Everyone knows what it is to feel a conflict between a ‘non-rational’ desire and reason, as e.g., when we want a second dish of ice cream but think it would be unwise to take it. In such cases we commonly think of our desires as unreasonable: they prompt us to perform some action contrary to our deliberations. Nevertheless, most of us assume that reason can move us: that simply recognizing an act as the most reasonable thing to do gives us (...) a motive to do it — even if in fact we do not perform that action. If we do not eat the second dish of ice cream we are disposed to think that we did not because we judged it unwise. If, on the other hand, we do eat the second dish, we are disposed to think we did because we were more strongly inclined toward eating than not eating, even though we were inclined toward refraining because we judged eating unwise. This is the position of the man on the street. It is the commonsensical notion of reason, motivation, and their relationship. (shrink)

TRADITIONAL INTERPRETATIONS OF HUME HAVE MISCONSTRUED HIS UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF PLEASURE, AND HOW PLEASURE IS DEPLOYED IN HIS VALUE THEORY. I RECTIFY THIS STATE OF AFFAIRS BY EXPLICATING THE ROLE WHICH PLEASURE PLAYS IN JUDGMENTS OF VALUE ON THE HUMEAN ANALYSIS. IT IS SHOWN THAT PLEASURE HAS ALL THE FEATURES THAT MAKE IT RELEVANT TO VALUE THEORY AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY, THAT HUME'S UNDERSTANDING OF PLEASURE IS MUCH MORE SOPHISTICATED THAN HAS BEEN GENERALLY REALIZED, AND THAT HUME'S CONCEPTION OF (...) PLEASURE IS WELL-INTEGRATED WITH HIS VALUE THEORY. (shrink)

Ethics and politics are inseparable sciences. Understanding them requires that we understand human nature and right reason.

This book is the compilation of over fifty years of teaching Metaphysics, Philosophy of the Person, Epistemology, and Ethics, including Virtue Ethics, in the classroom setting. Philosophy Begins in Wonder offers the classroom dynamic on the written page. Here you will find philosophical questions raised, many possible answers provided, guidance in discerning how to evaluate the answers, and encouragement for even greater considerations beyond the scope of this book. Philosophy that begins in wonder is open to proceeding further in a (...) lifetime journey of wonder, avoiding the unnecessary pitfalls of cynicism, pessimism, and despair. This spirit of wonder offers to one a life of amazement, joy, gratitude and, therein, often the unexpected moments of knowledge, understanding, insights, and occasionally wisdom. --- back cover of book. (shrink)

The impact of Gilles Deleuze on critical thought in the opening decades of the twenty-first century rivals that of Jacques Derrida or Michel Foucault on critical thought in the closing decades of the twentieth. The "Deleuze and..." industry is in overdrive in the humanities, the social sciences, and beyond, busily connecting Deleuzian philosophy to everything from literature to architecture, metaphysics to mathematics, ethics to physics, sexuality to technology, and ecology to theology. What of Deleuze and the Bible? What does the (...) Bible become when it is plugged into the Deleuzian corpus? An immense affective assemblage, among other things. And what does biblical criticism become in the process? A practice of close reading that is other than interpretation and renounces the concept of representation. The book begins with an extended exposition of Deleuzian thought, and proceeds to unexegetical explorations of five successive themes: Text (how to make yourself a Bible without Organs, and why); Body (why there are no bodies in the Bible, and how to read them anyway); Sex (a thousand tiny sexes, a trillion tiny Jesuses); Race (Jesus and the white faciality machine); and Politics (democracy, despots, pandemics, ancient prophets). Cumulatively, these explorations limn the fluid contours of a Bible after Deleuze. (shrink)

This volume is the first full-length attempt from within the fields of theological and biblical studies to grapple with "the turn to the animal" currently underway in the humanities, a turn catalyzed in part by the animality theory that has issued from such thinkers as Jacques Derrida and Donna Haraway.

The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers reveals how great philosophers of the past sought to answer the question of the meaning of life. This edited collection includes thirty-five chapters which each focus on a major figure, from Confucius to Rorty, and that imaginatively engage with the topic from their perspective. This volume also contains a Postscript on the historical origins and original significance of the phrase 'the meaning of life'.

Two prevailing paradigms explain the diversity of sex-determining modes in reptiles. Many researchers, particularly those who study reptiles, consider genetic and environmental sex-determining mechanisms to be fundamentally different, and that one can be demonstrated experimentally to the exclusion of the other. Other researchers, principally those who take a broader taxonomic perspective, argue that no clear boundaries exist between them. Indeed, we argue that genetic and environmental sex determination in reptiles should be seen as a continuum of states represented by species (...) whose sex is determined primarily by genotype, species where genetic and environmental mechanisms coexist and interact in lesser or greater measure to bring about sex phenotypes, and species where sex is determined primarily by environment. To do otherwise limits the scope of investigations into the transition between the two and reduces opportunities to use studies of reptiles to advance understanding of vertebrate sex determination generally. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

American universities are increasingly proactive in dealing with conflict of interest problems of their faculty. Changing social norms, publicized scandals, and more have made both university administrators and faculty extra alert to the dangers of faculty infidelity to their roles as teachers and scholars. Personal interests — both financial and non-financial — appear increasingly to pressure faculty to behave inappropriately. Most faculty members resist those pressures. Yet, enough conduct that either is, or appears to be, improper has occurred to prompt (...) the adoption by universities of an ever-more complex regulatory regime. This regime no longer relies primarily upon threats of after-the-fact punishment for gross deviations from professorial norms. Instead, universities have also enacted a wide array of in-advance restrictions. These include required disclosures by faculty members of certain private interests, prohibitions of specific faculty behavior, and specified instances in which faculty members must temporarily withdraw from their professorial roles in light of their private interests. This article draws especially upon the author’s experience at the University of California to illustrate the new system of regulation. (shrink)

Krasner considers the decline of the global economic power the United States enjoyed from the 1940s through the 1960s and prescribes a policy of repricocity to restore the country's postwar position, allowing it to compete effectively in an emerging and changing economic climate.

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night…John 3: 1–2A lady asked the famous Lord Shaftesbury what religion he was of. He answered the religion of wise men. She asked, what was that? He answered, wise men never tell.Diary of Viscount Percival , i, 113NEWTON AS HERETICIsaac Newton was a heretic. But like Nicodemus, the secret disciple of Jesus, he never made a public declaration of his private (...) faith – which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unravelling his personal beliefs. His one-time follower William Whiston attributed his policy of silence to simple, human fear and there must be some truth in this. Every day as a public figure and as the figurehead of British natural philosophy, Newton must have felt the tension of outwardly conforming to the Anglican Church, while inwardly denying much of its faith and practice. He was restricted by heresy laws, religious tests and the formidable opposition of public opinion. Heretics were seen as religiously subversive, socially dangerous and even morally debased. Moreover, the positions he enjoyed were dependent on public manifestations of religious and social orderliness. Sir Isaac had a lot to lose. Yet he knew the scriptural injunctions against hiding one's light under a bushel. Newton the believer was thus faced with the need to develop a modus vivendi whereby he could work within legal and social structures, while fulfilling the command to shine in a dark world. This paper recovers and assesses his strategies for reconciling these conflicting dynamics and, in so doing, will shed light on both the nature of Newton's faith and his agenda for natural philosophy. (shrink)

The overriding theme of the conference honoring Bob Cooter and his work is the question whether law and policy can change people’s preferences. The conventional “law and economics” answer is “no.” People have preferences that are fixed. What changes in law and policy do is to change how people behave by altering the costs and benefits people face in pursuit of their preferences. Put simply, the assumption of the “law and economics” model is that people respond to financial incentives by (...) changing how they act, not what they want. So, to take a simple example, imagine two people at the same starting point, both wanting to drive separately to visit a mutual friend. Their preference to get there promptly and safely is common to both of them, but how they act in pursuit of that goal may well differ. Moreover, government can alter how they drive to their friend’s by making changes such as putting in a freeway, or adding a new lane to the road, or installing lots of new traffic signals or stop signs along one route. The two people may have driven different routes previously, and they may alter their driving strategy in response to the policy changes government has adopted and may still decide that different routes are better for them. But they do not change their desire to see their friend in a prompt and safe manner. In this Article I offer a counterexample — an instance in which changes in law and policy can not only alter the behavior of some with fixed preferences, but also can impact the preferences of others. My example is about changes in society that can alter parenting style (of those parents with a fixed preference to have their children succeed) and can also change the underlying preferences that those children have as to how their lives should play out. (shrink)

The patient safety movement seeks to reduce the number of avoidable injuries and diseases that patients suffer while in hospital. Two regulatory strategies in support of that movement are explored here. “Required disclosure” would rely on market responses to an increase in publicly available information about hospital errors. “Performancebased regulation” would require hospitals to reduce their error rate or suffer substantial financial penalties. Both approaches are designed to give medical service providers incentives to promote safety without resorting to “command and (...) control” regulation under which government experts tell hospitals how to act. (shrink)

The focus of this Perspective article is on the comparison of two of the most popular initial applicant screening methods: Resumes and application forms. The viewpoint offered is that application forms are superior to resumes during the initial applicant screening stage of selection. This viewpoint is supported in part based on criterion-related validity evidence that favors application forms over resumes. For example, the biographical data inventory, which can contain similar questions to those used in application forms, is one of the (...) most valid predictors of job performance, whereas job experience and years of education, which are often inferred from resumes and cover letters, are two of the least valid predictors of job performance. In addition to validity evidence, making decisions based on application forms as opposed to resumes is likely to help organizations defend against claims of discriminatory hiring while enhancing their ability to hire in a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive manner. For example, applicant names on resumes can lead to screening bias against members of identifiable subgroups, whereas an applicant’s name can be easily and automatically hidden from decision-makers when reviewing application forms. Despite these convincing arguments focused on applicant quality and diversity, a substantial research–practice gap regarding the use of resumes and cover letters remains. (shrink)

By all accounts one of the most influential philosophical contributions of Duns Scotus is his distinction between intuitive cognition, in which a thing is known as present and existing, and abstractive cognition, which abstracts from actual presence and existence. Recent scholarship has focused almost exclusively on the role given intuitive cognition in the justification of contingent propositions and on the debates over certitude which arose from the critiques of Scotus's distinction by Peter Aureoli and William of Ockham.

A stunning compilation of the strongest pro-choice and pro-life arguments brought together for the first time in a single work that allows for meaningful comparisons and intelligent dialogue. This gives the discerning reader an opportunity to see both sides comprehensively; and move beyond emotionally charged mixed feelings to rational thought.

Within the context of questions raised by gender and sexuality studies about the relationship between sex and technics, I develop a theory of sexuation derived from Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation. First, I provide an overview of Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, from the physical to the collective. In the second section, I turn to the question of sexuality, outlining an ontogenetic account in which sexuation is conceived as a process of both individuation and relation that is fundamental to certain living (...) beings. Then, drawing on Simondon’s theorization of technics in its mediating function between humans and the world, I resituate understandings of the relation between sex and technics. While each section – Individuation, Sexuation, Technicity – argues for the significance of these concepts to feminist and queer theory, overall the essay uses Simondon’s work as a new paradigm for gender and sexuality studies and calls for the invention of a sexuate culture. (shrink)