Hull et al. see responses and properties of responses as units of selection in behavioral change. However, this perspective cannot account for goal-directed behavior in which organisms employ variable means to reliably attain intended consequences. An alternative perspective is offered in which the intended consequences (goals) of behavior serve as the units of selection in behavior change.

I attempt to define the concept of ‘living organism’. Intuitively, a living organism is a substantial entity with a capacity for certain relevant activities. But biology has discovered that living organisms have a particular compositional or microstructural nature. This nature includes carbon-based macromolecules and water molecules. I argue that such living organisms belong to a natural kind of compound physical object, viz., carbon-based living organism. My definition of a living organism encompasses both the intuitively relevant activities and the empirically discovered (...) compositional nature. The definition is designed to deal with a variety of problem cases, e.g., viruses, proteinoid microspheres, sterile organisms, suspended animation cases, and living parts of organisms. (shrink)

The chapter places Kant's discussions of empirical and rational psychology in the context of previous discussions in Germany. It also considers the status of what might be called his "transcendental psychology" as an instance of a special kind of knowledge: transcendental philosophy. It is divided into sections that consider four topics: the refutation of traditional rational psychology in the Paralogisms; the contrast between traditional empirical psychology and the transcendental philosophy of the Deduction; Kant's appeal to an implicit psychology in his (...) taxonomy and theory of cognitive faculties throughout the Critique of Pure Reason; and his new definitions of and support for empirical and rational psychology in the Doctrine of Method. (shrink)

Prior research on ethics codes has suggested, but rarely tested, the effects of code design alternatives on the impact of codes. This study considers whether the presence of explanatory rationales and descriptions of sanctions in ethics codes affects recipients'' responses to a code. Theories of organizational justice and persuasive communication support an expectation that rationales and sanctions will be positively related to code recipients'' recall of code content and perceptions of organizational justice. Content recall is an obvious precondition of code (...) compliance; justice perceptions have multiple implications for the attitudes and actions of organizational members. Results show that explanatory rationales are associated with a statistically significant increase in perceptions of organizational procedural justice, but that rationales and sanctions generally show no relationship to distributive justice perceptions and accurate content recall. These results suggest that common prescriptions regarding ethics code design are of uncertain value apart from further research which unearths the relationships among the intended and perceived purposes of codes, the organizational settings in which they are applied, and a wide variety of code designs. (shrink)

This is the first detailed assessment of the life and work of Felix Guattari--"Mr. Anti" as the French press labelled him--the friend of and collaborator with..

The project of “religious epistemology,” as it has developed and thrived among certain analytic philosophers over the last thirty years, has seldom exhibited a strong historical sensibility. Nonetheless, contemporary discussions of the rationality of religious belief obviously have important antecedents in the history of modern philosophy, particularly in the history of the Enlightenment project that so strongly challenged traditional religious belief. This paper develops two themes from this history that I will try to show are particularly important for understanding contemporary (...) issues about the rationality of religious belief: the affirmation of ordinary life, and the question of radical evil in human nature. (shrink)

This paper examines various views—religious, scientific, philosophical—on the meaning and significance of world history. The view it defends is a phenomenological, non-metaphysical one, i.e., it is one that does not seek to understand history in the light of end-states lying beyond time and history but which seeks, rather, to lay bare the logic at work within the contingency of events. Taking as its focus the phenomenon of globalization, the paper seeks to make explicit the global ontology that is implicit in (...) philosophical hermeneutics. The thesis it defends in this regard is that, to the degree that it prevails and by reason of a kind of “functional necessity,” globalization is capable of bringing into being a global ethic of mutuality and reciprocity. (shrink)

Consciousness -- Freedom -- Bad faith -- Authenticity.

This paper assesses Jurgen Habermas' reconstruction of Kant's cosmopolitan project suggesting ways in which this reconstruction creates new problems that were not part of Kant's endeavour as well as indicating critical appreciation of the idea of the project.

Introduction -- Newton's laws of motion versus nature's -- The continuity conundrum -- Continuity and linearity : confusion twice confounded -- From illusions of precision and reproducibility in natural science to delusions of normalcy in social science -- Mutability -- Laws of motion : natural law and questions of mutability -- Essential and intangible role of temporal factors : a detailed example -- Detaching Canada's East Coast Fishery from its history : causes and consequences -- Mishandling temporal factors : a (...) problem of method -- Social science and the problem of linearised time -- The dialectic of nature and its usefulness for the social sciences -- Placing Tlinear on life support -- Merchant's capital : key historic intangible of the East Coast Fishery -- The 800-pound gorilla. (shrink)

The ability to reason ethically is an extraordinarily important aspect of professionalism in any field. Indeed, the greatest challenge in ethical professional practice involves resolving the conflict that arises when the professional is required to choose between two competing ethical principles. Ethical Reasoning in the Mental Health Professions explores how to develop the ability to reason ethically in difficult situations. Other books merely present ethical and legal issues one at a time, along with case examples involving "right" and "wrong" answers. (...) In dramatic contrast, Ethical Reasoning in the Mental Health Professions provides you with the needed background in methods of ethical reasoning and introduces an innovative nine-step model of ethical decision-making for resolving ethical dilemmas. Ethical Reasoning in the Mental Health Profession discusses the ethical codes of both psychology and counseling. This interdisciplinary approach promotes a better understanding of the similarities and differences in the points of emphasis in the two codes, which, in turn, enriches your understanding of the range of ethical considerations relevant to the practice of the mental health professions. (shrink)

The Objective Threshold/Strategic Model proposes that strong, qualitative inferences of unconscious perception can be made if the relationship between perceptual sensitivity and stimulus visibility is nonlinear and nonmonotonic. The model proposes a nadir in priming effects at the objective identification threshold . These predictions were tested with masked semantic priming and repetition priming of a lexical decision task. The visibility of the prime stimuli was systematically varied above and below the objective identification threshold. The obtained relationship between prime visibility and (...) priming facilitation was nonlinear, but the results failed to confirm a nadir in priming effects at the objective identification threshold. We conclude that the objective identification threshold does not necessarily indicate the point where presumably unconscious priming effects might be inhibited by conscious cognitive processes. (shrink)

Sam, your newborn son, has been suffocating in your arms for the past 15 minutes. You’re as certain as you can be that he is going to die in the next 15.

This volume, the twenty-eighnth year of published proceedings, contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2011-12. The papers treat thinkers ranging from early Greek cosmology, to several on Plato and one each on Aristotle and Plotinus.

Volume 33 contains papers and commentaries presented to the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy during academic year 2015-16. Works: Parmenides’ _Poem, Posterior Analytics_ and _Poetics_, Gorgias. Topics: liar’s paradox, syllogism and nature, authorial freedom, _ousia_ and the true and good.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric as a Balancing of Ends:Cicero and MachiavelliGary RemerIn his youthful work on rhetoric, De inventione (published about 86 B.C.E.), Cicero lists the ends for deliberative (political) oratory as honestas and utilitas (the good or honorable and the useful or expedient). In more mature writings, like De oratore (55 B.C.E.) and De officiis (44 B.C.E.), Cicero maintains a similar position: that the morally good and the beneficial are reconcilable. (...) For example, Cicero assumes in De officiis the identity of the honestum and the utile. He states there that "there is one rule for all cases;... either the thing that seems beneficial must not be dishonorable, or if it is dishonorable, it must not seem beneficial" (On Duties 3.81).1 In recent years, Victoria Kahn (1994) and J. Jackson Barlow (1999) have offered Machiavelli's "rhetorical politics"—a politics "attuned to the rhetorical concerns of effective political action" (Kahn 1994, 24)—as a more coherent and intellectually honest alternative to Cicero's attempt to reconcile irreconcilables.2 They contend that, unlike Cicero, Machiavelli accepts the impossibility of simultaneously upholding the morally good and the useful. For Machiavelli, the successful political actor must choose the utile over the honestum.Cicero, however, is not alone in his inconsistency. As Kahn demonstrates, Machiavelli's account of virtù is itself inconsistent. For example, he sometimes includes morality as an element of excellence (virtù) and at other times does not. I contend in this article, however, that Kahn's interpretation [End Page 1] of Machiavelli's contradictoriness as only "apparent," a variability, she argues, that is rhetorically inspired rather than logically deficient, applies not only to Machiavelli, as Kahn would have it, but also to Cicero. I argue that both Machiavelli and Cicero eschew "clear-cut or permanent distinctions" within virtù and between the honestum and the utile, respectively, because they wish to signal the political actor's need for flexibility (Kahn 1994, 30). Insofar as Cicero's internal contradictions, like Machiavelli's, are apparent but not real, I hold that Machiavelli does not offer a political approach that is superior to Cicero's, at least not in the sense of greater intellectual coherence.Despite their similarities, however, Cicero and Machiavelli differ from each other in that Cicero, in contrast to Machiavelli, openly affirms that politics is incomplete without a dual commitment to the good and the beneficial. I examine Machiavelli's focus on the useful and public as opposed to Cicero's additional commitment to the honorable and to the private. I analyze, in particular, the pursuit of glory in Machiavelli as it derives from early classical culture, which was preoccupied with appearances and the search for immortality. I argue that Cicero, while not abandoning the quest for glory, also vests this concept (under Stoic influence) with a private, moral character. In doing so, Cicero adheres to the rhetorical principle of decorum, which obliges orators to adapt themselves to context. This principle, I maintain, is not only a matter of expediency for Cicero but also a moral duty. While Cicero accommodates himself to a Roman world in which private morality was already an important part of one's life, Machiavelli violates decorum, attempting to resurrect a heroic ideal that disappeared long ago.Although most recent work on the revival of rhetorical ethics focuses on Aristotle (see Allen 2004, 140–59; Furley and Nehamas 1994; Garver 1994; Rorty 1996), I discuss Cicero in this essay. Not only has Cicero been the dominant influence on the Western tradition of rhetoric, but he also (unlike Aristotle) includes the honorable as one of the ends of deliberative oratory. Thus Cicero states in De inventione that while "Aristotle accepts advantage as the end [of deliberative oratory],... I prefer both honor and advantage" (2.52.156). And while Aristotle's position on deliberative oratory's ends does not mean that he ignores moral considerations, Cicero's decision to promote the good as an explicit rhetorical end forces his readers (and Machiavelli) to confront the relationship between virtue and expediency in a way that Aristotle's readers do not (Cox 1997, 1113). I concentrate, in particular, on Cicero's De officiis because... (shrink)

There is a general consensus among scholars of Charles S. Peirce that his work was highly systematic, but not all agree that it constitutes a single consistent system. Sometimes the controversy on this question becomes a determining context for studies of specific aspects of Peirce’s work. For instance, Mayorga (2007, 3) expresses the hope that her study of Peirce’s realist metaphysics will “resolve some of the polemic regarding the coherence of his system.” With reference to Peircean semeiotic, Bergman (2009, 3–4) (...) describes a spectrum of views on the relations between his early and late work:In recent years, the question of the development of Peirce’s theory of signs has become a rather contentious topic. In.. (shrink)