Online research in philosophy

What is moral reasoning? For that matter, what is any sort of reasoning? Let me begin by making a few distinctions. First, there is a distinction between reasoning as something that that people do and the abstract structures of proof or “argument” that are the subject matter of formal logic. I will be mainly concerned with reasoning in the first sense, reasoning that people do. Second, there is a distinction between moral reasoning with other people and moral reasoning by and for yourself . Moral reasoning with others may involve discussion with them, bargaining with them, and possibly arguing with them.

What exactly is reasoning? Like many other philosophers, I shall endorse a broadly causal conception of reasoning. Reasoning is a causal process, in which one mental event (say, one’s accepting the conclusion of a certain argument) is caused by an antecedent mental event (say, one’s considering the premises of the argument). Just like causal accounts of action and causal accounts of perception, causal accounts of reasoning have to confront a version of what has come to be known as the problem of deviant causal chains. In this paper, I shall propose an account of the nature of reasoning, incorporating a solution to the specific version of the deviant causal chains problem that arises for accounts of reasoning. One striking feature of my solution is that it requires that certain normative facts are causally efficacious. It might be thought that this feature will make my account incompatible with any plausibly naturalistic approach to understanding the mind. I shall argue that this is not so: my account of the nature of reasoning is quite compatible with plausible versions of naturalism.

Warren and Brandeis' tort against invasion of privacy had chiefly a social goal: to enlist the courts to reinforce the norm of civility. Years later in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court announced a constitutional right of privacy that was personal in focus. Here and in subsequent rulings on abortion and the "right to die," it became apparent that Warren and Brandeis' Victorian "right to be let alone" had metamorphosed into a right to autonomy, whose amoeboid contours made prediction or even description a tricky business. But privacy is an unsatisfactory proxy for autonomy, and perhaps for this reason has dwindled in importance as a rationale in these areas. Keywords: abortion, autonomy, Charles Warren, Cruzan v. Director , Missouri Department of Health , Griswold v. Connecticut , In re Quinlan , Louis Brandeis, privacy, right to die, Roe v. Wade , Supreme Court CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Given terrorism and the rise of military 'peace' operations, I argue for a pragmatic approach to justice and war. My argument results in three amendments to the received view of the war and justice model. I claim that Rules of Engagement (ROE) concerning self-defense for deploying forces in counter-terrorism or peace operations should be at least consistent with self-defense ROE employed by law enforcement officials operating domestically. Policymakers in determining deployments in support of such operations must therefore deliberately decide, as part of their own ad bellum procedure, whether or not military ROE will be consistent with such a law enforcement baseline. I also argue that peace and counter-terrorism operations require an explicit acknowledgment of both the commanders' moral responsibility for force protection and the military members' moral justification to defend themselves fully. The method I employ in making my case is a detailed analysis of moral principle operative within three US realms of law--US Constitutional law, international law, and ROE--and through a close consideration of several recent US military operations.