Knowledge about moral development and elderly persons is very limited. A hermeneutical interpretative study was conducted with healthy elderly persons in order to explore and describe their moral orientation based on the paradigms of justice and care . The types of moral reasoning, dominance, alignment and orientation were determined. All but one participant included both types of reasoning when discussing an ethical conflict. None of the men’s moral reasoning was dominated by caring, but justice dominated the reasoning of four women. (...) The implications for ethical decision-making and future research are discussed. (shrink)

Knowledge about moral development and elderly persons is very limited. A hermeneutical interpretative study was conducted with healthy elderly persons (n = 20) in order to explore and describe their moral orientation based on the paradigms of justice (Kohlberg) and care (Gilligan). The types of moral reasoning, dominance, alignment and orientation were determined. All but one participant included both types of reasoning when discussing an ethical conflict. None of the men’s moral reasoning was dominated by caring, but justice dominated the (...) reasoning of four women. The implications for ethical decision-making and future research are discussed. (shrink)

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

This collection of essays, offered in honor of the distinguished career of prominent political philosophy professor Clifford Orwin, brings together internationally renowned scholars to provide a wide context and discuss various aspects of the virtue of “humanity” through the history of political philosophy.

The central project of the Critique of Pure Reason is to answer two sets of questions: What can we know and how can we know it? and What can't we know and why can't we know it? The essays in this collection are intended to help students read the Critique of Pure Reason with a greater understanding of its central themes and arguments, and with some awareness of important lines of criticism of those themes and arguments.

The preface by Parsons begins: “This book contains the most substantial philosophical papers I wrote for publication up to 1977, with one new essay added. … The collection is unified by a common point of view underlying the essays and by certain problems that are approached from different angles in different essays. Most are directly concerned with the philosophy of mathematics, and even in those that are not … the connection between the issues discussed and mathematics is never far (...) from the surface … in the Introduction I articulate some elements of my general point of view and point out some connections between the essays.“ The nine previously published papers are unrevised except in some cases for added postscripts and footnotes. Of the essays written for publication before 1977, essay 7, “Quine on the Philosophy of Mathematics,” has not been, in fact, previously published. The eleventh, “Sets and modality,“ is the new essay. A general point of view does indeed show itself in these essays, but it is rigorously subordinated to careful and balanced analyses of the problems discussed. That is why, without sharing all elements of the point of view, I have profited so much from these essays and, seeing them collected together, am so impressed by them. (shrink)

Coming to terms with Adorno and Eisler's Composing for the Films (Komposition für den Film) has never been easy. First-time readers in 1947 undoubtedly found the book puzzling, starting with its authorship. The art deco dust jacket transmits in chartreuse lettering against a dark grey background only five words: the title and the single name “Eisler.” Yet Hanns Eisler is not the sole author, a revelation delayed until 1969 (though still questioned), when, seven years after Eisler's death, his collaborator, Theodor (...) W. Adorno, issued a German-language version of the text.1 The preface to the 1947 edition compounds the likelihood of…. (shrink)

This collection of essays is dedicated to 'Joe' Karel Lambert. The contributors are all personally affected to Joe in some way or other, but they are definitely not the only ones. Whatever excuses there are - there are some -, the editors apologize to whomever they have neglected. But even so the collection displays how influential Karel Lambert has been, personally and through his teaching and his writings. The display is in alphabetical order - with one exception: Bas van Fraassen, (...) being about the earliest student of Karel Lambert, opens the collection with some reminiscences. Naturally, one of the focal points of this volume is Lambert's logical thinking and (or: freed of) ontological thinking. Free logic is intimately connected with description theory. Bas van Fraassen gives a survey of the development of the area, and Charles Daniels points to difficulties with definite descriptions in modal contexts and stories. Peter Woodruff addresses the relation between free logic and supervaluation semantics, presenting a novel condition which recovers desirable metatheoretic properties for free logic under that semantics. Terence Parsons shows how free logic can be utilized in interpreting sentences as purporting to denote events (true ones succeed and false ones fail) and how this helps to understand natural language. (shrink)

This is a forthright and refreshing book. It aims to bring the clarifying power of analytic philosophy to the luxuriant variety in one part of Meinong's ontology. Parson's title is meant to be read literally: it is not propositions, numbers, universals or sets, but only particular objects whose nonexistence concerns him. Parsons gives two reasons for believing that there are nonexistent objects. First, we match objects against the sets of their properties. When every existing object has been listed, we (...) carry on making sets of properties. These additional sets correlate with nonexistent objects, e.g., the golden mountain. Second, there are the many occasions when we use names or definite descriptions to characterize truly such nonexistent objects as Pegasus and Sherlock Holmes. There is, says Parsons, no satisfactory reason for rephrasing these sentences when we refuse to paraphrase sentences of the same form having existing objects as their referents. (shrink)

Today we are all familiar with the iconic pictures of the nebulae produced by the Hubble Space Telescope’s digital cameras. But there was a time, before the successful application of photography to the heavens, in which scientists had to rely on handmade drawings of these mysterious phenomena. Observing by Hand sheds entirely new light on the ways in which the production and reception of handdrawn images of the nebulae in the nineteenth century contributed to astronomical observation. Omar W. Nasim investigates (...) hundreds of unpublished observing books and paper records from six nineteenth-century observers of the nebulae: Sir John Herschel; William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse; William Lassell; Ebenezer Porter Mason; Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel; and George Phillips Bond. Nasim focuses on the ways in which these observers created and employed their drawings in data-driven procedures, from their choices of artistic materials and techniques to their practices and scientific observation. He examines the ways in which the act of drawing complemented the acts of seeing and knowing, as well as the ways that making pictures was connected to the production of scientific knowledge. An impeccably researched, carefully crafted, and beautifully illustrated piece of historical work, Observing by Hand will delight historians of science, art, and the book, as well as astronomers and philosophers. (shrink)

An excellent translation of the seminal and highly influential section of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft entitled "Religionssoziologie." This section, really an extended monograph, is Weber's most profound systematic analysis and theoretical account of religious communities. His basic concepts and distinctions—priest and prophet, rationalization and breakthrough, ethical and exemplary prophecy—have long provided the basic framework for the best work in the Sociology of Religion in this country. His study of the relationship between religious breakthrough and social status is masterful. His discussion of (...) "salvation" and the various kinds of asceticism and mysticism is invaluable. Talcott Parsons' introduction is helpfully expository and judiciously critical. In short, a truly classic text is now available in a worthy English version.—W. G. E. (shrink)