Bentham's dictum, ‘everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one’, is frequently noted but seldom discussed by commentators. Perhaps it is not thought contentious or exciting because interpreted as merely reminding the utilitarian legislator to make certain that each person's interests are included, that no one is missed, in working the felicific calculus. Since no interests are secure against the maximizing directive of the utility principle, which allows them to be overridden or sacrificed, the dictum is not usually (...) taken to be asserting fundamental rights that afford individuals normative protection against the actions of others or against legislative policies deemed socially expedient. Such non-conventional moral rights seem denied a place in a utilitarian theory so long as the maximization of aggregate happiness remains the ultimate standard and moral goal. (shrink)

Idealism offers a distinctive perspective on the methods of philosophical inquiry and on the nature of reality. In the version that dominated Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, there was a strong emphasis on the search for unity, for the connections between and among the diverse aspects of experience, and the many spheres of human interest, such as natural science, psychology, ethics, and politics. While each distinct science or area of study tries to explain and to provide a (...) coherent account of the phenomena falling within its sphere, such studies are limited in that they must begin from various conceptions, or “working hypotheses,” as Bradley often called them. It is the unique role of metaphysical inquiry to attempt to get behind and beyond these assumptions and lay everything bare to the questioning mind. (shrink)

F.H. Bradley always said that understanding his views requires understanding the importance of immediate experience, and in a recent paper in Bradley Studies, entitled, “F. H. Bradley and the Doctrine of Immediate Experience,” Dr. Sievers offers an important new study of this topic. His analysis lists eleven characteristics, each of which is, presumably, like the first on the list, an “important characteristic of feeling or immediate experience”. This list, and the title of the paper, suggest that there is a fairly (...) univocal sense of immediacy available in Bradley’s texts. On the one hand this has to be true, for an immediate experience of any type will necessarily display whatever characteristics differentiate it from experiences which are not immediate. On the other hand, Bradley’s discussions sometimes suggest that there are different types of immediate experience or feeling, that experiences can be immediate in more than one sense. If this is true, we need an analysis of these various senses of immediacy as a supplement to Dr. Sievers’ account. (shrink)

Several important discussions of Bradley’s ethical theory have recently appeared, among which is Professor Don MacNiven’s interesting paper on Bradley’s critical analyses of Utilitarian and Kantian ethics. In addition to directing us to central features in, and problems with, Bradley’s understanding of these doctrines, MacNiven correctly emphasizes the role of psychological discussions in Ethical Studies and remarks the distinction Bradley made between the moralist and the moral philosopher. Bradley is trying to understand moral experience, “the world of the thinking, feeling (...) moral agent, living his or her life out in the concrete context of family, society, and state,” and theories or systems of ethics are being judged according to their ability to illuminate that experience. MacNiven’s main concern is with Bradley’s arguments that neither utilitarianism and the empirical psychology on which it is grounded nor the Kantian ethics and the rational psychology that grounds it can satisfactorily explain moral experience. I do not wish to discuss these here. Rather, I want to offer some remarks about a topic that is introduced in MacNiven’s article but not discussed there because it is outside the scope of that paper. The topic arises when MacNiven mentions consistency and contradiction. He notes Bradley’s rejection of pure formalism in ethics, a purely formal theory being characterized as advocating the practical maxim, “realize non-contradiction”. One would be surprised to discover that Bradley thought such a view totally wrongheaded, and MacNiven rightly remarks that it “would be odd for Bradley to deny consistency a role in moral thought. After all, the principle of noncontradiction is fundamental for Bradley’s metaphysics and his coherence theory of truth.” However, as MacNiven would recognize, we need not be directed forward to Appearance and Reality to be assured of this, for noncontradiction has a central place in Ethical Studies. What is perhaps surprising is that there we are presented with the notion of a felt contradiction. In fact, there is considerable mention of feelings in Ethical Studies, and the notions of harmony and felt unity as well as that of a felt contradiction appear to be especially important. (shrink)

G. E. Moore’s The Refutation of Idealism falls into two main parts: the analysis of “esse is percipi,” which Moore claimed was the key premise of all Idealist arguments to the conclusion that reality is spiritual; and the discussion of sensations. I am here only concerned with the latter. This, on its critical side, took a position of Bradley’s as its target and, in its turn, drew objections from Strong and Ducasse. The following explores these disputes about sensory experience which (...) revolved around the second part of Moore’s Refutation. (shrink)

Those attempting to expound a comprehensive normative ethical theory are presumably motivated by the belief that there should be an ultimate reason people can give for their actions and a final response to the question of why we should act morally. Historically, one candidate for this ultimate end or reason is self-realization. To convince us of his theory the self-realizationist must successfully explicate the notion of the self—i.e., he must tell us what man’s distinctive nature or function is—and he must (...) have something to say about the perfecting of this self. (shrink)

Some writers suggest that corporations should act in ways which reflect a broad concern for the well-being of others, as opposed to a more narrow (Libertarian) conception of responsibility. But this Broad View of moral responsibility puts us on a collision course with our considered intuitions about paternalistic acts. This paper discusses several aspects of this issue: the neutrality of the Standard View of Paternalism, the nature of the defenses of paternalistic interventions allowed by the Standard View of Paternalism and (...) their reliance on consent; and the sort of position on paternalism the Board View would have to endorse in order to justify the benevolence-motivated orientation required by its conception of moral responsibility.The conclusion is that unless we are prepared to take a different, non-standard view of paternalism the Board View of corporate moral responsibility will be untenable. (shrink)

Virtually all the earlier critics — including Sidgwick and the Oxford Idealists — thought J. S. Mill’s arguments for qualities of pleasure and their ranking unacceptable. More recently there has been something of a reversal of this opinion, with commentators such as Skorupski, Donner, Berger and Wilson supporting Mill, and other writers, such as Edwards and Sprigge, arguing that qualitative hedonism is plausible. This paper reconsiders some of the arguments of F.H. Bradley and other earlier critics who dismissed Mill’s quantity-quality (...) distinction. (shrink)

One way out to avoid this tension is to adopt what legal theorists call a “mixed theory,” which presents the different penal elements as answering to different concerns. For example, one could hold that the justification of the institution of punishment requires a consequentialist answer focussed on various types of deterrence aimed at promoting social well-being, but that the distribution of actual punishments is decided in terms of desert and the degree of moral culpability of the criminal. This is the (...) type of mixed theory A. J. Milne claimed to have found in Green’s Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation. By contrast, Bradley is often interpreted as holding the converse mixed theory, according to which a right to punish is established via some retributive argument but, once this right is established, consequentialist considerations can then be introduced to determine the actual punishments doled out. The passage usually cited includes this sentence: “Having once the right to punish, we may modify the punishment according to the useful and the pleasant.”. (shrink)

If Bradley is right that Reality is experience, then an analysis of our experience should help us to understand the general nature of Reality. I believe Bradley thought this was the case. Our experience is of two broad types: feelings or immediate experiences on the one hand, and thoughts and volitions on the other. This division marks the boundary between nonintentional and intentional mental states, and whatever passage is allowed between these two types, they are not the same and no (...) experience can be both at once. Unfortunately, this renders our window on Reality rather opaque for Reality supposedly is similar to both without being identical to either. Reality has the type of nonrelational unity possessed by immediate experience, but is not immediate experience; and while it includes the objects of intentional states — what Bradley always called the “ideal objects” which constitute appearances — Reality is not the appearances themselves. (shrink)

Moral perfection makes its appearance in Chapter XIV of Appearance and Reality, and presents a problem for the general account of reality Bradley has developed to that point. This paper reexamines that problem and Bradley’s solution. In doing so, it also remarks the importance of Ethical Studies for our understanding of one of the main themes of Appearance and Reality.

Although f h bradley is usually taken to be a retributivist, His writings on the topic of punishment show his position to be more utilitarian. And he criticizes retributivism severely in his article in the "international journal of ethics" in 1894. The present paper attempts to present a more accurate picture of bradley's views of punishment and to show the relevance of these views to contemporary debate on the justification and distribution of punishment.

Following the formulation of the Identity Theory by Place and Smart a few years ago, there was considerable discussion of subjective mental states and of the importance of first-person reports of mental events. One concern was that the logical status of first-person claims might commit us to belief in irreducible mental phenomena referred to by such propositions. If so the Identity Theory would be false. Kurt Baier went so far as to argue that the incorrigibility of propositions such as “I (...) have a pain” demonstrates that Smart's identification of sensations with brain states and processes is untenable. While there is no point to reintroducing historical discussions it is worth remarking because a more general problem is reflected in this kind of debate. This is the problem of how we expect our ordinary intuitions and ways of talking about something to affect our theoretical view of it or vice versa. In this particular instance it manifests itself as the question of the extent to which a theory of persons is to be dictated to or decided by the common and generally accepted intuitions embedded in our psychological language. (shrink)

People have always had a considerable interest in the possibility of an after-life; some undoubtedly motivated by fear of death and others by a hope for a kind of cosmic corrective justice whereby the deserving sufferers in this life finally get their just rewards and the morally pernicious and evil also get theirs. Clearly, many cultures have believed in an afterlife, for they elaborately prepared the corpses of the dead and saw that useful goods were put in the deceased person's (...) tomb or burial urn. Such beliefs persist, with many contemporary religions believing both that there is an after life and that one's status there will be determined by the moral character of one' earthly life. (shrink)

The papers in this collection were originally presented at a conference celebrating the centenary of the publication of Appearance and Reality. Although ranging over a number of topics, they tend to focus on a few central Bradleyan doctrines, thereby giving the volume a reasonable measure of unity. This is helped by the editor’s fine introduction, which demonstrates how each paper contributes to our understanding of Bradley’s solution to the main problem which motivated his metaphysical excursions, that of “the relation between (...) thought and reality”. That this is a key to understanding Bradley’s philosophy is surely right, for in the appendix to the second edition of Appearance and Reality Bradley confessed that this was the issue over which he had agonized most, the assumptions with which he began having quickly led him to “the great problem of the relation of Thought to Reality”. A few paragraphs later he claims that Chapter XV, titled Thought and Reality, presents the main thesis of his book. (shrink)

In truth-functional analysis we need not worry about the purported ambiguity of the English ‘or,’ for we can assign different symbols and define each by means of a truth table. However, at least in classes in elementary logic, we often try to indicate that there is some rationale to the assignation of truth values by marshaling English disjunctive sentences which will clearly render an inclusive or an exclusive reading, without the explicit addition of one of the qualifying phrases, “or both” (...) or “but not both.” At this point one discovers people writing on logic saying quite different things about the English ‘or.’ In his Methods of Logic Quine takes the inclusive sense to be the more naturally intended and claims that “indisputable instances of the exclusive use” are rare. Yet in The Principles of Logic Bradley says that no one ever really intends to use ‘or’ in any other than an exclusive sense; and Bosanquet followed him in this. In this paper I am interested in attempting to discover why the British Idealists held that ‘or’ is always exclusive, especially in the face of various examples which, prima facie, establish both uses in English. Why would Bradley feel compelled to deny “any possible instance in which alternatives are not exclusive”? As it turns out, the position held by Bradley and Bosanquet is stronger and more interesting than one initially expects. (shrink)

Following the formulation of the Identity Theory by Place and Smart a few years ago, there was considerable discussion of subjective mental states and of the importance of first-person reports of mental events. One concern was that the logical status of first-person claims might commit us to belief in irreducible mental phenomena referred to by such propositions. If so the Identity Theory would be false. Kurt Baier went so far as to argue that the incorrigibility of propositions such as “I (...) have a pain” demonstrates that Smart's identification of sensations with brain states and processes is untenable. While there is no point to reintroducing historical discussions it is worth remarking because a more general problem is reflected in this kind of debate. This is the problem of how we expect our ordinary intuitions and ways of talking about something to affect our theoretical view of it or vice versa. In this particular instance it manifests itself as the question of the extent to which a theory of persons is to be dictated to or decided by the common and generally accepted intuitions embedded in our psychological language. (shrink)

This anthology opens with historical writings on fallacies, including selections from Aristotle, Whately, and J. S. Mill, and then moves on, in Parts 2 and 3, to recent discussions of fallacy theory and analyses of specific fallacies. It ends with a brief section debating the utility and advisability of teaching fallacies in courses in critical thinking or introductory logic. The volume’s target audience is senior undergraduate and graduate students, and also those for whom a compilation of contemporary work on this (...) subject would be a useful research tool. To the latter end it contains a select, nine-page bibliography of recent works on fallacies and fallacy theory. (shrink)

One dominant aspect of British Idealism of the late nineteenth century was its critical reaction to the central traditions of British philosophy from Hobbes to Mill; much of T. H. Green’s thought was cast against his criticism of the Lockean “way of ideas”; F. H. Bradley challenged key doctrines in Mill’s logic and the theory of the association of ideas as developed by Hume, Mill, and Hartley; Bernard Bosanquet’s political philosophy raised objections to the forms of liberal individualism found in (...) Bentham, Mill, and Spencer; and all three were critical of utilitarianism. In advancing their criticisms, they brought to bear the insights of other traditions they had encountered in their studies at Oxford: the ancient philosophies of Plato and Aristotle and the German idealism which had been gradually arriving from the continent. The extent to which they forged new positions from these sources varied. While Bradley’s thought was more eclectic and independent, Green’s thinking was always dominated by Kant and Bosanquet’s by Hegel. (shrink)

This collection of readings in the philosophy of law is divided into two parts. The first is focused on discussions of the nature of law, law’s relations to morality, and how law works as a social institution to protect individual liberty and promote citizens’ opportunities for self-determination and participation in government. The second part selects some contemporary issues so that the reader may see how the more general considerations and concerns of the first part apply to specific problems and concrete (...) situations. Legal cases are included throughout in order to illustrate a point or focus a debate. The book is designed to speak to a Canadian audience; the appendices include the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and a brief overview of the Canadian legal system, prepared by the editors; and the main text includes Waluchow’s fine paper on legal reasoning as it relates to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, entitled “Charter Challenges: A Test Case for Theories of Law?” as well as discussions of several important Canadian legal decisions, such as Morgentaler, Smolling and Scott v. The Queen, R. v. Keegstra, and R. v. Butler. In addition to this focus, the selection and arrangement of readings reflects, to a degree, the editors’ view that “questions about morality and the law are at root questions of political philosophy”. (shrink)

Property is one of the most important institutions of modern societies. That certain things can be owned, and thereby controlled by individuals or corporations or governments, forms a set of background understandings and expectations against which we plan our projects and make many of our choices. That property institutions are products of social design means we need to become clear about the roles we think they should play and the features they must have. Moreover, that the use-privileges and powers of (...) control attaching to one person's property rights will affect both what others are free to do and also the distribution of social wealth means that property institutions require moral justification. (shrink)

In his lectures in the 1870s, T. H. Green argued for an important connection between ethics and politics - namely, that the state has the moral function of promoting and protecting all citizens’ opportunities of developing their moral character. How this works out in a concrete case is best seen by considering Green’s view of how this perspective dictates to society’s design of its property institution. This paper analyzes Green’s theory of property so as to bring out and explore his (...) general thesis about the state’s moral role; and deals with the critics’ claim that a property institution constructed along the lines Green advocated would actually deny property to some and thereby defeat the moral purpose of having a property institution in the first place. (shrink)