Utilitarianism is the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being—that is, that maximises the sum of whatever makes life worth living, with each person’s life equally weighted. The promise of utilitarianism is to reduce morality to one simple principle, easily incorporated into policy analysis, economics and decision theory. However, utilitarianism is not popular amongst moral philosophers today. This is in large part due to the influence of (...) Williams’s ‘Integrity Objection’ (1973). Though the Integrity Objection has been influential in turning philosophers against utilitarianism, it is also difficult to make precise, evidenced by the myriad interpretations in the literature. In this paper I interpret the objection as holding that agents who accept utilitarianism cannot, as a matter of psychology, be committed to their projects. I explore other interpretations, finding some to be inconsistent with Williams’s approach, and others to be relatively easily answerable by the utilitarian. The psychological problem I identify is harder for utilitarians to avoid, though I have begun to offer a response in other work. (shrink)

In his famous ‘Integrity Objection’, Bernard Williams condemns utilitarianism for requiring us to regard our projects as dispensable, and thus precluding us from being properly committed to them. In this paper, I argue against commitment as Williams defines it, drawing upon insights from the socialist tradition as well as mainstream analytic moral philosophy. I show that given the mutual interdependence of individuals (a phenomenon emphasised by socialists) several appealing non-utilitarian moral principles also require us to regard our projects as dispensable. (...) This means that those who endorse those principles cannot appeal to Williams’s argument against utilitarianism. It also puts pressure on his thought that moral theories ought to permit commitment – in fact, it suggests that they ought not. Regarding one’s projects as dispensable may be alienating, and this may motivate us to hang onto commitment and reject these non-utilitarian principles along with utilitarianism. However, commitment also threatens a kind of alienation – from other people. Drawing upon the socialist tradition again, I argue that avoiding this form of alienation is necessary for proper engagement with our projects, and thereby with ourselves. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper takes Wittgenstein's later philosophy as a weak-theoretic body of work conditioned and characterized by weak affectivity: a philosophy that similarly avoids strong stances and strong feelings. This renders it vulnerable not only to attack, but to defense: attempts to defend Wittgenstein from accusations of complacency and quietism tend to resort to affectively and theoretically strong interpretations that move against the grain of his own writings. What, then, is generative or productive about weakness, if it invites attacks against which (...) it cannot defend itself? Drawing from Sianne Ngai's studies of weak affects and aesthetics, I argue that Wittgenstein's persistent replication of weak affects is a condition of his inquiry into ordinary life and language—that ordinariness has a structural weakness, which Wittgenstein's writings invite us to practice. (shrink)

Act-consequentialism (C) is self-effacing for an agent iff that agent’s not accepting C would produce the best outcome. The question of whether C is self-effacing is important for evaluating C. Some hold that if C is self-effacing that would be a mark against it (Williams 1973: 134); however, the claim that C is self-effacing is also used to defend C against certain objections (Parfit 1984: Ch. 1, Railton 1984). -/- In this paper I will show that one argument suggested by (...) Parfit and Railton fails to establish that C is self-effacing for individuals. However, a slightly different argument may show that C is self-effacing for groups. This raises the intriguing possibility that it might be right for an individual, but not for a group of which they are a member, to accept a moral theory. This possibility, odd though it seems, might be helpful to consequentialists. (shrink)

This thesis defends utilitarianism: the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being. Utilitarianism is widely rejected by philosophers today, largely because of a number of influential objections. In this thesis I deal with three of them. Each is found in Bernard Williams’s ‘A Critique of Utilitarianism’ (1973). The first is the Integrity Objection, an intervention that has been influential whilst being subject to a wide variety of (...) interpretations. In Chapter Two I give my interpretation of Williams’s Integrity objection; in Chapter Three I discuss one common response to it, and in Chapters Four and Five I give my own defence of utilitarianism against it. In Chapter Six I discuss a second objection: the problem of pre-emption. This problem is also found in Williams, but has received greater attention through the work of other authors in recent years. It suggests that utilitarianism is unable to deal with some of the modern world’s most pressing moral problems, and raises an internal tension between the twin utilitarian aims of making a difference and achieving the best outcomes. In Chapter Seven I discuss a third objection: that utilitarianism is insufficiently egalitarian. I find this claim to be unwarranted, in light of recent social science and philosophy. My responses to Williams’s objections draw upon resources from the socialist tradition – in particular, that tradition’s emphasis on the importance of social connections between individuals. Socialists have often been hostile to utilitarianism, in part for socialist-inflected versions of Williams’s objections. Thus, in responding to these objections I aim to demonstrate that socialist thought contains the means to defuse not only mainstream philosophy’s rejection of utilitarianism but also its own, and thus to re-open the possibilities for a productive engagement between the two traditions. (shrink)

A unique study of the earliest recorded "discourses" of the Buddha, taking an approach that is at once psychological, philosophical, and literary. The book is a series of essays on specific passages from the Buddha's original Discourses and is an introduction to the Buddha's radical empiricism for all people who like to read, think, and investigate.

Development is a process of achieving a right balance between economic growth and psychic income growth. A foreign investor’s manner of conducting business in a country could result in any of four scenarios in which economic/psychic income is low/inadequate, high/inadequate, low/adequate, or high/adequate. Foreign investment will contribute to development only if it reflects the fourth scenario. A responsible corporation can contribute to money income and more importantly to psychic income of a company’s workers. This paper examines the corporate responsibility performance (...) of Indian and Chinese investments in Zambia’s mining sector. The paper finds that while Chinese companies seem to be operating close to the first scenario, Indian companies are operatingbetween the first and fourth. Thus, neither of them is contributing to true development. (shrink)

Some of the world's most powerful corporations practise what Shoshana Zuboff (2015; 2019) calls ‘surveillance capitalism’. The core of their business is harvesting, analysing and selling data about the people who use their products. In Zuboff's view, the first corporation to engage in surveillance capitalism was Google, followed by Facebook; recently, firms such as Microsoft and Amazon have pivoted towards such a model. In this paper, I suggest that Karl Marx's analysis of the relations between industrial capitalists and workers is (...) closely analogous to the relations between surveillance capitalists and users. Furthermore, three problematic aspects of industrial capitalism that Marx describes – alienation, exploitation and accumulation – are also aspects, in new forms, of surveillance capitalism. I draw heavily on Zuboff's work to make these parallels. However, my Marx-inspired account of surveillance capitalism differs from hers over the nature of the exchange between users and surveillance capitalists. For Zuboff, this is akin either to robbery or the gathering of raw materials; on the Marx-inspired account it is a voluntary sale. This difference has important implications for the question of how to resist surveillance capitalism. -/- Joint winner of the 2020 Philosophy essay prize. (shrink)

A foundational problem in population ethics is the “repugnant conclusion", introduced by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons. It holds that for any possible population of at least ten billion lives of very high positive welfare, there is some larger possible population of lives of very low positive welfare whose existence would be better, if other things are equal. I call this claim RC1. In this article, I argue that by carefully considering the nature and variety of possible lives of (...) very low positive welfare, and distinguishing RC1 from a related but stronger claim I call RC2, we can show that RC1 is more acceptable than it first appears. It has been claimed that perfectionism— that is, a special concern for the best things in life—is a reason to reject the repugnant conclusion. I argue that although perfectionism gives us a reason to reject RC2, it does not give us any reason to reject, and might in fact support, RC1. In his last two papers on the subject, Parfit develops a strategy for avoiding the repugnant conclusion that appeals in part to perfectionism. In the final part of this article, I argue that Parfit’s strategy can help us avoid RC2 but not RC1. If I am right that RC1 is more acceptable than RC2, this may not be an unwelcome result. (shrink)

The article evaluates how knowledge workers in new-age businesses in developing economies conceptualize and practise acts of individual social responsibility vis-à-vis the corporate social responsibility endeavours of the companies for which they work. The study aims to differentiate between the values that drive ISR and CSR in such organizations. On one hand, the study targets young information technology professionals between the ages of 25 and 35 years exploring the individual motivations for socially responsible behaviour, and it looks at CSR managers (...) responsible for strategizing and implementing CSR portfolio, representing the organizational imperatives of CSR behaviour and practice on the other. The study concludes with a conceptualization of how the convergence or otherwise of motivations between ISR and CSR in such organizations are defined and what are their determinants, with the derivative managerial implications for firms in developing economies in the context of managing the relatively younger workforce’s participation in their CSR efforts. (shrink)

This paper examines a recent argument in favour of strong precautionary action—possibly including working to hasten human extinction—on the basis of a decision-theoretic view that accommodates the risk-attitudes of all affected while giving more weight to the more risk-averse attitudes. First, we dispute the need to take into account other people’s attitudes towards risk at all. Second we argue that a version of the non-identity problem undermines the case for doing so in the context of future people. Lastly, we suggest (...) that we should not work to hasten human extinction, even if significant risk aversion is warranted. (shrink)

Digital mental health can be understood as the in situ quantification of an individual’s data from personal devices to measure human behavior in both health and disease (Huckvale, Venkatesh and Chr...

This comprehensive and important volume includes contributions by activists, journalists, lawyers and scholars from twenty-one countries. The essays map the directions the movement for women's rights is taking--and will take in the coming decades--and the concomittant transformation of prevailing notions of rights and issues. They address topics such as the rapes in former Yugoslavia and efforts to see that a War Crimes Tribunal responds; domestic violence; trafficking of women into the sex trade; the persecution of lesbians; female genital mutilation; and (...) reproductive rights. (shrink)

Sally Sedgwick presents a fresh account of Hegel's critique of Kant's theoretical philosophy. She argues that Hegel offers a compelling critique of and alternative to the conception of cognition that Kant defended in his 'Critical' period, and explores Hegel's claim to derive from Kantian doctrines clues to a superior form of idealism.

Review of Primary Ousia: An Essay on Aristotle's Metaphysics Z and H, by Michael J. Loux (Cornell University Press: 1991).

Professor Bergmann is an original thinker who has for many years wrestled with some of the most important and difficult problems of philosophy. Although at first mainly interested in epistemology, he has gradually come to the conclusion that the fundamental questions of philosophy are ontological and that even epistemology is in the last analysis “the ontology of the knowing process.” He holds that by neglecting the explicit formulation of his ontology, a philosopher courts intellectual disaster because the inadequacies of the (...) ontological foundation are likely to affect all philosophical superstructures built on it. In his last book [1], Bergmann explains some of the main features of his ontology in systematic form and criticizes competing systems, especially those of Brentano and Meinong, by comparing them with his own. In the critical parts of his work he tries to show that the competing ontologies are not adequate to the tasks for which they are intended and why this is so. The constructive and the critical parts supplement each other very well, since Brentano's and Meinong's questions and emphases are similar to Bergmann's. Broadly speaking, he regards his own ontology as a phase in a development of ontological insight which consists, at least negatively, in the gradual elimination of three major errors: nominalism, reism, and representationalism. (shrink)

This study investigates the variations in the quality and comprehensiveness of 104 corporate social responsibility reports published by the world’s largest financial institutions in 2012. Using a novel measure of CSR report quality, we examine the impact of certain national, legal, and firm-level factors that might explain differences in the overall quality and extent of coverage of various issues in these reports. Our findings show that legal factors and CSR environment in a firm’s country of headquarters play an important role (...) in firms’ CSR reporting quality. Common law countries exhibit systematically higher overall CSR reporting quality than code law countries. Countries with higher CSR standards, policies, and regulations in place also produce significantly higher quality CSR reports. Firm size, on the other hand, has no major impact on the overall quality of CSR reports. In further analysis of the individual aspects of CSR disclosures, namely environment, philanthropy, bribery and corruption, and integrity assurance, we document that larger firms report at a higher quality on philanthropy and bribery and corruption. Bribery and corruption is reported at a higher quality in countries with common law tradition, high-quality legal regimes, and high CSR standards and regulations in place. We also observe higher quality integrity assurance in common law countries. CSR-minded countries and countries with low-quality legal environment also report on philanthropy at a higher quality. Finally, we offer guidelines for companies toward improving the quality of their reports, and suggestions for scholars and researchers for further avenues of research. (shrink)

A brief presentation of the major conclusions contained in the recently published monograph entitled "The Ascent to Law: Searches and Solutions," written over a period of many years. Chapter headings are: The law - an objective reality. The dogma of the law. The drama of scholarship. Searching. "The entire" substance of the law. Juridical constructs. The logic of laws. The secret of the law. Law - the highest purpose. Law in the life and fate of mankind.

Le mot «milieu» est précieux pour souligner que les installations humaines – l’architecture, la ville – tiennent compte de leur environnement, naturel ou bâti. Avant de configurer «un monde», l’art humain configure un lieu et même l’élit et le transfigure en le métamorphosant, faisant de milieux donnés des «lieux» habitables voire mémorables aux multiples formes de délimitations, d’échanges et de devenir. La notion de milieu habité est mise en perspective et pensée en termes de limites, passages, liens et métamorphoses.

The purpose of the present study was to address the shortcomings of Cronbach’s alpha concerning the semantic overlap between items. Using an example from a motivational measure, the correction of Cronbach’s alpha was applied by partialing out the effects due to conceptual overlap. The significance of Cronbach’s alpha was tested using simulated random data derived from the measure and by estimating the confidence intervals with known and unknown distributions. The results indicated that the uncorrected conceptual overlap coefficient alpha was equal (...) to 0.89 and 0.66 following the correction. After simulating the corrected statistical results, the distribution of alpha with random numbers had an estimate of 95%, equal to 0.41. The lower bound of the corrected alpha distribution was equal to 0.41, suggesting that the corrected alpha could easily belong to the distribution of alpha developed from simulated random numbers. Thus, the semantic overlap between items on a measure represents a significant threat to the validity of the alpha coefficient. (shrink)

This paper brings together the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Alston in speech-act theory with the aim of providing a deeper understanding of the nature of divine speaking through the medium of Scripture. Despite the fecundity of Wolterstorff's seminal work on the philosophical theology of Scripture, aspects of his speech-act centric account are underdeveloped and would benefit from the contributions of William Alston. In particular, his account of divine speech-acts could be fruitfully expanded by incorporating the concept of ‘taking (...) responsibility’ that is central to Alston's analysis of the nature of illocutionary acts. This would elucidate both the way in which readers of Scripture encounter divine practical authority in the reading process and the nature of the response of faith that is demanded of them. (shrink)

Several recent papers dealing with Plato's position on the imperfection of the phenomenal world draw heavily on the differences between two kinds of predicates in order to show the following: In the middle dialogues, Plato posits Forms only as referents of what the writers call incomplete predicates. He does not posit Forms as referents for complete predicates. When interpreters ignore the differences between these kinds of predicates, they ascribe too radical a view regarding the imperfection of the phenomenal world to (...) the middle dialogues. The ontology of these dialogues includes sensible particulars which retain their identity over time even though they are continually changing in some respect or other. (shrink)

In this article I seek to explain Hegel’s significance to contemporary meta-ethics, in particular to Kantian constructivism. I argue that in the master–slave dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit , Hegel shows that self-consciousness and intersubjectivity arise at the same time. This point, I argue, shows that there is no problem with taking other people’s reasons to motivate us since reflection on our aims is necessarily also reflection on the needs of those around us. I further explore Hegel’s contribution to (...) the debate about internal and external reasons. I end by arguing that we should understand reasons as historically constructed in the sense that who counts as an intrinsic bearer of value changes over time. I thus argue that the struggle for recognition is in fact the beginning of the long march toward the idea of recognition and the Kantian kingdom of ends. This march, however, is driven by the need to overcome injustice as it is instantiated at the beginning of history by the master’s absolute domination of the slave. (shrink)

SummaryAn accurate framework for interpreting Kant's theory of knowledge must clearly distinguish between the six terms he uses to describe the various stages in the epistemological development of the‘object’of knowledge. Kant portrays the object transcendentally in the first Critique as passing from an unknowable‘thing in itself through the intermediate stage of being a‘transcendental object’, and finally attaining the ideal status of an‘appearance’. When the object is considered empirically, it passes through three corresponding stages: the‘phenomenon’is the real object as known in (...) experience, the‘negative noumenon’limits our knowledge to its intuitive manifestation, and the‘positive noumenon’is that aspect of the known object which remains ultimately transcendent. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.3, 995a7–8, there are people who will take seriously the arguments of a speaker only if a poet can be cited as a ‘witness’ in support of them. Aristotle's passing observation sharply reminds us that Greek philosophy had developed within, and was surrounded by, a culture which extensively valued the authority of the poetic word and the poet's ‘voice’ from which it emanated. The currency of ideas, values, and images disseminated through familiarity with poetry had always (...) been a force with which philosophy, in its various manifestations, needed to reckon. As a mode of thought and discourse which proclaimed its aspiration to wisdom, philosophy could not easily eschew some degree of dialogue with an art whose practitioners had traditionally been ranked prominently among the sophoi. Even Aristotle, who keeps aloof from the assumption that philosophical contentions stand in need of poetic support, cites and quotes poetry regularly in his own writings in ways which indicate the influence on him of a prevailing mentality that regarded poets and philosophers as pursuers, up to a point at least, of a common wisdom. (shrink)

Many pressing problems are of the following kind: some collection of actions of multiple people will produce some morally significant outcome (good or bad), but each individual action in the collection seems to make no difference to the outcome. These problems pose theoretical problems (especially for act-consequentialism), and practical problems for agents trying to figure out what they ought to do. Much recent literature on such problems has focused on whether it is possible for each action in such a collection (...) to make such a tiny impact on the world that it makes no expected difference to the outcomes with which we’re concerned. I argue that even if this is impossible, there are cases in which each action makes no difference, not because it has such a tiny effect on the world, but because if it were not performed, a similar action would be. This recognition allows us to connect these problems with discussions of structural injustice. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, Metaphysics 2.3, 995a7–8, there are people who will take seriously the arguments of a speaker only if a poet can be cited as a ‘witness’ in support of them. Aristotle's passing observation sharply reminds us that Greek philosophy had developed within, and was surrounded by, a culture which extensively valued the authority of the poetic word and the poet's ‘voice’ from which it emanated. The currency of ideas, values, and images disseminated through familiarity with poetry had always (...) been a force with which philosophy, in its various manifestations, needed to reckon. As a mode of thought and discourse which proclaimed its aspiration to wisdom, philosophy could not easily eschew some degree of dialogue with an art whose practitioners had traditionally been ranked prominently among the sophoi. Even Aristotle, who keeps aloof from the assumption that philosophical contentions stand in need of poetic support, cites and quotes poetry regularly in his own writings in ways which indicate the influence on him of a prevailing mentality that regarded poets and philosophers as pursuers, up to a point at least, of a common wisdom. (shrink)

The codex Cromwellianus 12 , one of the most interesting astrological manuscripts of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, contains on p. 450 f., under the heading 'Ιμβρασίου 'Εεσίου περί ρρώστων, the first part of the first part of Ps.-Galen's περι κατακλίσεως νοσούντων, which is, together with a work of Hermes Trismegistos, our principal source for iatromathematics, that is, for diagnosis and prognosis based on certain constellations, above all on the Moon's position in a particular sign of the zodiac. It is (...) not the text itself that calls for notice—since we possess older and better manuscripts of it—but the mention of the author, Imbrasios of Ephesus, which only occurs here. (shrink)

Comparative study of the philosophy of Śaṅkaracārya, ca. 700, Hindu philosopher and Kabir, 15th century Hindi religious poet.