uma das teses fundamentais de Habermas no que diz respeito à relação entre direito e moral é que o direito alivia três exigências que são feitas à moral, quais sejam, exigência cognitivas, motivacionais e organizacionais. Os defensores de uma relação forte entre direito e moral, como por exemplo Dworkin, sustentam que a moral deve ser chamada para resolver os casos difíceis do direito. Ora, Habermas parece afirmar justamente o contrário, a saber, que é o direito que é chamado a suprir (...) um déficit cognitivo da moral. O texto explora as consequências dessa afirmação para a teoria discursiva do direito de Habermas, em relação a uma das teses fundamentais do positivismo jurídico, qual seja, a de que a moral não pode ser um fundamento para o direito justamente por causa de sua indeterminação cognitiva, razão pela qual os positivistas jurídicos afirmam o elemento de decisão última da autoridade do direito, sem que, para tal, o conteúdo seja o ponto determinante. O texto coteja o quanto a teoria discursiva do direito de Habermas se aproxima ou se afasta dessa tese fundamental do positivismo jurídico. (shrink)

Para Kant, humanidade signi!ca o universal sentimento de participação e a faculdade de comunicação íntima e universal, sendo o que distingue o homem do animal. Dessa formulação, surge o conceito de sociabilidade legal, pelo qual um povo constitui uma coletividade duradoura, capaz de conciliar liberdade, igualdade e coação. Rohden sustentou que esse conceito, apesar de se relacionar com o contexto estético, não se restringiria a este, implicando uma compreensão ampliada do conceito de humanidade. A partir de tal hipótese, poder-se-ia entender (...) também a sociabilidade legal como um pré-requisito para uma constituição política, no sentido de uma capacidade e disposição para se deixar guiar por princípios do direito. Nesse sentido, o direito constituir-se-ia na forma da sociabilidade legal e na possibilidade de expressá-la concretamente. O objetivo deste texto é examinar em que sentido essa interpretação do conceito de sociabilidade legal sugerida por Rohden pode ou não corresponder ao texto kantiano. (shrink)

The hypothesis of this paper is that legal positivism depends on the non plausibility of strong moral cognitivism because of the non necessary connection thesis between law and morality that legal positivism is supposed to acknowledge. The paper concludes that only when based on strong moral cognitivism is it consistent to sustain the typical non-positivistic thesis of the necessary connection between law and morality. Habermas’s Philosophy of law is confronted with both positions.

Para Kant, humanidade signi!ca o universal sentimento de participação e a faculdade de comunicação íntima e universal, sendo o que distingue o homem do animal. Dessa formulação, surge o conceito de sociabilidade legal, pelo qual um povo constitui uma coletividade duradoura, capaz de conciliar liberdade, igualdade e coação. Rohden sustentou que esse conceito, apesar de se relacionar com o contexto estético, não se restringiria a este, implicando uma compreensão ampliada do conceito de humanidade. A partir de tal hipótese, poder-se-ia entender (...) também a sociabilidade legal como um pré-requisito para uma constituição política, no sentido de uma capacidade e disposição para se deixar guiar por princípios do direito. Nesse sentido, o direito constituir-se-ia na forma da sociabilidade legal e na possibilidade de expressá-la concretamente. O objetivo deste texto é examinar em que sentido essa interpretação do conceito de sociabilidade legal sugerida por Rohden pode ou não corresponder ao texto kantiano. (shrink)

O texto apresenta a teoria discursiva da aplicação do direito, tal como concebida por Habermas. Essa teoria constituiu um cruzamento entre normas procedimentais coativas e argumentação, de maneira que o procedimento juridicizado não deve pré-julgar ou dirigir a lógica da argumentação. No entanto, tal argumentação não pode ser entendida do mesmo modo que a argumentação moral, justamente devido às honras que deve prestar à legitimidade do direito oriunda do processo democrático, cuja racionalidade, nos argumentos morais, é mais complexa do que (...) a da argumentação moral. Para clarificar esse ponto fundamental, é apresentada a recusa habermasiana da tese do caso especial, de Alexy. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Habermas. Filosofia do direito. Aplicação do direito. Discurso jurídico. ABSTRACT The texts presents Habermas’s theory of legal discourse. In this theory legal coercive procedures are intertwined with processes of argumentation, in such a way that those procedures should not determine the logic of argumentation. But such an argumentation cannot be understood in the same way as moral argumentation, since the rationality which makes a law legitimate is more complex than the one of moral argumentation. In order to clarify that fundamental point, Habermas’s refusal of Alexy’s special case thesis shall be exposed. KEY WORDS – Habermas. Philosophy of law. Adjudication. Legal discourse. (shrink)

The text aims to explore legal and moral aspects of torture. Under the legal aspect the text compares three definitions of torture: UN definition, Brazilian definition, and Spanish definition. In this regard, neither the UN formulation nor the Brazilian formulation are ideal, because the Brazilian legal definition restricts the element of action by the part of the perpetrator of torture, and the UN convention restricts the effect on the victim, given that pain or suffering should be severe. The hypothesis is (...) that a better proposal could be linked to the Spanish Penal Code, which in its art. 174 defines torture as the submission of someone “to conditions or procedures that, due to their nature, duration or other circumstances, involve physical or mental suffering, the suppression or decrease of their faculties of knowledge, discernment or decision, or that otherwise undermine their moral integrity”. Concerning the moral meaning of the repulse to torture it is intended to defend the paradigmatic character of the human right to not be tortured in at least two respects. The first aspect refers to its universalizing vocation in the full sense, since it can be extended to all sentient beings. In this regard, the prohibition of torture goes beyond the dominium of personality to advance in the direction of a domain of suffering not determined by the mask of personality. The second aspect is that the prohibition stands for an absolute right with no exceptions, precisely because of its deeper moral content.Keywords:radical evil, torture, perpetrator. (shrink)

This article seeks to present the function that civil society fulfills in Hegel and Habermas. In this paper, civil society is characterized summarily, tending to the view of determining its functions. In Hegel, civil society is related to the production of wealth and fulfils an organizing and ed..

O maior problema do controle de constitucionalidade – um dos institutos básicos do Estado de direito –, com relação à sua justificação democrática, é a chamada dificuldade contra-majoritária [countermajoritarian difficulty], já apontada por Bickel. O texto apresenta o tratamento dessa questão em Habermas, Rawls e Dworkin, a partir da bioética, especialmente o caso do aborto, da eutanásia e da eugenia. Argumenta-se que a justificação moral de boa parte do controle de constitucionalidade encontra sua base em fundamentos morais impostos ao legislador, (...) a partir de uma perspectiva liberal. Tais fundamentos são reconstruídos, tendo em vista a posição tolerante de Locke concernente à problemática religiosa. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Bioética. Constitucionalidade. Liberalismo. Liberadade religiosa. ABSTRACT The major problem of the control over constitutionality – one of the basic institutes of the rule of law –, with regard to its democratic justification, is the so-called countermajoritarian difficulty, already highlighted by Bickel. The article shows how this issue is tackled by Habermas, Rawls, and Dworkin, from the standpoint of bioethics, especially in matters of abortion, euthanasia, and eugenics. It argues that the moral justification of a great deal of the control over constitutionality finds its basis on moral grounds imposed to the legislator from a liberal perspective. Such grounds are reconstructed with a view to recasting Locke’s tolerant position concerning religious affairs. KEY WORDS – Bioethics. Constitutionality. Liberalism. Religious freedom. (shrink)

O conteúdo normativo da modernidade fundamenta a distinção entre moral e ética, bem como, no âmbito da teoria da justiça, a prioridade do justo sobre o bom. A normatividade assim concebida parte do pluralismo incomensurável de doutrinas e concepções de bem. O direito à liberdade que sustenta o edifício do consenso liberal não é uma base suficiente para dar conta de decisões aceitáveis por todos em questões de bioética. Por isso, duas alternativas são possíveis, aquela de um modus vivendi entre (...) as várias posições e aquela processual. Sugere-se que somente esta última pode fundamentar um consenso razoável entre as diversas posições. (shrink)

This paper presents human rights in connection with the dispute between legal positivism and legal non-positivism. The importance of this topic can be evaluated by the debate that took place between Hart and Dworkin. Indeed, much of Dworkin’s work can be considered a reaction to Hart’s positivism. The presented study argues for the defense of the thesis that in order to understand such a debate it is important to take a position between moral noncognitivism and moral cognitivism. The hypothesis is (...) that legal positivism does depend on the non plausibility of strong moral cognitivism. Therefore, only based on strong moral cognitivism would it be consistent to sustain the typical non-positivistic thesis of the necessary connection between law and morality. Human rights are in the center of this debate because they constitute the core of the current morality, especially the most important core of justice. (shrink)

RESUMO O texto acalenta a hipótese de que as razões pelas quais Hobbes justifica a desobediência e mesmo a resistência ao soberano possam ser compreendidas a partir da teoria da boa-fé contratual, tal qual apresentada por Rawls em Uma teoria da justiça. ABSTRACT The text raises the hypothesis that the reasons why Hobbes justifies disobedience and even resistance to the sovereign can be understood from the contractual good-faith theory, as presented by Rawls in A Theory of Justice.

A Escola de Frankfurt abandona,progressivamente, as teses da filosofia da história,cuja aceitação fornecia uma espécie de fundamentopara a teoria crítica, na medida em que sepodia confiar nos conteúdos emancipatórios darazão, embutidos nos ideais da sociedade burguesa:Tentaremos mostrar o pressuposto obliteradodas teses da filosofia da história a partir dadialética do senhor e do escravo de Hegel, e porque, então, tais teses mostraram-se insuficientes.Por fim, buscaremos demonstrar que a figuraçãoteórica do oposto às teses da filosofia da históriaencontra-se nos Über den Begriff der (...) Geschichtede Benjamin. Além disso, a recuperação de umtal fundamento obliterado nas teses da filosofia dahistória determina, a nosso ver, a consideraçãomoral da teoria crítica habermasiana. (shrink)

Tugendhat propõe, em seu livro - üções sobre éUca - uma análise formal do que seja uma moral Nesse patamar busca-se estatuir as características de qualquer sistema que queira ser identificado como moral Ao delimitar o que é uma moral Tugendhat determina, não só um cnténo para o reconhecimento de um sistema moral, mas, também, o próprio signjficado das proposições morais. Nesse último ponto, mostraremos os imbricamentos, bem como as diferenças entre essa posição é aquela de Kant. No tocante às (...) éticas kantianas, ele aceita o que concerne ao conteúdo, configurado numa moral do respeito universal, mas recusa sua pretensa fundamentação absoluta. (shrink)

O texto apresenta, resumidamente, quatro teorias ou modelos de democracia: agregativa, deliberativa, agônica e homogênea. Apresenta, em seguida, diversas críticas endereçadas a tais modelos. Considerando essas teorias e suas críticas, o presente estudo busca apresentar elementos que seriam indispensáveis ao tratamento da democracia. Ao final, tece algumas considerações críticas e construtivas a respeito da importância de que tais elementos sejam considerados ao se tratar da democracia. Palavras-chave: Democracia. Elementos. Metateoria. Direito. Política.

Technology is often touted as a means for providing new opportunities for learning, economic development, and participation in digital-age citizenry—especially for those who have limited access to high-quality learning environments and who have historically been marginalized in decision-making processes. Unfortunately, these opportunities for advancement are inextricably linked to the possibility of continued disenfranchisement and oppression. Lack of access to technology—or an absence of informed guidance regarding its use—can actually magnify the inequities in students’ education and further limit their opportunities. For (...) these reasons, two of the most fundamental issues of cyber ethics in education are eliminating digital divides and promoting digital equity. In order to review the most recent trends in digital equity for elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education, this article analyzes 42 peer reviewed journal articles published in 2009-10 for trends in research and scholarly thought. (shrink)

The peculiar legacy of Husserl’s mereology, chiefly studied by analytic philosophers interested in ontology, has led to a partial understanding of the III. LU, which is too often reduced to a chapter of “formal ontology”. Yet, the power of this Investigation goes far beyond: it enabled Husserl to deal, in the framework of a unified theory, with a vast range of particular problems. The paper focuses on one of these issues, namely abstraction, so as to expose how Husserl instrumentalizes his (...) formal tools in order to tackle material issues. The existence of an up and down pattern is uncovered: Husserl first reinterprets the psychological problem of abstraction in ontological terms, before coming back to the original problem with new insights. The second, correlative aim of the paper is to emphasize the key role played by Friedrich Schumann, a forgotten yet crucial character for Husserl’s conception of abstraction. (shrink)

This article aims to review the standard objections to dualism and to argue that will either fail to convince someone committed to dualism or are flawed on independent grounds. I begin by presenting the taxonomy of metaphysical positions on concrete particulars as they relate to the dispute between materialists and dualists, and in particular substance dualism is defined. In the first section, several kinds of substance dualism are distinguished and the relevant varieties of this kind of dualism are selected. The (...) remaining sections are analyses of the standard objections to substance dualism : It is uninformative, has troubles accounting for soul individuation, causal pairing and interaction, violates laws of physics, is made implausible by the development of neuroscience and it postulates entities beyond necessity. I conclude that none of these objections is successful. (shrink)

This book is an anthology of some of the most influential research on basic income in the period of roughly 1960-2010.

Roughly speaking, classical statistical physics is the branch of theoretical physics that aims to account for the thermal behaviour of macroscopic bodies in terms of a classical mechanical model of their microscopic constituents, with the help of probabilistic assumptions. In the last century and a half, a fair number of approaches have been developed to meet this aim. This study of their foundations assesses their coherence and analyzes the motivations for their basic assumptions, and the interpretations of their central concepts. (...) The most outstanding foundational problems are the explanation of time-asymmetry in thermal behaviour, the relative autonomy of thermal phenomena from their microscopic underpinning, and the meaning of probability. A more or less historic survey is given of the work of Maxwell, Boltzmann and Gibbs in statistical physics, and the problems and objections to which their work gave rise. Next, we review some modern approaches to (i) equilibrium statistical mechanics, such as ergodic theory and the theory of the thermodynamic limit; and to (ii) non-equilibrium statistical mechanics as provided by Lanford's work on the Boltzmann equation, the so-called Bogolyubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon approach, and stochastic approaches such as `coarse-graining' and the `open systems' approach. In all cases, we focus on the subtle interplay between probabilistic assumptions, dynamical assumptions, initial conditions and other ingredients used in these approaches. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyse the relation between the second law of thermodynamics and the so-called arrow of time. For this purpose, a number of different aspects in this arrow of time are distinguished, in particular those of time-reversal (non-)invariance and of (ir)reversibility. Next I review versions of the second law in the work of Carnot, Clausius, Kelvin, Planck, Gibbs, Caratheodory and Lieb and Yngvason, and investigate their connection with these aspects of the arrow of time. It (...) is shown that this connection varies a great deal along with these formulations of the second law. According to the famous formulation by Planck, the second law expresses the irreversibility of natural processes. But in many other formulations irreversibility or even time-reversal non-invariance plays no role. I therefore argue for the view that the second law has nothing to do with the arrow of time. (shrink)

The target article by Locke & Bogin (L&B) focuses on the evolution of language as a communicative tool. They neglect, however, that from infancy onwards humans have the ability to go beyond successful behaviour and to reflect upon language (and other domains of knowledge) as a problem space in its own right. This ability is not found in other species and may well be what makes humans unique.

This study investigates the effects of internal and external corporate governance and monitoring mechanisms on the choice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement and the value of firms engaging in CSR activities. The study finds the CSR choice is positively associated with the internal and external corporate governance and monitoring mechanisms, including board leadership, board independence, institutional ownership, analyst following, and anti- takeover provisions, after controlling for various firm characteristics. After correcting for endogeneity and simultaneity issues, the results show that (...) CSR engagement positively influences firm value measured by industry-adjusted Tobin’s q. We find that the impact of analyst following for firms that engage in CSR on firm value is strongly positive, while the board leadership, board independence, blockholders’ ownership, and institutional ownership play a relatively weaker role in enhancing firm value. Furthermore, we find that CSR activities that address internal social enhancement within the firm, such as employees diversity, firm relationship with its employees, and product quality, enhance the value of firm more than other CSR subcategories for broader external social enhancement such as community relation and environmental concerns. (shrink)

This paper outlines a framework of the temporal interpretation in Chinese with a special focus on complement and relative clauses. It argues that not only does Chinese have no morphological tenses but there is no need to resort to covert semantic features under a tense node in order to interpret time in Chinese. Instead, it utilises various factors such as the information provided by default aspect, the tense-aspect particles, and pragmatic reasoning to determine the temporal interpretation of sentences. It is (...) shown that aspectual markers in Chinese play the same role that tense plays in a tense language. This result implies that the Chinese phrase structure has AspP above VP but no TP is above AspP. (shrink)

In this article, we examine the empirical association between corporate governance (CG) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement by investigating their causal effects. Employing a large and extensive US sample, we first find that while the lag of CSR does not affect CG variables, the lag of CG variables positively affects firms’ CSR engagement, after controlling for various firm characteristics. In addition, to examine the relative importance of stakeholder theory and agency theory regarding the associations among CSR, CG, and corporate (...) financial performance (CFP), we also examine the relation between CSR and CFP. After correcting for endogeneity bias, our results show that CSR engagement positively influences CFP, supporting the conflict-resolution hypothesis based on stakeholder theory, but not the CSR overinvestment argument based on agency theory. Furthermore, firms’ CSR engagement with the community, environment, diversity, and employees plays a significantly positive role in enhancing CFP. (shrink)

This study was conducted to determine how culture influences the ethical perception of managers. Most studies conducted so far have only stated similarities and differences in ethical perception between cultural or ethnic groups and little attention has been paid towards understanding how cultural values influence the ethnic groups' ethical perception. Moreover, most empirical research in this area has focused on moral judgement, moral decision making and action, with limited empirical work in the area of ethical perception. A total of 22 (...) interviews were conducted and the questionnaire survey yielded 272 managerial responses. Three implications were obtained based on the findings of the study. The first implication is that differences in ethical perception can exist when one culture attributes moral significance to something that another culture does not. The results of the study also suggest that similarities in ethical perception can occur when a situation is viewed as an accepted and institutionalised part of doing business. Finally, the findings of the study also show that the influence of culture on ethical perception varied according to the different types of scenarios. (shrink)

Psychiatric diagnoses such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are primarily attributed on the basis of behavioral criteria. The aim of most of the biomedical research on ASD is to uncover the underlying mechanisms that lead to or even cause pathological behavior. However, in the philosophical and sociological literature, it has been suggested that autism is also to some extent a ‘social construct’ that cannot merely be reduced to its biological explanation. We show that a one-sided adherence to either a biological (...) or a social explanation leads to a moral dilemma, a Catch-22, for autistics and for those living with them. Such explanations close the space for self-identifying as autistic and at the same time being considered to be in good mental health. They foreclose the possibility of making sense of the lived experience of (and with) autistics. In this paper we argue that such lack of space for moral imagination inherently leads to scientific stalemate. We propose that one can only go beyond this stalemate by taking an ethical stance in theorizing, one that enables better intersubjective understanding. Only on such a view can behavior and biology be linked without either disconnecting them or reducing the one to the other. (shrink)

The concept of natural kind is center stage in the debates about scientific realism. Champions of scientific realism such as Richard Boyd hold that our most developed scientific theories allow us to “cut the world at its joints” (Boyd, 1981, 1984, 1991). In the long run we can disclose natural kinds as nature made them, though as science progresses improvements in theory allow us to revise the extension of natural kind terms.

This paper proposes an alternative view of the connection between knowledge and truth. Truth is traditionally seen as a semantic notion, i.e. a relation between what we say about the world and the world itself. Epistemologists and philosophers of science are therefore apt to resort to correspondence theories of truth in order to deal with the question whether our theories and beliefs are true. Correspondence theories try to define truth, but, in order to do so, they must choose a truth (...) bearer, i.e. something capable of being true, for instance, propositions, sentences or statements. According to the analysis here proposed, none of these truth bearers can be defined without reference to the others. The pragmatic, alternative view here presented, in its turn, is unaffected by this kind of conceptual difficulty. According to this view, one must focus on the use of truth terms – such as ‘true’, ‘false’, ‘correct’, ‘appropriate’, etc. – and the methodological role such terms play in the investigative practices and research programs to be found both in the sciences and in other, everyday investigative activities, such as forensic and journalistic investigations. (shrink)

This paper gives an analysis of the Chinese distributivity marker dou 'all', which can occur not only with definite plural NPs but also with NPs whose determiner is a quantifier word such as mei 'every' or dabufen-de 'most'. Besides normal distributive predicates, it can also occur with certain types of collective predicates. The difficulties of giving a compositional interpretation to constructions of these kinds are discussed in detail. I show that we can solve those difficulties if we treat dou as (...) a generalized distributivity marker in the sense of Schwarzschild (1991, 1996), which distributes over the members of a plurality cover. Apart from the above topic, which is more narrowly a semantics topic, this paper also discusses some syntax-semantics interface issues related to the distribution of dou's associates. (shrink)

It has been a longstanding problem to show how the irreversible behaviour of macroscopic systems can be reconciled with the time-reversal invariance of these same systems when considered from a microscopic point of view. A result by Lanford shows that, under certain conditions, the famous Boltzmann equation, describing the irreversible behaviour of a dilute gas, can be obtained from the time-reversal invariant Hamiltonian equations of motion for the hard spheres model. Here, we examine how and in what sense Lanford’s theorem (...) succeeds in deriving this remarkable result. Many authors have expressed different views on the question which of the ingredients in Lanford’s theorem is responsible for the emergence of irreversibility. We claim that these interpretations miss the target. In fact, we argue that there is no time-asymmetric ingredient at all. (shrink)