This book focuses on the degree to which certain moral and legal doctrines are rooted in specific passions that are then institutionalised in the form of criminal law. A philosophical analysis is developed of the following questions: when, if ever, should hatred be overcome by sympathy or compassion? What are forgiveness and mercy and to what degree do they require - both conceptually and morally - the overcoming of certain passions and the motivation by other passions? If forgiveness and mercy (...) indeed are moral virtues, what role, if any, should they play in the law? (shrink)

Achilles is vindictive; he wants to get even with Agamemnon. Being so disposed, he sounds rather like many current crime victims who angrily complain that the American system of criminal justice will not allow them the satisfactions they rightfully seek. These victims often feel that their particular injuries are ignored while the system addresses itself to some abstract injury to the state or to the rule of law itself – a focus that appears to result in wrongdoers being treated with (...) much greater solicitation and respect than their victims receive. If the actual victims are noticed at all, they will likely be told that there is another branch of law – tort law – that has the job of dealing with private injuries and grievances and that, if they pursue this route at their own expense, they might ultimately get some financial compensation for the wrongs done to them. However, just as Achilles felt that mere compensation was inadequate to the kind of injury done to him by Agamemnon, many of these victims will often claim that the injuries they have suffered do not admit of financial compensation. How, they might ask, can a dollar value be set on the humiliation and degradation they have experienced? They might also note that those who injure them tend, unlike Agamemnon, to be judgment-proof – so lacking in resources as to be unable to make any meaningful contribution to any compensation package that the victim may win. (shrink)

Grand Hotel Abyss investigates the lives and afterlives of the critical theorists who formed the Frankfurt School.

Chemists take mechanisms to be an important way of explaining chemical change. I examine the usefulness of the mechanism approach in the recent philosophical literature in explicating the explanatory use of mechanisms by organic chemists. I argue that chemists consider a mechanism to be explanatory because it accounts for the “dynamic process of bringing about” (Tabery 2004 , 10) chemical change. For chemists, mechanisms are causal explanations based on interventions that show “how some possibilities depend on others” (Woodward 2003 , (...) 375). Only possibilities are achievable because chemists face a number of challenges when they explain by means of a mechanism. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

There is considerable concern that climate change will displace many people in developing countries from their homes. This article examines whether developed countries are morally obligated to assist people displaced by climate change in developing countries. The article argues that there may not be a moral duty to assist climate change migrants as a category. Nonetheless, developed countries may have duties to assist vulnerable people elsewhere and may be obligated to assist climate change migrants along with other vulnerable people. In (...) addition, there likely is a duty to assist a particular subset of climate change migrants, specifically the citizens of small island countries existentially threatened by climate change. The article concludes by assessing the implications of its moral analysis for the focus of law and policy. Instead of developing new treaties to assist climate change migrants as a number of academics and practitioners have recently proposed, law and policy should be concerned with assisting migrants at risk generally, and/or the citizens of small island countries existentially threatened by climate change. (shrink)

This is a slightly revised text of Jeffrie G. Murphy’s Presidential Address delivered to the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, in March 2006. In the essay the author reconsiders two positions he had previously defended—the liberal attack on legal moralism and robust versions of the retributive theory of punishment—and now finds these positions much more vulnerable to legitimate attack than he had previously realized. In the first part of the essay, he argues that the use of Mill’s liberal harm principle (...) against legal moralism cannot be cabined in such a way as to leave intact other positions that many liberals want to defend—in particular, certain fundamental constitutional rights and character retributivism in criminal sentencing. In the second part of the essay, he expresses serious doubts—some inspired by Nietzsche—about the versions of character retributivism that he had once enthusiastically defended and now describes himself as no more than a reluctant retributivist. (shrink)

By stressing the act rather than the relation of approximation, I argue that the magnitude of the error introduced should not be used as the sole criterion for judging the worth of the approximation. Magnitude is a necessary but not sufficient condition for such a judgement. Controllability, the absence of cancelling errors, and the approximation's justification are also important criteria to consider when praising or blaming an approximation. Boltzmann's discussion of the types of approximations used in the kinetic theory of (...) gases at the turn of the century illustrates the use of these criteria. (shrink)

Simpson has claimed that “ATR0 is the weakest set of axioms which permits the development of a decent theory of countable ordinals” [8]. This paper provides empirical support for Simpson's claim. In particular, Cantor's Normal Form Theorem and Sherman's Inequality for countable well-orderings are both equivalent to ATR0. The proofs of these results require a substantial development of ordinal exponentiation and a strengthening of the comparability result in [3].

The essays in this collection explore, from philosophical and religious perspectives, a variety of moral emotions and their relationship to punishment and condemnation or to decisions to lessen punishment or condemnation.

The search for a historically conscious individual who is disposed to “radical action” is the main thrust of this paper. This is premised on the following claims: first, that the modern society is a pathological society whose rules, most often but not necessarily, imply control and domination; thus a “refusal” to abide by these rules is the most appropriate alternative available; and, second, that there is still hope for the Enlightenment’s project of emancipation, that is, such “refusal,” which means a (...) political fight for liberation, is still winnable no matter how formidable the forces of domination may be. But this paper can only do so much. I do not offer any universal and prefab solution to the pathological society. What I do instead is argue that the emergence of a historically conscious individual who is disposed to “radical action,” which eventually leads to a “collective radical action,” is still possible today. I also argue that “radical action” presupposes an awareness of the concrete socio-historical situations, thus the importance of “historicity.” This is done through a reconstructive reading of Marcuse’sCritical Theory. In fact, my argument is just an echo on what Marcuse did more than four decades ago. (shrink)

Through his stunning photography, Wyman Meinzer chronicles the life of the coyote from a flea-covered, one-pound fuzzball whelp into a glistening, furry jewel that moves with fluid grace across the Texas plains. The coyote has become the symbol of western freedom in popular culture, and historically its range was limited to west of the Mississippi River. Yet now—in spite of a hundred-year effort to exterminate this wild canine—coyote howls can be heard from Los Angeles to the Bronx and from Alaska (...) to Costa Rica. Apart from the mythology, until recently little has been known about this intelligent, adaptable creature.As he did with The Roadrunner, Meinzer gives us a personal account of the years he spent observing and photographing this often maligned animal. Seasoned with humor and poignancy, his observations give us a glimpse into the heart and soul of this intelligent and adaptable native North American. (shrink)

Scientists employ a variety of procedures to eliminate degrees of freedom from computationally and/or analytically intractable equations. In the process, they often construct new models and discover new concepts, laws and functional relations. I argue these procedures embody a central notion of reduction, namely, the containment of one structure within another. However, their inclusion in the philosophical concept of reduction necessitates a reevaluation of many standard assumptions about the ontological, epistemological and functional features of a reduction. On the basis of (...) the reevaluation, I advocate a continuum of reduction which proceeds from the eliminative to the constructive. The metaphysical aspects of theory use in constructive reductions are sketched. (shrink)

The essay examines the Underground Man's ambivalent position in Dostoevskij's hierarchy of values in light of the Nietzschean concept of ressentiment To elucidate the problem of free will in Notes from Underground, I propose to supplement Nietzsche's theory with the concept of ressentiment as developed by Max Scheler, whose endorsement of Christian love as a means of overcoming ressentiment suggests an affinity with Dostoevskij's own deeply religious worldview. With the help of Schelerian phenomenology, I read the novel as an early (...) statement of the problem of Christian freedom in Dostoevskij's oeuvre. Like the "Pro and Contra" section of The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from Underground turns our attention to the "costs" of the Christian ideal: in a world exposed to the ultimate horizon of desire through Christ, those lacking the serenity of faith may be doomed to the merciless torment of ressentiment. (shrink)

Admirers of Whitehead who know him best have suggested that Wordsworth had possibly a greater influence upon him than anyone except Plato. Nowhere apparently has Whitehead admitted such an influence, as he has that of Plato and Locke and that of William James, Bergson, and Alexander among traditional and contemporary philosophers But he had a predilection for poetry, and attributes to the great poets philosophical importance. They capture uniquely, he says, “a fragrance of experience”; and “… express deep intuitions of (...) mankind penetrating into what is universal in concrete fact.” As observers of nature both Wordsworth and Whitehead ascribed to animate and inanimate life a degree of feeling or satisfaction in the course of being and becoming. Like the poet, Whitehead must have found “joy in widest commonalty spread.” The multiplication table, he noted at one time, “… is no good to the realist. It shuts him up with Plato's ideas out of space and out of time” when “… like Wordsworth and the rest of us he wants to hear the throstle sing.”. (shrink)

Jeffry H. Morrison offers readers the first comprehensive look at the political thought and career of John Witherspoon--a Scottish Presbyterian minister and one of America's most influential and overlooked founding fathers. Witherspoon was an active member of the Continental Congress and was the only clergyman both to sign the Declaration of Independence and to ratify the federal Constitution. During his tenure as president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, Witherspoon became a mentor to James Madison and influenced many (...) leaders and thinkers of the founding period. He was uniquely positioned at the crossroads of politics, religion, and education during the crucial first decades of the new republic. Morrison locates Witherspoon in the context of early American political thought and charts the various influences on his thinking. This impressive work of scholarship offers a broad treatment of Witherspoon's constitutionalism, including his contributions to the mediating institutions of religion and education, and to political institutions from the colonial through the early federal periods. This book will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in American political history and thought and in the relation of religion to American politics. (shrink)

Based on a series of lectures delivered at the University of Virginia in October 1981. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Explore, as few have intimately done, the Big Bend Ranch State Park and the Chinati Mountains State Natural Area. Trust Wyman Meinzer to see as no one ever has the desert sanctuaries of the vast Big Bend and to pay tribute to their best-kept secret, the twin canyons of the Chinati Mountains, San Antonio and Los Pelos. Trust, too, that the images he delivers are as true as his eye, that the light bathing cholla at sunrise, on the eastern rim (...) of San Antonio Canyon, is unfiltered. Meinzer is one photographer who still waits for and catches the light, even if he has only a thirty-second window.?Placing a border around the vastness of the Big Bend is typically an invitation to disappointment. Reducing its depth to a medium of two dimensions tends to flatten a landscape known to be anything but flat. Catching the ever-changing moods of light and color in fractions of a second normally embalms the scene. So how does Wyman give us photos full of expansive depth and color? His skill is his passion for the beauty of Texas and his unwavering will to get to the toughest spots. He is an adventurer first and a photographer second. Wyman feels the land and sky. He becomes a part of the terrain, and his photos make you part of the scenery.” From the Introduction. (shrink)

The prevalence of social pathologies in contemporary societies has triggered many critical theorists to challenge or even disrupt the status quo in the hope for a better society. Thus, the notion of social transformation or, better yet, emancipation has become one of the central themes in critical social theory. This paper aims to contribute to this scholarship through an exposition of Herbert Marcuse's attempt to socialize Georg Hegel's ontology. Inparticular, this paper aims to show how Marcuse explains the possibility of (...) social transformation by appropriating key concepts in Hegel's huge philosophical system, most particularly from Hegel's Logic and the phenomenology of mind. (shrink)

We have all been victims of wrongdoing. Forgiving that wrongdoing is one of the staples of current pop psychology dogma; it is seen as a universal prescription for moral and mental health in the self-help and recovery section of bookstores. At the same time, personal vindictiveness as a rule is seen as irrational and immoral. In many ways, our thinking on these issues is deeply inconsistent; we value forgiveness yet at the same time now use victim-impact statements to argue for (...) harsher penalties for criminals. Do we have a right to hate others for what they have done to us? Providing a nuanced approach to a proper understanding of the place of our strongest emotions in moral, political, and personal life, and using lucid, easily understood prose, this volume is a classic example of philosophical thinking applied to a thorny, everyday problem. (shrink)

Jeffry H. Morrison offers readers the first comprehensive look at the political thought and career of John Witherspoon—a Scottish Presbyterian minister and one of America’s most influential and overlooked founding fathers. Witherspoon was an active member of the Continental Congress and was the only clergyman both to sign the Declaration of Independence and to ratify the federal Constitution. During his tenure as president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, Witherspoon became a mentor to James Madison and influenced many (...) leaders and thinkers of the founding period. He was uniquely positioned at the crossroads of politics, religion, and education during the crucial first decades of the new republic. Morrison locates Witherspoon in the context of early American political thought and charts the various influences on his thinking. This impressive work of scholarship offers a broad treatment of Witherspoon’s constitutionalism, including his contributions to the mediating institutions of religion and education, and to political institutions from the colonial through the early federal periods. This book will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in American political history and thought and in the relation of religion to American politics. “I have been waiting a long time for such a book on John Witherspoon. This book is not only well-researched, but well-written. The story Morrison tells is quite wonderful.” —_Michael Novak, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research_ _ _ "Dr. John Witherspoon is at once an exceptionally influential figure in Early American history, and a sadly neglected one. Professor Morrison's book fills this gap in American political history brilliantly. It is especially revealing of 18th century views on the interrationships between education, religion, and society. Morrison presents new insights into the Early American understanding of balancing faith, government, and society. It will change our conceptions of this period and provide fresh perspectives on contemporary problems. Everyone interested in the American Founding era is indebted to Morrison for this illuminating book." —_Garrett Ward Sheldon, University of Virginia's College at Wise_ "At last we have a full and learned account, as the title states, of _JOHN WITHERSPOON aND THE FOUNDING OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC_. Including discussion of Witherspoon's direct role in the crucial events of 1775-1790 as an advocate of Independence and friend of the Constitution, as a contributor to early American religious and political thought, and most important, as a mentor to James Madison and other Princeton revolutionairies and nation-builders, Morrison reveals Witherspoon's high standing in American religious, educational, and political history. Madison remembered Witherspoon's injunction to his students to 'Lead useful Lives;' he provided an excellent role model." —_Ralph Ketcham, Syracuse University_. (shrink)

For over forty years, Leland Ryken has championed and modeled a Christian liberal arts education. His scholarship and commitment to integrating faith with learning in the classroom have influenced thousands of students who have sat under his winsome teaching. Published in honor of Professor Ryken and presented on the occasion of his retirement from Wheaton College, this compilation carries on his legacy of applying a Christian liberal arts education to all areas of life. Five sections explore the background of a (...) Christian liberal arts education, its theological basis, habits and virtues, differing approaches, and ultimate aims. Contributors including Philip Ryken, Jeffry Davis, Duane Litfin, John Walford, Alan Jacobs, and Jim Wilhoit analyze liberal arts as they relate to the disciplines, the Christian faith, and the world. Also included are a transcript of a well-known 1984 chapel talk delivered by Leland Ryken on the student's calling and practical chapters on how to read, write, and speak well. Comprehensive in scope, this substantial volume will be a helpful guide to anyone involved in higher education, as well as to students, pastors, and leaders looking for resources on the importance of faith in learning. - Publisher. (shrink)

Framing Meinzer's work in elegant historic context, preeminent Panhandle historian Frederick W. Rathjen gives us a rare appreciation of the topographic majesty of the Periman Red Beds that 230 to 280 million years ago lay below a shallow sea and through subsequent millennia and riverine deposit, erosion, and redeposit would gain 'variegated walls and formations of gray, yellow, maroon, lavender and orange shown most conspicuously in the lovely Spanish Skirts.".

IntroductionIn highly developed countries, as many as 16 percent of children are physically abused each year. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the most common injury in non-accidental trauma (NAT) and is responsible for 80 percent of fatal NAT cases, with most deaths occurring in children younger than three years old. Cases of abusers who refuse withdrawal of life-sustaining medical treatment (LSMT) to avoid criminal charges have previously been reported. Therefore, we hypothesized that NAT is associated with a lower risk for (...) withdrawal LSMT in pediatric TBI.MethodsThe pediatric Trauma Quality Improvement Program database was analyzed (2014 to 2016) for patients aged 16 and younger with TBI and Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) of 8 and lower on admission. Patients with a head Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) of 2 or less or who died within 48 hours were excluded. A multivariable logistic regression model was used for analysis.ResultsOf 2,209 TBI patients, 92 (4.2 percent) had withdrawal of LSMT. Compared to those without withdrawal of LMST, those with LMST had statistically similar median age (three years of age versus seven years, p = 0.07) and a higher rate of NAT (33.7 percent versus 13.5 percent, p < 0.001). The most common specified perpetrator was a father/stepfather/ male partner (70 percent). After adjusting for covariates, factors associated with higher risk for withdrawal of LSMT included age of less than three years (OR 2.38, CI 1.34-4.23, p < 0.05) and NAT (OR 1.86, CI 1.02-3.41, p < 0.05).ConclusionNAT is associated with increased risk for withdrawal of LSMT in pediatric TBI. Age of less than three years is similarly associated with a higher risk for withdrawal of LSMT. Future research in this population is needed to determine what other factors predict withdrawal of LSMT and what resources, such as social workers and/or ethics consults, are utilized. (shrink)

The authors present a balanced critique of the adaptation/exaptation debate and specify some of the hard evidentiary criteria that are needed to advance our understanding of human evolution. Investigators must build more “special design” criteria into their theorizing and research. By documenting that certain traits meet these rigorous criteria, the evolutionary sciences will ultimately rest on a firmer theoretical foundation.

Human mating and parenting are more complex than has been implied by many evolutionarily based theories of sex differences. While focusing on sex differences might shed some light on the evolution of mating and parenting, this level of analysis is rather imprecise. More important, it ignores several ecological variables that should have influenced mating/parenting decisions and behaviors in both sexes.