This paper argues that independent auditors have lost sight of their obligation to be truly impartial, and have increasingly adopted an attitude of client advocacy. We argue that auditors have a professional obligation to go beyond merely passing judgment on whether client accounting methods are acceptable under GAAP, and to judge whether the principles adopted are the most appropriate under the circumstances. We then review recent evidence which suggests that auditors have abandoned this objective in favor of advocating client-preferred principles. (...) The results of a survey of public accountants employed by small CPA firms indicates that, in a scenario in which an auditor did not feel that the client's accounting treatment was the most appropriate under the circumstances but it was recognized as an acceptable alternative under GAAP, advocacy of the client-preferred approach is considered appropriate and is very likely to occur in practice. In less subtle cases (e.g., when the auditor did not feel that the client's treatment provided the best reflection of the economic substance of the underlying transactions), survey participants as a group were ambivalent regarding the appropriateness of client advocacy, and felt that subordination of judgment was likely to occur in practice. The results also indicate that engagement risk, or the risk that the firm will be harmed by aggressive behavior, affects judgments of both the appropriateness and likelihood of subordination of judgment. These findings suggest that auditors have adopted an ideology of client advocacy, within the constraints of engagement risk. (shrink)

Titin, the largest protein identified to date (over 1 μm long, almost 3 million daltons in mass) is the third most abundant component of the sarcomere. In the mature myofibril, titin molecules span from M line to Z line, forming a third filament system which provides sarcomeric alignment and elastic recoil. In the developing sarcomere, accumulating evidence from studies both in vivo and in vitro implicates titin as part of a morphogenetic scaffolding, upon which critical events in myofibrillogenesis are coordinated (...) in a time‐ and spacedependent manner. (shrink)

School performance and cognitive competence can be conceptualized as social and relational constructs. Thus, we expect their association to vary as a function of other socially-embedded variables which have proven meaningful in the academic domain. The present study takes a critical theory approach to assess gender-related and contextual variability in the association between peer-assessed school performance and self-perceived cognitive competence. The sample consisted of 719 preadolescents living in lower- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods in Montreal, Canada and Barranquilla, Columbia. Multigroup comparisons revealed (...) that peer-assessed school competence was more strongly associated with self-perceived cognitive competence for upper-middle-class than lower-middle-class participants from Barranquilla, whereas the opposite pattern was observed with Montreal participants, and that the association between communal orientation and self-perceived cognitive competence was stronger for girls than for boys across the sample, especially in the upper-middle-class school in Montreal. These findings highlight the nuanced degree of gender differences in preadolescents’ perceived academic competence and emphasize the role of SES in shaping self-perceptions. (shrink)

William Blake belongs to one of those visionary artists who, during his lifetime, did not receive much recognition from society, was not understood and therefore even marked as “crazy”, his art “odd”. Nevertheless, a small circle of sensitive connoisseurs favored and supported him. But fortunately, his work was not completely forgotten. It seems that today William Blake is being highly valued. An extensive exhibition of his fine, masterful artwork was shown at Tate Britain in London till February 2020. His pictorial, (...) sensitive works are of inestimable value to us today as they address areas that are so important for the further development of mankind nowadays. For William Blake, imprisonment of a human being does not mean only the physical, as a slave, but above all the spiritual, the mental. Unfortunately, mental slavery is not recognized as such by mankind, as Blake let us know, this is influence of sly forces. From early childhood he had visions of God and angels. For him it was clear and undoubted that man should be innocent as a small child and therefore is under God’s protection. However, according circumstances emanating from negative forces, man is enthralled and drowned in it. Keywords: religion, mental slavery, mental freedom, love for mankind, salvation. (shrink)

We suggest that the emerging field of the conservation humanities can play a valuable role in biodiversity protection in Papua New Guinea (PNG), where most land remains under collective customary clan ownership. As a first step to mobilising this scholarly field in PNG and to support capacity development for PNG humanities academics, we conducted a landscape review of PNG humanities teaching and research relating to biodiversity conservation and customary land rights. We conducted a systematic literature review, a PNG teaching programme (...) review, and a series of online workshops between the authors (10 PNG-based, 7 UK-based). We found a small but notable amount of PNG research and teaching focused on biodiversity conservation or customary land rights. This included explicit discussion of these topics in 8 of 156 PNG-authored humanities texts published 2010-2020 and related teaching content in the curricula of several different humanities-based programmes. We discuss current barriers to PNG academic development. The growth of fully fledged in-country conservation humanities will require a joint collaborative effort by PNG researchers, who are best placed to carry out such work, and researchers from abroad who can access resources to support the process. (shrink)

We welcome Ballantyne & Schaefer’s discussion of the issues concerning consent and use of health data for research. In response to their acknowledgement of the need for public debate and discussion, we provide evidence from our own public consultation on this topic.

The perfect companion to Lewis Carroll's classic book and director Tim Burton's March 2010 remake of Alice in Wonderland Alice?s Adventures in Wonderland has fascinated children and adults alike for generations. Why does Lewis Carroll introduce us to such oddities as blue caterpillars who smoke hookahs, cats whose grins remain after their heads have faded away, and a White Queen who lives backwards and remembers forwards? Is it all just nonsense? Was Carroll under the influence? This book probes (...) the deeper underlying meaning in the Alice books, and reveals a world rich with philosophical life lessons. Tapping into some of the greatest philosophical minds that ever lived?Aristotle, Hume, Hobbes, and Nietzsche?Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy explores life?s ultimate questions through the eyes of perhaps the most endearing heroine in all of literature. Looks at compelling issues such as perception and reality as well as how logic fares in a world of lunacy, the Mad Hatter, clocks, and temporal passage Offers new insights into favorite Alice in Wonderland characters and scenes, including the Mad Hatter and his tea party, the violent Queen of Hearts, and the grinning Cheshire Cat Accessible and entertaining, Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy will enrich your experience of Alice's timeless adventures with new meaning and fun. (shrink)

RESUMO Este texto discute alguns problemas metodológicos e históricos concernentes à fenomenologia da consciência de imagem elaborada por Edmund Husserl e algumas de suas repercussões teóricas. Primeiramente será tematizado o escopo mais amplo em que a abordagem filosófica das imagens auferiu relevância no século XX, a saber, a assim chamada “virada icônica” ou “pictórica”, conforme as respectivas formulações de Gottfried Boehm e William Mitchell. Será situada nesse contexto a fenomenologia da imagem e, mais especificamente, a fenomenologia da consciência de imagem (...) elaborada por Husserl, considerando-se, em especial, os eixos norteadores dos três direcionamentos que sobressaem nas teorias contemporâneas da imagem, a saber: as abordagens antropológica, semiótica e perceptiva. A partir da retomada de nuances semióticas remanescentes na fenomenologia da consciência de imagem, serão apresentados alguns pontos críticos acerca da classificação das análises de Husserl no escopo do direcionamento perceptivo e, finalmente, apontadas implicações do copertencimento à apresentação intuitiva da imagem daquilo que se denominará “circunstancialidade indicativa”. ABSTRACT This text addresses some methodological and historical problems concerning the phenomenology of image consciousness elaborated by Edmund Husserl as well as some of its theoretical repercussions. At first, I examine the broader scope in which the philosophical approach to images became relevant in the 20th century, the so-called “iconic turn” or “pictorial turn”, according to the respective terms proposed by Gottfried Boehm and William Mitchell. In this context I situate the phenomenology of image and, more specifically, the phenomenology of image consciousness elaborated by Husserl, considering, in particular, the guiding axes of three directions that stand out in contemporary theories of image, namely: the anthropological, the semiotic and the perceptual approach. By the resumption of semiotic nuances remaining in the phenomenology of image consciousness I present some critical points about the classification of Husserl’s analyses in the scope of perceptual approach. Finally, I point out some implications of the co-belonging to the intuitive image presentation of what can be called “indicative circumstantiality”. (shrink)

Bred to provide human companionship, dogs eclipse all other species when it comes to reading the body language of people. Dog owners hunger for a complete rapport with their pets; in the dog the fantasy of empathetic resonance finds its ideal. But cross-species communication is never easy. Dog love can be a precious but melancholy thing. An attempt to understand human attachment to the _canis familiaris_ in terms of reciprocity and empathy, _Melancholia’s_ _Dog_ tackles such difficult concepts as intimacy and (...) kinship with dogs, the shame associated with identification with their suffering, and the reasons for the profound mourning over their deaths. In addition to philosophy and psychoanalysis, Alice A. Kuzniar turns to the insights and images offered by the literary and visual arts—the short stories of Ivan Turgenev and Franz Kafka, the novels of J. M. Coetzee and Rebecca Brown, the photography of Sally Mann and William Wegman, and the artwork of David Hockney and Sue Coe. Without falling into sentimentality or anthropomorphization, Kuzniar honors and learns from our canine companions, above all attending to the silences and sadness brought on by the effort to represent the dog as perfectly and faithfully as it is said to love. (shrink)

Bred to provide human companionship, dogs eclipse all other species when it comes to reading the body language of people. Dog owners hunger for a complete rapport with their pets; in the dog the fantasy of empathetic resonance finds its ideal. But cross-species communication is never easy. Dog love can be a precious but melancholy thing. An attempt to understand human attachment to the _canis familiaris_ in terms of reciprocity and empathy, _Melancholia’s_ _Dog_ tackles such difficult concepts as intimacy and (...) kinship with dogs, the shame associated with identification with their suffering, and the reasons for the profound mourning over their deaths. In addition to philosophy and psychoanalysis, Alice A. Kuzniar turns to the insights and images offered by the literary and visual arts—the short stories of Ivan Turgenev and Franz Kafka, the novels of J. M. Coetzee and Rebecca Brown, the photography of Sally Mann and William Wegman, and the artwork of David Hockney and Sue Coe. Without falling into sentimentality or anthropomorphization, Kuzniar honors and learns from our canine companions, above all attending to the silences and sadness brought on by the effort to represent the dog as perfectly and faithfully as it is said to love. (shrink)

Key Topics in Clinical Research aims to provide a short, clear, highlighted reference to guide trainees and trainers through research and audit projects, from first idea, through to data collection and statistical analysis, to presentation and publication. This book is also designed to assist trainees in preparing for their specialty examinations by providing comprehensive, concise, easily accessible and easily understandable information on all aspects of clinical research and audit.

We distinguish scanning switches, which only enumerate states, from function switches which transform input states into output states. For the latter we introduce a logical network symbolism. Our history of early computer switching begins with the suggestions of Ramon Lull and Gottfried Leibniz, surveys the evolution of mechanical scanning switches and the first mechanical function switches, and then describes the first electromechanical function switches. The main themes of the present paper are that William S. Jevons built the first substantial function (...) switch (his logical piano), and that his work led to the design by Allan Marquand of the first substantial electromechanical function switch, as well as to Charles S. Peirce's idea for an electrical general-purpose programmable computer. These events all occurred fifty years before the first general-purpose programmable computers were constructed (in the 1940's), but they had no influence. (shrink)

We distinguish scanning switches, which only enumerate states, from function switches which transform input states into output states. For the latter we introduce a logical network symbolism. Our history of early computer switching begins with the suggestions of Ramon Lull and Gottfried Leibniz, surveys the evolution of mechanical scanning switches and the first mechanical function switches, and then describes the first electromechanical function switches. The main themes of the present paper are that William S. Jevons built the first substantial function (...) switch (his logical piano), and that his work led to the design by Allan Marquand of the first substantial electromechanical function switch, as well as to Charles S. Peirce's idea for an electrical general-purpose programmable computer. These events all occurred fifty years before the first general-purpose programmable computers were constructed (in the 1940's), but they had no influence. (shrink)

Albert Camus’s journals of his travels to North America (1946) and South America (1949) offer his astute perspectives on literature, the arts, and Western politics in the aftermath of World War II....

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Selected Letters by William, Henry JamesWilliam James EarleWilliam and Henry James. Selected Letters. Edited by Ignas K. Skrupskelis and Elizabeth M. Berkeley. Introduction by John J. McDermott. Charlottesville VA: University Press of Virginia, 1997. Pp. xxxi + 570. $ 39.95.Almost fifty years of letters to and from the very diversely brilliant James brothers: in this volume a generous, and probably ample, selection of 216 from a total of (...) 740 surviving letters or postcards, from an original total, according to the present editors, of twice as many. This volume of correspondence reflects the deep, unquestioned, unshakable familial (and virtually statutory) closeness of William and Henry who happened, as adults, to be seldom in the same place. There is, it must be said, very little explicit philosophy, narrowly or broadly defined, in these letters, but the philosophical reader will—or ought to—find much raw material for philosophical reflection. For example, a reasonable historicist thesis of how brotherhood, or family connection generally, plays itself out is supported by these documents. The nineteenth century is not the same as the twentieth. For example, here is William’s comment on the will of his sister, Alice, who left more to her companion and care-giver, Katherine Loring, a [End Page 479] women of extraordinary virtue and burden, than to her brother Robertson: “I can well sympathize with Alice’s desire to leave her something handsome; but I must say that her own consent (being apparently privy to the will) strikes me as tant soit peu lacking in delicacy. Surely no one of us would like to be in such a position in her family or any other” (271). This would be, in 1998, a rather unenlightened and ungenerous attitude, but is natural enough in 1892, even if not quite inevitable, not being shared by Alice herself. There is, incidentally, much discussion of wills and bequests, for the Jameses were of the genteel class, people with small family money and modest private incomes for whom the wherewithal to maintain homes with servants and to provide themselves with country houses and recuperative European vacations was always a faintly embarrassing, and occasionally a pressing, problem.It is probably also true that the much-discussed question of Henry’s homosexuality has, somehow, to be recast in historically relative terms. Here is an early report—1869—of Henry’s from Oxford: “As I walked along the river I saw hundreds of the mighty lads of England, clad in white flannel & blue, immense, fair-haired, magnificent in their youth, lounging down the stream in their punts or pulling in straining crews & rejoicing in their godlike strength” (41). This could not, the point is, be said by anyone, gay or straight, in 1998. Yet Henry is neither generally naive nor uncritically anglophile. He says of the Warwickshire scenery, which in a way he likes, that it is “too monotonously sweet & smooth—too comfortable, too ovine, too bovine, too English in a word.” And he adds, a little surprisingly: “It seems like a vast show region kept up at the expense of the poor” (41). This is only one of many appealing comments not sparsely scattered, but unpredictably, in letters of more ordinary news. Here’s one I liked occasioned by seeing theater in Paris: “We talk about it & write about it & criticize & dogmatize & analyse to the end of time: but those brave players stand forth & exemplify it & act—create—produce!” (66).Of course the “wit and wisdom” are not the monopoly of Henry. Here is William being wise: “We all learn sooner or later that we must gather ourselves up and more or less arbitrarily concentrate our interests, throw much overboard to save any” (55–56). Again: “It is a sweet world, in the interstices of its bedevilment & brutality” (321). And William being funny: “Boils are surely the most slowly evolving things in nature—Christian doctrine is nothing to them” (393). He is talking about his own boils and was subject, at every period, to ailments and infirmities: “Since writing to you, I have been swimming in deep seas of influenza, gout and Erysipelas of the face” (443). Or as he, in 1900, sums it up: “My... (shrink)

Consider Dretske's measles example (from page 74 in his Knowldege and the Flow of Information (MIT/Bradford: 1981) ): since the question of whether Alice's being one of Herman's children carries the information that she has the measles is a question about conditional probabilities, we must be careful about our specification of the condition, the antecedent. Although we are to suppose that it is a true generalization that all of Herman's children have the measles, since that is a coincidence, we (...) can just as well suppose that Alice is an only child with the measles. It is of course true that the conditional probability of Alice's having measles given that she has the measles is 1; but that is not relevant to the question Dretske raises. In Dretske's example, the question is whether Alice's being Herman's child carries the information that she has measles. And so the relevant condition in this example is simply Alice's being Herman's child. While it is in fact true that Alice has the measles, that isn't part of the condition: for the question is, "how probable is the one state of affairs given some other state of affairs,". (shrink)

This anthology is the first devoted exclusively to On Certainty. The essays are grouped under four headings: the Framework, Transcendental, Epistemic and Therapeutic readings, and an introduction helps explain why these readings need not be seen as antagonistic. Contributions from W.H. Brenner, Alice Crary, Michael Kober, Edward Minar, Howard Mounce, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Thomas Morawetz, D.Z. Phillips, Duncan Pritchard, Rupert Read, Anthony Rudd, Joachim Schulte, Avrum Stroll, Michael Williams.

Biographer Richardson has written a moving portrait of James--pivotal member of the Metaphysical Club and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience. The biography, ten years in the making, draws on unpublished letters, journals, and family records. Richardson paints extraordinary scenes from what James himself called the "buzzing blooming confusion" of his life, beginning with childhood, as he struggled to achieve amid the domestic chaos and intellectual brilliance of Father, brother Henry, and sister Alice. James was a beloved teacher (...) who taught courage and risk-taking, and served as mentor to W.E.B. Du Bois, Gertrude Stein, and many other Harvard outsiders. Richardson also illuminates James's hugely influential works. One of the great figures in mysticism here brought richly to life, James is a man "whose leading ideas are still so fresh and challenging that they are not yet fully assimilated by the modern world they helped to bring about."--From publisher description. (shrink)

Philosophers are intellectual cannibals; they feed on the supposed errors of their colleagues. No harm in that, it might be said. With a sophistical argument like that of the Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass to support the punishment of the innocent, progress in philosophy might be thought dependent on such voracious activities. The Queen thought that in replying to the claim that punishing the innocent was wrong one could say that if the victim really was innocent then (...) that produced a better universe than one which contained both the pain of the punishment and that of the original crime. In a similar way it might be argued that if the supposed errors of a colleague really exist, then their correction is beneficial; while if the errors do not exist then at least there is underlying agreement among philosophers, though perhaps not harmony. The sophistry, however, arises from the fact that in both cases there are other, and better, alternatives. The Queen unaccountably forgets that it would be still better in the case of innocence not to punish at all; and the philosophical apologist for intellectual cannibalism forgets, unaccountably, that it might be still better to advertise agreement rather than to feed on supposed errors which do not exist. For one thing, in that latter case the spurious conflict might positively conceal the real disagreements. Something of that latter kind happens in Timothy Sprigge’s comments on my views about William James ; James and Bradley:American Truth and British Reality, Open Court, 1994 ). I cannot, however, take much credit for stimulating Sprigge to adopt positions similar to mine for two reasons. First the apparent conflicts which conceal real agreement are relatively few, although quite important; second his own considered general view of James is certainly different from mine and marks the real disagreement between us. Accordingly I take two bites at this particular cherry; first to consider my supposed errors and second to identify the real differences between us. Timothy Sprigge claims to find a number of minor errors in my account, but I concentrate on the two major cases. (shrink)

Twisted Logic: Navigating Life's Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Big Questions draws upon an array of popular and novel puzzles and paradoxes to help us understand and navigate our everyday world, as well as engaging with the big questions beyond. It will appeal to all those interested in learning about twisted logic and the ways in which intuition and common sense can sometimes lead us astray. The book is designed for everyone and is accessible to the layman and student alike. No prior (...) mathematical skill or technical knowledge is required. (shrink)

This is a masterly introduction to the modern, and rigorous, theory of probability. The author emphasises martingales and develops all the necessary measure theory.

This collection is a festschrift prepared for Williams on his retirement from the White’s Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. The topics covered include equality, consistency, comparison between science and ethics, integrity, moral reasons, the moral system, and moral knowledge. Most of the chapters combine exegetical and critical ambitions. With contributions by J. E. J. Altham, Jon Elster, Nicholas Jardine, Ross Harrison, Christopher Hookway, John McDowell, Martin Hollis, Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, and Charles Taylor, and replies by Bernard (...) class='Hi'>Williams. (shrink)

In Revering God, author and scholar Thaddeus Williams bridges the gap between abstract theology and awe-inspired devotion, helping readers better understand God and drawing them into a deeper state of joy and reverence for their Creator.

Religion, Race, Multiculturalism, and Everyday Life takes a spirited conceptualist look back into the history of our development. The book sets out to explore the ways in which a punditry of human equality continues to lock in unassailably assured logical postures, enabled by the historically intertwined roles played by power and the passage of time, towards the invention and sustenance of social truth. Religion, race, and multiculturalism have been written about many times, and from a variety of academic, discipline-specific perspectives. (...) Nonetheless, these social issues remain ever relevant to any sincere bid to understand the inegalitarian aspects of modern society. Religion, Race, Multiculturalism, and Everyday Life was primarily written with serious students of philosophy, sociology, the humanities, and history in mind. The author contends that we should never be too afraid to explore contentious or difficult philosophical and social questions. (shrink)

This article examines how the historian deals with ‘information’ broadly conceived, especially its acquisition, retention and loss. Ammianus details a complex interplay between those who control information and those who must work with an information deficit. Just as this dialogue plays out within the text, however, so too does it with respect to the author's methodology, which dances between the poles of incomplete and complete information depending on circumstance. Ammianus thus becomes an author as hard to pin down as many (...) of his characters, by turns the omniscient narrator and the dumbfounded participant. (shrink)

In Subjects That Matter, Namita Goswami attends to philosophy’s institutional and disciplinary failures to reconcile its identitarian claims to universality and reason with the feminist and postcolonial modes of thinking it traditionally keeps at bay. This essay places Goswami’s critique within a context of “the thought from outside,” which, beginning with Foucault’s reading of Blanchot, continuing through the geopolitics of Dussel’s philosophy of liberation, and prominent in Catherine Malabou’s conceptualization of plasticity, demonstrates how political critiques of philosophical hegemony contain an (...) implicit theorization of “literature.” If “literature” gives voice to the thought from outside, does it in turn “decolonize” philosophy? If so, what itinerary of thought ought to follow the relationship between this literary decolonization of philosophy and its imbrication within the fold of philosophical thought? How to conceptualize the plastic relation between inside and outside, between center and periphery, without subordinating the latter to the hegemony of the former? This essay argues for a coherence between Goswami’s and Malabou’s materialist understandings of difference and a conceptualization of literature as an “outside” to philosophy that operates “excentrically” “inside” philosophy. (shrink)

Arnold Burms: Professor Williams has said that he is willing to answer some of our questions about his work. Given the amount of work he has to do here in a few days, this was a generous decision for which we are genuinely grateful. Professor Van de Putte will start the discussion with some questions about the relation between theory and practice.André Van de Putte: In Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy you situate ethical thought in the context of (...) a movement of reflection. To quote from page 112: “It is too late at this stage to raise the prior question: `Why reflection?' — too late in terms of this inquiry, and always too late in terms of the question itself, since one could answer it without prejudice only by not considering it.” And just before that quotation you also said that “the drive to theory has roots in ethical thought itself” and a little bit further you say: “The important question at this point is why reflection should be taken to require theory.” Now I would like to elaborate a little bit on these remarks and ask you to comment on what I'm going to say.Three things should be stressed concerning ethical reflection which are important for moral philosophy and for our understanding of moral philosophy. The first one is this: the person who is reflecting is already part of a concrete society when he or she starts reflecting. That means that he or she has been socialized in a concrete ethos and has already an experience of a substantive ethical life. In this sense he or she does not need to invent ethical life.The second remark is this: ethical reflection is in itself already the expression of an ethical intention. By asking the question `How should one live?', one shows that one is interested in living an ethical life. In this sense I can agree with what I think you say in Ethics, namely that the question `Why should I be moral?' is not meaningful for a moral thinker. The answer to the moral question, the results of his reflection are not meant to convince him or his readers to be moral. On the contrary, he starts precisely from this interest in morality and tries to understand what it means to be moral, what his wish to be moral implies.My third point is the most important. In starting his reflection the thinker has as it were decided that his answer will only be acceptable if it is valid for all, if it can be justified for all. In the moral question itself, a norm of universality is implied. And given the fact that the moral question is itself the expression of an ethical intention, this is important. If he would not assume this norm, he would in my view not really be posing the question. We can immediately understand this if we consider the alternative.Suppose a moral thinker who assumes that an answer to the moral question will be valid only when it suits him. Would we say in this case that this person is really asking the moral question? I do not think so. To put this another way, my thesis is that in the reflection the person who reflects is subjecting himself to the law of thinking itself, to the law of reason, in other words, to the law of universality, of non-contradiction. In the question he discovers this law as a norm for himself asking the moral question and thus as a norm inherent in moral intention. I think that this is precisely what Kant discovered and why for so many there is an important link between ethics and reason and why we are, as you say, driven to theory: since we want a universal answer, since a moral norm implies universality, we are looking for a theory, for a universal justification. But this is not yet the full story. All that I have said only becomes visible on the reflective level. It is only visible, as it were, once one starts reflecting.This means that the norm of universality cannot and must not be understood as a concrete norm which can and should replace the norms of the concrete ethos we all already live in when we start reflecting. I think rationalism in ethics is precisely that: the belief that this norm and what one hopes to deduce from it can and should replace the concrete ethos. I think it must be clear that this cannot be done. As we all know the Kantian imperative is formal and negative and does not produce any content. If we need content — and of course we need it — it should come from our historical ethos. (shrink)

This article builds on the tradition of attitudinal measures of religiosity established by Leslie Francis and colleagues with the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity by introducing a new measure to assess the attitudinal disposition of Pagans. A battery of items was completed by 75 members of a Pagan Summer Camp. These items were reduced to produce a 21-item scale that measured aspects of Paganism concerned with: the God/Goddess, worshipping, prayer, and coven. The scale recorded an alpha coefficient of 0.93. (...) Construct validity of the Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism was demonstrated by the clear association with measures of participation in private rituals. (shrink)

J. F. C. Harrison has written that ‘for each age there is a new view of Mr Owen’, which is proof of the fertility and continuing relevance of his ideas. Not just in Britain and America but today around the world anti-poverty campaigners, birth-controllers, collectivists, communitarians, co-operators, ecologists, educationalists, environmentalists, feminists, humanitarians, internationalists, paternalistic capitalists, secularists, campaigners for social justice, trade unionists, urban planners, utopians, welfare reformers can all find something to admire and inspire in the treasure trove that is (...) the thought and actions of Robert Owen. Owen was a creative genius of global significance, a radical writer and activist of international reputation and reach who has inspired those seeking to change human society for the better. The contributors to this volume include not only many of the recognized experts on the life, work and legacy of Owen, but also work from younger scholars or scholars coming to the field afresh. The volume presents the most recent and original research on Owen. Owen notoriously (and impressively) dabbled in many spheres, and this is reflected in the its breadth of content. The unifying themes are Owen’s profile in his own time, and the relevance of his ideas for the generations that followed. His importance for educational and social philosophy, for political economy and for the political theory of socialism are all discussed, as are his contribution as a philanthropic employer, his political activities and the specificities of his historical context. (shrink)