The question of the possibility of philosophy being an art form concludes Robert Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations.1 He seems to be of the view that an affirmative answer would augur well for further inquiry into the kinds of core philosophical questions, those that “make us tremble,” he writes, which he has just examined: the identity of the self; why is there something rather than nothing; knowledge and skepticism; free will; the foundation of ethics; and the meaning of life.2 These explorations aim (...) at answering the question: “how are we valuable and precious?”. Although he does not spell it out, it is clear that he seems to think that showing that philosophy can be an art form would reveal how it... (shrink)

Aims of education: historicism and In the castle of my skin -- The meaning of life and Black lightning -- The inner radiance of the shelf in Palace of the peacock -- Knowledge and human understanding in A house for Mr Biswas -- Existentialism and The children of Sisyphus -- Tragic vision in Wide Sargasso Sea -- African conceptions of a person and Myal -- The law of karma in Sastra -- The moralty of reparations in Salt -- Plato versus (...) Kincaid?: A reading of The autobiography of my mother. (shrink)

This chapter formulates a rational uniqueness principle holding that those who are epistemic peers on a proposition, in that they know that they share all rational considerations concerning the truth of the proposition, cannot be justified in having different attitudes toward it. It then argues against the principle, primarily on the grounds that such peers may rationally regard themselves as differing in their basis for rational belief, or their evidence, on the topic. The rationality of their differing perspectives can justify (...) having different attitudes toward the disputed proposition. (shrink)

As we face the compounded crises of late capitalism - environmental catastrophe, pandemics, and technological transformation - who are the thinkers with a grasp on our world? McKenzie Wark surveys three areas at the cutting edge of current critical thinking: media ecologies, postcolonial ethnography, and the design of technologies. She introduces us to the ideas of seventeen major writers who, when brought together, contribute to the common task of knowing the world. Each chapter is a concise account of an (...) individual thinker, providing useful context and opening connections to the work of the others. (shrink)

In eastern spiritual traditions, samsara has long been associated with the cycle of birth and death. But what are the hidden depths of samsara, and just how far does it go?

The prefrontal cortex has long been suspected to play an important role in cognitive control, in the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals. Its neural basis, however, has remained a mystery. Here, we propose that cognitive control stems from the active maintenance of patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex that represent goals and the means to achieve them. They provide bias signals to other brain structures whose net effect is to guide the flow of (...) activity along neural pathways that establish the proper mappings between inputs, internal states, and outputs needed to perform a given task. We review neurophysiological, neurobiological, neuroimaging, and computational studies that support this theory and discuss its implications as well as further issues to be addressed. (shrink)

How do you tell what’s right from what’s wrong? Can you always? What’s the difference between deduction, induction, and abduction? What are the best techniques for making an argument logically sound? In this fascinating little book, the smallest on its subject ever produced, philosopher Earl Fontainelle explores the ancient art of discursive Logic and demonstrates some of the techniques that have long been used to triumph over the debates and deceptions that assail us every day. Filled with helpful examples (...) of good and bad reasoning, Logic is an invaluable introduction to a defining human characteristic. (shrink)

Drawing on early work on ethical leadership, we argue that when leaders engage in leader moral hypocrisy (i.e., ethical promotion without ethical demonstration), followers can experience psychological reactance—a negative response to a perceived restriction of freedom—which can have negative downstream consequences. In a survey of employee–manager dyads (study 1), we demonstrate that leader moral hypocrisy is positively associated with follower psychological reactance, which increases follower deviance. In two subsequent laboratory experiments, we find similar patterns of results (study 2) and explore (...) potential alternative mechanisms (study 3). We demonstrate in a final experiment with working adults that the relationship between leader moral hypocrisy and psychological reactance is partly explained by increased perceptions of a leader’s use of power (study 4). We discuss the implications of our findings and advocate for further understanding of the risks associated with psychological reactance in response to leaders and other workplace situations. (shrink)

The case (Dawson et al. 2024) describes an Institutional Review Board (IRB) chair who seeks consultation about waiving the requirement that investigators obtain prospective, informed consent for co...

This book examines "Taylorean social theory," its sources, main characteristics and impact. Charles Taylor's meta-narrative of secularization in the West, prominently contained in his major work A Secular Age (2007), has brought new insight on the social and cultural factors that intervened in such process, the role of human agency, and particularly on the contemporary conditions of belief in North America and Europe. This study discusses what Taylor's approach has brought to the scholarly debate on Western secularization, which has been (...) carried on mostly in sociological terms. McKenzie interprets Taylor's views in a way that offers an original social theory. Such interpretation is possible with the help of sociologist Margaret Archer's "morphogenetic theory" and by making the most of Taylor's particular understanding of the method of the social sciences and of his philosophical views on human beings, knowledge and modernity. After exploring the philosophical and sociological sources informing Taylorean social theory and proposing its basic concepts and hermeneutic guidelines, the author compares it with two widespread theories of secularization: the now waning "orthodox" account and that proposed by Rational Choice Theory scholars, particularly prevalent in the United States. In doing so, the book shows in which ways Taylorean social theory supersedes them, what new issues it brings into the scholarly discussion, and what difficulties might limit its future development. (shrink)

The past 30 years has seen a theoretical and clinical renaissance in psychoanalysis, as well as a flourishing of Christian engagement in the fields of psychology and anthropology. This volume of essays stages a new conversation between Christianity and psychoanalysis that opens up new ways of thinking about the rich mosaic of human experience.

This book presents the foundations of a general theory of algebras. Often called “universal algebra”, this theory provides a common framework for all algebraic systems, including groups, rings, modules, fields, and lattices. Each chapter is replete with useful illustrations and exercises that solidify the reader's understanding. The book begins by developing the main concepts and working tools of algebras and lattices, and continues with examples of classical algebraic systems like groups, semigroups, monoids, and categories. The essence of the book lies (...) in Chapter 4, which provides not only basic concepts and results of general algebra, but also the perspectives and intuitions shared by practitioners of the field. The book finishes with a study of possible uniqueness of factorizations of an algebra into a direct product of directly indecomposable algebras. There is enough material in this text for a two semester course sequence, but a one semester course could also focus primarily on Chapter 4, with additional topics selected from throughout the text. (shrink)

Unfortunately, business is often associated with unethical behavior. While research has offered a number of explanations for why business might encourage unethical behavior, we argue that how a person frames a situation may provide important insight. Drawing on the decision frame literature, the goal of the current research is to identify the differences in cognitive processing associated with two decision frames dominant in the business ethics literature—business and ethical—and, with that knowledge, examine ways to mitigate the detrimental influence of frame (...) on unethical behavior. We first demonstrate the causal link between frame and misrepresentation, and then identify several differences in cognitive processing—cost–benefit analyses, concern for others, and construal level—that distinguish business and ethical frames, and investigate their effects on misrepresentation. In our final set of studies, we demonstrate that the influence of these frames on misrepresentation can be altered by manipulating these cognitive processes, both mitigating and exacerbating a decision maker’s engagement in misrepresentation. We conclude by summarizing our findings and their potential impact on unethical behavior more broadly. (shrink)

The paper explores the promise of ethical codes as a means to control unethical behavior in business. After a review of arguments for ethical codes from outside the business system, the paper outlines the arguments for codes from inside the business system at the level of the industry, firm and individual executive.The paper then discusses the problems of code design — the dilemma between specific practices and general precepts — and offers a model for a thoroughgoing code. This is followed (...) by a discussion of the problems of promulgation and code enforcement. (shrink)

A variant of the process dissociation procedure was coupled with a manipulation of response signal lag to assess whether manipulations of context affect one or both of the familiarity and search processes described by the dual process model of recognition. Participants studied a list of word pairs followed by a recognition test with target words presented in the same or different context, and in the same or different form as study . Participants were asked to recognize any target word regardless (...) of changes to form , or to only recognise words that were presented in the same form . The standard context reinstatement effect was evident even at the short response lags. Analyses of the estimates of the contributions of familiarity and search processes suggest that the context effect demonstrated here can be attributed in part to the influence of familiarity on recognition, whereas the effect on recollection was less clear. (shrink)

Any instance (i.e., event, behavior, trait) belongs to infinitely many reference classes, hence there are infinitely many base rates from which to choose. People clearly do not entertain all possible reference classes, however, so something must be limiting the search space. We suggest some possible mechanisms that determine which reference class is evoked for the purpose of judgment and decision.

Although a number of articles have addressed ethical perceptions and behaviors, few studies have examined ethics across cultures. This research focuses on measuring the job satisfaction, customer orientation, ethics, and ethical training of automotive salespersons in the U.S. and Taiwan. The relationships of these variables to salesperson performance were also investigated. Ethics training was found to be negatively related to perceived levels of ethicalness and performance. High performance U.S. salespeople reported high ethical behavior, while the opposite was true in Taiwan. (...) Customer orientation in both countries was influenced by ethics training. Managers should evaluate current ethics training programs to insure correct ethical behavior is taught and rewarded. (shrink)

This is an introduction to metaphysics for students and non-philosophers. (Philosophers: it's supposed to be the kind of book you can give to your friends and family, when they ask what you do for a living.) Contents: personal identity, fatalism, time, God, why not nothing?, free will, constitution, universals, necessity and possibility, what is metaphysics? (There is a second edition, which adds chapters on meta-metaphysics and the metaphysics of ethics.).

Evidentialism holds that the justified attitudes are determined entirely by the person's evidence. This book is a collection of essays, mostly jointly authored, that support and apply evidentialism.

he relationship between metaphysics and science has recently become the focus of increased attention. Ladyman and Ross, in particular, have accused even naturalistically inclined metaphysicians of pursuing little more than the philosophy of A-level chemistry and have suggested that analytic metaphysics should simply be discontinued. In contrast, we shall argue, first of all, that even metaphysics that is disengaged from modern science may offer a set of resources that can be appropriated by philosophers of physics in order to set physics (...) within an interpretational framework. Secondly, however, we shall urge that insofar as metaphysics is intended to be more than just a toolbox it needs to accommodate the implications of physics if many of its core claims are to be sustained. We shall illustrate this last point with a discussion of the nature of laws and modality in the context of modern physics. (shrink)

For quite some time, critics have attacked religious language on the grounds that theologians employed metaphors that were irreducible. By irreducible, they meant metaphors that could not be paraphrased in literal language. And any such language that could not be reduced to words that can be taken in a literal sense, would be devoid of cognitive meaning or truth value. Since theologians claimed that statements like ‘God is love’ cannot be reduced to a literal sense without robbing the concept of (...) God of its transcendent status, sceptics replied that such failures merely indicated the meaninglessness of religious language. Or, if apologists did assert that ‘God is love’ can be paraphrased by statements describing the love of one man for another, the sceptic claimed that such a move reduced religious language to anthropological language where terms like ‘God’ were superfluous. Critics argued that metaphors of religion posed the following dilemma: either religious metaphors could not be reduced to literal paraphrases and were, therefore, meaningless; or, religious metaphors could be reduced to literal paraphrases, but the method by which they were reduced eliminated the necessity for theological terminology. (shrink)

Evidentialism is a view about the conditions under which a person is epistemically justified in having a particular doxastic attitude toward a proposition. Evidentialism holds that the justified attitudes are determined entirely by the person's evidence. This is the traditional view of justification. It is now widely opposed. The essays included in this volume develop and defend the tradition. Evidentialism has many assets. In addition to providing an intuitively plausible account of epistemic justification, it helps to resolve the problem of (...) the criterion, helps to disentangle epistemic and ethical evaluations, and illuminates the relationship between epistemic evaluations of beliefs and the evaluation of the methods used to form beliefs. These issues are all addressed in the essays presented here. External world skepticism poses the classic problem for an epistemological theory. The final essay in this volume argues that evidentialism is uniquely well qualified to make sense of skepticism and to respond to its challenge. Evidentialism is a version of epistemic internalism. Recent epistemology has included many attacks on internalism and has seen the development of numerous externalist theories. The essays included here respond to those attacks and raise objections to externalist theories, especially the principal rival, reliabilism. Internalism generally has been criticized for having unacceptable deontological implications, for failing to connect epistemic justification to truth, and for failing to provide an adequate account of what makes basic beliefs justified. Each of these charges is answered in these essays. The collection includes two previously unpublished essays and new afterwords to five of the reprinted essays; it will be the definitive resource on evidentialism for all epistemologists. (shrink)

Self‐renewal and differentiation of stem cells are tightly regulated processes subject to intrinsic and extrinsic signals. Molecular chaperones and co‐chaperones, especially heat shock proteins (Hsp), are ubiquitous molecules involved in the modulation of protein conformational and complexation states. The function of Hsp, which are typically associated with stress response and tolerance, is well characterized in differentiated cells, while their role in stem cells remains unclear. It appears that embryonic stem cells exhibit increased stress tolerance and concomitant high levels of chaperone (...) expression. This review critically evaluates stem cell research from a molecular chaperone perspective. Furthermore, we propose a model of chaperone‐modulated self‐renewal in mouse embryonic stem cells. (shrink)