The Essential Herman Kahn offers the public for the first time an anthology consisting of the best of Herman Kahn's work. It brings together, out of the several thousands of pages published in his life, the "essential Kahn"—the most relevant, consequential, and interesting themes, ideas, and arguments of his work in areas such as international relations, public policy, environmentalism, strategic thinking, and futurology.

Kilcullen argues that Pierre Bayle's Philosophical Commentary on the Words of the Gospel: 'Compel Them to Enter In' presents the best case extant for religious toleration. The first two essays analyze the Commentary in a seventeenth-century theological context; the final three essays examine related current philosophical themes in the works of, among others, Feinberg, Peirce, and Rawls. While the author admits that his essays--focused on the dilemmas arising out of epistemological uncertainty--may be too wide-ranging for some readers, this work, with (...) over six hundred detailed footnotes, presents the finest available exegesis of the Commentary. (shrink)

For forty years, Harvey Mansfield has been worth reading. Whether plumbing the depths of MachiavelliOs Discourses or explaining what was at stake in Bill ClintonOs impeachment, MansfieldOs work in political philosophy and political science has set the standard. In Educating the Prince, twenty-one of his students, themselves distinguished scholars, try to live up to that standard. Their essays offer penetrating analyses of Machiavellianism, liberalism, and America., all of them informed by MansfieldOs own work. The volume also includes a bibliography of (...) MansfieldOs writings. (shrink)

Fitouchi et al.'s moral disciplining approach highlights the significant role social evaluations of self-control appear to play in human moral judgment. At the same time, attributing the wide range of puritanical concerns to a singular focus on self-control seems unwarranted. A more pluralistic approach would enrich understanding of moral judgment in all its cultural and historical diversity.

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)

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)

00 In this innovative analysis, Plato's four eleatic dialogues are treated as a continuous argument. In Kenneth Dorter's view, Plato reconsiders the theory of forms propounded in his earlier dialogues and through an examination of the theory's limitations reaffirms and proves it essential. Contradicted are both those philosophers who argue that Plato espoused his theory of forms uncritically and those who argue that Plato in some sense rejected the theory and moved toward the categorical analysis developed byAristotle. Dorter's reexamination (...) of Plato's insights implies an important new direction for modern philosophical inquiry. In this innovative analysis, Plato's four eleatic dialogues are treated as a continuous argument. In Kenneth Dorter's view, Plato reconsiders the theory of forms propounded in his earlier dialogues and through an examination of the theory's limitations reaffirms and proves it essential. Contradicted are both those philosophers who argue that Plato espoused his theory of forms uncritically and those who argue that Plato in some sense rejected the theory and moved toward the categorical analysis developed byAristotle. Dorter's reexamination of Plato's insights implies an important new direction for modern philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

From the beginning of the scientific revolution, scientists, philosophers, and laypersons have been concerned about the effects of knowledge on social relations. Although views differ about the details of this knowledge-society interface, most observers have understood that the kind of knowledge that emanates from establishedscience can indeed be quite powerful in practice. In exploring both the nature of race science discourse and selected features of the practical context within which it resonates effectively, the authors' investigationsof this field and its contribution (...) to the Holocaust represent an effort to specify some of the things that make knowledge powerful. (shrink)

Physicians have an ethical responsibility to their patients to offer the best available medical care. This responsibility conflicts with their role as gatekeepers of the limited health care resources available for all patients collectively. It is ethically untenable to expect doctors to face this trade-off during each patient encounter; the physician cannot be expected to compromise the wellbeing of the patient in the office in favour of anonymous patients elsewhere. Hence, as in other domains of public policy where individual and (...) collective interests conflict, some form of collective solution is required. Collective solutions may take the form of placing explicit resource constraints on resources available to physicians, or clinical practice guidelines that recognise cost-effective care as acceptable. Such solutions will be politically and ethically sustainable only if patients as citizens of the larger population accept the need for rationing of limited resources in health care. (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)

In the following paper, Annemiek Richters of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands addresses the dilemmas faced by health professionals who are asked to evaluate and provide supporting documentation for those refugees who seek political asylum in the countries of Europe. It is in the politically charged arena of asylum applications, government regulations, and public policy where bioethics, human rights, and health converge. Despite the 1951 Convention on Refugees, a treaty signed by nations around the world to safeguard the (...) rights of those who are displaced, and other treaties that protect the rights of vulnerable populations, refugee and asylum policies have become increasingly strict in an effort to deter those who would seek safety. This tightening of borders in the countries of the West challenges physicians who find themselves caught between obligations to treat, to advocate, and to challenge policies that make treatment a potentially dangerous proposition. Unfortunately, the World Trade Center attacks have exacerbated the problem by labeling asylees and refugees as potential terrorists and subject to deportation. (shrink)

In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego Freud addresses the problem of how groups are formed or of how society is possible. The question of the possibility of society presupposes that in some sense human beings are not thoroughly social beings, that they must agree to or be made to participate in a common life in which they submit to general principles regulating their conduct towards one another. The notion that the grounds for social order cannot be taken (...) for granted originates in the beginnings of modern thought, particularly in Hobbes’ Leviathan, in which the classical idea that human beings are essentially social and political animals is rejected in favor of the view that the individual is in a basic sense independent of society and opposed to it, and that society is merely a conventional unity. For Hobbes, society is primarily a defensive alliance guaranteed by fear of a sovereign who constitutes a legal order. Social order, then, is imposed externally on the individual, who submits to regulation only on the basis of prudence. The history of thought about the problem of order after Hobbes’ initial attempt to resolve it is a development of more refined motives for obedience, which culminates in Kant's notion of a self-legislated moral law. The importance of Kant's solution is that it provides a positive ground for society. Human beings do not merely submit to standards because they are inclined to, either out of fear or out of desire, but because they acknowledge a rational principle to which they give their voluntary assent. For Hobbes, society is at least an imposition and at most an expedient. For Kant, society may, indeed, be both an imposition and an expedient, but it is also an order of life that might be perfected. In Kant's view, human beings are imperfectly rational beings, not organisms entirely ruled by pleasure and pain, as they were for Hobbes. (shrink)

An omnipotent being would be a being whose power was unlimited. The power of human beings is limited in two distinct ways: we are limited with respect to our freedom of will, and we are limited in our ability to execute what we have willed. These two distinct sources of limitation suggest a simple definition of omnipotence: an omnipotent being is one that has both perfect freedom of will and perfect efficacy of will. In this paper we further explicate this (...) definition and show that it escapes the standard objections to divine omnipotence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In 2010,Business Ethics Quarterlypublished ten articles that considered the potential contributions to business ethics research arising from recent scholarship in a variety of philosophical and social scientific fields (strategic management, political philosophy, restorative justice, international business, legal studies, ethical theory, ethical leadership studies, organization theory, marketing, and corporate governance and finance). Here we offer short responses to those articles by members ofBusiness Ethics Quarterly’s editorial board and editorial team.

There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as ‘sustainable’ there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption — the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means — has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequences of real consumption by redirecting some consumptive behavior from shifting (...) material states to shifting information states. (shrink)

Argues that the explanation of man's social and cultural differences is best defined by history, not human biology, maintaining that humans shape their social lives by their historical activities.

This Open Access book provides both a broad perspective and a focused examination of cow care as a subject of widespread ethical concern in India, and increasingly in other parts of the world. In the face of what has persisted as a highly charged political issue over cow protection in India, intellectual space must be made to bring the wealth of Indian traditional ethical discourse to bear on the realities of current human-animal relationships, particularly those of humans with cows. Dharma, (...) yoga, and bhakti paradigms serve as starting points for bringing Hindu--particularly Vaishnava Hindu--animal ethics into conversation with contemporary Western animal ethics. The author argues that a culture of bhakti--the inclusive, empathetic practice of spirituality centered in Krishna as the beloved cowherd of Vraja--can complement recently developed ethics-of-care thinking to create a solid basis for sustaining all kinds of cow care communities. (shrink)

In the Introduction to the Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley attacks the “received opinion that language has no other end but the communicating our ideas, and that every significant name stands for an idea” (PHK, Intro §19). How far does Berkeley go in rejecting this ‘received opinion’? Does he offer a general theory of language to replace it? If so, what is the nature of this theory? In this chapter, I consider three main interpretations of Berkeley's view: (...) the modified ideational theory, the speaker intentions theory, and the use theory. I argue that the use theory does, and its competitors do not, make sense of Berkeley's remarks on language in both the earlier and later works. (shrink)

About this book Mr. Burke contributes an introductory and summarizing remark, "What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?

As critic, Kenneth Burke's preoccupations were at the beginning purely esthetic and literary; but afterCounter-Statement(1931), he began to discriminate a ...

For both its enthusiastic adherents as well as its more generous opponents, liberalism commands considerable ethical appeal but at a price. And that price is its lack of systematic integrity or coherence. The charm of its ethical appeal stems from the great values which it celebrates. But for many these very values seem fatally incommensurable, seem to be forever colliding with and thwarting one another. As Isaiah Berlin has never tired of reminding us, liberty and equality continue to defy our (...) best efforts to reconcile them, to weave them together in some kind of orderly and compelling way. Liberalism, in other words, is flawed, if not tragically flawed. For those who nevertheless remain charmed by its ethical appeal, the tragedy of the incommensurability of its basic values is disappointing and disturbing. (shrink)

Craik published only one complete work of any length, this essay on The Nature of Explanation.

This paper examines the undervalued role of Herbert Spencer in Sidgwick's thinking. Sidgwick recognized Spencer's utilitarianism, but criticized him on the ground that he tried to deduce utilitarianism from evolutionary theory. In analysing these criticisms, this paper concludes that Spencer's deductive methodology was in fact closer to Sidgwick's empiricist position than Sidgwick realized. The real source of Sidgwick's unhappiness withSpencer lies with the substance of Spencer's utilitarianism, namely its espousal of indefeasible moral rights.

This accessible, original book is an exploration of the relevance of classical social theory in the contemporary world. It examines the work of Marx, Weber and Durkheim through the lens of new theoretical issues, such as the role of Empire, the problem of cultural differences, and the possibilities of democracy that are implicit in each theorist's perspective.