We argue that once a normative claim is developed, there is an imperative to effect changes based on this norm. As such, ethicists should adopt an “implementation mindset” when formulating...

According to a widely credited model in the business ethics literature, ethical decisions are a function of two kinds of factors, personal(individual) and situational, and these factors interact with each other. According to a contrary view of decision making that is widely held in some areas of business research, individuals’ decisions about ethical issues (and subsequent actions) are purely a function of their self-interest.The laboratory experiment reported in this paper provides a test of the person-situation interactionist model, using the general (...) theoretical and experimental framework used in the experimental economics literature. One individual and two situational factors relating to moral intensity were examined which may influence decisions to misrepresent information in the course of business activities.The individual and one situational variable were significantly related to participants’ actions. The interactions among individual andsituation variables were not individually significant, although the model including interactions had a much higher level of statistical significance. Gender was significant, both directly and in interaction with moral development, suggesting that it may be worthy of further examination. (shrink)

This special issue of Foundations of Physics collects together articles representing some recent new perspectives on the hole argument in the history and philosophy of physics. Our task here is to introduce those new perspectives.

According to a widely credited model in the business ethics literature, ethical decisions are a function of two kinds of factors, personal(individual) and situational, and these factors interact with each other. According to a contrary view of decision making that is widely held in some areas of business research, individuals’ decisions about ethical issues (and subsequent actions) are purely a function of their self-interest.The laboratory experiment reported in this paper provides a test of the person-situation interactionist model, using the general (...) theoretical and experimental framework used in the experimental economics literature. One individual and two situational factors relating to moral intensity were examined which may influence decisions to misrepresent information in the course of business activities.The individual and one situational variable were significantly related to participants’ actions. The interactions among individual andsituation variables were not individually significant, although the model including interactions had a much higher level of statistical significance. Gender was significant, both directly and in interaction with moral development, suggesting that it may be worthy of further examination. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 82-84.

In almost every clinical interaction, clinicians must navigate interpersonal challenges with near‐instantaneous responses to patients. Yet medical ethics has largely overlooked these small, interpersonal exchanges, instead focusing on “big” ethical problems, such as euthanasia, brain death, or genetic modification. In 1995, Paul Komesaroff proposed the concept of microethics as a nonprinciplist approach to ethics that focuses on “what happens in every interaction between every doctor and every patient.” We aim to develop a microethics framework to guide everyday clinical encounters, with (...) a special focus on communication with patients and family members. We will advance three core insights: First, communication is an ethical act in ways seldom considered. Second, microethics is an essential lens through which to view the ethics of communication. Third, virtue can bridge reflective and automatic processes. Our intuitionist framework for microethics is thus based on this understanding of the role of virtue, and we propose six virtues that contribute to the goal of healing communication. (shrink)

What, if anything, would be wrong with replacing the light postulate in Einstein’s 1905 formulation of special relativity with a ‘sound postulate’, stating that the speed of sound is independent of the speed of the source? After reviewing the historical reasons underlying the particular focus on light in the special theory, we consider the circumstances under which such a theory of ‘sonic relativity’ would be justified on empirical grounds. We then consider the philosophical upshots of ‘sonic relativity’ for four contemporary (...) areas of investigation in the philosophy of spacetime: global versus subsystem symmetries, dynamical versus geometrical approaches to spacetime, the possibility of a preferred frame in theories of quantum gravity, and spacetime functionalism. (shrink)

We explore the significance of physical theories set in Euclidean spacetimes. In particular, we explore the use of these theories in contemporary physics at large, and the sense in which there can be a notion of temporal evolution in these theories. Having achieved these tasks, we proceed to reflect on the lessons that one can take from such theories for Knox’s ‘inertial frame’ version of spacetime functionalism, which seems to issue incorrect verdicts in the case of theories with Euclidean metrical (...) structure. (shrink)

Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy is often characterised in terms of competitive individuals debating orally with one another in public arenas. But it also developed over its long history a sense in which philosophers might acknowledge some other particular philosopher or group of philosophers as an authority and offer to that authority explicit intellectual allegiance. This is most obvious in the development after the classical period of the philosophical 'schools' with agreed founders and, most importantly, canonical founding texts. There also (...) developed a tradition of commentary, interpretation, and discussion of texts which itself became a mode of philosophical debate. As time went on, the weight of a growing tradition of reading and appealing to a certain corpus of foundational texts began to shape how later antiquity viewed its philosophical past and also how philosophical debate and inquiry was conducted. In this book leading scholars explore aspects of these important developments. (shrink)

This academic text features articles regarding paranormal, extraordinary, or fringe-science claims. It logically examines the claims of astrology; psychic ability; alternative medicine and health claims; after-death communication; cryptozoology; and faith healing, all from a skeptical perspective. Paranormal Claims is a compilation of some of the most eye-opening articles about pseudoscience and extraordinary claims that often reveal logical, scientific explanations, or an outright scam. These articles, steeped in skepticism, teach critical thinking when approaching courses in psychology, sociology, philosophy, education, or science.

This article reviews Bryan Lueck’s book Obligation and the Fact of Sense. In this quite original book, Lueck considers what he argues are the failures of various modern ethical theories to decisively identify the ground of obligation, and proposes a new account of obligation in light of those failures. The book traces the concept of obligation through its history in early modern thought up to Kant’s idea that the ground of obligation is the so-called fact of reason, that we (...) simply find ourselves bound by the moral law. Lueck’s own account begins from this point, but he recasts Kant’s idea of the fact of reason as the fact of sense, drawing on figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Serres, and Nancy. Ultimately, however, he argues that only a very deflationary version of obligation can be defended, as the failures of the early modern ethicists prove not to be accidental, but to emerge from the very phenomenon of obligation. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

A growing literature testifies to the persistence of place as an incorrigible aspect of human experience, identity, and morality. Place is a common ground for thought and action, a community of experienced particulars that avoids solipsism and universalism. It draws us into the philosophy of the ordinary, into familiarity as a form of knowledge, into the wisdom of proximity. Each of these essays offers a philosophy of place, and reminds us that such philosophies ultimately decide how we make, use, and (...) understand places, whether as accidents, instruments, or fields of care. (shrink)

A critical commentary is offered on a skeptical rebuttal made by Arthur Reber and James Alcock in the July/August 2019 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, which came in response to an article by Etzel Cardeña (published in the mainstream journal American Psychologist in 2018) that reviewed the extensive evidence from parapsychological experiments which seems to collectively offer support for the existence of psychic (or psi) phenomena. At the heart of their rebuttal, Reber and Alcock seek to make the counterargument that (...) this evidence cannot be meaningful because psi phenomena are "impossible," appearing to violate four fundamental principles of physics. It is shown here that rather than being based on any kind of substantial evidence, the criticisms that Reber and Alcock put forth in support of this counterargument are instead based on a combination of narrow personal opinion, unfounded assumption, and superficial rhetoric, leaving their claims unsound and ultimately unconvincing. (shrink)

Examines the political dimensions of Aristophanes’ comic poetry. This original and wide-ranging collection of essays offers, for the first time, a comprehensive examination of the political dimensions of that madcap comic poet Aristophanes. Rejecting the claim that Aristophanes is little more than a mere comedian, the contributors to this fascinating volume demonstrate that Aristophanes deserves to be placed in the ranks of the greatest Greek political thinkers. As these essays reveal, all of Aristophanes’ plays treat issues of fundamental political importance, (...) from war and peace, poverty and wealth, the relation between the sexes, demagoguery and democracy to the role of philosophy and poetry in political society. Accessible to students as well as scholars, The Political Theory of Aristophanes can be utilized easily in the classroom, but at the same time serve as a valuable source for those conducting more advanced research. Whether the field is political philosophy, classical studies, history, or literary criticism, this work will make it necessary to reconceptualize how we understand this great Athenian poet and force us to recognize the political ramifications and underpinnings of his uproarious comedies. Jeremy J. Mhire is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Louisiana Tech University. Bryan-Paul Frost is James A. and Kaye L. Crocker Endowed Professor of Political Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the coeditor (with Jeffrey Sikkenga) of History of American Political Thought. (shrink)

Ecosystem health, as James Nelson argues, must be understood as having both descriptive and normative content; it is in this sense a 'morally thick' concept. The health analogy refers (a) at the similarities between conservation ecology and medicine or plant pathology as normative sciences, and (b) to the ability of ecosystems to 'heal' themselves in the face of disturbances. Nelson, however, goes beyond these two aspects and argues that judgements of illness in ecosystems only support moral obligations to protect (...) them if they are attributed a 'good of their own'. But this latter extension of the analogy flies in the face of ecological science, which has been forced to abandon organicism. If one separates the question of the warranted assertibility of environmentalists' goals from the question of where values in nature are located, the search for an objective realm of value realism can be seen to be unnecessary. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 29.3 (1999) 63-80 [Access article in PDF] The Transversality of Michel de Certeau: Foucault's Panoptic Discourse and the Cartographic Impulse Bryan Reynolds and Joseph Fitzpatrick Above all (and this is a corollary, but an important one), the phenomenological and praxiological analysis of cultural trajectories must allow to be grasped at once a composition of places and the innovation that modifies it by dint of moving and cutting (...) across them. --Michel de Certeau, Culture in the PluralThrough his rigorous examinations of the common, the quotidian, the personal, the plural practices that establish and continually transform societies, Michel de Certeau develops a conception of culture born of the perpetual transgression, however subtle or pronounced, of the boundaries imposed by all totalizing systems, whether theoretical or social. This view of culture as a "cutting across" of boundaries, which can be found in many forms throughout his work, achieves a special significance for the study of subjectification in his discussion of "Spatial Practices" that comprises the third section of The Practice of Everyday Life. In an important essay on Certeau's theory of space, Ian Buchanan argues that "our understanding of culture must commence with an understanding of the formation of the subject," and that the latter is addressed by Certeau through his essays on space [129-30]. Following this assertion, we want to argue that Certeau's analyses of spatial practices in Heterologies, "The Gaze: Nicholas of Cusa," and The Practice of Everyday Life [particularly the chapter "Walking in the City" 91-110], outline a theory that describes subjectivity as what amounts to, as Certeau puts it in Culture in the Plural, "a composition of places and the innovation that modifies it by dint of moving and cutting across them" [146]. Furthermore, by articulating the close relationship between Certeau's spatial theory and our own work on "transversal movement," we will attempt to show that the method of analysis Certeau uses in "Walking in the City" (and describes in several other works) is itself marked by the "transversal" tactics that his theory describes. 1 By focusing in particular on Certeau's methodological critique of Foucault in both The Practice of Everyday Life and Heterologies, we will demonstrate the various ways in which he moves beyond what Bryan Reynolds and James Intriligator have labeled the "dissective-cohesive mode" of analysis, an analytical [End Page 63] [Begin Page 65] approach (characteristic of most dialectical argumentation) that breaks its subject matter into constituent parts and examines those parts with the goal of reassembling them into a unified and accountable whole (such as, say, the city or the human subject in "Walking in the City"). 2 Postmodern Space: Certeau and Jameson In his essay "Heterophenomenology, or Certeau's Theory of Space," Ian Buchanan situates Certeau's writings on the production of space within the postmodern debate over the autonomy of the subject, opposing Certeau's view to Fredric Jameson's "assumption that the subject takes his or her psychic bearings from the built environment and only has certain existence so long as he or she can cognitively 'map' this environment" [Buchanan 114]. Citing the example of the Westin Bonaventure hotel in Los Angeles, Jameson argues that "this latest mutation in space--postmodern hyperspace--has finally succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself, to organize its immediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappable external world" [44]. The effect on cultural politics, according to Jameson, is that the subject "submerged" by this postmodern hyperspace is deprived of the "critical distance" that makes possible the "positioning of the cultural act outside of the massive Being of capital" [48]. Buchanan finds in "Walking in the City" the basis for a critique of this view though a conception of space stemming from "heterophe-nomenology," defined as "a phenomenology predicated by a heterogeneously constituted subject which does not take for granted the unity of the body" [112]. Focusing on Certeau's debt to Merleau-Ponty's theories of perception (which can best be seen in... (shrink)

Given the wide range of mythical/occult lore, stage legerdemain, and popular fantasy-based fictional stereotypes that have long been associated with the term magic in human culture, it is quite possible that some academically-minded readers may initially be put off by the title of this book. But these are not the kinds of magic that Dean Radin is talking about. Rather, he is subtly alluding to a certain class of seemingly extraordinary human experiences and abilities for which the exact underlying physical (...) and biological mechanisms are not too well understood as of yet – namely, the experiences and abilities that may be classed as psychic (or psi). He focuses on examining three general sub-classes which, in keeping with the theme of this book, are labeled in the parlance of magic: force of will (referring to psychokinesis, aka. mind-matter interaction), divination (referring to extrasensory perception), and theurgy (referring to experiences related to survival after death). Yet even with such clarification being made from the outset, there might still be readers who would wonder whether it is even a good idea to discuss psi phenomena in conjunction with magic, as some parapsychologists may be reminded of the effort once made by psychologist (and noted skeptic) James Alcock (1981) to portray an association between the two as being something fanciful and not fitting with the pursuit of science in his book Parapsychology: Science or Magic? Arguing on the basis of its seeming incompatibility with mainstream science, Alcock implied that psi is something that could be seen as being akin to occult conjuring, where one is able to spontaneously gain certain knowledge or mentally bring about certain event outcomes at will, without any apparent logic or reason. And as psychologist and psi researcher John Palmer (1983) had pointed out in his critical review of the book, Alcock even went on to imply that parapsychologists tend to act more like occult magicians than scientists, claiming that they are motivated by a predisposed belief in psi rather than an objective search for facts and data-driven theory. In light of such blatant accusations being made in the past, one might figure that parapsychologists would be wary of their subject matter being discussed or referred to in relation to magic again, in any shape or form. (shrink)

Attention to the question of whether testimony is a distinctive source of knowledge is a comparatively recent development in Western epistemology. Does being told that p constitute reason for you to believe that p, independently of what you empirically establish about the speaker’s reliability, sincerity, and evaluative position? Still more recently — in just the last decade — Western epistemologists have become occupied with related problems concerning disagreement. What is the rational response, for instance, to discovering that an epistemic peer (...) disagrees with you about p? In the battery of new articles that explore this question, various fine-grained distinctions have been proposed to accommodate cases where it.. (shrink)

James Gilbert has provided fascinating and valuable historical sketches of the interactions of science and religion in American culture in this century, especially those taking place between 1945 and 1962. Yet, taken together, it is unclear what conclusion is to be drawn from these interactions. Ambiguity about the variety of forms of the science‐and‐religion relationship and about the referent of the termreligion make the task of apprehending a coherent pattern among these sketches very difficult.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Minding Brain Injury, Consciousness, and Ethics: Discourse and DeliberationsJoseph J. Fins (bio) and James Giordano (bio)The annual John Collins Harvey Lecture at the Georgetown University’s Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics is a forum for addressing contemporary topics at the intersection of medicine and bioethics. This year, in marking the decadal anniversary of the launch of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnology (BRAIN) Initiative, the Harvey Lecture provided (...) an interactive discussion with renowned clinician, researcher, scholar, and author, Joseph J. Fins, MD—who is the E. William Davis, Jr., MD Professor of Medical Ethics, Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics, and a Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College—conducted by James Giordano, PhD, MPhil—who is a Professor of Neurology and Biochemistry, and Chief of the Pellegrino Center’s Neuroethics Studies Program at the Georgetown University Medical Center. The discourse focused upon the topic of covert consciousness, and the ways in which current and developing brain science technologies, together with revised practices of medicine, in general, may afford new opportunities in patient care, but may also give rise to issues, questions, challenges, and opportunities for neuroethics.Prof. James GIORDANO:Prof. Fins, your most recent book, Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics, and the Struggle for Consciousness (Fins 2015), addresses your ongoing work to employ current and emerging neurological approaches to reveal conscious functions in patients with profound brain injury and disease. To be sure, the destination—if you will—is to talk about covert consciousness. But in commencing this discussion, I’d like to propose a route, which traces your professional journey to this point in your career, and how it led you on your search to reveal consciousness in those patients who lack expressive capability. You went into palliative care first, and that brought you to where you are today. [End Page 227]Prof. Joseph J. FINS:First, let me thank you and the Pellegrino Center for the honor of giving the John Harvey Collins Lecture in such an interactive manner. The forefront of neurological care—and the neuroethical issues and methods focal to such practice—wasn’t what I initially intended to do professionally, but I think that therein is a good lesson for young people’s career aspirations. Simply put, one doesn’t always know where they’ll end up at the beginning of the journey, and as Kierkegaard said, life is lived forward, but is understood backwards (Kierkegaard 1843).In the nineties and the early 2000s, I was trying to help improve the quality of care of people at the end of life, and I wrote a book, entitled The Palliative Ethic of Care: Clinical Wisdom at Life’s End (Fins 2006), in which I addressed notions of phronesis—practical wisdom—in integrating theory and practice toward improving how people die. I became interested in the Quinlan case (Quinlan 1976), and the right to die, and around the same time, I ran into a colleague of mine at Cornell: Dr. Nicholas D. Schiff. Dr. Schiff is a neurologist, who was a protégé of Fred Plum, who was the originator of the concept of the vegetative state with Bryan Jennett, back in 1972. Fred was both of our teachers here at Cornell. Niko (Dr. Schiff) was interested in patients with disorders of consciousness, and was beginning to envision doing work—that ultimately, we did—using deep brain stimulation (DBS) to try to treat patients in the minimally conscious state, a category that was subsequently codified in 2002.I realized that a whole population of people—with these disorders of consciousness—had been somewhat marginalized, and their neglect essentially devolves back to the considerations of the right to die. The right to die was established in the Quinlan case because Judge Hughes—the presiding chief judge of the New Jersey Supreme Court—talked about Ms. Quinlan’s loss of a cognitive, sapient state as being the moral warrant for her right to die, given the fact that it was viewed as a futile situation. I recognized, over the ensuing years—from my background in palliative and end-of-life care—[1] that we had over-generalized notions of futility... (shrink)

Review of the book Disagreement by Bryan Frances. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and JudgmentJames Arnt AuneSaving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Bryan Garsten. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. xii + 276. $45.00, hardcover.Something of what rhetoricians perennially run up against in modern political philosophy is illustrated by a recent article by Jürgen Habermas in Communication Theory. In a searing indictment of contemporary democracy and the mass media, Habermas writes, (...) "Issues of political discourse become assimilated into and absorbed by the modes and contents of entertainment. Besides personalization, the dramatization of events, the simplification of complex matters, and the vivid polarization of conflicts promote civic privatism and a mood of antipolitics" (2006, 422). Any historian of political communication in the Western democracies since the early nineteenth century is bound to be puzzled by this observation, for the emergence of mass democracy in the United States and England, at least, was characterized by intense popular participation in politics, precisely because political campaigns were heavily personalized, dramatized, simplified, and polarized. At the beginning of the article, Habermas praises Aristotle's Politics for its union of normative theorizing and empirical research, forgetting apparently that Aristotle also wrote a normative and empirical Rhetoric.That Habermas distrusts persuasion is obvious, but what is less clear is how the rhetoriphobia he shares with virtually every modern and contemporary philosopher came about. Bryan Garsten's book—the most important work on rhetoric and political philosophy since Ronald Beiner's Political Judgment—makes the startlingly original argument that the anti-rhetorical stance not only is grounded in a suspicion of private judgment, but that it can be traced back to Hobbes's, Rousseau's, and Kant's fear of the persuasive power of post-Reformation religious enthusiasm. Garsten not only provides provocative rereadings of these three fathers of modern liberalism but also extends our understanding of rhetorical and political judgment in Aristotle and Cicero. His analysis of the problems of persuasion and democracy in the twentieth century, while somewhat less satisfying, includes cogent criticisms of Rawls, Habermas, and theorists of deliberative democracy from what might be called a Ciceronian-Madisonian republican stance. [End Page 94]Saving Persuasion began as a doctoral dissertation in Government at Harvard, under the direction of Harvey Mansfield—after Allan Bloom, perhaps the most influential and controversial of the disciples of Leo Strauss. Although Garsten's book displays both the virtues and vices of Straussianism, it would be unfair to dismiss it as a neoconservative manifesto for rhetoric. (An enthusiastic review of the book appeared in the neoconservative Weekly Standard in February 2007, illustrating the curious fact that the Right "gets" rhetoric in ways that liberals and leftists do not (Deneen 2007).) Currently an assistant professor of political science at Yale, Garsten also received an MA from Cambridge in political theory and intellectual history. His book reveals the influence of Quentin Skinner and the Cambridge School of political theory, whose insistence on reading political philosophy in its historical context is the antithesis of the Straussian rejection of historicism. Garsten thus combines the Straussian emphasis on close reading with the contextual-rhetorical perspective of Skinner; this unique synthesis enables Garsten to solve some ongoing problems in textual interpretation (especially the relationship between Academic skepticism and Stoic natural law theory in Cicero) while developing interesting causal arguments about the rise of the public sphere in the eighteenth century, the decline of interest in rhetoric by liberal political theorists, and the pathologies of contemporary democratic politics.The book is divided into two main parts, following an introduction in which Garsten lays out his central thesis: "[A] politics of persuasion—in which people try to change one another's minds by appealing not only to reason but also to passions and sometimes even prejudices—is a mode of politics worth defending. Persuasion is worthwhile because it requires us to pay attention to our fellow citizens and to display a certain respect for their points of view and their judgments" (3). Persuasion rightly understood cannot be reduced either to manipulation or pandering. Rather, persuasion is inextricably linked to judgment, a human faculty threatened by modernity. Judgment is "the mental activity of responding to particular situations" by... (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Management. Ed. Robert Costanza, Bryan G. Norton, and Benjamin D. Haskell.

While the literature in business ethics abounds with philosophical analyses, perspectives from religious thinkers are curiously underrepresented. What religious analysis has occured has often been moralistic in tone, more fit to the pulpit than the classroom or the boardroom. In the three essays that follow, presented originally at a panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 1989, ethicists from the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish traditions analyze a case study familiar to many who teach and (...) research in business ethics — the Consolidated Foods Case. Each author shows how a particular religious tradition might react to the case. The authors show how insights from their traditions would affect corporation's moral deliberations about policy. Specific policy recommendations are offered to CEO John Bryan. (shrink)

While the literature in business ethics abounds with philosophical analyses, perspectives from religious thinkers are curiously underrepresented. What religious analysis has occured has often been moralistic in tone, more fit to the pulpit than the classroom or the boardroom. In the three essays that follow, presented originally at a panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 1989, ethicists from the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish traditions analyze a case study familiar to many who teach and (...) research in business ethics - the Consolidated Foods Case. Each author shows how a particular religious tradition might react to the case. The authors show how insights from their traditions would affect corporation's moral deliberations about policy. Specific policy recommendations are offered to CEO John Bryan. (shrink)

Aldo Leopold was a pragmatist in the vernacular sense of the word. Bryan G. Norton claims that Leopold was also heavily influenced by American Pragmatism, a formal school of philosophy. As evidence, Norton offers Leopold's misquotation of a definition of right (as truth) by political economist, A.T. Hadley, who was an admirer of the philosophy of William James. A search of Leopold's digitised literary remains reveals no other evidence that Leopold was directly influenced by any actual American Pragmatist (...) or by Pragmatism (although he may have been indirectly influenced by Pragmatism early in his career). A 1923 reference, by Leopold, to Hadley and Hadley's putative definition of truth, cited by Norton, is dripping with irony. Leopold, as he matured philosophically, regarded a profound cultural shift from anthropocentric dominionism and consumerism to an evolutionary-ecological worldview and an associated non-anthropocentric 'land ethic' to be necessary for successful and sustainable conservation. Hadley espoused a brutal form of Social Darwinism and his philosophy, as expressed in the book of Hadley's that Norton cites, is politically reactionary, militaristic and unconcerned with conservation. Leopold's mature philosophy and Hadley's – far from consonant, as Norton claims – are diametrically opposed. (shrink)

The giving up of the body or suicide for spiritual reasons has been dealt with by James Benn and D Max Moermane. The relationships of the dead and the living are discussed by Bryan J Cuevas, John Cliff ord Holt, and Matthew T Kapstein, while Hank Glassman, Mark Rowe, and Jason A Carbine talk about different funeral practices. With glossaries for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters and an elaborate index, this book is a unique peek into Buddhist practices (...) regarding the dead and deserves attention by researchers, students, and admirers of this religion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future: The Trento Conference Edited by James F. Keenan, and: The Social Mission of the US Catholic Church: A Theological Perspective by Charles E. CurranDaniel CosacchiCatholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future: The Trento Conference EDITED BY JAMES F. KEENAN Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011. 337 pp. $40.00The Social Mission of the US Catholic Church: A Theological Perspective CHARLES E. (...) CURRAN Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011. 196 pp. $29.95To read both Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future and The Social Mission of the US Catholic Church is to take a whirlwind tour—theological, historical, and geographical—through the Roman Catholic ethical tradition. Both volumes present wonderfully rich material and invaluable resources for the study of Christian ethics. Charles Curran and James Keenan are two of the foremost Catholic ethicists in the United States today. Keenan’s case is to be applauded for convening the 2010 conference in Trento, which brought together some six hundred Roman Catholic ethicists from around the world. His book, which assembles that conference’s thirty-one plenary addresses, does justice to this tremendous feat. Curran, for his part, has produced a text that focuses acutely on the Church in the United States and will benefit ethicists for years to come.Keenan uses the introduction to Catholic Theological Ethics Past, Present, and Future to provide an overview of the Trento conference and its attendees and proceedings. Keenan expertly identifies a common theme among the 240 diverse papers at the conference, noting that ethicists “always begin with the premise that there is a deficit in our location, and, therefore, we need to work together to find a way to remedy it” (6). What follows in the remainder of the book boldly moves toward remedies for many of the world’s ills. A few of these essays deserve particular mention.The conference and the collection of essays share the basic organizational principle of looking to the past, the present, and the future of Catholic theological ethics. Unsurprisingly, the Council of Trent played a foundational role in understanding the “past” of Catholic moral theology. Laurenti Magesa [End Page 216] (Kenya) explains that the African experience of the Council of Trent has remained largely unchanged since the conclusion of that council: “The Catholic Church in Africa is essentially a Tridentine church” (57). This essay makes clear that in Africa, the dominant voices are Western males. The missing voices, then, are given attention by Antônio Moser (Brazil), Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike (Kenya), and Bryan Massingale (United States). Massingale’s essay was most impressive, addressing the role of racism in our culture and concluding that Catholic ethicists “need to lament, mourn, and grieve our history” (121). This, he claims, is both a fruitful way to act in the present and a hopeful way to look toward the future.In focusing on the present, the strongest subsection of the book attended to political ethics. Here David Kaulemu’s (Zimbabwe) essay, “Catholic Social Teaching at a Crossroad,” has the potential to open the eyes of any reader. He writes, “It is frustrating and discouraging to the lay faithful to be inspired by Catholic social teaching and yet receive no recognition or support by ‘official’ church structures” (177). This highlights a serious problem to which all Catholic ethicists must attend. As for the future, Julie Hanlon Rubio (United States) points to a tripartite vision for marriage in the twenty-first century that sets high standards not only within the marital unit itself but also for the impact of the spouses on the larger society. Julie Clague (Scotland) presents a wonderful essay on the burgeoning relationship between moral theology and gender.Among the wealth of positive features of this collection is the great geographical diversity of the authors. This affirms that Catholic theological ethics is very healthy throughout the entire world and that on each continent there are voices of women and men willing to contribute fresh ideas to the discipline. In a time when there is so much tension between theologians and bishops, we should also be grateful that there are two essays from members of the episcopacy (Archbishop Bruno... (shrink)

PC Wars: Politics and Theory in the Academy addresses the very issue of political correctness and the current skirmishes in the culture wars. It includes statements from many of our leading contemporary public intellectuals, including Joan Wallach Scott, Michael Be;rube;, Bruce Robbins, Henry Giroux, and Gerald Graff. The collection marks a watershed in the debate about "pc" in that it presents serious considerations and analyses of the factors, causes, and consequences of the culture wars. Carefully examining the construction of "pc," (...) PC Wars analyses political correctness by focusing on the mass media, class politics, and the ideology of managerial democracy. It places the disputes around "pc" in the context of contemporary developments in critical and cultural theory and the current backlash against theory, manifested in the recent attacks on Marxism, feminism and deconstruction. The book also scrutinizes the undercurrents of anti-intellectualism and anti-professionalism which have tended to create a fertile ground for the "pc" hysteria. Offering much more than slogans and slinging arrows, PC Wars provides a spirited and critical look at the reaction, ideology, and political forces that have coalesced around the term. Contributors: Michael Be;rube;, Reed Way Dasenbrock, Frank Farmer, Henry Giroux, Gerald Graff, Darlene Hantzis and Devoney Looser, John S. Howard and James M. Lang, Tom Lewis, James Neilson, Christopher Newfield, Richard Ohmann, Burce Robbins, Barry Sarchett, Joan W. Scott, Michael Sprinker, Jeffrey Williams. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the impact of individualism and collectivism on three basic aspects of ethical decision making - the perception of moral problems, moral reasoning, and behavior. We argue that the inclusion of business practices within the moral domain by the individual depends partly upon individualism and collectivism. We also propose a pluralistic approach to post-conventional moral judgment that includes developmental paths appropriate for individualist and collectivist cultures. Finally, we argue that the link between moral judgment and behavior (...) is related to individualism and collectivism. (shrink)

In a series of recent works, Kit Fine, 605–631, 2003, 2007) has sketched a novel solution to Frege’s puzzle. Radically departing from previous solutions, Fine argues that Frege’s puzzle forces us to reject compositionality. In this paper we first provide an explicit formalization of the relational semantics for first-order logic suggested, but only briefly sketched, by Fine. We then show why the relational semantics alone is technically inadequate, forcing Fine to enrich the syntax with a coordination schema. Given this enrichment, (...) we argue, that that the semantics is compositional. We then examine the deep consequences of this result for Fine’s proposed solution to Frege’s puzzle. We argue that Fine has mis-diagnosed his own solution–his attempted solution does not deny compositionality. The correct characterization of Fine’s solution fits him more comfortably among familiar solutions to the puzzle. (shrink)

Individuals often lie for psychological rewards (e.g., preserving self image and/or protecting others), absent economic rewards. We conducted a laboratory experiment, using a modified dictator game, to identify conditions that entice individuals to lie solely for psychological rewards. We argue that such lies can provide a ready means for individuals to manage others’ impression of them. We investigated the effect of social distance (the perceived familiarity, intimacy, or psychological proximity between two parties) and knowledge of circumstances (whether parties have common (...) or asymmetric information) on the frequency of lying. We found that lying occurs more frequently when social distance is near and that the effect is exacerbated when information is asymmetric. Our theoretical development suggests that, under these conditions, individuals’ need to manage others’ impression is magnified. We discuss the implications of our findings. (shrink)

It is commonplace for philosophers to distinguish mere truths from truths that perspicuously represent the world's structure. According to a popular view, the perspicuous truths are supposed to be metaphysically revelatory and to play an important role in the accounts of law-hood, confirmation, and linguistic interpretation. Yet, there is no consensus about how to characterize this distinction. I examine strategies developed by Lewis and by Sider in his Writing the Book of the World which purport to explain this distinction in (...) terms of vocabulary: the truths that represent the world perspicuously have better, joint-carving vocabulary. I argue that the distinction between a perspicuous and mere truth concerns both the vocabulary of the sentence and its grammar. I then show that the collective motivations for distinguishing perspicuous from mere truths do not allow Lewis and Sider to properly impose constraints on grammar. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:SPLUTTERING UP THE BEACH TO NINEVEH... James Alison Rio de Janeiro I. Fleeing from the Word Jonah, ifyou remember, was a most unwilling prophet. The word of God came to him, telling him to go and preach against the great city ofNineveh, for its wickedness had come up before God. Jonah immediately went in the opposite direction. Rather than heading across the fertile crescent to Nineveh, he rushed (...) down to Jaffa and booked passage on a ship. Scripture tells us that he went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord (Jon 1,3) Not only was Tarshish quite the wrong way to go, it was a serious attempt to get away from the presence of the Living God. Why was Jonah so frightened? What was it about Nineveh that scared him? We get a clue later, when Jonah gets cross with Nineveh for repenting on cue. He hated Nineveh. He wanted it to be destroyed. He knew it to be wicked. Why go somewhere which should be destroyed and shout at its inhabitants to change their ways? They will probably give the messenger a rough time! Jonah did not appreciate that he was being sent to Nineveh for the good ofthe people there, yes, but also for his own good. At the end ofthe story he tells God that he hadn't wanted to go because he knew God was a loving God, and was too 'This talk originated as a presentation for the third annual conference ofthe Roman Catholic Caucus of the Gay and Lesbian Christian Movement held in London in March 1999. James Alison109 angry at the thought that the people ofNineveh would get off so lightly. But we're not told that at this stage. Jonah is the son of Amittai, which is to say son of "My Truth." So the whole story is set up from the beginning as one in which someone who is wedded to their own truth comes to learn God's truth the hard way. He knows what is wrong with the gentile world, but was at first able to hear only half of the word of God. He heard it as he was able to receive it: as a stern word of rebuke that he was to pass on to others. That was the state of his soul. Luckily, God had chosen someone who, invincible as he was in his righteousness, knew perfectly well that it is a terrible thing to fall into the presence ofthe living God, and suspected, at some level ofhis being that if, he, Jonah were to obey God, God would certainly break through the carapace ofordered adhesion to true religion, and come into contact with a much more turbulent, stormy world, the world of shame and fear and hatred that is the underside ofall ordered righteousness. Shame is a compulsion which heeds only one command: flee! And Jonah fled. Thank heaven for Jonah's flight! Think how much more damage is caused by those who are not vulnerable to their own shame, who really do manage to fool themselves that their righteousness and God's are cut from the same cloth. Something in Jonah's being was vulnerable to the suspicion that the word ofthe living God would wreak havoc with his own carefully covered hatred and fear, the suspicion that that hatred ofothers and fear of himselfwere aspects ofthe same as yet unredeemed dimension ofhis own life. In that vulnerability was his flight, and through it, ultimately, he was reached so as to be taught how to be a bearer ofGod's word. Andrew Sullivan has a line which catches this dynamic exactly: "Shame forces you prematurely to run away from yourself; pride forces you prematurely to expose yourself. Most gay lives, I'm afraid, are full of an embarassing abundance ofboth."2 Faced with the prospect ofshouting at an incomprehending Nineveh with the hollow pride of those who love neither themselves nor those whom they must convince, Jonah, who knew at the root ofhis heart that he had been giveln something to say, went, as many of us do, into exile. Shame forced him prematurely to... (shrink)

"The discovery of the law of Evolution in the material world has prepared men for a knowledge of the law of cause and effect in the mental world.... In the realm of thought and deed, the good survives, for it is ''fittest;'' the evil ultimately perishes. To know that the ''perfect law'' of Causation is as all-embracing in mind as in matter, is to be relieved from all anxiety concerning the ultimate destiny of individuals and of humanity-''For man is man (...) and master of his fate'' and the will in man which is conquering the knowledge of natural law will conquer the knowledge of spiritual law.... In this volume I have tried to set down some words indicative of this Law and this Destiny, and the manner of its working and its building." - JAMES ALLEN - A Complete and Unabridged edition of James Allen''s book The Mastery of Destiny. Part of The Works of James Allen Series. Other Books by James Allen:- Above Life''s Turmoil All These Things Added As a Man Thinketh Byways of Blessedness Entering the Kingdom (Part of- "All These Things Added") Foundation Stones to Happiness and Success From Passion to Peace From Poverty to Power James Allen''s Book of Meditations for Every Day in the Year Light on Life''s Difficulties Man: King of Mind, Body and Circumstance Men and Systems Morning and Evening Thoughts Out from the Heart (Sequel to "As a Man Thinketh") Poems of Peace The Divine Companion The Eight Pillars of Prosperity The Heavenly Life (Part of-"All These Things Added") The Life Triumphant The Path to Prosperity (Part of-"From Poverty to Power") The Shining Gateway The Way of Peace (Part of-"From Poverty to Power") Through the Gate of Good. (shrink)

Les luttes pour la reconnaissance des identités nationales dans les sociétés multinationales et démocratiques subissent une réorientation fondamentale. Puisque les sociétés multinationales, après de longues et épuisantes luttes pour la reconnaissance, se sont avérées incapables de s’entendre sur des formes de reconnaissance constitutionnelle définitives, l’enjeu n'est plus d’établir des formes de reconnaissance permanentes (une question de justice), mais plutôt de s’assurer qu’une démocratie constitutionnelle demeure ouverte aux luttes pour et contre des formes spécifiques de reconnaissance (une question relative au droit (...) des peuples à l’autodétermination). Cette réorientation est perceptible dans l’avis de la Cour suprême au sujet de la sécession du Québec. (shrink)

Francis Bacon, the English philosopher, statesman and jurist, is best known for developing the empiricist method which forms the basis of modern science. Bacon's writings concentrated on philosophy and judicial reform. His most significant work is the Instauratio Magna comprising two parts - The Advancement of Learning and the Novum Organum. The first part is noteworthy as the first major philosophical work published in English. James Spedding and his co-editors arranged this fourteen-volume edition, published in London between 1857 and (...) 1874, not in chronological order but by subject matter, so that different volumes would appeal to different audiences. The material is divided into three parts: philosophy and general literature; legal works; and letters, speeches and tracts relating to politics. Volume 14, published in 1874, contains Bacon's papers from 1619 until his death, including his will, papers about his impeachment, and his treatise on English laws. (shrink)