In a recent paper, Jeanne Peijnenburg and David Atkinson [ Studia Logica, 89:333-341 ] have challenged the foundationalist rejection of infinitism by giving an example of an infinite, yet explicitly solvable regress of probabilistic justification. So far, however, there has been no criterion for the consistency of infinite probabilistic regresses, and in particular, foundationalists might still question the consistency of the solvable regress proposed by Peijnenburg and Atkinson.

On the basis of the Suppes–Sneed structuralview of scientific theories, we take a freshlook at the concept of refutability,which was famously proposed by K.R. Popper in 1934 as a criterion for the demarcation of scientific theories from non-scientific ones, e.g., pseudo-scientificand metaphysical theories. By way of an introduction we argue that a clash between Popper and his critics on whether scientific theories are, in fact, refutablecan be partly explained by the fact Popper and his criticsascribed different meanings to the term (...) theoryThen we narrow our attention to one particular theory,namely quantum mechanics, in order to elucidate general matters discussed. We prove that quantum mechanics is irrefutable in a rather straightforward sense, but argue that it is refutable in a more sophisticated sense, which incorporates someobservations obtained by looking closely at the practiceof physics. We shall locate exactly where non-rigourous elements enter the evaluation of a scientific theory – thismakes us see clearly how fruitful mathematics isfor the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Two different concepts of iconicity compete in Peirce's diagrammatical logic. One is articulated in his general reflections on the role of diagrams in thought, in what could be termed his diagrammatology — the other is articulated in his construction of Existential Graphs as an iconic system for representing logic. One is operational and defines iconicity in terms of which information may be derived from a given diagram or diagram system — the other has stronger demands on iconicity, adding to the (...) operational criterion a demand for as high a degree of similarity as possible and may be termed optimal iconicity. Peirce himself does not clearly distinguish these two iconicity notions, a fact that has caused some confusion. By isolating them, we get a clearer and more refined conceptual apparatus for analyzing iconic signs, from pictures to logic. (shrink)

Artifacts are probably our most obvious everyday encounter with technology. Therefore, a good understanding of the nature of technical artifacts is a relevant part of technological literacy. In this article we draw from the philosophy of technology to develop a conceptualization of technical artifacts that can be used for educational purposes. Furthermore we report a small exploratory empirical study to see to what extent teachers’ intuitive ideas about artifacts match with the way philosophers write about the nature of artifacts. Finally, (...) we suggest a teaching and learning strategy for improving teachers’ concepts of technical artifacts through practical activities. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Community of the Future Page part 3 the right TO earn. 455 section 1 the development IN economic life and law Introduction 459 A. The development IN urban industries and the influence OF the law 463 Chapter 20. The dissolution of the old industrial organisations, the craft guilds 464 Unrestricted economic freedom of trade 464 I. England and North America 468 II. 496 Chapter 21. The Formations of the New Organisations of Industry and their Struggle for Legal (...) Recognition 504 1. England 509 II. The other [countries 515 Chapter 22. The Struggle for Power of the Organisations. The Period of Boycotting 517 I. Boycott-persecution 525 1. Penal Law 530 2. Civil Law 530 531 B. Other Countries II. The Trust Problem and the Law of the Great Industrial Countries 538 1. England 538 2. United States 540 3. France and: Germany 545 B. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Cathy Benedict, “Naming Our Reality: Negotiating and Creating Meaning in the Margin.”Frederik PioIn this paper we are offered a reflection on the historical and present marginalization of music education. As Cathy Benedict says, "What of this marginalization and what of its possibilities? I would like to suggest in this paper that this marginalized status partly reflects our own complicity as we have historically allowed others (...) to speak for us." The field of music education in other words is suffering from a lack of independence. She goes on to say, "music educators have copied the perceived successes of the basic disciplines instead of striving for transformation." However, the radical transformation which is called for seems to lie neither in the integration of music education as part of general education nor in the isolation of music education for she adds, "if we continue to 'concern ourselves with possible future scenarios for music education as part of general education' and in a music education vacuum, then we will probably continue to construct what 'could be' in the guise of what has 'always been.'"The assumption seems to be that music education belongs in the margin, for Benedict also adds, "it is misguided to think of our goal as simply to place music education as part of general education." Instead it is the margin that is claimed to be ripe with possibillities of transformation: "It is true that we need to envision 'what could be' scenarios for music education as part of general education.... It seems more important, though, even imperative, to grapple with the systemic issues that continually haunt us." From the margin music education "must begin narratives with the other disciplines." In other words, the margin seems to be the place from which one can "go about facilitating the creation of liminal space [End Page 69] and facilitate the habits of mind that will relativize taken-for-granted beliefs." It is from the margin that the transformations asked for can be carried out.The margin however has been infected with a dominance which stems from outsiders: "This margin... is our standpoint and a perspective from which we have allowed a worldview to be constructed for us." So the tension regarding the status of music education, between autonomy and integration, is not resolved.At the same time music education must become free. That means tearing loose from the "hidden hegemonic structures that inevitably serve to obscure the purpose of education" while an integrative effort on behalf of music education is called for in relation to general education: "In many cases, we have allowed other disciplines to name what we are and can be. We have crafted and named our importance in a version of their eyes." Consequently what is demanded here is that we craft a version of our field according to our own eyes. So far the field of music education has been marginalized (isolated), but it has never-the-less created itself according to the eyes of outsiders.On behalf of the field of music education, Benedict however seems to ask for a new productive or transformative kind of autonomy (exercised from the margin). The challenge then must now be to create the field of music education in our own eyes. Then perhaps the margin becomes the borderline between autonomy and integration.It would be helpful if Benedict could shed some light on the concept of 'the margin' positioned within a field of tension between autonomy (isolation) and integration. In other words, is the margin a place which has until now remained undiscovered? Does it mark out the limit between isolation and integration (on behalf of the field of music education)?Given the state of things described above the agenda created in the margin is seen as liberatory and transformative: "the space we need to facilitate is liberatory with change as a given not a goal oriented end-point" (emphasis added). In other words a liberation is called for which amounts to an attempt to oppose an oppression: "the field of music education has in fact manifested several characteristics of an oppressed society" (emphasis added). But what is meant by this reference to a liberation/oppression... (shrink)

Theodor W. Adornos Denken war Zeit seines Lebens von einem ebenso fruchtbaren wie zwiespältigen Verhältnis zu den Medien durchdrungen. Dabei verstand er es, seine gesellschaftskritischen Überlegungen an ihnen ebenso zu schärfen wie sie für die Vermittlung seiner Analysen an ein breites Publikum zu nutzen. Auch wenn er diese ambivalente Haltung an damaligen Medien entwickelte, erweist sich der Ansatz als vielversprechend, sie an der heutigen Medienlandschaft in ihrem Einfluss auf Gesellschaft, Politik und Kultur zu erproben. Die Fragen nach der Relevanz von (...) Adornos kritischer Theorie in der zeitgenössischen Reflexion der digitalen Kultur sowie nach der Bedeutung seiner Medienkritik für Philosophie, Kunstwissenschaft und Kulturtheorie der letzten Jahrzehnte stehen im Mittelpunkt dieses Bandes. Unterschiedliche Positionen und methodologische Ansätze zu Adornos intellektuellem Nachlass öffnen neue interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf aktuelle Medienphänomene und kulturelle Prozesse und setzen die Tradition einer philosophisch informierten und soziologisch fundierten Medienkritik fort. -/- Mit Beiträgen von Sarah Bianchi, Christian Fuchs, Samir Gandesha, Henrik Holm, Sulgi Lie, Stefano Marino, Tyrus Miller, Judith-Frederike Popp, Ulrike Ramming, Martin Ritter, Rolando Vitali, Lioudmila Voropai und Florian Wobser. (shrink)

This article is an investigation of parallel themes in Heinrich Hertz's philosophy science and Kant's theory of schemata, symbols and regulative ideas. It is argued that Hertz's "pictures" bears close similarities to Kantian "schemata", that is, they are rules linking concepts to intuitions and provide them with their meaning. Kant's distinction between symbols and schemata is discussed and related to Hertz's three pictures of mechanics. It is argued that Hertz considered his own picture of mechanics as symbolic in a different (...) way than the force and energy pictures. In the final part of the article it is described how Harald Høffding soon after the publication of Hertz's Principles of Mechanics developed a general theory of analogical reasoning, relying on the ideas of Hertz and Kant. (shrink)

A key question in the philosophy of logic is how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical entailment (assuming we have such justification at all). Justification holism asserts that claims of logical entailment can only be justified in the context of an entire logical theory, e.g., classical, intuitionistic, paraconsistent, paracomplete etc. According to holism, claims of logical entailment cannot be atomistically justified as isolated statements, independently of theory choice. At present there is a developing interest in—and endorsement of—justification holism (...) due to the revival of an abductivist approach to the epistemology of logic. This paper presents an argument against holism by establishing a foundational entailment-sentence of deduction which is justified independently of theory choice and outside the context of a whole logical theory. (shrink)

This paper discusses the Uniqueness Thesis, a core thesis in the epistemology of disagreement. After presenting uniqueness and clarifying relevant terms, a novel counterexample to the thesis will be introduced. This counterexample involves logical disagreement. Several objections to the counterexample are then considered, and it is argued that the best responses to the counterexample all undermine the initial motivation for uniqueness.

A stimulus may be given to the interpretation of Plato's Philebus by no longer ignoring the impact of Plato's political philosophy. A first hint is the occurrence of astasiastotatēn, a notion exclusively functioning within Plato's politi¬cal philosophy and no less surprising, in the 'non-political' Philebus, than 'Friday's Footprint' was to Crusoe. A second hint is the stasis between epistēmai and hēdonai, only to be avoided by the exclusion of hēdonai unwilling to subordinate themselves to phronēsis/nous. A new reading of Philebus (...) in light of these 'footprints' leads to the conclusion that not only the 'digressions' on ontology, cosmology and anthropology but also the analyses of hēdonai and epistēmai — in other words: the main body of Philebus — presuppose the substratum of Plato's political philosophy. Consciousness of this substratum contributes to understanding the content and course of the dialogue, and even to recognizing its unity. (shrink)

In this article we explore the state of current ESCM practices in U.K. companies. We develop a conceptual framework that draws upon the stakeholder,resource-based, and power-dependence perspectives and examine this framework in light of empirical evidence concerning ESCM in 166 UK companies. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, our evidence suggests that around 50% of sample companies engage in some form of ESCM activity and that experiencing significant external pressure from customers is an important driver of ESCM.

The problem of how to rationally aggregate probability measures occurs in particular when a group of agents, each holding probabilistic beliefs, needs to rationalise a collective decision on the basis of a single ‘aggregate belief system’ and when an individual whose belief system is compatible with several probability measures wishes to evaluate her options on the basis of a single aggregate prior via classical expected utility theory. We investigate this problem by first recalling some negative results from preference and judgment (...) aggregation theory which show that the aggregate of several probability measures should not be conceived as the probability measure induced by the aggregate of the corresponding expected utility preferences. We describe how McConway’s :410–414, 1981) theory of probabilistic opinion pooling can be generalised to cover the case of the aggregation of infinite profiles of finitely additive probability measures, too; we prove the existence of aggregation functionals satisfying responsiveness axioms à la McConway plus additional desiderata even for infinite electorates. On the basis of the theory of propositional-attitude aggregation, we argue that this is the most natural aggregation theory for probability measures. Our aggregation functionals for the case of infinite electorates are neither oligarchic nor integral-based and satisfy a weak anonymity condition. The delicate set-theoretic status of integral-based aggregation functionals for infinite electorates is discussed. (shrink)

Following Lauwers and Van Liedekerke (1995), this paper explores in a model-theoretic framework the relation between Arrovian aggregation rules and ultraproducts, in order to investigate a source of impossibility results for the case of an infinite number of individuals and an aggregation rule based on a free ultrafilter of decisive coalitions.

We present a logic, $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ ELI r, for the discovery of deterministic causal regularities starting from empirical data. Our approach is inspired by Mackie’s theory of causes as INUS-conditions, and implements a more recent adjustment to Mackie’s theory according to which the left-hand side of causal regularities is required to be a minimal disjunction of minimal conjunctions. To derive such regularities from a given set of data, we make use of the adaptive logics framework. Our knowledge of deterministic causal (...) regularities is, as Mackie noted, most often gappy or elliptical. The adaptive logics framework is well-suited to explicate both the internal and the external dynamics of the discovery of such gappy regularities. After presenting $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ ELI r, we first discuss these forms of dynamics in more detail. Next, we consider some criticisms of the INUS-account and show how our approach avoids them, and we compare $$\mathbf {ELI^r}$$ ELI r with the CNA algorithm that was recently proposed by Michael Baumgartner. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Øivind Varkøy, “The Concept of ‘Bildung’”Frederik PioThe process of Bildung has to do with something that “becomes.” The dimension of moving and developing makes the Bildung-metaphor of ‘the journey’ come into focus in Øivind Varkøy’s paper. As Varkøy states in his article, in relation to the Bildung concept one can see that “[the] relation between what is known in everyday life and what is new, unknown, (...) and strange, can in a sense be regarded as the meaning and intention of the concept.”This tension between that which is known and that which is unknown is handled by means of the metaphor of the journey. The journey is about leaving one’s homeground behind. The homeground is all that which is known. Then there is a venture into something not yet known. And then finally the individual returns home, enriched with a new experience, as a deeper and more encompassing human being. This is the blueprint of ‘the journey.’Thus the metaphor of the journey tells us that the crucial Bildung-factor is connected with a transgression of all that is familiar and well-known. So an experience is conducive to a process of Bildung to the extent that a transgression [End Page 97] occurs. That is as a movement that takes place beyond that in our ordinary lives which is all too well-known. Varkøy puts it this way:To have an experience is to be stricken, shaken, and affected. In this way, an experience is something which exceeds all boundaries, it notifies the arrival of something new and unknown. The subject is jerked out of its usual pattern and meets something that makes it look at itself with new eyes, experience its own subjectivity from unfamiliar quarters. Such experiences, such journeys, mean that we come into contact with important sides and dimensions of our way of being human.This translates into an educational context where a focus is on subject content “which enable[s] the students ‘to make journeys’... so that students can thereby not only emerge as educated music educationalists, but also as cultured (bilded) people.”All this belongs to the dimension of freedom. But as mentioned by Varkøy, Bildung is also about that which is authoritative and un-free. Thus Varkøy mentions Jon Fosse who found that “Norwegian schools certainly need a dose of Harold Bloom” and his book The Western Canon.So we have a tension between freedom (the journey into the unknown) and that which is un-free: the score we all have to settle with a great tradition that was there long before we arrived here and broke the surface of existence. In continuation of this I sense that Varkøy is touching upon a theme that tells us this: Today a process of Bildung should neither reject the tradition (to become anti-traditional). Nor should a process of Bildung become something that is just blindly reproducing the tradition and its values. So, it is not about being either anti-traditional or completely traditional, but about a quality which could be termed un-traditional. Varkøy says it like this:It is true to say... that the concept of Bildung’s cultural heritage perspective does not nescessarily mean a one-sided backwards glance focusing upon old masterworks... but also that it can to a considerable extent open up for focusing on the new and unknown.”So the Bildung concept contains simultaneously a directedness towards the past and a tradition which is authoritative, coupled with a directedness towards the future: and all that which is new and unknown, the open horizon of existence. It is in the light of this double directedness that Varkøy questions whether “the concept ‘cultural heritage’ should be considered, as something static or as something which is continually moving and developing.”So the past and our cultural heritage and the masterworks our cultural heritage is based upon, do not belong to bygone days. They do not belong to a finished [End Page 98] past. On the contrary, it is all still with us. That is how I read Varkøy. And this reading has a tremenduous resemblence to... (shrink)

This article establishes the existence of a definable , countably saturated nonstandard enlargement of the superstructure over the reals. This nonstandard universe is obtained as the union of an inductive chain of bounded ultrapowers . The underlying ultrafilter is the one constructed by Kanovei and Shelah [10].

The aim of this paper is threefold. Firstly, §1 and §2 introduce the novel concept logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia. If successful, the initial sections will draw attention to an interesting akratic phenomenon which has not received much attention in the literature on akrasia (although it has been discussed by logicians in different terms). Secondly, §3 and §4 present a dilemma related to logical akrasia. From a case involving the consistency of Peano Arithmetic and Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem (...) it’s shown that either we must be agnostic about the consistency of Peano Arithmetic or akratic in our arithmetical theorizing. If successful, these sections will underscore the pertinence and persistence of akrasia in arithmetic (by appeal to Gödel’s seminal work). Thirdly, §5 concludes by suggesting a way of translating the dilemma of arithmetical akrasia into a case of regular epistemic akrasia; and further how one might try to escape the dilemma when it’s framed this way. (shrink)

The paper gives a detailed reconstruction and discussion of Peirce’s doctrine of propositions, so-called Dicisigns, developed in the years around 1900. The special features different from the logical mainstream are highlighted: the functional definition not dependent upon conscious stances nor human language, the semiotic characterization extending propositions and quasi-propositions to cover prelinguistic and prehuman occurrences of signs, the relations of Dicisigns to the conception of facts, of diagrammatical reasoning, of icons and indices, of meanings, of objects, of syntax in Peirce’s (...) logic-as-semiotics. (shrink)

Frederik L. Schodt explores his lifelong fascination with the Heart Sutra: its mesmerizing mantra, its ancient history, the 'emptiness' theory, and the way it is used around the world as a metaphysical tool to overcome chaos and confusion and reach a new understanding of reality--a perfection of wisdom."--Back cover.

Deprivation offers a plausible explanation for the badness of death, so fear is not unreasonable. But horror at the prospect of one's death is not just extreme fear because horror is structurally different than fear. Horror requires a different explanation. For Sartre, horror is possible only in unique circumstances. I argue that Sartre's view, when combined with the subjective incomprehensibility of one's annihilation, can explain horror and other negative emotions that are not contingent on deprivation. Further, I argue that while (...) fear can be reasonable if one's death will deprive, Lucretius's Symmetry Argument shows that horror is unreasonable. (shrink)

In the current world of education, politics and public opinion, musical experience is increasingly threatened. It is designated ever more as an expendable luxury. This kind of general trend has hardly left the thinking in the field of music and music education untouched. Inspiration comes from the technical rationality of our time. This rationality affects an oblivion of ontology. In this article we discuss this trend related to Martin Heidegger’s thinking concerning the human existence in the world, artworks and notions (...) like “being” (Sein) and “oblivion-of-being” (Seinsvergessenheit). We think that it is possible to see this “oblivion-of-being” in relation to the trend in cultural and educational politics as well as in music educational thinking to focus on the instrumental usefulness of learning music. (shrink)

While the epistemic significance of disagreement has been a popular topic in epistemology for at least a decade, little attention has been paid to logical disagreement. This monograph is meant as a remedy. The text starts with an extensive literature review of the epistemology of (peer) disagreement and sets the stage for an epistemological study of logical disagreement. The guiding thread for the rest of the work is then three distinct readings of the ambiguous term ‘logical disagreement’. Chapters 1 and (...) 2 focus on the Ad Hoc Reading according to which logical disagreements occur when two subjects take incompatible doxastic attitudes toward a specific proposition in or about logic. Chapter 2 presents a new counterexample to the widely discussed Uniqueness Thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Theory Choice Reading of ‘logical disagreement’. According to this interpretation, logical disagreements occur at the level of entire logical theories rather than individual entailment-claims. Chapter 4 concerns a key question from the philosophy of logic, viz., how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical consequence. In Chapters 5 and 6 we turn to the Akrasia Reading. On this reading, logical disagreements occur when there is a mismatch between the deductive strength of one’s background logic and the logical theory one prefers (officially). Chapter 6 introduces logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia and presents a novel dilemma. Chapter 7 revisits the epistemology of peer disagreement and argues that the epistemic significance of central principles from the literature are at best deflated in the context of logical disagreement. The chapter also develops a simple formal model of deep disagreement in Default Logic, relating this to our general discussion of logical disagreement. The monograph ends in an epilogue with some reflections on the potential epistemic significance of convergence in logical theorizing. (shrink)

Default logic has been a very active research topic in artificial intelligence since the early 1980s, but has not received as much attention in the philosophical literature thus far. This paper shows one way in which the technical tools of artificial intelligence can be applied in contemporary epistemology by modeling a paradigmatic case of deep disagreement using default logic. In §1 model-building viewed as a kind of philosophical progress is briefly motivated, while §2 introduces the case of deep disagreement we (...) aim to model. On the heels of this, §3 defines our formal framework, viz., a refined Horty-style default logic. §4 then uses the framework to model deep disagreement, and finally §5 provides a critical discussion of the result. (shrink)

We propose simple nonlinear mathematical models for the legal concept of balancing of interests. Our aim is to bridge the gap between an abstract formalisation of a balancing decision while assuring consistency and ultimately legal certainty across cases. We focus on the conflict between the rights to privacy and to the protection of personal data in Art. 7 and Art. 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (EUCh) against the right of access to information derived from Art. 11 EUCh. (...) These competing rights are denoted by ( \(i_1\) ) _right to privacy _ and ( \(i_2\) ) _access to information_; mathematically, their indices are respectively assigned by \(u_1\in [0,1]\) and \(u_2\in [0,1]\) subject to the constraint \(u_1+u_2=1\). This constraint allows us to use one single index _u_ to resolve the conflict through balancing. The outcome will be concluded by comparing the index _u_ with a prior given threshold \(u_0\). For simplicity, we assume that the balancing depends on only selected legal criteria such as the social status of affected person, and the sphere from which the information originated, which are represented as inputs of the models, called legal parameters. Additionally, we take “time” into consideration as a legal criterion, building on the European Court of Justice’s ruling on the right to be forgotten: by considering time as a legal parameter, we model how the outcome of the balancing changes over the passage of time. To catch the dependence of the outcome _u_ by these criteria as legal parameters, data were created by a fully-qualified lawyer. By comparison to other approaches based on machine learning, especially neural networks, this approach requires significantly less data. This might come at the price of higher abstraction and simplification, but also provides for higher transparency and explainability. Two mathematical models for _u_, a time-independent model and a time-dependent model, are proposed, that are fitted by using the data. (shrink)

Lucretius famously argued that if we think death is bad because it deprives us of time we could have had by living longer than we do, then when we are born must be bad too, since we could have been born earlier than we were, and so be deprived of that time as well. John Martin Fischer thinks Lucretius’s symmetry argument fails because we have a bias toward the future. I argue that Fischer’s approach does not answer Lucretius. In contrast (...) to Fischer, I think that we can show an objective difference between the time before our birth and the time after our death, which means that we are justified in adopting different attitudes towards them. I revise a point made by Thomas Nagel that while we might live longer than we do, we cannot exist earlier than we did and remain the same people throughout. (shrink)

Four complete philosophical works have been transmitted by Diogenes Laertius under Epicurus’ name: three doctrinal letters, addressed to Herodotus, to Pythocles and to Menoeceus respectively, and a collection of maxims known as the Κύριαι δόξαι (variously translated as ‘Principal Doctrines’ or ‘Sovran Maxims’). While the Maxims and the Letters to Menoeceus and to Herodotus each enjoy a certain fame, the Letter to Pythocles has long suffered neglect. Symptomatic of this neglect is, for instanc...

Cette introduction présente et contextualise les articles publiés dans la section spéciale dont le but est d’analyser l’interprétation de la pensée hellénistique chez les philosophes continentaux très influents tels que : Agamben, Arendt, Blumenberg, Foucault, Heidegger et Stiegler. Les articles prêtent une attention particulière à trois directions de recherche. Ils examinent tout d’abord l’influence de la pensée hellénistique sur ces auteurs et la façon dont ils ont interprété, utilisé et mésinterprété l’héritage des philosophies hellé-nistiques. Deuxièmement, les articles analysent les hypothèses (...) in-terprétatives et les préjugés qui ont caractérisé ces interprétations. Enfin, ils nous permettent de comprendre plus clairement pourquoi plusieurs philosophes continentaux se sont intéressés à la philosophie ancienne. Les rédacteurs invités résument les conclusions pro-visoires de cette section spéciale en soulignant que les interprétations continentales de la pensée hellénistique représentent un thème particulièrement intéressant dans le cadre de la recherche historico-philosophique actuelle. (shrink)

While it is well known that Plutarch’s De facie in orbe lunae was a major source of inspiration for Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius, its influence on his Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, and especially on his views on gravity, has not been sufficiently explored. This essay offers the first systematic comparison of Plutarch’s and Galileo’s accounts of gravity by focusing on four themes: the thought experiment of a stone falling in a tunnel passing through the center of the (...) Earth; the account of gravity as a tendency to unite with the whole; the view that the Moon is a separate center of attraction; and the impossibility of attraction by an incorporeal point. The essay analyzes the role that these themes play in De facie and in the Dialogo, trying to understand how Galileo appropriated, reworked, and expanded on Plutarch’s views. (shrink)

This paper prepares an investigation into the roles and effectiveness of different types of corporate governance and environmental governance mechanisms in driving improvements in environmental performance. More specifically, the authors provide background theory regarding the way in which different types of traditional corporate governance and new concepts of environmental governance might have an impact on reducing firms’ levels of greenhouse gas emissions intensities. The paper also suggests a method of how this could be empirically tested.

Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that firms are responding differently to the mounting concerns over environmental degradation and climate change. While a few studies at individual firm level do exist, relatively little is known about the longitudinal development of corporate environmental strategy at the population level of firms. Employing KLD data we explore the evolution of environmental strategy among a sample of S&P500 corporations over the period 1997 to 2006. We theoretically ground our study in Burgelman’s (1991) autonomous and induced (...) perspectives of strategy-making. Our findings suggest widespread inertia among firms to adjust to the changing socio-institutional environment. (shrink)