This study assesses the impact had by institutional isomorphic pressures in the organisational fields of 185 businesses operating within the United Kingdom. The emphasis throughout is on how external institutions affect the socially and environmentally responsible aspects of an organization’s purchasing practice. Factor analyses and a linear regression model are employed to test the influence of these pressures. Initial findings suggest that what other industry participants are doing in this area is not as important in affecting the procurement practice of (...) the focal organisation as is the managers’ perception of how legitimacy is awarded by stakeholders and, indeed, if competitors with well-developed social and environmental supply chain management programs are perceived favourably in the industry. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on Daoist praxeology and language in order to build something of a moral realist position (the contours of which may differ from most western versions insofar as it need not commit to moral cognitivism) that hinges on the seemingly paradoxical notions of ineffable moral truths and non-transferable moral skill.

The focus of this paper will be on the earliest Greek treatments of impulse, motivation, and self-animation – a cluster of concepts tied to the hormē-conatus concept. I hope to offer a plausible account of how the earliest recorded views on this subject in mythological, pre-Socratic, and Classical writings might have inspired later philosophical developments by establishing the foundations for an organic, wholly naturalized approach to human inquiry. Three pillars of that approach which I wish to emphasize are: practical intelligence, (...) natural normativity, and an ontology of philosophical dialectic. (shrink)

Anthropology diffracted : originary humanicity -- Just figures?: forensic clairvoyance, mathematics, and the language question -- Enumerating language : "The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" -- Natural convers(at)ions : or, what if culture was really nature all along? -- (Con)founding "the human" : rethinking the incest taboo -- Culpability and the double-cross : Irigaray with Merleau-Ponty.

Deep learning and other black-box models are becoming more and more popular today. Despite their high performance, they may not be accepted ethically or legally because of their lack of explainability. This paper presents the increasing number of legal requirements on machine learning model interpretability and explainability in the context of private and public decision making. It then explains how those legal requirements can be implemented into machine-learning models and concludes with a call for more inter-disciplinary research on explainability.

Since the global financial crisis in 2008, corporations have faced a crisis of trust, with growing sentiment against ‘elites and ‘big business’ and a feeling that ‘something ought to be done’ to re-establish public regard for corporations. Trust and trustworthiness are deeply moral significant. They provide the ‘glue or lubricant’ that begets reciprocity, decreases risk, secures dignity and respect, and safeguards against the subordination of the powerless to the powerful. However, in deciding how to restore trust, it is difficult to (...) determine precisely what should be done, by whom, and who will bear the cost, especially if any action involves a risk to overall market efficiency and corporate profitability. The paper explores whether corporations have a moral duty to be trustworthy, to bear the cost of being so and thus contribute to resolving the current crisis of trust. It also considers where the state and other social actors have strong reason to protect and enforce such moral rights, while acknowledging that other actors have similar obligations to be trustworthy. It outlines five ‘salient factors’ that trigger specific rights to trustworthiness and a concomitant duty on corporations to be trustworthy: market power, subordination (threat and intimidation), the absence of choice, the need to preserve systemic trust, and corporate political power which might undermine a state’s legitimacy. Absent these factors and corporations do not have a general duty to be trustworthy, since a responsible actor in fair market conditions should be able to choose between the costs and benefits of dealing with generally trustworthy corporations. (shrink)

This chapter examines Thoreau’s experiences on Mt. Katahdin, vis-à-vis exposure science and wilderness therapy. A close reading of Thoreau’s account suggests the experience had a profound effect on him, emotionally and philosophically, an effect that is relevant to environmental exposure and eco-vulnerability in the contexts of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Thoreau’s experience on that mountain presented to him an aspect of wilderness antithetical to the romantic, transcendentalist notions he previously held and ultimately led to more nuanced, therapeutic depictions (...) found in works like “Walking” and Walden. That such a reconciliation was possible for Thoreau suggests a privileged insulation from trauma not afforded to many. It also indicates the value of both philosophical contemplation and wilderness therapy to promote psychological resilience and adaptability. The author argues philosophers should begin to engage conceptually and normatively with exposure, vulnerability, and resilience. (shrink)

The Significance Argument (SA) for the irreducibility of consciousness is based on a series of new puzzle-cases that I call multiple candidate cases. In these cases, there is a multiplicity of physical-functional properties or relations that are candidates to be identified with the sensible qualities and our consciousness of them, where those candidates are not significantly different. I will argue that these cases show that reductive materialists cannot accommodate the various ways in which consciousness is significant and must allow massive (...) vagueness in conscious experience. I also will argue that a nonreductive theory of the conscious-of relation can easily provide a very satisfying, unified explanation of the ways in which this relation is significant. (shrink)

Ce texte a déjà paru sur Techno-science.net. Des chercheurs découvrent la formule mathématique du rythme et avancent que notre cerveau pourrait être câblé pour y répondre. Une nouvelle étude montre que tout compositeur, de Bach à Brubeck, répète des motifs rythmiques, de sorte que la partie reproduit le tout. Une équipe de recherche dirigée par les neuroscientifiques Daniel Levitin et Vinod Menon, respectivement des universités McGill et Stanford, a analysé les partitions de quelque 2 000 compositions - Mathématiques – Nouvel (...) article. (shrink)

Il existe deux types d'ignorance que Maurice Blondel, philosophe, sociologue et théologien français, invite tout homme à combattre énergiquement pour éviter la disparition prématurée de l'espèce humaine, mais également celle de la planète Terre. Il y a, d'une part, l'ignorance de soi-même, de son être en perpétuel devenir et, d'autre part, celle de ses semblables, de son environnement, du monde physique et de l'Unique nécessaire. Ce livre s'assigne comme objectif de vulgariser les armes pour combattre ces deux fléaux, armes présentées (...) dans sa thèse de doctorat qui l'a rendu célèbre : L'Action (1893). (shrink)

Pour son projet d'une "union européenne", suite à des guerres récurrentes entre frères du même continent, Maurice Blondel a élaboré une méthode sociologique qui permet de rassembler les membres d'une même société autour des mêmes idéaux, de les aider à s'accepter les uns les autres, malgré leurs différences, de les pousser à atteindre un excellent niveau d'organisation sociale, économique, politique et culturelle, mais surtout d'intégrer efficacement les délinquants déclarés perdus à jamais, donc bons à être guillotinés comme autrefois en France. (...) Ce petit livre s'assigne comme objectif de présenter cette méthode et de faire connaître Maurice Blondel comme sociologue de l'action et d'une Europe de la paix perpétuelle. (shrink)

Este trabalho apresenta uma pesquisa sobre a religiosidade em Mazagão Velho, expressa por meio das festas devocionais que ali ocorrem, buscando compreendê-las como um elemento histórico de coesão social. Para tanto, parte-se do estudo da mentalidade formada no Brasil colônia com sua ideologia de expansão da fé cristã. É nesse contexto que toma forma o catolicismo popular. A localidade escolhida como base para este estudo apresenta especificidades que a tornam um caso único. Ela traz a memória das antigas lutas entre (...) cristãos e mouros ainda no Marrocos, onde foi primeiramente fundada, sendo posteriormente transferida para o Brasil no século XVIII. Além disso, apresenta um rico processo de interação com os indígenas e africanos, caracterizando-a como uma sociedade multicultural. Essa história ainda é marcada pela degradação social ocorrida no final do século XVIII. Contudo, mesmo passando por diversos reveses, a comunidade subsistiu e mantém-se viva até os dias atuais. Como principal prática social, destacam-se as festas devocionais, que são eventos coletivos que congregam elementos, como as crenças e os rituais que expressam a vida em sociedade. Também fazem parte dessas festas as manifestações culturais surgidas a partir do encontro das culturas ali presentes. Para entender essa longa história, a ideia de coesão social foi essencial. Neste sentido, a pesquisa buscou mostrar que essa comunidade manteve sua existência graças à coesão social ali formada e sustentada pela religiosidade que se manifesta, de maneira mais efetiva, por meio das festas em devoção aos santos católicos em um ciclo que se renova a cada ano. Para tanto, o trabalho foi realizado por meio de uma abordagem interdisciplinar, com uma análise que compreende tanto uma perspectiva histórica quanto uma abordagem sociológica. Para isso, houve a observação de algumas festas in loco, a pesquisa documental e a pesquisa bibliográfica. Conclui-se que as festas devocionais são eventos sociais fortemente marcados pela tradição histórica do local. Ademais, a continuidade histórica dos acontecimentos mostra que, diante dos problemas passados pela localidade, a sociedade encontrou forças na união de seus moradores, nas tradições e na memória de seus antepassados, fortalecendo-se por meio da realização das festas devocionais. (shrink)

Practical approaches to the notions of subsets and extension sets are compared, coming from broadly set-theoretic and category-theoretic traditions of mathematics. I argue that the set-theoretic approach is the most practical for ‘looking down’ or ‘in’ at subsets and the category-theoretic approach is the most practical for ‘looking up’ or ‘out’ at extensions, and suggest some guiding principles for using these approaches without recourse to either category theory or axiomatic set theory.

ABSTRACTResearch that dissociates different types of processes within a given task using a processing tree approach suggests that attitudes may be acquired through evaluative conditioning in the absence of explicit encoding of CS-US pairings in memory. This research distinguishes explicit memory for the CS-US pairings from CS-liking acquired without encoding of CS-US pairs in explicit memory. It has been suggested that the latter effect may be due to an implicit misattribution process that is assumed to operate when US evocativeness is (...) low. In the present research, the latter assumption was supported neither by two high-powered experiments nor by complementary meta-analytic evidence, whereas evocativeness exerted an influence on explicit memory. This pattern of findings is inconsistent with the view that CS-liking acquired without encoding of CS-US pairs in explicit memory reflects an implicit misattribution process at learning. Hence, the underlying learning process is awaiting further empirical scrutiny. (shrink)

Local theories of consciousness state that one is conscious of a feature if it is adequately represented and processed in sensory brain areas, given some background conditions. We challenge the core prediction of local theories based on long-lasting postdictive effects demonstrating that features can be represented for hundreds of milliseconds in perceptual areas without being consciously perceived. Unlike previous empirical data aimed against local theories, localists cannot explain these effects away by conjecturing that subjects are phenomenally conscious of features that (...) they cannot report. We also discuss alternative explanations that localists could offer. (shrink)

Though the vegetarian movement sparked by Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation has achieved some success, there is more animal suffering caused today due to factory farming than there was when the book was originally written. In this paper, I argue that there may be a technological solution to the problem of animal suffering in intensive factory farming operations. In particular, I suggest that recent research indicates that we may be very close to, if not already at, the point where we (...) can genetically engineer factory-farmed livestock with a reduced or completely eliminated capacity to suffer. In as much as animal suffering is the principal concern that motivates the animal welfare movement, this development should be of central interest to its adherents. Moreover, I will argue that all people concerned with animal welfare should agree that we ought to replace the animals currently used in factory farming with animals whose ability to suffer is diminished if we are able to do so. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely throughout (...) social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTwo high-powered experiments examined the role of evaluative response production in the extinction of evaluative conditioning by positioning EC in the procedural and conceptual framewo...

Institutional review boards, tasked with facilitating ethical research, are often pulled in competing directions. In what we call the protection-inclusion dilemma, we acknowledge the tensions IRBs face in aiming to both protect potential research participants from harm and include under-represented populations in research. In this manuscript, we examine the history of protectionism that has dominated research ethics oversight in the United States, as well as two responses to such protectionism: inclusion initiatives and critiques of the term vulnerability. We look at (...) what we know about IRB decision-making in relation to protecting and including “vulnerable” groups in research and examine the lack of regulatory guidance related to this dilemma, which encourages protection over inclusion within IRB practice. Finally, we offer recommendations related to how IRBs might strike a better balance between inclusion and protection in research ethics oversight. (shrink)

The massive increase of data generated by heterogeneous sources requires the development of computer tools enabling their semantic interoperability. Applied ontologies aim at fulfilling such needs. We will show in this article the central role that philosophical ontology can play for applied ontology, with a focus on biomedical ontologies; and reciprocally, how applied ontology can enlighten some classical issues in philosophical ontology, by considering the following question: Is disease a natural kind?

The conclusions of Barbey & Sloman (B&S) crucially depend on evidence for different representations of statistical information. Unfortunately, a muddled distinction made among these representations calls into question the authors' conclusions. We clarify some notions of statistical representations which are often confused in the literature. These clarifications, combined with new empirical evidence, do not support a dual-process model of judgment.

We classify actions of groups of finite Morley rank on abelian groups of Morley rank 2: there are essentially two, namely the natural actions of SL(V) and GL(V) with V a vector space of dimension 2. We also prove an identification theorem for the natural module of SL₂ in the finite Morley rank category.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ImagesAdrien BugariAdrien Bugari is a graduate of the École Supérieure d’Art et de Design (ESAD, Reims, France). In 2007, his work was exhibited at the Salon du Meuble de Paris and the Salon d’Art et de Design Contemporain de Montrouge (France). In 2008, he worked with the Italian designer Martino Gamper and continued his studies at the École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL, Switzerland), receiving a degree in 2009. (...) His work, Round Box, appeared at the Milan Salon du Design in 2008. While his early work focuses almost exclusively on objects and their functionality, Bugari’s practice engages with contemporary art in general and design in particular. His drawings—most often done with felt tip marker or pencil—are concerned with space and matter. Bugari lives and works in Paris.www.adrienbugari.comCristalThe series, Cristal—comprising fifteen drawings on recycled paper—was completed during a stay in Ithaca, New York, in 2011.Cristal is a specimen study inspired by a reading of A Field Guide and Introduction to the Geology and Chemistry of Rocks and Minerals by Charles Sorrell. Minimally sketched, the structures are set off by white oil pastel. The substance of each drawing is produced by the contrast between the rigid outlines of each facet and the brilliance of the white pastel. The light materiality of the sketches creates a delicate effect: the transparency covers the drawn lines without minimizing their imperfections. The structure—as nothing more than the relation between parts—naturally implies a point of view. It calls into question the necessity of form and the way that differences and similarities are established. It plays with resemblances, or, les airs de famille. It asks what in the drawing is regular or continuous and what is not. And it wonders where to begin. The series, Cristal, is also a magnetic proximity, a minimalist rhythm: it creates the possibility of successive metamorphoses, until there is nothing left to say.It is no doubt possible to interpret Cristal as a geometric abstraction. I prefer to define it as a moment rather than a concept. Viewed in that light, Cristal can be said to have endured for the season of one Ithaca winter. [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolutionIMAGE: Adrien Bugari, CRISTAL 14Felt tip marker and oil pastel on recycled paper, 65 × 48 cm.Courtesy the artist[End Page 2]Copyright © 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

L’homme qui médite est un animal dépravé.J.-J. Rouseau Seul l’homme peut être bête de bêtise.J. Derrida Me voici seul sur la terre, n’ayant plus de frere, de prochain, d’ami, de société que moi-même. Le plus sociable et le plus aimant des humains en a été proscrit par un accord unanime. Bien que notre siècle n’ait pas encore débrouillé les paradoxes nouant la solitude superlative du « plus sociable et aimant » des promeneurs resté solitaire, les longs extraits qui suivent voudraient, (...) en cette.. (shrink)

The following text seeks to identify the origins of what has come to be called the Sokal hoax. It appears that these origins remain problematic insofar as they cannot be thought without engaging into intrinsically duplicitous thinking. Thus, « originally », the gesture of the hoax is indeed « productive and conflictive, and no self-identity, no unity, and no inherent simplicity can possibly precede it », as « he » said, but « he » was disseminating, as we say. But (...) that is precisely the « strength » of the « form » of the Sokal hoax. With the delicate question of origins as its stumbling block—a stumbling block which may also be the question of irony—, the present text takes its cue from an passage from La Barbarie à visage humain and proposes to reveal the constructive consequences of the affair triggered by the hoax, while constantly paying tribute to its performance. Whether my argument will make it possible to distinguish the consequences from the origins remains moot : post hoc ergo propter hoc. One must remember that this is a sophism. (shrink)

Résumé Le texte qui suit s’efforce d’identifier l’origine de ce qu’il convient d’appeler « l’affaire Sokal ». Il appert que celle-ci reste problématique dans la mesure où elle n’est pas pensable sans engager, centralement, une duplicité. À « l’origine », le mouvement du canular sokalien est donc bien « productif et conflictuel et aucune identité, aucune unité, aucune simplicité originaire ne saurait [le] précéder », comme disait l’autre, mais il disséminait, paraît-il. C’est pourtant là la « force » de la (...) « forme » du canular sokalien. Achoppant sur la délicate question de l’origine (qui est probablement aussi celle de l’ironie), mais saluant sans cesse le travail du canular, à partir d’un extrait de La Barbarie à visage humain, cet article entend révéler les conséquences constructives de cette affaire. Il n’est pourtant pas sûr que son argumentation permette de distinguer la conséquence de l’origine : post hoc ergo propter hoc. Il s’agit d’un sophisme, rappelons-le. (shrink)

THE PRINCIPLE OF SUPERPOSITION. The need for a quantum theory Classical mechanics has been developed continuously from the time of Newton and applied to an ...

Le genre épigrammatique est connu pour son potentiel comique mais également pour la dimension ludique qu’il peut mettre en place. Cette étude s’intéresse précisément à ces deux aspects et à leur mise en relation au sein des épigrammes à caractère sexuel d’Ausone et de Claudien afin d’observer les interactions entre ces trois dimensions (comique, ludique, sexualité) mais également pour délimiter les moyens et les bornes du comique et du ludique.

This thoughtful new abridgment is enriched by the brilliant commentary which accompanies it. In it, Laurence Dickey argues that the _Wealth of Nations_ contains--and conceals--a great deal of how Smith actually thought a commercial society works. Guided by his conviction that the so-called Adam Smith Problem--the relationship between ethics and economics in Smith's thinking--is a core element in the argument of the work itself, Dickey's commentary focuses on the devices Smith uses to ground his economics in broadly ethical and (...) social categories. An unparalleled guide to an often difficult and perplexing work. (shrink)

In this article I claim that service-learning experiences, wherein students work directly with individuals in need—individuals from whom studentscan learn what they cannot learn elsewhere—are invaluable, and perhaps necessary, for any curriculum with an aim toward the development of ethical understanding, personal moral character and commitment, and/or conscientious citizenship, both local and global. My argument rests on Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophical ethical theory that re-envisions the ethical relation as arising out of revelation from the unique and precious Other, rather than reason (...) and the rational determinations and conceptions of the ethical agent. (shrink)

Apollon Sarpédonios, le grand dieu de Séleucie-du-Kalykadnos en Cilicie, fait l’objet d’un culte oraculaire renommé dans le monde antique aux époques hellénistique et romaine. L’analyse historique sur le temps long de cette divinité évoquant le héros Sarpédon fait apparaître une personnalité divine complexe quelque peu éloignée des conceptions « canoniques » de l’Apollon grec. Étudié dans son contexte régional, le cas d’Apollon Sarpédonios est un exemple particulièrement révélateur des mécanismes culturels et religieux qui opèrent à Séleucie et plus généralement dans (...) une Cilicie située au carrefour des cultures et soumises à de multiples influences culturelles tout au long de son histoire. Apparaissent alors les différentes strates culturelles qui se sont superposées en Cilicie où à l’ancien fond anatolien sont venues se mêler des influences louvite, hourrite, syro-phénicienne, perse, grecque puis romaine. (shrink)