607 research outputs found
Decisions in doubt the environment and public policy
No full textUsing examples from the area of waste management but touching also upon issues like the ozone layer, contaminated foodstuffs, and asbestos removal, Robison presents a new vision for rational decision making on environmental issues. But his ideas extend far beyond that arena to include other aspects of public policy. For in exploring a paradigm about how to make reasonable decisions without condemning us to inaction in the face of risks, Robison points out faults in our old policy-making methodology and offers a rationale for a decision procedure based less on certainty but more adapted and adaptive to our times
Client Perjury and Legal Ethics : an Examination of the Defense Counsel's Dilemma
No full textv, 64 p.The author reviews the pros and cons of absolute client confidentiality from its initial discussion by Professor Monroe H. Freedman in 1966 to the controversial Model Rules of Professional Conduct proposed and debated by the American Bar Association in 1983. The author focuses specifically on the responsibilities of the attorney who knows that his client intends to commit perjury during a trial
An Examination of Intentional Communication in Non-Human Species
No full textiv, 51 p.The author reviews the phenomena of speech in other species by first considering the traditional ways of viewing humans in relation to animals. The next step is to consider the work of Roger Fouts at the Institute for Primate Studies. Finally, the author examines the changes in perspective needed in behavioral science in order to evaluate the abilities of non-human communicators, and the effects of having the last bastion of human uniqueness challenged
Egoism and Altruism : The Conditions of Morality
No full textv, 61 p.The author establishes four propositions: 1. Egoism is commonly held to be unable to fulfill the rationality requirement, as a necessary condition of morality; 2. Altruism is commonly held to be unable to fulfill the psychological possibility requirement, as a necessary condition of morality; 3. The question of egoism's morality is often reduced to the debate over the rationality of egoism; 4. The question of altruism's morality is often reduced to the debate over the psychological possibility of altruism
An Analysis of Wittgenstein's Picture Theory
No full text25 p.Wittgenstein's distinction between what is shown
and what can be said is controversial because implicit
in this distinction is the assertion that both sides
of it are mutually exclusive, that is, what can be
shown cannot be said. This bold assertion rests on an
ontology forged from the beginning of the Tractatus
regarding the nature of simple objects. This ontology
views the world as necessarily consisting, independently
of us and of language, of simple objects whose relations
operate in particular ways. It is in fact this ontology
which leads Wittgenstein to a paradox in which
he admits that his own propositions are senseless since
his own descriptions about the relation of language
to the world can only be shown by language, not said or
stated in it. That Wittgenstein's method does breach
with his ontology is a problem he tried to answer by
likening the situation unto one where we regard his
propositions as a ladder on which we mount to a certain
level of understanding and which we then kick away.
Wittgenstein, as Russell remarks in the preface,l
manages to say an awful lot about what cannot be said.
I will try in this paper to expand on the limits he
assigns to language and the rationale he supplies for
doing so
An Examination of the Political and Philosophical Basis of "A Theory of Justice"
No full textiii, 50 p.It is not my intention
to produce a point by point reconstruction of the argument, though the
nature of the book, with the subtle and extremely complex connection of
the various parts, demands close scrutiny, lest the argument be misconstrued.
But my basic intent is to come to conclusions on some of
the larger questions implicit in Rawls effort
Environmental City Planning: Selected Philosophies of the 19th and 20th Centuries
No full textiv, 82 p.In examining a
part of the evolution of environmental concern, this paper will outline
and discuss apparent trends and Utopian concepts which have emerged in
architectural and city planning philosophies
A Summary of Aristotle's Conception of Happiness Posed in Nicomachean Ethics
No full text68 p.This paper is to be a summary and interpretation of the
conception of the nature of human happiness and the "good"
life posed by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics.
It is written for the purpose of demonstrating this author's
degree of understanding of Aristotelian moral philosophy, and
is thus quite detailed and carefully throughout. Although
this thoroughness may at times insult the knowledge of those
who have already been exposed to Aristotelian concepts, it
should nonetheless accommodate quite well readers unfamiliar
with ancient philosophy and Aristotle but interested in his
conception of happiness
The Aesthetics of Kant
No full text40 p.Kant's aesthetic theory asseses one particular problem: why is it when we judge an aesthetic object to be beautiful, we demand the assent of others. Kant discusses four moments--"Quality," "Quantity," "Relation," and "Modality"-- and their pertinence to aesthetic judgement in "The Analytic of the Beautiful." Kant also proposes that the noncognitive judgement of taste must be be tied to the cognitive faculties through the five stage process of "transcendental deduction.
A Critical Examination of the Capitalistic Economic System from the Moral Point of View
No full text98 p.The basic thesis for this essay is that the mechanisms by which capitalism hopes to provide satisfactory answers to the questions—“How to produce,” “For whom to produce,” and “What to produce”-- have important moral and social implications for both individuals within the system and society in general. There are philosophical as well as economic implications in a society's choice of economic structures. The centralizing focus of this essay is to examine, from a moral point of view, the ways in which capitalism answers the basic economic questions of production and distribution, and to consider their moral ramifications
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