Suppose that John has a moral obligation to stop smoking given that smoking is dangerous to his health. Suppose further that smoking is dangerous to his health. Does it follow that John has a moral obligation to stop smoking? Although intuition inclines one to answer in the affirmative, recent developments in deontic logic apparently call this inference into question. The issue at hand is whether unconditional obligations are detachable from conditional obligations on the basis of purely factual considerations. I believe (...) that they are not. In the course of arguing for this position I defend a novel restricted rule of detachment which is constructed out of both factual and normative components. (shrink)

A Theory of Argument is an advanced textbook intended for students in philosophy, communications studies and linguistics who have completed at least one course in argumentation theory, information logic, critical thinking or formal logic. Containing nearly 400 exercises, Mark Vorobej develops a novel approach to argument interpretation and evaluation. One of the key themes of the book is that we cannot succeed in distinguishing good argument from bad arguments until we learn to listen carefully to others. Part I (...) develops a relativistic account of argument cogency that allows for rational disagreement. Part II offers a comprehensive and rigorous account of argument diagramming. Hybrid arguments are contrasted with linked and convergent arguments, and a novel technique is introduced for graphically recording disagreements with authorial claims. (shrink)

Over the past forty years, Johan Galtung has extensively employed a broad definition of peace that incorporates the notion of structural violence. Roughly, structural violence is violence that results in harm but is not caused by a clearly identifiable actor, and positive peace is the absence of structural violence. Galtung’s account of structural violence, while highly influential, has recently been subjected to a surprisingly hostile critique by C. A. J. Coady in his 2008 study, Morality and Political Violence. In this (...) paper I show how a careful reading of Galtung’s work undercuts each of Coady’s criticisms. I conclude that the notion of structural violence remains a fruitful tool for peace researchers within the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Suppose that two nations A and B each possess a nuclear arsenal and are rational utility-maximizers. Suppose further that B has some interest in provoking A, possibly by attacking her with nuclear weapons. In the hope of preventing this from happening, A informs B of à conditional intention on her part to retaliate against B with nuclear weapons should B in fact attack A. By doing so A attempts to lower the probability of B's attacking A by increasing B's estimate (...) of the conditional probability of A's retaliating once provoked. Problematic deterrent situations are those in which B prefers to attack A without retaliation, A prefers most of all that she not be attacked, and A prefers an attack-with-no-retaliation scenario to an attack-with-retaliation scenario. Feature is à result of the fact that A prefers to minimize nuclear devastation, i.e., A would herself be worse off retaliating than not retaliating to an attack. Now, if B knows all of this to be the case then A's expression of a conditional intention to retaliate will not in fact deter B from attacking, since A is rational and will not act contrary to her own best interests. B has no reason to fear A's retaliation and therefore B has no reason not to attack. Deterrence, it seems, is an irrational policy among fully rational actors. This is one version of the so-called paradox of deter-rence. If expressing a conditional retaliatory intention is the best way for A to ward off an attack, then the paradox can be strengthened as follows: It is rational for A to intend to act irrationally. (shrink)

What is the nature of rational disagreement? A number of philosophers have recently addressed this question by examining how we should respond to epistemic conflict with a so-called epistemic peer—that is, someone over whom you enjoy no epistemic advantage. Some say that you're rationally required to suspend judgment in these cases—thereby denying the very possibility of a certain kind of rational disagreement. Others say that it's permissible to retain your beliefs even in the face of epistemic conflict. By distinguishing between (...) close peers and distant peers, I argue that it's rational to respond to different types of peers in different ways. I also argue that remote peers—a particularly distant kind of distant peer—provide us with an important lesson in epistemic humility. (shrink)

In this paper I demonstrate that most textbook accounts of the linked/convergent distinction fail to conform to the widespread intuition that all valid arguments ought to be classified as linked arguments. I also show that standard textbook accounts of linkage and convergence cannot provide a satisfactory treatment of fallacies of irrelevance and, due to their general insensitivity to the epistemic context in which arguments are offered, must be supplemented by subjective accounts of linkage and convergence which appeal exclusively to authorial (...) beliefs and intentions. (shrink)

Some of Jonathan Dancy's strongest arguments in support of moral particularism depend crucially upon the distinction he draws between three different kinds of relevance relations -- favourers, intensifiers and enablers. In this paper I generalize certain features of Dancy's account of the different roles that premises can play in moral argumentation. Most significantly, I argue that both intensifiers and enablers play parallel roles within different kinds of supplementation relations. This matters since it is common for people to accept Dancy's account (...) of intensifiers while remaining suspicious of his notion of enablers. But this asymmetrical response, I argue, cannot be justified. This account also generates a simpler and more elegant argument in support of moral particularism. (shrink)

Some of Jonathan Dancy's strongest arguments in support of moral particularism depend crucially upon the distinction he draws between three different kinds of relevance relations -- favourers, intensifiers and enablers. In this paper I generalize certain features of Dancy's account of the different roles that premises can play in moral argumentation. Most significantly, I argue that both intensifiers and enablers play parallel roles within different kinds of (more primitive) supplementation relations. This matters since it is common for people to accept (...) Dancy's account of intensifiers while remaining suspicious of his notion of enablers. But this asymmetrical response, I argue, cannot be justified. This account also generates a simpler and more elegant argument in support of moral particularism. (shrink)

James E. Tomberlin [6] has recently argued that the logical systems of conditional obligation proposed by Azizah al-Hibri [1] and Peter Mott [5] are incapable of resolving at least one variant of the notorious contrary to duty imperative paradox, formulated originally by Chisholm [2]. Tomberlin concedes that these systems offer the very best of the' “conditional obligation approach” to deontic logic and concludes his critical discussion with the pessimistic remark that “the best of this approach is simply not good enough. (...) Deontic logic … is obliged to turn elsewhere for its proper formulation and resolution of the deontic paradoxes”. Below I argue that Tomberlin's three central arguments against al-Hibri and Mott are fallacious. (shrink)

New scholarship paves the way for Earth-loving spirituality grounded in the ancientChristian image of God as an avian life form.

The author proposes that the Spirit goes well beyond the conventional Christian understanding of the force that unites the Father and Son in the Trinity, and presents a new model of the Spirit, one that is based on the earth and is a natural force that heals the violence humans have done to nature and to one another, and forges unity among enemies and brings opposites together, overcoming the differences that define personal and community life. Original.

Today the wood thrush returned to the Crum Woods. I have been waiting for this event for months. I moved to a house in the woods three years ago, and at that time I heard a strange and wonderful bird call in the forest. The song of the wood thrush is a melody unlike anything I had ever heard. Liquid, flute-like, perfectly pitched—the thrush vocalizes a kind of duet with itself in which it simultaneously produces two independent musical notes that (...) reverberate with one another. I have read that Tibetan monks can also sing two notes at the same time, a baseline and a melody line in contrapuntal balance, so now I think of the wood thrush as the singing monk of the forest.1In the spring and summer I wake up, and often .. (shrink)

During the years 1814–1819, William Higgins, an Irish chemist who worked at the Dublin Society, claimed he had anticipated John Dalton in developing the atomic theory and insinuated that Dalton was a plagiarist. This essay focuses not on William Higgins, but on his uncle Bryan Higgins, a well-known chemist of his day, who had developed his own theories of caloric and chemical combination, similar in many respects to that of Dalton. New evidence is first introduced addressing Bryan's disappearance from the (...) scientific community after 1803. In his later years, Bryan apparently suffered from a condition resulting in a decline in his mental health, which explains why he never lodged any priority claims of his own against Dalton, or defended those of his nephew. Dalton's mention of Bryan's name in Part II ofA New System of Chemical Philosophy, his laboratory notebook entries, and a fresh look at his correspondence with chemist Thomas Charles Hope indicate that Dalton adopted a Higgins-like caloric model in 1803. Together these factors provide evidence to support the argument that Dalton learned of Bryan's theories via a meeting he had with William Allen on 10 July 1803. Existing evidence related to the origin of the atomic theory is worthy of re-examination in light of Dalton's possible prior knowledge of Bryan's work. (shrink)

In an expansion of the fine-tuning argument, Michael Denton argues that every aspect of the universe is ideally suited for the production and maintenance of familiar and anthropomorphic forms of life. He further argues that the ideal nature of these aspects is extremely improbable unless one postulates a designer who tooled them for the express purpose of producing familiar and anthropomorphic life. I point out shortcomings in Denton’s line of argument, focusing in particular on the premise that the ideal nature (...) of the aspects in question is improbable absent a designer. (shrink)

We give anecdotal accounts from our own experience of scientific theories which have been generally accepted as the ruling opinion long after sufficient evidence has been collected for their disproof. This has led us to the opinion that the normal scientific process, of working hypothesis followed by experimental test aimed at disproof, is being replaced by the ruling opinion followed by experiment aimed at confirmation. The apparently widespread adoption of this procedure may be postulated to arise in part from the (...) need for workers entering a new field of study to obtain grants and to get their results published. (shrink)

This study focuses on conceptual questions that arise when we explore the fundamental aspects of violence. Mark Vorobej teases apart what is meant by the term ‘violence,’ showing that it is a surprisingly complex, unwieldy and highly contested concept. Rather than attempting to develop a fixed definition of violence, Vorobej explores the varied dimensions of the phenomenon of violence and the questions they raise, addressing the criteria of harm, agency, victimhood, instrumentality, and normativity. Vorobej uses this (...) multifaceted understanding of violence to engage with and complicate existing approaches to the essential nature of violence: first, Vorobej explores the liberal tradition that ties violence to the intentional infliction of harm, and that grows out of a concern for protecting individual liberty or autonomy. He goes on to explore a more progressive tradition – one that is usually associated with the political left – that ties violence to the bare occurrence of harm, and that is more concerned with an equitable promotion of human welfare than with the protection of individual liberty. Finally, the book turns to a tradition that operates with a more robust normative characterization of violence as a morally flawed response to the ontological fact of vulnerability. This nuanced and in-depth study of the nature of violence will be especially relevant to researchers in applied ethics, peace studies and political philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAccording to Brian Orend’s binary political model, minimally just states possess a robust set of moral rights, while other states essentially exist in a moral vacuum in which they possess n...

Chapter 20 David Kovacs’ “Essence, Grounding, and Explanation” sets out four different ways in which essence might be taken to relate to the notion of grounding or metaphysical explanation, i.e., the type of connection that is often expressed by means of non-causal “in virtue of” or “because”-claims: (i) Unity: essence and grounding belong to a unified set of explanatory concepts; (ii) Supplementation: essence and grounding both contribute in their own way to a distinctive type of explanation; (iii) Independence: essence is (...) a sui generis notion with no straightforward conceptual links to grounding; and (iv) Irrelevance: essence is not an explanatory notion at all and therefore should not be viewed as connected to explanatory notions like grounding. As Kovacs brings out in the chapter, a wide variety of attitudes are represented in the literature even among philosophers who are sympathetic to the recent “hyperintensional” turn in metaphysics when it comes to the question of how the notions of essence and grounding interact with one another. (shrink)

Voluntary Consensus Standards are commerce-related documents developed by interested volunteers under due-process procedures which ensure that the concerns of all parties are fairly taken into account. Standards are beneficial to society because they promote commerce and lower the costs of and barriers to doing business. Because of this, conformance to a standard can confer significant competitive advantage.Vigorous, democratic competition between ideas leads to a high- quality standard. Some participants in the standards-development process will, against the general interest, attempt to skew (...) a standard to favor a specific product, service, or practice. In order prevent this sort of abuse, rules are written to prevent any common-interest block from overwhelming the general interest. Unfettered debate is fostered by having no rules defining volunteer-member misconduct, eliminating any possibility that a majority will improperly use such rules to silence a minority. This unfortunately permits the rare but not-hypothetical situation where those unscrupulous and determined, or those out of control, are able to engage in obstructionism and misconduct without any possibility of penalty. (shrink)

L'horreur en art vise à effrayer, bouleverser, dégoûter et terroriser. Puisque nous ne sommes pas normalement attirés par de ielles expériences, pourquoi quiconque s'exposerait-il délibérément a la fiction d'horreur? Noel Carroll soutient que le caractère constant du phénomène de l'horreur en art tient à certains plaisirs d'ordre cognitif, qui résultent de la satisfaction de notre curiosité naturelle à l'ègard des monstres. Je soutiens, quant è moi, que la solution cognitive de Carroll auparadoxe de l'horreur est profondément erronée, étant donné la (...) façon dont les monsters sont représentés dans la fiction d'horreur; j'explore brievement une approche plus prometteuse, qui traite les monstres comme des moyens pour acquerir la connaissance de soi. (shrink)

The standard view of academic freedom and free speech is that they play complementary roles in universities. Academic freedom protects academic discourse, while other public discourse in universities is protected by free speech. Here I challenge this view, broadly, on the grounds that free speech in universities sometimes undermines academic practices. One defense of the standard view, in the face of this worry, says that campus free speech actually furthers the university’s academic aims. Another says that universities have a secondary (...) democratic function, which cannot be fulfilled without free speech on campus. I identify shortcomings in both types of arguments. (shrink)

McGowan argues that everyday verbal bigotry makes a key contribution to the harms of discriminatory inequality, via a mechanism that she calls sneaky norm enactment. Part of her account involves showing that the characteristic of conversational interaction that facilitates sneaky norm enactment is in fact a generic one, which obtains in a wide range of activities, namely, the property of having conventions of appropriateness. I argue that her account will be better-able to show that everyday verbal bigotry is a key (...) factor in social inequality if it tries to isolate a more specific property of conversation as the thing that facilitates sneaky norm enactment. (shrink)

The verb to legitimate is often used in political discourse in a way that is prima facie perplexing. To wit, it is often said that an actor legitimates a practice which is officially prohibited in the relevant context – for example, that a worker telling sexist jokes legitimates sex discrimination in the workplace. In order to clarify the meaning of statements like this, and show how they can sometimes be true and informative, we need an explanation of how something that (...) is officially illegitimate can have a kind of ersatz legitimacy conferred on it, and how this can occur even when the actor ‘doing the legitimating’ lacks formal authority. I examine one putative explanation centred around the phenomenon of normalization, and I highlight some advantages that this account has in comparison to an alternative explanation, one that makes reference to the phenomenon of licensed authority. (shrink)

Gödel once offered an argument for the general reflection principle in set theory that took the form of an analogy with Leibniz' Monadology. I discuss the mathematical and philosophical background to Gödel's argument, reconstruct the proposed analogy in detail, and argue that it has no justificatory force.

This paper explores the question of how films may be used to enhance the teaching of fallacies. Theoretical questions about the nature of fallacies will be addressed along with pedagogical issues. The paper is structured around a case study—an examination of various arguments from ignorance as articulated by fictional characters in the 1964 Hammer horror production of The Gorgon.

Sometimes logical support for a conclusion is provided exclusively by premises which are independently relevant to that conclusion. At other times, support is provided exclusively by independently irrelevant premises. On still other occasions, relevant and irrelevant premises may collectively offer a distinctive pattern of support. This paper provides a rigorous account of some of these differences in terms of a tripartite classification of convergent, linked and hybrid arguments. These various arguments are defined, diagrammed, and some of their logical properties are (...) explored. (shrink)