What is new about the present study is that the author approaches the religious metamorphosis from the perspective of the evolution of consciousness itself. The result of his exploration made the author realize that the development of European consciousness was not just an accidental historical process.

Critics of South Park make claims that are strikingly similar to those that have been leveled against Western philosophy since its beginnings. Philosophy, it's been charged, also mocks religious beliefs, leads younger folks to question accepted authority and values, and corrupts our children and culture. These condemnations formed the basis for Socrates' trial and execution in Athens. This chapter explores the heretical possibility that people perceive South Park as dangerous precisely because it is a form of philosophy. The “danger” South (...) Park poses has to do with its depiction of dialogue and free thought. In the end, one can learned something: like Socrates, the South Park harms no one. Philosophy and South Park actually instruct people and provide them with the intellectual tools they need to become wise, free, and good. (shrink)

Within the context of employee rights and management social responsibility, this paper identifies and explores three ethical dimensions of downsizing. Using ANOVA and Scheffe post-hoc statistical techniques, groups involved in the downsizing decision making process were compared with groups affected by the process on each ethical dimension. Results indicated that those affected by the process attached greater ethical significance to these dimensions than those who were involved in formulating and implementing/communicating downsizing decisions.

From an informal group of a dozen faculty and graduate students at Temple University, the Jean Piaget Society grew in seven years to 500 members who have interests in the application of genetic epistemology to their own disciplines and professions. At the outset Piaget endorsed the concept of a society which bore his name and presented a major address on equilibration at the society's first symposium in May, 1971. Had he not done so the society would no doubt have remained (...) a small parochial group, like so many others throughout the country, interested in Piaget and his theory. With the encouragement of Genevans and the leadership of its first four presidents, Lois Macomber, Barbara Press eisen, Marilyn Appel, and John Mickelson, the society undertook a number of programs to collect and disseminate the results of scholarly work in genetic epistemology. Particular emphasis was placed upon applications of Piaget's theory to developmental psychology, philos ophy, and education. One of these programs was the publication of an annual series on the development of knowing, of which this volume is the first. In 1973, the society asked Hans Furth with the assistance of Willis Overton and Jeanette Gallagher to initiate and plan a series of yearbooks with the result that in addition to this volume, a second volume on education was commissioned, and a third one on the decalage issue was planned. (shrink)

Laudato si' attempts simultaneously to disrupt prevailing global environmental discourse and to reorient central concepts in Catholic moral tradition by requalifying the meaning of dominion and by ecologically expanding human dignity. The image of Earth crying out to humans from within a kinship relation plays a central role in both arguments. However, the political consequences of those shifts remain vague because the “voice” of Earth remains silent in crucial loci of the encyclical's argument.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Argues for the primacy of the phylogenetic system as the general reference system in biology. This book, first published in 1966, generated significant controversy and opened possibilities for evolutionary biology.

"First Published in 1999, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.".

In his presidential address on “Symbols, Signs, and Signals,” given before the Association for Symbolic Logic, December 28, 1938, Professor C. J. Ducasse made and important distinction between what he there called the indicative and the quiddative symbol. He remarked in passing that he thought it possible to show that: 1) “The same entity may function both as indicative and as quiddative symbol: or one part of a complex symbol may be quiddative and another indicative”; and 2) “the difference between (...) the two roles is irreducible: the indicative is not a species of the quiddative nor vice versa.” An indicative symbol is defined as “one of which the distinctive property is to orient our attention to some place in an order system …”; and a quiddative symbol as “one of which the distinctive property is to make us conceive a certain kind of thing—a certain ‘what'—no matter where in any order system it may or may not be existing.”. (shrink)

In the Ethics, Spinoza is not expressly concerned with skepticism and the possibility envisaged by Descartes that clear and distinct ideas or conceptions may not be true. There is reason for this, as he was of the opinion that, if as in the Ethics we proceed in our thinking in the right order, doubt will not arise. In his earlier works, however, he is concerned with skepticism and, in particular, with the questioning of clear and distinct ideas. In the Prolegomenon (...) in Part One of Descartes’ Principles, he sets forth what he takes to be Descartes’ attempt to allay doubts about clear and distinct perceptions. He finds there that Descartes does not succeed in answering an objection to his procedure, and he proposes an alternative way of escape from doubt. This alternative is also stated in the Improvement of the Understanding in the section on doubt or idea dubia ; and considerable light is cast upon it by his discussion in this section of the nature of doubt. Distinguishing genuine doubt and merely verbal doubt, i.e. professions of doubt when “the soul does not doubt,” he explains what leads to genuine doubt and how such doubt is to be removed. In my paper, I shall explicate the view stated in these passages and raise questions about the relations of this view to other views of Spinoza’s. I shall also be concerned with a short and cryptic passage earlier in the Improvement of the Understanding in which he deals with professions of doubt that, farther on, he deems merely verbal. In a final section, I shall assemble the views about skeptical doubt stated in the various places and give a summary statement of Spinoza’s attitude toward philosophical skepticism. (shrink)

Despite acknowledgment that performance failure among new salespeople is a prevalent issue for organizations, researchers do not fully understand the consequences of repetitive periods of failure on new salespeople’s unethical selling behaviors. Further, little is known about how a sales force’s reward structure and managerial attempts to intervene following failure affect new salespeople’s behavior. Combining an experiment with longitudinal growth models, we show that repetitive periods of failure increase unethical behaviors, and interventions intended to remind the salesperson to behave in (...) the customer’s best interests attenuate this effect under a non-contingent reward structure. However, counter to managerial assumptions, under a contingent reward structure these customer-oriented interventions actually backfire by amplifying the original relationship between repetitive failure and unethical behaviors. The results have potentially important managerial implications for those who manage new salespeople learning how to sell or during other failure-prone periods. (shrink)

The way theologians think about God and their understanding of prayer have a profound and an interconnection which is significant for both.

The statement below is an outgrowth of a retreat at Tomales Bay,California, December 3-6, 1992, at which fifteen scientists and philosophersattempted to explore the question of an appropriate epistemology for consciousness research. Contributions were made by the scholars listed below and others; the final synthesis was performed by Willis Harman. The statement is submitted to the broader scientific community, and to the concerned public, to stimulate dialogue about a long-standing question, and to foster interest in an ever-deepening scientific study of (...) human consciousness. Basically, the question is: How does it happen that our powerful methods of scientific enquiry appear so ill-suited to the study of consciousness? If understanding our own consciousness is so central to understanding anything else, will we not have to take this question more seriously than has been the case so far? (shrink)

Es wird untersucht, wie weit den empirischen Bestätigungen der logistischen Differentialgleichung als Ausdruck eines biologischen Wachstumsgesetzes tatsächliche Beweiskraft zukommt. Durch eine Reihe praktischer Ausgleichungen wurde geprüft, welche Güte der Annäherung im Durchschnitt zu erwarten ist, wenn durch eine beliebige andere dreiparametrige ScharS-förmiger Kurven ersetzt wird und ). Es zeigt sich überraschenderweise, dass sich die logistische Kurve keineswegs besonders gut dem biologischen Material anpasst, und dass letzteres auch mit ganz anderen Hypothesen vereinbar wäre. Ähnliches gilt auch von den Experimenten vonGause bewiesen (...) werden sollte). - Dies schmälert keineswegs die besondere Eignung von zur Beschreibung von biologischen Wachstumsvorgängen, doch beruht sie z. T. auf den mathematischen Eigenschaften, und noch mehr auf der grossen Plausibilität, die den zu führenden Grundannahmen von vornherein zukommt. Dem empirischen Material kommt bisher gar keine selbstständige Beweiskraft zu, und es ist in keinem Spezialfall erlaubt, aus einer Übereinstimmung eines Wachstumsvorgangs mit auf dessen innere Natur und auf die wirkenden Kräfte Rückschlüsse zu ziehen.On examine le degré de sûreté qu'ont les vérifications empiriques de la loi logistique de croissance biologique. Pour estimer la bonté de Ja concordance on a ajusté aux observations d'autres courbes dépendants de trois constantes et ressemblant à et ). On trouve que la concordance de la loi logistique n'est nullement aussi excellente que l'on croit par avance et que le matériel empirique serait très bien compatible avec des hypothèses tout différentes. Cela est valable aussi pour les experiments deGause . — Malgré cela la loi logistique reste l'instrument le plus utile pour la description des phénomènes de croissance, mais cela tient en partie à ses propriétés analytiques, et encore plus à la plausibilité des hypothèses qui conduisent à . Les vérifications empiriques n'augmentent pas cette évidence apriorique, et dans n'importe quel cas spécial une concordance des observations avec la loi logistique ne permet aucune conclusion sur la nature du phénomène et les forces agissantes. (shrink)

Knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) is a fundamental area in artificial intelligence (AI) research, focusing on encoding world knowledge as logical formulae in ontologies. This formalism enables logic-based AI systems to deduce new insights from existing knowledge. Within KRR, description logics (DLs) are a prominent family of languages to represent knowledge formally. They are decidable fragments of first-order logic, and their models can be visualized as edge- and vertex-labeled directed binary graphs. DLs facilitate various reasoning tasks, including checking the satisfiability (...) of statements and deciding entailment. However, a significant challenge arises in the computation of models of DL ontologies in the context of explaining reasoning results. Although existing algorithms efficiently compute models for reasoning tasks, they usually do not consider aspects of human cognition, leading to models that may be less effective for explanatory purposes. This paper tackles this challenge by proposing an approach to enhance the intelligibility of models of DL ontologies for users. By integrating insights from cognitive science and philosophy, we aim to identify key graph properties that make models more accessible and useful for explanation. (shrink)

The fields of environmental ethics and of religion and ecology have been shaped by Lynn White Jr.'s thesis that the roots of ecological crisis lie in religious cosmology. Independent critical movements in both fields, however, now question this methodological legacy and argue for alternative ways of inquiry. For religious ethics, the twin controversies cast doubt on prevailing ways of connecting environmental problems to religious deliberations because the criticisms raise questions about what counts as an environmental problem, how religious traditions change, (...) and whether ethicists should approach problems and traditions with reformist commitments. This article examines the critiques of White's legacy and presents a pluralist alternative that focuses religious ethics on the contextual strategies produced by moral communities as they confront environmental problems. (shrink)

Ethicists regularly turn to virtue in order to negotiate features of climate change that seem to overwhelm moral agency. Appeals to virtue in climate ethics differ by how they connect individual flourishing with collective responsibilities and by how they interpret Anthropocene relations. Differences between accounts of climate virtue help critique proposals to reframe global ecological problems in terms of resilience and planetary stewardship, the intelligibility of which depends on connecting what would be good for the species with what would be (...) good for an individual life. A pragmatic way of establishing that connection may need a strong role for respect of nature. (shrink)

_Spinoza’s Modernity _is a major, original work of intellectual history that reassesses the philosophical project of Baruch Spinoza, uncovers his influence on later thinkers, and demonstrates how that crucial influence on Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing, and Heinrich Heine shaped the development of modern critical thought. Excommunicated by his Jewish community, Spinoza was a controversial figure in his lifetime and for centuries afterward. Willi Goetschel shows how Spinoza’s philosophy was a direct challenge to the theological and metaphysical assumptions of modern (...) European thought. He locates the driving force of this challenge in Spinoza’s Jewishness, which is deeply inscribed in his philosophy and defines the radical nature of his modernity. (shrink)

Willie Thompson offers a clear, jargon-free introduction to postmodernist theory and its significant impact on the study of history. This is a hotly-debated topic, and much of the literature is both polemical and inaccessible to the novice. Thompson, however, presents key ideas in a straightforward way, making these debates relevant to students' own work.