We study logical systems for reasoning about equations involving recursive definitions. In particular, we are interested in "propositional" fragments of the functional language of recursion FLR [18, 17], i.e., without the value passing or abstraction allowed in FLR. The "pure," propositional fragment FLR 0 turns out to coincide with the iteration theories of [1]. Our main focus here concerns the sharp contrast between the simple class of valid identities and the very complex consequence relation over several natural classes of models.

152 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:1 JANUARY 1996 knowing." Absolute knowing is "the human community's coming to a reflective nonmetaphysical understanding of what it must take as authoritative grounds for belief and action..." . Since this involves us in a continuous dialectic, dialectic "does not end in absolute knowing; it begins the task of renewing itself" . From Hegel we get "a new paradigm for philosophy..." . The final chapter offers an account of the Philosophy of Right, and (...) takes up the question of the nature of the institutionalized structure of our modern social space. This account focuses on the ambiguity of "rights" and of "autonomy" and the conflicts that these ambiguities foster. Pinkard offers a penetrating and useful analysis of our modern social and political existence. Pinkard's treatment of the relativist questions arising from such a historicist posi- tion deserves our attention. The book also offers a very clear statement of a "nonmetaphysicar' perspective on Hegel. Finally, if Hegelian philosophy is "open" as Pinkard argues, then the relevance of Hegel for our present human condition is unquestionable; for we have our own social space to examine, a social space that has developed since Hegel. The dialectic, as Pinkard understands it to work -- that is, very differently from the mystified, metaphysicalized, dogmatic understanding the text- book versions have given us -- is our most powerful tool in coming to.. (shrink)

This fascinating study offers a complete interpretation of the philosophies of both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. It finds in Nietzsche's philosophy an expression of the scepticism and relativism of the modern world to which he gave the name «nihilism.» If Nietzsche's conclusion that «there is no truth» poses the basic problematic of modernity, Professor Martin understands Wittgenstein's philosophy as addressing, in a radically new way, the overcoming of this nihilism. Martin offers a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's life work as focusing on (...) «the groundlessness of the human situation» and as restoring «truth» to its legitimate place within the conventions of language. The final chapter explores the spiritual implications for modern man of seeing clearly «the limits» of human language. (shrink)

152 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:1 JANUARY 1996 knowing." Absolute knowing is "the human community's coming to a reflective nonmetaphysical understanding of what it must take as authoritative grounds for belief and action...". Since this involves us in a continuous dialectic, dialectic "does not end in absolute knowing; it begins the task of renewing itself". From Hegel we get "a new paradigm for philosophy...". The final chapter offers an account of the Philosophy of Right, and takes up the (...) question of the nature of the institutionalized structure of our modern social space. This account focuses on the ambiguity of "rights" and of "autonomy" and the conflicts that these ambiguities foster. Pinkard offers a penetrating and useful analysis of our modern social and political existence. Pinkard's treatment of the relativist questions arising from such a historicist posi- tion deserves our attention. The book also offers a very clear statement of a "nonmetaphysicar' perspective on Hegel. Finally, if Hegelian philosophy is "open" as Pinkard argues, then the relevance of Hegel for our present human condition is unquestionable; for we have our own social space to examine, a social space that has developed since Hegel. The dialectic, as Pinkard understands it to work -- that is, very differently from the mystified, metaphysicalized, dogmatic understanding the text- book versions have given us -- is our most powerful tool in coming to... (shrink)

Nishitani was a Japanese student attending Heidegger's Freiburg lectures on Nietzsche's nihilism in the late 1930s. As a young thinker he absorbed western philosophy and literature, focusing especially on the growing tide of nineteenth- and twentieth-century voices expressing the collapse of traditional Western values and the advent of nihilism. Recognizing that the phenomenon of nihilism encompasses our human situation in a way that transcends any particular cultural tradition, the self-overcoming of nihilism became fundamental to his lifetime philosophical project. A progressively (...) deepening understanding of the role of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition in comprehending the possibility of a breakthrough beyond nihilism culminated in the 1961 publication of what may be Nishitani's magnum opus: Religion and Nothingness. (shrink)

Significant research attention has been devoted to understanding the ethical behavior of leaders (i.e., the moral person) and how leaders’ expectations influence their followers’ ethical behavior (...

David Hamilton is a leader in the American institutionalist school of heterodox economics that emerged after WWII. This volume includes 25 articles written by Hamilton over a period of nearly half a century. In these articles he examines the philosophical foundations and practical problems of economics. The result of this is a unique institutionalist view of how economies evolve and how economics itself has evolved with them. Hamilton applies insight gained from his study of culture to send the message that (...) human actions situated in culture determine our economic situation. David Hamilton has advanced heterodox economics by replacing intellectual concepts from orthodox economics that hinder us with concepts that help us. In particular, Hamilton has helped replace equilibrium with evolution, make-believe with reality, ideological distortion of government with practical use of government, the economy as a product of natural law with the economy as a product of human law and, last, he has helped us replace the entrepreneur as a hero with the entrepreneur as a real person. These articles provide an alternative to the self-adjusting market. They provide an explanation of how the interaction of cultural patterns and technology determine the evolutionary path of the economic development of a nation. This is not a simple materialist depiction of economic history as some Marxists have advocated, instead Hamilton treats technology and culture as endogenous forces, embedded and inseparable from each other and therefore, economic development. This volume will be of most interest and value to professional economists and graduate students who are looking for an in-depth explanation of the origins and significance of institutional economics. (shrink)

We study logical systems for reasoning about equations involving recursive definitions. In particular, we are interested in "propositional" fragments of the functional language of recursion FLR [18, 17], i.e., without the value passing or abstraction allowed in FLR. The "pure," propositional fragment FLR$_0$ turns out to coincide with the iteration theories of [1]. Our main focus here concerns the sharp contrast between the simple class of valid identities and the very complex consequence relation over several natural classes of models.

Late in 1990, the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology (lIT) received a grant of more than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical curriculum.! Enough has now been accomplished to draw some tentative conclusions. I am the grant's principal investigator. In this paper, I shall describe what we at lIT did, what we learned, and what others, especially philosophers, can learn (...) from us. We set out to develop an approach that others could profitably adopt. I believe that we succeeded. (shrink)

Ambition is a curiously neglected topic in ethics. It isn’t that philosophers have not discussed it. Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Harrington, Locke, Rousseau, Smith, Santayana and a number of others have discussed ambition. But it has seldom received more than a few paragraphs worth of analysis, in spite of the fact that ambition plays a central role in Western politics (one cannot be elected without it), and in spite of the fact that Machiavelli, Harrington, Locke and Rousseau each considered (...) it to be among the greatest threats to political security. The aim of this paper is to provide a long overdue analysis of ambition. The first part of the paper explores what ambition is. The second seeks to answer the question, “Is ambition a virtue or a vice?”. (shrink)

McBride, Glen Culture' and 'society' are words we use very loosely. We can find their exact meaning in dictionaries but usually don't, as the context of our sentences provides the information we need in our conversations. We know our societies are the huge group of people living in our city or nation. Our culture is the large range of behaviour we have learned in our society. It includes our food preferences, ways of dressing, our ceremonies for weddings and births (...) and the laws that structure our world, everything that we know from growing up in our family and society. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether search engines and other new modes of online communication should be covered by free speech principles. It criticizes the analogical reason-ing that contemporary American courts and scholars have used to liken search engines to newspapers, and to extend free speech coverage to them based on that likeness. There are dissimilarities between search engines and newspapers that undermine the key analogy, and also rival analogies that can be drawn which don’t recommend free speech protection for search engines. (...) Partly on these bases, we argue that an analogical approach to questions of free speech coverage is of limited use in this context. Credible verdicts about how free speech principles should apply to new modes of online com-munication require us to re-excavate the normative foundations of free speech. This method for deciding free speech coverage suggests that only a subset of search engine outputs and similar online communication should receive special protection against government regulation. (shrink)

Physicians make some medical decisions without disclosure to their patients. Nondisclosure is possible because these are silent decisions to refrain from screening, diagnostic or therapeutic interventions. Nondisclosure is ethically permissible when the usual presumption that the patient should be involved in decisions is defeated by considerations of clinical utility or patient emotional and physical well-being. Some silent decisions—not all—are ethically justified by this standard. Justified silent decisions are typically dependent on the physician's professional judgment, experience and knowledge, and are not (...) likely to be changed by patient preferences. We condemn the inappropriate exclusion of the patient from the decision-making process. However, if a test or treatment is unlikely to yield a net benefit, disclosure and discussion are at times unnecessary. Appropriate silent decisions are ethically justified by such considerations as patient benefit or economy of time. (shrink)

BackgroundSocial networking sites (SNSs) have penetrated all aspects of health care professionals’ (HCPs’) professional and private lives. A new term, e-professionalism, has emerged, which describes the linking of traditional values with this new dynamic online environment for HCPs. The four aims of this study were: (1) to examine their SNS prevalence and usage habits, (2) to examine their perception of e-professionalism, (3) to develop an e-professionalism assessment compatibility index and (4) to investigate their tendencies and differences in values of the (...) e-professionalism assessment compatibility index (ePACI).MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted among MDs and DMDs in Croatia via email using a questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed to all MDs and DMDs who were members of their respective chambers. In addition to descriptive statistics, Chi-square or Fisher’s exact test when appropriate, t-test, ANOVA and Mann–Whitney U tests were used to determine differences between groups. A principal component analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation was used to investigate dimensionality. Results of the PCA were compared to the coding based on the Social Media e-Professionalism rubric in order to create the ePACI.ResultsOf the 1013 gathered responses, 753 were from valid SNS users and suitable for further analysis. Facebook (91.6%) and Instagram (63.1%) were the predominant SNSs used. Both groups have a good understanding of e-professionalism. The newly developed ePACI deviates slightly in the “conservative” direction in the cases of both, MDs (t506 = 19.033, p < 0.001) and DMDs (t245 = 12.991, p < 0.001). HCPs who are older (r = 0.308, p < 0.001), who have fewer SNS profiles (rs = −0.142, p < 0.001), and who access their profiles less frequently (r = −0.166, p < 0.001) have statistically significantly more conservative ePACI values.ConclusionsMDs and DMDs in Croatia are frequent SNS users, with Facebook and Instagram being the main SNSs used. Both groups have a good understanding of e-professionalism. The newly developed ePACI deviates slightly towards the conservative side regarding perception of the e-professionalism content for both groups. The development of the ePACI, and its subsequent usage in further research, will have a direct influence in its validation, gathering comparable data, and be able to direct efforts in oversight, regulation and education. (shrink)

A cross-sectional study to ascertain what the Singapore population would regard as material risk in the anaesthesia consent-taking process and identify demographic factors that predict patient preferences in medical decision-making to tailor a more patient-centered informed consent. A survey was performed involving patients 21 years old and above who attended the pre-operative evaluation clinic over a 1-month period in Singapore General Hospital. Questionnaires were administered to assess patients’ perception of material risks, by trained interviewers. Patients’ demographics were obtained. Mann–Whitney (...) U test and Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance was used. Statistical significance was taken at p < 0.05. Four hundred fourteen patients were eligible of which 26 refused to participate and 24 were excluded due to language barrier. 364 patients were recruited. A higher level of education, being employed and younger age group are factors identified in patients who wanted greater participation in medical decisions. Gender, marital status, type of surgery, and previous surgical history did not affect their level of participation. The complications most patients knew about were Nausea, Drowsiness and Surgical Wound Pain. Patients ranked Heart Attack, Death and Stroke as the most significant risks that they wanted to be informed about in greater detail. Most patients wanted to make a joint decision with the anaesthetist, instead of letting the doctor decide or deciding for themselves. Discussion with the anaesthetist is the preferred medium of communication compared to reading a pamphlet or watching a video. Age and educational level can influence medical decision-making. Despite the digital age, most patients still prefer a clinic consult instead of audio-visual multimedia for pre-operative anaesthetic counselling. The local population appears to place greater importance on rare but serious complications compared to common complications. This illustrates the need to contextualize information provided during informed consent to strengthen the doctor-patient relationship. (shrink)

Small family businesses have generally been shown to exhibit significant concern for social responsibility, especially at the community level. Despite the reported heterogeneity of family firms in their preferences for and participation in social responsibility, the drivers of such differences are not agreed upon in the literature. We draw from enlightened self-interest and social capital theories by exploring their complementary and competing implications for the effect of duration and community satisfaction on participation in community-oriented social responsibility. Additionally, drawing on the (...) association between gender and self-construal and evidence that gender shapes helping and giving behaviors, we assess the moderating role of the gender of the firm manager in these relationships. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 279 family businesses and find support that gender moderates the relationship between community duration and satisfaction and measures of CSR. (shrink)

This paper examines an ancient debate over the rationality of perception. What leads the Stoics to affirm, and the Epicureans to deny, that to form a sense-impression is an activity of reason? The answer, we argue, lies in a disagreement over what is required for epistemic success. For the Stoics, epistemic success consists in believing the right propositions, and only rational states, in virtue of their predicational structure, put us in touch with propositions. Since they identify some sense-impressions as criteria (...) of truth and thus as the basis for epistemic success, the Stoics maintain that sense-impressions must be rational. The Epicureans agree with the Stoics that sense-impressions function as criteria of truth, and also agree broadly on what it means for a state to be rational, but deny that sense-impressions are rational because (1) they think that epistemic success must be supported by a state that is necessarily error-free and (2) accept that rational states can be false. In reconstructing this debate, we refine the standard interpretation of the fundamental difference between Epicurean and Stoic epistemology and also develop parallels with epistemological debates today. One upshot is a more nuanced appreciation of the merits of Epicurean epistemology vis-à-vis the Stoics. (shrink)

did plato and aristotle have anything to say about belief? The answer to this question might seem blindingly obvious: of course they did. Plato distinguishes belief from knowledge in the Meno, Republic, and Theaetetus, and Aristotle does so in the Posterior Analytics. Plato distinguishes belief from perception in the Theaetetus, and Aristotle does so in the De anima. They talk about the distinction between true and false beliefs, and the ways in which belief can mislead and the ways in which (...) it can steer us aright. Indeed, they make belief a central component of their epistemologies.The view underlying these claims—one so widespread these days as to remain largely unquestioned—is that when Plato and Aristotle talk... (shrink)

Although corporate social responsibility appears to be mutually beneficial for companies and consumers, the modern marketplace has left both parties in vulnerable positions. Consumers are increasingly subjected to incongruent CSR messages such as greenwashing, while companies are trapped in a strategic positioning dilemma with regard to how to most effectively and ethically approach CSR communication. This has led some companies to instead adopt a strategically silent approach, such as greenhushing. To capture this CSR positioning dilemma and test the positioning effects (...) on consumers’ attributions, this study applies attribution theory to conceptualize four distinct CSR positions which reflect varying combinations of congruence or incongruence between a company’s external CSR communication and its actual internal CSR actions. Using an online experiment, the effects of the CSR positions on consumer attributions for intrinsic and extrinsic CSR motivations and purchase intentions were tested across three CSR domains: environmental; labor; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender inclusion. Overall, the findings attest to the significant effect of internal–external congruence-based CSR positioning on how consumers respond to CSR communication. Importantly, the results indicate that discreet positioning is perceived similarly to uniform positioning, while misleading and unethical tactics such as CSR-washing are sure to backfire. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. (shrink)

Abstract In 2006, the Turkish Harun Yahya Enterprise published and distributed thousands of copies of its anti‐evolutionary text Atlas of Creation to educational institutes in the West. Although this was little more than a publicity stunt, it resulted in Harun Yahya becoming a mainstay in discussions about creationism in Europe. Although Yahya is often presented as the “go to” representative of European Muslim perceptions of evolution, one would be hard pressed to find the literature about Islamic creationism in Europe that (...) does not engage in a discussion of Harun Yahya. However, little evidence exists to support the notion that Harun Yahya warrants such extensive attention, or that Harun Yahya has a substantive influence among European Muslims. This article will explore existing claims about the popularity of Harun Yahya, before drawing on recent research into Muslim perceptions of evolution to argue that Harun Yahya is relatively unknown among Muslims, at least in the British context, and is not influential even among those who are familiar with his work. (shrink)

At the end of the Meno, the character Socrates claims that true doxa is distinguished from epistēmē by a working out of the explanation. This chapter argues that working out the explanation consists, for Socrates, in seeing how the fact to be explained is grounded in facts about the natures of the relevant fundamental entities of the domain to which it belongs. It reconstructs the resulting conception of epistēmē. Once that reconstruction is complete, it argues that notions of epistemic justification (...) are out of place in interpreting the Meno. It then appeals to recent work in epistemology to settle the long-standing question of whether Socrates' account of epistēmē is better interpreted as an account of knowledge or as an account of understanding, arguing that it is more charitably taken in the latter way. Moreover, the chapter notes that Socrates' account of epistēmē provides insights that any philosopher interested in the nature of understanding should take seriously. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:I here advance a critical research agenda for the political perspective of corporate social responsibility (Political CSR). I argue that whilst the ‘Political’ CSR literature is notable for both its conceptual novelty and practical importance, its development has been hamstrung by four ambiguities, conflations and/or oversights. More positively, I argue that ‘Political’ CSR should be conceived as one potentialformof globalization, and not as aconsequenceof ‘globalization’; that contemporary Western MNCs should be presumed to engage in CSR for instrumental reasons; that ‘Political’ (...) CSR should be associated with a corresponding ‘political’ model of corporate governance; and that both a ‘Rawlsian’ and ‘Habermasian’ perspective of Political CSR are different from ‘Political’ CSR. In concluding, I use these four critiques to identify a number of areas within which increasingly robust and sophisticated positive and normative theories of Political CSR are required. (shrink)

Industrial emissions of greenhouse gases are significant contributors to climate change, which poses a grave threat to social and economic systems. Our understanding of what might drive firms to reduce their emissions of these gases, however, is incomplete, and it is not clear that the knowledge gained from other environmental issues will readily apply to these emissions. We argue and find that indicators of environmental injustice previously shown to relate to toxic pollutants, for example, are poor predictors of greenhouse gas (...) emissions. Instead, we show that the degree of belief in and concern about climate change in a local community is a significant predictor of the facility’s rate of emission improvements. Furthermore, we find that beliefs at both the facility and headquarter communities influence emission reduction, and that those effects are substitutes for each other. (shrink)

Cet article relève une impasse qui apparaît quand les travaux récents sur la suspension du jugement sont intégrés aux solutions évidentialistes au problème de la «mauvaise sorte de raison» : il semble qu’il n’existe aucune raison pour suspendre le jugement. Deux réponses possibles à cette impasse sont considérées ici : l’une redéfinit la suspension du jugement comme une action mentale, l’autre la redéfinit comme une attitude de second ordre. L’article fait valoir que ces réponses n’évitent l’impasse qu’en compromettant de manière (...) inacceptable la notion de suspension du jugement. (shrink)

Most clinicians and mental health practitioners are reluctant to work with people with dangerous and severe personality disorders because they believe there is nothing that mental health services can offer. Dangerous and severe personality disorder also signals a diagnosis which is problematic morally. Moral philosophy has not found an adequate way of dealing with personality disorders. This paper explores the question: What makes a person morally responsible for his actions and what is a legitimate mitigating factor? How do psychiatric nurses (...) working with this client group understand the awful things some clients do? What concepts do they need, if they are to know how to explain and how to react? It is suggested that dangerous and severe personality disorder is best regarded as a moral category, framed in terms of goodness, badness, obligation and other ethical concepts. It seems plausible that in important ways the dangerous and severe personality disordered client does not understand morality or understands it differently. The peculiar position of the dangerous and severe personality disordered individual in our system of moral responsibility stems from his apparent inability to see the importance of the interests of others. It might be more helpful to regard personality disordered clients as we do children: partially but not fully reasonable for their actions. We might regard the dangerous and severe personality disordered client responsible for those actions which he most clearly understands, such as causing others physical pain, but not for those with which he is only superficially engaged, such as causing emotional pain. The paper concludes by suggesting that the dangerous and severe personality disordered individual does not fit easily into any conventional moral category, be it criminal, patient, animal or child, and thus an assessment of his moral accountability must take into consideration his special circumstances. (shrink)