„Das Naturrecht ist die Wissenschaft, welche aus dem Wesen und der Bestimmung des Menschen und der menschlichen Gesellschaft das oberste Prinzip oder die Idee des Rechts ableitet“. Das Naturrecht gründet in der Überzeugung, „dass es ein von willkürlichen Satzungen unabhängiges, in einer höheren sittlichen Lebensordnung gegründetes Recht gibt, welches als Maßstab zur Beurteilung der bestehenden Verhältnisse und Einrichtungen und als Richtschnur für ihre weitere Ausbildung zu dienen bestimmt ist“. (Heinrich Ahrens).

Language’s intentional nature has been highlighted as a crucial feature distinguishing it from other communication systems. Specifically, language is often thought to depend on highly structured intentional action and mutual mindreading by a communicator and recipient. Whilst similar abilities in animals can shed light on the evolution of intentionality, they remain challenging to detect unambiguously. We revisit animal intentional communication and suggest that progress in identifying analogous capacities has been complicated by (i) the assumption that intentional (that is, voluntary) production (...) of communicative acts requires mental-state attribution, and (ii) variation in approaches investigating communication across sensory modalities. To move forward, we argue that a framework fusing research across modalities and species is required. We structure intentional communication into a series of requirements, each of which can be operationalised, investigated empirically, and must be met for purposive, intentionally communicative acts to be demonstrated. Our unified approach helps elucidate the distribution of animal intentional communication and subsequently serves to clarify what is meant by attributions of intentional communication in animals and humans. (shrink)

With the exception of Anthony Manser’s recent treatise on Bradley’s logic, nothing noteworthy has been written on the British idealist since the studies of Wollheim and Vander Veer. This dearth of scholarship on one of the most powerful critics of empiricism and naturalism is surprising especially today when we witness a strong revival of interest in metaphysics and phenomenology. Hence Dario Sacchi’s monograph on Bradley’s Unity and Relation is particularly welcome. In addition, this study promises some interesting insights into how (...) an Italian scholar presumably familiar with various forms of continental idealism treats the British metaphysician. Unfortunately, students of Bradley’s thought will be disappointed. (shrink)

With the exception of Anthony Manser’s recent treatise on Bradley’s logic, nothing noteworthy has been written on the British idealist since the studies of Wollheim and Vander Veer. This dearth of scholarship on one of the most powerful critics of empiricism and naturalism is surprising especially today when we witness a strong revival of interest in metaphysics and phenomenology. Hence Dario Sacchi’s monograph on Bradley’s Unity and Relation is particularly welcome. In addition, this study promises some interesting insights into how (...) an Italian scholar presumably familiar with various forms of continental idealism treats the British metaphysician. Unfortunately, students of Bradley’s thought will be disappointed. (shrink)

Since coming to power in 2010, the UK Coalition government has enacted a series of cuts to public spending, under the auspices of austerity. Underpinning these cuts is a neo-liberal model of citizenship, in which citizens are expected to be autonomous, independent and economically productive, and in which the responsibilities of citizenship outweigh the rights. This model of citizenship is characterised by a paradoxical approach to social reproduction. The Coalition government has taken a significant interest in social reproduction as a (...) means of creating the next generation of ‘good’ neo-liberal citizens; yet, the current austerity measures involve the withdrawal of state support for social reproduction activities. Drawing on participant observation carried out with migrant women's groups in Sheffield and Manchester, as well as interviews with group members, this article demonstrates how the government's paradoxical approach to social reproduction, combined with gendered and racialised discourses of citizenship and ‘Britishness’, have led to policies that place ethnic minority migrant women in an untenable situation. The social reproduction activities of ethnic minority migrant women are the subject of intense government interest, because of the concern that they will be unable to produce ‘good’ neo-liberal citizens. In some cases, this has led to government policies clearly intended to dissuade ‘undesirable’ migrants from having children. In other cases, migrant women are expected to show their commitment to integration, both for themselves and their children, specifically by learning English, even as the government has drastically cut funding for English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) classes. While seemingly paradoxical, this is in keeping with a racialised neo-liberal model of citizenship under which the ‘responsible’ migrant mother should be able to parent and learn English without government assistance. Nonetheless, these policies are actually self-defeating, as they prevent migrant women from exhibiting the very characteristics of neo-liberal citizenship that they are ostensibly trying to encourage. (shrink)

The widespread availability of effective vaccines against life-threatening infections has been one of the greatest public health achievements. Unfounded but widely circulated safety concerns about some vaccines and ethical concerns about the derivation of others have caused a decline in the number of immunized individuals in the United States. Exploring distinctions between formal and material cooperation in evil provides reassurance that, in the absence of alternatives, Catholics may, in good conscience, receive vaccines originally derived from fetal tissue obtained from abortions. (...) Examining Catholic teaching on the individual’s responsibility to the common good shows that, in the absence of medical contraindications, each person has a duty to receive currently recommended vaccinations. (shrink)

There appears to be a wide measure of agreement, both amongst biologists and others, that Darwin's theory of evolution marks a major breakthrough in the science of biology; Darwin has even been called ‘Biology's Newton’, the highest term of praise that could be bestowed on a scientist. A. G. N. Flew, considering the matter from a philosophical point of view, says: ‘Yet one of the most important of all scientific theories is that developed by Darwin in his Origin of Species (...) . Covering the entire range of biological phenomena its scope is enormous. While if any scientific theory is interesting philosophically this one is.’ In spite of the testimony of both biologists and philosophers of science to the importance of the theory, it does not appear to play anything like the same role in biology as does Newton's theory in physics. For modern physics would be. (shrink)

This collection addresses a post-WWII shift in the hierarchy of scientific explanations, where the highest goal moves from reductionism towards some ...

Early in his Essays on Intellectual Powers, Reid draws a distinction between mental power, mental operation, and mental capacity (EIP 21). To the untrained eye, these terms could probably be used interchangeably, and Reid believes this is correct, up to a point. He argues that, if we are interested in understanding exactly how the human mind works, we must use these terms with more precise meanings. This is part of his more general strategy of trying to always use the words (...) with their common meanings, as much as possible, but also pointing out that certain philosophical distinctions are needed to carry out the project of laying out the foundations of the science of the mind. This paper explains what the distinction between power, operation, and capacity is, according to Reid, with the goal of understanding why it is important to draw such a distinction, not only for the Reidian project, but for action theory, more generally. (shrink)

A. R. Manser; XIII—Pleasure, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 61, Issue 1, 1 June 1961, Pages 223–238, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/61.1.

In his Philosophical Investigations , Wittgenstein introduces the notion of a ‘family resemblance’ to deal with certain problems. Talking of games and what they seem to have in common, he points out that there are no common features in virtue of which we call all games ‘games’. Instead there are, he claims, many different similarities and relationships; he says ‘we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail’. He then goes on to (...) add: ‘I can think of no better expression to characterise these similarities than “family resemblances”; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way,—And I shall say: “games form a family”.’ Wittgenstein also instances numbers as forming a ‘family’ in the same manner. This notion of a ‘family resemblance’ has come to be used by many philosophers to deal with a range of situations where there appears to be a difficulty in finding a single definite common property and yet there exists a desire to call some set of things by the same name. I myself have succumbed to this temptation. Perhaps the widest claim for the use of this device is that made by Mr Bambrough in an article entitled ‘Universals and Family Resemblances’ . This begins with the words ‘I believe that Wittgenstein solved what is known as “the problem of universals”’. (shrink)

A. R. Manser; XIII—Pleasure, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 61, Issue 1, 1 June 1961, Pages 223–238, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/61.1.

International criminal tribunals are weak institutions, especially since they do not have their own police forces to execute arrest warrants. Understandably then, much of the existing literature has focused exclusively on pressure from major powers and on changing domestic politics to explain the apprehension of suspected war criminals. In contrast, this article turns attention back to the tribunals themselves. I propose three ways in which the activities of international criminal tribunals impact compliance with arrest warrants: through the selection of individuals (...) to indict, demonstrated leniency on some suspects and outreach to domestic legal professionals. Using a duration model that accounts for sample selection and data collected on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, I test these theories alongside other existing explanations. I find that court activities can have an independent effect on the successful implementation of international criminal law. (shrink)

In this paper I want to examine the notion of desert, which seems to have been neglected by contemporary philosophers. Apartfrom its interest in its own right, it is important to be clear about the meaning of the word if there is to be any understanding of the idea of punishment. And that we are confused over the whole issue of punishment is obvious both from the remarks of professional philosophers and from the comments of the ‘man in the street’. (...) Because of this confusion, the discussion of any actual punishment seems to take place between two parties who never get to grips with the arguments of the other, as in the whole debate over the death penalty. To one set of people, it is obvious that the retention of hanging depends to a large extent on the question of its effectiveness in deterring murderers; to another it is equally obvious that the murderer ‘deserves’ to hang, and that there is no more to be said about the matter. Capital punishment is not a good starting-point for a discussion of punishment in general, for death is clearly unique among penalties; in addition, the topic gives rise inevitably to much sentimentality and resulting muddle-headedness. (shrink)

In their rare comments on Existentialism, contemporary British philosophers, with a few notable exceptions, frequently ridicule the use of “nothing” by such writers as Sartre and Heidegger. And when it is discovered that these writers maintain that the contemplation of nothingness gives rise to anguish, this ridicule is expressed even more strongly. What may be taken as a typical example of this tendency are Professor Ayer's remarks in his Horizon articles on Sartre. A characteristic quotation runs as follows: “In particular, (...) Sartre's reasoning on the subject of le néant seems to me exactly on a par with that of the King in Alice through the Looking-Glass … The point is that words like ‘nothing” and ‘nobody” are not used as the names of something insubstantial and mysterious; they are not used to name anything at all”;. (shrink)

In this short text, a distinguished philosopher turns his attention to one of the oldest and most fundamental philosophical problems of all: How it is that we are able to sort and classify different things as being of the same natural class? Professor Armstrong carefully sets out six major theories—ancient, modern, and contemporary—and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of each. Recognizing that there are no final victories or defeats in metaphysics, Armstrong nonetheless defends a traditional account of universals as the (...) most satisfactory theory we have.This study is written for advanced students, but as Armstrong goes considerably beyond his earlier work on this topic, it will interest professional scholars as well. Carefully plotted and clearly written, Universals is both a paradigm of exposition and a case study on the value of careful analysis of fundamental issues in philosophy. (shrink)