In Improvisation, Samuel Wells defines improvisation in the theater as "a practice through which actors seek to develop trust in themselves and one another in order that they may conduct unscripted dramas without fear." Sounds a lot like life, doesn't it? Building trust, overcoming fear, conducting relationships, and making choices--all without a script. Wells establishes theatrical improvisation as a model for Christian ethics, a matter of "faithfully improvising on the Christian tradition." He views the Bible not as (...) a "script" but as a "training school" that shapes the habits and practices of the Christian community. Drawing on scriptural narratives and church history, Wells explains six practices that characterize both improvisation and Christian ethics. His model of improvisation reinforces the goal of Christian ethics--to teach Christians to "embody their faith in the practices of discipleship all the time."--Publisher description. (shrink)

The story of God -- The story of the church -- The story of ethics -- The story of Christian ethics -- Universal ethics -- Subversive ethics -- Ecclesial ethics -- Good order -- Good life -- Good relationships -- Good beginnings and endings -- Good earth.

We are pleased to annouce that God’s Companions by Samuel Wells has been shortlisted for the 2007 Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing. www.michaelramseyprize.org.uk Grounded in Samuel Wells’ experience of ordinary lives in poorer neighborhoods, this book presents a striking and imaginative approach to Christian ethics. It argues that Christian ethics is founded on God, on the practices of human community, and on worship, and that ethics is fundamentally a reflection of God's abundance. Wells synthesizes (...) dogmatic, liturgical, ethical, scriptural, and pastoral approaches to theology in order to make a bold claim for the centrality of the local church in theological reflection. He considers the abundance of gifts God gives through the practices of the Church, particularly the Eucharist. His central thesis, which governs his argument throughout, is that God gives his people everything they need to worship him, be his friends, and eat with him. Wells engages with serious scholarly material, yet sets out the issues lucidly for a student audience. (shrink)

Written by two well-known theologians, the book encompasses Christian ethics in its entirety, but also offers a new way of viewing this subject.

The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics presents a comprehensive and systematic exposition of Christian ethics, seen through the lens of Christian worship.

Because moral understanding involves a distinctly first-personal grasp of moral matters, there is a temptation to think of its value primarily in terms of achievements that reflect well on its possessor: the moral worth of one's action or the virtue of one's character. These explanations, I argue, do not do full justice to the importance of moral understanding in our moral lives. Of equal importance is the value of moral understanding in our relations with other moral agents. In particular, I (...) argue that an understanding of moral matters is of central importance within relations of solidarity. In addition to highlighting an overlooked aspect of moral understanding's value, this view also has important implications for what solidarity requires of those who stand in that relationship. (shrink)

It is plausible that the models of our scientific theories correspond to possibilities. But exactly which models of which scientific theories stand in this correspondence? The answers to this question hinted at so far in the literature are too restrictive: they don't support the idea that the models of many of our best scientific theories correspond to physical possibilities. The paper thus provides a novel proposal for guiding belief about physical possibilities based on physics. The proposal draws on the notion (...) of an effective theory: a theory that applies very well to a particular, restricted domain. We argue that it is the models of effective theories that we should believe correspond, at least in part, to physical possibilities. It is thus effective theories that should guide modal reasoning in science. (shrink)

Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level (...) is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy. (shrink)

Aristotle analyses a large range of objects as composites of matter and form. But how exactly should we understand the relation between the matter and form of a composite? Some commentators have argued that forms themselves are somehow material, that is, forms are impure. Others have denied that claim and argued for the purity of forms. In this paper, I develop a new purist interpretation of Metaphysics Z.10-11, a text central to the debate, which I call 'hierarchical purism'. I argue (...) that hierarchical purism can overcome the difficulties faced by previous versions of purism as well as by impurism. Roughly, on hierarchical purism, each composite can be considered and defined in two different ways: From the perspective of metaphysics, composites are considered only insofar as they have forms and defined purely formally. From the perspective of physics, composites are considered insofar as they have forms and matter and defined with reference to both. Moreover, while the metaphysical definition is a definition in the strict sense of 'definition', the physical definition is a definition in a loose sense. Analogous points hold for intelligible composites and geometry. Finally, neither sort of definitional practice implies that, for Aristotle, forms are impure. (shrink)

By the middle of the twentieth century, many liberals looked glumly at the world modernity had brought about, with its devastating wars, rising totalitarianism, and permanent nuclear terror. They concluded that, far from offering a solution to these problems, the ideals of the Enlightenment, including emancipation and equality, had instead created them. The historian of political thought Samuel Moyn argues that the liberal intellectuals of the Cold War era--among them Isaiah Berlin, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Karl Popper, Judith Shklar, and Lionel (...) Trilling--transformed liberalism but left a disastrous legacy for our time. In his iconoclastic style, Moyn outlines how Cold War liberals redefined the ideals of their movement and renounced the moral core of the Enlightenment for a more dangerous philosophy: preserving individual liberty at all costs. In denouncing this stance, as well as the recent nostalgia for Cold War liberalism as a means to counter illiberal values, Moyn presents a timely call for a new emancipatory and egalitarian liberal philosophy--a path to undoing the damage of the Cold War and to ensuring the survival of liberalism."--Dust jacket. (shrink)

One of the more interesting philosophical debates in the seventeenth century concerned the nature and explanation of qualities. In order to understand these debates, it is important to place them in their proper historical-philosophical context. This book chapter starts with theoretical background in the work of Aristotle and the atomists, and then moves on to survey various theories of motion and rest, light, color, and sound, as well as the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, as represented in the work (...) of such figures as Berkeley, Boyle, Charleton, Cordemoy, Descartes, Desgabets, Galileo, Gassendi, Hobbes, Locke, Malebranche, Newton, Régis, Rohault, and Sennert. (shrink)

Delves into the complexity of Paine's character as well as his efforts on behalf of popular causes in America, France, and England.

Should the idea of economic man-the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus-determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding "no." Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may "crowd out" ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer (...) thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends. (shrink)

This paper examines the interplay of semantics and pragmatics within the domain of film. Films are made up of individual shots strung together in sequences over time. Though each shot is disconnected from the next, combinations of shots still convey coherent stories that take place in continuous space and time. How is this possible? The semantic view of film holds that film coherence is achieved in part through a kind of film language, a set of conventions which govern the relationships (...) between shots. In this paper, we develop and defend a new version of the semantic view. We articulate it for a pair of conventions that govern spatial relations between viewpoints. One such rule is already well-known; sometimes called the "180° Rule," we term it the X-Constraint; to this we add a previously unrecorded rule, the T-Constraint. As we show, both have the effect, in different ways, of limiting the way that viewpoint can shift through space from shot to shot over the course of a film sequence. Such constraints, we contend, are analogous to relations of discourse coherence that are widely recognized in the linguistic domain. If film is to have a language, it is a language made up of rules like these. (shrink)

Adopting a view of utilitarian ethics in which motivation in the public interest takes on greater weight than is generally appreciated, this book explores the extent to which the philosophy of Immanuel Kant is consistent with this nuanced version of utilitarianism. Kant's requirement that full ethical merit needs an agent to act purely 'from duty' to forward 'the universal end of happiness' rather than from a personal inclination to achieve that end clearly distinguishes his position from the version of utilitarian (...) ethics adopted here. But this book also argues that Kant's approval of a secondary category of conduct - conduct 'in conformity with' duty - entailing other-regarding or 'sympathetic' motivation to advance general happiness, differs from the utilitarian position only in its meriting a qualified degree of ethical credit. After comparing Kant's position with those of eighteenth-century utilitarian writers from Locke to Bentham, the book evaluates reactions to Kant by J.S. Mill and Karl Marx and proposes Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) as a 'precursor' for maintaining a 'Kantian' doctrine of conduct 'from duty' and for other shared features. In terms of public policy, the work demonstrates Kant's justification of poor relief and reduced inequality, his proposal for a state education plan, and his opposition to paternalism. This book provides essential reading for academic specialists and students concerned with the interface of political economy and ethics, as well as the history of economic thought, political economy, history of ethics, history of political thought and intellectual history. Samuel Hollander is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, Canada, and an Officer in the Order of Canada. (shrink)

The medical profession contains five “spheres of morality”: clinical care, clinical research, scientific knowledge, population health, and the market. These distinct sets of normative commitments require physicians to act in different ways depending on the ends of the activity in question. For example, a physician-scientist emphasizes patients’ well-being in clinic, prioritizes the scientific method in lab, and seeks to maximize shareholder returns as a board member of a pharmaceutical firm. Physicians increasingly occupy multiple roles in healthcare and move between them (...) frequently, creating the possibility of conflict between the ethical obligations of their various roles. This paper examines the entire moral landscape of medicine through the lens of role morality. It develops a novel framework that helps physicians recognize how their moral commitments depend on the nature and context of the situation, clarifies ethical conflicts that physicians face, and concludes with ideas for resolving these conflicts. (shrink)

In today's global business environment it is no longer acceptable that a corporation does well simply by doing good. It is expected. With increasing pressures from stakeholders to improve the bottom line as well as to be good corporate citizens, business leaders face tough decisions. What social issues should we support? What initiatives should we develop that will do the most good for the company as well as the cause? Do we include social messages in our advertising, encourage our employees (...) to volunteer, do we modify our business practices? How do we integrate a new initiative into current strategies? These and other challenges will continue to face future leaders. This book provides thoughtful answers to these important questions, and to many more. The book offers suggestions on how to choose among major worthy causes and also how to measure the amount of good achieved both for the recipients and the companies themselves. Of course, all is not only about challenges, there are loads of opportunities that go along with them but it's only responsible and sustainable leaders who would be able to spot these opportunities. That is the future which awaits 21st century leaders. (shrink)

The science of mind wandering has rapidly expanded over the past 20 years. During this boom, mind wandering researchers have relied on self-report methods, where participants rate whether their minds were wandering. This is not an historical quirk. Rather, we argue that self-report is indispensable for researchers who study passive phenomena like mind wandering. We consider purportedly “objective” methods that measure mind wandering with eye tracking and machine learning. These measures are validated in terms of how well they predict self-reports, (...) which means that purportedly objective measures of mind wandering retain a subjective core. Mind wandering science cannot break from the cycle of self-report. Skeptics about self-report might conclude that mind wandering science has methodological foundations of sand. We take a rather more optimistic view. We present empirical and philosophical reasons to be confident in self-reports about mind wandering. Empirically, these self-reports are remarkably consistent in their contents and behavioral and neural correlates. Philosophically, self-reports are consistent with our best theories about the function of mind wandering. We argue that this triangulation gives us reason to trust both theory and method. (shrink)

This article draws on the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to explore whether a corporate ‘duty of beneficence’ to non-shareholders is consistent with the orthodox ‘shareholder theory’ of the firm. It examines the ethical framework of Milton Friedman’s argument and asks whether it necessarily rules out the well-being of non-shareholders as a corporate objective. The article examines Kant’s distinction between ‘duties of right’ and ‘duties of virtue’ (the latter including the duty of beneficence) and investigates their consistency with the shareholder (...) theory. The article concludes that it is possible within the ethical framework of shareholder theory for managers to pursue directly the happiness of non-shareholders. Furthermore, shareholders have a duty to hold management to account for the moral consequences of the firm’s activities on non-shareholding stakeholders. (shrink)

This volume gathers together leading philosophers of science and cognitive scientists from around the world to provide one of the first book-length studies of this important and emerging field. Specific topics considered include learning and the nature of scientific knowledge, the cognitive consequences of exposure to explanations, climate change, and mechanistic reasoning and abstraction. Chapters explore how experimental methods can be applied to questions about the nature of science and show how to fruitfully theorize about the nature and role of (...) science with well-grounded empirical research. Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Science presents a new direction in the philosophical exploration of science and paves a path for those who might seek to pursue research in experimental philosophy of science. (shrink)

Andrew Samuels is one of the best known figures internationally in the fields of psychotherapy, Jungian analysis, relational psychoanalysis and counselling and in academic studies in those areas. His work is a blend of the provocative and original together with the reliable and scholarly. His many books and papers figure prominently on reading lists on clinical and academic teaching contexts. This self-selected collection, Passions, Persons, Psychotherapy and Politics, brings together some of his major writings at the interface of politics and (...) therapy thinking. In this volume, he includes chapters on the market economy, prospects for eco-psychology and environmentalism; the role of the political Trickster, particularly the female Trickster; chapters on the father; on relations between women and men and his celebrated and radical critique of the Jungian idea of 'the feminine principle'. Clinical material consists of his work on parents and on the therapy relationship. The book concludes with his seminal and transparent work on Jung and anti-semitism and an intriguing account of the current trajectory of the Jungian field.Samuels has written a highly personal and confessional introduction to the book. Each chapter also has its own topical introduction, written in a clear and informal style. There is also much that will challenge long-held beliefs of many working in politics and in the social sciences. This unique collection of papers will be of interest to psychotherapists, Jungian analysts, psychoanalysts and counsellors--as well as those undertaking academic work in those areas. (shrink)

"Adam Smith is widely regarded as the founder of political economy and one of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment period. Best-known for his founding work of economics, The Wealth of Nations, Smith's thought engaged equally with the nature of morality, above all in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith's brilliance leaves us with an important question, however: Was he first and foremost a moral philosopher, who happened to turn to economics for part of his career? In this outstanding philosophical (...) introduction Samuel Fleischacker argues that Smith is a superb example of the broadly curious thinkers who flourished in the Enlightenment; one for whom morality, politics and economics were just a few of the many fascinating subjects that could be illuminated by naturalistic modes of investigation. After a helpful overview of his life and work, Fleischacker examines the full range of Smith's thought, including: epistemology, philosophy of science and aesthetics, moral sentimentalism, moral approval, sympathy, and judgement, the character of virtue advantages and disadvantages of Smith's moral philosophy, Smith's views on religion, justice and jurisprudence, governmental policy, economic principles, Smith's philosophical legacy and his place in the history of liberalism. Including chapter summaries, suggestions for further reading and a glossary, Adam Smith is essential reading for those studying ethics, political philosophy, the history of philosophy, and the Enlightenment, as well as those reading Smith in related disciplines such as economics, law and religion"--. (shrink)

Samuel Rickless presents a new account of Berkeley's controversial argument, and suggests it is the philosopher's greatest legacy: not only is it valid, but it may well be sound.

Master Sorai's Responsals was to eighteenth-century Japan what The Prince was to Renaissance Italy. Like Machiavelli, Ogyu Sorai was a humanist scholar who served a prince and drew on his experiences as a house philosopher and on his vast knowledge of history and political affairs in his work. In 1720, when he began to write the letters that comprise this text, the Tokugawa regime was more than a hundred years old and beset with grave administrative and fiscal problems, about which (...) Sorai had much to say.Samuel Yamashita's impressive translation of this work offers modern readers a rare glimpse of the prevailing political discourse of the day and the specific concepts that rulers had at their disposal as they struggled to manage their domains, find talented men for their bureaucracies, create new sources of revenue, and keep their subjects well fed and happy.Sorai himself, of course, is a presence in the text. He is by tunes earnest, frank, impatient, utterly confident, and occasionally condescending. Unlike his Renaissance counterpart, he is something of an optimist: he was convinced that the introduction of archaic Chinese culture and institutions to Japan would solve its myriad problems.Well-versed in Chinese history, philosophy, religion, medicine, and belles lettres, Sorai holds forth on everything from archaic Chinese divination to Sung poetry and prose. He offers advice on how to become a Confucian gentleman, how to learn to read classical Chinese, and which books to read and which to avoid. He even discusses his belief in a sentient, Chinese-style "heaven," a topic not well understood by modern scholars. Long regarded as one of Sorai's best works, Master Sorai's Reponsals bristles with the sharp and clear opinions of the most influential thinker of Tokugawa Japan. (shrink)

Cosmopolitans argue that the account of human rights and distributive justice in John Rawls's The Law of Peoples is incompatible with his argument for liberal justice. Rawls should extend his account of liberal basic liberties and the guarantees of distributive justice to apply to the world at large. This essay defends Rawls's grounding of political justice in social cooperation. The Law of Peoples is drawn up to provide principles of foreign policy for liberal peoples. Human rights are among the necessary (...) conditions for social cooperation, and so long as a decent people respect human rights, a common good, and the Law of Peoples, it is not the role of liberal peoples to impose upon well-ordered decent peoples liberal liberties they cannot endorse. Moreover, the difference principle is not an allocative or alleviatory principle, but applies to design property and other basic social institutions necessary to economic production, exchange and consumption. It presupposes political cooperation—a legislative body to actively apply it, and a legal system to apply it to. There is no feasible global state or global legal system that could serve these roles. Finally, the difference principle embodies a conception of democratic reciprocity that is only appropriate to cooperation among free and equal citizens who are socially productive and politically autonomous. a Footnotesa I am grateful to K. C. Tan for many helpful discussions and criticisms of this essay. I am also grateful to the other contributors to this volume for their comments, and to Ellen Paul for her many helpful suggestions in preparing the final version of this essay. (shrink)

Previous scholarship on states’ autonomy from the interests of society has focused primarily on nondemocratic societies, raising the question of whether “state theory” is relevant to modern states. Public‐opinion research documenting the ignorance of mass polities suggests that modern states may be as autonomous as, or more autonomous than, premodern states. Premodern states’ autonomy was secured by their ability to suppress societal dissent by force of arms. Modern states may have less recourse to overt coercion because the very thing that (...) legitimates them in the eyes of society—democracy—virtually ensures that society will not control the state, since the putative agent of control, the electorate, cannot possibly be well informed about the multitudinous tasks undertaken by modern governments. Instead of focusing solely on armies, taxes, and bureaucracies, state theorists can now direct their attention to how the vagaries of public opinion and the legitimating effects of popular elections may fuel state autonomy. (shrink)

Intertheoretic reduction in physics aspires to be both to be explanatory and perfectly general: it endeavors to explain why an older, simpler theory continues to be as successful as it is in terms of a newer, more sophisticated theory, and it aims to relate or otherwise account for as many features of the two theories as possible. Despite often being introduced as straightforward cases of intertheoretic reduction, candidate accounts of the reduction of general relativity to Newtonian gravitation have either been (...) insufficiently general or rigorous, or have not clearly been able to explain the empirical success of Newtonian gravitation. Building on work by Ehlers and others, I propose a different account of the reduction relation that is perfectly general and meets the explanatory demand one would make of it. In doing so, I highlight the role that a topology on the collection of all spacetimes plays in defining the relation, and how the selection of the topology corresponds with broader or narrower classes of observables that one demands be well-approximated in the limit. (shrink)

Legg and Hutter, as well as subsequent authors, considered intelligent agents through the lens of interaction with reward-giving environments, attempting to assign numeric intelligence measures to such agents, with the guiding principle that a more intelligent agent should gain higher rewards from environments in some aggregate sense. In this paper, we consider a related question: rather than measure numeric intelligence of one Legg- Hutter agent, how can we compare the relative intelligence of two Legg-Hutter agents? We propose an elegant answer (...) based on the following insight: we can view Legg-Hutter agents as candidates in an election, whose voters are environments, letting each environment vote (via its rewards) which agent (if either) is more intelligent. This leads to an abstract family of comparators simple enough that we can prove some structural theorems about them. It is an open question whether these structural theorems apply to more practical intelligence measures. (shrink)

In this essay, moral anti-theodicy is characterized as opposition to the trivialization of suffering, defined as the reinterpretation of horrendous evils in a way the sufferer cannot accept. Ambitious theodicy (which claim goods emerge from specific evils) is deemed always to trivialize horrendous evils and, because there is no specific theoretical context, also harm sufferers. Moral anti-theodicy is susceptible to two main criticisms. First, it is over-demanding as a moral position. Second, anti-theodicist opposition to least ambitious theodicies, which portray God's (...) decision to create as an scenario, requires a moral commitment to philosophical pessimism. Thus anti-theodicists should not be quick to take the moral high ground. However, this should not encourage theodicists, since theodicies may well be self-defeating in so far as they attempt to provide comfort. (shrink)

Skepticism in epistemology refers to the supposedly irrational attitude of suspending judgment about all beliefs, particularly those taken for granted. The skeptical attitude presses philosophy to investigate the conditions under which knowledge and justification rather than accidental truths can be arrived at. In the first chapter, we will investigate how to construct a form of radical skepticism known as Pyrrhonian skepticism; we will see how Agrippa's Trilemma builds three ways of skeptical defense to object to three possible conditions in the (...) structuring of epistemic justification. In the second chapter, we will examine infinitism as a possible answer to the trilemma, as well as the conceptual bases that make possible the existence of this possible solution to the skeptical challenge. In the third, the main objection to infinitism known as the finite mind problem will be analyzed. In the fourth chapter, we will look at an alternative formulation of the trilemma, as well as the challenges this approach poses to the anti-skeptical response. (shrink)

Adam Smith was a philosopher before he ever wrote about economics, yet until now there has never been a philosophical commentary on the Wealth of Nations . Samuel Fleischacker suggests that Smith's vastly influential treatise on economics can be better understood if placed in the light of his epistemology, philosophy of science, and moral theory. He lays out the relevance of these aspects of Smith's thought to specific themes in the Wealth of Nations , arguing, among other things, that (...) Smith regards social science as an extension of common sense rather than as a discipline to be approached mathematically, that he has moral as well as pragmatic reasons for approving of capitalism, and that he has an unusually strong belief in human equality that leads him to anticipate, if not quite endorse, the modern doctrine of distributive justice. Fleischacker also places Smith's views in relation to the work of his contemporaries, especially his teacher Francis Hutcheson and friend David Hume, and draws out consequences of Smith's thought for present-day political and philosophical debates. The Companion is divided into five general sections, which can be read independently of one another. It contains an index that points to commentary on specific passages in Wealth of Nations . Written in an approachable style befitting Smith's own clear yet finely honed rhetoric, it is intended for professional philosophers and political economists as well as those coming to Smith for the first time. (shrink)

Public health and service delivery programmes, interventions and policies are typically developed and implemented for the primary purpose of effecting change rather than generating knowledge. Nonetheless, evaluations of these programmes may produce valuable learning that helps determine effectiveness and costs as well as informing design and implementation of future programmes. Such studies might be termed ‘opportunistic evaluations’, since they are responsive to emergent opportunities rather than being studies of interventions that are initiated or designed by researchers. However, current ethical guidance (...) and registration procedures make little allowance for scenarios where researchers have played no role in the development or implementation of a programme, but nevertheless plan to conduct a prospective evaluation. We explore the limitations of the guidance and procedures with respect to opportunistic evaluations, providing a number of examples. We propose that one key missing distinction in current guidance is moral responsibility: researchers can only be held accountable for those aspects of a study over which they have control. We argue that requiring researchers to justify an intervention, programme or policy that would occur regardless of their involvement prevents or hinders research in the public interest without providing any further protections to research participants. We recommend that trial consent and ethics procedures allow for a clear separation of responsibilities for the intervention and the evaluation. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Book II, Chapter viii of Locke' Essay is a unified, self-consistent whole, and that the appearance of inconsistency is due largely to anachronistic misreadings and misunderstandings. The key to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is that the former are, while the latter are not, real properties, i.e., properties that exist in bodies independently of being perceived. Once the distinction is properly understood, it becomes clear that Locke's arguments for it are simple, valid (...) and (in one case) persuasive as well. (shrink)

Noncognitivism about normative judgment is the view that normative judgment is a distinctive kind of mental state, identical neither to belief or desire, but desire-like in its functional role and direction of fit. Noncognitivism about intention (also called the “distinctive practical attitude” theory) is the view that intention is a distinctive kind of mental state, identical neither to belief or desire, but desire-like in its functional role and direction of fit. While these theories are alike in several ways, they have (...) rarely been discussed in concert. This paper studies the relation between these two theories, focusing on the question of whether noncognitivism about intention faces an analogue of the well-known Frege-Geach problem for noncognitivism about normative judgment. I argue that whether it faces the Frege-Geach problem depends on how it treats the distinction between what Anscombe called expressions of intention and personal predictions. I show that there is substantial pressure to treat that distinction as semantic, and that a variant of the Frege-Geach problem arises for versions of noncognitivism about intention that go this route. Yet some philosophers of action may be willing to resist this pressure, and I develop a pragmatic account of the distinction that would allow such philosophers to avoid the Frege-Geach problem altogether. I argue that this pragmatic account has significant independent appeal. Notably, it provides a way for noncognitivists about intention to undercut the force of a recent argument for cognitivism due to Berislav Marušić and John Schwenkler. (shrink)

Master Sorai's Responsals was to eighteenth-century Japan what The Prince was to Renaissance Italy. Like Machiavelli, Ogyu Sorai was a humanist scholar who served a prince and drew on his experiences as a house philosopher and on his vast knowledge of history and political affairs in his work. In 1720, when he began to write the letters that comprise this text, the Tokugawa regime was more than a hundred years old and beset with grave administrative and fiscal problems, about which (...) Sorai had much to say.Samuel Yamashita's impressive translation of this work offers modern readers a rare glimpse of the prevailing political discourse of the day and the specific concepts that rulers had at their disposal as they struggled to manage their domains, find talented men for their bureaucracies, create new sources of revenue, and keep their subjects well fed and happy.Sorai himself, of course, is a presence in the text. He is by tunes earnest, frank, impatient, utterly confident, and occasionally condescending. Unlike his Renaissance counterpart, he is something of an optimist: he was convinced that the introduction of archaic Chinese culture and institutions to Japan would solve its myriad problems.Well-versed in Chinese history, philosophy, religion, medicine, and belles lettres, Sorai holds forth on everything from archaic Chinese divination to Sung poetry and prose. He offers advice on how to become a Confucian gentleman, how to learn to read classical Chinese, and which books to read and which to avoid. He even discusses his belief in a sentient, Chinese-style "heaven," a topic not well understood by modern scholars. Long regarded as one of Sorai's best works, Master Sorai's Reponsals bristles with the sharp and clear opinions of the most influential thinker of Tokugawa Japan. (shrink)

End-of-life decision making is fraught with ethical challenges. Withholding or withdrawing life support therapy is widely considered ethical in patients with high treatment burden, poor premorbid status, or significant projected disability even when such treatment is not “futile.” Whether such withdrawal of therapy in the aftermath of attempted suicide is ethical is not well established in the literature. We provide a clinical vignette and propose criteria under which such withdrawal would be ethical. We suggest that it is appropriate to withdraw (...) life support, regardless of the cause of the critical illness or disability, when the following criteria are met: Surrogates request withdrawal of care and the adequacy of surrogates is confirmed, an external reasonability standard is met, passage of time, perhaps 72 hours, to allow certainty regarding the patient's wishes, and psychiatric morbidity should be considered as grounds for withdrawal only in truly treatment-refractory cases. Fundamentally, we believe the question to ask is, “If this were not an attempted suicide, would a request to withdraw care be reasonable?” We believe that under these circumstances, such withdrawal of life support, even in an individual who has attempted suicide, does not constitute physician assistance with suicide and is distinct from physician aid-in-dying in several important respects. (shrink)

End-of-life decision making is fraught with ethical challenges. Withholding or withdrawing life support therapy is widely considered ethical in patients with high treatment burden, poor premorbid status, or significant projected disability even when such treatment is not ?futile.? Whether such withdrawal of therapy in the aftermath of attempted suicide is ethical is not well established in the literature. We provide a clinical vignette and propose criteria under which such withdrawal would be ethical. We suggest that it is appropriate to withdraw (...) life support, regardless of the cause of the critical illness or disability, when the following criteria are met: (1) Surrogates request withdrawal of care and the adequacy of surrogates is confirmed, (2) an external reasonability standard is met, (3) passage of time, perhaps 72 hours, to allow certainty regarding the patient's wishes, and (4) psychiatric morbidity should be considered as grounds for withdrawal only in truly treatment-refractory cases. Fundamentally, we believe the question to ask is, ?If this were not an attempted suicide, would a request to withdraw care be reasonable?? We believe that under these circumstances, such withdrawal of life support, even in an individual who has attempted suicide, does not constitute physician assistance with suicide and is distinct from physician aid-in-dying in several important respects. (shrink)

Adam Smith was a philosopher before he ever wrote about economics, yet until now there has never been a philosophical commentary on the Wealth of Nations. Samuel Fleischacker suggests that Smith's vastly influential treatise on economics can be better understood if placed in the light of his epistemology, philosophy of science, and moral theory. He lays out the relevance of these aspects of Smith's thought to specific themes in the Wealth of Nations, arguing, among other things, that Smith regards (...) social science as an extension of common sense rather than as a discipline to be approached mathematically, that he has moral as well as pragmatic reasons for approving of capitalism, and that he has an unusually strong belief in human equality that leads him to anticipate, if not quite endorse, the modern doctrine of distributive justice. Fleischacker also places Smith's views in relation to the work of his contemporaries, especially his teacher Francis Hutcheson and friend David Hume, and draws out consequences of Smith's thought for present-day political and philosophical debates. The Companion is divided into five general sections, which can be read independently of one another. It contains an index that points to commentary on specific passages in Wealth of Nations. Written in an approachable style befitting Smith's own clear yet finely honed rhetoric, it is intended for professional philosophers and political economists as well as those coming to Smith for the first time. (shrink)

Recently there has been a growing literature on the concept of moral certainty. This concept, which is inspired by Wittgenstein’s reflections in On Certainty, is most prominently argued for by Nigel Pleasants. Pleasants contends that there is a meaningful parallel to be drawn between the epistemic certainties discussed by Wittgenstein and moral certainties. These moral certainties are unreflective, non-propositional, and show in the ways that we act. In addition, these certainties cannot be doubted by a reasonable moral agent. In a (...) recently published article, Fairhurst is critical of Pleasants’ account. Fairhurst argues that there are problems with Pleasants’ example of a moral certainty, 'it is wrong to kill innocent non-threatening people'. Fairhurst appeals to euthanasia as an example of when a reasonable person could meaningfully doubt that it is wrong to kill innocent, non-threatening people. If this is a certainty, then a doubt such as this should not be possible. In addition, he argues that Pleasants’ claim that moral certainties are natural is not well substantiated. In this article, I attempt to defend an account of moral certainty against Fairhurst’s criticisms. I divide his criticisms into two parts. His first set of criticisms deal with Pleasants’ example of a moral certainty. I argue that some of his criticisms are inconsistent while others can be addressed by making a small amendment to Pleasants’ account. His second criticism deals with Pleasants’ claim that moral certainties are natural. In order to address this criticism, I appeal to Machery’s Nomological Account of human nature and use it as a basis that allows us to consistently make the claim that there are natural moral certainties. (shrink)

Understanding inductive reasoning is a problem that has engaged mankind for thousands of years. This problem is relevant to a wide range of fields and is integral to the philosophy of science. It has been tackled by many great minds ranging from philosophers to scientists to mathematicians, and more recently computer scientists. In this article we argue the case for Solomonoff Induction, a formal inductive framework which combines algorithmic information theory with the Bayesian framework. Although it achieves excellent theoretical results (...) and is based on solid philosophical foundations, the requisite technical knowledge necessary for understanding this framework has caused it to remain largely unknown and unappreciated in the wider scientific community. The main contribution of this article is to convey Solomonoff induction and its related concepts in a generally accessible form with the aim of bridging this current technical gap. In the process we examine the major historical contributions that have led to the formulation of Solomonoff Induction as well as criticisms of Solomonoff and induction in general. In particular we examine how Solomonoff induction addresses many issues that have plagued other inductive systems, such as the black ravens paradox and the confirmation problem, and compare this approach with other recent approaches. (shrink)