This study explores how paradoxical tensions between economic growth and environmental protection are avoided through organizational mythmaking. By examining the European oil and gas supermajors’ “CEO-speak” about climate change, we show how mythmaking facilitates the disregarding, diverting, and/or displacing of sustainability tensions. In doing so, our findings further illustrate how certain defensive responses are employed: regression, or retreating to the comforts of past familiarities, fantasy, or escaping the harsh reality that fossil fuels and climate change are indeed irreconcilable, and projecting, (...) or shifting blame to external actors for failing to address climate change. By highlighting the discursive effects of enacting these responses, we illustrate how the European oil and gas supermajors self-determine their inability to substantively address the complexities of climate change. We thus argue that defensive responses are not merely a form of mismanagement as the paradox and corporate sustainability literature commonly suggests, but a strategic resource that poses serious ethical concerns given the imminent danger of issues such as climate change. (shrink)

What is the nature and the place of religion in an ever changing human condition, and in an ever changing world? As Kenneth Masong shows, such a reflection requires a broader perspective: the perspective of metaphysics, and actually the perspective of a metaphysics of becoming. Becoming-religion in a becoming universe. Indeed, religion is not an exception, but a phenomenon among others, although a peculiar one. But what applies to the rest of the universe, also applies to religion. And vice (...) versa. Now, one central law for all that exists, is that it is subject to change. The book is written with the distance, requisite for philosophical reflection, but with a warm heart for the topic, coming from a deep religious life. Again and again the book testifies to the author’s conviction of the intrinsic value of “the event of the religious” now and in the future – for what is called “ethnopoiesis”: the constitution of a unity of wills, by the persuasive power of the divine vision, on humanity’s journey towards civilization. –Professor André Cloots Catholic University of Leuven. (shrink)

The struggles that Alfred Schutz, Aron Gurwitsch, Harold Garfinkel, and other social phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists have had with Edmund Husserl’s progenitive but inconsistent notion of intersubjectivity are summarized and assessed. In particular, an account of Schutz’s objections to intersubjective constitution is presented. The commonly pervading elements and major differences within this lineage of inquiry – a four generation-long lineage of teacher and student that commences with Husserl, runs through Schutz and Gurwitsch, then Garfinkel, and then the present author and (...) his colleagues – are discussed, under the advisory (as suggested by Maurice Natanson) that what Husserl sought was more important than what he found. (shrink)

The article recovers the earlier meaning of event as found in Alfred North Whitehead’s works, Principles of Natural Knowledge and Concept of Nature. In the early Whitehead, the event is considered as the metaphysical ultimate; such that events are the metaphysical building blocks in order to account for the temporal and spatial extensiveness of reality. The recuperation of the pre-PR concept of event is expressive of a dynamic of extending over, or passing into, of one event to another. This (...) dynamic is explicitly absent in the actual occasion of Process and Reality, after Whitehead’s “turn to atomism.”. (shrink)

For Whitehead and Nishitani, a rethinking of religion necessitates a rethinking of the metaphysics that underlie one’s concept of religion. The dynamism of religion is unveiled only within the metaphysical grounding of an ontology that accommodates the philosophical preference of “becoming” as an ultimate category of reality. The novelty of Whitehead’s theory of religion lies in the process metaphysics that it presupposes. For him, religion, like the whole of reality, is inherently developing and evolving. What Nishitani offers is a rethinking (...) of Western understanding of religion by way of an Asian speculative approach grounded in Zen Buddhism. He argues that Western religion, particularly Christianity and Judaism, has succumbed to the modern predicament of nihilism, or relative nothingness. He radicalizes this same nihility towards absolute nothingness (śūnyatā). For both Whitehead and Nishitani, despite the distortion of religion by religious fundamentalists, genuine religion consolidates and points a society towards its real destiny. However, the realization of religion’s role necessitates reflexivity on its own inherent dynamism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 39.4 (2006) 333-339MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]On Persuasion, Identification, and Dialectical SymmetryKenneth BurkeEdited with introduction by James ZappenNote: This untitled paper was found in two typed copies among the books and papers in Kenneth Burke's personal library in July 2006—one copy folded into a heavily used Loeb edition of Aristotle's Rhetoric, the other in a small file cabinet in the library.1 The two copies are (...) nearly identical carbon copies, probably typed by Burke's wife Libby; the original has not been found.2 The paper includes brief discussions of persuasion, identification, and dialectical symmetry (hence the current title), plus brief critiques of behaviorism and general semantics, with specific reference to Alfred Korzybski's notion of the structural differential. It was probably written in the mid-1940s, after the second edition of Korzybski's Science and Sanity and The Philosophy of Literary Form, both published in 1941; perhaps at roughly the same time as the more extended discussions of behaviorism and Korzybski in A Grammar of Motives, published in 1945; and before the full development of Burke's ideas about persuasion, identification, and dialectical symmetry in A Rhetoric of Motives, published in 1950. The paper might have been prepared for a public lecture or for circulation among Burke's literary friends, as a brief commentary on some of the key concepts in A Rhetoric of Motives, while he was completing A Grammar of Motives or perhaps shortly following its publication. If so, then it might have been written as late as 1947.3This paper suggests that Burke's concept of identification was in part a creative response to current issues in behaviorism and general semantics, formulated in sympathy with George Herbert Mead's observations on identification, communication, and community in Mind, Self, and Society and The Philosophy of the Act and in opposition to Korzybski's general semantics and his structural differential. Moreover, and more important, this paper suggests that the final section of A Rhetoric of Motives, titled simply "Order," is essential to a complete understanding of Burke's ideas about persuasion and identification since only in this last section does Burke show how competing points of view [End Page 333] might be reconciled in an ultimate identification via the dialectical symmetry that he traces through the long history of Platonic thought.4James P. Zappen Department of Language, Literature, and Communication Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute* * *What, in sum, would be the salient traits of Aristotle's Rhetoric?5 And what would be our attitude towards them?His "art" is constructed about his stress upon persuasion as the purpose of rhetoric. Hence he surveys the resources of rhetoric, to the end that one might use the best means available for a given situation. To narrow down the choice of means, he makes a division into kinds of oratory: deliberative (concerned with the expediency of steps still to be taken); forensic (concerned with the justice or injustice of past acts); and demonstrative or epideictic (concerned with praise and blame, primarily involving the present). But to be effective in any of these kinds, one must appeal to the opinions of one's audience—hence the lists of "topics" reviewing such opinions. First he considers the components of happiness, on the grounds that all men aim at happiness, hence this topic figures in all persuasion and dissuasion. For deliberative oratory specifically, he lists the topics naming men's opinions as to the good, the expedient, and their opposites (along with relevant observations on different forms of government). His topics for epideictic, dealing with praise and blame, comprise the things men consider virtuous and vicious. And his list of forensic topics has to do with the motives and effects of just and unjust acts. Also, there are such general topics as the possible and impossible, the more and the less, the likely and the unlikely.Enthymemes (deductions based on opinion) fit well with forensic, he says. Rhetorical induction (example) best suits the deliberative. And to epideictic, amplification (auxesis... (shrink)

One of the central questions of economics relates to the coordination of individual units within a large organization to achieve the central objectives of that organization. This book examines the problems involved in allocating resources in an economic system where decision-making is decentralized into the hands of individuals and individual enterprises. The decisions made by these economic agents must be coordinated because the input decisions of some must eventually equal the output decisions of others. Coordination arises naturally out of the (...) mathematical theory of optimization but there is still the question of how it can be achieved in practice with dispersed knowledge. The essays here explore the many facets of this problem. Nine papers are grouped under the title 'Economies with a single maximand'. They include papers on static and dynamic optimization, decentralization within firms, and nonconvexities in optimizing problems. Fourteen papers are concerned with 'Economies with multiple objectives'. Among the topics covered here are stability of competitive equilibrium, stability in oligopology, and dynamic shortages. The final part of the book includes three papers on informational efficiency and informationally decentralized systems. Leonid Hurwitcz is the Nobel Prize Winner 2007 for The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, along with colleagues Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson, for his work on the effectiveness of markets. (shrink)

Although there has never been a shortage of book-length commentaries on Plato's Republic, Descartes's Meditations, or Spinoza's Ethics, the same cannot be said of Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed. A few Hebrew commentaries exist, but they are neither influential nor readily accessible to English-speaking audiences. So while there has been a noticeable resurgence of interest in Maimonides since the publication of Shlomo Pines's English translation in 1963, there is still a respect in which Ivry's book breaks new ground.The reasons for (...) the lack of such a commentary are several. The original text is written in Judeo-Arabic and presupposes advanced knowledge of the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic commentaries on the Bible... (shrink)

Susan Mills and John Beatty's propensity interpretation of fitness encountered very different philosophical criticisms by Alexander Rosenberg and Kenneth Waters. These criticisms and the rejoinders to them are both predictable and important. They are predictable as raisingkinds of issues typically associated with disposition concepts (this is established through a systematic review of the problems generated by Carnap's dispositional interpretation of all scientific terms). They are important as referring the resolution of these issues to the development of evolutionary biology. This (...) historical approach to the propensity interpretation of fitness draws attention to the precarious relation between philosophical clarification of scientific concepts and any given state of the empirical arts. (shrink)

Capturing the lively modernist milieu of Kenneth Burke's early career in Greenwich Village, where Burke arrived in 1915 fresh from high school in Pittsburgh, this book discovers him as an intellectual apprentice conversing with "the moderns." Burke found himself in the midst of an avant-garde peopled by Malcolm Cowley, Marianne Moore, Jean Toomer, Katherine Anne Porter, William Carlos Williams, Allen Tate, Hart Crane, Alfred Stieglitz, and a host of other fascinating figures. Burke himself, who died in 1993 at (...) the age of 96, has been hailed as America's most brilliant and suggestive critic and the most significant theorist of rhetoric since Cicero. Many schools of thought have claimed him as their own, but Burke has defied classification and indeed has often been considered a solitary, eccentric genius immune to intellectual fashions. But Burke's formative work of the 1920s, when he first defined himself and his work in the context of the modernist conversation, has gone relatively unexamined. Here we see Burke living and working with the crowd of poets, painters, and dramatists affiliated with Others magazine, Stieglitz's "291" gallery, and Eugene O'Neill's Provincetown Players; the leftists associated with the magazines The Masses and Seven Arts; the Dadaists; and the modernist writers working on literary journals like The Dial, where Burke in his capacity as an associate editor saw T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" into print for the first time and provided other editorial services for Thomas Mann, e.e. cummings, Ezra Pound, and many other writers of note. Burke also met the iconoclasts of the older generation represented by Theodore Dreiser and H. L. Mencken, the New Humanists, and the literary nationalists who founded Contact and The New Republic. Jack Selzer shows how Burke's own early poems, fiction, and essays emerged from and contributed to the modernist conversation in Greenwich Village. He draws on a wonderfully rich array of letters between Burke and his modernist friends and on the memoirs of his associates to create a vibrant portrait of the young Burke's transformation from aesthete to social critic. (shrink)

It is widely agreed among broadly Anselmian theists that God is in some sense the 'delimiter of possibilities.' In other words, the scope of possibility is explained by the manner in which the universe emanates from God. However, existing accounts of God's role here—in terms of freedom, choice, or power—face serious difficulties. The present paper provides a new account of God's role as the delimiter of possibilities in terms of the different manner in which the non-actuality of non-actual states of (...) affairs is explained. Intuitively and metaphorically, we can think of the menu of states of affairs being 'whittled down' in successive stages of a process of divine decision-making, with the different species of impossibility corresponding to when and how the states of affairs are ruled out. I argue that this approach provides genuine contingency while also preserving the Principle of Sufficient Reason. (shrink)

Physicians generally recommend that patients resuscitated with naloxone after opioid overdose stay in the emergency department for a period of observation in order to prevent harm from delayed sequelae of opioid toxicity. Patients frequently refuse this period of observation despiteenefit to risk. Healthcare providers are thus confronted with the challenge of how best to protect the patient’s interests while also respecting autonomy, including assessing whether the patient is making an autonomous choice to refuse care. Previous studies have shown that physicians (...) have widely divergent approaches to navigating these conflicts. This paper reviews what is known about the effects of opioid use disorder on decision-making, and argues that some subset of these refusals are non-autonomous choices, even when patients appear to have decision making capacity. This conclusion has several implications for how physicians assess and respond to patients refusing medical recommendations after naloxone resuscitation. (shrink)

At the beginning of his Metaphysics, Aristotle attributed several strange-sounding theses to Plato. Generations of Plato scholars have assumed that these could not be found in the dialogues. In heated arguments, they have debated the significance of these claims, some arguing that they constituted an 'unwritten teaching' and others maintaining that Aristotle was mistaken in attributing them to Plato. In a prior book-length study on Plato's late ontology, Kenneth M. Sayre demonstrated that, despite differences in terminology, these claims correspond (...) to themes developed by Plato in the Parmenides and the Philebus. In this book, he shows how this correspondence can be extended to key, but previously obscure, passages in the Statesman. He also examines the interpretative consequences for other sections of that dialogue, particularly those concerned with the practice of dialectical inquiry. (shrink)

Propose l'idée directrice suivante : les trois monothéismes méditerranéens forment système comme les polythéismes indo-européens. Au prix d'une critique girardienne du modèle dumézilien, qui a l'effet de compliquer les deux approches ainsi privées de leur tentation englobante, l'analyse procède à une exégèse véritablement anthropologique.

Le present volume rassemble plusieurs etudes qu' Alfred Schutz avait consacrees a diverses questions qui gravitent autour d'un probleme philosophique majeur: celui de la socialite. La plupart de ces etudes ont Me publiees ailleurs, mais elles etaient dispersees et d'un acces parfois difficile. Tel quel, l'ouvrage que nous presentons n' est que la premiere partie d'un ensemble dans lequell'auteur se proposait de faire reunir par son disciple et ami Maurice Natanson les nombreux essais qu'il avait ecrits depuis son arrivee (...) aux Etats-Unis au debut de la demiere guerre. La mort l'empecha de voir realiser ce projet. 11 nous a semble que la pUblication successive de cet ensemble, dans la fidelite aux indications laissees par l'auteur, etait Ie plus bel hommage que nous pussions rendre a ce penseur qui fut notre ami et meritait sans nul doute de tenir dans Ie courant phenomenologique une place de premier plan que faillirent lui refuser les circonstances dramatiques de sa vie, jointes a sa trop grande modestie per­ sonnelle. II me faudrait ici parler de l'homme, evoquer sa finesse d'esprit, son ironie penetrante, sa serenite et son courage dans l' exil, l' event ail tres vaste de ses preoccupations, Ie don de jeu­ nesse et de sympathie grftce auquel il entreprit a quarante ans d'assimiler avec bonheur une culture nouvelle, pour y exceller bientOt. (shrink)

The Structures of the Life-World is the final focus of twenty-seven years of Alfred Schutz's labor, encompassing the fruits of his work between 1932 and his death in 1959. This book represents Schutz's seminal attempt to achieve a comprehensive grasp of the nature of social reality. Here he integrates his theory of relevance with his analysis of social structures. Thomas Luckmann, a former student of Schutz's, completed the manuscript for publication after Schutz's untimely death.

The author demonstrates that certain forms of irrationality - incontinent action and self-deception - which many philosophers have rejected as being logically or psychologically impossible, are indeed possible.

Following the thematic divisions of the first three volumes of Alfred Schutz's Collected Papers into The Problem of Social Reality, Studies in Social Theory and Phenomenological Philosophy, this fourth volume contains drafts of unfinished writings, drafts of published writings, translations of essays previously published in German, and some largely unpublished correspondence. The drafts of published writings contain important material omitted from the published versions, and the unfinished writings offer important insights into Schutz's otherwise unpublished ideas about economic and political (...) theory as well as the theory of law and the state. In addition, a large group contains Schutz's reflections on problems in phenomenological philosophy, including music, which both supplement and add new dimensions to his published thought. All together, the writings in this volume cover Schutz's last 15 years in Europe as well as manuscripts written after his arrival in the USA in 1939. Audience: Students and scholars of phenomenology, social theory and the human sciences in general. (shrink)

Le present volume rassemble plusieurs etudes qu' Alfred Schutz avait consacrees a diverses questions qui gravitent autour d'un probleme philosophique majeur: celui de la socialite. La plupart de ces etudes ont Me publiees ailleurs, mais elles etaient dispersees et d'un acces parfois difficile. Tel quel, l'ouvrage que nous presentons n' est que la premiere partie d'un ensemble dans lequell'auteur se proposait de faire reunir par son disciple et ami Maurice Natanson les nombreux essais qu'il avait ecrits depuis son arrivee (...) aux Etats-Unis au debut de la demiere guerre. La mort l'empecha de voir realiser ce projet. 11 nous a semble que la pUblication successive de cet ensemble, dans la fidelite aux indications laissees par l'auteur, etait Ie plus bel hommage que nous pussions rendre a ce penseur qui fut notre ami et meritait sans nul doute de tenir dans Ie courant phenomenologique une place de premier plan que faillirent lui refuser les circonstances dramatiques de sa vie, jointes a sa trop grande modestie per­ sonnelle. II me faudrait ici parler de l'homme, evoquer sa finesse d'esprit, son ironie penetrante, sa serenite et son courage dans l' exil, l' event ail tres vaste de ses preoccupations, Ie don de jeu­ nesse et de sympathie grftce auquel il entreprit a quarante ans d'assimiler avec bonheur une culture nouvelle, pour y exceller bientOt. (shrink)

What place does motivation have in the lives of intelligent agents? Mele's answer is sensitive to the concerns of philosophers of mind and moral philosophers and informed by empirical work. He offers a distinctive, comprehensive, attractive view of human agency. This book stands boldly at the intersection of philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, and metaphysics.

Each of the following claims has been defended in the scientific literature on free will and consciousness: your brain routinely decides what you will do before you become conscious of its decision; there is only a 100 millisecond window of opportunity for free will, and all it can do is veto conscious decisions, intentions, or urges; intentions never play a role in producing corresponding actions; and free will is an illusion. In Effective Intentions Alfred Mele shows that the evidence (...) offered to support these claims is sorely deficient. He also shows that there is strong empirical support for the thesis that some conscious decisions and intentions have a genuine place in causal explanations of corresponding actions. In short, there is weighty evidence of the existence of effective conscious intentions or the power of conscious will. Mele examines the accuracy of subjects' reports about when they first became aware of decisions or intentions in laboratory settings and develops some implications of warranted skepticism about the accuracy of these reports. In addition, he explores such questions as whether we must be conscious of all of our intentions and why scientists disagree about this. Mele's final chapter closes with a discussion of imaginary scientific findings that would warrant bold claims about free will and consciousness of the sort he examines in this book. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead's SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD, originally published in 1925, redefines the concept of modern science.

Alfred North Whitehead was a prominent English mathematician and philosopher who co-authored the highly influential Principia Mathematica with Bertrand Russell. Originally published in 1919, and first republished in 1925 as this Second Edition, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge ranks among Whitehead's most important works; forming a perspective on scientific observation that incorporated a complex view of experience, rather than prioritising the position of 'pure' sense data. Alongside companion volumes The Concept of Nature and The Principle of (...) Relativity, it created a framework for Whitehead's later metaphysical speculations. This is an important book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in the relationship between science and philosophy. (shrink)

Authority is defined by the capacity to provide new reasons that apply to its subjects. There are two types of authority that differ from each other with respect to the kind of reasons their directives or opinions create. Authorityepistemic authority is distinguished from Authoritypractical authority in that the former is the source of reasons to believe and the latter is the source of reasons for action. Both kinds of authority are of considerable philosophical importance. This entry, however, is concerned with (...) the notion of practical authority and will focus on certain conceptual and normative issues arising in connection with such authority. In particular, this entry will be concerned with identifying the properties that constitute something as a practical authority and hence distinguish authorities from non-authorities; explicating the kind of reasons that bind subjects of a practical authority and give rise to a justified expectation, on the part of the authority, of subject compliance; and examining what standards a practical authority must satisfy to be morally legitimate. The reason for the emphasis is the central importance of practical authority in law. Law characteristically regulates subject behavior by issuing legal norms thought to be authoritative in the sense that they create new reasons for compliance that bind the subject. While the notion of epistemic authority figures into many issues arising in connection with law, this entry is intended to clarify the notion of practical authority that is thought to ground the binding quality of legal directives. Although there will be some discussion of epistemic authority and its relation to practical Authoritypractical, the relevant form of authority for our purposes is practical authority—again, as this is central to understanding the mechanisms by which law regulates subject behavior. (shrink)

Philospher, mathematician, and general man of science, Alfred North Whitehead was a polymath whose interests and generous sympathies encompassed entire worlds.

The essays in this volume are based on addresses presented during a colloquium on free logic, modal logic and related areas held at the University of California at Irvine, in May of 1968. With the single exception of Dagfinn F011esdal, whose revised address is included in a recent issue of Synthese honoring W. V. Quine, all of the speakers at the Irvine colloquium are contributors to this volume. Thanks are due to Professor A. I. Melden, Chairman of the Department of (...) Philosophy at Irvine, for his enthusiastic support of the colloquium, and to Drs. Gordon Brittan and Daniel Dennett for their help in the administration of the colloquium. Finally. I should also like to thank Professor Ralph W. Gerard, Dean of the Graduate Division of the University of California at Irvine, for the financial support which made the colloquium possible. KAREL LAMBERT Laguna Beach, California, 1969 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE V KAREL LAMBERT and BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN/ Meaning Relations, Possible Objects, and Possible Worlds 1 JAAKKO HINTIKKA / Existential Presuppositions and Uniqueness Presuppositions 20 RICHMOND H. THOMASON / Some Completeness Results for Modal Predicate Calculi 56 H. LEBLANC and R. K. MEYER / Truth-Value Semantics for the Theory of Types 77 J. M. VICKERS / Probability and Non Standard Logics 102 PETER W. WOODRUFF / Logic and Truth Value Gaps 121 DANA SCOTT / Advice on Modal Logic 143 INDEX OF NAMES 175 KAREL LAMBER T AND BAS C. (shrink)

Free logic, an alternative to traditional logic, has been seen as a useful avenue of approach to a number of philosophical issues of contemporary interest. In this collection, Karel Lambert, one of the pioneers in, and the most prominent exponent of, free logic, brings together a variety of published essays bearing on the application of free logic to philosophical topics ranging from set theory and logic to metaphysics and the philosophy of religion. The work of such distinguished philosophers as (...) Bas van Fraassen, Dana Scott, Tyler Burge, and Jaakko Hintikka is represented. Lambert provides an introductory essay placing free logic in the logical tradition beginning with Aristotle, developing it as the natural culmination of a trend begun in the Port Royal logic of the 1600s, and continuing through current predicate logic--the trend to rid logic of existence assumptions. His Introduction also provides a useful systematic overview of free logic, including both a standard syntax and some semantical options. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In a series of papers read to the Cambridge Philosophical Society through the 1820s, the Cambridge mathematician George Peacock laid the foundation for a natural history of arithmetic that would tell a story of human progress from counting to modern arithmetic. The trajectory of that history, Peacock argued, established algebraic analysis as a form of universal reasoning that used empirically warranted operations of mind to think with symbols on paper. The science of counting would suggest arithmetic, arithmetic would suggest (...) arithmetical algebra, and, finally, arithmetical algebra would suggest symbolic algebra. This philosophy of suggestion provided the foundation for Peacock's “principle of equivalent forms,” which justified the practice of nineteenth-century English symbolic algebra. Peacock's philosophy of suggestion owed a considerable debt to the early Cambridge Philosophical Society culture of natural history. The aim of this essay is to show how that culture of natural history was constitutively significant to the practice of nineteenth-century English algebra. (shrink)

La Phenomenologie, derniere section du Nouvel Organon (1764) de Jean-Henri Lambert, proposee ici dans sa traduction integrale, constitue une piece originale apportee au debat entre rationalisme et empirisme au XVIIIe siecle. Ce texte aborde le probleme de la critique de l'apparence en general, en ne recherchant pas seulement les criteres de l'apparence sensible, mais egalement ceux de l'apparence intellectuelle et morale, avec une consideration particuliere pour le domaine du probable. La verite apparente est au coeur de la phenomenologie definie (...) aussi comme une optique ou perspective transcendante. La question centrale est celle du depassement de l'apparence, car elle nous induit en erreur en nous dissimulant l'etre reel. (shrink)

This paper considers whether theism is compatible with moral error theory. This issue is neglected, perhaps because it is widely assumed that these views are incompatible. I argue that this is mistaken. In so doing, I articulate the best argument for thinking that theism and moral error theory are incompatible. According to it, these views are incompatible because theism entails that God is morally good, and moral error theory entails that God is not. I reject this argument. Since it is (...) the best argument for thinking that theism and moral error theory are incompatible, I conclude that these views are compatible: one can coherently accept both views. (shrink)

This chapter develops and defends an account of reason: to reason is to scrutinize one’s attitudes by consulting the perspectives of other persons. The principal attraction of this account is its ability to vindicate the unique of authority of reason. The chapter argues that this conception entails that reasoning is a robustly social endeavor—that it is, in the first instance, something we do with other people. It is further argued that such social endeavors presuppose mutual respect on the part of (...) those participating in them. The account therefore yields a form of Kantian constructivism: we have an unconditional duty of respect for persons because such a duty is implicit in the very nature of reasoning. -/- . (shrink)

The authors contend that most contemporary logic textbooks fail the average student because they emphasize the evaluation of arguments over their clarification, assuming that the student already understands what motivations underlie logic.