Pearl Harbor - Brief Look Essays - Military History By Country

Pearl Harbor - Brief Look On December 7, 1941 the U.S. troops stationed on the island of Pearl Harbor were not waken up by the familiar sound of a bugle but instead by gunfire and explosions. This is what it might have been like if you were one of the troops at Pearl Harbor. This attack was important because it led to other events in World War II. Some of these events were America's involvement in the war and the dropping of the Atom Bomb at Hiroshima. Between the years of 1920 and 1940 dictators came to power in Germany, Italy, and Japan. The first country to have a dictatorship was Italy. Thier dictator was Benito Mussolini. He became dictator in 1922. Mussolini organized and founded the Fascist party before he became dictator. After thier loss in World War I Germany had severe problems with thier economy. Adolf Hitler and his political party the Nazis promised they would end Germanies problems if Hitler became dictator. The Germans made Hitler thier dictator in 1933. Italy and Germany decided to become allies in 1939. They called themselves the Axis Powers. Japan joined the Axis Powers in 1940. The emperor of Japan at the present time was Emperor Hirohito. After he joined with the Axis Powers he started taking over countries, cities, and island in and around Japan that belonged to countries who opposed the Axis Powers. Joseph Stalin, the ruler of Russia at the present time, sided with Hitler until Hitler double crossed him and tried to take over Russia. After the double cross Stalin decided to side with the Allies. The Allies were the countries that were opposed to the Axis Powers. These countries were Britain, France, the U.S.A., and Russia. The three leaders of the Allied Powers were Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of the U.S.A., Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Britain, and Joseph Stalin. After World War II started Japan grew angry with the U.S.A. because they were helping China by sending them war supplies. Japan didn't like this because China was the main target of Japanese attacks. As a result of this Japan decided to take a "peace" trip to the U.S.A. . They made the trip in November of 1941. During this "peace" trip Japan made three proposals to the government. These proposals were, to stop aiding China, to stay out of Asian affairs, and to begin shipping oil to Japan right away or Japan would attack the U.S.A. . President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the government of the United States didn't carry out these proposals. As a result of this Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941 at 7:55 AM. The reason they attacked that early was because Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the person in control of the Japanese warships in that area, knew most of the troops at Pearl Harbor would be asleep. The main planes Japan used for the attack were bombers. The number of bombers used was 350. Six aircraft carriers are what these planes were carried on. They chose to use bombers because thier primary objective was to destroy as many ships as possible. They did have one squadron of fighter planes in each wave, however. The reason they did this was because Yamamoto predicted that the troops at Pearl Harbor would be able to a launch a few planes. There were two waves of planes. The first wave of planes were to destroy as many capital ships as possible. Capital ships are ships that are powerful. The planes that were still up and running after the first wave were to join in the second wave. The second wave of planes were to destroy whatever was left after the first wave of planes finished thier mission. These were mostly carrier ships and submarines that were surfaced. During this attack exactly ten major command ships were destroyed. Some of the ships that were destroyed were the U.S.S. Arizona, the Pennsylvania, the Maryland, and the West Virginia. The major results off the bombing of Pearl Harbor were the involvement of the United States in World War II. The second major result was the dropping of the Atom Bomb at Hiroshima in Japan. Harry S. Truman was the president

Definition of the Biology Prefix Eu-

Definition of the Biology Prefix Eu- The prefix (eu-) means good, well, pleasant or true. It is derived from the Greek eu meaning well and eus meaning good. Examples Eubacteria (eu-bacteria) - kingdom in the bacteria domain. Bacteria are considered to be true bacteria, distinguishing them from archaebacteria. Eucalyptus (eu-calyptus) - a genus of evergreen tree, commonly called gum trees, that are used for wood, oil, and gum. They are so named because their flowers are well (eu-) covered (calyptus) by a protective cap. Euchromatin (eu-chroma-tin) - a less compact form of chromatin found in the cell nucleus. Chromatin decondenses to allow DNA replication and transcription to occur. It is called true chromatin because it is the active region of the genome. Eudiometer (eu-dio-meter) - an instrument designed to test the goodness of air. It is used to measure gas volumes in chemical reactions. Euglena (eu-glena) - single-celled protists with a true nucleus (eukaryote) that have characteristics of both plant and animal cells. Euglobulin (eu-globulin) - a class of proteins known as true globulins because they are soluble in saline solutions but insoluble in water. Eukaryote (eu-kary-ote) - organism with cells containing a true membrane bound nucleus. Eukaryotic cells include animal cells, plant cells, fungi and protists. Eupepsia (eu-pepsia) - describes good digestion due to having the appropriate amount of pepsin (gastric enzyme) in gastric juice. Euphenics (eu-phenics) - the practice of making physical or biological changes in order to address a genetic disorder. The term means good appearance and the technique involves making phenotypic changes that dont alter a persons genotype. Euphony (eu-phony) - agreeable sounds that are pleasing to the ear. Euphotic (eu-photic) - relating to the zone or layer of a body of water that is well lit and receives enough sunlight for photosynthesis to occur in plants. Euplasia (eu-plasia) - the normal condition or state of cells and tissues. Euploid (eu-ploid) - having the correct number of chromosomes that corresponds to an exact multiple of the haploid number in a species. Diploid cells in humans have 46 chromosomes, which is twice the number found in the haploid gametes. Eupnea (eu-pnea) - good or normal breathing that is sometimes referred to as quiet or unlabored breathing. Eurythermal (eu-ry-thermal) - having the ability to tolerate a wide range of environmental temperatures. Eurythmic (eu-rythmic) - having a harmonious or pleasing rhythm. Eustress (eu-stress) - a healthy or good level of stress that is considered beneficial. Euthanasia (eu-thanasia) - the practice of ending a life in order to alleviate suffering or pain. The word literally means a good death. Euthyroid (eu-thyroid) - the condition of having a well functioning thyroid gland. In contrast, having an overactive thyroid is known as hyperthyroidism and having an underactive thyroid is known as hypothyroidism. Eutrophy (eu-trophy) - the state of being healthy or having well balanced nutrition and development. Euvolemia (eu-vol-emia) - the state of having the proper amount of blood or fluid volume in the body.

Many of todays drivers have dangerous habits Essay

Many of todays drivers have dangerous habits - Essay Example One of the main reasons for this increase in figure is that people have very little regard for traffic laws and many have a poor road sense. Moreover, the condition of the roads is very poor and needs lot of improvement. No amount of booking cases and fining motorists can cure this menace. One incident that constantly reminds me of the ugly face of rash driving is from news clipping, when an old man was hit from the back on the highway while he was driving within the speed limit. He suffered a severe shock and when he climbed out of the car and attempted crawling to cross the road to reach a point of safety, none of the many motorists on the road stopped to help him. I have particularly pointed out this incident not because it was the case of an old man but because it was a case of inhumanity or human insensitivity. Drunken driving has shown a gradual rise over the years. No amount of cajoling or strictness has hampered the enthusiasts who enjoy driving after getting heavily drunk. It has been observed that such incidents increase especially on festive occasions. Everyday, 36 people in United States die, and approximately 700 more are injured in motor vehicle crashes because of alcohol impaired drivers. This demands a zero tolerance laws against drunk drivers. Laws for the road should be followed with more determination. According to some members of the law and administration branch, fast driving does not mean rash driving. Thus, in case of an accident, it needs to be seen whether the driver was driving fast or rash. Rash and negligent driving accounts to the maximum percentage of life-claiming accidents all over the world. Next is the crop of under-age drivers who very often violate the traffic rules. The best possible way to address this road safety hazard is to educate both the parents and the children on road safety and bring about more strict rules for such offences which cradle under the term childish. About 30% of crashes killing young

Journalism and Communication - Screen cultures Essay

Journalism and Communication - Screen cultures - Essay Example Does video gaming portend any detrimental implications on those persons who are fanatics of constantly playing an assortment of diverse video games? Most researchers and writers typically address this concern with regard to reference to violent themed games (Melisa 2002). Moreover, it is overtly a pertinent prospect for the upcoming field of persuasive video games. These games encompass a diverse assortment of games that their authors design for educational, political and advocacy among other critical areas in the daily life. These video games seek to purposely influence and alter behavioural and notional perspectives of individuals who take an interest to play them (Ruth 2011). Moreover, it is critically consummate to determine the effective aspect of these games as potential vectors of persuasion on the persons who take an active role in gaming. With regard to various pertinent interrelationships of aspects such as intent, messages conveyed, player predisposition and quality of gam e among others, it is complicated to generalize regarding their implications and relative effectiveness. With use of a persuasive video game that I have designed, I intend to prospect and gauge its effectiveness as a social backing applet while isolating the various issues that put in to that (Gilles 1992). Introduction In the fresh past, in the year 2006, Gill, a 25 year old person murdered a woman and critically wounded nineteen other persons in a grave shoot out spree at a college affiliation in Montreal and eventually committed suicide. In his specific outline journal entries, he scribbled about his unconditional love and fanaticism for certain films, television shows among other constituents of popular, contemporary media and entertainment culture. However, he mentioned various video games, especially Super Columbine Massacre, that captured most of the entire media nerves to attention and raised the subject of how much mental and character influence various computer games can i mplicate on their players (Film Philosophy 2010). Moreover, this was nevertheless the initial time the matter was raised to publicity. The truth that the masterminds of the massacre game played doom and additionally modelled their own doom rankings was immensely criticised, as was the intelligence that a driver associated with a fatal motor accident had a copy of the violent street racing game, NFS, on the frontage seat of his carriage. These happenings among others resulted into various media critics and political figures arguing that by merit of their fascination, violent and realistic images and graphics with the aptitude to allow the players to practice diverse tasks and scenarios, video computer games could implicate on behaviours and attitudes. This would be for good or worse, though in the viewpoint of critics, it is typically for ill (Patrick 2011). The row that Calgary Sun correspondent Mike presented is archetypal. He questions the readers why they have to wait and witness assorted video games being evidence in several crime occurrences. He pickles the people to wake up and take an initiative to have control over such a situation which would be detrimental in society owing to the ill bizarre situations that arise when gamers take too much dose of typically murderously themed video games. Purportedly, Gill’s obvious signoff in blogs would state that life is a video game and that

Web pages content Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Web pages content - Essay Example Simply put, we do not merely provide web content writing for people to read as we excel in providing online content that do not merely offer information or serve as fillers and cache to your web template. While our products are designed primarily to be informative but on top of this they function as web tools that would get our clients increased web traffic and returning visitors. An example of this is our integrated SEO services which you could learn more in this page. We believe in the efficacy of getting our clients involved in their web pages content and cache development. There is an existing digital networked medium in place – the internet – which allows for fast, cheap and real time communication over long distances. We take advantage of this tool in order to have our online content writing projects become products of collaborative activity.We want to know how we may be able to help your needs. We have specific content solutions available for you and you may requ est a price quote or order this service in this link. We offer a full money-back guarantee policy to ensure that your project get the attention and quality assurance it deserves. Remember that with us, you get more than just web pages content.Article Writingof interactive media which entails article writing as an integral part of an audio and visual experience alongside the various tools and applications found in the web and other media which empowers the users or the readers in terms of interactivity that has never existed before.

Development of Chiles Economic Model

Development of Chiles Economic Model William Rodriguez Bibliography B: ‘Formal’ (post-colonial) economic and social development policies, plans, programs and projects, from the dawn of the ‘development era’ up to the present time in Chile. Introduction To obtain a complete perspective and framework of the economic and social development of Chile after the independence to the present time it is essential to see the evolution of the political forces and policies that have shaped the country throughout history. After independence, the institutions and the economy showed no substantial changes for the reason that the revolutionaries were the Landowners, therefore the political power and economy remained oligarchic and centralized. However through time, Chile has had dramatic changes in the social, economic and political structure (Luders, 1993), furthermore sharing similar circumstances with other countries in Latin America such as, social inequality, economic inequality, inflation and dictatorial governments. This bibliography B will analyse the different periods in the history of Chile, going through the changes that the country has experienced since the independence in 1818 to the institutional rupture in 1973 to the transition and consolidation of democracy in 1990. Bibliography PETRAS, J. 1969. Chapter 1: Economic development and Social Change; Chapter 4: The Middle Class; Chapter 6: Christian Democracy; Chapter 9: The Future of Chilean Politics. Politics and social forces in Chilean Development. Berkeley, University of California Press. Petras presents an interesting narrative of all political parties and forces that shaped the development of Chile before the institutional rupture in 1973. In this book, the author argues that the economic and political control was run by the usual elites and middle-class industrialists, however, obvious signs of agricultural and proletarian groups demanding more participation were increasingly visible. According to Petras, Chilean society was a democratic society. However, very few people were involved in the political process because they were controlled by the elite with the socio-economic power, the political parties driving the country according the author were: the Popular Action Front (FRAP) and the Christian Democratic, usually sharing interests and giving no participation to the lowest in the social strata. During the nineteenth century and the twentieth century each president appointed his successor by controlling the ruling classes and elections, political and social reforms were directed by the political class, and society basically was divided into the owners of properties and farmworkers. However according to the author, industrialization has played a role in the development of sectors such as the middle class sectors, strengthening this working class and giving them a more participatory role in Chilean politics and society. The author claims that, the working class must lead the way to change, integrating and becoming a significant force for political and economic development in the country. However, modernization and industrialization created a big difference in the social structure, promoting uneven development between classes during that period. GIL, F., LAGOS ESCOBAR, R. LANDSBERGER, H. 1979. Chapter 1: The Difficult Road to Socialism: the Chilean Case from a Historical Perspective; Chapter 2: The evolution Of the Chilean Political System 1952-1970; chapter 3: The Unidad Popular: A Historical Vision of the Transition to socialism. Chile at the Turning Point, lessons of the socialist years 1970-1973. Philadelphia, institute for the Study of Human Issues. According to the authors, until 1973 Chile had a political stability and the economy before 1952 was characterized by the expansion of the industrial sector. This apparent stability change with the election of Allende in 1970 and what he called the second round to socialism. Allende’s socialist strategies and the actions taken by his government by the nationalization of businesses, industry and banking system, gave way to a political unrest encouraging a system of confrontation; Government run out of options losing control of the country thus facilitating a military coup in 1973. The end of the democracy came with the authoritarian military rule in Chile in 1973, consequently, new policies for inversion, market and international trade, were created. New forms of transforming the economy took place, as well as changes in foreign policy, health services, education, industry and political system. VALDEZ, J. 1995. Chapter 1: Authoritarians without a Project; Chapter 9: In search of Politics; Chapter 10: The elusive Hegemony. Pinochets Economists: The Chicago School of Economics in Chile. Cambridge University Press. The social and political repression of the Pinochet period managed to make possible the implementation of economic changes in 1973, a commitment to free markets and the union of economists with similar ideals enabled the economic growth of the country. The book presents a description of how the government changed the economy of Chile during the Pinochet period, explaining how the group called â€Å"the Chicago boys took control of the economy, initiating economic neo-liberal free trade and radical development strategies to improve the economy. According to the author many of these strategies remained active even after the return to democracy. Valdez (1995), claims that the measures taken by this group of economists represented a record growth in the economy furthermore showing that a highly political environment and ideas provide a solid foundation for the implementation of public policies. BORZUTZKY, S. OPPENHEIM, L. 2006. Chapter 1: The Arduous Road to Democracy; Chapter 2: The consolidation of the Market. After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to Democracy and the Market. University Press of Florida. This book is a collective work of 8 professors, focusing on the period after the Pinochet government and the path to the democracy of Chile, the authors analyse the effect of institutions, market, health care, foreign policy, pensions, and public policies in the Chilean economy and society. Concentrating on the period of 1990-2006 this book is a view on all the factors involved in Chilean society during the twentieth century, including human rights, external politics, openness to market, economic policies, abortion, divorce, political institutions, church and the process of consolidation of democracy through democratically elected governments after the Pinochet regime. Contrary to what other authors argue, Borzutzky (2006) claims that the health policies adopted by Pinochet created a discriminatory system by reducing the budget in the public sector, consequently reducing the quality of the health services. Thea author also argues that the open market philosophy and privatization of the industry constituted a setback for those peasants who legally obtained and worked the land during that period. Discussion â€Å"In the last decades, Chile has suffered drastic changes in its economic, political, and social structure† (Santos, 2005), therefore, to have a detailed understanding and a comprehensive framework of the development of the country it is necessary to analyse the different periods in its history. Petras (1969) and Gil (1979) present a vision of the economy and society before the institutional rupture in 1973, Valdez (1995) poses a vision of the economy and society during the authoritarian military rule, and Borzutzky Oppenheim (2006) focus on the period after the military rule. This diversity of authors presents a complete view of all the elements that have shaped the economy and society in Chile. Petras (1969) and Gil (1979), agree that the economic and political power of Chile before 1973 was in the hands of â€Å"elites† and industrial merchants leaving no participation to the working class in politics, however, this centralized power helped maintain the political stability in the nation for many decades. According to the authors, projects and programs during this period were focused on benefiting the elites, but by the time of the 1970’s, development had increased the gap in the social structure producing a marked inequality in social and economic sectors. Democratic recovery, political stability, and economic growth seem to be the keys for the recent development of the nation (Santos, 2005). However, According to Valdez (1995), Borzutzky () Oppenheim (2006), the political repression of the Pinochet period and the implementation of social and economic reforms, created the basis for the development and economic growth of the country. The reforms made à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ ¹Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ ¹in order to obtain equal opportunities for citizens in terms of health, education, macroeconomic policy, openness to market, and mass privatization of enterprises were key achievements for the reactivation of the economy. A large-scale privatization occurred in Chile by 1974, approximately 550 companies were privatized (Luders, 1993). Consequently the private sector became responsible for growth and also was in charge of financing most of the investment in the country. Furthermore, a greater emphasis was placed on improving exports, avoid monopoly, strengthen the industry, and opening the economy to market. Valdez (1995) suggests that the rapid growth in that period, was due measures taken by â€Å"the Chicago boys a group of young economists who implemented neo-liberal economic policies in the country. In conclusion, Chile is today a clear proof of the imposition of the liberal model upon the economic and political (Moulian, 1997), the effectiveness of the Chilean economic model has become internationally recognized, the low rates of inflation, its policy of Foreign Trade, high investment, trade liberalization, search for social equality, competitiveness, success on social programs in health and education, improvement of labour relations, aid to low-income families, economic Growth, and high levels of internal investment have marked Chile as one of the most successful developing countries in the Latin American area (Muà ±oz, 1993). References: LUDERS, R. 1993. The success and failure of the state-owned enterprise divestitures in a developing country, the case of chile. . The Columbia Journal of World Business. MOULIAN, T. 1997. Chile actual. Anatomà ­a de un mito. Santiago: Arcis-Lom. MUÑOZ, H. 1993. La polà ­tica econà ³mica en la transicià ³n. Santiago: CIEPLAN. In: MCMAHON, J. A. M. Y. G. (ed.) Chile en transicià ³n: Estrategia econà ³mica y polà ­tica. SANTOS, A. 2005. The Chilean dilemma: between economic development and the deepening of democracy Oxford University Press.

Creating a Roadmap :: Internet Websites Computers Essays

Creating a Roadmap There are a variety of ways a link can be represented on the web. One of the challenges of designing a page is making a site visually appealing to the eye. Visual perception is how we analyze the world around us. Visual perception is â€Å"an active, thinking process of planning for, as well as interpreting, sensory data from the eyes† (Hilligoss 7). The layout and utilization of graphics serve as a roadmap for any website. Therefore, in order for people to effectively navigate a website, they must be able to communicate effectively through photos, icons, and text. The first key idea is the placement of the photos, icons, or text that will serve as buttons. â€Å"As we look around, we find focal points† and it is these points that direct our attention to the important areas of a page. When placing buttons, we do not want to make the size too small or to have a picture obscured behind text. If both text and graphics are used to represent the button, it is visually appeal ing to keep the text and graphics of equal width. This is exemplified on the main page of the WebCT course page where four pictures are used in conjunction with text labels. Each picture does not exceed the size of the text label, keeping the formatting consistent with the text serving as the foundation for the link. Choosing to use photos, icons, or text as buttons is up to the discretion of the author. â€Å"An icon is a graphic intended to convey a single specific message† (Farkas 208). Icons are largely symbolic and do not realistically represent their intended meanings. Authors M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Michael K. Gilbertson say that â€Å"iconic signs present general impressions that allow the observer to view a thing or a concept as a whole† (55). Iconic symbols should be chosen on their fundamentally understood meanings: a finger pointing right represents ‘Next Page’ or a printer represents the action ‘Print’. Killingsworth and Gilbertson call icons â€Å"relational and holistic,† meaning that the interpretation of a chosen symbol is relative to a culture (53). For a more specific meaning, an author may want to try using photos. Killingsworth and Gilbertson make the distinction that â€Å"the photographic image is not an icon, despite its near perfect resemblance to its object† (52). In this case, a photo must accurately represent the button or link.

Rationalism Essay

Rationalism vs. Empiricism First published Thu Aug 19, 2004; substantive revision Thu Mar 21, 2013 The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge. Rationalists generally develop their view in two ways. First, they argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge outstrips the information that sense experience can provide. Second, they construct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that additional information about the world. Empiricists present complementary lines of thought. First, they develop accounts of how experience provides the information that rationalists cite, insofar as we have it in the first place. (Empiricists will at times opt fo r skepticism as an alternative to rationalism: if experience cannot provide the concepts or knowledge the rationalists cite, then we don’t have them.) Second, empiricists attack the rationalists’ accounts of how reason is a source of concepts or knowledge. 1. Introduction The dispute between rationalism and empiricism takes place within epistemology, the branch of philosophy devoted to studying the nature, sources and limits of knowledge. The defining questions of epistemology include the following. 1. What is the nature of propositional knowledge, knowledge that a particular proposition about the world is true? To know a proposition, we must believe it and it must be true, but something more is required, something that distinguishes knowledge from a lucky guess. Let’s call this additional element ‘warrant’. A good deal of philosophical work has been invested in trying to determine the nature of warrant. 2. How can we gain knowledge? We can form true beliefs just by making lucky guesses. How to gain warranted beliefs is less clear. Moreover, to know the world, we must think about it, and it is unclear how we gain the concepts we use in thought or what assurance, if any, we have that the ways in which we divide up the world using our concepts correspond to divisions that actually exist. 3. What are the limits of our knowledge? Some aspects of the world may be within the limits of our thought but beyond the limits of our knowledge; faced with competing descriptions of them, we cannot know which description is true. Some aspects of the world may even be beyond the limits of our thought, so that we cannot form intelligible descriptions of them, let alone know that a particular description is true. The disagreement between rationalists and empiricists primarily concerns the second question, regarding the sources of our concepts and knowledge. In some instances, their disagreement on this topic leads them to give conflicting responses to the other questions as well. They may disagree over the nature of warrant or about the limits of our thought and knowledge. Our focus here will be on the competing rationalist and empiricist responses to the second question. 1.1 Rationalism To be a rationalist is to adopt at least one of three claims. The Intuition/Deduction thesis concerns how we become warranted in believing propositions in a particular subject area. The Intuition/Deduction Thesis: Some propositions in a particular subject area, S, are knowable by us by intuition alone; still others are knowable by being deduced from intuited propositions. Intuition is a form of rational insight. Intellectually grasping a proposition, we just â€Å"see† it to be true in such a way as to form a true, warranted belief in it. (As discussed in Section 2 below, the nature of this intellectual â€Å"seeing† needs explanation.) Deduction is a process in which we derive conclusions from intuited premises through valid arguments, ones in which the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. We intuit, for example, that the number three is prime and that it is greater than two. We then deduce from this knowledge that there is a prime number greater than two. Intuition and deduction thus provide us with knowledge a priori, which is to say knowledge gained independently of sense experience. We can generate different versions of the Intuition/Deduction thesis by substituting different subject areas for the variable ‘S’. Some rationalists take mathematics to be knowable by intuition and deduction. Some place ethical truths in this category. Some include metaphysical claims, such as  that God exists, we have free will, and our mind and body are distinct substances. The more propositions rationalists include within the range of intuition and deduction, and the more controversial the truth of those propositions or the claims to know them, the more radical their rationalism. Rationalists also vary the strength of their view by adjusting their understanding of warrant. Some take warranted beliefs to be beyond even the slightest doubt and claim that intuition and deduction provide beliefs of this high epistemic status. Others interpret warrant more conservatively, say as belief beyond a reasonable doubt, and claim that intuition and deduction provide beliefs of that caliber. Still another dimension of rationalism depends on how its proponents understand the connection between intuition, on the one hand, and truth, on the other. Some take intuition to be infallible, claiming that whatever we intuit must be true. Others allow for the possibility of false intuited propositions. The second thesis associated with rationalism is the Innate Knowledge thesi s. The Innate Knowledge Thesis: We have knowledge of some truths in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature. Like the Intuition/Deduction thesis, the Innate Knowledge thesis asserts the existence of knowledge gained a priori, independently of experience. The difference between them rests in the accompanying understanding of how this a priori knowledge is gained. The Intuition/Deduction thesis cites intuition and subsequent deductive reasoning. The Innate Knowledge thesis offers our rational nature. Our innate knowledge is not learned through either sense experience or intuition and deduction. It is just part of our nature. Experiences may trigger a process by which we bring this knowledge to consciousness, but the experiences do not provide us with the knowledge itself. It has in some way been with us all along. According to some rationalists, we gained the knowledge in an earlier existence. According to others, God provided us with it at creation. Still others say it is part of our nature through natural selection. We get different versions of the Innate Knowledge thesis by substituting different subject areas for the variable ‘S’. Once again, the more subjects included within the range of the thesis or the more controversial the claim to have knowledge in them, the more radical the form of rationalism. Stronger and weaker understandings of warrant yield stronger and weaker versions of the thesis as well. The third important thesis of  rationalism is the Innate Concept thesis. The Innate Concept Thesis: We have some of the concepts we employ in a particular subject area, S, as part of our rational nature. According to the Innate Concept thesis, some of our concepts are not gained from experience. They are part of our rational nature in such a way that, while sense experiences may trigger a process by which they are brought to consciousness, experience does not provide the concepts or determine the information they contain. Some claim that the Innate Concept thesis is entailed by the Innate Knowledge Thesis; a particular instance of knowledge can only be innate if the concepts that are contained in the known proposition are also innate. This is Locke’s position (1690, Book I, Chapter IV, Section 1, p. 91). Others, such as Carruthers, argue against this connection (1992, pp. 53–54). The content and strength of the Innate Concept thesis varies with the concepts claimed to be innate. The more a concept seems removed from experience and the mental operations we can perform on experience the more plausibly it may be claimed to be innate. Since we do not experience perfect tria ngles but do experience pains, our concept of the former is a more promising candidate for being innate than our concept of the latter. The Intuition/Deduction thesis, the Innate Knowledge thesis, and the Innate Concept thesis are essential to rationalism: to be a rationalist is to adopt at least one of them. Two other closely related theses are generally adopted by rationalists, although one can certainly be a rationalist without adopting either of them. The first is that experience cannot provide what we gain from reason. The Indispensability of Reason Thesis: The knowledge we gain in subject area, S, by intuition and deduction, as well as the ideas and instances of knowledge in S that are innate to us, could not have been gained by us through sense experience. The second is that reason is superior to experience as a source of knowledge. The Superiority of Reason Thesis: The knowledge we gain in subject area S by intuition and deduction or have innately is superior to any knowledg e gained by sense experience. How reason is superior needs explanation, and rationalists have offered different accounts. One view, generally associated with Descartes (1628, Rules II and III, pp.1–4), is that what we know a priori is certain, beyond even the slightest doubt, while what we believe, or even know, on the basis of sense experience is at least somewhat uncertain. Another view, generally associated with Plato  (Republic 479e-484c), locates the superiority of a priori knowledge in the objects known. What we know by reason alone, a Platonic form, say, is superior in an important metaphysical way, e.g. unchanging, eternal, perfect, a higher degree of being, to what we are aware of through sense experience. Most forms of rationalism involve notable commitments to other philosophical positions. One is a commitment to the denial of scepticism for at least some area of knowledge. If we claim to know some truths by intuition or deduction or to have some innate knowledge, we obviously reject scepticis m with regard to those truths. Rationalism in the form of the Intuition/Deduction thesis is also committed to epistemic foundationalism, the view that we know some truths without basing our belief in them on any others and that we then use this foundational knowledge to know more truths. 1.2 Empiricism Empiricists endorse the following claim for some subject area. The Empiricism Thesis: We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than sense experience. Empiricism about a particular subject rejects the corresponding version of the Intuition/Deduction thesis and Innate Knowledge thesis. Insofar as we have knowledge in the subject, our knowledge is a posteriori, dependent upon sense experience. Empiricists also deny the implication of the corresponding Innate Concept thesis that we have innate ideas in the subject area. Sense experience is our only source of ideas. They reject the corresponding version of the Superiority of Reason thesis. Since reason alone does not give us any knowledge, it certainly does not give us superior knowledge. Empiricists generally reject the Indispensability of Reason thesis, though they need not. The Empiricism thesis does not entail that we have empirical knowledge. It entails that knowledge can only be gained, if at all, by experience. Empiricists may assert, as some do for some subjects, that the rationalists are correct to claim that experience cannot give us knowledge. The conclusion they draw from this rationalist lesson is that we do not know at all. I have stated the basic claims of rationalism and empiricism so that each is relative to a particular subject area. Rationalism and empiricism, so relativized, need not conflict. We can be rationalists in mathematics or a particular area of mathematics and empiricists in all or some of the physical sciences. Rationalism and empiricism only conflict when formulated to cover the same subject. Then the debate, Rationalism vs. Empiricism, is joined. The fact that philosophers can be both rationalists and empiricists has implications for the classification schemes often employed in the history of philosophy, especially the one traditionally used to describe the Early Modern Period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries leading up to Kant. It is standard practice to group the major philosophers of this period as either rationalists or empiricists and to suggest that those under one heading share a common agenda in opposition to those under the other. Thus, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are the Continental Rationalists in opposition to Locke, Berkeley and Hume, the British Empiricists. We should adopt such general classification schemes with caution. The views of the individual philosophers are more subtle and complex than the simple-minded classification suggests. (See Loeb (1981) and Ke nny (1986) for important discussions of this point.) Locke rejects rationalism in the form of any version of the Innate Knowledge or Innate Concept theses, but he nonetheless adopts the Intuition/Deduction thesis with regard to our knowledge of God’s existence. Descartes and Locke have remarkably similar views on the nature of our ideas, even though Descartes takes many to be innate, while Locke ties them all to experience. The rationalist/empiricist classification also encourages us to expect the philosophers on each side of the divide to have common research programs in areas beyond epistemology. Thus, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz are mistakenly seen as applying a reason-centered epistemology to a common metaphysical agenda, with each trying to improve on the efforts of the one before, while Locke, Berkeley and Hume are mistakenly seen as gradually rejecting those metaphysical claims, with each consciously trying to improve on the efforts of his predecessors. It is also important to note that the Rationalist/Empiricist distinction is not exhaustive of the possible sources of knowledge. One might claim, for example, that we can gain knowledge in a particular area by a form of Divine revelation or insight that is a product of neither reason nor sense experience. In short, when used carelessly, the labels ‘rationalist’ and ‘empiricist,’ as well as the slogan that is the title of this essay, ‘Rationalism vs. Empiricism,’ can retard rather than advance our understanding. Nonetheless, an important debate properly described as ‘Rationalism vs. Empiricism’ is joined whenever  the claims for each view are formulated to cover the same subject. What is perhaps the most interesting form of the debate occurs when we take the relevant subject to be truths about the external world, the world beyond our own minds. A full-fledged rationalist with regard to our knowledge of the external world holds that some external world truths can and must be known a priori, that some of the ideas required for that knowledge are and must be innate, and that this knowledge is superior to any that experience could ever provide. The full-fledged empiricist about our knowledge of the external world replies that, when it comes to the nature of the world beyond our own minds, experience is our sole source of information. Reason might inform us of the relations among our ideas, but those ideas themselves can only be gained, and any truths about the external reality they represent can only be known, on the basis of sense experience. This debate concerning our knowledge of the external world will generally be our main focus in what follows. Historically, the rationalist/empiricist dispute in epistemology has extended into the area of metaphysics, where philosophers are concerned with the basic nature of reality, including the existence of God and such aspects of our nature as freewill and the relation between the mind and body. Major rationalists (e.g., Descartes 1641) have presented metaphysical theories, which they have claimed to know by reason alone. Major empiricists (e.g. Hume 1739–40) have rejected the theories as either speculation, beyond what we can learn from experience, or nonsensical attempts to describe aspects of the world beyond the concepts experience can provide. The debate raises the issue of metaphysics as an area of knowledge. Kant puts the driving assumption clearly: The very concept of metaphysics ensures that the sources of metaphysics can’t be empirical. If something could be known through the senses, that would automatically show that it doesn’t belong to metaphysics; thatà ¢â‚¬â„¢s an upshot of the meaning of the word ‘metaphysics.’ Its basic principles can never be taken from experience, nor can its basic concepts; for it is not to be physical but metaphysical knowledge, so it must be beyond experience. [1783, Preamble, I, p. 7] The possibility then of metaphysics so understood, as an area of human knowledge, hinges on how we resolve the rationalist/empiricist debate. The debate also extends into ethics. Some moral objectivists (e.g., Ross 1930) take us to know some fundamental objective moral truths by intuition, while some moral skeptics,  who reject such knowledge, (e.g., Mackie 1977) find the appeal to a faculty of moral intuition utterly implausible. More recently, the rationalist/empiricist debate has extended to discussions (e.g., Bealer 1999, and Alexander & Weinberg 2007) of the very nature of philosophical inquiry: to what extent are philosophical questions to be answered by appeals to reason or experience? 2. The Intuition/Deduction Thesis The Intuition/Deduction thesis claims that we can know some propositions by intuition and still more by deduction. Many empiricists (e.g., Hume 1748) have been willing to accept the thesis so long as it is restricted to propositions solely about the relations among our own concepts. We can, they agree, know by intuition that our concept of God includes our concept of omniscience. Just by examining the concepts, we can intellectually grasp that the one includes the other. The debate between rationalists and empiricists is joined when the former assert, and the latter deny, the Intuition/Deduction Thesis with regard to propositions that contain substantive information about the external world. Rationalists, such as Descartes, have claimed that we can know by intuition and deduction that God exists and created the world, that our mind and body are distinct substances, and that the angles of a triangle equal two right angles, where all of these claims are truths about an external reality independent of our thought. Such substantive versions of the Intuition/Deduction thesis are our concern in this section. One defense of the Intuition/Deduction thesis assumes that we know some substantive external world truths, adds an analysis of what knowledge requires, and concludes that our knowledge must result from intuition and deduction. Descartes claims that knowledge requires certainty and that certainty about the external world is beyond what empirical evidence can provide. We can never be sure our sensory impressions are not part of a dream or a massive, demon orchestrated, deception. Only intuition and deduction can provide the certainty needed for knowledge, and, given that we have some substantive knowledge of the external world, the Intuition/Deduction thesis is true. As Descartes tells us, â€Å"all knowledge is certain and evident cognition† (1628, Rule II, p. 1) and when we â€Å"review all the actions of the intellect by means of which we are able to arrive at a knowledge of things with no fear of being mistaken,†Ã‚  we â€Å"recognize only two: intuition and deduction† (1628, Rule III, p. 3). This line of argument is one of the least compelling in the rationalist arsenal. First, the assumption that knowledge requires certainty comes at a heavy cost, as it rules out so much of what we commonly take ourselves to know. Second, as many contemporary rationalists accept, intuition is not always a source of certain knowledge. The possibility of a deceiver gives us a reason to doubt our intuitions as well as our empirical beliefs. For all we know, a deceiver might cause us to intuit false propositions, just as one might cause us to have perceptions of nonexistent objects. Descartes’s classic way of meeting this challenge in the Meditations is to argue that we can know with certainty that no such deceiver interferes with our intuitions and deductions. They are infallible, as God guarantees their truth. The problem, known as the Cartesian Circle, is that Descartes’s account of how we gain this knowledge begs the question, by attempting to deduce the conclusion that all our intuitions are true from intuited premises. Moreover, his account does not touch a remaining problem that he himself notes (1628, Rule VII, p. 7): Deductions of any appreciable length rely on our fallible memory. A more plausible argument for the Intuition/Deduction thesis again assumes that we know some particular, external world truths, and then appeals to the nature of what we know, rather than to the nature of knowledge itsel f, to argue that our knowledge must result from intuition and deduction. Leibniz (1704) tells us the following. The senses, although they are necessary for all our actual knowledge, are not sufficient to give us the whole of it, since the senses never give anything but instances, that is to say particular or individual truths. Now all the instances which confirm a general truth, however numerous they may be, are not sufficient to establish the universal necessity of this same truth, for it does not follow that what happened before will happen in the same way again. †¦ From which it appears that necessary truths, such as we find in pure mathematics, and particularly in arithmetic and geometry, must have principles whose proof does not depend on instances, nor consequently on the testimony of the senses, although without the senses it would never have occurred to us to think of them†¦ (1704, Preface, pp. 150–151) Leibniz goes on to describe our mathematical knowledge as â€Å"innate,† and his argument may be directed to support the Innate Knowledge Thesis rather than the Intuition/Deduction  Thesis. For our purposes here, we can relate it to the latter, however: We have substantive knowledge about the external world in mathematics, and what we know in that area, we know to be necessarily true. Experience cannot warrant beliefs about what is necessarily the case. Hence, experience cannot be the source of our knowledge. The best explanation of our knowledge is that we gain it by intuition and deduction. Leibniz mentions logic, metaphysics and morals as other areas in which our knowledge similarly outstrips what experience can provide. Judgments in logic and metaphysics involve forms of necessity beyond what experience can support. Judgments in morals involve a form of obligation or value that lies beyond experience, which only informs us about what is the case rather than about what ought to be. The strength of this argument varies with its examples of purported knowledge. Insofar as we focus on controversial claims in metaphysics, e.g. that God exists, that our mind is a distinct substance from our body, the initial premise that we know the claims is less than compelling. Taken with regard to other areas, however, the argument clearly has legs. We know a great deal of mathematics, and what we know, we know to be necessarily true. None of our experiences warrants a belief in such necessity, and we do not seem to base our knowledge on any experiences. The warrant that provides us with knowledge arises from an intellectual grasp of the propositions which is clearly part of our learning. Similarly, we seem to have such moral knowledge as that, all other things being equal, it is wrong to break a promise and that pleasure is intrinsically good. No empirical lesson about how things are can warrant such knowledge of how they ought to be. This argument for the Intuition/Deduction Thesis raises additional questions which rationalists must answer. Insofar as they maintain that our knowledge of necessary truths in mathematics or elsewhere by intuition and deduction is substantive knowledge of the external world, they owe us an account of this form of necessity. Many empiricists stand ready to argue that â€Å"necessity resides in the way we talk about things, not in the things we talk about† (Quine 1966, p. 174). Similarly, if rationalists claim that our knowledge in morals is knowledge of an objective form of obligation, they owe u s an account of how objective values are part of a world of apparently valueless facts. Perhaps most of all, rationalist defenders of the Intuition/Deduction thesis owe us an account of what intuition is and how it  provides warranted true beliefs about the external world. What is it to intuit a proposition and how does that act of intuition support a warranted belief? Their argument presents intuition and deduction as an explanation of assumed knowledge that can’t—they say—be explained by experience, but such an explanation by intuition and deduction requires that we have a clear understanding of intuition and how it supports warranted beliefs. Metaphorical characterizations of intuition as intellectual â€Å"grasping† or â€Å"seeing† are not enough, and if intuition is some form of intellectual â€Å"grasping,† it appears that all that is grasped is relations among our concepts, rather than facts about the external world. Moreover, any intellectual faculty, whether it be sense perception or intuition, provides us with warranted beliefs only if it is generally reliable. The reliability of sense perception stems from the causal connection between how external objects are and how we experience them. What accoun ts for the reliability of our intuitions regarding the external world? Is our intuition of a particular true proposition the outcome of some causal interaction between ourselves and some aspect of the world? What aspect? What is the nature of this causal interaction? That the number three is prime does not appear to cause anything, let alone our intuition that it is prime. These issues are made all the more pressing by the classic empiricist response to the argument. The reply is generally credited to Hume and begins with a division of all true propositions into two categories. All the objects of human reason or inquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, â€Å"Relations of Ideas,† and â€Å"Matters of Fact.† Of the first are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic, and, in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That three times five is equal to half of thirty expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would forever retain their certainty and evidence. Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner, nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the  foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness as if ever so conformable to reality. (Hume 1748, Section IV, Part 1, p. 40) Intuition and deduction can provide us with knowledge of necessary truths such as those found in mathematics and logic, but such knowledge is not substantive knowledge of the external world. It is only knowledge of the relations of our own ideas. If the rationalist shifts the argument so it appeals to knowledge in morals, Hume’s reply is to offer an analysis of our moral concepts by which such knowledge is empirically gained knowledge of matters of fact. Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment. Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt more properly than perceived. Or if we reason concerning it and endeavor to fix the standard, we regard a new fact, to wit, the general taste of man kind, or some other fact which may be the object of reasoning and inquiry. (Hume 1748, Section XII, Part 3, p. 173) If the rationalist appeals to our knowledge in metaphysics to support the argument, Hume denies that we have such knowledge. If we take in our hand any volume–of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance–let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. (Hume 1748, Section XII, Part 3, p. 173) An updated version of this general empiricist reply, with an increased emphasis on language and the nature of meaning, is given in the twentieth-century by A. J. Ayer’s version of logical positivism. Adopting positivism’s verification theory of meaning, Ayer assigns every cognitively meaningful sentence to one of two categories: either it is a tautology, and so true solely by virtue of the meaning of its terms and provides no substantive information about the world, or it is open to empirical verification. There is, then, no room for knowledge about the external world by intuition or deduction. There can be no a priori knowledge of reality. For †¦ the truths of pure reason, the propositions which we know to be valid independently of all experience, are so only in virtue of their lack of factual content †¦ [By contrast] empirical propositions are one and all hypotheses which may be confirmed or discredited in actual sense experience. [Ayer 1952, pp. 86; 93–94] The  rationalists’ argument for the Intuition/Deduction Thesis goes wrong at the start, according to empiricists, by assuming that we can have substantive knowledge of the external world that outstrips what experience can warrant. We cannot. This empiricist reply faces challenges of its own. Our knowledge of mathematics seems to be about something more than our own concepts. Our knowledge of moral judgments seems to concern not just how we feel or act but how we ought to behave. The general principles that provide a basis for the empiricist view, e.g. Hume’s overall account of our ideas, the Verification Principle of Meaning, are problematic in their own right. In various formulations, the Verification Principle fails its own test for having cognitive meaning. A careful analysis of Hume’s Inquiry, relative to its own principles, may require us to consign large sections of it to the flames. In all, rationalists have a strong argument for the Intuition/Deduction thesis relative to our substantive knowledge of the external world, but its success rests on how well they can answer questions about the nature and epistemic force of intuition made all the more pre ssing by the classic empiricist reply. 3. The Innate Knowledge Thesis The Innate Knowledge thesis joins the Intuition/Deduction thesis in asserting that we have a priori knowledge, but it does not offer intuition and deduction as the source of that knowledge. It takes our a priori knowledge to be part of our rational nature. Experience may trigger our awareness of this knowledge, but it does not provide us with it. The knowledge is already there. Plato presents an early version of the Innate Knowledge thesis in the Meno as the doctrine of knowledge by recollection. The doctrine is motivated in part by a paradox that arises when we attempt to explain the nature of inquiry. How do we gain knowledge of a theorem in geometry? We inquire into the matter. Yet, knowledge by inquiry seems impossible (Meno, 80d-e). We either already know the theorem at the start of our investigation or we do not. If we already have the knowledge, there is no place for inquiry. If we lack the knowledge, we don’t know what we are seeking and cannot recognize it when we fin d it. Either way we cannot gain knowledge of the theorem by inquiry. Yet, we do know some theorems. The doctrine of knowledge by recollection offers a solution. When we inquire into the truth of a theorem, we both do and do not already know it. We have knowledge in the form of a  memory gained from our soul’s knowledge of the theorem prior to its union with our body. We lack knowledge in that, in our soul’s unification with the body, it has forgotten the knowledge and now needs to recollect it. In learning the theorem, we are, in effect, recalling what we already know. Plato famously illustrates the doctrine with an exchange between Socrates and a young slave, in which Socrates guides the slave from ignorance to mathematical knowledge. The slave’s experiences, in the form of Socrates’ questions and illustrations, are the occasion for his recollection of what he learned previously. Plato’s metaphysics provides additional support for the Innate Knowledge Thesis. Since our knowledge is of abstract, eternal Forms which clearly lie beyond our sensory experience, it is a priori. Contemporary supporters of Plato’s position are scarce. The initial paradox, which Plato describes as a â€Å"trick argument† (Meno, 80e), rings sophistical. The metaphysical assumptions in the solution need justification. The solution does not answer the basic question: Just how did the slave’s soul learn the theorem? The Intuition/Deduction thesis offers an equally, if not more, plausible account of how the slave gains knowledge a priori. Nonetheless, Plato’s position illustrates the kind of reasoning that has caused many philosophers to adopt some form of the Innate Knowledge thesis. We are confident that we know certain propositions about the external world, but there seems to be no adequate explanation of how we gained this knowledge short of saying th at it is innate. Its content is beyond what we directly gain in experience, as well as what we can gain by performing mental operations on what experience provides. It does not seem to be based on an intuition or deduction. That it is innate in us appears to be the best explanation. Noam Chomsky argues along similar lines in presenting what he describes as a â€Å"rationalist conception of the nature of language† (1975, 129). Chomsky argues that the experiences available to language learners are far too sparse to account for their knowledge of their language. To explain language acquisition, we must assume that learners have an innate knowledge of a universal grammar capturing the common deep structure of natural languages. It is important to note that Chomsky’s language learners do not know particular propositions describing a universal grammar. They have a set of innate capacities or dispositions which enable and determine their language development. Chomsky gives us a theory of innate learning  capacities or structures rather than a theory of innate knowledge. His view does not support the Innate Knowledge thesis as rationalists have traditionally understood it. As one commentator puts it, â€Å"Chomsky’s principles †¦ are innate neither in the sense that we are explicitly aware of them, nor in the sense that we have a disposition to recognize their truth as obvious under appropriate circumstances. And hence it is by no means clear that Chomsky is correct in seeing his theory as following the traditional rationalist account of the acquisition of knowledge† (Cottingham 1984, p. 124). Peter Carruthers (1992) argues that we have innate knowledge of the principles of folk-psychology. Folk-psychology is a network of common-sense generalizations that hold independently of context or culture and concern the r elationships of mental states to one another, to the environment and states of the body and to behavior (1992, p.115). It includes such beliefs as that pains tend to be caused by injury, that pains tend to prevent us from concentrating on tasks, and that perceptions are generally caused by the appropriate state of the environment. Carruthers notes the complexity of folk-psychology, along with its success in explaining our behavior and the fact that its explanations appeal to such unobservables as beliefs, desires, feelings and thoughts. He argues that the complexity, universality, and depth of folk-psychological principles outstrips what experience can provide, especially to young children who by their fifth year already know a great many of them. This knowledge is also not the result of intuition or deduction; folk-psychological generalizations are not seen to be true in an act of intellectual insight. Carruthers concludes, â€Å"[The problem] concerning the child’s acquisition of psychological generalizations cannot be solved, unless we suppose that much of folk-psychology is already innate , triggered locally by the child’s experience of itself and others, rather than learned† (1992, p. 121). Empiricists, and some rationalists, attack the Innate Knowledge thesis in two main ways. First, they offer accounts of how sense experience or intuition and deduction provide the knowledge that is claimed to be innate. Second, they directly criticize the Innate Knowledge thesis itself. The classic statement of this second line of attack is presented in Locke 1690. Locke raises the issue of just what innate knowledge is. Particular instances of knowledge are supposed to be in our minds as part of our  rational make-up, but how are they â€Å"in our minds†? If the implication is that we all consciously have this knowledge, it is plainly false. Propositions often given as examples of innate knowledge, even such plausible candidates as the principle that the same thing cannot both be and not be, are not consciously accepted by children and those with severe cognitive limitations. If the point of calling such principles â€Å"innate† is not to imply that they are or have been consciously accepted by all rational beings, then it is hard to see what the point is. â€Å"No proposition can be said to be in the mind, which it never yet knew, which it never yet was conscious of† (1690, Book I, Chapter II, Section 5, p. 61). Proponents of innate knowledg e might respond that some knowledge is innate in that we have the capacity to have it. That claim, while true, is of little interest, however. â€Å"If the capacity of knowing, be the natural impression contended for, all the truths a man ever comes to know, will, by this account, be every one of them, innate; and this great point will amount to no more, but only an improper way of speaking; which whilst it pretends to assert the contrary, says nothing different from those, who deny innate principles. For nobody, I think, ever denied, that the mind was capable of knowing several truths† (1690, Book I, Chapter II, Section 5, p. 61). Locke thus challenges defenders of the Innate Knowledge thesis to present an account of innate knowledge that allows their position to be both true and interesting. A narrow interpretation of innateness faces counterexamples of rational individuals who do not meet its conditions. A generous interpretation implies that all our knowledge, even that clearly provided by experience, is innate. Defenders of innate knowledge take up Locke’s challenge. Leibniz responds (1704) by appealing to an account of innateness in terms of natural potential to avoid Locke’s dilemma. Consider Peter Carruthers’ similar reply. We have noted that while one form of nativism claims (somewhat implausibly) that knowledge is innate in the sense of being present as such (or at least in propositional form) from birth, it might also be maintained that knowle dge is innate in the sense of being innately determined to make its appearance at some stage in childhood. This latter thesis is surely the most plausible version of nativism. (1992, p. 51) Carruthers claims that our innate knowledge is determined through evolutionary selection (p. 111). Evolution has resulted in our being determined to know certain things (e.g.  principles of folk-psychology) at particular stages of our life, as part of our natural development. Experiences provide the occasion for our consciously believing the known propositions but not the basis for our knowledge of them (p. 52). Carruthers thus has a ready reply to Locke’s counterexamples of children and cognitively limited persons who do not believe propositions claimed to be instances of innate knowledge. The former have not yet reached the proper stage of development; the latter are persons in whom natural development has broken down (pp. 49–50). A serious problem for the Innate Knowledge thesis remains, however. We know a proposition only if it is true, we believe it and our belief is warranted. Rationalists who assert the existence of innate knowledge are not just claiming that, as a matter of human evolution, God’s design or some other factor, at a particular point in our development, certain sorts of experiences trigger our belief in particular propositions in a way that does not involve our learning them from the experiences. Their claim is ev en bolder: In at least some of these cases, our empirically triggered, but not empirically warranted, belief is nonetheless warranted and so known. How can these beliefs be warranted if they do not gain their warrant from the experiences that cause us to have them or from intuition and deduction? Some rationalists think that a reliabilist account of warrant provides the answer. According to Reliabilism, beliefs are warranted if they are formed by a process that generally produces true beliefs rather than false ones. The true beliefs that constitute our innate knowledge are warranted, then, because they are formed as the result of a reliable belief-forming process. Carruthers maintains that â€Å"Innate beliefs will count as known provided that the process through which they come to be innate is a reliable one (provided, that is, that the process tends to generate beliefs that are true)† (1992, p. 77). He argues that natural selection results in the formation of some beliefs and is a truth-reliable process. An appeal to Reliabilism, or a similar causal theory of warrant, may well be the best way for rationalists to develop the Innate Knowledge thesis. They have a difficult row to hoe, however. First, such accounts of warrant are themselves quite controversial. Second, rationalists must give an account of innate knowledge that maintains and explains the distinction between innate knowledge and a posteriori knowledge, and it is not clear that they will be  able to do so within such an account of warrant. Suppose for the sake of argument that we have innate knowledge of some proposition, P. What makes our knowledge that P innate? To sharpen the question, what difference between our knowledge that P and a clear case of a posteriori knowledge, say our knowledge that something is red based on our current visual experience of a red table, makes the former innate and the latter not innate? In each case, we have a true, warranted belief. In each case, presumably, our belief gains its warrant from the fact that it meets a particular causal condition, e.g., it is produced by a reliable process. In each case, the causal process is one in which an experience causes us to believe the proposition at hand (that P; that something is red), for, as defenders of innate knowledge admit, our belief that P is â€Å"triggered† by an experience, as is our belief that something is red. The insight behind the Innate Knowledge thesis seems to be that the difference between our innate and a posteriori knowledge lies in the relation between our experience and our belief in each case. The e xperience that causes our belief that P does not â€Å"contain† the information that P, while our visual experience of a red table does â€Å"contain† the information that something is red. Yet, exactly what is the nature of this containment relation between our experiences, on the one hand, and what we believe, on the other, that is missing in the one case but present in the other? The nature of the experience-belief relation seems quite similar in each. The causal relation between the experience that triggers our belief that P and our belief that P is contingent, as is the fact that the belief-forming process is reliable. The same is true of our experience of a red table and our belief that something is red. The causal relation between the experience and our belief is again contingent. We might have been so constructed that the experience we describe as â€Å"being appeared to redly† caused us to believe, not that something is red, but that something is hot. The process that takes us from the experince to our belief is also only contingently reliable. Moreover, if our experience of a red table â€Å"contains† the information that something is red, then that fact, not the existence of a reliable belief-forming process between the two, should be the reason why the experience warrants our belief. By appealing to Reliablism, or some other causal theory of warrant, rationalists may obtain a way to explain how innate knowledge can be warranted. They still need to show how their explanation supports an account of the difference between innate knowledge and a posteriori knowledge. 4. The Innate Concept Thesis According to the Innate Concept thesis, some of our concepts have not been gained from experience. They are instead part of our rational make-up, and experience simply triggers a process by which we consciously grasp them. The main concern motivating the rationalist should be familiar by now: the content of some concepts seems to outstrip anything we could have gained from experience. An example of this reasoning is presented by Descartes in the Meditations. Descartes classifies our ideas as adventitious, invented by us, and innate. Adventitious ideas, such as a sensation of heat, are gained directly through sense experience. Ideas invented by us, such as our idea of a hippogriff, are created by us from other ideas we possess. Innate ideas, such as our ideas of God, of extended matter, of substance and of a perfect triangle, are placed in our minds by God at creation. Consider Descartes’s argument that our concept of God, as an infinitely perfect being, is innate. Our concept of God is not directly gained in experience, as particular tastes, sensations and mental images might be. Its content is beyond what we could ever construct by applying available mental operations to what experience directly provides. From experience, we can gain the concept of a being with finite amounts of various perfections, one, for example, that is finitely knowledgeable, powerful and good. We cannot however move from these empirical concepts to the concept of a being of infinite perfection. (â€Å"I must not think that, just as my conceptions of rest and darkness are arrived at by negating movement and light, so my perception of the infinite is arrived at not by means of a true idea but by merely negating the finite,† Third Meditation, p. 94.) Descartes supplements this argument by another. Not only is the content of our concept of God beyond what experience can provide, the concept is a prerequisite for our employment of the concept of finite perfection gained from experience. (â€Å"My perception of the infinite, that is God, is in some way prior to my perception of the finite, that is myself. For how could I understand that I doubted or desired–that is lacked something–and that I wa s not wholly perfect, unless there were in me some idea of a more perfect being which enabled me to recognize my own defects by comparison,† Third Meditation, p. 94). An empiricist response to this  general line of argument is given by Locke (1690, Book I, Chapter IV, Sections 1–25, pp. 91–107). First, there is the problem of explaining what it is for someone to have an innate concept. If having an innate concept entails consciously entertaining it at present or in the past, then Descartes’s position is open to obvious counterexamples. Young children and people from other cultures do not consciously entertain the concept of God and have not done so. Second, there is the objection that we have no need to appeal to innate concepts in the first place. Contrary to Descartes’ argument, we can explain how experience provides all our ideas, including those the rationalists take to be innate, and with just the content that the rationalists attribute to them. Leibniz (1704) offers a rationalist reply to the first concern. Where Locke puts forth the image of the mind as a blank tablet on which experience writes, Leibniz offers us the image of a block of marble, the veins of which determine what sculpted figures it will accept. This is why I have taken as an illustration a block of veined marble, rather than a wholly uniform block or blank tablets, that is to say what is called tabula rasa in the language of the philosophers. For if the soul were like those blank tablets, truths would be in us in the same way as the figure of Hercules is in a block of marble, when the marble is completely indifferent whether it receives this or some other figure. But if there were veins in the stone which marked out the figure of Hercules rather than other figures, this stone would be more determined thereto, and Hercules would be as it were in some manner innate in it, although labour would be needed to uncover the veins, and to clear them by polishing, and by cutting away what prevents them from appearing. It is in this way that ideas and truths are innate in us, like natural inclinations and dispositions, natural habits or potentialities, and not like activities, although these potentialities are always accompanied by some activities which correspond to them, though they are often imperceptible. (1704, Preface, p. 153) Leibniz’s metaphor contains an insight that Locke misses. The mind plays a role in determining the nature of its contents. This point does not, however, require the adoption of the Innate Concept thesis. Rationalists have responded to the second part of the empiricist attack on the Innate Concept thesis–the empricists’ claim that the thesis is without basis, as all our ideas can be explained as derived from experience–by focusing on difficulties in the empiricists’  attempts to give such an explanation. The difficulties are illustrated by Locke’s account. According to Locke, experience consists in external sensation and inner reflection. All our ideas are either simple or complex, with the former being received by us passively in sensation or reflection and the latter being built by the mind from simple materials through various mental operations. Right at the start, the account of how simple ideas are gained is open to an obvious counterexample acknowledged, but then set aside, by Hume in presenting his own empiricist theory. Consider the mental image of a particular shade of blue. If Locke is right, the idea is a simple one and should be passive ly received by the mind through experience. Hume points out otherwise. Suppose therefore a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years and to have become perfectly acquainted with colors of all kinds, except one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with; let all the different shades of that color, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest, it is plain that he will perceive a blank where that shade is wanting and will be sensible that there is a greater distance in that place between the contiguous colors than in any other. Now I ask whether it be possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe there are but few will be of the opinion that he can†¦ (1748, Section II, pp. 29–30) Even when it comes to such simple ideas as the image of a particular shade of blue, th e mind is more than a blank slate on which experience writes. Consider too our concept of a particular color, say red. Critics of Locke’s account have pointed out the weaknesses in his explanation of how we gain such a concept by the mental operation of abstraction on individual cases. For one thing, it makes the incorrect assumption that various instances of a particular concept share a common feature. Carruthers puts the objection as follows. In fact problems arise for empiricists even in connection with the very simplest concepts, such as those of colour. For it is false that all instances of a given colour share some common feature. In which case we cannot acquire the concept of that colour by abstracting the common feature of our experience. Thus consider the concept red. Do all shades of red have something in common? If so, what? It is surely false that individual shades  of red consist, as it were, of two distinguishable elements a general redness together with a particular shade. Rather, redness consists in a continuous range of shades, each of which is only just distinguishable from its neighbors. Acquiring the concept red is a matter of learning the extent of the range. (1992, p. 59) For another thing, Locke’s account of concept acquisition from particular experiences seems circular. As it stands, however, Locke’s account of concept acquisition appears viciously circular. For noticing or attending to a common feature of various things presupposes that you already possess the concept of the feature in question. (Carruthers 1992, p. 55) Consider in this regard Locke’s account of how we gain our concept of causation. In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things, we cannot but observe, that several particulars, both qualities and substances; begin to exist; and that they receive this their existence from the due application and operation of some other being. From this observation, we get our ideas of cause and effect. (1690, Book II, Chapter 26, Section 1, pp. 292–293) We get our concept of causation from our observation that some things receive their existence from the application and operation of some other things. Yet, we cannot make this observation unless we already have the concept of causation. Locke’s account of how we gain our idea of power displays a similar circularity. The mind being every day informed, by the senses, of the alteration of those simple ideas, it observes in things without; and taking notice how one comes to an end, and ceases to be, and another begins to exist which was not before; reflecting also on what passes within itself, and observing a constant change of its ideas, sometimes by the impression of outward objects on the senses, and sometimes by the determination of its own choice; and concluding from what it has so constantly observed to have been, that the like changes will for the future b e made in the same things, by like agents, and by the like ways, considers in one thing the possibility of having any of its simple ideas changed, and in another the possibility of making that change; and so comes by that idea which we call power. (1690, Chapter XXI, Section 1, pp. 219–220) We come by the idea of power though considering the possibility of changes in our ideas made by experiences and our own choices. Yet, to consider this possibility—of some things making a change in others—we must already have a concept of power. One way to meet at least some of these  challenges to an empiricist account of the origin of our concepts is to revise our understanding of the content of our concepts so as to bring them more in line with what experience will clearly provide. Hume famously takes this approach. Beginning in a way reminiscent of Locke, he distinguishes between two forms of mental contents or â€Å"perceptions,† as he calls them: impressions and ideas. Impressions are the contents of our current experiences: our sensations, feelings, emotions, desires, and so on. Ideas are mental contents derived from impressions. Simple ideas are copies of impressions; complex ideas are derived from impressions by â€Å"compounding, transposing, augmenting or diminishing† them. Given that all our ideas are thus gained from experience, Hume offers us the following method for determining the content of any idea and thereby the meaning of any term taken to express it. When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent), we need but inquire from what impression is that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to assign any, this will confirm our suspicion. (1690, Section II, p. 30) Using this test, Hume draws out one of the most important implications of the empiricists’ denial of the Innate Concept thesis. If experience is indeed the source of all ideas, then our experiences also determine the content of our ideas. Our ideas of causation, of substance, of right and wrong have their content determined by the experiences that provide them. Those experiences, Hume argues, are unable to support the content that many rationalists and some empiricists, such as Locke, attribute to the corresponding ideas. Our inability to explain how some concepts, with the contents the rationalists attribute to them, are gained from experience should not lead us to adopt the Innate Concept thesis. It should lead us to accept a more limited view of the contents for those concepts, and thereby a more limited view of our ability to describe and understand the world. Consider, for example, our idea of causation. Descartes takes it to be innate. Locke offers an apparently circular account of how it is gained from experience. Hume’s empiricist account severely limits its content. Our idea of causation is derived from a feeling of expectation rooted in our experiences of the constant conjunction of similar causes and effects. It appears, then, that this idea of a necessary connection among events arises from a number of similar instances which  occur, of the constant conjunction of these events; nor can that idea ever be suggested by any one of these instances surveyed in all possible lights and positions. But there is nothing in a number of instances, different from every single instance, which is supposed to be exactly similar, except only that after a repetition of similar instances the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant and to believe that it will exist. This connection, therefore, which we feel in the mind, this customary tran sition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary connection. (1748, Section VII, Part 2, p. 86) The source of our idea in experience determines its content. Suitably to this experience, therefore, we may define a cause to be an object followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second†¦ We may, therefore, suitably to this experience, form another definition of cause and call it an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought of the other. (1748, Section VII, Part 2, p. 87) Our claims, and any knowledge we may have, about causal connections in the world turn out, given the limited content of our empirically based concept of causation, to be claims and knowledge about the constant conjunction of events and our own feelings of expectation. Thus, the initial disagreement between rationalists and empiricists about the source of our ideas leads to one about their content and thereby the content of our descriptions and knowledge of the world. Like philosophical debates generally, the rationalist/empiricist debate ultimately concerns our position in the world, in this case our position as rational inquirers. To what extent do our faculties of reason and experience support our attempts to know and understand our situation.

Bullying and Harrasment in the Workplace Essay

In hard times people tend more to be willing to find out why things aren’t working and so a growing awareness of satisfying employees lead to a more detailed picture of bullying in the workplace. Due to great changes in hotel and hospitality industry caused by the economic crisis and its cumulative effects on the behaviour of managers as well as on employees, volition emerged to do more against bullying in the workplace. This paper critically analyzes the reason for the occurrence of bullying and gives impacts on relationship between bullying, work and health. Furthermore it shows emerging problems for the hotel and hospitality industry and gives advice to find appropriate solutions to provide a bullying-free working place. Several published definitions of bullying make it hard to find the genuine meaning of it. According to the Department of Education? s article, published on their homepage www. education. gov. k in October 2010, bullying can be defined as â€Å"Behaviour by an individual or group usually repeated over time, that intentionally hurts another individual or group either physically, emotionally or mentally†. This definition is accepted and used by various organisations in the UK for anti-bullying publications and treatment policies. Unfortunately this definition covers an array of bullying types, so Zapf D. (1996) categorised five types of bullying behaviour in the workplace to get a closer look on what bullying really is. They are work-related bullying which may include changing your work tasks or making them difficult to perform, social isolation, personal attacks or attacks on your private life by ridicule, insulting remarks, gossip or the like, verbal threats where you are criticised, yelled at or humiliated in public and physical violence or threats of such violence. Referring to those statements it is possible to critically analyze bullying by keeping in mind the definition in relationship with Zapf? s five types of bullying. Nowadays it is well-known that bullying is common in almost every Industry whether in small businesses or international companies. Especially in tourism-related businesses like hotel and hospitality industry, bullying causes capacious damage in different dimensions concerning areas like staff turnover and revenue but also number of staff away sick and motivation of employees. To avoid long-term impacts of harassment, bullying or mobbing has to be nipped in the bud according to Dolan C. (2010):1 who said that â€Å"Bullying can? survive in workplaces that won? t support it. † To provide such a workplace, is today? s great challenge for managers. Generally reasons for bullying are minor problems which aren’t obviously inflicting damage to somebody like discontent about matters, problems in private live, unintended aspersions compared to a co-worker or sometimes a harsh tone in stressful situations. In Hotel and Hospitality industry the constant contact with different people, whether new staff members or guests, provides an excellent breeding ground for such problems. It could be an annoying guest, a challenging situation or an excessive period of work strain which gets people to offend a colleague. All these minor incidents are harmful for working climate and interpersonal relationships in long-term. These problems could be categorised, in alleviated acceptation, into different types of physically and psychologically violence, referring to Fineman S. (2003), who splits workplace violence into intrusive, consumer-related and organizational violence. Intrusive violence rarely occurs in hotel and hospitality industry but is not entirely excluded. On August 21, 2010 the Intercontinental hotel in Rio de Janeiro was scene of a taking of hostages. 10 employees of the hotel were restraint for several hours until they have been released, after the police took some action towards the criminals. Attacks by terrorists against hotels and employees infrequently take place in most countries, but witnessing crime related situations could be an immense strain. A more eminent factor in tourism-related businesses is consumer related violence. Demands of customers which couldn? always be measured, are causing complaints about e. g. delays or bad handling. Especially front office employees have to deal with enormous pressure by being consistently confronted with complaints, and personal affronts from customers. Furthermore Fineman S. (2003):164 describes the occurrence of organizational violence in the workplace as a failing in the ethnically opinions of entrepreneur and characterizes this form of bullying as follows, â€Å"It translates into practices that systematically cause danger, risk or exploitation to employees. Emotionally, the employer can feel indifferent, even derisory about its workers and their psychological or physical well-being: ‘there are always more out there’. The worker may feel equally indifferent but trapped in the job. † Actually frequent occurrence of such, as in the majority of cases irrelevant sensed incidents, leads to a growth of troubles and personal antipathy against fellow-workers and employers is growing until the straw that breaks the camel? s back and physically or psychological damages are the immediate consequences. As has been proved in an array of researches by organisations dealing with the problems of bullying and harassment in the workplace, like ACAS, bullying affects a company in a tremendous variety of ways. Hotel and Hospitality industry is a very people-intensive branch primarily composed of small businesses. According to ACSA a main impact of bullying is the increase in rates of absence, especially concerning small firms where cover for sick employees is difficult to arrange. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), Europe’s largest HR and development professional body, releases every year a survey report pointing out the consequences of days of absence. In 2009 the average in days of absence, concerning all business sectors, was 7. 4 days per employee per year. The amount in hotel and hospitality sector was below average with 6. 0 days per employee per year but in comparison between hotel and hospitality and other businesses, the average annual costs of absence per employee per year are superior. Relating to the CIPD the average annual costs of absence per employee per year, enfolding all business-sectors, are 692 pounds. In this area hotel and hospitality businesses are the tragic top of the table with 1199 pounds per employee per year. The survey also shows that stress (often a result of bullying) is the major cause for long-term absence. Other consequences of bullying, described by ACAS, are poor morale and poor employee relations, loss of respect for managers and supervisors, poor performance, lost productivity, resignations, damage to company reputation and tribunal and other court cases and payment of unlimited compensations. Taking a closer look on stress it is to say that in hotel and hospitality industry it is a necessity for employees to know how to handle stress because there will always be periods of strain. The big problem in coping stress is that no two people respond to the same stressor in the same way and this is the perfect point where management should intervene. According to Stranks (2005) different strategies can be considered in dealing with work-related stress, first of all it is important recognizing the evidence of stress which could manifest in sickness, alcoholism or decreasing motivation. A second strategy is to prevent stress through e. g. personal stress audits for employees to identify causes of stress, to monitor stress levels and to report and discuss stressful elements of work to identify the measures necessary at organizational level to alleviate the problem. A third way is to give employees the opportunity to develop a personal stress-tackling technique by providing training and education. Stranks (2005):113 in this point said that employees need advice on identifying their own personal stress response and the measures necessary to coping with it. † Advice to handle stress could be found from organisations like Health and Safety Executive (HSE) releasing handbooks for employees (2003, Tackling Work-Related Stress: A Guide for Employees) as well as for managers (2001, Tackling Work-Related Stress: A Manager’s Guide to improving and Maintaining Employee Health and Well-being). These strategies work very well as reported in many case studies e. g. on United Biscuits by HSE in 2007. The case study points out that United Biscuits benefited from taking action against stress in many ways. From 2005 to 2007 reports of work related stress cases decreased from 24 to 6 per year. Furthermore HRS mentions that each case where absence is prevented, it is estimated the cost of 4 weeks wages and other associated costs is saved. As a matter of fact it is a necessity to override bullying and its consequences by management to keep costs low and protect employees from physical or psychological injuries caused by bullying. As mentioned in ‘bullying and harassment at work’, an advisory booklet publicised by ACAS, the first step to provide a bully-free working environment is to set up a formal policy including a statement of commitment from management and acknowledgement that bullying and harassment are problems for the organisation. The policy could also comprise a clear statement that bullying and harassment is unlawful, that it will not be tolerated, that it may be treated as disciplinary offences and that decisions should not be taken on the basis or whether someone submitted to or rejected a particular instance of harassment. Furthermore the policy is to comprehend steps the organisation takes to prevent bullying, responsibilities of supervisors and managers and confidentiality for any complainant. The policy should involve grievance, investigation and disciplinary procedures with timescales for action. Another point should deal with protection from victimisation and the importance and possibility of training for managers to avoid bullying. Involving staff into the process of developing such a policy will help achieving additional authority. Such a policy is supported by Stale Einarsen (1999):23 in the international journal of manpower who said â€Å"If not being permitted or supported by the people in power, a bully knows he/she may find him/herself the victim of aggressive counter-attacks and severe punishment. † In reference to ACAS the second step is to set a good example in behaviour, like discussing problems and consult employees instead of a too authoritarian management style. A current negative example for this point is the discussion about Gordon Brown? s abusive treatment of staff. The Guardian (21. 2. 2010) advertised that several employees from Downing Street No. 10 contacted the National Anti-bullying Helpline which raises discussions about Mr. Browns management style. Mr. Brown is being denoted as a bully by employees including assertions that he swore at staff, grabbed them by lapels and shouted at them. Third step to deal with bullying and harassment as a manager is to maintain fair procedures for dealing promptly with complaints from employees by using clear grievance and disciplinary procedure described in the Employment Relations Act 1999. Fourth step is to set clear standards of behaviour, to provide training and information about how to deal with bullying and to communicate the organisation? s views on it. Fifth, make clear that complaints will be dealt with fairly, confidentially and sensitively. By following these five steps of ACAS it is getting a lot easier to provide a good working climate and satisfy employees. In conclusion bullying is a problem affecting all businesses with different strength, in different ways and with different consequences, but the reason for occurrence of bullying is the one constant in all companies. It all starts with recurring minor problems that aren’t recognized until they grow big, so discussing problems and communicate them will help companies save money and satisfy employees. By using a metaphor to describe bullying, the strength in which bullying affects humans as well as companies could be expressed as follows A single thunderous gust could disroot trees, but a permanent breeze transforms mountains into grains of sand.