The problem of knowledge evolution has received considerable attention over the years. Mainly, the study of the dynamics of knowledge has been addressed in the area of Belief Revision, a field emerging as the convergence of the efforts in Philosophy, Logic, and more recently Computer Science, where research efforts usually involve “flat” knowledge bases where there is no additional information about the formulas stored in it. Even when this may be a good fit for particular applications, in many real-world (...) scenarios different information items may be attached to formulas. For instance, when the reliability of the source of the piece of information is attached to it as a measure of some quality (e.g., strength) of the piece of information itself, or when some characteristic informs us on the desirability of the item (e.g., the potential benefit that could be obtained from it). If this type of information is available, we can use it to guide how the belief base is to be modified when new information arrives. In this work, we present a novel approach to the contraction of knowledge bases where formulas have values attached that measure some quality linked to those formulas, exploiting it to define their desirability, and uses such desirability to define which formulas need to be removed to solve conflicts. In this context, we introduce a set of properties for contraction operators by extending classic approaches. We also show how the local treatment of minimal conflicts can induce some counter-intuitive contractions, and we present a way to avoid them by considering optimal resolutions of conflicts using the additional information encoded. We show how the proposed formalization captures any contraction that is optimal under a set of features. Finally, we present a refinement based on the identification of related minimal conflicts that performs contraction in optimal ways without looking into the entire knowledge base. The approach is based on the use of the accrual of beliefs where several formulas collaboratively use their respective values to prevail in the resolution of conflicts. (shrink)

Based on the assumption that the long-term value of a venture capital satisfies the algebraic Brownian motion, we develop a continuous-time exit model of venture capital under different exit modes, namely, initial public offering and mergers and acquisitions. The employee incentive problem is analyzed jointly with the exit decision of the firm in terms of the exit timing and the exit mode. Further, the problem of capital exit is considered from two perspectives, namely, optimal venture capital and social welfare maximization, (...) and the differences between these exit decisions are compared. Our model predicts that the timing of an IPO, the purpose of which is to maximize the utility of the capitalists, lags behind the exit timing, whose purpose is to maximize social welfare. Using a numerical analysis, this paper also proves that increasing the production efficiency, lowering the interest rates, and improving risk management can make the exit decision of venture capitalists converge with that of maximizing social welfare. (shrink)

Introduction -- "Every Legitimate Government is Republican": Rousseau's Debt to and Departure from Montesquieu on Republicanism -- What if There is no Legislator? Rousseau's History of the Government of Geneva -- Rousseau's Republican Citizenship: The Moral Psychology of The Social Contract -- Rousseau's negative liberty: Themes of domination and skepticism in The Social Contract -- Rousseau's Ancient Ends of Legislation: Liberty, Equality (& Fraternity) -- Property and Possession in Rousseau's Social Contract -- Political Equality Among Unequals -- On the Primacy (...) of Peoplehood: Nations and Nationalism in Rousseau's Social Contract -- Rousseau on Voting and Electoral Laws -- Rousseau and the puzzle of the Roman Republic -- Rousseau's Case against Democracy -- Rousseau's Dilemma or "Of Civil Religion" -- Entreating the Political: Politics and Theology in Rousseau's Social Contract -- Civil Religion and Political Unity: Social Contract 4.8. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Background: mapping the field of business ethics The evolution of social contract approaches to business ethics Integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) Remaining issues and promising research directions for contractarian business ethics.

As the contract cheating market has become more sophisticated and competition has intensified, the contract cheating industry has had to redevelop its approach to gain custom. The industry has developed new models of internal operation and providers are using more sophisticated techniques to reach potential customers. This paper discusses contract cheating industry workflows and introduces terminology to allow complexities of the industry to be more consistently discussed. Examples are provided throughout to indicate the scale and challenge of the contract cheating (...) industry operations.An analysis of contract cheating operations on the micro-outsourcing website Fiverr.com is presented, using comparative data collected in June 2016 and October 2018. The analysis of the data demonstrates how the contract cheating industry is seeing continual change. Specifically, on Fiverr.com, this includes an increase in the number of providers offering essay writing services, particularly those from Kenya and Pakistan. The increase in service availability is accompanied by an associated reduction in essay pricing. The advertised pricing per 1000 words has dropped substantially, from $31.73 USD to $5.73 USD. The accounts used by contract cheating providers are also being replaced at an increased rate.Based on the data, contract cheating providers on Fiverr.com are currently estimated to be taking a minimum of $92,001 USD per year in revenue. This is an example calculated from only one search term on which contract cheating providers advertise on only one micro-outsourcing site used for contract cheating. The actual industry income from micro-outsourcing web sites is likely to be substantially higher. (shrink)

Very diverse societies pose real problems for Rawlsian models of public reason. This is for two reasons: first, public reason is unable accommodate diverse perspectives in determining a regulative ideal. Second, regulative ideals are unable to respond to social change. While models based on public reason focus on the justification of principles, this book suggests that we need to orient our normative theories more toward discovery and experimentation. The book develops a unique approach to social contract theory that focuses on (...) diverse perspectives. It offers a new moral stance that author Ryan Muldoon calls, "The View From Everywhere," which allows for substantive, fundamental moral disagreement. This stance is used to develop a bargaining model in which agents can cooperate despite seeing different perspectives. Rather than arguing for an ideal contract or particular principles of justice, Muldoon outlines a procedure for iterated revisions to the rules of a social contract. It expands Mill's conception of experiments in living to help form a foundational principle for social contract theory. By embracing this kind of experimentation, we move away from a conception of justice as an end state, and toward a conception of justice as a trajectory. (shrink)

Some theorists have developed formal approaches to truth that depend on counterexamples to the structural rules of contraction. Here, we study such approaches, with an eye to helping them respond to a certain kind of objection. We define a contractive relative of each noncontractive relation, for use in responding to the objection in question, and we explore one example: the contractive relative of multiplicative-additive affine logic with transparent truth, or MAALT. -/- .

In 2017, the global Blockchain technology market was predictedto reach 339.5 million U.S. dollars in size and is forecasted to grow to 2.3billion U.S. dollars by 2021. The smart contract has an increasing role ingoverning the legal relationship between the interested parties. This researchexplores the current position of smart contracts in Malaysia and the viabilityof the Malaysian framework in handling the latest development. This researchadopts the qualitative and doctrinal legal approaches in analysing the currentlegal practice, the relevant statutes and the (...) viability of the Malaysian legalframework. These approaches are necessary to be carried out in ensuring theworkability of smart contracts in Blockchain. Additionally, the practices ofsmart contracts from international experiences are collected as case studies inthis research. As a part of the findings, the researchers found that smart contractsare more or less similar to traditional contracts. Therefore, the requirements asstipulated under the Contract Act 1950 that are applicable in Malaysia mustbe followed accordingly. In this study, based on the nature of Blockchain technology, the researchers evaluate the current position of Malaysian laws indealing with smart contracts. Additionally, the researchers also looked at theacceptable legal practice of smart contracts in Malaysia. (shrink)

This Major Reference series brings together a wide range of key international articles in law and legal theory. Many of these essays are not readily accessible, and their presentation in these volumes will provide a vital new resource for both research and teaching. Each volume is edited by leading international authorities who explain the significance and context of articles in an informative and complete introduction.

Stephen Jay Gould argued that replaying the ‘tape of life’ would result in radically different evolutionary outcomes. Recently, biologists and philosophers of science have paid increasing attention to the theoretical importance of convergent evolution—the independent origination of similar biological forms and functions—which many interpret as evidence against Gould’s thesis. In this paper, we examine the evidentiary relevance of convergent evolution for the radical contingency debate. We show that under the right conditions, episodes of convergent evolution can constitute valid natural experiments (...) that support inferences regarding the deep counterfactual stability of macroevolutionary outcomes. However, we argue that proponents of convergence have problematically lumped causally heterogeneous phenomena into a single evidentiary basket, in effect treating all convergent events as if they are of equivalent theoretical import. As a result, the ‘critique from convergent evolution’ fails to engage with key claims of the radical contingency thesis. To remedy this, we develop ways to break down the heterogeneous set of convergent events based on the nature of the generalizations they support. Adopting this more nuanced approach to convergent evolution allows us to differentiate iterated evolutionary outcomes that are probably common among alternative evolutionary histories and subject to law-like generalizations, from those that do little to undermine and may even support, the Gouldian view of life. (shrink)

The notion of emergence has received much renewed attention recently. Most of the authors I review (§ II), including most notably Robert Batterman (2002, 2003, 2004) share the common aim of providing accounts for emergence which offer fresh insights from highly articulated and nuanced views reflecting recent developments in applied physics. Moreover, the authors present such accounts to reveal what they consider as misrepresentative and oversimplified abstractions often depicted in standard philosophical accounts. With primary focus on Batterman, however, I show (...) (in § III), that despite (or perhaps because of) such novel and compelling insights; underlying thematic tensions and ambiguities persist nevertheless, due to subtle reifications made of particular (albeit central) mathematical methods employed in asymptotic analysis. I offer a potential candidate (in § IV), for regularization advanced by the theoretical physicist David Finkelstein (1996, 2002, 2004). The richly characterized multilinear algebraic theories employed by Finkelstein would, for instance, serve the two-fold purpose of clearing up much of the inevitably “epistemological emergence” accompanying divergent limiting cases treated in the standard approaches, while at the same time characterize in relatively greater detail the “ontological emergence” of particular quantum phenomena under study. Among other things, this suggests that the some of the structures suggested by Batterman as essentially involving the superseded theory are better understood as regular algebraic contraction (Finkelstein). Because of the regularization latent in such powerful multilinear algebraic methods, among other things this calls into question Batterman’s claims that explanation and reduction should be kept separate, in instances involving singular limits. (§ V). (shrink)

Public reason liberals argue that coercive social arrangements must be publicly justified in order to be legitimate. According to one model of public reason liberalism, known as convergence liberalism, this means that every moderately idealized member of the public must have sufficient reason, of her own, to accept the arrangement. A corollary of this Principle of Public Justification is that a coercive social arrangement fails to be legitimate so long as even one member of the public fails to have (...) sufficient reason to endorse the arrangement. This high bar for justification has led many critics, most notably David Enoch, to argue that convergence models are incapable of vindicating liberalism. They argue that in a sufficiently diverse society, there will always be someone for whom an arrangement is not justified, and therefore convergence liberalism leads to anarchy – the view that no law or coercive social arrangement is legitimate. Other critics accept that convergence liberalism could vindicate core liberal institutions but nothing more, and thus argue that the view makes libertarians effective “dictators”. In either case, critics hold that this objection is sufficient to reject convergence liberalism, either in favor of alternative public reason views or as a means of rejecting all public reason views. In this paper I argue that convergence liberalism can overcome this anarchy objection. I show that the objection largely rests on misinterpretations of convergence liberalism, and thus clarify aspects of the theory. However, I also show that internal debate over the scope of public justification – what stands in need of justification – must be resolved in favor of a wide scope, encompassing both State-based and non-State-based coercion, in order to overcome the anarchy objection. Therefore, my response to the anarchy objection has implications for how convergence liberalism should be developed going forward. (shrink)

The Contracts of Fiction invites readers to consider the advantages of describing fictions as governed by a set of social contracts, teaching us how to think about the stuff of daily life, animate and inanimate, as abstractions.

Blockage contraction is an operation of belief contraction that acts directly on the outcome set, i.e. the set of logically closed subsets of the original belief set K that are potential contraction outcomes. Blocking is represented by a binary relation on the outcome set. If a potential outcome X blocks another potential outcome Y, and X does not imply the sentence p to be contracted, then Y ≠ K ÷ p. The contraction outcome K ÷ p (...) is equal to the (unique) inclusion-maximal unblocked element of the outcome set that does not imply p. Conditions on the blocking relation are specified that ensure the existence of such a unique inclusion-maximal set for all sentences p. Blockage contraction is axiomatically characterized and its relations to AGM-style operations are investigated. In a finite-based framework, every transitively relational partial meet contraction is also a blockage contraction. (shrink)

How robust is a contraction-free approach to the semantic paradoxes? This paper aims to show some limitations with the approach based on multiplicative rules by presenting and discussing the significance of a revenge paradox using a predicate representing an alethic modality defined with infinitary rules.

Social contract theory has been criticized as a “theory in search of application.” We argue that incorporating the nano, or individual, level of analysis into social contract inquiry will yield more descriptive theory. We draw upon the psychological contract perspective to address two critiques of social contract theory: its rigid macro-orientation and inattention to the process of contract formation. We demonstrate how a psychological contract approach offers practical insight into the impact of social contracting on day-to-day human interaction. We then (...) articulate several potentially testable propositions that emerge from this nano-level perspective. (shrink)

We can often specify how we would contract by a certain sentence by saying that this contraction would coincide with some other contraction that we know how to perform. We can for instance clarify that our contraction by p&q would coincide with our contraction by p, or by q, or by {p, q}. In a framework where the set of potential outcomes is known, some contractions are “self-evident” in the sense that there is only one serious (...) candidate that can be the outcome of such a contraction. Contraction by a specific contractee (sentence or set of sentences to be contracted) is bootstrapped if it is specified by saying that it coincides with some such self-evident contraction. For a wide range of (multiple) contraction operators, contractions by any contractee can be bootstrapped. This means that the selection mechanism (selection function, incision function, etc.) can be replaced by a function called a bootstrapping selector that assigns to each contractee some “self-evident” contractee that yields the same outcome. With bootstrapping we can eliminate traditional extralogical components in contraction (e.g., selection functions) and replace them by bootstrapping selectors that reflect more closely the ways in which we actually reason and argue about belief contraction. (shrink)

In this pithy and highly readable book, Brian Skyrms, a recognised authority on game and decision theory, investigates traditional problems of the social contract in terms of evolutionary dynamics. Game theory is skilfully employed to offer new interpretations of a wide variety of social phenomena, including justice, mutual aid, commitment, convention and meaning. The author eschews any grand, unified theory. Rather, he presents the reader with tools drawn from evolutionary game theory for the purpose of analysing and coming to understand (...) the social contract. The book is not technical and requires no special background knowledge. As such, it could be enjoyed by students and professionals in a wide range of disciplines: political science, philosophy, decision theory, economics and biology. (shrink)

This paper reorganizes and further develops the theory of partial meet contraction which was introduced in a classic paper by Alchourron, Gardenfors, and Makinson. Our purpose is threefold. First, we put the theory in a broader perspective by decomposing it into two layers which can respectively be treated by the general theory of choice and preference and elementary model theory. Second, we reprove the two main representation theorems of AGM and present two more representation results for the finite case (...) that "lie between" the former, thereby partially answering an open question of AGM. Our method of proof is uniform insofar as it uses only one form of "revealed preference", and it explains where and why the finiteness assumption is needed. Third, as an application, we explore the logic characterizing theory contractions in the finite case which are governed by the structure of simple and prioritized belief bases. (shrink)

‘Contract cheating’ has recently emerged as a form of academic dishonesty. It involves students contracting out their coursework to writers in order to submit the purchased assignments as their own work, usually via the internet. This form of cheating involves epistemic and ethical problems that are continuous with older forms of cheating, but which it also casts in a new form. It is a concern to educators because it is very difficult to detect, because it is arguably more fraudulent than (...) some other forms of plagiarism, and because it appears to be connected to a range of systemic problems within modern higher education. This paper provides an overview of the information and literature thus far available on the topic, including its definition, the problems it involves, its causal factors, and the ways in which educators might respond. We argue that while contract cheating is a concern, some of the suggested responses are themselves problematic, and that best practice responses to the issue should avoid moral panic and remain focussed on supporting honest students and good academic practice. (shrink)

Some feminists hold that surrogacy contracts should be unenforceable or illegal because they contribute to and perpetuate unjust gender inequalities. I argue that in developed countries, surrogacy contracts either wouldn't have these negative effects or that these effects could be mitigated via regulation. Furthermore, the existence of a regulated surrogacy market is preferable on consequentialist grounds.

Convergence liberalism has emerged as a prominent interpretation of public reason liberalism. Yet, while its main rival in the public reason literature—the Rawlsian consensus account of public reason—has faced serious scrutiny regarding its ability to secure equal citizenship forallmembers of society, especially for members of historically subordinated groups, convergence liberalism has not. With this article, we hope to start a discussion about convergence liberalism and its (in)ability to address group-based social inequalities. In particular, we aim to show (...) that given the core features of the viewandreal-world pluralism, the policies needed to secure gender equality and protect equal citizenship for women will not be justified. We make our case by considering various inequalities that are due to the gendered division of labor and potential convergence liberal responses. (shrink)

Students are using file sharing sites to breach academic integrity in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper analyses the use of one such site, Chegg, which offers “homework help” and other academic services to students. Chegg is often presented as a file sharing site in the academic literature, but that is just one of many ways in which it can be used. As this paper demonstrates, Chegg can and is used for contract cheating This is despite the apparent existence (...) of an Honour Code on Chegg which asks students not to breach academic integrity. With pandemic led safety considerations leading to increased online teaching and assessment, the paper analyses data relating to how Chegg is used by students in five STEM subjects, namely Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics and Chemistry. The results show that students are using Chegg to request exam style questions. They demonstrate that contract cheating requests can be put live and answered within the short duration of an examination. The number of student requests posted for these five subjects increased by 196.25% comparing the time period April 2019 to August 2019 with the period April 2020 to August 2020. This increase corresponds with the time when many courses moved to be delivered and assessed online. The growing number of requests indicates that students are using Chegg for assessment and exam help frequently and in a way that is not considered permissible by universities. The paper concludes by recommending that academic institutions put interventions in place to minimise the risk to educational standards posed by sites such as Chegg, particularly since increased online teaching and assessment may continue after the pandemic. (shrink)

Modern belief revision theory is based to a large extent on partial meet contraction that was introduced in the seminal article by Carlos Alchourrón, Peter Gärdenfors, and David Makinson that appeared in 1985. In the same year, Alchourrón and Makinson published a significantly different approach to the same problem, called safe contraction. Since then, safe contraction has received much less attention than partial meet contraction. The present paper summarizes the current state of knowledge on safe (...) class='Hi'>contraction, provides some new results and offers a list of unsolved problems that are in need of investigation. (shrink)

This paper seeks to define and delimit the scope of the social responsibilities of health professionals in reference to the concept of a social contract. While drawing on both historical data and current empirical information, this paper will primarily proceed analytically and examine the theoretical feasibility of deriving social responsibilities from the phenomenon of professionalism via the concept of a social contract.

In this paper, the nature of the contract of employment is explored from an ethical point of view. It is argued that certain normative arguments should be taken into account in order to justify such a contract. Furthermore, an argument is developed against the claim that (a) the individual’s freedom of decision and (b) the practice of institutional arrangements are sufficient to justify a contract of employment. The dimensional analysis offered shows that further conditions are needed: (a) must be elaborated (...) and interpreted to the extent that this condition is not sufficient – rather sub-criteria regarding the agent’s state of knowledge must be met; and (b) should be supplemented by a demand for fairness. A tentative analysis of existing work contracts is the starting point for the ethical analysis. The aim is to show what a legitimate, or reasonable, contract of employment will require. Finally, some important normative implications and consequences regarding the contract’s normative status are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Welfarism: Law and Economics Nonwelfarist theories Historical Explanations Topics in Contract Theory Conclusion: Whither Contract Theory? References.

Probabilistic belief contraction has been a much neglected topic in the field of probabilistic reasoning. This is due to the difficulty in establishing a reasonable reversal of the effect of Bayesian conditionalization on a probabilistic distribution. We show that indifferent contraction, a solution proposed by Ramer to this problem through a judicious use of the principle of maximum entropy, is a probabilistic version of a full meet contraction. We then propose variations of indifferent contraction, using both (...) the Shannon entropy measure as well as the Hartley entropy measure, with an aim to avoid excessive loss of beliefs that full meet contraction entails. (shrink)

A powerful work of moral and political philosophy.The idea which I shall present here came to me more or less out of the blue. I was on a train some five years ago, on my way to spend a day at Headingley and I was reading a book about the death camp at Sobibor... The particular, not very appropriate, conjunction involved for me in this train journey... had the effect of fixing my thoughts on one of the more dreadful features (...) of human coexistence, when in the shape of a simple five-word phrase the idea occurred to me. In The Contract of Mutual Indifference, Norman Geras discusses a central aspect of the experience of the Holocaust with a view to exploring its most important contemporary implications. In a bold and powerful synthesis of memorial, literary record, historical reflection and political theory, he focuses on the figure of the bystander -- the bystander to the destruction of the Jews of Europe and the bystander to more recent atrocities -- to consider the moral consequences of looking on without active response at persecution and great suffering. Geras argues that the tragedy of European Jewry, so widely pondered by historians, social scientists, psychologists, theologians and others, has not yet found its proper reflection within political philosophy. Attempting to fill the gap, he adapts an old idea from within that tradition of enquiry, the idea of the social contract, to the task of thinking about the triangular relation between perpetrators, victims and bystanders, and draws a somber conclusion from it. Geras goes on to ask how far this conclusion may be offset by the hypothesis of a universal duty to bring aid. The Contract of Mutual Indifference is an original and challenging work, aimed at the complacent abstraction of much contemporary theory. It is supplemented by three shorter essays on the implications of the Jewish catastrophe for conceptions of human nature and progress and for certain types of Marxist explanation. (shrink)

The pervasive use of contracts in healthcare is a source of unease for many healthcare ethicists and patient advocates. This commentary examines the use of such contracts with individuals in rehabilitation settings who have complex medical and behavioural issues. The goals of this paper are to examine the many factors that can lead to contract use, to discuss some legal and ethical implications of contract use, and to assess contract use in light of concerns about health equity. The paper concludes (...) with some practical alternatives to the use of such contracts, and refers specifically to tools that might be borrowed from the field of behavioural therapy. (shrink)

This article reviews and develops an epistemological tradition in the philosophy of science, known as convergentism, which holds that inference methods should be assessed based on their ability to converge to the truth across a range of possible scenarios. Emphasis is placed on its historical origins in the work of C. S. Peirce and its recent developments in formal epistemology and data science (including statistics and machine learning). Comparisons are made with three other traditions: (1) explanationism, which holds that theory (...) choice should be guided by a theory's overall balance of explanatory virtues, such as simplicity and fit with data; (2) instrumentalism, which maintains that scientific inference should be driven by the goal of obtaining useful models rather than true theories; and (3) Bayesianism, which shifts the focus from all-or-nothing beliefs to degrees of belief. (shrink)

The basic assumption of repertoire contraction is that only some of the logically closed subsets of the original belief set are viable as contraction outcomes. Contraction takes the form of choosing directly among these viable outcomes, rather than among cognitively more far-fetched objects such as possible worlds or maximal consistent subsets of the original belief set. In this first investigation of repertoire contraction, postulates for various variants of the operation are introduced. Necessary and sufficient conditions are (...) given for when repertoire contraction coincides with AGM contraction or with operations generated by AGM-style contraction on a belief base. A close connection is shown to hold between repertoire contraction and specified meet contraction. (shrink)

A model of coherentist belief contraction is constructed. The outcome of belief contraction is required to be one of the coherent subsets of the original belief set, and a set of plausible properties is proposed for this set of coherent subsets. The contraction operators obtained in this way are shown to coincide with well-known belief base operations. This connection between coherentist and "foundationalist" approaches to belief change has important implications for the philosophical interpretation of models of belief (...) change. (shrink)

In The Libertarian Idea, Jan Narveson explains his interpretation of social contract theory this way: "The general idea of this theory is that the principles of morality are (or should be) those principles for directing everyone's conduct which it is reasonable for everyone to accept. They are the rules that everyone has good reason for wanting everyone to act on, and thus to internalize in himself or herself, and thus to reinforce in the case of everyone." It is plain, here, (...) that Narveson believes that social contract is to provide justification -- a foundation, in fact -- for 'the principles of morality'. The burden assumed in this essay is to examine how far Narveson has succeeded in making this foundational claim plausible. (shrink)

I argue that social-contract theory cannot succeed because reasonable people may always disagree, and that social-contract theory is irrelevant to the problem of the legitimacy of a form of government or of a system of moral rules. I note the weakness of the appeal to implicit agreement, the conflation of legitimacy with stability, the undesirability of “public justification” and the apparent blindness to the evolutionary critical-rationalist approach of Hayek and Popper. I employ that approach to sketch answers to the theoretical, (...) historical and practical questions about the legitimacy of government or of systems of moral rules. (shrink)

We advance a critical examination of two recent branches of the enactivist research program, namely, Radically Enactive Cognition (Hutto & Myin, 2013, 2017) and Linguistic Bodies (Di Paolo et al. 2018). We argue that, although these approaches may look like diverging views within the wider enactivist program, when appraised in a conciliatory spirit, they can be interpreted as developing converging ideas. We examine how the notion of know-how figures in them in order to show an important point of convergence, (...) namely, that the normativity of human cognitive capacities rests on shared know-how. Radical enactivism emphasizes the diachronic dimension of shared know-how, and linguistic bodies emphasizes the synchronic one. Given that know-how is a normative notion, it is subject to success conditions. We then argue it implies basic content, which is the content of the successful ongoing interactions between agent(s) and environment. Basic content does not imply accuracy conditions and representational content, so it evades Hutto & Myin's (2013) Hard Problem of Content. Moreover, this account is amenable to the central claim by Di Paolo et al. (2018) that the participatory sense-making relations at play in linguistic exchanges are explained in continuity with explanations of biological organization and sensorimotor engagements. (shrink)

I investigate the problem of contracting a dependency-network with respect to any of its nodes. The resulting contraction must not contain the node in question, but must also be a minimal mutilation of the original network. Identifying successful and minimally mutilating contractions of dependency-networks is non-trivial, especially when non-well-founded networks are to be taken into account. I prove that the contraction problem is NP-complete.1.

The revolution in Western family law over the past 50 years—often described as ‘liberalization’—involves a decrease in the importance of fault-based factors alongside an increase in the significance of marital contracts. While these two trends generally complement each other, they may conflict when a couple seeks to assign economic consequences to sexual fault through a contract. Should such an agreement be legally enforceable? Which aligns more with a ‘true liberal’ perspective: advocating against fault or for the use of contracts? This (...) paper suggests a new approach that goes beyond simply determining which trend should prevail. We illustrate how the perceived conflict between proponents of sexual liberalization and proponents of contractual liberalization could be resolved by identifying the underlying reasons that motivate each ‘camp’, proposing potential legal mechanisms and specific legal contexts in which broad agreement might be reached, and explicating the multidimensionality of family law liberalization. (shrink)

Contractions on belief sets that have no finite representation cannot be finite in the sense that only a finite number of sentences is removed. However, such contractions can be delimited so that the actual change takes place in a logically isolated, finite-based part of the belief set. A construction that answers to this principle is introduced, and is axiomatically characterized. It turns out to coincide with specified meet contraction.

This paper applies Wempe’s (2005, Business Ethics Quarterly 15(1), 113–135) boundary conditions that define the external and internal logics for contractarian business ethics theory, as a system of argumentation for evaluating current or prospective institutional arrangements for arriving at the “good life,” based on the principles and practices of social justice. It does so by showing that a more dynamic, process-oriented, and pluralist ‘dialogic twist’ to Donaldson and Dunfee’s (2003, ‘Social Contracts: sic et non’, in P. Heugens, H. van Oosterhout (...) and J. Vromen (eds.), The Social Institutions of Capitalism: Evolution and Design of Social Contracts (Cheltenham, UK, Edward Elgar Publishing, Ltd.) pp. 109–126; 1999, Ties that Bind: A Social Contracts Approach to Business Ethics (Boston, MA, Harvard Business School Press); 1995, Economics and Philosophy 11(1), 85–112; 1994, Academy of Management Review 19(2), 252–284.) integrated social contracting theory (ISCT) of economic ethics will further develop this promising and influential approach to moral reasoning, ethical decision-making, and stakeholder governance. This evolutionary, interactive learning-based model of ethical norm generation via dialogic stakeholder engagement is particularly appropriate within economic communities that are experiencing value conflict and pressures for institutional change. (shrink)

In the field of many-valued logics, Hájek’s Basic Logic BL was introduced in Hájek (Metamathematics of fuzzy logic, trends in logic. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Berlin, 1998). In this paper we will study four families of n-contractive (i.e. that satisfy the axiom \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\phi^n\rightarrow\phi^{n+1}}$$\end{document}, for some \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${n\in\mathbb{N}^+}$$\end{document}) axiomatic extensions of BL and their corresponding varieties: BLn, SBLn, BLn and SBLn. Concerning BLn we have that (...) every BLn-chain is isomorphic to an ordinal sum of MV-chains of at most n + 1 elements, whilst every BLn-chain is isomorphic to an ordinal sum of MVn-chains (for SBLn and SBLn a similar property holds, with the difference that the first component must be the two elements boolean algebra); all these varieties are locally finite. Moving to the content of the paper, after a preliminary section, we will study generic and k-generic algebras, completeness and computational complexity results, amalgamation and interpolation properties. Finally, we will analyze the first-order versions of these logics, from the point of view of completeness and arithmetical complexity. (shrink)

Due to the domain characteristics of business ethics, a contractarian theory for business ethics will need to be essentially different from the contract model as it is applied to other domains. Much of the current criticism of contractarian business ethics (CBE) can be traced back to autonomy, one of its three boundary conditions. After explaining why autonomy is so important, this article considers the notion carefully vis à vis the contracting partners in the contractarian approaches in business ethics. Autonomy is (...) too demanding a condition for the realm of CBE. But a less stringent version of the contract may be possible, a version which uses the contract as a heuristic device, which merely requires moral responsibility. Furthermore, it is argued that views of (human) agency and the moral subject should be made explicit in such a theory. (shrink)

According to political liberalism, laws must be justified to all citizens in order to be legitimate. Most political liberals have taken this to mean that laws must be justified by appeal to a specific class of ‘public reasons’, which all citizens can accept. In this paper I defend an alternative, convergence, model of public justification, according to which laws can be justified to different citizens by different reasons, including reasons grounded in their comprehensive doctrines. I consider three objections to (...) such an account—that it undermines sincerity in public reason, that it underestimates the importance of shared values, and that it is insufficiently deliberative—and argue that convergence justifications are resilient to these objections. They should therefore be included within a theory of political liberalism, as a legitimate form of public justification. This has important implications for the obligations that political liberalism places upon citizens in their public deliberations and reason-giving, and might make the theory more attractive to some of its critics, particularly those sympathetic to religious belief. (shrink)