A questionnaire was used to assess people's attitudes toward 33 species of animals on six dimensions . A cluster analysis resulted in five groups of animals with similar ratings on these dimensions. Respondents were also asked about their attitudes toward hunting, fishing, and medical, scientific and product-testing research using animals.

Organizations interested in employee ethics compliance face the problem of conflict between employee and organizational ethical standards. Socializing new employees is one way of assuring compliance. Important for longer term employees as well as new ones, however, is making those standards visible and then operable in the daily life of an organization. This study, conducted in one large organization, found that, depending on organizational level, awareness of an organization's ethical standards is predicted by managerial adherence to and organizational compliance with (...) those standards and/or discussions with peers. Regardless of level, organizational commitment was predicted most strongly by managerial adherence to organizational standards. These findings have theoretical implications for the fields of business ethics, organizational identity and organizational socialization and practical implications for the implementation of ethics policies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT An influential argument against the possibility of obligations to oneself states that the very notion of such obligations is incoherent: If there were such obligations, we could release ourselves from them; yet releasing oneself from an obligation is impossible. I challenge this argument by arguing against the premise that it is impossible to release oneself from an obligation. I point out that this premise assumes that if it were possible to release oneself from an obligation, it would be impossible (...) to violate that obligation. I note that there are two interpretations of this assumption, one conceptual and one psychological. I argue that, on both interpretations, the assumption is false—at least according to independently plausible accounts of obligations to oneself and of what it means to waive an obligation. My arguments paint a picture of obligations to oneself that not only challenges the argument against their coherence, but also illuminates these obligations’ relationship to other parts of the moral domain. (shrink)

We critically analyze Alexander Rosenberg’s argument based on the multiple realizability of biological properties that there are no biological laws. The argument is intuitive and suggestive. Nevertheless, a closer analysis reveals that the argument rests on dubious assumptions about the nature of natural selection, laws of nature, and multiple realizability. We also argue that the argument is limited in scope, since it applies to an outmoded account of laws and the applicability of the argument to other more promising accounts of (...) laws is questionable. Another concern of ours is that the relation between multiple realizability and natural selection is more complex than Rosenberg acknowledges. Finally, we claim that an explanation for why Rosenberg’s argument appears persuasive and appealing is that the argument is based on an inflated concept of multiple realizability that rests on unreliable intuitions concerning what counts as a different realization of the same property. Consequently, we argue that the argument is at best inconclusive and at worst false insofar as its implications for the existence of biological laws are concerned. (shrink)

In “Obligations of the ‘Gift’: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Precision Medicine,” Lee rightly points out that disparities in health care access also lead to disparities in precision medi...

The title in English: Scottish Enlightenment - David Hume. This is a chapter on Hume's political philosophy that I wrote to a Finnish textbook of the history of political thought.

This short thesis contains many philosophical and mystical views of Mulla Sadra. He has divided this book into forty chapters and presented the basis of his philosophical views in it. Among these views are Divine Essence and Attributes, the Reality of "being", creation and its stages, the spiritual journey and a discussion of the effects of love.In the first chapter, Mulla Sadra explicated the meaning and the definition of "being". He asserted that being is an external reality which has true (...) existence. All other things except for attributes and their relations do not have true existence. Mulla Sadra based this view on the "principality of being" and the "unity of being". Before reaching this conclusion, Mulla Sadra takes into account the views of Ibn Sina and Aristotle, but his true inspiration and teachings are rooted in the great gnostic, Ibn Arabi.Mulla Sadra agreed with the Peripatetic and the Illuminationist Philosophers on the order of creation and creation itself. He believed that God Almighty first created a divine "united essence" and out of it came "Intelligible substances" which are the cause for the celestial soul and the noble bodies. Sheikh al- Ishraq pays a lot of attention to the issue of celestial bodies and soul. The other mystical issue of this thesis is the spiritual journey. The thing that Mulla Sadra is most concerned with is the first of the four journeys in his celebrated book,AL-Asfar The journeys of the servant to the Creator and the journey of the devoted to the One who is worthy of love. (shrink)

Mullā ‘Alī Nūrī was an indispensable link in the transmission ofMullā Sadrā’s teachings and an important commentator of his works.In my article, I’ll focus on one of them – a short treatise, entitled“Basīt al-haqīqa wa wahdat al-wujūd,” which deals with the modes ofthingness and existence in general, and the socalled“illuminative relation” in particular.The most significant statements Nūrī makes in this brief work consistin the identification of thingness with existence and the “breath of theMerciful” with the “illuminative relation”. I intendto examine (...) these two important points and the employedargumentation in detail, showing how Nūrī exploited some ideas,current in the Kalām and theoretical Sufism, to the benefit of thedoctrine of Mullā Sadrā. (shrink)

Ahmad S. Dallal’s book is an informative and easily readable study of the thought of six leading twelfth/eighteenth century Muslim scholars. The author treats these scholars as the representatives of distinct intellectual trends of Islamic thought in the premodern period, while asserting that they belonged to the same thought-world and focused on the value of the present and the study of the ḥadīth. The monograph is a valuable contribution to the subject that is likely to cater to the needs of (...) graduate students. (shrink)

The main problem of this study is David Hume’s (1711-76) view on Metaphysical Realism (there are mind-independent, external, and continuous entities). This specific problem is part of two more general questions in Hume scholarship: his attitude to scepticism and the relation between naturalism and skepticism in his thinking. A novel interpretation of these problems is defended in this work. The chief thesis is that Hume is both a sceptic and a Metaphysical Realist. His philosophical attitude is to suspend his judgment (...) on Metaphysical Realism, whereas as a common man he firmly believes in the existence of mind-independent, external, and continuous entities. Therefore Hume does not have any one position; accordingly, a form of “no one Hume” interpretation (Richard Popkin, Robert J. Fogelin, Donald L.M. Baxter) is argued for in the book. The key point in this distinction is the temporal difference between Hume’s philosophical and everyday views. It is introduced in order to avoid attributing a conscious contradiction to him (a problem which has not attracted enough attention in the literature). The method of the work is modelled on Peter Millican’s work on Hume and induction. The approach to the main problem is to study the two “profound” arguments against the senses that Hume presents in the Section 12 of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748). These arguments are first reconstructed in detail resulting in Millican-type diagrams of them and then Hume’s endorsement of them is established on the basis of the diagrams. The first profound argument concludes that Metaphysical Realism and thus any Realistic theory of perception is unjustified as well as the existence of God and the soul. The second argument goes further having first conceptual conclusion: the very notions of Real entitity, material substance, and bodies are completely out of the reach of the faculty of understanding. Therefore they ought to be rejected according to Hume. This is a consequence of the consistent use of the Humean faculty of reason: idea-analysis and inductive inference. The second profound argument thus concludes that believing in Metaphysical Realism is inconsistent with the rational attitude that is to refrain from this belief. Hence, if we attributed both of them to Hume, we would end up with a great philosopher who embraces a manifest contradiction. The study is finished by arguing that this sceptical and Metaphysically Realistic interpretation concurs well with (1) Hume’s professed Academical philosophy and (2) project of the science of human nature. (1) According to Hume, Academical philosophy is in the first place diffidence, modesty, and uncertainty including suspension on certain issues. Secondly, it is restriction of the range of topics for which experience can provide a standard of truth. This kind of empiricist epistemological realism is coherent with the sceptical attitude on Metaphysical Realism because the latter does not rule out inter-subjective consensus on what we experience. (2) Suspension of judgment on Metaphysical Realism coheres with the mind-dependency of the objects of Hume’s science of human nature: the understanding, passions, morals, aesthetics, politics, and the human culture in all of its manifestations. Although the study takes the first Enquiry to be Hume’s authorised word on the understanding, his juvenile work A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) is argued to support this “no one Hume” interpretation. Hume’s other works are also discussed when needed. (shrink)

Anna Jani interprets the relationship between phenomenology and ontology by redefining its goals, methodological focuses, and key figures. The common methodology of hermeneutical phenomenology originates from the question on being, which resembles religious experiences in certain ways.

Title in English: Hume's Denial of Pyrrhonism.

This book introduces the theory of graded consequence and its mathematical formulation. It also compares the notion of graded consequence with other notions of consequence in fuzzy logics, and discusses possible applications of the theory in approximate reasoning and decision-support systems. One of the main points where this book emphasizes on is that GCT maintains the distinction between the three different levels of languages of a logic, namely object language, metalanguage and metametalanguage, and thus avoids the problem of violation of (...) the principle of use and mention; it also shows, gathering evidences from existing fuzzy logics, that the problem of category mistake may arise as a result of not maintaining distinction between levels. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Hume has an insight into the heart of most of “new philosophy” when he claims that according to it, proper sensibles are not Real properties of material substance and Real bodies. I call this tenet “the Proper Sensibles Principle” (PSP). In the second part of the paper, I defend the interpretation - mainly against Don Garrett’s doubts - that the PSP is a rational tenet in Hume’s view and he thus endorses it. Its rationality (...) means that the PSP has a firm foundation in inductive-causal reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a solution to an almost ignored problem in metaphysics and metametaphysics: what is categorial fundamentality and non-fundamentality? My proposal builds on E. J. Lowe’s view on the issue. By means of the newcomer notion of generic identity, I can give an account of something that Lowe did not explicate: the constitution of formal ontolog- ical relations. Formal ontological relations (e.g. instantiation) are internal relations that deter- mine ontological form and category-membership. I argue that categorial fundamentality (...) is hav- ing membership fully determined by a simple formal ontological relation or relations jointly in an order and categorial non-fundamentality is having membership at least partly determined by a derived formal ontological relation in an order. In contrast to Lowe, my proposal does not pre- suppose non-modal essentialism. (Please, ask for the penultimate draft.). (shrink)

Formal ontology as a main branch of metaphysics investigates categories of being. In the formal ontological approach to metaphysics, these ontological categories are analysed by ontological forms. This analysis, which we illustrate by some category systems, provides a tool to assess the clarity, exactness and intelligibility of different category systems or formal ontologies. We discuss critically different accounts of ontological form in the literature. Of ontological form, we propose a character- neutral relational account. In this metatheory, ontological forms of entities (...) are their standings in internal relations whose holding is neutral on the character of their relata. These relations are “formal ontological relations”. Entities belong to ontological categories because they stand in the same formal ontological relations. We hold a nominalist relationalism about ontological categories and forms. We conclude by showing that our metatheory is useful for understanding categorial fundamentality/non- fundamentality, different formal ontologies, and for unifying metaphysical questions. (shrink)

: This article is a humble attempt at highlighting the controversiesregarding the legitimacy of popular resistance or revolutionary movement tobring down Muslim political regime that claimed to be despotic, unjust andeven un-Islamic. Having the fact on the existence of another view by majorityscholars that more inclined towards pacifist ideology which stressed onpolitical stability as a prerequisite to prosperity, the article emphasizes moreon the revolutionary school, while the second shall be highlighted when it isnecessary for comparison. Employing qualitative method of study, (...) the articleseeks to examine the arguments provided by both movements. This will bedone by analyzing their textual and rational grounds of evidences used bythe two schools to legitimize their political stance. Associating with what ishappening in Muslims nation nowadays, current study compelled to review theradical revolutionary movement from the perspective of moderate Islam schoolof thought. (shrink)

When do people say that they are moved, and does this experience constitute a unique emotion? We review theory and empirical research on being moved across psychology and philosophy. We examine feeling labels, elicitors, valence, bodily sensations, and motivations. We find that the English lexeme being moved typically (but not always) refers to a distinct and potent emotion that results in social bonding; often includes tears, piloerection, chills, or a warm feeling in the chest; and is often described as pleasurable, (...) though sometimes as a mixed emotion. While we conclude that it is a distinct emotion, we also recommend studying it in a more comprehensive emotion framework, instead of using the ambiguous vernacular term being moved as a scientific term. (shrink)

In his first paper on the special theory of relativity, Einstein indicated that the question of whether or not two spatially separated events were simultaneous did not necessarily have a definite answer, but instead depended on the adoption of a convention for its resolution. Some later writers have argued that Einstein's choice of a convention is, in fact, the only possible choice within the framework of special relativistic physics, while others have maintained that alternative choices, although perhaps less convenient, are (...) indeed possible. (shrink)

The consequences of a trend to marginalize social studies in the early grades are complex and widespread, as a new wave of novice teachers and K-6 students are receiving a message clearly implying that social studies education is unimportant. Convincing them of the value in teaching and learning social studies is progressively becoming more difficult for social studies methods instructors. The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service teachers’ observations of the extent to which social studies is being marginalized, (...) possible barriers involved, and the impact that this phenomenon has on pre-service teachers and K-6 students in the classroom. Through a mixed-method design, 88 pre-service teachers were asked to report their classroom observations. Over half observed social studies instruction. Of those who observed social studies instruction, about a third indicated that teachers taught 5–15 min per day. Pre-service teachers reported personal success in planning and teaching social studies lessons during their practicum experiences; likewise, K-6 students were motivated by pre-service teachers’ student-centered activities in the lessons. The results of this study provide one form of current documentation regarding the effects of social studies marginalization in K-6 schools. (shrink)

The exceptional intellectual richness of seventeenth-century Safavid Iran is epitomised by the philosophical school of Isfahan, and in particular by its ostensible founder, Mir Damad (d. 1631), and his great student Mulla Sadra (aka Sadr al-Din Shirazi, d. 1636). Equally important to the school is the apophatic wisdom of Rajab 'Ali Tabrizi that followed later (d. 1669/70). However, despite these philosophers' renown, the identification of the 'philosophical school of Isfahan' was only proposed in 1956, by the celebrated French Iranologist Henry (...) Corbin, who noted the unifying Islamic Neoplatonist character of some 20 thinkers and spiritual figures; this grouping has subsequently remained unchallenged for some fifty years. In this highly original work, Janis Esots investigates the legitimacy of the term 'school', delving into the complex philosophies of these three major Shi'i figures and drawing comparisons between them. The author makes the case that Mulla Sadra's thought is independent and actually incompatible with the thoughts of Mir Damad and Rajab Ali Tabrizi. This not only presents a new way of thinking about how we understand the 'school of Isfahan', it also identifies Mir Damad and Rajab Ali Tabrizi as pioneers in their own right. (shrink)

According to second‐personal approaches to moral obligation, the distinctive normative features of moral obligation can only be explained in terms of second‐personal relations, i.e. the distinctive way persons relate to each other as persons. But there are important disagreements between different groups of second‐personal approaches. Most notably, they disagree about the nature of second‐personal relations, which has consequences for the nature of the obligations that they purport to explain. This article aims to distinguish these groups from each other, highlight their (...) respective advantages and disadvantages, and thereby indicate avenues for future research. (shrink)

The handout of my talk at the Nordic Network in Metaphysics webinar on Friday 2/10/2020.

The Problem of Obligation is the problem of how to explain the features of moral obligations that distinguish them from other normative phenomena. Two recent accounts, the Second-Personal Account and the Relational Account, propose superficially similar solutions to this problem. Both regard obligations as based on the claims or legitimate demands that persons as such have on one another. However, unlike the Second-Personal Account, the Relational Account does not regard these claims as based in persons’ authority to address them. Advocates (...) of the Relational Account accuse the Second-Personal Account of falling prey to the Problem of Antecedence. According to this objection, the Second-Personal Account is committed to the implausible claim that we have an obligation to φ only if, and because, others demand that we φ. Since the Relational Account’s proposed solution to the Problem of Obligation does not face the Problem of Antecedence, its advocates argue that it is dialectically superior to the Second-Personal Account. In this paper, I defend the Second-Personal Account by arguing that, first, the Relational Account does not actually solve the Problem of Obligation and, second, the Second-Personal Account does not fall prey to the Problem of Antecedence. (shrink)

This article advances three claims about the bindingness of duties to oneself: (1) To defend duties to oneself, one had better show that they can bind, i.e., provide normative reason to comply. (2) To salvage the bindingness of duties to oneself, one had better construe them as owed to, and waivable by, one's present self. (3) Duties owed to, and waivable by, one's present self can nevertheless bind. In advancing these claims, I partly oppose views recently developed by Daniel Muñoz (...) and Paul Schofield. My arguments at least tentatively suggest three general lessons for moral theory: (a) Bindingness is an essential feature of duties in general. (b) The long sought-after explanation of supererogation is not to be found in waivable duties to oneself. (c) The bindingness of duties is a distinctive normative phenomenon which does not crucially depend on some physical, temporal, or psychological distance between the binding and the bound self. (shrink)

(2011). Casuistry: Case-based Reasoning for the Ethical Journalist. Journal of Mass Media Ethics: Vol. 26, Media Accountability Part Two, pp. 88-92. doi: 10.1080/08900523.2011.532386.

Im Allgemeinen widmet sich das vorliegende Buch dem gemeinsamen Problembereich der zeitgenössischen Theologie und Philosophie, aber den konkreten Anlass der hiesigen Beiträgen geben jedoch die Parallelität in der Erscheinung der Enzyklika Fides et Ratio vom Papst Hl. Johannes Paulus II., und die Heiligsprechung Edith Steins (Mitpatronin Europas) von demselben heiligen Papst. Die Autoren des Bandes reflektieren sich auf die Gemeinsamkeit des Denkens dieser zwei Heiligen des 20. Jahrhunderts, auf ihre philosophischen Engagements in der christlichen Philosophie, sowie auf die heutigen Möglichkeiten (...) des gemeinsamen Denkens von Philosophie und Theologie. (shrink)

This volume, originally published as a special issue of Pragmatics and Society (issue 3:2, 2012), draws together complementary perspectives on the social and interactional life of evidentiality.

On Chang's voluntarist account of commitments, when we commit to φ, we employ the 'normative powers' of our will to give ourselves a reason to φ that we would otherwise not have had. I argue that Chang's account, by itself, does not have sufficient conceptual resources to reconcile the normative significance of commitments with their alleged fundamentally volitional character. I suggest an alternative, second-personal account of commitment, which avoids this problem. On this account, the volitional act involved in committing is (...) one of holding ourselves accountable, thus putting us under to a pro tanto obligation to ourselves. The second-personal account implies that there is an interesting link between commitment and morality. (shrink)

According to Darwall’s Second-Personal Account, moral obligations constitutively involve relations of authority and accountability between persons. Darwall takes this account to lend support to Kant’s moral theory. Critics object that the Second-Personal Account abandons central tenets of Kant’s system. I respond to these critics’ three main challenges by showing that they rest on misunderstandings of the Second-Personal Account. Properly understood, this account is not only congenial to Kant’s moral theory, but also illuminates aspects of that theory which have hitherto received (...) scant attention. In particular, it motivates a fresh perspective on the relationship between respect, persons, and the law. (shrink)