This research examines the association between attitudes on cheating and cognitive moral development. In this research, we use Rest's (1979a) Defining Issues Test, the Attitudes on Honesty Scale (Authors) and Academic Integrity Index (Authors); the last two are adaptations of the DIT. A total of 220 students from three universities participated in the study (66 psychology majors and 154 business majors). The data indicate that 66.4 percent of the students reported that they cheated in high school, college, or both high (...) school and college. Psychology majors scored higher than business majors on both the Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979a) and the Attitudes on Honesty Scale (AHS, Authors). Using factor analysis, we found significant associations between students' ratings of the importance considerations present in the three cheating scenarios and their estimates of whether cheating would occur (i.e., the Academic Integrity Index). Finally, using logistic regression, we found that the scores on the Attitudes on Honesty Scale and Academic Integrity Index associate with the self-reported cheating behavior of college students. (shrink)

This research examines the association between attitudes on cheating and cognitive moral development. In this research, we use Rest's (1979a) Defining Issues Test, the Attitudes on Honesty Scale (Authors) and Academic Integrity Index (Authors); the last two are adaptations of the DIT. A total of 220 students from three universities participated in the study (66 psychology majors and 154 business majors). The data indicate that 66.4 percent of the students reported that they cheated in high school, college, or both high (...) school and college. Psychology majors scored higher than business majors on both the Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979a) and the Attitudes on Honesty Scale (AHS, Authors). Using factor analysis, we found significant associations between students' ratings of the importance considerations present in the three cheating scenarios and their estimates of whether cheating would occur (i.e., the Academic Integrity Index). Finally, using logistic regression, we found that the scores on the Attitudes on Honesty Scale and Academic Integrity Index associate with the self-reported cheating behavior of college students. (shrink)

“When the two come into conflict, democracy takes priority to philosophy.”Richard Rorty“There are some people who use philosophy to lead people astray.”St. AugustineAs any seasoned litigator knows, occasionally one interposes an evidentiary objection not simply for the sake of preventing this or that from occurring in court, but also for the purpose of alerting a court to and educating it about the likelihood that it will have to rule on what may prove to be a substantial evidentiary dispute. Instead (...) of waiting until a trial has begun and somebody else’s expert witness is ready, willing, able and - most of all - present to testify, it can be useful to file a motion in limine, a pre-trial motion that seeks to bar or set limits to an expert’s testimony. (shrink)

“When the two come into conflict, democracy takes priority to philosophy.”Richard Rorty“There are some people who use philosophy to lead people astray.”St. AugustineAs any seasoned litigator knows, occasionally one interposes an evidentiary objection not simply for the sake of preventing this or that from occurring in court, but also for the purpose of alerting a court to and educating it about the likelihood that it will have to rule on what may prove to be a substantial evidentiary dispute. Instead (...) of waiting until a trial has begun and somebody else’s expert witness is ready, willing, able and - most of all - present to testify, it can be useful to file a motion in limine, a pre-trial motion that seeks to bar or set limits to an expert’s testimony. (shrink)

Whether ethics is too important to be left to the experts or so important that it must be is an age-old question. The emergence of clinical ethicists raises it again, as a question about professionalism. What role clinical ethicists should play in healthcare decision making – teacher, mediator, or consultant – is a question that has generated considerable debate but no consensus.

The Exchange of Words is a philosophical exploration of human testimony, specifically as a form of intersubjective understanding in which speakers communicate by making themselves accountable for the truth of what they say. This account weaves together themes from philosophy of language, moral psychology, action theory, and epistemology, for a new approach to this basic human phenomenon.

The paper argues for the centrality of believing the speaker (as distinct from believing the statement) in the epistemology of testimony, and develops a line of thought from Angus Ross which claims that in telling someone something, the kind of reason for belief that a speaker presents is of an essentially different kind from ordinary evidence. Investigating the nature of the audience's dependence on the speaker's free assurance leads to a discussion of Grice's formulation of non-natural meaning in an epistemological (...) light, concentrating on just how the recognition of the speaker's self-reflexive intention is supposed to count for his audience as a reason to believe P. This is understood as the speaker's explicitly assuming responsibility for the truth of his statement, and thereby constituting his utterance as a reason to believe. (shrink)

In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy.

Richard Swinburne offers an original treatment of a question at the heart of epistemology: what makes a belief rational, or justified in holding? He maps the rival accounts of philosophers on epistemic justification ("internalist" and "externalist"), arguing that they are really accounts of different concepts. He distinguishes between synchronic justification (justification at a time) and diachronic justification (synchronic justification resulting from adequate investigation)--both internalist and externalist. He also argues that most kinds of justification are worth having because they are (...) indicative of truth; however, it is only justification of internalist kinds that can guide a believer's actions. Swinburne goes on to show the usefulness of the probability calculus in elucidating how empirical evidence makes beliefs probably true. (shrink)

This letter responds to the essay “If Not Now, Then When? Taking Disability Seriously in Bioethics,” by Debjani Mukherjee, Preya S. Tarsney, and Kristi L. Kirschner, in the May‐June 2022 issue of the Hastings Center Report.

As everybody knows, advances in medicine and medical technology have brought enormous benefits to, and created vexing choices for, us all – choices that can, and occasionally do, test the very limits of thinking itself. As everyone also knows, we live in the age of consultants, i.e., of professional experts who are ready, willing, and able to give us advice on any and every conceivable question. One such consultant is the medical ethics consultant, or the medical ethicist who consults.Medical ethics (...) consultants involve themselves in just about every aspect of health care decision making. They help legislators and judges determine law, hospitals formulate policies, medical schools develop curricula, etc. In addition to educating physicians, nurses, and lawyers, amongst others, including medical, nursing, and law students, they participate in clinical decision making at the bedside. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne presents a powerful new case for substance dualism and for libertarian free will. He argues that pure mental events are distinct from physical events and interact with them, and claims that no result from neuroscience or any other science could show that interaction does not take place. Swinburne goes on to argue for agent causation, and claims that it is we, and not our intentions, that cause our brain events. It is metaphysically possible that each of us (...) could acquire a new brain or continue to exist without a brain; and so we are essentially souls. Brain events and conscious events are so different from each other that it would not be possible to establish a scientific theory which would predict what each of us would do in situations of moral conflict. Hence, we should believe that things are as they seem to be: that we make choices independently of the causes which influence us. It follows that we are morally responsible for our actions. (shrink)

As everybody knows, advances in medicine and medical technology have brought enormous benefits to, and created vexing choices for, us all – choices that can, and occasionally do, test the very limits of thinking itself. As everyone also knows, we live in the age of consultants, i.e., of professional experts who are ready, willing, and able to give us advice on any and every conceivable question. One such consultant is the medical ethics consultant, or the medical ethicist who consults.Medical ethics (...) consultants involve themselves in just about every aspect of health care decision making. They help legislators and judges determine law, hospitals formulate policies, medical schools develop curricula, etc. In addition to educating physicians, nurses, and lawyers, amongst others, including medical, nursing, and law students, they participate in clinical decision making at the bedside. (shrink)

This paper explores some aspects of the relation between different ways of achieving a consensus on the judgemental values of a group of indviduals; in particular, aggregation and deliberation. We argue firstly that the framing of an aggregation problem itself generates information that individuals are rationally obliged to take into account. And secondly that outputs of the deliberative process that this initiates is in tension with constraints on consensual values typically imposed by aggregation theory, at least when deliberation is modelled (...) as process of learning from others compatible with Bayesian updating principles. (shrink)

Atheism is a familiar kind of skepticism about religion. Moral error theory is an analogous kind of skepticism about morality, though less well known outside academic circles. Both kinds of skeptic face a "what next?" question: If we have decided that the subject matter (religion/morality) is mistaken, then what should we do with this way of talking and thinking? The natural assumption is that we should abolish the mistaken topic, just as we previously eliminated talk of, say, bodily humors and (...) unicorns. The fictionalist, however, offers a less obvious recommendation. According to the fictionalist, engaging in the topic in question provides pragmatic benefits that do not depend on its truth-in a way roughly analogous to engaging with a novel or a movie. The religious fictionalist maintains that even if we were atheists, we should carry on talking, thinking, and acting as if religion were true. The moral fictionalist maintains a similar view regarding moral talk, thought, and action. Both forms of fictionalism face serious challenges. Some challenges can be levelled at either form of fictionalism (or at any form of fictionalism), whereas others are problems unique to moral fictionalism or to religious fictionalism. There are important questions to be asked about the relationship between these two kinds of fictionalism. Could moral fictionalism be plausible even if religious fictionalism is not (or vice versa)? This is a volume of thirteen previously unpublished papers on the topics of religious fictionalism, moral fictionalism, and the relation between these views. (shrink)

This book brings together twenty articles giving a comprehensive view of the work of the Aristotelian commentators.... The importance of the commentators is partly that they represent the thought and classroom teaching of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonist schools and partly that they provide a panorama of a thousand years of anicient Greek philosophy, revealing many original quotations from lost works. Even more significant is the profound influence... that they exert on later philosophy, Islamic and Western. Not only did they preserve (...) anti-Aristotelian marterial which helped inspire Medieval and Renaissance science, but they presented Aristotle in a form that made him acceptable to the Christian Church. It is not Aristotle, but Aristotle transformed and embedded in the philosophy of the commentators, that so often lies behind the views of later thinkers. --From book jacket. (shrink)

Philosophy and literature enjoy a close, complex relationship. Elucidating the connections between these two fields, this book examines the ways philosophy deploys literary means to advance its practice, particularly as a way of life that extends beyond literary forms and words into physical deeds, nonlinguistic expression, and subjective moods and feelings.

_Heidegger_ is a classic introduction to Heidegger's notoriously difficult work. Truly accessible, it combines clarity of exposition with an authoritative handling of the subject-matter. Richard Polt has written a work that will become the standard text for students looking to understand one of the century's greatest minds.

This classic, provocative introduction to classical metaphysical questions focuses on appreciating the problems, rather than attempting to proffer answers.

The book begins with an overview that introduces the Theorem and the issues surrounding it, and explores how the essays that follow contribute to our understanding of those issues.

Richard Kilvington (ca. 1302-1361) was one of the most original and influential thinkers among the Oxford Calculators. His impact on late medieval philosophy and theology remains unquestionable. His physical, logical, and ethical solutions were extensively debated and referred to, paving the way for new approaches in philosophy and theology. This volume presents a critical edition of question 4 from Kilvington's Quaestiones super libros Sententiarum, complete with an introduction to the edition and a guide to Kilvington's theological concepts.

The sixteen essays in this volume confront the current debate about the relationship between philosophy and its history. On the one hand intellectual historians commonly accuse philosophers of writing bad - anachronistic - history of philosophy, and on the other, philosophers have accused intellectual historians of writing bad - antiquarian - history of philosophy. The essays here address this controversy and ask what purpose the history of philosophy should serve. Part I contains more purely theoretical and methodological discussion, of such (...) questions as whether there are 'timeless' philosophical problems, whether the issues of one epoch are commensurable with those of another, and what style is appropriate to the historiography of the subject. The essays in Part II consider a number of case-histories. They present important revisionist scholarship and original contributions on topics drawn from ancient, early modern and more recent philosophy. All the essays have been specially commissioned, and the contributors include many of the leading figures in the field. The volume as a whole will be of vital interest to everyone concerned with the study of philosophy and of its history. (shrink)

This Element, written for researchers and students in philosophy and the behavioral sciences, reviews and critically assesses extant work on number concepts in developmental psychology and cognitive science. It has four main aims. First, it characterizes the core commitments of mainstream number cognition research, including the commitment to representationalism, the hypothesis that there exist certain number-specific cognitive systems, and the key milestones in the development of number cognition. Second, it provides a taxonomy of influential views within mainstream number cognition research, (...) along with the central challenges these views face. Third, it identifies and critically assesses a series of core philosophical assumptions often adopted by number cognition researchers. Finally, the Element articulates and defends a novel version of pluralism about number concepts. (shrink)

Disagreement is common: even informed, intelligent, and generally reasonable people often come to different conclusions when confronted with what seems to be the same evidence. Can the competing conclusions be reasonable? If not, what can we reasonably think about the situation? This volume examines the epistemology of disagreement. Philosophical questions about disagreement arise in various areas, notably politics, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion: but this will be the first book focusing on the general epistemic issues arising from informed (...) disagreement. Ten leading philosophers offer specially written essays which together will offer a starting-point for future work on this topic. (shrink)

Thinking through the body: educating for the humanities -- The body as background -- Self-knowledge and its discontents: from Socrates to somaesthetics -- Muscle memory and the somaesthetic pathologies of everyday life -- Somaesthetics in the philosophy classroom: a practical approach -- Somaesthetics and the limits of aesthetics -- Somaesthetics and Burke's sublime -- Pragmatism and cultural politics: from textualism to somaesthetics -- Body consciousness and performance -- Somaesthetics and architecture: a critical option -- Photography as performative process -- Asian (...) ars erotica and the question of sexual aesthetics -- Philosophy as awakened life : everyday aesthetics of embodiment in American transcendentalism and Japanese Zen practice -- Somatic style. (shrink)

Richard Kilvington s commentary on Aristotle s Nicomachean Ethics (14th century) offers a unique perspective of argumentation by applying concepts and terminology from the fields of logic and physics to ethical dilemmas.".

Volume 20, Issue 3, March 2020, Page 29-31.

Whatever else these articles demonstrate, they reveal that two efforts closely associated with professionalizing healthcare ethics consultants —surveying the practice and certificating its pra...

Given how long bioethics has been around, how long bioethicists have devoted themselves to tackling ethical issues, how much work has gone into professionalizing the practice of clinical ethics consultation, how often bioethicists have either testified as experts in court proceedings or attached their names to amicus curiae briefs, and how ubiquitously they are present throughout the clinical, research, administrative, and other dimensions of health care, one would have thought that a convergence of opinion would exist on what it is (...) that the clinical ethics consultant's expertise consists of—if only for reasons of professional solidarity and reputation management. And yet, as a recent series of articles written by... (shrink)

In his final work, Richard Rorty provides the definitive statement of his political thought. Rorty equates pragmatism with anti-authoritarianism, arguing that because there is no authority we can rely on to ascertain truth, we can only do so intersubjectively. It follows that we must learn to think and care about what others think and care about.

Our existence is increasingly lived at a distance. As we move from flesh to image, we are in danger of losing touch with each other and ourselves. How can we combine the physical with the virtual, our embodied experience with our global connectivity? How can we come back to our senses? Richard Kearney offers a timely call for the cultivation of the basic human need to touch and be touched. He argues that touch is our most primordial sense, foundational (...) to our individual and common selves. Kearney explores the role of touch, from ancient wisdom traditions to modern therapies. He demonstrates that a fundamental aspect of touch is interdependence, its inherently reciprocal nature, which offers a crucial corrective to our fixation with control. Making the case for the complementarity of touch and technology, this book is a passionate plea to recover a tangible sense of community and the joys of life with others. (shrink)

What propositions are rational for one to believe? With what confidence is it rational for one to believe these propositions? Answering the first of these questions requires an epistemology of beliefs, answering the second an epistemology of degrees of belief.

In the early 1920s, the German mathematician David Hilbert (1862–1943) put forward a new proposal for the foundation of classical mathematics which has come to be known as Hilbert's Program. It calls for a formalization of all of mathematics in axiomatic form, together with a proof that this axiomatization of mathematics is consistent. The consistency proof itself was to be carried out using only what Hilbert called “finitary” methods. The special epistemological character of finitary reasoning then yields the required justification (...) of classical mathematics. Although Hilbert proposed his program in this form only in 1921, various facets of it are rooted in foundational work of his going back until around 1900, when he first pointed out the necessity of giving a direct consistency proof of analysis. Work on the program progressed significantly in the 1920s with contributions from logicians such as Paul Bernays, Wilhelm Ackermann, John von Neumann, and Jacques Herbrand. It was also a great influence on Kurt Gödel, whose work on the incompleteness theorems were motivated by Hilbert's Program. Gödel's work is generally taken to show that Hilbert's Program cannot be carried out. It has nevertheless continued to be an influential position in the philosophy of mathematics, and, starting with the work of Gerhard Gentzen in the 1930s, work on so-called Relativized Hilbert Programs have been central to the development of proof theory. (shrink)

Gödel's relation to the work of Plato, Leibniz, Kant, and Husserl is examined, and a new type of platonic rationalism that requires rational intuition, called ...