This profound metaphysical treatise is carefully and subtly argued. It merits the author recognition as one of the major contemporary philosophers in the United States. Plantinga begins by distinguishing logical necessity from causal necessity, what we will not give up, what is self-evident, and what we can know a priori. In the first chapter he also reviews why classical and contemporary philosophers have distinguished between saying that it is necessary that a proposition is true and saying of an object that (...) it is necessarily such and such. The second and third chapters are primarily a defense of the distinction between de dicto and de re necessity, despite the fact that he shows, to those who claim only to understand de dicto necessity, how assertions of de re necessity can be read as assertions of de dicto necessity. Plantinga mischievously observes in passing that assertions of de dicto necessity can be interpreted as de re assertions of a proposition that it is necessarily true. He defends the legitimacy of asserting necessity de re so that he can say of objects that they have properties essentially. (shrink)

Epistemological foundationalism can be generally characterized as the thesis that in order for there to be any genuine knowledge at all, there must be some self-authenticating instances of knowledge which epistemically ground the whole edifice. This position can be seen to involve three distinct claims: there are self-authenticating, noninferential pieces of knowledge; these privileged instances can be infallibly recognized as such so as to be able to function in grounding other knowledge claims; and without some such instances functioning in this (...) way, knowledge would have no foundation and skepticism would ensue. Although adherents of this ideal run the gamut from Aristotle to Husserl, it is usually identified with the epistemological problematic introduced by Descartes and Locke. The particular formulations of this general ideal differ to the extent that the self-authenticating instances are recognized as being sense-data, phenomenological essences, or intellectual principles. (shrink)

Corporate governance is increasingly becoming an issue of global concern, not least because we are more and more living in a corporate world that transcends international boundaries. The main purpose and motivation of this study is to determine how the international community should motivate businesses in fostering exemplary corporate governance, therefore eliminating obstacles to ethically exemplary behavior. The empirical approach utilized here has been applied to 161 businesses, both listed and over-the-counter (OTC) companies, with the results indicating that ethical considerations, (...) corporate governance and organizational performance are inextricably linked and, to an extent, demonstrably proportional. This study also indicates a major finding that family management is a significant mediating variable of the ethical considerations of corporate governance and organizational performance. Finally, this study has developed an operational model of ethical considerations of corporate governance as a consultancy aid for businesses that wish to implement and/or boost their performance in respect to corporate governance. (shrink)

This paper takes up again the perennial issue of the foundations of empirical knowledge. the general issue is seen to have three distinct though interrelated facets: those of "meaning", "justification", and "truth". first, how is it that our statements about the world acquire meaning; secondly, how is it that our beliefs about the world are justified; and thirdly, in what precisely consists the truth or falsity of the propositional content of our beliefs? answers to these questions are invariably interdependent, and (...) both classically and on the contemporary scene "the foundationalist" and "the coherentist" pictures of knowledge have been the dominant alternatives. after discussing each of these clear though stark views in some detail, i endeavor to construct and defend what i characterize as a mitigated foundational account of knowledge. (shrink)

In discussing whether legal systems are necessarily coercive, legal philosophers usually appeal to thought experiments involving angels or other morally driven beings who need no coercion to organise their social lives. Such appeals have invited criticism. Critics have not only challenged the relevance of such thought experiments to our understanding of legal systems; they have also argued that, contrary to the intuitions of most legal philosophers, the ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’ would not hold that there is law in a (...) society of angels because the view that law is necessarily coercive ‘enjoys widespread support among laypersons’. This is obviously an empirical claim. Critics, however, never systematically polled the ‘man on the Clapham Omnibus’. We boarded that bus. This article discusses findings from five empirical studies on the relationship between law and coercion. (shrink)