Christian morality has been of enormous significance in world history and still underpins moral notions today. In this groundbreaking volume, J. Ian H. McDonald explores the notion of Christian ethics and discusses its roots, its significance in developing moral standards throughout the world and its stability in the modern world. The Crucible of Christian Morality begins with a study of the ethos of early Christian communities, examining the relation of cosmic vision to moral attitude and authority, noting also the (...) types of moral discourse used, and tracing the roots of these developments to the Old Testament and to the ministry of Jesus. The second half of the book concentrates on selected moral themes, concerned with persons, with communities in societies and with virtue or moral excellence, situating them in the context of ancient cultural developments. (shrink)
This paper looks at conflicts of interest in the not-for-profit sector. It examines the nature of conflicts of interest and why they are of ethical concern, and then focuses on the way not-for-profit organisations are especially prone to and vulnerable to conflict-of-interest scandals. Conflicts of interest corrode trust; and stakeholder trust (particularly from donors) is the lifeblood of most charities. We focus on some specific challenges faced by charitable organisations providing funding for scientific (usually medical) research, and examine a case (...) study involving such an organisation. One of the principal problems for charities of this kind is that they often distribute their funds within a relatively small research community (defined by the boundaries of a small region, like an American state or Spanish Autonomous region, or a small country), and it often proves difficult to find high-level researchers within the jurisdiction to adjudicate impartially the research grants. We suggest and recommend options appropriate for our case study and for many other organisations in similar situations. (shrink)
Despite the fundamental and administrative difficulties associated with cross-cultural research the rewards are significant and, given an increasing trend toward globalisation, the move away from singular location studies to more comparative research is to be encouraged. In order to facilitate this research process it is imperative, however, that considerable attention is given to the methodological issues that can beset cross-cultural research, specifically as these issues relate to the primary domain or discipline of investigation, which in this instance is research on (...) business ethics. Utilising the experience of a four country comparative study of both Asian and Western cultures in the field of business ethics, the following presents a discussion of methodological concerns under the three broad areas of operationalising culture, operationalising business ethics, and data interpretation. (shrink)
To date the teaching of business ethics has been examined from the descriptive, prescriptive, and analytical perspectives. The descriptive perspective has reviewed the existence of ethics courses (e.g., Schoenfeldtet al., 1991; Bassiry, 1990; Mahoney, 1990; Singh, 1989), their historical development (e.g., Sims and Sims, 1991), and the format and syllabi of ethics courses (e.g., Hoffman and Moore, 1982). Alternatively, the prescriptive literature has centred on the pedagogical issues of teaching ethics (e.g., Hunt and Bullis, 1991; Strong and Hoffman, 1990; Reeves, (...) 1990; Castro, 1989; George, 1987; Golenet al., 1985) and in providing recommendations for teachers of business ethics (e.g., Nappi, 1990; Hosmer and Steneck, 1989). From the analytical perspective judgments have been made as to whether courses in ethics are in fact effective in achieving value and attitudinal modifications in students (e.g., Loeb, 1991; Weber, 1990; Wynd and Mager, 1989; Pamental, 1989; Martin, 1982; Purcell, 1977). The evidence to date suggests that courses can be a means of achieving ethical awareness and sensitivity in students although it should be recognized that significant objections to the teaching of business ethics do exist and greatly inhibit their successful introduction. This paper addresses a number of the common objections to the teaching of business ethics that must be overcome if ethical programs are to continue in the future, and concludes with recommendations to facilitate the establishment of ethical training in an academic context. (shrink)
This paper combines a review of existing literature in the field of business ethics education and a case study relating to the integration of ethics into an undergraduate degree. Prior to any discussion relating to the integration of ethics into the business curriculum, we need to be cognisant of, and prepared for, the arguments raised by sceptics in both the business and academic environments, in regard to the teaching of ethics. Having laid this foundation, the paper moves to practical questions (...) such as who should teach ethics, and when and how can ethics be taught. The paper presents alternative models for the teaching of ethics in the curriculum of undergraduate and postgraduate business programmes. An integrative model is elaborated on in more detail with a case example describing the six-stage process undertaken in the move from a single entry course to an integrated approach. The case study details not only the planning and initial implementation of ethical education in the context of an undergraduate business degree programme, but also the means by which a change in the way that ethics is taught was achieved in a business faculty in a tertiary institution. (shrink)
In the recent literature of environmental ethics, certain criticisms of pragmatism in general and Dewey in particular have been made, specifically, that certain features of pragmatism make it unsuitable as an environmental ethic. Eric Katz asserts that pragmatism is an inherently anthropocentric and subjective philosophy. Bob Pepperman Taylor argues that Dewey’s naturalism in particular is anthropocentric in that it concentrates on human nature. I challenge both of these views in the context of Dewey’s naturalism. I discuss his naturalism, his critique (...) of subjectivity, his naturalization of intrinsic value, and his holistic treatment of justification. (shrink)
Jones (1991) has proposed an issue-contingent model of ethical decision making by individuals in organizations. The distinguishing feature of the issue was identified as its moral intensity, which determines the moral imperative in the situation. In this study, we adapted three scenarios from the literature in order to examine the issue-contingent model. Findings, based on a student sample, suggest that (1) the perceived and actual dimensions of moral intensity often differed; (2) perceived moral intensity variables, in the aggregate, significantly affected (...) an individual''s moral judgments; and (3) some dimensions of moral intensity (namely, perceived social consensus and perceived magnitude of consequences) mattered more than others. (shrink)
: This paper examines the ethical status of animals and nature within the thought of Mary Whiton Calkins. Though Calkins held that her self-psychology and absolute personalistic idealism were compatible in many ways, the two schools of thought offer different conceptions of personhood with respect to animals and nature. On the one hand, Calkins's self-psychology classified animals and nature as non-persons, due to the fact that self-psychology viewed animals and nature as physical entities bereft of the psychical qualities necessary for (...) personhood. On the other hand, Calkins's absolute personalistic idealism classified animals and nature as persons, due to the absolute personalistic idealist understanding of the universe as ultimately mental and personal. Because Calkins's ethics requires the ethical individual to will for the benefit of all human beings, an ethics that adopts Calkins's psychological conception of personhood promotes an anthropocentrism that views animals and nature as possessing merely instrumental value, while an ethics that adopts Calkins's philosophical conception of personhood views animals and nature as possessing intrinsic value. (shrink)
We show how to construct certain L M, T -type interpreted languages, with each such language containing meaningfulness and truth predicates which apply to itself. These languages are comparable in expressive power to the L T -type, truth-theoretic languages first considered by Kripke, yet each of our L M, T -type languages possesses the additional advantage that, within it, the meaninglessness of any given meaningless expression can itself be meaningfully expressed. One therefore has, for example, the object level truth (and (...) meaningfulness) of the claim that the strengthened Liar is meaningless. (shrink)
In 1989, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada established a strategic research theme on applied ethics -- a theme which has been characterized by its welcome emphasis on the integration of theory and practice and interdisciplinarity. In the six competitions in that theme for research funding, bioethics has received more support than other areas of applied ethics including business ethics. Nonetheless, I argue that Canadian research in business and professional ethics has made significant strides over the past (...) six years. (shrink)
: Understanding Helmholtz's philosophy of science requires attention to his experimental practice. I sketch out such a project by showing how experiment shapes his theory of perception in three ways. One, the theory emerged out of empirical and experimental research. Two, the concept of experiment fills a critical conceptual gap in his theory of perception. Experiment functions not merely as a scientific technique, but also as a general epistemological strategy. Three, Helmholtz's experimental practice provides essential clues to the interpretation of (...) his theory of perception. A case study from experimental investigation of hearing shows how he designed such studies in accordance with the epistemological commitments of the theory of perception. Yet, while the theory was important to his experiments, the soundness of the experimental strategy was epistemically independent of those commitments. Secondly, the case study illustrates how Helmholtz consistently held that causal inferences underwrite reference to a real, but indirectly experienced external world. (shrink)
The development of a methodologically naturalistic approach to physiological and experimental psychology in the nineteenth century was not primarily driven by a naturalistic agenda. The work of R. Hermann Lotze and G. T. Fechner help to illustrate this claim. I examine a selected set of central commitments in each thinkers philosophical outlook, particularly regarding the human soul and the nature of God, that departed strongly from a reductionist materialism. Yet, each contributed significantly to the formation of experimental and physiological psychology. (...) Their work was influenced substantively by their respective philosophical commitments. Nevertheless, the evaluation of the merits of their specific proposals, Fechner's psychophysics and Lotze's local sign hypothesis respectively, did not depend upon sharing their metaphysical views regarding the human soul or the nature of God. A moderate, but significant, distinction between the contexts of discovery and of justification aids in understanding this balancing act. (shrink)
The theology of Joseph Smith remains controversial and at times divisive in the broader Christian community. This paper takes Smith’s trinitarian theologyas its point of departure and seeks to accomplish four interrelated goals: (1) to provide a general defense of “social trinitarianism” from some of the major objections raised against it; (2) to express what we take to be Smith’s understanding of the Trinity; (3) to analyze the state of modern ST and (4) to argue that, as a form of (...) ST, Smith’s views contribute to the present discussion amongst proponents of ST. (shrink)
We examine the occurrence of ethicsrelated terms in 10-K annual reports over 1994-2006 and offer empirical observations on the conceptual framework of Erhard et al. (Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics, and Legality (Harvard Business School, Harvard) 2007). We use a pre-Sarbanes-Oxley sample subset to compare the occurrence of ethics-related terms in our 10-K data with samples from other studies that consider virtue-related phenomena. We find that firms using ethics-related terms are more likely to (...) be "sin" stocks, are more likely to be the object of class action lawsuits, and are more likely to score poorly on measures of corporate governance. The consistency of our results across these alternative measures of ethical behavior suggests that managers who portray their firm as "ethical" in 10-K reports are more likely to be systematically misleading the public. These results are consistent with the integrity-performance paradox. (shrink)
This paper investigates ethical perceptions among Hong Kong Chinese managers of themselves and peers according to age, location of education and employment (local vs. multinational), based upon responses to thirteen potentially unethical situations.The major conclusions of the study are: (1) there is little consistency among perceptions of ethical situations; (2) Hong Kong managers perceive their peers as more unethical than themselves; (3) ethical perceptions in some situations are affected by age and to a lesser extent, place of education; and (4) (...) significant interactions were found between age and the nature of employer, as well as between the place of education and the nature of employer. (shrink)
In this paper, I address the question, Who are the political and ideological opponents of liberalism? I suggest that Dworkin's way of dividing liberals from their conservative opponents over the issue of pluralism fails to get at the main issue of redistribution. But arguments for and against redistribution share a common pluralistic conception of politics and morals, viz., that they are to be conceived in terms of an agreement amongst autonomous individuals who are each trying to maximize their own welfares.I (...) argue that this ignores our relations with the non-autonomous and is parasitic on a wider and more generous notion of the political and moral community. I suggest that such a community must form a focus of its members' loyalties and an end (telos) for human virtues. I then draw some lessons for business ethics, arguing that it is an essentially specialized enterprise which ought not to used to model moral and political relations in general. (shrink)
A review of ethical literature demonstrates that the material presented to date is largely based upon theoretical and empirical research. While this information has contributory value, the information produced is largely observational rather than practical. Managers are anxious to receive assistance with the mechanisms by which ethics can be integrated into their organisations. Utilising the recent experience of the author with a large utility company in Asia committed to developing an ethical programme to enhance ethical awareness in their organisation, this (...) paper intends to review current systems and procedures available to managers for integrating ethics into business. In addition to reviewing mechanisms for promoting an ethical climate, where appropriate, reference will be made to prior research and specific organisations where these practices have been used successfully. The paper concludes with a set of summary recommendations for managers embarking on the introduction of an ethical programme to their organisation. (shrink)
Exploratory research was undertaken in four locations in the Asia Pacific Rim to investigate the cognitive frameworks used by managers when considering ethical business dilemmas. In addition to culture, gender and organisational dimensions were also studied. Aggregate analysis revealed no significant differences in the cognitive frameworks used by business managers in Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Canada. Of the eight frameworks used in the study four cognitive frameworks appeared to feature predominantly. Utilising the results of regression analysis the most (...) salient cognitive frameworks utilised by managers were identified as; Self Interest, Neutralisation, Justice and Categorial Imperative, with Neutralisation and Self Interest being the most significant among all managers. Religious Conviction and the Light of Day framework (which relates to fear of being exposed) did not feature prominently in the analysis. A few significant differences in the ethical frameworks used by males and females were identified. For males in all four locations Self Interest, Neutralisation and Justice appeared to be dominant frameworks, while considerable variability was seen in the frameworks used by females. Marginally significant differences were observed in the cognitive frameworks used by managers with differing functional responsibilities. Across all locations respondents with general management responsibilities relied predominately on Self Interest, while those with marketing responsibilities utilised Neutralisation. Respondents with an accounting orientation also relied predominately on Neutralisation and Categorial Imperative frameworks. (shrink)
A review of ethical literature demonstrates that the materialpresented to date is largely based upon theoretical and empiricalresearch. While this information has contributory value, theinformation produced is largely observational rather thanpractical. Managers are anxious to receive assistance with themechanisms by which ethics can be integrated into theirorganisations. Utilising the recent experience of the authorwith a large utility company in Asia committed to developing an ethical programme to enhance ethical awareness in theirorganisation, this paper intends to review current systems andprocedures available (...) to managers for integrating ethics intobusiness. In addition to reviewing mechanisms for promoting anethical climate, where appropriate, reference will be made toprior research and specific organisations where these practiceshave been used successfully.The paper concludes with a set of summary recommendations formanagers embarking on the introduction of an ethical programme totheir organisation. (shrink)
The method of strong inference, wherein multiple hypotheses are constructed and a crucial experiment is carried out, is said to have special status in science because it guarantees falsifying results. However, the proposition that strong inference is in any way superior to the method of constructing and testing a single hypothesis is contradicted both by close rational analysis and by the empirical evidence. An experiment is reviewed in which subjects who conduct strong tests are much less likely to discover or (...) approximate the truth than subjects who conduct simple tests of a false hypothesis. It is concluded that a potential to falsify is necessary for a test to have corroborative value; however, arguments as to the general superiority of one type of potentially falsifying test over another have no logical basis. Any claim as to a general superiority of strong tests over simple tests would require access to information about the probability of each strategy to produce various relationships between the truth and whatever explanations are most accessible, and such information is not knowable, even in principle. (shrink)
In this paper, I outline both a nonanthropocentric and non-subjective theory of intrinsic value which incorporates pragmatism in environmental ethics in a novel way. The theory, which I call creative actualization, is a non-hierarchical, nonsubjective theory of value which includes the value of nonhuman species and the biosphere. I argue that there are conditions to such values. These limitations include evaluations of actual improvement (meliorism) and reciprocity as conditions. These conditions are necessary limitations upon actions, i.e., duties. I incorporate a (...) deontological ethic thereby as an alternative to utilitarian and other ethical theories in environmental ethics. Duties are to species and to habitats, not to individuals. I conclude that the distinction between ethics and ecological ethics is no longer tenable, given a theory of obligation which is truly universal rather than speciesist. Ecological ethics is the ethics of the future, embracing a way of life, duty, and questions of ultimate worth. (shrink)
We argue that models of reading should be based on anatomical reality, namely, the fact that both eyes are used in reading; and the observation that the human fovea is precisely vertically split, and projects each half of a fixated word to the contralateral hemisphere.
KRISP is a representation system and set of interpretation protocols that is used in the Sparser natural language understanding system to embody the meaning of texts and their pragmatic contexts. It is based on a denotational notion of semantic interpretation, where the phrases of a text are directly projected onto a largely pre-existing set of individuals and categories in a model, rather than first going through a level of symbolic representation such as a logical form. It defines a small set (...) of semantic object types, grounded in the lambda calculus, and it supports the principle of uniqueness and supplies first class objects to represent partially-saturated relationships.KRISP is being used to develop a core set of concepts for such things as names, amounts, time, and modality, which are part of a few larger models for domains including Who''s News and joint ventures. It is targeted at the task of information extraction, emphasizing the need to relate entities mentioned in new texts to a large set of pre-defined entities and those read about in earlier articles or in the same article. (shrink)
InTowards a Canadian Research Strategy ForApplied Ethics, I put forward proposals to advance Canadian research in applied ethics. I focus on the assessment made of Canadian teaching, consulting, and research in business and professional ethics and then on the strategy proposed for advancing work in these areas. I argue for research which is [1] oriented to the ethical needs of those in business and the professions, [2] interdisciplinary, and [3] involves the creation of national and international networks. I then offer (...) some preliminary observations on the first two years of the new research strategy''s operation. (shrink)
In an effort to build on the current knowledge of ethical behaviour in Asia this paper proposes to replicate existing ethical research and to investigate specific questions relating to intra-cultural differences in Hong Kong. Four major conclusions were derived from this descriptive empirical study. A statistically significant correlation exists between age and ethical beliefs, with older employees less likely to express agreement to an unethical action than younger employees. In contrast to many previous studies no statistically significant differences in ethical (...) beliefs were found in relation to gender, level in the organisation, company size, and whether the respondent worked in a multinational or local company. Significant differences in responses to ethical dilemmas were identified between local and expatriate personnel with expatriate respondents indicating a lower level of agreement to unethical actions. For local respondents, of Hong Kong origin, there was no significant correlation between level of education, religiosity, years of business experience, functional origin and their ethical responses. (shrink)
My argument is that poststructuralist and postmodernist theory carries on and intensifies the main lines of a characteristically modern tradition of aesthetics whose most important point of reference is not French structuralism – as the term, ‘poststructuralism’, implies – but the tradition of 18th-century German romanticism and idealism that culminated in the work of Heidegger during the Weimar period in Germany between the world wars and afterward. What characterizes this modernist tradition of aesthetics is its valorization of language as a (...) mode of being possessed of an ‘ontological’ status. I place the term ‘ontology’ in quotes in order to highlight the distinction between ‘metaphysics’, with its Aristotelian and neo-Platonic connotations of a ‘chain of being’, and the more modern term ‘ontology’, which was coined in the 17th century and which became widely used during the 18th century by Leibnizian philosophers Christian Wolff and Alexander Baumgarten; the latter, not incidentally, also helped to establish modern usage of the term ‘aesthetics’. ‘Metaphysics’ and ‘ontology’ have their roots, respectively, in those two most major currents of our western heritage, the Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian. These currents, although inextricably linked to one another in innumerable ways, have nonetheless been engaged, as Nietzsche put it, ‘in a fearful struggle on earth for thousands of years’ that has been obscured by Heidegger’s and Derrida’s accounts of the history of western philosophy. Such accounts have projected what is basically a romanticist critique of Enlightenment values and thought on to a totalizing account of the history of Western thought since Plato. My purpose in emphasizing the distinction between metaphysics and ontology is to provide a conceptual framework within which our understanding of the development of modern aesthetics, and the concept of language that informed that development, can be related to the larger philosophical issues at hand. Literary theorists in the United States, by endorsing Heidegger’s and Derrida’s self-serving accounts of their writings as assaults on the entire history of Western philosophy, and by failing to judge them critically as outgrowths of that history, have not only obscured these developments. They have also sustained the central tenet of American literary theory since the 1960s: that there is such a thing as a ‘Western philosophical tradition’ on the ‘other’ side of which, through an endless series of linguistic coinages and ‘erasures’, we may maneuver ourselves. My claim is that to the extent that there is such an other side, we are already on it, and that we fundamentally misunderstand our situation if we regard it as ‘other’ to the Western philosophical tradition. Key Words: Derrida • Heidegger • language • ontology • theory. (shrink)
The most important sources of contemporary American literary theory are neither the linguistics-based movement of French structuralism, as the term 'poststructuralism' implies, nor a 'modernity' that has been superseded, as the term 'postmodernism' implies, but rather a modernist tradition of aesthetics shaped by eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German romanticism and idealism, movements that culminated in the work of Heidegger during the Weimar period between the World Wars and afterward, exercising an increasingly dominant influence on French theorists after World War II, (...) from Sartre through Derrida, and subsequently on the development of poststructuralism and postmodernism during the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. This essay strives to put well-accepted facts and issues within what Wittgenstein called a 'perspicuous' perspective. Although it is common to observe that deconstruction shares with Romanticism certain very general features, the same judgment is not often applied to deconstruction's semiotic account of language as a system of arbitrary signs without positive values. The essay's claim, by contrast, is that romanticist, especially German influences, operating in complementary relation with influences from the English and French Enlightenments, provided the cultural and conceptual milieu in which literary theory's distinctively modern, characteristically ontological, and anti-metaphysical view of language developed. (shrink)
This report presents the findings of a survey of business ethics education undertaken in the Fall of 1988. The respondents were the deans of colleges and universities associated with the AACSB.Ethics, as a curriculum topic, received significant coverage at over 90 percent of the institutions, with 53 percent indicating interest in increasing coverage of the subject. The tabulations of this survey may prove useful to schools seeking to compare or develop their emphases in business ethics.
Knowledge translation has been widely taken up as an innovative process to facilitate the uptake of research-derived knowledge into health care services. Drawing on a recent research project, we engage in a philosophic examination of how knowledge translation might serve as vehicle for the transfer of critically oriented knowledge regarding social justice, health inequities, and cultural safety into clinical practice. Through an explication of what might be considered disparate traditions (those of critical inquiry and knowledge translation), we identify compatibilities (...) and discrepancies both within the critical tradition, and between critical inquiry and knowledge translation. The ontological and epistemological origins of the knowledge to be translated carry implications for the synthesis and translation phases of knowledge translation. In our case, the studies we synthesized were informed by various critical perspectives and hence we needed to reconcile differences that exist within the critical tradition. A review of the history of critical inquiry served to articulate the nature of these differences while identifying common purposes around which to strategically coalesce. Other challenges arise when knowledge translation and critical inquiry are brought together. Critique is one of the hallmark methods of critical inquiry and, yet, the engagement required for knowledge translation between researchers and health care administrators, practitioners, and other stakeholders makes an antagonistic stance of critique problematic. While knowledge translation offers expanded views of evidence and the complex processes of knowledge exchange, we have been alerted to the continual pull toward epistemologies and methods reminiscent of the positivist paradigm by their instrumental views of knowledge and assumptions of objectivity and political neutrality. These types of tensions have been productive for us as a research team in prompting a critical reconceptualization of knowledge translation. (shrink)
There is near universal recognition that human participant protection is both morally and practically essential for all forms of research involving humans. Yet most of the discourse around human participant protection has focussed on norms—rules, regulations and governance arrangements—rather than on the actual effectiveness of these norms in achieving their ends—protecting participants from undue risk and ensuring respectful treatment as well as advancing the generation of useful knowledge. In recent years there has been increasing advocacy for evidence-based human participant protection (...) that would be grounded on the careful investigation of the effects of research on human participants. We offer an analysis of evidence-based protection and then focus on Canadian examples of research on evidence-based protection. We consider the prospects for such research being put into practice in Canada. Finally we connect our remarks to the theme of “the changing landscape of human participant protection.”. (shrink)
Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport assesses the contemporary relevance of Marxist approaches and offers a unique and diverse examination of modern sports ...
Angus McDonald (2010). Eden/Shangri-La. In Ari Hirvonen & Janne Porttikivi (eds.), Law and Evil: Philosophy, Politics, Psychoanalysis. Routledge.score: 20.0
I would like to thank the editors of Philosophy East and West for courteously asking me if I would like to respond to Matthew Dasti and Stephen Phillips' very thoughtful remarks about the review I wrote of Phillips' translation and commentary on the pratyakṣa chapter of Gaṅgeśa's Tattvacintāmaṇi, prepared in collaboration with N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya (Phillips and Tatacharya 2004). Let me begin by reaffirming what I said at the beginning of my review, that the book is "a monumental (...) and momentous achievement, one whose importance cannot be understated." I have indeed enormous admiration for the magnitude of their achievement and respect for the contribution they have made through this translation to the field of .. (shrink)
Philosophy for Children arose in the 1970s in the US as an educational programme. This programme, initiated by Matthew Lipman, was devoted to exploring the relationship between the notions ‘philosophy’ and ‘childhood’, with the implicit practical goal of establishing philosophy as a full-fledged ‘content area’ in public schools. Over 40 years, the programme has spread worldwide, and the theory and practice of doing philosophy for or with children and young people appears to be of growing interest in the field (...) of education and, by implication, in society as a whole. This article focuses on this growing interest by offering a survey of the main arguments and ideas that have given shape to the idea of philosophy for children in recent decades. This aim is twofold: first, to make more familiar an actual educational practice that is not at all well known in the field of academic philosophy itself; and second, to invite a re-thinking of the relationship between philosophy and the child ‘after Lipman’. (shrink)
Confirmation of a hypothesis by evidence can be measured by one of the so far known incremental measures of confirmation. As we show, incremental measures can be formally defined as the measures of confirmation satisfying a certain small set of basic conditions. Moreover, several kinds of incremental measure may be characterized on the basis of appropriate structural properties. In particular, we focus on the so-called Matthew properties: we introduce a family of six Matthew properties including the reverse (...) class='Hi'>Matthew effect; we further prove that incremental measures endowed with reverse Matthew effect are possible; finally, we shortly consider the problem of the plausibility of Matthew properties. (shrink)
Through an argumentation analysis can one show how it is feasible to view a narrative religious text such as the Gospel of Matthew as a literary argument. The Gospel is not just good news but an elaborate argument for the standpoint that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah. It is shown why an argumentation analysis needs to be supplemented with a pragmatic literary analysis in order to describe how the evangelist presents his story so as to reach (...) his argumentative objective. The analysis also shows why in the case of historical religious literary texts, certain demands are put on the analyst that are not normally present. (shrink)
Robert Merton observed that better-known scientists tend to get more credit than less well-known scientists for the same achievements; he called this the Matthew effect. Scientists themselves, even those eminent researchers who enjoy its benefits, regard the effect as a pathology: it results, they believe, in a misallocation of credit. If so, why do scientists continue to bestow credit in the manner described by the effect? This paper advocates an explanation of the effect on which it turns out to (...) allocate credit fairly after all, while at the same time making sense of scientists' opinions to the contrary. (shrink)
In Practice in Christianity, Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonym, Anti-Climacus enters into an extended engagement with Matthew 11.6, ‘Blessed is he who takes no offense at me’. In so doing, he comes to an understanding that ‘the possibility of offense’ characterises the ‘crossroad’ at which one either comes to faith in Christ's revelation or rejects it. Such a choice, as he is well aware, cannot be made from a neutral standpoint, and so he is led to propose that it is ‘the (...) thoughts of the heart’ (i.e. a person's disposition) that constitute the pivotal factor in determining whether or not God will reconcile a person into the Christian faith. In this paper, I discuss Anti-Climacus' interpretation of Mt. 11.6 and consider his reasons for interpreting a person's predisposition as being so decisive for faith. (shrink)
Kenney, Mark Review(s) of: A source critical edition of the gospels of Matthew and Luke in Greek and English, 2 vols., Christopher J. Monaghan, C.P., Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2010, pp.378, 45.00.
The Matthew Effect refers to the hypothesis that a scientific contribution will receive disproportionate peer recognition whenever there are sharp and distinct differences in prestige within the academic stratification system. This paper empirically examines whether there is an institutional Matthew Effect in economics: does the prestige of an author's economics department influence the visibility or allocation of peer recognition of a scientific contribution? After controlling for author quality, journal quality and article?specific characteristics, the empirical results showed nineteen universities (...) classified as elite have a statistically and numerically positive impact on the level of peer recognition of a scientific contribution. However, further analysis found that the positive institutional Matthew Effect of these elite universities was due solely to the differential peer recognition of scientific contributions by economists affiliated with the economics departments of Harvard University and the University of Chicago. (shrink)
Matthew’s account of the journey of the magi to Jesus has been employed in historical theology to articulate the relation between reason and faith in four different ways: i) reason and faith forming a unity; ii) reason cooperating with faith; iii) reason being the tool of faith; iv) reason being superseded by faith. The paper considers each of these categories in turn, and thus progressively separates the two terms. It demonstrates that “faith” and “reason” are equivocal concepts, and that (...) their relationship is itself a key determinant of their nature. A plurality of forms of reasoning enables the journey to be completed, with each form providing a distinct contribution to a shared faith. (shrink)
In this paper I criticize arguments by Pauline Phemister and Matthew Stuart that John Locke's position in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding allows for natural kinds based on similarities among real essences. On my reading of Locke, not only are similarities among real essences irrelevant to species, but natural kind theories based on them are unintelligible.
In my reply to Boyle, Rosenthal, and Tumulty, I revisit my view of avowals’ security as a matter of a special immunity to error, their character as intentional expressive acts that employ self-ascriptive vehicles (without being grounded in self-beliefs), Moore’s paradox, the idea of expressing as contrasting with reporting and its connection to showing one’s mental state, and the ‘performance equivalence’ between avowals and other expressive acts.
A Martian reading contemporary work on perception might be forgiven for thinking that humans had only one sense: vision. Witness the title of one popular recent collection: Vision and mind: selected readings in the philosophy of perception. Our obsession with sight is stifling. It leads to distorted vision-based models of the other senses, and it means that the distinctive puzzles raised by non-visual modalities are routinely neglected. With this pioneering and long-overdue collection of essays on auditory perception, Nudds and O’Callaghan (...) aim to start correcting this state of affairs. They deserve much praise, not least for their own substantial contributions and splendid introduction. (shrink)
In this extended book review, I summarize Adler's views and critically analyze his key arguments on the measurement of well-being and the foundations of prioritarianism.
The late Professor Basil Willey's important and influential inquiry into the history of religious and moral ideas in the nineteenth century has become (since ...
This book consists of an introduction by the editor, eleven of Plantinga’s previously published pieces, and an index. The previously published works are presented in the following chronological order: “De Re et De Dicto” (1969); “World and Essence” (1970); “Transworld Identity or Worldbound Individuals?” (1973); Chapter VIII of The Nature of Necessity (1974); “Actualism and Possible Worlds” (1976); “The Boethian Compromise” (1978); “De Essentia” (1979); “On Existentialism” (1983); “Reply to John L. Pollock” (1985); “Two Concepts of Modality: Modal Realism and (...) Modal Reductionism” (1987); and “Why Propositions Cannot Be Concrete” (1993). (shrink)
Can it be better or worse for a person to be than not to be, that is, can it be better or worse to exist than not to exist at all? This old 'existential question' has been raised anew in contemporary moral philosophy. There are roughly two reasons for this renewed interest. Firstly, traditional so-called “impersonal” ethical theories, such as utilitarianism, have counter-intuitive implications in regard to questions concerning procreation and our moral duties to future, not yet existing people. Secondly, (...) it has seemed evident to many that an outcome can only be better than another if it is better for someone, and that only moral theories that are in this sense “person affecting” can be correct. The implications of this Person Affecting Restriction will differ radically, however, depending on which answer one gives to the existential question. Melinda Roberts (2003) and Matthew Adler (2009) have defended an affirmative answer to the existential question using an assumption that one can asribe a zero level of wellbeing to a person in a world in which that person doesn't exist. Contrariwise, Derek Parfit (1984), John Broome (1999), and others have worried that if we take a person’s life to be better for her than non-existence, then we would have to conclude that it would have been worse for her if she did not exist, which is absurd: Nothing would have been worse or better for a person if she had not existed. The paper suggests that an affirmative answer to the existential question can avoid such absurdities: One can claim that, say, it is better for a person to exist than not to exist, without implying that it would have been worse for a person if she had not existed or that her level of wellbeing would then have been lower. (shrink)
In this chapter we shall examine the characteristic properties of a construction wide-spread in the world’s languages, the passive. In section 1 below we discuss defining characteristics of passives, contrasting them with other foregrounding and backgrounding constructions. In section 2 we present the common syntactic and semantic properties of the most wide-spread types of passives, and in section 3 we consider passives which differ in one or more ways from these. In section 4, we survey a variety of constructions that (...) resemble passive constructions in one way or another. In section 5, we briefly consider differences between languages with regard to the roles passives play in their grammars. Specifically, we show that passives are a more essential part of the grammars of some languages than of others. (shrink)
