Sociologists often ask why particular groups of people have the moral views that they do. I argue that sociology’s empirical research on morality relies, implicitly or explicitly, on unsophisticated and even obsolete ethical theories, and thus is based on inadequate conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, and semantics of morality. In this article I address the two main problems in the sociology of morality: (1) the problem of moral truth, and (2) the problem of value freedom. I identify two ideal–typical approaches. (...) While the Weberian paradigm rejects the concept of moral truth, the Durkheimian paradigm accepts it. By contrast, I argue that sociology should be metaphysically agnostic, yet in practice it should proceed as though there were no moral truths. The Weberians claim that the sociology of morality can and should be value free; the Durkheimians claim that it cannot and it should not. My argument is that, while it is true that factual statements presuppose value judgments, it does not follow that sociologists are moral philosophers in disguise. Finally, I contend that in order for sociology to improve its understanding of morality, better conceptual, epistemological, and methodological foundations are needed. (shrink)

In this issue, our contributors demonstrate how art in the city, art “about” the city, art compared to the city, can bring to attention the insidious forces underlying every city’s gleaming, wide-awake veneer.

Spor alanında çağının sorunlarını ve konularını güncelliği içinde, bilim ve felsefenin temel ilkeleri doğrultusunda takip edebilmek ve yorumlayabilmek önemli bir beceridir. Çünkü sportif olay ve olgular, sadece bilim ve felsefenin yol göstericiliğinde daha net şekilde yorumlanabilinir ve değerlendirilebilinir. Dolayısıyla bu çalışmanın amacı, spor ve felsefe ilişkisini konu ile ilgili olan literatürü imkân dâhilinde tarayıp elde edilen verileri birbiri ile ilişkilendirerek değerlendirmektir. Bu bağlamda çalışma, analitik metot kullanılarak yürütülmüştür. Filozoflar ve felsefeciler, özellikle Aydınlanma Felsefesinin başladığı Aydınlanma Çağı denilen 18.yüzyıldan itibaren toplum, (...) hukuk, tarih, fizik, metafizik, bilgi, bilim, din, ahlak, sanat, siyaset ve spor gibi alanlara yönelip bu alanların kavramlarını sorgulayarak yeni anlamlar yüklemeye başlamışlardır. Böylece felsefenin bilim felsefesi, bilgi felsefesi, ontoloji, din felsefesi, ahlak felsefesi, sanat felsefesi, tarih felsefesi, siyaset felsefesi ve spor felsefesi gibi alt dalları ortaya çıkmaya başlamıştır. Haliyle, spor felsefesi de felsefenin spora uyarlanmasıyla ortaya çıkan bir felsefe dalı olmuştur. Sonuç olarak; spor felsefesi çoğu kişinin zannettiği gibi bir spor dalı değil, bir felsefe dalıdır. Bir felsefe dalı olarak spor felsefesinin çeşitli boyutları bulunmaktadır. Spora felsefi bir bakış açısı ile bakmak olan bu boyutlar hakkında genel bir bilgi sahibi olmak, her spor insanı için gerekli ve faydalı bir durumdur. Çünkü bu şekilde spor felsefesinin temel işlevleri ortaya konulabilinir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Spor, Felsefe, Spor Felsefesi, Spor İnsanı. (shrink)

Avicenna (980-1037) is perhaps the most provocative figure in the history of thought in the East. He was the product of the impact of Greek thought on Islamic teachings; his environment was that of the Persian Renaissance in the tenth century. This book attempts to present Avicenna's life and works to the general reader.

Francis Fukuyama's controversial new book, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, has elicited varied reactions, but like it or not, it seems likely to be influential. Here are three opinions. —Ed.

Scholarship on borderline vagueness pinpoints Russell's 1923 essay titled “Vagueness” as the starting point for rigorous analysis. The importance of Russell's work over and above discussions of indeterminacy in antiquity and in the modern period is that Russell isolated borderline vagueness from indeterminacies that do not threaten classical logic. This paper argues that historical propriety concerning the analysis of borderline vagueness belongs to Peirce since he was the first to show that borderline vagueness is distinct from other forms of indeterminacy (...) (e.g., generality, unspecificity, and uninformativeness) and that the application of vague predicates to borderline cases involves an intrinsic uncertainty. (shrink)

It's surprising that contemporary moral philosophers have not thought more about food. The rapidly expanding industrialized landscape of modern western agribusiness raises moral concerns about large-scale livestock production, the increased usage of genetically modified crops, and the effects these now common practices may have on long-term environmental and human health. Here Pence argues that biotechnology is more helpful than harmful, on the ground that it will abate world hunger. Positioning himself as an "impartialbioethicist" he sets about the task of sorting (...) through the extremism he thinks drives all environ- mental movements' opposition to genetically modified (GM) crops. His argu- ment is simple: the claim that GM foods are unsafe is the product of alarmism, not sound reason. Discarding what environmentalists have called the Precau- tionary Principle, he argues that GM foods are safe because they have not been proven unsafe. And GM foods have been tested more than many food products now on the market. (shrink)

Jesu li stvari ovog svijeta nešto što je dano samoj misli? Jesu li stvari tako mišljene da budu spoznatljive, da budu objektivne manifestacije transcendentalno uvjetovanih moći? Zapadna filozofska tradicija prema Francoisu Laruellu pretpostavlja tu transcendentalnu konstituciju realnog. To je pretpostavka koja uzdiže samu filozofiju kao označenu primateljicu transcendentalnog dara. U našem članku o Laruellovom projektu želimo pokazati kako ta pretpostavka kontrolira čak i prividno radikalne kritike filozofske tradicije koje su se umnožile kao posljedice Nietzscheovog i Heideggerovog mišljenja. Zato učinkovita kritika (...) filozofije mora biti ne-filozofska. Ona prema Laruellu mora dokinuti pretpostavke da je drugotnost dana da bi bila spoznata, kao što mora dokinuti pretpostavku kako sama misao ima fundamentalno drugačiju strukturu. Ne-filozofija počinje ne sa razlikom, ne sa subjektom i objektom, nego sa pozicioniranjem Jednog. Od te početne aksiomatske točke, ne-filozofija uzima kao vlastitu materijalnu filozofiju ponovno mišljenje u odnosu na Jedno. Ne-filozofski projekt ne započinje kao što to čini postmoderna filozofija s naviještanjem kraja filozofije. On uzima filozofiju kao prigodu da postavi pitanje drugačije vrste mišljenja – onog koji, umjesto da se diferencirajći odnosi prema svijetu koji pretpostavlja, potvrđuje kako je ultimativno u tijelu s Jednim kojeg nikad ne možemo znati. (shrink)

The aim of this research is to find the operating level manager’s interpersonal competence. The total subjects of this research are 139 operating level managers. The subjects of this research are divided by the big-five personality trait, such as openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Researcher used questionnaire which is based on Likert scale to collect the data of this research. The data was analyzed by descriptive statistics with SPSS program 12 th version. The result of this research (...) shows that openness to experience and neuroticism tipe of personality has higher interpersonal competence score than the other personality tipes.  . (shrink)

Review of J. O. Wisdom's Challengeability in Modern Science.

In: B. Hardy-Vallee & N. Payette, eds. Beyond the brain: embodied, situated & distributed cognition. (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar’s Press), in press. Abstract: In this article, I do three main things: 1. First, I introduce an approach to the mind motivated primarily by evolutionary considerations. I do that by laying out four principles for the study of the mind from an evolutionary perspective, and four predictions that they suggest. This evolutionary perspective is completely compatible with, although broader than, the embodied cognition (...) approach. 2. Then I look at one prediction in depth, the idea that the brain evolved by exaptation–reusing exiting functional units, and combining them in novel ways to generate new cognitive capacities. 3. Finally, I try to lay out some of the implications, both of the in-depth example, and of the more general approach. (shrink)

Translation of Aristotle's Physics I-II into Portuguese, with commentaries. Tradução para o português dos livros I e II da Física de Aristóteles, com comentários.

Block explains the conflation of phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness by appeal to the ambiguity of the term “consciousness.” However, the nature of ambiguity is not at all clear, and the thesis that “consciousness” is ambiguous between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness is far from obvious. Moreover, the conflation can be explained without supposing that the term is ambiguous. Block's argument can thus be strengthened by avoiding controversial issues in the semantics of “consciousness.”.

The Aristotelian axiom that function follows form was beautifully instantiated in molecular biology by the discovery of DNA’s structure that immediately suggested how DNA might work as depository and vehicle for genetic information. However, later on molecular biology became infatuated with the gene that became the center of the universe. This gene-centered viewpoint is an obstacle for the emerging field of evo-devo aiming at finding the causal connections between evolution and biological development. Here it is argued that molecular biology must (...) reject the narrow-minded causality associated with the gene-centered view and so it must recover to the spirit of Aristotelian natural history and its four types of causation in order to foster the evo-devo field of research. (shrink)

This text is the introduction of M. S. Archer,, Late Modernity: Trajectories towards Morphogenetic Society, Heidelberg-New York-London, Springer, 2014. In the last two decades, Sociological reactions to ‘the current crisis' and its repercussions have prompted two main responses amongst social theorists. On the one hand, some have simply embraced the overt – meaning empirically observable – contributory factors and consequential outcomes as the concatenation of contingency. In - Sociologie – Nouvel article.