This book examines influential conceptions of sport and then analyses the interplay of challenging borderline cases with the standard definitions of sport. It is meant to inspire more thought and debate on just what sport is, how it relates to other activities and human endeavors, and what we can learn about ourselves by studying sport.

The epistemic basing relation is the relation occurring between a belief and a reason when the reason is the reason for which the belief is held. It marks the distinction between a belief's being justifiable for a person, and the person's being justified in holding the belief. As such, it is an essential component of any complete theory of epistemic justification. ;I survey and evaluate all theories of the basing relation that I am aware of published between 1965 and 1995. (...) These include causal theories, , theories involving pseudo-overdetermination relations , theories involving what a person would appeal to in defense of her beliefs , and doxastic theories , involving an appeal to meta-beliefs. My discussion of these theories includes a detailed analysis of variations of Lehrer's case of the gypsy lawyer which, I show, can be reformulated to pose a decisive objection to causal theories, if not causal analyses, of the basing relation. ;Rejecting all published theories, I present a new kind of causal analysis of the basing relation which I call the causal-doxastic theory. This theory states that a belief is based on a reason if the reason bears an appropriate causal relation to the belief, or, it does not bear such a causal relation, but an appropriate meta-belief is present. A causal analysis of which meta-beliefs are appropriate is given, so as to count as inappropriate rationalizations, mistaken meta-beliefs, etc. In developing the causal-doxastic theory, I present a solution to the problem of deviant causal chains, a discussion of the causal sustaining of beliefs, an account of rejecting reasons, and a partial analysis of showing that one is justified. I then discuss implications of my theory regarding foundationalism, inference, basic and non-basic belief, holistic and linear coherentism, process reliabilism, internalism and externalism, and various closure principles. (shrink)

This article focuses on emergence in social systems. The author begins by proposing a new tool to explore the mechanisms of social emergence: multi agent–based computer simulation. He then draws on philosophy of mind to develop an account of social emergence that raises potential problems for the methodological individualism of both social mechanism and of multi agent simulation. He then draws on various complexity concepts to propose a set of criteria whereby one can determine whether a given social mechanism generates (...) emergent properties, in the sense that their explanation cannot be reduced to a mechanistic account of individuals and their interactions. This combined account helps to resolve the competing claims of methodological individualists and social realists. The author’s conclusion is that the scope of mechanistic explanation may be limited due to the extreme complexity of many social systems. (shrink)

This dissertation is a critical examination of dialetheism, the view that there are true contradictions. Dialetheism's proponents argue that adopting the view will allow us to solve hitherto unsolved problems, including the well-known logical paradoxes. ;Dialetheism faces three kinds of challenge. Challenges of the first kind put in doubt the intrinsic coherence of dialetheism. It can be claimed, for example, that it is incoherent for a claim to be both true and false; that claims known to be false cannot be (...) accepted; that claims known to be false cannot be rationally accepted; and that dialetheism entails the falsity of some of its own theoretical claims. The second kind of challenge concerns the use of paraconsistent logics, which dialetheists must adopt on pain of accepting the truth of every proposition. I examine a number of paraconsistent logics, and conclude that either they come at an unacceptably high price or they do not support the dialetheist project. ;I devote most attention to the third kind of challenge, according to which dialetheism fails to provide the promised solutions to the paradoxes and other previously intractable problems, and so we lose the major motivation for the theory. Proponents claim that dialetheism allows for the solution of numerous problems, particularly in metaphysics, law, and logic. In the case of metaphysics, it is claimed that dialetheism allows us to deal with puzzles involving change, vagueness, and motion. However, I argue that the proposed solution does not eliminate the old metaphysical problems, and in fact gives rise to new ones. In the case of law, it is claimed that dialetheism can allow us to deal with legal contradiction. I argue there are more plausible means of solving such conflicts. The strongest case for dialetheism is that it allows us to solve logical and semantic paradoxes of self-reference, some of which have endured for well over two thousand years. I construct a paradox that the dialetheist cannot accommodate, and which shows that dialetheism never provided a solution to the paradoxes at all, even in their more familiar forms. (shrink)

Intellectual Disability: Ethics, Dehumanization, and a New Moral Community presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the roots and evolution of the dehumanization of people with intellectual disabilities. Examines the roots of disability ethics from a psychological, philosophical, and educational perspective Presents a coherent, sustained moral perspective in examining the historical dehumanization of people with diminished cognitive abilities Includes a series of narratives and case descriptions to illustrate arguments Reveals the importance of an interdisciplinary understanding of the social construction of intellectual disability.

In this astonishingly rich volume, experts in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, political theory, aesthetics, history, critical theory, and hermeneutics bring to light the best philosophical scholarship on what is arguably Nietzsche's most rewarding but most challenging text. Including essays that were commissioned specifically for the volume as well as essays revised and edited by their authors, this collection showcases definitive works that have shaped Nietzsche studies alongside new works of interest to students and experts alike. A lengthy introduction, annotated (...) bibliography, and index make this an extremely useful guide for the classroom and advanced research. (shrink)

In light of more contemporary interest in the concept of an immemorial past, this essay takes up the manner in which this idea figures in Merleau-Ponty’s works by turning to the famous reference to “a past that has never been present” in Phenomenology of Perception. In order to contextualize and think through what Merleau-Ponty means, I turn to a reference in the same text to “primary silence.” Merleau-Ponty’s concern is to disclose the differential between the concatenation of sensibility and expression (...) and what remains beyond the bounds of the sensible. The task of phenomenology, accordingly, is the disclosure of this primary silence, this primary non-sense. Finally, articulating that this differential never ceased to be a concern for Merleau-Ponty, and, turning to texts from the 1950s as well as to The Visible and the Invisible, we see the development of Merleau-Ponty’s thought as the consistent effort to think through this question. (shrink)

There are many moral qualities which are valued in men. But the question of virtue, of the moral worth of the person as an agent, is quite a different question from that of whether or not he possesses these moral qualities. The problem with which Kant wrestled for many years was that of the nature of the relation between the ‘feeling’ and the ground or motivation of moral action. His Critical doctrine was that the moral feelings lie at the basis (...) of morality, as subjective conditions of our receptiveness to the concept of duty. The Critical doctrine was to allocate the moral feeling to the causality of reason in its practical use, and in that way deliver it from the subjectivism which Kant attributes to all feelings. In the Prize Essay Kant explicitly limits the task of philosophy, however provisionally, to the analytic one of exhibiting, in Newtonian fashion, the basic elements of experience. (shrink)

Kant makes it clear in the Inaugural Dissertation that all the sense‐representations which form the material content of human knowledge are simply ‘modifications of inner sense’. Immortality would be, Kant suggests, the continuation of the unity of one's experience in a differently intuited world; ‘those transcendental objects, which in our present state appear as bodies, could be intuited in an entirely different manner’. Just as the early rationalist doctrine of the self is denied speculative validity, but admitted as a practical (...) postulate of morality; so the early rationalist doctrine of God is retained, but solely for practical use, without any cognitive function. Kant's contention that the ideal of God is a postulate for the employment of understanding in the investigation of nature is not usually granted much force in contemporary thought. Positively, the absolute demands of categorical morality require the postulates of freedom, immortality and God as a condition of their intelligibility. (shrink)

Kant begins his own metaphysical ‘dream of a spiritual visionary’ by remarking that the conception of ‘spirit’ is not a difficult one to form, since it is ‘merely negative’, consisting in the denial of the properties of material existence. Though nature may ultimately be determined by spiritual forces, science cannot be concerned with them. ‘The morality of an action concerns the inner state of the spirit’, Kant writes; and the consequences of such spiritual actions only become fully apparent in the (...) ‘immediate communion of spirits’. Metaphysics is confined to an analytic role, resolving concepts into their fundamental elements. It cannot provide knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality. Moral concepts are now said to be ‘cognised not by experiencing them but through the pure intellect itself’; and the first principles of moral judgment, as of metaphysical knowledge, are known only through the pure intellect, and must be added to experience by the intellect. (shrink)

Kant's final conception of the relation of God and morality, and the fullest development of the metaphysical context of morality is to be found in the large collection of notes and jottings written down by Kant between about 1790‐1803, which have been collected as the Opus Postumum. There is a development in the Opus Postumum from the Critical doctrine that ‘God’ is a postulate which can have no direct influence on the moral life, an unknown, unexperiencable somewhat which makes the (...) summum bonum possible. The basic problem is that Kant has left a deeply religious ethics expressed in a radically humanistic terminology. He propounds a view of man as involved in an impersonal but purposive nature. In trying to replace speculative rationalism by a voluntaristic rationalism, Kant attempts to find a via media between the rationalism of Wolff and the stress on individual moral freedom of Pietism. (shrink)

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an exposition of the relation between Immanuel Kant's ethical and metaphysical views, with special reference to works other than the first two Critiques and the Groundwork. It shows that the categorical nature of moral obligation, yet Kantian ethics is, in a fundamental sense, a teleological ethic, concerned above all with ends of action, human fulfilment and happiness. The book outlines the development (...) of Kant's metaphysical and ethical views in a way which may illuminate some of his betterknown doctrines by tracing their origin and setting them in the wider context of his thought. It also expresses that Kant was driven both by a desire to believe in his spiritual vision and by the equally strong awareness that he could not justify it. (shrink)

The Groundwork is explicitly concerned with the formulation of the supreme principle of morality. Although happiness is, for Kant, a necessary aim of human action, it is not a duty to seek one's own happiness, since every man seeks his own happiness by nature in any case, and so does not have to be constrained to do so. The positive aspect of beneficence is mentioned by Kant in the derivation from the formula of humanity, where he remarks that to take (...) another person as an end in himself is to take his ends as one's own. There is one important strand in Kant's notion of treating humanity as an end‐in‐itself, and he brings this out in listing perfect duties to oneself and duties of respect to others. The initial implausibility of Kant's ethics is the thought that one can will something in the absence of any desire whatsoever. (shrink)

(1994). Exchange on professionalization as marginalization: The American home economics movement and the rhetoric of legitimation. Social Epistemology: Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 123-132.

Daniel Sportiello argues that my support of financial planning as a MacIntyrean practice fails because I have misunderstood the concept of internal goods, and because financial planning then has no internal good at all. Here, I rebut those charges.

Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Dialogues 1–11 discuss religion’s foundation in human reason. Dialogue 12, in which Philo. the relentless opponent of pro-theistic arguments, makes his “confession” that he embraces natural religion; namely, the view that the cause or causes of order in nature bear some remote analogy to human intelligence. Hume’s Natural History of Religion, although published earlier than the posthumous Dialogues, is, in effect, a second volume to them. It presents a complex naturalistic explanation of religion’s origin in (...) human nature, providing a sophisticated account of religion’s origin that is also a critique of religious belief. The core of this critique is an argument that theistic belief cannot be rendered so as to significantly differ from an atheism that grants that natural order has some cause or other. (shrink)

This paper argues against a standard view that all deterministic and conservative classical mechanical systems are time-reversible, by asking how the temporal evolution of a system modulates parametric imprecision (either ontological or epistemic). It notes that well-behaved systems (e.g. inertial motion) can possess a dynamics which is unstable enough to fail at reversing uncertainties—even though exact values are reliably reversed. A limited (but significant) source of irreversibility is thus displayed in classical mechanics, closely analogous the lack of predictability revealed by (...) unstable chaotic systems. (shrink)

Global ethics is no ordinary subject. It includes some of the most urgent and momentous issues the world faces, such as extreme poverty and climate change. Given this, any adequate review of that subject should, I suggest, ask some questions about the relation between what those working in that subject do and the real-world phenomena that are the object of their study. The main question I focus on in this essay is this: should academics and others working in the field (...) of global ethics take new measures aimed at having more real-world positive impact on the phenomena they study? Should they take new measures, that is, aimed at bringing about more improvements in those phenomena, improvements such as reductions in extreme poverty and in emissions of greenhouse gases? I defend a positive answer to this question against some objections, and also discuss some of the kinds of measure we might take in an attempt to have more positive impact. (shrink)

The Varieties of Religious Experience is an exploration of personal narratives about religious experience, but as one might gather from the epigraph to this article, James treats religion in an eccentric way. He takes religious experience to mean something close to the emotional experience of identity. His central question is how one might discover happiness within oneself and in one's relations with others, or if such happiness seems far distant, how one might achieve a change that will accomplish a new (...) identity. (shrink)

BackgroundDepressive disorders are a common form of psychiatric illness and cause significant disability. Regulation authorities, the medical profession and the public require high safety standards for antidepressants to protect vulnerable psychiatric patients. Ketamine is a dissociative anaesthetic and a derivative of a hallucinogen. Its abuse is a major worldwide public health problem. Ketamine is a scheduled drug and its usage is restricted due to its abuse liability. Recent clinical trials have reported that ketamine use led to rapid antidepressant effects in (...) patients suffering from treatment-resistant depression. However, various flaws in study designs, and possible biased reporting of results, may have influenced those findings. Further analyses of ketamine use are needed to ensure patient safety.DiscussionThe use of ketamine in research and treatment of depressive disorders is controversial. Recently, mental health professionals raised ethical concerns about an ongoing ketamine trial in the UK. Also, a Canadian agency reviewed the existing evidence and did not recommend prescribing ketamine to treat depressive disorders. Findings obtained from tightly controlled research settings cannot be easily translated to clinical practice as substance abuse is commonly comorbid with depressive disorders. An effective antidepressant should reduce severity of depressive symptoms without liability problems. Although the US FDA has not approved the use of ketamine to treat depressive disorders, some psychiatrists offer off-label repeat prescription of ketamine. Prescribing ketamine for treating depressive disorders requires substantial empirical evidence. Clinicians should also consider research findings on ketamine abuse. Depressive disorders can be chronic conditions and the current evidence does not rule out the risk of substance abuse after repeat prescription of ketamine. Off-label ketamine use in treating depressive disorders may breach ethical and moral standards, especially in countries seriously affected by ketamine abuse. This article presents two real-world clinical vignettes which highlight ethical principles and theories, including autonomy, nonmaleficience, fidelity and consequentialism, as related to off-label ketamine use.ConclusionWe urge clinicians to minimise the risk of harming patients by considering the empirical evidence on ketamine properties and attempting all standard antidepressant therapies before considering the off-label use of ketamine. (shrink)

In a companion review1 we discussed the data supporting the conclusion that at least two subtypes of spectrin exist in mammalian brain. One form is found in the cell bodies, dendrites, and post‐synaptic terminals of neurons (brain spectrin(240/235E)) and the other subtype is located in the axons and presynaptic terminals (brain spectrin(240/235)). Our recent understanding of brain spectrin subtype localization suggests a possible explanation for a conundrum concerning brain 4.1 localization. Amelin, an immunoreactive analogue of red blood cell (rbc) cytoskeletal (...) protein 4.1, is localized in neuronal cell bodies and dendrites when brain sections are stained with antibody against rbc protein 4.1. However, it has recently been suggested that synapsin I, a neuron‐specific phosphoprotein associated with the cytoplasmic surface of small synaptic vesicles, is related to erythrocyte 4.1. In this review we hypothesize that there are at least two forms of brain 4.1: a cell body/dendritic form (amelin) which is detected with rbc protein 4.1 antibody, and a unique form found exclusively in the presynaptic terminal (synapsin I). The binding of synapsin I to brain spectrin(240/235), and its ability to stimulate the spectrin/F‐actin interaction in a phosphorylation‐dependent manner suggests a model for the regulation of synaptic transmission mediated by the neuronal cytoskeleton. (shrink)

Traditionally, philosophers have ascribed moral agency almost exclusively to humans. Early writing about moral agency can be traced to Aristotle and Aquinas. In addition to human moral agents, Aristotle discussed the possibility of moral agency of the Greek gods and Aquinas discussed the possibility of moral agency of angels. In the case of angels, a difficulty in ascribing moral agency was that it was suspected that angels did not have enough independence from God to ascribe to the angels genuine moral (...) choices. Recently, new candidates have been suggested for non‐human moral agency. Floridi and Sanders suggest that artificially intelligence programs that meet certain criteria may attain the status of moral agents; they suggest a redefinition of moral agency to clarify the relationship between artificial and human agents. Other philosophers, as well as scholars in Science and Technology Studies, are studying the possibility that artifacts that are not designed to mimic human intelligence still embody a kind of moral agency. For example, there has been a lively discussion about the moral intent and the consequential effects of speed bumps. The connections and distributed intelligence of a network is another candidate being considered for moral agency. These philosophical arguments may have practical consequences for software developers, and for the people affected by computing. In this paper, we will examine ideas about artificial moral agency from the perspective of a software developer. (shrink)

John Macquarrie, a Fellow of the British Academy, was the foremost Anglican systematic theologian of the twentieth century. His many books cover a wide range of topics, from studies of existentialist philosophy to expositions of systematic Christian theology, writings on mysticism and world religion, and analyses of ethical thought. Macquarrie was always a theologian of the church, using a philosophical vocabulary that united philosophical idealism, existentialism, and Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophy in an original and fruitful way. His masterpiece was the 1966 (...) Principles of Christian Theology, which works through almost every aspect of Christian doctrine in the light of the concepts of human nature and of God that he had forged from idealism, from Martin Heidegger, and from an increasingly sacramental and mystical approach to Christian faith. In 1970, Macquarrie was offered, without his prior knowledge, the Lady Margaret Chair of Divinity at Christ Church, University of Oxford. He received various honours that testify to the high regard in which he was held both in America and in Britain. (shrink)

Philosphy is not necessary to religion, and philosophy in the modern West proceeds without much reference to religion. In so far as religion is taken to be a matter of reverence for the traditional gods of place and people, its rites and stories are as resistant to philosophical analysis as are the works of poets and dramatists. Yet insofar as a religion makes claims about the nature of the real world, claims based on some allegedly special mode of access proper (...) to that religion, then it is bound to come under critical scrutiny. The Socratic method of seeking an analysis of meanings and an exposition of modes of knowledge can be readily applied to any religious believers who claim to understand what religious concepts mean and who further claim that they know some of their beliefs to be true. Although Plato has Socrates participate in sacrifices to the gods, he never considers the rites of ancient Greek religion to be worthy of serious philosophical comment. Instead, he invented his own austere, mathematical, cerebral religion, the contemplation of the Good, which provides knowledge of how to live justly in society. Ever since that time, philosophers in the West have tended to invent their own vastly unpopular religions of intellectual supremacy, and to leave the mass of popular religion to superstition and illusion. Theologians, however, conscious of the need to provide some intellecutal basis for their faith, have tended to adopt the philosophical positions of a few, or even of a few hundred, years ago, and baptize them, sometimes very roughly, into the Christian or some other faith. (shrink)

Newspaper copy editors labor in anonymity and struggle for respect in their newsrooms. These conditions may make it difficult for them to realize their potential as the last line of defense against violations of ethical practice. By adopting existentialism as a guiding moral philosophy, however, copy editors can find the courage and confidence to act as final guardians of ethical journalism. This article examines how copy editors are often overlooked in the literature of journalism ethics and suggests ways in which (...) existential philosophy would address specific problems of copy editors. The article examines whether a model for the existential copy editor is morally defensible and how adopting it might benefit copy editors, their newsroom colleagues, and readers. (shrink)

We consider here an important family of conditional bets, those that proceed to settlement if and only if some agreed evidence is received that a condition has been met. Despite an opinion widespread in the literature, we observe that when the evidence is strong enough to generate certainty as to whether the condition has been met or not, using traditional conditional probabilities for such bets will NOT preserve a gambler from having a synchronic Dutch Book imposed upon him. On the (...) contrary (I show) the gambler can be Dutch-Booked if his betting ratios ever depart from a rather different probability, one that involves the probability of the agreed evidence being provided. We note furthermore that this same alternative probability assessment is necessary if the evidence is weaker (i.e. if it fails to provide knowledge whether or not the condition has been met.) By contrast, some of the (rather different) probability assessments proposed by Jeffrey, precisely for such situations, still expose the gambler to a Dutch-Book. (shrink)