In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Arthur A. Krentz DRAMATIC FORM AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONTENT IN PLATO'S DIALOGUES AN intriguing innovation in the history of philosophical discourse is Plato's employment ofdramatic dialogues as his deliberately chosen means ofcommunication. Throughout the history of philosophy scant attention has been focused on this feature of Plato's works. Recently, however, some students of Plato's writings contend that it is crucial for interpreters to give careful attention to the dialogue (...) form in order to reach an essential understanding of the philosophical content. Thus WernerJaeger, commenting in 1934 on the importance of the form of Aristotle's philosophical works, mentions as an aside that, "Even in the case of Plato, the importance of the form for the understanding of his particular thought has often been overlooked for long periods; departmental philosophers and students ofliterature in particular are always prone to consider it as something literary which had no material significance for Plato, in spite of the fact that it is unique in die history of philosophy. By now, however, most persons know mat the study of the development of the form ofhis writing is one of me main keys to a philosophical understanding of him." ' In spite ofJaeger's contention that most contemporary interpreters of Plato are aware of the significance of investigating the dramatic form for an understanding of a dialogue's content, a survey of the literature on Plato shows that interpreters often abandon such a concern in their own approach to his dialogues. For example, many interpreters treat dialogues as treatises, ignoring the dramatic features in order to concentrate on the examination of the logical, epistemológica!, ethical or other philosophical aspects of the argumentation in a single dialogue or group ofdialogues; as a result interpreters tend to separate the content from the form of Plato's works.2 The effect of this approach is one-sided, for, although such interpretations attempt to do justice to the arguments, they ignore the dramatic features of the dialogues and their bearing on an interpretation of die philosophical substance. Currently a growing number of interpreters of Plato in Europe and North America hold that a consideration of the form of Plato's dialogues is important 32 Arthur A. Krentz33 for an understanding oftheir content and philosophical message.3 1 am in agreement with this position and in this article I consider some reasons that may have led Plato to adopt dialogue as his medium of philosophical expression and attempt to show how attention to the dialogue form shapes the interpretation of their content. Unlike his philosophical predecessors who cast their writings in the form of extended poems, aphorisms, or treatises "On Nature," Plato wrote dramas. That the dramatic form ofhis writings is not incidental to his philosophical purposes becomes apparent as one considers how Plato presents philosophy in a fundamentally different way from that of his predecessors and successors who adopted the essay and treatise as the paradigm ofphilosophical communication. In a philosophical work such as a treatise, an author ordinarily attempts to state his own position on issues under discussion as clearly and as forcefully as possible. This, however, is not the primary aim of Plato's works, for certain features of his dramas indicate that he deliberately concealed his own views. Of special note in this regard is the fact that Plato never speaks on his own behalf in the discourses he creates. There is no character named "Plato" unequivocally declaring the author's own position.4 Instead a variety of interlocutors ask questions, investigate philosophical problems, and puzzle over solutions while Plato remains noticeably silent. This silence of Plato indicates that he did not regard the unequivocal presentation of his own views to be of paramount importance. If this had been his aim, Plato had only to write a dialogue which included himselfas one ofthe characters clearly stating his own position. Having engaged in many philosophical discussions with Socrates and with his own students, Plato could have written a dialogue based on such conversations. His not doing so is sufficient to show that he did not use his writings as a primary vehicle for transmitting his own position in his own words. Nor did Plato use... (shrink)

Affective disposition theory explains well the process of enjoying hero narratives but not the appeal of narratives featuring antiheroes. Recent antihero studies suggest that character identification and moral disengagement might be important factors in the enjoyment of such fare. The current study builds on this work. A sample of 101 self-identified fans and nonfans of the television series 24 viewed a condensed version of Season 1, providing evaluation of various protagonist perceptions, moral judgments, and emotional responses to the narrative, as (...) well as overall enjoyment. As expected, fans reported greater liking of the protagonist and greater enjoyment. But more importantly, regression analyses illuminated key differences between the groups in terms of the factors predicting enjoyment, providing a clearer picture of how we enjoy antihero narratives. (shrink)

In the realm of corporate leadership and organisational theory, the work of the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, has received little if any attention from scholars and practitioners alike. We argue in this paper that Heidegger’s work has an important message to convey with regard to the ability and perhaps the obligation of leaders to enable the ‘releasement’ and ‘opening up’ of the members of an organisational community to their ‘authentic possibilities’ within the realm of the work environment. We apply the (...) Heideggerian concepts of calculative and reflective thinking, as well as his philosophy of ‘being’ to the role of authentic leaders and their leadership possibilities. And we distinguish this approach to leadership from that which we identify as ‘inauthentic’ in which both leaders and members of organisations are alienated from their possibilities. (shrink)

We agree with Rachlin's aim to account for altruism within existing theory. However, his argument is implicitly dependent on social and cognitive constructs that are explicitly identified in other social-psychological theories. The account does not advance theory beyond available constructs (e.g., self-categorizations, motives, values, role-identities, and social structure), and Rachlin's implicit use of these strains the behaviorist account.

The painter "takes his body with him."Nevertheless, Renoir was looking at the sea.Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a human eye.The painter takes his body with him—he looks at what he sees and what he sees looks back at him. Perception takes place in the exchange, in time and in the world, not only between people or between living things but also between "subject" and "object," between perceiver and perceived. In this exchange that Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls (...) "the chiasm"—"this mediation through reversal"—something direct and active takes place. Before we can know or say what we're seeing, before we divide what we see into things or kinds of things, before naming and measurement, assertion and... (shrink)

According to Heidegger, "mortals live in the speaking of language"—to respond genuinely to language is to bring human being into existence. The Indo-European root gen -, meaning "to beget"—with derivatives including "kin," "kind," "king," "generation," "gentle," "gender," "native," "nation," and "nature"—is an index to two central questions in Shakespeare's plays: "Are human beings, by nature, kind?" and "Are the gods kind?" King Lear finds himself in a world of gen - topsy-turvy. His response to language and to the absent gods (...) recalls us to our own mortal being. (shrink)

The matrix notation of paper I is extended to include first-rank spinors expressed as two-component spin-vectors. Well-known two-component and four-component spinor equations are expressed in this notation. In addition, it is shown how other covariant wave equations can easily be invented. A certain nonlinear equation is found to have only positive-energy solutions for particles and antiparticles.

If scientists can successfully clone sheep, will humans be next? Today's headlines read like a science fiction novel! Due Consideration takes a poignant look at the rapidly changing field of biomedicine and the consequences it will have on our lives. Arthur Caplan, one of this nation's leading bioethicists, explores these issues and analyzes moral questions including: * Will we retain our essential humanity if we modify our biological blueprint? * Would it be irresponsible to procreate without a thorough genetic (...) examination? * Who will decide if physical traits like short stature and baldness are considered diseases? * Can biomedicine make our lives better? You'll also learn about the most current and controversial topics such as: * Cloning, abortion and assisted suicide. * Genetically engineering a human to be immune from infectious diseases. * The ability to "design" our children from head to toe. * Diagnosing and treating illnesses during fetal development. * Programs to prevent the transmission of HIV. No other book on the market today combines this analytic clarity with the latest from medical journals and media headlines. Now, you can decide for yourself what the future ought to hold in store. (shrink)

Companies often benefit from others’ attributions of moral conviction for prosocial behavior, for example, attributions that a company has a sincere moral desire to improve the environment when behaving sustainably. Across four studies, we explored how organizations’ changing resource positions influenced people’s attributions for the motivations underlying prosocial organizational behaviors. Observers attributed less moral conviction following prosocial behavior when they believed an organization was losing economic resources. This effect was primarily a “penalty” assessed against organizations that were losing resources, as (...) opposed to a “reward” given to organizations gaining resources. Finally, we found that this effect occurred because people perceive organizations that are losing resources as more situationally constrained, leading them to attribute less dispositional moral conviction. We discuss theoretical and practical implications stemming from how changes in resource access can lead people to be more skeptical of organizations’ motivations following prosocial behavior. (shrink)

A strong case can be made that the cognitive system is designed for guiding action, not, for example, symbol manipulation. I review empirical work demonstrating the link between action and cognition with special attention to the processes of language comprehension. Next, I sketch an embodied cognition framework for integrating work on language understanding with a more general approach to cognition and action. This general approach considers contributions to action of bodily states, emotions, social and cultural processes, and learning within a (...) framework that generates a dynamic system. This framework is used to consider the notion of distributed cognition and the prospects that technology might induce substantial changes in cognition. My assessment is that such changes are unlikely. (shrink)

This book is a fundamental and unique masterpiece which reflects the discussions on business and economic ethics over decades in German-speaking countries, and ...

Originally published in 1963. The essays in this volume are critical and, with one exception, directed against the philosophic movement of pragmatism. "The Thirteen Pragmatisms" is an exercise in logical analysis and is a challenge to a group of philosophers who have taken on a collective name to show how their apparent diversities are to be reconciled. Few philosophers would call themselves orthodox followers of this train of thought, so these essays can be studied without a sense of personal injury (...) that deadens the critical faculty and obscures insight. In The Thirteen Pragmatisms and Other Essays, logical technique is on display: the author's keenness in spotting double meanings and his ability to rephrase them in univalent form. This collection of essays should afford students of philosophy a set of cases in which they need not take sides but which give them an analytical method they can practice themselves on contemporary issues. The fact that these essays are on the whole critical gives them a heuristic value that dogmatic or expository essays would not have. (shrink)

We explore Woodin's Universality Theorem and consider to what extent large cardinal properties are transferred into HOD (and other inner models). We also separate the concepts of supercompactness, supercompactness in HOD and being HOD-supercompact. For example, we produce a model where a proper class of supercompact cardinals are not HOD-supercompact but are supercompact in HOD. Additionally we introduce a way to measure the degree of HOD-supercompactness of a supercompact cardinal, and we develop methods to control these degrees simultaneously for a (...) proper class of supercompact cardinals. Finally, we also produce a model in which the unique supercompact cardinal is also the only strongly compact cardinal, no cardinal is supercompact up to an inaccessible cardinal, level by level inequivalence holds and the unique supercompact cardinal is not HOD-supercompact. (shrink)

This report describes research focusing on virtues and character in teaching, by which we mean the kind of personal qualities professional teachers need to facilitate learning and overall flourishing in young people that goes beyond preparing them for a life of tests. The ‘good’ teacher is someone who, alongside excellent subject knowledge and technical expertise, cares about students, upholds principles of honesty and integrity both towards knowledge and student–teacher relationships, and who does good work . In the Framework for Character (...) Education , we considered the character of teachers to be a crucial ingredient in the development of flourishing children. This new report describes research that examined how teachers thought about, and drew upon, character strengths and virtues in their daily professional lives. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Combining techniques of the first author and Shelah with ideas of Magidor, we show how to get a model in which, for fixed but arbitrary finite n, the first n strongly compact cardinals κ 1 ,..., κ n are so that κ i for i = 1,..., n is both the i th measurable cardinal and κ + i supercompact. This generalizes an unpublished theorem of Magidor and answers a question of Apter and Shelah.

In The Abuse of Beauty, art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto explains how the notion of beauty as anathema to art arose and flourished and offers a new way of looking at art and beauty. He draws on the thought of artists, critics, and philosophers such as Rimbaud, Fry, Matisse, and Greenberg, to reposition beauty as one of many modes -- along with sexuality, sublimity, disgust, and horror -- through which the human sensibility expresses itself. 20 black-and-white illustrations are (...) included. (shrink)

Traditionally, species have been treated as classes or kinds in philosophical discussions of systematics and evolutionary biology. Recently a number of biologists and philosophers have proposed a drastic revision of this traditional ontological categorization. They have argued that species ought be viewed as individuals rather than as classes or natural kinds. In this paper an attempt is made to show that (a) the reasons advanced in support of this new view of species are not persuasive, (b) a reasonable explication can (...) be given of the treatment of species as classes that is consistent with current theory and practice in evolutionary biology and systematics, and (c) that once certain confusions concerning the species concept have been clarified, there are good theoretical grounds for maintaining that species are best viewed as classes or kinds. (shrink)