This article is the preface to a completed book manuscript, United Nations Human Rights Ethics. Based on the indivisibility of human rights, the Four Freedoms Speech, and the Preamble of the Universal Declaration, the book takes freedom of expression as the one human right. Other rights are modes of this one. For example, one exercises freedom of expression (speech) by exercising the right to life, access to courts, etc.. The book argues that human rights are primarily an ethical concept (introduced (...) by Rousseau) rather than a concept of international law. (shrink)

The usual version of the genetic argument for panpsychism is not difficult to refute. The version is based on the principle of biological continuity according to which the various species differ in degree rather than in kind. It is then asserted that if there is some point in the evolution of life out of inanimate matter, or of higher out of lower life, such that before this point minds did not exist while thereafter they do exist, then the principle of (...) continuity is violated. The argument, as Paul Edwards points out, is based on the Scholastic principle that a cause must contain its effect in actuality, since otherwise it could not communicate the effect and thus could not operate as its cause. Just as what causes a body to heat up must itself be hot, so what causes human minds to come into existence must already possess mentality. Ultimately, the inanimate world of, say, six billion years ago caused human minds to come into existence. Therefore, the constituents of even the so-called “inanimate world” are psychic. Yet Edwards’ refutation of this particular argument is unassailable. The argument fails, first, because the Scholastic principle on which it is based is highly dubious. But it fails even granting this principle. The emergence of high-level minds from low-level minds would create just as great a problem as an original emergence of the mental from the nonmental. There would still be the problem of how an entity with given capacities and characteristics could be caused by entities without those capacities and characteristics. And, finally, if we grant the emergence of high-level from low-level minds, it is not clear why the mental itself may not emerge from the nonmental. (shrink)

The usual version of the genetic argument for panpsychism is not difficult to refute. The version is based on the principle of biological continuity according to which the various species differ in degree rather than in kind. It is then asserted that if there is some point in the evolution of life out of inanimate matter, or of higher out of lower life, such that before this point minds did not exist while thereafter they do exist, then the principle of (...) continuity is violated. The argument, as Paul Edwards points out, is based on the Scholastic principle that a cause must contain its effect in actuality, since otherwise it could not communicate the effect and thus could not operate as its cause. Just as what causes a body to heat up must itself be hot, so what causes human minds to come into existence must already possess mentality. Ultimately, the inanimate world of, say, six billion years ago caused human minds to come into existence. Therefore, the constituents of even the so-called “inanimate world” are psychic. Yet Edwards’ refutation of this particular argument is unassailable. The argument fails, first, because the Scholastic principle on which it is based is highly dubious. But it fails even granting this principle. The emergence of high-level minds from low-level minds would create just as great a problem as an original emergence of the mental from the nonmental. There would still be the problem of how an entity with given capacities and characteristics could be caused by entities without those capacities and characteristics. And, finally, if we grant the emergence of high-level from low-level minds, it is not clear why the mental itself may not emerge from the nonmental. (shrink)

A defense of panpyschism based on Ockham's Razor, arguing against the materialistic identity thesis, e.g., J J C Smart.

This article denies that Hegel upheld the objective truth of any contradictory statements. Yet he did admit objective contradictions in the sense of intersubjectively held contradictory beliefs at the basis of some institutions, most famously lordship and bondage. He also shared the belief of Zeno, the inventor of dialectic, that continuous motion is self-contradictory but is an objective contradiction more widely shared by all institutions presupposing continuants (people and ordinary things).

The concept of the subject, of what Hegel calls absolute negativity, already appears early in the logic of being.1 Absolute negativity, negation of the negation, occurs throughout the logic as identity in difference understood as self-identification under different descriptions. First, the subject refers to itself merely under an incomplete description. Secondly, it refers to something other than itself under a second description which is logically required by the first. (For example, the description of being in general requires some determinate description (...) of being in particular). But this second description is dialectically excluded by the assumption that the first description is complete. Thirdly, the subject negates its negation of the other. It discovers itself in the other, under the other description, and thus comes to refer to itself less incompletely. This is Hegel in the analytic mode. (shrink)

Clark Butler presents an innovative analysis of Hegel's most challenging work in _Hegel's Logic_ -- the first major English-language treatment of Hegel's _Science of Logic_ to appear in nearly fifteen years. Although earlier commentators on the _Logic_ have considered standard analytical philosophy-and with it modern logic-in opposition to Hegel. Butler views it as a legitimate approach in terms of which Hegel needs to be understood. This interpretation allows him to address the rigor of Hegel's thought on several levels as (...) at once an exercise in purely conceptual redefinition and a full-bodied work in metaphysical ontology and even theology. The result is an account of the _Logic_ intelligible to analytical philosophers as well as non-specialists. (shrink)

Human Rights Ethics makes an important contribution to contemporary philosophical and political debates concerning the advancement of global justice and human rights. Butler's book also lays claim to a significant place in both normative ethics and human rights studies in as much as it seeks to vindicate a universalistic, rational approach to human rights ethics. Butler's innovative approach is not based on murky claims to "natural rights" that supposedly hold wherever human beings exist; nor does it succumb to the traditional (...) problems of justification associated with utilitarianism, Kantianism, and other procedural approaches to human rights studies. Instead, Butler proposes "a dialectical justification of human rights by indirect proof" that claims not to be question begging. Very much in the spirit of Hegel and Habermas, Butler proposes to vindicate a "totally rational account of human rights," but one that depends concretely and historically on a dialectically constructed "right to freedom of thought in its universal modes.". (shrink)

This book proposes a treatise on the Hegelian dialectical method as based on dialectical logic. Part One explores sources of dialectical logic before Hegel in ancient thought. Part Two examines dialectical logic and the dialectical method in Hegel, with attention to the relationship between dialectical logic and contemporary formal logic. Part Three concerns the dialectical method after Hegel, in which we seek to show that the method is available for uses other than the one to which the historical Hegel put (...) it. My intention has been constructive. I want to take issue with those who have contested the existence or validity of any dialectical logic, and of the dialectical method as well.1 The payoff for studying dialectical logic is the dialectical method. By using it one can reconstruct, rethink, and relive a historical course of dialectical deduction with the purpose of achieving deeper self-comprehension, i.e., comprehension of oneself by retraveling one’s past path of dialectical assumptions, contradictions, and corrections. Dialectical self-comprehension is possible when one’s present identity has historically constituted itself through such a path. It is possible when the individual is conscious of herself as triumphant over the contradictions of the past. Part Three, treating the dialectical method after Hegel, includes a reconstruction of American history since World War II in chapter 8, according to INTRODUCTION 9 1 0 Introduction the dialectical method. We will see how a Hegelian use of the method can assist in comprehending a post-Hegelian historical standpoint present to us but unknown to Hegel. (shrink)

The first English translation of Hegel's important lectures on logic.

Commentary on paper by Hector Castaneda.

Over twenty years after the 1989 General Assembly voted to open the Convention on the Rights of the Child for signature, the United States remains only one of two UN members not to have ratified it. The other is Somalia. This book explores the reasons for this resistance. The book highlights the priority of ethical human rights over legal human rights. Part One includes contributions by educators and child psychologists who favor and use the Convention even when it is not (...) ratified. Part Two includes two chapters by opponents of the Convention by home-schooling advocates. Part Three examines child rights in the developing world. (shrink)

Revised version of 1976 article, “Hegel and Freud: A Comparison,” in Turkish translation.

World history has been consigned by professional historians to textbooks for the public schools. But people will obtain ideological or mytihcal notions of the meaning of history unless philosophers ofhistory step in to rationally regulate accounts of world history. Despite its dependenc in most cases on secondary sources, world history not an impossible academic research disclipline due to the countless cultures and ethnic groups in history--much as astronomy is not impossible due the countless celestial objects. To understand world history it (...) is enough to distinguish a finite number of role model nations as distinct from nations that follow in their wake. The paper seeks to legitimate the sort of philosophical world history research pursued by Hegel. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to advance responsible rehabilitation of the speculative philosophy of history. It challenges the idea popularized by thinkers such as and Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jean-François Lyotard that historical meta-mythology and meta-narrative are philosophically obsolete. As long as humanity, viewed anthropologically, lives by over-arching narrative, the quest for a version that survives rational criticism remains vital. Here human rights serve as the key to unlock such a version. Despite the fact that the Hegelian philosophy of history (...) has often been derided, something very similar currently functions as the official ideology of the world community: the idea of history as the story of freedom. This book does not retell the world-historical story of freedom. Rather, it uncovers it, beginning with the current age of human rights and working backward through the great role-model civilizations of history. Its conclusion is that a forward retelling of the story of freedom as the story of human rights can be justified by dewesternizing the story. The book contains critical responses from specialized scholars and re-presentative of selected world cultures. The volume includes illustrations, and a guest Afterword by Donald Phillip Verene. It is a companion-volume to the author's _Hegel's Logic: Between History and Dialectic_ (North-western University Press, 1996). (shrink)

This article distinguishes between dogmatism as usually understood, unconditional dogmatism, and "dogmatism" in good sense, heuristic dogmatism. Reprinted as "Philosophy: What it is and Why" in Statements, edited for classroom use by Kathleen Squadrito, pp. 1-10.

Editorial introduction to special journal issue.

This review concentrates on Chaim Perelman's concept of the implementation of human rights as the gradual construction of the universal audience. Perelman's essay first converted me to human rights-based normative ethics in 1982.

Neither journalistic nor sensationalistic eye-witness accounts, this is the first book of serious reflection on the moral background and issues of internal legality surrounding the events of Guantanamo Bay.

Hegel’s defense of the welfare state retains appeal when grounded in dialogical human rights ethics defended as true normative ethical theory. His dialectic of trade passes through budding consumer desires in the once sovereign family and trade between households risking market-induced poverty, ending in market regulation by an external welfare state. The dialectic recurs on a higher level as we in domestic civil society turn to foreign products. Market-induced poverty generates an external global welfare state gradually visible in today’s international (...) financial institutions Hegel did not see. The US has fallen subject to the dialectic of trade, with relative economic decline and a more dialogical relation with the outside world. Yet a welfare state does not replace the market, but protects it against from itself. Entrepreneurship remains key to fighting world poverty. Beside mini-loans, “mini competitive economic colonialism”—neither classical political colonialism nor monopolistic economic neocolonialism—creates new consumer markets in the poorest nations for the products of developed nations, and vice versa: developing nations are not made dependent on a single foreign power or international financial organization, nor forced to generate investment capital domestically by an authoritarian suppression of consumption and democracy, nor forced to sacrifice economic development. (shrink)

First Statement of what would become Human Rights Ethics, Purdue University Press, 2008.

This book manuscript, entitled United Nations Human Rights Ethics: For The Greatest Success of the Greatest Number, critically examines most all major normative ethical theories since Socrates and finds Roman Stoic ethics to be the least deficient. It divides ethical theories into popular ones with little academic support, other popular ones that have had such support, and Kantian ethics standing alone as a philosopher's academic ethical philosophy with limited popular support. It criticizes the appropriation of human rights by the international (...) law profession to the exclusion of moral philosophy, despite the origin of "human rights" in the moral philosopher Rousseau. It blames the inability of moral philosophers to reach a professional consensus on the elements of normative ethics, not the legal profession. It laments both the failure of human rights education to human beings everywhere as requested by the Universal Declaration and the decline in popular support for human rights in favor of nationalism in current history since 2015. It advocates a way of redirecting human right education to people on the ground rather than mainly to law students. Such education has been overtaken by the Rule of Law movement fighting high crimes crimes against humanity unanticipated by the Universal Declaration. It argues for a way for ethicists to get on the same page in teaching elements in ethics and argues forcefully for a positive method for popular human rights education as well as for human rights-based elementary ethical theory. (shrink)

The article explains my third argument for panpsychism, based on disolving all properties, including dispositional physical properties like mass, energy, and force, into phenomenal properties. I thus reject a dual-property version of panpsychism. I seek to show, contrary to Paul Churchland, that the general panpsychist hypothesis has some explanatory value, and makes a cosmology consisting in comparative psychology possible. The mental life even of so-called physical particles in physics is hypothesized to help explain their behavior.

Assessment of radical Third Worldist, French trained psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, advocating the killing of a Frenchmen by each Algerian rebel as his total liberation from colonialism.