The concept of scientific history / Isaiah Berlin -- The limits of scientific history / W.H. Walsh -- The objectivity of history / J.A. Passmore -- Explanation in science and in history / C.G. Hempel -- The Popper-Hempel theory reconsidered / Alan Donagan -- The autonomy of historical understanding / Louis O. Mink -- Historical continuity and causal analysis / Michael Oakeshott -- Causal judgment in history and in the law / H.L.A. Hart and A.M. Honoré -- Causes, connections and (...) conditions in history / Michael Scriven -- The historical individual / A.C. Danto -- Methodological individualisms : definition and reduction / May Brodbeck -- Societal laws / Maurice Mandelbaum -- Determinism in history / Ernest Nagel. (shrink)

This update of the original version focuses on six central problems in the critical philosophy of history and explores the connections among them. Starting with the fundamentals of each philosophical topic in history and then delving into the specifics of each to better understand the surrounding issues, the reference first offers a comprehensive introduction into these topics then covers explanation and understanding ... objectivity and value judgment .. causes in history ... the nature and role of narrative ... and historical (...) determinism. Suitable for students, professors, and anyone else interested in the philosophy of history. (shrink)

Neurobiologist William Calvin explores the human brain, positing that the neurons in the brain operate in an accelerated version of biological evolution, evolving ideas through random variations and selections, and supports his hypothesis with numerous ca.

A systematic, rigorous, comprehensive, and unified overview of evolutionary game theory.

Combining engaging discussions and stimulating new case studies, BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES gives students a comprehensive survey of business ethics that will guide them toward becoming ethical professionals, even if they have never studied philosophy before. Rich with real-world examples, BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES invites students to critically analyze and apply a broad range of philosophical concepts and principles to today's most important issues in business and beyond. BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES is a concise (...) (without readings) and updated version of the eleventh edition of MORAL ISSUES IN BUSINESS. BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES is also available in an eBook format. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

"[This] book guides readers in thinking deeply about important moral issues that frequently arise in business situations and helps them develop the reasoning and analytical skills to resolve those issues. Combining insightful and accessible textbook chapters by the authors, cases that highlight the real-world importance of key ethical concepts, and reading selections from the most influential voices in contemporary ethical debates, this book provides a comprehensive, flexible, and pedagogically proven course of study exploring the intersections of commerce and ethics."--Book cover.

This book explains and defends a central ideas in the theory of history put forward by R. G. Collingwood, perhaps the foremost philosopher of history in the 20th century. Professor Dray analyses critically the idea of re-enactment, explores the limits of its applicability, and determines its relationship to other key Collingwoodian ideas, such as the role of imagination in historical thinking, and the indispensability of a point of view.

Aimed at undergraduates, _Contemporary Ethics_ presupposes little or no familiarity with ethics and is written in a clear and engaging style. It provides students with a sympathetic but critical guide to utilitarianism, explaining its different forms and exploring the debates it has spawned. The book leads students through a number of current issues in contemporary ethics that are connected to controversies over and within utilitarianism. At the same time, it uses utilitarianism to introduce students to ethics as a subject. In (...) these ways, the book is not only a guide to utilitarianism, but also an introduction to some standard problems of ethics and to several important topics in contemporary ethical theory. (shrink)

In the past two decades, reinforcement learning has become a popular framework for understanding brain function. A key component of RL models, prediction error, has been associated with neural signals throughout the brain, including subcortical nuclei, primary sensory cortices, and prefrontal cortex. Depending on the location in which activity is observed, the functional interpretation of prediction error may change: Prediction errors may reflect a discrepancy in the anticipated and actual value of reward, a signal indicating the salience or novelty of (...) a stimulus, and many other interpretations. Anterior cingulate cortex has long been recognized as a region involved in processing behavioral error, and recent computational models of the region have expanded this interpretation to include a more general role for the region in predicting likely events, broadly construed, and signaling deviations between expected and observed events. Ongoing modeling work investigating the interaction between ACC and additional regions involved in cognitive control suggests an even broader role for cingulate in computing a hierarchically structured surprise signal critical for learning models of the environment. The result is a predictive coding model of the frontal lobes, suggesting that predictive coding may be a unifying computational principle across the neocortex. (shrink)

The traditional view that all logical truths are metaphysically necessary has come under attack in recent years. The contrary claim is prominent in David Kaplan’s work on demonstratives, and Edward Zalta has argued that logical truths that are not necessary appear in modal languages supplemented only with some device for making reference to the actual world (and thus independently of whether demonstratives like ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’ are present). If this latter claim can be sustained, it strikes close to the (...) heart of the traditional view. I begin this paper by discussing and refuting Zalta’s argument in the context of a language for propositional modal logic with an actuality connective (section 1). This involves showing that his argument in favor of real world validity his preferred explication of logical truth, is fallacious. Next (section 2) I argue for an alternative explication of logical truth called general validity. Since the rule of necessitation preserves general validity, the argument of section 2 provides a reason for affirming the traditional view. Finally (section 3) I show that the intuitive idea behind the discredited notion of real world validity finds legitimate expression in an object language connective for deep necessity. (shrink)

The pedagogical technique of the playful Plato, especially his ability to create living discourses that directly address the student, is the subject of Plato the Teacher. “The crisis of the Republic” refers to the decisive moment in his central dialogue when philosopher-readers realize that Plato’s is challenging them to choose justice by going back down into the dangerous Cave of political life for the sake of the greater Good, as both Socrates and Cicero did.

Originally published in 1963. An outline of the metaphysical positions held by such major philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel, Kant, Hume, Moore, Bradley, Wittgenstein. The author maintains - controversially - that metaphysical arguments have a close bearing on religious and moral beliefs.

We present this work with pardonable pride, believing it will be the means of saving many lives and a vast amount of suffering and needless unhappiness. The importance and demand for a work of this character cannot be doubted. Its need has been announced upon the floor of the Senate Chamber; in resolutions adopted by Church Assemblies; in the Pulpit; in our Religious and Medical Journals; and the need of the knowledge it contains is evidenced by the newspapers, in their (...) daily records of disagreements, separations, desertions, seductions, adultery, insanity, suicide, murder and death, the cause of which in almost every case is admitted by all authorities and shown by the Records of our Courts to be ignorance of the Laws of Nature, of self and of sex. It is to the unfortunate victims of these dreadful conditions that this book directly appeals. It is written to enlighten and benefit those who have recklessly plunged into marriage, who have assumed that relationship at once so holy and so intricate, where knowledge is essential, yet substituted by ignorance; marriage, whose only incentive is to get "a home" or secure a "partner." It is this "home" and this "partner" that we desire to reach, as well as to enlighten those who mentally and physically are capable of the functions of wedlock, but who for lack of knowledge suffer in silence. In attempting to map out the rights and wrongs of the relations that exist between human beings, and which govern their life, health, intellect, love, power, happiness, usefulness and honor, we cannot avoid a feeling of responsibility, a desire and absolute determination to record nothing without careful investigation and due consideration-and yet an equal desire to hold back nothing that can give them a proper understanding of themselves. (shrink)

In this book, William H. F. Altman argues that it is not order of composition but reading order that makes Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo “late dialogues,” and shows why Plato’s decision to interpolate the notoriously “late” Sophist and Statesman between Euthyphro and Apology deserves more respect from interpreters.

This volume offers an unusual variety of topics presented during the sixth annual Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy.

This book deals with theoretical problems that arise at points of contact between the concerns of philosophers and historians about the practice of ...

J. H. Hexter, an American historian of early seventeenth-century history, terms himself whiggish and claims whiggishness is returning after the misguided popularity of Marxism. The distinction "whiggish" is more elusive than his claim suggests, and the accuracy of its application to Hexter's claim is unclear. Three characteristics commonly assigned to whig interpretation by its critics can be seen as reflections of broader, unresolved historical issues. These are: attention to political and constitutional issues; a tendency to refer to the present in (...) interpreting the past; and a belief in inevitability. It is difficult to ascertain whether Hexter's attention to political matters is a result of his view of them as intrinsically important to historical inquiry or as particularly relevant to historical accounts of Stuart England. The charge of presentism cannot confidently be made against him, as he is not guilty of anything as crude as anachronism, and subtle presentism is neither avoidable nor necessarily reprehensible. Inevitabilism is not only difficult to define, it is not displayed by Hexter. If he displays the weaknesses of whiggishness it is only through implication, in the body of ideas underlying his text. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed utilitarian analysis of the ethical issues involved in war. Utilitarianism and the Ethics of War addresses the two basic ethical questions posed by war: when, if ever, are we morally justified in waging war, and if recourse to arms is warranted, how are we permitted to fight the wars we wage? In addition, it deals with the challenge that realism and relativism raise for the ethical discussion of war, and with the duties of military personnel (...) and the moral challenges they can face. In tackling these matters, the book covers a wide range of topics—from pacifism to armed humanitarian intervention, from the right of national defense to pre-emptive or preventive war, from civilian immunity to the tenets of just war theory and the moral underpinnings of the rules of war. But, what is distinctive about this book is that it provides a consistent and thorough-going utilitarian or consequentialist treatment of the fundamental normative issues that war occasions. Although it goes against the tide of recent work in the field, a utilitarian approach to the ethics of war illuminates old questions in new ways by showing how a concern for well-being and the consequences of our actions and policies shape the moral constraints to which states and other actors must adhere. This book will be of much interest to students of the ethics of war, just war theory, moral philosophy, war and conflict studies and IR. (shrink)

In the first section, I consider what several logicians say informally about the notion of logical consequence. There is significant variation among these accounts, they are sometimes poorly explained, and some of them are clearly at odds with the usual technical definition. In the second section, I first argue that a certain kind of informal account—one that includes elements of necessity, generality, and apriority—is approximately correct. Next I refine this account and consider several important questions about it, including the appropriate (...) characterization of necessity, the criterion for selecting logical constants, and the exact role of apriority. I argue, among other things, that there is no need to recognize a special logical sense of necessity and that the selection of terms to serve as logical constants is ultimately a pragmatic matter. In the third section, I consider whether the informal account I have presented and defended is adequately represented by the usual technical definition. I show that it is, and provably so, for certain limited ways of selecting logical constants. In the general case, however, there seems to be no way to be sure that the technical and informal accounts coincide. (shrink)

In this book, William H. F. Altman considers the pedagogical connections behind the post-Republic dialogues from Timaeus to Theaetetus in the context of their Reading Order.

Originally delivered at a conference of Marxist philosophers in China, this article examines some links, and some tensions, between business ethics and the traditional concerns of Marxism. After discussing the emergence of business ethics as an academic discipline, it explores and attempts to answer two Marxist objections that might be brought against the enterprise of business ethics. The first is that business ethics is impossible because capitalism itself tends to produce greedy, overreaching, and unethical business behavior. The second is that (...) business ethics is irrelevant because focusing on the moral or immoral conduct of individual firms or businesspeople distracts one’s attention from the systemic vices of capitalism. I argue, to the contrary, that, far from being impossible, business requires and indeed presupposes ethics and that for those who share Marx’s hope for a better society, nothing could be more relevant than engaging the debate over corporate social responsibility. In line with this, the article concludes by sketching some considerations favoring corporations’ adopting a broader view of their social and moral responsibilities, one that encompasses more than the pursuit of profit. (shrink)

This article studies seriously actualistic quantified modal logics. A key component of the language is an abstraction operator by means of which predicates can be created out of complex formulas. This facilitates proof of a uniform substitution theorem: if a sentence is logically true, then any sentence that results from substituting a predicate abstract for each occurrence of a simple predicate abstract is also logically true. This solves a problem identified by Kripke early in the modern semantic study of quantified (...) modal logic. A tableau proof system is presented and proved sound and complete with respect to logical truth. The main focus is on seriously actualistic T, an extension of T, but the results established hold also for systems based on other propositional modal logics. Following Menzel it is shown that the formal language studied also supports an actualistic account of truth simpliciter. (shrink)