In this article, I critically evaluate the positions of Professors Jeremy Waldron and W.J. Waluchow on the right-based merits of entrenched constitutions and strong judicial review. I support Waluchow in arguing that (i) prohibitions on the constitutional entrenchment of rights and resultant prohibitions of strong judicial review may be only superficially fair or democratic, since fair procedure alone can neither eliminate pre-existing inequalities nor ultimately take the autonomy vital to self-governance seriously (whether individual or collective). Secondly, (ii) if deep dissensus (...) fails to exist on all substantive matters of rights, the constitutional entrenchment of rights combined with strong judicial review can indeed be achieved fairly. I then propose that (iii) the anti-constitutionalist concern about being governed by the ‘dead hand of the past’ is self-refuting, for the alternative is simply another constraint on autonomy. While this is largely consistent with Waluchow's position vis-à-vis Waldron's majoritarianism, I end by expressing serious concerns regarding whether the common law (and the ‘constitutional morality’ that Waluchow claims can be derived from it) can act as a sufficiently robust basis for the protection of liberal and egalitarian rights. (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaard’s claim that having faith requires being contemporary with Christ is one of the most important, yet difficult to interpret claims across his entire authorship. How can one be contemporary with a figure who existed more than two millennia ago? A prominent answer to this question is that contemporaneity with Christ is achieved through a kind of imaginative co-presence made possible by reading Scripture. However, I argue, this ignores what Kierkegaard thinks about Christ as a living agent, and not (...) a merely historical agent. By drawing on Kierkegaard’s discussion of Christ’s true presence in the sacrament of Communion, I argue that contemporaneity with Christ should be understood in the same way as any other intersubjective relation. That is, I argue, that just as relating to any living person as contemporary requires a kind of two-way attention-sharing, relating to Christ as contemporary, on Kierkegaard’s account, requires a kind of two-way attention-sharing with Christ. (shrink)

Forgiveness has traditionally been characterized an affective response to a wrongdoing, i.e. a psychological process that involves ridding oneself of resentment or other negative reactive attitudes. In contrast to the prevailing model, this paper advocates for the emerging position that forgiveness should be understood as a normative power akin to a promise. In particular, I argue that forgiveness involves surrendering the right to discount the interests of a perpetrator (a special permission the victim acquires in virtue of having been wronged). (...) I argue that this model fits and/or explains important features of forgiveness, such as the idea that forgiveness is a personal response to a blameworthy wrong, that forgiveness re-establishes a relation of equality, and that forgiveness is ‘normatively significant’. I further develop the position by showing how it can provide a unified case of paradigmatic forgiveness, self-forgiveness, and third-party forgiveness—this explanatory power distinguishes the view from previous articulations of the idea that forgiveness is a normative power. The final section further explores these distinctions by delimiting the scope of forgiveness to exclude powers related to apologies, compensation, or ‘redemption’. (shrink)

Is it possible to worship a non-personal God? According to some, the answer is no: worship necessarily involves addressing the object of one’s worship. Since non-personal gods cannot acknowledge or respond to address, it must be conceptually inappropriate to worship such gods. I object to this argument on two fronts. First, I show that the concept of worship used is too narrow, excluding many cases that obviously count as instances of worship. And, secondly, drawing on recent work on the philosophy (...) of object knowledge, I argue that addressing non-personal gods might not be as conceptually confused as it first appears. Thus, it at least possible to worship a non-personal God. (shrink)

One of the most pressing ethical challenges facing phase I cancer research centres is the process of informed consent. Historically, most scholarship has been devoted to redressing therapeutic misconception, that is, the conflation of the nature and goals of research with those of therapy. While therapeutic misconception continues to be a major ethical concern, recent scholarship has begun to recognise that the informed consent process is more complex than merely a transfer of information and therefore cannot be evaluated only according (...) to how well an individual understands such information. Other components of decision-making operate independently of understanding and yet still may compromise the quality of informed consent. Notable among these components is unrealistic optimism, an event-specific belief that one has a better chance of receiving benefit than others similarly situated. In this article, we consider responses to interviews with parents who had recently completed an informed consent conference for enrolling their child in a phase I cancer clinical trial to examine how this influence manifests and how investigators might address it during informed consent. (shrink)

Cuteness is one of the most culturally pervasive aesthetics of the new millennium and its rapid social proliferation suggests that the affective responses it provokes find particular purchase in a contemporary era marked by intensive media saturation and spreading economic precarity. Rejecting superficial assessments that would deem the ever-expanding plethora of cute texts trivial, The Aesthetics and Affects of Cutenessdirects serious scholarly attention from a variety of academic disciplines to this ubiquitous phenomenon. The sheer plasticity of this minor aesthetic is (...) vividly on display in this collection which draws together analyses from around the world examining cuteness's fundamental role in cultural expressions stemming from such diverse sources as military cultures, high-end contemporary art worlds,and animal shelters. Pushing beyond prevailing understandings that associate cuteness solely with childhood or which posit an interpolated parental bond as its primary affective attachment, the essays in this collection variously draw connections between cuteness and the social, political, economic, and technological conditions of the early twenty-first century and in doing so generate fresh understandings of the central role cuteness plays in the recalibration of contemporary subjectivities. (shrink)

In this article, we give much needed attention to the nature and value of corporate prayer by drawing together insights from theology, philosophy, and psychology. First, we explain what it is that distinguishes corporate from private prayer by drawing on the psychological literature on joint attention and the philosophical notion of shared situations. We suggest that what is central to corporate prayer is a “sense of sharedness,” which can be established through a variety of means—through bodily interactions or through certain (...) environments. Second, we argue that corporate prayer, when understood as a kind of shared situation, enables common knowledge, as well as a kind of alignment between participants. Through this process, participants’ attention is focused on the same target and affiliation between participants increases. Thus, we suggest, one benefit of understanding corporate prayer as a shared situation is that it establishes and deepens a sense of community in such a way that common purposes and goals can be enacted more effectively. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that folk psychology plays an important role in people’s moral judgments. For a simple example, take the process by which we determine whether or not an agent is morally blameworthy. Although the judgment here is ultimately a moral one, it seems that one needs to use a fair amount of folk psychology along the way. Thus, one might determine that an agent broke the vase intentionally and therefore conclude that she is blameworthy for breaking it. Here (...) it seems that one starts out with a folkpsychological judgment (that the agent acted intentionally) and then uses it as input to a process that eventually yields a moral judgment (that the agent is blameworthy). Many other cases have a similar structure. In recent years, however, a number of studies have shown that there are also cases in which the arrow of causation goes in the opposite direction. That is, there appear to be cases in which people start out with a moral judgment and then use it as input to a process that eventually yields a folk-psychological judgment (Knobe 2003a, 2003b, 2004, 2005a, 2005b). These findings come as something of a surprise, and it can be difficult to know just what to make of them. My own view is that the findings are best explained by the hypothesis that moral considerations truly do play a role in people’s underlying folk-psychological concepts (Knobe 2003b, 2004, forthcoming). The key claim here is that the effects revealed in recent experiments are not the result of any kind of ‘bias’ or ‘distortion.’ Rather, moral considerations truly do figure in a fundamental way in the issues people are trying to resolve when they grapple with folk-psychological questions. I must confess, however, that not all researchers in the field share this view. Although many have been convinced that moral considerations actually do play a role in folk-psychological concepts, others have suggested that there might be better ways to account for the results of recent experiments.. (shrink)

Isaiah Berlin was a central figure in twentieth-century political thought. This volume highlights Berlin's significance for contemporary readers, covering not only his writings on liberty and liberalism, the Enlightenment and Romanticism, Russian thinkers and pluralism, but also the implications of his thought for political theory, history, and the social sciences, as well as the ethical challenges confronting political actors, and the nature and importance of practical judgment for politics and scholarship. His name and work are inseparable from the revival of (...) political philosophy and the analysis of political extremism and defense of democratic liberalism following World War II. Berlin was primarily an essayist who spoke through commentary on other authors and, while his own commitments and allegiances are clear enough, much in his thought remains controversial. Berlin's work constitutes an unsystematic and incomplete, but nevertheless sweeping and profound, defense of political, ethical, and intellectual humanism in an anti-humanistic age. (shrink)

In this article, I summarize recent work on the philosophy of liturgy. In part 2 of this article, I consider how liturgy can provide a way of knowing God personally. I outline accounts of acquiring phenomenal knowledge, practical knowledge, and propositional knowledge by participating in liturgy.

Embodied cognition pertains to the consequences on thought and emotion of living with our particular human sensory and motor systems. The consequences are quite varied, and researchers across the cognitive sciences have made great discoveries in line with this principle. However, while we offer this principle, it is necessarily broad, and searching for a single unifying theme has not brought researchers together behind a clearly defined endeavor. Rather than attempt to do so, we embrace the variation and specificity in research (...) endeavors across the cognitive sciences to forge a practical sense in which embodied cognition can be a useful paradigm within which to think and work. This topic, The Future of Embodied Cognition, includes contributions from eight sets of authors communicating how embodied cognition has and will influence specific approaches within their disciplines. Through this format, the lessons from each contribution can be easily shared with colleagues across disciplines. As these lessons continue to be shared, a paradigm that is of practical use will emerge, and its coherence across disciplines will follow. To illustrate the practical aspect of this approach, in this introductory paper, we take one lesson from each contribution that must be shared and illustrate how each lesson can apply to a single, specific topic of study. (shrink)

Placing politics in an ecological perspective that discerns an inextricable connection between human political agency and the forces of nonhuman nature would seem to be a difficult task. While we have grown accustomed to understanding our personal capacities for thought and action as well as the shape of our intimate relations as aspects of our natural inheritance, our political life and reflection remain rife with human exceptionalism. We understand animals to have rudimentary reasoning skills and physical capabilities incredible to us. (...) We also understand some animals gather in social groupings held together by mutual dependence for fulfilling affective needs. But it is difficult to imagine that animals have .. (shrink)

Sometimes we descriptively name that which we condemn. “Hate crime” is such a name: it not only identifies the crime, it also refers to what we think is morally unique about the crime—its hatefulness morally sets it apart from other actions. On one theory of terrorism, “terrorism” is a similar name. What is morally special about terrorism, according to this view, is built right into the name itself: it aims to terrorize. C all this the straightforward analysis of terrorism. The (...) straightforward view is inconsistent with a number of recent attempts to identify what, if anything, is morally distinctive about terrorism. Some are skeptical that terrorism really should be thought of as morally unique, on the grounds that its morally relevant properties are exhausted by more general qualities, such as causing harm, being coercive, or violating autonomy. David Rodin, for example, believes that there is no morally relevant quality typically displayed by terrorism that is not also found in acts of conventional war. Others do think that terrorism is morally distinctive, but they nonetheless conclude that its morally distinctive feature is something other than its aim of producing fear. For example, we will see below that Robert Goodin, Jeff McMahan, and Samuel Scheffler maintain that the morally distinctive feature of terrorism is not the aiming to cause fear itself, but an intention to use that fear to bring about certain further effects. For Scheffler the unique problem lies in terrorism’s use of fear to undermine order in the society that the terrorist targets; for Goodin it is the terrorist’s use of fear for sociopolitical ends that is especially troubling; McMahan, finally, holds that the morally special aspect of terrorism is that it is the intentional harming of innocent people in order to intimidate and coerce others. (shrink)

A response by the author of A Theory of Race, to review essays by Michael Hardimon, Sally Haslanger, Ron Mallon, and Naomi Zack.

Ce texte constitue le chapitre 12 du livre de J. S. Goldstein, Long Cycles : Prosperity and War in the Modern Age, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988. L'ensemble du livre est accessible ici. - Économie et Marxisme – Nouvel article.

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 7, Page 53-54, July 2012.

Religion, belief and culture should be recognized as potential sources of moral purpose and personal strength in healthcare, enhancing the welfare of both clinicians and patients amidst the experience of ill-health, healing, suffering and dying. Communication between doctors and patients and between healthcare staff should attend sensitively to the welfare benefits of religion, belief and culture. Doctors should respect personal religious and cultural commitments, taking account of their significance for treatment and care preferences. Good doctors understand their own beliefs and (...) those of others. They hold that patient welfare is best served by understanding the importance of religion, belief and culture to patients and colleagues. The sensitive navigation of differences between people's religions, beliefs and cultures is part of doctors' civic obligations and in the UK should follow the guidance of the General Medical Council and Department of Health. In particular, apparent conflict between clinical judgement or normal practices and a patient's culture, religion and belief should be considered carefully. Doctors' own religion or culture may play an important role in promoting adherence to this good practice. In all matters, doctors' conduct should be governed by the law and arrangements for conscientious objection that are in effect. (shrink)

The final hymn of the Rigveda, 10.191, the last three stanzas of which are dedicated to saṃjñānam ‘unity’, plays in a remarkable way with the preposition/prefix sam(-) ‘with; together’ and the phonetic sequence mā̆n. Some of the words with mā̆n go back to Proto-Indo-European *men ‘think’ (mánas- ‘mind, intellect, thought’, mántra- ‘utterance, spell’, and mantraye ‘I utter an utterance, recite a spell’); others are forms of the adjective samāná- ‘common, the same’. This brief communication shows that the display of phonetic (...) fireworks has analogs in our earliest hymns in Avestan and Greek, in which both reflexes of *men and etymologically unconnected words that have the same pattern of sounds are frequently found in the most “privileged positions”: the beginning and/or end of a section, poem, or entire poetic collection. (shrink)

One of the most famous scenes in classical literature is theDichterweiheat the beginning of theTheogony: when Hesiod was tending his sheep below Mount Helicon, the Muses approached him, provided him with a staff and a divine voice, and told him to sing of the blessed, everlasting gods.

This thesis proffers a novel argument from order for the existence of God called the eutaxiological argument. It maintains the universe’s order and existence is fundamentally grounded in logos (λογος) or Mind. Unlike teleological design arguments, the eutaxiological argument is not concerned with the alleged end or purpose of some physical entity—e.g., the human eye, the bacteria flagellum, or the universe taken as a whole. It is, instead, concerned with the fact that the universe is ordered. It, thus, makes a (...) distinction between ‘order’ and ‘telos’. It argues that exemplifying essential order is both a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of physical entities—and, indeed, for the existence of the universe—and that we need not think of physical order in terms of goals, purposes, or final causation. -/- Unlike most contemporary arguments for God’s existence, the eutaxiological argument argues for the existence of God as conceived of by apophatic theism. According to apophatic theism, the term ‘God’ denotes a unique, ontologically distinct, ineffable, logos that fundamentally grounds the universe’s order and existence from nothing. Historically, one can find proponents of apophatic theism in numerous philosophical and religious traditions—including some strands of Hinduism, Judaism, Neoplatonism, Christianity, and Islam. Its most ardent Christian exponents come from the Eastern Christian tradition. This dissertation offers a fresh defence of apophatic theism inspired by the Eastern Christian tradition. It responds to serious objections regarding the coherence of divine ineffability and the supposed logical incompatibility of apophatic theism with Christianity. (shrink)