For most readers of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel’s example of “Ethical Action” is taken from Sophocles’ Antigone. In fact, however, Hegel provides us with a trilogy of tragic examples. The first is Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos; the second, Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes; Antigone is but the third. Further, just as a dramatic trilogy was followed by a satyr play among the ancients, ethical action’s final moment is taken from Aristophanes’ Ekklesiazousai. These four examples do not form a simple series where (...) each equally expresses the truth of ethical action. Rather, they are increasingly adequate to that truth. (shrink)

Most speakers experience unclarity about the application of predicates like tall and red to liminal cases. We formulate alternative psychological hypotheses about the nature of this unclarity, and report experiments that provide a partial test of them. A psychologized version of the ‘vagueness-as-ignorance’ theory is then advanced and defended.

Because the conjunction pandq implies p, the value of a bet on pandq cannot exceed the value of a bet on p at the same stakes. We tested recognition of this principle in a betting paradigm that (a) discouraged misreading p as pandnotq, and (b) encouraged genuinely conjunctive reading of pandq. Frequent violations were nonetheless observed. The findings appear to discredit the idea that most people spontaneously integrate the logic of conjunction into their assessments of chance.

ABSTRACTWe examined whether enhancing the emotionality of a referent public good influences the subsequent valuation of a target public good. We predicted that it would and that the directionality of its impact would depend on a fundamental cognitive process – categorisation. If the target and referent goods belong to the same domain, we expected that the effect on the target would be in the same direction as the emotional enhancement of the referent. However, if the target and referent goods belong (...) to different domains, we expected that the effect on the target would be either negligible or in the opposite direction to that of the emotional enhancement of the referent. In Experiment 1 we examined the impact of emotionally enhancing a referent public good on feelings towards a target public good, whereas in Experiment 2 on the willingness to contribute towards a target public good. The results support the predicted interaction, which was... (shrink)

U članku se razmatra nastanak i razvoj pojma ‘nacija’ u novovjekovnoj Europi, koja su shvaćanja pripadnosti naciji pritom bila u igri, te kako je cijeli ovaj kompleks ideologija utjecao na teoriju i praksu kolonijalnog ekspanzionizma nacionalnih država. S time je usko povezan i mit o tome da je kolonijalna ekspanzija Europe bila prvenstveno širenje civilizacije. U kritičkom sučeljavanju s ovim ideologijama na koncu se pojavljuje kako kolonijalno pitanje u marksizmu, tako i globalno nasljeđe kolonijalizma danas.Erörtert wird die Entstehung und Entwicklung (...) des Begriffes „Nation“ im Europa der Neuzeit, welche Auffassungen über die Zugehörigkeit zu einer Nation dabei im Spiel waren, und wie sich dieser gesamte Ideologienkomplex auf die Theorie und Praxis des kolonialen Expansionismus der Nationalstaaten ausgewirkt hat. Damit ist auch der Mythus eng verbunden, dass die koloniale Expansion Europas hauptsächlich eine Ausbreitung der Zivilisation gewesen sei. In kritischer Auseinandersetzung mit diesen Ideologien kommt abschließend sowohl die koloniale Frage im Marxismus zur Sprache, als auch das Globalerbe des Kolonialismus heute. (shrink)

It is easy to construct pairs of sentences X, Y that lead many people to ascribe higher probability to the conjunction X‐and‐Y than to the conjuncts X, Y. Whether an error is thereby committed depends on reasoners' interpretation of the expressions “probability” and “and.” We report two experiments designed to clarify the normative status of typical responses to conjunction problems.

This article gives a practice-based overview of the implementation aspects of Corporate Responsibility. After discussing the success factors for implementing Corporate Responsibility, the article describes a model for implementing Corporate Responsibility. Special attention is given to the success factors in the subsequent phases of implementation (sensitivity to the organizational environment, awareness of core values and clear leadership), to ensure that the most optimal results attainable for the organization can be reached. The implementation-model is clarified by looking at experiences in implementing (...) Corporate Responsibility at Chiquita. (shrink)

This article gives a practice-based overview of the implementation aspects of Corporate Responsibility. After discussing the success factors for implementing Corporate Responsibility, the article describes a model for implementing Corporate Responsibility. Special attention is given to the success factors in the subsequent phases of implementation (sensitivity to the organizational environment, awareness of core values and clear leadership), to ensure that the most optimal results attainable for the organization can be reached. The implementation-model is clarified by looking at experiences in implementing (...) Corporate Responsibility at Chiquita. (shrink)

. This paper investigates the mechanisms of knowledge production of twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology. How robotics influences investigations into the structure, development, and change of organic forms? Which definition of form is presupposed by this new approach to the study of form? I answer these questions by investigating how robots are used to understand and generate new questions about the locomotion of extinct animals in the first case study and in high-performance fishes in the second case study. After having illustrated (...) the landscape of twentieth-century morphology, I will reflect on the definition of form adopted in twenty-first century robotics-inspired morphology as well as on the differences between this approach to the study of form and the so-called nature-inspired disciplines, such as bionics or biomimetics. In the conclusion, I suggest that we are now in a material turn in morphology, characterized by the coexistence of the robotic, the virtual, and the real, which enables an understanding of how the structures and dynamics of shapes change over time. (shrink)

This essay pushes the history of a scientific discipline, morphology, toward a broader philosophically informed and cross-disciplinarily engaged history of knowledge. It shows that by looking at how knowledge and practices circulated between scientific disciplines (such as biology) and technoscientific ones (like architecture and design) we can better understand how (morphological) knowledge was produced. By doing so, the analysis contributes to the study of the mechanisms of knowledge exchange between the organic and the technical worlds and, more broadly, to the (...) study of the dynamics of knowledge circulation. First, the essay analyzes the engineering studies of organic form conducted by the Austro-Hungarian botanist Raoul Heinrich Francé (1874–1943) and the Scottish polymath D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1860–1948). Subsequently, the essay moves to twenty-first-century morphogenesis. It examines the transfer of the notion of morphospace, a paleontological practice of data visualization, into biology-inspired architectural design. The conclusion deals with the broader features of knowledge transfer and circulation. Twentieth- and twenty-first-century morphologists successfully translate and transfer morphogenetic processes from nature into technical artifacts to achieve technical solutions to given problems. In the translation of organic morphogenesis into a technical process, evolution’s intrinsic historical contingency was deliberately left behind. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Although ethical decision‐making theory has evolved over the years, within the field of management, research still revolves around James Rest’s (1986) four‐step framework, dominated by a positivist epistemology and a quantitative methodology. Given that currently there is a call for a theoretical, epistemological, and methodological renovation for the enlargement and enrichment of knowledge about how decisions are morally made in organizations, this paper has a double aim. First, by showing the models’ main flaws and limitations, it critically assesses the prominent (...) theoretical models of Rest, Trevino, and Jones. Then, for decision making in organizations, the paper aims to posit a fresh moral theory that addresses the phenomenon from a comprehensive epistemological perspective. To do so, it steps back from those prominent models in order to review John Dewey’s “theory of moral life.” At the core of the proposed comprehensive theoretical framework are Dewey’s concepts of a “moral standard” and “valuation.” Finally, the paper shows how the Dewey‐based framework can both overcome the flaws and limitations that are identified in those prominent models and can enrich empirical research, therefore contributing to developing as a whole the ethical decision‐making field. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to compare three alternative formal reconstructions of van Inwagen’s famous argument for incompatibilism. In the first part of my paper, I examine van Inwagen’s own reconstruction within a propositional modal logic. I point out that, due to the expressive limitations of his propositional modal logic, van Inwagen is unable to argue directly (that is, within his formal framework) for incompatibilism. In the second part of my paper, I suggest to reconstruct van Inwagen’s argument within (...) a first-order predicate logic. I show, however, that even though this reconstruction is not susceptible to the same objection, this reconstruction can be shown to be inconsistent (given van Inwagen’s own assumptions). At the end of my paper, I suggest to reconstruct van Inwagen’s argument within a quantified counterfactual logic with propositional quantifiers. I show that within this formal framework van Inwagen would not only be able to argue directly for incompatibilism, he would also be able to argue for crucial assumptions of his argument. (shrink)

In the substitutional framework, validity is truth under all substitutions of the nonlogical vocabulary. I develop a theory where □ is interpreted as substitutional validity. I show how to prove soundness and completeness for common modal calculi using this definition.

This paper examines the subversive role of statistics paleontology at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In particular, I will focus on German paleontology and its relationship with statistics. I argue that in paleontology, the quantitative method was questioned and strongly limited by the first decade of the 20th century because, as its opponents noted, when the fossil record is treated statistically, it was found to generate results openly in conflict with the Darwinian theory (...) of evolution. Essentially, statistics questions the gradual mode of evolution and the role of natural selection. The main objections to statistics were addressed during the meetings at the Kaiserlich-Königliche Geologische Reichsanstalt in Vienna in the 1880s. After having introduced the statistical treatment of the fossil record, I will use the works of Charles Léo Lesquereux, Joachim Barrande, and Henry Shaler Williams to compare the objections raised in Vienna with how the statistical treatment of the data worked in practice. Furthermore, I will discuss the criticisms of Melchior Neumayr, one of the leading German opponents of statistical paleontology, to show why, and to what extent, statistics were questioned in Vienna. The final part of this paper considers what paleontologists can derive from a statistical notion of data: the necessity of opening a discussion about the completeness and nature of the paleontological data. The Vienna discussion about which method paleontologists should follow offers an interesting case study in order to understand the epistemic tensions within paleontology surrounding Darwin’s theory as well as the variety of non-Darwinian alternatives that emerged from the statistical treatment of the fossil record at the end of the 19th century. (shrink)

Many versions of the ontological argument have two shortcomings: First, despite the arguments put forward, for example, by Hugh Chandler and Nathan Salmon, they assume that S5 is the correct modal logic for metaphysical modality. Second, despite the classical arguments put forward, for example, by David Hume and Immanuel Kant or the more recent arguments put forward, for example, by John Findlay and Richard Swinburne, they assume that necessary existence is possible. The aim of the paper is to develop an (...) alternative version of the ontological argument that, by an appeal to the logic of ‘actually’, avoids these two shortcomings. The version helps to leave aside unnecessary debates about the modal logic S5 or about the possibility of necessary existence and to focus on the actual challenge for the debate about the ontological argument: the challenge to evaluate the claim that it is possible that God exists. (shrink)

During his celebrated 1922 debate with Bergson, Einstein famously proclaimed: “the time of the philosopher does not exist, there remains only a psychological time that differs from the physicist’s.” Einstein’s dictum, I maintain, has been metabolized by the natural sciences, which typically presuppose, more or less explicitly, the existence of a single, univocal, temporal substratum, ultimately determined by physics. This reductionistic assumption pervades much biological and biomedical practice. The chronological age allotted to individuals is conceived as an objective quantity, allowing (...) one to straightforwardly assign and compare the biological age of organisms. This essay argues that the standard practice of assessing the age and aging of organisms against the backdrop of a physical conception of time is problematic. This becomes especially evident in light of recent discoveries of various levels of senescence underlying the development of individual organisms—a phenomenon known as ‘age mosaicism.’ The bottom line is that the study of age and aging requires a biological conception of time, as opposed to a physical one. Einstein clearly wasn’t wrong about his operationalization of time in relativity theory. Still time may be less monolithic than he surmised. (shrink)

In this paper, I delineate the first pages of a philosophical genealogy which outlines the cornerstones of a philosophy of bio-technical forms. In so doing, the essay contributes to the philosophical understanding of some key scientific concepts. In particular, it analyses the philosophical and historical preconditions, the epistemic assumptions, as well as the ontological commitments of the concept of form as used in digital design and in bionics. In the first section, I investigate Ernst Kapp’s philosophy of technical forms. In (...) the second section, I analyse the emergence of biotechnology, today’s bionics, as an independent technical discipline. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Austro-Hungarian botanist Raoul Heinrich Francé (1874–1943) founded this discipline with the aim of imitating the technical solutions chosen by nature. In the conclusion, I draw broader conclusions about the philosophy of bio-technical forms. Particularly, I argue, first, that the role of materiality and form-intrinsic propriety is of central importance in processes of form design. Second, I define morphology as a theory of possible constructions of forms in space and not, as in evolutionary biology, a science of the changes of forms in time. This characterises what I have called the ontological turn in form-design disciplines: nature operates technically to conceive new forms. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen’s original formulation of the Consequence Argument employed an inference rule that was shown to be invalid given van Inwagen’s interpretation of the modal operators in the Consequence Argument. In response, van Inwagen recently suggested a revised interpretation of his modal operators. Following up on a debate between Blum and Schnieder, I analyze van Inwagen’s revised interpretation in terms of explanatory notions and I argue that van Inwagen faces a dilemma: he either has to admit that beta entails (...) fatalism, or he has to admit that a new counterexample invalidates beta. Either way, it seems reasonable to reject beta and to conclude that the Consequence Argument fails. Further, I argue that Widerker’s well-known substitute for rule beta is faced with a similar dilemma and, therefore, is bound to fail as well. I conclude that, if the modal operators are interpreted in terms of explanatory notions, neither van Inwagen’s nor Widerker’s rule of inference turns out to be valid. (shrink)