compte des strategies qui menent un penseur lisant Proust a construire ou deconstruire ses cadres cognitifs, a s'articuler, dans la fluidite du jeu ou le coincement grincant, a une vie de la pensee ou (de)raison, emotion et fiction consonnent avec individuation. Sont ainsi restituees des pensees sensibles, comme autant de formes de soi traversees par le romanesque. (shrink)

This paper draws on Mary Daly's creative, connective use of the written word to challenge David Abram's central argument in The Spell of the Sensuous: that alphabetic writing and literacy are primarily responsible both for dulling human sensory perception and for severing a deep connection between humans and the natural world. It does so by outlining Abram's central claim, investigating the parallels and important differences between Abram's and Daly's work, and examining the strategies for reconnecting with the living world that (...) emerge from Daly's prose. Ultimately, this paper argues that the ways in which people interact with all language have a greater impact on their perception of and connec- tion to the natural world than whether they live in oral or literate communities. (shrink)

Selon certains auteurs, les technologies militaires contemporaines – automatisation croissante de la vision et intégration d’images de synthèse – font émerger de nouvelles temporalités. Le réalisateur allemand Harun Farocki et l’artiste israélien Omer Fast articulent le lien entre temporalité, virtualité, trauma et monde militarisé. À partir de leurs œuvres et de ces notions, il s’agit ici d’analyser différentes interprétations du remaniement de la temporalité et de la subjectivité à l’ère des guerres high-tech.

Introduction The mainstream view in philosophy of language is that sentence meaning determines truth-conditions. A corollary is that the truth or falsity of an utterance depends only on what words mean and how the world is arranged. Although several prominent philosophers (Searle, Travis, Recanati, Moravcsik) have challenged this view, it has proven hard to dislodge. The alternative view holds that meaning underdetermines truth-conditions. What is expressed by the utterance of a sentence in a context goes beyond what is encoded in (...) the sentence itself. Truth-conditional content depends on an indefinite number of unstated background assumptions, not all of which can be made explicit. A change in background assumptions can change truth-conditions, even bracketing disambiguation and reference assignment. That is, even after disambiguating any ambiguous words in a sentence and assigning semantic values to any indexical expressions in the sentence, truth-conditions may vary with variations in the background. (shrink)

The current pandemic period has triggered a series of changes in society, at both individual and collective behavioral levels. These changes were perceived as either positive or negative by the impacted bodies, leading to both social change and positive interactions in a tense context. In this paper, the authors will deal with Pandemica Panotpica, subjugation infiltrating all levels of society, and the approach adopted by several countries in trying to find countermeasures to combat the virus' proliferation. Our research scope began (...) at the onset of the pandemic and ended on early January 2021. (shrink)

Is there a link between how a firm manages its internal and external stakeholders? More specifically, are firms that give employees stock ownership and more say in running the enterprise more likely to engage with external stakeholders? This study seeks to answer these questions by elaborating on mechanisms that link employees to external stakeholders, such as the community, suppliers, and the environment. It tests these relationships using a sample of 347 private, mostly small-to-medium size firms, which completed a stakeholder impact (...) assessment organized by the non-profit B Lab. The results support the hypotheses that both employee ownership and employee involvement are positively associated with external stakeholder engagement. Further, we found that certification plays a role, as employee ownership contributes to external stakeholder engagement only in certified B Corporations, and not in firms that merely completed the B Lab Impact assessment. Our findings have import for stakeholder engagement frameworks, as we show that there is interplay between internal employee stakeholders and external stakeholders that may be important to overall firm–stakeholder management. (shrink)

Principle-based formulations of bioethical theory have recently come under increasing scrutiny, particularly insofar as they give prominence to personal autonomy. This essay critiques the dominant conceptualization of autonomy and urges an alternative formulation freed from the individualistic assumptions that pervade the prevailing framework. Drawing on feminist perspectives, I discuss the need for a vision of patient autonomy that joins relational experiences to individuality and acknowledges the influence of patterns of power and authority on the exercise of patient agency. Deficiencies in (...) the current models of science and social relations guiding medical practice are analyzed, particularly (1) the tendency to disregard the patients self-knowledge and (2) failure to recognize limitations on the generalizability of medical knowledge. Models of social relations such as mothering and friendship are explored to advance a conception of autonomy better suited to the practical activities of medicine. In conclusion, I consider how acknowledgement of the specificity and complexity of social relations can contribute to reconfiguration of other principles comprising the standard framework of bioethics, particularly beneficence, justice, and equality. (shrink)

This article proposes that the urgent task for feminist sociology is to recuperate those lost or residual `body matters' which lurk, unattended to, on the sidelines of the social. Feminist sociology must carefully negotiate the complex space between sociality and corporeality. The new feminist philosophies of the body tend sometimes to grate against this project by valorizing the body but de-valorizing gender. The new sociology of the body is recuperating the body within sociology, but pays insufficient attention to the ways (...) in which gendered bodies have always enjoyed varying degrees of absence or presence in the sociological imaginary - in the guise of `female corporeality' and `male embodiment'. By revisiting the classical texts of sociology, such as those of Durkheim, Weber and particularly Simmel, I explore the textual strategies whereby `the body' and `the social' were dissociated in the first place and how, simultaneously, woman is saturated with, while man is divested of, corporeality and she is divested while he is invested with sociality. The absent women in sociology were the women in the body excluded from the social. It is male bodies which animate the social - they appear for a fleeting moment, only to disappear immediately, in the space between `corporeality' and `sociality'. Thus, it is not simply a case of recuperating bodies into the social, but of excavating the gendered subtexts whereby gendered bodies were differently inscribed into and out of the social in the first place. The crucial point here is not the more familiar story of her saturation with corporeality but the less familiar one of what happened to his body - how, that is, did male sociologists effect the disappearance of their own bodies in the textual strategies of sociology? (shrink)

As concerns about the negative health effects of unhealthy eating, overweight and obesity have increased, so too have policy efforts to promote healthy eating. Federal, state, and local governments have proposed and implemented a variety of healthy eating policies. Many of these policies are controversial, facing objections that range from the practical (e.g., the policy won’t succeed at improving people’s diets) to the ethical (e.g., the policy is paternalistic or inequitable). Especially controversial have been policies limiting the options offered in (...) the marketplace, limiting access to certain options, or providing disincentives for the purchase of certain options. Examples of such policies include proposed .. (shrink)

We examine recent evolution in corporate responsibility in the forest industry, an important natural‐resource‐based industry which is under rapid internationalisation and structural change under challenging financial pressures. We address two recent trends in corporate communication: corporate disclosure, that is the adoption of consistent external reporting standards [namely the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) ], and the growing awareness of engagement with and impact on local communities through philanthropy, generation of prosperity, communication and the social impact of core activities. This study uses (...) a comparative qualitative case approach to forest industry multinational enterprises (MNEs) based on a combination of secondary (reporting, company newsletters and other documentation) and interview data. Three large‐scale multinational forest industry firms, all pursuing different strategies in terms of internationalisation and geographical and product diversification, were chosen for the study: Stora Enso, SCA and Sappi Ltd. Our results show that the overall quality of sustainability reporting has improved in these companies from 2005 to 2009 with the adoption of GRI. However, based on our fourfold categorisation of social impact, the core social impact indicator in GRI (SO1) has been interpreted very differently in these MNEs, and the adoption of GRI has not actually much improved the comparability of the reports or transparency of practices. (shrink)

Young netizens are an emerging generator of online content, engaging in an increasing number of online flaming interactions. This shortened communication mode has incorporated power amplifiers, enabling the inclusion of both verbal and non-verbal triggers, thereby initiating abuses akin to cyberbullying. Cyberbullying has emerged as an extremely unstable hot issue, which is difficult to regulate upstream, severely impacting inexperienced young netizens. This Machiavellian apparatus proves to be sophisticated, given its powerful nature, and results in its victims being ensnared in a (...) cyber net from which they see very little escape. Laws have been enacted to combat cyberbullying, which is rampant among netizens, highly naive or actively aggressive in their use of various social media platforms. (shrink)

School-based education in England has undergone significant changes since 2010, with a huge expansion of academies, schools outside local authority control, funded directly by central government. Academies and local authority (LA) maintained schools are subject to different legislative and regulatory frameworks. This paper focuses on the governance of LA maintained schools, single academy trusts (SATs) and schools that are part of multi-academy trusts (MATs). The research involved analysing legislative provision, policy documents, and documents addressing the governance arrangements of a sample (...) of 23 secondary schools. Our findings reveal a fragmented state-funded secondary school system as regards overall governance, school admissions, the curriculum, and the use of funding. Significantly schools in MATs, which are governed by the trust board, lack the autonomy of either SATs or maintained schools and are instead under the ultimate control of the trust board. The paper argues that there is a need for greater consistency regarding the governance of state-funded schools. (shrink)

The naturalistic fallacy is mentionedfrequently by evolutionary psychologists as anerroneous way of thinking about the ethicalimplications of evolved behaviors. However,evolutionary psychologists are themselvesconfused about the naturalistic fallacy and useit inappropriately to forestall legitimateethical discussion. We briefly review what thenaturalistic fallacy is and why it is misusedby evolutionary psychologists. Then we attemptto show how the ethical implications of evolvedbehaviors can be discussed constructivelywithout impeding evolutionary psychologicalresearch. A key is to show how ethicalbehaviors, in addition to unethical behaviors,can evolve by natural selection.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore artificial moral agency by reflecting upon the possibility of a Moral Turing Test and whether its lack of focus on interiority, i.e. its behaviouristic foundation, counts as an obstacle to establishing such a test to judge the performance of an Artificial Moral Agent. Subsequently, to investigate whether an MTT could serve as a useful framework for the understanding, designing and engineering of AMAs, we set out to address fundamental challenges within (...) the field of robot ethics regarding the formal representation of moral theories and standards. Here, typically three design approaches to AMAs are available: top-down theory-driven models and bottom-up approaches which set out to model moral behaviour by means of models for adaptive learning, such as neural networks, and finally, hybrid models, which involve components from both top-down and bottom-up approaches to the modelling of moral agency. With inspiration from Allen and Wallace as well as Prior, we elaborate on theoretically driven approaches to machine ethics by introducing deontic tense logic. Finally, within this framework, we explore the character of human interaction with a robot which has successfully passed an MTT. Design/methodology/approach – The ideas in this paper reflect preliminary theoretical considerations regarding the possibility of establishing a MTT based on the evaluation of moral behaviour, which focusses on moral reasoning regarding possible actions. The thoughts reflected fall within the field of normative ethics and apply deontic tense logic to discuss the possibilities and limitations of artificial moral agency. Findings – The authors stipulate a formalisation of logic of obligation, time and modality, which may serve as a candidate for implementing a system corresponding to an MTT in a restricted sense. Hence, the authors argue that to establish a present moral obligation, we need to be able to make a description of the actual situation and the relevant general moral rules. Such a description can never be complete, as the combination of exhaustive knowledge about both situations and rules would involve a God eye’s view, enabling one to know all there is to know and take everything relevant into consideration before making a perfect moral decision to act upon. Consequently, due to this frame problem, from an engineering point of view, we can only strive for designing a robot supposed to operate within a restricted domain and within a limited space-time region. Given such a setup, the robot has to be able to perform moral reasoning based on a formal description of the situation and any possible future developments. Although a system of this kind may be useful, it is clearly also limited to a particular context. It seems that it will always be possible to find special cases in which a given system does not pass the MTT. This calls for a new design of moral systems with trust-related components which will make it possible for the system to learn from experience. Originality/value – It is without doubt that in the near future we are going to be faced with advanced social robots with increasing autonomy, and our growing engagement with these robots calls for the exploration of ethical issues and stresses the importance of informing the process of engineering ethical robots. Our contribution can be seen as an early step in this direction. (shrink)

As Einstein’s successor in Prague and the author of a biography on Einstein, the physicist and philosopher Philipp Frank made relativity a central aspect of his thoughts on morality. He published his views on this topic mainly in the year 1950 in a small book entitled Relativity—A Richer Truth. As far as morality as a part of social and political life is concerned, Frank’s primary interest is to show that as in science, relativity in morality does not preclude objectivity. The (...) paper deals with the question of which conceptions of relativity and relativism Frank refers to in the context of modern science and examines the implications for objectivity and absolute values in morality. (shrink)

The environmental crisis is the most prominent challenge humanity has ever had to battle with, and humanity is currently failing. The Anthropocene—or so called ‘age of humans’—is indeed a period when the survival of humanity has never been so much at risk. This book locates itself in the field of critical green political theory. Fremaux's analysis of the current environmental crisis calls for us to embrace radical shifts in our modes of being; or, in other words, socially progressive innovations that (...) will be described within the unique framework of "Green Republicanism." In offering a constructive and emancipatory delineation of what could be considered an ecological civilization that is respectful of its natural environment and social differences, this book describes how to shift from an ‘arrogant speciesism’ and materialistic lifestyle to a post-anthropocentric ecological humanism focusing on the ‘good life’ within ecological limits. This new political regime calls for a radical reinvention of our societies, a decentering of the humans within our metaphysical worldview, and a withdrawal of the capitalist technosphere at the benefit of the biosphere. It will require a new economic paradigm that replaces the unsustainable capitalist logic of growth by sustainable degrowth and steady economics. Rooted in ethical thinking and political philosophy, this book seeks to offer a concrete roadmap of how sustainable societies can be fostered. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The secondary school system in England has undergone a radical transformation since 2010 with the rapid expansion of independent academies run by private companies (?academy trusts?) and funded directly by central government. This paper examines the development of academies and their predecessors, city technology colleges, and explores the extent and nature of continuity and change. It is argued that processes of layering and policy revision, together with austerity measures arising from economic recession, have resulted in a system-wide change with (...) private, non-profit-making companies, funded by central government, rapidly replacing local authorities as the main providers of secondary school education. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of education reforms on school admissions policies and practices. It discusses the changes that are needed to improve the current system, especially in areas where the market is highly developed. It is concluded that the new legislation to be enacted by the current Labour Government should be beneficial, but that more far-reaching changes are needed for the admissions process to be equitable, transparent and accountable.

Stimuli that resemble humans, but are not perfectly human-like, are disliked compared to distinctly human and nonhuman stimuli. Accounts of this “Uncanny Valley” effect often focus on how changes in human resemblance can evoke different emotional responses. We present an alternate account based on the novel hypothesis that the Uncanny Valley is not directly related to ‘human-likeness’ per se, but instead reflects a more general form of stimulus devaluation that occurs when inhibition is triggered to resolve conflict between competing stimulus-related (...) representations. We consider existing support for this inhibitory-devaluation hypothesis and further assess its feasibility through tests of two corresponding predictions that arise from the link between conflict-resolving inhibition and aversive response: 1) that the pronounced disliking of Uncanny-type stimuli will occur for any image that strongly activates multiple competing stimulus representations, even in the absence of any human-likeness, and 2) that the negative peak of an ‘Uncanny Valley’ should occur at the point of greatest stimulus-related conflict and not (in the presence of human-likeness) always closer to the ‘human’ end of a perceptual continuum. We measured affective responses to a set of line drawings representing nonhuman animal-animal morphs, in which each continuum midpoint was a bistable image (Exp. 1), as well as to sets of human-robot and human-animal computer-generated morphs (Exp. 2). Affective trends depicting classic Uncanny Valley functions occurred for all continua, including the nonhuman stimuli. Images at continua midpoints elicited significantly more negative affect than images at endpoints, even when the continua included a human endpoint. This illustrates the feasibility of the inhibitory-devaluation hypothesis and the need for further research into the possibility that the strong dislike of Uncanny-type stimuli reflects the negative affective consequences of cognitive inhibition. (shrink)

Although non-profit organisations typically have high representation of females on their boards, relatively little is known about the effects of gender diversity in these organisations particularly in relation to financial management. In this archival study, resource dependency theory and agency analysis are combined to provide theoretical insight and empirical analysis of gender diversity on effective financial management in member-governed, community financial institutions. The investigation is possible due to the unique characteristics of the organisational form and region being examined—credit unions in (...) Northern Ireland. The sector has not been subject to external regulation on board gender, yet a wide array of gender mix on boards ranging from 100 % male to 100 % female are in existence. In addition, effective financial management is crucial to their survival and their ability to meet member objectives. Boards with higher female representation exhibit superior financial management first, in respect of loan book quality in the period of austerity following the financial crisis and second when measured against return on assets. (shrink)

Reproductive tourism is a manifestation of a larger, more inclusive trend toward globalization of capitalist cultural and material economies. This paper discusses the development of cross-border assisted reproduction within the globalized economy, transnational and local structural processes that influence the trade, social relations intersecting it, and implications for the healthcare systems affected. I focus on prevailing gender structures embedded in the cross-border trade and their intersection with other social and economic structures that reflect and impact globalization. I apply a social (...) connection model of responsibility for unjust outcomes and consider strategies to counter structural injustices embedded in this industry. The concluding section discusses policy reforms and proposals for collaborative action to preclude further injustices and extend full human rights to all. (shrink)

L'ouvrage publié réunit les actes d'une journée d'étude consacrée à L'imprévu et le droit, souhaitée par les doctorants et organisée par l'Ecole doctorale de droit comparé de l'Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Le sujet est immédiatement apparu très riche. Si le terme d'imprévu n'est pas essentiellement juridique, il fait écho à des critères du droit tels que la prévisibilité d'une situation ou d'un texte, ou l'imprévisibilité d'un événement comme cause exonératoire de responsabilité. Il renvoie plus généralement à l'exigence de sécurité juridique (...) qui s'opposerait à l'imprévu juridique. En outre le contexte était des plus propices, quelle que soit la discipline concernée, droit public, droit privé et/ou droit pénal. L'imprévu est entendu comme tout ce qui n'a pas été prévu, tout ce qui arrive lorsqu'on ne s'y attend pas. Prévoir, c'est admettre comme probable. La question de l'imprévu confronté au droit est intéressante car les deux concepts semblent antinomiques. Le droit apparaît en effet comme quelque chose de figé, permettant de régler par anticipation les comportements humains. Il doit permettre à chacun de régler sa conduite puisque nul n'est censé ignorer la loi. Le droit doit donc être à la fois connu et prévisible dans ses effets même s'il n'en est pas toujours ainsi. La notion d'imprévu semble rencontrer le droit de deux manières. D'une part, il existe la norme imprévue : la norme nouvelle, la coutume en formation ou l'interprétation surprenante. Se posent alors les questions de la prévisibilité du droit, et corrélativement celle de la sécurité juridique. D'autre part, il y a le fait imprévu. La norme doit se saisir de comportements humains ou de situations de fait qui n'avaient pas été anticipés. L'appréhension du risque et de la survenance d'événements inattendus par des règles de droit préexistantes devient alors un enjeu essentiel. (shrink)