James Beattie was appointed professor of moral philosophy and logic at Marischal College, Aberdeen, Scotland at the age of twenty-five. Though more fond of poetry than philosophy, he became part of the Scottish 'Common Sense' school of philosophy that included Thomas Reid and George Campbell. In 1770 Beattie published the work for which he is best known, An Essay on Truth, an abrasive attack on 'modern scepticism' in general, and on David Hume in particular, subsequently and despite Beattie's attack, (...) Scotland's most famous philosopher. The Essay was a great success, earning its author an honorary degree from Oxford and an audience with George III. Samuel Johnson declared in 1772 that 'We all love Beattie'. Hume, on the other hand, described the Essay as 'a horrible large lie in octavo', and dismissed its author as a 'bigotted silly Fellow'. Although Beattie is no match for Hume as a philosopher, the success of the Essay suggests that, unlike Hume, Beattie voices the characteristic assumptions, and anxieties, of his age. The first part of this selection—the first ever made from Beattie's prose writings—includes several key chapters from the Essay on Truth, along with extracts from all of Beattie's other works on moral philosophy. The topics treated include memory, the existence of God, the nature of virtue, and slavery. The second part of the selection is devoted to Beattie's contributions to literary criticism and aesthetics. Beattie's studies of poetry, music, taste, and the sublime are vital to the understanding of the literary culture out of which developed the early Romanticism of Wordsworth and Coleridge. (shrink)

A global health archive consisting of podoconiosis tissue slides and blocks, was donated to Brighton & Sussex Medical School in 2014. There is little guidance on the socioethical and legal issues surrounding the retrospective use of archived or ‘abandoned’ tissue samples, which poses a number of questions relating to the ethical standing of the archive. There is a great deal of interpretation in the guidelines that are currently in existence; however, modern ethical principles cannot be applied as it is not (...) feasible to either reconsent or retrospectively seek approval. Our research team believed that it was unethical to leave the archive in storage, as this option favours neither researcher nor subjects. Permission was obtained from the Human Tissue Authority and a local ethics board for the tissues to be utilized in on-going research on podoconiosis aetiology. There is a delicate balance between the benefits gained by society relating to the development and progress of scientific research and the risks to the donor regarding the reuse of their tissues. Clearer guidelines should be made available to ensure that researchers are able to reuse tissue archives in contemporary research. (shrink)

ELSI efforts long have been troubled by critiques that they privilege scientific frameworks and grant scientists the power to set ethical agendas. As the first director of the Human Genome Project’...

When word pairs having a familiar order are sequentially flashed on a computer in their non-familiar order, , observers have a strong phenomenology of seeing them in familiar order . Reversal errors remained frequent even when participants obtained perceptual experience of reverse-display items by beginning with a block of longer-duration trials. A forced-choice order-detection procedure reduced but did not eliminate reversal errors, showing that “fast pairs” is a robust perceptual illusion. Even adjective + noun pairs showed reversal errors, and reversal (...) errors increased with the log frequency of the word pair, consistent with a strong role for statistical processing at the level of multi-word units. (shrink)

This is a selection of readings about professionalism and ethics in engineering. It addresses topics such as the concept of professionalism, education, and maintenance of competence, registration, professional autonomy, social effects and responsibilities, and enforcement of codes of ethics.

This paper concerns the Russian émigrée translator and philosopher Natalie Duddington (1886–1972). By establishing Duddington’s dependence on Nicholas Lossky (1870–1965), the paper argues that Duddington formed a unique synthesis of Russian intuitivism and British realism in her essay ‘Our Knowledge of Other Minds’. Despite the historical significance of Duddington’s work, it will be concluded that her synthesis succumbs to the most recent criticism which has been posed against perceptualists such as Fred Dretske (1932–2013). Russian ‘intuitivism’ is understood here as the (...) school of thought that was first developed by Lossky and subsequently inherited by Duddington. ‘Perceptualism’ will be understood as the broad claim that we perceive the contents of another mind in an immediate way rather than infer them. (shrink)

The logical consistency of a collection of assertions about events can be viewed as a special case of coherent probability assessments in the sense of de Finetti.

Georges Florovsky’s essay ‘On the Grounding of Logical Relativism’ has attracted attention from various theologians and students of Russian thought but has until now avoided a serious philosophical analysis and critique. The complex but thought-provoking essay presents Florovsky’s so-called logical relativism, a position which he seemed to maintain for the rest of his career. This paper will show that by conflating ‘scientific’ with ‘alethic’ relativism, Florovsky exposed himself to detrimental philosophical and theological critique. After some methodological remarks, the first part (...) of the paper will introduce Florovsky’s article, and present its central argument as a scientific relativism which is then conflated with a truly logical or alethic relativism. The second and third parts will highlight the philosophical and theological problems with Florovsky’s position. (shrink)

This study examines the notion of antinomy, or unavoidable contradiction, in the work of Pavel Florensky. Many Russian philosophers of the Silver Age shared a common conviction which is yet to receive sufficient attention in critical literature, either in Russia or abroad. This is namely a philosophical and theological dependence on unavoidable contradiction, paradox, or antinomy. The history of antinomy and its Russian reception is introduced here before a new framework for understanding Russian antinomism is defended. This is namely the (...) anticipation of ‘vertical’ antinomies in ‘horizontal’ antinomies. Here, by ‘horizontal’ we suppose an unavoidable contradiction of reason or philosophical reflection, and by ‘vertical’ an unavoidable contradiction of revelation, faith, or a self-contradictory dogma. The study aims to demonstrate that Florensky fails to provide a satisfactory anticipation of vertical antinomies. (shrink)

We propose a research program grounded in cultural theory and believe that this theory enables researchers to gain traction in Business and Society research. Grid-group cultural theory is a useful tool for examining organizational behavior. Organizational culture governs organizational social expression. Corporate Social Responsibility is a specific domain which benefits from exploration using cultural theory. Finally, objectives and aspirations of this research program are outlined.

During the intense philosophical and theological renaissance of the Russian Silver Age, the German Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) received a unique appraisal in the work of Semyon Liudwigovich Frank (1877–1950), hailed by some as ‘the greatest Russian philosopher’. This paper will show that five of Frank's central philosophical arguments can be traced directly to Cusa's writings. Once these key arguments are taken together with Frank's own comments about Cusa, it can be concluded that Frank saw himself as Cusa's modern (...) successor, presenting his ideas in a different intellectual context. In this sense, we can speak of Frank as the ‘Russian Cusanus’. The arguments in question include Cusa's docta ignorantia, our knowledge of being, the recognition of absolute being as ‘non‐other’, the identity of possibility and actuality in the absolute, and finally the coincidentia oppositorum. (shrink)