Interest in the nature of religious and mystical experiences (henceforth RMEs) is old. Recently, this interest has shifted toward understanding the relationship between brain function and RMEs. In the first section, I introduce neurocognitive data from three experiments that strongly correlate the report of religious mystical experiences with specific neural activity. Although correlations cannot be considered as “absolute” proof, strong correlations provide us with inductive grounds for justifying the belief or nonbelief of some proposition. These data suggest that the human (...) brain plays a key role in having an RME and will provide support for the claim that our explanations for phenomena should be located in the natural world. In the next section, I explore the meaning of an RME from a Jamesian perspective and discuss the use of RMEs and the apparent design of the world as proof for God’s existence. My point is to show that the whole enterprise of using phenomena “that only God could have brought about” as the proof for God’s existence is inherently question begging and so is no proof that God exists. In the third section, I lay out in detail my assumptions for my main argument in the final section. There, I argue that belief in the supernatural is not justifiable given the data we have from contemporary science and basic rules of reasoning. (shrink)

The Golden Rule is (roughly) as follows: treat others as you would have others treat you. Philosophical reactions to it vary; it has both supporters and detractors. In any case, almost nobody who things critically about morality takes the literal version of the Golden Rule seriously, since there are just too many problems with it. To demonstrate this, I will look at a literal version of the Golden Rule espoused by John C. Maxwell, a well-known and influential motivational speaker, and (...) briefly discuss some of the obvious problems that it faces. I will then examine a more sophisticated version of the Golden Rule espoused by philosopher Harry Gensler. While able to overcome some of the problems of the literal Golden Rule, Gensler's version nevertheless shares a common difficulty with it: in both cases, the moral agent is asked to imagine themselves in the place of another. Maxwell things this is easily done, and Gensler asks for vividness and accuracy in this act of imagination. I wish to show that any version of the Golden Rule that takes seriously the need to imagine oneself in the place of another is to ask one to do the impossible, so any versions of the Golden Rule that require this should be rejected. (shrink)

A gorgeous combination of photographs, original art, and descriptive text that celebrates the wild and seldom-visited canyonlands of the Texas Plains. Exploring an environment largely unknown to even native Texans, both writer and artist take the reader on an intimate and compelling visit to an unforgetably beautiful corner of Texas.

RÉSUMÉ: Partant d’un poème de Cratès de Thèbes transmis par Julien (dans ses discours Contre Héracleios le Cynique et Contre les cyniques ignorants), cet article se propose de revenir sur les notions de bonheur, de plaisir, de richesse et de justice, dans le cadre de la vie kata phusin telle que les cyniques l’ont conçue. L’«éthique du minimum» que ces philosophes ont proposée, et que la plupart des hommes qualifieraient d’expérience volontaire de la souffrance, se révèle un chemin possible pour (...) atteindre à la fois le bonheur individuel et la justice politique.ABSTRACT: This commentary on a poem of Crates of Thebes, which was transmitted in Julian’s Oration VII, To the Cynic Herakleios, and Oration IX (VI), To the Uneducated Cynics, intends to rediscuss the notions of happiness, pleasure, wealth, and justice in the context of the kata phusin life as viewed by the Cynics. The “minimal ethics” proposed by the cynic philosophers, which many would consider as a kind of voluntary experience of suffering, appears as a possible way to secure both individual happiness and political justice. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Partant d’un poème de Cratès de Thèbes transmis par Julien (dans ses discours Contre Héracleios le Cynique et Contre les cyniques ignorants), cet article se propose de revenir sur les notions de bonheur, de plaisir, de richesse et de justice, dans le cadre de la vie kata phusin telle que les cyniques l’ont conçue. L’«éthique du minimum» que ces philosophes ont proposée, et que la plupart des hommes qualifieraient d’expérience volontaire de la souffrance, se révèle un chemin possible pour (...) atteindre à la fois le bonheur individuel et la justice politique.ABSTRACT: This commentary on a poem of Crates of Thebes, which was transmitted in Julian’s Oration VII, To the Cynic Herakleios, and Oration IX (VI), To the Uneducated Cynics, intends to rediscuss the notions of happiness, pleasure, wealth, and justice in the context of the kata phusin life as viewed by the Cynics. The “minimal ethics” proposed by the cynic philosophers, which many would consider as a kind of voluntary experience of suffering, appears as a possible way to secure both individual happiness and political justice. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Partant d’un poème de Cratès de Thèbes transmis par Julien (dans ses discours Contre Héracleios le Cynique et Contre les cyniques ignorants), cet article se propose de revenir sur les notions de bonheur, de plaisir, de richesse et de justice, dans le cadre de la vie kata phusin telle que les cyniques l’ont conçue. L’«éthique du minimum» que ces philosophes ont proposée, et que la plupart des hommes qualifieraient d’expérience volontaire de la souffrance, se révèle un chemin possible pour (...) atteindre à la fois le bonheur individuel et la justice politique.ABSTRACT: This commentary on a poem of Crates of Thebes, which was transmitted in Julian’s Oration VII, To the Cynic Herakleios, and Oration IX (VI), To the Uneducated Cynics, intends to rediscuss the notions of happiness, pleasure, wealth, and justice in the context of the kata phusin life as viewed by the Cynics. The “minimal ethics” proposed by the cynic philosophers, which many would consider as a kind of voluntary experience of suffering, appears as a possible way to secure both individual happiness and political justice. (shrink)

Comment définir l’enfant victime? Répondre à cette question est moins simple qu’il n’y paraît et nécessite de relever trois défis : appréhender la connaissance statistique de ce phénomène, comprendre sa dimension politique et, enfin, saisir le contenu juridique des normes nationales et internationales produites dans ce domaine. Cette contribution met en évidence la diversité des approches possibles pour appréhender le sujet, mais aussi les vides juridiques pouvant exister en la matière. La présente contribution propose de faire le point sur l’état (...) du droit et les perspectives d’évolution qui pourraient être envisagées. (shrink)

Des historiens de l'Asie du Sud spécialisés dans divers domaines (études missionnaires, Empire moghol, orientalismes, etc.) tentent de cerner les contours du cosmopolitisme entre le XVIe et le XVIIIe siècles. Ils montrent que cette région constitua un pôle majeur de l'espace de circulation de l'Asie musulmane mais aussi un lieu de communication entre l'Orient et l'Occident.

Dans cette étude, qui procède d’une thèse de doctorat défendue à l’Université Lyon 3 en 2008, Flore Kimmel-Clauzet interroge la survie des grands poètes grecs dans l’imaginaire religieux, politique et culturel de l’Antiquité. C’est bel et bien de survie qu’il est question, puisque la présence des poètes dans la société grecque continue de se faire sentir longtemps après leur mort. En effet, les performances répétées de leur poésie les gardent au centre des préoccupations culturelles des cités...

Le cynisme ancien est conçu par la plupart des spécialistes comme un courant philosophique qui s’oppose à la civilisation au nom d’un mode de vie plus naturel, inspiré des animaux et des êtres humains primitifs. L’ouvrage d’Olimar Flores-Júnior (désormais A.) cherche à ébranler cette conception en proposant de nouvelles interprétations des textes qui servent généralement à l’appuyer. Sa démarche repose principalement sur l’argument suivant : puisque les cyniques vivent dans la ville et font u...

Claude Tresmontant (1925-1997) était professeur de philosophie médiévale et d'histoire des sciences à la Sorbonne. Ce livre présente ses thèses en insistant sur l'articulation entre les sciences et la question de l'existence de Dieu. La rationalité de la théologie chrétienne est soutenue. Ses travaux aboutissent à démontrer l'existence de Dieu et soulèvent l'alternative suivante : admettre l'existence du Créateur ou la refuser tout en continuant d'être les héritiers du matérialisme qui fit florès jusqu'aux réductionnistes contemporains. La finalité de l'évolution n'étant (...) autre que l'union de la nature humaine créée à la nature divine incréée, union dont le Christ incarne le Premier-Né. Les sciences donneraient alors accès à la Création en cours d'évolution, tandis que la Bible contiendrait le secret de l'information essentielle sur son avenir. 'Emounah' en hébreu, 'certitude de la vérité', la foi reviendrait ainsi à un acte rationnel, et non à une croyance purement affective"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

When people speak, their words never fully encode what they mean, and the context is always compatible with a variety of interpretations. How can comprehension ever be achieved? Wilson and Sperber argue that comprehension is an inference process guided by precise expectations of relevance. What are the relations between the linguistically encoded meanings studied in semantics and the thoughts that humans are capable of entertaining and conveying? How should we analyse literal meaning, approximations, metaphors and ironies? Is the ability to (...) understand speakers' meanings rooted in a more general human ability to understand other minds? How do these abilities interact in evolution and in cognitive development? MEANING AND RELEVANCE sets out to answer these and other questions, enriching and updating relevance theory and exploring its implications for linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science and literary studies. (shrink)

Empirical evidence indicates that bereaved spouses are surprisingly muted in their responses to their loss, and that after a few months many of the bereaved return to their emotional baseline. Psychologists think this is good news: resilience is adaptive, and we should welcome evidence that there is less suffering in the world. I explore various reasons we might have for regretting our resilience, both because of what resilience tells us about our own significance vis-à-vis loved ones, and because resilience may (...) render us incapable of comprehending how things really stand, valuewise. I also compare our actual dispositions to extreme alternatives (“sub-resilience” and “super-resilience”), and consider whether we might endorse (plain) resilience as a kind of mean. (shrink)

We have some of our properties purely in virtue of the way we are. (Our mass is an example.) We have other properties in virtue of the way we interact with the world. (Our weight is an example.) The former are the intrinsic properties, the latter are the extrinsic properties. This seems to be an intuitive enough distinction to grasp, and hence the intuitive distinction has made its way into many discussions in philosophy, including discussions in ethics, philosophy of mind, (...) metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of physics. Unfortunately, when we look more closely at the intuitive distinction, we find reason to suspect that it conflates a few related distinctions, and that each of these distinctions is somewhat resistant to analysis. (shrink)

In this chapter we focus on the debate over publicly-maintained racist monuments as it manifests in the mid-2010s Anglosphere, primarily in the US (chiefly regarding the over 700 monuments devoted to the Confederacy), but to some degree also in Britain and Commonwealth countries, especially South Africa (chiefly regarding monuments devoted to figures and events associated with colonialism and apartheid). After pointing to some representative examples of racist monuments, we discuss ways a monument can be thought racist, and neutrally categorize removalist (...) and preservationist arguments heard in the monument debate. We suggest that both extremist and moderate removalist goals are likely to be self-defeating, and that when concerns of civic sustainability are put on moral par with those of fairness and justice, something like a Mandela-era preservationist policy is best: one which removes the most offensive of the minor racist monuments, but which focuses on closing the monumentary gap between peoples and reframing existing racist monuments. (shrink)

The idea that there are some facts that call for explanation serves as an unexamined premise in influential arguments for the inexistence of moral or mathematical facts and for the existence of a god and of other universes. This book is the first to offer a comprehensive and critical treatment of this idea. It argues that calling for explanation is a sometimes-misleading figure of speech rather than a fundamental property of facts.

This book argues that political libertarianism can be grounded in widely shared, everyday moral beliefs--particularly in strictures against shifting our burdens onto others. It also seeks to connect these philosophical arguments with related work in economics, history, and politics for a wide-ranging discussion of political economy.

Dan Marshall and Josh Parsons note, correctly. that the property of being either a cube or accompanied by a cube is incorrectly classified as intrinsic under the definition we have given unless it turns out to be disjunctive. Whether it is disjunctive, under the definition we gave, turns on certain judgements of the relative naturalness of properties. They doubt the judgements of relative naturalness that would classify their property as disjunctive. We disagree. They also suggest that the whole idea of (...) judging relative naturalness is a dubious business. We reply that, like them or not, such judgements cannot easily be avoided. (shrink)

Some medical services have long generated deep moral controversy within the medical profession as well as in broader society and have led to conscientious refusals by some physicians to provide those services to their patients. More recently, pharmacists in a number of states have refused on grounds of conscience to fill legal prescriptions for their customers. This paper assesses these controversies. First, I offer a brief account of the basis and limits of the claim to be free to act on (...) one’s conscience. Second, I sketch an account of the basis of the medical and pharmacy professions’ responsibilities and the process by which they are specified and change over time. Third, I then set out and defend what I call the “conventional compromise” as a reasonable accommodation to conflicts between these professions’ responsibilities and the moral integrity of their individual members. Finally, I take up and reject the complicity objection to the conventional compromise. Put together, this provides my answer to the question posed in the title of my paper: “Conscientious refusal by physicians and pharmacists: who is obligated to do what, and why?”. (shrink)

In these writings by one of our most creative legal philosophers, Meir Dan-Cohen explores the nature of the self and its response to legal commands and mounts a challenge to some prevailing tenets of legal theory and the neighboring moral, political, and economic thought. The result is an insider's critique of liberalism that extends contemporary liberalism's Kantian strand, combining it with postmodernist ideas about the contingent and socially constructed self to build a thoroughly original perspective on some of the most (...) vital concerns of legal and moral theory.Dan-Cohen looks first at the ubiquity of legal coercion and considers its decisive impact on the nature of legal discourse and communication, on law's normative aspirations and claim to obedience, and on the ideal of the rule of law. He moves on to discuss basic values, stressing the preeminence of individual identity and human dignity over the more traditional liberal preoccupations with preference-based choice and experiential harm. Dan-Cohen then focuses more directly on the normative ramifications of the socially constructed self. Fundamental concepts such as responsibility and ownership are reinterpreted to take account of the constitutive role that social practices--particularly law and morality--play in the formation of the self.Throughout, Dan-Cohen draws on a uniquely productive mix of philosophical traditions and subjects, blending the methods of analytic philosophy with the concerns of Continental philosophers to reconceive the self and its relation to ethics and the law. (shrink)

Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen’s (1996) influential account of “cultures of honor” speculates that honor norms are a socially-adaptive deterrence strategy. This theory has been appealed to by multiple empirically-minded philosophers, and plays an important role in John Doris and Alexandra Plakias’ (2008) antirealist argument from disagreement. In this essay, I raise four objections to the Nisbett-Cohen deterrence thesis, and offer another theory of honor in its place that sees honor as an agonistic normative system regulating prestige competitions. Since my (...) account portrays honor norms as radically different from liberal ones, it actually strengthens Doris and Plakias’ case in some respects: cultures of honor are not merely superficially different from Western liberal ones. Nonetheless, the persistent appeal of honor’s principles, and their moral plausibility in certain contexts, suggests not antirealism, but pluralism—a reply on behalf of realism that itself has considerable empirical support. (shrink)

[Updated 2/23/21: complete chapter scan] In this chapter I sketch a rightist approach to monumentary policy in a diverse polity beleaguered by old ethnic grievances. I begin by noting the importance of tribalism, memorialization, and social trust. I then suggest a policy which 1) gradually narrows the gap between peoples in the heritage landscape, 2) conserves all but the most offensive of the least beloved racist monuments, 3) avoids recrimination (i.e., “keeps it positive”) and eschews ideological commentary in new monuments (...) or revisions to old ones, 4) as much as politically feasible, recognizes only the offense of willing tribemates, and 5) responds to aesthetic and other “irrational” offenses more than to “objective” historical or philosophical critiques. (shrink)

Vegetarians have argued at great length that meat-eating is wrong. Even so, the vast majority of people continue to eat meat, and even most vegetarians eventually give up on their diets. Does this prove these people must be morally corrupt? In Why It’s OK to Eat Meat, Dan C. Shahar argues the answer is no: it’s entirely possible to be an ethical person while continuing to eat meat—and not just the "fancy" offerings from the farmers' market but also the regular (...) meat we find at most supermarkets and restaurants. Shahar’s examination forcefully echoes vegetarians’ concerns about the meat industry’s impacts on animals, workers, the environment, and public health. However, he shows that the most influential ethical arguments for avoiding meat on the basis of these considerations are ultimately unpersuasive. Instead of insisting we all become vegetarians, Shahar argues each of us has broad latitude to choose which of the world’s problems to tackle, in what ways, and to what extents, and hence people can decline to take up this particular form of activism without doing anything wrong. (shrink)

In the past two decades, African American filmmakers like Spike Lee have made significant contributions to the dialogue about race in the United States by adapting techniques from classic _film noir _to black American cinema. This book is the first to examine these artistic innovations in detail from a philosophical perspective informed by both cognitive film theory and critical race theory. Dan Flory explores the techniques and themes that are used in black _film noir _to orchestrate the audience’s emotions of (...) sympathy and empathy felt toward morally complex characters whom people might not typically find appealing in real life, such as thugs, drug dealers, or murderers. Using an approach that combines the cognitive insights of theorists like David Bordwell, Noël Carroll, and Murray Smith with the reflective Wittgensteinian methods for considering film employed by Stanley Cavell, Stephen Mulhall, and William Rothman, Flory shows how these films scrutinize the state of race in America, induce their viewers to do so as well, and illuminate the ways in which categories of race have defined and continue to direct much of our vision of the moral self and what counts as appropriate moral sensibility. (shrink)

The first of its kind to thoroughly cover language technology at all levels and with all modern technologies this book takes an empirical approach to the ...

A number of philosophers have recently claimed that intrinsicality can be analysed in terms of the metaphysical notion of grounding. Since grounding is a hyperintensional notion, accounts of intrinsicality in terms of grounding, unlike most other accounts, promise to be able to discriminate between necessarily coextensive properties that differ in whether they are intrinsic. They therefore promise to be compatible with popular metaphysical theories that posit necessary entities and necessary connections between wholly distinct entities, on which it is plausible that (...) there are such properties. This paper argues that this promise is illusory. It is not possible to give an analysis of intrinsicality in terms of grounding that is consistent with these theories. Given an adequate analysis should be compatible with these theories, it follows that it is not possible to analyse intrinsicality in terms of grounding. (shrink)

In the past two decades, African American filmmakers like Spike Lee have made significant contributions to the dialogue about race in the United States by adapting techniques from classic _film noir _to black American cinema. This book is the first to examine these artistic innovations in detail from a philosophical perspective informed by both cognitive film theory and critical race theory. Dan Flory explores the techniques and themes that are used in black _film noir _to orchestrate the audience’s emotions of (...) sympathy and empathy felt toward morally complex characters whom people might not typically find appealing in real life, such as thugs, drug dealers, or murderers. Using an approach that combines the cognitive insights of theorists like David Bordwell, Noël Carroll, and Murray Smith with the reflective Wittgensteinian methods for considering film employed by Stanley Cavell, Stephen Mulhall, and William Rothman, Flory shows how these films scrutinize the state of race in America, induce their viewers to do so as well, and illuminate the ways in which categories of race have defined and continue to direct much of our vision of the moral self and what counts as appropriate moral sensibility. (shrink)

The issue of how to identify the liability of subjects after a traffic accident takes place remains a puzzle regarding the SAE classification system. The SAE system is not good at dealing with the problem of responsibility evaluation; therefore, building a new classification system for self-driving cars from the perspective of the subject's liability is a possible way to solve this problem. This new system divides automated driving into three levels: i) assisted driving based on the will of drivers, ii) (...) automated driving based on the will of the manufacturers, and iii) fully automated driving based on social will. The corresponding responsible subjects for level one, level two, and level three are the drivers, the manufacturers, and society, respectively. (shrink)

This commentary uses the dynamic of identity-protective cognition to pose a friendly challenge to Jussim (2012). Like other forms of information processing, this one is too readily characterized as a bias. It is no mistake, however, to view identity-protective cognition as generating inaccurate perceptions. The “bounded rationality” paradigm incorrectly equates rationality with forming accurate beliefs. But so does Jussim's critique.

A number of philosophers have recently claimed that intrinsicality can be analysed in terms of the metaphysical notion of grounding. Since grounding is a hyperintensional notion, accounts of intrinsicality in terms of grounding, unlike most other accounts, promise to be able to discriminate between necessarily coextensive properties that differ in whether they are intrinsic. They therefore promise to be compatible with popular metaphysical theories that posit necessary entities and necessary connections between wholly distinct entities, on which it is plausible that (...) there are such properties. This paper argues that this promise is illusory. It is not possible to give an analysis of intrinsicality in terms of grounding that is consistent with these theories. Given an adequate analysis should be compatible with these theories, it follows that it is not possible to analyse intrinsicality in terms of grounding. (shrink)

We argue that the growing prevalence of statistical machine learning in everyday decision making – from creditworthiness to police force allocation – effectively replaces many of our humdrum practical judgments and that this will eventually undermine our capacity for making such judgments. We lean on Aristotle’s famous account of how phronesis and moral virtues develop to make our case. If Aristotle is right that the habitual exercise of practical judgment allows us to incrementally hone virtues, and if AI saves us (...) time by taking over some of those practical judgments, or if its pattern recognition capacities are very good at learning that kind of behavior – we risk innovating ourselves out of moral competence with the introduction of AI. (shrink)

This article discusses the aesthetic concept of boringness, of which there has been relatively little philosophical discussion, especially along its objective, nonpsychological dimensions. I begin by confronting skepticism about the validity of judgments about boringness and rebut suggestions to the effect that these judgments are inevitably compromised by mistakes or vices of the audience. The article then develops an account focused on certain kinds of reasonable expectations we form in a given aesthetic context. I go on to confront the question (...) of whether boringness is inevitable given the internal imperatives of works of art and illustrate the discussion with Richard Wagner's Ring cycle. Although I focus on art, I conclude by drawing some connections with the boring in everyday life. (shrink)

The darwinistic doctrine of a continuous transformation of the animal world cannot be certified by Paleontology. On the contrary the building-plans of the animals present themselves ready made in the history of the earth. That may be shown before all at the oldest vertebrates which appear in the Silur and Devon in types fundamentally differentiated. Also the higher fishes, the amphibia, reptiles, birds and mammals present themselves ready made and are not to be derived one from another. Beyond the reach (...) of families descendance is unknown; it can, if anyhow, be maintained in the sense of a modification within typologically determined boundaries.Beurlen's Neomorphosis must be refused. The will for might, i.e. the will for dominating the world around, does not exist as a formgiving element, and can, before all, not be responsible there where the new type is separated from the old one by not adaptive, and therefore building constructive qualities.Remonstrances showing that the tradition having gaps in paleontology should not admit the above made conclusions are refused. The things found are, on the contrary, fully sufficient, asHeribert-Nilsson also showed for the fossil floras. The typological manner of contemplating has deciding importance in paleontology, whereas that of the theory of descendance only has a secondary one.La doctrine darwinienne d'une transformation continue du monde animal ne peut pas être confirmée par la paléontologie. Les plans constructifs des animaux apparaissent plutôt achevés dans l'histoire de la terre. Cela se montre avant tout aux plus anciens vertébrés qui font leur apparition dans le silure et le devon par des types variés et différenciés fondamentalement. Aussi les poissons de genres plus élevés, les amphibiens, les reptiles, les oiseaux et les mammifères se présentent achevés et ne sont pas dérivés les uns des autres. En dehors du domaine de la famille la descendance est inconnue, et elle ne pourrait être maintenue que dans le sens de modification au dedans de limites prescrites typologiquement. Il faut rejeter la néomorphose deBeurlen. La volonté du pouvoir, c'est-à-dire la volonté de dominer le milieu n'existe pas comme un facteur créateur de formes et ne peut pas avant tout être responsable là où le nouveau type est séparé de l'ancien par des qualités non adaptives, donc des qualités constructives.Les objections qui veulent prouver qu'une tradition paléontologique, pleine de lacunes, n'admet pas les conclusions faites ci-dessus, sont complètement réfutées. Les découvertes suffisent plutôt complètement, commeHeribert-Nilsson l'a démontré, pour les flores fossiles. La manière typologique de contempler a une signification décisive dans la paléontologie, celle de la théorie de la descendance a seulement une signification secondaire. (shrink)

This paper is an application of the principles of individuality found in Guay and Pradeu to illuminate biological individuality in mushrooms. I begin with the distinction between logico-cognitive individuals and ontological individuals, and then I argue for genidentity plus material continuity, as a minimum conception of ontological individuality in biology. Of the many materially-continuous genidenticals found in fungi, only those with functional roles in biological theory, either evolutionary or physiological, warrant consideration. Given numerous ways that theory picks out materially-continuous genidenticals (...) in fungi, I argue for a pluralistic account of mushroom individuality. (shrink)

Millikan and Her Critics offers a unique critical discussion of Ruth Millikan's highly regarded, influential, and systematic contributions to philosophy of mind and language, philosophy of biology, epistemology, and metaphysics. These newly written contributions present discussion from some of the most important philosophers in the field today and include replies from Millikan herself.

Every thinking person wants to lead a life of meaning and purpose. For thousands of years, holy books have told us that such a life is available only through obedience and submission to some higher power. Today, the faithful keep popular devotionals and tracts within easy reach on bedside tables and mobile devices, all communicating this common message: "Life is meaningless without God." In this volume, former pastor Dan Barker eloquently, powerfully, and rationally upends this long-held belief. Offering words of (...) enrichment, emancipation, and inspiration, he reminds us how millions of atheists lead happy, loving, moral, and purpose-filled lives. Practicing what he preaches, he also demonstrates through his own personal journey that life is valuable for its own sake--that meaning and purpose come not from above, but from within. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that prioritizing health care resources by their relative cost-effectiveness can result in lower priority for the treatment of disabled persons than otherwise similar non-disabled persons. I distinguish six different ways in which this discrimination against the disabled can occur. I then spell out and evaluate the following moral objections to this discrimination, most of which capture an aspect of its unethical character: it implies that disabled persons' lives are of lesser value than those of non-disabled persons; (...) it constitutes “double jeopardy” or violates Frances Kamm's non-linkage principle; it conflicts with equality of opportunity; it conflicts with fairness, which requires ignoring (some/most) differential impacts of treatment; it wrongly gives lower priority to disabled persons for equally effective treatment; it conflicts with giving all persons an equal chance to reach their full potential; and, it is in conflict with giving priority to the worse off. (shrink)

John is currently thinking that the sun is bright. Consider his occurrent belief or judgement that the sun is bright. Its content is that the sun is bright. This is a truth- evaluable content (which shall be our main concern) because it is capable of being true or false. In virtue of what natural, scientifically accessible facts does John’s judgement have this content? To give the correct answer to that question, and to explain why John’s judgement and other contentful mental (...) states have the contents they do in virtue of such facts, would be to naturalize mental content. (shrink)

Climate change is already a major global threat, but many of its worst impacts are still decades away. Many people who will eventually be affected by it still have opportunities to mitigate harm. When considering the avoidable burdens of climate change, it seems plausible victims will often share some responsibility for putting themselves into harm’s way. This fact should be incorporated into our thinking about the ethical significance of climate-induced harms, particularly to emphasize the importance of differential abilities to get (...) and stay out of harm’s way. Currently, many people face serious obstacles to reducing their vulnerability to climate change, such as poverty, lack of education, and political or legal obstacles to mobility. Climate policy discussions should do more to emphasize the alleviation of these sources of difficulties, thereby empowering people to choose what risks they will bear in a warming world. (shrink)

This chapter examines whether an individual’s being worse off than others should be a relevant consideration in the allocation of limited medical resources. It reviews arguments pressed by proponents of different theories of justice about whether being worse off than others makes special demands on health care resource prioritization. Even if there is good reason to restrict the concern for the worse off to those with worse health in the prioritization and allocation of health care resources, additional issues remain. One (...) is how to determine who has worse health, and whether the worse off are those with the worse overall health or those with the most serious medical condition now in need of treatment. Another issue is whether only individuals’ present health, or instead their lifetime health, including past and expected future health, is relevant. (shrink)

This article develops, illustrates, and defends a conception of immanent critique. Immanent critique is construed as a form of hermeneutical practice and second-order political and normative criticism. The common charge that immanent critique is a form of philosophical conventionalism necessarily committed to value relativism and to the rejection of transcultural and cosmopolitan norms is denied. But immanent critique insists that meaningful and potentially efficacious criticism must be connected to relevant criteria and understandings internal to the culture or social order at (...) which the criticism is directed. The complaint that this demand will likely limit political and moral criticism is also denied, and the ability of immanent critique to develop from convention unconventional thinking is defended and demonstrated. (shrink)

According to the Monist Interpretation of Descartes, there is really only one corporeal substance—the entire extended plenum. Evidence for this interpretation seems to be provided by Descartes in the Synopsis of the Meditations, where he claims that all substances are incorruptible. Finite bodies, being corruptible, would then fail to be substances. On the other hand, ‘body, taken in the general sense,’ being incorruptible, would be a corporeal substance. In this paper, I defend a Pluralist Interpretation of Descartes, according to which (...) there are many corporeal substances. In particular, I show that none of the claims in the Synopsis about incorruptibility and substance entail either that finite bodies are not substances, or that the only corporeal substance is the entire plenum. (shrink)