This book presents a new transhistorical framework of defining production, work and consumption. It shows that they all share the common feature of intentional physical transformation of something external to the agent, at some point in time.

Social circumstances often impinge on later generations in a socio-economic manner, giving children an uneven start in life. Overfeeding and overeating might not be an exception. The pathways might be complex but one direct mechanism could be genomic imprinting and loss of imprinting. An intergenerational "feedforward" control loop has been proposed, that links grandparental nutrition with the grandchild's growth. The mechanism has been speculated to be a specific response, e.g. to their nutritional state, directly modifying the setting of the gametic (...) imprint on one or more genes. This study raises the question: Can overnutrition during a child's slow growth period trigger such direct mechanisms and partly determine mortality?Data were collected by following-up a cohort born in 1905 in Överkalix parish, northernmost Sweden. The probands were characterised by their parents' or grandparents' access to food during their own slow growth period. Availability of food in the area was defined by referring to historical data on harvests and food prices, records of local community meetings and general historical facts. (shrink)

I argue against abductivism about logic, which is the view that rational theory choice in logic happens by abduction. Abduction cannot serve as a neutral arbiter in many foundational disputes in logic because, in order to use abduction, one must first identify the relevant data. Which data one deems relevant depends on what I call one's conception of logic. One's conception of logic is, however, not independent of one's views regarding many of the foundational disputes that one may hope to (...) solve by abduction. (shrink)

I argue that the accounts of inference recently presented (in this journal) by Paul Boghossian, John Broome, and Crispin Wright are unsatisfactory. I proceed in two steps: First, in Sects. 1 and 2, I argue that we should not accept what Boghossian calls the “Taking Condition on inference” as a condition of adequacy for accounts of inference. I present a different condition of adequacy and argue that it is superior to the one offered by Boghossian. More precisely, I point out (...) that there is an analog of Moore’s Paradox for inference; and I suggest that explaining this phenomenon is a condition of adequacy for accounts of inference. Boghossian’s Taking Condition derives its plausibility from the fact that it apparently explains the analog of Moore’s Paradox. Second, in Sect. 3, I show that neither Boghossian’s, nor Broome’s, nor Wright’s account of inference meets my condition of adequacy. I distinguish two kinds of mistake one is likely to make if one does not focus on my condition of adequacy; and I argue that all three—Boghossian, Broome, and Wright—make at least one of these mistakes. (shrink)

The paper offers an account of inference. The account underwrites the idea that inference requires that the reasoner takes her premises to support her conclusion. I reject views according to which such ‘takings’ are intuitions or beliefs. I sketch an alternative view on which inferring consists in attaching what I call ‘inferential force’ to a structured collection of contents.

Nontransitive responses to the validity Curry paradox face a dilemma that was recently formulated by Barrio, Rosenblatt and Tajer. It seems that, in the nontransitive logic ST enriched with a validity predicate, either you cannot prove that all derivable metarules preserve validity, or you can prove that instances of Cut that are not admissible in the logic preserve validity. I respond on behalf of the nontransitive approach. The paper argues, first, that we should reject the detachment principle for naive validity. (...) Secondly, I show how to add a validity predicate to ST while avoiding the dilemma. (shrink)

I argue that recent attempts to show that meaning and content are not normative fail. The two most important arguments anti-normativists have presented are what I call the ‘argument from constitution’ and the ‘argument from guidance’. Both of these arguments suffer from the same basic problem: they overlook the possibility of focusing on assessability by norms, rather than compliance with norms or guidance by norms. Moreover, I argue that the anti-normativists arguments fail even if we ignore this basic problem. Thus, (...) we have not been given good reasons to think that normativism is false. (shrink)

According to McHugh and Way reasoning is a person-level attitude revision that is regulated by its constitutive aim of getting fitting attitudes. They claim that this account offers an explanation of what is wrong with reasoning in ways one believes to be bad and that this explanation is an alternative to an explanation that appeals to the so-called Taking Condition. I argue that their explanation is unsatisfying.

The paper presents a truth-maker semantics for Strict/Tolerant Logic (ST), which is the currently most popular logic among advocates of the non-transitive approach to paradoxes. Besides being interesting in itself, the truth-maker presentation of ST offers a new perspective on the recently discovered hierarchy of meta-inferences that, according to some, generalizes the idea behind ST. While fascinating from a mathematical perspective, there is no agreement on the philosophical significance of this hierarchy. I aim to show that there is no clear (...) philosophical significance of meta-inferences above the first level. (shrink)

Some think that logic concerns the “laws of truth”; others that logic concerns the “laws of thought.” This paper presents a way to reconcile both views by building a bridge between truth-maker theory, à la Fine, and normative bilateralism, à la Restall and Ripley. The paper suggests a novel way of understanding consequence in truth-maker theory and shows that this allows us to identify a common structure shared by truth-maker theory and normative bilateralism. We can thus transfer ideas from normative (...) bilateralism to truth-maker theory, such as non-transitive solutions to paradox, and vice versa, such as notions of factual equivalence and containment. (shrink)

The perhaps most important criticism of the nontransitive approach to semantic paradoxes is that it cannot truthfully express exactly which metarules preserve validity. I argue that this criticism overlooks that the admissibility of metarules cannot be expressed in any logic that allows us to formulate validity-Curry sentences and that is formulated in a classical metalanguage. Hence, the criticism applies to all approaches that do their metatheory in classical logic. If we do the metatheory of nontransitive logics in a nontransitive logic, (...) however, there is no reason to think that the argument behind the criticism goes through. In general, asking a logic to express its own admissible metarules may not be a good idea. (shrink)

I am presenting a sequent calculus that extends a nonmonotonic consequence relation over an atomic language to a logically complex language. The system is in line with two guiding philosophical ideas: (i) logical inferentialism and (ii) logical expressivism. The extension defined by the sequent rules is conservative. The conditional tracks the consequence relation and negation tracks incoherence. Besides the ordinary propositional connectives, the sequent calculus introduces a new kind of modal operator that marks implications that hold monotonically. Transitivity fails, but (...) for good reasons. Intuitionism and classical logic can easily be recovered from the system. (shrink)

This book presents a philosophical conception of logic -- "logical expressivism"-- according to which the role of logic is to make explicit reason relations, which are often neither monotonic nor transitive. It reveals new perspectives on inferential roles, sequent calculi, representation, truthmakers, and many extant logical theories.

Some philosophers have recently argued that there are no diachronic norms of epistemic rationality, that is, that there are no norms regarding how you should change your attitudes over time. I argue that this is wrong on the grounds that there are norms governing reasoning.

While we can judge and believe things by merely accepting testimony, we cannot make inferences by merely accepting testimony. A good theory of inference should explain this. The theories that are best suited to explain this fact seem to be theories that accept a so-called intuitional construal of Boghossian’s Taking Condition.

I argue that logic is unlike science in its methodology, thus rejecting anti-exceptionalism about logic. Logic has a mathematical and a philosophical part. In its mathematical part, the methodology of logic is like that of mathematics, and no need to choose between theories arises in that part. In its philosophical part, the methodology of logic is like that of philosophy. Philosophy and mathematics are both unlike the empirical sciences in their methodology. So logic is unlike the empirical sciences in its (...) methodology. I end by looking at disagreements about the liar paradox as an example. (shrink)

Moral disengagement was initially conceptualized as a process through which people reconstrue unethical behaviors, with the effect of deactivating self-sanctions and thereby clearing the way for ethical transgressions. Our article challenges how researchers now conceptualize moral disengagement. The current literature is overly liberal, in that it mixes two related but distinct constructs—process moral disengagement and the propensity to morally disengage—creating ambiguity in the findings. It is overly conservative, as it adopts a challengeable classification scheme of “four points in moral self-regulation” (...) and perpetuates defining moral disengagement via a set of eight psychological mechanisms, narrowing our understanding of the phenomenon. To address these problems, we propose to define process moral disengagement intensionally (specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for correct application of the term) as intrapsychic cognitive reasoning processes through which people selectively reconstrue a moral judgment “behavior B by actor A is morally wrong” and shift it toward becoming “behavior B is not morally wrong” or “actor A is not responsible for behavior B.” This definition achieves disambiguation and increased concept clarity. We leverage the definition to motivate a classification scheme for psychological mechanisms of moral disengagement along two dimensions—reconstruing morality and reconstruing agency—and to initiate an open inventory of psychological mechanisms that specify how process moral disengagement operates. (shrink)

Several cognitive accounts of human communication argue for a language-independent, prelinguistic basis of human communication and language. The current study provides evidence for the universality of a prelinguistic gestural basis for human communication. We used a standardized, semi-natural elicitation procedure in seven very different cultures around the world to test for the existence of preverbal pointing in infants and their caregivers. Results were that by 10–14 months of age, infants and their caregivers pointed in all cultures in the same basic (...) situation with similar frequencies and the same proto-typical morphology of the extended index finger. Infants’ pointing was best predicted by age and caregiver pointing, but not by cultural group. Further analyses revealed a strong relation between the temporal unfolding of caregivers’ and infants’ pointing events, uncovering a structure of early prelinguistic gestural conversation. Findings support the existence of a gestural, language-independent universal of human communication that forms a culturally shared, prelinguistic basis for diversified linguistic communication. (shrink)

Organizations routinely make choices when addressing conflicting stakes of their stakeholders. As stakeholder theory continues to mature, scholars continue to seek ways to make it more usable, yet proponents continue to debate its legitimacy. Various scholarly attempts to ground stakeholder theory have not narrowed down this debate. We draw from the work of Juergen Habermas to theoretically advance stakeholder theory, and to provide practical examples to illustrate our approach. Specifically, we apply Habermas’ language-pragmatic approach to extend stakeholder theory by advancing (...) seven sets of normative axioms. We conclude that a deliberative approach, with its focus on the conditions of legitimation and deliberative democracy, has the potential to become a cornerstone of stakeholder theory. The need for global stakeholder discourse and its internalization in corporate structures and institutions is exemplified by a multitude of CSR and stakeholder initiatives that have mushroomed in response to global risk scenarios such as climate change, nuclear warfare, or terrorism. Further research may help to build a functioning global governance system in order to provide guidance for management in the 21st century. (shrink)

The paper distinguishes two versions of the guise of the good in Anscombe’s Intention and raises some doubts about Francesco Orsi’s recent proposal for how these two versions hang together. While Orsi’s interpretation of the two versions are separately insightful and illuminating, Orsi’s “Anscombean argument” for connecting Anscombe’s two versions of the guise of the good is at odds with Anscombe’s own approach.

The paper argues for a version of the Guise of the Good thesis, namely the claim that if someone acts as the result of practical reasoning, then she takes her premises to jointly provide a sufficient and undefeated reason for her action. I argue for this by showing, first, that it is an application of Boghossian's Taking Condition on inference to practical reasoning and, second, that the motivations for the Taking Condition for theoretical reasoning carry over to practical reasoning. I (...) end by arguing that this version of the Guise of the Good withstands standard objections. (shrink)

The paper presents teleo-inferentialism, which is a novel meta-semantic theory that combines advantages of teleosemantics and normative inferentialism. Like normative inferentialism, teleo-inferentialism holds that contents are individuated by the norms that govern inferences in which they occur. This allows teleo-inferentialism to account for sophisticated concepts. Like teleosemantics, teleo-inferentialism explains conceptual norms in a naturalistically acceptable way by appeal to the broadly biological well-functioning of our innate capacities. As a test-case for teleo-inferentialism, I discuss how the view handles Kripkenstein-style meaning skepticism.

We sometimes violate social norms in order to express our views and to trigger public debates. Many extant accounts of social norms don’t give us any insight into this phenomenon. Drawing on Cristina Bicchieri’s work, I am putting forward an empirical hypothesis that helps us to understand such norm violations. The hypothesis says, roughly, that we often adhere to norms because we are systematically blind to norm-violating options. I argue that this hypothesis is independently plausible and has interesting consequences. It (...) implies, e.g., that some experimental paradigms for investigating social norms have hitherto unnoticed shortcomings. (shrink)

It is often assumed that neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics postulates an obligation to be a good human being and that it derives further obligations from this idea. The paper argues that this assumption is false, at least for Philippa Foot’s view. Our argument blocks a widespread objection to Foot’s view, and it shows how virtue ethics in general can neutralize such worries.

In this article, I argue that conventional reasoning on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is based on the assumption of a liberal market economy in the context of a nation state. I build on the study of Scherer and Palazzo (Acad Manage Rev 32(4):1096-1120, 2007), developing a number of criteria to identify elements of liberal philosophy in the ongoing CSR debate. I discuss their occurrence in the CSR literature in detail and reflect on the implications, taking into account the emerging political (...) reading of the firm. I conclude that the apolitical framework in the mainstream CSR literature has to be overcome since it does not reflect recent changes in the socio-economic conditions for economic actors in a globalizing world. (shrink)

The new paradigm in the psychology of reasoning draws on Bayesian formal frameworks, and some advocates of the new paradigm think of these formal frameworks as providing a computational-level theory of rational human inference. I argue that Bayesian theories should not be seen as providing a computational-level theory of rational human inference, where by “Bayesian theories” I mean theories that claim that all rational credal states are probabilistically coherent and that rational adjustments of degrees of belief in the light of (...) new evidence must be in accordance with some sort of conditionalization. The problems with the view I am criticizing can best be seen when we look at chains of inferences, rather than single-step inferences. Chains of inferences have been neglected almost entirely within the new paradigm. (shrink)

The extensive, profound and influential oeuvre of Charles Taylor has inspired generations of thinkers. But how can we explore such a body of work? As we try to show in this Special Issue: by understanding him literally and making use of his notion of moral maps – or, differently put, by ‘mapping’ Charles Taylor. As he is far too modest a person to reveal to us his own moral atlas, we have decided to seize the occasion of his 85th birthday (...) to ask several of his renowned colleagues, students and interlocutors to contribute to the reconstruction of such a map. This introduction develops three ‘mountain ridges’ in this cartography – a philosophical anthropology in spatial terms, the indispensable motif of dialogue, and the role of political life –, around which the following 24 illuminating appraisals are grouped. (shrink)

For semantic inferentialists, the basic semantic concept is validity. An inferentialist theory of meaning should offer an account of the meaning of "valid." If one tries to add a validity predicate to one's object language, however, one runs into problems like the v-Curry paradox. In previous work, I presented a validity predicate for a non-transitive logic that can adequately capture its own meta-inferences. Unfortunately, in that system, one cannot show of any inference that it is invalid. Here I extend the (...) system so that it can capture invalidities. (shrink)

Pragmatism is a humanist philosophy that tells an antifoundationalist and antirepresentationalist story of progress and emancipation. While most theoretical approaches since the 1960s have radically rejected the humanist legacy, in pragmatism a particular understanding of humanism has persisted. This persistence of humanism is of the utmost importance, since one can only grasp the unique contemporary significance of pragmatism when one appreciates how pragmatism, humanism, anti-authoritarianism, and postmetaphysics are interlinked, and how this link has gained in importance after the exhaustion of (...) antihumanist theories. This essay combines the endeavor to elucidate the idea of a pragmatist humanism with a discussion of the relationship between pragmatism and aesthetic form. The essay is divided into three parts. While the first part explains why pragmatism is a humanist philosophy, the second part discusses why most pragmatists have been unwilling to consider the significance of form. It develops the central idea that Dewey’s naturalist aesthetics does not offer a convincing conception of form. The final part advances the argument that a pragmatist humanism that refuses to historicize the concept of form and is reluctant to regard the act of form-giving as a kind of poetic agency weakens its own position. (shrink)

I var tid ar ambitionen att sa mycket verksamhet som mojlig skall vila pa vetenskaplig grund. Darmed utokas vetenskapens domaner, samtidigt som begreppet som sadant forflackas. Filosofen Karl Poppers syn pa vetenskapen ar mera subtil. Enligt honom kan vi ingenting veta med sakerhet, ingenting bevisa, endast falsifiera, det vill saga visa att nagot ar oforenligt med faktiska forhallanden. Det som undandrar sig falsifieringen kan vi acceptera tillsvidare. Ulf Persson provar i denna bok Poppers teori pa ett antal vetenskapsomraden, daribland ekonomi, (...) pedagogik och evolutionsbiologi. (shrink)

This is a response to a claim by Sven Ove Hansson to the effect that Poppers dictum that falsification lies at the heart of all pursuit of science has once and for all been falsified by his study of articles published in Nature during the year 2000. We claim that this is based on a misunderstanding of Poppers philosophy of science interpreting it too literally, and that alternative readings of those papers are fully compliant with falsification. We scrutinize Hansson’s arguments (...) as well as giving an overview of Poppers falsification theory. (shrink)

Pragmatist aesthetics has not yet reached its full potential. This is primarily due to the legacy of John Dewey’s aesthetics. In order to confront the shortcomings and insufficiencies of his aesthetics, pragmatist aestheticians ought to establish a dialogue with continental aesthetics. The attempt to clarify what pragmatist aesthetics can learn from Theodor W. Adorno’s materialist aesthetics is still a desideratum. This essay focuses on two aspects. First, it shows that pragmatist aestheticians can use Adorno’s modern aesthetics in order to gain (...) a deeper and more complex understanding of the social nature or register of form (of what might be termed “die Gesellschaftlichkeit der Form”). Second, the essay demonstrates that Adorno, in contrast to Dewey, is valuable for the endeavor to grasp the significance of the dialectics of harmony and dissonance or organicity and fragmentation when analyzing modern art and literature. (shrink)

The paper presents an exhaustive menu of nonmonotonic logics. The options are individuated in terms of the principles they reject. I locate, e.g., cumulative logics and relevance logics on this menu. I highlight some frequently neglected options, and I argue that these neglected options are particularly attractive for inferentialists.

The paper aims to clarify the role of the meaning of life in Anselm Müller’s philosophy. Müller says that the ethically good life is the life of acting well, and acting well requires at least a rough conception of the meaning of life, or a conception of what makes a life go well. But why is such a conception required and what does it mean to have such a conception? I argue that such a conception cannot provide us with ultimate (...) ends in our practical deliberations. Nor can its role be merely to provide a standard against which practical reasoning can be assessed. Rather, our conception of the meaning of life is, in the first instance, that which allows us, in our practical reasoning, to see certain considerations as good reasons for certain actions and to weigh reasons for and against different options. One upshot of my interpretation is that Müller should be more optimistic about philosophy’s ability to answer the question of the meaning of life than he allows himself to be. (shrink)

So-called optimists about moral testimony argue, against pessimists, that, ceteris paribus, we ought to accept and act in accordance with trustworthy, pure moral testimony. I argue that even if we grant this, we need to explain why moral testimony cannot make us more virtuous. I offer an explanation that appeals to the fact that we cannot share inferential abilities via testimony. This explanation is compatible with the core commitments of optimism, but it also allows us to see what is right (...) about pessimism. (shrink)

In this comprehensive interview with Charles Taylor, the focus is put on the conceptual level. Taylor reflects on the relationship between history, narrativity and social critique, between social imaginaries and social change, and between his own thought and that of Cambridge School history of ideas, Nietzschean genealogy, Frankfurt School critical theory, and agonistic approaches to the political. This interview not only captures the tremendous breadth and range of Taylor’s theoretical interests, it also vindicates his contention that the common thread of (...) his oeuvre is the attempt to work out a non-reductive, non-mechanistic, non-atomistic philosophical anthropology. Still, it offers new insights into Taylor's most recent thinking and his intellectual engagement with the challenges of our time. (shrink)

This paper deals with EMIL-S, a software tool box which was designed during the EMIL project for the simulation of processes during which norms emerged in an agent society. This tool box implements the cognitive architecture of normative agents which was designed during the EMIL project which is also discussed in other papers in this issue. This implementation is described in necessary detail, and two examples of its application to several different scenarios are given, namely a scenario in which persons (...) involved in micro finance are simulated and learn how to sanction free riders and how to learn from these sanctions, and a scenario in which simulated persons move through a simulated airport where they more often than not have to wait in queues and learn how to behave properly in queues. (shrink)

In substructural logics, structural principles may hold in some fragments of a consequence relation without holding globally. I look at this phenomenon in my preferred substructural logic, in which Weakening and Cut fail but which is supra-intuitionistic. I introduce object language operators that keep track of the admissibility of Weakening and of intuitionistic implications. I end with some ideas about local transitivity.

By the end of the Second World War the advancing allied forces discovered a new nerve gas in Germany. It was called Tabun. Codenamed GA, it was found to be extremely toxic. British experts were immediately dispatched to examine the agent. On arrival, they discovered that German scientists had also developed even more toxic nerve agents, including Sarin, known as GB. The first organized testing of Sarin on humans began in October 1951 at Porton Down in Wiltshire, Britain's biochemical warfare (...) establishment since the First World War. In February 1953, volunteer number 562 experienced the first recorded serious adverse reaction. Testing continued. Two months later, on April 27, six subjects were given 300 milligrams of Sarin. One of the volunteers, a man named Kelly, suffered serious ill effects, fell into a coma, but then recovered. Although asked by their superiors to reduce the amount tested to the “lowest range of dosage”—which would have been somewhere in the region of 10–15 milligrams—Porton's scientists continued their tests with a “lower” dosage, reducing it from 300 to 200 milligrams. (shrink)

Applying the sensemaking perspective in the field of corporate social responsibility is a recent but promising development. Using an in-depth exploratory case study, we analyze and discuss the CSR character of British American Tobacco Switzerland. Our findings indicate that BAT Switzerland does not follow traditional patters of building CSR. BAT Switzerland can be classified as a “legitimacy seeker,” characterized mainly by a relational identity orientation and legitimation strategies that might provide pragmatic and/or cognitive legitimacy. We conclude that understanding the cognitive (...) processes underlying the CSR decision-making process is of fundamental value when analyzing and changing the CSR approach of a firm. We discuss boundary conditions of the CSR character framework and expand it by differentiating between process and product legitimacy, as both perspectives have important but possibly different implications for the firm. (shrink)

In Kapitel 5 dieses Buches wurde mit dem ontologischen Sextett eine Klassifizierung der Realität vorgestellt, die das klassische Aristotelische Viereck erweitert, indem sie Einzeldinge und Universalien in insgesamt sechs Kategorien umfaßt. Zwischen den Entitäten dieser Kategorien sind bestimmte Beziehungen postuliert worden, wie zum Beispiel Inhärenz, Partizipation, Instantiierung, Exemplifizierung und Charakterisierung. In diesem Kapitel soil der Frage nachgegangen werden, wie eben diese Beziehungen zwischen den Entitäten dieser Kategorien genauer charakterisiert und die sie bezeichnenden relationalen Ausdrücke eindeutig formal definiert werden konnen.

In Chapter 8 of The Language Animal, Charles Taylor claims that narratives are unsubstitutable for an appropriate understanding of social life and ‘human affairs’ in general. In order to identify open questions in his argumentation as well as unwanted consequences of his outlook, I proceed in three consecutive steps. I first problematize Taylor’s distinction between laws and stories, then go on to address his intentional blurring of stories and histories, and finally suggest that the concept of genealogy might be a (...) promising candidate for describing Taylor’s approach, concluding that he implicitly forms the equation: narrative equals history equals critique. (shrink)