Intrinsic religiosity drives ethical consumer behavior; however, previous studies regarding this connection are limited solely to a Christian cultural context. This comparative study instead includes Christian Consumers from Germany and Moslem Consumers from Turkey to determine if a specific religious community moderates the connection between intrinsic religiosity and consumer ethics. The results show that Consumers in the Turkish, Moslem subsample, exhibit an even stronger connection between religiosity and ethical consumer behavior than Consumers from the German, Christian subsample.

We critically evaluate arguments in a recent Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics article by Svoboda, Adler, and Van Howe disputing the 2012 affirmative infant male circumcision policy recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. We provide detailed evidence in explaining why the extensive claims by these opponents are not supported by the current strong scientific evidence. We furthermore show why their legal and ethical arguments are contradicted by a reasonable interpretation of current U.S. and international law and ethics. After (...) all considerations are taken into account it would be logical to conclude that failure to recommend male circumcision early in infancy may be viewed as akin to failure to recommend childhood vaccination to parents. In each case, parental consent is required and the intervention is not compulsory. Our evaluation leads us to dismiss the arguments by Svoboda et al. Instead, based on the evidence, infant male circumcision is both ethical and lawful. (shrink)

Western thought since the seventeenth century has been dominated by methodological solipsism (Krieger, 1991). The famous sound-bite of René Descartes 'cogito, ergo sum': 'I think, therefore I am', became the starting point for most discourse on the nature of things. This dictum does not advocate idealism. It does not assert that everything is necessarily a construct of the human mind. But it assumes that the world of things and beings is surveyed and interpreted from the point of view of (...) a single individual. Nowhere is this stance more entrenched than in the philosophy of science. To a remarkable degree the scientist is represented as studying the natural world as if alone in it, served only by mindless assistants who might as well be replaced by machines. Scientific theories are presented as systems of thought conjured up and tested by that same individual in a further series of single-headed operations. Research results are formulated and treated philosophically as the independent findings of lone explorers, each reporting the evidence of their own eyes and their rational inferences concerning the hidden mechanisms by which these personal percepts might be generated. Our epistemological role models are Robinson Crusoe and Sherlock Holmes, self-sufficient intellectuals to whom their human companions, Friday and Watson, are mere stooges. (shrink)

A review of Peter Steele’s Plenty, a book in which each poem is faced by a colour plate of the painting or object which sparked it off. Hollander’s ecphrasis and Krieger’s ekphrasis are held in – possibly unresolvable – dialectic by Steele’s poems. The only resolution which one can find is one of wit rather than of philosophy.

In Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute, the Maryland Court of Appeals considered whether it is possible for investigators or research entities to have a special relationship with subjects, thereby creating a duty of care that could, if breached, give rise to an action in negligence. The research under review, the Lead Abatement and Repair & Maintenance Study, was conducted from 1993 to 1996 by investigators at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University.After briefly discussing the (...) case at the center of this ruling, I consider how ambiguities within the federal research regulations at 45 C.F.R. § 46 contribute to disagreements among reasonable and informed people of good will about what studies should be approved. I argue that Grimes may be understood as placing restrictions on how these regulations may be interpreted and used. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 30, Number 2, November 2004, pp. 265-296 A Symposium on Louis E. Loeb, Stability and Justification in Hume's Treatise The Unity of Hume's Philosophical Project MICHAEL WILLIAMS 1. Introduction In both his Treatise of Human Nature and Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume presents a protean figure.1 By turns, he appears as a naturalistic theorist of the mind, a proto-Positivist critic of speculative metaphysics, and an utter (...) skeptic. Can these various characters be seen to work together? On the whole, Hume's interpreters seem to think not. The typical approach is to pick a dominant personality, leaving Hume's other philosophicalpersonae to be squeezed in as an afterthought, deprecated, or simply ignored. Louis Loeb is a shining exception.2 His new book, subtle and densely argued, offers an account of Hume's epistemology that makes a sustained effort to come to terms with its multi-faceted character. However, while Loeb's interpretation marks a real advance in our understanding of Hume, it is not one that I find ultimately persuasive. As I shall try to show, for all his insights, Loeb too fails to provide a satisfyingly unified account of Hume's philosophical pro j ect. In the course of explaining why I think this, I shall indicate how I think a better account ought to go. 2. Varieties of Skepticism The key to understanding Hume is to come to terms with the ways in which Hume is and is not a skeptic. So before going farther it will be useful to distinguish the Michael Williams is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Philosophy at The Johns Hopkins University, 347 Gilman Hall, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 266 Michael Williams various forms that skepticism takes, or might be thought to take, in Hume's epistemological writings. The distinctions I shall introduce will also make it easier to characterize different ways of reading Hume, Loeb's included. First, we must distinguish between epistemological skepticism, which has to do with knowledge and belief, and conceptual skepticism which has to do with meaning. So for example, where an epistemological skeptic may wonder whether beliefs of a certain broad kind can be justified, a conceptual skeptic will wonder whether the words we use to express such purported beliefs are so much as meaningful. It seems clear that both kinds of skepticism figure in Hume's theory of the understanding. However, commentators differ sharply over their relative importance. Second, we must distinguish two forms of epistemological skepticism: theoretical (or Academic) skepticism and suspensive skepticism (or Pyrrhonism). As its name suggests, theoretical skepticism is a thesis (or family of theses) about the epistemic status of human beliefs: for example, the thesis that such and such beliefs do not amount to knowledge or are not justifiable. It is important to note that one can entertain such a thesis in a purely speculative or theoretical way, without becoming inclined to relinquish any fundamental beliefs. By contrast, Pyrrhonism involves an actual breakdown in belief. Again, though we seem to be able to find both Academic and Pyrrhonian elements in Hume's epistemological outlook, commentators are seriously at odds over how to put them together. Third, both theoretical and suspensive skepticism can be either qualified (Hume says "mitigated") or unqualified (we can say "radical"). The most important form of qualified theoretical skepticism is anti-Rationalism. Anti-Rationalism embraces such theses as that our beliefs never amount to knowledge, or are not supportable by (what we can show to be) truth-conducive reasons. By contrast, theoretical skepticism in its most radical form is the claim that no beliefs are in any sense more reasonable than others: i.e., that normative-epistemological distinctions between beliefs are completely indefensible. We can make an analogous distinction with respect to suspensive skepticism. A qualifiedly skeptical outlook might take the form of anti-Dogmatism: we hold beliefs, but in an open-minded, fallibilist spirit, taking nothing to be altogether certain, suspending final judgment. Alternatively, we might suffer a complete breakdown of belief. Once more, we find serious differences of opinion among commentators. In what way is Hume's skepticism mitigated, or qualified, if indeed it is qualified... (shrink)

Reseña del libro Hegel Psíquico I (del alma) León Rozitchner (2015). Ediciones Biblioteca Nacional. 128 pp.

By utilizing new information from both clinical and experimental (lesion, electrophysiological, and gene-activation) studies with animals, the anatomy underlying anterograde amnesia has been reformulated. The distinction between temporal lobe and diencephalic amnesia is of limited value in that a common feature of anterograde amnesia is damage to part of an comprising the hippocampus, the fornix, the mamillary bodies, and the anterior thalamic nuclei. This view, which can be traced back to Delay and Brion (1969), differs from other recent models in (...) placing critical importance on the efferents from the hippocampus via the fornix to the diencephalon. These are necessary for the encoding and, hence, the effective subsequent recall of episodic memory. An additional feature of this hippocampalanterior thalamic and the perirhinal–medial dorsal thalamic systems are compromised, leading to severe deficits in both recall and recognition. (shrink)

John Woods' The Logic of Fiction, now thirty-five years old, is a ground-breaking event in the establishment of the semantics of fiction as a stand-alone research programme in the philosophies of language and logic. There is now a large literature about these matters, but Woods' book retains a striking freshness, and still serves as a convincing template of the treatment options for the field's key problems. The book now appears in a second edition with a new Foreword by Nicholas (...) Griffin and an extended bibliography covering the period 1969-2009. As Griffin notes in his Foreword, it is "surprising on looking back to discover how little was written on the semantics of fiction before John Woods' The Logic of Fiction was published in 1974. The surprise is the greater because Woods' book appeared after almost a quarter century of fierce philosophical debate about reference Fictional discourse, one would have thought, would be an important testing ground for philosophical theories of referential expressions and one, moreover, in which the standard theories would likely be tested to destruction. " " One of the great merits of Woods' book is that it takes seriously the wide-ranging demands that fiction imposes on logic and semantics, and does not try to force fiction into some pre-conceived logical mould. but thanks to Woods' pioneering efforts, we are much closer to one now than we were when he set out to write his book. His book was not the last word on the logic of fiction; it was much more important: it was nearly the first." NICHOLAS GRIFFIN is Canada Research Chair in Philosophy at McMaster University. Recent publications include Russell vs Meinong: The Legacy of "On Denoting," edited with Dale Jacquette. JOHN WOODS is Director of the Abductive Systems Group at the University of British Columbia and Charles S. Peirce Visiting Professor of Logic in the Group on Logic and Computational Science, King's College London. He has two forthcoming books on fiction - an edited volume, Fictions and Models: New Essays, and a research monograph, Sherlock's Member: New Perspectives on the Semantics of Fiction, both to appear in 2010. (shrink)

In August 2001, the Maryland Court of Appeals harshly criticized the Kennedy Krieger Institute of Johns Hopkins University for knowingly exposing poor children to lead-based paint. The court’s decision made national news, and is worth examining because it raises several very important issues for research ethics.The research conducted by the Institute was an attempt to understand how successful different lead abatement programs were in reducing continued lead exposure to children. Previously, Julian Chisolm and Mark Farfel, of John Hopkins (...) University, had disclosed the dangers of traditional dust-generating deleading practices. In the current study, Dr. Farfel and colleagues sought to document the longevity of various lead-based paint abatement strategies. (shrink)

The dominant figure of mid-nineteenth-century British political economy, John Stuart Mill exercised a lasting influence on philosophical thought. This compact statement of Mill's doctrines starts with an informative Introduction by editor Ernest Nagel and proceeds with extracts from A System of Logic that clarify Mill's processes of reasoning. The following five-part treatment draws upon the philosopher's major works to consider names and propositions; reasoning; induction; operations subsidiary to induction; and the logic of the moral sciences. Selections from An Examination (...) of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy conclude the text, along with an essay on the definition of political economy and its methods of investigation. (shrink)

Currently in the United Kingdom, anyone donating gametes has the status of an open-identity donor. This means that, at the age of 18, persons conceived with gametes donated since April 1, 2005 have a right to access certain pieces of identifying information about their donor. However, in early 2015, the UK Parliament approved new regulations that make mitochondrial donors anonymous. Both mitochondrial donation and gamete donation are similar in the basic sense that they involve the contribution of gamete materials to (...) create future persons. Given this similarity, this paper presumes that both types of donor should be treated the same and made open-identity under the law, unless there is a convincing argument for treating them differently. I argue that none of the existing arguments that have been made so far in favor of mitochondrial donor anonymity are convincing and mitochondrial donors should therefore be treated as open-identity donors under UK law. (shrink)

David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature presents the most important account of skepticism in the history of modern philosophy. In this lucid and thorough introduction to the work, John P. Wright examines the development of Hume's ideas in the Treatise, their relation to eighteenth-century theories of the imagination and passions, and the reception they received when Hume published the Treatise. He explains Hume's arguments concerning the inability of reason to establish the basic beliefs which underlie science and morals, (...) as well as his arguments showing why we are nevertheless psychologically compelled to accept such beliefs. The book will be a valuable guide for those seeking to understand the nature of modern skepticism and its connection with the founding of the human sciences during the Enlightenment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:George J. Leonard EMERSON, WHITMAN, AND CONCEPTUAL ART The widespread abandoning of the art object at the end of the 1960s was taken as something radically, even frighteningly, new, by critics and artists alike. Objects, concept artist Joseph Kosuth was asserting by 1969, are "irrelevant" to art. Though an artist might choose, as in the past, to "employ" objects, "all art is finally conceptual." In fact it was now (...) time that the object, nothing more than the "physical residue" of the artist's mental activity, was dispensed with.1 "We / open our eyes and ears seeing life / each day excellent as it is," John Cage chanted: "This / realization no longer needs art...."2 Aestheticians as disparate as Murray Krieger and Harold Rosenberg reacted to this "transfiguration of the commonplace," as Arthur Danto has called it. Danto has gained a wide scholarly audience for his ideas about the 1960s as "the end of art," or at least as the beginning of "post-historical art."3 We know from such works as Renato Poggioli's TL· T^ry oftL· Avant-Garde that, in this century, particular movements have routinely declared themselves to be art's climax.4 Critics like Jacques Barzun and artists like Amedee Ozenfant had been saying for years that art was exhausted. Yet conceptualism's attack on the object struck most critics as something both alarming and new: Irving Sandler wrote in a special edition of the College Art Association's Art Journal devoted to the problem that it demolished "every notion of what art should be,"5 and Murray Krieger feared that this "leap beyond Pop Art" would "complete the obliteration of the realm of art, its objects, its museums...."6 But the conceptualist attacks on the art object were, in fact, not new. One can find attacks as scathing in Emerson and Whitman; so scathing, that criticism has rarely taken them seriously. The attacks the concep297 298Philosophy and Literature tualists mounted in the 1960s were only the culmination ofan intellectual tendency which appeared throughout the West one hundred and sixty years before. It has long been a scholarly commonplace that after 1800 an "intellectual tendency"—as M. H. Abrams finallytermed it—extolling the possibilities of this world emerged in all parts of Western culture. When itappears in literature we nowusually call it, withAbrams, Natural Supernaturalism; or, with Harold Bloom, the "visionary company." Man, Wordsworth decreed, can and must learn to find "Paradise" in "the common day."7 Surprisingly litde work has been done on what happened when this intellectual tendency, Natural Supernaturalism, confronted the art object. Emerson and Whitman can stand for many who were necessarily ill at ease with the idea of art objects as elite objects superior to the common things it was their mission to extol. Wordsworth works before these two; Ruskin develops similar ideas into greater complexity; but since Emerson writes clear expository prose and avoids fanciful terminology, he makes a good place to enter this dark wood. Let us begin with some straightfor-ward, overdue interdisciplinary history, reading Emerson on the art object, noticing similar passages in Whitman, and noting where Emerson has reworked Hegel for his own ends. For Emerson objects are but thought's "inert effect," as for the concept artist Kosuth they would be but the "physical residue" of the artist's activity. Emerson and Kosuth, opposite Shakespeare, do not applaud the art process as the giving to an airy nothing a local habitation and a name; rather they disdain the stuff as petrifactions, as dead mud footprints left by living thoughts diat have raced away.8 In his essay "Circles," Emerson derides our admiration for a work of architecture, directing us to the "litde waving hand" that built it, for "that which builds is better than that which is built." By the same logic, the invisible thoughts which truly wrought the object were even better than the hand and "nimbler."9 When such passages are discussed at all, they are usually considered Platonic,10 but, in his essay "Art," Emerson envisions a use for art objects Plato would have blinked at. For the time being, art objects have a particular "office" to fill. That office, Emerson wrote in... (shrink)

This essay criticizes John Norton's 2010 defense of the thesis that “all induction is local.” Norton's local inductions are bound, if cogent, to involve general principles, and the need to accredit these general principles threatens to lead to all the usual problems associated with the ‘problem of induction’. Norton, in fact, recognizes this threat, but his responses are inadequate. The right response involves not induction but a sophisticated version of hypothetico-deduction. Norton's secondary thesis—that if there is a general account (...) of cogent scientific reasoning, then it is certainly not the one supported by personalist Bayesians—is also criticized. (shrink)

This superb collection by the eminent physicist and critic John Ziman, opens with an album of portraits of scientists--Albert Einstein, Freeman Dyson, Lev Landau, Mark Azbel, Andrei Sakharov. Ziman takes readers into the world of the contemporary scientist, showing how discoveries are made and how claims are tested. He then travels into the minds of scientists as they are drawn into competing directions. Here Ziman exposes the path of discovery, which is strewn with complex human needs, governmental restrictions, the (...) desire for profits, and the exercise of technical virtuosity. (shrink)

The article takes up a range of issues concerning knowledge of language in response to recent work of Rey, Smith, Matthews and Devitt. I am broadly sympathetic with the direction of Rey, Smith, and Matthews. While all three are happy with the locution ‘knowledge of language’, in their different ways they all reject the apparent role for a substantive linguistic epistemology in linguistic explanation. I concur but raise some friendly concerns over even a deflationary notion of knowledge of language. Against (...) Devitt I have more serious worries. The latter half of the paper seeks further clarification of Devitt’s realism and raises concerns over its ability to reflect the shape and content of linguistics. (shrink)

Managers have the primary role responsibility to protect and promote the economic viability of their organizations. Utilizing a formula that demonstrates the inherently unstable nature of economic systems, I argue that managers are sometimes morally required to make adjustments that result in harming people who work for them in order to reestablish the equilibrium necessary to remain viable. The question of who is going to be harmed and how this harm is morally justified is the focal point of this paper. (...) I argue that utilizingtraditional methods associated with our common morality cannot solve the issue of who is going to be harmed, and that the traditionalmethods for reestablishing equilibrium promote a distribution of harm that cannot be justified from a rationally defensible moral pointof view. Utilizing the constraint of impartiality and the concept of the health of the organization, I argue that an equal distribution of harmamong everyone affected by the decision is the only one that is rationally defensible. (shrink)

This volume gathers essays by fourteen scholars, written to honor Fred Dallmayr and the contributions of his political theory. Stephen F. Schneck's introduction to Dallmayr's thinking provides a survey of the development of his work. Dallmayr's “letting be,” claims Schneck, is much akin to his reading of Martin Heidegger's “letting Being be,” and should be construed neither as a conservative acceptance of self-identity nor as a nonengaged indifference to difference. Instead, he explains, endeavoring to privilege neither identity nor difference, the (...) hermeneutic circle for Dallmayr must also be one of thoroughgoing critique and praxis. And, indeed, what joins together Dallmayr's many essays and explorations, what inheres within his “cosmopolitan” understanding of the contemporary world, and what lends his analyses their imperative, is this same “letting be.” "How many of us, over the last forty years, have opened up this or that book by Fred Dallmayr to acquaint ourselves with a new thinker or intellectual movement? It has happened to me several times. Each time, something else happens too. I become alert again to the distinctive and noble temper expressed in Dallmayr's work. _Letting Be_ consists of a series of essays by leading scholars who articulate and appreciate this temper, particularly as it has found expression in his thought about global politics work over the last two decades. This is a fine study, devoted to a thinker whose temper of critical responsiveness deserves wide emulation." —_William E. Connolly, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor, Johns Hopkins University_ _ _ "These essays constitute a marvelous, extended conversation on how political theory should delineate its future tasks. The reader is treated to a lively debate about a crucial set of questions: what strands of traditional Western political thought offer the best resources today; how do we think more comparatively about the foundations of political life; how do we engage more fruitfully Islamic, Indian, and_ mestizo_ contributions; and how do we best envision cross-cultural dialogue and imagine the shape of a "cosmopolis" in ways that will do greater justice to human dignity and diversity? All in all a rich feast honoring a remarkable man and scholar, Fred Dallmayr." —_Stephen K. White, James Hart Professor, University of Virginia_ “This is not the first Festschrift for Dallmayr, and it may not be the last, but it is the first that begins to be in a position to assess his long career with all its twists and turns. I have never fully understood Dallmayr as a creative thinker in his own right until now, and even when I sensed he was, I couldn't precisely say how. Now I can.” —_C. Fred Alford, University of Maryland_. (shrink)

This book addresses one of the fundamental topics in philosophy: the relation between appearance and reality. John Yolton draws on a rich combination of historical and contemporary material, ranging from the early modern period to present-day debates, to examine this central philosophical preoccupation, which he presents in terms of distinctions between phenomena and causes, causes and meaning, and persons and man. He explores in detail how Locke, Berkeley and Hume talk of appearances and their relation to reality, and offers (...) illuminating connections and comparisons with the work of contemporary philosophers such as Paul Churchland and John McDowell. He concludes by offering his own proposal for a 'realism of appearances', which incorporates elements of both Humean and Kantian thinking. His important study will be of interest to a wide range of readers in the history of philosophy, the history of ideas, and contemporary philosophy of mind, epistemology and metaphysics. (shrink)

This book encapsulates John Beebe’s influential work on the analytical psychology of consciousness. Building on C. G. Jung’s theory of psychological types and on subsequent clarifications by Marie-Louise von Franz and Isabel Briggs Myers, Beebe demonstrates the bond between the eight types of consciousness Jung named and the archetypal complexes that impart energy and purpose to our emotions, fantasies, and dreams. For this collection, Beebe has revised and updated his most influential and significant previously published papers and has introduced, (...) in a brand new chapter, a surprising theory of type and culture. Beebe’s model enables readers to take what they already know about psychological types and apply it to depth psychology. The insights contained in the fifteen chapters of this book will be especially valuable for Jungian psychotherapists, post-Jungian academics and scholars, psychological type practitioners, and type enthusiasts. (shrink)

1. Srikantha In the Southern Saiva philosopher Srikantha (c. 1 150, although it is difficult to separate him from his really greater commentator ...

Human rights are in crisis today. Everywhere one looks, there is violence, deprivation, and oppression, which human rights norms seem powerless to prevent. This book investigates the roots of the current crisis through the thought of Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben. Human rights theory and practice must come to grips with key problems identified by Agamben "e; the violence of the sovereign state of exception and the reduction of humanity to 'bare' life. Any renewal of human rights today must involve breaking (...) decisively with the traditional coordinates of Western political thought and instead affirm a new understanding of life and political action. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Much has been written about the deplorable state of American health care, but rarely with the wealth of historical and political information packed into Peter Swenson’s Disorder: A History of Reform, Reaction, and Money in American Medicine (2021). In this meticulously researched and comprehensive study of the role of organized medicine, particularly the American Medical Association (AMA) and affiliated state and county medical societies, Swenson provides detailed insight into the AMA’s political evolution from a force advocating progressive reforms to a (...) protective guild backed by powerful economic and ideological interests. Swenson addresses the conflicts leading to and arising from these movements, always with an eye on the profession’s failure over the last century to fulfill its implicit social contract. Swenson describes the American medical disorder without fear or favor, including a public health system in disarray, defective government regulation of drugs, unchecked and concealed commercial influence on medical research, publications, and clinical guidelines. Swenson’s hope is clear: that a progressively reformed AMA—combined with a broad coalition of concerned citizens and legislators—will lead the medical profession back to its rightful mission. (shrink)