This is the first of two volumes announcing the emergence of the new legal realism as a field of study. At a time when the legal academy is turning to social science for new approaches, these volumes chart a new course for interdisciplinary research by synthesizing law on the ground, empirical research, and theory. Volume 1 lays the groundwork for this novel and comprehensive approach with an innovative mix of theoretical, historical, pedagogical, and empirical perspectives. Their empirical work covers such (...) wide-ranging topics as the financial crisis, intellectual property battles, the legal disenfranchisement of African-American landowners, and gender and racial prejudice on law school faculties. The methodological blueprint offered here will be essential for anyone interested in the future of law-and-society. (shrink)

Can poem and picture collaborate successfully in a composite art of text and design? Or does one art inevitably dominate the other? W.J.T. Mitchell maintains that Blake's illuminated poems are an exception to Suzanne Langer's claim that "there are no happy marriages in art—only successful rape." Drawing on over one hundred reproductions of Blake's pictures, this book shows that neither the graphic nor the poetic aspect of his composite art consistently predominates: their relationship is more like an energetic rivalry, (...) a dialogue between vigorously independent modes of expression. W.J.T. Mitchell is Professor of English and Art and Design at the University of Chicago and editor of Critical Inquiry. Originally published in 1978. 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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 197-201 [Access article in PDF] An Interview with Donald Mitchell and James Wiseman The 2002 Fred Streng Book Award has been given to Donald W. Mitchell and James Wiseman for their edited collection, The Gethsemani Encounter: A Dialogue on the Spiritual Life by Buddhist and Christian Monastics. Donald W. Mitchell is professor of comparative philosophy at Purdue University and a member of (...) the editorial advisory board of Buddhist-Christian Studies. James Wiseman is a member of the Benedictine community of St. Anselm's Abbey in Washington, D.C., and is an associate professor of theology at the Catholic University of America. Following is an edited interview with both.DONALD MITCHELL How long have Buddhist and Christian monastics been in dialogue? In 1978 the Benedictine Confederation founded what is now named the Monastic Interreligious Dialogue (MID) in order to develop intermonastic dialogue, especially with Buddhism. MID has been in dialogue with Buddhism in Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America. Numerous MID spiritual exchanges and hospitality programs have taken place between Buddhist and Christian monastics over the years. How did the Dalai Lama get involved? His Holiness the Dalai Lama met with Thomas Merton in 1968, and from then on has been interested in Christian monasticism. He first got involved with MID when several of their members spoke with him at an East-West conference at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in 1981. This was the beginning of a series of intermonastic hospitality exchanges, with Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns visiting Christian monasteries in the United States and Christian monastics being hosted at Tibetan Buddhist sites in India. Years later, at the Parliament of World's Religions in 1993, MID hosted a Buddhist-Christian dialogue on "Emptiness and Kenosis." The Dalai Lama took part in the dialogue and afterward told MID that he felt its dialogue with Buddhism had matured to the point [where] it would be helpful to have a weeklong retreat dialogue on the spiritual life in Buddhism and Christianity. Where did Gethsemani enter the picture? The Dalai Lama asked if it would be possible to hold the spiritual dialogue at Gethsemani Abbey, home of his friend Thomas Merton. In 1994 MID sent a delegation [End Page 197] to Dharamsala to discuss the proposal in more depth with the Dalai Lama. An agreement was reached to hold a retreat dialogue at Gethsemani Abbey with Buddhist and Christian teachers of spirituality coming from around the world. You're not a monk. How did you get involved? Good question. A year later, Sister Mary Margaret Funk, executive director of MID, met with me to request that I help organize the encounter as a lay advisor to MID. MID had used my book, Spirituality and Emptiness: The Dynamics of Spiritual Life in Buddhism and Christianity, to prepare for the Parliament dialogue on kenosis and emptiness. I agreed to help with inviting the Buddhist participants, crafting the program, and editing the proceedings. What developments in the dialogue have you seen occurring over the years? Many developments. As you can imagine, the Gethsemani Encounter in 1996 was itself a spiritual experience. As Ewert Cousins put it, there seemed to be two treasure boxes—Buddhism and Christianity—set before us in a spiritual atmosphere that enabled us to appreciate the gems of spiritual living shared by the participants. So the encounter itself brought the dialogue to a new stage of trust, understanding, and appreciation. This development can be seen in the fact that Buddhist participants suggested a project be undertaken to produce a Buddhist commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict. The result is Benedict's Dharma: Buddhists Reflect on the Rule of Saint Benedict, edited by Patrick Henry and published by Riverhead Books in 2001. What else? A small group of American Buddhist leaders and MID members met in 1999 to discuss the possibility of holding a Gethsemani Encounter II. It was decided to bring the dialogue ahead by focusing on one of the major topics that came up again and again at Gethsemani I—namely, the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 21-32 [Access article in PDF] Re-Creating Christian Community:A Response to Rita M. Gross Donald W. Mitchell Purdue University In Rita M. Gross's well-written, insightful, and provocative paper entitled "Some Reflections about Community and Survival," Rita says: "I am challenging my Christian colleagues to consider what role Western religious concepts about the individual may have played in getting us into the current hyper-individualism. I also (...) am asking whether the Buddhist concept of interdependence might be very useful in providing tools with which to think about why this hyper-individualism cannot survive."In terms of Rita's challenge, one could make the generalization that the notion of the individual soul being saved or on a journey to union with God has certainly played an important role in Christianity. At the extreme in this regard, Thomas à Kempis even advised solitude and the actual avoidance of other people, seen by him to be distractions to the spiritual life. However, most Christians would see this advice as an unhealthy extreme, agreeing with Rita that solitude has a "valued role...in the context of social life, not a substitute for it" (11). It is much more common for Christians to see themselves as parts of the mystical body of Christ, and to believe that their authentic selfhood and discipleship are found in the context of fellowship and community life in the church.In what follows here, I will try to show how the notions of selfhood and discipleship are being defined in a particular re-creation of Christian community, which includes persons of other faiths. I have been asked to make my response from the perspective of my own Christian community, the Focolare, which focuses on the kinds of social, economic, and environmental issues that we have been discussing for the past three years. In so doing, I will also try to show how the Focolare's trinitarian vision of God, community, and the cosmos is a possible answer to the above-quoted question Rita asks about how interdependence might be an antidote to hyper-individualism. Along the way, I will raise issues that relate to other points Rita makes in her paper, and then address her conclusions at the end of my paper. Seeds of a New Christian Community The Focolare began duringWorld War II with a small group of young women, whose ages ranged from fifteen to twenty-five, living in the city of Trent, Italy. 1 At the center [End Page 21] of the group was Chiara Lubich, who was only twenty-three at the time. In May of 1944 Lubich's home was destroyed by bombs, and her family decided to leave the city. Lubich made the difficult decision to remain with her companions in Trent, where they would meet in the bomb shelters as often as eleven times each day. They would take with them to the shelters only the Bible, which they searched for guidance in that difficult situation. What they came to understand in those hours together and then put into practice became the basis for re-creating a Christian community, one that is sensitive to the social, political, and economic conditions that had produced the war in which they were caught.A foundational discovery for these young women was a collective and yet very personal experience, in the midst of the death and destruction of the war, that "God is Love" (I John 4:8). Their contemplation of the First Letter of John, as well as other parts of the Scripture, strengthened not only their belief in the existence of God, when many were doubting God's existence, but also their faith in the love of God for each one of them.Wanting to respond to this experience of God's love, they again found in Scripture that God does not seek just a response of individual prayerful sentiment or personal piety, but a response that includes doing God's will: "It is not those who say to me, 'Lord, Lord,' who will enter the kingdom of heaven... (shrink)

The question naturally arises: Is public art inherently violent, or is it a provocation to violence? Is violence built into the monument in its very conception? Or is violence simply an accident that befalls some monuments, a matter of the fortunes of history? The historical record suggests that if violence is simply an accident that happens to public art, it is one that is always waiting to happen. The principal media and materials of public art are stone and metal sculpture (...) not so much by choice as by necessity. “A public sculpture,” says Lawrence Alloway, “should be invulnerable or inaccessible. It should have the material strength to resist attack or be easily cleanable, but it also needs a formal structure that is not wrecked by alterations.”12 The violence that surrounds public art is more, however, than simply the ever-present possibility of an accident—the natural disaster or random act of vandalism. Much of the world’s public art—memorials, monuments, triumphal arches, obelisks, columns, and statues—has a rather direct reference to violence in the form of war or conquest. From Ozymandias to Caesar to Napoleon to Hitler, public art has served as a kind of monumentalizing of violence, and never more powerfully than when it presents the conqueror as a man of peace, imposing a Napoleonic code or a pax Romana on the world. Public sculpture that is too frank or explicit about this monumentalizing of violence, whether the Assyrian palace reliefs of the ninth century b.c., or Morris’s bomb sculpture proposal of 1981, is likely to offend the sensibilities of a public committed to the repression of its own complicity in violence.13 The very notion of public art as we receive it is inseparable from what Jürgen Habermas has called “the liberal model of the public sphere,” a dimension distinct from the economic, the private, and the political. This ideal realm provides the space in which disinterested citizens may contemplate a transparent emblem of their own inclusiveness and solidarity, and deliberate on the general good, free of coercion, violence, or private interests.14 12. Lawrence Alloway, “The Public Sculpture Problem,” Studio International 184 : 124.13. See Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, “The Forms of Violence,” October, no. 8 : 17-29, for an important critique of the “narrativization” of violence in Western art and an examination of the alternative suggested by the Assyrian palace reliefs.14. Habermas first introduced this concept in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence . First published in 1962, it has since become the focus of an extensive literature. See also Habermas’s short encyclopedia article, “The Public Sphere,” trans. Sara Lennox and Frank Lennox, New German Critique 1 : 49-55, and the introduction to it by Peter Hohendahl in the same issue, pp. 45-48. I owe much to the guidance of Miriam Hansen and Lauren Berlant on this complex and crucial topic. W. J. T. Mitchell, editor of Critical Inquiry, is Gaylord Donnelly Distinguished Service Professor of English and art at the University of Chicago. His recent book is Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. (shrink)

This is a review of a book that tries to re-establish mind-body dualism by using (a) empirical research on near-death experiences, placebo effects, creativity, claiming even that parapsychology should become a respected part of science, and (b) Frederic W. H. Myers' (1843-1901) metaphor of the brain as a kind of receiving device that records what the irreducible mind sends as messages. Among other things, we criticize the lack of philosophical clarity about mind-body relation, and question the book's tendency to refer (...) to past and current parapsychological literature as reliable. (shrink)

With each of our three criminal-law topics—defining offenses, apprehending suspects, and establishing punishments—we feel, I believe, strong moral resistance to the idea that our practices should be settled by a prospective-participant perspective. This becomes quite clear when we look at how the “reforms” suggested by institutional viewing might combine once we consider all three topics together: imagine a more extensive and swifter use of the death penalty in homicide cases coupled with somewhat lower standards of evidence; or think of backing (...) a strict-liability criminal statute with the death penalty. Of course, such “reforms” would increase the execution of innocents; but, their proponents will tell us, any penal system involves the punishment of some innocents, and, if it provides for the death penalty, the execution of some innocents. Moreover, why is it worse for innocents to be punished than for innocents to suffer an equivalent harm in some other way? Formulated from a prospective-participant perspective: Why not run a small risk of being innocently executed in exchange for reducing, much more significantly, the risk of dying prematurely in other ways? (shrink)

During the past ten years Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) has become part of the repertoire of specialized decision-oriented theories in the business ethics literature. The intention here is to (1)␣provide a brief overview of the structure and strengths of ISCT; (2) identify recurring themes in the extensive commentary on the theory including brief mention of how ISCT has been applied outside the business ethics literature; (3) describe where research appears to be headed; and (4) specify challenges faced by those (...) who seek to reform ISCT. Key themes in the critiquing literature relate to (a) the identification process for hypernorms; (b) justification of the recognition of hypernorms; (c) proposals for considering meso or meta norms; (d)␣clarification of the relationship between stakeholder concepts and ISCT; (e) problems with potentially unoccupied moral free space; (f) sources of ethical obligation within the ISCT framework; and (g) the potential role for concepts of stakeholder dialogue and engagement. (shrink)

This paper extends the discussion of guanxi beyond instrumental evaluations and advances a normative assessment of guanxi. Our discussion departs from previous analyses by not merely asking, Does guanxi work? but rather Should corporations use guanxi? The analysis begins with a review of traditional guanxi definitions and the changing economic and legal environment in China, both necessary precursors to understanding the role of guanxi in Chinese business transactions. This review leads us to suggest that there are distinct types of, and (...) uses for guanxi. We identify the potentially problematic aspects of certain forms of guanxi from a normative perspective, noting among other things, the close association of particular types of guanxi with corruption and bribery. We conclude that there are many different forms of guanxi that may have distinct impacts on economic efficiency and the well-being of ordinary Chinese citizens. Consistent with Donaldson and Dunfee (1999), we advocate a particularistic analysis of the different forms of guanxi. (shrink)

Since Hilary Putnam offered multiple realization as an empirical hypothesis in the 1960s, philosophical consensus has turned against the idea that mental processes are identifiable with brain processes, and multiple realization has become the keystone of the 'antireductive consensus' across philosophy of science. Thomas W. Polger and Lawrence A. Shapiro offer the first book-length investigation of multiple realization, which serves as a starting point to a series of philosophically sophisticated and empirically informed arguments that cast doubt on the generality (...) of multiple realization in the cognitive sciences. They argue that mind-brain identities have played an important role in the growth and achievements of the cognitive sciences, and suggest that there is little prospect for multiple realization in an empirically-based theory of mind. This leads Polger and Shapiro to offer an alternative framework for understanding explanations in the cognitive sciences, as well as in chemistry, biology, and other non-basic sciences. (shrink)

Firms possessing a unique competency to rescue the victims of a human catastrophe have a minimum moral obligation to devote substantial resources toward best efforts to aid the victims. The minimum amount that firms should devote to rescue is the largest sum of their most recent year’s investment in social initiatives, their five-year trend, their industry’s average, or the national average. Financial exigency may justify a lower level of investment. Alternative social investments may be continued if they have an equally (...) compelling rationale. These duties apply to the global pharmaceutical companies in the context of the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa. (shrink)

G. E. Moore argues that goodness is an intrinsic non-natural property that supervenes irreducibly on the intrinsic natural properties of its bearers. Accordingly, it is often supposed that “Moorean” supervenience is incompatible with physicalism, a naturalistic thesis. In this paper I argue that Moorean supervenience is not in itself incompatible with physicalism, Moore’s ethical non-naturalism notwithstanding. Understanding why will help us to better appreciate the full range of resources available to physicalists.

Cognitivism about trust says that it requires belief that the trusted is trustworthy; non-cognitivism denies this. At stake is how to make sense of the strong but competing intuitions that trust is an attitude that is evaluable both morally and rationally. In proposing that one's respect for another's agency may ground one's trusting beliefs, second-personal accounts provide a way to endorse both intuitions. They focus attention on the way that, in normal situations, it is the person whom I trust. My (...) task is to develop an account of the latter insight without the controversial theoretical commitments of the former. I propose a functional account for why the second and third-personal ‘systems’ operate not just in parallel, but in tandem, in support of a cognitivist account of trust. (shrink)

In Natural Minds Thomas Polger advocates, and defends, the philosophical theory that mind equals brain -- that sensations are brain processes -- and in doing so brings the mind-brain identity theory back into the philosophical debate about consciousness. The version of identity theory that Polger advocates holds that conscious processes, events, states, or properties are type- identical to biological processes, events, states, or properties -- a "tough-minded" account that maintains that minds are necessarily indentical to brains, a position held (...) by few current identity theorists. Polger's approach to what William James called the "great blooming buzzing confusion" of consciousness begins with the idea that we need to know more about brains in order to understand consciousness fully, but recognizes that biology alone cannot provide the entire explanation. Natural Minds takes on issues from philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and metaphysics, moving freely among them in its discussion.Polger begins by answering two major objections to identity theory -- Hilary Putnam's argument from multiple realizability and Saul Kripke's modal argument against mind-brain identity. He then offers a detailed account of functionalism and functional realization, which offer the most serious obstacle to consideration of identity theory. Polger argues that identity theory can itself satisfy the kind of explanatory demands that are often believed to favor functionalism. (shrink)

Rosenberg does not provide arguments for some crucial premises in his argument against physicalism. In particular, he gives no independent argument to show that physicalists must accept the entry-by-entailment thesis. The arguments provided establish weaker premises than those that are needed. As a consequence, Rosenberg.

Feeling moved or touched can be accompanied by tears, goosebumps, and sensations of warmth in the centre of the chest. The experience has been described frequently, but psychological science knows little about it. We propose that labelling one’s feeling as being moved or touched is a component of a social-relational emotion that we term kama muta. We hypothesise that it is caused by appraising an intensification of communal sharing relations. Here, we test this by investigating people’s moment-to-moment reports of feeling (...) moved and touched while watching six short videos. We compare these to six other sets of participants’ moment-to-moment responses watching the same videos: respectively, judgements of closeness, reports of weeping, goosebumps, warmth in the centre of the chest, happiness, and sadness. Our eighth time series is expert ratings of communal sharing. Time series analyses show strong and consistent cross-correlations of feeling moved and touched and closeness with each other and with each of the three physiological variables and expert-rated communal sharing – but distinctiveness from happiness and sadness. These results support our model. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Background: mapping the field of business ethics The evolution of social contract approaches to business ethics Integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) Remaining issues and promising research directions for contractarian business ethics.

Philosophy &Public Affairs, Volume 47, Issue 4, Page 412-424, Fall 2019.

A common view is that the truth of multiple realization—e.g., about psychological states—entails the truth of functionalism. This is supposed to follow because what is multiply realized is eo ipso realized. I argue that view is mistaken by demonstrating how it misrepresents arguments from multiple realization. In particular, it undermines the empirical component of the arguments, and renders the multiplicity of the realization irrelevant. I suggest an alternative reading of multiple realizability arguments, particularly in philosophy of psychology. And I explain (...) the proper way to understand the relation between realization and multiple realization. (shrink)

Trust is difficult to define. Instead of doing so, I propose that the best way to understand the concept is through a genealogical account. I show how a root notion of trust arises out of some basic features of what it is for humans to live socially, in which we rely on others to act cooperatively. I explore how this concept acquires resonances of hope and threat, and how we analogically apply this in related but different contexts. The genealogical account (...) explains both why the notion has such value for us and why it is difficult to define. (shrink)

'Methinks I am like a man, who having narrowly escap'd shipwreck', David Hume writes in A Treatise of Human Nature, 'has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe'. With these words, Hume begins a memorable depiction of the crisis of philosophy and his turn to moral and political philosophy as the path forward. In this groundbreaking work, Thomas W. (...) Merrill shows how Hume's turn is the core of his thought, linking Hume's metaphysical and philosophical crisis to the moral-political inquiries of his mature thought. Merrill shows how Hume's comparison of himself to Socrates in the introduction to the Treatise illuminates the dramatic structure and argument of the book as a whole, and he traces Hume's underappreciated argument about the political role of philosophy in the Essays. (shrink)

Governments and their international agencies (FAO, World Bank) conceive of the eradication of hunger and poverty as a worthy wish that will eventually be realized through economic growth. They also make great cosmetic efforts to present as good-looking trend pictures as they can. Citizens ought to insist that the eradication of severe deprivations is a human rights correlative duty that permits no avoidable delay. Academics ought to collaborate toward providing a systematic alternative monitoring of what progress has really been made (...) against undernourishment and other povertyrelated deprivations. (shrink)

In contrast to his own "freestanding" liberalism, Rawls has characterized the liberalism of Kant's Rechtslehre as comprehensive, i.e., as dependent on Kant's teachings about good will and ethical autonomy or on his transcendental idealism. This characterization is not borne out by the text. Though Kant is indeed eager to show that his liberalism is entailed by his wider philosophical worldview, he is not committed to the converse, does not hold that his liberalism presupposes either his moral philosophy or his transcendental (...) idealism. Rather, Kant bases the establishment and maintenance of Recht solely on persons' fundamental a priori interest in external freedom. His liberalism is then, if anything, more freestanding than Rawls's, central elements of which-such as his postulate of certain moral powers with corresponding higher-order interests-are justified by appeal to fundamental ideas he finds to be prevalent in the public culture of his society. (shrink)

The brain disease model of addiction is widely endorsed by agencies concerned with treating behavioral disorders and combatting the stigma often associated with addiction. However, both its accuracy and its effectiveness in reducing stigma have been challenged. A proposed alternative, the “choice” model, recognizes the residual rational behavior control capacities of addicted individuals and their ability to make choices, some of which may cause harm. Since harmful choices are ordinarily perceived as blameworthy, the choice model may inadvertently help justify stigma. (...) This paper seeks to fully naturalize the choice model by highlighting the determinants of voluntary action and thus increase its potential for destigmatizing addiction. In light of a deterministic understanding of behavior, it is unreasonable to suppose that addicted individuals could have made different choices in becoming addicted and in subsequent situations. To the extent that stigma is motivated by the supposition that addicted individuals could have chosen otherwise in actual situations, a deterministic understanding of addictive behavior promises to mitigate blame and stigma. (shrink)

Politics I has been the subject of a number of textual questions about the relation of the Ethics to the Politics. These textual questions involve us in theoretical questions about the differences between contemporary and ancient conceptions of political rule. Resolving the exegetical challenges can help us clarify the theoretical differences. A fresh approach to the textual challenges reveals that Politics I has a contrapuntal character with two reinforcing movements. One explores why and how despotic conceptions of politics fail using (...) case studies of despotic power: slavery and money-making. Aristotle shows dialectically how this despotic approach to rule undermines the requirements for political life. The other movement explores the character of natural human associations, culminating in the polis. The two movements converge in Aristotle’s claim about the centrality of the human good for political rule. This claim challenges modern social contract theory’s understanding of the differences between despotic and political rule. (shrink)

Arguably, every new technology creates hidden ejfects in its environment, rearranging the social order it penetrates. Many ofthese effects are inextricably linked to ethical issues. Some are eternal issues such as censorship andfree speech, but others have new names and dimensions, and may even be new issues. Forty of these issues pertaining to the new communication technologies of the 1990s and next millennium are catalogued here. The author argues that each new communication technology either retrieves, amplifies, transforms, obsolesces, or mixes (...) ethical issues from the past or creates new issues for the future. However, as in the Ross Hume Hall (1974) effect, it is also likely there are issues yet unknown due to untested eflects of combining new technologies. (shrink)

In this truly interdisciplinary study that reflects the author's work in philosophy, political science, law, and policy studies, Thomas W. Simon argues that democratic theory must address the social injustices inflicted upon disadvantaged groups. By shifting theoretical sights from justice to injustice, Simon recasts the nature of democracy and provides a new perspective on social problems. He examines the causes and effects of injustice, victims' responses to injustice, and historical theories of disadvantage, revealing that those theories have important repercussions (...) for contemporary policy debates. Finally, Simon considers which institutions and practices come within the grasp of democracy and discusses the concept of a 'Negative Utopia,' or a future without injustice. (shrink)

The Reformed theological tradition has maintained that faith consists in trust, with that trust involving belief of certain doctrinal propositions. This paper has two aims. First, it contributes towards rehabilitating this conception of faith. I start, accordingly, by setting out the Reformers’ basic case: faith consists in trust because faith is a response to the promises of God, by which the Christian receives God’s forgiveness and is united with God. This argument is independent of any commitment to nondoxasticism or doxasticism (...) about faith. Second, it argues for a methodological commitment which the Reformers’ conception of faith-as-trust complies with, which I think is independently compelling, and which has significant implications for contemporary debates on faith: the kind of faith that matters is that which enables the individual to stand justified, or righteous, before God. Philosophical accounts of faith are unavoidably entangled with theological disputes about justification. (shrink)

According to the received view in philosophy of mind, mental states or properties are _realized_ by brain states or properties but are not identical to them. This view is often called _realization_ _physicalism_. Carl Gillett has recently defended a detailed formulation of the realization relation. However, Gillett’s formulation cannot be the relation that realization physicalists have in mind. I argue that Gillett’s “dimensioned” view of realization fails to apply to a textbook case of realization. I also argue Gillett counts as (...) realization some cases that should not count if realization physicalism is to be distinguished from its competitors in the usual ways. I conclude that the relation described by Gillett cannot be realization. (shrink)

This study empirically examines the association between certain director characteristics and the extent of voluntary audit committee disclosure in annual reports. Results suggest that Singapore's publicly traded firms are more likely to voluntarily disclose audit committee related information as: the number of board members increases; different individuals occupy the roles of CEO and board chairperson; and the proportion of independent directors serving on the board increases. Findings, however, fail to show any association between the amount of voluntary audit committee disclosure (...) and the percentage of executive directors' ownership. Documented findings are of interest and benefit to various parties including regulators, corporate governance reformists, and corporate management. For instance, findings imply that a positive by-product of implementing major corporate governance reforms currently championed by corporate governance reformists will be an increase in audit committee disclosures. As a result, there will be less pressure on regulators to develop, introduce, and enforce mandatory audit committee disclosures that may be potentially intrusive to a firm's management. (shrink)

Fifty years ago J. J. C. Smart published his pioneering paper, “Sensations and Brain Processes.” It is appropriate to mark the golden anniversary of Smart’s publication by considering how well his article has stood up, and how well the identity theory itself has fared. In this paper I first revisit Smart’s text, reflecting on how it has weathered the years. Then I consider the status of the identity theory in current philosophical thinking, taking into account the objections and replies that (...) Smart discussed as well as some that he did not anticipate. Finally, I offer a brief manifesto for the identity theory, providing a small list of the claims that I believe contemporary identity theorist should accept. As it turns out, these are more or less the ones that Smart defended fifty years ago. (shrink)

Michael Tye has recently been a vocal defender of color realism or, as I shall call it, color objectivism. Objectivism about color is the view that color properties are identical to intrinsic physical properties of the surfaces of objects. Subjectivism about color is the denial of color objectivism. Objectivists argue that color claims must be taken at face value. In this paper I forego the usual bickering about whether there are surface reflectance properties that can be identified with colors as (...) the objectivist theory requires. Supposing that some such properties could be found, I argue that if objectivism about color were correct it would have the unsavory consequence that we are rarely if ever right—perhaps never right—about the particular colors of particular things. So objectivism does not bear out common attribution of colors to the surfaces of things, after all. (shrink)

Frequently the literature on questions in the classroom supposes that teachers should ask high-level questions in order to get high-level thinking from students. Reversing this notion, this paper presents a method for structuring class discussion which helps students learn high-level questioning skills. The author articulates a typology of classroom conversations, arguing that the most desirable type is a “Problematical or Dialectical Discussion”. Characterized by “right answers” emerging as the most reasonable ideas that students work towards in discussion, the downside of (...) such discussions is they may result from a one-sided view of the issue or from a lack of student interest. In such cases, it is desirable to introduce alternative viewpoints into the discussion and the author argues that the best way to do this is the Devil’s Advocate approach. By asking students to argue against their own individual positions specifically, students learn to question their own views and thereby internalize the structure of communal, critical inquiry. The author argues that this method facilitates student autonomy, a key goal of education, since learning to ask the right questions allows students to become their own teachers. (shrink)

Forthcoming in Philosophy of Science. Despite some recent advances, multiple realization remains a largely misunderstood thesis. Consider the dispute between Lawrence Shapiro and Carl Gillett over the application of Shapiro’s recipe for deciding when we have genuine cases of multiple realization. I argue that Gillett follows many philosophers in mistakenly supposing that multiple realization is absolute and transitive. Both of these are problematic. They are tempting only when we extract the question of multiple realization from the explanatory context in which (...) it is invoked. Anchoring multiple realizability in its theoretical context provides grounds for arbitrating disagreements. Doing so, I argue, favors the view advanced by Shapiro. (shrink)

THE INTERPRETIVE TASK The aim of ethical inquiry is to understand moral experience, not simply as a given, but with reference to human potentialities. ...