Drawing from the development of individualism in western philosophy and American history, this book constructs a normative theory called authentic individualism. Using the precepts of that theory, it urges organizational leaders to change the way they think about their organizations and their organizations' social function. Students and scholars of political science, social science, public administration, moral theory and organizational theory will find this a useful work. Contents: Introduction to Individualism; PART ONE: A Model of the Individual from Western Philosophy; The (...) Individual of the Ancients; The Individual of the Dark Ages; The Individual of Modernity; PART TWO: A Model of the Individual in the United States; Rugged Individualism of the Revolutionary U.S.; Rational Individualism After Romanticism and Reform; Radical Individualism from Disillusionment and Loss of Faith; PART THREE: Synthesis of Philosophies Toward a More Socially Responsible Individualist in the Third Millennium; Need for a New World View; Changing the Paradigm; Soul of the Third Administrative State; Notes; Bibliography; Index. (shrink)

High-level perception--”the process of making sense of complex data at an abstract, conceptual level--”is fundamental to human cognition. Through high-level perception, chaotic environmen- tal stimuli are organized into the mental representations that are used throughout cognitive pro- cessing. Much work in traditional artificial intelligence has ignored the process of high-level perception, by starting with hand-coded representations. In this paper, we argue that this dis- missal of perceptual processes leads to distorted models of human cognition. We examine some existing artificial-intelligence models--”notably (...) BACON, a model of scientific discovery, and the Structure-Mapping Engine, a model of analogical thought--”and argue that these are flawed pre- cisely because they downplay the role of high-level perception. Further, we argue that perceptu- al processes cannot be separated from other cognitive processes even in principle, and therefore that traditional artificial-intelligence models cannot be defended by supposing the existence of a --œrepresentation module--� that supplies representations ready-made. Finally, we describe a model of high-level perception and analogical thought in which perceptual processing is integrated with analogical mapping, leading to the flexible build-up of representations appropriate to a given context. (shrink)

This paper explores the truism that people think about what they say. It proposes that, to satisfy their own goals, people often plan their speech acts to affect their listeners' beliefs, goals, and emotional states. Such language use can be modelled by viewing speech acts as operators in a planning system, thus allowing both physical and speech acts to be integrated into plans. Methodological issues of how speech acts should be defined in a planbased theory are illustrated by defining operators (...) for requesting and informing. Plans containing those operators are presented and comparisons are drawn with Searle's formulation. The operators are shown to be inadequate since they cannot be composed to form questions (requests to inform) and multiparty requests (requests to request). By refining the operator definitions and by identifying some of the side effects of requesting, compositional adequacy is achieved.The solution leads to a metatheoretical principle for modelling speech acts as planning operators. (shrink)

Nursing and nursing education face a paradox whereby the world's most trusted profession seems not to trust its own students and practitioners. Much of nursing education has adopted what has been memorably described as the ‘cop shit’ approach. This is the panoply of surveillance, anti‐plagiarism and proctoring technologies that appear to be used more for policing and punishment of an inherently dishonest student body than to develop ethical and scholarly writing among future peers and colleagues. Nurses in practice may experience (...) similar levels of distrust as they face growing micromanagement and control of both their appearance and nursing practice. We propose that these practices of distrust emerge, not from malice, but rather from the omnipresent neoliberalism and managerialism that engulf almost every aspect of health and university life. Neoliberalism's success has been to reformat academia and practice to the point where such ingrained mistrust has become merely a neutral recognition of ‘the real world’. Dismantling nursing and education's ‘cop shit’ culture and replacing it with the trust and respect that the world's most trusted profession is accorded by wider society will not be easy, but it is vital for the future of nursing. (shrink)

What is involved when a group of agents decide to do something together? Joint action by a team appears to involve more than just the union of simultaneous individual actions, even when those actions are coordinated. We would not say that there is any teamwork involved in ordinary automobile traffic, even though the drivers act simultaneously and are coordinated (one hopes) by the traffic signs and rules of the road. But when a group of drivers decide to do something together, (...) such as driving somewhere as a convoy, it appears that the group acts more like a single agent with beliefs, goals, and intentions of its own, over and above the individual ones. [more]. (shrink)

This paper explores principles governing the rational balance among an agent's beliefs, goals, actions, and intentions. Such principles provide specifications for artificial agents, and approximate a theory of human action (as philosophers use the term). By making explicit the conditions under which an agent can drop his goals, i.e., by specifying how the agent is committed to his goals, the formalism captures a number of important properties of intention. Specifically, the formalism provides analyses for Bratman's three characteristic functional roles played (...) by intentions [7, 9], and shows how agents can avoid intending all the foreseen side-effects of what they actually intend. Finally, the analysis shows how intentions can be adopted relative to a background of relevant beliefs and other intentions or goals. By relativizing one agent's intentions in terms of beliefs about another agent's intentions (or beliefs'), we derive a preliminary account of interpersonal commitments. (shrink)

This book presents views of the concept of intention and its relationship to communication from three perspectives: philosphy, linguistics, and artificial intelligence. The book is a record of a workshop held in 1987.

Reason and Value collects fifteen brand-new papers by leading contemporary philosophers on themes from the moral philosophy of Joseph Raz. The subtlety and power of Raz's reflections on ethical topics - including especially his explorations of the connections between practical reason and the theory of value - make his writings a fertile source for anyone working in this area. The volume honours Raz's accomplishments in the area of ethical theorizing, and will contribute to an enhanced appreciation of the significance of (...) his work for the subject. (shrink)

Between the affirmative and the negative, the compositional and the oppositional, we need to rethink the difference between difference and contradiction. In this regard, the concept of ‘diplomacy’, as developed by Isabelle Stengers, is of particular significance. Whereas many adherents of an affirmative ontology of difference reduce contradiction to a caveat – ‘of course, antagonism is inevitable, but …’ – diplomacy makes contradiction its fundamental concern. This article explicates the significance of such a conception, via close readings of Stengers’ work (...) in relation to that of Gilles Deleuze, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. However, it also develops diplomacy in new directions, particularly relating the diplomatic ‘fold’ to the sovereign ‘cut’. The fold of coexistence, then, is achieved through diplomacy as a ‘labour of difference’, against ‘facile pluralism’, which takes worldly cohabitation as given. A diplomatic political ontology is neither bellicose nor pacific; rather, it dramatizes the possibility of peace from within a coercive historical reality. (shrink)

Eunapius makes it clear in his Lives of the Philosophers, published some time after A.D. 396, that he had already published the major part of his historical work, and that he was contemplating extending its scope. He refers to the Gothic invasion of Greece in 395, and states that he has already recorded some of the disasters which befell about that time, and that he hopes to relate others.

Philip R. Shields shows that ethical and religious concerns inform even the most technical writings on logic and language, and that, for Wittgenstein, the need to establish clear limitations is both a logical and an ethical demand. Rather than merely saying specific things about theology and religion, major texts from the Tractatus to the Philosophical Investigations express their fundamentally religious nature by showing that there are powers which bear down upon and sustain us. Shields finds a religious view of (...) the world at the very heart of Wittgenstein's philosophy. "Shields argues that the appearance throughout Wittgenstein's writings of such concepts as ritual, limit, transgression, a change of will, pride, temptation, and judgment implies a relation between religion and the logical aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy."-- Choice "Of the many recent books about Wittgenstein, Logic and Sin is one of the very few that are well worth having"--Fergus Kerr, Modern Theology "What Shields has uncovered in Wittgenstein's religious sensibility is something genuine and profound. . . . Shields has not just written an important book on Wittgenstein but an enlightening work that invites further reflection."--Eric O. Springsted, Cross Currents. (shrink)

Scholars of early Chinese philosophy frequently point to the nontranscendent, organismic conception of the cosmos in early China as the source of China's unique perspective and distinctive values. One would expect recent works in Confucian ethics to capitalize on this idea. Reviewing recent works in Confucian ethics by P. J. Ivanhoe, David Nivison, R. P. Peerenboom, Henry Rosemont, and Tu Wei-Ming, the author analyzes these new studies in terms of the extent to which their representation of Confucian ethics reflects and (...) is consistent with the view that in early China the cosmos was conceived to be organismic, nontranscendent, and nondualistic. (shrink)

This article examines the women-led natural deathcare movment in the early 21st century U.S., focusing upon the movement’s non-coincidental epistemological and gender-political similarities to the natural childbirth movement. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing upon the author’s intensive interviews with pioneers and leaders of the U.S. natural deathcare movement, as well as from the author’s own participation in the movement, this article argues that the political similarities between the countercultural natural childbirth and natural deathcare movements reveal a common cultural provocation—one (...) that spans the natal transition and the fatal transition. (shrink)

Traditionally, the debate between epistemological internalists and externalists has centered on the value of knowledge and its justification. A value pluralist, virtue-theoretic approach to epistemology allows us to accept what I shall call the insight of externalism while still acknowledging the importance of internalists’ insistence on the value of reflection. Intellectual virtue can function as the unifying consideration in a study of a host of epistemic values, including understanding, wisdom, and what I call articulate reflection. Each of these epistemic values (...) is a good internal to inquiry. Thus, an inquiry-based conception of virtue is particularly well suited to help us account for a wide variety of epistemic goods, without reducing the value of those many goods to their contribution to the value of knowledge. Moreover, an inquiry-based conception of virtue can function as the unifying consideration in a general study of value, the scope of which is not restricted to epistemic value. (shrink)

This article examines the political controversy in the United States surrounding a new process for the disposition of human remains, alkaline hydrolysis. AH technologies use a heated solution of water and strong alkali to dissolve tissues, yielding an effluent that can be disposed through municipal sewer systems, and brittle bone matter that can be dried, crushed, and returned to the decedent’s family. Though AH is legal in eight US states, opposition to the technology remains strong. Opponents express concerns about public (...) health and safety and about the dignity of our mortal remains. Proponents focus on AH’s environmental benefits over cremation and earth burial, aligning the technology with the “green burial” movement. Drawing from historical sources, Science, Technology, and Society literature, interviews with funeral professionals, industry literature, and various media sources, this article examines four prominent conceptions of the dead human body as they are deployed by various funeral stakeholders seeking to exercise authority over the dead human body, to influence the trajectory of AH technology in the United States, and to chart a course for US deathcare culture in the twenty-first century. (shrink)