Raymond Turner first provides a logical framework for specification and the design of specification languages, then uses this framework to introduce and study ...

Time's mysteries seem to resist comprehension and what remains, once the familiar metaphors are stripped away, can stretch even the most profound philosopher. In Of Time and Lamentation, Raymond Tallis rises to this challenge and explores the nature and meaning of time and how best to understand it. The culmination of some twenty years of thinking, writing and wondering about (and within) time, it is a bold, original, and thought-provoking work. With characteristic fearlessness, Tallis seeks to reclaim time from (...) the jaws of physics. For most of us, time is composed of mornings, afternoons, and evenings and expressed in hurry, hope, longing, waiting, enduring, planning, joyful expectation, and grief. Thinking about it is to meditate on our own mortality. Yet, physics has little or nothing to say about this time, the time as it is lived. The story told by caesium clocks, quantum theory, and Lorentz coordinates, Tallis argues, needs to be supplemented by one of moss on rocks, tears on faces, and the long narratives of our human journey. Our temporal lives deserve a richer attention than is afforded by the equations of mathematical physics.The first part of the book, "Killing Time" is a formidable critique of the spatialized and mathematized account of time arising from physical science. Part 2, "Human Time" examines tensed time, the reality of time as it is lived: what we mean by "now", how we make sense of past and future events, and the idea of eternity. (shrink)

An entertaining series of logic problems and puzzles of increasing difficulty, and all relating important mathematical and logical concepts, includes mind-benders, paradoxes, metapuzzles, number exercises, and a mathematical novel.

This work subjects the fundamental ideas of Derrida, Lacan, Barthes and their followers to an examination and demonstrates the baselessness of post-Saussurean claims about the relations between language, reality and self.

This is a new edition of a classic textbook in health care ethics, one that offers an alternative to the principle-based approach from Beauchamp and Childress (Principles of Biomedical Ethics, now in its seventh edition from OUP) and traditional Catholic approaches of Ashley and O'Rourke. In the early chapters Devettere spells out the meaning of ethics and the importance of prudential reasoning in seeking the good life. The rest of the book deals with issues and cases, including determinations of life (...) and death, reproduction and research and genetics, and the distribution of health care. In this fourth edition Devettere updates all chapters and adds new cases and new sections on the following: neuroscience, social psychology, overriding advance directives, studies on the fetus, the palliative care movement, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, pharmacists and reproductive issues, prenatal life and abortion, neonatal testing and mandatory vaccinations, the US governments' STD research in Guatemala, the emergence of biobanks, facial transplantations, genetic testing, legal issues around the Affordable Care Act, and more. This is an accessible and comprehensive textbook covering all aspects of the field. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Acknowledgments References.

(1989). BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER: DON'T FORSAKE THE FAMILY JEWELS. Philosophical Papers: Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 265-280. doi: 10.1080/05568648909506323.

Professor Raymond Wacks breaks down the leading theories of justice and illustrates how present-day challenges, like terrorism and migration, affect our fundamental notions of fairness and democratic freedoms.

In Seeing Ourselves, philosopher and neuroscientist Raymond Tallis goes in search of what kind of beings we are, and where we might find meaning in our lives. Showcasing a remarkably detailed engagement with a huge range of disciplines, Tallis shows the unique nature of human consciousness.

A central task of schooling is to cultivate reasonableness in students. In this chapter we show how the teaching of reasonableness can be practiced successfully in secondary schools, using materials from the Western Australian curriculum. The discussion proceeds in four stages. We first defend the claim that the teaching of reasonable is a key aim of schooling. Here we offer an account of reasonableness, which we take to be both a skill and a disposition. Students learn reasonableness through the practice (...) of specific skills such as open and curious questioning, clarifying, and categorizing, and evaluating the merits of each contribution toward the problem or question under consideration. Reasonableness comes about as a joint commitment between the individual and the group to be honest in their views, to take care of those views, and for everyone to recognize that each member is a partial bearer of truth. Secondly, we discuss the pedagogies that cultivate reasonableness. The Philosophical Community of Inquiry is a natural pedagogy for this purpose. This can be supplemented with the thinking tools approach of Cam’s Twenty Thinking Tools or Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines. In addition, we introduce our own two skill-building exercises, the Reasoning Game and the Argument Game. Thirdly, we show how this approach can be applied not just in Philosophy classes, but in the Humanities and Social Sciences. We argue that our approach brings these subjects to life, it develops understanding and reasonableness, and it bumps up student engagement. Fourthly, we discuss the assessment of reasonableness. In this type of learning environment, the way students perform in the philosophical community of inquiry is the focus of assessment. The desirable qualities of being reasonable become the assessment criteria for an on-balanced judgment about the student. (shrink)

Qu'entend-on par enchantement et désenchantement du monde? Quelles seraient les voies à suivre pour susciter un réenchantement du monde qui sera le fait de l’humain lui-même? La raison et la rationalité sont-elles les causes des maux de nos errements ou des outils pour les contrer? Suffira-t-il d’avoir « foi en la raison » pour surmonter les défis que l’humanité s’est elle-même imposés par négligence et irresponsabilité.

Tallis brings his familiar erudition and insight to this most intriguing and important philosophical question - the nature of our freedom - one that impacts most directly on our lives and takes us to the heart of what we are.

Negative words or integrated negations: Nothingness, the completely Other, Nothing, the Infinite, the Unknowable, the Subconscious all have a certain poetic overtone. But we must be careful of linguistic sleight-of-hand taken for an idea.

What is law? Does it have a purpose? What is its relationship with justice? Do we have a moral duty to obey the law? These sorts of questions lie at the heart of jurisprudence. Moreover, every substantive or 'black letter' branch of the law raises questions about its own meaning and function. The law of contract cannot be properly understood without an appreciation of the concepts of rights and duties. The law of tort is directly related to several economic theories (...) of compensation. The criminal law is inextricably linked to philosophies of punishment? Understanding Jurisprudence explores these problems and provides an engaging introduction to the central issues of legal theory. The book navigates the reader through legal philosophy's fundamental concepts, concerns, and controversies. An experienced teacher of jurisprudence and distinguished writer in the field, Professor Wacks adopts an approach that is easy to follow and understand without avoiding the complexities and subtleties of the subject. Students of law, politics, philosophy, and other social sciences will find this an ideal guide to the essential themes of contemporary jurisprudence. Online Resource Centre A free online resource accompanies the book and provides the following resources: Analysis of current controversies of a jurisprudential nature such as current legal and moral controversies and political debates An additional chapter providing guidance and advice on the study of jurisprudence An interactive glossary of key terms relating to legal theory Further reading, including links to full text journal articles Questions and answers Useful Web links to support learning. (shrink)

The primitive conception is that the future already exists like a terra incognita which one can dimly make out with or without the help of the gods. This idea is at the basis of fatalism and of belief in prophets, oracles and astrologers. This ancient concept was replaced in the nineteenth century by the vocabulary of scientific determinism which said that actual beings can only function. If one knew in detail their structures and their movements, one could calculate the results (...) of their functioning with perfect precision. (shrink)

Published now for the first time in English, Cybernetics and the Origin of Information is a deep exploration into information theory, cybernetics, and the philosophy of information. A true hidden gem in the history of continental thought, this text helps us determine and understand the contemporary technological moment.

In a field dominated by research on moral prescription and moral prediction, there is poor understanding of the place of moral perceptions in organizations alongside philosophical ethics and causal models of ethical outcomes. As leadership failures continue to plague organizational health and firms recognize the wide-ranging impact of subjective bias, scholars and practitioners need a renewed frame of reference from which to reconceptualize their current understanding of ethics as perceived in individuals. Based on an assessment and selection perspective from the (...) field of human resource management, an alternative to conventional deductive-prescriptive approaches is proposed based on a pluralistic concept referred to as moral goodness. An inductive-descriptive theory-building framework is constructed based on three interrelated streams of inquiry to yield insight concerning both formal and informal instances of assessment. Recommendations are proposed for the application of the framework to future research and practice. (shrink)

W. David Solomon sits at the very center of the revival of virtue ethics. Solomon's work extended what began with the publication of G. E. M. Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" (1958) by solidifying virtue ethics as a viable approach within contemporary moral philosophy. Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Culture comprises twelve chapters: eleven that employ Solomon's work and legacy, followed by a twelfth concluding chapter by Solomon himself. Each chapter deepens and develops virtue ethics as a (...) rich intellectual tradition rooted in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Editor Raymond Hain divides the volume into three sections. The first addresses the historical contexts of happiness, justice, and mercy in the tradition of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. The second turns to recent themes in normative ethics, focusing on topics such as morality, virtue, and egoism. The third discusses broader ethical issues with significant cultural implications, such as human dignity, physician-assisted suicide, and secularization. Beyond the Self uncovers the shortcomings of contemporary moral philosophy and the depth and capacity of the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions, reminding the reader that classical virtue ethics remains the most promising framework for understanding the moral life. Contributors include: Michael Beaty, Kevin L. Flannery, Raymond Hain, John Haldane, Thomas Hibbs, Irfan Khawaja, Alasdair MacIntyre, John O'Callaghan, Bryan C. Pilkington, W. David Solomon, Christopher Toner, and Candace Vogler. (shrink)

Marx would not have anything much to contribute to contemporary discussions of ‘normativity’, because he would reject various of the assumptions on which they rest. Thus, he does not believe it possible to isolate ‘moral normativity’ as a distinct object of decontextualised study so as to derive from it rationally grounded imperative to individual action. This does not mean that Marx can provide no orientation for human action, but this has a different nature and structure. Marx suspicions of ethical theories (...) are well founded, but his own productivist assumptions should be revisited. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

This work offers the first critical edition of Raymond Sebond's Theologie naturelle translated by Montaigne, with indexing of all the variants from the two editions of 1569 and 1581, and a transcription of the Latin text of the Theologia naturalis.

Malgré un titre qui peut paraître imposant et intimider, le lecteur trouvera dans ce livre le condensé, particulièrement clair et élégant, que Raymond Ruyer voulut donner de sa pensée au soir de sa vie, en un ultime effort de présentation et d'actualisation. L'ouvrage, entièrement achevé, était jusqu'à ce jour inédit, ce qui fait de sa publication un événement. La pensée de Ruyer a retenu l'attention de nombre des penseurs les plus importants de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle (comme (...) Merleau-Ponty, Canguilhem, Deleuze ou Lacan), qui n'hésitaient pas à la placer au plus haut. La publication du dernier manuscrit philosophique de Ruyer représente l'occasion de se familiariser avec sa pensée et de lui accorder enfin la place qu'elle mérite. L'objectif du philosophe de Nancy a consisté à construire un système métaphysique ajusté aux découvertes de la science contemporaine. S'il est bien question ici de "Dieu", ce n'est pas dans la perspective d'une révélation : le Dieu de Ruyer est un Dieu spéculatif, comme celui d'Aristote ou de Whitehead, et nous sommes loin des considérations sur "le savant et la foi". D'autre part, "l'embryogenèse du monde" n'est pas une rêverie incontrôlée sur quelque Oeuf primordial, mais une tentative argumentée de constituer un panpsychisme à la manière de Leibniz, selon ce que Ruyer appelle lui-même une "monadologie corrigée". (shrink)

Written by a creative master of mathematical logic, this introductory text combines stories of great philosophers, quotations, and riddles with the fundamentals of mathematical logic. Author Raymond Smullyan offers clear, incremental presentations of difficult logic concepts. He highlights each subject with inventive explanations and unique problems. Smullyan's accessible narrative provides memorable examples of concepts related to proofs, propositional logic and first-order logic, incompleteness theorems, and incompleteness proofs. Additional topics include undecidability, combinatoric logic, and recursion theory. Suitable for undergraduate and (...) graduate courses, this book will also amuse and enlighten mathematically minded readers. (shrink)