In this engaged and engaging survey Piers Benn examines the major currents of ethical theory, concentrating on sound reasoning about morality. Benn's account offers a qualified defence of Aristotelian virtue theory, while bringing out what is distinctive and valuable in a broad range of approaches, such as those of Kant and the Utilitarians. His examples emphasize the ordinary choices of everyday life - gossip, friendship, honesty, sexual relations, work, and self-realization.

For over a century we have attempted to understand human aesthetic experience using scientific methods. A typical experiment could be described as reductive and quasi-psychophysical. We vary some aspect of the stimulus and systematically measure some aspect of the aesthetic response. The limitations of this approach can be categorized as problems on the Y axis and the X axis. The most enigmatic components of aesthetic experience include inclination to cry, aesthetic rapture, a sense of the sublime, and intense fascination. However, (...) we cannot evoke these 'hot' aesthetic emotions in the lab, at least not with well controlled stimuli on multiple trials. We thus resort to measuring cold, cognitive preference ratings. There are also problems on the X axis. The reductive psychophysical approach explicitly assumes that there are lawful relations between different stimulus dimensions and preferences. It also tacitly assumes that these dimensions are independent and orthogonal. The second assumption is implausible. Whatever stimulus-preference laws we discover are likely to be twisted and modulated when another dimension is added to the stimuli. This 'gestalt nightmare' has long been recognized, but never resolved. This matters, because human aesthetic faculties are probably tuned to the balance and relationship of parts which make up a whole and are indifferent to the parts presented in isolation. I conclude that the future of scientific aesthetics depends on how successfully we can transcend reductive, quasi-psychophysical approaches. (shrink)

The notion of a Sasaki projectionon an orthomodular lattice is generalized to a mapping Φ: E × E → E, where E is an effect algebra. If E is lattice ordered and Φ is symmetric, then E is called a Φ-symmetric effect algebra.This paper launches a study of such effect algebras. In particular, it is shown that every interval effect algebra with a lattice-ordered ambient group is Φ-symmetric, and its group is the one constructed by Ravindran in his proof that (...) every effect algebra that has the Riesz decomposition property is an interval algebra. It is shown that the doubling construction introduced in the paper is connected to the conditional event algebrasof Goodman, Nguyen, and Walker. (shrink)

Using the mathematical notion of an entity to represent states in quantum and classical mechanics, we show that, in a strict sense, proper superpositions are possible in classical mechanics.

Protagoras believes that all beliefs are true. Since Protagoras' belief that all beliefs are true is itself a belief, it follows from Protagoras' belief that all beliefs are true that Protagoras' belief is true. But what about the belief that Protagoras' belief is false? Doesn't it follow, by parallel reasoning and not at all trivially, that if all beliefs are true and there is a belief that Protagoras' belief is false, then Protagoras' belief is false?

Can there be a moral philosophy which combines Christianity and consequentialism? John Stuart Mill himself claimed that these positions were, at the least, not mutually exclusive, and quite possibly even congenial to one another; and some recent work by Christian philosophers in America has resurrected this claim. But there is a simple argument to show that consequentialism and orthodox Christianity are not so much as jointly assertible.

The missionary work of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika in theory and practice: in the past, present and futureIn this article a short survey is given of the missionary work, both in theory and practice, of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk during the last fifty years. There is also an indication that the Church has reached a crucial point which is going to require thorough rethinking and reconsideration of our missionary work.

Alarmed by Three Mile Island, Love Canal, and other disastrous deployments of new technologies, the public is demanding more voice in the decision-making on technology. To make this possible, it is proposed that metatechnology be evolved that will provide a practical technology for the safe, effective, and economical use of technology. A case history of a specific metatechnology is presented. Here the metatechnology enabled a realistic balancing of the benefits of mass screening of women by mammography against the hazards from (...) the X-rays. By showing that the screening of women under 50 was counterproductive, this metatechnology helped to ban such screening in a program involving a quarter of a million women. The strategic mistake in setting up this and other technological programs was that the decisions were made by the technologists. They benefited the technologists but were not beneficial to the women. One of the potentials of metatechnology is that in its fully computerized versions it could be used directly by the public for decision-making on the deployment of technologies. (shrink)

Norman tries to link the ecological and constructivist approaches to the dorsal and ventral pathways of the visual system. Such a link implies that the distinction is not only one of approach, but that different issues are studied. Norman identifies these issues as perception and action. The influence of contextual illusions is critical for Norman's arguments. We point out that fast (dorsal) actions can be fooled by contextual illusions while (ventral) perceptual judgements can be insensitive to them. We conclude that (...) both approaches can, in principle, be used to study visual information processing in both pathways. (shrink)

What is at stake in the dispute between moral objectivism and subjectivism is how we are to give a rational grounding to ethical first principles or basic commitments. The search is for an explanation of what if anything makes any commitments good. Subjectivisms such as Blackburn's quasi‐realism can give any set of commitments no ‘rational grounding’ in this sense except in considerations about internal consistency. But this is inadequate. Internal consistency is not sufficient for ethical rationality, since a set of (...) obviously bad commitments could be internally consistent. Nor is it necessary, since a set of obviously good commitments could be internally inconsistent. I therefore argue for an objectivist view of the grounding of commitments, taking them to be attitudes which get their rationality, or lack of it, from their responsiveness to natural human needs and well‐being. Since this view is objectivist, it avoids the problems which face subjectivism. (shrink)