At the forefront of international concerns about global legislation and regulation, a host of noted environmentalists and business ethicists examine ethical issues in consumption from the points of view of environmental sustainability, economic development, and free enterprise.

CHAPTER ONE Introduction Twenty-five years ago it was pretty widely held among Anglo- American philosophers that it was sheer confusion to suppose that an ...

In works of literary fiction, it is a part of the fiction that the words of the text are being recounted by some work-internal 'voice': the literary narrator. One can ask similarly whether the story in movies is told in sights and sounds by a work-internal subjectivity that orchestrates them: a cinematic narrator. George M. Wilson argues that movies do involve a fictional recounting (an audio-visual narration ) in terms of the movie's sound and image track. Viewers are usually prompted (...) to imagine seeing the items and events in the movie's fictional world and to imagine hearing the associated fictional sounds. However, it is much less clear that the cinematic narration must be imagined as the product of some kind of 'narrator' - of a work-internal agent of the narration. Wilson goes on to examine the further question whether viewers imagine seeing the fictional world face-to-face or whether they imagine seeing it through some kind of work-internal mediation . It is a key contention of this book that only the second of these alternatives allows one to give a coherent account of what we do and do not imagine about what we are seeing on the screen. Having provided a partial account of the foundations of film narration, the final chapters explore the ways in which certain complex strategies of cinematic narration are executed in three exemplary films: David Fincher's Fight Club , von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress , and the Coen brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There. (shrink)

This article argues, first, that the fundamental structure of the skeptical argument in Kripke’s book on Wittgenstein has been seriously misunderstood by recent commentators. Although it focuses particularly on recent commentary by John McDowell, it emphasizes that the basic misunderstandings are widely shared by other commentators. In particular, it argues that, properly construed, Kripke offers a fully coherent reading of PI #201 and related passages. This is commonly denied, and given as a reason for rejecting Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein’s text. (...) Second, it is pretty universally accepted that Kripke’s Wittgenstein is a ‘non-factualist’ about ascriptions of meaning. The article argues that, when Kripke’s discussion is rightly understood and the content of ‘non-factualism’ is clarified, there is an important sense in which the skeptical solution is not committed to non-factualism. (shrink)

This study investigates the reactions of 561 MBA students to ethical marketing dilemmas. An analysis is conducted across time to determine how MBA students' attitudes about ethical marketing issues have been changing over the course of the 1980s. The findings show some support for the notion that MBA students in the late 1980s are somewhat less likely to use moral idealism when resolving an ethical dilemma and more likely to justify the decision in terms of its outcomes as compared with (...) their counterparts at the start of the decade. (shrink)

This article argues, first, that the fundamental structure of the skeptical argument in Kripke's book on Wittgenstein has been seriously misunderstood by recent commentators. Although it focuses particularly on recent commentary by John McDowell, it emphasizes that the basic misunderstandings are widely shared by other commentators. In particular, it argues that, properly construed, Kripke offers a fully coherent reading of PI #201 and related passages. This is commonly denied, and given as a reason for rejecting Kripke's reading of Wittgenstein's text. (...) Second, it is pretty universally accepted that Kripke's Wittgenstein is a `non-factualist' about ascriptions of meaning. The article argues that, when Kripke's discussion is rightly understood and the content of `non-factualism' is clarified, there is an important sense in which the skeptical solution is not committed to non-factualism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:George M. Wilson EDWARD SAID ON CONTRAPUNTAL READING Edward Said's rich and powerful new book, Culture and Imperialism,1 offers, as one strand of its multifaceted discussion, methodological reflections on the reading and interpretation of works of narrative fiction. More specifically, Said delineates and defends what he calls a "contrapuntal" reading (or analysis) ofthe texts in question. I am sympathetic to much ofwhat Said aims to accomplish in tiiis endeavor, (...) but I am also puzzled about some key aspects of his proposal. I will begin by presenting a brief sketch of my understanding of what a contrapuntal reading involves, and I will tiien explain some of the doubts and puzzlement I feel. Unfortunately, there is much that Said says about even diis limited topic that I will have to by-pass, but I hope to say enough to initiate some helpful discussion of the issues. I should note that aldiough the topic of "contrapuntal reading" recurs with significant emphasis throughout his book, Said's direct explication of the enterprise is scattered across several chapters, and the relevant remarks tend to be, in each instance, fairly brief. Given this state of affairs, I have tried to extract a reasonably unified account from a wide range of passages, and I hope to have done so as sympadietically and accurately as possible. Nevertheless, die fact remains that what follows is my reconstruction of the view diat Said adumbrates. Contrapuntal readings are meant to interweave, mutually qualify, and above all, superimpose die legitimate claims ofinternal or intrinsic readings of a work, on the one hand, and the claims ofvarious forms of external critique, on the odier. Such readings rest upon the fact that any literary fiction refers to or depicts a complex of materials that have been drawn from the actual world, e.g., actual people, places, institutions, and practices. These items are taken up and variously deployed Philosophy and Literature, © 1994, 18: 265-273 266Philosophy and Literature within the wider imaginative project of the work. It is crucial to this deployment tiiat the intended audience can be expected to bring to the text a set of background "attitudes" concerning die relevant real world materials, and tiiat diese beliefs, concerns, ideological presuppositions, etc., are elaborated widiin die work's embedded patterns. Thus, die text is anchored in what Said calls "a structure of reference and attitude," and diis structure constitutes die base from which a contrapuntal reading chiefly proceeds. Reading contrapuntally, interpreters move back and forth between an internal and external standpoint on the work's imaginative project, with special attention to the structure of reference and attitudes it contains. From an internal standpoint, interpretation aims at explanation of the work's narrational, rhetorical, and linguistic strategies, an explanation that respects the strategies and die density of the textual elements tiiey implicate. It is important that the internal standpoint articulate die work's vision as compellingly as possible, not only because diis has an obvious interest of its own, but because the persuasiveness ofcommentary from an external standpoint depends upon giving full credit to the sophistication of the text. (We will return to diis point shortly.) An external standpoint examines the problematic seductiveness of die work's capacity to guide its audience's responses and seeks to define die limited degrees of freedom widiin whatever complexity it establishes. By reminding us of information about the structure of reference that die work ignores, distorts, or minimizes and by reminding us that the structure of invoked attitudes has plausible alternatives that the work has effectively excluded, die external standpoint situates the text critically within a wider field of imaginative possibilities. As Said formulates the point, we read from an external perspective "... with an effort to draw out, extend, give emphasis and voice to what is silent or marginally present or ideologically represented" in die work" (CUfI, p. 66). In elaborating the account above, I have spoken of "intrinsic readings " of narrative fictions, and it will help to fill in my sketch if I specify the fairly standard conception I have in mind. Said does not address diis as a separate topic, but I believe that die following remarks are fully compatible with what he seems... (shrink)

Toward the end of Chapter Four, Richard Moran provides a summary statement of some of his chief objectives in earlier portions of his book. He says.

This is a fully revised edition of one of the most successful volumes in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series. Incorporating extensive updates to the editorial apparatus, including the introduction, suggestions for further reading, and footnotes, this third edition of More's Utopia has been comprehensively re-worked to take into account scholarship published since the second edition in 2002. The vivid and engaging translation of the work itself by Robert M. Adams includes all the ancillary materials by (...) More's fellow humanists that, added to the book at his own request, collectively constitute the first and best interpretive guide to Utopia. Unlike other teaching editions of Utopia, this edition keeps interpretive commentary - whether editorial annotations or the many pungent marginal glosses that are an especially attractive part of the humanist ancillary materials - on the page they illuminate instead of relegating them to endnotes, and provides students with a uniquely full and accessible experience of More's perennially fascinating masterpiece. (shrink)

In this book George Marsden responds to critics of his The Soul of the American University, and attempts to explain how, without heavy-handed dogmatism or moralizing, Christian faith can be of great relevance to contemporary scholarship of the highest standards.

The spiritual geography of Russian cosmism. General characteristics ; Recent definitions of cosmism -- Forerunners of Russian cosmism. Vasily Nazarovich Karazin (1773-1842) ; Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749-1802) ; Poets: Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, (1711-1765) and Gavriila Romanovich Derzhavin (1743-1816) ; Prince Vladimir Fedorovich Odoevsky (1803-1869) ; Aleksander Vasilyevich Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817-1903) -- The Russian philosophical context. Philosophy as a passion ; The destiny of Russia ; Thought as a call for action ; The totalitarian cast of mind -- The religious and spiritual (...) context. The kingdom of god on earth ; Hesychasm: two great Russian saints ; The Third Rome ; Pre-Christian antecedents -- The Russian esoteric context. Early searches for "deep wisdom" ; Popular magic ; Higher magic in the time of Peter the Great ; Esotericism after Peter the Great ; Theosophy and anthroposophy -- Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829-1903), the philosopher of the common task ; The one idea ; The unacknowledged prince ; The village teacher ; First disciple: Dostoevsky and Tolstoy ; The Moscow librarian ; Last years: Askhabad: the only portrait -- The "common task" ; Esoteric dimensions of the "common task" ; Fedorov's legacy: projectivism, delo, regulation -- The religious cosmists. Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853-1900) ; Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871-1944) ; Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky (1882-1937) ; Nikolai Aleksandrovich Berdyaev (1874-1948) -- The scientific cosmists. Konstantin Edouardovich Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935) ; Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) ; Alexander Leonidovich Chizhevsky (1897-1964) ; Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevich (1897-1969) -- Promethean theurgy. Life-creation ; Cultural immortalism ; God-building ; Re-aiming the arrows of Eros ; Technological utopianism ; Occultism -- Fedorov's twentieth century followers. Nikolai Pavlovich Peterson (1844-1919) and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kozhevnikov (1852-1917) ; Svyatogor and the biocosmists ; New wine and the universal task ; Alexander Konstantinovich Gorsky (1886-1943) and Nikolai Alexandrovich Setnitsky (1888-1937) ; Valerian Nikolaevich Muravyov (1885-1932) ; Vasily Nikolaevich Chekrygin (1897-1922) -- Cosmism and its offshoots today. The N.F. Fedorov museum-library ; The Tsiolkovsky museum and Chizhevsky center ; ISRICA - Institute for Scientific Research in Cosmic Anthropoecology ; Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev (1912-1992) and neo-eurasianism ; The hyperboreans ; Scientific immortalism: Igor Vishev, Danila Medvedev ; Conclusions about the Russian cosmists. (shrink)

I. Metaphysical phenomena -- II. Physical phenomena.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a high-profile subject these days. In its brief history it has undergone several highs and lows and suffered from significant degrees of hype as well as antagonism and fear. One thing is clear: we are no closer to the goal of producing a truly sentient being than when it started. Nonetheless, the tools developed by AI researchers are here to stay and as with all technological advances it has its good and bad aspects. In this article (...) I will present a brief overview of the field of AI looking at what it is, how it developed, what are its specialism as well as some of its well-publicised successes, and failures, as well as pointing out some key Christian participants in the story. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Byzantinische Zeitschrift Jahrgang: 110 Heft: 3 Seiten: 645-648.

It is widely held in theories of narrative that all works of literary narrative fiction include a narrator who fictionally tells the story. However, it is also granted that the personal qualities of a narrator may be more or less radically effaced. Recently, philosophers and film theorists have debated whether movies similarly involve implicit audio-visual narrators. Those who answer affirmatively allow that these cinematic narrators will be radically effaced. Their opponents deny that audio-visual narrators figure in the ontology of movies (...) at all, and many have argued that the ‘effaced’ literary narrator is an illusion as well. In this paper, I attempt to sort out the central issues that arise in these debates, defending the existence of effaced narrators in both literature and film. (shrink)

This article starts out by delineating an interpretation of Kripke on Wittgenstein, an interpretation that seems to stand the best chance of fitting at least the basic concerns and insights expressed in the Investigations. In doing so, this article sketches a conception of meaning and truth conditions against which Wittgenstein's remarks are plausibly directed, and it explains how Kripke's reconstruction of Wittgenstein can be read as incorporating a broad attack on that conception. The interpretation with which the article opens offers (...) what the article calls ‘the dramatic reading of the Skeptical Argument.’. (shrink)