Dissanayake argues that art behaviors – which she characterizes first as patterns or syndromes of creation and response and later as rhythms and modes of mutuality – are universal, innate, old, and a source of intrinsic pleasure, these being hallmarks of biological adaptation. Art behaviors proved to enhance survival by reinforcing cooperation, interdependence, and community, and, hence, became selected for at the genetic level. Indeed, she claims that art is essential to the fullest realization of our human nature. I make (...) three criticisms: Dissanayake’s theory cannot account adequately for differences in the aesthetic value of artworks; the connections drawn between art and reproductive success are too stretched to account for art's production, nature, and reception; indeed, art enters the picture only because it is so thinly characterized that it remains in doubt that her topic is art as we understand it. (shrink)

The search for a worldwide environmental ethic is linked to the increase in environmental concern since (particularly) the 1960s, and the recognition that environmental problems can have a global i...To date, insufficient work has been carried out on how children view living organisms in the environment. In this study a large number of conversations were audio-taped and transcribed while primar...

An extensive survey of many of the topics and issues central to philosophical aesthetics.

The proliferation of computers in the business realm may lead to ethical problems between individual and societal rights, and the organization's need to control costs. In an attempt to explore the causes of this potential conflict, this study examined the varying levels of sensitivity 223 respondents assigned to different types of information typically stored in computer-based human resource information systems. It was found that information most directly related to the job — pay rate, fringe benefits, educational history — was considered (...) to be the most sensitive. Participants, however, were more concerned about certain types of individuals/groups accessing these systems than about the kinds of information contained in them. Implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

To analyze the relations between art and science, philosophers and historians have developed different lines of inquiry. A first type of inquiry considers how artistic and scientific practices have interacted over human history. Another project aims to determine the contributions that scientific research can make to our understanding of art, including the contributions that cognitive science can make to philosophical questions about the nature of art. We rely on contributions made to these projects in order to demonstrate that art and (...) science are codependent phenomena. Specifically, we explore the codependence of art and science in the context of a historical analysis of their interactions and in the context of contemporary debates on the cognitive science of art. (shrink)

In the last decade, reading research has seen a paradigmatic shift. A new wave of computational models of orthographic processing that offer various forms of noisy position or context-sensitive coding have revolutionized the field of visual word recognition. The influx of such models stems mainly from consistent findings, coming mostly from European languages, regarding an apparent insensitivity of skilled readers to letter order. Underlying the current revolution is the theoretical assumption that the insensitivity of readers to letter order reflects the (...) special way in which the human brain encodes the position of letters in printed words. The present article discusses the theoretical shortcomings and misconceptions of this approach to visual word recognition. A systematic review of data obtained from a variety of languages demonstrates that letter-order insensitivity is neither a general property of the cognitive system nor a property of the brain in encoding letters. Rather, it is a variant and idiosyncratic characteristic of some languages, mostly European, reflecting a strategy of optimizing encoding resources, given the specific structure of words. Since the main goal of reading research is to develop theories that describe the fundamental and invariant phenomena of reading across orthographies, an alternative approach to model visual word recognition is offered. The dimensions of a possible universal model of reading, which outlines the common cognitive operations involved in orthographic processing in all writing systems, are discussed. (shrink)

Cet article s’interroge sur la nature de l’expressivité musicale à travers deux grandes questions. La première est celle de la capacité de la musique, qui n’est pas un être sensible, à exprimer des émotions. L’auteur défend l’idée que, lorsqu’ils sont appliqués à la musique, les termes émotionnels ne renvoient pas à des émotions éprouvées mais à des caractéristiques émotionnelles, manifestes dans les sons. Cette thèse comporte un volet linguistique : il existe un usage secondaire et légitime des termes émotionnels, qui (...) ne décrit pas une émotion ressentie mais un comportement. Elle comporte également un volet psychologique : lorsque l’on fait l’expérience de la musique on lui reconna î t, en raison de son caractère dynamique, une grande similitude avec le comportement humain. L’auteur montre ainsi que la musique n’exprime pas véritablement des émotions, mais « porte » ou « présente » des caractéristiques émotionnelles. La seconde question est celle du rapport entre les émotions exprimées dans la musique et les émotions ordinaires, ressenties par les êtres sensibles. La question est envisagée à travers les réponses émotionnelles suscitées, chez l’auditeur, par l’expressivité de l’œuvre. L’auteur montre que, dans les cas non musicaux, certaines émotions sont contagieuses : face à une personne triste, j’éprouve une tristesse « réfléchie », qui se passe de justification. Or, il en va de même pour la musique : une œuvre triste aura tendance à me faire éprouver de la tristesse. Cette similitude entre les cas musicaux et les cas non-musicaux préserve le lien entre l’expressivité musicale et le monde des émotions vécues. À travers la théorie présentée dans cet article, l’auteur entend rendre compte de la valeur que nous accordons à la musique expressive : puisque l’expressivité musicale reflète l’expression des émotions humaines, elle peut nous donner une meilleure compréhension de nos sentiments. (shrink)

The Bible has influenced contemporary culture both positively and negatively. The present volume is a collection of papers that were discussed at an international colloquium on the use of the Bible in Ethics in the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield in April 1995. Participants came from many parts of the world and from different backgrounds, and the papers reflect their varied interests and the contexts in which they work. The contributors, in addition to the three editors, (...) are John Barton, Bruce Birch, Mark Brett, Mark Chapman, David Clines, Philip Davies, Cheryl Exum, Stephen Fowl, Norman Gottwald, John Haldane, Walter Houston, Sharon Ringe, Chrisopher Rowland, Lisa Sowle Cahill and Gerald West. (shrink)

This volume brings together essays by leading philosophers of art who consider what can be learned from the meaning of art about society, morality, and life in general. This subject inevitably leads to discussion of other issues. Is art distinct from life? Is a concern with art's messages consistent with an appropriately aesthetic appreciation of its works? Is there anything distinctive about the manner in which art communicates its messages, or about the messages it conveys? The topic of art's social (...) and moral importance has always been a central one in aesthetics. However, whereas Plato and Schiller, for instance, viewed art as intimately implicated in a person's moral and social education, modernist theories have argued for art's autonomy and separation from worldly matters. The essays presented here provide a contemporary perspective on this long-standing debate and reveal the recent revitalization of humanist concerns in describing art and its significance. Contributors are Stephen Davies, Susan L. Feagin, T. J. Diffey, Jenefer Robinson, Gregory Currie, Peter Lamarque, Jerrold Levinson, David Novitz, Ismay Barwell, Göran Hermerén, and Richard Shusterman. (shrink)

This, the twenty-seventh volume in the annual series of publications by the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy, features a number of distinguised contributors addressing the topic of criminal justice. Part I considers "The Moral and Metaphysical Sources of the Criminal Law," with contributions by Michael S. Moore, Lawrence Rosen, and Martin Shapiro. The four chapters in Part II all relate, more or less directly, to the issue of retribution, with papers by Hugo Adam Bedau, Michael Davis, Jeffrie G. (...) Murphy, and R. B. Brandt. In the following part, Dennis F. Thompson, Christopher D. Stone, and Susan Wolf deal with the special problem of criminal responsibility in government-one of great importance in modern society. The fourth and final part, echoing the topic of NOMOS XXIV, Ethics, Economics, and the Law , addresses the economic theory of crime. The section includes contributions by Alvin K. Klevorick, Richard A. Posner, Jules L. Coleman, and Stephen J. Schulhofer. A valuable bibiography on criminal justice by Andrew C. Blanar concludes this volume of NOMOS. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 277-278 [Access article in PDF] John Hedley Brooke, Margaret J. Osler, and Jitse M. van der Meer, editors. Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Journals Division, 2001. Pp. xiii + 376. Cloth, $39.00. Paper, $25.00. Some twenty years ago, when I submitted a dissertation proposal to explore connections between theologies of creation and views of scientific (...) knowledge in the seventeenth century, my doctoral committee was not initially enthusiastic—my idea might make a good dissertation in religion, but was it really history of science? I doubt I would have a similar experience today. Not only has the "warfare" thesis of science and religion been laid permanently to rest, historians have begun seriously to question whether it makes sense even to treat "religion" and "science" in an essentialist manner as separate ways of thinking that do not ordinarily interact. Many detailed case studies demonstrating a variety of fascinating, often important connections between science and religion have appeared from leading scholars in the past two decades. This trend continues in the latest volume of Osiris, which contains sixteen essays documenting various ways in which religious beliefs have influenced the actual content and presentation of science.The volume opens with two companion essays laying out the terrain. First, Brooke engages the new methodological and conceptual problems that confront historians following the demise of the "warfare" thesis. Then Stephen Wykstra offers criteria for sorting out the various roles for metaphysical and religious beliefs (which he distinguishes) in shaping scientific knowledge. The case studies begin with E. Jamil Ragep's essay on medieval Islamic astronomy, arguing that religion sometimes had a constructive role—a rather novel claim for Islamic science, he points out. Noah J. Efron and Menachem Fisch show how early modern Jewish exegetical practices influenced David b. Solomon Gans's interpretations of astronomical texts, and quite possibly his interpretation of nature also. A Christian astronomer is next, as Peter Barker and Bernard R. Goldstein detail how Johannes Kepler's theology contributed directly to the discovery of scientific laws. Maurice A. Finnocchiaro then reviews various accounts of the Galileo affair, finding far more conflict in the subsequent historiography of the events than in the trial itself.Moving from astronomy to natural philosophy, Margaret G. Cook's essay on Robert Boyle examines the web of connections between theology, the mechanical philosophy, and [End Page 277] "the Aristotelian philosophy that he sought to replace." She demonstrates that Boyle used the classical art/nature distinction "to interpret the biblical account of the Creation and to argue that chemical techniques offered experimental confirmation that the world, created by art, worked by the same mechanical principles as artificial objects, not by the inherent agency of Aristotelian nature" (136). Margaret J. Osler also writes about Boyle. Contrary to the traditional view that final causes were expunged from science by the mechanical philosophy—a view that originated in the "positivism and scientific optimism" of the postwar period (168)—she proves that final causality remained central to the thought of Boyle and Pierre Gassendi. The essay by Stephen D. Snobelen presents substantial evidence that the famous General Scholium, appended to the second edition of Isaac Newton's Principia, was a carefully worded declaration of Newton's heterodox theology. "A Trinitarian," Snobelen concludes, "could not have written the General Scholium" (186). He also shows the degree to which Newton's theology shaped his overall natural philosophy, decisively debunking the late Richard S. Westfall's view that such influences could not be found.The final seven essays are mainly devoted to nineteenth-century science. Michael J. Crowe documents several ways in which Christian beliefs about divine goodness and the Incarnation affected astronomy. Martin Fichman shows how Alfred Russel Wallace's theism—not merely a vague spiritualism, as traditional accounts claim—"shaped the cognitive content of his mature evolutionary synthesis, which included a theoretical reconceptualization of the scope of natural selection" (227). In a revisionist account of Charles Darwin's philosophy of "nature," Phillip R. Sloan challenges the received view that... (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History. By John Van Seters. The Hidden God: The Hiding of the Face of God in the Old Testament. By Samuel E. Balentine. Theodicy in the Old Testament. Edited by James L. Crenshaw. Ce Dieu censé aimer la Souffrance. By François Varone. Evil and Evolution, A Theodicy. By Richard W. Kropf. ‘Poet and Peasant’ and ‘Through Peasant Eyes’: A Literary‐Cultural Approach to (...) the Parable in Luke. By Kenneth Bailey. The Biblical Foundations for Mission. By Donald Senior and Carroll Stuhlmueller. New Testament Foundations of Ministry. By Colin Kruse. Church, Ministry and Unity. By James E. Griffiss. Theology of Ministry. By Thomas Franklin O'Meara. Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology. By Colin E. Gunton. I believe in the Holy Spirit. By Yves Congar. Between Jesus and Paul. By Martin Hengel. From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background. By Frances Young. Alan of Lille: The Frontiers of Theology in the Later Twelfth Century. By G.R. Evans. Mystic and Pilgrim: The Book and the World of Margery Kempe. By Clarissa W. Atkinson. Church, Politics and Society: Scotland 1408–1929. Edited by N. Macdougall. Renaissance and Reform: The Italian Contribution. Collected Essays, Volume II. By Frances A. Yates. Seven‐Headed Luther: Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentury, 1483–1983. Edited by Peter Newman Brooks. Ökumenische Erschliessung Martin Luthers. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer. Luther's Ecumenical Significance, An Interconfessional Consultation. Edited by Peter Manns and Harding Meyer, in collaboration with Carter Lindberg and Harry McSorley. States of Mind: A Study of Anglo‐Irish Conflict 1780 to 1980. By Oliver MacDonagh. The Parish Clergy in Nineteenth‐Century Russia: Crisis, Reform, Counter Reform. By Gregory L. Freeze. Pusey Rediscovered. Edited by Perry Butler. Between Two Worlds: George Tyrrell's Relationship to the Thought of Matthew Arnold. By Nicholas Sagovsky. The Concept of Glaubenslehre. By Walter E. Wyman, Jr. The Existence and Nature of God. Edited by Alfred J. Freddoso. Faith and Reason. By Anthony Kenny. Logic and The Nature of God. By Stephen T. Davis. Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality. By Josef Fuchs. Morality and Conflict. By Stuart Hampshire. Realism and Imagination in Ethics. By Sabina Lovibond. Intentionality. By John R. Searle. Philosophical Papers, I: Practical Reason. By G.H. von Wright. Philosophical Papers, II: Philosophical Logic. By G.H. von Wright. A Model of Making: Literary Criticism and its Theology. By Ruth Etchells. The Return of the Goddess: Femininity, Aggression and the Modern Grail Quest. By Edward Whitmont. The Power of the Poor in History. By Gustavo Gutierrez, translated by Robert R. Barr. The God of the Xhosa. By Janet Hodgson. Our Hymn Tunes: Their Choice and Performance. By Donald Webster. The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan. By William Morgan. An Introduction to Plato's Laws. By R.E. Stalley. Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved. By Kenneth M. Sayre. Plato's ‘Parmenides’: Translation and Analysis. By R.E. Allen. Politics in the Ancient World. By M.I. Finley. (shrink)

Stephen Davis's detailed assessment of the doctrine of the general resurrection suggests that it is the claim that those who have died will persist into a subsequent, embodied life by means of a divine miracle. The dualist's account of resurrection depends on the possibility that the identity of a person over time is preserved by the persistence of a simple immaterial substance with no necessary connection to a particular physical or psychological career. This chapter argues that the seemingly preposterous (...) simulacrum model fails to offer animalists such as van Inwagen an account of the metaphysical possibility of resurrection. Thus the constitution view of persons is unsuccessful in offering the materialist an account of how an individual might die and yet appear again at the Resurrection. However, while dualist accounts ground personal identity in the persistence of a simple immaterial substance (a soul), the uninformativeness of the constitution view has a different and problematic source. (shrink)

This essay review addresses the central responsibility thesis of David Brink's "Fair. Opportunity and Responsibility" and then considers two applications of the central. Thesis: legal insanity and diminished capacity.

Death, like many social problems, has become medicalized. In response to this medicalization, physician-assisted suicide has emerged as one alternative among many at the end of life. And although the practice is currently legal in the states of Oregon and Washington, opponents still argue that PAS is unethical, is inconsistent with a physician's role, and cannot be effectively regulated. In comparison, Switzerland, like Oregon, permits PAS, but unlike Oregon, non-physicians and private organizations play a significant role in assisted death. Could (...) the Swiss model be the answer? The following essay explores the Swiss model of assisted suicide for its potential to enhance the regulation of PAS, reduce physician involvement, and perhaps demedicalize the way we die. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the potential contributions of neuroscience to criminal justice decision-making and policy, with special emphasis on criminal responsibility. The central question is whether neuroscience is relevant to criminal justice. The general conclusion is that it is scarcely useful at present but may become more relevant as the science progresses. After explaining the meaning of criminal responsibility in use, the chapter speculates about the source of claims for the positive influence of neuroscience. The scientific status of behavioral neuroscience and (...) two radical challenges to responsibility neuroscience allegedly raises, determinism and the death of agency, are discussed next. Then, the specific relevance of neuroscience to criminal law and the use of neuroscience in criminal cases in the United States and abroad are addressed. The penultimate section points to some areas warranting modest optimism for the use of neuroscience in criminal justice. A brief conclusion follows. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to improve our conception of objectivity in general, especially in journalism and other media work. It defends the twin theses that: Global news media needs a new conception of objectivity and the conception of pragmatic objectivity is a viable candidate, and pragmatic objectivity is part of a radical rethinking of journalism and media ethics. It is an alternative to the professional objective model, a still-influential traditional idea of the objective journalist as a neutral stenographer of fact. Journalists (...) need to disrupt this model of good journalism. The chapter reconstructs objectivity as a natural evaluative capacity of humans that is situated and holistic. Then, it uses this naturalistic perspective to articulate pragmatic objectivity and apply it to journalism. (shrink)

In China creativity is construed as an ethico‐aesthetic practice in which signifying acts of self‐presentation (yi) are evaluated as to their efficacy in fostering harmonious relations of social exchange within specific historical occasions. To say this is to call attention to the performative dimension of aesthetic creativity; to recognize, beyond its constative meaning, the force of an expressive act to produce effects that profoundly affect its recipients.

This handbook is one of the first comprehensive research and teaching tools for the developing area of global media ethics. The advent of new media that is global in reach and impact has created the need for a journalism ethics that is global in principles and aims. For many scholars, teachers and journalists, the existing journalism ethics, e.g. existing codes of ethics, is too parochial and national. It fails to provide adequate normative guidance for a media that is digital, global (...) and practiced by professional and citizen. A global media ethics is being constructed to define what responsible public journalism means for a new global media era. Currently, scholars write texts and codes for global media, teach global media ethics, analyse how global issues should be covered, and gather together at conferences, round tables and meetings. However, the field lacks an authoritative handbook that presents the views of leading thinkers on the most important issues for global media ethics. This handbook is a milestone in the field, and a major contribution to media ethics. (shrink)

This chapter defends the project of global media ethics against the skeptics. The overall question for this chapter can be stated as follows: Is the creation of global media ethics as a whole a realistic and desirable goal? The chapter proceeds by exploring, and responding to, the major criticisms of the project and its idea of moral globalism. It then presents a realistic conception of what can be achieved by global media ethics. The chapter concludes that it is both rational (...) and practically worthwhile to support the project of global media ethics. (shrink)

This chapter explores the future of global media ethics by focusing on a question that is a cause of misunderstanding and, perhaps, its greatest conceptual challenge: What is the goal of global media ethics? The chapter argues that the image of global media ethics has been distorted by the view that a global ethic must consist of one, uniquely correct set of principles affirmed by a large majority of journalists around the world. Instead, the chapter proposes the idea of global (...) media ethics as plural in structure and method, as different discourses across different cultures. The future of global media ethics is participation in webs of de-centered discourse about the changing world of global media. (shrink)

1 Introducing Monsieur Foucault Stephen J. Ball Michel Foucault is an enigma, a massively influential intellectual who steadfastly refused to align himself ...

The legalization of physician-assisted suicide remains a hotly debated issue throughout the United States, and continues to capture the attention of government officials at both the state and federal levels. While the practice is currently legal in Oregon, some federal lawmakers and officials from the U.S. Department of Justice have attempted to outlaw that state's practice through legislation, or through a strained interpretation of the federal Controlled Substances Act. And while several citizen groups throughout the United States have attempted but (...) failed to legalize PAS through popular initiative, several state lawmakers have succeeded in specifically outlawing the practice. Yet even though physician-assisted suicide remains unlawful in every state except Oregon, there is ample evidence that American physicians throughout the United States have participated in PAS by providing their terminally ill patients with lethal prescriptions. (shrink)

Stephen Ward argues that present media practices are narrowly based within the borders of single country and thus unable to successfully inform the public about a globalized world. Presenting an ethical framework for work in multimedia, the author extends John Rawl’s theories of justice and the human good to redefine the aims for which journalism should strive and then applies this new foundation to issues such as the roles of patriotism and objectivity in journalism. An innovative argument that presents (...) a necessary corrective to contemporary media practices, Global Journalism Ethics is a theoretically rich study for journalists on the air, in print, and on the internet. (shrink)

This book develops an alternative approach to sentence- and word-meaning, which I dub the speech-act theoretic approach, or STA. Instead of employing the syntactic and semantic forms of modern logic–principally, quantification theory–to construct semantic theories, STA employs speech-act structures. The structures it employs are those postulated by a novel theory of speech-acts. STA develops a compositional semantics in which surface grammar is integrated with semantic interpretation in a way not allowed by standard quantification-based theories. It provides a pragmatic theory of (...) truth, a treatment of logically complex discourse as expressive cognitive states, and a background metaphysics in which the world is a totality of logically simple states of affairs. The book also puts forward an account of how intentional states provide the simple, representational foundation for a superstructure of speech-act structures–a system of thoughts–that far outruns the expressive power of the intentional foundation. In short, it provides an account of cognitive foundations of a language and a naturalistic reduction of semantics through an expressive theory of semantic norms. (shrink)

In this third paper in a series of four, we explore some ways of doing education differently. An education that moves beyond the persistent failures and irredeemable injustices of modern mass schooling episteme. The episteme for education we adumbrate – an episteme of life continuance – begins with a recognition of interdependency and the value of diversity, diverse knowledges and relations of tolerance. We propose an escape from the extinction ethics which modern schools perpetuate and a new grammar of living (...) in which education and politics are processes of re-learning, co-learning, decision taking, limit testing, and conflict resolution in relation to an uncertain future. To achieve this, we outline a set of open and ‘unplanned’ commoning activities that would take place within local social infrastructures focused on re-politising learning itself and practicing the care of oneself, others, community and the environment. The proposal for a different education as common(ing) activities undertaken within social infrastructures, is about reimagining political and environmental relations, and co-creating a sense of collective ownership of and responsibility for the environment. A form of community that it is practical, rather than utopian, and that would be both the means and ends for such an education. (shrink)

Three experiments investigated the relationship between subjective experience and attentional lapses during sustained attention. These experiments employed two measures of subjective experience to examine how differences in awareness correspond to variations in both task performance and psycho-physiological measures . This series of experiments examine these phenomena during the Sustained Attention to Response Task . The results suggest we can dissociate between two components of subjective experience during sustained attention: task unrelated thought which corresponds to an absent minded disengagement from the (...) task and a pre-occupation with one's task performance that seems to be best conceptualised as a strategic attempt to deploy attentional resources in response to a perception of environmental demands which exceed ones ability to perform the task. The implications of these findings for our understanding of how awareness is maintained on task relevant material during periods of sustained attention are discussed. (shrink)

Transnational corporations have become actors with significant political power and authority which should entail responsibility and liability, specifically direct liability for complicity in human rights violations. Holding TNCs liable for human rights violations is complicated by the discontinuity between the fragmented legal/political structure of the TNC and its integrated strategic reality and the international state system which privileges sovereignty and non-intervention over the protection of individual rights. However, the post-Westphalian transition—the emergence of multiple authorities, increasing ambiguity of borders and jurisdiction (...) and blurring of the line between the public and private spheres—should facilitate imposing direct responsibility on transnational firms. Mechanisms for imposing direct responsibility on TNCs are considered including voluntary agreements and international law. However, I conclude that a hybrid public-private regime which relies on non-hierarchical compliance mechanisms is likely to be both more effective and consistent with the structure of the emerging transnational order. (shrink)