Once upon a time, the twentieth-century investigations of the behaviors of sub-atomic particles were thought to have established that there can be no such thing as an objective, observer-independent, scientifically realist, empirically adequate picture of the physical world.

The economic distinction between technological and market information offers a useful guide to the relationship between information and policy. The two types create different problems for markets and require different emphases in public policy, focusing on either the production or the distribution of information. The interaction of the two types creates familiar policy problems such as underinvestment in information, adverse selection and moral hazard. Indicators and other means of dealing with such problems constitute policies and demonstrate not only the importance (...) of information for policy but the necessity of policy for information. (shrink)

PHYSICAL MEANING OF GEOMETRICAL PROPOSITIONS IN your schooldays most of you who read this book made acquaintance with the noble building of Euclid's ...

We develop a version of a direct perception account of emotion recognition on the basis of a metaphysical claim that emotions are individuated as patterns of characteristic features. On our account, emotion recognition relies on the same type of pattern recognition as is described for object recognition. The analogy allows us to distinguish two forms of directly perceiving emotions, namely perceiving an emotion in the absence of any top-down processes, and perceiving an emotion in a way that significantly involves some (...) top-down processes ; and, in addition, an inference-based evaluation of an emotion. Our model clarifies the epistemology of emotion recognition. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to reveal the stages and content of experimental work on the spiritual and moral education of contract servicemen in the army environment. The article focuses on the presence of certain patterns in the assimilation of spiritual and moral qualities by contract servicemen, which formed the basis of the tested method of spiritual and moral education. The scientific novelty lies in the substantiation and experimental verification of the methodology for the spiritual and moral education of (...) contract servicemen in the socio-cultural army environment, based on the consistent formation of the ideals and values of their centuries-old domestic and military culture. As a result of the study, a positive dynamics of the level of formation of spiritual and moral qualities among contract servicemen at the control stage was revealed, which proves the effectiveness of the developed methodology. (shrink)

A physician says, "I have an ethical obligation never to cause the death of a patient," another responds, "My ethical obligation is to relieve pain even if the patient dies." The current argument over the role of physicians in assisting patients to die constantly refers to the ethical duties of the profession. References to the Hippocratic Oath are often heard. Many modern problems, from assisted suicide to accessible health care, raise questions about the traditional ethics of medicine and the medical (...) profession. However, few know what the traditional ethics are and how they came into being. This book provides a brief tour of the complex story of medical ethics evolved over centuries in both Western and Eastern culture. It sets this story in the social and cultural contexts in which the work of healing was practiced and suggests that, behind the many different perceptions about the ethical duties of physicians, certain themes appear constantly, and may be relevant to modern debates. The book begins with the Hippocratic medicine of ancient Greece, moves through the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Enlightenment in Europe, and the long history of Indian and Chinese medicine, ending as the problems raised modern medical science and technology challenge the settled ethics of the long tradition. (shrink)

I distinguish between two conceptually different kinds of physical space: a space of ordinary material bodies, which is the space of points at which I could imaginably place the tip of my finger, or the center of a billiard-ball, and a space of elementary physical determinables, which is the smallest space of points such that stipulating what is happening at each one of those points, at every time, amounts to an exhaustive physical history of the universe. In all classical physical (...) theories, these two spaces happen to coincide – and what we mean by calling a theory “classical”, and all we mean by calling a theory “classical”, is precisely that these two spaces coincide. But once the distinction between these two spaces in on the table, it becomes clear that there is no logical or conceptual reason why they must coincide – and it turns out that a very simple way of pulling them apart from one another gives us quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Casuistry is a traditional method of interpreting and resolving moral problems. It focuses on the circumstances of particular cases rather than on the application of ethical theories and principles. After a brief history of casuistry, the method is explained and its relation to theory and principles is discussed.

Two leaves of typescript and 7 leaves of galley proofs with corrections in Einstein's hand for the article "Relativity" in American Peoples Encyclopedia.

The American Institute of certified public accountants (AICPA) has promulgated a Code of Professional Conduct , which has served as the primary ethical standard for public accountants in the United States for more than 20 years. It is now out of date and needs to be replaced with a code of ethics. Just as U.S. generally accepted accounting principles are being migrated toward “principles-based accounting” as part of a convergence with international financial reporting standards, a similar process needs to occur (...) with ethics. This article organizes the primary rules of the AICPA Code around five essential virtues: objectivity, integrity, inquisitiveness, loyalty, and trustworthiness. These virtues correspond to the general principles set forth in the Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC). From this virtue ethics perspective, various rules of the AICPA Code are critiqued as being inadequate at best, and poorly crafted at worst. The article concludes with the proposition that principles-based ethics serves the profession and the financial reporting process better than the current rules-based approach. (shrink)

"Race" is so highly charged and loaded a concept it often hampers critical thinking about racial practice and policy. A philosophical approach allows us to isolate and analyse the key questions: What is race? Can we do without race? What is racism and why is it wrong? What should our policies on race and racism be? The Philosophy of Race presents a concise and up-to-date overview of the central philosophical debates about race. It then builds on this philosophical foundation to (...) analyse the sociopolitical questions of racism and race-relevant policy. Throughout, the discussion is illustrated with a wide range of examples: Afro-American 'blackness'; British-Asian racial formation; Aboriginal identity in Australia; the racial grouping of Romany-Gypsies and Jews in Europe; categories of race in Brazil; and the concept of model minorities in the US and UK. (shrink)

Pierce challenges the argument that economic sanctions are always morally preferable to the use of military force. He argues that such sanctions inflict suffering and physical harm on noncombatants and that small-scale military operations are sometimes preferable.

Corporate transgression is a well-known phenomenon in today's business world. Some corporations are involved in violations of law and moral rules that produce organizational practices and products that take a toll on the public. Social cognitive theory of moral agency provides a conceptual framework for analyzing how otherwise pro-social managers adopt socially injurious corporate practices. This is achieved through selective disengagement of moral self-sanctions from transgressive conduct. This article documents moral disengagement practices in four famous cases of corporate transgressions and (...) discusses some implications for business ethics on how to counteract organizational use of moral disengagement strategies. (shrink)

English summary: The investigations in this book are on the problem of the relationship between politics and the economy as objects of the political theory and the economic theory. Both theories are part of the Herrschaftswissen as defined by Max Scheler. They are based on a general theory of action. This theory as well as the political and the economic theory which is developed from the theory of action is understood as a system of categories which contains the laws of (...) the fields concerned. Central categories are the categories of power and domination. The political and economic theory are conceived of as the basis of rational action in politics and in the economy. German description: Welche Beziehungen bestehen zwischen Politik und Wirtschaft als Gegenstanden der politischen und der okonomischen Theorie? Hans Albert widmet sich in seinen Untersuchungen dieser Frage. Er bestimmt sowohl die Politik als auch die Wirtschaft als Teile des Herrschaftswissens im Sinne Max Schelers. Sie werden aus einer allgemeinen Theorie des menschlichen Handelns entwickelt, die anthropologisch begrundet wird. Diese wird ebenso wie die aus ihr hervorgehenden Theorien der Politik und der Wirtschaft in ein System von Kategorien gebracht, welche die Gesetzlichkeiten der betreffenden Bereiche enthalten. Zentrale Kategorien sind die der Macht und der Herrschaft. Die politische und die okonomische Theorie werden als Grundlage rationalen Handelns in beiden Bereichen aufgefasst. (shrink)

We introduce a new understanding of deontic modals that we callobligations as weakest permissions. We argue for its philosophical plausibility, study its expressive power in neighborhood models, provide a complete Hilbert-style axiom system for it and show that it can be extended and applied to practical norms in decision and game theory.

The first completely geometric approach to relativity theory, based on the space-time geometries of Loedel and Brehme.

Corporate codes of conduct frequently impose a duty of loyalty upon employees. l examine the notion of loyalty in general, and loyalty in the workplace in particular. I conclude that unless loyalty is defined and articulated in favor of a larger social project (rather than in favor of aperson, a set of ruIes, or other entity), efforts to encourage loyalty will be a source of epistemic distortion at best, and oppression at worst.

In this paper we prove that the principles in the languagewith relation composition and dynamic implication, valid forall binary relations, are the same ones as the principlesvalid when we restrict ourselves to DPL-relations,i.e. relations generated from conditions (tests) and resettings.

It is inquired how much an observer can ascertain of the quantum state of a system of which he and his measuring apparatus form a part; how much, for example, observers like ourselves can ascertain of the quantum state of the Universe. It turns out that no practicable experiment (and: perhaps, no experiment whatever) can establish that that state is not the vacuum. Some of the implications of this curious result are discussed.

According to Fisher, a hypothesis specifying a density function for X is falsified (at the level of significance ) if the realization of X is in the size- region of lowest densities. However, non-linear transformations of X can map low-density into high-density regions. Apparently, then, falsifications can always be turned into corroborations (and vice versa) by looking at suitable transformations of X (Neyman's Paradox). The present paper shows that, contrary to the view taken in the literature, this provides no argument (...) against a theory of statistical falsification. (shrink)