To their dismay, children look like their parents. They are not perfect copies, and over many generations some features evaporate; but even over fifty generations features relevant to an anthropologist persist. Children perhaps can find some comfort in the fact that we are not alone: organisms in general maintain remarkably stable structures through time. In What is Life? Erwin Schrödinger famously predicted the existence of the gene, but he also asked how life manages such stability in the face of thermodynamics’ (...) prescription that systems spontaneously move to increase their entropy. How does life escape the randomizing effects of the Second Law? Schrödinger of course recognized that there is no genuine conflict between life and thermodynamics. The Second Law applies only to closed, i.e., approximately energetically isolated, systems, yet living organisms are open systems. Although living creatures are not plugged into electrical sockets like your refrigerator, Schrödinger noted that organisms are dependent on the high quality energy of their environment. They maintain their structures at the expense of increased contributions of entropy (waste) to their environment. Life arises in the balance between the low entropy found in the environment and the entropy the organism itself throws off. Writing in the 1940’s, Schrödinger could see the general form of the answer to his question, but he lacked the resources to explain why these stable structures arose in the first place. (shrink)

This study experimentally tests the contributions of specific appraisals, considered at both molecular (appraisal components) and molar (core relational themes) levels of analysis, to the experience of four emotions (anger, guilt, fear/anxiety, and sadness) using a two-stage directed imagery task. In Stage 1, subjects imagined themselves in scenarios designed to evoke appraisals hypothesised to produce either anger or sadness. In Stage 2, the scenarios unfolded in time to produce a second manipulation designed to systematically evoke the appraisals hypothesised to produce (...) each of the four emotions under study. The results provided substantial support for the theoretically specified appraisal-emotion relationships for anger, guilt, and fear/ anxiety. However, support for the predictions for sadness was weaker, partially due to ineffective manipulation of the relevant appraisals. Implications for the further development and testing of emotion theory are discussed. (shrink)

In a 2010 article Turri puts forward some powerful considerations which suggest that Williamson's view of knowledge as the most general factive mental state is false. Turri claims that this view is false since it is false that if S sees that p, then S knows that p. Turri argues that there are cases in which (A) S sees that p but (B) S does not know that p. In response I offer linguistic evidence to suppose that in propositional contexts (...) “see” does not have the sort of meaning (a purely perceptual meaning) which would sustain Turri's claims about the cases he offers (specifically, the (A) verdicts). (shrink)

We add texture to the conclusion of Duchon and Drake (Journal of Business Ethics, 85, 2009, 301) that extreme narcissism is associated with unethical conduct. We argue that the special features possessed by financial accounting facilitate extreme narcissism in susceptible CEOs. In particular, we propose that extremely narcissistic CEOs are key players in a recurring discourse cycle facilitated by financial accounting language and measures. Such CEOs project themselves as the corporation they lead, construct a narrative about the corporation and themselves (...) using financial accounting measures, and then reflect on how their accounting-constructed performance is perceived by stakeholders. We do not present empirical evidence about whether the use of accounting language and measures leads to unethical behaviour by extreme narcissistic CEOs — although the conclusions of Duchon and Drake (2009) suggest empirical support is probable. Rather, we focus on developing alertness to the potential for accounting, when engaged by an extremely narcissistic CEO, to be a precursor or implement of unethical behaviour. (shrink)

Craig Hanks and Aili Bresnahan are contributing editors only -- not main editors.

Libertarianism: For and Against offers dueling perspectives on the scope of legitimate government. Tibor R. Machan, a well-known libertarian philosopher, argues for a minimal government devoted solely to protecting individual rights to life, liberty, and property. Against this view, philosopher Craig Duncan defends democratic liberalism, which aims to ensure that all citizens have fair access to a life of dignity. In a dynamic exchange of arguments, the two philosophers cut to the heart of this important debate.

Specialist Sport Programs are an underexamined activity that combines the best features of two different contexts for adolescent development: a sporting program and a secondary school. A mixed-methods study was conducted to determine the influence of participation in SSPs on the educational outcomes of lower secondary students in Western Australia. The results demonstrated a significant improvement in specialist students' mean grade for Mathematics over the course of a year, while their mean grade for all other subjects, and their level of (...) engagement with school, remained stable over the same period of time. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with key stakeholders. Overall, the participants felt that SSPs had a positive influence on students' engagement with school, and that this engagement had a positive impact on their academic achievement. Taken together, the results of this research suggest that there is a role for SSPs in promoting positive educational outcomes for lower secondary students attending public schools located in low SES areas. (shrink)

The view that organisms deserve moral respect because they have their own purposes is often grounded in a specification of the biological functions that the organism has. One way to identify such functions, adopted by Gary Varner, is to determine the etiology of some behavior based on the evolution of the structures enabling it. This view suffers from some unacceptable problems, including that some organisms with profound defects will by definition have a welfare interest in their defects. For example, this (...) view entails that the patented oncomice, intentionally engineered and bred for a genetic defect that leads to extremely high incidence of cancer, would have a welfare interest in the development of tumors. The systems-based theory of biological functions, which refers not to the evolution of structures but rather to their role in the organism, escapes these problems, and shows how a theory of an organism’s welfare interest in its purposes can be grounded in a sound naturalistic approach. This approach also has some fruitful corollaries, including an elegant theory of why species may require special moral regard. (shrink)

Neuropsychiatric disorders such as drug addiction, depression and schizophrenia are often centrally implicated in public health challenges. These conditions impact the individuals affected and have widespread implications, contributing to related crises such as opioid epidemic, rising suicide rates and homelessness. Despite their influence, public health interventions frequently emphasise individual responsibility, overlooking the complex interplay of neurobiological and systemic factors that underpin these disorders. Current public health frameworks, such as the Nuffield Council on Bioethics’ intervention ladder, prioritise efforts that encourage individual (...) behaviour change. Paetkau critiques this emphasis on individual responsibility, emphasising the need to consider more systemic factors, such as social determinants of health, as targets of necessary intervention.1 We aim to reinforce Paetkau’s critique of the intervention ladder by introducing three neuropsychiatric case studies, each highlighting the limitations of an individual-based framework in addressing psychopathology-involved public health issues. We argue that conditions like addiction, depression and serious mental illness undermine the emphasis on individual responsibility in public health and policy interventions. To this end, neuroscience demonstrates that effective public health interventions necessitate a shift from the long-standing emphasis on individual responsibility towards more comprehensive, systems-level interventions. Opioid overdose deaths in the USA have sextupled since 1999, with over 100,000 deaths in 2023 alone.2 The opioid crisis has since remained one of the most pressing public …. (shrink)

Recent scandals involving executive leadership have significantly contributed to the topic of corporate social responsibility (CSR) becoming one of the most important concerns of the management literature in the twenty-first century. The antithesis of CSR is embodied in executive corruption and malfeasance. Unfortunately such things are all too frequent. We view the degree of centrality of leadership, and the primary power motivation of leaders, as key factors that influence the engagement in corruptive leader behavior and consequent corporate social ir-responsibility (CSIR) (...) in organizations. Shared and self-leadership, on the other hand, we introduce as alternatives to traditional top-down centralized views of leadership that can establish needed checks and balances capable of reducing corruptive tendencies. We offer a conceptual model along with several propositions to help guide future research and practice. (shrink)

Many of those memorialized around us in statues are wrongdoers, and so we are often called to consider whether we should take down those statues. Some of those statutes are memorialized for reasons now taken to be wrong; others are memorialized not for but rather despite their wrongdoing. How should we consider those latter cases? One tempting analysis suggests that we need only consider whether the wrongdoing was sufficiently transgressive. In this article, however, I reject that constrained focus. Instead, these (...) cases have as much to do with us, our priorities, and what those priorities should be as they have to do with the particulars of the lives of the subjects of the statues. Recognizing the central role that our priorities play in blame and condemnation better captures the contours of the debate about statue removal than any categorical rule about types of wrongs. (shrink)

This text draws on the evidence of Paul and the Gospels to present the case for accepting the historicity of the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

The world's population is a significant variable that can be altered to help decrease global emissions. Most of the discussion surrounding this variable has concentrated on the moral issues involved: to what extent is a state justified in reducing its population? Are individual procreators morally obligated to have fewer children? However, while these moral concerns are important, little attention has been given to the feasibility of a proposed solution to overpopulation. This article aims to rectify that. By understanding whether (and (...) how) feasibility impacts the truth-value of an ought claim, important progress can be made on deliberating what to do about overpopulation. In Section 2, I outline the public health crisis that overpopulation causes and present Sarah Conly's argument as the most well-thought-out account of how to ethically and rapidly reduce the population. In Section 3, I borrow from Nicholas Southwood to explore when infeasibility makes an ought claim false. In Section 4, I show that rapidly reducing the population is infeasible. Therefore, regardless of any ethical merits, it should be eliminated as an option when deliberating what to do. Instead, we must put our time and resources into finding a feasible solution to overpopulation. (shrink)

Research Articles Craig Yirush, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

Ethical perspectives -- Components of personal ethical development -- Ethical decision making and action -- Ethical interpersonal communication -- Exercising ethical influence -- Ethical conflict management and negotiation -- Improving group ethical performance -- Leadership ethics -- Followership ethics -- Building an ethical organizational culture -- Managing ethical hotspots in organizations -- Promoting organizational citizenship in a global society.

From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to The Motorcycle Diaries, to be a biker is to be on the road to the meaning of life. What would the existentialists have to say about facing death on a bike? Can your motorcycle be as much a work of art as a Michelangelo painting? And why is it that bikers are so often political rebels? Philosopher and biker Craig Bourne shows for the first time the thoughtful side of the (...) biker, and takes us on a fun trip through the philosophy of motorcycles. (shrink)

Certain arguments that phenomenal conscious states play no role, or play a role that could be different, depend upon the seeming plausibility of thought experiments such as the inverted spectrum or phenomenal zombie. These thought experiments are always run for perceptual states like colour vision. Run for affective states like emotions, they become absurd, because the prior intension of our concepts of emotional states are that the phenomenal experience is inseparable from their motivational aspects. Our growing scientific understanding of emotion (...) and motivation lends inductive evidence to this view. This points the way towards a positive hypothesis that affective consciousness is type-specific to its function. (shrink)

This paper explores consequences of the claim that phenomenal experiences are physical events of great descriptive complexity. This claim is attractive both because it can explain our most perplexing intuitions about the quality of consciousness and also because it is suggestive of very productive research opportunities. I illustrate the former by showing that two of the most compelling anti-physicalist arguments about phenomenal experience – the modal argument of Kripke and the conceivability argument of Chalmers – are not sound if this (...) claim is true. I illustrate the latter by showing that significant empirical predictions are a consequence of this claim. (shrink)

Ist der Unterschied zwischen wissenschaftlichen Gesetzen und Theorien ein qualitativer oder lediglich von quantitativer Art? Der Autor versucht zu zeigen, daß Gesetze und Theorien fundamental verschieden sind und daß die Kenntnis ihrer verschiedenen Natur notwendig für ein richtiges Wissenschaftsverständnis ist. Aus seiner Sicht sind Theorien geistige Konstruktionen mit dem Ziel, kausale Erklärungen von empirischen Gesetzen zu geben, während diese Gesetze auf der Grundlage von Messungen entdeckt werden und die Tatsachen der Wissenschaft konstituieren. Erkenntnistheoretisch sind daher Theorien und Gesetze auf verschiedenen (...) Ebenen anzusiedeln: während Gesetze Wissen liefern, liefern Theorien Verstehen. Der Kern der Theorien besteht aus Modellen, die idealisierte Abstraktionen aus Zustandsarten darstellen. Theoretische Modelle konstituieren Ontologien, die kausale Mechanismen aufzeigen. Solche Ontologien betreffen den Bedeutungsaspekt des Gegenstandsbereichs, auf den die Theorie angewendet wird, während empirische Gesetze den Ausdrucksaspekt des gleichen Gegenstandsbereichs betreffen. Theorien erklären Gesetze, indem sie zeigen, wie der Ausdrucksaspekt lediglich der natürliche Ausdruck der Auswirkungen der Kausalmechanismen in Bedeutungsaspekt sind. (shrink)

Ambiguity in the Western Mind, edited with an Introduction by Craig J. N. de Paulo, Senior Editor, et al. New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2005. Details: Preface by Joseph Margolis and distinguished contributors include John D. Caputo, Camille Paglia, Jaroslav Pelikan, Roland Teske, S.J. et al.

Incorporating techniques from book history into traditional intellectual history, this article traces the effective origin of indexing to the early printed editions of two lexicographical works, Lorenzo Valla's Elegantie and Niccolò Perotti's Cornu copiae, and then follows its development through the editions of the Roman poet Virgil published between 1500 and 1800. Indexing practices turn out to be tied to how books were read, with a new way of consuming books, which is labeled "transverse reading," emerging during this period.

Many share the conviction that wilderness should play a special role in any environmental ethic, even though the concept of wilderness remains contentious. Ever since it has been recognized that the traditional concept of a wilderness as a region “untrammeled” by human beings has a number of intractable difficulties, there has been no consensus on how we should understand wilderness, and most definitions or descriptions of wilderness remain negative (defining wilderness in terms of what it is not). I propose a (...) new ecological concept of wilderness, and show that this concept escapes the difficulties of the traditional concept and its recent alternatives, while being a useful ancillary to some of the leading contemporary theories in environmental ethics. (shrink)

I argue that natural realism is the best approach to explaining some emotional actions, and thus is the best candidate to explain the relevant emotions. I take natural realism to be the view that these emotions are motivational states which must be identified by using (not necessarily exclusively) naturalistic discourse which, if not wholly lacking intentional terms, at least does not require reference to belief and desire. The kinds of emotional actions I consider are ones which continue beyond the satisfaction (...) of the desires that could plausibly be said to motivate the agent. As a contrast to a realist position about emotions I examine interpretationist theories of mind, using Dennett and Davidson as examples, and show that the emotional actions in question will fail to be explained by these theories. In conclusion, I provide one weak version of a natural realist view of emotions, and show how it succeeds where interpretationism fails. (shrink)

The errors young children make when recognising others’ emotions may be systematic over-identification biases and may partially explain the challenges some have socially. These biases and associations may be differential by emotion. In a sample of 871 ethnically and racially diverse preschool-aged children (i.e. 33–68 months; 49% Hispanic/Latine, 52% Children of Colour), emotion recognition was assessed, and scores for accuracy and bias were calculated by emotion (i.e. anger, sad, happy, calm, and fear). Child and family characteristics and teacher-reported social behaviour (...) were also collected. Multilevel structural equation modelling revealed emotion-specific recognition accuracies varied between 36 and 65% whereas biases varied between 4 and 13%. Anger was the strongest bias followed by sad, happy, fear, and calm, in contrast to the pattern for accuracy – happy, sad, angry, fear, and calm. More variance was explained in emotion-specific recognition accuracies by child and family characteristics – 7–38% – than biases – 3–7%. Negatively-valanced emotion recognition biases associated with positively-valanced accuracies, and positively-valued emotion recognition biases associated with negatively-valued accuracies. Biases did not have meaningful associations with social behaviour. This study highlights that children’s emotion recognition errors may partially be systematic, but future studies are needed to understand the underlying cognitive mechanisms. (shrink)

In 19th Century Transkei, crowds would gather to watch whole herds of cattle charging over several kilometres in the popular sport of uleqo. This sport became untenable due to environmental conditions and colonial responses to those conditions. Horses replaced cattle in the racing tradition and uleqo was effectively relegated to a footnote in the history of the area. This article draws together the few remaining descriptions of uleqo in the Eastern Cape. It does so to ask two main questions: what (...) can we learn about uleqo's exclusion? And, what might including the remnants of uleqo offer? In answering these two questions this article will draw upon the idea of an 'artefact, which is simultaneously a remnant and a defect in an image. Here, 'artefact' is used also to refer to archival fragments, and to the distortions that ignoring them may have produced. By focusing on uleqo, it is argued, we can appreciate some neglected ways in which the people of the now-Eastern Cape altered their daily practices in response to the colonial project. (shrink)

Background: Despite a gradual shift in the focus of medical care among terminally ill patients to a palliative model, studies suggest that many children with life-limiting chronic illnesses continue to die in hospital after prolonged periods of inpatient admission and mechanical ventilation.Objectives: To examine the characteristics and location of death among hospitalised children, investigate yearwise trends in these characteristics and test the hypothesis that professional ethical guidance from the UK Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health would lead to significant (...) changes in the characteristics of death among hospitalised children.Methods: Routine administrative data from one large tertiary-level UK children’s hospital was examined over a 7-year period for children aged 0–18 years. Demographic details, location of deaths, source of admission , length of stay and final diagnoses were studied. Statistical significance was tested by the Kruskal–Wallis analysis of ranks and median test , χ2 test and Cochran–Armitage test .Results: Of the 1127 deaths occurring in hospital over the 7-year period, the majority were among infants. The main diagnoses at death included congenital malformations , perinatal diseases , cardiovascular disorders and neoplasms . Most deaths occurred in an intensive care unit environment , with a significant increase over the years . There was a clear increase in the proportion of admissions from in-hospital among the ICU cohort . Infants with congenital malformations and perinatal conditions were more likely to die in an ICU , and older children with malignancy outside the ICU . Children stayed for a median of 13 days on a hospital ward before being admitted to an ICU where they died.Conclusions: A greater proportion of hospitalised children are dying in an ICU environment. Our experience indicates that professional ethical guidance by itself may be inadequate in reversing the trends observed in this study. (shrink)

Creation and conservation are defined and distinguished; providence based on divine middle knowledge is defended; and miracles as naturally impossible events are defended.

This third book in a series of successful introductory textbooks by Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen builds on their previous projects, The Drama of Scripture and Living at the Crossroads, to offer a comprehensive narrative of philosophical thought from a distinctly Christian perspective. After exploring the interaction among Scripture, worldview, theology, and philosophy, the authors tell the story of philosophy from ancient Greece through postmodern times, positioning the philosophers in their historical contexts and providing Christian critique along the way. (...) The authors emphasize the Reformed philosophical tradition without neglecting other historical trajectories and show how philosophical thought relates to contemporary life. (shrink)

Five arguments to defend your faith. In an increasingly secular world, Christians face more pressure to justify their beliefs. Confronted by confident atheists, can you be sure your faith in God is reasonable? In How Do We Know God Exists?, William Lane Craig offers five air--tight arguments for God's existence. Not only are these arguments rational, but they have not been disproven--let alone adequately challenged. You can have confidence that your faith is grounded.

Talk of 'spirituality' and 'individual religion' is proliferating both in popular discourse and scholarly works. Increasingly people claim to be 'spiritual but not religious,' or to prefer 'individual religion' to 'organized religion.' Scholars have for decades noted the phenomenon - primarily within the middle class - of individuals picking and choosing elements from among various religious traditions, forming their own religion or spirituality for themselves. While the topics of 'spirituality' and 'individual religion' are regularly treated as self-evident by the media (...) and even some scholars of religion, Capitalizing Religion provides one of the first critical analyses of the phenomenon, arguing that these recent forms of spirituality are in many cases linked to capitalist ideology and consumer practices. Examining cases such as Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, and Karen Berg's God Wears Lipstick, Craig Martin ultimately argues that so-called 'individual religion' is a religion of the status quo or, more critically, 'an opiate of the bourgeoisie.' Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and Opiate of the Bourgeoisie is a landmark publication in critical religious studies. (shrink)