Despite a lack of press attention, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration has a still-ongoing inquiry into whether the Central Intelligence Agency's destruction of videotapes depicting brutal interrogations of detainees was an unauthorized destruction of federal records. The relationship between NARA and the CIA illustrates how the role of archivists in government document destruction is fraught with legal and ethical complexities. Archivists must act as a promoter of efficient agency records management while simultaneously acting both as an arbiter of (...) what records an agency should destroy and an enforcer when agencies destroy what they should not. The story of NARA and the destroyed CIA tapes provides an "in the trenches" view of negotiating these roles and balancing archival ethics, law, and government accountability. (shrink)

As Douglas Adams points out, if there is no final answer to question, 'What is the meaning of life?', '42' is as good or bad an answer as any other. Indeed, 42 quotes might be even better! Gary Cox guides us through 42 of the most misunderstood, misquoted, provocative and significant quotes in the history of philosophy providing a witty and compelling commentary along the way. This entertaining and illuminating collection of quotes doesn't merely list who said what and (...) when. Gary Cox claims that each quote is a philosophical thesis in itself. By exploring who a particular philosopher is and what he or she really meant when they said what they said, this book looks for the philosophy within the quote. Using the writings of everyone from Douglas Adams to A.J. Ayer and Thomas Aquinas to Karl Marx, Gary Cox takes us on a philosophical journey through history, culture and writing to bring us to a deeper understanding of why we think the way we do. (shrink)

This paper explores the grounds upon which moral judgment of a person's beliefs is properly made. The beliefs in question are non-moral beliefs and the objects of moral judgment are individual instances of believing. We argue that instances of believing may be morally wrong on any of three distinct grounds: (i) by constituting a moral hazard, (ii) by being the result of immoral inquiry, or (iii) by arising from vicious inner processes of belief formation. On this way of articulating the (...) basis of moral judgment of belief it becomes clear that rational and epistemic norms do not exhaust the kinds of normative judgment properly made of a person's state of believing. We argue that there are instances of believing that are both rational and true and yet morally wrong. (shrink)

In this paper it is shown is that although poisoning the well has generally been treated as a species of ad hominem fallacy, when you try to analyze the fallacy using ad hominem schemes, even by supplementing with related schemes like argument from position to know, the analysis ultimately fails. The main argument of the paper is taken up with proving this negative claim by applying these schemes to examples of arguments associated with the fallacy of poisoning the well. Although (...) there is a positive finding in this quest, in that poisoning the well is shown to be based on and associated with these forms of argument in interesting ways, the paper in the end is led to the conclusion that the fallacy is irreducibly dialectical. Poisoning the well is thus analyzed as a tactic to silence an opponent violating her right to put forward arguments on an issue both parties have agreed to discuss at the confrontation stage of a critical discussion. It is concluded that it is a special form of strategic attack used by one party in the argumentation stage of a critical discussion to improperly shut down the capability of the other party for putting forward arguments of the kind needed to properly move the discussion forward. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to present a typology of argument schemes. In first place, we found it helpful to define what an argument scheme is. Since many argument schemes found in contemporary theories stem from the ancient tradition, we took in consideration classical and medieval dialectical studies and their relation with argumentation theory. This overview on the main works on topics and schemes provides a summary of the main principles of classification. In the second section, Walton’s theory is (...) briefly explained to introduce the schemes classification and its different levels. At least, the final part shows the main application of the schemes in computing and AI. -/- . (shrink)

Cenzer, D., R. Downey, C. Jockusch and R.A. Shore, Countable thin Π01 classes, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 59 79–139. A Π01 class P {0, 1}ω is thin if every Π01 subclass of P is the intersection of P with some clopen set. Countable thin Π01 classes are constructed having arbitrary recursive Cantor- Bendixson rank. A thin Π01 class P is constructed with a unique nonisolated point A and furthermore A is of degree 0’. It is shown that no (...) set of degree ≥0” can be a member of any thin Π01 class. An r.e. degree d is constructed such that no set of degree d can be a member of any thin Π01 class. It is also shown that between any two distinct comparable r.e. degrees, there is a degree that contains a set which is of rank one in some thin Π01 class. It is shown that no maximal set can have rank one in any Π01 class, while there exist maximal sets of rank 2. The connection between Π01 classes, propositional theories and recursive Boolean algebras is explored, producing several corollaries to the results on Π01 classes. For example, call a recursive Boolean algebra thin if it has no proper nonprincipal recursive ideals. Then no thin recursive Boolean algebra can have a maximal ideal of degree ≥0”. (shrink)

Recent studies now provide a relatively robust explanation of how moral behavior evolved, perhaps not just in humans. An analysis of current biology textbooks shows that they fail to address this critical topic fully. Here, I survey resources—books, images, and videos—that can guide educators in meeting the challenge of teaching the biology of morality.

Beginning in 2013, Pennsylvania State University Press will manage design, production, distribution, and subscription fulfillment, in both print and online editions, of The Journal of Rand Studies. This enterprise requires an expansion of the journal's editorial and advisory boards. The Editorial Board— Stephen Cox, Roderick Long, and Chris Sciabarra—welcomes Robert Campbell, while the Board of Advisors welcomes six new members, reflecting its growing interdisciplinary and global reach: David Beito, Peter Boettke, Susan Love Brown, Hannes Gissurarson, Steven Horwitz, and David Mayer, (...) who join founding board members Douglas Den Uyl, Mimi Gladstein, Robert Hessen, Lester Hunt, Eric Mack, and Douglas Rasmussen. (shrink)

It is argued that Hellman's arguments purporting to demonstrate that constructive mathematics cannot cope with unbounded operators on a Hilbert space are seriously flawed, and that there is no evidence that his thesis is correct.

It can seem a truism that to understand a language is to know what its expressions mean.

Many physicians have found that the traditional approach to bioethics fails to account for important aspects of their moral experience in practice. New approaches to bioethics theory are challenging the traditional application of universal moral principles based in liberal moral theory. At the same time, a shift in both the goals and methods of bioethics education has accompanied its coming of age in the medical school curriculum. Taken together, these changes challenge both bioethics educators and theorists to come closer to (...) the details and nuances of real clinical encounters. The emerging trend emphasizes the importance of context in bioethics education and in the moral theory and research under-girding it. This article introduces one research approach examining the practical life contexts of medical students' ethical experiences and learning. It calls for increased attention to research and theory in bioethics that more adequately accounts for the ways different contexts produce significant changes in meaning and understanding in medical encounters. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.3 (2001) 436-440 [Access article in PDF] M. L. West. Ancient Greek Music. 1992. Rpt., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. 424 pp. Paper, $28.00. For many years, lamentably, classical scholarship lacked a good book in English on the subject of Greek music as a whole, in spite of the indisputable prominence mousike had in Greek culture. M. L. West's book has filled that gap admirably. It (...) is indeed, as its publisher claims, "clear, comprehensive, and authoritative.""Clear." It is as clear as humanly possible, given the incredible complexity of the topic. Alhough it "presupposes no special knowledge of music," I fear the average unmusical student of Greek culture will eventually be totally lost in the jungles of Greek terminology or swept away in a torrent of unfamiliar names. A similar fate awaits the nonclassical student of musicology. But West has done a superhuman job of explaining everything step by step, and readers who are dedicated and careful will be rewarded with a solid understanding of a very complicated subject."Comprehensive." There can be no doubt that the book is comprehensive. It would be almost impossible to find a topic that has been overlooked, or an [End Page 436] ancient author that has been slighted or misrepresented. There are chapters on music in Greek life, the voice, stringed instruments, wind and percussion, rhythm and tempo, scales and modes, melody and form, theory, notation and pitch, musical documents, and a historical synthesis (in two parts). The book ends with an epilogue on the place of Greek music "between Europe and Asia."Modern scholarship has been thoroughly canvassed. I did, however, note one serious omission. West does not refer to F. Kuttner and J. M. Barbour, The Theory of Classical Greek Music (Musurgia Records 1955), in the text or bibliography. This book has a recording that allows one to hear the various phenomena discussed, affording an enormous improvement over trying to guess what an interval of, say, 63 cents sounds like."Authoritative." This bold claim is largely justified, especially in areas of special expertise, such as rhythm and ancient poetry. Controversial issues are not evaded; and, after a judicious and thorough laying out of the evidence, West comes down with a magisterial conclusion. He is usually right.The topic that most classicists are likely to be interested in, especially if they are studying Plato or Aristotle, is the "modes" (harmoniai), which are supposed to have such moral power that it is appropriate for a legislator to promote some and ban others. Readers will have to wait for chapter 6 to learn what West thinks about this issue.With his characteristic thoroughness, West begins with the anatomy of the octave, then the anatomy of the fourth into genera, enharmonic, chromatic, and diatonic. He mentions an earlier "pentatonic trichord," which evolves into a four-note unit with the small interval divided into smaller units (conventionally called "quarter tones"). He then discusses the "fine tuning" represented by the shades (chroai) treated by the Pythagorean, Aristoxenian, and Ptolemaic theorists. The last group makes a distinction between the tunings of theory and those of the actual tunings used in practice by (contemporary?) musicians.He then discusses "ambitus" or the region of the normal tessitura, interpreting (convincingly) "slack" as referring to pieces of music largely confined to the lower register and "tense" as the opposite. A discussion of the scales described by the fifth-century theorist Damon follows, but they are not "modal" (in the Western sense of scales differentiated by varying patterns of large and small intervals).There follows a thorough canvas of the ancient literature to expound references to the various harmoniai and their alleged moral and psychological effects. One truth emerges: the harmoniai were not "fixed and unchanging.... Old ones were discarded, new ones grew" (184). Unfortunately, however, he reaches no decision as to what, exactly, these harmoniai were.Even after the consolidation of the scales into the "perfect immutable system" (a master scale, which has various scales, tonoi, with the ethnic epithets Dorian, Phrygian, and so on), we cannot recognize what is meant in modern theory... (shrink)

This book examines the concepts of power, wealth and women in the important Mahayana Buddhist scripture known as the Gandavyuha-sutra, and relates these to the text’s social context in ancient Indian during the Buddhist Middle Period. Employing contemporary textual theory, worldview analysis and structural narrative theory, the author puts forward a new approach to the study of Mahayana Buddhist sources, the ‘systems approach’, by which literature is viewed as embedded in a social system. Consequently, he analyses the Gandavyuha in the (...) contexts of reality, society and the individual, and applies these notions to the key themes of power, wealth and women. The study reveals that the spiritual hierarchy represented within the Gandavyuha replicates the political hierarchies in India during Buddhism’s Middle Period, that the role of wealth mirrors its significance as a sign of spiritual status in Indian Buddhist society, and that the substantial number of female spiritual guides in the narrative reflects the importance of royal women patrons of Indian Buddhism at the time. This book will appeal to higher-level undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars of religious studies, Buddhist studies, Asian studies, South Asian studies and Indology. (shrink)