Alan Turing devised his famous test through a slight modificationof the parlor game in which a judge tries to ascertain the gender of twopeople who are only linguistically accessible. Stevan Harnad hasintroduced the Total TT, in which the judge can look at thecontestants in an attempt to determine which is a robot and which aperson. But what if we confront the judge with an animal, and arobot striving to pass for one, and then challenge him to peg which iswhich? Now (...) we can index TTT to a particular animal and its syntheticcorrelate. We might therefore have TTTrat, TTTcat,TTTdog, and so on. These tests, as we explain herein, are abetter barometer of artificial intelligence than Turing's originalTT, because AI seems to have ammunition sufficient only to reach thelevel of artificial animal, not artificial person. (shrink)

From the Disney 'Teacher of the Year' and New York Times bestselling author comes a road map to enrich students' learning experiences, revised and updated for today's teachers and parents. After publishing the New York Times bestseller The Essential 55 (over 1 million copies sold), award-winning teacher Ron Clark took his rules on the road and traveled to schools and districts in 50 states. He met amazing teachers, administrators, students, parents, and all kinds of people involved in bringing up great (...) kids. These are the eleven qualities he describes in The Excellent 11: Enthusiasm, Adventure, Creativity, Reflection, Balance, Compassion, Confidence, Humor, Common Sense, Appreciation, and Resilience. Ron has filled this book with hundreds of suggestions, stories, and wonderfully funny anecdotes. You'll be smiling as you read--and finding the inspiration to change lives, one student at a time"--Back cover. (shrink)

In this book Ron Amundson examines two hundred years of scientific views on the evolution-development relationship from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology. This perspective challenges several popular views about the history of evolutionary thought by claiming that many earlier authors had made history come out right for the Evolutionary Synthesis. The book starts with a revised history of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought. It then investigates how development became irrelevant with the Evolutionary Synthesis. It concludes with an examination of the contrasts (...) that persist between mainstream evolutionary theory and evo-devo. This book will appeal to students and professionals in the philosophy and history of science, and biology. (shrink)

Since the publication of Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue in 1981, tensions inherent to the relationship between morally educative practices and the institutions that house them have been widely noted. We propose a taxonomy of the ways in which the pursuit of external goods by institutions undermines the pursuit of the internal goods of practices. These comprise substitution, where the institution replaces the pursuit of one type of good by another; frustration, where opportunities for practitioners to discover goods or develop new (...) standards of excellence are frustrated by institutional priorities and resource allocation; and injustice, which undermines the integrity of relationships within the organization and/or with partners. These threats, though analytically distinct, are often mutually reinforcing. This conceptual contribution is illustrated both by the extant literature and by a novel context, the three-ring circus. (shrink)

This paper considers discussions of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre in management literature. It argues that management scholars who have attempted to appropriate his After Virtue as a supportive text for conventional business ethics do so only by misreading or by ignoring his other work. It shows that MacIntyre does not argue for a reformed capitalism in which individual virtue overcomes institutional vice. Rather he argues that capitalist businesses are inherently vicious and that therefore individual virtue cannot be realised within (...) them. The job of the virtuous is to resist them.2. The paper first presents an account of MacIntyre’s position on management and introduces some of the critical and supportive uses of his work in management scholarship. It focuses on two papers3 typical of the approach taken by conventional business ethicists to his work. These have attempted to deploy concepts developed by MacIntyre while denying the account of management and organisation of which they form a part. The paper provides some tentative hypotheses as to why management scholars have approached MacIntyre in this way. It argues that these attempted appropriations not only have failed but also must fail as conceptual coherence is sacrificed when the account within which those concepts make sense is denied.4. (shrink)

In a series of papers Geoff Moore has applied Alasdair MacIntyre’s much cited work to generate a virtue-based business ethics. Central to this project is Moore’s argument that business falls under MacIntyre’s concept of ‘practice’. This move attempts to overcome MacIntyre’s reputation for being ‘anti-business’ while maintaining his framework for evaluating social action and replaces MacIntyre’s hostility to management with a conception of managers as institutional practitioners (craftsmen). I argue however that this move has not been justified. Given the importance (...) MacIntyre places on the protection of practices, the result is that much of Moore’s contribution is misplaced. Business cannot name a practice but business institutions certainly do house practices. The task then is to try to understand the circumstances under which practices might flourish and those under which they might founder in a business context. This is not aided by Moore’s redescription of all businesses as practices. (shrink)

This paper introduces ‘Virtue and Virtuousness: When will the twain ever meet?’ a special edition of Business Ethics: A European Review. The Call for Papers invited contributions that could inform the relationship between organisational virtuousness, as conceptualised by positive organisation studies, and the classical conception of virtues pertaining to individual women and men. While the resources of particular virtue traditions – Aristotelian, Catholic, Confucian, and the like – could inform their own debates as to whether virtue extends beyond individuals, the (...) debate between virtue traditions and positive organisation studies has a different dimension. The question is whether the claims of positive social sciences as such are compatible with those of any virtue tradition. We argue that positive social science and virtue traditions are indeed rivals such that adherence to the claims of the one precludes adherence to the other. Resolution to such conflicts requires that one tradition is able to resolve questions that exhaust the resources of the other. This paper suggests that at least one area of incoherence in the findings of positive social sciences can be resolved by virtue traditions, and introduces the remaining papers in the special edition. (shrink)

Philosophers of evolutionary biology favor the so-called etiological concept of function according to which the function of a trait is its evolutionary purpose, defined as the effect for which that trait was favored by natural selection. We term this the selected effect (SE) analysis of function. An alternative account of function was introduced by Robert Cummins in a non-evolutionary and non-purposive context. Cummins''s account has received attention but little support from philosophers of biology. This paper will show that a similar (...) non-purposive concept of function, which we term causal role (CR) function, is crucial to certain research programs in evolutionary biology, and that philosophical criticisms of Cummins''s concept are ineffective in this scientific context. Specifically, we demonstrate that CR functions are a vital and ineliminable part of research in comparative and functional anatomy, and that biological categories used by anatomists are not defined by the application of SE functional analysis. Causal role functions are non-historically defined, but may themselves be used in an historical analysis. Furthermore, we show that a philosophical insistence on the primary of SE functions places practicing biologists in an untenable position, as such functions can rarely be demonstrated (in contrast to CR functions). Biologists who study the form and function of organismal design recognize that it is virtually impossible to identify the past action of selection on any particular structure retrospectively, a requirement for recognizing SE functions. (shrink)

This exploratory study examines how managers and professionals regard the ethical and social responsibility reputations of 60 well-known Australian and International companies, and how this in turn influences their attitudes and behaviour towards these organisations. More than 350 MBA, other postgraduate business students, and participants in Australian Institute of Management (Western Australia) management education programmes were surveyed to evaluate how ethical and socially responsible they believed the 60 organisations to be. The survey sought to determine what these participants considered ‘ethical’ (...) and ‘socially responsible’ behaviour in organisations to be. The survey also examined how the participants’ beliefs influenced their attitudes and intended behaviours towards these organisations. The results of this survey indicate that many managers and professionals have clear views about the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies. This affects their attitudes towards these organisations which in turn has an impact on their intended behaviour towards them. These findings support the view in other research studies that well-educated managers and professionals are, to some extent, taking into account the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies when deciding whether to work for them, use their services or buy shares in their companies. (shrink)

The so-called "adaptationism" of mainstream evolutionary biology has been criticized from a variety of sources. One, which has received relatively little philosophical attention, is developmental biology. Developmental constraints are said to be neglected by adaptationists. This paper explores the divergent methodological and explanatory interests that separate mainstream evolutionary biology from its embryological and developmental critics. It will focus on the concept of constraint itself; even this central concept is understood differently by the two sides of the dispute.

This exploratory study examines how managers and professionals regard the ethical and social responsibility reputations of 60 well-known Australian and International companies, and how this in turn influences their attitudes and behaviour towards these organisations. More than 350 MBA, other postgraduate business students, and participants in Australian Institute of Management management education programmes were surveyed to evaluate how ethical and socially responsible they believed the 60 organisations to be. The survey sought to determine what these participants considered 'ethical' and 'socially (...) responsible' behaviour in organisations to be. The survey also examined how the participants' beliefs influenced their attitudes and intended behaviours towards these organisations. The results of this survey indicate that many managers and professionals have clear views about the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies. This affects their attitudes towards these organisations which in turn has an impact on their intended behaviour towards them. These findings support the view in other research studies that well-educated managers and professionals are, to some extent, taking into account the ethical and social responsibility reputations of companies when deciding whether to work for them, use their services or buy shares in their companies. (shrink)

This book critically interrogates the work of David Harvey, one of the world’s most influential geographers, and one of its best known Marxists. Considers the entire range of Harvey’s oeuvre, from the nature of urbanism to environmental issues. Written by contributors from across the human sciences, operating with a range of critical theories. Focuses on key themes in Harvey’s work. Contains a consolidated bibliography of Harvey’s writings.

Ron Mallon explores how thinking and talking about kinds of person can bring those kinds into being. He considers what normative implications this social constructionism has for our understanding of our practices of representing human kinds, like race, gender, and sexual orientation, and for our own agency.

The principles that AN INSTANCE OF A CLASS IS THE CLASS and A CLASS IS AN INSTANCE OF ITSELF allow for the so called LAWS OF THOUGHTIDENTITY - WHAT IS, IS.CONTRADICTION - NOTHING BOTH IS and IS NOT.EXCLUDED MIDDLE - EVERYTHING IS or IS NOT.and allow us to adopt a bivalent system. Everything essential for primary logic is provided.Though this is not the place to discuss it, it should be noted that the development of general logic with its current theories (...) of class, identity and natural numbers could take a very different course from the one it currently pursues.Human thought would have had to evolve to a high level of development before any systematic attempt to analyse it could have been made. It seems it was in the floruit of the Greek civilisation that this attempt was first made. The issues in this paper were of prime concern to those ancient thinkers and their achievements were considerable. Since those times further developments have occurred, many of which they would not have dreamed, but to this day there are still great issues that have not been resolved. The state of the art leaves much to be desired and it is my hope that this paper will contribute to its progress.If the ideas in this paper are true, then it seems we have come across the very origins of human rationality. (shrink)

In this book Ron Amundson examines 200 years of scientific views on the evolution-development relationship from the perspective of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo). This new perspective challenges several popular views about the history of evolutionary thought by claiming that many earlier authors made history come out right for the Evolutionary Synthesis. The book starts with a revised history of nineteenth-century evolutionary thought. It then investigates how development became irrelevant to evolution with the Evolutionary Synthesis. It concludes with an examination of (...) the contrasts that persist between mainstream evolutionary theory and evo-devo. (shrink)

De dicto moral motivation is typically characterized by the agent’s conceiving of her goal in thin normative terms such as to do what is right. I argue that lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would put the agent in a bad position for responding in the morally-best manner in a certain type of situations. Two central features of the relevant type of situations are the appropriateness of the agent’s uncertainty concerning her underived moral values, and the practical, moral importance (...) of resolving this uncertainty. I argue that in some situations that are marked by these two features the most virtuous response is deciding to conduct a deep moral inquiry for a de dicto moral purpose. In such situations lacking an effective de dicto moral motivation would amount to a moral shortcoming. I show the implications for Michael Smith’s argument against Motivational Judgment Externalism and for Brian Weatherson’s argument against avoiding moral recklessness: both arguments rely on a depreciating view of de dicto moral motivation, and both fail; or so I argue. (shrink)

Recent historiography of 19th century biology supports the revision of two traditional doctrines about the history of biology. First, the most important and widespread biological debate around the time of Darwin was not evolution versus creation, but biological functionalism versus structuralism. Second, the idealist and typological structuralist theories of the time were not particularly anti-evolutionary. Typological theories provided argumentation and evidence that was crucial to the refutation of Natural Theological creationism. The contrast between functionalist and structuralist approaches to biology continues (...) today, and the historical misunderstanding of 19th century typological biology may be one of its effects. This historical case can shed light on current controversies regarding the relevance of developmental biology to evolution. (shrink)

It is common in various quarters of philosophy to derive philosophically significant conclusions from theories of reference. In this paper, we argue that philosophers should give up on such 'arguments from reference.' Intuitions play a central role in establishing theories of reference, and recent cross-cultural work suggests that intuitions about reference vary across cultures and between individuals within a culture (Machery et al. 2004). We argue that accommodating this variation within a theory of reference undermines arguments from reference.

The aim of this book is to explain human rationality. The fundamental principles of human thought are stated in terms of Balzer's Principles, and their operations in everyday life are illustrated. The natural numbers are defined and explained in a fresh fashion. Paradoxes, including those of class theory and material implication, which have signaled that all is not well in our logical systems, are laid to rest here. The explanation of human rationality has more than logical interest, for it touches (...) upon the human values embedded in our rationality. The book carries the message that all human beings are fundamentally equal. (shrink)

William Whewell tried to explain how scientific knowledge of necessary and certain truth was possible by tracing it to ideas that arose not out of experience but had an independent origin in the mind. Although Whewell has generally been regarded as an a priorist in some sense and as a proponent of hypothetico-deductivism, Snyder tries to show that he can be assimilated to the twentieth-century inductivist mainstream. She fails to make her case, however, in part because she fails to pay (...) sufficient attention to Whewell’s insistence that scientific discovery is beyond the reach of method and always involves happy guesses. (shrink)

Prescriptive rules guide human behavior across various domains of community life, including law, morality, and etiquette. What, specifically, are rules in the eyes of their subjects, i.e., those who are expected to abide by them? Over the last sixty years, theorists in the philosophy of law have offered a useful framework with which to consider this question. Some, following H. L. A. Hart, argue that a rule’s text at least sometimes suffices to determine whether the rule itself covers a case. (...) Others, in the spirit of Lon Fuller, believe that there is no way to understand a rule without invoking its purpose — the benevolent ends which it is meant to advance. In this paper we ask whether people associate rules with their textual formulation or their underlying purpose. We find that both text and purpose guide people’s reasoning about the scope of a rule. Overall, a rule’s text more strongly contributed to rule infraction decisions than did its purpose. The balance of these considerations, however, varied across experimental conditions: In conditions favoring a spontaneous judgment, rule interpretation was affected by moral purposes, whereas analytic conditions resulted in a greater adherence to textual interpretations. In sum, our findings suggest that the philosophical debate between textualism and purposivism partly reflects two broader approaches to normative reasoning that vary within and across individuals. Keywords: , the concept of law, rules, legal psychology, Hart, Fuller. (shrink)

Until the second half of the 19th century the natural numbers were regarded as given and not further analysable. The concept of a class as defined by mathematicians of the time, Seeming more fundamental, Was then used to define the natural numbers. Their definitions of a class are unsuitable because of paradoxes and other difficulties. In this paper a new definition of a class is stated, And from this the natural numbers are defined.

What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This article uses the ‘goods–virtues–practices–institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner–directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at (...) least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice. (shrink)

Corporate management is torn between either focusing solely on the interests of stockholders or taking into account the interests of a wide spectrum of stakeholders. Of course, there need be no conflict where taking the wider view is also consistent with maximising stockholder wealth. In this paper, we examine the extent to which a conflict actually exists by examining the relationship between a company's positive and negative corporate social responsibility activities and equity performance. In general, we find little evidence to (...) suggest that managers taking a wider stakeholder perspective will jeopardise the interest of its stockholders. However, our findings do suggest that the market is not only influenced by the independent CSR activities, but also the totality of these activities and that the facets that they value do vary over time. It seems that most recently, the market has valued most firms that satisfied minimum requirements in the areas of diversity and environmental protection but were most proactive in the area of employee-relations. (shrink)

This book provides a much-needed, straightforward introduction to moral philosophy.

The Nature of Dignity argues that, given what evolutionary biology tells us about human nature, we need a new understanding of what is involved in the exhibition of personal dignity, since Kant and other Enlightenment figures whose ideas of dignity have shaped our own were wrong in several of their key assumptions. The required new conception of dignity is then developed on the basis of insights gleaned from history, political-economics, literature, film, hermeneutical ethics, and evolutionary biology.

How should deontological theories that prohibit actions of type K — such as intentionally killing an innocent person — deal with cases of uncertainty as to whether a particular action is of type K? Frank Jackson and Michael Smith, who raise this problem in their paper "Absolutist Moral Theories and Uncertainty" (2006), focus on a case where a skier is about to cause the death of ten innocent people — we don’t know for sure whether on purpose or not — (...) by causing an avalanche; and we can only save the people by shooting the skier. One possible deontological attitude towards such uncertainty is what Jackson and Smith call the threshold view, according to which whether or not the deontological constraint applies depends on our degree of (justified) certainty meets a given threshold. Jackson and Smith argue against the threshold view that it leads to implausible paradoxical moral dilemmas in a special kind of case. In this response, we show that the threshold view can avoid these implausible moral dilemmas, as long as the relevant deontological constraint is grounded in individualistic patient-based considerations, such as what an individual person is entitled to object to. (shrink)

These essays are the fruit of many years' research by one of the world's leading Hobbes scholars. Noel Malcolm offers not only succinct introductions to Hobbes 's life and thought, but also path-breaking studies of many different aspects of his political philosophy, his scientific and religious theories, his relations with his contemporaries, the sources of his ideas, the printing history of his works, and his influence on European thought.

Jennifer Rose Carr’s (2020) article “Normative Uncertainty Without Theories” proposes a method to maximize expected value under normative uncertainty without Intertheoretic Value Comparison (hereafter IVC). Carr argues that this method avoids IVC because it avoids theories: the agent’s credence is distributed among normative hypotheses of a particular type, which don’t constitute theories. However, I argue that Carr’s method doesn’t avoid or help to solve what I consider as the justificatory problem of IVC, which isn’t specific to comparing theories as such. (...) This threatens the implementability of Carr’s method. Fortunately, I also show how Carr’s method can nevertheless be implemented. I identify a type of epistemic states where the justificatory problem of IVC is not a necessary obstacle to maximizing expected value. In such states, the uncertainty stems from indecisive normative intuitions, and the agent justifiably constructs each normative hypothesis on the basis of a consistent subset of her intuitions by reference to the same unit of value. This part of my argument complements not only Carr’s (2020) argument, but also some moderate defenses of IVC. The combination of Carr’s paper and mine helps to illuminate the conditions for maximizing expected value under normative uncertainty without unjustified value comparison. (shrink)

The signing of the 2007 UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by over a hundred states is a realization of the importance of the quest of indigenous peoples to direct their present and future existence, together with the knowledge and heritage they have acquired from their ancestors which they constantly mould to survive and thrive in a contemporary world made up of competing interests that are often at odds with their physical, cultural, and spiritual survival. The paper examines (...) some of the interconnected philosophical and legal issues concerning indigenous knowledge and the indigenes' quest to safeguard their knowledge, with indigenous philosophical views given the necessary focus in analyzing these issues. It also traces how these philosophical views inform and are reflected in international documents, including the 2007 UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. (shrink)

Mike Anderson1 has given us a thoughtful and useful field guide: Not in the genre of a bird-watcher’s guide which is carried in the field and which contains detailed descriptions of possible sightings, but in the sense of a guide to a field (in this case embodied cognition) which aims to identify that field’s general principles and properties. I’d like to make some comments that will hopefully complement Anderson’s work, highlighting points of agreement and disagreement between his view of the (...) field and my own, and acting as a devil’s advocate in places where further discussion seems to be required. Given the venue for this guide, we can safely restrict the discussion to embodied artificial intelligence (EAI), even if such work draws on notions of embodied cognition.. (shrink)

According to spacetime state realism, the fundamental ontology of a quantum mechanical world consists of a state-valued field evolving in four-dimensional spacetime. One chief advantage it claims over rival wave-function realist views is its natural compatibility with relativistic quantum field theory. I argue that the original density operator formulation of SSR cannot be extended to QFTs where the local observables form type III von Neumann algebras. Instead, I propose a new formulation of SSR in terms of a presheaf of local (...) state spaces dual to the net of local observables studied by algebraic QFT. 1Introduction2Spacetime State Realism in Quantum Field Theory 2.1Equivalence thesis3Entanglement and the Type III Property 3.1No-Go Lemma 13.2No-Go Lemma 24State Space Axioms for Quantum Field Theory 4.1Revised equivalence thesis5Discussion. (shrink)

Tensions exist between the disability rights movement and the work of many bioethicists. These reveal themselves in a major recent book on bioethics and genetics, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. This book defends certain genetic policies against criticisms from disability rights advocates, in part by arguing that it is possible to accept both the genetic policies and the rights of people with impairments. However, a close reading of the book reveals a series of direct moral criticisms of the (...) disability rights movement. The criticisms go beyond a defense of genetic policies from the criticisms of disability rights advocates. The disability rights movement is said not to have the same moral legitimacy as other civil rights movements, such as those for women or "racial" minorities. This paper documents, and in some cases shows the flaws within, these challenges to the disability rights movement. (shrink)