Using firsthand accounts gleaned from notebooks, interviews, and correspondence of such twentieth-century scientists as Einstein, Fermi, and Millikan, Holton shows how the idea of the scientific imagination has practical implications for the history and philosophy of science and the larger understanding of the place of science in our culture.

This important new book takes as its points of departure two questions: What is the nature of valuing? and What morality can be justified in a society that deeply disagrees on what is truly valuable? In Part One, the author develops a theory of value that attempts to reconcile reason with passions. Part Two explores how this theory of value grounds our commitment to moral action. The author argues that rational moral action can neither be seen as a way of (...) simply maximising one's own values, nor derived from reason independent of one's values. Rather, our commitment to the moral point of view is presupposed by our value systems. The book concludes with a defense of liberal political morality. (shrink)

This book examines these questions not in the abstract but shows their historic roots and the answers emerging from the scientific and political controversies ...

In this issue of Philosophical Studies, Richard Arneson, Jonathan Quong and Robert Talisse contribute papers discussing The Order of Public Reason (OPR). All press what I call “agent-type challenges” to the project of OPR. In different ways they all focus on a type (or types) of moral (or sometimes not-so-moral) agent. Arneson presents a good person who is so concerned with doing the best thing she does not truly endorse social morality; Quong a bad person who rejects it and violates (...) the basic rights of others, and Talisse a morally ugly person, a hypocrite, who criticizes others for failing to do what he does not do. All suggest that OPR does not give a satisfying account of what we are to say to, or how we should act towards, such agents. In my response I highlight some core concerns of OPR, while also seeking to show that OPR does not say quite what they think it says, and it often leaves them room for saying what they would like to say about such agents. (shrink)

This study explores linkages between what Chinese managers generally know about environmental issues, how strongly they value environmental protection, and different types of behaviours/actions they may take within their organizations on behalf of the environment. From a sample of 305 managers in Guangzhou and Beijing, it was found that both environmental knowledge and values are more predictive of more personal managerial behaviours, such as keeping informed of relevant company issues and working within the system to minimize environmental impacts, than more (...) overt behaviours. Moreover, for these more personal actions, environmental knowledge and values were found to have both main and interactive effects. By comparison, it was found that both environmental values and knowledge had additive effects on managerial tendencies to initiate new programs within their domain of responsibility. Only environmental values was found to have a modest influence environmental advocacy. (shrink)

This essay provides a critical examination of Rawls' (and Rawlsians') conception of self-respect, the social bases of self-respect, and the normative justification of equality in the social bases of self-respect. I defend a rival account of these notions and the normative ideals at stake in political liberalism and a theory of social justice. I make the following arguments: (1) I argue that it is unreasonable to take self-respect to be a primary social good, as Rawls and his interpreters characterize it; (...) (2) secondly, drawing on a distinction made by Darwall, I argue that recognition respect provides a far more suitable notion of respect for a theory of justice than Rawls' notion of appraisal respect; (3) thirdly, I argue that Rawls' treatment of self-respect and the social bases of self-respect as empirical conceptions should be rejected in favor of normative notions of a reasonable or justified self-respect and equality in reasonable social bases of self-respect; (4) I argue that Rawls' notions of political liberalism and public reason provide a way of grounding a notion of the reasonable social bases of self-respect in political ideals of the person implicit in modern economic institutions, and family relations, ignored by Rawlsians—but as central to reasonable social bases of self-respect and justice, as Rawlsians' ideal of persons as free and equal citizens. (shrink)

This almost self-contained introduction to higher recursion theory is essential reading for all researchers in the field.

Initially found in population studies designed to discover a link between child abuse and population categories, risk has been institutionalized in British Columbia through the use of a risk assessment tool presumed to measure danger to particular children. Recruitment of the risk speech genre reflects a need for government child protection workers to clearly articulate which children are in need of protection from “risks as they really are” while avoiding the accusation of “intervening too much.” Moreover, risk assessment tools are (...) both audit systems and auditable systems connected through an audit chain. Auditors who represent potential blaming procedures track errors in risk valuation to specific decisions. This entrenches a separation between what we want to know about risk from what we want to do about risk. The apparently objective use of numeric values within risk assessments obscures the continuing role of subjective moral values in the practice of child protection. (shrink)

This brief supplement offers students a handy resource that contains codes of ethics for the various professional organizations. Available for packaging with this textbook at a nominal price.

Binding of antigen or lectin to the surface of a T lymphocyte initiates a complex sequence of events which result in both T cell proliferation and the acquisition of immunologic functions. This complex sequence of events is most likely programmed and precisely timed by a series of contingent gene activations in which one member of this series activates the next. The two most obvious examples of these stages are the set of genes activated when antigen interacts with the antigen receptor (...) and the set of genes activated when IL‐2 interacts with its receptor. However, it is likely that several other parallel pathways of gene activation are necessary to bring about T‐cell division. An example would be the antigen‐induced activation of the c‐myc gene, which in turn is likely to be involved in regulating an additional group of genes not directly controlled by either IL‐2 or antigen. A fundamental understanding of T‐lymphocyte activation necessitates identification of the factors involved in initiating each of these contingent levels of gene activation. (shrink)

The distinction between ‘comprehensive’ and ‘political’ liberalisms, explored in the previous chapter, has become central to contemporary political theory. My aim in this chapter is to examine various ‘comprehensive’ liberalisms, with particular care to identifying in what sense they are comprehensive. As I have argued elsewhere (Gaus, 2003: chap. 7), the distinction between political and comprehensive liberalisms is elusive. Rawls repeatedly describes as ‘comprehensive’ ‘philosophical’, ‘moral’ and ‘religious’ ‘doctrines’ (1996: xxv, 4, 36, 38, 160) or ‘beliefs’ (1996: 63). Indeed, so (...) often does Rawls characterize comprehensiveness in terms of moral, religious and philosophical doctrines or beliefs that a reader may be tempted to conclude that doctrine C is comprehensive if and only if it is a moral, religious or philosophical doctrine or belief. But though it is tempting to understand ‘comprehensive conceptions’ in this way, it would be wrong. Rawls is clear that ‘the distinction between the political conception and other moral conceptions is a matter of scope; that is, the range of subjects, to which a conception applies and the content a wider range requires’ (1996: 13). Comprehensive and general doctrines cover a wide range of topics, values and ideals applicable to various areas of life. Even given the terms of Rawls’s own analyses, rather than conceiving of comprehensive liberalisms as all relying on a fully comprehensive doctrine, it is better to conceive of them in terms of a spectrum of theories, from those that rely on something like a fully comprehensive view to those that rely on, say, only a general theory of the right. In this chapter I shall focus on the following versions of comprehensive liberalism. (shrink)

A central theme in F. A. Hayek’s work is the contrast between principles and expediency, and the insistence that governments follow abstract general principles rather than pursue apparently expedient social and economic policies that seek to make us better off.2 This is a radical and striking thesis, especially from an economist: governments should abjure the pursuit of social and economic policies that aim to improve welfare and, instead, adhere to moral principles. In this chapter I defend this radical claim. I (...) begin by explicating and defending Hayek’s argument against the pursuit of expediency based on his analysis of economic and social complexity. I then turn to a rather more critical examination of his evolutionary account of moral principles. (shrink)

A free markets needs ethical norms -- Moral maturity -- Ethics in business -- History of business values -- Factories, immigrants, and wealth -- Critics of capitalism -- Personal values and the firm -- Leaders, trust and watchdogs -- Globalization's impact on American values -- Future business values and sustainability.

In this essay, I critically evaluate the approaches to explaining the success of science in Kuhn and the works of inference-to-the-best-explanation scientific realists. Kuhn ’s challenge to realists, who invoke the truth of theories to explain their success, is two-fold. His paradigm-account of success confronts realists with the problem of theory change, and the historical fact of successful theories later rejected as false. Secondly, Kuhn ’s account of the success of science has no need to bring truth into the explanation. (...) In turn, I argue that weakness in Kuhn and the prevailing forms of scientific realism motivate a better account of realism which I characterize as ‘best current theory realism’ and defend against the pessimistic meta-induction and the problem of theory-change. This realism argues that the best explanation of the success of current and past scientific theories only requires the simple claim that our best current theories are true. Kuhn ’s account can explain how normal science succeeds but cannot account for why its problem solutions work where they do and why they fail for other puzzles. (shrink)