This book traces the development of the notion of self throughout the Western intellectual and religious tradition. While using the historical thread as its guiding norm, it presents a dynamic model of selfhood.

This volume examines some of the most contentious social justice issues present in the corpus of Augustine's writings. Whether one is concerned with human trafficking and the contemporary slave trade, the global economy, or endless wars, these essays further the conversation on social justice as informed by the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

In this paper it will be argued that Beauchamp and Childress' principle-based approach to bioethics has strongly pragmatic features. Drawing on the writings of William James, I first develop an understanding of methodological pragmatism as a method of justification. On the basis of Beauchamp's and Childress' most recent proposals concerning moral justification in the fifth edition of their Principles of Biomedical Ethics (2001), I then discuss different aspects that the principle-based approach and methodological pragmatism have in common.

For Charles Sanders Peirce, the hope that animates pragmatism is the attainment of truth as the normative standard to which we deliberately seek to conform our beliefs. By contrast, his good friend William James and others attempt to redefine truth as something malleable and constantly changing.

Mark Coeckelbergh starts his book with a very powerful picture based on a real incident: On the 9th of January 2020, Robert Williams was wrongfully arrested by Detroit police officers in front of his two young daughters, wife and neighbors. For 18 hours the police would not disclose the grounds for his arrest (American Civil Liberties Union 2020; Hill 2020). The decision to arrest him was primarily based on a facial detection algorithm which matched Mr. Williams’ driving license photo with (...) the picture of a man who was suspected of watch theft two years earlier. Not only did the computer ‘get it wrong’ as one of the detectives said, when Mr. Williams made them aware that the picture of the suspect obviously wasn’t resembling him, the probably unreliable algorithm very likely contributed to racial discrimination (Hill 2020). It is well documented that many available facial detection algorithms at this time had significant problems (e.g. a comparably high false positive rate) with respect to black persons, like Mr. Williams (NIST 2019). Multiple causes may exist, such as unbalanced training datasets and insufficient optimization. Coeckelbergh compares the disturbing case of Mr. Williams with a political interpretation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, where the protagonist, Josef K., is accused of an unspecified crime by an opaque, oppressive and absurd bureaucracy: “In the 21st-century United States, Josef K. is black and is falsely accused by an algorithm, without explanation” (p. 2). (shrink)

Schmidt's main thesis is that Lucretius did not exclusively use the writings of Epicurus in composing De rerurn natura, and that it is emphatically doubtful that Epicurus was even his principal source. Rather, Schmidt argues that it is virtually certain that early Epicurean writings are used in several passages, and that they are the most probable sources for the whole poem. Schmidt sees Lucretius as closely caught up with the current polemics between the Stoic and Epicurean schools (...) of his time. Schmidt is broadly successful in making his case that Lucretius did not exclusively follow Epicurus, but also had early Epicurean sources. The indices are helpful and the survey of competing views is scrupulously inclusive. This book deserves to be seriously considered by future researchers into the sources of De rerum natura inasmuch as it has certainly advanced the discussion. (shrink)

Some members from the cast of New Essays in Philosophical Theology set the tone of this anthology, although with essays not included in that volume. The Flew-Hare-Mitchell-Crombie discussion on falsifiability is the only selection from that volume included here. Also included in the same section are Wisdom's "Gods," much of Braithwaite's Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief, and selections by Diogenes Allen and John Hick. The opening section of the book is on the logical status of religious language. (...) Besides essays by MacIntyre, McPherson, and Crombie, it contains William Christian's article on truth-claims in religion and also a clear, sympathetic account by Father Bochenski on the formal structure of religious discourse. The section of the book on the question of literalness includes selections from Ayer, Tillich, Mascall, Buber, and Bultmann. The section on the possibility of religious knowledge includes essays by Calvin O. Schrag, Paul F. Schmidt, and Kierkegaard. Santoni's introduction discusses all the essays, ties them together, and consequently gives a rationale for their inclusion. On the whole, the anthology is thorough, unified, and, in spite of its restricted and well-worn theme, remarkably nonrepetative.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Silent thinking is often accompanied by subvocal sayings to ourselves, imagery, emotional feelings, and non-sensory experiences such as familiarity, rightness, and confidence that we can go on in certain ways. Phenomenological materials of these kinds, along with our dispositions to give explanations or draw inferences, provide resources that are sufficient to account for our knowledge of what we think, desire, and so on. We do not need to suppose that there is a distinctive, non-imagistic 'what it is like' to think (...) that p, and a different non-imagistic 'what it is like' to think that q. Nor need we suppose that there is a proprietary 'what it is like' to have one propositional attitude type rather than another. (shrink)

This essay discusses the role that creativity played in Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception and the lived-body as well as in his phenomenology of the social world-- mainly through language. The author identifies three main examples of the philosophical importance that creativity had for Merleau-Ponty: (1) the origin of meaning, (2) the rejection of the Cartesian mind-body dualism, and (3) necessary conditions for human dignity in the relationship of culture and nature. Finally, the last of these examples and the significance (...) of creativity are considered in the light of Merleau-Ponty's last, unfinished work, "The Visible and the Invisible". (shrink)

The recent profusion of studies directed to uncovering the “Young Marx” has also provoked some renewed interest in his contemporary, Johann Caspar Schmidt, better known as Max Stirner. With a few exceptions, the most important being William Brazill’s The Young Hegelians, Stirner has been retained in his traditional role as Marx’s first critic, the harried “Sankt Max” of The German Ideology. This perspective, established firmly by Sidney Hook and continued by David McLellen, does cast light upon Marx’s development, (...) but it cannot be expected to do justice to Stirner, who is more than a mere anti-Marxist. (shrink)

Did the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. cause the values of teenagers in the U.S. to change? Did their previously important self-esteem and self-actualization values become less important and their survival and safety values become more important? Changes in the values of teenagers are important for practitioners, managers, marketers, and researchers to understand because high school students are our current and future employees, managers, and customers, and research has shown that values impact work and consumer-related attitudes and (...) behaviors. Further, studies that compared higher to lower performing for-profit and not-for-profit companies have found that higher performing organizations had strong values that permeated their organizations [Collins J. C., and J. I. Porras: 1994, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (New York, Harper Business); O’Reilly, C. A. and J. A. Chatman: 1996, in B. M. Staw and L. L. Cummings (eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, vol. 18 (JAI Press, Greenwhich, CT), pp. 157–200; O’Reilly, C. A.: 1989, California Management Review 31(4), 9–25; Posner, B. Z., and W. H. Schmidt: 1996, Public Personnel Management, 25(3), 277–298; Rousseau, D.: 1990, Group and Organization Studies 15(4), 448–460; Schein, E. H.: 2004, Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Francisco, Jossey Bass)]. While one study of adults found value changes, no known studies have explored if the values of teenagers also changed post-9/11. This study filled that research gap by exploring the values of a random sample of 1000 U.S. teenagers in grades 9 to 12 pre- and post-9/11, using a demographic questionnaire and the Rokeach Value Survey. The research results indicated that teenage survival, safety, and security values (a world at peace, freedom, national security, and salvation) increased in importance while their self-esteem and self-actualization values (a sense of accomplishment, inner harmony, pleasure, self-respect, and wisdom) decreased in importance, mirroring the changes for adults. The meaning of these findings for practitioners, managers, marketers and researchers was discussed. (shrink)

Efforts to institutionalize ethics in corporations have been discussed without first addressing the desirability of norm conformity or the possibility that the means used to elicit conformity will be coercive. This article presents a theoretical context, grounded in models of social control, within which ethics initiatives may be evaluated. Ethics initiatives are discussed in relation to variables that already exert control in the workplace, such as environmental controls, organizational controls, and personal controls.

This chapter explains the “progressive elaboration” of Louis Althusser’s philosophy in relation to materialism. First, it shows the way in which Althusser’s thinking about materialism, Marxism, Marx’s materialism, and the correct materialism for Marxism had its roots in earlier Marxist reflection on the metaphysics of matter and science. Second, it demonstrates how Althusser’s materialism changed over time. In broad terms, this change can be described as the transition from a Marxist materialism that fully endorsed dialectical logic to one that denied (...) dialectical logic and ontology in the name of a materialism of chance and for the sake of Marxist politics. Another way of stating this is that, gradually, Althusser began to see Historical Materialism as that which is essential to Marxism and Dialectical Materialism as that “horror” which compromised the Marxist movement both theoretically and practically. (shrink)

This commentary begins by explaining how Mangan's important work leads to a question about the relation between non-sensory experiences and perception. Reflection on affect then suggests an addition to Mangan's view that may be helpful on this and perhaps some other questions. Finally, it is argued that acceptance of non-sensory experiences is fully compatible with epiphenomenalism.

Consideration of the work of Sade in relation to Adorno usually refers to the much-discussed chapter from Dialektik der Aufklärung. But Adorno made a number of other remarks across his career that suggest a very different reading. I will discuss the three most significant of these remarks and show how they develop an approach to the libidinal aspect of aesthetic experience that challenges our understanding of the relation of thought and language. In doing so, Sade’s works indicate an extraordinary liberation (...) of the dialectic of natural-history through a mimesis of desire, which is made apparent in what Sade’s texts literally present; in their contingency and also their facticity. (shrink)

This article defends epiphenomenalism against criticisms raised in Dwayne Moore’s “On Robinson’s Response to the Self-Stultifying Objection”.

Taking an analytic and historical approach, this work develops and defends Althusserian critical theory. This theory, it is argued, produces knowledge of how a particular class of people, in a particular time, in a particular place, is dominated, oppressed, or exploited. Moreover, without relying on a general notion of human emancipation, concrete critical theory can suggest political means for the alleviation of these conditions. Because it puts Althusser’s ideas in dialogue with contemporary social science and philosophy, the book as a (...) whole makes contributions to Althusser studies, to Anglo-American political philosophy, and to current debates in the philosophy of the social sciences. (shrink)

William S. Allen sets the works of Theodor Adorno, Immanuel Kant and Peter Weiss in dialogue, revealing how an interrogation of the aesthetics of 'the whole' and the conception of history in Western thought reveals new ways of thinking about history and historically. This book traces how Adorno's reconsideration of history through his readings of Kant's Critique of Judgement are distinct from formulations offered by other thinkers. More than any of them though, Adorno's aesthetics has introduced an alternative thought, (...) which, Allen shows, has been modified and extended in the work of Peter Weiss and other contemporary thinkers. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the potential role of metarepresentation—the representation of another representation, or as commonly considered within cognitive science, the mental representation of another individual's knowledge and beliefs—in mediating definite reference and common ground in conversation. Using dialogues from a referential communication study in which speakers conversed in succession with two different addressees, we highlight ways in which interlocutors work together to successfully refer to objects, and achieve shared conceptualizations. We briefly review accounts of how such shared conceptualizations (...) could be represented in memory, from simple associations between label and referent, to “triple co-presence” representations that track interlocutors in an episode of referring, to more elaborate metarepresentations that invoke theory of mind, mutual knowledge, or a model of a conversational partner. We consider how some forms of metarepresentation, once created and activated, could account for definite reference in conversation by appealing to ordinary processes in memory. We conclude that any representations that capture information about others' perspectives are likely to be relatively simple and subject to the same kinds of constraints on attention and memory that influence other kinds of cognitive representations. (shrink)

The practice of modern craniomaxillofacial surgery has been defined by emergent technologies allowing for the acquisition, storage, utilization, and transfer of massive amounts of sensitive and identifiable patient data. This alone has thrust providers into an unlikely and unprecedented role as the stewards of vast databases of digital information. This data powers the potent surgical tool of virtual surgical planning, a method by which craniomaxillofacial surgeons plan and simulate procedural outcomes in a digital environment. Further complicating this new terrain is (...) the involvement of third‐party contractors—a necessary presence in bringing raw data to bear in the office, virtual space, and operating room. The individual privileges and responsibilities of patients, providers, and vendors towards data are situated within the most recent U.S. court rulings and regulations. This paper offers guidance for overseeing the safe and responsible transfer to third‐party contractors, and provides suggestions for negotiating the trinary relationship between physicians, their patients, and the vendors offering this transformative technology. (shrink)

Writing Laws in Antiquity. Edited by Dominique Jaillard and Christophe Nihan. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 19. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017. Pp. 170. €58.

This paper traces the intellectual development of the workplace privacy construct in the course of American thinking. The role of technological development in this process is examined, particularly in regard to the information gathering/dissemination dilemmas faced by employers and employees alike. The paper concludes with some preliminary considerations toward a theory of workplace privacy.

According to epiphenomenalism, our behavior is caused by events in our brains that also cause our mentality. This resulting mentality reflects our brains¿ organization, but does not in turn cause anything. This book defends an epiphenomenalist account of philosophy of mind. It builds on the author¿s previous work by moving beyond a discussion of sensations to apply an epiphenomenalist outlook to other aspects of mental causation such as beliefs, desires, pleasure, and displeasure. The first four chapters of the book argue (...) for a dualistic theory of sensations and develop an epiphenomenalist version of dualism. The remaining chapters discuss propositional attitudes and valence. The author also responds to potential objections to epiphenomenalism by considering how sensations, intelligence, or understanding might be built into a robot. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in philosophy of mind who are interested in consciousness, mental causation, and how our mentality is situated in the world. (shrink)

In the interval between the time of the Reformation and today, large numbers of Christians seem quietly to have shifted their allegiance from one God to another, leaving themselves with the doctrine of the Trinity but no longer retaining the God whom it adumbrates.