Influenced by the Wittgensteinian slogan “Don’t look for the meaning, look for the use,” ordinary language philosophers aimed to defuse various philosophical problems by analyzing key words in terms of what they are used to do or the conditions for appropriately using them. Although Moore, Grice and Searle exposed this error – mixing pragmatics with semantics – it still gets committed, now to a different end. Nowadays the aim is to reckon with the fact that the meanings of a great (...) many sentences underdetermine what we would normally mean in using them – even if the sentence is free of indexicality, ambiguity, and vagueness. This can be so because the sentence expresses a “minimal” proposition or even because it doesn’t fully express any proposition. Many theorists are led to defend “truth-conditional pragmatics” (or linguistic “contextualism”), to find a hidden indexical in every syntactic nook or semantic cranny, or otherwise to pay undue respect to seemingly semantic intuitions and intentions. This paper identifies various such moves and explains what’s regressive about them. (shrink)

This article suggests that the inconsistency between collective and personal conceptions of justice in the "republic" is an intentional platonic statement, reflecting the dialogue's distinction between opinion and knowledge. The five parts of the analysis consider the demands put forward by glaucon and adeimantus at the outset of book 2; the function of the city in speech; the two applications of justice in book 4; the relationship between philosophy and the consideration of the concept of justice; and the dimensions which (...) a concern for justice has for the distinction between opinion and knowledge. (shrink)

Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Northern Illinois University. Includes bibliographical references.

What is consciousness? brentano suggests that consciousness is a simple binary relation between a self and an object. in this paper, i offer a textual clarification and a qualified philosophical defense of brentano's suggestion. in part i, i indicate the ordinary facts of subjective experience that any adequate theory of consciousness must account for. in part ii, i argue on textual grounds that brentano's theory has been misunderstood by chisholm. in part iii, i argue that brentano's theory meets the conditions (...) of an adequate theory. (shrink)

Gun violence in American and Canadian schools is an ongoing tragedy that goes substantially beyond its roots in the interlocking emotional and behavioral issues of mental health and bullying. In light of the need for effective policy development, Dianne T. Gereluk, J. Kent Donlevy, and Merlin B. Thompson examine gun violence in schools from several relevant perspectives in this article. The authors consider the principle of standard of care as it relates to parents, teachers, and community members in a (...) particular school's context. They posit that normative principles may provide a procedural mechanism appropriate for policymakers and practitioners when contemplating and implementing heightened security measures. Finally, they propose Rawlsian reasonableness as an effective and deliberative democratic process that reduces emotional, reactive responses to school shootings. Through these overlapping concepts, the authors advocate for purposeful discussions regarding gun violence in schools based on the unique pragmatic, educational, social, political, and contextual circumstances of individual schools and their surrounding communities. (shrink)

The contemporary operating environment for deployed United States military operations largely focuses on deployments to predominantly Islamic countries. The differences in cultural values between d...

Physiological concentrations of retinoic acid can induce acute alterations in the expression of the enzyme tissue transglutaminase in cultured macrophages. The induction of this enzyme offers a probe to study the mechanism of retinoid action in both normal and leukemic cells.

Corruption devours profits, people, and the planet. Ethical leaders promote ethical behaviors. We develop a first-stage moderated mediation theoretical model, explore the intricate relationships between ethical leadership and employee ethical behaviors, and treat ethical climate and organizational justice as dual mediators and leaders’ moral attentiveness as a moderator. We investigate leadership from two perspectives—leaders’ self-evaluation of moral attentiveness and members’ perceptions of ethical leadership. We theorize: These dual mediation mechanisms are more robust for high moral leaders than low moral leaders. (...) Our three-wave data collected from multiple sources, 236 members and 98 immediate supervisors in the Republic of Iraq, support our theory. Specifically, ethical leadership robustly impacts organizational justice’s intensity and magnitude, leading to high employee ethical behaviors when leaders’ moral attentiveness is high than low. However, ethical leadership only influences the ethical climate’s intensity but has no impact on the magnitude when leaders’ moral attentiveness is high than low. Therefore, organizational justice is a more robust mediator than the ethical climate in the omnibus context of leader moral attentiveness. Our findings support Western theory and constructs, demonstrating a new theory for Muslims in Arabic’s emerging markets. Individual decision-makers apply their values as a lens to frame their concerns in the immediate and omnibus contexts to maximize their expected utility and ultimate serenity-happiness. Ethical leadership trickles down to employee ethical behaviors, providing practical implications for improving the ethical environment, corporate social responsibility, leader-member exchange, business ethics, and economic potentials in the global competitive markets. (shrink)

This volume is a welcome addition to the growing body of contemporary scholarship aimed at a more manageable estimation of Greco-Roman historiography than that provided by the themes of nineteenth century German research and its progeny. This is an extremely well-written and reasoned treatment, squarely based upon the classical writings and encompassing a balanced presentation of substance and suggestion.

There are many mean and nasty things to say about mean and nasty talk, but I don't plan on saying any of them. There's a specific problem about slurring words that I want to address. This is a semantic problem. It's not very important compared to the real-world problems presented by bigotry, racism, discrimination, and worse. It's important only to linguistics and the philosophy of language.

This is a book about the philosophy of Henri Bergson which shows how relevant Bergson is to much contemporary philosophy. The book takes as its point of departure Bergson's insistence on precision in philosophy. It then discusses a variety of topics including laughter, the nature of time as experienced, how intelligence and language should be construed as a pragmatic product of evolution, and the antinomies of reason represented by magic and religion. This is not just another exposition of Bergson's work. (...) It offers an account of why Bergson commanded such a massive reading public in his own day and why he deserves to be read now. Written in a terse and clear style, this book will prove appealing to teachers and students of philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, religious studies and literature. (shrink)

This book comes strongly to the defence of educational theory and shows that it has a structure and integrity of its own. The author argues that the validity of educational theory may best be judged in terms of the various assumptions made in it. His argument is illustrated by a review and critique of some particularly influential theories of education: those of Plato, Rousseau, James Mill and John Dewey. He stresses the need for an on-going, contemporary, general theory of education (...) and examines the ways in which the disciplines of psychology, sociology and philosophy can contribute to a general theory of this kind. (shrink)

Philosophy and philosophy of education Introduction This book sets out to give a brief and elementary introduction to philosophy of education, a specialised ...

In the first experiment, I exhibit unreliable judgment about the primeness or divisibility of four-digit numbers, in contrast to a seeming Excel program. In the second experiment, I exhibit an imperfect memory for arbitrary-seeming three-digit number and letter combinations, in contrast to my seeming collaborator with seemingly hidden notes. In the third experiment, I seem to suffer repeated defeats at chess. In all three experiments, the most straightforward interpretation of the experiential evidence is that something exists in the universe that (...) is superior in the relevant respects – theoretical reasoning (about primes), memorial retention (for digits and letters), or practical reasoning (at chess) – to my own solipsistically-conceived self. (shrink)

A timely collection of advanced, original material in the area of statistical methodology motivated by geometric problems, dedicated to the influential work of Kanti V. Mardia This volume celebrates Kanti V. Mardia's long and influential career in statistics. A common theme unifying much of Mardia’s work is the importance of geometry in statistics, and to highlight the areas emphasized in his research this book brings together 16 contributions from high-profile researchers in the field. Geometry Driven Statistics covers a wide range (...) of application areas including directional data, shape analysis, spatial data, climate science, fingerprints, image analysis, computer vision and bioinformatics. The book will appeal to statisticians and others with an interest in data motivated by geometric considerations. Summarizing the state of the art, examining some new developments and presenting a vision for the future, Geometry Driven Statistics will enable the reader to broaden knowledge of important research areas in statistics and gain a new appreciation of the work and influence of Kanti V. Mardia. (shrink)

Cognitive Development and Acquisition of Language.