This document collects discussion and commentary on issues raised in the workshop by its participants. Contributors are: Greg Frost-Arnold, David Harker, P. D. Magnus, John Manchak, John D. Norton, J. Brian Pitts, Kyle Stanford, Dana Tulodziecki.

Originally published as L'Islam et l'occident, 2006. Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. xxii + 114 pp. Hardback, $19.99.

Tobias Jones’s Utopian Dreams and David Bramwell’s The No. 9 Bus to Utopia provide two travelogues that pull us from our theoretical social dreaming into the practical implementation of utopianism through alternative societies, or intentional communities. The authors narrate their experiences and insights as they travel through communities and interrogate claims that there might be better ways of living. The impetus behind their pilgrimage: the endemic anomie that both authors argue permeates our society. Armed with the facts, they both (...) describe the mass of problems of modern life: soaring rates of independent living, the breakdown of community, and the epidemic of depression. In positing the question of.. (shrink)

Recovering Reason: Essays in Honor of Thomas L. Pangle is a collection of essays composed by students and friends of Thomas L. Pangle to honor his seminal work and outstanding guidance in the study of political philosophy. These essays examine both Socrates' and modern political philosophers' attempts to answer the question of the right life for human beings, as those attempts are introduced and elaborated in the work of thinkers from Homer and Thucydides to Nietzsche and Charles Taylor.

This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

I argue that the study of variability rather than invariance should head the reading research agenda, and that strong claims of orthographic are unwarranted. I also expand briefly on Frost's assertion that an efficient orthography must represent sound and meaning, by considering writing systems as dual-purpose devices that must provide decipherability for novice readers and automatizability for the expert.

David Bohm was one of the foremost scientific thinkers and philosophers of our time. Although deeply influenced by Einstein, he was also, more unusually for a scientist, inspired by mysticism. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s he made contact with both J. Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama whose teachings helped shape his work. In both science and philosophy, Bohm's main concern was with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular. In this classic work he (...) develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole. Writing clearly and without technical jargon, he makes complex ideas accessible to anyone interested in the nature of reality. (shrink)

David Armstrong's book is a contribution to the philosophical discussion about possible worlds. Taking Wittgenstein's Tractatus as his point of departure, Professor Armstrong argues that nonactual possibilities and possible worlds are recombinations of actually existing elements, and as such are useful fictions. There is an extended criticism of the alternative-possible-worlds approach championed by the American philosopher David Lewis. This major work will be read with interest by a wide range of philosophers.

Introduction to the work David Hume described as the best of his many writings.

This volume is a tribute to Fr. John F. Wippel. Following the philosophical order that Aquinas might have adopted "had he chosen to write a Summa metaphysicae"—an order that Wippel himself lays out in his Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas—these essays unfold new research on some of the most intriguing topics in Aquinas’s metaphysics, from the most recent generation of scholars formed by Wippel’s pioneering work. -/- The contributors address the discovery of being qua being via separation (Gregory T. Doolan), (...) propter quid metaphysical demonstrations (Philip Neri Reese), the origins of the controversies about the real distinction between essence and esse (Mark Gossiaux), a defense of essence-realism as a key to the real distinction (David Twetten), the relationship of likeness and agency (Therese Scarpelli Cory), created form as act and potency (Stephen Brock), the variation of accidental forms (Gloria Frost), the possibility of angelic judgment (Francis Feingold), argumentation for the existence of God (Gaven Kerr), the propriety of " Qui Est" as a Divine Name (Brian Carl), ‘Beauty’ as a Divine Name (Michael Rubin), and God’s application of creaturely powers to action (Jason Mitchell). (shrink)

Abstract:This essay explores ways that looming climate change will affect how we think about future winters in New England. By all accounts, by the end of the twenty-first century the depth of the region's winter snow and cold will be much reduced from their historical averages. Drawing upon personal reflection, scientific data, and close readings of iconic New England authors, the essay examines potential future conceptions of the region's winters. I am particularly interested in how the expected warmer winters will (...) demand rereading literary works by iconic figures such as Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, and Robert Frost. The essay begins with an examination of the role nostalgia has played in popular images of New England winters and argues for a critically informed version of nostalgia that will enable readers to mourn for what they might lose in the future. The concluding section examines the folklore behind the January Thaw. Climate change, I argue, will usher in a period of an ongoing New England thaw to which our poetry and natural history writing will have to adapt. (shrink)

Transcending the overplayed debate between utilitarians and rights theorists, the book offers a fresh methodological approach with specific constructive conclusions about our treatment of animals. David DeGrazia provides the most thorough discussion yet of whether equal consideration should be extended to animals' interests, and examines the issues of animal minds and animal well-being with an unparalleled combination of philosophical rigor and empirical documentation. This book is an important contribution to the field of animal ethics.

Did you ever wonder why you are sometimes too tired to watch a film, and would rather watch some TV show? And then, you might end up watching five or six hours and binge watch an entire season, and yet feel too tired to commit yourself to a single 2-hour film piece. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, I will try to investigate whether there are any ontological differences in the form of a film or a television show. (...) Second, I will try to connect the newest neurological and psychological research regarding binging and attention span and see how seriality influences our brains. I will use the recent neurological findings to try to answer the question of why it seems easier to watch the same number of episodes rather than a single movie. Third, I will use David Lynch's and Mark Frost's third season of Twin Peaks as an example illustrating the blurry borders between a television show and a film, while contrasting it to the binge-watching phenomenon. (shrink)

In this book, David Boonin examines the problem of punishment, and particularly the problem of explaining why it is morally permissible for the state to treat those who break the law in ways that would be wrong to treat those who do not? Boonin argues that there is no satisfactory solution to this problem and that the practice of legal punishment should therefore be abolished. Providing a detailed account of the nature of punishment and the problems that it generates, (...) he offers a comprehensive and critical survey of the various solutions that have been offered to the problem and concludes by considering victim restitution as an alternative to punishment. Written in a clear and accessible style, The Problem of Punishment will be of interest to anyone looking for a critical introduction to the subject as well as to those already familiar with it. (shrink)

The first volume of this series presents fifteen selected papers dealing with a variety of topics in ontology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.

David Boonin has written the most thorough and detailed case for the moral permissibility of abortion yet published. Critically examining a wide range of arguments that attempt to prove that every human fetus has a right to life, he shows that each of these arguments fails on its own terms. He then explains how even if the fetus does have a right to life, abortion can still be shown to be morally permissible on the critique of abortion's own terms. (...) Finally he considers several pro-life arguments that do not depend on claims that the fetus has a right to life and concludes that these too are ultimately unsuccessful. This major book will be especially helpful to those teaching applied ethics and bioethics in philosophy departments or professional schools of law and medicine. It will interest students of women studies and general readers for whom abortion remains a high-profile issue. (shrink)

This collection opens a dialogue between process philosophy and contemporary consciousness studies. Approaching consciousness from diverse disciplinary perspectives—philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, neuropathology, psychotherapy, biology, animal ethology, and physics—the contributors offer empirical and philosophical support for a model of consciousness inspired by the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). Whitehead’s model is developed in ways he could not have anticipated to show how it can advance current debates beyond well-known sticking points. This has trenchant consequences for epistemology and suggests fresh and (...) promising new perspectives on such topics as the mind-body problem, the neurobiology of consciousness, animal consciousness, the evolution of consciousness, panpsychism, the unity of consciousness, epiphenomenalism, free will, and causation. Contents: Introduction, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes I. Setting the Stage 1. Process Thought as a Heuristic for Investigating Consciousness, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes 2. Whitehead as a Neglected Figure of 20th Century Philosophy, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes 3. Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought, Anderson Weekes 4. Whitehead’s Unique Approach to the Topic of Consciousness, Anderson Weekes II. Psychology and Philosophy of Mind 5. Consciousness as a Subjective Form, David Ray Griffin 6. The Interpretation and Integration of the Literature on Consciousness from a Process Perspective, Michael W. Katzko 7. Windows on Nonhuman Minds, Donald R. Griffin III. From Metaphysics to (Neuro)Science and Back Again 8. Panexperientialism, Quantum Theory, and Neuroplasticity, George W. Shields 9. The Evolution of Consciousness, Max Velmans 10. The Carrier Theory Of Causation, Gregg H. Rosenberg IV. Clinical Applications: Consciousness as Process 11. The Microgenetic Revolution in Contemporary Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics, Maria Pachalska and Bruce Duncan MacQueen 12. From Coma to Consciousness, Avraham Schweiger, Michael Frost, Ofer Keren 13. Consciousness and Rationality from a Process Perspective, Michel Weber V. History (and Future?) of Philosophy 14. Consciousness, Memory, and Recollection according to Whitehead, Xavier Verley 15. Consciousness and Causation in Light of Whitehead’s Phenomenology of Becoming, Anderson Weekes. (shrink)

Whether children have rights is a debate that in recent years has spilled over into all areas of public life. It has never been more topical than now as the assumed rights of parents over their children is challenged on an almost daily basis. David Archard offers the first serious and sustained philosophical examination of children and their rights. Archard reviews arguments for and against according children rights. He concludes that every child has at least the right to the (...) best possible upbringing. Denying that parents have any significant rights over their children, he is able to challenge current thinking about the proper roles of state and family in rearing children. Crucially, he considers the problem of how to define and understand `child abuse'. (shrink)

In _Panpsychism in the West_, the first comprehensive study of the subject, David Skrbina argues for the importance of panpsychism -- the theory that mind exists, in some form, in all living and nonliving things -- in consideration of the nature of consciousness and mind. Despite the recent advances in our knowledge of the brain and the increasing intricacy and sophistication of philosophical discussion, the nature of mind remains an enigma. Panpsychism, with its conception of mind as a general (...) phenomenon of nature, uniquely links being and mind. More than a theory of mind, it is a meta-theory -- a statement about theories of mind rather than a theory in itself. Panpsychism can parallel almost every current theory of mind; it simply holds that, no matter how one conceives of mind, such mind applies to all things. In addition, panpsychism is one of the most ancient and enduring concepts of philosophy, beginning with its pre-historical forms, animism and polytheism. Its adherents in the West have included important thinkers from the very beginning of Greek philosophy through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the present. Skrbina argues that panpsychism is long overdue for detailed treatment, and with this book he proposes to add impetus to the discussion of panpsychism in serious philosophical inquiries. After a brief discussion of general issues surrounding philosophy of mind, he traces the panpsychist views of specific philosophers, from the ancient Greeks and early Renaissance naturalist philosophers through the likes of William James, Josiah Royce, and Charles Sanders Peirce -- always with a strong emphasis on the original texts. In his concluding chapter, "A Panpsychist World View," Skrbina assesses panpsychist arguments and puts them in a larger context. By demonstrating that there is panpsychist thinking in many major philosophers, Skrbina offers a radical challenge to the modern worldview, based as it is on a mechanistic cosmos of dead, insensate matter. _Panpsychism in the West _will be the standard work on this topic for years to come. (shrink)

In this ambitious study, David Corfield attacks the widely held view that it is the nature of mathematical knowledge which has shaped the way in which mathematics is treated philosophically and claims that contingent factors have brought us to the present thematically limited discipline. Illustrating his discussion with a wealth of examples, he sets out a variety of approaches to new thinking about the philosophy of mathematics, ranging from an exploration of whether computers producing mathematical proofs or conjectures are (...) doing real mathematics, to the use of analogy, the prospects for a Bayesian confirmation theory, the notion of a mathematical research programme and the ways in which new concepts are justified. His inspiring book challenges both philosophers and mathematicians to develop the broadest and richest philosophical resources for work in their disciplines and points clearly to the ways in which this can be done. (shrink)

David Wiggins; II*—Deliberation and Practical Reason, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Pages 29–52, https://doi.org/10.

The central philosophical challenge of metaethics is to account for the normativity of moral judgment without abandoning or seriously compromising moral realism. In Morality in a Natural World, David Copp defends a version of naturalistic moral realism that can accommodate the normativity of morality. Moral naturalism is often thought to face special metaphysical, epistemological, and semantic problems as well as the difficulty in accounting for normativity. In the ten essays included in this volume, Copp defends solutions to these problems. (...) Three of the essays are new, while seven have previously been published. All of them are concerned with the viability of naturalistic and realistic accounts of the nature of morality, or, more generally, with the viability of naturalistic accounts of reasons. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:178 Feminist Studies 46, no. 1. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Nathan Snaza Biopolitics without Bodies: Feminism and the Feeling of Life Against a restrictive and imperialist concept of “the human,” which has become globalized during the long march of colonialist, heterosexist modernity, Samantha Frost’s Biocultural Creatures summons “counter-concepts” of the human that might authorize new political possibilities and theories of what it means to be human. (...) She writes, “These counter-concepts of the human are creatures who are embedded in various ecologies and networks of relations and who can integrate their acknowledgement of their embodiment, animality, physicality, dependence, and vulnerability into their self-conception and their orientation toward and modes of being in the world” (3). As this formulation suggests, whatever the new theory of the human is, it has been emerging at the edges of imperialist humanism for some time in a number of distinct political and intellectual projects clustering around decolonization, feminism, queer critique, technoscience, and ecology.1 Frost’s book, 1. Vandana Shiva and Ingunn Moser, editors, Biopolitics: A Feminist and Ecological Reader on Biotechnology (London: Zed Books, 1995); Cyd Cipolla, Kristina Gupta, David A. Rubin, and Angela Willey, eds., Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017); Sandra Harding, Sciences From Below: Feminisms, Postcolonialities, and Modernities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008); Sandra Harding, ed., The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 179 Nathan Snaza Books Discussed in This Essay Biocultural Creatures: Toward a New Theory of the Human. Samantha Frost. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Flourishing Thought: Democracy in an Age of Data Hoards. Ruth A. Miller. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016. The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets: A Reproductive History of the Nonhuman. Ruth A. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. The Economization of Life. Michelle Murphy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. along with recent work by Michelle Murphy and Ruth Miller, among many other feminist biopolitical thinkers, summons us to reconceive and decolonize the human by feeling it differently, and in so doing, open our intellectual and political projects toward what Miller calls “democracy as a nonhuman affair” in The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets (9). My sense is that this reconception throws into question the ways that we have understood both the human and politics through specific ideas about bodies. The body has a certain phenomenological obviousness for (some) humans, which might explain why it has been so central to most political projects of modernity, many of which share at least some commitment to the liberal individual as a self-contained entity.2 However, something else is beginning to press on contemporary feminist biopolitical thought. Karen Barad’s claim that “[o]bjects are not already 2. For a rich overview of the ways in which the body has animated feminist thought and politics, especially in light of debates in the physical and biological sciences, see Mary Jacobus, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Sally Shuttleworth, eds., Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (New York: Routledge, 1990. A different sense of the body begins to appear a few years later in Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993); and Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994). 180 Nathan Snaza there; they emerge through specific practices” attunes us to this new orientation.3 For Barad, knowledge practices are open-ended, and “the differential constitutions of human and nonhuman designate particular phenomena that are themselves implicated in the dynamics of intra-activity, including their enfolding and reconstitution in the reconfiguring of apparatuses.”4 In other words, knowledge emerges from the world through “cuts” that reconfigure it: entities—such as “the body” or “the human”—come into being through specific apparatuses. These include theoretical concepts: “Theorizing, like experimenting, is a material practice.”5 The concept of the body, then, is a material part of the intra-active becoming of the world in knowledge production—its meaning exceeds the fact of its existence. While the body has been useful to an enormous number of projects, contemporary feminist thought, in a wide variety of ways, is feeling... (shrink)

David Wiggins; IV*—Moral Cognitivism, Moral Relativism and Motivating Moral Beliefs, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 91, Issue 1, 1 June 1991, P.

Clearly and engagingly written, this volume is vital reading for students of philosophy and sociology, and anyone interested in Wittgenstein's later thought. David Bloor provides a challenging and informative evaluation of Wittgenstein's account of rules and rule-following. Arguing for a collectivist reading, Bloor offers the first consistent sociological interpretation of Wittgenstein's work for many years.

For this volume David Wiggins has selected and revised eleven of his essays in an area of metaphysics where his work has been particularly influential, and he has added a substantial introduction and one new unpublished essay. Among the subjects treated are substance, identity, persistence, persons, sortals, and artefacts.

This paper argues against a particular version of the inference from the success of a scientific theory to the claim that the theory must be approximately true to some extent. The kind of success at issue is comparative, where one theory is more empirically successful than its rival if that theory predicts phenomena that are inexplicable or anomalous according to its rival. A theory that exhibits this kind of comparative success can be seen as thereby achieving empirical progress over its (...) rival. David Harker has developed a form of selective scientific realism based on the idea that this kind of success is evidence for the approximate truth of the parts of theories responsible for such success. Counterexamples to Harker’s position are cases in which a theory is more successful than its rival in virtue of containing parts that are not even approximately true. In order to identify some counterexamples to Harker’s position, this paper considers four historical cases that Greg Frost-Arnold has recently used to motivate a novel historical challenge to realism called the Problem of Misleading Evidence. This paper argues that these four cases are counterexamples to Harker’s position, and that they provide a strong reason to doubt his position and the kind of success-to-truth inference that he defends. (shrink)

David Wiggins; XV*—Weakness of Will Commensurability, and the Objects of Deliberation and Desire, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1.

In this new introduction to a classic philosophical text, David Stern examines Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. He gives particular attention to both the arguments of the Investigations and the way in which the work is written, and especially to the role of dialogue in the book. While he concentrates on helping the reader to arrive at his or her own interpretation of the primary text, he also provides guidance to the unusually wide range of existing interpretations, and to the reasons (...) why the Investigations have inspired such a diversity of readings. Following closely the text of the Investigations and meant to be read alongside it, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well-suited to university-level courses on Wittgenstein, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines. (shrink)

David Chalmers uses Bayesian theories of credence to argue against referentialism about belief. This paper argues that Chalmers’s Bayesian objections to referentialism are similar to older, more familiar objections to referentialism. There are familiar responses to the old objections, and there is a predictable way to modify those old responses to meet Chalmers’s Bayesian objections. The new responses to the new objections are no less plausible than the old responses to the old objections. Chalmers’s positive theory of belief and (...) credence is structurally similar to typical referential theories of those objects, but his theory is more speculative and dubious. (shrink)

Never before has there been a greater need for deeper listening and more open communication to cope with the complex problems facing our organizations, businesses and societies. Renowned scientist David Bohm believed there was a better way for humanity to discover meaning and to achieve harmony. He identified creative dialogue, a sharing of assumptions and understanding, as a means by which the individual, and society as a whole, can learn more about themselves and others, and achieve a renewed sense (...) of purpose. (shrink)

In his writings, David Hume set out to bridge the gap between the learned world of the academy and the marketplace of polite society. This collection, drawing largely on his Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, which was even more popular than his famous Treatise of Human Nature, comprehensively shows how far he succeeded. From `Of Essay Writing' to `Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences' Hume embraces a staggering range of social, cultural, political, demographic, and historical (...) concerns. With the scope typical of the Scottish Enlightenment, he charts the state of civil society, manners, morals, and taste, and the development of political economy in the mid-eighteenth century. These essays represent not only those areas where Hume's arguments are revealingly typical of his day, but also where he is strikingly innovative in a period already famous for its great thinkers. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

`Quantum theory' is not a single physical theory but a framework in which many different concrete theories fit. As such, a solution to the quantum measurement problem ought to provide a recipe to interpret each such concrete theory, in a mutually consistent way. But with the exception of the Everett interpretation, the mainextant solutions either try to make sense of the abstract framework as if it were concrete, or else interpret one particular quantum theory under the fiction that it is (...) fundamental and exact. In either case, these approaches are unable to help themselves to the very theory-laden, level-relative ways in which quantum theory makes contact with experiment in mainstream physics, and so are committed to major revisionary projects which have not been carried out even in outline. As such, only the Everett interpretation is currently suited to make sense of quantum physics as we find it. (shrink)

In contrast with Ford’s essay, David R. Griffin presents a catalogue of the differences between the two philosophers from a "Hartshornian" perspective. Strangely, perhaps the least helpful contribution comes from Hartshorne himself, whose "Ideas and Theses of Process Philosophers" is simply a highly schematic outline. Completing the volume are essays by William O’Meara on Hartshorne’s methodology, and by Frederic Frost on relativity theory and Hartshorne’s dipolar conception of God. In general, the book suffers from repetition; many of the (...) same issues recur in the essays, at times with significantly different interpretations, but frequently with only the slightest modification of accent. While its flaws cannot be ignored, Two Process Philosophers does possess the virtue of focusing upon the genuine diversity within the tradition of process philosophy.-D.F.D. (shrink)

Universalism vs. Communitarianism focuses on the question, raised by recent work in normative philosophy, of whether ethical norms are best derived and justified on the basis of universal or communitarian standards. It is unique in representing both Continental and American points of view and both the older and a younger generation of scholars. The essays introduce the key issues involved in universalism vs. communitarianism and take up ethics in historical perspective, practical reason and ethical responsibility, justification, application and history, and (...) communitarian alternatives. Based on a special issue of the Journal Philosophy and Social Criticism, the book includes two additional essays by Chantal Mouffe and by Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus. David Rasmussen is Professor of Philosophy at Boston College and editor of Philosophy and Social Criticism. Contents: introduction, David, Rasmussen. Universalisms: Procedural, Contextualist, and Prudential, Alessandro Ferrara. Beyond Liberalism and Communitarianism: Toward a Critical Theory of Social Justice, Gerald Doppelt. The Liberal/Communitarian Controversy and Communicative Ethics, Kenneth Baynes. Discourse Ethics and Civil Society, Jean Cohen. Equality, Political Order and Ethics: Hobbes and the Systematics of Democratic Rationality, Rolf Zimmermann. Atomism and Ethical Life: On Hegel's Critique of the French Revolution, Axel Honneth. The Gadamer-Habermas Debate Revisited: The Question of Ethics, Michael Kelly. What Is and What Is Not Practical Reason? Agnes Heller. Adorno, Heidegger, and Postmodernity, Hauke Brunkhorst. Impartial Application of Moral and Legal Norms: A Contribution to Discourse Ethics, Klaus Günther. An Ethics, Politics, and History, Jürgen Habermas in an interview conducted by Jean-Marc Ferry. Rawls: Political Philosophy without Politics, Chantal Mouffe. What Is Morality: A Phenomenological Account of the Development of Ethical Expertise, Hubert L Dreyfus, Stuart E. Dreyfus. Universalism and Communitarianism: A Bibliography, Michael Zilles. (shrink)

David Luban is one of the world's leading scholars of legal ethics. In this collection of his most significant papers he ranges over such topics as the moral psychology of organisational evil, the strengths and weaknesses of the adversary system, and jurisprudence from the lawyer's point of view. His discussion combines philosophical argument, legal analysis and many cases drawn from actual law practice, and he defends a theory of legal ethics that focuses on lawyers' role in enhancing human dignity (...) and human rights. In addition to an analytical introduction, the volume includes two major previously unpublished papers, including a detailed critique of the US government lawyers who produced the notorious 'torture memos'. It will be of interest to a wide range of readers in both philosophy and law. (shrink)

Cognitive modules are internal mental structures. Some theorists and empirical researchers hypothesise that the human mind is either partially or massively comprised of structures that are modular in nature. Is the massive modularity of mind hypothesis a cogent view about the ontological nature of human mind or is it, rather, an effective/ineffective adaptationist discovery heuristic for generating predictively successful hypotheses about both heretofore unknown psychological traits and unknown properties of already identified psychological traits? Considering the inadequacies of the case in (...) favour of massive modularity as an ontological hypothesis, I suggest approaching and valuing massive modularity as an adaptationist discovery heuristic. (shrink)

Meaning is one of our most central and most ubiquitous concepts. Anything at all may, in suitable contexts, have meaning ascribed to it. In this wide-ranging book, David Cooper departs from the usual focus on linguistic meaning to discuss how works of art, ceremony, social action, bodily gesture, and the purpose of life can all be meaningful. He argues that the notion of meaning is best approached by considering what we accept as explanations of meaning in everyday practice and (...) shows that in these situations we are explaining the appropriate fit of an item - whether a word or an artwork - with something larger than or outside of itself. This fuller account of meaning explores questions of the meaning of meaning and tackles issues such as whether meaning is just a misleading 'folk' term for something more basic, whether there really is meaning at all, and whether we should strive for meaning or let our lives 'just be' rather than mean. By taking the problem of meaning out of the technical philosophy of language and providing a more general account, Cooper is able to offer new insights into the import, function, and status of meaning that will be of interest not only to philosophers of language but to students and philosophers working in areas such as epistemology and metaphysics. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to clarify the conceptual domains of organizational identity, image, and reputation. To initiate this theory development process, we present a “social actor” conception of organizational identity. Identity-congruent definitions of image and reputation are then specified and an integrated model proposed. With the aid of this model, a structural flawin the organizational reputation literature is identified and suitable remedies proposed. In addition, the authors explore the implications of invoking identity and identification in explanations and justifications (...) of organizational reputation. (shrink)

David Lyons is one of the pre-eminent philosophers of law active in the United States. This volume comprises essays written over a period of twenty years in which Professor Lyons outlines his fundamental views about the nature of law and its relation to morality and justice. The underlying theme of the book is that a system of law has only a tenuous connection with morality and justice. Contrary to those legal theorists who maintain that no matter how bad the (...) law of a community might be, strict conformity to existing law automatically dispenses 'formal' justice, Professor Lyons contends that the law must earn the respect that it demands. Moreover, we cannot, as some would suggest, interpret law in a value-neutral manner. Rather courts should interpret statutes, judicial precedents, and constitutional provisions in terms of values that would justify those laws. In this way officials can promote the justifiability of what they do to people in the name of law, and can help the law live up to its moral pretensions. (shrink)