A collection of interviews with influential theorists working in philosophy of logic. The questions: Why were you initially drawn to the philosophy of logic? What are your main contributions to the philosophy of logic? What is the proper role of philosophy of logic in relation to other disciplines, and to other branches of philosophy? What have been the most significant advances in the philosophy of logic? What are the most important open problems in philosophy of logic, and what are the (...) prospects for progress? Interviews with JC Beall, John Lane Bell, Johan van Benthem, Patricia A. Blanchette, Otávio Bueno, James Cargile, Mark Colyvan, Newton Carneiro Affonso da Costa, Pascal Engel, Susan Haack, Jaakko J. Hintikka, Dale Jacquette, Penelope Maddy, Lawrence S. Moss, Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen, Graham Priest, Stephen Read, Nicholas Rescher, Stewart Shapiro, Peter Simons, Timothy Williamson, Jan Woleński. (shrink)

In Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, author Mark Evan Bonds examines how writers have struggled to isolate the essence of music in ways that account for its profound effects on the human spirit. By carefully tracing the evolution of absolute music from Ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to twentieth-century America, Bonds provides the first comprehensive history of this pivotal concept, and provokes new thoughts on the essence of music and how this essence explains music's effect. A (...) long awaited book from one of the most respected senior scholars in the field. (shrink)

We are obsessed with self-improvement; it’s a billion-dollar industry. But apps, workshops, speakers, retreats, and life hacks have not made us happier. Obsessed with the endless task of perfecting ourselves, we have become restless, anxious, and desperate. We are improving ourselves to death. The culture of self-improvement stems from philosophical classics, perfectionist religions, and a ruthless strain of capitalism—but today, new technologies shape what it means to improve the self. The old humanist culture has given way to artificial intelligence, social (...) media, and big data: powerful tools that do not only inform us but also measure, compare, and perhaps change us forever. This book shows how self-improvement culture became so toxic—and why we need both a new concept of the self and a mission of social change in order to escape it. Mark Coeckelbergh delves into the history of the ideas that shaped this culture, critically analyzes the role of technology, and explores surprising paths out of the self-improvement trap. Digital detox is no longer a viable option and advice based on ancient wisdom sounds like yet more self-help memes: The only way out is to transform our social and technological environment. Coeckelbergh advocates new “narrative technologies” that help us tell different and better stories about ourselves. However, he cautions, there is no shortcut that avoids the ancient philosophical quest to know yourself, or the obligation to cultivate the good life and the good society. (shrink)

Self-representational theories of consciousness hold that a mental phenomenon is conscious if, and only if, it presents, among other things, itself. But in conscious perception one may lose oneself in the object perceived and not be aware of one’s perceiving. The paper develops a Brentano-inspired response to this objection. He follows Aristotle in holding that one is aware of one’s perceiving only ‘on the side’: when one perceives something one’s perception neither is nor can become observation of itself. I argue (...) that the arguments Brentano gave for this claim in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint are wanting. However, a promising argument emerges if one takes Brentano’s conception of noticing into account. (shrink)

Stories of firms that exceed local compliance requirements in their environmental performance appear routinely. However, we have limited theoretical explanations of what propels these firms to exceed compliance. Our theory suggests that global competitive and institutional pressures lead multinational firms to develop highlevel, environmental management systems (EMS) that make them more competitive. For economic and other reasons, select firms make the choice to rationalize their collective environmental performance to the highest common denominator rather than the lowest. Regulations around the world (...) differ widely and are a moving target in many settings. The need to comply with such myriad, shifting rules leads to firms creating EMS to help stay ahead of regulations worldwide. Using institutional and internationalization theories as our basis, we offer a propositional model concerning global competitive/institutional pressures and their effects on corporate environmental performance. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications of the model. (shrink)

On the basis of careful textual exegesis and philosophical analysis, and contrary to the received view, Mark R. Wheeler demonstrates that Aristotle presents and systematically explicates his definition of the essence of the truth in the Metaphysics. Aristotle states the nominal definitions of the terms "truth" and "falsehood" as part of his arguments in defense of the logical axioms. These nominal definitions express conceptions of truth and falsehood his philosophical opponents would have recognized and accepted in the context of (...) dialectical argument. On the basis of these nominal definitions, Aristotle develops his definitions of the essences of truth and falsehood--his "real" definitions of truth and falsehood. Aristotle's methodical exposition of his essential definitions of truth and falsehood in the Metaphysics serves as a well-developed example of how his philosophical inquiry starts with nominal definitions and ends with real definitions. Wheeler also argues for the novel claim that Aristotle defines the most fundamental kind of truth in terms of accurate measurement. Aristotle's metrical conception of truth serves as the theoretical basis for specifying the truth conditions of various assertions, for identifying the sorts of beings implicated in these truth conditions, and for explaining the nature of approximate truth and falsehood. Far from offering us a minimal account of truth, Wheeler shows how Aristotle offers us a sophisticated and metrical theory of truth. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical study of the relations between hearing and thinking about music. The central problem it addresses is as follows: how is it possible to talk about what a listener perceives in terms that the listener does not recognize? By applying the concepts and techniques of analytic philosophy the author explores the ways in which musical hearing may be described as nonconceptual, and how such mental representation contrasts with conceptual thought. The author is both philosopher and musicologist (...) and uniquely combines the perspectives of both disciplines. Exploring the philosophical questions of mental representation in the relatively neglected, nonverbal domain of music, this study is a major contribution to the philosophical understanding of music perception and cognitive theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhen attempting to articulate the nature and scope of corporate social responsibility , a variety of opinions emerge. The primary CSR issue appears to be: Should firms go “beyond profits”? In order to address this normative question, this article will explore the theoretical underpinnings of CSR and its practical application. Part one of the paper begins by discussing common CSR definitions. Part two outlines the CSR debate in terms of the “narrow view” of CSR versus the “broad view” . Part (...) three applies both the narrow and broad approaches to CSR in analyzing two classic business and society cases: the Ford Pinto; and Merck's river blindness pill. The article concludes with a proposed synthesis of the CSR approaches discussed. (shrink)

Physicist Perakh critically reviews recent trends towards harmonizing religion and science, and shows that all such approaches are little more than tailoring evidence to fit the desired theory.

We are plagued today by a decline in ethical behavior. Scandals come so thick and fast that any attempt to list them is out of date in weeks if not days. But ethics isn’t just a matter of headlines; it’s a part of everyone’s life. We’re called on to make ethical decisions, large and small, all the time. This can be particularly tricky in the workplace, where our decisions can affect not just ourselves but coworkers, clients, customers, and even the (...) entire company. Existing ethics books are of limited use. They generally feature one author’s opinions on very specific situations, which may well have nothing to do with the problems we’re facing. And anyway, we don’t need expert advice. Mark Pastin insists every one of us is qualified to resolve even the thorniest dilemmas ourselves, and in this profoundly practical book he gives us the tools to do just that. Pastin argues that we all have an innate ethical –he calls it “the ethics eye.” The problem is, we’re not aware we have it or how to develop it. Here he provides practical tools we can use to open up our ethics eye so that we can consistently see what is right and do it. Make an Ethical Difference shows how to apply these tools using actual ethical dilemmas drawn from Pastin’s decades of experience as an advisor to governments, corporations, and NGOs. The point is not to try to wedge your situation into one of the examples—it’s to show how a tool that can be applied to any situation is used in one particular instance. And once you’ve reached a decision, Pastin offers strategies for building consensus with those who might disagree with you. People often feel hopeless and skeptical that there is anything they as individuals can do to raise society’s ethical level or resolve long-standing impasses. By using the unique tools in this book, we will gain confidence in our innate ethical sense and take actions that will elevate the ethical level of the groups and organizations we belong to and society as a whole. (shrink)

_Rational Animals: The Teleological Roots of Intentionality_ offers an original account of the intentionality of human mental states, such as beliefs and desires. The account of intentionality in _Rational Animals_ is broadly biological in its basis, emphasizing the continuity between human intentionality and the levels of intentionality that should be attributed to animal actions and states. Establishing the goal-directed character of animal behavior, Mark Okrent argues that instrumentally rational action is a species of goal-directed behavior that is idiosyncratic to (...) individual agents and is distinguished by its novelty and flexibility. He also argues that some nonlinguistic animals are capable of instrumental rationality and that in the first instance, the contents of beliefs and desires are individuated by the explanatory role of those states in rationally accounting for such instrumentally rational behavior. The account of instrumental rationality offered in Rational Animals allows for understanding the practical rationality of linguistically competent human beings as a distinctive capacity of social animals capable of undertaking roles governed by socially sanctioned norms. Rational Animals will be of interest to cognitive scientists, philosophers of mind, philosophers of biology, philosophers of action, ethologists, and those interested in the debates concerning animal intelligence. (shrink)

Non-human animals (henceforth, “animals”) are typically regarded as moral patients rather than moral agents. Let us define these terms as follows: 1) X is a moral patient if and only if X is a legitimate object of moral concern: that is, roughly, X is something whose interests should be taken into account when decisions are made concerning it or which otherwise impact on it. 2) X is a moral agent if and only if X can be morally evaluated–praised or blamed (...) (broadly understood)–for its motives and actions. Nothing in (1) and (2), of course, rules out one and the same individual being both a moral agent and a patient. Most humans are both. The notion of a moral agent is typically run together with that of a moral subject: 3) X is a moral subject if and only if X is, at least sometimes, motivated to act by moral considerations. However, (2) and (3) are not equivalent: the motivation for an action is one thing, the evaluation of the action quite another; indeed evaluation is often of motivation. As a matter of practice these are, for obvious reasons, run together. But motivation and evaluation are conceptually distinct. This is a claim that many will regard with surprise. In effect, the bulk of this paper can be regarded as an attempt to defend this claim as it applies to the case of animals. In this section, I merely offer some preliminary remarks in its defense. Suppose that my wife, worn down by the domestic squalor that goes with two young boys, a very large dog, and a slovenly husband, has me (unknowingly) hypnotized. Now, whenever she utters the word ‘Rosebud’, I experience an uncontrollable desire to mop the floor. This desire is, it seems, a motivational state, one that when combined with relevant cognitive states (the belief that this is a mop, the belief that this is a floor, and so on) will, ceteris paribus, result in a certain sort of behavior on my part. This floor-mopping, however, is not something for which I can be praised or blamed. Ex hypothesi, it is the result of a motivational state that is outside my control.. (shrink)

The first film adaptation of the story of the unmasking of the insatiable Transylvanian vampire, Count Dracula. The tale unfolds with an awesome eeriness unequalled in later versions.

Wie geartet ist das Verhältnis zwischen den zentralen Begriffen „Bewußtsein“ und „Reflexion“ in Lockes Essay? Sind diese Begriffe für Locke identisch oder voneinander verschieden? Falls sie verschieden sind, wie ist der Unterschied genau zu bestimmen? Diese Arbeit untersucht die Fragen, unter Berücksichtigung der unterschiedlichen Deutungen in der Sekundärliteratur; sie sichtet und prüft den Text des Essays sorgfältig und breitet ein breites Spektrum philosophischer Implikationen von Lockes Ausführungen über das „Bewußtsein“ und „Reflexion“ aus. Der abschließende Teil legt dar, daß Locke niemals (...) eine feste Position gegenüber dem Verhältnis zwischen den beiden Begriffen eingenommen hat, sondern daß er zwischen verschiedenen Positionen schwankte -als Resultat der starken philosophischen Kräfte, die ihn bald in die eine, bald in die andere Richtung zogen. (shrink)

Over the past four decades, Charles Taylor's work as an intellectual historian, epistemologist, and normative political theorist has made him a leading figure in contemporary social philosophy. In Charles Taylor: Thinking and Living Deep Diversity, Mark Redhead examines the problem of political fragmentation, the problem of how to accommodate narrowly defined groups while promoting allegiance to a larger polity, through an analysis of Taylor's thought and politics.

This is one of those cases to which Dr. 8 oodhouse's remark applies with all its force, that a method which leads to true results must have its logic — H.S Smith (" On Some of the Methods at Present in Use in Pure Geometry," p. 6) A goodly amount of modern metaphysics has concerned itself, in one form or another, with the question: what attitude should we take in regard to a language whose semantic underpinnings seem less than certain? (...) Since much of standard English is surely of this type, many philosophers have felt driven to extreme and unpalatable resolutions — wholesale rejection of attractive logical rules, radical "antirealism", "minimalism" about truth, and so forth, Scientists, however, have long dealt with analogous foundational insecurities and, under the duress of practicality, have framed a set of shifting attitudes towards language and reasoning that seem far more commonsensical than the extreme positions to which pure philosophy has often been led. Following this lead, this essay will recommend a more nuanced approach to linguistic insecurity that is neither naively optimistic nor mired in the gloomy sloughs of antirealism. (shrink)

This issue of the journal sees a number of exchanges on significant ethical problems. ‘Nudges’ have attracted a good deal of attention recently in the context of the ethics of public health interventions. Martin Wilkinson writes a guest editorial introducing important debate on Yashar Saghai's featured article, Salvaging the concept of nudge . Also, Timothy Murphy locks horns with Katrien Devolder and Ezio Di Nucci on the doctrine of double effect as it applies to research on embryos.One of the exchanges (...) published here involves the legitimacy of research ethics review. Murray Dyck and Gary Allen claim that only in a small minority of cases is research ethics review warranted and that, in the main, responsibility for the ethical conduct of research should lie with the researchers themselves.However, David Hunter Mark Israel (see …. (shrink)

The dynamical patterns in mental phenomena have a characteristic suppleness&emdash;a looseness or softness that persistently resists precise formulation&emdash;which apparently underlies the frame problem of artificial intelligence. This suppleness also undermines contemporary philosophical functionalist attempts to define mental capacities. Living systems display an analogous form of supple dynamics. However, the supple dynamics of living systems have been captured in recent artificial life models, due to the emergent architecture of those models. This suggests that analogous emergent models might be able to explain (...) supple dynamics of mental phenomena. These emergent models of the supple mind, if successful, would refashion the nature of contemporary functionalism in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In Great Economists before Keynes, a chronological guide is included for readers wishing to trace the development of economic thought from early mercantilist writings to the pivotal work of John Maynard Keynes. Each article briefly discusses the life and enduring contributions of economists such as Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, David Ricardo, and Leon Walras. Wherever possible, portraits accompany the text. Mark Blaug is Emeritus Professor of the Economics of Education at the University of London Institute of Education, and Consultant (...) Professor at the University of Buckingham. He is the author of numerous articles and books in the field of economics and economic history, including Economic Theory in Retrospect, an established classic in the field. (shrink)

The attempt by the digital forces to ‘naturalize’ the digital and thus to make it one with our ontology raises a whole host of issues about how to identify the Self. The multi-pronged process of naturalization are driven by a particular dynamic: the ‘more’ of data. Data is not a static pile of information, but only works within strategies of accumulation. Businesses and academe have bought into this strategy – addicted to its potential for control – in ways that make (...) it impossible to see ‘an outside’. This ‘more’ is, however, hardly foolproof, and is in fact designed around a wide range of fallibilities – some visible, but most not - that are also now part of the new natural. The resultant dialectic is unstable and as it operates to re-engineer our sense of Self it faces its own destiny. (shrink)

Researchers in post-war industrial laboratories such as Bell Labs and the Smith-Kettlewell Institute pioneered solutions to compensate for sensory loss through so-called sensory substitution systems, premised on an assumption of cortical and sensory plasticity. The article tracks early discussions of plasticity in psychology literature from William James, acknowledged by Wiener, but explicitly developed by Bach-y-Rita and his collaborators. After discussing the conceptual foundations of the principles of sensory substitution, two examples are discussed. First, ‘Project Felix’ was an experiment in vibrotactile (...) communication by means of ‘hearing gloves’ for the deaf at Norbert Wiener’s laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, demonstrated to Helen Keller in 1950. Second, the tactile-visual sensory substitution system for the blind pioneered by Paul Bach-y-Rita from 1968 onwards. Cumulatively, this article underlines the crucial yet occluded history of research on sensory impairments in the discovery of underlying neurophysiological processes of plasticity and the emergent discourse of neuroplastic subjectivity. (shrink)

Comte’s ideas were spread in Britain through the medium of J S Mill’s System of Logic. Positivism in this version was much like the original in France: it was an historical theory about the classification of knowledge through three progressive stages. Progress referred to both scientific knowledge and civilisation. Comte’s system omitted the subject of psychology, but Mill’s followers, G H Lewes and Alexander Bain, remedied this by incorporating this discipline into the Comtean canon as an evolutionary doctrine.Comte had excluded (...) psychology from the ranks of the sciences because it lacked independence. That is, the mind’s ability to alter its environment by use of volition or will meant that it was not the sort of phenomenon that was analyzable using scientific method. Lewes, in countering this idea, based psychology in biology so as to emphasise those aspect of the discipline that were analogous to other sciences. Lewes saw the mind as the brain and regarded volition as very much like a reflex action or an instinct that might be beyond the mind’s control. Lewes also faulted Comte or classifying knowledge in an intellectual system that was not drawn from science. In place of Comte’s stages, Lewes substituted Herbert Spencer’s empirically-based notion of “ascending complexity”. This developmental thesis was not based upon natural selection, but upon the theory that both biological organism and the mind developed increased functionality as they evolved.Leslie Stephen’s positivism, unlike Lewes’, was not based upon data from neurophysiology. Instead it was a philosophical defence of a secular school of philosophy that began with Hume and Bentham and stretched forward to Lewes and Spencer. Rather perversely for a self-proclaimed member of a school that included Bentham, Stephen’s chief purpose was to attack utilitarianism, which he regarded as the opposition to evolutionary philosophy. Utilitarianism, Stephen argued, attributed too great a role to the intellect at the expense of the feelings. In his view, the latter were the important factors in decision-making and they were analogous to instincts and not subject to a utilitarian calculus. (shrink)

The first defenses of Aquinas's doctrine after his death, particularly those five polemical works known as the correctoria, are usually read as illustrations of the intellectual forces of the late thirteenth century. The correctoria are used to show the struggle between “Augustinianism” and “Aristotelianism,” between Franciscans and Dominicans, between anti-Thomists and Thomists. It is true that they are anti-Augustinian, after a fashion. They come from Dominican hands, and they defend Thomas. But it is important to see why they reject the (...) views of the self-proclaimed Augustinians and which Thomism they defend. Beyond any question of partisanship, the correctoria deserve to be read as original works of speculative self-consciousness. The Augustinianism they contest is one of philosophical literalism in method and doctrine; the Thomism they defend is one of analogical plurality and methodological restraint. The authors of the correctoria speak substantively about what Thomas achieved for the method of philosophical discourse and say pointedly why it is that his achievement offends their adversaries. (shrink)