This concise anthology of primary sources designed for use in an ancient philosophy survey ranges from the Presocratics to Plato, Aristotle, the Hellenistic philosophers, and the Neoplatonists. The Second Edition features an amplified selection of Presocratic fragments in newly revised translations by Richard D. McKirahan. Also included is an expansion of the Hellenistic unit, featuring new selections from Lucretius and Sextus Empiricus as well as a new translation, by Peter J. Anderson, of most of Seneca's _De Providentia_. The selections from (...) Plotinus have also been expanded. (shrink)

Patrick L. Miller - Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher, and Mathematician-King - Journal of the History of Philosophy 46:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 46.1 165-166 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Patrick Lee Miller Duquesne University Carl Huffman, Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, Philosopher, and Mathematician-King. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xv + 665. Cloth, $180.00. Archytas of Tarentum has in some ages been considered a major philosopher. He was one of (...) the three most important early Pythagoreans—along with Philolaus and Pythagoras himself—and so his reputation has risen and fallen with the popularity of this movement. When Pythagoreanism captivated some Romans at the end of the Republic, they championed him as a native talent; much later, some medieval Europeans inflated him into one of the great wise men of the ancient world. But Pythagoreanism has ebbed in recent centuries, and Archytas is now known only to specialists in ancient philosophy, and even then only by acquaintance from a few passages of Plato and.. (shrink)

In Republic, Plato presents a pedagogy whose crucial component is the conversion of the student’s soul. This is clearest in the Allegory of the Cave, where the prisoner begins her liberation by turning herself away from the images on the wall. Conversion is not something we professors typically seek to provoke in a philosophy course, even when we teach Plato. But if this were our goal, what could we do to achieve it within the limits of the modern university? I (...) present one such effort, a paper that uses the Allegory to focus on two questions: who are you, and how did you become that way? After presenting both the prompt and its rationale, I summarize six student submissions and discuss how I evaluated them. I conclude by considering the risks and possibilities of addressing the whole soul and not simply the intellect. (shrink)

There are five attitudes to truth: that of the philosopher, the truth-teller, the liar, the sophist, and the tyrant. After discussing the two most famous Greek Sophists, Gorgias and Protagoras, this essay argues that Trump’s attitude to truth while campaigning was that of a sophist: someone who is indifferent to the truth, using words only to acquire money, fame, and power. When he became president, however, his attitude changed to that of the tyrant described by Plato: someone who uses power (...) to assert control over the “truth.” In other words, by the repeated statement of manifest falsehoods, he drew a circle around himself, forcing others to choose between submission to his will and recognition of an independent reality. (shrink)

The relevance of 18th century words about justice, the concept of conservation, the question of which media values are truly universal, and the ethical challenges of digital news culture all are fr...

The neo-Aristotelian virtue theory of Philippa Foot is presented here as an alternative framework that is arguably more useful than deontological approaches and that relies less on the assertions of moral claims about the intrinsic goodness of foundational principles. Instead, this project focuses more on cultivating a true ethic; that is, a set of tools and propositions to enable individuals to negotiate inevitable conflicts among moral values and challenges posed by cultural contexts and technology use. Foot's ?natural normativity? connects the (...) conditions of human flourishing and objective reasons for acting morally, providing a framework for a digital media ethic to address three critical categories: virtuality and authenticity, privacy and autonomy, and exchange and discourse. (shrink)

This study argues that the notion of transparency requires reconsideration as an essence of ethical agency. It provides a brief explication of the concept of transparency, rooted in the principle of human dignity of Immanuel Kant, and suggests that it has been inadequately appreciated by media ethics scholars and instructors more focused on relatively simplistic applications of his categorical imperative. This study suggests that the concept's Kantian roots raise a radical challenge to conventional understandings of human interaction and, by extension, (...) what it means to exercise freedom. (shrink)

The concept of media accountability is widely used but remains inadequately defined in the literature and often is restricted to a 1-dimensional interpretation. This study explores perceptions of accountability as manifestations of claims to responsibility, based on philosophical conceptions of the 2 terms, and suggests media accountability be more broadly understood as a dynamic of interaction between a given medium and the value sets of individuals or groups receiving media messages. The shape-shifting nature of the concept contributes to the volatility (...) of debate surrounding conflicting notions of press freedom and responsibility. (shrink)

Recent advances in moral psychology and applications of virtue science have created promising opportunities to refine theories of media practice and ethical principles. This article sets forth the theoretical foundation for a model of virtuous action among media exemplars that is multidimensional, inductive, and informed by these developments. The model draws on a range of psycho-social assessment tools to explore five key dimensions of virtuous behavior: story of the self, personality, integration of morality into the self, moral ecology, and moral (...) skills and knowledge. The model's structure is designed to strengthen the empirical basis used to make normative and predictive claims about media practice. (shrink)

The articles in this issue span across multiple media sectors, yet all focus on questions of credibility and engagement.Even some of the best public relations veterans will acknowledge that they ca...

Scholarship on moral judgment continues to illuminate how we internalize value systems, how we form moral identities, and how both motivate and shape our decisions. Having developed within the fiel...

Articles in this issue focus on long-standing ethical issues in journalism and public relations.Food is always more than just about getting nutrients, and food journalism, at its best, is also more...

Volume 29, Issue 4, October-December, Page 209-209.

Volume 33, Issue 4, October-December 2018, Page 155-155.

Volume 34, Issue 1, January-March 2019, Page 1-1.

Volume 34, Issue 2, April-June 2019, Page 57-57.

Volume 35, Issue 1, January-March 2020, Page 1-1.

At its best, media ethics scholarship enriches contemporary debates by illuminating philosophical assumptions and interrogating habits. The articles in this issue accomplish precisely this, on a ra...

Care, voice, reparation, sensitivity. These concepts are front and center in this issue of the Journal. Claims made by an ethics of care have often confounded both theorists and media practitioners...

The articles in this issue address questions of vulnerability, moral maturation, and care in various media environments. With widespread, and problematic, use of personal data by third-party vendor...

Comedians, Marxism, and child development. These disparate topics are addressed in this issue’s articles. Linking them all are notions of responsibility and accountability. First is Sara Ödmark’s s...

Articles in this issue address some of the most central topics in media, many of which have generated headlines. First, “geo-blocking.” In Europe and other parts of the world, media audiences are i...

This issue addresses three of the most fraught and pressing ethical issues of our digital lives: cyberbullying, suicide trolling, and hateful speech. But it also features a discussion of American j...

This issue explores various factors that influence the cultivation of professional media cultures, which in turn (one hopes) encourage virtuous behavior by individual media professionals.First, det...

This issue addresses a wide range of vital media ethics questions – gender inequity, moral language in news, child-targeted marketing, and why journalists use fake names to protect themselves.First...

Volume 35, Issue 2, April-June 2020, Page 67-67.

In two influential articles setting forth his arguments against restrictions on free expression in the 1970s, Harvard philosopher T. M. Scanlon suggested and later rejected the notion that autonomous agency ought to be a primary constraint on most justifications used to restrict speech. The concept of autonomy, he said, was “notoriously vague and slippery” as a basis for judging free-speech restrictions. Instead, Scanlon argued that free expression—and proposed restrictions on it—should be justified in terms of our various “interests” in speech (...) as participants and as audience members. Reliance on autonomy does not provide the justificatory force for a theory of free expression, he said. However, in his landmark 1998 book, What We Owe to Each Other, Scanlon relies heavily on autonomous agency as the foundation of several of his key claims. Scanlon’s claims that our “interests” to protect free expression conflict with his reliance on autonomous agency in What We Owe to Each Other and have important implications for efforts both to cultivate a healthy public sphere and protect the open architecture of the Internet within an increasingly global media culture. (shrink)

Volume 35, Issue 1, January-March 2020, Page 65-65.

The Don W. Davis Program in Ethical Leadership is seeking manuscripts for the “Challenges to Digital Media Flourishing” symposium. Submission deadline is 15 April 2024.[Exact Symposium dates to be...

Drawing from midcentury and contemporary theoretical work on propaganda, this study provides an analysis of the propagandistic properties of the "Shared Values" initiative developed by Charlotte Beers, former chief of public diplomacy under U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. The campaign was broadcast in several Muslim countries before it was abandoned in 2003. The campaign's utilization of truth, its treatment of Muslim audiences as means to serve broader policy objectives rather than as a population to be engaged on its own (...) terms, and its use of palaver all suggest the "Shared Values" videos, as an example of mass communication, had serious ethical shortcomings. (shrink)

The scientific, ethical, and policy issues raised by research involving the engraftment of human neural stem cells into the brains of nonhuman primates are explored by an interdisciplinary working group in this Policy Forum. The authors consider the possibility that this research might alter the cognitive capacities of recipient great apes and monkeys, with potential significance for their moral status.

The articles in this issue span the globe and focus on recurring media ethics issues: the nature and quality of responsible and independent journalism, the search for universal standards, and how t...

The tropomyosins are a family of actin filament binding proteins. In multicellular animals, they exhibit extensive cell type specific isoform diversity. In this essay we discuss the genetic mechanisms by which this diversity is generated and its possible significance to cellular function.

Political debate in an election season is artificially constrained by the media's focus on electability as the primary determinant of news coverage. What gets lost under this criterion is the wealth of ideas that lesser known candidates can bring to the debate. This article argues that political coverage by the mainstream media should be more responsible in its efforts to cultivate public discourse by redefining the standards for who gets covered and challenging the prevailing notions of electability. It also argues (...) for a view of campaign news that is less driven by events and that gives voters more information about candidates' ideas on key issues of the day. (shrink)