The United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework,developed by the U.N. Special Representative JohnRuggie, brings together social expectations and law into anemerging policy framework of direct relevance to corporate social responsibility, CSR. The principle source of the Framework’s significance for the policy and practice of CSR is its definition of the theory of business responsibility for human rights as arising from business activities and relationships, and its deployment of due diligence for human rights risk as the core operational concept of (...) this theory of responsibility. The article considers the responsibility to respect human rights in light of theories about polycentric regulatory regimes and draws the conclusion that the Ruggie Framework creates a regulator dynamic in which both voluntarism and law have relevant and reinforcing roles to play in governing business behavior. In the wake of the adaptation of the Framework by the UN, the challenge for the field of CSR will be to adapt to an emerging reality in which business responsibility for ‘the social’ is increasingly a question of compliance and beyond. (shrink)

The challenge -- No silver bullet -- Protect, respect and remedy -- Strategic paths -- Next steps.

The ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’ (Principles) that provide guidance for the implementation of the United Nations’ ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework (Framework) will probably succeed in making human rights matters more customary in corporate management procedures. They are likely to contribute to higher levels of accountability and awareness within corporations in respect of the negative impact of business activities on human rights. However, we identify tensions between the idea that the respect of human rights is (...) a perfect moral duty for corporations and the Principle’s ‘human rights due diligence’ requirement. We argue that the effectiveness of the ‘human rights due diligence’ is in many respects dependent upon the moral commitment of corporations. The Principles leave room for an instrumental or strategic implementation of due diligence, which in some cases could result in a depreciation of the fundamental norms they seek to promote. We reveal some limits of pragmatic approaches to coping with business-related human rights abuses. As these limits become more apparent, not only does the case for further progress in international and extraterritorial human rights law become more compelling, but so too does the argument for a more forceful discussion on the moral foundations of human rights duties for corporations. (shrink)

The article is guided by two main research questions: First, do the Equator Principles (EPs), a voluntary CSR-initiative in the project finance sector, and the recently published working paper of the Thun Group of Banks adequately address the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights or do they fall behind the ‘Ruggie framework’? Second, is the demand for human rights due diligence sufficient to classify the EPs as a positive and leverage-based concept of CSR (à la (...) Wettstein and Wood) or is this requirement still a feature of a negative and impact-based concept of CSR? In case it is a negative and impact-based concept of CSR, the question comes up which further steps should be taken by financial institutions to fulfill their positive and leverage-based responsibilities. The article argues that positive and leverage-based responsibilities for multinational companies exist – due to the moral nature of human rights and due to the political authority of multinational companies – and that the current (Ruggie-like) requirements for human rights due diligence are not adequate for a positive and leverage-based concept of CSR. Further measures should be taken by multinational companies – and especially (Equator) banks which possess a high leverage-influence over their clients – to not only ensure the respect for human rights, but also the on-the-ground protection and realization of human rights. (shrink)

National human rights institutions (NHRIs) are key domestic mechanisms for promotion and protection of human rights. The institutions' broad mandate, competencies, and special status between state and nonstate actors on the one hand, and special status between the national and international levels on the other hand enable them to engage effectively in the field of business and human rights. Since 2009, NHRIs have been engaging with the international human rights system in order to increase understanding and raise awareness of their (...) role in addressing business and human rights issues. As a result, they have contributed to the development of the UN “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework and obtained an evolving role within all pillars of the framework and in its implementation. This paper presents how these domestic institutions, bridging the national and international levels, fit into the UN legal regime for corporate responsibility for human rights and what contribution they make to the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles. (shrink)

In 2011 it emerged that to induce the death penalty, United States authorities had begun giving injections of pentobarbital, a substance provided by Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck. Lundbeck's product pentobarbital is licensed for treatment of refractory forms of epilepsy and for usage as an anaesthetic, thus for a very different purpose. The Lundbeck case offers a difficult, but also interesting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) dilemma between choices facing a pharmaceutical company to stop the distribution of a medical substance in order (...) to avoid complicity in human rights violations, or to retain distribution of the substance in order not to impede access to the medicine for those patients who need it. The dilemma arose at a time when the United Nations (UN) Secretary General's Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, was finalizing a set of Guiding Principles to operationalize recommendations on business and human rights that he had presented to the UN Human Rights Council in 2008. The article discusses the dilemma in which Lundbeck was placed in from the perspective of the Guiding Principles on business and human rights and the 2008 Protect, Respect, Remedy UN Framework. The analysis seeks to assess what guidance may be gauged from the Guiding Principles in relation to the dilemma at hand and discusses the adequacy the Guiding Principles for dealing with acute human rights dilemmas of conflicting requirements in which a decision to avoid one type of violation risks causing violation of another human right. The article concludes by drawing up perspectives for further development of guidance on implementation of the UN Framework that could be considered by the newly established Working Group on Business and Human Rights and related UN bodies. (shrink)

This volume presents a collection of refereed papers reflecting the state of the art in the area of over-constrained systems. Besides 11 revised full papers, selected from the 24 submissions to the OCS workshop held in conjunction with the First International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming, CP '95, held in Marseilles in September 1995, the book includes three comprehensive background papers of central importance for the workshop papers and the whole field. Also included is an introduction (...) by one of the volume editors together with a bibliography listing 243 entries. All in all this is a very useful reference book relevant for all researchers and practitioners interested in hierarchical, partial, and over-constrained systems. (shrink)

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, resulting from the work of John Ruggie and his team, largely depend on state action and corporate good will for their implementation. One increasingly popular way for states to prevent and redress violations of human rights committed by companies outside their country of registration is to adopt measures with extraterritorial implications, some of which are presented in the article, or to assert direct extraterritorial jurisdiction in specific instances. Some (...) United Nations human rights bodies and non-governmental organisations are clearly supporting the use of extraterritoriality and have argued that international human rights law places an obligation on states to embrace extraterritoriality so as to better control the activities of companies registered on their territories. In this context, the article aims to determine whether extraterritoriality is the magic potion that will help enhance corporate accountability for human rights violations committed overseas. The article explores whether such obligation exists and, beyond this, whether extraterritoriality should be further encouraged. (shrink)

Human rights declarations are instruments used to introduce universal standards of ethics. The UN’s Protect, Respect, and Remedy Framework (Ruggie, Protect, respect, and remedy: A Framework for business and human rights. UN Doc A/HRC/8/5, 2008; Guiding principles on business and human rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect, and Remedy” framework. UN Doc A/HRC/17/31, 2011) intends to provide guidance for corporate behavior in regard to human rights. This article applies concepts from the field of organizational justice to the (...) arena of business and human rights for the purpose of operationalizing the UN Framework. This approach facilitates the recognition of gaps between perceptions of justice held by stakeholders versus businesses and/or the State. Such recognition raises the potential for addressing issues that lead to divergent perceptions of justice, thus potentially improving the human rights performance of businesses. The research also shows the potential for complicity of businesses in human rights abuses and exposes a fundamental weakness in the UN Framework, which attempts to draw a sharp distinction between duties of States versus responsibilities of business. We illustrate this approach through analysis of the case of Goldcorp’s Marlin Mine in Guatemala; an extractive industry project that affects indigenous communities. (shrink)

This paper considers the UN efforts to introduce a legally binding Treaty on corporate accountability for human rights impacts in the context of other proposed legislation at country level, on the one hand, and existing voluntary initiatives like the UN Guiding Principles (2011), on the other. What we are interested in is whether the proposed Treaty signals a transition from voluntary initiatives (based on moral commitments) to law (that is, a focus on compliance), and the extent to which it (...) might stimulate or hinder links between judicial and non-judicial initiatives. The scholars who have explicitly addressed these two divides are – Michael Sandel, on theory v. practice; and Amartya Sen, on law v. morality. We engage with their views, in sections II and III respectively, seeking to build an integrated approach to help us overcome these dualisms. We further consider John Ruggie’s “principled pragmatism”, a strategy that he uses to build the Protect, Respect and Remedy (henceforth, PRR) Framework; and we invoke arguments from casuistry as well as a practice-focused deontology (Thomas Donaldson’s) in favour of an ethics ‘beyond cognition’, which we consider better suited than either utilitarian or principle-based theories to guide the debate on human rights. This is because it allows us to take non-rational factors into account (such as emotions and personal affiliations), when judging the kind of common good we consider worth pursuing. In the last section of the paper, we investigate whether and how might the Treaty illustrate the two divides, trying to (a) distinguish between purely legal elements and those of a wider nature, to do with morality; and (b) understand what might help bridge the gap between theoretical commitments to the universality of human rights and various practical challenges. Our aim is not to evaluate the Treaty, from a legal viewpoint, or suggest improvements to it (lawyers are better placed to do that); rather, we seek to investigate the way in which the proposed Treaty – which is the first attempt to address the challenge of transnational business and human rights in international law – combines moral and legal aspects, and what this tells us about the world we live in. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Central to the United Nations Framework setting out the human rights responsibilities of corporations proposed by John Ruggie is the principle that corporations have a responsibility to respect human rights in their operations whether or not doing so is required by law and whether or not human rights laws are actively enforced. Ruggie proposes that corporations should respect this principle in their strategic management and day-to-day operations for reasons of corporate (enlightened) self-interest. This paper identifies this as a (...) serious weakness and argues that identifying the responsibility to respect human rights as an explicitly ethical obligation to be respected for that reason would provide a much stronger justificatory foundation for respecting the principle seen from a corporate perspective, given that corporations are accountable to their shareholders for their deployment of the firm’s financial resources. (shrink)

At the UN, important projects laying down transnational corporations' (TNCs) human rights responsibilities have been launched without ever clarifying the relevant theoretical foundations. One of the consequences is that the human rights principles in projects like the 2000 UN Global Compact and the 2003 Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights can be understood in different ways, which should not cause surprise given that their authors come from diverse backgrounds, including (...) economics and public policy. An examination of these projects and the views of their authors reveals that, although they are superficially linked to international human rights law, they go well beyond it and attempt to deal with corporate social responsibility issues in ways that elude neat classification as fitting neatly in either legal or non-legal categories. Too little attention has been paid to how in the course of developing these projects the legal and ethical dimensions have become entwined and how lines have gotten blurred. Meanwhile, there has been recognition that these UN projects have emerged simply as ad hoc responses to practical concerns about the sustainability of globalization. The lack of any foundational theory or normative framework should be addressed; it is time to bring together specialists from different fields concerned with the human rights responsibilities of corporations to see if it is possible to define a coherent overarching theory for these UN projects. (shrink)

I discuss the roles of journalism in aspirational democracies, and argue that they generate set of pressures on attention that apply to people by virtue of the type of society they live in. These pressures, I argue, generate a problem of democratic attention: for journalism to play its roles in democracy, the attentional demands must be met, but there are numerous obstacles to meeting them. I propose a principle of salience to guide the selection and framing of news stories that (...) I argue may help address the puzzle: the public-as-protagonist principle. -/- . (shrink)

Health care is ubiquitous in the industrialized world. Yet, every medical development, technique, and procedure impacts the environment. Green bioethics synthesizes environmental ethics and biomedical ethics, thus creating an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable health care. Notably, green bioethics addresses not the structure of environmental sustainability in health-care institutions but the sustainability of individual health-care offerings. It parallels traditional biomedical ethics by providing four principles for ethical guidance: distributive justice, resource conservation, simplicity, and ethical economics. Through these four principles, (...) green bioethics presents a coherent framework for evaluating the sustainability of medical developments, techniques, and procedures. The future of our world may very well depend on how effectively we halt ecological destruction and conserve our resources in all areas of life. The principles of green bioethics, outlined in this book, will advance sustainability in health care. (shrink)

Stephen Nathanson's clear-sighted abridgment of Principles of Political Economy, Mill's first major work in moral and political philosophy, provides a challenging, sometimes surprising account of Mill's views on many important topics: socialism, population, the status of women, the cultural bases of economic productivity, the causes and possible cures of poverty, the nature of property rights, taxation, and the legitimate functions of government. Nathanson cuts through the dated and less relevant sections of this large work and includes significant material omitted (...) in other editions, making it possible to see the connections between the views Mill expressed in Principles of Political Economy and the ideas he defended in his later works, particularly On Liberty. Indeed, studying Principles of Political Economy, Nathanson argues in his general Introduction, can help to resolve the apparent contradiction between Mill's views in On Liberty and those in Utilitarianism, making it a key text for understanding Mill’s philosophy as a whole. (shrink)

First published in 1903, _Principles of Mathematics_ was Bertrand Russell’s first major work in print. It was this title which saw him begin his ascent towards eminence. In this groundbreaking and important work, Bertrand Russell argues that mathematics and logic are, in fact, identical and what is commonly called mathematics is simply later deductions from logical premises. Highly influential and engaging, this important work led to Russell’s dominance of analytical logic on western philosophy in the twentieth century.

Kerstein and Bognar (2010) and Persad, Wertheimer, and Emanuel (2009) defend specific principles for the allocation of health care resources, but their choice of principles is influenced by the exa...

I argue that the Stoic logic is explosive. The claim applies to the Stoics' syllogistic in the strictest sense, because there is a provable syllogism which qualifies as a principle of explosion. It applies also to the general consequence operation, in the sense that every sentence is derivable from any pair containing both a sentence and the negation of the sentence. Finally, it applies to the connective of implication (conditional), in the sense that any conditional is derivable, providing its antecedent (...) is a conjunction of a sentence and the negation of the sentence. All three claims allow weakening, i.e., additions of extra premises to an inference or extra conjuncts to the antecedent of an implication, respectively. Consequently, no concept of relevance, let alone paraconsistency or connexivity is applicable to the Stoic logic; in particular, the Stoics' connective of implication is either material (Boolean) or formal (strict). (shrink)

_The purpose_ of the article is to clarify the philosophical principle of the local in the context of modern political governance. _The theoretical basis_ of the research embraces scenario analysis, dialectical and existential approaches, as well as philosophical anthropology and philosophy of communication. Local communities are a specific reflection of the connection between a person and a place. The specifics of the formation of a special mode of being, which forms and reproduces relations of loyalty, mutual understanding, and a common (...) feeling in the locus, are established. _Originality._ The article for the first time focuses on the anthropological content of local existence, which is the matrix of civil culture and the prospects of its integration into the global cultural space. _Conclusions._ Local identity as an object of purposeful formation in the conditions of nation-building requires considering the philosophical provisions that were introduced in the anthropological discourse. At the current stage, Ukrainian civil culture strives to invent specific local meanings of political identity in the conditions of external aggression. Its main components will be consensus, mutual respect, integrity, and the will to unite in order to protect statehood. Interdisciplinary meanings of locality form subject-object relations within which modern political management should be carried out. Taking into account the ethnic, cultural, and socio-functional, and role aspects of locality promises to ensure effective decision-making and increase the well-being of modern local communities. The political context of locality is formed based on the interaction of local political actors and institutions. Their examination within the framework of the case studies approach allows for empirically substantiating the local priorities of political actions. It also indicates the specific functionality of local political and administrative structures. at the local level, the discussed source of locality is the question of the origin or authenticity of the local population. For political governance, this is one of the meaningful contexts for justifying local autonomy or even sovereignty. (shrink)

_Purpose._ The authors of this paper seek to comprehend, on the basis of ethics of discourse and communicative philosophy, the dimensions of human existence in times of war. This involves solving the following research tasks: to show the importance of moral and ethical norms in the structure of human existence and to emphasize the need for their observance by a person in the realities of war; to find out what the role of responsibility and co-responsibility is in preserving the space (...) of human existence in times of war; to explore the influence of discourse on the establishment of rational and social dimensions of human existence, formation of communicative space of understanding. _Theoretical basis._ The ideas of communicative philosophy and principles of discourse ethics, focused on the problems of substantiating ethical norms and values in their relationship with the human life world, and its activities are underlying the research. The analysis of human existence in times of war was carried out considering the theoretical and methodological foundations of philosophical anthropology. _Originality._ It is substantiated that the recognition of the universality of moral norms and values, and the productive power of communication contribute to deepening the understanding of the complexity and versatility of human existence in times of war. It has been determined that human existence’s rational and moral dimensions acquire particular significance in the context of russian aggression against Ukraine. The role of discourse was defined for affirming the humanistic foundations of human existence, in achieving cohesion, interaction, social solidarity, which is a condition for human development as a collective and unique being. It is noted that in war conditions the value of individual forms of human existence is complemented by the obligatory responsibility and co-responsibility for a person, awareness of the significance of coexistence in a situation where there is a threat to human life. _Conclusions._ The study of human existence involves the use of the methodological potential of discourse ethics, the significance of the ideas of which is increasing in the modern world because of the dangers caused by russian aggression against Ukraine. The recognition of the power of universal moral norms and the productive power of communication results in the affirmation of the humanistic foundations of human existence, the formation of the communicative space of understanding and consent necessary for a person. In times of war, the need for communicative rationalization of human existence, awareness of the value of morality and human humanity becomes obvious. (shrink)

The Clarke/Rowe version of the Cosmological Argument is sound only if the Principle of Sufficient Reason is true, but many philosophers, including Rowe, think that there is not adequate evidence for the principle of sufficient reason. I argue that there may be indirect evidence for PSR on the grounds that if we do not accept it, we lose our best justification for an important principle of metaethics, namely, the Principle of Universalizability. To show this, I argue that all the other (...) justifications of the Principle of Universalizability on offer, including Richard Hare's, are inadequate. (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.

Recent attempts to develop and apply digital ethics principles to address the challenges of the digital transformation leave organisations with an operationalisation gap. To successfully implement such guidance, they must find ways to translate high-level ethics frameworks into practical methods and tools that match their specific workflows and needs. Here, we describe the development of a standardised risk assessment tool, the Principle-at-Risk Analysis (PaRA), as a means to close this operationalisation gap for a key level of the ethics infrastructure (...) at many organisations – the work of an interdisciplinary ethics panel. The PaRA tool serves to guide and harmonise the work of the Digital Ethics Advisory Panel at the multinational science and technology company Merck KGaA in alignment with the principles outlined in the company’s Code of Digital Ethics. We examine how such a tool can be used as part of a multifaceted approach to operationalise high-level principles at an organisational level and provide general requirements for its implementation. We showcase its application in an example case dealing with the comprehensibility of consent forms in a data-sharing context at Syntropy, a collaborative technology platform for clinical research. (shrink)

This essay gives an account of epistemic deference for agents with imprecise credences. I look at the two main imprecise deference principles in the literature, known as Identity Reflection and Pointwise Reflection (Moss, 2021). I show that Pointwise Reflection is strictly weaker than Identity Reflection, and argue that, if you are certain you will update by conditionalisation, you should defer to your future self according to Identity Reflection. Then I give a more general justification for Pointwise and Identity Reflection (...) from the assumption that you defer to someone whenever you consider their doxastic state to be better than yours, in the sense of leading to better decision-making. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) was a prominent English mathematician and philosopher who co-authored the highly influential Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell. Originally published in 1922, this book forms the follow-up volume to "The Principles of Natural Knowledge" (1919) and "The Concept of Nature" (1920). In it, Whitehead puts forward an alternative theory of relativity, one which goes against the heterogeneity of Einstein's later theories in deducing that 'our experience requires and exhibits a basis in uniformity'. The text is divided (...) into three parts - 'General Principles', 'Physical Applications', and 'Elementary Theory of Tensors' - and exhibits a characteristically ambitious approach in mixing various academic disciplines. This is a fascinating book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in natural science, physics, and philosophy, together with the history of science. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of the generalism-particularism debate and related issues concerning the relationship between normative reasons and moral principles.

First published in 1937. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Moral philosophy has long been dominated by the aim of understanding morality and the virtues in terms of principles. However, the underlying assumption that this is the best approach has received almost no defence, and has been attacked by particularists, who argue that the traditional link between morality and principles is little more than an unwarranted prejudice. In Principled Ethics, Michael Ridge and Sean McKeever meet the particularist challenge head-on, and defend a distinctive view they call "generalism as (...) a regulative ideal.". (shrink)

Moral reasoning in bioethics -- Bioethics and moral theories -- Paternalism and patient autonomy -- Truth-telling and confidentiality -- Informed consent -- Human research -- Abortion -- Reproductive technology -- Genetic choices -- Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide -- Dividing up health care resources.

The Principle of Unrest explores the contemporary implications of an activist philosophy, pivoting on the issue of movement. Movement is understood not simply in spatial terms but as qualitative transformation: becoming, emergence, event. Neoliberal capitalism's special relation to movement is of central concern.

New Principles of War: Enduring Truths with Timeless Examples argues that the currently recognized principles of war are flawed, and proposes a new set of principles to guide military leaders.

Lycan (1985, 1988) defended a “Principle of Credulity”: “Accept at the outset each of those things that seem to be true” (1988, p. 165). Though that takes the form of a rule rather than a thesis, it does not seem very different from Huemer’s (2001, 2006, 2007) doctrine of phenomenal conservatism (PC): “If it seems to S that p , then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that p ” (2007, (...) p. 30). My Principle was differently motivated and put to uses different from Huemer’s. In this paper I shall explore some of the differences. (shrink)

In On the Trinity 15.12.21, Augustine appears to endorse the KK principle (that if one knows that φ, then one knows that one knows that φ) in the course of giving an argument – the Multiplicity Argument – against the Academic skeptics. Gareth Matthews has disputed Augustine’s endorsement of the KK principle and presented a different reading of the Multiplicity Argument. In this note, I show that Matthews’s construal of the Multiplicity Argument is both interpretively and technically defective and defend (...) the attribution of some form of the KK principle to Augustine. (shrink)

This volume presents a significantly different interpretation of nature and society compared with existing theories of logic, relativity, quanta, evolution, medicine and international relations. For the first time in a number of years, it offers a new paradigm dealing with the entirety of reality. The Principle of Relations is formulated based on five postulates, before being applied to all fields of reality, namely the universe, elementary particles, changes of species, the human and international relations. It represents a platform on which (...) applications for all fields of reality can be understood, including gravity, energy, cancer, poverty, and prosperity and welfare. (shrink)