“Punishment,” writes J. E. McTaggart, “ is pain and to inflict pain on any person obviously [requires] justification.” But if the need to justify punishment is obvious, the manner of doing so is not. Philosophers have developed an array of diverse, often conflicting arguments to justify punitive institutions. Gertrude Ezorsky introduces this source book of significant historical and contemporary philosophical writings on problems of punishment with her own article, “The Ethics of Punishment.” She brings together systematically the important (...) papers and relevant studies from psychology, law, and literature, and organizes them under five subtopics: concepts of punishment, the justification of punishment, strict liability, the death penalty, and alternatives to punishment. Under these general headings forty-two papers are presented to give philosophical perspectives on punishment. Included are many not generally available. This book brings together in a single volume the views of such diverse writers as Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, Samuel Butler, Karl Marx, and Lady Barbara Wooten. Others are J. Andenaes, K. G. Armstrong, John Austin, Kurt Baier, Jeremy Bentham, F. H. Bradley, Richard Brandt, Clarence Darrow, A. C. Ewing, Joel Feinberg, “The Hon. Mr. Gilpin,” H. L. A. Hart, G. W. F. Hegel, Thomas Hobbs, Immanuel Kant, J. D. Mabbott, H. J. McCloskey, J. E. McTaggart, R. Martinson, G. E. Moore, Herbert Morris, Anthony Quinton, D. Daiches Raphael, H. Rashdall, John Rawls, W. D. Ross, Royal Commission on Capital Punishment Report 1949–53, George Bernard Shaw, T. L. S. Sprigge, and R. Wasserstrom. (shrink)

Alan Wertheimer claims the class of criminals who deserve punishment is identical with the class of criminals who are deferrable (Inquiry, Vol. 20 [1977]). According to Wertheimer this premise implies the conclusion that on ?the retributive account . . . the guilty are punished because we expect to alter (at least some) criminal behavior?. It is argued that this premise does not imply the conclusion.

_Historical and contemporary philosophical writings on punishment._.

Retributivists who proclaim our moral obligation to punish criminals have displayed, on their own behalf, a type of argumant which I shall call Moral Balance. There are three versions of Moral Balance. According to Moral Balance I, retaliatory punishment restores the equality disturbed by the criminal. Moral Balance II philosophers admire the proportion between morality and welfare which punishment can yield. Those who hold with Moral Balance Ill are fascinated by the equilibrium of social benefits and burdens set by punishment. (...) All three versions are flawed as follows: they imply that crime is morally justified.Moral Balance 1: EqualityHegel informs us that:his is the action of a rational being and this implies that it is something universal and that by doing it the criminal has laid down a law which he has explicitly recognized in his action and under which in consequence he should be brought as under his right. (shrink)

Ordinary men are “unconscious utilitarians.” So says Sidgwick.

The paper included here was presented by Nanette Funk in Honor of Gertrude Ezorsky, the famed philosopher, feminist, and antiracism activist, at the 1997 Meeting of the Society for Women in Philosophy. It is published here as presented. Thus, although it is a coauthored talk the “I” refers to Nanette Funk.

Intention is one of the masterworks of twentieth-century philosophy in English. First published in 1957, it has acquired the status of a modern philosophical classic. The book attempts to show in detail that the natural and widely accepted picture of what we mean by an intention gives rise to insoluble problems and must be abandoned. This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

Anscombe guides us through the Tractatus and, thereby, Wittgenstein's early philosophy as a whole. She shows in particular how his arguments developed out of the discussions of Russell and Frege. This reprint is of the fourth, corrected edition.

The intentionality of sensation -- The first person -- Substance -- The subjectivity of sensation -- Events in the mind -- Comments on Professor R.L. Gregory's paper on perception -- On sensations of position -- Intention -- Pretending -- On the grammar of "Enjoy" -- The reality of the past -- Memory, "experience," and causation -- Causality and determination -- Times, beginnings, and causes -- Soft determinism -- Causality and extensionality -- Before and after -- Subjunctive conditionals -- "Under a (...) description" -- Analysis competition--tenth problem -- A reply to Mr. C.S. Lewis's argument that "naturalism" is self-refuting. (shrink)

I IT is often declared or evidently assumed that causality is some kind of necessary connexion, or alternatively, that being caused is — non-trivially ...

One of our most distinguished intellectual historians gives us a brilliant revisionist history. The Roads to Modernity reclaims the Enlightenment–an extraordinary time bursting with new ideas about the human condition in the realms of politics, society, and religion–from historians who have downgraded its importance and from scholars who have given preeminence to the Enlightenment in France over concurrent movements in England and America. Contrasting the Enlightenments in the three nations, Gertrude Himmelfarb demonstrates the primacy of the British and the (...) wisdom and foresight of thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Paine, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Edward Gibbon, and Edmund Burke, who established its unique character and historic importance. It is this Enlightenment, she argues, that created a moral and social philosophy–humane, compassionate, and realistic–that still resonates strongly today, in America perhaps even more so than in Europe. This is an illuminating contribution to the history of ideas. (shrink)

-- v. 2. Metaphysics and the philosophy of mind.

Based on a framework that distinguishes several types, roles and functions of values in science, we discuss legitimate applications of values in the validation of computer simulations. We argue that, first, epistemic values, such as empirical accuracy and coherence with background knowledge, have the role to assess the credibility of simulation results, whereas, second, cognitive values, such as comprehensiveness of a conceptual model or easy handling of a numerical model, have the role to assess the usefulness of a model for (...) investigating a hypothesis. In both roles, values perform what we call first-order functions. In addition, cogni¬tive values may also serve an auxiliary function by facilitating the assessment of credibility. As for a third type of values, i.e. social values, their legitimate role consists in specifying and weighing epistemic and cognitive values with respect to practical uses of a simulation, which is considered a second-order function. Rational intersubjective agreement on how to specify and weigh the different values is supposed to ensure objectivity in simulation validation. (shrink)

Parmenides, mystery and contradiction -- The early theory of forms -- The new theory of forms -- Understanding proofs : Meno, 85d₉-86c₂, continued -- Aristotle and the sea battle -- The principle of individuation -- Thought and action in Aristotle -- Necessity and truth -- Hume and Julius Caesar -- "Whatever has a beginning of existence must have a cause" : Hume's argument exposed -- Will and emotion -- Retraction -- The question of linguistic idealism.

The debate on the foundations of knowledge and meaning has gained particular attention in recent philosophical discourse. A number of commentators, including Richard Rorty, have categorized leading contemporary philosophers such as Wittgenstein as being 'anti-foundationalist". In this comprehensive analysis of Wittgenstein's concept of the form of life and its implications, Professor Conway takes issue with this characterization of Wittgenstein. Instead, the author interprets Wittgenstein as continuing the discussion of foundations, while radically transforming the very understanding of foundations.

Early work from a leader in analytic philosophy From Parmenides to Wittgenstein, Volume 1: Collected Philosophical Papers is part of a multi-volume publication of G.E.M. Anscombe's collected works. Writing on philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic, Anscombe is known as one of analytical Thomisms's most prominent figures. This collection includes her writing on the work of her teacher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, with whom she worked closely as co-editor and translator.

Among the fragments published in Zettel, one finds one of Wittgenstein's most enigmatic comments. In entry 455, he states that "the philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas. That is what makes him into a philosopher". The apparent incongruity between this entry and the thrust of Wittgenstein's later works initially draws one's attention, but the passage sustains interest because it is situated at the nexus of issues addressed in current philosophical debate regarding cultural pluralism. This paper attempts (...) to make sense of the Zettel fragment in the contexts of both Wittgenstein's own analysis and such debate. It argues that the post-Enlightenment philosopher's role entails a cosmopolitan point of view with promotes both the recognition of citizens' embeddedness in a cultural tradition and the need for a critical distancing from that tradition, occasioned by an awareness of cultural pluralism. (shrink)