In recent years, legal studies have increased the focus on contemporary social issues involved in law and society. This volume discusses the traditional subjects covered in other law and society texts and eliminates the need for a separate reader by also including chapters on controversial legal topics including affirmative action, education, the death penalty, right to work laws, and abortion. Each chapter builds on the previous ones and includes concrete examples of the issues involved. Supplemented with ample pedagogical features, the (...) book is designed to encourage students in the development of new insights on the relationships between law and society. (shrink)

Bernard Williams is one of the most influential figures in ethical theory, where he has set a considerable part of the current agenda. In this collection a distinguished international team of philosophers who have been stimulated by Williams's work give responses to it. The topics covered include equality; consistency; comparisons between science and ethics; integrity; moral reasons; the moral system; and moral knowledge. Williams himself provides a substantial reply, which shows both the directions of his own thought and also his (...) present view of earlier work of his which has been extensively discussed for twenty years. This volume will be indispensable reading for all those interested in ethical theory. (shrink)

We propose a method for estimating subjective beliefs, viewed as a subjective probability distribution. The key insight is to characterize beliefs as a parameter to be estimated from observed choices in a well-defined experimental task and to estimate that parameter as a random coefficient. The experimental task consists of a series of standard lottery choices in which the subject is assumed to use conventional risk attitudes to select one lottery or the other and then a series of betting choices in (...) which the subject is presented with a range of bookies offering odds on the outcome of some event that the subject has a belief over. Knowledge of the risk attitudes of subjects conditions the inferences about subjective beliefs. Maximum simulated likelihood methods are used to estimate a structural model in which subjects employ subjective beliefs to make bets. We present evidence that some subjective probabilities are indeed best characterized as probability distributions with non-zero variance. (shrink)

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy is a neuroimaging technique that has undergone tremendous growth over the last decade due to methodological advantages over other measures of brain activation. The action-observation network, a system of brain structures proposed to have “mirroring” abilities, has been studied in humans through neural measures such as fMRI and electroencephalogram ; however, limitations of these methods are problematic for AON paradigms. For this reason, fNIRS is proposed as a solution to investigating the AON in humans. The present review (...) article briefly summarizes previous neural findings in the AON and examines the state of AON research using fNIRS in adults. A total of 14 fNIRS articles are discussed, paying particular attention to methodological choices and considerations while summarizing the general findings to aid in developing better protocols to study the AON through fNIRS. Additionally, future directions of this work are discussed, specifically in relation to researching AON development and potential multimodal imaging applications. (shrink)

On 18 September 1697, Christainity not Mysterious was burned in Dublin by order of Parliament. This edition of the text is now available 300 years later and also includes John Toland's defences of the work and eight critical essays.

Reports of ethical lapses in the business world have been numerous and widespread. Ethical awareness in business education has received a great deal of attention because of the number and severity of business scandals. Given Sarbanes-Oxley legislation and recent Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International’s (AACSBI) recommendations, this study examined respective websites of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulated public companies and AACSBI-accredited business schools for ethical policy statement content. The analysis was accomplished by classifying ethical expressions into (...) a framework consisting of the attributes of thematic content and focus/themes partially based on the 2004 research of Gaumnitz and Lere. Findings indicate that public companies have been diligent in presenting website ethical content that closely follows authoritative recommendations. Business schools appear not to have prioritized such disclosure to the extent done so by public companies. Although there was improvement between two samples taken in 2005 and 2007, this study provides evidence that many accredited business schools have little or no disclosed ethical expectations in their mission, vision, goals, or other similar types of statements on their websites. Additional findings provide several opportunities for future research. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The essays are arranged in two sections of ethical topics and a section on philosophy, evolution, and the human sciences that includes the title essay, “Making Sense of Humanity.” In World, Mind and Ethics, excellent pieces by Elster, Sen, Jardine, Hookway, McDowell, Nussbaum, Charles Taylor, Altham, and Hollis range even more widely: over ethics, political philosophy, and epistemology, reflecting some of the breadth of Williams’s interests.

John Wilson's work as moral educator is summarized and evaluated. His rationalist humanistic approach is based on a componential characterization of the morally educated person. Such a person consistently manifests a unity of reflection, feeling, belief, and acting under the logically structured rubrics of PHIL, EMP, GIG and KRAT, and exemplifying the formal features of 'moral opinion'. The rationale and conceptual status of the components is discussed, as is the view that the concept of education entails that teachers be (...) moral educators. This involves cultivating autonomous rationality with respect to the unconscious, motivation, day-to-day moral decision-making, and the emotions; in the latter case there are extensive applications in religious education. Finally, certain weaknesses and pre-eminent strengths of Wilson's position are indicated, and comparisons briefly made with the views of McPhail, Peters, Frankena and Kohlberg. (shrink)

The popular field of 'science and religion' is a lively and well-established area. It is however a domain which has long been characterised by certain traits. In the first place, it tends towards an adversarial dialectic in which the separate disciplines, now conjoined, are forever locked in a kind of mortal combat. Secondly, 'science and religion' has a tendency towards disentanglement, where 'science' does one sort of thing and 'religion' another. And thirdly, the duo are frequently pushed towards some sort (...) of attempted synthesis, wherein their aims either coincide or else are brought more closely together. In attempting something fresh, and different, this volume tries to move beyond tried and tested tropes. Bringing philosophy and theology to the fore in a way rarely attempted before, the book shows how fruitful new conversations between science and religion can at last move beyond the increasingly tired options of either conflict or dialogue. (shrink)

Principia Mathematica was the first sustained and successful formalization of mathematics.

Following an introduction to noise and noise regulation of wind turbines, the problem of adverse health effects of turbine noise is discussed. This is attributed to the characteristics of turbine noise and deficiencies in the regulation of this noise. Both onshore and offshore wind farms are discussed.

Excerpt from John Stuart Mill Not only is the language of the Liberty somewhat vague in defining the respective limits of 'persuasion and 'coer cion, ' but the practical illustrations of lawful restrictions by the State seem at times hardly consistent with so abso lute a doctrine. It is somewhat startling, after such tren chant assertion of the absolute freedom of the individual. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at (...) www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

We carry out a systematic study of decidability for theories of real vector spaces, inner product spaces, and Hilbert spaces and of normed spaces, Banach spaces and metric spaces, all formalized using a 2-sorted first-order language. The theories for list turn out to be decidable while the theories for list are not even arithmetical: the theory of 2-dimensional Banach spaces, for example, has the same many-one degree as the set of truths of second-order arithmetic.We find that the purely universal and (...) purely existential fragments of the theory of normed spaces are decidable, as is the ∀∃ fragment of the theory of metric spaces. These results are sharp of their type: reductions of Hilbertʼs 10th problem show that the ∃∀ fragments for metric and normed spaces and the ∀∃ fragment for normed spaces are all undecidable. (shrink)

Is philosophy of film without theory an oxymoron or a family of non-, anti-, and a-theoretical approaches with which to engage in film-involving philosophical scholarship and understanding? The goal of this collection is to argue for the latter and to do so by example. By demonstrating a mere handful of the many ways in which philosophy of film without theory might be pursued, in tandem with the insights born of these methods, the volume’s contributors both implicitly and explicitly challenge the (...) academic assumption that engaging philosophically with film must be a theoretical activity. Indeed, they indicate the potential for championing without theory scholarship across the humanities for anyone whose projects and practices seek and celebrate humanistic understanding. -/- Contributors include Lucy Bolton, Carla Carmona, James Conant, Katheryn Doran. Maximilian De Gaynesford, Rob van Gerwen, John Gibson, Eran Guter & Inbal Guter, Colin Heber-Percy, Iris Vidmar Jovanović, Andrew Klevan, David Macarthur, Rupert Read, William Rothman, Constantine Sandis, and Sebastian Sunday. Films and television programmed discussed include Gravity, Le notti di Cabiria, Dunkirk, The Handmaid's Tale, Three Colours: Red and many more. -/- In addition there is an interview with Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey. (shrink)

Richard Penny argues that Rawls’s commitment to self-respect puts him at odds with his endorsement of unequalizing incentives. Penny draws on G.A. Cohen’s distinction between ‘lax’ and ‘strict’ readings of the difference principle to make this point. Given this, Penny concludes that Rawls faces a dilemma: either Rawls weakens his endorsement of unequalizing incentives or weakens his commitment to self-respect. By taking the difference principle in isolation, Penny creates a false dilemma. I will argue that once we place the difference (...) principle in the context of Rawls’s theory as a whole, we find that unequalizing incentives pose no danger to the self-respect of the least advantaged. Moreover, I will argue that a strict reading of the difference principle is incompatible with the self-respect of all citizens in a well-ordered society given the fact of reasonable pluralism. My arguments reveal the importance of seeing self-respect as a threshold good, rather than a relative one. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 592-594 [Access article in PDF] John Earman. Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 217. Cloth, $39.95. Paper, $21.95. As his uncompromising title announces, John Earman considers Hume's famous account of miracles in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding to be an "abject failure." More than this, the author judges Hume's (...) well-known arguments to have failed in multiple ways. As he states in the opening paragraph: "It is not simply that Hume's [End Page 592] essay does not achieve its goals, but that his goals are ambiguous and confused." Hume's deliberations on this topic, Earman further contends, are unoriginal, and where original, insubstantial. Further, the logic of the position expressed in the essay "reveals the weakness and poverty of Hume's own account of induction and probabilistic reasoning." Finally, "the essay represents the kind of overreaching that gives philosophy a bad name." While there are occasional hints in the book that the author is himself not completely immune to this latter tendency, for the most part these bluntly stated objections to the famous essay are well supported. This book is a comprehensive and persuasive demolition of Hume's much vaunted claims about the credibility of miracle reports, and it issues a serious challenge to standard readings.Hume's Abject Failure is divided into two parts, the first of which takes the form of an analysis and critique of Hume's arguments. This eighty-page section is followed by another hundred pages of primary materials, mostly eighteenth-century, which address issues related to Hume's essay. It is clear from the format of the book that Earman intends to take seriously the intellectual context in which Hume's arguments first appeared. This a most welcome development. Many treatments of Hume's "Of Miracles" tend to be profoundly ahistorical. What becomes immediately apparent from a consideration of this context is the startling unoriginality of Hume's chief argument. The principle that uniform experience overrides testimony to the occurrence of a miracle was aired long before Hume claimed it as his own, although it can be conceded that in Hume's hands it took on a particularly persuasive form.More importantly, however, this is an argument which does not work. Earman claims that Hume would have been aware of this had he availed himself of the developing science of probability, and in particular Thomas Bayes's pioneering attempts to quantify degrees of belief and credibility. Hume's probabilistic arguments, even on the most charitable interpretation, simply fail the test of a Bayesian analysis, and a number of Earman's chapters forcefully demonstrate this. Having exposed the dubious nature of the argument based on competing testimony, Earman goes on to makes good his claim about the inadequacy of Hume's view of induction, showing how it would rule out not merely miracle testimony, but many empirical claims of the kind typically made in the sciences.It is perhaps a little unfair to charge Hume with having articulated a flawed argument the limitations of which only become obvious with the application of a sophisticated calculus unavailable to him. There is no evidence that Hume ever read Bayes. Earman points out that Richard Price, in his 1767 critique of the argument, drew Hume's attention to the possibility of a Bayesian approach, but Hume was apparently reluctant to incorporate quantification into subsequent editions of the Essay. Whether this amounts to a major failing on Hume's part is debatable. It is also worth noting that at times Earman seems to blur the contemporary distinction between "internal" and "external evidences" (miracles were instances of the latter). This distinction is important for understanding why Hume did not adopt the subjective notions of "miracle" of Locke and the Newtonians, and also why in section two of the Essay he deploys the 'contrary miracles' argument. There is also the puzzle as to how so acute a philosophical mind as Hume's could in this instance have... (shrink)

Did Descartes deny that animals can feel? While it has generally been assumed that he did, there has been some confusion over the fact that Descartes concedes to animals both sensations and passions'. John Cottingham, for example, has argued that while Descartes did insist that animals were automata, denying them thought and "self"-consciousness, none of these assertions entail the conclusion that animals do not feel. This paper examines both Cottingham's arguments and the relevant sections of Descartes' writings, concluding that (...) Descartes does indeed deny that animals are capable of feeling, but that for various reasons, this is not the brutal' and monstrous' view it is commonly assumed to be. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adam Smith and the History of the Invisible HandPeter HarrisonFew phrases in the history of ideas have attracted as much attention as Smith’s “invisible hand,” and there is a large body of secondary literature devoted to it. In spite of this there is no consensus on what Smith might have intended when he used this expression, or on what role it played in Smith’s thought. Estimates of its significance (...) range from the laudatory—“one of the great ideas of history,” to the dismissive—“an ironic joke.”1 Commentators are also divided on whether Smith’s “invisible hand” has teleological or providential connotations, or whether it is simply a rhetorical device. John Kenneth Galbraith declared that we do a grave disservice to Smith if we insist on understanding his invisible hand as a kind of “spiritual force.”2 Spenser J. Pack maintained that the invisible hand was “a rhetorical device which Smith made up, and knew he made up” and certainly “not [End Page 29] a theological underpinning for Smith’s social and/or economic theory.”3 Others have adopted the opposite view. Jacob Viner contended that Smith’s economic theory becomes unintelligible if “the invisible hand” is evacuated of its theological significance.4 For David A. Martin, Smith’s use of the phrase pointed to the foundational role played by divine wisdom in Smith’s thought, while for Andy Denis, “the invisible hand concept in Smith was entirely and unambiguously theological.”5Surprisingly, given this situation, a systematic study of the uses of the expression before Smith has yet to be made.6 Indeed, it is not unusual to find claims that Smith invented the expression himself, or that it was primarily owing to his influence that the phrase first became widespread.7 Those who have made perfunctory efforts at a history of the phrase generally point to a few scattered literary references with a view either to judging them irrelevant to Smith’s oeuvre, or to suggesting that Smith’s (admittedly meagre) uses of the phrase are empty metaphors. This paper seeks to remedy this deficiency, offering a history of “the invisible hand” with a particular focus on the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. What clearly emerges from this survey is that the concept was relatively common by the time Smith came to use it. Moreover, while “invisible hand” was used in a variety of contexts, by far the most common involved reference to God’s [End Page 30] oversight of human history and to his control of the operations of nature. Almost certainly, then, when readers encountered the phrase in Smith, they would have understood it as referring to God’s unseen agency in political economy. Whether Smith was himself committed to such a view is more difficult to determine, but the history of the expression and the contexts in which it appears in Smith’s writings offer some support for providentialist readings.Hidden and Invisible HandsThe expression “invisible hand” was not commonly used before the seventeenth century. It does not occur in classical literature (although some have suggested that the phrase may be found in Ovid).8 Neither does it appear in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.9 The earliest reference that I have found occurs in a Greek liturgy which invokes God’s “invisible right hand which is full of blessing.”10 The liturgy was used by the Alexandrian Church and its origins date back (probably) to the second century. However, [End Page 31] the expression is relatively rare in subsequent patristic and medieval writings. In one of his Old Testament commentaries, Alexandrian Church father Origen (185–254 ce) attributed the Israelites’ defeat of the Amalekites, recorded in Exodus 17, to the agency of God’s hidden hand.11 Some later sources made reference to the work of a “hidden” or “invisible” hand of God in restoring individuals to health. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 ce) thus spoke of the hidden hand of God which heals and makes whole.12 A medieval source refers similarly to a wound being healed by the touch of an invisible hand.13 French Benedictine Petrus Cellensis (1115–83 ce) alluded to the action... (shrink)