This book about the philosophy of science is the second out of four volumes by Richard Ned Lebow in this book series. It not only provides a useful overview of this broad topic, but also provides deeper insight into specific topics like the philosophy of science causation, epistemology and methods, and especially on counter factual analysis.

Conversely to the United States, lobbying consulting in France is a relatively recent activity and is perceived negatively by a majority of the population. Influencing public decision-making is certainly a sensitive occupation at both managerial and societal levels. This is why ethics applied to business can play a central role while establishing the practice of lobbying in France. This paper examines the issues and the practices of ethics in lobbying consulting. The field for this exploratory study is a lobbying consultancy (...) firm based in France. Our research is developed through a 3-month participant observation and complemented with secondary data on the lobbying profession in France. The results of this research are developed along two lines: The practice of ethics in lobbying consultancy firms reveals its limits as well as a framework worth developing. The players and the represented client topics are potential dangers for ethical lobbying firms. This intervention research has nevertheless allowed us to observe the emergence of an effective regulation approach: the ethics of exemplarity as potentially illustrated by a representative actor of the French lobbying consulting profession. The stakes of ethics are both internal and external to lobbying consulting professionals in France. Internally, ethics act as a structuring element enabling this profession to establish itself with practices and deontological codes; externally, it clarifies the relationship between lobbying consultants and their major stakeholders including customers, government, and the civil society. (shrink)

This research describes and empirically evaluates the application of a business ethics pedagogy informed by neuroscience and evolutionary biology that suggest ethical decisions are made unconsciously and emotionally. Moral Foundation Theory (MFT) provides a framework that considers a range of values individuals rely on for decision-making. This relates to Virtue ethics (VE) that develops intellectual and character virtues, requires emotional development and is thus suitable for guiding business ethics pedagogy. This study focuses on a business ethics course integrating intellectual virtue (...) and character virtue pedagogies, including contemplative and emotional intelligence skills practices. The aim of the course is to develop character, providing future managers the means to enact ethical decision-making through self-awareness of emotions, intrinsic values and translate these into ethical behavior. Pre-Post Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Moral Foundation Questionnaires (MFQ) are used to evaluate the development of students’ character virtues, i.e., increased emotional awareness, emotional regulation and intrinsic values. This paper mainly seeks to understand how to develop ethical behavior, beyond learning didactic definitions of what is ethically right and what is wrong, i.e. focusing on the learning process that can lead to personal ethical judgment and conduct. The related pedagogy integrates transdisciplinary theories and practices, and as such suggests a holistic approach to ethical behavior transformation. The results indicate limited, significant changes in all measures except emotional awareness. This developing field requires more research to identify the contributions of MFT and related pedagogy to students’ ethical development. (shrink)

Richard Bett presents a ground-breaking study of Pyrrho of Elis, who lived in the late fourth and early third centuries BC and is the supposed originator of Greek scepticism. In the absence of surviving works by Pyrrho, scholars have tended to treat his thought as essentially the same as the long subsequent sceptical tradition which styled itself 'Pyrrhonism'. Bett argues, on the contrary, that Pyrrho's philosophy was significantly different from this later tradition, and offers the first detailed account of (...) that philosophy in this light. Bett considers why Pyrrho was adopted as the figurehead for that tradition: his answer suggests that we should distinguish two phases within Pyrrhonism, of which the initial phase is much closer to Pyrrho's own thought than is the better-known later phase. Bett also investigates the origins and antecedents of Pyrrho's ideas; in particular, Plato is singled out as an important inspiration. The result is the first comprehensive picture of this key figure in the development of philosophy. The new claims that Bett puts forward have major implications for the history and interpretation of ancient Greek thought. (shrink)

Aging populations are a major consideration for socio-economic development in the early 21st century. This demographic change is mainly seen as a threat rather than as an opportunity to improve the quality of human life. Aging population is taking place in every continent of the world with Europe in the least favourable situation due to its aging population and reduction in economic competitiveness. Economic Foundations for Creative Aging Policy offers public policy ideas to construct positive answers for ageing populations. (...) This exciting new volume searches for economic solutions that can enable effective social policy concerning the elderly. Klimczuk covers theoretical analysis and case study descriptions of good practices, to suggest strategies that could be internationally popularised. (shrink)

Theodicy would be an impossible task if the only good states were pleasures and the only bad states were pains. This paper lists many other and greater goods, and shows that many of these cannot be had without corresponding bad states. These goods include the satisfaction of persistent desires, desires for incompatible good states, compassion with people in serious trouble, free choice of the good despite temptation, and being of use to others in providing knowledge and opportunities of certain sorts (...) for them. (shrink)

Although some attention has been devoted to assessing the attitudes and concerns of businesspeople toward ethics, relatively little attention has focused on the attitudes and concerns of tomorrow's business leaders, today's college students. In this investigation a national sample was utilized to study college students' attitudes toward business ethics, with the results being analyzed by academic classification, academic major, and sex. Results of the investigation indicate that college students are currently somewhat concerned about business ethics in general, and that (...) female students in particular are more concerned about ethical issues than are their male counterparts. (shrink)

Richard J. Bernstein argues that many of the important themes in philosophy during the past 150 years are variations and developments of ideas that were prominent in the classical American pragmatists: Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George H. Mead. The pragmatic thinkers reject a sharp dichotomy between subject and object, mind-body dualism, the quest for certainty, and the spectator theory of knowledge. They seek to bring about a sea change in philosophy that highlights the social character (...) of human experience and normative social practices, the self-correcting nature of all inquiry, and the continuity of theory and practice. And they - especially James, Dewey, and Mead - emphasize the democratic ethical-political consequences of a pragmatic orientation. Many of the themes developed by the pragmatic thinkers were central to the work of major twentieth-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein and Heidegger, but the so-called analytic/Continental split obscures this underlying continuity. Bernstein develops an alternative reading of contemporary philosophy that brings out the persistence and continuity of pragmatic themes. He explains why the discussion of pragmatism is alive, varied, and widespread"--Jacket. (shrink)

'Tis true governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit everyone who enjoys a share of the protection should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own consent, i.e., the consent of the majority giving it either by themselves or their representatives chosen by them. For if any one shall claim a power to lay and levy taxes on the people, by his own authority, and (...) without such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property and subverts the end of government. For what property have I in that which another may by right take when he pleases to himself. (shrink)

Winfield’s explication of Hegel’s theory of mind, especially Hegel’s theory of intelligence, is, he suggests, important for solving three problems that continue to haunt contemporary work in the philosophy of mind and epistemology: 1) A problem concerning the acquisition of language and its place in an account of consciousness, 2) A problem concerning the objectivity of representations, and 3) A problem concerning the grounds of knowing. I think Winfield is correct in identifying all three problems as having their source in (...) Kantian philosophy. I examine these three problems more carefully through a critical lens aimed at recent work by John McDowell and Robert Brandom. Both philosophers claim certain Hegelian influences. I argue that, in crucial ways, both Brandom and McDowell have each inherited the problems Hegel sought to solve and that are so clearly articulated in Winfield’s essay. (shrink)

The article assesses Arthur Schopenhauer’s reinterpretation of religious myths, particularly those of Christianity, in terms of his philosophical system, and applies his ideas to the mythical cosmology of shamanistic and animistic religions. Schopenhauer, a 19th-century Romantic philosopher, although an atheist himself, took religious myths very seriously, translating them into the terms of his metaphysical system. His view was that Roman Catholicism, for him the true form of Christianity, shared the pessimism and the focus on suffering of Hinduism and Buddhism, rather (...) than the alleged optimism of Protestantism, Judaism and Islam, excepting the myth of the Fall. For Schopenhauer, this pessimism was evident in the central symbol of Christianity, the figure of the crucified Christ. Schopenhauer put forward his ethic of compassion (and asceticism), aligning him, despite his atheism, with the altruistic ethics of the major world religions. The article also explores the extent to which Schopenhauer’s philosophy as, arguably, a form of panpsychism can be applied to shamanistic and animistic religions. While Schopenhauer translated religious myths into his metaphysical terms – based ultimately on Kant’s distinction between phenomena (things as they appear) and noumena (things as they are) – his understanding of the noumenon as the universal will to life was itself an explanatory myth for an essentially unknowable reality. Therefore, the attempt of Schopenhauer’s philosophy to translate myth into metaphysics in turn contained a myth at its very core. Nonetheless, the article argues that Schopenhauer’s argument may satisfy those dissatisfied with materialism’s shortcomings yet not willing to subscribe to a supernatural order.Contribution: The article applies to shamanism and animism the neglected philosopher Schopenhauer’s method of interpreting religious myths in terms of his metaphysical system, relating this very briefly to current philosophical debates on panpsychism. (shrink)

This volume offers a comprehensive survey of the main periods, schools, and individual proponents of scepticism in the ancient Greek and Roman world. The contributors examine the major developments chronologically and historically, ranging from the early antecedents of scepticism to the Pyrrhonist tradition. They address the central philosophical and interpretive problems surrounding the sceptics' ideas on subjects including belief, action, and ethics. Finally, they explore the effects which these forms of scepticism had beyond the ancient period, and the ways (...) in which ancient scepticism differs from scepticism as it has been understood since Descartes. The volume will serve as an accessible and wide-ranging introduction to the subject for non-specialists, while also offering considerable depth and detail for more advanced readers. (shrink)

This volume is a comprehensive roadmap to the burgeoning area of affective sciences, which now spans several disciplines. The Handbook brings together, for the first time, the various strands of inquiry and latest research in the scientific study of the relationship between the mechanisms of the brain and the psychology of mind. In recent years, scientists have made considerable advances in understanding how brain processes shape emotions and are changed by human emotion. Drawing on a wide range of neuroimaging techniques, (...) neuropsychological assessment, and clinical research, scientists are beginning to understand the biological mechanisms for emotions. As a result, researchers are gaining insight into such compelling questions as: How do people experience life emotionally? Why do people respond so differently to the same experiences? What can the face tell us about internal states? How does emotion in significant social relationships influence health? Are there basic emotions common to all humans? This volume brings together the most eminent scholars in the field to present, in sixty original chapters, the latest research and theories in the field. The book is divided into ten sections: Neuroscience; Autonomic Psychophysiology; Genetics and Development; Expression; Components of Emotion; Personality; Emotion and Social Processes; Adaptation, Culture, and Evolution; Emotion and Psychopathology; and Emotion and Health. This major new volume will be an invaluable resource for researchers that will define affective sciences for the next decade. (shrink)

When we engage with a work of fiction we gain knowledge about what is fictionally true in that work. Our grasp of what is true in a fiction is central to our engagement with representational works of art, and to our assessments of their merits. Of course, it is sometimes difficult to determine what is fictional – it is a good question whether the main character of American Psycho is genuinely psychotic or merely delusional, for instance. (And even in this (...) case, our ignorance itself is crucial to how we engage with the story and assess its qualities.) But in the vast majority of cases, we have no difficulty distinguishing what is fictionally true from what is not. Every attentive reader of Bleak House knows that it is fictional that Esther is Lady Dedlock’s daughter, but not fictional that Ada is the daughter of John Jarndyce. Moreover, we do not think that our judgements about what is fictional are based on guesswork. We have a folk theory of fictional truth, in the sense that we have a relatively stable framework upon which we rely when we engage with fiction, and we face the challenge of characterizing that theory systematically. (shrink)

Over the last 50 years, the English philosopher Richard Swinburne (b. 1934) has been a very influential proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God (natural theology). His major philosophical contributions lie in the areas of philosophy of science and philosophy of religion. From a general philosophical point of view, Swinburne stimulated much discussion with his early work in the philosophy of religion. He has also played a role (a) in the recent debate over the mind-body problem, (...) and (b) in the debate on libertarian free will. Swinburne is also noted as one of the foremost current Christian apologists, arguing that faith in Christian God is rational and coherent in a rigorous philosophical sense. My discussion with Richard Swinburne revisits the analytic and non-analytic philosophy of religion. Above all, however, it aims at shedding light on Swinburne’s thought regarding some important philosophical issues, such as the Kantian arguments on the existence of God, the relationship between ratio and one’s immediate experience of God (empireia), “strong possibilities” the problem of the existence of evil in the world, but also the theological significance and value of Orthodoxy in contrast to other Christian creeds or even religions. (shrink)

A new title from Routledge's Major Works series, Major Themes in Education, Philosophy of Education II is a five-volume 'mini library' of the very best scholarship. It is an essential successor collection to Philosophy of Education (1998) (978-0-415-12944-2), edited by Paul Hurst and Patricia White, and described by the Bulletin of the UK-Japan Education Forum as 'indispensable for libraries'. Philosophy of Education (1998) was the first comprehensive collection of the field's canonical and cutting-edge research, and this new collection (...) now takes full account of the numerous important developments that have taken place since its appearance. Moreover, Philosophy of Education II also includes coverage of many new areas and topics without the scope of the first collection. With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the learned editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Philosophy of Education II is a crucial work of reference. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital resource. (shrink)

Adaptations can occur at different hierarchical levels (e.g., cells and multicellular organisms), but it can be difficult to identify the level(s) of adaptation in specific cases. A major problem is that selection at a lower level can filter up, creating the illusion of selection at a higher level. We use optimality modeling of the volvocine algae to explore the emergence of genuine group (i.e., colony-level) adaptations. We find that it is helpful to develop an explicit model for what group (...) fitness would be in the absence of group-level relationships between traits and group fitness. We call this “counterfactual fitness,” because in many actual cases of interest there are group-level relationships. Once counterfactual fitness is modeled, the difference between effects that filter up and genuine group selection is explicit and so, therefore, is the distinction between apparent and genuine group adaptations. We call the latter group-specific adaptations. Recognizing group-specific adaptations is important because only group-specific adaptations would cause the lower-level units (cells in this case) to be maladapted if they were to leave the group and enter a global cell-level population. Thus, as group-specific adaptations evolve, they create selective pressure for increased cohesiveness and individuality of groups. This article suggests that group-specific adaptations could be present in the simplest, earliest branching colonial volvocine species, which do not have distinct specialized cells. The article also makes predictions about the kind of empirical evidence needed to support or refute the hypothesis that a particular trait is a group-level adaptation. (shrink)

Multiple-vote majority rule is a procedure for making group decisions in which individuals weight their votes on issues in accordance with how competent they are on them. When individuals are motivated by the truth and know their relative competence on different issues, multiple-vote majority rule performs nearly as well, epistemically speaking, as rule by an expert oligarchy, but is still acceptable from the point of view of equal participation in the political process.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your (...) Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.A CASE FOR MULTIPLE-VOTE MAJORITY RULEVolume 9, Issue 1Richard Bradley and Christopher ThompsonDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.5Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. A CASE FOR MULTIPLE-VOTE MAJORITY RULEVolume 9, Issue 1Richard Bradley and Christopher ThompsonDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.5Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. A CASE FOR MULTIPLE-VOTE MAJORITY RULEVolume 9, Issue 1Richard Bradley and Christopher ThompsonDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.5Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

A generation ago, the field of business ethics largely abandoned analyzing the broader issue of social justice to focus upon more micro concerns. Donaldson applied the social contract tradition of Locke and Rawls to the ethics of management decision-making, and with Dunfee, has advanced this project ever since. Current events suggest that if the field is to remain relevant it needs to return to examining social and economic fairness, and Rawl's approach to social contracting suggests a way to start. First, (...) however, the field needs to discard the weaker and counterproductive aspects of its Lockean legacy: Locke's hostility to government activism and his indifference with regard to outcomes for the bulk of society. Donaldson's and Dunfee's social contracting approach is not suited to, nor was it designed to, analyze or resolve broad issues of social and economic justice. Their postulated network of communities upon which they rely is problematic in a number of ways, and while they take the legal and political status quo into account, their method does not deal with the historical reality that, as the economic and social environment changes, promoting greater justice requires new and sometimes coercive government interventions. Rawls's work, however, does acknowledge the historically demonstrable necessity of using the power of government to help to achieve desirable social outcomes. While he rejected Mill's methodology, Rawls was inspired by the earlier philosopher's concerns for social justice at a time of major economic change. The field would do well to follow the example of both men in this respect. (shrink)

Emotion is normally regulated in the human brain by a complex circuit consisting of the orbital frontal cortex, amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and several other interconnected regions. There are both genetic and environmental contributions to the structure and function of this circuitry. We posit that impulsive aggression and violence arise as a consequence of faulty emotion regulation. Indeed, the prefrontal cortex receives a major serotonergic projection, which is dysfunctional in individuals who show impulsive violence. Individuals vulnerable to faulty regulation (...) of negative emotion are at risk for violence and aggression. Research on the neural circuitry of emotion regulation suggests new avenues of intervention for such at-risk populations. (shrink)

The current status of string theory is assessed quite differently by most of the theory’s exponents than by the majority of physicists in other fields. While the former tend to have a high degree of trust in string theory’s viability, the latter largely share a substantially more skeptical point of view. This article argues that the controversy can be best understood in terms of a paradigmatic rift between the two sides over their understandings of theory assessment. An attempt is made (...) to evaluate the two conflicting paradigms on their own terms. †To contact the author, please write to: Institute Vienna Circle, University of Vienna, Universtitätscampus Spitalgasse 2‐4, Hof 1, 1090 Vienna, Austria; e‐mail: richard[email protected]. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Richard H. Popkin 1923-2005Harry M. Bracken and Richard A. WatsonRichard H. Popkin, founding editor of the journal of the History of Philosophy, died on April 14, 2005. He was 81 years old and had continued his research and writing to the last moment before he entered the hospital on march 21st with extreme respiratory difficulties.Popkin's The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (1960) revolutionized the study (...) and understanding of early modern philosophy. Popkin entered the minds and world of thinkers from Erasmus to Descartes in a way few other scholars had done, and he showed how the development of philosophy and science was far from an easy series of steps from success to success. Instead, philosophers and scientists pursued a dozen lines from the scepticism of Sextus Empiricus through religious belief, atheism, numerology, astrology, alchemy, eschatology, magic, and millenarianism—a maelstrom of ideas out of which emerged the major figures and ideas of Modern philosophy and science. Dick once explained that actually he lived in the 17th century, and certainly he knew as many of those thinkers and their thoughts as did many people who actually lived at that time. Of course Popkin did not originate the notion of exploring the history of philosophy in the context of its times, but he made that approach central today. It led him not only through the Early Modern period, but also from medieval jewish philosophy to a critical analysis of the Kennedy assassination.Popkin received his PhD at Columbia University, and in his career he taught at the universities of Connecticut, Iowa, California (San Diego and Los Angeles), Washington University in St. Louis, and Harvey Mudd College. He served as the first editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, and as president of JHP, Inc. For many years, and was active in its operation for over four decades, having attended the annual meeting of the Board of Directors a little over a month before he died. After retirement, he lived in close association with the Clark Library in Los Angeles. He was well known to scholars and librarians throughout the world. Whatever library he visited, he was likely to find some obscure or hidden document that would either clear up some mystery, or give rise to a new problem. His memory was extraordinary. During his final years when he was virtually blind, he would sift through his mind, send assistants off to look for something that had to be in this or that library and write papers in his head for later dictation. Besides his memory, indispensable throughout his lifetime he had Julie, his co-worker and wife of 60 years, without whom, the Popkin we knew could not have existed.These few paragraphs are meant to be neither an obituary nor an adequate memorial. We were Dick's first two PhDs, and we were barely five years his junior. He treated us from the beginning as colleagues and he became a lifelong friend. He changed our lives, as he did the lives of many other aspiring scholars. We miss him.Copyright © 2005 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc.... (shrink)

The ideas of Martin Heidegger, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, have had a profound influence on work in literary theory and aesthetics, as well as on mainstream philosophy. This book offers a clear and concise guide to Heidegger's notoriously complex writings, while giving special attention to his major work Being and Time. Richard McDonough adds historical context by exploring Heidegger's intellectual roots in German idealism and ancient Greek philosophy, and introduces readers to the (...) key themes in Heidegger's work including Dasein, Existenz, time, conscience, death, and phenomenology. This book, which also considers Heidegger's controversial ethics and politics, would make an excellent text for both introductory and advanced undergraduate courses on existentialism, phenomenology, continental philosophy, and Heidegger himself. (shrink)

Clearly, Marx thought he was promoting democratic values. In the Manifesto, the immediate goal of socialism is summed up as “to win the battle of democracy.” Marx sees the reduction of individuality as one of the greatest injuries done by a system in which most people buy and sell their labor power on terms over which they have little control. As they supervised translations and re-issues of the Manifesto, Marx and Engels singled out just one point as a major (...) topic on which their view in 1848 had been superseded. The forms of government needed to be changed to give people more control over the state, a change in structure pioneered by the Paris Commune. (shrink)

There is a venerable philosophical tradition that views human beings as intrinsically rational, though even the most ardent defender of this view would admit that under certain circumstances people’s decisions and thought processes can be very irrational indeed. When people are extremely tired, or drunk, or in the grip of rage, they sometimes reason and act in ways that no account of rationality would condone. About thirty years ago, Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman and a number of other psychologists began reporting (...) findings suggesting much deeper problems with the traditional idea that human beings are intrinsically rational animals. What these studies demonstrated is that even under quite ordinary circumstances where fatigue, drugs and strong emotions are not factors, people reason and make judgments in ways that systematically violate familiar canons of rationality on a wide array of problems. Those first surprising studies sparked the growth of a major research tradition whose impact has been felt in economics, political theory, medicine and other areas far removed from cognitive science. In Section 2, we will sketch a few of the better known experimental findings in this area. We’ve chosen these particular findings because they will play a role at a later stage of the paper. For readers who would like a deeper and more systematic account of the fascinating and disquieting research on reasoning and judgment, there are now several excellent texts and anthologies available. (shrink)

Richard Sylvan died suddenly at the age of 60, when he had just completed this major text. But though this volume is the mature expression of one of our foremost modern philosophers, it remains, like all his work, pioneering, eclectic and controversial. Sylvan's theory of 'plurallism', the culmination of his life's work, is the subject of this important text. In his own characteristically provocative words, 'There is not merely a plurality of correct theories and more or less satisfactory (...) worldviews: there is a corresponding plurality of actual worlds. Plurality penetrates deeper in full plurallism than linguistic surface or than conceptual or theoretical structure, to worlds...There is no single fact of the matter, there are facts and matters.'. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Women Englishing Homer RICHARD HUGHES GIBSON Seven kingdoms strove in which should swell the womb / That bore great Homer; whom Fame freed from tomb,” so begins the fourth of “Certain ancient Greek Epigrams ” that George Chapman placed at the head of his Odyssey at its debut in 1615.1 The epigram was no mere antiquarian dressing for the text. It suggests a historical parallel with the (...) translator’s own feat—for this Odyssey appeared on the heels of Chapman’s 1611 Iliad, the first complete English translation of Homer directly from the Greek. Indeed, the title page of that Iliad boasted, “Never before in any language truly translated” (italics mine). In “Englishing ” Homer (as he put it), Chapman had vanquished not only local rivals but also the whole international field.2 Through Chapman, England bore Homer anew. Yet within a few decades challengers appeared. An octogenarian Thomas Hobbes published an Odyssey translation in 1675 and an Iliad the following year. Alexander Pope’s versions (Iliad, 1715–1720; Odyssey, 1726) were bestsellers in the next century, yet others soon enough sought to better them, including the poet William Cowper (Iliad, 1791; Odyssey, 1809). The rate of Homeric production then intensified in the nineteenth century, becoming in Edith Hall’s apt phrase a “national pastime” in Victorian Britain—and, I would add, in the United States too.3 In the 1860s, a new English Iliad or Odyssey debuted nearly every year, making Matthew Arnold, then Professor of Poetry at Oxford, seem prescient in selecting “On Translating Homer” as the topic for his 1860 lecture series. Anglo-American output of new English Homers has been steady ever since. The opening decades arion 26.3 winter 2019 of our century have been especially high-yielding—more than ten new Iliads and eight new Odysseys have appeared in print alongside fresh editions of twentieth-century favorites. Digital versions now circulate, too. To Chapman we might thus reply: Once seven Greek cities strove to be Homer’s nurse; now seventy tomes vie to be his English verse. Run down the complete bibliography, and a pattern already hinted in my list of notables becomes pronounced: name after name after name belongs to a man. Flip around a bit, and one can often find traces of women in these volumes. Hobbes, for example, argued in the preface to his translations that women have as “just” a “pretence” (in the sense of “claim”) as men to the moral education afforded by heroic poems, though one might cynically read this as a marketing strategy.4 Pope readily acknowledged his debt to the scholarship of Anne Le Fèvre Dacier, Homer’s first French female translator, and listed prominent female supporters in the subscription lists at the front of his editions.5 Women thus long factored into the business of “Englishing” classical texts, though almost exclusively as paying audience members. For more than four centuries, Homer’s English audience listened to a boys’ choir. That tune has only just begun to change thanks to the efforts of three women: the classicist and nonfiction writer Caroline Alexander, who became the first woman to publish a complete English Iliad in 2015; Emily Wilson, Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, who published the first English Odyssey by a female translator in 2017; and the poet Alice Oswald, whose selective translation of the Iliad, Memorial, appeared in 2011.6 By virtue of their appearance in such short order, these books have been, and surely will be henceforth, grouped together. And rightly so: ending the male monopoly on the English channel to Homer is a major development. The Homeric epics have not only shaped Western culture; they enjoy enduring prestige. You still need to know Homer to fancy yourself “well-read.” These three books are thus 36 on women englishing homer potent symbols. They mark the passage of English-speaking women from the audience of male efforts to curate and transmit tradition to participants in those endeavors—from the subscription lists, we might say, to the title page. We sell these translations short, though, if we allow their collective meaning to obscure the patent differences in Alexander’s, Wilson’s, and Oswald... (shrink)

Contemporary literature on consciousness, with some exceptions, rarely considers the olfactory system. In this article the characteristics of olfactory consciousness, viewed from the standpoint of the phenomenal /access distinction, are examined relative to the major senses. The review details several qualitative differences in both olfactory P consciousness and A consciousness . The basis for these differences is argued to arise from the functions that the olfactory system performs and from the unique neural architecture needed to instantiate them. These data (...) suggest, at a minimum, that P and A consciousness are uniquely configured in olfaction and an argument can be made that the P and A distinction may not hold for this sensory system. (shrink)

Wijdicks and colleagues1 recently presented the Full Outline of UnResponsiveness (FOUR) scale as an alternative to the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS)2 in the evaluation of consciousness in severely brain-damaged patients. They studied 120 patients in an intensive care setting (mainly neuro-intensive care) and claimed that “the FOUR score detects a locked-in syndrome, as well as the presence of a vegetative state.”1 We fully agree that the FOUR is advantageous in identifying locked-in patients given that it specifically tests for eye movements (...) or blinking on command. This is welcomed given that misdiagnosis of the locked-in syndrome has been shown to occur in more than half of the cases (see Laureys and colleagues3 for review). As for the diagnosis of the vegetative state, the scale explicitly tests for visual pursuit, and hence can disentangle the vegetative state from the minimally conscious state (MCS). The diagnostic criteria for MCS have been proposed4 only recently, but Wijdicks and colleagues1 do not mention the existence of this clinical entity in their article. As for the vegetative state, MCS can be encountered in the acute or subacute setting as a transitional state on the way to further recovery, or it can be a more chronic or even permanent condition. The MCS refers to patients showing inconsistent, albeit clearly discernible, minimal behavioral evidence of consciousness (eg, localization of noxious stimuli, eye fixation or tracking, reproducible movement to command, or nonfunctional verbalization).4 The FOUR scale does not test for all of the behavioral criteria required to diagnose MCS.4 It is known from the literature (see Majerus and colleagues5 for review) that about a third of patients diagnosed with vegetative state are actually in MCS, and this misdiagnosis can lead to major clinical, therapeutic, and ethical consequences. We tested the ability of the newly proposed FOUR scale to correctly diagnose the vegetative state in an acute (intensive care and neurology ward) and chronic (neurorehabilitation) setting.. (shrink)

In Liberalism and Pluralism, Richard Bellamy explores the challenges posed by conflicting values, interests and identities to liberal democracy. Conventional liberal thought is no longer suited to the complex, plural societies of today. By analyzing the three major strands of liberal thought as represented by Hayek, Rawls and Walzer, the author reveals how standard liberalism has tried to circumvent unstable settlements. This book establishes a more satisfactory alternative: namely, negotiated compromise.

Leishmania major infection of inbred mice leads to a major dichotomous response—death or survival—that depends on the strain of mice. This finding has motivated efforts to locate genetic determinants of disease susceptibility. Genotyping studies have confirmed a complex multilocus trait, but studies directed at the biology of the response suggest identifiable components of susceptibility that may direct the genetic investigations. A confluence of parasite variables—residence in macrophages, class II-dependent immunity, and avoidance of early IL-12 induction—with host factors—a prominent (...) helper T-cell precursor frequency to a dominant parasite epitope and a bias in IL-4 gene activation—conspires to drive an aberrant immune response in animals that suffer fatal disease. These insights may lead to an understanding of factors that focus responses on dominant antigens and that mold the naive T-cell repertoire. Collectively, such factors might contribute to the pathogenesis of other infectious and autoimmune diseases. BioEssays 21:510–518, 1999. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The more the number of people who live on Earth grows, the more significant are the cuts individuals must accept in realization of their own freedom, so as not to limit the freedom of others. With the growing population on the finite planet the real space for freedom of each individual decreases. Moreover, the growth of complexity of the global industrial civilization increases the degree of interdependence on one hand, on the other the degree of mutual trust decreases as a (...) result of the imperative of growth and profit, and without it no human society can function in the long term. Access to sources necessary for the realization of fundamental freedoms is unequal, and, in fact, it thus limits its accessibility for the majority of human population. Philosophical reflection then should cope with question, whether the range of guaranteed freedoms can be broadened or at least sustained when the space for its realization with the growing human population struggling for increasingly limited resources narrows. (shrink)

Recent work on gene concepts has been influenced by recognition of the extent to which RNA transcripts from a given DNA sequence yield different products in different cellular environments. These transcripts are altered in many ways and yield many products based, somehow, on the sequence of nucleotides in the DNA. I focus on alternative splicing of RNA transcripts (which often yields distinct proteins from the same raw transcript) and on 'gene sharing', in which a single gene produces distinct proteins with (...) the exact same amino acid sequence. These are instances of molecular pleiotropy, in which distinct molecules are derived from a single putative gene. In such cases the cellular and external environments play major roles in determining which protein is produced. Where there is molecular pleiotropy, alternative gene concepts are naturally deployed; molecular epigenesis (revision of sequence-based information by altering molecular conformations or by action of non-informational molecules) plays a major role in orderly development. These results show that gene concepts in molecular biology do, and should, have both structural and functional components. They also show the need for a plurality of gene concepts and reveal fundamental difficulties in stabilizing gene concepts solely by reference to nucleotide sequence. (shrink)

Chinese and Greco-Roman ethics present highly articulate views on how one should live; both of these traditions remain influential in modern philosophy. The question arises how these traditions can be compared with one another. Comparative ethics is a relatively young discipline; this volume is a major contribution to the field. Fundamental questions about the nature of comparing ethics are treated in two introductory chapters, and core issues in each of the traditions are addressed: harmony, virtue, friendship, knowledge, the relation (...) of ethics to morality, relativism, emotions, being and unity, simplicity and complexity, and prediction. (shrink)

About one and a half decades ago, two prominent reports were published in the United States which strongly influenced subsequent international discussions on the topic of human enhancement: a 2002 report on “converging technologies for improving human performance”, based on a workshop which was organised by the US National Science Foundation and the US Department of Commerce in December 2001, and the first report of US President George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, published in October 2003 with the title Beyond (...) Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness. The 2002 report included a wide variety of contributions from academics in various fields of research, from representatives of US institutions, and from companies. Due primarily to the influence of the two NSF staff editing the report, it can be regarded as the first major instance of the influence of transhumanism, a techno-futurist ideology and movement, on the US technology and innovation discourse. The PCBE report, on the other hand, is a prime example of a conservative critique of the transhumanist notion of human enhancement. In this invited contribution, these two crucial publications are analysed mainly in order to point out the relevance of philosophical anthropology as developed since the 1920s by Helmuth Plessner and others. This remarkable school of thought is experiencing a revival in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, and, to some extent, in the English-speaking world. In this article, it is argued that philosophical anthropology provides us with an important alternative to both anthropological essentialism and scientism, two approaches that are still highly relevant in current discourse on human enhancement. (shrink)

First published in 1974, this book presents a coherent collection of major articles by Richard Stanley Peters. It displays his work on psychology and philosophy, with special attention given to the areas of ethical development and human understanding. The book is split into four parts. The first combines a critique of psychological theories, especially those of Freud, Piaget and the Behaviourists, with some articles on the nature and development of reason and the emotions. The second looks in historical (...) order at ethical development. The third part combines a novel approach to the problem of understanding other people, whilst the fourth part is biographical in an unusual way. The volume can be viewed as a companion to the author’s _Ethics and Education _and will appeal to students and teachers of education, philosophy and psychology, as well as to the interested non-specialist reader. (shrink)

It is commonly held that there is no place for the 'now’ in physics, and also that the passing of time is something subjective, having to do with the way reality is experienced but not with the way reality is. Indeed, the majority of modern theoretical physicists and philosophers of physics contend that the passing of time is incompatible with modern physical theory, and excluded in a fundamental description of physical reality. This book provides a forceful rebuttal of such claims. (...) In successive chapters the author explains the historical precedents of the modern opposition to time flow, giving careful expositions of matters relevant to becoming in classical physics, the special and general theories of relativity, and quantum theory, without presupposing prior expertise in these subjects. Analysing the arguments of thinkers ranging from Aristotle, Russell, and Bergson to the proponents of quantum gravity, he contends that the passage of time, understood as a local becoming of events out of those in their past at varying rates, is not only compatible with the theories of modern physics, but implicit in them. (shrink)

Genome editing, for instance by CRISPR-Cas, is a major advancement of the last 10 years in medicine but questions ethically our practices. In particular, human embryo heritable genome editing is a source of great controversy. We explored how this ethical question was debated in the literature from PubMed database, in a period of 4 years (2016–2020) around the announcement of the ‘CRISPR babies’ Chinese experiment in November 2018. We evaluated the weight of the arguments for and against this topic, (...) through an analysis of reviews published on this question. The most important arguments come from the technical perspective: safety issues and benefits, putative long-term effects on the future generations and the need to assess this aspect. Next, foreseeable clinical benefits and the alternatives to these methods are discussed. The number of people that would benefit from such techniques is also considered. However, social and anthropological issues are addressed in a more disparate way. Parenthood and desire for children are sometimes overlooked. Few authors mention social justice, stigmatisation and equality of access. Consent and information are more clearly addressed, as well as the question of the relationship between generations. Finally, the effects on the nature of humankind or human species are far from being consensual; the risks of enhancement, eugenics and transhumanism are raised. We conclude that the risks associated with the immaturity of the technique were at the forefront of the ethical debate on human embryo heritable genome editing. Their consequences were seen as more immediate and easier to handle than those of sociological or anthropological projections, which are more speculative in nature. (shrink)

This collection of eleven papers by Elijah Millgram (nine of which have been previously published) is ostensibly united by the thesis that the best way to go about assessing moral theories is to identify the view of practical reasoning that each such theory rests upon, and evaluate the adequacy of these respective theories of practical reasoning. The correct moral theory, Millgram assures us, will be the one that is paired with the best theory of practical reasoning. He outlines this methodology (...) in a substantial (32 pp.) introduction. Why should we adopt Millgram’s method? A host of concerns immediately leap to mind. If two or more different moral theories rest on the same theory of practical reasoning, then how would discovering the latter to be the correct theory of practical reasoning help us decide among the moral theories? What if a given moral theory is consistent with two or more different theories of practical reasoning? What if we cannot evaluate theories of practical reasoning independently of having adopted a moral perspective? Millgram doesn’t address these natural questions head on, but rather proposes that the essays of the volume collectively constitute a “feasibility demonstration” (p. 3) of the method. In other words, the only way that we will be persuaded that the pairings between moral theories and practical reasoning theories are tight enough to support this grand project is to get our hands dirty in detailed discussion of particular moral theories, particular theories of practical reasoning, and the relations between them. It is through seeing the method at work that we will become convinced, Millgram hopes, of several interlocking theses: (1) that each of the major moral theories of the past has had a distinctive take on practical reasoning; (2) that pivotal structural elements of these theories are due to the underlying theory of practical reasoning; (3) that problems in a moral theory can often be traced to problems in the underlying theory of practical reasoning; (4) that theories of practical reasoning are “engines” (p.. (shrink)

Ultralogic as Universal? is a seminal text in non-classcial logic. Richard Routley presents a hugely ambitious program: to use an 'ultramodal' logic as a universal key, which opens, if rightly operated, all locks. It provides a canon for reasoning in every situation, including illogical, inconsistent and paradoxical ones, realized or not, possible or not. A universal logic, Routley argues, enables us to go where no other logic—especially not classical logic—can. Routley provides an expansive and singular vision of how a (...) universal logic might one day solve major problems in set theory, arithmetic, linguistics, physics, and more. It circulated in typescript in the late 1970s before appearing as the Appendix to Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond. With engaging, forceful prose, unsparing criticism of entrenched institutions, and many tantalizing proof sketches, Ultralogic? has had a major influence on the development of paraconsistent and relevant logic. This new edition makes this work available for a modern audience, newly typeset and corrected, along with extensive notes, and new commentary essays. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the potential of genomic technologies for the detection and surveillance of infectious diseases. Pathogen genomics is likely to play a major role in the future of research and clinical implementation of genomic technologies. However, unlike human genetics, the specific ethical and social challenges associated with the implementation of infectious disease genomics has received comparatively little attention. In this paper, we contribute to this literature, focusing on the potential consequences for individuals and communities of the (...) use of these technologies. We concentrate on areas of challenges related to privacy, stigma, discrimination and the return of results in the cases of the surveillance of known pathogens, metagenomics and host genomics. (shrink)

Growing ties to private industry have prompted many to question the impartiality of academic bioethicists who receive financial support from for-profit corporations in exchange for ethics-related services and research. To the extent that corporate sponsors may view bioethics as little more than a way to strengthen public relations or avoid potential controversy, close ties to industry may pose serious threats to professional independence. New sources of support from private industry may also divert bioethicists from pursuing topics of greater social importance, (...) such as the needs of medically underserved communities. To inform ongoing debates about the financing of bioethics and its transparency to those concerned about potential sources of bias, we examined funding disclosures appearing in original research reports in major bioethics journals. Reviewing research published over a 15-year period, we found little evidence that for-profit corporations are influencing bioethics research directly. Instead, we found evidence that a great number of organizations, both public and private, support bioethics research. These findings suggest that worries about the cooption of bioethics research by a few interested stakeholders are greatly overstated and undersupported by available data. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.2 (2002) 153-174 [Access article in PDF] LSDNA: Rhetoric, Consciousness Expansion, and the Emergence of Biotechnology Richard Doyle I had to struggle to speak intelligibly. —Albert Hofmann on his self-experiment with LSD-25 Finding a place to start is of utmost importance. Natural DNA is a tractless coil, like an unwound and tangled audio tape on the floor of the car in the dark. —Kary Mullis (...) on the invention of Polymerase Chain Reaction 1. Undoing life What happened is this: Once upon a time there was a narrative of vitality. Ok, not a narrative, but an apprehension, a fear, a vision. It didn't have a beginning, middle, or end. It was. Its contours were no more determinable than those of consciousness. Indeed, our consciousness, as humans, was our sole alleged difference from it. From something called "life." We were more than life, but were also, tragically, confined to it. You know the story all too well. Some of its major authors were Cuvier, Lamarck, Darwin, Bichat. Even Shelley.Just because this sudden transformation happened on paper doesn't mean it was easy to endure. Enormous numbers of humans went on tranquilizers just to deal with the effects. Others, elsewhere, knew nothing but rumors. Nonetheless, they became increasingly implicated in its effects, the effects of understanding and experiencing both "life" and "consciousness" as informatic events. Suddenly—and it is sudden, a real surprise—both our vitality and our thought were distributed, scattered across a network and nowhere in particular. Timothy Leary and Francis Crick were speaking the same language, the language of information where the organic and the machinic enfold each other helically and, sometimes, the capacity for replication goes through the ceiling. This new language of information would [End Page 153] introduce a novel response and abyss: the pleasures and hells of eternal replication. The distribution of both life and consciousness enabled a dream of immortality from which we have not yet awakened, as the mere specter of infinite clonal replicants provokes entropies of identity even as it preserves the self from onslaughts of decay. 1In at least one of its characteristics this shift toward an informatic understanding of life is perhaps not really so novel. The seductions of control are hardly, historians of science tell us, foreign to the practices and effects of technoscience. Evelyn Fox Keller makes this point concisely and precisely in her not-quite eponymous essay, "From Secrets of Life to Secrets of Death," itself a self-professed sequel to her 1986 "Making Gender Visible." Here the scientific "impulse" is underwritten by a perennial motif that underlies much of scientific creativity, namely, the urge to fathom the secrets of nature and the collateral hope that, in fathoming the secrets of nature, we will fathom (and hence gain control of) our own mortality (Secrets, 29).Surely Keller is correct that the nascent practices of molecular biology were cryptographic in character, an espionage project unknowingly launched by Erwin Schrodinger during the Second World War. Surely it is crucial to this moment that while Schrodinger's 1943 Dublin lectures were introducing audiences to the concept of the code-script, Alan Turing again brilliantly decrypted a modified U-boat code, giving the Allies code superiority for the remainder of the war. 2 But in this segment on that strange growth called "biotechnology," I want to focus on what Keller has called the "collateral" of hope in this cryptographic impulse, namely the collateral equation between inquiry and control, specifically the control of mortality.For is "fathoming" a secret identical to the exercise of control? The very cadence and rhetorical encryption of Keller's formulation here, a general parenthetical syllogistic conclusion within and alongside a hyphenated invocation of particularity, suggest that concepts and practices of secrecy are more unstable than Keller implies with her invocation of Feynman's "disease" of lock picking: "One of my diseases, one of my things in life, is that anything that is secret, I try to undo" (40).For Keller, Feynman's confession is emblematic of a desire to control life and death... (shrink)

Theories of Truth provides a clear, critical introduction to one of the most difficult areas of philosophy. It surveys all of the major philosophical theories of truth, presenting the crux of the issues involved at a level accessible to nonexperts yet in a manner sufficiently detailed and original to be of value to professional scholars. Kirkham's systematic treatment and meticulous explanations of terminology ensure that readers will come away from this book with a comprehensive general understanding of one of (...) philosophy's thorniest set of topics. -/- Included are discussions of the correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, semantic, performative, redundancy, appraisal, and truth-as-justification theories. There are also chapters or sections of chapters on the liar paradox, three-valued logic, Field's critique of Tarski, Davidson's program, Dummett's theory of linguistic competence, satisfaction, recursion, the extension/intension distinction, and an explanation of how theories of justification, properly understood, differ from theories of truth. -/- A persistent theme is that philosophers have too often failed to recognize that not all theories of truth are intended to answer the same question. When the various questions are made distinct, it is apparent that many of the "debates" in this field are really cases of philosophers talking past one another. There is much less disagreement within the field than has commonly been thought. (shrink)

Like other major modernist writers, Adorno sets himself against modern social formations, understood as deadening and evacuated of meaning. In Minima Moralia, he makes emphatic use of distinctively modernist literary techniques within philosophy as a form of writing. In focusing on particular circumstances of trauma and epiphany, he seeks to disclose in images the hollowness of modern life and to gesture toward life otherwise.

Ideal for anyone involved in the study of criminal justice, this book acquaints students with the philosophical concepts upon which ethical theory is based. It applies these ideas to specific issues and dilemmas within the criminal justice system. Its ultimate goal is to acquaint students with basic concepts of ethics in criminal justice and to train the mind to solve moral issues independently. The Ethical Foundations of Criminal Justice offers a comprehensive definition of ethics, and elucidates its unique language and (...) logic. The book explores the major ethical theories, with extensive discussion of authorities like Kant, Aristotle, Mill, and Hobbes. Chapters investigate normative ethics, teleological theories, deontological theories, and the alternative theories of ethics. The author exhibits the practice of these theories in actual matters of rights, the law, and the behavior of the courts. This book addresses ethics in the context of civil liability, police corruption, and abuse of police power, and includes numerous case studies and references to other relevant works. Criminal justice majors, criminology and law school students, and even police academy cadets will find this text an invaluable source of information both for academic studies and real-world applications. (shrink)