Philosophy

Daniel Dennett has claimed that if Chalmers' argument for the irreducibility of consciousness were to succeed, an analogous argument would establish the truth of Vitalism. Chalmers denies that there is such an analogy. I argue that the analogy does have merit and that skepticism is called for.

Abstract: I defend the wisdom in the old joke “business ethics is an oxymoron”. I offer two related arguments, the predictive and the normative, to the conclusion that good business will be unethical and that good business, economically “ought” to be unethical in a liberal society.

Abstract: Highmore's atomist critique of Digby's Aristotelian mechanism reveals how early modern naturalists struggled to accommodate the existence and proper interpretation of final causes in their theories of generation. I explain Digby's conception of generation and mechanism along with his "preemptive" criticism of Highmore's atomism. Highmore's response is explained by examining how he and Digby differ regarding the reality of minima naturalia as existing parts of substances, the significance of spontaneous generation, preformation, substantial transformation, and finally, the role of the soul in the construction of the seed. Although Highmore is often interpreted as being a non-mechanist I shall argue that he is best understood as following Gassendi in his theory of generation.