Thomas L. Friedman's recent book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, sees a religious value in globalization: “globalization emerges from below … from people's very souls and from their deepest aspirations” (1999, 338). Pierre Teilhard de Chardin made similar claims in 1920, calling globalization the “deep‐rooted religious movement of our age” (Teilhard 1979, 211). He came to this awareness through his experience in World War I. There he began connecting globalization to its roots in evolution and to (...) the mystics’ desire for the “All,” a desire he saw animating the work of believing and unbelieving scientists. He found confirmation of his ideas in the letters of Saint Paul, who told of God eventually filling all things. Teilhard used the vocabulary of mysticism to describe global developments in technology, industry, politics, and the environment, and the ardor of his texts has led to their being widely used for secular gatherings on global subjects. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence research and regulation seek to balance the benefits of innovation against any potential harms and disruption. However, one unintended consequence of the recent surge in AI research is the potential re-orientation of AI technologies to facilitate criminal acts, term in this article AI-Crime. AIC is theoretically feasible thanks to published experiments in automating fraud targeted at social media users, as well as demonstrations of AI-driven manipulation of simulated markets. However, because AIC is still a relatively young and inherently (...) interdisciplinary area—spanning socio-legal studies to formal science—there is little certainty of what an AIC future might look like. This article offers the first systematic, interdisciplinary literature analysis of the foreseeable threats of AIC, providing ethicists, policy-makers, and law enforcement organisations with a synthesis of the current problems, and a possible solution space. (shrink)

The idea of artificial intelligence for social good is gaining traction within information societies in general and the AI community in particular. It has the potential to tackle social problems through the development of AI-based solutions. Yet, to date, there is only limited understanding of what makes AI socially good in theory, what counts as AI4SG in practice, and how to reproduce its initial successes in terms of policies. This article addresses this gap by identifying seven ethical factors that are (...) essential for future AI4SG initiatives. The analysis is supported by 27 case examples of AI4SG projects. Some of these factors are almost entirely novel to AI, while the significance of other factors is heightened by the use of AI. From each of these factors, corresponding best practices are formulated which, subject to context and balance, may serve as preliminary guidelines to ensure that well-designed AI is more likely to serve the social good. (shrink)

Examine the first-year student experience as so rarely seen from the community college perspective and increase the odds of the new-to-college students’ success. For three decades, U.S. higher education has paid increasing attention to the beginning college experience—to ensure that entering students make a successful transition to college. Yet, much of the extant research and practice literature focuses on the experience of first-year students entering four-year colleges and universities. Fulfilling the Promise of the Community College is an insightful publication that (...) provides a thought-provoking, idea-inspiring look at the unique characteristics of the community college and its students. In addition, it explores the barriers to success these students face as well as strategies for ensuring that their higher education goals can be achieved. Authors describe successful adaptations of faculty development initiatives, first-year seminars, common reading programs, academic and career advising, learning communities, and STEM initiatives in the community college setting. (shrink)

Science and revelation have been presented as two books with the same “author,” their reconciliation being called “concordism.” Teilhard opposed concordism, insisting that supposed “revelations” be treated as scientific hypotheses to be verified or not in experience. Applying his criterion for truth (Does it bring “coherence and fecundity” to the phenomena?) to Christian revelation, he told of finding “an explosion of dazzling flashes.” So Teilhard spoke of the hypothesis as the supreme spiritual act wherein the dust of experience takes on (...) form and is kindled at the fire of knowledge. (shrink)

. Several recent Roman Catholics who were known for their devotion have left accounts of their troubled faith. I consider three of these: St. Therese of Lisieux, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Then I tell of the troubled atheism of Jean‐Paul Sartre. Finally, I use texts of Sartre and Teilhard to understand the unsettled nature of belief.

A demonstration of how Jung's quest for wholeness through the four faculties he saw in every psyche can be seen in the growth of the ideas of 12 key philosophers. The author examines and compares the 12 philosophers and gives an explanation of the development of their thought.

Thomas Reid is now recognized as one of the towering figures of the Enlightenment. Best known for his published writings on epistemology and moral theory, he was also an accomplished mathematician and natural philosopher, as an earlier volume of his manuscripts edited by Paul Wood for the Edinburgh Reid Edition, Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation, has shown. The Correspondence of Thomas Reid collects all of the known letters to and from Reid in a fully annotated form. (...) Letters already published by Sir William Hamilton and others have been reedited, and roughly half of the letters included appear in print for the first time. Writing in 1802, Reid's disciple and biographer Dugald Stewart doubted that Reid's correspondence &"would be generally interesting.&" This collection proves otherwise, for the letters illuminate virtually every aspect of Reid's life and career and, in some instances, provide us with invaluable evidence about activities otherwise undocumented in his manuscripts or published works. Through his correspondence we can trace Reid's relations with contemporaries such as David Hume and his colleagues at both King's College, Aberdeen, and the University of Glasgow, as well as his engagement with the most controversial philosophical, scientific, and political issues of his day. If anything, the letters assembled here serve as the starting point for understanding Reid and his place in the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

This article explores silence and the ethics of conscience through a study of the life and late letters of Sir Thomas More. More's silence is a paradigm case for the contest of conscience under conditions of tyranny, and it is one of the most influential in the formulation of principles of conscience and human rights in modern constitutional democracies. The article focuses on More's prosecution by King Henry VIII, and offers close analysis of the concept of conscience discussed (...) in his last letters. The approach is historical and philosophical, and puts More's case in dialogue with other classic and modern texts on the ethics of conscience. Emphasis is placed on More's principle of self-determination as essential to conscience. (shrink)

Age discrimination, particularly in the context of performance evaluation decisions, has been a source of major concern and litigation for organizations in the past, and indications are that this area will pose serious challenges in the future. The present study attempted to delve more deeply into the process by which manifest age discrimination operates in the performance evaluation process. A conceptualization was proposed and tested which suggested that age-related influences on performance ratings operate through interpersonal distance and political influence of (...) subordinates. Results demonstrated some support for this conceptualization. (shrink)

Thomas Reid, the Scottish natural and moral philosopher, was one of the founding members of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and a significant figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. Reid believed that common sense should form the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He criticised the sceptical philosophy propagated by his fellow Scot David Hume and the Anglo-Irish bishop George Berkeley, who asserted that the external world did not exist outside the human mind. Reid was also critical of the theory of ideas (...) propagated by Locke and Descartes, arguing that it was incompatible with physical and experiential facts. For Reid, our senses demonstrate that the external world must exist, and this work is organised in chapters examining each of the senses in turn. The book, based on his lectures, was first published in 1764 when Reid was a regent professor at King's College, Aberdeen, and was reissued in 1818. (shrink)

Thomas Reid , the Scottish natural and moral philosopher, was one of the founding members of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and a significant figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. Reid believed that common sense should form the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He criticised the sceptical philosophy propagated by his fellow Scot David Hume and the Anglo-Irish bishop George Berkeley, who asserted that the external world did not exist outside the human mind. Reid was also critical of the theory of (...) ideas propagated by Locke and Descartes, arguing that it was incompatible with physical and experiential facts. For Reid, our senses demonstrate that the external world must exist, and this work is organised in chapters examining each of the senses in turn. The book, based on his lectures, was first published in 1764 when Reid was a regent professor at King's College, Aberdeen, and was reissued in 1818. (shrink)

The Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid first published Essays on Active Powers of Man in 1788 while he was Professor of Philosophy at King's College, Aberdeen. The work contains a set of essays on active power, the will, principles of action, the liberty of moral agents, and morals. Reid was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment and one of the founders of the 'common sense' school of philosophy. In Active Powers Reid gives his fullest exploration of sensus communis (...) as the basis of all philosophical inquiry. He uses common sense realism to argue for the existence of a stable external world, the existence of other minds, and to offer a powerful challenge to versions of the Theory of Ideas advocated by Hume and Locke . This is a key work of the Scottish Enlightenment that made important contributions to fundamental debates about the basis of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

Thomas Reid, contemporary and philosophical foe of David Hume, was the chief figure in the group of philosophers constituting the Scottish school of common sense. Between 1753 and 1762, Reid delivered four "Philosophical Orations" at graduation ceremonies at King's College, Aberdeen. This is the first English translation of those Latin orations, which reveal Reid's philosophical opinions during his formative years. Reid's influence was strong in America until the middle of the 19th century. Thomas Jefferson was a convert (...) to the commonsense philosophy of Reid and his school, and for the first dozen academic generations after the revolutionary war, American students were steeped in the thought of Reid and his associates. Thus Reid profoundly influenced American political, literary, and philosophical culture. His philosophy served as a cornerstone of American education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 57-74 [Access article in PDF] An American Novelist in the Philosopher King's Court Thomas P. Crocker I MORAL PHILOSOPHY has languished long within the confines of something like the following purported dilemma: either moral discourse is the discourse of principles and rules rationally grounded, or moral discourse is the discourse of passions and personal preferences, clothed in the garments of rational justification. (...) Alasdair MacIntyre's disquieting suggestion—that our language of moral debate is nothing more than the "simulacra of morality"—provides a grim outlook for moral philosophy. 1 Indeed, when moral inquiry is conducted in terms of ethical theory, without independent grounds upon which competing arguments can meet, philosophical discourse, embedded in competing theories, seems to be only so much cacophonous clamor, rationally convincing no one except those who already accept the terms employed by their own theory. One way to avoid this philosophical effluvium produced by moral philosophy is to follow Ludwig Wittgenstein in rejecting the very terms upon which it is made (the distinction between the particular perspective and the universal standpoint), recognizing that moral inquiry begins from where we already are—the everyday world in which we find ourselves.Towards the end of avoidance here, I wish to add to this simmering background of ethical discord Mark Twain's story of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 2 Twain's controversial voice provides a place for moral thinking unavailable through strictly theoretical discourse. 3 And reading Huck and Jim's story through the philosophical avoidance of Wittgenstein's latent ethical thought provides the transformative possibility of seeing the domain of the ethical in a new light. 4 [End Page 57]Although Twain boldly states at the beginning of his novel that "persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished," 5 he does show us without the need of theory or dogma how a change in one's way of seeing is intertwined with a change in one's way of living; this connection between ways of seeing and ways of living makes possible a kind of moral transformation that characterizes the change in Huck's perception of Jim, from that of a slave to that of a friend. This moral conversion is much like the perceptual transformations that Ludwig Wittgenstein considers in his discussions of "noticing an aspect," 6 in which a shift in what one sees is connected to the background against which the perceptual object is seen and to the ways in which one is prepared to respond to it. When confronting perceptual ambiguity, as in the case of Jastrow's ambiguous duck/rabbit figure, one looks to the context and background to clarify what one sees, just as one does with semantic ambiguity. In coming to see in one way or the other, nothing is explicitly stated, nothing is put into argumentative form. And in Twain's narrative, we are not given arguments for why we should see Jim as human, nor does the narrative recount Huck's confrontations with moral arguments; rather, through his interactions with Jim, Huck is shown Jim's humanity, his friendship, and we, the readers, are shown the possibility of a moral transformation that is not determined by or grounded in rules or philosophical arguments.The moral realist might agree that such a transformation could be motivated in ways other than rational arguments, but to be legitimate, it must be possible to reconstruct the transformation according to rational considerations. The ability to "get behind" the transformation in some justificatory way is what I am denying here (as is Wittgenstein); for what one finds when one "gets behind" is another situated language game that is itself not open to question (though it could be if we direct our attention towards it). There is no final "getting behind" the things we do and the situations in which we do them, and hence there is no final justificatory argument one can give—as Wittgenstein famously says, "If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am... (shrink)

On the day before Christmas, 1170, Robert de Broc, member of a family of royal servants that had taken up King Henry II's fierce opposition to Thomas Becket, seized a horse bringing goods to the archbishop and cut off its tail. The next day, Archbishop Thomas noted this incident after his Christmas sermon when renewing his excommunication of Robert and several others, and he discussed it again four days later in his initial meeting with the men who (...) would shortly murder him. The excision of the horse's tail appears in five of the biographies of the martyr and subsequently in the national chronicles of Roger of Howden and Ralph of Diceto. Why did a minor act of cruelty inflicted on a horse seem so noteworthy to contemporaries? The sources recording it resound with the rich Latin vocabulary of shame: “dedecus, contemptus, ignominia, dehonestatio, opprobrium.” Robert's highly symbolic act, part of a pattern of harassment by the Brocs, was designed not just to threaten Becket but also to humiliate him. (shrink)

Robert King Merton’s article published in Science popularized the Matthew Effect: “For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away”. The Matthew Effect prevails at the individual, organization-industry, and country-global levels. This interdisciplinary review connects the Holy Bible with agency theory, tournament theory, corporate social responsibility, prospect theory, behavioral economics, the psychology of money, and business ethics in the literature. (...) I expand the Matthew Effect, incorporate prospect theory and the love of money, and develop a multi-level theory of the Matthew Effect in Monetary Wisdoms: Individual decision-makers apply their deep-rooted values as a lens, frame the critical concerns in the immediate and omnibus contexts, and maximize expected utility and ultimate serenity-happiness across people, context, and time at the individual, organization-industry, and country-global levels. The rich serve God, enjoying the ultimate joy and happiness. The poor serve mammon, destroying their lives. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Scholars of business ethics and CSR must explore this phenomenon in future studies. (shrink)

Herodotus’ fateful tale of the seven Persian emissaries sent to seek Earth and Water from the Macedonian king Amyntes has been the subject of increasingly rich discussion in recent years. Generations of commentators have cumulatively revealed the ironies of Herodotus’ account: its repeated hints, for example, of the Persians’ eventual end; and, crowning all other ironies, the story's ending: that, after resisting the indignity of his female relatives being molested at a banquet, and disposing of all trace of the (...) Persian ambassadors and their party, Alexander of Macedon then arranges his sister's marriage to the leader of the search party sent to investigate his disappeared compatriots (Hdt. 5.21.2). More recent readings have gone further in uncovering the mythological archetypes for thelogos, or in tracing its exploration of a number of themes: revenge, guest-friendship, the equation of sexual and military conquest, or the ‘explosion of violence resulting from the contact of two different cultures’. Most fruitful perhaps have been those readings that have seen thelogosno longer as a detached ‘short story’ but in its wider context in theHistories: David Fearn, for example, has stressed the need to understand the presentation of Alexander I in the light of what the reader knows of his subsequent history. (shrink)

The theory of knowledge attempts to explain the nature and extent of human knowledge. A good place to begin the discussion on this theory is with the Princess Lenore's beliefs about the moon in Many Moons, a children's story on the different conceptions of knowledge. The story raises important questions about the nature of knowledge and those who claim to have it. We can understand the philosophical point that Many Moons makes about knowledge ask why the Jester is able to (...) solve a problem that none of the King's advisors can. An objectivist sees knowledge as something that is independent of any individual's point of view. The Jester has a different conception of knowledge. There are many other issues in the theory of knowledge besides skepticism and relativism. (shrink)

As Avatar: The Last Airbender illustrates, toughness and hardness can be accompanied by great sensitivity, rigidity by openness, roughness by love. Thus, the show sets up a one‐sided stereotype which over time dissolves into a balanced, at King Bumi rules Omashu, which is introduced as an ordered and well‐organized city, with mighty walls and tough guards who kick out the cabbage merchant due to some rotten cabbages in his load and demand respect for the elderly‐so far, so earthy. The (...) Avatar, is the great bridge between worlds not just between those of spirits and humans, but also between different sides. In Western philosophy, the terms “false alternative,” “false dilemma,” and “false dichotomy” refer to an informal fallacy which revolves around exactly such an illegitimate restriction of options. Philosophy provides the tools to uncover such fallacious reasoning and problematic assumptions. (shrink)

Båve has argued that act-type theories of propositions entail unwanted ambiguity of sentences such as ‘Donald loves Joan’. King has argued that act-type theories of propositions entail an unwanted abundance of propositions. I reply that a version of the act-type theory can avoid these objections. The key idea is that grammar constrains the acts that can be performed by the utterance of a sentence. I present enough of the details of this version of the act-type theory to show how (...) it can be used to respond to Båve's and King's objections. I conclude that this is a promising way to develop the act-type theory of propositions. (shrink)

Books Reviewed in this Article: Towards a New Mysticism, Teilhard de Chardin and Eastern Religions. By Ursula King. Zen and the Bible: A Priest's Experience. By J.K. Kadowaki. Buddhism and Christianity, A Preface to Dialogue. By Georg Siegmund. Roman Catholicism: The Search for Relevance. By Bill McSweeney. The Church ‐ Maintained in Truth. By Hans Küng. The Communion of Saints. By Michael Perham. Identity and the Sacred: A Sketch for a New Social‐Scientific Theory of Religion. By Hans Mol. Sacrifice. (...) Edited by M.F.C. Bourdillon and Meyer Fortes. Theists and Atheists: A Typology of Non‐Belief By Thomas Molnar. Myth and Society in Ancient Greece. By Jean‐Pierre Vernant. The Alternative Tradition: Religion and the Rejection of Religion in the Ancient World. By James Thrower. Paulus im ältesten Christentum: Das Bild des Apostels and die Rezeption der paulinischen Theologie in der frühchristlichen Literatur bis Marcion. By Andreas Lindemann. Christ: the Christian Experience in the Modern World. By Edward Schillebeeckx. Interim Report on the Books “Jesus” and “Christ”. By Edward Schillebeeckx. Christologie im Präsens: Kritische Sichtung neuer Entwürfe. By Arno Schilson & Walter Kasper. Disput um Jesus and um Kirche. By Walter Kern. It is Not Lawful For Me To Fight: Early Christian Attitudes Toward War, Violence and the State. By Jean‐Michel Hornus. Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino‐Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century. By John Meyendorff. Reformation Principle and Practice: Essays in Honour of Arthur Geoffrey Dickens. Edited by Peter Newman Brooks. Adrianus Saravia. By Willem Nijenhuis. Rome and the Counter‐Reformation in Scandinavia, II. By Oskar Garstein. Winstanley the Digger: A Literary Analysis of Radical Ideas in the English Revolution. By T. Wilson Hayes. Perfect Fools. By John Saward. Lord Abbot of the Wilderness: The Life and Times of Bishop Salvado. By George Russo. St Edmund's House: The First Eighty Years. By Garrett Sweeney. Doubt and Religious Commitment: the Role of the Will in Newman's Thought. By M. Jaime Ferreira. The Philosophers: Their Lives and the Nature of Their Thought. By Ben‐Ami Scharfstein. Philosophies and Cultures. By Frederick C. Copleston. The Sceptical Feminist. By Janet Radcliffe Richards. Homosexuality and Ethics. Edited by Edward Batchelor, Jr. (shrink)

Die Frage, wie sich Aussagen uber Fahigkeiten von Personen zu Aussagen uber Moglichkeiten von Zustanden in der Welt verhalten, ist fur unser menschliches Selbstverstandnis zentral. Der vorliegende Band versammelt unter dieser Frage durchweg Originalbeitrage in historisch-systematischer Absicht; sie behandeln die Geschichte der Metaphysik und Ontologie von Parmenides bis Heidegger.INHALT: VORWORT - Klaus Jacobi: Das Konnen und die Moglichkeiten. Potentialitat und Possibilitat - Mischa von Perger: Moglichkeit, Parmenideisch - Ulrich Nortmann: 'Das Saatkorn ist dem Vermogen nach eine Pflanze'. Uber ontologische und (...) logische Aspekte Aristotelischer Moglichkeitssatze - Sang-Jin Kang: Anselm und die modallogische Betrachtung der gottlichen Notwendigkeit - Michael Astroh: Petrus Abaelardus on Modalities de re and de dicto - Christopher Martin: Peter Abaelard on Modality. Some Possibilities and Some Puzzles - Allan Back: Avicenna and Averroes: Modality and Theology - Seung-Chan (Elias) Park: Die Differenz von personlicher und unpersonlicher Moglichkeit bei Thomas von Aquin - Charles Lohr: 'Art' and Possibility: The Rule Concerning Possibility in the Ars lulliana - Peter King: Duns Scotus on Possibilities, Powers, and the Possible - Matthias Kaufmann: Gottes Allmacht und die Wahrheit modaler Satze. Potentialitat und Possibilitat bei Wilhelm von Ockham - Simo Knuuttila: On the History of Theory of Modality as Alternativeness - Stephan Meier-Oeser: Potentia versus Possibilitas? Posse! Zur cusanischen Konzeption der Moglichkeit - Dominik Perler: Cartesische Moglichkeiten - Hans Poser: Leibniz'sche Handlungsmodi zwischen Ontologie und Deontologie - Wilhelm Metz: Der transzendentale Moglichkeitsbegriff bei Kant und Fichte - Rainer Marten: Heidegger: Die eigenste eigentliche Moglichkeit - Tilman Borsche: Moglichkeiten des Seins, Moglichkeiten des Denkens - Thomas Buchheim: Zwischen Antinomie und Kompatibilitat: Versuch uber die naturliche Einbettung unserer Handlungsfreiheit - Kuno Lorenz: Dynamis und Energeia. Zur Aktualitat eines begrifflichen Werkzeugs von Aristoteles. (shrink)

Thomas Hobbes is arguably the greatest of all English philosophers. In the second half of the twentieth century, he has been the subject of sustained critical attention. Hobbes was capable of powerful argument on virtually any level, whether logical, scriptural or historical. And he has attracted attention in all these areas and more questions of historical method, language and linguistics, metaphysics, ethics, law, politics, science and religion. Hobbes has been examined from a great variety of perspectives as an ethical (...) positivist and a deontologist, as a bourgeois advocate and a supporter of the aristocracy, as an absolutist and a proponent of parliamentary government, as a "conservative" and a "modern," as an atheist and a believer. The periodical literature on Hobbes is accordingly very rich, but it is also difficult to access. The four volumes of these critical assessments assemble an important array of material which will be invaluable to all students of Hobbes. (shrink)