In thinking about the relationship between the sexed body and the state, it is worth recalling that both have a history. This essay, divided into two sections, uses the example of nineteenth-century England, which has had an exemplary status in scholarship on both the state and sexuality, to highlight the variability of law and government with respect to the body. The first section shows how a particular state during a key historical period produced sexuality through its decisions to protect and (...) regulate some bodies and not to regulate and protect others through the state's marriage laws and sodomy laws. The second section of this essay looks beyond sexuality to explore state oversight in the second sense of the term: as an omission or lapse in attention. What were the intimate matters to which the state was relatively indifferent? (shrink)

Abstract“Reading as if for Death” asks how people live in the face of imminent death by analyzing Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach. The few critics who have commented on this novel have focused on its message about the dangers of nuclear weapons. This article argues that this middlebrow Australian bestseller, which has never gone out of print, is also an important contribution to the literature of death and dying. In its focus on characters who may well be dead (...) within a year but continue to plant gardens and learn shorthand, the novel departs from common views of everyday life as passive, static, and immanent, instead portraying it as centered around acts of repair and future-oriented planning. In contrast to representations of mortality that emphasize transcendence and enlightenment, On the Beach sympathetically conveys the combination of certainty and uncertainty that most of its characters endure in living their final days and depicts characters for whom denial, refusing to see what is, and delusion, believing in what is not, become forms of palliative care. (shrink)

The sixteen essays in Gender Struggles address a wide range of issues in gender struggles, from the more familiar ones that, for the last thirty years, have been the mainstay of feminist scholarship, such as motherhood, beauty, and sexual violence, to new topics inspired by post-industrialization and multiculturalism, such as the welfare state, cyberspace, hate speech, and queer politics, and finally to topics that traditionally have not been seen as appropriate subjects for philosophizing, such as adoption, care work, and the (...) home. (shrink)

The pages that follow offer a critical survey of the motivic pursuit of a sober and wakeful way of life in old and late Stoicism (esp. Seneca’s Letters, Epictetus’ Discourses, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations). The aim is to show the key role that this motif plays in the Stoic conceptualization of conversion to philosophy and the school’s protreptic or rhetoric of conversion, that is to say, the forms of speech and literary strategies employed to instruct their addressees about what (...) they understood by conversion to philosophy and exhort them to change in their way of life. Wakefulness and soberness (and their counterparts, sleep and drunkenness) have been brought up occasionally in studies on Stoic ethics or moral philosophy. Yet, scholarship in the field has, to date, failed to identify the unique light this motif sheds on the Stoic pedagogical heuristics and conversion experience. T. Bénatouïl 2006, however, has already pointed out, in a study on the practical dimension of Stoicism, that despite its apparent triviality, the Stoic discussion on the sage’s use of wine and drunkenness unveils significant insights into the principles which govern the sage’s whole way of life. With a similar conviction, I hope that what follows may also elucidate the unparalleled lens that wakefulness and soberness as a motif for conversion provides for our understanding of the Stoic pursuit of a way of life in wisdom and virtue and its distinctiveness in the interaction process between traditions that characterized the ancient Mediterranean context. (shrink)

The Logic of Happiness guidebook explores the logic concepts introduced in the novel and includes excerpts of original works by some of the most significant philosophers in human history: the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and Charles Darwin. The readings will introduce students to an array of theories about how to achieve happiness while also teaching them to use classical logic techniques to discern whether or not those theories are (...) sound enough to be applicable in modern daily life. The guidebook also contains discussion questions that will get students thinking critically and deeply about different aspects of the philosophical theories, giving them practice examining, analyzing, and evaluating the strength of various arguments. -/- This guidebook can be used by instructors, but it is meant to be a companion book to the novel that enables students to understand the theories and beliefs of a diverse group of individuals who explored the problem of how to find happiness in a complicated world filled with complicated people. Students who work through it will find themselves more thoughtful and discerning—and more prepared to work toward establishing for themselves a life that will bring them their own happiness. (shrink)

Scholars have long been captivated by the parallels between birdsong and human speech and language. In this book, leading scholars draw on the latest research to explore what birdsong can tell us about the biology of human speech and language and the consequences for evolutionary biology. They examine the cognitive and neural similarities between birdsong learning and speech and language acquisition, considering vocal imitation, auditory learning, an early vocalization phase, the structural properties of birdsong and human language, and the striking (...) similarities between the neural organization of learning and vocal production in birdsong and human speech. After outlining the basic issues involved in the study of both language and evolution, the contributors compare birdsong and language in terms of acquisition, recursion, and core structural properties, and then examine the neurobiology of song and speech, genomic factors, and the emergence and evolution of language. Contributors: Hermann Ackermann, Gabriël J.L. Beckers, Robert C. Berwick, Johan J. Bolhuis, Noam Chomsky, Frank Eisner, Martin Everaert, Michale S. Fee, Olga Fehér, Simon E. Fisher, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Jonathan B. Fritz, Sharon M.H. Gobes, Riny Huijbregts, Eric Jarvis, Robert Lachlan, Ann Law, Michael A. Long, Gary F. Marcus, Carolyn McGettigan, Daniel Mietchen, Richard Mooney, Sanne Moorman, Kazuo Okanoya, Christophe Pallier, Irene M. Pepperberg, Jonathan F. Prather, Franck Ramus, Eric Reuland, Constance Scharff, Sophie K. Scott, Neil Smith, Ofer Tchernichovski, Carel ten Cate, Christopher K. Thompson, Frank Wijnen, Moira Yip, Wolfram Ziegler, Willem Zuidema. (shrink)

According to Ole Hjortland, Timothy Williamson, Graham Priest, and others, anti-exceptionalism about logic is the view that logic “isn’t special”, but is continuous with the sciences. Logic is revisable, and its truths are neither analytic nor a priori. And logical theories are revised on the same grounds as scientific theories are. What isn’t special, we argue, is anti-exceptionalism about logic. Anti-exceptionalists disagree with one another regarding what logic and, indeed, anti-exceptionalism are, and they are at odds with naturalist philosophers of (...) logic, who may have seemed like natural allies. Moreover, those internal battles concern well-trodden philosophical issues, and there is no hint as to how they are to be resolved on broadly scientific grounds. We close by looking at three of the founders of logic who may have seemed like obvious enemies of anti-exceptionalism—Aristotle, Frege, and Carnap—and conclude that none of their positions is clearly at odds with at least some of the main themes of anti-exceptionalism. We submit that, at least at present, anti-exceptionalism is too vague or underspecified to characterize a coherent conception of logic, one that stands opposed to more traditional approaches. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz behandelt den Zusammenhang zwischen Recht, Ethik und Moral in der MdS. Ausgangspunkt ist der Befund, daß Kants System der Pflichten in der MdS weder konsistent noch vollständig ist, weil Rechts- und Tugendpflichten, entgegen Kants Annahme, den Bereich der moralischen Pflichten nicht erschöpfen . Kants System der Pflichten beruht auf den Unterscheidungen zwischen Recht und Ethik und zwischen Legalität und Moralität. Letztere konzipiert Kant in der MdS anders als in früheren Werken, indem er sie nun auf die beiden Arten (...) der "Gesetzgebung" in Recht und Ethik und die daraus entspringenden Gesetze zurückführt . Im Zusammenhang mit der "ethischen" Gesetzgebung ergibt sich das Problem, wie es ethisch geboten sein kann, aus Pflicht zu handeln . Analog dazu stellt sich mit Blick auf die "juridische" Gesetzgebung die Frage, warum man befugt ist, andere zu rechtlichem Handeln zu zwingen. Handelt es sich um eine moralische oder eine spezifisch rechtliche Befugnis? Es zeigt sich, daß Kant zwei unvereinbare Auffassung miteinander verbindet: Aus seiner "offiziellen" Auffassung, wonach das Recht ein Teil der Moral ist, würde folgen, daß die Zwangsbefugnis im Recht moralisch gerechtfertigt werden kann. Tatsächlich ist eine solche Rechtfertigung aber nicht möglich, die "offizielle" Auffassung also unzureichend. Kant greift in der MdS aber auch mehrfach auf eine "alternative" Auffassung zurück, der zufolge das Recht als eine eigenständige Form autonomer Gesetzgebung neben der Moral steht . Dieser alternativen Auffassung zufolge, die der "offiziellen" insgesamt überlegen ist, würde die "Rechtslehre" also gar nicht in die Metaphysik der Sitten gehören. (shrink)

I claim that there is pro tanto moral reason for parents to not raise their child on a vegan diet because a vegan diet bears a risk of harm to both the physical and the social well-being of children. After giving the empirical evidence from nutrition science and sociology that supports this claim, I turn to the question of how vegan parents should take this moral reason into account. Since many different moral frameworks have been used to argue for veganism, (...) this is a complex question. I suggest that, on some of these moral frameworks, the moral reason that some parents have for not raising their child on a vegan diet on account of this risk is plausibly as strong as the reason they have for raising their child on a vegan diet. In other words, the moral reason I outline is weighty enough to justify some vegan parents in plausibly finding it permissible to not raise their child on a vegan diet. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

In der "Transzendentalen Ästhetik" der KrV will Kant zeigen, daß Raum und Zeit Anschauungsformen und daher keine Eigenschaften der Dinge an sich sind. Es scheint jedoch, als übersehe er dabei die Möglichkeit, daß Raum und Zeit Anschauungsformen und zugleich Eigenschaften der Dinge an sich sein könnten. Dagegen soll hier gezeigt werden, daß Kants Beweis durchaus schlüssig ist. Dabei kommt es zunächst darauf an, die genaue Struktur des Kantischen Beweises zu verstehen. Darauf folgt eine Diskussion der Kantischen Begriffe Anschauung sowie Form (...) der Anschauung und reine Anschauung, in der sich unter anderem herausstellt, daß Kants Anschauungsbegriff im Sinne der aktuellen Philosophie des Geistes "externalistisch" konzipiert ist. Dies erlaubt es dann, den Schluß auf die Idealität von Raum und Zeit tatsächlich als Folgerung aus Kants vorhergehenden Ausführungen zu verstehen. Abschließend geht es um einige der Konsequenzen, die sich aus dieser Interpretation für das Verständnis des transzendentalen Idealismus ergeben. (shrink)

This paper offers a partial defence of the Epicurean claim that death is not bad for the one who dies. Unlike Epicurus and his present-day advocates, this defence relies not on a hedonistic or empiricist conception of value but on the concept of ‘existential’ value. Existential value is agent-relative value for which it is constitutive that it can be truly self-ascribed in the first person and present tense. From this definition, it follows that death (post-mortem non-existence), while perhaps bad in (...) some respects, cannot be an existential harm for the one who dies. This paper argues that existential goods are central to any explanation of why life appears good to us from a self-interested perspective, which means that death is not bad in the very respect in which life is most saliently good (from that perspective). A corresponding error theory shows why this truth is easily overlooked and explains why we tend to think that death is significantly worse than it really is. (shrink)

Praktische Vernunft, Handlungstheorien und Moralvorstellungen. Ein Interessantes Werk zum Thema Handeln udn Denken.

The paper offers a three-premise argument that a person with first-hand experience of possession and exorcism, such as an exorcist, can have a justified belief in the existence of demons. (1) “Exorcism involves a process by which the exorcist comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon.” Cited for (1) are the Gospels, the Roman Ritual, some modern cases of exorcism, and exorcism practices in non-Christian contexts. (2) “If defeaters are absent, the exorcist may treat as reliable the (...) process by which he comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon.” For (2) a case is offered that we have a reliable ability to identify when testimony is being offered and when it is being offered by particular types of agents, what is termed testifier-identification. (3) “In many cases of exorcism, defeaters are absent.” An inductive case is given for (3) by responding to possible defeaters, including several suggested recently by David Kyle Johnson. Therefore, in many cases of exorcism the exorcist may treat as reliable the processes by which he comes to believe that testimony is offered by a demon, and so can have a justified belief in the existence of demons. (shrink)

Eli Hirsch recently suggested the metaontological doctrine of so-called "quantifier variance", according to which ontological disputes—e.g. concerning the question whether arbitrary, possibly scattered, mereological fusions exist, in the sense that these are recognised as objects proper in our ontology—can be defused as insubstantial. His proposal is that the meaning of the quanti er `there exists' varies in such debates: according to one opponent in this dispute, some existential statement claiming the existence of, e.g., a scattered object is true, according to (...) the other it is not. This paper argues that Hirsch's proposal leads into inconsistency. (shrink)

Medical practitioners of all specialisms are identified by their professional titles. Their function is determined by their regulators, and subject to voluntary employment contracts....

Paraconsistent and dialetheist approaches to a theory of truth are faced with a problem: the expressive resources of the logic do not suffice to express that a sentence is just true—i.e., true and not also false—or to express that a sentence is consistent. In his recent book, Spandrels of Truth, Jc Beall proposes a ‘just true’-operator to identify sentences that are true and not also false. Beall suggests seven principles that a ‘just true’-operator must fulfill, and proves that his operator (...) indeed fulfills all of them. He concludes that just true has been expressed in the language. I argue that, while the seven conditions may be necessary for an operator to express just true, they are not jointly sufficient. Specifically, first, I prove that a further plausible desideratum for necessary conditions on ‘just true’ is not fulfilled by Beall's proposal, namely that ‘just true’ ascriptions should themselves be just true, and not also false (or equivalently, that the ‘just true’-operator iterates). Second, I show that Beall's operator does not adequately express just true, but that it merely captures an arbitrary proper subset of the just true sentences. Further, there is no prospect of extending the proposal in order to encompass a more reasonable subset of the just true sentences without presupposing that we have antecedent means to characterize the class of just true sentences. (shrink)

This paper investigates feasible ways of destroying artworks, assuming they are abstract objects, or works of a particular art-form, where the works of at least this art-form are assumed to be abstracta. If artworks are eternal, mind-independent abstracta, and hence discovered, rather than created, then they cannot be destroyed, but merely forgotten. For more moderate conceptions of artworks as abstract objects, however, there might be logical space for artwork destruction. Artworks as abstracta have been likened to impure sets (i.e., sets (...) of concrete things, as opposed to pure sets, i.e., sets of nothing but other sets) that have a beginning in time, namely when their members come into being, and an end in time, namely when their members cease to exist. Alternatively, artworks as abstracta have been thought of as types that are created with their first token. Artwork destruction is harder on this account: merely destroying every token might not yet destroy the type. To what extent such similes can be spelt out and made plausible as an ontology of artworks, and what options there are on the different accounts for artwork destruction, is explored in this paper. (shrink)

This paper investigates the claim that the second-order consequence relation is intractable because of the incompleteness result for SOL. The opponents’ claim is that SOL cannot be proper logic since it does not have a complete deductive system. I argue that the lack of a completeness theorem, despite being an interesting result, cannot be held against the status of SOL as a proper logic.

Are the circumstances in which moral testimony serves as evidence that our judgement-forming processes are unreliable the same circumstances in which mundane testimony serves as evidence that our mundane judgement-forming processes are unreliable? In answering this question, we distinguish two possible roles for testimony: (i) providing a legitimate basis for a judgement, (ii) providing (‘higher-order’) evidence that a judgement-forming process is unreliable. We explore the possibilities for a view according to which moral testimony does not, in contrast to mundane testimony (...) play role (i), but can play role (ii). We argue that standard motivations for rejecting this hybrid position are unpersuasive but suggest that a more compelling reason might be found in considering the social nature of morality. (shrink)

Hegelian philosophical treatise beginning with analysis of Reversal Theory and restructuring into Resurrexit Theory, a structured phenomenology centred around Spirit (first three articles: Hegelian Analysis of Reversal Theory, Structural Reformation of Reversal Theory, & Resurrexit Theory - The Dualist Expansion of Structural Phenomenology). This is followed by a theory of mind and consciousness based in complex universality (Dialectic Mind). Naturally, this leads into how particularity can best align with universality, to thereby generate Good. Such a discussion begs the question of (...) virtues and sins. Sins are defined in materialistic terms, while virtues are given definition as aspects and moments of Reason through skill interactions and pathology, which is to say the experiences in emotions that instigate self-understanding and inform purpose (Structural Virtues Theory - The Dozen Skills in Reason). The series of articles then dives into evolutionary concepts of personality development and evidenced-based psychological theories. Spirit is identified with personality, and then personality is associated with mind module evolution and mate selection, especially within religious organisation (Spiritual Material - Evolutionary Theory of Spiritual Mate Selection and Personality Development). Finally, the author's dissertation is used to suggest an alteration of attachment theory for the greater contribution of fathers in the role of early socialisation (First Other Theory - The Paternity of Civilisation - Evolutionary Roots of Attachment and the Paternal Role in Formation of Civilisation). (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that Platonic Forms are angels. I make this identification by claiming that Platonic Forms have the characteristics of angels, in particular, that Platonic Forms are alive. I offer four arguments for this claim. First, it seems that engaging in self-directed action is a sufficient condition for being alive. The Forms are, as teleological activities, self-directed actions. Second, bodies receive their being from their Forms, and some bodies are essentially alive. Third, in the Good, all (...) the types of goodness, including life, are identical. The Forms are appearances of the Good. Fourth, since the Good imparts as much goodness as it can, the Forms are alive unless there is some bar to their being alive. There are good reasons to think that there is no such bar. I then show that ethical vices do not give body to human form, but give body to other forms—those that are evil angels. Lastly, I provide a survey of the relationships that various religious traditions posit between ethical vice and the demonic. (shrink)

The first decade of this century has seen the nascency of the first mathematical theory of general artificial intelligence. This theory of Universal Artificial Intelligence (UAI) has made significant contributions to many theoretical, philosophical, and practical AI questions. In a series of papers culminating in book (Hutter, 2005), an exciting sound and complete mathematical model for a super intelligent agent (AIXI) has been developed and rigorously analyzed. While nowadays most AI researchers avoid discussing intelligence, the award-winning PhD thesis (Legg, 2008) (...) provided the philosophical embedding and investigated the UAI-based universal measure of rational intelligence, which is formal, objective and non-anthropocentric. Recently, effective approximations of AIXI have been derived and experimentally investigated in JAIR paper (Veness et al. 2011). This practical breakthrough has resulted in some impressive applications, finally muting earlier critique that UAI is only a theory. For the first time, without providing any domain knowledge, the same agent is able to self-adapt to a diverse range of interactive environments. For instance, AIXI is able to learn from scratch to play TicTacToe, Pacman, Kuhn Poker, and other games by trial and error, without even providing the rules of the games. These achievements give new hope that the grand goal of Artificial General Intelligence is not elusive. This article provides an informal overview of UAI in context. It attempts to gently introduce a very theoretical, formal, and mathematical subject, and discusses philosophical and technical ingredients, traits of intelligence, some social questions, and the past and future of UAI. (shrink)

The result of two key social developments in recent years are examined here: the partial dismantling of the welfare state and the progress of genetics. Genetic insights are increasingly valuable for risk assessment, and insurers would like to use these insights to help determine premiums. Combined with the fact that social welfare is being curtailed, this could potentially create an uninsured high-risk population. Along with considerations of autonomy and privacy, this is the basis for an ethical critique of insurer's access (...) to information. The result has often been regulation of such information; but the authors argues that due to adverse selection, regulation will not solve these problems, and this may jeopardize the survival of private personal insurance. Instead, we should look towards the resurrection of social insurance, a key component of the welfare state. This will interest academic researchers as well as professionals involved with genetics and insurance. (shrink)

It is often claimed that nominalistic programmes to reconstruct mathematics fail, since they will at some point involve the notion of logical consequence which is unavailable to the nominalist. In this paper we use an idea of Goodman and Quine to develop a nominalistically acceptable explication of logical consequence.

In this thesis I provide a survey over different approaches to second-order logic and its interpretation, and introduce a novel approach. Of special interest are the questions whether second-order logic can count as logic in some proper sense of logic, and what epistemic status it occupies. More specifically, second-order logic is sometimes taken to be mathematical, a mere notational variant of some fragment of set theory. If this is the case, it might be argued that it does not have the (...) "epistemic innocence" which would be needed for, e.g., foundational programmes in mathematics for which second-order logic is sometimes used. I suggest a Deductivist conception of logic, that characterises logical consequence by means of inference rules, and argue that on this conception second-order logic should count as logic in the proper sense. (shrink)

The paper investigates whether imaginative states about propositions can be assessed in terms of fittingness (also known as correctness, appropriateness, aptness). After characterizing propositional imaginings and explaining the idea of fittingness, I present some considerations in favour of the no conditions view: imagining seems to be the sort of action that cannot be done unfittingly, and imaginings have no external cognitive nor conative goals in light of which they could be unfitting. I then examine the local conditions view, that there (...) can be fittingness conditions on imaginings, but that these are inherited from the mental projects in which imaginings can play a role. Given that there are virtues of the imagination such as creativity and spontaneity, and given that imaginings are subject to purposive mechanisms, and given that there are cases in which it is unfitting to fail to imagine, I endorse the general conditions view, on which imaginings have a goal, and therefore fittingness conditions, even outside the context of mental projects. I then examine 4 versions of the general conditions view and argue that imaginings aim to make contents available to mental projects. (shrink)

All contributions included in the present issue were originally presented at an ‘Author Meets Critics’ session organised by Richard Zach at the Pacific Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in San Diego in the Spring of 2014.

In times of increasing political polarization, the question of how teachers deal with controversial issues in their classrooms becomes more important than ever. Rejection, avoidance, or an overtly neutral stance on different positions on these issues can be detrimental to democratic education. In this study, we examine preservice teachers’ stances on different criteria for discussing controversial issues in their prospective classrooms and propose a specification of the approach of balancing different views on controversial issues that we call “committed balancing”: a (...) form of balancing that avoids according equal weight or importance to fundamentally unequal positions. To examine different stances that preservice teachers hold on controversy, we used a convenience sample of 162 German preservice teachers to develop the foundation for a standardized instrument that can be used to detect different ideas about the limits to controversial classroom discussions. We analyzed interviews with a subset of respondents to further examine their ideas about controversial issues in their future classroom practice. We found evidence of different strategies of (not) dealing with controversial issues as well as an emerging strategy of committed balancing. Our findings have practical implications for teachers and teacher educators in addressing controversial topics in the classroom. We suggest that “committed balancing” should be considered as a guide for how to approach these issues. (shrink)

This article aims to summarize the current ethical issues in the field of clinical and counseling psychology and the process of developing professional ethical standards in China. First, through a review of the history of counseling and psychotherapy in China, general background information is provided. Important ethical issues are then discussed based on the results from several empirical studies. Finally, the process of developing the new edition of the Chinese Psychological Society Code of Ethics for Clinical and Counseling Psychology, the (...) main contents as well as the considerations taken into account in the development of this code are presented. (shrink)

The present study aims to survey Chinese mental health professionals’ attitudes toward therapeutic confidentiality with adolescent patients in specific clinical situations, and compare Chinese adolescents’ and parents’ beliefs about when most mental health professionals would breach confidentiality. A sample of 36 mental health practitioners, 152 parents, and 164 adolescents completed a survey to assess their opinions about when confidentiality should be breached in 18 specific clinical situations. Nearly half of the parents and adolescents and 78% of the therapists in our (...) sample selected “yes” in response to the question of whether the principle of confidentiality applies to adolescents. However, 49% of parents indicated “no,” and 53% of adolescents indicated “not sure.” Compared to adolescents, parents were significantly more likely to believe that therapists would breach confidentiality for the high-breach-likelihood items. For the low-breach-likelihood items, adolescents and parents were significantly more likely than therapists to believe confidentiality should be breached. Results from this study provide data to inform the development, refinement, practical implementation, and communication of guidelines and recommendations specific to adolescents receiving psychotherapy in China. (shrink)

Unter „Skeptizismus" wird hier die Auffassung verstanden, daß unsere Meinungen, selbst wenn sie zufälligerweise wahr sein sollten, sind niemals gut genug begründet, um als Wissen gelten zu können. Die „kontextualistische" Reaktion auf den Skeptizismus beruht auf dem Gedanken, daß die Berechtigung von Wissensansprüchen u.a. vom jeweiligen Kontext abhängt, in dem sie erhoben werden. Diese Auffassung findet sich in unterschiedlicher Form zum Beispiel bei Peirce, Austin, dem späten Wittgenstein und, unter den neueren Autoren, bei Michael Williams, David Lewis und Hilary Putnam. (...) Der entscheidende Unterschied der hier vorgeschlagenen Lösung zu anderen Formen des epistemischen Kontextualismus liegt in einer Unterscheidung zwischen zwei Argumentationsebenen: der Ebene epistemischer Bewertung, auf der man sich mit Blick auf konkrete Inhalte ernsthaft die Frage stellt, ob man etwas weiß oder nicht, und der Ebene philosophischer Epistemologie, auf der man nach den Bedingungen und der Möglichkeit von Wissen im allgemeinen fragt. (shrink)

Sustainability reports are a crucial instrument to inform outside stakeholders not only about a company's sustainability performance but also to manage impressions. However, they are often prone to greenwashing and the reporting of negative topics can jeopardize corporate legitimacy. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze reporting quality and how grocery retailing companies deal with this challenge of reporting the true picture. The empirical material is taken from the latest sustainability reports and information available on the Internet for two major German (...) supermarkets, six grocery discount retailers, and two organic supermarkets. The Global Reporting Initiative standards are used to assess and compare the extent of information disclosure. A qualitative content analysis is applied to identify negative disclosure aspects and their legitimation. While the main focus areas (supply chain, employees, environment/climate, and society) are similar for the companies, different levels of reporting quality appeared. Negative information is rarely reported and “abstraction” and “indicating facts” are the dominant legitimation strategies. (shrink)