I propose the next steps in the neuropragmatic approach to philosophy that has been advocated by Solymosi and Shook (2013). My focus is the initial process of inquiry implicit in addressing philosophical questions of cognition and mind by utilizing the tools of neuroscientific research. I combine John Dewey’s pattern of inquiry with Charles Peirce’s three forms of inference in order to outline a methodological schema for neuropragmatic inquiry. My goal is to establish ignorance and guessing as well-defined pillars of methodology (...) upon which to build a neuropragmatic approach to inquiry. First, I outline Dewey’s pattern of inquiry, highlighting the initial problematic phase in which recognized ignorance provides the basis upon which to frame a philosophical problem and initiate the trajectory by which philosophical questions may be addressed with the assistance of neuroscientific evidence. Second, I provide an outline of Peirce’s three forms of inference, focusing upon the first phase of abduction: guessing. Third, I explain the transition between ignorance and guessing, urging the benefit of attending to these two aspects of inquiry. Finally, I provide an initial sketch indicating the next steps concerning a pragmatic reconstruction of neurophilosophy, pointing towards the need for a more thorough examination of scientific methodology within and following analyses of philosophical problems and neuroscientific evidence. (shrink)

Microaggressions cause epistemic injustice and prevent human flourishing. As a step toward the recognition of microaggressions as sources of epistemic injustice and their remedy as a source for flourishing, I propose active engagement with narratives that present cases of microaggressions as they are contextualized in experience. The poet, essayist, and mythobiographer, Audre Lorde, provides contextualized narratives that express experiences of microaggressions from multiply intersectional and humanistic perspectives. Lorde’s work is an ideal source for actively engaging with experiences of microaggressions and (...) epistemic injustice from a practical, humanist perspective. I argue that Lorde provides useful tools that assist in acknowledging, addressing, and remedying epistemic injustice. Her work suggests uses of anger through reconstruction and receptivity to difference that facilitate human flourishing. (shrink)

The secular conception of ubuntu, as proffered by Thaddeus Metz, supplies a foundation for a humanist argument that justifies obligation to one’s community, even apart from a South African context, when combined with Kwasi Wiredu’s conception of personhood. Such an account provides an argument for accepting the concept of ubuntu as humanistic and not necessarily based in communalism or dependent upon supernaturalism. By re-evaluating some core concepts of community as they are presented in Plato’s Republic, I argue that this account (...) of ubuntu fits as the basis from which to understand obligation to community from a secular humanist perspective. (shrink)

“Scientific research faces up with an open and unknown world”Within the work of C. S. Peirce, the most fundamental and contentious form of inference is that of abduction. According to Peirce, abduction is the only type of inference from which new ideas are created (CP 5.171, 1903). He wrote, “every single item of scientific theory which stands established today has been due to Abduction” (CP 5.172, 1903). Similarly, “All that makes knowledge applicable comes to us viâ abduction. […] Not the (...) smallest advance can be made in knowledge beyond the stage of vacant staring, without making an abduction at every step” (HP 2:899–900, 1901). It is little wonder that so much attention has been paid to this particular type of.. (shrink)

I provide a brief history of pragmatics as it relates to explanation, highlighting the great neglect of pragmatics and pragmatic considerations in regard to explanation during the mid-twentieth century. In order to understand pragmatic considerations regarding explanation, I utilize the work of Bas C. van Fraassen, Peter Achinstein, and Jan Faye. These thinkers provide crucial tools for understanding pragmatics, especially with regard to concepts such as context and exigence. The work of these thinkers provides the platform from which I compose (...) a definition of pragmatic considerations. (shrink)

When we assume that we have cultural competence rather than thoroughly engaging in what Dewey calls the pattern of inquiry, we fail to achieve cultural humility. By analyzing how habits undermine inquiry and underlie failure in situations that call for cultural humility, we may be better equipped to address unintentional offenses. In this essay, I define cultural humility and contrast it with cultural competence, explaining why aiming for cultural competence alone is problematic. Next, I consider the attributes necessary for cultural (...) humility and the attitudes that Dewey considers beneficial for inquiry. This is followed by an outline of Dewey’s pattern of inquiry and explanation of how unquestioned habits of thought short-circuit our ability to become culturally humble. I suggest that we forgo attempting to achieve cultural competence and instead use Dewey’s pattern of inquiry with the attitudes he recommends as tools to work toward cultural humility. (shrink)

This essay presents somaesthetics of discomfort as an extension of the field of somaesthetics as developed by Shusterman. Using the work of Peirce and Dewey as a foundation upon which Shusterman and Johnson have considered the body as the basis of aesthetics, I propose that somaesthetics of discomfort provides a means of enhancing bodily awareness and reflection useful for domains of inquiry, such as healthcare and design. Taking Peirce’s notion of the irritation of doubt in a literal sense, I explore (...) bodily discomfort as the inception of inquiry. I consider work done by phenomenologists concerning experiences of comfort and discomfort, which includes definitions of each. My argument follows the perspective put forth by Peirce, Dewey, and contemporary pragmatists that experience is qualitative and that feeling is at the root of reflection. I explain how discomfort may be considered a type of aesthetic experience and provide examples of bodily discomfort as somaesthetic. In closing, I consider somaesthetic focus on discomfort as fostering moral imagination and empathy. (shrink)

In his essay, “Affording our Culture: “Smart” Technology and the Prospects for Creative Democracy,” Tibor Solymosi addresses my challenge for neuropragmatism to counter what I have elsewhere called dopamine democracy. Although I believe that Solymosi has begun to provide an explanation for how neuropragmatism may counter dopamine democracy, especially with his conceptions Œ and cultural affordances, I respond with a helpful addition to his approach by returning to the theory of inquiry as put forth by John Dewey. In particular, I (...) focus on the phases of inquiry as colored by Dewey’s concept of humility. Solymosi does not pay adequate attention to the function of inquiry necessary for combatting dopamine democracy. His account of cultural affordances and education is strengthened by using Dewey’s concept of humility as a guiding disposition for neuropragmatic inquiry. Recognizing humility as an instrument of neuropragmatic inquiry provides us with a tool to better address the pitfalls of dopamine democracy, especially misinformation and incentive salience. My argument proceeds by first articulating dopamine democracy as a problem and Solymosi’s concept of cultural affordances and how he understands these as neuropragmatic tools to address the problem through education. I present humility as an instrumental concept derived from Dewey’s work on inquiry. I then suggest how humility may serve neuropragmatic inquiry to assist in combatting the problems of dopamine democracy. (shrink)

John Dewey provided a robust and thorough conception of scientific explanation within his philosophical writing. I provide an exegesis of Dewey's concept of scientific explanation and argue that this concept is important to contemporary philosophy of science for at least two reasons. First, Dewey's conception of scientific explanation avoids the reification of science as an entity separated from practical experience. Second, Dewey supplants the realist-antirealist debate within the philosophical literature concerning explanation, thus moving us beyond the current stalemate within philosophy (...) of science. (shrink)

The argument that justice entails a form of what is deserved continues to inform attitudes about punishment. The belief in ‘just deserts’ is especially relevant in cases of punishment that are not court-ordered or officially prescribed, but nonetheless are considered deserved. Perhaps the most egregious example concerns incarcerated persons who are sexually assaulted. The belief in violence as justly deserved is ethically problematic, negatively affecting the health of incarcerated persons, as well as those outside of prisons. I argue that in (...) the context of prison sexual violence, acceptance and proffering of the just deserts position is founded upon and promulgates toxic masculinity, which undermines the personhood of prisoners and reinforces a culture of homophobia and sexism both within and beyond prison walls. I outline an alternative based on an Ubuntu ethic that rejects prison sexual violence as a form of just deserts and fosters an approach to justice that seeks reconciliation. (shrink)

This article addresses the need for adaptive ethical analysis within machine learning that accounts for emerging problems concerning social bias and generative adversarial networks. I use John Dewey’s criticisms of the reflex arc concept in psychology as a basis for understanding how these problems stem from human-gan interaction. By combining Dewey’s criticisms with Donna Haraway’s idea of cyborgs, Luciano Floridi’s concept of distributed morality, and Shaowen Bardzell’s recommendations for a feminist approach to human-computer interaction, I suggest a dynamic perspective from (...) which to begin analyzing and solving issues of injustice evident in this particular domain of machine learning. (shrink)

Of the scientific concepts that the American philosopher, Charles S. Peirce, analyzed in his work, two of the less commonly investigated have been those of guessing and of scientific economy. Peirce argued that guessing was the initial moment of hypothesis-formation. He also argued that economic factors play a significant role in the development and acceptance of hypotheses; however, the relationship between these two concepts has been neglected in most philosophical and scientific literature. In the following, I provide an analysis of (...) how guessing and economic considerations contribute to hypothesis-formation. This analysis focuses primarily upon medical science; specifically, the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS. By using the first case studies in medical research that led to the ‘discovery’ of HIV/AIDS, I will argue that guessing is a tool utilized by researchers that is determined, at least in part, by implicit bias and economic considerations, which ultimately effect the trajectory of hypothesis-formation and the ensuing scientific research founded upon those hypotheses. In this particular case, both the biases of researchers and their effect upon economic considerations in the initial moments of guessing led to problematic hypotheses concerning the disease, populations susceptible to the disease, and how it was transmitted within that population. By recognizing how guessing and economy relate in this particular case and the functions of these conceptual tools as they relate to the isolation and discovery of disease, we can better understand epidemiological investigations and facilitate overcoming detrimental biases in such investigations. (shrink)

Assessment practices have come to dominate much of formalized education, especially within the United States. Currently, learning analytics (la) and educational data mining (edm) are purported by many educational companies and institutions to successfully improve learning through what are often considered as objective collection, classification, and analysis of educational data. Enthusiasm about big data in education has contributed to the naturalization of datafication within the field. Educational data is regarded as a natural resource that exists ‘out there’ to be mined (...) by edm and refined by la. Once refined, it is thought to bear the truth of educational assessment that leads to successful learning outcomes. (shrink)

Scientific explanation is both instrumental and consummatory. When we experience scientific explanation in its consummation, we experience what I have deemed a creative moment of scientific apprehension, which is an important aspect of creativity that comes at the end of inquiry and contributes to the development of future inquiry. Because scientific explanation is commonly cleaved from aesthetic experience, this moment of creativity has been neglected in both analyses of scientific practice and analyses of aesthetic experience. By synthesizing John Dewey’s conceptions (...) of scientific explanation and aesthetic experience with Charles S. Peirce’s categories, this moment of scientific inquiry is revealed and understood as a fundamental part of our creative reasoning process. In order to argue that scientific explanation is both instrumental and consummatory, Dewey’s instrumental conception of scientific explanation is provided, which includes why science is so often considered as separated from aesthetic experience. A general overview of Dewey’s conception of aesthetic experience and the common division conceived between scientific experience and that of aesthetics is also provided. Reasons are then supplied to reconsider scientific experience as having an aesthetic dimension, especially with regard to scientific explanations and the creative moment of scientific apprehension, which is followed by a brief discussion concerning how recognition of this moment reveals an important aspect of creative reasoning that is to be understood as a part of our experience through what Peirce referred to as firstness and secondness. Analyzing the aesthetic experience of scientific explanations against the backdrop of Dewey’s conceptions of aesthetics and science, combined with Peirce’s categories, accounts for that creative moment of scientific apprehension in which a scientific explanation takes on the quality of kalos, or sense of general harmony, that inspires reverie and future inquiry. (shrink)

There is no question that the work of John Dewey has been invaluable with regard to theories of education. What has too often been neglected, however, is Dewey's work on the philosophy of science as it pertains specifically to science education.1 Although educators might well concede that children should be encouraged to be "philosophical" within the arts or humanities, most neglect or fail to heed Dewey's insights concerning the child as philosopher-scientist within the science classroom. Dewey recognized that children were (...) too often taught "science" while not learning "the scientific way of treating the familiar material of ordinary experience" (MW 9: 228). The view of science as a nonphilosophical, highly .. (shrink)

We present a two-pronged criticism of Ramos's argument. Our main contention is that the logic of the author’s argument is flawed. As we demonstrate, the author conflates probability with necessity, in addition to conflating free will having causal efficacy with the merely illusory conscious experience of free will; such conflations undermine the claim that individual free will should be both exhibited on a social scale and necessarily cause a particular organized pattern to emerge. In addition, we will show that the (...) author makes a series of inadequately supported assertions concerning the relationship between, and degree of scholarly consensus upon, causally effective free will and mind-body interactionist dualism, which further undermine his argument. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 4, Page 560-564, July 2022.

We address Mark Tschaepe’s response to Tibor Solymosi, in which Tschaepe argues that neuropragmatism needs to be coupled with humility in order to redress “dopamine democracy,” Tschaepe’s term for our contemporary situation of smartphone addiction that undermines democracy. We reject Tschaepe’s distinction between humility and fallibility, arguing that audacious fallibility is all we need. We take the opportunity presented by Tschaepe’s constructive criticism of neuropragmatism to reassert some central themes of neuropragmatism. We close with (...) discussion of Bywater’s method of apprenticeship, as an imaginative education for creative democracy, thereby rejecting Tschaepe’s claim that neuropragmatism lacks a pedagogical method. (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people suffer (...) according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

This paper offers a new way to make sense of disagreement expansion from a polylogical perspective by incorporating various places in addition to players and positions into the analysis. The concepts build on prior implicit ideas about disagreement space by suggesting how to more fully account for argumentative context, and its construction, in large-scale complex controversies. As a basis for our polylogical analysis, we use a New York Times news story reporting on an oil train explosion—a significant point in the (...) broader controversy over producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing. (shrink)

A specific issue for argumentation theory is whether information and communication technologies play any role in governing argument — that is, as parties engage in practical activities across space and time via ICTs, does technology matter for the interplay of argumentative content and process in managing disagreement? The case made here is that technologies do matter because they are not merely conduits of communication but have a role in the pragmatics of communication and argumentation. In particular, ICTs should be recognized (...) as communication-information services that are delegated degrees of responsibility for managing disagreements arising from practical activities. These services are organized around practical theories for designing disagreement space. However, recognizing this relationship between argument and technology requires accounting for procedures, techniques, or rules and speech acts that are not argumentative propositions in any strict sense but that are consequential for what becomes argumentation in any setting. An account about designing disagreement space, grounded in Jackson and Jacobs’s theory of Disagreement Management, is put forward to address these issues while more generally contributing to understanding argument in context. (shrink)

It is time to bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its kind.

Since the 1960s, many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work, an endeavor that has required new strategies in art-making. To explore recent American manifestations of these interests, the David and Alfred Smart Museum commissioned new projects from artists Mark Dion, Peter Fend, and Dan Peterman, each focusing on interrelationships between particular organisms—human beings-and a specific group of sites—a museum building, a river landscape, and a university campus. The results, exhibited at the Smart Museum during the summer of (...) 2000, evoke the varied scales, from the microscopic to the global, at which human actions affect the environment. This catalog documents each of the artists' projects through an array of images and words: Smart Museum Associate Curator Stephanie Smith provides an introduction and brief overviews of the three projects, each of the artists contribute statements, and photographers Susan Anderson and Tom van Eynde document—in over 100 images—the processes and projects that comprise the exhibition. (shrink)

Fitting Attitudes accounts of value analogize or equate being good with being desirable, on the premise that ‘desirable’ means not, ‘able to be desired’, as Mill has been accused of mistakenly assuming, but ‘ought to be desired’, or something similar. The appeal of this idea is visible in the critical reaction to Mill, which generally goes along with his equation of ‘good’ with ‘desirable’ and only balks at the second step, and it crosses broad boundaries in terms of philosophers’ other (...) commitments. For example, Fitting Attitudes accounts play a central role both in T.M. Scanlon’s [1998] case against teleology, and in Michael Smith [2003], [unpublished] and Doug Portmore’s [2007] cases for it. And of course they have a long and distinguished history. (shrink)

A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life. For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime's quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain. Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. (...) In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies. Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain's obscure reaches. Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience. (shrink)

We usually consider literary thinking to be peripheral and dispensable, an activity for specialists: poets, prophets, lunatics, and babysitters. Certainly we do not think it is the basis of the mind. We think of stories and parables from Aesop's Fables or The Thousand and One Nights, for example, as exotic tales set in strange lands, with spectacular images, talking animals, and fantastic plots--wonderful entertainments, often insightful, but well removed from logic and science, and entirely foreign to the world of everyday (...) thought. But Mark Turner argues that this common wisdom is wrong. The literary mind--the mind of stories and parables--is not peripheral but basic to thought. Story is the central principle of our experience and knowledge. Parable--the projection of story to give meaning to new encounters--is the indispensable tool of everyday reason. Literary thought makes everyday thought possible. This book makes the revolutionary claim that the basic issue for cognitive science is the nature of literary thinking. In The Literary Mind, Turner ranges from the tools of modern linguistics, to the recent work of neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman, to literary masterpieces by Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Proust, as he explains how story and projection--and their powerful combination in parable--are fundamental to everyday thought. In simple and traditional English, he reveals how we use parable to understand space and time, to grasp what it means to be located in space and time, and to conceive of ourselves, other selves, other lives, and other viewpoints. He explains the role of parable in reasoning, in categorizing, and in solving problems. He develops a powerful model of conceptual construction and, in a far-reaching final chapter, extends it to a new conception of the origin of language that contradicts proposals by such thinkers as Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker. Turner argues that story, projection, and parable precede grammar, that language follows from these mental capacities as a consequence. Language, he concludes, is the child of the literary mind. Offering major revisions to our understanding of thought, conceptual activity, and the origin and nature of language, The Literary Mind presents a unified theory of central problems in cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. It gives new and unexpected answers to classic questions about knowledge, creativity, understanding, reason, and invention. (shrink)

Batterman and Rice ([2014]) argue that minimal models possess explanatory power that cannot be captured by what they call ‘common features’ approaches to explanation. Minimal models are explanatory, according to Batterman and Rice, not in virtue of accurately representing relevant features, but in virtue of answering three questions that provide a ‘story about why large classes of features are irrelevant to the explanandum phenomenon’ ([2014], p. 356). In this article, I argue, first, that a method (the renormalization group) they propose (...) to answer the three questions cannot answer them, at least not by itself. Second, I argue that answers to the three questions are unnecessary to account for the explanatoriness of their minimal models. Finally, I argue that a common features account, what I call the ‘generalized ontic conception of explanation’, can capture the explanatoriness of minimal models. (shrink)

It is argued here that large-scale organization and networked computing enable new divisions of communicative work aimed at shaping the content, direction, and outcomes of societal conversations. The challenge for argumentation theory and practice lies in attending to these new divisions of communicative work in constituting contemporary argumentative realities. Goffman’s conceptualization of participation frameworks and production formats are applied to articulate the communicative work of organizations afforded by networked computing that invents and innovates argument in all of its senses—as product, (...) process, and procedure. Communicative work, however, may be scaffolding argumentative contexts and practices that are quite different than what has constituted past argumentative realities. The computerization of argument happens as organizations invent and innovate argument practice relative to the demands and opportunities of interorganizational communication. The cases and examples examined here suggest that argument practice is evolving around the logic of conversation and the principle of personalization. The analysis challenges argumentation theory to seriously engage with the construction of communicative contexts and the realization of ideas about disagreement management in organizational practice and information infrastructures. Directions for integrating insights from a design perspective on argument with insights from organizational and information systems theory are proposed for coming to terms with an era of large-scale organization and computerization, in particular the evolution of argument practice, the inscription of argument in the built environment, and the absorption of socio-cultural argument practices by organizations and computation. (shrink)

Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We (...) Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection. (shrink)

Bringing together the latest scientific advances and some of the most enduring subtle philosophical puzzles and problems, this book collects original historical and contemporary sources to explore the wide range of issues surrounding the nature of life. Selections ranging from Aristotle and Descartes to Sagan and Dawkins are organised around four broad themes covering classical discussions of life, the origins and extent of natural life, contemporary artificial life creations and the definition and meaning of 'life' in its most general form. (...) Each section is preceded by an extensive introduction connecting the various ideas discussed in individual chapters and providing helpful background material for understanding them. With its interdisciplinary perspective, this fascinating collection is essential reading for scientists and philosophers interested in astrobiology, synthetic biology and the philosophy of life. (shrink)

Philosophers have tended to construe friendship as an intimate relationship involving mutual love, and have focused their discussions on this ‘true’ form of friendship. However, everyone recognizes that we use the word ‘friend’ and its cognates to refer, non-ironically, to those with whom we share various relationships that are not terribly intimate or which do not involve mutual love. I argue that there exists no general reason to restrict our philosophical focus to ‘true’ friendships, and allege that we can gain (...) important insights if we broaden our perspective to include lesser friends. I contend that friendships, in the broad sense (encompassing both ‘true’ and lesser forms), are necessarily relationships that are the product of significant collaborative norm manipulation. And I argue that understanding friendship in this way helps explain important features, including the difference between friendships and familiar relations, the non-fungibility of friends, and why friendships are often in flux. (shrink)

An account of distinctively mathematical explanation (DME) should satisfy three desiderata: it should account for the modal import of some DMEs; it should distinguish uses of mathematics in explanation that are distinctively mathematical from those that are not (Baron [2016]); and it should also account for the directionality of DMEs (Craver and Povich [2017]). Baron’s (forthcoming) deductive-mathematical account, because it is modelled on the deductive-nomological account, is unlikely to satisfy these desiderata. I provide a counterfactual account of DME, the Narrow (...) Ontic Counterfactual Account (NOCA), that can satisfy all three desiderata. NOCA appeals to ontic considerations to account for explanatory asymmetry and ground the relevant counterfactuals. NOCA provides a unification of the causal and the non-causal, the ontic and the modal, by identifying a common core that all explanations share and in virtue of which they are explanatory. (shrink)

Offers managers new tools to deal with the tough problems businesses face today. Reveals how analyzing the ethical dimensions of problems actually offers competitive advantages. Offers illustrative case examples from internally recognized companies showing that high ethics and high profits go hand in hand--and identifies the factors responsible for these companies' success.

For years now, unionization has been under vigorous attack. Membership has been steadily declining, and with it union bargaining power. As a result, unions may soon lose their ability to protect workers from economic and personal abuse, as well as their significance as a political force. In the Name of Liberty responds to this worrying state of affairs by presenting a new argument for unionization, one that derives an argument for universal unionization in both the private and public sector from (...) concepts of liberty that we already accept. In short, In the Name of Liberty reclaims the argument for liberty from the political right, and shows how liberty not only requires the unionization of every workplace as a matter of background justice, but also supports a wide variety of other progressive policies. (shrink)

Lange argues that some natural phenomena can be explained by appeal to mathematical, rather than natural, facts. In these “distinctively mathematical” explanations, the core explanatory facts are either modally stronger than facts about ordinary causal law or understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue. Craver and Povich argue that Lange’s account of DME fails to exclude certain “reversals”. Lange has replied that his account can avoid these directionality charges. Specifically, Lange argues that in legitimate DMEs, (...) but not in their “reversals,” the empirical fact appealed to in the explanation is “understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement at issue” in the explanandum. I argue that Lange’s reply is unsatisfactory because it leaves the crucial notion of being “understood to be constitutive of the physical task or arrangement” obscure in ways that fail to block “reversals” except by an apparent ad hoc stipulation or by abandoning the reliance on understanding and instead accepting a strong realism about essence. (shrink)