Aristotle's De Anima is the first systematic philosophical account of the soul, which serves to explain the functioning of all mortal living things. In his commentary, Ronald Polansky argues that the work is far more structured and systematic than previously supposed. He contends that Aristotle seeks a comprehensive understanding of the soul and its faculties. By closely tracing the unfolding of the many-layered argumentation and the way Aristotle fits his inquiry meticulously within his scheme of the sciences, Polansky answers (...) questions relating to the general definition of soul and the treatment of each of the soul's principal capacities: nutrition, sense perception, phantasia, intellect, and locomotion. The commentary sheds light on every section of the De Anima and the work as a unit. It offers a challenge to earlier and current interpretations of the relevance and meaning of Aristotle's highly influential treatise. (shrink)

We are causing species to go extinct at extraordinary rates, altering existing species in unprecedented ways and creating entirely new species. More than ever before, we require an ethic of species to guide our interactions with them. In this book, Ronald L. Sandler examines the value of species and the ethical significance of species boundaries and discusses what these mean for species preservation in the light of global climate change, species engineering and human enhancement. He argues that species possess (...) several varieties of value, but they are not sacred. It is sometimes permissible to alter species, let them go extinct and invent new ones. Philosophically rigorous, accessible and illustrated with examples drawn from contemporary science, this book will be of interest to students of philosophy, bioethics, environmental ethics and conservation biology. (shrink)

Review text: "Ronald W. Langacker is universally acclaimed as one of the founding fathers of the cognitive linguistics movement. His pioneering efforts towards developing a meaning-oriented, usage-based theory of grammar have given cognitive linguistics many of its key concepts, and his theory of Cognitive Grammar is not only one of the cornerstones of cognitive linguistics, it is also a magnificent achievement in its own right." Dirk Geeraerts, January 2009.

Efforts to counter software piracy are an increasing focus of software publishers. This study attempts to develop a profile of those who illegally copy software by looking at undergraduate and graduate students and the extent to which they pirate software. The data indicate factors that can be used to profile the software pirater. In particular, males were found to pirate software more frequently than females and older students more than younger students, based on self-reporting.

In Epistemic Cultures (1999), Karin Knorr Cetina argues that different scientific fields exhibit different epistemic cultures. She claims that in high energy physics (HEP) individual persons are displaced as epistemic subjects in favor of experiments themselves. In molecular biology (MB), by contrast, individual persons remain the primary epistemic subjects. Using Ed Hutchins' (1995) account of navigation aboard a traditional US Navy ship as a prototype, I argue that both HEP and MB exhibit forms of distributed cognition. That is, in both (...) fields cognition is distributed across individual persons and complex artifacts. The cognitive system producing the knowledge is heterogeneous. Nevertheless, in both fields we can reserve epistemic agency for the human components of these systems. We do not need to postulate new distributed cognitive agents, let alone ones exhibiting new forms of consciousness. (shrink)

According to one currently influential line of thinking, the evolution of ostensive communication was a prerequisite for the evolution of human language. In this article, I distinguish between a strong and a weak version of this view and offer a sustained argument against the former. More specifically, the strong version of this view would have it that ostensive communication was a prerequisite not just for the evolution of fully modern language but for any language-like system of communication. I argue that (...) this version is too strong: I show how some distinctive and important features of language may well have been assembled prior to the evolution of ostensive communication. Put another way, I argue that a protolanguage before ostensive communication scenario is a real possibility. I conclude by briefly arguing that such an evolutionary scenario coheres better with archaeological evidence from the early Pleistocene as well as evidence from developmental psychology pertaining to the nature of our mind reading abilities. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Ronald W Hepburn; Art, Truth and the Education of Subjectivity, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 185–198, https://doi.

Turning around and changing an organization's culture does not happen by chance. The purpose of this paper is to offer insights into what is needed for an organization to successfully transform itself from a culture and experience that does not support individual ethical behavior. The recent bond trading scandal at Salomon Brothers will be used to demonstrate that a successful ethical turnaround does not just happen spontaneously. In particular, we argue that new leadership, altering policies, structure, behavior, and beliefs are (...) paramount to successfully change to an organizational culture that supports ethical behavior. Schein's five primary mechanisms available to leaders for embedding and reinforcing culture will be used to systematically analyze efforts to change Salomon Brothers' culture. (shrink)

In this paper, we sketch the development of two important themes of modern set theory, both of which can be regarded as growing out of work of Kurt Gödel. We begin with a review of some basic concepts and conventions of set theory.§0. The ordinal numbers were Georg Cantor's deepest contribution to mathematics. After the natural numbers 0, 1, …, n, … comes the first infinite ordinal number ω, followed by ω + 1, ω + 2, …, ω + ω, (...) … and so forth. ω is the first limit ordinal as it is neither 0 nor a successor ordinal. We follow the von Neumann convention, according to which each ordinal number α is identified with the set {ν ∣ ν α} of its predecessors. The ∈ relation on ordinals thus coincides with <. We have 0 = ∅ and α + 1 = α ∪ {α}. According to the usual set-theoretic conventions, ω is identified with the first infinite cardinal ℵ0, similarly for the first uncountable ordinal number ω1 and the first uncountable cardinal number ℵ1, etc. We thus arrive at the following picture:The von Neumann hierarchy divides the class V of all sets into a hierarchy of sets Vα indexed by the ordinal numbers. The recursive definition reads: ;Vλ = ∪v<λVv for limit ordinals λ. We can represent this hierarchy by the following picture. (shrink)

This paper utilizes Scott domains (continuous lattices) to provide a mathematical model for the use of idealized and approximately true data in the testing of scientific theories. Key episodes from the history of science can be understood in terms of this model as attempts to demonstrate that theories are monotonic, that is, yield better predictions when fed better or more realistic data. However, as we show, monotonicity and truth of theories are independent notions. A formal description is given of the (...) pragmatic virtues of theories which are monotonic. We also introduce the stronger concept of continuity and show how it relates to the finite nature of scientific computations. Finally, we show that the space of theories also has the structure of a Scott domain. This result provides an analysis of how one theory can be said to approximate another. (shrink)

An accessible yet rigorous introduction to the field, Environmental Ethics: Theory in Practice helps students develop the analytical skills to effectively identify and evaluate the social and ethical dimensions of environmental issues. Covering a wide variety of theories and critical perspectives, author Ronald Sandler considers their strengths and weaknesses, emphasizes their practical importance, and grounds the discussions in a multitude of both classic and contemporary cases and examples. FEATURES * Discusses a wide range of theories of environmental ethics, representing (...) their strengths and weaknesses as charitably as possible without advocating for any particular theory, thereby encouraging students to think critically about which views are well justified and which are not * Extensive use of cases and examples links theoretical and practical issues and shows how environmental issues have both social and ecological components; issues covered include climate change, species conservation, ecological economics, consumption, environmental justice, intergenerational justice, genetically modified crops, animal agriculture, population, environmental rights, and food security, among many others * Incorporates both classic and cutting-edge cases and examples; iconic cases include the spotted owl, Bhopal chemical link, and Hetch Hetchy controversies, while contemporary cases include lead contamination of Flint, Michigan's water supply and innovations is conservation genetics, including conservation cloning, deextinction, and gene drives * Covers food ethics--addressing such topics as genetic engineering, food systems, food waste, and eating animals--and technology ethics, reflecting on technological power and the role of technology in creating and responding to environmental issues * Emphasizes the social justice dimensions of environmental problems with chapters on environmental justice, food security, ecofeminism, and more * Includes text boxes that provide extended discussions of cases; thought experiments; additional coverage of theoretical issues discussed in the main text; and exercises that ask students to apply theories or reflect on how theoretical issues intersect with practical problems * Provides numerous pedagogical aids including review questions, discussion questions, key terms and additional reading lists at the end of each chapter, extensive internal cross-referencing, a glossary of key terms and concepts, and more than thirty images, illustrations, tables, and graphs. (shrink)

Using the emerging technology of large-scale textual analysis, this study examines the use of the term ‘customer satisfaction’ and its variants in the annual reports issued by publicly traded U.S. corporations and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Form 10-K. We document the frequency of the term’s occurrence in 10-Ks over the 1995–2013 period and the differences in usage across industries. We then relate the term’s usage in 10-Ks to subsequent scores from the American Customer Satisfaction Index to (...) determine whether management’s discussion of customer satisfaction in financial disclosures is credible. The commitment of management to shareholders versus, more broadly, stakeholders is a central question in business ethics, and the integrity of management communication is a fundamental construct in the American Marketing Association’s Statement of Ethics. We document a complex relation between management’s discussion of customer satisfaction and subsequently reported satisfaction. We find that the general use of customer satisfaction in 10-K documents is negatively correlated with subsequent ACSI scores. However, for retail firms, when the phrase is located near words indicating measurement or monitoring of the phenomenon, the empirical relation is reversed and becomes positive. (shrink)

What is an inference rule? This question does not have a unique answer. One usually finds two distinct standard answers in the literature; validity inference $(\sigma \vdash_\mathrm{v} \varphi$ if for every substitution $\tau$, the validity of $\tau \lbrack\sigma\rbrack$ entails the validity of $\tau\lbrack\varphi\rbrack)$, and truth inference $(\sigma \vdash_\mathrm{t} \varphi$ if for every substitution $\tau$, the truth of $\tau\lbrack\sigma\rbrack$ entails the truth of $\tau\lbrack\varphi\rbrack)$. In this paper we introduce a general semantic framework that allows us to investigate the notion of inference (...) more carefully. Validity inference and truth inference are in some sense the extremal points in our framework. We investigate the relationship between various types of inference in our general framework, and consider the complexity of deciding if an inference rule is sound, in the context of a number of logics of interest: classical propositional logic, a nonstandard propositional logic, various propositional modal logics, and first-order logic. (shrink)

Kinship plays a foundational role in organizing human social behavior on both local and more global scales. Hence, any adequate account of the evolution of human sociality must include an account of the evolution of human kinship. This article aims to make progress on the latter task by providing a few key pieces of an evolutionary model of kinship systems. The article is especially focused on the connection between primate social cognition and the origins of kinship systems. I argue that (...) early conceptions of kinship in our line were very likely scaffolded by preexisting forms of primate social cognition. It was only later, as linguistic resources increased in our line, and as human social life grew more complex, that these conceptions came to resemble kin categories as we now know them. I conclude by situating “kin cognition” within a broader cognitive science framework for studying capacities that reflect both innate knowledge and human cultural learning. (shrink)

The idea that cognition makes use of one or more “languages of thought” remains central to much cognitive-scientific and philosophical theorizing. And yet, virtually no attention has been paid to the question of how a language of thought might evolve in the first place. In this article, I take some steps towards addressing this issue. With the aid of the so-called Sender–Receiver framework, I elucidate a family of distinctions and processes which enable us to see how languages of thought might (...) evolve via a series of small, incremental changes. While much work doubtlessly remains to be done in this area, I hope to at least show that there need be nothing mysterious about the existence of languages of thought on evolutionary grounds. (shrink)

Humans’ capacity for so-called symbolic cognition is often invoked by evolutionary theorists, and in particular archaeologists, when attempting to explain human cognitive and behavioral uniqueness. But what is meant by “symbolic cognition” is often left underspecified. In this article, I identify and discuss three different ways in which the notion of symbolic cognition might be construed, each of them quite distinct. Getting clear on the nature of symbolic cognition is a necessary first step in determining what symbolic cognition might plausibly (...) explain. (shrink)

This is the first volume on the subject of the alleviation of world suffering. At the same time it is also the first book framing the fields of global socio-economic development, world health, human rights, peace studies, sustainability, and poverty within the challenge of alleviating suffering and improving quality of life. Both international studies and global development have become specialized and fragmented, whereas this work assembles all of these development fragments together in order to determine whether common ground exists to (...) make headway in reducing global suffering. Leading experts in these various fields of development and suffering have been recruited worldwide to give scholarly assessments of the major human problems and how they can be successfully tackled. (shrink)

This text engages preservice and practicing teachers in considering some of the complex issues related to religion and teaching that all educators face in their interactions with students, parents, administrators, and fellow teachers. The questions are not just about what is legal and what is not, but how a teacher should act in the best interests of all students, both those who are religious and those who are not. This book does not provide answers. Its goal is to cause readers (...) to reflect deeply on issues related to their professional decisions and actions regarding religion and teaching. _Religion and Teaching_ is pertinent for all prospective and practicing teachers at any stage in their teaching careers. It can be used in any undergraduate or graduate course that addresses issues of religion and teaching. (shrink)

This book charts the university's entanglement with eight mega-ecosystems - knowledge, learning, persons, social institutions, culture, the economy, the polity and nature - and offers principles through which universities can imaginatively explore possibilities. This book sets out, in broad terms, what it is to realise the idea of the ecological university. Barnett draws together relevant contemporary scholarship from philosophy, social theory, comparative higher education, ethics, and theology. He advances thinking in each of the ecosystems the book looks at and develops (...) a particular form of the philosophy of higher education, drawing on examples to bring the whole text to life. (shrink)

Americans cannot live with judicial review, but they cannot live without it. There is something characteristically American about turning the most divisive political questions - like freedom of religion, same-sex marriage, affirmative action and abortion - into legal questions with the hope that courts can answer them. In Judicial Review in an Age of Moral Pluralism Ronald C. Den Otter addresses how judicial review can be improved to strike the appropriate balance between legislative and judicial power under conditions of (...) moral pluralism. His defense of judicial review is predicated on the imperative of ensuring that the reasons that the state offers on behalf of its most important laws are consistent with the freedom and equality of all persons. Den Otter ties this defense to a theory of constitutional adjudication based on John Rawls's idea of public reason and argues that a law that is not sufficiently publicly justified is unconstitutional, thus addressing when courts should invalidate laws and when they should uphold them even in the midst of reasonable disagreement about the correct outcome in particular constitutional controversies. (shrink)

This collection of essays presents a novel interpretation of a signature work of Alexander of Aphrodisias, and of the Stoic philosophy he seeks to refute. It covers all chapters of the work, challenging existing scholarship in significant ways.

The paper describes and discusses unethical behavior in organizations, as a result of (interacting) disputable leadership and ethical climate. This paper presents and analyzes the well-known bond trading scandal at Salomon Brother to demonstrate the development of an unethical organizational culture under the leadership of John Gutfreund. The paper argues that leaders shape and reinforce an ethical or unethical organizational climate by what they pay attention to, how they react to crises, how they behave, how they allocate rewards, and how (...) they hire and fire individuals. (shrink)