Intelligent Virtue presents a distinctive new account of virtue and happiness as central ethical ideas. Annas argues that exercising a virtue involves practical reasoning of a kind which can illuminatingly be compared to the kind of reasoning we find in someone exercising a practical skill. Rather than asking at the start how virtues relate to rules, principles, maximizing, or a final end, we should look at the way in which the acquisition and exercise of virtue can be seen to be in many ways like the acquisition and exercise of more mundane activities, such as farming, building or playing the piano. This helps us to see virtue as part of an agent's happiness or flourishing, and as constituting (wholly, or in part) that happiness. We are offered a better understanding of the relation between virtue as an ideal and virtue in everyday life, and the relation between being virtuous and doing the right thing.

Morality and Power offers a compelling critique of orthodox economic analysis and its impacts on public policy. Mike Berry argues that the theoretical underpinning of evaluative tools like cost-benefit analysis rests on an incoherent concept of 'efficiency' derived from Paretian welfare economics. Beginning by reviewing the historical progression of economic thought, Berry argues there has been a lack of crucial development in economic thinking in public policy since the economic crisis of 2008. The ethically unacceptable outcomes of the current public policy approach are exposed: most notably the support for policies that accentuate inequality and social polarization; the outbreak of crises in the financial sector, and the treatment of refugees and migrants. Finally, threats to liberal democracies in an age of rampant populism and rising nationalism are examined, offering noteworthy suggestions for an alternative democratic future. Both students and practitioners of heterodox economics and public policy will find this book a compelling insight into the ethical concerns of neoliberal policies shaped by politicians and policymakers today.

The concept of causation is fundamental to ascribing moral and legal responsibility for events. Yet the relationship between causation and responsibility remains unclear. What precisely is the connection between the concept of causation used in attributing responsibility and the accounts of causal relations offered in the philosophy of science and metaphysics? How much of what we call causal responsibility is in truth defined by non-causal factors? This book argues that much of the legal doctrine on these questions is confused and incoherent, and offers the first comprehensive attempt since Hart and Honore to clarify the philosophical background to the legal and moral debates.
The book first sets out the place of causation in criminal and tort law and then outlines the metaphysics presupposed by the legal doctrine. It then analyses the best theoretical accounts of causation in the philosophy of science and metaphysics, and using these accounts criticizes many of the core legal concepts surrounding causation - such as intervening causation, forseeability of harm and complicity. It considers and rejects the radical proposals to eliminate the notion of causation from law by using risk analysis to attribute responsibility. The result of the analysis is a powerful argument for revising our understanding of the role played by causation in the attribution of legal and moral responsibility.

How should you live? Should you devote yourself to perfecting a single talent or try to live a balanced life? Should you lighten up and have more fun, or buckle down and try to achieve greatness? Should you try to be a better friend? Should you be self-critical or self-accepting? And how should you decide among the possibilities open to you? Should you consult experts, listen to your parents, do lots of research? Make lists of pros and cons, or go with your gut? These are not questions that can be answered in general or in the abstract. Rather, these questions are addressed to the first person point of view, to the perspective each of us occupies when we reflect on how to live without knowing exactly what we're aiming for. To answer them, The Reflective Life focuses on the process of living one's life from the inside, rather than on defining goals from the outside. Drawing on traditional philosophical sources as well as literature and recent work in social psychology, Tiberius argues that, to live well, we need to develop reflective wisdom: to care about things that will sustain us and give us good experiences, to have perspective on our successes and failures, and to be moderately self-aware and cautiously optimistic about human nature. Further, we need to know when to think about our values, character, and choices, and when not to. A crucial part of wisdom, Tiberius maintains, is being able to shift perspectives: to be self-critical when we are prepared for it, but not when it will undermine our success; to be realistic, but not to the extent that we are immobilized by the harsh facts of life; to examine life when reflection is appropriate, but not when we should lose ourselves in experience.

This book brings together the study of two great disciplines of the Islamic world: law and philosophy. In both sunni and shiite Islam, it became the norm for scholars to acquire a high level of expertise in the legal tradition. Thus some of the greatest names in the history of Aristotelianism were trained jurists, like Averroes, or commented on the status and nature of law, like al-Farabi. While such authors sought to put law in its place relative to the philosophical disciplines, others criticized philosophy from a legal viewpoint, like al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya. But this collection of papers does not only explore the relative standing of law and philosophy. It also looks at how philosophers, theologians, and jurists answered philosophical questions that arise from jurisprudence itself. What is the logical structure of a well-formed legal argument? What standard of certainty needs to be attained in passing down judgments, and how is that standard reached? What are the sources of valid legal judgment and what makes these sources authoritative? May a believer be excused on grounds of ignorance? Together the contributions provide an unprecedented demonstration of the close connections between philosophy and law in Islamic society, while also highlighting the philosophical interest of texts normally studied only by legal historians.

Norms are a pervasive yet mysterious feature of social life. In Explaining Norms, four philosophers and social scientists team up to grapple with some of the many mysteries, offering a comprehensive account of norms: what they are; how and why they emerge, persist and change; and how they work. Norms, they argue, should be understood in non-reductive terms as clusters of normative attitudes that serve the function of making us accountable to one another--with the different kinds of norms (legal, moral, and social norms) differing in virtue of being constituted by different kinds of normative attitudes that serve to make us accountable in different ways. Explanations of and by norms should be seen as thoroughly pluralist in character. Explanations of norms should appeal to the ways that norms help us to pursue projects and goals, individually and collectively, as well as to enable us to constitute social meanings. Explanations by norms should recognise the multiplicity of ways in which norms may bear upon the actions we perform, the attitudes we form and the modes of deliberation in which we engage: following, merely conforming with, and even breaching norms. While advancing novel and distinctive positions on all of these topics, Explaining Norms will also serve as a sourcebook with a rich array of arguments and illustrations for others to reassemble in ways of their own choosing.

Technological developments and improved treatment methods have acted as an impetus for recent growth and change within the medical community. As patient expectations increase and healthcare organizations have come under scrutiny for questionable practices, medical personnel must take a critical look at the current state of their operations and work to improve their managerial and treatment processes. Organizational Culture and Ethics in Modern Medicine examines the current state of the healthcare industry and promotes methods that achieve effective organizational practice for the improvement of medical services in the public and private sphere. Focusing on patient communication, technology integration, healthcare personnel management, and the delivery of quality care, this book is a pivotal reference source for medical professionals, healthcare managers, hospital administrators, public health workers, and researchers interested in improving patient and employee satisfaction within healthcare institutions.

Since the introduction of radio and television news, journalism has gone through multiple transformations, but each time it has been sustained by a commitment to basic values and best practices.
Journalism Ethics is a reminder, a defense and an elucidation of core journalistic values, with particular emphasis on the interplay of theory, conceptual analysis and practice. The book begins with a sophisticated model for ethical decision-making, one that connects classical theories with the central purposes of journalism. Top scholars from philosophy, journalism and communications offer essays on such topics as objectivity, privacy, confidentiality, conflict of interest, the history of journalism, online journalism, and the definition of a journalist. The result is a guide to ethically sound and socially justified journalism-in whatever form that practice emerges.
Journalism Ethics will appeal to students and teachers of journalism ethics, as well as journalists and practical ethicists in general.

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

Praise for "THE SPECIFIC DENSITY OF SCIENTISTS"

As an expert in understanding and defining the cult mentality, David Conn manages, through logic and his strong faith, to explain the inability, or the refusal, of many scientists to separate the spiritual self from the scientifically driven self (in other words, "to bifurcate"). This, he boldly says, is their real path to illumination, to Jesus Christ, the only source of Truth, the creator not only of science, but of the entire universe. Mr. Conn bolsters his case by way of an inarguable and mathematically proven truism. --"Lillian Carucio, author, Humility, A Lost Virtue and the Search for Truth"

In his latest book, "THE SPECIFIC DENSITY OF SCIENTISTS," Mr. Conn deals with the cult mentality that has invaded the realm of science and scientists. He explains four major concepts that the unbifurcated wing of science has either refused to consider or has fearfully and illogically swept aside.

He exposes the weakness of the unbifurcated scientists, their minions, and the growing majority of a general population who, having themselves been infused with unscientific scientism, see to it that their children, their students, their spouses, and their friends, are also steeped in it. This errant scientism is a mentality that people are unaware of, but that flows in and out of them in torrents through public institutions, workplaces, artistic expressions, and social networks until it reaches a remarkable status of being something that Everybody knows and believes

Four major concepts in "THE SPECIFIC DENSITY OF SCIENTISTS" were introduced in Mr. Conn s last book, the Christian science fiction novel, "LEDNORF S DILEMMA." One of these concepts, Grath s Paradox, is a Terminal Corruption Hypothesis. It is tenuous, at best, as analysts attempt to discern whether the United States has or has not reached the point of no return.

In this latest book, Mr. Conn says: If the point of no return has not been reached, the only hope for a healthy realignment lies with America s intellectual community and its general citizenry coming to understand that scientists and other intellectuals are wrong to think their brains and education give them special advantages in determining whether or not God exists and participates in the lives of His people. The masses, therefore, should no longer be swayed by scientists who have no special authority in these spiritual matters. It is critical that they pursue the one source of Truth with all their hearts, souls and minds.

David Conn was for ten years a lead analyst with Chevron s big environmental laboratory and then joined the Department of Defense as a Quality Control Representative, a liaison among several Naval and Air Force bases and the Defense Department, performing surveillance over chemicals and fuels and the occasional fueling of Air Force One.

Aside from "LEDNORF S DILEMMA," David Conn also co-authored "THE CULT THAT DIED" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1980).

Hans Jonas (1903-1993) was one of the most important German-Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. A student of Martin Heidegger and close friend of Hannah Arendt, Jonas advanced the fields of phenomenology and practical ethics in ways that are just beginning to be appreciated in the English-speaking world. Drawing here on unpublished and newly translated material, Lewis Coyne brings together for the first time in English Jonas's philosophy of life, ethic of responsibility, political theory, philosophy of technology and bioethics. In Hans Jonas: Life, Technology and the Horizons of Responsibility, Coyne argues that the aim of Jonas's philosophy is to confront three critical issues inherent to modernity: nihilism, the ecological crisis and the transhumanist drive to biotechnologically enhance human beings. While these might at first appear disparate, for Jonas all follow from the materialist turn taken by Western thought from the 17th century onwards, and he therefore seeks to tackle all three issues at their collective point of origin. This book explores how Jonas develops a new categorical imperative of responsibility on the basis of an ontology that does justice to the purposefulness and dignity of life: to act in a way that does not compromise the future of humanity on earth. Reflecting on this, as we face a potential future of ecological and societal collapse, Coyne forcefully demonstrates the urgency of Jonas's demand that humanity accept its newfound responsibility as the 'shepherd of beings'.

The metaphysical part of this book is largely concerned with realism issues. Michael Devitt starts with realism about universals, dismissing Plato's notorious 'one over many' problem. Several chapters argue for a fairly uncompromisingly realist view of the external physical world of commonsense and science. Both the nonfactualism of moral noncognitivism and positivistic instrumentalism, and defl ationism about truth, are found to rest on an antirealism that is hard to characterize. A case is presented for moral realism. Various biological realisms are considered. Finally, an argument is presented for an unfashionable biological essentialism.
The second part of the book is epistemological. Devitt argues against the a priori and for a Quinean naturalism. The intuitions that so dominate "armchair philosophy" are empirical not a priori.
Throughout the book there is an emphasis on distinguishing metaphysical issues about what there is and what it's like from semantic issues about meaning, truth, and reference. Another central theme, captured in the title, is that we should "put metaphysics first." We should approach epistemology and semantics from a metaphysical perspective rather than vice versa. The epistemological turn in modern philosophy, and the linguistic turn in contemporary philosophy, were something of disasters.

Presenting ten diverse and original moral paradoxes, this cutting edge work of philosophical ethics makes a focused, concrete case for the centrality of paradoxes within morality.* Explores what these paradoxes can teach us about morality and the human condition* Considers a broad range of subjects, from familiar topics to rarely posed questions, among them "Fortunate Misfortune", "Beneficial Retirement" and "Preferring Not To Have Been Born"* Asks whether the existence of moral paradox is a good or a bad thing* Presents analytic moral philosophy in a provocative, engaging and entertaining way; posing new questions, proposing possible solutions, and challenging the reader to wrestle with the paradoxes themselves

This volume of new essays provides a comprehensive and structured examination of Kantian accounts of practical justification. This examination serves as a starting point for a focused investigation of the Kantian approach to justification in practical disciplines (ethics, legal and political philosophy or philosophy of religion). The recent growth of literature on this subject is not surprising given that Kant's approach seems so promising: he claims to be able to justify unconditional normative claims without recourse to assumptions, views or doctrines, which are not in their turn justifiable. Within the context of modern pluralism, this is exactly what the field needs: an approach which can demonstrably show why certain normative claims are valid, and why the grounds of these claims are valid in their turn, and why the freedom to question them should not be stifled. Although this has been a growth area in philosophy, no systematic and sustained study of the topic of practical justification in Kantian philosophy has been undertaken so far.
With fourteen original chapters and an introduction from leading researchers in the field, this volume addresses this neglected topic. The starting point is the still-dominant view that a successful account of justification of normative claims has to be non-metaphysical. The essays engage with this dominant view and pursue further implications in ethics, legal and political philosophy, as well as philosophy of religion. Throughout the essays, the contributors bring into contact with contemporary debates key interpretive questions about Kant's views on practical justification.

Thinking about Reasons is a collection of fourteen new essays on topics in ethics and the philosophy of action, inspired in one way or another by the work of Jonathan Dancy-one of his generation's most influential moral philosophers. Many of the most influential living thinkers in the area are contributors to this collection, which also contains an autobiographical afterword by Dancy himself. Topics discussed in this volume include: * the idea that the facts that explain action are non-psychological ones * buck passing theories of goodness and rightness * the idea that some moral reasons justify action without requiring it * the particularist idea that there are no true informative moral principles * the idea that egoism and impartial consequentialism are self-defeating * the idea that moral reasons are dependent on either impersonal value, or benefits to oneself, or benefits to those with whom one has some special connection, but not on deontological constraints * the idea that we must distinguish between reasons and enablers, disablers, intensifiers, and attenuators of reasons * the idea that, although the lived ethical life is shaped by standing commitments, uncodifable judgement is at least sometimes needed to resolve what to do when these commitments conflict * the idea that the value of a whole need not be a mathematical function of the values of the parts of that whole * the idea that practical reasoning is based on inference the idea that there cannot be irreducibly normative properties.

Oxford Studies in Metaethics is the only periodical publication devoted exclusively to original philosophical work on the foundations of ethics. It provides an annual selection of much of the best new scholarship being done in the field. Its broad purview includes work being done at the
intersections of ethical theory with metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. OSME provides an excellent basis for understanding recent developments in the field; those who would like to acquaint themselves with the current state of play in metaethics would do well
to start here.