“If you like it Green, put a ring on it”: Married women directors and environmental performance in family and non-family businesses.Vincenzo Vastola,Giovanna Campopiano,FrancescoDebellis &Domenico Rocco Cambrea -forthcoming -Journal of Business Ethics:1-17.detailsThis paper investigates whether the marital status of women directors predicts firm environmental performance in family and non-family businesses. We argue that rather than simply reflecting gender juxtaposition, the marital status of female directors can explain heterogeneity in firms’ environmental performances by triggering gender role attributions that lead to women board members enhancing their firms’ contributions to environmental sustainability. Building on social role theory and the socioemotional wealth perspective, we advance that gender role attributions unfold differently in family versus non-family (...) firms. Leveraging a dataset of Italian-listed companies from 2003 to 2019, we find that the greater presence of married female directors enhances environmental performance. However, while this result holds more strongly for non-family firms, a positive contribution of married female directors only manifests in family businesses when they belong to the controlling family. This paper advances the discussion of women’s participation on corporate boards in family firms and firms’ contributions to addressing environmental issues by shedding light on the individual traits and firm characteristics that shape social expectations and women’s behavior on boards. (shrink)
Experimental localism and external validity.Francesco Guala -2003 -Philosophy of Science 70 (5):1195-1205.detailsExperimental “localism” stresses the importance of context‐specific knowledge, and the limitations of universal theories in science. I illustrate Latour's radical approach to localism and show that it has some unpalatable consequences, in particular the suggestion that problems of external validity (or how to generalize experimental results to nonlaboratory circumstances) cannot be solved. In the last part of the paper I try to sketch a solution to the problem of external validity by extending Mayo's error‐probabilistic approach.
Peirce’s Speculative Grammar: Logic as Semiotics.Francesco Bellucci -2017 - London: Routledge.details_Peirce’s Speculative Grammar: Logic as Semiotics _offers a comprehensive, philologically accurate, and exegetically ambitious developmental account of Peirce’s theory of speculative grammar. The book traces the evolution of Peirce’s grammatical writings from his early research on the classification of arguments in the 1860s up to the complex semiotic taxonomies elaborated in the first decade of the twentieth century. It will be of interest to academic specialists working on Peirce, the history of American philosophy and pragmatism, the philosophy of language, the (...) history of logic, and semiotics. (shrink)
Preferences: neither behavioural nor mental.Francesco Guala -2019 -Economics and Philosophy 35 (3):383-401.detailsRecent debates on the nature of preferences in economics have typically assumed that they are to be interpreted either as behavioural regularities or as mental states. In this paper I challenge this dichotomy and argue that neither interpretation is consistent with scientific practice in choice theory and behavioural economics. Preferences are belief-dependent dispositions with a multiply realizable causal basis, which explains why economists are reluctant to make a commitment about their interpretation.
Bradley's regress and ungrounded dependence chains: A reply to Cameron.Francesco Orilia -2009 -Dialectica 63 (3):333-341.detailsA version of Bradley's regress can be endorsed in an effort to address the problem of the unity of states of affairs or facts, thereby arriving at a doctrine that I have called fact infinitism . A consequence of it is the denial of the thesis, WF, that all chains of ontological dependence are well-founded or grounded. Cameron has recently rejected fact infinitism by arguing that WF, albeit not necessarily true, is however contingently true. Here fact infinitism is supported by (...) showing that Cameron's argument for the contingent truth of WF is unsuccessful. (shrink)
The Philosophy of Social Science: Metaphysical and Empirical.Francesco Guala -2007 -Philosophy Compass 2 (6):954-980.detailsopinionated survey paper to be published in the Blackwell’s Philosophy Compass.
Extrapolation, Analogy, and Comparative Process Tracing.Francesco Guala -2010 -Philosophy of Science 77 (5):1070-1082.detailsComparative process tracing is the best analysis of extrapolation inferences in the philosophical and scientific literature so far. In this essay I examine some similarities and differences between comparative process tracing and former attempts to capture the logic of extrapolation, such as the analogical approach. I show that these accounts are not different in spirit, although comparative process tracing supersedes previous proposals in terms of analytical detail. I also examine some qualms about the possibility of drawing extrapolation inferences in the (...) social sciences and conclude by suggesting that there may be cases of extrapolation without process tracing. (shrink)
Justice, emotions, and solidarity.Francesco Tava -2023 -Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 26 (1):39-55.detailsThis paper discusses Habermas’s argument that justice requires solidarity as its ‘reverse side’, whereby the former provides the necessary global framework for establishing intersubjective solidarity whilst the latter constitutes an important precondition for igniting social and political change in the direction of social justice. In this paper I argue that such a paradigm of reciprocity might be fruitfully complemented by a less apparent yet substantial nexus: that between solidarity and perceived injustice, which I contend also triggers the emergence of solidarity. (...) Drawing from Arendt’s thematisation of solidarity as a principle that stems from human suffering and recent scholarship on transitional post-conflict justice, I analyse the negative and reactive aspect of solidarity and the role of negative emotions in its emergence. (shrink)
Clear-cut designs versus the uniformity of experimental practice.Francesco Guala -2001 -Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (3):412-413.detailsClear-cut designs have a number of methodological virtues, with respect to internal and external validity, which I illustrate by means of informal causal analysis. In contrast, a more uniform experimental practice across disciplines may not lead to progress if causal relations in the human sciences are highly dependent on the details of the context.
Reflexivity and equilibria.Francesco Guala -2013 -Journal of Economic Methodology 20 (4):397-405.detailsThe failure of models based on rational expectations to explain the ‘boom and bust’ of financial markets does not support Soros' critique of mainstream economics or his call for a theoretical revolution. Contrary to what Soros says, standard rational choice theory has the conceptual resources to analyse reflexivity. The dynamic of feedback loops for example can be described by simple models based on multiple equilibria and informational cascades. The problem is that agents and theorists sometimes lack the information required to (...) identify equilibria and tipping points. (shrink)
Positive Law and Natural Law.Francesco Viola -1983 -Review of Metaphysics 37 (2):321-334.detailsThe aim of this paper is to demonstrate: 1) that the notions of positive and natural law are not incompatible; 2) that positive and natural law are two species of the same genus "law," conceived as an obligatory prescription; 3) that the obligatory force of both laws depends on a rational justification, discriminating juridical norms from mere impositions; 4) that the difference between those laws depends on the universality or the particularity of their justification.
No categories
The normativity of Lewis Conventions.Francesco Guala -2013 -Synthese 190 (15):3107-3122.detailsDavid Lewis famously proposed to model conventions as solutions to coordination games, where equilibrium selection is driven by precedence, or the history of play. A characteristic feature of Lewis Conventions is that they are intrinsically non-normative. Some philosophers have argued that for this reason they miss a crucial aspect of our folk notion of convention. It is doubtful however that Lewis was merely analysing a folk concept. I illustrate how his theory can (and must) be assessed using empirical data, and (...) argue that it does indeed miss an important aspect of real-world conventions. (shrink)
Syntax and Interpretation.Francesco Pupa &Erika Troseth -2011 -Mind and Language 26 (2):185-209.detailsIn his book Language in Context, Jason Stanley provides a novel solution to certain interpretational puzzles (Stanley, 2007). The aphonic approach, as we call it, hangs upon a substantial syntactic thesis. Here, we provide theoretical and empirical arguments against this particular syntactic thesis. Moreover, we demonstrate that the interpretational puzzles under question admit of a better solution under the explicit approach.
Rescuing Ontological Individualism.Francesco Guala -2022 -Philosophy of Science 89 (3):471-485.detailsStandard defenses of ontological individualism are challenged by arguments that exploit the dependence of social facts on material facts—that is, facts that are not about human individuals. In this article, I discuss Brian Epstein’s “materialism” in The Ant Trap: granting Epstein’s strict definition of individualism, I show that his arguments depend crucially on a generous conception of social properties and social facts. Individualists, however, are only committed to the claim that projectible properties are individualistically realized, and materialists have not undermined (...) this claim. (shrink)
Phenomenology and the idea of Europe: introductory remarks.Francesco Tava -2016 -Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 47 (3):205-209.detailsÏntroductory remarks to the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology Special Issue "Phenomenology and the Idea of Europe".
Lucretius and his sources: a study of Lucretius, De rerum natura I 635-920.Francesco Montarese -2012 - Berlin: De Gruyter.details"This book discusses Lucretius' refutation of Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and other, unnamed thinkers in De Rerum Natura 1, 635-920. Chapter 1 argues that in DRN I 635-920 Lucretius was following an Epicurean source, which in turn depended on Theophrastean doxography. Chapter 2 shows that books 14 and 15 of Epicurus' On Nature were not Lucretius' source-text. Chapter 3 discusses how lines 635-920 fit in the structure of book 1 and whether Lucretius' source is more likely to have been Epicurus himself (...) or a neo-Epicurean. Chapter 4 focuses on Lucretius' own additions to the material he derived from his sources and on his poetical and rhetorical contributions, which were extensive. Lucretius shows an understanding of philosophical points by adapting his poetical devices to the philosophical arguments. Chapter 4 also argues that Lucretius anticipates philosophical points in what have often been regarded as the 'purple passages' of his poem - e.g. the invocation of Venus in the proem, and the description of Sicily and Aetna - so that he could take them up later on in his narrative and provide an adequate explanation of reality."--Publisher's website. (shrink)
(1 other version)La filosofia antica.Francesco Adorno -1991 - Milano: Feltrinelli.details1. La formazione del pensiero filosofico dalle origini a Platone, VI-IV a.C. -- 2. Filosofia, cultura, scuole tra Aristotele e Augusto, IV-II secolo a.C. -- 3. Pensiero, culture e concezioni religiose, II secolo a.C.-II secolo d.C. -- 4. Cultura, filosofia, politica e religiosità, II-VI secolo d.C.