On Sartre's own admission, his account of the emotions discloses them as functional. As such, the emotions aim to serve a particular purpose for which he provides the phenomenology. Sartre's phenomenology discloses consciousness as being-in-the-world in two ways, actually as having two worlds. One is a deterministic world, the other magical. Emotion is the drop from the deterministic world to the magical. In order for emotion to perform the function Sartre has in mind it performs, it is crucial there be (...) a certain tension between the deterministic world and the magical world. I argue that given what Sartre himself says about the magical world, the necessary tension can never arise; hence, no functional thesis of emotion is possible if it is formed along Sartre's lines. (shrink)

Greta Gaard, Tucson, AZ, The University of Arizona Press, 2007, ix +211 pp., paper, $17.95, ISBN: 978-0-8165-2576-8 Roger Paden, Lanham, MD, Lexington Books, 2007, xiii +209 pp., paper, $26.95, ISB...

John A. Matthews and David T. Herbert London and New York: Routledge, 2004, xiv + 402 pp., cloth, $160.00, paper, $44.95 The development of geography during the twentieth century has been a r...

With an inside view from an expert in the field and a clear and engaging writing style, Asian Philosophies, Seventh Edition invites students and professors to think along with the great minds of the Asian traditions. Eminent scholar and teacher John M. Koller has devoted his life to understanding and explaining Asian thought and practice. He wrote this text to give students access to the rich philosophical and religious ideas of both South and East Asia. New to this seventh (...) edition: Added material on Confucianism, including focused coverage of (1) the Analects and society and (2) ren and nature; Additional information on Theravada Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism as well as new in-depth coverage of ecological attitudes in Buddhism; Expanded coverage of ecological attitudes in all of the Asian traditions; Brief excerpts from primary sources to help better explain the key concepts; Added timelines for essential texts in each tradition; Improved Glossary and Pronunciation Guide; Additional text boxes, to help students quickly understand key ideas, texts, and concepts; Updated Further Reading sections. (shrink)

While nothing justifies atrocity, many perpetrators manifest cognitive impairments that profoundly degrade their capacity for moral judgment, and such impairments, we shall argue, preclude the attribution of moral responsibility.

In Faculty Misconduct in Collegiate Teaching, higher education researchers John Braxton and Alan Bayer address issues of impropriety and misconduct in the teaching role at the postsecondary level. Braxton and Bayer define and examine norms of teaching behavior: what they are, how they come to exist, and how transgressions are detected and addressed. Do faculty members across various collegiate settings, for example, share views about appropriate and inappropriate teaching behaviors, as they share expectations regarding actions related to research? And (...) what mechanisms are utilized to correct inappropriate behavior on the part of college and university teachers? The authors' work is based on survey results obtained from faculty members at research universities, liberal arts colleges, and two-year community, junior, and technical colleges. Braxton and Bayer's focus is on undergraduate teaching in four disciplines: biology, history, mathematics, and psychology. In their analyses, the authors examine how individual, disciplinary, and institutional differences influence professorial behavior. In contrast to the more explicitly understood and enforced rules of conduct in research, the authors find that teaching norms are informally defined and observed. They argue that a formal code of ethics for undergraduate teaching would serve the dual purpose of improving undergraduate education and elevating the status of college teaching. A groundbreaking study of contemporary academe, Faculty Misconduct in Collegiate Teaching is required reading for all university and college instructors and administrators. (shrink)

What is everything made of? -- Do I have free will? -- Can I know the world? -- Does God exist? -- How shall I live? -- What are my rights? -- How can I be saved? -- Appendix: Letters on philosophical topics.

In this volume, John Warner grapples with one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s chief preoccupations: the problem of self-interest implicit in all social relationships. Not only did Rousseau never solve this problem, Warner argues, but he also believed it was fundamentally unsolvable—that social relationships could never restore wholeness to a self-interested human being. This engaging study is founded on two basic but important questions: what do we want out of human relationships, and are we able to achieve what we are after? (...) Warner traces his answers through the contours of Rousseau’s thought on three distinct types of relationships—sexual love, friendship, and civil or political association—as well as alternate interpretations of Rousseau, such as that of the neo-Kantian Rawlsian school. The result is an insightful exploration of the way Rousseau inspires readers to imbue social relations with purpose and meaning, only to show the impossibility of reaching wholeness through such relationships. While Rousseau may raise our hopes only to dash them, Rousseau and the Problem of Human Relations demonstrates that his ambitious failure offers unexpected insight into the human condition and into the limits of Rousseau’s critical act. (shrink)

How does a school of thought, in the area of philosophy, or indeed of religion, from roots that may be initially open-ended and largely informal, come to take on the features that later mark it out as distinctive, and even exclusive? That is the theme which is explored in this book in respect of the philosophical movement known as Platonism, stemming as it does from the essentially open-ended and informal atmosphere of Plato's Academy. John Dillon focuses on a number (...) of key issues, such as monism versus dualism, the metaphysical underpinnings of ethical theory, the theory of Forms, and the reaction to the Sceptical 'deviation' represented by the so-called 'New Academy'. The book is written in the lively and accessible style of the lecture series in Beijing from which it originates. (shrink)

Temporal externalism (TE) is the thesis (defended by Jackman (1999)) that the contents of some of an individual’s thoughts and utterances at time t may be determined by linguistic developments subsequent to t. TE has received little discussion so far, Brown 2000 and Stoneham 2002 being exceptions. I defend TE by arguing that it solves several related problems concerning the extension of natural kind terms in scientifically ignorant communities. Gary Ebbs (2000) argues that no theory can reconcile our ordinary, practical (...) judgments of sameness of extension over time with the claim that linguistic usage determines word extensions. I argue that Ebbs shows at most that no theory other than TE can effect this reconciliation. Furthermore, while Ebbs’ argument undermines Jessica Brown’s solutions to two closely related problems about natural kind term extensions (Brown 1998), TE can solve both problems without difficulty. Some criticisms of TE are briefly addressed as well. (shrink)

What's a one-time bishop of Hippo got to do with the third millennium? -- The foundations of Augustine's moral Empiricism: truth, love and sin -- Scientific philosophy and first-person confession -- Against autonomy: ought and can -- The state: persecution, war, justice and regret -- Against political panaceas -- Utilitarians and Kantians: a parallel journey to triviality -- Rights theory -- The inevitable irrelevance of most contemporary theology -- Austin's brag: conventional relativism, nihilism or the Catholic tradition -- Transcript of (...) a radio interview with Bishop Austin Redivivus: 1.4.2016. (shrink)

Scientists and 'anti-scientists' alike need a more realistic image of science. The traditional mode of research, academic science, is not just a 'method': it is a distinctive culture, whose members win esteem and employment by making public their findings. Fierce competition for credibility is strictly regulated by established practices such as peer review. Highly specialized international communities of independent experts form spontaneously and generate the type of knowledge we call 'scientific' - systematic, theoretical, empirically-tested, quantitative, and so on. Ziman shows (...) that these familiar 'philosophical' features of scientific knowledge are inseparable from the ordinary cognitive capabilities and peculiar social relationships of its producers. This wide-angled close-up of the natural and human sciences recognizes their unique value, whilst revealing the limits of their rationality, reliability, and universal applicability. It also shows how, for better or worse, the new 'post-academic' research culture of teamwork, accountability, etc. is changing these supposedly eternal philosophical characteristics. (shrink)

The SIMPOL Solution, spearheaded by the Simultaneous Policy (SIMPOL) Organization, gives voters around the world a new way to pressure their leaders to address global problems ranging from climate change to mass immigration and gross income disparities. Blending politics and psychology, The SIMPOL Solution shows how through simultaneous action--through cooperation--we can overcome the problems we face today and our children will face tomorrow.The authors argue that the chief barrier to tackling pressing international issues is a vicious circle of destructive global (...) competition, in which nations, corporations, and citizens are helplessly caught. Our current economic system--which rewards corporations and nations that offer the greatest profits no matter what the social costs--has the effect of hollowing out national politics and encouraging either voter apathy or populism championed by the Far Right.The good news is that it doesn't take masses of people to break this vicious circle and initiate lasting change. In fact, key transitions in human history were initiated by small numbers of activists. Already endorsed by leading policy-makers, visionaries, and public figures, this exciting book offers everyone a way to become a part of this important worldwide movement for change. (shrink)

Why believe in the findings of science? John Ziman argues that scientific knowledge is not uniformly reliable, but rather like a map representing a country we cannot visit. He shows how science has many elements, including alongside its experiments and formulae the language and logic, patterns and preconceptions, facts and fantasies used to illustrate and express its findings. These elements are variously combined by scientists in their explanations of the material world as it lies outside our everyday experience. (...) class='Hi'>John Ziman’s book offers at once a valuably clear account and a radically challenging investigation of the credibility of scientific knowledge, searching widely across a range of disciplines for evidence about the perceptions, paradigms and analogies on which all our understanding depends. (shrink)

John Frame gives us an accessible introduction to "triperspectival" study-where theological issues are fruitfully viewed from multiple perspectives without compromise to their unity and truth. Book jacket.

In this 1976 volume, Professor Ziman paints a broad picture of science, and of its relations to the world in general. He sets the scene by the historical development of scientific research as a profession, the growth of scientific technologies out of the useful arts, the sources of invention and technical innovation, and the advent of Big Science. He then discusses the economics of research and development, the connections between science and war, the nature of science policy and the moral (...) dilemmas of social responsibility in science. Each topic is introduced by reference to easily understandable particular examples, with a large number of illustrations chosen to bring out the concreteness and reality of science as a human activity. Professor Ziman gives a chapter-by-chapter list of suggested topics for oral and written discussion, intended to provoke critical, sceptical attitudes to simplified solutions to real issues, and comments briefly on relevant books and other sources. (shrink)

Creating Public Value in Practice: Advancing the Common Good in a Multi-Sector, Shared-Power, No-One-Wholly-in-Charge World brings together a stellar cast of thinkers to explore issues of public and cross-sector decision-making within a framework of democratic civic engagement. It offers an integrative approach to understanding and applying the concepts of creating public value, public values, and the public sphere. It presents a framework and language for opening a constructive conversation on what governments, businesses, nonprofits, and citizens can achieve in a democracy (...) that honors a broad range of public values. Public officials, scholars, and citizens alike are engaged in an intense debate about the proper purpose, role, and size of government. In the midst of this debate is a growing concern that important public values are ignored by government reform efforts. This book explores the different definitions of public value and approaches to public value creation, discernment, measurement, and assessment. The text helps clarify the issues and demonstrates how the meaning of public value is intimately related to how it is theorized, operationalized, and measured. The book examines the many alternatives for recognizing, measuring, and assessing public value and addresses the pros and cons of each approach. The result is a contribution to the ongoing dialogue about the virtues and limitations of a focus on the public sphere, public values, and how to create public value in the context of developing and implementing policies, programs, projects, and plans that ideally boost confidence in public institutions. (shrink)

This book is a provocative contribution to contemporary ethical theory challenging foundational conceptions of character that date back to Aristotle. John Doris draws on behavioral science, especially social psychology, to argue that we misattribute the causes of behavior to personality traits and other fixed aspects of character rather than to the situational context. More often than not it is the situation not the nature of the personality that really counts. The author elaborates the philosophical consequences of this research for (...) a whole array of ethical theories and shows that, once rid of the misleading conception of motivation, moral psychology can support more robust ethical theories and more humane ethical practices. (shrink)

A History of Western Philosophy and Theology is the fruit of John Frame's forty-five years of teaching philosophical subjects. No other survey of the history of Western thought offers the same invigorating blend of expositional clarity, critical insight, and biblical wisdom. The supplemental study questions, bibliographies, links to audio lectures, quotes from influential thinkers, twenty appendices, and indexed glossary make this an excellent main textbook choice for seminary- and college-level courses and for personal study. Book jacket.

Introduction -- Paradoxes -- Scientism -- Logic and meaning -- Initiate learning -- The self and I -- Trust and wonder.

Do we know what we're doing, and why? Psychological research seems to suggest not: reflection and self-awareness are surprisingly uncommon and inaccurate. John M. Doris presents a new account of agency and responsibility, which reconciles our understanding of ourselves as moral agents with empirical work on the unconscious mind.

The purpose of this book is to give a coherent account of the different perspectives on science and technology that are normally studied under various disciplinary heads such as philosophy of science, sociology of science and science policy. It is intended for students embarking on courses in these subjects and assumes no special knowledge of any science. It is written in a direct and simple style, and technical language is introduced very sparingly. As various perspectives are sketched out in this (...) book, the reader moves towards a consistent conception of contemporary science as a rapidly changing social institution that has already grown out of its traditional forms and plays a central role in society at large. It will appeal to students in a wide range of scientific disciplines and complement well Professor Ziman's earlier books. (shrink)

Is the science of moral cognition usefully modelled on aspects of Universal Grammar? Are human beings born with an innate 'moral grammar' that causes them to analyse human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness as they analyse human speech in terms of its grammatical structure? Questions like these have been at the forefront of moral psychology ever since John Mikhail revived them in his influential work on the linguistic analogy and its implications for (...) jurisprudence and moral theory. In this seminal book, Mikhail offers a careful and sustained analysis of the moral grammar hypothesis, showing how some of John Rawls' original ideas about the linguistic analogy, together with famous thought experiments like the trolley problem, can be used to improve our understanding of moral and legal judgement. (shrink)

A general framework for analysing the effects of variability and the effects of interruptions on foraging is presented. The animal is characterised by its level of energetic reserves, x. We consider behaviour over a period of time [0,T]. A terminal reward function R(x) determines the expected future reproductive success of an animal with reserves x at time T. For any state x at a time in the period, we give the animal a choice between various options and then constrain it (...) to follow a background strategy. The best option is the one that maximizes expected future reproductive success. Using this framework, we show that sensitivity to variability in amount of energy gained is logically distinct from sensitivity to variability in the time at which food is obtained. We also show that incorporating interruptions results in both a preference for variability in time and a preference for a reward followed by a delay as opposed to the same delay before the reward. (shrink)

On the Life of Abraham displays Philo's philosophical, exegetical, and literary genius at its best. Philo begins by introducing the biblical figures Enos, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as unwritten laws. Then, interweaving literal, ethical, and allegorical interpretations, Philo presents the life and achievements of Abraham, founder of the Jewish nation, in the form of a Greco-Roman bios, or biography. Ellen Birnbaum and John Dillon explain why and how this work is important within the context of Philo's own (...) oeuvre, early Jewish and Christian exegesis, and ancient philosophy. They also offer a new English translation and detailed analyses, in which they elucidate the meaning of Philo's thought, including his perplexing notion that Israel's ancestors were laws in themselves. (shrink)

In this book John Ziman seeks the answers to crucial questions facing scientists who need to change the direction of their careers.

Literature on the Stoa usually concentrates on historical accounts of the development of the school and on Stoicism as a social movement. In this 1977 text, Professor Rist's approach is to examine in detail a series of philosophical problems discussed by leading members of the Stoic school. He is not concerned with social history or with the influence of Stoicism on popular beliefs in the Ancient world, but with such questions as the relation between Stoicism and the thought of Aristotle, (...) the meaning and purpose of such Stoic paradoxes as 'all sins are equal', and the philosophical interrelation of Stoic physics and ethics. There are chapters on aspects of Stoic logic and on the thought of particular thinkers such as Panaetius and Posidonius, but ethical problems occupy the centre of the stage. (shrink)

The Moral Psychology Handbook offers a survey of contemporary moral psychology, integrating evidence and argument from philosophy and the human sciences.

A discussion of the human side of science, originally published in 1981.

This article presents and discusses transcripts of some 270 explanations subjects provided subsequently for recognition memory decisions that had been associated with remember, know, or guess responses at the time the recognition decisions were made. Only transcripts for remember responses included reports of recollective experiences, which seemed mostly to reflect either effortful elaborative encoding or involuntary reminding at study, especially in relation to the self. Transcripts for know responses included claims of just knowing, and of feelings of familiarity. These transcripts (...) indicated that subjects were often quite confident of the accuracy of their decisions, compared with those for guess responses. Transcripts for decisions associated with guess responses also expressed feelings of familiarity but additionally revealed various strategies and inferences that did not directly reflect memory for studied items. The article concludes with a historical and theoretical overview of some interpretations of the states of awareness measured by these responses. (shrink)

John M. Doris has been a leading proponent of interdisciplinary approaches to moral psychology for decades. His work has transformed the way in which philosophers approach questions of character, virtue, and agency. This selection of his work focuses on the ways in which human personality orders moral cognition and behaviour.

This major work constitutes a significant attempt to provide a detailed and accurate account of the character and effects of Augustine's thought as a whole. It describes the transformation of Greco-Roman philosophy into the version that was to become the most influential in the history of Western thought. Augustine weighed some of the major themes of classical philosophy and ancient culture against the truth he found in the Bible and Catholic tradition, and reformulated these in Christian dress.

The most comprehensive collection of Neoplatonic writings available in English, this volume provides translations of the central texts of four major figures of the Neoplatonic tradition: Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus. The general Introduction gives an overview of the period and takes a brief but revealing look at the history of ancient philosophy from the viewpoint of the Neoplatonists. Historical background--essential for understanding these powerful, difficult, and sometimes obscure thinkers--is provided in extensive footnotes, which also include cross-references to other works (...) relevant to particular passages. (shrink)

While dominant management thinking is steered by profit maximisation, this paper proposes that sustained organisational growth can best be stimulated by attention to the common good and the capacity of corporate leaders to create commitment to the common good. The leadership thinking of Kautilya and Ashoka embodies this principle. Both offer a common good approach, emphasising the leader's moral and legal responsibility for people's welfare, the robust interaction between the business community and the state, and the importance of moral training (...) of leaders in identifying and promoting the common good. We argue that the complex process of re-orientating corporate priorities towards the common good requires alertness and concerted effort if both business and society are to truly benefit. As Ashoka said: ‘A good deed is a difficult thing’. (shrink)