Plato seems to have been pessimistic about how most people stand with regard to virtue. However, unlike the Stoics, he did not conclude that most people are vicious. Rather, as we know from discussions across several dialogues, he countenanced decent ethical conditions that fall short of genuine virtue, which he limited to the philosopher. Despite Plato's obvious interest in this issue, commentators rarely follow his lead by investigating in detail such conditions in the dialogues. When scholars do investigate what kind (...) of virtue, if any, Plato thinks is open to non-philosophers, they typically look to the Republic. But in the Republic Plato sets out an ideal city; therefore, the virtue available to non-philosophers there is likely different from what he thinks is available to them in the real world. If we want to determine Plato's thoughts about the virtue of actual non-philosophers, we must look elsewhere. In this paper, I set my sights on the Phaedo. (shrink)

Gathering information from both published and unpublished material and interviews with Gibson's family, colleagues, and friends, Reed (philosophy, Drexel U.) chronicles Gibson's life and intellectual development and his attempts to synthesize several contrasting intellectual traditions into what he ultimately called an "ecological approach" to psychology. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

General Electric has a rich history of being in the center of public discourse regarding the intersection of corporate strategy and environmental concerns. During Jeffrey Immelt’s tenure as Chief Executive Officer, G.E. has taken a proactive approach to coupling corporate social responsibility with organizational profitability in its Ecomagination initiatives. Critics abound with some investor groups questioning the utility of Immelt’s approach for shareholder returns while other stakeholder groups question G.E.’s motives and methods. This case study reviews G.E.’s past CSR efforts (...) and the more recent Ecomagination program and its efficacy and sustainability. The case was developed from public sources. (shrink)

Kant claims that an intuitive understanding—such as God would possess—could cognize things in themselves. This claim has prompted many interpreters of Kant's theoretical philosophy to propose that things in themselves correspond to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. In contrast, I argue that Kant's theoretical philosophy does not endorse the common proposal that all things in themselves correspond to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. Instead, Kant's theoretical philosophy maintains that things in themselves might or might not correspond (...) to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. I then consider whether Kant's moral philosophy and theory of reflecting judgment might provide alternative grounds for claiming that we should regard things in themselves as corresponding to how an intuitive understanding would cognize things. I argue that Kant's moral philosophy does not provide such grounds, but his theory of reflecting judgment does. Thus, interpretations of Kant's transcendental idealism should attend to the differences between Kant's theoretical philosophy, moral philosophy, and theory of reflecting judgment in assessing the relationship between intuitive understanding and things in themselves. (shrink)

Redrawing the Lines,the first book to focus on that interaction, brings together ten essays by key figures who have worked to connect literary theory and philosophy and to reassess the relationship between analytic and Continental ...

"What does it really mean to "be undocumented," particularly in the contemporary United States? Political philosophers, policymakers and others often define the term "undocumented migrant" legalistically-that is, in terms of lacking legal authorization to live and work in one's current country of residence. Socially Undocumented: Identity and Immigration Justice challenges such a pure "legalistic understanding" by arguing that being undocumented should not always be conceptualized along such lines. To be socially undocumented, it argues, is to possess a real, visible, and (...) embodied social identity that does not always track one's actual legal status in the United States. By integrating a descriptive/phenomenological account of socially undocumented identity with a normative/political account of how the oppression with which it is associated ought to be dealt with as a matter of social justice, this book offers a new vision of immigration ethics. It addresses concrete ethical challenges associated with immigration, such as the question of whether open borders are morally required, the militarization of the Mexico-U.S. border, the perilous journey that many Mexican and Central American migrants undertake to get to the United States, the difficult experiences of many socially undocumented women who cross U.S. borders to seek prenatal care while visibly pregnant, and more"--. (shrink)

Brings together the most recent discoveries in quantum physics and provides a powerful argument for transforming not only the way we view nature, but also how we view our own personal reality. The book also challenges readers to give up their prejudices regarding material realism.

Some disability rights advocates criticise prenatal testing and selective abortion on the grounds that these practices express negative attitudes towards existing persons with disabilities. Disability rights advocates also commonly criticise and oppose physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia on the same grounds. Despite the structural and motivational similarity of these two kinds of arguments, there is no literature comparing and contrasting their relative merits and the merits of responses to them with respect to each of these specific medical practices. This paper (...) undertakes such a comparison. My thesis is that a number of potentially significant weaknesses of the expressivist argument against reproductive technologies are avoided when the argument is used against PAS. In particular, I try to show that three common criticisms of the expressivist argument applied to reproductive technologies, whatever merit they have, have even less merit when they are used to reply to the expressivist argument applied to PAS. This is important because the expressivist argument applied to the end of life scenario does not get as much attention as the argument applied to the beginning of life scenario, and yet it has a relatively stronger position. (shrink)

Hintikka has criticized psychologists for "hasty epistemologizing," which he takes to be an unwarranted transfer of ideas from psychology (a discipline dealing with questions of fact) into epistemology (a discipline dealing with questions of method and theory). Hamlyn argues, following Hintikka, that Gibson's theory of perception is an example of such an inappropriate transfer, especially insofar as Hamlyn feels Gibson does not answer several important questions. However, Gibson's theory does answer the relevant questions, albeit in a new and radical way, (...) which suggests that the alleged distinction between psychology and epistemology is suspect. In fact, contrary to Hintikka and Hamlyn's claims, Gibson's theory of perception appears to be a valuable source of epistemological as well as psychological ideas. (shrink)

How the romantic displaced the rational in French thought.

Einstein insisted that the only acceptable interpretation of the quantum theory was an ensemble interpretation, that this way of understanding the quantum formalism eliminated all the problems associated with interpreting the theory as a complete description of individual systems. But he never developed his ensemble interpretation in any detail or explained how it was supposed to resolve the difficulties with the individual interpretation. We offer a reconstruction of Einstein's position that is consonant with his other beliefs and examine the “prism” (...) reconstruction recently proposed by Arthur Fine. We show the plausibility of our reading, as an interpretation of Einstein, and criticize Fine's proposal, as an alternative interpretation and as an attempt to understand quantum theory. As we reconstruct it, Einstein's position is, nevertheless, problematic. We therefore conclude with a plausible, if unoriginal, suggestion as to the reason he failed to develop his remarks on ensembles more fully. (shrink)

There have been several recent attempts to account for the special authority of self-knowledge by grounding it in a constitutive relation between an agent's intentional states and her judgments about those intentional states. This constitutive relation is said to hold in virtue of the rationality of the subject. I argue, however, that there are two ways in which we have self-knowledge without there being such a constitutive relation between first-order intentional states and the second-order judgments about them. Recognition of this (...) fact thus represents a significant challenge to the rational agency view. (shrink)