We show that the Axiom of Countable Choice is necessary and sufficient to prove that the existence of a Borel measure on a pseudometric space such that the measure of open balls is positive and finite implies separability of the space. In this way a negative answer to an open problem formulated in Górka (Am Math Mon 128:84–86, 2020) is given. Moreover, we study existence of maximal $$\delta $$ δ -separated sets in metric and pseudometric spaces from the point of (...) view the Axiom of Choice and its weaker forms. (shrink)

Despite their ethical intentions, ethically minded consumers rarely purchase ethical products (Auger and Devinney: 2007, Journal of Business Ethics76, 361–383). This intentions–behaviour gap is important to researchers and industry, yet poorly understood (Belk et al.: 2005, Consumption, Markets and Culture8(3), 275–289). In order to push the understanding of ethical consumption forward, we draw on what is known about the intention–behaviour gap from the social psychology and consumer behaviour literatures and apply these insights to ethical consumerism. We bring together three separate (...) insights – implementation intentions (Gollwitzer: 1999, American Psychologist54(7), 493–503), actual behavioural control (ABC) (Ajzen and Madden: 1986, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology22, 453–474; Sheeran et al.: 2003, Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 393–410) and situational context (SC) (Belk: 1975, Journal of Consumer Research2, 157–164) – to construct an integrated, holistic conceptual model of the intention–behaviour gap of ethically minded consumers. This holistic conceptual model addresses significant limitations within the ethical consumerism literature, and moves the understanding of ethical consumer behaviour forward. Further, the operationalisation of this model offers insight and strategic direction for marketing managers attempting to bridge the intention–behaviour gap of the ethically minded consumer. (shrink)

The paper aims at a phenomenological clarification of the “island community” category in the light of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s metaphysics of community. I begin with presenting a brief social history of the Spinalonga leprosarium as a model of an island community; then follows a sketch of some of the main findings made by the German philosopher concerning community per se, and finally an attempt is made to explain the place of island communities in Hildebrand’s hierarchy of communities. I aim to (...) show that an island community should be taken as a special example of what he calls a life circle. It is special because it somehow transcends the “primitiveness” imposed by Hildebrand on Lebenskreise in general, as a result of being rooted in a serious realm of value and meaning. (shrink)

In a recent series of papers, Jane Friedman argues that suspended judgment is a sui generis first-order attitude, with a question as its content. In this paper, I offer a critique of Friedman’s project. I begin by responding to her arguments against reductive higher-order propositional accounts of suspended judgment, and thus undercut the negative case for her own view. Further, I raise worries about the details of her positive account, and in particular about her claim that one suspends judgment about (...) some matter if and only if one inquires into this matter. Subsequently, I use conclusions drawn from the preceding discussion to offer a tentative account: S suspends judgment about p iff S believes that she neither believes nor disbelieves that p, S neither believes nor disbelieves that p, and S intends to judge that p or not-p. (shrink)

According to the orthodox view, the goodness of a life depends exclusively on the things that actually happened within it, such as its pleasures and pains, the satisfaction of its subject’s preferences, or the presence of various objective goods and bads. In this paper, I argue that the goodness of a life also depends on what could have happened, but didn’t. I then propose that this view helps us resolve ethical puzzles concerning the standards for a life worth living for (...) animals and the significance of a life’s shape. (shrink)

The first issue of _Artificial Intelligence and Law_ journal was published in 1992. This paper discusses several topics that relate more naturally to groups of papers than a single paper published in the journal: ontologies, reasoning about evidence, the various contributions of Douglas Walton, and the practical application of the techniques of AI and Law.

Responding to the increasingly influential role of Hannah Arendt's political philosophy in recent years, Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Total Domination: The Holocaust, Plurality, and Resistance, critically engages with Arendt's understanding of totalitarianism. According to Arendt, the main goal of totalitarianism was total domination; namely, the virtual eradication of human legality, morality, individuality, and plurality. This attempt, in her view, was most fully realized in the concentration camps, which served as the major "laboratories" for the regime. While Arendt focused (...) on the perpetrators' logic and drive, Michal Aharony examines the perspectives and experiences of the victims and their ability to resist such an experiment. The first book-length study to juxtapose Arendt's concept of total domination with actual testimonies of Holocaust survivors, this book calls for methodological pluralism and the integration of the voices and narratives of the actors in the construction of political concepts and theoretical systems. To achieve this, Aharony engages with both well-known and non-canonical intellectuals and writers who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Additionally, she analyzes the oral testimonies of survivors who are largely unknown, drawing from interviews conducted in Israel and in the U.S., as well as from videotaped interviews from archives around the world. Revealing various manifestations of unarmed resistance in the camps, this study demonstrates the persistence of morality and free agency even under the most extreme and de-humanizing conditions, while cautiously suggesting that absolute domination is never as absolute as it claims or wishes to be. Scholars of political philosophy, political science, history, and Holocaust studies will find this an original and compelling book. (shrink)

The aim of the current study was to monitor the changes that individual participants experienced as a result of taking part in a peace education program. The findings of prior analyses led to the understanding that participating in a peace program does not always ensure positive changes and may even cause a regression in attitudes. The present study was conducted in two stages. In the first stage, the researchers learned about the processes that participants underwent during a peace education program (...) and accordingly, a reinforcement program to restore/rehabilitate any negative attitudes was formed. In the second stage, the effectiveness over time of this reinforcement program was evaluated. The study’s findings show that engaging in reflection about the workshop content, especially when it is oriented towards positive thinking, is effective in reinforcing attitudes among participants who underwent a positive change in attitudes, and at the same time helps to rehabilitate attitudes among those participants who underwent a negative change. It is recommended that future peace education programs include at least three parts: preliminary preparation, the program itself, and follow-up/reinforcement activity after completion of the program. (shrink)

‘FORGIVING’ IN DERRIDA’S PHILOSOPHY OF MEETING, OR ON ETHICS AS AN FUNCTION OF LANGUAGE Ethics, which became a central point of the late works by Jacques Derrida, is a peculiar project within works of this scholar. Even an observation that the ‘deconstruction’ was solely an initial epistemological procedure, whose aim was to force its way through tissue of appropriating discourses, in order to make it available for ethics to exist from the beginning, once again, does not exhaust the risen issue. (...) Ethics, as interpreted by Derrida, is based on the categories of the philosophy of meeting – first of all in the Levinas’ version – but is in no way exhausted within its classical interpretations. A reason for such a situation is a high status given to a language by the author of the ‘Margins of Philosophy’. The philosophy of meeting, according to him, takes place in words, gestures and events, which dialoging is an introduction to construction of a fundamental ethic situation, i.e. the moment of meeting. One of such keywords is ‘forgiving’ – that becomes not only a signal of openness to accept the other, but also a communicative slogan, creating a horizon of ethics. It turns out that an ability of ‘forgiving’ is a basic condition. Through meeting it we can give each other a hand, and overcome the surrounding walls and entanglements. This is the feature of ‘forgiving’, where Derrida sees a basic chance for survival of the most precious values of our culture. (shrink)

Continual pressure on managers, their efficiency, and the need to search for novel solutions to problems can lead to psychologically demanding situations. In efforts to understand the main obstacles to work and to effectively manage work-related processes, and in the need to achieve personal development, new approaches that are based on existential philosophies emerge. The aim of this article is to highlight the ways in which existential approaches have been used or discussed in management and to show that existential themes (...) and their applications in management can also be found in the Eastern tradition of thought. The paper presents six case vignettes from management practice that use Western and Eastern existential insights and offer recommendations for self-development of managers. The paper concludes that although it is difficult or impossible to create a unified framework of existential philosophy of management because of the diversity of existential approaches and because of the problematic nature of comparing Eastern and Western philosophies, it is possible to work towards gathering applicable insights and values. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 39-40.

Many irreconcilable accounts of ratio legis in legal science, often concerned with legal interpretation, suffer from being disconnected from practical reasoning. Different theories of legal interpretation which result in one-sided views of ratio legis are by-products of one-sided semantics. The first part of the chapter diagnoses this problem by providing a model of three types of one-sided semantics—upstream, midstream and downstream—and explaining how they translate into respective accounts of legal interpretation and ratio legis. The second part of the chapter presents (...) an alternative to one-sided semantics in legal theory. The alternative account which combines semantics and practical reasoning in legal theory is based on Brandom’s inferential pragmatism. The usefulness of inferential pragmatism in legal theory with regard to the problem of ratio legis is tested and followed by extending an inferentialist account of ratio legis provided by Canale and Tuzet. A model of agent’s actions and reasons, and their impact on the reasoning of interpreters and decision-makers is the essential part of this extension. (shrink)

This article responds to a call from Philosophy of Management (Vandekerckhove 2020) to open a discussion on the contribution of Albert Camus’s work to management. The aim of this article is to argue that Camus’s sense of cyclicality related to the recurrence of crises is particularly important for existential management. This idea is embodied primarily by Camus’s famous retelling of the myth of Sisyphus, which is not only a provocative metaphor of his thoughts, as discussed by many authors, but is (...) also an inspiring expression of the idea of ​​revolt, which is further developed in Camus’s later work. The article focuses on recent updates to Camus’s Sisyphean revolt in existentially oriented approaches to management. These are mainly the concepts of the existential manager, an analysis of managerial lived experience within existential hermeneutic phenomenology, and the perspective of an absurd organization. Camus’s motif of cyclicality represents a stimulating framework for analysing lived managerial experience, which is characterized by alternating phases of success and failure. The article also draws attention to other important motives in Camus’s work, such as avoiding extremes and idealistic constructs, and expressing the value of human life as a basis for ethical behaviour. All the mentioned motives are closely related to the concept of revolt. This article also provides several explanatory comments on the editorial, which help to take a closer look at Camus’s style of thinking and avoid possible misinterpretations. In this respect, the distinction between Camus’s approach and forms of existentialism is particularly important. (shrink)

The paper deals with Martin Buber’s claim that responsibility “is the basic theme of my work in general.” As I show in the opening section of the article, his statement applies to the dialogical period of his work, but not the pre-dialogical. In the mystical phase of Buber’s thought there is no place for responsibility because the very nature of mysticism excludes that possibility. The incompatibility of mysticism and interpersonal responsibility is confirmed in the autobiographical fragment “conversion,” one of the (...) two biographical moments I discuss in relation to the shift in his thinking on responsibility. The second is his relationship with his wife Paula Winkler, which profoundly influenced his thinking about the importance of love and marriage for an understanding of responsibility. I then explore his view of responsibility as a doctrine, which developed along with his dialogical philosophy. Finally, I examine his critical views on four basic ways of avoiding responsibility, which highlight the close connection between freedom and responsibility: belief in fate, individualism, collectivism, and religious acosmism. (shrink)

Despite increasing interest in studying arguments from deontic authority of the general form “(1) $$\delta$$ δ is a deontic authority in institution $$\varOmega$$ Ω ; (2) according to $$\delta$$ δ, I should do $$\alpha$$ α, C: therefore, (3) I should do $$\alpha$$ α ”, the state of the art models are not capable of grasping their complexity. The existing sets of critical questions assigned to this argumentation scheme seem to conflate two problems: whether a person is subject to an authority (...) of an institution in the first place and whether the command issued within the context of a particular institution is eventually binding. For this reason, we introduce (1) a set of Basic Critical Questions to scrutinize the former issue, and (2) a set of more detailed questions related to specific features, also referred to as “parameters”, of institutional environments (Intra-Institutional Critical Questions). We identify major elements of institutional environments in which authoritative utterances are made and the crucial parameters of arguments from deontic authority. The selected evidence from the decisions of the Polish Supreme Administrative Court helps us show how these parameters may be used to reconstruct subtypes of this argument scheme, with their associated sets of critical questions. In specific institutional contexts, such detailed schemes are capable of grasping the complexity of appeals to deontic authority and thus should be used rather than general schemes. The reconstruction of argumentation schemes with critical questions shows how particular arguments may successfully be attacked. (shrink)

This is the editorial of the monothematic issue of the journal Filozofia dedicated to Martin Buber (1878 – 1965) on the occasion of the centenary of the first publication of his most famous and popular book, I and Thou, on his philosophy of dialogue.

Tato studie je v první řadě studií z dějin filosofie. Jejím hlavním úkolem je popsat život a dílo autora, který byl v česko-slovenském intelektuálním prostředí dlouhou dobu opomíjen: anglo-amerického matematika, fyzika a filosofa Alfreda Northa Whiteheada. Jeho životní příběh bývá někdy popisován jako „příběh tří měst“: Cambridge v Anglii, Londýna a nakonec Cambridge v Massachusetts, kde sídlí Harvardova univerzita. Studie se soustředí na některé významné momenty ve filosofově životě a pokouší se je zdůraznit jako klíč k porozumění Whiteheadovu celoživotnímu projektu. (...) Na samotném závěru je dodáno několik poznámek o recepci Whiteheadových myšlenek v česko-slovenském myšlenkovém milieu. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses the possibility of moral enhancement with ambient intelligence technologies and artificial intelligence presented in Savulescu and Maslen (2015). The main problem with their proposal is that it is not robust enough to play a normative role in users’ behavior. A more promising approach, and the one presented in the paper, relies on an artifi-cial moral reasoning engine, which is designed to present its users with moral arguments grounded in first-order normative theories, such as Kantianism or utilitarianism, (...) that reason-responsive people can be persuaded by. This proposal can play a normative role and it is also a more promising avenue towards moral enhancement. It is more promising because such a system can be designed to take advantage of the sometimes undue trust that people put in automated technologies. We could therefore expect a well-designed moral reasoner system to be able to persuade people that may not be persuaded by similar arguments from other people. So, all things considered, there is hope in artificial intelli-gence for moral enhancement, but not in artificial intelligence that relies solely on ambient intelligence technologies. (shrink)

It has been noticed by several authors that the colloquial understanding of anonymity as mere unknown-ness is insufficient. This common-sense notion of anonymity does not recognize the role of the goal for which the anonymity is sought. Starting with the distinction between the intentional and unintentional anonymity (which are usually taken to be the same) and the general concept of the non-coordinatability of traits, we offer a logical analysis of anonymity and identification (understood as de-anonymization). In our enquiry, we focus (...) on the intentional aspect of anonymity and develop a metaphor of “anonymity game” between “perpetrator” and “detective”. Beginning from common-sense intuitions, we provide a formalized, critical notion of anonymity. (shrink)

While mainstream CSR research has generally explored and argued for positive ethical, social and environmental performance, critical CSR scholars argue that change has been superficial—at best, and not possible in any substantial way within the current capitalist system. Both views, however, only address the role of business within larger systems. Little attention has been paid to the everyday material CSR practice of individual managers. We go inside the firm to investigate how the micro-level acts of individual managers can aggregate to (...) drive transformation of the macro-level business logic. We draw on the strategy-as-practice approach to organize our research. The study reveals two orientations towards the integration of personal ethics into the workplace: abdication and activism. These orientations are supported by managerial practice such as reproductive and coping tactics and covert and overt tactics ; and, three enabling conditions of activist practice: empowerment and psychological safety, moral shock, and morality praxis. While our findings illustrate the tremendous challenges managers face when attempting to influence organizational practices towards their ethical and environmental aspirations, we also show that under specific conditions, individual managers can become fully engaged advocates and drivers of positive change from the inside. In so doing, our individual-level analysis of intrapreneurship provides a more complex picture of the possibilities for positive change than have been previously put forth by mainstream and critical CSR research. (shrink)

One important aspect of biological explanation is detailed causal modeling of particular phenomena in limited experimental background conditions. Recognising this allows one to appreciate that a sufficient condition for a reduction in biology is a molecular model of (1) only the demonstrated causal parameters of a biological model and (2) only within a replicable experimental background. These identities—which are ubiquitous in biology and form the basis of ruthless reductions (Bickle, Philosophy and neuroscience: a ruthlessly reductive account, 2003)—are criticised as merely (...) “local” (Sullivan, Synthese 167:511–539, 2009) or “fragmentary” (Schaffner, Synthese, 151(3):377–402, 2006). However, in an instructive case, a biological model is preserved in molecular terms, demonstrating a complex phenomenon that has been successfully reduced. (shrink)

Contemporary analytic theories of law attempt to provide hermeneutic answers to the metaphysical question about the nature of law with intuition playing a pivotal role in these attempts. It is doubtful, however, whether intuition can meet metaphysical and hermeneutic expectations of such theories. The article points out divergent ways of understanding intuition in analytic theories of law. Moreover, such theories face a dilemma of choosing between the „hard” ontology of law, to which intuition would have a privileged epistemic access, and (...) „soft” ontology which entails multiple types of intuition. If collective consciousness, to which the intuitions that constitute the concept of law allegedly belong, is indeed the metaphysical foundation of contemporary analytic theories, they are hardly discernible from empiricism. A promising complementary approach to such a way of theorizing about law—where the vocabulary of intuitions is prioritized—can be provided by analytic pragmatism extending analysis to the practices in which words acquire their meanings. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that the meaning and significance of legal evidence is being constituted throughout the course of a singular instance of legal proceedings. This is to be achieved by describing what legal agents _do_ while appealing to different propositions of fact and inferring from them throughout the course of legal proceedings. The authors claim that the process of applying the law is ultimately rooted in the inferential discursive practices of exchanging reasons on the part (...) of the participants of legal proceedings. Therefore, they set forth a model of legal proceedings that consists of an interplay between three types of reasons, which are exchanged by the participants of legal proceedings: i.e. legal reasons, epistemic reasons and stake reasons. To illustrate this interplay, the authors deploy a metaphor of law as a game, and provide a description of legal proceedings as a particular instance of playing a game of law. The conclusion is that the legal concept of evidence is (at least in part) constituted by the role that evidence plays in affecting which reasons for action the participants to legal proceedings choose to act on. The other final assumption of this paper is metatheoretical: authors want to show that when analyzing what legal evidence is, one should begin from the perspective of a singular instance of legal proceedings, rather than from the perspective of law in general. (shrink)

Contemporary analytic theories of law attempt to provide hermeneutic answers to the metaphysical question about the nature of law with intuition playing a pivotal role in these attempts. It is doubtful, however, whether intuition can meet metaphysical and hermeneutic expectations of such theories. The article points out divergent ways of understanding intuition in analytic theories of law. Moreover, such theories face a dilemma of choosing between the „hard” ontology of law, to which intuition would have a privileged epistemic access, and (...) „soft” ontology which entails multiple types of intuition. If collective consciousness, to which the intuitions that constitute the concept of law allegedly belong, is indeed the metaphysical foundation of contemporary analytic theories, they are hardly discernible from empiricism. A promising complementary approach to such a way of theorizing about law—where the vocabulary of intuitions is prioritized—can be provided by analytic pragmatism extending analysis to the practices in which words acquire their meanings. (shrink)

This essay presents the Aestheticism of the 19th century as the foundational movement of modernist-formalist aesthetics of the 20th century. The main principle of this movement is what I denominate “productive opacity”. Aestheticism has not been recognized as a philosophical aesthetic theory. However, its definition of artwork as an exclusive kind of form—a deep, opaque form—is among the most precise ever given in the discipline. This essay offers an interpretation of aestheticism as a formalist theory, referred to here as “deep (...) formalism”, focusing on the thinking of leading aestheticists, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and James Whistler. These three thinkers defined artwork as a form saturated with an inextricable content, viz. opaque form. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to measure professional and personal values among nurses, and to identify the factors affecting these values. The participants were 323 Israeli nurses, who were asked about 36 personal values and 20 professional values. The three fundamental professional nursing values of human dignity, equality among patients, and prevention of suffering, were rated first. The top 10 rated values all concerned nurses' responsibility towards patients. Altruism and confidentiality were not highly rated, and health promotion and nursing (...) research were rated among the last three professional values. For personal (instrumental) values, honesty, responsibility and intelligence were rated first, while ambition and imagination were rated 14th and 16th respectively out of 18. Significant differences (P < 0.05) were found among some personal and professional values rated as functions of culture, education, professional seniority, position and field of expertise. The results may assist in understanding the motives of nurses with different characteristics and help to promote their work according to professional ethical values. (shrink)

We give a few results concerning the notions of causal completability and causal closedness of classical probability spaces . We prove that any classical probability space has a causally closed extension; any finite classical probability space with positive rational probabilities on the atoms of the event algebra can be extended to a causally up-to-three-closed finite space; and any classical probability space can be extended to a space in which all correlations between events that are logically independent modulo measure zero event (...) have a countably infinite common-cause system. Collectively, these results show that it is surprisingly easy to find Reichenbach-style ‘explanations' for correlations, underlining doubts as to whether this approach can yield a philosophically relevant account of causality. 1 Introduction2 Basic Definitions and Results in the Literature3 Causal Completability the Easy Way: ‘Splitting the Atom’4 Causal Completability of Classical Probability Spaces: The General Case5 Infinite Statistical Common-Cause Systems for Arbitrary Pairs6 ConclusionAppendix A. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Schopenhauer's argument against suicide has served as a punching bag for many modern-day commentators. Dale Jacquette, Sandra Shapshay, and David Hamlyn all argue that the premises of this argument or its conclusion are inconsistent with Schopenhauer's wider metaphysical and ethical project. This paper defends Schopenhauer from these charges. Along the way, it examines the relations between suicide, death by voluntary starvation, negation of the will, compassion, and Schopenhauer's critiques of cynicism and stoicism. The paper concludes that there may be (...) gaps in Schopenhauer's system, but not where the aforementioned commentators tried to locate them. (shrink)

In his Berlin Lectures of the 1820s, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) used spatial logic diagrams for philosophy of language. These logic diagrams were applied to many areas of semantics and pragmatics, such as theories of concept formation, concept development, translation theory, clarification of conceptual disputes, etc. In this paper we first introduce the basic principles of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language and his diagrammatic method. Since Schopenhauer often gives little information about how the individual diagrams are to be understood, (...) we then make the attempt to reconstruct, specify and further develop one diagram type for the field of conceptual analysis. (shrink)

The main purpose of the article is to compare the originally Greek, Plato\'s concept of dialogue and its function in the procedure of philosophying to the one developed by the 20-century \"philosophy of dialogue\" (F. Rosenzweig, M. Buber, F. Ebner, E. Levinas). It seems quite astounding that philosophy of dialogue, a trend which consistently and persistently defends the privileged position of dialogue in the structure of reality and uses it as an essential factor in the understanding of the relation between (...) God and Man, has not developed any solid methodological perspective. What is even worse, it failed to observe its presence in the very core of philosophical thinking, i.e. in Plato\'s thought. We are capable of reconstructing Plato\'s modus philosophandi with its essential conditions: the philosopher must not only \'see\' the truth (the noetical function), but must also tell it to the others, choose the partners of the dialogue and defend his logos if necessary (the apophantical function). The article consists of two complementary analyses: the first one is devoted to the presentation of the dialogical factor in Plato\'s noetics and apophantics, and the second one focuses on Rosenzweig\'s criticism of the whole European philosophy. The author tries to indicate its doubtful moments by -putting forward the question whether Plato\'s philosophy may be justly ascribed to the tradition under Rosenzweig\'s criticism, and if so, to what extent. (shrink)