The Discourses are a key source for ancient Stoicism, one of the richest and most influential schools of thought in Western philosophy. They not only represent the Stoicism of Epictetus' own time, but also reflect the teachings of such early Stoics as Zeno and Chrysippus, whose writings are largely lost. The first of the four books of the Discourses is philosophically the richest: it focuses primarily on ethics and moral psychology, but also touches on issues of logic, epistemology, science, and (...) rhetoric. Other notable schools of ancient thought, including Epicureanism, the Sceptics, and the Cynics, are discussed. Robert Dobbin presents a new translation into clear modern English of this important work, together with the first commentary on the work since the eighteenth century. Each of the thirty discourses that make up Book 1 is introduced and summarized; then the arguments are examined in detail. The general introduction gives background information about Epictetus' life, the intellectual context of the work, the style of the discourses, and the history of the text. A bibliography surveys the literature. The volume serves as a guide to Epictetus' thought as a whole. Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers General Editors: Jonathan Barnes and A. A. LongThis series is designed to encourage philosophers and students of philosophy to explore the fertile terrain of later ancient philosophy. The texts will range in date from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, and they will cover all the parts and all the schools of philosophy. Each volume contains a substantial introduction, an English translation, and a critical commentary on the philosophical claims and arguments of the text. The translations aim primarily at accuracy and fidelity, but also at readability; they are accompanied by notes on textual problems that affect the philosophical interpretation. No knowledge of Greek or Latin is assumed. (shrink)

Robert Dobbin presents a new translation into clear modern English of the first book of Epictetus' Discourses, accompanied by the first ever commentary on the work in English. The Discourses, composed around AD 100, are a key source for ancient Stoicism, one of the most influential schools of thought in Western philosophy.

The identity of the Caesar at "Aeneid", 1.286 is a long-standing problem. The prevailing opinion since Heyne favors Augustus, but a few scholars agree with Servius that the Dictator is meant. In recent years the suggestion that Vergil was being deliberately ambiguous has been advanced as a solution to the problem. I argue the case for Julius Caesar anew. The paper is in five sections. The first four deal respectively with the question of nomenclature; chronology; the descriptive epithets applied to (...) Caesar, especially spoliis Orientis onustum in 289; and the rhetoric of the passage. The fourth section confronts the challenge posed to my reading by the well-known view of Ronald Syme, held to throughout his lifetime, that Julius Caesar was a virtual non-person in the Rome of Vergil's day because the princeps tried to avoid awkward comparison with the Dictator. But this view has been challenged, and I draw on recent work in this area. In the fifth and final section I support my reading with references to Vergil's earlier poetry, attending especially to what it can tell us about Vergil's attitude toward Julius Caesar. Of particular relevance is the use he makes of the sidus Iulium, an image found in the Eclogues and important in connection with the apocalyptic outlook abroad at the time of Caesar's assassination. This section of the paper expands on Servius' generally neglected note, which maintains that the Caesar in question is Julius. (shrink)

The identity of the Caesar at "Aeneid", 1.286 is a long-standing problem. The prevailing opinion since Heyne favors Augustus, but a few scholars agree with Servius that the Dictator is meant. In recent years the suggestion that Vergil was being deliberately ambiguous has been advanced as a solution to the problem. I argue the case for Julius Caesar anew. The paper is in five sections. The first four deal respectively with the question of nomenclature; chronology; the descriptive epithets applied to (...) Caesar, especially spoliis Orientis onustum in 289; and the rhetoric of the passage. The fourth section confronts the challenge posed to my reading by the well-known view of Ronald Syme, held to throughout his lifetime, that Julius Caesar was a virtual non-person in the Rome of Vergil's day because the princeps tried to avoid awkward comparison with the Dictator. But this view has been challenged, and I draw on recent work in this area. In the fifth and final section I support my reading with references to Vergil's earlier poetry, attending especially to what it can tell us about Vergil's attitude toward Julius Caesar. Of particular relevance is the use he makes of the sidus Iulium, an image found in the Eclogues and important in connection with the apocalyptic outlook abroad at the time of Caesar's assassination. This section of the paper expands on Servius' generally neglected note, which maintains that the Caesar in question is Julius. (shrink)

This work is the latest contribution to the Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers series edited by Jonathan Barnes and A. A. Long. As with the earlier volumes (John Dillon's Alcinous, The Handbook of Platonism , R. J. Hankinson's Galen, On the Therapeutic Method Books I and II, Richard Bett's Sextus Empiricus, Against the Ethicists, and D. L. Blank's Sextus Empiricus, Against the Grammarians), D(obbin) provides an introduction, an English translation, and a critical commentary predominantly focused on the philosophical content of the (...) text of an author from the period ranging from the first century BC to the fifth century AD. A bibliography of a dozen earlier editions of E(pictetus), a painstaking bibliography of secondary literature, an index nominum, a generous index locorum, and a brief subject index are also included. Overall this edition maintains the high standards characteristic of the CLAP series. (shrink)

The Cultural Production of Social Movements offers a theory of cultural practices, protest tactics, strategic planning and deliberation, and movement organizational structures: “ideological contention.” It is a theory of ideology “from below.” The Cultural Production of Social Movements shows how conflicts—both with external political forces and disagreements, dissensus, and the decision-making process internal to social movements—produce knowledge and meanings that, in turn, impact upon and change the practices that contribute to how social movements are structured and organized. The Cultural Production (...) of Social Movements theorizes the relationship between consciously held superordinate ideas, the changing composition of progressive and oppositional social struggles, and the social worlds they hope to inhabit. Analyzing the Black Panther Party, specifically Kathleen Cleaver’s break with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and her contributions to the Party, Operaismo (or Workerism) in Italy and the relationship between shifting organizational strategies, inventive tactics, and novel and expansive ways to theorize class struggles, and the communal composition of “Worker-Recovered Enterprise Movements” in contemporary Argentina, this book shows how movement ideologies change and how meanings structure organizations, mobilizations, and futures. In The Cultural Production of Social Movements ideology is neither a static set of principles, nor is an unconscious orientation towards power and governance. Rather, it is the contentious, democratizing, and deliberative processes—which become realized as tactics in protests, struggles, defeats, and victories—that makes the relationship between movements, and what they “mean” conscious to its participants. (shrink)

This book argues that a conscientiously objecting medical professional should receive an exemption only if the grounds of an objector's refusal are reasonable. It defends a detailed, contextual account of public reasonability suited for healthcare, which builds from the overarching concept of Rawlsian public reason. The author analyzes the main competing positions and maintains that these other views fail precisely due to their systematic inattention to the grounding reasons behind a conscientious objection; he argues that any such view is plausible (...) to the extent that it mimics the 'reason-giving requirement' for conscience objections defended in this work. Only reasonable objections can defeat the prior professional obligation to assign primacy to patient well-being, therefore one who refuses a patient's request for a legally available, medically indicated, and safe service must be able to explain the grounds of their objection in terms understandable to other citizens within the public institutional structure of medicine. The book further offers a novel policy proposal to deploy the Reasonability View: establishing conscientious objector status in medicine. It concludes that the Reasonability View is a viable and attractive position in this debate. A New Theory of Conscientious Objection in Medicine: Justification and Reasonability will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in bioethics, medical ethics, and philosophy of medicine, as well as thinkers interested in the intersections between law, medical humanities, and philosophy. (shrink)

This article argues that practitioners have a professional ethical obligation to dispense emergency contraception, even given conscientious objection to this treatment. This recent controversy affects all medical professionals, including physicians as well as pharmacists. This article begins by analyzing the option of referring the patient to another willing provider. Objecting professionals may conscientiously refuse because they consider emergency contraception to be equivalent to abortion or because they believe contraception itself is immoral. This article critically evaluates these reasons and concludes that (...) they do not successfully support conscientious objection in this context. Contrary to the views of other thinkers, it is not possible to easily strike a respectful balance between the interests of objecting providers and patients in this case. As medical professionals, providers have an ethical duty to inform women of this option and provide emergency contraception when this treatment is requested. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the Reasonability View: the position that medical professionals seeking a conscientious exemption must state reasons in support of their objection and allow those reasons to be subject to evaluation. Recently, this view has been criticized by Jason Marsh as proposing a standard that is either too difficult to meet or too easy to satisfy. First, I defend the Reasonability View from this proposed dilemma. Then, I develop this view by presenting and explaining some of the (...) central criteria it uses to assess whether a conscientious objection is proper grounds for extending an exemption to a medical practitioner. (shrink)

(1997). Considering moral sensitivity in media ethics courses and research: An essay review by Robert F. Potter. Journal of Mass Media Ethics: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 51-57. doi: 10.1207/s15327728jmme1201_4.

Defenders of medical professionals’ rights to conscientious objection (CO) regarding emergency contraception (EC) draw an analogy to CO in the military. Such professionals object to EC since it has the possibility of harming zygotic life, yet if we accept this analogy and utilize jurisprudence to frame the associated public policy, those who refuse to dispense EC would not have their objection honored. Legal precedent holds that one must consistently object to all forms of the relevant activity. In the case at (...) hand, then, I argue that these professionals must also oppose morally innocuous practices that may prevent pregnancy after fertilization. These results reveal that such objectors cannot offer a plausible and consistent objection to harming zygotic life. Additionally, there are good reasons to reject the analogy itself. In either case, these findings call into question the case supporting refusals of EC based on scruples. (shrink)

This paper builds upon previous work in which I argue that we should assess a provider's reasons for his or her objection before granting a conscientious exemption. For instance, if the medical professional's reasoned basis involves an empirical mistake, an accommodation is not warranted. This article poses and begins to address several deep questions about the workings of what I call a reason-giving view: What standard should we use to assess reasons? What policy should we adopt in order to evaluate (...) the reasons offered by medical practitioners in support of their objections? I argue for a reasonability standard to perform the essential function of assessing reasons, and I offer considerations in support of a policy establishing conscientious objector status in medicine. (shrink)

Sixteen essays on epistemology, metaphysics, & history & politics, treating aspects of the writings of Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Leibniz, & Hobbes.

This landmark volume brings together the work of the world's leading researchers in sublimated perception. This compilation marks a fundamental shift in the current study of subliminal effects: No longer in question is the notion that perception without awareness occurs. Now, the emphasis is on elucidating the parameters of subliminal effects and understanding the conditions under which stimuli perceived without awareness significantly influence affect, cognition, and behavior. PERCEPTION WITHOUT AWARENESS firmly establishes subliminal perception within the mainstream of psychological science. Well (...) represented here are the two main research branches that have emerged: One directly investigates the nature of subliminal effects; the other uses subliminal techniques as tools for investigating psychological phenomena such as hypnosis, dreaming, repression, social judgment and inference, psychopathology, and symptom formation. Broadly grouped into three main sections, the contributed chapters explore * The cognitive perspective--including implicit memory and implicit perception, the measurement of unconscious perceptual processes, and methods for revealing unconscious processes * The clinical perspective--exploring the cognitive and dynamic aspects of subliminal perception, memory, and consciousness; direct recovery of subliminal stimuli; and validation of subliminal psychodynamic activation * The social perspective--discussing subliminal mere-exposure effects, affect and social perception, and the role of subliminality in social psychology Timely and thought-provoking, PERCEPTION WITHOUT AWARENESS is sure to be of enormous interest to all psychoanalytic clinicians and scholars, as well as cognitive, clinical, and social psychologists whose work touches upon issues relating to psychopathology, perception, cognition, and memory. (shrink)

Blind Realism originated in the deeply felt conviction that the widespread acceptance of Gettier-type counterexamples to the classical definition of knowledge rests in a demonstrably erroneous understanding of the nature of human knowledge. In seeking to defend that conviction, Robert F. Almeder offers a fairly detailed and systematic picture of the nature and limits of human factual knowledge.

Actions within organizational contexts should be understood differently as compared with actions performed outside of such contexts. This is the case due to the agentic shift, as discussed by social psychologist Stanley Milgram, and the role that systemic factors play in shaping the available alternatives from which individuals acting within institutions choose. The analysis stemming from Milgram’s experiments suggests not simply that individuals temporarily abdicate their moral agency on occasion, but that there is an erosion of agency within organizations. The (...) point about the erosion of agency is deepened in the discussion of a case study which illustrates the difficulty of identifying even the bare “ownership” of actions within organizations. While this is the case, explicating these reasons suggests that both individual actors and firms can bear ethical responsibility within organizational contexts. As part of the effort to present the whole picture, business ethics courses should introduce students to the relevant insights from social psychology and human factors research. (shrink)

Berkhofer ranges through a vast archive of recent writings by a broad range of authors. He explicates the opposing paradigms and their corresponding dilemmas by presenting in dialogue form the positions of modernists and postmodernists, formalists and deconstructionists, textualists and contextualists.

Rule-consequentialism is frequently regarded as problematic since it faces the following powerful dilemma: either rule-consequentialism collapses into act-consequentialism or rule-consequentialism is inconsistent. Recent defenders of this theory such as Brad Hooker provide a careful response to this objection. By explicating the nature and theoretical commitments of rule-consequentialism, I contend that these maneuvers are not successful by offering a new way of viewing the dilemma which retains its force even in light of these recent discussions. The central idea is that even (...) the most well-developed contemporary form of the view is ensnared in the following dilemma: as an agent-neutral consequentialist theory, rule-consequentialism is either inconsistent or it is desperately unmotivated as a form of consequentialism since it is committed to a non-consequentialist form of ultimate moral value. (shrink)

Blind Realism originated in the deeply felt conviction that the widespread acceptance of Gettier-type counterexamples to the classical definition of knowledge rests in a demonstrably erroneous understanding of the nature of human knowledge. In seeking to defend that conviction, Robert F. Almeder offers a fairly detailed and systematic picture of the nature and limits of human factual knowledge.

Recent survey data gathered from British medical students reveal widespread acceptance of conscientious objection in medicine, despite the existence of strict policies in the UK that discourage conscientious refusals by students to aspects of their medical training. This disconnect demonstrates a pressing need to thoughtfully examine policies that allow conscience objections by medical students; as it so happens, the USA is one country that has examples of such policies. After presenting some background on promulgated US conscience protections and reflecting on (...) their significance for conscience objections by medical students, this paper observes that the dominant approach (following the American Medical Association's conscience clause) is to allow exempted students to instead be evaluated on the basis of alternative curricular activities to learn the associated underlying content. This paper then introduces and discusses an example in which male Muslim students who believe it is wrong to touch members of the opposite sex object to performing physical examinations on female subjects in their medical training. This sort of case, it is argued, causes difficulty for a conscience clause that resolves the dilemma by granting reasonable exemptions in the form of participation in alternative curricular activities: there are cases where one must perform the ‘objectionable’ activity itself in order to learn the necessary content and underlying principles. (shrink)

In Human Happiness and Morality, noted philosopher Robert Almeder provides lucid introductory explanations of the major ethical theories and traditions, as well as a clear and comprehensive discussion of the proposed answers to three basic questions in ethics: What makes a right act right? Why should I be moral? What is human happiness and how can I attain it? He then ventures beyond the basic questions, describing the relationship between morality and happiness; clearly defining human happiness; and raising the (...) question of whether happiness, so defined, is the likely product of a life lived morally. In the final chapter, Almeder details simple Stoic rules for happy living and shows how it is possible to live the good life despite the existence of unhappiness and failure in others. (shrink)

De Finetti's treatise on the theory of probability begins with the provocative statement PROBABILITY DOES NOT EXIST, meaning that probability does not exist in an objective sense. Rather, probability exists only subjectively within the minds of individuals. De Finetti defined subjective probabilities in terms of the rates at which individuals are willing to bet money on events, even though, in principle, such betting rates could depend on state-dependent marginal utility for money as well as on beliefs. Most later authors, from (...) Savage onward, have attempted to disentangle beliefs from values by introducing hypothetical bets whose payoffs are abstract consequences that are assumed to have state-independent utility. In this paper, I argue that de Finetti was right all along: PROBABILITY, considered as a numerical measure of pure belief uncontaminated by attitudes toward money, does not exist. Rather, what exist are de Finetti's `previsions', or betting rates for money, otherwise known in the literature as `risk neutral probabilities'. But the fact that previsions are not measures of pure belief turns out not to be problematic for statistical inference, decision analysis, or economic modeling. (shrink)

A powerful objection to impersonal moral theories states that they cannot accommodate the good of friendship. This paper focuses on the problem as it applies to consequentialism and addresses the recent criticism that even the most sophisticated forms of consequentialism are incompatible with genuine friendship. I argue that this objection fails since those who pose this challenge either seriously oversimplify consequentialism's theory of value, misunderstand its theory of practical reason, or put too much weight on the good of friendship itself. (...) I conclude by assessing a contemporary consequentialist response in order to suggest a workable conception of consequentialist friendship. (shrink)

The situationist challenge to global character traits claims that on the basis of findings in social psychology, we should only accept at most the existence of local or context-sensitive traits. In this article I explore a neglected area of J. S. Mill's work to outline an account of context-sensitive traits. This account of traits, coupled with a sophisticated consequentialist ethical framework, suggests an interesting view on which persons govern the circumstances of their actions in order to best promote overall well-being.

As an introduction to explicating the concept of basic knowledge, I shall examine Aristotle's argument for the existence of basic knowledge and urge two basic points. The first point is that Aristotle's argument, properly viewed, establishes the existence of a kind of knowledge, basic or non-demonstrative knowledge, the definition of which does not require the specification of, and hence the satisfaction of,anyevidence condition. This point has been urged by philosophers like Peirce and Austin but it needs further argumentation because most (...) analytic epistemologists still insist thatallknowledge, whether basic or non-basic, requires the satisfaction of some evidence condition. Secondly, to urge that the basic propositions whose existence is established by Aristotle's argument could be privileged but not known, for the reason that there is no evidence condition for them, would be to adopt a position that either entails wholesale skepticism or undermines the basic distinction between knowledge and belief. (shrink)

Ancell and Sinnott-Armstrong argue that medical providers possess wide freedoms to determine the scope of their practice, and therefore, prohibiting almost any conscientious objections is a bad idea. They maintain that we could create an acceptable system on the whole which even grants accommodations to discriminatory refusals by healthcare professionals. Their argument is premised upon applying a free market mechanism to conscientious objections in medicine, yet I argue their Market View possesses a number of absurd and troubling implications. Furthermore, I (...) demonstrate that the fundamental logic of their main argument is flawed. Thinkers who wish to address the issues raised in this debate in general or by discriminatory conscience objections in particular should avoid the Market View and instead envisage theories that assess the reasons underlying conscientious refusals in medicine. (shrink)

Much of traditional AI exemplifies the explicit representation paradigm, and during the late 1980''s a heated debate arose between the classical and connectionist camps as to whether beliefs and rules receive an explicit or implicit representation in human cognition. In a recent paper, Kirsh (1990) questions the coherence of the fundamental distinction underlying this debate. He argues that our basic intuitions concerning explicit and implicit representations are not only confused but inconsistent. Ultimately, Kirsh proposes a new formulation of the distinction, (...) based upon the criterion ofconstant time processing.The present paper examines Kirsh''s claims. It is argued that Kirsh fails to demonstrate that our usage of explicit and implicit is seriously confused or inconsistent. Furthermore, it is argued that Kirsh''s new formulation of the explicit-implicit distinction is excessively stringent, in that it banishes virtually all sentences of natural language from the realm of explicit representation. By contrast, the present paper proposes definitions for explicit and implicit which preserve most of our strong intuitions concerning straightforward uses of these terms. It is also argued that the distinction delineated here sustains the meaningfulness of the abovementioned debate between classicists and connectionists. (shrink)

Things strike me in a variety ways. F and F# sound slightly different, ripe and unripe tomatoes neither look nor taste nor smell the same, and silk feels smoother than corduroy. In each case, I distinguish an experience of something on the basis of what it is like to be its subject. That is to say, in philosophical parlance, if not quite the vernacular, its “quale,” leads me to categorize it and, thus, respond appropriately to its stimulus. The function of (...) a quale being established, we must define it along with its subject and, as Sartre maintained, their relation. How should we understand the subject and predicate terms and the copula in sentences such as ‘He is listening to Chopin’ or ‘She is seeing the sights of Paris’? Elaborating upon adverbialism, I shall argue that the subject of experiencing is a hylomorphic compound that is temporarily identical to the 'accidental compound' that it forms along with a qualified passion. I begin by explicating the adverbialist’s treatment of qualitative consciousness and defending it against the charge of circularity. (shrink)

The current conflict between the recording industry and a portion of its customers who are involved in illicit copying of music files arose from innovations involving the compression and electronic distribution of files over the internet. This paper briefly describes some of the challenges faced by the recording industry, and examines some of the ethical issues that arise in various industry and consumer responses to the opportunities and threats presented by these innovations. The paper concludes by highlighting the risks associated (...) with responses that threaten further innovation, ultimately reducing the chances of finding solutions that hold appeal for all parties. (shrink)

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the wide range of issues surrounding "passive euthanasia" and "allow-to-die" decisions. The author develops a comprehensive conceptual model that is highly useful for assessing and dealing with real-life situations. He presents an informative historical overview, an evaluation of the clinical settings in which treatment abatement takes place, and an insightful discussion of relevant legal aspects. The result is a clearly articulated ethical analysis that is medically realistic, philosophically sound, and legally viable.