_Yanomami_ raises questions central to the field of anthropology—questions concerning the practice of fieldwork, the production of knowledge, and anthropology's intellectual and ethical vision of itself. Using the Yanomami controversy—one of anthropology's most famous and explosive imbroglios—as its starting point, this book draws readers into not only reflecting on but refashioning the very heart and soul of the discipline. It is both the most up-to-date and thorough public discussion of the Yanomami controversy available and an innovative and searching assessment of (...) the current state of anthropology. The Yanomami controversy came to public attention through the publication of Patrick Tierney's best-selling book, _Darkness in El Dorado,_ in which he accuses James Neel, a prominent geneticist who belonged to the National Academy of Sciences, as well as Napoleon Chagnon, whose introductory text on the Yanomami is perhaps the best-selling anthropological monograph of all time, of serious human rights violations. This book identifies the ethical dilemmas of the controversy and raises deeper, structural questions about the discipline. A portion of the book is devoted to a unique roundtable in which important scholars on different sides of the issues debate back and forth with each other. This format draws readers into deciding, for themselves, where they stand on the controversy’s—and many of anthropology’s—central concerns. All of the royalties from this book will be donated to helping the Yanomami improve their healthcare. (shrink)

This collection of ground-breaking essays considers the many dimensions of prayer: how prayer relates us to the divine; prayer's ability to reveal what is essential about our humanity; the power of prayer to transform human desire and action; and the relation of prayer to cognition. It takes up the meaning of prayer from within a uniquely phenomenological point of view, demonstrating that the phenomenology of prayer is as much about the character and boundaries of phenomenological analysis as it is about (...) the heart of religious life.The contributors: Michael F. Andrews, Bruce Ellis Benson, Mark Cauchi, Benjamin Crowe, Mark Gedney, Philip Goodchild, Christina M. Gschwandtner, Lissa McCullough, Cleo McNelly Kearns, Edward F. Mooney, B. Keith Putt, Jill Robbins, Brian Treanor, Merold Westphal, Norman Wirzba, Terence Wright and Terence and James R. Mensch. Bruce Ellis Benson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College. He is the author of Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida, and Marion on Modern Idolatry and The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music. Norman Wirzba is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Georgetown College, Kentucky. He is the author of The Paradise of God and editor of The Essential Agrarian Reader. (shrink)

Review of Terence Irwin, “The Reformation and Scholastic Moral Philosophy,” chapter 29 of The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study, Volume I: From Socrates to the Reformation.

Many philosophers hold antirealist views about morality, according to which moral facts or truths do not exist. Does this imply that other types of normative facts, such as epistemic facts, do not exist? The Normative Web develops a positive answer to this question. By means of an analogy between moral and epistemic facts, Terence Cuneo presents a compelling defence of robust realism in ethics. In so doing, he engages with a range of antirealist positions in epistemology such as error (...) theories, expressivist views, and reductionist views of epistemic reasons. (shrink)

Building on the strengths of the first edition, the second edition of the Irwin Nicomachean Ethics features a revised translation (with little editorial intervention), expanded notes (including a summary of the argument of each chapter), an expanded Introduction, and a revised glossary.

Since the 1950s, Terence Penelhum has been a leading contributor to studies on the thought of David Hume. In this collection, he presents a selection of the best of his essays on Hume. Most of the essays are quite recent and three are previously unpublished.

Since the introduction of mathematical population genetics, its machinery has shaped our fundamental understanding of natural selection. Selection is taken to occur when differential fitnesses produce differential rates of reproductive success, where fitnesses are understood as parameters in a population genetics model. To understand selection is to understand what these parameter values measure and how differences in them lead to frequency changes. I argue that this traditional view is mistaken. The descriptions of natural selection rendered by population genetics models are (...) in general neither predictive nor explanatory and introduce avoidable conceptual confusions. I conclude that a correct understanding of natural selection requires explicitly causal models of reproductive success. *Received May 2006; revised December 2006. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Kansas State University, 201 Dickens Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506; e‐mail: [email protected] . (shrink)

It is widely agreed that possession of consciousness contributes to an entity’s moral status, even if it is not necessary for moral status (Levy and Savulescu 2009). An entity is considered to have...

The most successful theory in all of science--and the basis of one third of our economy--says the strangest things about the world and about us. Can you believe that physical reality is created by our observation of it? Physicists were forced to this conclusion, the quantum enigma, by what they observed in their laboratories. Trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics and found, to their embarrassment, that their theory intimately connects consciousness with the physical world. Quantum Enigma explores (...) what that implies and why some founders of the theory became the foremost objectors to it. Schrodinger showed that it "absurdly" allowed a cat to be in a "superposition" simultaneously dead and alive. Einstein derided the theory's "spooky interactions." With Bell's Theorem, we now know Schrodinger's superpositions and Einstein's spooky interactions indeed exist. Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all of this in non-technical terms with help from some fanciful stories and bits about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, with an emphasis on what is and what is not speculation. Physics' encounter with consciousness is its skeleton in the closet. Because the authors open the closet and examine the skeleton, theirs is a controversial book. Quantum Enigma's description of the experimental quantum facts, and the quantum theory explaining them, is undisputed. Interpreting what it all means, however, is controversial. Every interpretation of quantum physics encounters consciousness. Rosenblum and Kuttner therefore turn to exploring consciousness itself--and encounter quantum physics. Free will and anthropic principles become crucial issues, and the connection of consciousness with the cosmos suggested by some leading quantum cosmologists is mind-blowing. Readers are brought to a boundary where the particular expertise of physicists is no longer a sure guide. They will find, instead, the facts and hints provided by quantum mechanics and the ability to speculate for themselves. (shrink)

What can we learn about management ethics from other cultures and societies? In this textbook, cross-cultural management theory is applied and made relevant to management ethics. To help the reader understand different approaches that global businesses can take to operate successfully and ethically, there are chapters focusing on specific countries and regions. As well as giving the wider geographical, political and cultural contexts, the book includes numerous examples in every chapter to help the reader critique universal assumptions of what is (...) ethical. By taking a closer look at the way we view other cultures and their values, the author challenges us to rethink commonly held assumptions and approaches in cross-cultural management, and to apply a more critical approach. (shrink)

Offers a compelling vision of how to achieve and conduct a liberal but democratic society through the ideal of Neutrality--between people and ideas of the good--and using the tool of Neutral dialogue.

Central to the lives of the religiously committed are not simply religious convictions but also religious practices. The religiously committed, for example, regularly assemble to engage in religious rites, including corporate liturgical worship. Although the participation in liturgy is central to the religious lives of many, few philosophers have given it attention. In this collection of essays, Terence Cuneo turns his attention to liturgy, contending that the topic proves itself to be philosophically rich and rewarding. Taking the liturgical practices (...) of Eastern Christianity as its focal point, Ritualized Faith examines issues such as what the ethical importance of ritualized religious activities might be, what it is to immerse oneself in such activities, and what the significance of liturgical singing and iconography are. In doing so, Cuneo makes sense of these liturgical practices and indicates why they deserve a place in the religiously committed life. (shrink)

Prabhpal Singh has recently defended a relational account of the difference in moral status between fetuses and newborns as a way of explaining why abortion is permissible and infanticide is not. He claims that only a newborn can stand in a parent–child relation, not a fetus, and this relation has a moral dimension that bestows moral value. We challenge Singh’s reasoning, arguing that the case he presents is unconvincing. We suggest that the parent–child relation is better understood as an extension (...) of an existing relationship formed during the gestational period. The change in this relation at birth is not sufficient to justify the radical change in moral status required to rule out infanticide while accepting the permissibility of abortion. Given that the moral status of orphans is also problematic under Singh’s account, we conclude that Singh has not shown that a newborn has greater moral worth than a fetus. (shrink)

In this paper I make some distinctions, which I hope are of help for Laura Valentini and others. Are the recommendations of a theory of what the government should do possible and are they feasible? Is the project of the theorist possibility-sensitive and is the project feasibility-sensitive?

The second edition of The Great Psychotherapy Debate has been updated and revised to include a history of healing practices, medicine, and psychotherapy, an expanded theoretical presentation of the contextual model, an examination of therapist effects, and a thorough review of the research on common factors such as the alliance, expectations, and empathy.

This exceptional book examines and explains Plato's answer to the normative question, "How ought we to live?" It discusses Plato's conception of the virtues; his views about the connection between the virtues and happiness; and the account of reason, desire, and motivation that underlies his arguments about the virtues. Plato's answer to the epistemological question, "How can we know how we ought to live?" is also discussed. His views on knowledge, belief, and inquiry, and his theory of Forms, are examined, (...) insofar as they are relevant to his ethical view. Terence Irwin traces the development of Plato's moral philosophy, from the Socratic dialogues to its fullest exposition in the Republic. Plato's Ethics discusses Plato's reasons for abandoning or modifying some aspects of Socratic ethics, and for believing that he preserves Socrates' essential insights. A brief and selective discussion of the Statesmen, Philebus, and Laws is included. Replacing Irwin's earlier Plato's Moral Theory (Oxford, 1977), this book gives a clearer and fuller account of the main questions and discusses some recent controversies in the interpretation of Plato's ethics. It does not presuppose any knowledge of Greek or any extensive knowledge of Plato. (shrink)

There is no greater testament to Emmanuel Levinas' reputation as an enigmatic thinker than in his meditations on eschatology and its relevance for contemporary thought. Levinas has come to be seen as a principal representative in Continental philosophy - alongside the likes of Heidegger, Benjamin, Adorno and Zizek - of a certain philosophical messianism, differing from its religious counterpart in being formulated apparently without appeal to any dogmatic content. To date, however, Levinas' messianism has not received the same detailed attention (...) as other aspects of his wide ranging ethical vision. Terence Holden attempts to redress this imbalance, tracing the evolution of the messianic idea across Levinas' career, emphasising the transformations or indeed displacements which this idea undergoes in taking on philosophical intelligibility. He suggests that, in order to crack the enigma which this idea represents, we must consider not only the Jewish tradition from which Levinas draws inspiration, but also Nietzsche, who ostensibly would represent the greatest rival to the messianic idea in the history of philosophy, with his notion of the ‘parody' of messianism. >. (shrink)

Moral realism of a paradigmatic sort -- Defending the parallel -- The parity premise -- Epistemic nihilism -- Epistemic expressivism : traditional views -- Epistemic expressivism : nontraditional views -- Epistemic reductionism -- Three objections to the core argument.

Our project in this essay is to showcase nonnaturalistic moral realism’s resources for responding to metaphysical and epistemological objections by taking the view in some new directions. The central thesis we will argue for is that there is a battery of substantive moral propositions that are also nonnaturalistic conceptual truths. We call these propositions the moral fixed points. We will argue that they must find a place in any system of moral norms that applies to beings like us, in worlds (...) similar to our own. By committing themselves to true propositions of these sorts, nonnaturalists can fashion a view that is highly attractive in its own right, and resistant to the most prominent objections that have been pressed against it. (shrink)

Thinking with Literature offers a succinct introduction to a cognitive literary criticsm, broad in scope but focusing on a particular cluster of approaches, some of which have so far been little used. Explanatory chapters and sections alternate with close readings of literary texts from a wide range of different periods and genres. The literary readings are not mere 'examples' of cognitive topics, still less of hypotheses in cognitive science: the central argument is that cognitive criticism must draw its primary energies (...) from the complexities of literature itself. The main objective of the book is to induce a change of perspective in the reader: to see the point, and the extreme interest, of adopting a cognitive approach to literary criticism. (shrink)

Human cooperation is held to be an evolutionary puzzle because people voluntarily engage in costly cooperation, and costly punishment of non-cooperators, even among anonymous strangers they will never meet again. The costs of such cooperation cannot be recovered through kin-selection, reciprocal altruism, indirect reciprocity, or costly signaling. A number of recent authors label this behavior ‘strong reciprocity’, and argue that it is: (a) a newly documented aspect of human nature, (b) adaptive, and (c) evolved by group selection. We argue exactly (...) the opposite; that the phenomenon is: (a) not new, (b) maladaptive, and (c) evolved by individual selection. In our perspective, the apparent puzzle disappears to reveal a biological and evolutionary logic to human cooperation. Group selection may play a role in theory, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain human cooperation. Our alternative solution is simpler, makes fewer assumptions, and is more parsimonious with the empirical data. (shrink)

In a laboratory experiment, we use a public goods game to examine the hypothesis that human subjects use an involuntary eye-detector mechanism for evaluating the level of privacy. Half of our subjects are “watched” by images of a robot presented on their computer screen. The robot—named Kismet and invented at MIT—is constructed from objects that are obviously not human with the exception of its eyes. In our experiment, Kismet produces a significant difference in behavior that is not consistent with existing (...) economic models of preferences, either self- or other-regarding. Subjects who are “watched” by Kismet contribute 29% more to the public good than do subjects in the same setting without Kismet. (shrink)

In this book Terence Parsons revives the older tradition of taking such objects at face value. Using various modern techniques from logic and the philosophy of language, he formulates a metaphysical theory of nonexistent objects. The theory is given a formalization in symbolism rich enough to contain definite descriptions, modal operators, and epistemic contexts, and the book includes a discussion which relates the formalized theory explicitly to English.

It is a truism that where one starts from and the direction one goes determines where one ends up. This is no less true in philosophy than elsewhere, and certainly no less true in matters dealing with the relationship between God’s foreknowledge and human free actions. In what follows I will argue that the incompatibilist view that Fischer and others stalwartly defend results from the particular starting point they choose, and that if one adopts a different starting point about divine (...) knowledge the logical incompatibility they envision and philosophically anguish over evaporates. (shrink)

I. Introduction : sortir du badiousisme Mehdi Belhaj Kacem a publié une longue lettre ouverte à Tristan Garcia où il décrit une “nouvelle conjecture” qui est en train d’émerger avec la génération montante des jeunes philosophes, qui commencent à se libérer de l’espace conceptuel défini par l’hégémonie intellectuelle exercée par Alain Badiou, pendant la dernière décennie, comme Maître Penseur incontesté. Selon MBK une nouvelle configuration conceptuelle est en train de se former, et sa “lettre...