Robert John Ackermann deals decisively with the problem of relativism that has plagued post-empiricist philosophy of science. Recognizing that theory and data are mediated by data domains (bordered data sets produced by scientific instruments), he argues that the use of instruments breaks the dependency of observation on theory and thus creates a reasoned basis for scientific objectivity. Originally published in 1985. 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)

This is an extensively re-written second edition of a well regarded and much cited text on the issue of animal protection. It remains the only text to combine an examination of the philosophy and politics of the issue. Its central argument is that the philosophical debate is central to an understanding and evaluation of the substantive issues involving animals and the nature of the movement for change. The book has been thoroughly revised to include major theoretical and empirical developments. Specifically, (...) the "second generation" of animal ethics literature is examined in detail, and attention is paid to the campaigns and public controversy over the export of live animals and the use of animals in research, the impact of genetic engineering on the welfare of animals and the latest developments in the controversy over hunting. (shrink)

Individuals are a prominent part of the biological world. Although biologists and philosophers of biology draw freely on the concept of an individual in articulating both widely accepted and more controversial claims, there has been little explicit work devoted to the biological notion of an individual itself. How should we think about biological individuals? What are the roles that biological individuals play in processes such as natural selection (are genes and groups also units of selection?), speciation (are species individuals?), and (...) organismic development (do genomes code for organisms)? Much of our discussion here will focus on organisms as a central kind of biological individual, and that discussion will raise broader questions about the nature of the biological world, for example, about its complexity, its organization, and its relation to human thought. (shrink)

This book clarifies the relation between religion and ethics, articulates principles governing religion in politics, and outlines a theory of civic virtue. It frames institutional principles to guide governmental policies toward religion and counterpart standards to guide individual citizens; and it defends an account of toleration that leavens the ethical framework both in individual nations and internationally.

In this book, Robert Talisse critically examines the moral and political implications of pluralism, the view that our best moral thinking is indeterminate and that moral conflict is an inescapable feature of the human condition. Through a careful engagement with the work of William James, Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, and their contemporary followers, Talisse distinguishes two broad types of moral pluralism: metaphysical and epistemic. After arguing that metaphysical pluralism does not offer a compelling account of value and thus cannot (...) ground a viable conception of liberal politics, Talisse proposes and defends a distinctive variety of epistemic pluralism. According to this view, certain value conflicts are at present undecidable rather than intrinsic. Consequently, epistemic pluralism countenances the possibility that further argumentation, enhanced reflection, or the acquisition of more information could yield rational resolutions to the kinds of value conflicts that metaphysical pluralists deem irresolvable as such. Talisse’s epistemic pluralism hence prescribes a politics in which deep value conflicts are to be addressed by ongoing argumentation and free engagement among citizens; the epistemic pluralist thus sees liberal democracy is the proper political response to ongoing moral disagreement. (shrink)

Medical ethics changed dramatically in the past 30 years because physicians and humanists actively engaged each other in discussions that sometimes led to confrontation and controversy, but usually have improved the quality of medical decision-making. Before then medical ethics had been isolated for almost two centuries from the larger philosophical, social, and religious controversies of the time. There was, however, an earlier period where leaders in medicine and in the humanities worked closely together and both fields were richer for it. (...) This volume begins with the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment when professors of medicine such as John Gregory, Edward Percival, and the American, Benjamin Rush, were close friends of philosophers like David Hume, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid. They continually exchanged views on matters of ethics with each other in print, at meetings of elite intellectual groups, and at the dinner table. Then something happened, physicians and humanists quit talking with each other. In searching for the causes of the collapse, this book identifies shifts in the social class of physicians, developments in medical science, and changes in the patterns of medical education. Only in the past three decades has the dialogue resumed as physicians turned to humanists for help just when humanists wanted their work to be relevant to real-life social problems. Again, the book asks why, finding answers in the shift from acute to chronic disease as the dominant pattern of illness, the social rights revolution of the 1960's, and the increasing dissonance between physician ethics and ethics outside medicine. The book tells the critical story of how the breakdown in communication between physicians and humanists occurred and how it was repaired when new developments in medicine together with a social revolution forced the leaders of these two fields to resume their dialogue. (shrink)

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the wide range of issues surrounding "passive euthanasia" and "allow-to-die" decisions. The author develops a comprehensive conceptual model that is highly useful for assessing and dealing with real-life situations. He presents an informative historical overview, an evaluation of the clinical settings in which treatment abatement takes place, and an insightful discussion of relevant legal aspects. The result is a clearly articulated ethical analysis that is medically realistic, philosophically sound, and legally viable.

Theodor W.Adorno was one of the towering intellectuals of the twentieth century. His contributions cover such a myriad of fields, including the sociology of culture, social theory, the philosophy of music, ethics, art and aesthetics, film, ideology, the critique of modernity and musical composition, that it is difficult to assimilate the sheer range and profundity of his achievement. His celebrated friendship with Walter Benjamin has produced some of the most moving and insightful correspondence on the origins and objects of the (...) Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. This unprecedented collection, devised and assembled by one of Europe's rising social theorists, distills the best from published assessments and responses to Adorno's oeuvre. The collection is divided into 4 volumes: Volume 1: Philosophy, Ethics and Critical Theory Part 1: Negative Dialectics Included here are contributions on the concept of totality in the writings of Adorno and Lukacs; Adorno and Bourgeois Philosophy; the relationship between Adorno and Kierkegaard; Adorno's Critique of Idealism; Adorno and Linguistics; Adono and Habermas. Part 2: Ethics and Redemption This is comprised of contributions on Adorno and Truth; Adorno's Inverse Theology; and Adorno and the Ineffable Part 3: Critical Theory, Ideology Critique and Social Science Included here are contributions on Adorno's relation to the Positivist Dispute; the Popper-Adorno Controversy; Adorno and Empirical Research; and Hermeneutics and Critical Theory. Volume 2: Aesthetic Theory Part 1: Art and Politics in 'Aesthetic Theory' This includes material on the De-Aestheticization of Art; Adorno, Utopia and Mimesis; Adorno and autonomous art; Adorno and Dialectics; Adorno, Marxism and Art; Art and Criticism in Adorno's Aesthetics; Adorno's concept of the Avant-Garde. Part 2: Philosophy of Music This includes contributions on Adorno's music and social criticism; Adorno and nostalgia; Adorno, Heidegger and the meaning of music; Adorno and Wagner. Part 3: On Jazz The material included here addresses questions of Adorno and Popular Music; Adorno's encounter with jazz; Adorno, Jazz and Society; and the reasons for Adorno's apparent hatred of jazz. Volume 3: Social Theory & The Critique of Modernity Part 1: On 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment' Included here are chapters on the dialectic of enlightenment and post-functionalist thought; dialectic of enlightenment as genealogy critique; the relationship between the dialectic of enlightenment, modernity and postmodernity; Adorno's critique of progress; Adorno and theories of subjectivity; and the dialectic of enlightenment and rationality. Part 2: Anti-Semitism This consists of material on Adorno and Horkheimer; and Adorno and Public Sphere Part 3: Popular Culture and Capitalism Included here are contributions on Adorno and Sport; Adorno's alleged left-wing elitism; Adorno's critique of astrology and the Occult; Benjamin and Adorno on Disney; Adorno, Totalitarianism and the Welfare State; and Adorno and Mass Society. Volume 4: Cultural Theory and the Postmodern Challenge Part 1: 'Damaged Life': Exile in America This section includes Leo Lowenthal's insightful recollections of Adorno; Adorno and the primal history of subjectivity; Adorno and Los Angeles; Adorno's relation to American culture; and Adorno's exile in England. Part 2: Film Theory This section includes chapters on Adorno and the Culture Industry; Benjamin, Adorno and Contemporary Film Theory; Adorno, Aesthetics and the Social. Part 3: Wellmer and Adorno Included here are papers on Aesthetic, Psychic and Social Synthesis in Adorno and Wellmer; and New German Aesthetic Theory after Adorno. Part 4: Jameson on Adorno Included here are papers on Jameson, Adorno and the persistence of the Utopian; and a Marxism for Postmodernism Part 5: Modernism and Postmodernism This section contains papers on Adorno, Foucault and the Modern Intellectual; Adorno, Foucault and Two forms of the Critique of Modernity; Adorno and the Habermas-Lyotard Debate; Adorno, Postmodernism and Edward Said; Adorno, Heidegger and Postmodernism; Adorno and the Decline of the Modern Age; The literary process of modernism; Adorno, Tradition and the Postmodern Part 5: The Feminist Response Included here are contributions on Adorno and Judith Butler; Adorno, Art Theory and Feminist Practice; and Gender in the writings of Adorno and Horkheimer. The collection comes with a superb Introduction to Adorno by Gerard Delanty which elucidates the main contributions of this penetrating and enduring thinker. Comprehensive and consistently illuminating, the collection includes the thought on Adorno from some of the most distinguished commentators on social theory. Included here are selections from the writings of Susan Buck-Morss, Martin Jay, Agnes Heller; David Frisby; Johann Arnason; Richard Wolin; Andrew Bowie; Robert Hulnot-Kentor; Leo Lowenthal; Richard Rorty Axel Honneth; Albrecht Wellmer; and Jurgen Habermas. The result is a peerless research resource allowing readers to delve into all aspects of Adorno's extraordinary accomplishments in social thought, philosophy and cultural criticism. It will be required reading for students of the Frankfurt School, Marxism, Critical Theory, Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics and Social Theory. (shrink)

The idea to produce the current volume was conceived by Jiirgen Mittelstrass and Robert E. Butts in 1978. Idealist philosophers are wrong about one thing: the temporal gap separating idea and reality can be very long indeed - even ten or so years! Problems of timing were joined by personal problems and by the pressure of other professional commitments. Fortunately, James Brown agreed to cooperate in the editing of the volume; the infusion of his usual energy, good judgement and (...) good-natured promptness saved the volume and made its produc tion possible. Despite the delays, the messages of the papers included in the book have not gone stale. An extremely worthwhile exercise in international philosophical cooperation has come to fruition; the German constructivist philosophical position is here represented in papers in English that will make its contemporary importance available to a larger audience. The editors owe thanks to many persons. All involved in the project owe much to the interest and support of Nicholas Rescher, a friend of the undertaking from the time of its inception. My review of the translations was helped immensely by Andrea Purvis' careful copy editing of the typescript. Most of all, however, we owe gratitude and admiration for the tireless efforts on behalf of this enterprise to Jiirgen Mittelstrass. (shrink)

Robert Zafft presents the too-often abstract language of business ethics in straight-forward language, laying out two themes commonly ignored: in the real world, it is often easy to lay out an ethical path but often very difficult to implement and encourage adherence to that path, and reputation is the single most important asset in business.

How are truths about physical and mental states related? Robert Kirk articulates and defends 'redescriptive physicalism'--a fresh approach to the connection between the physical and the mental, which answers the problems that mental causation has traditionally raised for other non-reductive views.

In this introductory paper, we assess the current status of blindsight -- the phenomenon in which patients with damage to their primary visual cortex retain the ability to detect, discriminate and localize visual stimuli presented in areas of their visual field in which they report that they are subjectively blind. Blindsight has garnered a great deal of interest and critical research, in part because of its important implications for the philosophy of mind. We briefly consider why this is so, and (...) then go on to examine three empirical questions which have fuelled challenges to the validity of blindsight as a distinct neuropsychological phenomenon. First, is blindsight simply degraded normal vision? Second, does blindsight depend on undamaged areas of primary visual cortex? Third, does evidence that blindsight patients are aware of moving stimuli undermine the apparent dissociation between access to visual information and visual experience in blindsight? In the course of the review we introduce the four other papers on blindsight in this issue. We conclude that, although patients with primary visual cortex damage may indeed perceive moving stimuli, there is still good evidence for a dissociation between access to information and phenomenal experience which cannot be accounted for in terms of degraded normal vision or undamaged primary visual cortex. (shrink)

René Descartes was a French mathematician and philosopher and is considered the father of modern philosophy. Coinciding with a period of scientific exploration and discovery in Europe, modern philosophy emphasized the use of reason over a dependence on traditional ways of thinking about the world. Embodying this spirit, Descartes split with many of the medieval and scholastic philosophers that came before him and attempted to build a philosophical system from scratch. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes begins this project (...) by considering how much we can know about the world around us. In this piece, we will critically examine Descartes’ arguments that reality is not what it appears to be. Descartes makes the case that we can't rule out that our life is all a dream or that we might all be radically deceived. Is there any way that we can rule these things out? (shrink)

The first edition of this book was published in 1977. At that time the field of thanatology, the study of death and dying, was still reasonably new and was dominated by research done by psychiatrists and social scientists. The most notable person in the field at the time was Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who was widely credited with having brought thanatology into public view with the 1969 publication of her book On Death and Dying. Two research centers on death and dying were (...) gaining national reputations: The Foundation of Thanatology in New York (Austin Kutscher, director), and the Center for Death Education and Research (Robert Fulton, director) at the University of Minnesota. (shrink)

With a new preface, Robert Paul Wolff's classic analysis of the foundations of the authority of the state and the problems of political authority and moral autonomy in a democracy.

Theologian, ethicist, and political analyst, Reinhold Niebuhr was a towering figure of twentieth-century religious thought. Now newly repackaged, this important book gathers the best of Niebuhr’s essays together in a single volume. Selected, edited, and introduced by Robert McAfee Brown—a student and friend of Niebuhr’s and himself a distinguished theologian—the works included here testify to the brilliant polemics, incisive analysis, and deep faith that characterized the whole of Niebuhr’s life. “This fine anthology makes available to a new generation the (...) thought of one of the most penetrating and rewarding of twentieth-century minds. Reinhold Niebuhr remains the great illuminator of the dark conundrums of human nature, history and public policy.”—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. “Sparkling gems... brought from the shadows of history into contemporary light. Beautifully selected and edited,_ _they show that Niebuhr’s fiery polemics and gracious assurances still speak with power to us today.”—Roger L. Shinn “An extremely useful volume.”—David Brion Davis, _New York Review of Books _“This collection, which brings together Niebuhr’s most penetrating and enduring essays on theology and politics, should demonstrate for a new generation that his best thought transcends the immediate historical setting in which he wrote.... [Brown’s] introduction succinctly presents the central features of Niebuhr’s life and thought.”—_Library Journal_. (shrink)

In this book, Robert Caper provides the reader with an introduction to psychoanalysis focusing explicitly on whether psychoanalysis is part of the sciences, and if not, where it belongs. Many psychoanalysts, beginning with Freud, have considered their discipline a science. In this book, Caper examines this claim and investigates the relationship of theory to observation in both philosophy and the experimental sciences and explores how these observations differ from those made in psychoanalytic interpretation. _Building Out into the Dark_ also (...) explores topics including: the origins of psychoanalysis in the art of medicine the therapeutic effect of psychoanalysis the archaic superego psychoanalysis with the individual and groups what makes psychoanalytic work unique. _Building Out into the Dark_ offers a thoughtful consideration of the nature of psychoanalytic knowledge and how it is gained. The book's accessible and concise style makes it a useful introductory resource for students studying psychoanalysis, for psychotherapists who are curious about the distinction between psychoanalysis and other forms of therapy as well as those interested in placing psychoanalysis in the context of current cultural and intellectual developments. (shrink)

Examining select high points in the speculative tradition from Plato and Aristotle through the Middle Ages and German tradition to Dewey and Heidegger, _Placing Aesthetics_ seeks to locate the aesthetic concern within the larger framework of each thinker's philosophy. In Professor Robert Wood's study, aesthetics is not peripheral but rather central to the speculative tradition and to human existence as such. In Dewey's terms, aesthetics is “experience in its integrity.” Its personal ground is in “the heart,” which is the (...) dispositional ground formed by genetic, cultural, and personal historical factors by which we are spontaneously moved and, in turn, are inclined to move, both practically and theoretically, in certain directions. Prepared for use by the student as well as the philosopher, _Placing Aesthetics_ aims to recover the fullness of humanness within a sense of the fullness of encompassing Being. It attempts to overcome the splitting of thought, even in philosophy, into exclusive specializations and the fracturing of life itself into theoretical, practical, and emotive dimensions. (shrink)

Bender, Robert Review of: In the public interest: 150 years of the Victorian Auditor-General's office, by Peter Yule, 2002, VAGO, 304 pages.

This article traces the evolution by which in the context of 1930s South Africa the liberal philosopher Alfred Hoernlé came to recognize the inability of classical liberalism to address the problems of a society in which a racial hierarchy had become deeply entrenched. Although he must be criticized for his patriarchal approach and for the pessimism that led him to take White attitudes toward Black South Africans as an unchangeable part of the situation that simply had to be accepted, his (...) insight into the limits of liberalism still resonates. While most White commentators were still thinking of racism in terms of beliefs and attitudes, he already understood that the problem lay in the systemic adoption of “techniques of domination” or what we today might call institutional racism. Although his proposal in 1939 that “Total Separation” was “a legitimate application of sound liberal ideas” was deeply problematic in context and might well have had a serious negative impact, it should be understood that it was intended to highlight the fundamental paradox into which liberalism fell when attempting to solve the problems it had helped to create by its belief in a civilizing mission that began with violence. (shrink)

Chow's account of Bayesian inference logic and procedures is replete with fundamental misconceptions, derived from secondary sources and not adequately informed by modern work. The status of subjective probabilities in Bayesian analyses is misrepresented and the cogent reasons for the rejection by many statisticians of the curious inferential hybrid used in psychological research are not presented.

Despite the fact that Ayn Rand did not influence the best artists, she did leave an important legacy for the American imagination and literary establishment. Rand's influence is arguably more multi-genre than any other author. Some multi-genre authors who were possibly influenced by Rand include: John Steinbeck (literature), Mickey Spillane and Ian Fleming (detective fiction), Ira Levin, Cameron Hawley, Erika Holzer and Kay Nolte Smith (popular fiction) and Terry Goodkind (science fiction). Her influence represents an important balance between many various (...) types of American Literature and is a credit to the hybrid and versatile nature of her fiction. (shrink)

Dans ces conditions, n'est-il pas urgent de s'interroger à nouveau sur ce qui fait la ligne de partage entre des images maîtresses d'erreur et d'errance et des images susceptibles d'éclairer le monde et donc de participer au mieux à l ...

Among the many scholarly surveys of historical and contemporary approaches to Christian eschatology, few treat the relation between eschatology and scientific cosmology. It is the purpose of this essay to do so. I begin with a brief summary of the importance of eschatology to contemporary Christian theology. Next, an overview is given of scientific cosmology, its earlier scenarios for the cosmic far future of “freeze or fry,” and, more recently the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. These (...) predictions severely challenge those versions of Christian eschatology that are based on the bodily resurrection of Jesus and, by analogy, the transformation of the universe into the new creation. Several recent approaches to this challenge are outlined, including those of Denis Edwards, Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Ted Peters, John Polkinghorne, and my own. I conclude with some suggestions for future research in both theology and science. (shrink)

This book presents a new classification system for acts of wrongdoing, sanctions imposed on the people who commit those acts, and the aims these sanctions intend to achieve.