For all the time and effort expended on empowerment and participation ‘programmes’, many fail each year. This paper argues that the cause is a faulty view of communication widespread among managers and their teachers: the conduit, transmission model. It frustrates participation and is an ideology of management control. It rests on untenable beliefs about meaning and how language relates to the world. The paper proposes a new model of communication in terms of ‘communicating other/wise’ and offers examples of how (...) it can be practised in management education and by managers aiming to bring empowered and participatory workplaces into being. (shrink)

Understanding the human condition through ethnography and critical philosophy.

What are the relations among wisdom, virtue, and expertise? Wisdom can be defined broadly as knowledge about how to live well. At the least, the task of living well requires some conception of what it means for a life to be _good_ as well as the knowledge and skill needed to actualize the good in one’s spheres of life. While this idea is easy to assert, it is difficult to examine empirically. This is because the scientific study of wisdom immediately (...) runs up against the challenge of the fact/value dichotomy. While psychological science seeks to study “what is”, the “wisdom” of any given decision, act or person is something that can only be assessed against some conception of the good. Thus, the study of wisdom calls on us to seek ways to bridge the fact/value dichotomy. In this paper, we pursue this goal. We suggest that the study of wisdom requires the integration of at least two forms of inquiry: psychological-empirical analyses of the development of knowledge and skills, and philosophical-conceptual inquiries into what it means to live a good life. In elaborating this approach, we first differentiate the concepts of _wisdom_, _wise decision-making_, and _wisdom-supporting skills_. Then we describe conceptual and _empirical_ tools for assessing the development of wisdom-supporting skills as well as an _evaluative_ framework for assessing the “wisdom” of any given act of decision-making. To illustrate these ideas, we report the results of a study demonstrating how the capacity for wise decision-making can be cultivated through participation in a program devoted to fostering the development of wisdom-supported skills. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 56-72 [Access article in PDF] Deconstruction and ZionismJacques Derrida's Specters of Marx Christopher Wise No differance without alterity, no alterity without singularity, no singularity without here-now. —Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx Introduction Following Jacques Derrida's first sustained critique of Marx and Marxism in Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International (1994), an expanded version of his (...) lectures delivered at the University of California, Riverside, in May 1993, numerous "Marxist" theorists have responded to his provocative (and, for some, "untimely") intervention. Several of these critical responses have been gathered in Michael Sprinker's volume Ghostly Demarcations: A Symposium on Jacques Derrida's "Specters of Marx" (1999), which includes contributions from such diverse theorists as Pierre Macherey, Antonio Negri, Fredric Jameson, Terry Eagleton, Aijaz Ahmad, and many others. Important omissions from Sprinker's book include Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's "Ghostwriting" (1995), an essay that Derrida nonetheless comments upon in his response "Marx & Sons," or any other feminist analysis of Specters of Marx, a curious absence in a text so riveted by questions of patriarchal affiliation. An even more startling omission from Sprinker's book is any analysis of Derrida's discussion of the Middle East, especially his remarks on the State of Israel and "a certain Jewish [i.e. Zionist] discourse on the Promised Land" [Specters of Marx 60] ("un certain discours juif de la Terre" [Spectres de Marx 104]). The myopic range of Marxist critiques of Specters of Marx is regrettable insofar as both Derrida and his Marxist critics ostensibly offer "radical" or "oppositional" perspectives on George H. W. Bush's New World Order while ignoring imperialist practices in places like Jerusalem, Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. In The End of the Peace Process (2001), Edward W. Said observes, "[w]hen one considers the broad lines of Jewish philosophy from [Martin] Buber to [Emmanuel] Levinas and perceives in it an almost total absence of reflection on the ethical dimensions of the Palestinian issue, one realizes how far one has to go" [208]. Said does not include Derrida in this trajectory of Jewish philosophers, possibly because Derrida has repeatedly disavowed any explicit affiliation with Judaism as religion, but I will argue here that Derrida's disavowal is implausible if not altogether disingenuous. In Ghostly Demarcations, Marxist responses to Derrida reveal how little real progress has been made in Western literary theory since the early 1980s, when now-tired debates about the Yale School echoed in nearly every humanities' corridor in the [End Page 56] United States. There are surely more compelling reasons to read Derrida today than to settle old scores with Ithaca-Irvine varieties of deconstruction. A key goal of this article is to enunciate Derrida's elision of the Palestinian question, not so much to undermine Specters of Marx, but to extend its power by venturing into domains that Derrida himself refuses to explore, a factor that weakens without totally disabling his deconstruction of Marxist theory. 1 The Rhetoric of Alterity In Specters of Marx, Derrida offers a complex, challenging, and virtuostic evaluation of Marx, focusing largely on "The Communist Manifesto" and The German Ideology. In particular, Derrida fixes his attention upon Marx's hostile and allegedly "obsessive" critique of Max Stirner, a rival Hegelian and "egological" anarchist. Derrida's criticisms of Marx turn on questions of spectrality, a suggestive way of describing the process whereby alienated or reified objects project illusory autonomy back upon the human subject. For purposes of the present essay, I draw attention to the rhetorical dimensions of the exchange between Derrida and his Marxist interlocutors, rather than the many subtleties implied by their respective analyses of this "new" concept formation. Such a strategy is useful not only because Derrida himself relies upon it in his essay "Marx & Sons," but also because it reveals key assumptions held by Derrida about deconstruction's political value, especially in the Middle East. Various contributors to Sprinker's volume do an impressive job of analyzing Derrida's critique of spectrality, especially Jameson, Warren Montag... (shrink)

For all the time and effort expended on empowerment and participation ‘programmes’, many fail each year. This paper argues that the cause is a faulty view of communication widespread among managers and their teachers: the conduit, transmission model. It frustrates participation and is an ideology of management control. It rests on untenable beliefs about meaning and how language relates to the world. The paper proposes a new model of communication in terms of ‘communicating other/wise’ and offers examples of how (...) it can be practised in management education and by managers aiming to bring empowered and participatory workplaces into being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Michael Wreen THE LOGIC OF IONESCO'S THE LESSON As men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise, or more mad than ordinary. Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 4 (L a RiTHMETic leads to philology, and philology leads to crime."1 This is both XXthe plot and die pessimism of Ionesco's The Lesson. As the drama unfolds, the spectator watches the world of progress-through-education crumble and a world (...) oflust and murder rise in its ruins. What has gone wrong? In a word, the life oflogic has become the logic oflife. To understand Ionesco's lesson, we must examine the (largely implicit) logic and philosophy of language of his Lesson. Logic, whether die classical syllogistic logic of Aristode, the modern symbolic logic of Russell and Whitehead, or die dialectical logic of Hegel, has two essentia ] components: a syntax, which distinguishes permissible from impermissible combinations and inferences, and a semantics, which allows interpretation and thus fills out the purely formal shell provided by the former. Ionesco's strategy is to show how each of these components as diey have come to be developed philosophically is inadequate to its real content — life, and how, together, they lead, at least metaphorically, to life's devastation. These diree conceptual moments correspond to the three dramatic divisions of the play, marked out by the interruptions of die maid. Ionesco begins with the methodology of logic, syntax, and focuses on arithmetic, which, we are told, "is more a method than a science" (p. 50). Since the time of Descartes, arithmetic, or more generally mathematics, has been the academic discipline par excellence, the study diat all of the empirical sciences have aspired to. So completely has the idea of the mathematical nature of reality impressed itself upon us diat for many people it has acquired the status of an 229 230Philosophy and Literature unquestioned, and even unquestionable, assumption. And for many in this group, including the Professor, it is more dianjust an assumption; it is a way of life. "Let us arithmetize a little," he says to his pupil (p. 51), and his neologism refers not just to a subject matter, arithmetic, but to a way of dealing with subject matters and, ultimately, to a way of dealing with the whole of reality. The noun "arithmetic" has become a verb, and the ascendancy of abstract method has begun. Formal logic, in adi diree of its classic Western forms, is now subjected to sustained and specific criticism. Generally speaking, the Pupil represents Aristotelian and Russellian humanism, a view based on an optimistic belief in man's capacity for direct knowledge, in understanding through analysis by fine distinctions between terms, and in the elimination of paradoxes, both in logic and life. The Professor, again roughly speadcing, represents Hegeliainism, a view based on an optimistic belief in die capacity of reason to unify all oppositions and to overcome, through a higher syndiesis, the fundamentally paradoxical nature of all phenomena, including life itself. Thus, at die level of formal logic and ontology, the Professor amd the Pupil aire diametrically opposed, united only in their uncritical reliatnce upon a method of reason. This philosophical opposition is in turn correlated with a psycho-physical opposition: the Professor is male, old, retiring, and initially lifeless; the Pupil is female, young, forwaurd, amd initiadly vivacious. The confrontation of the two embodied philosophical/ psychological principles over die matter of arithmetic makes dieir opposition manifest and demonstrates, for the first time in the play, die utter inability of bodi philosophical traditions to maintain a grip on reality. This confrontation is also a struggle, one which the fresh, straightforward, vital Pupil begins with great success. She is "magnificent" in addition, and claims she can "count to infinity" — an ability which would vindicate her confident, optimistic belief in man's mental capacities, but an ability, nevertheless, which is logically impossible to possess, since "infinity" is not the name of a particulatrly large number, ais she seems to think. Her claim to understand reveals her as limited and ignorant of the deeper and paradoxical nature of her subject, and thus as in need of further, more abstract lessons. "One must also be able to subtract," die Professor... (shrink)

The ethics of war and peace -- Levinas and business ethics in the 'War on terror' -- The ten commandments of working robots in organisations : from history to the future of robot ethics, legislation, and management -- Closing the gap between promises and outcomes : how moral frameworks contribute to the realisation of United Nations deployment objectives -- Visualising success : the wisdom of John Wooden -- Rushing fools and wise women : tales for organisations aiming to improve (...) lives -- Strong identification, weak ideology, organisational culture or all : unethical pro-organisational behaviour in India -- Forsaking the mean for the extreme : a response to Provis. (shrink)

I finished the first draft of this lecture just before the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia began — a campaign that provides, I think, a prime example of the failure of international society. A double failure in this case: its political agencies were not able to respond in a timely fashion to the disaster of the former Yugoslavia, and then they were not able to find a more effective form of military intervention. The problem both times wasn't one of organization (...) but of political will, and I am afraid that I won't have much to say in this lecture about how to solve it. No doubt there are organizational structures that lend themselves to swift and strong action in a crisis.But these structures can as easily produce reckless and cruel acts as wise ones, and so we need to limit their powers. And then, properly limited, they may not act at all. This dilemma is an old one, and my way of dealing with it — which, as you will see, is to multiply structures and agents in the hope that somewhere, somehow, someone will do the right thing — will certainly seem inadequate. I concede immediately that I cannot produce an organizational chart showing how a decision to act rightly in international society would be deliberated, and decided, and then resolutely carried out. There is no such procedural or organizational solution; we have to think instead of a political strategy for coping with crises and for creating the sorts of agents that might cope successfully. That's my goal. It doesn't answer to the urgency of the daily news, but these days nothing could answer.I imagine the possible political arrangements of international society as if they were laid out along a continuum marked off according to the degree of centralization. Obviously, there are alternative markings: the recognition and enforcement of human rights could also be measured along a continuum, as could democratization, economic laissez-faire, welfare provision, pluralism, and so on. But I think that focusing on centralization is the best way of opening a discussion of international politics and the quickest way to reach all the other political and moral questions, above all the classical question: what is the best or the best possible regime? What constitutional goals should we set ourselves in an age of globalization?My plan is to present seven possible regimes or constitutions or political arrangements. I will do this discursively, without providing a list in advance, but I do want to list the criteria against which the seven arrangements have to be evaluated: these are their capacity to promote peace, distributive justice, cultural pluralism, and individual freedom. Obviously, within the scope of a single lecture, I will have to deal much too briefly and summarily with some of the arrangements and some of the criteria. This is especially regrettable since the criteria turn out to be inconsistent with, or at least in tension with, one another. So my argument will be complicated, and could be, probably should be, much more so. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE SPATIO-TEMPORAL THEORY OF INDIVIDUATION MICHAEL POTTS Methodist Callege Fayetteville, North Carolina I. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW A. The Influence of Plato HE SPATIO-TEMPORAL theory of individuation has long history in the philosophical tradition. Its roots go ack to Aristotle's theory of individuation by matter,1 and ultimately back to Plato. In the Timaeus, Plato struggled with the problem of how forms are instantiated in the phenomenal world. Besides " a (...) model form (paradeigmatos eidos), intelligible and ever uniformly existent" and "the model's copy (mimeta paradeigmatos), subject to becoming and visible," Plato postulated a third thing, a " receptacle " (hupodochen), "the nurse of all becoming." 2 It is wholly indeterminate:... while it is always receiving all things, nowhere and in no wise does it assume any shape similar to any of the things that enter into it. For it is laid down by nature as a moulding-stuff for everything, being moved and marked by the entering figures, and because of them it appears different at different times. And the figures that enter and depart are copies of those that are always existent, being stamped from them...8 1 I recognize that this is a controversial claim. Since I am tracing the spatio-temporal theory of individuation from Aristotle through St. Thomas Aquinas, for the purposes of this paper I will follow St. Thomas's interpretation of Aristotle and accept the view that Aristotle took matter to be the principle of individuation. 2 Plato, Timaeus 49a. The version used is the Loeb edition by R. G. Bury (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966). a Timaeus 50b-c. 59 60 MICHAEL POTTS The receptacle, then, is like formless wax upon which the forms are stamped. It is " apprehensible by a kind of bastard reasoning (logismo tini notho), barely an object of belief." 4 B. Aristotle It may seem on the surface unusual that the idea of the receptable would later be modified and used to explain individuation. Plato himself was concerned with the universal, the form. The instantiations of the forms in the phenomenal world do not even deserve to be called "this " or " that." 5 With Aristotle, however, the individual gains new importance, since for him forms have their reality only in individuals and individuals are primarily called "substance." If this is the case, then Aristotle has to explain how " humanity " can be the same while " Socrates" and " Callias" are two different individuals. Since form is universal, it cannot individuate, so the source of individuation must be matter-two individuals are different human beings, for example, because they have different lumps of matter.... and when the whole has been generated, such a form in this flesh and these bones, this is Callias or Socrates, and this is distinct from that which generated it because the matter is distinct (hulen, hetera gar), but it is the same in species since the species is indivisible.6 This view raises problems. Matter is indeterminate; it is Aristotle 's modification of Plato's receptacle. How can anything indeterminate itself determine individual substances? More needed to be done to.bring out the meaning of individuation by matter, and St. Thomas Aquinas developed a more detailed and satisfactory position. 4 Timaeus 52b. 5 Timaeus 49d-50a. 6 Aristotle, Metaphyscis 28 (1034a5-8). The Greek text used is Metaphysica, ed. by Werner Jaeger (Oxonii : E Typographaeo Clarendoniano, 1957). The English translation is by Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell, Iowa: Peripatetic Press, 1979). THE SPATIO-TEMPORAL THEORY OF INDIVIDUATION 61 C. St. Thomas Aquinas Aquinas, recognizing that prime matter is indeterminate and therefore not something that can individuate, argues that the principle of individuation is " signate" or " designated" matter. "Materia signata" is defined as matter as " sub determinatis dimensionibus consideratur," " considered under determinate dimensions." 7 While the exact meaning of this is unclear, it seems to refer to matter under determinate spatial dimensions or coordinates. While the form determines what sort of thing an entity is, what determines it to be this individual is this matter with a particular set of spatial coordinates. Henry Veatch puts Aquinas's view into more modern terms: In fact, matter as determined by dimensive quantity guarantees ontologically nothing more nor less than the... (shrink)

Rappe's book argues for a "contemplative" understanding of Socrates and proposes to distinguish between an "outer Socrates," the one who strives for definitions and denies being wise, and an "inner Socrates," who exemplifies a wisdom that consists in self-investigation. The introduction, "Socratic Ignorance and Platonic Knowledge," presents Socrates as being part of the western "esoteric tradition"—as Rappe calls it—in so far as he stands for an initiation to philosophy that is in essence self-knowledge. According to Rappe, this esoteric tradition (...) is not to be confused with dogmatic or ironic esotericism, but stands for a "lived experience"... (shrink)

The Great New Wilderness Debate is an expansive, wide-ranging collection that addresses the pivotal environmental issues of the modern era. This eclectic volume on the varied constructions of “wilderness” reveals the recent controversies that surround those conceptions, and the gulf between those who argue for wilderness "preservation" and those who argue for "wise use." J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson have selected thirty-nine essays that provide historical context, range broadly across the issues, and set forth the positions (...) of the debate. Beginning with such well-known authors as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, the collection moves forward to the contemporary debate and presents seminal works by a number of the most distinguished scholars in environmental history and environmental philosophy. The Great New Wilderness Debate also includes essays by conservation biologists, cultural geographers, environmental activists, and contemporary writers on the environment. (shrink)

In his recent book, Professor J. S. Morrison has brought to a happy conclusion a quarter of a century and more of inspired research into the problem of how the oars of a classical trireme were arranged. The essence of his solution of this perennial problem is that the fifth-century Athenian trireme had her oars and benches alike disposed at three different levels, each rower having his own oar, and each oar its separate thole set at a distance of feet, (...) not inches, from its neighbours. The evidence is marshalled with such mastery that it may be thought unlikely that there will ever be any general recrudescence of the di scaloccio and a zenzile theories that were as fashionable once as they are seen now to have been unhistorical. In his inquiry, however, Professor Morrison has wisely confined himself to the ancient sources, and no more than touched upon the analogy of the Byzantine dromon, the direct descendant of the classical trireme and to some extent the parent of the a zenzile galley. Other protagonists, and notably Tarn, have been far from sharing his discretion, and there is still room perhaps for a brief note calling attention to the possibility that the dromon of the Middle Ages may shed indirect light upon the trireme of fifteen hundred years earlier. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kafka’s China and the Parable of ParablesMichael WoodI should like to begin and end this essay with a parable; one that is both dizzying and familiar; all the more dizzying perhaps for being so familiar. What happens in between my beginning and my end will be not so much an interpretation of the parable or a commentary on it as an unravelling of it, an exploration of one of (...) the spaces the parable opens up. We could see the parable, even with all the vertigo it offers, as a seamark, or known face, a remembered gesture: we look at it, we go away, we travel (to China), we come back. It has not changed, but perhaps we have. The parable is about parables, but then, as has been shrewdly said, all parables are. 1 It is by Franz Kakfa, probably written in 1922–1929, first published in 1931.Many complain [the parable says] that the words of the wise are again and again only parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says, “Go over,” he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could just about do if the result was worth the journey; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something he too cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say only that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.Thereupon a man said: Why are you so reluctant? If you followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that free of all your daily cares.Another said: I bet that is also a parable.The first said: You have won.The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost. 2 [End Page 325]We might call the space this parable opens up—one of the spaces, the space I want to explore—the space of reading. Reading as a habit, an addiction to understanding and bewilderment; and if we did our topic would then be, in Geoffrey Hartman’s phrase, the fate of reading. There is of course an interesting double meaning in this haunting phrase. It is not only that reading has a fate, that things happen to it, that it occurs in history; it is also that reading is a fate, one lives it as an adventure, a form of happiness or a form of risk, even a form of damage. It is not something other than life, it is life, or a piece of it. No one has understood this better than Hartman: “It is almost a mode of life, something you cannot shake off, something that follows and pursues you. Reading is fate: we are like characters in a certain kind of mystery story, who are drawn unwillingly into a plot that we alone, rather than the official investigator, can unriddle.” 3 My essay attempts to build on this understanding, particularly on Hartman’s paradoxical sense that the habit of reading leads to an interest in unreadability—where the unreadable is quite different from the unread, or the brutally misread, or the incomprehensible.First, a few remarks on the narrative form and tilt of the parable—in the spirit of Hartman’s principle that an attention to form is not the worst way of getting beyond formalism. 4 The parable is a fully dramatized piece of work: there are speakers but no detachable authorial voice beyond those of the speakers: there are the many, then a one [einer], then another [ein anderer]. There are three positions here—at least three—but no position outside them, no position that is not caught up in the play of meanings in front of us. Or rather, there is a position outside them, but it seems to me blinder than any position needs to be or ought to be. Attending to the play of meanings, as we are about to do, is of course... (shrink)

Mediaeval Iberia was rife with inter-religious conflict between Christians, Jews, and Muslims that incited forced conversions and culminated in mass expulsions. Yet, in the midst of such a harrowing time in the peninsula’s history, there were occasional elements of harmony between these three groups, made all the more impressive in their rarity. King Alfonso X, the Wise, was a man whose rule exhibited a relative tranquility in inter-religious relations some have even suggested is deserving of altering his sobriquet to (...) Alfonso the Tolerant. Through an examination of his law code, the Siete Partidas, and a compilation of several hundred canticles, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, this paper pinpoints elements of Alfonso’s rule to critically assess the claims of his tolerance. (shrink)

For sensible men I prepare only three kraters: one for health (which they drink first), the second for love and pleasure, and the third for sleep. After the third one is drained, wise men go home. The fourth krater is not mine any more—it belongs to bad behaviour; the fifth is for shouting; the sixth is for rudeness and insults; the seventh is for fights; the eighth is for breaking the furniture; the ninth is for depression; the tenth is (...) for madness and unconsciousness. The collection Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine, edited by Barry Smith, originated at a conference at London University in 2004.1 Smith writes that “it was the first ever conference on the philosophy of wine” (i). As Smith claims.. (shrink)

This article briefly reviews concerns related to the “cultural colonialism” of applying Western biomedical models of research ethics to non-Western groups. The feasibility of alternate ethical models is discussed and found wanting. In practical terms, many academic researchers in the United States are funded by federal agencies and are required to adhere to Title 45, Part 46 of the Code of Federal Regulations , legislation that is clearly grounded in the Western biomedical research tradition. Consequently, the question is not whether (...) this system of ethics should be applied but rather how it can be applied most sensitively, appropriately, and wisely. The remainder of this article discusses of how the authors have attempted to do so in each stage of their own research with Hispanic immigrants to the United States. (shrink)

Should research on the possible genetic components of human intelligence be carried out? I first try to provide some general guidelines as to whether any particular piece of research should be undertaken and then consider the specific example of the ethics of genetic research on intelligence. The history of the debate on intelligence does not make one very optimistic that the fruits of such research would be used wisely. However, there are indications that people’s understanding of the nature of inheritance (...) may be improving and it could be that such research might have significant benefits. It is worth remembering than the condition phenylketonuria, a genetic disease in any useful sense of the term, and one that leads to mental retardation (i.e. very low intelligence), is now wholly preventable, and indeed very largely prevented, through environmental intervention. (shrink)

The philosophy of hope centers on two interlocking sets of questions. The first concerns the nature of hope. Specific questions here include how to analyze hope, how hope motivates us, and whether there is only one type of hope. The second set concerns the value of hope. Key questions here include whether and when it is good to hope and whether there is a virtue of hope. Philosophers of hope tend to proceed from the first set of questions to the (...) second. This is a natural approach, for one might expect that you must develop a basic understanding of what hope is before you can determine its value. The structure of this chapter thus follows this approach. But readers should not be misled: there is in fact a good deal of feedback between the two sets of questions. A theory of hope is more plausible to the extent that it fits well with plausible ideas about the value of hope. So the movement from hope’s nature to its value is one of emphasis rather than a strict, step-wise process. (shrink)

Coady misrepresents Hume as a reductivist about testimony. Hume occasionally writes carelessly as if what goes for beliefs based on induction will also go for beliefs obtained from testimony. But, in fact, he has no theory of testimony at all, though in his more considered remarks he rightly thinks, as does Reid, that the natural response to a bit of testimony is simply to accept the information which it contains. The sense in which we owe the beliefs we get from (...) testimony to experience, according to Hume, is this: we each learn about the business of testimony from being exposed to it, and in particular to cases where what is told is manifestly true. Hume is also interested in the question of how we may be prompted to view some testimonies with suspicion, and how we should then respond to them. It is wrong, however, to take his thoughts about this as embodying an implicit theory of the basic mechanism of testimony. In fact he has a problem accounting for the human propensity to accept extraordinary testimonies within the general framework of his doctrine; the Treatise solution is wisely abandoned in the Enquiry.Author Keywords: Hume; Reid; Coady; Testimony; Reductivism; Knowledge. (shrink)

This article considers martial corporeality in light of the revolution in military affairs and the transformation of strategic discourse wrought by the confluence of the digital and molecular revolutions whose ontology is that of code. It deconstructs contemporary strategic desires to make the military body intelligence incarnate through mastery of code. That desire is an ancient one. The article therefore proceeds by taking military strategic discourse’s invocation of Athena seriously, and re-reads the myth of Athena in terms of a primordial (...) war of the sign to master the undecidablity of the sign. Conflict over the sign’s un-masterable power of engendering is typically played out in sexualized terms. The will to martial corporeality as intelligence incarnate is characterized as a modern replay of this war As military embodiment pursues the intelligence incarnate offered by the information and molecular revolutions, power over life becomes allied with power over death in a complex convergence of sovereign geopolitics with a global biopolitics gone digital. Populated by martial bodies that have long been cyborgs, the digital way of war witnesses the emergence of a libidinality in thrall to Athena-the-wise as digital dominatrix. (shrink)

If I say that Alice is everything Oscar hopes to be, I seem to be quantifying over properties. That suggestion faces an immediate difficulty, however: though Alice may be wise, she surely is not the property of being wise. This problem can be framed in terms of a substitution failure: if a predicate like ‘happy’ denoted a property, we would expect pairs like ‘Oscar is happy’ and ‘Oscar is the property of being happy’ to be equivalent, which they (...) clearly are not. I argue that a Fregean response that draws a distinction between objects and concepts faces serious difficulties, and that a syntactic solution to the substitution problem likewise fails. I propose to account for the substitution failure by instead distinguishing different ways that expressions can stand for properties: whereas ‘the property of being happy’ refers to a property, ‘happy’ expresses or ascribes that property. I go on to compare this view to proposals made by Wright and Liebesman, and end by drawing out a consequence my proposal has for a debate about the ontological commitments of predicatively quantified sentences. (shrink)

Predication is an indisputable part of our linguistic behavior. By contrast, the metaphysics of predication has been a matter of dispute ever since antiquity. According to Plato—or at least Platonism, the view that goes by Plato’s name in contemporary philosophy—the truths expressed by predications such as “Socrates is wise” are true because there is a subject of predication (e.g., Socrates), there is an abstract property or universal (e.g., wisdom), and the subject exemplifies the property.1 This view is supposed to (...) be general, applying to all predications, whether the subject of predication is a person, a planet, or a property.2 Despite the controversy surrounding the metaphysics of predication, many theistic philosophers—including the majority of contemporary analytic theists—regard Platonism as extremely attractive. At the same time, however, such philosophers are also commonly attracted to a form of traditional theism that has at its core the thesis that God is an absolutely independent.. (shrink)

In the debate volume, ’Knowledge of God’, co-authored with Alvin Plantinga, I argued that there is an inductively sound version of the argument from evil, and recently, several popular books criticizing religious belief have appeared, often focusing on that issue of the existence of God. In the present essay I argue, however, that to help ordinary people think more critically about religious beliefs, it is better to focus on beliefs associated with specific religions, such as Christianity. I then go on (...) to look briefly at Jesus, and I offer reasons for concluding that Jesus was neither wise nor morally admirable. (shrink)

The paper sets out to give in broad outline a comprehensive interpretation of some features of the Derveni text. In some important issues, this text should be seen in the context of the fourth century, rather than the late fifth century. Unfortunately, this 4th c. BCE literature has disappeared almost without a trace, the best characterization of this literature we have is in Plato’s polemical descriptions, most particularly, the one he puts forth as a refutation of different forms of atheism (...) in Laws X.Although on some issues the Derveni author holds theses similar to the ones criticized by Plato, on his physical exegesis of the Orphic poem the world is the result of the teleological action of the divine intellect. Moreover, it is part of this very order that it is providential, and that within this providential order human beings have their place and are provided for. Moreover, the order that Zeus brings about is not only a wise and providential physical order, but also a just order which is maintained by Zeus in such a way that every wrong is set right.Setting out the stages of the teleological activity of the divine intellect, during which the divinity bears different names, the paper closes with some considerations about the extent of the Derveni text, suggesting that it may well be plausible to assume that the author’s text could come to an end on a single roll. (shrink)

The Case Against Death aims to show that what Linden calls the ‘Wise View’ regarding death and ageing should be rejected. Because the adherents of the Wise View.

Although the details of the Clinton health care plan have yet to emerge from the continuing policy debate over the shape and size of the administration’s reform measures, one thing has become increasingly clear. Several recent developments in antitrust law will have important implications for what the plan will permit and how it will work.By all accounts, the broad outline of the administration’s plan revolves around the development of large and powerful consumer groups who, with the help of sophisticated, government-established (...) intermediaries, will presumably purchase health care wisely and well. This alliance of massed consumer purchasing and government information-gathering will, it is hoped, produce a health care market more in competitive balance than the current version, which is widely regarded as dominated by powerful providers who dictate terms to small, uninformed buying groups. (shrink)

This paper applies Greco-Roman thinking about wisdom to contemporary business and management practice. The first section outlines the contexts in which Greek and Roman writers referred to wisdom and related terms. Hesiod, Aeschylus, Pericles, Demosthenes, Plato and Aristotle were concerned with sophia and phronésis. Cicero, Horace and Seneca referred to prudentia and sapientia. The second section consists of examples from contemporary business and management behaviour which ranged from the “cunning/clever to the intelligently wise”. Reference is made to current research (...) highlighting concepts such as commonsense wisdom, conventional wisdom, contrarian wisdom and experienced based wisdom. A wise person knows how to use moral skills in the service of the right aims.1. (shrink)

A wise, accessible guide that makes the spiritual and ethical teachings of the yogic tradition immediately relatable to our practice on the mat—and in our everyday relationships and activities “There is no daily practice without some formal training; and there is no deep spiritual training without the mess of relational life. The two are one,” says Michael Stone. At the root of yoga practice there is a vast and intriguing philosophy that teaches the ethics of nonviolence, patience, honesty, (...) and respect. Innovative teacher Michael Stone draws from numerous disciplines—including Buddhism and psychotherapy—to provide an in-depth, completely clear explanation of yogic philosophy, along with teachings on how to bring our understanding of yoga theory to deeper levels through our practice on the mat—and through our relationships with others. Yoga, says Stone, is a practice that helps us be more present with the actual, fluid life we are living right now—and there is no yoga without the conditions of your life. This book describes how to work with those conditions and how to fully appreciate yoga as a practice of being intimate with moment-to-moment reality. (shrink)

Henri Bergson was a French professor and philosopher. Born in Paris in 1859 to a Polish composer and Yorkshire woman of Irish descent, his revelatory ideas of life as ceaseless transformation and the importance of attention, learning, humor and joy brought him incredible fame and media celebrity.Here you will find insights from his greatest works.The Life Lessons series from The School of Life takes a great thinker and highlights those ideas most relevant to ordinary everyday dilemmas. These books emphasize ways (...) in which wise voices from the past have urgently important and inspiring things to tell us. (shrink)

If philosophy has anything to do with wisdom there's certainly not a grain of that in Mind, & quite often a grain of that in the detective stories.This special issue of Philosophy East and West is dedicated to the topic of wisdom. It might appear to be a paradoxical endeavor to think about wisdom on the pages of an academic journal. As Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out a long time ago in his somewhat peculiar, quixotic style, philosophers in the setting of (...) modern academia are not necessarily in the best position to make meaningful contributions to the question of what it means to be wise. We do not really know what was going on in Plato's academy, or whether the conversations there had much, if anything, to do with... (shrink)

In this book, published in 1686, the scientist Robert Boyle attacked prevailing notions of the natural world which depicted 'Nature' as a wise, benevolent and purposeful being. Boyle, one of the leading mechanical philosophers of his day, believed that the world was best understood as a vast, impersonal machine, fashioned by an infinite, personal God. In this cogent treatise, he drew on his scientific findings, his knowledge of contemporary medicine and his deep reflection on theological and philosophical issues, arguing (...) that it was inappropriate both theologically and scientifically to speak of Nature as if it had a mind of its own: instead, the only true efficient causes of things were the properties and powers given to matter by God. As such, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature represents one of the subtlest statements concerning the philosophical issues raised by the mechanical philosophy to emerge from the period of the scientific revolution. (shrink)

Based on a review of several “anomalies” in research using implicit measures, Machery (2021) dismisses the modal interpretation of participant responses on implicit measures and, by extension, the value of implicit measures. We argue that the reviewed findings are anomalies only for specific—influential but long-contested—accounts that treat responses on implicit measures as uncontaminated indicators of trait-like unconscious representations that coexist with functionally independent conscious representations. However, the reviewed findings are to-be-expected “normalities” when viewed from the perspective of long-standing alternative frameworks (...) that treat responses on implicit measures as the product of dynamic processes that operate on momentarily activated, consciously accessible information. Thus, although we agree with Machery that the modal view is empirically unsupported, we argue that implicit measures can make a valuable contribution to understanding the complexities of human behavior if they are used wisely in a way that acknowledges what they can and cannot do. (shrink)

Can we make wise policy decisions about still‐emerging technologies—decisions that are grounded in facts yet anticipate unknowns and promote the public's preferences and values? There is a widespread feeling that we should try. There also seems to be widespread agreement that the central element in wise decisions is the assessment of benefits and costs, understood as a process that consists, at least in part, in measuring, tallying, and comparing how different outcomes would affect the public interest. But how (...) benefits and costs are best weighed when making decisions about whether to move forward with an emerging technology is not clear. Many commentators feel that the weighing is often inadequate or inappropriate. Those who argue for a “precautionary” approach to the weighing do so precisely because they feel the need for a restraint on the dominant decision‐making tools and processes for assessing outcomes.This Hastings Center special report examines those tools and processes, taking the method known as cost‐benefit analysis as a starting point. In U.S. governance, CBA, sometimes informed by risk assessment, is the most widely used and extensively studied method, and authoritative reports on genetic and reproductive technologies often use language suggestive of cost‐benefit analysis. There is also a long‐running debate about the role of values in CBA and other formal impact assessment mechanisms—and about how those mechanisms compare to the precautionary principle. The guiding idea in the report is to engage in a close examination of the strengths and limits of CBA for ensuring that emerging technologies are used in ways that square with the public's values, drawing on applications of synthetic biology to illustrate and sharpen the analysis and then considering corrections to CBA and some alternative methodologies that handle values differently. (shrink)

This article raises the issue of confidence in the global system, especially in its ability to deliver the goods: both material and moral. It reflects our concern, and Ronald Preston's concern, that faith insights should be incorporated into the substance of our economic policies. In response, two discrete but inter-related strategies are pursued. The first is called ‘radical participation seeking consensus’. The second is the constant effort at many levels to balance and counterbalance power. Without the one we shall not (...) draw out the wisdom we require. Without the other, before we even seek that wisdom, we shall demonstrate that we are not wise. (shrink)

The rapid sequencing of entire genomes based in large measure on a DNA cloning procedure, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), has opened new frontiers in the discovery process for novel therapeutic agents. DNA cloning is a basic tool in genomics and it has been used for over a decade. Drug discovery is currently focused on the identification of gene databases, gene arrays and protein arrays aimed at therapeutic modulation of disease-related genes—which require procedures that may involve cloning techniques. Currently, cloning (...) for pharmacologic products is most applicable in the preclinical area of drug discovery. For example, the identification of specific receptor subtypes occurred via cloning whereas traditional pharmacologic approaches that use agonists and antagonists may have failed to separate binding affinities. Successful therapeutic agents where cloning played vital role resulted in the development of synthetic insulin, growth hormone, erythropoiten and other tissue factors in blood products, Vaccines may be another successful application derived from cloning. Another area where cloning can make a significant impact upon human therapeutics is that this technique may provide a new source of cells for tissue engineering and transplantation. Stem cells, and in particular, embryonic stem cells can differentiate into other cell types such as hepatocytes and neurons to provide normal products for hepatic and neurological diseases. However, the use of cloning embryonic stem cells introduces important ethical, medical and legal issues which require that leaders in government, academic, and religious groups be fully educated in these applications. A close working relationship among these diverse groups is needed to respond wisely to the introduction of new therapeutic opportunities while at the same time providing protection for the individual and the public at large from unethical practises. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is rapidly and radically changing our lives and world. This book is a multidisciplinary engagement with the present and future impacts of AI from the standpoint of Christian faith. It provides technological, philosophical, and theological foundations for thinking about AI, as well as a series of reflections on the impact of AI on relationships, behavior, education, work, and moral action. The book serves as an accessible introduction to AI as well as a guide to wise consideration, design, (...) and use of AI by examining foundational understandings and beliefs from a Christian perspective. (shrink)

Wisdom is a multi-component trait that is important for mental health and well-being. In this study, we sought to understand gender differences in relative strengths in wisdom. A total of 659 individuals aged 27–103 years completed surveys including the 3-Dimensional Wisdom Scale and the San Diego Wisdom Scale. Analyses assessed gender differences in wisdom and gender’s moderating effect on the relationship between wisdom and associated constructs including depression, loneliness, well-being, optimism, and resilience. Women scored higher on average on the 3D-WS (...) but not on the SD-WISE. Women scored higher on compassion-related domains and on SD-WISE Self-Reflection. Men scored higher on cognitive-related domains and on SD-WISE Emotion Regulation. There was no impact of gender on the relationships between wisdom and associated constructs. Women and men have different relative strengths in wisdom, likely driven by sociocultural and biological factors. Tailoring wisdom interventions to individuals based on their profiles is an important next step. (shrink)

Universities have long played an important role in preparing thinkers and leaders who go on to have significant impact around the world. But if the world needs wise thinkers and good leaders, then how might modern universities educate leaders of character, particularly in a pluralistic context where many educators are reluctant to see the university as a site of moral formation? This article shares insights from one specific program, the Oxford Global Leadership Initiative, an extra-curricular program that seeks to (...) help diverse cohorts of graduate students develop the ethical qualities of character needed for leaders to serve the common good. Drawing upon qualitative data collected over three years of program activity to illuminate and illustrate our argument, we address three questions: Can virtues of character necessary for good leadership be cultivated in a university setting among a culturally diverse group of students? How can a character-based leadership program meet the particular developmental needs of “emerging adults”? and How might the program’s impact translate into society and culture? We conclude that a program integrating character and leadership can make valuable contributions to the ethical and professional development of postgraduate students. (shrink)