International Rules brings together exemplary works from the most prominent approaches to international rules of International Law and International Relations disciplines. Included are chapters on Natural Law, Legal Positivism, Classical Realism, the New Haven School, Institutionalism, Structural Realism, the New Stream, and Feminist Voices. Each of the eight chapters begins with a brief overview, offers a representative work or works, and concludes with a selected bibliography. From Hugo Grotius to David Kennedy, from George Kennan to Robert Keohane, the featured (...) authors provide valuable insights into their common subject: international rules. Despite divergent methods and objectives, they address fundamentally the same questions: What is the nature of such rules? What is their purpose? How do they originate? What role, if any, do they play in politics? Framing the selections assembled are two original chapter-length essays. The first chapter of this volume assesses the prospects for interdisciplinary collaboration; the final one suggests a direction for future research. (shrink)

This comprehensive history of German philosophy from its medieval beginnings to near the end of the eighteenth century explores the spirit of German intellectual life and its distinctiveness from that of other countries. Beck devotes whole chapters to four great philosophers -- Nicholas of Cusa, Leibniz, Lessing, and Kant -- and extensively examines many others, including Albertus Magnus, Meister Eckhart, Paracelsus, Kepler, Mendelssohn, Wolff, and Herder. Questioning explanations of philosophy by the racial or ethnic character of its exponents, (...) class='Hi'>Beck's conclusion is that German philosophy developed as a series of diverse responses to the historical experiences of the German people. The peculiarities of German philosophy must be viewed in the light of German political problems and educational structures. In particular he stresses the importance of the connections between philosophy and Germany's intellectual, literary, religious, and political history. (shrink)

This paper surveys and evaluates the answers that philosophers and animal researchers have given to two questions. Do animals have thoughts? If so, are their thoughts conceptual? Along the way, special attention is paid to distinguish debates of substance from mere battles over terminology, and to isolate fruitful areas for future research.

Are we gullible? Can we be easily influenced by what others tell us, even if they do not deserve our trust? Many strands of research, from social psychology to cultural evolution suggest that humans are by nature conformist and eager to follow prestigious leaders. By contrast, an evolutionary perspective suggests that humans should be vigilant towards communicated information, so as not to be misled too often. Work in experimental psychology shows that humans are equipped with sophisticated mechanisms that allow them (...) to carefully evaluate communicated information. These open vigilance mechanisms lead us to reject messages that clash with our prior beliefs, unless the source of the message has earned our trust, or provides good arguments, in which case we can adaptively change our minds. These mechanisms make us largely immune to mass persuasion, explaining why propaganda, political campaigns, advertising, and other attempts at persuading large groups nearly always fall in deaf ears. However, some false beliefs manage to spread through communication. I argue that most popular false beliefs are held reflectively, which means that they have little effect on our thoughts and behaviors, and that many false beliefs can be socially beneficial. Accepting such beliefs thus reflects a much weaker failure in our evaluation of communicated information than might at first appear. (shrink)

By systematically biasing our beliefs, self-deception can endanger our ability to successfully convey our messages. It can also lead lies to degenerate into more severe damages in relationships. Accordingly, I suggest that the biases reviewed in the target article do not aim at self-deception but instead are the by-products of several other mechanisms: our natural tendency to self-enhance, the confirmation bias inherent in reasoning, and the lack of access to our unconscious minds.

Complexity and emergence (the appearance and impact of the new) can be the bane of managers and their organizations. Both complexity and emergence threaten to upset adherence to predefined categories, which supposedly allows for efficiency. Indeed, traditional management thinking focuses on a retrospective coherence where ideas and events are assigned to categories, the categories are labeled, and outliers are treated as statistical deviants. The study of how such attributed (retrospective) sense-making breaks down in and around organizations is the focus of (...) social complexity theory. Coherence in the Midst of Complexity discusses the social complexity approach, where dialogue and stories allow for the degrees of freedom needed for the opportunities of emergence to take root. The book focuses on the experience of coherence and how such experiential lessons differ from the establishment and maintenance of categories and labels. The authors offer a four-fold logic for discussing experiential coherence and the embrace of emergence in organizations of all sizes. (shrink)

: Its promises to the contrary notwithstanding, bioethics is plural. There is a diversity of content-full moral understandings of the good and the right. Moreover, there is no secular means in principle to set this diversity aside without begging the question. This moral diversity exists both as a sociological condition and as a moral epistemological constraint. Without succumbing to a metaphysical scepticism or moral relativism, the bioethics of the future, if it is to be honest, should learn how to live (...) with robust moral diversity. (shrink)

Research questions and backgroundThis study explores a highly controversial issue of medical care in Germany: the decision to withhold or withdraw mechanical ventilation in critically ill patients. It analyzes difficulties in making these decisions and the physicians’ uncertainty in understanding the German terminology of Sterbehilfe, which is used in the context of treatment limitation. Used in everyday language, the word Sterbehilfe carries connotations such as helping the patient in the dying process or helping the patient to enter the dying process. (...) Yet, in the legal and ethical discourse Sterbehilfe indicates several concepts: (1) treatment limitation, i.e., withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment (passive Sterbehilfe), (2) the use of medication for symptom control while taking into account the risk of hastening the patient’s death (indirekte Sterbehilfe), and (3) measures to deliberately terminate the patient’s life (aktive Sterbehilfe). The terminology of Sterbehilfe has been criticized for being too complex and misleading, particularly for practical purposes. Materials and methods An exploratory study based on qualitative interviews was conducted with 28 physicians from nine medical intensive care units in tertiary care hospitals in the German federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. The method of data collection was a problem-centered, semi-structured interview using two authentic clinical case examples. In order to shed light on the relation between the physicians’ concepts and the ethical and legal frames of reference, we analyzed their way of using the terms passive and aktive Sterbehilfe. Results Generally, the physicians were more hesitant in making decisions to withdraw rather than withhold mechanical ventilation. Almost half of them assumed a categorical prohibition to withdraw any mechanical ventilation and more than one third felt that treatment ought not to be withdrawn at all. Physicians showed specific uncertainty about classifying the withdrawal of mechanical ventilation as passive Sterbehilfe, and had difficulties understanding that terminating ventilation is not basically illegal, but the permissibility of withdrawal depends on the situation. Conclusions The physicians’ knowledge and skills in interpreting clinical ethical dilemmas require specific improvement on the one hand; on the other hand, the terms passive and aktive Sterbehilfe are less clear than desirable and not as easy to use in clinical practice. Fear of making unjustified or illegal decisions may motivate physicians to continue (even futile) treatment. Physicians strongly opt for more open discussion about end-of-life care to allow for discontinuation of futile treatment and to reduce conflict. (shrink)

Because reasoning allows us to justify our beliefs and evaluate these justifications it is central to folk epistemology. Following Sperber, and contrary to classical views, it will be argued that reasoning evolved not to complement individual cognition but as an argumentative device. This hypothesis is more consistent with the prevalence of the confirmation and disconfirmation biases. It will be suggested that these biases render the individual use of reasoning hazardous, but that when reasoning is used in its natural, argumentative, context (...) they can represent a smart way to divide labor without loosing epistemic value. (shrink)

O presente trabalho defende, na filosofia platônica, a hipótese das Formas tem como escopo explicar os sensíveis e a sensibilidade, e não rechaçá-los, como fora pregado pela tradição. No Teeteto , Sócrates chega a analisar exaustivamente a possibilidade de a sensação ser encarada como conhecimento; no Fédon , no argumento da reminiscência, o mestre admite que para haver aprendizado/recordação é necessário que haja duas experiências cognitivas correlatas e mutuamente necessárias: a percepção sensível ( aísthesis ) que suscita a anamnese e (...) o contato, anterior ao nascimento, da alma com as Formas, pois só há recordação do que o indivíduo antes soubera. O estudo implica que haja uma filosofia da percepção em Platão. (shrink)

El texto muestra la complejidad de la discusión en torno al sentido y la dirección de la historia, y sobre todo la dificultad mayor de una dotación de sentido a favor del desarrollo histórico en el mundo actual. El artículo reconstruye brevemente la posición pesimista de la Escuela de Frankfurt sobre este tema, posición que representa una respuesta al optimismo convencional del liberalismo y del marxismo, desde una crítica de los resultados debidos a la tecnología y a la vista de (...) los problemas ecológicos. Finalmente se esboza el escepticismo moderado de Karl Löwith como un compromiso aceptable. (shrink)

Some years ago, it was fashionable for philosophers not to take sceptica arguments seriously. Now, it seems no longer so.

Can a machine think? More pointedly, if I am a machine, can I think? Beck answers these questions by analyzing two clusters of metaphors -- one of which dramatizes human beings as spontaneous agents (actors), and the other sees them as observers attempting to explain causally their own behavior and that of the actor (spectators). Using a hypothetical scene with two spectators, each explaining an action, and each representing a different way of viewing the world, Beck points up (...) the central philosophical problems raised by the varieties of ways in which we explain our own actions and those of others. (shrink)

This article questions the place of the child in the metaphysics and imaginary of Western colonization, racialization, and decolonization. In the last chapter of The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, children appear not only as victims but also as a problem for which Fanon struggles to account as a theorist of decolonization as much as a psychiatric practitioner. Through a reading of one of the cases, this article interrogates the ways in which colonization attempts to infantilize colonized populations (...) while erasing childhood, and the ways in which decolonization meets colonization by regarding childhood in the end as a misfortune. The work of decolonization, to proceed, thus would demand us to rethink childhood, and in doing so break free of Western metaphysics. (shrink)

The Condorcet Jury Theorem, along with empirical results, establishes the accuracy of majority voting in a broad range of conditions. Here we investigate whether naïve participants (in the U.S. and...

As a fascinating study of global justice in Asia, this book presents a series of contributions reflecting upon the conditions of a greater involvement of East Asian traditions of thought in the debate on global justice. Including chapters on diverse issues such as global social inequalities, human rights practice and the functioning of international institutions, this book examines the political cultures of East Asia in order to help political theorists better appraise the distinctiveness of non‐Western ideas of justice. Confirming the (...) persistence of a strong social ethos, the contributions also demonstrate the long-lasting influence of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism in shaping East Asian public conceptions of justice. Bringing much needed non-Western voices to the global justice debate, this book will appeal to students and scholars of politics, law and philosophy, as well as activists involved in the global justice movement. (shrink)

“Ex nihilo nihil fit” é uma máxima da metafísica e da teologia medievais que, digamos, tinha como finalidade ajudar na organização do inventário de uma herança cultural cujas bases não eram compatíveis com aquelas do pensamento cristão no qual o universo é Criação de um Criador. A ideia de que “do nada, nada vem” pode ser talvez identificada como a ideia central do novo livro do professor Ronai Rocha, da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, intitulado Escola partida: ética e política (...) na sala de aula. (shrink)

A collection of Lewis White Beck's most important essays on Immanuel Kant's philosophy.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:498 BOOK REVIEWS generations of theologians across denominational lines. Both Placher and Hunsinger at the end of their essays choose quotations from within Frei's own writings to give a synoptic portrait of the man and his work. Placher chooses a remark about Niebuhr's sense of vocation as a theologian (20), and Hunsinger one about knowledge of that seemingly elusive reality, a person's identity (257). However one might come away (...) from this challenging collection of essays, further confused or more enlightened, more in agreement or disagreement, I think every reader will recognize the coincidence of intellectual perspicuity and generosity with passionate faith. Regis College, Toronto School of Theology Toronto, Ontario, Canada GEORGE P. SCHNER, S.J. Reasoned Faith. Edited by ELEONORE STUMP. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993. Pp. x + 364. As the editor remarks in her "Introduction," it is not so long ago that the analytical philosophy of religion consisted very largely of discussions of the meaningfulness of religious language, and of arguments about the existence of God. Nowadays it is more adventurous, ranging over such topics as creation, providence, and God's responsibility for sin. According to Robert Merrihew Adams, the statement "truth is subjectivity," though one of the most famous, is also one of the most misunderstood in Kierkegaard's writings. He argues that, taken in context within the Concluding Unscientifu: Postscript, the statement is by no means incompatible with the objective truth of religious belief. From the point of view of the Postscript, a member of an idolatrous community who prays to her God with "the entire passion of the infinite" has more of the truth than one who prays in a false spirit from within Christendom; but this implies that the latter does have some truth. Whatever the deficiencies in her faith, she is clearly admitted to be in possession of the true concept of God objectively speaking (223 ). Adams maintains, quite rightly in the reviewer's opinion, that the Postscript is excessively pessimistic about the integration of the ideals of subjectivity and objectivity, of passionate commitment on the one side and rational assessment of evidence on the other, in religious faith (21). A useful distinction is made by Scott MacDonald between "occurrent" and "dispositional" belief; this seems to resolve some of the more puzzling paradoxes about the relation of the more cognitive and propositional side of faith to other aspects which may be thought essential to it. The demons alluded to by St. James (2:19) might believe dispositionally that their highest fulfillment BOOK REVIEWS 499 was to be found in obeying the divine will, and so performing acts of charity and service to other creatures. But to avoid the inconvenience of acting in such a way, they could think of God occurrently as just a powerful being who makes burdensome demands (55). For MacDonald, the cognitive component of faith has only two elements, belief that certain propositions are true, and belief that the kind of response of the will which is also essential to faith may be grounded on these (56). "We can make sense of Christian faith if we think of it simply as belief that Christianity is true plus an appropriate volitional response to that truth" (69). Against mainline Christian accounts like those of Augustine and Aquinas, he sees no good reason to suppose that one cannot have faith in propositions for which one has conclusive proof, but only in those for which one's justification is relatively weak. He provides interesting grounds for contradiction of a view which has been expounded by both Robert Adams and John Hick, that only such uncertainty can ground the trust which is essential to the relationship which human beings ought to have to God (59). "My ability to love and trust my wife, to commit myself without reservation to her well-being and to the goals and purposes we have chosen as definitive of our common life seem in no way dependent on my being uncertain about what she is like or what she will do" (60). On the question of how faith ought to be related to the demands of reason, Robert Audi remarks that, up to the middle 1970s... (shrink)

The psychological continuity theory of personal identity has recently been accused of not meeting what is claimed to be a fundamental requirement on theories of identity - to explain personal moral responsibility. Although they often have much to say about responsibility, the charge is that they cannot say enough. I set out the background to the charge with a short discussion of Locke and the requirement to explain responsibility, then illustrate the accusation facing the theory with details from Marya Schechtman. (...) I aim some questions at the challengers’ reading of Locke, leading to an argument that the psychological continuity theory can say all that it needs to say about responsibility, and so is not in any grave predicament, at least not with regard to this particular charge. (shrink)