The focus on animal welfare in society has increased during the last 50 years. Animal welfare legislation and private standards have developed, and today many farmers within animal production have both governmental legislation and private standards to comply with. In this paper intentions and values are described that were expressed in 14 animal welfare legislation and standards in four European countries; Sweden, United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. It is also discussed if the legislation and standards actually accomplish what they, in (...) their overall description and ethics, claimed to do, i.e. if this is followed up by relevant paragraphs in the actual body of the text in the legislation and standards respectively. The method used was an on-line questionnaire from the EconWelfare research project and text analyses. This study shows that the ethical values within a set of legislation or private standards are not always consistently implemented, and it is not always possible to follow a thread between the intentions mentioned initially and the actual details of the legislation or standard. Since values will differ so will also the animal welfare levels and the implications of similar concepts in the regulations. In general, the regulations described were not based on animal welfare considerations only, but also other aspects, such as food safety, meat quality, environmental aspects and socio-economic aspects were taken into account. This is understandable, but creates a gap between explicit and implicit values, which we argue, can be overcome if such considerations are made more transparent to the citizens/consumers. (shrink)

The ability to recognise others’ emotions from nonverbal cues is measured with performance-based tests and has many positive correlates. Although researchers have...

In this book Schmid holds that the traditional and cultural ideal of moderation is enough of an established fact that the Charmides can be held up against it to make the distinctions and similarities which will then provide for the necessary reference for interpreting the drama Plato uses in the dialogue. The Preface and section 1 define the “cultural setting in which the ancient Greek ideal of sophrosunê was situated”. Here Schmid defines the complex political and cultural setting (...) of ancient Greece out of which the dialogue is to be interpreted and thereby sets the stage for the drama and speech of the dialogue as a whole. (shrink)

This book is an admirable addition to the genre of books which concentrate on a single Platonic dialogue so as to exhibit the mutual dependence of the overt logos and the interlocutors' historically situated characters. The overt logos of the second half of the Laches is an aporetic discussion of courage, and Schmid shows how Plato portrays the different character flaws of the famous generals, Laches and Nicias, as hindrances to further investigation. Through a fine treatment of the relevant (...) sections of Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War, Schmid makes clear how these flaws also led to the failures of courage by Laches at the battle of Mantinea and by Nicias in the Sicilian campaign. He maintains that the secondary literature has failed to appreciate sufficiently not only that Laches' definition of courage is thoroughly traditional, deriving from Homer and Tyrtaeus, but also that Nicias's definition is not Socratic but rather sophistic and Promethian, connected with Periclean humanism. Laches defines courage as "the endurance of the soul" who fears disgrace, especially in reference to soldiers in a phalanx, but his definition omits the element of boldness, for instance, of a general who formulates an unexpected and even unpopular plan of attack or retreat. Nicias defines courage as "the knowledge of dreadful and emboldening things" which, for instance, enables a general to lead soldiers to victory. His definition not only denies the unavoidable contingency of life, and especially of war, but also overlooks the endurance of soul which is required to control one's fear of this contingency and to pursue one's plan. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Healing Emotions is the record of an extraordinary series of encounters between the Dalai Lama and prominent Western psychologists, physicians, and meditation teachers that sheds new light on the mind-body connection. Edited by Pulitzer Prize nominee and best-selling author Daniel Goleman.

Epistemologists have not usually had much to say about believing ‘in’, though ever since Plato's time they have been interested in believing ‘that’. Students of religion, on the other hand, have been greatly concerned with belief ‘in’, and many of them, I think, would maintain that it is something quite different from belief ‘that’. Surely belief ‘in’ is an attitude to a person, whether human or divine, while belief ‘that’ is just an attitude to a proposition? Could any difference be (...) more obvious than this? And if we over-look it, shall we not be led into a quite mistaken analysis of religious belief, at any rate if it is religious belief of the theistic sort? On this view belief ‘in’ is not a propositional attitude at all. (shrink)

First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

May I first say, Mr Chairman, that I regard it as a great honour to have been invited to take part in this Conference? I speak to you as a philosopher who happens to be interested both in religion and in psychical research. But I am afraid I am going to discuss some questions which it is ‘not done’ to talk about.

Before the development of the nuclear shell model estimates of the strength of the nuclear spin-orbit interaction varied widely. Wheeler was the first to conclude that the nuclear spin-orbit interaction produces splittings of several MeV. This conclusion appeared, however, to be inconsistent with some experimental results that later turned out to be faulty.

In ordinary life everyone assumes that he has a great deal of knowledge about other minds or persons. This assumption has naturally aroused the curiosity of philosophers; though perhaps they have not been as curious about it as they ought to have been, for they have devoted many volumes to our consciousness of the material world, but very few to our consciousness of one another. It was thought at one time that each of us derives his knowledge of other minds (...) from the observation of other human organisms. I observe that there are a number of bodies which resemble my own fairly closely in their shape, size, and manner of movement; I conclude by analogy that each of these bodies is animated by a. (shrink)

I am very grateful to Professor R. W. Sleeper for his critical comments on my article, as also for the kind way in which he has expressed them. I should now like to make a few comments on his comments. May I first say that I have no objection to being metaphysical? I do not like the word ‘metaphysics’ very much, and wish that we could find a less provocative one. But still, I do think that the difference between the (...) reducible and the irreducible belief-in is a difference which there really is . Moreover, I fully admit that when we believe in God we are making a factual claim. It is, of course, a factual claim of rather a special kind. If it is a fact that there is a supreme Being, ‘The Lord of All’, this is not just one fact among others. It is not quite like the fact that there is a stormy north-westerly wind this morning. One could not just give a list of facts and add at the end, ‘There is also another fact which I had forgotten to mention: there is a God’. All the same, this factual claim, like others, does need to be justified; and how is it to be justified? I am afraid that the brief hint which I offered elsewhere on this subject is indeed ‘not good enough’ as it stands . To be even half good enough, it needs much more elaboration, and I agree that there is much force in Mr Gunderson's criticisms. (shrink)