Do we control what we believe? Are we responsible for what we believe? In a series of ten essays David Owens explores various different forms of control we might have over belief, and the different forms of responsibility these forms of control generate.

This text asks what it is to be human. Spectres, cyborgs, clones, aliens - contemporary representations of the inhuman hybrid seem more various, multiform and pressing than ever before. Increasingly the blurred distinction between human and inhuman and the attendant technisation of social life raises a series of opportunities for cultural analysis: both in terms of its current transformative refiguration of body and self and in relation to the narratives, networks and communities within which these new identities are redeployed and (...) enjoyed. In the process of mapping a cultural genealogy which stretches from romanticism to "Neuromancer", this volume examines the impact of science and technology on culture and representation - past, present and future - and resituates the inhuman as a significant contemporary conceptual motif as it resonates across and within the philosophical trajectory of modernity. (shrink)

A menu of twelve moral issues that seem to be common to all organizations is described and illustrated. This menu identifies some of the most prominent moral issues requiring individuals to decide where to draw the line between moral and immoral conduct. A review ofThe Wall Street Journal during just one week provided over sixty articles illustrating how moral issues are inherent in almost every business decision. The articles included several illustrations of stealing, lying, and fraud that are immoral, although (...) in some cases not technically illegal. Other articles illustrated conflicts of interest, influence buying, hiding information, divulging personal information, taking unfair advantage, personal decadence, interpersonal abuse, organizational abuse, rule violations, being an accessory to unethical acts, and balancing ethical dilemmas. These illustrations are intended to help individuals identify moral issues and recognize the situations when they arise so they can avoid unwitting immoral behavior. (shrink)

A response to comments by William Casebeer, Peter Railton, and Michael Ruse on "Naturalizing Ethics" (2007).

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

_ The Moral Nexus _, by WallaceR. Jay. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii + 306.

Recently some philosophers interested in consciousness have begun to turn their attention to the question of what evolutionary advantages, if any, being conscious might confer on an organism. The issue has been pressed in recent dicussions involving David Chalmers, Todd Moody, Owen Flanagan and Thomas Polger, Daniel Dennett, and others. The purpose of this essay is to consider some of the problems that face anyone who wants to give an evolutionary explanation of consciousness. We begin by framing the problem (...) in the context of some current debates. Then we. (shrink)

This is the first book to offer the best essays, articles, and speeches on ethics and intelligence that demonstrate the complex moral dilemmas in intelligence collection, analysis, and operations. Some are recently declassified and never before published, and all are written by authors whose backgrounds are as varied as their insights, including Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John P. Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin Professor of Catholic Social Thought at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown (...) University; and Loch K. Johnson, Regents Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia and recipient of the Owens Award for contributions to the understanding of U.S. intelligence activities. Creating the foundation for the study of ethics and intelligence by filling in the gap between warfare and philosophy, this is a valuable collection of literature for building an ethical code that is not dependent on any specific agency, department, or country. (shrink)

Proof-theoretic semantics (P-tS) is the paradigm of semantics in which meaning in logic is based on proof (as opposed to truth). A particular instance of P-tS for intuitionistic propositional logic (IPL) is its base-extension semantics (B-eS). This semantics is given by a relation called support, explaining the meaning of the logical constants, which is parameterized by systems of rules called bases that provide the semantics of atomic propositions. In this paper, we interpret bases as collections of definite formulae and use (...) the operational view of them as provided by uniform proof-search—the proof-theoretic foundation of logic programming (LP)—to establish the completeness of IPL for the B-eS. This perspective allows negation, a subtle issue in P-tS, to be understood in terms of the negation-as-failure protocol in LP. Specifically, while the denial of a proposition is traditionally understood as the assertion of its negation, in B-eS we may understand the denial of a proposition as the failure to find a proof of it. In this way, assertion and denial are both prime concepts in P-tS. (shrink)

This paper argues for more randomised controlled trials in educational research. Educational researchers have largely abandoned the methodology they helped to pioneer. This gold-standard methodology should be more widely used as it is an appropriate and robust research technique. Without subjecting curriculum innovations to a RCT then potentially harmful educational initiatives could be visited upon the nation's children.

For many years, researchers and practitioners have sought out meaningful indicators of sales performance. Yet, as the concept of performance has broadened, the understanding of what makes up a successful seller, has become far more complicated. The complexity of buyer–seller relationships has changed therefore as the definition of sales performance has expanded, cultivating a growing interest in ethical/unethical actions since they could potentially have impacts on sales performance. Given this environment, the purpose of this study is to explore the impact (...) of moral judgment on sales performance and sellers engaging in a customer-oriented selling approach. Specifically, by utilizing a sample of 345 business-to-business salespeople, this study examines the relationships between moral judgment, customer-oriented selling, and outcome and behavior based performance. Results, managerial implications, and opportunities for future research are provided. (shrink)

In proof-theoretic semantics, meaning is based on inference. It may seen as the mathematical expression of the inferentialist interpretation of logic. Much recent work has focused on base-extension semantics, in which the validity of formulas is given by an inductive definition generated by provability in a ‘base’ of atomic rules. Base-extension semantics for classical and intuitionistic propositional logic have been explored by several authors. In this paper, we develop base-extension semantics for the classical propositional modal systems |$K$|⁠, |$KT$|⁠, |$K4$| and (...) |$S4$|⁠, with |$\square $| as the primary modal operator. We establish appropriate soundness and completeness theorems and establish the duality between |$\square $| and a natural presentation of |$\lozenge $|⁠. We also show that our semantics is in its current form not complete with respect to euclidean modal logics. Our formulation makes essential use of relational structures on bases. (shrink)

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL by M. B. Ahern.MORALITY AND RELIGION by W. W. Bartley III.ROLES AND VALUES: AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL ETHICS by R. S. Downie.THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE by D. W. Hamlyn.ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD by John Hick.THE LOGIC OF EDUCATION by P. H. Hirst and R. S. Peters.METALOGIC: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE METATHEORY OF STANDARD FIRST ORDER LOGIC by Geoffrey Hunter.ETHICAL KNOWLEDGE by J. J. Kupperman.LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN ARISTOTLE by Walter Leszl.MEMORY by Don Locke.JOHN STUART (...) MILL. A critical study by H. J. McCloskey.ATHEISM AND ALIENATION by Patrick Masterson.REASONS FOR ACTIONS by Richard Norman.CONCEPTS OF DEITY by H. P. Owen.COLLECTED PAPERS BY GILBERT RYLE.LOGICO‐LINGUISTIC PAPERS by P. F. Strawson.TRUTH by Alan R. White.PROTOTRACTATUS, AN EARLY VERSION OF TRACTATUS LOGICO‐PHILOSOPHICUS by Ludwig Wittgenstein. (shrink)

The obligations we owe to those with whom we share a valuable relationship (like friendship) cannot be reduced to the obligations we owe to others simply as fellow persons (e.g. the duty to reciprocate benefits received). Wallace suggests that this is because such valuable relationships are loving relationships. I instead propose that it is because, unlike general moral obligations, such valuable relationships (and their constitutive obligations) serve our normative interests. Part of what makes friendship good for us is that it (...) involves bonds of loyalty. Our lives go better if we are bound to others in this way. (shrink)

Grounded procedures of separation are conceptualized as a learned concept. The simultaneous cultural universality of the general idea and immense diversity of its implementations might be better understood through the lens of dual inheritance theories. By drawing on examples from developmental psychology and emotion theorizing, we argue that an innate blueprint might underlie learned implementations of cleansing that vary widely.

The obligations we owe to those with whom we share a valuable relationship (like friendship) cannot be reduced to the obligations we owe to others simply as fellow persons (e.g. the duty to reciprocate benefits received). Wallace suggests that this is because such valuable relationships are loving relationships. I instead propose that it is because, unlike general moral obligations, such valuable relationships (and their constitutive obligations) serve our normative interests. Part of what makes friendship good for us is that it (...) involves bonds of loyalty. Our lives go better if we are bound to others in this way. (shrink)

The paper by Susan M. Wolf and Jeffrey P. Kahn published in this issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics notes that we are members of the Working Group on Genetic Testing in Disability Insurance and that the members of the Working Group do not necessarily subscribe to its recommendations. Although we agree with some of Wolf and Kahn's recommendations, we do not agree with recommendations 1, 3, 4, and 5 for individual disability insurance and recommendations 1, 2, (...) and 3 for group disability insurance. We use this paper to delineate our areas of disagreement, but we do not discuss areas such as employment law as they are not our areas of expertise.First, understanding our roles on the Working Group is important. As members, we provided technical expertise on disability insurance. Our input to the Working Group represents our individual opinions. (shrink)

Quantitative research studies examining the effects of literacy instruction set in social studies classrooms (grades 6-12) on students’ academic content learning and reading comprehension are synthesized using meta-analytic techniques. An extensive search of the scholarly literature between 1983 and 2013 yielded a total of twelve intervention studies that provided literacy instruction to secondary students within social studies classes and quantitatively measured content learning outcomes, reading comprehension, or both. Findings revealed that content learning outcomes were consistently improved with instruction that included (...) text-processing activities such as summarizing and generating questions. While many social studies teachers do not provide explicit reading supports, in part because they perceive that the time needed to do so is prohibitive, the findings of this synthesis suggest that sound reading practices hold promise as a means through which teachers can help students better access social studies content, thus improving student learning outcomes. More rigorous quantitative research is needed to further understand the causal effects of literacy practices in social studies settings. Highlights • Literacy instruction supports both reading comprehension and academic content • Literacy instruction does not negatively affect content knowledge acquisition. • Few studies investigate the effects of literacy instruction in social studies. • More research is needed to explore the effects of literacy instruction in social studies. (shrink)

The years from 1918 to 1945 remain central to European History. It was a breath-taking time during which the very best and very worst attributes of Mankind were on display. In the euphoria of peace which followed the end of the First World War, the Baltic States emerged as independent forces on the world stage, participating in thrilling experiments in national and transnational governance. Later, following economic collapse and in the face of rising totalitarianism among even Europe’s most cultured nations, (...) Baltic communities succumbed to nationalism too. During wartime, Baltic peoples became both victims and, sometimes, victimisers. Ultimately their victimhood lasted until the end of the Cold War, yielding consequences still discernible at the start of the twenty first century. Taking the period 1918 to 1945 as pivotal, this collection of essays examines some of the key themes in Baltic History as they are emerging today. These include appreciations of identity, autonomy and the rights of national minorities; the everyday and social foundations of international security; and the importance of historical memory to popular and political identities. (shrink)