In Albert M. Hyamson’s invaluable reference work “The British Consulate in Jerusalem in relation to the Jews in Palestine 1838–1914” a letter from Sir Moses Montefiore is quoted. Montefiore was at that time President of the London committee of Deputies of the British Jews. The letter is addressed to Earl Russell, the Foreign Secretary, and in this letter Montefiore mentions that he is enclosing a Memorial from the Jewish Communities in Safed and Tiberias, complaining about the deplorable condition in which (...) they find themselves as a consequence of the withdrawal of British Protection which they had enjoyed during the preceding 10 years. The original Memorial is an address to Sir Moses Montefiore, sent by the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis of Safed and Tiberias in 1863. (shrink)

Joseph Raz presents a penetrating exploration of the interdependence of value, reason, and the will. These essays illuminate a wide range of questions concerning fundamental aspects of human thought and action. Engaging Reason is a summation of many years of original, compelling, and influential work by a major contemporary philosopher.

I propose to analyze the concept of basing beliefs on reasons. The concept is an important one in understanamg the so-called "inferential" or "indirect" knowledge. After briefly stating the causal analyses of this concept given by D.M. Armstrong and Marshall Swain I will present two cases which show these analyses to be too strong and too weak. Finally, I will propose an analysis which avoids these twin difficulties.

In this book Joseph Heath brings Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action into dialogue with the most sophisticated articulation of the instrumental conception of practical rationality-modern rational choice theory. Heath begins with an overview of Habermas's action theory and his critique of decision and game theory. He then offers an alternative to Habermas's use of speech act theory to explain social order and outlines a multidimensional theory of rational action that includes norm-governed action as a specific type.In the second (...) part of the book Heath discusses the more philosophical dimension of Habermas's conception of practical rationality. He criticizes Habermas's attempt to introduce a universalization principle governing moral discourse, as well as his criteria for distinguishing between moral and ethical problems. Heath offers an alternative account of the level of convergence exhibited by moral argumentation, drawing on game-theoretic models to specify the burden of proof that the theory of communicative action and discourse must assume. (shrink)

John McDowell and Hubert L. Dreyfus are philosophers of world renown, whose work has decisively shaped the fields of analytic philosophy and phenomenology respectively. Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-World: The McDowell-Dreyfus Debate opens with their debate over one of the most important and controversial subjects of philosophy: is human experience pervaded by conceptual rationality, or does experience mark the limits of reason? Is all intelligibility rational, or is there a form of intelligibility at work in our skilful bodily rapport with the (...) world that eludes our intellectual capacities? McDowell and Dreyfus provide a fascinating insight into some fundamental differences between analytic philosophy and phenomenology, as well as areas where they may have something in common. Fifteen specially commissioned chapters by distinguished international contributors enrich the debate inaugurated by McDowell and Dreyfus, taking it in a number of different and important directions. Fundamental philosophical problems discussed include: the embodied mind, subjectivity and self-consciousness, intentionality, rationality, practical skills, human agency, and the history of philosophy from Kant to Hegel to Heidegger to Merleau-Ponty. With the addition of these outstanding contributions, Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-World is essential reading for students and scholars of analytic philosophy and phenomenology. (shrink)

This book examines Aristotle's method in ethics from the vantage point of his broader conception of philosophy. Joseph Karbowski challenges longstanding dialectical orthodoxy and argues instead that, in his ethical treatises, Aristotle is seeking the first principles of a demonstrative ethical science, a science of human goodness, using an ethically adapted version of the method described in the second book of his Posterior Analytics. Part I of this volume develops a novel interpretation of Aristotle's conception of philosophy, which highlights (...) its ambition to scientific knowledge and its flexible approach to philosophical inquiry. Part II then demonstrates Aristotle's scientific and flexible approach to philosophy at work in his ethical treatises. The book shows how the aspiration to scientific knowledge is compatible with Aristotle's remarks about ethical precision, the practical aim of ethics, and the particular orientedness of phronēsis. (shrink)

The essence of who we are depends on our brains. They enable us to think, to feel joy and sorrow, communicate through speech, reflect on the moments of our lives, and to anticipate, plan for, and worry about our imagined futures. Although some of our abilities are comparatively new, key features of our behavior have deep roots that can be traced to the beginning of life. By following the story of behavior, step-by-step, over its roughly four-billion-year trajectory, we come to (...) understand both how similar we are to all organisms that have ever lived, and how different we are from even our closest animal relatives. We care about our differences because they are ours. But differences do not make us superior; they simply make us different. (shrink)

The relations between automatic processing and consciousness are discussed in this paper. It is argued that automatic processing should not be identified with the absence of consciousness. The organism has access to representations resulting from automatic processing, but these representations, in contrast to the representations resulting from nonautomatic processing, are not propositional. Therefore monitoring of the process, the defining feature of nonautomatic processing, is not possible.

Joseph Grange's beautifully written book provides a unique synthesis of two major figures of world philosophy, John Dewey and Confucius, and points the way to a global philosophy based on American and Confucian values. Grange concentrates on the major themes of experience, felt intelligence, and culture to make the connections between these two giants of Western and Eastern thought. He explains why the Chinese called Dewey "A Second Confucius," and deepens our understanding of Confucius's concepts of the way (dao) (...) of human excellence (ren). The important dimensions of American and Chinese cultural philosophy are welded into an argument that calls for the liberation of what is finest in both traditions. The work gives a new appreciation of fundamental issues facing Chinese and American relations and brings the opportunities and dangers of globalization into focus. (shrink)

I propose to analyze the concept of basing beliefs on reasons. The concept is an important one in understanamg the so-called "inferential" or "indirect" knowledge. After briefly stating the causal analyses of this concept given by D.M. Armstrong and Marshall Swain I will present two cases which show these analyses to be too strong and too weak. Finally, I will propose an analysis which avoids these twin difficulties.

The inclusion of morally binding values such as religious—or in a broader sense, spiritual—values fundamentally alter organizational decision-making and ethical behavior. Family firms, being a particularly value-driven type of organization, provide ample room for religious beliefs to affect family, business, and individual decisions. The influence that the owning family is able to exert on value formation and preservation in the family business makes religious family firms an incubator for value-driven and faith-led decision-making and behavior. They represent a particularly rich and (...) relevant context to re-assess the relationship between ethical beliefs, decision-making processes and behaviors in business organizations at the interface between family and professional logics. This Special Issue is dedicated to deepening our understanding of the role religious values and spirituality play in the formation of organizational ethical practices in faith-led family firms and resulting organizational and family-related outcomes. In this editorial, we introduce the 10 papers included in this Special Issue, which investigate the relationship between religion or spirituality and family firm ethical behavior in various geographical, cultural and religious contexts, using a multitude of qualitative and quantitative methodologies. By focusing on the effects of religious or spiritual orientations on both the business and the family, as well as on the values, norms and goals present in the family business system, further research can gain a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between religious and spiritual believes, and sustainable ethical behavior in family firms. (shrink)

The swamping problem is to explain why knowledge is epistemically better than true belief despite being no more true, if truth is the sole fundamental epistemic value. But Carter and Jarvis argue that the swamping thesis at the heart of the problem ‘is problematic whether or not one thinks that truth is the sole epistemic good’. I offer a counterexample to this claim, in the form of a theory of epistemic value for which the swamping thesis is not problematic: evidence (...) monism. Then I argue that another kind of response to the swamping problem given by Sylvan 2018 does not escape the problem unscathed, because it is not only instrumentalism that gives rise to the swamping problem. The upshot is that, given a standard account of fundamental value, the swamping problem favours evidence monism over truth monism. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill is one of the hallowed figures of the liberal tradition, revered for his defense of liberal principles and expansive personal liberty. By examining Mill's arguments in On Liberty in light of his other writings, however, Joseph Hamburger reveals a Mill very different from the "saint of rationalism" so central to liberal thought. He shows that Mill, far from being an advocate of a maximum degree of liberty, was an advocate of liberty and control--indeed a degree of (...) control ultimately incompatible with liberal ideals.Hamburger offers this powerful challenge to conventional scholarship by presenting Mill's views on liberty in the context of his ideas about, in particular, religion and historical development. The book draws on the whole range of Mill's philosophical writings and on his correspondence with, among others, Harriet Taylor Mill, Auguste Comte, and Alexander Bain to show that Mill's underlying goal was to replace the traditional religious basis of society with a form of secular religion that would rest on moral authority, individual restraint, and social control. Hamburger argues that Mill was not self-contradictory in thus championing both control and liberty. Rather, liberty and control worked together in Mill's thought as part of a balanced, coherent program of social and moral reform that was neither liberal nor authoritarian.Based on a lifetime's study of nineteenth-century political thought, this clearly written and forcefully argued book is a major reinterpretation of Mill's ideas and intellectual legacy. (shrink)

Various processes are often classified as both deterministic and random or chaotic. The main difficulty in analysing the randomness of such processes is the apparent tension between the notions of randomness and determinism: what type of randomness could exist in a deterministic process? Ergodic theory seems to offer a particularly promising theoretical tool for tackling this problem by positing a hierarchy, the so-called ‘ergodic hierarchy’, which is commonly assumed to provide a hierarchy of increasing degrees of randomness. However, that notion (...) of randomness requires clarification. The mathematical definition of EH does not make explicit appeal to randomness; nor does the usual way of presenting EH involve a specification of the notion of randomness that is supposed to underlie the hierarchy. In this paper we argue that EH is best understood as a hierarchy of random behaviour if randomness is explicated in terms of unpredictability. We then show that, contrary to common wisdom, EH is useful in characterising the behaviour of Hamiltonian dynamical systems. (shrink)

In 1908, three years after Einstein first published his special theory of relativity, the mathematician Hermann Minkowski introduced his four-dimensional “spacetime” interpretation of the theory. Einstein initially dismissed Minkowski’s theory, remarking that “since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself anymore.” Yet Minkowski’s theory soon found wide acceptance among physicists, including eventually Einstein himself, whose conversion to Minkowski’s way of thinking was engendered by the realization that he could profitably employ it for the (...) formulation of his new theory of gravity. The validity of Minkowski’s mathematical “merging” of space and time has rarely been questioned by either physicists or philosophers since Einstein incorporated it into his theory of gravity. Physicists often employ Minkowski spacetime with little regard to the whether it provides a true account of the physical world as opposed to a useful mathematical tool in the theory of relativity. Philosophers sometimes treat the philosophy of space and time as if it were a mere appendix to Minkowski’s theory. In this critical study, Joseph Cosgrove subjects the concept of spacetime to a comprehensive examination and concludes that Einstein’s initial assessment of Minkowksi was essentially correct. (shrink)

Edmund Husserl EDMUND GUSTAVE ALBRECHT HUSSERL was born in Prossnitz, Moravia, on April 8, 1859. After receiving his secondary education in Vienna, ...

Authority is one of the key issues in political studies, for the question of by what right one person or several persons govern others is at the very root of political activity. In selecting key readings for this volume Joseph Raz concerns himself primarily with the moral aspect of political authority, choosing pieces that examine its justification, determine who is subject to it and who is entitled to hold it, and whether there are any general moral limits to it. (...) The readings-by such modern political thinkeres as Robert Paul Wolff, H. L. A. Hart, G. E. M. Anscombe, and Ronald Dworkin-examine the basic moral issues and provide an essential introduction to the debate about the nature of authority for all students of political theory. (shrink)

Analyzes Schelling's arguments for his idealism and pieces together a description of his theory of nature from among the large number of his writings in this area. It also traces the influence of Naturphilosophie on 19th-century science and connects it with recent System Theory.

There is a need for empirically based research on social and ethical challenges related to informed consent processes, particularly in studies focusing on adolescent sexual and reproductive health. In a pilot study of a school-based pregnancy prevention intervention in rural Zambia, the majority of the guardians who were asked to consent to their daughters’ participation, refused. In this paper we explore the reasons behind the low participation in the pilot with particular attention to challenges related to the community engagement and (...) informed consent process. The pilot was implemented in two schools and examined the acceptability of a package of interventions including economic support to families to keep their girls in school, pocket money for girls, youth club meetings on reproductive health, and community meetings to sensitize the community. Focus group discussions were conducted with girls who participated in the pilot, boys in their class and with parents. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers, peer educators and community health workers involved in the coordination of the intervention as well as with religious and traditional leaders. Data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings indicate that inadequate use of recognized community communication channels during the community engagement process and dissemination of information about the pilot resulted in limited understanding of the pilot concept by the community. This surfaced through uncertainty and fear that the intervention may result in loss of control over daughters, worries about why money was provided unconditionally to girls, and suspicion of links to satanism. The sense of insecurity appeared to be exacerbated by low literacy levels, poverty, fear of loss of bride wealth, perceived disregard for local perceptions of social status, and scanty trust in the actors implementing the pilot. Inadequate use of locally appropriate channels in the dissemination of information created room for interpretation and facilitated development of mistrust, undermining the conditions for community engagement and actual informed consent. A key lesson learnt is the importance of taking seriously the complexity of local values and structures that may impact people’s capability to consent or not consent to a study in an informed manner. (shrink)

Most causal discovery algorithms in the literature exploit an assumption usually referred to as the Causal Faithfulness or Stability Condition. In this paper, we highlight two components of the condition used in constraint-based algorithms, which we call “Adjacency-Faithfulness” and “Orientation- Faithfulness.” We point out that assuming Adjacency-Faithfulness is true, it is possible to test the validity of Orientation- Faithfulness. Motivated by this observation, we explore the consequence of making only the Adjacency-Faithfulness assumption. We show that the familiar PC algorithm has (...) to be modified to be correct under the weaker, Adjacency-Faithfulness assumption. The modified algorithm, called Conservative PC (CPC), checks whether Orientation- Faithfulness holds in the orientation phase, and if not, avoids drawing certain causal conclusions the PC algorithm would draw. Howtion: ever, if the stronger, standard causal Faith-. (shrink)

This study surveys the internal audit department of a large financial services organization. Respondents were challenged to recognize and evaluate ethical and unethical situations often encountered in practice. Four key demographic variables were investigated: gender, age, years of employment and peer group influence. For the most part, respondents view themselves as more ethical than their peers. There does appear to be a gender effect suggesting females' ability to identify ethical behavior better than their male counterparts. This study contributes to the (...) extant literature in that it has explored a previously unexplored profession, namely, the internal auditing profession. (shrink)

In two recent papers Perez Laraudogoitia has described a variety of supertasks involving elastic collisions in Newtonian systems containing a denumerably infinite set of particles. He maintains that these various supertasks give examples of systems in which energy is not conserved, particles at rest begin to move spontaneously, particles disappear from a system, and particles are created ex nihilo. An analysis of these supertasks suggests that they involve systems that do not satisfy the mathematical conditions required of Newtonian systems at (...) the time the supertask is due to be completed, or else they rely on the application of the time-reversal transformation to states which are not well-defined. Consequently, it is unjustified to conclude that the paradoxical results are arising from within the framework of Newtonian mechanics. In the last part of this article, we discuss various aspects of the physics of these supertasks. (shrink)

The debate concerning the role of intuitions in philosophy has been characterized by a fundamental disagreement between two main camps. The first, the autonomists, hold that, due to the use in philosophical investigation of appeals to intuition, most of the central questions of philosophy can in principle be answered by philosophical investigation and argument without relying on the sciences. The second, the naturalists, deny the possibility of a priori knowledge and are skeptical of the role of intuition in providing evidence (...) in philosophical inquiry. In spite of the seemingly stark and deep disagreement between the autonomist and the naturalist, in this paper I will attempt to suggest that there is a way to mount a partial defense of intuition-based philosophical practice on naturalist grounds. As will be seen, doing so will require a number of concessions that will satisfy few autonomists while simultaneously disappointing those naturalists who might have thought that all notions of the a priori had been successfully laid to rest. However, I will argue that the account proposed here will preserve those features of traditional philosophical practice that matter most and better explain the history of successes and failures of that practice, thus answering the worries of the autonomist, and that the rejection of the No A Priori Thesis attendant with the account presented here is indeed demanded by the current theories of our best scientific understanding of the mind, thus pacifying the rabid naturalistic critic of any version of apriorism. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on John Locke as a representative figure of English Enlightenment theorizing about the legitimacy of cognitive authority and examine the way in which a greater attention to the cultural milieu in which Locke worked can lead to a profound reexamination of his writings on cognitive authority. In particular, I suggest that an inattention to the rise of a culture of reading and the growing availability of books in Early Modern England has led historians of philosophy (...) largely to misrepresent Locke's theory of testimonial justification. At the core of my paper are two interrelated claims. First, with respect to the history of ideas, I argue that the Locke's interest in testimony as a source of justification was in fact greater than that of his Scholastic forebears, and that this fact has a simple, if as yet unacknowledged, cultural cause -- viz., the rise of the book as a mass commodity in the late 17th century. Second, with respect to the history of philosophy more particularly, I argue that this failure to acknowledge the cultural movements that led to a consideration of testimony as a topic of interest to epistemologists in the Modern era has led to a misreading of Locke's work on the subject. Indeed, Locke, though usually read as having attempted to denigrate testimony as a legitimate source of justification, in fact sought to devise an epistemology that would do justice to the centrality of testimony in the intellectual lives of growing numbers of his contemporaries in 17th and 18th century England and Scotland. (shrink)

As in other societies, medical professionalism in the Peoples’ Republic of China has been rapidly evolving. One of the major events in this process was the endorsement in 2005 of the document, “Medical Professionalism in the New Millennium: A Physician Charter,” by the Chinese Medical Doctor Association (hereafter, the Charter). More recently, a national survey, the first on such a large scale, was conducted on Chinese physicians’ attitudes toward the fundamental principles and core commitments put forward in the Charter. Based (...) on empirical findings from that study and comparing them to the published results of a similar American survey, the authors offer an in-depth interpretation of significant cross-cultural differences and important transcultural commonalities. The broader historical, socio-economic, and ethical issues relating to salient Chinese cultural practices such as family consent, familism (the custom of deferring decisions to family members), and the withholding of medical information, as well as controversial topics such as not respecting patients’ autonomy, are examined. The Chinese Survey found that Chinese physicians supported the principles of the Charter in general. Here we argue that Chinese culture and traditional medical ethics are broadly compatible with the moral commitments demanded by modern medical professionalism. Methodologically and theoretically—recognizing the problems inherent in the hoary but still popular habit of dichotomizing cultures and in relativism—a transcultural approach is adopted that gives greater (due) weight to the internal moral diversity present within every culture, the common ground shared by different cultures, and the primacy of morality. Genuine crosscultural dialogue, including a constructive Chinese-American dialogue in the area of medical professionalism, is not only possible, but necessary. (shrink)

Joseph Margolis, known for his considerable contributions to the philosophy of art and aesthetics, pragmatism, and American philosophy, has focused primarily on the troublesome concepts of culture, history, language, agency, art, interpretation, and the human person or self. For Margolis, the signal problem has always been the same: how can we distinguish between physical nature and human culture? How do these realms relate? _The Cultural Space of the Arts and the Infelicities of Reductionism_ identifies a conceptual tendency that can (...) be drawn from the work of the twentieth century's best-known analytic philosophers of art: Arthur Danto, Richard Wollheim, Kendall Walton, Nelson Goodman, Monroe Beardsley, Noël Carroll, and Jerrold Levinson, among others. This trend threatens to impoverish our grasp and appreciation of the arts by failing to do justice to the culturally informed nature of the arts themselves. Through his analysis, Margolis sets out to retrieve an adequate picture of the essential differences between physical nature and human culture—particularly through language, history, meaning, significance, the emergence of the human self or person, and the essential features of human life—all to explain how such difference bears on our perception of paintings and literature. Clearly argued and provocatively engaging, Margolis's work reestablishes what is essential to a productive encounter with art. (shrink)

SummaryA number of authors have identified multiple concurrent sexual partnerships by both men and women to lie at the root of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. This study applies multilevel models to Demographic and Health Survey data collected during 2003–2008 in 20 sub-Saharan African countries to examine the influence of social and cultural context on involvement with multiple sexual partnerships in the region, above and beyond the effects of individual characteristics. The findings provide support for the ecological argument that (...) health behaviours are shaped and determined by societal conditions, in addition to the effects of individual and household characteristics. Involvement with multiple sex partners is most prevalent in societies in which sexual norms are widely permissive and where polygyny is common. Individual autonomy is substantial and attitudes towards sexuality are more liberal among men and women who live in communities in which sexual norms are widely permissive. Men and women who are most likely to have multiple sex partners in the sub-Saharan region are those who initiated sexual activity earlier and those who have the individual attributes that bring to them more rights and/or decision-making autonomy, but not necessarily more financial resources and economic security. On the other hand, involvement with multiple partners is determined by cultural norms and social change. The findings suggest a number of opportunities for more effective policy and programmatic responses to curb the prevalence of multiple partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa. (shrink)

De Finetti is one of the founding fathers of the subjective school of probability. He held that probabilities are subjective, coherent degrees of expectation, and he argued that none of the objective interpretations of probability make sense. While his theory has been influential in science and philosophy, it has encountered various objections. I argue that these objections overlook central aspects of de Finetti’s philosophy of probability and are largely unfounded. I propose a new interpretation of de Finetti’s theory that highlights (...) these aspects and explains how they are an integral part of de Finetti’s instrumentalist philosophy of probability. I conclude by drawing an analogy between misconceptions about de Finetti’s philosophy of probability and common misconceptions about instrumentalism. (shrink)

In Aquinas on Being and Essence: A Translation and Interpretation, Joseph Bobik interprets the doctrines put forth by St. Thomas Aquinas in his treatise On Being and Essence. He foregrounds the meaning of the important distinction between first and second intentions, the differing uses of the term “matter,” and the Thomistic conception of metaphysics.

According to agent-based approaches to virtue ethics, the rightness of an action is a function of the motives which prompted that action. If those motives were morally praiseworthy, then the action was right; if they were morally blameworthy, the action was wrong. Many critics find this approach problematically insensitive to an act’s consequences, and claim that agent-basing fails to preserve the intuitive distinction between agent- and act-evaluation. In this article I show how an agent-based account of right action can be (...) made sensitive to an act’s consequences. According to the approach which I defend, an action is right just in case it realizes an agent’s morally praiseworthy motive. Conversely, an action is wrong just in case it realizes a morally blameworthy motive. Specifying act-evaluation in terms of the realization, rather than the expression, of an agent’s motives allows an agent-based approach to distinguish between agent- and act-evaluation. This is because an agent may act from a morally praiseworthy motive, but fail to realize that motive. Her action will therefore not have been the right one, despite its being the expression of morally praiseworthy motives. (shrink)

Dissertation without tears By Joseph Agassi Tel-Aviv University 1. Perfectionism is the loss of the sense of proportion. 2. Perfectionism in education is pedantry and obstruction. 3. Pedantry expels traditional writing techniques. 4. There are many ways to write a scientific study. 5. The best and easiest writing formula is the dialectic. 1. Perfectionism is the loss of the sense of proportion.

Lehrer has argued that in having an aesthetic experience of an art work we come to have ineffable knowledge of what the art object is like. This knowledge is made possible by our ability to conceptualize the art object by means of a process Lehrer calls, "exemplarization", that involves using an experience to craft a general representation of that very experience. I suggest that exemplar concepts function as vehicles of ineffable representation only if they have two features: (i) they are (...) directly referential concepts; and (ii) they are what I call, "lucid concepts.". (shrink)