The standard interpretation of hume's ethical theory maintains that sympathy is merely an empirical feature of motivation and ethics. This article argues for an alternative interpretation according to which sympathy is a necessary feature of practical reasoning. Hence, It is impossible to deny that we have altruistic reasons, Because such a denial requires adopting a particular perspective which reveals inexorably the existence of such reasons. What this entails is that hume's ethical theory includes an argument rendering skepticism about altruism unintelligible.

Federalism as balance between the federal government and the states is a deeply entrenched principle of American constitutional law. Without the idea of balance or some replacement concept, judges and constitutional scholars seem incapable of conceptualizing federalism and resolving federalist conflicts. The thesis of the Article is that federalism as balance must be reexamined to assess whether it is jurisprudentially sound. For this purpose, the Article introduces a framework for understanding balancing discourse generally. Upon examination, federalism as balance does not (...) satisfy the requirements articulated by this framework. The result is that this conception has no discernible content and therefore can play no identifiable analytic role in either conceptualizing or resolving federalist conflicts. The failure of federalism as balance to be an analytically sound element in understanding federalism is an additional reason for reexamining the political safeguards argument for enforcing federalism. Without sufficient analytic content, federalism as balance is merely a rhetorical device which legislators can use just as well or as poorly as judges. (shrink)

This article explores the relations among and between intimacy, psychotherapeutic relationships and moral advice. The article concludes that a psychotherapeutic relationship is not usefully explained in terms of intimacy. Instead, a psychiatric relationship is a form of moral advice, and it is this dimension of a psychotherapeutic relationship as a form of moral advice that poses a natural limit to the confidentiality necessary for engaging in psychotherapy.

This article formulates a progressive conception of communitarian democracy which rests upon the distinction between deliberative and dedicated conceptions of community. Deliberative communities seek fallibilistic change through a non-Enlightenment conception of practical reason. According to this pragmatist conception of practical reason, members of deliberative communities jointly attempt to formulate political truth independently of any a priori or non-deliberative standards of the right and the good. By contrast, dedicated communities seek what they regard as the truth about reality and insist upon (...) adhering to those cultural and social givens of their society which express this truth. The distinction between deliberative and dedicated communities is relevant to the debate between liberalism and communitarianism. Rather than viewing this debate as one between those who value community and those who do not, it is better understood as a controversy over the appropriate kind of community. Typically, liberals seek deliberative communities, while communitarians seek dedicated ones. However, a person committed to deliberativism as the method of social change can also regard deliberativism as defining a certain conception of community and the conception of the persons who are its members. Consequently, in this view, almost every serious person is a communitarian, but some people are deliberative communitarians while others are dedicated communitarians. Communitarian democracy is an attempt to describe a deliberative community. Communitarian democrats seek freedom, equality, and solidarity for the purpose of devising joint solutions to social problems. In order to achieve this, communitarian democrats devise a civic discourse shorn of dedicated features, which values each citizen equally as a member of the community. This has implication for at least three conflicts in political and constitutional affairs. Since no irreducibly dedicated premises are possible in this civic discourse, dedicated arguments are impossible without translation into deliberative terms. This implies a particular conclusion to the debate about religion in the public square, namely, that dedicated religious discourse must be translated into its deliberative counterpart, if it has one, before its proponents may use it in public justification. (The article pays close attention to Michael Perry?s work concerning the role of religion in the public square.) Similarly, concerning multicultural conceptions of the right and the good, communitarian democrats can accept only those multicultural conceptions translatable into deliberative discourse. And, finally, communitarian democrats must guard against constitutional atrophy, the process by which initially deliberative structures become dedicated through lack of vigilance, criticism, and challenge. In a communitarian democracy, atrophied deliberative structures may be just as inefficient and unfair as some decidedly dedicated structures and must be similarly avoided. (shrink)

Judicial activism is in serious, though undeserved, trouble. The current impasse over its role in constitutional discourse pits two opposed positions committed to different paradigms of judicial activism against one another. One side condemns activist judges for engaging in ultra vires adjudication by reading their idiosyncratic values into the Constitution. In this view, the charge of judicial activism has significant content and should be deployed to restrain renegade judges. The other side insists that calling someone a "judicial activist" has only (...) emotive content and is used merely as an empty epithet denouncing judges with whom one disagrees. This Article redirects the controversy over judicial activism by distinguishing between two different, but interrelated, levels of constitutional discourse: the surface level and the deep level. The problem of judicial activism exists on the surface level of constitutional discourse and will remain irresolvable on that level. However, once we attend to the deep level of constitutional discourse, the role of judicial activism becomes clear. The presence of judicial activism on the surface structure of constitutional discourse reveals on the deep structure reasonable disagreement over the meaning of key constitutional provisions. The idea of "reasonable disagreement" is profitably explicated by combining what social theorist W.B. Gallie called "essentially contested concepts" with the political philosopher John Rawls' important categorization of "the burdens of judgment." These obstacles to rational consensus are endemic to a republican democracy. Consequently, reasonable disagreement over key constitutional provisions should not be regarded negatively; it is an inevitable and positive feature of any society championing liberty, equality, and pluralism. However, the inevitability and desirability of reasonable disagreement has institutional consequences for constitutional review. When reasonable disagreement is inevitable, legislatures, not courts should have the last word on constitutional meaning. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of a paper by Robert Lipkin [1]. Arguments for the following claims are put forward: (1) that what is essential to the psychiatric relationship is what we want it to be for utilitarian reasons; (2) it would not be to our advantage to allow the medicalization of morality; (3) what we should expect from the psychiatrist is prudential advice, not moral advice, and that Lipkin has a confused view about the relationship between (...) these two areas; and (4) we should not allow the psychiatrist to restrict individuals on moral grounds, but only on public safety grounds. (shrink)

Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions (...) is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)

A sourcebook for developing and facilitating collaborative groups capable of continuously adapting to anticipate the evolving learning needs of students. Based on a theoretical foundation of schools as complex systems in which linear management models are no longer sufficient.

Classical American pragmatism: the pragmatist -- Enlightenment-and its problematic semantics -- Analyzing pragmatism: pragmatics and pragmatisms -- A Kantian rationalist pragmatism: pragmatism -- Inferentialism, and modality in Sellars's arguments against -- Empiricism -- Linguistic pragmatism and pragmatism about norms: an arc of -- Thought from Rorty's eliminative materialism to his pragmatism -- Vocabularies of pragmatism: synthesizing naturalism and -- Historicism -- Towards an analytic pragmatism: meaning-use analysis -- Pragmatism, expressivism, and anti-representationalism: -- Local and global possibilities.

Develops a theory of culture based on a metaphysics that elaborates on the Platonic and Confucian traditions. In Metaphysics of Goodness, Robert Cummings Neville extends Alfred North Whitehead’s project of cultural studies, which was based on a new metaphysics that Whitehead developed in Adventures of Ideas. Neville’s focus is value or goodness in many modes. The metaphysics treated in this book derive from the Platonic and Confucian traditions, with significant modifications of Whitehead, Peirce, Dewey, Confucius, Xunzi, and Zhou Dunyi. (...) Part one develops a theory of form based on a metaphysics of harmony. Part two elaborates a theory of art based on a metaphysics of beauty. Part three sketches a theory of personhood based on a metaphysics of obligation. Part four discusses civilization in a systematic way based on a metaphysics of flourishing. Throughout the book, Neville elaborates a theory of interpretation that is inspired by Peirce, Dewey, and Xunzi but is not limited to their ideas. While the reasoning of the book is concise, it employs methodologies from many kinds of philosophy, art criticism, ethics, and cultural studies, and sees philosophy as needing to learn from all these disciplines. “Neville’s work is informed by a lifelong engagement with the most important philosophers in history, including Plato, Aristotle, Whitehead, and Dewey. Here, he offers an important argument that there is beauty not only in how people see the world, but also in the world itself.” — Kevin Schilbrack, Appalachian State University. (shrink)

Is business ethics a contradiction in terms? Absolutely not, says Robert Solomon. In fact, he maintains that sound ethics is a necessary precondition of any long-term business enterprise, and that excellence in business must exist on the foundation of values that most of us hold dear. Drawing on twenty years of experience consulting with major corporations on ethics, Solomon clarifies the difficult ethical choices all people in business are faced with from time to time. He takes an "Aristotelian" approach (...) to ethical questions, reminding readers that a corporation--like an individual--is embedded in a community, and that corporate values such as fairness and honesty are meaningless until transformed into action. Values--coupled with action--become virtues, and virtues make possible any good business corporate relationship. Without a base of shared values, trust and mutual benefits, today's national and international business world will fall apart. In keeping with his conviction that virtue and profit must thrive together, Solomon both examines the ways in which deficient values actually destroy businesses, and debunks the pervasive myths that encourage unethical business practices. Complete with a working catalog of virtues designed to illustrate the importance of integrity in any business situation, this compelling handbook contains a goldmine of wisdom for either the small business manager or the corporate executive struggling with ethical issues. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper is a preliminary attempt to better understand the concept of legitimacy in stakeholder theory. The normative component of stakeholder theory plays a central role in the concept of legitimacy. Though the elaboration of legitimacy contained herein applies generally to all “normative cores” this paper relies on Phillips’s principle of stakeholder fairness and therefore begins with a brief description of this work. This is followed by a discussion of the importance of legitimacy to stakeholder theory as well as the (...) general ambiguity of the term. A distinction is then drawn between normative and derivative legitimacy. Reference to this distinction helps distinguish between a relationship with the organization based on direct moral obligation and one based on the power to help or harm the organization. It is concluded that stakeholders who retain the ability to affect the organization arelegitimate(derivatively), but that this legitimacy is derived from the moral obligation owed other (normative) stakeholders and that the two sorts of legitimacy are importantly different from one another. An example of the normative/derivative distinction at work in managerial decision making is elaborated upon and managerial and research implications are then suggested. (shrink)

Abstract:Should the responsibilities of business managers be understood independently of the social circumstances and “market forces” that surround them, or (in accord with empiricism and the social sciences) are agents and their choices shaped by their circumstances, free only insofar as they act in accordance with antecedently established dispositions, their “character”? Virtue ethics, of which I consider myself a proponent, shares with empiricism this emphasis on character as well as an affinity with the social sciences. But recent criticisms of both (...) empiricist and virtue ethical accounts of character deny even this apparent compromise between agency and environment. Here is an account of character that emphasizes dynamic interaction both in the formation and in the interplay between personal agency and responsibility on the one hand and social pressures and the environment on the other. (shrink)

The "object theoretic operational view" suggests a new structure of physical knowledge. This view takes branches of physics as basic units. Its main concepts are primary (PIO) and secondary (SIO) ideal objects with the explicit definition of SIO through PIO and the implicit definition of PIOs within appropriate systems of statements, called a "nucleus of a branch of physics" (NBP). Within an NBP (which has a definite structure) the focus shifts from discovering "laws of nature" to definition of a physical (...) object (system) and its states, and the distinct notion "measurable" replaces the vague notion "observable". On this basis the roles of physical models and measurements within physics, as well as two types (PIO- and SIO- type) of theories, activity, and experiment are discussed, and a different junction of "realism” and "constructivism" is presented. (shrink)

Our aim is to point out the role of scientific research in contemporary technological developments. Interactions between science and technology in the context of application-driven research projects of the 20th century are discussed. We define science and technology as two separate domains, and provide elementary models for their interaction by the means of applied and engineering sciences. These elementary models constitute linear and cascade models of science-technology interaction. We apply these elementary models for the purpose of further methodological analysis of (...) Soviet nuclear warfare project. The special role of organization and management in research and development activities is being emphasized. The new science-technology interaction model is devised in the course of nuclear project. This new interaction model is referred as non-linear or spiral. The model is seen as more collaborative and risk aware than linear and cascade interaction models present in twentieth century. The conclusion is the new model was of great impact to modern social forms in which research is carried out in the present. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the conceptual changes that occurred in the structure of physical knowledge during the second half of the 19th century, are reflected by the concept of the “primary ideal object” and its implicit definition within appropriate systems of statements, called a “nucleus of a branch of physics”. Within an NBP focus shifts away from discovering “laws of nature” to observations of a physical object and its states, while the distinct notion of “measurable” replaces the vague (...) notion “observable”. On the basis of this notion, the roles of physical models and measurements within physics, different kinds of work, experiments, and laws are discussed. Next follows a discussion of different levels of change in science, after which this distinction is compared to Kuhn’s model. Finally, I present a new combination of “realism” and “constructivism”, which differs from both the “constructive empiricism” of van Fraassen and from different “empirical realisms”. (shrink)

The literature on theoretical reason has been dominated by epistemological concerns, treatments of practical reason by ethical concerns. This book overcomes the limitations of dealing with each separately. It sets out a comprehensive theory of rationality applicable to both practical and theoretical reason. In both domains, Audi explains how experience grounds rationality, delineates the structure of central elements, and attacks the egocentric conception of rationality. He establishes the rationality of altruism and thereby supports major moral principles. The concluding part describes (...) the pluralism and relativity his conception of rationality accommodates and, taking the unified account of theoretical and practical rationality in that light, constructs a theory of global rationality--the overall rationality of persons. Rich in narrative examples, intriguing analogies, and intuitively appealing arguments, this beautifully crafted book will spur advances in ethics and epistemology as well in philosophy of mind and action and the theory of rationality itself. (shrink)

A subtle and distinguished work by a philosopher renowned for his groundbreaking analysis of human emotions, About Love.

In “The Sources of Knowledge,” Robert Audi distinguishes what he calls the “four standard basic sources” by which we acquire knowledge or justified belief: perception, memory, consciousness, and reason. With the exception of memory, he distinguishes each of the above as a basic source of knowledge. Audi contrasts basic sources with nonbasic sources, concentrating on testimony. After clarifying the relationship between a source and a ground, or “what it is in virtue of which one knows or justifiedly believes,” Audi (...) evaluates the basic sources’ individual and collective autonomy as well as their vulnerability to defeasibility. He also examines the relationship of coherence to knowledge and justification, noting the distinction between a negative dependence on incoherence and a positive dependence on coherence. (shrink)

Looks at accounts by Locke, Fodor, Dretske, and Millikan concerning the nature of mental representation, and discusses connectionism and representation.

Robert Batterman examines a form of scientific reasoning called asymptotic reasoning, arguing that it has important consequences for our understanding of the scientific process as a whole. He maintains that asymptotic reasoning is essential for explaining what physicists call universal behavior. With clarity and rigor, he simplifies complex questions about universal behavior, demonstrating a profound understanding of the underlying structures that ground them. This book introduces a valuable new method that is certain to fill explanatory gaps across disciplines.

"This is an important new Cummins work.