This ethical analysis compares two mid-size Asian-based multinational corporations (Japanese and Taiwanese) that have established extensive operations in China. We describe and analyze ethically relevant dimensions of each corporation's culture and practices, including their corporate cultures and the ethical issues they face. We argue that these companies add value to China's social and economic transformation in several important ways, including their development of human capital – the enhanced skill sets, work experiences, and values acquired by their workers. We conclude by (...) highlighting three ethical challenges that seem most critical for these two firms: (a) creating mutual benefit for the corporation and the host country; (b) localization and management of the cultural gap between expats and local workers; and (c) dealing effectively with the power and roles of a large, pervasive government in a non-democratic society. The experiences of these two international firms can provide insights into how international firms might construct effective management strategies for doing business in countries such as China. (shrink)

In "A Problem in Possible-World Semantics," David Kaplan presented a consistent and intelligible modal principle that cannot be validated by any possible world frame (in the terminology of modal logic, any neighborhood frame). However, Kaplan's problem is tempered by the fact that his principle is stated in a language with propositional quantification, so possible world semantics for the basic modal language without propositional quantifiers is not directly affected, and the fact that on careful inspection his principle does not target (...) the world part of possible world semantics—the atomicity of the algebra of propositions—but rather the idea of propositional quantification over a complete Boolean algebra of propositions. By contrast, in this paper we present a simple and intelligible modal principle, without propositional quantifiers, that cannot be validated by any possible world frame precisely because of their assumption of atomicity (i.e., the principle also cannot be validated by any atomic Boolean algebra expansion). It follows from a theorem of David Lewis that our logic is as simple as possible in terms of modal nesting depth (two). We prove the consistency of the logic using a generalization of possible world semantics known as possibility semantics. We also prove the completeness of the logic (and two other relevant logics) with respect to possibility semantics. Finally, we observe that the logic we identify naturally arises in the study of Peano Arithmetic. (shrink)

A long history of research has revealed many neurophysiological changes and concomitant behavioral impacts of sleep deprivation, sleep restriction, and circadian rhythms. Little research, however, has been conducted in the area of computational cognitive modeling to understand the information processing mechanisms through which neurobehavioral factors operate to produce degradations in human performance. Our approach to understanding this relationship is to link predictions of overall cognitive functioning, or alertness, from existing biomathematical models to information processing parameters in a cognitive architecture, leveraging (...) the strengths from each to develop a more comprehensive explanation. The integration of these methodologies is used to account for changes in human performance on a sustained attention task across 88 h of total sleep deprivation. The integrated model captures changes due to time awake and circadian rhythms, and it also provides an account for underlying changes in the cognitive processes that give rise to those effects. The results show the potential for developing mechanistic accounts of how fatigue impacts cognition, and they illustrate the increased explanatory power that is possible by combining theoretical insights from multiple methodologies. (shrink)

Clonal disease is often regarded as almost synonymous with cancer. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that our bodies harbor numerous mutant clones that are not tumors, and mostly give rise to no disease at all. Here we discuss three somatic mutations arising within the hematopoietic system: BCR‐ABL, characteristic of chronic myeloid leukemia; mutations of the PIG‐A gene, characteristic of paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria; the V617F mutation in the JAK2 gene, characteristic of myeloproliferative diseases. The population frequencies of these three blood (...) disorders fit well with a hierarchical model of hematopoiesis. The fate of any mutant clone will depend on the target cell and on the fitness advantage, if any, that the mutation confers on the cell. In general, we can expect that only a mutation in a hematopoietic stem cell will give long‐term disease; the same mutation taking place in a cell located more downstream may produce just a ripple in the hematopoietic ocean. (shrink)

In this monograph I propose to interpret John Locke's view of central metaphysical notions such as substance, essence and identity to the backdrop of his distinction between distinct and confused ideas. I show that Locke draws this traditional distinction in a novel way—as a distinction pertaining only to the way ideas are related to our use of language. This distinction, I argue, allows him to radically rethink traditional questions of metaphysics and to mount a linguistic criticism of traditional metaphysical views (...) about substance, essence and identity. Furthermore, I propose that taking into account the linguistic dimension of Locke's metaphysical thought helps recognize the coherence of his overall picture of substance, essence and identity. (shrink)

This paper relocates the philosophical discourse on the Thing (das Ding) to the world of classical Daoism. In doing so, it explores the bond between the One, the Thing and its signifier before discussing how the Thing unveils itself to the world while receiving the gift of nothingness from Dao. It furthermore contends that the two most prominent discussions of the Thing in the Western tradition--those by Heidegger and Lacan--while philosophically valuable in their own right, fail to provide the degree (...) of profundity seen via a Daoist reading. What will become apparent is that the Thing qua the One serves to delineate the cosmological and human realms of reality, negating any inclination one might have of it as being anything but mystical. (shrink)

Die Abhandlung zeigt, dass Hegels Untersuchung der Wahrnehmung in der Phanomenologie des Geistes eine subtile und tiefgreifende Kritik entwickelt an dem systematisch wichtigen Abschnitt von Humes Traktat Vom Skeptizismus in Bezug auf die Sinne (I,iv 2), in dem Hume den Begriff der Ding-Identitat untersucht. Hume und ihm folgend Hegel beschaftigten sich mit basalen Fragen der Wahrnehmungssynthesis und des Begriffs der Substanz viel grundlicher als ihre (aber nicht nur ihre) Zeitgenossen (einschliesslich Kant): Wie ist eine gegebene Menge von Qualitaten in der (...) Wahrnehmung eines Gegenstandes zusammenzubringen? Und: Durch was fur einen Begriff eines Gegenstandes lassen sie sich so vereinheitlichen? (Diese Fragen tauchen in der heutigen Neurophysiologie der Wahrnehmung als das bis jetzt ungeloste Bindungsproblem auf.) Hegel zeigt u.a., dass der Begriff der Ding-Identitat die zwei entgegengesetzten Teilbegriffe Einheit und Verschiedenheit einschliesst, ohne sich auf diese bloss quantitativen Begriffe reduzieren zu lassen; dass demzufolge dieser Begriff (gegen Humes Begriffs-Empirismus) relativ a priori gilt; dass wir nur durch den Gebrauch eines solchen Begriffs Bewusstsein von Gegenstanden mit vielen Eigenschaften erlangen und dass insofern eine aktiv gedachte Erkenntnisweise durchaus in Einklang mit Common Sense-Realismus steht. Durch Bezugnahme auf Hume und den neuzeitlichen philosophischen Kontext der Problemlage Hegels ergibt sich zum ersten Mal eine befriedigende, vollstandige und philosophisch aufschlussreiche Rekonstruktion des Wahrnehmung-Kapitels. (shrink)

What are the philosophical views of professional philosophers, and how do these views change over time? The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions. The results provide a snapshot of the state of some central debates in philosophy, reveal correlations and demographic effects involving philosophers' views, and reveal some changes in philosophers' views over the last decade.

Moderate pragmatic invariantism (MPI) is a proposal to explain why our intuitions about the truth-value of knowledge claims vary with stakes and salient error-possibilities. The basic idea is that this variation is due to a variation not in the propositions expressed (as epistemic contextualists would have it) but in the propositions conversationally implicated. I will argue that MPI is mistaken: I will distinguish two kinds of implicature, namely, additive and substitutional implicatures. I will then argue, first, that the proponent of (...) MPI cannot appeal to additive implicatures because they don’t affect truth-value intuitions in the required way. Second, I will argue that the proponent of MPI cannot appeal to substitutional implicatures either because, even though they may have the required effects on truth-value intuitions, they don’t feature in the relevant cases. It follows that MPI is mistaken because whether the proponent of MPI appeals to additive or substitutional implicatures, at least one of the claims that make up her view is false. Along the way, I will suggest principles about implicatures that should be relevant not only to MPI, but to pragmatic accounts of seemingly semantic intuitions in general. (shrink)

Die in Wittgensteins Anfangsthesen des Tractatus formulierte Ansicht, daß Tatsachen die Bausteine der Welt ausmachen, kann auch so interpretiert werden, daß Tatsachen physische Entitäten sind. Die These von der physischen Existenz von Tatsachen wird in der analytischen Philosophie jedoch weitgehend abgelehnt. Hier wird hingegen versucht, diese Position als Tatsachen-Ontologie kohärent zu entwickeln. Vorzüge diese Position wären u.a. eine elegante Deutung der Vielheit verschiedener wahrer Aussagen, eine gute Basis fur eine Korrespondenztheorie der Wahrheit, Referenz auf strukturierte Raum-Zeit-Bereiche, sie wäre Baustein einer (...) realistischen Situationslogik und könnte eine Lösung für David Lewis' Problem der Einermengen liefern. (shrink)

Die in Wittgensteins Anfangsthesen des Tractatus formulierte Ansicht, daß Tatsachen die Bausteine der Welt ausmachen, kann auch so interpretiert werden, daß Tatsachen physische Entitäten sind. Die These von der physischen Existenz von Tatsachen wird in der analytischen Philosophie jedoch weitgehend abgelehnt. Hier wird hingegen versucht, diese Position als Tatsachen-Ontologie kohärent zu entwickeln. Vorzüge diese Position wären u.a. eine elegante Deutung der Vielheit verschiedener wahrer Aussagen, eine gute Basis fur eine Korrespondenztheorie der Wahrheit, Referenz auf strukturierte Raum-Zeit-Bereiche, sie wäre Baustein einer (...) realistischen Situationslogik und könnte eine Lösung für David Lewis' Problem der Einermengen liefern. (shrink)

A leading political theorist’s groundbreaking defense of ideal conceptions of justice in political philosophy Throughout the history of political philosophy and politics, there has been continual debate about the roles of idealism versus realism. For contemporary political philosophy, this debate manifests in notions of ideal theory versus nonideal theory. Nonideal thinkers shift their focus from theorizing about full social justice, asking instead which feasible institutional and political changes would make a society more just. Ideal thinkers, on the other hand, question (...) whether full justice is a standard that any society is likely ever to satisfy. And, if social justice is unrealistic, are attempts to understand it without value or importance, and merely utopian? Utopophobia argues against thinking that justice must be realistic, or that understanding justice is only valuable if it can be realized. David Estlund does not offer a particular theory of justice, nor does he assert that justice is indeed unrealizable—only that it could be, and this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. Estlund engages critically with important strands in traditional and contemporary political philosophy that assume a sound theory of justice has the overriding, defining task of contributing practical guidance toward greater social justice. Along the way, he counters several tempting perspectives, including the view that inquiry in political philosophy could have significant value only as a guide to practical political action, and that understanding true justice would necessarily have practical value, at least as an ideal arrangement to be approximated. Demonstrating that unrealistic standards of justice can be both sound and valuable to understand, Utopophobia stands as a trenchant defense of ideal theory in political philosophy. (shrink)

David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is the definitive statement of the greatest philosopher in the English language. His arguments in support of reasoning from experience, and against the "sophistry and illusion"of religiously inspired philosophical fantasies, caused controversy in the eighteenth century and are strikingly relevant today, when faith and science continue to clash. The Enquiry considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or (...) indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. Hume's calm and open-minded skepticism thus aims to provide a new basis for science, liberating us from the "superstition" of false metaphysics and religion. His Enquiry remains one of the best introductions to the study of philosophy, and his edition places it in its historical and philosophical context. (shrink)

This article brings together two sets of data that are rarely discussed in concert; namely, disagreement and testimony data. I will argue that relativism yields a much more elegant account of these data than its major rival, contextualism. The basic idea will be that contextualists can account for disagreement data only by adopting principles that preclude a simple account of testimony data. I will conclude that, other things being equal, we should prefer relativism to contextualism. In making this comparative point, (...) I will also defend self-standing relativist accounts of disagreement and testimony data. (shrink)

The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? Drawing on an analogy to practical (...) philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality. (shrink)

By means of an example, shows the possibility of beliefs that are separately rational whilst together inconsistent.

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can (...) just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

One of the enduring concerns of moral philosophy is deciding who or what is deserving of ethical consideration. Much recent attention has been devoted to the "animal question" -- consideration of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In this book, David Gunkel takes up the "machine question": whether and to what extent intelligent and autonomous machines of our own making can be considered to have legitimate moral responsibilities and any legitimate claim to moral consideration. The machine question poses a (...) fundamental challenge to moral thinking, questioning the traditional philosophical conceptualization of technology as a tool or instrument to be used by human agents. Gunkel begins by addressing the question of machine moral agency: whether a machine might be considered a legitimate moral agent that could be held responsible for decisions and actions. He then approaches the machine question from the other side, considering whether a machine might be a moral patient due legitimate moral consideration. Finally, Gunkel considers some recent innovations in moral philosophy and critical theory that complicate the machine question, deconstructing the binary agent--patient opposition itself. Technological advances may prompt us to wonder if the science fiction of computers and robots whose actions affect their human companions could become science fact. Gunkel's argument promises to influence future considerations of ethics, ourselves, and the other entities who inhabit this world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Werke, and: Vol. 1, Schriften zum Spinozastreit (1998), and: Vol. 2, Schriften zum transzendentalen Idealismus (2004), and: Vol. 3, Schriften zum Streit um die göttlichen Dinge und ihre Offenbarung (2000)Rolf AhlersFriedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Werke. Edited by Klaus Hammacher and Walter Jaeschke. Vol. 1, Schriften zum Spinozastreit ( 1998). Vol. 2, Schriften zum transzendentalen Idealismus ( 2004). Vol. 3, Schriften zum Streit um die göttlichen Dinge und ihre Offenbarung (...) ( 2000). Pp. x + 640. Cloth, € 168,00 (Vol. 1). Pp. vii + 823. Cloth, € 264,00 (Vol. 2). Pp. vi + 262. Cloth, € 78,00 (Vol. 3). Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1998, 2000, 2004.The new critical Jacobi Werke Ausgabe (JWA), accompanied by four volumes of the still incomplete Briefwechsel (in progress at Frommann-Holzboog Publishers since 1981), is a masterpiece of research on Jacobi, early German Idealism and early Romanticism. Now [End Page 491] available are Volumes I, II and III. Volume I (1998) carries the title Schriften zum Spinozastreit and contains Jacobi's Spinozabriefe in the three editions of 1785, 1789, and 1819, Wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen of 1786, and the Vorbericht (Preface) of the third edition of the Spinozabriefe of 1819. The running text of all writings contains all editions, variant readings clearly identifiable with page references in the margins, subscripted to identify the various editions. This method enables the identification of various disputes which Jacobi provoked and in which his writings played a role. The Anhang, appendix, to all texts contains a) a list of abbreviations, and b) the editorial principles used and also a description of the circumstances leading to the writing of the texts. But the bulk of the Anhang of each volume is c) the "Kommentar," the commentary. It provides the key to the highly nuanced and, without guidance, the often cryptic allusions and references of Jacobi's texts. This commentary (separately bound in Volumes I and II) really brings Jacobi's work to life. The end of the Anhang contains d) a bibliography of all works mentioned not only by Jacobi himself but also emerging in the literary debate unlocked by the commentary, as well as e) an extensive index of names. Volume II (2004) is Schriften zur Transzendentalphilosophie, and contains David Hume of 1787, the Sendschreiben an Fichte, Ueberflüssiges Taschenbuch, both of 1799, and other essays such as Three Letters to Köppen of 1803. Volume III (2000) is Schriften zum Streit um die Göttlichen Dinge and contains mainly the famous essay Von den Göttlichen Dingen of 1811 plus three other writings. This book deals with the controversy between Schelling and Jacobi while both were at Munich. Other major works of Jacobi, such as the novel Allwill, are to follow in later volumes.This critical edition of Fr. H. Jacobi (1743–1819) definitively revises the standard interpretation of the man and his work. The standard interpretation (advocated by such figures as Fr. Schlegel, Moses Mendelssohn, and H. Heine) views his thought as promoting irrationalism, specifically a religious irrationalism of faith, taking form in "personalism." Heine spoke of Jacobi as a "whiney old biddy." Fr. Schlegel characterized Jacobi's salto mortale as the "leap into the arms of divine mercy," promoting an irrational "philosophical non-philosophy" (KFSA XVIII 13, Nr. 101). Schlegel criticized Jacobi at the very end of in his Woldemar Review of 1796 thus: "So (Jacobi's) Woldemar is really an invitation to meet God..., and (his) theological masterpiece ends, as do all moral excesses, with a salto mortale... into the abyss of divine mercy" (Früher Idealismus und Frühromantik PlS I.1, ed. W. Jaeschke [Hbg: Meiner, 1995], 270). Carl Philipp Moritz credited Jacobi with "fanaticism and superstition."In contrast, Jacobi himself was quite critical of this characterization of his thought, especially in the Sendschreiben of 1799, and earlier in his Briefe. Jacobi already in 1786 thought it was "outrageous" for Mendelssohn to suggest he surrenders a philosophy of reason in favor of the Christian faith, or worse. He addresses this problem, which is still today the dominant view of the "irrationality" of his "leap," with admirable clarity in his letter to Neeb of May 30, 1817: "I do not at all advocate a head-first... (shrink)

Kennedy (Linguist Philos 30:1–45, 2007) forcefully proposes what is now a widely assumed semantics for absolute gradable adjectives. On this semantics, maximum standard adjectives like “straight” and “dry” ascribe a maximal degree of the underlying quantity. Meanwhile, minimum standard adjectives like “bent” and “wet” merely ascribe a non-zero, non-minimal degree of the underlying quantity. This theory clashes with the ordinary intuition that sentences like “The stick is straight” are frequently true while sentences like “The stick is bent” are frequently informative, (...) and fans of the indicated theory of absolute gradable adjectives appeal to loose talk in response. One goal of this paper is to show that all extant theories of loose talk are inconsistent with this response strategy. Another goal is to offer a revised version of Hoek’s (Philos Rev 127:151–196, 2018, in: Proceedings of the 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium, 2019) recent theory of loose talk that accommodates absolute gradable adjectives after all, while being defensible against a range of important concerns. (shrink)

This book shows how pressing issues in bioethics – e.g. the ownership of biological material and human cognitive enhancement – successfully can be discussed with in a virtue ethics framework. This is not intended as a complete or exegetic account of virtue ethics. Rather, the aim here is to discuss how some key ideas in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, when interpreted pragmatically, can be a productive way to approach some hot issues in bioethics. In spite of being a very promising theoretical (...) perspective virtue ethics has so far been underdeveloped both in bioethics and neuroethics and most discussions have been conducted in consequentialist and/or deontological terms. ​. (shrink)

How should one react when one has a belief, but knows that other people—who have roughly the same evidence as one has, and seem roughly as likely to react to it correctly—disagree? This paper argues that the disagreement of other competent inquirers often requires one to be much less confident in one’s opinions than one would otherwise be.