Philosophy, science, and common sense all refer to propositions--things we believe and say, and things which are true or false. But there is no consensus on what sorts of things these entities are. Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames, and Jeff Speaks argue that commitment to propositions is indispensable, and each defend their own views on the debate.

In this case study, I address the procedural ethics of conversation analysis (CA) and the collection of naturally occurring mundane interactions. I draw from the challenges that emerged from the institutional ethics review of the HIV, health and interaction study (the H2I Study), a CA project that sought to identify the practices through which normative assumptions of HIV and other health conditions are produced in conversations. Consistent with CA’s preference for naturally occurring interactions, the H2I Study collected and analysed everyday (...) telephone calls involving people living with HIV. This article offers practical strategies CA researchers might use to navigate two ethical concerns raised about the collection of naturally occurring mundane interactions. The first questions the merits of collecting naturally occurring mundane interactions. For those unfamiliar with CA, the specific advantages of analysing naturally occurring mundane interactions may not be self-evident. This places an evidentiary burden on CA researchers to warrant the collection of this type of data. To address this concern, I suggest demonstrating in ethics applications the analytic value of CA using publicly available interactions. The second concern questions the use of verbal consent necessary for the collection of naturally occurring mundane interactions. Like most CA research, the H2I Study required flexible informed consent protocols appropriate for spontaneous and unpredictable interactions. Drawing from within and outside the CA literature, I offer three rationales for the use of verbal consent. This article is written as a practical resource for conversation analysts seeking approval from their research ethics board (REB) and for REBs who might be unfamiliar with CA research. This article contributes to a small but growing body of literature that documents not only the kinds of challenges CA researchers encounter from institutional ethics review, but the specific procedural ethics they may employ to secure ethics approval. (shrink)

Wattles offers a comprehensive survey of the history of the golden rule, "Do unto others as you want others to do unto you". He traces the rule's history in contexts as diverse as the writings of Confucius and the Greek philosophers, the Bible, modern theology and philosophy, and the American "self-help" context. He concludes by offering his own synthesis of these varied understandings.

Levinas and the Philosophy of Religion Jeffrey L. Kosky Reveals the interplay of phenomenology and religion in Levinas’s thought. "Kosky examines Levinas’s thought from the perspective of the philosophy of religion and he does so in a way that is attentive to the philosophical nuances of Levinas’s argument.... an insightful, well written, and carefully documented study... that uniquely illuminates Levinas’s work." —John D. Caputo For readers who suspect there is no place for religion and morality in postmodern philosophy, (...) class='Hi'>Jeffrey L. Kosky suggests otherwise in this skillful interpretation of the ethical and religious dimensions of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought. Placing Levinas in relation to Hegel and Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger, Derrida and Marion, Kosky develops religious themes found in Levinas’s work and offers a way to think and speak about ethics and morality within the horizons of contemporary philosophy of religion. Kosky embraces the entire scope of Levinas’s writings, from Totality and Infinity to Otherwise than Being, contrasting Levinas’s early religious and moral thought with that of his later works while exploring the nature of phenomenological reduction, the relation of religion and philosophy, the question of whether Levinas can be considered a Jewish thinker, and the religious and theological import of Levinas’s phenomenology. Kosky stresses that Levinas is first and foremost a phenomenologist and that the relationship between religion and philosophy in his ethics should cast doubt on the assumption that a natural or inevitable link exists between deconstruction and atheism. Jeffrey L. Kosky is translator of On Descartes’ Metaphysical Prism: The Constitution and the Limits of Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Thought by Jean-Luc Marion. He has taught at Williams College. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor May 2001 272 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, bibl., index, append. cloth 0-253-33925-1 $39.95 s / £30.50. (shrink)

Debates in metaethics about metanormative realism, quasi-realism, anti-realism, and nihilism mostly focus on epistemic reasons for beliefs about values. Very little has been said about our practical reasons for metaethical beliefs, and even less is said about practical reasons for other attitudes we might take toward metaethical views. This paper shows why a recent argument bucking that trend fails to show that we have practical reasons to believe realism over nihilism, but that for many of us, we do have practical (...) reason to hope that what I call Optimistic Realism is true. (shrink)

Many of the most important social institutions—e.g., law and language—are thought to be normative in some sense. And philosophers have been puzzled by how this normativity can be explained in terms of the social, descriptive states of affairs that presumably constitute them. This paper attempts to solve this sort of puzzle by considering a simpler and less contentious normative social practice: table manners. Once we are clear on the exact sense in which a practice is normative, we see that some (...) practices can be normative in an interesting and non-trivial sense, but also explicable with merely descriptive resources. In addition to arguing that it is possible to explain normative practices with descriptive resources, this paper presents and defends just such an explanation—an account of the nature of table manners that appeals only to descriptive states of affairs. (shrink)

This essay introduces the second installment of a symposium in Common Knowledge called “Apology for Quietism.” This introductory piece concerns the sociology of quietism and why, given the supposed quietude of quietists, there is such a thing at all. Dealing first with the “activist” Susan Sontag's attraction to the “quietist” Simone Weil, it then concentrates on the “activist” William Empson's attraction to the Buddha and to Buddhist quietism, with special reference to Empson's lost manuscript Asymmetry in Buddha Faces (and to (...) Sharon Cameron's work on the topic in her book Impersonality). The author, who is also editor of the journal, argues against the effort of some contributors to substitute new terms for quietism and emphasizes instead what he calls (quoting Sontag) “the need for repose.”. (shrink)

Conservation can occur anywhere regardless of scale, political jurisdiction, or landownership. We present a framework to help managers at protected areas practice conservation at the scale of relationships. We focus on relationships between stakeholders and protected areas and between managers and other stakeholders. We provide a synthesis of key natural resources literature and present a case example to support our premise and recommendations. The purpose is 4-fold: 1) discuss challenges and threats to conservation and protected areas; 2) outline a relationship-scale (...) approach to address conservation threats; 3) describe the tools and techniques that can be used to implement this approach; and 4) present a case example from rural Alaska, USA, to illustrate relationship-scale conservation. Our case example illustrates how aspects of this approach to conservation were applied to address a wildlife population decline. Tools needed to implement relationship-scale conservation include 1) collecting and documenting narratives of place; 2) measuring and monitoring trust and commitment; and 3) identifying and mitigating threats. We recommend that planners and managers, working with their research partners, redefine and refocus their goals and objectives to include these practices. Doing so will enable them to gain substantial applied knowledge about their stakeholders and foster and maintain place relationships as desired outcomes of conservation. The ultimate outcome is a better prognosis for long-term global survival of protected areas and biodiversity. Published 2014. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 333-348, May 2022.

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 requires federal agencies to provide a meaningful role for rural subsistence harvesters in management of fish and wildlife in Alaska. We constructed an interpretive analysis of qualitative interviews with residents of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Stakeholders' perceptions of their roles and motivations to participate in collaborative management are linked to unseen and often ignored cultural features and differing worldviews that influence outcomes of collaboration. Agencies need to better understand Yup'ik preferences for working (...) together and change their formats and methods of public engagement. More frequent and higher quality interactions among stakeholders in rural communities will create awareness of cultural differences. Improved awareness will allow managers to design and implement a process that is culturally appropriate and increase the meaningfulness of collaborative management. (shrink)

This paper explores the idea that it is instrumentally valuable to learn normative truths. We consider an argument for "normative hedging" based on this principle, and examine the structure of decision-making under moral uncertainty that arises from it. But it also turns out that the value of normative information is inconsistent with the principle that learning *empirical* truths is instrumentally valuable. We conclude with a brief comment on "metanormative regress.".

A simple tool is provided to assist researchers in assessing contributions to a scientific publication, for ease in evaluating which contributors qualify for authorship, and in what order the authors should be listed. The tool identifies four phases of activity leading to a publication—Conception and Design, Data Acquisition, Analysis and Interpretation, and Manuscript Preparation. By comparing a project participant’s contribution in a given phase to several specified thresholds, a score of up to five points can be assigned; the contributor’s scores (...) in all four phases are summed to yield a total “contribution score”, which is compared to a threshold to determine which contributors merit authorship. This tool may be useful in a variety of contexts in which a systematic approach to authorial credit is desired. (shrink)

"This book introduces Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Principle of Optimality and argues that it plays a central role his physics and philosophy, with profound implications for both. Each chapter begins with an introduction to one of Leibniz's ground-breaking studies in natural philosophy, paying special attention to the role of optimal form in those investigations. Each chapter then goes on to explore the philosophical implications of optimal form for Leibniz's broader philosophical system. Individual chapters include discussions of Leibniz's understanding of teleology, the (...) nature of bodies, laws of nature, and free will. The final chapter explores the legacy of Leibniz's physics in light of his work on optimal form"--. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Chomsky's Challenge Methodological Physicalism.

Despite the current popularity of what is commonly referred to as an `ethics of care', no one has yet undertaken a systematic philosophical study of `care' itself. In this book, Jeffrey Blustein presents the first such study, offering a detailed exploration of human `care' in its various guises: concern for and commitment to individuals, ideals, and causes. Blustein focuses on the nature and value of personal integrity and intimacy, and on the questions they raise for traditional moral theory.

Interest in the future, clinical implementation of uterus transplantation for uterine factor infertility was recently boosted by the demonstration of proof-of-concept for deceased uterus donation/transplantation. The ethical dimensions of living and deceased uterus transplantation are explored and addressed in the paper through their comparison to the ethical elements of an existing, legal, assisted reproduction practice in some high-income countries, i.e., gestational surrogacy. A set of six ethics lenses is used in the comparative analysis: reproductive autonomy and rights, informed choice/consent, relevant (...) critical relational theories, health equity, theoretical application of the accepted living donation standard, and comparative benefits and burdens considerations. Gestational surrogacy, as currently practiced in some high-income countries, is the assumed, theoretical base-threshold for determination of ethical acceptability in assisted reproduction practices. The analysis demonstrates that : 1) the ethical acceptability of living uterus donation/transplantation is less than that of gestational surrogacy in high-income countries, and 2) the ethical acceptability of deceased uterus donation/transplantation is roughly equivalent to that of gestational surrogacy. This leads to the conclusion that, at the present time, only one version of uterus transplantation practice, i.e., deceased uterus transplantation, should be considered ethically acceptable for possible clinical implementation in high-income countries. (shrink)

The Sickness unto Death is commonly regarded as one of Kierkegaard's most important works – but also as one of his most difficult texts to understand. It is a meditation on Christian existentialist themes including sin, despair, religious faith and its redemptive power, and the relation and difference between physical and spiritual death. This volume of new essays guides readers through the philosophical and theological significance of the work, while clarifying the complicated ideas that Kierkegaard develops. Some of the essays (...) focus closely on particular themes, others attempt to elucidate the text as a whole, and yet others examine it in relation to other philosophical views. Bringing together these diverse approaches, the volume offers a comprehensive understanding of this pivotal work. It will be of interest to those studying Kierkegaard as well as existentialism, religious philosophy, and moral psychology. (shrink)

In this piece, the editor of Common Knowledge introduces a long-term project titled “Antipolitics: Symposium in Memory of György Konrád.” Konrád, who died in 2019, was a founding member of the Common Knowledge editorial board, and the symposium is meant to find present-day applications for the arguments of his book Antipolitics, published in 1982 in Hungarian. Although written under Cold War conditions and to that extent dated, the book is directed against politics and politicians as such: “What Machiavelli's Prince is (...) to would-be rulers, Antipolitics should be for those resistant to being ruled — a treasury of axioms and apothegms,” which this editorial collects, updates, and analyzes. Given that democratic systems and constitutions are “open and subject to further development,” Konrád urges us to devise and run experiments in governance that apply “creative imagination” to problems that, in better times, we might leave to politicians to resolve. “The crisis for democracy today,” Perl argues, “is that bad government (as Konrád, Václav Havel, and Adam Michnik defined it in the 1980s) appears to be what various electorates crave and therefore choose.” Realizing that elections produce, as Aristotle said, oligarchy rather than democracy, we should rethink majority rule and experiment with sortition as a counterpolitical means of self-government. (shrink)

In this introduction to Part 1 of “Contextualism—the Next Generation: Symposium on the Future of a Methodology,” the editor of Common Knowledge, a “journal of left-wing Kuhnian opinion,” reports that the new symposium responds to contextualist criticism of the previous CK symposium, which was on xenophilia. The content of the earlier symposium met with objections, from contextualists, on the grounds of methodology, and the new symposium questions the methodology of contextualism for the limits that it places on content as well (...) as on normative aims and degree of focus. Tracing the origins of contextualism to Kuhn and his theory that paradigms of scientific knowledge are incommensurable, this essay then argues that Kuhnian method is formal, with scant concern for content, and that Kuhn’s work was vatic, more than philosophical or historical. Kuhn’s depiction of his sudden, blinding realization that Aristotelian physics is correct in its own context is assessed as an ironic application of biblical scenes of revelation to what is, essentially, a process of scrupulous, piecemeal scholarship. What Kuhn unknowingly wanted, the essay concludes, was a combination of contextualism and phenomenology, as a means of knowing what it was like to believe in Aristotelian, as opposed to modern, concepts of matter, quality, space, void, position, change, and motion. The essay then introduces the first contribution to the new symposium: a monograph retrieving geometrical and taxonomic—Euclidean and Theophrastan—idioms of discourse about fictional characters and inquiring into their changing affective content. (shrink)

The question of meaning in life has enjoyed renewed attention in analytic discourse over the last few decades. Despite the apparently “existential” quality of this topic, existential philosophy has had little impact on this re-energized conversation. This paper draws on Kierkegaard’s _The Sickness unto Death_ in order to challenge the objectivist theory of meaning in life. According to that theory, a meaningful life is one replete with objective goods. Kierkegaard, however, exposits four forms of the spiritual sickness he calls despair (...) that are compatible with the possession of objective goods. If this account is convincing, it poses a challenge to the objectivist view, suggesting that a subjective contribution is also necessary to fully account for meaning in life. By a process of negative inference, this paper concludes by sketching out what this subjective contribution might look like and suggests the term “authenticity” in order to capture this subjective element of a meaningful life. (shrink)

The modern social world is unjust. It is also complex. What does this latter fact imply about the kind of approach that should be used in ameliorating the injustice expressed in the former fact? One answer, recently put forth by Jacob Barrett, is that _ideal theory_, which he understands as being fundamentally defined by the identification and subsequent pursuit of an aspirational macro-level institutional goal, lacks a place in social reform. The reason he thinks ideal theory lacks a place has (...) to do with its inability to deal with complexity. _Pace_ Barrett, I argue that ideal theory, suitably understood, can play a valuable role in social reform in a complex world. While some ideal theorists have underappreciated the extent to which complexity considerations complicate social reform, this does not mean that there is no place for it. This paper surveys the resources ideal theory has available to cope with what I call _the challenge of complexity_. Although the coping techniques will be successful to varying degrees, I believe, in aggregate, a compelling case can be made that ideal theory can combat the challenge of complexity. Still, one may worry that even if ideal theory can adequately deal with complexity, it cannot adequately deal with ever-changing social circumstances. Call this _the dancing landscape objection_. A static ideal theory cannot overcome it, but a _dynamic ideal theory_ could. In sum, dynamic ideal theory can contribute to social reform in a complex and mutable social world. (shrink)

This paper responds to David Little 's recent discussion of the author's "holistic" criticisms of "Comparative Religious Ethics". In two crucial areas, Little seems to have moved beyond his original position: first, in granting that the relation among the levels of the structure of practical justification is interactive; and second, in making explicit his conception of the point of pursuing comparative studies. Both developments are welcome, but they raise doubts about whether much of the original position survives. The author articulates (...) these doubts, and also reflects on what difference holism makes in ethics. (shrink)

This essay offers an alternative account of Leibniz’s views on substance and fundamental ontology. The proposal is driven by three main ideas. First, that Leibniz’s treatment should be understood against the backdrop of a traditional dispute over the paradigmatic nature substance as well as his own overarching conciliatory ambitions. Second, that Leibniz’s metaphysics is intended to support his conciliatory view that both traditional views of substance are tenable in at least their positive and philosophical respects. Third, that the relationship between (...) immaterial substances, corporeal substances, and ordinary bodies in Leibniz’s metaphysics is best understood as one of “material” constitution. The interpretation as a whole thus suggests that Leibniz needn’t be read as offering either an exclusive defense of corporeal substance realism, nor of immaterial substance idealism, nor as being deeply torn (at a time or over time) between two such views. He may instead be seen as offering a carefully presented, consistent, and sophisticated conciliatory account of substance. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that the eudaimonist virtue of hope holds pride of place in development of psychological traits that promote human flourishing. The argument is part theoretical and part empirical. On the theoretical side, hope, the virtue, is the disposition to envision future good possibilities for oneself and one’s community and to move towards those possibilities. This renders hope necessary for any agent’s self-conscious pursuit of the goods that constitute flourishing, and also for the development of other virtues. (...) On the empirical side, we draw on evidence from psychology to argue that early in development, humans need relationships of trust with caregivers to develop the future orientation and features of agency constitutive of the virtue of hope. Thus the virtue of hope generally needs to be fostered, in part, through trusting relationships for humans to flourish. (shrink)

Constitutive reflexivity, stories, and personal narrative were used to interpret leisure experience and provide insights for understanding leisure identity. I present a personal narrative of an annual canoe camping trip on a forested backcountry river. Stories are told in first person by the author about his trip of twenty years on a river with a small group of men. The author illustrates how personal narrative allows opportunities for understanding and interpreting meanings and changing leisure identities. The confluence of narrative, identity, (...) and leisure experience is illustrated and discussed. The purpose is to bring the writer/researcher into the qualitative project as a subject and actor in the story and show how leisure identity images are created and affirmed through time. (shrink)

If militarism violates the ideals of liberty and justice in one way, and rapidly increasing social stratification violates them in another, then American democracy is in crisis. A culture of democratic accountability will survive only if citizens revive the concerns that animated the great reform movements of the past, from abolitionism to civil rights. It is crucial, when reasoning about practical matters, not only to admit how grave one's situation is, but also to resist despair. Therefore, the fate of democracy (...) depends, to some significant degree, on how we choose to describe the crisis. Saying that we have already entered the new dark ages or a post-democratic era may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because anyone who accepts this message is apt to give up on the hard work of organizing and contestation that is needed to hold political representatives accountable to the people. This paper asks how one might strike the right balance between accuracy and hope in describing the democracy's current troubles. After saying what I mean by democracy and what I think the current threats to it are, I respond to Romand Coles's criticisms of reservations I have expressed before about rhetorical excess in the works of Stanley Hauerwas, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Rorty. This leads to a discussion of several points raised against me by Hauerwas. A digression offers some of my reasons for doubting that John Howard Yoder's biblical scholarship vindicates Hauerwas's version of pacifism. The paper concludes by arguing that Sheldon Wolin's work on the evisceration of democracy, though admirably accurate in its treatment of the dangers posed by empire and capital, abandons the project of democratic accountability too quickly in favor of the romance of the fugitive. (shrink)

Aristotle (384-322 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Plato, and tutor of Alexander the Great. His works span the topics of biology, metaphysics, mind, logic, language, science, epistemology, ethics, and politics. Aristotle held that there are many divine beings, but a supremely divine being is the first cause of the universe and the goodness of all other beings. This divine being plays a fundamental explanatory role in Aristotle’s thought.

Richard Jeffrey, Michael Hendrickson; XIV*—Probabilizing Pathology, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 89, Issue 1, 1 June 1989, Pages 211–226, htt.

This essay assesses Robert Merrihew Adams' contribution to the religion-morality debate in light of questions in philosophical semantics and metaphilosophy, questions Adams raises without addressing directly. It sketches a holistic theory of the use of language in thought in the hope of providing a context for determining the value and philosophical relevance of Adams' semantic claims. It concludes by suggesting that descriptive metaethics should give way to explicitly historical studies, and by maintaining that historians of ethics need not postulate "meanings" (...) in order to make sense of what they do. (shrink)

Unmanaged recreation presents a challenge to both researchers and managers of outdoor recreation in the United States because it is shrouded in uncertainty resulting from disagreement over the definition of the problem, the strategies for resolving the problem, and the outcomes of management. Incomplete knowledge about recreation visitors’ values and relationships with one another, other stakeholders, and the land further complicate the problem. Uncertainty and social complexity make the unmanaged recreation issue a wicked problem. We describe the wickedness inherent in (...) unmanaged recreation and some of the implications of wickedness for addressing the problem for the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Conclusions about the nature of the problem are based on a problem appraisal that included a literature review and interviews of key informants. Addressing wickedness calls for institutional changes that allow for and reward the use of trust building, inclusive communication, and genuinely collaborative processes. (shrink)

The normativity of meaning—introduced by Kripke in 1982, and the subject of active debate since the early 1990s—has been exclusively understood in terms of duty-imposing norms. But there are norms of another type, well-known within the philosophy of law: authority-conferring norms. Philosophers thinking and writing about the normativity of meaning—normativists, anti-normativists, and even Kripke himself—seem to have failed to consider the possibility that semantic norms are authority-conferring. I argue that semantic norms should be understood as having an authority-conferring structure, and (...) show how this allows normativism about meaning to escape the two most popular arguments against it. (shrink)

Ratio Juris, Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 331-355, December 2021.

C. S. Jenkins has recently proposed an account of arithmetical knowledge designed to be realist, empiricist, and apriorist: realist in that what’s the case in arithmetic doesn’t rely on us being any particular way; empiricist in that arithmetic knowledge crucially depends on the senses; and apriorist in that it accommodates the time-honored judgment that there is something special about arithmetical knowledge, something we have historically labeled with ‘a priori’. I’m here concerned with the prospects for extending Jenkins’s account beyond arithmetic—in (...) particular, to set theory. After setting out the central elements of Jenkins’s account and entertaining challenges to extending it to set theory, I conclude that a satisfactory such extension is unlikely. (shrink)

This work explains how human beings can live more peacefully with one another by understanding the conditions of possibility for dialogue. Philosophically, this challenge is articulated as the problem of: how dialogue as dia-logos is possible when the shared logos is precisely that which is in question. Emmanuel Levinas, in demonstrating that the shared logos is a function of interhuman relationship, helps us to make some progress in understanding the possibilities for dialogue in this situation. If the terms of the (...) argument to this point are taken largely from Levinas's 1961 Totality and Infinity, Dudiak further proposes that Levinas's 1974 Otherwise than Being can be read as a deepening of these earlier analyses, delineating, both the conditions of possibility and impossibility for discourse itself. Throughout these analyses Dudiak discovers that in Levinas's view dialogue is ultimately possible, only for a gracious subjectivity already graced by God by way of the other, but where the word God is inseparable from my subjectivity as graciousness to the other. Finally, for Levinas, the facilitation of dialogue, the facilitation of peace, comes down to the subject's capacity and willingness to be who he or she is, to take the beautiful risk of a peaceful gesture offered to the other, and that peace, in this gesture itself. As Levinas himself puts it: "Peace then is under my responsibility. I am a hostage, for I am alone to wage it, running a fine risk, dangerously." Levinas's philosophical discourse is precisely itself to be read as such a gesture. (shrink)

This chapter talks about “Super Best Friends,” where the kids are seduced by illusionist David Blaine and his growing cult, and Jesus and the Super Best Friends must come to the rescue. It reviews important philosophical questions the episode raises, including miracles and the difference between the natural and supernatural. More generally, the chapter also talks about the nature of religious pluralism—the co‐existence of many different claims to religious authority—and how faith relates to reason in a world of diverse beliefs.

One of the major contemporary challenges to Thomistic moral psychology is that it is incompatible with the most up-to-date psychological science. Here Thomistic psychology is in good company, targeted along with most virtue-ethical views by philosophical situationism, which uses replicated psychological studies to suggest that our behaviors are best explained by situational pressures rather than by stable traits (like virtues and vices). In this essay we explain how this body of psychological research poses a much deeper threat to Thomistic moral (...) psychology in particular. For Thomistic moral psychology includes descriptive claims about causal connections between certain cognitive processes and behaviors, even independent of whether those processes emerge from habits like virtues. Psychological studies of correlations between these can provide evidence against those causal claims. We offer a new programmatic response to this deeper challenge: empirical studies are relevant only if they investigate behaviors under intentional descriptions, such that the correlations discovered are between cognition and what Aquinas calls human acts. Psychological research on aggression already emphasizes correlations between cognition and intentional behavior, or human acts, and so is positioned to shed light on how well Thomistic moral psychology fits with empirical data. Surprisingly, Aquinas’s views have quite a lot in common with a leading model of aggression, the social information processing (SIP) model. We close by suggesting how we might examine claims of Thomistic moral psychology from an empirical perspective further using research on social information processing and aggression. (shrink)

Legal issues have long been a prominent part of the discourse of business ethics. This widespread attention to legal questions within business ethics arises primarily because specific legal issues are as a practical matter often intertwined with prominent ethical issues occurring in the workplace. Many of the central issues of business ethics—issues such as whistle blowing, insider trading, and workplace privacy—have significant legal dimensions.But this widespread attention to specific legal issues obscures a more significant deficiency within business ethics. This deficiency (...) relates to the consideration of law at a much more fundamental level. Business ethics lacks any developed awareness of the images of law within its discourse.Unlike jurisprudence, the field of business ethics has little in the way of fully developed models or concepts of law. Rather, ourunderstanding of the law here exists more at the level of images—general, unreflected-upon depictions of the law, determinate in someaspects, indeterminate in others.Such images are epistemologically potent, containing unexamined assumptions and exerting an often unrecognized influence over the development of our knowledge. As such, they deserve our attention, especially within a newly evolving field such as business ethics. Of particular importance to business ethics is how such images portray the relation of law to ethics. (shrink)

This paper articulates Epictetus's moral epistemology. The argument of the paper is that the famous Stoic "art of living" is best thought of as a science or kind of knowledge, and that, in his conception of knowledge, Epictetus is an orthodox Stoic, upholding the main tenets of Stoic epistemology. Thus, what exactly the art of living is and how it can be acquired can be better understood by understanding Stoic epistemology.