In The Author's Intention co-authors DiTommaso, Mitscherling, and Nayed divert the current philosophical misrepresentation of authorial intention. Implicitly challenging a second-generation theoretical approach to literature that dismisses the possibility of truth, coherent narratives, and, of course, intentionality the authors breathe new life back into "the author" and, also, literary theory. This book is essential reading for anyone in the humanities who has an interest in critical thought, hermeneutics, and all forms of interpretive technique.

In this short, dense essay, Jean Cavaillès evaluates philosophical efforts to determine the origin - logical or ontological - of scientific thought, arguing that, rather than seeking to found science in original intentional acts, a priori meanings, or foundational logical relations, any adequate theory must involve a history of the concept. Cavaillès insists on a historical epistemology that is conceptual rather than phenomenological, and a logic that is dialectical rather than transcendental. His famous call (cited by Foucault) to abandon "a (...) philosophy of consciousness" for "a philosophy of the concept" was crucial in displacing the focus of philosophical enquiry from aprioristic foundations toward structural historical shifts in the conceptual fabric. This new translation of Cavaillès's final work, written in 1942 during his imprisonment for Resistance activities, presents an opportunity to reencounter an original and lucid thinker. Cavaillès's subtle adjudication between positivistic claims that science has no need of philosophy, and philosophers' obstinate disregard for actual scientific events, speaks to a dilemma that remains pertinent for us today. His affirmation of the authority of scientific thinking combined with his commitment to conceptual creation yields a radical defense of the freedom of thought and the possibility of the new. (shrink)

An account and development of Arthur Murphy's Theory of Practical Reason and its application to contemporary moral problems. Chapter II gives a schematic account of Murphy's theory of normative discourse. Chapter III contrasts this theory with other theories and approaches. The author justly remarks that "Murphy's intent has been primarily to restore proper balance among considerations that play a role in practical discourse and to steer clear of the pitfalls which would impair or diminish the effectiveness of reason in human (...) actions." Chapter IV deals with "the contemporary erosion of practical reason and critique of existentialistic [[sic]] ethics." Chapter V contains an interesting discussion of Murphy's conception of developing and dynamic self as responsible agent. It gives recognition to the moral self as basic condition that underlies the activity of practical justification. The final chapter undertakes practical applications of the theory expounded. The monograph is a good exposition and defense of Murphy's important contribution to contemporary moral philosophy.--A. S. C. (shrink)

Context-sensitivity raises a metasemantic question: what determines the value of a context-sensitive expression in context? Taking gradable adjectives as a case study, this paper argues against various forms of intentionalist metasemantics, i.e. that speaker intentions determine values for context-sensitive expressions in context, including the coordination account recently defended by King :219–237, 2014a; in: Burgess, Sherman Metasemantics: New essays on the foundations of meaning, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 97–118, 2014b). The paper argues that all intentionalist accounts face the speaker authority (...) problem, that speaker intentions are just the wrong sorts of things to determine the standards for gradable adjectives in context. The problem comes to light when we look at cases in which speakers have idiosyncratic, false beliefs that cause their proper communicative intentions to come apart from the non-intentional features of context like the question under discussion, facts about the world, practical goals, and prior linguistic discourse. (shrink)

Information and communication technology has become the great technological fix of our time and not the least in the education system. There seems to be no end to the hype of ICT and the accompanying promises that education will be revolutionized—“smart” pupils will be made and the so-called knowledge society propelled. This master narrative has many co-authors, some of whom have the best intentions and realize the big challenge of educating the world population. In response to the two insightful reviews (...) of my article, I want to question this master narrative further and in doing so make clear where I agree and disagree with the reviewers. (shrink)

Intentionalism, it has been remarked, just won't go away.1 The idea that the meaning of a literary work is determined by the intentions of its author remains appealing and deeply entrenched in most people's thinking,2 in spite of ever-new waves of resistance. I do not wish to resume the discussion of the overall plausibility of intentionalism. Nor will I take a stand in the discussion of its different varieties, like actual versus hypothetical intentionalism.3 My interest lies in exploring the different (...) ways in which intentions might determine literary meaning, and the different kinds of meaning that may be found in a literary work. I contend that proponents of intentionalism have been insufficiently attentive to... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is about the problem of the moral responsibility resting on any person to form rational beliefs about, and moral attitudes towards, the deterrent threat of mutual assured destruction (MAD), which still lies behind the graduated nuclear response strategies now more fashionably discussed by military experts. The problem is to decide what kinds of reasons there are, and how to arrive in the light of them at determinate conclusions about deterrence and unilateral disarmament. Consequential arguments would be powerful, (...) if only they were determinate; but not only do they not point conclusively to one strategy rather than another, there is not even sufficient reason for accepting one rather than another of the competing optimising criteria by which the strategies might be assessed. So the reasons of other kinds against forming a conditional intention to retaliate with a massive second strike could be conclusive, if retaliation itself could do no (consequential) good, and if, as is claimed, the conditional intention could not be simulated. To form such an intention is held to be contrary to core values of a humane, rationalist culture. To assent to a nuclear retaliatory strike would do violence to the moral nature of anyone participating in such a culture, and to form an intention to make (or condone) such a strike would be a corruption of such a nature. So too would condoning the fostering of such an intention in others, as a way of making the retaliatory intention credible. The author accordingly considers this argument against MAD, and for unilateral nuclear disarmament, sufficient, given the inadequacy of the consequential arguments, while acknowledging that this might involve great sacrifice. The paper concludes, however, by considering whether anyone can reject nuclear deterrence who also believes that resistance to Nazism in 1939 was justified, given the then prevailing belief that the war might be massively destructive. The author holds that there is no inconsistency in both supporting resistance to evil, even at risk of total destruction, and in refusing to form or condone a conditional intention to do equivalent but pointless evil in order to make a threat credible. (shrink)

The economic and socio-political impact of multinational corporations (MNCs) on third world countries has been the subject of intense debate and controversy leading to charges of exploitation and colonization on the one hand, and demands for codes of conduct on the other. This article examines the working of one of the most comprehensive of such codes under the most reprehensible political conditions, i.e., the operations of U.S.—based multinational corporations in South Africa under the acgis of the Sullivan Principles. It is (...) argued that despite the best intentions, and considerable social goodwill, the Sullivan Principles were seriously flawed both as to goals and as to means of achieving them. Finally, it suggests a new approach to developing standards of MNC behavior in third world countries which emphasizes those areas of activities that are directly under the control of MNCs, and offers targets of achievement to which MNCs can and should be held accountable.The paper is a revised and expanded version of a keynote speech delivered by the author at the First Biannual Conference on Advances in Management, Orlando, Florida March 25–28, 1992. (shrink)

That the legacy of Berkeley's philosophy has been a largely sceptical one is perhaps rather surprising. For he himself took it as one of his objectives to undermine scepticism. He roundly denied that there were ‘any principles more opposite to Scepticism than those we have laid down’. Yet Hume was to write of Berkeley that ‘most of the writings of that very ingenious author form the best lessons of scepticism, Bayle not excepted’. And it has become something of a commonplace (...) to say that Berkeley's philosophy is sceptical in direction, if not in intention. He is represented as a half-hearted sceptic, applying radical empiricist principles in his treatment of matter but baulking at their implications when he came to consider spirits. Hume is credited with being the more thoroughgoing of the two. Berkeley had denied the substantiality of extended things. Hume felt obliged, by parity of reasoning, to deny the substantiality of the self. On his account of the mind there is ‘properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different’. It is commonly supposed that Berkeley, in maintaining the quite contrary view that we know ourselves to be simple, undivided beings, showed a lack of rigour or consistency. (shrink)

That the legacy of Berkeley's philosophy has been a largely sceptical one is perhaps rather surprising. For he himself took it as one of his objectives to undermine scepticism. He roundly denied that there were ‘any principles more opposite to Scepticism than those we have laid down’ . Yet Hume was to write of Berkeley that ‘most of the writings of that very ingenious author form the best lessons of scepticism, Bayle not excepted’. And it has become something of a (...) commonplace to say that Berkeley's philosophy is sceptical in direction, if not in intention. He is represented as a half-hearted sceptic, applying radical empiricist principles in his treatment of matter but baulking at their implications when he came to consider spirits. Hume is credited with being the more thoroughgoing of the two. Berkeley had denied the substantiality of extended things. Hume felt obliged, by parity of reasoning, to deny the substantiality of the self. On his account of the mind there is ‘properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different’ . It is commonly supposed that Berkeley, in maintaining the quite contrary view that we know ourselves to be simple, undivided beings , showed a lack of rigour or consistency. (shrink)

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority policy on permitting ova provision for research purposes breaches good regulatory practice in being inconsistent, unaccountable and untargeted. This article will illustrate how these breaches have resulted in a policy which is unfair to ova providers who wish to contribute to stem cell research and undermines the intentions behind the policy's very inception. (This article is based on a paper entitled Appropriate Recompense for Oocytes in Stem Cell Research presented at the Stem Cells: Hope (...) or Hype debate, North West Genetics Knowledge Park, Manchester in May 2007.). (shrink)

1. First person authority: the received explanation Over a wide range of psychological attributes, a mature speaker seems to enjoy a defeasible form of authority on how things are with him. The received explanation of this is epistemic, and rests upon a cognitive assumption. The speaker’s word is a authoritative because when things are thus-and-so with him, then normally he knows that they are. This is held to be because the speaker has direct and privileged access to the contents of (...) his consciousness by means of introspection, conceived as a faculty of inner sense. Like perceptual knowledge, introspective knowledge is held to be direct and non-evidential. Accordingly, the first-person utterances ‘I have a pain’, ‘I believe that p’, ‘I intend to V’ are taken to be descriptions of what is evident to inner sense. Many classical thinkers held such subjective knowledge to be not only immediate, but also infallible and indubitable. The challenge to the received conceptions came from Wittgenstein. He denied the cognitive assumption, arguing that it cannot be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know that I am in pain. For what is that supposed to mean — except perhaps that I am in pain?1 If it makes no sense to say that one knows that one is in pain, then the epistemic explanation is a non-starter, since it explains the special authoritative status of a person’s avowal of pain by reference to the putative fact that the subject of pain knows, normally knows, or cannot but know, that he is in pain when he is. It is important to note that Wittgenstein did not mechanically generalize the case of pain across the whole domain of firstperson utterances. The case of pain constitutes only one pole of a range of such utterances. Avowals and averrals of belief and intention approximate the other pole, and require independent analysis and grammatical description. (shrink)

The title accurately reflects the two chief philosophic aims of the book: the construction of a theory of inquiry, and of a theory of reality. The author’s intent, announced at the outset, is "to develop a systematic philosophy with the ultimate goal of disclosing the significance of man in the universe." He calls his approach a "pragmatic synthesis," since, he explains, it is a pragmatic defense of the "warrant" and the integration of ordinary and scientific beliefs with propositions affirming (...) emergence, potentiality, and internal relations drawn variously from "emergentism, Aristotelianism, and absolute idealism." He expresses much indebtedness to Dewey and James; he is also inspired by Lester F. Ward. (shrink)

There is given a short review of the most important biographical information about Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdi (d. ca. 1023), an outstanding representative of the Adab literature. Amongst his creative heritage it is emphasized the importance of the «Epistle (on Penmanship)». The conclusion is made that Adab style served in the best way the author’s intention. He was the first one who succeeded to exhaustively summarize the primary (defining) stage of the Arabic script formation, to clearly formulate the technique (...) for preparing the qalam. The “Epistle” is written in a simple manner, though it is not devoid of traditional elegance and eclecticism. Anticipating further development of the multiple types of proportional script referring to the existent schools, al-Tawḥīdi formulates common additional principles (apart from proportions), that, according to him, would constitute their aesthetics in future. In the second part of the “Epistle” there are given classic sayings and teachings, that became commonplace, regarding this type of art. Al-Tawḥīdi goes beyond his contemporaries and authors of the inner tradition. He gives the full scope of then existing knowledge regarding the discourse object. These data can be divided into rubrics depending on the subject and genre. In many of them we can trace the author's desire to zealously protect the Arab cultural heritage. It is concluded that al-Tawḥīdi strived to take out and convey further the main information, rules and techniques from the previous era of styles formation, so that they would not be lost or significantly changed. The writing contains numerous terms related to the preparation of tools and the process of script itself, which may again become relevant in the modern science of calligraphy. (shrink)

This paper discusses supportive neurological and social evidence for 'collective consciousness', here understood as a shared sense of being together with others in a single or unified experience. Mirror neurons in the premotor and posterior parietal cortices respond to the intentions as well as the actions of other individuals. There are also mirror neurons in the anterior insula and anterior cingulate cortices which have been implicated in empathy. Many authors have considered the likely role of such mirror systems in the (...) development of uniquely human aspects of sociality including language. Though not without criticism, Menant has made the case that mirror-neuron assisted exchanges aided the original advent of self-consciousness and intersubjectivity. Combining these ideas with social mirror theory it is not difficult to imagine the creation of similar dynamical patterns in the emotional and even cognitive neuronal activity of individuals in human groups, creating a feeling in which the participating members experience a unified sense of consciousness. Such instances pose a kind of 'binding problem' in which participating individuals exhibit a degree of 'entanglement'. (shrink)

Imagining A Phenomenological Study Second Edition Edward S. Casey A classic firsthand account of the lived character of imaginative experience. "This scrupulous, lucid study is destined to become a touchstone for all future writings on imagination." —Library Journal "Casey’s work is doubly valuable—for its major substantive contribution to our understanding of a significant mental activity, as well as for its exemplary presentation of the method of phenomenological analysis." —Contemporary Psychology "... an important addition to phenomenological philosophy and to the humanities (...) generally." —Choice "... deliberately and consistently phenomenological, oriented throughout to the basically intentional character of experience and disciplined by the requirement of proceeding by way of concrete description.... [Imagining] is an exceptionally well-written work." —International Philosophical Quarterly Drawing on his own experiences of imagining, Edward S. Casey describes the essential forms that imagination assumes in everyday life. In a detailed analysis of the fundamental features of all imaginative experience, Casey shows imagining to be eidetically distinct from perceiving and defines it as a radically autonomous act, involving a characteristic freedom of mind. A new preface places Imagining within the context of current issues in philosophy and psychology. [use one Casey bio for both Imagining and Remembering] Edward S. Casey is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is author of Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World and The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Studies in Continental Thought—John Sallis, general editor Contents Preface to the Second Edition Introduction The Problematic Place of Imagination Part One: Preliminary Portrait Examples and First Approximations Imagining as Intentional Part Two Detailed Descriptions Spontaneity and Controlledness Self-Containedness and Self-Evidence Indeterminacy and Pure Possibility Part Three: Phenomenological Comparisons Imagining and Perceiving: Continuities Imagining and Perceiving: Discontinuities Part Four: The Autonomy of Imagining The Nature of Imaginative Autonomy The Significance of Imaginative Autonomy. (shrink)

This paper offers a speculative elaboration on downward workplace mobbing – the intentional and repeated inflictions of physical or psychological harm by superiors on subordinates within an organization. The authors cite research showing that workplace mobbing is not a marginal fact in today's organizations and that downward workplace mobbing is the most prevalent form. The authors also show that causes of and facilitating circumstances for downward workplace mobbing, mentioned by previous research, match current organizational shifts taking place within a context (...) of globalisation. This paper argues that it is not the organizational shifts themselves which are to "blame", but an inadequate transformation of leadership and power in reaction to those shifts. Using Foucault's power-knowledge-rules of right triad, the authors offer an explanation for downward workplace mobbing beyond the organizational changes themselves. More precisely, as the organizational changes can be characterized by a new power/knowledge bond calling forth new rules of right, downward workplace mobbing could be seen as manifestations of power outside of the delineations drawn by these new rules of right. In other words, downward workplace mobbing is pathology of current organizational shifts, resulting from not acting out the full ethical potential of the discourse of excellence, adventure, creativity and responsibility, which characterizes these shifts. (shrink)

The title of this book is somewhat misleading. A more apt title would have been, "A Marxist Critique of Husserl’s Nullification of the Real World." Such a title would have made the central argument and underlying concern in the present discussion more explicit. The author is intent on a spirited refutation of Husserl’s phenomenology as a transcendental, phenomenological idealism. It is particularly this stage of Husserl’s phenomenological development, maintains Sang-Ki Kim, that effects a sacrifice of the real world. The belated (...) return to the life-world, characteristic of Husserl’s later thought, does not, according to the author, help matters much. Husserl’s analysis of the life-world continues to be informed by the anti-historical apriorism that defined his earlier program of phenomenological idealism. Husserl’s concept of the life-world thus remains a bloodless abstraction, bereft of any acknowledgement of the concrete, historical, naturalist-materialist basis that undergirds it. (shrink)

This book examines the human ability to participate in moments of joint feeling. It presents an answer to the question concerning the nature of our faculty to share in what might be called episodes of collective affective intentionality. The proposal develops the claim that our capacity to participate in such episodes is grounded in an ability central to our human condition: our capacity to care with one another about certain things. The author provides a phenomenologically adequate account of collective affective (...) intentionality that takes seriously the idea that feelings are at the core of our emotional relation to the world. He details a form of group emotional orientation that relies on the fact that the participating individuals have come to share a number of concerns. Readers will learn that at the heart of a collective affective intentional episode, one does not merely find a set of shared concerns, but also a particular mode of caring. In the end, the argument presented in this monograph makes plausible the idea that the emotions through which humans participate in moments of affective intentional community express our nature. In addition, it shows that the debate on collective affective intentionality also permits us to better understand the relationship between two conflicting philosophical pictures of ourselves: the idea that we are essentially social beings and the claim that we are creatures for whom our personal existence is an issue. Thus, aiming at an elucidation of the nature of our ability to feel together, the book offers a detailed account of what it is to situationally express our human nature by caring about something in a properly joint manner. (shrink)

Investigates the intent, method and structural unity of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles. The author of this study argues that the intended audience is Christian and that the subject is Christian wisdom.

The problem of the rational and the irrational has been one of the most important problems of philosophy since philosophy's birth, for what is philosophy if not meditation on the structure of the universe and of man, immersed in it: Is the universe rational, or is it at bottom irrational and hence unknowable and unpredictable? Are our means of coming to know being [bytie] rational, or can one reach the depths of being only through intuition, illumination, and so forth? Let (...) me immediately make the qualification that the questions posed are improper, for to separate the rational and the irrational is from various points of view extremely unphilosophical. Just as the one cannot exist without the many, just as there is no being without nonbeing, no left without right, no night without day, and no male without female, so there is in philosophy no rational without the irrational. To disregard or consciously reject either the rational or the irrational level of being leads to truly tragic consequences: not only is an invalid theoretical schema created that impoverishes reality, but a knowingly false idea of the universe and of man's situation in it is formed. Let us recall our, if one may call it that, most recent past. The Stalinist-Brezhnevist ideology without further ado simply forbade the irrational and commanded that the world be regarded as rational, lucid, and transparent. The powers that be taught philosophers and their ilk to "think" of being as exclusively of this world, a very simple world, each part of which was easy to describe, explain, and render comprehensible to all without exception. L. Gozman and A. Etkind have persuasively demonstrated how on the basis of such a theoretical postulate were built the corresponding moral, political, and scientific constructions, which became out-and-out caricatures . For example, the authors wrote, a "simple" person, who "had not studied in the universities," was considered the bearer of true morality and goodness. On the other hand, anything that was incomprehensible, that did not fit into a rationalistic framework, was declared an ill-intentioned muddling of a harmonious world that harbored no essential secrets. But if the world is simple and comprehensible, then all the work of scientists is a meaningless waste of the nation's money, and their discoveries and conclusions are an attempt to take people in. The broadest circulation was given to popularized scientific literature and educational lectures that helped the reader and the listener to develop the assurance that he was clear about everything, with the exception of why specialists were unable to get to the bottom of such obvious questions. (shrink)

This work is indeed, as Professor Wartofsky properly—if somewhat immodestly—claims "the first major full-length study of the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach." In sum, it is a lengthy tour de force through most of Feuerbach’s works with the intention of illustrating the coherency of their development, or in the author’s words, "this work... proposes to set forth the development of Feuerbach’s thought as a dialectic." The main argument of the work is that Feuerbach’s work, taken as a whole and (...) in the course of its presentment, not only is the record of his own intellectual development but esoterically expresses the very dialectic it would attempt to repudiate. Feuerbach is also taken as an "epochal figure" in the history of thought as regards his effort to set philosophy within a radically humanistic context. (shrink)

A slightly expanded version of the De Carle Lectures delivered in 1964. The general program of this essay is to defend the autonomy of certain aspects of first person intentional discourse on the ground that they have a normative element and are thus irreplaceable by scientific explanations of human conduct and mental processes, whatever course these explanations may take. The first chapter distinguishes two kinds of possibility, one of which is human capability or power conceptually connected to the notion of (...) wanting or willing. The second chapter discusses the concept of desire. The third chapter distinguishes two kinds of knowledge, knowledge of the natural order justified by observation and inductive reasoning, and knowledge of my future actions whose source is intention or decision. This essay is clearer and more concise than the author's Thought and Action.—R. S. (shrink)

The standardization of the display of intimacy implies that transparency is normalized in the information society. Social practices are bringing the idea of emancipation to the technological field. This carries significant but unquestioned socio-political expectations that are associated with powerful cybercompanies. Byung-Chul Han treats these issues in his political texts. He argues that transparency is a neoliberal device which does not help solve the problems of citizenship, and it even involves a “depoliticization”. My intention is to carry out a (...) critical review of his texts, and highlight their convergences with other authors dedicated to the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Ayalon Eidelstein’s Openness and Faith focuses on the centrality of the idea of openness, or open-mindedness, to the educational sphere. The first half presents the challenges in modern ‘divided-consciousness’ and its consequences of egoism, materialism, and hedonism on the one hand, and religious fanatism on the other. Eidelstein’s main audience is the Israeli secular public, to which he proposes an educational and philosophical middle-way rooted in sincere human and inter-human openness. This openness is inspired by the idea of disinterestedness that (...) Kant articulates in his Critique of Judgment. Eidelstein refers to additional authors, including Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas, to conceptualize the idea of open-mindedness. In the second half of the book, he engages classical American Pragmatism, specifically that of William James, in order to establish the possibility for, and the validity of, a humane open-mindedness. Pragmatism thus paves the way for accepting beliefs that may otherwise be excluded as superstitions and accords them a legitimate and productive role in the life of a modern individual. The difficulty, however, lies in Eidelstein’s employment of Kantian disinterestedness, for it is in fact seriously dissonant with the worthy pragmatic educational purposes that Eidelstein elaborates in the second half of his book. Pragmatism is opposed to disinterestedness in that it stresses the entanglement of fact and value, viewing interests as playing a necessary and productive part in moral motivation and action, while Kantian deontology eliminates consequentialism from the moral scope. While for pragmatists (for example John Dewey’s Democracy and Education) the human creature is holistically conceived, as made of flesh and blood and not only as ‘spirit’, Kant maintained the dualistic Cartesian tradition. This tension calls for a rigorous address. Since Eidelstein’s book is making an important claim about the place open-mindedness has within the Judaism, it must be noted that the disinterestedness of a presumed human ‘self’ is also not easily compatible with the dominant voices in normative Jewish tradition. The Bible does not deal to a large extent with the ‘self’ or with mental intentions, and its conception of the human is not categorically different in the Talmudic corpus. On the contrary, the rabbis frequently endorse pragmatic and ‘external’ reasons, as the motivational basis for action. The kind of purism associated with disinterestedness (as in Mishnah Avot 5:18-19) is barely represented in rabbinic thought. Openness and Faith: In Search of Cultural Education Here and Now is nevertheless an important contribution to the intellectual discourse over the individual and public virtues. In our ever-more segregated and fenced-off world, there is an urgency to delineating the virtue of openness, hoping that Ecclesiastes is right in contending that “No person has power over the spirit [רוח] to retain it” (8:8). But to make Eidelstein’s point about openness in the second half of his book educationally viable, there a need for a pragmatic refinement of the philosophical anthropology in its first half. One way or the other, Openness and Faith is praiseworthy for its articulateness and depth, which invites its readers to an open-minded conversation about the concept of openness. (shrink)

Collected in this volume are ten essays on Islamic philosophy, some of which have appeared before. The topics range from historical observations on the Islamic-European transmission of ideas to detailed examinations of Arabic developments in logic. The most comprehensive discussion of the latter concerns the theory of temporal modalities as found in Avicenna, al-Qazwini al-Katibi, et al. Of much wider interest is the inquiry into the Arabic concern with the notion of "existence." The author surprises the reader here by pointing (...) out that Al-Farabi was the first to deny that existence is an attribute; that Brentano's notion of "intentional inexistence" was anticipated by both Avicenna and Averroes; that certain teachings of al-Qazwini al-Katibi accord exactly with Russell's work concerning vacuous definite descriptions. The work as a whole provides considerable evidence for Rescher's thesis, fully articulated in the final essay, that "there is no such thing as an Arabic philosophy" but only "Greek philosophy carried forward in an Arabic-language setting." Indicative of this is the correspondence between Avicenna's formulation of the "logic of questions" and the Aristotelian table of categories. Another example is the commentary of Ibn al-Salah on Book II of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. More familiar is the syncretistic Arabic adaptation of the doctrines of Timaeus and De Caelo; this influence is discussed at length with respect to Al Kindi's cosmology. In summation, this author's work fills a number of gaps in the continuity of logical development from the Ancient-Medieval period to that of the early Renaissance.--W. S. (shrink)

This article forms part of a larger project on the apocryphal Book of Judith. It explores the performative nature of turmoil, trauma and tenacity as found in the second half of the book (9–16). The impetus for this investigation is the work done by same author on chapters 1–8 of Judith while focusing on a similar theme. The present article suggests that the exploration of the turmoil, trauma and tenacity to be found in chapters 1–8 does not comprehensively represent all (...) aspects that this topic has to offer to the reader of Judith. The contention here is that the theme of turmoil, trauma and the resultant tenacity in the second half of Judith needs further scholarly exploration as it reveals contrasting developments regarding two rivalling camps, that is, the Israelites and the Assyrians. From a speech act interpretive angle, the article asserts that turmoil, trauma and tenacity are intentionally utilised as a literary tool for indicating honour (Israelites) and shame (Assyrians). This has the potential to persuade the reader to make choices and/or decisions as they read the story.Contribution: The article is a continuation of my work on the first part of Judith (chapters 1–8), as indicated. Its main contribution rests on its unique approach to investigating the performative nature of trauma, turmoil and tenacity in the second part of the book, namely, chapters 9–16. The study of the theme of trauma, turmoil and tenacity in Judith is insightful and thought-provoking and does advance research around this fascinating book. (shrink)

Many jurisdictions have put regulatory strategies in place to provide incentives and safeguards to whistleblowers to encourage whistleblowing on corporate wrongdoings. One such strategy is the provision of a financial incentive to the whistleblower if the complaint leads to a successful regulatory enforcement action against the offending organization. We conducted an experiment using professional accountants as participants to examine whether such an incentive encourages potential whistleblowers to report an observed financial reporting fraud to a relevant external authority. We also examine (...) the effect of perceived seriousness of the wrongdoing on accountants’ intention to whistleblow. We find that a financial incentive results in a higher intention to whistleblow to a relevant external authority. We also find that perceptions of the seriousness of the wrongdoing are significantly and positively associated with accountants’ intention to whistleblow to a relevant external authority. We find a significant interaction between the provision of a financial incentive and the perceived seriousness of the wrongdoing on the intention to report the wrongdoing externally. The intention to report the financial reporting fraud externally is higher when the level of perceived seriousness is higher, regardless of the availability of a financial incentive. However, when the perceived level of seriousness is lower, the presence of financial incentive results in a higher intention to report the financial reporting fraud externally. These findings indicate that the impact of a financial incentive on the intention to whistleblow is moderated by perceptions of the seriousness of the wrongdoing. (shrink)

The importance of ethical listening -- The power of difference and values that unite -- Take off your armor and bring down the walls: adopting a listening posture -- Dolls and cages: listening as investment and care -- Deep listening: remembering and responding with intentional focus -- Hyenas and chickens: listening as invitation -- Hope for sustainable hospitality -- References -- About the author.