This article establishes the relevance of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka’s work for understanding human communication. Tymieniecka’s cosmology, available in her four-volume series Logos and Life (1988–2000) and supplemented by prolific writings across several decades, articulates a ‘third phenomenology’ – a phenomenology of life. Her work fulfils Edmund Husserl’s original phenomenology of consciousness and Roman Ingarden’s second phenomenology of realism/idealism. Tymieniecka’s ontopoietic cosmology, which strenuously resists linear form, is interwoven with the possibilities of human communication. Her works explain life as the expansion of (...) logos: recursively the vital sphere initiates logos, forcing the existential sphere, concurrently prompting the social sphere of the human condition. The human station reveals meaning-bestowing functions: the creative-imaginative origin urges the aesthetic, moral, and intellective senses. Self-individualizing development concurrently desires communicative participation in life. The lived-body and sign/word allow one to re-establish ties to communal life after self-individualization. At the human ‘crown’, life recedes through an individual quest for spiritual development, inspired by a desire for transcendence. (shrink)

But still I think some account has to be given of the application of CM to tides and cannon balls etc. etc. It seems to me that Einstein's and Bohr's analysis was essentially correct: we make the connection, and thus apply the mathematical statements of CM to macroscopic features of the world about us, by constructing, within the mathematical framework,. macroscopic conglomerates of the elementary particles and fields that should have the general appearance of tides and billiard, looked at from (...) a distance, and that would respond to the probings of mathematical models of measuring devices, whose "pointers" we can see from afar, in the ways that waves and billiard balls do. I think a look at how CM has been used and applied since the time of Newton and Galileo shows that the mathematical theory is linked into our experiences of the world in this nonproblematic way, and that this correspondence at this nonproblematic level is part of classical mechanics in the broad sense in which it is understood by people who use it. (shrink)

Amartya Sen is a renowned economist who has also made important contributions to philosophical thinking about distributive justice. These contributions tend to take the form of criticism of inadequate positions and insistence on making distinctions that will promote clear thinking about the topic. Sen is not shy about making substantive normative claims, but thus far he has avoided commitment to a theory of justice, in the sense of a set of principles that specifies what facts are relevant for policy choice (...) and determines, given a full characterization of any situation in terms of these relevant facts, what ought to be done in that situation. Moreover, Sen has expressed skepticism about the existence of a fully adequate theory in this sense. According to Sen there is a plurality of moral considerations that bear on choice of action and policy and no particular reason to think that weights can be attached nonarbitrarily to each consideration to yield a theory. (shrink)

Critical analysis of the commercialization and malpractice current in the profession of medicine.

What is the good for human persons? If I am trying to lead the best possible life I could lead, not the morally best life, but the life that is best for me, what exactly am I seeking?This phrasing of the question I will be pursuing may sound tendentious, so some explanation is needed. What is good for one person, we ordinarily suppose, can conflict with what is good for other persons and with what is required by morality. A prudent (...) person seeks her own good efficiently; she selects the best available means to her good. If we call the value that a person seeks when she is being prudent “prudential value,” then an alternative rendering of the question to be addressed in this essay is “What is prudential value?” We can also say that an individual flourishes or has a life high in well-being when her life is high in prudential value. Of course, these common-sense appearances that the good for an individual, the good for other persons, and the requirements of morality often are in conflict might be deceiving. For all that I have said here, the correct theory of individual good might yield the result that sacrificing oneself for the sake of other people or for the sake of a morally worthy cause can never occur, because helping others and being moral always maximize one's own good. But this would be the surprising result of a theory, not something we should presuppose at the start of inquiry. When a friend has a baby and I express a conventional wish that the child have a good life, I mean a life that is good for the child, not a life that merely helps others or merely respects the constraints of morality. After all, a life that is altruistic and perfectly moral, we suppose, could be a life that is pure hell for the person who lives it—a succession of horrible headaches marked by no achievements or attainments of anything worthwhile and ending in agonizing death at a young age. So the question remains, what constitutes a life that is good for the person who is living it? (shrink)

Prioritarianism holds that improvements in someone's life are morally more valuable, the worse off the person would otherwise be. The doctrine is impartial, holding that a gain in one person's life counts exactly the same as an identical gain in the life of anyone equally well off. If we have some duty of beneficence to make the world better, prioritarianism specifies the content of the duty. Unlike the utilitarian, the prioritarian holds that we should not only seek to increase human (...) well-being, but also distribute it fairly across persons, by tilting in favor of the worse off. A variant version adds that we should also give priority to the morally deserving – to saints over scoundrels. The view is a standard for right choice of individual actions and public policies, offering a distinctive alternative to utilitarianism, sufficiency and egalitarianism. (shrink)

Richard J. Arneson version 7/27/99 Is having a disability more like being a member of a racially stigmatized group or like lacking a talent? Both analogies might be apt. The Americans with Disabilities Act stresses the former analogy. The framing thought is that people with disabilities are objects of prejudice and prejudiced behaviors which wrongfully exclude them from participation in important social practices such as the labor market. Think for example of a blind person whose job applications are always (...) automatically rejected because she is blind and without any consideration of her aptitude for this or that specific job. Such a person suffers wrongful discrimination and is denied equality of opportunity. (shrink)

Nearly all studies of consumers’ willingness to engage in ethical or socially responsible purchasing behavior is based on unconstrained survey response methods. In the present article we ask the question of how well does asking consumers the extent to which they care about a specific social or ethical issue relate to how they would behave in a more constrained environment where there is no socially acceptable response. The results of a comparison between traditional survey questions of “intention to purchase” and (...) estimates of individuals willingness-to-pay for social attributes in products reveal that simple survey questions are too “noisy” to provide operationally meaningful information and overstate intentions to a considerable extent. (shrink)

In chapter 1 of Sovereign Virtue Ronald Dworkin argues against the claim that insofar as we care about distributive equality (equality in the distribution of resources to be privately owned), what we should care about is equality of welfare. This says that a distribution of resources in a society is equal just in case it results in all members of society having the same level of welfare (utility, well-being, personal good).

Harnad accepts the picture of computation as formalism, so that any implementation of a program - thats any implementation - is as good as any other; in fact, in considering claims about the properties of computations, the nature of the implementing system - the interpreter - is invisible. Let me refer to this idea as 'Computationalism'. Almost all the criticism, claimed refutation by Searle's argument, and sharp contrasting of this idea with others, rests on the absoluteness of this separation between (...) a computational system and its implementation. (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu was one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. He argued for, and practiced, rigorous and reflexive scholarship, interrogating the inequities and injustices of modern societies. Through a lifetime's explication of the ways in which schooling both produces and reproduces the status quo, Bourdieu offered a powerful critique and method of analysis of the history of schooling, and of contemporary educational polices and trends. Though frequently used in educational research, Bourdieu's work has had much less take (...) up in Educational Leadership, Management and Administration. Educational Leadership and Pierre Bourdieuargues that ELMA scholars have much to gain by engaging more thoroughly with his work. The book explains each of the key terms in Bourdieu's thinking tool kit, showing how the tripartite concepts of field, habitus and capitals offer a way through which to understand the interaction of structure and agency, and the limits on the freedom of an individual - in this case an educational leader - to act. Educational Leadership and Pierre Bourdieuoffers an analysis of dominant trends in ELMA research, examining the kinds of questions asked, projects undertaken and methods used. It provides alternative questions and methods based on a Bourdieusian approach, further readings and a range of exemplars of the application of these tools. The book will be of interest to those whose primary focus is the utility of Bourdieu's social theory. (shrink)

In her recent, provocative essay “What Is the Point of Equality?”, Elizabeth Anderson argues against a common ideal of egalitarian justice that she calls “ luck egalitarianism” and in favor of an approach she calls “democratic equality.”1 According to the luck egalitarian, the aim of justice as equality is to eliminate so far as is possible the impact on people’s lives of bad luck that falls on them through no fault or choice of their own. In the ideal luck egalitarian (...) society, there are no inequalities in people’s life prospects except those that arise through processes of voluntary choice or faulty conduct, for which the agents involved can reasonably be held responsible. Anderson asserts that the adherents of luck egalitarianism, which can be elaborated in many different ways, include John Roemer, Erik Rakowski, Thomas Nagel, Ronald Dworkin, Gerald Cohen, Richard Arneson, and Philippe Van Parijs.2 In contrast, according to the democratic equality conception, justice as equality requires an end to oppressive social relationships. In the ideal society of democratic equality, the social conditions of everyone’s freedom are secured, each stands to every other in a relationship of fundamental equality, including equal respect, and all have real freedom to participate in democratic self-government. (shrink)

Because psychiatry deals specifically with ‘mental’ suffering, its efforts are always centrally involved with the meaningful world of human reality. As such, it sits at the interface of a number of discourses: genetics and neuroscience, psychology and sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and the humanities. Each of these provides frameworks, concepts, and examples that seek to assist our attempts to understand mental distress and how it might be helped. However, these discourses work with different assumptions, methodologies, values, and priorities. Some are in (...) dispute with one another. At various times in the history of psychiatry, a particular form of understanding has become dominant and worked to marginalize .. (shrink)

Some theorists hold that there is no serious, significant issue concerning cosmopolitanism. They hold that cosmopolitanism is either the anodyne doctrine that we have some duties to distant strangers merely on the ground of shared humanity or the absurd doctrine that we have no special moral duties based on special-ties such as those of friendship, family, and national community. This essay argues against this deflationary position by defending (1) a very extreme cosmopolitan doctrine that denies special-tie moral duties altogether and (...) (2) a slightly milder but still extreme form of cosmopolitanism that allows that there might be special-tie moral duties to intimate associates such as friends and family members but denies that broader social group associations such as those of subjection to a national state or national or ethnic community memberships ever constitute special ties that ground special moral duties. The defense proceeds by rebutting bad arguments leveled against extreme cosmopolitanisms. (shrink)

The importance of ethical consumerism to many companies worldwide has increased dramatically in recent years. Ethical consumerism encompasses the importance of non-traditional and social components of a company's products and business process to strategic success - such as environmental protectionism, child labor practices and so on. The present paper utilizes a random utility theoretic experimental design to provide estimates of the relative value selected consumers place on the social features of products.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.1 (2002) 1-21 [Access article in PDF] Turning Kant Against the Priority of Autonomy: Communication Ethics and the Duty to Community Pat J. Gehrke Communication ethics scholars afford Immanuel Kant significantly less attention than one might expect. This may be because, as Robert Dostal notes, Kant argues that rhetoric merits no respect whatsoever (223). This rejection of rhetoric, Dostal writes, is grounded in the significant emphasis (...) given to Kant's concept of autonomy (232). The focus on autonomy and, hence, rhetoricians' relative neglect of Kant's ethical theory are both connected to the separation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (hereinafter CPuR) from his subsequent ethical and moral philosophy. Kenneth Burke writes that Kant's first critique has no ethical implications, "no 'wills,' 'oughts,' 'shoulds,' or 'thou shalt nots'... nothing but an inevitable is, a description of conditions as they necessarily are for human experience" (191; emphasis in original). Such readings lose much of the richness and complexity of Kant's thought and tend instead to produce simple moral duties, such as Mike Markel's assertion that technical communicators must be truthful.Perhaps the most critical element of Kant's work lost in our focus on autonomy is his articulation of a ground for a duty to community. While Kant makes clear the importance of community for his metaphysics in the first critique (CPuR), the importance of community in Kant's moral philosophy often is overlooked. Some scholars claim that an ethical duty to community is either rejected by Kant's emphasis on the autonomy of will or simply ignored. This article combines a reading of Kant's metaphysics of experience with his moral philosophy to articulate a communication ethic grounded in community. This argument is made in three parts: first, the community of objects in experience—the Third Analogy of Experience—is an organizing principle of and a necessary condition for the possibility of all experience; second, this metaphysical principle of community is relevant [End Page 1] to community as developed in Kant's ethical writings; and finally, Kant's own work undermines the primacy of autonomy and better supports a communication ethic grounded in a duty to community.Scholars interested in Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action have special reason to take note of Kant's work. Kant is not only a figure that Habermas sees reflected in his own work, 1 but a constant point of contrast. Craig Calhoun writes that much of Habermas's own philosophy emerges by rejecting Kant's epistemology and elements of his metaphysics while still giving credence to Kantian moral philosophy (2). However, like most communication scholars and philosophers, Habermas believes that autonomy governs Kantian ethics: "Formalistic ethics (Kant) binds the criterion of generality of norms to the further criterion of autonomy, that is, independence from contingent motives" (Habermas, Legitimation 89). Since autonomy excludes or represses the contingent, if our readings of Kant give primacy to autonomy we leave little room for any notion of community as manifest in experience. In no small part, it is the criticism of Kant for privileging autonomy that has given Habermasians their break from Kantian ethics. However, if we turn to the first critique to guide our reading of the moral philosophy, there is another way to understand the role of autonomy and community in Kant's thought. By linking Kant's metaphysics with his moral philosophy, this article turns Kant away from the primacy of autonomy and uses Kant's own works to argue that autonomy is but one half of an antinomy that is organized under the principle of community. Thus, this article recuperates the possibility of deploying Kantian metaphysics and moral philosophy together as grounds for a communication ethic that privileges community and recovers the value of rhetoric.For rhetorical scholars, the resistance to the priority of autonomy may be related to the frequent expression of community through appeal to commonality, sameness, or identification. Today, feminist, race, postmodern, and poststructural communication scholars are questioning the value of commonality as a ground for ethics (e... (shrink)

There would seem to be a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding in the public mind about the life stance of modern humanism and its philosophical underpinnings. As a committed humanist Pat Duffy Hutcheon has made many invaluable contributions to the clarification of the nature and origin of evolutionary naturalism as a necessary component of modern humanism. This collection of topical essays is the most recent addition to her ongoing pursuit, following her analysis of cultural development in Building Character and (...) Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999) and her earlier seminal work tracing the evolution of the naturalistic basis of social-scientific thought in Leaving the Cave (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1996). This, her newest book presents the ideas in the context of their time, of some of the most prominent thinkers who have, in one way or another, shaped the evolving philosophy of humanism over the centuries. It is a much needed and most welcome resource for any thoughtful person who wants to better appreciate the naturalistic view of human existence rather than the supernatural or mystical approaches that so regrettably dominate the current scene. (shrink)

Against Patrick Devlin, H. L. A. Hart rejects the enforcement of morals as such. Hart defends an expanded version of John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, but this expanded version is no more defensible than Mill’s original claim. Hart’s discussion fails to clarify what is really at stake in controversies regarding the moral acceptability of criminal prohibition of such activities as suicide and assisted suicide, recreational drug use, prostitution, and so on. Regarding the enforcement of morals as such, we should acknowledge (...) that the jury is still out. (shrink)

Left-libertarianism is a version of Lockean libertarianism that combines the idea that each person is the full rightful owner of herself and the idea that each person should have the right to own a roughly equal amount of the world's resources. This essay argues against left-libertarianism. The specific target is an interesting form of left-libertarianism proposed by Michael Otsuka that is especially stringent in its equal world ownership claim. One criticism advanced is that there is more tension than Otsuka acknowledges (...) between private ownership of self and equal ownership of the world. This emerges once one notices that self-ownership should not be conceived merely in a thin, formal way but also as a thicker substantive insistence on wide individual freedom. A second criticism is that in other respects the formal idea of self-ownership that Otsuka and other left-libertarians embrace is an extreme doctrine that merits rejection. (shrink)

This essay surveys varieties of the luck egalitarian project in an exploratory spirit, seeking to identify lines of thought that are worth developing further and that might ultimately prove morally acceptable. I do not attend directly to the critics and assess their concerns; I have done that in other essays. 7 I do seek to identify some large fault lines, divisions in ways of approaching the task of constructing a theory of justice or of conceiving its substance. These are controversial (...) in the sense that in the present state of discussion it is unclear how best to view them or to which side it is better to scramble. But in the end of course I’m not a moral geographer and map-maker, just an involved spectator/tourist offering yet another view of the cathedral. (shrink)

This book is for postgraduate students working for research degrees in institutions of higher education wherever the language of instruction is English. Irrespective of field of study, it will make their work and life more productive, effective and enjoyable. The Research Student's Guide to Success: identifies the skills and strategies which make for success as a postgraduate research student; offers practical advice which can be readily adapted to meet individual needs; provides essential support for all research students; encourages research students (...) to take responsibility for their own progress; acknowledges both the hardships and the pleasures of being a research student; and builds confidence throughout. The book is easy to dip into and is written in conversational style. Interest and realism are added through anecdotes, extracts from literature and pithy quotations. The book will also be useful to undergraduate, diploma and taught masters students doing projects and dissertations. (shrink)

Should government be neutral "on the question of the good life, or of what gives value to life"?1 Some political theorists propose that governmental neutrality is a core commitment of any liberalism worth the name and a requirement of justice. For them, neutrality is the appropriate generalization of the ideal of religious tolerance. The state should be neutral in matters of religion, and neutral also in all controversies concerning the nature of the good or the ways in which it is (...) valuable and worthwhile to live. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Pat White; Work-place Democracy and Political Education [1], Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 13, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 5–20, https://doi.org/10.

The phrase “applied moral philosophy” might naturally be understood as the application of general moral principles to descriptions of particular situations in order to derive conclusions about what ought to be done in those situations, but given the lack of agreement on general principles, any such conclusions would be disputable. Other possibilities are that applied moral philosophy is ethical thought directed toward concrete rather than abstract moral issues, or toward practical moral problems that arise in actual social life rather than (...) toward imagined hypotheticals. According to the reflective equilibrium conception, we should seek to reach a set of moral beliefs that hang together coherently, the general beliefs explaining and justifying the more particular beliefs that seem acceptable after reflection. On this conception, a judgment at any level of generality can reasonably shape our all things considered responses to practical moral controversies, so no important line separates applied and nonapplied ethics. (shrink)

Pat White, John White; David Cooper's Illusions, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 14, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 239–248, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1.

Evidence will be presented from two projects to support our argument that concepts and associated activities of leadership are shaped by the political contexts in which they are embedded. By comparing the managerialist purposes and definitions of school leadership in England with more democratic orientations in Denmark, we add our voices to the growing concern about the future of democracy in England.

This study uses best–worst scaling experiments to examine differences across six countries in the attitudes of consumers towards social and ethical issues that included both product related issues (such as recycled packaging) and general social factors (such as human rights). The experiments were conducted using over 600 respondents from Germany, Spain, Turkey, USA, India, and Korea. The results show that there is indeed some variation in the attitudes towards social and ethical issues across these six countries. However, what is more (...) telling are the similarities seen and the extent to which individual variation dominates observable demographics and country-based variables. (shrink)

We are very grateful to both Matthew Ratcliffe and Thomas Szasz for taking the time to read and respond to our paper. Ratcliffe is broadly sympathetic to our efforts and provides a very convincing argument against mind–body dualisms by drawing on work from the phenomenological tradition. His comments extend rather than challenge our central thesis. Szasz, however, is dismissive of our position. As a result, most of our response is directed to his commentary. Ratcliffe uses the work of van der (...) Berg to make the case that any easy distinction between bodily and mental illness or suffering is false to our lived reality as human beings. Of course, in the day-to- day world of contemporary medical practice .. (shrink)

Muddles can be instructive. The clarifying confusion to be examined in this paper is Isaiah Berlin's intelligent vacillation on the issue of whether or not the extent of a person's freedom depends on his desires. Is the amount of freedom an agent possesses determined solely by his objective circumstances or is it also partly a function of his subjective tastes and preferences? In clarifying this question I shall suggest that Berlin has trouble answering it because he almost perceives that interpersonal (...) cardinal measurement of freedom, if possible at all, is possible only on a subjective basis. Yet as Berlin eloquently reminds us measuring freedom according to a subjective metric generates paradox. Whether commonsense ideas of freedom are consistent and reasonable is not purely an academic issue, for we do often make political judgments to the effect that one or another policy, or a movement to one or another form of society, can be expected to reduce or enlarge human freedom. If freedom is not measurable these judgments are merely hortatory. (shrink)

Is there a moral right to freedom of conscience? Should a legal right to freedom of conscience be established in each country on Earth? This essay argues for negative answers to both questions. The term freedom of conscience might refer to freedom of thought and the freedom of expression that sustains freedom of thought. In this sense we might affirm the right of each person to form individual opinions about the right and the good, about what we owe one another (...) by way of due consideration of others, and about what is worthy of pursuit in life, on the basis of free discussion of these matters. In the present discussion, these freedoms, important as they might be, are not under consideration. Let us assume freedom of thought and expression are secured. The status of freedom of conscience in the sense that is our concern in this discussion is still wide open. (shrink)

..............................................................................................101 I. The Idea of a Noncombatant ........................................................104 II. The Moral Shield Protecting Noncombatants.............................106 A. Accommodation.......................................................................107 B. Guilty Past ...............................................................................107 C. Guilty Bystander Trying to Inflict Harm .................................109 D. Guilty Bystander Disposed to Inflict Harm .............................109 E. Guilty Bystander Exulting in Anticipated Evil ........................109 F. Fault Forfeits First Doctrine in Just Warfare ...........................110 III. Noncombatants as Wrongful Trespassers ...................................110 IV. The Noncombatant Status of Captured Soldiers ........................111 V. Guerrilla Combat ..........................................................................116 VI. Morally Innocent Unjust Combatants.........................................118 VII. Should Rights Reflect What (...) We Can Know? ............................121 VIII. Absolute and Moderate Construction of the Revised Right.. (shrink)

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