Johnston traced the debates within human geography since 1945 over philosophical and methodological issues. In the present book, the aim is the complementary one of giving an introduction to the foundation of those discussions, assuming no prior knowledge of philosophy.

INTRODUCTION: EXPLORING THE FUTURE OF GEOGRAPHY RJ Johnston Geographers, not for the first time, are undertaking a critical reappraisal of their discipline ...

In searching for appropriate business ethics for the 21st century, it is necessary to embrace a range of inter-related disciplines such as psychology and ethics, but also areas including philosophy, politics and religion. This text acts as an example of interdisciplinary scholarship.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is Hume A "Classical Utilitarian"? The central notion of utilitarianism is that a right kind of action or a virtuous quality of character is one which in the long run promotes the welfare of society or, as it is frequently stated, which promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number. But when we try to use the utilitarian concept as a guide for evaluating various possible ultimate distributions of (...) goods among the members of a society, we find there are alternative ways of making this goal more precise. I intend to review briefly five different ways in which the utilitarian goal can be stated more precisely. Then I will consider which one of these more precise formulations most accurately reflects what Hume 2 seems to have had in mind when he spoke of "public utility" or "the good of mankind" or "the true interests of mankind" (ICPM, p. 13) or "public interest and utility "(ICPM, p. 34). II The most effective way of illustrating the vagueness of such phrases as "the welfare of society" or "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" is to consider which of various specific but simple distributions of goods would be preferred by a utilitarian. This technique also is helpful in displaying the differences among the various ways of stating the utilitarian goal in more precise terms. Let us suppose that there are units of "goodness" or "welfare" all 2. of which are equal to each other. These units of "goodness" or "welfare" can be taken from one individual and given to another. Furthermore, the number of such units is not fixed, nor is the number of individuals among whom the units of value will be distributed. The distribution of goods among individuals is to be considered in a completely abstract way so that no individuals are to be more deserving then any others. In fact, from a utilitarian point of view, various actions and qualities of character are to be evaluated in terms of whether in the long run they hinder or promote the ideal distribution of goods being considered. To illustrate this technique, let us examine two conceivable distributions of goods. Individual Scheme I Scheme II A 5 10 B 5 3 C 5 3 In Scheme I there are fifteen units of goodness divided evenly among the three individuals A, B, and C. In Scheme II there are sixteen units of goodness distributed in such a way that A has twice as many units as he had in Scheme I while B and C have only three units each. Given that the utilitarian wants to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number, which Scheme would he choose to promote, 4 Scheme I or Scheme II? One variety of utilitarianism, the first of five to be distinguished, opts for Scheme II on grounds that the total number of units of welfare is greater (16 to only 15 for Scheme I). The emphasis here is on the first half of the utilitarian formula of "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" ; the aim is to increase the total amount of happiness. This view is usually called "classical utilitarianism " on grounds that it supposedly was the view championed by the classical utilitarians (Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, 5 Hume, Adam Smith, Bentham, J. S. Mill, and Sidgwick). A second variety of utilitarianism would opt for Scheme 3. I in the comparison given above on grounds that two individuals (B and C) would be better off with Scheme I while only one individual (A) would be better off with Scheme II. The emphasis here is on the second half of the utilitarian formula ; the aim is to increase the number of individuals who are better off. This view can be called "self-interest-vote utilitarianism" on grounds that the preferred scheme is the one which gets the most votes when each person votes in terms of his own self-interest. (Note that this interpretation of utilitarianism can be used only when the Schemes being compared have the same number of persons sharing the goods. ) A third variety of utilitarianism is that which declares the goal to be maximizing the average units of welfare available per person. As long... (shrink)

Synthetic organisms are at the same time organisms and artifacts. In this paper we aim to determine whether such entities have a good of their own, and so are candidates for being directly morally considerable. We argue that the good of non-sentient organisms is grounded in an etiological account of teleology, on which non-sentient organisms can come to be teleologically organized on the basis of their natural selection etiology. After defending this account of teleology, we argue that there are no (...) grounds for excluding synthetic organisms from having a good also grounded in their teleological organization. However, this comes at a cost; traditional artifacts will also be seen as having a good of their own. We defend this as the best solution to the puzzle about what to say about the good of synthetic organisms. (shrink)

R M HARE HAS CLAIMED THAT ALL NATURALISTIC ETHICAL\nTHEORIES ARE INCORRECT BECAUSE THEY FAIL TO TAKE ACCOUNT OF\nTHE COMMENDING FUNCTION OF ETHICAL TERMS. BUT HARE ASSUMES\nTHE POINT AT ISSUE BY SUPPOSING THAT NO DEFINING\nCHARACTERISTICS COULD THEMSELVES BE TAKEN AS COMMENDATORY.\nIF 'X IS GOOD' IS TAKEN TO MEAN 'AN INFORMED,\nDISINTERESTED, RATIONAL, NORMAL HUMAN SPECTATOR WOULD\nAPPROVE OF X', THEN THE DEFINIENS WOULD BE JUST AS\nCOMMENDATORY AS THE DEFINIENDUM.

UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASONING develops critical reasoning skills and guides students in the improvement of their scientific and technological literacy. The authors teach students how to understand and critically evaluate the scientific information they encounter in both textbooks and the popular media. With its focus on scientific pedagogy, UNDERSTANDING SCIENTIFIC REASONING helps students learn how to examine scientific reports with a reasonable degree of sophistication. The book also explains how to reason through case studies using the same informal logic skills employed (...) by scientists and to analyze a complex series of propositions and hypotheses using sound scientific reasoning. (shrink)

Climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have so far failed to achieve a robust international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Game theory has been used to investigate possible climate negotiation solutions and strategies for accomplishing them. Negotiations have been primarily modelled as public goods games such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, though coordination games or games of conflict have also been used. Many of these models have solutions, in the form of equilibria, corresponding to possible (...) positive outcomes—that is, agreements with the requisite emissions reduction commitments. Other work on large-scale social dilemmas suggests that it should be possible to resolve the climate problem. It therefore seems that equilibrium selection may be a barrier to successful negotiations. Here we use an N-player bargaining game in an agent-based model with learning dynamics to examine the past failures of and future prospects for a robust international climate agreement. The model suggests reasons why the desirable solutions identified in previous game-theoretic models have not yet been accomplished in practice and what mechanisms might be used to achieve these solutions. (shrink)

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

This article discusses relations among the multiple levels of analysis present in macro-sociological explanation—i.e., relations of individual, structural, and institutional processes. It also criticizes the doctrinal insistence upon single-level individualistic explanation found in some prominent contemporary sociological theory. For illustrative material the article returns to intellectual uses of Weber's "Protestant Ethic thesis," showing how an artificial version has been employed as a kind of proof text for the alleged scientific necessity of individualist explanation. Our alternative exposition renders the discussion of (...) Protestantism and capitalism in an explicitly multilevel way, distinguishing possible individual-level, social-organizational, and institutional linkages. The causal processes involved are distinct ones, with the more structural and institutional forms neither captured nor attainable by individual-level thinking. We argue more generally that "methodological individualisms" confuse issues of explanation with issues about microfoundations. This persistent intellectual conflation may be rooted in the broader folk models of liberal individualism. (shrink)

We show in ZFC that if there is no proper class inner model with a Woodin cardinal, then there is an absolutely definablecore modelthat is close toVin various ways.

We describe some of the ways that the field of content analysis is being transformed in an Era of Big Data. We argue that content analysis, from its beginning, has been concerned with extracting the main meanings of a text and mapping those meanings onto the space of a textual corpus. In contrast, we suggest that the emergence of new styles of text mining tools is creating an opportunity to develop a different kind of content analysis that we describe as (...) a computational hermeneutics. Here the goal is to go beyond a mapping of the main meaning of a text to mimic the kinds of questions and concerns that have traditionally been the focus of a hermeneutically grounded close reading, a reading that focuses on what Kenneth Burke described as the poetic meanings of a text. We illustrate this approach by referring to our own work concerning the rhetorical character of US National Security Strategy documents. (shrink)

Using the emerging technology of large-scale textual analysis, this study examines the use of the term ‘customer satisfaction’ and its variants in the annual reports issued by publicly traded U.S. corporations and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Form 10-K. We document the frequency of the term’s occurrence in 10-Ks over the 1995–2013 period and the differences in usage across industries. We then relate the term’s usage in 10-Ks to subsequent scores from the American Customer Satisfaction Index to (...) determine whether management’s discussion of customer satisfaction in financial disclosures is credible. The commitment of management to shareholders versus, more broadly, stakeholders is a central question in business ethics, and the integrity of management communication is a fundamental construct in the American Marketing Association’s Statement of Ethics. We document a complex relation between management’s discussion of customer satisfaction and subsequently reported satisfaction. We find that the general use of customer satisfaction in 10-K documents is negatively correlated with subsequent ACSI scores. However, for retail firms, when the phrase is located near words indicating measurement or monitoring of the phenomenon, the empirical relation is reversed and becomes positive. (shrink)

Much social theory takes for granted the core conceit of modern culture, that modern actors-individuals, organizations, nation states-are autochthonous and natural entities, no longer really embedded in culture. Accordingly, while there is much abstract metatheory about "actors" and their "agency," there is arguably little theory about the topic. This article offers direct arguments about how the modern (European, now global) cultural system constructs the modern actor as an authorized agent for various interests via an ongoing relocation into society of agency (...) originally located in transcendental authority or in natural forces environing the social system. We see this authorized agentic capability as an essential feature of what modern theory and culture call an "actor," and one that, when analyzed, helps greatly in explaining a number of otherwise anomalous or little analyzed features of modern individuals, organizations, and states. These features include their isomorphism and standardization, their internal decoupling, their extraordinarily complex structuration, and their capacity for prolific collective action. (shrink)

We show that either of the following hypotheses imply that there is an inner model with a proper class of strong cardinals and a proper class of Woodin cardinals. 1) There is a countably closed cardinal k ≥ N₃ such that □k and □(k) fail. 2) There is a cardinal k such that k is weakly compact in the generic extension by Col(k, k⁺). Of special interest is 1) with k = N₃ since it follows from PFA by theorems of (...) Todorcevic and Velickovic. Our main new technical result, which is due to the first author, is a weak covering theorem for the model obtained by stacking mice over $K^c ||k.$. (shrink)

How far does a researcher’s responsibility extend when an incidental finding is identified? Balancing pertinent ethical principles such as beneficence, respect for persons, and duty to rescue is not always straightforward, particularly in neuroimaging research where empirical data that might help guide decision making are lacking. We conducted a systematic survey of perceptions and preferences of 396 investigators, research participants, and Institutional Review Board members at our institution. Using the partial entrustment model as described by Richardson, we argue that our (...) data supports universal reading by a neuroradiologist of all research MRI scans for incidental findings and providing full disclosure to all participants. (shrink)