Online research in philosophy

Earlier in the pages of this journal (p 481), Wendler and Miller offered the "net risks test" as an alternative approach to the ethical analysis of benefits and harms in research. They have been vocal critics of the dominant view of benefit-harm analysis in research ethics, which encompasses core concepts of duty of care, clinical equipoise and component analysis. They had been challenged to come up with a viable alternative to component analysis which meets five criteria. The alternative must (...) (1) protect research subjects; (2) allow clinical research to proceed; (3) explain how physicians may offer trial enrolment to their patients; (4) address the challenges posed by research containing a mixture of interventions and (5) define ethical standards according to which the risks and potential benefits of research may be consistently evaluated. This response argues that the net risks test meets none of these criteria and concludes that it is not a viable alternative to component analysis. (shrink)

The Securities and Exchange Commission requires publicly held US corporations to disclose all information, whether it is positive or negative, that might be relevant to an investor's decision to buy, sell, or hold a company's securities. The decisions made by corporate managers to disclose such information can significantly affect the judgments and decisions of investors. This paper examines academic accounting research on corporate managers' voluntary disclosures of earnings forecasts and non-GAAP earnings measures. Much of the evidence from this research indicates (...) that some managers engage in opportunistic disclosure behavior that often benefits one group (managers and shareholders) at the expense of other groups (often other investors). The paper concludes by discussing the ethical implications of this behavior. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Introduction Jon Miller; Part I. Textual Issues: 1. On the unity of the Nicomachean Ethics Michael Pakaluk; Part II. Happiness: 2. Living for the sake of an ultimate end Susan Sauve;; 3. Contemplation and Eudaimonia in the Nicomachean Ethics Norman O. Dahl; 4. Aristotle on Eudaimonia, Nous, and divinity A. A. Long; Part III. Psychology: 5. Aristotle, agents, and action Iakovos Vasilou; 6. Wicked and inappropriate passion Stephen Leighton; 7. Perfecting pleasures: the metaphysics of pleasure (...) in Nicomachean Ethics X Christopher Shields; 8. Aristotle's definition of non-rational pleasure and pain and desire Klaus Corcilius; 9. Non-rational desire and Aristotle's moral psychology Giles Pearson; Part IV. Virtues: 10. Beauty and morality in Aristotle T. H. Irwin; 11. Justice in the Nicomachean Ethics Book V Hallvard Fossheim. (shrink)

Newton’s argument for universal gravitation in the Principia eventually rested on the third “Rule of Philosophizing,” which warrants the generalization of “qualities of bodies.” An analysis of the rule and the history of its development indicate that the term ‘quality’ should be taken to include both inherent properties of bodies and relations among systems of bodies, generalized into `laws'. By incorporating law‐induction into the rule, Newton could legitimately rebuff objections to his theory by claiming that universal gravitation was justified by (...) his method even if he could not specify the cause of gravity . †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Duke University, 201 West Duke Building, Box 90743, Durham, NC 27708; e‐mail: david.m.miller@duke.edu. (shrink)

This comprehensive study of Aristotle's Politics argues that nature, justice, and rights are central to Aristotle's political thought. Miller challenges the widely held view that the concept of rights is alien to Aristotle's thought, and presents evidence for talk of rights in Aristotle's writings. He argues further that Aristotle's theory of justice supports claims of individual rights that are political and based in nature.

Galileo’s impractical science Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9534-4 Authors David Marshall Miller, Department of Philosophy, Duke University, 201 West Duke, Durham, NC 27708, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

Bernard E. Rollin: Putting the Horse Before Descartes: My Life’s Work on Behalf of Animals Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9316-4 Authors Lantz Miller, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

This volume is a direct result of a conference held at Princeton University to honor George A. Miller, an extraordinary psychologist. A distinguished panel of speakers from various disciplines -- psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and artificial intelligence -- were challenged to respond to Dr. Miller's query: "What has happened to cognition? In other words, what has the past 30 years contributed to our understanding of the mind? Do we really know anything that wasn't already clear to William James?" Each (...) participant tried to stand back a little from his or her most recent work, but to address the general question from his or her particular standpoint. The chapters in the present volume derive from that occasion. (shrink)

My initial hope when I first saw Miller’s book was that here at least would be a work which satisfies the long standing need for a comprehensive introduction to contemporary metaethics which is accessible enough to be employed in advanced undergraduate courses and introductory graduate seminars. This hope was only partially realized, however, as Miller ends up oscillating between clear presentations of extant debates in the recent literature and his own extended attempts to determine where the truth of (...) the matter lies. The result is an interesting book that likely will appeal both to those looking for a classroom text in metaethics as well as to experts on the relevant issues. (shrink)

The Federalist, written by “Publius” (Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison) in 1787-1788 in defense of the proposed constitution of the United States, endorses a fundamental principle of political legitimacy: namely, “it is the reason of the public alone, that ought to control and regulate the government.” This essay argues that this principle—the rule of reason—may be traced back to Plato. Part I of the essay seeks to show that Plato's Statesman offers a clearer understanding of the rule of (...) reason than his more famous Republic, and it also indicates how this principle gave rise to the ideal of constitutionalism, which was adopted and reformulated by Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero, as well as moderns including Locke and Montesquieu. Part II argues that The Federalist agrees with Plato when it argues that popular sovereignty must be tempered by the rule of reason. A proper distance should be maintained between the people and the actual exercise of power in order that political decisions be based on reason rather than passion. The people must therefore act through a federal system divided between national government and state governments, and these governments must themselves possess separated powers which control each other by means of checks and balances. Indeed, federalism itself may be viewed as a modern counterpart of Plato's “art of weaving,” which unites naturally disparate and opposed parts of the city-state into a concordant whole. In declaring, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” The Federalist concedes that politics is the art of the possible. But statesmanship is not an exercise in pragmatism devoid of principles. Here “Publius” shares Plato's vision of politics as a “second sailing,” that is, an attempt to approximate the ideal of rational governance as far as possible in ordinary politics. Footnotesa This paper was originally presented at a meeting of the Symposium on Political Thought at Bowling Green State University. I am very grateful to the participants for their helpful suggestions, including Peter Celello, Albert Dzur, Neil Englehart, Jefferson Holcomb, David Jackson, Melissa Miller, Terrence Watson, and Adam White. I also received valuable criticisms from David Keyt, Ellen Frankel Paul, and the other contributors to this volume. (shrink)

In the Statesman , Plato brings together--only to challenge and displace--his own crowning contributions to philosophical method, political theory, and drama. In his 1980 study, reprinted here, Mitchell Miller employs literary theory and conceptual analysis to expose the philosophical, political, and pedagogical conflict that is the underlying context of the dialogue, revealing that its chaotic variety of movements is actually a carefully harmonized act of realizing the mean. The original study left one question outstanding: what specifically, in the metaphysical (...) order of things, motivated the nameless Visitor from Elea to abandon bifurcation for his consummating non-bifurcatory division of fifteen kinds at the end of the dialogue? Miller addressed in a separate essay, first published in 1999 and reprinted here. In it, he opens the horizon of interpretation to include the new metaphysics of the Parmenides , the Philebus , and the "unwritten teachings." "This study demonstrates how the Statesman is the culminating expression of Plato's lifelong effort, both in Athens and in the Academy, to bring metaphysical insight to the unending political crisis of his times."The Philosopher in Plato's Statesman a trail-blazing work. While not every reader will agree with the lessons Miller himself draws from this approach, none should fail to be impressed by its interpretive power. All this is exciting stuff. The interpretive pathway on which Miller has embarked has the potential for changing the face of scholarship on the late Platonic dialogues. Parmenides [Publishing] is to be commended for making these two important contributions available under a single cover." -- Kenneth Sayre, Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame "Miller casts considerable light on virtually every aspect of the dialogue. . . . All in all, this book is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the Statesman." -- Stanley Rosen, Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy, Boston University MITCHELL MILLER is Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College. He is the author of Plato's Parmenides. (shrink)

The recent eruption of scholarship surrounding the nature and tenability of foundationalism in the work of Edmund Husserl offers the impetus and opportunity to (re)examine Theodor Adorno’s Metacritique of Epistemology. In that text, Adorno attempts an immanent critique of phenomenology designed to expose the antinomies that vitiate not only Husserl’s philosophy but any foundationalist epistemology. A detailed analysis of Adorno’s arguments and Husserl’s texts reveals that while Adorno successfully locates a hidden contradiction within Husserl’s notion of ‘perceptual fulfillment,’ his attack (...) on ‘categorial intuition’ misfires. These mixed results call out for renewed and refined exercises in the immanent critique of foundationalism. (shrink)

The motivation of this paper is to contribute to the project of finding new ways to use "utopia" in philosophy again. Since philosophers as well as poets can look to their forbears for inspiration in re-inventing terms, it would be nice if those of us trying to rehabilitate the term could lean a bit on our own disciplinary heavies, especially in the current climate of philosophical skepticism, even cynicism, about the very idea of utopia. My contribution to that task here (...) will be to present a vision of utopian commitment that I see taking shape in the interface between Kant's ethics and aesthetics. This vision is broadly speaking a moral one, insofar as it describe the barriers to, but also the necessary conditions of, human motivation to strive for the creation of a just society in the real world. But turning to Kant's ethics as a model for a theory of utopia requires some explanation. After all, his moral theory, when it takes into account the really existing conditions of human existence, appears to do so only to dismiss them as obstacles or diversions in the path of correct moral judgment. When he discusses human community, it is often to dismiss it as driven by self-interest and and an "each against all" struggle that can be responsibly regulated but never eliminated. At best this "unsocial sociability" might be evidence for a hypothetical natural purpose: human strife and misery is a mechanical force driving the progress of our talents and capacities in the long evolutionary run.1 But this is hardly a utopian vision in the sense in which we would wish to see a well-regulated society be.. (shrink)

This collection of essays is dedicated to the memory of the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who died in 2002. The publication of Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974 revived serious interest in natural rights liberalism, which, beginning in the latter half of the eighteenth century, had been eclipsed by a succession of antithetical political theories including utilitarianism, progressivism, and various egalitarian and collectivist ideologies. Some of our contributors critique Nozick's political philosophy. Other contributors examine earlier figures in the (...) liberal tradition, most notably John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Government, published in the late seventeenth century, profoundly influenced the American founders. The remaining authors analyze natural rights liberalism's central doctrines. (shrink)

Three of Zeno's objections to motion are answered by utilizing a version of nonstandard analysis, internal set theory, interpreted within an empirical context. Two of the objections are without force because they rely upon infinite sets, which always contain nonstandard real numbers. These numbers are devoid of numerical meaning, and thus one cannot render the judgment that an object is, in fact, located at a point in spacetime for which they would serve as coordinates. The third objection, an arrow never (...) appears to be moving, is answered by showing that it only applies to a finite number of instants of time. A theory of motion is also advanced; it consists of a finite series of contiguous infinitesimal steps. The theory is immune to Zeno's first two objections because the number of steps is finite and each lies outside the domain of observation. Present motion is hypothesized to be an unobservable process taking place within each step. The fact of motion is apparent through a summing (Riemann integration) of the steps. (shrink)

In chapter 8 of Miller 2003, I argued against the idea that Jackson and Pettit's notion of program explanation might help Sturgeon's non-reductive naturalist version of moral realism respond to the explanatory challenge posed by Harman. In a recent paper in the AJP[Nelson 2006, Mark Nelson has attempted to defend the idea that program explanation might prove useful to Sturgeon in replying to Harman. In this note, I suggest that Nelson's argument fails.

My goal in this brief introduction is twofold: first, to briefly sketch some of the life of this remarkable man; and second, to provide an overview of the papers that make up this collection. The papers themselves have been organized around the following central topics in Quinn’s research: religious ethics, religion and tragic dilemmas, religious epistemology, religion and political liberalism, Christian philosophy of religion, and religious diversity.

[Alan Weir] This paper addresses the problem of how to account for objective content-for the distinction between how we actually apply terms and the conditions in which we ought to apply them-from within a naturalistic framework. Though behaviourist or dispositionalist approaches are generally held to be unsuccessful in naturalising objective content or 'normativity', I attempt to restore the credibility of such approaches by sketching a behaviouristic programme for explicating objective content. /// [Alexander Miller] Paul Boghossian (1989, 1990) has argued, (...) on grounds concerning the holistic nature of belief fixation, that there are principled reasons for thinking that 'optimal conditions' versions of reductive dispositionalism about content cannot hope to satisfy a condition of extensional accuracy. I discern three separable strands of argument in Boghossian's work-the circularity objection, the open-endedness objection, and the certification objection-and argue that each of these objections fails. My conclusion is that for all that Boghossian has shown, 'optimal conditions' versions of reductive dispositionalism have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

CHAPTER I THE EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF HUSSERL'S 'PHILOSOPHY OF ARITHMETIC'. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: WEIERSTRASS AND THE ARITHMETIZATION OF ANALYSIS In ...

This essay discusses Walter Benjamin's development of 'dream' as a model for understanding 19th- and 20th-century urban culture. Following Bergson and surrealist poetics, Benjamin used 'dream' in the 1920s as an heuristic analogy for investigating child hood memories, kitsch art and literature; during the early 1930s, he also developed it into an historiographic concept for studying 19th- century Parisian culture. Benjamin's interpretative use of the dream cuts across Ricoeur's distinction between the hermeneutics of 'recol lection' and the hermeneutics of 'suspicion'. (...) The political dream analyst seeks to discharge the 'fatal powers' of the ideological dream, while at the same time fostering the experience of waking in which dream elements may recollectively be grasped. Benjamin extends this dialectic of dreaming, interpreting and waking to the relation between historical epochs and the tasks of the materialist historian. Puzzling out the recent past's dreamlike rebuses may serve in the task of a present historical awakening. Key Words: Walter Benjamin • city • dream • hermeneutics • surrealism. (shrink)

In this paper, I raise three sets of issues inspired by Amy Coplan's paper, “Will the Real Empathy Please Stand Up.” They concern whether we need to distinguish between the three phenomena as Coplan suggests, what method(s) should be used in making those distinctions, and whether they are in fact made correctly.

This narrative review summarizes the empirical literature on children's competence for consent and assent in research and treatment settings. Studies varied widely regarding methodology, particularly in the areas of participant sampling, situational context studied (e.g., psychological versus medical settings), procedures used (e.g., lab-based vs. real-world approaches), and measurement of competence. This review also identified several fundamental dilemmas underlying approaches to children's informed consent. These dilemmas, including autonomy versus best interests approaches, legal versus psychological or ethical approaches, child- versus family-based approaches, (...) and approaches that emphasize consent versus those that emphasize assent, have implications for the measurement of children's competence and interpretation of findings. Recommendations for future research in the area of children's informed consent include the use of diverse samples and control groups, development of multidimensional and standardized measures of competence, utilization of observational methods and longitudinal designs, examination of noncognitive aspects of children's competence, and comparison of children's competence for treatment and research decisions. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the reading of Mill that D.G. Brown presents in ‘Mill’s Moral Theory: Ongoing Revisionism’ is inconsistent with several key passages in Mill’s writings. I also show that a rule-utilitarian interpretation that is very close to the one developed by David Lyons is able to account for these passages without difficulty.

In addressing thescientific study of consciousness, Crick and Koch state, It is probable that at any moment some active neuronal processes in your head correlate with consciousness, while others do not: what is the difference between them? (1998, p. 97). Evidence from electrophysiological and brain-imaging studies of binocular rivalry supports the premise of this statement and answers to some extent, the question posed. I discuss these recent developments and outline the rationale and experimental evidence for the interhemispheric switch hypothesis of (...) perceptual rivalry. According to this model, the perceptual alternations of rivalry reflect hemispheric alternations, suggesting that visual consciousness of rivalling stimuli may be unihemispheric at any one time (Miller et al., 2000). However, in this paper, I suggest that interhemispheric switching could involve alternating unihemispheric attentional selection of neuronal processes for access to visual consciousness. On this view, visual consciousness during rivalry could be bi hemispheric because the processes constitutive of attentional selection may be distinct from those constitutive of visual consciousness. This is a special case of the important distinction between the neuronal correlates and constitution of visual consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, we present an ethical and strategic approach to managing organizational crises. The proposed crisis management model (1) offers a new approach to guide an organization’s strategic and ethical response to crisis, and (2) provides a two-by-two framework for classifying organizational crises. The ethically rational approach to crisis draws upon strategic rationality, crisis, and ethics literature to understand and address organizational crises. Recent examples of corporate crises are employed to illustrate the theoretical claims advanced. Finally, the paper provides (...) guidelines for a morally optimal outcome for the organization and its stakeholders. (shrink)

Did the Gulf War defend moral principle or Western oil interests? Is violent pornography an act of free speech or an act of violence against women? In Casuistry and Modern Ethics , Richard B. Miller sheds new light on the potential of casuistry--case-based reasoning--for resolving these and other questions of conscience raised by the practical quandaries of modern life. Rejecting the packaging of moral experience within simple descriptions and inflexible principles, Miller argues instead for identifying and making sense (...) of the ethically salient features of individual cases. Because this practical approach must cope with a diverse array of experiences, Miller draws on a wide variety of diagnostic tools from such fields as philosophy of science, legal reasoning, theology, literary theory, hermeneutics, and moral philosophy. Opening new avenues for practical reasoning, Miller's interdisciplinary work will challenge scholars who are interested in the intersections of ethics and political philosophy, cultural criticism, and debates about method in religion and morality. (shrink)

This paper analyzes individual probabilistic predictions of state outcomes in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Employing an original survey of more than 19,000 respondents, ours is the first study of electoral forecasting to involve multiple subnational predictions and to incorporate the influence of respondents’ home states. We relate a range of demographic, political, and cognitive variables to individual accuracy and predictions, as well as to how accuracy improved over time. We find strong support for wishful thinking bias in expectations, as (...) Republicans gave higher probabilities to McCain victories and were worse at overall prediction. In addition, we find that respondents living in states with higher vote shares for Obama performed better at prediction and displayed less wishful thinking bias. We conclude by showing that suitable aggregations of our respondents’ predictions outperformed Intrade (a prediction market) and fivethirtyeight.com (a poll-based forecast) at most points in time. (shrink)

What is a person? What makes me the same person today that I was yesterday or will be tomorrow? Philosophers have long pondered these questions. In Plato's Symposium, Socrates observed that all of us are constantly undergoing change: we experience physical changes to our bodies, as well as changes in our 'manners, customs, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, [and] fears'. Aristotle theorized that there must be some underlying 'substratum' that remains the same even as we undergo these changes. John Locke rejected (...) Aristotle's view and reformulated the problem of personal identity in his own way: is a person a physical organism that persists through time, or is a person identified by the persistence of psychological states, by memory? These essays - written by prominent philosophers and legal and economic theorists - offer valuable insights into the nature of personal identity and its implications for morality and public policy. (shrink)

In an article in the Journal of Philosophical Logic in 1996, “Towards a Model Theory of Venn Diagrams,” (Vol. 25, No. 5, pp. 463–482), Hammer and Danner proved the full completeness of Shin’s formal system for reasoning with Venn Diagrams. Their proof is eight pages long. This note gives a brief five line proof of this same result, using connections between diagrammatic and sentential representations.

Despite Marx’s claim that criticism against his views from a religious standpoint are not deserving of serious examination, I try to offer a critical examination of Marx’s epistemology of religion from the viewpoint of Reformed epistemology. Although Marx himself never set forth a systematic epistemology, let alone an epistemology of religion, his writings nonetheless provide an adequate resource to reconstruct his views on the matter. Given this, I set out what I take to be characteristic of Marx’s epistemology of religion (...) and provide the meta-context in which the epistemological issue is framed. In light of Reformed epistemology, I then provide a critique of Marx’s criticism by turning his own argument on its head to the effect that there is significant likelihood that his view is both false and irrational. Finally, I defend against a possible objection. (shrink)

Insofar as John Stuart Mill can be accurately described as a socialist, his is a socialism that a classical liberal ought to be able to live with, if not to love. Mill's view is that capitalist economies should at some point undergo a `spontaneous' and incremental process of socialization, involving the formation of worker-controlled `socialistic' enterprises through either the transformation of `capitalistic' enterprises or creation de novo. This process would entail few violations of core libertarian principles. It would proceed by (...) way of a series of voluntary transactions. Capitalists' property rights would be respected throughout. The process would take place within a national system of laws that permits private ownership of productive property and competition, and would not result in that system's overthrow. And, if we accept some basic tenets of Mill's social philosophy, the outcome at which we should expect the process to arrive is a `patchwork' economy in which capitalistic and socialistic enterprises exist side by side. Key Words: Ludwig von Mises • John Stuart Mill • socialism • capitalism • worker control. (shrink)

A scenario is conjectured for Einstein's invention of the special theory of relativity that receives support over the widest possible number of archival, primary and secondary sources. This scenario takes into account the philosophical-physical-technological currents of 1905.

The notation and terminology of this paper follow [2], and are dual to those of [6] and [7]. If L is a language in the narrow sense, Cn may be any consequence operation on sets of sentences of L that includes classical sentential logic. Henceforth when we talk of the language L we intend to include reference to some fixed, though unspecified, operation Cn. X is a deductive system if X = Cn(X). Sentences x, z that are logically equivalent with (...) respect to Cn – that is x ∈ Cn({z}) and z ∈ Cn({x}) – are identified. If X and Z are systems we often write X x instead of x ∈ X and Z X instead of X ⊆ Z. If X = Cn({x}) for some sentence x, X is (finitely) axiomatizable. The set theoretical intersection of X and Z has the logical force of disjunction, and is written X ∨ Z; Cn(X ∪ Z), the smallest system to include both X and Z, is written XZ. If K is a family of systems, [K] and [K] may be defined in an analogous way. The logically strongest system S is the set of all sentences of L; the weakest system T is defined as Cn(∅). The autocomplement Z of Z is defined to be the strongest system to complement T, namely the system [{Y : Y ∨ Z = T}]. More generally we may define X − Z as [{Y : X Y ∨ Z}]. In terms of this operation to remainder, Z is identical with T − Z. The class of all deductive systems forms a distributive lattice under the operations of concatenation and ∨; and indeed a Brouverian algebra (a relatively authocomplemented lattice with unit) under concatenation, ∨ – and T. (shrink)

Abstract The ethics of technology use has tended to arise from the theory of the role of technology in human life and society and thus introduces a bias into moral assessment of such use. I propose a dialectical method of morally assessing a technology use without such a preset notion. Instead the assumption is that the moral agent is as responsible for use of a technology as for any other moral action of the agent, that is, the individual’s use of (...) a technology is a moral action that can be morally assessed. I apply this outlook to automobile use, weighing its moral pros and cons, such as in terms of autonomy, environmental degradation, land use, health hazards, and other moral drawbacks arising from the technology’s use or non-use. Although the conclusion leaves the final moral assessment undecided, the method points to a way fairly to assess morally the use of technologies in terms of human betterment and environmental and health concerns, minimizing biases from assumptions of the role or nature of technologies. Content Type Journal Article Category Articles Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s10806-011-9320-8 Authors Lantz Miller, CUNY, New York, NY, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863. (shrink)

Mill's discussion of ‘the internal sanction’ in chapter III of Utilitarianism does not do justice to his understanding of internal sanctions; it omits some important points and obscures others. I offer an account of this portion of his moral psychology of motivation which brings out its subtleties and complexities. I show that he recognizes the importance of internal sanctions as sources of motives to develop and perfect our characters, as well as of motives to do our duty, and I examine (...) in some detail the various ways in which these sanctions give rise to motivating desires and aversions. (shrink)

The example can be generalized. Suppose that ϕ and ψ are suffi- ciently different functions of an independent variable t. We may show that whenever X’s predictions for ϕ and ψ lie (weakly) between Z’s predictions and T’s predictions (the true values), then there are other quantities, interdefinable with ϕ and ψ, that reverse the ordering.

'Hobbes and the Imitation of God' ( Inquiry , 44, 223-6) is Eric Brandon's criticism of my article, 'Thomas Hobbes and the Constraints that Enable the Imitation of God' ( Inquiry , 42, 149-76). Brandon's criticisms are rooted in a misunderstanding of what is argued. Observations made concerning Hobbes's claims about prudence - a form of thinking Hobbes distinguishes from philosophic practice - are erroneously described by Brandon as a part of arguments concerning Hobbes's claims about philosophy. Brandon's own account (...) reaffirms a conventional interpretation by claiming that Hobbes envisioned philosophers discovering order, an interpretation challenged in the original argument. Hobbes privileged the creation of order over attempts to discover the order of the world, and this is reflected in his affinity for geometry over physics. (shrink)

After briefly presenting Ronald Giere's (1979, 1980) recent counterfactual characterization of population-level causation, I present two counterexamples to the characterization. The difficulty discussed stems from nonaccidental correlations that can obtain between causally effective and causally neutral factors.

ABSTRACT: In this article I argue that Hume's empiricism allows for time to exist as a real distinct impression of succession, not, as many claim, merely as a nominal abstract idea. In the first part of this article I show how for Hume it is succession and not duration that constitutes time, and, further, that only duration is fictional. In the second part, I show that according to the way Hume describes the functions of the memory and imagination, it is (...) possible to explain how we are able to perceive a distinct impression of succession.RÉSUMÉ: Dans cet article, je soutiens, à l'encontre de plusieurs, que l'empirisme de Hume conçoit le temps comme une impression réelle et distincte de succession, voire, une idée nominale et abstraite. Je montre en premier lieu que Hume définit le temps, non en termes de durée, mais de succession, et que cette notion de durée est fictive. À partir de la description de Hume des fonctions de la mémoire et de l'imagination, je montre en second lieu qu'il est possible d'expliquer comment nous sommes capables d'une impression distincte de succession. (shrink)

While most Chaucer critics interested in gender and sexuality have used psychoanalytic theory to analyze Chaucer's poetry, Mark Miller re-examines the links between sexuality and the philosophical analysis of agency in medieval texts such as the Canterbury Tales, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, and the Romance of the Rose. Chaucer's philosophical sophistication provides the basis for a new interpretation of the emerging notions of sexual desire and romantic love in the late Middle Ages.

The 'Art of Life' is John Stuart Mill's name for his account of practical reason. In this volume, eleven leading scholars elucidate this fundamental, but widely neglected, element of Mill's thought. Mill divides the Art of Life into three 'departments': 'Morality, Prudence or Policy, and Æsthetics'. In the volume's first section, Rex Martin, David Weinstein, Ben Eggleston, and Dale E. Miller investigate the relation between the departments of morality and prudence. Their papers ask whether Mill is a rule utilitarian (...) and, if so, whether his practical philosophy must be incoherent. The second section contains papers by Jonathan Riley and Wendy Donner, who explore the relation between the departments of morality and aesthetics. They discuss issues ranging from supererogation to aesthetic pleasure and humanity's relationship with nature. -/- The papers in the third section consider the Art of Life's axiological first principle, the principle of utility. Elijah Millgram contends that Mill's own life refutes his claim that the Art of Life has a single axiological first principle. Philip Kitcher maintains that Mill has a dynamic axiology requiring us to continually refine our conception of the good. In the final section, three papers address what it means to put the Art of Life into practice. Robert Haraldsson locates an 'Art of Ethics' in On Liberty that is in tension with the Art of Life. Nadia Urbinati plumbs the classical roots of Mill's view of the good life. Finally, Colin Heydt develops Mill's suggestion that we regard our own lives as works of art. (shrink)

We show that the Turing degrees are not sufficient to measure the complexity of continuous functions on [0, 1]. Computability of continuous real functions is a standard notion from computable analysis. However, no satisfactory theory of degrees of continuous functions exists. We introduce the continuous degrees and prove that they are a proper extension of the Turing degrees and a proper substructure of the enumeration degrees. Call continuous degrees which are not Turing degrees non-total. Several fundamental results are proved: a (...) continuous function with non-total degree has no least degree representation, settling a question asked by Pour-El and Lempp; every non-computable f $\epsilon \mathcal{C}[0, 1]$ computes a non-computable subset of $\mathbb{N}$ ; there is a non-total degree between Turing degrees $a _\eqslantless_{\tau}$ b iff b is a PA degree relative to a; $\mathcal{S} \subseteq 2^{\mathbb{N}}$ is a Scott set iff it is the collection of f-computable subsets of $\mathbb{N}$ for some f $\epsilon \mathcal{C}[O, 1]$ of non-total degree; and there are computably incomparable f, g $\epsilon \mathcal{C}[0, 1]$ which compute exactly the same subsets of $\mathbb{N}$ . Proofs draw from classical analysis and constructive analysis as well as from computability theory. (shrink)

Miller and Rodgers (2001) proposed a central nervous system based Ontogenetic Bonding System that operates across the life course to promote succorant, 1 affiliative, sexual, and nurturant bonds. I discuss features of this theoretical framework that can inform Depue & Morrone-Strupinsky's (D&M-S's) model. Most important, I suggest that the affiliative reward processes D&M-S describe are better conceptualized as subserving the affect/motivation of affection. Footnotes1 “Succorance” is a term coined by Murray (1938) to describe a general tendency to seek the (...) help and protection of others. (shrink)

This is a much-needed reissue of the standard English translation of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, originally published in 1970. The Philosophy of Nature is the second part of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, all of which is now available in English from OUP (Part I being his Logic, Part III being his Philosophy of Mind). Hegel's aim in this work is to interpret the varied phenomena of Nature from the standpoint of a dialectical logic. Those who still think of (...) Hegel as a merely a priori philosopher will here find abundant evidence that he was keenly interested in and very well informed about empirical science. The Philosophy of Nature is integral to his philosophical system and deserves the most serious attention. Students and scholars of Hegel and the history of European philosophy will welcome the availability of this important text, which also includes a translation of Hegel's Zusatze or lecture notes. (shrink)

Mystic -- Grundriss -- Breath -- The poem as a visual opening -- Silences of depth -- Multiple meanings of the heart -- Ariel -- The sacramental value of colors -- The turning -- Performing the feminine -- Bodies in poetry, bodies in the world -- White as lighting and depth -- In her own voice -- Striking a balance -- The moon and the yew tree -- A heavy light-ing -- Opening onto the feminine body -- Other ways of (...) listening and seeing the poem -- In the name of the mother -- Inside the suicidal body -- Facing the other -- Engendering sexes -- The arrival of the bee box -- Arriving -- Tensions and resistance -- The blond colonnades -- Swarms: plath's stereotypes -- Plath and racial imagery -- Plath's racism, beyond the bee box -- Letting be(e) -- Appropriation and releasement -- The box is only temporary -- Epilogue: Performing the spiritual for Plath, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

The self-communication of being and the human person’s intellectual vocation to draw it gradually into logos are important themes in the writing of W. Norris Clarke. This paper addresses two related obstacles to understanding the person’s individual essence: (1) the limited intellectual reach of the potential knower, who has no access to another’s subjectivity, (2) the person’s inability to reveal her individual essence in any one act and the need for it to be gradually unfolded. These obstacles can be partially (...) surmounted through motivational narrative, as developed by Arthur Miller, wherein persons describe those actions to which they are uniquely inclined and that bring profound fulfillment. The privileged recipient has rich access into the narrator’s subjectivity and opportunity to see in the story an ontologically stable pattern of motivated behavior that expresses her individual essence. (shrink)

Among the most overlooked sources for studying Newman’s epistemology are his sermons, particularly his Parochial and Plain Sermons. This essay compares Newman’s sermon “Religious Faith Rational” (1829) and his discussion of “Simple Assent” in his Grammar of Assent (1870), both of which defend faith or assent in daily life; this comparison reveals both a strong influence of the sermons on the Grammar and a shift in Newman’s understanding of the term “faith.”.

In several articles, Mumma has presented a formal diagrammatic system Eu meant to give an account of one way in which Euclid's use of diagrams in the Elements could be formalized. However, largely because of the way in which it tries to limit case analysis, this system ends up being inconsistent, as shown here. Eu also suffers from several other problems: it is unable to prove several wide classes of correct geometric claims and contains a construction rule that is probably (...) computationally intractable and that may not even be decidable. (shrink)

Technological innovations and social developments have led to dramatic changes in the practice of medicine and in the way that scientists conduct medical research. Change has brought beneficial consequences, yet these gains have come at a cost, for many modern medical practices raise troubling ethical questions: Should life be sustained mechanically when the brain's functions have ceased? Should potential parents be permitted to manipulate the genetic characteristics of their embryos? Should society ration medical care to control costs? Should fetal stem (...) cells be experimented upon in an effort to eventually palliate or cure debilitating diseases? Bioethicists analyze and assess moral dilemmas raised by medical research and innovative treatments; they also counsel healthcare practitioners, patients, and their families. In this anthology, fifteen philosophers, social scientists, and academic lawyers assess various aspects of this field. (shrink)

A critique is made of Bernard Rollin''s examination of the ethics of cloning adult mammalian cells. The primary concern is less to propound an anticloning or procloning position than to call for full exploration of the ethical complexities before a rush to judgment is made. Indeed, the ethical examination in question rushes toward an ethical position in such a way that does not appear consistent with Rollin''s usual methodology. By extending this methodology – which entails full weighing of benefits and (...) costs – it becomes apparent that there are real potential risks to this type of cloning in both animals and humans, besides the possible benefits, and that the scientific, political, philosophical, and broader academic communities should explore these risks and benefits extensively. Rollin''s usual methodological call for hesitation before risks would translate into hesitation before the ethical risks of adult mammalian cell cloning instead of his paper''s curiously laissez-faire stance. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging inquiry Richard W. Miller provides new resources for coping with the most troubling types of moral conflict: disagreements in moral conviction, conflicting interests, and the tension between conscience and desires. Drawing on most fields in philosophy and the social sciences, including his previous work in the philosophy of science, he presents an account of our access to moral truth, and, within this framework, develops a theory of justice and an assessment of the role of morality in (...) rational choice. In Miller's view, we are often in a position to claim that our moral judgments are true descriptions of moral facts. But others, relying on contrary ways of moral learning, would reject truths that we are in a position to assert, in dissent that does not depend on irrationality or ignorance of relevant evidence or arguments. With this mixed verdict on moral realism, Miller challenges many received views of rationality, scientific method, and the relation between moral belief and moral choice. In his discussion of justice, Miller defends the adequacy, for modern political choices, of a widely shared demand that institutions be freely and rationally acceptable to all. Drawing on social research and economic theories, he argues that this demand has dramatically egalitarian consequences, even though it is a premise of liberals and conservatives alike. In the final chapters, Miller investigates the role and limits of morality in the choice of conduct, arguing for new perspectives on reason and impartiality. (shrink)

The article begins with the gospels’ admonition to take up one's cross and asks how Christians might understand Christ's work on the cross so that we might better imitate or participate in it. Using tools from recent advances in literary analysis and systematic theology, the article attempts to provide some answer to this question. It considers contemporary feminist and liberation theologians’ criticism of the common but problematic interpretation of Christ's cross, what is often called ‘substitutionary penal atonement.’ It compares this (...) with Anselm's atonement theory of satisfaction and Bernard Lonergan's and René Girard's analysis of the cross as a communication of love that invites others into loving relationship. With these interpretations of Christ's work, it concludes with some thoughts on how Christians might take up their own daily crosses. (shrink)

Miller finds a seven-year-old's perspective on the definition of time.

This book was written with three aims in mind. The first was to provide a reasonably concise account of Hume's social and political thought that might help students coming to it for the first time. The second aim was to say something about the relationship between philosophy and politics, with explicit attention to Hume, but implicit reference to a general issue. The third is to offer an integrated account of Hume's thought. The book accounts for the varying interpretation of the (...) conservative and liberalist traditions by arguing that the distinction between liberalism and conservatism had little application in mid-18th-century Britain. Hume's ideology contained elements that we should now identify as conservative and liberal respectively, and so by selective emphasis it is possible to make him seem a thoroughbred conservative or liberal according to choice. These two problems the relationship between Hume's philosophy and his politics, and the ideological character of his thought are pursued through the first and second parts of the book respectively. (shrink)

This paper reviews the experience of an integrated approach to CSR in the U.S. electric utility sector. The authors report on the results of Southern Company’s historical definition of CSR as a dynamic model, balancing stakeholder needs through shifting pressures to assure long-term shareholder value, superior customer, price performance, and sustainable economic development. Using financial and utility sector measures, the paper assesses the company’s “balancing” approach to addressing CSR, which weights corporate, environmental, community, and economic factors in driving successful and (...) sustained financial, social, and environmental performance. The paper concludes by suggesting that CSR success in this sector requires, first, that the global warming issue be governed by the same balancing considerations to which all stakeholders and their legitimate interests are subject, and second, an energy policy that embraces both atechnology policy and appropriate regulatory incentives. (shrink)

This paper reviews the experience of an integrated approach to CSR in the U.S. electric utility sector. The authors report on the results of Southern Company’s historical definition of CSR as a dynamic model, balancing stakeholder needs through shifting pressures to assure long-term shareholder value, superior customer, price performance, and sustainable economic development. Using financial and utility sector measures, the paper assesses the company’s “balancing” approach to addressing CSR, which weights corporate, environmental, community, and economic factors in driving successful and (...) sustained financial, social, and environmental performance. The paper concludes by suggesting that CSR success in this sector requires, first, that the global warming issue be governed by the same balancing considerations to which all stakeholders and their legitimate interests are subject, and second, an energy policy that embraces both atechnology policy and appropriate regulatory incentives. (shrink)

A consensus in a scientific community is often used as a resource for making informed ‎public-policy decisions and deciding between rival expert testimonies in legal trials. This ‎paper contains a social-epistemic analysis of the high-profile Bendectin drug controversy, ‎which was decided in the courtroom inter alia by deference to an emerging scientific ‎consensus about the safety of Bendectin. Drawing on Miller’s theory of knowledge based ‎consensus, I argue that the consensus in this case was not knowledge based, hence courts’ (...) ‎deference to it was not epistemically justified. I draw sceptical lessons from this analysis ‎regarding the value of scientific consensus as a desirable and reliable means of resolving ‎scientific controversies in public life.‎. (shrink)

A new collection of thirteen essays, covering the reception of Aristotle's ethics from the ancient world to the twentieth century. Provides both a history of reception and conceptual analysis for each figure or school.

Roth's analysis of the Rationalitätstreit (i.e., the debate(s) about rationality) stands as one of the major works on how the debate affects a wide range of issues in the philosophy of science and the social sciences. His principal thesis is that the debate may be seen as a series of Quine-type "translation manuals," exhibiting characteristics of paradigms (following Kuhn 1970) that can be treated as testable scientific theories by adequate empirical tests. The author argues that Roth's notion of empirically testing (...) translation manuals is not possible given his criteria. He suggests a clearer definition of "methods" and develops a case whereby translation manuals can be adequately tested within an inductive model-but with rather severe restrictions. Implications are indicated. (shrink)

These essays represent the latest research of a number of prominent political theorists. The essays explore the role of government, the nature of public discourse and the obligations of citizens. Some examine the sources of our need for government, asking what form of government we should establish and whether a single form can be suitable for all societies. Some seek to discover the proper aims of government - asking, for example, whether government should promote equality among its citizens or whether (...) it should allow inequalities in the hope of raising everyone's level of well-being. Others explore government's role in ensuring citizens' autonomy and in protecting their rights to pursue their own interests and projects. Still others examine the processes through which policies are formulated and debated, asking what forms of public deliberation are likely to produce the best results. (shrink)

"In 1776, the American Declaration of Independence appealed to "the Laws of nature and of Nature's God" and affirmed "these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain ...

What is the good life? This question captured the attention of ancient philosophers and it remains with us today, because it compels us to consider what it is to be human. To inquire about the good life is to ask, not about the proper conduct in one specific situation, but about the proper course of an entire life. It is to ask what we ought to make of ourselves as moral beings, what standards we ought to follow, and what goals (...) we ought to aspire to. But does it make sense to talk about the good life or the human good, or are there many human goods and many ways of living a good life? If there are many goods, then ow are they related, and how are we to determine whether one good outweighs another? Does living one's own life well leave room for concern for the well-being of others? Are there other non-moral concerns that may sometimes take precedence over living a good life? These are a few of the questions that will be addressed by the essays in this issue. (shrink)

In their important paper “Autonomous Agents”, Floridi and Sanders use “levels of abstraction” to argue that computers are or may soon be moral agents. In this paper we use the same levels of abstraction to illuminate differences between human moral agents and computers. In their paper, Floridi and Sanders contributed definitions of autonomy, moral accountability and responsibility, but they have not explored deeply some essential questions that need to be answered by computer scientists who design artificial agents. One such question (...) is, “Can an artificial agent that changes its own programming become so autonomous that the original designer is no longer responsible for the behavior of the artificial agent?” To explore this question, we distinguish between LoA1 (the user view) and LoA2 (the designer view) by exploring the concepts of unmodifiable, modifiable and fully modifiable tables that control artificial agents. We demonstrate that an agent with an unmodifiable table, when viewed at LoA2, distinguishes an artificial agent from a human one. This distinction supports our first counter-claim to Floridi and Sanders, namely, that such an agent is not a moral agent, and the designer bears full responsibility for its behavior. We also demonstrate that even if there is an artificial agent with a fully modifiable table capable of learning* and intentionality* that meets the conditions set by Floridi and Sanders for ascribing moral agency to an artificial agent, the designer retains strong moral responsibility. (shrink)

A vision of a living code of ethics is proposed to counter the emphasis on negative phenomena in the study of organizational ethics. The living code results from the harmonious interaction of authentic leadership, five key organizational processes (attraction–selection–attrition, socialization, reward systems, decision-making and organizational learning), and an ethical organizational culture (characterized by heightened levels of ethical awareness and a positive climate regarding ethics). The living code is the cognitive, affective, and behavioral manifestation of an ethical organizational identity. We draw (...) on business ethics literature, positive organizational scholarship, and management literature to outline the elements of positive ethical organizations as those exemplary organizations consistently practicing the highest levels of organizational ethics. In a positive ethical organization, the right thing to do is the only thing to do. (shrink)

John McDowell has suggested recently that there is a route from his favoured solution to Kripke's Wittgenstein's "sceptical paradox" about rule-following to a particular form of cognitive externalism. In this paper, I argue that this is not the case: even granting McDowell his solution to the rule-following paradox, his preferred version of cognitive externalism does not follow.

At the United Nations climate change conference in 2011, parties decided to launch the “Durban Platform” to work towards a new long-term climate agreement. The decision was notable for the absence of any reference to “equity”, a prominent principle in all previous major climate agreements. Wealthy countries resisted the inclusion of equity on the grounds that the term had become too closely yoked to developing countries’ favored conception of equity. This conception, according to wealthy countries, exempts developing countries from making (...) commitments that are stringent enough for the collective effort needed to avoid dangerous climate change. In circumstances where even mentioning the term equity has become problematic, a critical question is whether scope for a fair agreement is being squeezed out of negotiations. To address this question we set out a conceptual framework for normative theorizing about fairness in international negotiations, accompanied by a set of minimal standards of fairness and plausible feasibility constraints for sharing the global climate change mitigation effort. We argue that a fair and feasible agreement may be reached by (i) reforming the current binary approach to differentiating developed and developing country groups, in tandem with (ii) introducing a more principled approach to differentiating the mitigation commitments of individual countries. These two priorities may provide the basis for a principled bargain between developed and developing countries that safeguards the opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change without sacrificing widely acceptable conceptions of equity. (shrink)

These essays address some of the most intriguing questions raised by natural law theory and its implications for law, morality, and public policy. some of the essays explore the implications that natural law theory has for jurisprudence, asking what natural law suggests about the use of legal devices such as constitutions and precedents. Other essays examine the connections between natural law and various political concepts, such as citizens' rights and the obligation of citizens to obey their government.

The essays in this volume examine the nature of human flourishing and its relationship to a variety of other key concepts in moral theory. Some of them trace the link between flourishing and human nature, asking whether a theory of human nature can allow us to develop an objective list of goods that are of value to all agents, regardless of their individual purposes or aims. Some essays look at the role of friendships or parent-child relationships in a good life, (...) or seek to determine whether an ethical theory based on human flourishing can accommodate concern for others for their own sake. Other essays analyze the function of families or other social-political institutions in promoting the flourishing of individuals. Still others explore the implications of flourishing for political theory, asking whether considerations of human flourishing can help us to derive principles of social justice. (shrink)

The Monstrosity of Christ provides an exchange between the Slovenian theorist Slavoj Žižek and the British theologian John Milbank. Both authors argue that Christianity is the religion of ‘absolute truth,’ but provide very different accounts of this. Milbank argues that Christianity is true insofar as only the incarnation of Christ mediates the paradoxical metaphysical participation of the finite within the infinite. Žižek argues that the crucifixion of Christ constitutes the death of God, demonstrating that there is no providential or transcendent (...) reality supervening on human history. This realization constitutes the universal truth of Christianity. (shrink)

A central idea in moral and political philosophy, 'autonomy' is generally understood as some form of self-governance or self-direction. Certain Stoics, modern philosophers such as Spinoza, and most importantly, Immanuel Kant, are among the great philosophers who have offered important insights on the concept. Some theorists analyze autonomy in terms of the self being moved by its higher-order desires. Others argue that autonomy must be understood in terms of acting from reason or from a sense of moral duty independent of (...) the passions. Autonomy seems closely related to the notion of freedom, but in what sense: freedom from coercion, freedom from psychological constraints, or freedom from material necessity? Various approaches to these and similar questions yield different implications for public policy. Is capitalism, social democracy or socialism more favorable to autonomy? The essays in this volume address these important questions. (shrink)

History and Philosophy of Logic, Volume 33, Issue 1, Page 104-106, February 2012.

Some essays in this book consider whether objective moral truths can be grounded in an understanding of the nature of human beings as rational and social ...

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been increasing interest in the global dimensions of a host of public policy issues - issues involving war and peace, terrorism, international law, regulation of commerce, environmental protection, and disparities of wealth, income, and access to medical care. Especially pressing is the question of whether it is possible to formulate principles of justice that are valid not merely within a single society but across national borders. The thirteen essays in this volume (...) explore a range of issues that are central to contemporary discussions of global politics. Written by prominent philosophers, political scientists, economists, and legal theorists, they offer valuable contributions to current debates over the nature of justice and its implications for the development of international law and international institutions. (shrink)