What happens now is that we (by which I mean the West) eradicate state sponsored terrorism. And we can achieve that only by replacing all political systems that perpetrate or collaborate with terrorism, by systems that respect human rights both domestically and internationally.

Misconduct in science is often viewed and analyzed through the lenses of normative ethics and moral philosophy. However, notions and methods in the philosophy of science could also provide rather penetrative explanatory insights into the nature and causes of scientific misconduct. A brief illustration in this regard, using as examples the widely popular Popperian falsification and the Kuhnian scientific paradigm, is provided. In multiple areas of scientific research, failure to seek falsification in a Popperian manner constitutes a questionable research practice (...) and could lead to “falsification” in the context of research misconduct. On the other hand, scientific misconduct is often facilitated by its perpetrators using the familiarity, expectations and confines of a Kuhnian paradigm to blend in fabricated data/results. A rudimentary application of these philosophical notions could be useful in our understanding of the nature and cause of research misconduct, and facilitate mitigation of the latter through educational means. (shrink)

Death.--The absurd.--Moral luck.--Sexual perversion.--War and massacre.--Ruthlessness in public life.--The policy of preference.--Equality.--The fragmentation of value.--Ethics without biology.--Brain bisection and the unity of consciousness.--What is it like to be a bat?--Panpsychism.--Subjective and objective.

Medicine is about caring for people. It is a moral enterprise, not simply a technique or a pursuit. Though modern healthcare offers an amazing array of options, it has also become a complex and sometimes utterly de-humanizing system. Now, more than ever, we need guidance to navigate through the issues surrounding our medical care. Advances in medical technology have blessed many with longer and healthier lives, but they have also provided us with interventions and procedures that call for serious ethical (...) evaluation. The BioBasics series is committed to an uncompromising respect for human life that will serve as a compass through a maze of challenging questions. (shrink)

This paper argues that questions can be bullshit. First it explores some shallowly interrogative ways in which that can happen. Then it shows how questions can also be bullshit in a way that’s more deeply interrogative.

A number of logicians and philosophers have turned their attention in recent years to the problem of developing a logic of interrogatives. Their work has thrown a great deal of light on the formal properties of questions and question-sentences and has led also to interesting innovations in our understanding of the structures of performatives in general and, for example, in the theory of presuppositions. When, however, we examine the attempts of logicians such as Belnap or Åqvist to specify what, precisely, (...) a question is, or what it is to ask or raise a question, then what we are offered is somewhat less illuminating. Two alternative reductionist accounts seem in particular to have gained most favor: questions are identified either as special sorts of statements, or as special sorts of requests. As we hope will become clear in what follows, neither of these accounts is even nearly adequate; and matters are not improved if questions are identified, by force majeure, as combinations of statements and requests. (shrink)

In addition to the Frege point, Frege also argued for the force-content distinction from the fact that an affirmative answer to a yes-no question constitutes an assertion. I argue that this fact more readily supports the view that questions operate on and present assertions and other forceful acts themselves. Force is neither added to propositions as on the traditional view, nor is it cancelled as has recently been proposed. Rather higher level acts such as questioning, but also e.g. conditionalizing, embed (...) assertive or directive acts that are forceful and committal, while suspending commitment to them. The Frege point confounds different varieties of force and the question whether something is merely presented for consideration with the question what is so presented. Force is representational: through assertoric and directive force indicators subjects non-conceptually present positions of theoretical or practical knowledge, while interrogative acts indicate positions of wondering which strive for such knowledge. (shrink)

In _A Question of Time_, Joel Pearl offers a new reading of the foundations of psychoanalytic thought, indicating the presence of an essential lacuna that has been integral to psychoanalysis since its inception. Pearl returns to the moment in which psychoanalysis was born, demonstrating how Freud had overlooked one of the most principal issues pertinent to his method: the question of time. The book shows that it is no coincidence that Freud had never methodically and thoroughly discussed time and that (...) the metaphysical assumption of linear time lies at the very heart of Freudian psychoanalysis. Pearl’s critical reading of Freud develops through an original dialogue that he creates with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and, specifically, with the German philosopher’s notion of temporality. Pearl traces the encounter between Freud and Heidegger by observing the common inspiration shaping their thinking: philosopher Franz Brentano, who taught both Freud and Edmund Husserl, Heidegger’s mentor. The book travels down an alternate path, one overlooked by Freudian thought – a path leading from Brentano, through Husserl and onto Heidegger’s notion of time, which is founded on the ecstatic’ interrelation of past, present and future. (shrink)

Socrates is still an enigmatic figure of enormous importance in Western culture. This book introduces both some of Socrates' problems and some of the problems about him. It seeks at the same time to advance new views, arguments and information on Socrates' mission, techniques, ethics and later reception. Composed of new essays by different scholars, some of them primarily Hellenstics, some philosophers, it illustrates both the variety of Plato's literary portrayals of Socrates and the diversity of later and present-day approaches (...) to him. Socratic Questions thus confronts the difficulties, philosophical and biographical, presented by dialogues such as Protagoras and Crito and by the Apology of Socrates. From civil disobedience to ethics, this collection provides stimulating discussions of Socrates' life, thought and historical significance. It will be of great interest to all students of ancient Greek history literature and philosophy. (shrink)

Certain questions have recurred throughout the history of philosophy. They are the big questions-about happiness and the good life, the limits of knowledge, the ultimate structure of reality, the nature of consciousness, the relation between causality and free will, the pervasiveness of suffering, and the conditions for a just and flourishing society-that thinkers in different cultures across the ages have formulated in their own terms in an attempt to make sense of their lives and the world around them. The essays (...) in this book turn to the major figures and texts of the Buddhist tradition in order to expand and enrich our thinking on these enduring questions. Examining them from a comparative and cross-cultural perspective demonstrates the value of alternative ways of addressing philosophical problems, showing how different approaches can produce new and unexpected kinds of questions and answers. Engaging with the Buddhist tradition, this book shows, helps return philosophy to its practical as well as theoretical aim: not only understanding the world but also knowing how to live in it. Featuring striking and generative comparisons of Buddhist and Western thought, Philosophy's Big Questions challenges our thinking in fundamental ways and offers readers new conceptual tools, methods, and insights for the pursuit of a good and happy life. (shrink)

This important textbook introduces the six great arguments for the existence of God, as found in a wealth of primary sources from classic and contemporary texts. It requires no specialist knowledge of philosophy, and is ideally suited to students and teachers at school or university level. Sections include: * The Ontological Argument * The Cosmological Argument * The Argument from Design * The Argument from Miracles * The Moral Argument * The Pragmatic Argument. Additional features include: * revision questions * (...) key reading for each chapter and an extensive bibliography * illustrated biographies of key thinkers and their works * marginal notes and summaries of arguments. (shrink)

In this paper I present an account of a distinctive form of ‘practical’ or ‘deliberative’ uncertainty that has been central in debates in both ethics and metaethics. Many writers have assumed that such uncertainty concerns a special normative question, such as what we ought to do ‘all things considered.’ I argue against this assumption and instead endorse an alternative view of such uncertainty, which combines elements of both metaethical cognitivism and non-cognitivism. A notable consequence of this view is that even (...) if there are objective and irreducible truths about how we ought to act, all things considered, the ‘central deliberative question,’ as it’s sometimes called, doesn’t concern such truths. Instead, that question doesn’t have a true answer. (shrink)

De unione Verbi incarnati est sans doute celle des Questions disputees qui a suscite parmi les disciples de saint Thomas d'Aquin les plus apres controverses. Seule en effet, elle mentionne, a cote de l'unique esse personnel du Christ, un autre etre de ce suppot, correspondant a la nature humaine. Comment concilier cette affirmation avec la doctrine thomasienne de l'unite d'etre substantiel? Et ne risque-t-elle pas de remettre en cause l'unite ontologique du Christ, et par la de detruire Jesus? Mais au-dela (...) de ces controverses, notre QuAestio revele l'emerveillement d'un contemplatif fascine par la nouveaute ineffable de l'Incarnation. 2000 ans apres la naissance du Christ, cette oeuvre puissante, publiee pour la premiere fois en edition latin-francais, ne pourra manquer de susciter un ardent interet. (shrink)

While there is a significant amount of discussion in philosophy on the ethics of wildlife conservation, there is relatively less discussion on the justice of conservation. By the “justice of conservation”, I mean the question of what we owe to fellow human beings with respect to conservation goals and practices. The goal of this paper is two-fold: first to highlight the justice-gap in the morality of wildlife conservation and, second, to frame and propose two dimensions of global conservational justice for (...) further discussion. Specifically, I suggest the need for a more equitable conservation to address the problem of distributive unfairness in global conservation practices, and the need to “decolonize” conservation to ensure more deliberative fairness in how global conservation problems and solutions are determined. (shrink)

"Ces "questiones" sont particulièrement reprèsentatives de la logique italienne au XIVe siècle.

This essay makes a case for the metaphysical status of the human fetus. I argue that personhood begins at conception as opposed to at some point in the post-conception continuum. However, there is a deep division over this matter. Defenders of the pro-life position grant that life begins at conception. In contrast, defenders of the pro-choice position deny that life begins at conception. Even if it were the case that life begins at conception, proponents of abortion claim that a woman’s (...) bodily autonomy should come first over protecting the fetus’s life. Contemporary discussions regarding this matter continue to lack a clear and adequate account of why we continue to face a stalemate in terms of settling the issue of the metaphysical status of the human fetus. In section I, I discuss what I call the less central issues that stand in the way when it comes to addressing the main question of the personhood of the human fetus. In section II, I discuss the personhood problem as it relates to the fetus. In section III, I sketch out a conception- grounded theory of fetal personhood. In section IV, I consider some objections. In section V, I discuss the origin problem as it relates to the fetus within the broader context of the challenge, we face in answering the question of the nature of life. Finally, in section VI, I conclude this paper by claiming that conception plays a decisive metaphysical role in the personhood status of the fetus. (shrink)

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It has been observed that, unlike other kinds of singular judgments, mental self-ascriptions are immune to error through misidentification: they may go wrong, but not as a result of mistaking someone else’s mental states for one’s own. Although recent years have witnessed increasing interest in this phenomenon, three basic questions about it remain without a satisfactory answer: what is exactly an error through misidentification? What does immunity to such errors consist in? And what does it take to explain the fact (...) that mental self-ascriptions exhibit this sort of immunity? The aim of this paper is to bring these questions into focus, propose some tentative answers and use them to show that one prominent attempt to explain the immunity to error through misidentification of mental self-ascriptions is unsuccessful. (shrink)

The article poses three questions relating to the self-definition of philosophical counselling: 1. Is it an alternative to psychological and psychotherapeutic approaches? 2. What is the therapeutic nature of philosophical counselling? 3. Is it contemplation or critical reasoning? The first part introduces some examples of the concepts that sharply distinguish philosophical counselling from psychological and psychotherapeutic approaches. It also considers those that mix these different approaches. The second part deals with the question of whether or not philosophical counselling can be (...) considered to be a therapy. Some philosophical counsellors work on the belief that there is a synchrony between modern philosophical counselling and the classical conception of philosophy as therapy. Many, however, are of the opinion that it is not possible to speak of it in terms of therapy. The third part gives examples of the way in which philosophical counselling is understood to be contemplation and on the other hand of those who employ approaches based on critical thinking in philosophical counselling. (shrink)

The collected essays in this volume encompass a wide-ranging spectrum of philosophical, scientific, and literary topics as they relate to the theory and strategy of interpretation.

This book brings together new essays on a major focus of debate in contemporary metaphysics: does time really pass, or is our ordinary experience of time as consisting of past, present, and future an illusion? The international contributors broaden this debate by demonstrating the importance of questions about the nature of time for philosophical issues in ethics, aesthetics, psychology, science, religion, and language.

In today's world, the boundaries within which Christian theologians operate are becoming ever more permeable, and Christian theology is increasingly influenced and challenged by multiple “outside” factors. In Western Europe, two such factors stand out in particular: the so-called “turn to religion” in continental philosophy and religious diversity. Theologians working with contemporary continental philosophers and theologians engaging the multireligious world tend to work quite separately from one another. The aim of the present book is therefore to initiate a conversation between (...) these two groups of theologians. The question of truth was chosen because it is both a key issue in contemporary-philosophical debates (in the continental and analytic traditions) and one that arises in complex and problematic ways in the praxis of, and theoretical reflection on, interreligious dialogue. Some of the pressing questions that are addressed by the contributors to this volume are: What is truth? What is theological truth? How does the issue of truth arise from interreligious encounter? To what extent can or should the nature of truth be discussed explicitly during interreligious dialogue? Or should the question of truth be rather postponed in the interest of successful interreligious encounter? Is there a hermeneutical concept of truth and, if so, how can it be of help for theological reflection on the question of truth and on the role and place of truth in the context of dialogue between religions? (shrink)

Choices confront us with questions. How we act depends on our answers to those questions. So the way our beliefs guide our choices is not just a function of their informational content, but also depends systematically on the questions those beliefs address. This paper gives a precise account of the interplay between choices, questions and beliefs, and harnesses this account to obtain a principled approach to the problem of deduction. The result is a novel theory of belief-guided action that explains (...) and predicts the decisions of agents who, like ourselves, fail to be logically omniscient: that is, of agents whose beliefs may not be deductively closed, or even consistent. (Winner of the 2021 Isaac Levi Prize.). (shrink)

In this paper I argue that there is a class of attitudes that have questions (rather than propositions or something else) as contents.

My chapter aims to advance the debate on a problem often raised by philosophers who are skeptical of implied narrators in movies. This is the concern that positing such elusive narrators gives rise to absurd imaginings (Gaut 2004: 242; Carroll 2006: 179-180). -/- Friends of the implied cinematic narrator reply that the questions critics raise about the workings of the implied cinematic narrator are "silly ones" to ask. -/- I examine how the "absurd imaginings" problem arises for all the central (...) arguments for the elusive cinematic narrator and discuss why the questions critics pose about this narrator are legitimate ones to ask. (shrink)

I would like to show how with Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, we have to do with three different ways of understanding the experience of the other. For Sartre it is a visual experience, the experience of being looked at by the other, so that the experience of the other is understood as a confrontation; for Merleau-Ponty, the experience of the other necessarily implies coexistence and what he calls intercorporeality, so that for him the other is never to be found in (...) front, but instead beside me, in reciprocity with me; for Levinas, the experience of the other is the experience of a non-reciprocity, of an assymetrical relation, because the experience of the other is for him an ethical and not an ontological experience, and because this experience of the face of the other is the experience of a speaking and not in the first place corporeal presence. There are consequently three different ways of finding an access to the other : the look for Sartre, intercorporeality for Merleau-Ponty and the face for Levinas. (shrink)

The question concerning technology.--The turning.--The word of Nietzsche: "God is dead."--The age of the world picture.--Science and reflection.

In this book a leading philosopher of religion offers fresh insights into some of the disputed religious questions of our time.

Philosophy cannot alone change the present state of the world, the role of the philosopher being only to question and help to arouse a true awareness of what is happening in the world. The current pandemic should therefore incite the philosophers to make the Europeanization of the planet their main question.

L’art – qu’est-ce à dire? Pourquoi Heidegger semble-t-il considérer, avec Hegel, mais peut-être en un sens différent, qu’il n’y a plus d’art? Pourquoi est-il allé, en son cheminement avec ou vers la peinture, de Van Gogh à Cézanne et Paul Klee? Telles sont quelques-unes des questions abordées et envisagées ici.