This paper attempts a sympathetic comparison between John Dewey and Richard Rorty. In particular I establish the ways in which both Dewey's and Rorty's aesthetical modes require qualitative starting points (or some indeterminate-event trajectory) as a condition for any poetic/novel movement into the future. I show how Dewey's notions of "indeterminate situation," highlighted in his event-metaphysics, resonates with Rorty's notion of metaphor, and that finally Rorty does in fact (wittingly or not) harbor a place for the noncognitive and nonlinguistic via, (...) interestingly enough, a linguistic device. How Rorty uses his notion of metaphor (inspired by Donald Davidson's groundbreaking work) starts very much to take on the feel of what Dewey meant by "primary experience." My emphasis, then, falls on the necessity to both of their respective pragmatic positions of a qualitative starting point (QSP). In this way, the troubling dualism that has developed between experience and language starts to dissolve. (shrink)

Wilber's groundbreaking synthesis of religion, philosophy, physics, and psychology started a revolution in transpersonal psychology.

Ken Wilber : Well.... I started keeping these journals as a type of experiment. They are definitely personal journals, like a diary--they contain personal incidences, meditation experiences, accounts of events in my daily life, and so on. But they also contain entries that are short essays--anywhere from one to ten pages--on topics that are of concern to me and my writing, and I hope are of concern to others.

This chapter reviews the relevant anthropology, starting with the apparent universality of the golden rule — do as you would be done by — in hunter-gatherer societies. It points out that all pure foraging societies have two properties: they do not tolerate bosses, and they share very fairly. A putative explanation of the first property is offered that appeals to the game theory discipline of mechanism design. The second property is explained as an evolutionary consequence of the implicit insurance contracts (...) that are common in animals as ahedge against hunger and starvation. If so, then we have an argument in support of the contention that Rawls' original position captures the deep structure of fairness norms wired into our brains. The analogy with Chomsky's deep structure of language is close. (shrink)

Many philosophy majors are shocked by the gap between the relative ease of lower-level philosophy courses and the difficulty of upper-division courses. This book serves as a necessary bridge to upper-level study in philosophy by offering rigorous but concise and accessible accounts of basic concepts and distinctions that are used throughout the discipline. It serves as a valuable advanced introduction to any undergraduate who is moving into upper-level courses in philosophy. While lower-level introductions to philosophy usually deal with popular topics (...) accessible to the general student in a piecemeal fashion, The Philosophy Major's Introduction to Philosophy offers coverage of important general philosophical concepts, tools, and devices that may be used for a long time to come in various philosophical areas. The volume is helpfully divided between a focus on the relation between language and the world in the first three chapters and coverage of mental content in the final two chapters, but builds a coherent narrative from start to finish. It also provides ample study questions and helpful sign-posts throughout, making it a must-have for any student attempting to engage fully with the problems and arguments in philosophy. Key Features Integrates topics from various areas of philosophy, such as philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and philosophical logic Provides descriptions of logico-mathematical tools necessary for philosophical studies, such as propositional logic, predicate logic, modal logic, set theory, mereology, and mathematical functions Makes connections with modern philosophy, including discussions of Descartes's skepticism and dualism, Locke's theory of personal identity, Hume's theory of causation, and Kant's synthetic a priori. Includes well-known entertaining puzzles and thought experiments such as the Ship of Theseus, the Statue and the Clay, a Brain in a Vat, and Twin Earth Lists helpful Exercise Questions and Discussion Questions at the end of each chapter and answers selected questions at the back of the book. (shrink)

ThatÂ’s sort of flip or flippant, I suppose, but the more you think about it, the more it starts to make sense. What if, just for the fun of it, we pretend -- you and I blasphemously pretend, just for a moment -- that we are Spirit, that Tat Tvam Asi? Why would you, if you were God Almighty, why would you manifest a world? A world that, as you say, is necessarily one of separation and turmoil and pain? Why (...) would you, as the One, ever give rise to the Many? (shrink)

It's hard to say exactly when modern science began. Many scholars would date it at roughly 1600, when both Kepler and Galileo started using precision measurement to map the universe. But one thing is certain: starting from whatever date we choose, modern science was, in many important ways and right from the start, deeply antagonistic to established religion.

This Article falls into three general parts. The first part starts with an important question: is the insanity defense constitutionally required? The United States Supreme Court will finally try to answer this question next term in the case of Kahler v. Kansas. -/- I say “finally” because the Court refused to answer this question in 2012 when it denied certiorari to an appeal brought by John Joseph Delling, a severely mentally ill defendant who was sentenced to life in prison three (...) years earlier for two murders. Delling never had the opportunity to plead the insanity defense because his home state, Idaho, had abolished it in 1982. -/- By depriving Delling of the right to plead insanity, Idaho violated Delling’s Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and his Eighth Amendment right against “cruel and unusual” punishment. Naturally, the same is true for many other mentally ill and disabled defendants who have been prosecuted in Idaho and in the other three states that have abolished the insanity defense: Kansas, Montana, and Utah. -/- The second general part of this Article notes an insight that I stumbled upon in the course of researching the first part: the insanity defense and the mistake of law defense both require ignorance of the law, what I refer to as “normative ignorance.” Indeed, normative ignorance is what makes both of these defenses exculpatory in the first place. -/- Given this critical connection, there is a way for Idaho, Kansas, Montana, and Utah to resume compliance with the Constitution. Instead of reinstating the insanity defense per se, which might be politically unpopular, they should just broaden their mistake of law defense to include normative ignorance caused by cognitive incapacity that is itself caused by mental illness or disability. -/- Still, this Article is not merely directed at these four western states. It is directed at the other forty-six states as well. Because they already have an insanity defense, they need not incorporate it into their mistake of law defense. But in the third general part, I will argue that they should still expand their mistake of law defense to cover defendants who either lack a reasonable opportunity to learn the law or reasonably but mistakenly infer from widely accepted norms or ethics that their conduct is lawful. (shrink)

I argue for two propositions. First, contrary to the common wisdom, we may justly punish individuals who are not morally responsible for their crimes. Psychopaths – individuals who lack the capacity to feel sympathy – help to prove this point. Scholars are increasingly arguing that psychopaths are not morally responsible for their behavior because they suffer from a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for them to understand, and therefore be motivated by, moral reasons. These same scholars then infer from (...) this conclusion that they must also lack criminal responsibility and therefore that our continuing to punish psychopaths for their crimes is unjust. My response is that this inference is entirely fallacious. -/- Criminal responsibility turns out to be quite distinct from moral responsibility. The two kinds of responsibility require very different conditions to be satisfied. In particular, criminal responsibility, unlike moral responsibility, does not require an agent be able to grasp and follow moral reasons; it requires only that the individual be able to grasp and follow criminal laws. Once this point is recognized, it becomes much easier to accept my thesis: while the subset of psychopaths who commit crimes are not morally responsible for their criminal behavior because they cannot understand moral reasons, they are still criminally responsible because they can understand what the consequences will be if they get caught. For this reason, even though I concede that psychopaths are not morally responsible for the crimes that they commit, our practice of punishing them for these crimes is still just. -/- Second, I argue that psychopathy is a mental illness and should be recognized as such. One reason that it should be recognized as a mental illness is simply because it is; it satisfies the main criteria for inclusion in the DSM-IV, the “bible” of mental disorders. The other reason is more practical than conceptual. It starts with two facts: the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the preventive detention of any individual who is not a criminal suspect is not constitutional unless the individual is not only dangerous but also mentally ill; and psychopathy is not currently considered to be a mental illness. So, as things now stand, we cannot preventively commit dangerous psychopaths – that is, psychopaths who have clearly indicated that they will be committing serious crimes. Instead, we must wait for them to commit the crimes before we can lock them up. Unfortunately, this incarceration always comes too late for the victims. It would therefore be better if we could lock them up before they actually inflict any harm. Once again, then, I propose that the legal and psychological communities classify psychopathy as a mental illness. (shrink)

This invited entry offers a brief overview of criminal responsibility. -/- The first part starts with a question: is Clyde criminally responsible for killing his girlfriend Bonnie? The answer: it depends. Particular circumstances determine whether Clyde is guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter, not guilty because he has a good excuse, or not guilty because he has a good justification. -/- The second part addresses the complicated relationship between criminal responsibility and moral responsibility. Until recently, both concepts were considered to (...) be more or less interchangeable. But there is a growing movement, which I refer to as "responsibility skepticism," which maintains that moral responsibility is either physically or metaphysically impossible. If the responsibility skeptics are right (that moral responsibility is impossible), then what are the implications for criminal responsibility and just criminal punishment? Should we abandon these as well? Or can they survive without moral responsibility? I try to answer these questions. -/- The third part addresses social causation. The criminal justice system tends to be "dispositionalist"; it tends, that is, to assume that criminal responsibility resides entirely within the defendant. Dispositionalism, however, overlooks the fact that who we are and what we do are significantly determined by environmental influences. I then try to show that this "situationist" alternative to dispositionalism should not radically alter our approach to criminal punishment. -/- The final part briefly discusses the difficulty in evaluating criminal responsibility when the defendant is both an offender and a victim - especially when the defendant is an offender *because* of his victimization. (shrink)

There is much more written about how and why business schools could and should talk about business ethics than about how they could “walk the talk.” When ethics is discussed, it is usually in relation to the position of business ethics within the curriculum, rather than about what does and does not constitute ethical behaviour on the part of a business school and its members. This paper seeks to explore how ethics can develop beyond the curriculum, and some methods by (...) which business schools might promote effective ethical self-development. Four basic ethical concepts are used as potential starting points for business school faculty to engage with business ethics beyond the curriculum: moral conflict, role morality, moral codes, and moral climate. Through a discussion of these, eight theses are developed for further discussion and are suggested as a framework for future comparative research about business school ethics. (shrink)

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed joint post-proceedings of three international workshops organized by the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, held in Tokyo, Japan in June 2006 during the 20th Annual Conference JSAI 2006. The volume starts with eight award winning papers of the JSAI 2006 main conference that are presented along with the 21 revised full workshop papers, carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the volume.

Readers of Eastern Christianity and Late Antique Philosophy will find a collection of authoritative papers from across the Neoplatonic and Eastern Christian traditions. It is only recently that scholars have started to take notice of the Eastern Christian engagement with late antique philosophical texts. This volume builds upon this new interest in order to show the dynamic nature of Neoplatonism and Eastern Christianity at a time when both faced a variety of challenges. The legacy of Greek philosophy in the Christian (...) East fills the gap between the schools of Alexandria and Baghdad and brings into focus the intellectual history of the period. The aim of the volume is to stimulate interest in late antique philosophy and its reception in the Christian East. (shrink)

Precursors of inferential capacities concerning self- and other- understanding may be found in the basic experience of social contingency and emotional sharing. The emergence of a sense of self- and other-agency receives special attention here, as a foundation for self-understanding. We propose that synchrony, an amodal parameter of contingent self-other relationships, should be especially involved in the development of a sense of agency. To explore this framework, we have manipulated synchrony in various ways, either by delaying mother’s response to infant’s (...) behaviour, disorganizing mother’s internal synchrony between face and voice, freezing the partner in a still attitude, or on the contrary maximizing synchrony through imitation. We report results obtained with healthy and clinical populations that are supposed to be at the beginning of basic experiences concerning the ownership of their actions: infants of 2 months and 6 months, low-functioning children with autism and MA matched young children with Down Syndrome. Our results support the idea of a two-step process linking understanding of self to understanding of other and leading on to form the concept of human beings as universally contingent entities. (shrink)

In the 21st century, the screen - the Internet screen, the television screen, the video screen and all sorts of combinations thereof - will be booming in our visual and infotechno culture. Screen-based art, already a prominent and topical part of visual culture in the 1990s, will expand even more. In this volume, digital art - the new media - as well as its connectedness to cinema will be the subject of investigation. The starting point is a two-day symposium organized (...) by the Netherlands Media Art Institute Montevideo/TBA, in collaboration with the _L&B _ series and the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis. Issues which emerged during the course of investigation deal with questions such as: How could screen-based art be distinguished from other art forms? Could screen-based art theoretically be understood in one definite model or should one search for various possibilities and/or models? Could screen-based art be canonized? What are the physical and theoretical forms of representation for screen-based art? What are the idiosyncratic concepts geared towards screen-based art? This volume includes various arguments, positions, and statements by artists, curators, philosophers, and theorists. The participants are Marie-Luise Angerer, Annette W. Balkema, René Beekman, Raymond Bellour, Peter Bogers, Joost Bolten, Noël Carroll, Sean Cubitt, Cãlin Dan, Chris Dercon, Honoré d'O, Anne-Marie Duquet, Ken Feingold, Ursula Frohne, hARTware curators, Heiner Holtappels, Aernout Mik, Patricia Pisters, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Jeffrey Shaw, Peter Sloterdijk, Ed S. Tan, Barbara Visser and Siegfried Zielinski. (shrink)

This is the Second Edition of a well-received book that reflects a fresh, integrated coverage of the concepts and scientific measurement of stress and welfare of animals including humans. This book explains the basic biological principles of coping with many forms of adversity. The major part of this work is devoted to explaining scientifically usable concepts in stress and welfare. A wide range of welfare indicators are highlighted in detail with examples being drawn from man and other species. The necessity (...) for combining information from disciplines is emphasized with a one-health, one-welfare approach. This information forms the basis for a synthesis of new ideas. Among the issues covered are: - How brain and body systems regulate using feelings, physiological responses, behaviour and responses to pathology - Limits to adaptation - Assessing positive and negative welfare during both short-term and long-term situations - Ethical problems and suggested solutions A proper assessment of animal welfare is essential to take informed decisions about what is morally acceptable in terms of practice and in the development of a more effective legislation. This work encapsulates a very wide body of literature on scientific aspects of animal welfare and will thus prove a valuable asset for animal welfare scientists, psychologists, students and teachers of all forms of biology, behaviour, medicine, veterinary medicine and animal usage. (shrink)

Cinema Derrida charts Jacques Derrida's collaborations and appearances in film, video, and television beginning with 1983's Ghost Dance (dir. Ken McMullen, West Germany/UK) and ending with 2002's biographical documentary Derrida (dir. Dick and Ziering, USA). In the last half of his working life, Derrida embraced popular art forms and media in more ways than one: not only did he start making more media appearances after years of refusing to have his photo taken in the 1960s and 1970s, but his (...) philosophy started to draw more explicitly from visual culture and artistic endeavours. While this book offers explanations of this transition, it contends the image of "Jacques Derrida" that emerges from film and TV appearances remains spectral, constantly deferring a complete grasp of him. Tyson Stewart draws out the main tenets of spectrality from Derrida's seminal texts Of Grammatology and Specters of Marx and other writings, like Echographies of Television, in order to fill a gap in studies of Derrida and film. Throughout the book, he explains how various techniques and spectral effects such as slow motion, stillness, repetition, mise-en-abîme, direct address, and focus on body parts/bodily presence bring about a structure of spectrality wherein the past other returns to make impressions and ethical demands on the viewer. Drawing on communication theory and film and media studies, Cinema Derrida makes a major intervention in classical communication thought. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of ‘tsunami-tendenko,’ a guideline suggesting that individuals prioritise their own safety over aiding others during large-scale disasters. Kodama defends tsunami-tendenko against accusations of egoism by arguing that the principle can be justified ethically on consequentialist (or more precisely, utilitarian) grounds. Kodama asserts that attempting to assist others during such disasters heightens the risk of ‘tomo-daore,’ where both the rescuer and the victim may perish. He claims that having people focus solely on saving themselves can maximise (...) the overall number of lives saved. However, we challenge Kodama’s assertion that utilitarianism inherently favours tsunami-tendenko over mutual assistance during disasters. Instead, this paper proposes an alternative ethical foundation for tsunami-tendenko grounded in the ‘antiextinction principle,’ which prioritises minimising the potential for catastrophic outcomes. When considering the ethics of responding to disaster, it is important to distinguish between maximising the number of lives saved (utilitarianism) and minimising the risk of tomo-daore (antiextinction principle). This distinction may be overlooked if the distribution of probabilities is not considered. We conclude that the antiextinction principle aligns more naturally with tsunami-tendenko, emphasising the avoidance of catastrophic outcomes—a concern not always addressed by utilitarianism. Therefore, tsunami-tendenko should be regarded as a societal guideline aimed at preserving community sustainability by averting total destruction. (shrink)

The human brain is the only object in the universe, as far as we know, that has discovered its own origins. But what, if any, are the limits of our understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have argued that some truths about the universe are perennial mysteries and will forever remain beyond our ken. Others have brushed this off as premature, a form of epistemic defeatism. In this paper we develop a conceptual toolbox for parsing different forms (...) of cognitive limitation that are often conflated in the literature. We distinguish between representational access and intuitive understanding. We also distinguish different modalities of cognitive limitation. If the scientific endeavor ever comes to a halt, will this feel like slamming into a brick wall, or rather like slowly getting bogged down in a swamp? By distinguishing different types and modalities of human cognitive limitation, we soften up the hypothesis of ‘cognitive closure’ and ultimate ‘mysteries’. Next, we propose specific mechanisms and strategies for overcoming our innate cognitive limitations. For a start, it is uninformative to think of the limits of a single, bare, unassisted brain. One of the central features of human intelligence is the capacity for mind extension and distributed cognition. We have developed various technologies for extending the reach of our naked brains and for pooling their cognitive resources, as witnessed by the history of science. We then discuss different cognitive mechanisms for overcoming the limits to our intuitive understanding, and argue that these are combinatorial and open-ended. In light of all these possibilities for extending the limits of our understanding, we conclude that there is no good reason to suspect the existence of an outer wall of human comprehension. (shrink)

In this paper we describe the Curry-Howard-De Bruijn isomorphism between Higher Order Many Sorted Intuitionistic Predicate Logic PREDω and the type system λPREDω, which can be considered a subsystem of the Calculus of Constructions. The type system is presented using the concept of a Pure Type System, which is a very elegant framework for describing type systems. We show in great detail how formulae and proof trees of the logic relate to types and terms of the type system, respectively. Finally, (...) we discuss some consequences of the isomorphism with respect to the relation between the systems discussed in this paper. (shrink)

What was probably the first collection of human skulls for purposes of study was established by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in Göttingen at the end of the 18th century. In subsequent years, the number of such collections increased, but their importance for scientific research remained modest. A breakthrough took place only in the 1850s when studies on the so-called cranial index by Karl Ernst von Baer and Anders Retzius gave skull collections a new lease on life, raising physical anthropology from a (...) solely descriptive science to an empirically based “biological anthropology” which used quantitative methods. As a result, Baer was among the first to distinguish between linguistic and morphologic criteria when systematising human populations. This article discusses the development of Baer's ideas concerning the aims and methods of physical anthropology during his career. It pays special attention to the role of scientific collections in moulding Baer's theories. (shrink)

Executives of many publicly held firms agree to compensation packages that create immense exposure to their employer’s stock. Corporate boards, aspiring to motivate executives to make value-maximizing decisions, often tie an executive’s earnings to stock price performance through stock or option awards. However, this engenders a significant ethical dilemma for many executives who are uncomfortable with sizable, firm-specific risk and desire to reduce it through hedging activities. Recent research has shown that executive hedging has become more prevalent. In essence, managers (...) are unwinding the acute economic incentive to act in the best interest of the owners. This appears to violate the spirit of the compensation contract and from a normative standpoint, is not how executives should act. In this article, we describe how some executives are acting in regard to this issue (descriptive ethics), how they should act (normative ethics) and how they can be helped to get from what they are doing, to what they should be doing (prescriptive ethics). (shrink)

The average age of women nursing students in Australia is rising. With this comes the likelihood that more now begin university with family responsibilities, and with their lives structured by the roles of mother and partner. Women with more traditionally gendered ideas of these roles, such as nurturing others and self‐sacrifice, are known to be attracted to nursing as a profession; once at university, however, these students can be vulnerable to gender role stress from the competing demands of study. A (...) qualitative research design, guided by Gadamer's hermeneutic philosophy, explored the gendered behaviours and experiences of 22 women nursing students, all of whom had children and began university in a heterosexual intimate relationship. The findings reveal traditional ideas of gender were almost universal among participants, and these ideas had a significant influence on the nursing degree experience. Participants commonly prioritised family over the university and practiced maternal gatekeeping (prevention of male partner involvement in domestic work). These traditionally gendered behaviours, coupled with experiences of gender role stress, had a detrimental impact on participants' capacity to study and their personal wellbeing. The importance of these findings to the burgeoning nursing workforce shortage nursing is considered in terms of student retention and the supply of graduates into the profession. The implications to the nursing profession are also explored against the evidence that nursing students with traditional gender beliefs are less likely to develop as autonomous, critical thinking nurses compared to their gender‐egalitarian peers. The introduction of gender theory via critical pedagogy in the undergraduate nursing degree curriculum is recommended to enlighten and empower women nursing students and promote the competence, agility, and sustainability of the nursing profession. (shrink)

Histories of communication are still relatively rare birds, but this one is distinctive on several grounds. The two authors are/were undisputed giants in the field. Ken Cmiel, the originator of the book, still unfinished when he suddenly died in 2006, was a cultural historian of communication; his best friend, John Peters, is one of the world leaders in the intellectual history of communication. In completing that unfinished manuscript, Peters has performed astonishing prestidigitation here in creating an effective hybrid: he retains (...) the core of Cmiel's account, while creating a unique book that, courtesy of Peters, brilliantly spins out the solid Cmielian core and its material traces into gorgeous reflections on aspects of how we make our way through a world of images and information. Promiscuous Knowledge constructs a cultural and intellectual history of information, images, and conceptions of knowledge since the 17th century, with an emphasis on the American context since the 19th century. Cmiel/Peters sketch the way in which various containers for information-knowledge, expertise, abridgment, books, digests, encyclopedias, museums, etc.-have variably organized gluts of information, and how these containers have eroded since the 1970s. A parallel throughline traces social attitudes and practices around images and key media for circulating and experiencing them. Cmiel envisioned the largest contour of the book as a contribution to the history of truth and truth-making. His protagonists are pictures and facts, images and information. They enact a process of gradual dismantling, erosion, or collapse of the mass culture system from last century into the present. Promiscuous knowledge has a new face, courtesy of the online universe full of filter bubbles, echo chambers, and fake news. Google offers a single portal to a churning mass of confusion; it lacks a principle of inclusion/inclusivity, it has no way of framing the whole. Peters has shaped what Cmiel started out with into a better Trump-era book than an Obama-era book. And he has retained its core: a brief history of how we left the world of fact for the world of information. (shrink)

Ken Elkins retired as chief photographer of the Anniston Star in 2000, and this selection of his work demonstrates his brilliant eye for finding and capturing images of rural southern lives and landscapes in all their difficulty, candor, and humor. These are unadorned images of a timeless landscape and proud resourceful people, who know well their neighbors, honor their past, and face the tests of daily life with wit and a stoic sense of endurance.

v. 1. The spectrum of consciousness ; No boundary ; Selected essays -- v. 2. The Atman Project ; Up from Eden -- v. 3. A sociable god ; Eye to eye -- v. 4. Integral psychology ; Transformations of consciousness ; Selected essays -- v. 5. Grace and grit : spirituality and healing in the life and death of Treya Killam Wilber. 2nd ed. -- v. 6. Sex, ecology, spirituality : the spirit of evolution. 2nd, rev. ed. -- v. (...) 7. A brief history of everything ; The eye of spirit -- v. 8. The marriage of sense and soul ; One taste. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of his first book, The Spectrum of Consciousness, written when he was twenty-three, Ken Wilber has been identified as the most comprehensive philosophical thinker of our times. This introductory sampler, designed to acquaint newcomers with his work, contains brief passages from his most popular books, ranging over a variety of topics, including levels of consciousness, mystical experience, meditation practice, death, the perennial philosophy, and Wilber's integral approach to reality, integrating matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit. Here (...) is Wilber's writing at its most reader-friendly, discussing essential ideas of the world's great psychological, philosophical, and spiritual traditions in language that is lucid, engaging, and inspirational. (shrink)

Wilber's most timely, accessible, and practical work to date. Here is a concise, comprehensive overview of Wilber's revolutionary thought and its application in today's world. Wilber has long been hailed as one of the most important thinkers of our time, but--until now--his work has seemed inaccessible to the general reader who lacks a background in consciousness studies or evolutionary theory. Integral Vision will allow a general audience to fully understand what all the excitement has been about. In clear, non-technical language, (...) Wilber presents complex, cutting-edge theories and models that integrate the realms of body, mind, soul, and spirit. He then demonstrates how these theories and models can be applied to real world problems. Finally, Wilber discusses daily practices that readers take up in order to apply this integrative vision to their own, everyday lives. Wilber begins by presenting a leading model of human evolution, a model called "spiral dynamics." He then goes on to summarize his ground-breaking "all-level, all-quadrant" model for integrating the seemingly contradictory realms of science and religion--the "all-level, all-quadrant" model has already been adopted by leading thinkers in a variety of fields. In a chapter entitle "The Real World," Wilber shows how these rather abstract theories and models are being applied to real-world issues such as politics, medicine, business, education, and the environment. Wilber goes on to present a collection of maps of the Kosmos. These are broader models that can integrate the various worldviews that have been developed around the world throughout the ages. The final chapter of the book, "One Taste," proposes that readers take up an "integral transformative practice" such as meditation to help them to apply and develop this integral vision in their personal, everyday lives. (shrink)

Drawing on social exchange theory, we argue that family-supportive supervisor behavior (FSSB) inhibits employees’ unethical pro-family behavior (UPFB) via the mediation of felt obligation. We further propose that employees’ positive reciprocity beliefs strengthen the hypothesized relationships. Using a sample consisting of 345 full-time employees from an Internet service company located in China, we found that felt obligation partially mediated the negative relationship between FSSB and UPFB and that the FSSB-felt obligation relationship and the mediation relationship were stronger for employees with (...) higher positive reciprocity beliefs. Theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed. (shrink)

If some external enforcement agency compels us to honor deals reached in the original position, then Harsanyi has shown that the outcome will be utilitarian. Under the same hypotheses, Rawls claims that the outcome will be egalitarian. This chapter confirms that Harsanyi is correct. It goes on to use the concept of an empathy equilibrium to predict the standard of interpersonal comparison needed to operate a utilitarian norm that will evolve in the medium run.

The goal of an "integral psychology" is to honor and embrace every legitimate aspect of human consciousness under one roof. This book presents one of the first truly integrative models of consciousness, psychology, and therapy.

Wright, Ken Review of: Matter and what matters: Some science for the religious and some religion for scientists, Lionel Sharman, Steele Roberts, Wellington, 2013, 116 pp., NZD 24.99.