Ross Poole displays the social content of the various conceptions of morality at work in contemporary society, and casts a strikingly fresh light on such fundamental problems as the place of reason in ethics, moral objectivity and the distinction between duty and virtue. The book provides a critical account of the moral theories of a number of major philosophers, including Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Habermas, Rawls, Gewirth and MacIntyre. It also presents a systematic critique of three of the most (...) significant responses to modernity: liberalism, nationalism and nihilism. It takes seriously the suggestion that men and women are subject to different conceptions of morality, and places the issue of gender at the centre of moral philosophy. Poole has written a valuable addition to the Ideas series. (shrink)

Nation and Identity provides a concise and comprehensive account of the place of national identity in modern life. Ross Poole argues that the nation became a fundamental organising principle of social, political and moral life during the period of early modernity and that is has provided the organising principle of much liberal, republican and democratic thought. Ross Poole offers us a new and urgently needed analysis of the concept of identity, arguing that we are now in (...) a position to envisage the end of nationalism. We see that the impact of issues like multiculturalism, republicanism, and indigenous rights have made it very difficult to see how the possibility of a postnational cosmopolitanism could not degenerate into a nihilistic moral universe. Nation and Identity will be a fascinating read for all those interested in issues of national identity, both politically and philosophically. (shrink)

An important role of memory, both individual and collective, is to remind us of what we owe to the past. To understand this role, we need to conceive memory not merely in cognitive terms, but also as what Nietzsche called "memory of the will." It is this "conative" aspect of memory which explains the link between memory and identity. There still remain problems of how to explain how a collective memory "of the will" is transmitted over long periods of time, (...) and how to explain certain familiar pathologies . In the later parts of the paper, I look at Jan Assmann's important contributions to this question. (shrink)

This paper questions the assumption that the term 'person' designates what we essentially are or ought to be. I use Hegel to argue against Locke and Kant that personal identity is not the foundation of certain legal and moral practices but their effect; and Nietzsche to suggest that being a person is the price we pay for certain kinds of social life. The concept of a person is an abstraction from our human and embodied existence, and to assume that it (...) picks out what is central to our existence makes it impossible to understand the moral significance of birth, growth, dependence, sexuality, procreation and death. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to identify and partially defend a form of practical reason involved in a number of central cases of human action. Against the claims of rational choice theory that reasoning about action is primarily instrumental, it argues for a form of practical reason which allows for the indeterminate, open?ended and creative nature of the most important examples of human action. Rational choice theory not only gives a distorted account of the reasoning involved in these cases; (...) it also ? and more fundamentally ? misconceives the nature of human agency. What moves us to act are characteristically not our ?preferences?, but our ?desires?, and the logic of desire is not that of means to end, but of narrative coherence. The paper also argues that rational choice theory fails to recognize the essentially social nature of rationality, and in its ambition to construct social theory on the basis of rational choice it fails to recognize the fundamental role of trust in social relationships. (shrink)

An important role of memory, both individual and collective, is to remind us of what we owe to the past. To understand this role, we need to conceive memory not merely in cognitive terms, but also as what Nietzsche called "memory of the will." It is this "conative" aspect of memory which explains the link between memory and identity. There still remain problems of how to explain how a collective memory "of the will" is transmitted over long periods of time, (...) and how to explain certain familiar pathologies. In the later parts of the paper, I look at Jan Assmann's important contributions to this question. (shrink)

In August 2000, Arthur Matas and his colleagues de scribed a protocol in which their institution began to accept as potential donors, individuals who came to the University of Minnesota hospital offering to donate a kidney to any patient on the waiting list. Matas and his colleagues refer to these donors as nondirected donors by which is meant that the donors are altruistic and that they give their organs to an unspecified pool of recipients with whom they have no emotional (...) relationship. This paper represents an ethical and policy critique of the nondirected donation protocol that was implemented at the University of Minnesota in August 1999. Specifically, I address the ethical questions: Whether altruistic living solid organ donations by strangers should be permitted? And if so, What are appropriate ethical guidelines for such donations? (shrink)

In August 2000, Arthur Matas and his colleagues de scribed a protocol in which their institution began to accept as potential donors, individuals who came to the University of Minnesota hospital offering to donate a kidney to any patient on the waiting list. Matas and his colleagues refer to these donors as nondirected donors by which is meant that the donors are altruistic and that they give their organs to an unspecified pool of recipients with whom they have no emotional (...) relationship. This paper represents an ethical and policy critique of the nondirected donation protocol that was implemented at the University of Minnesota in August 1999. Specifically, I address the ethical questions: Whether altruistic living solid organ donations by strangers should be permitted? And if so, What are appropriate ethical guidelines for such donations? (shrink)

Jeffrey Kahn and I agree that organ donation by altruistic strangers is acceptable, and that the organ procured this way ought to be allocated equitably. Our agreement in principle, however, is challenged in the details of its application. Specifically, I want to focus on three issues raised by Kahn that merit further discussion: whether relationships matter; how kidneys should be allocated; and the ethical acceptability of the expanded donor pool.

Jeffrey Kahn and I agree that organ donation by altruistic strangers is acceptable, and that the organ procured this way ought to be allocated equitably. Our agreement in principle, however, is challenged in the details of its application. Specifically, I want to focus on three issues raised by Kahn that merit further discussion: whether relationships matter; how kidneys should be allocated; and the ethical acceptability of the expanded donor pool.

Original essays by leading philosophers of science explore the question of whether metaphysics can and should be naturalized--conducted as part of natural science.

The Right and the Good, a classic of twentieth-century philosophy by the great scholar Sir David Ross, is now presented in a new edition with a substantial introduction by Philip Stratton-Lake, a leading expert on Ross. Ross's book is the pinnacle of ethical intuitionism, which was the dominant moral theory in British philosophy for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Intuitionism is now enjoying a considerable revival, and Stratton-Lake provides the context for a proper understanding (...) of Ross's great work today. (shrink)

Sir David Ross was one of the most distinguished and influential Aristotelians of this century; his study has long been established as an authoritative survey ...

Martine Nida-Rümelin (1996) argues that color science indicates behaviorally undetectable spectrum inversion is possible and raises this possibility as an objection to functionalist accounts of visual states of color. I show that her argument does not rest solely on color science, but also on a philosophically controversial assumption, namely, that visual states of color supervene on physiological states. However, this assumption, on the part of philosophers or vision scientists, has the effect of simply ruling out certain versions of functionalism. While (...) Nida-Rümelin is quite right to search for empirical tests for claims about the nature of visual states, philosophical issues remain pivotal in determining the correctness of these claims. (shrink)

Ross P. Cameron argues that the flow of time is a genuine feature of reality. He suggests that the best version of the A-Theory is a version of the Moving Spotlight view, according to which past and future beings are real, but there is nonetheless an objectively privileged present. Cameron argues that the Moving Spotlight theory should be viewed as having more in common with Presentism than with the B-Theory. Furthermore, it provides the best account of truthmakers for claims (...) about what was or will be the case. Cameron goes on to defend an account of the open future, and argues that this is a better account than that available to the Growing Block theory. (shrink)

Ross, Alf Loar, Brian, Editor.Directives and Norms. New York: Humanities Press, [1967]. ix, 188 pp. Reprint available April 2009 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN-13: 978-1-58477-961-2. ISBN-10: 1-58477-961-6. Cloth with dust jacket. $65.00 * Reprint of the first American edition. One of the most interesting jurists of the post-World War II era, Ross [1899-1979] was a legal and moral philosopher, scholar of international law and the leading representative of Scandinavian Legal Realism. This book and On Law and Justice (...) (1958) are his principal works. In Directives and Norms Ross asks whether imperatives (or, to use his term, 'directives') are subject to logic in the same way as indicatives. He shows the difference between indicative and directive discourse and explains the concepts 'directive' and 'norm' as they function in the social sciences, especially in the study of law. A contemporary essay in the Modern Law Review (32:544), though critical of this work, was still impressed by its "clear and convincing account" of these processes. (shrink)

The connection between whole and part is intimate: not only can we share the same space, but I’m incapable of leaving my parts behind; settle the nonmereological facts and you thereby settle what is a part of what; wholes don’t seem to be an additional ontological commitment over their parts. Composition as identity promises to explain this intimacy. But it threatens to make the connection too intimate, for surely the parts could have made a different whole and the whole have (...) had different parts. In this paper I attempt to offer an account of parthood that is intimate enough but not too intimate: the parts generate the whole, but they are not themselves the whole. (shrink)

This article begins by examining the concept of the pharmakon that is developed in Derrida’s essay ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’, as it is here that the idea of a medium that is simultaneously poisonous and therapeutic is developed in relation to the discursive effects of writing. The author then goes on to look at Stiegler’s attempt to reconfigure the ‘orthographic economy’ of deconstruction, particularly his account of how the ‘tertiary supports’ of virtual and information technologies have transformed the experience of the real (...) in the regime of global capitalisation. Finally, he argues that the appearance of the pharmakon as a matrix idea in his work, sharpens his account of the aporia of technological society: for the impossibility of human culture being reduced to either the disorientated life industrial populism, or to idealist notions of reflexivity, is what, for Stiegler, offers the chance of a new politics of spirit. (shrink)

A collection of 22 interviews and one personal essay, _Julia Kristeva Interviews_ presents an intimate and accessible portrait of one of France's most important critical thinkers and intellectual personalities.

'Chains of Being' argues that there can be infinite chains of dependence or grounding. Cameron also defends the view that there can be circular relations of ontological dependence or grounding, and uses these claims to explore issues in logic and ontology.

ABSTRACT A thriving project in contemporary epistemology concerns identifying and explicating the epistemic virtues. Although there is little sustained argument for this claim, a number of prominent sources suggest that curiosity is an epistemic virtue. In this paper, I provide an account of the virtue of curiosity. After arguing that virtuous curiosity must be appropriately discerning, timely and exacting, I then situate my account in relation to two broader questions for virtue responsibilists: What sort of motivations are required for epistemic (...) virtue? And do epistemic virtues need to be reliable? I will sketch an account on which curiosity is only virtuous when rooted in a non-instrumental appreciation of epistemic goods, before arguing that curiosity can exhibit intellectual virtue irrespective of whether one is reliable in satisfying it. (shrink)

What are the ontological commitments of a sentence? In this paper I offer an answer from the perspective of the truthmaker theorist that contrasts with the familiar Quinean criterion. I detail some of the benefits of thinking of things this way: they include making the composition debate tractable without appealing to a neo-Carnapian metaontology, making sense of neo-Fregeanism, and dispensing with some otherwise recalcitrant necessary connections.

I argue that traditional views on which beliefs are subject only to purely epistemic assessment can reject demographic profiling, even when based on seemingly robust evidence. This is because the moral failures involved in demographic profiling can be located in the decision not to suspend judgment, rather than supposing that beliefs themselves are a locus of moral evaluation. A key moral reason to suspend judgment when faced with adverse demographic evidence is to promote social equality—this explains why positive profiling is (...) dubious, along with more familiar cases of negative profiling, and why profiling is suspect even when no particular action is at stake. My suspension-based view, while compatible with revisionary normative positions, does not presuppose them. Philosophers of all stripes can reject demographic profiling both in thought and deed. (shrink)