Throughout the history of philosophy, skepticism has posed one of the central challenges of epistemology. Opponents of skepticism--including externalists, contextualists, foundationalists, and coherentists--have focussed largely on one particular variety of skepticism, often called Cartesian or Academic skepticism, which makes the radical claim that nobody can know anything. However, this version of skepticism is something of a straw man, since virtually no philosopher endorses this radical skeptical claim. The only skeptical view that has been truly held--by Sextus, Montaigne, Hume, Wittgenstein, and, (...) most recently, Robert Fogelin--has been Pyrrohnian skepticism. Pyrrhonian skeptics do not assert Cartesian skepticism, but neither do they deny it. The Pyrrhonian skeptics' doubts run so deep that they suspend belief even about Cartesian skepticism and its denial. Nonetheless, some Pyrrhonians argue that they can still hold "common beliefs of everyday life" and can even claim to know some truths in an everyday way. This edited volume presents previously unpublished articles on this subject by a strikingly impressive group of philosophers, who engage with both historical and contemporary versions of Pyrrhonian skepticism. Among them are Gisela Striker, Janet Broughton, Don Garrett, Ken Winkler, Hans Sluga, Ernest Sosa, Michael Williams, Barry Stroud, Robert Fogelin, and Roy Sorensen. This volume is thematically unified and will interest a broad spectrum of scholars in epistemology and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This study investigated effects of codes of ethics on perceptions of ethical behavior. Respondents from companies with codes of ethics (n = 465) rated role set members (top management, supervisors, peers, subordinates, self) as more ethical and felt more encouraged and supported for ethical behavior than respondents from companies without codes (n = 301). Key aspects of the organizational climate, such as supportiveness for ethical behavior, freedom to act ethically, and satisfaction with the outcome of ethical problems were impacted by (...) the presence of an ethics code. The mere presence of a code of ethics appears to have a positive impact on perceptions of ethical behavior in organizations, even when respondents cannot recall specific content of the code. (shrink)

This study investigated effects of codes of ethics on perceptions of ethical behavior. Respondents from companies with codes of ethics (n = 465) rated role set members (top management, supervisors, peers, subordinates, self) as more ethical and felt more encouraged and supported for ethical behavior than respondents from companies without codes (n = 301). Key aspects of the organizational climate, such as supportiveness for ethical behavior, freedom to act ethically, and satisfaction with the outcome of ethical problems were impacted by (...) the presence of an ethics code. The mere presence of a code of ethics appears to have a positive impact on perceptions of ethical behavior in organizations, even when respondents cannot recall specific content of the code. (shrink)

This article explores how ethical agency, as ‘other-oriented’ caring, emerged from feelings of being ‘different’ in a cultural organization by drawing on feminist ethics of care. By analyzing interview material from an ethnographic study, we centralize the relationship between feelings of being ‘different,’ vulnerability and the development of sensibilities, practices and imaginaries of care. We elaborate on how vulnerability serves as a ground for caring with rather than for others, and illustrate how it allowed individuals to challenge both organizational, normative (...) diversity discourses and essentialization of differences. We contribute to the literature on critical diversity management by furthering problematizations of instrumental diversity management from the perspective of care, and to the organizational literature on feminist care ethics by empirically exploring how ethical agency emerges from tensions related to feeling ‘different.’ While previous studies have shown how marginalized individuals use their sense of ‘otherness’ to negotiate, conform to and resist organizational norms, practices and discourses, we provide further insights on how it also can drive concern and care for others, and thus serve as possible ground for ethical change initiatives within organizations. (shrink)

Recent research on the cognitive abilities and emotional capacities of animals has fueled the animal rights movement and renewed debate over the differences between human and non-human animals. This debate has not been central to sociology, although George Herbert Mead drew a very hard line between humans and animals by asserting that the latter were not capable of symbolic interaction. Sociologists are now beginning to question this assumption, and this article falls within this new line of research. We begin by (...) presenting alternative interpretations of symbolic interaction that allow for the possibility of such activity in non-human animals. We review recent research on symbolic interaction between humans and dogs, and we present our own research findings on human-feline interaction. We conclude that there is growing evidence that symbolic interaction is widely distributed throughout the animal kingdom, and that it enables animals to survive more effectively in a wide variety of environments. (shrink)

This study explores the value of traditional ethnographic methods in sociology for the study of human-animal and animal-animal interactions and culture. Itargues that some measure of human-animal intersubjectivity is possible and that the method of participant observation is best suited to achieve this. Applying ethnographic methods to human-cat and cat-cat relationships in a no-kill cat shelter, the study presents initial findings; it concludes that the social structure of the shelter is the product of interaction both between humans and cats and (...) cats and cats and that the observed structure represents, to a large degree, choices made by the cats. The study also concludes that, within the cat community of the shelter, a distinctive cat culture has emerged, which represents the cats' adaptation to the particular conditions of shelter life. Specifically, the shelter allows for the emergence of higher order needs and goals that stress affection, friendship, and social cohesion among the cats rather than territoriality and conflict. The study further argues that traditional animal researchers have mistaken the relative equality of cat colonies for a lack of social structure, as opposed to a different structure from that found in sharply ranked nonhuman animal communities. (shrink)

This article examines strategies used by human rights advocates to lobby for policy at intergovernmental organizations. We suggest that the literatures’ central questions are about how best to organize, connect, and communicate, which are usually seen through theory on transnational advocacy networks and framing. We add that these questions should be seen as gendered, given the continued male dominance within diplomatic corps. With unusual access to their strategy, we conduct a case study of one advocate’s successful campaign to get the (...) United Nations to adopt a country-specific resolution. Like others, we found this campaigning relies upon the use of networks to overcome formal obstacles to access, human rights language to frame the problem, analysis of tally sheets of member states’ voting, and in-person lobbying. We also point out strategies key to their success that are not usually noticed by scholars, such as the gendered dynamics that get advocates in the door. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Does the Scientist of Man Observe? Janet Broughton In the introduction to the Treatise, Hume cautions the reader that the scientist of man cannot "go beyond experience" and "discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature."1 "[T]he only solid foundation we can give to this science," tie says, "must be laid on experience and observation" (Txvi). This methodological principle is a familiar Newtonian one; indeed Hume makes (...) a point of saying it applies to "all the sciences" (T xviii), not just to the science of man. Although the principle is familiar, just what it enjoins is not clear. We are to renounce investigations that go "beyond experience," and we are not to seek "ultimate" qualities. But exactly which investigations and qualities are these? The question is a difficult one for Newton as well as for Hume. But Hume's invocation of the familiar methodological principle raises two additional questions, ones that need not especially trouble Newton. When the scientist of man goes about his task ofgathering "experience and observation," what sort ofthing is he to observe? And how is he to make his observations? My mainaimin this paperisto answerthose two questionsas they arise for the early stages ofHume's investigation ofhuman nature in the Treatise. I hope also to persuade the reader that these questions are more difficult, and more important, than they may at first seem, andthattheyare connected with evenbroader questions aboutthe sort ofproject Hume undertook in the Treatise. "Perceptions" Without explanation, Hume begins the Treatise proper by distinguishing between two kinds of"perceptions ofthe human mind" and drawsthe distinction accordingtohow the perceptions"maketheir way into our thought or consciousness"(T 1). Afew pageslater, he asks which of these "impressions and ideas are causes and which effects" and then announces that the "full examination ofthis question is the subject of the present treatise" (T 4). The scientist ofman, then, is to observe perceptions in our consciousness. Most commentators assume therefore that Hume takes himselfto be studying what Locke called ideas: states of awareness whose 'immediate objects' are dependent for their existence on the existence Volume XVIII Number 2 155 JANETBROUGHTON ofthe states ofawareness themselves, and can be theimmediate objects of awareness for one mind only. Many commentators make the additional assumptionthatforHume, thepropersphere ofhis scientific investigations is really just his own Lockean ideas. That is, the only form of experience the scientist of man may consult is immediate experience; the only appropriateform ofobservationhe may undertake is introspection. Kemp Smith disagrees. He claims thatin the openingstages ofthe Treatise, Hume takes up a point of view that is "naively realistic."2 Kemp Smith prefers this readingbecause he thinks it explains Hume's general tendency, in the early parts ofbook 1, to slide between talking about objects and talking about ideas; before part 4's "Of scepticism withregard tothe senses," Kemp Smith claims, Hume himselfoccupies the position ofthe "vulgar"(for example, T 192), rather than that ofthe "philosophers." Kemp Smith reminds us that in part 4, after a long account of the position of the vulgar, Hume says that its inherent instability leads philosophers to change their system, and distinguish, (as we shall do for the future) betwixt perceptions and objects. (T 211, emphasis added) Only at this point, Kemp Smith says, does Hume adopt the Lockean theory ofideas. I also oppose the standard view, but unlike Kemp Smith I do not see our central interpretative task here as that of deciding whether Hume began his investigation ofhuman nature as a "naive realist" or as a Lockean theorist. For one thing, when Kemp Smith calls Hume a naive realist, he means that Hume begins by assuming that the Lockean is right about this much: when we see, hear, remember, and so on, we are "immediately" or "directly" aware of something—albeit objects, not ideas. But I do not think that Hume's account of the early phases of his investigation requires us to impute that assumption to him. I also see the choice Kemp Smith offers us as limiting in another way. For it focuses our attention just upon the metaphysical status of the objects ofsense-perception. We might agree with Kemp Smith that on that score Hume does notbegin... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 2, November 2000, pp. 279-289 Explaining General Ideas JANET BROUGHTON Hume declared himself a scientist of man; his aim was to identify the principles according to which our impressions give rise to our thoughts, beliefs, passions and actions. He took it that there are things about these products of experience that need to be explained, and as a scientist of man he aimed (...) to provide the needed explanation by finding principles that govern the operations of the mind. In what follows I want to consider Hume's account of general ideas, and I want especially to raise the question what it is about them that he wants to explain. In order to see what Hume thinks he should explain about our general ideas, we need first to see what sort of explanatory resources he thinks are available. In the introduction to the Treatise, he proposes to undertake a study of human nature, a study of the particular kind that he calls science of man. He is going to study the human mind using "careful and exact experiments"1 gleaned up from a "cautious observation of human life" as it appears in the "common course of the world" (T xix). The outcome will be the discovery of "principles," and Hume aims to render them "as universal as possible," "explaining all effects from the simplest and fewest causes" (T xvii). By itself this sounds awfully bland. How does it differ from the generalizations any of us might make about human mental life? On one common understanding of Hume, the answer is that he is studying objects we don't ordinarily talk about, using a method of observation we don't ordinarily use. He is studying what Locke called "ideas": the items of which a person is immeJanet Broughton is Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-2390, USA. e-mail: [email protected] 280 Janet Broughton diately aware, and which depend on that awareness for their existence. He is studying them by using his power of introspection, the power by which a person may become immediately aware of his own ideas. I have argued elsewhere2 that Hume's term, 'perception,' isn't meant to refer to Lockean ideas but to people's states of mind as we ordinarily understand them: dateable episodes of consciousness of a great many types, including episodes of seeing, touching, smelling, tasting and hearing objects in the world around us. Nor, I have argued, does Hume's "cautious observation of human life" (T xix) invariably or even usually take the form of introspection. Rather, the scientist of man attends to a range of the features of perceptions that we notice from time to time in ordinary life. What distinguishes the activities of the scientist of man from those of the ordinary observer of human mental life is that the scientist of man attends mainly just to this range of features, and reflects upon them in a sustained and systematic way. The features to which he gives his attention are, I believe, these: force and vivacity; content compounded from simple elements; and the kinds of sequences or patterns in which perceptions with such-and-such content having such-and-such force and vivacity occur. Of these three features, the most puzzling by far, I think, is content; I will be exploring aspects of content as I attempt to identify what it is about general ideas that the scientist of man wants to understand. To put it crudely, we must see what Hume thinks impressions already contain if we want to see what it is about general ideas he wants to explain. In the first part of Book I of the Treatise, Hume sets out the basic distinctions and principles upon which he will draw: the distinctions between impressions and ideas, between simple and complex perceptions, between impressions of sensation and those of reflection, and between ideas of memory and of imagination; and the principles that our simple ideas are derived from resembling simple impressions, and that our ideas are associated via relations of resemblance, contiguity and causation. After clarifying the notion of relations, Hume concludes part i by... (shrink)

The elegiac lines in PQasrlbrim inv. 78–3–11/1 , first edited and ascribed to Gallusby R. D. Anderson, P. J. Parsons and R. G. M. Nisbetin 1979, raise a number of major problems of interpretation yet to be resolved. As is now well known, the papyrus fragment contains nine fairly well-preserved lines: first a pentameter, followed by two quatrains each composed of two elegiac couplets; the two quatrains are carefully marked off from each other and from the lines which preceded and (...) followed them by a pair of signs which have defied interpretation; another such sign can be seen to have marked a similar separation between groups of lines in the next column of the papyrus. One might think that the sets of lines thus marked off were quite separate epigrams, or perhaps excerpts from longer poems, for they are concerned with separate, indeed discrepant, topics – the naughtiness of Lycoris, the morale-boosting effects of Caesar's forthcoming successes, the love-poet's fearless stance before his critics – and they do not seem prima facie to follow logically after one another. However, various unmistakable verbal and thematic connections between them have rightly been pointed out by Nisbet. So what is this sequence of related verses and why is it set out in this way? (shrink)

A paradigmatic aspect of a paradigmatic kind of right is that the rights holder is the only one who can alienate it. When individuals waive rights, the normative source of that waiving is normally taken to be the individual herself. This moral feature?immunity?is usually in the background of discussions about rights. We bring it into the foreground here, with specific attention to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Kentucky v. King (2011), concerning search and seizure rights. An entailment of the (...) Court's decision is that, at least in some cases, a right can be removed by the intentional actions of the very party against whom the right supposedly protects the rights holder. We argue that the Court's decision is mistaken. The police officers in the case were not morally permitted, and should not be legally permitted, to intentionally create the very circumstances that result in the removal of an individual's right against forced, warrantless search and seizure. (shrink)

This is a study of the effects of a number of background variables on ethical perceptions of Mexican and U.S. marketers. This research investigates how a marketer’s personal religiousness, relativism, and the ethical values influence in perceptions of the degree of ethical problems in hypothetical marketing scenarios. It also examines differences between Mexican and U.S. marketers on these variables. The results show significant differences in perception between the countries, and we discuss the implications of these differences for cross-cultural business activities.

Ovid's Tristia4.10 has in the past chiefly been considered as a source of biographical information rather than as a poem, but increasing interest in the poetry of Ovid's exile has now at last started to promote serious efforts to appreciate its literary qualities. The poem presents a formidable challenge to the critic: at first reading it seems a singularly pedestrian account of the poet's life and, although one may adduce plenty of parallels for details in its phrasing elsewhere in the (...) poetry of Ovid and the other Augustans, it is clear that Ovid's thought-processes are not to be explained solely in terms of the main stream of Greco-Roman poetic tradition. Prose biography and autobiography, rhetorical apology and eulogy, subliterary epitaphs and inscriptional lists of achievements: all these types of writing could have influenced Ovid's selection of data. (shrink)

We applaud Wood, Kressel, Joshi, and Louie’s careful, nuanced meta-analysis. The evolutionary hypotheses designed to explain menstrual cycle fluctuations in mate preferences are convoluted and, based on this new meta-analysis, unnecessary because the existence of the fluctuations is not supported by the data. Evolutionary explanations are still possible if they predict women’s mate preferences rather than cyclic fluctuations in those preferences. The biosocial model provides a plausible alternative account. We emphasize the importance of improved methods in future research, focusing especially (...) on ascertainment of cycle phase. (shrink)

There is no historians' consensus about the ninth century. Opinions have been both highly judgmental and bewilderingly disparate. The most common diagnosis has been of disintegration and decline: the terminal illness of the Carolingian state. But some more sanguine observers have claimed to find here transformation and a political creativity decisive for the future of western Europe. On any reckoning, the ninth century was an important period. Yet it remains as true as when Walter Schlesinger made the observation twenty years (...) ago that a history of the ninth century in and for itself has still to be written. When it is, an interpretation of the events between 840 and 843 will surely be given a central place. For it was during those years that Carolingian Europe underwent most obviously those changes which historians have held characteristic and seminal in the century as a whole. At the beginning of 840 the Carolingian Empire persisted as a political entity; in 843 it no longer did so. The quest for an understanding of what happened during these critical years must start from a thorough reexamination of the relevant sources, and a number of recent studies show that this task is already well under way. But one text, though not wholly neglected by modern scholarship, still stands in need of closer attention and reappraisal: the Histories of Nithard. (shrink)