While Russell famously rejected the pragmatist theory of truth, recent scholarship portrays his post-prison accounts of belief and knowledge as resembling James’s. But deeper divisions in fact persisted between Russell and James concerning the nature of mind. I argue 1) that Russell’s neutral monist approach to consciousness in The Analysis of Mind constitutes an early form of representationalism in that he took states to be phenomenally conscious partly in virtue of (truly) representing an antecedent (typically just-passed) sensation; 2) that (...) although James also saw representation (typically of expected kinaesthetic sensation) as a crucial component of consciousness, he contended that representation is a matter of affording future-directed action control that aligns with the agent’s interests; and 3) that what divides these contrasting approaches to consciousness and representation is precisely what Russell would continue to reject in the pragmatist theory of truth, namely the productive role James assigned to an agent’s interests. (shrink)

According to a standard representationalist view cognitive capacities depend on internal content-carrying states. Recent alternatives to this view have been met with the reaction that they have, at best, limited scope, because a large range of cognitive phenomena—those involving absent and abstract features—require representational explanations. Here we challenge the idea that the consideration of cognition regarding the absent and the abstract can move the debate about representationalism along. Whether or not cognition involving the absent and the abstract requires the (...) positing of representations depends upon whether more basic forms of cognition require the positing of representations. (shrink)

According to Ramsey (Representation reconsidered, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007 ), only classical cognitive science, with the related notions of input–output and structural representations, meets the job description challenge (the challenge to show that a certain structure or process serves a representational role at the subpersonal level). By contrast, connectionism and other nonclassical models, insofar as they exploit receptor and tacit notions of representation, are not genuinely representational. As a result, Ramsey submits, cognitive science is taking a U-turn (...) from representationalism back to behaviourism, thus presupposing that (1) the emergence of cognitivism capitalized on the concept of representation, and that (2) the materialization of nonclassical cognitive science involves a return to some form of pre-cognitivist behaviourism. We argue against both (1) and (2), by questioning Ramsey’s divide between classical and representational, versus nonclassical and nonrepresentational, cognitive models. For, firstly, connectionist and other nonclassical accounts have the resources to exploit the notion of a structural isomorphism, like classical accounts (the beefing-up strategy); and, secondly, insofar as input–output and structural representations refer to a cognitive agent, classical explanations fail to meet the job description challenge (the deflationary strategy). Both strategies work independently of each other: if the deflationary strategy succeeds, contra (1), cognitivism has failed to capitalize on the relevant concept of representation; if the beefing-up strategy is sound, contra (2), the return to a pre-cognitivist era cancels out. (shrink)

This article examines the role of the alien as the ultimate outsider and considers the challenges it poses to feminist theory. I argue that these challenges are based on the need to continue developing an ethics of relationality in which neither love nor relationality itself is deemed to be the answer; on rethinking agency and ontology in terms of becoming and the limitations of becoming; on a critique of representationalism which limits us to figuring the alien in rather than (...) as feminist theory and thereby invokes the archetypal story in which alien and human, monster and human switch sides; and finally on reconsidering modes of communication that resonate with their theme and emphasise the performativity, conceptual risk taking and creativity that might enable feminist theory itself to become alien again. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders Ockham's critique of the species theory of cognition. As Ockham understands this theory, it says that the direct objects of cognition are mental representations, or species. According to many commentators, one of Ockham's main objections to this theory was that, if the direct objects of cognition are species rather than external objects, we will never be able to establish whether or not a given species is a veridical representation of the world. In this paper I argue that (...) this line of interpretation sits uneasily with Ockham's epistemology, and offer a new interpretation of Ockham's critique of species. (shrink)

The pragmatist turn in Philosophy in the late XIX century and XX century was a serious attempt to refuse the privilege of the representational elements of the conscious- ness in the production of knowledge. Such privilege has its roots in Ancient Philosophy, in some consequences of the Platonic heritage, but was toughened by Modern philosophers of empiricist or aprioristic lineages within the modern concepts of Experience and Truth. With these last concepts of Experience and Truth I’m referring to the objectivising (...) tendency that leads to identify experience with the final object resulting from the judicative fixation of relations. Due to the fixation of some basic relations the object of experience was identified and conceived with such and such characteristics as something independent of the mental or judicative activity. Such method of fixation and objectivising of relations is also present in the common-sense ideas of Reality, Experience and Truth. In the field of the theory of signs the reputation of the modern concept of representation was so vast that despite the progress in the discovery of the differential character of the linguistic units, Saussure’s well-known notion of sign and the division between “signifiant” and “signifié” still kept the reference to the double across the body/mind polarity and to the “mental image” of the sign, Vorstellung, concept or “signifié,” as the core of meaning. If Peirce and James agree in the refusal of the classical theory of representation, their rejection came from different horizons and their critiques don’t mean the same. I’ll try to show that James’s and Peirce’s attempts are not disjunctive, although they are not members of a simple addition. In the writings of the Tartu School and in T. Sebeok’s reassessment to Peircean semeiosis one finds interesting tools to reconsider the relation to the World of the “field of consciousness” and semeiosic cycles, beyond representationalism, such as the concepts of environment and primary, secondary and tertiary modelling systems. Starting with these insights I’ll propose at the end of the essay the notion of a double environment between psychic systems and systems based on communication. (shrink)

Many philosophers and psychologists have attempted to elucidate the nature of mental representation by appealing to notions like isomorphism or abstract structural resemblance. The ‘structural representations’ that these theorists champion are said to count as representations by virtue of functioning as internal models of distal systems. In his 2007 book, Representation Reconsidered, William Ramsey endorses the structural conception of mental representation, but uses it to develop a novel argument against representationalism, the widespread view that cognition essentially involves the (...) manipulation of mental representations. Ramsey argues that although theories within the ‘classical’ tradition of cognitive science once posited structural representations, these theories are being superseded by newer theories, within the tradition of connectionism and cognitive neuroscience, which rarely if ever appeal to structural representations. Instead, these theories seem to be explaining cognition by invoking so-called ‘receptor representations’, which, Ramsey claims, aren’t genuine representations at all—despite being called representations, these mechanisms function more as triggers or causal relays than as genuine stand-ins for distal systems. I argue that when the notions of structural and receptor representation are properly explicated, there turns out to be no distinction between them. There only appears to be a distinction between receptor and structural representations because the latter are tacitly conflated with the ‘mental models’ ostensibly involved in offline cognitive processes such as episodic memory and mental imagery. While structural representations might count as genuine representations, they aren’t distinctively mental representations, for they can be found in all sorts of non-intentional systems such as plants. Thus to explain the kinds of offline cognitive capacities that have motivated talk of mental models, we must develop richer conceptions of mental representation than those provided by the notions of structural and receptor representation. (shrink)

The book aims to set out in which respects concepts are properly studied in philosophy, what methodological role the study of concepts has in philoso-phy's study of the world. Many of the considerations in this book nowadays are placed under the headline ‘metaphilosophy’. In contrast to paradigmatic ordinary language philosophy the book endorses a representationalist theory of meaning and concepts, thus agreeing with many of its critics in philosophy and the cognitive sciences. In contrast to many of these critics and (...) supposedly the majority of cognitive scientists it endorses the viability of conceptual analysis as one method of philosophy. The book reflects on Frege's theory of concepts, because Frege's theory of sentential unity has barely been super-seded, and the problems arising from Frege's understanding of concepts are still alive. The central part of the book starts by reconsidering the approach and the idea of ordinary language philosophy. Although ordinary language philosophy cannot be the whole of analytic philosophy a proper understanding of conceptual analysis turns out to be one part of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Our main considerations take as a starting point the educational policy demand for a model of competence of text comprehension, which should make it possible to measure and systematically increase comprehension accomplishments and competences. The approach of classical cognitive psychology appears particularly suitable for this purpose, which determines comprehension as a rule-guided transfer of a sign complex into a mental representation. However, such representationalism tends to be aporetic in character. A way out of this problem is offered by recent (...) concepts of understanding from the area ofEmbodied Cognition, according to which all mental operations are embedded in physical interaction processes. Comprehension means, in this sense, letting physical primary experiences be reproduced in a trial-action fashion. This approach is, in this paper, reconsidered in relation to the role of subjectivity and affect: Physical experiences are meaning-generating because they exhibit a subjectively perceived affective valence between pleasure and suffering. The beginning of all understanding therefore is to be located within the emotional sphere.Such a conception of understanding is supposed to have a considerable impact upon language- and literature teaching in schools. For example, training of reading skills should always be embedded in body-bound experiences. Moreover, learning and understanding both mean cultivating an alert ear for affective undertones, needs and irritations, which might even lead to drawing the curricular benchmarks and competency targets into question. Finally, as art and literature establish areas of freedom and play, literature teaching, especially, needs to be founded on affective awareness, discursive openness and proceeding voluntariness. (shrink)

Different points of Metzinger's position makes it a peculiar form of representationalism: (1) his distinction between intentional and phenomenal content, in relation to the internalism/externalism divide; (2) the notion of transparency defined at a phenomenal and not epistemic level, together with (3) the felt inwardness of experience. The distinction between reflexive and pre-reflexive phenomenal internality will allow me to reconsider Metzinger's theory of the self and to propose an alternative conception that I will describe both at an epistemic and (...) a phenomenal level. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars’ denunciation of the Myth of the Given was meant to clarify, against empiricism, that perceptual episodes alone are insufficient to ground and justify perceptual knowledge. Sellars showed that in order to accomplish such epistemic tasks, more resources and capacities, such as those involved in using concepts, are needed. Perceptual knowledge belongs to the space of reasons and not to an independent realm of experience. Dan Hutto and Eric Myin have recently presented the Hard Problem of Content as an (...) ensemble of reasons against naturalistic accounts of content. In a nutshell, it states that covariance relations—even though they are naturalistically acceptable explanatory resources—do not constitute content. The authors exploit this move in order to promote their preferred radical enactivist and anti-representationalist option, according to which, basic minds—the lower stratum of cognition—do not involve content. Although it is controversial to argue that the Hard Problem of Content effectively dismisses naturalistic theories of representation, a central aspect of it—the idea that information as covariance does not suffice to explain content—finds support among the defenders of classical cognitive representationalism, such as Marcin Miłkowski. This support—together with the acknowledgment this remark about covariance is a point already made by Sellars in his criticism of the Myth of the Given—has a number of interesting implications. Not only is it of interest for the debates about representationalism in cognitive science, where it can be understood as an anticipatory move, but it also offers some clues and insights for reconsidering some issues along Sellarsian lines—a conflation between two concepts of representation that is often assumed in cognitive science, a distinction between two types of relevant normativities, and a reconsideration of the naturalism involved in such explanations. (shrink)

The paper deals with the enactivist approach to the problem of consciousness. The problem of consciousness is the problem of naturalistic explanation of phenomenal aspects of our experience. According to classical cognitive science, we can explain all mental states as functional, representational states. Many philosophers disagree with this view. They demonstrate that phenomenal qualities of conscious states cannot be understood in terms of mental representations. Contemporary debates about the nature of phenomenal qualities are the debates between representationalists and anti-representationalists. The (...) arguments proposed by anti-representationalists demonstrate the insufficiency of classical representational approach. But it doesn't mean that we should accept the existence of qualia - special nonrepresentational phenomenal properties. It is possible to defend representationalism by reconsidering the nature of mental representations. This article examines the transformation of the concept of mental representation in cognitive science over the last few decades. It demonstrates that the notion of representation in action discussed in enactivist theories can help us to provide the foundation for naturalistic understanding of conscious experience. (shrink)

Recent attempts to define and support realism in semantics seem to acknowledge, as the only defence from skeptical attacks to the notion of meaning, a flat acceptance of the existence of representational relations between language and things in the world. In this paper I reconsider part of the mistrust about the normative character of meaning, in order to show that some of the worries urging the realists to cling on representationalism actually rest on misconceptions. To the contrary, I suggest (...) that normativity is the main strength of a stable realist stance in semantics. Support to this suggestion comes from the reanalysis of some oft-ignored sellarsian themes. (shrink)

Several arguments are considered which purport to demonstrate the impossibility of theory-neutral observation. The most important of these infers the continuity of observation with theory from the presumed continuity of perception with cognition, a doctrine widely espoused in recent cognitive psychology. An alternative psychological account of the relation between cognition and perception is proposed and its epistemological consequences for the observation/theory distinction are then explored.

Carnap is still often portrayed as a “representationalist.” While the genealogy of this prejudice may not actually go back to Neurath’s response to Carnap’s embrace of Tarskian semantics, there is a continuity of motivation and rhetoric. However, based on a reading of the later Neurath-Carnap correspondence reproduced in this volume, it would appear that the apparent dispute between them over semantics really was largely terminological, with certain differences of emphasis amplified by personality differences and the long interruption of personal contact (...) due to the war. Their conceptions of a language of science can be reconciled. Carnap was neither a representationalist nor an anti-representationalist nor an inferentialist, since ultimately to embrace one of these positions is to endorse an “order of explanation” or ontological primacy, and Carnap rejected ontology. (shrink)

Chomsky had been able to look into how various theses—representationalism, biological boundedness, domain specificity, innateness and universal grammar—may be used in explaining the acquisition and mastery of language. Chomsky was able to not only establish the inaccuracy of behaviorism through defending representationalism, but also initiate the development of a more mentalistic conception of both the learning of language and linguistic competence. Because other aspects of Chomsky's nativism are independent of each other, the falsity of behaviorism may be associated (...) with the truth of several other theories. To address this and other issues regarding Chomskyan nativism, the author presents three nonbehaviorist alternatives: 1) Weak nativism which merges innateness with domain specificity; 2) Enlightened empiricism which rejects innateness and accepts domain specificity; and 3) Putnamian empiricism which accepts innateness and rejects domain specificity. (shrink)

This article proposes an account of color constancy based on an examination of the relevant scientific literature. Differences in experimental settings and task instructions that lead to variation in subject performance are given particular attention. Based on the evidence discussed, the core of the proposal made is that there are two different forms of color constancy, one phenomenal and the other projective. This follows the hypothesis of Reeves et al. (Perception & Psychophysics 70:219–228, 2008). Unlike Reeves et al. (Perception & (...) Psychophysics 70:219–228, 2008), it is argued that projective color constancy is crucially dependent upon phenomenal color constancy and certain aspects of scene perception. Additionally, it is hypothesized that capacities that support projective color constancy have an important role to play in facilitating our ability to quickly recognize scenes with diagnostic chromatic properties independently of assignments of colors to object surfaces. (shrink)

ln "Possibilities and the Arguments for Origin Essentialism" Teresa Robertson (1998) contends that the best-known arguments in favour of origin essentialism can succeed only at the cost of violating modal common sense—by denying that any variation in constitution or process of assembly is possible. Focusing on the (Kripke-style) arguments of Nathan Salmon and Graeme Forbes, Robertson shows that both founder in the face of sophisticated Ship of Theseus style considerations. While Robertson is right that neither of the arguments is compelling (...) as formulated, each can be modified to fend off her particular counterexamples; these modifications do not differ in kind from those already needed to deal with ordinary Theseus cases, requiring only a further narrowing of the sufficiency clause from which the necessity of origins is derived. (shrink)

Much of the literature on the African philosophy of education juxtaposes two philosophical strands as mutually exclusive entities; traditional ethnophilosophy on the one hand, and ‘scientific’ African philosophy on the other. While traditional ethnophilosophy is associated with the cultural artefacts, narratives, folklore and music of Africa’s people, ‘scientific’ African philosophy is primarily concerned with the explanations, interpretations and justifications of African thought and practice along the lines of critical and transformative reasoning. These two alternative strands of African philosophy invariably impact (...) understandings of education in different ways: education constituted by cultural action is perceived to be mutually independent from education constituted by reasoned action. Yusef Waghid argues for an African philosophy of education guided by communitarian, reasonable and culture dependent action in order to bridge the conceptual and practical divide between African ethnophilosophy and ‘scientific’ African philosophy. Unlike those who argue that African philosophy of education cannot exist because it does not invoke reason, or that reasoned African philosophy of education is just not possible, Waghid suggests an African philosophy of education constituted by reasoned, culture-dependent action. This book provides an African philosophy aimed at developing a conception of education that can contribute towards imagination, deliberation, and responsibility - actions that can help to enhance justice in educative relations, both in Africa and throughout the world. This book will be essential reading for researchers and academics in the field of the philosophy of education, especially those wanting to learn from the African tradition. (shrink)

The primary goal of this paper is to read al-Fārābī’s Kitāb al-shiʿr [Book of poetry] between the lines. Though it touches upon his other treatises on poetry and poetics, i.e., Risāla fī qawānīn ṣināʿat al-shuʿarāʾ [Essay on the rules of the art of the poets] and Qawl al-Fārābī fī al-tanāsub wa-l-taʾlīf [al-Fārābī’s saying on harmony and composition), it does so only in passing. Emphasizing the primacy of mimesis (muḥākat) in al-Fārābī’s discussion of poetics, this paper demonstrates how poeticity (shiʿriyya), according (...) to al-Fārābī, goes beyond being a mere “textual” or “oral” quality to even encompass various human actions and activities. In doing so, it also underscores how al-Fārābī’s definition(s) of mimesis is not reducible to comparison, simile, metaphoror even the extended metaphor. (shrink)

One of the main challenges of the nonreductionist approach to complex structures and phenomena in philosophy of biology is its defense of the plausibility of the theory of emergence and downward causation. The tension between remaining faithful to the rules of physicalism and physical causal closure, while defending the novelty and distinctiveness of emergents from their basal constituents, makes the argumentation of many proponents of emergentism lacking in coherency and precision. In this article I aim at answering the suggestion of (...) several thinkers to redefine emergence and downward causation in terms of the broader Aristotelian view of causation. In addition, I further develop this interdisciplinary conversation to include theological implications of emergentism, analyzed in reference to Aquinas’ understanding of divine action in terms of the same fourfold division of causes—bringing thus natural science, philosophy, and theology into creative and fruitful dialogue. (shrink)

Most contemporary philosophers of action agree on the following claims. Firstly, the possibility of deviant or wayward causal chains poses a serious problem for the standard-causal theory of action. Secondly, we can distinguish between different kinds of deviant causal chains in the theory of action. In particular, we can distinguish between cases of basic and cases of consequential deviance. Thirdly, the problem of consequential deviance admits of a fairly straightforward solution, whereas the possibility of basic deviance constitutes a separate and (...) difficult problem that requires its own solution. I will argue that the problem of basic deviance is no more troublesome than the problem of consequential deviance, as a solution to the former is implicit in the standard solution to the latter. (shrink)

Moral distress has received much attention in the international nursing literature in recent years. In this article, we describe the evolution of the concept of moral distress among nursing theorists from its initial delineation by the philosopher Jameton to its subsequent deployment as an umbrella concept describing the impact of moral constraints on health professionals and the patients for whom they care. The article raises worries about the way in which the concept of moral distress has been portrayed in some (...) nursing research and expresses concern about the fact that research, so far, has been largely confined to determining the prevalence of experiences of moral distress among nurses. We conclude by proposing a reconsideration, possible reconstruction and multidisciplinary approach to understanding the experiences of all health professionals who have to make difficult moral judgements and decisions in complex situations. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between theology and sociology on two levels. The first is in terms of the general disciplinary closure that has marked much of their coexistence, despite the many topics on which they potentially meet. The second level is more specific and concerns the tension in Britain between religious sociology, in which sociology is put to serve faith, and the secular sociology of religion, where religion is studied scientifically. This tension has been addressed before with respect to (...) the history of sociology in France and the United States, but the British case, hitherto relatively unknown, illustrates the potential there was for a more fruitful relationship between sociology and theology in Britain that went undeveloped as the secular sociology of religion eventually replaced early religious sociology. The existence of religious sociology has been written out of the history of the discipline in Britain, such that when theology and sociology began a more serious engagement in the 1970s in Britain and elsewhere, particularly as biblical studies discovered sociology and as theologians and sociologists first met jointly, this earlier dialogue was entirely overlooked. (shrink)

This book elaborates a moral realism of phenomenological inspiration by introducing the idea that moral experience, primordially, constitutes a perceptual grasp of actions and of their solid traces in the world. The main thesis is that, before any reference to values or to criteria about good and evil—that is, before any reference to specific ethical outlooks—one should explain the very materiality of what necessarily constitutes the ‘moral world’. These claims are substantiated by means of a text- centered interpretation of Aristotle’s (...) _Nicomachean Ethics_ in dialogue with contemporary moral realism. The book concludes with a critique of Heidegger’s, Gadamer’s and Arendt’s approaches to Aristotle’s ethics. (shrink)

Après un siècle et demi de fouilles archéologiques, Éphèse est sans doute l’une des cités d’Asie Mineure les mieux connues. Sa vie religieuse, particulièrement riche, est l’une des mieux documentées. Pourtant, de nombreuses zones d’ombre demeurent en la matière. Un ouvrage consacré à cette cité et à l’archéologie de sa vie religieuse est donc bienvenu. Ce volume fait suite à deux rencontres internationales organisées en 2014 par la Society of Biblical Literature, à Vienne, en collaboration av...

According to the predictive coding theory of cognition , brains are predictive machines that use perception and action to minimize prediction error, i.e. the discrepancy between bottom–up, externally-generated sensory signals and top–down, internally-generated sensory predictions. Many consider PCT to have an explanatory scope that is unparalleled in contemporary cognitive science and see in it a framework that could potentially provide us with a unified account of cognition. It is also commonly assumed that PCT is a representational theory of sorts, in (...) the sense that it postulates that our cognitive contact with the world is mediated by internal representations. However, the exact sense in which PCT is representational remains unclear; neither is it clear that it deserves such status—that is, whether it really invokes structures that are truly and nontrivially representational in nature. In the present article, I argue that the representational pretensions of PCT are completely justified. This is because the theory postulates cognitive structures—namely action-guiding, detachable, structural models that afford representational error detection—that play genuinely representational functions within the cognitive system. (shrink)

This article revisits the author’s influential account of Nietzche as a philosophical naturalist. It identifies the sources of Nietzsche’s position in the German naturalism of the mid-nineteenth century, in particular the work of Friedrich Lange. His naturalism is, however, “speculative” in that he postulates causal mechanisms not confirmed by science. Nietzsche’s ambition to explain morality naturalistically coexists with a “therapeutic” ambition to induce some readers to escape from morality. The article also addresses doubts that might arise against reading Nietzsche as (...) a naturalist. (shrink)

Based on the ongoing work of the agenda-setting Future of Minority Studies national research project, Identity Politics Reconsidered reconceptualizes the scholarly and political significance of social identity. It focuses on the deployment of “identity” within ethnic-, women’s-, disability-, and gay and lesbian studies in order to stimulate discussion about issues that are simultaneously theoretical and practical, ranging from ethics and epistemology to political theory and pedagogical practice. This collection of powerful essays by both well-known and emerging scholars offers original (...) answers to questions concerning the analytical legitimacy of “identity” and “experience,” and the relationships among cultural autonomy, moral universalism, and progressive politics. (shrink)

There is a long-standing tradition of questioning the viability and scientificity of first-person methods. Husserlian reflective methodology, in particular, has been challenged on the basis of its perceived inability to meet the standards of objectivity and reliability, leading to what has been called “phenomenological skepticism” ( Roy, 2007 ). In this article, I reassess this line of objection by outlining Daniel C. Dennett’s empirically driven skepticism and reconstructing his methodological arguments against Husserlian phenomenology. His ensuing phenomenological skepticism is divided into (...) strong skepticism and categorical and gradual versions of weak skepticism. Both strands of Dennett’s criticism are then countered by analyzing the key components of Husserl’s method of phenomenological reflection: epoché and transcendental reduction, intentional analysis, eidetic variation, and intersubjective validation. Laying out the basic features of phenomenological reflection serves two purposes. First, it undermines Dennett’s methodological arguments, which are based on the unfounded assumptions that Husserl is committed to introspection, methodological solipsism, the first-person-plural presumption, and the lone-wolf approach. Second, it shows how Husserl’s own methodology can alleviate the more justified empirical worries concerning overinterpretation, underdescription, and disagreement. Finally, I argue that gradual weak skepticism is the only plausible form of phenomenological skepticism and conclude that Husserlian methodology is well-equipped to combat it. (shrink)

In the Groundwork and all three Critiques, Kant expresses the hope of eventually unifying theoretical and practical reason in one system, with a principle common to both. But he never clarifies what this principle is, leaving scholars to advance different possibilities. I advance a new response to this problem: I claim that Kant begins to refer to what he calls the ‘autonomy of ideas of reason’ in his final decade, enabling a new approach to finally bridging the theoretical and the (...) practical. This concept of autonomy, however, is no longer equivalent to the moral autonomy attributed to the self-legislating will, nor does it refer to the spontaneity of theoretical reason. Instead, it corresponds to the autonomy ascribed to reflective judgment in representing both theoretical and practical ideas of reason. Thus, this conception furnishes a principle, the principle of purposiveness, which I propose as the unifying principle Kant had been seeking. (shrink)

This book argues that critics of consequentialism have not been able to make a successful and comprehensive case against all versions of consequentialism because they have been using the wrong methodology. This methodology relies on the crucial assumption that consequentialist theories share a defining characteristic. This text interprets consequentialism, instead, as a family resemblance term. On that basis, it argues quite an ambitions claim, viz. that all versions of consequentialism should be rejected, including those that have been created in response (...) to conventional criticisms. The book covers a number of classic themes in normative ethics, metaethics and, particularly, ethical methodology and also touches upon certain aspects of experimental moral philosophy. It is written in clear language and is analytic in its argumentative style. As such, the book should appeal to students, graduate students as well as professional academics with an interest in analytic moral philosophy. (shrink)

Integrating "ethics all the way through" an organization suggests that the issue of moral agency and the corporation be reconsidered. Is the corporation a moral agent in some sense or is it no more than the people who are a part of the organization? Views which stress the role of the individual lose sight of the whole corporate entity, and views which think of the corporation as a collective lose sight of the individual. A view which rejects both these (...) alternatives sees the corporation as a type of community where there is a dynamic tension between the corporation as a whole and the individuals who are part of the organization. This view has implications relative to the focus of efforts to integrate ethics throughout an organization. (shrink)