Ethicists, policy-makers, and the general public have questioned whether artificial entities such as robots warrant rights or other forms of moral consideration. There is little synthesis of the research on this topic so far. We identify 294 relevant research or discussion items in our literature review of this topic. There is widespread agreement among scholars that some artificial entities could warrant moral consideration in the future, if not also the present. The reasoning varies, such as concern for the effects on (...) artificial entities and concern for the effects on human society. Beyond the conventional consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethicist ethical frameworks, some scholars encourage “information ethics” and “social-relational” approaches, though there are opportunities for more in-depth ethical research on the nuances of moral consideration of artificial entities. There is limited relevant empirical data collection, primarily in a few psychological studies on current moral and social attitudes of humans towards robots and other artificial entities. This suggests an important gap for psychological, sociological, economic, and organizational research on how artificial entities will be integrated into society and the factors that will determine how the interests of artificial entities are considered. (shrink)

In Volume I of Works of Love, Kierkegaard condemns preferential, “earthly” love and extols the virtues of impartial, “Christian” love. Yet he claims that his vision of Christianity leaves room for earthly relationships in their full richness. Controversy over this claim is longstanding, but a number of contemporary scholars have come to Kierkegaard’s defense. In what follows, I attempt to counter this trend. I do so by criticizing a scholar who I take to be one of Kierkegaard’s most persuasive apologists (...) – Jamie Ferreira. Drawing on recent work by Harry Frankfurt, I argue that essential to human love-relationships is their generation of preferential moral commitments. Ferreira’s defense of Kierkegaard is therefore inadequate; it shows only how Kierkegaardian Christianity leaves room for attention to distinct individuals, not how such distinctness can become morally relevant. Indeed, Kierkegaard’s ethic of selflessness specifically precludes this possibility, since partiality, he claims, is necessarily selfish. This claim I also dispute. If my argument succeeds, then, I will have shown not only that Kierkegaardian Christianity eliminates the possibility of loving earthly relationships, but also that it does so on inadequate grounds. I will conclude by briefly discussing the possibility of revising Kierkegaard’s account, taking as my example the amendments recently proposed by Sharon Krishek. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In Wisdom in Love : Kierkegaard and the Ancient Quest for Emotional Integrity , Rick Furtak argues that emotions are cognitive phenomena to be understood in terms of the relation between subject and object. Furtak uses his conception of emotion to argue that love is the source of meaning and value in human life. This paper places Kierkegaard's views, and the role love plays in them, in his historical context. I argue that Furtak's approach fails to account for the subtle (...) and complex role religious love plays in Kierkegaard's thought, and ultimately leaves him at odds with Kierkegaard methodologically and metaphysically. (shrink)

The rise of neo-integrative worldviews : towards a rational spirituality for the coming planetary civilization -- Beyond fundamentalism : spiritual realism, spiritual literacy and education -- Realism, literature and spirituality -- Judgemental rationality and the equivalence of argument : realism about God, response to Morgan's critique -- Transcendence and God : reflections on critical realism, the "new atheism", and Christian theology -- Human sciences at the edge of panentheism : God and the limits of ontological realism -- Beyond East and (...) West -- Meta-Reality (re-)contextualized -- Anti-anthropic spirituality : dualism, duality and non-duality -- "The more you kick God out the front door, the more he comes in through the window" : Sean Creaven's critique of transcendental dialectical critical realism and the philosophy of meta-Reality -- Resisting the theistic turn -- The pulse of freedom and the existential dilemma of alienation -- Meta-Reality, creativity and the experience of making art. (shrink)

This symposium examines insurrectionist ethics, the brainchild of Leonard Harris. The position does not stem from one key source; it was born out of Harris’s philosophical interaction with various philosophers over an extended period, including thinkers as diverse as David Walker, Karl Marx, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Alain Locke, and Angela Davis. The driving questions are: What counts as justified protest? Do slaves have a moral duty to insurrect? What character traits and modes to resistance are most conducive to (...) liberation and the amelioration of oppressive material conditions? Insurrectionist ethics is meant to address such questions. This symposium attempts to locate insurrectionist ethics in the work of representative practitioners. To this end, each of the contributors focuses on some historical figure in the American intellectual tradition with hopes of tracing, substantiating, questioning, clarifying, or extending Harris’s claims. (shrink)

In 1991 Redland Aggregates Ltd. put forward a proposal to embark upon the largest mining project in Europe, the chosen location being the remote island of Harris and Lewis in the Western Isles of Scotland. The proposal sparked off an impassioned debate between planners, conservationists and developers, while the local residents have attempted to come to terms with an operation on a scale previously inconceivable on the island. This paper attempts to examine the proposed development from a sociological angle (...) – it is less concerned with justifying or condemning the project on economic or political grounds and more with analysing the roots of the various viewpoints held by those involved, willingly or unwillingly, in the debate. From this analysis arise implications regarding different perspectives on the environment and different interpretations of the term sustainable. It is argued that these diverse perceptions are grounded in different interpretations of the environment, shaped by the cultural and historical context within which the groups or individuals that hold these views exist and interact. Ultimately, the paper makes a plea for a wider recognition of the diversity of meanings and interpretations implied by the term 'environment', a broader definition of the term 'development', and an expansion of the concept of sustainability to incorporate the variety of situations and perceived needs of different cultures. (shrink)

Much has been made of the Kierkegaardian flavour of Wittgenstein's thought on religion, both with respect to its explicit allusions to Kierkegaard and its implicit appeals. Even when significant disparities between the two are noted, there remains an important core of de facto methodological agreement between them, addressing the limits of theory and the dispelling of illusion. The categories of ‘nonsense’ and ‘paradox’ are central to Wittgenstein's therapeutic enterprise, while the categories of ‘paradox’ and the ‘absurd’ are central to much (...) of Kierkegaard's attempt to dispel religious illusion. Writing of how the ‘urge to thrust against the limits of language’ yields ‘nonsense’, Wittgenstein explicitly appealed to Kierkegaard: ‘Kierkegaard, too, recognized this thrust and even described it in much the same way ’. 1 I want to consider whether Kierkegaard's category of paradox of the absurd is assimilable to Wittgenstein's view of nonsense and paradox. I shall argue that a consideration of Wittgenstein's view of paradox can highlight contrasting strands in Kierkegaard's writings on religious faith, strands which take paradox more or less strictly – in particular, it can clarify several different opinions concerning the status of religious claims. My exploration will bring to the fore some implications of the attempt to make room, in the religious employment of language, for a ‘higher understanding’ of truths which we are said to be able to grasp but cannot express. (shrink)

In this classic work, best-selling author Harry Frankfurt provides a compelling analysis of the question that not only lies at the heart of Descartes's Meditations, but also constitutes the central preoccupation of modern philosophy: on what basis can reason claim to provide any justification for the truth of our beliefs? Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen provides an ingenious account of Descartes's defense of reason against his own famously skeptical doubts that he might be a madman, dreaming, or, worse yet, deceived by (...) an evil demon into believing falsely.Frankfurt's masterful and imaginative reading of Descartes's seminal work not only stands the test of time; one imagines Descartes himself nodding in agreement. (shrink)

Introduction -- Aristotle and Locke in the American founding -- Equality, liberty, wisdom, morality, and consent in the idea of political freedom -- Humanizing certitudes and impoverishing doubts : a critique of The closing of the American mind by Allan Bloom -- "The Reichstag is still burning : the failure of higher education and the decline of the West" : a valedictory lecture -- The end of history means the end of freedom -- The American founding as the best regime (...) : the bonding of civil and religious liberty -- The decline and fall of the American idea : reflections on the failure of American conservatism -- Thomas Aquinas meets Thomas Jefferson -- Dred Scott revisited -- Legend of Sleepy Hollow. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard and John Henry Newman have starkly opposed formulations of the relation between faith and reason. In this essay I focus on a possible convergence in their respective understandings of the transition to religious belief or faith, as embodied in metaphors they use for a qualitative transition. I explore the ways in which attention to the legitimate dimension of discontinuity highlighted by the Climacan metaphor of the ‘leap’ can illuminate Newman's use of the metaphor of a ‘polygon inscribed in (...) a circle’, as well as the ways in which Newman's metaphor can illuminate the dimension of continuity operative in the Climacan appreciation of qualitative transition. (shrink)

A collection of anecdotes that articulate the inspirations behind the development of the Frank/Suzuki Performance Aesthetics, an actor training system.

It is my view that one essential difference between persons and other creatures is to be found in the structure of a person's will. Besides wanting and choosing and being moved to do this or that, men may also want to have certain desires and motives. They are capable of wanting to be different, in their preferences and purposes, from what they are. Many animals appear to have the capacity for what I shall call "first-order desires" or "desires of the (...) first order," which are simply desires to do or not to do one thing or another. No animal other than man, however, appears to have the capacity for reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in the formation of second-order desires. (shrink)

Josiah Royce's graduate seminar in comparative methodology exerted one of the great teaching and intellectual influences of its time. Edited from photostatic copies of the original notebooks by Grover Smith, the text offers a condensed account of a great course in an era when great ideas were being formulated.

This book documents the impact of Stephen Harris’s works in Aboriginal education, Aboriginal learning styles, domains of language use and bilingual-bicultural education. It provides a summary and critique of Stephen Harris's key ideas, particularly those on bilingual-bicultural education. This book also profiles the man, his background, his beliefs and talents. It showcases contributions and personal reflections from Stephen’s family, wife, close colleagues, and many of those influenced by his work. This festschrift explores the professional life and work of (...) Stephen Harris as an educator and anthropologist who worked in the Northern Territory of Australia. (shrink)

In this comprehensive tour of the long history and philosophy of expertise, from ancient Greece to the 20th century, Jamie Carlin Watson tackles the question of expertise and why we can be skeptical of what experts say, making a valuable contribution to contemporary philosophical debates on authority, testimony, disagreement and trust. His review sketches out the ancient origins of the concept, discussing its early association with cunning, skill and authority and covering the sort of training that ancient thinkers believed (...) was required for expertise. Watson looks at the evolution of the expert in the middle ages into a type of "genius" or "innate talent", moving to the role of psychological research in 16th-century Germany, the influence of Darwin, the impact of behaviorism and its interest to computer scientists, and its transformation into the largely cognitive concept psychologists study today. (shrink)

In this work, Jamie Mayerfeld undertakes a careful inquiry into the meaning and moral significance of suffering. Understanding suffering in hedonistic terms as an affliction of feeling, he claims that it is an objective psychological condition, amenable to measurement and interpersonal comparison, although its accurate assessment is never easy. Mayerfeld goes on to examine the content of the duty to prevent suffering and the weight it has relative to other moral considerations. He argues that the prevention of suffering is (...) morally more important than the promotion of happiness, and that the duty to relieve suffering is much stronger than most of us acknowledge. (shrink)

Feyerabend is infamous for his defense of pluralism, which he extends to every topic he discusses. Disagreement, a by-product of this pluralism, becomes a sign of flourishing critical communities. In Feyerabend’s political works, he extends this pluralism from science to democratic societies and incorporates his earlier work on scientific methodology into a procedure for designing just policy. However, a description and analysis of Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement is lacking. In this paper, I reconstruct and assess Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement, with (...) a particular emphasis on the role of experts, and its role in the formation of science policy. I go on to assess this argument in light of recent literature on manufactured disagreement on politically contentious science policy. I conclude by suggesting some prospects and problems for de-idealizing Feyerabend’s position on disagreement to see whether it may be plausibly implemented. (shrink)

To anyone vaguely aware of Feyerabend, the title of this paper would appear as an oxymoron. For Feyerabend, it is often thought, science is an anarchic practice with no discernible structure. Against this trend, I elaborate the groundwork that Feyerabend has provided for the beginnings of an approach to organizing scientific research. Specifically, I argue that Feyerabend’s pluralism, once suitably modified, provides a plausible account of how to organize science. These modifications come from C.S. Peirce’s account of the economics of (...) theory pursuit, which has since been corroborated by empirical findings in the social sciences. I go on to contrast this approach with the conception of a ‘well-ordered science’ as outlined by Kitcher, Cartwright :981–990, 2006), which rests on the assumption that we can predict the content of future research. I show how Feyerabend has already given us reasons to think that this model is much more limited than it is usually understood. I conclude by showing how models of resource allocation, specifically those of Kitcher, Strevens :55–79, 2003) and Weisberg and Muldoon :225–252, 2009), unwittingly make use of this problematic assumption. I conclude by outlining a proposed model of resource allocation where funding is determined by lottery and briefly examining the extent to which it is compatible with the position defended in this paper. (shrink)

In this classic work, best-selling author Harry Frankfurt provides a compelling analysis of the question that not only lies at the heart of Descartes ...

First published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Jamie Dow presents an original treatment of Aristotle's views on rhetoric and the passions, and the first major study of Aristotle's Rhetoric in recent years. He attributes to Aristotle a normative view of rhetoric and its role in the state, and ascribes to him a particular view of the kinds of cognitions involved in the passions.

Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the 'Washington consensus' on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest slogan (...) or buzzword as shorthand for the political-economic Zeitgeist, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th Century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason dramatizes the rise of neoliberalism and its uneven spread as an intellectual, political, and cultural project, combining genealogical analysis with situated case studies of formative moments throughout the world, like New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The book names and tracks some of neoliberalism's key protagonists, as well as some of the less visible bit-part players. It explores how this adaptive regime of market rule was produced and reproduced, its logics and limits, its faults and its fate. (shrink)

This investigation is motivated by the lack of scholarship examining the content of what firms are communicating to various stakeholders about their commitment to socially responsible behaviors. To address this query, a qualitative study of the legal, ethical and moral statements available on the websites of Forbes Magazine''s top 50 U.S. and top 50 multinational firms of non-U.S. origin were analyzed within the context of stakeholder theory. The results are presented thematically, and the close provides implications for social responsibility among (...) managers of global organizations as well as researchers interested in business ethics. (shrink)