In August 2005, the Competitive Enterprise Institute , a conservative advocacy organization, filed a lawsuit in Louisiana challenging the legality of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement . The suit alleges that the MSA, under which the states receive monetary payments and the four major tobacco companies are insulated from price competition, violates the Compact Clause and other provisions of the U.S. Constitution. This lawsuit threatens to unravel of one of the most significant opportunities to improve public health in United States (...) history. We consider the merits of the lawsuit, the problems with the MSA that it highlights, and the potential consequences of the suit for public health. (shrink)

In August 2005, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative “think tank” and advocacy organization, filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the Western District of Louisiana against the Louisiana Attorney General challenging the legality of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement. If successful, this lawsuit could lead to the unraveling of one of the most significant opportunities to improve public health in United States history.Under the MSA, forty-six states agreed to end their litigation against the four largest tobacco companies (...) in the United States, who in turn agreed to pay the states an estimated $206 billion. The CEI alleges that the MSA is unconstitutional. Specifically, the suit alleges that the MSA established a cartel under which the states receive monetary payments and the four major tobacco companies are insulated from price competition – and that this arrangement violates the Compact Clause of the U.S. Constitution. (shrink)

This volume "contains eight articles dealing with the intellectual and institutional developments in physics from the mid-1840’s to the mid-1920’s. The primary focus is on the quantum and relativity theories and Einstein’s contributions to these theories. The secondary focus is on thermodynamics and its kinetic theory basis in the nineteenth century." Slightly more than one third of the book is devoted to various aspects of Einstein’s work: M. J. Klein analyzes his difference with Bohr in 1923-1925; R. McCormmach traces the (...) problem area which he extracted from Lorentz’ electron theory in about the first decade of this century; and S. Goldberg considers the British response to his special theory of relativity in 1905-1911. In the editor’s foreword, McCormmach illustrates from the current investigation of Einstein a general thesis about "the limitations of contemporary writing in the history of science." Thus, this anthology may well become a standard secondary source for Einstein scholarship. A fourth of the book has to do with thermodynamics: Y. Elkana follows Helmholtz’ formulation of its first law ; E. E. Daub looks at the evolution of concepts essential to its second law ; and E. W. Garber delineates Clausius’ contribution to its underpinnings. Just two articles are unrelated to these two foci: P. Forman, in the longest paper in the volume, considers Lande’s search for a theory of the anomalous Zooman effect in 1919-1921; and R. Sviedrys, in an exchange with A. Thackray, examines the rise of physical science at Cambridge University during the Victorian era. (shrink)

Are mystical experiences primarily formed by the mystic's cultural background and concepts, as modern day "constructivists" maintain, or do mystics in some way transcend language, belief, and culturally conditioned expectations? Do mystical experiences differ in the different religious traditions, as "pluralists" contend, or are they identical across cultures? Twelve contributors here attempt to answer these questions through close examination of a particular form of mystical experience, "Pure Consciousness"--the experience of being awake but devoid of intentional content for consciousness. The contributors (...) analyze pure consciousness and other mystical experiences from historical Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish sources, as well as from modern mystics. They demonstrate that pure consciousness poses serious conceptual problems for a contructivist understanding of mysticism. Revealing the inconsistencies and inadequacies of current models, they make significant strides towards developing new models for the phenomenon of mysticism, breaking new ground for our understanding of mysticism and of human experience in general. (shrink)

Many normative political theorists have engaged in the systematic collection and/or analysis of empirical data to inform the development of their arguments over the past several decades. Yet, the approach they employ has typically not been treated as a distinctive mode of theorizing. It has been mostly overlooked in surveys of normative political theory methods and methodologies, as well as by those critics who assert that political theory is too abstracted from actual political contestation. Our aim is to unearth this (...) grounded normative theory (GNT) approach – to identify its definitive practices and highlight its potential significance. We detail four overlapping commitments characteristic of GNT. These include commitments to expanding the comprehensiveness of input for normative arguments through original empirical research and/or analysis, recursivity in the development of normative claims, attentiveness to the systematic inclusion of a range of voices and ways of knowing, and accountability to those engaged by the theorist in empirical contexts. We discuss methodological distinctions within GNT, including between more- and less-solidaristic approaches. We discuss how GNT answers calls for theorists to engage more closely with empirical political dynamics and we consider responses to possible critiques. (shrink)

Now in a third edition, Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings is a highly acclaimed, topically organized collection that covers five major areas of philosophy--theory of knowledge, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, freedom and determinism, and moral philosophy. Editor Louis P. Pojman enhances the text's topical organization by arranging the selections into a pro/con format to help students better understand opposing arguments. He also includes accessible introductions to each chapter, subsection, and individual reading, a unique feature for an (...) anthology of this depth. While the book focuses on a compelling sampling of classical material--including selections from Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant--it also incorporates some of philosophy's best twentieth-century and contemporary work, featuring articles by Bertrand Russell, Richard Taylor, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, and others. This third edition contains an expanded glossary, more extensive section introductions, and twelve new selections: Karl Popper: "Epistemology without a Knowing Subject" Richard Rorty: "Dismantling Truth: Solidarity Versus Objectivity" Daniel Dennett: "Postmodernism and Truth" Bruce Russell: "The Problem of Evil: Too Much Suffering" David Chalmers: "Against Materialism: Can Consciousness Be Reductively Explained?" Baron Paul Henri d'Holbach: "A Defense of Determinism" Michael Levin: "A Compatibilist Defense of Moral Responsibility" Plato: Socratic Morality: "Crito" Herodotus: "Custom Is King" J. L. Mackie: "The Subjectivity of Values" Louis P. Pojman: "A Critique of Mackie's Theory of Moral Subjectivism" Thomas Nagel: "Moral Luck". (shrink)

In perpetuating and exacerbating restricted access to essential medicines, current trade-related intellectual property rules on medicines may violate core human rights to health and medicines. In this light, there should be serious questions about their necessity, and their justification should be critically assessed from the perspective of human rights standards.

Throws down a challenge to religious studies, offering a multidisciplinary approach - including developmental psychology, neuropsychology, philosophy of mind, and anthropology.

This 2010 text pursues Adam Smith's views on moral judgement, humanitarian care, commerce, justice and international law both in historical context and through a twenty-first-century cosmopolitan lens, making this a major contribution not only to Smith studies but also to the history of cosmopolitan thought and to contemporary cosmopolitan discourse itself. Forman-Barzilai breaks ground, demonstrating the spatial texture of Smith's moral psychology and the ways he believed that physical, affective and cultural distance constrain the identities, connections and ethical obligations (...) of modern commercial people. Forman-Barzilai emphasizes his resistance to the sort of relativism, moral insularity and cultural chauvinism that too often accompany localist critiques of cosmopolitan thought today. This is a fascinating, revisionist study that integrates the perspectives of intellectual history, moral philosophy, political theory, cultural theory, international relations theory and political economy, and will appeal across the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

A new wave of global protest movements offers the opportunity to reassess Marcuse’s work in the early twenty-first century. Before engaging with the Occupy movement and its analogs, it is necessary to scrutinize Marcuse’s assumptions about the affluent society. This examination suggests that the conditions of neoliberal accumulation diverge significantly from those Marcuse more or less took for granted as permanently stabilizing capitalist societies in the Global North. While much of what Marcuse offers retains relevance, its appeal to the new (...) movements is not immediate because these can no longer take for granted the prosperity of the earlier era. (shrink)

Kant’s account of the freedom gained through virtue builds on the Socratic tradition. On the Socratic view, when morality is our end, nothing can hinder us from attaining satisfaction: we are self-sufficient and free since moral goodness is (as Kant says) “created by us, hence is in our power.” But when our end is the fulfillment of sensible desires, our satisfaction requires luck as well as the cooperation of others. For Kant, this means that happiness requires that we get other (...) people to work for our ends; and this requires, in turn, that we gain control over the things other people value so as to have influence over them. If this plan for happiness is not subordinated to morality, then what is most valuable to us will be precisely what others value. This is the root of the “passions” that make us evil and make us slaves whose satisfaction depends on others. But, significantly, this dependence is a moral slavery and hence does not signal a loss, or even diminishment of the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Hegel's discussion of the concept of “habit” appears at a crucial point in his Encyclopedia system, namely, in the transition from the topic of “nature” to the topic of “spirit” (Geist): it is through habit that the subject both distinguishes itself from its various sensory states as an absolute unity (the I) and, at the same time, preserves those sensory states as the content of sensory consciousness. By calling habit a “second nature,” Hegel highlights the fact that incipient spirit retains (...) a “moment” of the natural that marks a limitation compared to “pure thought” but that also makes perceptual consciousness possible. This makes Hegel's account analogous in important respects to John McDowell's “naturalism of second nature.” But Hegel's account of habit can be seen as a version of a Kantian synthesis of the productive imagination—and hence presupposes a given material that can become one's own by means of habit. This does not mean that Hegel falls into the Myth of the Given, but it does suggest that an appropriate account of second nature might be committed to something McDowell wants to deny: that nonconceptual states of consciousness play a role (even if not a justificatory role) in perception. (shrink)

For Kant, any authentic moral demands are wholly distinct from the demands of prudence. This has led critics to complain that Kantian moral demands are incompatible with our human nature as happiness-seekers. Kant’s defenders have pointed out, correctly, that Kant can and does assert that it is permissible, at least in principle, to pursue our own happiness. But this response does not eliminate the worry that a life organized around the pursuit of virtue might turn out to be one from (...) which we cannot expect any of this (permissible) happiness. To address this worry, Kant would need to establish that there is a kind of harmony between virtue and our own happiness that can give us confidence that aiming at morality does not require us to abandon our hope for happiness in this life. This paper aims to show that Kant—building on insights from Rousseau that Kant identifies with Cynicism—does offer an account of such a harmony between virtue and worldly happiness. (shrink)

One of the most exciting aspects of this journal, of which I am proud to be an executive editor, is that it has become a venue in which so many distinct fields can interact on a single question, that of consciousness. I know of no other question, or journal, which has brought together so many voices, from so many fields, to swirl around a single topic. It is exciting both to provide a forum and to be a part of this (...) debate. In this article I would like to bring the findings of my somewhat unusual but increasingly accepted field -- mysticism-- to the discussion, for I think they may offer some helpful insights about consciousness. Why? When a biologist seeks to understand a complex phenomenon, one key strategy is to look to at it in its simplest form. Probably the most famous is the humble bacterium E. coli. Its simple gene structure has allowed us to understand much of the gene functioning of complex species. Similarly many biologists have turned to the `memory' of the simple sea slug to understand our own more kaleidoscopic memory. Freud and Durkheim both used totemism, which they construed as the simplest form of religion, to understand the complexities of religious life. The methodological principle is: to understand something complex turn to its simple forms. (shrink)

The concept of second nature plays a central role in McDowell's project of reconciling thought's external constraint with its spontaneity or autonomy: our conceptual capacities are natural in the sense that they are fully integrated into the natural world, but they are a second nature to us since they are not reducible to elements that are intelligible apart from those conceptual capacities. Rather than offering a theory of second nature and an account of how we acquire one, McDowell suggests that (...) Aristotle's account of ethical character formation as the acquisition of a second nature serves as a model that can reassure us that thought's autonomy does not threaten its naturalness. However, far from providing such reassurance, the Aristotelian model of second nature actually generates an anxiety about how the acquisition of such autonomous conceptual abilities could be possible. (shrink)

erkennung der Postmodernität: Hilfen für Historiker – und Historiker der Wissenschaften im Besonderen. Ausgehend von einer Unterscheidung zwischen der Postmodernit?t als einer von der Modernit?t durch eine breite Umkehr ihrer kulturellen Grundannahmen abgegrenzten historischen Ära und dem Postmodernismus – einer von den selbsternannten Postmodernisten in der frühen Postmodernität angenommenen intellektuellen Attitüde – thematisiert der Aufsatz zwei grundsätzliche Charakteristika der Postmodernität: Erstens die Umkehrung der kulturellen Rangfolge von Wissenschaft und Technik, worin Postmodernität und Postmodernismus übereinstimmen. Zweitens die Ablösung des Ideals eines (...) methodisch vorgehenden, uneigennützigen Wissenschaftlers, nicht durch ein fragmentiertes Subjekt, wie der Postmodernismus behauptet, sondern durch den einseitig interessierten Unternehmer, welcher unter Missachtung aller Regeln hartnäckig seine Eigeninteressen verfolgt. Diese Umkehr in Bedeutung und Rolle von Wissenschaft und Technologie, die um 1980 begann, ist ein Kennzeichen des Übergangs von der Modernit?t zur Postmodernität. Diese Umkehr ist primär zu erkennen als eine Ablehnung des Regelhaften, des methodischen Vorgehens – mit dem “Methodismus” als einer die Modernität auszeichnenden kulturellen Perspektive – aber auch als eine Ablehnung der Uneigennützigkeit, einer in der Modernität besonders wert geschätzten Geisteshaltung. Postmodernität konstituiert sich somit als diese Umwertung der Werte, die ihre Quelle im ich-fixierten, transgressiven und “risiko”-freudigen postmodernen Individuum und seinen anti-sozialen Annahmen in Bezug auf Persönlichkeit hat. In der Wissenschaftsgeschichte selbst findet sich daher seit circa 1980 ein entsprechender Wandel der wissenschaftlichen Aufmerksamkeit weg von der Wissenschaft und hin zur Technologie. Damit einhergeht eine erstaunliche Vermeidung sozialhistorischer Perspektivierung, wie sie sich nicht zuletzt in der Abkehr von kausalistischen “Einfluss”-Erklärungen zugunsten voluntaristischer “Ressourcen”-Erklärungen spiegelt.cognizing Postmodernity: Helps for Historians – of Science Especially. stmodernity, a historical era demarcated from modernity by a broad reversal in cultural presuppositions, is distinguished from postmodernism, an intellectual posture adopted by self-identified postmodernists early in postmodernity. Two principal features of postmodernity are addressed: first, the downgrading of science and the upgrading of technology in cultural rank – on which postmodernity and postmodernism are in accord; second, the displacement of the methodical, disinterested scientist, modernity's beau ideal, not by a fragmented subject as postmodernism claims, but by the single-minded entrepreneur, resourcefully pursuing his self-interest in disregard of all rules. The reversal in rank and role as between science and technology, setting in circa 1980, is a marker of the transition from modernity to postmodernity. That reversal is to be cognized primarily as rejection of rule-following, of proceeding methodically – ‘methodism’ being the cultural perspective that uniquely distinguished modernity – but also as rejection of disinterestedness, the quality of mind especially highly esteemed in modernity. Postmodernity is constituted by this transvaluation of values, whose well-spring is the egocentric, transgressive , postmodern personality and its anti-social presumptions regarding personhood. Within the history of science itself there has been since circa 1980 a corresponding turn of scholarly attention away from science to technology, and a growing distaste for social perspectives, reflected, i. a., in the rejection of causalist ‘influence’ explanations in favor of voluntarist ‘resource’ explanations. (shrink)

One of the most exciting aspects of this journal, of which I am proud to be an executive editor, is that it has become a venue in which so many distinct fields can interact on a single question, that of consciousness. I know of no other question, or journal, which has brought together so many voices, from so many fields, to swirl around a single topic. It is exciting both to provide a forum and to be a part of this (...) debate. In this article I would like to bring the findings of my somewhat unusual but increasingly accepted field -- mysticism-- to the discussion, for I think they may offer some helpful insights about consciousness. Why? When a biologist seeks to understand a complex phenomenon, one key strategy is to look to at it in its simplest form. Probably the most famous is the humble bacterium E. coli. Its simple gene structure has allowed us to understand much of the gene functioning of complex species. Similarly many biologists have turned to the `memory' of the simple sea slug to understand our own more kaleidoscopic memory. Freud and Durkheim both used totemism, which they construed as the simplest form of religion, to understand the complexities of religious life. The methodological principle is: to understand something complex turn to its simple forms. (shrink)

For Sellars, the possibility of empirical knowledge presupposes the existence of "sense impressions" in the perceiver, i.e., non-conceptual states of perceptual consciousness. But this role for sense impressions does not implicate Sellars' account in the Myth of the Given: sense impressions do not stand in a justificatory relation to instances of perceptual knowledge; their existence is rather a condition for the possibility of the acquisition of empirical concepts. Sellars suggests that learning empirical concepts presupposes that we can remember certain past (...) facts that we could not conceptualize at the time they obtained. And such memory presupposes, in turn, the existence of certain (past) non-conceptual sensory states that can be conceptualized. (shrink)

This paper advances the research on personalization of political communication by investigating whether this process of focusing on politicians instead of political issues plays a role on Twitter. Results of a content analysis of 5,530 tweets posted in the run-up to the German federal election provide evidence that Twitter communication refers more often to politicians than to issues. However, tweets containing personal characteristics about political leaders play only a marginal role. When distinguishing among different groups of actors on Twitter (journalists, (...) politicians, citizens), we find that citizens focus more on candidates than do journalists or politicians. Investigating the impact of a televised debate on Twitter communication, we observe that this person-centered event puts the focus on individual politicians instead of issues. (shrink)

In Grassroots Spirituality, Robert Forman documents an important and profound shift in the nature of spirituality in North America, that strongly influences Europe as well. His exciting survey graphically illustrates the possibility of this "grassroots" movement shaping a creative era that responds to new and old needs of religiosity.

One of Leibniz’s more unusual philosophical projects is his presentation (in a series of unpublished drafts) of an argument for the conclusion that a time will necessarily come when “nothing would happen that had not happened before." Leibniz’s presentations of the argument for such a cyclical cosmology are all too brief, and his discussion of its implications is obscure. Moreover, the conclusion itself seems to be at odds with the main thrust of Leibniz’s own metaphysics. Despite this, we can discern (...) a serious and important point to Leibniz’s consideration of the doctrine, namely in what it suggests about the proper boundary between metaphysics and theology, on the one hand, and ordinary history (whether human or natural), on the other. And we can get a better sense of Leibniz purpose in the essays by considering them in the context of Leibniz's response to Thomas Burnet's "Telluris theoria sacra" (1681-89). Leibniz praises Burnet's history of earth for presenting a harmony between the principles of nature and grace, a harmony absent in the cosmogonies of Descartes and the Newtonians. But Leibniz also complains that Burnet misconceives the boundary between natural explanation and reflections on divine wisdom. And Leibniz's essays on cyclical cosmology suggest the alternative to Burnet's account: a natural history of the earth and its inhabitants should be radically autonomous from, even if ultimately harmonious with, theological principles. (shrink)