The traditional theories of the firm leave no room for love in business organizations, perhaps because it is thought that love is only an emotion or feeling, not a virtue, or because economic efficiency and profit making are considered to be incompatible with the practice of charity or love. In this article, we show based on an approach to the human action within the organization, that love can and must be lived in firms for firms to operate efficiently, be attractive to those who take part in them, and act consistently in the long run.

Dynamic Topological Logic ( $\mathcal{DTL}$ ) is a modal logic which combines spatial and temporal modalities for reasoning about dynamic topological systems, which are pairs consisting of a topological space X and a continuous function f : X → X. The function f is seen as a change in one unit of time; within $\mathcal{DTL}$ one can model the long-term behavior of such systems as f is iterated. One class of dynamic topological systems where the long-term behavior of f is particularly interesting is that of minimal systems; these are dynamic topological systems which admit no proper, closed, f-invariant subsystems. In such systems the orbit of every point is dense, which within $\mathcal{DTL}$ translates into a non-trivial interaction between spatial and temporal modalities. This interaction, however, turns out to make the logic simpler, and while $\mathcal{DTL}$ s in general tend to be undecidable, interpreted over minimal systems we obtain decidability, although not in primitive recursive time; this is the main result that we prove in this paper. We also show that $\mathcal{DTL}$ interpreted over minimal systems is incomplete for interpretations on relational Kripke frames and hence does not have the finite model property; however it does have a finite non-deterministic quasimodel property. Finally, we give a set of formulas of $\mathcal{DTL}$ which characterizes the class of minimal systems within the class of dynamic topological systems, although we do not offer a full axiomatization for the logic.

I argue that Millianism has the very odd consequence that there are simple direct questions that Millians can grasp, but they cannot answer them in the positive or the negative, or in some other way, nor could they say that they do not know the answer.

Based on experience in marriage counseling and contributions made by philosophy of phenomenology and psychology, we have carried out an in-depth analysis of the forgiveness process in the marriage relationship. Philosophy of phenomenology allows to define the conceptual framework of the marriage relationship and its essential features, which gives the therapist a reference to guide the therapeutical process. The description of the process is enriched with contributions of Psychology and particularly Systemic Family Theories. We have identified a number of steps in the forgiveness process, which can be summarized as the passing from the initial pain, through the recovery of dignity and hope, up to the final consciousness of having reached forgiveness, where the intrapersonal process in the offended spouse is imbricated with the interpersonal relationship with the partner in marriage. This interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together clinical practice, philosophy of phenomenology, and psychology, has proven particularly fruitful: it has allowed us to identify when forgiveness becomes a case of regeneration and strengthening of the bonds of marriage, or on the contrary, the cases in which the problems, together with situations of imbalance or relational pathology progress to a chronic state. Apart from this, we have reflected upon the practical application of this theoretical approach in a therapeutic context with couples that need to pass through the forgiveness process, paying special attention to the risks they may encounter. Finally, we suggest possibilities for further investigations along these interdisciplinary lines of study.

Increased concern for the environment has increased the number of investment opportunities in mutual funds specialized in promoting responsible environmental attitudes. This article examines the performance and risk sensitivities of US green mutual funds vis-à-vis their conventional peers. We also analyze and compare this performance relative to other socially responsible investing (SRI) mutual funds. In order to implement this analysis, we apply a CAPM-based methodology and find that in the 1987–2009 period, environ- mental funds had lower performance than conventional funds with similar characteristics. However, if we focus on a more recent period (2001–2009), green funds achieved adjusted returns not significantly different from the rest of SRI and conventional mutual funds.

Drawing on the Agency–Stewardship approach, which suggests that manager profile may range from the agent model to the steward model, this article aims to examine how important CEOs are to corporate social responsibility (CSR). Specifically, this exploratory study proposes the existence of a relationship between manager profile and CSR practices and that this relation is mediated by the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility. After applying a mediated regression analysis using survey information collected from 149 CEOs in Spain, results show that those closer to the steward model are more inclined to attach great importance to ethics and social responsibility, and to implement CSR practices in their companies. Results also provide support for the suggested mediating effect. Thus, this article extends research in understanding top managers as drivers for CSR and suggests new ways to deal with this issue empirically.

Revealed religions have presented very vigorous moral codes and placed great emphasis on personal and social salvation, attainable through the respect of the law received directly from God. All of them have created norms originating in a conception of humans as ethical beings searching for happiness through the improvement of their natures and modes of conduct. Because these religions were closely linked to community life, ethics became linked to politics. In the Arab world, ethics developed from the Qurʾān and other religious sources, and also from Greek philosophical texts. Whatever forms it took, ethics strove to establish the criteria by which a given form of human behavior could be considered morally good. The subject received serious theoretical consideration in the work of some philosophers, subsequent to their readings of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Arabic philosophers saw it as being within an anthropology inspired by Greek philosophy and also linked it to politics. Its purpose was to understand human life and reach humankind’s ultimate goal: happiness.

Well-being is a multidimensional construct which includes hedonic and eudaimonic aspects. Hedonic well-being is focused on happiness, while eudaimonic well-being is focused on developing of human potential. Most hedonic psychologists have used measures of subjective well-being (SWB), which have two components: a cognitive evaluation of the satisfaction with one’s life as a whole, and an affective component that refers to predominance of positive over negative affect (or affect balance). Eudaimonic well-being, sometimes labelled psychological well-being (PWB), includes subjective evaluations of effective psychological functioning. Ryff’s (1989a) model of PWB, which is included within the eudaimonic perspective, conceives well-being as a multidimensional construct made up of life attitudes like self-acceptance, positive relation with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. Research has revealed that SWB and PWB are related, but, they are also distinguishable, since they were differentially related to various criteria. The main goal of the present study was to explore how these two different aspects of well-being are related. Two hundred and fifty-five individuals (114 male and 141 female, mean age = 36.46, standard deviation = 10.83) participated in the study. All the components of well-being were strongly interrelated, and mediational analysis showed that affect balance mediated the relationships between some positive life attitudes and satisfaction with life. Future research, using longitudinal designs, should clearly establish the causal relationships between the different aspects of well-being.

Taking Husserl’s thematisation of Greek philosophy as a starting point, the aim of this paper is to explore and recover the full sense of the concept of arete (virtues) and especially that which is considered to be the “virtue of all virtues”: phronesis. Phronesis is a dianoetic approach that deals with the deliberative aspects of the human condition. It is the “practical intelligence” that guides us in our actions and provides us with a sense of awareness of the world, enabling us to conduct our lives. It must also be remembered that phronesis is a constant presence in life’s practical situations. This paper will also discuss its conceptual foundations, namely proairesis (the capacity for personal choice) and boulesis (deliberation). In this sense, phronesis is a form of knowledge that facilitates decision making and the correct governance of our lives. Indeed, it will allow us to use our acquired habits in the correct manner, as it is responsible for articulating intellectual and moral virtues. It facilitates learning in order to enable us to face the complexities of life and to do things as they should be done: phronesis invites us to adopt the best decision on each occasion. It is man’s most reliable and immediate truth in an uncertain world. It is a means of foresight in the light of what may occur, a form of knowledge that can use the experiences of the past as a means of anticipating future events. For many centuries, phronesis has been a form of practical knowledge, and as such, represents a type of “emotional intelligence” that plays a key role in our experiences and situates us in a world where choice is a necessity; the choices we make at any given time shape our very nature.

In recent times, there have been different attempts to make an interesting use of the concept of script (as inherited from the fields of psychology and cognitive sciences) within argumentation theory. Although, in many cases, what we find under this label are computerized routines mainly used in e-learning collaborative proceses involving argumentation, either as an educational means or an educational goal, there are also other studies in which the concept of script plays a more theoretical role as the kind of commonly human cognitive structure that could account for the way in which argumentation might develop in ordinary language and ordinary settings. We aim at exploring these latter possibilities, differentiating between the global ascription of the script concept to argumentation practices as procedural and regulated actions from the somewhat more suggestive association between socially shared scripts (expected narratives, plausible sequences, customary experiences, etc.) and the way some enthymemes work from an interactive, rhetorical perspective. The concept of script could help us understand some more procedural than propositional aspects of the cognitive sets shared by arguer and audience and account for the communicative success of apparently defective argumentation.

Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭūsī was born in 1201 in Ṭūs, in Khorasan, within a family of Twelver Shīʿite allegiance. Philosopher, theologian, and author of about 150 works, he was considered a “third master,” after Aristotle and al-Fārābī. He was educated in Ṭūs and then he completed his education in Nīshāpūr, a highly reputed cultural center of his times, in Iraq and in Mosul. His studies included Arabic, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, medicine, law, religion, and natural sciences. Because of the Mongol invasion, he took refuge in Qūhistān’s fortresses, under the protection of the governor Naṣīr al-Dīn Muḥtashim. He then rapidly converted to the Ismāʿīlī faith and completed his main philosophical treatises, among which was his commentary to Avicenna’s Ishārāt.

After Alamūt’s fall, Ṭūsī became vizier of Hūlāġū, the Mongol commander. Thanks to Hūlāġū’s patronage, Ṭūsī established in Maragha the largest astronomical observatory of the times. He died in Baghdad in 1274 and was buried next to the seventh Shīʿite Imam in a site near the city.

Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī is considered one of the most important figures of Islamic thinking. He was one of the most prolific scholars of the thirteenth century, and left his mark on most literary and scientific disciplines.

We propose an analysis of the notion of model as crucially related to the notion of point of view. A model in this sense would always suggest a certain way of looking at a real system, a certain way of thinking about it and a certain way of acting upon it. We focus on System Dynamics as a paradigmatic case with respect to many of the features and problems we can find in the field of modelling and simulation. We analyse in detail some of those features. All of them would be present in many other cases of construction and use of models. Furthermore, they would support the thesis that a model can be fruitfully understood as offering a point of view capable of improving our own points of view over a certain system. The point of view offered by the model could include both non-conceptual and conceptual contents, it would have a complex structure and behaviour, and it would have direct consequences on the decisions made by the subjects adopting that point of view.

From an informational point of view, an inference or argumentation can be considered as a finite sequence of sentences of a language, not arbitrarily ordered, for which one may distinguish an initial group of sentences called premises, followed by another sentence called conclusion. The set of premises (or set of reasons) may be empty, but the conclusion has to be present.

A re-evaluation of the notion of vacuum in quantum electrodynamics is presented, focusing on the vacuum of the quantized electromagnetic field. In contrast to the ‘nothingness’ associated to the idea of classical vacuum, subtle aspects are found in relation to the vacuum of the quantized electromagnetic field both at theoretical and experimental levels. These are not the usually called vacuum effects. The view defended here is that the so-called vacuum effects are not due to the ground state of the quantized electromagnetic field. Nevertheless it is possible to maintain an empirically demonstrable notion of vacuum state that is consistent with the interpretation of the formalism of the theory.

Opponents of presentism have often argued that the presentist has difficulty in accounting for what makes (presently) true past-tensed propositions (TptP) true in a way that is compatible with her metaphysical view of time and reality. The problem is quite general and concerns not only strong truth-maker principles, but also the requirement that truth be grounded in reality. In order to meet the challenge, presentists have proposed many peculiar present aspects of the world as grounds for truths concerning the past, such as uninstantiated haecceities, Meinongian non-existents, ersatz times, and dispositional and distributional properties. The main problem with all such solutions is that any explanation of what grounds a TptP that involves the past is eo ipso a better explanation than any that involves only the present. Thus, the quest for an account of grounding for TptP that is compatible with the presentist ontology and ideology is doomed to be explanatorily deficient with respect to eternalism. In a recent article, Ben Caplan and David Sanson have claimed that presentists should change their strategy and, rather than seeking for exotic grounds for TptP, should adopt a more liberal view of explanation. That is, they should allow themselves to resort to “past directed” explanations, even if they do not accept the past in their ontology and ideology. I argue that such a proposal is not compatible with the tenet that there is a substantial distinction between the ideology of such a version of presentism and that of eternalism. Therefore, the presentist cannot endorse such “deflationist” explanations as an easy way out to the problem of the grounding of TptP.

The aim of this article is to analyse the internal mechanisms of corporate governance (board of directors and ownership structure), which influence voluntary disclosure of intangibles. The results appear to corroborate the view that an increase in institutional investor shareholding has a negative effect on voluntary disclosure, supporting the hypothesis of entrenchment, whereas an excessive ownership by institutional investors may have adverse effects on strategic disclosure decisions. The results also indicate that an increase in the number of members of the board to up to 15 has a beneficial effect on the disclosure of intangibles. However, as this number increases, the effect inverts and becomes adverse to improving the capacity for supervision and control in the decision-making process regarding the voluntary disclosure of intangibles. The findings endorse the recommendation of the most of the Corporate Governance Codes regarding an advisable maximum of 15 members on a board to ensure its effectiveness and internal cohesion.

Despite having been regarded for a long time as the first Andalusian philosopher, it can now be seen, thanks to the ideas contributed by some of his works, that Ibn Masarra’s thought tends more toward mysticism and Gnosticism than pure philosophy. Although he does expound philosophical ideas, these owe more to his cultural context than to a rigorous understanding of the implications of Greek philosophy. In fact, in his two surviving works he attacks the philosophers, pointing out that the path of philosophy strays from that leading to the truth.

The ‘paradoxes of coincidence’ are generally taken as an important factor for deciding between rival views on persistence through time. In particular, the ability to deal with apparent cases of temporary coincidence is usually regarded as a good reason for favouring perdurantism (or ‘four-dimensionalism’) over endurantism (or ‘three-dimensionalism’). However, the recent work of Gilmore (2007) and McGrath (2007) challenges this standard view. For different reasons, both Gilmore and McGrath conclude that perdurantism does not really obtain support from the puzzles of temporary coincidence. In this paper, I will evaluate their arguments and defend the opposite view: that the paradoxes of coincidence do give some support to perdurantism. However, the way in which they do so is rather unexpected. As we will see, there are different ways in which coincidence scenarios may be thought to support perdurantism, some of which have not yet been sufficiently explored. Thus, my immediate goal is to explore one of those directions, bringing into focus a new argument from coincidence to perdurantism. And although I motivate my discussion by examining the arguments in the work of Gilmore and McGrath, the merits of this argument can be independently assessed. More generally, my overall purpose is to contribute to our general understanding of how the topics of coincidence and persistence bear on each other.

Aristotelian corporate governance requires a radical change of tack from conventional theories. I shall attempt to develop this broad theme in three major stages. First, I will render something that could pass for an Aristotelian theory of the firm, fully aware that Aristotle himself did not deal with such an institution in his writings. I will have to provide an account of the proper locus and purpose of the firm within the overall context of society. Secondly, I will offer, through an analogy with the common good of the polis or the state, an account of the common good of the firm. I should also propose ways in which the particular common good of the firm could be integrated or subordinated to the wider common good of the political community. Lastly, I will try to explain the theory and practice behind what could stand as Aristotelian corporate governance, one that seeks to achieve the corporate common good.

The question of the unity of science is one of the most important issues that has concerned the modern philosophy of science from the beginning. The idea of Unified Science was so important for the Viennese neo-positivists that, from 1933 until its dissolution in 1938, the Vienna Circle edited a collection called Einheitswissenschaft with publications of several of the most significant members of the neo-positivist stream.

The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between personal values and well-being. Two correlational studies are presented with the following random samples: (1) four native samples: two samples from the 2006 European Social Survey (Europe n1 = 28,375, Spain n2 = 1,321) and two Basque samples (n3 = 1,770; n4 = 820); and (2) a sample of immigrants in the Basque Country (quasirandom) (n5 = 1,171). Age range of respondents was 18–60 years. The instruments used were for measuring: (1) personal values (Schwartz’s PVQ-40 or PVQ-21), and (2) well-being (Bradburn’s PNA, Goldberg’s GHQ, and life satisfaction and perceived control items from the World Value Survey). Partial correlation analysis was applied, with PVQ scale response bias controlled. The data supported a positive association of hedonic and psychological well-being with openness to experience and individualist values, and a negative association with power and conservation or collectivist values. Satisfaction with life partially mediated the relationship between personal values and affect. The results support a universal association of healthy values with well-being.

A pair of deductive systems (S,S’) is Leibniz-linked when S’ is an extension of S and on every algebra there is a map sending each filter of S to a filter of S’ with the same Leibniz congruence. We study this generalization to arbitrary deductive systems of the notion of the strong version of a protoalgebraic deductive system, studied in earlier papers, and of some results recently found for particular non-protoalgebraic deductive systems. The necessary examples and counterexamples found in the literature are described.

Gender discrimination continues to be a problem in organizations. It is therefore important that organizations use performance evaluation methods that ensure equal opportunities for men and women. This article reports the results of an experiment to investigate whether and, if so, how the gender of the rater and that of the ratee moderate the relationship between the level of subjectivity in performance appraisals and organizational attractiveness. Participants in the experiment were 313 undergraduate students. We predicted, and indeed established, that as the probability increases that employee performance is evaluated by a female manager, women expect more positive outcomes of subjective, but not objective evaluation processes. Our data did not support our expectation that as the probability of being evaluated by a female manager increases, men expect less positive outcomes of subjective evaluation processes. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of why women are over-represented in jobs with objective formula-based reward systems, such as piece-rate systems. They are also of interest to organizations that are looking for more ethical human resource management practices.

This essay aims to sharpen debates on the pros and cons of historical epistemology, which is now understood as a novel approach to the study of knowledge, by comparing it with the history of epistemology as traditionally pursued by philosophers. The many versions of both approaches are not always easily discernable. Yet, a reasoned comparison of certain versions can and should be made. In the first section of this article, I argue that the most interesting difference involves neither the subject matter nor goal, but the methods used by the two approaches. In the second section, I ask which of the two approaches or methods is more promising given that both historical epistemologists and historians of epistemology claim to contribute to epistemology simpliciter. Using traditional problems concerning the epistemic role of perception, I argue that the historical epistemologies of Wartofsky and Daston and Galison fail to show that studying practices of perception is philosophically significant. Standard methods from the history of epistemology are more promising, as I show by means of reconstructing arguments in a debate about the relation between perception and judgment in psychological research on the famous moon illusion.

We show that given a finite, transitive and reflexive Kripke model 〈 W, ≼, ⟦ ⋅ ⟧ 〉 and $${w \in W}$$ , the property of being simulated by w (i.e., lying on the image of a literalpreserving relation satisfying the ‘forth’ condition of bisimulation) is modally undefinable within the class of S4 Kripke models. Note the contrast to the fact that lying in the image of w under a bisimulation is definable in the standard modal language even over the class of K4 models, a fairly standard result for which we also provide a proof.

We then propose a minor extension of the language adding a sequent operator $${\natural}$$ (‘tangle’) which can be interpreted over Kripke models as well as over topological spaces. Over finite Kripke models it indicates the existence of clusters satisfying a specified set of formulas, very similar to an operator introduced by Dawar and Otto. In the extended language $${{\sf L}^+ = {\sf L}^{\square\natural}}$$ , being simulated by a point on a finite transitive Kripke model becomes definable, both over the class of (arbitrary) Kripke models and over the class of topological S4 models.

As a consequence of this we obtain the result that any class of finite, transitive models over finitely many propositional variables which is closed under simulability is also definable in L⁺, as well as Boolean combinations of these classes. From this it follows that the μ-calculus interpreted over any such class of models is decidable.

This article argues that considering cross-sector collaborations through the lens of indigenous-corporate engagements yields a more comprehensive understanding of the range of cross-sector engagement types, emphasizes the importance of cross-cultural bridge building which has received little attention in the literature (Selsky and Parker, J Manag 31(6):849–873, 2005), and highlights the potential for innovation via collaborations with fringe stakeholders. The study offers a more overarching typology of cross-sector collaborations and, building on an ethical approach to sustainable development with indigenous peoples (Lertzman and Vredenburg, J Bus Ethics 56:239–254, 2005), proposes a theoretical framework for cross-cultural bridge building between businesses and fringe stakeholders. By incorporating this framework into the literature on value creation in cross-sector collaborations, we suggest a model for value creation in cross-sector collaborations with fringe stakeholders. Finally, using case studies to illustrate the article’s theoretical arguments, we demonstrate the model’s usefulness for the analysis and development of indigenous-corporate collaborations.

The primary aim of the current study was to replicate and extend previous findings by examining the relationship between trait meta-mood and levels of subjective happiness in a 7-week follow-up study. Participants were 192 undergraduate students (155 females) who completed self-report measures of trait meta-mood and subjective happiness. After 7 weeks, 155 students completed the subjective happiness scale again. Focusing first on cross-sectional analysis, meta-mood dimensions were found to be moderately related to levels of subjective happiness. Next, along with initial levels of subjective happiness, we found that meta-mood dimensions independently predicted prospective levels of subjective happiness over a 7-week follow-up. These findings provide some preliminary evidence on the prospective value of meta-mood dimensions as relevant individual differences involved in the maintenance of emotional well-being indicators.

Bengoetxea focuses on MacCormick’s contribution to the understanding of nation, law and state in contemporary Europe, and, in particular, on his concept of “internal enlargement”, or, to express it differently, the possibility that Member States divide or split into new Member States so as to realise the aspirations to self-government of region-states. He reflects on the correlation between MacCormick’s institutional theory of law, with his emphasis on non-state institutional normative orders, and his defence of “liberal nationalism”, as a legally differentiated and distinct form of liberal political philosophy. Bengoetxea considers in detail the key role that such a form of nationalism could play in rooting and providing support for the cosmopolitan telos which characterises the European integration project

The aim of this study is to analyze investor behavior towards socially responsible mutual funds. The analysis is based on an experimental study where a sample of individuals takes investment decisions under different parameters of information about the investment alternatives and expected returns. In the experiment, each participant decides how to distribute an investment budget between two funds, returns on which are uncertain and change over time. Two treatments are conducted, each providing a different degree of information on the socially responsible (SR) character of one of the two investment alternatives. The results obtained suggest that although individuals’ criteria for investment are essentially guided by returns and diversification, participants invest significantly more in a fund when they are explicitly informed about its SR nature. In particular, participants who declare being concerned about SR actually invest significantly more in the SR alternative. Furthermore, the level of SR faithfulness among a small group of investors is such that they invest the main share of their budget in the SR fund, even when the return differential is highly unfavorable. Providing clear information about the SR characteristics of an investment is crucial to help investors express their preferences.

We defend the view that defines the rigidity of general terms as sameness of designated universal across possible worlds from the objection that such a characterization is incapable of distinguishing rigid from non-rigid readings of general terms and, thus, that it trivializes the notion of rigidity. We also argue that previous attempts to offer a solution to the trivialization problem do no succeed.

Corporate codes of conduct are a practical corporate social responsibility (CSR) instrument commonly used to govern employee behavior and establish a socially responsible organizational culture. The effectiveness of these codes has been widely discussed on theoretical grounds and empirically tested in numerous previous reports that directly compare companies with and without codes of conduct. Empirical research has yielded inconsistent results that may be explained by multiple ancillary factors, including the quality of code content and implementation, which are excluded from analyses based solely on the presence or absence of codes. This study investigated the importance of code content in determining code effectiveness by examining the relationship between code of conduct quality and ethical performance. Companies maintaining high quality codes of conduct were significantly more represented among top CSR ranking systems for corporate citizenship, sustainability, ethical behavior, and public perception. Further, a significant relationship was observed between code quality and CSR performance, across a full range of ethical rankings. These findings suggest code quality may play a crucial role in the effectiveness of codes of conduct and their ability to transform organizational cultures. Future research efforts should transcend traditional comparisons based on the presence or absence of ethical codes and begin to examine the essential factors leading to the effective establishment of CSR policies and sustainable business practices in corporate culture.

These days, a number of philosophers of science indulge in lamenting about a crisis of their discipline. They complain about its loss of relevance, and bemoan the mar gi na lization of their dis cipline in the philosophical community and in the wider academia (cf. Howard (2003, 75), Hardcastle and Richardson (2003)). The Munich take on the philosophy of science does not succumb to this temptation. According to it, philosophy of science is well and alive. In Carlos Ulises Moulines’s Die Entwicklung der modernen Wissen schaftstheorie (1890–2000) Eine historische Einführung (henceforth Einführung) the word “crisis” is used only in reference to the 1940s when clas sical logical positivism encountered some dif fi culties in dealing with problems concerning veri fi cation, the ana ly tic/synthetic distinction, and similar conundrums. For Moulines, “crisis” is not a word that applies to contemporary philosophy of science.

The Dasein is the only being who asks itself about its own being. That’s why, as Heidegger says at the beginning of Being and Time, if we want to get a right knowledge about the Being, we should first analyze the being of the Dasein. But in order to do this properly, we must bear in mind that the Dasein is not a lonely being. If we wish to understand the ontological structures which make up human existence, we cannot limit ourselves to a solipsist analysis, but we must take into consideration the fundamentally mundane character of the Dasein. For Heidegger, the Dasein is an entity that is in the world. So the study of the structures of human life must involve the prior investigation of this “being-in-the-world”. This need responds to one of the axioms which supports all the philosophical arguments of Being and Time: there is no essence of man that we have to discover, but it is the existence of the Dasein that is formed in a constant process of historical gestation. This is the way that Heidegger uses to introduce temporality in the constitution of the Dasein.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the Spanish mobile phone industry to determine how mobile phone companies and certain institutions can improve protection for children who use mobile phones. We carried out a multivariate statistical analysis using anonymous primary data from mobile phone companies, and institutions and associations that protect children, to compare these stakeholders’ opinions and to put forward solutions. We proved that, even though some European countries have made an effort to provide safer ICT services, all stakeholders still need to cooperate and agree on solutions to the commercial problems associated with children using mobile phones. This can be done by signing codes of conduct. We found that even though some companies implement measures to protect children from accessing harmful content via their mobile phones, they do so for reasons of legal and not social responsibility.

Paraconsistent approaches have received little attention in the literature on vagueness (at least compared to other proposals). The reason seems to be that many philosophers have found the idea that a contradiction might be true (or that a sentence and its negation might both be true) hard to swallow. Even advocates of paraconsistency on vagueness do not look very convinced when they consider this fact; since they seem to have spent more time arguing that paraconsistent theories are at least as good as their paracomplete counterparts, than giving positive reasons to believe on a particular paraconsistent proposal. But it sometimes happens that the weakness of a theory turns out to be its mayor ally, and this is what (I claim) happens in a particular paraconsistent proposal known as subvaluationism. In order to make room for truth-value gluts subvaluationism needs to endorse a notion of logical consequence that is, in some sense, weaker than standard notions of consequence. But this weakness allows the subvaluationist theory to accommodate higher-order vagueness in a way that it is not available to other theories of vagueness (such as, for example, its paracomplete counterpart, supervaluationism).

Economic and social activities are undergoing radical changes, which can be labelled as ‘knowledge economy and/or society’. In this sense, intellectual capital (IC), or knowledge assets, as the fourth factor of production, is replacing the other ones – job, land and capital. This article tries to offer the origins and nature of the firm’s IC that can be labelled as ‘An Intellectual Capital-Based View of the Firm Competition’. This framework tries to highlight the strategic role of different intangible assets like talented and committed workers, cultural values, or long-term relationships among the firm and its stakeholders – customers, allies, suppliers and society in general – in gaining and sustaining competitive advantages, being the management of IC a key issue in the management agenda.

We generalize Priestley duality for distributive lattices to a duality for distributive meet-semilattices. On the one hand, our generalized Priestley spaces are easier to work with than Celani’s DS-spaces, and are similar to Hansoul’s Priestley structures. On the other hand, our generalized Priestley morphisms are similar to Celani’s meet-relations and are more general than Hansoul’s morphisms. As a result, our duality extends Hansoul’s duality and is an improvement of Celani’s duality.

The aim of this article is to present the dynamics of the structure of human action to enable us to link the organizational level of institutions, norms, and culture of the firm. At the organizational level, the existing institutions and culture are the confines of our individual action. However, at the individual level, we focus on the external consequences of our acts. It is our acts that maintain social institutions and culture. The ethics of personal virtues demands an ethics of institutions, the ethics which deals with the institutional means of realizing individual ends. All individuals choose courses of action by deciding what type of life is worth living. In this view, virtue (areté) occupies a central position, defining the paradigm that each society with its institutions and norms sets as the model of life to be lived (eudiamonia).

Dynamic epistemic logic describes the possible information-changing actions available to individual agents, and their knowledge pre- and post conditions. For example, public announcement logic describes actions in the form of public, truthful announcements. However, little research so far has considered describing and analysing rational choice between such actions, i.e., predicting what rational self-interested agents actually will or should do. Since the outcome of information exchange ultimately depends on the actions chosen by all the agents in the system, and assuming that agents have preferences over such outcomes, this is a game theoretic scenario. This is, in our opinion, an interesting general research direction, combining logic and game theory in the study of rational information exchange. In this article we take some first steps in this direction: we consider the case where available actions are public announcements, and where each agent has a (typically epistemic) goal formula that she would like to become true. What will each agent announce? The truth of the goal formula also depends on the announcements made by other agents. We analyse such public announcement games.

After defining the essential elements of Aristotelian citizenship, the article proposes to apply these criteria in its search for the equivalent of a citizen within the corporate polis. It argues that shareholding managers are the best positioned among a firm’s constituents or stakeholders in fulfilling the role of corporate citizens. Greater participation by management not only in the control but also in the ownership of firms brings about benefits for the firm as a whole and for the managers themselves, as organizational citizenship behavior literature, among others, suggests.

Marr’s celebrated contribution to cognitive science (Marr 1982, chap. 1) was the introduction of (at least) three levels of description/explanation. However, most contemporary research has relegated the distinction between levels to a rather dispensable remark. Ignoring such an important contribution comes at a price, or so we shall argue. In the present paper, first we review Marr’s main points and motivations regarding levels of explanation. Second, we examine two cases in which the distinction between levels has been neglected when considering the structure of mental representations: Cummins et al.’s distinction between structural representation and encodings (Cummins in Journal of Philosophy, 93(12):591–614, 1996; Cummins et al. in Journal of Philosophical Research, 30:405–408, 2001) and Fodor’s account of iconic representation (Fodor 2008). These two cases illustrate the kind of problems in which researchers can find themselves if they overlook distinctions between levels and how easily these problems can be solved when levels are carefully examined. The analysis of these cases allows us to conclude that researchers in the cognitive sciences are well advised to avoid risks of confusion by respecting Marr’s old lesson.

La comparación entre reflexiones de Hölderlin sobre el fondo dialéctico del juicio, tal como lo propone Fichte, partiendo, primero, del sí mismo (Selbst) entre yo y no-yo, y después de la relación esto / este (Dieses/Dieser) de Hegel, nos permite deducir una relación predicativa que en realidad es la base de la transcendencia en el conocimiento. Transcendencia que se abre adverbialmente en el espaciotiempo (allí) y configura un tema al que revierten predicados cuya acción revela el transcurso de lo sujeto (el sujeto). El análisis de las preposiciones y del contenido del nombre en el lenguaje y pensamiento de Hegel permite observar, con el trasfondo de Humboldt, cómo la plástica del predicado lingüístico nos remite a la apertura trascendente del concepto. Y esta conclusión requiere una relectura de la filosofía de Hegel, pues la trascendencia del conocimiento tiene fundamento poético.

In this study we examined the associations between perceived emotional intelligence, dispositional optimism/pessimism and psychological well-being. In addition to correlational analyses, we examined a model by structural equation modeling (SEM). The study of psychological well-being in the field of positive psychology from the paradigmatic approach to happiness developed by Ryff and Singer (Psychother Psychosomat 65(1):14–23, 1998) is very important and essential, due in part to the lack of studies analyzing the predictors of Ryff’s PWB model by contemplating emotional and cognitive factors. In this framework, our study examines the possible role of optimism and PEI as possible predictors of the psychological well-being dimensions proposed by Ryff, with a specific pattern of relationships as a model. Our results show positive relationships between clarity and emotional regulation and the psychological well-being components. With regard to dispositional optimism versus pessimism, positive relationships were found between optimism and psychological well-being dimensions and negative relationships between pessimism and dimensions of psychological well-being. Our model also includes some relationships, not initially raised, between the dimensions of perceived emotional intelligence and some dimensions of psychological well-being. Our results suggest relationships between emotional attention and purpose in life as well as with personal growth dimensions of psychological well-being. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Representationalist theories of phenomenal consciousness have problems in accounting for pain, for at least two reasons. First of all, the negative affective phenomenology of pain (its painfulness) does not seem to be representational at all. Secondly, pain experiences are not transparent to introspection in the way perceptions are. This is reflected, e.g. in the fact that we do not acknowledge pain hallucinations. In this paper, I defend that representationalism has the potential to overcome these objections. Defenders of representationalism have tried to analyse every kind of phenomenal character in terms of indicative contents. But there is another possibility: Affective phenomenology, in fact, depends on imperative representational content. This provides a satisfactory solution to the aforementioned difficulties.

Teleological Theories of mental representation are probably the most promising naturalistic accounts of intentionality. However, it is widely known that these theories suffer from a major objection: the Indeterminacy Problem. The most common reply to this problem employs the Target of Selection Argument, which is based on Sober’s distinction between selection for and selection of. Unfortunately, some years ago the Target of Selection Argument came into serious attack in a famous paper by Goode and Griffiths. Since then, the question of the validity of the Target of Selection Argument in the context of the Indeterminacy Problem has remained largely untouched. In this essay, I argue that both the Target of Selection Argument and Goode and Griffiths’ criticisms to it misuse Sober’s analysis in important respects.

This introduction summarises the main themes of the book, and sketches a theory of the relation between propensities and probabilities that is consistent with many of the claims stated throughout the book. The theory is developed around four different theses concerning respectively: the objective nature of probability in physics, the key role played by transition probabilities in modelling statistical phenomena, the apparent redundancy of philosophical interpretations of probability, and last but not least, the ubiquity of causal concepts and presuppositions underlying probability models.

The focus of this study is cognitive choice: the selection of one cognitive option (a hypothesis, a theory, or an axiom, for instance) rather than another. The study proposes that cognitive choice should be based on the plausibilities of states posited by rival cognitive options and the utilities of these options' information outcomes. The proposal introduces a form of decision theory that is novel because comparative; it permits many choices among cognitive options to be based on merely comparative plausibilities and utilities. This form of decision theory intersects with recommendations by advocates of decision theory for cognitive choice, on the one hand, and defenders of comparative evaluation of scientific hypotheses and theories, on the other. But it differs from prior decision-theoretic proposals because it requires no more than minimal precision in specifying plausibilities and utilities. And it differs from comparative proposals because none has shown how comparative evaluations can be carried out within a decision-theoretic framework.

This article maps current thinking in the emerging field of responsible leadership. Various environmental and social forces have triggered interest in both research and practices of responsible leadership. This article outlines the main features of the relevant research, specifies a definition of the concept, and compares this emergent understanding of responsible leadership with related leadership theories. Finally, an overview of different articles in this special issue sketches some pathways for ongoing research.

We provide an overview of three ways in which the expression “Historical epistemology” (HE) is often understood: (1) HE as a study of the history of higher-order epistemic concepts such as objectivity, observation, experimentation, or probability; (2) HE as a study of the historical trajectories of the objects of research, such as the electron, DNA, or phlogiston; (3) HE as the long-term study of scientific developments. After laying out various ways in which these agendas touch on current debates within both epistemology and philosophy of science (e.g., skepticism, realism, rationality of scientific change), we conclude by highlighting three topics as especially worthy of further philosophical investigation. The first concerns the methods, aims and systematic ambitions of the history of epistemology. The second concerns the ways in versions of HE can be connected to versions of naturalized and social epistemologies. The third concerns the philosophy of history, and in particular the level of analysis at which a historical analysis should aim.

The moral ideology of banking and insurance employees in Spain was examined along with supervisor role modeling and ethics-related policies and procedures for their association with ethical behavioral intent. In addition to main effects, we found evidence supporting that the person–situation interactionist perspective in supervisor role modeling had a stronger positive relationship with ethical intention among employees with relativist moral ideology. Also as hypothesized, formal ethical polices and procedures were positively related to ethical intention among those with universal beliefs, but the relationship was much weaker among relativists. Thus, firms wishing to optimally promote ethical attitudes and behavior must tailor their organization-based initiatives to the individual characteristics of their employees.

This two-wave longitudinal study examines the ability of life satisfaction and adjustment strategies to predict anxious and depressive symptoms in coronary heart disease male patients. Studies have shown that most heart attack survivors report these symptoms, which may worsen the prognosis of the disease. At Time 1, immediately after the first cardiac episode, eighty-eight men reported their life satisfaction levels, adjustment strategies used, and anxious and depressive symptoms experienced. At Time 2, six months later, sixty-three of those patients reported only their anxious and depressive symptoms again. The results showed that, after controlling for demographic variables, anxious and depressive symptoms at Time 1 were predicted by positive adjustment and life satisfaction. At Time 2, after controlling for both demographic variables and Time 1-emotional symptoms, none of the psychological variables predicted anxious symptoms, while depressive symptoms were only predicted by life satisfaction. It is concluded that an adequate level of life satisfaction may help to decrease emotional distress, both short and long term, while the use of positive adjustment strategies is especially important immediately after diagnosis.

This chapter aims at situating MacCormick’s European constitutional pluralism in the problématique of European constitutional law. What Borowski labelled as the “European enigma” is de-coupled into two riddles, concerning the genesis of the European legal order (how what formally were international treaties could result in the establishment of a constitutional polity), and the relationship between legal orders (how Community law is granted almost unconditional primacy in European constitutional practice). The standard constitutional theories that have portended to solve these problems have failed to provide plausible answers to these two riddles. MacCormick’s constitutional pluralism broke new ground and offered a coherent re-construction of European constitutional practice from a sociological perspective. But it remains unsettled as a constitutional theory. Departing from MacCormick’s shift from a radical to a moderate pluralistic position, Menéndez tries to re-consider the key implications of European constitutional pluralism, and to apply the manifold insights left to us by MacCormick to the fashioning of a constitutional theory capable of accounting for the pluralistic traits of Community law, but without reneging on the regulatory ideal of law as a single legal system. That alternative theory is the theory of constitutional synthesis, which assigns a central role, in the legal and political process of European integration, to the collective of national constitutions, which were seconded from the entry into force of the Treaty of Paris onwards to the role of the common constitution of the Union.

It is still a matter of controversy whether the Principle of the Common Cause (PCC) can be used as a basis for sound causal inference. It is thus to be expected that its application to quantum mechanics should be a correspondingly controversial issue. Indeed the early 1990s saw a flurry of papers addressing just this issue in connection with the EPR correlations. Yet, that debate does not seem to have caught up with the most recent literature on causal inference generally, which has moved on to consider the virtues of a generalised PCC-inspired condition, the so-called Causal Markov Condition (CMC). In this paper we argue that the CMC is an appropriate benchmark for debating possible causal explanations of the EPR correlations. But we go on to take issue with some pronouncements on EPR by defenders of the CMC.

Ibn ‘Arabī belongs to a kind of mysticism or Sufism that can be considered esoteric: he seeks mystical experiences and is strongly influenced by Neoplatonism. He claimed that the experiential and intuitive knowledge he possessed came directly from God. The use of philosophical doctrines and terminology makes his work of great interest to philosophers. Among his doctrines, the most important are the transcendental unicity of being and the perfect man, who plays a central role in creation.

This article studies the differences between traditional financial intermediaries (commercial banks, savings banks and cooperative banks) and ethical banks based on property rights, in which the owner decides the ideology, principles, standards and objectives of the organisation. In ethical banking, affinity centres on positive social and ethical values. The article consequently focuses on an index proposed both to differentiate ethical banks from other types of banks, and also to pinpoint the differences between the various ethical banks themselves. This is the Radical Affinity Index (RAI), which groups banks together in terms of their stance on ethical commitment, concentrating on ethical ideology and principles (information transparency, placement of assets, guarantees and participation) and using a sample of 114 European banks. The evidence shows that transparency of information and placement of assets are factors that differentiate ethical banks from other financial intermediaries. Guarantees and participation are characteristics specific to ethical banks; these variables, however, do not offer clear evidence to our analysis.

This article argues that the (epi)genetic, cultural, symbolic, and environmental transmission channels are insufficient to explain the structure of modern human societies. Economic exchange of knowledge embodied in goods and services constitutes an additional transmission channel that makes more efficient use of limited human cognitive capacity. Economic exchange results in a gradual shift in societies from task-based division of labor to cognitive specialization. This shifts scarce cognitive resources away from production and into learning. It accelerates learning and reinforces the drive towards specialization. Cognitive specialization may constitute another “major transition” towards a higher level of aggregation in human societies, with properties that differ from symbolic transmission. Collective control of individual market-based exchange is ensured by means of economic institutions that put a constraint on individual behavior.

Islamic philosophy does not have a unique doctrine about nature and physical issues, but has common features. Two main streams flow in a related direction: the kalām tradition mostly assumes that substances are bodies made of atoms; the falsafa distinguishes between sensible and immaterial substances and assumes substances are bodies that can be infinitely divided. Under the influence of Greek philosophy, falsafa develops a deeper and more comprehensive explanation of nature. It conflicts with kalām on the issue of the preeternity of the universe, because the mutakallimūn understand that eternity in the past excludes the causal action of a free agent. Although this is an important issue, it is not the only one. The condemnation of Averroes in Almohad times and occasional burnings of philosophy books, including Avicenna’s, should not make us believe that falsafa was ousted from Islamic learning. Many Islamic thinkers, such as al-Baydawī (d. 1316?), did not see any conflict in studying kalām and falsafa at the same time. They were abiding by the Qurʾānic teaching to contemplate and reflect on nature.

The Merciful taught the Qurʾān

Created man,

Taught him the explanation:

The sun and the moon are in a reckoning

The star and the tree do obeisance (Qurʾān 55:1–5).

This article serves as an editorial introduction to this special issue on Pope Benedict’s encyclical-letter, Caritas in Veritate (2009) and its engagement with the field of business ethics. According to this document, love in truth, which includes justice, is indeed presented as a basic moral foundation for economic and business ethics. The article provides an overview of some major themes in the encyclical and their relationship to the essays in this special issue. The authors in this issue are an interdisciplinary group of scholars in the fields of philosophy, theology, psychology, business, economics, and political science who address the relevance and relationship of the encyclical to business ethics in light of their disciplinary field. Their articles include, among other topics, discussions based on recent scholarship on business ethics, the economics and ethics relationship, the orientation of business to the common good, the encyclical’s proposal of the principle of gratuitousness and the logic of gift in ordinary business, and new perspectives on economic exchange and bargains and hybrid forms of business.

Complexity is a key feature in the sciences of design from the point of view of their framework—or constitutive elements—as well as of their dynamics. This twofold complexity affects economics insofar as it is one of the sciences of the artificial. In this regard, economics is a “science of design” that enlarges our possibilities towards the future and uses prediction as a basis for decision-making. But economics is also a social science that deals with human needs. This feature adds more factors to the analysis of its complex configuration as a science and its dynamic evolution. Commonly, the studies on complexity in economics are focused on particular forms of expression of complexity rather than on the roots of this problem as a dual science (i.e., artificial and social).

We conceive of many general terms we use as having satisfaction conditions that are objective in that the thought that something meets them neither entails nor is entailed by the thought that we are currently in a position in which we are ready, or warranted, to apply those terms to it. How do we manage to use a given term in such a way that it is thereby endowed, and conceived to be endowed, with satisfaction conditions that are objective in this sense? In the first half of the paper, I present a number of interrelated problems for some extant metasemantical accounts of how use determines objective satisfaction conditions. In the second half, I then propose a novel account that avoids all of these problems.

Caritas in Veritate (CV) poses a challenge to the business community when it asks for “a profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise” (CV 40). The paper proposes the concept of the “common good” as a starting point for the discussion and sketches a definition of the common good of business as the path toward an answer for this challenge. Building on the distinction between the material and the formal parts of the common good, the authors characterize profit as the material part of the common good of business and work as the formal part that expresses the essential significance of business.

Retail banking is facing many challenges, not least the loss of its customers’ trust and loyalty. The economic crisis is forcing banks to examine their relationships with stakeholders and to offer greater reassurance that their brand promises will be delivered. More than ever, banks need to stand for something positive and valued by stakeholders. One way to achieve this is through paying more attention to brand values. Our article explores how values are adopted by employees within a bank. When employees ‘live’ their brand’s values, their behaviour during customer interactions reflects this, encouraging the strengthening of customer relationships. Specifically, we test the relationship between leadership style, employee commitment, and the adoption of values. Data was collected from a survey of 438 branch employees in a leading Irish retail bank. The study found that a structured and directive leadership style was effective at encouraging the adoption of the bank’s values. Moreover, when employees are committed to the organisation, this has a significant impact on their adoption of values. Thus, this study supports the literature which suggests that leadership and commitment are prerequisites for values adoption.

At its beginning, the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) did not include measures to guide farmers in preserving ecosystems. At the same time, the social context on the 1960s and 1970s did not encourage environmental care to become a priority. Since the 1980s, new social concern expressed alarm over ecology, recognizing that agriculture can pollute. These social changes moved the CAP to add measures that linked agriculture and environment. In order to study if the EU decision-makers have designed a CAP which responds to a new ethic that incorporates environmental care and social demands, two questions rise: whether the social image of agriculture as a polluting activity has changed; and whether farming performs the environmental functions demanded by society. To answer the previous questions, we have reviewed the environmental aspects added to the CAP, then a poll has been conducted and cluster method and classification tree models have been used to group respondents according to their opinions. The results show that the society ascribes great relevance to the environment for the future sustainability of the region, but they are not satisfied with the role of agriculture in producing environmental outputs.

This article presents a systematic literature review on quality management and social responsibility (focusing on ethical and social issues). It uses the literature review to identify the parallels between quality management and social responsibility, the extent to which qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods are used, the countries that have contributed most to this area, and how the most common quality management practices facilitate social responsibility. The literature review covers articles about quality management and social responsibility (focusing on ethical and social categories) based on a computer search in three databases, namely ABI Inform, Emerald and Science Direct, and includes articles dealing with the subject that were found in the lists of references of the articles found in the primary search, as well as a search in six top management journals. The results show (1) the journals most likely to publish this type of article; (2) the range of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods used; (3) the most productive countries in this field; (4) the parallels between quality management and social responsibility; and (5) how the most common quality management practices facilitate ethical behaviour and social aspects.

Does the board of directors influence cost of debt financing? This study of a sample of Spanish listed companies during the period 2004–2007 provides some evidence about the question. The results suggest that two board attributes – director ownership and board activity – appear to influence in the risk assessment of debtholders because of their ability to reduce agency cost and information asymmetry. We also find a non-linear relationship between board size and cost of debt, suggesting that from certain levels the benefits of large boards may be outweighed by the cost of poorer communication and increased decision-making time.

By denying to vegetal life the core values of autonomy, individualization, self-identity, originality, and essentiality, traditional philosophy not only marginalizes plants but, inadvertently, confers on them a crucial role in the current transvaluation of metaphysical value systems. From the position of absolute exteriority and heteronomy, vegetation accomplishes a living reversal of metaphysical values and points toward the collapse of hierarchical dualisms.

Information science and computer sciences are two realms of the sciences of the artificial that are faced with new forms of complexity. From the point of view of the content, there are new and increasingly more complex informative needs that are being demanded with a growing intensity. From the perspective of agents, there are new forms of interactions between the individuals and the information systems. This relation between users and information brings about new organizations that are strengthened through new advances in technology. Therefore there are inner and outer factors related to the new forms of complexity.

We examine the necessary physical underpinnings for setting up the cosmological standard model with a global cosmic time parameter. In particular, we discuss the role of Weyl’s principle which asserts that cosmic matter moves according to certain regularity requirements. After a brief historical introduction to Weyl’s principle we argue that although the principle is often not explicitly mentioned in modern standard texts on cosmology, it is implicitly assumed and is, in fact, necessary for a physically well-defined notion of cosmic time. We finally point out that Weyl’s principle might be in conflict with the wide-spread idea that the universe at some very early stage can be described exclusively in terms of quantum theory.

Dominicus Gundissalinus (or Gundisalvi), Spanish Domingo Gundisalvo, c. 1110–1190, Archdeacon of Cuéllar (in the Diocese of Segovia), is the most prominent representative of the so-called “Toledan School of Translators.” Not only did he translate over twenty philosophical tracts from Arabic into Latin, including works of al-Kindī, al-Fārābī, Avicenna, Ibn Gabirol, and al-Ġazālī, he also authored five philosophical works: Tractatus de anima, De immortalitate animae, De unitate et uno, De processione mundi, and De divisione philosophiae. Relying on Arabic as well as Latin sources, these works represent original, and often pioneering, contributions to the history of psychology (as the first instance of a Latin reception of Avicennian psychology), ontology, and metaphysics (with the introduction of the term “metaphysica” to the Latin West), as well as epistemology (giving up the traditional ordo scientiarum, i.e., the scheme of the Liberal arts, in favor of an Aristotelian division of the sciences). In particular, his theory of knowledge and science, which is built around important elements from Aristotelian epistemology, was very influential in the Paris Arts faculty during the thirteenth century, and was taken up by, among others, Arnulfus Provincialis, Robert Kilwardby, and Remigio dei Girolami. Some of Gundissalinus’ works were translated into Hebrew.

In this article I propose what I call the inverse spaceship paradox. The article’s interest lies in the fact that, contrary to what appears to be an implicit agreement in the literature on indeterminism, it shows that coming from infinity can be a perfectly predictable and therefore deterministic process in a classical universe.

This article looks into the process of searching for new forms of legitimacy among firms through corporate discourse. Through the analysis of annual sustainability reports, we have determined the existence of three types of rhetoric: (1) strategic (embedded in the scientific-economic paradigm); (2) institutional (based on the fundamental constructs of Corporate Social Responsibility theories); and (3) dialectic (which aims at improving the discursive quality between the corporations and their stakeholders). Each one of these refers to a different form of legitimacy and is based on distinct theories of the firm analyzed in this article. We claim that dialectic rhetoric seems to signal a new understanding of the firm’s role in society and a search for moral legitimation. However, this new form of rhetoric is still fairly uncommon although its use is growing. Combining theory and business examples, this article may help managers and researchers in the conceptualization of how firms make sense of their role in society and what forms of differentiation they strive for through their rhetoric strategies.

E. Husserl represents a key reference when addressing the need for a serious and exhaustive reflection on the notion of Europe, in an attempt to refute the fallacy that is being built up around its past. More than ever before, Europe urgently needs to establish an inner dialogue, and to realise that its true essence lies precisely in that “other Europe” that is being excluded and marginalised (an awareness of existence through the other). Europe needs to adopt a clear approach, accepting its intrinsic plurality and by extension the fact that its identity hinges on assuming as its own that which is superimposed upon it as being radically different. A Europe whose fuzzy, yet immensely powerful light can be seen all over the world. In keeping with the same line of thinking as that adopted by the father of phenomenology, Europe is above all the origin of the most quintessentially European event: philosophy. Indeed, it is philosophical thought that has set Europe apart from the other communities of the world. Philosophy does not target particularly privileged peoples or a specific tradition. To put it another way: philosophy is the conceptual framework that exists prior to the emergence and ultimate existence of the plural nature of the traditions and customs that are shaped to form communities, peoples, nation-states, etc. In fact, the Europeanization of the world (the generalised use of a philosophical lexis – the verbigratia of the concept of democracy) would lead to the necessary opacity and dissemination of Europe as a universal subject. Europe is philosophy and its praxis (or political perspective) the western concept of democracy. Europe must adopt a legitimising approach and relinquish its imposed universalism, timed to coincide with the “voluntary Europeanization of the world”. At all events, it should not be forgotten that Europe (and indeed the entire Western world) is experiencing a time of twilight, of self-imposed decline, of unconcealed deliquescence, precisely at a time when much of the rest of the world is enjoying the limitless expansion of the most genuinely western forms of expression.

Transparency in business and society is one of the challenges raised in the encyclical Caritas in Veritate by Benedict XVI. This paper focuses on the issue by extending the literature on business ethics, corporate social responsibility, and corporate transparency in two dimensions. First, it reviews the understanding and framing of the transparency issue in Caritas in Veritate and in a selection of relevant Catholic Social Teaching (CST) publications. Second, this paper provides normative indications for corporate transparency decisions which reflect four permanent principles of CST, that is, the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity, and respect for the human being. Inasmuch as human beings are worthy of love for their own sakes, the dimension of gift should always be present in relationships among them. This paper also provides insights for further studies on corporate transparency and the impact of religion on business ethics and corporate social responsibility.

Editors’ Introduction

We end the collection with a study of Dame Anita Roddick, the founder and former CEO of the Body Shop. After having been exposed to Collier and Esteban’s description of “systemic leadership”, and Uhl-Bien, Marion and Kelvey’s analysis of “complexity leadership theory”, as well as some of the more practical exposés of these dynamics in various contexts, we would like to challenge the reader to track some of these dynamics in the life of Anita Roddick. In this paper, it becomes clear that Roddick exemplifies what Pless and Maak identify as “responsible leadership,” which certainly displays certain parallels with what the other authors call “systemic leadership” or “complexity leadership theory”. Roddick managed to read and navigate a very complex set of dynamics, taking into account the global environment in which the Body Shop interacts, providing outlets for indigenous products, and being profitable as well. Pless argues that Roddick is an exemplar of the female archetype of leadership. Here we seem to have come full circle… The question that emerges once again is: Is it wise to maintain the notion of a “female archetype” of leadership? Does it not do more damage by entrenching dangerous stereotypes that continue to undermine women’s leadership capacities? Well, yes, and no. The “female archetype” at least indicates that there is an alternative to patriarchal leadership theories, and as such, it creates the possibility of change. All of the authors in this volume will agree that this archetype has been socially constructed, but that does not make its effects, both positive and negative, less real. Maybe the best we could hope for is that “systemic leadership” may offer an alternative to both male and female archetypes that would allow both men and women, to lead in different, more relational and more contextually sensitive ways.

Since time immemorial, the phenomenon of leadership and its understanding has attracted the attention of the business world because of its important role in human groups. Nevertheless, for years efforts to understand this concept have only been centred on people in leadership roles, thus overlooking an important aspect in its understanding: the necessary moral dimension which is implicit in the relationship between leader and follower. As an illustrative example of the importance of considering good morality in leadership, an empirical study is conducted in which a good performance of the “leader–follower” relationship is reflected when individuals perceive ethical leadership in higher hierarchical managerial levels. To be precise, findings of this study demonstrate that follower job response is improved through an ethics trickle-down partial effect from the Top Manager to the immediate supervisor, and also reveal both key aspects and managerial level on which the practice of ethical leadership should rest upon to have a stronger effect on the follower positive job response. Practical implications of these findings and directions for future research are finally presented.

In Values and the Reflective Point of View (2006), Robert Dunn defends a certain expressivist view about evaluative beliefs from which some implications about self-knowledge are explicitly derived. He thus distinguishes between an observational and a deliberative attitude towards oneself, so that the latter involves a purely first-person point of view that gives rise to an especially authoritative, but wholly non-observational, kind of self-knowledge. Even though I sympathize with many aspects of Dunn's approach to evaluative beliefs and also with his stress on the practical significance of self-knowledge, I argue that his proposal seriously misinterprets the role of observation and evidence within the first-person point of view and, derivatively, in the formation of evaluative beliefs.

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research.

In Islam, the revealed text reminds human beings of their need to know (Qurʾān, XVI, 78). Muslims embarked on an intellectual task, which was expressed in different discourses: theology, jurisprudence, mysticism, linguistics, history, and philosophy. The latter took shape when Islamic thought came into contact with Greek philosophy, giving rise to a movement called falsafa: philosophy. This movement continued and recreated Greek philosophical thought in the Islamic world. The great issues that interested philosophers were the relationship between philosophy and religion, the explanation for and conception of the universe and its origin, and human beings and their social and political conduct. Falsafa enjoyed productive expansion and diffusion throughout the Islamic world, first in the East and later in the West, where it exerted a powerful influence on the thought of Latinized areas: it contributed to the transmission of Greek philosophy to Europe and to new developments in the medieval philosophy of the Latin world.

Ramon Llull (c. 1232–1316) is best known for the new argumentative method he proposed, which he called “art of finding truth,” “demonstrative art” or “general art.” This Art, developed in several successive versions, was conceived as a tool for the conversion of non-Christians by means of interreligious disputation. However, Llull also presented his method as a universal science, aimed at overcoming the shortcomings of scholastic science. This claim has to be set against the background of a process of secularization of thought brought on by the Aristotelization of university curricula, which Llull strongly opposed. From this viewpoint, Llull put forward his Art as an alternative to an Aristotelian science that made impossible what he considered paramount: the concordance between philosophy and theology and the constitution of the latter as a truly scientific discipline, able to prove the articles of faith.

In recent years, the most widespread doctrine about the conflicts between fundamental (usually constitutional) legal rights could be summarized in the following three main theses: (1) The elements in conflict are legal principles, as opposed to legal rules; (2) Those conflicts are not consequences of the existence of inconsistencies or antinomies between the norms involved, but rather depend on the empirical circumstances of the case. In other words, the norms are logically consistent and the conflicts are not determinable a priori or in abstracto, but only in concreto; and (3) The classical criteria for solving conflicts between norms, such as lex superior, lex posterior and lex specialis, are not suitable to solve conflicts among fundamental legal rights. Indeed, they require a specific method known as ‘weighing and balancing’. Although all three theses could be (and indeed have been) regarded as problematic, in this paper I address mainly the second one. I try to show that there is room for a tertium genus between antinomies (deontic inconsistencies) and conflicts caused by strict empirical circumstances that I call ‘contextual antinomies’. There are situations in which the norms involved are not inconsistent but the conflict arises for logical reasons. My thesis is that many conflicts between fundamental legal rights fall in this category. I offer, in an appendix, a proposal of formalization of this kind of conflict and the elements involved in it.