This book is a collection of secondary essays on America's most important philosophic thinkers—statesmen, judges, writers, educators, and activists—from the colonial period to the present. Each essay is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of a noted American on the fundamental meaning of the American regime.

This paper presents an analysis of bluffing in labor negotiations from legal, economic, and ethical perspectives. It is argued that many forms of bluffing in labor negotiations are legal and economically advantageous, but that they typically constitute lying. Nevertheless it is argued that it is generally morally acceptable to bluff given a typical labor-management relationship where one's negotiating partner is familiar with and most likely employing bluffing tactics him/herself. We also consider whether it is an indictment of our present negotiating (...) practices and our economic system as a whole that, given the harsh realities of the marketplace, bluffing is usually morally acceptable. (shrink)

The recent accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom, and other corporations have helped to fuel a massive loss of confidence in the integrity of American business and have contributed to a very sharp decline in the U.S. stock market. Inasmuch as these events have brought ethical questions about business to the forefront in the media and public consciousness as never before, they are of signal importance for the field of business ethics. I offer some observations and conjectures about the bearing of (...) the recent scandals on the literature on business ethics. I defend the following contentions: 1. Recent events reveal serious weaknesses of the stakeholder theory about the social responsibilities of business which lacks prohibitions against fraud and deception. This is a glaring deficiency of standard versions of the stakeholder theory, but it is easily remedied by adding explicit prohibitions against fraud and deception. In addition, recent events highlight the stakeholder theory's very naive and unrealistic hopes and expectations for business executives as moral arbiters and agents of social improvement. 2. Recent events do not constitute an objection to the shareholder theory about the social responsibilities of business, however, these events make evident the implausibility of strong versions of the invisible hand theory. 3. Schemes of payment and reward often create perverse incentives for individuals to engage in unethical conduct. 4. Both the shareholder theory and the stakeholder theory need to add a constraint that requires executives to respect the professional obligations of employees. (shrink)

This paper has two distinct objectives. (1) I defend an analysis of the concept of a conflict of interest. On my analysis the concept of a conflict of interest is broader than is generally supposed. I argue that a very large class of cases not ordinarily regarded as conflicts of interest should be so regarded. Conflicts of interest are an integral feature of many professional relationships and do not (as is often supposed) require the existence of external financial or personal (...) relationships. (2) I defend and explain the commonsense view that conflicts of interest areprima facie wrong and argue that in ordinary cases it is wrong, all things considered, to allow an avoidable conflict of interest to occur. I attempt to establish these claims on the basis of weak and relatively noncontroversial assumptions. (shrink)

Introduction -- Nazi philosophy -- The expulsion of the invaders -- Philosophical method : virtue vs. vice -- The virtuous tradition : analysis, liberalism, englishness -- Epilogue.

The Socratic Way of Life is the first English-language book-length study of the philosopher Xenophon's masterwork. In it, Thomas L. Pangle shows that Xenophon depicts more authentically than does Plato the true teachings and way of life of the citizen philosopher Socrates, founder of political philosophy. In the first part of the book, Pangle analyzes Xenophon's defense of Socrates against the two charges of injustice upon which he was convicted by democratic Athens: impiety and corruption of the youth. In (...) the second part, Pangle analyzes Xenophon's account of how Socrates's life as a whole was just, in the sense of helping through his teaching a wide range of people. Socrates taught by never ceasing to raise, and to progress in answering, the fundamental and enduring civic questions: what is pious and impious, noble and ignoble, just and unjust, genuine statesmanship and genuine citizenship. Inspired by Hegel's and Nietzsche's assessments of Xenophon as the true voice of Socrates, The Socratic Way of Life establishes the Memorabilia as the groundwork of all subsequent political philosophy. (shrink)

With _Aristotle’s Teaching in the “Politics,” _Thomas L. Pangle offers a masterly new interpretation of this classic philosophical work. It is widely believed that the _Politics_ originated as a written record of a series of lectures given by Aristotle, and scholars have relied on that fact to explain seeming inconsistencies and instances of discontinuity throughout the text. Breaking from this tradition, Pangle makes the work’s origin his starting point, reconceiving the _Politics_ as the pedagogical tool of a master teacher. With (...) the _Politics_, Pangle argues, Aristotle seeks to lead his students down a deliberately difficult path of critical thinking about civic republican life. He adopts a Socratic approach, encouraging his students—and readers—to become active participants in a dialogue. Seen from this perspective, features of the work that have perplexed previous commentators become perfectly comprehensible as artful devices of a didactic approach. Ultimately, Pangle’s close and careful analysis shows that to understand the _Politics_, one must first appreciate how Aristotle’s rhetorical strategy is inextricably entwined with the subject of his work. (shrink)

Political societies frequently regard philosophers as potential threats to morality and religion, and those who speak for politics often demand a defense of philosophy. This book will address philosophy as a mode of existence put into question.

. What distinguishes Pangle's study from the dozens of books which have challenged or elaborated upon the republican revision is the sharpness with which he ...

Thomas L. Shaffer argues that the morals of modern American lawyers and doctors have been corrupted by misguided professionalism and weak philosophy.

Gert’s Morality is a remarkably original, lucid, ambitious, and wide-ranging book. No short essay can do justice to it. I offer four criticisms of Gert. First, he doesn’t adequately defend the priority he gives to avoiding evils over seeking goods. Second, he begs some important questions about moral realism in a way that is crucial for his definition of rationality and his larger purposes in the book. Third, his rejection of utilitarianism and religious morality rests on an assumption he doesn’t (...) adequately defend. Fourth, he is mistaken in claiming that moral judgments are not overriding. (shrink)

Offers students introductory discussions of ten widely read works of philosophical literature by such authors as Plato, Dante, Goethe, Voltaire, and Nietzsche.

This text is an ideal introduction for students to the basic mathematics of operations research as well as a valuable source of references to early literature ...

The proper method for dealing with meta-ethical questions in introductory ethics courses requires that the instructor consider and address at least some of the meta-ethical views most commonly held by the instructor's own students. Too often the meta-ethical views that students bring to their courses are simply ignored,.and the relation of these views to the highly abstruse theories and positions discussed in the readings and in class is not made clear. It may be the case that many popular meta-ethical views (...) are confused, unclear, ill-supported, and subversive to the values presupposed by a rational inquiry into morality. But if this is true, then it is all the more important to address these popular views.' For students' uncritical acceptance of them can be a distinct hindrance to getting them to think critically about moral questions. Many popular beliefs about the status of morality deny the possibility of a rational inquiry about moral questions. These preconceptions must be addressed and attended to, otherwise some of our students are unwilling to engage in the kind of critical and rational reflection'on moral questions that we aim to achieve in courses in moral philosophy. We face a strange situation, in that many of our students come into our classes with the firm, if not always clearly formulated, belief that there is no point in trying to do what we are doing. It is almost impossible to get anywhere in our classes unless we can persuade our students to at least suspend this belief. This paper addresses one set or family of preconceptions about the status of moral judgments which, I think, needs to be considered in introductory ethics courses. My special concern will be the views and attitudes of students who think it objectionable or in some sense wrong to make moral judgments, and, therefore, objectionable or wrong to engage in philosophical reflection which has as its aim the rational justification of moral judgments. (shrink)

Unlike many important leaders and historical figures, Abraham Lincoln is generally regarded as a singularly good and morally virtuous human being. Lincoln's Ethics assesses Lincoln's moral character and his many morally fraught decisions regarding slavery and the rights of African-Americans, as well as his actions and policies as commander in chief during the Civil War. Some of these decisions and policies have been the subject of considerable criticism. Lincoln undoubtedly possessed many important moral virtues, such as kindness and magnanimity, to (...) a very high degree. Despite this, there are also grounds to question the goodness of his character. Many fault him as a husband, father and son, and many claim that he was a racist. Carson explains Lincoln's virtues and assesses these criticisms. (shrink)

The Life of Wisdom in Rousseau's "Reveries of the Solitary Walker" is the first complete exegesis and interpretation of Rousseau's final and culminating work, showing its full philosophic and moral teaching. The Reveries has been celebrated as a work of literature that is an acknowledged acme of French prose writing. Thomas L. Pangle argues that this aesthetic appreciation necessitates an in-depth interpretation of the writing's complex and multileveled intended teaching about the normatively best way of life—and how essential this (...) is for a work that was initially bewildering. Rousseau stands out among modern political philosophers in that he restored, to political philosophy, what Socrates and his students (from Plato and Xenophon through Aristotle and the Stoics and Cicero) had made central—and that the previous modern, Enlightenment philosophers had eclipsed: the study of the life and soul of the exemplary, independent sage, as possessor of "human wisdom." Rousseau made this again the supreme theme and source of norms for political philosophy and for humanity's moral as well as civic existence. In his analysis of The Reveries, Pangle uncovers Rousseau's most profound exploration and articulation of his own life, personality, soul, and thought as "the man of nature enlightened by reason." He describes, in Rousseau's final work, the fullest embodiment of the experiential wisdom from which flows and to which points Rousseau's political and moral philosophy, his theology, and his musical and literary art. (shrink)

In a recent paper that appeared in this journal Fritz Allhoff addresses the morality of bluffing in negotiations1. He focuses on cases in which people misstate their reservation price in negotiations, e.g., suppose that I am selling a house and tell a prospective buyer that $300,000 is absolutely the lowest price that I will accept, when I know that I would be willing to accept as little as $270,000 for the house rather than continue to try to sell it. Allhoff (...) criticizes my (qualified) defense of bluffing in my paper Second Thoughts on Bluffing,2 and offers what he takes to be a more plausible defense of bluffing. Allhoffs criticisms rest on several serious misinterpretations of my views. He ascribes to me several arguments that I dont make. He also attributes to me an unqualified defense of bluffing that I explicitly reject. I briefly document this in Section 1. In Sections 2 and 3 I explain and criticize Allhoffs positive views about bluffing and the morality of bluffing. (shrink)

Normative nonrealism denies, first, that some things are good or bad independently of facts about the attitudes of moral agents and, second, that attitude-independent moral facts determine what is rational. This implies that facts about what is rational are logically prior to what is moral. Nonrealism commonly assumes (a) that moral realism is false or unjustifiable, (b) that there is a conceptual connection between morality and rationality and (c) that the particular theory of rationality is the correct account of rationality. (...) Facing the threat of relativism when abandoning (c) it is argued that (c) is at least dubious. Semantic considerations concerning the meaning of "rationality" are sketched and the full-information approach of decision making, intemalism and extemalism are discussed in the light of "Why care?"-questions with the resuh that these questions do serious damage to nonrealist approaches to rationality and reason-based morality. (shrink)

It is suggested that Walker's consolidation-based enhancement of memory during REM sleep corresponds to the simulated annealing technique used for function optimization, and that robotic and AI design could benefit from inclusion of a deliberate REM-like memory optimization phase.

Many of the problems studied in cognitive science are inductive problems, requiring people to evaluate hypotheses in the light of data. The key to solving these problems successfully is having the right inductive biases—assumptions about the world that make it possible to choose between hypotheses that are equally consistent with the observed data. This article explores a novel experimental method for identifying the biases that guide human inductive inferences. The idea behind this method is simple: This article uses the responses (...) produced by a participant on one trial to generate the stimuli that either they or another participant will see on the next. A formal analysis of this “iterated learning” procedure, based on the assumption that the learners are Bayesian agents, predicts that it should reveal the inductive biases of these learners, as expressed in a prior probability distribution over hypotheses. This article presents a series of experiments using stimuli based on a well-studied set of category structures, demonstrating that iterated learning can be used to reveal the inductive biases of human learners. (shrink)

Most cognitive psychology experiments evaluate models of human cognition using a relatively small, well-controlled set of stimuli. This approach stands in contrast to current work in neuroscience, perception, and computer vision, which have begun to focus on using large databases of natural images. We argue that natural images provide a powerful tool for characterizing the statistical environment in which people operate, for better evaluating psychological theories, and for bringing the insights of cognitive science closer to real applications. We discuss how (...) some of the challenges of using natural images as stimuli in experiments can be addressed through increased sample sizes, using representations from computer vision, and developing new experimental methods. Finally, we illustrate these points by summarizing recent work using large image databases to explore questions about human cognition in four different domains: modeling subjective randomness, defining a quantitative measure of representativeness, identifying prior knowledge used in word learning, and determining the structure of natural categories. (shrink)

One professor of literature renounces his fight to discriminate wrong from right readings. He succumbs to pressures from theorists and practitioners in the profession at large and enters a world of unimagined intellectual freedom. After all, to suggest that some readings might be wrong is not only to engage in intellectual discrimination, but to enter into complicity with a number of imperious gestures that carry dire political consequences. Coming to terms with his newfound freedom to embrace all interpretations of texts (...) as equally valid, he outlines for those who follow thirteen rules that guide hermeneutical practice in our postmodern age. (shrink)