Ethical principles and precepts -- The evolution of morality -- Ethics and law -- Exchange and reciprocity : conflict in personal relationships -- Ethics and the physical sciences -- Ethics and medicine -- Ethics and politics -- Ethics and business -- Ethics and war -- What does all this mean for the future? -- Appendix : relations to moral philosophy.

The impressive variation amongst biological individuals generates many complexities in addressing the simple-sounding question what is a biological individual? A distinction between evolutionary and physiological individuals is useful in thinking about biological individuals, as is attention to the kinds of groups, such as superorganisms and species, that have sometimes been thought of as biological individuals. More fully understanding the conceptual space that biological individuals occupy also involves considering a range of other concepts, such as life, reproduction, and agency. There has (...) been a focus in some recent discussions by both philosophers and biologists on how evolutionary individuals are created and regulated, as well as continuing work on the evolution of individuality. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between eugenics, disability, and dehumanization, with a focus on forms of eugenics beyond Nazi eugenics.

Pharmacy Ethics: A Foundation for Professional Practice provides a model for examining and resolving ethical dilemmas, thereby helping student pharmacists understand the ethical decision-making process in professional practice.

Written by the preeminent democratic theorist of our time, this book explains the nature, value, and mechanics of democracy. In a new introduction to this Veritas edition, Ian Shapiro considers how Dahl would respond to the ongoing challenges democracy faces in the modern world. “Within the liberal democratic camp there is considerable controversy about exactly how to define democracy. Probably the most influential voice among contemporary political scientists in this debate has been that of Robert Dahl.”—Marc Plattner, _New York (...) Times_ “An excellent introduction for novices, as well as a trusty handbook for experts and political science mavens.”—_Publishers Weekly_. (shrink)

Essentialism is widely regarded as a mistaken view of biological kinds, such as species. After recounting why (sections 2-3), we provide a brief survey of the chief responses to the “death of essentialism” in the philosophy of biology (section 4). We then develop one of these responses, the claim that biological kinds are homeostatic property clusters (sections 5-6) illustrating this view with several novel examples (section 7). Although this view was first expressed 20 years ago, and has received recent discussion (...) and critique, it remains underdeveloped and is often misrepresented by its critics (section 8). (shrink)

Introduction The contemporary study of society is fired by our quest for scientific truth. The very spirit of our age is tangible evidence ...

In the good old days, when general philosophy of science ruled the Earth, a simple division was often invoked to talk about philosophical issues specific to particular kinds of science: that between the natural sciences and the social sciences. Over the last 20 years, philosophical studies shaped around this dichotomy have given way to those organized by more fine-grained categories, corresponding to specific disciplines, as the literatures on the philosophy of physics, biology, economics and psychology--to take the most prominent four (...) examples--have blossomed. In general terms, work in each of these areas has become increasingly enmeshed with that in the corresponding science itself, increasingly naturalistic (in at least one sense of that term), and in my view, increasingly interesting. (shrink)

An overview of the philosophy of psychology.

Entrepreneurs sometimes make unethical decisions that have devastating effects on their companies, stakeholders, and themselves. We suggest that insights into the origins of such actions can be acquired through attention to personal motives and their impact on moral disengagement—a cognitive process that deactivates moral self-regulation, thus enabling individuals to behave in ways inconsistent with their own values. We hypothesize that entrepreneurs’ motivation for financial gains is positively related to moral disengagement, while their motivation for self-realization is negatively related to this (...) process. Results obtained with a sample of founding entrepreneurs offered support for the first prediction, as well as support for the prediction that moral disengagement is positively related to the tendency to make unethical decisions. (shrink)

This book provides a series of challenges to Jorge J. E. Gracia’s views on metaphysics and categories made by realist philosophers in the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. Inclusion of Gracia’s responses to his critics makes this book a useful companion to Gracia’s _Metaphysics and its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of Knowledge_.

Kant’s theory of evil, presented most fully in his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, has been consistently misinterpreted since he first presented it. As a result, readers have taken it to be a mess of inconsistencies and eccentricities and so have tried to mine it for an insight or two, dismissed it altogether, or sought to explain how Kant could have gone so wrong. In this work, I provide an interpretation of Kant’s theory of evil that renders it (...) consistent and plausible. The main problem Kant tries to solve with his theory of evil is the problem of willful immorality: how can someone who sees her moral obligations as overridingly authoritative willingly (and so culpably) transgress them? Kant’s answer is that we do so by indulging various “moral fantasies” – ways of reconceiving the moral law or one’s status in relation to it. By entertaining, e.g., the fantasy that one is exempt from the moral law’s commands (“the exceptionalist fantasy”), or that one cannot live up to them (“despondency”), or that one need only to live up to society’s standards rather than moral demands (“the adequacy fantasy”) – one persuades oneself that the duty the moral law demands one to perform is only optional. Moral fantasies appeal only because of the presence, in everyone, of the “propensity to evil,” which makes the moral law’s commands seem less authoritative, thereby strengthening one’s sensuous desires. As a result, moral fantasies thereby diminish the urgency of moral obligations, and so tempt us to entertain them. Scholars of Kant have missed this explanation of wickedness because they have restricted their attention to the Religion, a work whose gnomic statements on evil are difficult to interpret when isolated from the larger context of Kant’s thinking. Assaying Kant’s thinking on immorality from the mid-1780s to the late 1790s shows that Kant’s main concern with evil was not so much its nature, but its very possibility. Evaluating the Religion in this context reveals it to be a fruitful resource for explaining the moral psychology of immorality, a problem we still deal with today, and that is possibly. (shrink)

This paper offers an overview of "the species problem", arguing for a view of species as homeostatic property cluster kinds, positioning the resulting form of realism about species as an alternative to the claim that species are individuals and pluralistic views of species. It draws on taxonomic practice in the neurosciences, especially of neural crest cells and retinal ganglion cells, to motivate both the rejection of the species-as-individuals thesis and species pluralism.

Where does the mind begin and end? Most philosophers and cognitive scientists take the view that the mind is bounded by the skull or skin of the individual. Robert Wilson, in this provocative and challenging 2004 book, provides the foundations for the view that the mind extends beyond the boundary of the individual. The approach adopted offers a unique blend of traditional philosophical analysis, cognitive science, and the history of psychology and the human sciences. The companion volume, Genes and (...) the Agents of Life, explores the theme in the biological sciences. Written with verve and clarity, this ambitious book will appeal to a broad swathe of professionals and students in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and the history of the behavioural and human sciences. You can download the table of contents here. (shrink)

What place does freedom have in Confucianism? We find a wide spectrum of views on the matter: some deny that Confucians value or even conceive of freedom, while others celebrate uniquely exalted forms of Confucian freedom. This paper examines the range of proposals, finding consensus among these diverse views in that all identify distinctive Confucian emphases on (i) subjective affirmation of the good and (ii) the cultivation of desires and intentions to align with that good. The variation among views of (...) Confucian freedom does not result from disparate interpretations of Confucian teachings. Rather, their divergence lies in affirming or denying that these core aspects of Confucian thought should be seen as ‘freedom.’ This reveals an undiscussed, fundamental question regarding Confucian freedom: Can and should we see the traditional Confucian moral ideal—that is, Confucian goodness and sagely virtue—as versions of freedom? What do we gain by doing so? (shrink)

The question of whether perception can be penetrated by cognition is in the limelight again. The reason this question keeps coming up is that there is so much at stake: Is it possible to have theory-neutral observation? Is it possible to study perception without recourse to expectations, context, and beliefs? What are the boundaries between perception, memory, and inference (and do they even exist)? Are findings from neuroscience that paint a picture of perception as an inherently bidirectional and interactive process (...) relevant for understanding the relationship between cognition and perception? We have assembled a group of philosophers and psychologists who have been considering the thesis of cognitive (im)penetrability in light of these questions (Abdel Rahman & Sommer, 2008; Goldstone, Landy, & Brunel, 2011; Lupyan, Thompson-Schill, & Swingley, 2010; Macpherson, 2012; Stokes, 2011). Rather than rehashing previous arguments which appear, in retrospect, to have been somewhat ill-posed (Pylyshyn, 1999), this symposium will present a thesis of cognitive (im)penetrability that is at once philosophically satisfying, empirically testable, and relevant to the questions that cognitive scientists find most interesting. (shrink)

Several recent commentators have suggested that for fully rational agents who find themselves in iterated prisoner's dilemmas of indefinite length, co-operation is the rational strategy. Their argument is that these fully rational agents can be taught, through the co-operative actions of other agents, to bypass the dominant move of noncooperation and co-operate instead. The proponents of the “teaching strategy” seem to have ignored the compelling argument of Jordan Howard Sobel. While the teaching argument may work for agents who are less (...) than purely rational, Sobel has pointed out that hyperrational utility maximizers cannot be taught; they reason deductively, not inductively, as the “teaching argument” requires. (shrink)

Although ethics consultation is offered as a clinical service in most hospitals in the United States, few valid and practical tools are available to evaluate, ensure, and improve ethics consultation quality. The quality of ethics consultation is important because poor quality ethics consultation can result in ethically inappropriate outcomes for patients, other stakeholders, or the health care system. To promote accountability for the quality of ethics consultation, we developed the Ethics Consultation Quality Assessment Tool. ECQAT enables raters to assess the (...) quality of ethics consultations based on the written record. Through rigorous development and preliminary testing, we identified key elements of a quality ethics consultation, established scoring criteria, developed training guidelines, and designed a holistic assessment process. This article describes the development of the ECQAT,.. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory has become a central issue in the literature on business ethics / business and society. There are, however, a number of problems with stakeholder theory as currently understood. Among these are: 1) the lack of a coherent justificatory framework, 2) the problem of adjudicating between stakeholders, and 3) the problem of stakeholder identification. In this essay, I propose that a possible source of obligations to stakeholders is the principle of fairness (or fair play) as discussed in the political (...) philosophic literature of Rawls, Simmons, and Cullity among others. The principle of fairness states that, “Whenever persons or groups of persons voluntarily accept the benefits of a mutually beneficial scheme of co-operation requiring sacrifice or contribution on the parts of the participants and there exists the possibility of free-riding, there exist obligations of fairness on the part of these persons or groups to co-operate in proportion to the benefits accepted.” In this essay I discuss the gaps in the current stakeholder literature, elucidate and defend a principle of fairness that fills the gap, compare the fairness model to other similar models of business ethics, and draw some conclusions for the future of stakeholder theory. (shrink)

This chapter examines traditionalists’ arguments why Dungeons Dragons (DD) is good for us first, and then discusses the cases where it could be bad for us. The irony for Christian critics of DD, such as Schnoebelen, is that the philosophical and theological arguments of Christian traditionalists, such as Thomas Aquinas and J.R.R. Tolkien, provide some of the strongest arguments in favor of DD role‐playing. However, to be fair, these same arguments can be used to argue that a particular DD game, (...) under certain circumstances, can be bad. “Postmodernists” refers loosely to a group of philosophers and thinkers who question, if not outright reject, the core tenets of the traditionalists. If the traditionalists have the correct metaphysics about the real world, then it follows that DD is good, but that care must be taken to make sure the game does not become morally objectionable. (shrink)

This is an introductory article on sociobiology, particularly its relationship to eugenics. Sociobiology developed in the 1960s as a field within evolutionary biology to explain human social traits and behaviours. Although sociobiology has few direct connections to eugenics, it shares eugenics’ optimistic enthusiasm for extending biological science into the human domain, often with reckless sensationalism. Sociobiology's critics have argued that sociobiology also propagates a kind of genetic determinism and represents the zealous misapplication of science beyond its proper reach that characterized (...) the eugenics movement. More recently, evolutionary psychology represents a sophistication of sociobiology that attends to the mind as the "missing link" between evolution and behaviour (Cosmides and Tooby 1992, Pinker 1997). (shrink)

Renewed interest in the relationship between music education and cultural identity draws its vigor from strongly divergent sources. Globalized education and globalized musical culture supply new paradigms for understanding the central tasks of music education and their responsibility to a multicultural ethic of diversity, hybridity and difference. Yet recent anthropological studies of musical cognition and development emphasise both the centrality of ethnic and cultural particularism to the formation of musical awareness and the transcultural, factors in which such particularism is embedded. (...) These seemingly contrasting perspectives on the relationship of music to culture and identity offer a fertile context for redefining the place of music education in the curriculum. (shrink)

Renewed interest in the relationship between music education and cultural identity draws its vigor from strongly divergent sources. Globalized education and globalized musical culture supply new paradigms for understanding the central tasks of music education and their responsibility to a multicultural ethic of diversity, hybridity and difference. Yet recent anthropological studies of musical cognition and development emphasise both the centrality of ethnic and cultural particularism to the formation of musical awareness and the transcultural, factors in which such particularism is embedded. (...) These seemingly contrasting perspectives on the relationship of music to culture and identity offer a fertile context for redefining the place of music education in the curriculum. (shrink)

American Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner aspires to raise Steiners profile by digging into just one field of inquiry: philosophy. Before he became known to the world as a transmitter of clairvoyant wisdom, Steiner was an academic philosopher, editor of the scientific writings of Goethe and author of a foundational work in philosophy, The Philosophy of Freedom: The Basis for a Modern Worldview, published in 1894. That book expressed in philosophical terms many of the ideas that would later emerge as integral (...) to the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. (shrink)

A discussion of the remarkable relation between Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Ignatius Loyola, John XXIII, and the simple but vital ideas of Vatican II.

1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course.

The opposition set up between co-ordinated and mosaic brain evolution distracts from the fact that the two go hand-in-hand. Here and elsewhere (Barton & Harvey 2000), I show that the patterns of co- ordinated evolutionary change among brain structures fit a mosaic evolution model. The concept of overarching developmental constraints is unnecessary and is not supported by the data.

Genes and the Agents of Life undertakes to rethink the place of the individual in the biological sciences, drawing parallels with the cognitive and social sciences. Genes, organisms, and species are all agents of life but how are each of these conceptualized within genetics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology, and systematics? The 2005 book includes highly accessible discussions of genetic encoding, species and natural kinds, and pluralism above the levels of selection, drawing on work from across the biological sciences. The book (...) is a companion to the author's Boundaries of the Mind (2004), also available from Cambridge, where the focus is the cognitive sciences. The book will appeal to a broad range of professionals and students in philosophy, biology, and the history of science. You can download the table of contents and the first chapter here. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.