I argue that a gendered division of labor is often the result of choices by women that count as fully voluntary because they are an expression of preferences and commitments that reflect women's understanding of their own good. Since liberalism has a commitment to respecting fully voluntary choices, it has a commitment to respecting these gendered choices. I suggest that justified political action may require that we fail to respect some people's considered choices.

The new editorial team, Ann Levey, Karl Schafer and Amy Schmitter, are very pleased to present this special double-issue of Hume Studies. It contains a wide variety of articles on subjects old and new, as well as an assortment of book reviews, commissioned by the new book review editor, David Landy of San Francisco State University. We are grateful to the many people who have helped us get this volume and our tenure as editors underway, including the preceding editors-in-chief, (...) Angela Coventry and Peter Kail, and preceding book review editor, Annemarie Butler, as well as the previous editors-in-chief Corliss Swain and Saul Traiger, who offered invaluable advice about procedures, practices, and technological issues.... (shrink)

This volume of Hume Studies is a special double-issue devoted to discussions of four recent books on Hume: Hume: an Intellectual Biography, by James Harris; Imagined Causes: Hume's Conception of Objects, by Stefanie Rocknak; Hume's True Scepticism, by Donald Ainslie; and Reflecting Subjects: Passion, Sympathy, and Society in Hume's Philosophy, by Jacqueline Taylor. The latter three discussions began as Author-Meets-Critics sessions at the 43rd International Hume Conference in Sydney, Australia, and the present volume keeps the AMC format: each discussion starts (...) with a short précis of the book from the author, followed by comments from three respondents, and concludes with the author's reply. The selection of books... (shrink)

_Ethical Issues: Perspectives for Canadians_ is a collection of readings designed to introduce students to a number of important ethical topics, including obligations toward the environment, the treatment of non-human animals, abortion, assisted reproduction, euthanasia, freedom of expression, pornography, multiculturalism, terrorism, and war. Readings have been carefully selected to represent a broad array of perspectives and arguments. Relevant legislation, court cases, and other non-philosophical works complement the writings of professional philosophers to provide students with multiple approaches to the issues. Brief (...) introductions and discussion questions are provided for each reading, and a general introduction to the basic ethical theories is included. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted – not only in the philosophical literature but also in daily life – that ignorance is a failure of some sort. As a result, a desideratum of any ontological account of ignorance is that it must be able to explain why there is something wrong with being ignorant of a true proposition. This article shows two things. First, two influential accounts of ignorance – the Knowledge Account and the True Belief Account – do not satisfy this (...) requirement. They fail to provide a satisfying normative account of the badness of ignorance. Second, this article suggests an alternative explanation of what makes ignorance a bad cognitive state. In a nutshell, ignorance is bad because it is the manifestation of a vice, namely, of what Cassam calls “epistemic insouciance”. (shrink)

It can be shown by means of a paradox that, given the Principle of Sufficient Reason, there is no conjunction of all contingent truths. The question is, or ought to be, how to interpret that result: _Quid sibi velit?_ A celebrated argument against PSR due to Peter van Inwagen and Jonathan Bennett in effect interprets the result to mean that PSR entails that there are no contingent truths. But reflection on parallels in philosophy of mathematics shows it can equally be (...) interpreted either as a proof that there are "too many" contingent truths to combine in a single conjunction or as a proof that the concept _contingent truth_ is indefinitely extensible and there is no such thing as "all contingent truths." Either interpretation would reconcile PSR with contingent truth, but the natural rationales of those interpretations are at odds. This essay argues that the second interpretation is a more satisfactory explanation of why, if PSR is true, there should be no conjunction of all contingent truths. This sheds new light on the nature of the explanatory demand embedded in PSR and uncovers a number of surprising implications for the commitments of rationalism. (shrink)

Mathematician and philosopher Hermann Weyl had our subject dead to rights.

Dans la genese de sa constitution, la philosophie n'a pu faire l'economie d'une confrontation avec la musique qui fournissait aux anciens Grecs les schemes fondamentaux de la culture. De cette confrontation Platon est le temoin. Scindant la musique, il privilegie l'Harmonique, qui en est la partie theorique, sans toutefois lui reconnaitre la titre de science supreme. Correlativement, il condamne comme dysharmonie, tumulte fracassant et perturbateur de l'ordre cosmique, l'harmonie chromaticiste dont il s'emploie, non sans paradoxe, a decrire le detail. Par (...) cette lecture en filigrane des Dialogues de Platon, l'auteur se propose de reconstruire la pensee qui procede de l'harmonie chromaticiste et de montrer son importance dans l'elaboration de la philosophie fondatrice. Au carrefour des disciplines du savoir antique, ce livre s'adresse non seulement aux philosophes, mais aussi a tous ceux qui, musiciens ou stylisticiens, s'interessent a la forme musicale. (shrink)

Investigating the theoretical and empirical relationships between transparency and trust in the context of surveillance, this volume argues that neither transparency nor trust provides a simple and self-evident path for mitigating the negative political and social consequences of state surveillance practices. Dominant in both the scholarly literature and public debate is the conviction that transparency can promote better-informed decisions, greater oversight, and restore trust damaged by the secrecy of surveillance. The contributions to this volume challenge this conventional wisdom by considering (...) how relations of trust and policies of transparency are modulated by underlying power asymmetries, socio-historical legacies, economic structures, and institutional constraints. They study trust and transparency as embedded in specific socio-political contexts to show how, under certain conditions, transparency can become a tool of social control that erodes trust, while mistrust-rather than trust-can sometimes offer the most promising approach to safeguarding rights and freedom in an age of surveillance. The first book addressing the inter-relationship of trust, transparency, and surveillance practices, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students of surveillance studies as well as appeal to an interdisciplinary audience given the contributions come from political science, sociology, philosophy, law, and civil society. (shrink)

Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human “nature” but has to be for all For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural equality invited gradations of natural difference, and the ambiguity at the heart of “nature” enabled generations to write of people as equal by nature while barely noticing the exclusion of those marked as inferior by their gender, race, (...) or class. Despite what we commonly tell ourselves, these exclusions and gradations continue today. In Unconditional Equals, political philosopher Anne Phillips challenges attempts to justify equality by reference to a shared human nature, arguing that justification turns into conditions and ends up as exclusion. Rejecting the logic of justification, she calls instead for a genuinely unconditional equality. Drawing on political, feminist, and postcolonial theory, Unconditional Equals argues that we should understand equality not as something grounded in shared characteristics but as something people enact when they refuse to be considered inferiors. At a time when the supposedly shared belief in human equality is so patently not shared, the book makes a powerful case for seeing equality as a commitment we make to ourselves and others, and a claim we make on others when they deny us our status as equals. (shrink)

The sorites paradox receives its most sophisticated early modem discussion in Leibniz’s writings. In an important early document Leibniz holds that vague terms have sharp boundaries of application, but soon thereafter he comes to adopt a form of nihilism aboutvagueness: and it later proves to be his settled view that vagueness results from semantical indeterminacy. The reason for this change of mind is unclear, and Leibniz does not appear to have any grounds for it. I suggest that his various treatments (...) of the sorites do notspring from a single integrated view of vagueness, and that his early position reflects a mercenary interest in the sorites paradox---an interest to use the sorites to reach a conclusion in metaphysics rather than to examine vagueness as a subject to be understood in itsown right. The later nihilist stance reflects Leibniz’s own (if undefended) attitude towards vagueness. (shrink)

Pionnière dans la pénalisation du viol en 1980, la France a été en eurocrime qu’aurait entraîné l’unanimité dans l’acceptation de la nouvelle définition proposée par la Commission européenne. L’absence de consentement devient finalement pour tous le critère principal, et de nombreux pays ont aligné récemment leur législation avec la directive européenne. Sur le droit à l’avortement, la convergence est moins sensible, plusieurs pays mettent d’importantes restrictions. La constitutionnalisation de la liberté d’avorter et de sa garantie en France va peut-être conduire (...) à son inscription dans les droits humains. (shrink)

Objective—To identify and describe the current state of clinical ethics support services in the UK.Design—A series of questionnaire surveys of key individuals in National Health Service (NHS) trusts, health authorities, health boards, local research ethics committees and health professional organisations. Interviews with chairmen/women of clinical ethics committees identified in the surveys.Setting—The UK National Health Service.Results—Responses to the questionnaires were received from all but one NHS trust and all but one health authority/board. A variety of models of clinical ethics support were (...) identified including twenty formal clinical ethics committees (CECs). A further twenty NHS trusts expressed an intention to establish a CEC within the next twelve months. Most CECs in the UK have been in existence less than five years and are still defining their role. The chairmen identified education of committee members and contact with other ethics committees as important requirements for committee development. Problems were identified around lack of support for the committee and with raising the profile of the committee within the institution. There has been little evaluation of clinical ethics support services either in the UK or in other countries with longer established services. What evaluation has occurred has focused on process rather than outcome measures.Conclusions—Clinical ethics support services are developing in the UK. A number of issues have been identified that need to be addressed if such support services are to develop effectively. (shrink)

Kline's evolutionary analysis of teaching provides welcome reframing for cross-species comparisons. However, theory based on competition cannot explain the transmission of human cultural elements that were collectively created. Humans evolved in a cultural niche andteaching-learningcoevolved to transmit culture. To study human cultural variation in teaching, we need a more articulated theory of this distinctively human engagement.

The meaning of life and man's alienation from himself and his natural environment is examined in brief selections, illustrated with photographs, from the works of Albert Schweitzer.

Was passiert, wenn die Bevölkerung die Möglichkeit erhält, sich ungeschminkt und ungefiltert zu bioethischen Problemstellungen zu äußern?

This long-awaited two-volume set constitutes the definitive presentation of the system of classifying moral judgment built up by Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates over a period of twenty years. Researchers in child development and education around the world, many of whom have worked with interim versions of the system, indeed, all those seriously interested in understanding the problem of moral judgment, will find it an indispensable resource. Volume I reviews Kohlberg's stage theory, and the by-now large body of research on (...) the significance and utility of his moral stages. Issues of reliability and validity are addressed. The volume ends with detailed instructions for using the forms in Volume 2. Volume 2, in a specially-designed, user-friendly format, includes three alternative functionally-equivalent forms of the scoring system. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a critical look at Sartorio’s book Causation and Free Will (2016). Sartorio offers a rich defence of an actual-sequence view of freedom, which pays close attention to issues in the philosophy of causation and how they relate to freedom. I argue that although this focus on causation is illuminating, Sartorio’s project nevertheless runs into some serious difficulties. Perhaps most worrying amongst them is whether the agent-based reason-sensitivity account, offered by Sartorio, is consistent with Frankfurt-style cases (...) – the very cases which are provided as the sole reason to endorse an actual-sequence view of freedom. I suggest that given that powers and causation are so intimately bound together, the debate is skewed somewhat by thinking of these as rivals. (shrink)

“Leibniz's Constructivism and Infinitely Folded Matter” This essay examines Leibniz's account of the structure of matter and its relation to his views of the infinite. Leibniz interprets the actually infinite division of matter into finite parts on the model of infinite convergent series, but that model admits of different ontological interpretations; and the one Leibniz adopts appears to be in conflict with his metaphysical analysis of matter as a discrete rather than continuous quantity. I identify a constructivist strand of thought (...) in Leibniz's philosophy of mathematics, revealing two competing conceptions of the infinite in his philosophy. Leibniz's constructivism, I suggest, obscures from his view the difficulties with his own model of the structure of matter, yet his eventual recognition of some of those difficulties prepares the ground for his later doctrine of incorporeal substance. Thus, Leibniz's constructivism appears to play an instrumental role in the emergence of that doctrine. (shrink)

Raphael Cohen-Almagor’s Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism offers a different way of approaching multiculturalism from the systematic theoretical treatments that anchor the literature. While strongly committed to liberal democratic values, it presents not so much a theory or moral argument justifying minority or majority cultural rights as a set of values and principles for adjudicating controversial cases and oft-heard arguments against multicultural accommodation. After noting distinctive features of the approach, I discuss three areas of tension in the analysis. First, between its appeals (...) to Rawlsian justice and state neutrality and its support of state multiculturalism. Second, between its stated theoretical principles and its adjudication of some cases. Third, regarding how we think about a state’s entanglement with culture and, specifically, whether that should be in terms of an incomplete liberal neutrality, liberal perfectionism, or liberal nationalism. I suggest that as helpful as Cohen-Almagor’s liberal-democratic guidelines are, there remain some contextual factors which are no less important in justly responding to the pointy end of multiculturalism. (shrink)