This paper provides an exploratory comparative assessment of the institutional pressures influencing corporate social responsibility in a developed country, UK, vs. a developing country, Brazil, based on a survey of different actors. Information on sustainability concerns, organizational strategies and mechanisms of pressure was collected through interviews with environmental regulatory agencies, financial institutions, media and non-governmental organizations. Our results confirm that the more advanced awareness and CSR responsiveness in the UK is a consequence of a predominance of coercive and normative forces (...) on the organizational field. The institutional forces tend to build a Brazilian organizational field that is relational based and risk intensive. The findings lend support to the view that CSR responses are unlikely to be easily transformed into uniform standardized practices across the globe. This paper contributes to a collective understanding of the organizational field and a common template for CSR in the context of developed and developing countries. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that natural kind terms constitute a distinct semantic category. This idea emerged during the 1970's following Kripke's and Putnam's well-known remarks on natural kind terms. The idea has stayed with us, although it is now recognized that the issues are considerably more complex than initially thought. Thus, it has become clear that much of Kripke's and Putnam's discussions were based on rather simplified views of natural kinds. It also turns out that the semantic issues are less (...) straightforward than assumed - in particular, it is far from clear what it might mean to say that a kind term is rigid. Strikingly, however, these worries have not done much to undermine the confident assumption that natural kind terms form a special semantic category. In the paper I try to shake that confidence. I argue that although natural kind terms are no doubt important (for instance, from an explanatory point of view), we are certainly not warranted in concluding that they form a separate, semantic category among the kind terms. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical reflection on the experience of time from within exile. Its focus on temporality is unique, as most literature on exile focuses on the experience of space, as exile involves dislocation, and moods of nostalgia and utopia. Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback proposes that in exile, time is experienced neither as longing back to the lost past nor as wanting a future to come but rather as a present without anchors or supports. She articulates this present as (...) a "gerundive" mode, in which the one who is in exile discovers herself simply being, exposed to the uncanny experience of having lost the past and not having a future. To investigate this, the book establishes a conversation among three authors whose work has exemplified this sense of gerundive time: the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, the French writer and essayist Maurice Blanchot, and the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. The book does not aim to discuss how these authors understand the relation between time and exile but enters in conversation with them in relation to this question. Attempting to think and express this difficult sense of time from within exile, the book engages with the relation between thought and language, and between philosophy and literature. Departing from concrete existential questions, it opens new philosophical and theoretical modes through which to understand what it means to be present in times of exile. (shrink)

There are certain metaphysically interesting arguments ‘from vagueness’, for unrestricted mereological composition and for four-dimensionalism, which involve a claim to the effect that idioms for unrestricted quantification are precise. An elaboration of Lewis’ argument for this claim, which assumes the view of vagueness as semantic indecision, is presented. It is argued that the argument also works according to other views on the nature of vagueness, which also require for an expression to be vague that there are different admissible alternatives of (...) the relevant sort, such as epistemicism, as defended by Williamson. Recent attempts to resist the argument are discussed and rejected. (shrink)

Treatise on the theory of Advaita Vedanta philosophy.

The aim of the present article is to reflect upon comparative procedures at stake in the acknowledgment of differences, following some paths of Husserl's and Heidegger's views on “comparative examination” . Although using the same expression as Husserl, Heidegger presents in this concept, rather, a phenomenology of correspondence. The encounter with otherness is described as correspondence to the immensity of the event of the world in Dasein . From out of a “destruction” of comparative examinations, it becomes possible to seize (...) the a-subjective and ek-static structure of Dasein and claim a corresponding way of encountering otherness. In this corresponding way, the Other appears first as non-otherness, beyond a dialectics of selfhood and otherness. (shrink)

O significado hermenêutico da experiência da obra de arte -- A pertinência hermenêutica da ética aristotélica -- Para uma hermenêutica do cuidado: do mistério da saúde de H.-G. Gadamer aos novos fins da medicina -- A hermenêutica como pensamento de fronteira -- Hermenêutica filosófica e mobilidade cultural: conceitos fundamentais -- A Europa e o destino das ciências humanas -- Para uma hermenêutica da memória -- Tradição, linguagem e jogo -- A missão hermenêutica da filosofia -- Problemas da hermenêutica prática -- (...) O reconhecimento como núcleo da aplicação: de Gadamer a Ricoeur -- A linguagem da polis -- Retórica e hermenêutica. (shrink)

RESUMO A recente publicação de Faria tem como objetivo demonstrar que, “se o anti-individualismo estiver correto, então a obscuridade da validade é mais ampla do que necessitamos presumir para os objetivos atuais.” Através da rejeição de “uma variedade de movimentos exculpatórios, projetados para blindar a racionalidade de um pensador possivelmente azarado,” Faria sugere que o externalismo de conteúdo pode afetar drasticamente nossa autocompreensão como seres racionais. Temo que tenha que discordar. Faria superintelectualiza o pensamento, sempre performado da perspectiva de primeira (...) pessoa e é sujeito ao controle reflexivo pelo pensador. Para ter certeza, o externalismo de conteúdo mostra que um pensamento saudável é contingente no amplo ambiente e, assim, não depende exclusivamente das habilidades lógicas do ser vivo, mas é uma questão de sorte lógica. Apesar disso, o externalismo de conteúdo não é ameaça à racionalidade. Meu diagnóstico: através da adoção da estratégia de Wittgenstein de “trazer as palavras de volta pra casa”, Faria negligencia as conquistas da ciência cognitiva: na sua forma mais simples, a “inferência transitiva,” a racionalidade pervade o reino animal. (shrink)

Islam and politics in Iran; and on philosophy of political science.

In this paper, I argue against the phenomenal concept strategy and in favor of what Chalmers has called type-A materialism. On her release, Mary makes no cognitive discovery at all; not even a thin non-possibility-eliminating discovery, as Tye has recently claimed. When she is imprisoned, Mary already knows everything that is to be known about the phenomenal character of her experiences. What Mary acquires is a new non-cognitive and nonconceptual representation.

The purpose of this paper is to defend and further develop an account of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. Rather than identify the phenomenal character with the intrinsic properties represented by perceptual experience (phenomenal externalism), my aim is to support the alternative claim that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is to be identified with the mode of presentation of environmental properties.

Music; philosophy and aesthetics; Islamic philosophy.

Bafomé, a mais duradoura criação do escritor Éliphas Lévi, é um ícone do universo esotérico: é a imagem “satânica” mais conhecida da história. Na tentativa de desvendar a sua rica composição simbólica, uma exegese iconográfica será conduzida por intermédio da psicologia analítica, fundada pelo psiquiatra suíço Carl Gustav Jung. As origens de Bafomé na alquimia, na cabala e no gnosticismo serão perscrutadas e os conceitos Junguianos do inconsciente coletivo e dos arquétipos irão, em grande parte, balizar a interpretação proposta neste (...) trabalho. Tal análise será dividida em oito subáreas, entre elas: o significado do seu aspecto animalesco na escatologia cristã, o hermafroditismo na psicologia e nas ciências arcanas, as qualidades mágicas do pentagrama e a importância hermética do caduceu. Por fim, conclui-se que o Bafomé é um símbolo de self, o arquétipo da totalidade psíquica. Bafomé tem por finalidade ser uma alternativa à imagem primordial cristã de autorrealização, mais integradora e menos repressora que esta. Palavras-chave: Alquimia. Cristianismo. Magia. Psicologia junguiana. Religião e psicologia.Baphomet, the lasting creation of the French writer Éliphas Lévi, is an icon of the esoteric universe: it is the history’s best-known “satanic” image. In an attempt to unravel its rich symbolic composite, an iconographic exegesis will be conducted through the use of analytical psychology, founded by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. The origins of Baphomet in alchemy, Kabbalah and Gnosticism will investigated mostly through the application of Jungian concepts such as the collective unconscious and the archetypes. Such analysis will be divided into eight sub-areas, including: the significance of his animal appearance in Christian eschatology, hermaphroditism in psychology and the arcane sciences, the magical qualities of the pentagram and the importance of the caduceus in hermetism. Finally, we conclude that Baphomet is a symbol of the self, the archetype of psychic wholeness. Baphomet aims to be an alternative to the Christian primordial image of self-realization, more inclusive and less repressive than the latter. Keywords: Alchemy. Christianity. Jungian psychology. Magic. Religion and psychology. (shrink)

Classical work on Jaina philosophy; critical edition with Hindi translation.