F. H. Bradley was the foremost philosopher of the British Idealist school, which came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century. Bradley, who was a life fellow of Merton College, Oxford, was influenced by Hegel, and also reacted against utilitarianism. He was recognised during his lifetime as one of the greatest intellectuals of his generation and was the first philosopher to receive the Order of Merit, in 1924. His work is considered to have been important (...) to the formation of analytic philosophy. In metaphysics, he rejected pluralism and realism, and believed that English philosophy needed to deal systematically with first principles. This work, first published in 1893, is divided into two parts: 'Appearance' deals with exposing the contradictions that Bradley believed are hidden in our everyday conceptions of the world; and in 'Reality', he builds his positive account of reality and considers possible objections to it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Charles Faulkner Bryan: His Life and MusicTerese M. VolkCarolyn Livingston, Charles Faulkner Bryan: His Life and Music ( Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2003)There are many biographical studies in music education history.1 Indeed, it seems one of the easiest fields in historical research to mine—that is, until the researcher finds him or herself in the midst of what could be a years-long endeavor. Then the choice is (...) to commit to the research or quit. Carolyn Livingston did not quit. Her research began in 1981, continued through twenty years of investigations, interviews, library searches, and analyses, and has culminated in Charles Faulkner Bryan: His Life and Music. This book is not just the usual sequence of events in the life of a musician. Rather, it is more like becoming acquainted with someone you have never met before, yet feel comfortable with immediately. Charles Faulkner Bryan is genuinely likeable, and Livingston brings the person of Bryan to the fore and lets his humanity shine through his life and his music.Charles Faulkner Bryan: His life and Music is divided into two sections (pre- and post-WWII), each with four chapters. Livingston looks at this musician from several perspectives: the composer, the educator, the researcher, and the man. Appalachian folk music is the theme that connects the chapters, as it connected the events in Bryan's life. [End Page 211]Chapter 1 focuses on Bryan's youth, during which he and his family discovered his musical abilities. From performing at school, to building his own "turtle uke,"2 to his studies at the Nashville Conservatory of Music, Livingston describes the family support behind his developing musicality. Chapter 2 shows the reader his humanity even more clearly. Livingston tells of his early career as a music educator at the Tennessee Polytechnic institute; his marriage; and his mentorship of a young Black singer, J. Robert Bradley. That Bryan, a white Southerner, gave voice lessons to Bradley was not only generally unheard of with segregation as it was in the United States during the 1930s, but was dangerous to his career as well. Bryan moved on to teach at Peabody College in Nashville and then worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Music Program on the Tennessee Music Project. Later he became the assistant state coordinator for the Tennessee State Defense Council. During both of these service positions, he called for music education improvements in Tennessee. Commenting on his work during this period, Livingston says, "Bryan was both of his time and ahead of his time... grounded in reality and yet visionary."3In Chapter 3, Livingston gives the reader a review of the "status of folk music scholarship and performance" as it existed in the 1930s.4 She takes pains to introduce the folk music researchers and musicians who influenced Bryan in his work with Appalachian folk music: Lucien L. McDowell and Flora Lassiter McDowell, George Pullen Jackson, Charles Seeger, and John Jacob Niles. These connections and friendships were to influence his awareness of Appalachian folk music and would continue for the rest of his life. By 1945 he had come to be considered an authority on folk music in his own right and his vision of this music came to encompass "the ultimate meaning in representing America itself."5Chapter 4 traces Bryan's development as a composer. It is in this chapter that Livingston begins to incorporate analyses of Bryan's most popular compositions. Her reviews of these compositions are clear and detailed without being overly theoretical. Some of the selections she analyzes include "Charlottown," "The Ballad of the Harp Weaver," and the White Spiritual Symphony. The Symphony in particular shows his respect for the folk songs he incorporated in this composition. Indeed, as Livingston points out several times, he maintained the integrity of these songs in all his compositions and performances. Chapter 4 concludes with Bryan's academic achievements: a Guggenheim Fellowship for music composition and his acceptance at Yale University to study composition under Hindemith.Livingston continues the discussion and analyses of Bryan's compositions in Chapter 5, detailing his time at Yale. His completed choral works from this period include the "Bell... (shrink)

F. H. Bradley was the foremost philosopher of the British Idealist school, which came to prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century and remained influential into the first half of the twentieth. Bradley, who was educated at Oxford, and spent his life as a fellow of Merton College, was influenced by Hegel, and also reacted against utilitarianism. He was recognised during his lifetime as one of the greatest intellectuals of his generation and was the first philosopher (...) to receive the Order of Merit, in 1924. This collection of some of Bradley's most important journal articles was first published in 1914. He examines coherence and identity theories of truth, and discusses pragmatism and radical empiricism. The book contains extensive discussion of the work of Bertrand Russell and William James, while other essays cover a range of different subjects such as faith, memory, error and God. (shrink)

Senior managers are important to the successful management of ethics in organizations. Therefore, their perceptions of organizational ethics are important. In this study, we propose that senior managers are likely to have a more positive perception of organizational ethics than lower level employees do largely because of their managerial role and their corresponding identification with the organization and need to protect the organization’s image as well as their own identity. By contrast, lower level employees are more likely to be cynical (...) about the organization’s ethics. In order to compare senior managers’ and lower level employees’ perceptions of ethics in the organization, we surveyed randomly selected senior managers and lower level employees in three firms. We found that perceptions of ethics in the organization differed predictably across levels, with senior managers’ perceptions being significantly more positive and lower level employees’ perceptions being more negative. Implications for practice and research are discussed. (shrink)

Achieving a high quality of life is dependent upon how individuals face adversity. Positive psychological interventions are well-suited to support coping efforts; however, experimental research is limited. The purpose of the current research was to examine whether different savoring interventions could increase important coping resources in response to a social-evaluative hassle. We completed an experimental mixed subject design study with a university student sample. All participants completed a hassle induction task and were then randomly assigned into different intervention groups. Positive (...) emotion ratings were collected at three points in time. Results revealed a significant time x intervention interaction effect, such that individuals in the savoring the moment intervention reported higher levels of positive emotions compared to individuals assigned to the true control group, guided imagery control group, and savoring through reminiscence intervention. Such findings represent a significant extension to savoring theory and offer support for savoring the moment exercises as a primary prevention strategy to bolster effective responses to social-evaluative hassles. (shrink)

In Bradley, I offered an analysis of Sleeping Beauty and the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics. I argued that one can avoid a kind of easy confirmation of EQM by paying attention to observation selection effects, that halfers are right about Sleeping Beauty, and that thirders cannot avoid easy confirmation for the truth of EQM. Wilson agrees with my analysis of observation selection effects in EQM, but goes on to, first, defend Elga’s thirder argument on Sleeping Beauty and, second, (...) argue that the analogy I draw between Sleeping Beauty and EQM fails. I will argue that neither point succeeds. 1 Introduction2 Background3 Wilson’s Argument for ⅓ in Sleeping Beauty4 Reply: Explaining Away the Crazy5 Wilson's Argument for the Breakdown of the Analogy6 Reply: The Irrelevance of Chance7 Conclusion. (shrink)

We argue that there exists a necessary causally potent being. We then argue that that being is God.

In philosophy and in religious ethics, accounts of mercy are typically developed in relation to justice. The essays in this focus issue each insist on an integral connection between mercy and justice, yet each reconfigures that relationship by arguing that mercy is best understood as a normative response to others in their need. Defining mercy as our response to others’ need highlights the value of mercy as an effective public virtue, grounded in realism about the human condition and focused on (...) reparative and restorative action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Rhetoric of Philosophical Politics in Plato's Seventh LetterV. Bradley LewisThe name Syracuse has come to stand as an emblem of the problematic relationship between philosophy and politics. While the sources1 differ on specifics, we can be confident that Plato visited there at least three times between 387 and 362 B.C. On his first trip, during the reign of Dionysius I, he became acquainted with Dion, the tyrant's (...) brother-in-law. When the elder Dionysius died, Dion, a devotee of philosophy, apparently contrived for the old man's son, namesake, and successor to invite Plato back, believing that the young tyrant could be philosophically educated and convinced to lay down tyranny in favor of a new regime based on the rule of law. The plan was defeated, however, by a combination of Dionysius's dissolute life and opposition by Dion's enemies at court. Dion was exiled, and Plato returned to the Academy. Dion implored Plato to return to Syracuse on the basis of reports of Dionysius II's renewed resolution to take up philosophy and by the tyrant himself (who seems to have made some thinly veiled threats against the still-exiled Dion). Plato's second visit to Dionysius was no more successful than the first, however, and he considered himself fortunate to have escaped with his life. After a meeting at which Plato recounted the events of his final trip, Dion marshaled an expeditionary force, which included volunteers from the Academy, and set out to expel Dionysius II by violence. The effort succeeded, but the new regime was itself riven by faction, and Dion was assassinated in 353.2The principal legacy of this ill-starred episode is contained in the letters that have come down to us under the name of Plato, particularly those numbered seven and eight. Scholarly discussion of Plato's Seventh Letter has usually focused on three questions: the doctrinal content of the letter and its relationship to the doctrinal content of the dialogues; the character of the letter as an apologia for Plato's Syracusan activities; and the general authenticity of the letter. While the second of these questions focuses correctly [End Page 23] on the rhetorical character of the letter, it ignores the most obvious aspect, namely, the letter's explicit addressees: the friends and comrades of Dion, and their request for political advice. If we take this rhetorical element with sufficient seriousness, we will see that the content of the letter is fully consistent with the teachings of the political dialogues, a point that tells in favor of the authenticity of the letter. Specifically, a focus on the rhetorical character of the letter reveals that its content is determined mostly by what emerges as an effort by Plato to influence his correspondents by moderating their understandable desire for vengeance and thus to forestall further bloodshed and disorder in Syracuse. What is most important about the letter, then, is not so much its account of Plato's actions in Syracuse, but its unveiling of his intentions with respect to Dion's followers. It is not the philosophical-political blueprint, sketched vaguely in the Seventh Letter, that is most important,3 but the concrete effort to mitigate the passions of his correspondents. Read in this light, the letter becomes even more important, since it contradicts the popular image of Plato as a proponent of dangerous political utopianism and portrays a more subtle relationship between philosophy and politics.1. Dion's intentions, Plato's apologyTo the extent that the rhetoric of the letter has been treated, commentators have usually focused on Plato's (or whoever the author) defense of his own actions in Sicily.4 While there is certainly warrant for this approach, the most important fact about the letter concerns its intended audience, the "relatives and comrades of Dion."5 As Plato explains in the opening of the letter, these are the men who have sought not only his advice, but his cooperation in completing the political project halted by Dion's death at the hands of several of his other purported "allies."The most striking feature of the rhetorical structure is that, while the letter... (shrink)

Despite the potential political impact of industry attempts to influence public policy about genetic modification, little research has focused on critical understanding of industry perspectives. This article explores the rhetorical and discursive construction of public messages about this controversial issue by two major New Zealand export industries. The kiwifruit industry advocates a very cautious public policy position, while the dairy industry has been a strong advocate for the commercial development of genetic modification. We demonstrate that these industries draw on multiple (...) identities and rationalities to negotiate, express, and elaborate their positions on genetic modification, informed variously by discourses of risk, science, the political economy of the marketplace, and images of the ‘natural’ environment. We suggest that exploring how organizations seek to influence controversial socio-political issues through the management of multiple identities may facilitate greater understanding of viewpoints often represented in the media as two distinct polarities; that is as either ‘for’ or ‘against’ the issues. (shrink)

The career of the father of Claudius Etruscus is of special importance in the history of the Imperial administration in the first century A.D. In the course of a long life he rose from slave status under Tiberius to be head of the Imperial financial administration and to equestrian status under Vespasian. He was one of the most important, wealthy, and influential of the Imperial freedmen in the first century when their influence was at its peak; he is one of (...) the best documented of their number outside the pages of Tacitus; yet we do not know his personal name—he has to remain simply ‘the father of Claudius Etruscus’ —and even his nomen gentilicium and the date of his appointment to be the secretary a rationibus are subject to disput. (shrink)

The early church did not provide us with any normative statement on wealth and poverty, but it did give us clear witness to the hazards of wealth and to the abiding necessity of alms for the poor.

A careful examination of Matthew's narrative reveals a striking portrait of those who in the patriarchal world of first-century Palestine are largely people of little power and low esteem. To bring God into the story of women is ultimately, for Matthew, to grant women extraordinary and unanticipated significance for the life and the faith of the people of God.

This cross-sectional study of three generations of healthcare executives examines whether age cohort is the key determiner of ethical values. Responses to a national survey using the Rokeach Value Survey indicate that, contrary to widely reported beliefs that suggest otherwise, the age cohort groups in this sample exhibit virtually identical value preferences. The concept of career attraction is introduced to explain the similarities in value preference, and it is further suggested that generational differences may be nullified by the homogeneous demands (...) of organizational life in a healthcare setting. Implications for ethical decisionmaking are discussed.Does age cohort affiliation influence healthcare executive values and consequent ethical judgements? The greater body of literature clearly suggests the answer is yes, yet an empirical assessment of the question has never before been reported. The attention given this issue to date has been focused on the generational differences between the three age cohorts in the workplace today: Matures, Boomers, and Generation Xers (1). Defined as a group of people who share a given historical or socially structured life experience, an age cohort is believed to have a relatively stable influence over the decisionmaking of individuals, and serves to distinguish one generation from another (2)(3)(4). Generation X, or GenXers as they are commonly referred to, are comprised of individuals born between 1961 and 1981. Baby Boomers, or Boomers as they are popularly known, are those born between 1943 and 1960. Matures is the name given to characterize the group of people born between born 1925 and 1942. [Birth dates defining generational cohorts vary slightly among multiple sources. The dates used in this study are from Strauss and Howe (1991), though the nomenclature is not.]. (shrink)

Richard M Weaver, a thinker and writer celebrated for his unsparing diagnoses and realistic remedies for the ills of our age, is known largely through a few of his works that remain in print. This new collection of Weaver's shorter writings, assembled by Ted J Smith III, Weaver's leading biographer, presents many long-out-of-print and never-before-published works that give new range and depth to Weaver's sweeping thought. Included are eleven previously unpublished essays and speeches that were left (...) in near-final form at the time of Weaver's death in 1963. In all, there are some one hundred and twenty-six essays, speeches, book reviews, and editorials. (shrink)

Myra Hird and Harlan Weaver have been invited by the editors of this special issue to enter into discussion with each other – to conduct a series of interchanges – because of the careful attention their research has paid to the ways in which transness as a lived reality is ontologized in humans, non-human animals, bacteria, and viruses. With this issue’s interchanges, we would like to further the conversation on critically approaching the consequences of merging transness with animality. In (...) the following series of four essay questions, we particularly invited each of these scholars to consider moments of classificatory tension in which taxonomies of human and non-human become inflected and redirected by the categories of race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and geopolitical location. (shrink)

This essay defines and critiques ‘methodocentrism’, the belief that predetermined research methods are the determining factor in the validity and importance of educational research. By examining research in science studies and posthumanism, the authors explain how this methodocentrism disenables research from taking account of problems and non-human actants that are presumed to be of no importance or value in existing social science research methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative. Building from a critique of these methods as profoundly anthropocentric, the authors examine (...) three crucial problematics in which methodocentrism functions in educational research: the institutionalization of graduate training, a wide-spread privileging of the visual, and the seeming necessity of ‘data’ in social scientific research methodologies. Ultimately, this article does not reject the necessity of particular studies having methods—rigorous, philosophically grounded approaches to problems in the world—but it argues that the belief that methods must be selected from existing options and assembled before approaching the ‘objects’ of study is not only a form of bad science, it is also deeply implicated in anthropocentric and colonialist politics. Instead, what research requires today is a thorough rethinking of the very distinction between subject and object and a renewed questioning of how agency functions in specific research settings. (shrink)

Prior research on ethics codes has suggested, but rarely tested, the effects of code design alternatives on the impact of codes. This study considers whether the presence of explanatory rationales and descriptions of sanctions in ethics codes affects recipients'' responses to a code. Theories of organizational justice and persuasive communication support an expectation that rationales and sanctions will be positively related to code recipients'' recall of code content and perceptions of organizational justice. Content recall is an obvious precondition of code (...) compliance; justice perceptions have multiple implications for the attitudes and actions of organizational members. Results show that explanatory rationales are associated with a statistically significant increase in perceptions of organizational procedural justice, but that rationales and sanctions generally show no relationship to distributive justice perceptions and accurate content recall. These results suggest that common prescriptions regarding ethics code design are of uncertain value apart from further research which unearths the relationships among the intended and perceived purposes of codes, the organizational settings in which they are applied, and a wide variety of code designs. (shrink)

In what has become a classic work, Richard M. Weaver unsparingly diagnoses the ills of our age and offers a realistic remedy. He asserts that the world is intelligible, and that man is free. The catastrophes of our age are the product not of necessity but of unintelligent choice. A cure, he submits, is possible. It lies in the right use of man's reason, in the renewed acceptance of an absolute reality, and in the recognition that ideas—like actions—have consequences.

Philosophers who have written on modesty have largely agreed that it is a virtue, and that it therefore has an important psychological component. Mere modest behavior, it is often argued, is actually false modesty if it is generated by the wrong kind of mental state. The philosophical debate about modesty has largely focused on the question of which kind of mental state—cognitive, motivational, or evaluative—best captures the virtue of modesty. We therefore conducted a series of experiments to see which philosophical (...) account matches the folk concept of modesty. Surprisingly, we found that the folk concept is primarily behavioral. This leads us to argue that modesty may not be a virtue, but that if it is none of the extant philosophical accounts have properly explained why. (shrink)

Healthcare ethics consultants in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) document consults in an enterprise-wide web-based database entitled IEWeb, serving as a system of record for healthcare ethics documentation at 1300 VA facilities. The need arose to evolve the database from an ethics process training resource into a more streamlined documentation repository that captures essential consult elements. A VHA National Center for Ethics in Health Care (NCEHC) Improvement Team convened for three tasks: (1) Specify and prioritize IEWeb changes (occurred via six (...) focus groups composed of “new user” and “super user” cohorts with analysis of existing documentation patterns); (2) Pilot the changes regionally (via regional communication, training, and reviews of pre-post use patterns); and (3) Measure the impact of national change implementation on user perspectives (via pre-and post-change implementation polls). Focus groups identified six implementable priority areas for ethics consult documentation improvement, including the development of a usable consult summary note for ready conversion from IEWeb fields into the electronic health record. Post-IEWeb updates showed an increased number of consults documented, a reduction in “time to consult documentation closure” by a mean of 4.5 days, and a clinically-meaningful improvement in the quality of documentation (78% of ethics questions scored “above-bar” on the validation tool pre- vs. 89% scored “above-bar” post-IEWeb changes, n = 140). According to national survey findings, the number of consultants documenting “all” consults in IEWeb increased, satisfaction increased, and perception of documentation difficulty decreased. IEWeb simplification enabled ethics consultants to re-focus their documentation completion efforts by decreasing perception of documentation burden while improving documentation frequency and quality in a clinically-meaningful way. (shrink)

Spiritual belief is, in Weaver's view, a personal matter, not to be imposed doctrinally, and religion is a social construct with the critical role of providing structures within which communities can prosper. We need religion to survive in order to fulfil its true purpose of providing a social structure and rules for communal behaviour, he argues, but this will only happen if the existing religious claims to infallibility and exclusivity are eliminated. Many millions of people who no longer believe (...) in a spiritually ordered life are rejecting religion without recognising its intrinsic value as the guardian of our communal values and the rightful authority for the maintenance of social order. The one thing that religion is not, Weaver believes, is the owner of our spiritual beliefs."--Back cover. (shrink)

Frequently Asked Questions This supplement provides background information about many of the topics discussed in both the main Time article and its companion article What Else Science Requires of Time. It is not intended that this article be read in order by section number. Table of Contents What Are Durations, Instants, Moments, and Points of … Continue reading Time Supplement →.

Bradley's rich and complex version of Absolute Idealism plays a key role not only in Idealist philosophy, politics, and ethics, but also in the development of modern logic, analytical philosophy, and pragmatism, as well as in the thinking of such figures as R. G. Collingwood and A. N. Whitehead. Topics covered include: the history of Idealism in the twentieth century; Bradley's relation to figures such as Bernard Bosanquet, C. A. Campbell, Brand Blanshard, John Watson, John Dewey, and others; (...) Bradley's influence on twentieth-century empiricism, modern logic, and analytical philosophy; and his significance for contemporary debates in epistemology and ethics. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper delineates the normative and empirical approaches to business ethics based upon five categories: 1) academic home; 2) language; 3) underlying assumptions; 4) theory purpose and scope; 5) theory grounds and evaluation criteria. The goal of the discussion is to increase understanding of the distinctive contributions of each approach and to encourage further dialogue about the potential for integration of the field.

In this paper I argue that philosophers of science have an obligation to recognize and engage with the social nature of the sciences they assess if those sciences are morally relevant. Morally-relevant science is science that has the potential to risk harm to humans, non-humans, or the environment. My argument and the approach I develop are informed by an analysis of the philosophy of biology literature on the criticism of evolutionary psychology, the study of the evolution of human psychology and (...) behaviour. From this literature, I tease out two different methods of scientific critique. The first I call the “truth-detectional” approach. Those who take this approach are first and foremost concerned about the truth of EP claims as that truth can be determined by evidence. The second I call the “social-dimensional” approach. Those who take this approach talk about the production and truth of EP claims but within a social framework. On this account, the legitimacy and perceived legitimacy of EP claims are not separate from the institutional and social processes and values that lend to their production. I show that the truth-detectional approach risks harms to society and to the philosophy of science, but that the social-dimensional approach avoids these harms. Philosophers of science, therefore, should take a social-dimensional approach to the assessment of morally-relevant science. (shrink)