Bentham's dictum, ‘everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one’, is frequently noted but seldom discussed by commentators. Perhaps it is not thought contentious or exciting because interpreted as merely reminding the utilitarian legislator to make certain that each person's interests are included, that no one is missed, in working the felicific calculus. Since no interests are secure against the maximizing directive of the utility principle, which allows them to be overridden or sacrificed, the dictum is not usually (...) taken to be asserting fundamental rights that afford individuals normative protection against the actions of others or against legislative policies deemed socially expedient. Such non-conventional moral rights seem denied a place in a utilitarian theory so long as the maximization of aggregate happiness remains the ultimate standard and moral goal. (shrink)

Following the formulation of the Identity Theory by Place and Smart a few years ago, there was considerable discussion of subjective mental states and of the importance of first-person reports of mental events. One concern was that the logical status of first-person claims might commit us to belief in irreducible mental phenomena referred to by such propositions. If so the Identity Theory would be false. Kurt Baier went so far as to argue that the incorrigibility of propositions such as “I (...) have a pain” demonstrates that Smart's identification of sensations with brain states and processes is untenable. While there is no point to reintroducing historical discussions it is worth remarking because a more general problem is reflected in this kind of debate. This is the problem of how we expect our ordinary intuitions and ways of talking about something to affect our theoretical view of it or vice versa. In this particular instance it manifests itself as the question of the extent to which a theory of persons is to be dictated to or decided by the common and generally accepted intuitions embedded in our psychological language. (shrink)

Following the formulation of the Identity Theory by Place and Smart a few years ago, there was considerable discussion of subjective mental states and of the importance of first-person reports of mental events. One concern was that the logical status of first-person claims might commit us to belief in irreducible mental phenomena referred to by such propositions. If so the Identity Theory would be false. Kurt Baier went so far as to argue that the incorrigibility of propositions such as “I (...) have a pain” demonstrates that Smart's identification of sensations with brain states and processes is untenable. While there is no point to reintroducing historical discussions it is worth remarking because a more general problem is reflected in this kind of debate. This is the problem of how we expect our ordinary intuitions and ways of talking about something to affect our theoretical view of it or vice versa. In this particular instance it manifests itself as the question of the extent to which a theory of persons is to be dictated to or decided by the common and generally accepted intuitions embedded in our psychological language. (shrink)

Although f h bradley is usually taken to be a retributivist, His writings on the topic of punishment show his position to be more utilitarian. And he criticizes retributivism severely in his article in the "international journal of ethics" in 1894. The present paper attempts to present a more accurate picture of bradley's views of punishment and to show the relevance of these views to contemporary debate on the justification and distribution of punishment.

Those attempting to expound a comprehensive normative ethical theory are presumably motivated by the belief that there should be an ultimate reason people can give for their actions and a final response to the question of why we should act morally. Historically, one candidate for this ultimate end or reason is self-realization. To convince us of his theory the self-realizationist must successfully explicate the notion of the self—i.e., he must tell us what man’s distinctive nature or function is—and he must (...) have something to say about the perfecting of this self. (shrink)

In truth-functional analysis we need not worry about the purported ambiguity of the English ‘or,’ for we can assign different symbols and define each by means of a truth table. However, at least in classes in elementary logic, we often try to indicate that there is some rationale to the assignation of truth values by marshaling English disjunctive sentences which will clearly render an inclusive or an exclusive reading, without the explicit addition of one of the qualifying phrases, “or both” (...) or “but not both.” At this point one discovers people writing on logic saying quite different things about the English ‘or.’ In his Methods of Logic Quine takes the inclusive sense to be the more naturally intended and claims that “indisputable instances of the exclusive use” are rare. Yet in The Principles of Logic Bradley says that no one ever really intends to use ‘or’ in any other than an exclusive sense; and Bosanquet followed him in this. In this paper I am interested in attempting to discover why the British Idealists held that ‘or’ is always exclusive, especially in the face of various examples which, prima facie, establish both uses in English. Why would Bradley feel compelled to deny “any possible instance in which alternatives are not exclusive”? As it turns out, the position held by Bradley and Bosanquet is stronger and more interesting than one initially expects. (shrink)