This volume, with contributions from scholars in political science, literature, and philosophy, examines the mutual influence of reason and religion at the time of the American Founding.

THE MOST SACRED FREEDOM includes eight essays that were first presented at the 2014 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas, the seventh annual conference sponsored by Mercer Universitys Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for Americas Founding Principles. Together, these essays explore the great principle of religious liberty by charting its development in the Western tradition and reconsidering its place at Americas founding. The book begins with a comparison between the flood accounts in Genesis and the Mesopotamian (...) Atra-Has's and advances all the way to the 2014 Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The intervening chapters examine the contributions of figures such as Emperor Julian, Roger Williams, Cecilius Calvert, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the American Founders. Contributors to the volume are Steven Grosby, Jeremiah H. Russell, Maura Jane Farrelly, Daniel Cullen, John Witte, Jr., Scott Yenor, David Ramsey, and Michael Novak. (shrink)

Examines the theories of Plato, Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine Beecher, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman concerning the education of women.

Can a business be said to demonstrate moral virtues, and does being virtuous mean that it is more likely to behave ethically?

A high profile context in which physics and biology meet today is in the new field of systems biology. Systems biology is a fascinating subject for sociological investigation because the demands of interdisciplinary collaboration have brought epistemological issues and debates front and centre in discussions amongst systems biologists in conference settings, in publications, and in laboratory coffee rooms. One could argue that systems biologists are conducting their own philosophy of science. This paper explores the epistemic aspirations of the field by (...) drawing on interviews with scientists working in systems biology, attendance at systems biology conferences and workshops, and visits to systems biology laboratories. It examines the discourses of systems biologists, looking at how they position their work in relation to previous types of biological inquiry, particularly molecular biology. For example, they raise the issue of reductionism to distinguish systems biology from molecular biology. This comparison with molecular biology leads to discussions about the goals and aspirations of systems biology, including epistemic commitments to quantification, rigor and predictability. Some systems biologists aspire to make biology more similar to physics and engineering by making living systems calculable, modelable and ultimately predictable—a research programme that is perhaps taken to its most extreme form in systems biology’s sister discipline: synthetic biology. Other systems biologists, however, do not think that the standards of the physical sciences are the standards by which we should measure the achievements of systems biology, and doubt whether such standards will ever be applicable to ‘dirty, unruly living systems’. This paper explores these epistemic tensions and reflects on their sociological dimensions and their consequences for future work in the life sciences. (shrink)

Background/purpose:Research from other disciplines demonstrates that ethical position, idealism, or relativism predicts ethical decision-making. Individuals from diverse cultures ascribe to various religious beliefs and studies have found that religiosity and culture affect ethical decision-making. Moreover, little literature exists regarding undergraduate nursing students’ ethical position; no studies have been conducted in the United States on students’ ethical position, their self-identified culture, and intrinsic religiosity despite an increase in the diversity of nursing students across the United States.Participants and Research Context Objectives:The study’s (...) two aims were to determine the relationship of self-identified culture, religiosity, and ethics position of undergraduate nursing student and whether students’ level of education and past ethics courses taken related to idealism. Two hundred and twelve volunteer undergraduate students participated.Research design:A descriptive cross-sectional study was designed for participants who completed the Ethical Position Questionnaire, The intrinsic subscale of the Religious Orientation Scale, and a Demographic, Cultural, Ethnicity Form. To test the five hypotheses, analyses included t-tests, correlations, and ANOVA.Ethical Considerations:The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Adelphi University.Results:Idealism and intrinsic religiosity were significantly related. Differences were observed for intrinsic religiosity and idealism for cultural identity and cultural dimensions such as parents’ place of birth, and if participants were US born. Students’ level of education or participation in past courses on ethics did not influence idealism.Conclusions:The study’s findings were similar to most of the research from other disciplines on culture, ethics position, and religiosity. Generic courses on ethics taken prior to clinical work may not assist nursing students in integrating principles into complex ethical dilemmas. Self-identified culture, religion, and intrinsic religiosity related to ethics position; completing ethics courses and level of education, juniors compared with seniors, did not influence idealism. Faculty should consider integrating students’ culture, religious orientation, and ethics position into teaching ethics for all levels of nursing education. (shrink)

The work of Spinoza, Descartes and Leibniz is cited in an attempt to develop, both expositorily and critically, the philosophy of Anne Viscountess Conway. Broadly, it is contended that Conway's metaphysics, epistemology and account of the passions not only bear intriguing comparison with the work of the other well-known rationalists, but supersede them in some ways, particularly insofar as the notions of substance and ontological hierarchy are concerned. Citing the commentary of Loptson and Carolyn Merchant, and alluding to other commentary (...) on the Cambridge Platonists whose work was done in tandem with Conway's, it is contended that Conway's conception of the "monad" preceded and influenced Leibniz's, and that her monistic vitalism was in many respects a superior metaphysics to the Cartesian system. It is concluded that we owe Conway more attention and celebration than she has thus far received. (shrink)

La historia de la recepción de un texto suele estar en conflicto con sus orígenes. Colin Burrow nota la ironía de que, a pesar del gran apoyo de aquellos en el poder, la Eneida de Virgilio es tomada y traducida por los desfavorecidos durante el Renacimiento. Lo mismo es en parte cierto para la Ciropedia de Jenofonte. Este artículo examina el lugar de la Ciropedia dentro de la tradición humanista inglesa, centrándose en traducciones inglesas del texto y de sus interpretaciones (...) dentro de la tradición speculum principis. Esto culmina en el momento en el que el monarca reinante, el Rey Jacobo I de Inglaterra, encuentra reflejado en Ciropedia un modelo irresistible de realeza imperial. (shrink)

This paper explores the type of stakeholder engagement currently being undertaken by many organisations as part of social and ethical accounting, auditing and reporting processes. Specifically, the paper seeks to determine the extent to which current corporate practice iteratively promotes stakeholder participation in collaboratively designing accountability programmes, or whether it merely is a new term for canvassing stakeholder opinions. Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation is used as a conceptual model for positioning contemporary methods of stakeholder dialogue. The findings from interviews (...) with representatives from twenty‐nine UK and transnational organisations actively engaged in stakeholder dialogue are presented. This paper concludes that contemporary organisations seem to be seeking to engage with stakeholders in partnerships, yet their attempts still fall short of what Arnstein called Citizen Control, the level of achievement that non‐governmental organisations would like stakeholder engagement to attain. (shrink)

In one volume, this book brings together a new English translation of Plato's _Meno_, a selection of illuminating articles on themes in the dialogue published between 1965 and 1985 and an introduction setting the _Meno_ in its historical context and opening up the key philosophical issues which the various articles discuss. A glossary is provided which briefly introduces some of the key terms and indicates how they are translated. The _Meno_ is an excellent introduction to Plato and philosophy.

Is it helpful to model the idea of professional formation on ethical formation?ing from the specifically ethical interest of Aristotle's own doctrine, in the ?narrow?, ?moral? sense of ethical, and aiming at the same time for an inclusive, ?broad? formulation which extends to various types of métiers (occupations/professions), this paper argues that an Aristotelian perspective offers a more robust concept of personal, professional and civic responsibility??responsibleness??than any that our present ?managerial? rationality can promote. Drawing on some Aristotelian texts, I show (...) that the practical knowledge of one with ?formation? (appropriate to the métier in question) enables an agent to find the relevant end and the appropriate act in the name of that end?as if simultaneously. The end and the means to the end are perfectly suited to one another. Crucially, the structure of the agent's practical reasoning is grounded on the telos which guides the agent and this is summoned implicitly from formation. This Aristotelian model of practical rationality stands as a rival to the public rationality that now predominates, a rationality which sees the meeting of explicit, pre-specified outcomes, objectives or targets as the chief way in which the accountability of agents may be secured. (shrink)

Overviews -- Hildegard of Bingen -- Anne Conway -- Mary Astell -- Mary Wollstonecraft -- Harriet Taylor Mill -- Edith Stein -- Simone Weil -- Simone de Beauvoir -- Conclusions.

The influence of film's compelling images, characters and storylines has polarized perspectives on cinema and the moral imagination. Does film stimulate the audience's imagination and foster imitation in morally dangerous ways, or elicit ethical insight and empathy? Might the presentation of images on screen denude the capacity to conjure images in the mind's eye, or cultivate the imaginative capacity for moral vision as spectators attend to the plight of protagonists? Using Imitation of Life to interrogate paradoxical perspectives on the cinematic (...) imagination, this article develops an account of the moral imagination focusing on sensory, emotional and empathic aspects of the audience's imaginative relationship with screen characters and their innermost thoughts and feelings. (shrink)

In one volume, this book brings together a new English translation of Plato's _Meno_, a selection of illuminating articles on themes in the dialogue published between 1965 and 1985 and an introduction setting the _Meno_ in its historical context and opening up the key philosophical issues which the various articles discuss. A glossary is provided which briefly introduces some of the key terms and indicates how they are translated. The _Meno_ is an excellent introduction to Plato and philosophy.

Innovative surgery raises four kinds of ethical challenges: potential harms to patients; compromised informed consent; unfair allocation of healthcare resources; and conflicts of interest. Lack of adequate data on innovations and lack of regulatory oversight contribute to these ethical challenges. In this paper these issues and the extent to which problems may be resolved by better evidence-gathering and more comprehensive regulation are explored. It is suggested that some ethical issues will be more resistant to resolution than others, owing to special (...) features of both surgery and innovation. (shrink)

Financial and nonfinancial conflicts of interest in medicine and surgery are troubling because they have the capacity to skew decision making in ways that might be detrimental to patient care and well-being. The recent case of the Articular Surface Replacement (ASR) hip provides a vivid illustration of the harmful effects of conflicts of interest in surgery.

This paper is a personal dialogue of maneuvering the landscape of scholarship in the United States as a nurse faculty. The principal thesis of this paper is that a discursive shift from margins to mainstream literature has occurred within nursing discourse during the past 20 years as the result of a growing body of work by nurse philosophers. I utilize my own work in nursing philosophy as an exemplar and provide a narrative situated in a feminist‐critical paradigm. This paper: (1) (...) presents a historical background through a critical‐feminist lens of the discursive shift using my own work and lived experiences as exemplars; (2) examines a contemporary mainstream ‘authoritative’ text as an exemplar of this discursive shift and (3) proposes both potential positive intersections and threats in the future development of nursing philosophy resulting from this discursive shift. (shrink)

There has been much attention devoted in recent years to the question of whether our moral principles can be related to our biological nature. This collection of new essays focuses on the connection between biology, in particular evolutionary biology, and foundational questions in ethics. The book asks such questions as whether humans are innately selfish, and whether there are particular facets of human nature that bear directly on social practices. The volume is organised historically beginning with Aristotle and covering such (...) major figures as Hume and Darwin down to the present and the work of Harvard sociobiologist, E. O. Wilson. This is the first book to offer this historical perspective on the relation of biology and ethics, and has been written by some of the leading figures in the history and philosophy of science, whose work stands very much at the cutting edge of these disciplines. (shrink)

Several recent papers dealing with Plato's position on the imperfection of the phenomenal world draw heavily on the differences between two kinds of predicates in order to show the following: In the middle dialogues, Plato posits Forms only as referents of what the writers call incomplete predicates. He does not posit Forms as referents for complete predicates. When interpreters ignore the differences between these kinds of predicates, they ascribe too radical a view regarding the imperfection of the phenomenal world to (...) the middle dialogues. The ontology of these dialogues includes sensible particulars which retain their identity over time even though they are continually changing in some respect or other. (shrink)

This book explores the persistence of Pythagorean ideas in theoretical physics. It shows that the Pythagorean position is both philosophically deep and scientifically interesting. However, it does not endorse pure Pythagoreanism; rather, it defends the thesis that mind and mathematical structure are the grounds of reality. The book begins by examining Wigner's paper on the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. It argues that, whilst many issues surrounding the applicability of mathematics disappear upon examination, there are some core (...) issues to do with the effectiveness of mathematics in fundamental physics which remain. The core issues are the existence of the laws of nature and our minds ability to fathom them, the use of formal mathematics in discovering things about the quantum world, the fact that deep mathematics is needed to describe fundamental physics, and the asymptotic nature of the quest for knowledge. These issues are the focus of the book. The author seeks to explain them within a metaphysical framework that takes mind and mathematical structure as its fundamental principles. The framework - called quantum monadology - combines ideas from Leibnizian monadology, set theory, and consistent histories quantum theory. (shrink)

Explains the social theories of contemporary German intellectual Jurgen Habermas.

PREFATORY NOTE T may be well at the outset to say clearly what is the aim of the present volume. The title is Ancient Art and Ritual, but the reader will ...

It is plausible to think, as many developmental psychologists do, that joint attention is important in the development of getting a full grasp on psychological notions. This chapter argues that this role of joint attention is best understood in the context of the simulation theory about the nature of psychological understanding rather than in the context of the theory. Episodes of joint attention can then be seen not as good occasions for learning a theory of mind but rather as good (...) occasions for developing skills of expressing and sharing thoughts. This approach suggests seeing language acquisition as learning how to focus and fine-tune joint attention already present in the normal basic relation of carer and infant. Philosophers in thinking about other minds have concentrated too much on the contrast of first and third person, I vs he/she, and forgotten the centrality of the contrast of first and second person, I vs you, and the related centrality of we. (shrink)

Electricity systems in many parts of Europe and the United States are currently undergoing transformations that have potentially profound implications for managerial practice and the politics of user identities within these systems. After more than a century of “universal service” that provided technical goods and services to all users on essentially equal terms, utility managers are now constructing and exploiting heterogeneity and difference among users. This article explores local managerial practices within Swedish electricity in the mid-1990s, where managers promoted “brand-name” (...) electricity as a strategy for configuring identities for users, their utilities, and electricity itself. These dynamics are analyzed using theoretical perspectives from two bodies of science and technology studies on configuring users’ identities. The article then analyzes the emergent practices and their theoretical and political implications for understanding of how and why artifacts, users, and organizational entities are coconstituted in ongoing technoscientific practice in infrastructural systems. (shrink)

The long-form television drama series Hannibal thematises the embodied imagination and the elicitation of empathy and ethical understanding at the level of narrative and characterisation as well as through character engagement and screen aesthetics. Using Hannibal as a case study, this research investigates how stylistic choices frame the experiences of screen characters and engender forms of intersubjectivity based on corporeal and cognitive routes to empathy; in particular, it examines the capacity for screen media to facilitate what neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese terms (...) intercorporeality. As a constitutive aspect of intersubjectivity and social understanding that works through embodied simulation, intercorporeality invites a reconceptualisation of empathy and its association with ethical motivation and insight. Hannibal also introduces cannibalism as a dark metaphor for the incorporation of another into oneself, reflecting on empathy's ill-understood potential for negative affect and... (shrink)

This article explains what is meant by the creolizing of ideas and then demonstrates it through exploring a political observation about political illegitimacy made by eighteenth-century Genevan social and political thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau and creolized when the nineteenth-century African-American educator and social critic Anna Julia Cooper argued that the ideal of independence that lay at the core of political doctrines of republican self-governance relied on forms of willful blindness that cloaked the ongoing dependence of all human beings on one another. (...) In conclusion, the article considers what Cooper's expansion of Rousseau's insight and creolized readings of political philosophy imply for our pursuit of just political institutions today. (shrink)