This reconsideration of Hume’s classic essay “Of Miracles” via the lens of American pragmatist ways of thinking about history and power shifts our attention from Hume’s epistemic concerns about the legitimacy of witnesses and testimony to his distaste for sacred history, his critical stance regarding the social force of revelation, and his disdain for religious authority. To view Hume’s essay both as an articulation of a critical philosophy of history and as an exercise in moral dynamism (social power or, authority, (...) is a result of epistemic transactions), is to intervene in both Hume studies and Contemporary Pragmatism. (shrink)

Research in nanotechnology has advanced rapidly in recent years. Several researchers, however, warn that there is a paucity of research on the ethical, legal, and social implications of nanotechnology, and they caution that ethical reflections on nanotechnology lag behind this fast developing science. In this article, the authors question this conclusion, pointing out that the predicted concrete ethical issues related to the area of nanotechnology are rather similar to those related to the area of biotechnology and biology that have been (...) considered by ethicists since the 1970s. Hence, a knowledge base has already been acquired from ethical reflections on biotechnology and biology, which may be a good starting point and foundation for a discussion of ethical reflections on nanotechnology. The authors argue that a promising approach is the use of basic ethical principles as a method to analyze ethical issues of nanotechnology. (shrink)

An examination of David Hume's philosophy of religion that situates his conception "true religion" within the context of his overall science of human nature, his rejection of popular religion, and his Ciceronian influence"--Provided by publisher.

This contribution examines Arrighi’s effort in Adam Smith in Beijing to understand the trajectory of China’s political economy and the effects of that trajectory on the current reforms and changes in China. This article discusses these reforms from the perspective of China’s ’internal’ dynamics and suggests that Arrighi’s argument has been developed without proper reference to China’s complex realities. As an alternative, the contribution proposes a research-agenda that could better account for these realities.

Management consultants and their moral standards and behaviour have been questioned and caricatured, but it is not sufficiently appreciated that they frequently have to operate in situations which are characterized by ambiguity, ignorance, uncertainty and sensitivity and they cannot always simply apply ethical rules in cooperating with their clients. In addition, more attention should be given to the ethics of the client, and “dual ethics” should be a joint concern. Research among consultants and clients has identified several ethical dilemmas frequently (...) experienced by consultants which are explained and explored. Dr Poulfelt is Associate Professor of Management at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, Blaagaardsgade 23 B, DK‐2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark. (shrink)

Certain critics, e.g. Manfred Frank and Hans-Herbert Kögler, claim that Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics reduces the individual subject to a mere instrument of history and tradition, the latter reproducing themselves through the subject. However, Gadamer also emphasizes the active role of the subject in shaping and creating history and tradition. In this article I argue that the critics mistakenly emphasize a one-sided conception of history. By incorporating both active and passive aspects of the subject, Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics provides the means (...) by which the individual may be conceived more aptly in an interdependent, dialectical relation to their corresponding historical, cultural, and social context. (shrink)

Based on a dataset of more than 5,000 contentious collective actions from 1700-2000, this paper examines the relation between popular protest and democratization of the Danish political system. The first wave of protests began in the 1830s and culminated in 1848 with the fall of absolutism and the transition to constitutional monarchy. The next protest wave from 1885 to 1887 arose from the so-called ‘constitutional struggle’ and mobilized hundreds of thousands of ordinary Danes, and contributed to the parliamentarization and nationalization (...) of the political system. The third wave unfolded around the end of World War II, while the hitherto last wave of popular struggle erupted in 1968 with the youth rebellion. The analysis show that ‘democracy’ was the central issue of contention in all four of these protest waves, and support the main thesis that periods of intense interaction between popular protest and the state have had a decisive formative influence on the genesis and further development of Danish democracy. (shrink)

Tinguelys gesamtes Œuvre scheint vom Vanitas-Motiv grundiert: seine sinnlosen Maschinen aus Schrott, sich selbst vernichtenden, ephemeren Artefakte, die in Form von Flügelaltären stattfindende Auseinandersetzung mit dem Tod und erst recht der eine barocke Tragikomödie referierende Cenodoxus. Dass dieser Eindruck trügt, zeigt sich sobald das scheinbar Evidente mit den frühneuzeitlichen Spielarten der Vanitas konfrontiert wird. Dennoch adaptiert und inszeniert Tinguely das Motiv mit dem melancholischen Gestus des seines Heilshorizonts verlustig gegangenen Subjekts.

"First Published in 1999, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.".

Argues for the primacy of the phylogenetic system as the general reference system in biology. This book, first published in 1966, generated significant controversy and opened possibilities for evolutionary biology.

From an informal group of a dozen faculty and graduate students at Temple University, the Jean Piaget Society grew in seven years to 500 members who have interests in the application of genetic epistemology to their own disciplines and professions. At the outset Piaget endorsed the concept of a society which bore his name and presented a major address on equilibration at the society's first symposium in May, 1971. Had he not done so the society would no doubt have remained (...) a small parochial group, like so many others throughout the country, interested in Piaget and his theory. With the encouragement of Genevans and the leadership of its first four presidents, Lois Macomber, Barbara Press eisen, Marilyn Appel, and John Mickelson, the society undertook a number of programs to collect and disseminate the results of scholarly work in genetic epistemology. Particular emphasis was placed upon applications of Piaget's theory to developmental psychology, philos ophy, and education. One of these programs was the publication of an annual series on the development of knowing, of which this volume is the first. In 1973, the society asked Hans Furth with the assistance of Willis Overton and Jeanette Gallagher to initiate and plan a series of yearbooks with the result that in addition to this volume, a second volume on education was commissioned, and a third one on the decalage issue was planned. (shrink)

Ethicists regularly turn to virtue in order to negotiate features of climate change that seem to overwhelm moral agency. Appeals to virtue in climate ethics differ by how they connect individual flourishing with collective responsibilities and by how they interpret Anthropocene relations. Differences between accounts of climate virtue help critique proposals to reframe global ecological problems in terms of resilience and planetary stewardship, the intelligibility of which depends on connecting what would be good for the species with what would be (...) good for an individual life. A pragmatic way of establishing that connection may need a strong role for respect of nature. (shrink)

From an informal group of a dozen faculty and graduate students at Temple University, the Jean Piaget Society grew in seven years to 500 members who have interests in the application of genetic epistemology to their own disciplines and professions. At the outset Piaget endorsed the concept of a society which bore his name and presented a major address on equilibration at the society's first symposium in May, 1971. Had he not done so the society would no doubt have remained (...) a small parochial group, like so many others throughout the country, interested in Piaget and his theory. With the encouragement of Genevans and the leadership of its first four presidents, Lois Macomber, Barbara Press eisen, Marilyn Appel, and John Mickelson, the society undertook a number of programs to collect and disseminate the results of scholarly work in genetic epistemology. Particular emphasis was placed upon applications of Piaget's theory to developmental psychology, philos ophy, and education. One of these programs was the publication of an annual series on the development of knowing, of which this volume is the first. In 1973, the society asked Hans Furth with the assistance of Willis Overton and Jeanette Gallagher to initiate and plan a series of yearbooks with the result that in addition to this volume, a second volume on education was commissioned, and a third one on the decalage issue was planned. (shrink)

The fields of environmental ethics and of religion and ecology have been shaped by Lynn White Jr.'s thesis that the roots of ecological crisis lie in religious cosmology. Independent critical movements in both fields, however, now question this methodological legacy and argue for alternative ways of inquiry. For religious ethics, the twin controversies cast doubt on prevailing ways of connecting environmental problems to religious deliberations because the criticisms raise questions about what counts as an environmental problem, how religious traditions change, (...) and whether ethicists should approach problems and traditions with reformist commitments. This article examines the critiques of White's legacy and presents a pluralist alternative that focuses religious ethics on the contextual strategies produced by moral communities as they confront environmental problems. (shrink)

In this study, we argue that contemporary nursing care has been overtaken by new public management strategies aimed at curtailing budgets in the public hospital sector in Australia. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 15 nurses from one public acute hospital with supporting documentary evidence, we demonstrate what happens to nursing work when management imposesroundingas a risk reduction strategy. In the case study outlined rounding was introduced across all wards in response to missed care, which in turn arose as a result (...) of work intensification produced by efficiency, productivity, effectiveness and accountability demands. Rounding is a commercially sponsored practice consistent with new public management. Our study illustrates the impact that new public management strategies such as rounding have on how nurses work, both in terms of work intensity and in who controls their labour. (shrink)

Ethics in the anthropocene -- Atmospheric powers: climate change and moral incompetence -- Christian ethics and unprecedented problems -- Global ethics: moral pluralism and planetary problems -- Sustainability science and the ethics of wicked problems -- Toxic wombs and the ecology of justice -- Impoverishment and the economy of desire -- Intergenerational risk and the future of love -- Sustaining grace.

Laudato si' attempts simultaneously to disrupt prevailing global environmental discourse and to reorient central concepts in Catholic moral tradition by requalifying the meaning of dominion and by ecologically expanding human dignity. The image of Earth crying out to humans from within a kinship relation plays a central role in both arguments. However, the political consequences of those shifts remain vague because the “voice” of Earth remains silent in crucial loci of the encyclical's argument.

Within the context of employee rights and management social responsibility, this paper identifies and explores three ethical dimensions of downsizing. Using ANOVA and Scheffe post-hoc statistical techniques, groups involved in the downsizing decision making process were compared with groups affected by the process on each ethical dimension. Results indicated that those affected by the process attached greater ethical significance to these dimensions than those who were involved in formulating and implementing/communicating downsizing decisions.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Descartes's Conception of Perfect Knowledge WILLIS DONEY IN THEFIFTHMEDITATION, after presenting his a priori argument for the existence of God, Descartes compares the certainty of his conclusion with the c~rtainty of conclusions of mathematical demonstrations. In stating the view that Descartes expresses here, I shall use letters: D for the conclusion of his a priori argument, ttamely, that there is a God, and R for an example that he (...) gives of a conclusion that he has reached in mathematics, that is, the proposition that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. Concerning the certainty of D and R, he maintains in the Fifth Meditation that he is as certain of D as of "anything else that seems most certain," implying that D is for him as cea-tain as R; and he goes on to make what is clearly intended to be a stronger claim: I also observe that the certainty of other things so depends on this that without it nothing can ever be perfectly known,x This claim is repeated, by way of a conclusion, in the next to the last sentence of the Meditation: And so I clearly see that the certainty and truth of all knowledge depends on an apprehension of the true God, in such a fashion that, before I knew him, I could have no perfect knowledge of anything else.2 i AT VII, 69; HR I, 183. "AT" stands for the edition of Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, (Euvres de Descartes (Paris: L~.opold Cerf, 1897-1913); "'HR" for the English translation by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, The Philosophical Works of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931). In quotations I have departed from HR to avoid infeficities or inaccuracies. The Latin locution translated "perfec0y known" is perfecte sciri; in the French translation, sfauoir parfaitement is used (AT IX, 55). This is the first occurrence of this locution in the Meditations. 2 AT VII, 71; HR I, 185. The Latin locution in the last clause is perfecte scire; the F~-ench is, again, s~auoir parfaitement (AT IX, 56). In HR there is vacillation in the translation of scientia. In these passages in the Fifth Meditation, scientia and cognitio are both rendered "knowledge"; whereas, in the Replies to the Second Set of Obj~cttons, vera scientia is "true science" (AT VII, 141; HR II, 39). For scientiae certitudinem & veritatem, I have used "certainty and truth of knowledge," and "apprehension of the true God" for veri dei cognitione. [3S7] 388 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY In these sentences, Descartes does not limit his claims about certainty and perfect knowledge to propositions Like R, and one of his contemporaries, taking him to be asserting that, unless a person has knowledge of God's existence, he cannot be certain of anything else, raised the objection that, earlier in the Meditations, Descartes claimed to be certain of his own existence as a thinking thing prior to having proved the existence of God) In his reply, Descartes accused his critic of misreading what he had written in the Fifth Meditation. The claim that he made there was not about all propositions---about principles and evident propositions, such as ego cogito, ergo sum and sum res eogitans, as well as propositions like Rmbut specificaUy and exclusively about propositions like R.* Whether, when confronted with his critic's objection, Descartes retracted or modified a view expressed in the Meditations is a question on which sides have been taken. In my paper I have something to say about this question, but I shall be concerned primarily with a problem of interpretation that arises whether or not we take Descartes at his word; that is, whether we take the claim that he makes in the Fifth Meditation to be exclusively about propositions like R or, contrary to Descartes's reply to his critic, to be about other propositions as well. The problem arises when we try to make sense of what he says in the Fifth Meditation in support of this claim. In the first part of my paper, I shall pose the problem, pointing out that, on a very tempting and prima facie... (shrink)