Three years before René Girard published La violence et le sacré, a Jesuit doctoral candidate at the University of Fribourg began a short essay entitled “Unterwegs zu einer toleranten Kirche” in April 1969 with this claim: “Hexenjadgen gab es auf die eine oder andere Weise zu allen Zeiten”. After having asserted that it is a universal feature of human existence to elevate customs, laws, thought patterns, and other interests to absolute norms, he argued, “Im Namen dieser Normen stießen sie dann (...) einzelne oder Minderheiten aus ihrer Gemeinschaft aus und trieben sie in die Vereinsamung und oft sogar in den physischen Tod” (In... (shrink)

In Phenomenology and the Problem of History. David Carr examines the paradox involving Husserl's transcendental philosophy and his later historicist theory.

The sense of agency is the perception of willfully causing something to happen. Wegner and Wheatley proposed three prerequisites for SA: temporal contiguity between an action and its effect, congruence between predicted and observed effects, and exclusivity . We investigated how temporal contiguity, congruence, and the order of two human agents’ actions influenced SA on a task where participants rated feelings of self-agency for producing a tone. SA decreased when tone onsets were delayed, supporting contiguity as important, but the order (...) of the agents’ actions also mattered. Relative contiguity was the main determinant of SA, as delayed tones were usually attributed to the most recent action. This was unaffected by contingencies between the two actors’ actions , showing that contiguity has a powerful influence on SA, even during joint action in the presence of other cues. (shrink)

Since its first publication in 1961 E.H. Carr's What is History? has established itself as the classic introduction to the subject. Ranging across topics such as historical objectivity, society and the individual, the nature of causation, and the possibility of progress, Carr delivered an incisive text that still has power to provoke debate today. For this fortieth anniversary reissue, Richard J. Evans has written an extensive new introduction that discusses the origins and the impact of the book, and (...) assesses its relevance in the age of the 21st century postmodernism and epistemological anxiety. (shrink)

Language maps signals onto meanings through the use of two distinct types of structure. First, the space of meanings is discretized into categories that are shared by all users of the language. Second, the signals employed by the language are compositional: The meaning of the whole is a function of its parts and the way in which those parts are combined. In three iterated learning experiments using a vast, continuous, open-ended meaning space, we explore the conditions under which both structured (...) categories and structured signals emerge ex nihilo. While previous experiments have been limited to either categorical structure in meanings or compositional structure in signals, these experiments demonstrate that when the meaning space lacks clear preexisting boundaries, more subtle morphological structure that lacks straightforward compositionality—as found in natural languages—may evolve as a solution to joint pressures from learning and communication. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw upon the emerging view of strategic cognition and issue salience and show that CSR giving has evolved into more than an altruistic response to being asked for support, to one which is embedded in the strategic frames of management and which supports organizational identity. The managerial action as a result of such strategic cognition suggests that modern organizations are seeking to develop CSR giving processes that provide them with a competitive advantage. We draw on the (...) resource-based view of organizations and the VRIO framework to provide the theoretical foundations for our argument that CSR implementation in the form of corporate giving to charities can be developed as a dynamic capability. This can provide a competitive advantage by allowing organizations to manage key stakeholder relationships more effectively with benefits which could lead to increased organizational productivity and the ability to execute strategy more effectively. We interview CSR implementation managers from large organizations in Australia and find that the CSR giving process in many firms is evolving into a more sophisticated and strategically motivated process with expectations of a return. Central to this evolution is the appointment of a CSR implementation manager who acts as a boundary spanner between the organization and its key stakeholders. We posit that this corporate investment in their role and supporting structures can lead to the better management of stakeholders by organizations through the dynamic capability of the CSR giving process. We develop a table of best practise to help guide managers entering this sphere. (shrink)

Significant research has found that corporations have a social responsibility beyond maximizing shareholders' value. This study examines the effect of high-profile corporate bankruptcies on perception of corporate social responsibility. Undergraduate and graduate business students rated the importance of corporate social responsibility on profitability, long-term success and short-term success, before and after high-profile bankruptcies. The results indicated that students in general perceived corporate social responsibility to be more important to profitability and long-term success of the firm and less important to short-term (...) success after media publicity of corporate scandals. Several demographic factors such as gender, age and college major played a role in this perception. These findings have important implications for business education, especially as it relates to corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

This work provides a comprehensive introduction to Asian ethics, covering Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. Each chapter comprises historical background, essential ethical themes or topics, primary sources and more.

Despite much recent concern with the possibilities of moral character education in elementary schooling and professional training, the university and higher educational prospects of such education have only lately received much attention. This paper begins by considering – and largely endorsing – the general case for character education in contexts of pre-adult schooling and adult professional and vocational training. However, it proceeds to argue that the case for intervention in character formation in some educational contexts is not generally applicable to (...) university and higher education. Key points are that there can be no clear normative warrant for such intervention in the case of learners who are: (i) beyond the age of majority and (ii) voluntarily engaged in study wherein significant professional or public implications of personal character development are not a pressing concern. In short, while good moral character is clearly of general human importance, its deliberate or explicit promotion may not be equally warranted in all educational contexts. (shrink)

ABSTRACTGiven the existing inequities in climate change, any proposed climate engineering strategy to solve the climate problem must meet a high threshold for justice. In contrast to an overly thin paradigm for justice that demands only a science-based assessment of potential temperature-related benefits and harms, we argue for the importance of attention to recognitional justice. Recognitional justice, we go on to claim, calls for a different type of assessment tool. Such an assessment would pay attention to neglected considerations such as (...) relationships, context, power, vulnerability, narrative, and affect. Here we develop a care-ethics related tool for assessing the justice of climate engineering with stratospheric aerosols, and suggest that qualitative social science methods may be required for its effective application. We illustrate the use of this tool with a case study involving interviews about stratospheric aerosol injection conducted in Kenya, the Solomon Islands... (shrink)

Use of a placebo control in surgical trials is a divisive issue. We argue that, in principle, placebo controls for surgery are necessary in the same way as for medicine. However, there are important differences between these types of trial, which both increase justification and limit application of surgical studies. We propose that surgical randomised placebo-controlled trials are ethical if certain conditions are fulfilled: the presence of equipoise, defined as a lack of unbiased evidence for efficacy of an intervention; clinically (...) important research question; the risk to patients is minimised and reasonable; there is uncertainty about treatment allocation rather than deception; there is preliminary evidence for efficacy, which justifies a placebo-controlled design; and ideally, the placebo procedure should have some direct benefit to the patient, for example, as a diagnostic tool. Placebo-controlled trials in surgery will most often be justified when surgery is performed to improve function or relieve symptoms and when objective outcomes are not available, while the risk of mortality or significant morbidity is low. In line with medical placebo-controlled trials, the surgical trial should be sufficiently powered and standardised so that its results are valid, consent should be valid, the standard treatment or rescue medication should be provided if possible, and after the trial, the patients should be told which treatment they received and there should be provision for post-trial care if the study may result in long-term negative effects. We comment and contrast our guidelines with those of the American Medical Association. (shrink)

The purposes of higher education in general and of university education in particular have long been subject to controversy. Whereas for some, the main role of universities is to provide professional and vocational education and training and their benefits are to be measured in terms of social or economic utility, their value for others is to be seen more in terms of the liberal development and promotion of certain intrinsically worthwhile qualities of mind and intellect. In this context, indeed, much (...) recent literature on university education has been concerned to reaffirm what are usually taken to have been the liberal purposes of bygone university education over the more instrumental or vocational agendas of much contemporary university and higher education. While recognising, along with other treatments of this issue, that it is to some extent implicated in a false dichotomy between the liberal and the vocational, this paper seeks a clearer rationale for the liberal dimensions and aspirations of university education. (shrink)

Ethicists and social scientists alike have advocated for the inclusion of vulnerable populations in research and decision-making on climate engineering. Unfortunately, there have been few efforts to do so. The research presented in this paper was designed to build knowledge about how vulnerable populations think about climate engineering. The goal of this manuscript is to bring the ethics literature on climate engineering into dialogue with emerging social science data documenting the perspectives of vulnerable populations. The results indicate some concerns among (...) vulnerable populations may resemble those outlined by ethicists. However, the perspectives expressed by interviewees also extend previous ethical treatments by indicating ways in which climate engineering could compound existing injustices. (shrink)

This study examines self-legitimation and other-delegitimation in the online radio broadcasts of Nnamdi Kanu, the Supreme Leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Using Theo van Leeuwen’s (2008) legitimation approach, the paper analyses four speeches he delivered in Israel following his ‘reappearance’ in 2018. The analysis reveals that Kanu uses three legitimation strategies, namely authorisation, moralisation and rationalisation to justify his sudden escape from Nigeria, call for Biafra’s self-rule and boycott of elections and to discredit alleged cloning of the (...) president, electoral malpractices, marginalisation of the Igbo and corruption and brutality among security agents. These strategies are linguistically realised by self-glorification, exclusive and inclusive pronominalisations (us-them dichotomy), polarisation, derogatory nomination (labelling), and hyperbolic expressions. They are aimed at presenting Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB positively as fighting a legitimate cause. (shrink)

This chapter outlines different ethical approaches of relevance for a normative assessment of nano-release. We elaborate on traditional risk assessment and the well-known notion of a Precautionary Principle in order to demonstrate that these accounts need to be complemented to provide ethical guidance with regard to environmental influence of emerging technologies. We conclude that it is obligatory to engage in what they call an “eco-centric evaluation” of nano-release.

The category-theoretic representation of quantum event structures provides a canonical setting for confronting the fundamental problem of truth valuation in quantum mechanics as exemplified, in particular, by Kochen-Specker’s theorem. In the present study, this is realized by representing categorically the global structure of a quantum algebra of events in terms of sheaves of local Boolean frames forming Boolean localization functors. The category of sheaves is a topos providing the possibility of applying the powerful logical classification methodology of topos theory with (...) reference to the quantum world. In particular, we show that the topos-theoretic representation scheme of quantum event algebras by means of Boolean localization functors incorporates an object of truth values, which constitutes the appropriate tool for the definition of quantum truth-value assignments to propositions describing the behavior of quantum systems. Effectively, this scheme induces a contextualist account of truth in the quantum domain of discourse. The philosophical implications of the resulting account are analyzed. Such an account essentially denies that there can be a universal context of reference or an Archimedean standpoint from which to state the totality of facts of nature. (shrink)

Proceedings of PhiloWeb 2012, workshop at WWW 2012, on the philosophy of the Web.

Self-initiated action effects are often perceived as less intense than identical but externally generated stimuli. It is thought that forward models within the sensorimotor system pre-activate cortical representations of predicted action effects, reducing perceptual sensitivity and attenuating neural responses. As self-agency and predictability are seldom manipulated simultaneously in behavioral experiments, it is unclear if self-other differences depend on predictable action effect contingencies, or if both self- and externally generated stimuli are modulated similarly by predictability. We factorially combined variation in predictability (...) of action effects, spatial congruence, and performance by the self or computer to dissociate these influences on a visual discrimination task. Participants performed 2AFC speed judgments. Self-initiated motion was judged to be slower than computer-initiated motion when action effect contingencies were predictable, while spatial congruence influenced speed judgments only when action effect contingencies were unpredictable. Results are discussed in relation to current theories of sensory attenuation. (shrink)

It is central to virtue ethics both that morally sound action follows from virtuous character, and that virtuous character is itself the product of habitual right judgement and choice: that, in short, we choose our moral characters. However, any such view may appear to encounter difficulty in those cases of moral conflict where an agent cannot simultaneously act (say) both honestly and sympathetically, and in which the choices of agents seem to favour the construction of different moral characters. This paper (...) argues, against possible counter-arguments, for a view of virtue ethics which embraces the diversity of moral character. (shrink)

Some initial reflections on the theoretical status of philosophy of education suggest that it seems appropriate to regard education and teaching as practices in some sense. Following a distinction between teaching as an institutional and professional role and teaching as a more basic form of moral association, however, some key aspects of this distinction are explored via a contrast between MacIntyrean notions of moral and social practice and more mainstream Aristotelian virtue-ethics concepts of moral character and agency. The paper proceeds (...) to argue that, notwithstanding any and all pressure to regard teaching in institutional and professional contexts as a form of technical or managerial expertise directed to specific social ends, neither teaching nor the moral ends which it more widely serves seem reducible to practices in any such socially defined sense. (shrink)

This paper argues that moral judgment is suffering at the hands of instrumental rationality and identity thinking, concepts from the tradition of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory that help explain degradations in human relations. These concepts are not new, but they are realized in novel ways, and the implications continue to be significant, contributing to human suffering and prominent anti-intellectual sentiment. Working through the shared intellectual ground of Adorno, Edmundson, Stivers, and Ellul, the paper takes a critical look at (...) our culture through the objectification of genuine human relations that comes with techno-rational prioritization. The endpoint of such a culture is the compromise of human subjectivity in the service of efficiency, objectivity, and measurability. Extending the analysis to educational practice, Joas’s notion of situational creativity and Dewey’s aesthetics are proposed as possible points of resistance, highlighting positive actions to be taken to remediate these narrow and dehumanizing phenomena. (shrink)

Alfred I. Tauber (ed.), Organism and the Origins of Self. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. xix + 384 pp., US$ 110.00 (US$ 25.00 paperback). This is a fascinating book based on a 1990 symposium at Boston University. It promises to change the way one conceives of the organism. The authors start from different specializations but provide a most tantalizing feast of ideas. Richard Lewontin commences the book with a strange foreword. Lewontin submits that the concern with the "self and (...) private identity in modern biology is ... only one manifestation of the ideology of individualism that is a shibboleth of our particular [bourgeois] form of social organization" (p. xix). If this is the case, the reader should stop reading the book and ask for her money back. But I advise patience. Tauber's introduction is a mixture of the history of the medical notion of disease and the advocacy of a dialectical concept of the self as the interpenetration of part and whole. Tauber highlights Elie Metchnikoff's appealing idea of phagocytosis as just one form of the active organism striving to attain harmony among competing cells. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Teachers are regularly blamed–especially in times of moral panic–for failing to set a good example and teach proper moral standards to their pupils. As well as familiar issues about moral values and the legitimacy of different modes of moral pedagogy this also raises the question of the degree of connection between a teacher's private and personal values, attitudes and behaviour and his or her professional conduct and responsibilities. Two common responses to these problems–paternalism and liberalism–are here criticised and an (...) alternative perspective on the moral role of the teacher is sought, drawing on communitarian insights into the nature of moral and other values and their function in human affairs. (shrink)

Seeking to reinstate the importance of knowledge, truth and curriculum in contemporary intellectual debate, this book fills a major gap in the literature and greatly advances an exciting area of research.

While notions of spirituality, spiritual experience and spiritual development seem much neglected in the literature of modern analytical philosophy, such terminology continues to be current in both common usage and religious contexts. This author has previously taken issue with some recent attempts to develop conceptions of spirituality and spiritual experience as substantially independent of religious attachment. Notwithstanding this, the present paper considers whether such a ‘religiously-untethered’ notion of spirituality, spiritual experience or sensibility might yet be sustainable in terms of two (...) key criteria: as a capacity for non-instrumental perspectives on, or interpretations of, the world of ordinary experience; and as a corresponding capacity to identify goals and values that transcend or are not reducible to the meeting of immediate natural or material—either individual or social—needs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Patchwork of Non-Integrated OthersMichael Elias (bio)It has been a long time since I first presented a paper at a Colloquium on Violence & Religion (COV&R) conference, in 1994 in Wiesbaden, entitled "Neck Riddles in Mimetic Theory." It discusses riddle stories in which a man sentenced to death saves his life by propounding to the judge a riddle that he cannot possibly solve, because it is based on (...) bizarre experiences, unique to the condemned person. This was somewhat similar to what I did in my lecture, because I hid the fact that my research, which I would later base my doctorate on, was inspired by the eccentric experiences from psychoses that overtook me between 1979 and 1983 and landed me in a psychiatric hospital. Moreover, the motif of a condemned person saving his life is related for me to the experiences of my father, who spent weeks on death row at Buchenwald concentration camp during World War II—and miraculously escaped death. As the eldest in the family, I was definitely "the boy who had to make everything right."I am convinced that a lot of research is related to a researcher's own experiences. Our maître à penser, René Girard, tells his interviewer Michel Treguer, in answer to a question about the last chapter of Mensonge romantique, "You're [End Page 121] right, of course, about there being a personal experience behind what I say. I ended up understanding that I was going through an experience of the kind that I was describing."1 In his overview of Girard's work, Wolfgang Palaver wrote, "He began to turn away from his own pride and to see himself as a puppet of his own mimetic desire."2 But Girard adds a caveat in 1994: There is the danger of narcissism.3I also experience that when I do not stick to the theory, but try to clarify parts of my life story from the moment I started reading Girard's Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde, which offered me a new opening to my Christian background. It stimulated me to start learning Hebrew to investigate the roots of Christianity.My learning still continues, in a study group: what Jews do in a beth hamidrash. The Torah is too great to be owned by any of us, so the mimetic rivalry that is always there becomes a fruitful mimesis: Lernen leads to freedom. The last ten years we have been studying the book of Exodus, with midrashim from the long rabbinic tradition. It's a book of liberation that finally gave me the courage to write about that profound period in the psychiatric hospital.From the third part of Des choses cachées, I learned a lot about interdividuality, and also from J.-M. Oughourlian's The Mimetic Brain, in which he distinguishes between the rational, emotional, and mimetic brain. And from Henri Grivois, who published on incipient psychosis. Initially I steered toward a kind of psycho-philosophical self-analysis using insights from mimetic theory. However, in the end I decided: What I learned will not be put in a scientific treatise, but a novel. For several reasons:1. I learned from Mensonge romantique that real knowledge can be conveyed very well through a novel.2. Hungarian writer and Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész, explaining why he was unable to describe his real-life concentration camp experiences, gave me the freedom to paradoxically tell my "real story" in fiction.3. I could by no means always remember exactly what had happened, and therefore had to resort to fiction, even though I had preserved material from those years.4. I wanted to make people in my immediate surroundings unrecognizable by literary means. The American writer David Vann once said (according to a Dutch writer), "You must sacrifice your family on the altar of fiction." I didn't want that, especially with regard to my mother. [End Page 122]5. Finally, I was inspired by a Jewish sage from the eighteenth century in Lithuania (the maggid of Doubno). He explains why the truth of the Torah is not presented as a philosophy or code of law... (shrink)

For every uncountable regular cardinalκ and any cardinalλ≧κ,P κ λ denotes the set $\left\{ {x \subseteqq \lambda :\left| x \right|< \kappa } \right\}$ . Furthermore, < denotes the binary operation defined inP κ λ byx (...) + denotes the setP κ λ−I, andI * the filter dual toI.An idealI overP κ λ is said to benormal iff every functionf:P κ λ→λ with the property that {x∈P κ λ:f(x)∈x}∈I + is constant on a set inI +.I is said to bestrongly normal iff every functionf:P κ λ→P κ λ with the property that {x∈P κ λ:x∩xκ≠Ø∧f(x)shrink)

How do diverse groups of women in Canada define sexual harassment? To answer this question requires incorporating race and citizenship into the analysis of sexual harassment. The authors use data from seven focus groups of Canadian women. The white women with full citizenship rights most easily identify with existing legal understandings of sexual harassment and believe they have the right to report their harassment. For women of color and women without full citizenship rights, issues of racialized sexual harassment emerge as (...) central factors in their harassment experience. Black women with full citizenship rights call into question whether the term sexual harassment captures their experiences. Filipinas working as live-in caregivers on limited visas demonstrate how racism and lack of citizenship changes definitions of sexual harassment. Their experiences of harassment combine elements of isolation due to their lack of citizenship, racialized sexual harassment, and abuse. The authors argue that intersectional analyses are needed to understand women’s harassment experiences and their ability to complain and seek legal recourse. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most acute global crises in recent history, which profoundly impacted the world across many dimensions. During this period, racism manifested in ways specifically related to the pandemic, including xenophobic sentiments, racial attacks, discriminatory policies, and disparate outcomes across racial/ethnic groups. This paper examines some of the pressing questions about pandemic racism and inequity. We review what research has revealed about the nature and manifestations of racism, the entrenchment of structural racism, and trajectories (...) of racism during COVID-19. (shrink)

In February 2000, the EuropeanCommission adopted a Communication on theprecautionary principle. This states how theCommission intends to apply the principle andestablishes guidelines for its application. Thedocument is intended to inform discussions oninternational agreements. In particular, itprovides a defense of European Union (EU)precautionary policies in case of tradedisputes, for example, in case the EU isaccused of imposing unfair trade barriers onexports of genetically-modified (GM) productsfrom the United States under the rules of theWorld Trade Organisation. In the communication,the Commission emphasizes the scientificaspects (...) of the precautionary principle, perhapspartly to counter claims from US officials thatthe EU's reluctance to accept GM imports is notbased on science but is politically-motivated.However, a principle is by definition a moralguide to behavior. In other words, it is anethic. The precautionary principle should beviewed as a complement to science, to beinvoked when a lack of scientific evidencemeans that outcomes are uncertain. Anyinterpretation of this principle needs to placeat least as much emphasis on its ethical andvalue-based aspects as on its scientificjustification. The Commission's interpretationrisks undermining the painstaking progress madeamong European Union member states inresponding to public concern about GM crops andfood by adopting increased precaution. Thispaper explores the balance between thescientific and ethical/value-based aspects ofthe precautionary principle as set out in theCommission's communication, to make the casethat it is the ethical and value-based aspectsrather than the scientific aspects of theguidelines that need strengthening. (shrink)

Amongst the entities that have been created by human agents, and can be changed by human agents, besides concrete particulars, such as tables and chairs, our intuitions suggest that there are repeatables—entities that can each have multiple concrete instances. And since there is reason to think that repeatables are acausal, there is reason to think that that there are entities that are created, changeable, repeatable and acausal. Then again, it might be supposed that if an entity is created then it (...) is causal, and that if an entity is changed then it is causal. It is argued here that these suppositions are insufficiently motivated to undermine the case for the existence of entities that are created, changeable, repeatable and acausal. (shrink)

Dependency relationships within the cell cycle allow cells to arrest the cycle reversibly in response to agents or conditions that interfere with specific aspects of its normal progression. In addition, overlapping pathways exist which also arrest the cell cycle in response to DNA damage. Collectively, these control mechanisms have become known as checkpoints. Analysis of checkpoints is facilitated by the fact that dependency relationships within the cell cycle, such as the dependency of mitosis on the completion of DNA synthesis, and (...) the DNA damage checkpoint can be separated genetically. In fission yeast, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the dependency of mitosis on prior completion of DNA synthesis is mediated through tyrosine‐15 phosphorylation of the ubiquitous mitotic regulator p34cdc2. In contrast, the arrest of mitosis caused by DNA damage acts through a separate mechanism that appears to be independent of tyrosine‐15 phosphorylation. Despite these distinct interactions with the mitotic machinery, the majority of fission yeast mutants that are deficient in mitotic arrest after DNA damage are also unable to respond to inhibition of DNA synthesis. In this essay we survey the current knowledge concerning feedback controls and checkpoints within fission yeast and relate this to information derived from other systems. (shrink)