Book reviewed in this article: Ethical Issues in Social Research. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp, Ruth R. Faden, R. Jay Wallace, Jr., and LeRoy Walters. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. xii + 436 pp. $25.00 (hardcover); $8.95 (paper). Ethics of Human Subject Research. Edited by Allan J. Kimmel, Jr. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass, 1981. 106 pp. $6.95 (paper). Social Research Ethics. Edited by Martin Bulmer. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982. xiv + 284 pp. $39.50 (hardcover); $14.50 (paper). The (...) Ethics of Social Research: Field‐work, Regulation and Publication. Edited by Joan E. Sieber. New York: Springer‐Verlag, 1982. x + 187 pp. $23.50 (hardcover). The Ethics of Social Research: Surveys and Experiments. Edited by Joan E. Sieber. New York: Springer‐Verlag, 1982. xii + 249 pp. $23.50 (hardcover). (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Ethical Issues in Social Research. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp, Ruth R. Faden, R. Jay Wallace, Jr., and LeRoy Walters. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. xii + 436 pp. $25.00 (hardcover); $8.95 (paper). Ethics of Human Subject Research. Edited by Allan J. Kimmel, Jr. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass, 1981. 106 pp. $6.95 (paper). Social Research Ethics. Edited by Martin Bulmer. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982. xiv + 284 pp. $39.50 (hardcover); $14.50 (paper). The (...) Ethics of Social Research: Field‐work, Regulation and Publication. Edited by Joan E. Sieber. New York: Springer‐Verlag, 1982. x + 187 pp. $23.50 (hardcover). The Ethics of Social Research: Surveys and Experiments. Edited by Joan E. Sieber. New York: Springer‐Verlag, 1982. xii + 249 pp. $23.50 (hardcover). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Leviathan after 350 YearsSharon VaughanTom Sorell and Luc Foisneau, editors. Leviathan after 350 Years. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004. Pp. x + 308. Cloth, $74.00The editors introduce this collection as a testament to the continuing importance of Leviathan in political thought. Divided into three parts, these twelve essays are some of the papers presented at a May 2001 conference to mark the 350th anniversary of Leviathan's publication. Readers might (...) expect a discussion about Leviathan's endurance and relevance as a fundamental text of political philosophy, but this is not the book's main thrust. Instead, the authors engage in a discussion concerning some of the most provocative and controversial questions about Leviathan. Much of the debate centers on how one should interpret it, forcing readers not only to reconsider crucial parts of Hobbes's philosophy, but also the act of interpretation.Part one examines the place that Leviathan holds among Hobbes's political writings. Karl Schumann argues that one should not think of Leviathan as a radical departure from De Cive and that it did not mark the culmination of Hobbes's development as a political philosopher (14). Schumann's essay is not convincing because he effectively points out the consequential ways that Leviathan is distinct. Ted H. Miller suggests, "Leviathan's uniqueness is rooted in its poetic-philosophical innovations"(103). He points out that David Johnston, Quentin Skinner, and others have stressed the significance of its rhetorical style. Miller, however, proposes that it was the context and the company that Hobbes kept during this time that influenced his writing style. Kinch Hoekstra suggests that Hobbes is an unusual de facto theorist and Luc Foisneau believes that Leviathan is unique because of its theory of justice.Part two is devoted to investigating passions and politics in Leviathan. Richard Tuck believes that Hobbes's political philosophy is utopian because it demands a radical transformation of humans as passionate beings. Tuck says that while the Leviathan provides citizens with security, "they are also going to live a life without pride, their sense of their own individual importance reduced to nothing in the face of their commonwealth" (138). Tuck's essay stands in contrast to Tom Sorrell's analysis of the burdens on the sovereign. He concludes that he must be an individual with little, if any, regard for his own ambitions and passions (196). What one is left with is a Hobbesian version of a philosopher king who has his personal appetites in check always looking out for what benefits his subjects. Is [End Page 210] there any guarantee that the sovereign will be non-egotistical and public-spirited? No, because the sovereign has absolute freedom. Sorrell believes, however, that it is in the sovereign's best interest to be unselfish if she is to maintain her sovereignty (193).Quentin Skinner analyzes the classical theory of laughter, relating it to Hobbes's complicated views about it. Political agency in Leviathan is Yves Zarka's topic. It seems that the citizen is merely a subject, but Zarka cautions that one must carefully read the text and remember that certain rights are inalienable. How far one may take what Zarka interprets as the "the right of resistance" remains a debatable question (182). He believes that one might rethink Leviathan as a more complex piece of political philosophy by practicing "back-to front reading" as opposed to a direct-method reading of the text (182). Zarka thinks that citizens may have a more complex and passionate role than commonly thought (182). This is an alluring suggestion, but it is difficult to accept in light of Hobbes's preoccupation with security and obedience.The role of biblical and political authority is the theme for part three. Edwin Curley argues that Hobbes's treatment of covenants with God was possibly a vehicle for him to arouse skepticism about Christianity among his readers. A. P. Martinich rejects Curley's claim and concludes that not only does his argument fail on grounds of logic, but also it requires far too much "reading between the lines" (223). Martinich's analytic rigor and his attention to the process of interpretation raise serious doubts about Curley... (shrink)

This paper articulates a way to ground a relatively high prior probability for grand explanatory theories apart from an appeal to simplicity. I explore the possibility of enumerating the space of plausible grand theories of the universe by using the explanatory properties of possible views to limit the number of plausible theories. I motivate this alternative grounding by showing that Swinburne’s appeal to simplicity is problematic along several dimensions. I then argue that there are three plausible grand views—theism, atheism, and (...) axiarchism—which satisfy explanatory requirements for plausibility. Other possible views lack the explanatory virtue of these three theories. Consequently, this explanatory grounding provides a way of securing a nontrivial prior probability for theism, atheism, and axiarchism. An important upshot of my approach is that a modest amount of empirical evidence can bear significantly on the posterior probability of grand theories of the universe. (shrink)

Hunter Vaughan interweaves phenomenology and semiotics to analyze cinema's ability to challenge conventional modes of thought. Merging Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception with Gilles Deleuze's image-philosophy, Vaughan applies a rich theoretical framework to a comparative analysis of Jean-Luc Godard's films, which critique the audio-visual illusion of empirical observation (objectivity), and the cinema of Alain Resnais, in which the sound-image generates innovative portrayals of individual experience (subjectivity). Both filmmakers radically upend conventional film practices and challenge philosophical traditions to alter (...) our understanding of the self, the world, and the relationship between the two. Films discussed in detail include Godard's _Vivre sa vie_ (1962), _Contempt_ (1963), and _2 or 3 Things I Know About Her_ (1967); and Resnais's _Hiroshima, mon amour_ (1959), _Last Year at Marienbad_ (1961), and _The War Is Over_ (1966). Situating the formative works of these filmmakers within a broader philosophical context, Vaughan pioneers a phenomenological film semiotics linking two disparate methodologies to the mirrored achievements of two seemingly irreconcilable artists. (shrink)

The coherence of independent reports provides a strong reason to believe that the reports are true. This plausible claim has come under attack from recent work in Bayesian epistemology. This work shows that, under certain probabilistic conditions, coherence cannot increase the probability of the target claim. These theorems are taken to demonstrate that epistemic coherentism is untenable. To date no one has investigated how these results bear on different conceptions of coherence. I investigate this situation using Thagard’s ECHO model of (...) explanatory coherence. Thagard’s ECHO model provides a natural representation of the evidential significance of multiple independent reports. (shrink)

This work answers questions such as: What elements of the Pauline view of time did the supposed atheist Heidegger bring from his study of the epistles to his work, Being and Time? And why did Heidegger remain so silent about the Holocaust and his dalliance with National Socialism?

Wretchedness and terrorism, and differences we make between them -- A theory of justice, an anarchism, and the obligation to obey the law -- The principle of humanity -- Our omissions and their terrorism -- On democratic terrorism -- Doctrines, commitments, and four conclusions about terrorism for humanity.

Few philosophers have been as widely misunderstood as Nietzsche. His detractors and followers alike have often fundamentally misinterpreted him, distorting his views and intentions and criticizing or celebrating him for reasons removed from the views he actually held. Now available in paper, Nietzsche assesses his place in European thought, concentrating upon his writings in the last decade of his productive life. Nietzsche emerges in this comprehensive study as a philosopher of considerable sophistication who diverged sharply from traditional and ordinary ways (...) of thinking, but whose criticism, departures, and alternative views and strategies deserve to be given the most serious attention by philosophers. (shrink)

Ted T. Aoki, the most prominent curriculum scholar of his generation in Canada, has influenced numerous scholars around the world. Curriculum in a New Key brings together his work, over a 30-year span, gathered here under the themes of reconceptualizing curriculum; language, culture, and curriculum; and narrative. Aoki's oeuvre is utterly unique--a complex interdisciplinary configuration of phenomenology, post-structuralism, and multiculturalism that is both theoretically and pedagogically sophisticated and speaks directly to teachers, practicing and prospective. Curriculum in a New Key: The (...) Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki is an invaluable resource for graduate students, professors, and researchers in curriculum studies, and for students, faculty, and scholars of education generally. (shrink)

Violence for Equality, first published in 1989, questions the morality of political violence and challenges the presuppositions, inconsistencies and prejudices of liberal-democratic thinking. This book should be of interest to teachers and students of philosophy and politics.

The field of Astroethics addresses moral and societal issues arising out of speculation regarding terrestrial contact with extraterrestrial life in both its intelligent and non-intelligent forms. This chapter tackles 15 ethical quandaries, 12 of which are associated with space exploration within the solar system plus 3 with exoplanet communication. Within our solar ghetto, scientists expect at best to find only microbial life, leaving intelligent life to exoplanets elsewhere in our galaxy. The intra-solar system quandaries are these: What does planetary protection (...) mean? Does microbial life have intrinsic value? Should space explorers invoke the Precautionary Principle? Should we clean up our space junk? What should we do about satellite surveillance? Should we weaponize space? Should scientific research take priority over commercial space ventures? Should we terraform Mars? Should we colonize Mars? Should we prepare for bombardment of Earth by asteroids? Should we rely upon a single planetary community of moral deliberation? Should we pursue the good of the galactic commons? The extra-solar quandaries deal with three degrees of extraterrestrial intelligent creatures: those with less intelligence than us Homo sapiens, our Extraterrestrial Intelligent creatures peers in intelligence, and ETI who are superior to us in intelligence. To each quandary we ask: What is our terrestrial moral responsibility toward extraterrestrial life? Our answer is grounded in an appeal to a galactic common good. (shrink)

Abstract:The central inquiry of this article concerns the ethical orientation within post-structuralism, specifically questioning its potential affinity with deontology. While the “philosophers of difference” offer divergent perspectives on the doctrine of judgment, Jacques Derrida folds it within Deconstruction as a nomo-aporetic transcendental horizon. To understand this operation and its potential ethical significance, I suggest Jean-François Lyotard offers the best counter-model with which to compare against Derrida’s. Amongst their direct and indirect exchanges with each other is a dialogue concerning the law (...) and its fundamental ground. Through their respective readings of Kafka – Derrida’s reading of “Before the Law” and Lyotard’s reading of “In the Penal Colony” – both attempt to delineate how the specific nature of the ground of the law determines the way in which an individual becomes subject to the law. Despite the enigmatic nature of their discourses, their comparison reveals converging and diverging trajectories in their ethical reflections as they push toward thinking the limits of lawfulness. Through such a comparative study of their texts, this exploration aims to unveil the shared fugitive vector of their ethical contemplations within the post-structuralist framework. (shrink)

We are often uncertain how to behave morally in complex situations. In this controversial study, Ted Lockhart contends that moral philosophy has failed to address how we make such moral decisions. Adapting decision theory to the task of decision-making under moral uncertainly, he proposes that we should not always act how we feel we ought to act, and that sometimes we should act against what we feel to be morally right. Lockhart also discusses abortion extensively and proposes new ways to (...) deal with the ethical and moral issues which surround it. (shrink)

The historically rich and diverse tradition of phenomenology has contributed broadly to the emergence of environmental thought across the humanities and social sciences and is increasingly influential on environmental ethics and philosophy. Emphasizing the primacy of experience and inquiry into the epistemological and ontological assumptions that inform the historical and contemporary relationship with nature, phenomenology takes a critical distance from metaphysical naturalism and the instrumental framing of environmental problems in resourcist, technological, economic, and managerial terms. The tradition’s distinctive contributions to (...) environmental ethics include its focus on the epistemic and ontological revindication of experience, its critique of metaphysical and modernist assumptions, and its aim to articulate a post-metaphysical conception of the self-world relation and an alternative ethos appropriate to our experience of nature. Key concepts that inform current phenomenological research in environmental ethics include the lifeworld, the earth and elements, the chiasm, and poetic dwelling. (shrink)

M. Clifford-Vaughan; VII—Social Change and Legal Norms, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 67, Issue 1, 1 June 1967, Pages 103–110, https://doi.org.

This paper investigates links between social capital and symbolic capital and responsible entrepreneurship in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The source of the primary data was 144 ‘Business Profiles’, written by the owner-managers of small businesses in application for a Small Business Awards competition in 2005. Included in each of these narratives were claims relating to the firms’ contributions to wider society, relationships with customers, employees and stakeholders. These narratives were coded and classified in a framework drawn (...) from Nahapiet and Ghoshal’s (1998, Academy of Management Review 23(2), 242–266) categorisation of social capital. The analysis revealed a range of strategic orientations towards the development of social and symbolic capital, along a conceptual continuum ranging from being responsible for oneself to being responsible for others. Overall, the evidence demonstrates the significance of the power inherent in the social relations of SMEs as a force for ethical behaviour, and suggests that normative theories of the development of social capital may provide ‘competitive advantage’ through responsible behaviour for small business in the global economy. (shrink)

In this paper, we compare and contrast two methods for the revision of qualitative beliefs. The first method is generated by a simplistic diachronic Lockean thesis requiring coherence with the agent’s posterior credences after conditionalization. The second method is the orthodox AGM approach to belief revision. Our primary aim is to determine when the two methods may disagree in their recommendations and when they must agree. We establish a number of novel results about their relative behavior. Our most notable finding (...) is that the inverse of the golden ratio emerges as a non-arbitrary bound on the Bayesian method’s free-parameter—the Lockean threshold. This “golden threshold” surfaces in two of our results and turns out to be crucial for understanding the relation between the two methods. (shrink)

Introduction There are (at least) two questions which readily arise in the minds of sociology students when they begin courses in the philosophy of social ...

The modal logician's notion of possible world and the computer scientist's notion of state of a machine provide a point of commonality which can form the foundation of a logic of action. Extending ordinary modal logic with the calculus of binary relations leads to a very natural logic for describing the behavior of computer programs.

Do you know who you are? If the question seems unclear, it might owe to the notion of ‘knowing-wh’ (knowing-who, knowing-what, knowing-when, etc.). Such knowledge contrasts with ‘knowing-that’, the more familiar topic of epistemologists. But these days, knowing-wh is receiving more attention than ever, and here we will survey three current debates on the nature of knowing-wh. These debates concern, respectively, (1) whether all knowing-wh is reducible to knowing-that (‘generalized intellectualism’), (2) whether all knowing-wh is relativized to a contrast proposition (...) (‘contrastivism about knowing-wh’), and (3) whether the context-sensitivity of knowing-wh is a semantic or purely pragmatic phenomenon (‘contextualism vs. invariantism about knowing-wh’). (shrink)

Twenty philosophers offer new essays examining the form of reasoning known as inference to the best explanation - widely used in science and in our everyday lives, yet still controversial. Best Explanations represents the state of the art when it comes to understanding, criticizing, and defending this form of reasoning.

This paper promotes a philosophy derived from the direct distribution of goods to needs that occur in mothering and invisibly in many other aspects of life. Such a philosophy is suggested as an alternative to market based values, which currently permeate society. It is important to bring alternative values to consciousness and validate them for both teachers and children so that the orientation towards the other that characterizes the gift paradigm will not be lost in the fight for survival endemic (...) to a market society. The hope is that we can find solutions that are viable for all. After presenting this philosophy, we show how it already exists among educators and children, and we suggest ways in which it may be validated and promoted in early childhood education. (shrink)

This book delivers a definitive contribution to the understanding of Habermas's oeuvre as it applies to education. The authors examine Habermas's contribution to pedagogy, learning and classroom interaction; the relation between education, civil society and the state; forms of democracy, reason and critical thinking; and performativity, audit cultures and accountability.

Hallucination: the perception of an impossible image. That which can never appear suddenly does so anyways - a private world that appears only to the eye of the one imagining it... until now. Ted Serios, psychic photographer, claimed he could project images directly from his mind onto photographic film. Under the sign of the psychic photograph, “Hallucinating Ted Serios” is a theorization of the dominant forms of uncertainty that persist in postmodern evaluations of representation, interpretation and identity. The central thesis (...) of this paper is that the imaginary and the real have collapsed into the spectral hallucination of one another, rendering impossible the rhetorical separation of hallucination from image. With the collapse of the boundary between the fictive and the real, the world of representation becomes intelligible only as an imaginary phenomenon; with the collapse between the object and the observer, interpretation is rendered deceptively magical; and, with the collapse between the self and its anonymous double, identity itself is relegated to a state of impossibility. Consequently, under the persisting signs of the imaginary, the magical and the impossible, “Hallucinating Ted Serios” asserts that in our contemporary world there no longer exists the possibility of failed performativity – psychic, imaginary or otherwise. (shrink)

The current dominant perspective on addiction as a brain disease has been challenged recently by Marc Lewis, who argued that the brain-changes related to addiction are similar to everyday changes of the brain. From this alternative perspective, addictions are bad habits that can be broken, provided that people are motivated to change. In that case, autonomous choice or “free will” can overcome bad influences from genes and or environments and brain-changes related to addiction. Even though we concur with Lewis that (...) there are issues with the brain disease perspective, we also argue that pointing to black swans can be important, that is: there can be severe cases where addiction indeed tips over into the category of brain disease, but obviously that does not prove that every case of addiction falls into the disease category, that all swans are black. We argue that, for example, people suffering from Korsakoff’s syndrome, can be described as having a brain disease, often caused by alcohol addiction. Moreover, the brain changes occurring with addiction are related to choice-behaviour, habit formation and insight, hence essential mental abilities to break the addiction. We argue for a more graded perspective, where both black swans and white swans are rare, and most cases of addiction come as geese in different shades of gray. (shrink)

The value of Colin Wilson as an original philosopher - and more.

Reason and Explanation develops a new explanationist account of epistemic justification. Poston argues that the explanatory virtues provide a plausible account of necessary and sufficient conditions for justification. The justification of a subject's belief consists in the explanatory virtue of her entire beliefs compared with other sets of beliefs she could have. Poston's argument for coherentism involves a defense of the epistemic value of background beliefs, the development of a novel framework view of reasons, and the articulation of a mentalism (...) evidentialist account of coherentism. Poston argues against foundationalist views that ground justification in sense experience apart from supporting background beliefs. He extends the argument against foundationalism by examining a coherentist view of a priori knowledge. Finally, he articulates a compatiblist position regarding Bayesianism and inference to the best explanation. (shrink)

Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism investigates an idea that underpins the ethical criticism of art but is rarely acknowledged and poorly understood - namely, that the ethical criticism of art involves judgments not only of the attitudes a work endorses or solicits, but of what artists do to create the work. The book pioneers an innovative production-oriented approach to the study of the ethical criticism of art, one that will provide a refined philosophical account of this important topic as well (...) as conceptual tools that can guide future philosophizing and criticism. (shrink)