Including an edited transcription of a colloquium on Sander's life and work, this title contains plates selected from the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection. Sander's works exemplify the contradictory nature of early 20th century Germany.

Some philosophers have claimed that pleasures and pains are characterized by their particular or . Most contemporary writers reject this view: they hold that hedonic states have nothing in common except being liked or disliked (alternatively: pursued or avoided) for their own sake. In this article, I argue that the hedonic tone view has been dismissed too quickly: there is no clear introspective or scientific evidence that pleasures do not share a phenomenal quality. I also argue that analysing hedonic states (...) in terms of liking or wanting is implausible. If it is correct that pleasures and pains are not united by any particular hedonic tone, we should instead simply conclude that there are several different hedonic tones. This pluralistic understanding of the hedonic tone view has generally been overlooked in the literature, but appears to be fairly plausible as a philosophical account of pleasure and pain. (shrink)

Logic is widely held to be a normative discipline. Various claims have been offered in support of this view, but they all revolve around the idea that logic is concerned with how one ought to reason. I argue that most of these claims—while perhaps correct—only entail that logic is normative in a way that many, if not all, intellectual disciplines are normative. I also identify some claims whose correctness would make logic normative in a way that sets it apart from (...) other disciplines. I argue that we have no reason think that these claims are correct. In other words, logic is not a distinctively normative discipline. (shrink)

This article focuses on critical realist analysis of concrete processes of structure formation and realization of structural propensity. It aims to explain the reasons for the rise and fall of the neoliberal regime in Iceland that led to the extreme expansion of the Icelandic financial system and its crisis. The article argues that the neoliberal regime was actively constructed by economic and political actors within the framework of the particular structural characteristics of Iceland. It claims that rigid structural conditions due (...) to the very small size of the economy and severe problem of oligopoly undermined the neoliberal utopia of perfect market competition. In order to develop this argument, the paper observes how power elites actively affect public opinion and establish their hegemonic position in the political system. (shrink)

Though corporate social responsibility (CSR) is on the agenda of most major corporations, corporate executives still largely support the view that corporations should maximize the returns to their owners. There are two lines of defence for this position. One is the Friedmanian view that maximizing owner returns is the social responsibility of corporations. The other is a position voiced by many executives, that CSR and profits go together. This article argues that the first position is ethically untenable, while the latter (...) is not supported by empirical evidence. The implication is that there may be good reason for firms to deviate from a maxim of profit maximization. (shrink)

Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended (...) to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhibiting greater cognitive reflection were more likely to view free will as incompatible with causal determinism. We discuss these findings in light of documented cultural differences in the tendency toward dispositional versus situational attributions. (shrink)

The singular position of Montesquieu's political philosophy seems to raise the question: Isn't the opposition between republicanism and liberalism a largely artificial one? On the one hand, the description of the republican vivere civile in the Spirit of the Laws testifies to the important ties that exist between Montesquieu and the tradition of ?civic humanism?. However, this apparent theoretical proximity between Montesquieu and the British Neo-Harringtonians ought not to be taken too far, obscuring the deep divergences that differentiate their respective (...) positions, notably when it comes to the interpretation of history. Montesquieu's break from the republican tradition is exemplified by his rejection of its conception of freedom rooted in the citizens' necessary participation in power. But in the end, this does not enable us to conclude that he subscribes to a purely liberal theory. The British model shows that even if direct participation in the exercise of power is not necessary for the existence of liberty, a certain level of civic involvement and public awareness is needed. The liberal opposition between positive and negative liberty, political autonomy and enjoyment of rights without interference must therefore be transcended. (shrink)

In his paper “The challenge of brain death for the sanctity of life ethic”, Peter Singer advocates two options for dealing with death criteria in a way that is compatible with efficient organ transplantation policy. He suggests that we should either redefine death as cortical death or go back to the old cardiopulmonary criterion and scrap the Dead Donor Rule. We welcome Singer’s line of argument but raise some concerns about the practicability of the two alternatives advocated by him. We (...) propose adding a third alternative that also – as the two previous alternatives – preserves and extends the possibility of organ transplantation without using anyone without their consent. Namely, we would like to draw readers’ attention to a proposal by Robert Veatch, formulated 42 years ago in his 1976 book “Death, dying, and the biological revolution” and developed further in his later publications. Veatch argues for a conscience clause for the definition of death that would permit people to pick from a reasonable range of definitional options. This autonomy-based option, we believe, is more likely to be practicable than the two options advocated by Singer. Furthermore, we present data from a study with Lithuanian participants that suggest that there is quite pronounced variation of preferences concerning death determination. (shrink)

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross‐cultural principles of law? In a between‐subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and also (...) whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross‐culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people's grasp of how legal systems function in practice. (shrink)

The ethics of corruption cannot be analysed without simultaneously addressing the legitimacy of public office or entrusted power. This paper introduces a concept of core unethical corruption, defined as violations of distributed ethical obligations for private gain. In other words, it is suggested that what is ethically wrong with corruption is that it entails the violation of certain obligations attributed to agents. By explicitly relating corruption to obligations, this approach helps make ethical sense of the concepts of public office or (...) entrusted power, attending to the question of their legitimacy. Since distributed obligations are implied by a wide range of ethical theories, the concept of core unethical corruption also reflects a (partial) overlapping consensus on the ethics of corruption. (shrink)

Since it is Hume who famously asked how an "ought" can ever possibly be deduced from an "is," it is Hume who is typically cast as the representative of empiricism's inadequacy for doing the work of ethics. Yet, as I will show, in his description of the proper functioning of the passions that necessarily involve other persons and their evaluations of us, Hume provides a naturalistic description that is not reductive of value, but rather incorporates values into the very ground (...) of empirical description. Contemporary moral philosophers who dismiss Hume's complex account of the passions as unnecessary for understanding his account of morals, and then fault the account of morals for its failure to move beyond mere description to any kind of normative assessment, ignore how the detail of Hume's own account of the passions suggests a way that an empirical account can in fact be value-laden, as we shall see. (shrink)

There is a move towards more use of engagement strategies in responsible investment. This change in strategies is motivated by a number of claims about the effectiveness of engagement versus exclusion of companies from the investment universe. This paper examines the basis for three central claims: That engagement, in contrast to exclusion, does not reduce the investment universe; That exclusion reduces an investor's influence on a company; and That engagement with exclusion is necessarily a more effective means of influencing companies (...) than pure exclusion. All three claims are argued to be open to challenge. It is possible that the move towards more engagement reflects bureaucratic incentives and political considerations among institutional investors, rather than arguments about the effectiveness and efficiency of engagement. (shrink)

Building on previous works which argued that scalar implicatures can be computed in embedded positions, this paper proposes a constraint on exhaustification which restricts the conditions under which an exhaustivity operator can be licensed. We show that this economy condition allows us to derive a number of generalizations, such as, in particular, the ‘Implicature Focus Generalization’: scalar implicatures can be embedded under a downward-entailing operator only if the scalar term bears pitch accent. Our economy condition also derives specific predictions regarding (...) the licensing of so-called Hurford disjunctions. (shrink)

A pesar de que, a grandes rasgos, el análisis marxista del proceso de alienación sigue vigente, ha llegado a perder toda su fuerza revolucionaria. La razón parece encontrarse en que la dinámica del consumo integra y supera a un tiempo las carencias propias de la alienación, complementando el papel de trabajador con el de consumidor. De hecho, es una idea común que en la sociedad de consumo el sujeto se ha liberado de las trabas que limitaban el desarrollo de su (...) personalidad, y que parece tener a toda la industria al servicio de sus deseos. Detrás de este supuesto encontramos una trasformación de fondo de los conceptos de libertad, sujeto y realidad. Pero algunos autores como Z.Baumann han puesto en duda que el consumismo sea un sistema plegado al sujeto y que no sea pertinente hablar de alienación del consumidor. (shrink)

John Rawls's claim to have demonstrated the superiority of his own two principles of justice to the principle of utility has generated fairly extensive critical discussion. However, this discussion has almost completely disregarded those of Rawls's arguments that are concerned with practicability, despite the significance accorded to them by Rawls himself. This article addresses the three most important of Rawls's objections against the practicability of utilitarianism: that utilitarianism would generate too much disagreement to be politically workable, that a utilitarian society (...) would be vulnerable to social instability, and that publicly adopting the principle of utility as the ultimate criterion of right and wrong would undermine the self-respect of some citizens. It is argued that Rawls's objections are either exaggerated or mistaken, and that this may have an impact on the assessment of `justice as fairness' as well as the utilitarian doctrine. Key Words: justice as fairness • feasibility • disagreement • stability • self-respect. (shrink)

Since the introduction of a new criterion for determining death (i.e., the brain death criterion) in 1968, the research community has been embroiled in debates about whether this criterion should b...

I present some problems for phenomenal (i.e. consciousness-based) accounts of personal identity and egoistic concern. These accounts typically rely on continuity in the capacity for consciousness to explain how we survive ordinary periods of unconsciousness such as dreamless sleep. I offer some thought experiments where continuity in the capacity for consciousness does not seem sufficient for survival and some where it does not seem necessary. There are ways of modifying the standard phenomenal approach so as to avoid these difficulties, but (...) I argue that they all lead to other problems that are no less serious. (shrink)

A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied markedly across (k = 15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism: (...) in a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’ adherence to rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (total n = 5,794) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning provides a clear focal point—an identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers, and judges. (shrink)

En el presente artículo nos proponemos describir la racionalidad subyacente a las estrategias de adaptación al cambio ambiental global de los agentes poderosos de la vitivinicultura en Mendoza, Argentina. En términos estrictamente físicos, el Cambio Ambiental Global se presenta como un aumento de las temperaturas promedio a nivel global, las repercusiones de este cambio serán diferentes según sea la zona geográfica del planeta que se considere. En el oasis norte de la Provincia de Mendoza se espera una reducción en los (...) caudales del Río que lo alimenta. Frente a esta situación, los actores poderosos de la vitivinicultura mendocina han optado por estrategias de adaptación tendientes a profundizar la racionalidad instrumental, característica de estos grupos, para hacer frente al cambio ambiental global: obtener aguas en mayor cantidad y calidad a través del traslado de sus explotaciones a zonas de montaña ubicadas aguas arriba del río y búsqueda de mercados internacionales, entre otras. (shrink)

The article discusses several epistemological and methodological issues related to the analysis of discourse in general and of educational talk in particular. The theoretical framework provided by conversation analysis (CA) is applied and critically discussed in the analysis of an empirical example of educational talk. Several questions seem pertinent: Can we - as analysts - have direct access to talk "as it actually occurs", independent of any kind of theorizing and predefined categorization? What is the epistemological status of the conversation (...) analytic categories? What are the limitations of applying turn-taking as an analytical category in the study of talk? To what extent can we presume the knowledgeability of the interlocutors as a premise in our analysis? On the background of my own attempts at applying CA in the analysis of educational discourse, I argue for a widening of the perspective from a narrow, empiricist focus on conversational turn-takings and sequential organization of talk, for example in the handling of issues like silences and absences in talk. On the other hand, I also warn against the pitfalls of historicist, abstract social theory; here exemplified with some texts from theorists applying abstract philosophical categories from dialectical and historical materialism like "the law of contradiction" as explanatory tools in the study of situated action. In the study of educational meaning making we should avoid empiricist as well as historicist approaches and explanations. (shrink)

The experimental turn in philosophy has reached several sub-fields including ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. This paper is among the first to apply experimental techniques to questions in the philosophy of law. Specifically, we examine Lon Fuller's procedural natural law theory. Fuller famously claimed that legal systems necessarily observe eight principles he called "the inner morality of law." We evaluate Fuller's claim by surveying both ordinary people and legal experts about their intuitions about legal systems. We conclude that, at best, we (...) should be skeptical of Fuller's inner morality of law in light of the experimental data. (shrink)

In discussing the atomists' theory of vision modern accounts have quite neglected to take into account two sections of Alexander of Aphrodisias on this topic. Nearly identical in length and content, they contain objections to the atomist theory of vision by means of the . In form they consist of a series of questions purporting to contain atomist doctrine. Each question is followed by objections to its subject-matter. Most of the questions contain doctrine known to us already from other sources.

ABSTRACT Most theorists agree that our social order includes a distinctive legal dimension. A fundamental question is that of whether reference to specific legal phenomena always involves a commitment to a particular moral view. Whereas many philosophers advance the ‘positivist’ claim that any correspondence between morality and the law is just a function of political circumstance, natural law theorists insist that law is intrinsically moral. Each school claims the crucial advantage of consistency with our folk concept. Drawing on the notion (...) of dual character concepts, we develop a set of hypotheses about the intuitive relation between a rule’s moral and legal aspects. We then report a set of studies that conflict unexpectedly with the predictions by legal positivists. Intuitively, an evil rule is not a fully-fledged instance of law. (shrink)

When a terminally ill patient kills herself, using a drug prescribed by a physician for this purpose, in bioethical literature this would be described as a case of physician-assisted suicide. This would also be a case of suicide according to the standard account of suicide in the philosophical literature. However, in recent years, some authors have argued that terminally ill self-killing in fact should not be considered suicide. In this paper, we don’t try to address the philosophical merits of such (...) arguments. Instead, we ask whether these considerations align with the way non-philosophers think about suicide. We present empirical evidence from four studies that address different concerns raised about terminally ill self-killing being a suicide. We conclude that the raised concerns cannot be supported by the folk understanding of suicide. (shrink)