This essay seeks to give a contractarian foundation to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, meant as an extended model of corporate governance of the firm. It focuses on justification according to the contractarian point of view. It begins by providing a definition of CSR as an extended model of corporate governance, based on the fiduciary duties owed to all the firm's stakeholders. Then, by establishing the basic context of incompleteness of contracts and abuse of authority, it analyses how the (...) extended view of corporate governance arises directly from criticism of the contemporary neo-institutional economic theory of the firm. Thereafter, an application of the theory of bargaining games is used to deduce the structure of a multi-stakeholder firm, on the basis of the idea of a constitutional contract, which satisfies basic requirements of impartial justification and accordance with intuitions of social justice. This is a sequential model of constitutional bargaining, whereby a constitution is first chosen, and then a post-constitutional coalition game is played. On the basis of the unique solution given to each step in the bargaining model, the quest for a prescriptive theory of governance and strategic management is accomplished, so that I am able to define an objective-function for the firm consistent with the idea of CSR. Finally, a contractarian potential explanation for the emergence of the multi-fiduciary firm is provided. (shrink)

This essay seeks to give a contractarian foundation to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, meant as an extended model of corporate governance of the firm. Whereas, justificatory issues have been discussed in a related paper, in this essay I focus on the implementation of and compliance with this normative model. The theory of reputation games, with reference to the basic game of trust, is introduced in order to make sense of self-regulation as a way to implement the social contract (...) on the multi-fiduciary model of corporate governance. This affords understanding of why self-regulation, meant as mere recourse to a long-run strategy in a repeated trust game, fails. Two basic problems for the functioning of the reputation mechanism are examined: the cognitive fragility problem, and the motivational problem. As regards the cognitive fragilities of reputation, the paper develops the logic and the structure that self-regulatory norms must satisfy if they are to serve as gap-filling tools with which to remedy cognitive limitations in the reputation mechanism. The motivation problem then arises from the possibility of sophisticated abuse by the firm. Developed in this case is an entirely new application of the theory of conformism-and-reciprocity-based preferences, the result of which is that the stakeholders refuse to acquiesce to sophisticated abuse on the part of the firm. (shrink)

This essay seeks to give a contractarian foundation to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), meant as an extended model of corporate governance of the firm. It focuses on justification according to the contractarian point of view (leaving compliance and implementation problems to a related article, [Sacconi 2004b, forthcoming in the Journal of Business Ethics]). It begins by providing a definition of CSR as an extended model of corporate governance, based on the fiduciary duties owed to all the (...) firm’s stakeholders. Then, by establishing the basic context of incompleteness of contracts and abuse of authority, it analyses how the extended view of corporate governance arises directly from criticism of the contemporary neo-institutional economic theory of the firm. Thereafter, an application of the theory of bargaining games is used to deduce the structure of a multi-stakeholder firm, on the basis of the idea of a constitutional contract, which satisfies basic requirements of impartial justification and accordance with intuitions of social justice. This is a sequential model of constitutional bargaining, whereby a constitution is first chosen, and then a post-constitutional coalition game is played. On the basis of the unique solution given to each step in the bargaining model, the quest for a prescriptive theory of governance and strategic management is accomplished, so that I am able to define an objective-function for the firm consistent with the idea of CSR. Finally, a contractarian potential explanation for the emergence of the multi-fiduciary firm is provided. (shrink)

By considering what we identify as a problem inherent in the ‘nature of the firm’—the risk of abuse of authority—we propound the conception of a social contract theory of the firm which is truly Rawlsian in its inspiration. Hence, we link the social contract theory of the firm with the general theory of justice. Through this path, we enter the debate about whether firms can be part of Rawlsian theory of justice showing that corporate governance principles enter the “basic structure.” (...) Finally, we concur with Sen’s aim to broaden the realm of social justice beyond what he calls the ‘transcendental institutional perfectionism’ of Rawls’ theory. We maintain the contractarian approach to justice but introduce Sen’s capability concept as an element of the constitutional and post-constitutional contract model of institutions with special reference to corporate governance. Accordingly, rights over primary goods and capabilities are granted by the basic institutions of society, but many capabilities have to be turned into the functionings of many stakeholders through the operation of firms understood as post-constitutional institutional domains. The constitutional contract on the distribution of primary goods and capabilities should then shape the principles of corporate governance so that at post-constitutional level anyone may achieve her/his functionings in the corporate domain by exercising such capabilities. In the absence of such a condition, post-constitutional contracts would distort the process that descends from constitutional rights and capabilities toward social outcomes. (shrink)

This essay seeks to give a contractarian foundation to the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), meant as an extended model of corporate governance of the firm. Whereas, justificatory issues have been discussed in a related paper (Sacconi, L.: 2006b, this journal), in this essay I focus on the implementation of and compliance with this normative model. The theory of reputation games, with reference to the basic game of trust, is introduced in order to make sense of self-regulation as (...) a way to implement the social contract on the multi-fiduciary model of corporate governance. This affords understanding of why self-regulation, meant as mere recourse to a long-run strategy in a repeated trust game, fails. Two basic problems for the functioning of the reputation mechanism are examined: the cognitive fragility problem, and the motivational problem. As regards the cognitive fragilities of reputation (which result from the impact of unforeseen contingencies and from bounded rationality), the paper develops the logic and the structure that self-regulatory norms must satisfy if they are to serve as gap-filling tools with which to remedy cognitive limitations in the reputation mechanism. The motivation problem then arises from the possibility of sophisticated abuse by the firm. Developed in this case is an entirely new application of the theory of conformism-and-reciprocity-based preferences, the result of which is that the stakeholders refuse to acquiesce to sophisticated abuse on the part of the firm. (shrink)

We advance the thesis that the method of experimental economics can make significant contributions to normative, as opposed to descriptive, business ethics. We contend that there are two basic ways in which experimental economics may make this contribution, and we exemplify these ways by pointing to experimental support of social contract theory as rational foundation for business ethics. These two ways are: (1) adding psychological realism; and (2) testing some quasi-empirical assumptions present in normative theory. In order to make good (...) our methodological claim, we first describe the methodological rules of experimental economics, distinguishing this method from other behavioral business ethics approaches. We also contemplate the possible objection that empirical methods cannot bear on normative ethics because there is no way of bridging the gap between descriptive theory (how people behave) and normative theory (how people ought to behave). (shrink)

Abuse of authority is an unsolved problem in the new institutional theory of the firm. This paper attempts a double attack to this problem by developing a contractarian view of corporate codes of ethics. From the ex-ante standpoint the paper elaborates on the idea of a Social Contract based on Co-operative Bargaining Games and deduces from it the fair/efficient 'Constitution' of the firm endorsed by means of a well-devised corporate code of ethics. From the ex-post standpoint, codes of ethics are (...) proved to be self-enforcing norms, by showing how they put at work the mechanism of a Repeated Game of Reputation within hierarchical transactions (firms) characterised by incomplete contracts and unforeseen events. To accomplish this task a theory of rationality in the face of unforeseen contingencies is sketched by working out the idea that the domain of a principle of ethics defines a fuzzy event, i.e. an event to which also the ex-ante unforeseen, unimaginable states of the world belong to a certain degree. (shrink)

This comment addresses two issues that arise in Sacconi/Faillo/Ottone's essay. The first is the problem of compliance as it arises in social contract theory. The second is the problem of avoiding an incoherence that arises in the formulation of welfarist principles of distributive justice if these principles are taken to be concerned with the distribution of welfare without restriction. Sacconi, Faillo, and Ottone define an interesting class of principles that govern only the distribution of 'material utility', which they (...) distinguish from 'conformist utility'. Sacconi, Faillo, and Ottone are primarily concerned, however, to argue that there is a need to revise 'the utility maximization model of a rational economic man'. I discuss this claim briefly, in concluding the paper. (shrink)

Lorenzo Sacconi's The Social Contract of the Firm (Berlin, Springer, 2000) is a major contribution to the normative theory of the firm. It contains a full-fledged contractarian explanation of the role of Corporate Codes of Ethics. Sacconi proposes a game-theoretical model of the normative structure of the firm, including explicit and implicit contracts binding the members of the organisation, and the so-called constitutional contract: the hypothetical agreement that sets the basic co-operative structure in which the organisation consists. (...) While Sacconi's theory is sound and full of suggestions, it is doubtful whether it completely grasps the nature of organisational ethics. In presenting organisations as the product of an agreement among self-interested individuals, the model does not account for the social and systemic embeddedness of business institutions. This paper points to several shortcomings of Sacconi's view, and explores alternative understandings of a contractarian morality as applied to business ethics. (shrink)

Lorenzo Sacconi’s recent re-statement of his social contract account of business ethics is a major contribution to our understanding of the normative nature of CSR as the expression of a fair multi-party agreement supported by the economic rationality of each participant. However, at one crucial point in his theory, Sacconi introduces the concept of stakeholders’ conformist preferences – their disposition to punish the firm if it defects from the agreement, refusing to abide by its own explicit CSR (...) policies and norms. We take issue with him over this concept: we show that the assumption of conformist preferences is a moral premise, and it arguably weakens the normativity of the theory as a whole. As an alternative, we propose an evolutionary game theoretic approach. We draw upon recent applications of evolutionary game theory to moral philosophy (Skyrms, Danielson), and we use a computer simulation of the trust game. According to this approach, the failure of the logic of reputation, which is the problem conformist preferences were introduced to solve, is overcome through the dynamics of interaction. (shrink)

Lorenzo Sacconi's recent re-statement of his social contract account of business ethics is a major contribution to our understanding of the normative nature of CSR as the expression of a fair multi-party agreement supported by the economic rationality of each participant. However, at one crucial point in his theory, Sacconi introduces the concept of stakeholders' conformist preferences - their disposition to punish the firm if it defects from the agreement, refusing to abide by its own explicit CSR (...) policies and norms. We take issue with him over this concept: we show that the assumption of conformist preferences is a moral premise, and it arguably weakens the normativity of the theory as a whole. As an alternative, we propose an evolutionary game theoretic approach. We draw upon recent applications of evolutionary game theory to moral philosophy , and we use a computer simulation of the trust game. According to this approach, the failure of the logic of reputation, which is the problem conformist preferences were introduced to solve, is overcome through the dynamics of interaction. (shrink)

This book aims to develop the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics, the theoretical account of interpretive (as opposed to explanatory) understanding--the account of meanings and contexts rather than causes and predictions--usually restricted to the domain of literary and textual analysis, in new directions by exploiting its potential as an instrument of critique. It refutes commonly held claims that hermeneutic analyses are necessarily relativistic, Eurocentric, or critically impotent and demonstrates how hermeneutic procedures can inform analyses of urgent current and cross-cultural issues such (...) as the biology of race, female genital excision, and the so-called "culture of poverty" thesis. Lorenzo Simpson demonstrates that a robust methodology of philosophical hermeneutics is well positioned to intervene in critical political and social issues in global ethics and justice in concert with critical theory's emancipatory aims. (shrink)

Firstly, this contribution proposes to address synthographies – images generated through Text-to-image technologies – by deepening the epistemological shift related to the possibility of transposing the image-creation process from the analogue arts to the notational ones (or, by drawing on Nelson Goodman's terminology, from the “autographic” to the “allographic” forms of art). Secondly, the paper highlights how synthographies can be considered partly autographic and partly allographic, since the linguistic prompts constitute only the notational aspect of the generated images. Furthermore, this (...) contribution argues that the recent critiques around such images, which referenced aspects related to the absence of authorial presence and mechanicality, characterised the history of photography since its beginning. Finally, the contribution explores how the possibility to create synthographies that are almost indistinguishable from photographies easily might further separate the interaction between the detective and the depictive functions to the advantage of the latter, erasing what remains of the visual reliability and documental value of images. (shrink)

This is the first dedicated commentary to Sextus Empiricus’ treatise _Against the Arithmeticians_, dealing with crucial issues in the history of the sceptical, Platonic and Pythagorean traditions and in the ancient philosophy of mathematics.

The field of genetics has seen major advances in recent decades, particularly in research, prevention and diagnosis. One of the most recent developments, the genomic editing technique Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9, has opened the possibility for genetic therapies through genome modification. The technique marks an improvement on previous procedures but poses some serious ethical conflicts. Bioethics is the discipline geared at finding answers to ethical challenges posed by progress in medicine and biology and examining their repercussions for (...) society. It can also offer a conceptualization of these ethical dilemmas. The aim of this paper is to offer a map of the ethical dilemmas associated with this technique by way of a critical analysis of current literature. The main issues can be grouped in four areas: efficacy and security; the types of cells which can be targeted by the technique (somatic, embryonic and gametes); the goal of the therapy; and accessibility and justice. (shrink)

Equity in Early Modern Legal Scholarship takes the reader through the vast amount of legal writings on equity that were published in continental Europe in early modern times. The book offers the first comprehensive overview of the development of the legal concept of equity through the sixteenth and seventeenth century. During this time, equity scholarship broke with its medieval past and entered a lively debate on the nature and function of the concept. Lorenzo Maniscalco links these developments to the (...) early modern identification of equity with Aristotelian epieikeia, a conceptual shift that brought down the barrier that divided theological and legal writings on equity and led to its development as a tool for the interpretation and amendment of legal rules. (shrink)

Locked and unlocked strategies are at the center of this article, as ways of shedding new light on the cognitive aspects of deep learning machines. The character and the role of these cognitive strategies, which are occurring both in humans and in computational machines, is indeed strictly related to the generation of cognitive outputs, which range from weak to strong level of knowledge creativity. I maintain that these differences lead to important consequences when we analyze computational AI programs, such as (...) AlphaGo, which aim at performing various kinds of abductive hypothetical reasoning. In these cases, the programs are characterized by _locked_ abductive strategies: they deal with weak (even if sometimes amazing) kinds of hypothetical creative reasoning, because they are limited in what I call eco-cognitive openness, which instead qualifies human cognizers who are performing higher kinds of abductive creative reasoning, where cognitive strategies are instead _unlocked_. (shrink)

Lorenzo Girardi brings together themes of Europe, phenomenology and politics to reveal the relevance of Edmund Husserl and Jan Patočka’s works for contemporary political issues. Addressing the concept of crisis in Europe, this book presents an agonistic conception of liberal democracy based on Patočka’s phenomenological concept of problematicity.

Complementarity tells us we cannot know precisely the values of all the properties of a quantum object at the same time: the precise determination of one property implies that the value of some other (complementary) property is undefined. E.g. the precise knowledge of the position of a particle implies that its momentum is undefined. Here we show that a Schrödinger cat has a well defined value of a property that is complementary to its “being dead or alive” property. Then, thanks (...) to complementarity, it has an undefined value of the property “being dead or alive”. In other words, the cat paradox is explained through quantum complementarity: of its many complementary properties, any quantum system, such as a cat, can have a well defined value only of one at a time. Schrödinger’s cat has a definite value of a property which is complementary to “being dead or alive”, so it is neither dead nor alive. Figuratively one can say it is both dead and alive. While this interpretation only uses textbook concepts (the Copenhagen interpretation), apparently it has never explicitly appeared in the literature. We detail how to build an Arduino based simulation of Schrödinger’s experiment based on these concepts for science outreach events. (shrink)

When the Canonical Ramsey’s Theorem by Erdős and Rado is applied to regressive functions, one obtains the Regressive Ramsey’s Theorem by Kanamori and McAloon. Taylor proved a “canonical” version of Hindman’s Theorem, analogous to the Canonical Ramsey’s Theorem. We introduce the restriction of Taylor’s Canonical Hindman’s Theorem to a subclass of the regressive functions, the $$\lambda $$ λ -regressive functions, relative to an adequate version of min-homogeneity and prove some results about the Reverse Mathematics of this Regressive Hindman’s Theorem and (...) of natural restrictions of it. In particular we prove that the first non-trivial restriction of the principle is equivalent to Arithmetical Comprehension. We furthermore prove that the well-ordering-preservation principle for base-$$\omega $$ ω exponentiation is reducible to this same principle by a uniform computable reduction. (shrink)

This paper attempts a reconstruction of reason’s contribution to empirical truth in connection with Kant’s definition of truth as the agreement of cognition with its object. I argue that Kant’s treatment of truth in the Transcendental Analytic gets completed in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic with an often neglected but compelling argument (what I shall call the Variety Argument). This argument postulates such a variety in the appearances as to undermine any attempt at formulating empirical truths. Crucially, I argue (...) that this variety does not depict an extreme-case scenario, but our own epistemic situation without reason. Reason completes Kant’s theory of truth by allowing the understanding (i.) to form empirical concepts and (ii.) approximate to empirical truth. (shrink)

The distinction between philosophical and prophetic revelation, the separation between philosophy and theology, the theory of truth and certainty, and the passages of the KV dedicated to divine revelation all depend on signs. The Platonic etymology that combines sema and soma links the philosophical destiny of the sign to that of the body, providing the fundamental opening to the long history of dualism between body and soul. Spinoza stresses the importance of distinguishing between imagination and intellection. To think of Spinoza's (...) epistemology means to insert correctly the infinite bodies modified in infinite ways into the ontological and cosmological framework. Spinoza's definition of images lies in the physical essence of the mark. Spinoza's semiotics will then appear perhaps less anomalous than it could have seemed at a first sight, even if, for this reason, no less original. (shrink)

Philosophers have debated at length the epistemological status of scientific thought experiments. I contend that the literature on this topic still lacks a common conceptual framework, a lacuna that produces radical disagreement among the participants in this debate. To remedy this problem, I suggest focusing on the distinction between the internal and the external validity of an experiment, which is also crucial for thought experiments. I then develop an account of both kinds of validity in the context of thought experiments. (...) I show that we can naturally conceptualise internal validity in terms of games of make-believe. Then, I argue that external validity is best defined as accurate representation of a target system. Finally, I turn back to the current debate on thought experiments and show that my diarchic account provides a general framework that can be shared by the competing philosophical views, as well as a fruitful guide for their reconciliation. (shrink)

This article aims to justify the positive role in the empirical investigation of nature that Kant attributes to the idea of God in the Critique of Pure Reason. In particular, I propose to read the Transcendental Ideal section and the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic together to see whether they can reciprocally illuminate each other. I argue that it is only by looking at the transcendental deduction of the ideas of reason and the resulting analogical conception of God that a (...) fully legitimate positive use of the idea of God can be vindicated. (shrink)

In today's world, the corporate image of the largest companies is closely linked to their performance in the field of corporate social responsibility and the disclosure of information on that topic, specifically, on climate change. Since the Board of Directors is the body responsible for this process, the aim of this article is to show the role that companies' Boards of Directors play in the accountability process vis-à-vis stakeholders in relation to one specific aspect which has enormous significance in environmental (...) information: practices used to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. In order to achieve this, we shall verify certain business characteristics, in addition to the size and activity of the Board of Directors, and we shall take different dependence models into consideration. These models will include variables related to the level of independence and diversity of the Board of Directors, which interact with dummy variables representing the company's litigation risks regarding environmental behavior and the institutional macro-context of the organization's country of origin. The results make it clear that Boards of Directors are basically focused on the traditional responsibility of creating economic value, instead of dealing with today's broader business world concepts, which include social responsibility. This focus, therefore, does not favor the accountability process before other stakeholders, if this makes it more difficult to protect the interests of shareholders. (shrink)

Firstly, this contribution proposes to address synthographies – images generated through Text-to-image technologies – by deepening the epistemological shift related to the possibility of transposing the image-creation process from the analogue arts to the notational ones (or, by drawing on Nelson Goodman's terminology, from the “autographic” to the “allographic” forms of art). Secondly, the paper highlights how synthographies can be considered partly autographic and partly allographic, since the linguistic prompts constitute only the notational aspect of the generated images. Furthermore, this (...) contribution argues that the recent critiques around such images, which referenced aspects related to the absence of authorial presence and mechanicality, characterised the history of photography since its beginning. Finally, the contribution explores how the possibility to create synthographies that are almost indistinguishable from photographies easily might further separate the interaction between the detective and the depictive functions to the advantage of the latter, erasing what remains of the visual reliability and documental value of images. (shrink)

Es un estudio en profundidad de la teología filosófica desarrollada en el ámbito de la filosofía analítica, en la cual se ha sometido a examen el concepto mismo de Dios, con vistas a probar si era lógicamente defendible; de no serlo, tendríase una prueba de la inexistencia de Dios. El autor acude a una lógica no clásica (contradictorial y gradualista) para articular el concepto de Dios de manera que, a pesar de tales contradicciones, es lógicamente defendible.

A philosophical examination of the treatment of logic and God in Lacan's later psychoanalytic theory. In The Not-Two, Lorenzo Chiesa examines the treatment of logic and God in Lacan's later work. Chiesa draws for the most part from Lacan's Seminars of the early 1970s, as they revolve around the axiom “There is no sexual relationship.” Chiesa provides both a close reading of Lacan's effort to formalize sexual difference as incompleteness and an assessment of its broader implications for philosophical realism (...) and materialism. Chiesa argues that “There is no sexual relationship” is for Lacan empirically and historically circumscribed by psychoanalysis, yet self-evident in our everyday lives. Lacan believed that we have sex because we love, and that love is a desire to be One in face of the absence of the sexual relationship. Love presupposes a real “not-two.” The not-two condenses the idea that our love and sex lives are dictated by the impossibility of fusing man's contradictory being with the heteros of woman as a fundamentally uncountable Other. Sexual liaisons are sustained by a transcendental logic, the so-called phallic function that attempts to overcome this impossibility. Chiesa also focuses on Lacan's critical dialogue with modern science and formal logic, as well as his dismantling of sexuality as considered by mainstream biological discourse. Developing a new logic of sexuation based on incompleteness requires the relinquishing of any alleged logos of life and any teleological evolution. For Lacan, the truth of incompleteness as approached psychoanalytically through sexuality would allow us to go further in debunking traditional onto-theology and replace it with a “para-ontology” yet to be developed. Given the truth of incompleteness, Chiesa asks, can we think such a truth in itself without turning incompleteness into another truth about truth, that is, into yet another figure of God as absolute being? (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a systematic account of Kant’s view on ‘phenomenal substance’. Several studies have recently analyzed Kant’s notion of substance. However, I submit that more needs to be said about how this notion is reconceptualized within the critical framework to vindicate a genuine and legitimate sense of substance in the phenomenal realm. More specifically, I show that Kant’s transcendental idealism does not commit him to a rejection of substantiality in phenomena. Rather, Kant isolates a general notion of (...) substance (as ultimate subject) and argues that (i) the relationality of phenomena is compatible with this notion; and that (ii) matter and all its parts are the ultimate subjects of everything existing in space (as what is independently movable in space). I suggest that vindicating a genuine and legitimate notion of phenomenal substance has far-ranging consequences for the interpretation of Kant’s empirical realism. (shrink)

Dispositionalism, perhaps the most popular variant of non-Humean metaphysics, submits that dispositions, powers, or capacities, are part of the furniture of the world. In this book I advance an original approach to dispositionalism revolving around the notion of Dispositional Reality; the novelty lies in the fact that the account, unlike most alternatives on the market, does not require the reification of objects, facts, properties, nor their dispositional essences – and is in fact compatible with a far more deflationary approach to (...) dispositions, while still being true to the non-Humean spirit of the proposal. This power metaphysics without powers allows one to dispel several puzzles in recent literature, or recast them under a new light. Albeit with its own peculiarities, this proposal constitutes a variant of explanatory dispositionalism, according to which realism about dispositions ought not to be understood as an ontological inflation, but as an explanatory inversion within the nomic and modal family. Some of these explanations are hereby attempted, and a study of various types of non-causal explanation will be provided. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to save "the sexual" from the oblivion to which certain strands in queer theory tend to condemn it, and at the same time to limit the risks of anti-politics and solipsism contained in what has been termed antisocial queer theory. It takes a journey from Sigmund Freud to Mario Mieli and Guy Hocquenghem, from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to Teresa de Lauretis, Leo Bersani, Lee Edelman, and Tim Dean, and from all of these thinkers (...) back to Immanuel Kant and Thomas Hobbes. At the end, through readings of Bruce LaBruce's movies on gay zombies, the elitism of antisocial queer theory is brought into contact with popular culture. The living dead come to represent a dispossessed form of subjectivity, whose monstrous drives are counterposed to predatory desires of liberal individuals. The reader is thus lead into the interstitial spaces of the Queer Apocalypses, where the past and the future collapse onto the present, and sexual minorities resurrect to the chance of a non-heroic political agency. (shrink)