In this engaging study, the authors put casuistry into its historical context, tracing the origin of moral reasoning in antiquity, its peak during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and its subsequent fall into disrepute from the mid-seventeenth century.

from my first courses as an undergraduate in African American studies, I have been concerned about the dynamics by which white and Black1 people discuss race. For one, I was troubled in my undergraduate African American studies courses by the ease with which white students would insert themselves into conversations where, it seemed to me, they simply did not belong, for example, conversations concerning visions for the future of the Black community and strategies for achieving such visions. Shannon Sullivan speaks (...) of this phenomenon, accurately I believe, as “ontological expansiveness”: one central feature of privilege is a sense of entitlement to enter every room without first considering whether or not one is .. (shrink)

Francisco Ayala and others have argued that recent genetic evidence shows that the origins of the human race cannot be monogenetic, as the Church hastraditionally taught. This paper replies to that objection, developing a distinction between biological and theological species first proposed by Andrew Alexanderin 1964.

Let me begin by repeating my remarks at the close of the annual Business Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, March 17, 2012 :"We call ourselves the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, but one of the hopes of at least Josiah Royce and John Dewey was that great societies might eventually grow into great communities. So I am deeply honored today to assume the position of SAAP's new President because it is an honor that (...) comes not merely from a society of professional colleagues but from a community of friends who have nurtured and supported me for thirty-seven years, both professionally and personally. Initially I came to SAAP in order to share common philosophical .. (shrink)

In 300 BCE, the tutor of the heir-apparent to the Chu throne was laid to rest in a tomb at Jingmen, Hubei province in central China. A corpus of bamboo-strip texts that recorded the philosophical teachings of an era was buried with him. The tomb was sealed, and China quickly became the theater of the Qin conquest, an event that proved to be one of the most significant in ancient history. For over two millennia, the texts were forgotten. But in (...) October 1993, they were unearthed. The discovery of the Guodian texts, together with other recently discovered Warring States manuscripts, has revolutionized the study of early Chinese intellectual history. Kenneth Holloway argues that the Guodian corpus puts forth a political philosophy based on the harmonious interconnection of individuals engaged in moral self-cultivation. This unique worldview, says Holloway, cannot meaningfully be categorized as "Confucian" or "Daoist," because it shares important concepts and vocabulary with a number of different textual traditions that have anachronistically been characterized as competing or incompatible "schools" of thought. He finds that within the Guodian corpus familiar philosophical concepts and texts are applied in distinctive ways, presenting a worldview that is quite different from the received textual traditions. In the corpus, the most important function of government is to assist in the harmonization of state and family relations. It sees the relationship between these two entities - the family and the collection of families that ultimately constitute the state - as being inherently conflicting social groupings. The texts posit an interesting solution: State and family disharmony can be overcome by developing a hybrid government that employs both meritocratic and aristocratic methods. Without knowledge of the emphasis on hybridization found in the Guodian texts, however, scholars were unable to understand the interrelationships between these two methods of government. This new understanding illuminates central issues of government, religion, and philosophy in early China that were overlooked in received texts. As part of the contribution to our understanding of this particular body of texts, Holloway proposes a methodology for assessing a corpus of texts without relying on assumptions and definitions that derive from two thousand years of scholarship. The Guodian corpus, and Holloway's analysis of it, are now absolutely indispensable to any student or scholar of ancient Chinese intellectual history. (shrink)

Catholic evolutionists have proposed to reconcile evolutionary anthropogenesis with Catholic doctrine by suggesting that a created soul could be infused into a body produced by evolution from an animal body. Could such an infusion yield not just a Platonic composite but a being with the unity of substance required by a Thomistic philosophy of nature? How could such a soul be the form of the body into which it was infused? This paper suggests that animals seem to have sense-powers with (...) a level of complexity, if not sufficient to underlie the abstraction of concepts in a being that also has a rational soul, then at least nearly so. The burden of proof lies rather on those who think that evolutionary development of such powers is not possible. In its final section, the paper argues that the existence of Eve as a second, and the only additional, initial rational being does not create special problems for the view here articulated. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to contribute to a more robust theory of leadership that shifts the frame of reference from leadership as exclusively facilitated through a single inspired leader to one that includes the view of leadership as an emergent and complex social phenomenon. The article begins with a review of the leader-centric approaches that dominated much of twentieth century leadership studies then moves on to present contemporary critiques of leader-centric approaches leading to an alternative perspective of leadership (...) as an emergent and complex social phenomenon. Viewing leadership as an emergent and complex social phenomenon changes our attitude regarding the roles that leaders and others play in the creation of leadership. A central theme of this article is the impact that the concept of emergence has on leadership theory. In response to this changing attitude, the article then moves to return to and reassess the ontological, epistemological and ethical grounds of leadership and concludes that there is an underlying philosophy that supports viewing leadership as an emergent social phenomenon and further suggests that recent work in virtue epistemology along with Calvin Schrag’s theory of communicative praxis and transversal rationality, can facilitate a better understanding of leadership as an emergent social phenomenon. (shrink)

This article argues that the Mondragon cooperatives, a network of worker-owned businesses in the Basque region of Spain, offers a concrete example of Deweyan economy, wherein democracy is part of everyday work-life. It first identifies three central features of Deweyan economy: a) its notion of economic growth is rooted in human growth; b) it is organic and evolutionary, not ideological or utopian; and c) it is empirical and experimental. Second, the article sketches some of the important historical and philosophical influences (...) upon and distinct features of the Mondragon cooperatives, and, third, it indicates how the Mondragon cooperatives manifest each of the three central features of Deweyan economy. The article concludes by suggesting that the Mondragon cooperatives have achieved a previously unknown level of economic democracy and that its recent modifications in response to changing economic conditions, far from being retreats from fundamental principles, as some critics maintain, are evidence of Mondragon’s experimental, non-ideological character. Furthermore, it is an economic model that transcends the stale, false capitalist-socialist dichotomy and thereby helps us to imagine creative solutions to current economic problems. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to trace how a perverted understanding of the human – of human nature, growth, and well-being – came to form the foundation for classical liberal economic thought and to identify some of the negative consequences of this development. My suggestion is that, in response to the social upheaval of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries that would lead to the rise of capitalism and make possible the industrial revolution, moral philosophers applied to humans and (...) to human society mechanistic principles from the highly successful natural sciences in an effort to make sense of a social world that had ceased to make sense. Thus emerged the impoverished view of the human that lies at the foundation of mainstream economic thinking: homo economicus – the human as a rational, utility-optimizing machine, driven by unlimited desires. (shrink)

For over 2000 years, economics was studied in the West as a branch of ethics, or moral philosophy. Presently, though, few economists and no textbook in economic orthodoxy claim any close connection between economic science and philosophy. However, might the current 'crises' in economics, and in the economics profession have their deep roots in the separation of economics from philosophy and ethics? American pragmatism, among the various contemporary philosophic traditions, lends itself specially to dialogue with economics because of its view (...) of philosophy as an instrument for solving the real, concrete problems of human life, both personal and social. The essays in this volume, drawing heavily on the tradition of pragmatism, suggest that the economic crises of our time might not be merely technical in nature - that is, the result of faulty applications of economic tools by politicians and policy makers, based up conventional economic models - but also due to the faulty philosophical assumptions underlying those models. These essays suggest that the overcoming of our current economic crises requires that economists once again become moral philosophers, or that philosophers once again engage themselves in economic matters. In either case, this volume aims to foster dialogue between the two disciplines and in that way, contribute to the improvement of contemporary economic life. This book is suitable for those who study political economy, economic theory and economic philosophy. (shrink)

capitalist proponents and orthodox Marxists alike tend to agree that capitalism entails a significant break from systems of chattel slavery: both claim that there is a significant, substantive difference between a system that commands and oppresses labor directly and one that commands labor indirectly through the private ownership of capital, although Marxists would deny that the latter is any less oppressive that the former. Apologists for capitalism commonly claim that the rise of that system ended slavery and that the overthrow (...) of slavery by “free labor” is the clearest evidence of capitalism’s moral superiority over other economic systems. Orthodox Marxists, such as Eugene Genovese, concur that slavery in the Americas was “precapitalist,”(45) and that capitalism brought it to an end, although they would maintain more continuities between the two systems than capitalism’s defenders would admit, and deny any moral advantage to “wage slavery” over chattel slavery. Defenders of capitalism are wrong on this matter for several reasons, but what I wish to focus upon in this paper is how a Weberian understanding of capitalism as a “spirit” or ethos, rather than in terms of a set of economic institutions and practices, demonstrates how the Caribbean slave trade was an early manifestation of capitalism rather than its antithesis. (shrink)

Increasingly widespread adoption of health information technology tools in clinical care increases interest in ethical and legal issues related to the use of these tools for public health and the effects of these uses on the clinician-patient relationship. It is argued that patients, clinicians, and society have generally uncontroversial duties to support civil society's public health mission, information technology supports this mission, and the effects of automated and computerized public health surveillance are likely to have little if any effect on (...) the clinician-patient relationship. It is also suggested, nevertheless, that electronic public health surveillance raises interesting and important ethical issues, some of which can be addressed if not resolved by empirical research, especially regarding patient preferences about secondary use of health data and their moral obligation to contribute to population- based health. (shrink)

One of the largest, oldest, and most interesting challenges in health care is the balancing act in which clinicians have generally uncontroversial duties both to individual patients and to communities. Physicians and nurses must — so we teach them — put patients first, and at the same time recognize that individuals are members of communities. Individuals affect the health of communities, and communities affect the health of individuals. Thus, the moral and professional duties that result are sometimes in conflict.Moreover, the (...) traditional, prosaic clinical encounter is evolving in an environment increasingly shaped by electronic health records, personal health records, pharmacogenomics and vast networks of data collection and storage for public health surveillance, human subjects research, health services evaluation, and comparative effectiveness research. Health information technology is changing everything. It would be perverse otherwise: imagine large amounts of data and information either ignored, missed, or collected and then ignored. (shrink)

This article explores different dimensions of the concept of negligence in the law. The first sections focus on the fundamental distinction between conduct negligence, a conception that dominates tort law; and cognitive negligence, a conception that is much more important in criminal law. The last major section identifies five significant institutional functions served by a legal negligence standard: expressing a legal norm in the form of a standard rather than a rule; personifying fault; empowering the trier of fact to give (...) content to the standard; creating a secondary legal norm parasitic on a primary legal norm; and distinguishing grades of fault. These functions reveal the distinctive significance of negligence, but also disclose numerous problems that the use of such a legal standard can pose. Careful analysis of these different dimensions of negligence clarifies certain misconceptions and has important implications. For example, the question whether "negligence" is an appropriate minimum standard of liability is unanswerable until we identify the type of negligence at issue and its role in norm-definition. Similarly, comparing negligenceto supposedly "more serious" forms of fault, such as recklessness, knowledge, and purpose, is treacherous and sometimes amounts to comparing apples and oranges. A better understanding of the different conceptions of negligence and of the distinctive institutional functions of a legal negligence standard can facilitate the development of more coherent, and more justifiable, fault criteria in criminal law, torts, and other legal domains. (shrink)

Negligence is both an important concept and an ambiguous one. Here I concentrate upon the sense of creating an unjustifiable, low-probability risk of future harm. This essay attempts to dispel theprevalent view that only a maximizing, utilitarian approach can render intelligible certain features of negligence analysis—its focus on the marginal advantages and disadvantages of the actor's taking a specific precaution, its consideration and balancing of the short-term effects of different actions, and its sensitivity to a multiplicity of factors. Perhaps certain (...) absolutist deontological perspectives are inconsistent with these features; but other deontological perspectives can easily accommodate them. Careful examination of the concept of negligence helps resolve an important debate about the nature of tort law, supporting the view that fault, rather than corrective justice, is the better interpretation and justification of Anglo-American tort doctrine. (shrink)

Doug Husak suggests that sometimes an actor should be deemed reckless, and not merely negligent, with respect to the risks that she knowingly created but has forgotten at the moment of action. The validity of this conclusion, he points out, depends crucially on what it means to be aware of a risk. Husak’s neutral prompt and counterfactual actual belief criteria are problematic, however. More persuasive is his suggestion that we understand belief, in this moral and criminal law context, as a (...) concept whose meaning is determined by its function as a culpability standard. Husak concludes that inadvertent actors are often less culpable than knowing-but-later-forgetful actors; this is plausible, but there are also numerous counterexamples. Holly Smith focuses on negligence cases in which an agent’s failure to notice a risk stems, not from a prior culpable choice, but from an objectionable attitude or set of attitudes. She is right to emphasize that genuine moral culpability does not depend on conscious choice. However, Smith also asserts that decisions that flow from an actor’s objectionable attitudes are only rarely culpable, because they often do not arise from a reasonably full configuration of the actor’s motives. This last requirement is, I fear, an unrealistic and unnecessarily demanding criterion of culpability. Even when many of the actor’s evaluative attitudes are inactive in Smith’s sense, the actor might deserve blame for not bringing them to bear on his decision. Michael Moore and Heidi Hurd thoroughly explore, and find deficient, H.L.A. Hart’s unexercised capacity theory of negligence. They are correct that that theory requires a further judgment: an actor’s inadvertence is culpable only if he had the capacity to have adverted if X where X is the source of the actor’s moral desert. They overstate, however, in suggesting that the capacity issue falls out of the picture once we identify that underlying desert basis. The authors also worry that if desert is grounded on an underlying vice, we lack a reliable way of ranking the different vices that might explain the actor’s inadvertence; this is not a fatal objection, however, because negligence determinations are quite feasible even in the absence of clear rankings. Moore and Hurd conclude by identifying eight distinct categories in which criminal liability for negligence is justifiable. Negligence is indeed a surprisingly complex and pluralist concept. The three articles in this symposium brightly illuminate some of the most fundamental conceptual and normative issues in the debate over whether it is just to blame and punish the negligently inadvertent. (shrink)

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How to inculcate virtue in the citizens of Magnesia by means of the dance component ofchoreiaconstitutes one of the principal concerns in theLaws(=Leg.), revealing Plato's evolving ideas about the expediency of music andpaideiafor the construction of his ideal city since theRepublic. Indeed, a steady stream of monographs and articles on theLawshas enriched our understanding of how Plato theorizes the body as a site of intervention and choral dance as instrumental in solidifying social relations and in conditioning the ethical and political (...) self. As one scholar has aptly put it: ‘a city and its sociopolitical character [are] effectively danced into existence.’ Drawing on this recent work, I focus on an enigmatic passage inLawsBook 7 that merits more attention than it has received, in which Plato curiously singles out Bacchic dances from those that are ‘without controversy’ (815b7–d4):τὴν τοίνυν ἀμφισβητουμένην ὄρχησιν δεῖ πρῶτον χωρὶς τῆς ἀναμφισβητήτου διατεμεῖν. τίς οὖν αὕτη, καὶ πῇ δεῖ χωρὶς τέμνειν ἑκατέραν; ὅση μὲν βακχεία τ᾽ ἐστὶν καὶ τῶν ταύταις ἑπομένων, ἃς Νύμφας τε καὶ Πᾶνας καὶ Σειληνοὺς καὶ Σατύρους ἐπονομάζοντες, ὥς φασιν, μιμοῦνται κατῳνωμένους, περὶ καθαρμούς τε καὶ τελετάς τινας ἀποτελούντων, σύμπαν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος οὔθ᾽ ὡς εἰρηνικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὡς πολεμικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὅτι ποτὲ βούλεται ῥᾴδιον ἀφορίσασθαι: διορίσασθαι μήν μοι ταύτῃ δοκεῖ σχεδὸν ὀρθότατον αὐτὸ εἶναι, χωρὶς μὲν πολεμικοῦ, χωρὶς δὲ εἰρηνικοῦ θέντας, εἰπεῖν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι πολιτικὸν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος, ἐνταῦθα δὲ κείμενον ἐάσαντας κεῖσθαι, νῦν ἐπὶ τὸ πολεμικὸν ἅμα καὶ εἰρηνικὸν ὡς ἀναμφισβητήτως ἡμέτερον ὂν ἐπανιέναι.So, first of all, we should separate questionable dancing far from dancing that is without controversy. Which is the controversial kind, and how are the two to be distinguished? All the dancing that is of a Bacchic kind and cultivated by those who indulge in intoxicated imitations of Nymphs, Pans, Sileni and Satyrs (as they name them), when performing certain rites of expiation and initiation—this entire class of dancing cannot easily be marked off either as pacific or as warlike, nor as of any one particular kind. The most correct way of defining it appears to me to be this—to place it away from both pacific and warlike dancing, and to pronounce that this type of dancing is οὐ πολιτικόν; having thus set aside and dismissed it, we will now return to the warlike and pacific types, which without controversy belong to us. (shrink)

Faced with the choice between creating a risk of harm and taking a precaution against that risk, should I take the precaution? Does the proper analysis of this trade-off require a maximizing, utilitarian approach? If not, how does one properly analyze the trade-off?These questions are important, for we often are uncertain about the effects of our actions. Accordingly, we often must consider whether our actions create an unreasonable risk of injury — that is, whether our actions are negligent.

Along with more frequently discussed theses, Strawson in his Chapter on Persons has maintained that the perceptual experience of the same subject could be causally dependent upon a multiplicity of bodies. But, without drastic revision, his effort to show in illustration that the visual experience of one subject might causally depend upon three different bodies is too fraught with difficulty to lend coherent support. When the difficulties are removed by revision, the truth of the thesis depends upon the truth of (...) a particularly implausible variety of dualistic representa- tionalism. Constructive measures are required to ensure its consistency with Strawson's more salient claim 'that a necessary condition of states of consciousness being ascribed at all is that they should be ascribed to the very same things as certain corporeal characteristics'. The thesis is inconsistent with Strawson's defense of the possibility of Group Persons. (shrink)

Between 1924 and 1937, the Jesuit Curia in Rome repeatedly placed restrictions on what Jesuit priest‐paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was allowed to write on those aspects of human origins that, in the view of the Curia, had theological as well as scientific aspects. In 2018, David Grumett and Paul Bentley published an account of the first of those restrictions, together with a previously undiscovered document associated with that restriction. This article corrects a relatively important error in their historical narrative, (...) offers an alternative to their comments about the case, and concludes by embedding the events of 1924–1925 in a slightly larger history of Teilhard's relations with the Jesuit Curia and with the Holy Office. That larger narrative shows that, while Grumett and Bentley's account was mistaken about the involvement of the Holy Office in the case they discuss, it was not wrong about the concerns of that Congregation in questions of human origins. (shrink)

When a plaintiff has been negligent in the sense that he should have acted otherwise, should the same criterion of negligence apply that would apply if he were creating risks only to others? Indeed, are there any persuasive reasons not to apply a radically different criterion of negligence? Moreover, should the plaintiff's recovery be diminished, outside the category of assumption of risk, even when the plaintiff has not been negligent? What are the justifiable criteria and limits of such plaintiff strict (...) responsibility? There are reasons for caution before concluding that a victim's self-regarding conduct is negligent. A victim often deserves special sympathy in the light of his special predicament, choosing between two evils, the immediate costs of which he must personally bear. Indeed, it might appear that the law is unfair or unduly onerous when it places significant demands on a victim with respect to his own self-regarding behavior. On the other hand, we should not forget that the victim's “duty” to use reasonable care is merely conditional: it applies only in case the victim seeks a remedy against the tortfeasor. (shrink)

The responsible corporate officer doctrine is, as a formal matter, an instance of strict criminal liability: the government need not prove the defendant’s mens rea in order to obtain a conviction, and the defendant may not escape conviction by proving lack of mens rea. Formal strict liability is sometimes consistent with retributive principles, especially when the strict liability pertains to the grading of an offense. But is strict liability consistent with retributive principles when it pertains, not to grading, but to (...) whether the defendant has crossed the threshold from noncriminal to criminal conduct? In this essay, I review the two most plausible arguments supporting an affirmative answer in the context of the RCO doctrine. First, perhaps this doctrine reflects a rule-like form of negligence, akin to a rule that prohibits selling alcohol to a minor. Second, perhaps this doctrine expresses a duty to use extraordinary care to prevent a harm. Neither argument is persuasive. The first argument, although valid in some circumstances, fails to explain and justify the RCO doctrine. The second argument, a duty to use extraordinary care, is also inadequate. If “extraordinary care” simply means a flexibly applied negligence standard that considers the burdens and benefits of taking a precaution, it is problematic in premising criminal liability on ordinary negligence. If instead it refers to a higher duty or standard of care, it has many possible forms, such as requiring only a very slight deviation from a permissible or justifiable standard of conduct, placing a “thumb” on the scale of the Learned Hand test, identifying an epistemic standard more demanding than a reasonable person test, or recognizing a standard that is insensitive to individual capacities. However, some of these variations present a gratuitous or incoherent understanding of “negligence,” and none of them sufficiently explain and justify the RCO doctrine. (shrink)