This paper clarifies why context-specific studies have scientific merit and provides recommendations to authors and journal stewards on how to develop them well. A context-specific study is a study in a unique setting yielding conclusions that can be considered to have limited generalizability to other settings. A firm’s industry—think of pharmaceuticals, video games, movies, platform markets, sharing economy—may represent an unambiguous example of a specific context. Unfortunately, the generalizability-specificity dilemma is often misunderstood. Generalizability is excessively heralded as the ideal, and (...) studies in specific contexts are too often denigrated, while both intrinsically can be valuable to the advancement of knowledge. The present paper aims to (1) provide a more nuanced system of beliefs for marketing scholarship to adopt in favor of specificity; (2) offer a helping hand to authors and editors when developing and publishing context-specific studies; (3) review successful examples from the prior literature; and (4) offer clear implications for scholars. (shrink)

A review of: Thomas I. White, Business Ethics: A Philosophical Reader (MacMillan Publishing Co./Maxwell MacMillan Canada, New York/Toronto, 1993), 867 pages.

Common-sense philosophers typically maintain that common-sense propositions have a certain kind of epistemic privilege that allows them to evade the threats of skepticism or radical revisionism. But why do they have this special privilege? In response to this question, the “Common-Sense Tradition” contains many different strands of arguments. In this paper, I will develop a strategy that combines two of these strands of arguments. First, the “Dynamic Argument” (or the “starting-point argument”), inspired by Thomas Reid and Charles S. Peirce (but (...) which will be strengthened with the help of Gilbert Harman’s epistemology of belief revision). Second, G.E. Moore’s “greater certainty argument” (interpreted along the lines of Soames’ and Pollock’s construal). This combined strategy, I will argue, is the strong core of Common-Sense Philosophy, and relies on extremely modest and widely held assumptions. (shrink)

This article, the first of a two-part essay, presents an account of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism that engages with recent work on neuroscience and philosophy of mind. I show that Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism is compatible with the new mechanist approach to neuroscience and psychology, but that it is incompatible with strong emergentism in the philosophy of mind. I begin with the basic claims of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism and focus on its understanding of psychological powers embodied in the nervous system. Next, I (...) introduce the new mechanist approach to neuroscience and psychology and illustrate how it can enrich the more abstract ontological framework of Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism. In the third section of this article I establish in detail the many ways Aristotelian hylomorphic animalism is incompatible with strong emergentism in the philosophy of mind. Based on these fundamental differences I show why a criticism leveled against emergentism by the new mechanist philosophy does not hamper my proposed rapprochement between hylomorphism and the new mechanist philosophy. This conclusion, however, leaves untouched the problem I address in the second article, namely, is the new mechanist philosophy compatible with Aristotelian philosophical anthropology’s contention that intellectual operations are immaterial and interact with the psychosomatic operations of the rational animal? (shrink)

I argue that Rawls’ reading of Kant has been a major influence on the work of some contemporary Kantian scholars. Rawls’ influence on the new Kantian moral theory can be recognized in several points: a) the conception of philosophy as a “deeply practical project”, which leads to the adoption of a first-person approach to ethics; b) the reception of Kant’s philosophy within a pragmatic context, which leads to play down the metaphysical implications of Kant’s dualisms, in favor of an interpretation (...) which seems plausible within a political culture given in advance c) a characteristic interpretation of Kant’s moral constructivism, which while stressing the primacy of the right over the good, tries to specify the ways in which the good plays a role in morals, thereby opening a way to show the relevance of the empirical in Kant’s ethics d) an approach to Kant’s practical reason which stresses the complementarities between the Hypothetical and the Categorical Imperative, interpreted in the light of Rawls’ distinction between the Rational and the Reasonable; e) the central role played by the concept of “rational nature” in the new Kantian moral theory, which may likewise be related to Rawls’ concern for clarifying the conception of the person behind his approach to practical reason. (shrink)

Aristotle’s metaphysics, ethics and psychology can help to interpret pedagogy from a “scientific” point of view. Naturally, it is not a question of considering the science of education as a natural science born during modernity; the main difference is that the object of pedagogy is actually a subject, i.e. the human being, notably the free human. That is why an ancient thinker like Aristotle can promote pedagogy through theoretical reflection. In fact Aristotle clearly indicates human goals which even nowadays can (...) guide human education and action. (shrink)

This article highlights certain recurring themes in Mariano Artigas’s works by examining a judicial decision made in the United States in 1982 concerning the teaching of “creation-science” alongside “evolution-science” in public schools. These themes include: the proper delimitation of the boundaries of science, the importance of philosophy as a bridge between science and religion, and the misunderstandings concerning the limits of science inherent in scientism.

This essay, written on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Mariano Artigas’s death, examines Artigas’s engagement with analytic philosophy in his philosophy of science. I argue that, overall, Artigas’s project in the philosophy of science is one of—using his own metaphor—‘building bridges’ between distinct areas of knowledge. After reviewing the function of Artigas’s philosophy of science as a bridge between science and philosophy, I analyse how he moved from classical to analytic philosophy. I then assess the extent to which (...) Artigas’s work conforms to reasonable analytic standards of clarity and precision, which can be expected from work in the philosophy of science. I conclude that, while Artigas’s dedication and production were admirable, his work remains essentially unfinished, thus inviting further research that should develop and clarify his conception of science, of its aims, its methods, progress, and of how science leads to knowledge. I attempt to assess Artigas’s philosophy of science from an objective and detached perspective. Thus the essay should be of interest to both scholars in the philosophy of science, as well as to those generally interested in Artigas-scholarship. (shrink)

The concept of human dignity lies at the heart of many national and international conventions of human rights. This idea, based on man's rationality, can be found already in Greco-Roman Antiquity, was fully developed in Christianity, in its synthesis with the Biblical conception of man as image of God. With the secularization of the European mind from the 18th century onwards, the justification of human dignity becomes problematic. This most influential attempt to justify it by secular rationality came from Kant, (...) who saw man’s dignity as deriving from his capacity for moral reasoning and from it came the notions of autonomy and equality. However, during the last two centuries, secularized cultures produced skeptical attitudes toward both the Judeo-Christian and Kantian concepts of the intrinsic dignity of man, which eventually paved the way for twentieth-century totalitarian-isms. After the horrors of Nazism, concerns about putting human rights in the centre of culture, politics and law compelled a search ―largely impossible― for a common idea of human dignity, shared by different philosophical traditions, both religious and secular. During the years after World War II, especially after the Second Vatican Council, there was a renewed discovery of human rights as based on human dignity by Catholicism, which, in view of the different reduc-tionist or destructive tendencies found in the secularized culture, perhaps is the most satisfactory approach. Finally, the problem of religious freedom is examined as a case study for further reflections on human dignity. (shrink)

I review Mariano Artigas’ appraisal of Evolution as reflected in some of his works. I find that his perception of evolutionary theory changed from a critical attitude, mainly directed against the modern synthesis of the twentieth century, to a more lenient approach as he incorporated new elements into his reflections. However, he did not fully appreciate some of the advances made in evolutionary biology in recent years. I provide some examples, taken from the field of evolutionary genomics, which shed new (...) light on why evolvability is a necessary property of living beings and how adaptation proceeds through the rewiring of modular gene regulatory networks, resulting in a remarkable degree of phenotypic plasticity. This view provides a richer understanding of two key elements of Artigas’ portrayal of the modern worldview: dynamism and patterning. (shrink)

In this paper I aim at explaining how analytic philosophical theology developed into a thriving field of research. In doing so, I place analytic philosophical theology into a larger intellectually narrative that is deeply influenced by the philosophy of Enlightenment. This larger framework shows that analytic philosophical theology aims at providing answers to concerns raised by a philosophical tradition that shaped fundamentally the making of our modern Western secular world.

My primary aims in this paper are to give an overview of a recent movement which goes by the name of ‘analytic theology’, to locate that movement within the larger context of contemporary philosophy of religion, and to identify some of the weakness or objections that analytic theology will need to address moving forward. While I think that some of these objections have merit, I also think that the promise of analytic theology’s contribution to theology more broadly is, in my (...) view, sufficiently robust that we should continue to engage in it as a theological enterprise. (shrink)

While the importance of Avicenna as a source of Aquinas’s thought is generally recognized, the details of that dependence are just now being worked out. This article presents Avicenna’s teaching on the “subjects” of the theoretical sciences—physics, mathematics, and metaphysics—as presented in his Introduction to the Book of Healing. Its influence on Aquinas’s commentary on Boethius’s De trinitate, q. 5, art. 1, is then presented. Comparing Avicenna with Thomas in this way shows the profound influence of Avicenna on Thomas’s understanding (...) of the range of the three kinds of theoretical sciences. (shrink)

In his Commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate 3.1, Aquinas cites Maimonides as giving five reasons for the need for faith. Yet interpreters tend to see Aquinas as “standing Maimonides on his head”. In this paper, the author places Maimonides’ text within the context of his rational mysticism and compares it to Aquinas’ own Christian mystical thought in an attempt to show that in his own mind Aquinas is not misquoting, reversing, or doing violence to Maimonides’ text; rather, Aquinas is completing (...) Maimonides’ natural, rational mysticism with what he understands to be the supernatural perfection of the theological virtue of faith. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to clarify the difference between deliberate action and spontaneous action, and see how Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume and Kant approach this topic.