Green Logic seeks to highlight the key questions regarding entrepreneurship and sustainability in terms of motivation, government intervention and ethics. This new book aims to examine how 'Green Logic' works, how it differs from other logics and how green thinking can be targeted in order to create environmentally responsible businesses in an era of rapid change. In short, what does it really take to motivate entrepreneurs to design and start up green businesses? Green Logic is suitable for both business and (...) academic audiences and significantly pushes forward the debate on environmental responsibility. (shrink)

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was an Italian Jesuit and one of the first Christian missionaries to China in the modern era. He was a genuine polymath—a translator, cartographer, mathematician, astronomer, and musician. Above all, Ricci was a missionary for the gospel. As we briefly examine his 1603 seminal work, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, our hope is that we, as evangelical educators, will perceive some of the deeper principles necessary for our own missionary work among unreached people.

The issue of the dimensionality of materialism and postmaterialism, and their impact on key social and personal indicators, has been a hotly debated topic for decades. This study sought to achieve two goals to further our understanding of these constructs. First, it assessed whether an interactive materialism–postmaterialism conceptualization could be expanded to predict outcomes related to well-being. Second, the study extended the interactive model by using Richins’ three dimensions of materialism instead of the unidimensional construct utilized in previous studies. Results (...) indicated that the interactive model successfully predicted three different measures of well-being, specifically physical symptoms, stress, and subjective vitality. Results are discussed in terms of extending materialism–postmaterialism theory, both with respect to refining the materialism construct as well as its associations with new criterion variables. (shrink)

The authors describe the ethical considerations underlying the inclusion of mental health services into a prioritized health care system. The Oregon Health Plan is a process for defining and delivering basic health services to an entire state. As the plan was developed, the mental health community needed to decide whether or not to participate in the process and, if so, how. Lengthy discussions among mental health consumers, family members, and providers led to a strategy that emphasized the integration of mental (...) health and chemical dependency services into a comprehensive and universal health care program. This approach appears to have achieved relative parity for mental health. (shrink)

In his sociological works Pareto developed a theory of cyclical social change within the general equilibrium framework. Building on an earlier propositional formalization, we translate Pareto's theory into a series of simultaneous equations and simulate the equation system. The dynamic behavior of the simulation is consistent with Pareto's predictions and demonstrates the internal logic of the theory.

Questions of Miracle will be a valuable reference book and teaching tool for scholars and students of theology, religious studies, and philosophy. Contents The Logic of Probabilities in Hume's Argument against Miracles - Fred Wilson David Hume and the Miraculous - Robert Larmer Miracles and the Laws of Nature - Robert Larmer Against Miracles - John Collier Against "Against Miracles" - Robert Larmer Miracles and Conservation Laws - Neil MacGill Miracles and Conservation Laws: A Reply to Professor (...) MacGill - Robert Larmer Miracles and Criteria - Robert Larmer Miracles and Natural Explanations - David Basinger Miracles and Natural Explanations: A Rejoinder - Robert Larmer Miracles as Evidence for Theism: A Surrejoinder - David Basinger Miracles, Evidence, and Theism: A Further Apologia - Robert Larmer Authenticating Biblical Reports of Miracles - Phillip Wiebe Miracles and Testimony: A Reply to Wiebe - Robert Larmer Miracles as Evidence against the Existence of God - Christine Overall Miracles and the Existence of God: A Reply - Robert Larmer. (shrink)

Biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey has suggested that one of the reasons we as a society invest so little in research on combating aging is because we are in an intellectual trance. We think the effort will be futile: aging is immutable, so why try? A healthy skepticism can be a good thing but it is a major mistake to bet against the irresistible force of inexorable technological progress. Over the next few decades, nanotechnology will come to play a pivotal role (...) in the solution to the problem of human aging. Medical nanorobotics, if it can be made to work, can unquestionably offer convenient solutions to all known causes of age-related damage and most likely can also successfully address any new causes of senescence that remain undiscovered today. (shrink)

Everywhere stealing, lying and killing are considered wrong. But in some contexts, in war for example, these codes can differ. Robert Hinde argues that understanding the evolutionary origins of our morality and how we bend the rules can help guide us away from global catastrophe and towards a more ethical world.

This book offers a sustained critique of individualism in psychology, a view that has been the subject of debate between philosophers such as Jerry Fodor and Tyler Burge for many years. The author approaches individualism as an issue in the philosophy of science and by discussing issues such as computationalism and the mind's modularity he opens the subject up for non-philosophers in psychology and computer science. Professor Wilson carefully examines the most influential arguments for individualism and identifies the main metaphysical (...) assumptions underlying them. Since the topic is so central to the philosophy of mind, a discipline generating enormous research and debate, the book has implications for a very broad range of philosophical issues including the naturalisation of intentionality, psychophysical supervenience, the nature of mental causation, and the viability of folk psychology. (shrink)

I never met my maternal grandfather, Irving Lincoln Smith. I understand he was a good man, a kind and loving father, a hard worker.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:121. HUME'S Of Scepticism with regard to reason: A STUDY IN CONTRASTING THEMES.* This paper attempts to describe the complex dialectical interplay among the contrasting rational, sceptical and naturalist elements which appear in Section I, Part IV of Book I of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. At the same time we shall try to show that, contrary to Hume's own evaluation of that section, it is the sceptical element, (...) in which the unreliability of reason is supposedly demonstrated, as opposed to the naturalist element, in which its unreliability is supposed to remain hidden from us, that deserves to triumph. With these two goals in mind and in order to make it easier for the reader to follow the inevitable twists and turns of the dialectic, we have divided the paper into two three-sectioned parts. The first part bears the title "Reason and Scepticism", while the second part bears the title "Naturalism". The first section of Part I is concerned with proving that Hume's attempted reduction of all knowledge to probability is frustrated by his failure to explain how we can make mistakes in simple operations with small numbers. If so, the first phase of his sceptical assault against reason fails to dislodge her from her throne. If the second section is right, the second stage of the sceptical assault fares no better. For Hume's attempted reduction of all probabilities to zero is shown to rely on an unsatisfactory formula for calculating the probabilities in question. In the third section an effort is made to show that the attempted reduction of the second section, i_f it had been a success instead of a failure, would have destroyed reason but left scepticism intact. *I should like to thank Howard Sobel for his penetrating and unsparing criticism of an earlier version of this paper. 122. Hume's conviction, on the other hand, that the flawed reduction in question is unflawed and destroys both leads to a prolonged discussion, initiated in the first section of Part II, of his naturalism. Indeed, this theme dominates the rest of the paper. Thus it deserves a part to itself. If we are correct in the first section of Part II, Hume's naturalism is best interpreted as a doctrine of instincts relying for its doctrinal status upon a failure to accept the conclusion of the sceptical argument directed against reason. But, as we try to bring out in the second section, the specific psychological inability with which Hume could in the final analysis give substance to this failure of acceptance is left without any causal foundation. Finally, in the third section that inability is seen to run afoul of reason as Hume himself understands it. And note is taken of the fact that reason so understood and the sceptical argument directed against reason that Hume adopts for his own both commit him willy-nilly to rejecting for good or ill one standard definition of knowledge. Reason and Scepticism Nowhere are the rational elements in Hume's philosophy more in evidence, ironically enough, than in Section I, Part IV of Book I of the Treatise entitled Of Scepticism with regard to reason. For it is there we are told in the very first paragraph that in all demonstrative sciences the rules are certain and infallible. Our reason, moreover, must be consider ' d as a kind of cause, of which truth is the natural effect. (T180) In other words, reason, left to its own devices, would produce truth and, presumably, only truth. Anyone who steadfastly adheres to such principles will reject out of hand one kind of scepticism with regard 123. to reason. That is the kind which results from the alleged discovery that reason, left to its own devices, compels us to embrace one or more contradictions, an obvious form of 2 falsity. It is a kind of scepticism which Bayle cultivated so assiduously. And yet, despite the influence which Bayle 's writings exerted upon Hume, they never convinced him of the viability of this kind of scepticism. On the contrary, apart from some wavering in the Enquiry, he was as adamant as any Leibnizian rationalist that right reason3 ing leads only... (shrink)

I argue that we need not accept Quine's holistic conception of mathematics and empirical science. Specifically, I argue that we should reject Quine's holism for two reasons. One, his argument for this position fails to appreciate that the revision of the mathematics employed in scientific theories is often related to an expansion of the possibilities of describing the empirical world, and that this reveals that mathematics serves as a kind of rational framework for empirical theorizing. Two, this holistic conception does (...) not clearly demarcate pure mathematics from applied mathematics. In arguing against Quine, I present a formal account of applied mathematics in which the mathematics employed in an empirical theory plays a role that is analogous to the epistemological role Kant assigned synthetic a priori propositions. According to this account, it is possible to insulate pure mathematics from empirical falsification, and there is a sense in which applied mathematics can also be labeled as a priori. (shrink)

L'argument de Descartes selon lequel son essence s'identifie avec sa pensée s'expose à la critique destructrice de Leibniz. En même temps l'interprétation de l'argument donnée par Arnauld s'avère défectueuse. Car elle repose sur l'hypothèse que Descartes doutait des idées claires et distinctes qui sont présentés à l'esprit. En fait Descartes ne doutait jamais de telles idées en de telles circonstances. Et ce n'est qu'après que l'hypothèse du malin génie lui permettait de douter de l'identité de son essence et de sa (...) pensée. A ce moment-là, d'ailleurs, il était prêt à admettre la possibilité que celle-là soit complètement différente de celle-ci. Mais l'interprétation d'Arnauld ne lui permet point de comprendre une telle possibilité. (shrink)

Given a strong family history of early heart attacks, the future has always been an iffy proposition. Miraculously, I have bypassed the early off-ramps and find myself approaching 80, stents in place, considering the very real but previously unimaginable possibility of still more. But what kind of more? With dopamine on the wane and no longer supercharged by the push and shove of unbridled ambition and pride, bigger and grander are out of the question. Tired clichés poke through the widening (...) cracks in my thinking to become uninvited bulletins of compromise and consolation. Be grateful. Relax, reminisce, enjoy sunsets, learn the backyard birds’ names, maybe even sing to them, and count blessings. (shrink)

Past work demonstrates that ethical ideologies and behaviors are associated with the physical and psychological well-being of employees. Drawing from ethical impact theory and related research, this investigation utilizes two studies of working adults to examine the relationships among employees’ moral outrage, anger expression, and generalized well-being, with the latter construct being operationalized with multi-variable measures of ill-being, positive life outlook, and health consciousness. In the first study, two dimensions of moral outrage were identified, with results indicating that these components (...) variably related to the ill-being/well-being measures and similar health behaviors. In the second study, anger expression was accounted for, thus disentangling it from the moral outrage dimensions, with results demonstrating that such anger changed the nature of some relationships between the moral outrage dimensions and the well-being outcomes. Overall, anger expression was associated more closely with negative outcomes, while the moral outrage dimensions were more closely associated with positive outcomes. These findings suggest that moral outrage may be cathartic, which contributes to further theory development and enhances understanding of the complex relationships among individual moral outrage, anger expression, and well-being. The practical considerations of the results are discussed, and the study’s limitations and suggestions for future research directions are highlighted. (shrink)

We develop the theory of partial satisfaction relations for structures that may be proper classes and define a satisfaction predicate ($\models^*$) appropriate to such structures. We indicate the utility of this theory as a framework for the development of the metatheory of first-order predicate logic and set theory, and we use it to prove that for any recursively enumerable extension $\Theta$ of ZF there is a finitely axiomatizable extension $\Theta'$ of GB that is a conservative extension of $\Theta$. We also (...) prove a conservative extension result that justifies the use of $\models^*$ to characterize ground models for forcing constructions. (shrink)

The concept of “intrinsic reinforcement” stretches the use of “reinforcement” beyond where it is valuable. The concept of the “self-system,” though fuzzy at the edges, can cover experience as well as the behaviour of altruistic acts.

Der Aufsatz ist in drei Teile gegliedert. Im ersten versuche ich Descartes gegen den Vorwurf, sein Beweis für die Existenz eines wahrhaftigen Gottes sei zirkelhaft, zu verteidigen. Im zweiten suche ich ihn zu verteidigen gegen den Vorwurf, die Beweise seien, wenn auch nicht zirkulär, so doch bezweifelbar, und zwar dann, wenn man nicht auf die Voraussetzungen achte, aus denen die Konklusion nach Descartes' Meinung folge. Das heißt jedoch nicht, daß ich keine Vorbehalte gegen einige Folgerungen der Cartesischen Erkenntnistheorie hege. Ein (...) derartiger Vorbehalt gegen eine derartige Folgerung ist im dritten Teil des Aufsatzes vorgebracht. (shrink)