In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Resonance and Response:Dewey, Merleau-Ponty, and Ecological EthicsMatthew Williams-WyantIntroductionThe contributions of Dewey and Merleau-Ponty exhibit a kinship rarely seen in philosophy. This uncanny similarity between two thinkers who shared no known direct contact and were separated by an ocean becomes less mysterious considering their shared situation and approach grounded in lived experience. For Dewey, the denotative-empirical method is a means to study things "on their own account" (Experience and (...) Nature, LW 1:14). Through selective emphasis, the inquirer is open within primary experience to the expressive movement of the object of inquiry. Merleau-Ponty's notion of interrogation seeks a similar aim in motivating Being to creatively express itself. In the act of expression, the reverberations of nature emerge, as Dewey notes, in "a perfect integration" of substance and form (Art as Experience, LW 10:114). The resonances of nature qua reverberations in turn resonate—evoke qualitative, non-cognitive meanings—between the inquirer and the selected object of inquiry establishing a resonance between our conceptions of the concrete world. The similarity between Dewey and Merleau-Ponty, then, is due to their attunement to this resonance.Perspective—the situated, lived context through which each person is attuned—prevents a one-for-one mapping of Dewey's thought onto Merleau-Ponty and vice versa.1 However, the resonance between these two thinkers establishes a complementary approach to ethics. In this paper, I argue that the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and the philosophy of Dewey, when read together, provide a clear path from an aesthetic point of departure to a genuinely ecological ethics. The aesthetic foundation of Dewey's denotative-empirical method benefits from Merleau-Ponty's notion of interrogation grounded on his discussion of the body. In turn, Dewey's ethical contributions give voice [End Page 40] to the implicit ethics present but never explicitly formulated by Merleau-Ponty. The result is an ethical relation of responsiveness that accounts for the plurality of values and the porous, ever-changing boundaries between nature and human activity.1. The "Problem" of ExperienceA genuinely ecological ethics, one founded on the intertwined relation between human activity and nature, requires an approach that avoids the epistemological traps common to many philosophical positions. In framing interrogation as a necessary revision to traditional philosophical approaches, Merleau-Ponty indirectly addresses this concern.For Merleau-Ponty, interrogation is a response to a specific situation raised through the inadequacies of previous modes of philosophical inquiry; namely, reflection, dialectic, and intuition. Each of these perspectives employs a view from above—a "pensée de survol"—resulting in an insurmountable break between our knowledge of the world and the world itself. In attempting to overcome our everyday naïveté through philosophical understanding, the philosophies of reflection "replaces the 'world' with the 'Being-thought'" (Visible and the Invisible 43). In doing so, it remains naïve to the presuppositions that accompany any mode of philosophy that analyzes Being as if the observer were not already caught up in the movement of being. Dialectical philosophy has often been encumbered by formulations that mistake the fluidity of the dialectic itself for a rigid set of stages marked by complete and exhaustive concepts such as Fichte's thesis-antithesis-synthesis or Sartre's Being and Nothingness (Visible and the Invisible 94). According to Merleau-Ponty, it forgets, or ignores, the openness of meaning as it intertwines with others and transcends its previous moment. Finally, philosophical inquiries grounded in intuition run the risk of bifurcating, and ultimately reifying, fact and essence rather than seeing these two aspects as abstract moments, or dependent parts, of concrete existence (Visible and the Invisible 113).Dewey recognizes a similar problem when philosophers emphasize the need for a definition of experience. If our approach to philosophical inquiry was done correctly, we would not see experience as an epistemological stumbling block, but see it for what it is, our point of access to the world. This is what the denotative-empirical method attempted to show.2 For Dewey, traditional theories on the interaction between human activity and nature "are really elaborations of the same sort of assumptions … assumptions which first make a division where none exists, and... (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to clarify Nāgārjuna’s use of the term pratijñā in verse 29 of the Vigrahavyāvartanī as situated in its contemporaneous thriving debate culture. In contrast to the standard formulation, which interprets the term pratijñā as a reference to the thesis of śūnyatā proffered by Nāgārjuna in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, an examination of the debate culture in, and leading up to, second-century CE India shows that the term pratijñā refers to the first of five steps within the (...) Nyaya five-membered syllogism as it functions within a vitaṇḍā form of debate. Through an examination of the context in which this verse was written, the association made between Nāgārjuna’s use of pratijñā in the VV and śūnyatā within other texts becomes dislodged, thereby demonstrating the inadequacy of the standard formulation and the need for a revised understanding of the intent of the VV. (shrink)

When a speaker states an argument in arguing—in its core sense—for the conclusion, the speaker asserts, as opposed to merely implies or implicates, the associated inference claim to the effect that the conclusion follows from the premises. In defense of this, I argue that how an inference claim is conveyed when stating an argument is constrained by constitutive and normative conditions for core cases of the speech of arguing for a conclusion. The speech act of assertion better reflects such conditions (...) than does implication, conversational implicature, or conventional implicature. (shrink)

Pascal, turning Augustinianism inside out, radically expanded the powers of imagination implicit in the work of Montaigne and Descartes, and made imagination ...

This paper distinguishes between two types of persuasive force arguments can have in terms of two different connections between arguments and inferences. First, borrowing from Pinto, an arguer's invitation to inference directly persuades an addressee if the addressee performs an inference that the arguer invites. This raises the question of how invited inferences are determined by an invitation to inference. Second, borrowing from Sorenson, an arguer's invitation to inference indirectly persuades an addressee if the addressee performs an inference guided by (...) the argument even though it is uninvited. This raises the question of how an invitation to inference can guide inferences that the arguer does not use the argument to invite. Focusing on belief-inducing inference, the primary aims here are to clarify what is necessary for an addressee's belief-inducing inference to be invited by an argument used as an instrument of persuasion; and to highlight the capacity of arguments to guide such inferences. The paper moves beyond Pinto's discussion by using Boghossian's Taking Condition in service of and in way that illustrates how epistemically bad arguments can rationally persuade addressees of their conclusions. (shrink)

The Doctor Strange offers a unique opportunity to explore the question: how can people say that something exists if it can't be detected in the physical world. As a physician and a man of science, Doctor Stephen Strange has a strictly materialist worldview. Before Kamar‐Taj, Strange sought his cure through the only means he could understand: medicine and science. Medicine and science always push the boundaries of what people can know about the human body and the universe, constantly discovering new (...) methods and drugs through research and experimentation. The Doctor Strange provides an opportunity to consider the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard writes that “it is also the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision” with the unknown. Kierkegaard describes two different kinds of teachers in the Philosophical Fragments: Socratic teacher and the god as teacher. The Ancient One seems to be a combination of the Socratic teacher and the god as teacher. (shrink)

A 47-year-old woman with a history of anxiety disorder is admitted to the hospital for shortness of breath. On the third day of hospitalization, she asks her physician for a copy of all documents pertaining to her care. What expectation should she have for full disclosure? Are there limits on her access to her medical records and do her physician's concerns about professional privilege matter?The virtues of transparency in medicine have been well described. As proponents of transparency, we favor patient (...) access to their medical records, but we are increasingly troubled by the ease and extent of disclosure in current practice as technology advances and... (shrink)

This article presents a cognitive anthropological critique of François Jullien’s approach to language and culture. Jullien approaches ‘culture’ as a coherent set of concepts across time and space, relying primarily on identifying Chinese (and Greek) thought with particular concepts expressed in language. This mischaracterizes human culture, which exists on the level of individual mental representations, and relies on a form of linguistic determinism which fails to stand in the face of psychological and anthropological evidence. This leads Jullien to claim an (...) incredible degree of cultural (and ontological) divergence between the Chinese and Europeans. By accounting for the distribution and dynamism of mental representations, the degree to which thought is underdetermined by language, and above all the divergence of intuitive and reflective cognition on the individual level, we can arrive at an alternative, ontologically realistic account of cultural divergence. (shrink)

Two criticisms of the virtue-theoretic approach to argument appraisal are as follows. First, it is inadequate as argument cogency is conceptually independent of the characteristics of arguers (Bowell and Kingsbury 2013). Second, it is unmotivated since the viability of virtue argumentation theory (VAT) doesn’t require a virtue-theoretic approach to argument appraisal. This deflates the first criticism as an evaluation of VAT (Gascon 2016, Paglieri 2015). I consider each and explain why it is misguided highlighting the connection between the general concept (...) of good argument and associated criteria of goodness, and the connection between good arguments and good arguing. Résumé: L’approche fondée sur la théorie de la vertu pour l’évaluation des arguments fait l’objet de deux critiques. Premièrement, elle est inadéquate, car la force de l’argument est conceptuellement indépendante des caractéristiques des argumentateurs (Bowell et Kingsbury 2013). Deuxièmement, elle est dénuée de motivation, car la viabilité de la théorie de l’argumentation fondée sur la vertu (AFV) ne nécessite pas une approche fondée sur la théorie de la vertu pour l’évaluation des arguments. Cela dévalorise la première critique en tant qu’évaluation de la AFV (Gascon 2016, Paglieri 2015). J’examine chacune de ces critiques et j’explique pourquoi elles sont erronées en soulignant le lien entre le concept général de bon argument et les critères de bonté qui lui sont associés, et le lien entre les bons arguments et la bonne argumentation. (shrink)

The general issue addressed in this dissertation is: what do the models of formal model-theoretic semantics represent? In chapter 2, I argue that those of first-order classical logic represent meaning assignments in possible worlds. This motivates an inquiry into what the interpretations of first-order quantified model logic represent, and in Chapter 3 I argue that they represent meaning assignments in possible universes of possible worlds. A possible universe is unpacked as one way model reality might be. The problem arises here (...) as to how we are to understand the distinction between the actual and the possible as it relates to modal reality. ;Along with the development of the main arguments in Chapters 2 and 3, the dissertation assesses the status of semantic accounts or logical properties and relations. Specifically, what does the model-theoretic account of a logically possible situation add to the syntactic account ? ;Proofs of invalidity in terms of the models of formal semantics do not establish that it is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false, since a formal model is merely given by a consistent set of sentences. Unless there is some way to generate a non-formal model from a formal one, such proofs do not really go beyond syntactic notions. The dissertation ends by concluding that there is no way to generate a non-formal model from a formal one without relying on logical intuitions that are syntactical. ;Hence efforts to construct a semantic basis for model logic independent of syntactic commitments are misguided. However, in classical logic the independence of the semantic account from the syntactic one is grounded on the intuition that it is metaphysically possible for there to be a denumerably infinite totality of objects. (shrink)

The misconception that the application of statistical methods makes psychology a science is examined. Criticisms of statistical methods involving issues related to the generalization of aggregate-level findings to individuals, the impoverished language of numbers, the application of questions to methods, and the logic of statistical hypothesis testing are reviewed. It is not suggested, however, that statistical methods be abandoned. Instead, it is suggested that shortcomings of statistical methods indicate the importance of making ontological considerations a primary concern. Methodological considerations in (...) the absence of an understanding of the truth or ontological status of what is being studied will inevitably undermine psychologists’ efforts at understanding what it is to be human. Whereas the use of statistical methods in psychological research does not make the discipline a science, the truthful affiliation of methodology with ontology may. (shrink)

Humans are unique in their ability to create systematic accounts of the world - theories based on guiding cosmological principles. This book is about the role of cognition in creating cosmologies, and explores this through the ethnography and history of Yijing divination in China. Diviners explain the cosmos in terms of a single substance, qi, unfolding across scales of increasing complexity to create natural phenomena and human experience. Combined with an understanding of human cognition, it shows how this conception of (...) scale offers a new way for anthropologists and other social scientists to think about cosmology, comparison, and cultural difference. (shrink)

The anti-realist nihilism of post-modernist thought provides a constant challenge for science and scientists not only to refute this view but to make clear what constitutes science and the scientific method. The author reviews the major arguments of post-modern thought and its criticism of science and then provides a point by point refutation. The Popperian notion of refutability and empiricality provide the cornerstone of this discussion. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

An account of validity that makes what is invalid conditional on how many individuals there are is what I call a conditional account of validity. Here I defend conditional accounts against a criticism derived from Etchemendy’s well-known criticism of the model-theoretic analysis of validity. The criticism is essentially that knowledge of the size of the universe is non-logical and so by making knowledge of the extension of validity depend on knowledge of how many individuals there are, conditional accounts fail to (...) reflect that the former knowledge is basic, i.e., independent of knowledge derived from other sciences. Appealing to Russell’s pre-Principia logic, I defend conditional accounts against this criticism by sketching a rationale for thinking that there are infinitely many logical objects. (shrink)

Responds to comments by F. C. Richardson regarding the present author's rejection of the indeterminate textuality of postmodern thought as self-contradictory . The present author considers the possibility of a rational-empiricist explanation of human behavior. 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

This reader brings together classic and contemporary contributions to debates about social justice. A collection of classic and contemporary contributions to debates about social justice. Includes classic discussions of justice by Locke and Hume. Provides broad coverage of contemporary discussions, including theoretical pieces by John Rawls, Robert Nozick and Ronald Dworkin. Contains papers that apply theories of justice to concrete issues, such as gender and the family, the market, world poverty, cultural rights, and future generations. Philosophically challenging yet accessible to (...) students. (shrink)

One of the central debates within contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy concerns how to formulate an egalitarian theory of distributive justice which gives coherent expression to egalitarian convictions and withstands the most powerful anti-egalitarian objections. This book brings together many of the key contributions to that debate by some of the world’s leading political philosophers: Richard Arneson, G.A. Cohen, Ronald Dworkin, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, John Rawls, T.M. Scanlon, and Larry Temkin.

There has been little previous research regarding the effectiveness of ethics education interventions for residential care‐givers. The Researching Interventions to Promote Ethics in social care project responded to the question: Which is the most effective ethics education intervention for care‐givers in residential social care? A pragmatic cluster trial explored the impact of three ethics education interventions for: (a) interactive face‐to‐face ethics teaching; (b) reflective ethics discussion groups; and (c) an immersive simulation experience. There was also a control arm (d). 144 (...) trial participants were recruited from 39 residential care homes for older people in southern England. Change scores compared across intervention arms showed a significant reduction in work‐related moral stress in the teaching arm compared with control group (p =.03); there were no significant differences between control and intervention arms in change scores for moral sensitivity, interpersonal reactivity (empathy) or ethical leadership. Qualitative data themes were as follows: ethical care; care challenges; and ethical care inhibitors. Overall findings stimulate reflection on the value of three different ethics education interventions and the most appropriate means to evaluate their impact. Findings suggest the complexity and diverse nature of ethical competence in care. We suggest a way forward for research evaluating ethics education. (shrink)

Introduction -- "Every Legitimate Government is Republican": Rousseau's Debt to and Departure from Montesquieu on Republicanism -- What if There is no Legislator? Rousseau's History of the Government of Geneva -- Rousseau's Republican Citizenship: The Moral Psychology of The Social Contract -- Rousseau's negative liberty: Themes of domination and skepticism in The Social Contract -- Rousseau's Ancient Ends of Legislation: Liberty, Equality (& Fraternity) -- Property and Possession in Rousseau's Social Contract -- Political Equality Among Unequals -- On the Primacy (...) of Peoplehood: Nations and Nationalism in Rousseau's Social Contract -- Rousseau on Voting and Electoral Laws -- Rousseau and the puzzle of the Roman Republic -- Rousseau's Case against Democracy -- Rousseau's Dilemma or "Of Civil Religion" -- Entreating the Political: Politics and Theology in Rousseau's Social Contract -- Civil Religion and Political Unity: Social Contract 4.8. (shrink)

Lower subjective socioeconomic status (SSS) and higher personal relative deprivation (PRD) relate to poorer health. Both constructs concern people’s perceived relative social position, but they differ in their emphasis on the reference groups people use to determine their comparative disadvantage (national population vs. similar others) and the importance of resentment that may arise from such adverse comparisons. We investigated the relative utility of SSS and PRD as predictors of self-rated physical and mental health (e.g., self-rated health, stress, health complaints). Across (...) 6 studies, self-rated physical and mental health were on the whole better predicted by measures of PRD than by SSS while controlling for objective socioeconomic status (SES), with SSS rarely contributing unique variance over and above PRD and SES. Studies 4 to 6 discount the possibility that the superiority of PRD over SSS in predicting health is due to psychometric differences (e.g., reliability) or response biases between the measures. (shrink)

Many health care professionals (HCPs) are understandably reluctant to treat patients in environments infested with bedbugs, in part due to the risk of themselves becoming bedbug vectors to their own homes and workplaces. However, bedbugs are increasingly widespread in care settings, such as nursing homes, as well as in private homes visited by HCPs, leading to increased questions of how health care organizations and their staff ought to respond. This situation is associated with a range of ethical considerations including the (...) duty of care, stigmatization, vulnerability, confidentiality, risks for third parties, and professional autonomy. In this article, we analyze these issues using a case study approach. We consider how patients whose living environments are infested with bedbugs can receive care in the community setting in a manner that supports their well-being, is consistent with fairness in care provision, and takes into account risks for HCPs and third parties. We also discuss limits and obstacles to the provision of care in these situations. (shrink)

This book examines the origins and subsequent evolution of multicellularity. The transition from unicellular to multicellular life was one of a few major events in the history of life that created new opportunities for more complex biological systems to evolve.

TRAGICALLY, ETHNIC CONFLICTS HAVE BECOME ONE OF THE HALLMARKS of the post-Cold War era. In response to this, two distinct traditions appear to be emerging.The first continues the classical just war tradition while the second represents a new "reconciliation tradition," built largely around questions of restorative justice in areas of social division. Our goal in this essay is to begin a rapprochement of these divergent traditions by asking the question, what does a restorative justice perspective offer to the just war (...) tradition? We proceed in three stages: first, we survey the current state of the just war tradition; second, we introduce the reconciliation tradition, drawing on both reconciliation thinkers and the practical experience of experiments in social reconciliation in South Africa and Rwanda; and third, we draw these two traditions together with a series of constructive proposals for how the reconciliation tradition can enrich the just war tradition. (shrink)

A substantial body of evidence suggests that autobiographical recollection and simulation of future happenings activate a shared neural network. Many of the neural regions implicated in this network are affected in patients with bipolar disorder , showing altered metabolic functioning and/or structural volume abnormalities. Studies of autobiographical recall in BD reveal overgeneralization, where autobiographical memory comprises primarily factual or repeated information as opposed to details specific in time and in place and definitive of re-experiencing. To date, no study has examined (...) whether these deficits extend to future event simulation. We examined the ability of patients with BD and controls to imagine positive, negative and neutral future events using a modified version of the Autobiographical Interview that allowed for separation of episodic and non-episodic details. Patients were selectively impaired in imagining future positive, negative, and neutral episodic details; simulation of non-episodic details was equivalent across groups. (shrink)

The United States has long been a model for accessible, affordable education, as exemplified by the country's public universities. And yet less than 60 percent of the students entering American universities today are graduating. Why is this happening, and what can be done? Crossing the Finish Line provides the most detailed exploration ever of college completion at America's public universities. This groundbreaking book sheds light on such serious issues as dropout rates linked to race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Probing graduation (...) rates at twenty-one flagship public universities and four statewide systems of public higher education, the authors focus on the progress of students in the entering class of 1999--from entry to graduation, transfer, or withdrawal. They examine the effects of parental education, family income, race and gender, high school grades, test scores, financial aid, and characteristics of universities attended. The conclusions are compelling: minority students and students from poor families have markedly lower graduation rates--and take longer to earn degrees--even when other variables are taken into account. Noting the strong performance of transfer students and the effects of financial constraints on student retention, the authors call for improved transfer and financial aid policies, and suggest ways of improving the sorting processes that match students to institutions. An outstanding combination of evidence and analysis, Crossing the Finish Line should be read by everyone who cares about the nation's higher education system. (shrink)

Two important assumptions of behavioral momentum theory are contradicted by existing data. Resistance to change is not due simply to the Pavlovian contingency between a discriminative stimulus and the rate of reinforcement in its presence, because variations in the response-reinforcer contingency, independent of the stimulus-reinforcer contingency, produce differential resistance to change. Resistance to change is also not clearly related to measures of preference, in that several experiments show the two measures to dissociate.

The National Catholic Bioethics Center’s commentary on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2018 responsum concerning hysterectomy fails to address the explicit reasoning that the CDF offers to justify its response. The CDF does not condone the hysterectomies in question as indirect sterilizations, justified by double effect. Rather, it defines procreation—and consequently sterilization—such that the moral categories of direct and indirect sterilization are not applicable in such cases. The CDF responsum is far more radical and consequential than the (...) NCBC commentary acknowledges. The responsum provides Catholic ethicists with an occasion for a necessary conversation that can be had only once the reasoning of the 2018 responsum is taken seriously in its own right. (shrink)

This essay examines the role that circumstances play in determining the morality of moral acts as presented in ST I-II, q. 18 and argues that q. 18 uses two different sets of principles that are left unreconciled in the text. The paper argues that consequently the text is not coherent but is radically divided; specifically, q. 18 holds both that a circumstance—by virtue of being a true circumstance and accident of the act—can make a good act evil but also that (...) whenever a circumstance renders a good act evil it must cease to be a circumstance and an accident. This paper then shows that in De Malo, q. 2 Aquinas provides a distinct and heretofore unappreciated account of circumstances and that he explicitly used the unique features of this account to reconcile the propositions that were left unreconciled in q. 18. (shrink)

Philosophical reflections on the environment began with early philosophers' invocation of a cosmology that mixed natural and supernatural phenomena. Today, the central philosophical problem posed by the environment involves not what it can teach us about ourselves and our place in the cosmic order but rather how we can understand its workings in order to make better decisions about our own conduct regarding it. The resulting inquiry spans different areas of contemporary philosophy, many of which are represented by the fifteen (...) original essays in this volume. The contributors first consider conceptual problems generated by rapid advances in biology and ecology, examining such topics as ecological communities, adaptation, and scientific consensus. The contributors then turn to epistemic and axiological issues, first considering philosophical aspects of environmental decision making and then assessing particular environmental policies, including reparations, remediation, and nuclear power, from a normative perspective. (shrink)

A global health archive consisting of podoconiosis tissue slides and blocks (which was collected and imported into the UK before the introduction of the Human Tissue Act), was donated to Brighton & Sussex Medical School in 2014. There is little guidance on the socioethical and legal issues surrounding the retrospective use of archived or ‘abandoned’ tissue samples, which poses a number of questions relating to the ethical standing of the archive. There is a great deal of interpretation in the guidelines (...) that are currently in existence; however, modern ethical principles cannot be applied as it is not feasible to either reconsent or retrospectively seek approval. Our research team believed that it was unethical to leave the archive in storage, as this option favours neither researcher nor subjects. Permission was obtained from the Human Tissue Authority and a local ethics board for the tissues to be utilized in on-going research on podoconiosis aetiology. There is a delicate balance between the benefits gained by society relating to the development and progress of scientific research and the risks to the donor regarding the reuse of their tissues. Clearer guidelines should be made available to ensure that researchers are able to reuse tissue archives in contemporary research. (shrink)

Previous studies suggest that psychopathic traits commonly present as comorbid with substance use disorders. Moreover, neuroimaging and psychometric findings suggest that psychopathic traits may predispose individuals to a sensitized reward response to drugs. Given that substance use disorders are characterized by a neurocognitive bias toward drug-reward relative to non-drug reward, it is possible that heightened psychopathic characteristics may further predispose to this processing bias. To evaluate this possibility, we assessed psychopathic traits (measured using the PCL-R; Hare, 2003 ) in 105 (...) probationers/parolees and evaluated the relationship between PCL-R scores, lifetime duration of drug use, and biases in neural response to drug- compared to food-related videos. Psychopathic traits (potentially driven by interpersonal/affective traits) were positively correlated with drug > food reactivity within the right insula and left amygdala. In addition, psychopathic traits modulated the relationship between drug use and drug > food reactivity within the left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, right insula, and left caudate nucleus. Specifically, lifetime duration of drug use correlated positively with drug > food reactivity in participants with lower levels of psychopathic traits and correlated negatively with drug > food reactivity in individuals with higher levels of psychopathic traits. These results help reconcile prior studies on psychopathy and drug-stimulus processing and provide neurocognitive support for the notion that psychopathic traits serve as an underlying risk factor for substance use disorders. These results suggest that different treatment regimens for substance abuse for individuals with higher or lower levels of psychopathy may be beneficial and suggest that reduction of neurocognitive biases to drug-related stimuli may offer useful targets for future treatment protocols. (shrink)

Aquinas implies that there is a single end of man, which can be known by reason from the moment of discretion and without the aid of revelation. This raises the problems: What is this end? How is it known? And how are the several natural, human goods related to this one end? The essay argues, first, that the naturally known end of man is the operation of virtue rather than God; second, that the virtue in question is, in the first (...) place, moral rather than intellectual; third, that the sub-rational goods, though naturally desired, are ultimately valuable as instrumental means to further goods; and finally, that there is, for Aquinas, a fundamental paradox at the heart of man’s moral experience, and that the axiology developed in the essay can help us to appreciate this paradox. It will also argue, in passing, that Aquinas’s axiology bears the clear mark of Cicero’s moderate Stoicism. (shrink)

Societal problems are not solved by individualistic interventions, but nor are systemic approaches optimal given their neglect of the social psychology underpinning group dynamics. This impasse can be addressed through agroup-level analysis (a “g-frame”) that social identity theorizing affords. Using a g-frame can make policy interventions more adaptive, inclusive, and engaging.

Anscombe argues in “Modern Moral Philosophy” that obligation and moral terms only have meaning in the context of a divine Lawgiver, whereas terms like ‘unjust’ have clear meaning without any such context and, in at least some cases, are incontrovertibly accurate descriptions. Because the context needed for moral-terms to have meaning does not generally obtain in modern moral philosophy, she argues that we should abandon the language of obligation, adopting instead the yet clear and meaningful language of injustice. She argues (...) further that we should develop an account of human flourishing to answer the question why we need to be just. The essay contends that Aquinas has an account of obligation that requires neither a god nor an account of human flourishing, and that proceeds immediately from the common apprehension of justice Anscombe noted. (shrink)

To study how religiosity affects family business goals, we merge literatures on goal setting, temporal orientation, and family business to argue that family business goals can be distinguished into short-term and long-term orientations and propose that religiosity affects both orientations, but to varying degrees. Drawing on a sample of private U.S. family businesses and applying partial least squares structural equations modeling, we find tentative support that religiosity has a stronger positive effect on long-term goal orientation than on short-term goal orientation. (...) We discuss implications for theory development and future research involving religiosity and family business goals. (shrink)

Theorists of learning, regulation, and evolution explain behavior using remarkably different concepts because of pressures toward specialization, a focus on testing simple causal theories that underconceptualize the contributions of the organism and its environment, and the absence of a working model capable of surviving in a complex environment. We add suggestions for the development and testing of such a model.

A review of The Cambridge Translations of Medieval Philosophical Thought, vol. 2.

This classroom edition includes _On the Social Contract_, the _Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts_, the _Discourse on the Origins of Inequality_, and the Preface to _Narcissus_. Each text has been newly translated and includes a full complement of explanatory notes. The editors’ introduction offers students diverse points of entry into some of the distinctive possibilities and challenges of each of these fundamental texts, as well as an introduction to Rousseau’s life and historical situation. The volume also includes annotated (...) appendices that help students to explore the origins and influences of Rousseau’s work, including excerpts from Hobbes, Pascal, Descartes, Mandeville, Diderot, Voltaire, Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Joseph de Maistre, Kant, Hegel, and Engels. (shrink)

In the covariant Hamiltonian mechanics with action-at-a-distance, we compare the proper time and dynamical time representations of the coordinate space world line using the differential geometry of nongeodesic curves in 3+1 Minkowski spacetime. The covariant generalization of the Serret-Frenet equations for the point particle with interaction are derived using the arc length representation. A set of invariant point particle kinematical properties are derived which are equivalent to the solutions of the equations of motion in coordinate space and which are functions (...) of either the proper time or the dynamical time. Expressions for the quantities are given for the example of the covariant harmonic oscillator and comments are offered regarding the measurability of the dynamical time. (shrink)

Final Crisis was an event comic produced by DC Comics in 2008 and written by Grant Morrison. In the story, the villain Darkseid takes over the minds of a majority of the Earth's population, including many of its superheroes. Wonder Woman is a notable exception. When one digs into the history of Wonder Woman, though, it isn't difficult to see from where Morrison is coming. This chapter examines a term Zizek uses alongside his discussion of fetishes, the "symptom". In everyday (...) use, it is easy to confuse what Zizek calls a symptom. If Morrison finds the concept of Wonder Woman to be bogus in light of the kinky sexuality associated with her origin, one could see his portrayal of Wonder Woman in Final Crisis as an attempt to bring to light the repressed truth underneath the surface of her image as a feminist icon. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: Debates about global distributive justice focus on the gulf between the wealthy North and the impoverished South, rather than on issues arising between liberal democracies. A review of John Rawls’s approach to international justice discloses a step Rawls skipped in his extension of his original-position procedure. The skipped step is where a need for the distributional autonomy of sovereign liberal states reveals itself. Neoliberalism denies the possibility and the desirability of distributional autonomy. A complete Rawlsian account of global justice (...) shows the necessity and possibility of a charter between liberal states, assuring each a proper minimum degree of distributional autonomy. (shrink)