The economic growth in India is quite visible through infrastructural and industrial growth in metros but the same is overshadowed by the poor plight of beggars in these cities. This article addresses the living conditions of the beggars and their awareness about the various government policies. The study gives an insight into the economic status of beggars and answers why people go for begging. The solution calls for a comprehensive programme and reorientation of the existing programmes. We often read and (...) hear of aids that are directed towards the upliftment of the beggars; and the article aims to check if these aids have in any way improved their plight. Many NGOs, non-profit private organizations and corporations are helping disadvantaged populace from various segments. But this segment has not received the requisite assistance and attention and this article examines the responsibility of corporations in this concern. (shrink)

Beauty and the End of Art shows how a resurgence of interest in beauty and a sense of ending in Western art are challenging us to rethink art, beauty and their relationship. By arguing that Wittgenstein's later work and contemporary theory of perception offer just what we need for a unified approach to art and beauty, Sonia Sedivy provides new answers to these contemporary challenges. These new accounts also provide support for the Wittgensteinian realism and theory of perception that (...) make them possible. -/- Wittgenstein's subtle form of realism explains artworks in terms of norm governed practices that have their own varied constitutive norms and values. Wittgensteinian realism also suggests that diverse beauties become available and compelling in different cultural eras and bring a shared 'higher-order' value into view. With this framework in place, Sedivy argues that perception is a form of engagement with the world that draws on our conceptual capacities. This approach explains how perceptual experience and the perceptible presence of the world are of value, helping to account for the diversity of beauties that are available in different historical contexts and why the many faces of beauty allow us to experience the value of the world's perceptible presence. -/- Carefully examining contemporary debates about art, aesthetics and perception, Beauty and the End of Art presents an original approach. Insights from such diverse thinkers as Immanuel Kant, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Arthur Danto, Alexander Nehamas, Elaine Scarry and Dave Hickey are woven together to reveal how they make good sense if we bring contemporary theory of perception and Wittgensteinian realism into the conversation. (shrink)

This study focuses on retraction notices from two major Latin American/caribbean indexing databases: SciELO and LILACS. SciELO includes open scientific journals published mostly in Latin America/the Caribbean, from which 10 % are also indexed by Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Journal of Citation Reports. LILACS has a similar geographical coverage and includes dissertations and conference/symposia proceedings, but it is limited to publications in the health sciences. A search for retraction notices was performed in these two databases using the keywords “retracted”, (...) “retraction” “withdrawal”, “withdrawn”, “removed” and “redress”. Documents were manually checked to identify those that actually referred to retractions, which were then analyzed and categorized according to the reasons alleged in the notices. Dates of publication/retraction and time to retraction were also recorded. Searching procedures were performed between June and December 2014. Thirty-one retraction notices were identified, fifteen of which were in JCR-indexed journals. “Plagiarism” was alleged in six retractions of this group. Among the non-JCR journals, retraction reasons were alleged in fourteen cases, twelve of which were attributed to “plagiarism”. The proportion of retracted articles for the SciELO database was approximately 0.005 %. The reasons alleged in retraction notices may be used as signposts to inform discussions in Latin America on plagiarism and research integrity. At the international level, these results suggest that the correction of the literature is becoming global and is not limited to mainstream international publications. (shrink)

Drawing on managerial discretion and conflicting institutional logics literature, this study investigates the relation between the personal sustainability behaviors of owner–managers and the corporate sustainability practices of SMEs. The research proposes a contingency model that assesses the moderating effects of perceived economic advantages and environmental hostility on this relationship. Based on linear hierarchical multiple regression analyses of a cross-sectoral sample of French SMEs, the results suggest a positive influence of the manager's PSB on the SME's CS practices that appears to (...) be differently moderated depending on the type of practice considered. The influence on environmental practices is fostered through the perception of economic advantages. The influence on workplace practices is only effective when the business environment is deemed benign and the influence on community practices is dampened by the perception of environmental hostility. Highlighting the trade-off between the manager's personal values and the SME's economic constraints, these findings contribute to a better understanding of the critical antecedents of sustainability in small businesses. (shrink)

We begin this article by delineating the explanatory gaps left by prevailing gene‐focused approaches in our understanding of phenotype determination, inheritance, and the origin of novel traits. We aim not to diminish the value of these approaches but to highlight where their implementation, despite best efforts, has encountered persistent limitations. We then discuss how each of these explanatory gaps can be addressed by expanding research foci to take into accountbiological agency—the capacity of living systems at various levels to participate in (...) their own development, maintenance, and function by regulating their structures and activities in response to conditions they encounter. Here we aim to define formally what agency and agents are and—just as importantly—what they are not, emphasizing that agency is an empirical property connoting neither intention nor consciousness. Lastly, we discuss how incorporating agency helps to bridge explanatory gaps left by conventional approaches, highlight scientific fields in which implicit agency approaches are already proving valuable, and assess the opportunities and challenges of more systematically incorporating biological agency into research programs. (shrink)

In recent years, the changing landscape for the conduct and assessment of research and of researchers has increased scrutiny of the reward systems of science. In this context, correcting the research record, including retractions, has gained attention and space in the publication system. One question is the possible influence of retractions on the careers of scientists. It might be assessed, for example, through citation patterns or productivity rates for authors who have had one or more retractions. This is an emerging (...) issue today, with growing discussions in the research community about impact. We have explored the influence of retractions on grant review criteria. Here, we present results of a qualitative study exploring the views of a group of six representatives of funding agencies from different countries and of a follow-up survey of 224 reviewers in the US. These reviewers have served on panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and/or a few other agencies. We collected their perceptions about the influence of self-correction of the literature and of retractions on grant decisions. Our results suggest that correcting the research record, for honest error or misconduct, is perceived as an important mechanism to strengthen the reliability of science, among most respondents. However, retractions and self-correcting the literature at large are not factors influencing grant review, and dealing with retractions in reviewing grants is an open question for funders. (shrink)

This article reviews al‐Ghazālī's conception of Divine Command Theory (DCT) in light of contemporary philosophical developments. There are two well‐known objections against DCT. These include the problem of arbitrariness (PoA), which states that God randomly chose our moral framework for no reason given His capability to choose any moral commands; and the problem of God's goodness (PoGG), which questions God's goodness if morality could be other than what it is. Modern defenders of DCT have attempted to counter these objections through (...) various strategies. This article juxtaposes al‐Ghazālī's interpretation of DCT with modern strategies to illustrate how these two issues are untroubling concerns in al‐Ghazālī's framework. In doing so, it highlights where and how they differ in their approaches. Additionally, it critiques interpretations suggested by some contemporary thinkers who suggest that al‐Ghazālī may not be a strict proponent of DCT. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity is the first full-length study of Beauvoir's political thinking. Best known as the author of The Second Sex, Beauvoir also wrote an array of other political and philosophical texts that together, constitute an original contribution to political theory and philosophy. Sonia Kruks here locates Beauvoir in her own intellectual and political context and demonstrates her continuing significance. Beauvoir still speaks, in a unique voice, to many pressing questions concerning politics: the values (...) and dangers of liberal humanism; how oppressed groups become complicit in their own oppression; how social identities are perpetuated; the limits to rationalism; and the place of emotions, such as the desire for revenge, in politics. In discussing such matters Kruks puts Beauvoir's ideas into conversation with those of many contemporary thinkers, including feminist and race theorists, as well as with historical figures in the liberal, Hegelian, and Marxist traditions. Beauvoir's political thinking emerges from her fundamental insights into the ambiguity of human existence. Combining phenomenological descriptions with structural analyses, she focuses on the tensions of human action as both free and constrained. To be human is to be a paradoxical being, at once capable of free choice and yet, because embodied, vulnerable to injury from others. Politics is thus a domain of complexly interwoven, multiple, human interactions that is rife with ambiguity, and where freedom and violence too often closely intertwine. Beauvoir accordingly argues that failure is a necessary part of political action. However, she also insists that, while acknowledging this, we should assume responsibility for the outcomes of what we do. (shrink)

This article critically addresses recent anthropological and feminist efforts to theorize and analyse Muslim women's participation in and support for the Islamic revival in its various manifestations. Drawing on ethnographic material from research on young Muslims engaged in Islamic youth and student-organizations in Norway, I investigate some of the challenges that researching religious subjectivities and practices pose to feminist theory. In particular, I deal with how to understand women's religious piety in relation to questions of self, agency and resistance. Engaging (...) with Saba Mahmood's work on The Politics of Piety, this article suggests ways of understanding the young women's religious engagement that move beyond the confines of a binary model of subordination and resistance, coercion and choice. Grounding the discussion in ethnographic analysis of how young Muslim women in Norway speak about the ‘self’, I argue that critically revisiting feminist notions of agency, autonomy and desire, is necessary in order to understand the kinds of self-realization that these women aspire to. However, the article argues against positing Muslim conceptions and techniques of the self as ‘the other’ of liberal-secular traditions. Rather, I show how configurations of personhood, ethics and self-realization drawn from Islamic and liberal-secular discursive formations inhabit not only the same cultural and historical space, but also shape individual subjectivities and modes of agency. (shrink)

The idea of the subject as a construct, of various external influences, was not new to the cultural and literary circles in the 1980s when DeLillo published White Noise. In the second half of the twentieth century, post-structuralist and postmodern theories unsettled the established ideas of the humanist tradition like the concept of the subject. The idea that the subject is constituted by external factors posed a challenge to the modernist notion of the subject as authentic and independent consciousness. Influenced (...) by post-structuralist and postmodern theories, novelists in post-war America, especially during and after the 1980s, portrayed their protagonists (the subjects) as textual constructs rather than authentic heroic figures we often find in modernists’ works of art. DeLillo engages with technological developments and sociocultural changes in post-war America and explores how such developments/changes influence an individual’s subjectivity. Critics have described Jack Gladney, the protagonist of White Noise, as a late-modernist displaced to negotiate the postmodern landscape. This study, which is purely of scholarly interest, attempts to show how Gladney vacillates between the notions of modernist authentic subject and the de-centred postmodern subject created textually. This article also attempts to explore how DeLillo’s fiction engages with the idea of the subject during the 1980s. (shrink)

Ethical decision making in medicine has recently seen calls to move towards less prescriptive- based approaches that consider the particularities of each case. The main alternative call from the literature is for better understanding of phronesis concepts applied to decision making. A well-cited phronesis-based approach is Kaldjian’s five-stage theoretical framework: goals, concrete circumstances, virtues, deliberation and motivation to act. We build on Kaldjian’s theory after using his framework to analyse data collected from a three-year empirical study of phronesis and the (...) medical community. The data are a set of narratives collected in response to asking a medical community what making ethically wise decisions means to them. We found that Kaldjian’s five concepts are present in the accounts to some extent but that one of the elements, motivation, is constructed as playing a different, though still crucial role. Rather than being an end-stage of the process as Kaldjian’s framework suggests, motivation was constructed as initiating the process and maintaining the momentum of taking a phronesis-based approach. The implications for medical ethics decision-making education are significant as motivation itself is a highly complex concept. We therefore theorise that motivation is required for leading in, continuing and completing the actions of the ethical decision taken. Appreciating the central importance of motivation through the whole of Kaldjian’s framework has implications for cultivating the virtues of phronesis and courage to take the right course of action. (shrink)

As religiosidades de matriz africana tem um importante papel na condução das práticas de saúde de seus devotos a partir de uma visão integral do corpo da pessoa que considera o ser humano em suas diferentes esferas, a espiritual, a social, a mental e a biológica. No candomblé, a cabeça, denominada de _Orí_, é entendida como a sede da individualidade do sujeito, possui um conteúdo espiritual, tem _status_ de divindade, e guia os filhos e filhas de santo em sua jornada (...) no Ayê. Se enfraquecida, ela pode trazer enfermidades, o que exige uma série de procedimentos rituais para o fortalecimento de _Orí_, como o _bori_, que se traduz no ritual de dar comida e bebida à cabeça, essencial para o restabelecimento da saúde espiritual ou física. A partir desse contexto, a pesquisa buscou compreender a importância de _Orí_ para o processo saúde-doença de pessoas filiadas ao candomblé, entrevistando sujeitos de diferentes terreiros. Os resultados apontam para a capacidade de _Orí_ em fortalecer o caráter das pessoas, seus valores e atitudes positivas diante da vida, como sendo fundamental para se fazer boas escolhas em prol da saúde, e evitar as enfermidades. Ter uma cabeça boa é ter uma saúde boa. (shrink)

The context-based use of terminology and phraseology is one of the essential building blocks of legal translation. The contextual nature of both components has implications when it comes to designing resources that are adapted to the needs of translators. For Arabic legal translation, there are a multitude of different print and online resources available, however, they do not integrate the context-related parameter for term choice acceptability. In this article, we will describe the main features of certain bilingual legal dictionaries with (...) the English-Arabic and French-Arabic language pairs. We will then make a descriptive assessment of the tools available online, highlighting their limitations. Taking into consideration all the contextual parameters involved in making a translation choice, we will put forward the value of developing bilingual ontologies with Arabic. With the rapid expansion of information technologies, a move towards formalizing legal knowledge will help fill existing gaps in the representation of Arabic legal content and the retrieval of information, providing legal translators with a tool that provides specific details that will enable translators to make informed and relevant decisions, in addition to opening new research perspectives for Arabic legal translation. (shrink)

Tacit knowing as a concept and legitimate topic of scholarship came up in philosophical research in the second half of the 20th century in the form of some influential works by Michael Polanyi (although similar concepts had been discussed before). Systematic epistemological studies on the topic are still scarce, however. In this article, I support the thesis that tacit knowing pervades all our common major divisions of knowledge and that it therefore must not be neglected in epistemological research. By this (...) approach I am simultaneously giving a systematic back-up for Polanyi's claim that the tacit component is found in all knowledge. (shrink)

With the question of the title of this paper, which recalls an issue that Valcárcel already asked herself in 1991, I reflect on the need to recover the struggle of feminism as a political struggle. To this end, I argue that feminism cannot be understood without the objective of trying to transform societies, without the aspiration to emancipation. Therefore, it will be urgent to be able to answer and resist the task of depoliticization that the neoliberal capitalist system administers until (...) it tries to convert feminism into another commodity. I propose to recover the collective subject of feminism, above the constant ontological and epistemological function that neoliberal politics applies, as the only way to aspire to that liberation and emancipation that we feminists long for. (shrink)

Eight years since the Spanish statute on gender violence (Ley 1/2004) has been passed, it is time to assess its implementation. This paper deals with the proof of acts that are typified under that heading. In particular, it focuses on three issues. Firstly, it questions the admissibility of accepting the victim testimony as sufficient evidence to outweigh the presumption of innocence in favour of the accused. Secondly, it analyzes whether the Spanish Supreme Court doctrine on evidence in cases of gender (...) violence allows inferring such admissibility, and whether this is applicable to every case or only to a certain type. Thirdly, it tries to identify the consequences that can be attached to that admission. (shrink)

Entre os desafios postos para as pesquisas em ciências humanas e sociais está a compreensão do cotidiano como espaço para a captura das formas de apropriação da realidade objetiva por parte dos sujeitos e, ao mesmo tempo, a identificação das respostas dos sujeitos diante das condições postas. Como categoria analítica, destacamos as reflexões de Lukács acerca da categoria alternativa, tomando-a como mediação entre teleologia e reflexo, no processo de objetivação da teleologia em causalidade posta.

Resumen: El corpus, siendo una herramienta eficaz, se está empleando en múltiples ámbitos, entre los que se encuentran los estudios de traducción. Sin embargo, dicho recurso no se utiliza con mucha frecuencia en las investigaciones traductológicas cuando una de las lenguas en cuestión es chino clásico (la lengua escrita empleada antiguamente en China), y autores que sí hacen estas investigaciones suelen no mencionar los pasos a seguir cuando se trata un corpus paralelo ad hoc. El objetivo del presente artículo es (...) presentar cómo se elabora un corpus paralelo chino clásico-español tomando como ejemplo la novela histórica Romance de los Tres Reinos y sus traducciones al español. Para ello, hemos descrito la problemática de creación y explotación de este tipo de corpus, siguiendo el orden de las fases del proceso. Resulta que algunas fases del proceso son universales, mientras que otras son propias de lenguas clásicas y de la combinación lingüística chino-otra lengua, en cuyo caso sí faltan aplicaciones eficaces. Con el trabajo, esperamos deparar información a los estudiosos que quieran realizar y profundizar las investigaciones basadas en corpus paralelo y en las obras clásicas de China. Abstract: The corpus, being an effective tool, is utilized in multiple fields. One of them is the Translation. However, this resource isn´t used frequently in translation studies when one of the languages in question is classical chinese (written language used anciently in China). And when it comes to an ad hoc parallel corpus, the steps of how to create it are usually omitted by researchers who make such investigations. The objective of this article is to present how to elaborate a classic Chinese-Spanish parallel corpus taking as example the historic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms and its two translations into Spanish. To reach the objective, we have described the problem of creation and exploitation of this type of corpus, following the order of the phases of the process. We’ve found that some of the phases are universal while other phases are unique for old languages and for the linguistic combination Chinese-other language. And in this latter case, there’s a lack of effective applications. With the current work, we hope to offer useful information to those scholars who are willing to carry out their own investigations based on self-built parallel corpus and at the same time related to the classic Chinese works. (shrink)

V tomto článku se zabývám konceptem SI (superinteligence) a s ní spojeným problémem kontroly. Podle určité skupiny teoretiků umělé inteligence stojíme na prahu události, která může radikálně změnit povahu technologického pokroku a lidské společnosti obecně. Touto událostí má být takzvaná technologická singularita, která je často spojována se vznikem první větší než lidské inteligence. Lidé jako Nick Bostrom varují před nebezpečím, které pro nás vznik SI znamená a upozorňují, že musíme co nejdříve najít metody kontroly této inteligence. Podle Bostroma a dalších (...) nebezpečí SI vyplývá z její povahy. Já na jedné straně posuzuji, jak SI může vzniknout, a na druhé straně soudím smysluplnost problému kontroly. Vznik SI vyplývá ze vzniku umělé inteligence. Proto soustřeďuji podstatnou část textu argumentům pro její vznik. Ukazují jak se Bostrom a další nechávají unést jedním problematickým argumentem. Dále podrobuji jejich pozici klasické kritice umělé inteligence. Prezentuji, jak stále lpí na problematických domněnkách svých předchůdců. Zejména soustřeďuji svoji kritiku na tvrzení, že SI bude mít jeden konečný cíl, který bude interpretovat. Toto tvrzení označuji jako antitetické, a to představě, že SI bude obecnou inteligencí. V závěru z mojí argumentace vyvozuji, že problém kontroly zaměňuje dva jiné různé problémy „kontroly.“. (shrink)

Despite the vast scholarship on Ibn Khaldun, little attention has been devoted to his views on war - views of considerable contemporary significance because he remains one of the few authoritative figures across a broad swath of the Islamic political spectrum. The first part of this article identifies jihad as a crucial element of a broader imperative for Ibn Khaldun: establishing empires of sufficient size, diversity and cosmopolitanism to sustain the kind of civilization he views as necessary for human excellence. (...) The second part of the article demonstrates that for Ibn Khaldun the good military commander, like the good religious guide, is a model for the good or artful statesman in general. In the process, Ibn Khaldun's study of war and empire emerges as one of the most innovative articulations of Realpolitik in Islamic political thought. (shrink)

This study reviews and synthesizes the contemporary business literature that focuses on the role of corporate social responsibility to enhance firm value. The main objective of this review is to proffer a precise understanding of what has already been investigated and the findings of those investigations regarding the value-enhancing capabilities of CSR for public firms. In addition, this review identifies gaps in the existing literature, evaluates inconsistent findings, discusses possible data sources for empirical researchers, and provides direction for exploring other (...) promising avenues in future studies. The thrust of the CSR literature largely acknowledges the value-enhancing capabilities of firms’ social and environmental activities. However, the predominance of inconsistent theoretical grounds in major CSR-benefits-related areas suggests that there is ample room for future research to contribute to the extant literature. Anecdotal evidence, the prevalence of theoretical arguments, and the availability of large cross-sectional firm-level data suggest that future research will enrich the literature by investigating the real insights behind several unanswered questions, by establishing implicit understandings regarding recognized findings, and by developing new theories in this emerging field. (shrink)

Heidegger has often been seen as having no moral philosophy and a political philosophy that can only support fascism. Sonia Sikka's book challenges this view, arguing instead that Heidegger should be considered a qualified moral realist, and that his insights on cultural identity and cross-cultural interaction are not invalidated by his support for Nazism. Sikka explores the ramifications of Heidegger's moral and political thought for topics including free will and responsibility, the status of humanity within the design of nature, (...) the relation between the individual and culture, the rights of peoples to political self-determination, the idea of race and the problem of racism, historical relativism, the subjectivity of values, and the nature of justice. Her discussion highlights aspects of Heidegger's thought that are still relevant for modern debates, while also addressing its limitations as reflected in his political affiliations and sympathies. (shrink)

Sonia Greger; Aesthetic Meaning, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 6, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 137–163, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.1972.tb0.

Like the French revolutionaries, Kant defended individual rights and a republican constitution. That he nonetheless rejected a right of revolution has puzzled scholars. In this article I give an overview of Kant’s rejection of a right of revolution, compare it to the German intellectual context, and use it to explain Kant’s view of the events in France. In Kant’s nuanced account of the revolution’s two central phases, he refined a distinction between legitimate political transition and lawless popular rebellion.

Courts are divided as to whether abortion informed consent mandates violate the First Amendment. This article argues that given the doctor's and patient's unique expertise, the patient's strong interests in autonomous decision making, and the fact that these laws regulate speech, rather than conduct, heighted or strict scrutiny should apply to such mandates.

The aim of this article is to describe and analyze the undergraduate Social Foundations course I taught at an urban, inclusive university that attempted to provide students with, among other things, a forum for them to develop both a self-confident personal voice and a view of self as potential change agent of schools. In brief, with what I term pedagogical scaffolding, including the use of key essential questions and double-entry journals, undergraduate students develop personal philosophy statements that are coherent, thoughtful, (...) and self-confident and that demonstrate a sense of personal efficacy in the context of urban public schooling. Excerpts from student papers serve as evidence demonstrating that over the course of the semester students became increasingly secure while responding to academic text, in formulating clear and strong positions on education issues and, perhaps most important, in their commitments and abilities to participate in the reform of urban schools for all children. (shrink)

An introduction to the political philosophy of Kant, exploring how he developed his views in a context shaped by controversies following the French revolution. It provides new information on his followers and critics as they engaged in high stakes political debates on freedom's relation to the state at this key turning point in history.

The COVID-19 outbreak has ravaged all societal domains, including education. Home confinement, school closures, and distance learning impacted students, teachers, and parents’ lives worldwide. In this study, we aimed to examine the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on Italian and Portuguese students’ academic motivation as well as investigate the possible buffering role of extracurricular activities. Following a retrospective pretest–posttest design, 567 parents reported on their children’s academic motivation and participation in extracurricular activities. We used a multi-group latent change score model to (...) compare Italian and Portuguese students’: pre-COVID mean motivation scores; rate of change in motivation; individual variation in the rate of change in motivation; and dependence of the rate of change on initial motivation scores. Estimates of latent change score models showed a decrease in students’ motivation both in Italy and in Portugal, although more pronounced in Italian students. Results also indicated that the decrease in students’ participation in extracurricular activities was associated with changes in academic motivation. Furthermore, students’ age was significantly associated with changes in motivation. No significant associations were found for students’ gender nor for parents’ education. This study provides an important contribution to the study of students’ academic motivation during home confinement, school closures, and distance learning as restrictive measures adopted to contain a worldwide health emergency. We contend that teachers need to adopt motivation-enhancing practices as means to prevent the decline in academic motivation during exceptional situations. (shrink)

Cárcel de árboles (1991) narra la historia del experimento que la doctora Pelcari realiza a un grupo de prisioneros en la selva guatemalteca, y por el cual somete a los hombres a cirugías cerebrales que los despojan de sus capacidades de hablar y pensar. En esta nouvelle, el cuerpo como texto, la escritura y la oralidad se instituyen en marcas de un lenguaje múltiple que pretende metaforizar la historia violenta de Guatemala. El objetivo es analizar y explicar el problema de (...) la representación de la violencia en la literatura en relación con estas múltiples formas del lenguaje presentes en la nouvelle. (shrink)

Due to the influence of Nathan Salmon’s views, endorsement of the “flexibility of origins” thesis is often thought to carry a commitment to the denial of S4. This paper rejects the existence of this commitment and examines how Peacocke’s theory of the modal may accommodate flexibility of origins without denying S4. One of the essential features of Peacocke’s account is the identification of the Principles of Possibility, which include the Modal Extension Principle (MEP), and a set of Constitutive Principles. Regarding (...) their modal status, Peacocke argues for the necessity of MEP, but leaves open the possibility that some of the Constitutive Principles be only contingently true. Here, I show that the contingency of the Constitutive Principles is inconsistent with the recursivity of MEP, and this makes the account validate S4. It is also shown that, compatibly with the necessity of the Constitutive Principles, the account can still accommodate intuitions about flexibility of origins. However, the account we end up with once those intuitions are consistently accommodated may not be satisfactory, and this opens up the debate about whether or not artefacts allow for some variation in their origins. (shrink)

Papers presented at the Seminar on Ethics and Aesthetics in Indian Literary Practices, held at Udaipur in Rajasthan, India in 2009; organized by Department of English, Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, India.