We aim to find a middle path between disease models of addiction, and those that treat addictive choices as choices like any other. We develop an account of the disease element by focussing on the idea that dopamine works primarily to lay down dispositional intrinsic desires. Addictive substances artifically boost the dopamine signal, and thereby lay down intrinsic desires for the substances that persist through withdrawal, and in the face of beliefs that they are worthless. The result is cravings that (...) are largely outside the control of the addict. But this does not mean that addicts are bound to act on such cravings, since they typically retain their faculty of self-control. The issue is one of difficulty not impossibility. Controlling an addictive craving is exceedingly demanding. (shrink)

Nystrom and Puckett's pamphlet gives us the most comprehensive picture available of Richard Rorty's political views. This is Rorty being avuncular, cranky, and straightforward: his arguments on patriotism, the political left, and philosophy—as usual, unusual—are worth pondering. This pamphlet will appeal to all those interested in Rorty's distinct brand of pragmatism and leftist politics in the United States.

The essays in this volume apply philosophical analysis to address three kinds of questions: What are the implications of genetic science for our understanding of nature? What might it influence in our conception of human nature? What challenges does genetic science pose for specific issues of private conduct or public policy?

Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible.

In this paper the authors present a description and reflective analysis of an underdeveloped aspect of legal ethics education: judicial ethics. Part I provides an introduction to Canada's National Judicial Institute and its early attempts to design and deliver judicial ethics education programmes. Part II then suggests that in the last few years a second generation of judicial ethics education has emerged, generating a more systemic and contextually sophisticated pedagogical agenda. Finally, in Part III, the authors argue in favour of (...) even more challenging judicial ethics programmes that will enable judges to develop an enhanced ethical identity. (shrink)

There are many fallacious arguments in the dialogues of Plato. The author argues that Plato was fully conscious of the fallacious character of at least an important number of these arguments and that he sometimes made deliberate use of fallacy as an indirect means of setting forth certain of his fundamental philosophical views. Plato introduces them, the author maintains, for the purpose of working out their implications. Plato is thus able to expose them for what they are, to clear away (...) possible lines of attack upon his own position, and even to show that when the proper correction is applied his own views receive support. (shrink)

Used by more than one million students around the world since its original publication, this introductory philosophy text makes accessible a wide range of philosophical issues closely related to everyday life. Emphasizing personal and immediate questions, the authors approach introductory philosophy through basic human questions rather than focusing on methodology or the history of thought. The text presents vital questions of contemporary interest in an overall framework of enduring concepts, interweaving coverage of various topics in art, history, and education. It (...) covers a variety of types of philosophy in depth, and both western and eastern perspectives are represented. Ideal for students who have no background in philosophy, Living Issues in Philosophy, 9/e simplifies technical language wherever possible; unfamiliar terms are clearly defined upon first appearance and in the end-of-chapter glossaries. Additional pedagogical features include exercises, chapter summaries, and annotated bibliographies at the end of every chapter. The text also features photo biographies of major philosophers and short excerpts from philosophical classics. (shrink)

This paper presents an analysis of bluffing in labor negotiations from legal, economic, and ethical perspectives. It is argued that many forms of bluffing in labor negotiations are legal and economically advantageous, but that they typically constitute lying. Nevertheless it is argued that it is generally morally acceptable to bluff given a typical labor-management relationship where one's negotiating partner is familiar with and most likely employing bluffing tactics him/herself. We also consider whether it is an indictment of our present negotiating (...) practices and our economic system as a whole that, given the harsh realities of the marketplace, bluffing is usually morally acceptable. (shrink)

I, for my part, endured all this, clinging to the original intention which I had formed upon my arrival, in the hope that he might come to desire the life of a lover of wisdom; but his obstinacy prevailed. This is the story of my first period of residence ...

Enhanced by over one thousand pictures and fifty maps, tells the story of Chicago and how it grew from a frontier outpost to become one of the great cities of the world.

Objectives: To test the range of beliefs regarding the ethics of testing, in resource poor settings, new therapies that are less efficacious but more affordable and feasible than the best current therapeutic standard. Design: Using a web-based survey, we presented a hypothetical scenario proposing to test a therapy for HIV disease ("therapeutic inoculation") known to be less efficacious than highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Respondents evaluated various trial designs as ethical or unethical. Participants: 604 subscribers to two listservs for individuals (...) interested in international health research ethics. Main outcome measures: Proportion of respondents endorsing trials testing this "substandard" therapy, and proportion endorsing placebo-controlled trials. Results: There were 215 respondents from 47 countries. Forty-five percent of respondents were from low or middle income countries; 96% devoted at least some time to research activities; and 75% had "some" or "considerable" research experience in developing countries. Of respondents, 97% (95% CI 94.7 to 99.4) endorsed testing therapeutic inoculation, without HAART, in patients with HIV disease; 86% (95% CI 81.4% to 90.7%) endorsed testing against placebo. Sixty-eight percent explicitly endorsed principles where the standard of care for subjects in clinical trials is determined by local, not universal, standards. There were no differences in responses based on respondent education-level or the income-level of their country of citizenship. Conclusion: There was broad agreement that a therapy of potential local benefit may be tested, even when that therapy is known to be inferior to the standard of care in wealthy countries. Most agreed that a placebo control may be used in some circumstances. (shrink)

The question 'Why should I obey the law?' introduces a contemporary puzzle that is as old as philosophy itself. The puzzle is especially troublesome if we think of cases in which breaking the law is not otherwise wrongful, and in which the chances of getting caught are negligible. Philosophers from Socrates to H.L.A. Hart have struggled to give reasoned support to the idea that we do have a general moral duty to obey the law but, more recently, the greater number (...) of learned voices has expressed doubt that there is any such duty, at least as traditionally conceived. (shrink)

Toward A Sociological Imagination builds on the ideas C. Wright Mills expressed in The Sociological Imagination for an approach to the scientific method broad enough to open up to the full range of knowledge within the sociology discipline. In this book, nine sociologists and one philosopher provide detailed tests of the utility of the approach within diverse substantive sociological areas.

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

What happens when we vote? What are we counting when we count ballots? Who decides what an election should look like and what it should mean? And why do so many people believe that some or all elections are rigged? Moving between intellectual history, literary criticism, and political theory, The Electoral Imagination offers a critical account of the decisions before the decision, of the aesthetic and imaginative choices that inform and, in some cases, determine the nature and course of democratic (...) elections. Drawing on original interpretations of George Eliot and Ralph Ellison, Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Arrow, Anthony Trollope and Arthur Koestler, Richard Nixon and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Palm Beach Butterfly Ballot and the Single Transferable Vote, The Electoral Imagination works both to understand the systems we use to move between the one and the many and to offer an alternative to the 'myth of rigging.'. (shrink)

In contemporary discussions of natural evil, one classically important theodicy—variously called warfare theodicy, fallen angel theodicy, or the Satan hypothesis—is rarely mentioned, let alone defended. This is the view that so-called natural evil, the evil suffered by sentient beings that is not caused by human agency, is caused by angelic agency, specifically that of Satan and other fallen angels. Although the Satan hypothesis has received scant attention in contemporary philosophy of religion, Richard Swinburne, Michael Martin, Robert Adams, and David O’Connor (...) have each brought separate objections against it, but their objections fail. The real problem with the Satan hypothesis lies elsewhere. This paper begins by stating the Satan hypothesis and briefly sketching its scriptural and theological warrants in the Christian tradition. Second, it canvasses the objections that have been brought against the hypothesis and shows how each objection fails. Third, it isolates the real problem for the Satan hypothesis, namely the lack of any satisfactory account of how malevolent angelic agency could conceivably be the cause of natural evil. Finally, the paper offers three speculative proposals for such an account, highlighting problems with each. The upshot is that although the Satan hypothesis is a prominent theodicy in the history of Christian thought and in popular Christianity, it confronts philosophical challenges not yet met by its proponents. (shrink)

A new advanced systems theory concerning the emergent nature of the Social, Consciousness, and Life based on Mathematics and Physical Analogies is presented. This meta-theory concerns the distance between the emergent levels of these phenomena and their ultra-efficacious nature. The theory is based on the distinction between Systems and Meta-systems (organized Openscape environments). We first realize that we can understand the difference between the System and the Meta-system in terms of the relationship between a ‘Whole greater than the sum of (...) the parts’ and a ‘Whole less than the sum of its parts’, i.e., a whole full of holes (like a sponge) that provide niches for systems in the environment. Once we understand this distinction and clarify the nature of the unusual organization of the Meta-system, then it is possible to understand that there is a third possibility which is a whole exactly equal to the sum of its parts that is only supervenient like perfect numbers. In fact, there are three kinds of Special System corresponding to the perfect, amicable, and sociable aliquot numbers. These are all equal to the sum of their parts but with different degrees of differing and deferring in what Jacques Derrida calls “differance”. All other numbers are either excessive (systemic) or deficient (metasystemic) in this regard. The Special Systems are based on various mathematical analogies and some physical analogies. But the most important of the mathematical analogies are the hypercomplex algebras, which include the Complex Numbers, Quaternions, and Octonions, with the Sedenions corresponding to the Emergent Meta-system. However, other analogies are the Hopf fibrations between hyperspheres of various dimensions, nonorientable surfaces, soliton solutions, etc. These Special Systems have a long history within the tradition since they can be traced back to the imaginary cities of Plato. The Emergent Meta-system is a higher order global structure that includes the System with the three Special Systems as a cycle. An example of this from our tradition is in the Monadology of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. There is a conjunctive relationship between the System schema and the Special Systems that produce the Meta-system schema cycle. The Special Systems are a meta-model for the relationship between the emergent levels of Consciousness (Dissipative Ordering based on the theory of negative entropy of Prigogine), Living (Autopoietic Symbiotic based on the theory of Maturana and Varela), and Social (Reflexive based on the theory of John O’Malley and Barry Sandywell). These different special systems are related to the various existenitals identified by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time and various temporal reference frames identified by Richard M. Pico. We also relate the special systems to morphodynamic and teleodynamic systems of Terrence Deacon in Incomplete Nature to which we add sociodynamic systems to complete the series of Special Systems. (shrink)

lthough it was in the early eighties when I began to feel a growing disaffection with the radicalized academic left, a decisive nausea—inducing body blow was administered by the PMLA of january 1989. In that infamous issue appeared a letter signed by twenty-four feminist academics attacking the eminent Shakespeare scholar Richard Levin, for "Feminist Thematics and Shakespearean Tragedy," which had appeared in PMLA the year before. Levin’s essay, the work of a well-tempered, open-minded, and liberal supporter of many radical reforms (...) in the academy, was a penetrating critique of the feminist identity politics that were trying to wrest Shakespeare into the persona of a feminist scourge of sexism and patriarchy. Levin’s temerity in taking on the distortions of identity politics was threatening enough, but his Enlightenment style and Swiftian wit, which he brilliantly deployed to dismantle the tendentious and self—serving hermeneutics of the "dictatorship of virtue" (a phrase I borrow here from Richard Bernstein) that constitutes avant-garde millenarianism in the U.S. academy, served further to inflame the hypersensitive skins of his holier-than-thou critics, who brook no criticism.. (shrink)