Online research in philosophy

Robert Sparrow has recently claimed that unless there are reasons to think the sexed nature of human beings is normatively significant, current trends in bioethical reasoning force the conclusion that “we may do well to move toward a ‘post sex’ humanity” (American Journal of Bioethics 10: 7 (2010)). This commentary uses basic methodological principles from feminist ethics to argue that he has, in fact, given no reasons to think that a 'post sex' humanity is any more valuable than gender diverse (...) one, and no reason to think that sexual dimorphism has normative significance as a brute biological fact. (shrink)

This article is based on a Lecture given as part of the Franklin J. Matchette Foundation Lecture Series on Truth at the Catholic University of America, School of Philosophy, in 2002. It explores what theorists in the natural law tradition and modern legal theorists have argued about what makes propositions of morality and law true, focusing on the rubric of "reason" as opposed to "will." It seems probable, and perhaps inevitable, that theorists about the nature of truth in morality must (...) choose between reason and will - that morality, at its core, is either one or the other. What makes law distinctive is that it is, as a practical matter if not by conceptual necessity, a mixture of both. And it is this intertwining of reason and will, of normative system and practical reasoning, which makes assertions about the nature of legal truth, and theories about the nature of law, so difficult. The arguments about truth in law are as much disagreements about what it means to say that a legal proposition is truth as they are about what makes legal propositions true. Are declarations of truth in law statements about legal norms and legal sources, or are they statements about the results of particular disputes or particularized inquiries? There are obvious complilcations in speaking of truth in a context like law, where there is simultaneously an effort to create a coherent normative system and a decision-making procedure that can modify that system in the course of resolving disputes. (shrink)

The restless probings of the mind of man have pushed the search for constancy into theodicy and metaphysics. The Greek knew and felt with horror the ...