I will argue that a desert-based justification for treating a person in a certain way is a justification that holds this treatment to be justified simply by what the person is like and what he or she has done, independent of (1) the fact that treating the person in this way will have good effects (or that treating people like him or her in this way will have such effects); (2) the fact that this treatment is called for by some (...) (justified) institution or practice; or (3) the fact that the person could have avoided being subject to this treatment by choosing appropriately, and therefore cannot complain of it. I will explore the implications of this understanding of desert for the role of desert-based justifications of blame, punishment, and economic reward. (shrink)

Argues that there is a puzzle about how our own thick concepts, which motivate us simply because they are our own, can be legitimated in any stronger sense than that, from a perspective which is not an “insider perspective.”.

This sense of attributability, or internality, is the quarry in many of Frankfurt's articles, and it has proved to be an elusive one. In this paper I want to explore, in a tentative fashion, the question of why we should be interested in finding this quarry. It seems to me that there are at least two quite distinct kinds of reason for this concern, and that when they are distinguished the problem may look less difficult than it has seemed.

Knobe reports that subjects' judgments of whether an agent did something intentionally vary depending on whether the outcome in question was seen by them as good or as bad. He concludes that subjects' moral views affect their judgments about intentional action. This conclusion appears to follow only if different meanings of “intention” are overlooked.

In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other.

Can there be a "reflexive" or presuppositional, reasonably non-rejectable grounding of a Forst-type right to justification, or of a meaningful form of constitutive discursive standing? The paper argues that this is not so, and this for reasons that reflect more general limitations of presuppositional arguments for relevantly contested conclusions. To this end, the paper critically engages Forst's "reflexive" argument for human rights. It also considers O'Neill's presuppositional attempt to defend a form of cosmopolitanism, as well as the attempt to anchor (...) constructivist conclusions in the meaning of the word "reasonable". (shrink)

Inequality is widely regarded as morally objectionable: T. M. Scanlon investigates why it matters to us. He considers the nature and importance of equality of opportunity, whether the pursuit of greater equality involves objectionable interference with individual liberty, and whether the rich can be said to deserve their greater rewards.

These essays in political philosophy by T. M. Scanlon, written between 1969 and 1999, examine the standards by which social and political institutions should be justified and appraised. Scanlon explains how the powers of just institutions are limited by rights such as freedom of expression, and considers why these limits should be respected even when it seems that better results could be achieved by violating them. Other topics which are explored include voluntariness and consent, freedom of expression, tolerance, (...) punishment, and human rights. The collection includes the classic essays 'Preference and Urgency', 'A Theory of Freedom of Expression', and 'Contractualism and Utilitarianism', as well as a number of other essays that have hitherto not been easily accessible. It will be essential reading for all those studying these topics from the perspective of political philosophy, politics, and law. (shrink)

Die Reihe "Philosophie und Politik" gibt der praktischen Politik Impulse aus der politischen Philosophie. Führende Politikerinnen und Politiker der deutschen Sozialdemokratie antworten auf die Anstöße aus philosophischer Sicht. Thomas M. Scanlon diskutiert in dem Band die Bedingungen, unter denen Gleichheit politisch relevant und ethisch begründet ist. Scanlon ist einer der profiliertesten zeitgenössischen Philosophen im Bereich der Ethik und der politischen Theorie. Er zählt zu den so genannten New Contractarians, also den Theoretikern, die mit und gegen John Rawls (...) Gerechtigkeitstheorie zur Renaissance des Vertragsargumentes in der politischen Philosophie beigetragen haben. Damit wurde eine Denkfigur wiederbelebt, die am Beginn der modernen europäischen Demokratie steht, die die Begründung politischer Ordnungen an individuelle Rationalität bindet und alle Bürger als gleiche und freie einbezieht. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas produced a voluminous body of work on moral theory, and much of that work is on virtue, particularly the status and value of the virtues as principles of virtuous acts, and the way in which a moral life can be organized around them schematically. Thomas Osborne presents Aquinas's account of virtue in its historical, philosophical and theological contexts, to show the reader what Aquinas himself wished to teach about virtue. His discussion makes the complexities of Aquinas's (...) moral thought accessible to readers despite the differences between Thomas's texts themselves, and the distance between our background assumptions and his. The book will be valuable for scholars and students in ethics, medieval philosophy, and theology. (shrink)

T. M. Scanlon has cited the value of friendship in arguing against a ‘teleological’ view of value which says that value inheres only in states of affairs and demands only that we promote it. This article argues that, whatever the teleological view's final merits, the case against it cannot be made on the basis of friendship. The view can capture Scanlon's claims about friendship if it holds, as it can consistently with its basic ideas, that (i) friendship is (...) a higher-level good consisting in appropriate attitudes to other goods and evils in a friend's life, (ii) these goods and evils have agent-relative value, i.e. more value than similar states of strangers, and (iii) the attitudes constituting friendship have less value than their objects. Given these independently plausible claims, the teleological view can agree with Scanlon that, e.g., it is wrong to betray a friend in order to promote more friendships among other people. (Published Online August 21 2006). (shrink)

This book collects Thomas Nagel's recent philosophical reflections on topics of fundamental interest: ethics, moral psychology, science and religion, death and the holocaust, and the metaphysics of mind. Among the figures discussed are Peter Singer, Alvin Plantinga, Christine Korsgaard, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch, T. M. Scanlon, Ronald Dworkin, Samuel Scheffler, Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Haidt, Joshua Greene, and Daniel Dennett. Nagel consistently defends a realist interpretation of moral truth and resists reductive attempts to subsume ethics to psychology (...) and evolutionary theory. He also defends a pluralistic conception of the content of morality against utilitarianism, including deontological elements such as rights and special responsibilities. A realist outlook also informs his discussions of metaphysical and epistemological questions. The book closes with tributes to a number of people Nagel has known over the course of his career. The essays are all addressed to a general audience, and should appeal not only to philosophers but to anyone interested in current attempts to understand human life, human values, and how we fit into the world. (shrink)

This book argues that Plato's Charmides presents a unitary but incomplete argument intended to lead its readers to substantive philosophical insights.

Aquinas thinks that practical reason is distinct but not entirely insulated from speculative reason. Although his description of practical reasoning applies to a variety of human activities, his greatest focus is on that practical reasoning which is involved in human action. Although practical reasoning resembles the speculative in its use of a kind of syllogism, its connection with particular affairs precisely as contingent gives it a special character.

Alasdair MacIntyre’s criticism of contemporary politics rests in large part on the way in which the political communities of advanced modernity do not recognize common goals and practices. I shall argue that although MacIntyre explicitly recognizes the influence of Jacques Maritain on his own thought, MacIntyre’s own views are incompatible not only with Maritain’s attempt to develop a Thomistic theory which is compatible with liberal democracy, but also relies on a view of the individual as a part which is related (...) to the whole in a way that is incompatible with Maritain’s understanding of the spiritual individual or person. (shrink)

This paper is reprinted in the book Machine Ethics, eds. M. Anderson and S. Anderson, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

‘Zero tolerance’ of avoidable infection events is explicit in UK and international policy documents describing strategies for the control of healthcare-associated infection. I consider what principles governing avoidable infections acquired in healthcare institutions might be reasonably rejected from the contractualist perspective of Thomas Scanlon. Many hospital infections can be cost-effectively avoided. There would seem to be additional reasons to take the prevention of avoidable infection acquired in hospitals seriously in addition to optimizing the cost-effectiveness of healthcare. These include (...) the irretrievable nature of the harm of some of the infections; the reasonable rejection of avoidable harm when the patient could not rationally consent to the risk of harm and the social consequences such as loss of trust in healthcare providers. Despite these reasons, a principle of ‘zero tolerance’ has implausible implications, promotes unrealistic patient expectations and can be reasonably rejected from the perspective of those who will suffer unacceptable opportunity costs. However, the contractualist perspective would also seem to reject a principle of tolerance of harm when there is a feasible reconfiguration of institutional arrangements that reduces the risk of harm without a redistribution of a proportionate or greater burden to others. (shrink)

" Our various cultures are symbolic environments or "spiritual ecologies" within which the Human Eros can thrive. This is how we inhabit the earth. Encircling and sustaining our cultural existence is nature.

This updated edition of a well-established anthology of social and political philosophy combines extensive selections from classical works with significant recent contributions to the field, many of which are not easily available. Its central focus is on the liberal currents in modern Western political thought--variants of classical liberalism, modern liberalism, and libertarianism--with specific focus on differing conceptions of political obligation, freedom, distributive justice, and representative democracy. The text is organized into four thematic sections: Political Obligation and Consent, Freedom and Coercion, (...) Justice and Equality, and Democracy and Representation, making it easily accessible to students. Each chapter features selections from classical thinkers alongside writings by influential contemporary philosophers and political theorists, thus tracing the historical development and transformation of Western political thought on key issues in the field. Among the classical authors represented in this collection are Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Mill. Contemporary contributors include John Rawls, Isaiah Berlin, Thomas Scanlon, Robert Nozick, Thomas Nagel, Ronald Dworkin, and Hanna Pitkin. Each section is preceded by an introductory overview and followed by a helpful, current bibliography providing guides to further reading. (shrink)

Verschwindet die Religiosität in der Moderne oder ist im Gegenteil eine Rückkehr der Religionen zu verzeichnen? Das Handbuch beleuchtet die Dialektik von Säkularisierung und Revitalisierung der Religionen aus philosophischer, soziologischer und religionswissenschaftlicher Perspektive. Vorgestellt werden grundlegende Konzepte, z. B. von Durkheim, Weber, Habermas, Blumenberg und Luhmann. Der zweite Teil untersucht Begriffe wie das Böse, das Heilige, Pluralismus etc. in ihrer Bedeutung im Kontext der Säkularisierung. Abschließend geht es um Konflikte wie Glauben und Wissen, Religion und Menschenrechte oder Säkularisierung und die (...) Weltreligionen. (shrink)

This article reports the results of a study of attitudes of future business executives towards issues of social responsibility and business ethics. The 455 respondents, who were MBA students during 1985 at one dozen schools from various regions in the United States, were asked to respond to a series of open-ended and closed-ended questions. From the responses to the questions the authors were able to conclude that future executives display considerable sensitivity, though to varying degrees, towards ethical issues in business. (...) Women, in particular, tend to evince strong feelings regarding such issues. (shrink)

Thomas Alexander shows that the primary, guiding concern of Dewey's philosophy is his theory of aesthetic experience.

The paper aims to put certain basic mathematical elements and operations into an empirical perspective, evaluate the empirical status of various analytic operations widely used within psychology and suggest alternatives to procedures criticized as inadequate. Experimentation shows the "manyness" of items to be a perceptual quality for both young children and animals and that natural operations are performed by naive children analogous to those performed by persons tutored in arithmetic. Number, counting, arithmetic operations therefore can make distinctions that are not (...) inevitably arbitrary, and conceptual operations can obviously have a status as natural events with psychology. If the elements and conceptual operations involved in mathematical systems were not inherent in physiological process, various primitive discriminations could not be possible. Also, since some calculi have a natural status in a given empirical circumstance, the axioms of others can not be satisfied. Therefore the psychologist when acting as an empirical scientist seeks a calculus having a structure whose elements are isomorphic with natural units of stimulus and response and whose operations are isomorphic with whatever natural processes are involved. Measurement poses a special problem for the empirical scientist. It concerns but a single class of natural qualities and this only in a limited way. The concept of quantity has a natural counterpart but quantity and measurement are not wholly analogous. Measurement is defined, as H. S. Leonard suggests, as a theoretical activity. Measurement theory has a formal structure but empirical end. Measurement hypothesizes about the position of a particular quality within a definite range of qualities. It therefore is beholden to definite empirical restrictions. Some hypotheses-making systems use terms and relations per se as the context and starting point for dealing with discriminable events. Such procedures are 'transcendent." In empirical science, questions are part of problem-solving activity and their reference is naturally restricted. In providing description and explanation, psychological researchers frequently use calculi in a transcendent way. This results in theories that are only quasi-empirical and "half" true. The roles measurement plays in psychology are discussed. Of particular concern are those cases in which the results of measuring or a theory of measurement are used to define the "real" units, or the "real" relations involved in problematic psychological events, and thence to describe and explain behaviors of interest. Metaphysical or ontological usages of measurement sometimes occur. The implication of these arguments with regard to a view of empirical science is discussed. (shrink)

This Element defends a version of the classical theory of divine ideas, the containment exemplarist theory of divine ideas. The classical theory holds that God has ideas of all possible creatures, that these ideas partially explain why God's creation of the world is a rational and free personal action, and that God does not depend on anything external to himself for having the ideas he has. The containment exemplarist version of the classical theory holds that God's own nature is the (...) exemplar of all possible creatures, and therefore that God's ideas of possible creatures are in some sense ideas of himself. Containment exemplarism offers a monotheism fit for metaphysics, insofar as it is coherent, simple, and explanatorily powerful; and offers a metaphysics fit for monotheism, insofar as it leaves God truly worthy of the unconditional worship which Christians, along with Jews and Muslims, aspire to offer to God. (shrink)

Can computer systems ever be considered moral agents? This paper considers two factors that are explored in the recent philosophical literature. First, there are the important domains in which computers are allowed to act, made possible by their greater functional capacities. Second, there is the claim that these functional capacities appear to embody relevant human abilities, such as autonomy and responsibility. I argue that neither the first (Domain-Function) factor nor the second (Simulacrum) factor gets at the central issue in the (...) case for computer moral agency: whether they can have the kinds of intentional states that cause their decisions and actions. I give an account that builds on traditional action theory and allows us to conceive of computers as genuine moral agents in virtue of their own causally efficacious intentional states. These states can cause harm or benefit to moral patients, but do not depend on computer consciousness or intelligence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Many scholars and managers endorse the idea that the primary purpose of the firm is to make money for its owners. This shareholder wealth maximization objective is justified on the grounds that it maximizes social welfare. In this article, the first of a two-part set, we argue that, although this shareholder primacy model may have been appropriate in an earlier era, it no longer is, given our current state of economic and social affairs. To make our case, we employ a (...) utilitarian moral standard and examine the apparent logical sequence behind the link between shareholder wealth maximization and social welfare. Upon close empirical and conceptual scrutiny, we find that utilitarian criteria do not support the shareholder model; that is, shareholder wealth maximization is only weakly linked to social welfare maximization. In view of the dubious validity of this sequential argument, we outline some of the features of a superior corporate objective—a variant of normative stakeholder theory. In the second article, we will advance and defend our preferred alternative and then discuss some institutional arrangements under which it could be implemented. (shrink)

Conceptions of acceptability-based moral or political justification take it that authoritative acceptability constitutes, or contributes to, validity, or justification. There is no agreement as to what bar for authoritativeness such justification may employ. The paper engages the issue in relation to (i) the level of idealization that a bar for authoritativeness, ψ, imparts to a standard of acceptability-based justification, S, and (ii) the degree of discursive purchase of the discursive standing that S accords to people when it builds ψ. I (...) argue that (i) and (ii) are interdependent: high idealization values entail low discursive purchase, while high degrees of purchase require low idealization values. I then distinguish between alethic conceptions of justification that prioritize ends that commit to high idealization values, and recognitive conceptions that favour high discursive purchase. On this basis, I argue for a moderately recognitivist constraint on idealization. To render the recognitive discursive minimum available to relevant people at the site of justification, S should set ψ low enough so that it is a genuine option for actual people to reject relevant views in ways that S recognizes as authoritative. (shrink)

Beginning with the well-knowncyber-rape in LambdaMOO, I argue that it ispossible to have real moral wrongs in virtualcommunities. I then generalize the account toshow how it applies to interactions in gamingand discussion communities. My account issupported by a view of moral realism thatacknowledges entities like intentions andcausal properties of actions. Austin's speechact theory is used to show that real people canact in virtual communities in ways that bothestablish practices and moral expectations, andwarrant strong identifications betweenthemselves and their online identities. Rawls'conception (...) of a social practice is used toanalyze the nature of the wrong and thestage-setting aspect of engaging in a practice. (shrink)

This paper examines some aspects of Spinoza's metaphysics of the essences of modes.2 I situate Spinoza's use of the notion of essence as a response to traditional, Aristotelian, ways of thinking about essence. I argue that, although Spinoza rejects part of the Aristotelian conception of essence, according to which it is in virtue of its essence that a thing is a member of a kind, he nevertheless retains a different part of such a conception, according to which an essence is (...) some structural feature of a thing which causally explains other, non-essential features. I go on to develop an account of Spinoza's metaphysics of essence, according to which essences, what he sometimes calls formal essences, are produced by the divine essence prior to and independent of the creation of finite modes, and according to which essences are the formal or exemplar causes of finite modes. I then argue that finite modes, in virtue of the formal essences which they actualize, are genuine causal relata. Finally, I offer some speculations about Spinoza's answer to the question, "Why, in a necessitarian cosmos filled with formal essences, should there be temporal finite modes at all?". (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Employing utilitarian criteria, Jones and Felps, in “Shareholder Wealth Maximization and Social Welfare: A Utilitarian Critique” (Business Ethics Quarterly23[2]: 207–38), examined the sequential logic leading from shareholder wealth maximization to maximal social welfare and uncovered several serious empirical and conceptual shortcomings. After rendering shareholder wealth maximization seriously compromised as an objective for corporate operations, they provided a set of criteria regarding what a replacement corporate objective would look like, but do not offer a specific alternative. In this article, we draw (...) on neo-utilitarian thought to advance a refined version of normative stakeholder theory that we believe addresses a major remaining criticism of extant versions, their lack of specificity. More particularly, we provide a single-valued objective function for the corporation—stakeholder happiness enhancement—that would allow managers to make principled choices between/among policy options when stakeholder interests conflict. (shrink)

Ward examines Scotus's arguments for his distinctive version of hylomorphism, the view that at least some material objects are composites of matter and form. It considers Scotus's reasons for adopting hylomorphism, and his accounts of how matter and form compose a substance, how extended parts, such as the organs of an organism, compose a substance, and how other sorts of things, such as the four chemical elements and all the things in the world, fail to compose a substance. It highlights (...) the extent to which Scotus draws on his metaphysics of essential order to explain why some things can compose substance and why others cannot. Throughout the book, contemporary versions of hylomorphism are discussed in ways that both illumine Scotus's own views and suggest ways to advance contemporary debates. (shrink)