This article investigates how the meanvariance efficient frontier defined by sovereign bonds of 20 developed countries is affected by the consideration of socially responsible indicators for countries in investment decision-making. For a global rating of socially responsible performances, we show that it is possible to build portfolios with an increased average rating without significantly harming the risk/return relationship. This result differs when considering sub-ratings related to the environment, social concerns and public governance. The results are good news for (...) responsible investors and suggest that socially responsible portfolios of sovereign bonds can be built without a significant loss of mean-variance efficiency. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has underscored the possibility that capital-adequacy regulations may have contributed to the 2008 financial crisis by privileging highly rated asset-backed securities, such as mortgage-backed securities. The same regulations gave an even more privileged position to sovereign debt, leading to the question of whether they helped cause the European sovereign-debt crisis. There is little question that the regulations encouraged European banks to invest in European governments' bonds, but it does not appear that this encouragement led to (...) more government borrowing by significantly reducing the yield governments needed to pay on their debt. However, it does appear that capital-adequacy regulations—along with post-2008 liquidity regulations—concentrated sovereign risk in the European banking system, aggravating the sovereign-debt problem by requiring government bailouts that, in turn, required the issuance of more sovereign debt, further jeopardizing the governments' fiscal position and banks' solvency. Exacerbating the situation, in the midst of a panic, the European Banking Authority imposed new capital requirements on banks and effectively forced them to realize mark-to-market losses on sovereign exposures. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has underscored the possibility that capital-adequacy regulations may have contributed to the 2008 financial crisis by privileging highly rated asset-backed securities, such as mortgage-backed securities. The same regulations gave an even more privileged position to sovereign debt, leading to the question of whether they helped cause the European sovereign-debt crisis. There is little question that the regulations encouraged European banks to invest in European governments' bonds, but it does not appear that this encouragement led to (...) more government borrowing by significantly reducing the yield governments needed to pay on their debt. However, it does appear that capital-adequacy regulations—along with post-2008 liquidity regulations—concentrated sovereign risk in the European banking system, aggravating the sovereign-debt problem by requiring government bailouts that, in turn, required the issuance of more sovereign debt, further jeopardizing the governments' fiscal position and banks' solvency. Exacerbating the situation, in the midst of a panic, the European Banking Authority imposed new capital requirements on banks and effectively forced them to realize mark-to-market losses on sovereign exposures. (shrink)

Law clings to rules to stabilize a preferred normative reality. But rules never suffice. Character is the dark matter of law. Ethos anthropos daimon. “Character is fate.” This paradoxically reversible saying by the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus asserts that we are defined by the daimon – the god or messenger angel – with which we identify most. As Plato queried in the Phaedrus: which god do you follow, whose love claims you? In contemporary terms we might say, what character type, (...) what emotional ideal, what deep story do you hold most sacred? Out of the maelstrom that is the state of exception, choices must be made. What emotional field shall we occupy when we do politics and law? Bound by what sovereign values or ideals, embodied within what sort of character, emplotted in what sort of political or legal narrative? In synergy with culture, character plays out the emotional conflicts and aspirations of the time. Whether we witness this in the mostly silent resistance of unassimilable characters like Barnardine in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure or in the silent prayer of nineteen-year-old Emma Gonzalez, in public protest against uncontrolled gun violence in American schools, we are all called upon, as citizens in public life, to occupy an emotional space that attains centrality within deep narratives that vie for political dominance. Reverse engineering liberal society, we might ask: what emotional and character ideals are optimal in order for a particular kind of political society to arise and be sustained? There is a reciprocal relationship between the sovereign authority of law and the character ideals that express a capacity and willingness to accept that authority. What will the configuration be? Addressing this question constitutes the ethical, esthetic, and epistemological calling of our time. (shrink)

Berthold-Bond (philosophy, Bard College) traces the project through Hegel's epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of history. Paper edition ($18.95) not seen. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The idea of “place” has become a topic of growing interest in environmental ethics literature. I explore a variety of issues surrounding the conceptualization of “place” in bioregional theory. I show that there is a necessary vagueness in bioregional definitions of region or place because these concepts elude any purely objective, geographically literal categorization. I argue that this elusiveness is in fact a great meritbecause it calls attention to a more essential “subjective” and experiential geography of place. I use a (...) reading of Aldo Leopold’s Sand Country Almanac as an example of the value of a non-literalistic geography for the understanding of place. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to show, by considering a number of sources, including Wittgenstein, Sartre, Thomas Nagel and Spinoza, but also adding something crucial of my own, that it is impossible to construe the subject of experience as an object among other objects in the world. My own added argument is the following. the subject of experience cannot move in time along with material events and processes or it could not be aware of the passage of time, hence neither (...) of change nor of motion. the subject cannot therefore be identified with any neural process, function, or location since whatever goes on in the CNS is necessarily objective and part of the temporal flux. However this does not imply any form of dualism for experiences exist only for the subject whose experiences they are and hence they have no objective reality. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to show, by considering a number of sources, including Wittgenstein, Sartre, Thomas Nagel and Spinoza, but also adding something crucial of my own, that it is impossible to construe the subject of experience as an object among other objects in the world. My own added argument is the following. The subject of experience cannot move in time along with material events and processes or it could not be aware of the passage of time, hence neither (...) of change nor of motion. The subject cannot therefore be identified with any neural process, function, or location since whatever goes on in the CNS is necessarily objective and part of the temporal flux. However this does not imply any form of dualism for experiences exist only for the subject whose experiences they are and hence they have no objective reality. (shrink)

Although form is one of the most commonly used terms in music interpretation, it remains one of the most ambiguous. This study explores evolving ideas of musical form from a historical perspective and sheds light on current conceptualizations of music.

The relations between reason, motivation and value present problems which, though ancient, remain intractable. If values are objective and rational how can they move us and if they are dependent on our contingent desires how can they be rational? E. J. Bond makes a bold attack on this dilemma. The widespread view among philosophers today is that judgements contain an irreducible element of personal commitment. To this Professor Bond proposes an account of values as objective and value judgements as true (...) or false, employing a distinction between grounding and motivating reasons to establish their connection with action. He defines and tests his position against a number of recent theories, providing in the process forceful criticism of Williams, Wiggins, Foot, Narveson and Nagel, among others. A distinctive contribution to the subject, it will stimulate interest and worthwhile debate among philosophers, while also serving as an introduction to this vital topic. (shrink)

Creative accounting involves accountants in making accounting policy choices or manipulating transactions in such a way as to convey a preferred and deliberately chosen impression in the accounts. Although it is regarded as unethical by most observers, a defense of creative accounting can be based on the assumption that users of accounts can identify bias in accounting policy choices and make appropriate adjustments. In this paper we take the example of the Barcelona Football Club where the club management made three (...) key accounting policy choices that resulted in the presentation of a favourable position, and a supporters club presented an alternative report choosing three alternative accounting policies that presented an unfavourable position. We presented each of these financial reports to one of two groups of Spanish bank loan officers: we found that the more favourable set of accounts was significantly more likely to attract a positive response to a loan request. This result undermines the validity of defending creative accounting based on the argument that accounts users can identify manipulation. (shrink)

This book shows how an understanding of the nature and role of insanity in Hegel's writing provides intriguing new points of access to many of the central themes of his larger philosophic project.

In Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, author Mark Evan Bonds examines how writers have struggled to isolate the essence of music in ways that account for its profound effects on the human spirit. By carefully tracing the evolution of absolute music from Ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to twentieth-century America, Bonds provides the first comprehensive history of this pivotal concept, and provokes new thoughts on the essence of music and how this essence explains music's effect. (...) A long awaited book from one of the most respected senior scholars in the field. (shrink)

The ecofeminist cosmologies of Indian scientist Vandana Shiva and Catholic theologian Ivone Gebara are examined. At the centre of each author’s discourse is their feminist epistemology that occasion a new way of knowing, incorporating each thinker’s social locations as nexus for authority. For Shiva, the feminine principle of Prakriti, or the awareness of nature as a living, interdependent force, is realized through the inclusion of women as sources of expertise and knowledge. Gebara rejects classical theology and philosophy as androcentric, anthropocentric, (...) and hierarchical. Instead Gebara envisions a revised epistemology of inclusivity with emphasis on multiplicity and unity initiated by an ecofeminist Trinitarian cosmology. Taken together Shiva and Gebara provide an epistemology that privileges the paradox of unity through diversity and difference as a solution to society’s current ecological crises. (shrink)

There is a strongly entrenched ambiguity in Hegel's philosophy between two opposed ways of describing the End, or "completion" of history: the "absolutist" and the "epochal" readings. Either Hegel's eschatological vision is of a completely final End, where no further progress in history or knowledge is possible, or it is an epochal conception, where the completion he speaks of is the fulfillment of an historical epoch. Passages in Hegel's texts may be found to support either of these alternatives. A non-absolutist (...) reading of Hegel's philosophy is shown to be preferable through a consideration of 1) his unorthodoxly historical interpretation of the Christian eschatological End, to which he lends great importance; 2) the implication that if Christianity were to usher in a radical completion of history and time, spirit would cease to be spirit and God would cease to be God, since for Hegel God is irreducibly the logos, or Word, or spirit; and 3) a closer look at Hegel's conception of the "new world," which shows the paralyzing sacrifice of the dialectical soul necessary to an absolutist reading of Hegel's philosophy. Any attempt to harmonize the absolutist and epochal readings must inevitably fall into confusion. (shrink)

In this article I will discuss various aspects of Hegel’s radical critique of metaphilosophy. This critique announces a clear-cut departure from the widely held conviction in the philosophic tradition that in order to gain a firm foundation for science, a preliminary examination of the capacity and nature of knowledge is required. Hegel’s position is that such a propaedeutic is impossible. In the first part of this article, I will show how Hegel’s position can be illuminated in terms of his criticism (...) of Kant’s philosophic methodology and in terms of a comparison with Plato’s solution to the Meno paradox. In the second part, I will ask the question whether Hegel’s own philosophic method is consistent with his criticism of metaphilosophy. This question arises most clearly when we reflect on Hegel’s frequent claim that in order for the philosopher to write the science of knowledge, he or she needs “only to watch” or “merely to look on” at the way consciousness develops its knowledge of objects. We must consider whether such a “language of spectatorship,” as we might call it, does not contradict the evident conclusion of Hegel’s critique of metaphilosophy, viz., that the philosopher cannot attain a distanced perspective from knowledge without at the same time abandoning knowledge. (shrink)

While neither Hegel nor Marx can be called “ecologists” in any strict sense of the term, they both present views of the human-nature relationship which offer important insights for contemporary debates in philosophical ecology. Further, while Marx and Engels began a tradition of sharply distinguishing their own views of nature from those of Hegel, careful examination reveals a substantial commonality of sentiment. The essay compares Hegel and Marx (and Engels) in terms of their basic conceptions of nature, their critiques of (...) Romanitic nature-worship, their notions of how a meaningful unity with nature requires the act of socially transforming nature, their respective calls for a new science of nature, and their attitudes towards technology. I argue that we can uncover a largely shared humanistic orientation toward nature, and I situate this view within contemporary debates about the anthropocentric or non-anthropocentric foundation of ecological thinking. (shrink)

While neither Hegel nor Marx can be called “ecologists” in any strict sense of the term, they both present views of the human-nature relationship which offer important insights for contemporary debates in philosophical ecology. Further, while Marx and Engels began a tradition of sharply distinguishing their own views of nature from those of Hegel, careful examination reveals a substantial commonality of sentiment. The essay compares Hegel and Marx (and Engels) in terms of their basic conceptions of nature, their critiques of (...) Romanitic nature-worship, their notions of how a meaningful unity with nature requires the act of socially transforming nature, their respective calls for a new science of nature, and their attitudes towards technology. I argue that we can uncover a largely shared humanistic orientation toward nature, and I situate this view within contemporary debates about the anthropocentric or non-anthropocentric foundation of ecological thinking. (shrink)

Introduction : Rorschach tests -- A question of style -- Live or tell -- Kierkegaard's seductions -- Hegel's seductions -- Talking cures -- A penchant for disguise : the death (and rebirth) of the author in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche -- Passing over : the death of the author in Hegel -- Conclusion : the melancholy of having finished -- Aftersong : from low down.

This is an ideal introduction to moral philosophy for beginning students and general readers, dealing with the philosophical theories which often lie behind everyday opinions and inviting the reader to examine those theories thoroughly. Using numerous examples and diagrams, Professor Bond guides the reader through the key problems of theoretical ethics seeking to outline a substantial view of morality in universal practical reason, he concludes in an attempt to show that a viable universal morality can only relate to the thriving, (...) flourishing or well-being of individuals in a community. (shrink)

We seek to bring Black bodies and lives into full view within the enterprise of Indigenous health research to interrogate the unquestioned good that is taken to characterize contemporary Indigenous health research. We articulate a Black bioethics that is not premised upon a false logic of beneficence, rather we think through a Black bioethics premised upon an unconditional love for the Black body. We achieve this by examining the accounts of two Black mothers, fictional and factual rendering visible the racial (...) violence Black bodies have been subjected to. We call for a Black bioethics that reimagines the Black body as beautiful and belonging—to both someone and somewhere. (shrink)

Digital phenotyping is the term given to the capturing and use of user log data from health and wellbeing technologies used in apps and cloud-based services. This paper explores ethical issues in making use of digital phenotype data in the arena of digital health interventions. Products and services based on digital wellbeing technologies typically include mobile device apps as well as browser-based apps to a lesser extent, and can include telephony-based services, text-based chatbots, and voice-activated chatbots. Many of these digital (...) products and services are simultaneously available across many channels in order to maximize availability for users. Digital wellbeing technologies offer useful methods for real-time data capture of the interactions of users with the products and services. It is possible to design what data are recorded, how and where it may be stored, and, crucially, how it can be analyzed to reveal individual or collective usage patterns. The paper also examines digital phenotyping workflows, before enumerating the ethical concerns pertaining to different types of digital phenotype data, highlighting ethical considerations for collection, storage, and use of the data. A case study of a digital health app is used to illustrate the ethical issues. The case study explores the issues from a perspective of data prospecting and subsequent machine learning. The ethical use of machine learning and artificial intelligence on digital phenotype data and the broader issues in democratizing machine learning and artificial intelligence for digital phenotype data are then explored in detail. (shrink)

In Part I of this paper I attempt to present, in more or less summary fashion, some well-known difficulties in the concept of deontic morality , as shown by certain features of deontic moral discourse. I make no great claims for originality here, although perhaps there may be some virtue in the presentation and ordering. In any case, Part I is a necessary preliminary to Part II, where I attempt to defend the rationality of and the necessity for deontic language (...) against some recent attacks. (shrink)

Eine systemtische und entstehungsgeschichtliche Studie zu Reinhold von den Anfängen der Elementarphilosophie bis zum Rationalen Realismus.

Reinholds Kritik an Kants Ausführungen über Willkürfreiheit aus der Einleitung zur "Metaphysik der Sitten". Zur Aktualität dieser Kritik.

In his treatment of a Kantian concept of moral freedom, Schiller argues for two kinds of freedom: freedom in the spirit of autonomous practical reason and freedom in which man is considered a mixed (sensual and rational) being. It is apparent that Schiller is on a Reinholdian path. He follows Reinhold’s theory of free will in conceiving of moral freedom primarily as the capacity to decide between the material drive as a sensible, self-interested drive and the formal drive as a (...) rational, unselfish drive. But it is also obvious that Schiller modifies Reinhold’s results in order to obtain a concept of aesthetic freedom. This project is important in view of a deeper understanding of the concept of aesthetic consciousness but is of little use in achieving a better understanding of the concept of moral freedom. (shrink)

Die Philosophie Karl Leonhard Reinholds (1757-1823) findet heute vermehrt Beachtung. Während dieser Denker lange Zeit als Popularisator Kants, als Vorläufer Fichtes oder als tatsachenphilosophischer Antipode Schellings und Hegels wahrgenommen wurde und gemeinhin im Ruf eines unsteten und unselbständigen Geistes stand, ist seit einigen Jahrzehnten eine Gegentendenz feststellbar: Reinholds Denkentfaltung wird zunehmend in ihrem gesamten Umfang sowie als eigenwilliger und innovativer Ansatz innerhalb der postkantischen Systemphilosophie zur Kenntnis genommen. Mehr und mehr wird anerkannt, dass Reinhold entscheidende Anstöße zur Entstehung des deutschen (...) Idealismus gegeben und diese Strömung zugleich auf der Grundlage von Einsichten, die in die Richtung der Phänomenologie und Sprachphilosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts weisen, kritisiert hat. Die in diesem Band vereinigten Beiträge gehen auf die I. Internationale Reinhold-Tagung zurück, die vom 14. bis 18. März 1998 in Bad Homburg stattgefunden hat. Sie geben systematische Fragestellungen und entwicklungsgeschichtliche Kontexte aus Reinholds kantischer Phase der Elementarphilosophie, aus der Periode seiner Zusammenarbeit mit Fichte und Jacobi sowie aus seiner sprachphilosophisch orientierten Spätzeit wieder. Alles in allem spiegeln sie das gegenwärtige Bedürfnis, Reinhold zu entdecken, sein Denken und Schaffen in seinen Wandlungen und in seiner thematischen Breite aufzuarbeiten und nachzuvollziehen. Zudem sind sie repräsentativ für die aktuell bestehenden vielfältigen Zugänge zu diesem produktiven Philosophen. (shrink)

The idea of “place” has become a topic of growing interest in environmental ethics literature. I explore a variety of issues surrounding the conceptualization of “place” in bioregional theory. I show that there is a necessary vagueness in bioregional definitions of region or place because these concepts elude any purely objective, geographically literal categorization. I argue that this elusiveness is in fact a great meritbecause it calls attention to a more essential “subjective” and experiential geography of place. I use a (...) reading of Aldo Leopold’s Sand Country Almanac as an example of the value of a non-literalistic geography for the understanding of place. (shrink)