The article reports the findings of a study conducted among 387 consumers regarding their perceptions of the unethicality of business practices of firms and how these affect their response behavior, in terms of trust, satisfaction, and loyalty. The study confirmed that high levels of perceived corporate unethicality decrease consumer trust. This in turn reduces consumer satisfaction, which ultimately has negative effects on customer loyalty. It was also revealed that, although both consumer gender and urbanity have a moderating effect on the (...) link between perceived unethicality and trust, the age group and level of education of the consumer did not exhibit such an effect. With regard to consumer cultural characteristics, both high uncertainty avoidance and low individualism were found to increase the negative impact of business unethicality on trust, as opposed to power distance and masculinity that did not have any moderating effect on this relationship. Implications for managers are extracted from the study findings, as well as directions for future research. (shrink)

Emotions are the focus of intense debate both in contemporary philosophy and psychology, and increasingly also in the history of ideas. Simo Knuuttila presents a comprehensive survey of philosophical theories of emotion from Plato to Renaissance times, combining rigorous philosophical analysis with careful historical reconstruction. The first part of the book covers the conceptions of Plato and Aristotle and later ancient views from Stoicism to Neoplatonism and, in addition, their reception and transformation by early Christian thinkers from Clement and Origen (...) to Augustine and Cassian. Knuuttila then proceeds to a discussion of ancient themes in medieval thought, and of new medieval conceptions, codified in the so-called faculty psychology from Avicenna to Aquinas, in thirteenth century taxonomies, and in the voluntarist approach of Duns Scotus, William Ockham, and their followers. Philosophers, classicists, historians of philosophy, historians of psychology, and anyone interested in emotion will find much to stimulate them in this fascinating book. (shrink)

This paper follows Derrida’s criticism, in The Voice and the Phenomenon, of Husserl ‘s conception of meaning as ideality and identity. The french author contests the ideality and supratemporality·of meaning, its separation from the meaning conferring act, and defends the inclusion of the following indicative dimensions of the last in the former: 1) the sensible element of the linguistic sign (namely in the ideal form of the word, that is in the expression) 2) the manifestation and communication of the experience (...) or act (in the conscience as such) 3) the sensible and empirical content of experience, be it sensational, perceptive, imaginative or potentially and mediatelly intended (in the meaning itself). He questions, moreover, having asserted its temporal condition, which also derives, nevertheless, from some assertions by Husserl, the possibility of constitution of a «strict» and «true» identity, stating that intuitive presence is unable to form both the total covering between the intended and the fulfilling meaning, and the abstract ideality that would be function of the possibility of an infinite repetition, instead of conditioned by a “finite-infinite” one. Finally, he explains better the relation between the sensible face of sign and the ideality of meaning, the former’s place and role within the differentiation and repetition process. He notes that it is an ‘originary’ lack in thinking and meaning itself that claims for the linguistic sign (‘supplement of origin’), “in succession” for its ideal form and its sensible oral and written elements, without ever reaching any completion (‘ supplementarity’, ‘differe(a)nce’). We also attend the derridean hypothesis of writing as the consummation of the link between ideality and death, the last one being considered as having a special relation to sensibility and difference. (shrink)

Originally published in 1993, Modalities in Medieval Philosophy looks at the idea of modality as multiplicity of reference with respect to alternative domains. The book examines how this emerged in early medieval discussions and addresses how it was originally influenced by the theological conception of God acting by choice. After a discussion of ancient modal paradigms, the author traces the interplay of old and new modal views in medieval logic and semantics, philosophy and theology. A detailed account is given of (...) late medieval discussions of the new modal logic, epistemic logic, and the logic norms. These theories show striking similarities to some basic tenets of contemporary approaches to modal matters. This work will be of considerable interest to historians of philosophy and ideas and philosophers of logic and metaphysics. (shrink)

In this paper I defend two claims regarding complex demonstratives. On the one hand I argue that, when one of these expressions misdescribes the referred object, the right semantic analysis is to treat the expression as uninterpretable. On the other, I claim that the uninterpretability thesis finds itself in trouble when it comes to dealing with non-deictic uses of complex demonstratives, i.e., uses of “that F” in which the speaker has no acquaintance or direct perception of any object that could (...) satisfy the predicative material. In order to make these two claims compatible, I set out to modify the way the uninterpretability thesis has been traditionally formulated. (shrink)

The article defends the no-harm principle as an intuitively plausible and a common-sense way to justify individual emitters’ duties to take more radical steps in the fight against climate change. The appearance of climate change as requiring large-scale collective action should not lead us astray with respect to the fundamental moral nature of the problem: individual emitters who knowingly sustain and foster the carbon intensive ways of acting also bear personal moral responsibility for the foreseeable climate-related harm and acquire in (...) line with the no-harm principle a direct personal duty to contribute to the efforts of preventing the harm. The article examines more closely the so-called collectivistic approach, according to which emitters’ responsibilities are primarily collective, and argues that without individualistic grounds of emitters’ personal moral responsibility for the harm the collectivistic approach fails to provide unstructured emitters with sufficient reason to act together and fulfil their correlative duty of effective harm prevention. The article argues that since an emitter's personal moral responsibility warrants others to expect her personal engagement in the efforts of effective harm prevention and can justify blame if she fails, identifications of personal responsibility may also significantly increase unstructured emitters’ collective capability of remedying the climate crisis. (shrink)

This book not only articulates a tradition-specific Pentecostal rationality of Biblical Pragmatism, but also provides the first intellectual history of a major British classical Pentecostal denomination. Pentecostal theologians increasingly acknowledge that their theological methodology should be informed by a Pentecostal rationality, epistemology and theological hermeneutics. Simo Frestadius offers such a Pentecostal rationality from a Foursquare perspective. Frestadius first analyses and evaluates some of the main contemporary Pentecostal rationalities and epistemologies to date, with a particular emphasis on the works of Amos (...) Yong and James K.A. Smith and L. William Oliverio Jr., before proposing that Alasdair MacIntyre's tradition-focused and historically-minded narrative approach is conducive in providing a more tradition-constituted Pentecostal rationality. Utilising the methodological insights of MacIntyre, the book then provides a philosophically informed historical narrative of a major British Pentecostal tradition, namely, the Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance, by exploring its underlying context and roots as a classical Pentecostal movement, its emergence as a religious tradition, and its two major 'epistemological crises'. Based on this historical narration and analysis, it is argued that Elim's tacit Pentecostal rationality is best defined as Pentecostal Biblical Pragmatism in a Foursquare Gospel framework. This form of rationality is then developed vis-à-vis Elim's Pentecostal concept of truth, biblical hermeneutics, and pragmatic epistemic justification in dialogue with William P. Alston. In doing the above, the book not only articulates a tradition-specific Pentecostal rationality of Biblical Pragmatism but also provides the first intellectual history of a major British classical Pentecostal denomination. (shrink)

This article analyses a New Year’s revue from 1929 by Helsinki-born Jac Weinstein and the image of the Jewish merchant. Many stereotypes concerning ethnicity and gender are at play in the revue and the line between humour, Jewish self-deprecation and antisemitic depiction of the Jew becomes blurred. The questionable business ethics of Jewish merchants is one of the core themes of the revue.The article asks what role ethnic stereotypes played in Jewish humour before the height of National Socialist racial antisemitism, (...) and what purpose such performances served. It examines the various stereotypes found in the couplets, sketches and one-act plays in Weinstein’s kleynkunst performance against the background of transnational Jewish performing arts and current research on Jewish entrepreneurship and antisemitism in Finland. (shrink)

This article considers three medieval approaches to the problem of future contingent propositions in chapter 9 of Aristotle's _De interpretatione_. While Boethius assumed that God's atemporal knowledge infallibly pertains to historical events, he was inclined to believe that Aristotle correctly taught that future contingent propositions are not antecedently true or false, even though they may be characterized as true-or-false. Aquinas also tried to combine the allegedly Aristotelian view of the disjunctive truth-value of future contingent propositions with the conception of all (...) things being timelessly present to God's knowledge. The second approach was formulated by Peter Abelard who argued that in Aristotle's view future contingent propositions are true or false, not merely true-or-false, and that the antecedent truth of future propositions does not necessitate things in the world. After Duns Scotus, many late medieval thinkers thought like Abelard, particularly because of their new interpretation of contingency, but they did not believe, with the exception of John Buridan, that this was an Aristotelian view. (shrink)

JAAKKO HINTIKKA GAPS IN THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING: AN EXERCISE IN THE METHODOLOGY OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS* For some historians, to understand everything is to pardon everything. For others, like Lord Acton, history is not only a judge, ...

This paper discusses the issues of deciding to have a child with mental retardation, and of terminating a pregnancy when the future child is known to have the same disability. I discuss these problems by criticizing a utilitarian argument, namely, that one should act in a way that results in less suffering and less limited opportunity in the world. My argument is that future parents ought to assume a strong responsibility towards the well-being of their prospective children when they decide (...) to reproduce. The moral point in cases in which our acts affect the well-being of future children should be expressed strictly in terms of parents' culpability. Future children thus do not have current moral standing but presently living persons have current obligations to consider the presumable effects of their actions on future people. I will also argue that there are morally significant differences between 'selective contraception' and selective abortion. (shrink)

This article attempts to clarify the concept of disability by explaining the ways in which it has been applied, and defined, by both philosophers and disability scholars. Conceptual approaches to disability can be divided into two main categories: the individualistic and the social approaches. In the individualistic framework, disability is seen as an individual condition that results in a disadvantaged position regarding civic, economic, and personal flourishing. This is the dominant view of disability in bioethics. According to the social approaches, (...) disability is seen as a result of the oppressive material arrangements in existing societies, or as a corollary of the prevailing cultural values, ideas, attitudes, and language that produce and shape human reality. I argue that disability is essentially a normative concept that reflects the idea of what kind of beings humans ought to be, or, how society ought to be constructed to treat its members equally. In other words, the essential core of the concept of disability is ethical, and this implies that ethical examination is needed to provide a fuller picture of disability as a physical, psychological, and social phenomenon. a. (shrink)

Originally published March 20, 2020. This version published December 30, 2020.

This paper discusses whether prospectiveparents ought to find out about their geneticconstitution for reproductive reasons. It isargued that ignoring genetic information can bein line with responsible parenthood or perhapseven recommendable. This is because parenthoodis essentially an unconditional project inwhich parents ought to commit themselves tonurturing any kind of child. Besides, thetraditional reasons offered for theunfortunateness of impairments and the tragicfate of families with disabled children are notconvincing. Other morally problematic outcomesof genetics, such as discrimination againstindividuals with impairments, and limiting freeparental (...) decision making, are alsoconsidered. (shrink)

Current ecological threats, such as the sixth mass extinction or climate change, highlight the need to evaluate the moral implications of changing populations, both human and non-human. The paper sketches a non-anthropocentric and multispecies sufficientarian account of population ethics. After discussing several other options for multispecies population ethics, the paper proposes a two-level account of multispecies sufficientarianism, according to which the value of populations depend on two kinds of sufficientarian thresholds. First, there is a species-relativized individual-level threshold for what species-specific (...) flourishing is for an organism. Second, there is a population-level threshold for a sufficiently viable population enough to support the species-specific flourishing of the current and future members of that population. The paper concludes by discussing some of the practical implications and concerns raised by the two-level account suggested. (shrink)

The study of the cultural Cold War and East–West interaction outside diplomacy and high politics has emerged as an important research field during the last two decades. With a few exceptions, however, scholarly interaction has been overshadowed by other forms of interaction. Existing research has mostly paid attention to technological exchange and to espionage, which was at times connected with scientific exchanges across the Iron Curtain. This article discusses scholarly exchanges in the human sciences between Finland and the Soviet Union. (...) Even though Finland was a western-style democracy with a market economy, it had close political ties with the Soviet Union, which allowed for the development of active scholarly connections between the countries. This article discusses the emergence of such connections in the human sciences and the reasons for their rapid expansion in the 1970s. (shrink)

Following the 15th anniversary of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS), one can definitely say that this relatively young society has come of age. Through regular meetings, a journal, a prize, fellowships and various other activities, the ESHS has been striving to create a space fostering diversity, plurality and internationalization among historians of science, located in Europe and elsewhere. This paper revisits my own research on the past of the sciences in Portugal, examining in particular the role (...) of the 18th century naturalist and diplomat Abbé Correia da Serra. As a member of an extended network of estrangeirados (Europeanized intellectuals), Correia da Serra played a decisive role in the circulation of knowledge in Europe and also in the world, a role forgotten by his peers within the time interval of a generation. This case study acts as a springboard to discuss the importance of geographical and methodological diversity in the past of the sciences in Europe. In the present historiographical predicament in which the international community finds itself, I advocate that one of the main challenges faced by the ESHS is to turn its historical gaze to Europe again, while fiercely repudiating Eurocentrism. This enables to show how much the building of the European spaces of scientific practice were never a prerogative of a few regions or a small set of countries, but, on the very contrary, took shape as the result of complex interactions between diverse spaces and cultures, not only intra-European but also non-European. (shrink)

My purpose is to analyze the peculiar thinking of Weil, according to the categories of reasoning, as a choice to avoid violence. In his definition of man, Weil recovers the notion of realization, with which man is redefined in terms of what he must be and not merely for what he is. There-to, man is ..

This paper attempts to elucidate Wittgenstein’s remark about the “strange resemblance between a philosophical investigation (especially in mathematics) and an aesthetic one” from 1937 by looking at its textual and philosophical context. The conclusion is that the remark can be seen both as a description of a particular conception of philosophy, a prescription or declaration of intent (to proceed in a particular way), and a reminder (to Wittgenstein himself) about the form of a philosophical investigation. Furthermore, it is concluded that (...) the Darstellungsform he has in mind is the one that finds expression especially in the first part of the PI. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this text, we build dialogues between Mikhail Bakhtin’s moral philosophy and Hans Kelsen’s legal theory, analyzing the notions of ought to be, science, and being. The goals are to shed light on Bakhtin’s (1999) legal foundation, from the perspective of moral philosophy as philosophia prima, which encompasses the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of law (Bakhtin, 1999; Simões, 2024); and to point out ethical considerations for the sciences, particularly for Law and Linguistics. The research is bibliographical, and (...) the corpus consists, centrally, of the works Toward a Philosophy of the Act (Bakhtin, 1993) and General Theory of Law and State (Kelsen, 1949). Our conclusions point to Bakhtin’s (1999) contributions, which appear to be authoritative for a perspective on the ought to be in the world of life; and for the debate on ethics in the sciences (Kelsen, 1949; Rajagopalan, 2011), particularly around the scientist’s relationship with the ought to be (Bakhtin, 1999). (shrink)

This article provides the first historiographical analysis of the origins of Jewish Orthodoxy in Helsinki and describes the development of the rabbinate from the establishment of the congregation in the late 1850s up to the early 1980s. The origins of the Finnish Jewish community lies in the nineteenth-century Russian army. The majority of Jewish soldiers in Helsinki originated from the realm of Lithuanian Jewish culture, that is, mainly non-Hasidic Jewish Orthodoxy that emerged in the late eighteenth century. Initially, the Finnish (...) Jewish religious establishment continued this Orthodox-Litvak tradition. After the independence of Finland, the Helsinki congregation hired academic, Modern Orthodox rabbis educated in Western Europe. Following the devastation of the Shoah and the Second World War, the recruitment of rabbis faced new challenges. Overall, the rabbi recruitments were in congruence with the social and cultural development of the Helsinki community, yet respected its Orthodox roots. (shrink)

J.S. Mill has formulated a classical statement of the "argument from analogy� concerning knowledge of other minds: "I must either believe them [other human beings] to be alive, or to be automatons� (Mill 1872, 244). It is possible that Wittgenstein had this in mind when writing the following: "I believe he is suffering.�—Do I also believe that he isn"t an automaton? It would go against the grain to use the word in both connexions. (Or is it like this: I believe (...) he is suffering, but am certain the he is not an automaton? Nonsense!) Suppose I say of a friend: "He isn"t an automaton�.—What information is conveyed by this, and to whom would it be information? To a human being who meets him in ordinary circumstances? What information could it give him? (At the very most that this man always behaves like a human being, and not occasionally like a machine.) "I believe he is not an automaton�, just like that, so far makes no sense. My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul [eine Einstellung zur Seele]. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul. (PI p. 178) Here Wittgenstein contrasts opinion (Meinung) and attitude (Einstellung). How should this contrast be understood? On a view such as Mill"s, to regard someone as a conscious being is to hold certain beliefs about him, beliefs that can perhaps ultimately be grounded in a theory of some sort. To have an "attitude towards a soul� is, on the contrary, to see a person"s gestures and facial expressions as "filled with meaning�. We have an attitude towards a soul when confronted with a person, which means that we react to his presence and behaviour in a certain way. (shrink)

O objetivo principal deste artigo é mostrar a concepção política radicalmente normativa elaborada por Aristóteles no livro I da Política, concepção que determina a vida na cidade como uma condição fundamental para a realização da excelência ou virtude humana (ἀρετή). Trata-se, assim, de investigar como o filósofo pensa a polis como uma forma de comunidade (κοινωνία) que tem por meta não apenas assegurar as condições materiais e econômicas necessárias ao viver humano elementar (ζῆν), mas também propiciar ao homem um locus (...) superior no qual ele possa efetivar o bem viver (εὖ ζῆν), ou seja, a vida boa entendida como a realização da virtude e da racionalidade que lhe são próprias, o que desemboca na vigorosa subordinação da política às exigências da moralidade. (shrink)