How should we make choices when we know so little about our futures? L. A. Paul argues that we must view life decisions as choices to make discoveries about the nature of experience. Her account of transformative experience holds that part of the value of living authentically is to experience our lives and preferences in whatever ways they evolve.

W. Labov's & T. Labov's findings concerning their child grammar acquisition ("Learning the Syntax of Questions" in Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language, Campbell, R. & Smith, P. Eds, New York: Plenum Press, 1978) are interpreted in terms of different semantics of why & other wh-questions. Z. Dubiel.

Truth-relativism is the claim that the truth of statements is dependent on the context in which they are made. In this article, truth-relativism is considered as a way to explain disagreements. Viewpoint relativism, a recent version of truth-relativism, is introduced as a useful framework to analyse how truth-relativism approaches disagreements. Viewpoint relativism is based on contextual semantics and the logic of viewpoint, which is a two-dimensional modal logic. In viewpoint relativism, the central concept is a point of view in relation (...) to which truth claims are evaluated. Viewpoint relativism is compared to the truth-relativism of Peter Lasersohn and John MacFarlane. Finally, truth-relativism is defended against the critique of Paul Boghossian that it represents untenable ‘replacement relativism’. (shrink)

A “conceptual spaces” approach is used to formalize Aristotle’s main intuitions about time and change, and other ideas about temporal points of view. That approach has been used in earlier studies about points of view. Properties of entities are represented by locations in multidimensional conceptual spaces; and concepts of entities are identified with subsets or regions of conceptual spaces. The dimensions of the spaces, called “determinables”, are qualities in a very general sense. A temporal element is introduced by adding a (...) time variable to state functions that map entities into conceptual spaces. That way, states may have some permanency or stability around time instances. Following Aristotle’s intuitions, changes and events will not be necessarily instant phenomena, instead they could be processual and interval dependent. Change is defined relatively to the interval during which the change is taking place. Time intervals themselves are taken to represent points of view. To have a point of view is to look at the world as it is in the selected interval. Many important concepts are relativized to intervals, for instance change, events, identity, ontology, potentiality, etc. The definition of points of view as intervals allows to compare points of view in relation to all these concepts. The conceptual space approach has an immediate semantic and structural character, but it is tempting to develop also logics to describe them. A formal language is introduced to show how this could be done. (shrink)

The paper addresses the journal Jahrbücher für speculative Philosophie, published between 1846 and 1848 in Darmstadt. The paper focuses on the forewords of the journal written by the sole editor Ludwig Noack (1819–1885). In these forewords, Noack elaborates the current situation of philosophy. He outlines his vision for the future philosophy. It would be meaningful not only for professional philosophers but also for the general audience. Moreover, it would be closely associated with other sciences. Noack’s vision was inspired by August (...) Cieszkowski’s (1814–1894) so-called “Philosophie der Tat” (the philosophy of action), which resonated with the entire generation of German Hegelians from the late 1830s. Noack realized his journal in co-operation with the “Philosophische Gesellschaft zu Berlin”, founded by Cieszkowski and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) former student Carl Ludwig Michelet (1801–1893) in 1843. (shrink)

I argue for a property mereology and for mereological bundle theory. I then apply this theory to the one over many problem (universals) and puzzles concerning persistence and material constitution.

The paper discusses three talks, which were given at the meetings of the Philosophical Society of Berlin (Philosophische Gesellschaft zu Berlin) in the mid-1870s. In these talks, the principles of some main movements in contemporary philosophy (realism, absolute idealism, critical idealism) were elaborated and contrasted to each other. The paper focuses on the concepts of real-idealism and ideal-realism. All the discussants, Friedrich Frederichs, C. L. Michelet and J. H. von Kirchmann, introduce these concepts. Frederichs, an adherent of critical idealism, argues (...) only for the standpoint of real-idealism. Michelet, G. W. F. Hegel’s personal student and an adherent of absolute idealism, takes real-idealism and ideal-realism to be the two sides of the one coin. Kirchmann, an advocate of realism, regards real-idealism as an objective, and he is skeptical about the possibility to achieve it. (shrink)

Points of view are a central phenomenon in human cognition. Although the concept of point of view is ambiguous, there exist common elements in different notions. A point of view is a certain way to look at things around us. In conceptual points of view, things are looked at or interpreted through conceptual lenses. Conceptual points of view are important for epistemology, cognitive science, and philosophy of science. In this article, a new method to formalize conceptual points of view is (...) introduced. It is based on the conceptual space approach, where concepts are regions of multi-dimensional quality spaces. Points of view, as defined in this article, consist of a selection of relevant dimensions, referred to here as determinables, and of a certain supposition, referred to here as a theory, about the subject content. After considering some early efforts to formalize points of view, the notion of conceptual space is defined and explored. One concept of point of view is defined and developed in the framework of conceptual space, and a new logic for points of view is also outlined. The problem of mind–body correlation is discussed as an example of the application of the notion of points of view. To conclude, the meaning and applications of the new concepts and tools developed in the article are discussed. (shrink)

In this paper a propositional logic of viewpoints is presented. The language of this logic consists of the usual modal operatorsL (of necessity) andM (of possibility) as well as of two new operatorsA andR. The intuitive interpretations ofA andR are from all viewpoints and from some viewpoint, respectively. Semantically the language is interpreted by using Kripke models augmented with sets of viewpoints and with a new alternativeness relation for the operatorA. Truth values of formulas are evaluated with respect to a (...) world and a viewpoint. Various axiomatizations of the logic of viewpoints are presented and proved complete. Finally, some applications are given. (shrink)

The paper addresses Thiodolf Rein’s (1838–1919) view of empiricist philosophies, which arrived in Finland in the second half of the nineteenth century. Rein was the key figure of Finnish philosophy towards the end of the nineteenth century. His philosophy was strongly influenced by Hermann Lotze (1817–1881), probably the most distinguished German philosopher of the time. In his main work, "Försök till en framställning af psykologin eller vetenskapen om själen" (Attempt at a presentation of psychology, or the science of the soul, (...) 1876–1891), Rein attempts to reconcile modern natural science and its empirical methodology with idealist metaphysics. His chief concern is to refute the claim that the results of natural science corroborate materialism. Whereas Lotze had only shortly commented on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Rein attempts to integrate Darwin’s theory into his idealist metaphysics. Besides philosophy, Rein’s arguments had also implications for broader political and cultural issues of the time. (shrink)

The term ‘phenomenology’ has become almost as over-used and emptied of meaning as that other word from Continental Philosophy, namely ‘existentialism’. Yet Husserl, who first put forward the phenomenological method, considered it a rigorous alternative to positivism, and in the hands of Merleau-Ponty, a disciple of Husserl in France, phenomenology became a way of gaining a disciplined and coherent perspective on the world in which we live. When this study originally published in 1977 there were only a few books in (...) English on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. It introduced the reader and suggested how his thought might throw light on some of the assumptions and presuppositions of certain contemporary forms of Anglo-Saxon philosophy and social science. It also demonstrates how phenomenology seeks to unite philosophy and social science, rather than define them as mutually exclusive domains of knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper an analysis of scientific theories and theory change including meaning change is presented by using intensional logic. Several cases of scientific progress are distinguished and special attention is given to incommensurability. It is argued that ,in all cases the comparison of rival theories is possible via translation. Finally two different forms of theory-Iadenness of observation are analysed.

Drawing on diverse historical cases, this paper describes and examines various aspects of a modality of scientific appraisal which has remained largely unexplored, theory pursuit. Specifically, it addresses the following issues: the epistemic and pragmatic commitments involved in theory pursuit, including how these differ from those characteristic of theory acceptance; how the research interests of scientists enter into their pursuit decisions; some of the strategies for the refinement and extension of a theory's empirical abilities which typify theory pursuit; and the (...) need to distinguish between individual and community rationality in contexts of pursuit. (shrink)

In the real world, there can be constraints on rational decision-making: there can be limitations on what I can know and on what you can know. There can also be constraints on my ability to deliberate or on your ability to deliberate. It is useful to know what the norms of rational deliberation should be in ideal contexts, for fully informed agents, in an ideal world. But it is also useful to know what the norms of rational deliberation should be (...) in the actual world, in non-ideal contexts, for imperfectly informed agents, especially for big, life-changing decisions. That is, we want to know how to deliberate as best we can, given the real-world limitations on what we can know, and given real-world limitations on how we are able to deliberate. In this paper, our concern is with the norms of rational deliberation in certain, important, non-ideal contexts, where the reasoning occurs from the agent’s first person, subjective point of view. The norms governing the process of deliberation for real people in the sorts of non-ideal contexts we’ll consider need to reflect the way that real agents, with an incomplete grasp on the facts and an imperfect ability to deliberate, can be expected to proceed. Our central contention is that framing and exploring the deliberative process from the first person perspective allows us to uncover and explore important, real-world constraints on boundedly rational agents deliberating from the subjective perspective. (shrink)

This article represents an attempt to organize, critique, and extend research findings on gender differences in business ethics. The focus is on two dependent variables—ethical judgment and behavioral intent. Differences in findings between student and professional groups are noted and theoretical implications are discussed. The new research provided for this article contains two benchmark studies undertaken with identical stimuli and identical measures. These studies were followed by two additional studies, using the same measures but different stimuli, as a partial replication (...) and extension of the first two. Findings suggest that little difference exists between the genders on behavioral intent for professional groups and only minimal differences for the ethical judgment measures. Student results, however, produced more substantial differences for behavioral intention. (shrink)

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Creating and defining works of art -- Purposes of art -- The artist's visual language -- Two-dimensional media and techniques of art -- Three-dimensional media and techniques --Art in history.

Race and Gender in the Classroom explores the paradoxes of education, race, and gender, as Laurie Cooper Stoll follows eighteen teachers carrying out their roles as educators in an era of “post-racial” and “post-gendered” politics.

Race and Gender in the Classroom explores the paradoxes of education, race, and gender, as Laurie Cooper Stoll follows eighteen teachers carrying out their roles as educators in an era of “post-racial” and “post-gendered” politics.

This essay engages the work of Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero and her concept of the narratable self. Her relational humanism, rooted in our exposure to others, offers an ontology of uniqueness whose critique of abstraction, masculinism, and identity politics still resonates today where the meaning of a unique “you” is negotiated in embodied exchanges that may offer care or wounds. Cavarero develops an altruistic ethics that cultivates this humanism. I argue that her work should be extended to better capture (...) the political purchase of the narratable self that interacts dynamically and often ambiguously with the “we” of collective politics. Putting her work into conversation with the nineteenth‐century abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth, I suggest that Cavarero's work illuminates Truth as a philosopher of the narratable self. Moreover, Truth's work extends Cavarero's concerns with exposure that may do violence or offer care by making explicit the challenges of narration in the context of inequality, especially in terms of race and class. Exposure as an ontological and phenomenological condition then needs to take account of a broader publicity of textual, individual, and collective exposure to others to develop the critical, ethical, and political purchase it offers. (shrink)

Across three studies, the authors examine the interactive effects of moral identity and the negative reciprocity norm in predicting revenge. The general argument is that moral identity provides the motivational impetus for individuals’ responses, whereas the normative framework that people adopt as a basis for guiding moral action influences the direction of the response. Results indicated that moral identity and the negative reciprocity norm significantly interacted to predict revenge. More specifically, the symbolization dimension of moral identity interacted with the negative (...) reciprocity norm to predict revenge when individuals were the targets of mistreatment, whereas the internalization dimension of moral identity interacted with the negative reciprocity norm to predict revenge when individuals were the observers of mistreatment. Theoretical implications related to the differences between the symbolization and internalization dimensions of moral identity, the importance of examining normative frameworks, and the functionality of revenge are discussed. (shrink)

Provides a collection of essays that offer varying viewpoints on the subject of ethics, covering such topics as what motivates people to act ethically, why ethical behavior is necessary, and how moral standards impact corporations and biomedical science.

Examines acts of showing--from dog shows to striptease--to understand and theorize instances of heightened performance in everyday life as well as on the stage.

Improve yourself – and your workplace – with GRIT Leading With GRIT is a practical and proven guide for transforming the workplace, offering pragmatic insight on value-based strategies that improve the individual and the business. Based on the author's proprietary principles of GRIT – Generosity, Respect, Integrity, and Truth – this book describes how working toward individual improvement produces better organizational results than traditional approaches that focus on collective improvement. Readers are introduced to GRIT with a framework that can be (...) applied in any workplace scenario, and are provided with strategies for applying GRIT to communication and intra-office operations. Each chapter includes activities that assist with implementation, moving beyond the theoretical framework commonly taught in business school to provide a more practical approach to personal development. The principles of GRIT are exactly the sort of instruction leaders are encouraging, and companies worldwide are willing to invest large sums. The approach stands out for its unique, personal approach that melds values-based principles with business concepts to produce spectacular results. This book is the complete guide to GRIT, with an emphasis on practicality. Learn why the principles of GRIT have proven so effective Apply GRIT in communications for better productivity Discover how each person impacts those around them Cultivate a positive, constructive attitude for less stress and more growth GRIT helps readers make themselves and their workplaces happier and healthier, decreasing stress, sparking personal growth, retaining employees, and developing mindful leaders. In essence, Leading With GRIT is a handbook for improving the bottom line by improving the lives and outlook of those who contribute to it. (shrink)