This article argues, against contemporary experimentalist criticism, that conceptual analysis has epistemic value, with a structure that encourages the development of interesting hypotheses which are of the right form to be valuable in diverse areas of philosophy. The article shows, by analysis of the Gettier programme, that conceptual analysis shares the proofs and refutations form Lakatos identified in mathematics. Upon discovery of a counterexample, this structure aids the search for a replacement hypothesis. The search is guided by heuristics. The heuristics (...) of conceptual analysis are similar to those in other interesting areas of scholarship, and so hypotheses generated by it are of the right form to be applicable to diverse areas. The article shows that the explanationist criterion in epistemology was developed and applied in this way. The epistemic value of conceptual analysis is oblique because it contributes not towards the main purpose of conceptual analysis but towards the reliable development of epistemically valuable hypotheses in philosophy and scholarship. (shrink)

Over the recent decades, the concept of resilience has spread from environmental science to a number of disciplines dealing with crisis and disaster management. From psychology, public health, and human resource management to development and security studies, resilience is replacing an earlier focus on resistance and adaptability within these fields. There exist several studies dealing with resilience discourse as a key to a diagnostic of the present. While some hail resilience as a new register of ecological resistance for social movements, (...) other decries resilience as a discourse legitimating the neoliberal state’s abandonment of the poor to catastrophe. This article proposes a framework for reading together these highly diverging interpretations of resilience through a historicising of the concept of resilience, tracing its rise genealogically in relation to the concepts of resistance and adaptability. Through readings of authors such as Thomas Hobbes, Carl von Clausewitz, Herbert Spencer, and C.J. Holling, the article shows how these concepts were imported from scientific materialism into pragmatic and normative discourses of defence of life against shifting threats to individual and social life. The article shows how the shifting importance of the concepts of resistance, adaptability and resilience must be related to changing social-ecological problems and the forms of contestation and governance that respond to them. (shrink)

Criticism of sex differences in mathematical ability and sex roles in sociobiology and the pernicious influence of these ideas on education.

Although Geary's partitioning of mathematical abilities into those that are biologically primary and secondary is an advance over most sociobiological theories of cognitive sex differences, it remains untestable and ignores the spatial nature of women's traditional work. An alternative model based on underlying cognitive processes offers other advantages.

Value creation has long been hailed as the major objective of business firms by many management researchers. Some authors state that a firm must create value for its shareholders; some insist that value must be created not just for shareholders but also for all stakeholders. However, most discussions of value creation do not address an important question: "For whom the value is created?" The purpose of this paper is to take a first step to fill this void and propose a (...) model of value creation along three dimensions: financial, nonfinancial, and time. It is hoped that the model will contribute to a better understanding of how strategic and operational decisions of managers may create value for some stakeholders while destroying it for others. (shrink)

This paper proposes a systematic framework for the analysis of tensions in corporate sustainability. The framework is based on the emerging integrative view on corporate sustainability, which stresses the need for a simultaneous integration of economic, environmental and social dimensions without, a priori, emphasising one over any other. The integrative view presupposes that firms need to accept tensions in corporate sustainability and pursue different sustainability aspects simultaneously even if they seem to contradict each other. The framework proposed in this paper (...) goes beyond the traditional triad of economic, environmental and social dimensions and argues that tensions in corporate sustainability occur between different levels, in change processes and within a temporal and spatial context. The framework provides vital groundwork for managing tensions in corporate sustainability based on paradox strategies. The paper then applies the framework to identify and characterise four selected tensions and illustrates how key approaches from the literature on strategic contradictions, tensions and paradoxes—i.e., acceptance and resolution strategies—can be used to manage these tensions. Thereby, it refines the emerging literature on the integrative view for the management of tensions in corporate sustainability. The framework also provides managers with a better understanding of tensions in corporate sustainability and enables them to embrace these tensions in their decision making. (shrink)

Any plausibly just market exchange must balance two conflicting moral considerations: non-worseness (Wertheimer, 1999) and euvoluntariness (true voluntariness; Munger, 2011). We propose an analytical theory of just market exchange that partly resolves this conflict.

The ArgumentThe secret of invention or the art of inventing has recently become the object of positive or experimental research, aimed at discovering the logic of the initial mental processes that lead to “innovation.” But the problem is old and goes back to antiquity: The art of memory, rhetoric, symbolics. Does the succession of thought in invention follow a rule, such that its variations could be classified? Here I offer but a general direction: There is an analogy between the two (...) relations: invention/innovation and fecundation/maturation – namely, a male and a female principle.The Ancients thought that inventing was a divine art and that man receives the spark to then brood over its fruit in his mind. Today's still dominant materialist tendency insists on the importance of this secondary maturation and minimizes the role of the primordial spark.Thus becomes possible the ranking according to a unique order — but not without hesitations and guilt — of thinkers as far apart as Mandeville, Adam Smith, Hegel, Buffon, Rousseau, and Herder, to find the contemporary trend to which François Dagognet belongs. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to discuss some of the foundational issues centering around the question of integrating education in human values with professional engineering education: its necessity and justification. The paper looks at the efforts in ‘tuning’ the technical education system in India to the national goals in the various phases of curriculum development. The contribution of the engineering profession in national development and India’s self-sufficiency is crucially linked with the institutionalization of expertise and the role of morality (...) and responsibility. This linkage can be created through a proper understanding of the social role of the profession—what motivates the professionals and what makes professional life meaningful. Value education facilitates the process of moral maturity and the development of a ‘holistic’ mindset. This paper deals with the need to create such a mindset, the human values associated with it and gives examples of efforts to impart such education through ‘action-oriented’ programmes introduced in some institutes of engineering in India. (shrink)

In China, practice‐oriented views of science can be traced back to antiquity. In ancient times, the Chinese people independently created and developed application‐oriented sciences, but they ignored basic science. In modern times, China learned and introduced Western science and technology as a practical instrument to protect the nation and make it prosperous and powerful. Through technology and production, science has been playing an immediate and major role in the development of socialism since 1949. Since 1978, the Chinese government has always (...) emphasized that science and technology are the primary productive forces. From ancient times to the present, the practice‐oriented views of science are grounded in politics. Science has been the handmaiden of politics since the Qin Dynasty. However, this state of affairs hinders the development of basic science, a science that is not oriented toward immediate application. It also hinders open‐minded, critical reflection on the downsides or limits of science, which could draw on broader (moral, spiritual, or religious) values. (shrink)

Since we have learned that human organs can be used to treat severe health problems, only donation has been considered for organ procurement. Among the other possibilities that can be used after a person’s death, purchase or systematic removal have been a priori rejected. However, we will show that the appeal to individual altruism have resulted in some of the aporias of the present situation. Subsequently, we will consider how systematic organ removal from deceased persons can be made acceptable in (...) liberal and democratic societies. Finally, we will suggest that individual choices with regard to systematic organ removal could well be registered in a way that allows proper implementation of present French legislation. (shrink)

This article challenges E.P. Thompson's definition of ‘moral economy’ as a traditional consensus of crowd rights that were swept away by market forces. Instead, it suggests that the concept has the potential of improving the understanding of modern civil society. Moral economy was a term invented in the eighteenth century to describe many things. Thompson's approach reflects only a minor part of this conceptual history. His understanding of moral economy is conditioned by a dichotomous view of history and by the (...) acceptance of a model according to which modern economy is not subject to moral concerns. It is on principle problematic to confine a term conjoining two concepts as general as ‘moral’ and ‘economy’ to a specific historical and social setting. Recent approaches that frame moral economy as an emotively defined order of morals are also misleading since they do not address economic issues in the way they are commonly understood. The most promising current approaches appear to be those that consider t.. (shrink)

If contracts cannot be fully specified Pareto optimal results may be closed off because individuals cannot rationally trust each other's promises. This paper assumes that human individuals can become internally committed not to act opportunistically and that others can detect to a certain extent whether they are dealing with an uncommitted (untrustworthy) or a committed (trustworthy) partner. Adopting an `indirect evolutionary approach' we show that co-operative commitments can survive in evolutionary competition even if conventional mechanisms like repetition, reputation, contract or (...) promising are lacking. If detection of uncommitted individuals is neither too costly nor too unreliable there will in general be a `niche' for both committed and uncommitted actors even in one off large numbers' interactions. (shrink)

:In this essay I defend an alternative account of why markets are legitimate. I argue that markets have a raison d’être—a potential to be valuable that, if fulfilled, would justify their existence. I characterize this potential in terms of the goods that are promoted by the legal protection of economic agency: resource discretion, contribution esteem, wealth, diffusion of power, and freedom of association. I argue that market institutions deliver these goods without requiring the participants to have shared ends, or shared (...) deliberation about joint ends—indeed, this feature is the source of the market’s distinctive contribution to well-being. I suggest that when markets lack legitimacy, this is because they fail to fulfill their raison d’être, or fail to be recognized as doing so. Thus, the contours of legal protection must be drawn so that these goods are realized together in a recognizable way, without sacrificing one good for the sake of others. Finally, I argue that this account is appealing because it allows regulators to consider a plurality of goods, and because it makes room for the essential role of rhetoric in securing market legitimacy. (shrink)

There have been attempts to subsume Charles Darwin's theory of evolution under either one of two distinct intellectual traditions: early Victorian natural science and its descendants in political economy (as exemplified by Herschel, Lyell, or Malthus) and the romantic approach to art and science emanating from Germany (as exemplified by Humboldt and Goethe). In this paper, it will be shown how these traditions may have jointly contributed to the design of Darwin's theory. The hypothesis is that their encounter created a (...) particular tension in the conception of his theory which first opened up its characteristic field and mode of explanation. On the one hand, the domain of the explanandum was conceived of under a holistic and aesthetic view of nature that, in its combination with refined techniques of observation, was deeply indebted to Humboldt in particular. On the other hand, Darwin fashioned explanations for natural phenomena, so conceived, in order to identify their proper causes in a Herschelian spirit. The particular interaction between these two traditions in Darwin, it is concluded, paved the way for a transfer of the idea of causal laws to animate nature while salvaging the romantic idea of a complex, teleological and harmonious order of nature. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJohn Tomasi's Free Market Fairness claims to provide a principled defense of classical-liberal institutions. Respect for the development of our moral powers or “self-authorship,” according to Tomasi, requires that we make certain economic liberties basic, including freedom of contract and the right to accumulate property. Yet Tomasi's principles and his institutions are at odds. Tomasi has provided ethical grounds for defending not classical-liberal but radical-democratic, even socialist, economic freedoms. This is most vivid in Tomasi's account of the “liberties of working.” (...) He argues that it is not just the choice of work but control of the workplace experience that is a vital part of our self-authorship. If this is true, Tomasi has not given a defense of a robust right to “freedom of contract,” but rather of those rights of control over work and property that leftists have long argued for. (shrink)

The revival of classical liberal thought has reignited a debate about economic freedom and social justice. Classical liberals claim to defend expansive economic freedom, while their critics wish to restrict this freedom for other values. However, there are two problems with the role ‘economic freedom’ plays in this debate: inconsistency in the use of the concept and indeterminacy with respect to its definition. Inconsistency in the use of the concept ‘freedom’ has mistakenly made a certain kind of ‘left-wing’ critique of (...) poverty, and of markets generally, appear to be a concern with inequality in means to enjoy freedom, not with freedom itself. Indeterminacy about which beings and doings the basic liberties protect misrepresents the left-wing position as about something other than economic freedom. Inconsistency and indeterminacy lead to artificial narrowness in current debates and to a failure to see that disagreement is based not just on moral differences but also on conceptual confusion. This confusion leads both classical liberals and their critics to claim more than they may legitimately do, and to ignore a position that accepts the standard of definition of freedom but arrives at different institutional conclusions about what secures that freedom. (shrink)

The Stoic, David Hume’s “man of action and virtue,” is often considered the forerunner and foundation of Adam Smith’s market man of morals (Hume 1985, 146–54). Ian Simpson Ross notes Smith’s enthusiasm for Stoic philosophers such as Cicero and Marcus Aurelius and the way Stoic philosophy informs Smith’s arguments on various topics such as self-command, self-love, and suicide (Ross 1995, 172, 384). Pierre Force confirms the influence of Stoicism in tracing Smith’s moral system as a contrast with the Epicurean/Augustinian tradition, (...) showing that for Smith and Stoics self-love merely points the way for an agent to choose rationally a course of action (Force 2003, 103–5). However, Deirdre McCloskey and others .. (shrink)

Thirty years after the demise of the Soviet bloc, there still persists a rhetoric of differentiation and a discursive polarisation between the Western and the non-Western educational thinking and practices. This rhetoric overshadows a potential similarity, or homogeneity, between the dominant and several marginalised contexts. Regional, local and personal variations are prematurely attributed to fundamental, if often poorly argued, cultural differences. We seek to introduce and to preliminarily summarise the existing understandings of refraction in education and social research. Sporadically used (...) but seldom defined, the refraction metaphor appears to feature: (a) a multiplicity of viewpoints as an incentive for social research, (b) non-relativistic, scientific progress as an end value for understanding social reality, (c) a balanced approach towards homogeneity and heterogeneity in social research, and (d) a substantially historical orientation towards analysing homogeneity and heterogeneity. Education in the former socialist European countries demonstrates how heterogeneity is rhetorically overstated and how variations can be more adequately addressed by analysing refractions. (shrink)

Evolutionary biologists, evolutionary epistemologists, and biosemioticians have demonstrated that organisms not merely adapt to an external world, but that they actively construct their environmental, sociocultural, and cognitive niches. Denis Noble demonstrates that such is no different for those organisms that engage in science, and he lays bare several crucial assumptions that define the scientific dogmas and practices of evolutionary biology.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Every time another corporate scandal captures media headlines, the ‘bad apple vs. bad barrel’ discussion starts anew. Yet this debate overlooks the influence of the broader societal context on organizational behavior. In this article, we argue that misbehaviors of organizations (the ‘barrels’) and their members (the ‘apples’) cannot be addressed properly without a clear understanding of their broader context (the ‘larder’). Whereas previously, a strong societal framework dampened the practical application of the Homo economicus concept (business actors as perfectly rational (...) and egocentric utility-maximizing agents without any moral concern), specialization, individualization and globalization led to a business world disembedded from broader societal norms. This emancipated business world promotes a literal interpretation of Homo economicus among business organizations and their members. Consequently, we argue that the first step toward ‘healthier’ apples and barrels is to sanitize the larder, that is, adapt the framework in which organizations and their members evolve. (shrink)

Every time another corporate scandal captures media headlines, the ‘bad apple vs. bad barrel’ discussion starts anew. Yet this debate overlooks the influence of the broader societal context on organizational behavior. In this article, we argue that misbehaviors of organizations (the ‘barrels’) and their members (the ‘apples’) cannot be addressed properly without a clear understanding of their broader context (the ‘larder’). Whereas previously, a strong societal framework dampened the practical application of the Homo economicus concept (business actors as perfectly rational (...) and egocentric utility‐maximizing agents without any moral concern), specialization, individualization and globalization led to a business world disembedded from broader societal norms. This emancipated business world promotes a literal interpretation of Homo economicus among business organizations and their members. Consequently, we argue that the first step toward ‘healthier’ apples and barrels is to sanitize the larder, that is, adapt the framework in which organizations and their members evolve. (shrink)

In contemporary medicine, it is not always obvious whether the acceptance of a benefit constitutes a conflict of interest. A particular area of controversy has been the impact of small gifts or other benefits from pharmaceutical companies on physicians' behaviour. Typically, in such cases, the gift is not an explicit reward for cooperation; the physician does not perceive the gift as an attempt to influence his or her judgement; and the reward is relatively minor. Under these circumstances, physicians are generally (...) of the view that acceptance of gifts will not affect their behaviour, notwithstanding findings from social psychology and neuroscience that the impact of gifts is often unconscious, shaping action without a person's awareness. Here, we draw on traditional texts of Jewish law pertaining to the prohibition of taking a gift to illustrate recognition by the ancients of unconscious conflicts of interest, and their approach to dealing with the problem. (shrink)

The resurgence of interest in collective behavior is in large part due to tools recently made available for conducting laboratory experiments on groups, statistical methods for analyzing large data sets reflecting social interactions, the rapid growth of a diverse variety of online self‐organized collectives, and computational modeling methods for understanding both universal and scenario‐specific social patterns. We consider case studies of collective behavior along four attributes: the primary motivation of individuals within the group, kinds of interactions among individuals, typical dynamics (...) that result from these interactions, and characteristic outcomes at the group level. With this framework, we compare the collective patterns of noninteracting decision makers, bee swarms, groups forming paths in physical and abstract spaces, sports teams, cooperation and competition for resource usage, and the spread and extension of innovations in an online community. Some critical issues surrounding collective behavior are then reviewed, including the questions of “Does group behavior always reduce to individual behavior?”“Is ‘group cognition’ possible?” and “What is the value of formal modeling for understanding group behavior?”. (shrink)

The article aims to present the concepts of Adam Smith which are important considering the current disputes over liberalism, as well as the challenge that is the maintenance of the world’s economic order. Firstly, the article analyses the significance of the division of labour which is perceived as a fundamental premise for transitioning from small communities and face-to-face exchanges to the impersonal exchange and the expanded social order in which relations with strangers become meaningful. Secondly, the present work indicates that (...) Smith did not neglect the matter of justice when proclaiming the need for freedom. He believed that efficient functioning of the market depends on the political system and a man’s ethical system, and his criticism of interventionism was not directed against the state as an institution co-creating the social order, but against the act of granting special privileges to certain interest groups. Thirdly, the article refers to the concept of coordination described by Scottish moral philosophers and the so-called Smith Problem. In this context, the article presents arguments against the assumption that John Nash’s theory provided proof of the erroneous nature of Adam Smith’s concepts. Arguments in favour of the timelessness of the economic philosophy of the father of economics are also drawn from Vernon Smith’s experimental economy and the research of evolutionary psychologists. (shrink)

Property regimes are based on fundamental values of the society or group that designs and reproduces them. This paper analyses the ethical underpinnings of Progressive Commons in comparison to the...

Instructors of business ethics now have a wealth of cases and other pedagogical material to draw on to contribute to achieving ethics learning goals now required at most business schools. However, standard ethics case pedagogy seems to provide more guidance regarding the form and process for getting to a good answer than on the ethical content of the answer itself. Indeed, instructors often withhold their own judgments on what is a good answer so as not to indoctrinate students with the (...) instructor’s views. To answer our question on what is a good answer to an ethical question, we asked three master teachers of business ethics to share their perspectives on a good answer. Their answers revealed stark differences—regarding the starting point of business ethics, the purpose of business, prioritization of analytical disciplines, and research methods—but also a common thread demanding that a good answer articulates a student's own moral voice. Moral voice is a genuine expression of an individual’s considered moral judgment that is reflective of personal values and cognizant of professional expectations. Cultivating the expression of moral voice goes beyond formal and theoretical proficiency to overcome human tendencies toward idealism, insincerity, and rationalization. Moral voice does not by itself fill the gap in business ethics pedagogy on the content of a good answer, but it demands that students support an answer that they can genuinely believe in while encouraging instructors to cultivate in their students sincerity and engagement, conscience, and a sense of self that are indispensable to genuine ethical commitment. (shrink)

As part of our exploration of a new conceptual framework for an economy that works for 100% of humanity, this conceptual paper asks why all talk about the purpose of organizations seems to suffer from a certain bias, namely the bias of scarcity, and how this myth of scarcity influences our understanding of corporate responsibility. The mainstream understanding of corporate purpose always contains partly normative and partly functional aspects designed to cope with the purported problem of scarcity. According to economic (...) and CSR reasoning, this bias concerning the purpose of business organizations triggers two quite distinct understandings of the essence of corporate responsibility. The economic view interprets it as responsibility towards the company, while CSR and business ethics argue that it reflects, or at least ought to reflect, a broader responsibility towards society. To overcome this responsibility gap, we need to affect a paradigm shift in economic reasoning, a shift which reconciles economic responsibility on the micro-level logic of raising profit with the greater demands of the meso, macro, and supra levels. Only then do we obtain a truly meaningful lever for changing real-world business practice from within the micro-logics of running a corporation. This paradigm shift requires a different mental model - a model of resource growth and natural abundance, rather than of scarcity - on the part of both economists and business ethicists. It can be labeled the economic model of future viability. This paper develops a conceptual argument for a future viable model of business practice which, first and foremost, takes seriously the need for the kind of micro-level decision-making which keeps individual organizations afloat, but which also, and crucially, delivers a solution for future viable business models and business behavior which breaks the apparent downward spiral of modern wealth creation, i.e. the spiral of continuous acceleration, disruption, concentration and resource exploitation, and which, thirdly, delivers a proper definition of purpose which can be applied in measurement systems which are free of biased assumptions of scarcity. (shrink)

Geary proposes a sociobiological hypothesis of how sex differences in math and spatial skills might have jointly arisen. His distinction between primary and secondary math skills is noteworthy, and in some ways analogous to the closed versus open systems postulated to exist for language. In this commentary issues concerning how genes might affect complex cognitive skills, the interpretation of heritability estimates, and prior research abilites are discussed.

Although since the 1960s human capital theory has played a major role in guiding educational policy, philosophical issues that stem from this development have rarely been discussed. In this article, I critically examine how the idea that human capital should serve as a guide to educational policy making stands in relation to the role assigned to education in promoting social cooperation. I begin by exploring the conception of human conduct that underlies human capital theory. I then move to examine the (...) conception of social cooperation that tacitly guides human capital theory and maintain that it could not be effectively defended. I, therefore, turn to examine alternative ways to combine between human capital theory and the promotion of social cooperation. My main argument is that under existing conditions there is a deep theoretical incompatibility between the philosophical foundations of human capital theory and the ways in which education seeks to promote social cooperation. (shrink)

In Darwinian terminology, “sexual selection” refers to purely reproductive competition and is conceptually distinct from natural selection as it affects reproduction generally. As natural selection may favor the evolution of sexual dimorphism by virtue of the division of labor between males and females, this possibility needs to be taken very seriously.

Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology offers a powerful critique of ideological justifications for inequality in capitalist societies. Does this mean we should reject capitalist institutions altogether? This paper defends some aspects of capitalism by explaining the epistemic function of market economies and their ability to harness capital to meet the needs of the relatively disadvantaged. We support this classical liberal position with reference to empirical research on historical trends in inequality that challenges some of Piketty’s interpretations of the data. Then (...) we discuss the implications of this position in terms of limits on the efficacy of participatory governance within firms and the capacity of the state to levy systematic taxes on wealth. (shrink)

The principles of sexual selection were used as an organizing framework for interpreting cross-national patterns of sex differences in mathematical abilities. Cross-national studies suggest that there are no sex differences in biologically primary mathematical abilities, that is, for those mathematical abilities that are found in all cultures as well as in nonhuman primates, and show moderate heritability estimates. Sex differences in several biologically secondary mathematical domains are found throughout the industrialized world. In particular, males consistently outperform females in the solving (...) of mathematical word problems and geometry. Sexual selection and any associated proximate mechanisms influence these sex differences in mathematical performance indirectly. First, sexual selection resulted in greater elaboration in males than in females of the neurocognitive systems that support navigation in three-dimensional space. Knowledge implicit in these systems reflects an understanding of basic Euclidean geometry, and may thus be one source of the male advantage in geometry. Males also use more readily than females these spatial systems in problem-solving situations, which provides them with an advantage in solving word problems and geometry. In addition, sex differences in social styles and interests, which also appear to be related in part to sexual selection, result in sex differences in engagement iii mathematics-related activities, thus further increasing the male advantage in certain mathematical domains. A model that integrates these biological influences with sociocultural influences on the sex differences in mathematical performance is presented in this article. (shrink)

The male advantage in certain mathematical domains contributes to the difference in the numbers of males and females that enter math-intensive occupations, which in turn contributes to the sex difference in earnings. Understanding the nature and development of the sex difference in mathematical abilities is accordingly of social as well as scientific concern. A more complete understanding of the biological contributions to these differences can guide research on educational techniques that might someday produce more equal educational outcomes in mathematics and (...) other academic domains. (shrink)

Environmental issues are high on today's political agenda. Why we have landed in our present undesirable, and possibly even dangerous, situation and how we should act differently in the future, are questions central to our time. Max Oelschlaeger joins the current debate on both these questions. As historian he examines the roots of our environmental problems and looks, in some detail, at the history of wilderness as an idea. As philosopher he outlines some of the principal positions taken by eco-philosophers (...) towards wilderness and its preservation; he also presents his own views. (shrink)

Our concern in this essay are the roles of religious conviction in what we call a “publicly justified polity” — one in which the laws conform to the Principle of Public Justification, according to which (in a sense that will become clearer) each citizen must have conclusive reason to accept each law as binding. According to “justificatory liberalism,”1 this public justification requirement follows from the core liberal commitment of respect for the freedom and equality of all citizens.2 To respect each (...) as free and equal requires that no one simply be forced to submit to the judgments of others as to what she must do. Laws must be justified to those subject to them — each must accept grounds that justify the law. As Kant indicated, if such a condition is achieved, each is both subject and legislator: each is subject to the law, yet each legislates the law, and so all our free and equal under the law.3 Now it would appear that if we are to justify laws to each and every person, the reasons for these laws must be “accessible to all.”4 Religious reasons, however, are not shared by everyone, and may be inaccessible to some: they would thereby seem inappropriate in public justification. On the face of it, justificatory liberals seem committed to expunging religious-based reasoning from political justification. Not surprisingly, this apparent commitment of justificatory liberalism is adamantly rejected by many citizens of faith who consider themselves liberals. These citizens embrace the traditional liberal freedoms and rights and, moreover, reject any suggestion that a legitimate polity might seek to establish a religion, much less a theocracy. Yet they.. (shrink)

En este escrito me propongo examinar la filosofía política republicana como una concepción en diálogo con el liberalismo. Según intentaré mostrar -a través del recurso a ejemplos históricos provenientes de los orígenes del constitucionalismo- ambas filosofías se encuentran unidas por sus comunes aspiraciones igualitarias, pero al mismo tiempo muestran entendimientos diferentes acerca del significado y los alcances de la idea de igualdad. El republicanismo, según diré, viene a «reparar» los déficits del liberalismo en tanto postura igualitaria. Sin embargo -sostendré también-, (...) el éxito del republicanismo en esta empresa resulta, en todo caso, sólo parcial. Para proceder en este análisis, primero haré referencia a algunos rasgos salientes del liberalismo; luego mostraré las respuestas del republicanismo frente a los mismos; y finalmente mencionaré algunos de los límites propios de la respuesta republicana. Desde ya, me interesa dejar en claro que siendo tantas y tan disímiles las posibles caracterizaciones de las dos teorías aquí en juego -el liberalismo y el republicanismo- mi presentación sólo resultará de algún interés para quienes acepten las descripciones que aquí propongo sobre las mismas. (shrink)

Prior research suggests brokers do not always act in the best interests of clients, although morally obligated to do so. We empirically investigated this issue focusing on trades executed at best execution price, before and after the introduction of electronic limit-order trading, on the London Stock Exchange. As a result of limit-order trading, the proportion of trades executed at the best execution price for the customer significantly increased. We attribute this to a sustained increase in the liquidity of stocks as (...) a result of limit-order trading, regardless of market capitalisation. We discuss the ethical implications of our findings and conclude that market structures that enhance market competitiveness may help reconcile broker and client interests. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the importance of trust, in the context of economic institutions, and specifically with respect to questions about market mechanisms and the role of social interactions. We review recent advances in institutional economics closely tied to developments in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, involving extended and enactive cognition. We argue that the analysis of different conceptions of institutional mind extension, in Denzau and North’s shared mental models, Clark’s extended mind, and a more enactive approach that (...) emphasizes the importance of social interaction and personal relationships, can benefit from Kathrine Hawley’s distinction between reliability and trust. Institutional arrangements based solely on the reliability of impersonal mechanisms can lead to a variety of social pathologies and, at the extreme, a form of cognitive atrophy, all of which can undermine the sustainability of institutions. Even if trust comes with risks and some degree of unpredictability, it turns out to be a necessary glue-like ingredient in the constitution of social institutions. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 52, Issue 4, Page 235-257, July 2022. Charles Pigden’s 1995 article “Popper Revisited, or What is Wrong with Conspiracy Theories?” stimulated what is today a fertile sub-field of philosophical enquiry into conspiracy theories. In his article, Pigden identifies Karl Popper as the originator of the philosophical argument that it is naïve to believe in any conspiracy theory. But Popper was not criticizing belief in conspiracy theories at all, as Pigden defined them or as they (...) have usually come to be understood since about the 1960s. Pigden has therefore fundamentally and anachronistically misinterpreted Popper. The object of Popper’s criticism was, rather, the inadequate approach to social science that is limited to the discovery of human intentions, including conspiracies, in particular the will of Great Men. Popper’s critique of the conspiracy theory of society was correct and should be rehabilitated. Pigden is correct only insofar as he concludes that we should not dismiss conspiracy theories without critical evaluation, a proposition with which Popper would likely have wholeheartedly agreed. (shrink)

Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 52, Issue 4, Page 235-257, July 2022. Charles Pigden’s 1995 article “Popper Revisited, or What is Wrong with Conspiracy Theories?” stimulated what is today a fertile sub-field of philosophical enquiry into conspiracy theories. In his article, Pigden identifies Karl Popper as the originator of the philosophical argument that it is naïve to believe in any conspiracy theory. But Popper was not criticizing belief in conspiracy theories at all, as Pigden defined them or as they (...) have usually come to be understood since about the 1960s. Pigden has therefore fundamentally and anachronistically misinterpreted Popper. The object of Popper’s criticism was, rather, the inadequate approach to social science that is limited to the discovery of human intentions, including conspiracies, in particular the will of Great Men. Popper’s critique of the conspiracy theory of society was correct and should be rehabilitated. Pigden is correct only insofar as he concludes that we should not dismiss conspiracy theories without critical evaluation, a proposition with which Popper would likely have wholeheartedly agreed. (shrink)

An important part of what it means for agents to be situated in the everyday world of human affairs includes their engagement with economic practices. In this paper we employ the concept of cognitive institutions in order to provide an enactive and interactive interpretation of market and economic reasoning. We challenge traditional views that understand markets in terms of market structures or as processors of distributed information. The alternative conception builds upon the notion of the market as a ‘scaffolding institution’. (...) Introducing the concept of market as a ‘socially extended’ cognitive institution we go beyond the notion of scaffolding to provide an enactive view of economic reasoning that understands the market participant in terms of social interactive processes and relational autonomy. Markets are more than inert devices for information processing; they can be viewed as ‘highly scaffolded’, where strong constraints and incentives predictably direct agents’ behavior. Building on this idea we argue that markets emerge from (a) the economic interaction of both supply and demand sides, in continual and mutual interplay, and (b) more basic social interactions. Consumer behavior in the marketplace is complex, not only determining the market price, but also extending the consumer’s cognitive processes to reliably attain a correct evaluation of the good. Moreover, this economic reasoning is socially situated and not something done in isolation from other consumers From a socially situated, interactive point of view buying or not buying a good is something that enacts the market. This shifts the status of markets from external institutions that merely causally affect participants’ cognitive processes to social institutions that constitutively extend these cognitive processes. On this view the constraints imposed by social interactions, as well as the possibilities enabled by such interactions, are such that economic reasoning is never just an individual process carried out by an autonomous individual, classically understood. In this regard, understanding the concept of relational autonomy allows us to see how economic reasoning is always embodied, embedded in, and scaffolded by intersubjective interactions, and how such interactions make the market what it is. (shrink)

This article argues that corporate law has become the legal platform upon which is erected a social process impeding society’s capacity to lucidly reflect on its primary ends; in this sense, corporate law is in conflict with social autonomy. This process is described here as a social feedback loop, in the structural centre of which lies the corporation which imposes its own purpose as an irrational social end, i.e. irrespective of its potentially catastrophic social consequences. The article argues that resolving (...) the conflict between corporate law and social autonomy is impossible, because it presupposes a change of social paradigm towards one where corporate law as business organisation law has no obvious fit. This questions the social legitimacy of corporate law, signifies its non-permanence and thus opens up the field for seeking radical alternatives in the future. (shrink)