Classical theism is often said to suffer from the problem of modal collapse: if God is necessary and simple then all of his effects (creatures) are also necessary. Many classical theists have turned to extrinsic predication in response: God’s simple and necessary act is compatible with any number of possible effects or no effects, and is only said to be an act of creating in virtue of the existence of the universe itself. Leftow and Schmid criticize this solution for leading (...) to “providential collapse”: God would not have control over which creation obtains if all his intrinsic features are compatible with any possible universe. Thomistic classical theism avoids both modal collapse and providential collapse by utilizing the metaphysics of relations. With no differences within his simple essence/act, God can relate himself differently to his possible effects, willing some and not willing others. These relations determine whether or not the effects will exist. Thomistic classical theism’s version of divine simplicity is not incompatible with God having a multiplicity of relations, for the three divine persons are distinct relations within God. Divine simplicity is only incompatible with a multiplicity of absolute items within God. Furthermore, not all differences of relation are grounded in the different absolute characteristics of their relata. Rather, sometimes differences of relation themselves ground differences in the absolute characteristics of their relata. God’s divine act is thus said to be an act of willing this creation rather than that in virtue of his chosen, contingent relation to possible creatures, rather than in virtue of the creatures themselves. (shrink)

This chapter defends the moral right of national communities to self‐determination, but examines the problems involved in institutionalizing such a right, and the problem of perverse consequences in exercising the right.

In this classic work by one of America's most distinguished historians, Daniel Boorstin enters into Thomas Jefferson's world of ideas.

Aquinas holds that by its nature the human will has happiness as its ultimate end in every choice, and yet he holds that one can and ought to love God more than oneself or one’s own happiness. This generates the so-called “problem of love”: how can an eudaimonist like Aquinas account for non-selfish love? I argue that Aquinas’s doctrine of goodness as the will’s object and his distinction between the love of desire and the love of friendship solve this problem (...) and indicate that Aquinas’s eudaimonism is only “subordinated eudaimonism.” By its nature the will has happiness—total inhering goodness—as its ultimate object secundum quid, and God—total subsisting goodness—as ultimate object simpliciter. Nevertheless, Aquinas argues on philosophical grounds and with the support of Aristotle’s Liber de Bona Fortuna that God Himself would have to move the will if one were to love God above oneself even in the order of nature. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to show how the questions of anomality and animality belong together in phenomenology. The figure of the human animal serves as the guideline of the study, namely the figure of a person who is not considered as similar to myself in the frame of a Husserlian characterization of normality. Husserl’s thinking is analyzed with respect to the problem of an intersubjective co-constitution of a common world. It is shown that Husserl only accepts animality and (...) anomality within the restrictive perspective of a so-called normal humanity, that of the adult man, healthy, reasonable and European. However, he constantly strives to include the anomality and animality into humanity as well, an intention that distinguishes him from Heidegger. Heidegger radicalized the question with respect to race, which serves him as a guideline for thinking the very own of the human being. Defending a thinking of exclusion, Heidegger refuses to animals as well as to anomals all right of citizenship in the community of human beings. The article ends by proposing to overcome this duality between an inclusive thinking and an exclusive thinking. (shrink)

Molinists offer a tempting bargain: accept divine middle knowledge, and reap solutions to a number of philosophical/theological problems. The prime benefit we are meant to reap from middle knowledge is a solution to the problem of freedom and providence. I argue that they cannot deliver. Even if we make metaphysical and semantic assumptions that have generally been considered friendly to Molinism, Molinism is in danger of undermining divine providence altogether. This “collapse" persists despite fairly uncontroversial assumptions, and plagues the best (...) Molinist theories defended in the literature. (shrink)

Is liberal democracy appropriate for East Asia? In this provocative book, Daniel Bell argues for morally legitimate alternatives to Western-style liberal democracy in the region. Beyond Liberal Democracy, which continues the author's influential earlier work, is divided into three parts that correspond to the three main hallmarks of liberal democracy--human rights, democracy, and capitalism. These features have been modified substantially during their transmission to East Asian societies that have been shaped by nonliberal practices and values. Bell points to the (...) dangers of implementing Western-style models and proposes alternative justifications and practices that may be more appropriate for East Asian societies. If human rights, democracy, and capitalism are to take root and produce beneficial outcomes in East Asia, Bell argues, they must be adjusted to contemporary East Asian political and economic realities and to the values of nonliberal East Asian political traditions such as Confucianism and Legalism. Local knowledge is therefore essential for realistic and morally informed contributions to debates on political reform in the region, as well as for mutual learning and enrichment of political theories. Beyond Liberal Democracy is indispensable reading for students and scholars of political theory, Asian studies, and human rights, as well as anyone concerned about China's political and economic future and how Western governments and organizations should engage with China. (shrink)

Particularists in material-object metaphysics hold that our intuitive judgments about which kinds of things there are and are not are largely correct. One common argument against particularism is the argument from arbitrariness, which turns on the claim that there is no ontologically significant difference between certain of the familiar kinds that we intuitively judge to exist (snowballs, islands, statues, solar systems) and certain of the strange kinds that we intuitively judge not to exist (snowdiscalls, incars, gollyswoggles, the fusion of the (...) my nose and the Eiffel Tower). Particularists frequently respond by conceding that there is no ontologically significant difference and embracing some sort of deflationary metaontology (relativism, constructivism, quantifier variance). I show -- by identifying ontologically significant differences -- that the argument can be resisted without retreating to any sort of deflationary metaontology. (shrink)

Addresses perceived irresolvable paradoxes regarding reality as presented by a number of philosophers.

Addresses perceived irresolvable paradoxes regarding reality as presented by a number of philosophers.

Addresses perceived irresolvable paradoxes regarding reality as presented by a number of philosophers.

A futuristic examination of metaphysical systems, responsibility, understanding, conceit, continuums, and history’s vector.

Aquinas holds that by its nature the human will has happiness as its ultimate end in every choice, and yet he holds that one can and ought to love God more than oneself or one’s own happiness. This generates the so-called “problem of love”: how can an eudaimonist like Aquinas account for non-selfish love? I argue that Aquinas’s doctrine of goodness as the will’s object and his distinction between the love of desire and the love of friendship solve this problem (...) and indicate that Aquinas’s eudaimonism is only “subordinated eudaimonism.” By its nature the will has happiness—total inhering goodness—as its ultimate object secundum quid, and God—total subsisting goodness—as ultimate object simpliciter. Nevertheless, Aquinas argues on philosophical grounds and with the support of Aristotle’s Liber de Bona Fortuna that God Himself would have to move the will if one were to love God above oneself even in the order of nature. (shrink)

I argue for a novel reading of the mover principle used in Aquinas’s motion proofs for God’s existence. Many interpret Aquinas’s principle as holding that everything in motion is moved by something else currently in contact with it. Others, following James Weisheipl, understand the principle as claiming only that everything being moved is being moved by something else. I argue against both readings and hold that the principle means that everything in motion is moved by something else—whether that something else (...) simply set it in motion or is currently moving it by contact. By looking closely at Aquinas’s inductive argument for the mover principle, I show that simultaneity between mover and moved is not necessary on Aquinas’s view. My interpretation allows me to respond to objections to Aquinas’s act-potency argument for the mover principle more convincingly than others, and sets the groundwork for robust engagement between Thomism and modern science. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that neither St. Bonaventure nor St. Thomas are eudaimonists in the normal sense. Neither holds that happiness--which is a condition of human persons, and thus falls on the creature side of the Creator/creature divide--is the ultimate end of human beings strictly speaking, being rather a penultimate end. God is the true ultimate end of human beings, and He falls on the other side of the Creator/creature divide. -/- Both St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure hold that (...) happiness consists in the attainment of God. They differ in that St. Bonaventure holds that loving God constitutes the attainment of God, for he who loves God has God. St. Thomas, on the other hand, holds that loving God does not in and of itself mean having Him. Love causes us to desire union with God, but is not itself union with Him. God is attained when He is known. However, St. Thomas also holds that loving God is better than knowing Him, and thus better than happiness. This is because God Himself, and not our happiness in knowing Him, is our true ultimate end. -/- On the basis of these theories, both St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas avoid the self-centeredness objections to eudaimonism, while being able to incorporate all of the strengths of virtue ethics. (shrink)

One of the lingering questions for development economists is that of economic transition and whether development can be promoted by a strong political leader. Earlier writings on leadership and economic development tend to fall into one of two camps: leaders matter and can contribute positively to economic growth, or leaders seldom have positive effects and, at best, can avoid doing a great deal of harm. This article establishes a third option—a middle-ground position—between these two views. Good leadership can, indeed, have (...) a positive effect on economic growth but only during the initial moment when economic reform is up for grabs. Once the opportunity to implement sweeping reform has passed, interests become entrenched, and the opportunity for growth-enhancing reform passes. Bad leaders, on the other hand, can hamper economic growth in periods well beyond the ideal reform moment. (shrink)

Moral distress in healthcare has been an increasingly prevalent topic of discussion. Most authors characterize it as a negative phenomenon, while few have considered its potentially positive value. In this essay, I argue that moral distress can reveal and affirm some of our most important concerns as moral agents. Indeed, the experience of it under some circumstances appears to be partly constitutive of an honorable character and can allow for crucial moral maturation. The potentially positive value, then, is twofold; moral (...) distress carries both aretaic and instrumental value. Granted, this position is not without its caveats, but by making these clear, I provide a novel framework for policy recommendations regarding when, if ever, we should work to reduce moral distress. (shrink)

Medical errors are all too common. Ever since a report issued by the Institute of Medicine raised awareness of this unfortunate reality, an emerging theme has gained prominence in the literature on medical error. Fears of blame and punishment, it is often claimed, allow errors to remain undisclosed. Accordingly, modern healthcare must shift away from blame towards a culture of safety in order to effectively reduce the occurrence of error. Against this shift, I argue that it would serve the medical (...) community well to retain notions of individual responsibility and blame in healthcare settings. In particular, expressions of moral emotions—such as guilt, regret and remorse—appear to play an important role in the process of disclosing harmful errors to patients and families. While such self-blaming responses can have negative psychological effects on the individual practitioner, those who take the blame are in the best position to offer apologies and show that mistakes are being taken seriously, thereby allowing harmed patients and families to move forward in the wake of medical error. (shrink)

This article examines the relevance of survey data of scientists’ attitudes about science and values to case studies in philosophy of science. We describe two methodological challenges confronting such case studies: 1) small samples, and 2) potential for bias in selection, emphasis, and interpretation. Examples are given to illustrate that these challenges can arise for case studies in the science and values literature. We propose that these challenges can be mitigated through an approach in which case studies and survey methods (...) are viewed as complementary, and use data from the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative to illustrate this claim. (shrink)

Why should one person obey another? Why (to ask the question from the first-person perspective) ought I to submit to another and follow her judgment rather than my own? In modern political thought, which denies that some are born rulers and others are born to be ruled, the most prominent answer has been: “Because I have consented to her authority.” By making authority conditional on the subjects’ consent, political philosophers have sought to reconcile authority’s hierarchical structure with the equal moral (...) standing of governor and governed. Yet such consent accounts of authority have long been deemed problematic on a number of grounds, not the least of which is that few citizens have given their consent to the state under whose laws they live. So unless we are willing to deny the state’s authority over those who have not consented, or revert to the pre-modern assumption of a natural political hierarchy, we must find another way of reconciling authority with our standing as free and equal moral agents. In recent political and legal philosophy, the most influential solution to this problem has been Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority, according to which legitimate authority, while it does not require the consent of the governed, must exist for their sake, or serve them. The normal way to justify someone’s authority, on the service conception, is to show that, by treating her directives as binding, the subjects are likely better to conform to reasons that apply to them anyway. The service conception has, however, recently been criticized (by, among others, Thomas Christiano, Scott Hershovitz, and Jeremy Waldron) for being insufficiently attuned to the significance that procedural, and in particular democratic, features of political and legal institutions have for the justification of their authority. If these ‘democratic critics’ are right, then two commitments that many in the liberal-democratic tradition may find independently attractive turn out to be in tension: the liberal idea that authority is normally legitimate only insofar as it serves its subjects, and the democratic idea that legitimate authority can (and regularly does) rest on fair procedures. In this article I argue that the critics’ arguments rest on a misunderstanding of the service conception; yet their worries point the way to an under-appreciated and interesting view of democracy as an authoritative arbitration procedure. After introducing the service conception’s view of justified authority, I briefly distinguish a broad and a narrow interpretation of it, and suggest that we should embrace the latter to make sense of the idea that political authority serves its subjects (Section I). Next I turn to the objection raised by the democratic critics: the service conception, they say, cannot make room for the intrinsic fairness of democratic procedures because it is preoccupied with the quality of outcomes (Section II). But, I argue, the objection rests on an illicit identification of two different kinds of outcomes: the outcome of the decision-making procedure on the one hand, the outcome or result of treating that first outcome as authoritative on the other. Distinguishing between these is crucial for an adequate understanding of democracy’s authority. While the service conception is indeed organized around the latter, this does not commit it to an exclusive concern with the former; yet it is a singular commitment to the former that is problematic from a democratic point of view (Section III). To bring home this point, I sketch a model of authority as arbitration that is frequently overlooked in recent discussions of authority even though it is centrally concerned with procedural (and ultimately democratic) values and fits squarely into the service conception of authority (Section IV). (shrink)

Recent medical and bioethics literature shows a growing concern for practitioners’ emotional experience and the ethical environment in the workplace. Moral distress, in particular, is often said to result from the difficult decisions made and the troubling situations regularly encountered in health care contexts. It has been identified as a leading cause of professional dissatisfaction and burnout, which, in turn, contribute to inadequate attention and increased pain for patients. Given the natural desire to avoid these negative effects, it seems to (...) most authors that systematic efforts should be made to drastically reduce moral distress, if not altogether eliminate it from the lives of vulnerable practitioners. Such efforts, however, may be problematic, as moral distress is not adequately understood, nor is there agreement among the leading accounts regarding how to conceptualize the experience. With this article I make clear what a robust account of moral distress should be able to explain and how the most common notions in the existing literature leave significant explanatory gaps. I present several cases of interest and, with careful reflection upon their distinguishing features, I establish important desiderata for an explanatorily satisfying account. With these fundamental demands left unsatisfied by the leading accounts, we see the persisting need for a conception of moral distress that can capture and delimit the range of cases of interest. (shrink)

In slapstick comedy, the worst thing that could happen usually does: The person with a sore toe manages to stub it, sometimes twice. Such errors also arise in daily life, and research traces the tendency to do precisely the worst thing to ironic processes of mental control. These monitoring processes keep us watchful for errors of thought, speech, and action and enable us to avoid the worst thing in most situations, but they also increase the likelihood of such errors when (...) we attempt to exert control under mental load (stress, time pressure, or distraction). Ironic errors in attention and memory occur with identifiable brain activity and prompt recurrent unwanted thoughts; attraction to forbidden desires; expression of objectionable social prejudices; production of movement errors; and rebounds of negative experiences such as anxiety, pain, and depression. Such ironies can be overcome when effective control strategies are deployed and mental load is minimized. (shrink)

Many of those who accept the universalist thesis that mereological composition is unrestricted also maintain that the folk typically restrict their quantifiers in such a way as to exclude strange fusions when they say things that appear to conflict with universalism. Despite its prima facie implausibility, there are powerful arguments for universalism. By contrast, there is remarkably little evidence for the thesis that strange fusions are excluded from the ordinary domain of quantification. Furthermore, this reconciliatory strategy seems hopeless when applied (...) to the more fundamental conflict between universalism and the intuitions that tell against it. (shrink)

This essay criticizes the proposal recently defended by a number of prominent economists that welfare economics be redirected away from the satisfaction of people's preferences and toward making people happy instead. Although information about happiness may sometimes be of use, the notion of happiness is sufficiently ambiguous and the objections to identifying welfare with happiness are sufficiently serious that welfare economists are better off using preference satisfaction as a measure of welfare. The essay also examines and criticizes the position associated (...) with Daniel Kahneman and a number of co-authors that takes welfare to be ‘objective happiness’ – that is, the sum of momentary pleasures. (shrink)

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.

This paper discusses the post-trial access to drugs for patients who participated in clinical trials in Brazil. The ethical guidance for clinical trials in Brazil is arguably one of the clearest in the world in attributing to research sponsors the responsibility for providing post-trial drugs to patients who participated in their experiments. The Federal Constitution recognizes health as a fundamental right to be fulfilled by the State. Based on the Brazilian constitution and on the National Health Council resolutions, courts have (...) been accepting patients' claims and ordering the State and the pharmaceutical companies to provide these patients with the tested treatment in the quantity and duration they need it. This generous interpretation of the duties of the pharmaceutical companies and the State makes the Brazilian model for post-trial access unique when compared to the experience of other countries and thus should be followed with attention by future research in order to assess its consequences for patients, research sponsors, and the public health system. (shrink)

Is liberal democracy a universal ideal? Proponents of "Asian values" argue that it is a distinctive product of the Western experience and that Western powers shouldn't try to push human rights and democracy onto Asian states. Liberal democrats in the West typically counter by questioning the motives of Asian critics, arguing that Asian leaders are merely trying to rationalize human-rights violations and authoritarian rule. In this book--written as a dialogue between an American democrat named Demo and three East Asian critics-- (...) class='Hi'>Daniel A. Bell attempts to chart a middle ground between the extremes of the international debate on human rights and democracy.Bell criticizes the use of "Asian values" to justify oppression, but also draws on East Asian cultural traditions and contributions by contemporary intellectuals in East Asia to identify some powerful challenges to Western-style liberal democracy. In the first part of the book, Bell makes use of colorful stories and examples to show that there is a need to take into account East Asian perspectives on human rights and democracy. The second part--a fictitious dialogue between Demo and Asian senior statesman Lee Kuan Yew--examines the pros and cons of implementing Western-style democracy in Singapore. The third part of the book is an argument for an as-yet-unrealized Confucian political institution that justifiably differs from Western-style liberal democracy.This is a thought-provoking defense of distinctively East Asian challenges to Western-style liberal democracy that will stimulate interest and debate among students of political theory, Asian studies, and international human rights. (shrink)

We explore a general method based on trees of elementary submodels in order to present highly simplified proofs to numerous results in infinite combinatorics. While countable elementary submodels have been employed in such settings already, we significantly broaden this framework by developing the corresponding technique for countably closed models of size continuum. The applications range from various theorems on paradoxical decompositions of the plane, to coloring sparse set systems, results on graph chromatic number and constructions from point-set topology. Our main (...) purpose is to demonstrate the ease and wide applicability of this method in a form accessible to anyone with a basic background in set theory and logic. (shrink)

Epidemiology is a science of disease which specifies rates (illness prevalences, incidences, distributions, etc.). Evolution is a science of life which specifies changes (gene frequencies, generations, forms, function, etc.). Evolutionary Epidemiology is a synthesis of these two sciences which combines the empirical power of classical methods in genetical epidemiology with the interpretive capacities of neo-darwinian evolutionary genetics. In particular, prevalence rates of genetical diseases are important data points when reformulated for the purpose of analysis in terms of their evolutionary frequencies. (...) Traits which exceedprevalences beyond the rates of mutation (in Hardy-Weinberg calculations) or evidence unusualrange of phenotypic reaction are of special interest. This is because traits which did not confer advantages in the environment of evolutionary adaptation cannot accede, through natural selection, to anything but low rates of genomic prevalence.Evolutionary epidemiology is, in all of medicine, of particular promise in ongoing efforts to better understand psychopathology. Many complexities of phenotypic adjustment arise when new developmental demands are placed on an old genome. The new and complex biosocial ecology of human mass society now evokes different phenotypes than those in the prehistorical ecology to which the genome is structurally and functionally better adapted. Some of these new phenotypes are darwinian failures. In this paper, the theoretical implications of evolutionary epidemiology are extended and some tentative points of clinical application (particularly to psychiatry) are offered. (shrink)

Pellegrino was there at the beginning of the field. In the 1950s and 60s, before there was a Kennedy Institute of Ethics or a Hastings Center; before the word ‘bioethics’ itself was coined, Pellegrino was writing articles such as "Ethical Considerations in the Practice of Medicine and Nursing," published in 1964. He was among those who started the Society for Health and Human Values—a precursor organization to the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. He was the founding editor of the (...) Journal of Medicine and Philosophy at a time when the notion that there was a relationship between philosophy and medicine was foreign to both physicians and philosophers. The authors of the articles published in the very .. (shrink)