In this engaging book, Douglas Anderson begins with the assumption that philosophy—the Greek love of wisdom—is alive and well in American culture. At the same time, professional philosophy remains relatively invisible. Anderson traverses American life to find places in the wider culture where professional philosophy in the distinctively American tradition can strike up a conversation. How might American philosophers talk to us about our religious experience, or political engagement, or literature—or even, popular music? Anderson’s second aim is to find (...) places where philosophy happens in nonprofessional guises—cultural places such as country music, rock’n roll, and Beat literature. He not only enlarges the tradition of American philosophers such as John Dewey and William James by examining lesser-known figures such as Henry Bugbee and Thomas Davidson, but finds the theme and ideas of American philosophy in some unexpected places, such as the music of Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, and Bruce Springsteen, and the writingsof Jack Kerouac.The idea of “philosophy Americana” trades on the emergent genre of “music Americana,” rooted in traditional themes and styles yet engaging our present experiences. The music is “popular” but not thoroughly driven by economic considerations, and Anderson seeks out an analogous role for philosophical practice, where philosophy and popular culture are co-adventurers in the life of ideas. Philosophy Americana takes seriously Emerson’s quest for the extraordinary in the ordinary and James’s belief that popular philosophy can still be philosophy. (shrink)

The research described here contributes to the extant empirical research on business ethics education by examining outcomes drawn from the literature on positive organizational scholarship (POS). The general research question explored is whether a course on ethical decision-making in business could positively influence students’ confidence in their abilities to handle ethical problems at work (i.e., moral efficacy), boost the relative importance of ethics in their work lives (i.e., moral meaningfulness), and encourage them to be more courageous in raising ethical problems (...) at work even if it is unpopular (i.e., moral courage). Specifically, the study used a rigorous quasi-experimental pretest–posttest research design with a treatment (N = 30) and control group (N = 30) to investigate whether a graduate-level course in business ethics could influence students’ levels of moral efficacy, meaningfulness, and courage. Findings revealed that participants in the business ethics treatment course experienced significant positive increases in each of the three outcome variables as compared to the control group. The largest increase was in moral efficacy, followed by moral courage, and finally, moral meaningfulness. These findings are discussed in the context of the current research on business ethics education and POS. Implications for future research are discussed. (shrink)

Off-shoring is a business decision increasingly being considered as a strategic option to effect expected cost savings. This exploratory study focuses on the moral recognition of off-shoring using ethical decision making embedded within affective events theory. Perceived magnitude of consequences and time pressure are hypothesized as affective event characteristics that lead to decision makers’ empathy responses. Subsequently, cognitive and affective empathy influence the decision makers’ moral recognition. Decision makers’ prior knowledge of off-shoring was also predicted to interact with perceptions of (...) the affective event characteristics to influence cognitive and affective empathy. Findings from a limited sample of human resource management professionals suggest that perceptions of magnitude of consequences and cognitive empathy directly relate to moral recognition and that affective empathy partially mediates the relationship between perceptions of the magnitude of consequences and moral recognition. The three-way interaction of the perceptions of magnitude of consequences, time pressure, and prior knowledge of off-shoring was marginally related to cognitive empathy. Interpretations of the findings, validity issues, limitations, future research directions, and management implications are provided. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Method of Inquiry Doubt, Intuition, and Certainty Peirce's Reconstruction of the “method for guiding one's reason” A Transformed Ontology.

The Issues at Issue: Heidegger declares metaphor to be a function of metaphysics. Ricoeur's tension theory of metaphor takes the understanding of metaphor beyond metaphysics. Ricoeur's theory of metaphor is a theory of metaphorical statement not of naming. The classical, lexical theory of metaphor focuses on a primary meaning of each metaphor. As such metaphor is merely ornamentation in language. What it names could more appropriately be accomplished in literal language. In contrast, metaphor is understood by Ricoeur to be a (...) semantic event made possible by three kinds of tensions. One may understand symbols to function with the same metaphorical tensions. In the case of symbols, however, these tensions function not at the level of the sentence but rather of the narrative. Metaphor and symbol both have an ‘ontological priority’ over other elements of discourse and experience. They ‘work’ because of the event character of both understanding and experience. Understanding and experience have event as their condition of possibility. Metaphor and symbol both have a ‘temporal priority’, as well, for they serve as the shock to think ‘more’. This can occur, however, because they are part of a circularity that is non-metaphysical, that is, the circularity of the event character of the Being-of beings. Hence, just as metaphors are always ‘larger’ than the sentence, so are symbols always ‘larger’ than the narrative. (shrink)

Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, “I” arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the “strange loop”—a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain is the one called “I.” The “I” is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming (...) to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse. How can a mysterious abstraction be real—or is our “I” merely a convenient fiction? Does an “I” exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the laws of physics? These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Gödel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is a moving and profound inquiry into the nature of mind. (shrink)

SummaryBy now, the story of T. D. Lysenko's phantasmagoric career in the Soviet life sciences is widely familiar. While Lysenko's attempts to identify I. V. Michurin, the horticulturist, as the source of his own inductionist ideas about heredity are recognized as a gambit calculated to enhance his legitimacy, the real roots of those ideas are still shrouded in mystery. This paper suggests those roots may be found in a tradition in Russian biology that stretches back to the 1840s—a tradition inspired (...) by the doctrines of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Etienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. The enthusiastic reception of those doctrines in Russia and of their practical application—acclimatization of exotic life forms—gave rise to the durable scientific preoccupation with transforming nature which now seems implicated in creating the context for Lysenko's successful bid to become an arbiter of the biological sciences. (shrink)

I argue that Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts. I begin by arguing that the soul moves things by means of such acts as examination and deliberation, and that this view is developed in response to Anaxagoras. I then argue that every kind of soul enjoys a kind of cognition, with even plant souls having a form of Aristotelian discrimination (...) (krisis), and that there is therefore no completely unintelligent, evil soul in the cosmos that can explain disorderly motions; as a result, the soul is not the principle of all motion but only motion in the cosmos after it has been ordered by the Demiurge. (shrink)

Peirce's cosmogony involves an apparent tension concerning the statusof initial ideas. They appear both dependent and independent. Peirce appears to resolve this tension, maintaining elements of both his realism and his idealism in his cosmogony, by asserting that God serves as a necessary condition for the reality of the initial ideas and by holding, through his agapasticism, that the ideas, as firsts, retain an element of spontaneity or freedom. From another angle, it is plausible to suggest that for Peirce God (...) functions as a continuum of other continua. Such a view allows Peirce to understand evolutionas a developmental teleology in which both order and spontaneity playsignificant roles. (shrink)

Not long before he died, Henry David Thoreau was asked by a friend where religion was to be found in his writings. Thoreau responded by saying that his religiosity pervaded his works but that no one noticed it. This result was enabled by the cultural belief that religiosity entailed formal religion, creeds, fixed rituals, and overt discussions of God or gods. Thoreau’s point—a development of Emerson’s “Divinity School Address”—was to show the mistakenness of this compartmentalization of one’s religious life. For (...) Thoreau, genuine religiosity pervades and marks every aspect of one’s being—body and soul. “Our life,” Thoreau wrote in his journal in 1840, “is but the Soul made known by its fruits, the .. (shrink)

In the early 1950s Grant McConnell, Jr., called for a political adjudication of our environmental and political visions. He pointed out the arbitrary nature of Gifford Pinchot's noble-sounding formula (“The greatest good for the greatest number over the longest time”), noting that such a determination depended on whom you asked. No technocrat can determine the greatest good on the basis of some secret expertise or privileged knowledge. We need to resolve our disparate visions of the uses of nature and human (...) beings politically, without recourse to privileged knowledge.But does such a political adjudication imply the unimpeded domination of the will of the majority? Not necessarily, because there is no overall majority for a total “bundle” of policies and programs — these must be horse-traded and haggled over on the basis of shifting coalitions. Yet, can it not be argued that even so, some very deeply held values of minorities will be trounced and trampled? It would be dishonest not to admit to such a danger. What we must do is try to define and develop a workable conception of baseline human rights that will be inviolable by the will of temporary majorities, and this itself is a tenuous political process which we have only just embarked on in recent times.The danger of Valentin Rasputins, Vernadskii cultists, and Deep Ecologists everywhere is that they are arguing from privileged knowledge. “We know what is really best for you, what will cure you,” they assert. They alone know the distinction between natural harmony and disorder, social health and corruption, pollution and purity, alienation and unity. They do not recognize the social construction of their ethical beliefs and political visions; they absolutize their individual truths. They may be right, but what if they are not...?It is therefore all the more important for those of us who wish to preserve a maximum of biotic and human diversity for our-selves and for future humans (and nonhumans) to be explicit about the moral and political agendas we embrace. The soundest way for us to prevail is to persuade our neighbors on this planet that our visions have something of value for them, too. We must keep in mind the fact that in a world where there exists more than one fanaticism, peaceful coexistence is in principle impossible.And if fanaticisms, including ecological ones, are the products of the fear or the fact of material, cultural, or spiritual dispossession, then we must work harder to make a world in which each of us and our interests are treated with equal respect. We cannot get there through the tainted means of absolutizing individual truths.Aldo Leopold, in his testament Sand County Almanac, as much as called for a new myth, for us to “think like a mountain.”57 He called for a new myth because he believed that humans were dangerous (to ourselves, first of all, and to the planet), and that inculcating a myth was the only way to effect a deep behavioral change on a massive enough scale to save the situation.58 It is my belief that myths are often more dangerous than the situations they seek to remedy. We need to cultivate a taste of de-mythologizing, of making our lives more self-aware. We need to become aware of our needs and our value preferences and to take responsibility for them as individual preferences. Then we will be in a good position indeed to respect and compromise with the preferences of our neighbors all around this planet, just as we would have them respect and compromise with ours. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00005 *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00006 *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A8402064 00007. (shrink)

This research on the ethics of meaningful work examined how types of job-related harm and their magnitude of consequences influenced components of ethical decision-making. The research also investigated the moderating effects of individual differences on the relation between the MOC and the ethical decision-making elements for each type of harm. Using a sample of 185 Chinese professionals, a between-subjects, fully crossed experimental scenario design revealed that physical and economic job-related harm were recognized as moral issues to a greater extent than (...) cognitive or emotional harm. Second, physical job-related harm stimulated a higher level of moral evaluations than economic and cognitive harm. Third, individuals intended to act ethically when MOC was high versus low. Finally, experience with layoffs and IMO helped explain the relations between MOC and moral evaluations for economic and cognitive job-related harm, respectively. Implications for research and management are discussed. (shrink)

Under the influence of rationalism and various forms of absolute idealism in the nineteenth century, teleology took on the nature of fixity; the universe was held to be fulfilling a definite telos. Such teleology defined a closed universe. In the latter half of the same century the American pragmatists, under the influence of Bergson and Renouvier, began to develop their notion of an open universe: one whose possibilities were not predetermined but were evolving creatively. This necessarily involved a change in (...) the understanding of teleology as reflected, for example, in C. S. Peirce’s 1892 account of “developmental teleology.” These changes in turn led to the “open universe” views of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and process theology in general. Within this historical framework one view which deserves some recognition for its role in this transition is often overlooked, that is, the personalism of Borden Parker Bowne. Bowne’s personalism suggests both the need for redefining teleology and two possible avenues for accomplishing such redefinition. (shrink)

Contractualists characterize morality as fundamentally concerning how people relate to one another. Insofar as someone treats others in a way that they can accept, her actions are permissible. If someone’s actions cannot be justified to others, she acts wrongly. By relying on this idea of justifiability to others, contractualists can account for the wrongness of acts by appealing to a wide variety of reasons. For instance, contractualists can explain why murder is wrong by appealing to the death of innocents and (...) explain the wrongness of plagiarism in terms of the importance of authenticity and originality. Someone can reasonably reject letting people act on principles that allow murder or plagiarism, at least in part, for those reasons. While this flexibility is a strength of contractualism, it also complicates explaining how the fact that an act is wrong itself provides a reason against doing it. Put differently, if the death of innocents explains the wrongness of murder, why take the .. (shrink)

To read any book by Paul Weiss is to enter into an ongoing philosophical discussion. Emphatics is no exception. Here Weiss takes up some issues from previous work but from a new angle of vision. Much of what he says also moves beyond the content of earlier writings, which is as it should be. "A creative, systematic philosopher," Weiss says, "is somewhat like a poet rewriting a long poem, preserving some parts of earlier versions in later ones. What has been (...) done is not invalidated, but moved beyond" (37). Another characteristic Weissian feature marks Emphatics: it is difficult to read. The ideas themselves are difficult, and Weiss doesn't go out of his way to coddle his reader. Serving as... (shrink)

In 1856, the English photographer Francis Frith set out on the first of three tours of Egypt and the Holy Lands. Traveling up the Nile and then on to the Sinai, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, Frith systematically crafted exquisite pictures of ruins, landscapes, and legendary sites. He then published his views in England and America in a variety of formats, becoming something of a celebrity in photographic circles. This book, the first to place Frith's Egyptian and Levantine images in cultural (...) context, reveals the distinct meanings these ostensibly "topographic" pictures held for the photographer and his Victorian audience. A Quaker by birth and an entrepreneur by nature, Frith brought to his photographic projects a sense of mission: to revive and confirm the stories of the Bible, while offering the region to armchair travelers as a seamless Oriental milieu of Romantic reverie. Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine narrates the political, intellectual, and social concerns that make Frith representative of England's encounter with the East in the nineteenth century. Historian of photography Douglas R. Nickel brings a sophisticated interdisciplinary approach to bear on the subject in order to expose the complexity of Frith's image-making, setting the photographs against a Victorian backdrop of religious debate, imperialist thought, Romantic philosophy, and Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics. (shrink)

Design and analysis of algorithms can be a difficult subject for students due to its sometimes-abstract nature and its use of a wide variety of mathematical tools. Here the author, an experienced and successful textbook writer, makes the subject as straightforward as possible in an up-to-date textbook incorporating various new developments appropriate for an introductory course. This text presents the main techniques of algorithm design, namely, divide-and-conquer algorithms, greedy algorithms, dynamic programming algorithms, and backtracking. Graph algorithms are studied in detail, (...) and a careful treatment of the theory of NP-completeness is presented. In addition, the text includes useful introductory material on mathematical background including order notation, algorithm analysis and reductions, and basic data structures. This will serve as a useful review and reference for students who have covered this material in a previous course. Features The first three chapters provide a mathematical review, basic algorithm analysis, and data structures. Detailed pseudocode descriptions of the algorithms along with illustrative algorithms are included. Proofs of correctness of algorithms are included when appropriate. The book presents a suitable amount of mathematical rigor. After reading and understanding the material in this book, students will be able to apply the basic design principles to various real-world problems that they may encounter in their future professional careers. (shrink)

In his "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of Goc" (1908), Charles Peirce argued for two dimensions of belief in God's reality. On the one side, he maintained that this belief would be useful for guiding the conduct of life; on the other side, he maintained that the belief could function as the first stage in a scientific inquiry. My suggestion in this paper is that we examine the last of Peirce's 1903 lectures on pragmatism at Harvard to see how (...) the possibility of this dual function arises out of his late theory of cognition in which the functional certainty of perception is brought to close quarters with the provisionality of hypotheses. The upshot is that for Peirce a healthful religious belief should internally "marry" science and religion —theory and practice — by allowing provisional and vague conceptions of God to carry on the work of guiding conduct. /// No texto "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" (1908), Charles Peirce defende que há duas dimensões de crença na realidade de Deus. Afirma, por um lado, que esta crença poderia ser útil para orientar o comportamento (conduct of life); por outro, que ela poderia ser como que o primeiro escalão numa investigação científica. A minha sugestão neste artigo é que, examinámos as últimas conferências de Peirce de 1903 sobre o pragmatismo em Harvard para ver como a possibilidade desta dupla função surge da sua última teoria de conhecimento (cognition) em que a certeza funcional de percepção é usada para aproximar o aspecto provisório das hipóteses. A consequência disso é que para Peirce uma saudável crença religiosa deve "juntar" internamente ciência e religião - teoria e prática - permitindo as concepções provisórias e vagas de Deus para continuar a tarefa de orientar o comportamento. /// Dans ce texte "Un argument négligé pour la réalité de Dieu" (1908), Charles Peirce soutient qu'il y a deux dimensions de croyance en la réalité de Dieu. Il afflrme, d'un côté, que cette croyance pourrait être utile pour orienter le comportement (conduct of life) et, par ailleurs, qu'elle pourrait être pour ainsi dire le premier niveau dans une recherche scientifique. Ma suggestion dans le présent article est que nous examinions les dernières conférences de Peirce en 1903 sur le pragmatisme à Harvard pour voir comment Ia possibilite de cette double fonction surgit de sa dernière théorie de la connaissance dans laquelle la certitude fonctionnelle de perception est utilisée pour aborder l'aspect provisoire des hypothèses. La conséquence en est que pour Peirce une saine croyance religieuse doit "unir" intrinsèquement science et religion - théorie et pratique - en permettant les conceptions provisoires et vagues de Dieu. (shrink)

Chapter INTRODUCTION Charles Sanders Peirce is quickly becoming the dominant figure in the history of American philosophy. The breadth and depth of his work ...

The regulation of glucose dehydrogenase (GLD) in Drosophila illustrates the combinatorial aspects of gene regulation in development. Furthermore, the findings serve to point up a general question about cukaryotic structural gene control: is regulation of expression always optimal?

The ability to transfer genes from one species to another provides a powerful method to study genetic regulatory differences between species in a homogeneous genetic background. A survey of several transgenic animal experiments indicates that the vast majority of regulatory differences observed between species are due to differences in the cis‐acting elements associated with the genes under study. A corollary is that in almost all cases the host species provides the necessary regulatory proteins for expression of the transgenes in specific (...) tissues in which the endogenous homolog is not expressed. Although the details of the cis‐acting differences are unknown for most cases, it appears that these differences may consist of the acquisition or loss of unique elements or subtle variation of conserved elements. It is unknown whether much of this variation is directly related to adaptive evolution. The identification of the promoter enhancer elements responsible for these differences is an important first step in examining the functional significance of this variation. (shrink)

This work seeks to address the absence of serious theological discussion in our culture and in our material society. McGaughey creates two new paradigms for the validity of faith and experience and discusses Christianity in the new century as a 'Faith Seeking Understanding.'.

I argue that, according to Plato, the body is the sole cause of psychic disorders. This view is expressed at Timaeus 86b in an ambiguous sentence that has been widely misunderstood by translators and commentators. The goal of this article is to offer a new understanding of Plato’s text and view. In the first section, I argue that although the body is the result of the gods’ best efforts, their sub-optimal materials meant that the soul is constantly vulnerable to the (...) body’s influences. In the second section, I argue that every psychic disorder is a disruption of the motions of the inner psychic circles by the body; moreover, I defend my translation of 86b. In the final section, I argue that the goal of education is to restore the circles to their original orbits, and I disarm a possible objection that bad education is also a cause of psychic disorder. (shrink)