Aimed at undergraduates, _Contemporary Ethics_ presupposes little or no familiarity with ethics and is written in a clear and engaging style. It provides students with a sympathetic but critical guide to utilitarianism, explaining its different forms and exploring the debates it has spawned. The book leads students through a number of current issues in contemporary ethics that are connected to controversies over and within utilitarianism. At the same time, it uses utilitarianism to introduce students to ethics as a subject. In (...) these ways, the book is not only a guide to utilitarianism, but also an introduction to some standard problems of ethics and to several important topics in contemporary ethical theory. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics 1. 7, Aristotle gives a definition of the human good, and he does so by means of the “ ergon argument.” I clear the way for a new interpretation of this argument by arguing that Aristotle does not think that the ergon of something is always the proper activity of that thing. Though he has a single concept of an ergon, Aristotle identifies the ergon of an X as an activity in some cases but a product in (...) others, depending on the sort of thing the X is—for while the ergon of the eye is seeing, the ergon of a sculptor is a sculpture. This alternative interpretation of Aristotle’s concept of an ergon allows the key explanatory middle term of the ergon argument to be what, I argue, it ought to be: “the best achievement of a human.”. (shrink)

The Desire-as-Belief thesis (DAB) states that any rational person desires a proposition exactly to the degree that she believes or expects the proposition to be good. Many people take David Lewis to have shown the thesis to be inconsistent with Bayesian decision theory. However, as we show, Lewis's argument was based on an Invariance condition that itself is inconsistent with the (standard formulation of the) version of Bayesian decision theory that he assumed in his arguments against DAB. The aim of (...) this paper is to explore what impact the rejection of Invariance has on the DAB thesis. Without assuming Invariance, we first refute all versions of DAB that entail that there are only two levels of goodness. We next consider two theses according to which rational desires are intimately connected to expectations of (multi-levelled) goodness, and show that these are consistent with Bayesian decision theory as long as we assume that the contents of 'value propositions' are not fixed. We explain why this conclusion is independently plausible, and show how to construct such propositions. (shrink)

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The author (physics, Northeastern U.) draws on history, theories of human development, and 30 years of teaching to argue that scientific thinking, which is analytic and objective, goes against the grain of traditional human thinking and arose in Greece because of unique historical factors. Having taken an active interest in middle-level science education in recent years, he concludes with recommendations for an overhaul of science teaching to steer away from the pervasive over-abstraction at inappropriate grade levels. Annotation copyright by Book (...) News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

_Business Ethics and the Natural Environment_ examines the present status of relations between corporate enterprise and the natural environment in the world today. •Discusses such questions as: What obligations does a corporation have toward the environment? To respect entities unprotected by law? To care about future generations? •Argues that environmentally-friendly business practices yield dividends exceeding expectations, and that the competitive firm of the 21st century will follow “green” standards •Provides a background in ethics, a survey of business ethics, an account (...) of environmental philosophy, an overview of environmental legal issues, and an account of the problems associated with globalization. (shrink)

Providing the most thorough coverage available in one volume, this comprehensive, broadly based collection offers a wide variety of selections in four major genres, and also includes a section on film. Each of the five sections contains a detailed critical introduction to each form, brief biographies of the authors, and a clear, concise editorial apparatus. Updated and revised throughout, the new Fourth Edition adds essays by Margaret Mead, Russell Baker, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Alice Walker; fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, (...) Ursula K. LeGuin, Anton Chekov, James Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Louise Erdrich, Donald Barthelme, and James McPherson; poems by John Donne, Robert Browning, Walt Whitman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, e.e. cummings, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Philip Levine, and Louise Gluck; and plays by August Wilson, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, and Vaclav Havel. The chapter devoted to film examines the relation of film to literature and gives the complete screenplay for Citizen Kane plus close analysis of a scene from the film. With its innovative structure, comprehensive coverage, and insightful and stimulating presentation of all kinds of literature, this is an anthology readers will turn to again and again. (shrink)

To find more information on Rowman & Littlefield titles, please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

Consider the following patient: a 40-year-old man who has had back pain that radiates down his left leg, on and off for 2 months. He performs his normal activities and does not have any “red flag”...

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.Adam Smith, Wealth of NationsAs the quote above indicates, economists generally are more comfortable with self interest as a motivating force for social benefit than with altruism. This is because in most instances in a market economy, self interest will lead agents to provide benefits for others. Ultimately this is because the butcher or baker (...) will not get paid unless he does something that others are willing to pay for. This is the source of the famous “invisible hand,” also discussed by Adam Smith.This might sound trivial, except that in discussing aspects of medicine we seem to lose sight of this mechanism and rely on other tools to provide benefits. These tools do not work as well as naked self interest would. Some might say that medicine and medical progress is too important to depend on the market. (shrink)

From early sage philosophers to Leopold Senghor of Senegal and Steve Biko of South Africa, African thinking has challenged the way we think. As we enter a new millenium, the perspectives provided in this volume offer wise and refreshing alternatives to problems of self and society, culture, aesthetics, metaphysics and religion. Out of Africa always something new, and in these pages contemporary problems of cross-cultural cognition and post-coloniality are not only addressed, but also enacted. The reader witnesses the collision and (...) the coalescence of cultures in the writings of philosophers from Africa. (shrink)

The Theory of Knowledge: A Thematic Introduction explains the main ideas and problems of contemporary epistemology while avoiding technical detail. Comprehensive and rich in illustrations and examples, it highlights contemporary debates over the definition, sources, and limits of human knowledge, and covers major topics including the nature of belief, theories of truth, epistemic justification, the Gettier problem, skepticism, and epistemic rationality. Its discussions identify important connections between traditional epistemological questions and cognitive science, the history of science, the sociology of knowledge, (...) and cross-cultural studies. The book culminates with a focus on questions regarding epistemological method and an examination of the roots of contemporary analytic approaches to epistemology. The authors defend a distinctive position regarding epistemological method, called broad explanationism, that incorporates some insights from naturalism in epistemology. The volume is enhanced by a glossary of important epistemological terms and suggestions for further reading. Easily accessible to beginning students in philosophy, The Theory of Knowledge serves as an ideal text for courses in the theory of knowledge and will also appeal to general readers interested in philosophy. (shrink)

This Oxford Classical Text contains all the extant fragments of Menander's work, including one complete play, the Dyskolos, and considerable fragments from fourteen other plays. It is fully up to date, with an appendix containing the latest discoveries.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes: Legacies of Postmodern Theory,Thomas LeddySpirits Hovering Over the Ashes: Legacies of Postmodern Theory, by H. L. Hix; x & 208 pp. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995, $16.95 paper.This intriguing, rich and witty book is a collection of twelve mainly previously published essays each of which is titled “Postmodern” something.“Postmodern Grief,” which first appeared in Philosophy and Literature (1993), is a wonderful and fun deconstruction (...) of the postmodernists themselves. Hix sees certain writings in terms of Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The grief is over cultural losses (the ashes of which are referred to in the book’s title) in our electronic information age.Hix is dead right when he argues that Derrida exemplifies the strategy of denial in “Plato’s Pharmacy.” Derrida, as Hix puts it, addresses yesterday’s problem. Hix also plausibly fits writers like Eco and Bloom into the stage of anger. His interpretation of Lyotard as dealing with grief by bargaining (“if I let consensus go, will you let me keep justice?”) is brilliant. There is something pathetic about Lyotard’s belief that if we give all people free access to information technology then this will insure justice. Hix matches Baudrillard, who laments the loss of four-dimensionality in the electronic era, with depression. Finally, Ong exemplifies acceptance since, for Ong, electronic [End Page 511] technologies bring us to a new oral age which fosters a communal sense and concentrates on the present. Hix then calls for a new Socrates who will take us beyond lament to forge a new ideal.“Postmodern Beauty” argues, contra Lyotard, that beauty is still possible in our computer age since artworks are eternally created here and now. We can have aesthetic friendships with a visionary superior such as Van Gogh. However the Van Gogh we are speaking of is not the real historical one but a created proxy who only exists discursively. Still, the great artist is divine and gives us his (Hix’s examples are all male) blessing.“Postmodern Obscenity” presents Baudrillard’s view that obscenity is to be found not in desire’s triumph but rather in its defeat. In this postmodern age we lose sexuality because penetration is no longer possible, and that is so because of the collapse of the distinction between surface and depth. Hix then contrasts a photograph by Mapplethorpe with a Victoria’s Secret catalog. The catalog fits the postmodern conception of obscenity nicely. The Mapplethorpe, although obscene in the traditional sense, is not in the postmodern sense.“Postmodern Color” is my favorite chapter. Here, Hix deconstructs Derrida’s own analysis of metaphor and metaphysics. He shows how Derrida must use metaphors of opacity and depth to make his point. These metaphors also entail the very view Derrida opposes. It is here that Hix develops his theme of the postmodern replacement of metaphors of time with those of space. Prior to our postmodern era the Other which constitutes our selves was historical (for example, ancestors) while the Other which threatened us was spatial (for example, foreigners). By contrast, in the postmodern era we are constituted by the spatial Other and are threatened by the temporal Other. This explains something that has puzzled me in recent curriculum debates. As Hix puts it, reasonable people like Lynne Cheney and Louis Gates understand the humanities differently in terms of these competing metaphors. Cheney takes the traditional view, using temporal metaphors of origin and tradition, while Gates takes the postmodern view, using spacial metaphors of decentering and marginality.“Postmodern Love” and “Postmodern Sex” fit together. The first argues that although postmodernists claim we lack a language of love, they actually believe that love and language are one. More importantly, they know but repress the idea that love is something that transcends language. Here Hix calls on postmodernism to recognize that what structures language is outside language. The second argues that sex in our postmodern era has been transformed into discourse and discourse into sex. Each is in exchange for the other. Thus, whereas postmodern love is inexpressible, postmodern sex is nothing but talk.“Postmodern Virtue” begins by showing that... (shrink)

This book is the product of a major British Academy Symposium held in 2007 to mark the centenary of the birth of H.L.A. Hart, the most important legal philosopher and one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century. -/- The book brings together contributions from seventeen of the world's foremost legal and political philosophers who explore the many subjects in which Hart produced influential work. Each essay engages in an original analysis of philosophical problems that were tackled (...) by Hart, some essays including extended critical discussions of his major works: The Concept of Law, Punishment and Responsibility, Causation in the Law and Law, Liberty and Morality. All the main topics of Hart's philosophical writings are featured: general jurisprudence and legal positivism; criminal responsibility and punishment; theories of rights; toleration and liberty; theories of justice; and causation in the law. (shrink)

Islamic philosophy; Hanbalites; doctrines; creation (Islam); early works to 1800.

"The studies collected in this book are all concerned with aspects of the Platonic tradition, either in its own internal development in the Hellenistic age and the period of the Roman Empire, or with the influence of Platonism, in one or other of its forms, on other spiritual traditions, especially that of Christianity." [Book jacket].

al-majmūʻah 1. Kayfa naʻmal lil-Islām -- Muqawwimāt shakhṣīyat al-Muslim -- al-Tawāzun wa-al-iʻtidāl fī ḥayāt al-Muslim.

Transformations of the Confucian Way. John H. Berthrong. Westview, Boulder, Colorado, and Oxford 1998. xiv, 250 pp. Cloth £53.95, pbk £15.95. ISBN 0-8133-28055/2804-7.

jild-i avval. Ḥuqūq-i ṭabīʻī, qarārdādʹgarāyī va ḥākimīyat -- jild-i duvvum. Dīn va ḥākimīyat.

Professor H. James Birx shows how the never-ending controversy of human evolution came to be. He details the events that caused thinkers like Charles Darwin to develop his theory of evolution, and what ideas caused some people to reconcile a somewhat mystical theology with a concrete model of the universe. He tells you how Darwin's work infuriated everybody from "God-fearing" Christians to the church heirarchies. Birx explains how scientific advances and philosophical arguments have made beliefs about divine intervention as the (...) origin of man a moot point. He shows how creationism ignores proven scientific facts, and how human evolution remains a much sounder truth. You'll read how some western religions are starting to accept evolution as the process which creates life on earth. You'll also learn why scientific evolution and creationism have not been accepted together and how bold attempts to merge the two ideas have failed miserably. (shrink)

H. P. Owen; VII—The Evidence for Christian Theism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 64, Issue 1, 1 June 1964, Pages 123–138, https://doi.org/10.1.