Concerns about energy security have dramatically increased since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. If U.S. energy use follows business-as-usual projections, the energy system will become increasingly vulnerable. No quick fixes are available to make the United States energy independent. However, there are energy policies that promote efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources such as wind, biomass, geothermal, and solar can gradually reduce dependence on imported oil and natural gas and reduce the vulnerability of the U.S. energy (...) infrastructure to disruption of supplies or to attack. This article reviews recent analyses by the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s and by the Union of Concerned Scientists. These studies showthat efficiency and renewable energy investments can increase energy security while lowering consumer energy bills and reducing local and global environmental hazards. (shrink)

In Republic II, after Socrates has constructed the smallest city answering the demands of Necessity, Glaucon dismisses it as unfit for human habitation. The lack of relishes makes life there unpalatable. Without further ado, this “healthy” and “true” city is abandoned, and Socrates spends the rest of the Republic on the etiology, diagnosis, and possible treatment of the chronic “fever” afflicting the city of luxury. Prominent commentators see nothing strange in his brisk turn away from the “true” city, taking the (...) Kallipolis as a hardheaded alternative to Socratic pie in the sky. By contrast, I take seriously Socrates’ claim that the CP is the true city. I analyze its political-economic structure; show how this reappears in the Kallipolis; and explain the CP’s hidden role as a quasi-medical model of equilibrium, an ideal the Kallipolis never achieves, yet to which its rulers must look in exercising their craft. (shrink)

This chapter is a philosophical survey of some leading approaches in formal epistemology in the so-called ‘Bayesian’ tradition. According to them, a rational agent’s degrees of belief—credences—at a time are representable with probability functions. We also canvas various further putative ‘synchronic’ rationality norms on credences. We then consider ‘diachronic’ norms that are thought to constrain how credences should respond to evidence. We discuss some of the main lines of recent debate, and conclude with some prospects for future research.

My talk today will be about Newton’s avowed methodology, and specifically the place of experiment in his conception of science, and how his ideas changed significantly over the course of his career. I also want to look at his actual scientific practice and see how this influenced his views on the nature of the experimental sciences.

Much of the discussion on business ethics is philosophical in nature. There is no lack of theories and ideals on moral reasoning. What is missing is translating these moral theories and principles into specific, operational procedures that can indicate a proper course of action. Although most business actions are routine and do not raise serious ethical questions, many people experience difficulty in applying their personal moral principles to specific business decisions in ethically-dilemmatic situations.This study seeks to develop a framework that (...) can be utilized to implement personal moral reasoning based on the teleological theory of Utilitarianism and the deontological theory of Ross''s Prima Facie Duties in the business decision-making process. The central feature in the framework is a point-system that quantities the ethical worth of a proposed business action and determines whether the action would be ethically desirable if taken. It provides an objective element in an otherwise qualitative ethical inquiry process. This study also illustrates practical applications of the system by analyzing the ethical implications of a proposed action where foreign bribery is involved. (shrink)

Metaphysics and language: Quine, W. V. O. On the individuation of attributes. Körner, S. On some relations between logic and metaphysics. Marcus, R. B. Does the principle of substitutivity rest on a mistake? Van Fraassen, B. C. Platonism's pyrrhic victory. Martin, R. M. On some prepositional relations. Kearns, J. T. Sentences and propositions.--Basic and combinatorial logic: Orgass, R. J. Extended basic logic and ordinal numbers. Curry, H. B. Representation of Markov algorithms by combinators.--Implication and consistency: Anderson, A. R. Fitch on (...) consistency. Belnap, N. D., Jr. Grammatical propaedeutic. Thomason, R. H. Decidability in the logic of conditionals. Myhill, J. Levels of implication.--Deontic, epistemic, and erotetic logic: Bacon, J. Belief as relative knowledge. Wu, K. J. Believing and disbelieving. Kordig, C. R. Relativized deontic modalities. Harrah, D. A system for erotetic sentences. (shrink)

The Groningen Protocol allows active euthanasia of severely ill newborns with unbearable suffering. Defenders of the protocol insist that the protocol refers to terminally ill infants and that quality of life should not be a factor in the decision to euthanize an infant. They also argue that there should be no ethical difference between active and passive euthanasia of these infants. However, nowhere in the protocol does it refer to terminally ill infants; on the contrary, the developers of the protocol (...) take into account the future quality of life of the infant. We also note how the Nazi Euthanasie Programm started with the premise that there is some life not worthy of living. Therefore, in our opinion, the protocol violates the traditional ethical codes of physicians and the moral values of the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the world. (shrink)

Criteria for a successful theory of punishment include first, that it specify a reasonable limit to punishments in particular cases, and second, that it allow benefits to outweigh costs in a penal institution.It is argued that traditional utilitarian and retributive theories fail to satisfy both criteria, and that they cannot be coherently combined so as to do so. Retributivism specifies a reasonable limit in its demand that punishment equal crime, but this limit fails to allow benefits to outweigh costs of (...) punishing. Utilitarians demand the latter but cannot guarantee the former. Combinations continue to violate one requirement or the other. (shrink)

Este artículo es un estudio acerca de la elaboración de la teoría de la empatía de Edmund Husserl. Procura reconstruir dos de los hitos principales de las reflexiones sobre la empatía en cuanto que vivencia intencional aprehensora de una subjetividad ajena, a partir de una interpretación de textos póstumos sobre la intersubjetividad editados por Iso Kern en 1973 en los volúmenes XIII, XIV y XV de _Husserliana_. El primer hito es la discusión que a comienzos del 1900 Husserl entabla con, (...) por un lado, la teoría de la inferencia por analogía de Benno Erdmann –formulada originalmente por John Stuart Mill– y, por el otro, la teoría de la empatía como instinto de imitación y expresión de Theodor Lipps. El segundo es la reelaboración del concepto de empatía a partir de la fenomenología genética y el descubrimiento de síntesis pasivas a la base de los actos cogitativos del ego. Sostengo en este trabajo que estos dos jalones del pensamiento husserliano sobre la intersubjetividad no están completamente desvinculados: las nociones de analogía y de operaciones no-yoicias, tan importantes en el segundo período, estaban ya presentes a su manera en la interpretación crítica de las teorías de Erdmann/Mill y Lipps. (shrink)

Mr. T. H. Mcpherson has given, in a recent article in PHILOSOPHY , various reasons for supposing that there was a development in Butler's ethics from the Sermons to the Analogy . He argues that Butler was in the Sermons a “rational egoist” or “Ethical Eudaemonist,” and in the Analogy an Intuitionist. By “Ethical Eudaemonism” he seems1 to mean that “the ground or criterion of rightness is conduciveness to the agent's interest” or that “it is the happiness-producing character of acts (...) that makes them right” . I shall use the phrase “McPherson's view” to denote the theory that this was Butler's view in the Sermons. (shrink)

The rapid development of biobanks internationally reflects the considerable expectations attached to the exploitation of genetics knowledge. However, establishing consent and legitimacy for the new generation of biobanks is not without its challenges because they tend to be prospective in nature, involving the collection of DNA, personal medical and lifestyle data generally held over a very long period of time for unspecified research purposes. Thus far, biobanks have tended to be established ahead of wide-ranging debate about their broad implications. Making (...) specific reference to the 'engagement' processes employed by UK Biobank during its establishment phase, this article focuses on the politics of 'public engagement'. It examines the context of arguments for 'public engagement', drawing attention to how particular approaches to 'engagement' within biobank projects may serve to limit debate on substantive questions arising from their development. Unless biobanks' 'engagements' substantially involve publics in deliberations about their development, it is argued, publics are likely to become distrustful of projects and perhaps resist other similar population-based health initiatives in the future. (shrink)

The paper offers a critical engagement with Cécile Laborde’s book, Liberalism’s Religion. It elaborates several objections to Laborde’s account of religious accommodations, and sketches an alternative approach.

This study explores the way that belief systems, interactions with social or experimental environments, and skills at the “control” level in decision‐making shape people's behavior as they solve problems. It is argued that problem‐solvers' beliefs (not necessarily consciously held) about what is useful in mathematics may determine the set of “cognitive resources” at their disposal as they do mathematics. Such beliefs may, for example, render inaccessible to them large bodies of information that are stored in long‐term memory and that are (...) easily retrieved in other circumstances. In other cases, individuals' reactions to an experimental setting (fear of failure, or the desire to “look mathematical” while being videotaped) may induce behavior that is almost pathological—and at the same time, so consistent that it can be modeled. In general, such “environmental” factors establish the context within which individuals access and utilize the information potentially at their disposal.Protocols illustrating these points are presented and discussed. A model based on an axiomatization of students' beliefs about plane geometry is outlined, and is shown to correspond closely to their problem‐solving performance. A framework is offered for analyzing problem‐solving performance at three qualitatively different levels: access to cognitive resources stored in LTM, executive or control decision‐making, and belief systems. (shrink)

This paper examines moral problems that arise when assigning liability in causally problematic mass exposure tort cases. It examines the relevance of different conceptions of corrective justice for such assignments of liability. It explores an analogy between the expressive role of punishment and the expressive role of tort, and argues that the imposition of liability in causally problematic mass exposure cases can be justified by appeal to expressive considerations.

It is desirable that the antecedents of existing, highly specialised, evolutionary mechanisms in animals be sought. The study of the lower Metazoa and especially of their simpler reproductive processes suggests that asexual reproduction is the primitive evolutionary mechanism from which the more advanced sexual mechanisms have evolved. A study of the metagenetic cycles of Coelenterata and Platyhelminthes seems to throw much light upon their prophylogeny and indicates that: Such cycles seem to provide the closest possible recapitulatory parallelism between phylogeny and (...) ontogeny. The Hydrozoa are ancestral to the other classes of Coelenterata. The polypoid adult is more primitive than the medusoid adult. The sporocysts, rediae and scolices represent the more primitive types of adults in their respective ontogenies and phylogenies.On avance la théorie qu'il y a eu une évolution des mécanismes évolutionnaires depuis les stades primitifs jusqu'aux stades avancés. D'après cette théorie les premières étapes dans l'évolution des Métazoaires inférieurs se sont effectuées par la reproduction asexuelle avant que les mecanismes sexuels très spécialisés se soient manifestés.Des preuves à l'appui de cette théorie découlent: de la rencontre actuelle d'une reproduction asexuelle chez des animaux, avec l'indication que sa simplicité est, dans la plupart des cas, originelle, et des cycles d'évolution des Coelentérés et Platyhelminthes qui sont métagénésiques. Leurs cycles peuvent s'interpréter comme partant de stades reproductifs asexuels pour évoluer vers des formes se reproduisant sexuellement.On croit que les organismes ne pouvant se reproduire que sexuellement sont plus avancés que ceux qui peuvent se reproduire asexuellement, ou à la fois sexuellement et asexuellement.Cette théorie a d'importantes implications pour l'étude de la métagenèse, de la récapitulation et de la phylogénie chez les Métazoaires inférieurs; elle exemplifie, dans l'étude de ces phénomènes, la nouvelle orientation qu'on a appelée Prophylogénie.In dieser Arbeit wird eine Theorie entwickelt, die besagt, dass eine Fortentwicklung der Evolutionsmechanismen von primitiven zu fortgeschrittenen Stufen besteht. Dieser Theorie nach haben sich die niedrigeren Metazoen ursprünglich nur ungeschlechtlich entwickelt und fortgepflanzt. Erst später haben sich die höchst spezialisierten geschlechtlichen Mechanismen entwickelt.Belege für diese Theorie sind: Noch heute kommt die geschlechtslose Fortpflanzung in Tieren vor, was dafür spricht, dass ihre Einfachheit in den meisten Fällen ursprünglich ist. Die Lebenskreisläufe der Metagenetischen Coelenteraten und Platyhelminthen lassen sich interpretieren als bestehend aus ursprünglich ungeschlechtlichen Fortpflanzungsstufen, die jedoch später in Formen mit geschlechtlicher Fortpflanzung übergehen.Es wird behauptet, dass Organismen mit nur geschlechtlicher Fortpflanzung weiter fortgeschritten sind als solche mit nur ungeschlechtlicher oder mit sowohl ungeschlechtlicher als auch geschlechtlicher Fortpflanzung.Diese Theorie ist wichtig für das Studium der Metagenese, Rekapitulation und Phylogenie in den niedrigen Metazoen und veranschaulicht die Prophylogenie, d.h. die neue Methode im Studium dieser Erscheinungen. (shrink)

The starting point for this paper is the question that forms its title. Why is it that management seems to have no history? In making this bold claim I am not of course suggesting that historians have not written about management, as of course they have. The question I am posing is rather one about the practice of management, its received status as an amalgam of technical insights and administrative expertise perceived to stand objectively, and necessarily so, a corpus of (...) skills analogous to those an engineer or a chemist might have: management as a transferable technology unclouded by competing values. Nor am I suggesting that the practice of management has been perceived as unproblematic. Rather, I aim to probe the degree to which its nature as an objective ‘know-how’ renders it as in some way anterior to ethics. It is that proposition that I am attempting to investigate here, indirectly as it were, by posing this question — a question initially about history. This question it seems to me is underlined by the assumption that the history of management is necessarily circumscribed in a way that, say, political history or the history of religion is not. Is it the story of how this expertise was acquired, the intellectual equivalent of a Brunel or a Napier, building bridges or constructing log tables? Or is it something more? Religion and politics clearly have a more problematic history than this, while management appears not to do so; and it is that question I propose to probe in this essay. (shrink)

We construct a model in which the splitting number is large and every ultrafilter has a small subset with no pseudo-intersection.

There are many different ways of dealing with the conditions of justice. In this paper I raise some basic questions about the foundations of justice, including whatare its central requirements and, especially, what it is about justice that underlies or explains its mandatoriness: why it is that justice is regarded as so morally necessary that any violation of it calls for the most severe condemnation and correction.

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of Buddhist meditation practice on the attitude, work and lived experience of therapists and their self-reported experiences of work with clients. The research describes particular dynamics and effects of meditation on six psychotherapists who practiced Buddhist meditation for over five years in the Theravadin , Zen and Vajrayana traditions. Interviews and follow-up interviews were conducted by the researcher combining both structured and open-ended formats. A phenomenological analysis of the interviews with (...) the privileged subjects is the method utilized to make sense of the data. Summaries of each subject's interviews were prepared. A co-reader expert in phenomenological analysis participated with the researcher in a dialogal process to challenge and clarify the themes that emerged from the interviews. ;The findings revealed five primary themes that emerged in the interviews: conviction/grounding, mindfulness of the present, impermanence, suffering, and skepticism of melodramas. These are discussed from the viewpoint of each of the subjects as they addressed them in the interviews. There were three essential meaning structures that emerged from the phenomenological analysis. These are described as a trinity with each bearing a crucial relationship to the other in how meditation impacts the work of these therapists. The essential meaning structures consist of conviction/grounding, skepticism of melodramas, and mindfulness in the present. These themes are also discussed from the viewpoint of three-fold logic of ground, path, and fruition. ;A critique of the phenomenological research is presented. Acknowledgment is made regarding the limitations and benefits of conducting this method of research. Implications of the findings for the training of therapists is discussed. Further related research is suggested. (shrink)