The focus of this paper is to further a discussion of codes of ethics as institutionalized organizational structures that extend some form of legitimacy to organizations. The particular form of legitimacy is of critical importance to our analysis. After reviewing various theories of legitimacy, we analyze the literature on how legitimacy is derived from codes of ethics to discover which specific form of legitimacy is gained from their presence in organizations. We content analyze a sample of codes to consider the (...) question of whether a strategic, self-interested rationale lies behind the adoption of a code of ethics. We propose that the process of employing codes of ethics in this strategic manner has become, through isomorphism, an institutionalized practice that itself confers a cognitive form of legitimacy to the organization and further distances the codes from their moral foundation. (shrink)

Intellectual history, philosophy, and science’s own self-understanding undermine the claim that science entails or need even tend toward atheism. By definition a radically transcendent creator-God is inaccessible to empirical investigation. Denials of the possibility or actual occurrence of miracles depend not on science itself, but on naturalist assumptions that derive originally from a univocal metaphysics with its historical roots in medieval nominalism, which in turn have deeply influenced philosophy and science since the seventeenth century. The metaphysical postulate of naturalism and (...) its correlative empiricist epistemology constitute methodological self-limitations of science -- only an unjustified move from postulate to assertion permits ideological scientism and atheism. It is entirely possible that religious claims consistent with the empirical findings of the natural and social sciences might be true. Therefore, historians of religion not only need not assume that atheism i. (shrink)

This Enlightenment’s concept of God was shaped by the legacy of the Reformation era. It was also shaped by certain medieval philosophical assumptions. Those assumptions have remained influential since the eighteenth century. They are particularly influential in common modern claims about the stadial supersession of revealed religion and about the disenchantment of the world born of modern science. The Enlightenment’s philosophical discourse about God is part of a longer historical trajectory, one that begins long before the seventeenth century and extends (...) well beyond the eighteenth. (shrink)

The rejection of confessional commitments in the study of religion in favor of social-scientific or humanistic theories of religion has produced not unbiased accounts, but reductionist explanations of religious belief and practice with embedded secular biases that preclude the understanding of religious believer-practitioners. These biases derive from assumptions of undemonstrable, dogmatic, metaphysical naturalism or its functional equivalent, an epistemological skepticism about all truth claims of revealed religions. Because such assumptions are so widespread among scholars today, they are not often explicitly (...) articulated. They were overtly asserted by Emile Durkheim in his Elementary Forms of Religious Life , however, and are implicit in the claims of two other thinkers influential in the study of early modern Christianity in recent years, namely Clifford Geertz and Michel Foucault. The use of such theories in the history of religion yields secular confessional history, parallel to traditional religious confessional history only with different embedded metaphysical beliefs. If scholars want to understand religious persons such that the latter would recognize themselves in what is said about them, rather than impose their own metaphysical convictions on them, then they should reject metaphysically biased reductionist theories of religion no less than confessional religious assumptions in the practice of their scholarship. Instead, a study of religion guided not by theories but by the question, “What did it mean to them?” and which is particularized in metaphysically neutral ways offers a third alternative that avoids confessional history, whether religious or secular. When carried out consistently for multiple traditions, such an approach can reconstruct disagreements that point beyond description to historical explanation of change over time. (shrink)

Secularization in the Western world is not a contrived combination of disconnected phenomena. It is a complex, long-term, multi-faceted process in which the central place of Christianity has greatly diminished in all areas of life since the sixteenth century, and which derives from the enduring doctrinal disagreements and recurrent religio-political conflicts of the Reformation era. Because late medieval Christianity was embedded in and intended to influence all areas of human life, including buying and selling, the exercise of power, and higher (...) education, all areas of human life were powerfully affected by the Reformation’s rejection of Roman Catholicism. By problematizing religion, the disagreements and conflicts inspired new ideas and institutional means to address them, and thus inadvertently contributed to secularization. The two principal accounts of long-term Western secularization – Enlightenment-liberationist and Catholic-disembedding – diverge not in their descriptions of what happened, but rather in their overall assessments of the process as respectively positive or not. (shrink)

John Henry Newman was a discerning critic of the dominant social values and cultural features of England in the Victorian era that revolved around the sovereign self. Insofar as many of these features—individuals as their own masters, wealth and celebrity, the arbitrariness of answers about faith and meaning, and the character of higher education in the absence of theology—also characterize American society and culture in the early twenty-first century, Newman’s critique of his own time and society also applies to ours. (...) This essay was first delivered as the 2014 Newman Legacy Lecture, sponsored by the National Institute for Newman Studies, at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 3, 2014. (shrink)

The History of Everyday Life. Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life by Alf Lüdtke; William Templer Jeux D'Échelles. La Micro-Analyse à L'Expérience. by Jacques Revel.

This new and complete translation of Spinoza's famous 17th-century work fills an important gap, not only for all scholars of Spinoza, but also for everyone interested in the relationship between Western philosophy and religion, and the history of biblical exegesis.

What determines whether an action is right or wrong? Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader explores for students and researchers the relationship between consequentialist theory and moral rules. Most of the chapters focus on rule consequentialism or on the distinction between act and rule versions of consequentialism. Contributors, among them the leading philosophers in the discipline, suggest ways of assessing whether rule consequentialism could be a satisfactory moral theory. These essays, all of which are previously unpublished, provide students in (...) moral philosophy with essential material and ask key questions on just what the criteria for an adequate moral theory might be. (shrink)

Where’s Wilber at? That is, what is the present philosophical position of Ken Wilber, the pundit who many claim to be the world’s most intriguing and foremost philosopher? This is not an easy question to answer, for the breadth of Wilber’s encyclopedic vision is enormous and covers over a quarter century of prolific publication and continual evolution. In other words, Wilber’s work too has evolved over the years. Indeed, its progressive unfoldment in complexity and depth allows us to recognize at (...) least five consecutive and distinct phases or periods in his career to date (which we’ll discuss in depth below). Because of this, many people, reading from an array of sources, often find him hard to pin down, to really understand exactly “where he’s at.” But where he is at, stated quickly and summarily, is Phase-5 or Wilber-5 or Wilber/Phase-51 – the post-metaphysical AQAL approach (reviewed in detail in Part II and III of this essay). Therefore, by including in our understanding the important contributions and advancements of all four previous phases, we may better understand where the philosophy of Ken Wilber stands today and where it’s going during the opening years of the new millennium. From the perspective of an overview, Wilber/Phase-5 is a continuation of the AQAL (pronounced ah-quil) or the “all-quadrants, all-levels”– which is actually short for “all quadrants, all levels, all lines, all states, all types” – approach to integral studies pioneered by.. (shrink)

Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions has been enduringly influential in philosophy of science, challenging many common presuppositions about the nature of science and the growth of scientific knowledge. However, philosophers have misunderstood Kuhn's view, treating him as a relativist or social constructionist. In this book, Brad Wray argues that Kuhn provides a useful framework for developing an epistemology of science that takes account of the constructive role that social factors play in scientific inquiry. He examines the core concepts of (...) Structure and explains the main characteristics of both Kuhn's evolutionary epistemology and his social epistemology, relating Structure to Kuhn's developed view presented in his later writings. The discussion includes analyses of the Copernican revolution in astronomy and the plate tectonics revolution in geology. The book will be useful for scholars working in science studies, sociologists and historians of science as well as philosophers of science. (shrink)

James Drane's More Humane Medicine: A Liberal Catholic Bioethics is an outstanding contribution to the study of bioethics in our day. Catholics and others who are interested in the issues discussed here will benefit from this masterful treatment. The author opens with a set of definitions, starting with what he means by a “more humane medicine.” Drane contends that a more humane medicine has become necessary and desired, but not because the traditional medical ethic as “a self-declared and self-imposed ethic, (...) outlining what noble service to others entails” is no longer valid. Rather he defines it as an advance on the traditional ethic; a “new foundation” based on a “lived set of obligations derived from a felt commitment to other persons … an ethics based on the relationship between doctors and patients and essentially an ethics of virtue.” Drane's work is a “liberal Catholic Bioethics” in which he challenges his own faith tradition, the Roman Catholic Church, on such topics as sexuality, birth control, abortion, cloning, stem cell research, aging and dying, and euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. The present article is a critical essay that analyzes the author's statements and conclusions. (shrink)

E. E. Constance Jones was a student of Henry Sidgwick's. Her article is mainly about the idea that there are ‘two supreme principles of human action, both of which we are under a “manifest obligation” to obey.’ One is the principle of Rational Benevolence and the other is the principle of Rational Self-Love. Jones contends that ‘Rational Benevolence implies or includes the Rationality of Self-Love’. There is one reading of Jones's contention that makes it undeniable but other readings that make (...) it implausible. Near the end, I comment upon Jones’s remarks about the relation of utilitarianism to common-sense moral intuitions. (shrink)

This paper starts by juxtaposing the normative ethics in the final part of Parfit's final book, On What Matters, vol. 3, with the normative ethics in his earlier books, Reasons and Persons and On What Matters, vol. 1. The paper then addresses three questions. The first is, where does the reflective-equilibrium methodology that Parfit endorsed in the first volume of On What Matters lead? The second is, is the Act-involving Act Consequentialism that Parfit considers in the final volume of On (...) What Matters as plausible as Rossian deontology? The third is, how is the new argument that Parfit puts forward for Rule Consequentialism supposed to work? (shrink)

In the Critique of Judgment, Kantattempts to unravel the problem of Übergang that threatens his CopernicanRevolution. Having opened up a ``chasm'' betweensensible and supersensible, betweenepistemological and ontological, Kant facesboth the specter of empirical chaos in whichthe noumenal refuses to conform to theunderstanding's attempts to legislate over themanifold of intuition, and the problem offinding a place for freedom to have effectswithin the seamless phenomenal realm ofefficient causality. Central to Kant's attemptto overcome these problems is his notion of theheautonomy of reflective judging, (...) in whichjudgment subjectively legislates its ownactivity. The net effect of this strategy isto preserve the integrity of the architectonicby permitting judgment use of ontologicalprinciples in regulating its own activity, butalways placing these ontological principlesunder an epistemological ``as if'' that cannot becarried over into the noumenal realm (e.g.,judgment can subjectively operate under theprinciple that the world appears ``as if'' it haspurpose, but this cannot be thought to apply tothe noumenal). Kant shields his architectonicby allowing it to encounter onlyepistemologically neutered noumena. This paperargues that Hick faces an analogousÜbergang problem, explores his``heautonomous'' attempt to blunt the problem,and concludes that the attempt fails, leavingHick with an unresolved problem of``onto-ethical discontinuity.''. (shrink)

This paper addresses the challenge of ethically integrating ChatGPT, a sophisticated AI language model, into K-14 economics education. Amidst the growing presence of AI in classrooms, it proposes the “Evaluate, Reflect, Assurance” model, a novel decision-making framework grounded in normative and virtue ethics, to guide educators. This approach is detailed through a theoretical decision tree, offering educators a heuristic tool to weigh the educational advantages and ethical dimensions of using ChatGPT. An educator can use the decision tree to reach a (...) conclusion on using ChatGPT within the classroom environment by using ethical considerations to promote personalized learning and upholding academic integrity. The paper stresses the importance of ongoing professional development for educators in ethical AI usage and calls for institutional support in this pursuit. It also identifies future research directions, including long-term impact studies of ChatGPT and comparative analyses of various AI tools in economics education, underscoring the paper’s relevance to current educational technology discourse. (shrink)

This essay explores the Foucauldian influence on Cornel West’s prophetic pragmatism. Although West argues that Foucauldian methods are insufficient to deliver a philosophy of liberation, I argue that there is nothing in Foucault that would prohibit West from such a goal, even though a philosophy of liberation was not one of Foucault’s goals. Fortunately, one can understand West’s own project of liberation in terms of “practices of freedom,” allowing one to describe West’s philosophical project in strict Foucauldian terms.

Sequel to Armendt 1986, ‘A Foundation for Causal Decision Theory.’ The representation theorem for causal decision theory is slightly revised, with the addition of a new restriction on lotteries and a new axiom (A7). The discussion gives some emphasis to the way in which appropriate K-partitions are characterized by relations found among the agent’s conditional preferences. The intended interpretation of conditional preference is one that embodies a sensitivity to the agent’s causal beliefs.

Professional sports with high rates of concussion have become increasingly concerned about the long-term effects of multiple head injuries. In this context, return-to-play decisions about concussion generate considerable ethical tensions for sports physicians. Team doctors clearly have an obligation to the welfare of their patient (the injured athlete) but they also have an obligation to their employer (the team), whose primary interest is typically success through winning. At times, a team’s interest in winning may not accord with the welfare of (...) an injured player, particularly when it comes to decisions about returning to play after injury. Australia’s two most popular professional football codes—rugby league and Australian Rules football—have adopted guidelines that prohibit concussed players from continuing to play on the same day. I suggest that conflicts of interest between doctors, patients, and teams may present a substantial obstacle to the proper adherence of concussion guidelines. Concussion management guidelines implemented by a sport’s governing body do not necessarily remove or resolve conflicts of interest in the doctor–patient–team triad. The instigation of a concussion exclusion rule appears to add a fourth party to this triad (the National Rugby League or the Australian Football League). In some instances, when conflicts of interest among stakeholders are ignored or insufficiently managed, they may facilitate attempts at circumventing concussion management guidelines to the detriment of player welfare. (shrink)

In this article I summarize Friedrich Hayek’s cultural group selection theory and describe the evidence gathered by current cultural group selection theorists within the behavioral and social sciences supporting Hayek’s main assertions. I conclude with a few comments on Hayek and libertarianism.

First Published in 2016. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.

Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics has been unjustly neglected in comparison with its more famous counterpart the Nicomachean Ethics. This is in large part due to the fact that until recently no complete translation of the work has been available. But the Eudemian Ethics is a masterpiece in its own right, offering valuable insights into Aristotle's ideas on virtue, happiness and the good life. This volume offers a translation by Brad Inwood and Raphael Woolf that is both fluent and exact, and (...) an introduction in which they help the reader to gain a deeper understanding both of the Eudemian Ethics and of its relation to the Nicomachean Ethics and to Aristotle's ethical thought as a whole. The explanatory notes address Aristotle's many references to other works, people and events. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of the history of ethics, ancient and moral philosophy, and Aristotle studies. (shrink)

After preliminaries concerning different accounts of the good and the distinction between actual-consequence consequentialism and expected-value consequentialism, this paper explains why consequentialists should prescribe a moral decision procedure dominated by rules. But act-consequentialists deny rules have a role in the criterion of moral rightness. Prescribing a decision procedure dominated by rules and then denying rules a role in the criterion of rightness can be problematic. Rule-consequentialism gives rules roles first in the decision procedure agents should use and second in the (...) criterion of moral rightness. But giving rules this second role has attracted objections, some of which are outlined and answered here. The final section of the paper considers some recent developments. (shrink)

The problem of the man who met death in Damascus appeared in the infancy of the theory of rational choice known as causal decision theory. A straightforward, unadorned version of causal decision theory is presented here and applied, along with Brian Skyrms’ deliberation dynamics, to Death in Damascus and similar problems. Decision instability is a fascinating topic, but not a source of difficulty for causal decision theory. Andy Egan’s purported counterexample to causal decision theory, Murder Lesion, is considered; a simple (...) response shows how Murder Lesion and similar examples fail to be counterexamples, and clarifies the use of the unadorned theory in problems of decision instability. I compare unadorned causal decision theory to previous treatments by Frank Arntzenius and by Jim Joyce, and recommend a well-founded heuristic that all three accounts can endorse. Whatever course deliberation takes, causal decision theory is consistently a good guide to rational action. (shrink)

Brad Inwood presents a selection of his most influential essays on the philosophy of Seneca, the Roman Stoic thinker, statesman, and tragedian of the first century AD. Including two brand-new pieces, and a helpful introduction to orient the reader, this volume will be an essential guide for anyone seeking to understand Seneca's fertile, wide-ranging thought and its impact on subsequent generations.

To what extent is the external world the way that it appears to us in perceptual experience? This perennial question in philosophy is no doubt ambiguous in many ways. For example, it might be taken as equivalent to the question of whether or not the external world is the way that it appears to be? This is a question about the epistemology of perception: Are our perceptual experiences by and large veridical representations of the external world? Alternatively, the question might (...) be taken as asking whether or not the external world is like its ways of appearing to us, where the expression “ways of appearing” is intended to pick out aspects of our perceptual experiences themselves. This is a metaphysical version of the question of the relationship between appearance and reality: What is the relationship between the phenomenal features that characterize perceptual experience, on the one hand, and the mind-independent features of the external objects of perception, on the other? There are some philosophers who might resist distinguishing between these two questions. For them, “ways of appearing” in the phenomenal sense just are the ways that things appear to be (let’s call the latter the “intentional sense” of “ways of appearing”).1 That is, the phenomenal character of an experience is nothing over and above its representational content. Phenomenal properties are represented properties—the properties that an experience attributes to the external objects of perception. The question of whether or not phenomenal properties can be identified with the represented properties of an experience mirrors traditional questions in the philosophy of perception. If they can be identified with each other, then in veridical perception we might be said to “directly grasp” features of the external world through perception. The properties that are present to the mind are the very same properties that belong to the external objects of perception. Such a view affords.... (shrink)

Seneca's Letters to Lucilius are a rich source of information about ancient Stoicism, an influential work for early modern philosophers, and a fascinating philosophical document in their own right. This selection of the letters aims to include those which are of greatest philosophical interest, especially those which highlight the debates between Stoics and Platonists or Aristotelians in the first century AD, and the issue, still important today, of how technical philosophical enquiry is related to the various purposes for which philosophy (...) is practised. In addition to examining the philosophical content of each letter, Brad Inwood's commentary discusses the literary and historical background of the letters and to their relationship with other prose works by Seneca.Seneca is the earliest Stoic author for whom we have access to a large number of complete works, and these works were highly influential in later centuries. He was also a politically influential advisor to the Roman emperor Nero and a celebrated author of prose and verse. His philosophical acuity and independence of mind make his works exciting and challenging for the modern reader.CLARENDON LATER ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERSGeneral Editors: Jonathan Barnes and A. A. Long This series is designed to encourage philosophers and students of philosophy to explore the fertile terrain of later ancient philosophy. The texts range in date from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, and will cover all the parts and all the schools of philosophy. Each volume contains a substantial introduction, an English translation, and a critical commentary on the philosophical claims and arguments of the text. The translations aim primarily at accuracy and fidelity; but they are also readable and accompanied by notes on textual problems that affect the philosophical interpretation. No knowledge of Greek or Latin is assumed. (shrink)

This article sheds light on a relatively unexplored aspect of the Northern Territories dispute by examining the views of residents in Nemuro -- the symbolic frontline in Japan’s Northern Territories Reversion Movement (NTRM). The NTRM began in this northern periphery as a movement of divergent attitudes but was soon coopted by the Japanese government for political reasons. Local opposition to the government’s four island en bloc policy existed in some quarters but was largely kept in check by state largesse. However, (...) as a result of demographic and socioeconomic changes, dissent is slowly emerging in Nemuro. There are signs of an emerging disjuncture between national policy and local aspirations. This disjuncture has both theoretical and policy implications. Theoretically, this paper is congruent with politico-institutional arguments emphasizing the impact of the regulatory regime in shaping civil society organizations. From a policy perspective, public opinion in Nemuro indicates a potential avenue for compromise in Tokyo’s negotiating strategy, although pressure for change is unlikely to emerge from the bureaucratized NTRM. (shrink)

The debate over Locke’s theory of slavery has focused on his involvement with the Royal African Company and other institutions of African slavery, as well as his rhetorical use of slavery in opposing absolutism. This overlooks Locke’s deep involvement with the Carolina colony, and in particular that colony’s Indian slave trade, which was largely justified in just-war terms. Evidence of Locke’s participation in the 1682 revisions to the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which removed the infamous “absolute power and authority” clause, (...) and his knowledge of colonial affairs, when examined alongside textual evidence of the timing of the composition of Locke’s theory of slavery, indicates a significant connection between the colony and Locke’s work. In light of this evidence, this article suggests an interpretation of Locke’s theory that stresses its character as a response to the conditions he encountered in Carolina. (shrink)

BOOK REVIEWS 149 cannot be denied: volumes 2o-2 3 are, in their present form, less than perfect. There- fore, it would be very good if they could be revised. Stark makes a convincing case for this. Yet, it would be a mistake if one were to see the significance of his Nachforschungen just in this negative result. It may ultimately be important for the positive contributions it makes to a better understanding of Kant's extant manuscript materials. It does indeed go (...) some way towards supplying some of the materials that Adickes meant to supply, and it thus represents indeed a first step towards a better edition of Kant's works. I do not see any reasons that would speak against a revised edition of the Academy edition as a whole. MANFRED KUEHN Purdue University Andrew Bowie. ScheUing and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction. London and New York: Routledge Press, 1993. Pp x + 21 i. Cloth, $65.oo. Paper, $16.95. Andrew Bowie devotes much of his instructive and well-researched text, as the title promises, to locating Schelling on the map of contemporary theory and simultaneously questioning the relevance of that map. Bowie situates Schelling historically within the context of the pantheism debate and his relationship with Fichte . He explores, in detail, questions of Schelling's natural philosophy, makes a brief excursion into Schelling's philosophy of art, looks closely at his identity philosophy and finally at his response to.. (shrink)

Theories of individual well‐being fall into three main categories: hedonism, the desire‐fulfilment theory, and the list theory (which maintains that there are some things that can benefit a person without increasing the person's pleasure or desire‐fulfilment). The paper briefly explains the answers that hedonism and the desire‐fulfilment theory give to the question of whether being virtuous constitutes a benefit to the agent. Most of the paper is about the list theory's answer.

Neurodevices that collect neural (or brain activity) data have been characterised as having the ability to register the inner workings of human mentality. There are concerns that the proliferation of such devices in the consumer-directed realm may result in the mass processing and commercialisation of neural data (as has been the case with social media data) and even threaten the mental privacy of individuals. To prevent this, some argue that all raw neural data should be conceptualised and regulated as “medical (...) data” even if it is collected from consumer-directed devices in obviously non-clinical settings. In this paper, we argue that without a clearer formulation of what does and does not count as medical data, this approach might also uncritically enlarge the scope for medical influence and an unwarranted medicalisation of everyday aspects of mental life. Indeed, if we were to accept the position that all neural data is medical data because it offers insights into personally sensitive information (such a person’s thoughts, emotions, or intentions) then this could even unnecessarily expand the boundaries of medical data to other forms of data that otherwise seem to be non-clinical. If all brain data (neural activity data) is considered to be medical data even when collected from consumer-directed devices then we might unintentionally reduce meaningful distinctions between what is and what is not rightfully in the purview of medicine. (shrink)