Basic issues in the recent ‘death-of-God’ movement can be illuminated by comparison and contrast with the relevant ideas of two American philosophers, John Dewey and William James. Dewey is an earlier spokesman for ideas that are central to the ‘radical theology’ of Thomas J. J. Altizer, William Hamilton, and Paul Van Buren. His reasons for rejecting theism closely resemble propositions maintained by these ‘death-of-God’ theologians. James, on the other hand, points toward a theological alternative. He takes cognizance of ideas (...) similar to those in the ‘radical theology’, but he does not opt for either a metaphorical or real elimination of God. Thus, the contentions of this paper are that there has been a version of the ‘death-of-God’ perspective in American thought before, and that there are resources in the American tradition that suggest a viable option to this perspective. (shrink)

The general problem of visual search can be shown to be computationally intractable in a formal, complexity-theoretic sense, yet visual search is extensively involved in everyday perception, and biological systems manage to perform it remarkably well. Complexity level analysis may resolve this contradiction. Visual search can be reshaped into tractability through approximations and by optimizing the resources devoted to visual processing. Architectural constraints can be derived using the minimum cost principle to rule out a large class of potential solutions. The (...) evidence speaks strongly against bottom-up approaches to vision. In particular, the constraints suggest an attentional mechanism that exploits knowledge of the specific problem being solved. This analysis of visual search performance in terms of attentional influences on visual information processing and complexity satisfaction allows a large body of neurophysiological and psychological evidence to be tied together. (shrink)

"Sheriff’s text moves the "guess" to a new level of understanding, while integrating much of Peirce’s philosophy, and provokes many questions." —Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Newletter "The purpose of Sheriff’s work is to expound Peirce’s unified theory of the universe—from cosmology to semiotic—and to discuss its ramifications for how we should live. He concludes that Peirce has given us a theory we can live with. The book makes an important contribution to philosophy of life and to the (...) humanities in general."—Nathan Houser "In clear and concise prose, Sheriff describes Peirce’s ‘theory of everything,’ a vision of cosmic and human meaning that offers a positive alternative to popular pessimistic and relativistic approaches to life and meaning." —Peirce Project Newsletter. (shrink)

The paper describes two practical exercises (and their learning outcomes) requiring students to consider certain concrete decisions made by managers in business and professional life. The first exercise requires students to consider that competitive economic exchange inevitably puts managers in situations where they cannot accurately predict the outcomes of their decisions, and often results in harm to innocent people. In this practical exercise, seven discussion situations are described and students are asked to make decisions that take into account the individuals (...) affected by these managerial decisions. Students are asked to consider various ethical theories and devise creative solutions so as to avoid unnecessary harm. The second exercise places students in roles that represent shareholders and stakeholders and asks them to consider the relocation of a manufacturing company to their community. (shrink)

This collection of twelve original essays commissioned by Britain's Royal Economic Society commemorates the 1990 centennial of the first publication of Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics, one of the truly seminal works in the history of the subject. Marshall, who lived from 1842 to 1924, was the founder of the Cambridge school of economics and the teacher of John Maynard Keynes. Each of the twelve essays in this volume focuses on some aspect or aspects of Marshall's work, life, or (...) legacy. His magnum opus, the Principles, receives considerable attention, but the discussion is not narrowly restricted to that work - which was in any case only a portion of a larger project, never completed. John Whitaker's essay sets out the detailed history of Marshall's failure to complete the projected second volume of the Principles, and describes the thorny path leading to the publication of Industry and Trade in 1919 and Money Credit and Commerce in 1923. (shrink)

The 14 chapters in _Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments_, all published here for the first time, focus on recent thinking in this important area, helping initiate issues and lines of argument that have not been explored previously. At the same time, a reader can use this volume to become oriented to the established questions and positions in end of life ethics, both because new questions are set in their context, and because most of the chapters—written (...) by a team of experts—survey the field as well as add to it. Each chapter includes initial summaries, final conclusions, and a Related Topics section. TABLE OF CONTENTS John K. Davis, "Introduction" Geoffrey Scarre, "Is it possible to be better off dead?" Taylor W. Cyr, "How Does Death Harm the Deceased?" Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, "The Significance of an Afterlife" Jens Johansson, "The Severity of Death" John K. Davis, "Defining Death" James Stacey Taylor, "Autonomy, Competence, and End of Life" Eric Vogelstein, "Deciding for the Incompetent" Paul T. Menzel, "Change of Mind: An Issue for Advance Directives" Nancy S. Jecker, "Medical Futility and Respect for Patient Autonomy" Paul T. Menzel, "Refusing Lifesaving Medical Treatment and Food and Water by Mouth" Thomas S. Huddle, "Suicide, Physician-Assisted Suicide, the Doing-Allowing Distinction and Double Effect" Michael Cholbi, "Grief and End of Life Surrogate Decision-making" Bruce Jennings, "Solidarity near the End of Life: The Promise of Relational Decision-making in the Care of the Dying" Colin Farrelly, "Justice and the Aging of the Human Species". (shrink)

The general problem of visual search can be shown to be computationally intractable in a formal, complexity-theoretic sense, yet visual search is extensively involved in everyday perception, and biological systems manage to perform it remarkably well. Complexity level analysis may resolve this contradiction. Visual search can be reshaped into tractability through approximations and by optimizing the resources devoted to visual processing. Architectural constraints can be derived using the minimum cost principle to rule out a large class of potential solutions. The (...) evidence speaks strongly against bottom-up approaches to vision. In particular, the constraints suggest an attentional mechanism that exploits knowledge of the specific problem being solved. This analysis of visual search performance in terms of attentional influences on visual information processing and complexity satisfaction allows a large body of neurophysiological and psychological evidence to be tied together. (shrink)

This is the first of a three-volume work constituting a comprehensive, scholarly edition of the correspondence of the English economist, Alfred Marshall, one of the leading figures in the development of economics and the founder of the Cambridge School of Economics. The edition fills a long-standing gap in the history of economic thought with hitherto unpublished material. Students will find it a basic resource for understanding the development of economics and other social sciences in the period since 1870. In particular, (...) it provides much new information about Marshall's views on economic, social and political issues, his struggles to promote the teaching of economics at the University of Cambridge, and his relations with colleagues in Cambridge and elsewhere. Marshall's letters are notable for their frankness and spontaneity. (shrink)

The Failures of Ethics concentrates on the multiple shortfalls and shortcomings of thought, decision, and action that tempt and incite us human beings to inflict incalculable harm. Absent the overriding of moral sensibilities, if not the collapse or collaboration of ethical traditions, the Holocaust, genocide, and other mass atrocities could not have happened. Our senses of moral and religious authority have been fragmented and weakened by the accumulated ruins of history and the depersonalized advances of civilization that have taken us (...) from a bloody twentieth century into an immensely problematic twenty-first. Salvaging the fragmented condition of ethics, this book shows how respect and honor for those who save lives and resist atrocity, deepened attention to the dead and to death itself, and appeals for human rights and renewed spiritual sensitivity confirm that ethics contains and remains an irreplaceable safeguard against its own failures. (shrink)

Inspired by Goffman and Mead Social Interactionism theory and Ghanaian traditional leadership model, this article interprets Mark 7:24-30 as text that re-imagines alternative leadership practice. The study suggest that social interactionism theory tenants of ritual making, people processing, characterisation, frame making and dramaturgy provide a alternative heuristic tools to understand Jesus' view of leadership. Seemingly and for Jesus, leadership is a product of social interaction derived from the manner one interacts with various people. This study proposes that the Ghanaian Akan (...) traditional notion of leadership based on social interaction provides analogical model that complements social interactionism theory in interpreting Jesus' leadership practices. Therefore, the study explains social interactionism theory and then illustrated it through Akan leadership model analogue. The story of the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7:24-30 gives the social interaction, people processing, characterisation, frame making and dramaturgy that informs Jesus' leadership model to be modelled by the Church. (shrink)

Peter Singer places a stringent requirement on us to come to the aid of those who are suffering, as long as we do not have to give up something of comparable worth. I consider some criticisms of this view here, while arguing in defense of Singer’s conclusion. I presume here that it is morally impermissible to create unnecessary and avoidable harm to innocent people. I argue that if we have an adequate understanding of agent causation and moral responsibility then we (...) can meet these objections. I refer to this as ‘agent-causation responsibility.’ I argue that through our intentional inaction we do cause unnecessary and avoidable suffering to continue and that we are therefore morally required to work towards eliminating it. (shrink)

In this paper I outline an approach to managerial decision making that incorporates the important role that metaphors and moral imagination play in our moral reasoning coupled with an organisational moral concept I call the Health of the Organisation. I have used this concept in my managerial (and philosophical) career to interpret and evaluate potential, and actual, courses of action. I have concluded that this concept fits in nicely with Mark Johnson’s analysis of the metaphor of morality is health, which (...) he argues is one of the central moral metaphors in the conceptual framework that we use to interpret and evaluate actions from a reasonable moral point of view. He argues that metaphors are the essential components in defining the rational mental framework utilised in interpreting, evaluating, predicting likely outcomes from various alternatives, and choosing morally acceptable courses of action. I argue that the metaphor morality is health explicated as the Health of the Organisation can serve as an antidote to the unimaginative moral decision making processes that Patricia Werhane has shown can result in bad moral decisions. I do this by demonstrating that a healthy organisation is one that is optimally functional. This means that the components that make up the organisation are so structured that there is no better possible organisational arrangement available for achieving the goals designed to ensure successful performance in the marketplace. (shrink)

In classical and intuitionistic arithmetics, any formula implies a true equation, and a false equation implies anything. In weaker logics fewer implications hold. In this paper we rehearse known results about the relevant arithmetic R, and we show that in linear arithmetic LL by contrast false equations never imply true ones. As a result, linear arithmetic is desecsed. A formula A which entails 0 = 0 is a secondary equation; one entailed by 0 6= 0 is a secondary unequation. A (...) system of formal arithmetic is secsed if every extensional formula is either a secondary equation or a secondary unequation. We are indebted to the program MaGIC for the simple countermodel SZ7, on which 0 = 1 is not a secondary formula. This is a small but signi cant success for automated reasoning. (shrink)

Among his generation of intellectuals, the eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder is recognized both for his innovative philosophy of language and history and for his passionate criticism of racism, colonialism, and imperialism. A student of Immanuel Kant, Herder challenged the idea that anyone--even the philosophers of the Enlightenment--could have a monopoly on truth. In Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, John K. Noyes plumbs the connections between Herder's anti-imperialism, often acknowledged but rarely explored in depth, and his epistemological investigations. Noyes (...) argues that Herder's anti-rationalist epistemology, his rejection of universal conceptions of truth, knowledge, and justice, constitutes the first attempt to establish not just a moral but an epistemological foundation for anti-imperialism. Engaging with the work of postcolonial theorists such Dipesh Chakrabarty and Gayatri Spivak, this book is a valuable reassessment of Enlightenment anti-imperialism that demonstrates Herder's continuing relevance to postcolonial studies today. (shrink)

I note that the logics of the relevant group most closely tied to the research programme in paraconsistency are those without the contraction postulate(A.AB).AB and its close relatives. As a move towards gaining control of the contraction-free systems I show that they are prime (that wheneverA B is a theorem so is eitherA orB). The proof is an extension of the metavaluational techniques standardly used for analogous results about intuitionist logic or the relevant positive logics.

"There's nothing available that I know of that comes as close to representing the range of Royce's works.... " -- John H Lavely.

Honoring a living will typically involves treating an incompetent patient in accord with preferences she once had, but whose objects she can no longer understand. How do we respect her precedent autonomy by giving her what she used to want? There is a similar problem with subsequent consent: How can we justify interfering with someone''s autonomy on the grounds that she will later consent to the interference, if she refuses now?Both problems arise on the assumption that, to respect someone''s autonomy, (...) any preferences we respect must be among that person''s current preferences. I argue that this is not always true. Just as we can celebrate an event long after it happens, so can we respect someone''s wishes long before or after she has that wish. In the contexts of precedent autonomy and subsequent consent, the wishes are often preferences about which of two other, conflicting preferences to satisfy. When someone has two conflicting preferences, and a third preference on how to resolve that conflict, to respect his autonomy we must respect that third preference. People with declining competence may have a resolution preference earlier, favoring the earlier conflicting preference (precedent autonomy), whereas those with rising competence may have it later, favoring the later conflicting preference (subsequent consent). To respect autonomy in such cases we must respect not a current, but a former or later preference. (shrink)

Provides information on some 27 categories within general field of ethics. All entries are accessible through a complete table of contents, a thematic index, an index of persons, and a general subject index recommended for public libraries.

Contains entries that provide information about some of history's greatest philosophers and philosophical works; arranged alphabetically from Abe-to-Friere.

The 14 chapters in _Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments_, all published here for the first time, focus on recent thinking in this important area, helping initiate issues and lines of argument that have not been explored previously. At the same time, a reader can use this volume to become oriented to the established questions and positions in end of life ethics, both because new questions are set in their context, and because most of the chapters—written (...) by a team of experts—survey the field as well as add to it. Each chapter includes initial summaries, final conclusions, and a Related Topics section. TABLE OF CONTENTS John K. Davis, "Introduction" Geoffrey Scarre, "Is it possible to be better off dead?" Taylor W. Cyr, "How Does Death Harm the Deceased?" Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, "The Significance of an Afterlife" Jens Johansson, "The Severity of Death" John K. Davis, "Defining Death" James Stacey Taylor, "Autonomy, Competence, and End of Life" Eric Vogelstein, "Deciding for the Incompetent" Paul T. Menzel, "Change of Mind: An Issue for Advance Directives" Nancy S. Jecker, "Medical Futility and Respect for Patient Autonomy" Paul T. Menzel, "Refusing Lifesaving Medical Treatment and Food and Water by Mouth" Thomas S. Huddle, "Suicide, Physician-Assisted Suicide, the Doing-Allowing Distinction and Double Effect" Michael Cholbi, "Grief and End of Life Surrogate Decision-making" Bruce Jennings, "Solidarity near the End of Life: The Promise of Relational Decision-making in the Care of the Dying" Colin Farrelly, "Justice and the Aging of the Human Species". (shrink)

The 14 chapters in Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments, all published here for the first time, focus on recent thinking in this important area, helping initiate issues and lines of argument that have not been explored previously. At the same time, a reader can use this volume to become oriented to the established questions and positions in end of life ethics, both because new questions are set in their context, and because most of the chapters--written (...) by a team of experts--survey the field as well as add to it. Each chapter includes initial summaries, final conclusions, and a Related Topics section. TABLE OF CONTENTS John K. Davis, "Introduction" Geoffrey Scarre, "Is it possible to be better off dead?" Taylor W. Cyr, "How Does Death Harm the Deceased?" Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, "The Significance of an Afterlife" Jens Johansson, "The Severity of Death" John K. Davis, "Defining Death" James Stacey Taylor, "Autonomy, Competence, and End of Life" Eric Vogelstein, "Deciding for the Incompetent" Paul T. Menzel, "Change of Mind: An Issue for Advance Directives" Nancy S. Jecker, "Medical Futility and Respect for Patient Autonomy" Paul T. Menzel, "Refusing Lifesaving Medical Treatment and Food and Water by Mouth" Thomas S. Huddle, "Suicide, Physician-Assisted Suicide, the Doing-Allowing Distinction and Double Effect" Michael Cholbi, "Grief and End of Life Surrogate Decision-making" Bruce Jennings, "Solidarity near the End of Life: The Promise of Relational Decision-making in the Care of the Dying" Colin Farrelly, "Justice and the Aging of the Human Species". (shrink)

Sometimes the mentally ill have sufficient mental capacity to refuse treatment competently, and others have a moral duty to respect their refusal. However, those with episodic mental disorders may wish to precommit themselves to treatment, using Ulysses contracts known as “mental health advance directives.” How can health care providers justify enforcing such contracts over an agent’s current, competent refusal? I argue that providers respect an agent’s autonomy not retrospectively—by reference to his or her past wishes—and not merely synchronically—so that the (...) agent gets what he or she wants right now—but diachronically and prospectively, acting so that the agent can shape his or her circumstances as the agent wishes over time, for the agent will experience the consequences of providers’ actions over time. Mental health directives accomplish this, so they are a way of respecting the agent’s autonomy even when providers override the agent’s current competent refusal. (shrink)

Patients sometimes request procedures their doctors find morally objectionable. Do doctors have a right of conscientious refusal? I argue that conscientious refusal is justified only if the doctor's refusal does not make the patient worse off than she would have been had she gone to another doctor in the first place. From this approach I derive conclusions about the duty to refer and facilitate transfer, whether doctors may provide 'moral counseling,' whether doctors are obligated to provide objectionable procedures when no (...) other doctor is available, why the moral consensus among doctors seems relevant even though it does not determine whether something is morally acceptable, and whether doctors should stay out of fields whose standard procedures they find morally unacceptable. (shrink)