Approximately 200 entries to scientific or medical topics of interest because of their ethical or moral implications. Intended primarily for laypersons and professionals in the United Kingdom, but also throughout the world. Each entry gives definition, discussion (1-several pages), cross references, references, and contributor's name. 1st ed., 1977.

This book is the first comprehensive study of Rousseau's rich and complex theory of the type of self-love (amour proper) that, for him, marks the central difference between humans and the beasts. Amour proper is the passion that drives human individuals to seek the esteem, approval, admiration, or love--the recognition--of their fellow beings. Neuhouser reconstructs Rousseau's understanding of what the drive for recognition is, why it is so problematic, and how its presence opens up far-reaching developmental possibilities for creatures that (...) possess it. One of Rousseau's central theses is that amour proper in its corrupted, manifestations--pride or vanity--is the principal source of an array of evils so widespread that they can easily appear to be necessary features of the human condition: enslavement, conflict, vice, misery, and self-estrangement. Yet Rousseau also argues that solving these problems depends not on suppressing or overcoming the drive for recognition but on cultivating it so that it contributes positively to the achievement of freedom, peace, virtue, happiness, and unalienated selfhood. Indeed, Rousseau goes so far as to claim that, despite its many dangers, the need for recognition is a condition of nearly everything that makes human life valuable and that elevates it above mere animal existence: rationality, morality, freedom--subjectivity itself--would be impossible for humans if it were not for amour proper and the relations to others it impels us to establish. (shrink)

The Scientific Attitude presents a systematic account of the cognitive and social features of science. Written by an experimental biologist actively engaged in research, the work is unique in its attempt to understand science in terms of day-to-day practice. The book goes beyond the traditional description of science that focuses on method and logic to characterize the scientific attitude as a way of looking at the world.

This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor ...

The first half of the book concentrates on key definitions and epistemological issues, including an overview of philosophy as applied to technology, a definition of technology, and an examination of technology as it relates to practical and ...

In a series of articles specifically commossioned for this volume, some of today's most distinguished business ethicists survey the main areas of interest and ...

Hintikka has said this about questions: ‘The questioner asks his listener to supply a certain item of information, to make him know a certain thing’. 1 Now this certainly seems to capture our intuitions about one kind of enquiry, a kind which I call market-place enquiry . That is, it seems to capture the speaker's aims when, in typical situations, he addresses a question to another person. But there are many uses of interrogative sentences, even some questioning uses, which Hintikka's (...) account will not fit. It will not fit so-called rhetorical questions nor, in a perfectly straight way, the questions with which quizzing schoolteachers seek to discover what their pupils know and do not know. Above all, it will not fit those questions with which philosophers and others are wont to preface their solitary enquiries. I call these Cartesian enquiries after their most devoted practitioner; but it should be noted that Cartesian enquiries, as I understand them, may be quite mundane. I shall be engaged in one if, alone in my house, I wonder whether the post has come and go and look. Because there is no one to ask I have to find out on my own. Contrariwise, market-place enquiries, although they are often mundane may be momentous. (shrink)

This moral philosophy text with readings embraces Socrates' observation that ethics is "no small matter, but how we ought to live." How ought we to live? This hard question captures the full range of moral inquiry from traditional moral theory to contemporary moral issues, such as abortion, capital punishment, and war. But there is much more to moral philosophy: How should we be as people? When should we forgive? Are we capable of morality? What about non-western ethics? And most distressing (...) of all, why be moral in the first place? These and other challenging questions show the profundity and inescapable importance of moral philosophy for a life worth living. Life's Hardest Questions combines lively and informative introductory discussions with classic and contemporary writings in moral philosophy. (shrink)

The verb know has the following well-known property. If someone is correctly described as knowing that p then it is the case that p , and if someone is correctly described as knowing wh , then any proposition which spells out what they know in knowing wh will be true.

Prichard held, like some others before and since, that there is a categorial difference between knowing and believing: To know is not to have a belief of a special kind, differing from beliefs of other kinds; and no improvement in a belief and no increase in the feeling of conviction which it implies will convert it into knowledge. Nor is their difference that of being two species of a common genus. It is not that there is a general kind of (...) activity, for which the name would have to be thinking, which admits of two kinds, the better of which is knowing and the worse believing, nor is knowing something called thinking at its best, thinking not at its best being believing. (shrink)

For over four decades, "Introduction to Operations Research" by Frederick Hillier has been the classic text on operations research. While building on the classic strengths of the text, the author continues to find new ways to make the text current and relevant to students. One way is by incorporating a wealth of state-of-the-art, user-friendly software and more coverage of business applications than ever before. The hallmark features of this edition include clear and comprehensive coverage of fundamentals, an extensive set (...) of interesting problems and cases, and state-of-the-practice operations research software used in conjunction with examples from the text. The ninth edition introduces a new partnership with the Institute for Operations Research and Management (INFORMS). These two pillars of the OR world have come together to showcase some of the award-winning applications of operations research and integrate them with this text. (shrink)

A critique of the hypothesis of extended cognition.

Neil Levy defends no-platforming people who espouse dangerous or unacceptable views. I reject his notion of higher-order evidence as authoritarian and dogmatic. I argue that no-platforming frustrates the growth of knowledge.

What is it about knowledge that makes us value it more highly than mere true belief? This question lies at the heart of epistemology and has challenged philosophers ever since it was first posed by Plato. Michael Welbourne's examination of the historical and contemporary answers to this question provides both an excellent introduction to the development of epistemology but also a new theory of the nature of knowledge. The early chapters introduce the main themes and questions that have provided the (...) context for modern discussions. The Platonic beginnings, Cartesian individualism and the tripartite analyses of knowledge are examined in turn. In the second half of this book, the focus shifts from conceptual analysis to an examination of the social practices surrounding knowledge, placing special emphasis on the notion of testimony. The author argues originally and persuasively that our idea of knowledge has its roots in communicative practices and that thinking about how testimony works as a source of beliefs actually gives us a handle on the very idea of knowledge itself. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in epistemology, the philosophy of language, or the intersection between the two areas. (shrink)

In an inspirational act of faith and hope, nearly one hundred contributors--social activists, thinkers, artists and spiritual leaders--reflect with poignant candor on our shared human condition and attempt to define a core set of human values in our rapidly changing socity. Contributors include: * The Dalai Lama * Wilma Mankiller * Oscar Arias * Jimmy Carter * Cornel West * Jack Miles * Mother Teresa * Nancy Willard * Elie Wiesel * James Earl Jones * Joan Chittister * Mary Evelyn (...) Tucker * Vaclav Havel * Archbishop Desmund Tutu What Does It Mean To Be Human? is a vital meditation on the endless possibilities of our humanity. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Cultural relativism Ethical absolutism A cognitive alternative to EA: ethical relativism External and internal objections to ER Finding the middle ground: pluralistic relativism Ethics in business Conclusion.

Moral intensity theory is used to explain how characteristics of moral issues affect ethical decision-making. According to moral intensity theory, individuals and firms will make more ethical decisions when moral intensity is present, such as greater negative consequences, including harm to customers. However, evidence suggests this does not always happen in crisis situations. For example, Fisher Price waited until 30 babies died before recalling its Rock’n Play Sleeper in 2019. In this article, the concept of immoral entrenchment is introduced to (...) address how crises affect the expected firm responses to morally intense ethical issues. Immoral entrenchment suggests that firms experience threat-rigidity responses to crises that lead to collective moral disengagement. Immoral entrenchment results in firms’ denial of responsibility and unethical behavior, instead of ethical behavior, in the face of highly negative consequences. The study in this article tests immoral entrenchment in the context of the speed to recall 843 consumer products. Supplemental qualitative evidence illustrates the collective moral disengagement dimension of immoral entrenchment. Contributing to the literature on ethics and crisis, the findings demonstrate that crises can generate immoral entrenchment in firms, which reverses the expected ethical response of those firms to issues with high moral intensity. (shrink)

This book is addressed to readers who have laid the foundation of a liberal education & are beginning the special study of law.

In this groundbreaking interdisciplinary work, Frederick Turner presents a new theory of aesthetics based on the argument that beauty is an objective reality in the universe. He identifies the experience of beauty as a pancultural, neurobiological phenomenon. Drawing on recent work in a wide range of fields--ritual and dramatic performance, the oral tradition, paleoanthropology and human evolution, neurobiology, cosmology and theoretic physics, chaos theory and fractal mathematics--the book describes evolution as a self-organizing, emergent process that generates increasingly advanced forms (...) of self-reflection, and proposes that the experience of beauty is the recognition of this evolutionary process and the reward for participating in it. The experience of aesthetic beauty, Turner says, is an adaptive function that drives evolution through sexual selection. Those individuals most sensitive to beauty survived surface cultural changes, excelled in mating rituals, and were participants in the positive evolution of the species. Turner shows how, as a result, neurotransmitters in the brain respond to certain inherited systems by which we appreciate beauty. Turner also presents the implications for theories of art and literature that follow from his identification of the inherent genres of human aesthetic experience. Forms of art cannot be arbitrary but must be rooted in our biological inheritance. This calls into question theories about modern art, and suggests that modernist culture turned its back on beauty in an attempt to repress and avoid the shame of humanness and our biological nature. This book breaks radically with contemporary positions in psychology, sociology, philosophy, andart, and offers an alternative to present trends in literary and critical theory. It should be of interest to a wide variety of readers, including the artistic community, critical theorists, students of oral traditions, philosophers, and aestheticians. (shrink)

The Hegelian-Marxist idea of alienation fell out of favor after the postmetaphysical rejection of humanism and essentialist views of human nature. In this book Rahel Jaeggi draws on the Hegelian philosophical tradition, phenomenological analyses grounded in modern conceptions of agency, and recent work in the analytical tradition to reconceive alienation as the absence of a meaningful relationship to oneself and others, which manifests in feelings of helplessness and the despondent acceptance of ossified social roles and expectations. A revived approach to (...) alienation helps critical social theory engage with phenomena such as meaninglessness, isolation, and indifference. By severing alienation's link to a problematic conception of human essence while retaining its social-philosophical content, Jaeggi provides resources for a renewed critique of social pathologies, a much-neglected concern in contemporary liberal political philosophy. Her work revisits the arguments of Rousseau, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, placing them in dialogue with Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and Charles Taylor. (shrink)

Coady misrepresents Hume as a reductivist about testimony. Hume occasionally writes carelessly as if what goes for beliefs based on induction will also go for beliefs obtained from testimony. But, in fact, he has no theory of testimony at all, though in his more considered remarks he rightly thinks, as does Reid, that the natural response to a bit of testimony is simply to accept the information which it contains. The sense in which we owe the beliefs we get from (...) testimony to experience, according to Hume, is this: we each learn about the business of testimony from being exposed to it, and in particular to cases where what is told is manifestly true. Hume is also interested in the question of how we may be prompted to view some testimonies with suspicion, and how we should then respond to them. It is wrong, however, to take his thoughts about this as embodying an implicit theory of the basic mechanism of testimony. In fact he has a problem accounting for the human propensity to accept extraordinary testimonies within the general framework of his doctrine; the Treatise solution is wisely abandoned in the Enquiry.Author Keywords: Hume; Reid; Coady; Testimony; Reductivism; Knowledge. (shrink)

What is it about knowledge that makes us value it more highly than mere true belief? This question lies at the heart of epistemology and has challenged philosophers ever since it was first posed by Plato. Michael Welbourne's examination of the historical and contemporary answers to this question provides both an excellent introduction to the development of epistemology but also a new theory of the nature of knowledge. The early chapters introduce the main themes and questions that have provided the (...) context for modern discussions. The Platonic beginnings, Cartesian individualism and the tripartite analyses of knowledge are examined in turn. In the second half of this book, the focus shifts from conceptual analysis to an examination of the social practices surrounding knowledge, placing special emphasis on the notion of testimony. The author argues originally and persuasively that our idea of knowledge has its roots in communicative practices and that thinking about how testimony works as a source of beliefs actually gives us a handle on the very idea of knowledge itself. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in epistemology, the philosophy of language, or the intersection between the two areas. (shrink)

At Theaetetus 163d-164b Socrates objects to the thesis that knowledge is perception by pointing out that a man who has seen something can still remember it, and so has knowledge of it; but this is impossible, if knowledge is perception, since he is no longer perceiving it.To this Protagoras is made to reply with two sentences at 166b 1–4: .Cornford translates ‘ For instance, do you think you will find anyone to admit that one's present memory of a past impression (...) is an impression of the same character as one had during the original experience, which is now over? It is nothing of the sort’.Cornford understands this as the suggestion that the memory and the original perception are of different things: ‘ All that the objection in fact established was that “ perception” must be stretched to include awareness of memory images’. So too Lee: ‘Protagoras’ “way out”… appears to be to say that what we now know is not properly X but rather our memory trace of X - some present πά θ ο ς quite distinct from X and very different from that ’. McDowel. (shrink)

At Theaetetus 163d-164b Socrates objects to the thesis that knowledge is perception by pointing out that a man who has seen something can still remember it, and so has knowledge of it; but this is impossible, if knowledge is perception, since he is no longer perceiving it.To this Protagoras is made to reply with two sentences at 166b 1–4:.Cornford translates ‘ For instance, do you think you will find anyone to admit that one's present memory of a past impression is (...) an impression of the same character as one had during the original experience, which is now over? It is nothing of the sort’.Cornford understands this as the suggestion that the memory and the original perception are of different things: ‘ All that the objection in fact established was that “ perception” must be stretched to include awareness of memory images’. So too Lee: ‘Protagoras’ “way out”… appears to be to say that what we now know is not properly X but rather our memory trace of X - some present πά θ ο ς quite distinct from X and very different from that ’. McDowel. (shrink)

One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics—Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis—as the founders of absolute idealism.

It is often claimed that the Duhem problem shows that the notion of falsifiability is inapplicable to scientific theories. I explain why the claim is false.

In ‘Aeon’ magazine, 2 August 2017, Professor Paul Russell maintains that identities such as race, gender and sexual orientation have equal ethical standing because they cannot be discarded and they are not constituted by beliefs, values or practices. We should, he says, resist attempts to present those who identify as gay as making a choice and affirming certain values and practices that they are capable of shedding. However, such identities can be discarded and they are in part constituted by beliefs, (...) values or practices. Russell’s defence of homosexual equality, because it focuses on the inclination to homosexuality, is pointless and useless. A proper defence of homosexual equality focuses on homosexual lifestyles and argues that the choice of such lifestyles is not wrong. Whether people who choose homosexual lifestyles do so because of a natural and unchangeable inclination, or whether environment or choice plays a part in bringing about that inclination, is an interesting question for science but of no concern for politics. (shrink)