In this study, I surveyed students' evaluative perceptions of instructor behavior and their possible influence on academic dishonesty. Slightly over 20% of 1,369 student respondents admitted to academic dishonesty in at least 1 class during 1 term at college. Students who admitted to acts of academic dishonesty had lower overall evaluations of instructor behavior than students who reported not committing academic dishonesty. Implications for student learning and the enhancement of academic integrity in the classroom are discussed.

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Daniel Rothbart and Karyna Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other.

Breastfeeding remains an understudied topic in research and theorizing about reproductive experience and women's bodies. This article reports on women's experiences of breastfeeding in public as revealed through in-depth interviews with 51 women. The current construction of the good maternal body requires women to carefully manage the performance of breastfeeding in specific ways and with particular attention to the dominant notion of a sexualized rather than nurturing breast. Women accommodate to, and resist, the perceived boundaries of the good maternal body (...) through their breastfeeding behaviors. (shrink)

Carbon offsetting remains contentious within, at least, philosophy. By posing and then answering a general question about an aspect of the morality of carbon offsetting—Does carbon offsetting make luxury emissions morally permissible?—this essay helps to lessen some of the topic’s contentiousness. Its central question is answered by arguing and defending the view that carbon offsetting makes luxury emissions morally permissible by counteracting potential harm. This essay then shows how this argument links to and offers a common starting point for further (...) examination of offsetting across various disciplines and domains, such as policy and other branches of philosophy like the ethics of risk. (shrink)

It appears at least intuitively appropriate to claim that we owe it to victims to punish those who have wronged them. It also seems plausible to state that we owe it to society to punish those who have violated its norms. However, do we also owe punishment to perpetrators themselves? In other words, do those who commit crimes have a moral right to be punished? This work examines the sustainability of the right to be punished from the standpoint of the (...) two main theories of rights—the will and the interest conceptions. The right to be punished is shown to be largely indefensible on both accounts: on the will theory, the right to be punished conflicts with autonomy, and it can neither be claimed nor waived by a perpetrator; on the interest theory, a perpetrator’s interest in punishment, inasmuch as it exists, is not sufficient to ground a duty on the part of the state. (shrink)

T. S. Eliot left Harvard during his third year of study in the department of philosophy and went to England. Forty-six years later he authorized the publication of his doctoral dissertation. Here we have a reprint of his sympathetic but not entirely uncritical study of the English idealist philosopher F. H. Bradley.

This work shows that two problems—the reference class and the mental state of the agent—undermine the plausibility of the ‘blameworthiness tracks risk thesis’ (BTRT), which states, prima facie, an agent is more blameworthy for imposing a greater rather than smaller risk. The article first outlines core concepts. It then shows how the two problems undermine BTRT; namely, (1) no blame attribution based on risk imposition is unequivocal; (2) when the materialization of risk is subject to chance, an agent’s decision can (...) ground an equal degree of blameworthiness regardless of whether the risk is greater or lesser. (shrink)

This paper is a response to "The Customer Is Not Always Right" published in the November, 1994 issue of this Journal (Sorell, 1994). The authors argue that "The Customer Is Not Always Right" ignores significant contributions from the literature of business and economics. This comment refutes Sorell's arguments on a case by case basis showing why in each situation the customer is, in reality, right or the situation is not a question of the customer being right or wrong. Existing knowledge (...) from economics and marketing is shown to provide richer, more parsimonious explanations and answers to the problems and dilemmas posed by Sorell. (shrink)

American parents greatly value children’s happiness, citing it well above other possible priorities. This commitment to happiness, shared with parents in other Western societies but not elsewhere, is an important feature of popular emotional culture. But the commitment is also the product of modern history, emerging clearly only in the 19th century. This article explains the contrast between more traditional and modern views, and explains the origins but also the evolution of the idea of a happy childhood. Early outcomes, for (...) example, included the novel practice of hosting parties for children’s birthdays, another mid-19th-century innovation that has expanded over time. Explaining the intensification of the happiness commitment also reveals some of the downsides of this aspect of popular emotional culture, for example in measurably complicating reactions to childish unhappiness. The basic goal of the essay is to use this important facet of modern emotional history to evaluate a commitment that many modern parents assume is simply natural. (shrink)

In two studies, we examined how expressions of guilt and shame affected person perception. In the first study, participants read an autobiographical vignette in which the writer did something wrong and reported feeling either guilt, shame, or no emotion. The participants then rated the writer's motivations, beliefs, and traits, as well as their own feelings toward the writer. The person expressing feelings of guilt or shame was perceived more positively on a number of attributes, including moral motivation and social attunement, (...) than the person who reported feeling no emotion. In the second study, the writer of the vignette reported experiencing (or not experiencing) cognitive and motivational aspects of guilt or shame. Expressing a desire to apologise (guilt) or feelings of worthlessness (private shame) resulted in more positive impressions than did reputational concerns (public shame) or a lack of any of these feelings. Our results indicate that verbal expressions of moral emotions such as guilt and shame influence perception of moral character as well as likeability. (shrink)

The concern people are now expressing about the human environment, ecology, pollution, and overpopulation, though admittedly legitimate from a moral point of view, has not attracted much attention from philosophers. This is notable particularly inasmuch as the United States civil rights struggle, the Vietnam War, and various responses of civil disobedience and violence to social problems have all aroused philosophers to careful thought on rights and obligations. I do not want to suggest that a social problem is interesting only if (...) it is philosophically interesting; nor do I want to make light of the way in which the problems of waste, noise, and overcrowding have captured the popular imagination. Yes, we must protect and use wisely the human environment and natural resources. But still, saying it seems banal, and philosophers do not feed on banalities. Here we have a modern moral commandment which speaks to an urgent and serious matter but which, like “Do not steal,” seems so obvious as to be trite. Yes, we must plan the world’s population in a rational way. Even that commandment, though disputed by some, seems trite. (shrink)

If one were to make, not altogether seriously, such a distinction between types of philosophers, there is no doubt that Professor Feibleman would in many ways fall into the first category. The present volume is impressive in its scope: at one time or another it touches on practically every known field of philosophy, the sciences, the arts, theology, etc. Unfortunately, the development of this vast material is not adequate to the greatness of the themes. Mr. Feibleman has at times interesting, (...) original and provocative ideas; but the reader must, as it were, mine through a mountain of lesser material in order to come upon these occasional nuggets of precious metal. Philosophical doctrines which are palpably inconsistent are eclectically thrown together; arbitrary statements are made; and at times there is an almost incredible over-simplification of problems and lack of subtlety in analysis. To point out the numerous inconsistencies would be a task almost too easy, and one can only regret that Mr. Feibleman did not for his own sake more carefully revise the book before publishing it, so as at least to remove the most glaring of these. (shrink)

Music can answer questions that often confound more discursive modes of thought. Music takes concepts that are all too familiar, reframes these concepts, and returns them to us with incisive clarity and renewed vision. Unity is one of these "all too familiar concepts," thrown around by politicians, journalists, and pastors as if we all know what it means. By turning to music, especially musical space, the relational structure of unity becomes less abstract and more tangible within our philosophy. Arnold Schoenberg, (...) as an inherently musical thinker, is our guide in this study of unity. His reworking of musical structure, dissonance, and metaphysics transformed the tonal language and aesthetic landscape of twentieth century music. His philosophy of compositional unity helps us to deconstruct and reconceive how unity can be understood and worked with both aesthetically and theologically. This project also critiques Schoenberg's often monadic musical metaphysic by turning to Colin Gunton's conviction that the particularity and unity at the heart of God's triune being should guide all of our theological endeavors. Throughout, music accompanies our thinking, demonstrating not only how theology can benefit the philosophy of music but also how the philosophy of music can enrich and augment theological discourse. (shrink)

Since 1960 the prevailing interpretation of Anselm’s Proslogion has been that it contains not one but at least two ontological arguments for the existence of God. The first argument, appearing in Proslogion II, assumes that existence is a perfection and shows that God, the being more perfect than which no being can be conceived, exists. The crucial difficulty with this proof, as Kant pointed out and many contemporary philosophers agree, is that ‘existence’ is not a predicate, and therefore can not (...) signify any property, and hence can not signify a perfection. However, the prevailing interpretation claims, there is an additional argument in Proslogion III which at least is not subject to the difficulty Kant exposed. There the premiss is not that existence is a perfection but rather that necessary existence is a perfection. To this premiss the objection that ‘existence’ is not a predicate is irrelevant. Claiming that something necessarily exists does contribute to our concept of the entity in question. It tells us that the entity can not be brought into existence, is compatible with all conceivable states of affairs, and hence can not be destroyed. Since necessary existence is a consistently conceivable perfection which God can have, God, the being more perfect than which nothing can be conceived, must have it. Furthermore, some recent interpreters of the Proslogion maintain that the conclusion of the second argument is stronger than the conclusion of the first. Proslogion II, even if valid, yields nothing more than God’s existence, whereas Proslogion III yields God’s necessary existence. From the conclusion of Proslogion III the conclusion of Proslogion II is entailed, but not vice versa. The purpose of my paper is to show that the current interpretation of Anselm on these points is incorrect. (shrink)

James Collins writes that some modern philosophers have not been given revisionary treatment by their critics.This is the case with Wolff, Bentham, and Comte, who are held fast in their respective categories of rationalism and utilitarianism and positivism, with only minor flurries of research aimed at reconsidering them from a fresh angle.Fortunately, Bentham's day has now come, and we have in David Lyons’ In the Interest of the Governed, a major new interpretation. Lyons permits us to continue to call Bentham (...) a “utilitarian,” but we have to revise what we understand by the term in this context. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 92-93. A collection of Images produced by intentionally corrupting the circuitry of a Kodak DC280 2 MP digitalcamera. By rewiring the electronics of a digital camera, glitched images are produced in a manner that parallels chemically processing unexposed film or photographic paper to produce photographic images without exposure to light. The DCP Series of Digital Images are direct visualizations of data generated by a digital camera as it takes a picture. Electronic processes associated with the normal operations (...) of the camera, which are usually taken for granted, are revealed through an act of intervention. The camera is turned inside­out through complexes of short­circuits, selected by the artist, transforming the camera from a picture taking device to a data capturing device that renders raw data (electronic signals) as images. In essence, these images are snap­shots of electronic signals dancing through the camera's circuits, manually rerouted, written directly to the on­board memory device. Rather than seeing images of the world through a lens, we catch a glimpse of what the camera sees when it is forced to peer inside its own mind. With the digital photo, this light, from out of the night, no longer comes entirely from the day, it doesn't come from a past day that would simply have become night (like the photons emenating from Baudelaire's face.) It comes from Hades, from the realm of the dead, from underground: it is an electric light, set free by materials from deep within the belly of the earth. And electronic, that is to say, a decomposed light. Digitization breaks the chain, it introduces manipulation even into the spectrum, and by the same token, it makes phantoms and phantasms indistinct. Photons become pixels that are in turn reduced zeroes and ones on which discrete calculations can be performed. Essentially indubitable when it was analog (whatever its accidental manipulability), the this was has become essentially doubtful when it is digital (it is nonmanipulation that becomes accidental). —Bernard Steigler, The Discrete Image There are so many ways to take something apart. Deconstruction, differentiation, dissection, dissolution. A whole slew of concepts and processes towards atomization which aim, eventually, to evoke or locate an essence of some kind, in material science as in philosophy. In picking things apart, what is it we attempt to do? To simplify? To comprehend? To confront? To disprove? With Stearns’ DCP Series we see that destructive scrutiny can sometimes bring about new forms. To create this series of images, Stearns applies circuit bending techniques to modern photography—his fingers and stray wires cutting across the camera’s circuitry at the moment of registration. As with Moholy­Nagy’s vinyl records and Nam June Paik’s cathode ray TVs, Stearns deconstructs the technological inscription of his era. In so doing, the function of the digital camera is revealed, but its transduction inverted: A recorder becomes a synthesizer, the scientist an artist. In a single, simple gesture, these works example a media archeology of the present. We resist the urge to call these photographs. —Jamie Allen. (shrink)

On the basis of a distinction between suffering and punishment, I maintain that divine punishment is suffering understood against the backdrop of an ultimate or divine morality. Suffering can in some cases be a retributively just desert even where there is an obvious absence of distributive justice. After reconciliation with God the suffering may continue unabated, but the suffering loses its status as punishment. An innocent or forgiven person cannot be punished no matter how much s/he is made to suffer. (...) Divine punishment is an ultimate moral concept, an interpretation placed on suffering by a person of morally good will. (shrink)

This is an attempt to understand the ethics of leonard nelson as dealing with some of the same problems arising from kant's moral philosophy as have concerned the rule utilitarians in anglo-American philosophy. In particular, They share the attempt to provide a rationale for specific duties in terms of ends to be achieved, And they try to correct what they see as excessive rigidity and formalism in the kantian imperatives.

The moral argument for the existence of God is really a family of arguments. What they have in common is Kant’s insistence that philosophical theology proceed by drawing out the presuppositions of moral reasoning. Kant’s own favorite version of the argument is widely rejected today. Kant maintained that the summum bonum, the perfect unison of virtue and happiness, is the aim of rational action. Because it ought to be achieved it is possible, as the ought implies the ability to bring (...) it about. The moral faith is that God’s existence and human immortality enable continued moral progress after death and the enjoying of happiness appropriate to it, thus making the arrival at the summum bonum possible. Kant also urged that the categorical commands of the moral conscience suggested the existence of a cosmic lawgiver and commander, and there are a number of nineteenth-century arguments which proceed along those lines. (shrink)

Concept of Avidyā in the Vedānta philosophy of Śaṅkarācārya; a study.

REVIEWS: This is a very helpful volume and a good addition to contemporary scholarship on the valuable and little-known Jaina contribution to philosophy. Prof.Nagin Shah has edited the book well, including clear introduction and a very complete index.

This book explores the relation of John Henry Newman's idea of conscience to what he called conscience "in the ordinary sense of the word," examining such neglected difficulties in this area as the relation between individual conscience and the authority of the church, and rights of conscience.

Islamic philosophy; Ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī, al-Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf, 1250-1325; Muslim scholars; 13th century; history.