This is a contribution to the discussion on the role of truth degrees in manyvalued logics from the perspective of abstract algebraic logic. It starts with some thoughts on the so-called Suszko’s Thesis (that every logic is two-valued) and on the conception of semantics that underlies it, which includes the truth-preserving notion of consequence. The alternative usage of truth values in order to define logics that preserve degrees of truth is presented and discussed. Some recent works studying these in the (...) particular cases of Łukasiewicz’s many-valued logics and of logics associated with varieties of residuated lattices are also presented. Finally the extension of this paradigm to other, more general situations is discussed, highlighting the need for philosophical or applied motivations in the selection of the truth degrees, due both to the interpretation of the idea of truth degree and to some mathematical difficulties. (shrink)

A filter of a sentential logic ? is Leibniz when it is the smallest one among all the ?-filters on the same algebra having the same Leibniz congruence. This paper studies these filters and the sentential logic ?+ defined by the class of all ?-matrices whose filter is Leibniz, which is called the strong version of ?, in the context of protoalgebraic logics with theorems. Topics studied include an enhanced Correspondence Theorem, characterizations of the weak algebraizability of ?+ and of (...) the explicit definability of Leibniz filters, and several theorems of transfer of metalogical properties from ? to ?+. For finitely equivalential logics stronger results are obtained. Besides the general theory, the paper examines the examples of modal logics, quantum logics and Łukasiewicz's finitely-valued logics. One finds that in some cases the existence of a weak and a strong version of a logic corresponds to well-known situations in the literature, such as the local and the global consequences for normal modal logics; while in others these constructions give an independent interest to the study of other lesser-known logics, such as the lattice-based many-valued logics. (shrink)

This paper reviews the development of socially responsible investment (SRI) in the Spanish financial market. The year, 1997 saw the appearance in Spain of the first SRI mutual fund, but it was not until late 1999, that major Spanish fund managers offered SRI mutual funds on the retail market. The development of SRI in the Spanish financial market has not experienced the high levels of development seen in other European countries, such as France or Italy, where interest in SRI began (...) during the same period. This paper presents an analysis of the impact of SRI mutual funds managed by Spanish fund managers comparing the evolution of managed assets and number of investors. We also analyse the investment strategies adopted by these funds, which mainly use negative screening criteria and the participation of non-governmental organisations as institutional investors. An analysis of the take up of socially responsible investment in the Spanish financial market shows majors deficits in this process. This is due to Spanish investors having limited sensitivity to social issues and knowledge of SRI, and a lack of development of SRI investment strategies, such as engagement or shareholder activism by fund managers. Furthermore, the take-up of SRI mutual funds in the Spanish financial market coincided with a fall in the stock market at the beginning of the 21st Century. We conclude with an analysis of the relationship between SRI and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). (shrink)

This paper reviews the impact of Rasiowa's well-known book on the evolution of algebraic logic during the last thirty or forty years. It starts with some comments on the importance and influence of this book, highlighting some of the reasons for this influence, and some of its key points, mathematically speaking, concerning the general theory of algebraic logic, a theory nowadays called Abstract Algebraic Logic. Then, a consideration of the diverse ways in which these key points can be generalized allows (...) us to survey some issues in the development of the field in the last twenty to thirty years. The last part of the paper reviews some recent lines of research that in some way transcend Rasiowa's approach. I hope in this way to give the reader a general view of Rasiowa's key position in the evolution of Algebraic Logic during the twentieth century. (shrink)

In practice, the relationship between business and ethics is not well-settled. In the past, organisations have developed an interest in setting value charts but this has been approached from a purely managerial perspective following the momentum and interest aroused by research on organisational cultures. Although interest in managing organisational cultures has slowly died down, for both theoretical and practical reasons we argue that there are feasible ways to explore values as part of an organisational culture. Indeed it is our claim (...) that it is feasible and productive to discuss values within organisations. However, rather than developing sophisticated theoretical frameworks, more efforts should be put into thinking about the conditions under which participants can enter into productive dialogue. It is our claim that if processes are carefully examined people within organisations can make better sense of their work and discover their own perspective to account for what they actually do and to project themselves into what they think they should be doing. Thus, values identified within the organisation can eventually reach a point where they become an expression of a shared commitment. The experience we describe aims to illustrate only one example of a concrete application of this approach. (shrink)

ukasiewicz''s four-valued modal logic is surveyed and analyzed, together with ukasiewicz''s motivations to develop it. A faithful interpretation of it in classical (non-modal) two-valued logic is presented, and some consequences are drawn concerning its classification and its algebraic behaviour. Some counter-intuitive aspects of this logic are discussed in the light of the presented results, ukasiewicz''s own texts, and related literature.

Anàlisi crítica sobre les bases doctrinals de l'ecologisme. Idees i reflexions que trenquen els tòpics més divulgats.

The inference systems proposed for solving SAT are unsound for solving MaxSAT and MinSAT, because they preserve satisfiability but not the minimum and maximum number of clauses that can be falsified, respectively. To address this problem, we first define a clause tableau calculus for MaxSAT and prove its soundness and completeness. We then define a clause tableau calculus for MinSAT and also prove its soundness and completeness. Finally, we define a complete clause tableau calculus for solving both MaxSAT and MinSAT, (...) in that the minimum number of generated empty clauses provides an optimal MaxSAT solution and the maximum number provides an optimal MinSAT solution. (shrink)

This article analyzes efforts in Nicaragua to create ethical organizations and an ethical economy. Three societal ethea found in contemporary Nicaragua are examined: the ethos of revolution, the ethos of corruption, and the ethos of human development. The emerging ethos of human development provides the most hope for the nation's social and economic evolution. The practices of three successful economic development organizations explicitly aligned with the ethos of human development are described and evaluated: (1) a microfinance foundation (FDL), (2) a (...) federation of cooperatives (FENACOOP), and (3) a local branch of an international NGO (IO-Nicaragua). The article concludes with additional reflections on the meaning of ethical organizations and an ethical economy in the context of contemporary Nicaragua. (shrink)

Engineering ethics is usually focused on engineers’ ethics, engineers acting as individuals. Certainly, these professionals play a central role in the matter, but engineers are not a singularity inside engineering ; they exist and operate as a part of a complex network of mutual relationships between many other people, organizations and groups. When engineering ethics and engineers’ ethics are taken as one and the same thing the paradigm of the ethical engineer which prevails is that of the heroic engineer, a (...) certain model of the ideal engineer: someone both quite individualistic and strong enough to deal with all the moral challenges that could arise. We argue that this is not the best approach, at least today in our interrelated world. We have achieved a high degree of independence from nature by means of technology. In exchange for this autonomy we have become increasingly tied up with very complex systems to which we constantly delegate new tasks and powers. Concerns about safety keep growing everywhere due to the fact that now we have a sensitive awareness of the huge amount of power we are both consuming and deploying, thus, new forms of dialogue and consensus have to be incorporated at different levels, in different forums and at different times. Within these democratic channels of participation not just the needs and interests, but also the responsibilities and mutual commitments of all parties should be taken into account. (shrink)

This essay begins with a look at the contribution made by Business Ethics and by Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to Business Education, and how the first two have moved to the last over time. Yet their contributions also reveal limitations that need to be taken into account in the debate on the training provided by Business Schools. This debate cannot be confined to speaking of disciplines and their cross-cutting natures but rather needs to focus directly on the kind of personal (...) profile fostered among business students. In the context of this debate on the future of Business Schools, the essay stresses the relevance of Peter-Hans Kolvenbach’s framework. He proposed an educational ideal based upon educating competent, conscious, compassionate, and committed people. This ideal took shape in the form of an educational paradigm integrating four dimensions: professional (_utilitas_), ethical-social (_iustitia_), humanist (_humanitas_) and spiritual (_fides_). The essay not only shows how each of these dimensions is in tune with some of the present proposals for renewing Business Education but also how Kolvenbach's more holistic approach can help to further integrate and spotlight the blind spots of each of them. (shrink)

Sobre el tiempo y la música -- Las óperas de Josep Soler -- Kom-Ombo -- El misterio de San Francisco.

In this paper two deductive systems associated with relevance logic are studied from an algebraic point of view. One is defined by the familiar, Hilbert-style, formalization of R; the other one is a weak version of it, called WR, which appears as the semantic entailment of the Meyer-Routley-Fine semantics, and which has already been suggested by Wójcicki for other reasons. This weaker consequence is first defined indirectly, using R, but we prove that the first one turns out to be an (...) axiomatic extension of WR. Moreover we provide WR with a natural Gentzen calculus. It is proved that both deductive systems have the same associated class of algebras but different classes of models on these algebras. The notion of model used here is an abstract logic, that is, a closure operator on an abstract algebra; the abstract logics obtained in the case of WR are also the models, in a natural sense, of the given Gentzen calculus. (shrink)

The “representation problem” in abstract algebraic logic is that of finding necessary and sufficient conditions for a structure, on a well defined abstract framework, to have the following property: that for every structural closure operator on it, every structural embedding of the expanded lattice of its closed sets into that of the closed sets of another structural closure operator on another similar structure is induced by a structural transformer between the base structures. This question arose from Blok and Jónsson abstract (...) analysis of one of Blok and Pigozzis’s characterizations of algebraizable logics. The problem, which was later on reformulated independently by Gil-Férez and by Galatos and Tsinakis, was solved by Galatos and Tsinakis in the more abstract framework of the category of modules over a complete residuated lattice, and by Galatos and Gil-Férez in the even more abstract setting of modules over a quantaloid. We solve the representation problem in Blok and Jónsson’s original context of M-sets, where M is a monoid, and characterise the corresponding M-sets both in categorical terms and in terms of their inner structure, using the notions of a graded M-set and a generalized variable introduced by Gil-Férez. (shrink)

This paper examines the debate about the referential meaning of Kant’s concept of substance. In the Critique of Pure Reason and other works such as the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, the category or concept of substance appears quite uncontroversially to have both a logical meaning (by which it means roughly ‘a thing that is the ultimate subject of predication’) and an objective meaning (by which it means roughly ‘a thing that is permanent’, or, equivalently, ‘a thing existing at all (...) times’). However, it is highly contested what kind of object, or objects, are supposed to meet, in experience, the criteria imposed by the conjunction of these two distinct meanings. I discuss two examples of the main interpretations to be found in the literature: Peter Strawson (2000), who contends that the reference of substance is only matter, and Claudia Jáuregui (2021), who also includes ordinary particular objects as substances. I scrutinize their fit with some of the textual evidence, primarily from the First Analogy of Experience, and finally reject Jáuregui’s interpretation as implying a kind of mereological essentialism about particular objects. Keywords: substance, meaning, matter, ordinary objects, First Analogy of Experience. (shrink)

The centenary of the birth of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) provided an opportunity for recovering some of the great Wittgensteinian subjects, for re-examining them and for discussing their implications and relevance. This volume is the result of the interchange that took place in Girona (Spain) among well-known scholars of Wittgenstein's work in different countries. The eleven contributions are organized into three main subjects: on Wittgenstein's method (B. McGuinness, E. Tugendhat and J.M. Terricabras), on knowledge and meaning (G.E.M. Anscombe, R. Bambrough, N. (...) Malcolm, and P.T. Geach), on language and use (D. Pears, E.v. Savigny, J. Bouveresse and J. Ferrater Mora). This volume is not only the result of the different and mature reflexions of its authors, but in two cases (Malcolm and Ferrater Mora) it has also unfortunately become their last contribution to the subject. (shrink)

The last years of the 20th Century have been somewhat contradictory with respect to values like loyalty, trust or truthfulness. On the one hand, (often implicitly, but sometimes very explicitly), self-interest narrowly defined seems to be the dominant force in the business world, both in theory and in practice. On the other hand, alliances, networks and other forms of cooperation have shown that self-interest has to be at least "enlightened".The academic literature has reflected both points of view, but frequently in (...) an ambiguous way, since the concepts of loyalty and trust are somewhat elusive and equivocal. This paper attempts to analyze the concept of loyalty in depth, examining the different conceptions about the word that can be found in the literature. We begin by going to the management classics (specifically, Follett, Barnard and Simon), and we then turn to the anthropological approach of Pérez López (1993), with its built-in ethical analysis, and show how trust and loyalty are crucial to the development of organizations. We end by suggesting in what ways loyalty and trust can be created and fostered in organizations. (shrink)

Dirac's approach to gauge symmetries is discussed. We follow closely the steps that led him from his conjecture concerning the generators of gauge transformations {\it at a given time} ---to be contrasted with the common view of gauge transformations as maps from solutions of the equations of motion into other solutions--- to his decision to artificially modify the dynamics, substituting the extended Hamiltonian for the total Hamiltonian. We show in detail that Dirac's analysis was incomplete and, in completing it, we (...) prove that the fulfilment of Dirac's conjecture ---in the ``non-pathological" cases--- does not imply any need to modify the dynamics. We give a couple of simple but significant examples. (shrink)

A definition and some inaccurate cross-references in the paper A Survey of Abstract Algebraic Logic, which might confuse some readers, are clarified and corrected; a short discussion of the main one is included. We also update a dozen of bibliographic references.

Chimpanzees follow the gaze of conspecifics and humans — follow it past distractors and behind barriers, ‘check back’ with humans when gaze following does not yield interesting sights, use gestures appropriately depending on the visual access of their recipient, and select different pieces of food depending on whether their competitor has visual access to them. Taken together, these findings make a strong case for the hypothesis that chimpanzees have some understanding of what other individuals can and cannot see. However, chimpanzees (...) do not seem nearly so skillful in the Gesture Choice and Object Choice experimental paradigms. Neither behavioral conditioning nor theory of mind explanations can account for these results satisfactorily. Instead this chapter proposes the idea that chimpanzees have the cognitive skills to recall, represent, categorize, and reason about the behavior and perception of others, but not their intentional or mental states, because they do not know that others have such states since they cannot make a link to their own. Human beings began their own evolutionary trajectory with these same skills, but then at some point in their evolution (probably quite recently) they began to understand that their own experience could serve as some kind of model for that of other persons. This allowed for even better prediction and control of the behavior of others and better communication and cooperation with them as well, and so it was an adaptation with immediate adaptive consequences that ensured its survival. (shrink)

This paper reflects on the possible relationship between organizational cultures and ethics. It begins by pointing out that viewing companies as cultures legitimates the creation of values and shared meanings as part of business practice. But it also points out that there is a risk involved: management by values can be a new form of manipulation and control. The author suggests that this danger can be averted and proposes that creation of corporate cultures be examined in the light of Aristotelian (...) thought. However, he stress that this return to Aristotelian tradition cannot ignore corporate social responsibility or the need to imbue corporate cultures with a post-conventional perspective. (shrink)

In recent writings Paul Horwich has pursued two related aims: (i) To show “how small a constraint is provided by compositionality” (Horwich 1998, chapter 7, p. 183). “The compositionality of meaning imposes no constraint at all on how the meaning properties of words are constituted” (p. 154). (ii) To present a deflationary alternative to the “Davidsonian truth-theoretic perspective” (Horwich 2001) The paper has three sections: in section 1 I make some comments on compositionality, in section 2 I argue that Horwich (...) does not succeed in achieving aim (i), and in section 3 I argue that he does not succeed either in achieving aim (ii). (shrink)

We can distinguish different senses in which a formal language can be said to have been provided with an interpretation. We focus on two: (i) We provide a model (or structure) and a definition of satisfaction and truth in the standard way (ii) We provide a translation into a natural language. We argue that the sentences of a formal language interpreted as in (i) do not have meaning. A formal language interpreted as in (i) models the way the truth of (...) a sentence would be affected by two factors: the interpretation as in (ii) of the language, and a way the world might be. Viewing in this way the relation between interpreting a formal language as in (i) and as in (ii) allows us to justify the conceptual adequacy of the standard model-theoretic definitions of the properties of logical truth and logical consequence. (shrink)