In three experiments we tested hypotheses derived from the goal specificity literature using a real-world physics task. In the balance-scale paradigm participants predict the state of the apparatus based on a configuration of weights at various distances from the fulcrum. Non-specific goals (NSG) have been shown to encourage hypothesis testing, which facilitates rule discovery, whereas specific goals (SG) do not. We showed that this goal specificity effect depends on task difficulty. The NSG strategy led to rule induction among some participants. (...) Among non-discoverers, SG participants were faster and more accurate on difficult problems than NSG participants. The use of misleading exemplars (scale configurations that obscured the rule governing outcomes) led to fixation on inappropriate hypotheses for NSG but not SG participants. When more diagnostic learning exemplars were used, NSG non-discoverers still performed worse than SG participants on difficult problems. SG participants also outperformed NSG participants on a post-test of difficult problems. These findings qualify the generality of goal specificity effects. (shrink)

Difficult Atheism shows how contemporary French philosophy is rethinking the legacy of the death of God in ways that take the debate beyond the narrow confines of atheism into the much broader domain of post-theological thinking. Christopher Watkin argues that Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Quentin Meillassoux each elaborate a distinctive approach to the post-theological, but that each approach still struggles to do justice to the death of God.

John F. Post argues that physicalistic materialism is compatible with a number of views often deemed incompatible with it, such as the objectivity of values, the irreducibility of subjective experience, the power of the metaphor, the normativity of meaning, and even theism.

This book draws from previously unpublished letters and interviews with physicists, theologians, and Sir John’s close associates and family to present Sir John’s ideas on pure unlimited love. Post, who was in dialogue with Sir John for fifteen years on this topic and who had founded the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, addresses how John Templeton arrived at his philosophy as a youth growing up in Tennessee. Post also shares how classical Presbyterian ideas came to synergize in (...) his mind with the more eastern influences of American transcendentalism and the Unity School of Christianity and ponders if Sir John truly believed that science and spiritualty might fully converge on the same view of Ultimate Reality with their very different ways of knowing. _Is Ultimate Reality Unlimited Love?_ presents Sir John’s hope for spiritual progress with the eventual convergence of ultimate reality and unlimited love at its very center. (shrink)

After some preliminary clarifications, arguments for the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination, such as they are, are shown to be unsound. An argument against the supposed asymmetry is then constructed and defended against objections. This is followed by explanations of why the intuition of asymmetry is nonetheless so entrenched, and of how the asymmetric ontological priority of the physical over the non-physical can be understood without the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination.

A growing body of work suggests that the presence of women and of independent directors on boards of directors is associated with higher corporate environmental performance. However, the mechanisms linking board composition to corporate environmental performance are not well understood. This study proposes and empirically tests the mediating role of sustainability-themed alliances in the relationship between board composition and corporate environmental performance. Using the population of public oil and gas firms in the United States as the sample, the study relies (...) on renewable energy alliances to measure sustainability-themed alliances and longitudinally analyzes lagged data for independent and control variables. The study found that the higher the representation of women on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances, and the higher the representation of independent directors on a firm’s board, the more likely the firm is to form sustainability-themed alliances. Such alliances, in turn, positively contribute to corporate environmental performance. This paper discusses the study’s contributions to the board composition-social performance literature. (shrink)

Anti-racist debate today remains polarised between ‘class reductionist’ (any attempt to address racial disparities reinforces capitalist class relations) and ‘liberal identity’ (disparities in racial representation can be resolved without questioning class inequality) politics. Both positions share a common perspective – racial oppression and class exploitation are the products of distinctive social dynamics whose relationship is historically contingent. This essay is an initial step toward characterising a structurally necessary relationship between capitalism and racial oppression. The essay draws upon Anwar Shaikh and (...) Howard Botwinick’s elaboration of Marx’s political economy, and Ellen Wood’s analysis of the specificity of capitalist imperialism. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION In ita original form the present paper was presented to the American Mathematical Society, April 2k,, as a companion piece to the writer's ...

After some preliminary clarifications, arguments for the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination, such as they are, are shown to be unsound. An argument against the supposed asymmetry is then constructed and defended against objections. This is followed by explanations of why the intuition of asymmetry is nonetheless so entrenched, and of how the asymmetric ontological priority of the physical over the non-physical can be understood without the supposed asymmetry of supervenience and determination.

New-wave psychoneural reduction, a la Bickle and Churchland, conflicts with the way certain adaptation properties are individuated according to evolutionary biology. Such properties cannot be reduced to physical properties of the token items that have the adaptation properties. The New Wave may entail a form of individualism inconsistent with evolutionary biology. All of this causes serious trouble as well for Jaegwon Kim's thesis of the Causal Individuation of Kinds, his Weak Supervenience thesis, Alexander's Dictum, his synchronicity thesis that all psychological (...) kinds supervene on the contemporaneous physical states of the organism, Correlation Thesis, and indeed his Restricted Correlation Thesis. All these theses are strongly individualist, in the sense of entailing that ALL a thing's properties are determined by its own physical properties and relations, contrary to many properties in biology and psychology. (shrink)

Theory as History brings together twelve essays by Jarius Banaji addressing the nature of modes of production, the forms of historical capitalism and the varieties of pre-capitalist modes of production. Problematic formulations concerning the relationship of social-property relations and the laws of motion of different modes of production and his notion of merchant and slave-holding capitalism undermines Banaji’s project of constructing a non-unilinear, non-Eurocentric Marxism.

David Papineau's model of scientific reduction, contrary to his intent, appears to enable a naturalist realist account of the primitive normativity involved in a biological adaptation's being “for” this or that (say the eye's being for seeing). By disabling the crucial anti‐naturalist arguments against any such reduction, his model would support a cogni‐tivist semantics for normative claims like “The heart is for pumping blood, and defective if it doesn't.” No moral claim would follow, certainly. Nonetheless, by thus “pressing from below” (...) we may learn something about moral normativity. For instance, suppose non‐cognitivists like Mackie are right that the semantics of normative claims should be “unified”: if the semantics of moral claims is non‐cognitivist, so too is that of all normative claims. Then, assuming that a naturalist reduction does yield a sound cognitivist account of the primitive normativity, it would follow that our semantics of moral claims is cognitivist as well. (shrink)

The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) requires as a condition of accreditation that every health care institution -- hospital, nursing home, or home care agency -- have a standing mechanism to address ethical issues. Most organizations have chosen to fulfill this requirement with an interdisciplinary ethics committee. The best of these committees are knowledgeable, creative, and effective resources in their institutions. Many are wellmeaning but lack the information, experience, and skills to negotiate adequately the complex ethical (...) issues that arise in clinical and organizational settings. Handbook for Health Care Ethics Committees is the first resource designed to address the range of work performed by ethics committees as part of their multiple responsibilities, including education, case consultation, and policy development. It features an eight-chapter curriculum reviewing the content of contemporary health care bioethics and discussing the ethical foundations of clinical practice, with each subsequent section focusing on a set of ethical issues that commonly arise in the clinical setting. Through case studies, the authors explore issues such as informed consent and refusal, decision making and decisional capacity, truth telling, decision-making concerns of minors, end-of-life issues, palliation, justice in and access to health care services, and organizational ethics. They offer sample policies and procedures, draft guidelines and protocols, and key legal cases. Providing both a strong theoretical foundation and practical applications, this handbook will be essential reading for every member of a health care ethics committee. (shrink)

This essay argues that Knafo and Teschke fundamentally misread Brenner’s original contribution to the transition debate. They equate his rejection of trans-historical or trans-modal laws of motion with the notion that social-property relations do not have strong rules of reproduction that structure the actions of agents and give rise to ‘developmental patterns’ specific to each form of social labour. Knafo and Teschke’s critique of Brenner’s analysis of capitalist expansion and crisis is also theoretically and empirically questionable.

In order to defend the regress argument for foundationalism against Post’s objection that relevant forms of inferential justification are not transitive, Lydia McGrew and Timothy McGrew define a relation E of positive evidence, which, they contend, has the following features: It is a necessary condition for any inferential justification; it is transitive and irreflexive; and it enables both a strengthened regress argument proof against Post’s objection and an argument that nothing can ever appear in its own justificational ancestry. (...) In reply, we construct in their own terms both a counterexample to the would-be transitivity of E, and a related objection to their never-in-its-own-ancestry argument. We also rebut their rejection of certain counterexamples to the would-be transitivity of some forms of inferential justification. By doing so, and by questioning their transitivity claim for E, we aim to further the project of undermining the circularity arguments advanced by a zoo of skeptics, relativists, antirealists and internalists against realism and externalism. (shrink)

This paper discusses global corporate citizenship in the twenty-first century. The primary focus is on the responsibility of managementeducators to foster among students an understanding of the causes and consequences of business activitiy that creates organizationalwealth, including the role of stakeholders. The modern corporation is a stakeholder enterprise: stakeholders enable the business to create wealth and require that it distribute wealth appropriately. The stakeholder enterprise model, which has been so economically successful, also implies corporate citizenship responsibilities. The Clarkson Principles are (...) discussed as a means through which educators and managers can better understand and address the challenges of corporate citizenship in the modern world. (shrink)

Although studies show that those who are physically or psychologically overwhelmed by the needs of others do experience a stressful burden that can have significant negative health consequences, little attention has been given to whether there are health benefits from helping behaviour that is fulfilling, not overwhelming. In this book, Stephen Post brings together distinguished researchers from basic science to address this question in objective terms. The book provides heuristic models, from evolution and neuroscience, to explain the association between (...) altruism and health, and examine potential public health and practical implications of the existing data. (shrink)