Adorno’s reading of Hegel’s theory of civil society shapes his way of addressing the core question of his critical theory of society: “Why do social crises not lead to social transformation?” Our chapter investigates the philosophical innovations at the heart of Hegel’s and Adorno’s respective approaches to the problems revealed by the antagonisms of civil society. We will do this by asking the questions: 1. How does Hegel conceive of the antagonistic structure of civil society? 2. How does Hegel conceive (...) of the way civil society addresses crises of legitimacy? 3. How does Adorno think of the way modern welfare states silence crises of legitimacy? 4. How does Adorno’s conception of Bannkreis aim to illuminate the root structure of how all antagonistic societies silence crises of legitimacy? We will thereby focus on the basic antagonism at work in both Adorno’s and Hegel’s theories of society: the antagonism between the overwhelming power of social orders over individuals, and the fragile power of individuals to demand legitimacy from their social orders. First, we will briefly sketch Adorno’s surprisingly affirmative reading of Hegel’s theory of civil society. We then go on to assess what role antagonism plays in the latter. We will argue that Hegel sees education (Bildung) as the central operator in reconciling the antagonisms of civil society. This will allow us to take a new look at Adorno’s social theory as tracing Bannkreis through a plurality of models, which discloses the reproduction of the social totality as a form of counter-education (Halbbildung). We ultimately argue that Adorno conceptualises Bannkreis as an answer to the question of Hegel’s account of world-spirit that revives the insights of Hegel’s conception of civil society. We conclude by taking a closer look at how Bildung turns into the counter-education of Bannkreis, and what potential for socially transformative practice this dialogue between Adorno and Hegel uncovers. (shrink)

The ML community recognizes the importance of anticipating and mitigating the potential negative impacts of benchmark research. In this position paper, we argue that more attention needs to be paid to areas of ethical risk that lie at the technical and scientific core of ML benchmarks. We identify overlooked structural similarities between human IQ and ML benchmarks. Human intelligence and ML benchmarks share similarities in setting standards for describing, evaluating and comparing performance on tasks relevant to intelligence. This enables us (...) to unlock lessons from feminist philosophy of science scholarship that need to be considered by the ML benchmark community. Finally, we outline practical recommendations for benchmark research ethics and ethics review. (shrink)

Dans le sillage de la pensée rawlsienne, plusieurs défenseurs du « coopérativisme » soutiennent que l’étendue de la justice est strictement nationale et non mondiale. Dans cet article, nous défendons l’idée que la coopération internationale, malgré son caractère tantôt informel, tantôt imparfait, n’en est pas moins fondamentale, et qu’elle génère bel et bien une exigence égalitaire. Nous appuierons cette thèse par un examen attentif du rôle joué par le patrimoine cognitif mondial. Dans l’économie du savoir qui est la nôtre, ce (...) qui fait la richesse d’une société est l’ensemble de ses savoir-faire, techniques productives, etc. Mais le savoir est un bien public mondial puisque son partage ne s’arrête pas aux frontières nationales. Ainsi, la simple possibilité de créer la moindre richesse – au niveau prétendument « national » – dépend d’entrée de jeu d’un produit coopératif mondial. (shrink)

One of the greatest challenges facing current generations is the environmental and climate crisis. Democracies, so far, have not distinguished themselves by their capacity to bring about appropriate political responses to these challenges. This is partly explicable in terms of a lack of state capacity in a globalized context. Yet we also argue that election-centered democracies suffer from several flaws that make them inapt to deal with this challenge properly: youth is not appropriately represented; parliaments suffer from a lack of (...) diversity; elected representatives’ time-horizon is too narrow; anti-regulation lobbies have too much influence. Considering this, we argue for rejuvenating our democratic systems by introducing a randomly selected legislative chamber, which would be permanently integrated to our political systems and would play a deliberative and scrutinizing role. We have identified four eco-political arguments in favor of such reform. The generational rebalancing argument, which we examine first, has some plausibility but is not the strongest. The other three arguments – its eco-epistemic promises; its wider time horizon; and the independence of its members from short-term corporate interests – however, appear to us to be much more convincing. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In a series of reports the United Nations Special Representative on the issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations has emphasized a tripartite framework regarding business and human rights that includes the state “duty to protect,” the TNC “responsibility to respect,” and “appropriate remedies” for human rights violations. This article examines the recent history of UN initiatives regarding business and human rights and places the tripartite framework in historical context. Three approaches to human rights are distinguished: moral, political, and legal. (...) It is argued that the tripartite framework’s grounding of the responsibility of TNCs to respect human rights is properly understood as moral and not merely as a political or legal duty. A moral account of the duty of TNCs to respect basic human rights is defended and contrasted with a merely strategic approach. The main conclusion of the article is that only a moral account of the basic human rights duties of TNCs provides a sufficiently deep justification of “the corporate responsibility to respect human rights” feature of the tripartite framework. (shrink)

An increasing number of regulations propose the notion of ‘AI audits’ as an enforcement mechanism for achieving transparency and accountability for artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Despite some converging norms around various forms of AI auditing, auditing for the purpose of compliance and assurance currently have little to no agreed upon practices, procedures, taxonomies, and standards. We propose the ‘criterion audit’ as an operationalizable compliance and assurance external audit framework. We model elements of this approach after financial auditing practices, and argue (...) that AI audits should similarly provide assurance to their stakeholders about AI organizations’ ability to govern their algorithms in ways that mitigate harms and uphold human values. We discuss the necessary conditions for the criterion audit, and provide a procedural blueprint for performing an audit engagement in practice. We illustrate how this framework can be adapted to current regulations by deriving the criteria on which ‘bias audits’ for hiring algorithms can be performed, as required by the recently effective New York City Local Law 144 of 2021. We conclude by offering critical discussion on the benefits, inherent limitations, and implementation challenges of applying practices of the more mature financial auditing industry to AI auditing where robust guardrails against quality assurance issues are only starting to emerge. Our discussion as informed by experiences in performing these audits in practice highlights the critical role that an audit ecosystem plays in ensuring the effectiveness of such methodology. (shrink)

This study is about Brentano’s criticism of a version of phenomenalism that he calls “mental monism” and which he attributes to positivist philosophers such as Ernst Mach and John Stuart Mill. I am interested in Brentano’s criticism of Mill’s version of mental monism based on the idea of “permanent possibilities of sensation.” Brentano claims that this form of monism is characterized by the identification of the class of physical phenomena with that of mental phenomena, and it commits itself to a (...) form of idealism. Brentano argues instead for a form of indirect or hypothetical realism based on intentional correlations. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage vise à délimiter le champ d'investigation de la philosophie de l'esprit. Il comprend huit chapitres. Le premier, le plus général, se veut une première délimitation du champ d'investigation de la philosophie de l'esprit à l'aide de ses trois concepts clés: l'intentionnalité, la rationalité et la conscience. Le chapitre suivant se veut une réflexion plus générale sur les motivations philosophiques qui commandent des jugements si opposés sur le statut ontologique et épistémologique de la psychologie du sens commun. Le chapitre (...) IV dresse un tableau de ces différents programmes et des grands courants de la philosophie de l'esprit, en commençant par le behaviorisme, le physicalisme, le fonctionnalisme et le connexionnisme. Les trois chapitres suivants porteront sur les problèmes et débats liés à la naturalisation des trois propriétés principales de l'esprit, des trois problèmes principaux de la philosophie de l'esprit, soit les concepts d'intentionnalité, de rationalité et de conscience. Le chapitre V porte, d'une part, sur la nature de l'intentionnalité et les différents concepts de directionnalité (aboutness) que l'on retrouve actuellement en philosophie de l'esprit ; d'autre part, il s'agira pour nous de décrire et de classer les différents programmes de naturalisation de l'intentionnalité. Le chapitre six est ouvre de nouvelles perpectives en ce qu'il porte sur la nature de la rationalité et sur les différentes tentatives et arguments en faveur de sa naturalisation. Le chapitre VII s'attaque au problème central de la philosophie de l'esprit, à savoir la conscience. (shrink)

Franz Brentano’s impact on the philosophy of his time and on 20th-century philosophy is considerable. The “sharp dialectician” (Freud) and “genial master” (Husserl) influenced philosophers of various allegiances, being acknowledged not only as the “grandfather of phenomenology” (Ryle) but also as an analytic philosopher “in the best sense of this term” (Chisholm). The fourteen new essays gathered together in this volume give an insight in three core issues of Brentano’s philosophy: consciousness (sect.1), intentionality (sect. 2) and ontology and metaphysics (sect. (...) 3). Two further sections of the volume deal with the posterity of his philoso¬phy: in section 4, the legacy of his account of sense perception and feeling is discussed, while the history of Brentano’s unpublished manuscripts is discussed in section 5. This section also presents an edition of a manuscript from 1899 on relations, along with the letters from Brentano to Marty which discuss this manuscript. The last part of section 5 contains the text of a public lecture given by Brentano on the laws of inference. (shrink)

This article applies the Kantian doctrine of respect for persons to the problem of sweatshops. We argue that multinational enterprises are properly regarded as responsible for the practices of their subcontractors and suppliers. We then argue that multinationalenterprises have the following duties in their off-shore manufacturing facilities: to ensure that local labor laws are followed; to refrain from coercion; to meet minimum safety standards; and to provide a living wage for employees. Finally, we consider and reply to the objection that (...) improving health and safety conditions and providing a living wage will cause greater harm than good. (shrink)

Human emotions guide verbal and non-verbal behaviour during social encounters. During public performances, performers’ emotions can be affected directly by an audience’s attitude. The valence of the emotional state (positive or negative) of a broad range of animal species is known to be associated with a body and visual orientation laterality bias. Here, we evaluated the influence of an audience’s attitude on professional actors’ head orientation and gaze direction during two theatrical performances with controlled observers’ reactions (Hostile vs Friendly audience). (...) First, our speech fluency analysis confirmed that an audience’s attitude influenced actors’ emotions. Second, we found that, whereas actors oriented more their head to the left (i.e. Right Hemisphere Bias) when the audience was hostile, they gazed more straight ahead at Friendly spectators. These results are in accordance with the Valence-Specific Hypothesis that proposes that processing stimuli with negative valences involves the right hemisphere (i.e. left eye) more than the left hemisphere. (shrink)

Human emotions guide verbal and non-verbal behaviour during social encounters. During public performances, performers’ emotions can be affected directly by an audience’s attitude. The valence of the emotional state (positive or negative) of a broad range of animal species is known to be associated with a body and visual orientation laterality bias. Here, we evaluated the influence of an audience’s attitude on professional actors’ head orientation and gaze direction during two theatrical performances with controlled observers’ reactions (Hostile vs Friendly audience). (...) First, our speech fluency analysis confirmed that an audience’s attitude influenced actors’ emotions. Second, we found that, whereas actors oriented more their head to the left (i.e. Right Hemisphere Bias) when the audience was hostile, they gazed more straight ahead at Friendly spectators. These results are in accordance with the Valence-Specific Hypothesis that proposes that processing stimuli with negative valences involves the right hemisphere (i.e. left eye) more than the left hemisphere. (shrink)

Il existe, en français, un ouvrage de référence sur la pensée anthropologique de Humboldt (Jean Quillien, 1991, réédité en 2015) mais rien de tel sur sa pensée du langage. Ce livre souhaite donc combler cette lacune tout en remettant à leur place certaines idées fausses. Il se révèle, à ce titre, triplement provocateur. D'une part, cet ouvrage rappelle que Humboldt se situe entièrement dans le prolongement de la tradition généraliste des grammaires philosophiques qu'il ne renie jamais entièrement. Il relit au (...) contraire cette tradition au moyen des conceptions de la philosophie allemande de Kant et Fichte. D'autre part, il souligne que Humboldt ne s'est pas contenté de formuler quelques idées générales sur le langage, mais a effectué un immense travail empirique sur près de 80 langues, rédigeant plus de 30 grammaires. Denis Thouard donne un aperçu de ce travail en évoquant l'édition des grammaires américaines effectuée ces dernières années à l'Académie de Berlin-Brandebourg, et développe le cas du basque, du chinois et de l'égyptien. C'est l'occasion de découvrir un linguiste véritable. Enfin, il permet de remettre en lumière le rôle essentiel et le plus souvent ignoré qu'a joué pour la pensée de Humboldt sa réflexion sur la traduction en analysant son travail de traducteur de l'Agamemnon d'Eschyle dans son contexte culturel. Une réflexion sur la question de la diversité des langues dans l'Europe actuelle, le renouveau des études sur l'origine des langues et les mésusages des idées de Humboldt accompagnent une présentation sélective et approfondie des points essentiels de sa pensée. (shrink)

This article applies the Kantian doctrine of respect for persons to the problem of sweatshops. We argue that multinational enterprises are properly regarded as responsible for the practices of their subcontractors and suppliers. We then argue that multinationalenterprises have the following duties in their off-shore manufacturing facilities: to ensure that local labor laws are followed; to refrain from coercion; to meet minimum safety standards; and to provide a living wage for employees. Finally, we consider and reply to the objection that (...) improving health and safety conditions and providing a living wage will cause greater harm than good. (shrink)

Le suicide collectif apparaît comme une aberration sociale, une extrême anomalie de la culture. Et si c'était au contraire l'aboutissement de toute collectivisation achevée? Si c'était la destinée cachée - sectaire et mystique - de toute histoire commune, de toute pensée unique? Admettons-le, ne serait-ce qu'un moment. Nous sommes alors contraints de bouleverser notre perception de la vie sociale et politique. Celle-ci ne devrait pas sa survie à la recherche d'unité bien-gérée, mais aux " trous " dans le collectif ; (...) à la résistance des corps vivants, et non à l'Esprit qui tente de les fondre en une mortelle idéalité commune. La théorie freudienne du " lien de masse " rend compte de cette dérive fatale des collectifs idéalisés. Sous- estimée par les sciences sociales, elle permet de lire ce qu'il advient aujourd'hui de nos sociétés saisies dans l'imago d'une " secte-monde ", et du péril majeur qui les y guette. Elle permet aussi, rétroactivement, d'analyser l'histoire occidentale comme une suite d'oscillations entre la capture fatale par l'Idéal et le retour à la pluralité vivante des Corps. Est-ce dans ce balancement, cette danse entre Corps et Esprit, que la culture humaine résiste au cours des temps à la fascination narcissique? (shrink)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), le philosophe des Lumières, de la raison, de l'universel et de la liberté, le solitaire de Koenigsberg (Prusse), a révolutionné durablement la philosophie en lui donnant un tour critique. Le geste critique consiste à diriger l'attention non pas sur les objets de la connaissance mais sur les conditions de leur constitution, ce à quoi Kant s'est employé méthodiquement dans la Critique de la raison pure (1781-87), la Critique de la raison pratique (1788) et la Critique de la (...) faculté de juger (1790). Philosopher, pour lui, ce n'est pas parvenir à une nouvelle définition du savoir, du juste ou du beau, mais s'interroger sur ce qui nous permet de parler du savoir, du juste ou du beau. Comment pouvons-nous penser ce que nous pensons? Quelles sont les règles que nous suivons dans nos jugements et nos actions, et dans quelle mesure sont-elles légitimes? C'est ce mode de questionnement qui autorise Kant à se réclamer de Socrate quand il évalue les discours et pratiques de son temps. Cet ouvrage se propose d'introduire à la cohérence mais aussi à l'actualité de la pensée de Kant, en exposant la signification de l'entreprise critique : revenant sur les conditions de l'activité philosophique, Kant découvre l'importance du jugement, de la réflexion et du sentiment. Il replace l'exercice de la raison dans la perspective concrète d'un sujet de sentiment, libre et sensible à la fois. On montre comment, à partir de là, il élabore une nouvelle conception de la subjectivité - legs de la philosophie kantienne à la pensée contemporaine. (shrink)

Les études colligées dans le présent ouvrage ont pour objet les Recherches logiques de Edmund Husserl. La plupart de ces études sont issues du colloque "Les Recherches logiques d'Edmund Husserl, origines et postérité de la phénoménologie (1900/1)" qui a eu lieu à Montréal au mois de mai 2001. Le prétexte à cet événement était de marquer le centenaire de la publication de l'ouvrage séminal de la phénoménologie par une réflexion sur sa signification actuelle, ses origines et sa postérité. L'ouvrage contient (...) douze études qui examinent divers aspects des Recherches logiques de Husserl. (shrink)

Cet article traite du problème de l'imaginaire dans les mathématiques et du débat opposant Husserl à K. Twardowski sur les représentations sans objet.

This paper is the general introduction to a collection of essays entitled Franz Brentano and Austrian Philosophy (forthcoming). In this substantial introduction, I comment several aspects of the recent reception of Brentano’s philosophical programme in contemporary philosophy, and the actual debates on topics such as emotions, values, and intentionality, for example. It is divided in four parts corresponding to the four sections of the book. The first three sections contain 11 original contributions on Brentano’s philosophy and its place in the (...) history of philosophy in Austria, and the last section contains three unpublished manuscripts from Alfred Kastil et Moritz Schlick. I. Descriptive psychology and phenomenology: Brentano and Husserl II. Brentano and the Vienna Circle III. Brentano and the history of philosophy IV. Documentation: Alfred Kastil and the Vienna Circle . (shrink)

We review recent developments in ethical pluralism, ethical particularism, Kantian intuitionism, rights theory, and climate change ethics, and show the relevance of these developments in ethical theory to contemporary business ethics. This paper explains why pluralists think that ethical decisions should be guided by multiple standards and why particularists emphasize the crucial role of context in determining sound moral judgments. We explain why Kantian intuitionism emphasizes the discerning power of intuitive reason and seek to integrate that with the comprehensiveness of (...) Kant’s moral framework. And we show how human rights can be grounded in human agency, and explain the connections between human rights and climate change. (shrink)

In paradigm exercises of agency, individuals guide their activities toward some goal. A central challenge for action theory is to explain how individuals guide. This challenge is an instance of the more general problem of how to accommodate individuals and their actions in the natural world, as explained by natural science. Two dominant traditions–primitivism and the causal theory–fail to address the challenge in a satisfying way. Causal theorists appeal to causation by an intention, through a feedback mechanism, in explaining guidance. (...) Primitivists postulate primitive agential capacities in their explanations. The latter neglect to explain how primitive capacities integrate with findings from natural science. The former do not explain why some feedback mechanism’s activity amounts to the agent’s guidance. In this paper I argue that both traditions should acknowledge a capacity to guide, as actually constituted by the executive system. I argue that appeals to this empirically discovered psychological system explain how individuals guide in a way that integrates with explanations from cognitive science. Individuals’ capacity to guide is embedded in the natural world through the activity of its constituent (mechanistic) components. (shrink)

In this dissertation I develop a general theory of coercion that allows one to distinguish cases of interpersonal coercion from cases of persuasion or manipulation, and cases of institutional coercion from cases of oppression. The general theory of coercion that I develop includes as one component a theory of second-order coercion. Second-order coercion takes place whenever one person intentionally impairs the formation of the second-order desires of another person, or constrains them after their formation, in a way that frustrates or (...) eliminates the possibility of the victim fulfilling certain of his or her first-order desires. The concept of second-order coercion is important because it suggests that a person's autonomy may be violated in ways that have not been previously recognized. In this dissertation I argue that the unique feature of all cases of coercion is that the alternatives available to the victim, with regard to the formation of his or her will, are intentionally constrained by another person in a way that violates the victim's autonomy. A general theory of coercion should be able to explain how institutions may be understood as coercive. I argue that if institutions are understood as social practices maintained for the purpose of achieving some end, then they may be properly understood as capable of coercion. ;This theory of coercion allows me to make two arguments concerning moral responsibility. First, I argue that current discussions of moral responsibility are inadequate because they fail to take seriously the claim that a person may be responsible, at least in part, for having the beliefs and desires that make a particular action a case of coercion. Second, I argue that discussions of moral responsibility are inadequate because they fail to recognize that an agent may not be responsible for the state of his or her will because he or she may have been coerced in a way that has not been previously recognized. (shrink)

In “Sweatshops and Respect for Persons” we argued on Kantian grounds that managers of multinational enterprises (MNEs) have the following duties: to adhere to local labor laws, to refrain from coercion, to meet minimum health and safety standards, and to pay workers a living wage. In their commentary on our paper Sollars and Englander challenge some of our conclusions. We argue here that several of their criticisms are based on an inaccurate reading of our paper, and that none of the (...) remaining criticisms successfully challenge our main arguments. By highlighting the shortcomings of their arguments we hope to advance discussion of the ethical treatment of workers in global supply chains. (shrink)

April 15, 2024: This article published in Early View in error. The article will republish shortly.

Over the course of human history, the sciences, and biology in particular, have often been manipulated to cause immense human suffering. For example, biology has been used to justify eugenic programs, forced sterilization, human experimentation, and death camps—all in an attempt to support notions of racial superiority. By investigating the past, the contributors to _Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins_ hope to better prepare us to discern ideological abuse of science when it occurs in the future. Denis R. (...) Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers bring together fourteen experts to examine the varied ways science has been used and abused for nonscientific purposes from the fifteenth century to the present day. Featuring an essay on eugenics from Edward J. Larson and an examination of the progress of evolution by Michael J. Ruse, _Biology and Ideology_ examines uses both benign and sinister, ultimately reminding us that ideological extrapolation continues today. An accessible survey, this collection will enlighten historians of science, their students, practicing scientists, and anyone interested in the relationship between science and culture. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Little theoretical attention has been paid to the question of what obligations corporations and other business enterprises have to the four billion people living at the base of the global economic pyramid. This article makes several theoretical contributions to this topic. First, it is argued that corporations are properly understood as agents of global justice. Second, the legitimacy of global governance institutions and the legitimacy of corporations and other business enterprises are distinguished. Third, it is argued that a deliberative democracy (...) model of corporate legitimacy defended by theorists of political CSR is unsatisfactory. Fourth, it is argued that a Rawlsian theoretical framework fails to provide a satisfactory account of the obligations of corporations regarding global justice. Finally, an ethical conception of CSR grounded in an appropriately modest set of duties tied to corporate relationships is then defended. This position is cosmopolitan in scope and grounded in overlapping arguments for human rights. (shrink)

Most shoppers like bargains. Do bargains come at the expense of workers in sweatshops around the world? The authors argue that many large multinational corporations are running the moral equivalents of sweatshops and are not properly respecting the rights of persons. They list a set of minimum standards of safety and decency that they claim all corporations should meet (and that many are not). Finally, they defend their call for improved working conditions by replying to objections that meeting improved conditions (...) will cause greater harm than good, even to the workers themselves. They consider many specifi c corporations and name names and point the finger at various forms of disrespect for persons, along the way. (shrink)

"The main conclusion of this essay is that it is plausible to conclude that corporations are capable of exhibiting intentionality, and as a result that they may be properly understood as moral agents" (p. 281).