REVIEW (1): "Jeff Kochan’s book offers both an original reading of Martin Heidegger’s early writings on science and a powerful defense of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) research program. Science as Social Existence weaves together a compelling argument for the thesis that SSK and Heidegger’s existential phenomenology should be thought of as mutually supporting research programs." (Julian Kiverstein, in Isis) ---- REVIEW (2): "I cannot in the space of this review do justice to the richness and range (...) of Kochan's discussion [...]. There is a great deal in this foundational portion of Kochan's discussion that I find tremendously interesting and engaging [...]." (David R. Cerbone, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science) ---- REVIEW (3): "Science as Social Existence will be of interest not only to Heidegger scholars but to anyone engaged in science and technology studies. [...] This is an informative and original book. Kochan should be praised for his clear, pleasant-to-read prose." (Michael Butler, in CHOICE). (shrink)

In this short autobiographical essay, I reflect upon what comparative philosophy could mean to the social existence of a female Chinese scholar like me. I argue that comparative studies have been beneficial to people like me who live in hybrid, ex-colonial spaces. Comparative philosophy has allowed me to develop, and hone, my own understanding of issues pertaining to feminist theory and aesthetics. It has also aided me in recontextualizing and reappropriating some elements of my Confucian background.

Sartre's Philosophy of Social Existence is a critical interpretation of Jean-Paul Sartre's phenomenology of social existence and the dynamics of group-formation. It seeks to trade the foreshadowing of a theory of individual action in the practical field of social existence in Being and Nothingness and sees a continuity between this work and Sartre's Critique of Rational Dialectic (1960). The movement in Sartre's thought from the abstract freedom of consciousness to concrete freedom and individual praxis (...) is illuminated in relation to his description of a complex social dialectic. It is shown that as Sartre develops an account of social group-formation he admits determinations and necessities that undermine his attempt to preserve the idea of free individual praxis. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of the key term aidagara ('betweenness') in the philosophical ethics of Watsuji Tetsurō (1889-1960), in response to and in light of the recent movement in Japanese Buddhist studies known as 'Critical Buddhism'. The Critical Buddhist call for a turn away from 'topical' or intuitionist thinking and towards (properly Buddhist) 'critical' thinking, while problematic in its bipolarity, raises the important issue of the place of 'reason' vs 'intuition' in Japanese Buddhist ethics. In this paper, a comparison (...) of Watsuji's 'ontological quest' with that of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Watsuji's primary Western source and foil, is followed by an evaluation of a corresponding search for an 'ontology of social existence' undertaken by Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962). Ultimately, the philosophico-religious writings of Watsuji Tetsurō allow for the 'return' of aesthesis as a modality of social being that is truly dimensionalized, and thus falls prey neither to the verticality of topicalism nor the limiting objectivity of criticalism. (shrink)

A contribution to the rapidly growing literature on the development of Sartre's thought, this volume is primarily devoted to interpretation and critique of Sartre's evolution from abstract individualist to social philosopher. Challenging Raymond Aron's claim that Sartre's Critique de la raison dialectique offers nothing of significance to sociologists, Stack attempts to show that CRD, while seriously flawed, is both philosophically and sociologically "a valuable study". Sartre achieves a "sociology," Stack argues, not by jettisoning his early existential phenomenology but rather (...) by resituating his "abstract" analysis of free consciousness in L'être et le néant in a concrete, practical social field, historically dominated by economic scarcity. (shrink)

Volume 31, Issue 4, December 2017, Page 432-435.

Any point of departure for exegesis which ignores God in Christ as the liberator of the oppressed or makes salvation as liberation secondary is invalid. The test of validity lies not only in the particularity of the oppressed culture, but in the One who freely grants us freedom when we were doomed to slavery.

After the three families divided up the state of Jin and the Tian family took over Qi, the political situation in the fourth century B.C.E. appeared even more chaotic. Wei conquered Chu's Luyang and Qin's Xihe, Qin defeated Wei at Shimen , and again at Shaoliang , and Wei moved its capital to Daliang. During the mid-Warring States period, Qin became dominant in the west, Qi in the east, Chu in the south, and Wei in the center. Rapid changes occurred (...) one after another; trickery and conflict were rampant. However, the shi , the intelligentsia, actually managed to expand their spheres of existence and activity accordingly in this state of tension between countries, states, and men. A few major states assembled quite a number of literati; and those men of the villages, who had in earlier times merely waited passively for opportunities to fall into their laps, crisscrossed the various feudal states; literati who previously had no cause to use military force became, one by one, the honored guests of the feudal lords. With the breakdown of the previously simple and obvious order, the gradually dismantling of the common body of the ancestral clan of the past, and the increasing complexities of social relationships after the dissolution of blood ties, social order became a matter of concern. Or, to reword this most practical issue: How could this universally chaotic society go from disorder to order? (shrink)

Purpose. The research is aimed at determining the influence of negative ethical emotions on social life and the activity of the individual, which involves solving the following problems: a) to find out approaches to the typology of ethical emotions, b) to highlight individual negative ethical emotions and to determine their ability to influence human behaviour. Theoretical basis. The theoretical and methodological basis of the research is the recognition of the significant influence of negative emotions on human activity in society. (...) In this regard, it is proposed to consider them as a complex multidisciplinary phenomenon, which is predetermined by both social and personal factors of origin and has a certain specificity of objectification. Originality. The authors determined that in addition to destructive effects on a person of negative emotions, they can also have a constructive effect on person’s behaviour, due primarily to the fact that a person does not want to experience these emotions and therefore tries to avoid situations they cause. Conclusions. The ethical emotions of guilt, embarrassment, anger, disgust and contempt can affect, through the cognitive aspect of the emotional process, the decision-making process of people when they predict situations in which they risk to feel such emotions. So the emotion of guilt creates a constructive setup aimed at correcting inappropriate social norms of human behaviour. The emotion of embarrassment motivates a person to behave more benevolently in society in order to integrate in it and get its approval, thus encouraging the person to adhere to social and moral agreements and norms. The emotion of anger motivates a person to act to eliminate injustice, herewith not only in relation to himself, but also in relation to others. Rejecting those people who cause moral and social aversion, society creates a system of punishments and rewards that acts as a strong deterrent to the socio-cultural behaviour. The emotion of contempt performs the function of preventing punishment in relation to the despised individual. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Three years ago, at the suggestion of Professor Jacques Etienne of Institut Superieur de Philosophie, a probing mission into the problem of ...

En partant du constat que les significations du terme « utopie » varient en fonction des différents niveaux de langue (politique, professionnel, commun, etc.) l’auteur s’interroge sur les modalités des « expérimentations utopiques » dans la société. Dans la lignée des analyses de Paul Ricœur et de Robert Nozick, ainsi qu’en s’appuyant sur les conclusions de ses propres recherches consacrées aux représentations utopiques au XVIIIe siècle, l’auteur montre que l’utopie permet à l’individu d’exprimer son idéal de la société basé sur (...) des choix axiologiques personnels, ainsi qu’à fonder l’identité d’un groupe dont les membres disputent à l’idéologie sa prétention à la domination. Enfin, l’utopie sous la forme de fiction constitue un élément important d’un discours théorique portant sur les modèles institutionnels alternatifs et questionnant l’idéologie. L’étude des modes de l’existence sociale de l’utopie permet d’interpréter la façon dont elle se manifeste et perdure dans la société. (shrink)

The existence of social learning has been confirmed in diverse taxa, from apes to guppies. In order to advance our understanding of the consequences of social transmission and evolution of behavior, however, we require statistical tools that can distinguish among diverse social learning strategies. In this paper, we advance two main ideas. First, social learning is diverse, in the sense that individuals can take advantage of different kinds of information and combine them in different ways. (...) Examining learning strategies for different information conditions illuminates the more detailed design of social learning. We construct and analyze an evolutionary model of diverse social learning heuristics, in order to generate predictions and illustrate the impact of design differences on an organism’s fitness. Second, in order to eventually escape the laboratory and apply social learning models to natural behavior, we require statistical methods that do not depend upon tight experimental control. Therefore we examine strategic social learning in an experimental setting.. (shrink)

If a potential person would have a good life if he were to come into existence, can we coherently regard his coming into existence as better for him than his never coming into existence? And can we regard the situation in which he never comes into existence as worse for him? In this paper, we argue that both questions should be answered affirmatively. We also explain where prominent arguments to differing conclusions go wrong. Finally, we explore (...) the relevance of our answers to issues in population ethics. (shrink)

This research work examines Heidegger's (1889-1976) contention that phenomenology can inspire, illuminate, motivate, reinforce and guide (human) individual's actions. It achieves this by adapting Heidegger's phenomenological approach to analyze and interpret representative everyday factical experiences of nepotism, selfishness and mass mentality in the (Nigerian) society. Doing this helps to ascertain whether these experiences have any phenomenological link with inauthenticity. Also, it provides a close reading and interpretation of Heidegger's treatment of authentic existence, and explores the possibility of complimenting it (...) with the phenomenology of Commensality, as a mode of care and a way to authenticity. In this manner, it strategically explores possible ways of inspiring individual Daseins to authenticity, and with it engendering a positive transformation of the (Nigerian) society. Presenting and elaborating the phenomenology of Commensality, the work highlights the relationship and the differences between the phenomenology of Commensality and the ontical or sociological understanding of commensality as obtained in African traditional societies. Phenomenology of Commensality argues for the 'renaissance' of Commensality, concretely expressed as Onyenkeanyi, and not just for its 'revival'. The research work further develops the phenomenology of education for Commensality, discussing the possible content and focus of its curriculum, while differentiating it from ethics. The proper implementation of phenomenology of education for Commensality could inspire and illuminate individual Daseins to authenticity, and thereby becomes an improvement strategy for the positive transformation of the (Nigerian) society. As a phenomenology, it is appropriate that the people and places analyzed take on a definite character, which is why the Nigerian society is used. However, it is expected that the implications of the findings presented here will be general and accurate enough to allow application to any number of similar situations. (shrink)

In contrast with the development of big theories in the context of social sciences, there is nowadays an increasing interest in the construction of simulation models for complex phenomena. Those simulation models suggest a certain image of social sciences as a kind of, let us say, "patchwork". In that image, an increase in understanding about the phenomena modeled is obtained through a certain sort of aggregation. There is not an application of sound, established theories to all the phenomena (...) of a certain kind, but an aggregation of the structures supposed, and of the results obtained, when particular systems are modeled. The recent case of the "El Farol Bar" problem, and the models built in order to face this problem, are a good example of this. We will analyze that case, trying to make clear what would be implied by the image above mentioned. Special attention will be paid to the need to take seriously the notion of a bounded rationality, linked to the special circumstances generating each decision problem, and to the existence of an irreducible pluralism of models. (shrink)

:This essay investigates the relationships among scripts, schemata, and social norms. The authors examine how social norms are triggered by particular schemata and are grounded in scripts. Just as schemata are embedded in a network, so too are social norms, and they can be primed through spreading activation. Moreover, the expectations that allow a social norm’s existence are inherently grounded in particular scripts and schemata. Using interventions that have targeted gender norms, open defecation, female genital (...) cutting, and other collective issues as examples, the authors argue that ignoring the cognitive underpinnings of a social norm can hamper the effectiveness of behavioral interventions. (shrink)

Central figures in the phenomenological tradition, such as Aron Gurwitsch, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, drew extensively on gestalt psychology in their writings. The dialogue between phenomenology and psychology they began continues today in the field of embodied cognitive science. We take up this conversation starting from Aron Gurwitsch’s rich phenomenological analysis of the perception of the cultural world. Gurwitsch’s phenomenological descriptions of the perception of the cultural world bear a striking resemblance to work in embodied cognitive science that takes (...) its inspiration from Gibson’s ecological psychology. Gibson coined the term “affordance” to refer to the possibilities for action that can be directly perceived by persons [Gibson 1979]. However, Gibson from his earliest writings made a distinction between a universal, strictly individual and nonsocial form of perception and a perception of the world that was subject to social and cultural influences. We use Gurwitsch to argue against Gibson’s individualist understanding of direct perception. Each affordance that can be selected as an object of perception refers to a wider sociocultural context, which Gurwitsch called an “order of existence”. We end our paper by taking up the question of the relation of phenomenological description of the perceptual world and explanations of perceptual experience provided by embodied cognitive science. (shrink)

Central figures in the phenomenological tradition, such as Aron Gurwitsch, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, drew extensively on gestalt psychology in their writings. The dialogue between phenomenology and psychology they began continues today in the field of embodied cognitive science. We take up this conversation starting from Aron Gurwitsch’s rich phenomenological analysis of the perception of the cultural world. Gurwitsch’s phenomenological descriptions of the perception of the cultural world bear a striking resemblance to work in embodied cognitive science that takes (...) its inspiration from Gibson’s ecological psychology. Gibson coined the term “affordance” to refer to the possibilities for action that can be directly perceived by persons [Gibson 1979]. However, Gibson from his earliest writings made a distinction between a universal, strictly individual and nonsocial form of perception and a perception of the world that was subject to social and cultural influences. We use Gurwitsch to argue against Gibson’s individualist understanding of direct perception. Each affordance that can be selected as an object of perception refers to a wider sociocultural context, which Gurwitsch called an “order of existence”. We end our paper by taking up the question of the relation of phenomenological description of the perceptual world and explanations of perceptual experience provided by embodied cognitive science. (shrink)

Prolonged solitary confinement has become a widespread and standard practice in U.S. prisons—even though it consistently drives healthy prisoners insane, makes the mentally ill sicker, and, according to the testimony of prisoners, threatens to reduce life to a living death. In this profoundly important and original book, Lisa Guenther examines the death-in-life experience of solitary confinement in America from the early nineteenth century to today’s supermax prisons. Documenting how solitary confinement undermines prisoners’ sense of identity and their ability to understand (...) the world, Guenther demonstrates the real effects of forcibly isolating a person for weeks, months, or years. -/- Drawing on the testimony of prisoners and the work of philosophers and social activists from Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis, the author defines solitary confinement as a kind of social death. It argues that isolation exposes the relational structure of being by showing what happens when that structure is abused—when prisoners are deprived of the concrete relations with others on which our existence as sense-making creatures depends. Solitary confinement is beyond a form of racial or political violence; it is an assault on being. (shrink)

According to a mainstream position in contemporary cognitive science and philosophy, the use of abstract compositional concepts is amongst the most characteristic indicators of meaningful deliberative thought in an organism or agent. In this article, we show how the ability to develop and utilise abstract conceptual structures can be achieved by a particular kind of learning agent. More specifically, we provide and motivate a concrete operational definition of what it means for these agents to be in possession of abstract concepts, (...) before presenting an explicit example of a minimal architecture that supports this capability. We then proceed to demonstrate how the existence of abstract conceptual structures can be operationally useful in the process of employing previously acquired knowledge in the face of new experiences, thereby vindicating the natural conjecture that the cognitive functions of abstraction and generalisation are closely related. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to outline the basis for a comprehensive account of educational rights. It begins by acknowledging the difficulties posed by diversity, and defends a conception of universal human rights that limits parental educational discretion. Against the backdrop of the literature of public reason and fair equality of opportunity, it sketches arguments for the existence of rights to education of some specific kinds. Those rights, and associated educational purposes, are systematised on the basis of a (...) conception of education as initiation into practices that express human flourishing. (shrink)

If a potential person would have a good life if he were to come into existence, can we coherently regard his coming into existence as better for him than his never coming into existence? And can we regard the situation in which he never comes into existence as worse for him? In this paper, we argue that both questions should be answered affirmatively. We also explain where prominent arguments to differing conclusions go wrong. Finally, we explore (...) the relevance of our answers to issues in population ethics. (shrink)

Foucault's analysis of an aesthetics of existence is presented as an instrument to practice ethical thought without the presupposition of an autonomous subject. The implications of Foucault's aesthetics of existence for ethical thought are traced to the work of Nietzsche. In Foucault's work, experiences of oneself are not a given, but are constituted in power relations and true-and-false games. In the interplay of truths and power relations, the individual constitutes a certain relationship to him- or herself. Foucault designated (...) the relation to oneself and one's existence as the main area of ethical concern and the most important field where aesthetic values are to be applied. In his aesthetics of existence, he invited the individual to problematize the relationship with the self and by using 'self-techniques' to transform it into a work of art. The relation to intimate others, shaped as friendship, is crucial to this ethical-aesthetic approach. Key Words: aesthetics of existence • ethics • Foucault • friendship • Nietzsche • subjectivity. (shrink)

[Sally Haslanger] In debates over the existence and nature of social kinds such as 'race' and 'gender', philosophers often rely heavily on our intuitions about the nature of the kind. Following this strategy, philosophers often reject social constructionist analyses, suggesting that they change rather than capture the meaning of the kind terms. However, given that social constructionists are often trying to debunk our ordinary (and ideology-ridden?) understandings of social kinds, it is not surprising that their (...) analyses are counterintuitive. This article argues that externalist insights from the critique of the analytic/synthetic distinction can be extended to justify social constructionist analyses. /// [Jennifer Saul] Sally Haslanger's 'What Good Are Our Intuitions? Philosophical Analysis and Social Kinds' is, among other things, a part of the theoretical underpinning for analyses of race and gender concepts that she discusses far more fully elsewhere. My reply focuses on these analyses of race and gender concepts, exploring the ways in which the theoretical work done in this paper and others can or cannot be used to defend these analyses against certain objections. I argue that the problems faced by Haslanger's analyses are in some ways less serious, and in some ways more serious, than they may at first appear. Along the way, I suggest that ordinary speakers may not in fact have race and gender concepts and I explore the ramifications of this claim. (shrink)

The paper begins by comparing Adorno’s and Foucault’s accounts of the normalizing practices that socialize individuals, integrating them into Western societies. In this context, I argue that the animus against socialism can be read as an expression of profound anxiety about the existing socialization of reproduction in the West. In fact, Adorno and Foucault contend that really existing socialization has contained our political imagination to the point where even our ideas about alternatives only conjure up more of the same. Yet (...) Adorno and Foucault do outline what radical social change might look like. Since Foucault linked radical change to the development of a specifically socialist art of government, but offered few clues about what this might mean, the paper also explores Adorno’s work to put more flesh on the idea of a socialist art of government. (shrink)

The only complete study of Buber as a political thinker. Shed new light upon Buber's I Thou, while also attempting to understand Buber's Zionist thought and activity in a new and fresh manner.

Often machine learning programs inherit social patterns reflected in their training data without any directed effort by programmers to include such biases. Computer scientists call this algorithmic bias. This paper explores the relationship between machine bias and human cognitive bias. In it, I argue similarities between algorithmic and cognitive biases indicate a disconcerting sense in which sources of bias emerge out of seemingly innocuous patterns of information processing. The emergent nature of this bias obscures the existence of the (...) bias itself, making it difficult to identify, mitigate, or evaluate using standard resources in epistemology and ethics. I demonstrate these points in the case of mitigation techniques by presenting what I call ‘the Proxy Problem’. One reason biases resist revision is that they rely on proxy attributes, seemingly innocuous attributes that correlate with socially-sensitive attributes, serving as proxies for the socially-sensitive attributes themselves. I argue that in both human and algorithmic domains, this problem presents a common dilemma for mitigation: attempts to discourage reliance on proxy attributes risk a tradeoff with judgement accuracy. This problem, I contend, admits of no purely algorithmic solution. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The individual-community relationship has always been one of the most fundamental topics of social sciences. In sociology, this is known as the micro-macro relationship while in economics it refers to the processes, through which, individual actions lead to macroeconomic phenomena. Based on philosophical discourse and systems theory, many sociologists even use the term "emergence" in their understanding of micro-macro relationship, which refers to collective phenomena that are created by the cooperation of individuals, but cannot be reduced to individual (...) actions. "Emergence" theories attempt to explain the nature of society as a complex system by examining how individuals and their relationships lead to the creation of integrated and macro-social phenomena such as markets, educational systems, cultural beliefs, and shared social practices. As a prelude to activity, every researcher has to answer the question from the methodological point of view, how is it possible to study the behavior of social groups and how can we gain knowledge about the laws related to social groups? Anyone who deals with humanities and social sciences or any reality and phenomenon that affects human beings, inevitably deals with the reality that is emerging. In fact, emergence occurs when one level of reality emerges radically from another level. Examples of emergent levels of reality include how the mind emerges from the body; or the way society emerges from human beings. Therefore, when there is an emerging factor, different scientific disciplines should be used, because it is inevitable to talk about social affairs, psychology and neurobiology, as well as physical and even chemical. -/- INTRODUCTION Since its beginning in the 19th century, sociology has faced the fundamental question of what a social phenomena stands for? At a glance, sociologists deal with the study of social groups, collective behavior, institutions, social structures, social networks, and social dynamics, and ultimately all such phenomena are composed of individuals. Therefore, social phenomena seem to have no independent ontological status, and in this case, sociology is ultimately about reducible individuals. Different approaches about the micro-macro relationship, using the concept of "emergence", argue that although collective phenomena are created by individuals, they cannot be reduced to individual action. The term "emergence" is used to distinguish "emergent results" from " Procedural results". Results are called Procedural that can only be calculated by adding or subtracting the causes that act together. On the contrary, they are emergent outcomes that are qualitatively novel compared to the causes from which they originate. An example of such emergent results is mental characteristics that emerge from neural processes, but are not considered among the characteristics of neural processes of components - which are their origin. Philosophical debates about emergentism and reductionism focus on the mind-brain relationship, but as many philosophers have noted, they can be generalized to apply to any hierarchical set of features. The cognitive revolution reactivated a 19th century controversy between theorists of Identity and dualism. The theorists of Identity believe in reductionist materialism and elimination of metaphysics, according to which the mind is nothing more than the biological, while the dualists believe that the mind and the brain are distinct from each other. Emergence has been considered as a third way between the theories of Identity and dualism. -/- METHODOLOGY Interdisciplinarity Is fundamentally indicated by the dominance of open systems as well as social and emerging systems at different levels. Therefore, as long as we are facing a new emergentism, there will necessarily be different fields and an interdisciplinary method. The commonality of social sciences and cognitive sciences on the issue of emergence provides the possibility of interaction and exchange of concepts between these two for deeper research. Therefore, in this research, apart from the concepts of Subvenience and downward causation, we have used multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, which are used to explain the emerging concept in cognitive sciences, including neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy. For analytical and interdisciplinary approaches, after examining the concepts of subvenience, and wildly disjunctive, Individualistic and collectivist emergentism have been reviewed. And then their adequacy is criticized and evaluated in meeting strong emergence conditions. -/- FINDINGS Philosophers of the mind have been able to define the conditions of irreducibility and downward causation, which are essential for strong emergence, by using the principle of subvenience with the help of multiple realization and wildly disjunctive principles. Therefore, by definition, emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and emergentist collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the challenges facing the two methodological approaches of individualism and collectivism leads us to three unresolved issues about the emerging phenomenon, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. Despite the differences in the stances of these two approaches regarding the aforementioned triple problems, individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and some others are irreducible due to their complexity, the determination of which, depends on the case study of the mechanism of emergence of each social characteristic. -/- CONCLUSION An emergence that is consistent with reductionism is called a weak emergence. And strong emergence includes the principle of irreducibility and downward causality. According to strong emergence, the characteristics of social phenomena have downward causal power, which cannot be reduced to the causal forces. The principle of subvenience, together with multiple realization and wildly disjunctive, can provide the conditions of irreducibility and downward causality, which are essential conditions of strong emergence. Based on the philosophical analysis of two methodological approaches, individualist and collectivist, it can be concluded that emergentist individualism suffers from the problem of how to explain downward causality and irreducibility, and reification collectivism faces the challenge of reification. The analysis of the problems faced by these two approaches leads us to three unresolved issues, which are realism, downward causality, and mechanism. individualist emergentists acknowledge the existence of emergent social characteristics, but despite this, they believe that these characteristics are not real but merely analytical constructs that require explanation based on individuals and their mutual actions. But collectivists argue that emergentism yields a categorical ontology and supports social realism. They accept the dependence of social characteristics on individuals, but claim that social entities and structures are ontologically independent. Individualists and collectivists both agree that some social characteristics are reducible; and others are irreducible due to their complexity; and the only way to recognize this is to engage in empirical studies of the mechanisms and temporal processes of "emergence" that create social characteristics. -/- NOVELTY The newness of this compact article is as follows: a) Presenting an interdisciplinary approach using the analysis of philosophy of cognitive sciences, including the philosophy of mind, neurobiology and psychology to formulate the issue of social emergence; b) Criticizing individualist and collectivist methodological approaches to the issue of social emergence and explaining the sufficiency and shortcomings of both in providing weak and strong emerging conditions; c) Explaining and categorizing the challenges facing methodological approaches in explaining the phenomenon of social emergence, in three categories: realism, downward causality, and mechanism. BIBLIOGRAPHY Beckermann, A., Flohr, H., & Kim, J. (eds.) (1992). Emergence or reduction? Essays on the prospects of nonreductive physicalism. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Bhaskar, R. (1979). The possibility of Naturalism. New York: Routledge. Bhaskar, R., Danermark, B. & Price, L. (2018). Interdisciplinarity and wellbeing: A critical realist general theory of interdisciplinarity. London and New York: Routledge. Blau, P.M. (1981). Introduction: diverse views of social structure and their common denominator. In Blau, P.M. & Merton, R.K. (eds.), Continuity in Structural Inquiry (pp. 1–23). Beverly Hills: Sage. Blau, P.M. (1987). Microprocess and macrostructure. In K.S. Cook (ed.), Social Exchange Theory (pp. 83–100). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Brooks, R.A., & Maes, P. (eds). (1994). Artificial life IV; proceedings of the Fourth International Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Coleman, J. S. (1987). Microfoundations and macrosocial behavior. In: J. C. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, & Neil J. Smelser (Eds.). The Micro-Macro Link (pp. 153–73). Berkeley: University of California. Coleman, J. S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Elster, J. (1985). Making sense of Marx. New York: Cambridge University Press. Fodor, J.A. (1974). Special sciences (Or: The disunity of science as a working hypothesis). Synthese, 28(2), 97–115. Fodor, J.A. (1989). Making mind matter more. Philosophical Topics, 17, 59-79. Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hempel, C.G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press. Horgan, T. (1993). From supervenience to superdupervenience: meeting the demands of a material world. Mind, 102, 555-586. Humphreys, P. (1997). How properties emerge”. Philosophy of Science, 64, 1-17. Kim, J. (1999). Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies, 95, 3–36. Kincaid, H. (1997). Individualism and the unity of science. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Lewis, D.K. (1986). The plurality of worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nigel, G., & Conte, R. (eds.) (1995). Artificial societies; The computer simulation of social life. London: UCL Press. O’Connor, T. (1994). Emergent properties. American Philosophical Quarterly, 31, 91-104. Popper, K.R. (1968). Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row. Sawyer, R. K. (2001). Emergence in sociology: contemporary philosophy of mind and some implications for sociological theory. American Journal of Sociology, 107, 551-585. Sawyer, R. K. (2004). The mechanisms of emergence. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 34, 260–282. Sawyer, R. K. (2005). Social emergence: societies as complex systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sawyer, R.K. (2003). Nonreductive individualism: Part 2, Social causation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33, 203–224. Winch, P. (1993). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy‭ (SAMT, Trans.). Tehran, Iran: SAMT. (shrink)

We link the corporate governance literature in financial economics to the agency cost perspective of corporate social responsibility to derive theoretical predictions about the relationship between corporate governance and the existence of executive compensation incentives for CSR. We test our predictions using novel executive compensation contract data, and find that firms with more shareholder-friendly corporate governance are more likely to provide compensation to executives linked to firm social performance outcomes. Also, providing executives with direct incentives for CSR (...) is an effective tool to increase firm social performance. The findings provide evidence identifying corporate governance as a determinant of managerial incentives for social performance, and suggest that CSR activities are more likely to be beneficial to shareholders, as opposed to an agency cost. (shrink)

Recent reviews show a rapid increase in the corporate social responsibility communication literature. However, while mapping the literature and the field of CSR communication, they do not fully capture the evolutionary character of this emerging interdisciplinary endeavour. This paper seeks to fill this gap by presenting a follow-up study of the CSR communication literature from a dynamic perspective, which focuses on micro-discursive changes in the field. A bibliometric approach and frame theory are used to examine continuities in the development (...) of field ‘frames’ in three consecutive periods between 2002 and 2016. The article highlights the growing fragmentation of the CSR communication field over time and the existence of 11 distinct frames during the field’s emergence, whereby the two most prominent in the three time periods are the reporting and business case frames. Regardless, they are subjected to discursive changes as well. For example, they become split into stakeholder-focused, business case and institutionalisation frame and contested by the constitutive logic, respectively. The paper argues that interdisciplinary fields like CSR communication can rarely exist without contestation. It also shows that micro-framing processes such as fragmentation, merging and extension visibly shape the identified field frames and the overall discursive dynamic of the CSR communication field while investigating their value for sustaining the field’s polyphonic state and further development. The study findings suggest that additional cross-fertilisation processes between the CSR communication literature and sustainability and digital communication research hold the potential to influence the next stage of the field’s discursive evolution. (shrink)

The fact of multiculturalism cannot have much bearing on moral epistemology unless it bears on moral truths. It is argued that the existence of some values is dependent on the practices that sustain them, and as a result, these practices will figure in an explanation of why we value particular values. If this is true, it is also considered to what extent such an account is consistent with the universality of values.

A central dispute in social ontology concerns the existence of group minds and actions. I argue that some authors in this dispute rely on rival views of existence without sufficiently acknowledging this divergence. I proceed in three steps in arguing for this claim. First, I define the phenomenon as an implicit higher-order disagreement by drawing on an analysis of verbal disputes. Second, I distinguish two theories of existence—the theory-commitments view and the truthmaker view—in both their eliminativist (...) and their constructivist variants. Third, I examine individual contributions to the dispute about the existence of group minds and actions to argue that these contributions have an implicit higher-order disagreement. This paper serves two purposes. First, it is a study to apply recent advances in meta-ontology. Second, it contributes to the debate on social ontology by illustrating how meta-ontology matters for social ontology. (shrink)

Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story “Yentl the Yeshiva Boy”.) needs to be read in the light of traditional Jewish sources. The question is, how does it stand up to modern hypotheses of gender construction? Yentl was originally published in Yiddish and was translated to English in the latter half of the twentieth century. We will see that the context within which to understand the story properly is encoded in the story itself, as Umberto Eco explains in his The Role of (...) the Reader and The Limits of Interpretation. We will see how the concept of a person’s gender, as a construction by social norms, is viewed within mainstream Jewish thought. Some textual issues and contemporary ideas of gender are applied to the story. Finally, the feature film Yentl. 1983. Yentl [film]. Los Angeles: United Artists Films.) is also compared the short story on which it was based as an example of translation and re-interpretation. (shrink)

By examining corporate social responsibility and power within the context of the food supply chain, this paper illustrates how food retailers claim to address food waste while simultaneously setting standards that result in the large-scale rejection of edible food on cosmetic grounds. Specifically, this paper considers the powerful role of food retailers and how they may be considered to be legitimately engaging in socially responsible behaviors to lower food waste, yet implement practices that ultimately contribute to higher levels of (...) food waste elsewhere in the supply chain. Through interviews with key actors in the Australian fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain, we highlight the existence of a legitimacy gap in corporate social responsibility whereby undesirable behaviors are pushed elsewhere in the supply chain. It is argued that the structural power held by Australia’s retail duopoly means that supermarkets are able to claim virtuous and responsible behaviors, despite counter claims from within the fresh food industry that the food supermarkets’ private quality standards mean that fresh food is wasted. We argue that the supermarkets claim CSR kudos for reducing food waste at the expense of other supply chain actors who bear both the economic cost and the moral burden of waste, and that this is a consequence of supermarkets’ remarkable market power in Australia. (shrink)

The literature on social interactions has shown that participants coordinate not only at the behavioral but also at the physiological and neural levels, and that this coordination gives a temporal structure to the individual and social dynamics. However, it has not been fully explored whether such temporal patterns emerge during interpersonal coordination beyond dyads, whether this phenomenon arises from complex cognitive mechanisms or from relatively simple rules of behavior, or which are the sociocultural processes that underlie this phenomenon. (...) We review the evidence for the existence of group-level rhythmic patterns that result from social interactions and argue that the complexity of group dynamics can lead to temporal regularities that cannot be predicted from the individual periodicities: an emergent collective rhythm. Moreover, we use this interpretation of the literature to discuss how taking into account the sociocultural niche in which individuals develop can help explain the seemingly divergent results that have been reported on the social influences and consequences of interpersonal coordination. We make recommendations on further research to test these arguments and their relationship to the feeling of belonging and assimilation experienced during group dynamics. (shrink)

Some environmental activists occasionally use the argument that poverty is ‘no excuse’ for not going green and denounce discourses putting forward social conditions as unduly exculpatory. Employing participant observation among middle-class activists mobilising to diffuse environmental lifestyles in socially diverse suburbs near Paris (France), the article explores their relation to the working class and examines the consequences of their endeavours on local class relations. It describes the tension between their goal of mainstreaming environmental reflexivity and the stubborn existence (...) of material inequalities and constraints. While their efforts are configured by a moral economy of environmental responsibility which assigns an undifferentiated moral obligation to consume sustainably to all individuals, they make sense of social differences by drawing on culturalist representations of poverty and folk social theories. These sense-making practices enhance rather than alleviate attributions of blame against working-class people and contribute to reinforcing the activists’ dominant symbolic position. (shrink)

The social exchange theory of reasoning, which is championed by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, falls under the general rubric “evolutionary psychology” and asserts that human reasoning is governed by content-dependent, domain-specific, evolutionarily-derived algorithms. According to Cosmides and Tooby, the presumptive existence of what they call “cheater-detection” algorithms disconfirms the claim that we reason via general-purpose mechanisms or via inductively acquired principles. We contend that the Cosmides/Tooby arguments in favor of domain-specific algorithms or evolutionarily-derived mechanisms fail and that (...) the notion of a social exchange rule, which is central to their theory, is not correctly characterized. As a consequence, whether or not their conclusion is true cannot be established on the basis of the arguments they have presented. (shrink)