In the fall of 1996 I taught a course at Fudan University in Shanghai dealing with medical ethics in America. As part of the course we spent some time on the heated American debate about abortion. The reaction of Chinese students was revealing.

In the fall of 1996 I taught a course at Fudan University in Shanghai dealing with medical ethics in America. As part of the course we spent some time on the heated American debate about abortion. The reaction of Chinese students was revealing.

The concept of scientific history / Isaiah Berlin -- The limits of scientific history / W.H. Walsh -- The objectivity of history / J.A. Passmore -- Explanation in science and in history / C.G. Hempel -- The Popper-Hempel theory reconsidered / Alan Donagan -- The autonomy of historical understanding / Louis O. Mink -- Historical continuity and causal analysis / Michael Oakeshott -- Causal judgment in history and in the law / H.L.A. Hart and A.M. Honoré -- Causes, connections and (...) conditions in history / Michael Scriven -- The historical individual / A.C. Danto -- Methodological individualisms : definition and reduction / May Brodbeck -- Societal laws / Maurice Mandelbaum -- Determinism in history / Ernest Nagel. (shrink)

In a philosophical approach to color, Gass explores man's perception of the color blue as well as its common erotic, symbolic, and emotional associations.

This update of the original version focuses on six central problems in the critical philosophy of history and explores the connections among them. Starting with the fundamentals of each philosophical topic in history and then delving into the specifics of each to better understand the surrounding issues, the reference first offers a comprehensive introduction into these topics then covers explanation and understanding ... objectivity and value judgment .. causes in history ... the nature and role of narrative ... and historical (...) determinism. Suitable for students, professors, and anyone else interested in the philosophy of history. (shrink)

Neurobiologist William Calvin explores the human brain, positing that the neurons in the brain operate in an accelerated version of biological evolution, evolving ideas through random variations and selections, and supports his hypothesis with numerous ca.

A systematic, rigorous, comprehensive, and unified overview of evolutionary game theory.

The pedagogical technique of the playful Plato, especially his ability to create living discourses that directly address the student, is the subject of Plato the Teacher. “The crisis of the Republic” refers to the decisive moment in his central dialogue when philosopher-readers realize that Plato’s is challenging them to choose justice by going back down into the dangerous Cave of political life for the sake of the greater Good, as both Socrates and Cicero did.

In this book, William H. F. Altman argues that it is not order of composition but reading order that makes Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, and Phaedo “late dialogues,” and shows why Plato’s decision to interpolate the notoriously “late” Sophist and Statesman between Euthyphro and Apology deserves more respect from interpreters.

This book explains and defends a central ideas in the theory of history put forward by R. G. Collingwood, perhaps the foremost philosopher of history in the 20th century. Professor Dray analyses critically the idea of re-enactment, explores the limits of its applicability, and determines its relationship to other key Collingwoodian ideas, such as the role of imagination in historical thinking, and the indispensability of a point of view.

Combining engaging discussions and stimulating new case studies, BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES gives students a comprehensive survey of business ethics that will guide them toward becoming ethical professionals, even if they have never studied philosophy before. Rich with real-world examples, BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES invites students to critically analyze and apply a broad range of philosophical concepts and principles to today's most important issues in business and beyond. BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES is a concise (...) (without readings) and updated version of the eleventh edition of MORAL ISSUES IN BUSINESS. BUSINESS ETHICS: A TEXTBOOK WITH CASES is also available in an eBook format. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

"[This] book guides readers in thinking deeply about important moral issues that frequently arise in business situations and helps them develop the reasoning and analytical skills to resolve those issues. Combining insightful and accessible textbook chapters by the authors, cases that highlight the real-world importance of key ethical concepts, and reading selections from the most influential voices in contemporary ethical debates, this book provides a comprehensive, flexible, and pedagogically proven course of study exploring the intersections of commerce and ethics."--Book cover.

Aimed at undergraduates, _Contemporary Ethics_ presupposes little or no familiarity with ethics and is written in a clear and engaging style. It provides students with a sympathetic but critical guide to utilitarianism, explaining its different forms and exploring the debates it has spawned. The book leads students through a number of current issues in contemporary ethics that are connected to controversies over and within utilitarianism. At the same time, it uses utilitarianism to introduce students to ethics as a subject. In (...) these ways, the book is not only a guide to utilitarianism, but also an introduction to some standard problems of ethics and to several important topics in contemporary ethical theory. (shrink)

In this book, William H. F. Altman considers the pedagogical connections behind the post-Republic dialogues from Timaeus to Theaetetus in the context of their Reading Order.

This book deals with theoretical problems that arise at points of contact between the concerns of philosophers and historians about the practice of ...

The German Stranger provides a guide to Leo Strauss that situates his thought in the context of National Socialism; by destroying any middle ground between 'Athens' and 'Jerusalem, ' Strauss undermined modernity's secular bulwark against political theology. Once National Socialism is understood as an atheistic religion re-enacted by post-Revelation 'philosophers, ' the German avatar of Plato's Athenian Stranger can be recognized as its principal theoreticia.

This book is a study of Plato’s most elementary dialogues, arranged in relation to Reading Order as opposed to order of composition. Beginning with the theatrical Protagoras and reaching a mountaintop in Symposium, the dialogues between them—Alcibiades, Lovers, Hippias, Ion, and Menexenus—introduce the student to both philosophy and Platonism.

In "The Cerebral Code," he has solidly embedded his ideas in experimental neurophysiology and neuropharmacology, deriving from his decades in the laboratory.

In the first section, I consider what several logicians say informally about the notion of logical consequence. There is significant variation among these accounts, they are sometimes poorly explained, and some of them are clearly at odds with the usual technical definition. In the second section, I first argue that a certain kind of informal account—one that includes elements of necessity, generality, and apriority—is approximately correct. Next I refine this account and consider several important questions about it, including the appropriate (...) characterization of necessity, the criterion for selecting logical constants, and the exact role of apriority. I argue, among other things, that there is no need to recognize a special logical sense of necessity and that the selection of terms to serve as logical constants is ultimately a pragmatic matter. In the third section, I consider whether the informal account I have presented and defended is adequately represented by the usual technical definition. I show that it is, and provably so, for certain limited ways of selecting logical constants. In the general case, however, there seems to be no way to be sure that the technical and informal accounts coincide. (shrink)

The past few decades of moral psychology research have yielded empirical anomalies for rationalist theories of moral judgments. An increasing number of psychologists and philosophers argue that these anomalies are explained well by sentimentalism, the thesis that the presence of an emotion is necessary for the formation of a sincere moral judgment. The present review reveals that while emotions and moral judgments indeed often co-occur, there is scant evidence that emotions directly cause or constitute moral judgments. Research on disgust, anger, (...) sympathy, and guilt indicates that people only reliably experience emotions when judging conduct that is relevant to the welfare of the self and valued others. Moreover, many recent studies have either failed to replicate or exposed crucial confounds in the most cited evidence in support of sentimentalism. Moral psychologists should jettison sentimentalism, and focus instead on how considerations of harm and welfare—the core concepts of rationalist theories— interact with empirical beliefs to shape moral judgments. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed utilitarian analysis of the ethical issues involved in war. Utilitarianism and the Ethics of War addresses the two basic ethical questions posed by war: when, if ever, are we morally justified in waging war, and if recourse to arms is warranted, how are we permitted to fight the wars we wage? In addition, it deals with the challenge that realism and relativism raise for the ethical discussion of war, and with the duties of military personnel (...) and the moral challenges they can face. In tackling these matters, the book covers a wide range of topics—from pacifism to armed humanitarian intervention, from the right of national defense to pre-emptive or preventive war, from civilian immunity to the tenets of just war theory and the moral underpinnings of the rules of war. But, what is distinctive about this book is that it provides a consistent and thorough-going utilitarian or consequentialist treatment of the fundamental normative issues that war occasions. Although it goes against the tide of recent work in the field, a utilitarian approach to the ethics of war illuminates old questions in new ways by showing how a concern for well-being and the consequences of our actions and policies shape the moral constraints to which states and other actors must adhere. This book will be of much interest to students of the ethics of war, just war theory, moral philosophy, war and conflict studies and IR. (shrink)

Investigates the rapid evolution of the ape brain into the hominid brain, and explains why understanding our evolutionary past can help us survive an uncertain future.

In the past two decades, reinforcement learning has become a popular framework for understanding brain function. A key component of RL models, prediction error, has been associated with neural signals throughout the brain, including subcortical nuclei, primary sensory cortices, and prefrontal cortex. Depending on the location in which activity is observed, the functional interpretation of prediction error may change: Prediction errors may reflect a discrepancy in the anticipated and actual value of reward, a signal indicating the salience or novelty of (...) a stimulus, and many other interpretations. Anterior cingulate cortex has long been recognized as a region involved in processing behavioral error, and recent computational models of the region have expanded this interpretation to include a more general role for the region in predicting likely events, broadly construed, and signaling deviations between expected and observed events. Ongoing modeling work investigating the interaction between ACC and additional regions involved in cognitive control suggests an even broader role for cingulate in computing a hierarchically structured surprise signal critical for learning models of the environment. The result is a predictive coding model of the frontal lobes, suggesting that predictive coding may be a unifying computational principle across the neocortex. (shrink)