Many people find comparisons of the value of persons distasteful, even immoral. But what can be said in support of the claim that persons have incomparable worth? This chapter considers an argument purporting to show that the value of persons is incomparable because it is so great—because it is infinite. The argument rests on two claims: that the value of our capacity for valuing must equal or exceed the value of things valued and that our capacity for valuing is unbounded (...) in a very strong sense. After laying out this argument, I consider its implications for how we should regard each other. In particular, I suggest that it complicates efforts to understand morality as a system of principles. Instead, I propose that an aesthetic attitude, not unlike our experience of the sublime, is an apt response to humanity’s infinite value. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Intervention into the Flew/Fogelin Debate Kenneth G. Ferguson Under an aggressive title, Robert FogeUn has recently undertaken to reveal "What Hume Actually Said About Miracles."1 He felt this necessary to correct whathe considers a serious misreading ofHume's essay "OfMiracles" (sec. 10 ofthe Enquiries2), a reading which infers that Hume did not argue thatmiracles are impossible a priori (Fogelin, 81). One writer at least regards this reading so (...) common that she has dubbed it the "traditional interpretation" of Hume's account of miracles.3 At any rate, it finds a strong advocate in Anthony Flew,4 against whom the majority ofFogelin's comments are directed. What I find fascinating about this debate is that both Flew and FogeUn appear to be right. On the one hand, Hume does have the textual resources to marshall a fully deductive argument against miracles, at least, once a strict definition of miracles is admitted. On the other hand, while exploiting these resources, Hume somewhat clumsily mingles in vestiges ofa not-fully consistent inductive argument against miracles which he bases on the balancing of probabilities. I will attempt to identify these two skeins ofargument, in the anticipation that this will help to temper the debate between Flew and Fogelin. Hume opens section 10by promisingan argument that will furnish "an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion" (E 110). Moreover, he claims that "there is here a direct and full proof... against the existence of any miracle" (E 115), a quote which Fogelin repeats seven times (toextractits full flavour). C. S. Peirce, wholate inlife took an interest in Hume's argument, conjectured that Hume hoped to provide a general disproof of all miracles that would not require "a minute analysis of each story"; such a procedure was in fact popular amongthe miracle debunkers ofHume's day, forexample, Rev. Thomas Woolston, whose books were extremely popular.5 Hume's boast of "a direct and full proof might be assumed, offhand, to augur an a priori argumentbased on the comparison ofideas; butitmust notbe forgotten that back in the Treatise (for which the essay "Of Miracles" was originally drafted6) Hume defines a "proof" as an argument "deriv'd from the relation of cause and effect."7 There he contrasts "proofs" explicitly with the type of assured knowledge that comes "from the comparison ofideas" (T 124). Still, Hume requires that proofs, despite their empirical origin, must nonetheless be "entirely free from doubt Volume XVII Number 2 105 KENNETH G. FERGUSON and uncertainty" (T 124); proofs, then, must be superior to ordinary causal arguments that are able to offer only a degree of probability (T 124). By his own examples, namely, that "the sun will rise to-morrow" and "all men must dye" (T 124), likewise from the essay "Of Miracles" itself, that "lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air" and that "fire consumes wood" (E 114), Hume makes it clear that "proofs" are simply to be causal arguments uniformly confirmed by a great wealth of past experience: empirical conclusions so sound that any who deny them "wou'd appear ridiculous" (T 124). Taking Hume's definition of "proof" to heart, we might infer that his "direct and full proof against miracles is not then to be an a priori or deductive conclusion, but instead merely a fully convincing induction, along the Unes of"all men must dye." This,would appear to dispel Fogelin's hope to portray the argument as a priori; but the logic ofHume's special proofagainst miracles is somewhat complicated. As Hume's own selection of examples verify, a proof, at least ordinarily, issues in the confirmation of a law of nature. This contrasts with the special proof against miracles where the object is, of course, not to defend a law of nature, but rather to exploit reasoning about the formation of such laws to prove a result regarding the occurrence of miracles. The proof against miracles, consequently, concerns causes, but is not necessarily a causal argument in the ordinary sense. Indeed, it might be properly thought ofas a "meta-causal" argument, if such a term is allowed. And such an argument may potentially have, as Fogelin proposes, an a priori... (shrink)

‘The Strong Arm of the Law’ seeks to explain how the identification with military power that is produced through corporate mass mediated spectacles such as bodybuilding threatens democratic identifications. What is more, the militarized body aims at ever-greater control over the physical world yet results only in evergreater estrangement from it. The article begins by illustrating the martial dimensions of the bodybuilder’s body. Then, it reveals the extent to which the built body promises safety, security, and freedom while contributing (...) to the militarization of civil society – a process at odds with democratization. Next, it demonstrates the logic behind the bodybuilder’s identification and appeal as not merely soldier but weapon. The article concludes by raising the possibility of imagining the democratized body. (shrink)

Psychotherapy holds out the promise of help for people who are hurting and in need. It can save lives and change lives. In therapy, clients can find their strengths and sense of hope. They can change course toward a more meaningful and healthy life. They can confront loss, tragedy, hopelessness, and the end of life in ways that do not leave them numb or paralyzed. They can discover what brings them joy and what sustains them through hard times. They can (...) begin to trust, or to trust more wisely. They can learn new behaviors in therapy and how to teach themselves new behaviors after therapy ends. They can question what they always believed was a given. They can find out what matters most to them, and how to stop wasting time. They can become happier, or at least less miserable. They can become better able, as Freud noted, to love and to work. They can learn how to accept and love themselves just as they are and accept others who are different from them. Our ethics acknowledge and affirm our profession's responsibilities. This book was written to help strengthen, deepen, and inform ethical awareness and the sense of personal ethical responsibility. Its job is to help you hold onto the ideals-including ethical ideals-that called you into the profession to begin with, to help you develop and fulfill those ideals. There will be so much-trust us on this-that tends to dull ethical awareness, to make ethics drift out of focus, to create barriers between you and your ideals, to replace ethics with pseudo-ethics and ethics placebos. Fatigue, endless paperwork, unrealistic expectations, illness, family crises, not being able to make ends meet, burn out, threats of job loss, insurance coverage that doesn't come close to meeting the needs of our clients, biases that have not been addressed, and so many other forces can pressure us into cutting ethical corners. This book is intended to help you develop a strong and healthy resistance to such forces, to help you weather them without losing your ethical awareness and ideals. (shrink)

One of the boldest claims one finds in the enactivist and embodied cognition literature is that perceiving is bodily action. Research on the role of eye movements in vision have been thought to support PBA, whereas research on paralysis has been thought to pose no challenge to PBA. The present paper, however, will argue just the opposite. Eye movement research does not support PBA, whereas paralysis research presents a strong challenge that seems not to have been fully appreciated.

The extant literature on comparative Corporate Social Responsibility often assumes functioning and enabling institutional arrangements, such as strong government, market and civil society, as a necessary condition for responsible business practices. Setting aside this dominant assumption and drawing insights from a case study of Fidelity Bank, Nigeria, we explore why and how firms still pursue and enact responsible business practices in what could be described as challenging and non-enabling institutional contexts for CSR. Our findings suggest that responsible business practices (...) in such contexts are often anchored on some CSR adaptive mechanisms. These mechanisms uniquely complement themselves and inform CSR strategies. The CSR adaptive mechanisms and strategies, in combination and in complementarity, then act as an institutional buffer, which enables firms to successfully engage in responsible practices irrespective of their weak institutional settings. We leverage this understanding to contribute to CSR in developing economies, often characterised by challenging and non-enabling institutional contexts. The research, policy and practice implications are also discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There is a strong pragmatic argument that in our times, dominated as they are by continuous change, one's education needs to be a lifelong process. But can another, different, argument be made that lifelong education is a moral duty everyone owes to oneself irrespective of any other pragmatic justijication? The answer evidently depends largely on whether the notion of a moral duty owed to oneself is an intelligible one. In effect, it turns out, on examination, to be very (...) problematic. It is suggested rather that a moral duty to educate oneselffor life can be more coherently grounded in another different notion: one of membership in one's community regarded as a ‘learning society’. (shrink)

Abstract: There has recently been controversy over the existence of 'multiple realization' in addition to some confusion between different conceptions of its nature. To resolve these problems, we focus on concrete examples from the sciences to provide precise accounts of the scientific concepts of 'realization' and 'multiple realization' that have played key roles in recent debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology. We illustrate the advantages of our view over a prominent rival account ( Shapiro, 2000 and (...) 2004 ) and use our work to rebut recent objections to the long-standing claim that psychological properties are multiply realized. For we use scientific evidence, in combination with our more precise theoretical framework, to show that we have strong reason to believe that psychological properties are indeed multiply realized both at the biochemical and neuronal levels. (shrink)

Little is known about employees' responses to their organizations' initiatives in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Academics have already identified a few outcomes regarding CSR's impact on employees' attitudes and behaviours; however, studies explaining the underlying mechanisms that drive employees' favourable responses to CSR remain largely unexplored. Based on organizational identification (OI) theory, this study surveyed 155 employees of a petrochemical organization to better elucidate why, how and under which circumstances employees might positively respond to organizations' CSR initiatives in the controversial (...) oil industry sector. Findings first support that perceived CSR (i.e. environmental CSR) positively relates to employees' OI which is known as an important antecedent of employees' outcomes (Riketta, J Vocat Behavior, 66(2):358, 2005). Furthermore, results highlighted that the relationship between perceived CSR and employees' OI is mediated by organizational trust. Finally, this study also revealed that some contingency factors such as employees' attributions of self-centred motives to their organization's investment in environmental issues can moderate the relationship between perceived CSR and organizational trust. Based on these findings, it is argued that CSR initiatives can support organizations' efforts to maintain a strong relationship with their employees, and gain their support even in a controversial industry sector. (shrink)

Emergence is typically discussed in the context of mental properties or the properties of the natural sciences, and accounts of emergence within these contexts tend to look a certain way. The emergent property is taken to emerge instantaneously out of, or to be proximately caused by, complex interaction of colocated entities. Here, however, I focus on the properties instantiated by the elements of certain systems discussed in social ontology, such as being a five-dollar bill or a pawn-movement, and I suggest (...) that these properties emerge in a distinctive way. They emerge in part because of a system that is far beyond and typically before the object that instantiates them. I characterize how emergence occurs in these cases, juxtaposing it with how emergence is typically discussed. I then consider whether their emergence is best framed as weak or strong as these notions are characterized in the literature, and I reveal what debates are central to answering this question. Though I will not resolve these debates, I do show a collection of views that would vindicate these properties as strongly emergent and downwardly causing. (shrink)

This paper examines the nature of theory structure in biology and considers the implications of those theoretical structures for theory reduction. An account of biological theories as interlevel prototypes embodying causal sequences, and related to each other by strong analogies, is presented, and examples from the neurosciences are provided to illustrate these middle-range theories. I then go on to discuss several modifications of Nagel''s classical model of theory reduction, and indicate at what stages in the development of reductions these (...) models might best apply. Finally I consider several implications of these analyses of theory structure and reduction for disciplinary integration in biology. (shrink)

Jack Goody’s work on the origins, spatial extent and defining characteristics of modernity has vigorously questioned claims that only European history led to assorted modern characteristics: capitalism, science, democracy, romantic love, and inwardly-motivated personal restraint. He argues that many societies which experienced the Bronze Age urban revolution share certain important material similarities which set them apart from others, and are best understood by constructing an analytical grid rather than categorical stages. With respect to alleged affective differences, Goody takes a more (...) strongly relativist stance, rejecting any developmental divide in the prevalence of romantic love, internalized self-discipline, etc. These useful steps nonetheless generate new problems. One concerns the relationship between material/technical changes, which seem to suggest a few very general historical periods, and affective traits, which have no history in this schema. A second concerns periodization itself; while agreeing that periods defined by the experience of one region are usually unhelpful, some general terms do seem essential for conceptualizing developments that, though less epochal than writing or fossil fuels, are nonetheless important. (shrink)

Economic success in competitive systems requires resource redistribution to those who fail. Once we recognize that success in competitive endeavors depends meaningfully on the failure of others, policy implications that involve strong redistributive mechanisms should be drawn. Particular attention is paid to the role of education in fostering a sense of self-esteem necessary to counter the effects of internalized competition.

William King's De Origine Mali contains an interesting, sophisticated, and original account of free will. King finds 'necessitarian' theories of freedom, such as those advocated by Hobbes and Locke, inadequate, but argues that standard versions of libertarianism commit one to the claim that free will is a faculty for going wrong. On such views, free will is something we would be better off without. King argues that both problems can be avoided by holding that we confer value on objects by (...) valuing them. Such a view secures sourcehood and alternative possibilities while denying that free will is simply a capacity to choose contrary to our best judgment. This theory escapes all of the objections levelled against it by Leibniz and also has interesting consequences for ethics: although constructed within a eudaimonist framework, King's theory gives rise to a very strong moral requirement of respect for individual self-determination. (shrink)

Abstract:This field survey focused on two constructs that have been developed to represent the ethical context in organizations: ethical climate and ethical culture. We first examined issues of convergence and divergence between these constructs through factor analysis and correlational analysis. Results suggested that the two constructs are measuring somewhat different, but strongly related dimensions of the ethical context. We then investigated the relationships between the emergent ethical context factors and an ethics-related attitude (organizational commitment) and behavior (observed unethical conduct) for (...) respondents who work in organizations with and without ethics codes. Regression results indicated that an ethical culture-based dimension was more strongly associated with observed unethical conduct in code organizations while climate-based dimensions were more strongly associated with observed unethical conduct in non-code organizations. Ethical culture and ethical climate-based factors influenced organizational commitment similarly in both types of organizations. Normative implications of the study are discussed, as are implications for future theorizing, research and management practice. (shrink)

The standard case of weakness of will involves a strong temptation leading us to reconsider or act against our judgments. Here, however, I consider cases of what I call ‘habitual weakness', where we resolve to do one thing yet do another not to satisfy any grand desire, but out of habit. After giving several examples, I suggest that habitual weakness has been under-discussed in the literature and explore why. These cases are worth highlighting for their ubiquity, and I show (...) three further advantages of appreciating habitual weakness as a kind of weakness: It challenges purportedly necessary conditions on akrasia, it side-steps outstanding skeptical concerns, and it provides a new model for considering the weak-willed behavior of group agents. I conclude by arguing that cases of habitual weakness are genuine cases of akrasia and weakness of will. Rather than lacking strength of will, habitual weakness involves lacking diligence, vigilance, or fortitude. (shrink)

There is a strong pragmatic argument that in our times, dominated as they are by continuous change, one's education needs to be a lifelong process. But can another, different, argument be made that lifelong education is a moral duty everyone owes to oneself irrespective of any other pragmatic justijication? The answer evidently depends largely on whether the notion of a moral duty owed to oneself is an intelligible one. In effect, it turns out, on examination, to be very problematic. (...) It is suggested rather that a moral duty to educate oneselffor life can be more coherently grounded in another different notion: one of membership in one's community regarded as a ‘learning society’. (shrink)

This article examines two recent alternatives to the traditional conception of human rights as natural rights: the account of human rights found in discourse ethics and the ‘political conception’ of human rights influenced by the work of Rawls. I argue that both accounts have distinct merits and that they are not as opposed to one another as is sometimes supposed. At the same time, the discourse ethics account must confront a deep ambiguity in its own approach: are rights derived in (...) a strong sense from the conditions of ‘communicative freedom’ or are they developed from the participants’ own reflection upon their ongoing and continuously changing practices and institutions? The political conception recently proposed by Joshua Cohen can, I argue, contribute to the resolution of this ambiguity, though not without some modifications of its own. Keywords: human rights; discourse ethics; The ‘political conception’ of rights; Seyla Benhabib; John Rawls; Rainer Forst; Michael Ignatieff; Thomas Pogge; Joshua Cohen (Published: 10 March 2009) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i1.1938. (shrink)

One of the boldest claims one finds in the enactivist and embodied cognition literature is that perceiving is bodily action. Research on the role of eye movements in vision have been thought to support PBA, whereas research on paralysis has been thought to pose no challenge to PBA. The present paper, however, will argue just the opposite. Eye movement research does not support PBA, whereas paralysis research presents a strong challenge that seems not to have been fully appreciated.

With the world looking to the U.S. for strategic leadership in ethics and power, Americans cannot afford to deny American youth a strong foundation and education in international studies.

This essay looks at the concept of AKEDAH, the essence of which is the travail of the human condition and the trust in vindication and victory, as a salient and deep metaphor for bioethics. The author first delineates the symbol, then shows its theological and ethical significance, and finally suggests its bioethical applications.The LORD said, “Go get Isaac, your only son, the one you dearly love! Take him to the land of Moriah, and I will show you a mountain where (...) you must sacrifice him to me on the fires of an altar.” So Abraham got up early the next morning and chopped wood for the fire. He put a saddle on his donkey and left with Isaac and two servants for the place where God had told him to go.Genesis 22There is silence all around. The Baptist appears, and cries: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Soon after that comes Jesus, and in the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign. (shrink)

Above all other titles, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) prized that of logician. He thought of logic broadly, such that it includes not merely formal logic but an examination of the entire process of inquiry. His works are replete with detailed investigations into logical questions. Peirce is especially concerned to show that valid inferential processes, diligently followed, will eventually root out error and alight on the truth. Peirce on Inference draws together diverse strands from Peirce's lifelong reflections on logic in order (...) to develop a comprehensive perspective on Peirce's theory of inference. -/- Peirce argues that each genus of inference--deduction, induction, and abduction--has a different truth-producing virtue. An inference is valid just in case the procedure used in fact has the truth-producing virtue claimed for it and the person making the inference adheres to the procedure. In successive chapters, this book shows how Peirce supports the thesis that these genera of inference have the truth-producing virtues claimed for them and how Peirce responds to objections. Among the objections given consideration are the liar paradox, Hume's problem of induction, Goodman's new riddle of induction, that this may be a chance world, and that we are incapable of conceiving the true hypothesis. The book defends several controversial theses, including that Peirce does not so strongly object to Bayesianism as is sometimes claimed and that prior to 1900 Peirce had no explicit theory of abduction. It also proposes a novel account of abduction. (shrink)

We show that a set has an η-representation in a linear order if and only if it is the range of a 0'-computable limitwise monotonic function. We also construct a Δ₃ Turing degree for which no set in that degree has a strong η-representation, answering a question posed by Downey.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Individual in Relation to the Sangha in American Buddhism:An Examination of "Privatized Religion"Kenneth K. TanakaIn his celebrated book Bowling Alone (2000), Robert Putnam noted the increased level in the phenomenon of "privatized religion" within the previous thirty-five years. Many of the Baby Boomer generation left churches in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Some sought out new religious movements and religious therapies, but most simply "dropped out" (...) of organized religion altogether. He cites Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, specialists in American religion, who describe the outcome of this trend in American religious behavior: "[The consequence was a] tendency toward highly individualized religious psychology without the benefits of strong supportive attachments to believing communities. A major impetus in this direction in the post-1960s was the thrust toward greater personal fulfillment and quest for the ideal self.... In this climate of expressive individualism, religion tends to become "privatized," or anchored in the personal realms."1 Putnam observes that although privatized religion may be "morally compelling and psychologically fulfilling," it involves less social capital than environments in which individuals are connected to other individuals in shared faith commitment.Interestingly, American Buddhism may be one of the beneficiaries of this trend, for the recent growth of Buddhism in the United States is partly attributable to the climate of "privatized" religion. Nowhere is this symbolized more than by the so-called Nightstand Buddhists.2The Nightstand Buddhists derive their name from their practice of placing a Buddhist meditation book on the nightstand after reading it before they go to sleep. They get up the next morning and practice to the best of their ability the meditation they had read about the night before. Further, they may frequently attend lectures at the local university and visit a Buddhist center's web-page or participate in an online Buddhist discussion group. And if we were to visit them, we might find their homes decorated with Buddhist artifacts.But these Nightstand Buddhists do not show up in any statistics on the [End Page 115] American Buddhist population because they would not identify themselves as Buddhists. According to Thomas Tweed, who coined the term Nightstand Buddhists, "Sympathizers (= Nightstand Buddhists) are those who have some sympathy for Buddhism but do not embrace it exclusively or fully. When asked, they would not identify themselves as Buddhists. They would say they are Methodists, or Jewish, or unaffiliated."3 However, they have been an important part of the story of Buddhism in America from its beginning and continue to be so today.Among the three million Buddhists currently estimated to be in the United States, I believe there are Buddhists who exhibit many of the same characteristics as the Nightstand Buddhists. And this number is significant, particularly among those converts to Buddhism whose main practice is meditation. This group of convert Buddhists is one segment of the larger Buddhist community in the United States, which I have categorized into four groups.41. New Asian American Buddhists (those who have mostly arrived in the United States since the 1960s: Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Cambodian, Myanmar, Laotian, and Sri Lankan).2. Old-line Asian American Buddhists (those who were established before World War II: Chinese and Japanese).3. Convert Buddhists whose main practice is meditation (predominately Euro-Americans practicing in the Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan traditions).4. Convert Buddhists whose main practice is chanting (Sōkagakkai International–USA, a sizable percentage of whom are African and Hispanic Americans).In this paper, I wish to focus on a Jōdo Shinshū temple from the second group (old-line Asian American Buddhists) and on several centers collectively that belong to the Zen, Vipassanā, and Tibetan traditions from the third group (convert Buddhists whose main practice is meditation), looking at the manner in which individuals relate to their respective institutions and traditions, with special attention given to the phenomenon of "privatized religion."For purposes of this paper, my definition of "privatized religion" is based on the observation of Roof and McKinney, cited above, as "a tendency for individuals (1) to emphasize practicing at home over religious centers, and (2) to value the subjective and the inward." The homebound orientation is connected... (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The thesis is an examination of the concept of rights. Its aims are analytical and descriptive. No attempt is made to justify any particular possession or denial of rights. It is, however, a theory about rights in general, and not just about either legal or moral rights. This reflects the writer's belief that conceptual problems about the nature of rights can be satisfactorily tackled only if a unified approach (...) is adopted. In each of the first three chapters a leading theory of rights is examined, criticised and rejected. These theories are benefit theories, choice theories, theories of overriding. Particular attention is given to the writings of John Austin, HLA Hart and RM Dworkin. In the fourth chapter Hohfeld's claim for the diversity of rights is examined and rejected as unproven. In the fifth chapter an attempt is made to provide a more satisfactory theory of moral rights. This draws a distinction between rights as assessments of that which the right-holder may do and as assessments of that which others must do for the right-holder. Rights of the first type are explained in terms of a strong sense of permission; those of the second type as an instance of welfare principles. In the succeeding chapter this explanation is extended to legal rights. Finally, an attempt is made to provide a theory of the nature of property rights in general, and of ownership in particular. (shrink)

Henry Longueville Mansel published his Bampton Lectures in 1858, twenty seven years after Hegel's death and twelve years before the publication of Ritschl's Rechtfertigung und Versoehnung. The timing is significant. As a sweeping critique of liberalism, frequently symbolized by the work of Hegel, the lectures react to the slow but inexorable permeation of English religious thought by German ways of thinking. By 1858, the process was sufficiently widespread that Mansel felt justified in devoting the principal portion of his work to (...) the attack. Ritschl marks the effective end of Hegel's direct influence on theology and a return to a more Kantian mode of thinking. His gambit had already been made, for Mansel is in many ways a more cautious version of Ritschl. Mansel, however, wrote in English and had the misfortune to say what he did at the beginning of a movement so strong that it allowed no quali fication. Thus Mansel's thought was rarely accepted. He was certainly not ignored, at least at the time. The lectures, entitled "The Limits of Religious Thought," were an immediate sensation. They were quickly reprinted both on the Continent and in America and went through two editions in 1858, two more in 1859, and a fifth in 1867. For a period they became "almost a textbook in the schools of the University. " 1 Few leading divines of the day were silent and fewer yet were neutral. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 33.2 (2005) 71-97 [Access article in PDF] The Subject of Religion Lacan and the Ten Commandments Kenneth Reinhard Julia Reinhard Lupton Despite Freud's Nietzschean unmasking of religion as ideology, psychoanalysis has frequently been attacked as itself a religion, a cabal of analyst-priests dedicated to the worship of a dead master. Such critics "do not believe in Freud" in much the same way as atheists "do not believe (...) in God," and their rejections of psychoanalysis in the name of the secular partake in the very structure of religious thought they claim to repudiate. In Seminar XXI: Les non-dupes errent, Lacan comments on the blindness of the atheistic insight concerning religion: "I know that you're not believers, right? But that doesn't mean that you aren't all the more conned... because even if you are not believers, you still believe in that aspiration [for the love of God]. I won't say that you suppose it; rather, it supposes you" [Dec. 18, 1973; our trans.]. In Lacan's analysis, it is not that secular intellectuals suffer from unexamined religious "suppositions" or assumptions, to be swept away through a little ideology-critique or time on the couch. The case is rather, in Lacan's strong formulation, that religious discourse supposes us—supports and underwrites our very structures of being, subjectivity, and social interaction. That is, the secular subject is produced by the religious discourses that precede and continue to speak through it; the challenge for the contemporary critic is not to silence or debunk those discourses, but rather to bring the modern subject to assume responsibility for their enunciation.Throughout the decades of his seminar, Lacan addressed the monotheistic foundations of Western subjectivity as a set of discursive ruptures or cuts which continue to scar and brand the modern subject beyond their secular abrogation. Distinguishing between Freud "the individual with his atheistic profession of faith" and "the Freud who was the first to acknowledge the value and relevance of [the] myth... we call the death of God" [S VII 192–93], Lacan insists that Freud regarded monotheism as an epochal divide that irrevocably altered all that came before and after it: "On the left of this [monotheistic] message, there are some things that are henceforth outdated, obsolete; they no longer hold beyond the manifestation of the message. On the right, things are quite different" [172]. What, in Lacan's analysis, is the difference that monotheism has made, both during its periods of dominance and after? The laws, narratives, and symbols of monotheism continue to undergird key fantasies of personhood, nationhood, and neighborhood in the modernity that purports to have supplanted them. In Lacan's formulation, monotheism "supposes" the subject of these fantasies, precipitating it from out of the expanse of signifiers and in relation to a sublime object of both unbearable enjoyment and social obligation. Moreover, it is the scandal and the gift of monotheism that it not only creates moments of traumatic singularity, but also thinks the singular as trauma, rending the fabric of an animistic nature which would unite every polarity of being in the fullness of a sexual relation. Unlike the gods of Greek philosophy, the monotheistic God is not part of the nature he creates. In its decisive thinking of singularity, monotheism elicits and eludes all rapprochement with philosophical conceptions of the One, whether in the guise of Hellenized Judaism, Pauline theology, or Arab Aristotelianism. Lacan extends the monotheistic project of thinking singularity [End Page 71] by insisting that "there is something of One" [il y a de l'Un]—not the self-identical One of Greek logic, mathematics, and cosmology, but the One of a violent rupture that creates subjects and their worlds around a void, an un that un-does the primacy it speaks.If, from the Lacanian vantage, the singular invention of the God shared by the People of the Book forever separates religion from philosophy, we would also insist that religion is not simply a subset of "culture," understood as the symbolic practices that unify a people... (shrink)

Hegel’s Philosophy of Right responds to two dichotomies. One is between the freedom of rational thought in its practical application and the givenness of natural impulses and desires. Against Kant Hegel argues that pure reason alone cannot determine the content of any maxim or principle of action. Thus Hegel must find a way in which the content of natural needs and impulses – the only source of content for maxims of action – can be transfigured into contents of rationally self-given (...) principles and maxims. Hegel also responds to the dichotomy between the individual agent and the social whole within which agents act. Hegel argues that this dichotomy is specious because human beings are fundamentally social practitioners and because neither social practices nor individual agents have priority over the other. There are no social practices without social practitioners and there are no social practitioners without social practices. Hegel’s response to this second dichotomy allows him to respond to the first one as well. The elaboration and specialization of natural needs and desires through exchange relations and the social division of labor transfigures the contents of those needs and desires into collectively self-given ends. The social practices producing this transfiguration and meeting these ends form the contents of implicit principles of right. These implicit principles are collectively self-given because they result from the social practices collectively developed to meet these needs. Only acts that are executed and accepted by an agent are free acts. This strong condition requires that an agent’s intentions correspond to the actual nature and consequences of his or her act. Since the aims, the principles, and the means of action are fundamentally social, these strong constraints entail that free action is possible only within a community which makes known its structure and the role of its members within it and their contribution to it, so that its members can act on the basis of that knowledge. Hegel’s theory of the state is a theory of a communal structure that makes such explicit, free action possible. In briefest compass, Hegel holds that laws are legitimate only insofar as they codify those practices that have been developed in order to achieve human freedom, and laws are obligatory only insofar as they are necessary for achieving human freedom. Hegel’s government is designed to codify and promulgate such laws. Hegel’s legislature is designed to make known to the citizens at large, through their corporate representatives, that laws have such a basis and how individual roles and actions fit within the community as a whole. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of attitude toward piracy on intention to buy pirated CDs using Chinese samples. Attitude toward piracy is measured by a multi-item scale that has been shown to have a consistent factor structure with four distinct components, namely, social cost of piracy, anti-big business attitude, social benefit of dissemination, and ethical belief. Our findings reveal that social benefit of dissemination and anti-big business attitude have a positive relationship with intention to buy pirated CDs while social cost (...) of piracy and ethical belief have a negative relationship. Among these components, ethical belief tends to most strongly predict intention to buy pirated CDs. Demographic variables such as gender and age also help explain the respondents' intention to buy pirated CDs. In addition, those respondents with experience of buying pirated CDs would tend to be more likely to buy pirated CDs than those without such experience. The results are discussed with a view to helping copyright businesses to effectively suppress piracy, and directions for future research are suggested. (shrink)

Kant’s and Hegel’s transcendental argument for mental-content externalism breaks the deadlock between ‘internal’ and genuine realists. This argument shows that human beings can only be self-conscious in a world that provides a humanly recognizable regularity and variety among the things (or events) we sense. This feature of the world cannot result from human thought or language. Hence semantic arguments against realism can only be developed if realism about the world is true. Some of Putnam’s arguments for internal realism are taken (...) as cases in point, and criticized accordingly. Pragmatic realists can use this transcendental argument, because its strong modal claims are consistent with falliblist accounts of justification. (shrink)

This paper examines and rejects some purported refutations of eliminative materialism in the philosophy of mind: a quasi-transcendental argument due to Jackson and Pettit (1990) to the effect that folk psychology is “peculiarly unlikely” to be radically revised or eliminated in light of the developments of cognitive science and neuroscience; and (b) certain straight-out transcendental arguments to the effect that eliminativism is somehow incoherent (Baker, 1987; Boghossian, 1990). It begins by clarifying the exact topology of the dialectical space in which (...) debates between eliminativist and anti-eliminativist ought to be framed. I claim that both proponents and opponents of eliminativism have been insufficiently attentive to the range of dialectical possibilities. Consequently, the debate has not, in fact, been framed within the correct dialectical setting. I then go onto to show how inattentiveness to the range of dialectical possibilities undermines both transcendental and quasi-transcendental arguments against eliminativism. In particular, I argue that the quasi-transcendentalist overestimates the degree to which folk psychology can be insulated from the advance of neuroscience and cognitive science just in virtue of being a functional theory. I argue further that transcendental arguments are fallacious and do not succeed against even the strongest possible form of eliminativism. Finally, I argue that that transcendental arguments are irrelevant. Even if such arguments do succeed against a certain'very strong form of eliminativism, they remain complete non-starters against certain weaker forms of eliminativism. And I argue that if any of these weaker forms is true, folk psychology is in trouble enough to vindicate Paul Ckurchland's claim that our common sense psychological framework is “a radically false and misleading conception of the causes of human behavior and the nature of cognitive activity”. (shrink)

Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’ plainly has an anti-Cartesian conclusion: ‘inner experience in general is only possible through outer experience in general’ (B278). Due to wide-spread preoccupation with Cartesian skepticism, and to the anti-naturalism of early analytic philosophy, most of Kant’s recent commentators have sought to find a purely conceptual, ‘analytic’ argument in Kant’s Refutation of Idealism – and then have dismissed Kant when no such plausible argument can be reconstructed from his text. Kant’s argument supposedly cannot eliminate all relevant alternatives, (...) and so cannot justify its strong modal claims. Kant based his arguments on an inventory of our basic cognitive capacities to employ our forms of intuition and our forms of judgment. Kant provides a variety of considerations and arguments to determine what our cognitive capacities are. This involves ‘transcendental reflection’, which Kant held is absolutely crucial for judging matters a priori (A263/B319). I argue that there is a level of philosophical reflection on our own cognitive capabilities and their preconditions that is significantly richer than has been noticed by recent commentators, and that is a precondition of Kant’s transcendental reflection proper. I explicate certain thought experiments Kant proposes in order for us to recognize some our basic, characteristic cognitive capabilities, and the limits and requirements they entail for the nature and objects of human knowledge. These thought experiments involve a kind of reflection on who we as cognizant subjects are, on what our basic cognitive capabilities are. Engaging in this kind of reflection reveals that Kant’s transcendental arguments are significantly stronger and more persuasive than has been recognized in recent commentary. (shrink)

Every day in the United States 17 people die waiting for an organ transplant. The waiting list for organs, which now contains the names of 82,000 people, has more than tripled in the last 10 years. The U.S. policy on who can donate an organ is based both on previous consent of the potential donor and on the consent of the donor's family. This foundation greatly limits the number of potential donors. Spain is the world's leader in providing organs to (...) its population, and the underlying principle of their policy on donors in presumed consent. That is, those people who have not expressly opposed donating their organs are considered eligible for donation. This policy, along with a plan of public education and a strong infrastructure for organ procurement, is what has enhanced their donor rates. Spain is not alone: other countries have seen the benefits of presumed consent and the limits of opt-in systems. The United States must put to use the experiences of these countries to stem the tide of organ shortage and give new life to those desperately awaiting organs. a. (shrink)

Empirical investigations use empirical methods, data and evidence. This banal observation appears to favour empiricism, especially in philosophy of science, though no rationalist ever denied their importance. Natural sciences often provide what appear to be, and are taken by scientists as, realist, causal explanations of natural phenomena. Empiricism has never been congenial to scientific realism. Bas van Fraassen’s ‘Constructive Empiricism’ purports that realist interpretations of any scientific theory in principle always transcend whatever can be justified by that theory’s empirical adequacy, (...) and that ‘explanations’ are merely pragmatic, insofar as they are context-specific to the presuppositions of whomever poses the question an explanation is to answer. Here I argue that ‘Constructive Empiricism’ rests upon a series of flawed presumptions about natural science and about epistemology. To do so I draw upon two main resources. One resource is the constraints upon specifically cognitive reference to particulars, first identified by Kant (and later by Evans). The second is William Harper’s (2011) brilliant re-analysis and defence of Newton’s Principia, which shows that, and how, Newton justified his realism about gravitational force. One surprise is that Kant’s semantics of singular cognitive reference (examined in §3) directly and strongly supports Newton’s Rule 4 of scientific method (§4), which strongly supports his realism about gravitational force (summarised in §2). A further surprise is that Hegel first recognised that this semantics of singular cognitive reference directly and strongly supports Newton’s methodological Rule 4 of experimental philosophy in ways which support Newton’s realism about gravitational force, and about distance forces generally. The textual and exegetical issues these attributions require I examine elsewhere. Here I make these important findings available to philosophers and historians of science. (shrink)

Millers Living Systems Theory (LST) is known to be very comprehensive. It comprises eight nested hierarchical levels. It also includes twenty critical subsystems. While Millers approach has been analyzed and applied in great detail, some problematic features remain, requiring further explication. One of these is the relationship between reduction and emergence in LST. There are at least four relevant possibilities. One is that LST exhibits neither clear reductionism nor emergence, but is essentially neutral in this regard. Another is that the (...) apparent comprehensiveness of LST is illusory, as the approach remains vulnerable to reduction that could ultimately reduce it to a shadow of its present self. The charge of reductionism has been made by critics leading Miller to defend this theory vehemently as nonreductionist in nature. A third possibility is that LST is not reductionist, but is in fact an emergent theory. Miller makes this claim quite strongly. A fourth possibility, and in some ways the most analytically problematic, is that LST exhibits evidence of both reductionism and emergence simultaneously. Some critics might see this fourth situation as evidence of a troubling paradox or anomaly that must be resolved before further progress can be made in the explication and application of LST. The purpose of the paper is to remove this apparent anomaly. The paper removes this anomaly by differentiating between new-variable emergence and transformational emergence. No concrete evidence is found to contradict Milers claim of emergence in LST, and thus no true anomaly exists. (shrink)

This paper explores the logical consequences of the the thesis that all of the essential properties of consciousness can be known introspectively (Completeness, called "Strong Transparency" in the paper, following D.M. Armstrong's older terminology). It is argued that it can be known introspectively that consciousness does not have complete access to its essential properties; and it is show how this undermines conceivability arguments for dualism.

Economist Amartya Sen’s and philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to economic development enjoys global attention, and there has been considerable interest in connections between it and pragmatism. 1 This paper argues, first, that there are indeed strong, productive affinities between Sen’s and Nussbaum’s understanding of ‘capabilities’ in rethinking how economies are to be developed and measured, on the one hand, and John Dewey’s notion of ‘growth’ and applications of pragmatism to economics, by economists such as Thorstein Veblen, John Commons, (...) and, more recently, Daniel Bromley, to rethink and to reconstruct their discipline, on the other. Second, the paper suggests that Dewey’s notion of ‘growth’ can do much to strengthen and to deepen Sen’s and Nussbaum’s “capabilities approaches” to economics. Third, it suggests that Dewey enriches notions of ‘science’ and ‘democracy’, which are largely underdeveloped in capabilities approaches. (shrink)

In Hegel's 'Aesthetics', one can find a strong distinction between the Hebraic, true sublimity and the Indian, positive sublime. The main thesis of our article is that, from the rhetorical and cognitive point of view, the two sublimities do not form an opposition, although from the theological point of view they do. In order to affirm the thesis, we briefly analyze the main figures of the sublime as presented in Pseudo-Longinos' 'On the Sublime' and the concept of the sublime (...) in Kant. According to our theory of the sublime, the Lyotardian formula of the sublime as 'presenting the unpresentable' should be expressed as 'representing the unimaginable'. When we examine the main examples of the Hebraic and the Indian sublime, we can easily see that in both literary cultures we can find a strong mimetic element as well as antimimetic evocation of the unimaginable. We identify the mimetic element in the sublime texts not only with space seen in accord with Kant but also with 'mimesis of emotion' which is regarded as the main form of mimesis in the ancient Greek tradition, for instance in Plato. (shrink)

It began in 1992, with two men walking out of a television studio. Colin Blakemore, Oxford Professor of Physiology, is a quiet-spoken, eloquent defender of the use of animals in medical research. Les Ward, Director of the Edinburgh-based Advocates for Animals, is a passionate opponent of animal use. Bringing them together in front of an invited audience with strong opinions on both sides would make the sparks fly and be good viewing. But Blakemore and Ward, retiring after yet another (...) bout that neither side won, were dissatisfied. Both knew that media debates gave them a chance to highlight the flaws and evasions in the other side's arguments, and perhaps to recruit some new supporters to their own. But Ward realized that this was not enough to achieve the radical change he wanted: replacement of animals by other methods. And Blakemore disliked defending animal experiments against all comers. He too wanted to replace animals, albeit only when this could be done without forgoing the real benefits of research. (shrink)

This is a study of how ambiguous identities are interactionally managed in network marketing discourse. Network marketing, as an enterprise `using' friendship to promote products, has been notorious for its exploitative use of interpersonal meaning. In this study, the interactions between supervisors and subordinates in network marketing firms have been studied and their relationship was found to be ambiguous and conflicting. On the one hand, they are `friends' because of the strong emphasis on rapport and harmony in the philosophy (...) of network marketing; on the other hand, the supervisors have to regulate their downlines, which unfortunately lacks the legitimacy found in traditional business firms, as neither of them is an employee of their company. These ambiguous and conflicting identities motivate the participants to mobilize pertinent identities so as to manage conflicts, justify themselves and resume control. Previous research has shown that identities are both interactionally and retrospectively constructed. This study adds to our understanding that identities are not only products of interactions but that they are also interactional resources, which can be mobilized by participants to achieve their goals, although the identity mobilization does not always result in harmony owing to the inherent incompatiblity of the identities invoked. Implications for identity formation in contemporary firms are also drawn. (shrink)

We analyze naturally occurring datasets from student use of educational technologies to explore a long-standing question of the scope of transfer of learning. We contrast a faculty theory of broad transfer with a component theory of more constrained transfer. To test these theories, we develop statistical models of them. These models use latent variables to represent mental functions that are changed while learning to cause a reduction in error rates for new tasks. Strong versions of these models provide a (...) common explanation for the variance in task difficulty and transfer. Weak versions decouple difficulty and transfer explanations by describing task difficulty with parameters for each unique task. We evaluate these models in terms of both their prediction accuracy on held-out data and their power in explaining task difficulty and learning transfer. In comparisons across eight datasets, we find that the component models provide both better predictions and better explanations than the faculty models. Weak model variations tend to improve generalization across students, but hurt generalization across items and make a sacrifice to explanatory power. More generally, the approach could be used to identify malleable components of cognitive functions, such as spatial reasoning or executive functions. (shrink)

Little is known about employees’ responses to their organizations’ initiatives in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Academics have already identified a few outcomes regarding CSR’s impact on employees’ attitudes and behaviours; however, studies explaining the underlying mechanisms that drive employees’ favourable responses to CSR remain largely unexplored. Based on organizational identification (OI) theory, this study surveyed 155 employees of a petrochemical organization to better elucidate why, how and under which circumstances employees might positively respond to organizations’ CSR initiatives in the controversial (...) oil industry sector. Findings first support that perceived CSR (i.e. environmental CSR) positively relates to employees’ OI which is known as an important antecedent of employees’ outcomes (Riketta, J Vocat Behavior, 66(2):358, 2005). Furthermore, results highlighted that the relationship between perceived CSR and employees’ OI is mediated by organizational trust. Finally, this study also revealed that some contingency factors such as employees’ attributions of self-centred motives to their organization’s investment in environmental issues can moderate the relationship between perceived CSR and organizational trust. Based on these findings, it is argued that CSR initiatives can support organizations’ efforts to maintain a strong relationship with their employees, and gain their support even in a controversial industry sector. (shrink)

Percy has been studied under several headings: Catholic, Southerner, Existentialist. Two such aspects, however, have been neglected: the strong influence of Charles Sanders Peirce, plus Percy’s deep competence in laboratory science. His typescript essay, “Peirce and Modern Semiotic,” presented here, shows that Percy was well ahead of his contemporaries in understanding the scientific and philosophical importance of Peirce’s Semeiotic, the Theory of Semeioses. Percy particularly pointed to the experiential importance of “taking the other’s meaning.” He regarded that common phenomenon (...) as vital, and genuine—a kind of event that behaviorists such as B. F. Skinner or Charles Morris explained away as nothing but a dynamic dyadic causal process. Percy’s essay definitively blocks those reductions. (shrink)

The Ethics Consultation Quality Assessment Tool (ECQAT) establishes standards by which the quality of ethics consultation records (ECRs) can be assessed. These standards relate to the ethics question, consultation-specific information, ethical analysis, and recommendations and/or conclusions, and result in a score associated with one of four levels of ethics consultation quality. For the ECQAT to be useful in assessing and improving the quality of healthcare ethics consultations, individuals who rate the quality of ECRs need to be able to reliably use (...) the tool.We developed a short course to train ethics consultants in using the ECQAT, and evaluated whether the participants (1) achieved an acceptable level of calibration in matching expert-established quality scores for a set of ethics consultations, and (2) were satisfied with the course. We recruited 28 ethics consultants to participate in a virtual, six-session course. At each session participants and faculty reviewed, rated, and discussed one to two ECRs. The participants’ calibration in matching expert-established quality scores improved with repeated exposure at all levels of ethics consultation quality. Participants were generally more accurate when assessing consultation quality at the dichotomous level of “acceptable” (scores of three or four) versus “unacceptable” (scores of one or two) than they were with a more specific score. Participants had higher rates of accuracy with the extreme ratings of “strong” (level four) or “poor” (level one). Although participants were highly satisfied with the course, only a minority of participants achieved the prespecified acceptable level of calibration (that is, 80 percent or greater accuracy between their score and expert-established scores). These results suggest that ECQAT training may require more sessions or need modification in the protocol to achieve higher reliability in scoring. Such trainings are an important next step in ensuring that the ECQAT is a tool that can be used to promote improvement in ethics consultation quality. (shrink)

The tension between Kant’s egalitarian conception of persons as ends in themselves and his rejection of the right of revolution has been widely discussed. The crucial issue is more fundamental: Is Kant’s defense of absolute obedience consistent with his own principle of legitimate law, that legitimate law is compatible with the Categorical Imperative? Resolving this apparent inconsistency resolves the subsidiary inconsistencies that have been debated in the literature. I argue that Kant’s legal principles contain two distinct grounds of obligation to (...) obey political authority. One lies in his metaphysical principles of law, according to which there is only a duty to obey legitimate law or fully legitimate authorities. Another lies in his moral-pragmatic principles. He believes that membership in the state helps improve one’s character by counter-balancing one’s immoral inclinations. This is his ultimate ground for obedience to de facto, imperfectly legitimate states. On this ground, the duty to obey an actual state is conditional. Kant’s strong statements about the duty to obey actual states is explained by the ease with which he thinks the relevant condition is met by extant states. The apparent ambiguities in his discussion of obedience point to some important philosophical and historical shortcomings of his analysis of the division of govemmental powers and of judicial competence which hamper his analysis of the duty to obey the state. (shrink)