Contribution to a symposium on Alan Chalmer's The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone: How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms (Springer, Dordrecht, 2009).

The longstanding interest in business ethics has been given renewed emphasis by high profile scandals in the world of business and finance. At the same time, many economists--dissatisfied with the discipline's emphasis on self-interest and individualism and by the asocial nature of much economic theory--have sought to englarge the scope of economics by looking at ethical questions. In Ethics and Economic Affairs a group of interdisciplinary scholars provide contributions on international interest in this aspect of socio-economics and economic-psychology. The book (...) is divided into four parts. The first looks at Business Ethics and Management. Part Two enlivens the debate with empirical data. The third part examines the implications for economic theory and asks if the integration of ethics in the economy is possible or if they are fundamentally different systems. Part Four introduces perspectives from other disciplines, sets economics within its wider context and looks to the future. The editors have brought together a group of contributors from nine different countries and a broad range of disciplines, including: Norman E. Bowie, Monroe Burk, Amitai Etzioni, Richard H. Guerette, Ralph E. Miner, Lynne M. Rosansky, N. Craig Smith, Roberts Stallaerts, Philip Stone and John Tomer. (shrink)

What happens when an entire group of human beings is excluded from the definition of humanity? How is the power of language used to distort reality? What happens when a comprehensive economic plan is based on theft, brainwashing, slave labor, and murder? These and other philosophical questions about the Holocaust are contemplated in Contemporary Portraits of Auschwitz. In 1988, a group of philosophers who had survived the Holocaust, or had known people at the Auschwitz death camp, decided to found an (...) organization that would examine the philosophical implications of Shoah: the Society for the Philosophic Study of Genocide and the Holocaust. Noting that the history and the personal horror stories had been told and retold, SPSGH's founders Sander Lee, Berel Lang, and Alan Rosenberg argued that too little study had been so far devoted to the philosophy of Hitler's final solution and other genocides. Auschwitz problematized the Enlightenment concept of humanity, and other concepts. The perfection of state-sponsored and -administered mass death issued in new forms of language, moral indifference, and forgetting. Philosophy often even fails to mention the Holocaust in discussions of National Socialism. And the disaster of Auschwitz has been largely neutralized by the normalization of a "ruined" language. This volume includes essays in several areas: Witnesses and Testimonies; Morality and Ethics; Art and Poetry; History and Memory; and The Crisis of Representation. Contributors are Karyn Ball, Eve Bannet, Debra Bergoffen, James Bernauer, Klaus Dorner, Jennifer N. Fink, Roger Fjellstrom, Ruth Liberman, Burkhard Liebsch, Alan Milchman, Raj Sampath, Paul Sars, Hans Seigfried, Thomas W. Simon, Dan Stone, Peter Strasser, Frans van Peperstratten, Erik M. Vogt, Andrew Weinstein, and others. (shrink)

The essays in this volume treat topics from education to publishing, from academic freedom to political activism, from Russell's possible adoption of new communication modes (were he alive today) to the representation of his life and ideas in fiction. They reflect the engagement of Bertrand Russell in public affairs over three quarters of a century. They also reflect the diverse interestes that bring scholars together in the Russell Society to study his manifold works. The consistently first-rate papers in this collection (...) serve as a powerful reminder of the breadth and depth of the contributions from one of the leading philosophers of the Twentieth Century. Those of us familiar with Russell's writings have always been impressed by the range of topics that concerned Bertie. His commitment to the examined life, with all its foibles, shines bright in this set of essays. This text is an invaluable resource for students of Russell's life and thought (Kenneth Blackwell and Alan Schwerin). -Publisher description. (shrink)

Drawn from the archives of major Zen centers in America and interviews with some of the most seminal figures of American Zen, including Philip Kapleau, Bernie Glassman, Robert Aitken, Gary Snyder, Alan Watts, and Walter Nowick, Murphy presents moments of insight and wisdom, quotable quotes, and the humor of Zen as it has flowered in America over the last hundred years.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Clinical CommentaryChong Siow Ann, Associate ProfessorDr. G appears to experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia, which is arguably the most severe mental disorder and which afflicts about one in a hundred people. This is a psychotic disorder that causes disturbances and distortions in thinking, including neurocognitive impairments, perception and behaviour. There is no cure for this often devastating disorder. Current antipsychotic medications can alleviate some of the symptoms but it often (...) comes at a price as these antipsychotics have burdensome side effects.A feature of this disorder is anosognosia, which is a lack of awareness or “insight” that an illness is present. This lack of insight presents a particular challenge because these individuals would, as in the case of Dr. G, refuse needed treatment as they do not perceive that they are ill. This is not necessarily an all-or-none phenomenon but is rather more complex and multidimensional; there might be an unawareness or recognition on behalf of the patient that they are suffering from a mental illness, the failure to appreciate the necessity of treatment; and/or the inability to recognise and define the psychotic symptoms like unusual thoughts and hallucinations as signs of illness1 and in many instances, all three are present. It is also by no means uncommon. Studies have found that between 60% and 80% of people with schizophrenia lack awareness of their illness to varying degrees.2This phenomenon remains an enigma. Some regard it as a form of psychological defence against the harsh reality of a psychotic illness — awareness of having a chronic and devastating illness might lead to demoralisation, hopelessness and suicide.3 Recent research, however, [End Page 250] indicates that this psychological denial plays a small part, if any, and instead has found an association with certain neuropsychological and neurocognitive deficits,4 as well as functional and structural brain abnormalities in the frontal lobe of the brain.5The prevailing clinical view thus is that this is an intrinsic and organic aspect of the schizophrenic illness which has nothing to do with wilfulness but rather the incapacity to perceive the presence of the illness. Edwin Fuller Torrey, an eminent psychiatrist and executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Foundation, calls anosognosia the “single largest reason why individuals with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder do not take their medications”, and he has remarked that “to keep talking about civil liberty is illogical. Patients are anything but free when they’re at the beck and call of their own delusions”.6It is also this view that it is a product of a brain disorder that some — particularly patients — find unacceptable. At one level, it does not take into context the person’s own experiences, and at a deeper level it calls into question the conception of the self with its capacity to exercise judgements and the autonomy to make decisions.This is a perennial ethical issue in psychiatry when people with severe mental illnesses refuse treatment. This becomes a Catch-22 situation where part of the illness that needs treatment is also preventing any treatment to be given: implicit in the principle of informed consent for treatment is that the person should be aware of the nature and course of their illness and acknowledge the need for treatment. While there are laws for involuntary commitment, the bar is usually high in that there must be a clear and present risk of harm to the person or others. Alan Stone, a professor of law and psychiatry at Harvard University proposed a possible justification for involuntary treatment based on his “thank-you theory” which assumes that patients will become well and subsequently agree that the intervention was in their best interests but research suggests that only half of these patients would admit so.7One suggested mechanism is the use of advance directives — psychiatry’s version of the living will in which people can specify what sort of medical care they would like should they become mentally unwell and unable to exercise appropriate judgement. An intrinsic part of this might include a “Ulysses contract” — just as Ulysess instructed his crew to lash him to the mast of the his ship so that he could... (shrink)

Alan Turing’s influence on subsequent research in artificial intelligence is undeniable. His proposed test for intelligence remains influential. In this paper, I propose to analyze his conception of intelligence by relying on traditional close reading and language technology. The Turing test is interpreted as an instance of conceptual engineering that rejects the role of the previous linguistic usage, but appeals to intuition pumps instead. Even though many conceive his proposal as a prime case of operationalism, it is more plausibly (...) viewed as a stepping stone toward a future theoretical construal of intelligence in mechanical terms. To complete this picture, his own conceptual network is analyzed through the lens of distributional semantics over the corpus of his written work. As it turns out, Turing’s conceptual engineering of the notion of intelligence is indeed quite similar to providing a precising definition with the aim of revising the usage of the concept. However, that is not its ultimate aim: Turing is after a rich theoretical understanding of thinking in mechanical, i.e., computational, terms. (shrink)

The desire to minimize the number of individual new entities postulated is often referred to as quantitative parsimony. Its influence on the default hypotheses formulated by scientists seems undeniable. I argue that there is a wide class of cases for which the preference for quantitatively parsimonious hypotheses is demonstrably rational. The justification, in a nutshell, is that such hypotheses have greater explanatory power than less parsimonious alternatives. My analysis is restricted to a class of cases I shall refer to as (...) additive. Such cases involve the postulation of a collection of qualitatively identical individual objects which collectively explain some particular observed phenomenon. Especially clear examples of this sort occur in particle physics.1Introduction2Particle physics: a case study3Three kinds of simplicity4Explanatory power5Explanation and non‐observation6Parsimony and scientific methodology7Conclusions. (shrink)

“Sticks and stones will break my bones,” Justice Scalia pronounced from the bench in oral arguments in Schenck v. Pro-Choice Network, “but words can never hurt me. That's the First Amendment,” he added. Jay Alan Sekulow, the lawyer for the petitioners, anti-abortion protesters who had been enjoined from moving closer than fifteen feet away from those entering an abortion facility, was obviously pleased by this characterization of the right to free speech, replying, “That's certainly our position on it, and (...) that is exactly correct …”. (shrink)

In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking ...

The themes of the book—the value of knowledge and epistemic appraisal broadly conceived—are introduced in this chapter. The Meno problem is explained and related to the swamping problem as discussed by Jonathan Kvanvig. The stance of virtue epistemologists is outlined. This is followed by a brief discussion of the role of truth in epistemic appraisal. The remainder of the introduction summarises the contributions to the book.

This book is a major contribution to the history of analytic philosophy in general and of logical positivism in particular. It provides the first detailed and comprehensive study of Rudolf Carnap, one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century philosophy. The focus of the book is Carnap's first major work: Der logische Aufbau der Welt. It reveals tensions within the context of German epistemology and philosophy of science in the early twentieth century. Alan Richardson argues that Carnap's move to (...) philosophy of science in the 1930s was largely an attempt to dissolve the tension in his early epistemology. This book fills a significant gap in the literature on the history of twentieth-century philosophy. It will be of particular importance to historians of analytic philosophy, philosophers of science, and historians of science. (shrink)

While the image of the slave as the antithesis of the freeman is central to republican freedom, it is striking to note that slaves themselves have not contributed to how this condition is understood. The result is a one-sided conception of both freedom and slavery, which leaves republicanism unable to provide an equal and robust protection for historically outcast people. I draw on the work of Frederick Douglass – long overlooked as a significant contributor to republican theory – to show (...) one way why this is so. Focusing the American Revolution, the subsequent republican government established new political institutions to maintain the collective interests of the whole population. The political revolution was held in place by processes of public reason that reflected the values and ideas of the people that had rebelled. The black population, however, had not been part of this revolution. After emancipation, black Americans were required to accept terms of citizenship that had already been defined, leaving them socially dominated, subject to the prejudices and biases within the prevailing ideas of public discourse. Douglass argued that republican freedom under law is always dependent on a more fundamental revolution, that he calls a ‘radical revolution in thought’, in which the entire system of social norms and practices are reworked together by members of all constituent social groups – women and men, black and white, rich and poor – so that it reflects a genuinely collaborative achievement. Only then can we begin the republican project of contestatory freedom as independence or non-domination that today’s republicans take for granted. (shrink)

Alan H. Goldman argues for the internalist or subjectivist view of practical reasons on the grounds that it is simpler, more unified, and more comprehensible ...

Alison Stone offers a feminist defence of the idea that sexual difference is natural, providing a new interpretation of the later philosophy of Luce Irigaray. She defends Irigaray's unique form of essentialism and her rethinking of the relationship between nature and culture, showing how Irigaray's ideas can be reconciled with Judith Butler's performative conception of gender, through rethinking sexual difference in relation to German Romantic philosophies of nature. This is the first sustained attempt to connect feminist conceptions of embodiment (...) to German idealist and Romantic accounts of nature. Not merely an interpretation of Irigaray, this book also presents an original feminist perspective on nature and the body. It will encourage debate on the relations between sexual difference, essentialism, and embodiment. (shrink)

The first book length study of property-owning democracy, Republic of Equals argues that a society in which capital is universally accessible to all citizens is uniquely placed to meet the demands of justice. Arguing from a basis in liberal-republican principles, this expanded conception of the economic structure of society contextualizes the market to make its transactions fair. The author shows that a property-owning democracy structures economic incentives such that the domination of one agent by another in the market is structurally (...) impossible. The result is a renovated form of capitalism in which the free market is no longer a threat to social democratic values, but is potentially convergent with them. It is argued that a property-owning democracy has advantages that give it priority over rival forms of social organization such as welfare state capitalism and market socialist institutions. The book also addresses the currently high levels of inequality in the societies of the developed West to suggest a range of policies that target the "New Inequality" of our times. For this reason, the work engages not only with political philosophers such as John Rawls, Philip Pettit and John Tomasi, but also with the work of economists and historians such as Anthony B. Atkinson, François Bourguignon, Jacob S. Hacker, Lane Kenworthy, and Thomas Piketty. (shrink)

When does a woman give valid consent to sexual relations? When does her consent render it morally or legally permissible for a man to have sexual relations with her? Why is sexual consent generally regarded as an issue about female consent? And what is the moral significance of consent? These are some of the questions discussed in this important book, which will appeal to a wide readership in philosophy, law, and the social sciences. Alan Wertheimer develops a theory of (...) consent to sexual relations that applies to both law and morality in the light of the psychology of sexual relations, the psychology of perpetrators, and the psychology of the victims. He considers a wide variety of difficult cases such as coercion, fraud, retardation, and intoxication. We can all agree that 'no' means 'no'. This book suggests that the difficult question is whether 'yes' means 'yes'. (shrink)

Aristotle did not see a sharp contrast between the psychological and the physical. He viewed the physical as just the natural, and treats the psychological as part of the physical. This essay attempts to explain why this is so, and presents observations about Aristotle’s framework. It explores the relation of hylomorphism to functionalism, and argues against funtionalist interpretations of Aristotle due to the belief that Aristotle was confronting a different set of concerns and issues.

I advocate a method that strives to interpret important historical figures in philosophy as presenting philosophical systems of thought. This kind of systematic interpretation, as I shall call it, begins with the supposition that the philosophy being interpreted is itself systematic. This sometimes requires recovering the obscured systematicity. Section I gives a positive characterization of systematic interpretations. Section II notes some of the special obstacles that these interpretations must overcome if they are to be successful. Section III gives a brief (...) sketch of how one might systematically approach Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. That text is a good test case because Locke professes systematicity, but historians have produced daunting arguments for the conclusion that the text fails to present a coherent system. (shrink)

Originally published in 1972, Should Trees Have Standing? was a rallying point for the then burgeoning environmental movement, launching a worldwide debate on the basic nature of legal rights that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, in the 35th anniversary edition of this remarkably influential book, Christopher D. Stone updates his original thesis and explores the impact his ideas have had on the courts, the academy, and society as a whole. At the heart of the book is an eminently (...) sensible, legally sound, and compelling argument that the environment should be granted legal rights. For the new edition, Stone explores a variety of recent cases and current events--and related topics such as climate change and protecting the oceans--providing a thoughtful survey of the past and an insightful glimpse at the future of the environmental movement. This enduring work continues to serve as the definitive statement as to why trees, oceans, animals, and the environment as a whole should be bestowed with legal rights, so that the voiceless elements in nature are protected for future generations. (shrink)

Alison Stone investigates how human existence is conditioned by the fact that it begins with birth. How does birth shape the way we are in the world, and the meaning of our lives? Philosophers have written much about death, but neglected birth. Stone brings natality into philosophical view, offering fascinating insights into the human condition.

Number concepts must support arithmetic inference. Using this principle, it can be argued that the integer concept of exactly ONE is a necessary part of the psychological foundations of number, as is the notion of the exact equality - that is, perfect substitutability. The inability to support reasoning involving exact equality is a shortcoming in current theories about the development of numerical reasoning. A simple innate basis for the natural number concepts can be proposed that embodies the arithmetic principle, supports (...) exact equality and also enables computational compatibility with real- or rational-valued mental magnitudes. (shrink)

Whose Keeper? is a profound and creative treatise on modernity and its challenge to social science. Alan Wolfe argues that modern liberal democracies, such as the United States and Scandinavia, have broken with traditional sources of mortality and instead have relied upon economic and political frameworks to define their obligations to one another. Wolfe calls for reinvigorating a sense of community and thus a sense of obligation to the larger society.

What is law? How is legal responsibility defined? How does law reflect moral judgment? Why are law's definitions uncertain and conflicted? Basic questions for liberal law and criminal justice - what could they have to do with the forgotten historical figure of the Beautiful Soul? Starting from concrete legal issues, Alan Norrie develops a critical vision of law in its relation to morality and socio-historical context. Liberal law, he argues, is marked by splits and contradictions (antinomies), signs of something (...) missed. Traced historically, such conflicts can be read today in law's treatment of legality and justice, judgment and responsibility. A critical understanding must also be self-critical. From splits in law, Norrie moves to the split in critique: between its socio-historical and ethical forms. Drawing on critical realism and deconstruction, on the dialectics of Hegel, Adorno and Bhaskar, he argues for a form of critical thought that is at once historical and ethical. Thinking critically about critique finally leads to the Beautiful Soul, and its unexpected relation to law. These essays will be of interest to academics and advanced students of legal theory; criminal law, criminology and criminal justice; law and social theory; and critical legal studies. (shrink)

This remarkably clear and comprehensive account of empirical knowledge will be valuable to all students of epistemology and philosophy. The author begins from an explanationist analysis of knowing—a belief counts as knowledge if, and only if, its truth enters into the best explanation for its being held. Defending common sense and scientific realism within the explanationist framework, Alan Goldman provides a new foundational approach to justification. The view that emerges is broadly empiricist, counteracting the recently dominant trend that rejects (...) that framework entirely. Topics treated include the Gettier problem, the nature of explanation and inductive inference, the justification of foundations for knowledge in terms of inference to the best explanation, the possibility of realist interpretations of contemporary science, reference, and the relations between empirical psychology and epistemology. Professor Goldman defends the need for a foundational theory of justification and presents a version that refutes standard criticisms of that doctrine. His defense of realism takes into account contemporary advances in semantics and philosophy of science. It attempts to clarify the kinds of skeptical argument the philosopher must take seriously, without succumbing to them. While recent epistemology has tended to dismiss the traditional foundational approach, it has not provided a suitable alternative. Goldman breaks new ground by adapting that approach within his explanationist, inductive theory. (shrink)

In 1996, Alan Sokal, a Professor of Physics at New York University, wrote a paper for the cultural-studies journal Social Text, entitled: 'Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity'. It was reviewed, accepted and published. Sokal immediately confessed that the whole article was a hoax - a cunningly worded paper designed to expose and parody the style of extreme postmodernist criticism of science. The story became front-page news around the world and triggered fierce and wide-ranging controversy. (...) -/- Sokal is one of the most powerful voices in the continuing debate about the status of evidence-based knowledge. In Beyond the Hoax he turns his attention to a new set of targets - pseudo-science, religion, and misinformation in public life. 'Whether my targets are the postmodernists of the left, the fundamentalists of the right, or the muddle-headed of all political and apolitical stripes, the bottom line is that clear thinking, combined with a respect for evidence, are of the utmost importance to the survival of the human race in the twenty-first century.' The book also includes a hugely illuminating annotated text of the Hoax itself, and a reflection on the furore it provoked. (shrink)

Causal relations among components and activities are intentionally misrepresented in mechanistic explanations found routinely across the life sciences. Since several mechanists explicitly advocate accurately representing factors that make a difference to the outcome, these idealizations conflict with the stated rationale for mechanistic explanation. We argue that these idealizations signal an overlooked feature of reasoning in molecular and cell biology—mechanistic explanations do not occur in isolation—and suggest that explanatory practices within the mechanistic tradition share commonalities with model-based approaches prevalent in population (...) biology. (shrink)

The Greek text used was that of the English edition of Hugh G. Evelyn-White (HESIOD, 1914). The translations of the Theogony of Ana Lúcia Silveira Cerqueira and Maria Therezinha Áreas Lyra (HESÍODO, 1986) have been consulted for comparison, José Antonio Alves Torrano (HESÍODO, 1995), Hugh G. Evelyn-White (HESIOD, 1914) and José Marcos Mariani de Macedo (MACEDO, 2010). In addition, this translation was based on the translations of the Homeric Hymns, Edvanda Bonavina da Rosa et alia (2010), and Trajano Vieira’s Odyssey (...) (HOMERO, 2011). (shrink)

Free Speech is a philosophical treatment of a topic which is of immense importance to all of us. Writing with great clarity, wit, and genuine concern, Alan Haworth situates the main arguments for free speech by tracing their relationship to contemporary debates in politics and political philosophy, and their historical roots to earlier controversies over religious toleration. Free Speech will appeal to anyone with an interest in philosophy, politics and current affairs.