Most people have the intuition that, when we can save the lives of either a few people in one group or many people in another group, and all other things are equal, we ought to save the group with the most people. However, several philosophers have argued against this intuition, most famously John Taurek, in his article ‘Should the Numbers Count?’ They argue that there is no moral obligation to save the greater number, and that we are permitted to save (...) either the many or the few. I argue in this article that, even if we are almost completely persuaded by these ‘numbers sceptics’, we ought not to just save the few. If the choice is simply between saving the many or the few, we ought to save the many. (shrink)

There is a common refrain in the literature on punishment that presumes the mutual exclusivity of defending retribution and adopting a humanistic or welfare-oriented outlook. The refrain, that if we want to be humane, or care about human welfare, we must abandon retributive punishment, anger, and resentment is readily repeated, endorsed, and relied upon. This article suggests that this opposition is false: retribution and welfare-orientation can not only be endorsed concomitantly, but are complimentary projects, and may even be grounded in (...) the same normative basis, such that if we endorse one we are already committed to ideas that ground reason to care about the other.My primary target will be claims that aim to undermine retributivism by demonstrating the desirability of welfare-orientation. If both can live together, demonstrating the attractiveness of one goes nowhere toward displacing the other. Further, establishing this claim invites further inquiry into classic questions about the “barbaric,” or “morally repugnant” credentials of retributivism. Confronting these claims will elucidate the consistency of adopting both retributive and welfare-oriented views, which, I suggest, can be jointly adopted and pursued. (shrink)

An approach to phenomenology, by D. Cairns.--Husserl's critique of psychologism: its historic roots and contemporary relevance, by J. Wild.--The ideal of a presuppositionless philosophy, by M. Farber.--On the intentionality of consciousness, by A. Gurwitsch.--The "reality-phenomenon" and reality, by H. Spiegelberg.--The phenomenological concept of "horizon", by H. Kuhn.--Phenomenology and logical empiricism, by F. Kaufmann.--Phenomenology and the history of science, by J. Klein.--Phenomenology and the social sciences, by A. Schuetz.--Art and phenomenology, by F. Kaufmann.--The relation of science to philosophy in the (...) light of Husserl's thought, by L. O. Kattsoff.--Husserl and the social structure of immediacy, by C. Hartshorne.--A materialist approach to Husserl's philosophy, by V. J. McGill.--Outline-sketch of a system of metaphysics, by W. E. Hocking.--Men and the law, by G. Husserl.--The ghost of modality, by H. Weyl.--Supplement: Grundlegende untersuchungen zum phänomenologischen ursprung der räumlichkeit der natur, by E. Husserl. (shrink)

This article analyzes the question of how the size of bribes should impact criminal sanctions. In contrast to the commonly held view that punishment should increase with the size of the bribe, we argue to the contrary: that the punishment of the bribee should decrease with the size of the bribe. Our conclusion is based both on a philosophical argument and an economic argument. We argue that all else being equal, as an agent’s reservation price for selling public interests decreases, (...) the culpability of the agent willing to receive a bribe increases. In addition, from an economic perspective, the expected social harm of an official acting with a low reservation price for bribes is much greater than one acting with a high reservation price: both the susceptibility of being bribed as well as the potential for social harm is much greater when the reservation price is low. (shrink)

It is easy to think of Frege as having offered two unintentionally discordant criteria for the identity of senses—one tied to the truth conditions of sentences, and one meant to capture relations of cognitive discriminability. This reading, however, is doubly mistaken; the discord between these two ways of thinking of senses has a Fregean resolution, but neither the resolution nor either of the original two pictures affords a genuine criterion for the identity of senses.

Recently some arguments against Cartesian-style skepticism have been based on causal theories of content. I hope to show that the relevance of causal theories of content to what we can know is conditional in a more complex way than has been recognized so far.

We present an axiomatization of a problem in commonsense reasoning, characterizing the proper procedure for cracking an egg and transferring its contents to a bowl. The axiomatization is mid-sized, larger than toy problems such as the Yale Shooting Problem or the Suitcase Problem, but much smaller than the comprehensive axiomatizations associated with CYC and HPKB. This size of axiomatization permits the development of non-trivial, reusable core theories of commonsense reasoning, acts as a testbed for existing theories of commonsense reasoning, and (...) encourages the discovery of new problems in commonsense reasoning.We present portions of core theories of containment, falling, and pouring, integrated into Shanahan's circumscriptive event calculus, and show how these can serve as the basis of an axiomatization that partly characterizes egg cracking. We discuss several commonsense reasoning problems encountered during this research, such as the Initial Specification Problem (a relative of the frame problem that occurs in theories in which fluents can trigger actions), and the Unobtainable State Problem (the problem of determining whether or not a theorem stating that one cannot get from one state to another is meaningful). (shrink)

When blame is understood to be emotion-based or affective, its emotional tone is standardly identified as one of anger. We argue that this conception of affective blame is overly restrictive. By attending to cases of blame that emerge against a background of a particular kind of hope invested in others, we identify a blaming response characterized not by anger but by sadness: reactive disappointment. We develop an account of reactive disappointment as affective blame, maintaining that while angry blame and disappointed (...) blame are both condemnatory responses, they have distinct evaluative foci and occupy different but complementary roles in our accountability practices. (shrink)

Recently some arguments against Cartesian-style skepticism have been based on causal theories of content. I hope to show that the relevance of causal theories of content to what we can know is conditional in a more complex way than has been recognized so far.

Logical structure may explain the necessity and a priori knowability of such truths as that if A is red then A is either red or green. But this explanation cannot be extended to sentences that, while necessary and knowable a priori, do not wear the appropriate logical structure on their sleeves – sentences like ''''if A is a point and A is red, then A is not green,'''' or ''''if A is a sphere, then A is not a cube.'''' The (...) real origin of these sentences'' necessity and a priori knowability is a relationship between the meanings of their component atomic sentences – a relationship which cannot be systematically reduced to logical structure by translating those atomic sentences into any kind of ''''ideal'''' language. Moreover, this kind of relationship is one to which any atomic sentences are susceptible if they have a classifying, or comparison-implying, content. Arguably, then, all atomic sentences are capable of being related to others in ways that are necessary and knowable a priori. (shrink)

Would you want to be operated on by a surgeon trained at a medical school that did not evaluate its students? Would you want to fly in a plane designed by people convinced that the laws of physics are socially constructed? Would you want to be tried by a legal system indifferent to the distinction between fact and fiction? These questions may seem absurd, but these are theories being seriously advanced by radical multiculturalists that force us to ask them. These (...) scholars assert that such concepts as truth and merit are inextricably racist and sexist, that reason and objectivity are merely sophisticated masks for ideological bias, and that reality itself is nothing more than a socially constructed mechanism for preserving the power of the ruling elite. In Beyond All Reason, liberal legal scholars Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry mount the first systematic critique of radical multiculturalism as a form of legal scholarship. Beginning with an incisive overview of the origins and basic tenets of radical multiculturalism, the authors critically examine the work of Derrick Bell, Catherine MacKinnon, Patricia Williams, and Richard Delgado, and explore the alarming implications of their theories. Farber and Sherry push these theories to their logical conclusions and show that radical multiculturalism is destructive of the very goals it wishes to affirm. If, for example, the concept of advancement based on merit is fraudulent, as the multiculturalists claim, the disproportionate success of Jews and Asians in our culture becomes difficult to explain without opening the door to age-old anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes. If historical and scientific truths are entirely relative social constructs, then Holocaust denial becomes merely a matter of perspective, and Creationism has as much "validity" as evolution. The authors go on to show that rather than promoting more dialogue, the radical multiculturalist preferences for legal storytelling and identity politics over reasoned argument produces an insular set of positions that resist open debate. Indeed, radical multiculturalists cannot critically examine each others' ideas without incurring vehement accusations of racism and sexism, much less engage in fruitful discussion with a mainstream that does not share their assumptions. Here again, Farber and Sherry show that the end result of such thinking is not freedom but a kind of totalitarianism where dissent cannot be tolerated and only the naked will to power remains to settle differences. Sharply written and brilliantly argued, this book is itself a model of the kind of clarity, civility, and dispassionate critical thinking which the authors seek to preserve from the attacks of the radical multiculturalists. With far-reaching implications for such issues as government control of hate speech and pornography, affirmative action, legal reform, and the fate of all minorities, Beyond All Reason is a provocative contribution to one of the most important controversies of our time. (shrink)

This chapter discusses anti-individualism—which often depicts the individual as a physical creature bounded by its skin—and how it runs contrary to the Cartesian view of the mind—which states that it is coherent to doubt whether any of one’s thoughts correspond to external objects. Anti-individualism contends that this is a conceptual truth; without objects external to an individual, that individual’s purported thoughts would have no content at all. A well-known argument presented by McKinsey holds out the possibility of proving to skeptics (...) that there are physical things. Two things have been missing from this argument, however, and they shall be outlined here. First is a thorough assessment of the extent to which the anti-individualism it relies on can be made compelling for the skeptic. Second is the application of a lesson that can be drawn from Wittgenstein to the Cartesian self-knowledge which is the other main component of the argument. (shrink)

Among anti-skeptical arguments based on premises about meaning, Davidson’s is distinctive because of the holistic element in both his semantic starting point and his epistemological conclusion. Davidson takes the primary bearers of meaning to be belief systems, and it is actually-held belief systems whose overall correctness he concludes to be knowable. Critical attention has gravitated toward a part of the argument that claims that any meaningful discourse must be radically interpretable by one who is omniscient except for the meanings of (...) the speaker’s words and thoughts. I argue that there is a reading of this claim on which skeptics have good reason to accept it. But on this reading the argument goes through only if another crucial premise---the necessity for radical interpretation to be done charitably---is construed in a way that leaves skeptics free to reject it. (shrink)

Among anti-skeptical arguments based on premises about meaning, Davidson’s is distinctive because of the holistic element in both his semantic starting point and his epistemological conclusion. Davidson takes the primary bearers of meaning to be belief systems, and it is actually-held belief systems whose overall correctness he concludes to be knowable. Critical attention has gravitated toward a part of the argument that claims that any meaningful discourse must be radically interpretable by one who is omniscient except for the meanings of (...) the speaker’s words and thoughts. I argue that there is a reading of this claim on which skeptics have good reason to accept it. But on this reading the argument goes through only if another crucial premise---the necessity for radical interpretation to be done charitably---is construed in a way that leaves skeptics free to reject it. (shrink)

Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas, two twentieth-century Jewish philosophers and two extremely provocative thinkers whose reputations have grown considerably over the last twenty years, are rarely studied together. This is due to the disparate interests of many of their intellectual heirs. Strauss has influenced political theorists and policy makers on the right while Levinas has been championed in the humanities by different cadres associated with postmodernist thought. In Leo Strauss and Emmanuel Levinas: Philosophy and the Politics of Revelation, Leora (...) Batnitzky brings together these two seemingly incongruous contemporaries, demonstrating that they often had the same philosophical sources and their projects had many formal parallels. While such a comparison is valuable in itself for better understanding each figure, it also raises profound questions in the current debate on the definitions of 'religion', suggesting new ways that religion makes claims on both philosophy and politics. (shrink)

Although Franz Rosenzweig is arguably the most important Jewish philosopher of the twentieth century, his thought remains little understood. Here, Leora Batnitzky argues that Rosenzweig's redirection of German-Jewish ethical monotheism anticipates and challenges contemporary trends in religious studies, ethics, philosophy, anthropology, theology, and biblical studies.This text, which captures the hermeneutical movement of Rosenzweig's corpus, is the first to consider the full import of the cultural criticism articulated in his writings on the modern meanings of art, language, ethics, and national (...) identity. In the process, the book solves significant conundrums about Rosenzweig's relation to German idealism, to other major Jewish thinkers, to Jewish political life, and to Christianity, and brings Rosenzweig into conversation with key contemporary thinkers.Drawing on Rosenzweig's view that Judaism's ban on idolatry is the crucial intellectual and spiritual resource available to respond to the social implications of human finitude, Batnitzky interrogates idolatry as a modern possibility. Her analysis speaks not only to the question of Judaism's relationship to modernity, but also to the generic question of the present's relationship to the past--a subject of great importance to anyone contemplating the modern statuses of religious tradition, reason, science, and historical inquiry. By way of Rosenzweig, Batnitzky argues that contemporary philosophers and ethicists must relearn their approaches to religious traditions and texts to address today's central ethical problems. (shrink)

In Social Decay and Transformation social and political critic Samuel Farber presents an analysis of social decline that has been missing from the contemporary scene: a view from the Left, one which draws from the ideas and traditions of the Enlightenment's left wing. Using a comparative approach to situate his theoretical conclusions in historical circumstances, Farber looks at the working class and temperance movements, civil rights rebellions and the Black Panthers, and the cultural revolutions of 1920s Russia and (...) the Bolsheviks. Providing carefully reasoned interrogations of contemporary thinkers such as James C. Scott and Robin D. G. Kelley, Farber clarifies the discussions on social decay currently taking place, adding an important voice of the Left to the current debate. (shrink)

Le projet de ce numéro est né de la recherche que nous avons menée il y a quelques années sur la généalogie comparée des « États-providence », dans lesquels la loi assignait les femmes à leur rôle de « mères des futurs citoyens ». Il nous est resté une interrogation sur les genres respectifs de la nation et de l'État. Il ne s'agit pas bien entendu de genre grammatical : par genre (gender) de la nation nous entendons, dans un premier (...) temps, la place respective des hommes et des femmes d... (shrink)

Would you want to be operated on by a surgeon trained at a medical school that did not evaluate its students? Would you want to fly in a plane designed by people convinced that the laws of physics are socially constructed? Would you want to be tried by a legal system indifferent to the distinction between fact and fiction? These questions may seem absurd, but there are theories being seriously advanced by radical multiculturalists that force us to ask such questions. (...) These scholars assert that such concepts as truth and merit are inextricably racist and sexist, that reason and objectivity are merely sophisticated masks for ideological bias, and that reality itself is nothing more than socially constructed mechanism for preserving the power of the ruling elite. In Beyond All Reason, liberal legal scholars Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry mount the first systematic critique of radical multiculturalism as a form of legal scholarship. Beginning with an incisive overview of the origins and basic tenets of radical multiculturalism, the authors critically examine the work of Derrick Bell, Catherine MacKinnon, Patricia Williams, and Richard Delgado, and explore the alarming implications of their theories. Farber and Sherry push these theories to their logical conclusions and show that radical multiculturalism is destructive of the very goals it wishes to affirm. If, for example, the concept of advancement based on merit is fraudulent, as the multiculturalists claim, the disproportionate success of Jews and Asians in our culture becomes difficult to explain without opening the door to age-old anti-Semitic and racist stereotypes. If historical and scientific truths are entirely relative social constructs, then Holocaust denial becomes merely a matter of perspective, and Creationism has as much "validity" as evolution. The authors go on to show that rather than promoting more dialogue, the radical multiculturalist preferences for legal storytelling and identity politics over reasoned argument produces an insular set of positions that resist open debate. Indeed, radical multiculturalists cannot critically examine each others' ideas without incurring vehement accusations of racism and sexism, much less engage in fruitful discussion with a mainstream that does not share their assumptions. Here again, Farber and Sherry show that the end result of such thinking is not freedom but a kind of totalitarianism where dissent cannot be tolerated and only the naked will to power remains to settle differences. Sharply written and brilliantly argued, this book is itself a model of the kind of clarity, civility, and dispassionate critical thinking which the authors seek to preserve from the attacks of the radical multiculturalists. With far-reaching implications for such issues as government control of hate speech and pornography, affirmative action, legal reform, and the fate of all minorities, Beyond All Reason is a provocative contribution to one of the most important controversies of our time. (shrink)

Le numéro 44 de la revue Clio, Femmes, Genre, Histoire propose un parcours de longue durée à travers l’histoire des juifs, de la judéité et du judaïsme. C’est, en effet, ce triptyque, ainsi que la vie en diaspora, qui rend l’analyse du genre dans la tradition juive si spécifique. Le judaïsme est, bien sûr, une religion, mais il n’est pas qu’une religion. « Peuple », « Nation », « Ethnie », « Culture », ou « Communauté de destin »? Les (...) juifs ne cessent depuis des siècles de débattre sur leur... (shrink)

Is Judaism a religion, a culture, a nationality--or a mixture of all of these? In How Judaism Became a Religion, Leora Batnitzky boldly argues that this question more than any other has driven modern Jewish thought since the eighteenth century. This wide-ranging and lucid introduction tells the story of how Judaism came to be defined as a religion in the modern period--and why Jewish thinkers have fought as well as championed this idea. Ever since the Enlightenment, Jewish thinkers have (...) debated whether and how Judaism--largely a religion of practice and public adherence to law--can fit into a modern, Protestant conception of religion as an individual and private matter of belief or faith. Batnitzky makes the novel argument that it is this clash between the modern category of religion and Judaism that is responsible for much of the creative tension in modern Jewish thought. Tracing how the idea of Jewish religion has been defended and resisted from the eighteenth century to today, the book discusses many of the major Jewish thinkers of the past three centuries, including Moses Mendelssohn, Abraham Geiger, Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Zvi Yehuda Kook, Theodor Herzl, and Mordecai Kaplan. At the same time, it tells the story of modern orthodoxy, the German-Jewish renaissance, Jewish religion after the Holocaust, the emergence of the Jewish individual, the birth of Jewish nationalism, and Jewish religion in America. More than an introduction, How Judaism Became a Religion presents a compelling new perspective on the history of modern Jewish thought. (shrink)

The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) requires as a condition of accreditation that every health care institution -- hospital, nursing home, or home care agency -- have a standing mechanism to address ethical issues. Most organizations have chosen to fulfill this requirement with an interdisciplinary ethics committee. The best of these committees are knowledgeable, creative, and effective resources in their institutions. Many are wellmeaning but lack the information, experience, and skills to negotiate adequately the complex ethical (...) issues that arise in clinical and organizational settings. Handbook for Health Care Ethics Committees is the first resource designed to address the range of work performed by ethics committees as part of their multiple responsibilities, including education, case consultation, and policy development. It features an eight-chapter curriculum reviewing the content of contemporary health care bioethics and discussing the ethical foundations of clinical practice, with each subsequent section focusing on a set of ethical issues that commonly arise in the clinical setting. Through case studies, the authors explore issues such as informed consent and refusal, decision making and decisional capacity, truth telling, decision-making concerns of minors, end-of-life issues, palliation, justice in and access to health care services, and organizational ethics. They offer sample policies and procedures, draft guidelines and protocols, and key legal cases. Providing both a strong theoretical foundation and practical applications, this handbook will be essential reading for every member of a health care ethics committee. (shrink)