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)

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

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)

This paper describes the results of several large empirical studies that investigated the impact of social product attributes on consumer purchase intentions. Our results show that some consumers are willing to pay for more socially acceptable products, but that most of those consumers do not think about the social product features of the products they purchase. Furthermore, our analyses demonstrate that consumers can be segmented based on their preferences for social product features and that these segments are not country-specific.

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)

If children could ask God one question, what would it be? Johns Hopkins pediatrician Pat Fosarelli surveyed 9,000 children over a fifteen-year period, and their responses illuminate the hopes, dreams, anxieties, and fears of a future generation.

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)

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.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the concept of 'best interest' in order to give nurses, who use it to justify their actions, a clear picture of what this means, and to identify the skills needed for doing so. The process for concept analysis developed by Walker and Avant was used in the analysis of data generated from the literature. Themes were identified from which the defining attributes, antecedents and consequences emerged. The congruence of the findings with current (...) values in nursing, such as promotion of patient autonomy, and the nurse as advocate, are discussed, together with the underpinning ethics theory. The skills needed for nursing practice are identified and recommendations for nurse education are made. (shrink)

The most plausible type of panpsychism explains high-level consciousness as a compound of basic conscious properties instantiated by basic bottom-level physical objects. Arguments for panpsychism stand little chance in the absence of an account that makes sense of basic bottom-level experience; and explains how basic bottom-level experiences yield high-level experiences. This paper tackles the first task. It develops a method for investigating basic bottom-level experience: it identifies constraints, motivated by scientific and philosophical considerations, that force a unique account. Then it (...) applies this method, using quarks as stand-ins for basic but conscious physical objects. It concludes that quark-consciousness is maximally simple ; multiple ; and internal. (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.

Pat White; Education, Democracy and the Public Interest, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 5, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 7–28, https://doi.org/10.1111.

This article—the first of a linked set of three outlining the development and practice of a different approach to science/religion dialogue—begins with an overview of some persistent tensions in the field. Then, using a threefold heuristic of encounter, engagement, and expression, it explores the routes taken by James Ashbrook and Andrew Newberg to develop a dialogue between theology and neuroscience, discussing some of the problems associated with these and their implications for attempts to further develop neurotheology. Finally, it proposes a (...) different way of thinking about this enterprise and points toward a new methodology for supporting this endeavor. (shrink)

Physical attractiveness affects how one gets treated, but it is just a single component of one's overall “market value.” One's treatment depends on other markers of market value, including social status, competence, warmth, and any other cues of one's ability or willingness to confer benefits on partners. To completely understand biased treatment, we must also incorporate these other factors.

This short essay examines the relationship between academic research and policy with particular emphasis on the question of whether a critical criminology can engage in academic critique at the same time as engaging in policy oriented research. Recognising that critical criminology falls between theory and politics criminologists are urged to adopt pragmatic, strategic positions as they negotiate their role in contentious debates and practical minefields. It is concluded that a critical criminology must try not only to think the unthinkable about (...) crime, but also to speak the unspeakable about the conditions in which and by which it is known. (shrink)

Nowhere is current controversy over biological explanations for human behaviour more striking than in debates over violence. New theories are being formulated, and biological markers are being identified in new ways. The terms of discourse and debate are being changed. Violence may be represented as a pathological biological syndrome, or as natural, especially for men. Why the growing interest now in biological explanations of violence? Is the biology of violence suggestive of a new brand of biological determinism? This latter, broader (...) question poses a challenge to the argument that current biological theories of behaviour are different and better than faulty, often racist and eugenicist, theories which have gone before. New theories do not reduce to linear cause-and-effect explanations, and there are no `genes for crime'. Nevertheless, there is a question of geneticism, `the doctrine of the primacy of the genetic make-up in determining every aspect of the human mind, constitution and social behaviour...' (Medawar, 1984: 255). (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)

The evolution of reciprocal altruism probably involved the evolution of mechanisms to detect cheating and remember cheaters. In a well-known study, Mealey, Daood, and Krage (1996) observed that participants had enhanced memory for faces that had previously been associated with descriptions of acts of cheating. There were, however, problems with the descriptions that were used in that study. We sought to replicate and extend the findings of Mealey and colleagues by using more controlled descriptions and by examining the possibility of (...) enhanced altruist recognition. We also examined whether individual differences in cheating tendencies were related to cheater and altruist recognition. In the first experiment, 164 undergraduates saw 40 faces that were paired with character descriptions representing the categories of cheater, trustworthy, altruist, or neutral, for individuals who had either low or high social status. One week later participants reported which faces they recognized from the previous week (among 80 faces). Overall, the results failed to replicate the findings of Mealey and her colleagues, as there was no enhanced memory for cheaters. In addition, there was no enhanced memory for altruists, and no effect of participants’ cheating tendencies. A second experiment using a slightly different methodology produced similar results, with some evidence for enhanced memory for altruists. (shrink)

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)

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.

Any panpsychism building complex consciousness out of basic atoms of consciousness needs a theory of ‘mental chemistry’ explaining how this building works. This paper argues that split-brain patients show actual mental chemistry or at least give reasons for thinking it possible. The paper next develops constraints on theories of mental chemistry. It then puts forward models satisfying these constraints. The paper understands mental chemistry as a transformation consistent with conservation of consciousness rather than an aggregation perhaps followed by the creation (...) of something in addition. The paper suggests that this kind of mental chemistry alone yields a workable panpsychism. (shrink)

Phenomenology has contributed to healthcare by providing resources for understanding the lived experience of the patient and their situation. But within a burgeoning literature on the characteristic features of illness, there has not yet been an account appropriate to describe congenital illnesses: conditions which are present from birth and cause suffering or medical threat to their bearers. Congenital illness sits uncomfortably with standard accounts in phenomenology of illness, in which concepts such as loss, doubt, alienation and unhomelikeness presuppose prior health. (...) These accounts reflect, in different ways, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s assumption that the ways of living of the ill contain allusions to fundamental, healthy functions. The originality of congenital illness complicates this assumption and demands its own original phenomenology. In this paper, I sketch my personal experience living with a single-ventricle heart condition. While some of this story may reflect my own idiosyncratic experience, I hope that much of it will resonate with the congenital illness experience. I argue that the phenomenological literature on illness, grounded in the notion of loss, does not describe the congenital illness experience. I show how a number of other patient-centred theories of health and illness which have been influential on phenomenology can and cannot elucidate congenital illness. In particular, I consider Georges Canguilhem’s account of the normal and the pathological; debates in disability; and the notion of illness as biographical disruption. I show that congenital illness results in the preadmission of its patients to a paradoxical logic of medical palliation, one product of which is existential maturity. (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)

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)

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)

One of the sub-branches of Central Semitic, Northwest Semitic, contains a number of languages with no established hierarchical relation among them: Ugaritic, Aramaic, Canaanite, Deir Alla, and Samalian. Over the years, scholars have attempted to establish a more accurate sub-branching for Northwest Semitic or to suggest a different genetic affiliation for some languages, usually Ugaritic. In this paper, we will argue that Aramaic and Canaanite share a direct ancestor, on the basis of a number of morphosyntactic features: the fs demonstrative (...) *ðaˀt, the direct object marker *ˀayāt, the development of dative subjects with adjectival predicates, the use of the construct state with prepositions, the G imperfect inflection of geminate verbs, and the plural form of *bayt. We will also address arguments that Ugaritic is a Canaanite dialect, or that Canaanite and Ugaritic are more closely related. This proposal not only outlines a more coherent family tree for Northwest Semitic, but also accounts for numerous “Aramaic”-like features in some Canaanite dialects, primarily Biblical Hebrew, which have thus far been treated as the result of language contact in the early Iron Age. (shrink)

This paper argues that emergent conscious properties can't bestow emergent causal powers. It supports this conclusion by way of a dilemma. Necessarily, an emergent conscious property brings about its effects actively or other than actively. If actively, then, the paper argues, the emergent conscious property can't have causal powers at all. And if other than actively, then, the paper argues, the emergentist finds himself committed to incompatible accounts of causation.