The Religion of Humanity, first expounded by the founder of Positivism, Auguste Comte, focused the minds of a wide range of prominent Victorians on the possibility of replacing Christianity with an alternative religion based on scientific principles and humanist values. This new book traces the impact of Comte's 'religion' on Victorian Britain, showing how its ideas were championed by John Stuart Mill and George Henry Lewes before being institutionalised by Richard Congreve and Frederic Harrison, the leaders of the two main (...) centres of Positivist worship. Widely discussed by scientists, philosophers, and theologians, it also attracted the attention of numerous literary figures, including Matthew Arnold, Walter Pater, and Leslie Stephen, achieving its widest circulation through the works of George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and George Gissing. A wide-ranging and interdisciplinary contribution to the history of ideas, this book sheds new light on a significant but hitherto neglected strand of Victorian thought. (shrink)

A new relationship between Aboriginal peoples and other Canadians is central for Canada's future, but the issues it presents may also be a portent of things to come for us all with increasing globalization. What is entailed in fashioning a viable and just Canadian society and state in which distinct Aboriginal peoples or nations can not only survive and break out of a colonial past, but flourish, especially in an increasingly global economy with its homogenizing pressures? This essay provides an (...) overview of the issues. Following a brief historical survey of the relationship between the Aboriginal peoples and the newcomers in Canada, the political and economic challenges in forming a more just relationship are outlined together with some of the competing visions, social policy options, and current mechanisms for effecting such. Next, some of the pressures on civil society and needed changes this generates are noted. Finally, the religious dimension in all of this, especially the peculiar situation of the churches, is briefly described, including the churches' tainted past, and yet their promising new role emerging as they come to terms with this past and seek to forge new relationships within their own communities. (shrink)

A survey was conducted of the perceived correlates of illegal abuses in the electronics industry. Human resource directors of thirty-one firms responded to a questionnaire which assessed their perceptions of the degree to which illegal behavior was caused by (1) deficiencies in the moral character of employees (2) the clarity of expectations and standards describing illegal behavior and (3) the presence of reinforcements and punishments contingent on these behaviors. All three variables were related to the frequency of abuses in three (...) areas of organizational crime (e.g. administrative, labor, environment) and three areas of personal crime (theft, falsifying records kickbacks) as reported by the directors and/or indicated by archival records. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of how organizations may reduce illegal activity. (shrink)

Patient narratives from two investigational deep brain stimulation trials for traumatic brain injury and obsessive‐compulsive disorder reveal that injury and illness rob individuals of personal identity and that neuromodulation can restore it. The early success of these interventions makes a compelling case for continued post‐trial access to these technologies. Given the centrality of personal identity to respect for persons, a failure to provide continued access can be understood to represent a metaphorical identity theft. Such a loss recapitulates the pain of (...) an individual's initial injury or illness and becomes especially tragic because it could be prevented by robust policy. A failure to fulfill this normative obligation constitutes a breach of disability law, which would view post‐trial access as a means to achieve social reintegration through this neurotechnological accommodation. (shrink)

Each of the following papers gives an account of a different UK clinical ethics committee. The committees vary in the length of time they have been established, and also in the main focus of their work. The accounts discuss the development of the committees and some of the ethical problems that have been brought to them. The issues raised will be relevant for other National Health Service (NHS) trusts in the UK that wish to set up such a committee.

In list-method directed forgetting, reexposure to forgotten List 1 items has been shown to reduce directed forgetting. proposed that reexposure to a few List 1 items only during a direct test of memory reinstates the entire List 1 episode. In the present experiments, part-list reexposure in the context of indirect as well as direct memory tests reduced directed forgetting. Directed forgetting was reduced when 50% or more of the items were reexposed, and was intact when only 25% were reexposed. Furthermore, (...) part-list reexposure appeared to reinstate only reexposed items-not the entire List 1 episode. (shrink)

A laboratory-testable, solid-state Maxwell demon is proposed that utilizes the electric field energy of an open-gap p-n junction. Numerical results from a commercial semiconductor device simulator (Silvaco International–Atlas) verify primary results from a 1-D analytic model. Present day fabrication techniques appear adequate for laboratory tests of principle.

This book focuses upon the perennial question of the existence and nature of an obligation to obey the law. Leading writers have, at one time or another, emphasized considerations such as gratitude, 'divine ordering, ' prudence, contract, autonomy, and utility in seeking to justify, or to deny any justification for, some sort of obligation to obey the positive law. The book provides relevant selections from a sampling of the historical approaches to legal obligation taken by writers such as Plato, Augustine, (...) Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Thoreau, Bentham, Marx and Engels, and Martin Luther King, Jr. These classical discussions are augmented by critical questions and commentary, by independent discussions of the question of legal obligation by a wide range of contemporary writers, and by relevant judicial cases discussing matters such as conscientious objection and civil disobedience. (shrink)

Greek text, english translation and commentary on the surviving fragments of Empedocles (fragments as known in 1981, does not include more recent finds).

Plato's Timaeus contains a powerful and influential myth, of the construction of the universe by a divine craftsman. A god imposes reason on necessity, to bring order from a primeval 'receptacle' of disordered matter. There results the 'child' that is the cosmos - a copy of an eternally-existing perfect model. Here eight new essays from a distinguished international cast, explore aspects of this challenging work: the principles of the mythical narrative, how the world soul and human body are formed, implications (...) for illness - mental and physical, the importance of music and harmonious proportion. Later developments are also treated: Aristotle's theory of generation, the commentary of Proclus and elements of modern evolutionary theory. (shrink)

War and Border Crossings brings together renowned scholars to address some of the most pressing problems in public policy, international affairs, and the intercultural issues of our day. Contributors from widely varying disciplines discuss cross-cultural ethical issues and international topics ranging from American international policy and the invasion and occupation of Iraq to domestic topics such as immigration, the war on drugs, cross-cultural bioethics and ethical issues involving American Indian tribes. The culture clashes discussed in these essays raise serious questions (...) about what principles ought to inform the negotiating of conflicts in order to achieve, or at least approach, outcomes that are fundamentally just, fair, responsible, and ethical. (shrink)

In this paper, I take up Habermas’s recent writing on Rawls in Inclusion of the Other and focus on an example that Habermas discusses there, the Catholic stance on abortion. He brings in this example to question how such views could be rationally negotiated, under Rawls’s views of political liberalism, prior to arriving at an overlapping consensus. Habermas argues that Rawls must affirm the truth of moral constructivism in order to resolve the question of which conceptions of the good make (...) a valid claim on us. Though I have criticisms of how both Rawls and Habermas cast the issue of abortion, I argue that through properly understanding the role of the political ideal of citizenship in Rawls’s conception of political liberalism, we can find resources to contend with the problem Habermas finds here. I defend the capacity of political constructivism to resolve this issue without affirming the truth of moral constructivism. (shrink)

The concept of biological mimicry is viewed as a ‘process of life’ theory rather than a ‘process of change’ theory—regardless of the historical interest and heuristic value of the subject for the study of evolution. Mimicry is a dynamic ecological system reflecting the possibilities for mutualism and parasitism created by a pre-established bipartite signal-based relationship between two organisms – a potential model and its signal receiver (potential operator). In a mimicry system agency and perception play essential, interconnected roles. Mimicry thus (...) describes emergent biologically meaningful relationships based on synergy, and is not an object-based theory. Biosemiotics offers a particularly valuable discipline for analysing the dynamics and nuances of mimicry systems, and can thus pave the way for a better and more complete understanding of how mimicry has evolved in the past, and how it might evolve in the future—presented here with special reference to the need for an integrated, ‘third way of evolution’ approach to biological relativity. A revised definition of mimicry is proposed. (shrink)

This concise, lively introduction to ancient Greek philosophy will help beginning students of both classical studies and philosophy get their bearings within an important yet complex array of names, schools, and ideas. The book illuminates the key period from the sixth to the third century BC, looking at the ideas that engaged the Greeks, in particular those of the Presocratics, the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the earliest Hellenistic philosophers. After chronologically mapping the main figures and their interconnections, _Introducing Greek (...) Philosophy_ focuses on themes especially relevant to philosophy today, including the origins of the universe and its mathematical structures; divine creation versus evolution and natural law; probability theory and the criteria for truth; political debates on democracy, citizen rights, and state obligations; and finally ethics, happiness, and the best way to live. (shrink)

This article shows how there is a great kinship between Polanyi's thought and that of Bernard Haring, "the father of modern moral theology" in the Roman Catholic Church. Haring advocated an ethics of personal responsibility that calls for an epistemology such as Polanyi developed for history and social sciences in The Study of Man.

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