This paper is part of an ongoing research project and builds upon a previous one in which we explain the failure of the Agency Theory through the Shell case. In that, we analysed the behaviour of Shell managers, who reclassified oil reserves, playing with the share price because they owned share options. This previous paper established an important literature framework that is continued and organized to go deeper into our analysis in this paper. The goal here is to show that (...) the way that is supposed to be the right tool to inform stakeholders – disclosure – is not enough, and even in the Shell case, no one would have noticed the problems with the oil reserves through the mere analysis of the company disclosure during the ‘strange period’ . The methodology used in this paper is lexical analysis, which seems to be an innovative and effective approach to the analysis of Corporate Social Disclosure, given the un‐codified nature of the latter. The conclusions obtained highlight the problem of lack of transparency in the contents of corporate social disclosure: some firms avoid communicating crucial contents, some others twist the results in order to camouflage advantages to shareholders or managers. If it is like this for disclosing firms, what is happening in the case of non‐disclosing firms? (shrink)

El presente artículo es un estudio teórico sobre las similitudes entre las doctrinas gnósticas, que florecieron alrededor del siglo ii de nuestra era, y el pensamiento estético del pintor ruso Vasili Kandinsky. El objetivo es analizar estos dos marcos de ideas filosóficas y espirituales para exponer sus similitudes y diferencias. De esta manera, se indagará si, pese a los siglos que las separan y la diferencia de contextos históricos que las rodean, pueden existir en los orígenes de ambas propuestas doctrinales (...) unas problemáticas existenciales y filosóficas comunes. El estudio buscará, con ello, dilucidar si es posible entender la estética de Kandinsky como una especial gnosis moderna estructurada a través de sus planteamientos conceptuales y artísticos. Los resultados de la investigación pretenden no solo dar luces sobre la originalidad de Kandinsky dentro de la historia del arte, sino que también llegar a ser útiles para resaltar y comprender algunos puntos importantes de la discusión cultural dentro de la cual se enmarca su obra. (shrink)

This paper is part of an ongoing research project and builds upon a previous one in which we explain the failure of the Agency Theory through the Shell case. In that, we analysed the behaviour of Shell managers, who reclassified oil reserves, playing with the share price because they owned share options. This previous paper established an important literature framework that is continued and organized to go deeper into our analysis in this paper. The goal here is to show that (...) the way that is supposed to be the right tool to inform stakeholders – disclosure – is not enough, and even in the Shell case, no one would have noticed the problems with the oil reserves through the mere analysis of the company disclosure during the ‘strange period’ (1998–2003). The methodology used in this paper is lexical analysis, which seems to be an innovative and effective approach to the analysis of Corporate Social Disclosure, given the un‐codified nature of the latter. The conclusions obtained highlight the problem of lack of transparency in the contents of corporate social disclosure: some firms avoid communicating crucial contents, some others twist the results in order to camouflage advantages to shareholders or managers. If it is like this for disclosing firms, what is happening in the case of non‐disclosing firms? (shrink)

This paper is part of an ongoing research project and builds upon a previous one in which we explain the failure of the Agency Theory through the Shell case. In that, we analysed the behaviour of Shell managers, who reclassified oil reserves, playing with the share price because they owned share options. This previous paper established an important literature framework that is continued and organized to go deeper into our analysis in this paper. The goal here is to show that (...) the way that is supposed to be the right tool to inform stakeholders – disclosure – is not enough, and even in the Shell case, no one would have noticed the problems with the oil reserves through the mere analysis of the company disclosure during the ‘strange period’ (1998–2003). The methodology used in this paper is lexical analysis, which seems to be an innovative and effective approach to the analysis of Corporate Social Disclosure, given the un‐codified nature of the latter. The conclusions obtained highlight the problem of lack of transparency in the contents of corporate social disclosure: some firms avoid communicating crucial contents, some others twist the results in order to camouflage advantages to shareholders or managers. If it is like this for disclosing firms, what is happening in the case of non‐disclosing firms? (shrink)

Recent EEG studies on the early postmortem interval that suggest the persistence of electrophysiological coherence and connectivity in the brain of animals and humans reinforce the need for further investigation of the relationship between the brain’s activity and the dying process. Neuroscience is now in a position to empirically evaluate the extended process of dying and, more specifically, to investigate the possibility of brain activity following the cessation of cardiac and respiratory function. Under the direction of the Center for Healthy (...) Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, research was conducted in India on a postmortem meditative state cultivated by some Tibetan Buddhist practitioners in which decomposition is putatively delayed. For all healthy baseline and postmortem subjects presented here, we collected resting state electroencephalographic data, mismatch negativity, and auditory brainstem response. In this study, we present HB data to demonstrate the feasibility of a sparse electrode EEG configuration to capture well-defined ERP waveforms from living subjects under very challenging field conditions. While living subjects displayed well-defined MMN and ABR responses, no recognizable EEG waveforms were discernable in any of the tukdam cases. (shrink)

In recent years, supported by new scientific evidence, the conceptualization of cognitive reserve has been progressively enriched and now encompasses not only cognitive stimulating activities or educational level, but also lifestyle activities, such as leisure physical activity and socialization. In this context, there is increasing interest in understanding the role of psychological factors in brain health and cognitive functioning. In a previous study, we have found that these factors mediated the relationship between CR and self-reported cognitive functioning. In this study, (...) we have confirmed an association between two important constructs included in the psychological wellbeing and salutogenic models, “purpose in life” and “sense of coherence,” CR, as assessed using a questionnaire, and cognitive functioning, as evaluated using a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. Results from 888 middle-aged healthy participants from the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative indicate that both sense of coherence and CR were positively associated with verbal memory, reasoning and attention, working memory, and global cognition. Moreover, the relation between CR and cognitive functioning in the different domains is partially mediated by SoC. When we controlled for brain integrity, introducing into the model neurofilament light chain measures, the mediator role of SoC was confirmed for reasoning and attention and global cognition. However, purpose in life was not associated with cognitive functioning. These results reveal the central role of the SoC construct, which mediates the association between classic CR estimates and cognitive functions, potentially representing a modifiable target for interventions that aim to promote brain health. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How do we recognize distinct types of emotion in music?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What counts as cognitive penetration?

This report highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012: 1. How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development? 2. What are the origins of multimodal associations? 3. Does our representation of time provide an amodal framework for multi-sensory integration? 4. What counts as cognitive penetration? 5. How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: Does our representation of time provide and amodal framework for multi-sensory integration?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What are the origins of multimodal associations?

This project seeks to highlight the benefits of the implementation and management of the teaching digital portfolio. In today's world full of technology and tools that facilitate daily activities, education and its various processes must also embrace the digital tools available and make them the basis for any innovation and improvement process. The teaching portfolio in physics has long been the means by which teachers have organized the processes, evidence, and other results of educational work. Nowadays, all that range of (...) evidence and productions, which signify the achievement and advances in each group of students, has been able to be integrated into technology. (shrink)

Two hundred years ago, J.M.W. Turner packed up two large leatherbound sketchbooks, pencils, and watercolors and set off for the north of England. When he returned from the tour that he regarded as one of the most important of his career, Turner had completed more than two hundred sketches - works that later became the basis of more than fifty major oil paintings and watercolors. For this illustrated book, David Hill has taken photographs of many of the actual sites (...) Turner sketched on his northern tour. The result is an look at the whole of Turner's creative process, from site to exhibited picture, and at the quality and intensity of the artist's experience. (shrink)

To the extent that dualism is even taken to be a serious option in contemporary discussions of personal identity and the philosophy of mind, it is almost exclusively either Cartesian dualism or property dualism that is considered. The more traditional dualism defended by Aristotelians and Thomists, what I call hylemorphic dualism, has only received scattered attention. In this essay I set out the main lines of the hylemorphic dualist position, with particular reference to personal identity. First I argue that overemphasis (...) of the problem of consciousness has had an unhealthy effect on recent debate, claiming instead that we should emphasize the concept of form. Then I bring in the concept of identity by means of the notion of substantial form. I continue by analyzing the relation between form and matter, defending the traditional theses of prime matter and of the unicity of substantial form. I then argue for the immateriality of the substantial form of the human person, viz. the soul, from an account of the human intellect. From this follows the soul's essential independence of matter. Finally, although the soul is the immaterial bearer of personal identity, that identity is still the identity of an essentially embodied being. I explain how these ideas are to be reconciled. Footnotesa I am grateful to Stephen Braude, John Cottingham, John Haldane, David Jehle, Joel Katzav, Eduardo Ortiz, and Fred Sommers for helpful comments and discussion of a draft of this essay. I would also like to thank Ellen Paul, whose suggestions have helped greatly to improve the essay's style and content. (shrink)

Según los Anales Eclesiásticos de Ortiz de Zúñiga la Hermandad del Cristo de la Corona gozó de gran devoción popular durante los siglos del barroco, estableciéndose en la antigua capilla del Sagrario de la catedral hispalense desde sus orígenes. Tras la inauguración del nuevo templo en 1661 la hermandad se trasladó a su actual capilla en el nuevo Sagrario en 1716. La nueva capilla, con sus dos retablos, han configurado desde el pasado la imagen actual del nazareno de la (...) Hermandad de la Corona. La escultura, talla anónima del último tercio del siglo XVI, presenta el abrazo de Cristo a la cruz antes de su muerte, rescatando modelos iconográficos procedentes de Italia o Alemania a través de los grabados, y desarrollados a través de representaciones pictóricas, como las de Sebastiano del Piombo. (shrink)

In this book, which thoroughly revises and greatly expands his classic work Sameness and Substance, David Wiggins retrieves and refurbishes in the light of twentieth-century logic and logical theory certain conceptions of identity, of substance and of persistence through change that philosophy inherits from its past. In this new version, he vindicates the absoluteness, necessity, determinateness and all or nothing character of identity against rival conceptions. He defends a form of essentialism that he calls individuative essentialism, and then a (...) form of realism that he calls conceptualist realism. In a final chapter he advocates a human being-based conception of the identity and individuation of persons, arguing that any satisfactory account of personal memory must make reference to the life of the rememberer himself. This important book will appeal to a wide range of readers in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim , from there to a modal claim , and from there to a metaphysical claim.

Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...) principles we should aim to implement. I start by separating the mathematical model used to prove the second-best theorem from its familiar economic interpretation. I then develop an alternative normative-theoretic interpretation of the model, which yields a novel second best theorem for idealistic normative theory. My method for developing this interpretation provides a template for developing additional interpretations that can extend the reach of the second-best theorem beyond normative theoretical domains. I also show how, within any domain, the implications of the second-best theorem are more specific than is typically thought. I conclude with some brief remarks on the value of mathematical models for conceptual exploration. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence has historically been conceptualized in anthropomorphic terms. Some algorithms deploy biomimetic designs in a deliberate attempt to effect a sort of digital isomorphism of the human brain. Others leverage more general learning strategies that happen to coincide with popular theories of cognitive science and social epistemology. In this paper, I challenge the anthropomorphic credentials of the neural network algorithm, whose similarities to human cognition I argue are vastly overstated and narrowly construed. I submit that three alternative supervised learning (...) methods—namely lasso penalties, bagging, and boosting—offer subtler, more interesting analogies to human reasoning as both an individual and a social phenomenon. Despite the temptation to fall back on anthropomorphic tropes when discussing AI, however, I conclude that such rhetoric is at best misleading and at worst downright dangerous. The impulse to humanize algorithms is an obstacle to properly conceptualizing the ethical challenges posed by emerging technologies. (shrink)

A collection of 14 essays honoring the life and work of Oxford philosopher Wiggins touching on topics from ancient philosophy to ethics, metaphysics and the theory of meaning. The contributing scholars debate many of the seminal issues of Wiggins' work, including the determinancy of distinctness, relative identity, naturalism in ethics, logic and truth in moral judgments, and the practical wisdom of Aristotle. The collection uniquely features replies by Wiggins to each of the papers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, (...) OR. (shrink)

Drawing on work of the past decade, this volume brings together articles from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science, and many other branches of the biological sciences. The volume delves into the latest theoretical controversies as well as burning questions of contemporary social importance. The issues considered include the nature of evolutionary theory, biology and ethics, the challenge from religion, and the social implications of biology today (in particular the Human Genome Project).

Bernard Rollin argues that it is permissible to change an animal's telos through genetic engineering, if it doesn't harm the animal's welfare. Recent attempts to undermine his argument rely either on the claim that diminishing certain capacities always harms an animal's welfare or on the claim that it always violates an animal's integrity. I argue that these fail. However, respect for animal dignity provides a defeasible reason not to engineer an animal in a way that inhibits the development of those (...) functions that a member of its species can normally perform, even if the modification would improve the animal's welfare. (shrink)

Bernard Rollin argues that it is permissible to change an animal's telos through genetic engineering, if it doesn't harm the animal's welfare. Recent attempts to undermine his argument rely either on the claim that diminishing certain capacities always harms an animal's welfare or on the claim that it always violates an animal's integrity. I argue that these fail. However, respect for animal dignity provides a defeasible reason not to engineer an animal in a way that inhibits the development of those (...) functions that a member of its species can normally perform, even if the modification would improve the animal's welfare. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping causal (...) patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

According to dispositionalism about modality, a proposition <p> is possible just in case something has, or some things have, a power or disposition for its truth; and <p> is necessary just in case nothing has a power for its falsity. But are there enough powers to go around? In Yates (2015) I argued that in the case of mathematical truths such as <2+2=4>, nothing has the power to bring about their falsity or their truth, which means they come out both (...) necessary and not possible. Combining this with axiom (T), it is easy to derive a contradiction. I suggested that dispositionalists ought to retreat a little and say that <p> is possible just in case either p, or there is a power to bring it about that p, grounding the possibility of mathematical propositions in their truth rather than in powers. Vetter’s (2015) has the resources to provide a response to my argument, and in her (2018) she explicitly addresses it by arguing for a plenitude of powers, based on the idea that dispositions come in degrees, with necessary properties a limiting case of dispositionality. On this view there is a power for <2+2=4>, without there being a power to bring about its truth. In this paper I argue that Vetter’s case for plenitude does not work. However, I suggest, if we are prepared to accept metaphysical causation, a case can be made that there is indeed a power for <2+2=4>. (shrink)

En este trabajo realizamos una revisión historiográfica sobre la fabricación de anatomías artificiales que fueron ampliamente demandadas como herramientas didácticas en la enseñanza de la naturaleza, entre finales del siglo XVIII y principios del XX. Se analizan los contextos educativos y sociales que favorecieron la amplia difusión de este tipo de artefactos en el comercio de la cultura científica, y se describen las técnicas de manufactura. Se concluye que estos artefactos, fruto del ingenio humano, son fuentes materiales de extraordinario valor (...) para comprender la construcción y evolución de la ciencia, los avances en los recursos pedagógicos y las innovaciones tecnológicas. (shrink)

Japan and the Enemies of Open Political Science argues that Eurocentric blindness is a scientific failing, not a moral one. In a way true of no other political system, Japan's greatness has the potential to enliven and reform almost all the main branches of Western Political Science. David Williams criticizes Western social science, Anglo-American Philosophy and French Theory and explains why mainstream economists, historians of political thought and postculturalists have ignored Japan's modern achievements. Williams demonstrates why the renewal of (...) social science and the nurturing of a "a philosophy of the Pacific Century" requires a sustained act of intellectual demolition. (shrink)

For different reasons, Husserl's original, thought-provoking ideas on the philosophy of logic and mathematics have been ignored, misunderstood, even despised, by analytic philosophers and phenomenologists alike, who have been content to barricade themselves behind walls of ideological prejudices. Yet, for several decades, Husserl was almost continuously in close professional and personal contact with those who created, reshaped and revolutionized 20th century philosophy of mathematics, logic, science and language in both the analytic and phenomenological schools, people whom those other makers of (...) 20th century philosophy, Russell, Frege, Wittgenstein and their followers, rarely, if ever, met. Independently of them, Husserl offered alternatives to the well-trodden paths of logicism, nominalism, formalism and intuitionism. He presented a well-articulated, thoroughly argued case for logic as an objective science, but was not philosophically naive to the point of not seeing the role of subjectivity in shaping the sense of the reality facing objective science. Given the preeminent role that philosophy of logic and philosophy of mathematics have played in transforming the way philosophy has been done since Husserl's time, and given the depth of his insights and his obvious expertise in those fields, his ideas need to be integrated into present-day, mainstream philosophy. Here, philosopher Claire Ortiz Hill and mathematician-philosopher Jairo da Silva offer a wealth of interesting insights intended to subvert the many mistaken idees recues about the development of Husserl's thought and reestablish broken ties between it and philosophy now. (shrink)

El súbito consenso que se ha producido en nuestros días alrededor de la importancia de la noción democracia no se ha acompañado de una reflexión filosófica sobre su sentido moderno. La obra filosófica de Claude Lefort ha contribuido a llenar este vacío teórico. Para Lefort, el sentido de la democracia moderna no puede revelarse, como ha supuesto la ciencia política, a través de la descripción del funcionamiento de sus instituciones, sino puede estudiarse mediante la exploración de su dimensión simbólica. En (...) efecto, la fundación y el destino de la democracia son inseparables de la indeterminación de sus fundamentos y de la infigurabilidad del poder, de la ley y del saber. Origen y destino que bien pueden ser rastreados a la luz del contraste entre la sociedad democrática y la sociedad totalitaria. El presente ensayo se ocupa de contrastar la dimensión simbólica de ambas formas de sociedad. Palabras clave: Democracia; totalitarismo; dimensión simbólica; político; Claude Lefort Democracy and totalitarianism: The Symbolic Dimension of the Political according to Claude LefortThe sudden consensus prevailing nowadays on the importance of the concept of democracy has not been accompanied by a philosophical reflection on its modern sense. Claude Lefort’s philosophical work has helped to fill this theoretical vacuum. According to Lefort, the sense of modern democracy cannot be disclosed, as political science has assumed, just by describing the operation of its institutions. Rather, it may be studied by exploring its symbolic dimension. In fact, democracy’s origin and fate are inseparable from the indeterminacy of its foundation and the non-figurable nature of power, law and knowledge. Such an origin and fate may indeed be tracked in light of the contrast between the democratic society and the totalitarian one. This essay aims to contrast the symbolic dimension of both forms of society. Keywords : Democracy; totalitarianism; symbolic dimension; political; Claude Lefort. (shrink)

Why study notations, diagrams, or more broadly the variety of nonverbal “representations” or “signs” that are used in mathematical practice? This chapter maps out recent work on the topic by distinguishing three main philosophical motivations for doing so. First, some work (like that on diagrammatic reasoning) studies signs to recover norms of informal or historical mathematical practices that would get lost if the particular signs that these practices rely on were translated away; work in this vein has the potential to (...) broaden our view of the specific normativity of mathematics beyond logical proof. Second, some work focuses on signs to highlight the open-ended and “nonrigorous” aspects of mathematical practice, and the role of these aspects in the historical development of mathematics. The third motivation is based on the following observation: the reason differences in signs matter in mathematics is that humans are finite agents, with cognitive and computational limitations. Accordingly, studying signs can be a way to study how human computational constraints shape the mathematics that we do, and to tackle the topic of mathematical understanding. (shrink)

The author of this book has traced the major lines of argument over those years in a most engaging style with clear descriptions of the concepts and ideas.

Interpretation -- Introduction -- Interpreting Plato -- The political culture of Plato's early dialogues -- Dialogue -- Character and history -- The mouthpiece principle -- Forms of evidence -- Desire -- Socrates and eros -- The subjectivist conception of desire -- Instrumental and terminal desire -- Rational and irrational desires -- Desire in the critique of Akrasia -- Interpreting Lysis -- The deficiency conception of desire -- Inauthentic friendship -- Platonic desire -- Antiphilosophical desires -- Knowledge -- Excellence as wisdom (...) -- The epistemic unity of excellence -- Dunamis and technê -- Goodness and form -- The epistemological priority of definitional knowledge -- Ordinary ethical knowledge -- Method -- The Socratic fallacy -- Socrates' pursuit of definitions -- Hupothesis -- Two postulates -- The geometrical illustration -- Geometrical analysis -- The method of reasoning from a postulate -- Elenchus and hupothesis -- Knowledge and aitia -- F-conditions -- Cognitive security -- Aporia -- Forms of aporia -- Dramatic aporia -- The example of Charmides -- Charmides as autobiography -- The politics of Sôphrosunê -- Critias' Philotimia -- Self-knowledge and the knowledge of knowledge -- Knowledge of knowledge and knowledge of the good -- Philosophy and the polis. (shrink)

David Williams explores the complex links between Condorcet as visionary ideologist and pragmatic legislator, and between his concept of modernity and the management of change. The Marquis de Condorcet was one of the few Enlightenment thinkers to witness and participate in the French Revolution. Based on an extensive array of printed and original manuscript sources, Williams' analysis of Condorcet's politics will be a major contribution to Enlightenment studies.