This article compares topographical and archaeological remains of the Thermopylae frontier with the ancient testimonia of the sixth century historian Procopius of Caesareia (De aedificiis4.2.1.–22). It was revealed that: many of the frontier fortifications described were initially built before the sixth century; the fortified κλεισούρα mentioned should be equated with the Dhéma Pass; and the commercial settlement of Myropóles is best identified with the modern village of Káto Dhió Vouná. Written in Attic prose, this passage represents a rhetorical exercise, the (...) climax of which turned not on the ancient battlefield of Thermopylae, but rather on a mountain pass and it's highway that neutralized the Thermopylae defenses if they were ever controlled by the enemy. We were told that only the Emperor Justinian's wisdom could grasp this critical fact. Additionally, Procopius employed many rhetorical devices in this narrative: τóπος, χρóνος,, ἄγαλμα, ἔκφρασις, πανηγρικóς and employed imperial propaganda, praise, and exaggeration as well. In short, the passage is a classic example of selective story telling that may have found its inspiration in the Hunnic raid of 539/540 and the Herodotean account of the Persian invasion of 480 BC. While Procopius' account remains our best topographical description of the late antique Thermopylae frontier, one can only say that more archaeological questions were left unanswered than were resolved. In short, as an archaeological source, theDe aedificiisis a disappointing and vexing resource filled with equivocations. Finally, one may doubt that Procopius ever did visit the Thermopylae frontier, even though during his career he certainly had ample opportunity to do so. His account, therefore, must have been based upon secondary sources, whether imperial archival material, itineraries, or military staff reports and were not the result of personal autopsy. (shrink)

Disney's computer‐animated musical film, Moana tells the tale of Moana, the daughter of Tui, the chief of a Polynesian island, Motunui. Bound by the legendary tradition of her ancestors, Moana is expected to follow her lineage and take over as chief when she grows up. As the authors dig beneath the surface level of the story, they find a metaphorical and philosophical level to Moana's journey. The story of Moana has layers. First, it is literally a tale of Moana's voyage (...) outside beyond the reef so that she can restore the heart of Te Fiti and save the people of Motunui. She closes this tale with a happy ending as she simultaneously lives the life that she freely chooses, becomes the leader of her people (by saving them) as her parents wanted, and honors her tradition insofar as she restores her ancestors' tradition of wayfinding. (shrink)

In the broadest sense, this intellectual biography is designed to give insight into the reasons why Western values and institutions failed to take root in the Chinese environment. Three interrelated themes are treated by Professor Duiker: the evolution of the Chinese educational system from the beginning of the 20th century to World War II; the process by which a Chinese intellectual absorbed Western values and attitudes while retaining significant elements of his traditional Confucian world view; the goals of the humanist (...) movement in early republican China and the reasons for its failure. Ts'ai, as first Minister of Education under the 1912 republic, helped to formulate educational policies during an important stage of transition in modern China. Later, as chancellor of Peking University, he was a central figure in the tumultuous events of the May Fourth period. Having been educated traditionally to the doctoral level before studying at a European university, Ts'ai attempted to synthesize the humanist side of the Confucian tradition with the libertarian elements in Western culture. Ts'ai's synthesis was unique but ultimately unsuccessful. Penn State Study No. 41. (shrink)

The past forty years or so have witnessed a renaissance in the philosophy of religion. New tools (modal logic, probability theory, and so on) and new historical research have prompted many thinkers to take a fresh look at old topics (God’s existence, the problem of evil, faith and reason, and the like). Moreover, sophisticated examinations of contentious new issues, such as the problem of religious diversity or the role of emotions and other non-evidential factors in shaping rationally held religious beliefs, (...) have also emerged. Addressing the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of this rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of scholarly literature, Philosophy of Religion is a new title in the Routledge Major Works series, Critical Concepts in Philosophy. Edited by a leading scholar, it is a four-volume collection which brings together key examples of the most important recent work, together with carefully selected historical pieces needed to understand them. Volume I focuses on concepts of the divine while Volume II explores arguments for and against the existence of a divine reality, with special attention to the problem of evil, the problem of divine hiddenness, and the case for naturalism. Volume III and the first part of Volume IV are devoted to broadly epistemic issues: the cognitive value of religious experience; the proper role of evidence in the formation of religious belief; the nature of justified religious belief; and pragmatic arguments for religious belief. The remainder of Volume IV introduces some of the best recent work on religious diversity, tolerance, and the public role of religion in a pluralistic society. The Philosophy of Religion is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the material in its historical and intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research resource. Available now at a special introductory price. This price is applicable until 3 months after publication. For more information, please contact us ( [email protected] ). (shrink)

This article presents findings from a series of research studies designed to identify classroom teaching practices that can enhance moral reasoning of undergraduate students in business foundational courses. The research, conducted over five semesters at a Midwestern university, resulted in the development of teaching methods and materials that can, when properly sequenced and integrated into undergraduate business courses, increase levels of student moral reasoning as measured by the revised version of the Defining Issues Test (DIT-2). Findings in this research demonstrate (...) that faculty members who are not specialists in business ethics can effect positive increases in student moral reasoning in non-ethics business courses. However, significant time and effort must be invested in case-based moral decision making, and grade incentives for students to engage the use of an ethical decision-making framework are required. (shrink)

We present a computational analysis of de re, de dicto, and de se belief and knowledge reports. Our analysis solves a problem first observed by Hector-Neri Castañeda, namely, that the simple rule -/- `(A knows that P) implies P' -/- apparently does not hold if P contains a quasi-indexical. We present a single rule, in the context of a knowledge-representation and reasoning system, that holds for all P, including those containing quasi-indexicals. In so doing, we explore the difference between reasoning (...) in a public communication language and in a knowledge-representation language, we demonstrate the importance of representing proper names explicitly, and we provide support for the necessity of considering sentences in the context of extended discourse (for example, written narrative) in order to fully capture certain features of their semantics. (shrink)

A striking feature of the current philosophical scene is the division between those philosophers of religion primarily associated with the American Philosophical Association and those primarily associated with the American Academy of Religion. This difference is loosely correlated with twoothers: the comparative dominance of analytic philosophy in the APA and of hermeneutical philosophy in the AAR, and the greater visibility of traditional theists in the APA. In this book eight prominent philosophers of religion from these organizations explore the historical, cultural, (...) andphilosophical roots of these differences, their connections, and the prospects for rapprochement. (shrink)

Rowe argues that if for every good world there is a better, then God is not morally perfect since no matter what world God were to create he could have done better than he did. I contend that Rowe’s argument doesn’t do justice to the role grace plays in the theist’s doctrine of creation, and respond to five new criticisms of my position that Rowe offers in Can God be Free?

Volume 19, Issue 9, September 2019, Page 8-10.

Ford’s Helen Keller Was Never in a Chinese Room claims that my argument in How Helen Keller Used Syntactic Semantics to Escape from a Chinese Room fails because Searle and I use the terms ‘syntax’ and ‘semantics’ differently, hence are at cross purposes. Ford has misunderstood me; this reply clarifies my theory.

Introduction: characterizing ethical realismIt is useful to begin a survey of recent work on ethical realism with a look at current disputes over what makes a theory of ethics count as ‘realist’ in the first place. Nearly all characterizations of ethical realism include some version of the following two core claims: Ethical discourse is assertoric and descriptive: ethical claims purport to state ethical facts by attributing ethical properties to people, actions, institutions, etc., and are thus true or false depending on (...) whether their descriptions of things are accurate or not . 1 At least some ethical claims, when literally construed, are true in the above sense.Sayre-McCord maintains that these two conditions are necessary and sufficient to characterize ethical realism; others argue that further conditions must be added to yield ethical realism, or at least ‘paradigmatic’ or ‘robust’ ethical realism. Before turning to that, however, it is worth noting that some have recently denied that the above two conditions are even necessary for ethical realism. In probing new work on metaethical taxonomy, Miller argues that the core of ethical realism is simply the metaphysical commitment to objective ethical properties and facts, which is strictly independent of the semantic claims above. If one holds that there are objective facts about the wrongness of slavery, for example, then one ought to count as an ethical realist regardless of whatever views one might hold about the semantics of the contingent forms of discourse that have evolved among language users. Even if our ethical discourse turns out primarily to express conative states ), or all moral claims turn out to be false because …. (shrink)

The article begins with a review of the structural differences between act consequentialist theories and human rights theories, as illustrated by Amartya Sen's paradox of the Paretian liberal and Robert Nozick's utilitarianism of rights. It discusses attempts to resolve those structural differences by moving to a second-order or indirect consequentialism, illustrated by J.S. Mill and Derek Parfit. It presents consequentialist (though not utilitarian) interpretations of the contractualist theories of Jürgen Habermas and the early John Rawls (Theory of Justice) and of (...) the capability theories of Sen and Martha Nussbaum. It also discusses two roles that well-being or a surrogate for well-being typically plays in theories of human rights: (a) well-being plays a role in the justification of at least some exceptions to human rights principles; and (b) some human rights seem to be best understood as rights to some level of well-being or expected well-being (or of a surrogate for one of them). It reviews two consequentialist challenges to the moral adequacy of non-consequentialist accounts of human rights, one based on a duty to relieve suffering and the other generated by Parfit's Non-Identity Problem, and concludes with a contrast between two ways of looking at the history of the development and implementation of human rights conventions and laws. Video abstract (click to view). (shrink)

Despite acknowledgment that performance failure among new salespeople is a prevalent issue for organizations, researchers do not fully understand the consequences of repetitive periods of failure on new salespeople’s unethical selling behaviors. Further, little is known about how a sales force’s reward structure and managerial attempts to intervene following failure affect new salespeople’s behavior. Combining an experiment with longitudinal growth models, we show that repetitive periods of failure increase unethical behaviors, and interventions intended to remind the salesperson to behave in (...) the customer’s best interests attenuate this effect under a non-contingent reward structure. However, counter to managerial assumptions, under a contingent reward structure these customer-oriented interventions actually backfire by amplifying the original relationship between repetitive failure and unethical behaviors. The results have potentially important managerial implications for those who manage new salespeople learning how to sell or during other failure-prone periods. (shrink)

This chapter applies the Millian epistemology to ground a robust, inalienable right to freedom of expression and to ground the other autonomy rights, as necessary for the process of the social process of the free give-and-take of opinion. The chapter considers a variety of exceptions to freedom of expression, including product advertising and political advertising. He uses the examples of Google and Wikipedia to provide empirical confirmation for Mill’s claims about the social process of the free give-and-take of opinion. He (...) also shows how the Millian case for freedom of propositional expression can be extended to cover nonpropositional expression in art and literature. The chapter shows that the Millian argument does not limit freedom of expression to reasonable views. The chapter argues that the distinction between reasonable and unreasonable comprehensive views, which plays a large role in Rawls’s theory and in contemporary discussions of human rights, cannot support the weight that it is intended to bear. This leads to an extended discussion of intolerant subversive advocacy, in which the chapter argues that neither Habermas’s nor Rawls’s theory can explain why the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the Smith Act in Dennis v. U.S. was erroneous. The chapter also explains why Mill’s social process epistemology does not undermine his political philosophy. The author concludes by explaining why the main principle would endorse a human right to freedom of expression. (shrink)

This chapter introduces a consequentialist meta-theoretic sufficient condition for a change in moral practices to be a moral improvement, the main principle. The chapter introduces the main principle by considering a series of examples of exceptions to libertarianism, especially to norms against coercion. The chapter also considers various purported counterexamples to consequentialist principles, including Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlain example. The chapter presents the main principle as a multiple time-slice end-state principle of moral reciprocity and explains the key terms, though he can’t (...) define here. (shrink)

This author shows how the main principle would endorse a new ground-level principle of weak legal paternalism, the most reliable judgment standard, and compares this standard with the most influential nonconsequentialist standard, Joel Feinberg’s voluntariness standard. The most reliable judgment standard will permit legal paternalism if it is reasonable to believe that the subject will or would come to unequivocally endorse it. The chapter illustrates the difference between his and Feinberg’s standards with hypothetical examples of drug and suicide prohibitions. The (...) chapter explains his consequentialist account of autonomy and shows how that account fits the legal standard of autonomy. However, it does not fit the standard statement of the insanity defense. The chapter explains why the insanity defense should be revised. (shrink)

This chapter shows how the main principle points the way to a solution to the two deepest mysteries in moral philosophy, one metaphysical and one epistemological. The metaphysical mystery is to explain why moral norms and principles always seem to have exceptions. The epistemological mystery is to explain how human beings could come to recognize exceptions to the very moral norms and principles that were used in their moral training. The solution to the metaphysical mystery is to see that moral (...) reasoning has a reference class logic, modeled by conditional probability. The solution to the epistemological mystery is to see that moral training can produce practical wisdom, understood as implicit sensitivity to the main principle. The chapter also reviews the historical discovery of the paradox of direct consequentialism to explain why the main principle does not endorse a change to using it as a ground-level moral principle. The chapter then compares the book's account of legal improvement with R. Dworkin’s account of law as integrity on the issue of retroactivity in the civil law. (shrink)

The differentiation of mammalian neurons during development is a highly complex process involving regulation and coordination of gene expression at multiple steps. The P19 mouse embryonal carcinoma cell line is a suitable model system with which to analyze regulation of neuronal differentiation. These multipotential cells can be maintained and propagated in tissue culture in an undifferentiated state. Exposure of aggregated P19 cells to retinoic acid results in the differentiation of cells with many fundamental phenotypes of mammalian neurons. Undifferentiated P19 cells (...) are amenable to genetic manipulations such as transfection and establishment of stable clonal cell lines expressing introduced genes. Proteins that play a key role in the neuronal differentiation of P19 cells are beginning to be identified. These include retinoic acid receptors, the epidermal growth factor receptor and the transcription factors Oct‐3 and Brn‐2. The biological and technical advantages of this system should facilitate deeper analysis of the activities of proteins that play a role in neuronal differentiation. (shrink)

When Festus said to Paul: ‘Much learning doth make thee mad’, Paul's answer was the instinctive defence of a scholar under attack: ‘I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak forth the words of truth and soberness’. Whether poets were mad or sober has been a question for critics ever since Gorgias pointed out the incompatibility; it is less frequently debated why scholars unlike poets should need to affirm their sobriety. I should like to concentrate on one aspect of (...) ancient criticism, that of problem-solving, in order, as I hope, to put into a different perspective the whole business of what Alexandrians did with texts. Inevitably perhaps it will be argued that I am neglecting the vast philological and lexical labours of the Alexandrians and failing to appreciate their subtlety in textual criticism. I hope that my criticisms will not be construed in this way; yet I believe that the Alexandrians have been idealized and their critical attitudes over-simplified. By taking a problem from antiquity and setting it in its context, I will be trying to give what I consider to be a more correct perspective to the labours of our ancient predecessors. (shrink)