In the tradition of Milton Friedman's 1962 classic, Capitalism and Freedom, Lansing Pollock draws on moral, political, and economic theory to defend a libertarian vision of the good society. Pollock argues that mutual consent, derived from a fundamental Kantian moral equality, is the ideal standard for judging relations between persons. He contends that if the equal right of all persons to be free is taken seriously, most of the coercion by government that many take for granted is immoral. Pollock (...) situates libertarian moral theory in an American historical context, one compatible with the views of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Pollock argues that when the Constitution is interpreted according to the political philosophy of the framers, the modern welfare state is unconstitutional. Pollock goes on to demonstrate how free market economies promote human well-being, whereas government regulation is often counterproductive. In advocating a reduction in the size and scope of government, Pollock includes applied policy analyses of poverty and health care, among other topical issues. He also offers an innovative solution to the problem of funding a limited government without violating individual rights. The strength of The Free Society lies in its synthetic achievement. In a book that is accessibly written and sure to appeal to scholar and lay reader alike, Pollock provides a compelling conception of the good society--one in which the libertarian vision includes moral, social, political, and economic perspectives. (shrink)

Japan's politieal, cultural, and geographic isolation, its symbiotic government-business arrangement, and its practice of practical, resources-oriented politics, trade, and diplomacy have led it to be the only major global economic power to strictIy comply with the Arab boycott. A brief history and description of the boycott are presented here, along with an overview of the responses of major economic trading nations. Three issues are addressed: Japan's global conscience, the framework appropriate to analyze the ethics of global economic boycotts, and the (...) Japanese government's excuse of leaving boycott decisions to business considering the historic relationship between the two. The logical conclusion of this analysis is that Japan as a nation must abandon its insularity and take a greater ethical responsibility in line with its economic power. From this comes the responsibility of the govenment to guide the business sector towards a corporate conscienee, one that is grounded in global awareness. (shrink)

A large U.S. government investigation into arms procurement procedures with corporate contractors has recently led to guilty pleas to fraud and illegal use of classified documents. Operation Ill Wind has brought public attention to the criminal and unethical conduct of large defense contractors in their dealings with the government. This article will review how the defense contract bidding process operates and why illegal activity has been able to compromise the process. We will offer proposals to improve the process in light (...) of the present inquiry. (shrink)

While tourism is often seen as a welcome source of economic development, conventional mass tourism is associated with numerous negative effects, such as the destruction of ecological systems and loss of cultural heritage. In response to these concerns, a term that has surfaced recently is, sustainable tourism. This article attempts to define sustainable tourism and asks the question of whether this new term is an acceptable criteria or is merely a marketing ploy to attract the morally conscious tourist.

This paper examines diverse perspectives around the concept of responsibility concerning antibiotic use in animal agriculture. Antibiotic use in agriculture has been identified as a source of antimicrobial resistance, one of the largest public health threats today. In the United States, efforts to curb antibiotic use in farming draws on a diverse range of actors—including farmers, veterinarians, consumers, and public health advocates—and relies on a mix of industry standards and federal guidelines around responsible use. The paper selects a similarly diverse (...) range of people and employs Q methodology to query the points of disagreement and consensus around the practices that constitute responsible antibiotic use in animal agriculture, and who is responsible for antimicrobial resistance. We find a diverse mix of actor types across three discourses, but with clear differences between farmers and public health advocates. We also argue that, in some cases, points of disagreement and agreement are often based on different interpretations of ideas, indicating points of common ground where there might appear to be disagreement, and areas of difference where there appears to be agreement. We argue that these flexible interpretations of some of the key issues around antibiotic use are nevertheless grounded in durable differences in views of what agriculture is and what it should be. (shrink)

Understanding the ethics and politics of environmentalism, as well as predator biology, means thinking in new ways about objectivity. The history of predator biology shows how scientists order nature as they interact with non-humans. If science ultimately orders nature as its comprehends it, the implications for environmental ethics and politics, which continue to call on the authority of objective science, loom large.

Corporate violations of the law are occurring with increasing frequency and with increasing public attention. Solutions to date have proved ineffectual because of the problem of determining whom is to be punished for the offense of the corporation. Instead of individual jail terms or corporate fines, we propose that the dissolution of the corporation be considered as a more effectual means of conforming corporate behavior to the norms of the legal system.

In recent years, there has been considerable pressure on corporations doing business in South Africa to divest and withdraw from that country. While this moral view espouses withdrawal, this article seeks to provide insight into the practical consequences of divestment. One of the questions addressed is how does foreign divestment affect Black South Africans, those who are supposed to benefit from a divestment policy.

The attacks on commercial shipping vessels by Somali pirates have introduced a business dilemma for ship-owners. While maritime piracy has been outlawed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, ship-owners must determine whether to pay ransom demands to Somali pirates or not. There is no easy answer to solve this ethical dilemma for ship-owners and other interest groups, however, this article proposes a solution which takes into account all of the parties involved.

Intelligence augmentation was one of the original goals of computing. Artificial Intelligence (AI) inherits this project and is at the leading edge of computing today. Computing can be considered an extension of brain and body, with mathematical prowess and logic fundamental to the infrastructure of computing. Multimedia computing—sensing, analyzing, and translating data to and from visual images, animation, sound and music, touch and haptics, as well as smell—is based on our human senses and is now commonplace. We use data visualization (...) and sonification, as well as data mining and analysis, to sort through the complexity and vast volume of data coming from the world inside and around us. It helps us ‘see’ in new ways. We can think of this capacity as a new kind of “digital glasses”. The Internet of Living Things (IOLT) is potentially an even more profound extension of ourselves to the world: a network of electronic devices embedded into objects, but now with subcutaneous, ingestible devices, and embedded sensors that include people and other living things. Like the Internet of Things (IOT), living things are connected; we call those connections “ecology”. As the IOT becomes increasingly synonymous with the IOLT, the question of ethics that is at the centre of aesthetics and the arts will move to the forefront of our experience of and regard for the world in and around us. (shrink)

In the following discussion, we address the ethical dilemma of who should benefit from the many frequent-flier programs used by airlines. The issue of central concern involves whether the employer or employee are acting unethically when either of them choose to be the beneficiary from frequent-flier programs. Once this issue is decided, we then determine if the benefits outweigh the costs for the employer that either keeps the miles or, decides to let their employees enjoy them.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1895. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres.As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature.Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare (...) and historical knowledge for the future. (shrink)

A discussion of Aristotle’s thought on determinism and culpability, Necessity, Cause, and Blame also reveals Richard Sorabji’s own philosophical commitments. He makes the original argument here that Aristotle separates the notions of necessity and cause, rejecting both the idea that all events are necessarily determined as well as the idea that a non-necessitated event must also be non-caused. In support of this argument, Sorabji engages in a wide-ranging discussion of explanation, time, free will, essence, and purpose in nature. He (...) also provides historical perspective, arguing that these problems remain intimately bound up with modern controversies. “ Necessity, Cause and Blame would be counted by all as one of Sorabji’s finest. The book is essential for philosophers—both specialists on the Greeks and modern thinkers about free will—and also compelling for non-specialists.”—Martha Nussbaum “Original and important . . . The book relates Aristotle’s discussions to both the contemporary debates on determinism and causation and the ancient ones. It is especially detailed on Stoic arguments about necessity . . . and on the social and legal background to Aristotle’s thought.”— Choice “It is difficult to convey the extraordinary richness of this book. . . . A Greekless philosopher could read it with pleasure . . . At the same time, its learning and scholarship are enormous.”—G. E. M. Anscombe, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

When it first appeared in 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature hit the philosophical world like a bombshell. In it, Richard Rorty argued that, beginning in the seventeenth century, philosophers developed an unhealthy obsession with the notion of representation: comparing the mind to a mirror that reflects reality. Rorty's book is a powerful critique of this imagery and the tradition of thought that it spawned. Thirty years later, the book remains a must-read and stands as a classic of (...) twentieth-century philosophy. Its influence on the academy, both within philosophy and across a wide array of disciplines, continues unabated. This edition includes new essays by philosopher Michael Williams and literary scholar David Bromwich, as well as Rorty's previously unpublished essay "The Philosopher as Expert.". (shrink)

By a thorough study of the Posterior Analytics and related Aristotelian texts, Richard McKirahan reconstructs Aristotle's theory of episteme--science. The Posterior Analytics contains the first extensive treatment of the nature and structure of science in the history of philosophy, and McKirahan's aim is to interpret it sympathetically, following the lead of the text, rather than imposing contemporary frameworks on it. In addition to treating the theory as a whole, the author uses textual and philological as well as philosophical material (...) to interpret many important but difficult individual passages. A number of issues left obscure by the Aristotelian material are settled by reference to Euclid's geometrical practice in the Elements. To justify this use of Euclid, McKirahan makes a comparative analysis of fundamental features of Euclidian geometry with the corresponding elements of Aristotle's theory. Emerging from that discussion is a more precise and more complex picture of the relation between Aristotle's theory and Greek mathematics--a picture of mutual, rather than one-way, dependence. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Objectives: To examine associations of changing employment conditions, specifically switching to working from home or job loss, with mental health, using data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic.Methods: Data from 2,301 US adults in employment prior to COVID-19 were collected April 3rd−7th, 2020. Participants reported whether their employment remained unchanged, they were WFH when they had not been before, or they had lost their job due to the pandemic. Outcomes were symptoms of depression, anxiety, stress, loneliness, and positive mental health assessed (...) using validated questionnaires. Linear regression quantified associations of employment changes with mental health outcomes, controlling for age, sex, race, BMI, smoking status, screen time, physical activity, marital status, chronic conditions, and current COVID-19 containment strategies being followed.Results: Compared to participants whose employment remained unchanged, those who switched to WFH did not differ in any measures of mental health. Participants who had lost their job reported higher symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, and lower PMH. Loneliness did not differ between groups.Conclusion: This study demonstrates that concerns around potential adverse mental health effects, particularly increases in loneliness, should not preclude WFH in the general population, while considering each individual's personal circumstances, and the acute adverse association of job loss with mental health. Tailored and sensitive interventions may be required to prevent deteriorations in mental health associated with job loss during periods of societal stress. (shrink)

Ethics and the Clinical Encounter explores the moral dimensions of clinical medicine and the phenomenon of illness, to determine what ethics must be in order to be fully responsive to clinical encounters. Written in a lively and conversational style with minimal technical terminology, and enhanced by actual experience or real clinical situations, this volume lays out a clinical ethics methodology both in practical and theoretical terms. Here's what the experts had to say: Professor Zaner has provided us with a remarkably (...) lucid and trenchant discussion of the interface of philosophy and the field of medicine. He brings into play an extraordinary range of historial knowledge, extensive observations based on firsthand experience with medical practices, and an acute sense of philosophical argumentation. This is a work that will be an exemplary and indispensable text in the philosophy of medicine for years to come. -- Calvin Schrag... it is a highly original contribution usable in a number of fields.... It really has no competition.... The genius of Zaner's approach is to ground ethics from the 'bottom up' and to direct us to the concrete particulars of therapeutic encounters wherein lie moral and ethical matters... meaty, challenging, and ultimately rewarding.... -- Paul R. Dokecki Richard M. Zaner founded the Center for Clinical and Research Ethics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Having established Vanderbilt's first Hospital Ethics Committee (1985), he served as co-chair of VUMC's Ethics Committee since its inception in 1990. Zaner has published five original books, edited ten, and translated four more, and has published more than 100 sections of books and professional journals. (shrink)

Since its publication in 1994, Richard McKirahan's _Philosophy Before Socrates_ has become the standard sourcebook in Presocratic philosophy. It provides a wide survey of Greek science, metaphysics, and moral and political philosophy, from their roots in myth to the philosophers and Sophists of the fifth century. A comprehensive selection of fragments and testimonia, translated by the author, is presented in the context of a thorough and accessible discussion. An introductory chapter deals with the sources of Presocratic and Sophistic texts (...) and the special problems of interpretation they present. In its second edition, this work has been updated and expanded to reflect important new discoveries and the most recent scholarship. Changes and additions have been made throughout, the most significant of which are found in the chapters on the Pythagoreans, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles, and the new chapter on Philolaus. The translations of some passages have been revised, as have some interpretations and discussions. A new Appendix provides translations of three Hippocratic writings and the Derveni papyrus. (shrink)

Living with people who differ—racially, ethnically, religiously, or economically—is the most urgent challenge facing civil society today. We tend socially to avoid engaging with people unlike ourselves, and modern politics encourages the politics of the tribe rather than of the city. In this thought-provoking book, Richard Sennett discusses why this has happened and what might be done about it. Sennett contends that cooperation is a craft, and the foundations for skillful cooperation lie in learning to listen well and discuss (...) rather than debate. In _Together_ he explores how people can cooperate online, on street corners, in schools, at work, and in local politics. He traces the evolution of cooperative rituals from medieval times to today, and in situations as diverse as slave communities, socialist groups in Paris, and workers on Wall Street. Divided into three parts, the book addresses the nature of cooperation, why it has become weak, and how it could be strengthened. The author warns that we must learn the craft of cooperation if we are to make our complex society prosper, yet he reassures us that we can do this, for the capacity for cooperation is embedded in human nature. (shrink)

Orientalism and Religion offers us a timely discussion of the implications of contemporary post-colonial theory for the study of religion. Drawing on a variety of post-structuralist and post-colonial thinkers, including Foucault, Gadamer, Said, and Spivak, Richard King examines the way in which notions such as mysticism, religion, Hinduism and Buddhism are taken for granted, and shows us how religion needs to be redescribed along the lines of cultural studies.

The humanity formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative demands that we treat humanity as an end in itself. Because this principle resonates with currently influential ideals of human rights and dignity, contemporary readers often find it compelling, even if the rest of Kant's moral philosophy leaves them cold. Moreover, some prominent specialists in Kant's ethics have recently turned to the humanity formulation as the most theoretically central and promising principle of Kant's ethics. Nevertheless, it has received less attention than many other (...) aspects of Kant's ethics. Richard Dean offers the most sustained and systematic examination of the humanity formulation to date. He presents an original analysis of what it means to treat humanity as an end in itself, and examines the implications both for Kant scholarship and for practical guidance on specific moral issues. (shrink)

Engaging some of the most recent and more urgent issues in the philosophy of religion today, in this lively book Richard Kearney proposes that instead of thinking of God as "actual," God might best be thought of as the possibility of the ...

The current status of string theory is assessed quite differently by most of the theory’s exponents than by the majority of physicists in other fields. While the former tend to have a high degree of trust in string theory’s viability, the latter largely share a substantially more skeptical point of view. This article argues that the controversy can be best understood in terms of a paradigmatic rift between the two sides over their understandings of theory assessment. An attempt is made (...) to evaluate the two conflicting paradigms on their own terms. †To contact the author, please write to: Institute Vienna Circle, University of Vienna, Universtitätscampus Spitalgasse 2‐4, Hof 1, 1090 Vienna, Austria; e‐mail: richard[email protected]. (shrink)

Few people will easily admit to taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others. But who doesn't enjoy it when an arrogant but untalented contestant is humiliated on American Idol, or when the embarrassing vice of a self-righteous politician is exposed, or even when an envied friend suffers a small setback? The truth is that joy in someone else's pain--known by the German word schadenfreude--permeates our society. In The Joy of Pain, psychologist Richard Smith, one of the world's foremost authorities (...) on envy and shame, sheds much light on a feeling we dare not admit. Smith argues that schadenfreude is a natural human emotion, one worth taking a closer look at, as it reveals much about who we are as human beings. We have a passion for justice. Sometimes, schadenfreude can feel like getting one's revenge, when the suffering person has previously harmed us. But most of us are also motivated to feel good about ourselves, Smith notes, and look for ways to maintain a positive sense of self. One common way to do this is to compare ourselves to others and find areas where we are better. Similarly, the downfall of others--especially when they have seemed superior to us--can lead to a boost in our self-esteem, a lessening of feelings of inferiority. This is often at the root of schadenfreude. As the author points out, most instances of schadenfreude are harmless, on par with the pleasures of light gossip. Yet we must also be mindful that envy can motivate, without full awareness, the engineering of the misfortune we delight in. And envy-induced aggression can take us into dark territory indeed, as Smith shows as he examines the role of envy and schadenfreude in the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Filled with engaging examples of schadenfreude, from popular reality shows to the Duke-Kentucky basketball rivalry, The Joy of Pain provides an intriguing glimpse into a hidden corner of the human psyche. (shrink)

Some theorists who accept the existence of global justice duties to alleviate the condition of distant needy strangers hold that these duties are significantly constrained by special ties to fellow countrymen. The patriotic priority thesis holds that morality requires the members of each nation-state to give priority to helping needy fellow compatriots over more needy distant strangers. Three arguments for constraint and patriotic priority are examined in this essay: an argument from fair play, one from coercion, another from coercion and (...) autonomy. Under scrutiny, none of these arguments qualifies as successful. (shrink)

Motivation to Permissibility 780 III. The Deception Accounts of Wrongful Discrimination 783 IV. Discrimination from Animus and Prejudice 787 V. An Objection 789 VI. Innocent Discrimination 790 VII. Disparate Impact 793 VIII. Suspect Classifications 795..

Much of the history of physics at the beginning of the twentieth century has been written with a sharp focus on a few key figures and a handful of notable events. Einstein’s Generation offers a distinctive new approach to the origins of modern physics by exploring both the material culture that stimulated relativity and the reaction of Einstein’s colleagues to his pioneering work. Richard Staley weaves together the diverse strands of experimental and theoretical physics, commercial instrument making, and the (...) sociology of physics around 1900 to present a complete view of the collective efforts of a group whose work helped set the stage for Einstein’s revolutionary theories and the transition from classical to modern physics that followed. Collecting papers, talks, catalogues, conferences, and correspondence, Staley juxtaposes scientists’ views of relativity at the time to modern understandings of its history. Ultimately, Einstein’s Generation tells the story of a group of individuals whose work engendered some of the most significant advances of the twentieth century—and challenges our celebration of Einstein’s era above all others. (shrink)