The ‘Problem of Evil’ has been the focus of a number of articles in Think. Here, Timothy Chambers offers an unusual perspective on this seemingly intractable difficulty facing theists. ‘Did not I weep for him whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the poor? But when I looked for good, evil came; and when I waited for light, darkness came.’.

In a recent article, John Leslie has defended the intriguing Carter-Leslie ‘Doomsday Argument’ (Philosophy, January 2000). I argue that an essential presupposition of the argument—that ‘the case of one's name coming out of [an] urn is sufficiently similar to the case of being born into the world’—engenders, in turn, a parallel ‘Ussherian Corollary’. The dubiousness of this Corollary, coupled with independent considerations, casts doubt upon the Carter-Leslie presupposition, and hence, dooms the Doomsday argument.

This paper treats a question which first arose in these Proceedings: Can Anselm's ontological argument be inverted so as to yield parallel proofs for the existence (or non-existence) of a least (or worst) conceivable being? Such 'devil parodies' strike some commentators as innocuous curiosities, or redundant challenges which are no more troubling than other parodies found in the literature (e.g., Gaunilo's Island). I take issue with both of these allegations; devil parodies, I argue, have the potential to pose substantive, and (...) novel, challenges to Anselm's ontological argument. (shrink)

Here, Timothy Chambers argues that rape is not a sex act. In the follow up piece, I suggest that it is.

BackgroundA recent upsurge in nature-based exercise research demonstrates the potential added benefits of exercising in this context compared to more urban ones. Yet there is a lack of qualitative research investigating the lived experiences of those who participate in nature-based exercise events.ObjectiveTo explore the lived experience of individuals who were first-time participants in a nature-based running event.MethodSix participants who completed the Run Forrest trail run for the first time were individually interviewed. Semi-structured interviews were devised, and participants were invited to (...) talk about their experiences of running in the event. Interviews were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis.ResultsFollowing data analysis, two superordinate themes were constructed to resemble participant experiences. “Maintaining good health is vital” reflected participants’ personal theory of health and their perceived benefits of exercise. “Nature as a special place” reflected the atmospheric characteristics of the event, including the pre-event set-up and the actual running event itself.ConclusionAnalysis suggests that participants considered the event and natural environment to provide unique value adding opportunities that encouraged positive experiences. These results also reaffirm the positive benefits associated with nature-based exercise, including potential benefits to individual wellbeing. Further research in this context may strengthen our collective understanding regarding individual motivation towards such events. (shrink)

Social prescriptions are one term commonly used to describe non-pharmaceutical approaches to healthcare and are gaining popularity in the community, with evidence highlighting psychological benefits of reduced anxiety, depression and improved mood and physiological benefits of reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and reduced hypertension. The relationship between human health benefits and planetary health benefits is also noted. There are, however, numerous barriers, such as duration and frequencies to participate in activities, access, suitability, volition and a range of unpredictable variables impeding (...) a comprehensive approach to their use on a wider scale. From a multidisciplinary perspective, this commentary incorporates a salutogenic and nature-based approach to health, we also provide a range of recommendations that can be undertaken at the patient level to assist in shifting the acknowledged systemic barriers currently occurring. These include using simple language to explain the purpose of health empowerment scripts, ensuing personal commitment to a minimum timeframe, enabling ease of access, co-designing a script program, providing ongoing motivational support and incorporating mindfulness to counter unexpected disruptions. (shrink)

Carson Strong's article “Cloning and Infertility” has initiated a conversation in this journal about the ethical and policy issues surrounding the question of who, if anyone, should be allowed access to human reproductive cloning technology, should somatic cell nuclear transfer ever become technically feasible and safe. Strong's position in that article is that infertile opposite sex couples for whom cloning is the last resort for having a genetically related child are the only people who should be granted access to such (...) technology, primarily because this need to have a genetically related child would give such couples respectable reasons for cloning themselves. Also, every child has a basic right to a “decent minimum opportunity for development.” Thus it would be morally wrong, other things being equal, to clone a person with cystic fibrosis or spina bifida but morally permissible to clone a nearsighted person, because nearsightedness is not sufficiently disabling to violate the child's birthright. With this caveat, he concludes that protecting reproductive freedom requires that physicians be allowed to provide cloning services only to that small subset of infertile opposite sex couples who would need it as a last resort, should human reproductive cloning ever become safe and feasible. (shrink)

Carson Strong argues, in that if cloning of humans by somatic cell nuclear transfer were to become a safe procedure, then infertile couples should have access to it as a last resort. He lists six reasons such couples might desire genetically related children. Of these, two are relevant to justifying their access to cloning—namely, that they want to jointly participate in the creation of a person, and that having a genetically related child would constitute an affirmation of their mutual love. (...) According to Strong, these reasons justify at least some infertile couples' freedom to clone themselves. He wants to prevent the widespread use of cloning technology by making it available to only infertile couples and only as a last resort. One way to enforce this restriction, he suggests, is to penalize physicians who carry out disallowed clonings. After all, fertile couples and many infertile couples can satisfy their need to have genetically related children in other ways. (shrink)

For many commentators in bioethics and the law, safety is the fulcrum for evaluating the ethics of human reproductive cloning. Carson Strong has argued that if cloning were effective and safe it should be available to married couples who have tried to have children through various assisted reproductive technologies but been unable to do so. On his view, cloning should be available only as reproductive last resort. I challenged that limited use by trying to show that the arguments Strong adduces (...) in favor of reproductive somatic nuclear transfer for married couples extend to same-sex couples as well, who face a different kind of infertility. I also went on to argue that his justifications would in fact extend the legitimate use of SNT to any couples regardless of whether they had fertility difficulties or not. (shrink)

In this article, I critically engage Adriana Cavarero’s account of uniqueness via an analysis of her work on narrativity and violence. I suggest there is an ambivalence in Cavarero’s account of uniqueness: Cavarero argues both that uniqueness is susceptible to destruction, and that it cannot finally be annihilated. To make this clear I use Cavarero’s account to read a narrative offered by Miklós Nyiszli, of a woman who survived an Auschwitz gas chamber. I contrast this to Cavarero’s reading of Eurydice (...) and Orpheus, arguing that the ambivalence in Cavarero’s account can be resolved by thinking an excess proper to uniqueness. (shrink)

Carson Strong argues, in that if cloning of humans by somatic cell nuclear transfer were to become a safe procedure, then infertile couples should have access to it as a last resort. He lists six reasons such couples might desire genetically related children. Of these, two are relevant to justifying their access to cloning—namely, that they want to jointly participate in the creation of a person, and that having a genetically related child would constitute an affirmation of their mutual love. (...) According to Strong, these reasons justify at least some infertile couples' freedom to clone themselves. He wants to prevent the widespread use of cloning technology by making it available to only infertile couples and only as a last resort. One way to enforce this restriction, he suggests, is to penalize physicians who carry out disallowed clonings. After all, fertile couples and many infertile couples can satisfy their need to have genetically related children in other ways. (shrink)

Jean E. Chambers and Timothy F. Murphy responded to my article “Cloning and Infertility” and extended the debate over human cloning in interesting ways. I had argued that none of the objections to cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer are successful in the context of infertile couples who use cloning to have genetically related children, assuming the issue of safety is overcome by scientific advances.

Vagueness provides the first comprehensive examination of a topic of increasing importance in metaphysics and the philosophy of logic and language. Timothy Williamson traces the history of this philosophical problem from discussions of the heap paradox in classical Greece to modern formal approaches such as fuzzy logic. He illustrates the problems with views which have taken the position that standard logic and formal semantics do not apply to vague language, and defends the controversial realistic view that vagueness is a (...) kind of ignorance--that there really is a grain of sand whose removal turns a heap into a non-heap, but we cannot know which one it is. (shrink)

Humean arguments from evil are some of the most powerful arguments against Theism. They take as their data what we know about good and evil. And they argue that some rival to Theism better explains, or otherwise predicts, that data than Theism. However, this paper argues that there are many problems with various methods for defending Humean arguments. I consider Philo’s original strategy; modern strategies in terms of epistemic probability; phenomenological strategies; and strategies that appeal to scientific and metaphysical explanations. (...) None of these methods have been sufficiently developed to provide a clear and distinctive defense of Humean arguments. Defenders of Humean arguments need to spend more time on the underlying methodology of their arguments. (shrink)

The author argues that all forms of life are interconnected and that no being, construct, or object can exist independently from the ecological entanglement, nor does "nature" exist as an entity separate from the uglier or more synthetic elements of life. Realizing this interconnectedness is what the author calls the ecological thought. He investigates the philosophical, political, and aesthetic implications of this interconnectedness.

At any given time, a subject has a multiplicity of conscious experiences. A subject might simultaneously have visual experiences of a red book and a green tree, auditory experiences of birds singing, bodily sensations of a faint hunger and a sharp pain in the shoulder, the emotional experience of a certain melancholy, while having a stream of conscious thoughts about the nature of reality. These experiences are distinct from each other: a subject could experience the red book without the singing (...) birds, and could experience the singing birds without the red book. But at the same time, the experiences seem to be tied together in a deep way. They seem to be unified, by being aspects of a single encompassing state of consciousness. (shrink)

When I take off my glasses, the world looks blurred. When I put them back on, it looks sharpedged. I do not think that the world really was blurred; I know that what changed was my relation to the distant physical objects ahead, not those objects themselves. I am more inclined to believe that the world really is and was sharp-edged. Is that belief any more reasonable than the belief that the world really is and was blurred? I see more (...) accurately with my glasses on than off, so visual appearances when they are on have some cognitive priority over visual appearances when they are off. If I must choose which kind of visual appearance to take at face value, I will choose the sharp-edged look. But what should I think when I see a mist, which looks very blurred however well I am seeing? Indeed, why choose to take any of the looks at face value? Why not regard all the choices as illegitimate projections of ways of seeing the world onto the world itself? (shrink)