Standing at the intersection of criminology and philosophy, this book demonstrates the ways in which mythic movies and television series can provide an understanding of actual crimes and social harms. Taking three social problems as its subjects – capitalist political economy, structural injustice, and racism – the book explores the ways in which David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–2019), and Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) offer solutions by reconceiving justice in terms of personal and collective transformation, (...) utopian thinking, and the relationship between racism and elitism, respectively. In doing so, the authors set out a theory of understanding the world based on cinematic and televisual works of art and conclude with a template that establishes a methodology for future use. An Epistemology of Criminological Cinema is authoritative and accessible, ideal reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students, criminologists, philosophers, and film, television, and literary critics with an interest in social justice and social harm. (shrink)

This manuscript reports on a landmark symposium on the ethical, legal and technical challenges of xenotransplantation in the UK. King’s College London, with endorsement from the British Transplantation Society (BTS), and the European Society of Organ Transplantation (ESOT), brought together a group of experts in xenotransplantation science, ethics and law to discuss the ethical, regulatory and technical challenges surrounding translating xenotransplantation into the clinical setting. The symposium was the first of its kind in the UK for 20 years. This paper (...) summarises the content of the expert lectures showcasing the progress which has been made in xenotransplantation including—the history of xenotransplantation, advances in gene edited animals and progress towards clinical xenotransplantation. We then set out the ethical and legal issues still to be resolved. Finally, we report the themes of the roundtable discussion highlighting areas of consensus and controversy. While the detail of the legal discussion was directed towards the UK, the principles and summary reported here are intended to be applicable to any jurisdiction seeking to implement clinical xenotransplantation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT An influential argument against the possibility of obligations to oneself states that the very notion of such obligations is incoherent: If there were such obligations, we could release ourselves from them; yet releasing oneself from an obligation is impossible. I challenge this argument by arguing against the premise that it is impossible to release oneself from an obligation. I point out that this premise assumes that if it were possible to release oneself from an obligation, it would be impossible (...) to violate that obligation. I note that there are two interpretations of this assumption, one conceptual and one psychological. I argue that, on both interpretations, the assumption is false—at least according to independently plausible accounts of obligations to oneself and of what it means to waive an obligation. My arguments paint a picture of obligations to oneself that not only challenges the argument against their coherence, but also illuminates these obligations’ relationship to other parts of the moral domain. (shrink)

Debates about what constitutes benefits in human research continue to be less informed due to a lack of empirical evidence from the developing world. This study aimed to explore what constitutes benefits in HIV vaccine trials in Tanzania and examine inherent ethical implications. A qualitative case study design was deployed and a total of 29 purposively selected study participants comprising of experienced researchers, institutional review board members and community advisory board members were included. Collected data were analyzed by thematic analysis (...) aided by computer software: MAXQDA version 20.4.0. The study findings indicate that there is a growing appreciation of benefits beyond actual vaccines to include 1) capacity building at individual, community, institutional and regulatory levels; and 2) non‐capacity building related benefits such as strengthened collaborations, ancillary care and employment opportunities. So, as the struggle for viable HIV vaccines continues, other benefits that have accrued from such trials are not to be blindsided especially for developing countries like Tanzania. (shrink)

It is advisable to treat some sorts of discourse about fiction with the aid of an intensional operator "in such-And-Such fiction...." the operator may appear either explicitly or tacitly. It may be analyzed in terms of similarity of worlds, As follows: "in the fiction f, A" means that a is true in those of the worlds where f is told as known fact rather than fiction that differ least from our world, Or from the belief worlds of the community (...) in which the fiction originated. (shrink)

Poverty, inequality, violence, environmental degradation, and tyranny continue to afflict the world. Ethics of Global Development offers a moral reflection on the ends and means of local, national, and global efforts to overcome these five scourges. After emphasizing the role of ethics in development studies, policy-making, and practice, David A. Crocker analyzes and evaluates Amartya Sen's philosophy of development in relation to alternative ethical outlooks. He argues that Sen's turn to robust ideals of human agency and democracy improves (...) on both Sen's earlier emphasis on 'capabilities and functionings' and Martha Nussbaum's version of the capability orientation. This agency-focused capability approach is then extended and strengthened by applying it to the challenges of consumerism and hunger, the development responsibilities of affluent individuals and nations, and the dilemmas of globalization. Throughout the book the author argues for the importance of more inclusive and deliberative democratic institutions. (shrink)

How are children raised in different cultures? What is the role of children in society? How are families and communities structured around them? Now in its third edition, this deeply engaging book delves into these questions by reviewing and cataloging the findings of over 100 years of anthropological scholarship dealing with childhood and adolescence. It is organized developmentally, moving from infancy through to adolescence and early adulthood, and enriched with anecdotes from ethnography and the daily media, to paint a nuanced (...) and credible picture of childhood in different cultures, past and present. This new edition has been expanded and updated with over 350 new sources, and introduces a number of new topics, including how children learn from the environment, middle childhood, and how culture is 'transmitted' between generations. It remains the essential book to read to understand what it means to be a child in our complex, ever-changing world. (shrink)

This chapter outlines the main ideas of my book National responsibility and global justice. It begins with two widely held but conflicting intuitions about what global justice might mean on the one hand, and what it means to be a member of a national community on the other. The first intuition tells us that global inequalities of the magnitude that currently exist are radically unjust, while the second intuition tells us that inequalities are both unavoidable and fair once national (...) responsibility is allowed to operate. This conflict might be resolved either by adopting a cosmopolitan theory of justice (which leaves no room for national responsibility) or by adopting a ?political? theory of justice (which denies that questions of distributive justice can arise beyond the walls of the sovereign state). Since neither resolution is satisfactory, the chapter defends the idea of national responsibility and proposes a new theory of global justice, whose main elements are the protection of basic human rights worldwide, and fair terms of interaction between independent political communities. (shrink)

Professional philosophers are members of bioethical committees and regulatory bodies in areas of interest to bioethicists. This suggests they possess moral expertise even if they do not exercise it directly and without constraint. Moral expertise is defined, and four arguments given in support of scepticism about their possession of such expertise are considered and rejected: the existence of extreme disagreement between moral philosophers about moral matters; the lack of a means clearly to identify moral experts; that expertise cannot be (...) claimed in that which lacks objectivity; and that ordinary people do not follow the advice of moral experts.I offer a better reason for scepticism grounded in the relation between moral philosophy and common-sense morality: namely that modern moral philosophy views even a developed moral theory as ultimately anchored in common-sense morality, that set of basic moral precepts which ordinary individuals have command of and use to regulate their own lives.Even if moral philosophers do nevertheless have a limited moral expertise, in that they alone can fully develop a set of moral judgments, I sketch reasons – grounded in the values of autonomy and of democracy – why moral philosophers should not wish non-philosophers to defer to their putative expertise. (shrink)

A natural view of testimony holds that a source's statements provide one with evidence about what the source believes, which in turn provides one with evidence about what is true. But some theorists have gone further and developed a broadly analogous view of memory. According to this view, which this essay calls the “diary model,” one's memory ordinarily serves as a means for one's present self to gain evidence about one's past judgments, and in turn about the truth. This (...) essay rejects the diary model's analogy between memory and testimony from one's former self, arguing first that memory and a diary differ with respect to their psychological roles, and second that this psychological difference underwrites important downstream epistemic differences. The resulting view stands opposed to prominent discussions of memory and testimony, which either, like the diary model, treat memory by analogy to what we naively wish to say about testimony, or which instead attempt to extend to testimony the epistemically preservative role of memory. (shrink)

Current controversies about knowledge integration reflect conflicting ideas of what it means to “take Indigenous knowledge seriously”. While there is increased interest in integrating Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge in various disciplines such as anthropology and ethnobiology, integration projects are often accused of recognizing Indigenous knowledge only insofar as it is useful for Western scientists. The aim of this article is to use tools from philosophy of science to develop a model of both successful integration and integration failures. On (...) the one hand, I argue that cross-cultural recognition of property clusters leads to an ontological overlap that makes knowledge integration often epistemically productive and socially useful. On the other hand, I argue that knowledge integration is limited by ontological divergence. Adequate models of Indigenous knowledge will therefore have to take integration failures seriously and I argue that integration efforts need to be complemented by a political notion of ontological self-determination. (shrink)

The enhancement of human traits has received academic attention for decades, but only recently has moral enhancement using biomedical means – moral bioenhancement (MB) – entered the discussion. After explaining why we ought to take the possibility of MB seriously, the paper considers the shape and content of moral improvement, addressing at some length a challenge presented by reasonable moral pluralism. The discussion then proceeds to this question: Assuming MB were safe, effective, and universally available, would it be morally (...) desirable? In particular, would it pose an unacceptable threat to human freedom? After defending a negative answer to the latter question – which requires an investigation into the nature and value of human freedom – and arguing that there is nothing inherently wrong with MB, the paper closes with reflections on what we should value in moral behaviour. (shrink)

Here, I put forth a construal of P. F. Strawson’s so-called reversal, his view that what it means to be morally responsible is determined by our practices of holding responsible. The “concern-based” construal that I defend holds that what it means to be morally responsible is determined by the basic social concerns of which our practices are an expression. This construal, I argue, avoids a dilemma that Patrick Todd has recently raised for the reversal.

Altruism has both an evolutionary and a psychological meaning. As the term is used in evolutionary theory, a trait is deemed altruistic if it reduces the fitness of the actor and enhances the fitness of someone else. In its psychological sense, the thesis that we have altruistic ultimate motives asserts that we care about the welfare of others, not just as a means of enhancing our own well-being, but as an end in itself. In Unto Others (hereafter UO), we (...) consider both evolutionary altruism (Part I) and psychological altruism (Part II) from an evolutionary perspective. We propose a multilevel selection theory to explain how altruism can evolve from group selection, based on Darwin’s solution to the problem. Our presentation of multilevel selection theory expands the range of topics beyond altruism in other respects as well. In Part I1 of UO, we evaluate the arguments, both conceptual and empirical, that philosophers and psychologists have advanced in an attempt to choose between psychological egoism and motivational pluralism. We conclude that these arguments are inconclusive. (shrink)

Traditional means of crime prevention, such as incarceration and psychological rehabilitation, are frequently ineffective. This collection considers how crime preventing neurointerventions could present a more humane alternative but, on the other hand, how neuroscientific developments and interventions may threaten fundamental human values.

How should we punish criminal offenders? One prima facie attractive punishment is administering a mandatory neurointervention—interventions that exert a physical, chemical or biological effect on the brain in order to diminish the likelihood of some forms of criminal offending. While testosterone-lowering drugs have long been used in European and US jurisdictions on sex offenders, it has been suggested that advances in neuroscience raise the possibility of treating a broader range of offenders in the future. Neurointerventions could be a cheaper, and (...) more effective method of punishment. They could also be more humane. Nevertheless, in this paper we provide an argument against the use of mandatory neurointerventions on offenders. We argue that neurointerventions inflict a significant harm on an offender that render them a morally objectionable form of punishment in a respect that incarceration is not. Namely, it constitutes an objectionable interference with the offender’s mental states. However, it might be thought that incarceration also involves an equally objectionable interference with the offender’s mental states. We show that even if it were the case that the offender is harmed to the same extent in the same respect, it does not follow that the harms are morally equivalent. We argue that if one holds that intended harm is more difficult to justify than harm that is unintended but merely foreseen, this means neurointerventions could be morally objectionable in a significant respect that incarceration is not. (shrink)

Is it rational to be moral? How do rationality and morality fit together with being human? These questions are at the heart of David Schmidtz's exploration of the connections between rationality and morality. This inquiry leads into both metaethics and rational choice theory, as Schmidtz develops conceptions of what it is to be moral and what it is to be rational. He defends a fairly expansive conception of rational choice, considering how ends as well as means can be (...) rationally chosen and explaining the role of self-imposed constraints in a rational life plan. His moral theory is dualistic, ranging over social structure as well as personal conduct and building both individual and collective rationality into its rules of recognition for morals. To the "why be moral" question, Schmidtz responds that being moral is rational, but he does not assume we have reasons to be rational. Instead, Schmidtz argues that being moral is rational in a particular way and that beings like us in situations like ours have reasons to be rational in just that way. This approach allows him to identify decisive reasons to be moral; at the same time, it explains why immorality is as prevalent as it is. This book thus offers a set of interesting and realistic conclusions about how morality fits into the lives of humanly rational agents operating in an institutional context like our own. (shrink)

An extended analysis is given of the program, originally suggested by Deutsch, of solving the probability problem in the Everett interpretation by means of decision theory. Deutsch's own proof is discussed, and alternatives are presented which are based upon different decision theories and upon Gleason's Theorem. It is argued that decision theory gives Everettians most or all of what they need from `probability'. Contact is made with Lewis's Principal Principle linking subjective credence with objective chance: an Everettian Principal Principle (...) is formulated, and shown to be at least as defensible as the usual Principle. Some consequences of (Everettian) quantum mechanics for decision theory itself are also discussed. -/- [NB: this this long (70 pages) and occasionally rambling online-only paper has been almost entirely superseded by material in subsequent; if something is not included in them it usually means that I have had second thoughts. I include it for completeness only. (shrink)

It’s often held that undetectable inversion of mental qualities is, if not possible, at least conceivable. It’s thought to be conceivable that the mental quality your visual states exhibit when you see something red in standard conditions is literally of the same type as the mental quality my visual states exhibit when I see something green in such circumstances. It’s thought, moreover, to be conceivable that such inversion of mental qualities could be wholly undetectable by any third-person means. And (...) since first- person access is limited to a single individual, and so could not reveal a disparity in mental quality between us, third-person undetectability means undetectability tout court. (shrink)

Emptiness means that all entities are empty of, or lack, inherent existence - entities have a merely conceptual, constructed existence. Though Nagarjuna advocates the Middle Way, his philosophy of emptiness nevertheless entails nihilism, and his critiques of the Nyaya theory of knowledge are shown to be unconvincing.

This chapter contains sections titled: What Role for Philosophy? Wittgenstein and Davidson Wittgenstein and Davidson Contrasted McDowell The Idea of Bildung Understanding the Bildungsprozess The Conceptual and the Practical Conclusion.

Eleanor Knox has argued that our concept of spacetime applies to whichever structure plays a certain functional role in the laws (the role of determining local inertial structure). I raise two complications for this approach. First, our spacetime concept seems to have the structure of a cluster concept, which means that Knox's inertial criteria for spacetime cannot succeed with complete generality. Second, the notion of metaphysical fundamentality may feature in the spacetime concept, in which case spacetime functionalism may be (...) uninformative in the absence of answers to fundamental metaphysical questions like the substantivalist/relationist debate. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to create dialectical space for a hitherto under-discussed option in the philosophy of conspiracy theories. The extant literature on the topic almost exclusively assumes that conspiracy theories are a type of explanation. The typical mental attitude towards explanations is belief, a representational attitude that can be assessed as true, false, warranted or unwarranted. I call models based on this assumption alethic models. Alethic models can’t pick out conspiracy theories as a distinct class of mental (...) attitudes without latching onto their negative epistemic properties. The extant literature therefore finds itself in an unfortunate situation. It either has to presume that conspiracy theories are epistemically defective in general (generalism). Or it has to deny that conspiracy theories are a distinct class of mental attitudes. Conspiracy theories are then nothing more than theories, theories about conspiracies, and should be assessed on a case-by-case basis (particularism). Instead, this paper motivates the research program of narrative models. According to narrative models, conspiracy theories are first and foremost stories – structured fictions. And their relevant mental attitudes are the attitudes of fiction – make-believe and imagination. Fictions are not subjects to epistemic norms. They are neither rational nor irrational. Narrative models can therefore pick out conspiracy theories as a distinct class of mental attitudes without labeling them as defective in general. In addition, they are able to explain certain features of conspiracy discourse particularly well, and they offer new perspectives on the popularity of conspiracy theories and the means of intervention we have at our disposal. (shrink)

Although Foucault’s 1979 lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics promised to treat the theme of biopolitics, the course deals at length with neoliberalism while mentioning biopolitics hardly at all. Some scholars account for this elision by claiming that Foucault sympathized with neoliberalism; I argue on the contrary that Foucault develops a penetrating critique of the neoliberal claim to preserve individual liberty. Following Foucault, I show that the Chicago economist Gary Becker exemplifies what Foucault describes elsewhere as biopolitics: a form of (...) power applied to the behavior of a population through the normalizing use of statistics. Although Becker’s preference for indirect intervention might seem to preserve the independence of individuals, under biopolitics individual liberty is itself the means by which populations are governed indirectly. In my view, by describing the history and ambivalence of neoliberal biopolitics, Foucault fosters a critical vigilance that is the precondition for creative political resistance. (shrink)

What is justice? Questions of justice are questions about what people are due, but what that means in practice depends on context. Depending on context, the formal question of what people are due is answered by principles of desert, reciprocity, equality, or need. Justice, thus, is a constellation of elements that exhibit a degree of integration and unity, but the integrity of justice is limited, in a way that is akin to the integrity of a neighborhood rather than that (...) of a building. A theory of justice is a map of that neighborhood. (shrink)

Kant’s account of the freedom gained through virtue builds on the Socratic tradition. On the Socratic view, when morality is our end, nothing can hinder us from attaining satisfaction: we are self-sufficient and free since moral goodness is (as Kant says) “created by us, hence is in our power.” But when our end is the fulfillment of sensible desires, our satisfaction requires luck as well as the cooperation of others. For Kant, this means that happiness requires that we get (...) other people to work for our ends; and this requires, in turn, that we gain control over the things other people value so as to have influence over them. If this plan for happiness is not subordinated to morality, then what is most valuable to us will be precisely what others value. This is the root of the “passions” that make us evil and make us slaves whose satisfaction depends on others. But, significantly, this dependence is a moral slavery and hence does not signal a loss, or even diminishment of the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer is often criticized for his account of the fusions of horizons as the ideal resolution of dialogue. I argue that in fact it is an excellent account of the successful resolution of dialogue, but only in light of a proper understanding of what Gadamer means by 'horizon' and how then horizons are fused. I do this by showing how Gadamer is drawing on the technical sense of 'horizon' found in Edmund Husserl's and Martin Heidegger's phenomenologies. In the (...) process I show why a prominent criticism of Gadamer's account of the fusion of horizons, a criticism presented most forcefully by E. D. Hirsch, is mistaken. (shrink)

Some people contend that fetuses have moral status but less than that of paradigm persons. Many people hold views implying that sentient animals have moral status but less than that of persons. These positions suggest that moral status admits of degrees. Does it? To address this question, we must first clarify what it means to speak of degrees of moral status. The paper begins by clarifying the more basic concept of moral status and presenting two models of degrees of (...) moral status. It then sketches several significant considerations in favor of, and several against, the assertion of degrees of moral status. The paper concludes by drawing lessons from the discussion. (shrink)

In recent years, many philosophers of science have rejected the “value-free ideal” for science, arguing that non-epistemic values have a legitimate role to play in scientific inquiry. However, this philosophical position raises the question of how to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate influences of values in science. In this paper, we argue that those seeking to address this “new” demarcation problem can benefit by drawing lessons from the “old” demarcation problem, in which philosophers tried to find a way of distinguishing (...) between science and non-science. Many of those who worked on this problem ultimately found that efforts to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for defining science failed, and most concluded that the best solution to the problem was to characterize scientific hypotheses, theories, and research programs in terms of some common norms. We suggest that those seeking to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate value influences on science would do well to adopt a similar approach. Rather than attempting to establish necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying appropriate value influences, it will be more fruitful to evaluate scientific activities based on their adherence to a set of epistemic and ethical norms that can be implemented in scientific practice by means of rules, conventions, policies, and procedures. (shrink)

Some people contend that fetuses have moral status but less than that of paradigm persons. Many people hold views implying that sentient animals have moral status but less than that of persons. These positions suggest that moral status admits of degrees. Does it? To address this question, we must first clarify what it means to speak of degrees of moral status. The paper begins by clarifying the more basic concept of moral status and presenting two models of degrees of (...) moral status. It then sketches several significant considerations in favor of, and several against, the assertion of degrees of moral status. The paper concludes by drawing lessons from the discussion. (shrink)

This paper examines Plato's ideas on cause-effect relations in the "Phaedo." It maintains that he sees causes as things (not events, states of affairs or the like), with any information as to how that thing brings about the effect relegated to a strictly secondary status. This is argued to make good sense, so long as we recognise that aition means the "thing responsible" and exploit legal analogies in order to understand what this amounts to. Furthermore, provided that we do (...) not pre-suppose that we already know what can and what cannot count as a cause, Plato proves to have an attractive case for his principle that all causation is a matter of like causing like. Once we appreciate this, we are a little closer to understanding his more idiosyncratic principle, which although puzzling is ubiquitous in his writings and often invoked as a premise in key arguments, that opposites cannot cause opposites. The last part of the paper turns to formal causes, defending Plato's advocacy of them, and examining their role in the "Parmenides'" Third Man Argument. The main proposal is that Plato's conception of Forms as causes opens the door to a better version of that argument's "Non-identity" premise than those currently available. (shrink)

Some forms of ethical relativism seem to endorse strict contradictions. Various forms of relativism are distinguished, And their vulnerability to such charges compared. Means of avoiding incoherence are considered. Relativistic justification seems either innocuous but nonrelativistic or else unintelligible. Relativistic analyses of moral judgments are implausible and seem required for no other purpose than to avoid charges of incoherence.

It is well known that de se (or ‘self-locating’) propositions complicate the standard picture of how we should respond to evidence. This has given rise to a substantial literature centered around puzzles like Sleeping Beauty, Dr. Evil, and Doomsday—and it has also sparked controversy over a style of argument that has recently been adopted by theoretical cosmologists. These discussions often dwell on intuitions about a single kind of case, but it’s worth seeking a rule that can unify our treatment of (...) all evidence, whether de dicto or de se. -/- This paper is about three candidates for such a rule, presented as replacements for the standard updating rule. Each rule stems from the idea that we should treat ourselves as a random sample, a heuristic that underlies many of the intuitions that have been pumped in treatments of the standard puzzles. But each rule also yields some strange results when applied across the board. This leaves us with some difficult options. We can seek another way to refine the random-sample heuristic, e.g. by restricting one of our rules. We can try to live with the strange results, perhaps granting that useful principles can fail at the margins. Or we can reject the random-sample heuristic as fatally flawed—which means rethinking its influence in even the simplest cases. (shrink)

Hegel's discussion of the concept of “habit” appears at a crucial point in his Encyclopedia system, namely, in the transition from the topic of “nature” to the topic of “spirit” (Geist): it is through habit that the subject both distinguishes itself from its various sensory states as an absolute unity (the I) and, at the same time, preserves those sensory states as the content of sensory consciousness. By calling habit a “second nature,” Hegel highlights the fact that incipient spirit retains (...) a “moment” of the natural that marks a limitation compared to “pure thought” but that also makes perceptual consciousness possible. This makes Hegel's account analogous in important respects to John McDowell's “naturalism of second nature.” But Hegel's account of habit can be seen as a version of a Kantian synthesis of the productive imagination—and hence presupposes a given material that can become one's own by means of habit. This does not mean that Hegel falls into the Myth of the Given, but it does suggest that an appropriate account of second nature might be committed to something McDowell wants to deny: that nonconceptual states of consciousness play a role (even if not a justificatory role) in perception. (shrink)

Bernard Williams’ discussion of immortality in “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality” has spawned an entire philosophical literature. This literature tends to focus on one of Williams’ central claims: if we were to relinquish our mortality, we would necessarily become alienated from our existence and environment—“bored,” in his terms. Many theorists have defended this claim; many others have challenged it. Even if this claim is false, though, it still isn’t obvious that we should choose to relinquish our (...) mortality, given the option. And this is puzzling. Death is generally regarded as an evil, meriting anxiety, dread, and avoidance. What is it about our mortality that makes us hesitant to relinquish it? In this paper, I aim to explain this hesitancy and to argue in its favor: we should be hesitant to relinquish our mortality. Further, I take my discussion to suggest that most of us probably shouldn’t take this option if we were given it. To make these points, I draw on Williams’ discussion of immortality, developing and extending his thought in order to better understand how mortality shapes the way we relate to our lives, particularly the commitments and values that make them meaningful. Our mortality, it seems, plays a crucial role in our lives standing for something. Relinquishing it thus means risking the loss of this value. (shrink)

A natural view is that linguistic understanding is a source of justification or evidence: that beliefs about the meaning of a text or speech act are prima facie justified when based on states of understanding. Neglect of this view is largely due to the widely held assumption that understanding a text or speech act consists in knowledge or belief. It is argued that this assumption rests, in part, on confusing occurrent states of understanding and dispositions to understand. It is then (...) argued that occurrent states of understanding are not states of belief of knowledge since a subject may fail to believe that a text or speech act means what she understands it to mean if she doubts the reliability or truth- fulness of that understanding. States of understanding, it is maintained, belong in the same epistemic category as states of perception and memory. (shrink)

A natural view is that linguistic understanding is a source of justification or evidence: that beliefs about the meaning of a text or speech act are prima facie justified when based on states of understanding. Neglect of this view is largely due to the widely held assumption that understanding a text or speech act consists in knowledge or belief. It is argued that this assumption rests, in part, on confusing occurrent states of understanding and dispositions to understand. It is then (...) argued that occurrent states of understanding are not states of belief of knowledge since a subject may fail to believe that a text or speech act means what she understands it to mean if she doubts the reliability or truthfulness of that understanding. States of understanding, it is maintained, belong in the same epistemic category as states of perception and memory. (shrink)

Educators continually ask about the best means to engage students and how best to capture attention. These concerns often make the problematic assumption that students can directly govern their own attention. In order to address the role and limits of attention in education, some theorists have sought to recover the significance of silence or mindfulness in schools, but I argue that these approaches are too simplistic. A more fundamental examination of our conceptions of identity and agency reveals a Cartesian (...) and Kantian foundationalism. This assumed subjectivity establishes too simplistic a conception of the agency of students in directing attention. I critically engage with these conceptions by drawing on a range of diverse sources, primarily modern Continental philosophy and Christian mystical theology. (shrink)

The “ultimate objective” of this book, says David Schmidtz, “is to examine the degree to which being moral is co-extensive with being rational”. For Schmidtz, an “end” gives us a reason for action provided that its pursuit is not undercut by some other end. Morality has a two-part structure. A person’s goal is “moral” if “pursuing it helps [her] to develop in a reflectively rational way,” provided its pursuit does not violate “interpersonal moral constraints”. Interpersonal constraints are imposed by (...) “collectively rational” social institutions, institutions that “make people in general better off by nonexploitative means”. Schmidtz’s view is a form of “actualism.” Our reasons are given by our actual goals, subject to the qualification mentioned above, and moral constraints are given by actually existing collectively rational institutions. Schmidtz concedes that this framework cannot guarantee that it is rational for every agent to be moral, and he concedes that his moral theory might be incomplete. Nevertheless, he argues, “morality and rationality make room for each other in a variety of ways”. (shrink)

Most early studies of consciousness have focused on human subjects. This is understandable, given that humans are capable of reporting accurately the events they experience through language or by way of other kinds of voluntary response. As researchers turn their attention to other animals, “accurate report” methodologies become increasingly difficult to apply. Alternative strategies for amassing evidence for consciousness in non-human species include searching for evolutionary homologies in anatomical substrates and measurement of physiological correlates of conscious states. In addition, creative (...) means must be developed for eliciting behaviors consistent with consciousness. In this paper, we explore whether necessary conditions for consciousness can be established for species as disparate as birds and cephalopods. We conclude that a strong case can be made for avian species and that the case for cephalopods remains open. Nonetheless, a consistent effort should yield new means for interpreting animal behavior. (shrink)

The great variousness and plurality of goodness has given comfort to general scepticism about values and a multitude of metaethical attitudes or predilections. But is this variousness and plurality really the hotch-potch it has appeared? The paper recapitulates and expands von Wright's typology of the varieties of goodness and looks to explain the order or system that underlies the phenomena by developing and extending a conjecture of Aristotle's, the so-called 'focal hypothesis', and combining there-with a suggestion of von Wright's, to (...) the effect that the central case of something good is the faring well of a being. By means of focal hypothesis, one may account fairly well for medical, technical, instrumental, beneficial and utilitarian goodness. Other varieties such as hedonic and ethical goodness complicate the picture, as also do all cases where it seems that an antecedent kind of goodness impinges upon a being. These complications mirror in part the finding that the human scale of values is not a scale exclusively of human values. (shrink)

: This paper discusses the origins of two key notions in Foucault's work up to and including The Archaeology of Knowledge. The first of these notions is the notion of "archaeology" itself, a form of historical investigation of knowledge that is distinguished from the mere history of ideas in part by its unearthing what Foucault calls "historical a prioris". Both notions, I argue, are derived from Husserlian phenomenology. But both are modified by Foucault in the light of Jean Cavaillès's critique (...) of Husserl's theory of science. On Husserl's view, we demand that propositions holding of scientific objects be intersubjective and invariant, but this demand conflicts with our immediate experience, which is essentially bound to a subject's perspective. Thus the mathematical and physical sciences must utilise formal languages to fix these truths independently of the thoughts of a particular subject. This necessary procedure leads to the sedimentation of these formal systems: we forget their source in the concrete experiences of individuals, and use them as purely technical means. The technique of reactivating the intentional acts in which sedimented formal systems originated is thus, in Fink's terminology, an archaeological method. Foucault and Cavaillès retain the general outlines of this archaeology of the sciences, but they reject its appeal to conscious acts of meaning, to what Cavaillès calls "the philosophy of consciousness". I conclude by discussing the implicit difficulties in the "linguistic transcendentalism" proposed as an alternative by these French critics of Husserl. (shrink)

One matter upon which the already voluminous philosophical and psychological literature on the topic seems to be agreed is that gratitude is a psychologically and socially beneficial human quality of some moral significance. Further to this, gratitude seems to be widely regarded by positive psychologists and virtue ethicists as a moral virtue. This paper, however, sets out to show that such claims and assumptions about the moral character of gratitude are questionable and that its status as a moral virtue is (...) by no means straightforward. (shrink)

This paper stands at the confluence of two streams in contemporary political thought. One stream is composed of those critics of liberal political philosophy who are often described collectively as ‘communitarians’. What unites these critics is a belief that contemporary liberalism rests on an impoverished and inadequate view of the human subject. Liberal political thought – as manifested, for instance, in the writings of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Ronald Dworkin – claims centrally to do justice to individuality: to specify (...) the conditions under which distinct individuals, each with his own view about how life should be lived, can pursue these visions to the best of their ability. But, the critics claim, liberalism is blind to the social origins of individuality itself. A person comes by his identity through participating in social practices and through his affiliation to collectivities like family and nation. An adequate political philosophy must attend to the conditions under which people can develop the capacity for autonomy that liberals value. This, however, means abandoning familiar preoccupations of liberal thought – especially the centrality it gives to individual rights – and looking instead at how social relationships of the desired kind can be created and preserved. It means, in short, looking at communities – their nature and preconditions. (shrink)

According to Scott Shapiro’s Moral Aim Thesis, it is an essential feature of the law that it has a moral aim. In short, for Shapiro, this means that the law has the constitutive aim of providing morally good solutions to morally significant social problems in cases where other, less formal ways of guiding the activity of agents won’t work. In this article, I argue that legal positivists should reject the Moral Aim Thesis. In short, I argue that although there (...) are versions of the Moral Aim Thesis that are arguably compatible with legal positivism, all of the different ways of making it compatible face serious philosophical difficulties. Following a discussion of what these difficulties are, I provide an alternative to the Moral Aim Thesis, a thesis that I call the ‘Represented-as-Moral Thesis’. This thesis avoids the problems that I raise for the Moral Aim Thesis and better resonates with some of the core intuitions behind legal positivism. Furthermore, a version of Shapiro’s Planning Theory of Law that is developed with the Represented-as-Moral Thesis (as opposed to the Moral Aim Thesis) can explain all of the things that Shapiro uses the Moral Aim Thesis to explain. (shrink)

As a member of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, I was involved in early deliberations about the appropriateness of publishing this avian influenza research when manuscripts were referred to us from two scientific journals during their review process, via the U.S. government. As described by David Resnik in this issue, we grappled with benefits and risks, and in our initial, unanimous decision recommended limited publication, alerting the world to the possibility of evolved transmissibility in these viruses but (...) with redaction of the exact genetic mutations that would enable anyone skilled in the art to synthesize these potentially dangerous viruses. However, after additional discussion, both internal and external to the board, we were asked to reconsider the situation, and this time a majority voted in favor of full publication. I was one of the minority that opposed full publication. Resnik points to the difficulties of performing a formal risk‐benefit assessment without the means of quantifying these two terms and suggests application of reasoning based on the precautionary principle instead. This makes sense. But there are three other issues that should be highlighted. (shrink)

According to robust moral realism, there exist objective, non-natural moral facts. Moral facts of this sort do not fit easily into the world as illuminated by natural science. Further, if such facts exist at all, it is hard to see how we could know of their existence by any familiar means. Yet robust realists are not moral skeptics; they believe that we do know the moral facts. Thus robust moral realism comes with a number of hard-to-defend ontological and epistemological (...) commitments. Recently, Sharon Street has claimed, in light of these commitments, that robust moral realism requires a kind of faith and “has become a strange form of religion.” I believe that Street is right. I argue at some length that robust moral realism does require faith, and is a religion. However, I further argue that it is an excellent religion. I argue that it has three principal advantages: it is avoids wishful thinking, is guaranteed not to contradict the results of natural science, and is profoundly simple in its ontological commitments. Further, robust moral realism may be rationally defensible on evidentialist grounds. Consequently, even if the standard arguments for traditional religions are not compelling, there might still be compelling arguments for robust moral realism. (shrink)

Pointing by apes is near-ubiquitous in captivity, yet rare in their natural habitats. This has implications for understanding both the ontogeny and heritability of pointing, conceived as a behavioral phenotype. The data suggest that the cognitive capacity for manual deixis was possessed by the last common ancestor of humans and the great apes. In this review, nonverbal reference is distinguished from symbolic reference. An operational definition of intentional communication is delineated, citing published or forthcoming examples for each of the defining (...) criteria from studies of manual gestures in apes. Claims that chimpanzees do not point amongst themselves or do not gesture declaratively are refuted with published examples. Links between pointing and cognitive milestones in other domains relating means to ends are discussed. Finally, an evolutionary scenario of pointing as an adaptation to changes in hominid development is briefly sketched. (shrink)