The ontology of marketing, particularly the question of what products and brands are, is still largely unexplored. The ontological status of brands hinges on their relationship with products. Idealists about brands see perceptual or cognitive acts of consumers grouped under the heading ‘brand awareness’ or ‘brand image’ as constitutive for the existence of brands so that, in their view, tools of the marketing mix can influence relevant mental dispositions and attitudes. Brand realists, on the other hand, reject the view of (...) brands as mere marks or names and interpret them as emergent products with properties that afford branding in the sense of Gibson’s ecological psychology. Brand strength is a function of the degree to which brands occupy defensible niches in product space. Branding as a process involves changing external or internal boundaries of products. Several arguments are proposed in favor of brand realism. The fragments of an ontology of marketing are developed in a broadly Aristotelian framework. Brand realism has significant implications for a new understanding of issues ranging from the effects of advertising to financial brand valuation, the nature of trademarks, and marketing strategy in general. It permits one to treat brand equity as a real phenomenon not dependent on associations, attitudinal states such as brand loyalty, or spurious constructs such as brand character or personality. (shrink)

The following article starts by summarising how much modern capitalism is characterised by its religious structure. The world of branding — consumer goods becoming religiously attractive — and religious metaphors that have become necessary to describe contemporary neoliberalism are key examples. A second step consists in describing four typical aspects of religious capitalism in the following of Walter Benjamin's fragment `Capitalism as Religion' from 1921. Against this background I thirdly summarise Hans G. Ulrich's theological ethics concerning the economy. At the (...) centre of Ulrich's ethics we find his emphasis on God's economy that relieves us from all our worries enabling us thereby to become cooperators of God acting and working in an ethical way. A final step discusses Ulrich's rejection of an ethics of striving for God as the summum bonum by showing that desire or will do not necessarily contradict with the priority of God's grace. (shrink)

Due to increasing consumer skepticism towards promotional messages, companies are looking for new ways to communicate with their target audiences in a less obtrusive way than traditional advertising. Sponsored content disseminated on the online portals of newspapers (i. e., online advertorials) is regarded as a promising way to promote products and brands. Regulations require communicators to inform consumers about the commercial nature of this ‘masked’ persuasion attempt by including an explicit sponsorship disclosure (i. e., a ‘Sponsored’ label). This study demonstrates (...) that such an explicit advertising cue may not be enough to alert recipients. Furthermore, this study investigates the effects of promotional messages by means of a 2 (no disclosure vs. disclosure) x 2 (no forewarning vs. forewarning) experiment. Results show that both (i) foregoing instructions aimed at activating consumers’ persuasion knowledge (i. e., an additional forewarning message) and (ii) recipients’ prior media literacy can foster the effect of sponsorship disclosures in triggering situational distrust towards brand-related content, and in turn, increasing consumers’ reactance. (shrink)

Media archaeological methods for extending the lifetime of new media into ‘old media’ have experienced a revival during the past years. In recent media theory, a new context for a debate surrounding media archaeology is emerging. So far media archaeology has been articulated together with such a heterogeneous bunch of theorists as Erkki Huhtamo, Siegfried Zielinski, Thomas Elsaesser and to a certain extent Friedrich Kittler. However, debates surrounding media archaeology as a method seem to be taking it forward not only (...) as a subdiscipline of (media) history, but increasingly into what will be introduced as materialist media diagrammatics. This article maps some recent media archaeological waves in German media theory. The text addresses Wolfgang Ernst’s mode of media archaeology and his provocative accounts on how to rethink media archaeology as a fresh way of looking into the use and remediation of media history as a material monument instead of a historical narrative and as a recent media theoretical wave from Germany that seems to not only replicate Kittler’s huge impact in the field of materialist media studies but develop that in novel directions. However, as will be argued towards the end, Ernst’s provocative take that hopes to distinguish itself as a Berlin brand of media theory in its hardware materiality and time-critical focus resonates strongly with some of the recent new directions coming from US media studies, namely in software and platform studies. (shrink)

Institutional investors, policy makers, and researchers have advocated for greater director independence in hopes of improving corporate governance and discouraging unethical behaviors such as corporate frauds, accounting irregularities, and other organizational failures. However, increasing demands upon directors and sitting CEOs, as well as constraints on the number of boards on which they can serve, has resulted in a dramatic increase in the use of retired independent directors. Compared to other directors with full-time job demands, we argue that RIDs have lesser (...) time constraints and greater attentional capacities with which to discharge their responsibilities, thereby improving overall board “bandwidth.” Using S&P 1500 firms for the period of 2000–2012, we find that enhanced board bandwidth associated with an increased proportion of RIDs on the board relates to greater resource provisioning through reducing costs of capital, improved monitoring through reducing disclosure-related weaknesses, and better accounting and market performance. We thereby advance traditional board bandwidth research by contemplating the available time that independent directors would have by virtue of being retired and relating this to board effectiveness. (shrink)

To review a book that deals with 1000 years of Byzantine history is just as bold an undertaking as the writing of the book itself. Treadgold (henceforth T.) took this challenge on, and we should be grateful to him for doing so. The reviewer admits that he is not informed equally well over all periods of the history of the Byzantine empire – there is probably no-one on the planet who could with a clear conscience assert that they were. In (...) this respect the reviewer admires T. for his lack of reserve in expressing his views on problems and periods of Byzantine history with which he is clearly less familiar than with those of the eighth and ninth centuries. (shrink)

This book has grown out of eight years of close collaboration among its authors. From the very beginning we decided that its content should come out as the result of a truly common effort. That is, we did not "distribute" parts of the text planned to each one of us. On the contrary, we made a point that each single paragraph be the product of a common reflection. Genuine team-work is not as usual in philosophy as it is in other (...) academic disciplines. We think, however, that this is more due to the idiosyncrasy of philosophers than to the nature of their subject. Close collaboration with positive results is as rewarding as anything can be, but it may also prove to be quite difficult to implement. In our case, part of the difficulties came from purely geographic separation. This caused unsuspected delays in coordinating the work. But more than this, as time passed, the accumulation of particular results and ideas outran our ability to fit them into an organic unity. Different styles of exposition, different ways of formalization, different levels of complexity were simultaneously present in a voluminous manuscript that had become completely unmanageable. In particular, a portion of the text had been conceived in the language of category theory and employed ideas of a rather abstract nature, while another part was expounded in the more conventional set-theoretic style, stressing intui tivity and concreteness. (shrink)

According to the classical quantificational analysis of modals, an agent has the ability to perform an act iff relevant facts about the agent and her environment are compatible with her performing the act. The analysis faces a number of problems, many of which can be traced to the fact that it takes even accidental performance of an act as proof of the relevant ability. I argue that ability statements are systematically ambiguous: on one reading, accidental performance really is enough; on (...) another, more is required. The stronger notion of ability plays a central role in normative contexts. Both readings, I argue, can be captured within the classical quantificational framework, provided we allow conversational context to impose restrictions not just on the “accessible worlds”, but also on what counts as a performance of the relevant act among these worlds. (shrink)

Traces Rhetoric from its composition through its preservation in Greece and Rome; investigates its emergence in the Middle Ages; and explores the development of its editions in Greek and Latin.

After a Guatemalan migrant worker living in northern California was killed by a hit-and-run driver while crossing a highway one night, his family requested that his body be sent back to his native village in southwestern Guatemala to be mourned and buried according to traditional Catholic custom. But the County morgue confused this deceased individual with another Latino and cremated his body before it could be shipped. This article analyzes the cultural, psychological and economic ramifications of this accidental cremation. Although (...) permissible within the Catholic Church, the cremation caused enormous suffering to the family of the deceased as well as to the dead man's soul. At the same time it generated potential financial windfall not only for his relatives, but for lawyers and the present author. (shrink)

This article reports on an empirical qualitative study on applying a Philosophy for Children (P4C) modeled science story to support the teaching of basic science process skills of classification, observation, and inference to a group of fifth-grade science students. The science story was written to model the skills for the children. From individual interviews with a focus group of 10 students, the findings show that the story modeled the understanding of classification, observation, and inference skills for the children as well (...) as encouraged reflection on the meaning of inference. The majority of the students identified with the fictional characters, particularly regarding traits such as cleverness and inquisitiveness, and with the learning context of the story. Implications for the theory and practice of P4C are discussed. (shrink)

This Element addresses three questions about Kant's guarantee thesis by examining the 'first addendum' of his Philosophical Sketch: how the guarantor powers interrelate, how there can be a guarantee without undermining freedom and why there is a guarantee in the first place. Kant's conception of an interplay of human and divine rational agency encompassing nature is crucial: on moral grounds, we are warranted to believe the 'world author' knew that if he were to bring about the world, the 'supreme' good (...) would come about too. Perpetual peace is the condition that enables the supreme good to be realized in history. (shrink)

Kant's theory of cognition centrally builds on his conception of self‐consciousness and the transcendental use of the phrase “I think”: the ability to add the phrase “I think” to a representation is a necessary condition of the ability to cognize objects. The paper argues that “I think”, rather than denoting the content of a predicative judgement, is typically an expression of the subject's thinking. It expresses a kind of self‐consciousness that, without assertively representing the subject itself, indicates that representational contents (...) are unified in a single consciousness of a single subject. Our aim is thus to develop and defend an expressivist interpretation of Kant's “I think”. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that some cases of naked statistical evidence license a high credence, but not an outright belief. If this is correct, there cannot be an unconditional bridge principle from credence to outright belief. We show that at least one prominent putative counterexample to such a bridge principle is based on a mistake, by demonstrating that the statistical evidence falls short not only of licensing rational belief, but also of justifying a high credence.

It is often assumed that Aristotle, Boethius, Chrysippus, and other ancient logicians advocated a connexive conception of implication according to which no proposition entails, or is entailed by, its own negation. Thus Aristotle claimed that the proposition ‘if B is not great, B itself is great […] is impossible’. Similarly, Boethius maintained that two implications of the type ‘If p then r’ and ‘If p then not-r’ are incompatible. Furthermore, Chrysippus proclaimed a conditional to be ‘sound when the contradictory of (...) its consequent is incompatible with its antecedent’, a view which, in the opinion of S. McCall, entails the aforementioned theses of Aristotle and Boethius. Now a critical examination of the historical sources shows that the ancient logicians most likely meant their theses as applicable only to ‘normal’ conditionals with antecedents which are not self-contradictory. The corresponding restrictions of Aristotle’s and Boethius’ theses to such self-consistent antecedents, however, turn out to be theorems of ordinary modal logic and thus don’t give rise to any non-classical system of genuinely connexive logic,. (shrink)

This ground-breaking book brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to discuss the control and coordination of processes involved in perceptually guided actions. The research area of motor control has become an increasingly multidisciplinary undertaking. Understanding the acquisition and performance of voluntary movements in biological and artificial systems requires the integration of knowledge from a variety of disciplines from neurophysiology to biomechanics.

_ Source: _Page Count 16 This paper deals with an apparent tension in Wittgenstein’s _Philosophical Investigations_: Wittgenstein holds an expressivist position with regard to avowals, but also claims that the _doxastic_ avowal “I believe that p” is a “hesitant assertion” of p. It is argued that the tension is apparent only and that Wittgenstein’s expressivism in fact justifies and explains his views on “I believe”: avowals typically are _explicit expressives_ and usually implicate the corresponding illocutionary acts. The hesitant assertion of (...) p is the result of an implicature of the explicit expressive “I believe that p”. The paper also addresses the ambiguity of avowals and the possibility of thereby undermining the Frege–Geach objection to psychological expressivism. (shrink)

We present a reconstruction of so-called classical, formal or Mendelian genetics using a notation which we believe is more legible than that of earlier accounts, and lends itself easily to computer implementation, for instance in PROLOG. By drawing from, and emending, earlier work of Balzer and Dawe (1986,1997), the present account presents the three most important lines of development of classical genetics: the so-called Mendel's laws, linkage genetics and gene mapping, in the form of a theory-net. This shows that the (...) set theoretic representation format used in the structuralist approach to the philosophy of science also applies to the domain of genetic theories. There construction is intended to lend more clarity to theme thodological, philosophical and didactical discussions of the foundations of genetics, and on the other hand to defend a formally, logically minded view of theories which seems to have become contested through the work of Feyerabend, Kuhn and Kitcher. (shrink)

Prominent instances of anti-luck epistemology, in particular sensitivity and safety accounts of knowledge, introduce a modal condition on the pertinent belief in terms of closeness or similarity of possible worlds. Very roughly speaking, a belief must continue to be true in close possibilities in order to qualify as knowledge. Such closeness-accounts derive much support from their (alleged) ability to eliminate standard instances of epistemic luck as they appear in prominent Gettier-type examples. The article argues that there are new Gettier-type examples (...) which are grounded in “distant” epistemic luck. It is demonstrated that sensitivity and safety theories cannot handle such examples. (shrink)

One of the main controversies of the Logic Schools of the 12th century centered on the question: What follows from the impossible? In this paper arguments for two diametrically opposed positions are examined. The author of the ‘Avranches Text’ who probably belonged to the school of the Parvipontani defended the view that from an impossible proposition everything follows (‘Ex impossibili quodlibet’). In particular he developed a proof to show that by means of so-called ‘disjunctive syllogism’ any arbitrary proposition B can (...) be logically derived from a pair of contradictory propositions A and Not-A. The author of the Ars Meliduna instead argued that nothing follows from an impossible proposition (‘ex falso nihil sequitur’). This view is supported by various counterexamples which aimed to show that the admission of impossible premises would give rise to inconsistent conclusions. Upon closer analysis these inconsistencies do not, however, have the formal structure of a real contradiction like A and Not-A, but rather the structure of two rivalling conditionals like ‘If B then A’ and ‘If B then Not-A’. Hence these counterexamples rather have to be considered as refutations of the basic principles of ‘connexive logic’. (shrink)

The paper critically examines an objection to epistemic contextualism recently developed by Elke Brendel and Peter Baumann, according to which it is impossible for the contextualist to know consistently that his theory is true. I first present an outline of contextualism and its reaction to scepticism. Then the necessary and sufficient conditions for the knowability problem to arise are explored. Finally, it will be argued that contextualism does not fulfil these minimal conditions. It will be shown that the contrary view (...) is based on a misunderstanding of what contextualists are claiming. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to explicate the concept of causal independence between sets of factors and Reichenbach's screening-off-relation in probabilistic terms along the lines of Suppes' probabilistic theory of causality (1970). The probabilistic concept central to this task is that of conditional stochastic independence. The adequacy of the explication is supported by proving some theorems about the explicata which correspond to our intuitions about the explicanda.

This book is a critical examination of Michel Foucault's relation to ancient Greek thought, in particular his famous analysis of Greek history of sexuality. Wolfgang Detel offers a new understanding of Foucault's theories of power and knowledge based on modern analytical theories of science and concepts of power. He offers a fresh and complex reading of the texts which Foucault discusses, covering topics such as Aristotle's ethics and theory of sex, Hippocratic diatetics, the earliest treatises on economics, and Plato's (...) theory of love. The result is a philosophically rich and probing critique of Foucault's later writings, and a persuasive account of the relation between ethics, power and knowledge in classical antiquity. His book will have a wide appeal to readers interested in Foucault and in Greek thought and culture. (shrink)

It is widely held that if an object a is identical (or non-identical) to an object b, then it is necessary that a is identical (non-identical) to b. This view is supported an argument from Leibniz's Law and a popular conception of de re modality. On the other hand, there are good reasons to allow for contingent identity. Various alternative accounts of de re modality have been developed to achieve this kind of generality, and to explain what is wrong with (...) the argument from Leibniz's Law. (shrink)

Hermann Grassmann is known to be the founder of modern vector and tensor calculus. Having as a theologian no formal education in mathematics at a university he got his basic ideas for this mathematical innovation at least to some extent from listening to Schleiermacher’s lectures on Dialectics and, together with his brother Robert, reading its publication in 1839. The paper shows how the idea of unity and various levels of reality first formulated in Schleiermacher’s talks about religion in 1799 were (...) transformed by him into a philosophical system in his dialectics and then were picked up by Grassmann and operationalized in his philosophical-mathematical treatise on the extension theory in 1844. (shrink)

Recently, Bengt Hansson presented a paper about dyadic deontic logic,2 criticizing some purely axiomatic systems of dyadic deontic logic and proposing three purely semantical systems of dyadic deontic logic which he confidently called dyadic standard systems of deontic logic (DSDL1–3). Here I shall discuss the third by far most interesting system DSDL3 which is operating with preference relations. First, I shall describe this semantical system (Sections 1.1–1.3). Then I shall give an axiomatic system (Section 1.4) which is proved to be (...) correct (Section 2) and complete (Section 3) with respect to Hansson's semantics. Finally, in face of these results Hansson's semantics will be discussed from a more intuitive standpoint. After emphasizing its intuitive attractiveness (Section 4.1) I will show that two objections often discussed in connection with preference relations do not apply to it (Section 4.2 and 4.3); more precisely, I will show that the connectedness condition for preference relations can be dropped and that, in a sense, it is not necessary to compare two possible worlds differing in infinitely many respects. (What exactly is meant by this, will become clear later on.) Yet there is a third objection to Hansson's semantics which points to a real intuitive inadequacy of DSDL3. A way of removing this inadequacy, which corresponds to Hansson's own intuitions as well as to familiar metaethical views, is suggested, but not technically realized (Section 4.4). In the last section (section 4.5) I shall briefly show that DSDL3 is decidable, as expected. (shrink)

The systems Kα of transfinite cumulative types up to α are extended to systems K∞α that include a natural infinitary inference rule, the so-called limit rule. For countable α a semantic completeness theorem for K∞α is proved by the method of reduction trees, and it is shown that every model of K∞α is equivalent to a cumulative hierarchy of sets. This is used to show that several axiomatic first-order set theories can be interpreted in K∞α, for suitable α.

To review a book that deals with 1000 years of Byzantine history is just as bold an undertaking as the writing of the book itself. Treadgold (henceforth T.) took this challenge on, and we should be grateful to him for doing so. The reviewer admits that he is not informed equally well over all periods of the history of the Byzantine empire – there is probably no-one on the planet who could with a clear conscience assert that they were. In (...) this respect the reviewer admires T. for his lack of reserve in expressing his views on problems and periods of Byzantine history with which he is clearly less familiar than with those of the eighth and ninth centuries. (shrink)