: To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understood principles? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web-based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals’ responses to a series of moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: patterns of moral (...) judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation and a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments. These results indicate that the principle of the double effect may be operative in our moral judgments but not open to conscious introspection. We discuss these results in light of current psychological theories of moral cognition, emphasizing the need to consider the unconscious appraisal system that mentally represents the causal and intentional properties of human action. (shrink)

This paper concerns how motor actions are neurally represented and coded. Action planning and motor preparation can be studied using a specific type of representational activity, motor imagery. A close functional equivalence between motor imagery and motor preparation is suggested by the positive effects of imagining movements on motor learning, the similarity between the neural structures involved, and the similar physiological correlates observed in both imaging and preparing. The content of motor representations can be inferred from motor images at a (...) macroscopic level, based on global aspects of the action and the motor rules and constraints which predict the spatial path and kinematics of movements. A more microscopic neural account calls for a representation of object-oriented action. Object attributes are processed in different neural pathways depending on the kind of task the subject is performing. During object-oriented action, a pragmatic representation is activated in which object affordances are transformed into specific motor schemas. Animal as well as human clinical data implicate the posterior parietal and premotor cortical areas in schema instantiation. A mechanism is proposed that is able to encode the desired goal of the action and is applicable to different levels of representational organization. (shrink)

This paper explores the nature of the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and competitiveness. We start with the commonly held view that firm competitiveness is defined by the market. That is, the question of what are the critical competitiveness factors is answered by looking at how companies and financial analysts describe and evaluate a firm. To analyze this, we review the current state of the art on the relationship between CSR and competitiveness. Second, CSR criteria used by financial analysts (...) is identified and compared with company valuation methods. Third, the results of a multi-stakeholder dialogue on CSR and competitiveness of the European financial sector are presented. As a conclusion, we argue that CSR and competitiveness relate through a learning and innovation cycle, where corporate values, policies and practices are permanently defined and re-defined. Thus, we propose that learning takes place as CSR is embedded in business processes, and that once it has been integrated, in turn, it generates innovative practices, and finally, competitiveness. At the end of the paper, we propose that CSR in practice consists of managing inherent paradoxes generated by the tension between CSR and business policies. (shrink)

The thesis we develop in this essay is that all humans are endowed with a moral faculty. The moral faculty enables us to produce moral judgments on the basis of the causes and consequences of actions. As an empirical research program, we follow the framework of modern linguistics.1 The spirit of the argument dates back at least to the economist Adam Smith (1759/1976) who argued for something akin to a moral grammar, and more recently, to the political philosopher John Rawls (...) (1971). The logic of the argument, however, comes from Noam Chomsky’s thinking on language specifically and the nature of knowledge more generally (Chomsky, 1986, 1988, 2000; Saporta, 1978). If the nature of moral knowledge is comparable in some way to the nature of linguistic knowledge, as defended recently by Harman (1977), Dwyer (1999, 2004), and Mikhail (2000; in press), then what should we expect to find when we look at the anatomy of our moral faculty? Is there a grammar, and if so, how can the moral grammarian uncover its structure? Are we aware of our moral grammar, its method of operation, and its moment-to-moment functioning in our judgments? Is there a universal moral grammar that allows each child to build a particular moral grammar? Once acquired, are different moral grammars mutually incomprehensible in the same way that a native Chinese speaker finds a native Italian speaker incomprehensible? How does the child acquire a particular moral grammar, especially if her experiences are impoverished relative to the moral judgments she makes? Are there certain forms of brain damage that disrupt moral competence but leave other forms of reasoning intact? And how did this machinery evolve, and for what particular adaptive function? We will have more to say about many of these questions later on, and Hauser (2006) develops others. However, in order to flesh out the key ideas and particular empirical research paths, let us turn to some of the central questions in the study of our language faculty.. (shrink)

This text discusses the impact of immersive technologies on our identity and relationship to digital and analogue modalities in a non-normative way. It references the work of Joseph Beuys, specifically his iconic performance of being confined with a coyote in a gallery space for three days, to construct connections between borders, edges, limits and identity, face presentation, representation and projection towards ourselves and our audiences. We reference the works of Marcel Duchamp and George Orwell and compare the immersive devices of (...) the nineteenth century to current technology. Various works of art and literature are used to illustrate the impact of technology on society and the individual’s relationship to the collective imagination. The text raises questions about the limits or nonlimits of exposure of identity through machinic and technological devices or processes in the context of privacy of expression in a contemporary networked world. (shrink)

Building on earlier work on the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and a firm’s financial performance, this integrative empirical study supports the theoretical argument that the higher a firm’s CSP the lower its financial risk. Specifically, the relationship between CSP and risk appears to be one of reciprocal causality, because prior CSP is negatively related to subsequent financial risk, and prior financial risk is negatively related to subsequent CSP. Additionally, CSP is more strongly correlated with measures of market risk (...) than measures of accounting risk. Of all CSP measures, reputation for social responsibility appears to be the most important one in terms of its risk implications. (shrink)

What are the brain and cognitive systems that allow humans to play baseball, compute square roots, cook soufflés, or navigate the Tokyo subways? It may seem that studies of human infants and of non-human animals will tell us little about these abilities, because only educated, enculturated human adults engage in organized games, formal mathematics, gourmet cooking, or map-reading. In this chapter, we argue against this seemingly sensible conclusion. When human adults exhibit complex, uniquely human, culture-specific skills, they draw on a (...) set of psychological and neural mechanisms with two distinctive properties: they evolved before humanity and thus are shared with other animals, and they emerge early in human development and thus are common to infants, children, and adults. These core knowledge systems form the building blocks for uniquely human skills. Without them we wouldn’t be able to learn about different kinds of games, mathematics, cooking, or maps. To understand what is special about human intelligence, therefore, we must study both the core knowledge systems on which it rests and the mechanisms by which these systems are orchestrated to permit new kinds of concepts and cognitive processes. What is core knowledge? A wealth of research on non-human primates and on human infants suggests that a system of core knowledge is characterized by four properties (Hauser, 2000; Spelke, 2000). First, it is domain-specific: each system functions to represent particular kinds of entities such as conspecific agents, manipulable objects, places in the environmental layout, and numerosities. Second, it is task-specific: each system uses its representations to address specific questions about the world, such as “who is this?” [face recognition], “what does this do?” [categorization of artifacts], “where am I?” [spatial orientation], and “how many are here?” [enumeration]. Third, it is relatively encapsulated: each uses only a subset of the information delivered by an animal’s input systems and sends information only to a subset of the animal’s output systems. (shrink)

Serious concerns about pervasive, persistent, and unjustified social inequalities have prompted a small—but growing—number of academic commentators to raise some hard and troubling questions for those who would like to legalize physician-assisted suicide. In various ways, these commentators have asked: In light of existing social inequalities—inequalities that operate, for example, along sometimes intersecting lines of race, class, age, sex, and disability—how persuasive are autonomy-based arguments in favor of legalization of assisted suicide when those arguments depend on a conception of autonomy (...) that either presupposes social equality or does not expressly account for its absence? How compelling are arguments that we ought to legalize assisted suicide out of feelings of mercy for the sick and dying, when such affective expressions may actually be the socially acceptable manifestation of private ambivalence that includes merciless discrimination? (shrink)

The practice around informed consent in clinical medicine is both inconsistent and inadequate. Indeed, in busy, contemporary health care settings, getting informed consent looks little like the formal process developed over the past sixty years and presented in medical textbooks, journal articles, and academic lectures. In this article, members of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Collaborative on Ethics and Humanities review the conventional process of informed consent and its limitations, explore complementary and alternative approaches to doctor‐patient interactions, (...) and propose a new model of consent that integrates these approaches with each other and with clinical practice. The model assigns medical interventions to a consent continuum defined by the discrete categories of traditional informed consent, assent, and nondissent. Narrative descriptions and clinical exemplars are offered for each category. The authors invite colleagues from other disciplines and from the academic ethics community to provide feedback and commentary. (shrink)

The evidence that we get from peer disagreement is especially problematic from a Bayesian point of view since the belief revision caused by a piece of such evidence cannot be modelled along the lines of Bayesian conditionalisation. This paper explains how exactly this problem arises, what features of peer disagreements are responsible for it, and what lessons should be drawn for both the analysis of peer disagreements and Bayesian conditionalisation as a model of evidence acquisition. In particular, it is pointed (...) out that the same characteristic of evidence from disagreement that explains the problems with Bayesian conditionalisation also suggests an interpretation of suspension of belief in terms of imprecise probabilities. (shrink)

I was born on November 22, 1963. Later that day, President Kennedy was assassinated. This coincidence does not cry out for any special explanation. But it led m.

Some mathematical proofs explain why the theorems they prove hold. This paper identifies several challenges for any counterfactual account of explanation in mathematics (that is, any account according to which an explanatory proof reveals how the explanandum would have been different, had facts in the explanans been different). The paper presumes that countermathematicals can be nontrivial. It argues that nevertheless, a counterfactual account portrays explanatory power as too easy to achieve, does not capture explanatory asymmetry, and fails to specify why (...) certain proofs are explanatory and others are not. Greater informativeness about counterfactual dependence can even yield less explanatory power. (shrink)

This paper explores the biographical and cultural sources that inspired the decision of Janusz Korczak to make his life’s vocation the education of young children from dysfunctional families. This decision emerged out of the radical version of humanism he embraced. His identification of children as the population his humanist ethos must serve, distinguishes it from other versions of humanism. The paper explores the role his sense of self and his identification with Poles, Jews, and humanity play in the composition of (...) this humanism. It identifies the hybridity of his cultural identifications as its heart. It proposes that the tensions between these identifications in general, and his non-Jewish Jewish identification that situated him as being ‘a part of’ and ‘apart from’ Polish society in particular, induced Korczak to create a universal religion of children in which religious, ethnic, or physical distinctions do not generate prejudice, intolerance, and violence. (shrink)

In de vroege jaren tachtig van de vorige eeuw publiceerde Benjamin Libet de resultaten van experimenten waarmee hij volgens velen de illusie van een vrije wil aantoonde. Wat Libet liet zien, was dat hersenactiviteit te meten is die indicatief is voor een aankomende handeling kort voordat iemand de bewuste intentie vormt die handeling uit te voeren. Op het moment dat we bewust de ‘beslissing’ nemen een handeling uit te voeren, zijn onze hersenen al bezig geweest die handeling voor te bereiden; (...) de bewuste beslissing komt als mosterd na de maaltijd. (shrink)

This article seeks to explain how it was possible that, until the first century BC, the Roman dictatorship was never abused and turned against the constitution itself. The traditional explanation is that, contrary to its first century imitations, the dictatorship was subject to formal restrictions, such as the six months' tenure, which were strictly applied. By contrast, this article suggests that informal constraints on the dictator's powers, such as moral and religious norms, were as important as formal constraints. It shows, (...) more particularly, how the fides, or the requirement of trust, was essential for preventing an abuse of dictatorial powers. (shrink)

This paper delves into the striking parallels between the linguistic patterns of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the concepts of psychosis in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lacanian theory, with its focus on the formal and logical underpinnings of psychosis, provides a compelling lens to juxtapose human cognition and AI mechanisms. LLMs, such as GPT-4, appear to replicate the intricate metaphorical and metonymical frameworks inherent in human language. Although grounded in mathematical logic and probabilistic analysis, the outputs of LLMs echo the nuanced linguistic (...) associations found in metaphor and metonymy, suggesting a mirroring of human linguistic structures. A pivotal point in this discourse is the exploration of “absolute metaphors”—core gaps in reasoning discernible in both AI models and human thought processes and central to the Lacanian conceptualization of psychosis. Despite the traditional divide between AI research and continental philosophy, this analysis embarks on an innovative journey, utilizing Lacanian philosophy to unravel the logic of AI, using concepts established in the continental discourse on logic, rather than the analytical tradition. (shrink)

Governments and companies are increasingly promoting and organizing Responsible Innovation. It is, however, unclear how the seemingly incompatible demands for responsibility, which is associated with care and caution, can be harmonized with demands for innovation, which is associated with risk-taking and speed. We turn to the tradition of virtue ethics and argue that it can be a strong accomplice to Responsible Innovation by focussing on the agential side of innovation. Virtue ethics offers an adequate response to the epistemic and moral (...) complexity in innovation and encourages moral behaviour. We enumerate a number of virtues that people involved in Responsible Innovation would need to cultivate both related to responsibility, such as justice, anticipation, civility and inclusion, and virtues related to innovation, such as courage, dedication, curiosity and creativity. We put forward practical wisdom as a key virtue to regulate relevant virtues and to deal with the tension between responsibility and innovation. Practical wisdom helps an agent to find an appropriate mean in exercising and expressing the other virtues—where the mean is relative to the specific context of action and the role and abilities of the agent. (shrink)

Millum and Bromwich’s excellent article provides both conceptual and practical rationale for reexamining the fundamentals of the informed consent process for research and clinical interventi...

Unknown peers create a problem for those epistemologists who argue that we should be conciliatory in cases of peer disagreement. The standard interpretation of ‘being conciliatory’ has it that we should revise our opinions concerning a specific subject matter whenever we encounter someone who is as competent and well informed as we are concerning this subject matter (and thus is our peer) and holds a different opinion. As a consequence, peers whom we have never encountered and who are hence unknown (...) to us are not taken into account. This, however, appears odd; not only because it is an accidental matter which peers we happen to encounter and which not, but also because it would allow people to deliberately isolate themselves from any kind of intellectual exchange on the topic under consideration. The paper argues that we should take the problem of unknown peers seriously, and that disregarding the problem is an instance of the more general mistake of assuming that evidential quality and justified believability can be dealt with separately. Moreover, a solution to the problem of unknown peers is suggested. (shrink)

Several logical operators are defined as dual pairs, in different types of logics. Such dual pairs of operators also occur in other algebraic theories, such as mathematical morphology. Based on this observation, this paper proposes to define, at the abstract level of institutions, a pair of abstract dual and logical operators as morphological erosion and dilation. Standard quantifiers and modalities are then derived from these two abstract logical operators. These operators are studied both on sets of states and sets of (...) models. To cope with the lack of explicit set of states in institutions, the proposed abstract logical dual operators are defined in an extension of institutions, the stratified institutions, which take into account the notion of open sentences, whose satisfaction is parametrised by sets of states. A hint on the potential interest of the proposed framework for spatial reasoning is also provided. (shrink)

To investigate the impact of framing on rule-breaking in social dilemmas, we incorporated a rule in a 1-shot resource game with 2 framing treatments: in one frame, we offered a give-some dilemma (i.e., a variant of a public goods game), and in the other frame, a take-some dilemma (i.e., a variant of a commons dilemma game). In each frame, all participants were part of 1 single collective sharing a common good. Each participant was initially equipped with 1 of 5 different (...) endowments of points from which they must give/were allowed to take amounts to/from the common good. The rule established outcome equality between participants by prescribing the exact amounts of what to give/take to/from the common good, which was finally divided equally among participants. Participants decided whether to cooperate and comply with the rule or to break the rule to their own advantage and to the detriment of the collective (i.e., giving lower/taking higher amounts). The results of an online experiment with 202 participants showed a significantly higher proportion of individuals breaking the rule in the take-some dilemma than in the give-some dilemma. In addition, endowment size influenced the proportion of rule-breaking behavior in the take-some dilemma. However, the average amounts of points not given/taken too much were not different between the 2 dilemma types. (shrink)

This paper argues that in mathematical practice, conjectures are sometimes confirmed by “Inference to the Best Explanation” as applied to some mathematical evidence. IBE operates in mathematics in the same way as IBE in science. When applied to empirical evidence, IBE sometimes helps to justify the expansion of scientists’ ontological commitments. Analogously, when applied to mathematical evidence, IBE sometimes helps to justify mathematicians' in expanding the range of their ontological commitments. IBE supplements other forms of non-deductive reasoning in mathematics, avoiding (...) obstacles sometimes faced by enumerative induction or hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Both platonist and non-platonist interpretations of mathematics ought to accommodate explanation in mathematics and ought to recognize IBE in mathematics, though these interpretations disagree on the ontological commitments that mathematicians ought to have. This paper offers an inductive account of why mathematical IBE tends to lead to mathematical truths. (shrink)

This article takes stock of the regularity theory of causation. It considers three challenges to the theory: the problem of joint effects, the problems of redundant causation, and omission‐involving causation. The former is often cited as a special, and especially challenging, problem for regularity theories. But the force of this problem has been greatly overstated. The threat to regularity theories instead comes from the latter two.

Contemporary design practices, such as participatory design, human-centered design, and codesign, have inherent ethical qualities, which often remain implicit and unexamined. Three design projects in the high-tech industry were studied using three ethical traditions as lenses. Virtue ethics helped to understand cooperation, curiosity, creativity, and empowerment as virtues that people in PD need to cultivate, so that they can engage, for example, in mutual learning and collaborative prototyping. Ethics of alterity helped to understand human-centered design as a fragile encounter between (...) project team members and prospective users, and foregrounds the ethics in these encounters: our tendencies to “grasp the other” and to “program invention.” And pragmatist ethics helped to understand codesign as a process of joint inquiry and imagination, involving the organization of iterative processes of problem setting and solution finding, with moral qualities. When we open the “black boxes” of design practices, we find them filled with ethics. Moreover, it is proposed that design practitioners need to make explicit their practices’ inherent ethical qualities and that they can do that by embracing reflexivity. (shrink)

Several philosophers propose probabilistic measures of how well a potential scientific explanation would explain the given evidence. These measures could elaborate “best” in “inference to the best explanation”. This paper argues that none of these measures succeeds. The paper considers the various rival explanations that scientists proposed for the parallelogram of forces. Scientists regarded various features of these proposals as making them more or less “lovely”. None of these probabilistic measures of loveliness can reflect these features. The paper concludes by (...) considering the kinds of probabilities that could reflect these features. (shrink)

Dieser Text geht der Frage nach, ob und, wenn ja, inwieweit sich Gedankenexperimente in der praktischen Philosophie in ihrer Struktur und ihrer epistemischen Signifikanz von Gedankenexperimenten in der theoretischen Philosophie oder in den Naturwissenschaften unterscheiden. Anhand einer allgemeinen Strukturanalyse von Gedankenexperimenten wird dabei aufgezeigt, dass bei Gedankenexperimenten in der praktischen Philosophie zwar häufig die angemessene Bewertung eines zugrunde gelegten Szenarios im Zentrum steht und nicht, wie zum Beispiel in theoretischen Philosophie oft, dessen angemessene Beschreibung, dass dieser Unterschied aber kaum Auswirkungen (...) hat auf die prinzipielle Anwendbarkeit – abgesehen von einer bisher übersehenen Konsequenz: Man darf in einem Gedankenexperiment nicht annehmen, dass moralische, ästhetische oder entscheidungstheoretische Prinzipien in unterschiedlichen möglichen Welten verschieden sind. Andernfalls käme dem Gedankenexperiment keinerlei epistemische Signifikanz zu. (shrink)

The singular expertise of family physicians is the ability to manage complexity with pragmatism, both clinically and ethically. Telemedicine raises multiple questions about the nature of the patient‐physician relationship as manifested in clinical encounters. Some of these questions are concerning, underscoring the need to assess whether medical care is better with this new technology—or if it is just different or maybe even worse. It seems clear, however, that, regardless of its limitations, telemedicine is here to stay. The pragmatic complex ethical (...) question, then, is how all of us together—both medical professionals and society at large—will manage it. (shrink)

Societal polarization has given rise to opposing groups that fight each other as enemies and that have very different ideas about what should be done and about what is the case. This article investigates what tools there are in the philosophy of Martin Buber to address this societal polarization. Buber’s notion of community, the relationship between means and ends, his opposition to the political principle, the notion of an I-Thou dialogue and his conception of truth are presented as relevant for (...) overcoming societal polarization. The article also presents the case of Daryl Davis as manifesting some of these Buberian principles. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 3, Page 437-456, March 2022. Societal polarization has given rise to opposing groups that fight each other as enemies and that have very different ideas about what should be done and about what is the case. This article investigates what tools there are in the philosophy of Martin Buber to address this societal polarization. Buber’s notion of community, the relationship between means and ends, his opposition to the political principle, the notion of an (...) I-Thou dialogue and his conception of truth are presented as relevant for overcoming societal polarization. The article also presents the case of Daryl Davis as manifesting some of these Buberian principles. (shrink)

This book explores convergences and divergences between process thought and Roman Catholicism. It examines why process philosophy and process theology have had a minimal impact in Roman Catholic circles compared to Protestantism, and investigates avenues of promising engagement between process thought and Roman Catholicism.