In this article, we outline a unique conceptual framework connecting legitimacy types (Suchman, 1995), theories of corporate responsibility (Brummer, 1991), and levels of organizational moral development based on Kohlberg's (1971) moral development stages. In addition, based on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) categories, we found empirical support for our framework, by content analyzing Fortune 500 corporate citizenship reports from four different industries (i.e., chemicals, motor vehicle/auto parts, pharmaceutical, and utilities), at three data points (i.e., 2002, 2007, and 2012). Our analysis indicates (...) that motor vehicle/auto parts and chemicals industries are at a higher developmental level, and portray moral legitimacy along with social demandingness corporate responsibility in recent years; while the pharmaceutical and utilities sectors are at a lower developmental level, showing signs of pragmatic legitimacy, alongside classical and stakeholder corporate responsibility strategies. This article contributes to the current organizational moral development literature by developing and finding empirical support of a conceptual framework of organizational moral development, legitimacy, and corporate responsibility. In particular, our findings provide a deeper understanding of the differences in moral development levels across four focal industries over a 10‐year timespan. (shrink)

The present work intends to investigate about explanation models related to the evolution concept in school texts in Argentina, using categories proposed by Bar (2005). The reconstructed model shows characteristics of adaptation systems, models that give account of biological phenomena with end..

This paper argues that the principles of instrumental rationality apply primarily to extended action through time. Most philosophers assume that rational requirements and principles govern in the first instance momentary mental states, as opposed to governing extended intentional actions directly. In the case of instrumental rationality, the relevant mental states or attitudes would typically be preferences, decisions, or intentions. In fact, even those who recognize the extended nature of our agency still assume that rational requirements apply primarily to mental states (...) at a moment in time. Such views try to do justice to the extended nature of our agency by postulating rational requirements that apply in the first instance to plans, policies, and intentions more generally. The paper focuses on the central case of requirements and reasons governing the reconsideration of intentions and argues that these requirements or reasons are either superfluous or invalid.I argue that a proper conception of instrumental reasoning that applies directly to actions turn out to have surprising consequences. In fact, this conception allows us to see that policies, projects and the like are best understood as instances of extended actions, and that the instrumental requirements that apply to projects and policies are exactly the same as the instrumental requirements that apply to ordinary extended actions. Finally, I argue that the resulting theory of instrumental rationality is a significant improvement over theories that rely on principles governing intentions. (shrink)

Constitutivists have tried to answer Enoch’s “schmagency” objection by arguing that Enoch fails to appreciate the inescapability of agency. Although these arguments are effective against some versions of the objection, I argue that they leave constitutivism vulnerable to an important worry; namely, that constitutivism leaves us alienated from the moral norms that it claims we must follow. In the first part of the paper, I try to make this vague concern more precise: in a nutshell, it seems that constitutivism cannot (...) provide an adequate account of the relation between the constitutive norms of agency and the particular ends the agent pursues. I then provide a broad outline of an interpretation of Kant’s formalism that is immune to this objection. I conclude that constitutivism is best understood as the upshot of a formalist view of categorical practical principles. (shrink)

We discuss the axiomatization of generalized consequence relations determined by non-deterministic matrices. We show that, under reasonable expressiveness requirements, simple axiomatizations can always be obtained, using inference rules which can have more than one conclusion. Further, when the non-deterministic matrices are finite we obtain finite axiomatizations with a suitable generalized subformula property.

This philosophical introduction to and discussion of social and political studies of science argues that scientific knowledge is socially constructed.

This book tells the story of modern ethics, namely the story of a discourse that, after the Renaissance, went through a methodological revolution giving birth to Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s new science of natural law, leaving room for two centuries of explorations of the possible developments and implications of this new paradigm, up to the crisis of the Eighties of the eighteenth century, a crisis that carried a kind of mitosis, the act of birth of both basic paradigms of the two (...) following centuries: Kantian ethics and utilitarianism. The new science of natural law carried a fresh start for ethics, resulting from a mixture of the Old and the New. It was, as suggested by Schneewind, an attempt at rescuing the content of Scholastic and Stoic doctrines on a new methodological basis. The former was the claim of existence of objective and universal moral laws; the latter was the self-aware attempt at justifying a minimal kernel of such laws facing skeptical doubt. What Bentham and Kant did was precisely carrying this strategy further on, even if restructuring it each of them around one out of two alternative basic claims. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics of the Enlightenment attacked both not on their alleged failure in carrying out their own projects, but precisely on having adopted Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project. What counter-enlightenment has been unable to spell out is which alternative project could be carried out facing the modern condition of pluralism, while on the contrary, if we takes a closer look at developments in twentieth-century ethics or at on-going discussions on practical issues, we might feel inclined to believe that Grotius’s and Pufendorf’s project is as up-to-date as ever. -/- Table of Contents -/- Preface I. Fathers of the Reformation and Schoolmen 1.1. Luther: passive justice and the good deeds; 1.2. Calvin: voluntarism and predestination; 1.3. Baroque Scholasticism; 1.4. Casuistry and Institutiones morales -/- II Neo-Platonists, neo-Stoics, neo-Sceptics 2.1. Aristotelian, neo-Platonic, neo-Epicurean and neo-Cynic Humanists; 2.2. Oeconomica and the art of living; 2.3. Neo-Stoics; 2.4. Neo-Sceptics; 2.5. Moralistic literature -/- III Neo-Augustinians 3.l. The Jansenists on natura lapsa, sufficient grace, pure love; 3.2. Nicole on the impossibility of self-knowledge; 3.3. Nicole on self-love and charity; 3.4. Nicole against civic virtue, for Christian civility; 3.5. Malebranche on general laws and necessary evil; 3.6. Malebranche on Neo-Augustinianism and Platonism. -/- IV Grotius, Pufendorf and the new moral science 4.1. Grotius against Aristotle and the sceptics; 4.2. Mersenne and Gassendi; 4.3. Descartes on ethics as the last branch of philosophy’s tree; 4.4. Hobbes on scepticism and the new moral science; 4.5. Spinoza on the new moral science as a descriptive science;4.6. Locke on voluntarism and probabilism; 4.7. Pufendorf on natural law as an exact science; 4.8. Pufendorf on physical and moral entities; 10. Pufendorf on self-preservation -/- V The empiricist version of the new moral science: from Cumberland to Paley 5.1. Cumberland against Hobbesian voluntarism; 5.2. Cumberland and theological consequentialism; 5.3. Cumberland on universal benevolence and self-love; 5.4. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 5.5. Hutcheson on natural law and moral faculties; 5.6. Gay, Brown, Paley and theological consequentialism. -/- VI The rationalist version of the new moral science: from Cudworth to Price 6.1. The Cambridge Platonists; 6.2. Shaftesbury on the moral sense; 6.3. Butler and a third way between voluntarism and scepticism; 6.4. Price and the rational character of moral truths; -/- VII Leibniz’s compromise between the new moral science and Aristotelianism 1.Leibniz against voluntarism; 2.Leibniz against the division between the physical and the moral good; 3.Leibniz on la place d’autrui and theological consequentialism; 4.Thomasius, Wolff, Crusius -/- VIII French eighteenth-century philosophers without the new moral science 8.1. The genealogy of our ideas of virtue and vice; 8.2. Maupertuis and moral arithmetic 8.3. The philosophes and the harmony of interests; 8.4. Rousseau on corruption, self-love, and virtue; 8.5. Sade on the merits of vice -/- IX Experimental moral science: Hume and Adam Smith 9.1. Mandeville’s paradox; 9.2. Hutcheson on the law of nature and moral faculties; 9.3. Hume on experimental moral philosophy and the intermediate principles; 9.4. Hume’s Law; 9.5. Hume on the fellow-feeling; 9.6. Hume on natural and artificial virtues and disinterested pleasure for utility; 9.7. Adam Smith’s anti-realist metaethics; 9.8. Adam Smith on self-deception and the paradox of happiness; 9.9. Adam Smith on sympathy and the impartial spectator; 9.10. Adam Smith on the twofold criterion for moral judgement and its paradox; 9.11. Reid on the refutation of scepticism and the self-evidence of duty -/- X Kantian ethics 10.1. Kantian metaethics: moral epistemology; 10.2. Kantian metaethics: moral ontology; 10.3. Kantian metaethics: moral psychology; 10.4. Kantian normative ethics; 10.5. Kant on the impracticability of applied ethics; 10.6. Kantian moral anthropology; 10.7. Civilisation and moralisation; 10.8. Theology on a moral basis and the origins of evil; 10.9. Fichte and the transformation of theoretical philosophy into practical philosophy XI Bentham and utilitarianism 11.1. Bentham’s linguistic theory; 11.2. Bentham’s moral ontology, psychology, and theory of action; 11.3. The principle of greatest happiness; 11.4. The critique of religious ethics; 11.5. The new morality; 11.6. Interest and duty; 11.7. Virtues; 11.8. Private ethics and legislation -/- XII Followers of the Enlightenment: liberal Judaism and Liberal Theology 12.1. Mendelssohn; 12.2. Salomon Maimon; 12.3. Haskalā and liberal Judaism; 12.4. Liberal Theology. -/- XIII Counter-Enlighteners 13.1.Romanticism and the fulfilment of individuality as the Summum Bonum; 13.2. Hegel on history as the making of liberty; 13.3. Hegel on the unhappy consciousness and the beautiful soul; 13.4. Hegel on Morality and Sittlichkeit; 13.5. Marx on ideology, alienation, and praxis; 13.6. Schopenhauer on compassion; 13.7. Kierkegaard on faith beyond ethics. -/- XIV Followers of the Enlightenment: intuitionists and utilitarian 14.1 Whewell‘s criticism of utilitarianism; 14.2 Whewell on morality and the philosophy of morality; 14.3 Whewell on the Supreme Norm; 14.4 Whewell on the conflict between duties; 14.5 Mill and the proof of the principle of utility; 14.6 Mill’s eudemonistic utilitarianism; 14.7 Mill on rules -/- XV Followers of the Enlightenment: neo-Kantians and positivists 15.1. French spiritualism; 15.2. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.3. Neo-Kantians: the Marburg school; 15.4. Comte’s positivism and the invention of altruism; 15.5. Social Darwinism; 15.6. Wundt and an ethic of humankind -/- XVI Post-enlighteners: Sidgwick 16.1. Criticism of intuitionism; 16.2. On ethical egoism; 16.3. Criticism of utilitarianism -/- XVII Post-enlighteners: Durkheim 17.1. Sociology as physics of customs; 17.2. Morality as physics of customs and as practical science; 17.3. On Kantian ethics and utilitarianism; 17.4. The variability of moralities;17.5. Social solidarity as end and justification of morality; 17.6. Secular morality as “sociodicy”; XVIII Post-enlighteners: Nietzsche 18.1. On the Dionysian; 18.2. On the deconstruction of the world of values 18.3 On the twofold genealogy of moralities; 18.4. On ascetics and nihilism; 18.5. Normative ethics of self-fulfilment -/- Bibliography / Index of names / Index of concepts -/- . (shrink)

Recently, Piccinini and Craver have stated three theses concerning the relations between functional analysis and mechanistic explanation in cognitive sciences: No Distinctness: functional analysis and mechanistic explanation are explanations of the same kind; Integration: functional analysis is a kind of mechanistic explanation; and Subordination: functional analyses are unsatisfactory sketches of mechanisms. In this paper, I argue, first, that functional analysis and mechanistic explanations are sub-kinds of explanation by scientific (idealized) models. From that point of view, we must take into account (...) the tradeoff between the representational/explanatory goals of generality and precision that govern the practice of model-building. In some modeling scenarios, it is rational to maximize explanatory generality at the expense of mechanistic precision. This tradeoff allows me to put forward a problem for the mechanist position. If mechanistic modeling endorses generality as a valuable goal, then Subordination should be rejected. If mechanists reject generality as a goal, then Integration is false. I suggest that mechanists should accept that functional analysis can offer acceptable explanations of cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

In recent years, there have been several high-profile recalls of hybrid products. If consumers perceive a global firm to be responsible for the recall, then it will reduce their brand equity. Therefore, global firms may respond in ethically questionable ways to justify themselves to important stakeholders and avoid blame. Understanding how stakeholders attribute blame for crises involving hybrid products is important to shed light on the unethical manner in which global firms might avoid blame in such situations. The research reported (...) here shows that in a hybrid product crisis, consumers show a bias in favor of the brand company and against the manufacturing company. This bias is more pronounced when the country of manufacture has an unfavorable image or when consumers lack familiarity with the recalled brand. Ambiguous recall announcements by companies that fail to provide a specific and clear reason for the product defect prompt consumers to assume that a manufacturing flaw caused the product defect. As a result, consumers reduce their attribution of blame for the brand company, and thus its brand equity is maintained. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the framework for the compositional relations of properties in the sciences, or "realization relations", offered by Ken Aizawa and Carl Gillett (A&G) in a series of papers, and in particular on the analysis of "multiple realizations" they build upon it. I argue that A&G's analysis of multiple realization requires an account of levels and I try to show, then, that the A&G framework is not successful under any of the extant accounts of levels. There is consequently (...) a real concern tha thte A&G framework for realization may not be viable. (shrink)

Anticipation has emerged over the past two decades as a fundamental tool for a wide variety of normative frameworks aimed at promoting a more socio-politically responsible governance of science, technology and innovation. However, theoretical considerations and reflections on the meaning and scope of anticipation have received far less attention than its invocation. The main objective of this article is to advance the theoretical-conceptual treatment of anticipation. On the one hand, it assumes that there is a connection between the ways of (...) thinking about and using the future and the fields of science, technology and innovation that are considered the object of ethical-political problematisation. On the other hand, the article evaluates each of these forms of anticipatory articulation of responsibility on the basis of their respective ethico-political radicality. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a growing interest, both within theoretical biology and the philosophy of biology, in the possibility and desirability of a theory of development. Among the many issues raised within this debate, the questions of the spatial and temporal boundaries of development have received particular attention. In this article, noting that so far the discussion has mostly centered on the processes of morphogenesis and organogenesis, we argue that an important missing element in the equation, namely the development of (...) language and cognition in general, may play an important role in settling the issue of temporal boundaries. After examining the idea that the development of language, cognition, and action are bona fide biological processes, we explore the consequences for a general theory of development of taking them into consideration. (shrink)

Definiciones de epistemología hay muchas, al igual que clases y estilos. Sin embargo, más allá de esta diversidad, es necesario contar con una definición básica que guíe nuestra comprensión del tema. Dos serán las preguntas que nos ayuden a ello en este artículo: a) ¿qué es la epistemología? y b) ¿para qué le sirve al científico?

Reply to critics on panel on "Appearances of the Good".

La filosofía de la ciencia se desarrolló durante la primera mitad del siglo xx bajo el supuesto de que la ciencia podía caracterizarse por la estructura lógica tanto del conocimiento articulado en las teorías más exitosas como de sus explicaciones. En la segunda mitad del siglo xx se cuestiona fuertemente esa idea, pero se sigue asumiendo que la filosofía de la ciencia debe hacerse siguiendo los cánones de una epistemología fundamentalista que considera que el avance de la ciencia pasa por (...) una ontología cada vez mas austera guiada por la idea de "mientras menos mejor". Desde esta perspectiva fundamentalista, el que las diferentes ciencias hablen de diferentes tipos de cosas es un obstáculo al entendimiento, producto de la imperfección del conocimiento actual. Este ideal nos invita a pensar que la epistemología debe hacerse reflexionando sobre el conocimiento articulado en nuestras teorías más austeras y nos compromete con propuestas reduccionistas problemáticas que no permiten explicar la diversidad de recursos epistémicos que de hecho utilizan los científicos. En este libro promovemos una epistemología que no sigue el lema de "mientras menos mejor", sino el de "organizar nuestros recursos epistémicos de manera que se genere entendimiento". Así, la misma estructura de las explicaciones y las prácticas (que incluye métodos y normas respecto de lo que se considera plausible y valioso) es lo que nos da la pauta para responder a la pregunta de qué es lo que hay. Esta estrategia epistémica nos obliga a hacer una filosofía de la ciencia muy cercana a la ciencia, reconociendo la pluralidad de sus métodos, objetivos y prácticas, sin reducir la filosofía de la ciencia a la sociología o a cualquier otra ciencia en particular. (shrink)

This paper examines whether Bratman’s succeeds in provides a reductive account of collective intention.

La percepción clara y distinta es el elemento sobre el que se asienta la certeza metafísica de Descartes. Con todo, el planteamiento de los argumentos escépticos referidos a la duda metódica cartesiana ha evidenciado la necesidad de hallar una justificación al propio criterio de la percepción clara y distinta. Frente a los intentos basados en la indubitabilidad de la percepción o en la garantía surgida de la bondad divina, se defenderá una justificación alternativa pragmatista.

It seems rather intuitive that if I can save either one stranger or five strangers, I must save the five. However, Kantian (and other non-consequentialist) views have a difficult time explaining why this is the case, as they seem committed to what Parfit calls “innumeracy”: roughly, the view that the values of lives (or the reasons to save them) don’t get greater (or stronger) in proportion to the number of lives saved. This chapter first shows that in various cases, it (...) is permissible to save fewer lives, contrary to what is implied by “numerate” views. Then it argues that in the cases in which it is intuitive that we must save the greater number, Kantians (and other deontologists) can not only deliver this verdict but also explain why it is correct, without presupposing that the value of our action depends on “adding up” the values of the lives saved. (shrink)

A dominant theme in the ninth of the Heroides, Deianira's letter to Hercules, is Deianira's indignation that Hercules has been defeated by a woman: first by Iole ; then by Omphale . The theme is exploited so insistently that Vessey, who regards the epistle as spurious, sees in this insistence a sign of the forger's clumsiness. consider the exploitation of the motive of‘victor victus’ in Heroides 9, on the contrary, as a strong sign of Ovidian authorship. From the very beginning (...) of the letter, the reader is reminded that if a woman, Iole, has metaphorically destroyed Hercules, another woman is on the point of destroying Hercules in a much more real and literal way, and this woman is none other than Deianira herself. When Deianira writes the letter, she has just sent to Hercules the garment soaked in Nessus' poison that will provoke Hercules' horrible death : thus Deianira, rather than Iole or Omphale, is the woman who vanquishes the unvanquished hero. But this is not only a matter of dramatic irony based on the general lines of the story. Heroides 9 is an elegiac rewriting of Sophocles' Trachiniae , and at the same time is inserted in the time and the ‘body’ of the tragedy. Ironic prefiguration in Heroides is normally realized through intertextual anticipation: thefuture events that are prefigured are present in the texts of the model epic or tragedy. Deianira blames Hercules for bis defeat: quern numquam Iuno seriesque immensa laborum fregerit, huic Iolen imposuisse iugum quem non mille ferae, quern non Stheneleius hostis, non potuit Iuno vincere, vincit amor. (shrink)

Microalgae in the wild often form consortia with other species promoting their own health and resource foraging opportunities. The recent application of microalgae cultivation and deployment in commercial photobioreactors (PBR) so far has focussed on single species of algae, resulting in multi-species consortia being largely unexplored. Reviewing the current status of PBR ecological habitat, this article argues in favor of further investigation into algal communication with conspecifics and interspecifics, including other strains of microalgae and bacteria. These mutualistic species form the (...) ‘phycosphere’: the micro-environment surrounding microalgal cells, potentiating the production of certain metabolites through biochemical interaction with cohabitating microorganisms. A better understanding of the phycosphere could lead to novel PBR configurations, capable of incorporating algal-microbial consortia, potentially proving more effective than single-species algal systems. (shrink)

A implementação de tecnologias móveis de informação e comunicação no suporte à Saúde Mental tem atraído a atenção das autoridades. Com a ascensão das Inteligências Artificiais, esse movimento pode ser impulsionado de maneira exponencial. Nesse cenário, esta revisão tem como objetivos verificar a aplicabilidade das Inteligências Artificiais (IAs) na Saúde Mental e analisar os aspectos que favorecem a relação entre IAs e usuários. Para tanto, realizou-se uma revisão sistemática nas bases de dados PubMed e Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde, no período (...) de 25 de maio a 23 de junho de 2023. Selecionamos os 100 primeiros artigos mais relevantes com as palavras-chave: “Inteligência Artificial”, “Saúde Mental”, “Chatbots”, “Psicoterapia”, “Psicologia” e suas equivalentes em inglês. Os critérios de inclusão foram: acesso aberto, publicação a partir de 2018, em português ou inglês e menção à atuação de IAs no âmbito da Saúde Mental. Para reduzir o risco de viés, excluímos os estudos que não mensuraram o impacto das intervenções por meio de métodos experimentais ou quase-experimentais. Para a síntese dos dados, delimitaram-se alguns pontos específicos de análise, como “Resultado da intervenção”, “Aspectos que favorecem a relação”, entre outros. Atenderam aos critérios de inclusão 24 estudos, dos quais 17 apresentaram resultados positivos em suas intervenções. O uso de IAs na Saúde Mental possui grande potencial de expansão e os resultados obtidos neste trabalho podem guiar a implementação dessas práticas e futuras pesquisas na área. (shrink)

The paper describes how a simple idea, that of a new foundation of moral philosophy taking Galilean new natural philosophy as a mode , lead to unforeseen developments once the competition between a Cartesian and a Newtonian paradigm emerged. Those developments are reconstructed in Hume, Smith, Ferguson.

The paper discusses the relationship between Adam Smith’s economic doctrines and his ethical doctrines in the light of the “Lectures on Jurisprudence”. The main claim is a comparatively autonomous status of economic discourse, an autonomy granted not by dismissal of ethical claims but instead precisely by a given constellation of claims, on liberty, justice, equality, prudence and benevolence.

We reply to Philippe Depoortère’s paper “On Ricardo’s method: The Unitarian influence examined. Some comments on Cremaschi and Dascal’s article ‘Malthus and Ricardo on Economic Methodology’”. Depoortère asks two questions: (1) was Ricardo’s ‘conversion’ to Unitarianism sincere? (2) did Ricardo follow the methodologies of Priestley and Belsham? His answers are that he was a ‘religious skeptic’ and he was not an ‘empiricist’ like Priestley and Belsham. We reply that the sincerity of Ricardo’s religious beliefs is irrelevant since we start with (...) the evidence that he was exposed for a long time to the intellectual influence of Belsham, primarily in matters of philosophy, and to deny this would imply a negative answer to a different question, namely, did Ricardo attend Unitarian meetings for 15 years? Then we reply that Ricardo inherited Belsham’s version of Newtonian methodology which omitted the fourth rule, that is the most anti-Cartesian and anti-systematic rule, and this has little to do with empiricism but instead with apriorism. (shrink)

El objetivo del presente artículo consiste en analizar la relación Dewey-Honneth con el propósito de profundizar en la comprensión de la idea de > y evidenciar algunos puntos de encuentro que, en el ámbito de la filosofía social, se dan entre la tradición pragmatista y la teoría crítica de la sociedad representadas por John Dewey y Axel Honneth. Se considera la existencia de cierto aire de familia en el entendimiento de Honneth sobre la idea > con relación a las consideraciones (...) del pragmatismo, especialmente las elaboradas por C. S. Peirce y Dewey, en lo que respecta al análisis de la relación entre teoría y praxis. La tesis que se defiende afirma que para Dewey y Honneth, existe una prioridad metodológica de la experiencia para la comprensión de la moralidad en el contexto de la reconstrucción normativa de la misma; dicha prioridad entiende que la fuente de normatividad se constituye en el análisis de las prácticas sociales individuales y colectivas, de cómo se relacionan los individuos y los grupos con las instituciones vigentes, y de la incidencia recíproca de las mismas en su interacción con el ambiente social, económico, político y cultural. (shrink)

The theory of ‘objective thought’ can be characterized as an essential core of the Hegelian philosophy and, at the same time, as one of its most indigestible kernels. This theory, at the intersection of foundational and epistemological problems, on the one hand, provides Hegel’s solution to the problem of the relation between being and thought. On the other hand, this theory is the result of a powerful conceptual torsion carried out by Hegel on the notion of thought. This torsion consists, (...) in a first approximation, of a strong enlargement of the scope of such a notion, articulated principally in two steps. In the first step, we have an enlargement within the finite subject, inside the mental realm. Thought (conceived of as Denken) becomes, from a mental faculty or activity separated from the other mental activities, an active element working in an unconscious and instinctual way in the whole of the mental. This step, naturally, requires a redefinition of thought as a faculty or activity, i.e. a redefinition of conscious and reflective thought (conceived of as Nachdenken). In the second step, the scope of the notion of thought is enlarged in order to encompass reality in all of its different spheres, natural and spiritual. Here, thought is conceived as the logicrational structure of reality. With this further step, thought evades the mental sphere in which it would be enclosed on a merely psychological account. In this paper, I will move from the assumption that the first step, providing a first sense in which objectivity can be attributed to thought, is a necessary, though insufficient, condition for the second step, and then for the further sense of this attribution. Thus, I will attempt to provide a conceptual map of the fundamental distinctions within the notion of thought, particularly regarding the first step of this conceptual torsion. (shrink)

I reconstruct the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that (...) the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, has to be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. (shrink)

Standpoint theory makes the claim that there are social positions from which privileged perspectives on knowledge can be obtained. This article describes some arguments that stake out relatively narrow grounds for the relevance of standpoint theory to science and technology: namely, the oppressed are in a potentially good position to understand social relations. Although these grounds seem narrow and apparently irrelevant to the bulk of the activity of the sciences, recent work in science and technology studies indicates that social relations (...) are topics and resources as much in physics and mathematics as in primatology and psychology. So, if we accept the arguments for standpoint theory, the social picture of science should lead us to recognize the wide-ranging applicability of standpoint theory to science. (shrink)

A short reconstruction of the vicissitudes of the notion of ethical naturalism through American late nineteenth-century 'naturalism', Moore criticism of so-called naturalistic ethics, reaching Anscombe, Geach and Foot and their particular kind of anti-non-naturalism. The conclusion is that the notion of ethical naturalism is little more than a mere 'flatus vocis' used to indicate three heterogeneous kinds of ethical theories.

Let TP be the theory obtained by adding a generic predicate to an o-minimal theory T. We prove that if T admits elimination of imaginaries, then TP also admits elimination of imaginaries.

Gabriel Tarde, along with Durkheim and others, set the foundations for what is today a common-sense statement in social science: crime is a social phenomenon. However, the questions about what social is and what kind of social phenomenon crime is remain alive. Tarde’s writings have answers for both of these capital and interdependent problems and serve to renew our view of them. The aim of this article is to reconstruct Tarde’s definition of crime in terms of genus and specific difference, (...) exploring his criminology as a case of his general sociology. This procedure shows that Tarde succeeded in creating a comprehensive theory of crime and criminals founded not only on his most well-known concept, imitation, but also on his equally important concepts of invention, opposition, social logic and social teleology. For Tarde, crime is a complex phenomenon related to criminal inventions, criminal propagations, the production of penal laws, the execution of controls and punishments, and the collective reactions to all these. (shrink)

A presentation of Adam Smith's epistemology, ethics, political theory and economics.

In recent decades the central questions of moral psychology have attracted renewed interest. Contemporary work on moral motivation and the rationality of moral action has broadened its focus to include a wide array of related issues. New interpretations of historical figures have also contributed to conceptual advances in moral psychology, in a way unparalleled in any other area of philosophy. This volume presents original work from some of the most prominent philosophers currently working on moral psychology, spanning both the historical (...) and the contemporary problem-based approaches. (shrink)

A brief presentation of life, activity and publications of an Italian philosopher, the founder with Guido Calogero of the Liberal-Socialist movement under the Fascist regime and the theorist of non-violence and omnicracy as the key ideas for a new left, beyond reformism and third-International state-socialism.

In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the paradigm of a new science, political economy, was established. It was a science distinct from the Aristotelian sub-disciplines of practical philosophy named oikonomía and politiké, and emphasis on its character of science not unlike the natural sciences – still called ‘natural philosophy’ – mirrored precisely a willingness to stress its autonomy from two other sub-disciplines of practical philosophy, that is, ethics and politics. However, the new science resulted from a transformation (...) of part of traditional practical philosophy, allowing the inclusion of bodies of knowledge accumulated by experts of commerce and public finance. Such bodies of knowledge were unified by the (true or alleged) discovery of regularities, mechanisms, causal connections making for a new partial order within the overall social order. How far this paved the way to a science similar to mathematics rather left a normative discipline as alive as ever was a recurrent question for at least a century, until the marginalist revolution opened the way for a sharp division, leaving ‘economics’ as a science of causes and effects facing ‘economic policy’ as a discourse on ends. (shrink)

A reconstruction on the evolution in the understanding of wealth in the political literature from the Renaissace to the eighteenth century.

The unresolved dilemma of Marxian theory is whether the overall social constellation may legitimately be called 'mode of production' because mono-causal economic explanations are acceptable or whether there is instead a more complex causality at the level of the 'ökonomische Gesellschaftsformation', i.e. the social constellation as a whole.

A short reconstruction of the origin and evolution of Islamic moral doctrines and their re-interpretation by Arabic philosophers.

The aim of this essay is twofold. First, it outlines the concept of ontological frame. Secondly, two models are distinguished on this structure. The first one is connected to Kant’s concept of possible object and the second one relates to Leibniz’s. Leibniz maintains that the source of possibility is the mere logical consistency of the notions involved, so that possibility coincides with analytical possibility. Kant, instead, argues that consistency is only a necessary component of possibility. According to Kant, something is (...) possible if there is a cause capable of bringing it into existence; to this end consistency alone is not sufficient. Thus, while the Leibnizian notion of consistency is at the root of the concept of analytical possibility, the Kantian notion of possibility is the source of real possibility. This difference plays an important role in the discussion of Gödel’s ontological proof, which can be formally interpreted on the ontological frame of the pure perfections. While this proof, under some emendation condition, is conclusive in the context of Leibniz’s ontological model, it is not so within the Kantian one. This issue will be the subject of the second part of the present essay. (shrink)

A short reconstruction of the method of casuistry in Medieval and early Modern moral theology.

A short presentation of Richard Whately's ideas on logic, method, and the status of political economy.

A discussion of the origins of the very notion of development, its role in eocnomic thoery, and its discussion in applied ethics.

A short reconstruction of the discussion on the genesis of Western Modern individualism, of the arguments advanced by its critics and by recent vindications of ethical and political individualism.

A short presentation of James Steuart's neglected philosophical publications as well as of his well-known economic contribution.

TWENTIETH-CENTURY ETHICS. AFTER NIETZSCHE -/- Preface This book tells the story of twentieth-century ethics or, in more detail, it reconstructs the history of a discussion on the foundations of ethics which had a start with Nietzsche and Sidgwick, the leading proponents of late-nineteenth-century moral scepticism. During the first half of the century, the prevailing trends tended to exclude the possibility of normative ethics. On the Continent, the trend was to transform ethics into a philosophy of existence whose self-appointed task was (...) that of describing the human condition as consisting of choices, as unavoidable as arbitrary, without any attempt at providing criteria for making such choices. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, the heir of ethics was a philosophy of morality, that is, an analysis of the language of morality that intended to clarify valuations without trying to justify them. 1958 was the year of the normative turn that led to the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy, a turn followed by decades of controversies between distinct kinds of normative ethics: utilitarian, Kantian, virtue ethics. While the controversy was raging, a quiet revolution took place, that of applied ethics which surprisingly dissolved the controversy's very subject matter by providing methods for making convergence possible on intermediate principles even when no agreement was available about first principles. The normative turn and the revolution of applied ethics have led us, at the turn of the century, to a goal that was quite far from the starting point. Instead of scepticism and relativism that was the fashion at the beginning of the century, at the beginning of the third millennium impartial and universal moral arguments seem to hold the spot being supported, if not by a final rational foundation, at least by reasonableness, the most precious legacy of the Enlightenment. -/- ● TABLE OF CONTENTS -/- ● I Anglo-Saxon philosophy: naturalism 1. Dewey beyond evolutionism and utilitarianism 2. Dewey and anti-essentialist moral epistemology 3. Dewey and naturalist moral ontology 4. Dewey and normative ethics of conduct and function 5. Perry and semantic naturalism -/- ● II Anglo-Saxon philosophy: ideal utilitarianism and neo-intuitionism 1. Moore's critique of utilitarian empiricism 2. Moore on the naturalistic fallacy 3. Moore on the nature of intrinsic value 4. Moore on ideal utilitarianism 5. Prichard on the priority of the right over the good 6. Ross's coherentist moral epistemology 7. Ross's moral ontology: realism, pluralism, and non-naturalism 8. Ross's normative ethics of prima facie duties -/- The chapter reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore's early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. It stresses the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. It argues that PE is more a patchwork of somewhat diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. -/- ●III Anglo-Saxon philosophy: non-cognitivism 1. The Scandinavian School, the Vienna circle and proto-emotivism 2. Wittgenstein and the ineffability of ethics 3. Russell's and Ayer's radical emotivism 4. Stevenson and moderate emotivism 5. Stevenson and the pragmatics of moral language 6. Stevenson and the methods for solving ethical disagreement 7. Hare and prescriptivism The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of 'good', its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with 'emotive' meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell's ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson's theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. A section reconstructs the discussion from the Forties about Hume's law, mentioning Karl Popper's argument and Richard Hare's early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- ●IV Anglo-Saxon philosophy: critics of non-cognitivism 1. Neo-naturalism and its objections to the naturalistic fallacy argument 2. Objections to Hume's law 3. Clarence Lewis and the pragmatic contradiction 4. Toulmin and the good reasons approach 5. Baier and moral reasons 5. Baier, social moralities and the absolute morality 6. Baier and the moral point of view 7. Baier and the contents of absolute ethics -/- ● V Continental philosophy: the philosophy of values 1. Max Weber and the polytheism of values 2. Phenomenology against psychologism and rationalism 3. Reinach and the theory of social acts 4. Scheler and the material ethics of values 5. Hartmann and the ontology of values 6. Plessner, Gehlen and the Philosophische Anthropologie -/- The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl's project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the apriori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy conducted in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach's theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that sketches the ideas 'discovered' later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section discusses Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of 'values' – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler, who claimed to be Husserl's legitimate heirs. -/- ● VI Continental philosophy: the critics of the philosophy of values 1. Freud, the Superego and Civilization 2. Heidegger on original ethos against ethics 3. Sartre and de Beauvoir on authenticity and ambiguity 4. Adorno and Horkheimer on emancipation and immoralism -/- ●VII Post-liberal theologians and religious thinkers 1. Barth on the autonomy of faith from ethics 2. Developments of Reformed moral theology after Barth 3. Bonhoeffer on the concrete divine command and ethics of penultimate realities 4. Developments of Reformed and Catholic moral theology after world war II 5. Baeck and the transformation of liberal Judaism 6. Rosenzweig against liberal Judaism 7. Buber and religion as the vital lymph of morality 8. Heschel and Judaism as a science of actions -/- The chapter examines the main protagonists of Christian theology and Jewish religious thinking in the twentieth century. It stresses how the main dilemmas of contemporary philosophical ethics lie at the root of the various path of inquiry taken by these thinkers. -/- ● VIII Normative ethics: neo-Utilitarianism 1. The discussion on act and rule utilitarianism 2. Hare on two-tiered preference utilitarianism 3. Harsanyi, Gauthier and rational choice ethics 4. Parfit, utilitarianism and the idea of a person 5. Brandt and indirect conscience utilitarianism -/- The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick's and Moore's fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine refuted. Two examples give the reader a glimpse at this uproarious process. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This transformation results in preference utilitarianism combined with a 'Kantian' version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare's two-level preference utilitarianism, where act utilitarianism plays the function of the eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of an action-guiding practical device. -/- ● IX Normative ethics: neo-Aristotelianism and virtue ethics 1. Hannah Arendt, action and judgement 2. Hans-Georg Gadamer and phronesis 3. Alasdair MacIntyre on practices, virtues, and traditions 5. Stuart Hampshire on deliberation 6. Bernard Williams and moral complexity 7. Feminist ethics -/- Sect 1 reconstructs the post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named 'Rehabilitation of practical philosophy' is described. Heidegger's most brilliant disciples were the promoters of this Rehabilitation. Hans-Georg Gadamer is a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle's lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger's lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the significant role of the notion of phronesis. Sect 3 discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. It argues that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. The chapter gives a short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot's and Peter Geach's critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre's grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly inevitable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- ● X Normative ethics: Kantian and rights-based ethics 1. Dialogical constructivism 2. Apel, Habermas and discourse ethics 3. Gewirth and rights-based ethics 4. Nagel on agent-relative reasons 5. Donagan and persons as ends in themselves Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This current started with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. The chapter offers an examination of his argument in some detail, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas's elaboration on Apel's theory. -/- ● XI The applied ethics renaissance 1. Elisabeth Anscombe on the atom bomb 2. From medical ethics to bioethics 3. Rawls and public ethics 3. Nozick, Dworkin and further developments of public ethics 5. Sen and the revival of economic ethics -/- The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin's new casuistry. The chapter argues that Rawls's distinction between a "political" and a "metaphysical" approach to the theory of justice, one central part of ethical theory, is a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and the new casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter. The idea is that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls' view never will be close – on the essential criteria for judgment. -/- ● XII Fin-de-siècle metaethics 1. Deontic logics 2. Anti-realism 3. External realism 4. Internal realism 5. Kantian constructivism -/- The chapter illustrates the fresh start of meta-ethical discussion in the Eighties and Nineties and the resulting new alignments: metaphysical naturalism, internal realism, anti-realism, and constructivism. (shrink)