People with early-to-mid stage dementia frequently attend groups that provide opportunities for socialising and engaging in group activities, such as quizzes. This article uses conversation analysis to investigate the interactional strategies that the staff use to initiate and keep these quizzes ‘on track’, and what they orient to as impediments and facilitators of quiz progression. Specifically, we outline how staff deal with incorrect or ‘non-answers’, and what happens when players have their own goals or ‘projects’ that do not align with (...) staff members’ orientations to the overarching activity completion. We reflect on the tensions that arise between doing interactional work to progress through the quiz, and how that goal can conflict with attending to the needs or wishes expressed by the person living with dementia, potentially resulting in threats to the ‘face’ of the quiz players. Data are taken from a corpus of 10 quizzes recorded in 4 different group settings in England. (shrink)

Interpreters are less univocal than one might think in assessing Søren Kierkegaard's attitude toward eudaimonism. Through an analysis of several key texts from across Kierkegaard's authorship, I argue that existing interpretations do not convincingly address the relationship between Kierkegaard's critique of eudaimonism and his mid-nineteenth-century context, which was dominated by post-Kantian idealists. While I am sympathetic to aspects of deontological and aretaic interpretations, a contextual reading shows that his critique centers on what he diagnoses as the enclosure of the modern (...) self. This puts his critique of eudaimonism in the purview of his moral psychology and in continuity with his critique of romanticism. (shrink)

En général, une personne sait ce qu’elle pense, veut, ou ressent, sans avoir besoin pour cela de s’appuyer sur des observations d’elle-même. En ce sens, la connaissance de soi semble bénéficier d’un privilège par rapport à la connaissance d’autrui, celui de pouvoir apparaître comme vraie sans être fondée sur l’observation et l’inférence. Ce privilège se nomme, après Wittgenstein, l’« autorité de la première personne ». Pour expliquer ce phénomène, la métaphysique traditionnelle a postulé, à l’instar du cogito cartésien, que le (...) sujet aurait une sorte d’accès direct à son intériorité que ne peut avoir autrui. Or, la plupart des philosophes contemporains rejettent l’idée d’intériorité « privée », mais ils ne s’accordent cependant pas sur l’explication qui devrait la remplacer. Ce chapitre se concentre sur la solution que Richard Moran apporte à ce problème. Moran reprend la thèse sartrienne selon laquelle pour savoir et dire ce que je pense, veux, ou vais faire, je suis obligé de me décider, de m’engager plutôt que de m’observer. En ce sens, soutient Moran, le trait distinctif de la connaissance de soi en première personne n’est pas tant un privilège qu’une responsabilité à assumer. Mais pour s’engager de façon responsable, ne faut-il pas chercher d’abord à se connaître ? Nous considérons la force de cette objection, soulevée par Ferdinand Alquié contre Sartre, et tâchons d’y répondre. Ce faisant, notre but est de montrer en quoi l’engagement d’une personne exige un rapport à soi sans équivalent dans ses rapports à autrui. (shrink)

This volume reviews and takes stock of legal ethics, at a time when the legal profession globally is experiencing considerable change and challenges, through a re-evaluation of writings that are in some way foundational to the field. Legal ethics, understood here as the study of the ethics and professional regulation of lawyers, has emerged as a novel and important field of study over the last 50 years. It is also one that displays considerable diversity in its scholarship, with distinctive philosophical (...) and interdisciplinary approaches emerging over the years to underpin and supplement the doctrinal 'law on lawyering'. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars from the United States, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, this collection offers not just critical insights into the authors' chosen texts, but a thought-provoking commentary on the current state of legal ethics scholarship and its future directions. In addition to being an essential resource for scholars and students of legal ethics theory, it will also be of interest to academics and researchers in legal theory, the philosophy of law, and applied ethics. (shrink)

The question of how gender might inflect and affect philosophy as a way of life has been somewhat neglected, as has the role of philosophical modes of living for historical female philosophers. This essay draws on Michel Foucault’s multifaceted, Hadot‐inspired conception of philosophy to show how transformative philosophical practices of the self function as feminist praxis in the work of the early modern feminist philosopher Mary Astell. Philosophy in Astell’s texts, the essay argues, is a spiritual practice of the self (...) that at the same time functions as a feminist critique both of sexist social structures and of the self that undertakes the practice. It facilitates women in achieving internal freedom. Finally, the essay discusses potential feminist concerns about Astell’s proposed philosophical way of living, before suggesting that it may have value for women today. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a dramatically expanding area of activity for managers and academics. Consumer demand for responsibly produced and fair trade goods is swelling, resulting in increased demands for CSR activity and information. Assets under professional management and invested with a social responsibility focus have also grown dramatically over the last 10 years. Investors choosing social responsibility investment strategies require access to information not provided through traditional financial statements and analyses. At the same time, a group of mainstream (...) institutional investors has encouraged a movement to incorporate environmental, social, and governance information into equity analysis, and multi-stakeholder groups have supported enhanced business reporting on these issues. The majority of research in this area has been performed on European and Australian firms. We expand on this literature by exploring the CSR disclosure practices of a size- and industry-stratified sample of 50 publicly traded U.S. firms, performing a content analysis on the complete identifiable public information portfolio provided by these firms during 2004. CSR activity was disclosed by most firms in the sample, and was included in nearly half of public disclosures made during that year by the sample firms. Areas of particular emphasis are community matters, health and safety, diversity and human resources (HR) matters, and environmental programs. The primary venues of disclosure are mass media releases such as corporate websites and press releases, followed closely by disclosures contained in mandatory filings. Consistent with prior research, we identify industry effects in terms of content, emphasis, and reporting format choices. Unlike prior research, we can offer only mixed evidence on the existence of a size effect. The disclosure frequency and emphasis is significantly different for the largest one-fifth of the firms, but no identifiable trends are present within the rest of the sample. There are, however, identifiable size effects with respect to reporting format choice. Use of websites is positively related to firm size, while the use of mandatory filings is negatively related to firm size. Finally, and also consistent with prior literature, we document a generally self-laudatory tone in the content of CSR disclosures for the sample firms. (shrink)

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is (...) substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obviousa priorigrounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions ofhumannature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges. (shrink)

The human propensity to take an ethical stance toward oneself and others is found in every known society, yet we also know that values taken for granted in one society can contradict those in another. Does ethical life arise from human nature itself? Is it a universal human trait? Or is it a product of one's cultural and historical context? Webb Keane offers a new approach to the empirical study of ethical life that reconciles these questions, showing how ethics (...) arise at the intersection of human biology and social dynamics. Drawing on the latest findings in psychology, conversational interaction, ethnography, and history, Ethical Life takes readers from inner city America to Samoa and the Inuit Arctic to reveal how we are creatures of our biology as well as our history--and how our ethical lives are contingent on both. Keane looks at Melanesian theories of mind and the training of Buddhist monks, and discusses important social causes such as the British abolitionist movement and American feminism. He explores how styles of child rearing, notions of the person, and moral codes in different communities elaborate on certain basic human tendencies while suppressing or ignoring others."--Publisher's Web site. (shrink)

The ability to generate diverse ideas is valuable in solving creative problems ; yet, however advantageous, this ability is insufficient to solve the problem alone and requires the ability to logically deduce an assessment of correctness of each solution. Positive schizotypy may help isolate the aspects of divergent thinking prevalent in insight problem solving. Participants were presented with a measure of schizotypy, divergent and convergent thinking tasks, insight problems, and non-insight problems. We found no evidence for a relationship between schizotypy (...) and insight problem solving. Relationships between divergent thinking and insight problem solving were also surprisingly weak; however, measures of convergent thinking had a stronger relationship with problem solving. These results suggest that convergent thinking is more important than divergent thinking in problem solving. (shrink)

No thinker in the modern world has laid the way for the development of philosophy so influentially as Immanuel Kant, and it is hard to think of the philosophy of education without some sense of Kant in the background. Yet simplified exegeses and synoptic accounts abound, making for a' picture that readily succumbs to caricature. Interpreting Kant for Education exposes the errors in this picture. Through a spiralling series of arguments, Sheila Webb dismantles the sclerotic dualisms of fact and (...) value, subject and object, and body and mind that have done so much to hamper appreciation of Kant and to harm education. This ground-breaking work in the philosophy of education allows a reappraisal of Kant; it plays its part in the reengagement with Kant in the wider analytic tradition and provides a secure footing for better research and practice in education. (shrink)

Incredible discoveries from the fringes of the universe to the inner workings of our mindsÑall from nothing! It turns out that almost nothing is as curiousÑor as enlighteningÑas, well, nothing. What is nothingness? Where can it be found? The writers of the world's top-selling science magazine investigateÑfrom the big bang, dark energy, and the void to superconductors, vestigial organs, hypnosis, and the placebo effectÑand discover that understanding nothing may be the key to understanding everything: What came before the big bang, (...) and will our universe end? How might cooling matter down almost to absolute zero help solve our energy crisis? How can someone suffer from a false diagnosis as though it were true? Does nothingness even exist? Recent experiments suggest that squeezing a perfect vacuum somehow creates light. Why is it unfair to accuse slothsÑanimals who do nothingÑof being lazy? And more! Contributors Paul Davies, Jo Marchant, and Ian Stewart, along with two former editors of Nature and 16 other leading writers and scientists, marshal up-to-the-minute research to make one of the most perplexing realms in science dazzlingly clear. Prepare to be amazed at how much more there is to nothing than you ever realized. (shrink)

Science, Truth, and Meaning presents a scientific and philosophical examination of our place in the world. It also celebrates how diverse, scientific knowledge is interconnected and reducible to common foundations.The book focuses on aspects of scientific truth that relate to our understanding of reality, and confronts whether truth is absolute or relative to what we are. Hence, it assesses the meaning of the scientific deductions we have made and how they have profoundly influenced our conception of life and existence.The subtitle (...) is 'From Wonder to Understanding', which is a paraphrased quote from Einstein, who said that the search for scientific truth is '... a continual flight from wonder to understanding'.In addressing the goal of advancing our understanding of our place in the world, this book also reveals the development and details of diverse sciences, their connections and achievements, and that while perhaps the same fundamental questions exist, they are seen in the light of an ever-refined scientific perspective on reality.Why the book is needed: many popular science books have been written, aimed at different levels of subject expertise, and nearly all treat their specific subject in isolation. Few attempt to link different sciences to their common foundations, and those that do are written by physicists. Since human knowledge is derived by, and relates to, the biological organism that human beings are, then such a book written from a biological perspective represents a novel perspective on the integration of science, and addresses new questions. This is such a book.Impressive aspects: the depth, breadth, consistency, and clarity of the work. (shrink)

Recent years have featured a spate of regulatory action pertaining to the development and/or disclosure of corporate governance structures in response to financial scandals resulting in part from governance failures. During the same period, corporate governance activists and institutional investors increasingly have called for increased voluntary governance disclosure. Despite this attention, there have been relatively few comprehensive studies of governance disclosure practices and response to the regulation. In this study, we examine a sample of 50 U.S. firms and their public (...) disclosure packages from 2004. We find a high degree of variability in the presentation and reporting format choices for many elements of the governance structure. This variability includes several items for which disclosure is mandated by regulators or legislative action. In particular, smaller firms offer fewer disclosures pertaining to independence, board selection procedures, and oversight of management (including whistleblowing procedures). There are also trends associated with board characteristics: boards that are less independent offer fewer disclosures of independence and management oversight matters. Moreover, large firms provide more disclosures of independence standards, board selection procedures, audit committee matters, management control systems, other committee matters, and whistleblowing procedures but do not appear to have a strictly superior information environment when compared to smaller firms. The findings raise questions about compliance with regulatory requirements and the degree to which conflicts of interest between managers and directors are being controlled. While there have been notable improvements in the information environment of governance disclosures, there remain structural issues that may possess negative ramifications for stakeholders. (shrink)

"First published by Oxford University Press, 1916."--Title page verso.

Does all conscious experience essentially involve self-consciousness? In his Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person, Dan Zahavi answers “yes”. I criticize three core arguments offered in support of this answer—a well-known regress argument, what I call the “interview argument,” and a phenomenological argument. Drawing on Sartre, I introduce a phenomenological contrast between plain experience and self-conscious experience. The contrast challenges the thesis that conscious experience entails self-consciousness.

Since the very beginning, Confucianism has been troubled by a serious gap between its political ideals and the reality of societal circumstances. Contemporary Confucians must develop a viable method of governance that can retain the spirit of the Confucian ideal while tackling problems arising from nonideal modern situations. The best way to meet this challenge, Joseph Chan argues, is to adopt liberal democratic institutions that are shaped by the Confucian conception of the good rather than the liberal conception of (...) the right.Confucian Perfectionism examines and reconstructs both Confucian political thought and liberal democratic institutions, blending them to form a new Confucian political philosophy. Chan decouples liberal democratic institutions from their popular liberal philosophical foundations in fundamental moral rights, such as popular sovereignty, political equality, and individual sovereignty. Instead, he grounds them on Confucian principles and redefines their roles and functions, thus mixing Confucianism with liberal democratic institutions in a way that strengthens both. Then he explores the implications of this new yet traditional political philosophy for fundamental issues in modern politics, including authority, democracy, human rights, civil liberties, and social justice.Confucian Perfectionism critically reconfigures the Confucian political philosophy of the classical period for the contemporary era. (shrink)

Joseph J. Fins calls for a reconsideration of severe brain injury treatment, including discussion of public policy and physician advocacy.

José Benardete developed a famous paradox involving a beginningless set of items each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. The Grim Reaper version of this paradox has recently been employed in favor of various finitist metaphysical theses, ranging from temporal finitism to causal finitism to the discrete nature of time. Here, I examine a new challenge to these finitist arguments—namely, the challenge of implying that the future cannot be endless. In particular, I (...) develop future-oriented Benardete paradoxes and examine their epistemic symmetry with past-oriented paradoxes. (shrink)

Rigid designators for concrete objects and for properties -- On the coherence of the distinction -- On whether the distinction assigns to rigidity the right role -- A uniform treatment of property designators as singular terms -- Rigid appliers -- Rigidity - associated arguments in support of theoretical identity statements: on their significance and the cost of its philosophical resources -- The skeptical argument impugning psychophysical identity statements: on its significance and the cost of its philosophical resources -- The skeptical (...) argument further examined: on resources, allegedly overlooked, for confirming psychological identities. (shrink)

This paper addresses the notorious logic and semantic difficulties encountered by Lévinas in articulating his ethics of alterity. Tracing the philosophical genesis of this question in Descartes and Heidegger, it recognises Lévinas's claim that there can be no ontological foundation for ethics because ontology would reduce ethics to a form of mathematical ratio. Lévinas is unwilling to deny his phenomenological experience of a desire for goodness and unable to deny his despair at his ontological alienation from the good and so (...) he is driven to seek an irrational link between the human being and a metaphysical ‘good beyond being’. Retrieving an ancient gnostic neo-Platonist working of the same problem from the work of Hans Jonas, the paper reconsiders Lévinas's reading of Plato, specifically his understanding of Socrates’ exposition of erosin the Phaedo, in order to illustrate how his ethics of alterity may allow the human being to refer irrationally to the good beyond being. (shrink)

Benardete paradoxes involve a beginningless set each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. Such paradoxes have been wielded on behalf of arguments for the impossibility of an infinite past. These arguments often deploy patchwork principles in support of their key linking premise. Here I argue that patchwork principles fail to justify this key premise.

The paper argues that normative reasons are of two fundamental kinds, practical which are value related, and adaptive, which are not related to any value, but indicate how our beliefs and emotions should adjust to fit how things are in the world. The distinction is applied and defended, in part through an additional distinction between standard and non-standard reasons (for actions, intentions, emotions or belief).