These questions lie at the heart of contemporary feminist theory, and in this collection they are addressed by a group of distinguished international scholars ...

The essays in this book engage the original and controversial claims from Michael Boylan's A Just Society. Each essay discusses Boylan's claims from a particular chapter and offers a critical analysis of these claims. Boylan responds to the essays in his lengthy and philosophically rich reply.

This anthology contains essays by a distinguished group of British and American scholars prominent in the field of medieval philosophy. Setting high standards of clarity and exactness, the papers reflect current analytic, formalistic, and traditional methods of philosophy applied to topics such as logic, linguistics, and the philosophy of the mind.

In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often‐ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science—including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes—can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and potential benefits. They conclude with a discussion of responsible behavior in the context of SBG research. (...) SBG research that compares individuals within a group according to a “sensitive” phenotype requires extra attention to responsible conduct and to responsible communication about the research and its findings. SBG research (1) on sensitive phenotypes that (2) compares two or more groups defined by (a) race, (b) ethnicity, or (c) genetic ancestry (where genetic ancestry could easily be misunderstood as race or ethnicity) requires a compelling justification to be conducted, funded, or published. All authors agree that this justification at least requires a convincing argument that a study's design could yield scientifically valid results; some authors would additionally require the study to have a socially favorable risk‐benefit profile. (shrink)

Invited contributions were asked for statements of how they came to be acquainted with Wittgenstein’s work, the influence it had on their own work, and how they see Wittgenstein in relation to prevalent trends in contemporary philosophy. The weight given to the various elements in the invitation was left to the discretion of the contributors. Contributions have also been included from the Rush Rhees and Peter Winch archives. Articles by: Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora Diamond, İlham Dilman, P.M.S. Hacker, (...) B.F. McGuinness, Anthony Palmer, D.Z. Phillips, Rush Rhees, Joachim Schulte, Eike von Savigny, Georg Henrik von Wright, and Peter Winch. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A NOTE ON THE RELATION OF PACIFISM AND JUST-WAR THEORY: IS THERE A THOMISTIC CONVERGENCE? 1 GABRIEL PALMER-FERNANDEZ Youngstown State University Youngstown, Ohio FOR CENTURIES, the moral analysis of war began with a consideration of a set of principles which together form the doctrine of the just-war and with a rejection of pacifism. However, several recent studies by Catholic moralists argue that pacifism and just-war theory have much (...) in common and converge in at least one morally important way-namely, they share a presumption against violence. In this note I want to consider whether or not classical just-war theory gives us reason to accept this claim. I will give evidence against it, and suggest that the "original just-war question," as James Turner Johnson calls it, does not begin with aprohibitive presumption or some equivalent constraint on action. If we are to speak of a presumption in classical just-war theory, it is that justice be done for the sake of the common good. Up to very recent times, those Christian denominations which Ernst Troeltsch called the "church-type" (Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist, and Roman Catholic) upheld a " two-tiered " or "double" morality. A "vocational" pacifism was required of clerical ranks, and the individual Christian was obligated to take up arms for the sake of the common good. For example, prior to the Second Vatican Council, Roman Catholic teaching on war rejected conscientious objection to all war (i.e., pacifism) as an option for Catholics. Manuals of moral theology prior to Vatican 1 I wish to acknowledge the very helpful and detailed comments provided by Richard B. Miller to an earlier version of this paper. 247 248 GABRIEL PALMER-FERNANDEZ II did prohibit the soldier from fighting in an unjust war and made room for subjective doubt about the justice of a particular war. But the consensus among Catholic theologians was both wide and deep. Pacifism for individual Christians did not have any moral-theological justification. It was, in fact, a grave moral error. In spite of this, Vatican II called for a " completely fresh reappraisal of war." 2 The policy of obliterating whole cities enacted during World War II, coupled with the development of nuclear and other indiscriminate weapons of destruction (e.g., incapacitating gases, biological weapons, etc.) and the instability of superpower relations, created an unprecedented condition for which traditional teachings on war seemed woefully inadequate, if not morally dangerous. A new, more far-reaching perspective was needed. And this was to allow for individuals the pacifist option as a second and complementary moral doctrine alongside traditional teaching on war.3 As the American Catholic bishops said in their pastoral letter on war and peace : 2 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, in A. Flannery, 0.P., ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Collegeville, Minn. : Liturgical Press, 1975), par. 80. 3 This development in contemporary Roman Catholic teaching on war and peace has been challenged with considerable force by George Weigel in what has become one of the most controversial studies on the subject. In Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), Weigel advances several arguments which are meant to correct what he insists is a failure among Catholic ethicists in the U.S. to develop their tradition, and, indeed, an abandonment of their heritage. " At the level of moral theory," Weigel maintains, "the two classic positions [just-war theory and pacifism] are not reconcilable. The attempt to merge them... tends to corrupt both traditions. Pacifists end up making judgments on military strategy and tactics, and just-war theorists are held accountable to arguments they previously declined to accept.... The net result is to bifurcate morality and politics, and to abandon attempts to apply the tradition of reason to the limit case of the use of armed force in the defense of values-which is precisely the result Murray most feared in his strictures against moralism" (251). For David Hollenbach's rebuttal, see his review essay, "War and Peace in American Catholic Thought: A Heritage Abandoned? " Theological Studies 48 (1987) : 711-727... (shrink)

The aim of this review is to show the fruitfulness of using images of facial expressions as experimental stimuli in order to study how neural systems support biologically relevant learning as it relates to social interactions. Here we consider facial expressions as naturally conditioned stimuli which, when presented in experimental paradigms, evoke activation in amygdala–prefrontal neural circuits that serve to decipher the predictive meaning of the expressions. Facial expressions offer a relatively innocuous strategy with which to investigate these normal variations (...) in affective information processing, as well as the promise of elucidating what role the aberrance of such processing might play in emotional disorders. (shrink)

In 2000, Mark Palmer, one of the National Endowment for Democracy’s founders and Vice Chairman of Freedom House—an organization funded entirely by the U.S. Congress—founded a new government-supported group, Friends of Falun Gong. By perusing FoFG’s annual tax filings, one discovers that FoFG has contributed funds to Sounds of Hope Radio, New Tang Dynasty TV, and the Epoch Times—all Falun Gong media outlets. FoFG has also contributed to Dragon Springs and to Shen Yun, as well as to Falun Gong’s (...) PR arm. In order to contextualize the U.S. government’s funding of Falun Gong, it will also be helpful to examine a handful of additional U.S. agency activities, such as the NED’s funding of Liu Xiaobo, the Hong Kong protests, and other China-related and Tibet-related groups. (shrink)

In Vagueness and Contradiction (2001), Roy Sorensen defends and extends his epistemic account of vagueness. In the process, he appeals to connections between vagueness and semantic paradox. These appeals come mainly in Chapter 11, where Sorensen offers a solution to what he calls the no-no paradox—a “neglected cousin” of the more famous liar—and attempts to use this solution as a precedent for an epistemic account of the sorites paradox. This strategy is problematic for Sorensen’s project, however, since, as we establish, (...) he fails to resolve the semantic pathology of the no-no paradox. (shrink)

Today, modern Western medicine is facing a quality-of-care crisis that is undermining the patient–physician relationship. In this paper, a notion of the epistemically virtuous clinician is proposed in terms of both the reliabilist and responsibilist versions of virtue epistemology, in order to help address this crisis. To that end, a clinical case study from the literature is first reconstructed. The reliabilist intellectual virtues, including the perceptual and conceptual virtues, are then discussed and applied to the case study. Next, a similar (...) method is employed to examine the responsibilist intellectual virtues, including curiosity, courage, honesty, and humility, and to apply them to the case study. To round out the discussion, the love of knowledge and both theoretical and practical wisdom are explored and applied to the case study. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how the notion of an epistemically virtuous clinician addresses the quality-of-care crisis, in terms of the connection between ethical and intellectual virtues, and of the notion’s implications for medical education. (shrink)

The practice of paying research subjects for participating inclinical trials has yet to receive an adequate moral analysis.Dickert and Grady argue for a wage payment model in whichresearch subjects are paid an hourly wage based on that ofunskilled laborers. If we accept this approach, what follows?Norms for just working conditions emerge from workplacelegislation and political theory. All workers, includingpaid research subjects under Dickert and Grady''s analysis,have a right to at least minimum wage, a standard work week,extra pay for overtime hours, (...) a safe workplace, no faultcompensation for work-related injury, and union organization.If we accept that paid research subjects are wage earners likeany other, then the implications for changes to current practiceare substantial. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION The present volume is a study of the extant commentaries on a number of Plato's dialogues which were written by Neoplatonist philosophers of ...

Based on analysis of interviews with managers about the ethical questions they face in their work, a typology of morally questionable managerial acts is developed. The typology distinguishes acts committed against-the-firm (non-role and role-failure acts) from those committed on-behalf-of-the-firm (role-distortion and role-as-sertion acts) and draws attention to the different nature of the four types of acts. The argument is made that senior management attention is typically focused on the types of acts which are least problematical for most managers, and that (...) the most troublesome types are relatively ignored. (shrink)

The Yijing/Binary System Episode involved Leibniz' discovery of a de facto representation of the binary number system in the sixty-four-hexagram Fu Xi "Yijing." Scholars have left the match unexplained, since they have found no evidence of a forgotten binary number system in ancient China. The interesting similarities and differences are discussed between the thought of Leibniz and that of Shao Yong, both of whom, it is argued, understood and recognized the importance of the double geometric progression in the diagram.

In the seventeenth century, Newton published his famous experimentum crucis, in which he claimed that light is heterogeneous and is composed of rays with different refrangibilities. Experiments, especially the crucial experiment, were important for justifying Newton’s theory of light, and eventually his theory of color. A century later, Goethe conducted a series of experiments on the nature of color, especially in contradistinction to Newton, and he defended his research with a methodological principle formulated in “Der Versuch als Vermittler.” Goethe’s principle (...) included two elements: a series of experiments and resultant higher empirical evidence, which functioned as mediator between the objective and the subjective . Although the notion of experimentum crucis became popular among scientists for reconstructing experimental research and for justifying theories, especially for rhetorical purposes, Newton’s justification of his theory of light and color is best reconstructed in terms of Goethe’s methodological principle. Finally, Goethe’s principle has important consequences for the contemporary philosophical underdetermination thesis. (shrink)

Is knowledge in the natural sciences discovered or constructed? For objectivists, scientific knowledge is discovered through investigations into a mind-independent, natural world. For constructivists, such knowledge is produced through negotiations among members of a professional guild. I examine the clash between the two positions and propose that scientific knowledge is the concurrent outcome from investigations into a natural world and from consensus reached through negotiations of a professional guild. Specifically, I introduce the general methodological notion, instituting science, which incorporates both (...) the discovery and the construction processes in the generation of scientific knowledge. To that end, I use a case study from the biomedical sciences to illustrate the notion. I conclude with a discussion of how this methodological notion helps to address the debate between objectivists and constructivists over the generation of scientific knowledge, and of how it compares with others who have also attempted to address the debate. (shrink)

This article argues that we can and should recognize the mind dependence, epistemic dependence, and social dependence of theories of mind-independent reality, as opposed to Rorty, who thinks not even a constructivist theory of mind-independent reality can be had. It accuses Rorty of creating an equivocation or "dualism of scheme and content" between causation and justification based on various "Davidsonian" irrelevancies, not to be confused with the actual Davidson. These include the 'principle of charity', the attack against conceptual schemes, the (...) linguistification of social practice, intersubjectivism, and causal naturalism. It follows that realists and constructivists need neither follow Rorty's mischaracterizations nor succumb to his internal paradoxes. (shrink)

While the literature in business ethics abounds with philosophical analyses, perspectives from religious thinkers are curiously underrepresented. What religious analysis has occured has often been moralistic in tone, more fit to the pulpit than the classroom or the boardroom. In the three essays that follow, presented originally at a panel at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 1989, ethicists from the Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish traditions analyze a case study familiar to many who teach and (...) research in business ethics - the Consolidated Foods Case. Each author shows how a particular religious tradition might react to the case. The authors show how insights from their traditions would affect corporation's moral deliberations about policy. Specific policy recommendations are offered to CEO John Bryan. (shrink)

Intentionalism is the view that statutes should be interpreted in accordance with the intentions of the legislatures that produce them. As a theory of legislative interpretation, intentionalism has been very influential, but it has also been subject to much critical attention. It is claimed that legislatures will seldom have any relevant intentions, and that even if they did, we could not come to know them. I propose a modification of intentionalism that significantly mitigates the severity of these problems. I begin (...) by noting that legislation is seldom (if ever) written by an entire legislature. Instead, it is commonly written by individuals or subgroups acting as proxies on behalf of the legislature. I then argue that the reasons why legislation should be interpreted in accordance with the intentions of legislatures are equally applicable to the intentions of proxies. This is significant because proxies are much more likely to have ascertainable intentions. (shrink)

In discussions of the probabilistic argument from evil, some defenders of theism have recently argued that evil has no evidential force against theism. They base their argument on the claim that there is no reason to think that we should be able to discern morally sufficient reasons which God presumably has for permitting the evil which occurs. In this paper I try to counter this argument by discussing factors which suggest that we should generally be able to discern why God (...) permits evil events. I close by suggesting that the theist use the evidential force which evil does have as a reason to question her understanding of the divine attributes. (shrink)

In this article, I introduce the notion of horizon for scientific practice (HSP), representing limits or boundaries within which scientists ply their trade, to facilitate analysis of scientific discovery and progress. The notion includes not only constraints that delimit scientific practice, e.g. of bringing experimentation to a temporary conclusion, but also possibilities that open up scientific practice to additional scientific discovery and to further scientific progress. Importantly, it represents scientific practice as a dynamic and developmental integration of activities to investigate (...) and analyze the natural world. I use the discovery of the clotting factor, thrombin, and the experiments conducted by the Johns Hopkins physiologist, William Howell, on the enzymatic nature of thrombin to illustrate the notion of HSP. In a concluding section, I compare the notion of HSP to other notions for scientific practice proposed in the history and philosophy of science literature. (shrink)

While Maimonides reread his sources to reconcile biblical and rabbinic texts with the demands of reason, Hermann Cohen, in his construction of a “religion of reason,” rereads Maimonides' rereadings of those very same texts. Maimonides' Judaism often bridges the sources toward Cohen's religion of reason by providing a philological anchor that nudges a term or verse now viewed through a more modern historical and evolutionary lens toward its ultimate reason-infused meaning. This paper will explore a hitherto neglected feature of their (...) oeuvres that unites Maimonides and Cohen as much as it distinguishes them: the “Jewishness” shared by both, as evident in the most Jewish of all exercises that suffuses both their works, biblical and midrashic exegesis. Their exegetical nets are systematically cast widely throughout the breadth of the Hebrew Bible, but more often than not they offer highly discrepant readings of the same passage or prooftext. Cohen's referencing of many of the same sources appeals to their Maimonidean rationalist refurbishment, but at the same time often places them in combative discourse in order to subvert and reorient Maimonides' exegesis. The notions of divine names, the “image” ( tselem ) of God, “nearness” to God, and divine “glory” ( kavod ) are closely examined to demonstrate this intertextual relationship between these two seminal Jewish thinkers. While Cohen may be misreading Maimonides' rereading of scripture, he remains a true hermeneutical disciple in his exegetical restructuring and realignment of scripture. Cohen's programmatic exegetical idealization of Maimonidean prooftexts to reconstruct a new Kantianized God forms a common ground of discourse with Maimonides that traverses seven centuries of a quintessential Jewish enterprise. (shrink)

In Dienes & Perner's analysis, implicitly represented knowledge differs from explicitly represented knowledge only in the attribution of properties to specific events and to self-awareness of the knower. This commentary questions whether implicit knowledge should be thought of as being represented in the same conceptual vocabulary; rather, it may involve a quite different form of representation.

Carruthers’ thesis is undermined on the one hand by examples of integration of output from domain-specific modules that are independent of language, and on the other hand by examples of linguistically represented thoughts that are unable to integrate different domain-specific knowledge into a coherent whole. I propose a more traditional role for language in thought as providing the basis for the cultural development and transmission of domain-general abstract knowledge and reasoning skills.

This paper has two aims. The first is to criticize epistemological externalism in a way different from most other criticisms. Most criticisms claim externalism fails because it does not adequately explicate ordinary notions of knowledge and justification. Such criticisms are often unhelpful to the externalist because he may not even intend his theory to be such an explication. The criticism presented here avoids this difficulty. The other aim, achieved en route to this criticism, is to explode a dogma of contemporary (...) epistemology — that the primary end of epistemic endeavors is truth — and to bring to light the many other important goals there are for such endeavors in addition to truth. Several of these goals pertain to the power of knowledge in social contexts. The criticism ultimately made of externalism is that externalist knowledge is defective because it fails to achieve these extra-verific goals of epistemic endeavors. (shrink)

The most defensible justifications of war in the European intellectual tradition hold that war is instrumentally necessary for the maintenance of peace and order. An investigation of Ancient Chinese philosophical attitudes towards war calls this assumption into question. The closest parallel to an instrumental concept of war is found in the Legalist school, but historical experience in China has rejected this. The Confucian school, especially Mencius and Xunxi, insists that war is not instrumental in creating social order, but derives from (...) the prior establishing of cultural and political authority, and thus must be punitive in nature. Even the use of “punitive expeditions” is not instrumental, but rather demonstrative or performative in nature, for if coercive methods are necessary, the authority to use them is arguably absent. War for the Chinese, then, is not justified by the necessity for creating public order, but is in itself a sign of the failure to achieve such an order. This contrasts sharply with the views of the dominant Western thinkers on war, such as Michael Walzer, whose positions insist upon the instrumental necessity of armed force, even to the point of absurdity. The ancient Chinese position suggests that this necessity may be ungrounded. (shrink)

Collapsing three-dimensional space into two violates Lehar's “volumetric mapping” constraint and can cause the visual system to construct illusory transparent regions to replace voxels that would have contained illumination. This may underlie why color constancy is worse in two dimensions, and argues for Lehar to revise his phenomenal spatial model by putting “potential illumination” in empty space.

This history of Western philosophy is based upon two convictions: one is that this must be a subjective enterprise; the other is that its guiding aim should be to interpret the great diversity found among past philosophers as an understandable, connected, and progressive order. The author relates these philosophies to each other to discern a path through 2500 years of reflective thought as pointing toward a justifiable present position. Contents: Early Greek Philosophy; Plato; Aristotle; A Transition: The Stoics and Skeptics; (...) The Emergence of Faith; Saint Augustine; Saint Thomas Aquinas; Faith and the Re-Emergence of Reason; Descartes; Leibniz and Spinoza; The British Empiricists; Kant and Schopenhauer; Vico; Hegel; Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind; After Hegel; A Summary Conclusion and a Look Beyond; Index. (shrink)

This paper analyses the use of metaphor in discourses around the “superweed” Palmer amaranth. Most weed scientists associated with the US public agricultural extension system dismiss the term superweed. However, together with the media, they indirectly encourage aggressive control practices by actively diffusing the framing of herbicide resistant Palmer amaranth as an existential threat that should be eradicated at any cost. We use argumentative discourse analysis to better understand this process. We analyze a corpus consisting of reports, policy (...) briefs, and press releases produced by state extension services, as well as articles from professional and popular magazines and newspapers quoting extension specialists and/or public sector weed scientists or agronomists. We show how the superweed discourse is powered by negative metaphors, and legitimizes aggressive steps to eradicate the weed. This discourse reinforces the farmers’ techno-optimism master frame, contributes to deskilling of farmers and sidelines ethical concerns. (shrink)