The paper is one of the first empirical attempts that builds on the moral dilemmas and group rationality literature to explore the way in which group composition with respect to group members’ individual choices in moral dilemmas and social influence processes impact on group moral choices. First individually and then, in small groups, 221 participants were asked to decide on 10 moral dilemmas. Our results show that emergent group level utilitarianism is higher than the average individual utilitarianism, yet, lower than (...) the highest individual utilitarianism within groups. We also show that average individual utilitarianism positively predicts group utilitarianism while group fragmentation in individual utilitarianism has a negative effect on group utilitarianism. Next to group composition, minority influence processes explain additional variance in group utilitarianism, cognitive dissent having a positive influence, while normative deviance a negative influence on group utilitarianism. Majority influence has no significant influence on group utilitarianism. Finally, our results show that the relationship between group fragmentation in individual utilitarianism and emergent group utilitarianism is mediated by the two forms of minority influence. (shrink)

Multiple team membership is a form of work organization extensively used nowadays to flexibly deploy human resources across multiple simultaneous projects. Individual members bring in their cognitive resources in these multiple teams and at the same time use the resources and competencies developed while working together. We test in an experimental study whether working in MTM as compared to a single team yields more individual performance benefits in estimation tasks. Our results fully support the group-to-individual transfer of learning, yet the (...) hypothesized benefits of knowledge variety and broader access to meta-knowledge relevant to the task in MTM as compared to single teams were not supported. In addition, we show that individual estimates improve only when members are part of groups with low or average collective estimation errors, while confidence in individual estimates significantly increases only when the collective confidence in the group estimates is average or high. The study opens valuable venues for using the dynamic model of G-I transfer of learning to explore individual learning in MTM. (shrink)

This essay deals with metaphilosophical issues, i.e., different ways of “doing philosophy” and their possible applications for the formulation of a properly Brazilian philosophy. The arguments are drawn from questions that constitute the instigating and pertinent book by Gonçalo Palácios entitled De como fazer filosofia sem ser grego, estar morto ou ser gênio. In order to problematize the increasingly explored question of whether there is a Brazilian philosophy, firstly, I interact with some problems raised in the mentioned work, such as (...) academic philosophical practice, its attachment to the exegesis of works consecrated by tradition, and the consequent subdivision between history of philosophy and “philosophizing” through specific problems of national reality. Next, I articulate some elements that allow us to characterize a specifically Brazilian philosophy. To carry out this characterization, it is essential to critically articulate the relationship between philosophy teaching, in both school and academic level, with the philosophical tradition and its adjacent concepts. (shrink)

De nos jours, la cote de l'imaginaire est en hausse. Sensibles au mouvement des idees, les historiens se sont mis a la tache. Leurs contributions dans ce domaine ne se denombrent plus. Mais chaque historien affine sa problematique particuliere. Les ponts sont rares entre les epoques et les cultures, et encore plus rares entre les axes differents de recherche. Il existe des imaginaires historiques plutot qu'une veritable histoire de l'imaginaire.Une telle histoire - batie essentiellement sur les structures de l'imaginaire - (...) serait-elle possible? Lucian Boia le croit et essaie de le prouver. Son but est d'identifier certains principes susceptibles d'offrir un minimum de coherence a un domaine pour le moment eclate. Tout en tenant compte d'un large eventail de contributions, ce travail repose en grande partie sur les propres recherches de l'auteur. Il y est question de l'imaginaire scientifique, de l'espace, des humanites autres, des visions apocalyptiques, des millenarismes, des mythes fondateurs, ces mythologies totalitaires. C'est la premiere fois qu'un historien tente de rassembler dans un panorama cette diversite deroutante de manifestations en vue de definir les structures et la dynamique propres a l'imaginaire et de saisir ainsi sa logique particuliere.L'histoire de l'imaginaire: une des histoires de demain? (shrink)

Although David Mitrany’s international thought is not usually associated with the concept of the international anarchy, I argue that his analysis actually compares two forms of anarchical order. The first form is the order associated with the relations between states, while the second is his functional alternative to this order. The functional approach is anarchical in the sense that it remains an order without an orderer. In first analysing the dynamics and failings of the inter-state order, and then suggesting pragmatic (...) process-orientated solutions to those failings, I argue that Mitrany follows a similar approach to his classical realist contemporaries. (shrink)

In the Christian imaginary, the ternary representation of the universe is reiterated by appealing either to the Platonic texts, or to the Stoic ones. The triadic scheme of the worlds certifies an ambiguous status of man, of an individual placed neither here nor there, by the force of some circumstances which he cannot resist. Situated at equal distance from sidereal heights - credited as having the monopoly on perfection - and from the terrifying shadows, managed in a totalitarian manner by (...) the instances of evil, in “the world between the worlds”, he thinks of the interval as of a space of communication, filled with signs, shapes and characters, by means of which distances can be “neared, compressed and “humanised”. Each step, stage, climb or descent is perceived as a “rupture of level”, as overcoming of the human condition by assuming a trans-mundane axiological repertoire. (shrink)

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En examinant l’oeuvre de Descartes et en en découvrant les éléments sociologiques, il nous devient possible de déduire l’horizon social de son système. Descartes mentionne les conditions, les manifestations et les unités sociales. Pour lui, l’individu est partie d’un tout. L’amitié et la générosité sont des sentiments profondément sociaux. Mais la raison met la vie sociale en valeur et c’est elle aussi qui décide, en cas de conflit entre l’individu et la société, lequel des deux a le bon droit de (...) son côté et si c’est l’individu qui doit se sacrifier à la société. Le Souverain Bien est le critère suprême. La société à laquelle aspire Descartes doit être dirigée par une aristocratie intellectuelle, créée sur des bases démocratiques et ayant à sa tête, peut-être, un roi-philosophe, législateur unique et prévoyant. L’homme cartésien est une synthèse de la sagesse antique, de Partisan moderne et de l’homme créateur qui, par la science et la raison, cherche à rapprocher la Société du Bien souverain. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cultura. International Journal of Philosophy of Culture and Axiology Jahrgang: 8 Heft: 2 Seiten: 159-176.

The Hermotimus is Lucian’s longest piece of writing, surpassing even the two books of the True Tales, and at the same time his most successful effort to recreate the style and atmosphere of a Platonic dialogue, filled with a new—and for Lucian uncharacteristically serious—content, namely a sustained attack on “dogmatic” philosophical schools (the “haireseis” of its subtitle) and, inversely, a ringing endorsement of the tenets of Pyrrhonian Scepticism.... (review at BMCR).

This collection uses economic analysis to study some of the most pressing issues in corporate law. The last decade has brought certain corporate transactions and arrangements to the forefront of public attention and public debate. At the same time, a new mode of corporate law analysis has been developed - one that uses the tools of economics to identify the consequences and desirable features of corporate law rules. By bringing together work at the frontier of this method of analysis, the (...) volume provides a good picture of the power, current state, and future direction of the economic analysis of corporate law. Written by some of the most prominent contributors to the field, many of the chapters focus directly on the corporate control transactions that have recently attracted the most interest and controversy - corporate takeovers, buy-outs, recapitalizations, and reorganizations. (shrink)

"Previously unpublished images from glass-plate negatives taken by Walter Schneider capture the years of transition from agrarian to industrial society in America and beyond.

Developments in both China and Russia are a challenge to political science, and more particularly to theories of political culture. Both countries are engaged in profound processes of transition involving the abandonment of totalitarianism and the adoption of market-based economies. It is, however, far from clear what form their political systems will eventually take. They are currently following strikingly different paths. Are the differences a reflection of their distinctive cultures? Or, are the differences more structural, a manifestation of their respective (...) stages of economic and social development? Or, are they merely the consequences of the idiosyncratic choices and policy decisions of the two leaderships? (shrink)

From a classical phenomenological point of view, to reason is to have a conscious intentional experience. A conscious experience can be described as a predicative reconstruction of whatever reason might be concerned with while the intentional aspect can be deduced from the effort of disclosing specialized propositional insights into whatever reasoning is concerned with. Husserl argued that the task of phenomenology is to pave the way toward a science of consciousness in which reason as key feature of conscious life will (...) be properly treated. However, contemporary phenomenology adopted an entirely different perspective on this matter. Conscious experiences are now described from a perspective reminiscent to traditional empiricism while the search for universal objectivity is abandoned in favor of contextual truths. The current situation raises several questions how did we get here, does making sense entail emotions, does the emotivist reconsideration of consciousness solve the problem of objectivity, should a future science of consciousness stress the role of emotions as a solution to subjectivism and yet to be considered a phenomenological science of consciousness. In this paper, I only begin to tackle these problems. (shrink)

There is an interesting historical detour in the dissemination of one of the seventeenth century’s most praised discoveries: the reception of Harvey’s account of the circulation of the blood is closely intertwined, especially in the Low Countries, with Descartes’ account of the origin of the heartbeat. Descartes was one of the first figures to support the circulation of the blood and to give credit to Harvey for it, although he presumably arrived at the same conclusion independently through his own anatomical (...) experiments. He did so while vocally rejecting Harvey’s views on the muscular nature of the heart and his explanation of cardiac motion, to promote his own mechanistic solutions instead. Although Descartes’ .. (shrink)

We almost can’t find among the countries of the East one not to praise or to display as own virtues – particular or specific – hospitality and tolerance. In fact, to project such qualities in a privileged register of categories is a part of a quasi-generalized imagologic strategy meant to valorize the positive character of some traits – ethnic, national or belonging to a group. Each country needs a favorable mythology, luxuriant in fairytales, heroes, acts of bravery, one in which (...) to be able to project its obsessions and nostalgias, composing a self image as good as possible. Is the fervor of idealization a sin? Certainly not, if the purposes are reasonable, and not subjected to some insidious ideological or propagandistic finalities. (shrink)