This volume insists that, if we are to properly face the challenges of the coming century, we need to re-examine international politics and development through the prism of ethics and morality. International relations must now contend with a widening circle of participants reflecting the diversity and unevenness of status, memory, gender, race, culture and class. Contributors to this volume challenge North America's privileged position in world politics, suggest initiatives for improving the quality of human existence in tangible ways, and critique (...) the conventional wisdom on how we think we can create peace and justice. Re-Framing the International shows that, when we develop projects for world reform, we must remember that the most basic prevailing assumptions of modern law, politics, and culture are by no means as obvious, natural, or progressive as we formerly thought. (shrink)

When it is seen that those who speak for the new society also establish it wherever they are, then the ranks of oppression and inequity break and straggle; when it is seen that those who speak for the new society are less regardful of the comfort and rights of others than are the best in the old society, then the ranks of oppression and inequity re-aline [sic] and advance anew to battle. He that cries against externally-enforced order carries complete conviction (...) only when he ceases to create disorder by discourtesy, tumult, and greater invasions. I can have little faith in the professed love of liberty of one who denies to me the opportunity to hear what he or she does not care to hear, just as I can have little faith in the professions of the Censor who denies to me the opportunity to read what he does not care to read. “We learn to do by doing.”. (shrink)

Suicidal Thoughts is a compilation of some of the most moving and insightful writing accomplished on the topic of suicide. It presents the thoughts and experiences of fifteen writers who have contemplated suicide-some on a professional level, others on a personal level, and a few, both personally and professionally. Through this collection, the reader is able to bear witness to the struggle between life and death and to the devastating aftermath of suicide. Suicidal Thoughts provides readers with a better understanding (...) of the reasons why some individuals give serious consideration to killing themselves. (shrink)

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION (A) Historical Problem Suggested by the Nature of Modern Thought How curious, after all, is the way in which we moderns think about ...

Providing the most thorough coverage available in one volume, this comprehensive, broadly based collection offers a wide variety of selections in four major genres, and also includes a section on film. Each of the five sections contains a detailed critical introduction to each form, brief biographies of the authors, and a clear, concise editorial apparatus. Updated and revised throughout, the new Fourth Edition adds essays by Margaret Mead, Russell Baker, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Alice Walker; fiction by Nathaniel (...) Hawthorne, Ursula K. LeGuin, Anton Chekov, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich, Donald Barthelme, and James McPherson; poems by John Donne, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, e.e. cummings, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Philip Levine, and Louise Gluck; and plays by August Wilson, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, and Vaclav Havel. The chapter devoted to film examines the relation of film to literature and gives the complete screenplay for Citizen Kane plus close analysis of a scene from the film. With its innovative structure, comprehensive coverage, and insightful and stimulating presentation of all kinds of literature, this is an anthology readers will turn to again and again. (shrink)

This paper sets out a philosophical interpretation of the model theory of Mares and Goldblatt (The Journal of Symbolic Logic 71, 2006). This interpretation distinguishes between truth conditions and information conditions. Whereas the usual Tarskian truth condition holds for universally quantified statements, their information condition is quite different. The information condition utilizes general propositions . The present paper gives a philosophical explanation of general propositions and argues that these are needed to give an adequate theory of general information.

In this paper we set out a semantics for relevant (counterfactual) conditionals. We combine the Routley-Meyer semantics for relevant logic with a semantics for conditionals based on selection functions. The resulting models characterize a family of conditional logics free from fallacies of relevance, in particular counternecessities and conditionals with necessary consequents receive a non-trivial treatment.

The virtue approach to business ethics is a topic of increasing importance within the business world. Focusing on Aristotle's theory that the virtues of character, rather than actions, are central to ethics, Edwin M. Hartman introduces readers of this book to the value of applying Aristotle's virtue approach to business. Using numerous real-world examples, he argues that business leaders have good reason to take character seriously when explaining and evaluating individuals in organisations. He demonstrates how the virtue approach can (...) deepen our understanding of business ethics, and how it can contribute to contemporary discussions of character, rationality, corporate culture, ethics education and global ethics. Written by one of the foremost Aristotelian scholars working in the field today, this authoritative introduction to the role of virtue ethics in business is a valuable primer for graduate students and academic researchers in business ethics, applied ethics and philosophy. (shrink)

This paper presents a theory of belief revision that allows people to come tobelieve in contradictions. The AGM theory of belief revision takes revision,in part, to be consistency maintenance. The present theory replacesconsistency with a weaker property called coherence. In addition to herbelief set, we take a set of statements that she rejects. These two sets arecoherent if they do not overlap. On this theory, belief revision maintains coherence.

To the medieval thinker, man was the center of creation and all of nature existed purely for his benefit. The shift from the philosophy of the Middle Ages to the modern view of humanity's less central place in the universe ranks as the greatest revolution in the history of Western thought, and this classic in the philosophy of science describes and analyzes how the profound change occurred. A fascinating analysis of the works of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Gilbert, Boyle, (...) and Newton, it not only establishes the reasons for the triumph of the modern perspective but also accounts for certain limitations that characterize contemporary scientific thought. (shrink)

This paper extends the theory of situated inference from Mares to treat two weak relevant logics, B and DJ. These logics are interesting because they can be used as bases for consistent naïve theories, such as naïve set theory. The concepts of a situation and of information that are employed by the theory of situated inference are used to justify various aspects of these logics and to give an interpretation of the notion of set that is represented in the naïve (...) set theories that are based on them. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that semantics for relevance logic, based on the Routley-Meyer semantics, can be given without using the Routley star operator to treat negation. In the resulting semantics, negation is treated implicationally. It is shown that, by the use of restrictions on the ternary accessibility relation, simplified by the use of some definitions, a semantics can be stipulated over which R is complete.

It may be nearly impossible to use standard principles to make a decision about a complex ethical case. The best decision, say virtue ethicists in the Aristotelian tradition, is often one that is made by a person of good character who knows the salient facts of the case and can frame the situation appropriately. In this respect ethical decisions and strategic decisions are similar. Rationality plays a role in good ethical decision-making, but virtue ethicists emphasize the importance of intuitions and (...) emotions as well.Virtue ethics suggests a reconciliation of the factual and the normative. Virtues may explain as well as justify actions. The same is true of other psychological states and events. That psychological terms have normative implications does not render them useless in explanation. As Aristotle does not distinguish cleanly between the normative and empirical, so many moral philosophers today reject the is-ought dichotomy. They are prepared to learn from economists, psychologists, and other empirical scientists who offer information about the nature of the good life and of values. Social psychologists who study community or corporate culture suggest a close relationship between organizational and ethical features, much as Aristotle saw a close relationship between politics and ethics. We should infer from all this that in business ethics there is good reason for philosophers and organization scholars to work closely together. (shrink)

Many authors have posited an “object file” system, which underlies perceptual selection and tracking of objects. Several have proposed that this system internalizes principles specifying what counts as an object and relies on them during tracking. Here I consider a popular view on which the object file system is tuned to entities that satisfy principles of three-dimensionality, cohesion, and boundedness. I argue that the evidence gathered in support of this view is consistent with a more permissive view on which object (...) files select and track according to well-known perceptual organization criteria. Further evidence supplies positive support for the permissive view. (shrink)

The logic CE (for "Classical E") results from adding Boolean negation to Anderson and Belnap's logic E. This paper shows that CE is not a conservative extension of E.

This paper sets out two semantics for the relevant logic R based on Dunn's four-valued semantics for first-degree entailments. Unlike Routley's semantics for weak relevant logics, they do not use two ternary accessibility relations. Unlike Restall's semantics, they capture all of R. But there is a catch. Both of the present semantics are neighbourhood semantics, that is, they include sets of propositions in the specification of their frames.

Abstract:Phillips and Margolis argue that moral philosophy is a poor basis for business ethics, but their narrow view of moral philosophy would exclude Aristotle, for one. They criticize me for assimilating states and organizations in using the Rawlsian device, but they put too much faith in Rawls’s distinction between states and voluntary organizations and pay too little attention to the continuities between them. Their plea for a conceptually autonomous ethics for organizations I interpret as reasonable and largely compatible with my (...) own stated opinion. (shrink)

Behaviorism is consistent with the assumptions of perfect competition, with the homo economicus model, and with a form of ethics that enshrines market-based notions of utility, justice, and rights and encourages rational maximizing. Economics and business courses foster this deficient form of ethics, assuming an overriding desire for money, which, according to MacIntyre and Aristotle, crowds out the associative virtues. These beliefs, often associated with Taylor and Friedman, lead to such practices as incentive compensation, which would be effective only if (...) employees were homines economici and thus rational in the sense of knowing how to satisfy whatever desires they have. Against Davidson’s view that psychology cannot be a natural science, Aristotle believes that there can be a teleological, if not exact, science of behavior. Aristotle believes that emotions and objectives may be rational or irrational. But rationality—phronesis, practical wisdom—is not a matter of applying algorithms. Doris questions whether character generates the first premises of an agent’s practical syllogisms, while Haidt has argued that we often act on emotions rather than on the basis of the reasons that we claim motivate us. Aristotle agrees that many people are not virtuous and that weakness of the will is a common occurrence, and he agrees that emotion drives actions. But if you are virtuous, your emotions and desires support your rationality. Aristotle gives us reason to reject the notion that people are homines economici and to treat them as rational deliberators, in part by creating an appropriate culture. The claim that it is in the nature of human beings to deliberate rationally is in part aspirational, but also in part scientific—in Aristotle’s modest sense. (shrink)

Abstract:Phillips and Margolis argue that moral philosophy is a poor basis for business ethics, but their narrow view of moral philosophy would exclude Aristotle, for one. They criticize me for assimilating states and organizations in using the Rawlsian device, but they put too much faith in Rawls’s distinction between states and voluntary organizations and pay too little attention to the continuities between them. Their plea for a conceptually autonomous ethics for organizations I interpret as reasonable and largely compatible with my (...) own stated opinion. (shrink)

In recent years many influential philosophers have advocated that philosophy is an a priori science. Yet very few epistemology textbooks discuss a priori knowledge at any length, focusing instead on empirical knowledge and empirical justification. As a priori knowledge has moved centre stage, the literature remains either too technical or too out of date to make up a reasonable component of an undergraduate course. Edwin Mares book aims to rectify this. This book seeks to make accessible to students the (...) standard topics and current debates within a priori knowledge, including necessity and certainty, rationalism, empiricism and analyticity, Quine's attack on the a priori, Kantianism, Aristotelianism, mathematical knowledge, moral knowledge, logical knowledge and philosophical knowledge. (shrink)

The proceedings of the first major international conference on the philosophy of Spinoza to be held in the United States are published here.

In this paper, I set out a semantics for identity in relevant logic that is based on an analogy between the biconditional and identity. This analogy supports the semantics that Priest has set out for identity in basic relevant logic and it motivates a version of the Routley–Meyer semantics in which identities can be viewed as constraints on the ternary relation that is used to treat implication.

Abstract:We have reached a rough moral consensus in the field of business ethics. We believe in capitalism with a safety net and enough regulation to deal with serious market imperfections. We favor autonomy for individuals and democracy for governments, though not necessarily for organizations. We recognize the rights of citizens and the different rights of employees. We respect a variety of possible sets of values, and so countenance a distinction between public and private. In other words, we are capitalists, pluralists, (...) and liberals. But globalization will force us and businesspeople who share our views to deal with significant stakeholders who do not. The 21st century will see the accelerating pace of globalization. The great challenge for business ethics, for its philosophers and its scholars of business, will be to identify and advocate morality that takes adequate account of globalization, and that in so doing avoids untenable parochialism without falling into relativism. (shrink)

Serious work in history of philosophy requires doing something very difficult: conducting a hypothetical dialogue with dead philosophers. Is it worth devoting to it the time and energy required to do it well? Yes. Quite apart from the intrinsic interest of understanding the past, making progress toward solving philosophical problems requires a good grasp of the range of possible solutions to those problems and of the arguments which motivate alternative positions, a grasp we can only have if we understand well (...) philosophy's past. Philosophers who concentrate too much on the present are apt to assume too simple a view of alternative theories and of important philosophical arguments. Ryle and Austin offer instructive examples of how it is possible to go wrong by ignoring or misrepresenting historical figures. (shrink)

This paper begins with a discussion of C. I. Lewis’s theory of meaning in his book, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946) and his pragmatic theory of analyticity and necessity. I bring this theories together with some remarks that he makes in an appendix to the second edition of Symbolic Logic to construct an algebraic semantics for his logics S2 and S3. These logics and their semantics are compared and evaluated with regard to how well they implement Lewis’s theories (...) of meaning and analyticity. (shrink)

Sandys, Sir John Edwin. Aristotle's Constitution of Athens. A Revised Text with an Introduction Critical and Explanatory Notes Testimonia and Indices. Second edition, Revised and Enlarged. London: Macmillan & Co., Limited, 1902. xcii, 331 pp. Frontis. Illus. Reprinted 2000 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. LCCN 99-23952. ISBN 1-58477-004-X. Cloth. $75. * By the author of the standard comprehensive history of classical scholarship, A History of Classical Scholarship. This scholarly examination of the textual evidence of the papyrus of what is (...) known to be Aristotle's Constitution of Athens, which dated from 328 and 325 B.C., is enhanced by notes that pertain to the legal aspects of the work. A thorough introduction surveys Greek political literature prior to Aristotle's time and that ascribed to him, and concludes with a history of the Constitution itself. While other scholars may have already deciphered the papyrus, this work is distinguished by the provision of the text with critical notes on each page, followed by the Testimonia, which contain further evidence on the text, in the form of quotations in Greek, often providing passages in full for immediate reference. With a bibliography and English as well as Greek index. (shrink)