This study discusses how perceptions of ethics are formed by certified public accountants (CPAs). Theologians are used as a point of comparison. When considering CPA ethical dilemmas, both subject groups in this research project viewed confidentiality and independence as more important than recipient of responsibility and seriousness of breach. Neither group, however, was insensitive to any of the factors presented for its consideration. CPA reactions to ethical dilemmas were governed primarily by provisions of the CPA ethics code; conformity to that (...) code may well be evidence of higher stage moral reasoning. (shrink)

This collection of Kant's writings on the philosophy of history includes, besides the well-known "What is Enlightenment?" and "Perpetual Peace," several other essays from his critical period. Most are newly translated. Together they give a reasonably complete picture of Kant's views on history, which he never presented in systematic form. The result is valuable in showing how widely Kant applied some of the central principles of the Critiques, as well as the close relationship of his ideas to other Enlightenment thinkers. (...) The editor provides a useful introduction.--A. F. G. (shrink)

This volume contains the Dialogues, The Natural History of Religion, and several short essays and selections from other works. The selection is a good one, but the editor's introduction does little to explicate the principles upon which Hume's writings on religion are based or to connect them with his other philosophical work.—A. F. G.

Friedman characterizes modern man as alienated and problematic, an exile and a rebel. The Modern Promethean and the Modern Job are the typical responses to this situation. These categories are central to Friedman's "depth-image" of modern man and he attempts to give them concrete meaning through intensive examination of the writings of Melville, Dostoievsky, Kafka and Camus. The analysis tends to be repetitious and often too detailed to have clear relevance to the author's main theme.—A. F. G.

Contains three lectures on vaguely related topics. John Cogley outlines the sources of religious conflict in the United States. Holding that the First Amendment was intended not to discourage religion but to promote religious liberty, he develops principles for the solution of problems of Church-State relations. Paul Weiss discusses the more theoretical problem of the relationship of natural and supernatural law. Natural law derives from a common good relative to a particular group, and is strictly utilitarian. Reference to a supernatural (...) or divinely given good is necessary to adjudicate between and order the differing and possibly conflicting common goods of different groups, and to provide for ethical laws that transcend utilitarian considerations. John Wu sees the main prerequisite of a future world democracy as a meeting of the insights and cultures of the East and West.--A. F. G. (shrink)

Cassirer rejects Burckhardt's thesis that there is a radical separation between the theory and practice of the Renaissance, and that Renaissance philosophy is merely a survival of the Middle Ages, containing none of the new tendencies of the period. Nor does he see a sharp break between Renaissance and medieval thought. Instead, Cassirer traces the "close interplay between religion, philosophy, and humanism" in Renaissance thought, and the gradual emergence of a new view of man. Underlying the astonishing variety of philosophies (...) in this period, he uncovers certain common tendencies. Starting with Cusanus, the key transition figure in the shift from medieval patterns of thought, Cassirer traces the rise of new conceptions of knowledge, science, freedom and humanity.--A. F. G. (shrink)

This volume forms a part of the Great American Thinkers Series and is intended for the general reader. It is largely devoted to a highly readable biography of Jefferson in which main emphasis is placed on his political activities and ideas, and their influence upon the development of the United States. A separate essay at the end gives the outlines of Jefferson's thought, relating it to the contemporary ideas of the enlightenment, and tracing its sources to those thinkers whom Jefferson (...) most admired, Bacon, Newton, Locke, and Epicurus. In discussing these figures, the author exhibits an unfortunate tendency towards facile and occasionally incorrect generalizations.—A. F. G. (shrink)

This study centers on Hume's discussion of the relation of reason and the passions in Book III, Part I, section I of the Treatise and related passages. Hume's central arguments are carefully laid out and are found to rest on unwarranted premisses. Making use of the distinctions suggested by Baier, Ryle, and other modern writers, Broiles questions Hume's thesis that reason plays no direct role in ethics, and further suggests that a failure to distinguish explanatory or exciting reasons from justifying (...) reasons leads Hume to an incorrect conception of the nature of motives. Hume's relation to the earlier British moralists is also treated, and the famous "is-ought" passage is given a fresh interpretation.—A. F. G. (shrink)

This large anthology offers a well-chosen selection of writings on defining the good, the free-will problem, ethical method, and political and social implications of ethics. Of special interest is the inclusion of four relevant articles by social scientists. Editorial material is brief but useful and the selections are of ample length, several complete works being included.—A. F. G.

Intended as an introduction to ethics, this book examines four main problems: obligation, moral value, intrinsic goods and the justification of moral judgments. Frankena's approach to each problem is to examine critically the main types of theory and then develop his own position. Of particular interest is his discussion of the meaning and justification of moral judgments; while joining recent English thought in holding that a non-descriptivist position does not imply the impossibility of sensible discussion of normative problems, Frankena suggests (...) that this need not necessitate even an ultimate relativism, since broad standards of rationality may be applied in cases of conflict. By approaching ethics through types of ethical theory rather than concrete examples, and because of the great variety of subjects discussed within this brief compass, a necessary over-simplification and superficiality results which may inhibit the beginning student from developing his own thinking. A more selective approach might have been both less confusing and more stimulating.--A. F. G. (shrink)

Using twelve modern philosophers as moments in a rather contrived dialectic, Kiley examines man's relation to himself and to the world. While showing the many "possibilities of human existence," he suggests that "human completion" can only be achieved through the religious experience.—A. F. G.

Five essays concerned primarily with Dewey's philosophy of education and its influence. Taking up half of the volume is Williams Brickman's thoroughly documented study of the rise and decline of Dewey's sympathies with the Soviet Union and the varying treatment his educational theories received there. George Axtelle surveys Dewey's philosophy, which he sees as expressing "the genius of American civilization" and showing directions for its future development. Dewey's reliance on the "civilizational functions" of education as the major tool for developing (...) a sound democratic society is emphasized by John Childs. Brief essays on Dewey's influence on American educators and an early proposal to teach psychology in high school fill out the collection.—A. F. G. (shrink)

This essay eloquently supports the thesis that great dramatic works are necessarily reinterpreted by each generation in its own terms. This transformation, however, is not a destruction; the eternal truths of a great work remain although understood in contemporary terms. This process implies the impossibility of completely comprehending any work as it was originally intended.—A. F. G.

Payment for research participation has raised ethical concerns, especially with respect to its potential for coercion. We argue that characterising payment for research participation as coercive is misguided, because offers of benefit cannot constitute coercion. In this article we analyse the concept of coercion, refute mistaken conceptions of coercion and explain why the offer of payment for research participation is never coercive but in some cases may produce undue inducement.

`Folk Psychology' - our everyday talk of beliefs, desires and mental events - has long been compared with the technical language of `Cognitive Science'. Does folk psychology provide a correct account of the mental causes of our behaviour, or must our everyday terms ultimately be replaced by a language developed from computational models and neurobiology? This broad-ranging book addresses these questions, which lie at the heart of psychology and philosophy. Providing a critical overview of the key literature in the field, (...) including the seminal work of Fodor and Churchland, the author explores the classic `Frame Problem' and assesses the future prospects of cognitive science. The scope of the frame problem, touching on connec. (shrink)

John McMillan's article raises numerous important points about the ethics of surgical castration of sex offenders.1 In this commentary, we focus solely on and argue against the claim that the offer of release from detention conditional upon surgical castration is a coercive offer that compromises the validity of the offender's consent. We take no view on the question as to whether castration for sex offenders is ethically permissible. But, we reject the claim that it is ethically permissible only if competing (...) ethical considerations outweigh worries about coercion. For in the situation described, the proposal is not coercive at all.McMillan states that if offenders agree to castration because they fear long-term detention, then ‘it seems, intuitively, as if agreeing to be castrated under these conditions makes the decision coerced in some way.’1 He adds that if castration is ‘the only way that they will be released back into the community, the status of this decision as a genuine expression of their autonomy is questionable.’1 In defence of his claim, he uses two analogies that he borrows from Joel Feinberg. First, if a governor offers to commute a death sentence if the prisoner agrees to participate in a medical experiment, then ‘it's clear that the governor is coercing the prisoner.’1 Second, if a millionaire offers to give a woman $1 000 000 …. (shrink)

Reviewed Works:G. Priest, R. Routley, Graham Priest, Richard Routley, Jean Norman, First Historical Introduction. A Preliminary History of Paraconsistent and Dialethic Approaches.Ayda I. Arruda, Aspects of the Historical Development of Paraconsistent Logic.G. Priest, R. Routley, Systems of Paraconsistent Logic.G. Priest, R. Routley, Applications of Paraconsistent Logic.G. Priest, R. Routley, The Philosophical Significance and Inevitability of Paraconsistency.

Animal welfare involves societal and human values, ethical concerns and moral considerations since it incorporates the belief of what is right or what is wrong in animal treatment and care. This paper aims to ascertain whether the different dimensions of individual attitudes toward animal welfare in food choices may be characterized by general human values, as identified by Schwartz. For this purpose, an EU-wide survey was carried out, covering almost 2500 nationally representative individuals from five European countries. Compared with the (...) previous literature this study shows a twofold novelty: it develops a general framework to link individual enduring beliefs and attitudes toward animal welfare attributes in food choices; the framework is analyzed within a broad-based cross-country study. Our empirical results prove that human values related to self-transcendence are strongly associated to overall animal welfare attitudes and especially to those explicitly related to food choices, while values related to the spheres of self-enhancement and conservatism are significantly associated to less sensitive attitudes to animal welfare. Moreover, our results appear to indicate that a determinant of animal welfarism in food choices is potentially associated to individual concerns regarding food safety issues. (shrink)

Initially, we perceive an indefinite extension imprecisely, a spread C ; this perception can be visual, aural, or tactile.

This volume contains the Dialogues, The Natural History of Religion, and several short essays and selections from other works. The selection is a good one, but the editor's introduction does little to explicate the principles upon which Hume's writings on religion are based or to connect them with his other philosophical work.—A. F. G.

Rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence are leading to an increasing human reliance on machine decision making. Even in collaborative efforts with Decision Support Systems (DSSs), where a human expert is expected to make the final decisions, it can be hard to keep the expert actively involved throughout the decision process. DSSs suggest their own solutions and thus invite passive decision making. To keep humans actively ‘on’ the decision-making loop and counter overreliance on machines, we propose a ‘reflection machine’ (RM). This (...) system asks users questions about their decision strategy and thereby prompts them to evaluate their own decisions critically. We discuss what forms RMs can take and present a proof-of-concept implementation of a RM that can produce feedback on users’ decisions in the medical and law domains. We show that the prototype requires very little domain knowledge to create reasonably intelligent critiquing questions. With this prototype, we demonstrate the technical feasibility to develop RMs and hope to pave the way for future research into their effectiveness and value. (shrink)

A total of 1918 loci, detected by the hybridization of 938 expressed sequence tag unigenes from 26 Triticeae cDNA libraries, were mapped to wheat homoeologous group 4 chromosomes using a set of deletion, ditelosomic, and nulli-tetrasomic lines. The 1918 EST loci were not distributed uniformly among the three group 4 chromosomes; 41, 28, and 31% mapped to chromosomes 4A, 4B, and 4D, respectively. This pattern is in contrast to the cumulative results of EST mapping in all homoeologous groups, as reported (...) elsewhere, that found the highest proportion of loci mapped to the B genome. Sixty-five percent of these 1918 loci mapped to the long arms of homoeologous group 4 chromosomes, while 35% mapped to the short arms. The distal regions of chromosome arms showed higher numbers of loci than the proximal regions, with the exception of 4DL. This study confirmed the complex structure of chromosome 4A that contains two reciprocal translocations and two inversions, previously identified. An additional inversion in the centromeric region of 4A was revealed. A consensus map for homoeologous group 4 was developed from 119 ESTs unique to group 4. Forty-nine percent of these ESTs were found to be homoologous to sequences on rice chromosome 3, 12% had matches with sequences on other rice chromosomes, and 39% had no matches with rice sequences at all. Limited homology was found between wheat ESTs on homoeologous group 4 and the Arabidopsis genome. Forty-two percent of the homoeologous group 4 ESTs could be classified into functional categories on the basis of blastX searches against all protein databases. (shrink)

This collection of Kant's writings on the philosophy of history includes, besides the well-known "What is Enlightenment?" and "Perpetual Peace," several other essays from his critical period. Most are newly translated. Together they give a reasonably complete picture of Kant's views on history, which he never presented in systematic form. The result is valuable in showing how widely Kant applied some of the central principles of the Critiques, as well as the close relationship of his ideas to other Enlightenment thinkers. (...) The editor provides a useful introduction.--A. F. G. (shrink)

This book introduces a new category, in-between, that will have a far-reaching impact on classic ways of thinking. Husserl's description of consciousness and Whitehead's criticism of the prejudice of simple location are two starting points. Relativity theory's radical changes in the conception of space and time also motivate some of the lines of thought.

This book introduces a new category, in-between, that will have a far-reaching impact on classic ways of thinking. Husserl's description of consciousness and Whitehead's criticism of the prejudice of simple location are two starting points. Relativity theory's radical changes in the conception of space and time also motivate some of the lines of thought.

Um certo número de trabalhos foi dedicado à viabilidade e interesse da matemática inconsistente, mas até hoje poucos esforços comparáveis foram feitos no que diz respeito à física. Alguns poucos tópicos de física são aqui descritos no qual a presença de contradições é indisputável e clama por um tratamento lógico diferenciado. O argumento baseia-se em dois fatos. Primeiro, antinomias não são necessariamente geradas por negação: a conjunção de dois enunciados opostos pode igualmente gerar uma antinomia. Segundo, essa antinomicidade por oposição (...) desce ao nível dos conceitos — termos e relações — que se tornam antinômicos quando ligados a seus opostos. Cada categoria básica do pensamento, por exemplo, é impensável e sem significado se não tomada em conjunção com sua categoria oposta. Todas elas são necessariamente antinômicas. Aqui, indeterminismo, não localidade e vazio, em particular, são apresentados como conceitos físicos eminentemente antinômicos. DOI: 10.5007/1808-1711.2011v15n1p43. (shrink)