In Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Marti Kheel explores the underlying worldview of "nature ethics," offering an alternative ecofeminist approach. Seeking to heal the divisions between the seemingly disparate movements and philosophies of feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health, Kheel proposes an ecofeminist philosophy that underscores the importance of empathy and care for individual beings as well as larger wholes.

This commentary on Fresco's article "Information processing as an account of concrete digital computation" illuminates the two intertwined roles that the definition of the term "information" plays in Fresco's analysis. It provides analysis of the notion of actualizing control in information processing. The key point made is that not all control information in common computational devices cannot be processed.

Purpose This paper aims to explore the ethical and social impact of augmented visual field devices, identifying issues that AVFDs share with existing devices and suggesting new ethical and social issues that arise with the adoption of AVFDs. Design/methodology/approach This essay incorporates both a philosophical and an ethical analysis approach. It is based on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, philosophical notions of transparency and presence and human values including psychological well-being, physical well-being, privacy, deception, informed consent, ownership and property and (...) trust. Findings The paper concludes that the interactions among developers, users and non-users via AVFDs have implications for autonomy. It also identifies issues of ownership that arise because of the blending of physical and virtual space and important ways that these devices impact, identity and trust. Practical implications Developers ought to take time to design and implement an easy-to-use informed consent system with these devices. There is a strong need for consent protocols among developers, users and non-users of AVFDs. Social implications There is a social benefit to users sharing what is visible on their devices with those who are in close physical proximity, but this introduces tension between notions of personal privacy and the establishment and maintenance of social norms. Originality/value There is new analysis of how AVFDs impact individual identity and the attendant ties to notions of ownership of the space between an object and someone’s eyes and control over perception. (shrink)

The starting premise of this paper is that business models can transform social reality—sometimes to an extreme. Then, building on the concept of “grand challenges,” we argue that such transformations can be either positive or negative in nature —even in the case of business models designed to improve value not only economically but environmentally and socially as well. To further our understanding of the negative aspects, we introduced two conceptual categories of business model: those for oppression or depletion and exclusionary (...) ones. We further argue that bringing the notion of grand challenges center-stage highlights four elements that can contribute to emerging research and inform practice on transformational business models. These elements are: participatory forms of architecture; multivocal inscriptions; scaffolding; and proximity. They are central components of what we name transformational business models. (shrink)

This research details a pilot study of Finnish college students and their views on the academic ethics. Finland is an unexamined population on this issue. In the current project, we surveyed students in the spring of 2014. We found unethical behavior is common on projects but less common on exams. We also found students are unwilling to report wrongdoing by other students. We examined differences between students’ attitudes on cheating based on several demographic factors, including gender, age and major. We (...) conclude by discussing the implications for further research in this area. (shrink)

I show the relevance of feminist thought to some of the major debates within the field of environmental ethics. The feminist vision of a holistic universe is contrasted with the dualistic notions inherent in both the “individual rights” and traditionally defined “holist” camps. I criticize the attempt in environmental ethics to establish universal, hierarchical rules of conduct for our dealing with nature (an up-down dualism) as weIl as the attempt to derive an ethic from reason alone (the dualism of reason (...) and emotion). I maintain that the division between the “holist” and “individual rights” camps is yet another form of dualist thinking, and propose in its stead a holistic vision that concerns itself both with the individual and with the whole of which the individual is apart. (shrink)

Excerpt from Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie Uber den Begriff und die Aufgaben der Sprachphilosophie und allgemeinen Grammatik und ihr Verhältnis zur Psychologie. Erstes Kapitel. Begriff der Sprache und der Sprachphilosophie. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in (...) the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Corporate abuse is a dehumanizing attitude built into the policies, structures and operations of a business. This text explains how this attitude is a natural outcome of the transition from a manufacturing to an information-based economy.

Assumed benefits from improved reputation are often used as motives to drive corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Are improved cost efficiencies among these reputation benefits? Cost efficiencies and cost management have become more relevant as revenue streams dry up in these tough economic times. Can a good reputation aid these efforts to develop cost efficiencies specifically when managing labor costs? Prior research hypothesizes that good reputation can create labor productivity and efficiency benefits. The purpose of this study is to empirically (...) investigate reputation's relationship with labor efficiency, labor productivity, and labor cost. Using a sample of highly reputable firms from Fortune's America's Most Admired Companies list and a corresponding matched sample of firms, we find that reputation is associated with improved labor efficiency and labor productivity. However, we do not find a significant association between reputation and reduced labor costs. Our study contributes to current research hypothesizing and finding efficiency benefits associated with good reputation. Documenting these potential reputation benefits has important implications for CSR activities and initiatives. It supports recent work that incorporates reputation into a more developed model of the relationship between CSR and performance (Vilanova et al.: 2009, Journal of Business Ethics 87, 57-69). This work is useful to businesses and supports strategies focused on "doing well by doing good" and maintaining healthy reputations. (shrink)

We explore two ways of distinguishing the semantic operation of kind terms. First, we focus on a distinction between terms with a flexible versus terms with an inflexible semantics. Flexibility depends on whether some changes in the domain of application are taken to be possible while being consistent with past usage and what is intuitively the same meaning. On the other hand we discuss terms whose mode of operation is tolerant, in that the cohabitation in the speakers’ community of more (...) than one use or practice of use of the term in question is accepted. Those terms contrast with terms that operate in a strict way restricting severely the legitimacy of different uses that cut the domain of application in different ways. Among the latter we include terms with an ethical component and terms whose correct application involves high stakes. These distinctions are not new, since the phenomena that we identify as flexibility and tolerance have been observed, although in our view they have not been properly systematized and assessed. We argue that the two distinctions throw light on the bases of some disputes and on some legal disagreements. (shrink)

Male provisioning ability may have evolved as a “good dad” indicator through sexual selection, whereas male creativity may have evolved partly as a “good genes” indicator. If so, women near peak fertility (midcycle) should prefer creativity over wealth, especially in short-term mating. Forty-one normally cycling women read vignettes describing creative but poor men vs. uncreative but rich men. Women’s estimated fertility predicted their short-term (but not long-term) preference for creativity over wealth, in both their desirability ratings of individual men (r=.40, (...) p<.01) and their forced-choice decisions between men (r=.46, p<.01). These preliminary results are consistent with the view that creativity evolved at least partly as a good genes indicator through mate choice. (shrink)

According to Donnellan the characteristic mark of a referential use of a definite description is the fact that it can be used to pick out an individual that does not satisfy the attributes in the description. Friends and foes of the referential/attributive distinction have equally dismissed that point as obviously wrong or as a sign that Donnellan's distinction lacks semantic import. I will argue that, on a strict semantic conception of what it is for an expression to be a genuine (...) referential device, Donnellan is right: if a use of a definite description is referential, it must be possible for it to refer to an object independently of any attributes associated with the description, including those that constitute its conventional meaning. (shrink)

We demonstrate that different categories of software raise different ethical concerns with respect to whether software ought to be Free Software or Proprietary Software. We outline the ethical tension between Free Software and Proprietary Software that stems from the two kinds of licenses. For some categories of software we develop support for normative statements regarding the software development landscape. We claim that as society's use of software changes, the ethical analysis for that category of software must necessarily be repeated. Finally, (...) we make a utilitarian argument that the software development environment should encourage both Free Software and Proprietary Software to flourish. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that the scope of indefinites is island insensitive, i.e., that, generally, an indefinite inside of a syntactic island, such as an adjunct clause, is capable of taking scope outside of that island. This paper challenges this assumption by studying the scope behaviour of the Spanish plural indefinite algunos ’). It presents an experimental study that shows that the scope of algunos is not free and depends on its syntactic environment, at least in the dialect of Spanish (...) studied here. The paper discusses some of the implications of the study for current theories of indefinite scope: it points out the problems that choice functions and singleton indefinites have with the Spanish data, and it also discusses the implications for Schwarzschild's solution to the so-called ‘Donald Duck’ problem. (shrink)

In this paper I demonstrate that there is an explanation of the number marking we see on nouns when they combine with the numeral _zero_ which combines Martí’s (Semant. Pragmat., 2020a, https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.13.3 ) account of the morphosyntax and semantics of the numeral-noun construction with Bylinina and Nouwen’s (Glossa 3(1):98, 2018 ) semantics for _zero_ and which does not need to appeal to any further principles (e.g., agreement).

In recent years attacks on the Kripke-Putnam approach to natural kinds and natural kind terms have proliferated. In a recent paper, Häggqvist and Wikforss (The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1–23, 2017) attack the once-dominant essentialist account of natural kinds. Häggqvist & Wikforss also suggest that it is time to return to some sort of cluster-based descriptivist semantics for natural kind terms, thus targeting both the metaphysical and semantic tenets that underpin the Kripke-Putnam approach. In our paper we (...) want to challenge both parts of Häggqvist and Wikforss’ project. We will argue that the anti-essentialist considerations and arguments they raise against the Kripke-Putnam view are far from compelling in some cases, and certainly not decisive against a reasonable form of the view. On the semantic side, although Häggqvist and Wikforss give few details about what a viable cluster-based descriptivist theory should look like, we will argue that one can already see the approach to be a non-starter. Ignorance and error arguments of the kinds provided by Kripke and Putnam continue to be decisive objections. The only way we can see to save the cluster descriptivist approach is to make the essential properties postulated by Kripke and Putnam become essential features of the descriptive cluster. But this makes the success of the approach parasitic on the correctness of the Kripke-Putnam view. (shrink)

Génesis y límites de la razón abstracta en el pensamiento jurídico -- La crisis del racionalismo jurídico.

Because it is provocative and is based on the denigration of absent third parties, shock jock discourse stimulates reactions that go well beyond the initial circle of listeners. Trash radio supporters and detractors alike take up the hosts’ deprecating remarks, reinterpret them and put them back into circulation. As the repetitions multiply, interweaving private speech and public speech, a complex web of circulation forms, attesting to the contagiousness of the discourse and the influence of the radio hosts. In order to (...) capture and explain this mechanism of propagation, we propose a model of analysis that combines elements of linguistic, discursive and pragmatic description. The model is illustrated by a case study. We are led to observe that the extent and rate of propagation of deprecating remarks inevitably affect the image of the person targeted and, more fundamentally, tend to make an aggressive mode of expression part of the natural speechscape. (shrink)

Available for the first time in English, Ernesto Che introduces readers to this important figure's pedagogical thinking. One of Guevara's enduring contributions was his insistence that a new socialist society involved not only economic and political change, but also the creation of what he called "a new man." "Collectivism," says author Linda Turner Martî, "was considered by Che a very important part of the personality of the Cuban socialist man." Martî points out that in Che's vision "the education of every (...) person is subjected not only to individual influences (teachers, parents, family and comrades) but above all to the influence of the collective, the social group, the environment, the media and others. (shrink)

This paper analyzes certain technical details of Floridi’s Theory of Strongly Semantic Information. It provides a clarification regarding desirable properties of degrees of informativeness functions by rejecting three of Floridi’s original constraints and proposing a replacement constraint. Finally, the paper briefly explores the notion of quantities of inaccuracy and shows an analysis that mimics Floridi’s analysis of quantities of vacuity.

In the semantic revolution that has led many philosophers of language away from Fregeanism and towards the acceptance of direct reference, the notion of rigidity introduced by Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity has played a crucial role. The notions of rigidity and direct reference are indeed different, but proponents of new theories of reference agree that there is a one way connection between them: although not all rigid terms are directly referential (witness rigid definite descriptions), all directly referential terms (...) are rigid. My purpose in this paper is to contest this widely held view. I will argue that, on a certain conception of what direct reference is (a conception present in the works of the main proponents of the theory), the fact that a term is directly referential does not entail that it is rigid. From this conclusion, I will argue, we can learn some substantial lessons about the assumptions and commitments of new theories of reference. (shrink)

Los trabajos que aquí se presentan ofrecen una gran panorámica sobre la reflexión en torno a la vida humana y vienen a continuación de los expuestos en el libro Dimensiones de la vida humana tal como las ofrece la antropología española. Ahora se abordan esas dimensiones desde tres vertientes diferenciadas, la historia, la literatura y la hermenéutica. La vida humana es plural y así son también las vistas sobre ella. Un primer conjunto de textos trata de la imagen del ser (...) humano en diversos momentos de la historia de la filosofía. Un segundo grupo nos acerca a la reflexión filosófica que se da en la literatura, ya que los escritores exploran las posibilidades de la vida humana, con lo que sus creaciones son un excelente mirador que el antropólogo filósofo no puede ignorar. Por último aparece un bloque de investigaciones que se centran en la hermenéutica -con una importante presencia de Paul Ricoeur- y en M. Merleau-Ponty, con motivo de su centenario en 2008. La cantidad de trabajos aquí recogidos es una buena muestra de los estudios que sobre antropología filosófica se están realizando en nuestro país. Cada texto es una ventana abierta que permite una mirada sobre el ser humano, sobre su imagen o sus imágenes. Sobre los autores: Javier San Martín, catedrático de Filosofía en la UNED, ha centrado su investigación en la fenomenología, antropología filosófica y filosofía de Ortega y Gasset. Tomás Domingo Moratalla, profesor de Ética en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, se ha centrado en la filosofía de Paul Ricoeur, la antropología filosófica y la filosofía práctica en clave hermenéutica. (shrink)

“Congealing” is a word that evokes senses of unpleasantness where perhaps something inviting had once been. It also implies that things are becoming less fluid and more rigid. As we began organizing ETHICOMP 2018, we wanted a theme that reflected the impact of technologies on human cultures, practices and lives. Our initial draft of the theme was “Creating, Changing, and Congealing Ways of Life with Technologies.” And while we were eventually persuaded to use a more congenial way of putting the (...) idea (it became “Creating, Changing, and Coalescing Ways of Life with Technologies”), in some ways, it remains true for us that “congealing,” and its connotations of something less pleasant, gets at the original idea. As we incorporate technologies into our practices, much attention is paid to how they change our ways of doing things. But technologies can also help ways of life set-up and harden like yesterday’s leftovers – not appealing, yet difficult to budge and sometimes quite unhealthy. Once a particular process is built around a piece of technology, it can become entrenched and increasingly difficult to change. For a historical example, consider how difficult it was to adapt records and software on the eve of the 21st century in response to the so-called “Y2K” problem. In early software development, efficient use of memory was an important design consideration. It had become a standard practice to use a 2-digit field for the year, which would roll to from “99” to “00” in the year 2000, causing problems for datedependent functions. Technologies can also reflect and reinforce existing cultural tendencies. For a recent example, consider the human resources software created by Amazon that used its existing hiring data to train a machine-learning system to rate applicants. The resulting system turned out to be biased against women applicants, downranking resumes that included the word “woman” or “women’s.” Amazon ended up scrapping the project altogether. Because of these kinds of effects, we wanted to encourage people to think beyond well-worn paradigms like “technologies are disruptive” to consider other kinds of effects they can have. As it happened, the imagery of “congealing” proved distasteful enough that the steering committee opted for a more neutral term. But even with the less-dramatic wording the conference ended up attracting a rich and diverse range of papers that examined technological issues from a variety of angles, exactly as we had hoped. (shrink)

El artículo analiza las interacciones entre el lenguaje blasfematorio y las expresiones de contenido ateísta manifestadas en el vocabulario corriente de las clases populares en el marco de la Cataluña de los siglos XVI-XVIII. A través del estudio de la documentación judicial elaborada por la Inquisición de Barcelona y de la literatura de reforma moral católica postridentina se ponen al descubierto las diversas interpretaciones que suscitaba el tema entre juristas y teólogos, desvelándose las distintas sensibilidades de los grupos sociales y (...) de ciertas profesiones frente a la blasfemia y la desafección religiosa. Un comportamiento irreligioso potencialmente atribuible a la lógica del razonamiento popular o a la herencia de las tradiciones religiosas católica, judía y musulmana en la construcción de la fraseología blasfema cristiana. (shrink)

A variety of leech homeobox genes have been identified by homology with genes that are known to bring about the regionalization and segmentation of the anteroposterior body axis in other organisms. Embryonic expression patterns suggest a number of interphyletic similarities in the way that these genes are utilized. However, several interesting differences have also been observed. In particular, transplantation experiments in the leech embryo have shown that axially aligned patterns of homeobox gene expression are not specified by a global pattern (...) of positional cues. Rather, the leech independently establishes anteroposterior patterns of gene expression in each of five discrete stem cell lineages, and these patterns are brought into their final alignment through a process of morphogenetic assembly. (shrink)