ABSTRACT:Little theoretical attention has been paid to the question of what obligations corporations and other business enterprises have to the four billion people living at the base of the global economic pyramid. This article makes several theoretical contributions to this topic. First, it is argued that corporations are properly understood as agents of global justice. Second, the legitimacy of global governance institutions and the legitimacy of corporations and other business enterprises are distinguished. Third, it is argued that a deliberative democracy (...) model of corporate legitimacy defended by theorists of political CSR is unsatisfactory. Fourth, it is argued that a Rawlsian theoretical framework fails to provide a satisfactory account of the obligations of corporations regarding global justice. Finally, an ethical conception of CSR grounded in an appropriately modest set of duties tied to corporate relationships is then defended. This position is cosmopolitan in scope and grounded in overlapping arguments for human rights. (shrink)

We prove that the boundedness theorem of generalized recursion theory can be derived from the ω-completeness theorem for number theory. This yields a proof of the boundedness theorem which does not refer to the analytical hierarchy theorem.

Recognizing the growing interdependence of the European Union and the importance of codes of conduct in companies’ operations, this research examines the effect of a country’s culture on the implementation of a code of conduct in a European context. We examine whether the perceptions of an activity’s ethicality relates to elements found in company codes of conduct vary by country or according to Hofstede’s (1980, Culture’s Consequences (Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, CA)) cultural constructs of: Uncertainty Avoidance, Masculinity/Femininity, Individualism, and Power (...) Distance. The 294 individuals, who participated in our study, were from 8 Western European countries. Their responses to our 13 scenarios indicate that differences in the perceptions of ethicality associate primarily with the participants’ country as opposed to their employer (i.e., accounting firm), employment level, or gender. The evidence also indicates that these country differences associate with Hofstede constructs of Individualism and Masculinity. (shrink)

This paper proves exponential separations between depth d-LK and depth -LK for every utilizing the order induction principle. As a consequence, we obtain an exponential separation between depth d-LK and depth -LK for . We investigate the relationship between the sequence-size, tree-size and height of depth d-LK-derivations for , and describe transformations between them. We define a general method to lift principles requiring exponential tree-size -LK-refutations for to principles requiring exponential sequence-size d-LK-refutations, which will be described for the Ramsey principle (...) and d=0. From this we also deduce width lower bounds for resolution refutations of the Ramsey principle. (shrink)

The Aesthetics of Human Environments is a companion volume to Carlson's and Berleant's The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Whereas the earlier collection focused on the aesthetic appreciation of nature, The Aesthetics of Human Environments investigates philosophical and aesthetics issues that arise from our engagement with human environments ranging from rural landscapes to urban cityscapes. Our experience of public spaces such as shopping centers, theme parks, and gardens as well as the impact of our personal living spaces on the routine activities (...) of our everyday life are discussed in terms of their aesthetic value and the nature of our aesthetic appreciation. This volume will appeal to any reader concerned about the aesthetic quality of the world in which we live. (shrink)

The Pessimistic Induction (PI) states: most past scientific theories were radically mistaken; therefore, current theories are probably similarly mistaken. But mistaken in what way? On the usual understanding, such past theories are false. However, on widely held views about reference and presupposition, many theoretical claims of previous scientific theories are neither true nor false. And if substantial portions of past theories are truth-valueless, then the PI leads to semantic antirealism. But most current philosophers of science reject semantic antirealism. So PI (...) proponents face a difficult choice: accept either semantic antirealism or an unorthodox position on reference and presupposition. (shrink)

Strawson's view on punishment has been either neglected or recoiled from in contemporary scholarship on ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (FR). Strawson's alleged retributivism has made his view suspect and troublesome. In this article, we first argue, against the mainstream, that the punishment passage is an indispensable part of the main argument in FR (section 1) and elucidate in what sense Strawson can be called ‘a retributivist’ (section 2). We then elaborate our own hypothesis of symbolic retribution to explain the continuum between (...) moral reactive attitudes and punishment that Strawson only adumbrates (section 3). After this justification of the punitive response to wrongdoing, we compare and contrast our specific kind of retributivist hypothesis with other positions in the so-called ‘new retributivism’ (section 4). Our hypothesis differs from other subvarieties of expressive retributivism in putting centre stage the idea of punishment as taking up a reverential stance towards the victim. (shrink)

A thoughtful meditation on the role of meaning and purpose in the development of technology.

This article – which includes a complete translation of Mūlamadhyamakakārikā chapter 2 together with Candrakīrti’s commentary thereon – argues that notwithstanding the many different and often arcane interpretations that have been offered of Nāgārjuna’s arguments against motion, there is really just one straightforward kind of argument on offer in this vexed chapter. It is further argued that this basic argument can be understood as a philosophically interesting one if it is kept in mind that the argument essentially has to do (...) with whether a personal level of description will admit of an exhaustively impersonal explanation. (shrink)

To be a liberal is, among other things, to grant basic liberties some degree of priority over other aspects of justice. But why do basic liberties warrant this special treatment? For Rawls, the answer has to do with the allegedly special connection between these freedoms and the ‘two moral powers’ of reasonableness and rationality. Basic freedoms are said to be preconditions for the development and exercise of these powers and are held to warrant priority over other justice-relevant values for that (...) reason. In the first half of the article I mount an internal critique of this Rawlsian line, arguing that it is flawed in two main ways. First, it overestimates the contribution of basic freedom to moral personality. Second, it underestimates the contribution of non-liberty resources to moral personality. In the second half of the article I repair these flaws. The result is a new, intriguingly radical version of justice as fairness, one with surprising—yet plausible—implications for economic and gender justice. (shrink)

Inspired from Buchholz' ordinal analysis of ID1 and Beckmann's analysis of the simple typed λ-calculus we classify the derivation lengths for Gödel's system T in the λ-formulation.

Arnold Berleant gilt als einer der Gründerväter der environmental aesthetics, zu der er seit den 1970er-Jahren veröffentlicht hat und weltweit Vorträge hält; er war jahrelang Präsident der International Association of Aesthetics und ist emeritierter Professor der Long Island University. Sein Aufsatz in dieser Polylog-Ausgabe nimmt zunächst seine Grundgedanken zur Ästhetik als Sinnlichkeitslehre wieder auf. Daraufhin gründet Berleant die »ästhetische Politik« auf der Idee eines »Gemeinguts der Wahrnehmung«, zu dem etwa Luft, Wasser oder Raum gehören; jeder Mensch hat Anspruch auf (...) die Wahrnehmung dieser natürlichen Ressourcen, die sauber bleiben sollen, um seiner Gesundheit und seinem Wohlbefinden zu dienen. Aus dieser Perspektive wird die »Kooptation der Sinnlichkeit«, anders gesagt: die kommerzielle und profitorientierte Aneignung dessen, was im öffentlichen Raum wahrzunehmen ist, scharf verurteilt. Die Ästhetik als Wahrnehmungslehre ist nicht von einer engagierten Ethik und demokratischen Politik des Gemeinwohls zu trennen. (shrink)

We investigate the relation between intermediate predicate logics based on countable linear Kripke frames with constant domains and Gödel logics. We show that for any such Kripke frame there is a Gödel logic which coincides with the logic defined by this Kripke frame on constant domains and vice versa. This allows us to transfer several recent results on Gödel logics to logics based on countable linear Kripke frames with constant domains: We obtain a complete characterisation of axiomatisability of logics based (...) on countable linear Kripke frames with constant domains. Furthermore, we obtain that the total number of logics defined by countable linear Kripke frames on constant domains is countable. (shrink)

The term “objective” has both a metaphysical and an epistemological meaning, and each of these meanings gives rise to a corresponding objective-subjective dichotomy. A formal definition of objectivity is given, and this clarifies the nature of the epistemological dichotomy. These dichotomies are represented by classes of existents, and a Venn-type diagram is used to illustrate the relationship between them. It is shown that the class of all existents can be partitioned into three mutually exclusive and exhaustive classes, which correspond to (...) Rand's intrinsic-subjective-objective trichotomy. (shrink)

l’Art de Connaïtre un Paysage, Diogène n° 233-234, janvier 2011, 54-70. “Changing Landscapes,” International Conference on Transition Landscapes/ Paysages en Transition, Lisbon, Portugal, in Portuguese. 2011.

By the close of the eighteenth century, many features of Western intellectual history had become incorporated into a coherent body of aesthetic doctrine that soon acquired the standing of tradition. "The three dogmas of aesthetics" is Allen Carlson's fitting designation of the main principles by which I have characterized this theory: that "art consists primarily of objects," that "these objects possess a special status," and that "they must be regarded in a unique way." Held against the practice and experience of (...) the arts, each of these, I claim, is assumptive and misleading.'. (shrink)

Recent interpretations of Locke's primary/secondary quality distinction have tended to emphasize Locke's relationship to the corpuscularian science of his time, especially to that of Boyle. Although this trend may have corrected the unfortunate tendency to view Locke in isolation from his scientific contemporaries, it nevertheless has resulted in some over- simplifications and distortions of Locke's general enterprise. As everyone now agrees, Locke was attempting to provide a philosophical foundation for English corpuscularianism and one must therefore look not only at the (...) current scientific hypotheses but also at the nature of the philosophical foundation Locke was attempting to erect. In particular, Locke made an attempt, based on epistemological principles, to give a philosophical justification of atomistic corpuscularianism. Moreover, he was not content to give this justification post hoc—the epistemological foundation was prior to, and determined the framework for, the details of the correct scientific theory. Locke's epistemology made legitimate an atomistic theory, one making crucial use of the notion of solidity in the definition of the elementary particles, although it did not prejudge the details of this theory. (shrink)

Psychotherapy and psychoanalysis don't always work. Inevitably, a therapy or analysis may fail to alleviate the suffering of the patient. The reasons why this occurs are as manifold as the patients and analysts themselves, and oftentimes are a source of frustration and vexation to clinicians, who aren't always eager to discuss them. Taking the challenge head-on, Arnold Goldberg proposes to demystify failure in an effort to determine its essential meaning before determining its causes. Utilizing multiple vignettes of failed cases, (...) he offers a deconstruction and a subsequent taxonomy of failure, delineating cases that go bad after six months from cases that never get off the ground, mismatches from impasses, failures of empathy from failures of inattention. Commonalities in the experience of failure – conceived as less a misapplication of technique than consequences of a co-constructed yet fraught therapeutic relationship – begin to emerge for scrutiny. (shrink)

Revisiting the author’s characteristic line of interpretation of the Madhyamaka philosophy of Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti, this essay responds to critiques thereof by arguing for the sense Madhyamaka makes, on the author’s interpretation, as a Buddhist position. For purposes of the argument, it is allowed that especially on the author’s characteristic interpretation, Madhyamaka appears to have affinities with the “personalist” doctrine long regarded by Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions as unorthodox. In particular, it is accepted that on this interpretation, Mādhyamika arguments (...) to the effect that conventional truth cannot be explained away by any “ultimate” truth are tantamount to the view that a personal level of description cannot coherently be thought superseded by the kind of impersonal analysis typical of Abhidharma literature. The main burden of the essay is to explain the sense it makes to think this supposedly unorthodox embrace of the category person counts, in fact, as elaborating the tradition’s orienting no-self doctrine. (shrink)

Marx believed that what most clearly distinguished him and Engels from the nineteenth-century French socialists was that their version of socialism was “scientific” while the latters' was Utopian. What he intended by this contrast is roughly the following: French socialists such as Proudhon and Fourier constructed elaborate visions of a future socialist society without an adequate understanding of existing capitalist society. For Marx, on the other hand, socialism was not an idea or an ideal to be realized, but a natural (...) outgrowth of the existing capitalist order. Marx's historical materialism is a systematic attempt to discover the laws governing the inner dynamics of capitalism and class societies generally. Although this theory issues in a prediction of the ultimate triumph of socialism, it is a commonplace that Marx had little to say about the details of post-capitalist society. Nevertheless, some of its features can be discerned from his critical analysis of capitalism and what its replacement entails. (shrink)

Commentators have generally been content to cite parallels for the phrase iucunda uoluptas at Propertius 1.10.3 without drawing attention to an interesting resonance which it may evoke.

In several late dialogues, Plato uses the paradeigma of the letters to illustrate the methods of dialectics. This study examines why letters in particular represent suitable models, and explores important themes of Plato's late ontology and epistemology from this viewpoint. The author thereby reveals the nature of the paradeigma and its central role as a method.

Recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) present profound challenges for law. These challenges stem from law’s anthropocentrism, which is often left unspoken. This essay examines both the epistemic and normative dimensions of anthropocentrism within German Law, with a focus on Private Law. It defends the proposition that law’s anthropocentrism does not inherently oppose the idea of granting AI some form of legal capacity. Rather, so the essay argues, it is essentially a question of regulatory prudence to determine (...) the conditions and criteria under which the law should grant a legal status, legal capacity, or partial legal capacity to AI entities. Nonetheless, it is crucial to acknowledge that the core principles of private law as well as questions of liability for fault and negligence are rooted in human agency and cannot be directly applied to AI. It will be argued that the legal discourse on the recognition of AI is to be understood as a fundamentally political discourse. The political dimension of that discourse will be analyzed through the lens of the political theories of Hannah Arendt and Jaques Rancière, among others. (shrink)

The damaging effects of the Industrial Revolution are discussed with particular reference to man's improvidence leading to the waste of irreplaceable natural resources and to the pollution of the environment. The role of the British Royal Society is then analysed in the context of technological advances and religious thought. It is claimed that monotheistic religions have removed the constraints on man's greed and have overthrown the traditional balance between man and nature. The present environmental crisis is ascribed to the rise (...) of monotheism. The remedy may consist in reverting to pantheism and the religions of the East. (shrink)

An argument structure that covers both cases Gettier described in his 1963 paper reinforces the conclusion of my 2012 Logos & Episteme article that the justified true belief (JTB) conception of knowledge is inconsistent. The stronger argument makes possible identification of fundamental flaws in the standard approach of adding a fourth condition to JTB, so that a new kind of skepticism becomes inevitable unless conceptual change occurs.

In my recent book, Art and Engagement (1991), I develop the idea of aesthetic engagement as central to the appreciation of art. The human contribution to the constitution of the "work" of art, I claim, is a critical part of appreciative experience. This contribution, however, is easily misread into the history of the idea of experience that has dominated Western philosophy since the seventeenth century, a history that sees experience as an inner, personal, subjective affair. From this vantage point, the (...) metaphysical implications of an aesthetics of experience seem to lead resolutely to idealism.1 'Experience', however, is a troublesome term precisely because its meaning is equivocal. Despite its association with philosophical idealism, experience allows a range of interpretations in various contexts. Even though aesthetic experience is often understood subjectively, it is mistaken to think that it allows of no other alternative. These comments raise a complex of issues, two of which I want to consider here: first, the metaphysical significance of experience and, second, the bearing of art on metaphysics. (shrink)