Open theists deny that God knows future contingents. Most open theists justify this denial by adopting the position that there are no future contingent truths to be known. In this paper we examine some of the arguments put forward for this position in two recent articles in this journal, one by Dale Tuggy and one by Alan Rhoda, Gregory Boyd, and Thomas Belt. The arguments concern time, modality, and the semantics of ‘will’ statements. We explain why we find none (...) of these arguments persuasive. This wide road leads only to destruction. (shrink)

From David Brat, the college professor who made political headlines when he unseated Majority Leader Eric Cantor, comes his plan for restoring fiscal liberty for America. Congressman David Brat's odds-defying win against Eric Cantor--a triumph of a modest $200,000 campaign fund against a $5 million war chest--immediately brought David Brat, heretofore a liberal arts college economics professor, into the political limelight. Now, in his first book, AMERICAN UNDERDOG, Brat examines how we brought down the status quo by (...) tapping into moral and economic lessons as old as our civilization and discusses how Washington can learn from history instead of ignoring it. A fighter for children, he illuminates how our current fiscal policies are selling their future, and outlines new ways to move forward with a conservative agenda that provides fairer treatment for all. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 108 Heft: 2 Seiten: 809-826.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 7, Page 18-20, July 2011.

Volume 1. The oppression of nonhuman animals as sources of food -- Volume 2. The oppressive and destructive role of capitalism.

Projective contents, which include presuppositional inferences and Potts's conventional implicatures, are contents that may project when a construction is embedded, as standardly identified by the FAMILY-OF-SENTENCES diagnostic. This article establishes distinctions among projective contents on the basis of a series of diagnostics, including a variant of the family-of-sentences diagnostic, that can be applied with linguistically untrained consultants in the field and the laboratory. These diagnostics are intended to serve as part of a toolkit for exploring projective contents across languages, thus (...) allowing generalizations to be examined and validated crosslinguistically. We apply the diagnostics in two languages, focusing on Paraguayan Guaraní, and comparing the results to those for English. Our study of Paraguayan Guaraní is the first systematic exploration of projective content in a language other than English. Based on the application of our diagnostics to a wide range of constructions, four subclasses of projective contents emerge. The resulting taxonomy of projective content has strong implications for contemporary theories of projection, which were developed for the projective properties of particular subclasses and fail to generalize to the full set of projective contents. (shrink)

This study utilises a posthuman perception to explore the psychological changes brought on by the relationship between humans and robots in the post-apocalyptic context with the schizoanalytic framework of Deleuze and Guattari. Through the analysis of Becky Chambers’ fiction, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, the article explores how the characters’ self-perceptions and psyche alter when they engage with sentient robots. In light of contemporary discussions around AI and technology, post-apocalyptic fiction also provides a forum for considering how human–machine relationships are (...) evolving. With the Schizoanalytic study, the creation of new reality, psyche, and subjectivity are analysed. Alongside, the idea of “Cyborg Embodiment” by Donna Haraway sheds light on how character’s concepts of embodiment and self are changing. The posthuman subjectivity framework of N. Katherine Hayles directs an examination of shifting emotional vistas. This study offers insights into the complex interplay between human and robot experiences by weaving these posthuman concepts along with schizoanalysis, thus enhancing our understanding of human psyche in the post-apocalyptic narratives. The analysis explores the relationship between human and robot experiences in post-apocalyptic fiction, using posthuman concepts, thereby contributing to the discourse at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and society. (shrink)

Critics point to four issues as presenting barriers to the use of virtue in the context of business. They focus on the relationship between management and practice, the potential for virtuous behaviour in a competitive environment, the ability to develop a reflexive critique of management that can be acted on, and the differentiation between work and wider social roles and people's propensity to take responsibility for them. In this paper we propose a solution to criticisms levelled at the use of (...) virtue within Business Ethics. We examine the critiques of management in the context of Virtue Ethics and the application of these to business. In arguing for a role for business in being virtuous and promoting virtue we accept that the concept of management that is based on the type of liberalism founded on personal preference and benefit is deeply problematic and that management that is driven solely by profit is not compatible with the development of practice based virtue. However, we argue that to exclude those activities in which management is involved as a result would be wrong and dangerous. Instead we see the great advantage of a Virtue Ethic is that it conjures up an alternative vision to the dominant practice, and such an alternative vision is urgently needed in business today. (shrink)

This year's volume of collected papers in the Current Legal Problems series provides in-depth analyses some important developments which have taken place in recent months. Public law has witnessed much activity both in the courts and in Parliament during the last twelve months and this is reflected in three essays which examine different aspects of human rights, equality, and the right to privacy. In the wake of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, two lengthy essays deal with evidence in police (...) investigations and the concept of due process and pre-trial criminal justice. (shrink)

Rare copy number variants have a prominent role in the aetiology of schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Substantial risk for schizophrenia is conferred by large CNVs at several loci, including microdeletions at 1q21.1, 3q29, 15q13.3 and 22q11.2 and microduplication at 16p11.2. However, these CNVs collectively account for a small fraction of cases, and the relevant genes and neurobiological mechanisms are not well understood. Here we performed a large two-stage genome-wide scan of rare CNVs and report the significant association of copy (...) number gains at chromosome 7q36.3 with schizophrenia. Microduplications with variable breakpoints occurred within a 362-kilobase region and were detected in 29 of 8,290 patients versus 2 of 7,431 controls in the combined sample. All duplications overlapped or were located within 89 kilobases upstream of the vasoactive intestinal peptide receptor gene VIPR2. VIPR2 transcription and cyclic-AMP signalling were significantly increased in cultured lymphocytes from patients with microduplications of 7q36.3. These findings implicate altered vasoactive intestinal peptide signalling in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia and indicate the VPAC2 receptor as a potential target for the development of new antipsychotic drugs. © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved. (shrink)

An important goal of ethical investment is to influence companies to improve their ethical and environmental performance. The principal means that many ethical funds employ is passive market signalling, which may not, on its own, have a significant effect. A much more promising approach may be active engagement. This paper reports on a questionnaire study of a sample of 1146 ethical investors in order to assess whether U.K. ethical investors would support more activist ethical investment and whether they would be (...) prepared to invest in companies which are failing ethically in order to do so. The results show general support for the current practice of passive signalling accompanied by "soft" engagement in the form of lobbying and the development of dialogue in order to improve corporate practice. The "harder" options of investing in companies that err in order to change them is, however, favoured by consistent minorities. (shrink)

This article explores the opportunities and challenges of using journalistic exemplars in the digital network to explicate intellectual virtues necessary for flourishing in that network. It seeks to advance media ethics theorizing by drawing together exemplar-based virtue theory, specifically Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory, and work on intellectual virtues, in particular Baehr’s delineation of nine intellectual virtues. After a description of theoretical foundations, this article articulates an approach to identifying and explicating intellectual virtues through journalistic exemplars in the digital network. It (...) then applies this approach to the work of two journalists who have frequently and thoughtfully used social media. This exploratory analysis suggests the proposed approach holds promise for explication of individual virtues and identification of patterns among them. The approach also carries challenges and limitations, partly related to the nature and scope of virtual evidence for enactment of virtues by journalists. The authors suggest future research to minimize these limitations and continue advancing theorizing within this framework. (shrink)

In the last few years, off-line simulation has become an increasingly important alternative to standard explanations in cognitive science. The contemporary debate began with Gordon (1986) and Goldman's (1989) off-line simulation account of our capacity to predict behavior. On their view, in predicting people's behavior we take our own decision making system `off line' and supply it with the `pretend' beliefs and desires of the person whose behavior we are trying to predict; we then let the decision maker reach a (...) decision on the basis of these pretend inputs. Figure 1 offers a `boxological' version of the off-line simulation theory of behavior prediction.(1). (shrink)

ABSTRACTVirtue ethics, a topic of growing interest in media ethics and philosophy more broadly, poses challenges for classroom instruction because it is rooted in long-term development of character. This article explores approaches for incorporating virtue into media ethics instruction and assessing associated student learning, based on an analysis of how students in a journalism ethics class demonstrated their understanding and application of virtues through activities tailored to virtue ethics. The analysis, in addition to suggesting the value of assignments such as (...) an exemplar paper for learning and assessment, highlights several challenges instructors should consider in both teaching and evaluating virtue instruction. (shrink)

: In 2000, the Romanian journal Paideia published a series of essays to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of John Dewey. Three articles--by Peter Hlebowitsh, then the editor of Education and Culture; Daniel Tanner, then the president of the John Dewey Society; and William Schubert, past president of the JDS-- were prepared and translated into Romanian for publication. Paideia editor Nicolae Sacalis has contributed an article describing Dewey's influence in Romania. In "The Writings of John Dewey in Romania: (...) Policy and Pedagogy," Sacalis describes the interest in pragmatism of the Romanian intellectuals of the 1920s and 1930s and how Dewey's writings became important to the government's education leaders and school practitioners. Dewey's popularity was so great that a comprehensive overview of his work was published to honor and acknowledge his eightieth birthday. The writings of Dewey were silenced thereafter but not forgotten. His works reappeared in the 1970s for a new generation of Romanian educators, and since the 1989 revolution, his writings have received even greater popularity, leading to the commemoration of his death by Paideia. (shrink)

This article provides current Schwartz Values Survey (SVS) data from samples of business managers and professionals across 50 societies that are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. We report the society scores for SVS values dimensions for both individual- and societal-level analyses. At the individual-level, we report on the ten circumplex values sub-dimensions and two sets of values dimensions (collectivism and individualism; openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence). At the societal-level, we report on the values dimensions of embeddedness, hierarchy, mastery, affective (...) autonomy, intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and harmony. For each society, we report the Cronbach’s α statistics for each values dimension scale to assess their internal consistency (reliability) as well as report interrater agreement (IRA) analyses to assess the acceptability of using aggregated individual level values scores to represent country values. We also examined whether societal development level is related to systematic variation in the measurement and importance of values. Thus, the contributions of our evaluation of the SVS values dimensions are two-fold. First, we identify the SVS dimensions that have cross-culturally internally reliable structures and within-society agreement for business professionals. Second, we report the society cultural values scores developed from the twenty-first century data that can be used as macro-level predictors in multilevel and single-level international business research. (shrink)

The “basic debate” in business ethics between shareholder theory and stakeholder theory has underlined the field since its inception, with wide ranging normative, descriptive, and instrumental arguments offered on both sides. We maintain that insofar as this is primarily a normative debate, clarity can be brought by elucidating how it is framed by the political philosophies of liberalism and libertarianism.With liberalism represented by John Rawls’s theory of justice and libertarianism represented by the ideas of Milton Friedman and Robert Nozick, and (...) Edward Freeman, the paper shows that both liberalism and libertarianism can be interpreted to justify shareholder and stakeholder theory respectively. The debate between shareholder theory and stakeholder theory is framed by liberal and libertarian justifications that hinge primarily on whether and to what extent one should have exogenous or endogenous safeguards on corporate behavior. Accordingly, political philosophy turns out to be highly relevant to both business ethics and corporate governance, not because the corporation resembles the state, but because of the potential safeguards placed on the corporation by the state. (shrink)

Expressions like "two novels" are traditionally taken to convey information about cardinality and are analyzed using a cardinality function. Salmon (Philosop Perspect 11:1–15, 1997), Liebesman (Australasian J Philos 93:21–42, 2015; Philos’ Impr 16:1–25, 2016; In D. W. Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford studies in metaphysics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, forthcoming), and Haida and Trinh (in: Dočekal, Wagiel (eds) Formal approaches to number in Slavic and beyond, Language Science Press, Berlin, 2001) argue against this traditional account, claiming that it can’t explain our use (...) of expressions like "two and a half novels". According to them, the proper analysis of such expressions requires a partiality measure, which maps entities to rational numbers such as 2.5. In this paper, we set out to defend the traditional account. To do so, we demonstrate that an analysis based on a partiality measure is inconsistent with the truth conditions of plural comparatives and equatives. We also show that such an account doesn’t provide an adequate analysis for expressions like "two novels and a half", nor for their French counterparts (e.g., "deux romans et demi"). Critically, such expressions contain no constituent that could refer to the number 2.5. We provide an alternative analysis for all these expressions, based on cardinality and an operation of non-overlapping summation. (shrink)

Business ethics can be regarded as a field dealing with corporate _self-regulation_ as it relates to the treatment of stakeholders. However, a concern for corporate stakeholders need not take a corporate-centric perspective, as shown by recent efforts (especially Singer in Bus Ethics Q 25(1):65–92, 2015) to situate corporate conduct within Rawls’ political theory. Although Rawls was largely mute on the subject himself, his theory has implications for business ethics and corporate governance more specifically. Given an understanding of a “Rawlsian society” (...) as a whole—where corporations as associations are a part—this paper addresses how a Rawlsian perspective would safeguard against corporate harms in society. We argue that a Rawlsian society would primarily regulate corporate conduct through exogenous constraints in the form of legislation. To the extent that business ethics is concerned with endogenous constraints in the form of corporate-centric self-regulation regarding _stakeholders_, to adopt a Rawlsian perspective is to assume instead a society-centric perspective and to impose exogenous constraints on corporate conduct in the form of legislation for the benefit of _citizens_. In the context of Rawls’ political liberalism, normative concerns in business are accounted for through legislation and the system of background justice. In a clear departure from Singer (Bus Ethics Q 25(1):65–92, 2015, Bus Ethics J Rev 6(3):11–17, 2018a), we further develop our argument to propose that Rawls' theory can be interpreted as providing a rule for corporate governance. The rule—which is imposed exogenously for the good of society—states: After choosing the corporate constraint mechanism (exogenous vs. endogenous) that best promotes the Liberty Principle, choose the corporate control regime (shareholder vs. stakeholder) that maximizes economic efficiency. (shrink)

Using interviews with activists and Lisa Sowle Cahill's concept of participatory discourse, this article examines how the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) built solidarity for the 2006 Massachusetts health care reform law. The analysis explores the morally formative connections between GBIO's activist strategies and its public liturgy for reform. The solidarity generated through this interfaith coalition's activities and religious arguments contrasts with two standard types of policy discourse, economics and liberalism. Arguments for health care reform based on economic efficiency or (...) positive rights are hampered by the lack of solidarity in U.S. political culture. GBIO's congregation-based organizing offers a performative model of public argumentation for religious groups committed to achieving affordable, quality health care for all Americans. (shrink)

Frank Ramsey (1931) wrote: If two people are arguing 'if p will q?' and both are in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge and arguing on that basis about q. We can say that they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p. Let us take the first sentence the way it is often taken, as proposing the following test for the acceptability of an indicative conditional: ‘If p then q’ (...) is acceptable to a subject S iff, were S to accept p and consider q, S would accept q. Now consider an indicative conditional of the form (1) If p, then I believe p. Suppose that you accept p and consider ‘I believe p’. To accept p while rejecting ‘I believe p’ is tantamount to accepting the Moore-paradoxical sentence ‘p and I do not believe p’, and so is irrational. To accept p while suspending judgment about ‘I believe p’ is irrational for similar reasons. So rationality requires that if you accept p and consider ‘I believe p’, you accept ‘I believe p’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe financial crisis of 2008 was unforeseen partly because the academic theories that underpin policy making do not sufficiently account for uncertainty and complexity or learned and evolved human capabilities for managing them. Mainstream theories of decision making tend to be strongly normative and based on wishfully unrealistic “idealized” modeling. In order to develop theories of actual decision making under uncertainty, we need new methodologies that account for how human actors often manage uncertain situations “well enough.” Some possibly helpful methodologies, (...) drawing on digital science, focus on the role of emotions in determining people's choices; others examine how people construct narratives that enable them to act; still others combine qualitative with quantitative data. (shrink)

After encountering this book, you will never look at the tiniest sliver of your own backyard or neighborhood park the same way; instead, you will be stunned by the unexpected variety of species found in an area so small.

The Russian philosopher and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin has traditionally been seen as the leading figure in the group of intellectuals known as the Bakhtin Circle. The writings of other members of the Circle are considered much less important than his work, while Bakhtin's achievement has been exaggerated in proportion to the downgrading of the thinkers with whom he associated in the 1920s. This volume, which includes new translations and studies of the work of the most important members of the (...) Circle, sets out to correct the distortions in the established representations of its activity. The original contributions to literary and linguistic theory made by Valentin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev (but frequently credited to Bakhtin) are assessed, and the distinctiveness of their approaches is highlighted. (shrink)

Recent work has suggested that conservation efforts such as restoration ecology and invasive species eradication are largely value-driven pursuits. Concurrently, changes to global climate are forcing ecologists to consider if and how collections of species will migrate, and whether or not we should be assisting such movements. Herein, we propose a philosophical framework which addresses these issues by utilizing ecological and evolutionary interrelationships to delineate individual ecological communities. Specifically, our Evolutionary Community Concept recognizes unique collections of species that interact and (...) have co-evolved in a given geographic area. We argue this concept has implications for a number of contemporary global conservation issues. Specifically, our framework allows us to establish a biological and science-driven context for making decisions regarding the restoration of systems and the removal of exotic species. The ECC also has implications for how we view shifts in species assemblages due to climate change and it advances our understanding of various ecological concepts, such as resilience. (shrink)

In this article I use a case study of 3 newspaper pieces about assisted suicide and euthanasia to show how journalists can use analysis and commentary to highlight the ethical dimension of an important public issue. Using an approach grounded in ethical theory, I examine how these pieces-from the Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times-shed light on ethical issues including matters of duties and consequences. It is argued that an analytical approach that openly frames a topic (...) as having a moral dimension is particularly appropriate for ethics coverage in light of the value-laden nature of writing about ethics. (shrink)