IT IS SHOWN IN DETAIL THAT RECENT ACCOUNTS FAIL TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN INTENTIONALITY AND MERELY CAUSALLY DISPOSITIONAL STATES OF INORGANIC PHYSICAL OBJECTS—A QUICK ROAD TO PANPSYCHISM. THE CLEAR NEED TO MAKE SUCH A DISTINCTION GIVES DIRECTION FOR FUTURE WORK. A BEGINNING IS MADE TOWARD PROVIDING SUCH AN ACCOUNT.

This paper examines the effects of employees’ sense that they work for a purpose-driven company on their workplace sustainability behaviors. Conceptualizing corporate purpose as an overarching, relevant, shared ethical vision of why a company exists and where it needs to go, we argue that it is particularly suited for driving employee sustainability behaviors, which are more ethically complex than the types of employee ethical behaviors typically examined by prior research. Through four studies, two involving the actual employees of construction companies, (...) we demonstrate that purpose drives the sustainability behaviors of employees by causing them to take psychological ownership of sustainability. In addition, we show that the sustainability-enhancing effect of purpose is stronger when employees perceive that they have higher autonomy in enacting their sustainability actions and for those employees for whom being moral is more central to their sense of self. (shrink)

What are the most fundamental features of the world? Do minds stand outside the natural order? Is a unified picture of mental and physical reality possible? The Mind in Nature provides a staunchly realist account of the world as a unified system incorporating both the mental and the physical.

Descriptively many Protestant perspectives on access to health care share much in common with secular accounts…perhaps too much. A normative account of a Protestant perspective on access to health care must be perceptively qualified by the Christ story. A genuinely theocratic approach may not lead one to the conclusion that the faith commits us to the notion of equality; rather the faith commits us to the notion of care. What counts as care may not be the same in every instance (...) (if this is indeed what equality means; in ordinary use, equality is tantamount to sameness). The Christ story reminds us who we are, beloved, sinful, redeemed. Acting out this story is to accept, to give, and to receive reconciliation. For many Christians this will mean that we are called to deny ourselves “equal” access to the system (as if equality actually existed!). (shrink)

More than four years ago I ventured to put forward some ideas about the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The publication, within the last year or two, of a number of important books of Wittgensteiniana has seemed to offer a good occasion for reviewing this earlier essay. The present article proposes to assess these books and, in the light of them to reconsider the writer’s earlier interpretation of Wittgenstein, as well as to embark on a more ambitious study of Wittgenstein’s later (...) thought. I shall begin with some general remarks about the books in question. (shrink)

Critically analyzes and revitalizes agrarian philosophy by tracing its evolution. Today, most historians, philosophers, political theorists, and scholars of rural America take a dim view of the agrarian ideal that farmers and farming occupy a special moral and political status in society. Agrarian rhetoric is generally seen as special pleading on the part of farmers seeking protection from labor reform and environmental regulation while continuing to receive direct payments and subsidies from the public till. Agrarianism should not be viewed as (...) a set of immutable claims about farming and political order, but as a tradition of moral and political philosophy that has evolved and deepened over the centuries. Agrarian naturalism--the belief that culture and conduct are conditioned by nature because they are of a piece with nature--becomes pragmatic naturalism, giving way to a new set of puzzles about how we are to understand the rural landscape and our responsibilities for its use. The agrarian idea that personality and sociability are integrated with the material transformation of the landscape can serve as the basis for a new, pragmatically grounded ethic of natural resources and rural development. The essays in this volume critically analyze and revitalize agrarian philosophy by tracing its evolution in the classical American philosophy of key figures such as Franklin, Jefferson, Emerson, Thoreau, Dewey, and Royce. Three chapters address the belief that farming peoples develop moral virtue and a taste for democracy as it evolved in the American context, and four examine how a reconstitution of agrarian themes might invigorate our nation's thinking on environment, food, and rural development policy. The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism will be of broad interest to scholars of American philosophy, rural history, history of ideas, geography, and agricultural or natural resource policy. (shrink)

While considerable attention has been given to the harm done to consumers by marketing, less attention has been given to the harm done by consumers as an indirect effect of marketing activities, particularly in regard to supply chains. The recent development of dramatically expanded global supply chains has resulted in social and environmental problems upstream that are attributable at least in part to downstream marketers and consumers. Marketers have responded mainly by using corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication to counter the (...) critique of CSR practice, but these claims of ethical corporate behavior often lack credibility and can result in a backlash against brands. The article argues that more adequate attention to the harmful upstream effects of downstream marketing and consumption decisions requires greater attention to stakeholder marketing and marketer efforts to help create responsible consumers. It concludes by identifying implications for further research in this important emergent area of marketing ethics. (shrink)

In common with traditional forms of epistemic internalism, epistemological disjunctivism attempts to incorporate an awareness condition on justification. Unlike traditional forms of internalism, however, epistemological disjunctivism rejects the so-called New Evil Genius thesis. In so far as epistemological disjunctivism rejects the New Evil Genius thesis, it is revisionary. -/- After explaining what epistemological disjunctivism is, and how it relates to traditional forms of epistemic internalism / externalism, I shall argue that the epistemological disjunctivist’s account of the intuitions underlying the New (...) Evil Genius thought experiment is at best incomplete. As presented, therefore, epistemological disjunctivism is unable to accommodate the core guiding intuitions of epistemic internalism. Given the stated aim of not being revisionary on this score, the view is at a dialectical disadvantage over the traditional forms of epistemic internalism the position is meant to replace. Unfortunately, therefore, at present, the impasse between internalism and externalism remains. (shrink)

Singing and praying in the words of biblical men and women is basic to sacramental mimesis, i.e., Christian imitation of the actions of the saints with the intention of thereby opening themselves to grace. This evidence counters the “voiceless victim” paradigm prevalent in much feminist scholarship. In pre-Christian Jewish liturgy, the song of Miriam after the Crossing of the Red Sea was already important in the annual celebration of the Passover. Jesus emphasized the spiritual equality of the sexes in his (...) teaching and ministry, and this led to increased visibility for women in Christian tradition: Susanna was the first of at least eight women interpreted as types of Christ. She was presented this way even within the synoptic Gospels themselves [see “Aneboesen phone megale: Susanna and the Synoptic Passion Narratives,” forthcoming in Gregorianium]. Moreover, the practice of presenting examples from both sexes in sermons and church decoration was so pervasive as to constitute a pastoral program of the Church. Such balanced representation of the sexes is found in both texts and art. The linguistic range of the evidence for the singing of women’s words includes Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Slavonic, and German. The artworks depicting women are from throughout the Christian world, including Dura Europos, Jerusalem, Egypt, Ethiopia, Cyprus, Syria, Armenia, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany. More than twenty biblical women are treated in the essay. Women’s words, quoted from the biblical record or imaginatively supplied, became the prayer of the whole congregation. Miriam’s words remain focal universally on Holy Saturday. The acclamations of Elizabeth and of the Virgin Mary became prominent early in both East and West . Both Byzantine and Gregorian chant commemorated them and other women such as Eve, Esther, Judith, Sarah , Susanna, Martha of Bethany, the Samaritan woman, the Canaanite woman, the woman with the ointment, the Samaritan woman, the ten virgins of the parable , and especially the Holy Women at the Tomb . Their proclamation of the Lord’s rising became particularly important in Byzantine resurrection hymns used at Easter and year-round. With four other first-century female saints– Junia, Mariamne, Photina and Thecla– Mary Magdalene was deemed ἰσαπόστολος “equal to the apostles,” because the angel commissioned her to announce the Lord’s Resurrection to the disciples. Martha’s profession of faith is the fullest recorded in the Gospels and became the basis for a Byzantine communion prayer . Repeatedly, one finds that women’s words were sung at important Sunday feasts and during Holy Week. In Gregorian chant their words were sung over the course of several days. Susanna’s words are readily found in fifty Gregorian chant manuscripts from the ninth through fifteenth centuries, used in cathedrals, in monasteries and other religious houses, and in parish churches; an appendix lists these manuscripts. Throughout the continent–in Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, France, The Netherlands, England, Wales–the varied communities of the church sang Susanna’s words. Moreover, her words as mediated through Gregorian chant were quoted by Bernard of Clairvaux in a sermon and by Hermann of Scheda in his account of his conversion from Judaism. These men used Susanna’s words to evoke her as a type of Christ and thereby to seek to be like him themselves. That is, they experienced sacramental mimesis through singing women’s words. (shrink)

'Why did the window break when it was hit by the stone? Because the window is brittle and the stone is hard; hardness and brittleness are powers, dispositional properties or dispositions.' Dispositions are essential to our understanding of the world. This book is a record of the debate on the nature of dispositions between three distinguished philosophers - D. M. Armstrong, C. B. Martin and U. T. Place - who have been thinking about dispositions all their working lives. Their distinctive (...) accounts cover many of the issues surrounding dispositions such as the nature of mind, matter, universals, existence, laws of nature and causation. Dispositions illuminates this central topic in analytic philosophy and at the same time highlights deeper concerns of metaphysics. (shrink)

Too much is claimed for this book by its title and by the blurb. The essays published in it were prepared in connection with a course of lectures, organized by the British Council, for non-British philosophy teachers, and held at Peterhouse, Cambridge, in the summer of 1953. The course was a good one; but it did not amount to an adequate picture of British Philosophy in 1953; and it is too much to claim that “it is not only an authoritative (...) review of some of the outstanding recent developments in British Philosophy, but also a significant contribution to these developments.” As a record of what the most vocal British philosophers are saying to-day, it is not so helpful as the less pretentious B.B.C. and Oxford symposia, The Revolution in Philosophy, and The Nature of Metaphysics. As a guide to what is going on in British philosophy to-day, it compares very unfavourably with H. D. Lewis’s symposium, Contemporary British Philosophy. (shrink)

Mr. Mure, the Warden of Merton, does not conceal his entire lack of sympathy with contemporary British, and particularly Oxford, philosophy. His last words are: “At present, if I had an intelligent son coming up to Oxford, I should not regret it if he turned his face away from all the three Honours Schools that include philosophy, even from Greats.” Such words are not lightly spoken by a man whose life has been bound up with philosophy and with Oxford. He (...) was University lecturer in philosophy from 1929 to 1937, and has been Warden of Merton since 1947. He has written two works on Aristotle and two on Hegel: an Introduction to Hegel and A Study of Hegel’s Logic. He obviously belongs, therefore, to a different generation and a different philosophical world from that of contemporary Oxford teachers of philosophy. Judging the latter by the standards of his own generation and tradition, he finds their work devoid of all virtue or value. (shrink)

Although gas thermometers have long been the standard against which all other thermometers are checked, English-language physics textbooks usually propose experiments for students to test the linearity of the relationship, at constant pressure, between gas volume and temperature indicated by a mercury thermometer. This absurd exercise receives support from many authoritative textbooks which wrongly associate with Gay-Lussac's classic 1802 paper in Annales de Chimie—in which he announced that all gases have the same mean expansivity over the range 0 to 100°C—a (...) diagram of an apparatus he used, later, to compare mercury thermometers with air thermometers. This confusion is first found in Biot's Traité de Physique and has been perpetuated, with unfortunate consequences, by many subsequent authors. (shrink)

John Dewey expresses repeatedly that the significance of democracy is more than political discourse. He invites us to realize that democracy is primarily moral idea that animates a process of living and should be actualized continuously. He underlines that the idea of liberty, equality and fraternity, which is the democratic trinity, is ethical ideal of humanity in which personality is at the centre of reflection. Every human individual is free to actualize its self-realization. His liberty is based on the belief (...) that every human individual has a right to equal opportunity with every other person to develop whatever endowment he has. Then, democracy indicates fraternity as an ethical value, which every human individual is able to actualize his capacities only in actively cooperative relationship with other. Political and social democracy presenting in a real association of life will be effectively sustained if its values of ideal hu-manity becomes an animating force of life. In other words, he envisions that democracy becomes a personal way of life. Keywords: values of democracy, social responsibility, culture of democracy, transformation of life, peaceful life. Absrak: John Dewey menyatakan berulangkali bahwa demokrasi lebih dari sekedar persoalan politik. Ia menunjukkan bahwa demokrasi pertama-tama merupakan sebuah gagasan etis yang menjiwai proses hidup secara terus-menerus. Kebebasan, kesederajatan, dan persaudaraan yang menjadi inti demokrasi merupakan nilai-nilai etis kemanusiaan yang menjadi arah hidup manusia di dalam kehidupan bersama di tengah masyarakat. Setiap individu adalah bebas untuk mewujudkan dirinya. Kebebasannya didasarkan pada keyakinan bahwa setiap individu mempunyai hak dan kesempatan yang sama untuk mengembangkan diri sesuai dengan potensi yang dianugerahkan kepadanya. Persaudaraan merupakan nilai etis yang menegaskan bahwa setiap individu hanya mampu mewujudkan diri di dalam relasi dan kerjasama dengan sesamanya. Ketiga nilai etis tersebut seharusnya menjiwai tata hidup bersama. Dengan kata lain, demokrasi seharusnya menjadi pola hidup setiap pribadi sebagai anggota masyarakat. Kata-kata Kunci: nilai-nilai demokrasi, tanggung jawab sosial, budaya demo-krasi, transformasi hidup, hidup damai. (shrink)

Decisions are central to engineering processes and hold them together. It is argued that better decisions will lead to better engineering. To achieve better decisions requires that they be understood in detail. A typical decision is broken down into its essential requirements and processes, thus displaying the components of its framework. The process leads to the identification of a number of concerns. The components are discussed and a set of issues where more work needs to be done is identified. There (...) are significant implications for both engineering practice and engineering education. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis. (shrink)

Nisbet and Kraggerud make good cases for taking the ninth Epode as a dramatic recreation of the Actium campaign. Horace begins in fearful anticipation; then the crisis comes, first on land and then on sea; Antony turns to flight; and — even though some danger remains, and there is metus as well as joy at the end of the poem — the celebrations can finally begin. On this reading there remains the familiar problem of vv. 17–20: at huc frementes uerterunt (...) bis mille equos Galli canentes Caesarem, hostiliumque nauium portu latent puppes sinistrorsum citae. The first couplet clearly relates to the defection of Amyntas' Galatians, the decisive moment in the fighting on land; the second must describe the crucial battle on sea. There is no problem in portu latent. The fleet has withdrawn, and is skulking in harbour instead of fighting. But what of nauium…puppes sinistrorsum citae? The difficulty is notorious: the secondary sources do not clearly describe any movement ‘toward the left’, and it is hard to see why Horace chooses so enigmatic a phrase to capture the fighting. His audience would not make much of the topographical detail in any case: unless they had been at Actium themselves , their reaction to the words would centre on other associations — the contrast between these magnificent puppes and their undignified sideways movement; the suggestions of ill omen in sinistrorsum. (shrink)

Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno (Counterfactuals and Context, ANALYSIS 68 (2008): 39-46) argue that the standard Stalnaker-Lewis counterexamples to hypothetical syllogism, strengthening the antecedent, and contraposition trade on a failure to hold fixed the context in which truth values are determined for the premises and conclusion in each counterexample. I argue that no contextual fallacy is committed in the standard counterexamples, and I offer a different view of what it is for a fact to be held fixed by a counterfactual (...) antecedent. On my view, for a fact to be held fixed is an epistemological matter, not a semantic matter. (shrink)