The traditional problem of incontinence raises the question of whether there is any way to account for action contrary to judgment. When one acts, rather than only being acted upon by circumstances, the action is explained in terms of the reasons for action one judges oneself to have. It therefore seems impossible to explain action that iscontrary to such judgment. This paper examines the question of how such explanation would be possible. After excluding accounts that either eliminate incontinence or render (...) it inexplicable, I argue that genuine incontinence would require three components: first, a distinction between the types of judgments simultaneously present in the agent; second, the Aristotelian idea that not all of those types of judgments can be directly action-guiding; and third, that the judgments that are action-guiding can be pre-conceptual perceptions. I then use elements of Collingwood's aesthetics to make the case that although such pre-conceptual perceptions would not be propositional judgments and the relationship between them and the behaviors of the agent could not be causal, those behaviors could still qualify as incontinent actions. (shrink)

During the academic year 1940-1941, several giants of analytic philosophy congregated at Harvard, holding regular private meetings, with Carnap, Tarski, and Quine. Carnap, Tarski, and Quine at Harvard allows the reader to act as a fly on the wall for their conversations. Carnap took detailed notes during his year at Harvard. This book includes both a German transcription of these shorthand notes and an English translation in the appendix section. Carnap’s notes cover a wide range of topics, but surprisingly, the (...) most prominent question is: If the number of physical items in the universe is finite, what form should scientific discourse take? This question is closely connected to an abiding philosophical problem: What is the relationship between the logico-mathematical realm and the material realm? Carnap, Tarski, and Quine’s attempts to answer this question involve issues central to philosophy today.This book focuses on three such issues: nominalism, the unity of science, and analyticity. In short, the book reconstructs the lines of argument represented in these Harvard discussions, discusses their historical significance (especially Quine’s break from Carnap), and relates them when possible to contemporary treatments of these issues. (shrink)

Motivated by contemporary debates concerning whether directors inappropriately deploy corporate funds for corporate political donations and the limited research into managerial influence on corporate political donations, we examine the impact of director influences from a network perspective. Using a sample of large listed Australian corporations and their political party donation activity during 2000–2007, we find that both the professional and non-professional networks of directors influence corporate political donations. We observe these influences in relation to donations at the federal and state (...) levels, and with respect to the choice of recipient political parties. (shrink)

The logic of singular terms that refer to nothing, such as ‘Santa Claus,’ has been studied extensively under the heading of free logic. The present essay examines expressions whose reference is defective in a different way: they signify more than one entity. The bulk of the effort aims to develop an acceptable formal semantics based upon an intuitive idea introduced informally by Hartry Field and discussed by Joseph Camp; the basic strategy is to use supervaluations. This idea, as it stands, (...) encounters difficulties, but with suitable refinements it can be salvaged. Two other options for a formal semantics of multiply signifying terms are also presented, and I discuss the relative merits of the three semantics briefly. Finally, possible modifications to the standard logical regimentation of the notion of existence are considered. (shrink)

This paper reports the results of a study of the top 500 private sector organizations and the top 100 public sector organizations in Sweden. It is a replication of the study by Svensson et al . (2004) . The aim of the study was to describe and compare the business ethics commitment of organizations across the two sectors. The empirical findings indicate that the processes involved in business ethics commitment have begun to be recognized and acted upon at an organizational (...) level in Sweden. Some support is provided to show that codes of ethics are developing in some of Sweden's largest private and public sector organizations – although this is happening to a lesser extent in the public sector. It is noted that an effect of a code of ethics on the bottom line of the business was acknowledged by respondents in both private and public sector organizations. We believe that the supporting measures of business ethics commitment appear to be underutilized in both private and public sector organizations in Sweden (among those that possess codes of ethics), thus indicating that the commitment to business ethics in Swedish organizations has potential for future development. (shrink)

We show that every dominating analytic set in the Baire space has a dominating closed subset. This improves a theorem of Spinas [15] saying that every dominating analytic set contains the branches of a uniform tree, i.e. a superperfect tree with the property that for every splitnode all the successor splitnodes have the same length. In [15], a subset of the Baire space is called u-regular if either it is not dominating or it contains the branches of a uniform tree, (...) and it was proved that Σ21-Kσ-regularity implies Σ21-u-regularity. Here we show that these properties are in fact equivalent. Since the proof of analytic u-regularity uses a game argument it was clear that determinacy implies u-regularity of all sets. Here we show that an inaccessible cardinal is enough to construct a model for projective u-regularity, namely it holds in Solovay's model. Finally we show that forcing with uniform trees is equivalent to Laver forcing. (shrink)

Rutherford and Lindell (2011) review an extensive literature on lateralization of emotion. As they note, an important issue surrounding this question is the nature of emotion, which bears on what, precisely, is lateralized. The present comments are intended to broaden the context of the review, by considering lateralization from the standpoint of a bivariate model of evaluative processes and a neuroevolutionary perspective.

SummaryThis article offers a novel and comprehensive account of Walter Bagehot's political thought. It ties together an interpretation of Bagehot's liberal commitment to norms of discussion and deliberation, with an analysis of Bagehot's extensive arguments about the institutions of representative government. We show how Bagehot's opposition to American-style presidentialism, to parliamentary democracy, and to proportional representation were profoundly shaped by his conceptions of government by discussion, and the rule of public opinion. Bagehot's criticisms of English parliamentarianism, both of its pre-1832 (...) and post-1832 varieties were also motivated by those principles, as was his own proposal for parliamentary reform. By examining the whole range of Bagehot's writings on representative government and by connecting his institutional recommendations to his liberal principles, we are also able to better clarify Bagehot's position in Victorian political thought. The article concludes with a discussion of the debate leading up to the Second Reform Act, in which we elucidate Bagehot's disagreements with other prominent exponents of liberalism including John Stuart Mill, the “university liberals,” and Robert Lowe. (shrink)

This paper examines the implementation, communication and benefits of corporate codes of ethics by the top companies operating in Australia, Canada and Sweden. It provides an international comparison across three continents. It is also based on a longitudinal approach where three national surveys were performed in 2001–2002 and replications of the same surveys were performed in 2005–2006. The empirical findings of this research show in all three countries that large organisations indicate a substantial interest in corporate codes of ethics. There (...) are, however, differences in the ways that the companies in each country implement and communicate their corporate codes of ethics and the benefits that they see being derived from them. The longitudinal comparison between 2001–2002 and 2005–2006 indicates changes in the implementation, communication and benefits of corporate codes of ethics in the three countries. (shrink)

This paper examines the implementation, communication and benefits of corporate codes of ethics by the top companies operating in Australia, Canada and Sweden. It provides an international comparison across three continents. It is also based on a longitudinal approach where three national surveys were performed in 2001–2002 and replications of the same surveys were performed in 2005–2006. The empirical findings of this research show in all three countries that large organisations indicate a substantial interest in corporate codes of ethics. There (...) are, however, differences in the ways that the companies in each country implement and communicate their corporate codes of ethics and the benefits that they see being derived from them. The longitudinal comparison between 2001–2002 and 2005–2006 indicates changes in the implementation, communication and benefits of corporate codes of ethics in the three countries. (shrink)

Based on the 'Partnership Model of Corporate Ethics' (Wood, 2002), this study examines the ethical structures and processes that are put in place by organizations to enhance the ethical business behavior of staff. The study examines the use of these structures and processes amongst the top companies in the three countries of Australia, Canada, and Sweden over two time periods (2001–2002 and 2005–2006). Subsequendy, a combined comparative and longitudinal approach is applied in the study, which we contend is a unique (...) approach in the area of business ethics. The findings of the study indicate that corporations operating in Sweden have utilized ethical structures and processes differently than their Canadian and/or Australian counterparts, and that in each culture the way that companies fashion their approach to business ethics appears congruent with their national cultural values. There does, however, appear to be a convergence of views within the organizations of each culture, as the Swedish companies appear to have been more influenced in 2005–2006 by an Anglo-Saxon business paradigm than they have been in the past. (shrink)

This book considers the cultural legacy of the Keynesian Revolution in economics. It assesses the impact of Keynes and Keynesian thinking upon economics and policy, as well as the response of the Chicago and Austrian schools, and the legacy of all three in shaping economic life. The book is a call to restore economics to its roots in moral and cultural knowledge, reminding us that human beings are more than consumers. The Keynesian Revolution taught us that we should be happy (...) if we are prosperous, but instead we feel hollow and morally anxious – our economy feels empty. Drawing on paradigms from earlier historical periods while affirming modern market systems, this book encourages a return to a view of human beings as persons with the right and responsibility to discover, and do, the things in life that are intrinsically good and enduring. Because in the long run, the legacy of our choices will continue long after “we’re all dead.”. (shrink)

Two central and well-known philosophical goals of the logical empiricists are the unification of science and the elimination of metaphysics. I argue, via textual analysis, that these two apparently distinct planks of the logical empiricist party platform are actually intimately related. From the 1920’s through 1950, one abiding criterion for judging whether an apparently declarative assertion or descriptive term is metaphysical is that that assertion or term cannot be incorporated into a language of unified science. I explore various versions of (...) this criterion throughout the works of Carnap and Neurath. (shrink)

In this paper we develop a participatory model of the Christian doctrine of the atonement, according to which the atonement involves participating in the death and resurrection of Christ. In part one we argue that current models of the atonement—exemplary, penal, substitutionary and merit models—are unsatisfactory. The central problem with these models is that they assume a purely deontic conception of sin and, as a result, they fail to address sin as a relational and ontological problem. In part two we (...) argue that a participatory model of the atonement is both exegetically and philosophically plausible, and should be taken seriously within philosophical theology.i.. (shrink)

For a regular cardinal κ with κ<κ = κ and κ ≤ λ , we construct generically a subset S of {x ∈ Pκλ : x ∩ κ is a singular ordinal} such that S is stationary in a strong sense but the stationarity of S can be destroyed by a κ+-c. c. forcing ℙ* which does not add any new element of Pκλ . Actually ℙ* can be chosen so that ℙ* is κ-strategically closed. However we show that such (...) ℙ* itself cannot be κ-strategically closed or even <κ-strategically closed if κ is inaccessible. (shrink)

Place is central to many research projects in the social sciences, but it is often taken by researchers as a given. Recently, discourse analysts have devoted more attention to the construction of place in interaction. We focus on one aspect of this construction, the process of drawing inferences from place categories and place names, in transcripts of oral history interviews. We apply membership categorization analysis to descriptions of house types and houses, showing how some categories are presented as being shared (...) and recognizable, and how inferences are projected. Then we apply a similar approach to the ways inferences are drawn from place names, focusing especially on proximity. Participants’ categories can be investigated by examining the ways they are used in question–answer pairs, and in the construction of turns using elaborations, contrasting pairs, negatives and qualifications. This analysis shows the work these place references do for the participants, for instance, in categorizing themselves and others and giving accounts for behaviour. (shrink)

There are certain explanations that scientists do not accept, even though such explanations do not conflict with observation, logic, or other scientific theories. I argue that a common version of the no-miracles argument (NMA) for scientific realism relies upon just such an explanation. First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans neither generates novel predictions nor unifies apparently disparate phenomena. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions, and fails to (...) unify disparate phenomena. Third, Psillos, Boyd, and other proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using any methods not employed by science itself. Therefore, such naturalistic philosophers of science should not accept the version of scientific realism that appears in the NMA. [Publication note: This text is for a talk at the 2008 PSA convention. An expanded version of the talk was later published as a regular article in Philosophy of Science (2010).]. (shrink)

The ethical culture of any organization is not simply a reflection of its mission statement or even its code of conduct. Rather, the real ethics of institutions are often embedded in their reward systems. We suggest how ethics professors can lead students to develop a greater understanding of rewards by providing a review of various forms of organizational rewards. We also offer insights into how professors can compare reward systems in their classes. We conclude by addressing a number of pedagogical (...) approaches that are useful in equipping ethics students with awareness and understanding of reward systems’ power and influence on employee attitudes and behaviors surrounding ethical decision making. (shrink)

Reading Nietzsche, now available in English for the first time, is a group of essays that grew out of this monumental work.

Gustav Bergmann was, arguably, the greatest ontologist of the twentieth century in pursuing the fundamental questions of first philosophy as deeply as any philosopher of any time. In 2006 and 2007, international conferences devoted solely to Bergmann's work were held at the University of Iowa in the USA, Université de Provence in France, and Università degli Studi Roma Tre in Italy. The papers in this volume were presented at the first of these conferences, in Iowa City, where Bergmann taught for (...) nearly four decades after escaping from Europe, following the dissolution of the Vienna Circle of which he had been the youngest member. There are nine philosophical papers, reminiscences of three of his students, and a complete bibliography of his published writings. (shrink)

For more than 10 years, Ulrich Beck has dominated discussion of risk issues in the social sciences. We argue that Beck's criticisms of the theory and practise of risk analysis are groundless. His understanding of what risk is is badly flawed. His attempt to identify risk and risk perception fails. He misunderstands and distorts the use of probability in risk analysis. His comments about the insurance industry show that he does not understand some of the basics of that industry. And (...) his assertions about the wrongness of allowing acceptable levels of exposure to toxic chemicals do not stand up to scrutiny. Key Words: Beck • risk analysis • risk perception • probability • insurance. (shrink)

New Takes in Film-Philosophy offers a space for the advancement of the film-philosophy debate by some of its major figures. Fifteen leading academics from Philosophy and Film Studies develop new approaches to film-philosophy, broaden theoretical analyses of the topic and map out problems and possibilities for its future. The collection examines theoretical issues about the relationship between film and philosophy; looks at the relationships film-philosophy has to other media such as photography and literature; and applies theoretical approaches to particular films (...) and directors. Written in a clear style that assumes no previous knowledge of any particular philosopher, this collection will appeal to advanced students and scholars in philosophy, film studies, cultural studies, media studies and the arts. _. (shrink)

This book introduces an important group of logics that have come to be known under the umbrella term 'susbstructural'. Substructural logics have independently led to significant developments in philosophy, computing and linguistics. _An Introduction to Substrucural Logics_ is the first book to systematically survey the new results and the significant impact that this class of logics has had on a wide range of fields.The following topics are covered: * Proof Theory * Propositional Structures * Frames * Decidability * Coda Both (...) students and professors of philosophy, computing, linguistics, and mathematics will find this to be an important addition to their reading. (shrink)

A fundamental goal of research in neuroscience is to uncover the causal structure of the brain. This focus on causation makes sense, because causal information can provide explanations of brain function and identify reliable targets with which to understand cognitive function and prevent or change neurological conditions and psychiatric disorders. In this research, one of the most frequently used causal concepts is ‘mechanism’ — this is seen in the literature and language of the field, in grant and funding inquiries that (...) specify what research is supported, and in journal guidelines on which contributions are considered for publication. In these contexts, mechanisms are commonly tied to expressions of the main aims of the field and cited as the ‘fundamental’, ‘foundational’ and/or ‘basic’ unit for understanding the brain. Despite its common usage and perceived importance, mechanism is used in different ways that are rarely distinguished. Given that this concept is defined in different ways throughout the field — and that there is often no clarification of which definition is intended — there remains a marked ambiguity about the fundamental goals, orientation and principles of the field. Here we provide an overview of causation and mechanism from the perspectives of neuroscience and philosophy of science, in order to address these challenges. (shrink)

Curious about something? Google it. Look at it. Ask a question. But is curiosity simply information seeking? According to this exhilarating, genre-bending book, what’s left out of the conventional understanding of curiosity are the wandering tracks, the weaving concepts, the knitting of ideas, and the thatching of knowledge systems—the networks, the relations between ideas and between people. Curiosity, say Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett, is a practice of connection: it connects ideas into networks of knowledge, and it connects knowers (...) themselves, both to the knowledge they seek and to each other. -/- Zurn and Bassett—identical twins who write that their book “represents the thought of one mind and two bodies”—harness their respective expertise in the humanities and the sciences to get irrepressibly curious about curiosity. Traipsing across literatures of antiquity and medieval science, Victorian poetry and nature essays, as well as work by writers from a variety of marginalized communities, they trace a multitudinous curiosity. They identify three styles of curiosity—the busybody, who collects stories, creating loose knowledge network; the hunter, who hunts down secrets or discoveries, creating tight networks; and the dancer, who takes leaps of creative imagination, creating loopy ones. Investigating what happens in a curious brain, they offer an accessible account of the network neuroscience of curiosity. And they sketch out a new kind of curiosity-centric and inclusive education that embraces everyone’s curiosity. The book performs the very curiosity that it describes, inviting readers to participate—to be curious with the book and not simply about it. (shrink)

Benchmark theory , introduced by Ralph Wedgwood, departs from decision theories of pure expectation maximization like evidential decision theory and causal decision theory and instead ranks actions according to the desirability of an outcome they produce in some state of affairs compared to a standard—a benchmark—for that state of affairs. Wedgwood motivates BT through what he terms Gandalf’s principle, that the merits of an action in a given state should be evaluated relative only to the performances of other actions in (...) that state, and not to their performances in other states. Although BT succeeds in selecting intuitively rational actions in a number of cases—including some in which EDT or CDT seem to go wrong—it places constraints on rational decision-making that either lack motivation or are untenable. Specifically, I argue that as it stands BT is committed both to endorsing and rejecting the independence of irrelevant alternatives. Furthermore its requirement that weakly dominated actions be excluded from consideration of rational action lacks motivation and threatens to collide with traditional game theory. In the final section of the paper, I construct a counterexample to BT. (shrink)

This paper concerns a key point of decision in Donald Davidson's early work in philosophy of language — a fateful decision that set him and the discourse in the area on the path of truth-theoretic semantics. The decision of moment is the one Davidson makes when, in the face of a certain barrier, he gives up on the idea of constructing an explicit meaning theory that would parallel Tarski's recursive way with truth theory. For Davidson there was little choice: he (...) tells us he does not see how to deal with the difficulty except in the radical way he proposes. But there is a way to give such a meaning theory — a meaning theory proper which, using classical logic only, meets a meaning-theoretic analogue of Convention T, satisfies Davidson’s three key desiderata for a theory of meaning, reflects linguistic competence, and avoids quantifying over meanings. The meaning theory sketched here uses Tarskian strategies, as Davidson proposed, but differs from Davidson's approach in not going by way of a truth theory for the target language. (shrink)

Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising--on campus as well as nationally. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into (...) American childhood and education: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths--and the resulting culture of safetyism--interferes with young people's social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. They examine changes on campus, including the corporatization of universities and the emergence of new ideas about identity and justice. They situate the conflicts on campus within the context of America's rapidly rising political polarization and dysfunction. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines. (shrink)

The two-dimensional modal logic of Davies and Humberstone [3] is an important aid to our understanding the relationship between actuality, necessity and a priori knowability. I show how a cut-free hypersequent calculus for 2D modal logic not only captures the logic precisely, but may be used to address issues in the epistemology and metaphysics of our modal concepts. I will explain how the use of our concepts motivates the inference rules of the sequent calculus, and then show that the completeness (...) of the calculus for Davies–Humberstone models explains why those concepts have the structure described by those models. The result is yet another application of the completeness theorem. (shrink)

The stock market crash of 1987 had a profound effect on corporate Australia and the Australian community in general. The fall-out revealed that some of our most respected business figures had not been as ethical, or even as lawful, as we would have hoped. This impropriety produced in Australia an awakening to business ethics. Whilst many companies endeavoured to introduce ethical practices into their corporations, they perceived ethics as a way of minimising damage to the corporation and in some cases (...) as a means of competitive advantage. What was lost was the reason that one should embark on business ethics; and that is to make the society and corporate Australia a more ethical place in which to exist.This paper proposes a model based on 2 factors: commitment and partnerships, as a means of enabling corporate Australia to refocus attention on the main purpose of being inherently ethical in all that we do. This ethical model requires a commitment to partnerships with all stakeholders both internal and external in an attempt to enhance the level of ethical business practices that are contemplated and pursued within corporate Australia. Whilst the research agenda and the information collected is Australian-based, it is hoped that the ideas contained within this paper will have a wider appeal to corporations in similar cultural settings. (shrink)

introduction Rhetoric/Memory/Place Carole Blair, Greg Dickinson, and Brian L. Ott The story is told of the poet Simonides of Ceos who, after chanting a poem ...

In this paper I urge friends of truth-value gaps and truth-value gluts – proponents of paracomplete and paraconsistent logics – to consider theories not merely as sets of sentences, but as pairs of sets of sentences, or what I call ‘bitheories,’ which keep track not only of what holds according to the theory, but also what fails to hold according to the theory. I explain the connection between bitheories, sequents, and the speech acts of assertion and denial. I illustrate the (...) usefulness of bitheories by showing how they make available a technique for characterising different theories while abstracting away from logical vocabulary such as connectives or quanti- fiers, thereby making theoretical commitments independent of the choice of this or that particular non-classical logic. (shrink)