The purpose of this article is to examine empirically the impact of environmental certification on firm financial performance (FP). The main question is whether there is a "green premium" for certified firms, and, if so, for what kind of certification. We analyze the short-run and the long-run stock price performance using an event-study methodology on a sample of Canadian and U.S. firms. The results of short-run event abnormal returns indicate that forest certification does not have any significant impact on firm (...) FP regardless of the certification system carried out by firms. Unlike the short-run results, the long-run post-event abnormal returns suggest that forest certification has, on average, a negative impact on firm FP. However, the impact of forest certification on firm FP depends on who grants the certification, since only industry-led certification (Sustainable Forestry Initiative, Canadian Standards Association and ISO14001) are penalized by financial markets, whereas non-governmental organizations—led Forest Stewardship Council certification is not. (shrink)

Geo Maher’s _Anticolonial Eruptions_ is a force to be reckoned with. As a reading experience, it’s a bloody delight, even as – and maybe because – Maher guides us down in to the depths of the volcanoes stoking the explosive fires of rebellion. We also get to follow the moles below and high above ground as they wait for their moment to emerge, shock, and rebel. These moles are blind in one sense, while in another sense they can (...) tell time, or more accurately they create time in the form of political time; marking the potential beginning of a new era. This political time is created in the moment of the emergence of these moles from the shadows in order to ambush and take advantage of the “hubris” of colonizers who are comfortable in their own blindness, in not-seeing what they cannot grapple with, that which is right before their eyes; colonization and all it has wrought upon the colonized. A new political moment is then birthed, time starts anew, and this is a result of the colonizer’s limitations in grasping the depths and heights of their oppression of the colonized. (shrink)

Maher (1988, 1990) has recently argued that the way a hypothesis is generated can affect its confirmation by the available evidence, and that Bayesian confirmation theory can explain this. In particular, he argues that evidence known at the time a theory was proposed does not confirm the theory as much as it would had that evidence been discovered after the theory was proposed. We examine Maher's arguments for this "predictivist" position and conclude that they do not, in fact, (...) support his view. We also cast doubt on the assumptions of Maher's alleged Bayesian proofs. (shrink)

This study aims to use the Asian knowledge model “APO” as a determinant for performance excellence in universities and identifying the most effecting factors on it. This study was applied on Al-Azhar University in Gaza strip. The result of the study showed that (APO) model is valid as a measure and there are four dimensions in the model affecting significantly more than the others (university processes, KM leadership, personnel, KM outputs). Furthermore, performance excellence produced though modernizing the means of education, (...) curriculum development, technology and flexibility in the organizational structure. The study recommends expanding the usage of (APO) model, enhancing the role of knowledge leadership, technology, organizational flexibility, sharing culture and incentive systems that encouraging innovation. (shrink)

Anticolonial theorists and revolutionaries have long turned to dialectical thought as a central weapon in their fight against oppressive structures and conditions. This relationship was never easy, however, as anticolonial thinkers have resisted the historical determinism, teleology, Eurocentrism, and singular emphasis that some Marxisms place on class identity at the expense of race, nation, and popular identity. In recent decades, the conflict between dialectics and postcolonial theory has only deepened. In _Decolonizing Dialectics _George Ciccariello-Maher breaks this impasse by bringing (...) the work of Georges Sorel, Frantz Fanon, and Enrique Dussel together with contemporary Venezuelan politics to formulate a dialectics suited to the struggle against the legacies of colonialism and slavery. This is a decolonized dialectics premised on constant struggle in which progress must be fought for and where the struggles of the wretched of the earth themselves provide the only guarantee of historical motion. (shrink)

This Handbook fills a large gap in current scholarly literature on animal abuse studies. It moves considerably beyond the debate that has traditionally dominated the discourse of animal abuse – the link between one-on-one interpersonal violence and animal abuse – and towards those institutionalised forms of animal abuse which are routine, everyday, socially acceptable and invisibilised. Chapters from expert contributors raise issues such as: the use of animals as edibles; vivisection; animal sexual assault; animals used in sport and hunting; animal (...) trafficking; the use of animals by youth gangs, by other groups and in war; species extinction; and the passivity of national and international organisations in combating animal abuse. The Handbook is a unique text: it is essential reading for students, researchers, academics, activists and policy makers involved in understanding and preventing animal abuse. (shrink)

I describe Maher's utility-based account of theory acceptance, generally approvingly but with a few questions and doubts.

Americans have recently had thrust into their faces multiple media borne medical and social ethics dilemmas ranging from Dr. Kevorkian's euthanizing a patient on national television to payments by managed care providers for experimental medical treatments,to the nationally telecast situation which this paper will attempt to address. The case at hand concerns a minor in need of a repeat(third) kidney transplant who has been offered a kidney by her father. He also provided a kidney for her second kidney transplant some (...) years ago. The teenage girl went into her current kidney failure/organ rejection state because, feeling well, she stopped taking her antirejection medications. Her father appears to understand the consequences of this offer and is willing nonetheless to donate his remaining kidney to his daughter. His ex-wife and daughter want the kidney and will take it knowing what it will do to him. Of additional interest is that he is incarcerated as a prisoner for a crime for which he will be eligible for parole in the not distant future. This means that although altruistically self-induced, the State will become financially responsible for his medical care and dialysis treatments. This paper will attempt to analyze the competing issues presented by this dilemma and address the underlying conflict between the parameters patient autonomy, parental beneficence and the deontologically based responsibilities of the state and of the health care team. (shrink)

This article approaches contemporary European debates on the subject of realism through the lenses offered by two decolonial thinkers: Fanon and Dussel. Whereas both share with realism a fundamental emphasis on reality as the starting point for theory – an assumption shared by much decolonial thought – they nevertheless provide another layer of specificity in their consideration of the colonial condition, diagnosing a fundamental absence of reciprocity that dictates the course of decolonization as a transformation of reality. Reconsidering the debates (...) on realism in light of these insights therefore provides a powerful basis for both formulating a specifically decolonial realism and for engaging in comparative political theorizing more generally. (shrink)

Predictivism asserts that where evidence E confirms theory T, E provides stronger support for T when E is predicted on the basis of T and then confirmed than when E is known before T's construction and 'used', in some sense, in the construction of T. Among the most interesting attempts to argue that predictivism is a true thesis (under certain conditions) is that of Patrick Maher (1988, 1990, 1993). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of (...) predictivism using Maher's analysis as a starting point. I briefly summarize Maher's primary argument and expand upon it; I explore related issues pertaining to the causal structure of empirical domains and the logic of discovery. (shrink)

Maher proposed in 1974 that schizophrenic delusions are hypotheses formed to explain anomalous experiences. He stated that they are “rational, given the intensity of the experiences that they are developed to explain.” Two-factor theorists of delusion criticized Maher’s theory because 1) it does not explain why some patients with anomalous experiences do not develop delusions, and 2) adopting and adhering to delusional hypotheses is irrational, considering the totality of experiences and patients’ other beliefs. In this paper, the notion (...) of the intensity of experience is reappraised to uphold Maher’s basic conception. Regarding 1), I propose that differences in the intensity of anomalous experience are vital to whether the patient forms delusions, while partially reforming his rationality claim regarding 2). Although adopting delusions is irrational, it is inevitable and excusable, given the intensity of the patient’s anomalous experience. With the aid of this notion, it is maintained that anomalous experience is sufficient for the development of delusions, at least in some cases of schizophrenia. Compared to other theories of schizophrenic delusion, Maher’s theory, which embraces the notion of intensity of experience, better explains why such irrational mental states as delusions develop from anomalous experiences, and why delusional patients persist in believing specific thematic content. (shrink)

This book is a major contribution to decision theory, focusing on the question of when it is rational to accept scientific theories. The author examines both Bayesian decision theory and confirmation theory, refining and elaborating the views of Ramsey and Savage. He argues that the most solid foundation for confirmation theory is to be found in decision theory, and he provides a decision-theoretic derivation of principles for how many probabilities should be revised over time. Professor Maher defines a notion (...) of accepting a hypothesis, and then shows that it is not reducible to probability and that it is needed to deal with some important questions in the philosophy of science. A Bayesian decision-theoretic account of rational acceptance is provided together with a proof of the foundations for this theory. A final chapter shows how this account can be used to cast light on such vexed issues as verisimilitude and scientific realism. (shrink)

Could a Nazi soldier or terrorist be courageous? The Courage Problem asks us to answer this sort of question, and then to explain why people are reluctant to give this answer. The present paper sheds new light on the Courage Problem by examining a controversy sparked by Bill Maher, who claimed that the 9/11 terrorists’ acts were ‘not cowardly.’ It is shown that Maher's controversy is fundamentally related to the Courage Problem. Then, a unified solution to both problems (...) is provided. This solution entails that gutsy people who lack good ends are not courageous. (shrink)

First published in Spanish in 2006, _Twenty Theses on Politics_ is a major statement on political philosophy from Enrique Dussel, one of Latin America’s—and the world’s—most important philosophers, and a founder of the philosophy of liberation. Synthesizing a half-century of his pioneering work in moral and political philosophy, Dussel presents a succinct rationale for the development of political alternatives to the exclusionary, exploitative institutions of neoliberal globalization. In twenty short, provocative theses he lays out the foundational elements for a politics (...) of just and sustainable coexistence. Dussel first constructs a theory of political power and its institutionalization, taking on topics such as the purpose of politics and the fetishization of power. He insists that political projects must criticize or reject as unsustainable all political systems, actions, and institutions whose negative effects are suffered by oppressed or excluded victims. Turning to the deconstruction or transformation of political power, he explains the political principles of liberation and addresses matters such as reform and revolution. _Twenty Theses on Politics_ is inspired by recent political transformations in Latin America. As Dussel writes in Thesis 15, regarding the liberation praxis of social and political movements, “The winds that arrive from the South—from Nestor Kirchner, Tabaré Vásquez, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Evo Morales, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, and so many others—show us that things can be changed. The _people _must reclaim sovereignty!” Throughout the twenty theses Dussel engages with Latin American thinkers and activists and with radical political projects such as the World Social Forum. He is also in dialogue with the ideas of Marx, Hegel, Habermas, Rawls, and Negri, offering insights into the applications and limits of their thinking in light of recent Latin American political thought and practice. (shrink)

In this volume, Maher contextualizes the work of a group of contemporary analytic philosophers—The Pittsburgh School—whose work is characterized by an interest in the history of philosophy and a commitment to normative functionalism, or the insight that to identify something as a manifestation of conceptual capacities is to place it in a space of norms. Wilfrid Sellars claimed that humans are distinctive because they occupy a norm-governed "space of reasons." Along with Sellars, Robert Brandom and John McDowell have tried (...) to work out the implications of that idea for understanding knowledge, thought, norms, language, and intentional action. The aim of this book is to introduce their shared views on those topics, while also charting a few key disputes between them. (shrink)

The idea that plants have minds can sound improbable, but some widely respected contemporary scientists and philosophers find it plausible. It turns out to be rather tricky to vindicate the presumption that plants do not have minds, for doing so requires getting clear about what plants can do and what exactly a mind is. By connecting the most compelling empirical work on plant behavior with philosophical reflection on the concept of minds, _Plant Minds _aims to help non-experts begin to think (...) clearly about whether plants have minds. Relying on current consensus ideas about minds and plants, Chauncey Maher first presents the best case for thinking that plants do _not_ have minds. Along the way, however, he unearths an idea at the root of that case, the idea that having a mind requires the capacity to represent the world. In the last chapter, he defends a relatively new and insightful theory of mind that rejects that assumption, making room for the possibility that plants do have minds, primarily because they are alive. (shrink)

This article sets out from an analysis of the pioneering work of Susan Buck-Morss to rethink, not only Hegel and Haiti, but broader questions surrounding dialectics and the universal brought to light by the Haitian Revolution. Reading through the lens of C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins , I seek to correct a series of ironic silences in her account, re-centering the importance of Toussaint’s successor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and underlining the dialectical importance of identitarian struggles in forging the universal. Finally, I (...) offer Frantz Fanon’s reformulation of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic—overlooked in Buck-Morss’ account—as a corrective that allows us to truly rethink progress toward the universal in decolonized dialectical terms. (shrink)

Topics discussed in this work are abortion, euthanasia, medical negligence and human experimentation.

Originally delivered to mark the fiftieth anniversary of both Frantz Fanon’s death and the publication of his seminal discourse on decolonization, The Wretched of the Earth, these remarks seek to offer a preliminary outline of Fanon’s continuing relevance to the present. Conceptually spanning such touchstone elements of Fanon’s thought as sociogeny, race, violence, the human, and the relation between decolonial ethics and decolonial politics, the authors turn our attention to diagnosing the neoliberal face of contemporary coloniality/modernity and contributing to movements (...) from the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement, from Philadelphia’s “flash mobs” to the new Latin American Left. (shrink)

The visibility of pregnancy in contemporary societies through various forms of medical imaging has often been interpreted by feminist critics as negative for the autonomy and experience of pregnant women. Here, I consider the representation of pregnancy in Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando, and Sally Potter’s film of the same name arguing that, despite limited critical attention to Orlando’s pregnancy, these texts offer a productive interpretation of gestation that counters conventionally reductive cultural images of that embodied state. In particular, I argue (...) that Potter’s translation of Woolf’s novel to the screen gives us a useful model for thinking through the new visibility of pregnancy in contemporary Western culture. (shrink)

In this essay, we draw on John Haugeland’s work in order to argue that Burge is wrong to think that exercises of perceptual constancy mechanisms suffice for perceptual representation. Although Haugeland did not live to read or respond to Burge’s Origins of Objectivity, we think that his work contains resources that can be developed into a critique of the very foundation of Burge’s approach. Specifically, we identify two related problems for Burge. First, if (what Burge calls) mere sensory responses are (...) not representational, then neither are exercises of constancy mechanisms, since the differences between them do not suffice to imply that one is representational and the other is not. Second, taken by themselves, exercises of constancy mechanisms are only derivatively representational, so merely understanding how they work is not sufficient for understanding what is required for something, in itself, to be representational (and thereby provide a full solution to the problem of perceptual representation). (shrink)

The extended mind hypothesis (EMH) is the claim that the mind can and does extend beyond the human body. Adams and Aizawa (A&A) contend that arguments for EMH commit a ‘coupling constitution fallacy’. We deny that the master argument for EMH commits such a fallacy. But we think that there is an important question lurking behind A&A's allegation: under what conditions is cognition spread across a tightly coupled system? Building on some suggestions from Haugeland, we contend that the system must (...) exhibit a distinctive sort of semantic activity, semantic activity that the system as a whole takes responsibility for. (shrink)

In 1959 Carnap published a probability model that was meant to allow forreasoning by analogy involving two independent properties. Maher (2000)derived a generalized version of this model axiomatically and defended themodel''s adequacy. It is thus natural to now consider how the model mightbe extended to the case of more than two properties. A simple extension waspublished by Hess (1964); this paper argues that it is inadequate. Amore sophisticated one was developed jointly by Carnap and Kemeny in theearly 1950s but (...) never published; this paper gives the first published descriptionof Carnap and Kemeny''s model and argues that it too is inadequate. Since noother way of extending the two-property model is currently known, the conclusionof this paper is that a satisfactory extension to multiple properties requires somenew approach. (shrink)