Required reading for anyone who believes in the equality of the sexes. A long awaited, highly acclaimed new translation of Simone De Beauvoir's landmark work.

In this article we discuss what are the implications for improving the design of corporate ethics programs, if we focus on the moral motivation accounts offered by main ethical theories. Virtue ethics, deontological ethics and utilitarianism offer different criteria of judgment to face moral dilemmas: Aristotle's virtues of character, Kant's categorical imperative, and Mill's greatest happiness principle are, respectively, their criteria to answer the question "What is the right thing to do?" We look at ethical theories from a different perspective: (...) the question we ask is "Why should I do the right thing?" In other words, we deal with the problem of moral motivation, and we examine the different rationale the main ethical theories provide. We then point out the relation between moral motivation and the concept of rationality in the different approaches - is acting morally seen as an expression of rational behavior? Our analysis of moral motivation provides a useful framework to improve the understanding of the relationships between formal and informal elements of corporate ethics programs, emphasizing the importance of the latter, often overlooked in compliance-focused programs. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of moral imagination can provide a unifying approach to enhance the effectiveness of corporate ethics programs, by providing an intangible asset that supports the implementation of their formal components into management decision making. (shrink)

The VIDAS data set presents data from 200 participants from different countries and language backgrounds. They completed an oral expression and interaction test in the context of a Spanish certification exam for adult migrants. The aim of the VIDAS data set is to provide researchers in psycholinguistics and second language acquisition with a Spanish spoken corpus of traditionally marginalized and underrepresented learners, providing a compelling data set of oral interactions by migrants and refugees. The corpus contains more than 29 h (...) of recordings of the oral interactions of the participants with trained interviewers, as well as background information about the participants. It furthermore contains the scores obtained by the participants in the oral expression and interaction exam. The VIDAS corpus allows for the development of studies on L2 spoken language comprehension and processing, as well as for comparative analyses of language acquisition between different L1 groups at different linguistic levels. (shrink)

The emphasis in this approach to philosophy of history is on the system philosophers. The emphasis itself follows from the theme of the book, which is that man's vision of historical reality is ultimately reducible to religious or secular notions of progress, or to cyclical recurrence of some kind. All other outlooks on history are taken to be merely variations on these two basic themes. As a result, the modern existentialist, phenomenological and analytic approaches to history are all lumped together (...) in one short chapter at the end of the book. The linguistic approach goes unmentioned altogether. There is a special chapter on Theology of History and the Augustinian Spirit. The philosophers examined are Augustine, Vico, Kant, Turgot, Saint-Simon, Marx, Nietzsche, Danilevsky, Spengler, Sorokin, Hegel, Dilthey, Croce, Toynbee, Teilhard de Chardin, Maritain, Dawson, and Marrou. The bibliographical references are valuable. Unfortunately, the author accepts uncritically interpretations which have been vigorously challenged in the last thirty years, most notably in the cases of Hegel, Marx, and Dilthey.--H. B. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

Belle van Zuylen dicteerde haar brief aan haar neef toen deze bij haar in Frankrijk verbleef. Zij was al sinds zijn geboorte betrokken geweest bij zijn opvoeding, als raadgeefster van haar broer, de vader van Willem-René. Na de Franse Revolutie kon de jongeman geen aanspraak meer maken op de voorrechten van zijn adellijke geboorte, maar zou zichzelf met werken een plaats in de maatschappij moeten veroveren.

The proposal that there is an illusion of conscious will has been supported by findings that priming of stimulus location in a task requiring judgements of action-authorship can enhance participants’ experience of agency. We attempted to replicate findings from the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ task [Aarts, H., Custers, R., & Wegner, D. M. . On the inference of personal authorship: enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information. Consciousness and Cognition, 14, 439–458]. We also examined participants’ performance on this task in relation (...) to self-reported passivity experiences and hallucination-proneness. We found a significant effect of priming, with primes being found to increase the experience of agency. An interaction between gender and priming was also found, with priming enhancing feelings of agency in women but not in men. There were no significant correlations between levels of self-reported passivity experiences or hallucination-proneness and participants’ susceptibility to the priming effect on ratings of agency. Implications of these findings are discussed with regard to a prominent model of passivity experiences. (shrink)

L'article thématise la tension entre la compréhension d'une « Écriture sainte » et une philosophie critique « éclairée » dont la position est, au premier chef, représentée par Kant. Pour lui, l' interprétation de l' Écriture obéit uniquement au strict paradigme herméneutique. Il part du fait que l'homme, un être qui n'est pas purement rationnel, mais qui est simultanément raisonnable et soumis aux sens, est moralement obligé de saisir positivement les commandements éthiques fondés dans la raison comme des commandements divins. (...) Pour ce faire, il est « au mieux » préférable d'avoir une Écriture « sainte ». Son caractère « sacré » signifie que son texte reste, face à toute interprétation par une raison finie, ouvert à d'autres interprétations de sorte qu'aucune ne peut se dire définitive. Cela vaut tout particulièrement pour certains passages de l' Écriture qui sont difficiles voire impossibles à comprendre dans l'esprit et l'horizon d'une époque donnée. L'épisode de la tour de Babel et celui du bon Samaritain servent ici d'exemples. Der Aufsatz hat die Spannung zwischen einer kritischen, « aufgeklärten » Philosophie und dem Verstehen einer « Heiligen Schrift » zum Thema. Für die Position kritischen Philosophie steht in erster Linie die Philosophie Kants. Für ihn ist die Schriftauslegung immer noch das hermeneutischen Paradigma schlechthin. Er geht davon aus, daß der Mensch, als ein Wesen, das nicht rein vernünftig, sondern als Vernunftwesen zugleich Sinnenwesen ist, moralisch verpflichtet sei, die in reiner Vernunft begründeten Gebote der Moral positiv als göttliche Gebote aufzufassen. Dazu habe man « am besten » eine « heilige » Schrift. Ihre « Heiligkeit » bedeutet, daβ ihr Text gegenüber jeder Auslegung durch endliche Vernunft stehenbleibt für andere Auslegungen, so daβ keine Interpretation sich als endgültig verstehen kann. Das gilt besonders für Passagen der Schrift, die aus dem Geist und dem Horizont einer bestimmten Zeit schwer oder gar nicht zu verstehen sind. Als Beispiele dienen vor allem die Schriftstellen vom Turmbau zu Babel und vom barmherzigen Samariter. (shrink)

Cet article étudie l'interprétation, par Fénelon, des arguments platoniciens de Clément d'Alexandrie destinés, dans les Stromates, à inciter la conversion des païens au christianisme. S'il reconnaît la dette du Père alexandrin à l'égard de la pensée académique, Fénelon, pourtant, déforme et escamote les sources platoniciennes tout au long de son opuscule, dans le but évident de conformer la pensée de celui-ci à sa conception de l'élévation gnostique. Le platonisme du Gnostique de Fénelon est moins redevable à la tradition alexandrine qu'à (...) la théologie négative des mystiques de son temps. This paper studies Fénelon's interprétation of Clément of Alexandria's Platonic arguments in the Stromata which were intended to be used to convert pagans to Christianity. Although he acknowledges the debt owed to the Alexandrian Father with regard to academic thought, Fénelon, nevertheless, alters and skips over its Platonic origins throughout his op uscule, with the obvious objective of molding the thinking of the latter into his own concept of gnostic grandeur. The Platonism of the Gnostique owes less to the Alexandrian tradition than to the negative theology of the mystics of his times. (shrink)

In recent years there has been an explosion of interest by companies in developing approaches to instill values in their decision‐making processes and to manage and report on their social performance. The emerging field of social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting (SEAAR) is characterised by considerable differentiation not only in terminology, but also in methodology and focus. This article aims to analyse the key conceptual and methodological differences between internally focussed approaches to SEAAR, dealing with ethics (behavioural) issues, and (...) externally focussed approaches to SEAAR, dealing with social (stakeholder) issues. In their discussion of the benefits and potential pitfalls of exclusively internally or externally focussed approaches the authors suggest two organisational metaphors as heuristics – the Cultish and the Chameleon organisation. The authors then propose an integrative approach to SEAAR which will overcome this dissonance and initiate a mutually reinforcing process that, in the long‐term, can build both internal trust and cohesiveness and external credibility. The suggested approach is characterised as social and ethical alchemy since the aim is to achieve more than the sum of the two separate parts – a business ethics programme and a social reporting process – by creating leverage and synergy between the key components. (shrink)