Although populism is an ideologically fluid political vehicle, it is not one that is intrinsically anti-business. Indeed, different varieties of populist parties may encourage business activity for utilitarian ends, but with their own ideas on what businesses should be doing. This reality implies that initiatives not related to national greatness or priorities as defined by the populist leadership may be viewed as redundant. Key among such initiatives would be corporate social responsibility (CSR). In a populist environment, it is possible that (...) firms may divert resources away from broad-based CSR under pressure from populist governments. This article explores the relationship between populist governance and CSR with an econometric examination of over a thousand firms in 13 countries under both pro- and anti-business populist governments at varying times from 2012 to 2020. Using dynamic panel data methods, we find strong evidence that firms substitute away significantly from CSR under populism. This effect grows significantly larger under anti-business populists. (shrink)

Professional engineers are under increasing pressure to practice in an environmentally sensitive way. To prepare engineers for this new reality, changes in engineering education are needed. For example, engineering hydrology has traditionally been taught with an emphasis on the interpretation of numerical data bout rainfall and runoff in watersheds. However, to do environmentally sensitive hydrology work, it is necessary to also understand the life forms that share the watershed. In 1997, a project was undertaken in the Department of Civil Engineering (...) at the University of Toronto to enhance an introductory hydrology course by adding information about how hydrological phenomena affect fish. Through carefully structured assignments and exam questions, an assessment was made of the effectiveness of the enhancements in increasing students’ awareness of the life context of hydrology. The project has resulted in a commitment to increased environmental information in the hydrology curriculum, and the implementation of an assessment process for all students, to monitor changes in their environmental knowledge and attitudes. It has also raised questions about ultimate objectives in engineering education. (shrink)

This paper offers a new argument against raising and killing sentient non-human animals for food. It is immoral to non-lethally impair sentient non-human animals for pleasure, and since raising and killing sentient animals for gustatory pleasure impairs them to a much greater degree, it also is wrong. This is because of the impairment principle: if it is immoral to impair an organism to some degree, then, ceteris paribus, it is immoral to impair it to a higher degree. This argument is (...) structurally analogous to Perry Hendricks’s impairment argument for the immorality of abortion. However, the argument is more defensible applied to the raising and killing of sentient nonhuman animals for food because of the sentience of the non-human animals involved. I explain how the argument is distinct from other pro-vegan, pro-vegetarian arguments. (shrink)

Une gemme en agate peu étudiée provenant d’Anapa, datée de la période impériale, présente un grand intérêt, dans la mesure où elle diffère de la plupart des gemmes magiques par sa forme sphérique, sa grande taille et son contenu : elle commence par une référence aux rituels traditionnels grecs d’expulsion et se termine par une liste des parties de la tête humaine semblable à celle que l’on trouve dans un manuel médical hippocratique. La gemme ne serait pas une amulette, comme (...) les éditeurs précédents l’ont supposé, mais plutôt un manuel miniature contenant des instructions pour la fabrication d’amulettes. (shrink)

Workers often have a complex relationship with the technologies they use in the workoplace, and many influences can affect that relationship. This is well demonstrated in the story of unionized painters who, at the turn of this century, were sufferingfrom occupational lead poisoning because the paints of the day used lead as their primary pigment. At the beginning of the study period, the painters were fairly passive about the disease, having accepted it as a hazard of the job. By the (...) middle of the 1920's, however, the painters' union was fighting aggressively to remove lead from their work environments and to make employers take some responsiblilty for work-related health care needs. No single event or person brought this change about. Instead, it was the coalescence of several influences that convinced the painters that occupational lead poisoning was something they should fight against. (shrink)

Theory and practice, reason and revelation, ancients and moderns are the key themes running through the eighteen studies of the literature of political philosophy in Reason's Inquisition. Alfarabi is a pivotal figure, but the range is wide, from Plato and Thucydides to Shakespeare and Hobbes, extending to such contemporary figures as Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin.

Marleen Eijkholt presents a new argument in healthcare ethics, the false hope harms (FHH) argument. In brief, false hope promotes a host of individual harms (e.g., financial, physical, and psychological harms) and system‐level harms (e.g., distrust of medical practitioners, increased complexity of care and the associated costs), all of which provide reason for healthcare providers to stop promoting false hope in medicine. The goal of this paper is to show that the FHH argument is unsuccessful.

I consider the question of how literally one can construe the “gauge argument,” which is the canonical means of understanding the putatively central import of local gauge symmetry principles for fundamental physics. As I argue, the gauge argument must be afforded a heuristic reading. Claims to the effect that the argument reflects a deep “logic of nature” must, for numerous reasons I discuss, be taken with a grain of salt.

Discussions of monotheism often consider its bigotry toward other gods as a source of conflict, or emphasize its universality as a source of peaceful tolerance. Both approaches, however, ignore the combined danger and liberation in monotheism's 'intolerance.' In this volume, Christopher Haw reframes this important argument. He demonstrates the value of rejecting paradigms of inclusivity in favor of an agonistic pluralism and intolerance of absolutism. Haw proposes a model that retains liberal, pluralistic principles while acknowledging their limitations, and he (...) relates them to theologies latent in political ideas. His volume offers a nuanced, evolutionary, and historical understanding of the biblical tradition's emergence and its political consequences with respect to violence. It suggests how we can mediate impasses between liberal and conservative views in culture wars; between liberal inclusivity and conservative decisionism; and, on the religious front, between apologetics for exclusive monotheism and critiques of its intolerance. (shrink)

The present study examines section five of Poroi and Xenophon’s proposal to restore the reputation of Athens. After outlining his plan for ‘justly’ supplying the dēmos with sufficient sustenance in Poroi 1-4, section 5 addresses the desire to regain hegemony after Athens had lost the Social War. Xenophon does not adopt an anti-imperialist stance; instead he seeks to re-align imperial aspirations with Athenian ideals and earlier paradigms for securing hegemony. Xenophon’s ideas in Poroi are contextualized with consideration for his ‘Socratic’ (...) distinction between tyranny and kingship, as well as his wider advice for ruling well. It is shown that his proposals for securing the consent of the allies reiterates ideas that Xenophon outlines across his corpus, especially Hiero and Cyropaedia. In Poroi Xenophon therefore applies his political thought in an attempt to re-direct Athenian ambitions away from policies that prompted charges of being a ‘tyrant polis’ and towards ‘legitimate rule’. (shrink)

In a familiar passage from Plato's Euthyphro, Socrates points to a contrast between "matters of difference that cause hatred and anger," and matters where agreement is reached by seemingly rational means. Where a dispute concerns number, size or weight, we arrive at a decision by counting or measuring. But there are matters of disagreement where such convergence is not to be expected: "the just and the unjust, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad" notorious among them. Socrates's (...) point, in drawing what a modern reader might take to be a contrast between facts and values, is not so easily understood. The Euthyphro passage elicits a concern-call it a concern about "objectivity"-which is often addressed in a characteristically narrow way. How we approach a given concern depends on how we articulate that concern, and this is what I propose to consider here. (shrink)

"Mobile Lifeworlds illustrates how the imaginaries and ideals of Western travellers, especially those of untouched nature and spiritual enlightenment, are consistent with media representations of the Himalayan region, romanticism and modernity at large. Blending tourism and pilgrimage, travel across Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and Northern India is often inspired and oriented by a search for authenticity, adventure and Otherness. Such valued ideals are shown, however, to be contested by the very forces and configurations that enable global mobility. The role ubiquitous media (...) and mobile technologies now play in framing travel experiences are explored, revealing a situation in which actors are neither here nor there, but increasingly are 'inter-placed' across planetary landscapes. Beyond institutionalised religious contexts and the visiting of sacred sites, the author shows how a secular religiosity manifests in practical, bodily encounters with foreign environments. This book is unique in that it draws on a dynamic and innovative set of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, especially phenomenology, the mobilities paradigm and philosophical anthropology. The volume breaks fresh ground in pilgrimage, tourism and travel studies by unfolding the complex relationships between the virtual, imaginary and corporeal dynamics of contemporary mobile lifeworlds"--From publisher's website. (shrink)

The year 2019 witnessed the 20th Jubileum of the Växjö conference series on quantum foundations and probability in physics. This has been the longest running series of conferences on the subject in history. Many old and new friendships were forged at Linnaeus University and the beautiful surrounding lakes of Småland, where once yearly everyone gathers to renew the debate and report their latest progress. 2019 also represents the Porcelain Anniversary—18 years—of the point of view on quantum theory known as QBism. (...) In this regard, the 2001 meeting in the series was pivotal in more ways than one. Not only did it instigate Fuchs’s break [1] from the earlier (Jaynes style) “objective Bayesianism” and neo-Copenhagen thinking of Caves et al. [2], but it was the first meeting at an international scale to indicate that the quantum information revolution might have something genuine to contribute to quantum foundational thought. That meeting set the pace far beyond Växjö by the participation of a number of luminaries of quantum information: The late Asher Peres, Daniel Greenberger, David Mermin, Herbert Bernstein, Carlton Caves, Rüdiger Schack, Richard Jozsa, Benjamin Schumacher, and John Smolin. One could almost hear a battle cry echo from the woods, “Quantum foundations from quantum information or die!” The foundations debate had turned so stale by the time, it would surely die without an influx of new thinking. (shrink)

Paul Wood’s edited volume, Thomas Reid and the University, exceeds the bounds of its title. This last instalment of The Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid, collects artifacts from Reid’s pedagogical...

This unique interpretation of Alfarabi's thought stresses the ways in which the tenth-century Arab philosopher self-consciously broke the metaphysical tradition that began with Plato. By examining Alfarabi's work as more than an extension or continuation of Greek philosophy, Colmo rethinks what medieval philosophy is and challenges almost universal assumptions about the origins of modernity.

Religion has become a vital resource for attempts to rethink the meaning of the political. This article rehearses the efforts of two recent figures, René Girard and Giorgio Agamben, to transform the political by renewing its connection to religion. Both thinkers struggle to escape politics as defined by Carl Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction. Girard and Agamben do clash ideologically, but their inquiries into sacrifice and messianism take similar courses. Regarding origins, Girard argues for the sacrificial crisis as the common parent to (...) religion and politics. Conversely, for Agamben, the Roman figure of homo sacer distinguishes politics from religion. With respect to the future, Girard's messianism installs Christian belief as the only way to move beyond violence. By contrast, Agamben steers Pauline messianism toward the efforts to displace sovereignty and reopen the political. I conclude that Agamben breaks with Schmitt while Girard reinscribes his politics at a higher level. Key Words: Giorgio Agamben • Rey Chow • Christianity • René Girard • homo sacer • messianism • politics • sacred • sacrifice • Carl Schmitt. (shrink)

The book as a symbol of totality and logocentric order has become a familiar motif in histories of medieval culture. In recent years numerous studies have examined in detail not only how this “idea of the book” and its dependent metaphors rendered all experience “legible,” but also how the tasks of ensuring a correct “reading” devolved upon exegesis and commentary.

The idea that the womb moved freely about a woman's body causing spasmodic disease enjoyed great popularity among the ancient Greeks, beginning in the classical period with Plato and the Hippocratic writers and continuing on into the Roman and Byzantine periods. Armed with sophisticated analyses of the medical tradition and new texts pertaining to the magical, this essay describes how both approaches to the wandering womb develop side by side in mutual influence from the late classical period onwards. Of special (...) interest will be the tendency in both traditions to imagine both demons and errant wombs as wild animals and to use fumigations to control both. It concludes with a discussion of the historical development of and consequences for the idea that women alone possessed an internal organ that was variously interpreted as a mechanically defective body-part, a sentient and passionate animal, and then finally a demon with malicious intent, who bites and poisons the female body. It also argues against the hypothesis or assumption that midwives or wet-nurses were the original source for the idea of the wandering womb, suggesting that the syndrome never fit comfortably into the category of gynecological illness, because the womb was not the site of disease, but rather a cause of spasmodic disease in other areas of the body. (shrink)

Recent discussions surrounding the conceptualising of disability has resulted in a stalemate between British sociologists and philosophers. The stagnation of theorizing that has occurred threatens not only academic pursuits and the advancement of theoretical interpretations within the Disability Studies community, but also how we educate and advocate politically, legally, and socially. More pointedly, many activists and theorists in the UK appear to believe the British social model is the only effective means of understanding and advocating on behalf of people with (...) disabilities. This model, largely reliant upon materialist research traditions, contends that disability is a form of social oppression and hence, is a phenomenon that should be conceptualised in social terms. Individual properties such as impairments are disregarded as they are viewed to be unimportant in the analysis of the social causes of disability. Concurrently, many bioethicists and philosophers have embraced what Tom Shakespeare has classified as an ‘Interactional Approach’ to disability—that “the experience of a disabled person results from the relationship between factors intrinsic to the individual, and the extrinsic factors arising from the wider context in which she finds herself”. I intend to demonstrate that the benefits of the British social model are now outweighed by its burdens. I suggest, as Jerome Bickenbach has, that while it may be somewhat churlish to critique the social model in light of its political success, taken literally, it implies that people with disabilities require no additional health resources by virtue of their impairments. Despite the eloquent arguments that have preceded me by interactional theorists, none have been accepted as evidence of fallacious reasoning by British social model theorists. This article is an attempt to clarify why it is that the types of arguments British social model theorists have been offering are misguided. I suggest that the British social model, unlike an interactional approach, is unable to provide a realistic account of the experience of disability, and subsequently, unable to be properly utilized to ensure justice for people with disabilities. (shrink)

Patients and physicians do not know the cost of medical procedures. Opaque medical billing thus contributes to exorbitant, rising medical costs, burdening the healthcare system and individuals. After criticizing two proposed solutions to the problem of opaque medical billing, I argue that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should pursue a rule requiring that patients be informed by the physician of a reasonable out-of-pocket expense estimate for non-urgent procedures prior to services rendered.

In ‘Dilemma for Appeals to the Moral Significance of Birth’, we argued that a dilemma is faced by those who believe that birth is the event at which infanticide is ruled out. Those who reject the moral permissibility of infanticide by appeal to the moral significance of birth must either accept the moral permissibility of a late-term abortion for a non-therapeutic reason or not. If they accept it, they need to account for the strong intuition that her decision is wrong (...) as well as deny the underlying normative principle that killing a viable fetus requires good reason, and not wanting to care for the child when the child could be easily placed for adoption is not a good enough reason to abort. If they reject the moral permissibility of the late-term abortion, they need to explain why her decision is wrong. Doing so, however, will undermine their own project of denying infanticide by appeal to birth. Walter Veit argues that the dilemma relies too much on intuition and does not live up to biological continuity. We explain why his criticisms are unconvincing. (shrink)

Smajdor’s Reification and Assent in Research Involving Those Who lack Capacity claims, among other things, that ‘adults who cannot give informed consent may nevertheless have the ability to assent and dissent, and that these capacities are morally important in the context of research’.1 More pointedly, she suggests we can rely upon Gillick competence, or that ‘it is worth thinking about why the same trajectory [as children] has not been evident in the context of [adults with impairments of capacity to give (...) informed consent (AWIC)]’.1 I argue that her likening assent in AWIC to assent in children is problematic for at least two related reasons. First, direct comparisons between AWIC and children run the risk of perpetuating or reinforcing infantilising stereotypes against people with disabilities. Second, I argue that people with disabilities are vulnerable in ways that most children are not, and thus, are dissimilar in a morally relevant manner. The infantilising of people with disabilities is quite widely documented and thought to be deeply problematic.2 Not only are people with disabilities often thought to be infantile in regard to particular …. (shrink)