New standards adopted by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) stress business curriculum-wide learning objectives, of which ethics is a critical part. “Knowledge and skills” in ethical responsibilities are required as part of institutionalaccreditation. An exploratory study offers insight into ethics integration, perceived comfort in teaching ethics, and methods used. The main tension presented balances calls for ethics across business curricula with the assertion that ethics instruction, in the hands of an untrained professor, may do more (...) damage than good. Results suggest that while faculty include ethics in their courses, only slightly more than half have received some kind of ethics training. We also explore ethics pedagogies and found differences between methods respondents used in the classroom and desired learning methods for themselves. We offer insights about and possible explanations for the gaps we found in our study, contextualizing them in new literature. We finish with a brief discussion of how our findings impact accreditation assessment. (shrink)

New standards adopted by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) stress business curriculum-wide learning objectives, of which ethics is a critical part. “Knowledge and skills” in ethical responsibilities are required as part of institutionalaccreditation. An exploratory study offers insight into ethics integration, perceived comfort in teaching ethics, and methods used. The main tension presented balances calls for ethics across business curricula with the assertion that ethics instruction, in the hands of an untrained professor, may do more (...) damage than good. Results suggest that while faculty include ethics in their courses, only slightly more than half have received some kind of ethics training. We also explore ethics pedagogies and found differences between methods respondents used in the classroom and desired learning methods for themselves. We offer insights about and possible explanations for the gaps we found in our study, contextualizing them in new literature. We finish with a brief discussion of how our findings impact accreditation assessment. (shrink)

Friendship, in its nature, purpose, and effects, has been an important concern of philosophy since antiquity. It was of particular significance in the life of Gilles Deleuze, one of the most original and influential philosophers of the late twentieth century. Taking L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze -- an eight-hour video interview that was intended to be aired only after Deleuze's death -- as a key source, Charles J. Stivale examines the role of friendship as it appears in Deleuze's work and (...) life. Stivale develops a zigzag methodology practiced by Deleuze himself to explore several concepts as they relate to friendship and to discern how friendship shifts, slips, and creates movement between Deleuze and specific friends. The first section of this study discusses the elements of creativity, pedagogy, and literature that appear implicitly and explicitly in his work. The second section focuses on Deleuze's friendships with Foucault, Derrida, Claire Parnet, and Félix Guattari and reveals his conception of friendship as an ultimately impersonal form of intensity that goes beyond personal relationships. Stivale's analysis offers an intimate view into the thought of one of the greatest thinkers of our time. (shrink)

Despite its importance, the linkage between genetic and cultural evolution has until now been little explored. An understanding of this linkage is needed to extend evolutionary theory so that it can deal for the first time with the phenomena of mind and human social history. We characterize the process of gene-culture coevolution, in which culture is shaped by biological imperatives while biological traits are simultaneously altered by genetic evolution in response to cultural history. A case is made from both theory (...) and evidence that genetic and cultural evolution are inseverable, and that the human mind has tended to evolve so as to bias individuals toward certain patterns of cognition and choice rather than others. With the aid of mathematical models we trace the coevolutionary circuit: The genes prescribe structure in developmental pathways that lay down endocrine and neural systems, imposing regularities in the development of cognition and behavior; these regularities translate upward into holistic patterns of culture, which can be predicted in the form of probability density distributions ; natural selection acts within human history to favor certain epigenetic rules over others; and the selection alters the frequencies of the underlying genes. The effects of genetic and cultural changes reverberate throughout the circuit and are consequently tested with the passage of each life cycle. In addition to modeling gene-culture coevolution, we apply methods from island biogeography and information theory to examine the cultural capacity of the genes, the factors determining the magnitude of cultural diversity, and the possible reasons for the uniqueness of the human achievement. (shrink)

Despite its importance, the linkage between genetic and cultural evolution has until now been little explored. An understanding of this linkage is needed to extend evolutionary theory so that it can deal for the first time with the phenomena of mind and human social history. We characterize the process of gene-culture coevolution, in which culture is shaped by biological imperatives while biological traits are simultaneously altered by genetic evolution in response to cultural history. A case is made from both theory (...) and evidence that genetic and cultural evolution are inseverable, and that the human mind has tended to evolve so as to bias individuals toward certain patterns of cognition and choice rather than others. With the aid of mathematical models we trace the coevolutionary circuit: The genes prescribe structure in developmental pathways that lay down endocrine and neural systems, imposing regularities in the development of cognition and behavior; these regularities translate upward into holistic patterns of culture, which can be predicted in the form of probability density distributions ; natural selection acts within human history to favor certain epigenetic rules over others; and the selection alters the frequencies of the underlying genes. The effects of genetic and cultural changes reverberate throughout the circuit and are consequently tested with the passage of each life cycle. In addition to modeling gene-culture coevolution, we apply methods from island biogeography and information theory to examine the cultural capacity of the genes, the factors determining the magnitude of cultural diversity, and the possible reasons for the uniqueness of the human achievement. (shrink)

Should engineering ethics be taught? Despite the obvious truism that we all want our students to be moral engineers who practice virtuous professional behavior, I argue, in this article that the question itself obscures several ambiguities that prompt preliminary resolution. Upon clarification of these ambiguities, and an attempt to delineate key issues that make the question a philosophically interesting one, I conclude that engineering ethics not only should not, but cannot, be taught if we understand “teaching engineering ethics” to mean (...) training engineers to be moral individuals (as some advocates seem to have proposed). However, I also conclude that there is a justification to teaching engineering ethics, insofar as we are able to clearly identify the most desirable and efficacious pedagogical approach to the subject area, which I propose to be a case study-based format that utilizes the principle of human cognitive pattern recognition. (shrink)

It is well known that Augustine, Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas participated in a tradition of philosophical theology which determined God to be simple, perfect, immutable and timelessly eternal. Within the parameters of such an Hellenic understanding of the divine nature, they sought a clarification of one of the fundamental teachings of their Christian faith, the doctrine of the Trinity. These classical theists were not dogmatists, naively unreflective about the very possibility of their project. Aquinas, for instance, explicitly worried about and (...) fought to dispel the seeming contradiction between the philosophical requirement of divine simplicity and the creedal insistence on a threefold personhood in God. 1 Nevertheless, doubts abound. Philosophers otherwise friendly to Classical Theism still remain unsure about the coherence of affirming a God that is at once absolutely simple and triune. 2 A less friendly critic has even suggested that the theory of divine simplicity pressured Augustine and his medieval followers away from recognizing that real complexity within the life of God which Trinitarianism expresses. 3. (shrink)

Man has the urge to thrust against the limits of language. Think for instance about one's astonishment that anything exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question and there is no answer to it. Anything we can say must, a priori, be nonsense.

I argue that sport hunting is a right thing according to Leopold’s land ethic. First, I argue that what Leopold means by a “thing” (“A thing is right...”) is not a human action, as is generally assumed, but rather a practice of conservation that is an activity connecting humans to the land. Such an “outdoor” activity emphasizes internal rewards and the achievement of excellence according to standards which at least partially define the activity. To say that hunting is a right (...) thing is to say that the practice of sport hunting tends in the direction of the land ethic. The actions of individual hunters are judged to be ethical or not by the standards of the practice; these standards are in turn evaluated by the precepts of the land ethic. Second, I discuss how the practical standards are evaluated. I argue that the concepts of integrity, stability, and beauty, contrary to some interpretations, are not inherent values of the biotic community, but rather labels carefully chosen by Leopold as three conduits for the ecological conscience necessary for the land ethic: the ethical, the ecological, and the aesthetic. I show that Leopold uses this model for his own evaluation of the practice of hunting as well as his evaluation of other practices of conservation. Thus, to ask about whether sport hunting is a right thing is to ask about the historical evolution of the standards of this practice and, of equal importance, about the future direction of these standards with regard to the land ethic. (shrink)

Leopold’s principle of the land ethic has been modified, vilified, and ignored as a useful scientific and ethical insight. Issues concerning the nature of the three properties and their relations to biotic communities are mostly responsible for this problem. An ontology which takes integrity, stability, and beauty as dispositions is both consistent with what Leopold says and, more importantly, clarifies their relations to biotic communities. This approach, which relies on some developments in the philosophy of science, presents a dilemma for (...) defenders of the principle: to retain the scientific reality of the properties, which results in them being largely indistinguishable from each other or to keep them conventionally distinct at the expense of their scientific usefulness. (shrink)

Although controversy concerning the morality of hunting is generally focused on sport hunting, sport hunting itself is not a morally distinctive kind of hunting. The understanding of hunting in general needs to be supplemented with reference to the goods which hunting seeks. Attempts to draw a moral distinction between sport and subsistence hunting are inadequate and historically suspect. Likewise, trying to establish sport hunting as morally distinctive by emphasizing its similarities to other sports also fails. Nevertheless, there are standards accepted (...) by hunters that support ethical judgments about hunting. Ethical hunting requires reentry into a community of nonhuman beings governed by ecology and evolution, not human constructs, the development of virtues such as tenacity, courage, moderation, and discipline, and the achievement of a heightened respect for the biotic community in which the hunt takes place. By means of such standards, we may yet be able to determine what good hunting is even though we are unable to determine whether sport hunting is good. (shrink)

The land ethic of Aldo Leopold has increasingly received attention as an example of an environmental virtue ethic. However, an important remaining question is how to cultivate and transmit environmental virtues. The answer to this question can be found in the pursuit of wild leisure. The classical view of leisure primarily as articulated in Aristotle’s Politics provides a good starting point for an examination of wild leisure. Leopold thought wild leisure was important and associated it with his land ethic. Leopold’s (...) view of wild leisure focused on the role of perception in ecological education and the habituation of virtue. The classical virtue of moderation when habituated by wild leisure becomes the central virtue required by an ecological conscience. Wild leisure educates just those intellectual and scientific virtues necessary for refined perception and prudence. These virtues provide connections between good citizenship and land citizenship. (shrink)

This volume sets Berkeley's philosophy in its historical context by providing selections from: firstly, works that deeply influenced Berkeley as he formed his main doctrines; secondly, works that illuminate the philosophical climate in which those doctrines were formed; and thirdly, works that display Berkeley's subsequent philosophical influence. The first category is represented by selections from Descartes, Malebranche, Bayle, and Locke; the second category includes extracts from such thinkers as Regius, Lanion, Arnauld, Lee, and Norris; while reactions to Berkeley, both positive (...) and negative, are drawn from a wide range of thinkers - Leibniz, Baxter, Hume, Diderot, Voltaire, Reid, Kant, Herder, and Mill. (shrink)

Louis Frédéric Ancillon was a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and Belles Lettres whose imagined dialogue between Berkeley and Hume was read to the Academy in 1796 and published in 1799. It is important as an indicator of the reception of Hume and Berkeley in francophone philosophical circles in late eighteenth-century Prussia. Our introduction is followed by an English translation with notes.

Memory exhibits episodic superposition, an analog of the quantum superposition of physical states: Before a cue for a presented or unpresented item is administered on a memory test, the item has the simultaneous potential to occupy all members of a mutually exclusive set of episodic states, though it occupies only one of those states after the cue is administered. This phenomenon can be modeled with a nonadditive probability model called overdistribution (OD), which implements fuzzy-trace theory's distinction between verbatim and gist (...) representations. We show that it can also be modeled based on quantum probability theory. A quantum episodic memory (QEM) model is developed, which is derived from quantum probability theory but also implements the process conceptions of global matching memory models. OD and QEM have different strengths, and the current challenge is to identify contrasting empirical predictions that can be used to pit them against each other. (shrink)

Although Gilles Deleuze never wanted a film to be made about him, he agreed to Claire Parnet's proposal to film a series of conversations in which each letter of the alphabet would evoke a word: From A to Z. These DVDs, elegantly transtlated and subtitled in English, make these conversations available for English-speaking audiences? for the first time.In dialogue with Parnet, the philosopher exhibited the modest and thrilling transparency that his seminal works reveal. The sessions were taped when Deleuze was (...) already terminally ill; he and Parnet agreed that the film would not be shown publicly until after his death. The awareness of mortality floats through the dialogues, making them not just intellectually stimulating but also emotionally engaging. Because Parnet knew Deleuze so well, she was able to draw him out--as no one else had--to what might be the 1001st plateau: a place of brilliance, rigor, and charm.In "A as in Animal," for example, Deleuze vents his hatred of pets: "A bark," he declares, "really seems to me the stupidest cry." Instead, he praises the tick: "... in a nature teeming with life, [the tick] extracts three things": light, smell, and touch. This, he claims, in a sense is philosophy. "And that is your life's dream?" Parnet wryly asks. "That's what constitutes a world," he replies. For Deleuze, doing philosophy meant not just creating concepts but living a life in philosophy. Gilles Deleuze from A to Z presents the mind of a great philosopher at work. (shrink)