This study uses secondary data to explore language dynamics in interpersonal communication for interpersonal relationships in Africa. Specifically, it looks at how the African society thrives in the use of this form of communication for the preservation of its culture and values and concludes that for these reasons interpersonal communication will continue to remain an intrinsic part of the African life and society.

This study uses secondary data to examine Obiora’s education ethics vis-à-vis the higher education system in Nigeria. The discourse centered on government educational agencies such as the National Universities Commission (NUC); National Board for Technical Education (NBTE); National Commis-sion for Colleges of Education (NCCE) and Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and their roles in the management of the educational system in Nigeria. The study further highlights the ethical lapses in the tertiary education system in Nigeria. The researcher suggests that, the (...) government should encourage private ownership of tertiary institutions, while the government through its agencies supervises them. (shrink)

The Puṣṭipravāhamaryādābheda (PPM) by Vallabhācārya (1479–1531?) is a brief work (25 verses) written in Sanskrit in about the year 1500, which is accompanied by four Sanskrit commentaries and one Hindi (Brajbhāṣạ) commentary. The most important and authoritative commentary is by Puruṣottama, written about two centuries after the original text. The article contains a translation of the PPM with long extracts from the commentaries, particularly the one composed by Puruṣottama. After an introduction placing the PPM’s doctrine of the hierarchy of embodied (...) souls (jīvas) and their eligibility to obtain states of devotion (bhakti) in a wider context of Vaiṣṇava sectarian and philosophical schools, the text is presented along with the translation and notes to the text (including extracts from the commentaries). The article concludes with reflections on the PPM’s doctrine of predestination, comparing it with those of other Indian religious sects and within the wider context of predestination in Western religions, where these discussions have been ongoing for more than 1500 years. An extensive bibliography is included at the end. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“The Blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven Will See the Punishments of the Damned So That Their Bliss May Be More Delightful to Them”: Nietzsche and AquinasJames Lehrberger O.Cist.NO DECENT HUMAN BEING can read those words of St. Thomas Aquinas, which Frederick Nietzsche quotes in On the Genealogy of Morals1 (GM) without feeling horror, shock, and disgust: “‘The blessed in the kingdom of heaven,’ he [Aquinas] (...) says meek as a lamb, ‘will see the [End Page 425] punishments of the damned so that their bliss might be more pleasing to them.’” Nietzsche scholars regularly notice and comment on this passage from the Summa theologiae.2 The typical gloss takes it to show the spirit of hatred that lies at the heart of Aquinas’s Christianity. Thus Walter Kaufmann reads the quotation as showing how the Christian faith enables its adherents “to indulge their lust for revenge by hoping for the eternal torture and destruction of their persecutors.”3 Weaver Santinello echoes this sentiment when she claims that “‘the great teacher and saint [Aquinas]’ had a ‘bloodthirsty vision of Hell.’”4 Even so sensitive a Christian as Merold Westphal reads Nietzsche’s Aquinas in this way. “[I]t is hard to deny that the spirit of resentment and longing for vengeance burns hot in these passages... in them the final judgment makes the Final Solution seem almost moderate.”5 Similar comments and observations so abound in the scholarship that they form a virtual consensus on this Summa passage’s teaching.6This proliferation of such statements on Aquinas’s meaning, however, contrasts sharply with the absence of careful analyses [End Page 426] of the passage. I do not know, in fact, of a single article, book chapter, or study that takes Nietzsche’s quotation of Aquinas for its theme. More generally, despite the vast literature on Nietzsche and Christianity, comparative studies of Nietzsche and Aquinas are rare.7 The absence of substantive studies on the Genealogy’s use of the Aquinas quotation is doubly unfortunate. First, it silences or at least muffles the voice of Nietzsche. He cites Aquinas’s text in the specific context of Treatise I of the Genealogy. The quotation reveals the full meaning that Nietzsche intended it to convey only when it is read in that context. Second, it obscures and distorts the thought of Aquinas: the quotation must be read in its own context in the Summa theologiae to grasp the teaching that Aquinas intended his words to express.In light of Aquinas’s importance as a Christian theologian and the crucial role he plays in the Genealogy’s critique of moral values, I intend to examine Nietzsche’s presentation of this text. Careful study of this matter can shed light on a key question which has long been discussed and debated: Is Nietzsche’s account of Christianity as life-inimical rooted in an extraordinarily perceptive reading of the Christian psyche? Or is it based, rather, on a profound misunderstanding of that psyche? I will argue for two points: (1) that Nietzsche has utterly misconstrued Aquinas’s teaching; and (2) that Aquinas’s Christian morality, far from being life-inimical, is life-affirming. [End Page 427] More specifically, I will show not only that Aquinas is completely free from the hatred, envy, and vengefulness that Nietzsche attributes to him, but also that the virtues and beliefs he embraces, such as meekness, mercy, and divine justice, are strong and supportive of human flourishing.I will proceed in the following steps. First, I will investigate Nietzsche’s understanding of the Aquinas quotation in terms of the role it plays in the Genealogy’s First Treatise. As already noted, recognizing Nietzsche’s purpose in quoting Aquinas requires understanding the objections he develops to Christianity throughout that Treatise. Hence I will highlight the principal criticisms of Aquinas’s Christianity found there. Second, I will analyze the quotation from Aquinas in its own context in the Summa theologiae. Lastly, I will compare and contrast Nietzsche and Aquinas in terms of those issues which the quoted passage has brought to the fore. Nietzsche’s take on Aquinas, however, is the only question I will address. I do not... (shrink)

That about sums up what is wrong with Clark's view.

This article examines two arguments that a worship-worthy agent cannot command worship. The first argument is based on the idea that any agent who commands worship is egotistical, and hence not worship-worthy. The second argument is based on Campbell Brown and Yujin Nagasawa's (2005) idea that people cannot comply with the command to worship because if people are offering genuine worship, they cannot be motivated by a command to do so. One might then argue that a worship-worthy agent would have (...) no reason to issue a command to worship. I argue that both these arguments fail. (shrink)

Religious disagreements are widespread. Some philosophers have argued that religious disagreements call for religious skepticism, or a revision of one’s religious beliefs. In order to figure out the epistemic significance of religious disagreements, two questions need to be answered. First, what kind of disagreements are religious disagreements? Second, how should one respond to such disagreements? In this paper, I argue that many religious disagreements are cases of unconfirmed superiority disagreements, where parties have good reason to think they are not epistemic (...) peers, yet they lack good reason to determine who is superior. Such disagreements have been left relatively unexplored. I then argue that in cases of unconfirmed superiority disagreements, disputants can remain relatively steadfast in holding to their beliefs. Hence, we can remain relatively steadfast in our beliefs in such cases of religious disagreements. (shrink)

Hegel is one of the major philosophers of the nineteenth century. Many of the major philosophical movements of the twentieth century - from existentialism to analytic philosophy - grew out of reactions against Hegel. He is also one of the hardest philosophers to understand and his complex ideas, though rewarding, are often misunderstood. In this magisterial and lucid introduction, Frederick Beiser covers every major aspect of Hegel's thought. He places Hegel in the historical context of nineteenth-century Germany whilst clarifying (...) the deep insights and originality of Hegel's philosophy. A masterpiece of clarity and scholarship, _Hegel_ is both the ideal starting point for those coming to Hegel for the first time and essential reading for any student or scholar of nineteenth century philosophy. Additional features: glossary chapter summaries chronology annotated further reading. (shrink)

Neo-Kantianism was an important movement in German philosophy of the late 19th century: Frederick Beiser traces its development back to the late 18th century, and explains its rise as a response to three major developments in German culture: the collapse of speculative idealism; the materialism controversy; and the identity crisis of philosophy.

Frederick C. Beiser presents the first book to be written on two of the most important idealist philosophers in Germany after Hegel: Adolf Trendelenburg and Rudolf Lotze. Beiser addresses every aspect of their philosophy-- logic, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics--and traces their intellectual development from their youth until their death.

Weltschmerz is a study of the pessimism that dominated German philosophy in the second half of the nineteenth century. Pessimism was essentially the theory that life is not worth living, and was introduced into German philosophy by Schopenhauer. Frederick C. Beiser examines the intense and long controversy that arose from Schopenhauer's pessimism, which changed the agenda of philosophy in Germany away from the logic of the sciences and toward an examination of the value of life. He examines the major (...) defenders of pessimism and its chief critics, especially Eugen Dühring and the neo-Kantians. The pessimism dispute of the second half of the century has been largely ignored in secondary literature and this book is a first attempt since the 1880s to re-examine it and to analyze the important philosophical issues raised by it. The dispute concerned the most fundamental philosophical issue of them all: whether life is worth living. (shrink)

This paper traces the application of information theory to philosophical problems of mind and meaning from the earliest days of the creation of the mathematical theory of communication. The use of information theory to understand purposive behavior, learning, pattern recognition, and more marked the beginning of the naturalization of mind and meaning. From the inception of information theory, Wiener, Turing, and others began trying to show how to make a mind from informational and computational materials. Over the last 50 years, (...) many philosophers saw different aspects of the naturalization of the mind, though few saw at once all of the pieces of the puzzle that we now know. Starting with Norbert Wiener himself, philosophers and information theorists used concepts from information theory to understand cognition. This paper provides a window on the historical sequence of contributions made to the overall project of naturalizing the mind by philosophers from Shannon, Wiener, and MacKay, to Dennett, Sayre, Dretske, Fodor, and Perry, among others. At some time between 1928 and 1948, American engineers and mathematicians began to talk about `Theory of Information' and `Information Theory,' understanding by these terms approximately and vaguely a theory for which Hartley's `amount of information' is a basic concept. I have been unable to find out when and by whom these names were first used. Hartley himself does not use them nor does he employ the term `Theory of Transmission of Information,' from which the two other shorter terms presumably were derived. It seems that Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon were using them in the Mid-Forties. (shrink)

This paper examines the moral arguments for and against employees' blowing the whistle on illegal or immoral actions of their employers. It asks whether such professional dissidents are justified in disclosing wrongdoing by others while concealing their own identity. Part I examines the concept of anonymity, distinguishing it from two similar concepts — secrecy and privacy. Part II analyzes the concept of whistleblowing using recent definitions by Bok, Bowie and De George. Various arguments against anonymous whistleblowing are identified and evaluated. (...) The author concludes with a defense of the practice in terms of social benefits — primarily the redressing of wrongdoing. (shrink)

A great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to the function- al roles of intentions in intentional action. In this paper we sketch and defend a position on this issue while attacking a provocative alternative. Our position has its roots in a cybernetic theory of purposive behavior and is only part of the larger task of understanding all goal-directed behavior. Indeed, a unified model of goal-directed behavior, with appropriate modifications for different types of systems, is a long-range (...) ambition. (shrink)

The Early Romantics met resistance from artists and academics alike in part because they defied the conventional wisdom that philosophy and the arts must be kept separate. Indeed, as the literary component of Romanticism has been studied and celebrated in recent years, its philosophical aspect has receded from view. This book, by one of the most respected scholars of the Romantic era, offers an explanation of Romanticism that not only restores but enhances understanding of the movement's origins, development, aims, and (...) accomplishments--and of its continuing relevance. Poetry is in fact the general ideal of the Romantics, Frederick Beiser tells us, but only if poetry is understood not just narrowly as poems but more broadly as things made by humans. Seen in this way, poetry becomes a revolutionary ideal that demanded--and still demands--that we transform not only literature and criticism but all the arts and sciences, that we break down the barriers between art and life, so that the world itself becomes "romanticized." Romanticism, in the view Beiser opens to us, does not conform to the contemporary division of labor in our universities and colleges; it requires a multifaceted approach of just the sort outlined in this book. (shrink)

The Sovereignty of Reason is a survey of the rule of faith controversy in seventeenth-century England. It examines the arguments by which reason eventually became the sovereign standard of truth in religion and politics, and how it triumphed over its rivals: Scripture, inspiration, and apostolic tradition. Frederick Beiser argues that the main threat to the authority of reason in seventeenth-century England came not only from dissident groups but chiefly from the Protestant theology of the Church of England. The triumph (...) of reason was the result of a new theology rather than the development of natural philosophy, which upheld the orthodox Protestant dualism between the heavenly and earthly. Rationalism arose from a break with the traditional Protestant answers to problems of salvation, ecclesiastical polity, and the true faith. Although the early English rationalists were not able to defend all their claims on behalf of reason, they developed a moral and pragmatic defense of reason that is still of interest today. Beiser's book is a detailed examination of some neglected figures of early modern philosophy, who were crucial in the development of modern rationalism. There are chapters devoted to Richard Hooker, the Great Tew Circle, the Cambridge Platonists, the early ethical rationalists, and the free-thinkers John Toland and Anthony Collins. (shrink)

That no member of a natural kind can switch kinds is a consequence of David Wiggins’ view that the identity conditions for such things are given by the natural kind itself. If dog is a natural kind, then dogs must be dogs and one dog cannot ‘turn into’ something else, say, by gradually ‘becoming’ a mass of tissue (as Marjorie Price had held). Were such a transition to involve the persistence of the same thing, then the thing in question would (...) comply with conditions of identity not restricted to dogs. To provide for such transitions James Baillie suggests alternative conditions of identity, based on Andrew Brennan’s notion of ‘survival’ (itself borrowed from Parfit). Survival requires that the earlier thing be ‘structurally similar to’, and ‘play a significant and direct role in the production of’ the later thing (sufficiency is gained if, in addition, they are composed of the same kind of matter). Unlike identity, however, survival is what Wiggins calls a ‘branching’ relation, capable of linking a single thing with two or more equal ‘competitors’ (as apparently happens in cases of brain fission). To provide conditions of identity per se, Baillie follows Parfit, who claimed that our identity is preserved by psychological continuity when there is no branching. Members of natural kinds, such as dogs, are now said to be reidentifiable over time by the relation of non-branching survival. I argue against this on the ground that we can know when this relation obtains only when we are already able to individuate things by a different sort of relation, such as those associated with natural kinds. (shrink)

This research extends and confirms recent brainwave findings that distinguished an individual’s sense-of-self along an Object-referral/Self-referral Continuum of self-awareness. Subjects were interviewed and were given tests measuring inner/outer orientation, moral reasoning, anxiety, and personality. Scores on the psychological tests were factor analyzed. The first unrotated PCA component of the test scores yielded a “Consciousness Factor,” analogous to the intelligence “g” factor, which accounted for over half of the variance among groups. Analysis of unstructured interviews of these subjects revealed fundamentally different (...) descriptions of self-awareness. Individuals who described themselves in terms of concrete cognitive and behavioral processes exhibited lower Consciousness Factor scores, lower frontal EEG coherence, lower alpha and higher gamma power during tasks, and less efficient cortical preparatory responses . In contrast, individuals who described themselves in terms of an abstract, independent sense-of-self underlying thought, feeling and action exhibited higher Consciousness Factor scores, higher frontal coherence, higher alpha and lower gamma power during tasks, and more efficient cortical responses. These data suggest that definable states of brain activity and subjective experiences exist, in addition to waking, sleeping and dreaming, that may be operationally defined by psychological and physiological measures along a continuum of Object-referral/Self-referral Continuum of self-awareness. (shrink)

Science traditionally is taught as a linear process based on logic and carried out by objective researchers following the scientific method. Practice of science is a far more nuanced enterprise, one in which intuition and passion become just as important as objectivity and logic. Whether the activity is committing to study a particular research problem, drawing conclusions about a hypothesis under investigation, choosing whether to count results as data or experimental noise, or deciding what information to present in a research (...) paper, ethical challenges inevitably will arise because of the ambiguities inherent in practice. Unless these ambiguities are acknowledged and their sources understood explicitly, responsible conduct of science education will not adequately prepare the individuals receiving the training for the kinds of decisions essential to research integrity that they will have to make as scientists. (shrink)

An account of classic problems of moral and political theory—with an emphasis on the views of famous philosophers in history. The book is organized around 10 chapters, each framed as a question: 1) Why Be Moral? 2) What is the Good Life? 3) Is Morality Objective? 4) Can Morality Be Defined? 5) Is It Reasonable to Rely on a Moral System? 6) Why Obey the Law? 7) Are Some Races Intellectually Superior? 8) Is Democracy a Blessing? 9) Is Marxism Still (...) Tenable? and 10) Why Does God Permit Evil? Philosophers discussed include Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Kant, Edmund Burke, Tocqueville, Frederick Douglass, Marx, and Freud. (shrink)

Critics of Divine Command Theory (DCT) argue that DCT implies the following counterpossible is true: If God commanded us to perform a terrible act, then the terrible act would be morally obligatory. However, our intuitions tell us that such a counterpossible is false. Therefore, DCT fails. This is the counterpossible terrible commands objection. In this paper, I argue that the counterpossible terrible commands objection fails. I start by considering a standard response by DCT proponents that appeals to vacuism—the view that (...) all counterpossibles are vacuously true. I argue that DCT proponents should pursue a different response instead. I then go on to provide a new response to the counterpossible terrible commands objection: I argue that we lack reason to think that the counterpossible in question is false by examining the underlying intuitions. (shrink)

1. Do models formulated in programming languages use explicit rules where connectionist models do not? 2. Are rules as found in programming languages hard, precise, and exceptionless, where connectionist rules are not? 3. Do connectionist models use rules operating on distributed representations where models formulated in programming languages do not? 4. Do connectionist models fail to use structure sensitive rules of the sort found in "classical" computer architectures? In this chapter we argue that the answer to each of these questions (...) is negative. (shrink)

The complex structure of the tragic aspects of globalization has been accounted for in extant literature. What remains unclear is how deglobalization, isolationism and all the radically disruptive movements and politics in-between will shape transnational corporations’ organizational practices. The purpose of this study is to interrogate and problematize the implications of anarchic ‘globalisolationism’ vis-à-vis the atlas of insurrection and the TNCs’ global responsibility towards human-centric management practices. We situate our analysis in the heavily politicized and contested discursive space of emergent (...) global geopolitical and environmental tensions and the global quest to reclaim dignity, freedoms, right to resources and decisions—stakeownership. ‘Globalisolationism’ is conceptualized as a radically non-compromising coexistence of globalization and isolationism by design, aided by new information technologies, reactivated mass consciousness and slack political resources. It is characterized by the radical pursuit of new deals within the global geopolitical and economic order; renegotiation of existing deals for resource appropriation and democratic space for the marginalized; the collapse of the old political order via auto-implosion as a beneficial constraint; and the defence of the status quo in global resource and environmental governance due to ‘translocal’ insurrection. Therefore, the paper suggests how TNCs’ current modus operandi could be transformed into responsible human/environment-centric organisational practices to accommodate emerging sociopolitical and environmental challenges. It further highlights the implications for novel game-changing policies and political action by ‘subaltern’ societies and their metamorphosis from victims of planetary vandalism to stakeowners with sovereignty over their resources. (shrink)

The permissibility of actions depends upon facts about the flourishing and separateness of persons. Persons differ from other creatures in having the task of discovering for themselves, by conjecture and refutation, what sort of life will fulfil them. Compulsory slavery impermissibly prevents some persons from pursuing this task. However, many people may conjecture that they are natural slaves. Some of these conjectures may turn out to be correct. In consequence, voluntary slavery, in which one person welcomes the duty to fulfil (...) all the commands of another, is permissible. Life-long voluntary slavery contracts are impermissible because of human fallibility; but fixed-term slavery contracts should be legally enforceable. Each person has the temporarily alienable moral right to direct her own life. (shrink)

Social science employs teleological explanations which depend upon the rationality principle, according to which people exhibit instrumental rationality. Popper points out that people also exhibit critical rationality, the tendency to stand back from, and to question or criticise, their views. I explain how our critical rationality impugns the explanatory value of the rationality principle and thereby threatens the very possibility of social science. I discuss the relationship between instrumental and critical rationality and show how we can reconcile our critical rationality (...) with the possibility of social science if we invoke Popper’s conception of limited rationality and his indeterminism. (shrink)

Aristotle and the biologists who follow him have led us down a primrose path for centuries. The biological possibility of classifying species led Aristotle to assume that logic and the human mind did or should move in the same way. All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is a mortal—is true. And the human mind can also follow the universal rules of genus and species. The problem is, however, that the world was so created that human value (...) systems do not parallel this neat structure. Not all of anything is all of something else, other than biologically or logically. Where values are concerned, God evidently opted for a dual system, one where different orders operate according to different principles. Spinoza thought all possible orders were parallel in structure. This is the rationalist’s assumption, and it would be easier for us if it were true. But God opted for greater complexity, or so it seems. (shrink)