From the philosophy of mind and language, through physics and mathematics, to the philosophy of the human sciences, morality and religion, there is almost no area of philosophy to which Hilary Putnam has not made highly original and influential contributions. This wide-ranging collection of papers provides a critical assessment and exploration of Putnam's Seminal Work. Written by Philosophers themselves well known for their work in the field, each essay bears witness to the continuing influence and importance of Putnam's thought. Putnam's (...) reply constitutes an extensive new essay which clarifies, and develops further, central themes in his philosophy. This volume includes papers by Simon Blackburn, George Boolos, Michael Hallett, Michael Redhead, Thomas Ricketts, David Wiggins and Crispin Wright. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Unibilitas: The Key to Bonaventure’s Understanding of Human NatureThomas M. Osborne Jr.Historians of medieval philosophy have sometimes described St. Bonaventure’s anthropology as dualist or Augustinian. The conventional story runs that the conservative Bonaventure was afraid of contemporary attempts to describe the rational soul as the substantial form of the corporeal body.1 Bonaventure’s relationship to two intellectual trends lends some support to this theory. First, Bonaventure, following Avicebron and Alexander (...) of Hales, believed in universal hylomorphism, holding that all substances, even the angels and human souls separated from the body, are comprised of matter and form.2 If the human soul apart from the body has its own matter, then in what [End Page 227] sense can the soul be the substantial form of corporeal matter? Second, followers of Bonaventure pointed to this difficulty when they held that the body has its own forma corporeitatis.3 It is not surprising that some historians have regarded Bonaventure as a strong dualist. If the soul is a substance apart from the body, then how can it be one substance with the body? Unibilitasis Bonaventure’s answer to this problem.Bonaventure himself is thoroughly aware that he might seem to regard the soul as a complete substance by itself when he describes it as a composition of form with spiritual matter. If the soul is a composition of form and matter, then it is a hoc aliquid and complete in itself. The soul united with the body could not combine into a third substance.4 I will argue that for Bonaventure unibility is this ability of the soul and body to be united as one substance.In the thirteenth century, unibility describes the ability of two different substances or dispositions to become one supposit.5 For example, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas use unibility to describe how Christ’s human nature and his divine nature can be one person. Moreover, John of Rupella, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure use unibility to describe how the soul and the body form one substance. Most historians, like E. Gilson and E. Weber, have generally described unibility as the attempt to show how one human person can have both a substance which is spiritual and a different substance which is corporeal.6 Unibility is for them a concept which precedes the Thomistic discovery of the soul as the substantial form of the body. If this interpretation [End Page 228] were correct, then it would be difficult to see how Thomas Aquinas could retain the term. In fact, unibility has a variety of uses which depend upon the context of its appearance and the thought of the one who uses it.The unibility of the soul plays a far greater role in the thought of Bonaventure than it does in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Bonaventure describes unibility as the specific difference between the angels and humans. Unlike Thomas, Bonaventure thinks that humans, like angels, have both a substantial form and spiritual matter. A human being differs from an angel in that a human’s form can also be the substantial form of a body. Since unibility lies at the heart of Bonaventure’s anthropology, it seems strange that it has not been more thoroughly examined and discussed.The four main sections of this paper roughly correspond to the different contexts in which Bonaventure uses unibility to describe a property of the human soul. The first section shows that unibility is the specific difference that distinguishes humans from angels in the genus of intellectual substances. Second, this difference between humans and angels will be elaborated to show how human souls, unlike angels, are not only movers of bodies, but also perfections of their own particular body. The third section argues that since the soul is the perfection of the body, it is also the one substantial form of the body. The fourth section touches on Bonaventure’s discussion of personhood to show that the human soul when separated from the body is not a person because it is not a fully individual substance. Since an angel is not unitable to a human body, it is unlike a human soul in that it does not need... (shrink)

The nineteenth century theologian, author and poet Charles Kingsley was a notable populariser of Darwinian evolution. He championed Darwin’s cause and that of honesty in science for more than a decade from 1859 to 1871. Kingsley’s interpretation of evolution shaped his theology, his politics and his views on race. The relationship between men and apes set the context for Kingsley’s consideration of these issues. Having defended Darwin for a decade in 1871 Kingsley was dismayed to read Darwin’s account of the (...) evolution of morals in Descent of Man. He subsequently distanced himself from Darwin’s conclusions even though he remained an ardent evolutionist until his death in 1875. (shrink)

The essays in this book began as a contributions to a Summer Workshop arranged by the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, and haled at the University of Calgary from July 7 to 14, 1978. The Institute, which was founded by the University in 1976 for the encouragement of humanistic studies, has held such conferences each summer as a part of its programme of research.

Beginning with a Cuban Catholic ritual in Miami, this book takes readers on a momentous theoretical journey toward a new understanding of religion.

The concept of equity is clearly important in Thomas Hobbes's philosophy. In his writings he repeatedly employs it in significant load bearing ways, particularly in the areas of civil law and governance. Equity is, however, not directly addressed in a sustained way in his core works and—perhaps even more frustratingly—it is often applied in ways which ask more questions about the concept than they answer. This presents an impediment to accurately understanding what equity really means to Hobbes. His late (...) Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England (1681) seems to offer a solution to this challenge. This work contains extensive discussion on equity, including on the application of equity in relationship to absolute rule. However, equity in the Dialogue is not always the same as what we see in Hobbes's core works. The question is, did Hobbes change his mind on equity? This article argues no. Hobbes did not change his mind on equity; rather, within the Dialogue he is engaging with a common understanding of the term as it existed in English law. Consequently, Hobbes's discussions here should not inform us about how equity fits into his philosophy. (shrink)

A major issue in philosophical debates on the species problem concerns the opposition between two seemingly incompatible views of the metaphysics of species: the view that species are individuals and the view that species are natural kinds. In two recent papers in this journal, Olivier Rieppel suggested that this opposition is much less deep than it seems at first sight. Rieppel used a recently developed philosophical account of natural kindhood, namely Richard Boyd’s “homeostatic property cluster” theory, to argue that every (...) species taxon can be conceived of as an individual that constitutes the single member of its own specific natural kind. In this paper I criticize Rieppel’s approach and argue that it does not deliver what it is supposed to, namely an account of species as kinds about which generalized statements can be made. (shrink)

"Unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published ... in 1950." Bibliographical footnotes.

Political Theory of Death and Dying provides a comprehensive, encyclopedic review that compiles and curates the latest scholarship, research, and debates on the political and social implications of death and dying. Adopting an easy-to-follow chronological and multi-disciplinary approach on forty five canonical figures and thinkers, leading scholars from a diverse range of fields, including Political Science, Philosophy, and English, discuss each thinker's ethical and philosophical accounts on mortality and death. Each chapter focuses on a single established figure in political philosophy, (...) as well as religious and literary thinkers, covering classical to contemporary thought on death. Through this approach, the chapters are designed to stand alone, allowing the reader to study every entry in isolation and with greater depth, as well as trace how thinkers are influenced by their predecessors. A key contribution to the field, Political Theory of Death and Dying provides an excellent overview for students and researchers who study philosophy of death, the history of political thought, and political philosophy. (shrink)

A business association is a collaborative organization founded and funded by businesses or business owners and usually represents companies operating in an industry or across industries. Business associations often institute a code of ethics, code of practice, and/or code of conduct that guide member company policy and behavior. Specifically, the paper will thoroughly define codes of ethics, conduct, and practice; their relationship to each other is delineated and explained; examples of three business associations’ codes of ethics and/or conduct are explored; (...) and the U.S. legal environment—focusing on antitrust considerations that governs their organizational use—evaluated for business association compliance enforcement. Given this exploratory and explanatory research foundation, managerial recommendations are offered in the discussion section to assist business associations, and by extension, their member companies, in effectively utilizing such association governance codes in both association and company planning, policy development, and operational management activities in domestic and global commerce. (shrink)

Recently Coleman and Wiley presented a new defense of the species-are-individuals thesis, based on an analysis of the use of binomial species names by biologists. Here I point out some problems in their defense and I argue that although in some domains of biological science species are best understood as individuals, Coleman and Wiley fail to establish that this is true for the whole of biology.

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic constituted a crisis situation in which science was very far from Kitcher’s ideal of well-ordered science. I suggest that this could and should have been different. Kitcher’s ideal should play a role in assessing the allocation of research resources in future crisis situations, as it provides a way to balance highly divergent interests and incorporate the common good into decision-making processes on research.

Evolutionary explanations are not only common in the biological sciences, but also widespread outside biology. But an account of how evolutionary explanations perform their explanatory work is still lacking. This paper develops such an account. I argue that available accounts of explanations in evolutionary science miss important parts of the role of history in evolutionary explanations. I argue that the historical part of evolutionary science should be taken as having genuine explanatory force, and that it provides how‐possibly explanations sensu Dray. (...) I propose an account of evolutionary explanations as comparative‐composite explanations consisting of two distinct kinds of explanations, one processual and one historical, that are connected via the explanandum's evolvability to show how the explanandum is the product of its evolutionary past. The account is both a reconstruction of how evolutionary explanations in biology work and a guideline specifying what kind of explanations evolutionary research programs should develop. (shrink)

Although several theories of online syntactic processing assume the parallel activation of multiple syntactic representations, evidence supporting simultaneous activation has been inconclusive. Here, the continuous and non‐ballistic properties of computer mouse movements are exploited, by recording their streaming x, y coordinates to procure evidence regarding parallel versus serial processing. Participants heard structurally ambiguous sentences while viewing scenes with properties either supporting or not supporting the difficult modifier interpretation. The curvatures of the elicited trajectories revealed both an effect of visual context (...) and graded competition between simultaneously active syntactic representations. The results are discussed in the context of 3 major groups of theories within the domain of sentence processing. (shrink)

In this article, the focus is on developing a governance concept built on integrating the ISO 26000 Social Responsibility standard with an “employee social responsibility” concept developed by the authors. To this end. The authors propose to compliment the voluntary, organizationally adaptable, ISO 26000 SR standard for the organization/firm with a seamlessly integrated—and equally adaptable—ESR concept for the individual/employee of that organization/firm. An SR/ESR governance concept emerges, with an emphasis on implementing a SR-based business enterprise code of conduct and ESR-related (...) functional-level codes of conduct, the latter firmly ensconced in an organization's ethical climate. The conclusion section discusses the strengths and weaknesses of our proposed SR/ESR governance concept. (shrink)

In an effort to assess the latest thinking in the Roman Catholic Church on economic matters, we examine the newest encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) for guidance concerning marketing and business strategy. Core ethical values, consistent with historical Catholic Social Teachings (CST), are retained. However, some important nuances are added to previous treatments, and, reflecting the mind of the current Pontiff, certain points of emphasis are shifted to account for recent global developments. Key areas (...) of consistency and differences (as we perceive them) are spelled out along with some brief commentary on the evolution of the CST position on matters of importance to business decision makers. We close our analysis with a brief discussion of how the lessons of the encyclical can be applied to selected marketing problems embedded with ethical issues, including some criteria for evaluating marketing programs. Finally, we note some editorial commentary published in the wake of the letter’s release along with our own summation. (shrink)

No detailed description available for "Evidence and Argumentation in Linguistics".

This book originated as a Festschrift to mark the publication of Volume 50 of the journal `Acta Biotheoretica' in 2002 and the journal's 70th anniversary in ...

Among the oldest extant medical ethics, the Hippocratic Oath prohibits the giving of a deadly drug, regarding this act as an egregious violation of a medical ethic that is exclusively therapeutic. Proportionate palliative sedation involves the administration of a deadly drug. Hence it seems to violate the venerable Hippocratic promise associated with the dawn of Western medicine not to give a deadly drug. Relying on distinctions commonly employed in the analysis and evaluation of human actions, this article distinguishes physician-assisted suicide (...) and euthanasia, as acts that necessarily violate the prohibition against giving a deadly drug, from proportionate palliative sedation, as an act that does not. (shrink)

Examines the relationship between the question of God and the destiny of metaphysics. Concept of the end of metaphysics; Ambiguous relation between phenomenology and metaphysics; Return of special metaphysics in phenomenology; Phenomenological figure of God. Examines the relationship between the question of God and the destiny of metaphysics. Concept of the end of metaphysics; Ambiguous relation between phenomenology and metaphysics; Return of special metaphysics in phenomenology; Phenomenological figure of God.

The Dodd‐Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law by President Obama in July 2010, included two significant corporate governance mandates: “say‐on‐pay” shareholder voting and the frequency of such votes among all publicly traded companies. The say‐on‐pay rule requires publicly traded companies subject to proxy rules to offer their shareholders an advisory, or nonbinding, vote at least once every three years on the compensation packages of the most highly compensated executives. The actual data for the first five (...) years of say‐on‐pay voting indicates one intractable conclusion: that shareholder say‐on‐pay voting has not verified what many shareholder activists originally believed, i.e., that the majority of shareholders held similar opinions about business executives being significantly overpaid for their managerial performances. During its first five years in effect, the results of say‐on‐pay voting indicate that shareholders are overwhelmingly satisfied with executive compensation packages, as a 92 percent average shareholder say‐on‐pay approval result (i.e., exceeding 70 percent) among companies listed in the Russell 3000 Index attests. (shrink)

BackgroundDespite rapid growth of the scientific literature, no consensus guidelines have emerged to define the optimal criteria for editors to grade submitted manuscripts. The purpose of this project was to assess the peer reviewer metrics currently used in the surgical literature to evaluate original manuscript submissions.MethodsManuscript grading forms for 14 of the highest circulation general surgery-related journals were evaluated for content, including the type and number of quantitative and qualitative questions asked of peer reviewers. Reviewer grading forms for the seven (...) surgical journals with the higher impact factors were compared to the seven surgical journals with lower impact factors using Fisher’s exact tests.ResultsImpact factors of the studied journals ranged from 1.73 to 8.57, with a median impact factor of 4.26 in the higher group and 2.81 in the lower group. The content of the grading forms was found to vary considerably. Relatively few journals asked reviewers to grade specific components of a manuscript. Higher impact factor journal manuscript grading forms more frequently addressed statistical analysis, ethical considerations, and conflict of interest. In contrast, lower impact factor journals more commonly requested reviewers to make qualitative assessments of novelty/originality, scientific validity, and scientific importance.ConclusionSubstantial variation exists in the grading criteria used to evaluate original manuscripts submitted to the surgical literature for peer review, with differential emphasis placed on certain criteria correlated to journal impact factors. (shrink)