The use of a photomultiplier to measure the reduction in counting statistics noise (from the usual N1/2 form) which is expected to occur for squeezed coherent light is shown to lead to no reduction or to an increase of the noise unless the number of photons in a fundamental measuring time of the photomultiplier is very large. This fundamental time is estimated to be less than 10−13 sec for ordinary detectors. A technique for using squeezed states for determining the time (...) a photomultiplier takes to detect the presence of a photon is presented. (shrink)

The Unruh-Wald scenario for mining quantum black holes is applied to de Sitter space. The following questions are addressed: Will the generalized second law of thermodynamics be maintained for de Sitter horizons? Does the mining process allow the recovery of unlimited energy from the cosmological gravitational field? The evaporation of a black hole in de Sitter space is also investigated in the context of the second law.

We discuss the Starobinskii-Unruh process for the Kerr black hole. We show how this effect is related to the theory of squeezed states. We then consider a simple model for a highly relativistic rotating star and show that the Starobinskii-Unruh effect is absent.

ABSTRACT When does a state of affairs constitute a harm to someone? Comparative accounts say that being worse off constitutes harm. The temporal version of the comparative account is seldom taken seriously, due to apparently fatal counterexamples. I defend the temporal version against these counterexamples, and show that it is in fact more plausible than the prominent counterfactual version of the account. Non-comparative accounts say that being badly off constitutes harm. However, neither the temporal comparative account nor the non-comparative account (...) can correctly classify all harms. I argue that we should combine them into a hybrid account of harm. The hybrid account is extensionally adequate and presents a unified view on the nature of harm. (shrink)

Many people believe that we have moral duties towards those we bring into existence in the short term: our children. Many people also believe that we have moral duties towards those we bring into existence in the long term: future generations. In this article, I explore how these beliefs are connected. I argue that the present generation is morally responsible for future generations in virtue of bringing them into existence. This responsibility entails moral duties to ensure that future people have (...) adequate life prospects. These duties are held directly towards future generations. I argue that this direct argument can overcome challenges that indirect arguments, which justify moral duties concerning future generations via moral duties towards present children, face. The upshot is that considerations from procreative ethics help to illustrate that the present generation stands in a morally relevant special relationship to future generations, a fact that is often overlooked in intergenerational ethics. (shrink)

Many people hold the constraint against doing harm, the view that the reason against doing harm is stronger than the reason against merely allowing harm, everything else being equal. Mogensen and MacAskill (2021) have recently argued that when considering indirect long-term consequences of our everyday behavior, the constraint against doing harm faces a problem: it has the absurd implication that we should do as little as possible in our lives. In this paper, I explore the view that, for behavior that (...) does not increase anyone’s ex ante risk of suffering harm, the reason against doing harm is not stronger than the reason against merely allowing harm, everything else being equal. I argue that this view is plausible, show how it solves the paralysis problem, and defend it against objections. (shrink)

Can a corporation have a conscience? What is wrong with reverse discrimination? Can ethical management and managed care coexist? Hoffman, Frederick, and Schwartz address these and many other current, intriguing, often complex issues in corporate morality. This introductory business ethics text contains a thorough general introduction on ethical theory, 54 readings, and 25 cases. Divided into five parts, each with an introduction that presents the major themes of its articles and cases, the text contains an impartial, point-counterpoint presentation of different (...) perspectives on the most important issues being debated in business ethics. Each chapter ends with questions that can be used for student discussion, review, tests/quizzes, or for student assignments. The fourth edition has 27 new readings, 15 new cases, and 10 new mini-cases. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the view that within a rights-based ethical framework, the moral status of future generations is best understood as that of present rightsholders. I argue that in this way it can be justified that we have obligations towards future generations. This justification in turn is of great relevance for many issues in moral theory and applied ethics. In the first part of the paper, I argue that the fact that future persons will have rights in the (...) future cannot fully account for present obligations. The missing link in this argument cannot be provided by approaches that infer those obligations mediately. In the second part of the paper, I argue that existing is not a necessary condition for being a rightsholder. First, our own future selves should be said to have rights even though they do not exist at present. Second, even at present, uncertainty challenges the relationship between rightsholders and obligation bearers: often enough, obligations depend on presuppositions or suspicions about other persons’ existence. In light of these cases, we should conceive of rightsholders as place holders, that is, sets of (actual) individuals whose existence or identity can be unknown or indetermined, with specific properties. Therefore, future generations can coherently be said to have rights now that correspond to our present obligations towards them. (shrink)

berkley's line of reasoning about sex and pain experience suggests a completely different perspective on sex differences in human experimental, clinical, and epidemiological pain research. Although physiological mechanisms may place women at greater risk for pain, women may have found ways to dampen the effect of these mechanisms. Nevertheless, it is a challenge to extrapolate physiological mechanisms in human phenomena from outcomes observed in animal models.

Many people think that the moral reason against doing harm is stronger than the moral reason against allowing harm. What should these people think about doing and allowing good? I address this question by distinguishing two ways of understanding the doing/allowing distinction. The agency view implies that the moral reason for doing good is stronger than the moral reason for allowing good. The imposition view implies that the moral reason against preventing good is stronger than the moral reason against failing (...) to do good. I defend the imposition view and explore its implications for the comparative strength of harm-based and benefit-based reasons. (shrink)

Recent work by Ingmar Persson and Jason Hanna has posed an interesting new challenge for deontologists: How can they account for so-called cases of letting oneself do harm? In this article, I argue that cases of letting oneself do harm are structurally similar to real-world cases such as climate change, and that deontologists need an account of the moral status of these cases to provide moral guidance in real-world cases. I then explore different ways in which deontologists can solve this (...) challenge and argue that the most promising way to conceive of cases of letting oneself do harm is as nonstandard cases of allowing harm, supplemented with an additional argument for the moral relevance of one's own agency. The upshot is that cases of letting oneself do harm are both more theoretically challenging and practically important than has been acknowledged. (shrink)

Many people believe that we have a moral reason to benefit others. However, this reason is commonly thought to be weaker than the reason against harming others. This might explain why relatively little attention has been paid to the morality of benefiting in non-identity cases. My aim is to convince you, in the next few paragraphs, that this is a decisive oversight. The non-identity problem arises in cases of harming and in cases of benefiting alike. It is therefore broader in (...) scope than is often acknowledged. The most promising solutions of the non-identity problem are harm-based, but such solutions will need to provide suitable accounts of both harming and benefiting. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 pandemic governments across the globe have provided unparalleled support to private sector firms. As a result, new oversight mechanisms are urgently needed, to enable society to assess and, if necessary, redress, moves by firms which have taken government aid. Many jurisdictions have seen the introduction of ‘piecemeal’ conditionality on different pots of aid. This paper argues that a better response would be to adopt a more unified approach. In particular, the paper explores the social licence framework as (...) a potential way to ‘build back better’. It is argued that the nature of the implicit social contract between society and the private sector provides the normative force underpinning demands for a social purpose for business, and that this purpose in turn can be used to specify the conditions firms must meet to legitimise their operations. The paper then considers three core elements involved in any introduction of a social licence framework, and surveys the potential benefits and challenges that might emerge in moving towards a social licence framework. (shrink)

Im Vergleich mit anderen rechtsphilosophischen Schriften Platons - etwa der Politeia - hat der Dialog "Kriton" in Kontinentaleuropa bisher wenig Beachtung gefunden. Anders als im anglo-amerikanischen Wissenschaftsraum fanden sich bisher nur vereinzelte Stellungnahmen in Gesamtdarstellungen zu Platons Philosophie.Die Monographie folgt den Ereignissen und Gedankengangen der Dialogpartner und rekonstruiert erstmals umfassend den rechtsphilosophischen Gehalt der Schrift, das heiat die zugunsten der Pflicht zum Rechtsgehorsam vorgebrachten Argumente. Diese Rekonstruktion fuhrt zu der Erkenntnis, daa Platon im "Kriton" eine konsistente und mit seinen anderen (...) (Fruh-) Schriften kompatible Begrundung fur die Pflicht zum Rechtsgehorsam geliefert hat, die im Kern auch heute noch bedenkenswert ist.Die Analyse ist daher nicht nur fur eine vollstandige Erfassung der gewichtigen Rechtsphilosophie Platons, sondern auch fur die gegenwartige Diskussion um die Gehorsamspflicht von Nutzen. (shrink)

We present a general relativistic model of a spherical shell of matter with a perfect fluid on its surface coupled to an internal oscillator, which generalizes a model recently introduced by the authors to construct a self-gravitating interferometer. The internal oscillator evolution is defined with respect to the local proper time of the shell, allowing the oscillator to serve as a local clock that ticks differently depending on the shell’s position and momentum. A Hamiltonian reduction is performed on the system, (...) and an approximate quantum description is given to the reduced phase space. If we focus only on the external dynamics, we must trace out the clock degree of freedom, and this results in a form of intrinsic decoherence that shares some features with a proposed “universal” decoherence mechanism attributed to gravitational time dilation. We note that the proposed decoherence remains present in the limit of flat spacetime, emphasizing that the effect can be attributed entirely to proper time differences, and thus is not necessarily related to gravity. Whereas the effect described in vanishes in the absence of an external gravitational field, our approach bootstraps the gravitational contribution to the time dilation decoherence by including self-interaction, yielding a fundamentally gravitational intrinsic decoherence effect. (shrink)

A complete translation of Aristotle's classic that is both faithful and readable, along with an introduction that provides the modern reader with a means of understanding this seminal work and its impact on our culture. In this volume, Joe Sachs (translator of Aristotle's _Physics, Metaphysics,_ and the _Nicomachean Ethics _)also supplements his excellent translation with well-chosen notes and glossary of important terms. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a (...) glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Aristotle’s immediate audience. (shrink)

Explores the nature and types of mystical experience and discusses the value of mysticism for humanity.

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show in a new (...) way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)

W. V. Quine is one of the most eminent philosophers alive today. Now in his mid-eighties he has produced a sharp, sprightly book that encapsulates the whole of his philosophical enterprise, including his thinking on all the key components of his epistemological stance--especially the value of logic and mathematics. New readers of Quine may have to go slowly, fathoming for themselves the richness that past readers already know lies between these elegant lines. For the faithful there is much to ponder. (...) In this short book, based on lectures delivered in Spain in 1990, Quine begins by locating his work historically. He provides a lightning tour of the history of philosophy (particularly the history of epistemology), beginning with Plato and culminating in an appreciative sketch of Carnap's philosophical ambitions and achievements. This leads, in the second chapter, to an introduction to Quine's attempt to naturalize epistemology, which emphasizes his continuities with Carnap rather than the differences between them. The next chapters develop the naturalistic story of the development of science to take account of how our conceptual apparatus is enhanced so that we can view the world as containing re-identifiable objects. Having explained the role of observation sentences in providing a checkpoint for assessing scientific theories, and having despaired of constructing an empirical criterion to determine which sentences are meaningful, Quine in the remaining chapters takes up a variety of important issues about knowledge. He concludes with an extended treatment of his views about reference and meaning and his attitudes toward psychological and modal notions. The presentation is distinctive, and the many small refinements of detail and formulation will fascinate all who know Quine's philosophy. (shrink)

The Deck Romania case is intended for MBA and Executive Education programs and focuses on the ‘gritty’ aspects of business in emerging market countries. It is particularly powerful in combining traditional managerial concerns like emerging market strategy and global supplier relationships with the larger challenges of cross-cultural and country differences in the conduct of business. Deck is a U.S.-based automotive supplier and part of a joint venture in Romania. In October 2006 the JV needed to expand to meet the needs (...) of one of its major global customers, Renault. The investment would be to support Renault-Dacia’s highly successful new world car, the Logan. But the question of expansion reveals that the JV does not meet many of Deck’s global manufacturing and business practice criteria. Deck’s dilemma is how to respond to the pressure from its global customer to make a substantial investment in a small market that may not meet financial or business practice expectations. (shrink)

The Deck Romania case is intended for MBA and Executive Education programs and focuses on the ‘gritty’ aspects of business in emerging market countries. It is particularly powerful in combining traditional managerial concerns like emerging market strategy and global supplier relationships with the larger challenges of cross-cultural and country differences in the conduct of business. Deck is a U.S.-based automotive supplier and part of a joint venture in Romania. In October 2006 the JV needed to expand to meet the needs (...) of one of its major global customers, Renault. The investment would be to support Renault-Dacia’s highly successful new world car, the Logan. But the question of expansion reveals that the JV does not meet many of Deck’s global manufacturing and business practice criteria. Deck’s dilemma is how to respond to the pressure from its global customer to make a substantial investment in a small market that may not meet financial or business practice expectations. (shrink)

A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes is a popular-science book on cosmology (the study of the origin and evolution of the universe) by British physicist Stephen Hawking. It was first published in 1988. Hawking wrote the book for readers who have no prior knowledge of the universe and people who are interested in learning.

While the idea of philosophy as conceptual analysis has attracted many adherents and undergone a number of variations, in general it suffers from an authority problem with two dimensions. First, it is unclear why the analysis of a concept should have objective authority: why explicating what we mean should express how things are. Second, conceptual analysis seems to lack intersubjective authority: why philosophical analysis should apply to more than a parochial group of individuals. I argue that Hegel’s conception of social (...) ontology, focused on his concept of “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit), helps to explain how concepts (and their explication) have both objective and intersubjective authority in the social domain. Hegel claims that modern institutions are the product of self-conscious purposes, so that they are conceptually constituted. Concepts do not just represent these objects and so depend on a contingent relation to them. As many contemporary social ontologists agree, this means that our concepts of these institutions are uniquely epistemically “transparent.” They have objective authority. Concepts have intersubjective authority in the modern world as well, according to Hegel. However, I show that this feature of Hegel’s account does not rely on the solution to a philosophical problem. Rather, since the concepts of modern ethical life are “essentially contested,” their content depends on the practical and political agreement of modern subjects. This means that concepts can only have objective authority if some prior intersubjective agreement has been reached. The role of philosophy as conceptual analysis is thus importantly dependent on political developments. (shrink)

_Selections_ seeks to provide an accurate and readable translation that will allow the reader to follow Aristotle's use of crucial technical terms and to grasp the details of his argument. Unlike anthologies that combine translations by many hands, this volume includes a fully integrated set of translations by a two-person team. The glossary--the most detailed in any edition--explains Aristotle's vocabulary and indicates the correspondences between Greek and English words. Brief notes supply alternative translations and elucidate difficult passages.

From Greco-Roman antiquity through to European enlightenment, philosophy and religious thought were inseparably interwoven. This book explores intellectual worlds of Abrahamic religious traditions, their approaches to scriptural hermeneutics, and their interaction over many centuries on common ground of inheritance of classical Greek philosophy.

P. KOnig: Einleitung - P. ZIche: Idiographik und allgemeine Wissenschaftlichkeit - Windelband und die Wissenschaftsreflexion um 1900 - G. HArtung: Ein Philosoph korrigiert sich selbst - Wilhelm Windelbands Abkehr vom Relativismus - O. SChlaudt: Philosophie am Leitfaden der Empirie. WIndelbands relativistisches Programm - S. KUft: Windelbands Konzeption von Transzendentalphilosophie und ihr Bezug zur Kulturphilosophie - R. BOnito Oliva: Windelband. KUlturphilosophie und Kulturkrise - P. KOnig: Teleologie und Geschichte bei Wilhelm Windelband - J. BOhr: Im Fortschreiben der Probleme: Windelbands 19. JAhrhundert (...) - T.-H. CHang: Der Wertbegriff beiWilhelm Windelband und sein Konzept der Problemgeschichte - T. KUbalica: Die Geschichte der Philosophie als Problemgeschichte - J. MEhlich: Windelbands Praludien und das Silberne Zeitalter in Russland - G. SChluter: Windelbands italienische Kontakte und Bezugnahmen - D. STefanelli: Notizen uber Karl Vossler und die "Sudwestdeutsche Schule" - C. ZAnfi: Geschichte, Natur und Leben: Windelband und Bergson in der Historismus-Debatte - J.-I. LIndén: Der beseelte Geist: Dilthey als Kritiker der badischen Schule - H. GUndlach: Windelbands Ringen mit der Psychologie - Anhang: Wilhelm Windelband: Blaue Hefte zur Psychologie. (shrink)

The _Physics_ is a foundational work of western philosophy, and the crucial one for understanding Aristotle's views on matter, form, essence, causation, movement, space, and time. This richly annotated, scrupulously accurate, and consistent translation makes it available to a contemporary English reader as no other does—in part because it fits together seamlessly with other closely associated works in the New Hackett Aristotle series, such as the _Metaphysics_, _De Anima_, and forthcoming _De Caelo_ and _On Coming to Be and Passing Away_. (...) Eventually the series will include all of Aristotle's works. Sequentially numbered endnotes provide the information most needed at each juncture, while a detailed Index of Terms indicates places where focused discussion of key notions occurs. An illuminating general Introduction describes the book that lies ahead, explaining what sort of work it is and what sorts of evidence it relies on. (shrink)

If within the borders of human life the truth is, as Vico has said, what is made, then the task of a student of human life can be and should be to find out from what human beings have made what manner of makers they are and what sorts of production their circumstance allows.