(2001). J.E. Malpas's Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography (Cambridge University Press, 1999) Converging and diverging in/on place. Philosophy & Geography: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 225-230.

The term “stakeholder capitalism” has become part of our shared business lexicon. This is due in large part to the work of R. Edward Freeman and his collaborators who conceive of stakeholder theory not simply as an approach to ethics in business but also of a new narrative for the ethics of capitalism. We argue that stakeholder thought as it is developed in this literature remains deficient as an ethics of capitalism because it fails to fully appreciate the distinction (...) between business firms as one institution of capitalism and capitalism as an interrelated network of institutions. Failing to appreciate this distinction thwarts any facile movement between the theory's account of the ethics of business, which is concerned with the aims that guide business management, and the ethics of capitalism, which is concerned with how various institutions should be designed as a system with an internal division of moral labor. This difference suggests a prospective way forward for stakeholder theory that focuses more attention on the responsibilities that business firms owe to support the legal and economic institutions of capitalism. (shrink)

Recently there has been a strong movement towards reflections about the “geography of reason,” especially among philosophers who deal with postcolonial thinking. There is also a renewed interest among different schools of thought, both analytical and continental, in the ways our “life world,” or “embodiment,” or “situated cognition,” shape our minds and eventually the philosophy we do. As a result, we have seen some recent publications on the nature and import of the concept of “place” by authors such as (...) class='Hi'>Edward Casey, Jeff Malpas, and Bruce Janz. In Philosophy in an African place, Bruce Janz introduces the concept of “philosophy-in-place” with the question as to what it is to do philosophy in a particular context of lived experience or, more specifically, what it is to do philosophy in an African place. This paper expands on Janz's “philosophy-in-place” by developing what will be called a “philosophy through place.” It starts with Janz's discussion of the problem of placing philosophy and a philosophy-in-place. Then it attempts to develop an argument for a “philosophy through place” and its implications for considering the place of philosophy in Africa and the challenge it poses to philosophy. (shrink)

Described by Jeffrey Masson as 'the single best introduction to animal rights ever written,' this new book by Tom Regan dispels the negative image of animal rights advocates perpetrated by the mass media, unmasks the fraudulent rhetoric of 'humane treatment' favored by animal exploiters, and explains why existing laws function to legitimize institutional cruelty.

In the course of his long development, Kant's concept of matter changed somewhat, while his concept of scientific explanation changed considerably. Both developments achieved a coherent integration in Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Using this developmental background, the present paper argues that the Foundations should be interpreted as an attempted rational reconstruction of the mechanics of Newton and Euler. Kant attempted to do this by constructing a concept of matter that would confer a Leibnizian intelligibility on Newtonian mechanics, and (...) also accord with Kant's theories on the nature of concepts and their role in scientific explanation. (shrink)

The modal object calculus is the system of logic which houses the (proper) axiomatic theory of abstract objects. The calculus has some rather interesting features in and of itself, independent of the proper theory. The most sophisticated, type-theoretic incarnation of the calculus can be used to analyze the intensional contexts of natural language and so constitutes an intensional logic. However, the simpler second-order version of the calculus couches a theory of fine-grained properties, relations and propositions and serves as a framework (...) for defining situations, possible worlds, stories, and fictional characters, among other things. In the present paper, we focus on the second-order calculus. The second-order modal object calculus is so-called to distinguish it from the second-order modal predicate calculus. Though the differences are slight, the extra expressive power of the object calculus significantly enhances its ability to resolve logical and philosophical concepts and problems. (shrink)

At one point Fish says that a profession produces no “real” commodity but offers only a service. But surely the increasing reification of services and even of knowledge has made them a commodity as well. And indeed the logical extension of Fish’s position on professionalism is not that it is something done or lived but something produced and reproduced, albeit with redistributed and redeployed values. What those are, Fish doesn’t say. Then again he makes the rather telling remarks that he (...) is “turning everything into professionalism” —an instance of overstating and overinsisting at a moment when what he is really arguing for can neither be formulated nor defended clearly. To turn “everything” into professionalism is to strip professionalism of any meaning at all. For until one can define professionalism—and the particular values associated with it—there is very little value in going on about the incoherencies of antiprofessionalism. Fish resorts to the reductionist attitude of telling us that professionalism is what is, and whatever is, is more or less therefore right, which by only the slightest extension of its logic is a view no less applicable to antiprofessionalism.On the other hand, Fish does say that the profession has changed, that new ways of doing things have emerged, that values are contested within and without the profession. Those kinds of observations, however, have to be pursued, made me more concrete, put in specific historical contexts, one of which is the fact that professions are not natural objects but concrete, political, economic, and social formations playing very defined, although sometimes barely visible, roles. Unfortunately, Fish commits the lobbyist-s error by obscuring and being blind to the sociopolitical actualities of what he lobbies for even as he defends its existence. Thus when Fish alleges that the reason most literary professionals “exist in a shamefaced relationship with the machinery that enables their labors” is because of their damaging antiprofessionalism , he is making an observation whose form is assertive but whose sense is tautological since he neither defines the professional and professionalism nor specifies “machinery” and “labors” with any precision at all. For if you take the extraordinary step of reducing everything to professionalism and institutionalism as Fish does, then the very possibility of talking about the profession with any intelligibility is negated. Few would dispute Fish’s important point, that all interpretive and social situations are in fact already grounded in a context, in institutions, communities, and so forth. But there is a very great difference between making that claim and going on to say that so far as the literary profession is concerned, “the profession” is the context to which “everything” can be related. Edward W. Said’s most recent work is The World, the Text, and the Critic. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Problem of Textuality: Two Exemplary Positions” and “Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community”. (shrink)

Implicit in the scottish tradition is a metaphilosophy of commonsense which deserves as much attention as that recently given to scottish presentative realism and agent causality. The author articulates this metaphilosophy by (a) sketching a systematic metaphilosophy of commonsense, (b) considering to what extent thomas reid fits this pattern, And (c) deciding to what extent asa mahan, One of the ablest of the american realists, Fits it. The result is a characterization of a coherent scottish metaphilosophy still worthy of consideration. (...) He also explores the question whether the metaphilosophy that emerges from (b) and (c) is part of an ongoing tradition. It has been suggested that there are important similarities between the scottish view and g e moore's concept of analysis. While he agrees that there are analogies he stresses the disanalogies as more enlightening about the nature of both. (shrink)

Aesop's Fables With the possible exception of the New Testament, no works written in Greek are more widespread and better known than Aesop’s Fables. For at least 2500 years they have been teaching people of all ages and every social status lessons how to choose correct actions and the likely consequences of choosing incorrect actions. … Continue reading Aesop's Fables →.

Many neuroimaging studies of semantic memory have argued that knowledge of an object's perceptual properties are represented in a modality-specific manner. These studies often base their argument on finding activation in the left-hemisphere fusiform gyrus-a region assumed to be involved in perceptual processing-when the participant is verifying verbal statements about objects and properties. In this paper, we report an extension of one of these influential papers-Kan, Barsalou, Solomon, Minor, and Thompson-Schill (2003 )-and present evidence for an amodal component in the (...) representation and processing of perceptual knowledge. Participants were required to verify object-property statements (e.g., "cat-whiskers?"; "bear-wings?") while they were being scanned by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We replicated Kan et al.'s activation in the left fusiform gyrus, but also found activation in regions of left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and middle-temporal gyrus, areas known to reflect amodal processes or representations. Further, only activations in the left IFG, an amodal area, were correlated with measures of behavioural performance. (shrink)

Willard Van Orman Quine's work revolutionized the fields of epistemology, semantics and ontology. At the heart of his philosophy are several interconnected doctrines: his rejection of conventionalism and of the linguistic doctrine of logical and mathematical truth, his rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation and his thesis of the inscrutability of reference. In this book Edward Becker sets out to interpret and explain these doctrines. He offers detailed analyses of the relevant texts, discusses (...) Quine's views on meaning, reference and knowledge, and shows how Quine's views developed over the years. He also proposes a new version of the linguistic doctrine of logical truth, and a new way of rehabilitating analyticity. His rich exploration of Quine's thought will interest all those seeking to understand and evaluate the work of one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The arguments of the dialetheists for the rejection of the traditional law of noncontradiction are not yet conclusive. The reason is that the arguments that they have developed against this law uniformly fail to consider the logic of encoding as an analytic method that can resolve apparent contradictions. In this paper, we use Priest [1995] and [1987] as sample texts to illustrate this claim. In [1995], Priest examines certain crucial problems in the history of philosophy from the point of view (...) of someone without a prejudice in favor of classical logic. For each of these problems, the logic of encoding offers an alternative explanation of the phenomena---this alternative is not considered when Priest describes what options there are in classical logic for analyzing the problem at hand. -/- The argument at heart of the case that Priest develops against the law of noncontradiction (i.e., the argument based on the paradoxes of self-reference) is then reanalyzed in light of encoding logic. After showing why the argument is inconclusive, the paper concludes both with a more general discussion of logic and predication and with the suggestion that there is no need to tamper with the logic of the traditional mode of predication if there is alternative mode of predication which is well-suited to the analysis of cases involving contradictory objects. (shrink)

Alexander Herzen was the most outstanding figure in the early period of the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin claimed him as a forerunner of the Bolsheviks, and Soviet scholars have sought to establish his latent sympathy with Marxism. In the west on the other hand, he has been seen as a precursor of Solzhenitsyn, the personification of protest against all forms of oppression. Dr Acton provides a compelling intellectual biography. The focus is on the years between 1847 and 1863. Herzen's ideas (...) are set in the context of those political developments and dramatic private experiences that affected his outlook. His profound faith in human nature and in the inevitable triumph of socialism was undermined not only by the failure of the revolutions of 1848, but even more deeply by personal catastrophe - the discovery of the infidelity of his beautiful wife Natalie. This dual blow, Dr Acton shows, had a decisive impact upon Herzen's approach to Russian problems. It lay at the root of the ambivalent attitude he adopted towards peasant revolution in the critical period of Emancipation. (shrink)

HAMILTON WORRIED THAT THERE WERE REPRESENTATIVE ELEMENTS\nIN REID'S EPISTEMOLOGY, WHILE J S MILL FLATLY CHARACTERIZED\nTHE SCOT AS A REPRESENTATIVE REALIST. I ARGUE THAT HAMILTON\nAND MILL WERE MISTAKEN AND THAT THEIR MISTAKES AROSE FROM\nAN INSUFFICIENT UNDERSTANDING AND APPRECIATION OF THE\nNATIVISTIC ELEMENTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING INTRODUCED BY\nREID; AND TO INSUFFICIENT AWARENESS OF REID'S\nCHARACTERIZATION OF PERCEPTION AS ACTIVE IN CONTRAST TO\nBRITISH EMPIRICIST RELIANCE ON A PASSIVELY GIVEN EPISTEMIC\nBASE. REID REJECTED EVERY VARIETY OF THE "MESSENGER"\nTHEORY.

Tammy A. Kinsey 'Let us Never Speak of It?: Edward S. Small's _Direct Theory_' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 7 no. 51, December 2003.

This retrospective by celebrated photographer Edward Stokes presents a telling, evocative portrait of Hong Kong's natural beauty. It captures the airy paths and ridgetop walks from which Hong Kong's most dramatic panoramas can be gained.

Aristotele. Science as a systematic explanation through causes.--Newton, I. Rules and reflections on scientific reasoning.--Carnap, R. Empiricism, semantics, and ontology.--Hempel, C. On the logic of explanation.--Nagel, E. The realist view of theories.--Quine, W. V. On the role of logic in explanation.--Harris, E. E. Method and explanation in metaphysics.--Einstein, A. Remarks on Bertrand Russell's theory of knowledge.--Sellars, W. The language of theories.--MacKinnon, E. Atomic physics and reality.--Bunge, M. Physics and reality.--Heelan, P. A. Quantum mechanics and objectivity.--Bibliographical essay (p. 285-301).

After two generations of emphasis on governmental inefficiency and the need for deregulation, we now see growing interest in the possibility of constructive governance, alongside public calls for new, smarter regulation. Yet there is a real danger that regulatory reforms will be rooted in outdated ideas. As the financial crisis has shown, neither traditional market failure models nor public choice theory, by themselves, sufficiently inform or explain our current regulatory challenges. Regulatory studies, long neglected in an atmosphere focused on deregulatory (...) work, is in critical need of new models and theories that can guide effective policy-making. This interdisciplinary volume points the way toward the modernization of regulatory theory. Its essays by leading scholars move past predominant approaches, integrating the latest research about the interplay between human behavior, societal needs and regulatory institutions. The book concludes by setting out a potential research agenda for the social sciences. (shrink)

_A Vindication of some Passages in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ se publicó en febrero de 1779 en respuesta a los ataques que Gibbon había sufrido tras la publicación del primer volumen de su obra, que terminaba con los dos capítulos en cuestión. En sus _Memorias_ da cuenta circunstanciada de la naturaleza de esos ataques y de su irónica decisión de responder únicamente al cargo de no haber sido (...) escrupuloso en el manejo de las fuentes, pasando por alto los cargos de irreligiosidad. Lord Sheffield incluyó la _Vindicación_ en su edición póstuma de los _Miscellaneous Works_ de Gibbon (1796, 1814 2 ). La edición más reciente se encuentra como Apéndice 3 en _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, ed. de David Womersley, Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, Londres, 1994, 3 vols., vol. 3, pp. 1108-1184. Véase _Religious Scepticism. Contemporary Responses to Gibbon_, ed. de D. Womersley, St. Augustine Press, South Bend, 1997. (shrink)

Humankind evolved through three psychological stages - subconscience, conscience and supraconscience. Ritual and myth, cosmology and theism marked phases of psychic integration, initiating our supraconscience evolution. Secular and humanistic developments reveal themselves to be the primary powers accelerating human evolution. Together, they have nurtured humankind's ever-evolving supraconscience.