Art, like Christian faith itself, is at home in the region of symbol - that realm in which meanings are not so much stated as they are evoked or illuminated, and in which events are not so much described as they are remembered and celebrated. This common zone is fertile, inexhaustible, and highly volati≤ therein lie both its powers and its dangers. Yet it claims the effort and allegiance of us all, insofar as we are humanly capable of fashioning and (...) responding to the world in which we live. Art and faith stand here on common ground, more common than the devotees of each ordinarily realize, and this ought to be pointed out and better understood. (From the Preface). (shrink)

Essays on the relationship of theology and philosophy, the sciences and the arts.

We consider whether public corporations can be ethical, using the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR). We distinguish between ‘weak’ CSR (where corporate profitability is enhanced by pursuing social and environmental objectives) and ‘strong’ CSR (where it is not) and consider four possible positions in relation to strong CSR. First, CSR is unnecessary – good ethics is synonymous with good business. Second, CSR is unethical as the government is responsible for intervention in markets. Third, CSR is ethical and is being (...) implemented by corporations. We find none of these positions convincing and argue a fourth position – CSR is ethical but impossible for corporations to implement due to competitive markets and the legal requirements of the corporate form. We conclude that public corporations are best considered amoral entities. In order to alleviate the inevitable negative social and environmental outcomes arising from corporate activities, we suggest strengthening the regulatory environment and using alternate organizational forms to conduct economic activities. (shrink)

We must therefore begin again from the metaphysical end of the main problem. We find in Whitehead's thought a picture of the kind of world in which value is possible, in which organic relatedness and continuity between diverse elements are made possible through "participation", through the agency of God. But we find that there is contradiction between his theory of value as atomic feeling and his whole metaphysics. True to our acceptance of "objectivity", we rather conceive value to be the (...) source and goal of feeling, the "participation of reality in ideality, of individuality in community". Both the nature and function of God in the world suggest that he is the absolute value in terms of which and because of which all "relative values" are achieved. ;The problem of the relation of value and existence is one of the special problems of value-theory in general. But it is particularly central not only to axiology but also to ontology, and the relation of these two fields to one another. It is the problem of a contrast between "realms" of Being; we are asking ourselves in what ways the contrast arises and is felt, and whether it can be metaphysically overcome. ;We must begin with an analysis of the value-situation in empirical terms. Ethics, as a field of thought concerned with value-factors, may serve to present the typical problems of the relation of value to existence: the objectivity of value, arising from a consideration of the judgment and definition of value and also from the normative character of ethical principles; the apprehension of value, following upon our admission, with Hartmann, of "objectivity" to value; the realization of value, introduced by the previous two problems taken together and by the further conception of the place and function of man the subject-agent. Thus, though we begin with the "phenomena" we find we must go beyond them to the metaphysical reference which they themselves presuppose. We agree with Hartmann that value has "objectivity" and is genuinely given in and for knowledge; we do not however concur that "objectivity" necessarily implies "essentiality" in value. (shrink)

This paper applies a utilitarian analysis to corporate political donations. Unlike the more common rights-based analyses, it is argued that the optimal policy is the one that best satisfies society’s rational preferences concerning donor influence, adequate financing, donor pressure and the cost of maintaining and enforcing the democratic system. This analysis suggests that a ban is best if it would be generally observed and sufficient financing from other sources is available, otherwise a donation cap is a better option. Further, lobbyists (...) should be banned from donating small gifts and drafting bills for candidates. The impact of disclosure and other risk management mechanisms are also considered. (shrink)

Objectives of socially responsible investment (SRI) are discussed with reference to the two main mechanisms of the SRI ‘movement’: shareholder advocacy and managed investments. We argue that in their current forms, both mechanisms lack the power to create significant corporate change. Shareholder advocacy has been largely unsuccessful to date. Even if resolutions were successful, shareholder advocacy may still be ineffective if underlying economic opportunities remain. Marketing material and investment prospectuses issued by socially responsible mutual funds (SRI funds) commonly contain the (...) claim that, by affecting corporations' access to capital funding, SRI funds can change corporate practices. This paper makes a contribution by presenting the market share of SRI funds in the regions where they are most developed, being Europe, the U.S. and Australia, to show that this claim is unlikely to eventuate. SRI funds also commonly claim that they will outperform conventional active mutual funds. That the economic performances of both are similar might be explained by their similar portfolio compositions. The paper makes an innovation in the SRI literature by adopting a legitimacy framework to explain the continued presence of SRI funds. To achieve desired social and environmental outcomes, SRI funds are urged to address issues at a more systemic level. A suggested mechanism is the collective lobbying of corporations and, especially, governments. (shrink)

Human sleeping arrangements have evolved over time and differ across cultures. The majority of adults share their bed at one time or another with a partner or child, and many also sleep with pets. In fact, around half of dog and cat owners report sharing a bed or bedroom with their pet. However, interspecies co-sleeping has been trivialized in the literature relative to interpersonal or human-human co-sleeping, receiving little attention from an interdisciplinary psychological perspective. In this paper, we provide a (...) historical outline of the “civilizing process” that has led to current sociocultural conceptions of sleep as an individual, private function crucial for the functioning of society and the health of individuals. We identify similar historical processes at work in the formation of contemporary constructions of socially normative sleeping arrangements for humans and animals. Importantly, since previous examinations of co-sleeping practices have anthropocentrically framed this topic, the result is an incomplete understanding of co-sleeping practices. By using dogs as an exemplar of human-animal co-sleeping, and comparing human-canine sleeping with adult-child co-sleeping, we determine that both forms of co-sleeping share common factors for establishment and maintenance, and often result in similar benefits and drawbacks. We propose that human-animal and adult-child co-sleeping should be approached as legitimate and socially relevant forms of co-sleeping, and we recommend that co-sleeping be approached broadly as a social practice involving relations with humans and other animals. Because our proposition is speculative and derived from canine-centric data, we recommend ongoing theoretical refinement grounded in empirical research addressing co-sleeping between humans and multiple animal species. (shrink)

In this paper I draw on the French philosopher Michel Foucault for a viewpoint on aspects of EBM. This means that I develop his idea of the spaces occupied by disease. I give much of the paper to only one of these spaces, the space of perception of disease, in order to major on the medical gaze, one of Foucault’s best-known contributions to the philosophy of medicine. As I explain what I mean by each of the spaces of disease, I (...) configure EBM into this space. The conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. Evidence-based clinical practice requires integration of individual clinical expertise and patient preferences with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research and consideration of available resources. EBM can be considered a subcategory of evidence-based healthcare, which also includes other branches of health-care practice such as evidence-based nursing or evidence-based physiotherapy. EBM subcategories include evidence-based surgery and evidence-based cardiology (Guyatt et al. 2008 , 783). (shrink)

In this work the distinguished physical chemist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi, demonstrates that the scientist's personal participation in his knowledge, in both its discovery and its validation, is an indispensable part of science itself. Even in the exact sciences, "knowing" is an art, of which the skill of the knower, guided by his personal commitment and his passionate sense of increasing contact with reality, is a logically necessary part. In the biological and social sciences this becomes even more evident. (...) The tendency to make knowledge impersonal in our culture has split fact from value, science from humanity. Polanyi wishes to substitute for the objective, impersonal ideal of scientific detachment an alternative ideal which gives attention to the personal involvement of the knower in all acts of understanding. His book should help to restore science to its rightful place in an integrated culture, as part of the whole person's continuing endeavor to make sense of the totality of his experience. In honor of this work and his The Study of Man Polanyi was presented with the Lecomte de Noüy Award for 1959. (shrink)

A liberal society seeks not to impose a single way of life, but to leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends. It therefore must govern by principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular vision of the good life. But can any such principles be found? And if not, what are the consequences for justice as a moral and political ideal? These are the questions Michael Sandel takes up in this penetrating (...) critique of contemporary liberalism. Sandel locates modern liberalism in the tradition of Kant, and focuses on its most influential recent expression in the work of John Rawls. In the most important challenge yet to Rawls' theory of justice, Sandel traces the limits of liberalism to the conception of the person that underlies it, and argues for a deeper understanding of community than liberalism allows. (shrink)

History, Philosophy and Science Teaching argues that science teaching and science teacher education can be improved if teachers know something of the history and philosophy of science and if these topics are included in the science curriculum. The history and philosophy of science have important roles in many of the theoretical issues that science educators need to address: the goals of science education; what constitutes an appropriate science curriculum for all students; how science should be taught in traditional cultures; what (...) integrated science is; how scientific literacy can be promoted; and the conflict which can occur between science curriculum and deep-seated religious or cultural values and knowledge. In part, answers to these questions hinge on views about the nature of science, views that are best informed by historical and philosophical study. Outlining the history of liberal, or contextual, approaches to the teaching of science, Michael Matthews elaborates contemporary curriculum developments that explicitly address questions about the nature and the history of science. He provides examples of classroom teaching and develops useful arguments on constructivism, multicultural science education and teacher education. The book will appeal to school and university science teachers, educators of science teachers, and historians and philosophers of science. (shrink)

This book expounds a system of ideas about the nature of mathematics which Michael Resnik has been elaborating for a number of years. In calling mathematics a science he implies that it has a factual subject-matter and that mathematical knowledge is on a par with other scientific knowledge; in calling it a science of patterns he expresses his commitment to a structuralist philosophy of mathematics. He links this to a defense of realism about the metaphysics of mathematics--the view that (...) mathematics is about things that really exist. (shrink)

In _Reconstructing the Cognitive World_, Michael Wheeler argues that we should turn away from the generically Cartesian philosophical foundations of much contemporary cognitive science research and proposes instead a Heideggerian approach. Wheeler begins with an interpretation of Descartes. He defines Cartesian psychology as a conceptual framework of explanatory principles and shows how each of these principles is part of the deep assumptions of orthodox cognitive science. Wheeler then turns to Heidegger's radically non-Cartesian account of everyday cognition, which, he argues, (...) can be used to articulate the philosophical foundations of a genuinely non-Cartesian cognitive science. Finding that Heidegger's critique of Cartesian thinking falls short, even when supported by Hubert Dreyfus's influential critique of orthodox artificial intelligence, Wheeler suggests a new Heideggerian approach. He points to recent research in "embodied-embedded" cognitive science and proposes a Heideggerian framework to identify, amplify, and clarify the underlying philosophical foundations of this new work. He focuses much of his investigation on recent work in artificial intelligence-oriented robotics, discussing, among other topics, the nature and status of representational explanation, and whether cognition is computation rather than a noncomputational phenomenon best described in the language of dynamical systems theory. Wheeler's argument draws on analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and empirical work to "reconstruct" the philosophical foundations of cognitive science in a time of a fundamental shift away from a generically Cartesian approach. His analysis demonstrates that Heideggerian continental philosophy and naturalistic cognitive science need not be mutually exclusive and shows further that a Heideggerian framework can act as the "conceptual glue" for new work in cognitive science. (shrink)

On the 100th anniversary of the publication of History and Class Consciousness, a new edition of this indispensable guide to Lukacs's thought and politics The philosophical and political development that converted Georg Lukács from a distinguished representative of Central European aesthetic vitalism into a major Marxist theorist and Communist militant has long remained an enigma. In this this now classic study, Michael Löwy for the first time traced and explained the extraordinary mutation that occurred in Lukács's thought between 1909 (...) and 1929. Utilizing many as yet unpublished sources, Löwy meticulously reconstructed the complex itinerary of Lukács's thinking as he gradually moved towards his decisive encounter with Bolshevism. The religious convictions of the early Lukács, the peculiar spell exercised on him and on Max Weber by Dostoyevskyan images of pre-revolutionary Russia, the nature of his friendships with Ernst Bloch and Thomas Mann, were amongst the discoveries of the book. Then, in a fascinating case-study in the sociology of ideas, Löwy showed how the same philosophical problematic of Lebensphilosophie dominated the intelligentsias of both Germany and Hungary in the pre-war period, yet how the different configurations of social forces in each country bent its political destiny into opposite directions. The famous works produced by Lukács during and after the Hungarian Commune—Tactics and Ethics, History and Class Consciousness and Lenin—were analysed and assessed. A concluding chapter discussed Lukács's eventual ambiguous settlement with Stalinism in the thirties, and its coda of renewed radicalism in the final years of his life. In this new edition, Löwy has added a substantial new introduction which reassess the nature of Lukacs's thought in the light of newly published texts and debates. (shrink)

This paper advocates inclusion of a wider set of ethical theories into the accounting canon. We find that the mainstream accounting curriculum does not adequately engage with non-Western ethical theories or contemporary Western ethical thought, as evidenced by the ethics content of core accounting texts and the International Federation of Accountants’ ethics publications. We suggest adopting a ‘thematic’ approach to teaching ethics as an integrated part of accounting curricula. This approach addresses two competing principles implicit in International Education Standard 4: (...) (i) that all accountants need to be educated to meet global ethical standards, and (ii) that teaching ethics should accommodate ethical traditions and practices that could vary between nations and cultures. The thematic approach we propose requires less additional space within existing accounting curricula and less additional preparation by accounting educators than the alternative approach of teaching substantive ethical theories from a sufficiently diverse range of cultures and traditions. The paper also provides exemplars of this thematic approach to teaching ethics in accounting. (shrink)

Children must be taught morality. They must be taught to recognise the authority of moral standards and to understand what makes them authoritative. But there’s a problem: the content and justification of morality are matters of reasonable disagreement among reasonable people. This makes it hard to see how educators can secure children’s commitment to moral standards without indoctrinating them. -/- In A Theory of Moral Education, Michael Hand tackles this problem head on. He sets out to show that moral (...) education can and should be fully rational. It is true that many moral standards and justificatory theories are controversial, and educators have an obligation to teach these nondirectively, with the aim of enabling children to form their own considered views. But reasonable moral disagreement does not go all the way down: some basic moral standards are robustly justified, and these should be taught directively, with the aim of bringing children to recognise and understand their authority. -/- This is an original and important contribution to the philosophy of moral education, which lays a new theoretical foundation for the urgent practical task of teaching right from wrong. (shrink)

Developments in medical science have afforded us the opportunity to improve and enhance the human species in ways unthinkable to previous generations. Whether it's making changes to mitochondrial DNA in a human egg, being prescribed Prozac, or having a facelift, our desire to live longer, feel better and look good has presented philosophers, medical practitioners and policy-makers with considerable ethical challenges. But what exactly constitutes human improvement? What do we mean when we talk of making "better" humans? In this book (...) Michael Hauskeller explores these questions and the ideas of human good that underpin them. Posing some challenging questions about the nature of human enhancement, he interrogates the logic behind its processes and examines the justifications behind its criteria. Questioning common assumptions about what constitutes human improvement, Hauskeller asks whether the criteria proposed by its advocates are convincing. The book draws on recent research as well as popular representations of human enhancement from advertising to the internet, and provides a non-technical and accessible survey of the issues for readers and students interested in the ethics and politics of human enhancement. (shrink)

Modern physics has revealed the universe as a much stranger place than we could have imagined. The puzzle at the centre of our knowledge of the universe is time. Michael Lockwood takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the nature of things. He investigates philosophical questions about past, present, and future, our experience of time, and the possibility of time travel. We zoom in on the behaviour of molecules and atoms, and pull back to survey the expansion of (...) the universe. We learn about entropy and gravity, black holes and wormholes, about how it all began and where we are all headed. Things will never seem the same again after a voyage through The Labyrinth of Time. (shrink)

Sceptical theists--e.g., William Alston and Michael Bergmann--have claimed that considerations concerning human cognitive limitations are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil. We argue that, if the considerations deployed by sceptical theists are sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil, then those considerations are also sufficient to undermine inferences that play a crucial role in ordinary moral reasoning. If cogent, our argument suffices to discredit sceptical theist responses to evidential arguments from evil.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of Hegel's philosophical thought via a systematic exploration of over 100 key terms, from `absolute' to `will'. By exploring both the etymological background of such terms and Hegel's particular use of them, Michael Inwood clarifies for the modern reader much that has been regarded as difficult and obscure in Hegel's work.

Possibility offers a new analysis of the metaphysical concepts of possibility and necessity, one that does not rely on any sort of "possible worlds." The analysis proceeds from an account of the notion of a physical object and from the positing of properties and relations. It is motivated by considerations about how we actually speak of and think of objects. Michael Jubien discusses several closely related topics, including different purported varieties of possible worlds, the doctrine of "essentialism," natural kind (...) terms and alleged examples of necessity a posteriori. The book also offers a new theory of the functioning of proper names, both actual and fictional, and the discussion of natural kind terms and necessity a posteriori depends in part on this theory. (shrink)

The margins of philosophy are populated by non-human, non-animal living beings, including plants. While contemporary philosophers tend to refrain from raising ontological and ethical concerns with vegetal life, Michael Marder puts this life at the forefront of the current deconstruction of metaphysics. He identifies the existential features of plant behavior and the vegetal heritage of human thought so as to affirm the potential of vegetation to resist the logic of totalization and to exceed the narrow confines of instrumentality. Reconstructing (...) the life of plants "after metaphysics," Marder focuses on their unique temporality, freedom, and material knowledge or wisdom. In his formulation, "plant-thinking" is the non-cognitive, non-ideational, and non-imagistic mode of thinking proper to plants, as much as the process of bringing human thought itself back to its roots and rendering it plantlike. (shrink)

This paper considers an objection to intentionalism (the view that the phenomenal character of experience supervenes on intentional content) based on the phenomenology of blurred vision. Several intentionalists, including Michael Tye, Fred Dretske, and Timothy Crane, have proposed intentionalist explanations of blurred vision phenomenology. I argue that their proposals fail and propose a solution of my own that, I contend, is the only promising explanation consistent with intentionalism. The solution, however, comes at a cost for intentionalists; it involves rejecting (...) the "transparency of experience", a doctrine that has been the basis for the central argument in favor of intentionalism. (shrink)

Why does reason matter, if in the end everything comes down to blind faith or gut instinct? Why not just go with what you believe even if it contradicts the evidence? Why bother with rational explanation when name-calling, manipulation, and force are so much more effective in our current cultural and political landscape? Michael Lynch's In Praise of Reason offers a spirited defense of reason and rationality in an era of widespread skepticism--when, for example, people reject scientific evidence about (...) such matters as evolution, climate change, and vaccines when it doesn't jibe with their beliefs and opinions. In recent years, skepticism about the practical value of reason has emerged even within the scientific academy. Many philosophers and psychologists claim that the reasons we give for our most deeply held views are often little more than rationalizations of our prior convictions. _In_ _Praise of Reason_ gives us a counterargument. Although skeptical questions about reason have a deep and interesting history, they can be answered. In particular, appeals to scientific principles of rationality are part of the essential common currency of any civil democratic society. The idea that everything is arbitrary--that reason has no more weight than blind faith--undermines a key principle of a civil society: that we owe our fellow citizens explanations for what we do. Reason matters--not just for the noble ideal of truth, but for the everyday world in which we live. (shrink)