In the ongoing debate concerning the nature of human racial categories, there is a trend to reject the biological reality of race in favour of the view that races are social constructs. At work here is the assumption that biological reality and social constructivism are incompatible. I oppose the trend and the assumption by arguing that cladism, in conjunction with current work in human evolution, provides a new way to define race biologically. Defining race in this way makes sense when (...) compared to the developments in other areas of systematic biology, where shared history has largely replaced morphological similarity as the foundation of a natural biological classification. Surprisingly, it turns out that cladistic races and social constructivism are compatible. I discuss a number of lessons about the way human biological races have been conceptualized. (shrink)

Race was once thought to be a real biological kind. Today the dominant view is that objective biological races don't exist. I challenge the trend to reject the biological reality of race by arguing that cladism (a school of classification that individuates taxa by appeal to common ancestry) provides a new way to define race biologically. I also reconcile the proposed biological conception with constructivist theories about race. Most constructivists assume that biological realism and social constructivism are incompatible views about (...) race; I argue that the two conceptions can be compatible. (shrink)

Many contemporary race scholars reject the biological reality of race.Elsewhere I have argued that they have been too quick to do so. Part ofthe reason is that they have overlooked the possibility that races canbe defined cladistically. Since the publication of the cladistic raceconcept, a number of questions and objections have been raised. My aimin this paper is to address these objections.

What is sexism? What are its underlying causes? What makes it morally wrong? Can whole institutions, practices and policies, contribute to the unjust distribution of benefi ts and burdens? Or does sexism, when it exists, occur on an individual basis? This article analyzes the notion of institutional sexism for its conceptual, causal, and moral character. The author compares the notions that institutional sexism largely pertains to the oppression of women to those which say that it pertains broadly to any unjust (...) treatment on the basis of sex. She examines the historical and cultural sources of sexism. When it exists, do the sources of sexism rest with attitudes of individuals or the very structure of institutions themselves? She shows why individual attitudes themselves are often not the sole sources of sexism, where it exists. Institutional structure can equally contribute to its existence. (shrink)

Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology addresses seven philosophically significant questions regarding feminism, its central concepts of sex and gender, and the project of centering women’s experience. Topics include the nature of sexist oppression, the sex/gender distinction, how gender-based norms influence conceptions of rationality, knowledge, and scientific objectivity, feminist ethics, feminst perspectives on self and autonomy, whether there exist distinct feminine moral perspectives, and what would comprise true liberation. Features an introductory overview illustrating the development of feminism as a philosophical movement (...) Contains both classic and contemporary sources of feminist thought, including selections by Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill, Simone de Beauvior, Kate Millett, bell hooks, Marilyn Frye, Martha Nussbaum, Louise Antony, Sally Haslanger, Helen Longino, Marilyn Friedman, Catharine MacKinnon, and Drucilla Cornell. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the scientific value of the human genome project. To what extent is the data obtained by sequencing the entire human genome useful in the gene dicovery process? Responding to Alex Rosenberg' skepticism about the value of such data, we maintain that brute sequence data is much more useful than he suggests.

Background: There has for some time now been recognition that there was a relationship between exceptional creative talent and mental disorder. The works of Andreasen (2008) and others in this area have been very significant. However, most of the research has been carried out in USA and Europe. Very little has come out of Africa on the subject. Aim : To survey the beliefs of different groups within an African society, concerning the possibility of a relationship between creative talent (...) and mental disorder. To assess creativity within a community of people with a formal diagnosis of mental disorder. Materials and Methods: Some of the mythology of the Yoruba was examined for content, concerning the behaviour of certain notable individuals and the existence of psychopathology based on modern-day criteria. The beliefs of members of the general public and mental health professionals concerning the existence of a relationship between creative talent and psychopathology were surveyed using a questionnaire designed for the project. A sample of patients with formal diagnoses of affective disorder or schizophrenia drawn from two units, the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital and the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital Yaba, were assessed for 'Creativity.' Results : Although there are notable 'eccentric' figures in local mythology, the overwhelming majority of the people surveyed do not believe there is any relationship between creativity and mental illness. They however believe that engaging in creative activities helps the mentally ill to recover from illness. The mental health professionals, who were clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, had a significant minority who believed that a relationship does exist, and they also strongly assert that creative activity has a therapeutic effect for the mentally ill. A survey of in-patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and affective disorder failed to show a significant difference in the creativity of the two populations, as measured by the originality score of the Rorschach scale. The survey of patients is inconclusive, based on small sample size (ten patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, ten with bipolar affective disorder.). The linkage between formal mental disorder is only recognised by a significant minority of mental health professionals. A significant proportion of the population believe that creative activity aids recovery from mental illness. More research is required into this important subject in Africa. (shrink)

While most business ethics texts focus exclusively on individual decision making--what should an individual do--this resource presents the whole business ethics story. Highly realistic, readable, and down-to-earth, it moves from the individual to the managerial to the organizational level, focusing on business ethics in an organizational context to promote an understanding of complex influences on behavior. The new Fifth Edition is the perfect text for students entering the workplace, those seeking to become professionals in training, communications, compliance, in addition to (...) chief ethics officers, corporate counsel, heads of human resources, and senior executives. (shrink)

The capacity to be creative, to produce new concepts, ideas, inventions, objects or art, is perhaps the most important attribute of the human brain. We know very little, however, about the nature of creativity or its neural basis. Some important questions include how should we define creativity? How is it related (or unrelated) to high intelligence? What psychological processes or environmental circumstance cause creative insights to occur? How is it related to conscious and unconscious processes? What is happening at the (...) neural level during moments of creativity? How is it related to health or illness, and especially mental illness? This paper will review introspective accounts from highly creative individuals. These accounts suggest that unconscious processes play an important role in achieving creative insights. Neuroimaging studies of the brain during "REST" (random episodic silent thought, also referred to as the default state) suggest that the association cortices are the primary areas that are active during this state and that the brain is spontaneously reorganising and acting as a self-organising system. Neuroimaging studies also suggest that highly creative individuals have more intense activity in association cortices when performing tasks that challenge them to "make associations." Studies of creative individuals also indicate that they have a higher rate of mental illness than a noncreative comparison group, as well as a higher rate of both creativity and mental illness in their first-degree relatives. This raises interesting questions about the relationship between the nature of the unconscious, the unconscious and the predisposition to both creativity and mental illness. (shrink)

Deuteronomy forced the issue of humanitarian considerations and of freedom on the community at the moments when it was truest to itself—the moments of worship and cultic celebration, notably on the sabbath, the sabbatical year, and the harvest festivals.

In chapter 3 of Wild Animal Ethics Johannsen argues for a collective obligation based on beneficence to intervene in nature in order to reduce the suffering of wild animals. In the same chapter he claims that the non-identity problem is merely a “theoretical puzzle” which doesn’t affect our reasons for intervention. In this paper I argue that the non-identity problem affects both the strength and the nature of our reasons to intervene. By intervening in nature on a large scale we (...) change which animals come into existence. In doing so, we enable harmful animals to inflict harms on other animals, and we put other animals in harm’s way. The harms that these animals will inflict and endure are foreseeable. Furthermore, since non-human animals aren’t moral agents, harmful animals cannot be morally responsible for their harmful actions. I argue therefore that by causing animals to exist, knowing that they will inflict and suffer harms, we become morally responsible for those harms. By engaging in identity-affecting actions then we take on secondary moral duties towards the animals we have thereby caused to exist, and these secondary moral duties may be extremely demanding, even more so than the initial costs of intervention. Finally, these duties are duties of justice rather than duties of beneficence, and as such are more stringent than purely beneficence-based moral reasons. Furthermore, this conclusion flows naturally from several plausible principles which Johannsen explicitly endorses. (shrink)

National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. Searching (...) for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham. (shrink)

Esta dissertação encontra-se construída em torno de um núcleo central - a exposição, aná-lise e discussão do chamado 'Argumento da linguagem privada', de Wittengstein. A dinâmica própria da abordagem e discussão do tema leva necessariamente a percorrer o conjunto da obra de Wittengstein, o que motiva um notável aprofundamento do assunto e torna ainda mais aliciante este ensaio.

The most important clarification we bring in our reply to commentators concerns the problem of the “explanatory gap”: that is, the gulf that separates physical processes in the brain from the experienced quality of sensations. By adding two concepts (bodiliness and grabbiness) that were not stressed in the target article, we strengthen our claim and clarify why we think we have solved the explanatory gap problem, – not by dismissing qualia, but, on the contrary, by explaining why sensations have a (...) “feel” and why “feels” feel the way they do. We additionally clarify our views on: internal representations (we claim internal representations cannot explain why sensation has a feel), on behaviorism (we are not behaviorists), on perception and action (we believe there can be perception without action), and on the brain (we believe the brain does do something important in perception). (shrink)

This is the first modern, annotated and scholarly edition of Jean-Baptiste Du Bos’ _Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting_, one of the seminal works of modern aesthetics in any language.

An article of mine in The Heythrop Journal a decade ago discussed Descartes’ “Olympica” dream-sequence, the original of which is lost, but the details of which are preserved in a French version in...

Providing a vibrant four-color design, market-leading BUSINESS ETHICS: ETHICAL DECISION MAKING AND CASES, Ninth Edition, thoroughly covers the complex environment in which managers confront ethical decision making. Using a proven managerial framework, this accessible, applied text addresses the overall concepts, processes, and best practices associated with successful business ethics programs--helping readers see how ethics can be integrated into key strategic business decisions. Thoroughly revised, the new ninth edition incorporates coverage of new legislation affecting business ethics, the most up-to-date examples, and (...) the best practices of high-profile organizations. It also includes 20 all-new or updated original case studies. (shrink)

What sorts of things really exist, in the world or out of it? What can we know about them? How do your thoughts and words relate to reality? What are human beings? What do their freedom and consciousness amount to? How should people act? What would a just society be like? These are the perennial problems of philosophy, which have been examined and debated for thousands of years and are still confronted by philosophers today. In his superb general introduction to (...) contemporary philosophy and its concerns, Anthony O'Hear shows how differing answers to these questions lead to differing conceptions of ourselves and the world. (shrink)

The phenomenon of action in which the mind moves the body has puzzled philosophers over the centuries. In this new edition of a classic work of analytical philosophy, Brian O'Shaughnessy investigates bodily action and attempts to resolve some of the main problems. His expanded and updated discussion examines the scope of the will and the conditions in which it makes contact with the body, and investigates the epistemology of the body. He sheds light upon the strangely intimate relation of awareness (...) in which we stand to our own bodies, doing so partly through appeal to the concept of the body-image. The result is a new and strengthened emphasis on the vitally important function of the bodily will as a transparently intelligible bridge between mind and body, and the proposal of a dual aspect theory of the will. (shrink)

Although vast and complex, the universe is orderly in many ways, and conditions at its beginning were right for the eventual evolution of life on this planet. But with life there is death, and with sentient life there is great pain and suffering, often with no apparent justification or purpose. Taking these things together, is it reasonable to conclude that the universe was brought about by God? Moreover, does the magnitude of seemingly pointless suffering square with the idea that God (...) exists, or is it good reason to think there is no God? These questions come up for many people, not just religious believers, and are examined in this engaging and thought-provoking book. Starting out with no pre-disposition to theism, atheism, or agnosticism, God, Evil, and Design takes up these questions in order to see where an impartial investigation leads. To achieve impartiality, the reader is invited to simulate ignorance insofar as his or her own religious preference is concerned. With this approach, God, Evil, and Design provides both a fresh look at important and controversial issues in philosophy and an excellent introduction to the contemporary debates surrounding them. Lively and non-technical, this book will be accessible to anyone with an interest in these topics. (shrink)

Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempt to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a `constructivist' vindication of reason and a moral vision (...) in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, automony and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasises differences between Kant's ethics and recent 'Kantian' ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. This reassessment will add significantly to the understanding of Kantian practical philosophy. (shrink)

In this first systematic reconstruction of the concept of human flourishing, Eri Mountbatten-O'Malley addresses the central problems with the treatment of the concept in psychology, education, policy and science. He develops a sophisticated methodology of conceptual analysis and makes the case for paying closer attention to complex human contexts, purposes and uses. Re-humanizing current research on the concept that is technicalized and detached from ordinary uses, this volume takes the 'human' in conceptions of human flourishing seriously.