The editors, working with a team of 325 renowned authorities in the field of ethics, have revised, expanded, and updated this classic encyclopedia. Along with the addition of 150 new entries, all of the original articles have been newly peer-reviewed and revised, bibliographies have been updated throughout, and the overall design of the work has been enhanced for easier access to cross-references and other reference features. New entries include * Aristotelian Ethics * Avicenna * Bad Faith * Beneficence * Categorical (...) and Hypothetical Imperatives * Cheating * Civil Liberty * Conventions * Dirty hands * Evolution * Fiduciary Relationships * Gay ethics * Genetic Engineering * Holocaust * Journalism * Killing/Letting Die * Moral Imagination * Narrative Ethics * Political correctness * Population Ethics * Public and 0rivate Morality * Racism, concepts of * and many more. (shrink)

Willard Van Orman Quine's work revolutionized the fields of epistemology, semantics and ontology. At the heart of his philosophy are several interconnected doctrines: his rejection of conventionalism and of the linguistic doctrine of logical and mathematical truth, his rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation and his thesis of the inscrutability of reference. In this book Edward Becker sets out to interpret and explain these doctrines. He offers detailed analyses of the relevant texts, discusses Quine's (...) views on meaning, reference and knowledge, and shows how Quine's views developed over the years. He also proposes a new version of the linguistic doctrine of logical truth, and a new way of rehabilitating analyticity. His rich exploration of Quine's thought will interest all those seeking to understand and evaluate the work of one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

We argue that the asymmetry between diverging and converging electromagnetic waves is just one of many asymmetries in observed phenomena that can be explained by a past hypothesis and statistical postulate (together assigning probabilities to different states of matter and field in the early universe). The arrow of electromagnetic radiation is thus absorbed into a broader account of temporal asymmetries in nature. We give an accessible introduction to the problem of explaining the arrow of radiation and compare our preferred strategy (...) for explaining the arrow to three alternatives: (i) modifying the laws of electromagnetism by adding a radiation condition requiring that electromagnetic fields always be attributable to past sources, (ii) removing electromagnetic fields and having particles interact directly with one another through retarded action-at-a-distance, (iii) adopting the Wheeler-Feynman approach and having particles interact directly through half-retarded half-advanced action-at-a-distance. In addition to the asymmetry between diverging and converging waves, we also consider the related asymmetry of radiation reaction. (shrink)

Detachment, Involvement, and Rationality: are we Essentially Rational Animals? Philosophers have long thought that what differentiates humans from mere animals is that humans are essentially rational. The rational nature of human beings lies in their ability to detach themselves from ongoing involvement and to ask for as well as give reasons for activity. According to the philosophical tradition, human action and perception generally should be understood in light of this ability. This essay examines a contemporary version of this conviction, one (...) promulgated by John McDowell. McDowell follows the tradition in suggesting that people are always able to step back and to ask as well as answer why questions about what they are doing, i.e., they always have reasons for their actions. This essay shows that people have no reasons for many of the things they do. They often, instead, simply respond to shifting situational fields of attraction and repulsion. These attractions and repulsions cannot be captured in propositional form—any attempt to describe, or even just name, them turns them into objects and robs them of their motivational force. The demands of the situation are not available as reasons, but exist only as embodied in actions. McDowell, consequently, errs in claiming that conceptual capacities are inextricably implicated in human activity. Nor is the detached, rational way of being any more essential to human life than is involved coping. (shrink)

Biotechnology marks a new scientific revolution. It holds the promise of generating resources to meet our needs in the fight against hunger, disease and environmental disasters.

In der Antisemitismuskritik insbesondere nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg wird Fichte vielfach eine zentrale Rolle zugedacht: nämlich als dem Angelpunkt des Umschlags vom religiösen Antijudaismus zur politischen Judenfeindlichkeit. Diese Sicht, die sich im Wesentlichen auf eine Äußerung in einer Frühschrift des Philosophen von 1793 stützt, hat — so die These des Buches — dessen weitere Entwicklung, wenn überhaupt, dann nur völlig unzureichend zur Kenntnis genommen. Für überraschend viele jüdische Zeitgenossen, seine jüdischen Studenten voran, ist Fichte der wegweisende Philosoph der Epoche gewesen. (...) Die weitere, gerade jüdische Rezeptionsgeschichte seines Werkes belegt bis ins Dritte Reich hinein eine erstaunliche, bislang in diesem Umfang nicht zur Kenntnis genommene Affinität des Judentums zu Fichte. Dabei erweisen sich Fichtes Reden an die deutsche Nation — für viele sicherlich überraschend — gerade für den Zionismus als beispielhaft für jedes Volk im Werden und für das jüdische allemal. Auch die französische Fichte-Rezeption — ebenfals dort ist die jüdische prominent vertreten — hat, die Zeit des Grande Guerre ausgenommen, bis zu Beginn des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Fichte vor allem den Erben der Freiheitsversprechen von Aufklärung und Revolution in Frankreich gesehen. (shrink)

In a recent study, Becker and Elliott [Becker, C., & Elliott, M. A. . Flicker induced color and form: Interdependencies and relation to stimulation frequency and phase. Consciousness & Cognition, 15, 175–196] described the appearance of subjective experiences of color and form induced by stimulation with intermittent light. While there have been electroencephalographic studies of similar hallucinatory forms, brain activity accompanying the appearance of hallucinatory colors was never measured. Using a priming procedure where observers were required to indicate the presence (...) of one of eight target colors we compared electrophysiological correlates of hallucinatory color with brain states associated with other visual phenomena. Different target colors were accompanied by different patterns of EEG activation. However, in general, we found that the appearance of hallucinatory colors is preceded by a power decrease in the lower alpha band alongside an increase in gamma band frequencies. We argue that decreasing activity in the lower alpha band acts as a gating mechanism, inducing a switch in perception between different colors. The increasing gamma activation may correlate with the formation of a coherent conscious percept. (shrink)

This is a newly revised and updated edition of A History of Western Ethics, a coherent and accessible overview of the most important figures and influential ideas of the history of ethics in the Western philosophical tradition. Written by eleven distinguished scholars, and including a glossary of key terms, this book is an essential reference for students and general readers alike.

Le present ouvrage propose une etude systematique de la conception de la condition humaine contenue dans Condition de l'homme moderne de H. Arendt. Il en eclaire l'orientation, a la fois par rapport a la tradition ancienne et classique de la philosophie et par rapport au contexte immediat de la phenomenologie et de l'existentialisme contemporains. Il met en evidence une structure de la condition humaine, un agencement des differentes conditions qui la composent et l'accent mis par Arendt sur un pluriel de (...) conditions de base plus que sur les traits generaux habituellement mis en avant (la finitude, la mortalite). Outre la triade bien connue des trois activites fondamentales, le travail, l'oeuvre, l'action, il explicite une triade d'activites mentales, l'intelligence, la connaissance et la pensee. Il examine le statut de la pensee dans la condition humaine et le paradoxe de sa capacite de retrait par rapport a elle. La conception arendtienne de la condition humaine, non depassee a ce jour, est une reference capitale pour l'humanite, aujourd'hui inquiete de l'avenir de son monde. La version allemande du livre de Arendt, remaniee par rapport a l'edition anglaise originale, est prise en compte. (shrink)

Contemporary society needs the recognition of a moral middle ground, where human behavior can be evaluated as permissible, understandable, or even valuable. As a counterforce to polarization and divisive politics, an identity model is proposed in which individual and group identities are transcended by a human and ecological identity.

La 4e de couverture indique : "Les thèses de Lacan viennent de sa pratique, mais il avait articulé celles-ci dans un cadre théorique très élaboré. De Platon et Descartes jusqu'à Heidegger ou Wittgenstein, en passant par Kant et Hegel, Lacan a lu avec attention les grands philosophes. Le refondateur de la psychanalyse, à l'encontre des scolastiques de la psyché qu'il a sans cesse combattues, avait à faire à la vérité, à la vérité freudienne, celle des sujets qui s'analysent, mais aussi (...) aux articulations de savoir qui prennent une place primordiale dans l'élaboration de son immense séminaire qui constitue une des créations les plus puissantes de notre temps. Les grands philosophes y sont fréquemment interrogés dans leur pensée fondamentale et jusqu'à leur point de butée que Lacan nommait l'impossible et qu'il tentait de déborder à partir des (quatre) concepts fondamentaux de Freud et en posant avec l'objet a le registre du Réel et le primat de l'écriture.". (shrink)

"This book provides a representative survey of early and more recent concerns in cognitively inspired lexical semantics.