The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) offer a comprehensive framework for global sustainable development, embraced by both UN member states and multinational enterprises (MNEs). The SDGs take a holistic approach and emphasize the need to align public- and private-sector actions. However, understanding the effectiveness of the SDG framework in coordinating stakeholder actions remains a challenge. This study explores how MNEs engage with the SDGs as a function of their home countries’ SDG profiles. Leveraging institutional theory, we test competing mechanisms (...) by analyzing sustainability reports from 150 MNEs across 23 countries. Our results suggest that MNEs’ engagement with the SDGs aligns most closely with a “liability of origin” explanation, with firms showing greater SDG engagement when their home countries have lower progress on the SDGs. However, at the individual SDG level, the engagement patterns are more nuanced. Our findings have important implications for both theory and practice, providing insights into the complex dynamics that shape MNEs’ engagement with the SDGs and offering guidance for policymakers and businesses seeking to enhance their contributions to sustainable development. (shrink)

Volume 46, Issue 6, November 2020, Page 693-707.

What implications, if any, does evolutionary biology have for metaethics? Many believe that our evolutionary background supports a deflationary metaethics, providing a basis at least for debunking ethical realism. Some arguments for this conclusion appeal to claims about the etiology of the mental capacities we employ in ethical judgment, while others appeal to the etiology of the content of our moral beliefs. In both cases the debunkers’ claim is that the causal roles played by evolutionary factors raise deep epistemic problems (...) for realism: if ethical truths are objective or independent of our evaluative attitudes, as realists maintain, then we lose our justification for our ethical beliefs once we become aware of the evolutionary shaping of our ethical capacities or beliefs, which would not have disposed us reliably to track independent ethical truths; realism, they claim, thus saddles us with ethical skepticism. I distinguish and spell out various evolutionary debunking arguments along these lines and argue that they all fail: the capacity etiology argument fails to raise any special or serious problem for realism, and the content etiology arguments all rely on strong explanatory claims about our moral beliefs that are simply not supported by the science unless it is supplemented by philosophical claims that just beg the question against realism from the start. While the various debunking arguments do bring out some interesting commitments of ethical realism, and even raise some good challenges as realists develop positive moral epistemologies, they fall far short of their debunking ambitions. (shrink)

It no longer is true in a metaphorical sense only that a person can have a change of heart. We might grant this much — allow that a person may have one heart at one time and have another heart at still another time — and also resist the idea that a person can have a change of mind in anything other than a qualitative sense. In the discussion that follows, this standard view of the matter is called into question. (...) If the argument presented here is sound, it can happen both that one person has numerically different minds at different times and that different people have the same mind at different times. These possibilities, as I take them to be, call for reassessment of some well entrenched assumptions concerning personal identity and responsibility. In particular, they suggest that it may not be true that person A bears responsibility for making decisions person B previously made only on the condition that A is the same person as B. (shrink)

"Orginally published by: Leiden, NV: Koninklijke Brill, 1993.".

This paper begins with a summary of an argument for epiphenomenalism and a review of the author's previous work on the self-stultification objection to that view. The heart of the paper considers an objection to this previous work and provides a new response to it. Questions for this new response are considered and a view is developed in which knowledge of our own mentality is seen to differ from our knowledge of external things.

This volume is a comprehensive, up-to-date, and readable introduction to linguistic meaning. While partial to conceptual and typological approaches, the book also presents results from formal approaches. Throughout, the focus is on grammatical meaning -- the way languages delineate universal semantic space and encode it in grammatical form. Subjects covered by the author include: the domain of linguistic semantics and the basic tools, assumptions, and issues of semantic analysis; semantic properties of entities, events, and thematic roles; language and space; tense, (...) aspect, and the internal structure and temporal ordering of events; modality, negation, and the epistemology of the speaker; and modification and attribution. In contrast to most current treatments of semantics, this book is accessible to the beginning student of semantics and linguistics and also useful to the advanced practitioner. A textbook and reference work in a single volume, it can be used in a number of disciplines: psychology, computer science, and anthropology as well as linguistics. (shrink)

Rhetorical Structure Theory has enjoyed continuous attention since its origins in the 1980s. It has been applied, compared to other approaches, and also criticized in a number of areas in discourse analysis, theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computational linguistics. In this article, we review some of the discussions about the theory itself, especially addressing issues of the reliability of analyses and psychological validity, together with a discussion of the nature of text relations. We also propose areas for further research. A follow-up (...) article will discuss applications of the theory in various fields. (shrink)

The theory of corporations as moral persons was first advanced by Peter French some fifteen years ago. French persuasively argued that corporations, as persons, have moral responsibility in pretty much the same way that most human beings are said to have moral responsibility. One of the crucial features of French's argument has been his reliance on the idea that corporations are "intentional systems," that they have beliefs and desires just as humans do. But this feature of French's thought has been (...) left largely undeveloped. Applying some philosophical ideas of Daniel Dennett, this article provides support for French's contention that corporations are intentional actors by analyzing what is meant by the term "intentional system," and showing why corporations should be thought of as, in many important ways, indistinguishable from humans. (shrink)

The dispositional properties encountered in everyday experience seem to have causal bases in other properties, e.g., the microstructure of a vase is the causal basis of its fragility. In contrast, the Pure Dispositions Thesis maintains that some dispositions require no causal basis. This thesis faces the Problem of Being: without a causal basis, there appears to be no grounds for the existence of pure dispositions. This paper establishes criteria for evaluating the problem, critically examines four theories of the being of (...) pure dispositions, and develops an explanation of how a pure disposition grounds itself via its own power. (shrink)

This paper is a response to Christopher Boorse's recent defense of hisBiostatistical Theory (BST) of health and disease. Boorse maintains that hisconcept of theoretical health and disease reflects the ``consideredusage of pathologists.'' I argue that pathologists do not use ``disease'' inthe purely theoretical way that is required by the BST. Pathology does notdraw a sharp distinction between theoretical and practical aspects ofmedicine. Pathology does not even need a theoretical concept of disease. Itsfocus is not theoretical, but practical; pathology's goal is (...) to contribute tothe healing of patients. Pathology, even experimental pathology, is notvalue-free. Not only ``disease'' but also such terms as ``nerve'' and ``organ''are laden with conceptual values. (shrink)

Being and Time, by Martin Heidegger, has had a direct impact on philosophers, artists, writers, and filmmakers. This guide takes readers through the book, section by section, idea by idea. It provides a much-needed and jargon-free introduction to this key text.

Pantheists commonly wish to hold three distinct theses: that God is identical with the universe as a whole, that God is to be found altogether in each part of the universe, and that some features of the universe are more divine than others. However, it might well be complained that these constitute an incompatible set of requirements on any theory. After outlining the three positions in question, this paper considers how successfully the four main species of pantheist metaphysic — the (...) substance monist model, the microcosmic-macrocosmic model, the universal-expressivist model, and the Absolute Idealist model — are able to respond to the problem of their compatibility. (shrink)

Introduction: the Study of Argumentation Although our overall organization of the readings suggests one way of dividing our selected literature, ...

The origins of testing scientific models with statistical techniques go back to 18th century mathematics. However, the modern theory of statistical testing was primarily developed through the work of Sir R.A. Fisher, Jerzy Neyman, and Egon Pearson in the inter-war period. Some of Fisher's papers on testing were published in economics journals (Fisher, 1923, 1935) and exerted a notable influence on the discipline. The development of econometrics and the rise of quantitative economic models in the mid-20th century made statistical significance (...) testing a commonplace, albeit controversial tool within economics. -/- In the debate about significance testing, methodological controversies intertwine with epistemological issues and sociological developments. Our aim in this chapter is to expound these connections and to show how the use of, and the debate about, significance testing in economics differs from other social sciences, such as psychology. (shrink)

John Searle’s argument that social-scientific laws are impossible depends on a special open-ended feature of social kinds. We demonstrate that under a noncontentious understanding of bridging principles the so-called "counts-as" relation, found in the expression "X counts as Y in (context) C," provides a bridging principle for social kinds. If we are correct, not only are social-scientific laws possible, but the "counts as" relation might provide a more perspicuous formulation for candidate bridge principles.

The ability to predict the actions of other agents is vital for joint action tasks. Recent theory suggests that action prediction relies on an emulator system that permits observers to use information about their own motor dynamics to predict the actions of other agents. If this is the case, then predictions for self-generated actions should be more accurate than predictions for other-generated actions. We tested this hypothesis by employing a self/other synchronization paradigm where prediction accuracy for recording of self-generated movements (...) was compared with prediction accuracy for other-generated movements. As expected, predictions were more accurate when the observer’s movement dynamics matched the movement dynamics of the recording. This is consistent with that idea that the observer’s movement dynamics influence the predictions they generate. (shrink)

This essay treats Private Management and Public Policy not only as one of the key building blocks of theory in the business and society field, but as a work of theoretical social science in the structural-functional tradition. As a work in the "s-f" tradition, it shares the weaknesses inherent in that mode of theorizing and introduces some of its own in the attempt to translate structural-functionalism into terms relevant for management. These problems are discussed in the context of detailed analysis (...) of the work's theoretical structure. (shrink)

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Responds to the article by Brad Brown and Susan Perry in the August 1995 issue of `Business & Society' periodical on the measure of corporate social responsibility (CSP).

This paper analyzes recent work in psychology on the nature of the representation of complex forms of knowledge with the goal of understanding how theories are represented. The analysis suggests that, as a psychological form of representation, theories are mental structures that include theoretical entities (usually nonobservable), relationships among the theoretical entities, and relationships of the theoretical entities to the phenomena of some domain. A theory explains the phenomena in its domain by providing a conceptual framework for the phenomena that (...) leads to a feeling of understanding in the reader/hearer. The explanatory conceptual framework goes beyond the original phenomena, integrates diverse aspects of the world, and shows how the original phenomena follow from the framework. This analysis is used to argue that mental models are the subclass of theories that use causal/mechanical explanatory frameworks. In addition, an argument is made for a new psychologism in the philosophy of science, in which the mental representation of scientific theories must be taken into account. (shrink)

Calhoun, W.C., Incomparable prime ideals of recursively enumerable degrees, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 63 39–56. We show that there is a countably infinite antichain of prime ideals of recursively enumerable degrees. This solves a generalized form of Post's problem.