We link the corporate governance literature in financial economics to the agency cost perspective of corporate social responsibility to derive theoretical predictions about the relationship between corporate governance and the existence of executive compensation incentives for CSR. We test our predictions using novel executive compensation contract data, and find that firms with more shareholder-friendly corporate governance are more likely to provide compensation to executives linked to firm social performance outcomes. Also, providing executives with direct incentives for CSR is an effective (...) tool to increase firm social performance. The findings provide evidence identifying corporate governance as a determinant of managerial incentives for social performance, and suggest that CSR activities are more likely to be beneficial to shareholders, as opposed to an agency cost. (shrink)

Many people with religious beliefs, pro or con, are aware that those beliefs are denied by a great number of others who are as reasonable, intelligent, fair-minded, and relatively unbiased as they are. Such a realization often leads people to wonder, “How do I know I’m right and they’re wrong? How do I know that the basis for my belief is right and theirs is misleading?” In spite of that realization, most people stick with their admittedly controversial religious belief. This (...) entry examines the epistemology of such belief retention, addressing issues of disagreement, agnosticism, skepticism, and the rationality of reflective religious belief. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction I Peters on Ritual in Education II R. S. Peters on Ritual and Imitation: An Assessment Future Directions References.

The guide dog robot (GDR) is a low-speed companion robot that serves visually impaired people and is used to guide blind people to walk steadily, carrying a variety of intelligent technologies and needing to have the ability to guide with optimal energy consumption in specific scenarios. This paper proposes an innovative technique for virtual-real collaborative path planning and navigation of the GDR specific indoor scenarios, and designs an experimental method for virtual-real collaborative path planning of the GDR specific scenarios. The (...) energy consumption integral equation is used to solve for the energy consumption of the GDR with virtual-real synergy, and the difference in energy consumption is compared for three different navigation directions: horizontal, vertical and oblique obstacle avoidance. The results show that the optimized GDR saves 6.91% in rectilinear movement and 10.60% in curved movement. The efficiency of planning and navigating the GDR in specific domestic scenarios is verified by a virtual-real cooperative. The realization of optimal path planning for energy consumption is instrumental in exploring many of the most significant thought in the path planning and navigation of mobile robots in indoor specific scenarios. (shrink)

'The arrow of time' refers to the curious asymmetry that distinguishes the future from the past. Reversing the Arrow of Time argues that there is an intimate link between the symmetries of 'time itself' and time reversal symmetry in physical theories, which has wide-ranging implications for both physics and its philosophy. This link helps to clarify how we can learn about the symmetries of our world, how to understand the relationship between symmetries and what is real, and how to overcome (...) pervasive illusions about the direction of time. Roberts explains the significance of time reversal in a way that intertwines physics and philosophy, to establish what the arrow of time means and how we can come to know it. This book is both mathematically and philosophically rigorous yet remains accessible to advanced undergraduates in physics and the philosophy of physics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

Aristotle thinks that happiness is an activity---it consists in doing something---rather than a feeling. It is the best activity of which humans are capable and is spread out over the course of a life. But what kind of activity is it? Some of his remarks indicate that it is a single best kind of activity, intellectual contemplation. Other evidence suggests that it is an overarching activity that has various virtuous activities, ethical and intellectual, as parts. At stake are questions about (...) how we should live and the correct balance of theoretical and practical activity. Numerous interpreters have sharply disagreed about Aristotle's answers to such questions. This book offers a fundamentally new approach to determining what kind of activity Aristotle thinks happiness is, one that challenges widespread assumptions that have until now prevented a dialectically satisfactory interpretation. This approach displays the boldness and systematicity of Aristotle's practical philosophy. (shrink)

Diogenes subscribes to a principle that, roughly, causal interaction and change require a certain sort of uniformity among the relata. Attending to this principle can help us understand Diogenes's relationship to the superficially similar Anaximenes without insisting, as some do, that Diogenes must be consciously responding to Parmenides. Diogenes is distinctive and philosophically interesting because his principle combines two senses of ‘archê’ (principle, starting-point), namely, the idea of source or origin and that of underlying (material) principle, and gives the rudiments (...) of an argument for associating the two, by which Aristotle may have been influenced. Diogenes’s principle and its deployment in biological explanations thematized a concern that Aristotle at least partially shared, and which led him to appeal, as Diogenes is said to have done, to pneuma (breath, air). (shrink)

This practical guide helps us identify the wrong beliefs about God we received from our families of origin and replace them with truth so we can embrace the abundant Christian life we long for.

In the language of second-order logic, first- and second-order variables are distinguished syntactically and cannot be grammatically substituted. According to a prominent argument for the deployment of these languages, these substitution failures are necessary to block the derivation of paradoxes that result from attempts to generalize over predicate interpretations. I first examine previous approaches which interpret second-order sentences using expressions of natural language and argue that these approaches undermine these syntactic restrictions. I then examine Williamson’s primitivist approach according to which (...) second-order sentences are not offered readings in a previously understood language. I argue that the syntactic restrictions alone do not block the derivation of the paradox, unless they are backed by a principled reason that the language cannot be expanded to allow the grammatical substitution of first- and second- order variables. I argue that there is neither a syntactic nor a semantic principle that prohibits such an expansion. (shrink)

洪耀勳是誰？是否有臺灣哲學？何謂臺灣哲學？何以洪耀勳的思想與實存哲學、日本哲學有深刻的關聯？哲學在東亞的接受與發展脈絡和洪耀勳的哲學思想有何關聯？洪耀勳的哲學思想能以何種形式和東亞的哲學發展產生關聯？ 其哲學思想有何種當代性意義？ 本書收錄洪耀勳日治時期的八篇哲學文章，撰寫年代在1934至1943十年之間，其中或隱或顯地援用日本京都學派哲學作為其哲學思索的資源。洪耀勳援引西田幾多郎「我和你」的理論，針對當時哲學發展的脈動，提出貼 近當代哲學需求的歷史實存概念。此外，他在探索臺灣文學創作的哲學理論時，亦以實存概念出發，主張新康德學派的價值哲學應與歷史實存形成呼應，藉以超越形而上學的價值世界。實存概念經洪耀勳的哲學探索，使得和辻哲 郎的風土論、務臺理作「表現世界的邏輯」、田邊元的「種的邏輯」等哲學資源，以一種「個別、特殊、普遍」的臺灣歷史實存姿態出現，並在異文化的臺灣，得到特殊性的發展。 Who is Hung Yao-hsün? Is there Taiwanese philosophy? What is Taiwanese philosophy? Why is Hung Yao-hsün’s thought deeply related to philosophy of existence and Japanese philosophy? What is the relationship between the reception and development of philosophy in East Asia and Hung Yao-hsün’s philosophical thought? In what form can Hung Yao-hsün’s philosophical thoughts be related to the development of philosophy in East Asia? What is the contemporary significance of his philosophical thinking? This book contains eight philosophical articles written (...) by Hung Yao-hsün between1934-1943, when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. These papers show implicit and explicit references to Kyoto School philosophy, which is a resource for his philosophical thinking. In response to the philosophical development at that time, Hung develops the notion of historical existence by citing Nishida’s theory of I and Thou. Besides, he explores the concept of existence as the philosophical foundation of Taiwanese literature, and argues the philosophy of value of Neo-Kantianism should echo the historical reality in order to overcome the metaphysical world of value. Hung’s philosophy deepens the concept of existence, and transforms the philosophical resources of Watsuji’s theory of Fūdo, Mutai Risaku’s logic of world expression and Tanabe’s logic of species into Taiwan’s historical reality of “individuality, particularity and universality;” these philosophies developed into a new dimension in Taiwan, a culture alien to Japan. (shrink)

Those of us who take skepticism seriously typically have two relevant beliefs: (a) it’s plausible (even if false) that in order to know that I have hands I have to be able to epistemically neutralize, to some significant degree, some skeptical hypotheses, such as the brain-in-a-vat (BIV) one; and (b) it’s also plausible (even if false) that I can’t so neutralize those hypotheses. There is no reason for us to also think (c) that the BIV hypothesis, for instance, is plausible (...) or probably true. In order to take skepticism seriously it’s sufficient to hold (a) and (b); one need not hold (c). Indeed, philosophers who accept (a) and (b) never endorse (c). Show me a philosopher who suspects that he is a brain in a vat and I’ll show you someone who is deranged! That’s one thing that bothers undergraduates in philosophy. They object: why on earth do some philosophers take the BIV hypothesis to pose any threat at all to our beliefs given that those very same philosophers think that there’s no real chance that the BIV hypothesis is true? Sure, the BIV hypothesis is formally inconsistent with my belief that I have hands, so if the former is true then my belief is false. But so what? Why should that bare inconsistency matter so much? Is this strange attitude amongst philosophers the result of some logic fetish infecting the philosophical community? It is sometimes said that the skeptical hypotheses are not only inconsistent with our beliefs but are explanatory of our experiences, which is supposed to make them more of a threat. But students aren’t fooled: although the skeptical hypotheses may attempt to explain why our experience is as it is, it’s the kind of attempt appropriate for science fiction movies that are all special effects and virtually no plot. No one with any sense of reality will take the evil demon hypothesis to be even tenuously explanatory. (shrink)

We tend to think that philosophical progress, to the extent that it exists, is a good thing. I agree. Even so, it has some surprising unfortunate consequences for the rationality of philosophical belief.

Towards the end of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, Nyasha is taken to a psychiatrist who dismisses her family’s concerns based on his belief that Africans cannot suffer metal illness. Frantz Fanon explores a similar theme in his 1952 essay, ‘The “North African Syndrome”’. In both cases, the veil of sterility behind which the clinical encounter is often presumed to take place is rent, and the clinician and patient are exposed as coloniser and colonised or ‘white’ and ‘raced’ first. Similarly, the (...) pages that follow provide an account of the situation of the racialised at the outset of a psychiatric consultation with a white clinician in a Western clinical setting. Drawing on Fanon’s ‘The “North African Syndrome”’ I attempt to shed light on the gulf that must be traversed in order for the patient to be intelligible to the clinician. I question the process of bridging that divide, particularly the question of which party bears the bulk of the responsibility for traversing the distance between the two. The challenge presented to clinician, and the extent of the turmoil of the patient in this kind of encounter are thus brought to the fore. I conclude by offering a suggestion of what Fanonian ethics demand of the clinician. (shrink)

There is a long history of using facts about disagreement to argue that many of our most precious beliefs are false in a way that can make a difference in our lives. In this essay I go over a series of such arguments, arguing that the best arguments target beliefs that meet two conditions: (i) they have been investigated and debated for a very long time by a great many very smart people who are your epistemic superiors on the matter (...) and have worked very hard under optimal circumstances to figure out if the belief is true, and (ii) as far as you know these people have not come to any significant agreement on the belief and as far as you know those who agree with you are not, as a group, in a better position to judge the belief than those who disagree with you. (shrink)

In several passages, Frege suggests that successful communication requires that speaker and audience understand the uttered words and sentences to have the same sense. On the other hand, Frege concedes that, in many ordinary cases, variation in sense is tolerable. In a recent article in this journal, Michaelson and Textor (2023) offer a new interpretation of Frege on the tolerability of sense variation according to which variation in sense is tolerable when the conversation aims at joint action, but not when (...) the conversation aims at joint thought. We maintain, contra Michaelson and Textor, that whether sense variation is tolerable does not depend on the conversational purpose, whether it be theoretical or practical. Rather, whether sense variation is tolerable depends instead on the conversational background. This picture offers what we take to be a more plausible reconstruction of Frege’s own view. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: What is Biological Diversity? The Definition Problem Two Models of Biodiversity Science and Management Understanding Biodiversity in Public Policy Discourse Identifying and Measuring Values Derived from Biological Diversity Conclusion References Further Reading.

Covers such topics as epistemology and education, feminist philosophy of education, race and education, school dress codes, and sex education. The use of film, literature, art, case studies, and other disciplines or situations/events provide illustrations of human experiences which work as gateways to questions philosophers try to address.

The convergence hypothesis asserts that, if one takes the full range of human values—present and future—into account, one will choose a set of policies that can also be accepted by an advocate of a consistent and reasonable nonanthropocentrism. Brian Steverson has attacked this hypothesis from a surprising direction. He attributes to deep ecologists the position that nonhuman nature has intrinsic value, interprets this position to mean that no species could ever be allowed to go extinct, and proceeds to show that (...) my commitment to contextualism prohibits me from advocating the protection of species universally. In response, I show, by reference to recent scientific findings, how difficult it is to defend species preservation in all situations. In particular, I argue that Steverson’s appeal to a possible world in which we have nearly complete biological knowledge misses the point of the convergence hypothesis. It is an empirical hypothesis, with significant indirect, and some direct, evidence to support it. Although it is a falsifiable hypothesis about realworld policies, it cannot be falsified by a contrary-to-fact case. (shrink)

The purpose is to improve the teaching and learning efficiency of college Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education. Firstly, from the perspective of aesthetic education, this work designs the teacher and student sides of the Computer-aided Instruction system. Secondly, the CAI model is implemented based on the weight sharing and local perception of the Convolutional Neural Network. Finally, the performance of the CNN-based CAI model is tested. Meanwhile, it analyses students’ IEE experience under the proposed CAI model through a case study of (...) Music Majors from Xi’an Conservatory of Music. The experimental data show that the CNN-based CAI model can respond quickly and stably when users access different functional modules, such as webpage browsing. The proposed CAI model increases students’ entrepreneurial interest, skills, and knowledge by 55.62, 57.32, and 72.12%, respectively. Students’ entrepreneurial practice ability has been improved by over 50.00%; such an increase in entrepreneurial practice ability has also shown individual differences. Thus, the proposed Music Majors-oriented IEE-infiltrated CAI model based on CNN improves students’ entrepreneurial practice ability and reflects the positive experience of Music Majors on IEE. The finding provides references for the step-by-step identification of the CNN-based CAI model and has certain guiding significance for analyzing the effect of college IEE. (shrink)

Abstract:German Romanticism plays a central role in Gilbert Simondon's writings. In Mode of Existence, Simondon draws on Goethe and E. T. A. Hoffmann to illustrate the tragic consequences of failing to attend to the individuated relationship between landscape and tool. While Novalis is only mentioned in passing, his work presents the most radical form of what might be called Romantic mechanology. With the stated aim of achieving the ideal of perpetual motion, Novalis's poetics highlight the central role literary experimentation plays (...) in technological thinking, revealing how Simondon may shed new light on several key aspects of romantic poetry and philosophy. (shrink)

The convergence hypothesis asserts that, if one takes the full range of human values—present and future—into account, one will choose a set of policies that can also be accepted by an advocate of a consistent and reasonable nonanthropocentrism. Brian Steverson has attacked this hypothesis from a surprising direction. He attributes to deep ecologists the position that nonhuman nature has intrinsic value, interprets this position to mean that no species could ever be allowed to go extinct, and proceeds to show that (...) my commitment to contextualism prohibits me from advocating the protection of species universally. In response, I show, by reference to recent scientific findings, how difficult it is to defend species preservation in all situations. In particular, I argue that Steverson’s appeal to a possible world in which we have nearly complete biological knowledge misses the point of the convergence hypothesis. It is an empirical hypothesis, with significant indirect, and some direct, evidence to support it. Although it is a falsifiable hypothesis about realworld policies, it cannot be falsified by a contrary-to-fact case. (shrink)

Bryan W. Van Norden lambastes academic philosophy for its Eurocentrism and insularity and challenges educational institutions to live up to their cosmopolitan ideals. Taking Back Philosophy is at once a manifesto for multicultural education, an accessible introduction to Confucian and Buddhist philosophy, and a defense of the value of philosophy.

The distinction between germline and somatic gene editing is fundamental to the ethics of human gene editing. Multiple conferences of scientists, ethicists, and policymakers, and multiple professional bodies, have called for moratoria on germline gene editing, and editing of human germline cells is considered to be an ethical “red line” that either never should be crossed, or should only be crossed with great caution and care. However, as research on germline gene editing has progressed, it has become clear that not (...) all germline interventions are alike, and that these differences make a significant moral difference, when it comes to ethical questions about research, regulation, clinical application, and medical justification. In this paper, I argue that, rather than lumping all germline interventions together, we should distinguish between revising, correcting, and transferring genes, and I assess the consequences of this move for the ethics of gene editing. (shrink)

In this essay I try to motivate and formulate the main epistemological questions to ask about the phenomenon of religious disagreement. I will not spend much time going over proposed answers to those questions. I address the relevance of the recent literature on the epistemology of disagreement. I start with some fiction and then, hopefully, proceed with something that has at least a passing acquaintance with truth.

Although primarily known as a portrait painter, Charles Willson Peale also possessed a profound interest in natural history. Indeed, Peale eventually founded the first natural history museum in the United States, and, during the end of the eighteenth century, he began to overlap his two great interests: art and nature. The event Peale chronicled in his 1804 painting The Exhumation of the Mastodon caused an extreme stir within the intellectual and religious circles of its time, and brought about, at the (...) very least, a serious questioning in the deeply held notion of the Great Chain of Being. Although now largely discredited, this religious conviction postulated two concepts that Peale’s Exhumation of the Mastodon seemingly contradicts. The first was the belief that no animals since creation had suffered the fate of extinction. The second was a lack of belief in geological time. Indeed, one Irish clergyman calculated the actual date of creation to 4004 BCE. In this paper, I explore Peale’s monumental painting, a work that is many things, a self-portrait and history painting among others. Indeed, in this painting, Peale was responding to science, religion, and their shifting positions within early-nineteenth-century America. When viewed together, Peale’s The Exhumation of the Mastodon is not merely a record of an event that occurred in New York during the early nineteenth century, and instead is a document of Peale and the interaction of science and religion in early-Federal America. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment is a creative, careful, and mostly convincing study of the predictive accuracy of political experts. My only major complaints are that Tetlock (1) understates the predictive accuracy of experts, and (2) does too little to discourage demagogues from misinterpreting his work as a vindication of the wisdom of the average citizen. Experts have much to learn from Tetlock's epistemological audit, but there is still ample evidence that, compared to laymen, experts are very good.

Aristotle’s typical procedure is to identify something's four causes. Intentional action has typically been treated as an exception: most think that Aristotle has the standard causalist account, according to which an intentional action is a bodily movement efficiently caused by an attitude of the appropriate sort. I show that action is not an exception to Aristotle’s typical procedure: he has the resources to specify four causes of action, and thus to articulate a powerful theory of action unlike any other on (...) offer. (shrink)

We argue that once a normative claim is developed, there is an imperative to effect changes based on this norm. As such, ethicists should adopt an “implementation mindset” when formulating...

The following pages sketch the outlines of “a Canaanite reading” of the health system. Beginning with the Black person—African, Afro-diasporic, Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander—who is seen by a health professional, the functions and effects of the racializing gaze are examined. I wrestle with Al Saji’s understanding of “colonial disregard,” Whittaker’s insights into the extractive disposition of settler institutions vis-à-vis Indigenous peoples, and Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten’s struggle with the spectacular. This leads me to conclude that the situation of (...) the Black within the health system is a tragic one. The prescription for the path out of this tragedy that I settle on, responding to Okiji’s opening call, is found in Vernon Ah Kee’s “Unwritten” series. (shrink)

Naming or names (ming 名) is one of the key concepts in Daodejing (道德經). According to a popular understanding, names in Daodejing correspond to features (xing 形) of things; ordinary things have names, but Dao is featureless and nameless. What is missing, however, is atheory of the relationship between names and features explaining why ordinary things have names but Dao does not. In this paper, I develop a theory of names in Daodejing that explains how names relate to things and (...) their features. According to this theory, a name corresponds to a feature that is shared by a group of things, and names provide identity conditions for individuating ordinary things. Further, this theory implies that the various descriptions of Dao in Daodejing do not include names; therefore, talking about Dao while insisting that it is unnamable is not committed to any paradox. (shrink)