Using panel data of 4,244 company years, we examine whether and how corporate social performance (CSP) affects a firm’s capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets. Based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena, we hypothesized a U-shaped relationship between CSP and multinationality. Results supported our contention that multinational enterprises (MNEs) need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their CSP investments, and improve their capacity to (...) compete in foreign markets. MNEs engaged in intermediate levels of CSP achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum. In addition, this study demonstrates that CSP moderates a well-established relationship in international business literature – the relationship between R&D investment and a firm’s multinationality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Using panel data of 4,244 company years, we examine whether and how corporate social performance affects a firm's capacity to achieve profitable sales in foreign markets. Based on our extension of instrumental stakeholder theory into the international arena, we hypothesized a U-shaped relationship between CSP and multinationality. Results supported our contention that multinational enterprises need to be substantially committed to social performance objectives if they are to recoup the cost of their CSP investments, and improve their capacity to compete in (...) foreign markets. MNEs engaged in intermediate levels of CSP achieve lower levels of multinationality than firms operating at either anchor of the social performance continuum. In addition, this study demonstrates that CSP moderates a well-established relationship in international business literature - the relationship between R&D investment and a firm's multinationality. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

A philosopher and a cognitive neuroscientist conversed with Buddhist lama Tilmann Lhündrup Borghardt (TLB) about the unresolved phenomenological concerns and logical questions surrounding “pure” consciousness or minimal phenomenal experience (MPE), a quasi-contentless, non-dual state whose phenomenology of “emptiness” is often described in terms of the phenomenal quality of luminosity that experienced meditators have reported occurs in deep meditative states. Here, we present the excerpts of the conversation that relate to the question of how it is possible to first have and (...) later retrieve such non-dual states of selflessness and timelessness that are unrelated to sensory input. According to TLB, a “pure” experience of consciousness contains the phenomenal quality of luminous clarity, which is experienced solely in the transitional phase from the non-dual state of absolute emptiness to the state of minimal emptiness, when the person gradually returns to duality. However, this quality of luminous clarity can also be experienced in non-minimal states as in the experiential mode of being awakened. TLB describes this transition as a kind of ephemeral afterglow in the form of a maximally abstract phenomenal quality, i.e., luminosity, which justifies the conclusion of having been in a state of “pure” consciousness. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the relationship between paradigms of explication and the practice of conceptual engineering. It defends three interrelated claims: First, the predominant functionalist attitude in the present debate on conceptual engineering is due to its roots in Carnapian explication, which identifies the explicandum with a precursor concept. Second, alternative metaphysical paradigms of explication locate the explicandum in a part of a concept-independent reality (‘field explication‘, as I will call it). Third, field explication may be a better paradigm (...) than Carnapian functionalism for certain instances of socio-political conceptual engineering. In these instances, we adjust our concepts to more adequately capture differences in our concept-independent (felt) reality. To demonstrate this, I will contrast the metaphysical to the functionalist paradigm concerning the example of Heimat. [in German]. (shrink)

Brentano is perhaps most famously renowned for his re-deployment of Scholastic terminology of ‘intentional act’ and ‘intentional object’ in the elaboration of his novel science of ‘descriptive psychology’ in the mid-1870s and 1880s. In this re-deployment, however, Brentano adapted the original Scholastic meanings of both of these terms. Thus Brentano advanced not one but two descriptive-psychological theses of intentionality.1 These theses, however, are often not properly distinguished, and consequently they are more often confused. Nevertheless, once the two theses are distinguished, (...) Brentano’s basic descriptive-psychological tenet of the intentionality of consciousness is more readily understandable on its own terms. Whether Brentano’s descriptive-psychological tenet is entirely acceptable philosophically, or not, of course, is another matter but this presupposes understanding in a straightforward sense what Brentano’s doctrine is. In this article, I will be concerned mainly with Brentano’s re-introduction of ‘what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object’ in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874),2 even though it is Brentano’s (second) thesis on ‘intentional act’, one that he developed after his 1874 publication, that is more generally well known and examined. While acknowledging that many versions of ‘Brentano’s thesis’, as it is usually (and loosely) referred to by commentators today, have been re-worked in modern philosophy of mind, this article focuses attention on some of the main points of convergence and deviance between the original Scholastic concept and Brentano’s ‘new’ concept of intentionality in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. (shrink)

This paper analyses Heidegger’s controversial advancement of Husserl’s idea of philosophy and phenomenological research towards ‘the Being-Question’ and its relation to ‘Dasein’. It concentrates on Heidegger’s elision of Dilthey and Husserl’s different concepts of ‘Descriptive Psychology’ in his 1925 Summer Semester lecture-course, with Husserl’s concept losing out in the competition, as background to the formulation of ‘the Being-Question’ in Being and Time (1927). It argues that Heidegger establishes his own position within phenomenology on the basis of a partial appropriation of (...) Dilthey’s hermeneutical manner of thinking, an appropriation that was later radically called into question by Levinas on Diltheyean-hermeneutical-philosophical grounds. (shrink)

Social scientists who conduct qualitative research frequently use emotional engagement to gather information about participants’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviours in relation to a particularly research question. When the subject under investigation is related to trauma, listening to, or being exposed to personal accounts of participants’ traumatic experiences can carry a significant emotional cost for researchers. This may place them at risk of secondary trauma. In this article, I examine these issues from the context of my doctoral field research in South (...) Africa, which focused on intergenerational trauma amongst descendants of victims of apartheid-era gross human rights violations. I reflect on my positionality as both an insider and outsider and feelings of guilt that emanated from my sense of being privileged and an imposter. I also reflect on the emotional turmoil brought about by my engagement with the trauma of participants and their families. I conclude by sharing the lessons I have learnt, and that have enabled me to sustain my scholarly engagement with intergenerational trauma. Ultimately, this article gives insight into, and raises awareness about, the emotional consequences of conducting trauma research. It offers practical suggestions to help researchers navigate the emotional minefield involved in conducting trauma research. (shrink)

Cyril Smith shows that Marx developed a far richer and liberatory vision of humanity and the alternative to capital than that which has characterized his followers, and he makes a powerful argument that it is essential to return to Marx's original body of thought in order to reconstitute a viable critique of existing capitalist society.

This paper evaluates how Amartya Sen’s critique of revealed preference theory stands against the latter’s contemporary, ‘neo-Samuelsonian’ version. Neo- Samuelsonians have argued that Sen’s arguments against RPT are innocuous, in particular once it is acknowledged that RPT does not assume away the existence of motivations or other latent psychological or cognitive processes. Sen’s claims that preferences and choices need to be distinguished and that external factors need to be taken into account to analyze the act of choice then appear to (...) be irrelevant. However, while it is true that contemporary revealed preference theory partially evades Sen’s critique, I show that the latter is still relevant outside the restricted areas of consumer choice and market dynamics. In particular, Sen’s views regarding the importance of incomplete preferences and the multiplicity of levels of agency can hardly be integrated into the framework of CRPT. This is a significant limit, given the imperialistic claims of some of the proponents of the latter. (shrink)

Glowacki asserts that interdependent relationships beyond group boundaries are exceptionally rare among nonhuman mammals. However, rudimentary forms of interdependence can be seen in primate species that form multilevel societies, that is, core social units embedded within higher-level grouping categories. Studies of primate multilevel societies can enrich discussions about the evolutionary origins of peaceful between-group interactions in humans.

The essays contained in Beyond the Juxtaposition of Nature and Culture represent an attempt by scholars from Canada, Germany, and Mexico to come to grips with the innovative work of the American philosopher and anthropologist Lawrence Krader who has proposed nothing less than a new theory of nature, according to which there are at least three different orders--the material-biotic, the quantum, and the human--which differ from one another according to their different configurations of space-time, and which cannot be reduced the (...) one to the others. Each author takes up Krader's theory in relation to its impact on their own discipline: sociology, anthropology, the study of myth, the theory of labor and value, economics, linguistics, and aesthetics. The question of how nature and culture can be integrated within a theoretical framework which links them in difference and nexus and allows each their non-reductive space leads each of the contributors to move in their thinking beyond the old dualisms of materialism and idealism, fact and value, nature and culture. (shrink)

:Most game-theoretic accounts of institutions reduce institutions to behavioural patterns the players are incentivized to implement. An alternative account linking institutions to rule-following behaviour in a game-theoretic framework is developed on the basis of David Lewis’s and Ludwig Wittgenstein's respective accounts of conventions and language games. Institutions are formalized as epistemic games where the players share some forms of practical reasoning. An institution is a rule-governed game satisfying three conditions: common understanding, minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality. Common understanding has (...) a strong similarity with Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of lebensform while minimal awareness and minimal practical rationality capture the idea that rule-following is community-based. (shrink)

This article presents a community-based account of salience as an alternative and a complement to the ‘natural salience’ approach which is endorsed by almost all game theorists who use this concept. While in the naturalistic approach, salience is understood as an objective and natural property of some entities, the community-based account claims that salience is a function of community membership. Building on David Lewis’s theory of common knowledge and on some of its recent refined accounts, I suggest that salience acts (...) as a correlating device in a correlated equilibrium. What is constitutive of salience is common understanding, the fact that agents have common knowledge that they share the same modes of reasoning with respect to a well-identified set of events. I argue that the basis for common understanding is community membership. The relevance of this account stems from the fact that it answers the objection that salience is either unnecessary or unable to account for coordination between rational agents. (shrink)

This article examines the subjective structure and genesis of personal identity in (some of) Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous writings. Based on a structural analysis of self-awareness (here, in particular, the category of existential becoming, the social embeddedness of the individual and the irreducible fact of mediation of personal identity), the main thesis is that, according to Kierkegaard, personal identity can best be described as a constant interweaving of hypertextual and intertextual layers. Accordingly, the central metaphor of palimpsest is used in order to (...) account for the self-relation as an overwriting process, realized by a constant self-reinterpretation of the individual. The article focuses on certain structural, existential, hermeneutic, and semiotic key aspects of such an interpretation. (shrink)

Die Arbeit untersucht Sören Kierkegaards Begriff der Innerlichkeit in konzeptionsstruktureller und existenzpragmatischer Hinsicht. Sie stellt die bisher breiteste Untersuchung zu diesem Thema dar. Der Fokus liegt auf den Texten von Kierkegaards Pseudonym Johannes Climacus und auf Kierkegaards Reden von 1843 bis 1845. Das anthropologische Anliegen, wie sich ein Selbstverhältnis konstituiert, bleibt an die Frage gebunden, welche Merkmale die Innerlichkeit als konkrete Lebensform besitzt. Die Analyse von Kierkegaards Mitteilungstheorie, Handlungs- und Erfahrungsbegriff, sowie den die Innerlichkeit umfassenden religiösen und existenzanthropologischen Kontexten ermöglichte (...) es nicht nur die Alleinstellungsmerkmale von Kierkegaards Konzeption der Innerlichkeit gegenüber der ideengschichtlichen Vorstellung eines "Innen" herauszuarbeiten, sondern auch die konventionelle Kritik an Innerlichkeit infragezustellen. Wichtige systematische Ergebnisse sind u.a. die enge Verzahnung der Innerlichkeit mit der Frage nach Kontingenzbewältigung und die Verbindung der Innerlichkeit zu einer dialogischen Ethik. Sämtliche Ergebnisse bleiben an den Aspekt der Identitätsbildung und Individuierung unter existenziellen und religiösen Vorzeichen gebunden. (shrink)