Part 1: What is philosophy? Introduction -- A brief history of philosophy -- Part II: The evolution of philosophy. Reason -- Sense experience -- Reason, sense, and intuition -- Self-preservation/power -- Desire/Free will -- Science -- Language -- Additional human activities -- Philosophy : the lessons learned -- Part III: The philosophy of conscious energy. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) -- The philosophy of conscious energy -- Comments.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Aesthetic Turn: Reading Eliot Deutsch on Comparative PhilosophyJoseph GrangeThe Aesthetic Turn: Reading Eliot Deutsch on Comparative Philosophy. Edited by Roger T. Ames. Chicago: Open Court, 2000. Pp. xiv + 225. Hardcover $42.95.The quality of the eleven contributions to The Aesthetic Turn: Reading Eliot Deutsch on Comparative Philosophy, edited by Roger T. Ames, which celebrates the work of Eliot Deutsch, is one measure of the man. The other (...) is the man himself. It is no exaggeration to say that his efforts as a philosopher and editor of Philosophy East and West helped lay the foundation for the flourishing discipline now called comparative philosophy. In this work, some of the more important philosophers engaged in this worldwide effort comment on particular aspects of Deutsch's philosophy. The results are an exceptional tribute to an exceptional philosopher. Deutsch's responses show an open and gracious intelligence at work, one that is constantly learning from the insights of others.Arthur Danto offers his understanding of the relation between mysticism and art in Deutsch's philosophy. Deutsch's response brings the reader back to the formative years at Columbia University and the still simmering debate over what constitutes a genuine work of art. By revisiting this debate on the ontological status of the modern and the commonplace in a work of art we are provided flashes of insight into Deutsch's understanding of the mystical dimension of "radiant form" as the source of beauty in art. Graham Parkes offers a meditation on the form of the Zen rock garden and thereby prompts an enlightening discussion of the place of the arbitrary and the perfect in aesthetic experience. Essays by J. N. Mohanty and Thomas Kasulis inquire into Deutsch's theory of truth as the real presence of ontological "rightness" and the "fulfillment" of attention. The influence of Advaita Vedānta on Deutsch's thought is nicely brought out as is the continuity of his ideas with other classical European views of truth. Gerald Larson explores the role of the "Tradition Text" in Deutsch's comparative philosophy. Postmodern philosophers could learn from Deutsch's careful handling of historical sources even as he appropriates the moving center of Indian philosophy for his own philosophical projects.One of the most brilliant essays in this festschrift is contributed by Herbert Fingarette. By bringing together the art of "wei wuwei" and the act of suffering, understood as the process of letting be what is really happening, Fingarette restores to suffering its genuine spiritual core. To suffer is not just to suffer pain but rather to "Suffer the Way to be. Do not interfere. Be like water—passive, and yet in the end powerful" (p. 74). Deutsch is moved by this extraordinary essay to offer an exceptional restatement of the central doctrine of the Bhagavad Gītā and his own theory of free action and its relation to authentic art: "This power is compelling for others. It attracts, because it is evident; it calls because one recognizes its possibilities for oneself; it demands because it sets a standard by which one measures, as it were, one's own attainment as a person" (p. 193). The continuing presence of normative [End Page 116] thinking in the pursuit of liberation demonstrates just how serious and well-disciplined is the Asian understanding of moksha. This profound meditation by two wise men is one of the highlights of this book.But Deutsch can also be very tough. The exchange between him and Daya Krishna on the possibility of effective worldly action, given the tenets of the Advaita Vedānta school, offers the spectacle of two very powerful minds struggling with ultimate issues of deep metaphysical concern. Deutsch's response involves careful distinctions to be drawn between concepts such as person, self, and individual. These in turn allow him to paint a very concrete portrait of the acting person as first of all and always a loving being. The continuing relevance of forms of idealistic thinking to a largely secular world is given a robust defense in Deutsch's review of his lifelong efforts to craft a theory of the person as having within its very being the moral, social... (shrink)

Joseph Newhard (2017) argues that a libertarian anarchist society would be at a serious military disadvantage if it extended the nonaggression principle to include potential foreign invaders. He goes so far as to recommend cultivating the ability to launch a nuclear attack on foreign cities. In contrast, I argue that the free society would derive its strength from a total commitment to property rights and the protection of innocent life. Both theory and history suggest that a free (...) society would be capable of defending itself, and indeed that it would probably use other means to avoid military conflict altogether. (shrink)

It would surely have been better to entitle this work ‘Reflexions on ethical theories’, for it cannot in any true sense of the word be called a study, a scientific study which entails detailed analysis and positive criticism. In fact Professor Mackinnon presents us with a series of considerations, highly personal and at times indeed penetrating and instructive, on the moral theories of certain British and continental philosophers—of the 19th century utilitarians ; of Kant, Hegel and their followers; of the (...) theologianphilosopher bishop of Durham, Joseph Butler; of Russell, Moore and others. The impression left on one after a careful perusal of the work is that it is no more than an agglomeration of ‘mights’ and ‘perhaps’, never a clear–cut judgment. The chief general defect of the book and the cause of much obscurity is certainly this: the absence of any welldefined distinction between exposé and critique. As often as not one does not know what the opinion of the author is as distinct from his interpretation of the authors he is studying. This defect would seem to be characteristic of a great part of the ethical writing produced by the Scottish and British schools, when they do not reduce ethical theory to anything better than semasiology, to a study of ethical language or linguistic usage. Prof. Mackinnon has certainly not freed himself from the ‘present confused state of moral philosophy in this country’, which he so rightly condemns. I had thought that all philosophers, of whatever ilk, were agreed that ethical science or moral philosophy was nothing more than the study of the human being on its way towards completeness in human being, from an initial embryonic stage, as it were, to the full flowering of human perfection, manifested in perfect human being and perfect human life—a journey or precess directed and controlled by the human subject itself, fully conscious of the end to be achieved and conscious too of the steps or means towards it. I would have thought too that if we are to set up moral science as distinct from mere semasiology, or from psychology, biology, zoology or botany, then all were agreed that we have to do with the domain of free activity, of voluntary conscious activity, which obviously brings with it the order of responsibility and willed subjection to a given objective order of things, that is, of human nature itself and human perfection. I would have taken for granted too that one could study all this field of the free development of the human being towards its ultimate perfection either with a view to the acquisition of knowledge and nothing more, or precisely with a view to being in a position to direct oneself and others towards that fullness of being. That would give us two distinct modes of moral or ethical theory, the speculative or theoretical and the practical and normative, the resolutive and the compositive. I am not so sure that Professor Mackinnon is ready to admit these presupposita. He speaks of the ‘curious and almost silly claim that we are free’, and at the same time he can write about the ‘frankly metaphysical reality of freedom’, or its ‘near–metaphysical reality’. This, in the language of the author, is just another way of proclaiming that human freedom is no more than a myth, lacking all substance and reality. Moral science as distinct from all other sciences, one would think, presupposes that the moral subject be conscious of itself and its activity, that is, that it fully and clearly know that its life and its activity is its own. It must be master of its own actions, and in that sense truly master of its own destiny. Then and only then are we in the order of moral activity. However, we are warned by Professor Mackinnon that “to know that an action is mine is a very strange sort of knowledge, quite different from knowing that an apple or a book is mine: to use the word ‘know’ in such a context is a venture fraught with intellectual peril”. I sincerely think it would have been better had the author denied straight out the possibility, not just of metaphysics, but of ethical theory tout court; for he denies often enough the existence of the moral subject, namely, man freely and deliberately ordaining himself towards human consummation. Had he done that at the outset he would have been spared the trouble of writing his book. All in all, one gets the distinct impression that the author is just not sure of his ground and has no really sound criterion whereby to judge of various ethical theories. In fact the book ends with a big question–mark: ‘If we speak and write thus, do we speak and write sound and fury signifying nothing?’. Reluctantly I am constrained to answer in the affirmative. And I should like to add, so as not to appear completely destructive, but in some way constructive: if, instead of dismissing Aristotle and his followers, ancient and modern, as mere ‘intuitionists’, Professor Mackinnon would only study them seriously he would first of all find out how unjustified is his condemnation of them and then, I venture to suggest, he would acquire a light to guide him surely through the maze of ethical theory with which he grapples aimlessly and would thus be enabled to extricate himself from ‘the present confused state of moral philosophy’ in Britain. (shrink)

In Socrates among Strangers, Joseph P. Lawrence reclaims the enigmatic sage from those who have seen him either as a prophet of science, seeking the security of knowledge, or as a wily actor who shed light on the dangerous world of politics while maintaining a prudent distance from it. The Socrates Lawrence seeks is the imprudent one, the man who knew how to die. The institutionalization of philosophy in the modern world has come at the cost of its most (...) vital concern: the achievement of life wisdom. Those who have ceased to grow (those who think they know) close their ears to the wisdom of strangers—and Socrates, who stood face to face with death, is the archetypal stranger. His avowal of ignorance, Lawrence suggests, is more needed than ever in an age defined by technical mastery and expert knowledge. (shrink)

This project explores the ethical obligations of food journalists. Using history, normative, and feminist theory, I argue that if specific media is going to be considered food journalism, then we should be able to identify its service to citizens. This project thus seeks a unified view for evaluating the democratic and caring potential of food journalism. I outline some of the contours of quality food journalism – its principles, practices and forms – through both historical and contemporary examples. I show (...) how both sets of food journalists adhere(d) to traditional notions of democracy-serving communication while also employing a more situated ethic of care. Ultimately, I argue that quality food journalists should adopt this care ethic addressing citizen-eaters, as this nourishes the relationships necessary for democratic worldmaking and gives us the best opportunity of collectively eating and living well. (shrink)

O rzeczywistym wpływie Dostojewskiego na Kafkę można mówić jedynie w przypadku powieści: Die Verwandlung, Der Prozeß i Der Bau. Studia porównawcze sprowadzają się jednakże najczęściej do badania poszczególnych motywów. Niniejszy szkic podejmuje próbę bardziej wnikliwego omówienia owych wpływów, a przedstawione fakty zdają się potwierdzać jednoznacznie duchowe powinowactwo Kafki i Dostojewskiego.

Filmmakers use continuity editing to engender a sense of situational continuity or discontinuity at editing boundaries. The goal of this study was to assess the impact of continuity editing on how people perceive the structure of events in a narrative film and to identify brain networks that are associated with the processing of different types of continuity editing boundaries. Participants viewed a commercially produced film and segmented it into meaningful events, while brain activity was recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging (...) (MRI). We identified three degrees of continuity that can occur at editing locations: edits that are continuous in space, time, and action; edits that are discontinuous in space or time but continuous in action; and edits that are discontinuous in action as well as space or time. Discontinuities in action had the biggest impact on behavioral event segmentation, and discontinuities in space and time had minor effects. Edits were associated with large transient increases in early visual areas. Spatial-temporal changes and action changes produced strikingly different patterns of transient change, and they provided evidence that specialized mechanisms in higher order perceptual processing regions are engaged to maintain continuity of action in the face of spatiotemporal discontinuities. These results suggest that commercial film editing is shaped to support the comprehension of meaningful events that bridge breaks in low-level visual continuity, and even breaks in continuity of spatial and temporal location. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive introduction to the many ethical and legal issues that arise in the practice of nursing. Ethical analysis is supplemented with the rigorous discussion of precedents from the American legal system as well as the requirements of professional codes operating at the national and state levels. Topics include informed consent, end-of-life treatment, impaired decisional capacity, privacy and confidentiality, and much more.

This book reviews and integrates the most recent research and theories on this exciting topic, and features original contributions from leading researchers ...

Approaches to clinical ethics dilemmas that rely on basic principles or rules are difficult to apply because of vagueness and conflict among basic values. In response, casuistry rejects the use of basic values, and specification produces a large set of specified rules that are presumably easily applicable. Balancing is a method employed to weigh the relative importance of different and conflicting values in application. We argue against casuistry and specification, claiming that balancing is superior partly because it most clearly exhibits (...) the reasoning behind moral decision-making. Hence, balancing may be most effective in teaching bioethics to medical professionals. (shrink)

The philosophical relation between Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre is important, partly because of the considerable influence of Heidegger on Sartre, and partly because of their critiques of each other.

People often choose intuitive rather than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. The authors suggest that these intuitive biases arise because intuitions often spring to mind with subjective ease, and the subjective ease leads people to hold their intuitions with high confidence. An investigation of predictions against point spreads found that people predicted intuitive options more often than equally valid nonintuitive alternatives. Critically, though, this effect was largely determined by people's confidence in their intuitions. Across naturalistic, expert, and laboratory samples, against personally (...) determined point spreads, and even when intuitive confidence was manipulated by altering irrelevant aspects of the decision context, the authors found that decreasing intuitive confidence reduced or eliminated intuitive biases. These findings indicate that intuitive biases are not inevitable but rather predictably determined by contextual variables that affect intuitive confidence. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultants should show bold moral courage in discharging their duties to patients, families, and healthcare providers. Given the corrosive impact on trust, and on the appropriate d...

Ever since Plato’s ‘Republic’ was written over two thousand years ago, one of the main concerns of social philosophy and later empirical social science was to understand the moral nature of human beings. The faculty to think and act in terms of overarching moral values is as much a defining hallmark of our species as is our intelligence, so _homo moralis_ is no less an appropriate term to describe humans as _homo sapiens_. This volume makes a case for the pivotal (...) role of social psychology as the core discipline for studying morality. The book is divided into four parts. First, the role of social psychological processes in moral values and judgments is discussed, followed by an analysis of the role of morality in interpersonal processes. The sometimes paradoxical, ironic effects of moral beliefs are described next, and in the final section the role of morality in collective and group behavior is considered. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in the social and behavioral sciences concerned with moral behavior, as well as professionals and practitioners in clinical, counseling, organizational, marketing and educational psychology where issues of ethics and morality are of importance. (shrink)

Researchers designing a clinical trial may be aware of disputed evidence of serious risks from previous studies. These researchers must decide whether and how to describe these risks in their model informed consent document. They have an ethical obligation to provide fully informed consent, but does this obligation include notice of controversial evidence? With ACCORD as an example, we describe a framework and criteria that make clear the conditions requiring inclusion of important controversial risks. The ACCORD model consent document did (...) not include notice of prior trials with excess death. We develop and explain a new standard labeled risk in equipoise. We argue that our approach provides an optimal level of integrity to protect the informational needs of the reasonable volunteers who agree to participate in clinical trials. We suggest language to be used in a model consent document and the informed consent discussion when such controversial evidence exists. (shrink)

Neil Levy offers the most prominent moral principles that are specifically and exclusively designed to apply to neuroethics. His two closely related principles, labeled as versions of the ethical parity principle , are intended to resolve moral concerns about neurological modification and enhancement [1]. Though EPP is appealing and potentially illuminating, we reject the first version and substantially modify the second. Since his first principle, called EPP , is dependent on the contention that the mind literally extends into external props (...) such as paper notebooks and electronic devices, we begin with an examination of the extended mind hypothesis and its use in Levy’s EPP . We argue against reliance on EMH as support for EPP . We turn to his second principle, EPP , which is not dependent on EMH but is tied to the acceptable claim that the mind is embedded in, because dependent on, external props. As a result of our critique of EPP , we develop a modified version of EPP , which we argue is more acceptable than Levy’s principle. Finally, we evaluate the applicability of our version of EPP. (shrink)

Some bioethicists have argued in favor of a sliding scale notion of competence, paternalistically requiring greater competence in relation to more significant risk. I argue against a sliding scale notion, taking issue with the positions of Allen E. Buchanan and Dan W. Brock, Ian Wilkes, and Joel Feinberg. Rejecting arguments that a sliding scale is supported by legal cases, by ordinary usage, and by fallible judgments about competence, I argue in favor of greater evidence of competence when risk is greater. (...) Two clinical cases are examined, both involving amputation, to show that my fixed concept of competence, with a requirement of clearer evidence of competence when risk is high, better accounts for good moral decisions in bioethics. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive approach to moral experience. It respects the many dimensions of our moral life which elude the traditional philosophical theories that deal exclusively with principles, consequences, virtues, or some other single dimension. Working from a critique of such traditions, the book shows how to integrate their values in a dynamic coherence. Thus, it is not just another ethical theory, but a new level of philosophizing in ethics which rewards the reader with an enlarged and enriched vision (...) of our complexity as moral beings. (shrink)

Lukas J. Meier et al. offer the promise of a pathway for resolving clinical bioethical problems using an artificial intelligence interface. The ultimate goal, we assume, is...

Prior studies report that the business group structure and the associated intra-group capital flows are prone to conflicts of interest between controlling shareholders and minority investors. Yet business group is a prevalent and stable structure around the globe, particularly where capital markets are underdeveloped. Using data from China, this paper empirically studies the trade-off between the negative and positive roles played by intra-group capital flows and tests the efficiency implications of such trade-off. We find that from the perspective of the (...) whole group, intra-group capital flows are most efficient when the groups are least subject to conflicts of interest between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders and when they face strong external financing constraints. (shrink)

Available for the first time in English, this is the definitive account of the practice of sexual slavery the Japanese military perpetrated during World War II by the researcher principally responsible for exposing the Japanese government's responsibility for these atrocities. The large scale imprisonment and rape of thousands of women, who were euphemistically called "comfort women" by the Japanese military, first seized public attention in 1991 when three Korean women filed suit in a Toyko District Court stating that they had (...) been forced into sexual servitude and demanding compensation. Since then the comfort stations and their significance have been the subject of ongoing debate and intense activism in Japan, much if it inspired by Yoshimi's investigations. How large a role did the military, and by extension the government, play in setting up and administering these camps? What type of compensation, if any, are the victimized women due? These issues figure prominently in the current Japanese focus on public memory and arguments about the teaching and writing of history and are central to efforts to transform Japanese ways of remembering the war. Yoshimi Yoshiaki provides a wealth of documentation and testimony to prove the existence of some 2,000 centers where as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, Dutch, Australian, and some Japanese women were restrained for months and forced to engage in sexual activity with Japanese military personnel. Many of the women were teenagers, some as young as fourteen. To date, the Japanese government has neither admitted responsibility for creating the comfort station system nor given compensation directly to former comfort women. This English edition updates the Japanese edition originally published in 1995 and includes introductions by both the author and the translator placing the story in context for American readers. (shrink)

This contemporary examination of moral theory succinctly covers the full range of theoretical positions, from extreme particularism to moral ideals. Students are challenged to think critically about abstract theories and to use acquired knowledge to support moral experience. In this comprehensive approach to the study of ethics the student is exposed to numerous positions, asked to consider their strengths and weaknesses, and guided to understand how typically opposed theories can jointly aid moral decision making.