Biomass provides the only sustainable source of organic carbon for the production of chemicals used in manufacturing and as liquid transportation fuels. In this article, the authors examine some of the challenges that society faces in the transition from a global economy in which transportation fuels are derived from fossil fuels to one in which they are derived from renewable biomass via a “biorefinery.” In so doing, the authors present an overview of the technology currently available to society and highlight (...) some of the key issues that must be resolved in order to grasp the opportunities that stem from the transition. They conclude by considering the situation of their own country, Australia, to illustrate that the solutions to the challenges will likely depend not only on technology development but also on social, political, and geographical factors. (shrink)

Numerous social, economic and academic pressures can have a negative impact on representations of biomedical research. We review several of the forces playing an increasingly pernicious role in how health and science information is interpreted, shared and used, drawing discussions towards the role of narrative. In turn, we explore how aspects of narrative are used in different social contexts and communication environments, and present creative responses that may help counter the negative trends. As traditional methods of communication have in many (...) ways failed the public, changes in approach are required, including the creative use of narratives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anthony Close CENTERING THE DE-CENTERERS: FOUCAULT AND LAS MENINAS Over the last two decades, French avant-garde critical theory has shaken the pillars of the traditionalist temple with this thought: the interpreter of a literary text should not primarily be concerned with its author's intentional design, but rather with the surreptitious forces which shape it, warp it, and ultimately turn it into a problematic will-ofthe -wisp. The "decoding" of (...) those forces takes many forms (Freudian, anthropological, and so on), of which deconstruction is the most celebrated ; "de-centering"—the banishment of the intentional subject from the focus of interpretation — is common to all. In the first part of this article I wish to set out my philosophical objections to that exclusion, and in the second part, to examine an interesting failure to make it effective in practice: Foucault's analysis of Velazquez's painting Las Meninas, which constitutes the first chapter of Les mots et ks choses. One of my reasons for choosing Foucault's text as an example is that its premises are in some ways comparable to the philosophy of the archdeconstructor, Derrida. My skepticism about them and the analytic method based on them is not meant to suggest that I regard Foucault's historical studies as valueless. On the contrary, I recognize that he, together with some other decoders (particularly Barthes), has important things to say. My attack is a form of defense. I wish to uphold the value of traditional forms of interpretation by showing that though Foucault, like other decoders, casts radical doubts upon them in theory, he tends to negate those doubts by the implications of his practice. 21 22Philosophy and Literature M. H. Abrams has defined the traditionalist historian of culture as one who assumes that (a) authors of the past exploited the norms and possibilities of their language to say something determinate, (b) the properly equipped historian can approximate to their meaning, (c) his interpretation can aspire to a reasonable degree of objectivity. ' Let that serve as a working definition of my traditionalist standpoint. This has a philosophical rationale, basically Wittgensteinian and Austinian, which needs to be explained and set over against some of decoding's typical presuppositions. I choose Derrida's as an example. From my perspective, two objections can be leveled against his thought: its tendency to hypostatize the intentional subject as a metaphysical essence which must be reached through and beyond language, and to see language itself as an unrealistically slippery medium. Both objections were raised against him by Searle in their famous polemic with each other.2 Derrida's thought is inscribed within, even while it reacts against, a traditional conception of language as a name-like substitute for essence. According to this conception, influentially represented in this century by Husserl's phenomenology, bits of language somewhat resemble sterling currency bills which bear on their face the legend: "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of? pound(s)" That is, they are potentially capable ofbeing cashed for lumps of being, which can thus be possessed by mind. Derrida counters that the currency is fraudulent: it continually defers presence and possession, rendering problematic its relation to being and self, and their very existence. In order to foster the illusion that he is master of his words, hence of what they designate, Western Man has historically given status of originality to voice rather than to writing, to a form of expression which is seemingly intimate to consciousness rather than external. The paradoxical thesis ofDe lagrammatologie is that writing came first. One of the routes by which Derrida arrives at this conclusion is Saussure's conception of the discontinuous, articulated nature of language and the negative and differential character of linguistic signifiers, not stably linked to universal referents.3 On this basis he builds his idea of différance (a pun on difference and deferral ), the elusive negative margin which makes language possible, and at the same time, makes impossible consciousness's full presence to itself and to being.4 Hence Derrida's notion of language's anarchic and willful power to detach itself from die intentions or usage of its users and to float... (shrink)

Unreal City: a zany cartoon megalopolis where towers are built of cotton candy, facts scatter like pixie dust, and the truth is whatever you feel it to be. And it's no fantasy. It's where we live. We dwell in Unreal City. We believe in un-being. With saber-like wit, poet and professor Anthony Esolen leads readers on a tour through the ruins of their own Western world--through king-size bookstores, manicured college campuses, strobe-lit choir lofts, mechanized farms, divorce courts, drag-queen libraries, (...) and beyond. This hilarious guide to a culture gone mad with sex and self-care minces no words and spares no egos. We the people of Unreal City are no better, and certainly no smarter, than our fathers. But fear not. Sex and the Unreal City insists there's no need to settle down in the ninth circle of unreality. Esolen lights a torch and heads up the well-trod path back to our cleaner, kinder, truer homeland: earth. Along the way, the author sings the songs of masters somehow long forgotten--Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, the evangelists--and asks us to chant along. Readers of essayists like George Weigel, George Rutler, Malcom Muggeridge, and Walker Percy will enjoy this rollicking, intelligent book."--Amazon. (shrink)

This illustrated edition of Sir Anthony Kenny's acclaimed survey of Western philosophy offers the most concise and compelling story of the complete development of philosophy available. Spanning 2,500 years of thought, An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy provides essential coverage of the most influential philosophers of the Western world, among them Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Berkeley, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Darwin, Freud, Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein. Replete with over 60 (...) illustrations - ranging from Dufresnoy's The Death of Socrates, through to the title page of Thomas More's Utopia, portraits of Hobbes and Rousseau, photographs of Charles Darwin and Bertrand Russell, Freud's own sketch of the Ego and the Id, and Wittgenstein's Austrian military identity card - this lucid and masterful work is ideal for anyone with an interest in Western thought. (shrink)

In this book, John A. McGuckin reviews and assesses the monumental influence that Origen of Alexandria has exercised over the shape and content of the Christian tradition over seventeen hundred years.

The growing sophistication of philosophical speculation together with the increasingly contentious claims of the thirteenth-century masters of Arts and Theology is reflected in the literary career of Robert Kilwardby. As a young Parisian Arts master, Kilwardby devoted much of his energy to explaining the works of Aristotle, recently introduced into the University’s curriculum. Although particularly interested in the logical treatises, Kilwardby most likely commented upon the so-called ‘Ethica vetus et nova’, which were part of the Arts curriculum in the (...) first half of the thirteenth century. Kilwardby’s commentary, while quickly superseded by the more complicated questions on the entire Ethics, represents an extremely important transitional phase in the understanding of Aristotle’s moral philosophy. Kilwardby’s careful reading of Aristotle’s text allowed him to reject the usual religious interpretation of his contemporaries. His awareness of the limitations of moral science marks a decisive step away from the earlier reading of the Nicomachean Ethics (EN), which viewed Aristotle’s doctrine of the human good to be identical with the religious ideal of union with God. As a result, Kilwardby’s commentary on the EN demonstrated how Aristotle’s ethics could no longer be understood as a slight variant of Christian moral theology. (shrink)

In 1475, the Florentine humanist Piero Cennini sent a friend a letter in Latin, in which he described in detail both the Florentine baptistery and the yearly celebration of the feast of St John in late June. This article presents a full text and English translation of the document, with an introduction and notes. Cennini, a scribe and scholar, belonged to a distinguished family of Florentine goldsmiths, with whose members he collaborated on an edition of the commentaries of Servius on (...) Virgil. His description of the baptistery was informed by his knowledge of and pride in his family’s craft, as well as by the teachings of Leon Battista Alberti, which he had mastered. Cennini’s hybrid of craft and humanism enables him to fill his account of the celebration of St John with vivid detail, but his choice of Latin also makes it too artificial to convey the enchantment that the plays and processions, like the baptistery itself, inspired in other observers—a feature that helps to explain the author’s frustration with his remarkably vivid text. Drawing on contemporary texts and paintings, this article finally places Cennini’s vision on the spectrum between the magic of Florentine religion and its disenchantment. (shrink)

Sidgwick claimed Kant as one of his moral philosophical masters. This did not prevent Sidgwick from registering pointed criticisms of most of Kant’s main claims in ethics. This paper explores the practical ethics of Sidgwick and Kant. In § I, I outline the element of Kant’s theoretical ethics that Sidgwick endorsed. In §§ II and III, I outline and adjudicate some of their sharpest disagreements in practical ethics, on the permissibility of lying and on the demands of beneficence. In (...) § IV, I argue that compared to Kant, Sidgwick has a better strategy for overcoming disagreement in practical ethics. §V sums things up. (shrink)

This study examines J.S. Sanni’s argument on the role of religion in promoting silence and extortion in contemporary African (Nigerian) society, leveraging on the name of God, with a view to determining the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. Sanni posits that religion (Christianity and Islam) have played crucial roles in promoting silence and extortion in Africa, with particular reference to Nigeria. He argues that the colonial debris of disempowerment, injustices, manipulation and extortion, using the instrumentality of religion, are still (...) very much part of African society today. According to him, the above manipulations, extortions and injustices, perpetrated by the colonial masters on African societies using the tool of religion, is still very much part of the contemporary African society and have only assumed new outlooks and language and consequently plunged many Africans into silence in the face of what is often presented as sacred and holy. The study examines the strengths and weaknesses of this argument. The paper adopts historical hermeneutics and textual analysis methods. (shrink)

Social Epistemology arose from the recognition that nearly all that we believe or claim to know is second hand and derived from the speech or writing of others. The “we” of “our knowledge” here is, of course, “educated members of advanced industrial societies”. Our remoter, but still identifiably, human ancestors, without speech or writing, picked up such knowledge or belief as they had on their own, apart from what they may have leant from the reactions of others to the presence (...) of quarry or danger. Palaeolithic man, having mastered speech, had access to plenty of second hand knowledge. But it was only of what the people he directly met could tell him. With writing a vast new range of informants is brought into play. Clay tablets and papyrus rolls give way to codices – in other words, books – and another gigantic step forward is made with the invention of printing. We would appear to be going through a comparable information revolution at the present day. We, as defined above, either posses or have ready access to a vast assemblage of common knowledge, actual or claimed. How are we to rationally to decide how much of this we are to accept? It is obviously not all worthy, or equally worthy of acceptance. (shrink)

Concepts are best understood as a particular kind of human ability: a person who has mastered the use of a word for F in some language possesses the concept of F. Abilities are individuated by their possessors and their exercises, though they are not to be identified with either. Typically abilities are associated with vehicles, that is to say underlying actualities which account for their exercises. The mind is the human ability to form concepts, and its principal vehicle is the (...) brain; but the mind should not be identified with the brain any more than it should be identified with the behaviour in which its concepts are expressed. (shrink)

In 1998, the first edition of Anthony Kenny's comprehensive history of Western philosophy was published, to be met with immediate praise and critical acclaim. As the first book since Bertrand Russell's 1945 A History of Western Philosophy to offer a concise single-author review of the complete history of philosophy from the pre-Socratics to the modern masters of the 20th century, Kenny's work fills a critical gap in the modern philosophy reading list and offers valuable guidance for the general (...) reader of philosophy—an ideal starting point for anyone with an interest in great thinkers and the family lines of philosophical evolution. Widely considered to be one of the most thorough and accessible historical reviews in philosophy, An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy has earned an estimable and distinctive reputation, both for the compelling writing style of Anthony Kenny, one of the most respected and accomplished living philosophers, and for the rich collection of paintings, illustrations, maps, and photos included with every chapter to complement this review of 2,500 years of philosophical thought. Newly revised and expanded for a special 20th anniversary publication, the latest edition of An Illustrated Brief History of Western Philosophy contains all of Kenny's original writings on the history of Western philosophy from ancient to modern, along with new writings on the philosophy of the mid-20th century, covering important contributions from continental philosophers and philosophers of the post-Wittgenstein anglophone tradition, including the work of many women who have too often been neglected by the historical record. (shrink)

The author of this paper was managing editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies from its launch in 1994 until this year. As he steps down from the post, he reflects on the role of the editor, who has by turns to encourage, support, cajole, and even threaten, the team of contributors and reviewers, whose servant and master he is. What follows may be taken both as an apologia for his time in office, addressed to the consciousness community, and a (...) word of caution and advice addressed to his successor. (shrink)

Masters thesis on reformed epistmeology.

In December 2006, dons at Oxford University caused turmoil by rejecting a set of governance reforms that were championed by their own vice-chancellor. This book is a response to these events, addressed in large part to Oxford's funders - government and benefactors - and is useful reading for those with an interest in the future of this university.Sir Anthony Kenny was formerly Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and president of the British Academy. He is the author of many books (...) on philosophy and over 40 years has held almost every kind of post in Oxford from graduate student to pro-vice-chancellor. Robert Kenny is managing director of a consulting firm. (shrink)

Contemporary bioethics is a complex and multidisciplinary combination of medicine, philosophy and law, made more difficult because few,if any, bioethicists are masters of all three disciplines. To further complicate matters, each discipline contains specialised subdisciplines and internal debates. Philosophy is used to illustrate this point. Given constraints of expertise on practising bioethicists in South Africa, a few modest proposals are suggested to make bioethics as a discipline more rigorous in its use of medicine, philosophy and law.

How does the conscious mind relate to the physical body? Two common views from the past offered the stark choice between dualism which said mind and body were quite separate and physicalism which said that the mind was in fact 'nothing but' the physical brain. Both these views are now widely rejected. 'Emergence' theory offers a compromise: the mind ‘emerges’ from the physical body but the whole person, mind and body, is more than the sum of the physical parts. In (...) _The Emergence of Consciousness_ philosopher Robert Van Gulick gives a clear and masterly overview and comparison of the current ‘emergent’ and ‘reductive’ approaches. Other contributors discuss more detailed aspects of the subject. The editor's own chapter argues for the radical proposal that even God is an ‘emergent property’. (shrink)

Master basic skills of philosophical writing The Philosophy Student Writer's Manual, 3/e provides readers with the tools needed to write successful philosophy papers. The manual includes general background information on philosophy, helpful writing strategies, research tips, format instructions, and more. This user-friendly guide includes samples of excellent student writing that serve as concrete models for quality philosophical writing.

Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-28 11:57:18.196.

Mené entre septembre 2019 et janvier 2020 par les designers Jürg Lehni et Douglas Edric Stanley au sein du Master Media Design de la Haute École d’Art & Design de Genève (HEAD – Genève), le workshop « Thinking Machines » prend comme point de départ l’automatisation des métiers de la création et le fantasme de machines « pensantes ». Ce projet examine, avec un brin d’ironie, un avenir où les designers seraient en mesure de cultiver les IA et de s’extraire (...) des fantasmes technologiques. En quoi le design pourrait-il contribuer à une critique de la culture dominante de l’IA? Comment inventer, par les pratiques de design, des alternatives soutenables? (shrink)

Anthony Grafton, like Jacob Burckhardt before him, begins his appreciation of Leon Battista Alberti by reviewing how the fifteenth‐century Italian author created a many‐faceted identity through willful self‐fashioning. Grafton, however, offers the reader a much richer Bildungsroman than the older portrait and exposes many forces undercutting the monolithic character of Burckhardt's Renaissance, the same forces that may provide a key to the contrary and doubt‐ridden persona frequenting Alberti's writings. Alberti's ambitions and the leitmotifs of his life from his youthful (...) aspirations to their later glorious fulfillment are laid out in stunning detail.Moving well beyond the unrelenting brightness of Burckhardt's presentation, Grafton also attempts to fuse what have become for scholars the dramatic polarities of Alberti's enigmatic personality. An ambitious scholar and writer on academic subjects, on the visual and practical arts, Alberti was a lover of nature and a sensitive commentator on aesthetic, familial, and cultural ideals. He was also given to irony, despair, and bitter isolation. Grafton makes a strong case for Alberti's dependence on an unwavering determination that compelled him to assume many guises and foster numerous strategies to achieve his literary, social, and economic goals. As his friend Cristoforo Landino once noted, Alberti was like a chameleon. In Grafton's hands, however, Alberti remains dazzlingly inventive and radically humanist, and he endures as appropriately leonine and the hero of his own tale.With a predictable outpouring of references, Grafton evokes Alberti's social, political, and intellectual world and, reprising his earlier writings, develops several themes. These include Alberti's literary erudition and the high price he paid to achieve it; how Alberti applied the lessons of ancient sources to the problems of his own world, and in so doing subverted those lessons to create something new; how the humanist author developed special vocabularies for writing about such novel subjects as the visual arts, instruments of measure, and other current technologies; and, perhaps most surprisingly for a man given to bitterly mocking his contemporaries, how Alberti became involved in the creative energy of early modern life with apparent enthusiasm and accomplished the astonishing feat for a humanist of becoming a practicing architect.Grafton finds Alberti's confidence in a material culture driven by technology, theoretical knowledge, and careful observation expressed forcefully in the dedicatory letter of his essay On Painting addressed to the builder Filippo Brunelleschi. Brunelleschi deserved to be praised not for slavishly drinking from the fountain of the ancients, but for the brilliance of his intelligence and the successful application of his knowledge. Further, by requesting that the architect emend his essay, Alberti, the scholar, is shown to have treated Brunelleschi, the builder, as an equal and thereby to have elevated all technical knowledge. Alberti cleverly places himself within the circle of the ingenious engineers who were masters of practical knowledge based on underlying principles and therefore at the forefront of an intellectual parade led by its most renowned practitioner. One wonders, perhaps, what Brunelleschi at the height of his fame might have desired to learn from the audacious savant.As Alberti masters how to make his way in Florence and among the elegant courts of his day, he is seen to revisit the themes of his youthful writings with ever‐deepening insight. Grafton's reflections on Alberti and Florence, though generally convincing, have been greatly enriched by Luca Boschetto's recent book devoted to that subject . In addition, some of Grafton's notions about the influence of On Painting as centered in courtly art seem to reach beyond the evidence and the explicit directives found in Alberti's writings.The reader interested in Alberti's involvement in science and technology will still want to consult Joan Gadol's Leon Battista Alberti: Universal Man of the Early Renaissance , and the lack of a general bibliography will be an irritation to those who like to follow an author's research trail, the trekker in this case having to stumble through a thicket of footnotes. Nonetheless, Grafton has created a richly drawn portrait of Alberti. Scholar and student alike will garner much that is important about this immensely gifted and mercurial man whose writings continue to influence our understanding of the beginnings of early modernity. (shrink)

At M. Bernard's I saw several magnificent paintings on porcelain by Monsieur Constantin. In two hundred years, Raphael's frescoes will be known only through Monsieur Constantin.Stendhal, Voyage en France, 1837If we compare the forms that the act of copying has assumed in various civilizations, we cannot fail to notice that a certain number of phenomena are specific to European culture since the Renaissance. Perhaps one of the most singular of these phenomena is the will to create and to possess imperishable (...) reproductions of works that have been singled out, at a given moment, as the brightest jewels of Western art. The history of the fortune of Graeco-Roman sculptures has been masterfully related by Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny in Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, even if it would no doubt be worthwhile to give further consideration to the critical fortune of materials used for reproduction, and particularly to the particular prestige attached to bronze—from the Mantuan works of Antico to the reconstitutions of Greek Urbilder in bronze, instead of the plaster used earlier, which were executed at the beginning of the twentieth century, such as the two Doryphoros that Georg Römer realized from various ancient marble copies of Polyclitus's athlete. But, in fact, it was not only in modern Europe that copies were made in bronze. The production of copies using this alloy was particularly prevalent in imperial China after the rediscovery, in the second half of the eleventh century of our era, of a collection of archaic bronzes from the Shang era. This is why I prefer to call attention to a practice that appears to me, in contrast, to be unique to the Western world: the copying of renowned paintings in materials that are supposed to defy time. (shrink)

Beata Halicka's masterly narrated biography is the story of an extraordinary man and leading intellectual in the Polish-American community. Z. Anthony Kruszewski was first a Polish scout fighting in World War II against the Nazi occupiers, then Prisoner of War/Displaced Person in Western Europe. He stranded as a penniless immigrant in post-war America and eventually became a world-renowned academic. Kruszewski's almost incredible life stands out from his entire generation. His story is a microcosm of the 20th-century history, covering various (...) theatres and incorporating key events and individuals. Kruszewski walks a stage very few people have even stood on, both as an eye-witness at the centre of the Second World War, and later as vice-president of the Polish American Congress, and a professor and political scientist at world-class universities in the USA. Not only did he become a pioneer and a leading figure in Borderland Studies, but he is a borderlander in every sense of the word. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedAquinas on Being. By Anthony Kenny. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Pp. x + 212. Price not given.Before and after Avicenna: Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group. Edited by David C. Reisman, with the assistance of Ahmed H. al Rahim. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. xix + 302. Price not given.Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha. Edited by Harold Kasimow, (...) John P. Keenan, and Linda Klepinger Keenan. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003. Pp. 284. Paper $14.95.The Buddhist Unconscious: The ālaya-vijñāna in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought. By William S. Waldron. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Pp. xvi + 269. Price not given.Comparative Political Philosophy: Studies under the Upas Tree. Edited by Anthony J. Parel and Ronald C. Keith. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2003. Pp. xxxviii + 260. Paper $26.95.The Confucian Quest for Order: The Origin and Formation of the Political Thought of Xun Zi. By Masayuki Sato. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. xviii + 500. Price not given.Gathering the Meanings: The Compendium of Categories: The Arthaviniścaya Sūtra and Its Commentary Nibandhana. Translated from the Sanskrit by N. H. Samtani. Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 2002. Pp. xxxiv + 390. Price not given.I Have Arrived, I Am Home: Celebrating Twenty Years of Plum Village Life. By Thich Nhat Hanh. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2003. Pp. 253. Paper $25.00.Identity and the Moral Life. By Mrinal Miri. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xvii + 132. Hardcover Rs 645.00.Indian Philosophers and Postmodern Thinkers: Dialogues on the Margins of Culture. By Carl Olson. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 331. Hardcover Rs 950.00.Islamic Humanism. By Lenn E. Goodman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xiii + 273. Price not given.Letting Go: The Story of Zen Master Tōsui. Translated by Peter Haskel. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001. Pp. xv + 167. Hardcover $45.00. Paper $16.95.A Life Journey to the East: Sinological Studies in Memory of Giuliano Bertuccioli (1923-2001). Edited by Antonino Forte and Federico Masini. Kyoto: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale, 2002. Pp. xxxv + 280. Price not given.The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility and Mystery. By David E. Cooper. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 372. Price not given. [End Page 277]Mencius, Hume and the Foundations of Ethics. By Xiusheng Liu. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003. Pp. vii + 204. Price not given.Monks and Monarchs, Kinship and Kingship: Tanqian in Sui Buddhism and Politics. By Chen Jinhua. Kyoto: Scuola Italiana di Studi sull'Asia Orientale, 2002. Pp. xiii + 310. Price not given.Music in the Sky: The Life, Art, and Teachings of the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. By Michele Martin. Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. Pp. 351. Paper $18.95, U.K. £12.95.New Confucianism: A Critical Examination. Edited by John Makeham. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Pp. 262. Hardcover $55.00.On the Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam: Abū Hāmid Al-Ghāzalī's Faysal al-Tafriqa Bayna al-Islām wa al-Zandaqa. By Sherman A. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xiv + 156. Hardcover Rs 295.00.Pandita Ramabai's American Encounter: The Peoples of the United States (1889). By Pandita Ramabai and translated and edited by Meera Kosambi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 284. Hardcover $59.95. Paper $29.95.Parmenides of Elea: A Verse Translation with Interpretative Essays and Commentary to the Text. By Martin J. Henn. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2003. Pp. 147. Hardcover $59.95.Philosophes taoïstes, tome II: Huainan Zi, texte traduit, présenté et annoté sous la direction de Charles le Blanc et de Rémi Mathieu. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2003. Pp. lxxxiii + 1182. Hardcover €56,90.The Philosophy and Ethics of the Vīraśaiva Community. By Dan A. Chekki. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003. Pp. xxv + 287. Hardcover $119.95.Poems of Hanshan. Translated by Peter Hobson with introduction by T. H. Barrett. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 151. Hardcover $65.00. Paper $19.95.Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. Edited by Jeremy D. Safran. Boston... (shrink)

Participants struck 500 golf balls to a concealed target. Outcome feedback was presented at the subjective or objective threshold of awareness of each participant or at a supraliminal threshold. Participants who received fully perceptible feedback learned to strike the ball onto the target, as did participants who received feedback that was only marginally perceptible . Participants who received feedback that was not perceptible showed no learning. Upon transfer to a condition in which the target was unconcealed, performance increased in both (...) the subjective and the objective threshold condition, but decreased in the supraliminal condition. In all three conditions, participants reported minimal declarative knowledge of their movements, suggesting that deliberate hypothesis testing about how best to move in order to perform the motor task successfully was disrupted by the impoverished disposition of the visual outcome feedback. It was concluded that sub-optimally perceptible visual feedback evokes implicit processes. (shrink)

We examine whether mindfulness can neutralize the negative impact of COVID-19 stressors on employees’ sleep duration and work engagement. In Study 1, we conducted a field experiment in Wuhan, China during the lockdown between February 20, 2020, and March 2, 2020, in which we induced state mindfulness by randomly assigning participants to either a daily mindfulness practice or a daily mind-wandering practice. Results showed that the sleep duration of participants in the mindfulness condition, compared with the control condition, was less (...) impacted by COVID-19 stressors (i.e., the increase of infections in the community). In Study 2, in a 10-day daily diary study in the United Kingdom between June 8, 2020, and June 19, 2020, we replicate our results from Study 1 using a subjective measure of COVID-19 stressors and a daily measure of state mindfulness. In addition, we find that mindfulness buffers the negative effect of COVID-19 stressors on work engagement mediated by sleep duration. As the COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing and the number of reported cases continues to rise globally, our findings suggest that mindfulness is an evidence-based practice that can effectively neutralize the negative effect of COVID-19 stressors on sleep and work outcomes. The findings of the present study contribute to the employee stress and well-being literature as well as the emerging organizational research on mindfulness. (shrink)

Over the last three decades, social theory has become an increasingly important subdiscipline within sociology. Social theory has attempted to elucidate the philosophical basis of sociology by defining the nature of social reality. According to social theory, society consists of objective institutions, structure, on the one hand, and individuals, agency on the other, it promotes human social relations, insisting that in every instance social reality consists of these relations.

Many potential therapeutic agents are discarded before they are tested in humans. These are not quack medications. They are drugs and other interventions that have been developed by responsible scientists in respectable companies or universities and are often backed up by publications in peer-reviewed journals. These possible treatments might ease suffering and prolong the lives of innumerable patients, yet they have been put aside. In this paper, we outline a novel mechanism—the Plutocratic Proposal—to revive such neglected research and fund early (...) phase clinical trials. The central idea of the Proposal is that any patient who rescues a potential therapeutic agent from neglect by funding early phase clinical trials should be offered a place on the trial. (shrink)

Fallibilism about knowledge and justification is a widely held view in epistemology. In this paper. I will try to arrive at a proper formulation of fallibilism. Fallibilists often hold that Cartesian skepticism is a view that deserves to be taken seriously and dealt with somehow. I argue that it turns out that a canonical form of skeptical argument depends upon the denial of fallibilism. I conclude by considering a response on behalf of the skeptic.

This article considers financial risk management practice using a virtue ethics lens, in response to ongoing critiques of risk management from within business ethics. Risk management should be seen as embedded within a complex system of cultures, organizations and regulations that are underpinned by a quantitatively reductive or ‘mechanistic’ economic paradigm, where dominant logics of self-interest, profit maximization and short-termism prevail. Building on recent work applying virtue ethics in finance, an alternative to the values, normative expectations and priorities in financial (...) risk management is presented in the form of a refined ‘taxonomy’ of the virtues that can be applied to individuals and organizations engaged in financial risk management. This article aims to contribute to and extend debate on the ethical aspects of risk management and presents an alternative to more technically based critiques which do not engage with the underlying socially constructed foundations of risk management practice. It thereby provides a basis to critique the mechanistic and narrow approach used in the current regulation of the sector. (shrink)

There has recently been considerable interest in accounts of fiction which treat fictional characters as abstract objects. In this paper I argue against this view. More precisely I argue that such accounts are unable to accommodate our intuitions that fictional negative existentials such as “Raskolnikov doesn’t exist” are true. I offer a general argument to this effect and then consider, but reject, some of the accounts of fictional negative existentials offered by abstract object theorists. I then note that some of (...) the sort of data invoked by the abstract object theorist in fact cuts against her position. I concludle that we should not regard fictional characters as abstract objects but rather should adopt a make-believe theoretic account of fictional characters along the lines of those developed by Ken Walton and others. (shrink)