In this one volume, John C.S. Kim offers a way for each reader to find one's own creative approach to resolve the riddles of life. The author examines critical issues facing individuals today and challenges the reader to determine the nature of the complex problems which stem from the lack of a sound moral foundation, learn and master analytical methods, and apply these skills creatively and constructively to resolve problems.

For many years, the downtown in Clarksdale, with a municipal population of 17,960 and located in the northern part of the Mississippi Delta, had lost its role as the centre providing a wide range of jobs and services to those living in the surrounding region. For many cities and towns in America, downtown decline has been associated with the flight to the suburbs and the growth in shopping malls serving flourishing gated communities. In Clarksdale’s case, downtown decline has been due (...) largely to the advent of big box retailing and the location of new retail and commercial developments along the state highway on the edge of town, combined with the loss of jobs and population associated with agricultural restructuring. Today, however, Clarksdale has taken up the challenge to ‘revitalize’ the downtown in the face of economic adversity. Recovery is under way, and much of this is associated with blues music and Delta culture: Clarksdale is situated at the fabled ‘crossroads’ of Highways 49 and 61 and is also the home to national icons in literature, art and other cultural pursuits. These are key elements around which the downtown revitalization effort is focused. This paper charts the process by which the Clarksdale community has embarked on the road to downtown recovery, and highlights the town’s indelible links with the blues, borne out of years of toil, hardship and social deprivation. The paper emphasizes the importance of ‘champions’ and ‘creative people’, drawing on community support, in achieving downtown revitalization. Positive results are becoming evident with new businesses and jobs, improved levels of service, refurbishment of derelict buildings, a renewed sense of place, and an uplift in community confidence. The significance of cultural tourism to downtown revitalization is highlighted, with particular emphasis on the global appeal of blues, but with its roots firmly established in Clarksdale and the Delta. (shrink)

In 2008, Representative John Read of Mississippi recently co-sponsored state legislation that would ban restaurants from serving obese customers. He later admitted that the bill was a publicity stunt,meant to “shed a little light on the number one problem in Mississippi.” Although controversial, Read’s bill exemplifies both the current perception of obesity as a national public health problem and the general sentiment underlying the types of interventions that are being considered to address this issue. The proposed legislation also demonstrates (...) how policymakers can use or, in this case misuse, information about obesity to generate significant discussion on an issue along with ill-conceived legal interventions.Information sharing and the methods used to share best practices are components of the fourth core element of public health legal preparedness. (shrink)

In 2008, Representative John Read of Mississippi recently co-sponsored state legislation that would ban restaurants from serving obese customers. He later admitted that the bill was a publicity stunt,meant to “shed a little light on the number one problem in Mississippi.” Although controversial, Read’s bill exemplifies both the current perception of obesity as a national public health problem and the general sentiment underlying the types of interventions that are being considered to address this issue. The proposed legislation also demonstrates (...) how policymakers can use or, in this case misuse, information about obesity to generate significant discussion on an issue along with ill-conceived legal interventions.Information sharing and the methods used to share best practices are components of the fourth core element of public health legal preparedness. (shrink)

Studies suggest that when a language requires grammatical marking of future events, speakers prefer immediate payoffs and engage in less future-oriented behavior. If future costs of tax avoidance are non-trivial, we posit that strong future time reference in languages would lower managers’ perceptions about costs, encouraging more tax avoidance. Using a large sample of 56,243 firm-year observations across 31 countries, we find that tax avoidance is higher where FTR in the language is strong. We also find that tax avoidance is (...) more prevalent in Swiss regions with strong FTR and in US firms whose CEOs were born in countries with strong FTR. Collectively, our evidence suggests that costs of tax avoidance can be non-trivial, and that linguistically driven time perception helps explain the cross-country variation in tax avoidance. (shrink)

One of the paradoxes of the physical sciences is that as our knowledge has progressed, more and more diverse physical phenomena can be explained in terms of fewer underlying laws, or principles. In Hidden Unity, eminent physicist John Taylor puts many of these findings into historical perspective and documents how progress is made when unexpected, hidden unities are uncovered between apparently unrelated physical phenomena. Taylor cites examples from the ancient Greeks to the present day, such as the unity of (...) celestial and terrestrial dynamics (17th century), the unity of heat within the rest of dynamics (18th century), the unity of electricity, magnetism, and light (19th century), the unity of space and time and the unification of nuclear forces with electromagnetism (20th century). Without relying on mathematical detail, Taylor's emphasis is on fundamental physics, like particle physics and cosmology. Balancing what is understood with the unestablished theories and still unanswered questions, Taylor takes readers on a fascinating ongoing journey. John C. Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge. A student of Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, Taylor's research career has spanned the era of developments in elementary particle physics since the 1950s. He taught theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, and at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and he has lectured worldwide. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. (shrink)

This book explains the classical Christian doctrine of God's timelessness and defends it against contemporary philosophical criticism. The historical background and discussion of this concept is reviewed from Parmenides to the present, and particular note is made that the doctrine cannot be detached from the various metaphysical systems in which it is embedded.

Polanyi’s philosophy requires a synthesis of ontology and epistemology through the resonances that structure personal knowing. Its convivial elements make it political; self-conscious circularity distances it from metaphysical realism; the paradox of self-set standards accomodates dissent. The roles of reality, knowledge and truth in metaphysical realism are better understood in terms of resonance, trust and worthwhileness if we follow Polanyi’s lead. This more humane vocabulary saves us from the tyrannies of the truths and realities others would impose upon us. Polanyi (...) points the way towards a position that avoids the worst of both absolutism and relativism. (shrink)

The first of 3 volumes of essays on Japanese philosophy, this work brings together essays that clarify its heritage and its practice, above all in the dynamic thought of Nishida Kitaro. Showing how philosophy takes shape through the translation of language and culture, the author examines the frameworks that have defined and confined Nishida’s thought and then charts new avenues of questioning Nishida and letting him question us. How should we envision the world at a time of environmental crisis, how (...) might we rethink our conceptions of history, religion and God; how is bodily awareness a way that the world knows itself, and just what can we make of Nishida'™s famous notion of nothingness—these are some of the questions that guide the meticulous explorations in this collection. (shrink)

The paper first summarizes the author's decision-theoretical model of moral behavior, in order to compare the moral implications of the act-utilitarian and of the rule-utilitarian versions of utilitarian theory. This model is then applied to three voting examples. It is argued that the moral behavior of act-utilitarian individuals will have the nature of a noncooperative game, played in the extensive mode, and involving action-by-action maximization of social utility by each player. In contrast, the moral behavior of rule-utilitarian individuals will have (...) the nature of a cooperative game, played in the normal mode, and involving a firm commitment by each player to a specific moral strategy (viz. to the strategy selected by the rule-utilitarian choice criterion) — even if some individual actions prescribed by this strategy, when considered in isolation, should fail to maximize social utility. The most important advantage that rule utilitarianism as an ethical theory has over act utilitarianism lies in its ability to give full recognition to the moral and social importance of individual rights and personal obligations. It is easy to verify that action-by-action maximization of social utility, as required by act utilitarianism, would destroy these rights and obligations. In contrast, rule utilitarianism can fully recognize the moral validity of these rights and obligations precisely because of its commitment to an overall moral strategy, independent of action-by-action social-utility maximization. The paper ends with a discussion of the voter's paradox problem. The conventional theory of rational behavior cannot avoid the paradoxical conclusion that, in any large electorate, voting is always an irrational activity because one's own individual vote is extremely unlikely to make any difference to the outcome of any election. But it can be shown that, by using the principles of rule-utilitarian theory, this paradox can easily be resolved and that, in actual fact, voting, even in large electorates, may be perfectly rational action. More generally, the example of rule utilitarianism shows what an important role the concept of a rational commitment can play in the analysis of rational behavior. (shrink)

For Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg, God's love and wisdom is the basis for everything that happens in the world, from creation itself to the details of our everyday existence. In this volume, he describes the nature of God and heaven and how they relate to our human existence. This edition is a reprint of an 1885 translation by John C. Ager.

When von Neumann's and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior appeared in 1944, one thought that a complete theory of strategic social behavior had appeared out of nowhere. However, game theory has, to this very day, remained a fast-growing assemblage of models which have gradually been united in a new social theory - a theory that is far from being completed even after recent advances in game theory, as evidenced by the work of the three Nobel Prize winners, (...) class='Hi'>John F. Nash, John C. Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten. Two of them, Harsanyi and Selten, have contributed important articles to the present volume. This book leaves no doubt that the game-theoretical models are on the right track to becoming a respectable new theory, just like the great theories of the twentieth century originated from formerly separate models which merged in the course of decades. For social scientists, the age of great discover ies is not over. The recent advances of today's game theory surpass by far the results of traditional game theory. For example, modem game theory has a new empirical and social foundation, namely, societal experiences; this has changed its methods, its "rationality. " Morgenstern (I worked together with him for four years) dreamed of an encompassing theory of social behavior. With the inclusion of the concept of evolution in mathematical form, this dream will become true. Perhaps the new foundation will even lead to a new name, "conflict theory" instead of "game theory. (shrink)

In this paper I begin by arguing that there are significant intellectual and normative continuities between pre-Victorian hereditarianism and later Victorian eugenical ideologies. Notions of mental heredity and of the dangers of transmitting hereditary ‘taints’ were already serious concerns among medical practitioners and laymen in the early nineteenth century. I then show how the Victorian period witnessed an increasing tendency for these traditional concerns about hereditary transmission and the integrity of bloodlines to be projected onto the level of national health. (...) Tracing the gradual emergence of eugenical thought, I also highlight some of the more fundamental social, political and intellectual factors that promoted this predilection for extrapolating from the individual lineage to the nation and race. In doing so I argue that fully fledged eugenical thought was always unlikely to emerge prior to the early Victorian period. However, I am also able to show that Francis Galton's 1865 eugenical proposals were far from innovative and that identifying him as the ‘father’ of the eugenics movement is highly misleading. (shrink)

More than a dozen prominent leaders in business and other fields leaders discuss successes and failures, and lessons learned, while grappling with real ethical ...

Arguably, two of the most important forces affecting contemporary global culture are the growing awareness of ecological crises and the rapid spread of digital media. Félix Guattari's unfinished concept of ecosophy suggests the basis of a theoretical framework for constructing productive syntheses between the ecological and the digital. Moreover, a Guattarian rethinking of the ecological turn in the humanities challenges the philosophical basis of the pedagogy of Nature appreciation that has characterised the eco-humanities landscape since the 1970s. Guattari's ecosophy gestures (...) towards a transversal eco-humanities, which would be rhizomatically rooted in autopoiesis and becoming-other, rather than defined by static allegiance to the ideals of ‘Self-realisation’ postulated by the deep ecology movement. (shrink)

This paper considers whether Rawls' theory of justice as fairness may be used to justify a human right to health care. Though Rawls himself does not discuss health care, other writers have applied Rawls' theory to the provision of health care. Ronald Green argues that contractors in the original position would establish a basic right to health care. Green's proposal, however, requires considerable relaxation of the constraints Rawls places on the original position and thus jeopardizes Rawls' arguments for the two (...) principles of justice. Norman Daniels claims that health care is best understood as a means for helping to achieve Rawls' goal of equality of fair opportunity. Daniels acknowledges, however, that his interpretation cannot justify a basic right to health care; rather, it would at best require that certain kinds of care be made available to certain kinds of individuals. Finally, in place of the notion of health care is a human right, it is suggested that the provision of health care is a social ideal which may inspire the creation of specific legal rights. On this view, social provision of health care may properly vary significantly from culture to culture. Despite this variability, social systems may still be criticized on moral grounds. Keywords: justice, right to health care, equality, fair opportunity. (shrink)

The apparent tension between the moral codes of the Old and New Testaments constitutes a perennial problem for Christian ethics. Scholars who have taken this problem seriously have often done so in ways that presume sharp discontinuity between the Testaments. They then proceed to devise a system for identifying what is or is not relevant today, or what pertains to this or that particular social sphere. John Howard Yoder brings fresh perspectives to this perennial problem by refuting the presumption (...) of intratestamental discontinuity. Throughout multiple scattered works on the Old Testament, Yoder offers a coherent and provocative narration that culminates in the way of Christ and establishes the ethical continuity of the entire biblical canon. This essay presents the basic parameters of Yoder's Old Testament narration, suggests points where revision is needed, and highlights several implications for social ethics. (shrink)