ABSTRACT Journalists often take themselves as having a moral duty to protect their sources. If the sources in question leak information from government departments, government ministers will consider themselves as having the moral right to demand that the journalists disclose the identity of those sources. This creates conflicts of value between what journalists and ministers consider to be right. It is argued not only that traditional moral theories cannot resolve such moral conflicts, but that they are in a sense a (...) good thing. A world in which the conflicts occur may be considered to be better than one in which they are prevented from occurring, for one can expect to have both effective journalism and effective government only in the former. The most important consequence of this view is that it makes the professional ethics of journalism into something more than the mere application of universal moral rules to the various situations in which those who work in the profession are liable to find themselves. (shrink)

The original edition of this directory of professional codes of conduct in the United Kingdom was the first reference book to give information on more than a handful of codes. For the second edition the work has been greatly extended and revised, thereby reflecting both the ever-increasing number of codes and the ongoing interest in them. The main part of the book lists alphabetically nearly 500 UK organizations with codes in use, an increase of some 30 per cent on the (...) previous edition. Each entry gives the name, address, telephone and fax numbers of an organization and either reproduces its code verbatim (to make a total of about 200) or summarizes the content. Approximately 80 per cent of the codes or summaries have undergone changes since first publication. The comprehensive introduction looks at the development, scope and purpose of codes, recent trends and codes in an international context amongst other points, while the extensive index provides an easy and useful approach by topic. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Journalists often take themselves as having a moral duty to protect their sources. If the sources in question leak information from government departments, government ministers will consider themselves as having the moral right to demand that the journalists disclose the identity of those sources. This creates conflicts of value between what journalists and ministers consider to be right. It is argued not only that traditional moral theories cannot resolve such moral conflicts, but that they are in a sense a (...) good thing. A world in which the conflicts occur may be considered to be better than one in which they are prevented from occurring, for one can expect to have both effective journalism and effective government only in the former. The most important consequence of this view is that it makes the professional ethics of journalism (and, by implication, those of other professions) into something more than the mere application of universal moral rules to the various situations in which those who work in the profession are liable to find themselves. (shrink)

One of the most frequently discussed passages from Locke's An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding is that which occurs in IV.vii.9, where he writes:… the Ideas first in the Mind, ‘tis evident, are those of particular Things, from whence, by slow degrees, the Understanding proceeds to some few general ones; which being taken from the ordinary and familiar Objects of Sense, are settled in the Mind, with general Names to them. Thus particular Ideas are first received and distinguished, and so (...) Knowledge got about them: and next to them, the less general, or specifick, which are next to particular. For abstract Ideas are not so obvious or easie to Children, or the yet unexercised Mind, as particular ones. If they seem so to grown Men, ’tis only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. For when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find, that general Ideas are Fictions and Contrivances of the Mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves, as we are apt to imagine. For example, Does it not require some pains and skill to form the general Idea of a Triangle, for it must be neither Oblique, nor Rectangle, neither Equilateral, Equicrural, nor Scalenon; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot exist; an Idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent Ideas are put together.I shall not pretend that what Locke is claiming in this passage is wholly clear, nor shall I try to defend the views expressed in it. My intention is to show that what he says here has been widely misinterpreted. It has become common to treat the contents of the passage as aberrant; as presenting a ridiculous variant on his main thesis on abstraction, or that very thesis elaborated with a foolish rhetorical flourish. But what is said in this passage is not something said elsewhere, nor is it an alternative to something said elsewhere. Here, and nowhere else, Locke shows awareness of implications for his doctrine of abstraction, of views he holds about simple ideas. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Public companies in most countries are legally required to publish annual accounts, and these are widely used for making financial decisions. To prevent users of accounts being misled into making disastrous decisions, all major Western countries have introduced controls on the ways accounts are presented. By British and EEC law a company's accounts must give a ‘true and fair view’ of its financial state. It has become widely accepted that if accounts are prepared according to standards drawn up by (...) the accounting profession itself, then they can be considered as being ‘true and fair’. In this paper it is argued that such an interpretation of ‘true and fair’ gives inadequate protection to users. How users' interests might be better protected is discussed. Finally, it is suggested that Rawls’ notion of a ‘veil of ignorance’ could be used to ensure that in the preparation of accounts equal regard is paid to the interests of different types of user. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.4 (2003) 561-562 [Access article in PDF] Gianni Paganini, Miguel Benítez, and James Dybikowski, editors. Scepticisme, Clandestinité et Libre Pensée. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002. Pp. 382. Cloth, €60.00. This book consists of papers from two Tables rondes held in Dublin in 1999 on the occasion of the Tenth International Congress on the Enlightenment. The contributors are: Paganini, Benítez, Dybikowski, Alan Charles Kors, Winfried (...) Schröder, José R. Maia Neto, Adam Sutcliffe, Justin Champion, Antony McKenna, Lorenzo Bianchi, Christine Berkvens-Stevelinck, Pierre Lurbe, Stephen David Snobelen, Nigel Aston, and Stuart Brown. There is remarkably little overlap among the papers and Paganini has clearly insisted on very [End Page 561] high standards. Because of space limitations, I shall focus on several of the general themes which run through the book rather than on individual contributions.Despite the phenomenal success Richard Popkin and collaborators like the late Charles B. Schmitt, Giorgio Tonelli, and Ezequiel de Olaso have had in documenting the amazing impact of skepticism in the Renaissance and in the years up to the Enlightenment, this volume demonstrates that skepticism, that many-faceted force, continued throughout the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. After Bayle, and the application of his special forms of skepticism to theological topics—forms which were often employed, contrary to Bayle's probable intentions, in defense of atheism—skepticism went "underground." A large variety of literature was circulated in manuscript form, the clandestine literature of the period. The lesson which this conference celebrates is that skepticism did not cease being a major cultural force. Thus there is, thanks to the philosophical dimension of the clandestine literature in the eighteenth century, a transition from Christian rationalism to an anti-Christian rationalism.Major figures of the Enlightenment were, of course, well-acquainted with skepticism, e.g., Berkeley, Voltaire, Hume, Crousaz, Condillac, Reid, and Kant. Not surprisingly, the major topics discussed in these papers center around skepticism, fideism and atheism, proofs for the existence of God, and the status of the "preambles" to the faith. These all receive careful attention. The tension between the arguments for Christian Pyrrhonism versus anti-Christian rationalism runs through many of these papers. And of course Bayle's points of view on both sides of the Christian debate appear in much of the clandestine literature. The matter of the immortality of the soul is carefully discussed. What is the status of this doctrine? Is it a question of Church dogma or is it another belief to be discarded in the light of reason?The connection perceived to hold between atheism and political legitimacy are explored in several papers. In the seventeenth century, Locke would exclude atheists from the body politic, in part because they were unable to truthfully swear an oath. Atheists were perceived as a danger for many eighteenth-century figures and the political need to suppress atheism was widely understood and accepted by those in the various religious establishments. Bayle's two-century-old attempt to break the putative logical tie between morality and religion failed in his own day, and despite the efforts of the authors of clandestine philosophical literature, the intimate link Bayle tried to break seems to be stronger than ever in much of the world today. It is interesting that the United States is virtually the only industrial and democratic society in which atheists are virtually precluded from being political candidates in federal, and probably most local, elections. Among other things, the papers in this volume help one to understand just how difficult breaking free from theological constraints in the interest of political freedom has proved to be. Harry McFarland Bracken Arizona State University, Tempe... (shrink)

One of the most frequently discussed passages from Locke's An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding is that which occurs in IV.vii.9, where he writes:… the Ideas first in the Mind, ‘tis evident, are those of particular Things, from whence, by slow degrees, the Understanding proceeds to some few general ones; which being taken from the ordinary and familiar Objects of Sense, are settled in the Mind, with general Names to them. Thus particular Ideas are first received and distinguished, and so (...) Knowledge got about them: and next to them, the less general, or specifick, which are next to particular. For abstract Ideas are not so obvious or easie to Children, or the yet unexercised Mind, as particular ones. If they seem so to grown Men, ’tis only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. For when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find, that general Ideas are Fictions and Contrivances of the Mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves, as we are apt to imagine. For example, Does it not require some pains and skill to form the general Idea of a Triangle, for it must be neither Oblique, nor Rectangle, neither Equilateral, Equicrural, nor Scalenon; but all and none of these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect, that cannot exist; an Idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent Ideas are put together.I shall not pretend that what Locke is claiming in this passage is wholly clear, nor shall I try to defend the views expressed in it. My intention is to show that what he says here has been widely misinterpreted. It has become common to treat the contents of the passage as aberrant; as presenting a ridiculous variant on his main thesis on abstraction, or that very thesis elaborated with a foolish rhetorical flourish. But what is said in this passage is not something said elsewhere, nor is it an alternative to something said elsewhere. Here, and nowhere else, Locke shows awareness of implications for his doctrine of abstraction, of views he holds about simple ideas. (shrink)

With the resurgence in recent years of Hegelian studies a veritable spate of new translations have appeared of that philosopher’s works. For a long time we have had Wallace’s inimitable version of the lesser Logic and the main text of the Philosophy of Mind. We have had also Johnson and Struther’s translation of the greater Logic, Baillie’s Phenomenology, the History of Philosophy done by E. S. Haldane and The Philosophy of History by Sibree, not to mention various fragmentary editions of (...) the Introduction. Besides these there have been Sir Malcolm Knox’s excellent translations of the Rechtsphilosophie and, more recently, of Lectures on Aesthetics. But in the last few years A. V. Miller has given us a new and much improved version of the Science of Logic and the hitherto untranslated Philosophy of Nature as well as a new and revised edition of Wallace’s Encyclopaedia Logic and his Philosophy of Mind with the addition now of the Zusätze in English. At the same time another translation of the Naturphilosophie by Petry appeared, with voluminous historical and explanatory notes. Now attention is being given to the earlier works, and new translations have appeared, under the imprint of the State University of New York Press, of Hegel’s Differenz des Fichteschen und Schellingschen Systems der Philosophic and Glauben und Wissen, by Walter Cerf and Henry S. Harris, supplementing the Early Theological Writings earlier provided by Knox and Kroner. (shrink)

Ferrater Mora's paper is devoted to the thesis that man makes his own life--a person constituting himself historically. Harris's lecture is a two-pronged attack on contemporary analytic philosophy. One part of the argument attempts to show that the enterprise is self-refuting, based on an epistemology of naive positivistic empiricism which most of its present proponents have themselves rejected. The other part of the argument is ad hominem, showing the urgent necessity for a synthetic and constructive philosophy which will be (...) able to develop a way of life and system of values capable of stemming the drift toward nuclear self-annihilation. Prior, starting with the MacTaggart-Broad time puzzle and digressing backward through St. Augustine, offers an adverbial analysis of time and tenses, based on the theory that there are only things, not events, and that things are present tense, when they are.--W. G. E. (shrink)

This is a collection of essays in ethics and the philosophy of religion contributed by former students and colleagues of Professor W. Harry Jellema to honor his 70th birthday and his retirement from Calvin College. The essays are quite diverse but uniformly worthwhile. They are nicely balanced between such traditional approaches as in Veatch's "For a Renewal of an Old Departure in Ethics" and Parker's "Traditional Reason and Modern Reason," contemporary analytic approaches as in Plantinga's "Necessary Being" and Brouwer's "A (...) Restricted Motive Theory of Ethics," and historical studies such as Stob's "The Ethics of Jonathan Edwards" and De Boer's "First Steps in Mysticism." The quality and seriousness of the collection as a whole appropriately honors a man who has been one of the most devoted and effective teachers in the American philosophic community for the past fifty years.—W. G. E. (shrink)

‘One of the guilding thoughts throughout this work’, writes the author, ‘is that G.F.W. Hegel is the philosopher of the modern age’.

Taxometric analyses were applied to the construct of psychopathy (as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist) and to several variables reflecting antisocial childhood, adult criminality, and criminal recidivism. Subjects were 653 serious offenders assessed or treated in a maximum-security institution. Results supported the existence of a taxon underlying psychopathy. Childhood problem behaviors provided convergent evidence for the existence of the taxon. Adult criminal history variables were continuously distributed and were insufficient in themselves to detect the taxon.

To what extent do the mother's and father's jobs and occupational sex-typing influence the status and sex-typing of their children's occupation at first entry into the labour market? Referring to a database containing 5027 respondents of two merged Dutch surveys held between 1992 and 1995, this study finds that the effect of the mother's occupational status on her daughter's is significant, but smaller than either the effect of father's status on his son's or his daughter's status. The mother's occupational sex-typing (...) is related to her daughter's occupational sex-typing. The more female sex-typed the daughter's occupation, the lower her occupational status. In the same way, the father's occupational sex-typing is related to his son's occupational sex-typing. While the extension of the classical status attainment models by the mother's occupation and occupational sex-typing leads to interesting and new coefficients, the authors conclude that the more elementary classical model is not invalidated by these new perspectives. (shrink)

Harry G. Frankfurt begins his inquiry by asking, “What is it about human beings that makes it possible for us to take ourselves seriously?” Based on The Tanner Lectures in Moral Philosophy, Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting It Right delves into this provocative and original question. The author maintains that taking ourselves seriously presupposes an inward-directed, reflexive oversight that enables us to focus our attention directly upon ourselves, and “[it] means that we are not prepared to accept ourselves just as (...) we come. We want our thoughts, our feelings, our choices, and our behavior to make sense. We are not satisfied to think that our ideas are formed haphazardly, or that our actions are driven by transient and opaque impulses or by mindless decisions. We need to direct ourselves—or at any rate to believe that we are directing ourselves—in thoughtful conformity to stable and appropriate norms. We want to get things right.” The essays delineate two features that have a critical role to play in this: our rationality, and our ability to love. Frankfurt incisively explores the roles of reason and of love in our active lives, and considers the relation between these two motivating forces of our actions. The argument is that the authority of practical reason is less fundamental than the authority of love. Love, as the author defines it, is a volitional matter, that is, it consists in what we are actually committed to caring about. Frankfurt adds that “The object of love can be almost anything—a life, a quality of experience, a person, a group, a moral ideal, a nonmoral ideal, a tradition, whatever.” However, these objects and ideals are difficult to comprehend and often in conflict with each other. Moral principles play an important supporting role in this process as they help us develop and elucidate a vision that inspires our love. The first section of the book consists of the two lectures, which are entitled “Taking Ourselves Seriously” and “Getting It Right.” The second section consists of comments in response by Christine M. Korsgaard, Michael E. Bratman, and Meir Dan-Cohen. The book includes a preface by Debra Satz. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)