Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. Pp. 178.Hb. £15.95.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. Pp. 178.Hb. £15.95.

This collection by some of the leading scholars of Strauss's work is the first devoted to Strauss's thought regarding education. It seeks to address his conception of education as it applies to a range of his most important concepts, such as his views on the importance of revelation, his critique of modern democracy and the importance of modern classical education.

The ArgumentHistorians of science naturally tend to express interest in other forms of intellectual activity only when these intersect with science. This tendncy has produced a number of enlightening studies of what happens when science and (for instance) law or theology come into contact, but little by way of how science enters into the calculations and social status of such forms of knowledge after the conjuction has passed. Recent work in the sociology of professions, in contrast, has focused attention precisely (...) on those moments when the expert knowledge produced by different group doesnotoverlap. This has been the contribution of Andrew Abbortt's theory of “jurisdictional boundaries” between competing professions. The case of Victorian actuaries who worked hard to maintain unique intellectual claims in the competitive life insurance industry while maintainiing strong social connections and overlaps in knowledge with organized science, challenges the way both historians of science and sociologists of professions view contending knowledge claims. By observing what motivated actuaries to forge an alliance with men of science in the 1820s, then tracing their gradual recognition of a need to distance themselves from certain of the “scientific” values that had earlier informed their collective identity, it is possible to make sense of connections as well as disconnections between science and other forms of knowledge. A history of quantification from the actuaries' perspective, in other words, allows us to view science bothasandincontext. (shrink)

Individuals frequently make use of the body and environment when engaged in a cognitive task. For example, individuals will often spontaneously physically rotate when faced with rotated objects, such as an array of words, to putatively offload the performance costs associated with stimulus rotation. We looked to further examine this idea by independently manipulating the costs associated with both word rotation and array frame rotation. Surprisingly, we found that individuals’ patterns of spontaneous physical rotations did not follow patterns of performance (...) costs or benefits associated with being physically rotated, findings difficult to reconcile with existing theories of strategy selection involving external resources. Individuals’ subjective ratings of perceived benefits, rather, provided an excellent match to the patterns of physical rotations, suggesting that the critical variable when deciding on-the-fly whether to incorporate an external resource is the participant's metacognitive beliefs regarding expected performance or the effort required for each approach. Implications for metacognition's future in theories of cognitive offloading are discussed. (shrink)

This book argues that ethical business behavior can be enhanced by taking fuller account of human nature, particularly with respect to the need for creating relatively small communities within the corporation. Timothy Fort discusses this premise in relation to the three predominant theories of business ethics--stakeholder, virtue, and contract. Drawing heavily from philosophy, he analyzes traditional business ethics and legal theory. Overall, his work provides a good example of how to integrate normative and empirical studies in business ethics, a (...) task that often receives substantial discussion in academic journals. (shrink)

Properties of mental representation are related to findings in cognitive science and ideas in shamanism. A selective review of research in cognitive science suggests visual images and spatial memory preserve important functional information regarding physical principles and the behavior of objects in the natural world, and notions of second‐order isomorphism and the perceptual cycle developed to account for such findings are related to shamanic experience. Possible roles of implicit processes in shamanic cognition, and the idea that shamanic experience may involve (...) normally unconscious information becoming temporarily available to consciousness, are considered. The existence of a cognitive module dedicated to processing information relevant to social knowledge and social interaction is consistent with cognitive science and with shamanism, and may help account for the extension of intentionality and meaning that characterize shamanic practice. Overall, findings from cognitive science and ideas from shamanism exhibit a number of correspondences and similarities regarding basic properties of cognition, and this suggests that shamanic and nonshamanic cognition may not be fundamentally different. (shrink)

Correspondences and similarities between ideas in shamanism and ideas in contemporary cognitive science are considered. The importance of interconnectedness in the web of life worldview characteristic of shamanism and in connectionist models of semantic memory in cognitive science, and the extension of meaning to elements of the natural world in shamanism and indistributed cognition, are considered. Cognitive consequences of such an extension (e.g., use of representativeness and intentional stance heuristics, magical thinking, social attribution errors, and social in‐group/out‐group differences) are discussed. (...) It is suggested that attributions of mental states, beliefs, and desires to a computer on the basis of behavioral measures (e.g., the Turing test) is consistent with the extension of meaning and intentionality to nonhuman elements of the natural world in shamanism. In general, the existence of such correspondencesand similarities suggests that elements of shamanism may reflect cognitive structures and processes that are also used by nonshamans and in nonshamanic settings. (shrink)

Experiences of qualia, subjective sensory-like aspects of stimuli, are central to imagistic representation. Following Raffman , qualia are considered to reflect experiential knowledge distinct from descriptive, abstract, and propositional knowledge; following Jackendoff , objective neural activity is distinguished from subjective experience. It is argued that descriptive physical knowledge does not provide an adequate accounting of qualia, and philosophical scenarios such as the Turing test and the Chinese Room are adapted to demonstrate inadequacies of accounts of cognition that ignore subjective experience. (...) Arguments by Dennett and others that qualia do not exist or that qualia do not provide additional explanatory power are addressed, and it is suggested that consideration of qualia is necessary in order to explain objective behavior. The hypotheses of functional equivalence, second-order isomorphism, and psychophysical complementarity between imagery and perception are discussed, and the ability of analog and schematic models of imagery to account for qualia is examined. (shrink)

Can moral judgements be true or false? Can rational methods be applied to ethics? In this landmark study, Sprigge gives an account of how philosophers have tackled these questions and puts forward his own theory on the matter.

This paper argues that business can be helpfully conceived of as a mediating institution. Drawing upon neo-conservative theology, the author argues that mediating institutions serve a vital function in a free society to provide social justice out of an expanded civil society and provide a framework for a flourishing free market. Such institutions also nourish the attitudinal orientation of solidarity in applying the principle of subsidiarity by which self-interest becomes fulfilled through concern for others.The author further argues that businesses also (...) be conceived of as mediating institutions and thereby be held to criteria of meeting associationalneeds. In addition to normative reasons for revising the social contract so that businesses do serve the role of mediating institutions, contemporary management theories demonstrate that businesses can also meet their social obligations of creating wealth while meeting associational needs. (shrink)

Explores moral progress in the American military.

In this response to Paul Lawrence’s Ruffin Lecture, I assess the benefits of integrating biology into business ethics including the way in which biology counteracts conventional economic descriptions of human nature. Section II looks at the dangers of the project and offers the notion of Multilevel Selection Theory as a way to address the notion of how one balances various biological drives. Section III concludes by suggesting that in order to optimally integrate biology, one should attend to contractual notions (the (...) deal) as well as a Sisyphean quest to engage in the task of integration. In doing so, we should also remember to draw upon the dolphin in each of us, that part that takes pleasure in doing moral acts. (shrink)

What's going on? -- Integrity and trust -- Corporate dilemmas in the absence of integrity and trust -- Inspirational stories of integrity and trust -- Making good decisions about strategy, ethics, and leadership -- Building on good decisions with authenticity and sincerity -- Twelve ways to lead with the sincerity edge.

This study used fMRI to investigate the neural substrates of moral cognition in health resource allocation decision problems. In particular, it investigated the cognitive and emotional processes that underpin utilitarian approaches to health care rationing such as Quality Adjusted Life Years. Participants viewed hypothetical medical and nonmedical resource allocation scenarios which described equal or unequal allocation of resources to different groups. In addition, participants were assigned to 1 of 2 treatments in which they either did or did not receive advanced (...) instructions about the principles of utilitarianism. In all cases, participants were asked to judged the proposed allocations as “fair” or “unfair.” More brain activity was observed within the superior parietal lobe, angular gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and bilateral caudate nucleus when participants viewed scenarios depicting equal divisions of resources. Conversely, unequal resource divisions were associated with more activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and insula cortex. Furthermore, instructions about the principles of utilitarianism led to significant activation differences within the inferior frontal gyrus and the middle frontal gyrus. Significant differences in activity were also found within the inferior frontal cortex and anterior insula between medical and nonmedical scenarios. The implications for cognitive control mechanisms and the cognitive and neural bases of utilitarian ethical judgment are discussed. (shrink)

Various reflections on the nature of consciousness, partly inspired by Alastair Hannay's views on the subject, are presented. In particular, its reality as a distinct non-physical existence is defended against such alternatives as have dominated philosophy for many years. The main difficulty in such a defense concerns the contingency it seems to imply as to the relations between consciousness and its expression in behaviour. But it only implies such contingency if some version of the Humean principle that there cannot be (...) necessary connections between distinct existences is assumed. It is more promising to see this relation as the falsification of this Humean principle and thus avoid what seems the main recommendation of behaviourism, functionalism etc. Some final reflections on the nature of the physical suggest that something like consciousness may be the noumenal essence of the physical in general. (shrink)

One of the central debates among British chemists during the 1830s concerned the use of symbols to represent elements and compounds. Chemists such as Edward Turner, who desired to use symbolic notation mainly for practical reasons, eventually succeeded in fending off metaphysical objections to their approach. These objections were voiced both by the philosopher William Whewell, who wished to subordinate the chemists' practical aims to the rigid standard of algebra, and by John Dalton, whose hidebound opposition to abbreviated notation symbolized (...) the suspicion with which older British chemists perceived continental innovations. It is argued that the success of chemists like Turner in this debate reflects their larger success in the 1830s in achieving disciplinary autonomy and in beginning to align themselves more closely with prevailing chemical practice across the Channel. (shrink)

The disciplined investigation of consciousness is of three main types: eidetic, anthropological , and psychophysical. The first concerns the essence of consciousness in general and of its main modes. Its method involves introspection, empathy, and insight into necessities present in what these reveal. As the study of the essence of that which is the locus of all value it is of unique importance, and it is also essential as a foundation of the other inquiries. Such inquiry has been the main (...) task set for itself by phenomenology as a philosophical school, but engagement in it need not imply acceptance of distinctive doctrines of this school. English language?philosophy has developed in ways which discourage the eidetic investigation of consciousness, especially through insistence that modes of consciousness, conceived as a private possession, cannot be the referent of socially shared meanings. Its great mistake has been to expect ?consciousness? to refer to some elusive phenomenon to be looked for in the world and able to be studied as a distinctive reality only if conceptually isolable from what it reveals. Study of consciousness, however, is not primarily study of a phenomenon to be found within the world, but of the variety of ways in which the world can be present to us. (shrink)

This paper is a response to a recent colloquy among Professors David Messick, Donna Wold, and Edwin Harman. I defend Messick’s naturalist methodology, which suggests that people inherently categorize others and act altruistically toward certain people in a given person’s in-group. This paper suggests that an anthropological reason for this grouping tendency is a limited human neural ability to process large numbers of relationships. But because human beings also have the ability to modify, to some extent, their nature, corporate law (...) can organize small mediating institutions within large corporations in order to take ethical advantage of this groupingtendency. Within a corporate law taking seriously a mediating institution’s formulation of business communities, a virtue ethicsapproach can be integrated with a naturalist approach in a way that fosters ethical business behavior while mitigating the dangers of ingrouping tendencies. (shrink)