This research project substantially extends the reach of serial argument theory from its nearly exclusive application to close relationships, into the workplace. Data were gathered on general motivation to engage in a serial argument, specific goals, several tactics, and three outcome measures. Results indicated causal relations from goals and motivations to tactics, and from tactics to outcomes. A structural equation model was successful in fitting the whole system of variables. Results were generally compatible with those found in relational and classroom (...) settings, and help build the case that serial arguing has certain base characteristics that may not change much when settings are quite substantially different. (shrink)

Las tasas de producción y consumo de alimentos en el mundo se hacen insostenibles. Estados Unidos está a la cabeza de los países que exceden con creces su capacidad en esta materia. La causa principal es la incorporación de combustibles fósiles en la producción de alimentos desde 1950, tanto en forma de energía cinética, como también en los pesticidas y otros productos utilizados en su producción. Según el autor, literalmente nos estamos comiendo los hidrocarburos rápidamente y sin tener ninguna alternativa (...) con la cual reemplazarlos. Sólo un restablecimiento de un equilibrio entre capacidad productiva sostenible y consumo alimentario podría evitar la crisis que se avista en el horizonte. (shrink)

Table of Contents Perspectives on Animal Cognition Chapter 1 The Myth of Anthropomorphism John Andrew Fisher Chapter 2 Gendered Knowledge? Examining Influences on Scientific and Ethological Inquiries Lori Gruen Chapter 3 Interpretive Cognitive Ethology Hugh Wilder Chapter 4 Concept Attribution in Nonhuman Animals: Theoretical and Methodological Problems in Ascribing Complex Mental Processes Colin Allen and Marc Hauser Cognitive and Evolutionary Explanations Chapter 5 On Aims and Methods of Cognitive Ethology Dale Jamieson and Marc Bekoff Chapter 6 Aspects of (...) the Cognitive Ethology of an Injury-Feigning Bird, The Piping Plover Carolyn Ristau Chapter 7 Tradition in Animals: Field Observations and Laboratory Analysis Bennett G. Galef Chapter 8 The Study of Adaptation Randy Thornhill Chapter 9 The Units of Behavior in Evolutionary Explanations Sandra D. Mitchell Chapter 10 Levels of Analysis and the Functional Significance of Helping Behavior Walter D. Koenig and Ron Mumme Recognition, Choice, Vigilance, and Play Chapter 11 The Ubiquitous Concept of Recognition with Special Reference to Kin Andrew R. Blaustein and Richard H. Porter Chapter 12 Do Animals Choose Habitats? Michael Rosenzweig Chapter 13 The Influence of Models on the Interpretation of Vigilance Steven L. Lima Chapter 14 Is There an Evolutionary Biology of Play? Alex Rosenberg Chapter 15 Intentionality, Social Play, and Definition Colin Allen and Marc Bekoff Communication and Language Chapter 16 Communication and Expectations: A Social Process and the Cognitive Operation It Depends upon and Influences W. John Smith Chapter 17 Animal Communication and Social Evolution Michael Philips and Steven Austad Chapter 18 Animal Language: Methodological and Interpretive Issues Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Karen E. Brakke Chapter 19 Knowledge Acquisition and Asymmetry between Language Comprehension and Production: Dolphins and Apes as General Models for Animals Louis M. Herman and Palmer Morrel-Samuels Animal Minds Chapter 20 Evolution and Psychological Unity Roger Crisp Chapter 21 The Mental Lives of Nonhuman Animals John Dupré Chapter 22 Inside the Mind of a Monkey Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney Chapter 23 Science and Our Inner Lives: Birds of Prey, Bats, and the Common Bi-ped Kathleen Akins Chapter 24 Afterword: Ethics and the Study of Animal Cognition. (shrink)

In 1793, Kant published an essay entitled On the Common Saying: “That May be Correct in Theory, but It is of No Use in Practice.” The saying purports to express the superior wisdom of the worldly and experienced person, conveying a justified disdain of impractical philosophers with their abstract theories. (Its intended target is conjectured to be Edmund Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, and Burke's claim that philosophical theorists were to blame for what went disastrously wrong in France.) In (...) the context of Kant's essay, ‘theory’ means philosophy, and ‘practice’ means its application. The common saying could thus be taken as an attack on the very idea of ‘applied philosophy’, or else as advocating the view that philosophy may be applied only with ad hoc exceptions. Kant argues, however, that when accurately understood, the Common Saying is not wisdom at all. Instead, in relation to non‐moral cases, it represents only ludicrous ignorance, while in relation to morality it exhibits an attitude of self‐deceptive moral corruption. Kant argues this last point at length in relation first, to personal morality, second, to the duties of politicians, and third, to our outlook in relation to the question whether the human species is morally progressing. The present chapter sympathetically expounds Kant's arguments in relation to morality, emphasizing especially the application of his argument to politics. (shrink)

This essay builds on recent work by Susan Haack to suggest that Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s conception of the common law was influenced by Darwinian evolution and classical pragmatism. This is no small claim: perceptions of what the common law is and does within the constitutional framework of the United States continue to be heavily debated. Holmes’s paradigm for the common law both revised and extended the models set forth by Sir Edward Coke, Thomas Hobbes, Sir Matthew Hale, and Sir (...) William Blackstone. Adding additional substance to Haack’s argument by pointing out passages in Holmes’s opinions and in his only book, The Common Law, that corroborate her claims about the particular features of Holmes’s pragmatism, this essay concludes by suggesting that, because of his connections with the classical pragmatists and his reverence for Emerson, Holmes is the best place to begin answering the famous question formulated by Stanley Cavell: “What’s the Use in Calling Emerson a Pragmatist?”. (shrink)

Exposing the religious roots of our ostensibly godless age, Michael Allen Gillespie reveals in this landmark study that modernity is much less secular than conventional wisdom suggests. Taking as his starting point the collapse of the medieval world, Gillespie argues that from the very beginning moderns sought not to eliminate religion but to support a new view of religion and its place in human life. He goes on to explore the ideas of such figures as William of Ockham, Petrarch, (...) Erasmus, Luther, Descartes, and Hobbes, showing that modernity is best understood as a series of attempts to formulate a new and coherent metaphysics or theology. ''Bringing the history of political thought up to date and situating it against the backdrop of contemporary events, Gillespie's analyses provide us a way to begin to have conversations with the Islamic world about what is perhaps the central question within each of the three monotheistic religions: if God is omnipotent, then what is the place of human freedom?''. (shrink)

Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688) is a member of the group of philosophers and theologians commonly called ‘the Cambridge Platonists’. Although not part of the canon of great early modern philosophers, Cudworth’s work is of more than merely passing interest. Cudworth was an influential philosopher in the early modern period both for his criticisms of contemporaries like Hobbes, Descartes, and Spinoza, and for his own distinctive philosophical views. This entry focusses on Cudworth’s views on mind and body, considering both his criticisms of (...) contemporaries’ theories of mind and body, and outlining his alternative form of dualism in which plastic nature plays a central role. (shrink)

The author of the classic book Influencing Human Behavior here gives a brilliant overview of both ancient wisdom and contemporary science, in dialogue and cooperation with one another in the search for a new philosophy of life. Read the author recommended by Dale Carnegie in his classic books, now back in print in a brand new edition!

Shaftesbury is one of those philosophers who are usually placed more or less in the margin of the history of thought because an insufficient idea of system and a certain looseness of conception make it difficult to grasp their ideas and to classify them. Yet when you are able to break down or to dismiss the mental figures in which you have been accustomed to consider the historical succession of doctrines and are prepared to revive their words with an open (...) mind, not only do they give you in their originality more than you had hoped, but also they help to render your representation of intellectual life as a whole more complex and more harmonious in its development. Bandini,1an Italian scholar, in making a zealous study of Shaftesbury, has succeeded in drawing out his rich personality, and at the same time in explaining the importance of his contribution to theperennis philosophia. We could hardly succeed in understanding the modern English mind in its genesis if we concentrated our attention exclusively on those empiristic currents which, although they preponderate in Anglo-Saxon speculation, do not contain all its originality. There is a deep fount of romance in the spirit of this people which wells up from time to time, and the drier and harder the surface earth the more strongly it gushes forth. Shaftesbury is just such a fount, isolated and inexplicable to all outward appearances, but far otherwise for anyone who knows how to penetrate below the surface. In his essay Bandini, while emphasizing the contrast between the philosophy of moral enthusiasm and feeling and the contemporaneous doctrines of Hobbes and Locke, examines with equal penetration the way in which the former becomes reattached to English speculative tradition and by what means it contributes in its turn to furnishing new trends in philosophy. (shrink)

This volume brings together a collection of new essays by leading scholars on the subject of causation in the early modern period, from Descartes to Lady Mary Shepherd. Aimed at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, the volume advances the understanding of early modern discussions of causation, and situates these discussions in the wider context of early modern philosophy and science. Specifically, the volume contains essays on key early modern thinkers, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant. It also (...) contains essays that examine the important contributions to the causation debate of less widely discussed figures, including Louis la Forge, Thomas Brown and Lady Mary Shepherd. (shrink)

This chapter examines the debates concerning the theory of ideas in Great Britain during the seventeenth century, focusing on the concept, origin, and types of ideas. It explains that the so-called way of ideas that are primarily associated with Rene Descartes and John Locke represent attempts to replace scholastic Aristotelian theories of the nature of the mind and its relation to the world. The chapter also discusses the relevant works of Thomas Hobbes and the Cambridge Platonists, and considers the relevance (...) of skepticism and idealism to the notion of ideas. (shrink)

In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla argues that political theology invariably leads to apocalyptic politics, and that we can avoid this fate only by maintaining a “Great Separation” between politics and religion, such as the one that Hobbes initiated, but which was overturned by Rousseau and German liberal theology—leading to Nazism. We argue that Hobbes never established such a divide; political theology is far more diverse than Lilla suggests; and liberal German political theology was not a significant source of Nazism. (...) Moreover, liberalism is itself a political theology, suggesting that religion and politics should not, and perhaps cannot, be divided—although they may be reconciled. (shrink)

In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla argues that political theology invariably leads to apocalyptic politics, and that we can avoid this fate only by maintaining a “Great Separation” between politics and religion, such as the one that Hobbes initiated, but which was overturned by Rousseau and German liberal theology—leading to Nazism. We argue that Hobbes never established such a divide; political theology is far more diverse than Lilla suggests; and liberal German political theology was not a significant source of Nazism. (...) Moreover, liberalism is itself a political theology, suggesting that religion and politics should not, and perhaps cannot, be divided—although they may be reconciled. (shrink)

_ _ _Modern Philosophy: An Anthology_ features a broad range of selections from important but seldom anthologized works in the philosophy of psychology, natural science, morality, politics and religion. Features a broad range of selections from works in the philosophy of psychology, natural science, morality, politics and religion. Places the modern thinkers in conversation with each other, including Leibniz on Descartes and Spinoza, Reid on Locke and Hume, and Kant on Hobbes. Offers important, but seldom anthologized primary works.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Despotie der Vernunft? Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant HegelBernd LudwigArmin Adam. Despotie der Vernunft? Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant Hegel. Reihe praktische Philosophie. Műnchen: Karl Alber Verlag, 1999. Pp. 304. Cloth, DM 74.00.Eine Philosophie der Vernunft bedroht die Freiheit, weil der Versuch einer konsequenten Begründung der politischen Institutionen aus Freiheit und Vernunft den Absolutismus ebendieser Institutionen begünstigt (285). Das ist die These, die Armin Adams politikwissenschaftliche Habilitationsschrift anhand einer Analyse der politischen (...) Philosophie der Aufklärung, genauer, anhand der Lektüre von Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant und Hegel expliziert: Hobbes' individualistische Revolution des Naturrechts führt zum Absolutismus des Leviathan, Rousseaus Ideal der Volkssouveränität [End Page 591] zur Mystik der volonté générale, Kants Verrechtlichung des Politischen zur Leugnung des Widerstandsrechts und Hegels Pathos der Freiheit schließlich zum Mythos des Staates. Bei allen vier Autoren wird der aus der Freiheit geborene Staat vor den Gerichtshof der Vernunft zitiert und am Ende steht die Aufhebung (Hobbes) oder die radikale Umdeutung (Rousseau bis Hegel) des Begriffs der Freiheit, welche die ursprünglichen Freiheits-Intuitionen vergessen macht.Deutungen, welche die Aufklärung an ihren befreienden Leistungen messen, sind für Adam zwar genauso berechtigt wie jene, die ihre "dunkle Seite" (288) thematisieren. Ihm geht es gleichwohl darum, gerade die letztere nicht als bloß-akzidentell zu begreifen, sondern vielmehr die Kritik der philosophischen Aufklärung "aus dem Inneren der philosophischen Arbeit" zu leisten (288) und so der Apologie der Aufklärung eine "zweite Geschichte" zur Seite zu stellen.]Ausgangspunkt für die Politische Philosophie der Aufklärung wie auch für Adams Auseinandersetzung mit ihr ist die Vertragstheorie des Staates (22 ff.). Bei Hobbes und Rousseau findet die politische Gegenwart in der "Urszene des Vertrages" ihre Legitimitätsquelle (288). Erst mit Kant (und Hegel) wird der Vertrag verpflichtungstheoretisch entlastet, als Scharnierstück zwischen Motivation und Obligation entbehrlich, weil eine reichere praktische Philosophie die Rede von der Pflicht zum Staat rechtfertigen kann (159 ff.). Hobbes setzt noch auf die individuelle ökonomische Rationalität als movens zum Staat. Die Freiheit ist aber nur das Prinzip der Herrschaftsbegründung, sie wird durch das Prinzip der Souveränität in die Vorgeschichte des politischen Körpers verbannt (44, 70). Rousseau behält die Hobbessche Interessenlogik bei, doch durch die Konstitution der volonté générale wird der Selbsterhaltungswille des Einzelnen in den Willen zur Erhaltung des Gemeinwesens transformiert (94). Von der Herrschaftsbegründung verschiebt sich der Blick auf die Herrschaftspraxis (98). Entsprechend schwankt Rousseau zwischen einer Interpretation seiner volonté générale als bien commun(Économie Politique) und als volonté de tous (Du Contrat social). (104 ff.) Die Freiheit im Staat wird mit der Vernunft identifiziert und so der bloßen Willkür entgegengesetzt, der Gesellschaftsvertrag ist nicht mehr nur die Legitimationsgrundlage der Herrschaft, sondern "die Stunde Null" des Projekts der politischen Volkserziehung durch Institutionen. (133) Kant endlich löst die Pflicht vom Nutzen (168) und kann so auf die individuelle Freiwilligkeit, d. i. auf jegliche kontraktualistische Herrschaftslegitimation verzichten: Das "exeundum e statu naturali" wird zur Pflicht und der Vertrag degeneriert zur (moralphilosophischen) Idee (175): "Die Abkehr vom Prinzip empirischer Freiwilligkeit zugunsten des moralphilosophischen Prinzips der Universalisierung von Freiheit ersetzt auch die empirischen Subjekte der Staatsbegründung durch die Vernunft selbst" (178). Hegel verabschiedet dann endgültig die "epistemische und moralische Priorität des Individuums" (246) indem sein Konzept der Sittlichkeit es ihm erlaubt, die Freiwilligkeit in der "substanziellen Freiheit" aufgehoben zu sehen (241). Der "fundamentalistisch-kritische Gestus" der Aufklärung wird durch das Vertrauen in die Wirklichwerdung des Vernünftigen ersetzt. Indem Hegel das Recht als entwickelte Idee der Freiheit versteht, bildet seine Rechtsphilosophie den Gipfel einer politischen Philosophie der Aufklärung (252). [End Page 592]Adams Buch will ein Korrektiv für jenen Aufklärungsoptimismus liefern, der mit dem Zeitalter der Vernunft das Ende der Geschichte eingeläutet sieht. Ohne Frage: Das Ideal einer "vollendeten Herrschaft der Vernunft" (289), wie es Adam als Leitmotiv bei dem von ihm behandelten "Quartetts" entdecken will, überforderte jede menschliche Form der Politik. Aber möglicherweise wird man zumindest einigen dieser Autoren eher gerecht, wenn man ihr Unternehmen gerade umgekehrt als den kritischen Versuch begreift, menschliche Herrschaft vom Glorienschein arkaner Wahrheiten zu entkleiden... (shrink)

Duties to address global poverty face a motivation gap. We have good reasons for acting yet we do not, at least consistently. A ‘sentimental education’, featuring literature and journalism detailing the lives of distant others has been suggested as a promising means by which to close this gap. Although sympathetic to this project, I argue that it is too heavily wed to a charitable model of our duties to address global poverty—understood as requiring we sacrifice a certain portion of our (...) income. However, political action, aimed at altering institutions at both a global and a local level is likely to be necessary in order to provide effective long-term solutions to poverty globally. To rectify this, the article develops an alternative dialogical account of sentimental education, suitable for motivating support for political action to address global poverty. (shrink)

The eighteenth-century Physiocrats are widely considered to be precursors to classical economics, the French ninteenth-century Economistes, and contemporary free-market economics. They advocated free trade against mercantilism, and natural law against despotism. Although the Physiocrats also contributed to Walras and modern economic engineering, they fit squarely within the French (and world) liberal tradition.

Coherence in conversations and in texts can be partially characterized by a set of coherence relations, motivated ultimately by the speaker's or writer's need to be understood. In this paper, formal definitions are given for several coherence relations, based on the operations of an inference system; that is, the relations between successive portions of a discourse are characterized in terms of the inferences that can be drawn from each. In analyzing a discourse, it is frequently the case that we would (...) recognize it as coherent, in that it would satisfy the formal definition of some coherence relation, if only we could assume certain noun phrases to be coreferential. In such cases, we will simply assume the identity of the entities referred to, in what might be called a “petty conversational implicature,” thereby solving the coherence and coreference problems simultaneously. Three examples of different kinds of reference problems are presented. In each, it is shown how the coherence of the discourse can be recognized, and how the reference problems are solved, almost as a by‐product, by means of these petty conversational implicatures. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between strategies of cosmopolitan education intended to motivate citizens of affluent countries to care about distant others facing injustice, and injustices within the borders of these affluent countries. I argue that promoting justice within affluent countries and motivating citizens to act to address global injustices, are potentially complementary rather than competing projects. I make two claims. Injustices within national borders can undermine the development of cosmopolitan concern. National institutions delivering health and social care play a (...) vital role in developing and sustaining affective dispositions necessary to care about the fate of distant others. (shrink)

Potential ethical issues can arise during the process of epidemiological classification. For example, unnatural infant deaths are classified as accidental deaths or homicides. Societal sensitivity to the physical abuse and neglect of children has increased over recent decades. This enhanced sensitivity could impact reported infant homicide rates. Infant homicide and accident mortality rates in boys and girls in the USA from 1940 to 2005 were analysed. In 1940, infant accident mortality rates were over 20 times greater than infant homicide rates (...) in both boys and girls. After about 1980, when the ratio of infant accident mortality rates to infant homicide rates decreased to less than five, and the sum of infant accident and homicide rates became relatively constant, further decreases in infant accident mortality rates were associated with increases in reported infant homicide rates. These findings suggest that the dramatic decline of accidental infant mortality and recent increased societal sensitivity to child abuse may be related to the increased infant homicide rates observed in the USA since 1980 rather than an actual increase in societal violence directed against infants. Ethical consequences of epidemiological classification, involving the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and justice, are suggested by observed patterns in infant accidental deaths and homicides in the USA from 1940 to 2005. (shrink)

Legislatures enact laws and the courts interpret them. Under the doctrine of legislative supremacy, a judge is not free to ignore or modify a statutory provision in order to substitute a rule that seems to him to be better reasoned; thus where the language of a statute is clear and unambiguous, interpretation is unnecessary and it must be enforced according to its terms. Nevertheless, gaps and ambiguities can arise and, in such cases, courts apply interpretive rules, or ‘canons of construction’, (...) to resolve these ambiguities. One frequently invoked rule requires that words that are not defined by a statute be given their ordinary meaning by the interpreting court. In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has increasingly relied upon dictionary definitions in applying this rule. The Court’s use of dictionaries as authority for its interpretations incorporates the assumption that the dictionary is the best source for ascertaining the meaning of statutory texts. This article challenges that assumption on linguistic grounds. I argue that the focus on definitions skews the interpretation of statutory language by isolating words from their semantic context. By comparing two cases in which the Court used dictionary definitions to a third case in which the definition used by the Court was contained in the statute itself, I demonstrate that the ordinary meaning of legal terms cannot be determined by dictionary definitions. (shrink)

In this paper, planning models developed in artificial intelligence are applied to the kind of planning that must be carried out by participants in a conversation. A planning mechanism is defined, and a short fragment of a free‐flowing videotaped conversation is described. The bulk of the paper is then devoted to an attempt to understand the conversation in terms of the planning mechanism. This microanalysis suggests ways in which the planning mechanism must be augmented, and reveals several important conversational phenomena (...) that deserve further investigation. (shrink)

The main title of this work is a little misleading. Hobbs does not begin to consider in any detail Plato’s relation to traditional Greek models of the hero until chapter 6, nearly two-thirds of the way through the book. In fact, Hobbs’s treatment of Plato’s re-working of the hero-figure is embedded in a nexus of themes revolving round the Greek virtue of andreia and its psychological basis in that part of the soul that Plato in the Republic calls (...) the thumos. Commonly translated ‘spirit’, the term is notoriously hard to render by a single English equivalent. Plato’s conception of this human drive can be captured, according to Hobbs’s succinct phrase, as “the need to believe that one counts for something”. (shrink)

The practice of medicine involves obtaining, evaluating and analyzing information drawn from a variety of sources; thus physicians assess and act upon information that varies in terms of both reliability and the extent to which it may be directly perceived. In the hospital setting, physicians’ progress notes provide a record of this process that serves as a primary means of communication between treaters who are not co-present with one another; accordingly, in order to permit independent evaluation of the information they (...) contain, physicians have developed a repertoire of linguistic devices to express differing attitudes towards the information that their notes convey. In this article, through the microanalysis of a pediatric resident’s note, I demonstrate how physicians use evidential markers, including the passive voice and agentless constructions, to construct frameworks of credibility and responsibility that both underlie and enable medical work. These grammatical devices permit the physician-reader to weigh for himself or herself the evidence which supports the conclusions reached. (shrink)

Laplacean determinism remains a popular theory among philosophers and scientists alike, in spite of the fact that the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, with which it is inconsistent, has been around for more than fifty years. There are a number of reasons for its continuing popularity. One, recently articulated by Honderich, is that there are too many possible interpretations of quantum mechanics, and the subject is too controversial even among physicists to be an adequate basis for overturning determinism. Nevertheless, quantum (...) mechanics is an enormously successful theory, considering the quantity and variety of its predictions which have been verified under conditions never dreamt of by its originators; and the Copenhagen Interpretation is the only widely accepted interpretation of it. Although a hidden variable theory consistent with the results of quantum mechanics is not impossible, one of its major advocates admits that it is highly speculative, and far from adequately developed. Yet such a theory would be needed to reconcile Laplacean determinism with quantum mechanics; most of the controversies alluded to by Honderich are irrelevant. (shrink)

This article presents a philosophical framework for physician-family ethical decision-making for the controversial cases of withdrawal, initiation, or continuation of treatment for spina bifida infants. The well-known criteria for selective treatment proposed by Lorber are shown to be ethically sub-optimal on the grounds that they are based on a general conception of the decision framework that is open to serious criticisms and questioning.We propose a model of joint physician-family decision-making that we think represents a more rational method of balancing patient (...) autonomy with the professional expertise and international moral norms of physicians. We raise serious reservations about the wisdom of allowing the state to intervene too strenously in this type of decision, in many cases. (shrink)