Sustainability has been one of architecture’s most significant trends over the last twenty years. The environmental consciousness of professionals has put sustainability at the heart of the architectural profession and has contributed to adopting and implementing sustainable designs on the scale of urban landscapes. A green roof or living roof, which is a sustainable solution in architecture, is a roof on the surface of which plants are grown. The roof is covered by plants, covering the waterproof layer beneath the (...) vegetation. However, various types of plants can be used in this scheme. Understanding the influencing factors in choosing the right plant species and the impact that utilizing green roofs has on the overall energy consumption of the building can tremendously help scientists and clarify the possible future research topics in this field. Hence, this article investigates energy optimization in the construction process of a green roof in sustainable architecture and its advantages and challenges. The results of this study show that budget limitations, managerial and organizational policies, legal issues, technical and scientific infrastructure, and cultural and geographical aspects are all affecting the widespread use of green roofs currently and need to be considered in future studies. (shrink)

Employee engagement and spirituality have both been the focus of increasing interest by researchers and practitioners, and both are still early stage theories with ill-defined constructs and definitions. Emergent empirical work related to engagement and spirituality has supported the promise of improving both organizational performance and employee conditions. Responding to the call by theorists to examine engagement antecedents and specifically, the relationship between spirituality and employee engagement, a cross-sectional study was performed to examine self-reported individual spirituality as measured by the (...) DSES and employee engagement measured using the UWES-9 including the dimensions of vigor, dedication, and absorption. 124 usable surveys were collected from a snowballing convenience sample and after confirming demographic representativeness and identifying the individual’s organizational role as a potential influential variable, analyses of the relationships between individual spirituality, overall engagement, and three individual engagement dimensions were performed using multiple regression controlling for organizational role. Empirical support was found for relationships between individual spirituality and engagement, vigor, and dedication but not for the engagement dimension of absorption. The findings should encourage further future exploration of the relationship between spirituality and engagement and inquiry into why results differ across engagement’s dimensions; specifically, why the relationship was not supported for absorption. The empirical support for spirituality as a predictor of engagement informs practical decisions for addressing workplace spirituality and concerns with the potential to assist in countering the declining engagement trend. (shrink)

The epistemic relevance of forgiveness has been neglected by both the discussion of forgiveness in moral psychology and by social epistemology generally. Moral psychology fails to account for the forgiveness of epistemic wrongs and for the way that wrongs in general have epistemic implications. Social epistemology, for its part, neglects the way that epistemic trust is not only conferred but repaired. In this essay, I show that the repair of epistemic trust through forgiveness is necessary to the economy of knowledge (...) for fallible persons like us. Despite the fact that forgiveness is never included on lists of important intellectual virtues or epistemic activities, it is vital to our lives as social knowers. Likewise, an account of forgiveness that neglects its epistemic dimension is importantly incomplete. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to determine if an instrument could be developed to measure spiritual engagement. The study resulted in the Spiritual Engagement Instrument concept comprised of four factors that included the following: worship that explained 57.8% of the variance and Cronbach’s alpha of.94, meditation that explained 12.7% of the variance and Cronbach’s alpha of.96, fasting that explained 9.58% of the variance and Cronbach’s Alpha of.98, and rest that explained 5.16% of the variance and Cronbach’s alpha of.99. The (...) four factors together explain 85.24% of the variance. The four spiritual engagement scales within the Spiritual Engagement Instrument show significant correlation with other similar but different measures of spirituality, the Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/spirituality scale and Daily Spiritual Experience Scale, confirming convergent validity. A supplemental validation study was performed using CFA, p <.001, CFI =.98, TLI =.97, RMSEA =.06). This SpEI offers researchers a tool that might be used as a pre-/post-test measure in conjunction with a spiritual development program or to measure effects of the four factors of spiritual engagement with other social constructs such as job satisfaction, normative commitment, or leadership behaviors. Ethical behavior may be influenced by individual worldview and underlying religious practices, so the SpEI offers a validated instrument to study the cycle of behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs of spiritual practices that may influence ethics. (shrink)

Looking at the metaphorical similarities between abortion statutes and copyright law reveals reproductive laws' stake in property ideologies. "Fair use" provisions in copyright law are analogous to abortion rights, delimiting the extent to which a non-owner (one who copies, a mother) can exert control over material "belonging" to another. The similarity suggests that the way to understand abortion fury is as a manifestation of property rights.

This is a new edition of T. H. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics (1883), a classic of modern philosophy, in which Green sets out his perfectionist ethical theory. In addition to the text of the Prolegomena itself, this new edition provides an introductory essay, a bibliographical essay, and an index. Brink's extended editorial introduction examines the context, themes, and significance of Green's work and will be of special interest to readers working on the history of ethics, ethical theory, (...) political philosophy, and nineteenth century philosophy. (shrink)

T. H. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics is a classic of modern philosophy. It begins with Green's idealist attack on empiricist metaphysics and epistemology and develops a perfectionist ethical theory that aims to bring together the best elements in the ancient and modern traditions, and that provides the moral foundations for Green's own distinctive brand of liberalism. David Brink's new edition will restore this great work to prominence, after two decades in which it has been hard to obtain. (...) The present edition uses the text of the fifth edition, accompanied by a new introductory essay, bibliographical essay, and index. Translations are provided for Green's quotations from other languages. Of particular importance is the editor's extended introductory essay, which situates the Prolegomena in its intellectual context, sympathetically but critically engages its main themes, and explains Green's enduring significance for the history of philosophy and contemporary ethical theory. Students and scholars of the history of ethics, ethical theory, political philosophy, and nineteenth century philosophy will find this new edition an invaluable resource. (shrink)

Angle Grinder Man removes wheel locks from cars in London.1 He is something of a folk hero, saving drivers from enormous parking and towing fi nes, and has succeeded thus far in eluding the authorities. In spite of his cape and lamé tights, he is no fi ction; he’s a real person. By contrast, Pegasus, Zeus and the like are fi ctions. None of them is real. In fact, not only is each of them different from the others, all differ (...) from Angle Grinder Man. After all, Zeus throws thunderbolts but doesn’t remove boots from cars; unlike Superman, Angle Grinder Man couldn’t leap over a parked Mini, and all sightings suggest that he is a human being, not a horse. According to the charmingly austere theory of Direct Reference, a proper name’s meaning is simply its referent.2 Two proper names with.. (shrink)

How did life come into existence on Earth? Although many scientific theories and hypotheses have been drawn, we have not yet been able to provide a detailed answer to this fundamental question. What if intelligent computers would someday be in a condition to postulate their own evolution theory which would explain how they came into the world, how would this theory look like? And how would it stand in comparison to the humans’ theory? Let us suppose that a thousand years (...) from now, intelligent and self-aware computers who, for any reason whatsoever, had lost all contacts with humans, and had continued to self-develop and improve by themselves, slowly began to wonder about how they came into the world? These intelligent computers may eventually develop a coherent theory of evolution, which would seemingly explain their existence. How would their theory stand in comparison to our theory of evolution? Would it be less comprehensive or viable? Taking into consideration the inorganic nature of computers, their relative simplicity compared to the human body, and the closeness of their components to the surrounding inorganic environment, it would not be a surprise if their theory would be more plausible than that of the humans. So, what would this signify and mean to our scientific theories in general? (shrink)

Dummett's output has been prolific and highly influential, but not always as accessible as it deserves to be. This book sets out to rectify this situation.

This groundbreaking work was the first to propose an inquiry into the forms, dynamics, and constructs of educational policy. This fine book remains the only treatment of educational policy incorporating an account of the differences between various kinds of educational goods. Professor Green explored the nature of policy and prospects for the future, and it is a rare treat that we can now (more than fifteen years later) revisit the text to discover his uncanny accuracy.

In this study Professor Michalson attempts to clarify the complex tangle of issues connected with Kant's doctrines of radical evil and moral regeneration, and to set the problems resulting from these doctrines in an interpretive framework that tries to make sense of the instability of his overall position. In his late work Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant charts out these doctrines in a manner that represents a fresh development in his own thinking on moral and relgious matters, (...) apparently at variance with the mainstream Enlightenment outlook which Kant otherwise embodies. His position appears to amount to a retrieval of the supposedly outmoded Christian doctrine of original sin, and this ambivalence is seen to stem from his desire to do justice both to the Protestant Christian, and the Enlightenment rationalist, tradition, which weigh equally heavily upon him. In this study Professor Michalson attempts to clarify the complex tangle of issues connected with Kant's doctrines of radical evil and moral regeneration, and to set the problems resulting from these doctrines in an interpretive framework that tries to make sense of the instability of his overall position. (shrink)

Philosophers frequently defend definitions by appealing to intuitions and contemporary folk classificatory norms. I raise methodological concerns that undermine some of these defenses. Focusing on Andrew Kania's recent definition of music, I argue that the way in which it has been developed leads to problems, and I show that a number of other definitions of interest to philosophers of art run into similar problems.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Instinct of Nature: Natural Law, Synderesis, and the Moral SenseRobert A. Greene“Instinct is a great matter.”—Sir John FalstaffThis essay traces the evolution of the meaning of the expression instinctus naturae in the discussion of the natural law from Justinian’s Digest through its association with synderesis to Francis Hutcheson’s theory of the moral sense. The introduction of instinctus naturae into Ulpian’s definition of the natural law by Isidore of Seville (...) in the seventh century posed a problem of definition for medieval commentators. Some said that it meant a universal and providential natura naturans; some defined it as the urge to self and species preservation in animals, degenerating in man into sensual and shameful impulses; some advanced the humanistic and paradoxical notion that it referred to a unique exercise of human reason in coming to know the natural law. The contemporaneous revival in the twelfth century of St. Jerome’s puzzling new term “synderesis,” and its gradual definition as the immediate apprehension of the first practical moral principles of the natural law, brought the two terms into proximity and loose association.A half-century later St. Bonaventure made explicit what had remained latent in the thinking of Thomas Aquinas by relocating synderesis in the affective rather than the intellectual part of man’s nature. Accordingly the moral discoveries of synderesis came to be spoken of as not only non-discursive but instinctive in nature—apprehensions for which no reason could be given, apprehensions somehow rooted in affective human experience. During the bilingual early modern period an increasingly secularized, internalized, and reified instinctus [End Page 173] naturae, together with its abbreviated vernacular cognate, “instinct,” came to serve as a substitute and synonym for the obsolescent synderesis. Edward Herbert’s attention to instinctus naturae in his De Veritate (1624), Sir Matthew Hale’s speculations about the place of rational instinct in the natural law, and Francis Hutcheson’s theory of a moral sense all exemplify this semantic legacy.The first entry in Justinian’s Digest has had a disproportionate influence on later speculation about the natural law. It begins a chapter that gives pride of place to general definitions of justice, law, jus naturale and jus gentium, and it is drawn from the writings of the Roman jurisconsult Domitius Ulpianus (d. 223), whose work constitutes forty percent of the Digest. Ulpian defines the natural law, with insistent repetition, as that which nature has taught to, or is common to, all animals:Jus naturale is that which nature has taught to all animals; for it is not a law specific to mankind but is common to all animals—land animals, sea animals, and the birds as well. Out of this comes the union of man and woman [male and female] which we call marriage, and the procreation of children, and their rearing. So we can see that the other animals, wild beasts included, are rightly understood to be acquainted with this law. Jus gentium, the law of the nations, is that which all human peoples observe. That it is not coextensive with natural law can be grasped easily, since this latter is common to all animals whereas jus gentium is common only to human beings among themselves. 1Justinian’s compilers gave Ulpian’s definition striking prominence at the beginning of the Digest and then in the same short chapter quoted the incompatible and more traditional definitions of his contemporaries Gaius and Paulus. They confined the operation of the natural law to mankind and spoke of reason as its source. 2 The compilers had been charged to eliminate just such conflicts; yet here at the very outset they set a conundrum that perplexed commentators [End Page 174] and invited explanation from Isidore of Seville to Hugo Grotius. Their selection of quotations suggests that as lawyers they regarded such general definitions as “for legal purposes no more than ornament to discussion.” 3 For those of a more speculative bent, however, the dilemmas could not have been more fundamental. How was the natural law to be defined in relation to those appetitive and self-preservative urges that man seemed to share with animals? Or did the term law apply only... (shrink)

History of women philosophers in Australia delivered as part of a series of of lectures on many aspects of philosophy in Australia.

This essay ties together some main strands of the author’s research spanning the last quarter-century. Because of its broad scope and space limitations, he prescinds from detailed arguments and instead intuitively motivates the general points which are supported more fully in other publications to which he provides references. After an initial delineation of several distinct notions of meaning, the author considers such a notion deriving from the evolutionary biology of communication that he terms ‘organic meaning’, and places it in the (...) context of evolutionary game theory. That provides a framework for a special type of organic meaning found in the phenomenon of expression, of which the author here offers an updated characterization while highlighting its wide philosophical interest. Expression in turn generalizes to a paradigmatic form of human communication—conversation—and section 4 provides a taxonomy of conversation-types while arguing that attention to such types helps to sharpen predictions of what speakers say rather than conversationally implicate. We close with a view of fictional discourse on which authors of fictional works are engaged in conversation with their readers, and can provide them with knowledge in spite of the fictional character of their conversation. Such knowledge includes knowledge of how an emotion feels and is thus a route to empathy. (shrink)

For more than 30 years, beginning with the Reagan administration's refusal to support and provide oversight for embryo research, and continuing to the present in congressionally imposed limits on funding for such research, progress in infertility medicine and the development of stem cell therapies has been seriously delayed by a series of political interventions. In almost all cases, these interventions result from a view of the moral status of human embryo premised largely on religious assumptions. Although some believe that these (...) interventions are valid expressions of religious values in the public sector, it is argued here that they, in fact, contradict Rawls's conception of public reasoning. Both the prohibition of research involving the human embryo as well as bans on federal funding for embryo-related research place the particular religious views of some citizens above the pressing health needs of almost all, and thus violate the ideal of civility implicit in the Rawlsian standard. (shrink)

This article presents an architecture for natural language generation of biomedical argumentation. The goal is to reconstruct the normative arguments that a domain expert would provide, in a manner that is transparent to a lay audience. Transparency means that an argument's structure and functional components are accessible to its audience. Transparency is necessary before an audience can fully comprehend, evaluate or challenge an argument, or re-evaluate it in light of new findings about the case or changes in scientific knowledge. The (...) architecture has been implemented and evaluated in the Genetics Information Expression Assistant, a prototype system for drafting genetic counselling patient letters. Argument generation makes use of abstract argumentation schemes. Derived from the analysis of arguments used in genetic counselling, these mainly causal argument patterns refer to abstract properties of qualitative causal domain models. (shrink)

This essay examines Aquinas's discussions of hatred in Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 29 and II-II, Q. 34, in order to retrieve an account of what contemporary theorists of the emotions call its cognitive contents. In Aquinas's view, hatred is constituted as a passion by a narrative pattern that includes its intentional object, beliefs, perceptions of changes in bodily states, and motivated desires. This essay endorses Aquinas's broadly "cognitivist" account of passional hatred, in line with his way of treating passions in (...) general. I suggest that Aquinas's account of hatred's arising out of attachment is compelling. However, I also argue that if Aquinas's treatment of hatred is to help us understand the phenomenon of hate, where classes of people are abominated for an identity they bear, and to avoid equating an oppressor's hatred with that of the oppressed for the oppressor, the cognitive pathway to hatred must be broader than through envy. (shrink)

The Trolley Problem arises from a set of moral dilemmas, most of which involve tradeoffs between causing one death and preventing several more deaths. The normative and descriptive Trolley Problems are closely related. The normative Trolley Problem begins with the assumption that authors' natural responses to these cases are generally, if not uniformly, correct. Thus, any attempt to solve the normative Trolley Problem begins with an attempt to solve the descriptive problem, to identify the features of actions that elicit their (...) moral approval or disapproval. The chapter explains an empirical research paper to provide an approximate descriptive solution to the Trolley Problem. More specifically, this research highlights the influence of two factors that exert a powerful influence when both are present. From a normative perspective, the personal force factor is notable because it is not one that the authors ordinarily regard as morally relevant. (shrink)

Many who doubt its analytic status nonetheless agree with the claim that a spinster is a woman of marriageable age who has not yet married. They are also likely to agree that this claim has the look of a definition. After all, it has the following four features: 1) Extensional adequacy: It cites a particular condition that is met by all and only things of the kind being defined (the spinsters, in this case).

This essay turns to ancient sources in order to rethink the relationship between political apathy and democracy. If modern democratic theorists place political apathy entirely outside of democracy – either as a destructive limit upon the full realization of a democratic polity, or, more sanguinely, as a pragmatic necessity which tempers democracy so that it may function in a workable yet watered-down form – the ancients conceived of political apathy as a peculiarly democratic phenomenon that was likely to flourish in (...) tandem with the expansion of egalitarian institutional structures and moral ideas. Evidence for the ancient recognition of political apathy as a uniquely democratic kind of affliction centers on, but is not limited to, three main sources. In literature, the Homeric epic, and specifically the story of Achilles, present apathy for politics and commitment to human equality as synonymous forces. In philosophy, one of the main reasons Plato opposes the democratic regime is precisely that it engenders apathy among the citizenry. And in history, Herodotus’ account of the first debate on constitutions as well as the ancient democratic practice of election by lot reveal an ancient egalitarian interest in using democracy to quell, rather than encourage, political behavior. (shrink)

Although the primary meaning of Max Weber’s concept of disenchantment is as a sociological condition (the retreat of magic and myth from social life through processes of secularization and rationalization), as Weber himself makes clear in his address, “Science as a Vocation,” disenchantment can also be a philosophical act: an unusual form of moral discourse that derives new ethical direction out of the very untenability of a previously robust moral tradition. The philosophical variant of disenchantment is significant both because it (...) contradicts numerous elements of the sociological version and because it suggests there are forms of cognition unique to moral philosophy (insofar as the derivation of a moral teaching from the very absence of one is foreign to both a religious and ascientific mindset). (shrink)

In February 1975, a group of leading scientists, physicians, and policymakers convened at Asilomar, California, to consider the safety of proceeding with recombinant DNA research. The excitement generated by the promise of this new technology was counterbalanced by concerns regarding dangers that might arise from it, including the potential for accidental release of genetically modified organisms into the environment. Guidelines developed at the conference to direct future research endeavors had several consequences. They permitted research to resume, bringing to an end (...) the voluntary moratorium that the National Academy of Sciences had instituted several months earlier. They also served to illustrate that the scientific community was capable of self-governance, thereby securing public trust and persuading Congress not to institute legislative restrictions. Finally, they underscored the importance of weighing unforeseen risks inherent in some research against potential benefits that may arise from these same endeavors. (shrink)

Many claims about conceptual matters are often represented as, or inferred from, claims about the meaning, reference, or mastery, of words. But sometimes this has led to treating conceptual analysis as though it were nothing but linguistic analysis. We canvass the most promising justifications for moving from linguistic premises to substantive conclusions. We show that these justifications fail and argue against current practice (in metaethics and elsewhere), which confuses an investigation of a word’s meaning, reference, or competence conditions with an (...) analysis of some concept or property associated with that word. (shrink)

Using the theoretical approach he introduced in his acclaimed Religious Reason, and drawing on contemporary rationalist ethical theory as well as a variety of religious traditions and issues, Ronald M. Green here provides a simple, effective model for understanding the complexity of religious life. He shows clearly and convincingly that the basic processes of religious reasoning are the same everywhere and that they give rise, in perfectly understandable ways, to the rich diversity of religious expression worldwide. This is a (...) major resource for courses in the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

According to Wollstonecraft. This suggests that for her ethical judgement is based on reason, and so she is an ethical cognitivist. This impression is upheld by the fact that she clearly believes in the existence of ethical truth and has little sympathy with subjectivism. At the same time, she places a great deal of importance on the role of the emotions in ethical judgement. This raises the question how the emotions can be relevant if ethics consists in a realm of (...) truths, discoverable by reason. The paper answers this question and clarifies Wollstonecraft's model of the interaction of emotion and reason by comparing it with those of Rousseau, Godwin, Price and Adam Smith. It argues that the originality of Wollstonecraft's position resides in the way she understands the role of the imagination in ethical reasoning. (shrink)

This article offers a new interpretation of Bonhoeffer's Christian peace ethic, a more penetrating description of what is usually called his `pacifism'. This peace ethic does not rest on a principle of non-violence — Bonhoeffer rejects an ethic of principles — but is rooted in his distinctive reading of Scripture, especially the Sermon on the Mount, and his understanding of Christ, discipleship, the gospel and the church. Consequently he does not abandon his peace ethic to participate in the anti-Hitler conspiracy (...) and attempted tyrannicide. Theological analysis and historical information both support this conclusion. (shrink)

This paper develops a new account of Beauvoir's "Hegelianism" and argues that the strand of contemporary interpretation of Beauvoir that seeks to represent her thought in isolation from that of Jean-Paul Sartre constitutes a betrayal of the philosophy of recognition that she denves from Hegel. It underscores the extent to which Beauvoir influenced Sartre's Being and Nothingness and shows that Sartre and Beauvoir both adapted Hegel's ideas and agreed in rejecting his optimism.

How is the burden of proof to be distributed among individuals who are involved in resolving a particular issue? Under what conditions should the burden of proof be distributed unevenly? We distinguish attitudinal from dialectical burdens and argue that these questions should be answered differently, depending on which is in play. One has an attitudinal burden with respect to some proposition when one is required to possess sufficient evidence for it. One has a dialectical burden with respect to some proposition (...) when one is required to provide supporting arguments for it as part of a deliberative process. We show that the attitudinal burden with respect to certain propositions is unevenly distributed in some deliberative contexts, but in all of these contexts, establishing the degree of support for the proposition is merely a means to some other deliberative end, such as action guidance, or persuasion. By contrast, uneven distributions of the dialectical burden regularly further the aims of deliberation, even in contexts where the quest for truth is the sole deliberative aim, rather than merely a means to some different deliberative end. We argue that our distinction between these two burdens resolves puzzles about unevenness that have been raised in the literature. (shrink)

The basic principles of scientific research from the great French physiologist whose contributions in the 19th century included the discovery of vasomotor nerves; nature of curare and other poisons in human body; more.

This book considers the arguments for and against the implementation of in vitro meat technology. Rachel Robison-Greene argues that in light of emerging technology, we should rethink the ethical dimensions of what makes something “edible.”.

Aquinas's argument against the possibility of genuine self-hatred runs counter to modern intuitions about self-hatred as an explanatorily central notion in psychology, and as an effect of alienation. Aquinas's argument does not deny that persons experience hatred for themselves. It can be read either as the claim that the self-hater mistakes what she feels toward herself as hatred, or that, though she hates what she believes is her "self," she actually hates only traits of herself. I argue that the argument (...) fails on both readings. The first reading entails that all passions are really self-love, and so is incompatible with Aquinas's own "cognitivist" view of what it is that distinguishes specific passions in experience. The second reading entails that persons have no phenomenal access to "self," rendering self-reference--how it is that the self can be an intentional object of conscious mental states---a mystery. Augustine's claim, which Aquinas accepts on authority, that all sin originates in inordinate self-love seems to entail the impossibility of genuine self-hatred because both thinkers fail to distinguish between two distinct forms of self-love: amor concupiscentiae and amor benevolentiae. (shrink)