The astonishing growth of the Internet coupled with its unique capabilities has captured the attention of the marketing community. Although many businesses are acknowledging the importance of a Web site, to date, little attention has been given to the business community'sperceptions of the ethicality of this new medium. A national sample of marketing executives was surveyed regarding their perceptions of: (1) regulation of the Internet, (2) the potential ethical issues via Internet marketing facing their industry, and (3) the role of (...) ethics and Internet marketing in their organization. Results and recommendations for incorporating Internet ethical guidelines into organizations are discussed. (shrink)

There is now a considerable literature on Michel Foucault but this is the first monograph which explicitly addresses his influence and impact upon education. Personal autonomy has been seen as a major aim, if not the aim of liberal education. But if Foucault is correct that personal autonomy and the notion of the autonomous person are myths, then the pursuit of such an aim by educationalists is misguided. The author develops this critique of personal autonomy and liberal education from the (...) writings of Foucault, and also considers Foucault's own educational practices. The author, James Marshall, who lives in New Zealand, has already written several articles for academic journals on Foucault. (shrink)

Background and objectives Conscientious refusal of abortion has been discussed widely by medical ethicists but little information on practitioners' opinions exists. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued recommendations about conscientious refusal. We used a vignette experiment to examine obstetrician-gynecologists' (OB/GYN) support for the recommendations. Design A national survey of OB/GYN physicians contained a vignette experiment in which an OB/GYN doctor refused a requested elective abortion. The vignette varied two issues recently addressed by the ACOG ethics committee—whether the (...) doctor referred and whether the doctor disclosed their objection to the abortion. Participants and setting 1800 OB/GYN randomly selected physicians were asked to complete a mail survey containing the vignette. The response rate was 66% (n=1154) after excluding 40 ineligible cases. Measurement Physicians indicated their approval for the vignette doctor's decision. Main results Overall, 43% of OB/GYN physicians responded that the conscientious refusal exercised by the vignette physician was appropriate. 70% rated the vignette doctor as acting appropriately when a referral was made. This dropped to 51% when the doctor disclosed objections to the patient, and to 12% when the doctor disclosed objections and refused to make a referral. Consistent with previous research, males were more likely to support disclosure and refusal to refer. Highly religious physicians supported non-referral but not disclosure. Conclusion OB/GYN physicians are less likely to support conscientious refusal of abortion if physicians disclose their objections to patients. This is at odds with ACOG recommendations and with some models of the doctor–patient relationship. (shrink)

Realizing the ideal of democracy requires political inclusion for citizens. A legitimate democracy must give citizens the opportunity to express their attitudes about the relative attractions of different policies, and access to political mechanisms through which they can be counted and heard. Actual governance often aims not at accurate belief, but at nonepistemic factors like achieving and maintaining institutional stability, creating the feeling of government legitimacy among citizens, or managing access to influence on policy decision-making. I examine the traditional relationship (...) between inclusiveness and accuracy, and illustrate this connection by discussing empirical work on how group decision-making can improve accuracy. I also advance a Generic Epistemic Principle that any evidence-based decision-making procedures must embrace. Focusing on policy-making, I then measure the distance between these standards and the ones actually implemented in U.S. political settings. Psychological research on individual and group decision-making is a source of normative assessment for existing policy judgment, but it neither rationalizes nor legitimates the actual and typical processes used in U.S. institutions of political decision making. To establish this point, I focus on one characteristic government institution—the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology—that displays deliberative processes at odds with the sciences they advocate, and with the Generic Epistemic Principle. I explain this discouraging condition in terms of several inveterate factors in U.S. politics: a limitlessly money-driven and endless campaigning process that effectively forces elected representatives to align themselves with money and vote strategically, the use of procedural arrangements known to make people feel politically included when they are not, and the unresponsiveness of a majoritarian (vs. consensus) democracy. (shrink)

In this paper we prove that the equational class generated by bounded BCK-algebras is the variety generated by the class of finite simple bounded BCK-algebras. To obtain these results we prove that every simple algebra in the equational class generated by bounded BCK-algebras is also a relatively simple bounded BCK-algebra. Moreover, we show that every simple bounded BCK-algebra can be embedded into a simple integral commutative bounded residuated lattice. We extend our main results to some richer subreducts of the class (...) of integral commutative bounded residuated lattices and to the involutive case. (© 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim). (shrink)

We discuss the question of Ralf-Dieter Schindler whether for infinite time Turing machines Pf = NPf can be true for any function f from the reals into ω1. We show that “almost everywhere” the answer is negative.

We apply the Galilean covariant formulation of quantum dynamics to derive the phase-space representation of the Pauli–Schrödinger equation for the density matrix of spin-1/2 particles in the presence of an electromagnetic field. The Liouville operator for the particle with spin follows from using the Wigner–Moyal transformation and a suitable Clifford algebra constructed on the phase space of a (4 + 1)-dimensional space–time with Galilean geometry. Connections with the algebraic formalism of thermofield dynamics are also investigated.

A combination of social forces has thrown marriage into question in westernised societies at the end of the millennium. This uncertainty creates space for new ways of thinking about marriage. In this context, we examine the idea of marriage as friendship. We trace its genealogy in the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor and then subject it to critical scrutiny using some of Michel de Montaigne’s ideas. We ask how applicable the ideal of higher friendship is (...) to marriage and what might be gained and lost by a synthesis of marriage and friendship. Grounding the discussion in historical sources is valuable because the topic is so little explored in the contemporary philosophical literature. This approach also allows any enduring value in these historical texts to be elicited. (shrink)

I. Tijdperk vam Cartesius tot Kant -- II. De strijd tussen idealisme en naturalisme in de negentiende eeuw.

The aim of this lucid translation from the Latin text of the Leonine edition of St Thomas’s commentary upon Aristotle’s Peri Hermeneias is to situate the traditional formal logic in relation to modern logic. The old logic of terms is still of importance, as illustrated by Hermann Weyl.

This packed record of proceedings of the 1959 meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association is dedicated to the memory of its first and recently deceased Secretary, Monsignor C. A. Hart. It opens with the convivial address by its President, Professor L. E. Lynch, the citation by M. Maritain for the award of the Spellman–Aquinas Medal of Rev. Dr. G. B. Phelan and the latter’s personal address on philosophical wisdom. Two other lectures range from the statement by Professor F. H. (...) Anderson of ‘Platonic Elements in Epistemology’ to Professor H. Spiegelberg’s outline evaluation of the subjectivity allegedly present in the contemporary method of phenomenology. (shrink)

Scholastic terminology, with roots in theology and the now largely unfamiliar Latin language, is a perpetual obstacle for the uninitiated and a potential cause of misunderstanding and cross-argument in communication with non-Scholastics. Yet if any jargon is legitimate, one tried by centuries of definition and discussion of fundamental problems has classic value and is a fit object of study in the modern mood of linguistic analysis. The present welcome addition to the English language is a compact collection of some 1,600 (...) common terms and phrases current in the general stream of Thomist Aristotelian philosophy. Its ideal is the crisp definition which the author’s pedagogical experience suggests is necessary to understand a general course of such philosophy. Choice of matter is practical, not exhaustive and makes no attempt to trace the diversity of historical usage. Occasionally a precise reference is given to the classic origin of its decisive definition, mainly to the works of Aristotle and St. Thomas and occasionally to Augustine, Boethius, Scotus and Suarez. For fuller information reference is also made to current Thomist monographs in English. (shrink)

This admirable volume inagurates a manual series which precisely implements, neither more nor less, what its experienced Dominican writer claims: a clear introduction to Thomist philosophy. Within the classic simplicity of the manual tradition it expounds the vital first principles of metaphysical psychology without overloading the beginner with unnecessary technical difficulties, and refreshingly illustrates the lucid concentration of Thomas upon the relevant questions. Sometimes its simplicity is deceptive, since it is inspired by the traditional commentary upon the classic intellectualism, which (...) is the basis of epistemology as Thomas conceived it historically, in his developing Aristotelianism. It expounds this doctrine sensibly in its own historical right, apart from the findings of modern empirical psychology. To his own text, Père Gardeil adds a valuable selection of passages from the relevant works of St. Thomas, notably the Quaestiones Disputatae, De Anima et De Veritate, with pedagogical cross-references. Dr. Otto’s translation is unpretentiously faithful and easy for a twentieth century student unaccustomed to Scholastic terminology and method. (shrink)

Eleven Oxford dons and one guest-speaker from Melbourne in this candid series of talks, first delivered on the radio in 1955, seem to share a conscious disadvantage in respect of their subject, the irrepressible science of metaphysics—like a group of disconcerted bankers who return to trade with a one-time bankrupt, whose currency has irresistibly hardened again and for whom they now concert a limp welcome and a scratch set of trading rules. As Mr. Warnock wryly notes: “It would be impossible (...) to deny that respect or distaste for metaphysics is, though no doubt it should be an intellectual matter, in fact very largely a matter of temperament; and disagreements of this variety are notoriously liable to be heated and vehement, liable also to be long drawn out, inconclusive, and rather unprofitable”. After the eighteenth century bankruptcy proceedings instituted by David Hume and the subsequent doldrums of university philosophy, the empiricist suspicions of Victorian Britain led to the positivist hostility of the twentieth century towards that traditional, standard science, which Europe never substantially devalued. The current return in England is both a forced retreat from brash futility in the field of urgent values and of scientific postulates, and a cautious reconnaissance of old positions. The present exploratory discussion is not unlike an international truce in its tendency to bog down in procedural analysis and to substitute this new scholasticism for an engagement in the substantial business of metaphysics. Metametaphysics buries its head in sand of its own sophisticated creation; and the individual talks are not as distinct nor as simple as their titles might suggest. (shrink)

On the basis of data gathered in a Mormon village and in a settlement of Texas homesteaders, the author sets up a schematism or "grammar" of values. The distinctions he draws between existential, normative, and idiosyncratic values seem arbitrary.--J. D. T., Jr.

The selections, arranged chronologically and prefaced with a short biographical sketch of each author, are divided into five historical periods, some major trends of which are briefly noted in the introduction to each epoch. In addition, five different syllabi are included as suggestions of various ways to organize the readings into a significant whole suitable for classroom presentation.--J. D.

Fr. James Demske first published this book in 1963 in Germany under the title: Sein, Mensch und Tod: Das Todesproblem bei Martin Heidegger. Except for minor revisions--such as changing the numeration and headings of the chapters and the occasional expansion of paragraphs--this is substantially the same book. The author follows the development of the problem of death in Heidegger through the famous discussion in Being and Time and into the later works. The fact of the continuing importance of "death" in (...) Heidegger's work is easily overlooked. But while the phrase "Being-unto-death" disappears after Being and Time the same phenomenon of Dasein's mortality reappears in the later accounts of the "Quadrate" : the heavens and earth, gods, and mortals. Chapter six of Demske's book is one of the few and clearest accounts of this central theme in Heidegger's thought. The book as a whole, apart from its thematization of the problem of death, presents a sound appraisal and a clear overview of the development of Heidegger's "path of thought" and is, on that account too, a welcome addition to the literature.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Dr. Fuad Nucho, a native Jordanian and presently a pastor in Yeadon, Pa., provides us with a lucid and illuminating account of the central problem of freedom in the Christian existentialism of Nicolas Berdyaev. Confident that the thought of Berdyaev, while professedly not a "System," suffers no distortion from an organized and systematized explication, Dr. Nucho orders his work around the problem of freedom conceived of as a paradox demanding resolution. He deals in turn with the nature, implications, and solution (...) of the paradox, after a brief, informative discussion of the influences on Berdyaev's thinking. Critical and evaluatory remarks are reserved for a final chapter, so as not to interrupt the progress of his argument. For Berdyaev, man is a citizen of two worlds, divided between an inclination toward material objects which enslave him, and an aspiration toward the transcendent world of divine freedom. Nature, society, and history all tend to enslave man, yet they are also the theater in which his freedom must be exercised. Man himself is conceived of essentially as a free being. Freedom for Berdyaev means creativity, where creativity is taken in the radical sense of production out of nothing. Hence the alliance of freedom with the "nothing," and so with Boehme's Ungrund. The paradox is resolved only when, first, the world of natural necessity is recognized as perfused with symbol and when, finally, the revelation of Christ is taken as the meaning of that symbolization. Such a liberation comes to historical man in metahistorical moments when he grasps the eternal meaning behind the phenomena of nature and history, that is, when he grasps the end of history and nature. Nucho concludes that Berdyaev is a religious thinker in the tradition of the early Christian Fathers—a modern parallel, in particular, to Clement of Alexandria.—J. D. C. (shrink)

One of the scandals of Anglo-American philosophical scholarship is its neglect of the German Idealist tradition. Even in the case of Hegel himself, many important works are either untranslated or have received only inadequate or outdated renderings and suffer from a lack of first-rate, full-length commentaries. The situation is much worse, when one turns to Schelling and Fichte. Lachs and Heath have rendered a real service in providing us with a new translation, available in a well-bound papercover edition, of Fichte's (...) major work, the Wissenschaftslehre of 1794, to supplant the very objectionable Kroeger translation which is, in any case, long since out of print. This is an essential work for comprehending the development of European philosophy in the short but extraordinarily productive period from 1781 to 1807. Along with Schelling's System des transzendentalen Idealismus, Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre constitutes the bridge between Kant's three Critique's and Hegel's Phenomenology. Both of the famous "Introductions" are translated in the current edition. Despite their torturous text, their renderings are clearer than one might expect. There is an extremely helpful introduction by Lachs (who also translated the "First Introduction of 1797," a German-English glossary, and a detailed index. The translators also supply the standard marginal pagination from the Gesamtausgabe of 1834-1846. In all, the work is professionally done, a permanent and much needed contribution of the study of Fichte for English-reading students.--J. D. C. (shrink)

This compact sketch of Fichte's idealism is No. 82 in the PUF series "Initiation philosophique," directed by Jean Lacroix. Bourgeois' book follows the classic division proposed by Gueroult of the genesis of Fichte's thought into three stages: the early philosophy of the ego up to 1800, including the 1794 edition of the Wissenschaftslehre and the celebrated "two introductions" of 1794; the philosophy of Being, 1800-1804, especially The Vocation of Man; and finally the philosophy of the Absolute, 1804 and thereafter, which (...) includes the Fundamental Characteristics of the Present Age and The Way to the Blessed Life. For Bourgeois, these may be just as well characterized, respectively, as the philosophy of moral obligation, of vocation, and of love. He hopes to defend the early Fichte against the charge of "subjective" idealism levelled at him by Schelling and Hegel. He singles out for emphasis the close connection that Fichte makes--Kierkegaard notwithstanding--between life and idealism, and finds this a recurrent characteristic of all of Fichte's works. His interpretation of the first Wissenschaftslehre focusses upon Fichte's remark in the First Introduction that "the kind of philosophy one chooses depends upon the kind of man that one is." This deserves emphasis, anticipating as it does not only the Existentialist interpretation of philosophy but also the Lebensphilosophie of Dilthey. The book is brief and to the point and should prove helpful in the difficult task of unravelling Fichte's thought.--J. D. C. (shrink)

M. Palmier has made a valuable contribution to one of the most controversial issues in contemporary philosophy: the problem of Heidegger and the Nazis. Palmier does not side-step the issue by writing off the political works of 1933-1934 as a regrettable "mistake." "These writings belong to the work of Heidegger as the theological works at Tübingen belong to that of Hegel". He analyzes what is known of Heidegger's early life in a somewhat sketchy way, omitting, e.g., any mention of Karl (...) Braig. After discussing Brentano, Rickert, Lask, and Dilthey, he studies Heidegger's relationship with Cassirer and clears up most convincingly the charge of anti-Semitism levelled against Heidegger in 1950 by Cassirer's wife. This is followed by an equally persuasive and sympathetic account of Heidegger and Husserl. The heart of the book, however, is an analysis of the remark made in 1935 in which Heidegger refers to the "inner truth and grandeur" of the Nazi movement which became so notorious when Heidegger allowed it to appear unchanged in the 1953 edition of those lectures under the title An Introduction to Metaphysics. The grandeur Heidegger has in mind is the confrontation of modern man and planetary technology. This phrase must be understood, Palmier argues, in connection with a book by Ernst Jünger which appeared in 1932 entitled Der Arbeiter. The analysis the author offers is most illuminating. Palmier's interpretation is happily reenforced by an appendix which consists in a selection of texts from Ernst Krieck, an official Party philosopher, in which Heidegger is violently attacked--thus making the distance which Heidegger had put between himself and the Nazis abundantly clear, and effectively counterbalancing Schneeberger's one-sided documentation in Nachlese zu Heidegger.--J. D. C. (shrink)

While this is the most recent volume to appear in the continuing work of a critical edition of Husserl's collected works, it contains Husserl's first published book, The Philosophy of Arithmetic. This is the famous study in which Husserl--under the influence of J. S. Mill and Brentano--undertook a psychologistic interpretation of the origin and validity of mathematical principles. Under the impulse of Frege's criticism, Husserl came to repudiate this view. Indeed, even without this external impetus, one suspects that the dynamics (...) of Husserl's own thought would have eventually carried him beyond such a view, for his concern even in this first book is to find a "strict" foundation for mathematics, a concern which seems to be clearly at odds with the naturalism and empiricism of the psychologistic theory. The tension between these two--the empirical and the ideal character of mathematical thinking--is reflected in the subtitle of this work: Logical and Psychological Investigations. "Part One" concerns the psychological origin of number: "Part Two" the logical roots. The editor has also included in this volume a set of "Supplementary Texts ". Among these is included the Habilitationsschrift of 1878, The Concept of Number: Psychological Analyses. The rest of this volume is made up of a set of treatises which were to be part of the planned second volume of The Philosophy of Arithmetic, which never appeared. This volume was to be concerned with such topics as the logic of signs, the a priori character of Arithmetic, the imaginary in Arithmetic, and axiomatic systems.--J. D. C. (shrink)

Six articles on various aspects of Hegel including time, alienation, substance, and theology, plus a study of Merleau-Ponty. The collection is distinguished by R. C. Whittemore's critique of the pantheistic interpretation of Hegel. --J. D. T. Jr.

Kierkegaard’s work Purity of Heart is To Will One Thing, signed in his own name, was meant as a private preparation for public confession. To be pure of heart meant to have a single-minded dedication to the will of God, a dedication from which all other foreign motives had been filtered out. A pure heart does good not out of fear of punishment or the hope of a reward but solely because it is God’s will. There is thus a Kantian (...) rigorism in this work: every overt or concealed form of self-love must be purged in order that an act be truly moral. Jeremy Walker, who has also written a book on Frege, and whose book reads faintly like a work in analytic ethics, has written not an exhaustive commentary on Purity of Heart but a set of "reflections" on some philosophical themes that run through the work. He takes up the question of Kierkegaard’s Kantian conception of morality and argues that the dynamic of Kierkegaard’s notion of ethical choice leads straight to an absolute commitment to the absolute good, God. Thus purity of heart is only possible if the will is directed towards an absolute good. Kierkegaard’s true view is a Christian synthesis of Kant and Plato. It also follows that the opposition of the ethical and the religious is false. Such a view, which belongs to the doctrine of the three stages, is not Kierkegaard’s but that of the pseudonymous authors. It is actually opposed to the view that Kierkegaard signs in his own name. Walker’s book is brief, clear and addressed to an important point, not only for Kierkegaardian scholarship, but also for ethics.—J.D.C. (shrink)