‘‘Post-normal science’’ has received much attention in recent years, but like many iconic concepts, it has attracted differing conceptualizations, applications, and implications, ranging from being a ‘‘cure-all’’ for democratic deficit to the key to achieving more sustainable futures. This editorial article introduces a Special Issue that takes stock of research on PNS and critically explores how such research may develop. Through reviewing the history and evolution of PNS, the authors seek to clarify the extant definitions, conceptualizations, and uses of PNS. (...) The authors identify five broad areas of research on, or using, PNS which have developed over four decades. Their analysis suggests that the 1990s represent a symbolic watershed in the use of PNS terminology, when the concept was further developed and applied to highly complicated issues such as climate change. The authors particularly distinguish between uses of PNS as a normative prescription and as a practical method. Through this classification, they set out gaps and research questions arising. They then briefly summarize the Special Issue articles and consider their relationship to each other and the research questions raised by their analysis. They conclude by considering what the articles in this issue suggest for future theory building in PNS and related scholarship. (shrink)

In this article, we explore the institutional negotiation of public engagement in matters of science and technology. We take the example of the Science in Society dialogue program initiated by the UK’s Royal Society, but set this case within the wider experience of the public engagement activities of a range of charities, corporations, governmental departments, and scientific institutions. The novelty of the analysis lies in the linking of an account of the dialogue event and its outcomes to the values, practices, (...) and imperatives—the institutional rationality—of the commissioning organization. We argue that the often tacit institutional construction of scientific citizenship is a critical, and relatively undeveloped, element of analysis—one that offers considerable insight into the practice and democratic implications of engaging publics in science and science policy. We also present evidence indicating that over time the expanding ‘‘capacities’’ associated with dialogue can act in subtle ways to enroll other elements of institutional architectures into more reflexive modes of thinking and acting. In the concluding section of the article, we consider the ways in which research and practice could engage more squarely with facets of institutional context and culture. (shrink)

Written by two of the leading figures in the field, this is a lucid and systematic introduction to semantics as applied to transformational grammars of the ...

Introduction -- The end of history and the Kantian moment -- The progressive mind and the Islamist challenge -- The incoherence of the philosophers -- The language of progress and the closure of the European mind -- The networked global order -- All roads lead to China -- Maxims or axioms? -- The revenge of politics and the search for order -- Conclusion -- Afterword : the study of international relations and the erosion of acdemic integrity.

Durante los años 1880, Nietzsche propone una idea original de individuo en tanto pluralidad como un modo de superación del difundido nihilismo con respecto a la unidad. Sus escritos, tanto editados como inéditos, presentan una crítica aguda de la concepción heredada de unidad anímica y cultural acorde con la crisis de identidad que vive Europa en la segunda mitad del siglo xix. Nuestro objetivo es mostrar un hilo que va desde la biología celular hasta la filosofía de Nietzsche. Consideramos cómo (...) la biología celular, especialmente con Rudolph Virchow, inauguró la crítica de la noción de Individuum desde el plano orgánico. Eso constituyó un motivo fuerte en la psicología de los franceses Hippolyte Taine y Theódule Ribot, quienes transpusieron el problema al ámbito anímico y de la psicopatología. Ambos concluyeron con un fuerte cuestionamiento sobre la unidad y simplicidad del yo. Eso generó un profundo interés en la filosofía de Nietzsche que en repetidas ocasiones se refiere al Individuum como una multiplicidad de células. Finalmente, profundizaremos en el registro nietzscheano acerca del Individuum, ya que constituye uno de los costados del pensamiento sobre el Übermensch, que Nietzsche imagina inspirado en los grandes hombres del Renacimiento, como posible superación del nihilismo. Among possible ways that Nietzsche can take to deal with Nihilism and its challenges, he proposes an original idea of plural individual. His papers both published and unpublished, present a sharp critique of the inherited view of psychic and cultural unit. It was in line with the identity's crisis faced by Europe along the second half of the nineteenth century. Our goal is to show a thread that goes from cell biology to Nietzsche's philosophy. We see how cell biology, precisely through Rudolph Virchow, inaugurated the critique of the notion of organic Individuum from the organic field. It became a strong subject in the psychology of Hippolyte Taine and Theódule Ribot. They transposed the issue to the field of mind and psychopathology. Both concluded in a strong challenge on the self's unity and simplicity. This generated a deep concern in Nietzsche's philosophy. He repeatedly refers to Individuum as a multiplicity of cells. Finally, we will go in deep into the Nietzschean consideration about Individuum because this topic means one important aspect of the concept of Übermensch that Nietzsche imagines inspired by the great men of the Renaissance as a promising way out of Nihilism. (shrink)

Scientists have used models for hundreds of years as a means of describing phenomena and as a basis for further analogy. In Scientific Models in Philosophy of Science, Daniela Bailer-Jones assembles an original and comprehensive philosophical analysis of how models have been used and interpreted in both historical and contemporary contexts. Bailer-Jones delineates the many forms models can take (ranging from equations to animals; from physical objects to theoretical constructs), and how they are put to use. She examines (...) early mechanical models employed by nineteenth-century physicists such as Kelvin and Maxwell, describes their roots in the mathematical principles of Newton and others, and compares them to contemporary mechanistic approaches. Bailer-Jones then views the use of analogy in the late nineteenth century as a means of understanding models and to link different branches of science. She reveals how analogies can also be models themselves, or can help to create them. The first half of the twentieth century saw little mention of models in the literature of logical empiricism. Focusing primarily on theory, logical empiricists believed that models were of temporary importance, flawed, and awaiting correction. The later contesting of logical empiricism, particularly the hypothetico-deductive account of theories, by philosophers such as Mary Hesse, sparked a renewed interest in the importance of models during the 1950s that continues to this day. Bailer-Jones analyzes subsequent propositions of: models as metaphors; Kuhn's concept of a paradigm; the Semantic View of theories; and the case study approaches of Cartwright and Morrison, among others. She then engages current debates on topics such as phenomena versus data, the distinctions between models and theories, the concepts of representation and realism, and the discerning of falsities in models. (shrink)

In this book , Lorraine Besser-Jones develops a eudaimonistic virtue ethics based on a psychological account of human nature. While her project maintains the fundamental features of the eudaimonistic virtue ethical framework—virtue, character, and well-being—she constructs these concepts from an empirical basis, drawing support from the psychological fields of self-determination and self-regulation theory. Besser-Jones’s resulting account of "eudaimonic ethics" presents a compelling normative theory and offers insight into what is involved in being a virtuous person and "acting well." (...) This original contribution to contemporary ethics and moral psychology puts forward a provocative hypothesis of what an empirically-based moral theory would look like. (shrink)

The received view of Martin Heidegger’s work is that he leaves little room for reason in the practice of philosophy or the conduct of life. Citing his much-scorned remark that reason is the “stiff-necked adversary of thought”, critics argue that Heidegger’s philosophy effectively severs the tie between reason and normativity, leaving anyone who adheres to his position without recourse to justifying reasons for their beliefs and actions. Transcending Reason is a collection of essays by leading Heidegger scholars that challenges this (...) view by exploring new ways to understand Heidegger’s approach to the relationship between reason, normativity, and the philosophical methodology that gives us access to these issues. The volume points to Heidegger’s novel approach to reason understood in terms of what he calls Dasein’s ‘transcendence’—the ability to occupy the world as a space of normatively structured meanings in which we navigate our striving to be. By examining the strengths and weaknesses of this new and innovative take on Heidegger’s philosophy, this collection considers the possibility that he does not sever but rather reconceives the relation between reason and normativity. -/- . (shrink)

Virtue ethics is on the move both in Anglo-American philosophy and in the rest of the world. This volume uniquely emphasizes non-Western varieties of virtue ethics at the same time that it includes work in the many different fields or areas of philosophy where virtue ethics has recently spread its wings. Just as significantly, several chapters make comparisons between virtue ethics and other ways of approaching ethics or political philosophy or show how virtue ethics can be applied to "real world" (...) problems. (shrink)

The identification of two possible readings – de re and de dicto – of modal claims is considered one of the greatest achievements of Abelard’s logic. In the Dialectica and the Logica “Ingredientibus,” Abelard uses this distinction as a basis for his modal semantics and theory of modalities. Rather than focusing on Abelard’s own theory, the aim of this article is to pay attention to a number of sources that – like Abelard’s logical works – are datable to the first (...) decades of the twelfth century, to investigate whether the de re–de dicto distinction was already adopted and debated in them. It argues that, even if there is no systematic theorization of the distinction in these sources, Abelard’s contemporaries put forward a number of questions concerning the syntax and the signification of modal claims that contributed to set the stage for the distinction’s identification and later development. (shrink)

The notion of nature is central not only to Abelard’s theory of cognition and to his treatment of universals, but also to Abelard’s modal logic, to his discussion of future contingents and to his theory of conditionals. In this essay, I emphasize how the notion of nature—despite its pervasiveness in Abelard’s philosophy and despite the attention that has been paid to it—still raises puzzling questions to interpreters. One of these puzzles has to do with Abelard’s idea that different individuals may (...) be “of a same nature,” a claim that according to some is hardly compatible with the nominalist position he endorsed. Another interpretative issue is raised by Abelard’s claims in De Intellectibus that substances have more than one nature, and that we might consider things as being of a different nature depending on which of their properties we pay attention to. Given Abelard’s essentialist framework, his assertions on the multiplicity of natures associable to a single individual may sound perplexing. Other issues that I take into account are Abelard’s attribution of natures to non-existent things such as chimaeras or horned men, and his remarks concerning the accessibility of natures to our knowledge. (shrink)

El artículo se centra en el filósofo argentino Eugenio Pucciarelli (1907-1995) y su recepción de la fenomenología, a la que confiere un sesgo humanista. Se procederá a una introducción a su contribución a la fenomenología en América Latina y se abordarán los siguientes temas: 1) la misión de la filosofía, las diversas vías de acceso a su esencia, en particular aquellas de Scheler, Dilthey y Husserl, 2) su recepción de Husserl en cuanto concierne a los ideales de ciencia y de (...) razón, 3) la crisis de la razón y de la evidencia, 4) su concepción pluralista de la razón, del tiempo y de la cultura, 5) humanismo y libertad. La tesis sostiene que su concepción de la filosofía, que enfatiza la dimensión personal y el compromiso social de la práctica filosófica, revela un profundo humanismo pluralista que no descuida su función militante y crítica, evidenciado así la actualidad de su mensaje. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) -- Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929) -- Martin Buber (1878-1965) -- Leo Strauss (1899-1973) -- Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-1995).

I reply to each of the contributions in this issue. I agree with much that Hillel Steiner argues, especially his insistence that the associated ideas of impartiality and discontinuity are crucial to dealing satisfactorily with a diversity of competing claims. I am, however, less willing to conceive provision for that diversity as the role, rather than a role, that we should ascribe to rights. I question the success of David Miller’s endeavour to provide a unified justification of human rights grounded (...) in the concept of need. It is the notion of a minimally decent human life, rather than need itself, that does most of the justificatory work in Miller’s argument and, arguably, that notion does not deliver a genuinely unitary account of human rights. I concede the case for state funding of opera and the arts more generally to John Horton’s argument, but defend neutralism, and its associated distinction between the right and the good, as a strategy for dealing with diversity, including cultural diversity. I resist Richard Bellamy’s attempt to ground all basic rights in democracy and suggest that his argument relies upon idealized assumptions about the functioning of democracy. I share much of his objection to substituting judicial for political decision-making but argue that a strong moral commitment to rights need not imply a shift in power from democratic processes to courts. I endorse Albert Weale’s argument for favouring a beneficial design approach over a rights approach to healthcare and to many other social goods. Rights should not monopolize our moral and political thinking. (shrink)

Research has shown that the construction of visual representations may have a positive effect on cognitive skills, including argumentation. In this paper we present a study on learning argumentation through computer-supported argument diagramming. We specifically focus on whether students, when provided with an argument-diagramming tool, create better diagrams, are more motivated, and learn more when working with other students or on their own. We use learning analytics to evaluate a variety of student activities: pre and post questionnaires to explore motivational (...) changes; the argument diagrams created by students to evaluate richness, complexity and completion; and pre and post knowledge tests to evaluate learning gains. (shrink)

Previous studies consistently showed age-related differences in temporal judgment and temporal memory. Importantly, emotional valence plays a crucial role in older adults’ information processing. In this study, we examined the effects of emotions at the intersection between time and memory, analysing age-related differences in a temporal source memory task. Twenty-five younger adults (age range 18–35), 25 old adults (age range 65–74), and 25 old–old adults (age range 75–84) saw a series of emotional pictures in three sessions separated by a one-day (...) rest period. In the fourth session, participants were asked to indicate in which session (1, 2, or 3) they saw each picture. Results showed that old–old adults tended to collocate negative pictures distant in time, while positive stimuli were remembered as more recent than real, compared to neutral pictures. To a lower extent, people over 65 showed the same pattern of results. In contrast, emotional valence did not affect younger adults’ temporal positioning of stimuli. Current findings fit well with the Socio-Emotional Selectivity Theory’s assumptions and extended the literature on the positivity effect to temporal source memory. (shrink)

The concept of sustainability was developed in response to stakeholder demands. One of the key mechanisms for engaging stakeholders is sustainability disclosure, often in the form of a report. Yet, how reporting is used to engage stakeholders is understudied. Using resource dependence and stakeholder theories, we investigate how companies within the same industry address different dependencies on stakeholders for economic, natural environment, and social resources and thus engage stakeholders accordingly. To achieve this objective, we conducted our research using qualitative research (...) methods. Our findings suggest that the resource dependencies on different stakeholders lead to development of different stakeholder relationships and thus appropriate resources within the company to execute engagement strategies that are informing, responding, or involving. Our research explains why diversity exists in sustainability disclosure by studying how it is used to engage stakeholders. We find that five sustainability reporting characteristics are associated with the company’s stakeholder engagement strategy: directness of communication, clarity of stakeholder identity, deliberateness of collecting feedback, broadness of stakeholder inclusiveness, and utilization of stakeholder engagement for learning. Our study develops the literature by providing insight into companies’ choices of stakeholder engagement strategy thus explaining diversity in sustainability reporting based on the characteristics and relationships with specific stakeholders. (shrink)

Research from behavioural sciences shows that people reach decisions in a much less rational and well-considered way than was often assumed. The doctrine of informed consent, which is an important ethical principle and legal requirement in medical practice, is being challenged by these insights into decision-making and real-world choice behaviour. This article discusses the implications of recent insights of research on decision-making behaviour for the informed consent doctrine. It concludes that there is a significant tension between the often non-rational choice (...) behaviour and the traditional theory of informed consent. Responsible ways of dealing with or solving these problems are considered. To this end, patient decisions aids are discussed as suitable interventions to support autonomous decision-making. However, current PDAs demand certain improvements in order to protect and promote autonomous decision-making. Based on a conception of autonomy, we will argue which type of improvements are needed. (shrink)

In this new and original book, Claire Armon-Jones examines the concept of affect and various philosophical positions which attempt to define and characterize it: the standard view, the neo-cognitivist view, and the objectual thesis. She contends that these views radically distort our understanding of affect by disregarding modes of affect which fail to conform to the accounts they each employ. Against the standard and neo-cognitivist views she argues that the notions they use to characterize affect are neither necessary nor (...) sufficient; and against the objectual thesis she further argues that affective states exhibit degrees of independence from the concept of an object. She develops a new theory of the varieties of affect that explains their cognitive nature, their felt aspect, their special logic and the relationship between their objectless and object-directed forms. Armon-Jones concludes by suggesting that her arguments call into question certain assumptions about the rationality and moral status of affect and require a revision of the conception of the good in affect. (shrink)

Kausales Denken spielt sowohl im Alltag wie auch im wissenschaftlichen Forschungsprozess eine zentrale Rolle. Es erlaubt uns, Phänomene vorherzusagen, zu kontrollieren und zu verstehen. Kausales Denken geht über die Angabe der Ursachen eines Phänomens hinaus: Wollen wir verstehen, warum ein Fahrrad fährt, so versuchen wir, Schritt für Schritt nachzuvollziehen, wie die einzelnen Bestandteile des Fahrrads zusammenwirken, um miteinander die Bewegung zu produzieren. Wir sind an dem Mechanismus interessiert, durch den das Phänomen zustande kommt. Dieses Vorgehen wird in der Wissenschaftsphilosophie wie (...) auch in der Kognitionspsychologie mit Hilfe mechanistischer Theorien kausalen Denkens beschrieben. Der Sammelband bringt erstmals Vertreter beider Disziplinen in sechs aufeinander abgestimmten Beiträgen zusammen. Neben einer Diskussion der Kernmerkmale mechanistischen Denkens stehen insbesondere Fragen nach dem Erwerb mechanistischer Denkstrukturen und nach der Rolle von Handlungen und Handlungserfahrungen im Fokus. (shrink)

An introduction to sociological theories -- Emile Durkheim -- Marx and Marxism -- Max Weber -- Feminist theories -- Interpretive sociology : action theories -- Michel Foucault : discourse theory and the body-centredness of modernity -- Language and social life : structuralism, post-structuralism and relativism -- Post-modernity and postmodernism -- Critical responses to post-modernity and postmodernism.

Controlled human malaria infection (CHMI) studies involve the deliberate infection of healthy volunteers with malaria parasites under controlled conditions to study immune responses and/or test drug or vaccine efficacy. An empirical ethics study was embedded in a CHMI study at a Kenyan research programme to explore stakeholders’ perceptions and experiences of deliberate infection and moral implications of these. Data for this qualitative study were collected through focus group discussions, in‐depth interviews and non‐participant observation. Sixty‐nine participants were involved, including CHMI study (...) volunteers, community representatives and research staff. Data were managed using QSR Nvivo 10 and analysed using an inductive‐deductive approach, guided by ethics literature. CHMI volunteers had reasonable understanding of the study procedures. Decisions to join were influenced by study incentives, trust in the research institution, their assessment of associated burdens and motivation to support malaria vaccine development. However, deliberate malaria infection was a highly unusual research strategy for volunteers, community representatives and some study staff. Volunteers’ experiences of physical, emotional and social burdens or harms were often greater than anticipated initially, and fluctuated over time, related to specific procedures and events. Although unlikely to deter volunteers' participation in similar studies in furture, we argue that the dissonance between level of understanding of the burdens involved and actual experiences are morally relevant in relation to community engagement, informed consent processes, and ongoing support for volunteers and research staff. We further argue that ethics oversight of CHMI studies should take account of these issues in deciding whether consent, engagement and the balance of benefits and harms are reasonable in a given context. (shrink)

Scientific models represent aspects of the empirical world. I explore to what extent this representational relationship, given the specific properties of models, can be analysed in terms of propositions to which truth or falsity can be attributed. For example, models frequently entail false propositions despite the fact that they are intended to say something "truthful" about phenomena. I argue that the representational relationship is constituted by model users "agreeing" on the function of a model, on the fit with data and (...) on the aspects of a phenomenon that are modelled. Model users weigh the propositions entailed by a model and from this decide which of these propositions are crucial to the acceptance and continued use of the model. Thus, models represent phenomena when certain propositions they entail are true, but this alone does not exhaust the representational relationship. Therefore, the constraints that produce the choice of the relevant propositions in a model must also be examined and their analysis contributes to understanding the relationship between models and phenomena. (shrink)

With the increased use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in wildlife conservation, issues around whether AI-based monitoring tools in wildlife conservation comply with standards regarding AI Ethics are on the rise. This review aims to summarise current debates and identify gaps as well as suggest future research by investigating (1) current AI Ethics and AI Ethics issues in wildlife conservation, (2) Initiatives Stakeholders in AI for wildlife conservation should consider integrating AI Ethics in wildlife conservation. We find that the existing literature (...) weakly focuses on AI Ethics and AI Ethics in wildlife conservation while at the same time ignores AI Ethics integration in AI systems for wildlife conservation. This paper formulates an ethically aligned AI system framework and discusses pre-eminent on-demand AI systems in wildlife conservation. The proposed framework uses agile software life cycle methodology to implement guidelines towards the ethical upgrade of any existing AI system or the development of any new ethically aligned AI system. The guidelines enforce, among others, the minimisation of intentional harm and bias, diversity in data collection, design compliance, auditing of all activities in the framework and ease of code inspection. This framework will inform AI developers, users, conservationists, and policymakers on what to consider when integrating AI Ethics into AI-based systems for wildlife conservation. (shrink)

Known throughout East Asia as Mengzi, or "Master Meng," Mencius was a Chinese philosopher of the late Zhou dynasty, an instrumental figure in the spread of the Confucian tradition, and a brilliant illuminator of its ideas. Mencius was active during the Warring States Period, in which competing powers sought to control the declining Zhou empire. Like Confucius, Mencius journeyed to one feudal court after another, searching for a proper lord who could put his teachings into practice. Only a leader who (...) possessed the moral qualities of a true king could unify China, Mencius believed, and in his defense of Zhou rule and Confucian philosophy, he developed an innovative and highly nuanced approach to understanding politics, self-cultivation, and human nature, profoundly influencing the course of Confucian thought and East Asian culture. _Mencius_ is a record of the philosopher's conversations with warring lords, disciples, and adversaries of the Way, as well as a collection of pronouncements on government, human nature, and a variety of other philosophical and political subjects. Mencius is largely concerned with the motivations of human actors and their capacity for mutual respect. He builds on the Confucian idea of _ren_, or humaneness, and places it alongside the complementary principle of _yi_, or rightness, advancing a complex notion of what is right for certain individuals as they perform distinct roles in specific situations. Consequently, Mencius's impact was felt not only in the thought of the intellectual and social elite but also in the value and belief systems of all Chinese people. (shrink)

This essay is a critical review of two recent collections, Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, edited by Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby and Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender, edited by Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. While the collections differ in their manner of addressing the critical sources that have inspired them-the former relying upon a single theorist, the latter attempting to move through some of the philosophical history that constitutes our present theoretical terrain-both attempt to (...) think through and thus revisualize some of the categories of difference which we have inherited. Though the best essays from these collections are celebrated for demonstrating how "feminism as critique" can work to move us toward a clearer and more inclusive feminist theory, questions are raised about what the inattention to race in these volumes suggests about our own role in the construction of power and knowledge, and the erasures that help to secure them both. (shrink)

Known throughout East Asia as Mengzi, or "Master Meng," Mencius was a Chinese philosopher of the late Zhou dynasty, an instrumental figure in the spread of the Confucian tradition, and a brilliant illuminator of its ideas. Mencius was active during the Warring States Period, in which competing powers sought to control the declining Zhou empire. Like Confucius, Mencius journeyed to one feudal court after another, searching for a proper lord who could put his teachings into practice. Only a leader who (...) possessed the moral qualities of a true king could unify China, Mencius believed, and in his defense of Zhou rule and Confucian philosophy, he developed an innovative and highly nuanced approach to understanding politics, self-cultivation, and human nature, profoundly influencing the course of Confucian thought and East Asian culture. _Mencius_ is a record of the philosopher's conversations with warring lords, disciples, and adversaries of the Way, as well as a collection of pronouncements on government, human nature, and a variety of other philosophical and political subjects. Mencius is largely concerned with the motivations of human actors and their capacity for mutual respect. He builds on the Confucian idea of _ren_, or humaneness, and places it alongside the complementary principle of _yi_, or rightness, advancing a complex notion of what is right for certain individuals as they perform distinct roles in specific situations. Consequently, Mencius's impact was felt not only in the thought of the intellectual and social elite but also in the value and belief systems of all Chinese people. (shrink)

This article proposes a method for philological provenance research that allows us to examine the transfer of »oral literatures« from colonised areas to Europe. This transfer has received little scholarly attention but is present in contemporary postcolonial narratives. It was substantial not only in consolidating the poetics of the historical avant-gardes and informing literary and linguistic theory, but also in sustaining a market for gift-books still flourishing today. To disrupt these exclusively Western cycles of exploitation, we propose to return the (...) authority of interpretation as a possibility of restitution. (shrink)

There are several conceptions of truth, such as the classical correspondence conception, the coherence conception and the pragmatic conception. The classical correspondence conception, or Aristotelian conception, received a mathematical treatment in the hands of Tarski (cf. Tarski [1935] and [1944]), which was the starting point of a great progress in logic and in mathematics. In effect, Tarski's semantic ideas, especially his semantic characterization of truth, have exerted a major influence on various disciplines, besides logic and mathematics; for instance, linguistics, the (...) philosophy of science, and the theory of knowledge. The importance of the Tarskian investigations derives, among other things, from the fact that they constitute a mathematical, formal mark to serve as a reference for the philosophical (informal) conceptions of truth. Today the philosopher knows that the classical conception can be developed and that it is free from paradoxes and other difficulties, if certain precautions are taken. We believe that is not an exaggeration if we assert that Tarski's theory should be considered as one of the greatest accomplishments of logic and mathematics of our time, an accomplishment which is also of extraordinary relevance to philosophy, as we have already remarked. In this paper we show that the pragmatic conception of truth, at least in one of its possible interpretations, has also a mathematical formulation, similar in spirit to that given by Tarski to the classical correspondence conception. (shrink)

This article uses a conversation analytic framework to describe a type of wh-question used to challenge a prior utterance, specifically to challenge the basis for or right to do an action done by the prior utterance. These wh-questions are able to do challenging because, rather than asking for new information, they are used to convey a strong epistemic stance of the questioner, a negative assertion. The utterances are designed as requests for an account for a prior claim or action, but (...) by conveying a negative assertion, they suggest that there is no adequate account available and, thus, that there are no grounds for the prior claim or action. The use of these questions in institutional settings can display participants' orientation to institutional goals, norms and roles, showing that institutional roles can thus be enacted, and goals accomplished, by means of practices of talk which are not, themselves, institutionally specific. (shrink)

This study investigates the performance measurement systems adopted by companies to manage their social responsibility activities, a theme that remains under-researched despite the important role that these mechanisms may play in helping firms control and improve their social performance. An integrative model is developed to examine how the three fundamental drivers of corporate social strategies, i.e., business motivations, perceived stakeholder pressures, and top management’s social commitment, influence the use of social performance indicators for internal decision-making and control and how such (...) use impacts companies’ social and economic performance. The results from a survey of 97 Italian companies suggest that economic motivations and top management’s commitment are associated with a more intensive use of social performance indicators for decision-making and control, whereas perceived pressures from stakeholders do not represent a significant determinant of such use. The use of social performance indicators, in turn, is found to directly influence a firm’s social performance and, indirectly, its bottom line. (shrink)

Summary The article briefly introduces a path, that starts from the Franz Boas’ anthropological field research in British Columbia about sound, dance and motion among the Indians until the 1930s to the practice of dance and sound as a therapeutic issue in Franziska Boas’ work in New York.

Integrity ought logically to be a particularly important concept within political science. If those acting within the political system do not have integrity, our ability to trust them, to have confidence in their actions, and perhaps even to consider them legitimate can be challenged. Indeed, the very concept of integrity goes some way towards underwriting positive views of political actors. Yet, despite this importance, political science as a discipline has perhaps focused too little on questions of integrity. Where political science (...) has looked at the subject of integrity, it has often done so without using the specific linguistic formulation “integrity”. Most commonly, the focus has instead been on “corruption”—a strand of research which has produced results that cannot always be translated into discussions of integrity, by virtue of its narrower focus upon the “negative pole” of public ethics. Other measures, such as “Quality of Government”, focus on positive attributes, notably impartiality, but this also fails fully to capture the notion of integrity: dishonesty can be impartial. Specific formal “codes” used within public life and among political practitioners can be much more nuanced than the most widely used measures, and can be much closer to what we understand—academically—as “integrity”. This paper argues that the hard conceptual and empirical work of elaborating integrity into a fully operationalizable concept offers the potential reward of an analytical concept that is more closely aligned with political reality. (shrink)