"When John Dewey died in 1952, he was memorialized as America's most famous philosopher, revered by liberal educators and deplored by conservatives, but universally acknowledged as his country's intellectual voice. Many things conspired to give Dewey an extraordinary intellectual eminence: He was immensely long-lived and immensely prolific; he died in his ninety-third year, and his intellectual productivity hardly slackened until his eighties." "Professor Alan Ryan offers new insights into Dewey's many achievements, his character, and the era in which (...) his scholarship had a remarkable impact. He investigates the question of what an American audience wanted from a public philosopher - from an intellectual figure whose credentials came from his academic standing as a philosopher, but whose audience was much wider than an academic one." "Ryan argues that Dewey's "religious" outlook illuminates his politics much more vividly than it does the politics of religion as ordinarily conceived. He examines how Dewey fit into the American radical tradition, how he was and was not like his transatlantic contemporaries, why he could for so long practice a form of philosophical inquiry that became unfashionable in England after 1914 at the latest."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)
This study examines the relationship between an employee's level of moral reasoning and a form of work performance known as organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). Prior research in the public accounting profession has found higher levels of moral reasoning to be positively related to various types of ethical behavior. This study extends the ethical domain of accounting behaviors to include OCB. Analysis of respondents from a public accounting firm in the northeast region of the United States (n = 107) support a (...) positive and significant relationship between moral reasoning and two dimensions of OCB: interpersonal helping behaviors and sportsmanship behaviors. This study controls for previously identified determinants of OCB (e.g., procedural justice) and demographic variables (age, sex, tenure and social desirability). Results suggest that moral reasoning accounts for professional behaviors that are perceived as intrinsically good by the employee and economically beneficial by the employer. (shrink)
Introduction The unusually wide range of John Stuart Mill's interests and abilities does much to make him an intellectually live figure a century after his ...
This collection of essays by philosophers, political theorists, and social critics ranges over two millennia--from the ideas of Plato and Aristotle to those of contemporary thinkers such as John Rawls and Robert Nozick. It examines the nature of justice, its importance in human life, and its place among the other virtues. The scope of the collection gives a clear picture of the differences and continuities that have marked the debate: Plato's emphasis on the ideal of "sticking to one's task" (...) contrasts with the modern emphasis on individual rights, while the account of justice as part of the law of nature offered by Aristotle and Cicero contrasts with Hume's analysis of justice as an artificial virtue. Alan Ryan's introductory essay emphasizes the stringency of justice--showing how its demands can conflict with considerations of the general welfare. The book concludes with a discussion of Marx's view that justice is perhaps merely a concession to a world of scarcity and selfishness created by capitalist necessities. An excellent guide to interpretations of one of the central values of political life and thought, this book will interest students and scholars of political theory and philosophy. (shrink)
Mark White hopes to incorporate John Dewey's appeal to deliberation in preference formation into the neoclassical model of choice. White finds affinities between Dewey and neoclassicism: both reject preordained goals, value consequences above motives, and promote 'scientific ethics.' I claim Dewey's actual theory of value and choice is more radically divergent, and may not simply be integrated with neoclassical model. Specifically, I claim: 1) White's interactional view of agents acting in an environment falls short of Dewey's transactional notion (...) of their reciprocal determination within problem-solving activity; 2) beyond both preference and deliberation, the consequence of valuation activity is the final determinant of a good; 3) Dewey did not advocate relinquishing ethics to the natural and social sciences, but rather viewed moral behavior as the cultivation of a unique 'art.'. (shrink)
This is the first in a series of occasional volumes of original papers on predefined themes. The Mind Association will nominate an editor or editors for each collection, and may join with other organizations in the promotion of conferences or other scholarly activities in connection with each volume. This collection, published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Thomas Hobbes's birth, focuses on central themes in his life and work. Including essays by David Gauthier, Noel Malcolm, Arrigo Pacchi, David Raphael, (...) Tom Sorrell, Francois Tricaud, and Richard Tuck, the book testifies to Hobbes's enduring importance as a major philosopher and helps to unravel those aspects of his intellectual biography that are relevant to a proper appreciation of his philosophy. (shrink)
ALTHOUGH THERE is no direct dependence of Bernard Lonergan upon Edmund HusserI in the manner, say, of Husserl himself upon Franz Brentano, there are nonetheless points of similarity and contrast between them. It would be possible to list these matching points singly on their own, such as Epoche and self-appropriation, Erlebnis and consciousness, monad and subject, Anschauung and affirmation. However, besides and beneath these individual points of similarity and contrast, lying as their basis, there is similarity and contrast at the (...) level of the fundamental conceptions of the two philosophers. Husserl and Lonergan share a common problematic: the structure of intentionality. If intentionality is the common problematic where Husserl and Lonergan meet, one might ask if and how various notions of theirs viewed in relation to intentionality are common or divergent. For the sake of comparison-confrontation, one might take the two central notions, Anschauung (intuition) in Husserl and affirmation in Lonergan, and inspect some of the implications they have for the two philosophers. Husserl calls intuition the "principle of all principles for his phenomenology." For his part, Lonergan conceives of affirmation as the culmination of the knowing process. Intuition and affirmation have analogous roles. For Husserl it is through intuition that cognition attains what is real, whereas for Lonergan it is through affirmation. The comparison-confrontation between Husserl and Lonergan can be summed up in terms of the three questions that Lonergan sets up to mark off the range of human knowing. First, what happens when one knows? Secondly, why is doing that knowing? Thirdly, what does one know when he does it? Husserl and Lonergan would seem closest in their approach to answering question one. However, they would part company in their answers to questions two and three, for here intuition and affirmation essentially determine what kind of an answer can be given. This paper will work within the brackets of these three questions. (shrink)
Ruchkin et al. ascribe a pivotal role to long-term memory representations and binding within working memory. Here we focus on the interaction of working memory and long-term memory in supporting on-line representations of experience available to guide on-going processing, and we distinguish the role of frontal-lobe systems from what the hippocampus contributes to relational long-term memory binding.
Although O'Regan & Noë (O&N) claim that the world may serve as the viewers' external visual memory, findings from the field of memory research have demonstrated the existence of internal visual representations. These representations are stored in the viewer's brain, contain information regarding visual objects and their relations, guide subsequent exploration of the visual world and promote change detection.
Researchers typically define animal signaling as morphology or behavior specialized for transmitting encoded information from a signaler to a perceiver. Although intuitively appealing, this conception is inherently metaphorical and leaves concepts of both information and encoding undefined. To justify relying on the information construct, theorists often appeal to Shannon and Weaver’s quantitative definition. The two approaches are, however, fundamentally at odds. The predominant definition of animal signaling is thus untenable, which has a number of undesirable consequences for both theory and (...) practice in the field. Theoretical problems include conceptual circularity and running afoul of fundamental evolutionary principles. Problems in empirical work include that research is often grounded in abstractions such as signal honesty and semanticity, and thereby distracted from more basic and concrete factors shaping communication. A revised definition is therefore proposed, making influence rather than transmission of encoded information the central function of animal signaling. This definition is conceptually sound, empirically testable, and inclusive, yet bounded. Implications are considered in both theoretical and empirical domains. (shrink)
Although John Dewey was a notoriously unstylish writer, he not only enjoyed the striking phrases he borrowed from other writers, poets particularly, but coined a few of his own. By the same token, he resolutely defended the sufficiency of the world of experience, and at the same time kept on observing that it was what happened at the edge of experience that was really fascinating. Conversely, he eschewed ’aggressive atheism,’ but for most of his life remained a mild, but (...) unmistakable atheist. The world did not present itself to us tidily pre-arranged, with its implications for understanding and action plain upon its face; careful and thoughtful attention is needed to elicit the meaning of experience. But, there is no deep mystery at the heart of experience; indeed, there is, in that sense, no ’heart’ to generate the deep mystery. (shrink)
This study examines the use of a video news release in a specific story. Press coverage and editorial criticism in the case showed that journalists do not articulate sufficiently how the news owners' sway, through institutional controls, can lead to a hegemony of expedient action in the newsroom. Critical self-reflection by news workers will better enable journalists to ethically deliberate news choices that balance their responsibilities to owners, peers, and the public.
Choquet expected utility substitutes capacities for subjective probabilities to explain uncertainty aversion and related phenomena. This paper studies capacities as models of belief. The notions of inner and outer acceptance context are defined. These are shown to be the natural acceptance contexts when belief expansion is described by naïve Bayesian and DempsterâShafer updating of capacities respectively. We also show that Eichberger and Kelsey's (1999b) use of DempsterâShafer updating as a model of belief revision may lead to violations of the AGM (...) axioms for rational belief change. (shrink)
In his opening address, Dershowitz only dealt with the issue obliquely, and devoted most of his time to berating the Palestinians, Chomsky, and professors who criticize Israel, and challenged Chomsky to form an alliance with him to work for peace in the area-- a seemingly worthy proposal but totally off topic. Chomsky began by saying that the only thing Dershowitz said that he couldn't take issue with was that the two of them had once been in some summer camp (...) together. Chomsky then proceeded to provide background to the crisis and pointed out that the current Israel-USA policy and any proposal emanating from it would lead to only further disaster. The Palestinians are not prepared to accept a non-contiguous Bantustan "state" which is what is being offered. Instead he clearly stated that it was the Geneva Accord that provided a basis for meaningful future negotiations. Dershowitz, on the other hand, only at the end, when pressed on this matter, said that the new Sharon-Peres party would "offer" the Palestinians a "proposal"--which the Palestinians should not refuse! This was his answer to "where do we go from here." So much for substance by Dershowitz. Debate score? (shrink)
We consider Sussman et al.'s suggestion that auditory biases for processing low-noise relationships among pairs of acoustic variables is a preadaptation for human speech processing. Data from other animal communication systems, especially those involving sexual selection, also suggest that neural biases in the receiver system can generate strong selection on the form of communication signals.
