The rational-agent frame of reference for the analysis of corporate strategic decision-making may be expanded to a moral-agent perspective where decision content is seen as comprising both commercial and ethical factors. Relevant factors may then be classified on the basis of the ethical decision principles to which they relate: rational-egoism, self-referential altruism or deontology. This approach is then applied to the problem of decision support for strategic divestment by MNCs.
The rational-agent frame of reference for the analysis of corporate strategic decision-making may be expanded to a moral-agent perspective where decision content is seen as comprising both commercial and ethical factors. Relevant factors may then be classified on the basis of the ethical decision principles to which they relate: rational-egoism, self-referential altruism or deontology. This approach is then applied to the problem of decision support for strategic divestment by MNCs.
At a 2011 meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, N. T. Wright offered four reasons for rejecting the existence of soul. This was surprising, as many Christian philosophers had previously taken Wright's defense of a disembodied intermediate state as a defense of a substance dualist view of the soul. In this paper, I offer responses to each of Wright's objections, demonstrating that Wright's arguments fail to undermine substance dualism. In so doing, I expose how popular arguments against dualism fail, (...) such as dualism is merely an unwarranted influence of Greek culture on Christianity, and substance dualism is merely a soul-of-the-gaps hypothesis. Moreover, I demonstrate that Wright himself has offered a powerful reason for adopting substance dualism in his previous works. In conclusion I offer a view that explains why the human soul needs a resurrected body. (shrink)
In the past 25 years or so, the issue of ethical universalizability has figured prominently in theoretical as well as practical ethics. The term, 'universaliz ability' used in connection with ethical considerations, was apparently first introduced in the mid-1950s by R. M. Hare to refer to what he characterized as a logical thesis about certain sorts of evaluative sentences. The term has since been used to cover a broad variety of ethical considerations including those associated with the ideas of impartiality, (...) consistency, justice, equality, and reversibility as well as those raised in the familar questions: 'What if everyone did that?' and 'How would you like it if someone did that to you? But this recent effloresence of the use of the term 'universalizability' is something that has deep historical roots, and has been central in various forms to the thinking about morality of some of the greatest and most influential philosophers in the western tradition. While the term is relatively new, the ideas it is now used to express have a long history. Most of these ideas and questions have been or can be formulated into a principle to be discussed, criticized, or defended. As we discuss these ideas below this prin ciple will be stated on a separate numbered line. The concepts of justice and equality were closely linked in Greek thought. These connections between these two concepts are apparent even in two authors who were hostile to the connection, Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)
According to N. T. Wright, anyone who is a Christian should at least think twice before he or she speaks about the soul, especially as an entity that is distinct from its physical body and can survive death in a disembodied intermediate state until the resurrection and reembodiment. In Wright’s mind, talk of the soul is talk about soul-body substance dualism, which is the villain in Christian anthropological thought. As far as Wright is concerned, it is time for Christians to (...) renounce dualism once and for all. In this paper, I take issue with Wright’s position on substance dualism. (shrink)
On November 19, 2017, the eighth annual Analytic Theology Lecture was delivered in Boston, Massachusetts by N.T. Wright before the American Academy of Religion. His lecture, titled “The Meanings of History: Event and Interpretation in the Bible and Theology,” is printed here for the first time.
In this new study of Rousseau, Levine presents a Kantian reading of the Social Contract. By attempting to reveal Rousseau’s anticipation of such Kantian themes as moral right and obligation the author’s purpose has been "to produce a Kantian reading of The Social Contract, a reading that emphasizes the many respects in which Rousseau anticipates Kant and motivates his investigations in moral philosophy". This purported similarity has been noted previously by thinkers such as Hegel and Cassirer. The book also develops (...) the theme that the solution to the conflict between moral autonomy and political authority is the main issue in The Social Contract. Because Rousseau apparently "grasped his conflict better than either Hobbes or Locke" he was able to anticipate Marx’s critique of the contractarian tradition. Consequently, Rousseau’s political philosophy underlies the "deep structure" of contemporary mentality, and continues to dominate our own sense of self, society, and being-in-the-world. While the main issues in Kant’s moral philosophy—autonomy/heteronomy, person/thing, rule of reason/heteronomous irrationalism—are present in ovo in Rousseau, the author warns us of crucial differences between the two thinkers, for example, in Kant the notion of our being forced to our own freedom is absent. But both thinkers share the belief that any conception of the state’s function as merely external coercion or coordination is sub-rational. Also, Kant’s conception of moral autonomy located in the de jure kingdom of political ends is anticipated in Rousseau’s attempt to direct society to the norm of the general will as its legitimate political end. In sum, Levine’s book, while drawing from the previous work of Althusser, avoids the usual Marxist concept manipulation, and gives us an interesting addition to Rousseau scholarship.—H.N.T. (shrink)
The theory of relativity forbids the superluminal travel of ordinary matter. However, it is possible to amend the theory of relativity and to develop a theory permitting superluminal travel. The acceptability of the features needed for superluminal travel is discussed.
Using mobile health research as an extended example, this article provides an overview of when the Common Rule “applies” to a variety of activities, what might be meant when one says that the Common Rule does or does not “apply,” the extent to which these different meanings of “apply” matter, and, when the Common Rule does apply, how it applies.
At last an English edition of Georg Simmel’s Philosophie des Geldes has appeared. Simmel first published this work in Germany in 1900. A second and enlarged edition was published in 1907. The Philosophy of Money is the first complete English translation of the second edition.
The geodesics and the curvature of a metric representing an isolated tachyon are investigated. It is argued that the properties are unphysical and inconsistent with observation, thus providing further evidence against the existence of tachyons.
In Hegel’s Dialectic the English speaking world is presented with a collection of five newly translated essays from the pen of Hans-Georg Gadamer. These essays on various topics in Hegel will all be of interest to Hegel scholars.
