El presente texto tiene como objetivo exponer el concepto de “cultura básica”, fundamental en la fenomenología de Lester Em-bree. En la primera parte se expondrá el contexto biográfico de ese texto. En la segunda se abordará el primer avance que hace Lester Embree, para en la tercera centrarse en el artículo fundamental sobre el mismo. El núcleo del concepto está en relación con la diferencia que Lester Embree establece entre la experiencia y la posicionalidad de uso, valoración y creencia. (...) Estas son características o determinaciones culturales que constituyen el mundo humano, que por eso es siempre un mundo cultural. Esa cultura básica se da también, al menos, en algunos animales no humanos. Aunque se alude a puntos problemáticos de esa teoría, no se entra de lleno en esos problemas.The present paper aims to expose the concept of "basic culture", fundamental in Lester Embree’s phenomenology. In the first part the biographical context of that text is explained. In the second one, the first advance made by Lester Embree is described, and in the third one the fundamental article about it will be focused on. The core of the concept is in relation to the difference that Lester Embree establishes between experience and the positionality of use, valuation and belief. These are characteristics or cultural determinations that constitute the human world, which therefore is always a cultural world. This basic culture also occurs, at least, in some non-human animals. Although problematic points of that theory are alluded to, these problems are not fully developed. (shrink)

By examining corporate social responsibility and power within the context of the food supply chain, this paper illustrates how food retailers claim to address food waste while simultaneously setting standards that result in the large-scale rejection of edible food on cosmetic grounds. Specifically, this paper considers the powerful role of food retailers and how they may be considered to be legitimately engaging in socially responsible behaviors to lower food waste, yet implement practices that ultimately contribute to higher levels of food (...) waste elsewhere in the supply chain. Through interviews with key actors in the Australian fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain, we highlight the existence of a legitimacy gap in corporate social responsibility whereby undesirable behaviors are pushed elsewhere in the supply chain. It is argued that the structural power held by Australia’s retail duopoly means that supermarkets are able to claim virtuous and responsible behaviors, despite counter claims from within the fresh food industry that the food supermarkets’ private quality standards mean that fresh food is wasted. We argue that the supermarkets claim CSR kudos for reducing food waste at the expense of other supply chain actors who bear both the economic cost and the moral burden of waste, and that this is a consequence of supermarkets’ remarkable market power in Australia. (shrink)

Informed consent, a cornerstone of research ethics, ensures participant protection and informed participation, particularly in online settings. Despite its significance, engagement with online consent forms remains low, underscoring the need for improved presentation strategies. This study investigates the impact of interactive elements and diverse presentation formats on the comprehension and engagement of online informed consent documents among a broad demographic beyond the commonly studied student populations. Employing a between-subjects experimental design, we explored six versions of online consent forms varying in (...) interactivity, readability, and visual formatting to identify optimal strategies for enhancing participant comprehension and engagement. Our findings reveal that interactive formats significantly improve comprehension and perceived readability, highlighting the pivotal role of design in facilitating informed consent. The study also examines the influence of individual differences, such as self-efficacy and trust in science, on the effectiveness of consent forms, providing insights into the nuanced dynamics between participant characteristics and consent form engagement. These results advocate for integrating interactive elements and thoughtful design in consent forms to foster a more informed and engaged participant base. Implications for research ethics, best practices in consent form development, and future research directions are also discussed, emphasizing the need for ongoing innovation in the consent process to adapt to the evolving landscape of online research. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on research ethics by offering evidence-based recommendations for enhancing the informed consent process, ultimately promoting participant-centered research practices. (shrink)

Theorists seeking evidence of moral cognition – whether in human infants, nonhuman animals, or any other population – would benefit from a minimalistic description of what moral cognition is. However, such a definition has proven elusive. Some argue that debates over the existence (or not) of moral cognition in various populations turn on unresolvable semantic disagreement over how to characterize the moral domain. I acknowledge a semantic dimension to some disputes and identify another problem: Often, while sidestepping semantics, researchers rely (...) on logically circular operationalizations, defining moral cognition in terms of elements that are already implicitly understood to be features of moral cognition, while failing to answer the question of what makes these features, or their combination, uniquely moral. The present article proposes a single solution to both problems. The issue of semantics is addressed by the identification of a naturally emerging and distinctive cognitive modality that is necessary to all definitions of moral cognition. The problem of circularity is overcome by a reduction of moral cognition to elements that are, in themselves, nonmoral. I call this distinctive combination of nonmoral elements the “molecular” structure of moral cognition. (shrink)

This paper attempts to quantify the development of the key monetary values and changes in monetary trust that occurred during Roman times under ever-increasing prices. To track those developments, the paper introduces a minimal-parameter model that builds on available numismatic data relating to the Roman landmark coinages and on papyrological findings. The modelling produces a series of graphs which clearly signal the occurrence of a later crisis of confidence. It is argued that the monetary measures typically taken by the Roman (...) authorities actually fostered a crisis of confidence, and even made it inevitable. (shrink)

Black women and their babies matter. In this commentary, we explore the current challenges that Black women face when pregnant and what is needed to ensure an anti-racist approach to prenatal and p...

This book explores the dramatic evolution of a feminist movement that mobilised to challenge a women’s prison system in crisis. Through in-depth historical research conducted in the Australian state of Victoria that spans the 1980s and 1990s, the authors uncover how incarcerated women have worked productively with feminist activists and community coalitions to expose, critique and resist the conditions and harms of their confinement. Resisting Carceral Violence tells the story of how activists—through a combination of creative direct actions, reformist lobbying (...) and legal challenges—forged an anti-carceral feminist movement that traversed the prison walls. This powerful history provides vital lessons for service providers, social justice advocates and campaigners, academics and students concerned with the violence of incarceration. It calls for a willingness to look beyond the prison and instead embrace creative solutions to broader structural inequalities and social harm. (shrink)

Although workplace bullying is common and has universally harmful effects on employees’ outcomes, little is known about workplace bullies. To address this gap in knowledge, we draw from the tenets of social exchange and displaced aggression theories in order to develop and test a model of workplace bullying that incorporates the effects of employees’ individual differences, perceptions of their work environments, and perceptions of supervisory treatment on their tendencies to bully coworkers. The results of mediated moderation analyses that examine responses (...) from two samples of working adults support our hypotheses. Specifically, we find evidence of an indirect relationship between entitlement and coworker bullying through perceptions of abusive supervision that is stronger for employees who report lower levels of felt accountability than employees who report higher levels of felt accountability. This study makes important theoretical and practical contributions to abusive supervision research, bullying research, and organizational efforts to promote ethical work environments devoid of interpersonal mistreatment by providing novel insight into how employees’ entitlement and felt accountability combine to influence their tendencies to perceive themselves as victims of abusive supervision and culprits of coworker bullying. (shrink)

Martin Wrights original ground-breaking and influential analysis of the defects of the adversarial system of justice, plus the arguments in favour of a more ...

Bermúdez's “rational framing effects” are consequences of a counterintuitive phenomenon that I call “normative polyphony”: the reality that a single action may, with logical consistency, sustain diverse positive and negative judgments. I show that normative polyphony emerges from “ontological polyphony” – that is, diverse possible framings of relevant details – and illustrate this “polyphony principle” through a reading of Dostoevsky's (1993) Crime and Punishment.

[I]f you could know a priori that you are in a given mental state, and your being in that state conceptually or logically implies the existence of external objects, then you could know a priori that the external world exists. Since you obviously _can.

Heidegger in America explores the surprising legacy of his life and thought in the United States of America. As a critic of modern life, Heidegger often lamented the growing global influence of all things American. However, it was precisely in America where his thought inspired the work of generations of thinkers – not only philosophers but also theologians, architects, novelists, and even pundits. As a result, the reception and dissemination of Heidegger's philosophical writings transformed the intellectual and cultural history of (...) the United States at a time when American influence was itself transforming the world. A case study in the complex and sometimes contradictory process of transnational exchange, Heidegger in America recasts the scope and methods of contemporary intellectual and cultural history in the age of globalization, challenging what we think we know about Heidegger and American ideas simultaneously. (shrink)

The discussion of collective agency involves the reduction problem of the concept of a collective. Individualism and Cartesian internalism have long restricted orthodox theories and made them face the tension between an irreducible concept of a collective and ontological reductionism. Heterodox theories as functionalism and interpretationism reinterpret the concept of agency and accept it as realized on the level of a collective. In order to adequately explain social phenomena that have relations as their essence, in this paper we propose a (...) relational, holistic account of collective agency and argue that functionalism and interpretationism can be integrated into such an account. (shrink)

Residency training in the Netherlands is to be restructured over the coming years. To this end a general competence profile for medical specialists has been introduced. This profile is nearly the same as the Canadian CanMEDS 2000 model, which describes seven general areas of medical specialist competence, one of which is professionalism. In order to establish a training programme for residents and their instructors based on this competence, it is necessary to develop a vision that does justice to everyday medical (...) practice. The two most prevailing views of professionalism—as personal, or as a behavioural characteristic—fall short of this. Only when professionalism is understood as reflective professionalism does it encompass the fundamental contextuality of medical treatment. This means that the focus of training and assessment must be shifted to accountability for treatment. (shrink)

In this lively collection ten philosophers tackle the notoriously elusive issues raised by religious discourse in a series of linked debates. The debates focus on reason and faith; the logic of mysticism; the meaning of the word 'God'; language, biblical interpretation and worship; and religion and ethics. Through contemporary philosophical analysis it is possible to shed new light on teh status and language of religion, and in many ways the contributors to Religion and Philosophy break new ground in this perennially (...) controversial field. The collection is addressed to philosophers, theologians and anyone with a general intellectual interest in religion. Certainly it will be a valuable addition to the reading list of all teachers or students of the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

I defend a new reading of Spinoza's account of causation that reconciles the strengths of the mechanist and formal cause interpretations by locating instances of nature's fixed and unchanging laws inside individual natures; natures are efficacious because that's where the laws are. God's necessity, for instance, follows from certain logical principles contained within God's nature. Causes between finite particulars likewise stem entirely from finite natures. They do so, I argue, because finite instances of nature's fixed and unchanging laws are inscribed (...) within those natures. In each of these instances, effects follow from natures on account of laws contained within them. (shrink)

Moral luck is a puzzling aspect of our psychology: Why do we punish outcomes that were not intended (i.e. accidents)? Prevailing psychological accounts of moral luck characterize it as an accident or error, stemming either from a re‐evaluation of the agent's mental state or from negative affect aroused by the bad outcome itself. While these models have strong evidence in their favor, neither can account for the unique influence of accidental outcomes on punishment judgments, compared with other categories of moral (...) judgment. Why might punishment be particularly sensitive to moral luck? We suggest that such sensitivity is easily understood from the broader perspective of punishment's ultimate adaptive goal: Changing others’ behavior by exploiting their capacity to learn. This pedagogical perspective accounts for the exceptional influence of outcomes on punitive sentiments and makes predictions for additional moderators of punishment. We review evidence supporting the pedagogical hypothesis of punishment and discuss fruitful directions for future research. (shrink)

Based on a comparison of various sources, such as different editions, correspondence, reviews, and lecture transcripts, it is shown that Ludwig Heinrich Jakob’s Outline of the General Logic and Critical Elements of Metaphysics in General uses one or more transcripts of Kant’s Logic Lectures as a source. In addition to the thus far known texts by Kiesewetter and Hippel, Jakob’s textbook should therefore also be added to the list of secondary transmissions of Kant’s Logic Lectures.

How do people excluded from political life achieve political agency? Through a series of historical events that have been mostly overlooked by political theorists, Martin Breaugh identifies fleeting yet decisive instances of emancipation in which people took it upon themselves to become political subjects. Emerging during the Roman plebs's first secession in 494 BCE, the _plebeian experience_ consists of an underground or unexplored configuration of political strategies to obtain political freedom. The people reject domination through political praxis and concerted (...) action, therefore establishing an alternative form of power. Breaugh's study concludes in the nineteenth century and integrates ideas from sociology, philosophy, history, and political science. Organized around diverse case studies, his work undertakes exercises in political theory to show how concepts provide a different understanding of the meaning of historical events and our political present. _The Plebeian Experience_ describes a recurring phenomenon that clarifies struggles for emancipation throughout history, expanding research into the political agency of the many and shedding light on the richness of radical democratic struggles from ancient Rome to Occupy Wall Street and beyond. (shrink)

Spinoza revises his early Cartesian arguments for God in three important respects. By defining God in terms of conceptually distinct attributes, he has an argument for God’s actual possibility. By defining God in terms of conceptual independence, he has an argument for the mind independence of God’s nature. By including reason and power as features of God’s nature, he provides a mechanism by which God’s nature necessitates God. Each of these address important objections to Descartes’ ontological argument. Given his similarities (...) with Descartes and familiarity with these objections, Spinoza may have had Descartes’ critics in mind, and regardless, Cartesians may benefit by examining Spinoza’s ontological arguments more closely. (shrink)

The philosophical papers comprising this volume range from process metaphysics and theology, through the phenomenological study of intentionality, to the foundations of geometry and of the system of real numbers. New light, it is thought, is shed on all these topics, some of them being of the highest interest and under intensive investigation in contemporary philosophical discussion. Metaphysi cians, process theologians, semanticists, theorists of knowledge, phenomenologists, and philosophers of mathematics will thus find in this book, it is hoped, helpful materials (...) and methods. The categoreal scheme of Whitehead's Process and Reality is discussed rather fully from a logical point of view in the first paper [I] in the light of the author's previous work on the logico-metaphysical theory of events. The clarification that results is thought to provide a new depth and precision to the problem of interpreting one of the most difficult books in the recent history of metaphysics and cosmol ogy. A detailed examination of some aspects of Hartshorne's recent Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method is given in II. This book is perhaps the most significant work on process philosophy since Process and Reality itself, and its logical underpinnings thus merit a full critical discussion. (shrink)

As founder of modern political economics and prominent theorist of the commercial society, Adam Smith’s importance is universally recognized. Little, however, has been done so far to develop Adam Smith’s virtue ethics in the context of modern business, characterized by digitalization. This article aims to rediscover Adam Smith’s virtue of prudence and its relevance for the “e-commercial society”: It presents a framework that considers the central place of prudence in the relationship between a prosperous e-commercial system and societal flourishing. In (...) Smith’s view of the commercial society, prudence enables people to develop habits of character related to industriousness, genuineness, spirit of sacrifice, and self-command, which help in the conduct of a prosperous business activity. This article translates Smith’s virtue of prudence into a language typical of consumers in the current e-commerce scenario, considering their development as persons and the contribution of their activities to the good of society. (shrink)

Time and being.--Summary of a seminar on the lecture "Time and being."--The end of philosophy and the task of thinking.--My way to phenomenology.

These are the basis of lectures to philosophy students in universities, colleges and seminaries. The text has been revised repeatedly in use with students in different years of philosophical studies.

Heidegger hielt die unter dem Titel Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs angekundigte Vorlesung im Sommer-Semester 1925 in der Marburger Universitat. Er gelangte jedoch nicht mehr zur Ausfuhrung der zentralen Thematik. Der Themenkreis der Vorlesung ist mit der Nennung des Untertitels abgesteckt: Prolegomena zu einer Phanomenologie von Geschichte und Natur. Heideggers thematische Uberlegungen beginnen mit einer Kennzeichnung der Situation von Philosophie und Wissenschaft in der zweiten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts und stellen das seiner Deutung nach entscheidende Ereignis dieser Zeit heraus: den Durchbruch der (...) Phanomenologie als philosophische Forschung. Er untersucht ihre wesentlichen Entdeckungen, verteidigt sie gegen Missverstandnisse, um dann seinerseits Kritik vorzubringen, wo die Phanomenologie ihrer Forderung zu den Sachen selbst nicht gerecht wird. (shrink)

There are no moral cookbooks—no algorithms for whipping up moral confections to suit every occasion. But more modest and flexible tools might still be useful for practical ethics. One team describes how professionals can be taught to use a framework for understanding moral problems.