A critique of Strawson's distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics.

The theses and program below ask about judgment and tradition in a self-consciously plural world. The little program points down a path I am exploring in a pair of texts, one on notions of identity in the history of philosophy, and one on the identity of buildings and places. The underlying issue of those texts is: what will replace the old notion of a particular identity? Places, persons, and communities do not and have never had such simple identities as our (...) concepts often made them out to have. But our world today defies the application of universal categories and judgments to fixed particulars. Our places and identities become complexly multiplied, they interpenetrate, the electronic no-place / all-place opens before us. Yet at the same time exclusions and particularities assert themselves everywhere. If universal judgment seems unlikely, relativism is one response, but relativism remains within the horizon of universals and particulars. What kinds of identity can provide standpoints for describing and judging today? (shrink)

The early modern period (roughly, 1600–1800 ce) in Europe brought tremendous changes in intellectual, political, and cultural life. It was a period in which philosophical debates were inevitably bound up with questions about the nature and sources of religious truth. A chronological examination of some of the period’s major thinkers highlights two issues that were central to the development of philosophy of religion in the period. The first concerns the relations between God, the soul, and the body; the other concerns (...) the relationship between human reason and divine revelation. (shrink)

What would it take to design a real place online where real learning would happen?

Lack of information is hardly our problem. Information comes at us in waves, sloshing out of the magazine rack, lapping at our computer monitors. It repeats and repeats on all-day news shows. It comes neatly packaged as sound bites, or little nuggets ready for trivia games. We have plenty of information, but it is not often the information we need. Even if it is, we need to learn how to deal with it. It is not just the amount, but the (...) speed. Too much happens everywhere that may be important anywhere. Too much comes for us to think it over. (shrink)

While various definitions of moral distress have been proposed, some agreement exists that it results from illegitimate constraints in clinical practice affecting healthcare professionals’ moral agency. If we are to reduce moral distress, instruments measuring it should provide relevant information about such illegitimate constraints. Unfortunately, existing instruments fail to do so. We discuss here several shortcomings of major instruments in use: their inability to determine whether reports of moral distress involve an accurate assessment of the requisite clinical and logistical facts (...) in play, whether the distress in question is aptly characterized as moral, and whether the moral distress reported is an appropriate target of elimination. Such failures seriously limit the ability of empirical work on moral distress to foster appropriate change. (shrink)

Studying Plato's "unwritten doctrines" in the light of his discussion of limit and unlimited in his dialogue Philebus. The essay raises also the question whether there is too much "atomism" in the usual presentation of Plato's Forms as individual absolute entities, rather than as themselves derived from a more fundamental limit/unlimited ontology.

Habermas's criticizes Heidegger for insulating totalities of meaning from possible overturning by attempts to invalidate individual claims. I first state Habermas's criticism, then elaborate an example from Heideggerthat supports Habermas's attack. Then I defend Heidegger by distinguishing levels of meaning in Heidegger's "world" from Habermas's more propositional "lifeworld." I conclude by accepting Habermas's objection restated in terms of the contrast between transcendental and local conditions. If Heidegger is unwilling to pay the price of either Kantian generality or Hegelian unity, he (...) should give up the simple priority of his epochal understandings of being. (shrink)

Though Plato favors physical atoms in his Timaeus, they are not ultimate; he generates them from a formless energy-space plus mathematical patterns. On the other hand most interpreters read the Platonic Forms as ultimate intellectual atoms. I suggest that Plato refuses atomism on all levels, and the Forms themselves should be seen as generated from a combination of limit and unlimited, as we are told in the Philebus and as is hinted at in the reports on the "unwritten doctrines.".

He uses the novel strategy of presenting Heidegger's critique of Hegel and then suggesting the critique of Heidegger that Hegel might have made.

This essay examines Kant's idea of organic teleology. The first two sections are devoted to Kant's analysis and justification of teleological conceptions in biology. Both the idea of teleology and Kant's anti-reductionism are derived from basic elements of his critical treatment of the human intellect. The third section discusses the limitations Kant places on accounts of origins in the life world. It is argued that the limitations Kant places on accounts of the origins of species do not follow from his (...) idea of teleology. The final section briefly outlines the fate of the Kantian formulation of teleology in the nineteenth century. (shrink)

The workshop – presented by the director of a new center and the coordinator of an alliance intended to amplify and extend the influence of an established center – focused on the challenges involved in founding, growing, and sustaining centers for business ethics within university business schools. The discussion draws on experience at the Center for Business and Society, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado, and the Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College and Bentley’s Alliance for Ethics & Social (...) Responsibility. (shrink)

Also in paper (unseen) for $14.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Must CEOs Be Saints? Contra Moriarty on CEO Abstemiousness by Robert KolbIn this journal, Jeffrey Moriarty argued that CEOs must refuse to accept compensation above the minimum compensation that will induce them to accept and per­form their jobs. Acting otherwise, he maintains, violates the CEO’s fiduciary duty, even for a CEO new to the firm. I argue that Moriarty’s conclusion rests on a failure to adequately distinguish when a person acts as a fiduciary from when she acts on her own (...) account as a person. Further, Moriarty’s argument assumes that the CEO knows this minimum level of compensation. However, we learn the suitability of compensation only through the market process of wage negotiation, not through some process of introspection. I conclude that a CEO who abstains from interfering with the board of directors and its compensation com­mittee is morally free to negotiate for the highest wage available. (shrink)

Two lines of argument with which kant defends the distinction between thought and intuition are examined. It is argued that attempts to establish thought and intuition as separate faculties on the basis of the immediacy and singularity of intuitions and the mediacy and generality of concepts fail. Kant's second way of making out the distinction is a transcendental account of the possibility of an intellect like ours. He argues that it is a fundamental characteristic of the human intellect that it (...) is not intuitive and that we can be brought into relation with objects only through an intuitive faculty distinct from the faculty of conceptual representation. This line of argument is reconstructed from kant's correspondence and the "critique of judgment", And it is argued that it represents "a" plausible kantian response to criticisms of his distinction. (shrink)

Argues that Sellars' theories can be seen as an elaborate argument for scientific realism as an almost-transcendental condition for the meaningfulness of language.

The essay examines kant's treatment of mechanisms and mechanical science in the major works of kant's critical period. it is argued that kant's conception of mechanism as a science must be understood through the distinctive elements the critical idea of nature developed in the "critique of pure reason" and the "critique of judgement". rather than appearing as a champion of the sufficiency of classical mechanics, kant emerges as one puzzled about the very intelligibility of the basic concepts of a mechanical (...) science. he ultimately maintains that the coherence of mechanical science derives from the regulative idea of systematic unity. (shrink)

What are the ontological commitments in Hegel and Heidegger’s discussion of the self? In this essay I approach these continental thinkers with a question from analytic philosophy, to see how they might respond. In different ways Hegel and Heidegger try to locate the question within a prior discourse about the conditions of the possibility of any local ontological commitments. The priority they claim can be clarified by distinguishing conditions of possibility from conditions of actuality.

In der Pflege gibt es noch zu wenig gerontopsychiatrisches Fachpersonal und Betreuungskonzepte zur Versorgung dementer alter Menschen. Beides aber ist absolut notwendig, da es durch die Unterversorgung vor allem zu Problemen bei der Ernährung der Demenzkranken kommt. Das Postulat, das Anlegen einer perkutanen endoskopischen Gastrostomie-(PEG-)Sonde) ausschließlich zur Erleichterung der Pflege grundsätzlich abzulehnen, ist ethisch korrekt, ändert aber nichts an der Tatsache der Versorgungsprobleme bei fehlenden Pflegekräften. Entscheidend bei der Pflege von Demenzkranken sind der Beziehungsaspekt und der Erhalt der Lebenswelt des (...) Betroffenen. Schwierig wird es vor allem in der Frage, ob ein Demenzkranker im fortgeschrittenen Stadium noch seinen Willen ausdrücken kann. Es muss eine Vielzahl von körperlichen Ursachen ausgeschlossen werden, bevor eine Verweigerung des Essens als Willensäußerung gedeutet werden darf. Auch hier scheinen psychosoziale Gesichtspunkte entscheidend zu sein. Der Nutzen einer künstlichen Ernährung bei Demenzkranken ist umstritten und bedarf der skrupelhaften Einzelfallbeurteilung. Doch gerade in der terminalen Phase der Erkrankung scheint sie eher eine Gewissensberuhigung der Betreuenden darzustellen anstatt eine für den Betroffenen nützliche Maßnahme. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 1 Seiten: 360-372.

ZusammenfassungIn der Pflege gibt es noch zu wenig gerontopsychiatrisches Fachpersonal und Betreuungskonzepte zur Versorgung dementer alter Menschen. Beides aber ist absolut notwendig, da es durch die Unterversorgung vor allem zu Problemen bei der Ernährung der Demenzkranken kommt. Das Postulat, das Anlegen einer perkutanen endoskopischen Gastrostomie-(PEG-)Sonde) ausschließlich zur Erleichterung der Pflege grundsätzlich abzulehnen, ist ethisch korrekt, ändert aber nichts an der Tatsache der Versorgungsprobleme bei fehlenden Pflegekräften. Entscheidend bei der Pflege von Demenzkranken sind der Beziehungsaspekt und der Erhalt der Lebenswelt des (...) Betroffenen. Schwierig wird es vor allem in der Frage, ob ein Demenzkranker im fortgeschrittenen Stadium noch seinen Willen ausdrücken kann. Es muss eine Vielzahl von körperlichen Ursachen ausgeschlossen werden, bevor eine Verweigerung des Essens als Willensäußerung gedeutet werden darf. Auch hier scheinen psychosoziale Gesichtspunkte entscheidend zu sein. Der Nutzen einer künstlichen Ernährung bei Demenzkranken ist umstritten und bedarf der skrupelhaften Einzelfallbeurteilung. Doch gerade in der terminalen Phase der Erkrankung scheint sie eher eine Gewissensberuhigung der Betreuenden darzustellen anstatt eine für den Betroffenen nützliche Maßnahme. (shrink)

The women of Sons of Anarchy have pivotal, powerful roles in the drama, despite not being official members of the MC. Here we have three images of motherhood: the bad mother (few things are considered worse in our society) who endangers her child, the powerful matriarch who comes to the child's rescue, and the mothering healer who is responsible for keeping Abel alive. While the Mothers of Anarchy, on the surface, have no control, in reality they use their power in (...) the private sphere to influence the public sphere and effect great change, albeit with little public recognition for their efforts. While the traditional masculine and feminine spheres are firmly in place within SAMCRO, with the men making all the decisions about the club's future behind the closed chapel doors, the power this mother (Gemma) wields is monumental. (shrink)