Affirmative action programs are not justified by compensatory justice. They place a disproportionate burden on white-male applicants. White-male applicants do not owe compensation because they committed a relevant wrongdoing or because they benefitted from another’s wrongdoing. They did not commit a relevant wrongdoing. Receipt of an unjust benefit, when unavoidable and mixed with hard work, does not justify a duty to compensate a victim of the injustice. Thus, the compensatory-justice argument for affirmative action fails.

In trust relationships, one person has a ‘beneficial interest’ in another’s performance. The former not only would but should benefit from the latter’s action, and the latter has a ‘fiduciary duty’ toward the former to so act. But where that act would otherwise be wrong, the first person’s beneficial interest would be providing a pro tanto reason for the second person to do something that is pro tanto wrong. That reason can – and should – be removed by (...) the former renouncing their beneficial interest in the latter’s pro tanto wrongful action. Doing so would cancel the fiduciary’s excuse for wrongdoing on the beneficiary’s behalf. (shrink)

In Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov is an impoverished university student who commits a brutal double-murder of an old money-lender and her sister, and then for much of the novel manages to evade detection.1 He is racked by guilt and anxiety from the act. Sonia is a young woman who lives with her parents and several siblings. Her father is an alcoholic, unable to hold down a job, and Sonia has therefore become a prostitute to support the (...) family. What is remarkable about Sonia is that she feels no bitterness, either to her father, or to her family, or to her clients, or even to fate itself.The novel traces an arc from the murders in part I to Raskolnikov's confession to the police .. (shrink)

This article explores the ethical architecture of the ‘beneficiary pays’ principle, which holds that agents can come to possess remedial obligations of corrective justice to others through the involuntary receipt of benefits stemming from injustice. Advocates of the principle face challenges of both persuasion and limitation in seeking to convince those unmoved of its normative force, and to explain in which cases of benefiting from injustice it does and does not give rise to rectificatory obligations. The article (...) considers ways in which advocates of the principle might seek to win over those sceptical of its merits by employing a modified principle which sidesteps the issue of enforceability, before considering the question of whether the argument can be expanded from cases of benefiting from wrongdoing specifically to other sorts of situation where one agent involuntarily benefits from another's loss. (shrink)

Some normative theorists believe that there is a principled moral reason not to retain benefits realized by injustice or wrongdoing. However, critics have argued that this idea is implausible. One purported problem is that the idea lacks an obvious rationale and that attempts to provide one have been unconvincing. This paper articulates and defends the idea that the principled reason in question has an expressive quality: it gets its reason-giving force from the symbolic aptness of such an act (...) as an expressive response to wrongdoing. The paper thus argues that at least in a certain subset of cases, renouncing benefits realized by injustice amounts to a powerful and uniquely apt expression of protest against the disrespect for the victim that is implied by the wrongdoer’s actions. The paper shows how this idea can inform the question of reparations for slavery and its aftermath in the United States. Lastly it develops an important objection to the argument presented and gives an account of how this objection can be met. (shrink)

This paper examines the logic and morality of the German Stem Cell Act of 2002. After a brief description of the law’s scope and intent, its ethical dimensions are analysed in terms of symbolic threats, indirect consequences, and the encouragement of immorality. The conclusions are twofold. For those who want to accept the law, the arguments for its rationality and morality can be sound. For others, the emphasis on the uniqueness of the German experience, the combination of absolute and qualified (...) value judgments, and the lingering questions of indirect encouragement of immoral activities will probably be too much. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper examines the logic and morality of the German Stem Cell Act of 2002. After a brief description of the law's scope and intent, its ethical dimensions are analysed in terms of symbolic threats, indirect consequences, and the encouragement of immorality. The conclusions are twofold. For those who want to accept the law, the arguments for its rationality and morality can be sound. For others, the emphasis on the uniqueness of the German experience, the combination of absolute and (...) qualified value judgments, and the lingering questions of indirect encouragement of immoral activities will probably be too much. (shrink)

Dominant theories of moral blame require an individual to have caused or intended harm. However, across four studies we demonstrate cases where no harm is caused or intended, yet individuals are nonetheless deemed worthy of blame. Specifically, individuals are judged to be blameworthy when they engage in actions that enable them to benefit from another’s misfortune (for example, betting that a company’s stock will decline or that a natural disaster will occur). We present evidence suggesting that perceptions of (...) the actor’s wicked desires are responsible for this phenomenon. We argue that these results are consistent with a growing literature demonstrating that moral judgments are often the product of evaluations of character in addition to evaluations of acts. (shrink)

When does benefiting from others’ wrongdoing effectively make one a moral accomplice in their evil deeds? If stem cell research lives up to its therapeutic promise, this question (which has previously cropped up in debates over fetal tissue research or the use of Nazi research data) is likely to become a central one for opponents of embryo destruction. I argue that benefiting from wrongdoing is prima facie morally wrong under any of three conditions: (1) (...) when the wrongdoer is one’s agent; (2) when acceptance of benefit directly encourages the repetition of the wrongful deed (even though no agency relationship is involved); and (3) when acceptance of a benefit legitimates a wrongful practice. I conclude by showing that, because of the ways in which most embryonic stem cell lines come into being, people who oppose embryo destruction may use human embryonic stem cells without incurring moral blame. (shrink)

While there are many points of opposition between the political philosophies of Marx and Kant, the two can greatly benefit from one another in various ways. Bringing the ideas of Marx and Kant together offers a promising way forward for each view. Most significantly, a powerful critique of capitalism can be developed from their combined thought: Kant’s political philosophy offers a robust idea of freedom to ground this critique, while Marx provides the nuanced understanding of social and political (...) power structures under capitalism that allows this idea of freedom to be properly applied. (shrink)

Agents sometimes innocently benefit from the wrongdoing perpetrated by others. It has been asserted that when this happens the beneficiary acquires a defeasible duty to disgorge these benefits until the beneficiary’s gain is extinguished or the victim’s loss has been reversed. At the same time, critics have denied the existence of duties of disgorgement. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by proposing a novel account of the underlying justification, or rationale, for disgorgement duties grounded in the (...) value of corrective justice. An agent benefiting from injustice has a duty to disgorge, on this account, because fulfilling this duty helps correct injustice by making it as though the transaction that wrongfully enriched them had never happened. We go on to address five objections to this account of disgorgement duties and argue that the corrective justice account can withstand these objections. (shrink)

Regan appeals to the benefit of the doubt as a reason to include some animals within the scope of his arguments about the rights of animals. I think the informal appeal to the benefit of the doubt can be fleshed out and made more compelling. What I shall do differs from his project, however. It is narrower in scope, because I shall focus on a single issue, the dietary use of animals. On another dimension, though, I aim to do (...) more. Regan thinks that it is “not unreasonable” to extend the benefit of the doubt, and that it is better to do so. I shall be arguing that it is unreasonable not to do so. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 20 According to the fair play defense of political obligations citizens have a reciprocity-based duty to share the costs involved in the production of public goods. But sometimes, states produce collective goods through wrongdoing. For example, sometimes states’ wrongful immigration policies can contribute to the welfare of their own populations. Do citizens have duties of reciprocity in light of such wrongful benefits? I argue that the answer to this question is negative. Drawing on the observation (...) that beneficiaries of wrongdoing incur compensatory duties to the victims of that wrongdoing, I argue that, rather than having a duty of reciprocity for wrongful benefits, citizens have a duty to disgorge the benefits in compensation. Furthermore, the fair play defense of political obligations entails that citizens can be justified in disobeying the law in order to comply with their compensatory duties to victims of their state’s wrongdoing. (shrink)

According to the fair play defense of political obligations citizens have a reciprocity-based duty to share the costs involved in the production of public goods. But sometimes, states produce collective goods through wrongdoing. For example, sometimes states’ wrongful immigration policies can contribute to the welfare of their own populations. Do citizens have duties of reciprocity in light of such wrongful benefits? I argue that the answer to this question is negative. Drawing on the observation that beneficiaries of wrongdoing (...) incur compensatory duties to the victims of that wrongdoing, I argue that, rather than having a duty of reciprocity for wrongful benefits, citizens have a duty to disgorge the benefits in compensation. Furthermore, the fair play defense of political obligations entails that citizens can be justified in disobeying the law in order to comply with their compensatory duties to victims of their state’s wrongdoing. (shrink)

Future mobility planning to cope with ongoing environmental challenges such as air pollution has to be anchored in the work of every public authority worldwide. One recent trend that could support public authorities to meet the European Union’s sustainability targets is the creation and sharing of transport and mobility “big” data between public authorities via tools such as crowdsourcing. While the benefits of the use of big data to increase public authorities’ efficiency and effectivity and their citizens’ lives is well (...) understood, examples from the public sector that highlight public authorities’ engagement in such sharing activities is still missing. To date relevant literature has highlighted issues around the capacity of public authorities that hinder shared activities. In this paper we want to raise distrust as a key reason for lack of engagement. Based on comprehensive data collected over the period of 4 years via several workshops and semi-structured interviews with seven public authorities in Europe, we are able to demonstrate that a major obstacle for not providing and sharing data via crowdsourcing for mutual benefit lies primarily in the hands of the public authority’s servants of the middle and high-level management. Our results show firstly, that distrust may emerge toward different referents such as the community, particular individuals, or the technology itself and thus, managerial implications have to be very specific to overcome distrust. Secondly, we show how distrust may spread from one referent to another through negative reciprocity and which, if unchecked may lead to an all-encompassing state that affects the whole sharing economy framework and inhibits potential benefits. (shrink)

There are a number of ways in which a person can share the guilt of another's wrongdoing. He might advise it, command it or consent to it. He might provoke it, praise it, flatter the wrongdoer, or conceal the wrong. He might stay silent when there is a clear duty to denounce the wrong or its perpetrator; or he might positively defend the wrong done. Finally, he might actively participate or cooperate in the wrongdoing. These various activities, apart (...) from cooperation, typically occur before or after the commission of the wrong itself, only provocation being essentially before the fact. As such they fall into the categories of seduction or comfort, seduction being essentially pre-commission and comfort post-commission. In seduction, the seducer typically leads another into doing wrong who has not definitely made up his mind. He does not assist in the commission, but he leads to its occurring. If the principal has made up his mind, actions which might otherwise amount to seduction are best characterized as amounting to scandal, since they do not lead to wrong but reinforce the principal in his wrongful intent or provide to third parties a bad example since they connote approval of the principal's action. Closely related to the concept of seduction is that of solicitation, though perhaps these are best thought of as two aspects of the same kind of activity. Seduction can be thought of as a strong form of inducement to wrong, typified by command, counsel and enticement through praise or provocation. Solicitation is a softer form of inducement typically involving requests, appeals, and invitations. Whereas the seducer or solicitor leads another into wrong but does not assist in its commission, the co-operator does not lead the principal into wrong but assists in its commission. (shrink)

Film can be a significant way of doing public philosophy. This chapter sketches some essential public features of philosophy by using popular films. Learning to watch popular films as philosophical expressions, on par with books and articles, brings film and philosophy to inform one another and illuminate important areas of overlap. Memento is an especially uncanny film because it begins with the story's ending. Daniel J. Clark's 2018 documentary film Behind the Curve charts the resurgence of flat‐Earth theory in the (...) United States. Its core thesis is that false, avowed belief in flat‐Earth is sustained partly by an irrational weighing of evidence reinforced by various social, psychological, and economic benefits that come from holding the belief. We gain insight into a classic mechanism of motivated reasoning from Tony Kaye's film American History X, a fictional exploration of the rise of white supremacist ideology in US white working‐class neighborhoods. (shrink)

Many clinicians are experiencing consumer resistance to the prescription of equine HRT (that is hormone replacement therapy which has been manufactured from mare's urine). In this paper I consider the ethical implications of prescribing these preparations. I decide that patients should have a right to refuse such treatment but also ask whether a prescribing doctor should choose one preparation over another on moral grounds. I determine that there is prima facie evidence to suggest that mares may suffer and that (...) prescription of equine HRT (instead of synthetic oestrogen-oestriol) would therefore have to be justified in terms of either offering greater benefits to the women or offering greater value for money to the health service. I find that there is no substantial evidence to suggest that equine HRT offers unique advantages over and above oestriol. I conclude that it would be preferable for a doctor to recommend the synthetic oestrogen to women who want relief from the symptoms of the menopause and protection from osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. (shrink)

© 2015 NATCO, The Organization for Transplant Professionals.Despite the known benefits of kidney transplant, less than 30% of the 615 000 patients living with end-stage renal disease in the United States have received a transplant. More than 100 000 people are presently on the transplant waiting list. Although the shortage of kidneys for transplant remains a critical factor in explaining lower transplant rates, another important and modifiable factor is patients' lack of comprehensive education about transplant. The purpose of this article (...) is to provide an overview of known best practices from the broader literature that can be used as an evidence base to design improved education for ESRD patients pursuing a kidney transplant. Best practices in chronic disease education generally reveal that education that is individually tailored, understandable for patients with low health literacy, and culturally competent is most beneficial. Effective education helps patients navigate the complex health care process successfully. Recommendations for how to incorporate these best practices into transplant education design are described. Providing more ESRD patients with transplant education that encompasses these best practices may improve their ability to make informed health care decisions and increase the numbers of patients interested in pursuing transplant. (shrink)

Since the appearance of Dodds's edition of Gorgias a number of the dialogues in tetr. I-VII have benefited from a re-examination of the evidence for the Platonic text—most notably Meno, tetr. IV, Parmenides, and Phaedrus. Recently the textual tradition of Phaedo has been studied by A. Carlini in a useful book which traces the fortunes of the text from antiquity until the time of the major manuscripts. The evidence thus accumulated goes some way to lessening a problem which (...) has long been obvious—the difficulty of studying the tradition of any single dialogue in isolation from the rest of the Platonic corpus. I propose to argue, however, that the bulk of evidence now available for several dialogues should not blind us to another hazard—that of attempting to fit dialogues showing different textual features into what is basically a single stemmatic pattern. (shrink)

Previous chapters considered value theories of psychology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy. These disciplines can benefit and learn from one another, and closer interaction between disciplines will lead to better value theory. To facilitate an interdisciplinary understanding of value, this chapter will highlight the overlap between the different disciplines and what they can learn from one another. Each section of this chapter compares two disciplines and highlights overlaps, similarities, and differences. The hope is that this constructive comparison will build (...) a bridge between disciplines, which helps to advance the theory development within the disciplines and brings theoretical blind spots into focus. Bringing disciplines together is the first step towards crossing disciplinary boundaries, resolving conceptual differences, and increasing interdisciplinary communication. (shrink)

Bracket out the wrong of committing a wrong, or conspiring or colluding or conniving with others in their committing one. Suppose you have done none of those things, and you find yourself merely benefiting from a wrong committed wholly by someone else. What, if anything, is wrong with that? What, if any, duties follow from it? If straightforward restitution were possible — if you could just ‘give back’ what you received as a result of the wrongdoing (...) to its rightful owner — then matters are morally more straightforward. But in real-world cases that is often impossible, and questions of ‘how much, from whom and to whom?’ become far more vexing. The beneficiary disgorging all benefits of the wrong is part of the story, but where that is not possible or will not suffice to compensate the victim of wrongdoing we discuss various ways of allocating the cost of making the victim whole, including supplementation from public coffers. (shrink)

Some moral theorists argue that innocent beneficiaries of wrongdoing may have special remedial duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims of the wrongdoing. These arguments generally aim to simply motivate the idea that being a beneficiary can provide an independent ground for charging agents with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Consequently, they have neglected contexts in which it is implausible to charge beneficiaries with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing, thereby failing (...) to explore the limits of the benefiting relation in detail. Our aim in this article is to identify a criterion to distinguish contexts in which innocent beneficiaries plausibly bear remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing from those in which they do not. We argue that innocent beneficiaries incur special duties to the victims of wrongdoing if and only if receiving and retaining the benefits sustains wrongful harm. We develop this criterion by identifying and explicating two general modes of sustaining wrongful harm. We also show that our criterion offers a general explanation for why some innocent beneficiaries incur a special duty to the victims of wrongdoing while others do not. By sustaining wrongful harm, beneficiaries-with-duties contribute to wrongful harm, and we ordinarily have relatively stringent moral requirements against contributing to wrongful harm. On our account, innocently benefiting from wrongdoing _per se_ does not generate duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Rather, beneficiaries acquire such duties because their receipt and retention of the benefits of wrongdoing contribute to the persistence of the wrongful harm suffered by the victim. We conclude by showing that our proposed criterion also illuminates why there can be reasonable disagreement about whether beneficiaries have a duty to victims in some social contexts. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with Noam Chomsky's influence on historical linguistics, one might also ask about the influence of historical linguistics on Chomskyan thought. It outlines the tension between Chomskyan generative grammar and historical linguistics and argues how both have been beneficial to each other. Generative grammar and historical linguistics can benefit from each other's insights. The chapter explains how there is a great deal of influence of Chomskyan, generative linguistics on historical linguistics, in particular syntax, and also shows (...) how Third Factor Principles shape language change. Chomsky's current focus on labeling as a Third Factor effect necessitated by the interfaces and unconnected to Merge makes it possible to see syntactic change in another way, namely as a resolution to labeling problems. Apart from labeling, there are other Third Factor Principles, such as the one to avoid indeterminacy in a derivation. (shrink)

That capitalism is a superior economic system because it elicits productive effort from individuals by utilizing the desire for material improvement, is a contention that can be defended if it could be established that this desire is a universal human motive and is to be found in non-capitalist as well as capitalist societies. In addition, it can be argued that within a market economy, if men pursue what is in their own interest, their actions are likely to have the (...) unintended consequence that, many others benefit; for under capitalism, one man's gain is not necessarily another's loss. Both these points are raised in reply to Richard Schmitt's alleged refutation of 'the psychological defence of capitalism” Inquiry, Vol. 16 [1973], No. 2). (shrink)

This chapter investigates the moral status of agents who innocently benefit from the wrongdoing of others. We commonly think that perpetrators should not benefit from their wrongdoings. But sometimes wrongdoings benefit third parties. Clearest examples are historical wrongdoings, such as colonialism and slavery, which have long lasting effects to this very day, benefitting some while harming others. Recent attempts to identify those who should address such wrongdoings suggest that their beneficiaries, even though they have done not taken (...) part in the original wrongdoing, have duties to relinquish the wrongful benefit and/or to compensate the victim. If correct, this view has important practical implications for identifying who should address pressing moral challenges such as climate change, reparations for slavery and global poverty. The chapter explores the normative underpinnings of the ‘principle of wrongful benefits’, and some of the theoretical and practical challenges to it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The 2003 Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian StudiesFrances S. AdeneyThe 2003 meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies was held in Atlanta, Georgia, 21-22 November 2003. This year's theme was "Overcoming Greed: Christians and Buddhists in a Consumeristic Culture." During the first session panelists Paula Cooey, Valerie Karras, and John Cobb, whose paper was read by Jay McDaniel, presented Christian views and Stephanie Kaza gave a Buddhist response. (...) The second session mirrored the first with panelists Kenneth Kraft, David Barnhill, and Judith Simmer-Brown presenting Buddhist views on the theme and Paul Knitter responded with a Christian analysis.Cooey began the discussion by outlining her thesis that overcoming greed depends on overcoming fear. She asserted that people buy out of fear thus perpetuating a system of greed. The consequences of fear support the cultural myth of upward mobility—there is no way to go but up. The exploitation of fear then produces goods benefiting those at the top of the economic system. This system also produces consequences for human rights as cultural fear leads to laws that thwart due process, for example, the Patriot Act.An alternative Christian view understands desire to be culturally produced—sin upsets the natural order; God redeems. Christian transformation requires dissent against the underlying greed that supports the cultural system.Christianity arose as a movement of dissent, a countercultural movement. That trajectory of dissent has continued through the centuries. Although early Calvinists were noted for linking personal wealth with election, the Mennonites and Anabaptists created better models for practicing dissent. Those communities are based in an economy of grace, supported by an underlying ethic of the ability to give as a gift of grace. This economy, for Christians, is mediated by Jesus of Nazareth and allows for transformation toward becoming greedy for God.Valerie Karras illumined the differences in Christian traditions by her analysis of the difference in anthropology between Eastern and Western Christian theologies. The community model of Eastern Christianity is hostile to the individualism of Western consumerism. Instead, in this model, greed is recognized as a fallen passion, the consequence of separation from God. The two aspects of greed in this view are [End Page 231] acquisitive lust: the desire for control, and desire for the physical acquisition of things.Karras used Clement of Alexandria and John Chrysostom as examples of theologians that criticized the rich and encouraged Christians to use their wealth for the poor. In this view, overcoming greed involves a spiritual process. Virtue can be cultivated by a proper use of wealth, which in itself has no moral content. It is the misuse of wealth that indicates deeper spiritual problems. Some of those spiritual problems can be alleviated by asceticism: celibacy, almsgiving, fasting, and prayer. Such exercises can provide a means to master the vices—greed, in this case, being the vice at hand.John Cobb's paper argued that a theology of consumerism is deeply embedded in our culture. That theology runs counter to traditional Western Christian teaching that consuming more deprives others. The question one must ask is, Does consumption enhance or detract from the common good? Traditional arguments that too much consumption deprives others were rendered obsolete by the industrial revolution. The new problem is how can demand keep up with production. The argument here is that increased consumption benefits others by preventing downturns in the economy.Unfortunately, Cobb argues, the spiritual costs to this pattern of consumption are tremendous. A class of exploited peasants now produces more goods, but has a better society been created? Increasing poverty in two-thirds of the world, global warming, dehumanizing advertising, and the unsustainability of keeping production at current levels press the issue. Human survival depends on changing consumption patterns. The elite must be forced to give up control and we must recover and emphasize the traditional Christian interpretation of greed as a cardinal sin.To accomplish this, Cobb recommends rejecting consumerism in our personal lives, developing local sustainability projects, and demonstrating another world possibility—another way to live that leads to human flourishing. Buddhist and Christian emphases on overcoming consumerism are complimentary and together can make possible the deep changes that are... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 454-456 [Access article in PDF] Michael Potter. Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap.New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 305. Cloth, $45.00. This book tells the story of a remarkable series of answers to two related questions:(1) How can arithmetic be necessary and knowable a priori? [End Page 454](2) What accounts for the applicability (...) of arithmetic to matters of empirical fact?These are philosophical questions, part of a "wider puzzle of explaining the link between experience, language, thought, and the world" (18). But answers to them are heavily constrained by technical results in logic and mathematics, and most of Potter's protagonists are either mathematicians (Frege, Dedekind, Ramsey, Hilbert, Gödel) or mathematically trained philosophers (Kant, Russell, Carnap). (Only Wittgenstein fits neither category.) Potter, whose doctorate was in pure mathematics, is an able guide.It is not hard to think of answers to these questions taken singly; what is hard is answering both at the same time. Formalists can easily explain why arithmetic does not depend for its justification on empirical fact—it is just a game with symbols, not responsible to anything beyond its own rules—but they then have trouble explaining why the world of empirical fact is constrained by this game. Empiricists can explain the applicability of arithmetic in just the same way they explain the applicability of physics, but they then must then explain away the apparent a prioricity and necessity of arithmetic. Kant was the first to propose a plausible answer to both questions: arithmetic is both necessary and empirically applicable because it is grounded in the spatio-temporal form of any possible experience.What unites Frege, Dedekind, Russell, Ramsey, Hilbert, and Carnap is that they reject Kant's answer while continuing to seek an answer to his question: how can arithmetic's necessity be reconciled with its applicability? Potter helpfully classifies their projects by the surrogates they substitute for Kant's appeal to the form of spatio-temporal intuition: Frege and Dedekind appeal to thought, Russell to necessary features of the world, Wittgenstein, Ramsey, and Carnap to language, and Hilbert to the necessary structure of our experience of finitary combinations of objects. (Revealingly, the logicists are not grouped together in Potter's taxonomy.) A chapter (or two) is devoted to each of these thinkers, plus Kant and Gödel.This breadth of coverage does not come at the price of superficiality: Potter's chapters are (by and large) accurate, penetrating, and full of interesting insights. I cannot think of another book that offers such clear explanations of the many mathematical concepts and distinctions one must grasp in order to follow debates in the philosophy of arithmetic. The Russell chapters are enhanced by numerous quotations from archival material. The exposition of Hilbert's programme and the implications for it of Gödel's theorems is the best I have seen. The discussions of Wittgenstein's views on arithmetic and of Carnap's syntactical approach also shine. The chapters on Kant and Frege are somewhat weaker; the discussion of Kant, in particular, would have benefited from some engagement with Michael Friedman's views.But the real contribution of Potter's book is its integration of these nine thinkers into a single coherent story. No one will be surprised that Russell's motivations can only be understood in light of Frege's failures, or that many features of Wittgenstein's cryptic work become clearer when seen in light of the specific problems with Russell's system. But there are also some less obvious payoffs: for example, Hilbert's programme is usefully compared with Russell's regressive method (227-8), and Carnap and Russell are shown to face a common dilemma (269, 286).If there is a central theme to Potter's story, it is "how often we have had to reject an [End Page 455] account not for philosophical reasons but for technical ones" (278). Frege's program founders on Russell's paradox, Russell's... (shrink)

This article investigates the performative nature of forensic dialogue as a literary device in the story of Susanna. Whilst Susanna scholars have brought significant contributions in recent years, this article contends that there has never been a special focus on the performative function of forensic dialogue in Susanna. This aspect should be explored further as it can contribute to how the story can be read, interpreted and applied in contemporary society. The article suggests that the forensic dialogue in Susanna is (...) possibly an intentional literary strategy by the implied author and has a performative function to benefit the implied reader. This means that the implied author uses forensic dialogue to invite participation from the reader. From a speech act interpretive angle, this article attempts to prove this claim by exploring the aforementioned literary device in Susanna and demonstrating its performative nature aimed at the reader. Contribution: The article’s main contribution rests on its unique approach to investigating the performative nature of forensic dynamics in Susanna. This technique of exploring narrative texts does also advance the Susanna scholarship, in that it offers a reader yet another way of reading, interpreting and applying the story to the contemporary society. (shrink)

The principle of wrongful benefits prescribes that beneficiaries from wrongdoing incur duties towards the victims of the wrongdoing. The principle focuses on involuntary beneficiaries, demanding that they disgorge their tainted benefit. However, it overlooks the duties of beneficiaries who are not straightforwardly involuntary. The article addresses this gap in the literature. It explores the duties of ‘voluntary beneficiaries’, who could avoid receiving the tainted benefit; and the duties of ‘welcoming beneficiaries’, who cannot avoid receiving the tainted benefit (...) but welcome it. The article demonstrates that in both cases, the duties of the beneficiary towards the victim of the original wrongdoing are not limited to the disgorgement of the benefit. Rather, voluntary and welcoming beneficiaries are themselves involved in the commission of wrongdoing against the victim of the original wrongdoing, and hence may owe the victim compensation that exceeds the level of their own benefit. This argument has various practical implications, e.g. in specifying the duties of companies who benefit from human rights violations down their supply chain. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of Jacques Rohault’s Cartesianism. It aims to enrich the current portrayal of Rohault (1618–72) as a Cartesian natural philosopher concerned with experimentation. The modern evaluation of Rohault as an experimentalist can benefit from another explanatory layer, emphasizing the mathematical physics that shapes his natural philosophy. In order to argue for this complementary account, I focus on an early episode in Rohault’s career, represented by his reply to Fermat’s attacks against Descartes’s law of refraction (1658). (...) The source has been discussed, so far, solely as part of the dispute in optics between Fermat and the Cartesians. The reading endorsed here explores the source from a different angle, suggesting an alternative account grounded on a more contextual understanding of Rohault’s contribution to Cartesianism. More diverse dimensions of Rohault’s intellectual formation are revealed, which in turn provides a more complex picture of this strain of Cartesian natural philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Save Us From Being Saved:Girard's Critical SoteriologySimon J. Taylor (bio)One of the most striking things about the work of René Girard is that it is an overarching critique of what it is to be saved. The paradox that Girard presents us with is that "salvation" is something from which we must be saved. This combination of salvation as something that must be avoided and something we desperately (...) need appears to have the characteristic of a "double bind," about which Girard has written so much.1 Are we then, even within Girard's own thesis, bound to the mimetic doubling of need and revulsion that can end only in the expulsion or death of a common victim? It is this question that I hope to explore in this article.Girard's Critique Of SalvationTo set out Girard's critique of salvation, it is first necessary to see that what he has come to call the victimage mechanism ("mécanisme victimaire") is, in fact, salvation. Girard's thesis states that desire is mimetic, based on the imitation of another's desire. "Desire is always an imitation of another desire, desire for the same object, and therefore, an inexhaustible source of conflicts and rivalries" (Girard 1978, 39). As the rivalry produced by this desire intensifies, it spreads and produces conflict and violence on a large scale. On an unlimited scale, Girard identifies this with the Hobbesian "war of all against all."2 And it is at this point that the victimage mechanism kicks in. It is at this point that the identification of a scapegoat and the expulsion or killing of the scapegoat produce unity and restore peace. It is this, in Girard's originary scene, that leads to the simultaneous origins of society and religion. In restoring unity to the group, and hence founding the community, the victim becomes sacred, a god. This in itself is an indicator of the salvific power that the scapegoat effects in the community. In order that the violence, once diverted, should not break out again, two things are necessary: ritual, specifically sacrifice, and myth. Ritual reenacts the founding murder upon which society is based, enabling the [End Page 21] participants to transfer their violence to another victim. Myth is the story told by the persecutors about the events that led to the creation of their community, that is, the founding murder. Thus, religion "dehumanizes violence; it protects man from his own violence by taking it out of his hands, transforming it into a transcendent and ever-present danger to be kept in check by the appropriate rites appropriately observed and by a modest and prudent demeanor.... religion protects man as long as its ultimate foundations are not revealed" (Girard 1978, 134–35). Salvation has happened, and a cult arises to disburse the effects of this salvation.It is important that we take this account of religion with full seriousness and do not regard it simply as the prologue to Girard's later promotion, even rehabilitation, of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. This is salvific: religion protects us from our own violence; it has mechanisms for bringing to an end outbreaks of that violence. Elsewhere Girard can speak of "the negative usefulness of religion as a social prop against anarchy and chaos" (Girard 1997, 162–63). This is salvation: violence is dealt with and human society can dwell in relative peace. Religion, on this account, is not "pie-in-the-sky," a transcendent deferral of gratification. It has real benefits to society today; it is attractive, elegant, and simple. What more could we want from religion?But Girard will not allow us to rest content with this account of religion. He is blunt when he declares that "most religions are based on a lie, which is the supposed guilt of the victim" (Girard 1993c, 32). Nietzsche wrote that "The sacrificial animal does not share the spectators' ideas about sacrifice, but one has never let it have its say,"3 and this is precisely the origin of Girard's critique of the salvation offered by religions based on scapegoating. Girard is attempting to let the sacrificial animal have its say. All too often, these... (shrink)

The main aim of Christopher Williams’s book is to develop and advocate a Humean account of what it is to be a “reasonable” person. The project is motivated by the fact that Hume depicts reason paradoxically as both a source of skepticism and as a source of belief, as both enslaved to the passions and as important to establishing which passions are morally significant. In his preface, Williams tell us that genre matters to philosophy; how it matters, he says, “is (...) another question”. He sees his project in the genre of an essay, although he acknowledges that a book, with sustained arguments over several chapters, can’t ideally cultivate the “casual, unsystematic air that is the cachet of the great essayists ‘attempts’”. However, even in Hume, the master essayist, structure has its purpose, and Williams’s discussion could benefit from more of it, especially since he has some sophisticated insights into Hume and Humean positions that can get lost, ironically, on the casual reader. Whatever Williams’s intent to communicate by the manner of presentation, the approach often obscures the content. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 454-456 [Access article in PDF] Michael Potter. Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap.New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 305. Cloth, $45.00. This book tells the story of a remarkable series of answers to two related questions:(1) How can arithmetic be necessary and knowable a priori? [End Page 454](2) What accounts for the applicability (...) of arithmetic to matters of empirical fact?These are philosophical questions, part of a "wider puzzle of explaining the link between experience, language, thought, and the world" (18). But answers to them are heavily constrained by technical results in logic and mathematics, and most of Potter's protagonists are either mathematicians (Frege, Dedekind, Ramsey, Hilbert, Gödel) or mathematically trained philosophers (Kant, Russell, Carnap). (Only Wittgenstein fits neither category.) Potter, whose doctorate was in pure mathematics, is an able guide.It is not hard to think of answers to these questions taken singly; what is hard is answering both at the same time. Formalists can easily explain why arithmetic does not depend for its justification on empirical fact—it is just a game with symbols, not responsible to anything beyond its own rules—but they then have trouble explaining why the world of empirical fact is constrained by this game. Empiricists can explain the applicability of arithmetic in just the same way they explain the applicability of physics, but they then must then explain away the apparent a prioricity and necessity of arithmetic. Kant was the first to propose a plausible answer to both questions: arithmetic is both necessary and empirically applicable because it is grounded in the spatio-temporal form of any possible experience.What unites Frege, Dedekind, Russell, Ramsey, Hilbert, and Carnap is that they reject Kant's answer while continuing to seek an answer to his question: how can arithmetic's necessity be reconciled with its applicability? Potter helpfully classifies their projects by the surrogates they substitute for Kant's appeal to the form of spatio-temporal intuition: Frege and Dedekind appeal to thought, Russell to necessary features of the world, Wittgenstein, Ramsey, and Carnap to language, and Hilbert to the necessary structure of our experience of finitary combinations of objects. (Revealingly, the logicists are not grouped together in Potter's taxonomy.) A chapter (or two) is devoted to each of these thinkers, plus Kant and Gödel.This breadth of coverage does not come at the price of superficiality: Potter's chapters are (by and large) accurate, penetrating, and full of interesting insights. I cannot think of another book that offers such clear explanations of the many mathematical concepts and distinctions one must grasp in order to follow debates in the philosophy of arithmetic. The Russell chapters are enhanced by numerous quotations from archival material. The exposition of Hilbert's programme and the implications for it of Gödel's theorems is the best I have seen. The discussions of Wittgenstein's views on arithmetic and of Carnap's syntactical approach also shine. The chapters on Kant and Frege are somewhat weaker; the discussion of Kant, in particular, would have benefited from some engagement with Michael Friedman's views.But the real contribution of Potter's book is its integration of these nine thinkers into a single coherent story. No one will be surprised that Russell's motivations can only be understood in light of Frege's failures, or that many features of Wittgenstein's cryptic work become clearer when seen in light of the specific problems with Russell's system. But there are also some less obvious payoffs: for example, Hilbert's programme is usefully compared with Russell's regressive method (227-8), and Carnap and Russell are shown to face a common dilemma (269, 286).If there is a central theme to Potter's story, it is "how often we have had to reject an [End Page 455] account not for philosophical reasons but for technical ones" (278). Frege's program founders on Russell's paradox, Russell's... (shrink)

Historically, the sub-Saharan Africans’ being-in-the-world with other peoples and nations has been characterized by a ‘Black-Out,’ or the exclusion of black Africans from full humanity and the violation of their human rights through slavery, colonization, apartheid, etc. So far globalization looks like another ‘Black-Out’ or recolonization, Westernization, homogenization, the universalization of the particular, and a jungle rather than an opportunity for all. This conception of globalization has resulted in skepticisms about, and fear of the phenomenon. Antiglobalization movements – e.g., (...) the World Social Forum - are the expression of many people’s feelings about globalization. The 21st-century globalization cannot be really global except by being a dynamic synthesis of all peoples’ culturaland economic values. So in this paper I argue that despite the potential benefits of globalization, African peoples – more than anybody else - have good reasons to fear and/ or be skeptical about it. This is due to the negativities and the paradoxical nature of globalization on the one hand; and the African colonial andneocolonial experience, on the other. I propose an alternative to “the savage globalization” or ‘junglobalization.’ I will call it ‘Pan-Bantuist Globalization.’ It is intended to move globalization from Eurocentrism and/or any other negative ethnocentrism to ‘pan-anthropocentrism’ or ‘pan-Bantucentrism,’ thereby creatingconditions for inclusion, equality, brotherhood/sisterhood, and respect for human rights. In other words, Pan-Bantuist Globalization is concerned with democratizing and civilizing the savage globalization through an ethic of globalization, i.e., a global ethics that is based on the golden rule, human rights, ‘Ubuntu’, ‘Maat’, and ‘Yin-Yang’. If acted upon this ethics, noboby – including Africans – will be left behind and things will not fall apart again. (shrink)

Amid increasing demands from students and the public, universities have recently reinvigorated their efforts to increase the number of faculty from underrepresented populations. Although a myriad of piecemeal programs targeting individual recruitment and development have been piloted at several institutions, overall growth in faculty diversity remains almost negligible and highly localized. To bring about genuine change, we hypothesize a consortia approach that links individuals to hiring opportunities within a state university system might be more effective. Here we present (...) a case study describing the progress of the NSF-funded Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate PROMISE Academy Alliance, a consortium within the University System of Maryland collaborating to develop, implement, self-study, evaluate, and disseminate a unique postdoc-to-faculty conversion model in the biomedical sciences. The initiative centers on diversifying faculty across five institutions in the USM, including teaching-focused institutions, comprehensive universities, research institutions, and professional schools. Components of this approach include enhanced recruiting and hiring practices to attract outstanding postdoctoral scholars from underrepresented backgrounds, multi-institutional networking and professional development, and facilitated processes to transition postdocs into tenure-track positions at their postdoctoral institution or another institution in the state system. This model is distinct from more deficit-based approaches because it goes beyond focusing on building the individual’s skills to enter the professoriate. This program restructures the traditionally short-term nature of postdoctoral employment and incorporates a pathway to a tenure-track professorship at the same institution or within the same statewide system where the postdoc is trained. This multi-institutional model leverages collaboration and distinct institutional strengths to create cross-institutional support, advocacy, and policy. Importantly, it uses a decentralized financial structure that makes this approach distinctly replicable. Recognizing the immediate need for more collaborative approaches to diversify faculty and a lack of literature about such approaches, this case study describes the development of, and potential benefits of, a state university system, as well as the qualitative lessons learned from self-study, internal evaluation, external evaluation, and NSF site visits. The AGEP PROMISE Academy can serve as a model for replication at other university systems hoping to diversify their faculty. (shrink)

This is a survey of, and introduction to, ordinary language philosophy for the benefit of German readers. Von Savigny first presents the thought of Wittgenstein, Ryle and Austin, complete with annotated bibliography of works about each and a thematic list of passages from the Philosophical Investigations. He then shows how ordinary language philosophers approach three general areas: good and evil, being and nonbeing, and opinion and knowledge--ethics, ontology, and epistemology. Each chapter uses the work of many writers and also (...) has an annotated bibliography. Finally, von Savigny examines the methodology in ordinary language philosophy: how ordinary language can be used for clarification, its therapeutic function, how it can serve to prove a position by argument, and how it functions heuristically to provoke inquiry. He closes with a chapter on some principles concerning ordinary language, and another on its philosophical usefulness. The work is clear and basic, the bibliographies at the end of each chapter are comprehensive, and their annotations illuminating.--R. S. (shrink)

The research presented in this paper is the first wave of a longitudinal study of a Cambodian information and communication for development (ICT4D) project, iREACH, aimed at testing a framework for evaluating whether and how such initiatives can contribute to capabilities, empowerment and sustainability. The framework is informed by Amartya Sen’s capability approach (CA), uses a participatory methodology, considers the micro-, meso-, and macro- levels in understanding the role ICT can play in the development process, and adopts a forward-looking longitudinal (...) perspective. Key findings of this research are that the project had contributed to livelihoods and other aspects of well-being in diverse ways, primarily in education, health, and farming. Participants also valued the project because of its contribution to empowerment, particularly gender empowerment. Another way in which participants valued iREACH was of a more intrinsic nature, manifested in a general appreciation of just being part of the world and knowing about events in other parts of Cambodia and beyond. These findings are consistent with the CA’s emphasis on development being about more than economic growth and support the importance of considering external factors, conceptualised here as the meso- and macro- levels, in the conversion of commodities in the form of services provided at iREACH, to capabilities. (shrink)

One popular defence of moral omnivorism appeals to facts about the indirectness of the diner’s causal relationship to the suffering of farmed animals. Another appeals to the claim that farmed animals would not exist but for our farming practices. The import of these claims, I argue, has been misunderstood, and the standard arguments grounded in them fail. In this paper, I develop a better argument in defence of eating meat which combines resources from both of these strategies, together with (...) principles of population ethics, and discuss its implications for which sorts of meat it is permissible to eat. According to the diner’s defence, there is an asymmetry between producers and consumers of meat. Producers can prevent the suffering of animals without preventing their existence, but consumers cannot. This asymmetry grounds a defence against harm-based objections to eating meat which is available to the consumer alone, and which avoids the controversial commitments about moral status or the interests of nonhuman animals endemic to existing attempts to justify omnivorism. (shrink)

This book is an inquiry into the motivation for altruistic behavior. It uncovers the condition that prompts or sometimes even compels us to act intentionally for the benefit of others. This condition, the pre-reflective experience of another person as a self-conscious individual just like oneself, finds its origin in the very structure of the mind. The essay is a synthesis of evidence from neuroscience, phenomenology, Eastern philosophy, analytic philosophy of mind, and cognitive psychology. Hence, it is an excellent example (...) of work in applied cognitive science. The book includes a critique of the several main approaches to the explanation of the motivation for altruistic behavior: biological, psychological, and philosophical. The path of the main inquiry produces several innovative proposals in the philosophy of mind in addition to the main conclusion. Included in these are a detailed account of the structure of the human mind, an ontological categorization of mental states, a naturalistic explanation of so-called mystical states, a proposal for the role of consciousness in the downward causation of physical events, a new interpretation of the Buddhist doctrine of no-self and a unique view of the nature of love. (shrink)

Along with political, economic, ethical, rehabilitative and military dimensions, psychopathological sequelae of war and terrorism also deserve our attention. The terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre ( W.T.C.) in 2001 and the Gulf War of 1990-91 gave rise to a number of psychiatric disturbances in the population, both adult and children, mainly in the form of Post-traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD). Nearly 75,000 people suffered psychological problems in South Manhattan alone due to that one terrorist attack on the WTC in (...) New York and the Pentagon in Washington. In Gulf War I, more that 1,00,000 US veterans reported a number of health problems on returning from war, whose claims the concerned government has denied in more than 90% cases. Extensive and comprehensive neurological damage to the brain of Gulf War I veterans has been reported by one study, as has damage to the basal ganglia in another, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in a third, possibly due to genetic mutations induced by exposure to biological and chemical agents, fumes from burning oil wells, landfills, mustard or other nerve gases. The recent Gulf War will no doubt give rise its own crop of PTSD and related disorders. In a cost-benefit analysis of the post Gulf War II scenario, the psychopathological effects of war and terrorism should become part of the social audit any civilized society engages in. Enlightened public opinion must become aware of the wider ramifications of war and terrorism so that appropriate action plans can be worked out. (shrink)

Some instances of right and wrongdoing appear to be of a distinctly collective kind. When, for example, one group commits genocide against another, the genocide is collective in the sense that the wrongness of genocide seems morally distinct from the aggregation of individual murders that make up the genocide. The problem, which I refer to as the problem of collective wrongs, is that it is unclear how to assign blame for distinctly collective wrongdoing to individual contributors when (...) none of those individual contributors is guilty of the wrongdoing in question. I offer Christopher Kutz’s Complicity Principle as an attractive starting point for solving the problem, and then argue that the principle ought to be expanded to include a broader and more appropriate range of cases. The view I ultimately defend is that individuals are blameworthy for collective harms insofar as they knowingly participate in those harms, and that said individuals remain blameworthy regardless of whether they succeed in making a causal contribution to those harms. (shrink)

Some believe that the mere beneficiaries of wrongdoing of others ought to disgorge their tainted benefits. Others deny that claim. Both sides of this debate concentrate on unavoidable beneficiaries of the wrongdoing of others, who are presumed themselves to be innocent by virtue of the fact they have neither contributed to the wrong nor could they have avoided receiving the benefit. But as we show, this presumption is mistaken for unavoidable beneficiaries who intend in certain ways to benefit (...) from wrongdoing, and who have therefore done something wrong in forming and acting on such an intention. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Ethics of Revenge and the Meanings of the Odyssey by Alexander C. LoneyEmily P. AustinAlexander C. Loney. The Ethics of Revenge and the Meanings of the Odyssey. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xii +265. Hardcover, $78.00. ISBN 978-0-190-90967-3.The Ethics of Revenge and the Meanings of the Odyssey places Odysseus' climactic act of revenge where it belongs: at the center of our interpretation of the Odyssey. (...) With admirably clear prose, Loney traces out the recurring pattern of tisis narratives woven through the poem. The accumulation of these revenge stories demonstrates that, in Loney's words, "tisis breeds endless further plots, making an epic of revenge fatally open-ended" (225, emphasis mine). Although the focus is simple, Loney's comprehensive account of the workings of revenge narratives commands the reader's interest. I, for one, was unprepared to recognize how systematically the poet sets up its readers to be disturbed by the ending—although I have long found the final books of the Odyssey troubling. On Loney's reading, the Odyssey sets up the terms of revenge's justice such that, on those very terms, the execution of vengeance is always ambivalent. For anyone with interests in Homer or revenge narratives, Loney's book has much to offer.The Ethics of Revenge begins with archaic conceptions of vengeance (tisis) (chap. 1). Loney distinguishes between "positive" reciprocity, which aims at balance through the ostensibly free exchange of benefits; and "negative" reciprocity, which is blatantly transactional: tisis is a form of negative reciprocity, where harm is met with immediate and (supposedly) equivalent harm. But as Loney shows, the returning harm is equivalent to the initial harm only insofar as someone judges it to be so. This insight is essential to understanding the inconclusive quality of vengeance: one person's retributive act is, potentially, another person's harm received. The justice achieved by such retributions is limited to the perspective of the one judging.Loney turns to such overlapping stories of tisis in the Odyssey in chapter 2. These overlaps prime the audience to notice ethical complexities among different characters' claims about wrongdoings and merited punishments. For Loney, Zeus' story of Orestes in Book 1 is the paradigmatic tisis narrative of the Odyssey. From this story, Loney distills the elements of all tisis narratives in the poem: absence (Agamemnon away) → unheeded warning / recklessness (Aigisthos ignores Hermes' warning) → preparation for offense (Aigisthos woos Klytaimnestra) → offense (Aigisthos commits adultery with Klytaimnestra and murders Agamemnon) → preparation for retribution (Orestes returns to Mycenae) → retributive act (Orestes kills Aigisthos and Klytaimnestra) → just order restored (Aigisthos has repaid in full). [End Page 535] Loney emphasizes how the unheeded warnings contribute to the ideal of immediate equivalence in tisis: when an offender chooses to perpetrate harm despite a warning (often marked by the term ἀτασθαλίαι), he or she effectively chooses to suffer retribution. The narrator of the tisis story moreover stresses equivalence—in the Orestes paradigm, killing for killing.In the next four chapters, Loney masterfully applies this theoretical and philological work to his interpretation of the poem. Chapter 3 follows three narratives of divine vengeance: Zeus avenging the companions' offense against Helios; Poseidon avenging Odysseus' blinding of Polyphemos; and Poseidon taking vengeance on the Phaiakians, who helped Odysseus. With clear analysis of story patterns and intratextual resonance, Loney shows how these stories evoke latent meanings through their parallels, echoes, or mutual implications. So, for example, Odysseus complicates the narrative of Poseidon avenging Polyphemos with his own story of Polyphemos' wrongs against him and his companions; and the vengeance of Poseidon on the Phaiakians is left literally open-ended, with the poet never telling us if Zeus destroys the island or not. As a result, by the time we get to the central tisis narrative of the poem (chap. 4), Odysseus' vengeance against the suitors comes to us against a varied backdrop of inconclusive and intertwined stories of retribution.In chapter 4, Loney explicates the key aspects of tisis in Odysseus' "terrifying revenge" (cf. Plato's Ion 535c7). For example, the suitors receive five of the poem's nine attributions of ἀτασθαλίαι, marking their wrongdoings as "precipitating harm" that... (shrink)

This thesis argues that Heidegger’s accounts of practice and temporality in Being and Time are inseparable, and demonstrates the importance of temporality for contemporary dialogues between Heideggerian phenomenology and cognitive science. It proposes that enactive and action-oriented models of cognition are best suited to engaging with a Heideggerian view of the temporality of practice, and will benefit from the latter’s capacity to explain the purposive self-concern, possibility-directedness, and varying complexity of cognition in richly temporal terms. I begin by showing (...) that Heidegger’s account places temporality and practice in a complex reciprocity in which each fundamentally shapes and permeates the other. The Heidegger of Being and Time conceptualises practice as fundamentally temporal and temporality as intrinsically purposive, meaning that we cannot adequately understand or utilise his analysis of either structure without acknowledging the role of the other. In outlining and defending this reading, I draw out two characteristics of Heidegger’s model of temporality; these features, which affect and are affected by the interconnection of temporality and purposiveness, are an inherent connection to the self-concern of the entity and an emphasis upon a radically indeterminate futurity. I then consider which contemporary approaches in cognitive science represent the most promising interlocutors for this temporality-oriented Heideggerian perspective. After rejecting selected in principle objections to the pursuit of a collaborative, rather than primarily critical, dialogue between Heideggerian phenomenology and cognitive science, I put forward two candidates for participation in a ‘temporality-oriented Heideggerian cognitive science’: the enactivist tradition and Michael Wheeler’s model of cognition. I set out each approach’s connections to Heideggerian thought (which involves arguing for as-yet unexplored links as well as defending existing ones) before showing how and why a Heideggerian conception of temporality can be integrated into both. I suggest that the structures of a Heideggerian model of temporality already resonate with and operate in enactivists’ and Wheeler’s analyses of cognition, and outline how I think each framework benefits from explicitly taking up and developing these connections. Rather than ultimately choosing one of these perspectives over the other, I conclude by proposing that they cooperate with one another. A Heideggerian conception of temporality opens up a space for enactivism and Wheeler’s approach to contribute distinct and complementary insights in the pursuit of a collaborative temporality-oriented Heideggerian cognitive science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Intention and Wrongdoing: A Defense of the Principle of Double Effect by Joshua StuchlikMichael J. DegnanSTUCHLIK, Joshua. Intention and Wrongdoing: A Defense of the Principle of Double Effect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xvi + 220 pp. Cloth, $99.99In this book Joshua Stuchlik vigorously defends the principle of double effect (PDE), which states, "There is a strict moral constraint against bringing about serious evil (harm) to (...) an innocent person intentionally, but it is permissible in a wider range of circumstances to act in a way that brings about serious evil incidentally, as a foreseen but non-intended side effect." After defining the terms of the principle and considering an intuitive case-based defense, he supports its truth based on a standard of solidarity. Since the PDE requires the distinction between intended consequences and nonintended side effects, he explains Elizabeth Anscombe's theory of intention, which supports the distinction's moral significance. He uses her theory to treat the closeness problem, the irrelevance of intention critique, and a challenge from Joshua Greene's empirical moral psychology that purports to undermine deontological constraints on causing harm.I present Stuchlik's grounding for the PDE followed by an uncontroversial example of its application. After this I consider two important objections to the PDE that Stuchlik critiques: the closeness problem and James Rachels's argument that intentions are irrelevant to judging the moral permissibility of actions. I conclude by examining Stuchlik's treatment of these challenges.Stuchlik interprets the PDE's very strict constraint against intentional killing or seriously harming the innocent as a near absolute prohibition, for he believes innocent persons are not suitable recipients of intentional harm. He grounds this constraint on the principle of solidarity. Being in solidarity with another is possessing concern for that other's sake. The ground for this concern is a shared human nature that enables members to think of themselves as making a "we." Human nature consists in the structured potentialities for knowing and freely choosing. Evidence of these rational potentialities is the human orientation toward the transcendent values of truth and goodness. Such embodied potentialities have inviolable worth.The scenarios of the precision bomber and the terror bomber illustrate the moral significance of the intended harm versus the nonintended but foreseen harm that Stuchlik adopts from Elizabeth Anscombe's action theory. Each bombers' goal is to help his country win a just war. The precision bomber pursues that goal by targeting a munitions factory. Though he foresees that many noncombatants will be killed or seriously [End Page 367] injured from the bomb, he does not necessarily intend these harms. By contrast, the terror bomber targets a civilian center necessarily intending harm for noncombatants. The PDE rules out his conduct.Anscombe's account of intention can lead to the problem of closeness in which the content of an intention is sufficiently fine-grained that an agent need not intend harm in almost any situation. Stuchlik illustrates the problem with Alexander Pruss's zookeeper scenario.An eccentric literalistic but always truthful magnate tells Sam he will donate to famine relief saving a hundred lives if and only if Sam follows his directions to the iota. Sam is to purchase a gun, sneak at night into a zoo owned by the magnate and kill the first mammal he sees. Sam sneaks into the zoo, sees a mammal in the distance, and forms the intention to shoot it. Then he notices that the mammal is human but shoots nonetheless on utilitarian grounds.In this case applying the PDE shows that Sam is simply intending that a mammal be killed. The fact that the mammal is a human is irrelevant, according to Anscombe's action theory.Stuchlik's response clarifies the scope of intention in the PDE. As stated above, the intention's content includes seriously harming an innocent human. However, if the intention ranges only over an intention to bring about an effect, E, and it turns out that E is a serious harm for an innocent human being, then applying the principle shows that Sam's action is wrong. The intended effect of killing the mammal is, as a matter of fact, an... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:News from the President’s Council on BioethicsDiane M. Gianelli (bio) and F. Daniel Davis (bio)Although the President's Council has moved into several new areas of interest during the past year, it also has devoted considerable effort to finalizing several upcoming reports and white papers. In early 2008, the Council will publish a collection of essays on human dignity and bioethics, a report on organ transplantation, and a white (...) paper on "brain death."The Council's report on organ transplantation—now near the end of the drafting and editing phases—has the public as its main audience and, as such, seeks to promote greater understanding of the ethical issues in organ procurement, allocation, and transplantation. The report situates these issues within the contexts of the history of transplantation, the clinical realities of this therapeutic modality, and the current policy framework of state and federal law and regulation.The Council is aware that other bodies—such as the Institute of Medicine—have, in recent years, produced excellent reports on transplantation. The Council's report, however, has a different focus. It explores such foundational issues as the meaning and experience of human embodiment, the philosophy of giving and receiving, and transplantation in relation to the ends and aims of medicine.The report also analyzes the ethics of deceased organ donation, living organ donation, organ allocation, and various proposals for increasing the supply of organs, with a focus on those that call for the replacement of the organ-as-gift philosophy with a market-oriented ethic of selling and buying.In another upcoming publication, the Council revisits the notion of "brain death." The Council did not plan to take on this issue when it began its organ transplantation project. But when researching material for that report, it became clear that—in recent years—some serious criticisms of the neurological standard for declaring death have arisen. Since the vast majority of organs procured from the dead come from "brain dead" patients—that is, those declared dead by the neurological standard—this presented an issue ripe for exploration.The last time a national bioethics body looked at the criteria for determining death was in 1981, when The President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research issued "Defining Death," its seminal report that articulated and defended the neurological standard for declaring death. It also proposed a uniform statute for states to adopt based [End Page 397] on that standard. After its publication, states that had not already rewritten their laws to recognize the new neurological standard did so. The Council's white paper on the topic takes a new look at "brain death" in light of the recent evidence and arguments on both sides of the issue.In the Council's last report to the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (December 2006), its upcoming volume on "Dignity" was described. Scholars from a variety of disciplines—and opinions—have written essays on "dignity and bioethics." The volume is ready to go to press.In addition to these documents, the Council, after devoting a number of sessions to the topic over the past couple of years, is considering publication of a white paper on newborn screening, with a probable focus on the benefits, harms, and burdens of mandated screening, and a look at the broader human significance of genetic information. The paper probably also will address the moral precepts that should guide such testing, as well as the precepts that should guide the acquisition and use of the genetic information gained through this process.Venturing into new territory this year, the Council heard from several speakers on "the healing professions" and "the ethical foundations of health care." Both of these topics are the subject of considerable attention and debate in the ethics literature. There is some concern, for example, that medicine and the other healing professions have lost—or are in danger of losing—their moral bearings. And in the controversies surrounding health care reform policies, what is at stake ethically often is obscured, confused, or lacking altogether.Under the rubric of "the professions," the Council heard various dimensions of the issue: the "crisis" in the ethics... (shrink)

Competition – more specifically economic competition – is relevant to ethical reflection in different ways. Some of its features exacerbate the intensity of moral problems we may otherwise come across in a context of scarcity. For instance, when competition is especially tough – think about winner-takes-all cases – one agent is likely to lose significantly if he or she acts ethically, to the benefit of others who act in ways that seem ethically questionable. Whenever ‘ethics does not pay’ and competition (...) is intense, an economic actor can lose business as a result. Admittedly, business death does not necessarily amount to a person’s death, which makes it different from lifeboat cases. But running out of business is still a very serious problem. Consider also the issues that arise in the context of strong tax competition. Imposition of a fair corporate tax structure may simply chase the most mobile players to low-tax jurisdictions.Another fact about economic competition that renders ethical issues more vivid is company replaceability. Often, if a single agent renounces acting in a way considered morally problematic – e.g. investing in natural resource infrastructure and exploration in a country such as Burma – other players may step in to replace the single agent and immediately assume its morally problematic role. As a result, the people the single agent was concerned about – the citizens of Burma – may reap no positive consequences at all from what we consider the right act by the single agent.There is of course a connection between the first phenomenon – “competition may make it more costly for me to be moral” – and the second – “it makes no difference whether I act morally or not”. I lose in both cases, while no one other than a competitor who has no more moral status than I do wins. If I lose business because I aim at doing the right thing, and others immediately replace me, I will be the only loser. The only winner will be another company. And the very people I am most concerned about may gain nothing at all.It seems legitimate to expect moral theory to have at least something to tell us about what individual agents are supposed to do in such types of contexts. It is also moral theory’s task to consider under which conditions competition itself can be seen as a good thing, whether more competition is always better – as consumer protection too often assumes – and whether there is some connection between coming closer to perfect competition and getting closer to what could be called a fair price. The question is not only “how to be fair when there is competition”, it is also “can competition be fair?”These questions invite us to look more closely at markets. The marketplace allows for supply-demand coordination. It also allows consumers to compare products from different suppliers. We often operate under the assumption that the existence of competition helps to reduce the degree to which producers can exploit consumers. This assumption is, indeed, key to justifying policies that aim at fighting monopolies. But is this salutary effect enough to render even perfect competition fair? One might claim, for example, that while markets permit a reduction in producer exploitation of consumers, it may in fact exacerbate the reverse phenomenon, i.e. by allowing consumers to “exploit” workers and capitalists.Three papers offered in the present edition of Ethical Perspectives are the outcome of a workshop organized in October 2010 as part of a project entitled “Social Responsibility in Economic Life”. This workshop took place with the financial support of the Fondation Emile Bernheim at the Université catholique de Louvain. The first two papers – by Roberts and Dietsch – look at issues of fairness in competition, whereas the third – by Arnsperger – addresses the problem of fairness of competition.Competition is a location in which people continuously harm one another – e.g. my competitive practices can easily make you lose clients or your leadership position. Against this backdrop, the only important issue is often considered to be whether – and to what extent – such a harm should also be seen as a wrong.Roberts focuses on cases in which the very harm itself seems impossible to locate – a finding that would itself seem to moot the issue of wrongdoing from the start. Multiple-agent situations in particular challenge our ability to discern harm in any clear sense. Consider the case in which one agent’s acting in a questionable way seems to make no difference to the alleged victim, since had the one agent not acted in that way a second agent would have stepped in to replace the one agent and imposed at least the same degree of damage on that victim. In such an instance, how can the one agent’s acting in a questionable way be said to harm the victim, when the fact is that it makes no difference from the victim’s perspective whether the one agent acts in this way or not?Relying on an account of how individual agents can be said to participate in what is in effect a group harm, Roberts argues that that ‘no difference’ assessment is a mistake. She then demonstrates how the application of this concept of harm can translate into ethical constraints on specific agents.Dietsch focuses on regulatory competition and more specifically on the duties of one type of actor – the tax planning industry. He considers three definitions of corporate social responsibility before offering an even weaker definition. The latter consists in the following double obligation. According to Dietsch, corporations should ‘pay their taxes’ and ‘not undermine the respect of fiscal obligations by third parties’. He does not directly question the legitimacy of tax planning as a whole. He insists instead that self-regulation in this sector is utopian – more than in other sectors – even if one assigns to the actors in question a truly minimal social responsibility. In this connection, he identifies a twofold challenge that the ethical actor must, in Dietsch’s view, be prepared to meet.Finally, Arnsperger shows that the relationship between solidarity and competition can be understood in at least three ways. Competition can be seen as a source of solidarity. Solidarity can be seen as a counterweight to some effects of competition. And competition can be considered as a dynamic threat to genuine solidarity. He defends the third view as central, with clear implications for the claim according to which competition can be seen as fair. (shrink)

You care about what others believe about you. What others believe about you determines whether you have a good reputation, whether you have the respect of your peers, and whether your friends genuinely like you. Your caring about others’ beliefs makes sense, because others’ beliefs bear directly upon your level of well-being. Your beliefs can influence others’ well-being, as much as their beliefs can influence yours. How your beliefs influence another’s well-being is a different matter from whether your (...) beliefs are supported by the evidence. Sometimes you can benefit another person by regulating your beliefs in response to considerations of her well-being, not of the evidence. Usually, you do not have strong reasons to regulate your beliefs in response to considerations of the interests of others. But it can be different when the person in question is your friend. Within some perfectly good friendships, the support that each friend provides for the other extends as far as their being willing to regulate their beliefs with the goal of benefiting the other, even if that makes it less likely that their beliefs will be supported by the evidence. Within our friendships, we then have reasons for belief that do not arise directly from, and sometimes compete with, reasons provided by evidence. This claim conflicts with the widespread Aristotelian view that good friendship is oriented to virtue. But it fits with a more plausible view about friendship, on which the function of friendship is to help us cope with the fact that we are not fully virtuous, and to serve needs that we have because we are not fully virtuous. (shrink)

Character plays a central role in our everyday understanding and evaluation of ourselves and one another. It informs the expectations that ground our plans and projects, our moral responses to other people's behaviour and to opportunities we ourselves face, and our political decisions concerning formal education, criminal punishment, and other aspects of social organisation. These philosophical essays clarify this idea of character, analyse its relation with the findings of experimental psychology, and draw out the implications of this for education and (...) for criminal punishment. They emphasise that character is inherently dynamic, challenging the tendency among personality psychologists and virtue ethicists alike to focus on static snapshots of traits, and they emphasise the close integration of character with the individual's social context. The volume is intended to demonstrate the deep conceptual affinity of moral philosophy and social psychology and the consequent potential for each to benefit from the other. (shrink)