Aquinas seems to hold following theses on moral autonomy. «Nobody imposes his acts the law»: there is no perfect, no radical autonomy. Natural law is defined as participation in the eternal law. That means «theonomy» which for Kluxen is not primordial, but adventitious metaphysical interpretation. We could speak of «cognitive autonomy»: human reason is competent to formulate norms and moral judgements. But the cognitive acts are accompanied by voluntary consent: which is natural and necessary in first principles; becomes worlds consens (...) in the natural law conclusions ; and becomes correct desire in prudence and, especially, in «gnome» judgments. (shrink)

La tradición filosófica cristiana, medieval en sentido amplio, hereda de la filosofía griega una valoración positiva de la coacción como instrumento auxiliar de la moralidad. San Agustín la exagera por referencia a la "libido" y al pecado original. Santo Tomás considera "providencial" todo el aparato punitivo del estado. Marsilio de Padua convierte la coacción en meollo de la ley. Suárez concibe la ley como "Imposición" (no democrática) de la voluntad del superior. Ambos parecen sucumbir ante el fenómeno moderno de la (...) "centralización del poder". (shrink)

Solms and the other authors in this series of BBS target articles accept the findings that the executive control of the REM/NREM cycle is still localized within a narrow region of the pontine brainstem. However, recent findings challenge this notion. We will review the recent data and suggest instead that the hypothalamus is the primary regulator of states of consciousness. If the hypothalamus indeed controls all the fun stuff, such as sex, eating, drinking, sleeping, and so on, then one can (...) more easily accept Solms's argument that dreams are also generated from the forebrain. [Solms]. (shrink)

Science is driven by technical innovations, and perhaps nowhere as visibly as in neuroscience. In the past decade, advances in methods have led to an explosion of studies in cognitive (Gazzaniga et...

Medical and public health professionals recommend wearing face masks to combat the spread of the coronavirus disease of 2019. While the majority of people in the United States support wearing face masks as an effective tool to combat COVID-19, a smaller percentage declared the recommendation by public health agencies as a government imposition and an infringement on personal liberty. Social media play a significant role in amplifying public health issues, whereby a minority against the imposition can speak loudly, perhaps using (...) tactics of verbal aggression taking the form of toxic language. We investigated the role that toxicity plays in the online discourse around wearing face masks. Overall, we found tweets including anti-mask hashtags were significantly more likely to use toxic language, while tweets with pro-mask hashtags were somewhat less toxic with the exception of #WearADamnMask. We conclude that the tensions between these two positions raise doubt and uncertainty around the issue, which make it difficult for health communicators to break through the clutter in order to combat the infodemic. Public health agencies and other governmental institutions should monitor toxicity trends on social media in order to better ascertain prevailing sentiment toward their recommendations and then apply these data-driven insights to refine and adapt their risk communication messaging toward mask wearing, vaccine uptake, and other interventions. (shrink)

In this article, we present results from a literature review of intrinsic, instrumental, and relational values of nature conducted for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, as part of the Methodological Assessment of the Diverse Values and Valuations of Nature. We identify the most frequently recurring meanings in the heterogeneous use of different value types and their association with worldviews and other key concepts. From frequent uses, we determine a core meaning for each value type, which is (...) sufficiently inclusive to serve as an umbrella over different understandings in the literature and specific enough to help highlight its difference from the other types of values. Finally, we discuss convergences, overlapping areas, and fuzzy boundaries between different value types to facilitate dialogue, reduce misunderstandings, and improve the methods for valuation of nature's contributions to people, including ecosystem services, to inform policy and direct future research. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. (shrink)

Der Mensch als Naturwesen, von P. Jordan.--Die Zukunft des Menschen bei Teilhard de Chardin, von E. Benz.--Christlicher Schöpfungsglaube und naturwissenschaftliche Entwicklungstheorie; zur Aussage Teilhard de Chardins, von H. Dolch.--Weltverwandlung und Sinnesverwirklichung; zwei Zentralbegriffe der Keyserlingschen Philosophie, von G. Böhme.--Zu einer Zukunftssynthese von Geist und Natur, von H. Mislin.--Das Phänomen Mensch in der Deutung Teilhards, von J. Piveteau.--Biographische Notizen.

The volume presents the proceedings of the international symposium, fruit of a common research project engaged in by 48 scholars, that took place in Rome to celebrate the 8th centennial of Saint Bonaventure's birth. The theme, "Deus summe cognoscibilis", could sound, in the contemporary agnostic, secular context, like a provocation. The approach, however, of the symposium was to consider "the current theological relevance of Saint Bonaventure", focusing on thinking with our author about a number of themes: theological method (philosophy, theology (...) and mysticism); revelation (in Scripture and history); creation (in Laudato si' and evolution); Christology (the triplex Verbum and logos of the Cross); ecclesiology and Trinitarian dimensions of sacramental theology; pre-phenomenological Trinitarian theology, and our own divine filiation. An appendix contains a previously unpublished text of J. Ratzinger about Bonaventure's theological method. The volume has also two indexes (authors' names and references to the works of Bonaventure). (shrink)

Do firms gain environmental legitimacy when they conform to external expectations regarding the natural environment? Drawing on institutional logic and signaling theory, we investigate sources of heterogeneity in the impacts of environmental actions on environmental legitimacy. Longitudinal data about 325 publicly traded U.S. firms in polluting industries support the notion that environmental actions help firms gain environmental legitimacy. However, some actions instead can harm this legitimacy if environmental performance deteriorates and the firm is subject to intense scrutiny from nongovernmental organizations. (...) Thus, an important contribution of this research is to identify conditions under which greenwashing can backfire. (shrink)

In this article, we empirically assess the impact of corporate ethical identity (CEI) on a firm's financial performance. Drawing on formulations of normative and instrumental stakeholder theory, we argue that firms with a strong ethical identity achieve a greater degree of stakeholder satisfaction (SS), which, in turn, positively influences a firm's financial performance. We analyze two dimensions of the CEI of firms: corporate revealed ethics and corporate applied ethics. Our results indicate that revealed ethics has informational worth and enhances shareholder (...) value, whereas applied ethics has a positive impact through the improvement of SS. However, revealed ethics by itself (i.e. decoupled from ethical initiatives) is not sufficient to boost economic performance. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

This paper examines the association between board characteristics and the ethical reputation of financial institutions. Given the pivotal governance role of the board of directors and the value-relevance of ethical corporate behavior, we postulate a positive relationship between ethical reputation and board features that foster more effective monitoring and oversight. Using a sample of large financial institutions from 13 different countries, we run several alternative panel regressions of ethical reputation on board characteristics and firm-specific controls. Our results demonstrate that the (...) ethical reputation of financial institutions is positively associated with board size, gender diversity, and CEO duality, while being negatively related to the busyness of the board members and a composite index reflecting poor monitoring. Nevertheless, inconsistent with our hypothesis, we also document that financial institutions with less frequent board meetings have better ethical reputation. Overall, our empirical findings suggest that stronger board oversight may promote ethical behavior in the financial industry. (shrink)

We theoretically discuss and empirically show how CEO power based on environmental expertise and formal influence over executives and directors, in the absence and presence of shareholder activism, spurs firms toward greener strategies. Our results support the idea that CEOs with informal power, grounded in expertise, reduce corporate environmental impact and this relationship is amplified when the CEO also enjoys formal power over the board of directors. Additionally, we found that any source of CEO power, whether informal or formal, is (...) a good catalyst for transforming shareholder activism into corporate greening. However, in the absence of such activism, only CEOs’ informal environmental expert power acts as a determinant of firm environmental performance. (shrink)

RESUMENTras analizar sucintamente las conseciencias científicas y filosóficas de la identidad mente-cerebro, se señalan argumentos a favor y en contra de mantener el debate mente.cerebro. En particular se consideran las nuevas técnicas de exploración del cerebro como argumento en contra de tal debate. las deficiencias e insuficiencias de tales técnicas aconsejan mantener el debate mente-cerebro y no asumir el materialismo. PALABRAS CLAVEMENTE-CEREBRO - EXPLORACIÓN DEL CEREBRO- RMF-TEPABSTRACTAfcter a brief analysis of the scientific and philosophical consequences of the mind-brain identify thesis, (...) arguments for and against the maintenance of the mind.brain debate are pointed out. Particularly the recent techniques to explore the brain are considered as an argument against this maintenance. the shortcomings and lacks found in theses techniques recommend the maintenance of the mind.brain debate and not to assume materialism.KEYWORDSMIND-BRAIN - BRAIN IMAGING- FMR- PET. (shrink)

Vital events, such as widowhood and retirement, are broadly accepted as points of inflection in the lives of older adults that often differ according to gender. In this study, we analyzed the influence of gender differences in meaningful leisure among older adults through the integration of qualitative and quantitative findings. The use of joint displays revealed that: (1) there is no significant difference between the influence of retirement and widowhood on the two genders, (2) the ethic of care is a (...) constraining factor in older women’s leisure, (3) women are more innovative in their leisure in older age, and (4) volunteer activities are highly segregated by gender. The use of joint displays helped illuminate these four phenomena in light of quantitative and qualitative data. (shrink)