Discusses Anglo-American capitalism, exemplified by the commercial and financial systems of Wall Street and the City of London and including the ethics of the stock market, the morality of takeovers, and the problem of business and the environment.

Humor and social dilemmas are two disparate areas that have been linked to emotions. However, they tend to have been studied apart from considerations of emotion and emotional expression. We provide an overview of how such areas might be illuminated by Vigil's socio-relational framework, and how capacity and trustworthiness are communicated in humor and social dilemmas.

A critical survey of the major philosophical arguments that have been used to justify the institutions and policies of contemporary welfare states considers the claims of rights theory, egalitarianism, and citizenship and communitarian doctrines. It finds that these arguments are both internally confused and inconsistent with conventional welfare policies. It is argued that the welfare state itself has serious ambiguities: it claims to cater for the needy, as part of its ?public good?; obligations, yet in practice it delivers a range (...) of private goods, e.g., health, housing, education and pensions, often irrespective of need. Yet classical liberal theories of state welfare, which favor simple cash payments, are flawed in theory and potentially costly in practice, while neocon?servative theories, by imposing ?values?; on welfare recipients, undermine liberal pluralism. The author concludes that welfare philosophy should be concerned with two neglected areas: the possibility that welfare be provided outside the familiar market and state categories, and the construction of constitutional rules to prevent the middle?class ?capture?; of existing welfare states. (shrink)

The savanna theory of happiness proposes that, due to evolutionary constraints on the human brain, situations and circumstances that would have increased our ancestors’ happiness may still increase our happiness today, and those that would have decreased their happiness then may still decrease ours today. It further proposes that, because general intelligence evolved to solve evolutionarily novel problems, this tendency may be stronger among less intelligent individuals. Because humans are a diurnal species that cannot see in the dark, darkness always (...) represented danger to our ancestors and may still decrease our happiness today. Consistent with this prediction, the analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) data shows that exposure to sunlight was associated with happiness but the association was significantly weaker among more intelligent individuals. (shrink)

First published in 1987. Towards the end of the twentieth century there was a resurgence of thinking about politics, economics and society referred to variously as the 'New Right', the radical right, neo-conservatism, economic liberalism or libertarianism. Although the New Right is not a single coherent movement it represented a clear alternative to the prevailing social-democratic consensus and had had considerable influence on government policy in both America and Britain. This book presents an introductory survey of the New Right worldwide. (...) It examines the varieties of free-market and 'monetarist' economic thought and introduces the reader to the public-choice critique of public policy. In political philosophy the book analyses American and British conservative thought and compares conservatism with neo-liberalism. The author pays particular attention to the New Right's analysis of constitutionalism and its critique of the dominance of 'politics' over 'economics' during the high-point of the consensus period. The author assesses the success which the different schools of the New Right have had in influencing public opinion and in the formation of government policy. He does not argue for or against the New Right but presents a dispassionate survey from which the reader can draw his or her own conclusions. (shrink)

This Essay examines debates surrounding Qu Tongzu's ‘Confucianization of law’ theory. Qu's theory claims that Chinese law underwent a process of ‘Confucianization’ starting in the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD) and ending and culminating in the Tang dynasty (618–907), where the Confucian concept of li and other Confucian moral teachings were introduced and incorporated into the written law. I argue that Qu's theory should be properly characterised as a theory of descriptive jurisprudence and also a form of the mirror thesis. (...) In light of this characterisation, this Essay then lays out the possible counterarguments that could be raised against Qu's theory and then situates existing scholarship in the debate in these categories. I then test Qu's theory using a case study about kinship concealment in traditional Chinese law The Essay then concludes by urging that the debate should include more jurisprudential approaches. (shrink)

Journalists covering the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech aggravated the trauma felt by victims' families and survivors, raising ethical questions about the role of media at major news events in an Internet-enabled era of continuous coverage. Some journalists breached professional norms by knocking on doors at 6 a.m., claiming a hidden camera was a breast pump and bullying reluctant interviewees. Even conscientious journalists, however, exacerbated the ordeal through their overabundance. By forcing survivors to endure repetitious interviews and making mourners feel (...) they were being stalked, journalists demonstrated they must embrace press pools to minimize harm in the future. (shrink)

The article applauds the early Christians for their courage in embracing Greek, the lingua franca of the time. In this embrace they were not seduced by Greek philosophy. Rather, the early councils of the Church fashioned a theological vocabulary that expressed with remarkable fidelity the key concepts of the Christian message.

L'article est basé sur une conférence donnée au Victoria and Albert Muséum à Londres en Mai 2000. Il retrace l'enseignement sur l'eucharistie à travers les vingt et un conciles traditionnellement considérés oecuméniques par l'Eglise Catholique Romaine, de Nicée à Vatican II . Tous les conciles n'ont pas parlé de l'eucharistie; mais ceux qui l'ont fait ont apporté de profondes intuitions sur le sacrement central du Christianisme. L'auteur résume ces développements comme suit: …les premiers conciles se préoccupent en priorité des personnes (...) présentes à l'eucharistie; les conciles du Moyen-Age et celui de Trente tournent leur attention vers le prêtre, les objets employés pour faire l'eucharistie, et spécialement la présence du Christ. Vatican II renoue avec la préoccupation de l'ancienne Eglise pour les gens présents a l'eucharistie, mais avec des intérêts différents. (shrink)

Interoception can be broadly defined as the sense of signals originating within the body. As such, interoception is critical for our sense of embodiment, motivation, and well-being. And yet, despite its importance, interoception remains poorly understood within modern science. This paper reviews interdisciplinary perspectives on interoception, with the goal of presenting a unified perspective from diverse fields such as neuroscience, clinical practice, and contemplative studies. It is hoped that this integrative effort will advance our understanding of how interoception determines well-being, (...) and identify the central challenges to such understanding. To this end, we introduce an expanded taxonomy of interoceptive processes, arguing that many of these processes can be understood through an emerging predictive coding model for mind–body integration. The model, which describes the tension between expected and felt body sensation, parallels contemplative theories, and implicates interoception in a variety of affective and psychosomatic disorders. We conclude that maladaptive construal of bodily sensations may lie at the heart of many contemporary maladies, and that contemplative practices may attenuate these interpretative biases, restoring a person’s sense of presence and agency in the world. (shrink)

Sweeping denials of the story's capacity to accurately reflect the past are ever catalyzing equally misleading global affirmations. The impositionalists, such as theorist Hayden White, view historical narratives as imposing a falsifying narrative structure on the past, and conclude that narratives cannot be true. Plot-reifiers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, David Carr, and Frederick Olafson, posit that the past is already narratively structured; historical plots are reified in order for there to be something in the world to which narrative structures can (...) correspond in being true. The antireferentialists such as JeanFrançois Lyotard and Roland Barthes deny that narrative histories even claim truth. Escaping this trilemma of theoretical interpretation involves accepting the idea that construction of a history does not entail its falsification. Historical narrative need to be allowed to function both figurally, in the sense of generating new discursive figures, and at the same time literally, in the sense of asking to be understood literally. Narratives need to be understood on their own terms, and not treated as an approximation to some foreign ideal. (shrink)

Resolution-oriented dialogue has a normative structure that is largely subject to theoretical explication. This paper develops a simple model that sheds light on how moves in a reason-giving game alter the distribution of discursive commitments and entitlements. By clarifying the practice of deontic scorekeeping, we can enhance our collective capacity to resolve conflicts dialogically.