As a philosopher, whose theory about economics and business is systematically connected to a moral and political philosophy, Aristotle provides a rich conceptual framework to reflect upon personal wellbeing, the wealth of households, and the welfare of the state. Even though Aristotle has mainly been portrayed as an enemy of business, interest in his teachings has been on the rise among management scholars. Several articles have examined Aristotle's position with regard to current managerial approaches such as total quality management, knowledge (...) management, crisis management, and networking. Even though Aristotle is a constant reference point for business ethics scholars, only rarely have there been attempts to see what consequences his thinking would have for reorienting business philosophy and organizational strategy. In this study, we wiD outline how Aristotle's theory of household management can be applied to the management of modern corporations. We argue that conceptions of chrematistike and oikonomia provide a basis to discuss the relationship between business and society and to draw important conclusions for business management. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:After a brief historical introduction, three interpretations of dignity in relation to management theory and business ethics are elaborated: Dignity as a general category, Human Dignity as Inherent and Universal, and Human Dignity as Earned and Contingent. Next, two literature reviews are presented under the headings of “Dignity and Business Research” and “Dignity and Business Ethics Research.” The latter discussion identifies three subcategories of business ethics research involving human dignity: the role of dignity as a cornerstone for paradigmatic shifts, the (...) role of dignity as the ‘ultima ratio’ for the protection of human rights, and the role of dignity in organizing business practices. The article concludes with summaries of the three articles chosen for this special section. (shrink)

While the idea of freedom lies at the heart of our economic system, academic research has neglected to connect theories of the firm to freedom theory. To fill this void, the authors delineate two archetypes of freedom — quantitative and qualitative — and outline the consequences of the respective notions for organisational strategy, corporate governance, leadership and culture. Supporting the quest for reform in management theory, the authors argue for an enlarged perspective of the role of the firm within free (...) societies. (shrink)

This article is an account of an electronic discussion which took place between November 1995 and June 1996. A number of specialists in relevant research areas had been invited to take part in the discussion from the very beginning, and some were added later. Altogether 30 individuals subscribed to the list. The “target paper,” written by Allen Renear, was sent to the list on November 27, 1995. The target paper alone comprised 8,500 words. The ensuing discussion, to which 9 of (...) the members on the list made one or more individual contributions, comprises 30 entries of altogether 37,000 words. It is the function of this printed article to provide a brief summary and a key to the full electronic discussion which accompanies it. (shrink)

Michael Jensen made a name for himself in the 1970s–1990 s with his ‘agency theory’ and its application to questions of corporate governance and economic policy. The effects of his theory were acutely felt in the pedagogics of business studies, as Jensen lent his authority to combat all attempts to integrate social considerations and moral values into business education. Lately, however, Michael Jensen has come to defend quite a different approach, promoting an ‘integrity theory’ of management learning. Jensen (...) now rather aspires to empower students to give authentic expression to their personal values in their professional lives, and he sees the main function of management studies in assisting them in this effort. This article reconstructs the transformation of Jensen’s outlook, drawing on Jensen’s theories as an exemplar of wider trends in the current literature on management learning, away from a decidedly ‘mechanistic’ and towards a more ‘humanistic’ pedagogy of management. Jensen’s case serves to highlight developments that might make for better preconditions for the appreciation of business ethics on part of business students. On closer inspection, though, it appears that his remaining within a positivistic framework ultimately impedes the kind of progress Michael Jensen envisions for business studies. (shrink)

What does it mean to witness after the human? The adverbial clause suggests, first, a temporal and a conditional relation to the subject, whereby the act or event of witnessing follows, responds to...

According to a common account, grammatical mood is merely a conventional indicator of force with no semantic significance. Focusing on indicatives, interrogatives and imperatives, I advance two reasons to reject this “force treatment” of mood. First, it can be shown that the mood of a subordinate clause can have semantic significance that affects the sense of a sentence in which it is embedded—which the force treatment cannot accommodate. Second, the speech acts of asserting, asking and ordering have something in common (...) even when they do not involve the same descriptive content, namely, the commitment that is present when one speaks seriously for oneself. The force treatment cannot accommodate the fact that when we subtract this positive force from the act, what we are left with is not bare descriptive content, but the mere expression of a proposition, question or order (as appropriate). I conclude by suggesting that the sense of a mood indicator is a function from descriptive content to a proposition, question or order. (shrink)

Drawing on Stalnaker’s projection strategy, a revised version of the Ramsey test, and Dudman’s account of the evaluation of projective conditionals (e.g., “If Hitler invades England, Germany will win the war” and “If Hitler had invaded England, Germany would have won the war”), I offer a novel truth-conditional account of the semantics of a range of English conditionals. This account resolves some key puzzles in the philosophical literature about semantic differences between maximally similar conditionals of different types (including some parallel (...) indicative and subjunctive conditionals) without assuming that the word “if” is ambiguous. It does so by explaining these semantic differences on the basis of semantic properties of the clauses combined by “if” and temporal factors arising from these properties. (shrink)

The Frege point to the effect that e.g. the clauses of conditionals are not asserted and therefore cannot be assertions is often taken to establish a dichotomy between the content of a speech act, which is propositional and belongs to logic and semantics, and its force, which belongs to pragmatics. Recently this dichotomy has been questioned by philosophers such as Peter Hanks and Francois Recanati, who propose act-theoretic accounts of propositions, argue that we can’t account for propositional unity independently of (...) the forceful acts of speakers, and respond to the Frege point by appealing to a notion of force cancellation. I argue that the notion of force cancellation is faced with a dilemma and offer an alternative response to the Frege point, which extends the act-theoretic account to logical acts such as conditionalizing or disjoining. Such higher-level acts allow us to present forceful acts while suspending commitment to them. In connecting them, a subject rather commits to an affirmation function of such acts. In contrast, the Frege point confuses a lack of commitment to what is put forward with a lack of commitment or force in what is put forward. (shrink)

The Fregean analysis of definite descriptions as referring expressions predicts that copular sentences with definite descriptions in postcopular position are invariably interpreted as identity statements. But as numerous diagnostics show, such sentences are frequently capable of receiving a predicational reading. A uniform Fregean analysis therefore won’t do. Things aren’t that simple, however. I show that descriptions which exhibit the structure [the + N + of + Proper Name] fall into two semantically distinct classes, and that the members of one of (...) these classes of descriptions (those I call “identifying”) pattern with proper names in resisting a predicative reading. I argue that a proposal according to which referring expressions can quite generally undergo a type shift that transforms them into predicates thus fails on grounds of overgeneration. I propose that we can account for the data by instead appealing to two definite determiners: a Fregean determiner ‘the r ’ which forms referring descriptions, and a determiner ‘the p ’ which forms predicative descriptions. I argue that this proposal also correctly predicts that copular sentences with proper names in postcopular position fail to have a predicational reading. I conclude the paper by defending the analysis of names to which I appeal against an alternative view inspired by Burge (J Philos 70(14):425–439, 1973), and suggest a way in which the desired results could be achieved while making do with a single definite article. (shrink)

An argument is offered against three naturalistic theories of intentional content: causal-covariation theories, teleological theories, and certain versions of conceptual role semantics. The strategy involves focusing on a normative problem regarding the practice of associating content expressions (e.g., that-clauses) with internal entities (states, symbol structures, etc.). The problem can be expressed thus: Which content expressions are the right ones to associate with internal entities? I argue, first, that an empirical solution to this problem—what I call the Normative Problem—will follow naturally (...) from a descriptive-explanatory account of the practice of associating content expressions with internal entities; and second, that the empirical solution will be accepted and adopted within cognitive science. Naturalistic theories of content also entail solutions to the Normative Problem, and such theories are shown to be false by showing that their solutions to the Normative Problem are inconsistent with the empirical solution coming out of cognitive science. (shrink)

Tyler Burge says that first-person authority can be reconciled with anti-individualism about the intentional by denying part of the "Cartesian conception" of authority, which claims that I am actually authoritative about my intentional attitudes in counterfactual situations. This clause, he says, wrongly conflates the evaluation-conditions for sceptical doubts about the "external" world with the conditions for classifying intentional attitudes in counterfactual situations. This paper argues that the kind of possibility needed to understand external-world scepticism justifies the conflation and that Burge (...) can reject the Cartesian conception only if he rejects either metaphysical realism or anti-individualism. (shrink)

Was Luther avowing a genuine moral incapacity when he claimed that he could do no other? Bernard Williams has distinguished moral from psychological incapacity in terms of deliberation. There are three particular difficulties for the notion: in addition to (1) scepticism about whether the agent is genuinely incapable, there are (2) the possibility of conflicting moral incapacities, and (3) apparent cases where there is no actual or possible deliberation. If (1) can be countered, (2) can be met by ceteris paribus (...) clauses, and it is shown that these do not remove the element of necessity. And (3) can be met by showing how possible deliberation is involved in putative counter‐examples. Williams' account needs to be augmented to deal with cases of the morally unthinkable, and refined to allow for incipient attempts to do the morally impossible. (shrink)

This book is an interdisciplinary guide to the religion clauses of the First Amendment with a focus on its philosophical foundations, historical developments, and legal and political implications. The volume begins with fundamental questions about God, the nature of belief and worship, conscience, freedom, and their intersections with law. It then traces the history of religious liberty and church-state relations in America through a diverse set of religious and non-religious voices from the seventeenth century to the most recent Supreme Court (...) decisions. The Companion will conclude by addressing legal and political questions concerning the First Amendment and the court cases and controversies surrounding religious liberty today, including the separation of church and state, corporate religious liberty, and constitutional interpretation. This scholarly yet accessible book will introduce students and scholars alike to the main issues concerning the First Amendment and religious liberty, along with offering incisive new insights into one of the most important topics in American culture. (shrink)

Sometimes the fact that something is the law can be justified by the law. For example, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is the law because it was enacted by Congress pursuant to the Commerce Clause. But eventually legal justification of law ends. The ultimate criteria of validity in a legal system cannot themselves be justified by law. According to H.L.A. Hart, justification of these ultimate criteria is still available, by reference to social facts concerning official acceptance - facts about what Hart calls (...) the "rule of recognition" for the system. -/- Drawing upon criticisms of sociological accounts of the law that can be found in the writings of Hans Kelsen, I argue in this essay that Hart's approach cannot account for statements about the law that assert the independence of legal validity from rule of recognition facts. I offer as an alternative a legal quietist approach, which can account for such statements. For the quietist, legal justification exhausts the possible justification for law. If our judgments about the law are fundamental, in the sense that they cannot be justified by other judgments about the law, then they have no justification (which is not to say that they should be abandoned). I argue that legal quietism is exemplified - if somewhat imperfectly - in Kelsen's writings, and I end the essay by exploring some difficulties that the quietist approach must face. (shrink)

The proper role of religious faith in the public life of a liberal democracy is one of the most important and controversial issues in the United States today. Since the publication in 1991 of his book Love and Power, Michael J. Perry's important writings on this issue have been among the most insightful. In this new book, Perry argues that political reliance on religious faith violates neither the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution nor, more broadly, the morality (...) of liberal democracy. Nonetheless, Perry argues, religious believers sometimes have good reasons to be wary about relying on religious beliefs in making political decisions. Along the way, Perry thoughtfully addresses three subjects at the center of fierce contemporary political debate: school vouchers, same-sex marriage, and abortion. (shrink)

This paper examines parataxis and ring composition in Anaxagoras Fragment B4a, arguing that this ostensibly prose philosopher employs these poetic techniques to capture his thought. Comparing the fragment with Homeric similes and his description of Achilles’s Shield from Ililad XVIII reveals an immanent poetics within the Anaxagorean text. Lying between two instances of "πολλά τε καὶ παντοῖα" (many things of all kinds) most of fragment constitutes a single sentence. Such ring composition advises that no part of the paratactic clause should (...) be read independently from any other. This supports reading the discussion of "seeds" (σπέρματα) and "compacted" (συμπαγῆναι) human beings in B4a as yielding a conception of infinitely proliferating microcosmic worlds each undergoing its own separation within a single cosmos. (shrink)

Together, the two volumes underscore the richness and variety of Habermas's project.Contributors: Karl-Otto Apel. Richard J. Bernstein. Peter Burger. Martin Jay. Thomas McCarthy. Herbert Schnadelbach. Charles Taylor. Michael Theunissen.

The law market model posits that the most appropriate resolution of choice-of-law disputes in private international law is to permit individuals to choose ex ante the law that applies to them. This is contrasted to the public law model where courts choose law based on the perceived interests of, or the parties’ connections with, the states or nations involved. The law market model envisions that consumer choice will lead to optimal competition among jurisdictions to supply the most efficient law. This (...) model has influenced the rise of party autonomy, most notably in the widespread enforcement of many contractual choice-of-law and forum-selection clauses. One area that the model has had little influence on is the enforcement of foreign judgments. In the United States, judgments from other countries face higher hurdles in obtaining recognition and enforcement, as compared to judgments issued by courts of sister states. There has been little discussion in the law market literature of the possibility of ex ante contractually waiving these hurdles, or of choosing the law of states that make it easier to enforce foreign judgments. This reticence appears to be based in part on the assumption that state law on such recognition is mandatory and non-waivable, and that such law reflects the sovereign interests of states. Revisiting this regime through the lens of the law market model suggests that courts and public policymakers should permit parties, within broad limits, to contractually waive or select the law on judgment recognition, as they are permitted to do with other areas of law. (shrink)

The argument by which the Eleatic Stranger differentiates the kinds being and different (255c9-e2) is one of the most controversial in Plato’s Sophist. In it the Stranger introduces the vexed distinction between beings that are auta kath’ hauta, ‘themselves according to themselves’, and those that are pros alla, ‘relative to others’ (255c13-14). Although commentators have developed many interpretations of the argument, there is a key yet hitherto unrecognized ambiguity in the syntax of the counterfactual conditional at 255d4-6, concerning whether the (...) adjunct comparative clause, hōsper to on, should be adjoined to the protasis or apodosis. Editors from Heindorf to Robinson adjoin hōsper to on to the protasis. I argue this is mistaken. Adjoining hōsper to on to the apodosis instead allows for a more straightforward interpretation of the argument and offers a resolution to the controversies surrounding the ‘according to themselves’ / ‘relative to others’ distinction. (shrink)

Sentences such as “The ship was sunk to collect the insurance” exhibit an unusual form of anaphora, implicit control, where neither anaphor nor antecedent is audible. The non-finite reason clause has an understood subject, PRO, that is anaphoric; here it may be understood as naming the agent of the event of the host clause. Yet since the host is a short passive, this agent is realized by no audible dependent. The putative antecedent to PRO is therefore implicit, which it normally (...) cannot be. What sorts of representations subserve the comprehension of this dependency? Here we present four self-paced reading time studies directed at this question. Previous work showed no processing cost for implicit vs. explicit control, and took this to support the view that PRO is linked syntactically to a silent argument in the passive. We challenge this conclusion by reporting that we also find no processing cost for remote implicit control, as in: “The ship was sunk. The reason was to collect the insurance.” Here the dependency crosses two independent sentences, and so cannot, we argue, be mediated by syntax. Our Experiments 1–4 examined the processing of both implicit (short passive) and explicit (active or long passive) control in both local and remote configurations. Experiments 3 and 4 added either “3 days ago” or “just in order” to the local conditions, to control for the distance between the passive and infinitival verbs, and for the predictability of the reason clause, respectively. We replicate the finding that implicit control does not impose an additional processing cost. But critically we show that remote control does not impose a processing cost either. Reading times at the reason clause were never slower when control was remote. In fact they were always faster. Thus, efficient processing of local implicit control cannot show that implicit control is mediated by syntax; nor, in turn, that there is a silent but grammatically active argument in passives. (shrink)

In a recent article, Thomas Nagel argues against the court’s decision to strike down the Dover school district’s requirement that biology teachers in Dover public schools inform their students about Intelligent Design. Nagel contends that this ruling relies on questionable demarcation between science and nonscience and consequently misapplies the Establishment Clause of the constitution. Instead, he argues in favor of making room for an open discussion of these issues rather than an outright prohibition against Intelligent Design. We contend that Nagel’s (...) arguments do not succeed. First, we argue that Nagel’s case trades on an ambiguity regarding the content of non-theological views and fails to engage adequately some of the problems of ID. Then we raise concerns about Nagel’s conclusion; specifically, we will point to three incongruities between Nagel’s argument and his conclusion, and then we will raise a more general worry about the likely impact of Nagel’s view. (shrink)

In a recent article, Thomas Nagel argues against the court’s decision to strike down the Dover school district’s requirement that biology teachers in Dover public schools inform their students about Intelligent Design. Nagel contends that this ruling relies on questionable demarcation between science and nonscience and consequently misapplies the Establishment Clause of the constitution. Instead, he argues in favor of making room for an open discussion of these issues rather than an outright prohibition against Intelligent Design. We contend that Nagel’s (...) arguments do not succeed. First, we argue that Nagel’s case trades on an ambiguity regarding the content of non-theological views and fails to engage adequately some of the problems of ID. Then we raise concerns about Nagel’s conclusion; specifically, we will point to three incongruities between Nagel’s argument and his conclusion, and then we will raise a more general worry about the likely impact of Nagel’s view. (shrink)

We describe approximation algorithms for MAX SAT with performance ratios arbitrarily close to 1, in particular, when performance ratios exceed the limits of polynomial-time approximation. Namely, given a polynomial-time α-approximation algorithm , we construct an -approximation algorithm . The algorithm runs in time of the order ck, where k is the number of clauses in the input formula and c is a constant depending on α. Thus we estimate the cost of improving a performance ratio. Similar constructions for MAX 2SAT (...) and MAX 3SAT are also described. Taking known algorithms as , we obtain particular upper bounds on the running time of. (shrink)

This volume advances discussions between critics and defenders of the force-content distinction and opens new ways of thinking about force and speech acts in relation to the unity problem. -/- The force-content dichotomy has shaped the philosophy of language and mind since the time of Frege and Russell. Isn’t it obvious that, for example, the clauses of a conditional are not asserted and must therefore be propositions and propositions the forceless contents of forceful acts? But, others have recently asked in (...) response, how can a proposition be a truth value bearer if it is not unified through the forceful act of a subject that takes a position regarding how things are? Can we not instead think of propositions as being inherently forceful, but of force as being cancelled in certain contexts? And what do indicators of assertoric, but also of directive and interrogative force mean? (shrink)

Sehen wird traditionell als passiver Prozess aufgefasst, der im Gehirn innere Bil-der entstehen lässt, welche die Wirklichkeit repräsentieren. Handlungen wer-den hingegen in der Regel als aktive Prozesse verstanden, die von Subjekten gesteuert werden. Die Beiträge der Eröffnungstagung der Kolleg-Forschergruppe „Bildakt und Verkörperung“ erarbeiten in den Sektionen „E-naktivismus“, „Dynamik des Blickens“ und „Die Sicht auf die Dinge“ alternative Verständnisweisen von Visualität. Sie begreifen Sehen als eine Aktivität, die nicht nur das Gehirn, sondern den gesamten Körper einbezieht, permanent Wirklichkeit gestaltet und somit (...) als Handlung verstanden werden kann. Mit Beiträgen von Alex Arteaga, Horst Bredekamp, Frank Fehrenbach, Shaun Gallagher, Bettina Gockel, Dan Hutto, Sybille Krämer, John Michael Krois, Helmut Pape, Eva Schürmann und Claus Zittel. (shrink)

The development of abstract schemas and productive rules in language is affected by both token and type frequencies. High token frequencies and surface similarities help to discover formal and functional commonalities between utterances and categorize them as instances of the same schema. High type frequencies and diversity help to develop slots in these schemas, which allow the production and comprehension of novel utterances. In the current study we looked at both token and type frequencies in two related constructions in German (...) child-directed speech: simple transitive and complement-clause constructions. Both constructions contain high frequency verbs, which potentially support the development of verb-specific schemas. However, only the frequent verbs in the transitive constructions occur with a variety of subject types, which also supports the development of a slot in the subject position. We then used an elicited production task to compare 4- and 5-year-old German-speaking children's productivity with simple transitive constructions and complement-clause constructions. The children were prompted to change the subjects of high and low frequency simple transitive verbs, such as essen ‘eat’ and naschen ‘nibble’, mental-state complement-taking verbs, such as denken ‘think’ and vermuten ‘presume’, and communication complement-taking verbs, such as sagen ‘say’ and berichten ‘report’. In accordance with earlier findings, children had less difficulty producing new utterances with high frequency transitive verbs than with low frequency transitive verbs. For the other verb classes, however, we found either reverse frequency effects or no frequency effects. For these verb classes, children's productivity can be determined by diversity rather than simple token frequency. We discuss how token frequency interacts with diversity, discourse function, semantic complexity, and syntactic complexity. (shrink)

We provide a translation from SNFPLTL, a normal form for propositional linear time temporal logic, into alternating automata on infinite words, and vice versa. We show this translation has the property that the set of SNFPLTL clauses is satisfiable if and only if the alternating automaton has an accepting run. As there is no direct method known for checking the non-emptiness of alternating automata, the translation to SNFPLTL, together with a temporal proof on the resulting SNFPLTL clauses, provides an indirect (...) non-emptiness check for alternating automata. (shrink)

What is life? Is it just the biologically familiar--birds, trees, snails, people--or is it an infinitely complex set of patterns that a computer could simulate? What role does intelligence play in separating the organic from the inorganic, the living from the inert? Does life evolve along a predestined path, or does it suddenly emerge from what appeared lifeless and programmatic? In this easily accessible and wide-ranging survey, Claus Emmeche outlines many of the challenges and controversies involved in the dynamic (...) and curious science of artificial life. Emmeche describes the work being done by an international network of biologists, computer scientists, and physicists who are using computers to study life as it could be, or as it might evolve under conditions different from those on earth. Many artificial-life researchers believe that they can create new life in the computer by simulating the processes observed in traditional, biological life-forms. The flight of a flock of birds, for example, can be reproduced faithfully and in all its complexity by a relatively simple computer program that is designed to generate electronic "boids." Are these "boids" then alive? The central problem, Emmeche notes, lies in defining the salient differences between biological life and computer simulations of its processes. And yet, if we can breathe life into a computer, what might this mean for our other assumptions about what it means to be alive? The Garden in the Machine touches on every aspect of this complex and rapidly developing discipline, including its connections to artificial intelligence, chaos theory, computational theory, and studies of emergence. Drawing on the most current work in the field, this book is a major overview of artificial life. Professionals and nonscientists alike will find it an invaluable guide to concepts and technologies that may forever change our definition of life. (shrink)