Moving beyond the almost exclusively liberal and realist readings included in other anthologies, Introduction to Global Politics: A Reader provides a better balance of canonical essays and more recent scholarship representing contemporary work in the constructivist, feminist, Marxist, and postmodern traditions. Thomas Homer-Dixon on eco-terrorism; and Cynthia Enloe on Abu Ghraib. Other experts address such compelling topics such as landmines, global hunger, jihad, torture, and cyber-terrorism.

Introduction.--Philosophy and physical science.--Philosophy and biology.--Philosophy and psychology.--Philosophy and religion.--Retrospect.

Illustrates various basic principles and unifying concepts in the philosophy of science as the author has discovered them in his career.

In light of South Park's parody of the election process, this chapter engages with the questions such as How important was Stan's vote? Would the vote have been more valuable had the final margin of victory been closer? Also, how important is a vote that is between only two viable and equally unsavory options? by looking at how the power to vote has been extended in the United States over the past 200 years. The chapter discusses the voting irregularities that (...) arose in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. It considers the problem of choice within a two‐party system, given the South Park PETA member's comment that every election is “always between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich.”. (shrink)

Renegotiations of identities in a 21st century world and a resurgence of older loyalties are calling into question our shared sense of belonging and place. This results in the predicament of how and where to feel at home.

“Deep Thoughts” and “Fuzzy Memories” were fan favorites as transitional pieces between larger set pieces on Saturday Night Live in the 1990s. Delivered over soothing music and serene images, Jack Handey's bits never showed his face on screen, calling to mind his observation that “the face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.” Some dark and offbeat takes on the human condition often have an existentialist feel. Existentialism is a philosophy concerned with “the (...) individual, the experience of choice, and the absence of rational understanding of the universe with a consequent dread or sense of absurdity in human life.” In other words, human beings find themselves trying to live meaningful lives without truly comprehending the nature of what that meaning may be, or whether or not true meaning could even exist. (shrink)

This is the first critical edition of the most important political text by William of Ockham, a significant and influential fourteenth century British philosopher.

The institutes of medicine and surgery.--The universe in its biological aspect.--The foundations of psychology.--Religion and realism.--Religion and current theology.--Modern idolatry.--Values in industry.--Reality as spiritual.

This essay applies the principle of justice as fairness to the issue of same-sex marriage. I will outline Rawls’s theory of justice, including the original position and the veil of ignorance as the means by which choosers craft a just state. In considering whether same-sex marriage should be permissible, I argue that a just society, formulated in the Rawlsian context of justice as fairness, should allow them. I assert that gays and lesbians do count as equal citizens because they possess (...) the minimum requirements of the capacity for a sense of justice, a conception of the good, and the ability to be cooperating members of society. Furthermore, within the original position gays and lesbians will be represented because choosers do not know their sexual orientation because it is one of the individual characteristics that are withheld behind the veil. Since the choosers do not know their sexual orientation, they will be unable to use that information in their construction of what counts as a just state comprised of free and equal citizens. Because the family, and the institution of marriage as a primary manifestation of the family, is one of the major social institutions within the basic structure, limitations must be carefully scrutinized. (shrink)

Organized around concrete problems and issues that focus on important, engaging areas of life and experience, the text features readings drawn from a broad range of philosophical points of view.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Jon Stewart often delivers the satire himself, but nearly every episode also features at least one of The Daily Show's numerous correspondents. This chapter focuses on Larry Wilmore, who as Senior Black Correspondent is able to discuss issues of race in ways that a white correspondent probably could not. For example, Wilmore has discussed how the election of Barack Obama could be perceived by the African‐American community in the United States, proposing that peer pressure creates a monolithic voting block among (...) African‐Americans. Other issues discussed by Wilmore include the Trayvon Martin case, whether the Congressional Black Caucus has “maxed out” the race card, and how Obama should “go blacker” in response to the US credit downgrade. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume address global, regional, and local landscapes, cosmopolitan and indigenous cultures, and human and more-than-human ecology as they work to reveal place-specific tensional dynamics. This unusual book, which covers a wide-ranging array of topics, coheres into a work that will be a valuable reference for scholars of geography and the philosophy of place.

[John Hawthorne] We examine some well-known disjunctivist projects in the philosophy of perception, mainly in a critical vein. Our discussion is divided into four parts. Following some introductory remarks, we examine in part two the link between object-dependent contents and disjunctivism. In part three, we explore the disjunctivist's use of discriminability facts as a basis for understanding experience. In part four, we examine an interesting argument for disjunctivism that has been offered by Michael Martin. /// [Scott Sturgeon] The (...) paper aims to do five things: sketch the backbone of disjunctivism about visual experience, explore the view of our title, defend a version of that view from two objections, press two more objections of my own, and sketch a more radical variety of disjunctivism which avoids much of the bother. (shrink)

Given increasing ethical problems in business, many organizations have tried to control these problems by institutionalizing ethics such as by creating new ethics positions and formulating and enforcing codes of ethics. In this study, the impact of implicit and explicit forms of institutionalization of ethics on job satisfaction, esprit de corps, and organizational commitment for marketing professionals is investigated. Additionally, the influence of organizational socialization, ethical relativism, and age relative to each of the above organizational climate constructs is examined. Results (...) indicate that at least one of the forms of institutionalization of ethics is a significant determinant of all three organizational climate constructs. However, while organizational socialization is a significant determinant of all three organizational climate variables, relativism is only significant in determining organizational commitment (in a negative direction) and age is only significant in determining job satisfaction. (shrink)

By any metric, the twentieth century university was a successful institution. However, in the twenty-first century, ongoing neoliberal educational reform has been accompanied by a growing epistemological crisis in the meaning and value of the humanities and social sciences (HaSS). Concerns have been expressed in two main forms. The governors of tertiary education systems—governments, private investors, university managers and consultancy firms—have focused on how HaSS can adapt to the perceived research needs of the 21st century. At the same time, a (...) competing set of discourses has been generated by scholars and researchers employed within the critical HaSS themselves. This article considers what these differing perspectives mean for reconceptualising HaSS for the twenty-first century. After surveying the contemporary climate, this article examines the findings of key reports on the future of the humanities from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Alongside those of Western Europe, these university systems are arguably the key drivers for the global university system. It is argued that these reports provide an opportunity for emerging universities to reflect on their research priorities and developmental strategies. The article concludes with some reflections on the wider consequences of the globalising of the university system, the increase of China's influence in Asia, and ponders the prospect of post-human/ist futures of the humanities. (shrink)

The ethics literature has identified moral motivation as a factor in ethical decision-making. Furthermore, moral identity has been identified as a source of moral motivation. In the current study, we examine religiosity as an antecedent to moral identity and examine the mediating role of self-control in this relationship. We find that intrinsic and extrinsic dimensions of religiosity have different direct and indirect effects on the internalization and symbolization dimensions of moral identity. Specifically, intrinsic religiosity plays a role in counterbalancing the (...) negative impact of extrinsic religiosity on the internalization of moral identity. Further, intrinsic religiosity also counterbalances the negative and indirect impact of extrinsic religiosity on symbolization of moral identity via self-control. Lastly, self-control does not play a mediating role in the impact of religiosity on the internalization dimension of moral identity. We conclude that this study presents important findings that advance our understanding of the antecedents of moral identity, and that these results may have implications for the understanding of ethical decision-making. (shrink)

This article presents the results of a study that investigated the roles that one's money ethic, religiosity and attitude toward business play in determining consumer attitudes/beliefs in various situations regarding questionable consumer practices. Two dimensions of religiosity - intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness - were studied. A global scale of money ethic was examined, as was a global measure of attitude toward business. Results indicate that both types of religiosity as well as one's money ethic and attitude toward business were significant (...) determinants of at least some types of consumer ethical beliefs. (shrink)

In this essay, we give a theoretical overview of how humor can play a meta-argumentative role, particularly in making clear the norms and stakes of arguments. This, we think, has salutary consequences for teaching critical thinking and argument evaluation—humor is a useful tool for making those things clear. However, there are troubling features of humor’s functions that problematize its use in teaching settings. These are what we call the cruelty, audience, accessibility, and gender gap problems for humor as a pedagogical (...) tool. (shrink)

Managers in Peru, South Africa, and the United States were classified into four groups along Singhapakdi et al. (J Bus Ethics 15:1131–1140, 1996) Perceived Role of Ethics and Social Responsibility (PRESOR) scale. In Peru and the United States, individuals in the ethics and social responsibility first category reported greater satisfaction with organizational performance than did those in the profits first category. Moral capitalists—individuals who report high emphases on both social responsibility and profits—reported the highest satisfaction with performance in the United (...) States. Managers in the United States are more likely than their counterparts in Peru and South Africa to reject the mutual exclusivity of prioritizing social responsibility and profits simultaneously. Directions for future research are outlined. (shrink)

We present a general cognitive architecture that tightly integrates symbolic, spatial, and visual representations. A key means to achieving this integration is allowing cognition to move freely between these modes, using mental imagery. The specific components and their integration are motivated by results from psychology, as well as the need for developing a functional and efficient implementation. We discuss functional benefits that result from the combination of multiple content-based representations and the specialized processing units associated with them. Instantiating this theory, (...) we then discuss the architectural components and processes, and illustrate the resulting functional advantages in two spatially and visually rich domains. The theory is then compared to other prominent approaches in the area. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive, critical review of social theory that places leading contributions in their larger context. Written predominantly for students, the scope and range of the subjects and authors dealt with results in one of the most comprehensive introductions to social theory published to date. Ranging from the philosophical foundations of sociology and the discovery of `the social' to distinctive sociological approaches, to the significance of issues pertaining to gender and patriarchy, to questions of modernity and post-modernity, the book (...) is comprehensive in subject matter. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of a fallacy we will call bothsiderism, which is to mistake disagreement on an issue for evidence that either a compromise on, suspension of judgment regarding, or continued discussion of the issue is in order. Our view is that this is a fallacy of a unique and heretofore untheorized type, a fallacy of meta-argumentation. The paper develops as follows. After a brief introduction, we examine a recent bothsiderist case in American politics. We use this as (...) a pivot point to survey the theoretical literature on the fallacy. The most prominent theory is that bothsiderism is a case of dialogue-shifting. This view fails, we maintain, to explain how bothsiderism might be persuasive. We argue, rather, bothsiderism is a kind of meta-argumentative fallacy. (shrink)