In 2001, France became one of the few countries to require corporate social responsibility reporting through its Nouvelles Régulations Économiques #2001-420. However, initial compliance with the statute was low, a factor implying the law lacked normativity. In this exploratory study, we attempt to determine whether there is movement toward normativity by examining the change in CSR disclosure from 2004 in comparison to 2010 for a sample of 81 publicly traded French firms. We measure both the space and the quality of (...) CSR disclosures, including in the latter a measure based on informational quality attributes as discussed by the International Accounting Standards Board, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and the Global Reporting Initiative. We find significant increases in the space allocated to CSR disclosure, as well as some evidence of increased quality; although the informational quality of the disclosures remains quite low and fewer firms are including negative performance information in their reports. Finally, we document that differences in disclosure space and quality in 2004 appeared to be associated with legitimacy-based variables and that those relations remain largely unchanged in 2010. As such, it appears that the NRE’s goals of increased transparency remain unmet. (shrink)

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a pervasive difficulty affecting number processing and arithmetic. It is encountered in around 6% of school-aged children. While previous studies have mainly focused on general cognitive functions, the present paper aims to further investigate the hypothesis of a specific numerical deficit in dyscalculia. The performance of 10- and 11-year-old children with DD characterised by a weakness in arithmetic facts retrieval and age-matched control children was compared on various number comparison tasks. Participants were asked to compare a (...) quantity presented in either a symbolic (Arabic numerals, number words, canonical dots patterns) or a nonsymbolic format (noncanonical dots patterns, and random sticks patterns) to the reference quantity 5. DD children showed a greater numerical distance effect than control children, irrespective of the number format. This favours a deficit in the specialised cognitive system underlying the processing of number magnitude in children with DD. Results are discussed in terms of access and representation deficit hypotheses. (shrink)

There is a debate over whether actions that resist devaluation are primarily habit- or goal-directed. The incentive habit account of compulsive actions has received support from behavioral paradigms and brain imaging. In addition, the self-reported Creature of Habit Scale has been proposed to capture inter-individual differences in habitual tendencies. It is subdivided into two dimensions: routine and automaticity. We first considered a French version of this questionnaire for validation, based on a sample of 386 undergraduates. The relationship between two dimensions (...) of habit and the risk of substance use disorder and impulsive personality traits was also investigated. COHS has good psychometric properties with both features of habits positively associated with an Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory score. Besides, the propensity to rely more on routines was associated with lower levels of alcohol abuse and nicotine use, suggesting that some degree of routine might act as a protective factor against substance use. In contrast, a high automaticity score was associated with an increased risk of harmful alcohol use. These results demonstrate that the COHS is a valid measure of habitual tendencies and represents a useful tool for capturing inter-individual variations in drug use problems in undergraduates. (shrink)

Grelling's Paradox is the paradox which results from considering whether heterologicality, the word-property which a designator has when and only when the designator does not bear the word-property it designates, is had by 'heterologicality'. Although there has been some philosophical debate over its solution, Grelling's Paradox is nearly uniformly treated as a variant of either the Liar Paradox or Russell's Paradox, a paradox which does not present any philosophical challenges not already presented by the two better known paradoxes. The aims (...) of this paper are, first, to offer a precise formulation of Grelling's Paradox which is clearly distinguished from both the Liar Paradox and Russell's Paradox; second, to offer a solution to Grelling's Paradox which both resolves the paradoxical reasoning and accounts for unproblematic predications of heterologicality; and, third, to argue that there are two lessons to be drawn from Grelling's Paradox which have not yet been drawn from the Liar or Russell's Paradox. The first lesson is that it is possible for the semantic content of a predicate to be sensitive to the semantic context; i.e., it is possible for a predicate to be an indexical expression. The second lesson is that the semantic content of an indexical predicate, though unproblematic for many cases, can nevertheless be problematic in some cases. In Section 1, Grelling's Paradox is presented informally. After making some refinements, Grelling's Paradox is then presented formally. In Section 2, the formal version of Grelling's Paradox is evaluated, and several previously proposed solutions are discussed and argued to be inadequate. In Section 3, it is argued that the heterologicality predicate is an indexical expression. A semantics for the heterologicality predicate is given, and it is shown how this semantics accounts for the unproblematic predications of heterologicality, as well as the problematic cases, and therefore constitutes a satisfactory and complete solution to Grelling's Paradox. Objections to this solution are addressed in Section 4. The conclusions of this paper are summarized in Section 5. (shrink)

WHO II low grade glioma evolves inevitably to anaplastic transformation. Magnetic resonance imaging is a good non-invasive way to watch it, by hemodynamic and metabolic modifications, thanks to multinuclear spectroscopy 1H/31P. In this work we study a multi-scale minimal model of hemodynamics and metabolism applied to the study of gliomas. This mathematical analysis leads us to a fast-slow system. The control of the position of the stationary point brings to the concept of domain of viability. Starting from this system, the (...) equations bring to light the parameters that push glioma cells out of their domain of viability. Four fundamental factors are highlighted. The first two are cerebral blood flow and the rate of lactate transport through monocarboxylate transporters, which must be reduced in order to push glioma out of its domain of viability. Another factor is the intra arterial lactate, which must be increased. The last factor is pH, indeed a decrease of intra cellular pH could interfere with glioma growth. These reflections suggest that these four parameters could lead to new therapeutic strategies for the management of low grade gliomas. (shrink)

mind and certain collocations of living matter. Conscious mind is essentially a specialization, a distillation of that directive activity, inherent in certain mechanical activities, that distinguishes living from lifeless matter. The characteristics of mind ...

A collection of essays by Frederick J.E. Woodbridge that show the changes and developments in an essentially constant philosophy, and presents a unified view of the author's constructive ideas and metaphysical position.

Noel Malcolm, one of the world's leading experts on Thomas Hobbes, presents a set of extended essays on a wide variety of aspects of the life and work of this giant of early modern thought. Malcolm offers a succinct introduction to Hobbes's life and thought, as a foundation for his discussion of such topics as his political philosophy, his theory of international relations, the development of his mechanistic world-view, and his subversive Biblical criticism. Several of the essays pay special (...) attention to the European dimensions of Hobbes's life, his sources and his influence; the longest surveys the entire European reception of his work from the 1640s to the 1750s. All the essays are based on a deep knowledge of primary sources, and many present striking new discoveries about Hobbes's life, his manuscripts, and the printing history of his works. Aspects of Hobbes will be essential reading not only for Hobbes specialists, but also for all those interested in seventeenth-century intellectual history more generally, both British and European. (shrink)

Standard approaches to ontological simplicity focus either on the number of things or types a theory posits or on the number of fundamental things or types a theory posits. In this paper, I suggest a ground-theoretic approach that focuses on the number of something else. After getting clear on what this approach amounts to, I motivate it, defend it, and complete it.

Prescriptive rules guide human behavior across various domains of community life, including law, morality, and etiquette. What, specifically, are rules in the eyes of their subjects, i.e., those who are expected to abide by them? Over the last sixty years, theorists in the philosophy of law have offered a useful framework with which to consider this question. Some, following H. L. A. Hart, argue that a rule’s text at least sometimes suffices to determine whether the rule itself covers a case. (...) Others, in the spirit of Lon Fuller, believe that there is no way to understand a rule without invoking its purpose — the benevolent ends which it is meant to advance. In this paper we ask whether people associate rules with their textual formulation or their underlying purpose. We find that both text and purpose guide people’s reasoning about the scope of a rule. Overall, a rule’s text more strongly contributed to rule infraction decisions than did its purpose. The balance of these considerations, however, varied across experimental conditions: In conditions favoring a spontaneous judgment, rule interpretation was affected by moral purposes, whereas analytic conditions resulted in a greater adherence to textual interpretations. In sum, our findings suggest that the philosophical debate between textualism and purposivism partly reflects two broader approaches to normative reasoning that vary within and across individuals. Keywords: , the concept of law, rules, legal psychology, Hart, Fuller. (shrink)

Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in (...) having their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified? (shrink)

Essays and accompanying bibliographies survey recent (to 1990) studies of Boethius' 6th-century Latin work as it was translated into Old English (primarily King Alfred), medieval German, medieval French, and Middle English (primarily Chaucer). Each of the four chapters is an independent treatment, b.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1915 Edition.

Jill North argues that Hamiltonian mechanics provides the most spare -- and hence most accurate -- account of the structure of a classical world. We point out some difficulties for her argument, and raise some general points about attempts to minimize structural commitments.

A major obstacle facing interpreters of quantum field theory is a proliferation of different theoretical frameworks. This article surveys three of the main available options—Lagrangian, Wightman, and algebraic QFT—and examines how they are related. Although each framework emphasizes different aspects of QFT, leading to distinct strengths and weaknesses, there is less tension between them than commonly assumed. Given the limitations of our current knowledge and the need for creative new ideas, I urge philosophers to explore puzzles, tools, and techniques from (...) all three approaches. (shrink)

Dr Noel Semple, Professor Russell Pearce and Professor Renee Knake combine to compare legal profession regulation in the US with that of the countries closest to it institutionally and culturally: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland. This enables them to develop an illuminating taxonomy of legal professional regulation, and to describe the assumptions and objectives underlying the different approaches to regulation. The US and Canada provide a 'professionalist-independent framework' that centres on 'a unified, hegemonic occupation of (...) lawyer' which promotes self-regulation, and the exclusion of non-lawyers from partnership and investment in law practices. By contrast, in other countries that they examine, 'consumerist-competitive approaches' predominate, opening up the profession to co-regulation with executive government and allowing for different forms of legal occupations and non-lawyer influence and investment in law practices. Of course, as they show, in some countries there are combinations and hybrids of these two approaches. Unlike Rhode, who endorses England and Wales' consumerist-competitive approach to regulation in the Legal Services Act 2007, Semple, Pearce and Knake consciously avoid stating a preference for one approach over the other. (shrink)

In this book, Bradley Armour-Garb and James A. Woodbridge distinguish various species of fictionalism, locating and defending their own version of philosophical fictionalism. Addressing semantic and philosophical puzzles that arise from ordinary language, they consider such issues as the problem of non-being, plural identity claims, mental-attitude ascriptions, meaning attributions, and truth-talk. They consider 'deflationism about truth', explaining why deflationists should be fictionalists, and show how their philosophical fictionalist account of truth-talk underwrites a dissolution of the Liar Paradox and its (...) kin. They further explore the semantic notions of reference and predicate-satisfaction, showing how philosophical fictionalism can also resolve puzzles that these notions appear to present. Their critical examination of fictionalist approaches in philosophy, together with the development and application of their own brand of philosophical fictionalism, will be of great interest to scholars and upper-level students of philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophical logic, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and linguistics. (shrink)

Which individuals should count in a welfare-consequentialist analysis of public policy? Some answers to this question are parochial, and others are more inclusive. The most inclusive possible answer is ‘everybody to count for one.’ In other words, all individuals who are capable of having welfare – including foreigners, the unborn, and non-human animals – should be weighed equally. This article argues that ‘who should count’ is a question that requires a two-level answer. On the first level, a specification of welfare-consequentialism (...) serves as an ethical ideal, a claim about the attributes that the ideal policy would have. ‘Everybody to count for one’ might succeed on this level. However, on the second level is the welfare-consequentialist analysis procedure used by human analysts to give advice on real policy questions. For epistemic reasons, the analysis procedure should be more parochial than ‘everybody to count for one.’. (shrink)

Stephen Read has presented an argument for the inconsistency of the concept of validity. We extend Read’s results and show that this inconsistency is but one half of a larger problem. Like the concept of truth, validity is infected with what we call semantic pathology, a condition that actually gives rise to two symptoms: inconsistency and indeterminacy. After sketching the basic ideas behind semantic pathology and explaining how it manifests both symptoms in the concept of truth, we present cases that (...) establish the indeterminacy of validity and that link this indeterminacy with the concept’s inconsistency. Our conclusion is that an adequate treatment of the semantic pathology thus revealed must deal with both of its symptoms. Further, it must extend to the occurrences of this condition elsewhere: in the concept of truth, in the other central semantic notions, and even in certain philosophical concepts outside semantics. (shrink)

Truth-talk exhibits certain features that render it philosophically suspect and motivate a deflationary account. I offer a new formulation of deflationism that explains truth-talk in terms of semantic pretense. This amounts to a fictionalist account of truth-talk but avoids an error-theoretic interpretation and its resulting incoherence. The pretense analysis fits especially well with deflationism’s central commitment, and it handles truth-talk’s unusual features effectively. In particular, this approach suggests an interesting strategy for dealing with the Liar paradox. This version of deflationism (...) has advantages over the formulations currently available in the literature, mainly because it offers a more satisfying account of the generalizing role deflationary views take as truth-talk’s central function. Explaining the notion of truth in terms of pretense generates some special concerns, but none we cannot address through careful consideration of how pretense operates in truth-talk and of the attitudes instances of pretending involve. (shrink)

Abstract:This article examines two approaches to aesthetic experience, especially with respect to the practice of art criticism. The two approaches are (1) aesthetic experience construed as experience necessarily valued for its own sake and (2) aesthetic experience characterized in terms of its content. In this article, the content approach is defended as the one most suitable to the practice of art criticism.

Childcare robots are being manufactured and developed with the long term aim of creating surrogate carers. While total childcare is not yet being promoted, there are indications that it is ‘on the cards’. We examine recent research and developments in childcare robots and speculate on progress over the coming years by extrapolating from other ongoing robotics work. Our main aim is to raise ethical questions about the part or full-time replacement of primary carers. The questions are about human rights, privacy, (...) robot use of restraint, deception of children and accountability. But the most pressing ethical issues throughout the paper concern the consequences for the psychological and emotional wellbeing of children. We set these in the context of the child development literature on the pathology and causes of attachment disorders. We then consider the adequacy of current legislation and international ethical guidelines on the protection of children from the overuse of robot care. (shrink)

Connolly, Noel Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium defines the church as a 'community of missionary disciples'. We have to be missionary to be called disciples. He dreams of 'a missionary option' that will transform everything. For Francis, mission is clearly essential to the church. He is continuing a movement that began with Ad Gentes, the missionary document of Vatican II. The fathers at the council insisted, 'The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature. For it is from the (...) mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father'. This was reiterated by Paul VI in Evangelii Nuntiandi: 'Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize'; and by John Paul II in Redemptoris Missio: 'the Church is missionary by her very nature'. (shrink)