In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Criminal Law, Pain Relief, and Physician Aid in DyingFaye Girsh, Ed.D., Executive DirectorMadam:The article by Cantor and Thomas on “Pain Relief, Acceleration of Death, and Criminal Law” (KIEJ, June 1996) was a tortured attempt to develop criteria for the humane and compassionate physician who tries to serve the needs of a patient in unremitting pain. There are three areas that merit comment.The authors dealt with pain medications that (...) might have the undesirable side effect of causing death. They did not mention tolerance, which usually occurs in a patient with chronic pain and which would require exceedingly high doses to be effective. They did not mention barbiturates, which are preferable to opiates in causing death and which are used increasingly by compassionate physicians to answer the pleas of their suffering patients, but for which there is no excuse about alleviating pain. Would the criminal law just call the prescription of a lethal dose of barbiturates a reckless act and require conviction? Fortunately, juries, as the authors point out, do not balance these formulas on the head of a pin. When they see the circumstances under which these doctors do help their patients, they choose to nullify the law and would ignore the suggestions made in this article.The authors refer to the “consent” of the patient. They do not mention that these doctors are operating with more than consent; they are administering these medications because suffering patients are begging them to put them out of their pain and the indignities of the dying process. The article discusses the process as though it were the same as consent to elective surgery. These patients—with AIDS, cancer, and hopeless neurological degeneration—are not simply agreeing to a procedure; they are desperately seeking a way out. If the criminal law were to develop criteria for physician aid in dying, certainly one of them should be the active, witnessed, repeated request of such a patient for a certain, quick, painless, gentle death.The third point is that physicians do not face prosecution when administering no treatment to a patient whose life could be saved with treatment but who chooses not to receive it. This has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court; no criteria for suffering, alternatives, terminality, justifiability, or unbearability are required. The doctor can stand by while the patient dies what may be a protracted, difficult death, but it is within the law. What matters in this situation is the decision of the patient to refuse treatment, and that is absolute. How ironic that the patient who cannot refuse treatment must, with his or her doctor, jump through all these hoops to achieve a peaceful death.One worries that the physician who must balance the risk of “risky pain relief” against the accusation of recklessness will err in the direction of allowing [End Page 103] the patient to bear the pain rather than help with a dose of analgesics that might be considered beyond the stipulated “risk.”Why don’t we just be honest about it? Allow dying or hopelessly ill patients to make the decision about what they want by passing a carefully defined law allowing euthanasia rather than balancing the risk and trying to determine the “purpose” of the physician’s ministrations. We protect some patients from themselves while allowing others almost complete autonomy to make the choice of ending their lives. The authors were right in saying that proponents of rational laws consider this sheer hypocrisy.Faye Girsh, Executive DirectorHemlock Society U.S.A. Denver, COFaye Girsh misconceives our article’s objective as an “attempt to develop criteria” for the humane physician. Our goal in writing the paper was to analyze the current criminal law framework in the hope of sharpening debate and engendering normative critiques. We readily acknowledge tensions in the current legal framework and would support changes in that framework.Copyright © 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Brian Fay - The Ethics of History - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 677-678 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Brian Fay Wesleyan University David Carr, Thomas R. Flynn, and Rudolf A. Makkreel, editors. The Ethics of History. Northwestern University Topics in Historical Philosophy. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2004. Pp xvi + 263. Paper, $29.95. It is rare that every essay in a collection is well worth reading, (...) but that is the case in this illuminating and stimulating volume. Perhaps this should not be surprising, since its contributors comprise a virtual "Who's Who" of philosophers and intellectual historians who have contributed.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"A Mark ofthe Growing Mind is Veneration of Objects" (Ludwig Wittgenstein) Fay Horton Sawyier Introduction In book 1 of the Treatise,1 Hume directs his attention to two sets of concepts; one of these sets is what I think of as the "basic epistemological set" and the other as the "basic metaphysical or ontological set." Except for the idea of personal identity, the First Inquiry2 addresses the same arrays of (...) concerns. Within the "epistemological set" we find discussions ofknowledge, belief, origin of ideas, etc.; within the "metaphysical set"are seen space, time, identity, cause and effect, uniformity ofnature, external objects and so on.3 For the first (epistemological) set, Hume constructs a mode of analysis which depends crucially on the provenance of an idea or concept. Thatis, asit does forarthistorians today, authenticityortruth depends on how the thingin question came intoyour possession. Hume announces not only that every simple idea depends on and comes from its simple impression, but that the full understandingofa complexidea requires first factoring it into its simple components and then tracing them back to their impressions. Understanding is, so to speak, like displaying the family tree. It turns out that all of the members of the "metaphysical" set have dubious parentage. Even if one grants the accuracy and adequacy of Hume's factoring, we are left facing his demonstrations that for each metaphysical concept there are at least some elements with no clear ancestry from single impressions. In this wayHume directs our attention tohis questforhow suchideas(or such elements withinideas) are ever come by. Why do we attribute identity? Howcanwe assume thereisanecessary connection and apower? What can possibly bring us to imagine, even, that anything can be independent ofour perceptions? And so on. All ofthis is not only at the heart ofthe Humean enterprise inbook 1 ofthe Treatise ami theFirstInquiry butis well-known to anyone even modestly familiar with Hume's writings. The result of his powerful analyses is that these mysterious, illegitimate elements in the metaphysical concepts are generated within subjects exposed to repeated instances of, for example, pairings in time or place, similar sightings after temporal lapses and so on. The processes by which we Volume XVIII Number 2 315 FAY HORTON SAWYIER construct our categories as well as the elements out ofwhich we make them areimportantandin these cases were shown tobe developmental or time-dependent.4 Furthermore, since these processes and these resultant conceptshavebeen shown tohave been generated by us, they are uniquely quaUfied to demonstrate the nature of human nature, which was, after all, the subject ofthe Treatise? Having reminded ourselves ofthese extremely general features of Hume's exposition, I want now to isolate and to highlight some particular and peculiar features. 1.The subject upon whose mind or sensibilities paired and repeated events are presumed to impinge and by whose consequent conditioning these otherwise inexplicable concepts can be understood is always an adult male.6 2.The presentingsituation which is presumed to arise and repeatfor this adult male is always hypothetical and never observed. 3.Thisman'sconstructionofanyoneofthese concepts (like necessary connection) is always as his solution to a logical problem, his way-out ofa mental awkwardness or unease. 4.These adult male concept generators and logical problem solvers neverseem to doanything but sitstill and look around themselves.7 The fundamental character ofmy inquiry can be understood as a search for the (presumably deleterious) consequences of the four particular features noted above. Since the lives and experiences of young children are neglected and since acquisition of the basic metaphysical set is always initiated in early childhood, one may well hypothesize that Hume's results will be damaged or skewed. Intuitively, this would seem to be an obvious inference, but proof is needed that in some cases Hume did indeed misconstrue certain basic concepts and that the central factor in his shortfall was his neglect of the child's experience of concept development and acquisition. By contrast, his contemporary, Thomas Reid, remarked, "Could we obtain a distinct and full history of all that hath passed in the mind ofa child from thebeginning ofUfe and sensation, till it grows to the use ofreason... this would be a treasury of natural history, which would probably give... (shrink)

With the main work The Revolutions of Science, Thomas S. Kuhn became one of the most read and influential science theorists of the 20th century, and today Kuhn's mindset is part of the majority of science theory courses mandatory at any university course. Kuhn's concepts of paradigms, scientific revolutions and incommensurability have not only changed our view of science but have almost become part of the everyday language and are used far outside the world of science. The legacy of (...) Kuhn paints a picture of the importance Kuhn's thoughts have had to our understanding of the sciences. The authors begin with an introduction to Kuhn's life and work and to the many philosophical discussions that his work has spawned. Next follows a series of chapters outlining Kuhn's influence on the history of science and philosophy of science and his importance in sociology, physics, biology, geography, anthropology, psychology, linguistics and aesthetic sciences. The book is aimed at anyone studying or engaged in one of these subjects, or who wants to understand the debate about the sciences and their evolution over the last half-century. (shrink)

Thomas Sheehan’s attack on my book Heidegger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie, addressed neither the book’s topic nor its arguments. He instead highlighted a few isolated details in a sophistic and biased fashion. Moreover, his exposition was interspersed with ad personam insults not typically found in philosophical or scientific discussions. Although I had hitherto resolved not to respond to personal attacks, I owe it to the memory of Johannes Fritsche, who was also attacked by Sheehan, to take my (...) turn to speak and to thereby pay intellectual tribute to Professor Fritsche. The article returns to the interpretation of Being and Time and analyzes the meaning and connotations of Heidegger’s use of the German term Bodenlosigkeit. The key methodological issue concerns the need to study the semantic, historical, and political context of concepts instead of hiding these issues by reducing everything to a battle between dogmatic positions. (shrink)

Thomas Sheehan’s attack on my book Heidegger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie, addressed neither the book’s topic nor its arguments. He instead highlighted a few isolated details in a sophistic and biased fashion. Moreover, his exposition was interspersed with ad personam insults not typically found in philosophical or scientific discussions. Although I had hitherto resolved not to respond to personal attacks, I owe it to the memory of Johannes Fritsche, who was also attacked by Sheehan, to take my (...) turn to speak and to thereby pay intellectual tribute to Professor Fritsche. The article returns to the interpretation of Being and Time and analyzes the meaning and connotations of Heidegger’s use of the German term Bodenlosigkeit. The key methodological issue concerns the need to study the semantic, historical, and political context of concepts instead of hiding these issues by reducing everything to a battle between dogmatic positions. (shrink)

Thomas A. Fay Heidegger and the Formalization of Thought 1 Dagfinn F011esdal The Justification of Logic and Mathematics in Husserl's Phenomenology 25 Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock On Husserl's Distinction between State of Affairs and Situation of Affairs.... 35 David Woodruff Smith On Situations and States of Affairs 49 Charles W. Harvey, Jaakko Hintikka Modalization and Modalities................... 59 Gilbert T. Null Remarks on Modalization and Modalities 79 J. N. Mohanty Husserl's Formalism 93 Carl J. Posy Mathematics as a Transcendental Science (...) 107 vi Gian-carlo Rota Mathematics and the Task of Phenomenology 133 John Scalon "Tertium Non Datur: " Husserl's Conception of a Definite Multiplicity..... 139 Thomas M. Seebohm Psychologism Revisited 149 Gerald J. Massey Some Reflections on Psychologism 183 Robert S. Tragesser How Mathematical Foundation all but come about: A Report on Studies Toward a Phenomenological Critique of Godel's Views on Mathematical Intuition.. 195 Kenneth L. Manders On Geometric Intentionality 215 Dallas Willard Sentences which are True in Virtue of their Color... 225 John J. Drummond Willard and Husserl on Logical Form 243 Index of Names 257 Index of Subjects 259 PREFACE The phenomenology of logic and ideal objects is the topic of Husserl's Logical Investigations. This book determined the early development of the so called phenomenological movement. It is still the main source for many phenomenologists, even if they disagree with Husserl's transcendental turn and developed other phenomenological positions or positions beyond phenomenology he early sense. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ethics of HistoryBrian FayDavid Carr, Thomas R. Flynn, and Rudolf A. Makkreel, editors. The Ethics of History. Northwestern University Topics in Historical Philosophy. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2004. Pp xvi + 263. Paper, $29.95.It is rare that every essay in a collection is well worth reading, but that is the case in this illuminating and stimulating volume. Perhaps this should not be surprising, since its (...) contributors comprise a virtual "Who's Who" of philosophers and intellectual historians who have contributed significantly to the philosophical enterprise in general and to the philosophy of history in particular. Adding to the volume is the fact that the contributors come from varied perspectives: from the so-called 'analytic' tradition (Arthur Danto, Joseph Margolis) to the so-called 'continental' tradition (Jean-François Lyotard, John D. Caputo, Joan Copjec), [End Page 677] and to all manner of approaches along this continuum and that arguably even subvert it (Frank Ankersmit, Edith Wyschogrod, Allan Megill, Jörn Rüsen, Rudolf Makkreel, Thomas R. Flynn, and David Carr). The editors of the volume not only should be congratulated for putting it together (and for sponsoring the conference at Emory University on which it is based), but also for contributing important essays to it.So what are the issues addressed under the rubric of the "ethics of history"? One way to answer this is to focus on the questions the authors ask as they explore this topic:• What is the relationship of moral and political values to historical truth? (Ankersmit);• What is the relation between the ethical posture of historians and their role as narrators? (Wyschogrod);• How should the epistemology of historical investigation connect to the ethics of historical investigation (and what are these ethics)? (Megill);• "What basis in morality can we identify that makes truth a duty?" (Danto, 81);• "How are we to console the dead who are long since dead? How are we to repair their irreparable loss?" (Caputo, 93);• How can the lives or stories of the past still morally concern or speak to us today? (Copjec, who asks this question regarding Antigone);• How to represent transcendent moments—theophanic occasions of incarnational grace and saintly joy? That is, "Where can an absolute visit be situated or placed, in relation to a biography?" (Lyotard, 157, who asks this question by examining Augustine's Confessions);• Does the fact of our historicity (that, as selves, we are artifacts of history and understand ourselves as such) place peculiar ethical demands on us both as historical agents and as historical interpreters? (Margolis);• What are the responsibilities of historians to their profession? To their audience? To their subjects, those who have lived in the past? (Rüsen);• Is there any "inner connectedness" between the ethical and the historical that "justifies the idea of an ethics of history"? More specifically, what are the ethical conditions that make a hermeneutical history possible? (Makkreel, 214);• Can one be a "committed" historian? (Flynn);• Do the ways history resembles fiction (both make use of narrative and the imagination) render the moral obligation to tell the truth irrelevant for, or unrealizable by, history?. (Carr)In addressing these questions, the authors explore a number of central concepts that appear over and over in the volume, including truth, historicity, autonomy, objectivity, subjectivity, commitment, suffering, remembrance, and responsibility.Two general questions, posed in different ways by different authors, hold the center of the collection. First, given that objectivity conceived in terms of a simple correspondence in which historians empty themselves in order to record the past as it was is no longer intellectually tenable, what are the norms and values of history as a discipline that help distinguish it from propaganda? Second, given that history is about those who are dead, can historians be said to have obligations or responsibilities to them? For instance, should historians offer moral judgments about the evils that people have perpetrated on each other as a way of respecting those who have suffered? Is this a way historians can act responsibly toward their subjects? If not (and many in fact think not), then how else can we honor their suffering?Answers to these questions sometimes reveal deep disagreement (Flynn... (shrink)

Excerpt from The Two Bookes of Sr. Francis Bacon: Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Humane; To the King Ifhall fay is no amplification at ail5but a pofitiue and rhea {tired truth: which is55that there hath not beene fince Chrills time any King, or temporall Monarch which hath bin {0 learned in al literature and eruditi. On, din'ne and humane. For let a man {etiou y and diligently leuolue and penile the fucce ion of the Emperours ofkeme, (...) of w hich Caftr the Draator5 who lined lomeyeares before Chrili 5 and Marcus Automate: were the bell Learned 53nd fo dcfcend to the Empet ours ofgic 245of of the: W( 1} 5 and then to the i-ines of Emma sizzefiarglafia; Scot therefi 5 and hee (nail hade his iudgement is truely made. For it feemeth much in a King5if'by the com. Pendiout extraeirons or Other mens Wits and La. Bout 5 hee can take hold of any ipeificiall Orna ments andlhewes of Learning 5 or if hee conure. Name and preferre learning and learned men But to drinke indeed of the true Fountaynes oflearning5 n3y5to haue inch 3 fountayne of learning in him felfe5 in a King, and in a King borne 5 is altitoll a Miracle. And the more5 beeaule there is met in your Maiel'ty a rare Coniunetion 5 a well of Dunn: and fatted li terature, as of prephane and humane So as your Maiefiy llandeth inuelied of that triplicity 5 which in great veneration5was afcribed to the ancient Her me: 5 the power and fortune of a King 5 the know ledgeand illumination ol'a Prie 5 and the learnirg and vniuerfaliry of a phylofoplter. This propriety5 inherent and indiuiduall attribute in your Mait y. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Criminal Law, Pain Relief, and Physician Aid in DyingFaye Girsh, Ed.D., Executive DirectorMadam:The article by Cantor and Thomas on “Pain Relief, Acceleration of Death, and Criminal Law” (KIEJ, June 1996) was a tortured attempt to develop criteria for the humane and compassionate physician who tries to serve the needs of a patient in unremitting pain. There are three areas that merit comment.The authors dealt with pain medications that (...) might have the undesirable side effect of causing death. They did not mention tolerance, which usually occurs in a patient with chronic pain and which would require exceedingly high doses to be effective. They did not mention barbiturates, which are preferable to opiates in causing death and which are used increasingly by compassionate physicians to answer the pleas of their suffering patients, but for which there is no excuse about alleviating pain. Would the criminal law just call the prescription of a lethal dose of barbiturates a reckless act and require conviction? Fortunately, juries, as the authors point out, do not balance these formulas on the head of a pin. When they see the circumstances under which these doctors do help their patients, they choose to nullify the law and would ignore the suggestions made in this article.The authors refer to the “consent” of the patient. They do not mention that these doctors are operating with more than consent; they are administering these medications because suffering patients are begging them to put them out of their pain and the indignities of the dying process. The article discusses the process as though it were the same as consent to elective surgery. These patients—with AIDS, cancer, and hopeless neurological degeneration—are not simply agreeing to a procedure; they are desperately seeking a way out. If the criminal law were to develop criteria for physician aid in dying, certainly one of them should be the active, witnessed, repeated request of such a patient for a certain, quick, painless, gentle death.The third point is that physicians do not face prosecution when administering no treatment to a patient whose life could be saved with treatment but who chooses not to receive it. This has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court; no criteria for suffering, alternatives, terminality, justifiability, or unbearability are required. The doctor can stand by while the patient dies what may be a protracted, difficult death, but it is within the law. What matters in this situation is the decision of the patient to refuse treatment, and that is absolute. How ironic that the patient who cannot refuse treatment must, with his or her doctor, jump through all these hoops to achieve a peaceful death.One worries that the physician who must balance the risk of “risky pain relief” against the accusation of recklessness will err in the direction of allowing [End Page 103] the patient to bear the pain rather than help with a dose of analgesics that might be considered beyond the stipulated “risk.”Why don’t we just be honest about it? Allow dying or hopelessly ill patients to make the decision about what they want by passing a carefully defined law allowing euthanasia rather than balancing the risk and trying to determine the “purpose” of the physician’s ministrations. We protect some patients from themselves while allowing others almost complete autonomy to make the choice of ending their lives. The authors were right in saying that proponents of rational laws consider this sheer hypocrisy.Faye Girsh, Executive DirectorHemlock Society U.S.A. Denver, COFaye Girsh misconceives our article’s objective as an “attempt to develop criteria” for the humane physician. Our goal in writing the paper was to analyze the current criminal law framework in the hope of sharpening debate and engendering normative critiques. We readily acknowledge tensions in the current legal framework and would support changes in that framework.Copyright © 1997 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Natural kinds are often contrasted with other kinds of scientific kinds, especially functional kinds, because of a presumed categorical difference in explanatory value: supposedly, natural kinds can ground explanations, while other kinds of kinds cannot. I argue against this view of natural kinds by examining a particular type of explanation—mechanistic explanation—and showing that functional kinds do the same work there as traditionally recognized natural kinds are supposed to do in “standard” scientific explanations. Breaking down this categorical distinction between traditional natural (...) kinds and other kinds of kinds, I argue, delivers two goods: It provides us with a view of natural kindhood that does justice to the epistemic roles of kinds in scientific explanations. And it allows us to solve a problem that HPC theory, currently one of the more popular accounts of natural kindhood, confronts. (shrink)

This work argues for the need to close the gap between the fields of the philosophy of religion and religious studies. Thomas A. Lewis takes up what, in recent years, has often been seen as a fundamental reason for excluding religious ethics and philosophy of religion from religious studies: their explicit normativity. Against this presupposition, Lewis argues that normativity is pervasive--not unique to ethics and philosophy of religion--and therefore not a reason to exclude them from religious studies. He bridges (...) more philosophical and historical subfields by arguing for the importance of history to the philosophy of religion. He considers the future of religious ethics, explaining that the field as whole should learn from the methodological developments associated with recent work in comparative religious ethics and 'comparative religious ethics' should no longer be conceived as a distinct subfield. The concluding chapter engages broader, post-9/11 arguments about the importance of studying religion, arguing that prominent contemporary notions of 'religious literacy' actually hinder our ability to grasp the significance of religion and impact in the world today. (shrink)

There are two main inspirations for an analysis of an important post-Śaṇkara text: the recent controversial debate in "Philosophy East and West" concerning the status of anubhava as a pramāṇa for Śaṅkara, and recent scholarship in the epistemology of religious experience that focuses on broader mechanisms of knowing to determine the epistemic significance of religious experience. These projects are combined and extended, and it is argued that the "Vivekacūḍāmaṇi" dances between the poles of "internalism" and "externalism" with considerable social and (...) epistemic consequences on universalism, exclusivism, and the justification of claims that follow upon liberating experience. (shrink)

The twelve essays in this volume aim at providing philosophers, neuroscientists, psychologists, and legal theorists with an opportunity to examine the cluster of related issues that will need to be addressed as scholars struggle to come to grips with the picture of human agency being pieced together by researchers in the biosciences.

There are two main inspirations for an analysis of an important post-Śaṇkara text: the recent controversial debate in "Philosophy East and West" concerning the status of anubhava as a pramāṇa for Śaṅkara, and recent scholarship in the epistemology of religious experience that focuses on broader mechanisms of knowing to determine the epistemic significance of religious experience. These projects are combined and extended, and it is argued that the "Vivekacūḍāmaṇi" dances between the poles of "internalism" and "externalism" with considerable social and (...) epistemic consequences on universalism, exclusivism, and the justification of claims that follow upon liberating experience. (shrink)

While evolutionary thinking is increasingly becoming popular in fields of investigation outside the biological sciences, it remains unclear how helpful it is there and whether it actually yields good explanations of the phenomena under study. Here we examine the ontology of a recent approach to applying evolutionary thinking outside biology, the generalized Darwinism approach proposed by Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen. We examine the ontology of populations in biology and in GD, and argue that biological evolutionary theory sets ontological criteria (...) that GD fails to meet. We suggest two options to revise the population concept in GD: reformulating the concept in terms of inheritance and reproduction such that it comes to pick out individuals similar to evolving populations, or trying to build an adequate population concept on a principle of differential retention instead of differential reproduction. 1 Introduction2 Generalized Darwinism2.1 What is generalized Darwinism?2.2 Darwinian principles3 The Ontology of Generalized Darwinism: What Are Populations?3.1 The population concept of generalized Darwinism3.2 The population concept in evolutionary theory4 Locating Evolving Systems in Generalized Darwinism5 Conclusion. (shrink)

Attending closely to Hegel's social, political, and intellectual context, the book begins with Hegel's early concerns with a modern civil religion in the ...

The ‘music appreciation as contemplation’ paradigm of traditional aesthetics and music education assumes that music exists to be contemplated for itself. The resulting distantiation of music and music education from life creates a legitimation crisis for music education. Failing to make a noteworthy musical difference for society, a politics of advocacy attempts to justify music education. Praxial theories of music, instead, see music as pragmatically social in origin, meaning, and value. A praxial approach to music education stresses that appreciation is (...) seen in use; thus, it seeks to ‘make a difference’ that students and society find musically noteworthy. (shrink)

Non-epistemic values play important roles in classificatory practice, such that philosophical accounts of kinds and classification should be able to accommodate them. Available accounts fail to do so, however. Our aim is to fill this lacuna by showing how non-epistemic values feature in scientific classification, and how they can be incorporated into a philosophical theory of classification and kinds. To achieve this, we present a novel account of kinds and classification, discuss examples from biological classification where non-epistemic values play decisive (...) roles, and show how this account accommodates the role of non-epistemic values. (shrink)

Organizational ecology is commonly seen as a Darwinian research program that seeks to explain the diversity of organizational structures, properties and behaviors as the product of selection in past social environments in a similar manner as evolutionary biology seeks to explain the forms, properties and behaviors of organisms as consequences of selection in past natural environments. We argue that this explanatory strategy does not succeed because organizational ecology theory lacks an evolutionary mechanism that could be identified as the principal cause (...) of organizational diversity. The “evolution” of organizational populations by means of selection, which organizational ecologists put forward as the mechanism responsible for the extant diversity of organizational forms, is not evolution in any proper sense, because organizational populations do not have what it takes to participate in evolutionary processes. This implies that organizational ecology is not a Darwinian research program and that it cannot explain organizational diversity. (shrink)

In Civic Liberalism, prominent political theorist Thomas A. Spragens, Jr. asserts that most versions of democratic ideals—libertarianism, liberal egalitarianism, difference liberalism, and the liberalism of fear—lead our polity significantly astray. Spragens offers another alternative. He argues that we should recover the multiple and complex aspirations found within the tradition of democratic liberalism and integrate them into a more compelling public philosophy for our time—or what he calls civic liberalism.

Keith DeRose gives an invalid argument for contextualism in “Assertion, Knowledge, and Context.” In section 2.4, entitled “The Argument for Contextualism,” DeRose makes the following remarks. “The knowledge account of assertion provides a powerful argument for contextualism: If the standards for when one is in a position to warrantedly assert that P are the same as those that comprise a truth-condition for ‘I know P,’ then if the former vary with context, so do the latter. In short: The knowledge account (...) of assertion together with the context-sensitivity of assertability yields contextualism about knowledge”. (shrink)

In this target article we question the assumption that perception is divided into separate domains of vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. We review implications of this assumption for theories of perception and for our understanding of ambient energy arrays (e.g., the optic and acoustic arrays) that are available to perceptual systems. We analyze three hypotheses about relations between ambient arrays and physical reality: (1) that there is an ambiguous relation between ambient energy arrays and physical reality, (2) that there (...) is a unique relation between individual energy arrays and physical reality, and (3) that there is a redundant but unambiguous relation, within or across arrays, between energy arrays and physical reality. This is followed by a review of the physics of motion, focusing on the existence and status of referents for physical motion. Our review indicates that it is not possible, in principle, for there to be a unique relation between physical motion and the structure of individual energy arrays. We argue that physical motion relative to different referents is specified only in the global array, which consists of higher-order relations across different forms of energy. The existence of specificity in the global array is consistent with the idea of direct perception, and so poses a challenge to traditional, inference-based theories of perception and cognition. However, it also presents a challenge to much of the ecological approach to perception and action, which has accepted the assumption of separate senses. (shrink)

Business schools play an instrumental role in laying the foundations for ethical behavior and socially responsible actions in the business community. Drawing on social learning and identity theories and using data collected from undergraduate business students, we found that ethical climate was a significant predictor of unethical behavior, such that students with positive perceptions about their business school’s ethical climate were more likely to refrain from unethical behaviors. Moreover, we found that high moral and institutional identities strengthened the effect of (...) ethical climate on unethical behavior. In addition to novel theoretical contributions to the business ethics and socio-psychology literature, this study offers practical pathways through which business schools can nurture and instill the values and behaviors that ultimately help shape positive organizational ethics. Directions for future research are provided. (shrink)