Advancing Transnational Corporations’ Overseas Environmental Accountability

This paper addresses the extraterritorial dimension of transnational corporations, focusing on the corporateaccountability-deficit that characterizes the current International legal framework. The analysis looks at parentcompanies’ civil liability for environmental harm caused abroad. By introducing a selected number of foreign direct liability cases brought before European national courts, the paper investigates whether the binding environmental and human rights reporting obligations contained in Directive 2014/95/EU contribute to the determination of a parent company’s duty of care towards its overseas subsidiaries, and consequently establish their potential liability

No longer true

There are sentences that express the same temporally fully specified proposition at all contexts--call them 'context-insensitive, temporally specific sentences.' Sentence (1) 'Obama was born in 1961' is a case in point: at all contexts, it expresses the proposition ascribing to the year 1961 the property of being a time in which Obama was born. Suppose that someone uttered (1) in a context located on Christmas 2000 in our world. In this context, (1) is a true sentence about the past. Moreover, it seems impossible that (1) will be false in a successive context (one located, say, on Christmas 2020 in our world). More generally, one might be tempted to endorse the following principle: if a context-insensitive, temporally specific sentence is uttered in a context in which it is about the past and takes a certain truth value in this context, it cannot be the case that it takes a different truth value in a successive context located in the same world. In this paper, we present linguistic evidence that shows that this principle fails. On this basis, we draw an apparently crazy conclusion: the past can change. We then explain why this conclusion is not that crazy, after all

Not more than a feeling: An experimental investigation into the folk concept of happiness

Affect-based theorists and life satisfaction theorists disagree about the nature of happiness, but agree about this methodological principle: a philosophical theory of happiness should be in line with the folk concept HAPPINESS. In this article, we present two empirical studies indicating that it is affect-based theories that get the folk concept HAPPINESS right: competent speakers judge a person to be happy if and only if that person is described as feeling pleasure/good most of the time. Our studies also show that the judgement that a person is feeling pleasure/good most of the time reliably brings about the judgement that they are satisfied with their life, even if that person is described as not satisfied. We suggest that this direct causal relation between the concepts POSITIVE AFFECT and LIFE SATISFACTION might explain why many philosophers have been attracted to life satisfaction theories

Valence: a reflection

This article gives a short presentation of reflective imperativism, the intentionalist theory of valence I developed with Max Khan Hayward. The theory says that mental states have valence in virtue of having reflexive imperative content. More precisely, mental states have positive valence (i.e., feel good) in virtue of issuing the command "More of me!", and they have negative valence (i.e., feel bad) in virtue of issuing the command "Less of me!" The article summarises the main arguments in favour of reflexive imperativism and against other intentionalist treatments of valence

Beyond good and bad: reflexive imperativism, not evaluativism, explains valence

Evaluativism by Carruthers and reflexive imperativism by Barlassina and Hayward agree that valence—the (un)pleasantness of experiences—is a natural kind shared across all affective states. But they disagree about what valence is. For evaluativism, an experience is pleasant/unpleasant in virtue of representing its worldly object as good/bad; for reflexive imperativism, an experience is pleasant/unpleasant in virtue of commanding its subject to get more/less of itself. I argue that reflexive imperativism is superior to evaluativism according to Carruthers's own standards. He maintains that a theory of valence should account for its phenomenology and role in imagination‐based decision‐making. I show that it is reflexive imperativism, rather than evaluativism, that fits this explanatory bill

Formación de nuevos liderazgos en la región. La experiencia de la Academia de Innovación política

The purpose of this article is to share some reflections about training courses mediated by information and communication technologies (ICT). Several of these reflections and considerations emerge from the learning experiences in the framework of the creation and development of the Academy of Political Innovation. The academy emerges from an investigation held by “South Affairs”, in which 165 training programs for political and social leaders were mapped in Latin America. “South Affairs” not only profited from the knowledge acquired during several years of fieldwork, but it also enhanced the training courses with practical tools while adding the know how in political innovation to train future regional leaders.Por medio de este artículo nos proponemos compartir una serie de reflexiones acerca de la formación mediada por las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC). Varias de estas reflexiones y consideraciones se desprenden de las experiencias y los aprendizajes en el marco de la creación y el desarrollo de la Academia de Innovación Política, que encuentra sus raíces a partir de una investigación que realizamos desde Asuntos del Sur, donde se mapearon 165 programas de formación de líderes y lideresas políticos/as y sociales en América Latina. Asuntos del Sur supo aprovechar los saberes adquiridos durante varios años de trabajo en los territorios, potenciar con herramientas prácticas y, a ello, sumarle el know how en innovación política para formar a nuestros futuros/as líderes y lideresas de la región

Loopy regulations: The motivational profile of affective phenomenology

Affective experiences such as pains, pleasures, and emotions have affective phenomenology: they feel (un)pleasant. This type of phenomenology has a loopy regulatory profile: it often motivates us to act a certain way, and these actions typically end up regulating our affective experiences back. For example, the pleasure you get by tasting your morning coffee motivates you to drink more of it, and this in turn results in you obtaining another pleasant gustatory experience. In this article, we argue that reflexive imperativism (Barlassina & Hayward 2019) is the only intentionalist account of affective phenomenology—probably, the only account at all—that is able to make sense of its loopy regulatory profile