Modern social and scientific-technological progress have resulted in an unprecedented acceleration of rates of change in all the principal elements of the system comprising the material life of society: production, social relationships, the geographic environment, population, and others. This made more obvious the complex interrelationship among these elements and the need to coordinate them rationally within the framework of the single system of mutual determination of various natural and social factors, any disruption of the stability and integrity of which is (...) pregnant with exceedingly serious consequences to human existence. (shrink)

K. E. Boxer explores moral responsibility, and whether it is compatible with causal determinism. She suggests that to answer this question we must focus on responsibility in the sense of liability, and that an incompatibilist view may only be preserved on an understanding of the moral desert of punishment that many find morally problematic.

Whether or not intellectual property rights ought, as a matter of political morality, to be protected by the law surely depends on what kinds of interests the various parties have in intellectual content. Although theorists disagree on the limits of morally legitimate lawmaking authority, this much seems obvious: the coercive power of the law should be employed only to protect interests that rise to a certain level of moral importance. We have such a significant interest in not being lied to, (...) for example, that ordinary unilateral lies are morally wrong, but the wrongness of lying does not rise to the level of something the state should protect against by coercive criminal prohibition. Indeed, it would clearly be wrong for the law to coercively restrict behaviors in which no one has any morally significant interests whatsoever. Using the coercive power of the law to restrict freedom is not justified unless the moral benefits of restricting the behavior outweigh the moral costs involved in using force to restrict human autonomy and freedom. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 89 MODERNIST HERESIES K.yE. Garay Arts & Science/Research Collections / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4m2 [email protected] Damon Franke. Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883–1924. Columbus : Ohio State U. P., 2008. Pp. xx, 258. isbn 978-0-8142-1074-1 (hb). us$47.95. The editor of the Russell journal summed up Modernist Heresies: British Literary History, 1883–1924z with his usual brevity during a (...) recent conversation : “The Wrst part is about Russell and the rest of it isn’t.” In fact the Wrst two chapters are only somewhat concerned with Russell, since he Wgures as part of the Heretical Cambridge scene with which Damon Franke opens this study, but, September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd 90 Reviews after a Xeeting appearance of both Russells, Bertie and Dora, in the opening pages of Chapter 3, Bertie is not heard from again. Franke, who teaches English at the University of Southern Mississippi, has set himself an ambitious task, the scope of which is not fully captured in this book’s title. The selection of no fewer than ten subject headings in the cataloguing data for this studyz—zheadings ranging from “Modernism (Literature)” through “English Literature”, “Religion and Literature”, “Heresies, Christian”, and “Paganism in Literature”z—zprovides the wary reader withsome forewarning of its breadth. The author’s focus is on nothing less than the emergence and development of modernism in England, using the rise and demise of what Franke terms “heresy” as his barometer. Nor does the ascribed date range, 1883– 1924, prove much more accurate; in one of the most persuasive segments of the book, the After Words, Franke extends his examination, Wrst into the 1930s and then as far as 1949, the year that Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Fourz was published. Selecting as his starting point the 1883 blasphemy trial of G.yW. Foote, the editor of The Freethinker, at which the right to attack “even the fundamentals of religion” was enshrined in English law, providing that “the decencies of controversy” are observed (p. 10), Franke argues that this decision made possible “intellectual and literary forms of heresy which questioned the principles of religion ” (ibid.). His use of the term “heresy” for his wide ranging survey of philosophical and linguistic as well as literary opinion, provoked pause in this reader. The Oxford English Dictionary, the Wrst edition of which appeared the year after Foote’s heresy trial, provides a primary deWnition of heresy as follows: Theological or religious opinion or doctrine maintained in opposition, or held to be contrary, to the “catholic” or orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, or, by extension, to that of any church, creed, or religious system, considered as orthodox. It is only through an extended deWnition of heresy that the door opens to allow Franke’s highly variable use of the term: “Opinion or doctrine in philosophy, politics, science, art, etc., at variance with those generally accepted as authoritative ” (OED Online, 2008). As will be demonstrated, aspects of thought which the less adventurous might prefer to call agnosticism, paganism or even atheism, are subsumed into the wide-ranging scope of this provocative study. The Cambridge Heretics, the group of which Russell was an Honorary Member, provides Franke with both his heretical cornerstone and his book’s opening chapters. In a skilfully contextualized examination, Franke documents the group’s Michaelmas 1909 genesis in the shadow, or perhaps in the intellectual light, of the Chawner ATairz—zthe Master of Emmanuel’s public expression of his personal loss of religious faith. Its Wrst chairman was C.yM. Picciotto, but it was its Wrst secretary, C.yK. Ogden, a newly arrived Magdalene College under- September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 91 graduate, who was to prove the group’s guiding genius. Franke argues convincingly that the group, which included Bernard Shaw, J.yM. Keynes, I.yA. Richards and G.yE. Moore, as well as Russell, in its membership roster, has suTered puzzling scholarly neglect, particularly when compared with the Apostles, its... (shrink)

The 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) is a provision of U.S. copyright law that seeks to protect the noneconomic rights of artists, called "moral rights." These rights are due to the "presumed intimate bond between artists and their works."1 In the United States it protects rights of artistic attribution and integrity: the artwork cannot be claimed as the work of another, and it cannot be distorted. In some cases VARA protects artworks from destruction. But what is the nature of (...) this intimate bond? The underlying principle behind the legal construct of artistic moral rights is that the artwork is an extension of its creator such that any harm to the work is a violation of the personhood of the artist.2 Another .. (shrink)

The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Løgstrup is second in reputation in his homeland only to Søren Kierkegaard. He is best known outside Europe for his _The Ethical Demand_, first published in Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in 1997. _Beyond the Ethical Demand_ contains excerpts, translated into English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays Løgstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first essay, he engages the critical response to _The Ethical (...) Demand,_ clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics “demands” that we are concerned for the other by introducing the crucial concept of “sovereign expressions of life.” Like Levinas, Løgstrup saw in the phenomenon of “the other” the ground for his ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of “the sovereign expressions of life,” spontaneous phenomena such as trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding. The last two essays connect his ethics with political life. Interest in Løgstrup in the English-speaking academic community continues to grow, and these important original sources will be essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of his ethics and phenomenology. “K. E. Løgstrup’s work undoubtedly made in his time an original contribution to the field of moral philosophy and philosophy of religion. This translation makes extracts from his later publications on moral philosophy accessible to an English-speaking audience. I am again impressed by the depth of his ideas, which are certainly not outdated and still relevant for contemporary debates in moral philosophy.” —_Bert Musschenga, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam _ “Making a large part of Knud Løgstrup’s legacy accessible to the English-speaking public is an event of enormous cultural, philosophical and political importance—and we are all in debt to his disciple, Kies van Kooten Niekerk, and the University Press of Notre Dame, for making it happen. Løgstrup, alongside few other giants of 20th Century ethical thought, like Emmanuel Levinas or Hans Jonas, anticipated and articulated all the major challenges and urgent tasks with which the coming century is likely to confront the moral self. Our ethical discourse was all the poorer so far for being barred access to his findings and proposition. This will no longer be the case.” —_Zygmunt Bauman, emeritus, University of Leeds_ “The publication of an English translation of Knut Eljert Løgstrup's later works in ethics provides a wider readership with the opportunity to better understand his important contribution to ethics in the second half of the last century. With his notion of the _Sovereign Expressions of Life_ Løgstrup articulates his rejection of moral atomism that has become influential in recent times. The introduction and annotation by Kees van Kooten Niekerk are very helpful to see how Løgstrup's thought developed beyond _The Ethical Demand.” —__Hans S. Reinders, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam_. (shrink)

In an earlier paper by one of us [K.-E. Hellwig (1981)], elements of discrete quantum stochastic processes which arise when the classical probability space is replaced by quantum theory have been considered. In the present paper a general formulation is given and its properties are compared with those of classical stochastic processes. Especially, it is asked whether such processes can be Markovian. An example is given and similarities to methods in quantum statistical thermodynamics are pointed out.

Concept of cognition in Viśiṣṭādvaita philosophy; a study.

The "gang of four" — Wang Hung-wen, Chang Ch'un-ch'iao, Chiang Ch'ing and Yao Wen-yuan — have created great chaos by confusing the relations between ourselves and the enemy, obliterating the differences between the two kinds of contradiction, wrecking Chairman Mao's policy of uniting with, educating and reforming intellectuals, calling intellectuals the "stinking number nine," smothering the revolutionary initiative of the broad masses of intellectuals, and destroying the ranks of revolutionary intellectuals.

In this paper I have tried to clarify the meaning of two very different sets of characteristics which philosophers have had in mind when they claimed that ethical terms were objective. I gave a very tentative answer to the question whether it is true to say that, in any of the distinguished senses, ethical statements are objective. Lastly, I indicated how the failure to make the distinction I draw was responsible for a number of confusions and unnecessary difficulties. More precisely, (...) in (1) I defined the first set of the characteristics in question, which together I have called solidity ; in (2) I give reasons why it is misleading to claim that ethical statements are solid and also misleading to claim they are not; in (3) I defined the second set of these characteristics, namely, proper contentiousness and proper complexity; in (4) I explained what I thought were the fundamental differences between these two sets of characteristics; in (5) I suggested that the solidity of an expression is normally a good reason for holding that the expression is properly contentious and properly complex; in (6) I claim that the failure to understand (4) and, therefore, also (5) leads to the following errors: (a) that, if an expression is solid , it must be properly contentious and properly complex ; that, if an expression is non-solid , it must be either properly contentious and properly simple , or properly non-contentious . (5) That, if an expression is properly contentious and properly complex , it must be solid ; if it is properly contentious and properly simple or if it is properly non-contentious , then it must be non-solid ; and lastly in (7) I have mentioned some common reasons for holding that ethical expressions have one or the other of the above-mentioned characteristics. (shrink)