Starting with Ackrill's problem of homonymous parts and the responses of Williams, Cohen and Whiting, I examine Aristotle's account of the matter of living bodies, focusing on the homogeneous parts. I conclude that the dual nature of these parts (material and formal) underlies the homonymy principle in its biological application, and contributes to a coherent theory of body and soul as matter and form.

In his contemplative works on nature, Aristotle twice appeals to the general principle that being is better than not being. Taking his cue from this claim, Christopher V. Mirus offers an extended, systematic account of how Aristotle understands being itself to be good. Mirus begins with the human, examining Aristotle's well-known claim that the end of a human life is the good of the human substance as such--which turns out to be the good of the human capacity for (...) thought. Human thought, however, is not concerned with human affairs alone. It is also contemplative, and contemplation is oriented toward the beauty of its objects. In each of the three branches of contemplative thought--mathematics, natural science, and theology--the intelligibility of being renders it beautiful to thought. Both in nature and in human life, moreover, the being that is beautiful through its intelligibility serves also as an end of motion and of action; hence it counts not only as beautiful, but also as good. The persistent concern of thought with the beautiful reveals what is at stake for human beings in Aristotle's larger metaphysics of the good: in the connection between goodness and actuality that structures his natural science and metaphysics, in his explicit claim that being is better than not being, and in his concepts of order and determinacy, which help connect being with goodness. These in turn shed light on his concepts of the complete and the self-sufficient, on his teleological understanding of the four elements, and on the curious role of the honorable in his natural science and metaphysics. (shrink)

THERE ARE ANY NUMBER OF REASONS for wanting to know what Aristotle means by “good”. For students of Aristotle, understanding his conception of goodness would provide an authentic Nicomachean metaethics, so to speak, a clearer view of his natural teleology, and a great deal of help in making sense of his cosmology and his metaphysics, especially the theological bits. For the less historically minded, the rebirth of virtue ethics makes the relation between nature and norm an important problem, with implications (...) not only for ethics proper but also for social philosophy and the foundations of the social sciences. Epistemology and the philosophy of science finally have begun to take questions of value more seriously, and therefore they ought also to be interested in possible connections between knowledge of nature and the apprehension of value. Aristotle’s conception of goodness is relevant to all these questions. (shrink)

Aristotle twice affirms that being is better than nonbeing. Throughout the corpus—in both practical and theoretical works—he explicates this claim in terms of three main concepts, each of which serves to link being with goodness. These include completeness and self-sufficiency, which are well-known from Aristotle’s ethics and politics. Even more fundamental, however, are the closely related concepts of order and determinacy, which the present essay explores. Beginning with the causal role of the good in Aristotle’s accounts of nature and human (...) life, it proceeds to his identification of order as characterizing both the being and the goodness of natural things. After pausing to consider the relation between goodness and beauty, it then moves from order to determinacy as a general characteristic of being by examining his concepts of limit and the unlimited. It concludes by discussing determinacy and the good in Aristotle’s ethics and metaphysics. (shrink)

IN GENERATION AND CORRUPTION 2.9, Aristotle sets out to give an account of “how many and what are the principles of all coming to be are like.” In doing so, he situates the cause “for the sake of which,” τὸ οὗ ἕρεκα, within a causal nexus familiar to readers of Physics 2. It is constituted by the end—that is, the form produced—by the matter in which it is produced, and by the agent that produces it. In Meteorology 4.12, moreover, he (...) explains that form itself must be understood in terms of the species-typical activities that follow upon its presence and for the sake of which the composite substance exists. He thus recognizes two sorts of ends, form and activity, of which the latter seems to be ultimate. Although form is the immediate end of coming to be, a composite substance exists in the last analysis for the sake of its activity. (shrink)

In 'Meteorology' IV.12, Aristotle explains that homogeneous bodies are defined in terms of their functiony "function" he does nos not mean, as Gill has argued, a functional role in some living thing or artifact, but rather a power of acting or being affected that each homogeneous body has in its own right. This points toward a teleology in Aristotle that is less dependent on his biology than has recently been argued.

What picture of reality emerges from the attempt to hold together the following three claims? (1) For temporal beings only the present, not the past or the future, exists. (2) For God, all times are present. (3) For temporal beings, what counts as present varies from individual to individual, as described in the theory of relativity. These claims jointly suggest that reality is always reality for—for God, or for this or that creature. This is neither relativism nor anti-metaphysical phenomenology; instead, (...) it looks more like a modest but insistent development of the Thomistic doctrine of participation in being. Being is not a neutral and amorphous glop spread out before just any observer; rather, it belongs to and is measured by particular beings. Created being as a whole belongs to God (and, eventually, to the saints in God), whereas the share in being assigned to any creature is limited. (shrink)

In this article I provide a philosophical exposition of Aristotle’s claim that natural beings—precisely as beings—are intrinsically good and beautiful. The discussionattends to both living and non-living beings, and also explores the relation between Aristotle’s account of natural beauty, his teleology, and his ethics. I conclude by exploring three objections to Aristotle’s view: that many existing things are clearly bad; that the concepts “good” and “bad” apply only in relation to living things, being relevant to these not as beings but (...) as alive; and finally, that things cannot be called good or bad in themselves, but only good or bad “for” an appropriate sort of agent. The discussion of these objections gives particular attention to the legacy of Hume’s fact-value distinction. (shrink)

Working within the Aristotelian tradition, I argue that relation is not a category but a transcendental property of being. By this I mean that all substances are actualized, and hence defined, relationally: all actuality is interactuality. Interactuality is the locus for the relational categories of substance, action, being-affected, number, and most types of quality. The interactuality of corporeal beings is further conditioned by relations of setting; here we find the relational categories of place (where), quantity in the sense of size, (...) quality in the sense of shape, and time (when). In offering a relational account of substance, I distinguish between external relata (physical environment, objects of sensation and knowledge as external) and internal relata (one’s body, objects of sensation and knowledge as internal. This distinction between external and internal relata is transcended in the case of the Trinity, insofar as the divine persons are both perfectly distinct and perfectly united. (shrink)

This essay explores Aristotle’s description of virtue or excellence as a completion through a contextual reading of two texts: the entry on “the complete” in his philosophical lexicon and the brief discussion of excellence in Physics 7.3. In both Aristotle explores conceptual and ontological issues germane to a general concept of excellence; in both, the key premise is that excellence is best thought of as a completion. His development of this claim draws on two larger themes. In Metaphysics 5, the (...) concept of excellence as a completion belongs to a broad conceptual realm—explored in chapters 16–17 and 25–27—in which intelligible realities are presented metaphorically in terms of shape and size. Within this realm, excellence grows toward a limit set by the powers that make a substance what it is. In the Physics, excellence belongs to a world structured by contraries and therefore also by coming to be and destruction. What it completes is a substance’s power to negotiate such a world while maintaining and developing its own identity. Having grown to full stature through its proper excellence, the substance can keep itself from being affected or altered in ways that would undermine its being; in so doing, it approximates the self-sufficient impassivity that Aristotle attributes to thought. The themes of alteration and identity are also pursued in On the Soul 2.5, which provides an important complement to Physics 7.3. (shrink)

This study is the most comprehensive account to date of modern treatments of the love commandment. Gene Outka examines the literature on agape from Nygren's Agape and Eros in 1930. Both Roman Catholic and Protestant writings are considered, including those of D'Arcy, Niebuhr, Ramsey, Tillich, and above all, Karl Barth. The first seven chapters focus on the principal treatments in the theological literature as they relate to major topics in ethical theory. The last chapter explores further the basic normative (...) content of agape and discusses some of the most characteristic problems. "The book is in my judgment the best recent work in religious ethics. Outka brings together analytic moral philosophy and theological ethics, providing a masterly survey of views and issues arising in the past forty years.... I can think of few books of interest to scholars in both philosophy and theology, but Outka's is one. Unlike some scholars who are at home in continental theology, Outka is also at home in secular analytic philosophy; he brings them together in a mutually illuminating way."--Donald Evans "Outka has mastered this vast literature on love, and has brought a critical and clarifying analysis to bear upon it. This is a most important book on a most important subject, and brings the whole discussion into a new phase."--John Macquarrie "The first thing to be said about Outka's book quite simply is that it is excellent; in fact, it is probably the very best available book about contemporary Christian ethical theory."--The Humanities Association Review. (shrink)

This experimental study evaluated the influence of stated organizational concern for ethical conduct upon managerial behavior. Using an in-basket to house the manipulation, a sample of 113 MBA students with some managerial experience reacted to scenarios suggesting illegal conduct and others suggesting only unethical behavior. Stated organizational concern for ethical conduct was varied from none (control group) to several other situations which included a high treatment consisting of a Code of Ethics, an endorsement letter by the CEO and specific sanctions (...) for managerial misconduct. Only in the case of suggested illegal behavior tempered by high organizational concern were managers influenced by organizational policy to modify the morality of their actions. However, the responses to the illegal scenarios were significantly more ethical than the reactions given to the unethical (but not illegal) situations. The implications of these findings are then discussed. (shrink)

Abstract:This study examined the relationship between the individual difference variables of personal moral philosophy, locus of control, Machiavellianism, and just world beliefs and ethical judgments and behavioral intentions. A sample of 602 marketing practitioners participated in the study. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypothesized relationships. The results either fully or partially supported hypothesized direct effects for idealism, relativism, and Machiavellianism. Findings also suggested that Machiavellianism mediated the relationship between individual difference variables and ethical judgments/behavioral intentions.

This paper begins by examining several potentially unethical recent marketing practices. Since most marketing managers face ethical dilemmas during their careers, it is essential to study the moral consequences of these decisions. A typology of ways that managers might confront ethical issues is proposed. The significant organizational, personal and societal costs emanting from unethical behavior are also discussed. Both relatively simple frameworks and more comprehensive models for evaluating ethical decisions in marketing are summarized. Finally, the fact that organizational commitment to (...) fostering ethical marketing decisions can be accomplished by top management leadership, codes of ethics, ethics seminars/programs and ethical audits is examined. (shrink)

This volume centers on debates about how far moral judgments bind across traditions and epochs. Nowadays such debates appear especially volatile, both in popular culture and intellectual discourse: although there is increasing agreement that the moral and political criteria invoked in human rights documents possess cross-cultural force, many modern and postmodern developments erode confidence in moral appeals that go beyond a local consensus or apply outside a particular community. Often the point of departure for discussion is the Enlightenment paradigm of (...) a common morality, in which it is assumed that certain unchanging beliefs inhere in the structure of human reason. Whereas some thinkers continue to defend this paradigm, others modify it in diverse ways without abandoning entirely the attempt to address a universal audience, and still others jettison virtually all of its distinguishing features. Exhibiting a range of positions Western participants take in these debates, this volume seeks to advance the substance of the debates themselves without prejudging the outcome. Rival assessments of the Enlightenment paradigm are offered from various philosophical and theological points of view. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Robert Merrihew Adams, Annette C. Baier, Alan Donagan, Margaret A. Farley, Alan Gewirth, David Little, Richard Rorty, Jeffrey Stout, and Lee H. Yearley. (shrink)

Research findings on addiction are contradictory. According to biographical records and widely used diagnostic manuals, addicts use drugs compulsively, meaning that drug use is out of control and independent of its aversive consequences. This account is supported by studies that show significant heritabilities for alcoholism and other addictions and by laboratory experiments in which repeated administration of addictive drugs caused changes in neural substrates associated with reward. Epidemiological and experimental data, however, show that the consequences of drug consumption can significantly (...) modify drug intake in addicts. The disease model can account for the compulsive features of addiction, but not occasions in which price and punishment reduced drug consumption in addicts. Conversely, learning models of addiction can account for the influence of price and punishment, but not compulsive drug taking. The occasion for this target article is that recent developments in behavioral choice theory resolve the apparent contradictions in the addiction literature. The basic argument includes the following four statements: First, repeated consumption of an addictive drug decreases its future value and the future value of competing activities. Second, the frequency of an activity is a function of its relative (not absolute) value. This implies that an activity that reduces the values of competing behaviors can increase in frequency even if its own value also declines. Third, a recent experiment (Heyman & Tanz 1995) shows that the effective reinforcement contingencies are relative to a frame of reference, and this frame of reference can change so as to favor optimal or suboptimal choice. Fourth, if the frame of reference is local, reinforcement contingencies will favor excessive drug use, but if the frame of reference is global, the reinforcement contingencies will favor controlled drug use. The transition from a global to a local frame of reference explains relapse and other compulsive features of addiction. (shrink)

The advance of technology has influenced marketing in a number of ways that have ethical implications. Growth in use of the Internetand e-commerce has placed electronic “cookies,” spyware, spam, RFIDs, and data mining at the forefront of the ethical debate. Some marketers have minimized the significance of these trends. This overview paper examines these issues and introduces the two articles that follow. It is hoped that these entries will further the important “marketing and technology” ethical debate.

Recent work by Jaegwon Kim and others suggest that functionalism leaves mental properties causally inefficacious in some sense. I examine three lines of argument for this conclusion. The first appeals to Occam's Razor; the second appeals to a ban on overdetermination; and the third charges that the kind of response I favor to these arguments forces me to give up "the homogeneity of mental and physical causation". I show how each argument fails. While I concede that a positive theory of (...) mental causation is desirable, there is no reason to think that functionalism renders such a theory unattainable. (shrink)

The role of imagery in encoding event-based prospective memories has yet to be fully clarified. Herein, it is argued that imagery augments a cue-to-context association that supports event-based prospective memory performance. By this account, imagery encoding not only improves prospective memory performance but also reduces interference to intention-related information that occurs outside of context. In the current study, when lure words occurred outside of the appropriate responding context, the use of imagery encoding strategies resulted in less interference when compared with (...) a standard event-based intention condition. This difference was eliminated when participants were not given a specific context to associate their intention . These results support a cue-to-context association account of how imagery operates in certain event-based prospective memory tasks. (shrink)

: The medical and clinical promise of stem cell research is widely heralded, but moral judgments about it collide. This article takes general stock of such judgments and offers one specific resolution. It canvasses a spectrum of value judgments on sources, complicity, adult stem cells, and public and private contexts. It then examines how debates about abortion and stem cell research converge and diverge. Finally, it proposes to extend the principle of "nothing is lost" to current debates. This extension links (...) historic discussions of the ethics of direct killing with unprecedented possibilities that in vitro fertilization procedures yield. A definite normative region to inhabit is located, within a larger range of rival value judgments. The creation of embryos for research purposes only should be resisted, yet research on "excess" embryos is permissible by virtue of an appeal to the "nothing is lost" principle. (shrink)

In this book, author Gene Fendt shows how Plato's Republic provides a liturgical purification for the political and psychic delusions of democratic readers, even as Socrates provides the same for his interlocutors at the festival of Bendis. Each of the several characters is analyzed in accord with Book Eight's 6 geometrically possible kinds of character showing how their answers and failures in the dialogue exhibit the particular kind of movement and blindness predictable for the type.

Tyler Cowen's ?Why Keynesianism Triumphed? proposed that only Keynesian economists have presented a successful explanation for the Great Depression of 1929?1933 and the continuing slow and intermittent recovery of the rest of the 1930s. This paper examines recent scholarship on the 1930s and finds that there is increasing doubt about the validity of Keynesian explanations, lending credence to both older and recent scholarship that vindicates free?market views of why the Depression happened and why the recovery was so slow and uneven.

ONE OF THE MOST prominent theorists of anarcho-capitalism is Hans- Hermann Hoppe. In what is perhaps his most famous result, the argumentation ethic for libertarianism, he purports to establish an a priori defense of the justice of a social order based exclusively on pri- vate property. Hoppe claims that all participants in a debate must presuppose the libertarian principle that every person owns himself, since the principle underlies the very concept of argumentation. Some libertarians (e.g., Rothbard 1988) have celebrated Hoppe’s (...) argument as the final nail in the coffin for collectivism of any type; following Hoppe, they believe that to deny the libertarian ethic is not only wrong, but also internally contradictory. On the other hand, a number of other prominent libertarians characterized Hoppe’s initial statement of his case as “one muddle after another” (Steele 1988, p. 47) or “a tissue of bald assertions” (Yeager 1988, p. 45). (shrink)

Poetic and dramatic readings of selected Platonic dialogues show the fallacy of the philosophical and political positions usually attributed to Plato. Dialogues dealt with include Apology, Meno, Ion, Republic, Theaetetus, Euthyphro, Laws.

Presented in six principal analytic chapters with supporting appendices, this book explores the role of Islam in precipitating Europe's twelfth century commercial renaissance. Employing the classic analytic techniques of economics, Gene Heck determines that medieval Europe's feudal interregnum was largely caused by indigenous governmental business regulation and not by shifts in international trade patterns. He then proceeds by demonstrating how Islamic economic precepts provided the ideological rationales that empowered medieval Europe to escape its three-centuries-long experiment in "Dark Age economics" (...) ― in the process, providing the West with its archetypic tools of capitalism. While treatises such as Maxime Rodinson's excellent book, Islam and Capitalism, document the capitalistic nature of the Islamic economic system, in applying modern economic method to medieval orientalist historiography, this work is unique in capturing both the evolution and the impact of the system's role in forging medieval history. (shrink)

We all live our daily lives surrounded by the products of technology that make what we do simpler, faster, and more efficient. These are benefits we often just take for granted. But at the same time, as these products disburden us of unwanted tasks that consumed much time and effort in earlier eras, many of them also leave us more disengaged from our natural and even human surroundings. It is the task of what Gene Moriarty calls focal engineering to (...) create products that will achieve a balance between disburdenment and engagement: “How much disburdenment will be appropriate while still permitting an engagement that enriches one’s life, elevates the spirit, and calls forth a good life in a convivial society?” One of his examples of a focally engineered structure is the Golden Gate Bridge, which “draws people to it, enlivens and elevates the human spirit, and resonates with the world of its congenial setting. Humans, bridge, and world are in tune.” These values of engagement, enlivenment, and resonance are key to the normative approach Moriarty brings to the profession of engineering, which traditionally has focused mainly on technical measures of evaluation such as efficiency, productivity, objectivity, and precision. These measures, while important, look at the engineered product in a local and limited sense. But “from a broader perspective, what is locally benign may present serious moral problems,” undermining “social justice, environmental sustainability, and health and safety of affected parties.” It is this broader perspective that is championed by focal engineering, the subject of Part III of the book, which Moriarty contrasts with “modern” engineering in Part I and “pre-modern” engineering in Part II. (shrink)

This article outlines the rationale for a molecular genetic study of social behavior, and explains why social insects are good models. Summaries of research on brain and behavior in two species, honey bees and fire ants, are presented to illustrate the richness of the behavioral phenomena that can be addressed with social insects and to show how they are beginning to be used to study genes that influence social behavior. We conclude by considering the problems and potential of this emerging (...) field. (shrink)

In the early 1970s, the major industrial states were preparing to shift to nuclear fission as their principal source of electrical power. But that change has not occurred. In part, this is due to a growing public recognition that techniques and institutions for management of spent nuclear fuel, separated plutonium, and long-lived radioactive wastes are not yet fully developed. The consequent pressures for resolution have spurred a series of often ill-defined and sometimes contradictory attempts to promote international cooperation and control (...) of hazardous activities. How are these varied suggestions to be compared and evaluated? By what criteria can plans be selected that are likely to be both effective and negotiable? In this study, Gene I. Rochlin, physicist and social scientist, explores the technical, political, and institutional aspects of international nuclear export and fuel cycle policies. He categorizes existing proposals and suggests way to develop new ones that better promote both national and international goals. Dr. Rochlin argues neither for nor against the use of nuclear power or plutonium fuels. Instead, he addresses the question of how international arrangements could be reached that might jointly satisfy the objective of the several key nations, yet not be too difficult to negotiate. He concludes that a major fault has been the tendency to improvise arrangements for specific technical or industrial operations. As a result, overall social and political goals have become the bargaining points for compromise. Yet attempts to simultaneously resolve all problems are unlikely to prove fruitful. Dr. Rochlin suggests instead the formation of institutions organized around more limited social, political, and technical objectives, even at the expense of excluding some nations or omitting some aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. Only by so doing, he argues, can immediate agreements be reached that preserve the potential for more comprehensive future arrangements without sacrificing industrial, environmental, or nonproliferation goals. This important book will be of interest to scientists, social scientists, government officials, and others concerned with the problems of plutonium management and nuclear wastes. (shrink)

Time was when you could bite a tomato and not ingest fish genes. Time was when you could eat french fries and just worry about the fat and salt, not the bacterial genes that produce insecticides in the potato. Those times are over, thanks to corporate control over both genetic engineering and the lack of food-labeling. Unless you are a “hard core” consumer of organic foods, you eat genetically engineered foods everyday. While 80-90% of US consumers believe genetically engineered foods (...) should be labeled, only 3% know they already on the market.[1] Today 60-70% of the food in a grocery store contains components from genetically modified crops. Moreover, this technology was unleashed on over 45 million acres of US farmland last year alone, after having been commercially introduced only four years ago.[2] Here we will provide a brief background on the types of genetically engineered crops that are being surreptitiously forced upon consumers, then argue against their current widespread use. (shrink)

The Ethical Journalist gives aspiring journalists the tools they need to make responsible professional decisions. Provides a foundation in applied ethics in journalism Examines the subject areas where ethical questions most frequently arise in modern practice Incorporates the views of distinguished print, broadcast and online journalists, exploring such critical issues as race, sex, and the digitalization of news sources Illustrated with 24 real-life case studies that demonstrate how to think in 'shades of gray' rather than 'black and white' Includes questions (...) for class discussion and guides for putting important ethical concepts to use in the real world Accompanying website includes model course schedules, discussion guides, PowerPoint slides, sample quiz and exam questions and links to additional readings online: www.wiley.com/go/foreman. (shrink)

Peter Winch famously critiqued Michael Oakeshott's view of human conduct. He argued that Oakeshott had missed the fact that truly human conduct is conduct that 'follows a rule.' This paper argues that, as is sometimes the case with Oakeshott, what seems, on the surface, to be a disagreement with another, somewhat compatible thinker about a matter of detail in some social theory in fact turns out to point to a deeper philosophical divide. In particular, I contend, Winch, as typical of (...) those who only picked up on Oakeshott's work in the 1940s and 1950s, when Oakeshott became known for his critique of rationalism, failed to understand the idealist metaphysics underlying that critique. (shrink)

Theological and secular concepts ofstewardship evolved markedly in the 20thcentury. During this period of evolution, theAmerican Country Life Association through itschurch, academic, farm organization, andgovernmental affiliations, served as a bridgingand bonding agent in developing the stewardshipidea. As in any evolutionary process, thestewardship concept was subjected to a broadarray of influences and characterized bynotable highlights such as the Lynn Smithcritique of the Judaeo-Christian ethic, theman-in-nature statement of Douglas John Hall,and the environmental concerns of ecologistsand philosophers of the post-Rachel Carson era.Some gains (...) have been made in understanding theplace of humans in nature, but the stewardshipidea continues as work in process. (shrink)