In this book, Rhodes provides a nonevaluative account of coercion. He begins with a thorough discussion of the charge that coercion is an essentially contested concept. He argues that effective communication of regulations pertaining to human conduct requires a basic level of clarity as to the kind of conduct being regulated. Accordingly, he argues that before we prescribe or proscribe conduct, we should describe it. In short, he maintains that wherever possible description should precede prescription and proscription. Rhodes (...) begins his descriptive project by providing a fundamental account of human motivation. Upon this foundation he supports his distinctions between threats, offers, throffers, and neutral proposals. He argues that all coercion claims can be understood in light of these components. He applies this analysis to three prominent accounts of coercion as advanced by F.A. Hayek, Harry Frankfurt, and Robert Nozick. After comparing and contrasting these views, Rhodes provides his own account. Rhodes's account is based upon the identification of what he refers to as perceived-threat-avoidance-behavior as a necessary condition for coercion. As a descriptive, or nonevaluative, account, Rhodes is able to identify coercion independent from normative judgments. He argues that it is not the wrongfulness of some conduct that makes it coercion, instead, it is the coerciveness of some conduct that makes it wrong. Unique to Rhodes's account, coercion is not necessarily wrong. As a descriptive account, his view permits an independent analysis of the moral status of an act of coercion. The book concludes with a discussion of the normatively significant variables of a coercion claim. (shrink)

This study uses the ATBEQ, as published by J.F. Preble and A. Reichel (1988) to measure attitudes towards ethical business attitudes held by final year South African Bachelor of Commerce students at Rhodes University. Three samples of students were assessed over three consecutive years of 1989, 1990 and 1991, and results are compared with samples (1988) of American and Israeli students and a sample (1991) of Western Australian students. A significant difference in attitudes was found to exist between the (...) Israeli and South African samples. A factor analysis of the questionnaire identified eleven factors of which seven are theoretically labelled. A revised version of the ATBEQ is suggested which excludes the poorly performing questions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NECESSARY PROPOSITIONS AND THE SQUARE OF OPPOSITION MARK ROBERTS University of Rhode Island Kingston, Rhode Island IT IS COMMONPLACE to define contradictory, contrary, and subcontrary propositions in the following way: contradictory propositions cannot both be true and cannot both be false; contrary propositions cannot both be true but can both be false; and subcontrary propositions can both be true but cannot both be false. In his Introduction to Logic (...) 1 Irving Copi raises a problem with two of these definitions which he believes forces him to limit the range of propositions which can be used in the square of opposition. Since contrary propositions can both be false, but the falsity of a necessarily true proposition is not possible, a necessarily true proposition has no contrary. Therefore, only contingent propositions can be contraries. Subcontrary propositions can both be true, but the truth of a necessarily false proposition is not possible.2 This problem is rarely raised in other logic texts, but, it is interesting to note, it is mentioned by a number of neoscholastic philosophers, for example, P. Nicholas Russo,3 Rev. H. Grenier,4 1 Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic (New York: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 178-179. Copi first introduced this problem in the fifth edition of his work on the basis of an article by David H. Sanford entitled " Contraries and Subcontraries,'' Nous 2 (1968) : 95-96. Sanford argues that the most reasonable way to resolve the problem of necessary propositions is to assume that contingent propositions comprise the square of opposition. 2 Copi, pp. 178-179. 8 Nicholas Russo, Summa Philosophica (Boston: Apud Marlier et Socios, 1[;85), p. 23. 4 Henri Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy, Vol. I (Charlottetown, Canada: St. Dunstan's University, 1950), p. 69. 427 428 MARK ROBERTS G. Sanseverino,5 Jacques Maritain,6 F.-X. Maquart,7 P. Coffey,8 and others.9 (It is also mentioned by Bishop Whately.10 ) Each of these philosophers makes necessarily true or false propositions an exception to the definition of contrary and subcontrary propositions. The reason is they and Copi interpret the definitions of contrary and subcontrary propositions to mean that the falsity of each contrary proposition is possible and the truth of each subcontrary proposition is possible. It should be mentioned, however, that the position of the philosophers cited above is not entirely the same as Copi's. Copi reasons that these definitions imply that necessary propositions have no contrary or subcontrary. The other philosophers believe that necessary propositions can be contraries and subcontraries. Thus, in the case of necessary propositions contrary and subcontrary propositions are, instead, defined merely in terms of their quantity and quality, not by whether or not they can both be false or can both be true. In fact, Coffey and some of the other philosophers cited above assert that, when the propositions composing the square are necessary, one can infer the truth of the universal from the truth of 5 Gaietano Sanseverino, Philosophia Christiana, Vol. II (Neapoli: Vincentii Manfredi, 1862), pp. DCCXXXVIII ff. 6 J. Maritain, An Introduction to Logic (London: Sheed & Ward, 1937), p. 135, notes 1 & 2. 7 F.-X. Maquart, Elementa Philosophiae, Vol. I (Parisiis: Andreas Blot, 1937)' p. 126 ff. 8 P. Coffey, The Science of Logic, Vol. 1 (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918), p. 225, 226. 9 Joseph Gredt, Elementa Philosophiae, Vol. I (Friburgi: Herder, 1929), p. 46, notes 1 & 2; Sylvester J. Hartman, A Textbook of Logic (New York: American Book Co., 1936), p. 162 ff; Roland Houde and Jerome J. Fischer, Handbook of Logic (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Co., 1954), p. 61; Eduard Hugon, Cursus Philosophiae Thomisticae, Vol. I (Parisiis: P. Lethielleux n.d), p. 155; Dennis C. Kane, Logic: The Art of Predication and Inference (Providence: Providence College Press, 1978), p. 98 ff; Francis P. Siegfried, Essentialia Philosophiae (Philadelphia: Dolphin Press, 1927), p. 25; Francis Varvello, Minor Logic, trans. and supplemented Arthur D. Fearon (San Francisco: Univ. of San Francisco Press, 1933), p. 73 ff. 10 Richard Whately, Elements of Logic (Boston: James Munroe & Co., 1854), p. 77 ff. PROPOSITIONS AND THE SQUARE OF OPPOSITION 429 the particular and the falsity of the particular from the falsity of the universal.11 Maritain maintains that in the case... (shrink)

MEDIEVAL LOGICS LAMBERT MARIE DE RIJK (ed.), Die mittelalterlichen Traktate De mod0 opponendiet respondendi, Einleitung und Ausgabe der einschlagigen Texte. (Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge Band 17.) Miinster: Aschendorff, 1980. 379 pp. No price stated. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MARTA FATTORI, Lessico del Novum Organum di Francesco Bacone. Rome: Edizioni dell'Ateneo 1980. Two volumes, il + 543, 520 pp. Lire 65.000. VIVIAN SALMON, The study of language in 17th century England. (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory (...) and History of Linguistic Science, Series 111: Studies in theHistory of Linguistics, Volume 17.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1979.x + 218 pp. Dfl. 65. Theoria cum Praxi. Zum Verhaltnis von Theorie und Praxis im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. (Akten des 111. Internationalen Leibnizkongress, Hannover, 12. bis 17.November 1977, Band 111: Logik, Erkenntnistheorie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Metaphysik, Theologie.) Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1980. vii + 269 pp. DM 48. CLASSICAL AND NON-CLASSICAL LOGICS MICHAEL CLARK, The place of syllogistic in logical theory. Nottingham: University of Nottingham Press, 1980. ix + 151 pp. £3.00. A.F. PARKER-RHODES, The theory of indistinguishables. Dordrecht, Boston and London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981. xvii + 216 pp. Dfl.90.00/$39.50. NICHOLAS RESCHER and ROBERT BRANDOM, The logic of inconsistency. Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1980. x + 174 pp. f 11.50. MISCELLANEOUS J. ZELENY, The logic of Marx. Translated from the German by T. Carver. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. xcii + 247 pp. £12.50. FELIX KAUFMANN, The infinite in mathematics. Edited by Brian McGuinness. Introduction by E. Nagel. Translation from the German by Paul Foulkes. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978. xvii + 235 pp. Dfl 85/$39.50 (cloth); Dfl 45/$19.95 (paper). PAMELA MCCORDUCK, Machines who think. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1979. xiv + 275 pp. $14.95. J. MITTELSTRASS (ed.), Enzyklopadie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie Bd. 1 : A-G. Mannheim, Wien, Ziirich: Bibliographisches Institut, 1980. 835 pp. DM 128. (shrink)

(1997). Considering moral sensitivity in media ethics courses and research: An essay review by Robert F. Potter. Journal of Mass Media Ethics: Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 51-57. doi: 10.1207/s15327728jmme1201_4.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the wide range of issues surrounding "passive euthanasia" and "allow-to-die" decisions. The author develops a comprehensive conceptual model that is highly useful for assessing and dealing with real-life situations. He presents an informative historical overview, an evaluation of the clinical settings in which treatment abatement takes place, and an insightful discussion of relevant legal aspects. The result is a clearly articulated ethical analysis that is medically realistic, philosophically sound, and legally viable.

The situationist challenge to global character traits claims that on the basis of findings in social psychology, we should only accept at most the existence of local or context-sensitive traits. In this article I explore a neglected area of J. S. Mill's work to outline an account of context-sensitive traits. This account of traits, coupled with a sophisticated consequentialist ethical framework, suggests an interesting view on which persons govern the circumstances of their actions in order to best promote overall well-being.

In Human Happiness and Morality, noted philosopher Robert Almeder provides lucid introductory explanations of the major ethical theories and traditions, as well as a clear and comprehensive discussion of the proposed answers to three basic questions in ethics: What makes a right act right? Why should I be moral? What is human happiness and how can I attain it? He then ventures beyond the basic questions, describing the relationship between morality and happiness; clearly defining human happiness; and raising the (...) question of whether happiness, so defined, is the likely product of a life lived morally. In the final chapter, Almeder details simple Stoic rules for happy living and shows how it is possible to live the good life despite the existence of unhappiness and failure in others. (shrink)

Blind Realism originated in the deeply felt conviction that the widespread acceptance of Gettier-type counterexamples to the classical definition of knowledge rests in a demonstrably erroneous understanding of the nature of human knowledge. In seeking to defend that conviction, Robert F. Almeder offers a fairly detailed and systematic picture of the nature and limits of human factual knowledge.

If classical Western theism is correct that God's timeless omniscience is compatible with human free will, then it is incoherent to hold that this God can in any strict sense be immutable and a se as well as omniscient. That is my thesis. ‘Classical theism’ shall refer here to the tradition of philosophical theology centring on such mainstream authors as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. ‘Divine omniscience’ shall mean that the eternal God knows all events as a timeless observer of them. (...) ‘Human free will’ shall mean that human beings are, at least sometimes, self-determining agents who make choices not decisively caused to be what they are by external or internal factors other than the free willing itself – choices that these agents have the capacity and the freedom to make differently than they do. Except where stipulated otherwise, ‘divine immutability’ shall ‘mean that God is neither subject to, nor capable of, change in being, knowing, or willing, since God is immune to external influences, and without internal needs, of the sorts that might give rise to such change. Finally, ‘aseity’ shall be used to underline the divine immunity to external influences, since a being that is wholly a se or self-caused , cannot be open to such influences, cannot be made to be what or how it is by anything other than itself. (shrink)

Blind Realism originated in the deeply felt conviction that the widespread acceptance of Gettier-type counterexamples to the classical definition of knowledge rests in a demonstrably erroneous understanding of the nature of human knowledge. In seeking to defend that conviction, Robert F. Almeder offers a fairly detailed and systematic picture of the nature and limits of human factual knowledge.

Sixteen essays on epistemology, metaphysics, & history & politics, treating aspects of the writings of Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Leibniz, & Hobbes.

Robert Dobbin presents a new translation into clear modern English of the first book of Epictetus' Discourses, accompanied by the first ever commentary on the work in English. The Discourses, composed around AD 100, are a key source for ancient Stoicism, one of the most influential schools of thought in Western philosophy.

This book argues that a conscientiously objecting medical professional should receive an exemption only if the grounds of an objector's refusal are reasonable. It defends a detailed, contextual account of public reasonability suited for healthcare, which builds from the overarching concept of Rawlsian public reason. The author analyzes the main competing positions and maintains that these other views fail precisely due to their systematic inattention to the grounding reasons behind a conscientious objection; he argues that any such view is plausible (...) to the extent that it mimics the 'reason-giving requirement' for conscience objections defended in this work. Only reasonable objections can defeat the prior professional obligation to assign primacy to patient well-being, therefore one who refuses a patient's request for a legally available, medically indicated, and safe service must be able to explain the grounds of their objection in terms understandable to other citizens within the public institutional structure of medicine. The book further offers a novel policy proposal to deploy the Reasonability View: establishing conscientious objector status in medicine. It concludes that the Reasonability View is a viable and attractive position in this debate. A New Theory of Conscientious Objection in Medicine: Justification and Reasonability will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in bioethics, medical ethics, and philosophy of medicine, as well as thinkers interested in the intersections between law, medical humanities, and philosophy. (shrink)

Recent survey data gathered from British medical students reveal widespread acceptance of conscientious objection in medicine, despite the existence of strict policies in the UK that discourage conscientious refusals by students to aspects of their medical training. This disconnect demonstrates a pressing need to thoughtfully examine policies that allow conscience objections by medical students; as it so happens, the USA is one country that has examples of such policies. After presenting some background on promulgated US conscience protections and reflecting on (...) their significance for conscience objections by medical students, this paper observes that the dominant approach (following the American Medical Association's conscience clause) is to allow exempted students to instead be evaluated on the basis of alternative curricular activities to learn the associated underlying content. This paper then introduces and discusses an example in which male Muslim students who believe it is wrong to touch members of the opposite sex object to performing physical examinations on female subjects in their medical training. This sort of case, it is argued, causes difficulty for a conscience clause that resolves the dilemma by granting reasonable exemptions in the form of participation in alternative curricular activities: there are cases where one must perform the ‘objectionable’ activity itself in order to learn the necessary content and underlying principles. (shrink)

The first edition of this book was published in 1977. At that time the field of thanatology, the study of death and dying, was still reasonably new and was dominated by research done by psychiatrists and social scientists. The most notable person in the field at the time was Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who was widely credited with having brought thanatology into public view with the 1969 publication of her book On Death and Dying. Two research centers on death and dying were (...) gaining national reputations: The Foundation of Thanatology in New York (Austin Kutscher, director), and the Center for Death Education and Research (Robert Fulton, director) at the University of Minnesota. (shrink)

This article argues that practitioners have a professional ethical obligation to dispense emergency contraception, even given conscientious objection to this treatment. This recent controversy affects all medical professionals, including physicians as well as pharmacists. This article begins by analyzing the option of referring the patient to another willing provider. Objecting professionals may conscientiously refuse because they consider emergency contraception to be equivalent to abortion or because they believe contraception itself is immoral. This article critically evaluates these reasons and concludes that (...) they do not successfully support conscientious objection in this context. Contrary to the views of other thinkers, it is not possible to easily strike a respectful balance between the interests of objecting providers and patients in this case. As medical professionals, providers have an ethical duty to inform women of this option and provide emergency contraception when this treatment is requested. (shrink)

The subject of the passions has always haunted Western philosophy and, more often than not, aroused harsh judgments. For the passions represent a force of excess and lawlessness in humanity that produces troubling, confusing paradoxes. Michel Meyer provides new insight into an age-old dilemma: Does passion torture people because it blinds them, or, on the contrary, does it permit them to apprehend who and what we really are?

In this paper I defend the Reasonability View: the position that medical professionals seeking a conscientious exemption must state reasons in support of their objection and allow those reasons to be subject to evaluation. Recently, this view has been criticized by Jason Marsh as proposing a standard that is either too difficult to meet or too easy to satisfy. First, I defend the Reasonability View from this proposed dilemma. Then, I develop this view by presenting and explaining some of the (...) central criteria it uses to assess whether a conscientious objection is proper grounds for extending an exemption to a medical practitioner. (shrink)

This is a book about the role that psychological impairment should play in a theory of criminal liability. Criminal guilt in the Anglo-American legal tradition requires both that the defendant committed some proscribed act and did so with intent, knowledge, or recklessness. The second requirement corresponds to the intuitive idea that people should not be punished for something they did not do 'on purpose' or if they 'did not realize what they were doing'. Unlike many works in this area, this (...) book addresses the automatism and insanity defences by examining the types of functional impairment that typical candidates for these defences actually suffer. What emerges is a much wider conceptual framework that allows us to understand the significance of psychological states and processes for the attribution of criminal responsibility in a manner that is logically coherent, morally defensible, and consistent with research in psychopathology. (shrink)

As an introduction to explicating the concept of basic knowledge, I shall examine Aristotle's argument for the existence of basic knowledge and urge two basic points. The first point is that Aristotle's argument, properly viewed, establishes the existence of a kind of knowledge, basic or non-demonstrative knowledge, the definition of which does not require the specification of, and hence the satisfaction of,anyevidence condition. This point has been urged by philosophers like Peirce and Austin but it needs further argumentation because most (...) analytic epistemologists still insist thatallknowledge, whether basic or non-basic, requires the satisfaction of some evidence condition. Secondly, to urge that the basic propositions whose existence is established by Aristotle's argument could be privileged but not known, for the reason that there is no evidence condition for them, would be to adopt a position that either entails wholesale skepticism or undermines the basic distinction between knowledge and belief. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the claim that no theory of\nepistemic justification is possible because whatever\ndefinition one gives admits of the question "Are you\njustified in accepting your definition of justification?"\nwhich cannot be answered without begging the question in\nfavor of the original definition offered. I examine various\nreplies to the argument and then argue that the question\nneed not be answered.

Positions taken in the current debate over free will can be seen as responses to the following conditional: If every action is caused solely by another event and a cause necessitates its effect, then there is no action to which there is an alternative. The Libertarian, who believes that alternatives are a requirement of free will, responds by denying the right conjunct of C’s antecedent, maintaining that some actions are caused, either mediately or immediately, by events whose effects could be (...) different, even if they were to recur under identical circumstances. We have here a denial of Laplacian Determinism (LD), according to which the condition of the world at any instant makes only one state possible at any other instant.¹ One prominent defender of this view, Robert Kane, holds that unless an agent’s neural mechanisms operated indeterministicly in forming her character she is not responsible for its manifestations.² This requirement is entailed by the principle of “ultimate responsibility” (UR) according to which an act is freely willed only if (a) its agent is personally responsible for its performance in the sense of having caused it to occur by voluntarily doing something that was avoidable and (b). (shrink)

In this essay it is argued that (1) if the process of scientific inquiry were to continue foreever, then science would ultimately terminate in the acceptance of a single theoretical framework better than all conceivable others, and (2) there is some evidence in favor of the view that science will continue unto eternity but no evidence in favor of the contrary view. In arguing for claim (1) it is claimed that if we are to understand the sense in which science (...) is progressive we must mean either that science progresses by approximating a final goal which, given an infinite process, will be attained, or that science progresses simply in the sense of expanding a body of funded knowledge such that, given an infinite process, the body of funded knowledge expands ad infinitum. That the second member of this disjunct is false and that the first cannot be shown to be false follows largely from a discussion and rejection of all available arguments (five) against the hypothesis proposed in (1). Further, an argument provided by Peirce (and suitably supplemented) provides additional positive evidence for the truth of the first member. No such argument exists for the truth of the second member. In arguing for claim (2) it is held that evidence in favor of a belief can be purchased by the positive moral value likely to occur as a result of accepting the beliefs, and that there is at least one moral value which accrues to the belief that inquiry will continue forever but which does not accrue to the belief that inquiry will not continue forever. In short, while there is no systematic evidence for or against the view that inquiry will continue forever, we have the right (and duty) to believe that inquiry will continue forever but we do not have the right (and duty) to believe the contrary. (shrink)

Defenders of medical professionals’ rights to conscientious objection (CO) regarding emergency contraception (EC) draw an analogy to CO in the military. Such professionals object to EC since it has the possibility of harming zygotic life, yet if we accept this analogy and utilize jurisprudence to frame the associated public policy, those who refuse to dispense EC would not have their objection honored. Legal precedent holds that one must consistently object to all forms of the relevant activity. In the case at (...) hand, then, I argue that these professionals must also oppose morally innocuous practices that may prevent pregnancy after fertilization. These results reveal that such objectors cannot offer a plausible and consistent objection to harming zygotic life. Additionally, there are good reasons to reject the analogy itself. In either case, these findings call into question the case supporting refusals of EC based on scruples. (shrink)

This landmark volume brings together the work of the world's leading researchers in sublimated perception. This compilation marks a fundamental shift in the current study of subliminal effects: No longer in question is the notion that perception without awareness occurs. Now, the emphasis is on elucidating the parameters of subliminal effects and understanding the conditions under which stimuli perceived without awareness significantly influence affect, cognition, and behavior. PERCEPTION WITHOUT AWARENESS firmly establishes subliminal perception within the mainstream of psychological science. Well (...) represented here are the two main research branches that have emerged: One directly investigates the nature of subliminal effects; the other uses subliminal techniques as tools for investigating psychological phenomena such as hypnosis, dreaming, repression, social judgment and inference, psychopathology, and symptom formation. Broadly grouped into three main sections, the contributed chapters explore * The cognitive perspective--including implicit memory and implicit perception, the measurement of unconscious perceptual processes, and methods for revealing unconscious processes * The clinical perspective--exploring the cognitive and dynamic aspects of subliminal perception, memory, and consciousness; direct recovery of subliminal stimuli; and validation of subliminal psychodynamic activation * The social perspective--discussing subliminal mere-exposure effects, affect and social perception, and the role of subliminality in social psychology Timely and thought-provoking, PERCEPTION WITHOUT AWARENESS is sure to be of enormous interest to all psychoanalytic clinicians and scholars, as well as cognitive, clinical, and social psychologists whose work touches upon issues relating to psychopathology, perception, cognition, and memory. (shrink)

This paper builds upon previous work in which I argue that we should assess a provider's reasons for his or her objection before granting a conscientious exemption. For instance, if the medical professional's reasoned basis involves an empirical mistake, an accommodation is not warranted. This article poses and begins to address several deep questions about the workings of what I call a reason-giving view: What standard should we use to assess reasons? What policy should we adopt in order to evaluate (...) the reasons offered by medical practitioners in support of their objections? I argue for a reasonability standard to perform the essential function of assessing reasons, and I offer considerations in support of a policy establishing conscientious objector status in medicine. (shrink)