In this book, Linda Wetzel examines the distinction between types and tokens and argues that types exist (as abstract objects, since they lack a unique ...

The distinction between a type and its tokens is auseful metaphysical distinction. In §1 it is explained what itis, and what it is not. Its importance and wide applicability inlinguistics, philosophy, science and everyday life are brieflysurveyed in §2. Whether types are universals is discussed in§3. §4 discusses some other suggestions for what types are,both generally and specifically. Is a type the sets of its tokens?What exactly is a word, a symphony, a species? §5 asks what atoken is. §6 considers (...) the relation between types and theirtokens. Do the type and all its tokens share the same properties? Mustall the tokens be alike in some or all respects? §7 explains someproblems for the view that types exist, and some problems for the viewthat they don’t. §8 elucidates a distinction often confused withthe type-token distinction, that between a type and anoccurrence of it. It also discusses some problems thatoccurrences might be thought to give rise to, and one way to resolvethem. (shrink)

The distinction between a type and its tokens is a useful metaphysical distinction. In §1 it is explained what it is, and what it is not. Its importance and wide applicability in linguistics, philosophy, science and everyday life are briefly surveyed in §2. Whether types are universals is discussed in §3. §4 discusses some other suggestions for what types are, both generally and specifically. Is a type the sets of its tokens? What exactly is a word, a symphony, a species? (...) §5 asks what a token is. §6 considers the relation between types and their tokens. Do the type and all its tokens share the same properties? Must all the tokens be alike in some or all respects? §7 explains some problems for the view that types exist, and some problems for the view that they don't. §8 elucidates a distinction often confused with the type-token distinction, that between a type (or token) and an occurrence of it. It also discusses some problems that occurrences might be thought to give rise to, and one way to resolve them. (shrink)

If one attempts to examine the role of a concept in the writings of a man of letters, it seems appropriate to begin with some linguistic observations pertinent to the discussion: aesthetics. To what extent and in what particular way does the metaphorical field associated with the concept of organism determine or at least reach into descriptions of the creative process as such? Such an initial step of modest pragmatics suggests itself especially in view of the fact that Goethe never (...) developed a system of aesthetics, classical or otherwise, in which a theoretical analysis would be possible. In fact, we will see that he had a fundamental distrust of theoretical systems for art or nature. In what terms, then, does Goethe describe the process of artistic creation? As might be expected, there are indeed expressions of "conceiving," of "nurturing" a theme, of "bearing" a poem for years until its final "birth." Many of those poems that strike the reader with their convincing immediacy, which seem to have been nothing but impulse and instantaneous expression of feeling, came into the world after a considerable period of incubation. And Goethe emphasizes that the length of pregnancy poetic was not determined by the poet, but by an internal process of maturing and usually by an external, catalytic occasion. (shrink)

The newly updated Right and Wrong 2nd Edition is an accessible introduction to the major traditions in western philosophical ethics, written in a lively and engaging style. It is designed for entry-level ethics courses and includes real-life ethical scenarios chosen to appeal directly to students. Greatly expanded and improved, this successful text introduces students to the major ethical traditions, and provides a simple methodology for resolving ethical dilemmas Treats teleological and deontological approaches to ethics as the two most important traditions, (...) but now includes chapters on virtue ethics and the ethics of care The very accessible writing style speaks directly to students’ own experience Draws examples from three types of real-life ethical scenarios submitted by students: academic dishonesty, partying, and personal relationships Provides a concise treatment of this notoriously complex subject, perfect for entry-level ethics and applied ethics courses. (shrink)

When making decisions, humans can observe many kinds of information about others' activities, but their effects on performance are not well understood. We investigated social learning strategies using a simple problem-solving task in which participants search a complex space, and each can view and imitate others' solutions. Results showed that participants combined multiple sources of information to guide learning, including payoffs of peers' solutions, popularity of solution elements among peers, similarity of peers' solutions to their own, and relative payoffs from (...) individual exploration. Furthermore, performance was positively associated with imitation rates at both the individual and group levels. When peers' payoffs were hidden, popularity and similarity biases reversed, participants searched more broadly and randomly, and both quality and equity of exploration suffered. We conclude that when peers' solutions can be effectively compared, imitation does not simply permit scrounging, but it can also facilitate propagation of good solutions for further cumulative exploration. (shrink)

Dietmar Wetzel unternimmt eine diskurskritisch-vergleichenden Lektüre zweier Theorielinien der neueren Sozialphilosophie: identitäts- versus alteritätsorientierte Konzepte. Das Denken des Ethischen und des Politischen wird dabei anhand einer Beschäftigung mit Schlüsselbegriffen, Konstellationen und Figuren der Gegenwartsgesellschaft thematisch an Gerechtigkeit, Geschlecht, Dritte(m) und Gemeinschaft ausgerichtet. Soziologische Essays, dem Intellektuellen, der Hausfrau, dem Grenzpolizisten und dem Flüchtling gewidmet sind, komplementieren die Analysen. So kann gezeigt werden, daß differenztheoretische Positionen (Lévinas/Derrida) den Begriff der Gerechtigkeit um Aspekte der Fürsorge und der moralischen Gefühle erweitern müssen (Benhabib, (...) Cornell). Da im Übergang der Ich-Anderer-Beziehung zu "ordentlichen Bezügen" das Dritte eine grundlegende Rolle spielt, läßt sich Gemeinschaftsbildung nicht mehr im Sinne natural bzw. religiös begründeter Nachbarschaft (Kommunitarismus), sondern nur als stets neu zu legitimierende und variierende Kultivierung von Andersheit begreifen. (shrink)

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

Roughly half the essays in this collection engage directly with Augustine's theological animus and follow his thinking into self-division, perversity of will, grief, conversion, and the aspiration for transcendence.

John Milbank's case against secular reason draws much of its authority and force from Augustine's critique of pagan virtue. "Theology and Social Theory" could be characterized, without too much insult to either Augustine or Milbank, as a postmodern "City of God". Modern preoccupations with secular virtues, marketplace values, and sociological bottom-lines are likened there to classically pagan preoccupations with the virtues of self-conquest and conquest over others. Against both modern and antique "ontological violence" (where 'to be' is 'to be antagonistic'), (...) Milbank advances an Augustinian hope for the peace that is both beyond and prior to the peace of (temporarily) repressed antagonism. One aim of this essay is to consider whether virtues conceived out of such a hope are really all that different from the virtues they are taken to replace. I take a critical look at Augustine's critique of pagan virtue, Milbank's appropriation of that critique, the applicability of that critique to Plato, and the polemical value of Augustine's notion of original sin. I end up being skeptical of the notion of a peculiarly Christian way to turn antagonistically conceived virtues into love, but I am not unsympathetic to Milbank's concerns about a loveless and self-complacent secularity. (shrink)

v. 1. Editorial introduction -- v. 2. The English and Latin texts (i) -- v. 3. The English and Latin texts (ii).

Some theories of goodness are descriptively rich: they have much to say about what makes things good. Neo-Aristotelian accounts, for instance, detail the various features that make a human being, a dog, a bee good relative to facts about those forms of life. Famously, such theories of relative goodness tend to be comparatively poor: they have little or nothing to say about what makes one kind of being better than another kind. Other theories of goodness—those that take there to be (...) absolute goodness—are comparatively rich: they offer grounds for judging some types of things better than others because they have more absolute goodness. Moorean accounts, for example, can tell us that humans and human experiences are superior to bees and blades of grass. But such theories tend to be descriptively poor: they struggle to tell us in virtue of what this is so. In this essay we motivate and flesh out a view that splits the difference between accounts of goodness as relative and accounts of goodness as absolute. Such a view holds promise only if the mechanics of this kind of metaphysics of goodness can be worked out. Here we present a view on which the paradigm for absolute goodness is God and the paradigm for each kind of relative goodness is a divine idea. (shrink)

The negative aim of this paper is to identify shortcomings in received theories. First, we criticize approaching audiences, and large gatherings more general, in categories revolving around the notion of the crowd. Second, we show how leading paradigms in emotion research restrict research on the social-relational dynamics of emotions by reducing them to physiological processes like emotional contagion or to cognitive processes like social appraisal. Our positive aim is to offer an alternative proposal for conceptualizing emotional dynamics in audiences. First, (...) we offer a notion of emotional sharing for studying the social-relational dynamics of emotions. Second, we propose a working concept of audience as a dynamic and dispersed social collective. Finally, we bring these elements together in the description of two scenes of jubilation. (shrink)

Proceedings of a conference held in Apr. 2008 in Washington, D.C.

Father Williams explains how the conscience is formed through our training and experiences and informed by the Holy Spirit, making it an essential tool for daily living. He uses familiar and surprising characters to illustrate the positive choices conscience can direct--and the disaster that results when a conscience is undeveloped or ignored. Questions he tackles include "Is it more important to be smart or good?""Is there a morally right thing to do in every situation?" and "Is the Christian moral life (...) an exciting adventure, or a necessary burden?" Rich, provocative, and practical for everyday decision making, KNOWING RIGHT FROM WRONG is a must-read for all who hunger for personal holiness. (shrink)

It is somewhat misleading to think of the Franciscans as forming a “school” in ethics, since there was a fair bit of diversity among Franciscans. Nonetheless, one can identify certain characteristic tendencies of Franciscan moral thought, and certain “celebrity” Franciscans whose views in ethics and moral psychology are particularly noteworthy. I shall first offer an overview of the general character of Franciscan moral thought in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and then turn to a more detailed examination of (...) the thought of John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) and William Ockham (c. 1288-1347) on three central matters of debate: the nature of the virtues, the relationship between intellect and will, and the relationship between moral requirements and the divine will. (shrink)

The importance of teaching critical thinking skills at the college level cannot be overemphasized. Teaching a subcategory of these skills—argument analysis—we believe is especially important for first-year students with their college careers, as well as their lives, ahead of them. The struggle, however, is how to effectively teach argument analysis skills that will serve students in a broad range of disciplines.

In this book Thomas Wren uncovers and assesses the largely hidden philosophical assumptions about human motivation that have shaped contemporary psychological ...

THE NATURE OF ART is a collection of 29 seminal, historically-organized readings that are focused on a basic philosophical question: What is Art? Including writings from the Western tradition'both Continental and Analytic traditions'as well as non-Western, minority, and feminist writings, this volume provides students with a rich set of resources to explore this matter both broadly and deeply. Introductions to each reading situate the selection amidst each respective thinker's body of work and the greater philosophical context in which the remarks (...) arose. Reading questions accompany each selection, drawing students' attention to key points to be encountered. Hailed by reviewers and adopters for its clarity and rigor, Wartenberg's THE NATURE OF ART offers a lively and engaging introduction to the philosophy of art. (shrink)

For courses in Business Ethics A fresh approach to the assumptions that underlie business practices Two recent events — the 2008 economic meltdown and the ongoing concentration of the nation's wealth in the hands of a very small percentage of the population — have led many people to question a number of basic assumptions about business, corporations, and the workings of contemporary free-market capitalism in a global economy. Written as a dialogue between Socrates and a hypothetical contemporary CEO,Socrates Comes to (...) Wall Street leads students to think critically about perspectives and practices that are taken as “givens” in most American business schools and corporations. Employing this original and provocative approach, author Thomas White seeks to encourage the next generation of business leaders to be more astute about the implications of their actions, and to act more prudently and more fairly than we have seen in the recent past. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt is associated with a strong distinction between guilt and responsibility: Whereas she insists that guilt is strictly personal, she advances a vicarious notion of collective political responsibility without guilt. Yet Arendt also proposes a political concept of forgiveness—which yields the critical question: Does a political concept of forgiveness not presuppose a political concept of guilt? Arendtian forgiveness addresses what Arendt terms trespassing. Scrutinizing her notion of trespassing and how it is situated within her theory of political action, I (...) ponder whether Arendt, in effect, offers a political concept of guilt. I argue that while trespassing is clearly a political notion, it cannot be labelled guilt. Rather, trespassing refers to a purely causal responsibility without blame, and to a social-ontological condition of non-sovereignty and fallibility inherent in political interaction. The non-blameworthiness of trespassing implies that Arendt’s oft-cited concept of forgiveness resembles what is usually categorized as excuse. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Although the writings of Thomas Reid are very fertile and interesting, his life is biographically barren in comparison to such seventeenth - and ...

Are demands for equality motivated by envy? Nietzsche, Freud, Hayek, and Nozick all thought so. Call this the Envy Objection. For egalitarians, the Envy Objection is meant to sting. Many egalitarians have tried to evade the Envy Objection.. But should egalitarians be worried about envy? In this paper, I argue that egalitarians should stop worrying and learn to love envy. I argue that the persistent unwillingness to embrace the Envy Objection is rooted in a common misunderstanding of the nature of (...) the charge, what it reveals, and what can be said in response to it. I develop what Bernard Williams might call a vindicatory genealogy of envy, thereby allowing us to see that envy, rather than undermining egalitarian intuitions, can in fact play a distinct justificatory role (when it is fitting), which undermines the Envy Objection. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Personhood: A Start Are Dolphins Persons? Language and the Hand Personhood Redefined Conclusion: What Kind of Beings Are Dolphins?

There is substantial evidence from many domains that visual representations aid various forms of cognition. We aimed to determine whether learning to construct visual representations of argument structure enhanced the acquisition and development of argumentative writing skills within the context of first-year college writing course. We found a significant effect of the use of argument diagrams, and this effect was stable even when multiple plausible correlates were controlled for. These results suggest that natural⎯and relatively minor⎯modifications to standard first-year composition courses (...) could provide substantial increases in student writing ability. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume questions one of the most fundamental tenets of social theory by focusing on detachment, an important but neglected aspect of social life. Going against the grain of recent theoretical celebrations of engagement, this book challenges us to re-think the relational basis of social theory. In so, doing it brings to light the productive aspects of disconnection, distance and detachment. Rather than treating detachment simply as the moral inversion of compassion and engagement, the volume brings together empirical studies (...) and theoretical comments by leading anthropologists, sociologists and science studies scholars. Taken together, these illustrate the range of contexts within which distance and disconnection can offer meaningful frameworks for action. Positioned at the cutting edge of social theory, this landmark volume will be of great interest to students and academics across the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)