The distinction between moral rules and moral ideals is presented and explained in various ways. The authors propose that people in business are required to obey the moral rules and have a choice with respect to ideals. Thus, they are not in a different position from that of anyone else in society.Four case studies are presented and discussed. The analytical approaches used by the authors' students are summarized and evaluated. The moral rules/ideals paradigm is described as helping discussants of the (...) cases to establish congruence between business ethics and their personal set of values. Other values of the classroom discussion of ethics cases are considered. (shrink)

In his contribution to Human Senses and Perception , R. J. Hirst has made a number of important suggestions about perceptual consciousness, He has emphasised the need to describe ‘what the percipient is or may be conscious of’ from the percipient's own point of view . This mode of description is contrasted with stimulus or neurological description. Perceptual consciousness of one object is distinguished from perceptual consciousness of another object ‘only by or on the evidence of, the person concerned’ . (...) The method of obtaining descriptions of perceptual consciousness is either to question a percipient or to reflect on our own experience, The second important point stressed by Hirst is that the end product of perceiving is ‘the conscious experience of external objects’ . Such an obvious point is often lost sight of in behavioural, dispositional, or neurophysiological analyses, The third and final suggestion made by Hirst to which I want to call attention is the usefulness of a genetic hypothesis to explain and account for perceptual consciousness. Hirst feels that perceptual consciousness is ‘unanalysable at the conscious level’, meaning that it is ‘a unitary awareness of objects or scenes’ and that the ‘various interacting unconscious activities’ which coexist with awareness ‘cannot be brought forward into consciousness’ . The various analytical theories of perception have been designed to break perceptual consciousness into its components. This has resulted in their being false to perceptual consciousness. A genetic explanation of awareness has several advantages, prime among them being its ability to explain the complexity and development of awareness. (shrink)

Wittgenstein wrote ‘While thinking philosophically we see problems in places where there are none. It is for philosophy to show that there are no problems’. He meant that the ‘problems’ philosophers grapple with are of their own making. In a related remark he said: ‘This is the essence of a philosophical problem. The question itself is the result of a muddle. And when the question is removed, this is not by answering it’. Even more explicitly he said: ‘All that philosophy (...) can do is to destroy idols’. As he understood his job, it was not to produce or construct something; his job was entirely destructive. This is how Wittgenstein thought of philosophy when he thought about it in the abstract, and I share this view of philosophy. I believe that when we see how to dispose of all philosophical categories, our job is finished. For example, in epistemology our job is not to argue that it is possible to know such-and-such because so-and-so ; rather, we undermine all those ideas that make it seem as though we could not know such-and-such. Undermining philosophical ideas takes the form: When we philosophise, we are tempted to think so-and-so, but if we consider that idea, and do so while remaining free of all philosophical jargon, we find that we cannot make sense of it. (shrink)

I find myself in profound disagreement with Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion and hence in disagreement also with those philosophers who have undertaken to elaborate and defend Wittgenstein's position. My principal objection is to the idea that religion is a language-game and that because of the kind of language-game it is, religious believers are not to be thought of as necessarily harbouring beliefs about the world over and above their secular beliefs. I reject this position, not because I think that there (...) are language-games and that religion happens not to be one, but because I find the very idea of a language-game to be indefensible. Put another way, I find myself out of sympathy with the recent idea that in philosophy of religion we ought to be discussing something called ‘religious language’ or ‘the kind of language involved in religious beliefs’. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a tendency in some quarters to see an affinity between the views of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on the subject of religious belief. It seems to me that this is a mistake, that Kierkegaard's views were fundamentally at odds with Wittgenstein's. That this fact is not generally recognized is, I suspect, owing to the obscurity of Kierkegaard's most fundamental assumptions. My aim here is to make those assumptions explicit and to show how they differ from (...) Wittgenstein's. (shrink)

This paper attempts to relax the tension between Adam Smith's claim that sympathy involves an evaluative act of imaginative projection and his claim that sympathy involves a non-evaluative act of imaginative identification. The first section locates the tension specifically in the two different ways Smith depicts the stance adopted by the sympathizer. The second section argues that we can relax this tension by finding an important role for a non-evaluative stance in Smith's normative account of moral evaluation. This solution protects (...) the continuity in Smith's account of sympathy (cf. Griswold 1999: 99–103). Because of the particular way in which it renders intelligible the relationship between the evaluative and non-evaluative stances, this solution also emphasizes the importance that respect for the agent's conscience has in Smith's conception of an ideal moral judge (cf. Darwall 2004; 2006). The third section investigates a possible systematic basis for Smith's normative commitment to respectful moral judgment. (shrink)

John Carroll undertakes a careful philosophical examination of laws of nature, causation, and other related topics. He argues that laws of nature are not susceptible to the sort of philosophical treatment preferred by empiricists. Indeed he shows that emperically pure matters of fact need not even determine what the laws are. Similar, even stronger, conclusions are drawn about causation. Replacing the traditional view of laws and causation requiring some kind of foundational legitimacy, the author argues that these phenomena are (...) inextricably intertwined with everything else. This distinctively clear and detailed discussion of what it is to be a law will be valuable to a broad swathe of philosophers in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

One of the central problems in the philosophy of psychology is an updated version of the old mind-body problem: how levels of theories in the behavioral and brain sciences relate to one another. Many contemporary philosophers of mind believe that cognitive-psychological theories are not reducible to neurological theories. However, this antireductionism has not spawned a revival of dualism. Instead, most nonreductive physicalists prefer the idea of a one-way dependence of the mental on the physical.In Psychoneural Reduction, John Bickle presents (...) a new type of reductionism, one that is stronger than one-way dependency yet sidesteps the arguments that sank classical reductionism. Although he makes some concessions to classical antireductionism, he argues for a relationship between psychology and neurobiology that shares some of the key aims, features, and consequences of classical reductionism. Parts of Bickle's "new wave" reductionism have emerged piecemeal over the past two decades; this is his first comprehensive statement and defense of it to appear. (shrink)

John Carroll undertakes a careful philosophical examination of laws of nature, causation, and other related topics. He argues that laws of nature are not susceptible to the sort of philosophical treatment preferred by empiricists. Indeed he shows that emperically pure matters of fact need not even determine what the laws are. Similar, even stronger, conclusions are drawn about causation. Replacing the traditional view of laws and causation requiring some kind of foundational legitimacy, the author argues that these phenomena are (...) inextricably intertwined with everything else. This distinctively clear and detailed discussion of what it is to be a law will be valuable to a broad swathe of philosophers in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

John Carroll undertakes a careful philosophical examination of laws of nature, causation, and other related topics. He argues that laws of nature are not susceptible to the sort of philosophical treatment preferred by empiricists. Indeed he shows that emperically pure matters of fact need not even determine what the laws are. Similar, even stronger, conclusions are drawn about causation. Replacing the traditional view of laws and causation requiring some kind of foundational legitimacy, the author argues that these phenomena are (...) inextricably intertwined with everything else. This distinctively clear and detailed discussion of what it is to be a law will be valuable to a broad swathe of philosophers in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Rich with historical and cultural value, these works are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

With the possible exception of causation, disposition concepts are as prevalent in ordinary thought as any of the nomic concepts. Progress on their nature has been hard to come by. No doubt the difficulty of saying anything illuminating and suitably general about their nature is a function of their pervasiveness.

Using his intimate knowledge of John Locke's writings, John W. Yolton shows that Locke comprehends 'human understanding' as a subset of a larger understanding ...

Human activity is changing the global environment on a scale unlike that of any other era. Environmental deterioration is now a global issue--ecologically, politically, and economically--that requires global solutions. Yet there is considerable disagreement over what kinds of strategies we should adopt in order to halt and reverse damage to the global ecosystem. What kinds of international institutions are best suited to dealing with global environmental problems? Why are women and indigenous peoples still marginalized in global environmental politics? What are (...) the consequences of the global ecological crisis for economic and security policies? The Global Politics of the Environment makes sense of the often seemingly irreconcilable answers to these questions. It focuses throughout on the tensions between mainstream strategies, which seek to build support for reforms through existing institutions, and radical critiques, which argue that environmental degradation is a symptom of a dysfunctional world order that must itself be transformed if we are to meet the challenge of saving the planet. (shrink)

This book, a reevaluation of a major issue in modern philosophy, explores the controversy that grew out of John Locke's suggestion, in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), that God could give to matter the power of thought.

Essays on philosophy and intellectual history, focusing in particular on John Locke.

In 1984, John W. Yolton published Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid. His most recent book builds on that seminal work and greatly extends its relevance to issues in current philosophical debate. Perception and Reality examines the theories of perception implicit in the work of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers which centered on the question: How is knowledge of the body possible? That question raises issues of mind-body relation, the way that mentality links with physicality, and the nature of the (...) known world. In contrast to commonsense realism, which suggests that the world is as it appears to be, a more complex theory developed throughout this period. Yolton traces its evolution from Descartes to Kant, via Arnauld, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Yolton explains that the new theory postulated two interactive relations between perceivers and the physical world, one physical and causal, the other cognitive. An understanding of this double relation is important for an accurate construction of the history of philosophy. It is also important for contemporary thought because it suggests a way to account for representation (cognitivity) and realism at the same time. (shrink)

Some Thoughts concerning Education, originally published in 1693, is one of John Locke's major works, a classic text in the philosophy of education; this is the definitive scholarly edition. The work mainly concerns moral education and its role in creating a responsible adult, and the importance of virtue as a transmitter of culture; but Locke ranges also over a wide range of practical topics.

This is a review of Marc Lange's _Natural Laws in Scientific Practice<D>.

Professor Yolton delves into John Locke 's most important work, the Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

This book is an accessible introduction to the central themes of contemporary metaphysics. It carefully considers accounts of causation, freedom and determinism, laws of nature, personal identity, mental states, time, material objects, and properties, while inviting students to reflect on metaphysical problems. The philosophical questions discussed include: What makes it the case that one event causes another event? What are material objects? Given that material objects exist, do such things as properties exist? What makes it the case that a person (...) may exist at two different times? An Introduction to Metaphysics makes these tough questions tractable by presenting the features and flaws of current attempts to answer them. Intended primarily for students taking a first class in metaphysics, this lucid and well-written text would also provide an excellent introduction for anyone interested in knowing more about this important area of philosophy. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of The Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke: Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) can produce benefits at individual, organizational, sectoral and societal levels. In this article, we argue that the distribution of benefits depends in part on the cognitive frames held by partnership participants. Based on Selsky and Parker's (J Manage 31(6):849-873, 2005) review of CSSPs, we identify three analytic "platforms" for social partnerships — the resource-dependence platform, the social-issue platform, and the societal-sector platform. We situate platforms as prospective sensemaking devices that help project managers make sense of partnerships (...) by calling attention to certain desired features or downplaying other features. We describe the three platforms and contrast them on factors that influence social benefit, including orientation, learning, and power. We provide illustrations of each platform and demonstrate how the choice of platform is consequential for practice, such as how a partnership project gets started, evolves and produces social benefits. (shrink)

The essays reflect Locke's position as a polymath and recontextualise his ideas through the juxtaposition of various academic approaches.

As a subject of inquiry, laws of nature exist in the overlap between metaphysics and the philosophy of science. Over the past three decades, this area of study has become increasingly central to the philosophy of science. It also has relevance to a variety of topics in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and epistemology. Readings on Laws of Nature is the first anthology to offer a contemporary history of the problem of laws. The book is organized around three (...) key issues: the matter of distinguishing laws from mere correlations, questions concerning inductive reasoning and laws, and the consideration of whether there are any true laws in science. Designed for class use, the anthology covers a remarkably broad range of views and concerns, and consists exclusively of articles that have proved highly influential in the field. Readings on Laws of Nature will also serve as a valuable research and reference tool for philosophers who do not specialize in the subject, but who have occasion to examine concepts relating to the laws of nature in their own work. (shrink)