This book draws upon philosophical arguments, criminological evidence, and legal literature on prisoners' rights and sentencing to explore the restrictions and deprivations that can be legitimately imposed on serious offenders in the name of punishment.

The question addressed here is whether evidence concerning defendants' past criminal records should be introduced at their trials because such evidence reveals their character and thus reveals whether they are the kinds of persons likely to have committed the crimes with which they are currently charged. I strongly caution against the introduction of such evidence for a number of reasons. First, the link between defendants' past criminal records and claims about their standing dispositions to think and act is tenuous, at (...) best. Second, noncharacter, or trace, evidence should have primacy in determining the guilt or innocence of defendants. Third, character evidence will vary in its freshness and specificity. Other things being equal, only relatively fresh and specific character evidence has probative value. Moreover, such evidence will have greater probative value in criminal cases where the issue before the court is whether a crime has been committed than in cases where the issue is whether it was the defendant who committed the crime. Finally, we might be more sanguine about the introduction of fresh and specific character evidence under conditions likely to work against its misuse or misinterpretation. However, the relevant conditions may not often be satisfied in the real world of criminal trials and defendants. (shrink)

In _Freedom and the End of Reason_, Richard L. Velkley offers an influential interpretation of the central issue of Kant’s philosophy and an evaluation of its position within modern philosophy’s larger history. He persuasively argues that the whole of Kantianism—not merely the Second Critique—focuses on a “critique of practical reason” and is a response to a problem that Kant saw as intrinsic to reason itself: the teleological problem of its goodness. Reconstructing the influence of Rousseau on Kant’s thought, Velkley (...) demonstrates that the relationship between speculative philosophy and practical philosophy in Kant is far more intimate than generally has been perceived. By stressing a Rousseau-inspired notion of reason as a provider of practical ends, he is able to offer an unusually complete account of Kant’s idea of moral culture. (shrink)

Nature, God and Humanity clarifies the task of forming an ethics of nature, thereby empowering readers to develop their own critical, faith-based ethics. Calling on original, thought-provoking analyses and arguments, Richard L. Fern frames a philosophical ethics of nature, assesses it scientifically, finds support for it in traditional biblical theism, and situates it culturally. Though defending the moral value of beliefs affirming the radical Otherness of God and human uniqueness, this book aims not to compel the adoption of any (...) particular ethic but rather illumine the contribution diverse forms of inquiry make to an ethics of nature. How does philosophy clarify moral conviction? What does science tell us about nature? Why does religious faith matter? Rejecting the illusion of a single, rationally-compelling ethics, Fern answers these questions in a way that fosters both agreement and disagreement, allowing those holding conflicting ethics of nature to work together for the common good. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the distinction between "negative" and "positive" duties. Special attention will be given to certain criticism raised against this distinction by Michael Tooley.

In a number of essays published over the last decade or so, W. V. Quine has made some interesting suggestions concerning the ontology of theories. If I understand him correctly, one of his principal objects has been to formulate a criterion by means of which one can correctly decide what are the ontological commitments of any given theory. My aim in this paper is to reveal what I think are inadequacies in Quine's criterion and to indicate the direction in which (...) a proper formulation lies. (shrink)

The dominant approach to the analysis of issues in business ethics consists in the articulation and use of a set of mid-level moral principles. This approach is geared to business practitioners who are not interested in the difficult problems of moral and political theory. I argue that this "practitioner model" is philosophically suspect. I show how the theoretical frameworks prominent business ethicists employ are insufficiently developed. I also show how many of their analyses presuppose substantive views about issues of social (...) justice which they rarely defend or acknowledge. Since no neutral position on these issues is available, I argue that the only alternative is to address the problems such issue's raise for the analysis of institutions and the conduct of persons acting under those institutions. I offer suggestions about how we can develop a more philosophically defensible approach to business ethics. (shrink)

The physical and relational structure of the biologic continuum (both internal and external to the organism) creates the information signature that is the basis for the origination of meaning in the living system. A meaning metric can be grounded in the significance of that information to the stability of the system during the process of adaptive reconciliation of divergences from the steady state condition. From this perspective, an information-theoretic formulation of the process for translating incident information into adaptive action is (...) proposed that can be practically used in defining and quantifying the meaning of that information for the living system. (shrink)

Richard Tieszen presents an analysis, development, and defense of a number of central ideas in Kurt Gödel's writings on the philosophy and foundations of mathematics and logic. Tieszen structures the argument around Gödel's three philosophical heroes - Plato, Leibniz, and Husserl - and his engagement with Kant, and supplements close readings of Gödel's texts on foundations with materials from Gödel's Nachlass and from Hao Wang's discussions with Gödel. He provides discussions of Gödel's views, and develops a new type of (...) platonic rationalism that requires rational intuition, called 'constituted platonism'. (shrink)

Theories of Truth provides a clear, critical introduction to one of the most difficult areas of philosophy. It surveys all of the major philosophical theories of truth, presenting the crux of the issues involved at a level accessible to nonexperts yet in a manner sufficiently detailed and original to be of value to professional scholars. Kirkham's systematic treatment and meticulous explanations of terminology ensure that readers will come away from this book with a comprehensive general understanding of one of philosophy's (...) thorniest set of topics. -/- Included are discussions of the correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, semantic, performative, redundancy, appraisal, and truth-as-justification theories. There are also chapters or sections of chapters on the liar paradox, three-valued logic, Field's critique of Tarski, Davidson's program, Dummett's theory of linguistic competence, satisfaction, recursion, the extension/intension distinction, and an explanation of how theories of justification, properly understood, differ from theories of truth. -/- A persistent theme is that philosophers have too often failed to recognize that not all theories of truth are intended to answer the same question. When the various questions are made distinct, it is apparent that many of the "debates" in this field are really cases of philosophers talking past one another. There is much less disagreement within the field than has commonly been thought. (shrink)

The paper is a paradigmatic presentation of what the new science of communicology represents: the semiotic and phenomenological study of humandiscourse and the critical study of discourse and practice both, an interaction of communication, mass communications, popular culture, public relations, advertising, marketing, linguistics, discourse analysis, political economy, institutional analysis, organization of urban and rural spaces, ergonomics, body culture, clinical practice, health care, constructions of disease, health, and rehabilitation, human factors, signage, and so forth. Communicology is the human science research result (...) in which validity and reliability are logic constructs based in the necessary and sufficient conditions of discovered systems (codes), whether eidetic (based in consciousness) or empirical (based in experience). (shrink)

We present a detailed process theory of the moment‐by‐moment working‐memory retrievals and associated control structure that subserve sentence comprehension. The theory is derived from the application of independently motivated principles of memory and cognitive skill to the specialized task of sentence parsing. The resulting theory construes sentence processing as a series of skilled associative memory retrievals modulated by similarity‐based interference and fluctuating activation. The cognitive principles are formalized in computational form in the Adaptive Control of Thought–Rational (ACT–R) architecture, and our (...) process model is realized in ACT–R. We present the results of 6 sets of simulations: 5 simulation sets provide quantitative accounts of the effects of length and structural interference on both unambiguous and garden‐path structures. A final simulation set provides a graded taxonomy of double center embeddings ranging from relatively easy to extremely difficult. The explanation of center‐embedding difficulty is a novel one that derives from the model' complete reliance on discriminating retrieval cues in the absence of an explicit representation of serial order information. All fits were obtained with only 1 free scaling parameter fixed across the simulations; all other parameters were ACT–R defaults. The modeling results support the hypothesis that fluctuating activation and similarity‐based interference are the key factors shaping working memory in sentence processing. We contrast the theory and empirical predictions with several related accounts of sentence‐processing complexity. (shrink)

In a recent paper Anthony Flew gives an argument which can be outlined as follows: 1. Any attempt to give a ‘free will defence’ must be based either on a compatibilist notion of free will or a libertarian, incompatibilist, notion of free will. 2. A free will defence based on a compatibilist notion of free will must fail, for on a compatibilist view of free will, God could make creatures who were free but never chose evil. 3. A free will (...) defence based on a libertarian notion of free will might have other difficulties, but on a libertarian view of free will God could not both leave men free and bring it about that they never chose evil. 4. But a free will defence based on an incompatibilist, libertarian notion of free will can be rejected, since: It is not clear that the ordinary use of such key terms as ‘action’ and ‘choice’ carry any implications of libertarian free will. If such terms did carry the implication of libertarian free will it becomes hard to see how anyone could be in a position to know that a choice had been made or an action performed. The possession of libertarian free will by created beings seems to be incompatible with the essential theistic doctrine that all created beings are always utterly dependent on God as their sustaining cause. 5. Therefore the free will defence fails. (shrink)

The most popular method of incorporating time into a formal logic is based on the work of Arthur Prior. It treats tenses as operators on sentences. In this essay I show a serious problem with that approach, a confusion of scheme versus proposition, which makes any system built in that way incoherent. I will compare how other formal logics deal with the scheme versus proposition distinction and find that only for formal modal logics does the same problem arise. I then (...) compare Prior’s approach to other ways of taking time into account in formal logics. (shrink)

First, this article summarizes major arguments levied against codes. Second, standards for a sound ethical code are presented. Third, a trend is described toward more concrete codes developed by specific communication organizations. Finally, positive functions of codes are examined, with special emphasis on two: the argumentative function and the character?depiction function.

Two recent discussions concerning punishment of the socially deprived reach conflicting conclusions. Andrew von Hirsch and Andrew Ashworth argue that we should sympathize with the predicament of the poor and therefore mitigate their sentences. Peter Chau disputes von Hirsch and Ashworth’s conclusion, contending that having to face strong temptations is not an appropriate ground for reducing anyone’s punishment for their crimes. I argue that neither von Hirsch and Ashworth’s account nor Chau’s critique of it is persuasive. I then take up (...) the challenge of showing why social deprivation renders punishment problematic. I contend that it establishes a perverse incentive structure that is persistent and powerful, requiring the disadvantaged to exercise self-control on an ongoing basis. Repeated acts of self-control are difficult, especially for youths whose skills at it are not yet fully developed. Also, in a variety of more and less subtle ways, social deprivation reduces the incentives for self-control and may work to stunt its development. In closing, I briefly consider the options for responding to the crimes of the chronically disadvantaged. (shrink)

The United States relies on uncompensated family caregivers to provide most of the long-term care required by older adults as they age. But such care comes at a significant financial cost to these caregivers in the form of lower lifetime earnings and diminished Social Security retirement benefits, ineligibility for Medicare coverage of their healthcare costs, and minimal retirement savings. To reduce the impact of uncompensated caregiving on the intergenerational transmission of poverty, this paper discusses three possible mechanisms of compensating family (...) caregivers: public payments, deemed wage credits under Social Security, and income tax incentives. (shrink)

While many countries are following the lead of the United States in making insider trading illegal, its moral status is still controversial. I summarise the scholarly debate over the fairness of insider trading and lay bare the assumptions about fairness implicit in that debate. I focus on the question whether those assumptions can be defended independently of a more comprehensive theory of social justice. Current analyses presuppose that we can intelligently discuss what the social rules regarding insider trading should be (...) while ignoring questions about the broader principles of justice that should be adopted and the extent to which existing institutions realise those principles. I argue that such questions must be addressed. I then employ an egalitarian conception of social justice to analyse insider trading. I thereby illustrate how a more systematic approach, grounded in a comprehensive theory of justice, transforms the debate about the fairness of insider trading. (shrink)

I defend mereological nihilism, the view that there are no composite objects, against a challenge from ontological emergence, the view that some things have properties that are ‘something over and above’ the properties of their parts. As the nihilist does not believe in composite wholes, there is nothing in the nihilist's ontology to instantiate emergent properties – or so the challenge goes. However, I argue that some simples can collectively instantiate an emergent property, so the nihilist's ontology can in fact (...) accommodate emergent properties. Furthermore, I show that employing plural instantiation does not bloat the nihilist's ontology or ideology. (shrink)

The coding function of semiotic-systems in literature is explored as an example of Umberto Eco’s real and fictional protocols in the play of discourse formation (lector in fabula). The intricate phenomenological levels of intersemiotic translation (apposition, opposition, chiasm, zeugma) are illustrated by analyzing a rhetorical passage (semiotic object) from Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. The passage on the logic of series (“lists”) allows us to explore fact/fiction, real/imaginary, normal/abnormal, sane/insane, neurotic/psychotic choices as discourse voice protocols (active, middle, passive) for the (...) axiological interpretation (ethic, moral, aesthetic, politic, and rhetoric) of meaning formation (tropes) and signification function (figures). Models of discourse are drawn from Benveniste, Foucault, Greimas, Lévi-Strauss, and Wilden. (shrink)

This book is dedicated to a classic presentation of the theory of computable functions in the context of the foundations of mathematics. Part I motivates the study of computability with discussions and readings about the crisis in the foundations of mathematics in the early 20th century, while presenting the basic ideas of whole number, function, proof, and real number. Part II starts with readings from Turing and Post leading to the formal theory of recursive functions. Part III presents sufficient formal (...) logic to give a full development of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Part IV considers the significance of the technical work with a discussion of Church's Thesis and readings on the foundations of mathematics. This new edition contains the timeline "Computability and Undecidability" as well as the essay "On mathematics". (shrink)

Here is an in-depth look at the role myth, mortality, and religion play in J. R. R. Tolkien's works such as The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion -- including Tolkien's private letters and revealing opinions of his own work. Richard L. Purtill brilliantly argues that Tolkien's extraordinary ability to touch his readers' lives through his storytelling -- so unlike much modern literature -- accounts for his enormous literary success. This book demonstrates the moral depth in (...) Tolkien's work and cuts through current subjectivism and cynicism about morality. A careful reader will find a subtle religious dimension to Tolkien's work -- all the more potent because it is below the surface. Purtill reveals that the author's fantasy stories creatively incorporate profound religious and ethical ideas. For example, Purtill shows us how hobbits reflect both the pettiness of unimaginative parochial humanity and the unexpected heroism of ordinary people in crisis. Purtill effectively addresses larger issues of the place of myth, the relation of religion and morality to literature, the relation of Tolkien's work to traditional mythology, modern fantasy and science fiction, and the lessons Tolkien's work teaches that are applicable to our own lives. Book jacket. (shrink)

Those found liable for negligently injuring others are required to compensate them, but current practices permit most tort feasors to spread the costs of their liability burdens through the purchase of insurance. Those found guilty of criminal offences, however, are not allowed to shift the burdens of their sentences onto others. Yet the reasons for not allowing criminal offenders to shift such burdens – harm reduction, retribution, and moral education – also appear to retain some force in relation to negligent (...) tort feasors. Arguments for and against limiting the abilities of negligent tort feasors to spread such costs, thus imposing a penalty on them, are discussed. The conclusion reached is that further consideration of such a penalty is warranted. (shrink)