ABSTRACTIn Sinicized Asia, justice, conceptualized and institutionalized in its current form on a Western mold is part of a singular and ancient Confucian legal tradition.In this paper, it will be argued that Confucians initially articulated the concept of justice in relation to their own explanation of the world and their ideal, which distinguishes and rewards men’s actions according to their merits and social condition.It will be shown that Confucius’s thinking is primarily political and suggests ways of harmoniously organizing and reforming (...) society in which justice is conceived both as a principle of government, a principle of social conduct and one of the essential virtues, or a ‘moral sense’ that everyone must possess, while, in practice, Confucian justice will put forward the imperatives of retributive justice. This, despite its philosophical aversion for sanctions and for what upsets harmony. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the relationship between paradigms of explication and the practice of conceptual engineering. It defends three interrelated claims: First, the predominant functionalist attitude in the present debate on conceptual engineering is due to its roots in Carnapian explication, which identifies the explicandum with a precursor concept. Second, alternative metaphysical paradigms of explication locate the explicandum in a part of a concept-independent reality (‘field explication‘, as I will call it). Third, field explication may be a better paradigm (...) than Carnapian functionalism for certain instances of socio-political conceptual engineering. In these instances, we adjust our concepts to more adequately capture differences in our concept-independent (felt) reality. To demonstrate this, I will contrast the metaphysical to the functionalist paradigm concerning the example of Heimat. [in German]. (shrink)

L’enfant adopté est le dépositaire du narcissisme parental, avec ses forces et ses fragilités. Dans le cas clinique exposé, le lien – à partir d’une filiation instituée – se bâtit sur des émotions – joies et inquiétudes – partagées, l’histoire du couple entrant parfois en résonance avec celle de leur fils. En accompagnant la famille adoptive, l’intermédiaire est un « co-créateur » du lien; il a pour fonction de contenir doutes et angoisses.

Using panel data of 4,244 company years, we examine whether and how corporate social performance affects a firm's capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets. Based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena, we hypothesized a U-shaped relationship between CSP and multinationality. Results supported our contention that multinational enterprises need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their CSP investments, and improve their capacity to compete in (...) foreign markets. MNEs engaged in intermediate levels of CSP achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum. In addition, this study demonstrates that CSP moderates a well-established relationship in international business literature - the relationship between R&D investment and a firm's multinationality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The essays contained in Beyond the Juxtaposition of Nature and Culture represent an attempt by scholars from Canada, Germany, and Mexico to come to grips with the innovative work of the American philosopher and anthropologist Lawrence Krader who has proposed nothing less than a new theory of nature, according to which there are at least three different orders--the material-biotic, the quantum, and the human--which differ from one another according to their different configurations of space-time, and which cannot be reduced the (...) one to the others. Each author takes up Krader's theory in relation to its impact on their own discipline: sociology, anthropology, the study of myth, the theory of labor and value, economics, linguistics, and aesthetics. The question of how nature and culture can be integrated within a theoretical framework which links them in difference and nexus and allows each their non-reductive space leads each of the contributors to move in their thinking beyond the old dualisms of materialism and idealism, fact and value, nature and culture. (shrink)

S.J. Cyril Barrett; VI—Concepts and Concept Formation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 63, Issue 1, 1 June 1963, Pages 127–144, https://doi.org/.

This paper evaluates how Amartya Sen’s critique of revealed preference theory stands against the latter’s contemporary, ‘neo-Samuelsonian’ version. Neo- Samuelsonians have argued that Sen’s arguments against RPT are innocuous, in particular once it is acknowledged that RPT does not assume away the existence of motivations or other latent psychological or cognitive processes. Sen’s claims that preferences and choices need to be distinguished and that external factors need to be taken into account to analyze the act of choice then appear to (...) be irrelevant. However, while it is true that contemporary revealed preference theory partially evades Sen’s critique, I show that the latter is still relevant outside the restricted areas of consumer choice and market dynamics. In particular, Sen’s views regarding the importance of incomplete preferences and the multiplicity of levels of agency can hardly be integrated into the framework of CRPT. This is a significant limit, given the imperialistic claims of some of the proponents of the latter. (shrink)

(1982). ’What is the Good?’: a comparison of young people's responses to two unfinished sentences about values. Educational Studies: Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 113-121.

The argument from ignorance mounted by John Schellenberg argues from the existence of non-faulty unbelief to the non-existence of God, from the fact of atheism or agnosticism to the truth of atheism. It relies on two putative conceptual relations: between the idea of love and that of personal relationship, and between personal relationship and existential belief on each side of the relation concerning the other relatum. I argue that each is debatable, and so the argument cannot proceed.

Glowacki asserts that interdependent relationships beyond group boundaries are exceptionally rare among nonhuman mammals. However, rudimentary forms of interdependence can be seen in primate species that form multilevel societies, that is, core social units embedded within higher-level grouping categories. Studies of primate multilevel societies can enrich discussions about the evolutionary origins of peaceful between-group interactions in humans.

For a quarter of a century the industrial Western world has been living in the euphoria of continuous improvements in welfare, based on economic programming, increasing integration and terms of trade which favor indus trial countries and discriminate against agricultural regions. It is true that recessions have periodically recurred during these years : time and again, however, government intervention succeeded in reducing them to mere "in ventory cycles". In contrast with the twenties and thirties, when economic policy in the West (...) focused on fighting unemployment and stimulating investment, the postwar period has been characterized by a permanent concern to curb inflationary pressure, which was partly due to full-employ ment. The present welfare economy has given rise to a growth of the pro pensity to consume such that public policy has often been constrained to limit consumption and stimulate saving. In this new framework it has perhaps been forgotten that today's welfare owes much to the lessons from the past. The bitter world crisis experience of the thirties in particular has exerted a fruitful and decisive influence upon the search for means to prevent, eliminate or soften the cyclical fluctuations which the process of economic growth involves. Forty years after the out break of the greatest economic crisis ever, it seems useful to draw up the balancesheet of the lessons learned from it. There exists a large literature about the depression of the thirties. (shrink)

This paper pursues a naturalist endeavor in social ontology by arguing that the Beliefs-Rules-Equilibrium account of institutions can help to advance the debate over the nature of social kinds. This account of institutions emerges from a growing number of works in economics that use game theory to study the role and the functioning of institutions in human societies. I intend to show how recent developments in the economic analysis of rules and institutions can help solve issues that are generally considered (...) constitutive of any ontological inquiry. I argue that the Beliefs-Rules-Equilibrium account of institutions can contribute to advancing the debate on an issue of particular importance, regarding the specific form of dependence characterizing the relation between institutions and individuals’ attitudes about them. I tackle this issue by taking Francesco Guala's claims about the nature of institutions made in his book “Understanding Institutions” as a point of departure. In particular, I reject Guala’s functionalism about institutions. On the basis of the Beliefs-Rules-Equilibrium account, I claim that it is futile to search for constitutive features of general institutions (money, property rights, family…) and that the best we can have is a knowledge of what are the rules within a specific institution, which the agents consider to be essential in their institutional practice. (shrink)

Résumé Prenant pour exemple la figure littéraire de l’employé de bureau, notre étude se propose de saisir les particularités synchroniques et le cheminement diachronique d’une esthétique de l’impotence qui aurait émergé avec la tentation flaubertienne du « livre sur rien », pour se développer ensuite dans une large part du roman français de la première moitié du xx e siècle et trouver, enfin, son aboutissement dans l’œuvre de Samuel Beckett.

:Most game-theoretic accounts of institutions reduce institutions to behavioural patterns the players are incentivized to implement. An alternative account linking institutions to rule-following behaviour in a game-theoretic framework is developed on the basis of David Lewis’s and Ludwig Wittgenstein's respective accounts of conventions and language games. Institutions are formalized as epistemic games where the players share some forms of practical reasoning. An institution is a rule-governed game satisfying three conditions: common understanding, minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality. Common understanding has (...) a strong similarity with Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of lebensform while minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality capture the idea that rule-following is community-based. (shrink)

Cyril Smith shows that Marx developed a far richer and liberatory vision of humanity and the alternative to capital than that which has characterized his followers, and he makes a powerful argument that it is essential to return to Marx's original body of thought in order to reconstitute a viable critique of existing capitalist society.

A philosopher and a cognitive neuroscientist conversed with Buddhist lama Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt (TLB) about the unresolved phenomenological concerns and logical questions surrounding “pure” consciousness or minimal phenomenal experience (MPE), a quasi-contentless, non-dual state whose phenomenology of “emptiness” is often described in terms of the phenomenal quality of luminosity that experienced meditators have reported occurs in deep meditative states. Here, we present the excerpts of the conversation that relate to the question of how it is possible to first have and (...) later retrieve such non-dual states of selflessness and timelessness that are unrelated to sensory input. According to TLB, a “pure” experience of consciousness contains the phenomenal quality of luminous clarity, which is experienced solely in the transitional phase from the non-dual state of absolute emptiness to the state of minimal emptiness, when the person gradually returns to duality. However, this quality of luminous clarity can also be experienced in non-minimal states as in the experiential mode of being awakened. TLB describes this transition as a kind of ephemeral afterglow in the form of a maximally abstract phenomenal quality, i.e., luminosity, which justifies the conclusion of having been in a state of “pure” consciousness. (shrink)

Présentation de l'indice de la distance intertextuelle et de ses propriétés. Discussion des limites du calcul : influence des décimales et des différences de taille entre textes comparés. Examen de la contribution à la distance des vocables classés en fonction de leurs catégories grammaticales et de leurs fréquences. L'indice de la distance inter-textuelle fournit un outil intéressant pour la mesure des ressemblances et des dissemblances au sein des grandes bases de textes.

What motivates human life as a whole? What is the measure of becoming oneself? The answer of Kierkegaard on these fundamental questions is the topic of this article. His account of the human existential pathos as 'interest' has been reconstructed in parts 1 and 2 and contrasted with an objective-systematic understanding of human life and with an esthetical way of life. In part 5 I try to show how Kierkegaard's understanding of this pathos is inherently linked with his unique indirect (...) method of philosophical thinking. (shrink)

Chez Eisenstein on découvre comment dans le cinéma de prise de vues réelles, il est déjà possible de détourner un élément du représenté pour en faire le moyen d’une représentation qui le dépasse au point de lui être étranger, dans la mesure où il sert un propos tout autre que celui de son contexte d’origine. Dans le stop motion la mise en mouvement fondée sur un type de « montage » image par image permet non seulement de réanimer le monde, (...) mais aussi de transfigurer les objets et leur matérialité même. L’adhésion au contenu profilmique ne concerne donc plus uniquement les contenus généraux et narratifs de la représentation (comme le lieu ou la temporalité), mais aussi la matérialité même des objets. (shrink)

Après avoir identifié quelques arguments pour illustrer ce dont traite la philosophie analytique de la religion, je défends que celle-ci a la pertinence de la spéculation classique sur le contenu de la foi. L’une et l’autre reposent sur la contrainte logique qui suit de l’acceptation d’une proposition — refus de ce qui la contredit, acceptation de ses conséquences — et sur le fait que la Révélation chrétienne contient des propositions, certaines paradoxales. J’illustre cette pertinence par trois exemples pris dans la (...) « philosophie continentale de la religion ». (shrink)

I argue that one can be responsible for a certain state of affairs, one has brought about, or one has let happen, only if one could have avoided it, by omitting or by performing a certain action. I limit my argument to the consequences of actions and omissions, and to the conditional ability of avoiding the consequences by an alternative behaviour. Even within those limits, the argument challenges the Causal Conception of Moral Responsibility and the strategy mounted by Frankfurt against (...) the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. It is a step in favor of the idea that the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Nous pensons avoir souvent le choix entre plusieurs options et considérons que les personnes humaines qui exercent normalement ce pouvoir peuvent être tenues pour responsables de leurs actes. Ces croyances, en la liberté, en la responsabilité et en leur relation nécessaire, ont pu être entendues de manières différentes, voire niées. L'idée que les actions humaines sont déterminées par des facteurs qui ne dépendent pas des agents humains, comme le sont tous ou la plupart des événements de ce monde, est une (...) croyance ancienne (destin, prédestination) et moderne (déterminisme des lois de la nature). Et la pensée qu'une indétermination des actions humaines ne serait pas plus favorable à la liberté et à la responsabilité peut conduire à la conclusion que ces dernières sont impossibles. Pour affronter ce problème, il faut élucider les concepts, et évaluer les analyses ainsi que les arguments proposés de part et d'autre. En s'appuyant sur l'état contemporain de la discussion, ce livre défend la possibilité et la plausibilité de la conception "libertarienne" de la liberté. Elle serait incompatible avec le déterminisme et compatible avec l'indéterminisme, qui est la condition de la responsabilité morale."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)