The ‘aesthetic theory of virtue’ or ATV, is the thesis, partly inspired by Thomas Reid, that virtue coincides with beauty of soul and vice with ugliness of soul. The basic idea of ATV is that for a person to be virtuous is for his soul to have certain aesthetic properties, which are necessary and sufficient conditions for personal goodness. The relation between morally aesthetic properties and moral attributes is one of supervenience of the former upon the latter. McGinn cites (...) the film Brief Encounter to illustrate the concept of the beautiful soul, and he also draws upon Nabokov's discussion of the aesthetic in Lolita. A morally bad character, McGinn argues, cannot have a beautiful soul, nor can a morally good character have an ugly soul. (shrink)

Given its initial form by Protestant natural lawyers such as Pufendorf, practical ethics figured prominently in the writings and lectures of university teachers like Hutcheson, Smith, Reid, and Paley, and it provided the most important shared background for philosophical views concerning how we ought to act and what dispositions we should cultivate. The core of practical ethics was a systematic presentation of our duties, rights, and virtues. This chapter analyzes the structure and discusses the purposes served by practical ethics. (...) It then surveys philosophical opinion on our principal duties—those to God, to self, and to others—and examines debates on piety, suicide, and lying. (shrink)

Paideia is a word that signifies education or culture—two concepts that are only apparently distinct in Ancient Greek thinking. The performance of poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, drama, dance, and even athletics functioned simultaneously as education and culture. They entertained and unified communities by affirming shared heritage and interrogating common values. This process had special importance in Sicily and Southern Italy, where Hellenism was often a matter of education rather than ancestry. This volume explores the intersection of education and cultural performance in (...) a variety of disciplines and from a variety of perspectives. Authors discussed include Sappho, Empedocles, Gorgias, Plato, and Aristotle. Contexts range from choral dance, to epideictic oratory, theatrical performance, philosophical dialogue, and gymnastic exercise. Taken together, these diverse essays reveal a cultural paideia aimed at realizing an ideal of human potential—not least by questioning human reality. Edited by Henry C. Curcio, Mark Ralkowski, and Heather L. Reid, the volume includes essays by Audrey L. Anton & Erika N. Brown, Paloma Flávio Betini, Michał Bizoń, L.M.J. Coulson, Mateo Duque, Jurgen R. Gatt & Andrew Debono Cauchi, Michael Goyette, Veronika Konrádová, Georgios Mouratidis & Heather L. Reid, Kristian Sheeley, and Colin C. Smith. (shrink)

"There is in Ethicks as in most Sciences," Thomas Reid told the students in his moral philosophy class, "a Speculative and a practical Part. … The proper object of the Theory of Morals is to explain the Constitution of the human Mind so far as regards Morals, that is to explain the Moral and active Powers of the human Mind." He continued: "The various Theorists disagree not about what is to be accounted virtuous Conduct but why it is so (...) to be accounted." It was as a theorist of morals that, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith distinguished between the questions of, first, what virtue consists in, and, secondly, "by what... (shrink)

Kant holds that the applicability of the moral ‘ought’ depends on a kind of agent-causal freedom that is incompatible with the deterministic structure of phenomenal nature. I argue that Kant understands this determinism to threaten not just morality but the very possibility of our status as rational beings. Rational beings exemplify “cognitive control” in all of their actions, including not just rational willing and the formation of doxastic attitudes, but also more basic cognitive acts such as judging, conceptualizing, and synthesizing.

Colin McGinn presents his latest work on consciousness in ten interlinked papers, four of them previously unpublished. He extends and deepens his controversial solution to the mind-body problem, defending the view that consciousness is both ontologically unproblematic and epistemologically impenetrable. He also investigates the basis of our knowledge that there is a mind-body problem, and the bearing of this on attempted solutions. McGinn goes on to discuss the status of first-person authority, the possibility of atomism with respect to consciousness, (...) extreme dualism, and the role of non-existent objects in constituting intentionality. He argues that traditional claims about our knowledge of our own mind and of the external world can be inverted; that atomism about the conscious mind might turn out to be true; that dualism is more credible the more extreme it is; and that all intentionality involves non-existent objects. These are all surprising positions, but he contends that what the philosophy of mind needs now is 'methodological radicalism' - a willingness to consider new and seemingly extravagant ideas. (shrink)

Article published in Progress in Human Geography, Aug 2017. This is a pre-publication version of the article ; please see early online version at publisher website for final version.: This article examines rhythmanalysis within the context of Henri Lefebvre's critique of everyday life and identifies gaps in his framework from the vantage point of intersectional feminist scholarship. Intersectional rhythmanalysis, I argue, provides a framework - Géographie – Nouvel article.

In recent years there has been a bold revival in the field of natural theology, where “natural theology” can be understood as the attempt to demonstrate that God exists by way of reason, evidence, and argument without the appeal to divine revelation. Today's practitioners of natural theology have not only revived and recast all of the traditional arguments in the field, but, by drawing upon the findings of contemporary cosmology, chemistry, and biology, have also developed a range of fascinating new (...) ones. -/- Contemporary Arguments in Natural Theology brings together twenty experts working in the field today. Together, they practice natural theology from a wide range of perspectives, and show how the field of natural theology is practiced today with a degree of diversity and confidence not seen since the Middle Ages. Aimed primarily at advanced undergraduates and graduate students, the volume will also be of interest to researchers in philosophy, theology, biblical studies, and religious studies, as an indispensable resource on contemporary theistic proofs. (shrink)

Malebranche holds that visual experience represents the size of objects relative to the perceiver's body and does not represent objects as having intrinsic or nonrelational spatial magnitudes. I argue that Malebranche's case for this body-relative thesis is more sophisticated than other commentators—most notably, Atherton and Simmons —have presented it. Malebranche's central argument relies on the possibility of perceptual variation with respect to size. He uses two thought experiments to show that perceivers of different sizes—namely, miniature people, giants, and typical human (...) beings—can experience the very same objects as having radically different sizes. Malebranche argues that there is no principled reason to privilege one of these ways of experiencing size over the others and, more specifically, that all three kinds of perceivers experience size veridically. From the possibility of this kind of veridical perceptual variation, Malebranche infers that visual experience represents only body-relative size. (shrink)

Hayek and the Efficient Market Hypothesis are often seen as proposing a similar theory of prices. Hayek is seen as proposing to understand prices as information conveyer, incorporating inform...

Amsterdam University Press is a leading publisher of academic books, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Our aim is to make current research available to scholars, students, innovators, and the general public. AUP stands for scholarly excellence, global presence, and engagement with the international academic community.

This short paper introduces institutional theory to some long-standing questions about business and society theory. Specifically, institutional theory would seem to offer some potential for understanding why business organisations may adopt CSR practices for non-instrumental reasons.

This paper utilises rhetorical analysis to explore how persuasive appeals in company social/environmental reports shape understandings about corporate responsibility.

Many people place great stock in the importance of civic virtue to the success of democratic communities. Is this hope well-grounded? The fundamental question is whether it is even possible to cultivate ethical and civic virtues in the first place. Taking for granted that it is possible, at least three further questions arise: What are the key elements of civic virtue? How should we cultivate these virtuous dispositions? And finally, how should schools be organized in order to make the education (...) of citizen possible? These interrelated questions are the focus of this collection. By considering these questions from a variety of philosophical perspectives ranging from moral psychology, philosophy of education, and political philosophy, the nine essays assembled here advance our understanding of the challenges we face in trying to shape children to be virtuous citizens. -/- . (shrink)

El consumo contemporáneo es frecuentemente objeto de críticas por parte de intelectuales, académicos, líderes religiosos y comentaristas diversos. En este trabajo se analizan y examinan cinco de las críticas más comunes, como son: la crítica de la necesidad, la crítica sobre su materialismo, la crítica de la adicción, la crítica del egoísmo, y la crítica sobre su irracionalidad. Se muestra a continuación que todas ellas están desencaminadas o carecen de apoyo empírico. Finalmente, se pone de manifiesto que varias de estas (...) críticas son incompatibles entre sí. (shrink)

A recent article by Jeff Kochan contains a discussion of modus ponens that among other thing alleges that the paradox of the heap is a counterexample to it. In this note I show that it is the conditional major premise of a modus ponens inference, rather than the rule itself, that is impugned. This premise is the contrapositive of the inductive step in the principle of mathematical induction, confirming the widely accepted view that it is the vagueness of natural language (...) predicates, not modus ponens , that is challenged by Sorites. (shrink)

This paper addresses the problem of why the conditions under which standard proofs of the Dutch Book argument proceed should ever be met. In particular, the condition that there should be odds at which you would be willing to bet indifferently for or against are hardly plausible in practice, and relaxing it and applying Dutch book considerations gives only the theory of upper and lower probabilities. It is argued that there are nevertheless admittedly rather idealised circumstances in which the classic (...) form of the Dutch Book argument is valid. (shrink)

Some of the problem areas in which British philosophers of science have recently been engaged are described and some of the major contributions noted. Two sets of problems are given special attention: one concerned with the analysis of probability statements and one concerned with the appraisal of scientific theories. Three traditions in the approach to this second set of problems are distinguished. These might be called the Carnapian, the Popperian and the Wittgensteinian traditions.

The world's largest industry is trying to become environmentally sensitive, but is it succeeding? Judy Karwacki, currently working towards an MBA, has an MA in Political Studies; she runs a travel agency in Saskatoon and has a very strong personal interest in ecotourism. Colin Boyd is Professor of Management at the College of Commerce, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Sask., Canada S7N 0W0, and an Associate Editor of this Review.

According to Wittgenstein's mature philosophy, no 'language game' or 'form of life' is inherently philosophically problematic. However real, practical moral problems undermine the objectivity of morality, which as moral beings we cannot abandon. This problem is both philosophical and 'real'. Morality therefore undermines the later Wittgenstein's whole account of philosophy, i.e. its nature, how such problems are resolved, and its relation with the rest of our lives. Perhaps that is why he virtually never mentions Ethics in his writings after 1932-3.