When I was an undergraduate in Oxford, we were taught economics almost as though it were a natural science. The subject matter of economics might be different from physics, but only in the way that the subject matter of chemistry or biology is different from physics. The actual results were presented to us as if they were scientific theories. So when we learned that savings equals investment, it was taught in the same tone of voice as one teaches that force (...) equals mass times acceleration. And we learned that rational entrepreneurs sell where marginal cost equals marginal revenue in the way that we once learned that bodies attract in a way that is directly proportional to the product of their mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. At no point was it ever suggested that the reality described by economic theory was dependent on human beliefs and other attitudes in a way that was totally unlike the reality described by physics or chemistry. Some years ago, when I published The Construction of Social Reality, I was aware that it had implications for the ontology of economics, but I was not aware that there had already been an important revival of the tradition of institutional economics. It would be an understatement to say that I welcome this interest in institutions; I enthusiastically support it. But I think that in the institutional literature there is still an unclarity about what exactly an institution is. What is the ontology, the mode of existence, of institutional reality? This article tries to add to this discussion. Economics as a subject matter, unlike physics or chemistry, is largely concerned with institutional facts. Facts about money and interest rates, exchange and employment, corporations and the balance of payments, form the very heart of the subject of economics. When Lionel Robbins, in a classic work, tells us that “Economics is a study of the disposal of scarce commodities,”2 he takes for granted a huge invisible institutional.... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John R. Boly NIHILISM ASIDE: DERRIDA'S DEBATE OVER INTENTIONAL MODELS DERRIDA'S PHILOSOPHY, or perhaps antiphilosophy, emerges from phenomenological thought. But to a great extent, he has been permitted to define that emergence on his own terms, particularly in his writings on Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. This is, of course, highly questionable. It in effect licenses Derrida to become a revisionist historian of his own origins. So I propose (...) a variation. Instead of placing phenomenology against Derrida's backdrop, I want to question his deconstructive project in its relation to the phenomenological venture. The difficulty with this is apparent. What would such a venture be? Even posing the question raises problems in that it presupposes an impossible vantage, an uninvolved point from which to look down in serene mastery at a game rigged in advance. Yet perhaps a synoptic point ofview may be indulged in for a while, provided no one forgets its provisional nature. In that case, the phenomenological venture includes four moments. 1. Suspension (or epoche). Human beings cannot perceive reality in itself. They can only experience meaning through the operations of intentionality, which may be thought of as the exclusions, selections, and combinations of a mediating system. This truism is no less terrifying for being so true, and every mediating system bears within itselfan impulse towards protective closure, an impulse to veil its own forming activity. Such closure eventually encrusts a mediating system and hardens into what Marxists call ideology, the early Barthes called myth, or contemporary response theorists call repertoire. Suspension involves a questioning attentiveness that remains within the closure it questions. Every fact is reconsidered, as factum, a deed brought forth through a process ofmaking. The consequently bracketed "fact" is both sacred object, granting reflexive ac152 John R. Boly153 cess to its formative process, and utter pretension, trying to conceal that process and thereby promote itself as fact rather than facture, origin rather than product. Phenomenology begins with a questioning of that pretension. Like a difficult child, it is perplexed at the self-evident and wonders at the obvious. 2.Reduction. Yet this questioning attentiveness takes only a first step. Suspension disenchants or disillusions, but it does not advance toward an understanding of the intricate patterns through which meaning emerges from the infinite possibilities of perception. That is the task of reduction, to which Husserl assigned two phases, the eidetic and the transcendental.1 In the eidetic phase, phenomena are released, so far as this is possible, into a preflective and preconceptual mode, as pure perceptions still awaiting the activity of mediation. Here, phenomena are boundless as well as exhilarating in their semantic potential. This return to primary perception, however, generates an opposing phase, the transcendental reduction, which traces the way in which mediating systems or what John Wild called versions of the life-world, select and arrange a potentially infinite semantic potential into actual meanings.2 Eidetic and transcendental phases work together, as inseparable antagonists within a continuous dialectic of disclosure. Because these two phases oppose one another, reduction involves a continuous interplay between energy and order, dynamism and system, with the result that it tirelessly traces patterns in the life-world, yet does so only to modify and transform those patterns through the very act of its tracing. Efforts to set the patterns of a life-world into a stable structure at the same time set free their infinite possibilities.3 The eidetic phase of the reduction thus provides a relentless semantic pressure that qualifies, elaborates, and eventually disperses every order of the transcendental phase. Yet without the revealing provocation of such inadequate orders, the eidetic phase would become incoherent and lapse into a speechless nihilism. Though it enacts a comic drama, reduction is the central task of the phenomenological venture, which halts the instant it is denied access to the intentional realm of the life-world. 3.Opening. So important is this access that it generates a separate moment, which pauses to meditate on the conditions of such access. The issues that arise here dominated Heidegger's thought after Being and Time, and they are among the most abstruse yet important concerns of phenomenology. How can models of intentional patterning be... (shrink)

The kind of expertise someone who specialises in ethics has, or indeed whether it makes sense to talk of moral expertise, is keenly debated and is a far from settled issue. It has been of interest to moral philosophers, partly because of the light it might shine on the nature of morality.1 2 It has also been debated within medical ethics, with some arguing against the idea that expertise in moral philosophy translates into ethical expertise and others arguing that skills (...) in ethical justification can be viewed as ethical expertise.3 4 This issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics includes a number of papers that demonstrate the importance of ethical expertise and some of the distinctive elements of it. Public involvement in research is seen in a number of countries as something valuable and in some, such as Australia, it can be a criterion for research grants. The UK National Standards for Public Involvement in Research are discussed in this issue of JME and McCoy et al provide a good illustration of why ethical expertise is important for framing public policy.5 The appeal of stakeholders having some say into research projects, particularly when they are funded via taxation is easy to understand, so who would not see public involvement as a good thing? However, McCoy et al claim that while there is a substantial and growing literature on public involvement in research that tends to emphasise the importance of public involvement, it doesn’t explain how or what this looks like when …. (shrink)

Throughout his life, John Tyler Bonner contributed to major transformations in the fields of developmental and evolutionary biology. He pondered the evolution of complexity and the significance of randomness in evolution, and was instrumental in the formation of evolutionary developmental biology. His contributions were vast, ranging from highly technical scientific articles to numerous books written for a broad audience. This historical vignette gathers reflections by several prominent researchers on the greatness of John Bonner and the implications of his (...) work. (shrink)

As an institution serving “the youth of Maryland of the colored race,” the evolution of Princess Anne Academy as a land grant school depicts the problems and successes of the early black land grant schools of the South. It responded to the prevailing economic and social forces of its time. Despite the rhetoric of the federal 1890 Land Grant Act, Princess Anne Academy, like other 1890 schools, did not enjoy the equal financial support accorded the 1862 schools. (...) A hostile community and an indifferent legislature prevented Princess Anne Academy from actively participating in the educational life on the Eastern Shore. (shrink)

John Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education began as a series of letters to his friend, Sir Edward Clarke. Written during the same period he was writing the final draft of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, the Thoughts was first published in 1693. Locke was as concerned with cultivating the minds of adults as he was with childhood education. Of the Conduct of the Understanding addresses this concern. Locke's thoughts on education are part of his comprehensive epistemological, moral, and political (...) reflections. For this reason, this chapter begins by considering the Thoughts and the Conduct in turn for what they reveal of Locke's educational principles and recommended practices. Then, it turns to address the ways in which these writings on education can deepen our understanding of unresolved theoretical problems in Locke's thought, of key concepts such as freedom and reasonableness, and of the degree of coherence of his philosophy altogether. (shrink)

Recent trends in business ethics along with growing attacks upon unions, suggest that employee rights will be a major social concern for business managers during the next decade. However, in most of the discussions of employee rights to date, the very meaning and legitimacy of such rights are often uncritically taken for granted. In this paper, we develop an account of employee rights and defend this conception against what we take to be the strongest in-principle objections to it.

The study of rationality and practical reason, or rationality in action, has been central to Western intellectual culture. In this invigorating book, John Searle lays out six claims of what he calls the Classical Model of rationality and shows why they are false. He then presents an alternative theory of the role of rationality in thought and action. A central point of Searle's theory is that only irrational actions are directly caused by beliefs and desires—for example, the actions of (...) a person in the grip of an obsession or addiction. In most cases of rational action, there is a gap between the motivating desire and the actual decision making. The traditional name for this gap is "freedom of the will." According to Searle, all rational activity presupposes free will. For rationality is possible only where one has a choice among various rational as well as irrational options. Unlike many philosophical tracts, Rationality in Action invites the reader to apply the author's ideas to everyday life. Searle shows, for example, that contrary to the traditional philosophical view, weakness of will is very common. He also points out the absurdity of the claim that rational decision making always starts from a consistent set of desires. Rational decision making, he argues, is often about choosing between conflicting reasons for action. In fact, humans are distinguished by their ability to be rationally motivated by desire-independent reasons for action. Extending his theory of rationality to the self, Searle shows how rational deliberation presupposes an irreducible notion of the self. He also reveals the idea of free will to be essentially a thesis of how the brain works. (shrink)

One of the most important and influential philosophers of the last 30 years, John Searle has been concerned throughout his career with a single overarching question: how can we have a unified and theoretically satisfactory account of ourselves and of our relations to other people and to the natural world? In other words, how can we reconcile our common-sense conception of ourselves as conscious, free, mindful, rational agents in a world that we believe comprises brute, unconscious, mindless, meaningless, mute (...) physical particles in fields of force? The essays in this collection are all related to the broad overarching issue that unites the diverse strands of Searle's work. Gathering in an accessible manner essays available only in relatively obscure books and journals, this collection will be of particular value to professionals and upper-level students in philosophy as well as to Searle's more extended audience in such fields as psychology and linguistics. (shrink)

Int. intr nseca i derivada. Condicions de satisfacci . Atribuci literal i metaf rica d'Int. Int. intr nseca-cervell. Ment-cervell. Panorama Filosof a de la Ment. Ryle. Causaci intencional. Teleolog a. Explicaci de les CC. Socials.

Cognitive Science is likely to make little progress in the study of human behavior until we have a clear account of what a human action is. The aim of this paper is to present a sketch of a theory of action. I will locate the relation of intention to action within a general theory of Intentionality. I will introduce a distinction between prior intentions and intentions in actions; the concept of the experience of acting; and the thesis that both prior (...) intentions and intentions in action are causally selfreferential. Each of these is independently motivated, but together they enable me to suggest solutions to several outstanding problems within action theory (deviant causal chains, the accordian effect, basic actions, etc.), to show how the logical structure of intentional action is strikingly like the logical structure of perceptions, and to construct an account of simple actions. A successfully performed intentional action characteristically consists of an intention in action together with the bodily movement or state of the agent which is its condition of satisfaction and which is caused by it. The account is extended to complex actions. (shrink)

Neuroethics applies cognitive neuroscience for prescribing alterations to conceptions of self and society, and for prescriptively judging the ethical applications of neurotechnologies. Plentiful normative premises are available to ground such prescriptivity, however prescriptive neuroethics may remain fragmented by social conventions, cultural ideologies, and ethical theories. Herein we offer that an objectively principled neuroethics for international relevance requires a new meta-ethics: understanding how morality works, and how humans manage and improve morality, as objectively based on the brain and social sciences. This (...) new meta-ethics will simultaneously equip neuroethics for evaluating and revising older cultural ideologies and ethical theories, and direct neuroethics towards scientifically valid views of encultured humans intelligently managing moralities. Bypassing absolutism, cultural essentialisms, and unrealistic ethical philosophies, neuroethics arrives at a small set of principles about proper human flourishing that are more culturally inclusive and cosmopolitan in spirit. This cosmopolitanism in turn suggests augmentations to traditional medical ethics in the form of four principled guidelines for international consideration: empowerment, non-obsolescence, self-creativity, and citizenship. (shrink)

Cognitive Science is likely to make little progress in the study of human behavior until we have a clear account of what a human action is. The aim of this paper is to present a sketch of a theory of action. I will locate the relation of intention to action within a general theory of Intentionality. I will introduce a distinction between prior intentions and intentions in actions; the concept of the experience of acting; and the thesis that both prior (...) intentions and intentions in action are causally selfreferential. Each of these is independently motivated, but together they enable me to suggest solutions to several outstanding problems within action theory (deviant causal chains, the accordian effect, basic actions, etc.), to show how the logical structure of intentional action is strikingly like the logical structure of perceptions, and to construct an account of simple actions. A successfully performed intentional action characteristically consists of an intention in action together with the bodily movement or state of the agent which is its condition of satisfaction and which is caused by it. The account is extended to complex actions. (shrink)

Most people are aware of the health benefits of being physically active. The question arises then why people so easily fall into sedentary habits. The idea developed here is that sedentary behavior is part of a suite of behaviors to reduce levels of physical activity that were strongly selected in the evolutionary past, likely because high levels of physical activity had direct negative consequences for survival. However, hunter‐gatherer populations could not reduce activity indefinitely because of the need to be active (...) to hunt for, and gather food. Hence they never experienced low levels of activity that are damaging to health, and no corresponding mechanism avoiding low activity evolved. Consequently, gene variants promoting efficiency of activity and increased sedentariness were never selected against. Modern society facilitates reduced activity by providing many options to become less active and divorcing food intake from the need to be active. Choosing the less active option is hard wired in the genes; this explains why being sedentary is so common, and why reversing it is so difficult. Incentivizing activity may be enabled using modern technology, but ultimately may only end up replacing one set of health issues with others. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/ekHbUwPw-v4. (shrink)

_A Companion to Pragmatism,_ comprised of 38 newly commissioned essays, provides comprehensive coverage of one of the most vibrant and exciting fields of philosophy today. Unique in depth and coverage of classical figures and their philosophies as well as pragmatism as a living force in philosophy. Chapters include discussions on philosophers such as John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas and Hilary Putnam.

This paper attempts to begin to answer four questions. 1. What is consciousness? 2. What is the relation of consciousness to the brain? 3. What are some of the features that an empirical theory of consciousness should try to explain? 4. What are some common mistakes to avoid?

An analysis of student learning with the LISP tutor indicates that while LISP is complex, learning it is simple. The key to factoring out the complexity of LISP is to monitor the learning of the 500 productions in the LISP tutor which describe the programming skill. The learning of these productions follows the power‐law learning curve typical of skill acquisition. There is transfer from other programming experience to the extent that this programming experience involves the same productions. Subjects appear to (...) differ only on the general dimensions of how well they acquire the productions and how well they retain the productions. Instructional manipulations such as remediation, content of feedback, and timing of feedback are effective to the extent they give students more practice programming, and explain to students why correct solutions work. (shrink)

Lewis white beck's "a commentary on kant's critique of practical reason" overlooks the fact that some of the ideas most important to kant's ethics are not presented in the second "critique". It also lacks a necessary emphasis on the notion of the highest good, The unifying theme of the work as a whole. The author traces the role of this concept throughout the second "critique" and shows how kant developed the content of the idea of the highest good in the (...) combined notions of perfection as the moral good and happiness as the natural good. (staff). (shrink)

This chapter explores arguments from analogy containing ethical predicates like 'just', 'courageous', and 'honest'. The approach is Wittgensteinian in a double sense. The role of paradigm cases in ethical discourse is emphasized, first of all, and the inductive logics to be employed spring from Wittgenstein's remarks on probability (1922). Although these logics rely on a semantic concept of range, they yield results for the ethical problems treated here only if grounded in certain kinds of pragmatic consensus.

Sustainable farming, and waysto achieve it, are important issues foragricultural policy. New Zealand provides aninteresting case for examining sustainableagriculture options because gene technologieshave not been commercially released and thereis a small but rapidly expanding organicsector. There is no strong governmentsubsidization of agriculture, so while policiesseem to favor both options to some degree,neither has been directly supported. Resultsfrom a survey of 656 farmers are used to revealthe intentions, environmental values, andfarming practices for organic, conventional,and GE intending farmers. The results show thatorganic (...) and conventional farmers are relativelysimilar but contrast to GE intending farmers,especially with respect to perceivedconsequences of each technology. While 75%of farmers have not yet made a commitmentto either technology, one fifth were GEintending and one quarter may become organic.Organic farmers have different attitudes tonature, matched in part by conventionalfarmers. In terms of policy for sustainableagriculture, the results suggest that organicand conventional farmers are incrementallymoving towards agroecological sustainabilitywhile GE intending farmers are committed tointensive production methods of which GEproducts are potentially important. GEintending farmers reject incrementalism infavor of a revolutionary technological fix forsustainability concerns in agriculture.Overall, the results show that there areclearly two different paradigms ofsustainability among farmers. Policies that areseeking to achieve sustainable agriculture needto address the tensions that span the differentparadigms. (shrink)

Decades of empirical and theoretical research has produced an extensive literature on the ethical judgments construct. Given its importance to understanding people’s ethical choices, future research should explore the psychological processes that produce ethical judgments. In this paper, the authors discuss two steps needed to advance this effort. First, they note that the business ethics literature lacks a single, generally accepted definition of ethical judgments. After reviewing several extant definitions, the authors offer a definition of the construct and discuss its (...) advantages. Second, future ethical judgment research would benefit from greater integration between theories of ethical decision making and theories of social cognition. Drawing upon the Hunt–Vitell ( Journal of Macromarketing 6 (Spring), 5–15, 1986 ; In: N. C. Smith and J. A. Quelch (eds.), Ethics in Marketing . Irwin, Homewood, IL, pp. 775–784, 1992 ) model and the heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39 (November), 752–766, 1980 ), the authors present a brief research agenda intended to stimulate research on the psychological processes behind ethical judgments. (shrink)

Theory choice can be approached in at least four ways. One of these calls for the application of decision theory, and this article endorses this approach. But applying standard forms of decision theory imposes an overly demanding standard of numeric information, supposedly satisfied by point-valued utility and probability functions. To ameliorate this difficulty, a version of decision theory that requires merely comparative utilities and plausibilities is proposed. After a brief summary of this alternative, the article illustrates how comparative decision theory (...) affords a rational reconstruction of decisions made by exemplary scientists in two cases of theory choice: Buffon’s law and the luminiferous ether. It also offers a rational reconstruction of two cases of theory diagnosis: Mendeleev’s anomalies and the Pioneer anomaly. (shrink)