This book collects a multidisciplinary range of contributions focusing on the prolific and seminal work of Willem Drees in the fields of philosophy of religion, philosophy of the humanities, and science and theology/religion. Trained in both theoretical physics and theology/philosophy of religion, Drees holds doctoral degrees in both theology and in philosophy and, amongst other distinguished positions, held professorships at the University of Leiden and at the University of Tilburg. Drees was also Editor-in-Chief of Zygon, Journal of Religion & Science, (...) between 2008 and 2018, and served as President of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) between 2002 and 2008. In 2018, he was elected as member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW). This contributed volume builds on Drees’ expansive and provocative scholarly contributions, notably around the concept and meaning of naturalism and the humanities to the fields of science and religion, as exemplified by his works Religion, Science and Naturalism (1996) and What Are the Humanities For? (2021). In a time where more and more young people across the globe are entering higher education such cross-disciplinary explorations and (re-)evaluations are vital to the field. Accordingly, by approaching his work from a variety of disciplines this collection illuminates the broad reach of Drees’ work and provides scholars from various fields with many new and rich opportunities avenues for research. (shrink)

The belief that primitive men lived like beasts and that civilisation developed out of these brutal origins is found in numerous ancient authors, both Greek and Latin. It forms part of certain theories about the beginnings of culture current in late antiquity. These are notoriously difficult to trace to their sources, but they already existed in some form in the fifth century b.c. One idea common to these theories is that of progress, and for this reason a fragment of Xenophanes (...) is sometimes cited as their remote prototype: ‘The gods did not reveal all things to men from the beginning; instead, by seeking, men discover what is better in time’. Mainly on the strength of this fragment, Ludwig Edelstein devoted the first chapter of his bookThe Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquityto Xenophanes, and W. K. C. Guthrie has even declared that there is good reason to attribute to him a fuller account of progress, one that would include details found in later authors who speak of the early life of mankind. One of these details is the statement that the life of primitive men was ‘brutal’ or ‘beastlike’ (θηριώδης). In these authors the implication of that term varies from ‘unschooled in the basic crafts’ to ‘inhumanly violent and bloodthirsty’. In one sense or the other it is repeatedly encountered in ancient references to this subject. Accounts of primitive brutishness which make use of the wordθηριώδης(orθηριωδ⋯ςcan be found in theSuppliantsof Euripides, in the Hippocratic treatiseOn Ancient Medicine, in three passages of Diodorus, one of which is thought by some to contain Democritean doctrine, in four passages of Isocrates, in a fragment from a satyr-playSisyphuswhich the ancient sources attribute variously to Euripides and to Critias, in a fragment of Athenion, in a second-century inscription, in Plutarch, in Tatian, in Themistius, and in a scholion to Euripides. (shrink)

The objective of the article is twofold: to advance an interpretation of Descartes’ position on the problem of explaining how deduction from universal propositions to their particular instances can be both legitimate and useful for discovery of truth; and to argue that his position is a valuable contribution to the philosophy of logic. In Descartes’ view. the problem in question is that syllogistic deductions from universal propositions to their particular instances is circular and hence useless as a means for discovery (...) of truth. Descartes’ solution to the problem is to claim that noncircular, useful deduction from the universal to the particular must first be based on deduction from particular truths to particular truths. I examine previous interpretations of Cartesian deduction given by E.M. Curley, Bernard Williams, and Andre Gombay. None of these interpretations fit with all of Descartes’ criticisms of syllogistic deduction and his characterization of useful and legitimate deduction (such as the cogito). I argue that the key to a correct interpretation is Descartes’ claim that implicit knowledge of universal propositions plays a crucial role in useful and legitimate deduction, and I explain how we may cash in his talk of implicit knowledge through Ryle’s notion of knowing how. Having set out a fuller explication of Descartes’ theory of deduction, I argue that it is consistent with the way people actually reason, that it helps us with problems in the philosophy of logic that have been raised by John Stuart Mill, Hilary Putnam, and Michael Dummett. (shrink)

The objective of the article is twofold: to advance an interpretation of Descartes’ position on the problem of explaining how deduction from universal propositions to their particular instances can be both legitimate and useful for discovery of truth; and to argue that his position is a valuable contribution to the philosophy of logic. In Descartes’ view. the problem in question is that syllogistic deductions from universal propositions to their particular instances is circular and hence useless as a means for discovery (...) of truth. Descartes’ solution to the problem is to claim that noncircular, useful deduction from the universal to the particular must first be based on deduction from particular truths to particular truths. I examine previous interpretations of Cartesian deduction given by E.M. Curley, Bernard Williams, and Andre Gombay. None of these interpretations fit with all of Descartes’ criticisms of syllogistic deduction and his characterization of useful and legitimate deduction (such as the cogito). I argue that the key to a correct interpretation is Descartes’ claim that implicit knowledge of universal propositions plays a crucial role in useful and legitimate deduction, and I explain how we may cash in his talk of implicit knowledge through Ryle’s notion of knowing how. Having set out a fuller explication of Descartes’ theory of deduction, I argue that it is consistent with the way people actually reason, that it helps us with problems in the philosophy of logic that have been raised by John Stuart Mill, Hilary Putnam, and Michael Dummett. (shrink)

The belief that primitive men lived like beasts and that civilisation developed out of these brutal origins is found in numerous ancient authors, both Greek and Latin. It forms part of certain theories about the beginnings of culture current in late antiquity. These are notoriously difficult to trace to their sources, but they already existed in some form in the fifth century b.c. One idea common to these theories is that of progress, and for this reason a fragment of Xenophanes (...) is sometimes cited as their remote prototype: ‘The gods did not reveal all things to men from the beginning; instead, by seeking, men discover what is better in time’. Mainly on the strength of this fragment, Ludwig Edelstein devoted the first chapter of his book The Idea of Progress in Classical Antiquity to Xenophanes, and W. K. C. Guthrie has even declared that there is good reason to attribute to him a fuller account of progress, one that would include details found in later authors who speak of the early life of mankind. One of these details is the statement that the life of primitive men was ‘brutal’ or ‘beastlike’ . In these authors the implication of that term varies from ‘unschooled in the basic crafts’ to ‘inhumanly violent and bloodthirsty’. In one sense or the other it is repeatedly encountered in ancient references to this subject. Accounts of primitive brutishness which make use of the word θηριώδης (or θηριωδς can be found in the Suppliants of Euripides, in the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine, in three passages of Diodorus, one of which is thought by some to contain Democritean doctrine, in four passages of Isocrates, in a fragment from a satyr-play Sisyphus which the ancient sources attribute variously to Euripides and to Critias, in a fragment of Athenion, in a second-century inscription, in Plutarch, in Tatian, in Themistius, and in a scholion to Euripides. (shrink)

This essay is a critical response to Loren Lomasky's essay in this volume: The essay argues that Lomasky both overestimates the value of eating meat and underestimates the harms to animals of practices surrounding meat eating. While Lomasky takes the fact that an animal would not have lived at all if it were not being raised for food to constitute a benefit for animals being so raised, this essay argues that it would be better for animals raised on factory farms (...) to have never been born. It also contends that Lomasky overstates his case regarding the benefits of meat eating for human well-being. While gastronomic experiences can enrich our lives, it would be a mistake to think that meat eating is indispensable to the enrichment of our lives; one canexperience the flourishing of eating well without eating animals. (shrink)

Uncovering the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics, in this volume Michael Gill shows how the British moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries completed a Copernican revolution in moral philosophy. They effected a shift from thinking of morality as independent of human nature to thinking of it as part of human nature itself. He also shows how the British Moralists - sometimes inadvertently, sometimes by design - disengaged ethical thinking, first from distinctly Christian ideas and then from (...) theistic commitments altogether. Examining in detail the arguments of Whichcote, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson against Calvinist conceptions of original sin and egoistic conceptions of human motivation, Gill also demonstrates how Hume combined the ideas of earlier British moralists with his own insights to produce an account of morality and human nature that undermined some of his predecessors' most deeply held philosophical goals. (shrink)

Michael B. Gill offers a new account of Humean moral pluralism: the view that there are different moral reasons for action, which are based on human sentiments. He explores its historical origins, and argues that it offers the most compelling view of our moral experience. Together, pluralism and Humeanism make a philosophically powerful couple.

This article offers a novel, conservative account of material constitution, one that incorporates sortal essentialism and features a theory of dominant sortals. It avoids coinciding objects, temporal parts, relativizations of identity, mereological essentialism, anti-essentialism, denials of the reality of the objects of our ordinary ontology, and other departures from the metaphysic implicit in ordinary ways of thinking. Defenses of the account against important objections are found in Burke 1997, 2003, and 2004, as well as in the often neglected six paragraphs (...) that conclude section V of this article. (shrink)

In the mid-20th century, descriptive meta-ethics addressed a number of central questions, such as whether there is a necessary connection between moral judgment and motivation, whether moral reasons are absolute or relative, and whether moral judgments express attitudes or describe states of affairs. I maintain that much of this work in mid-20th century meta-ethics proceeded on an assumption that there is good reason to question. The assumption was that our ordinary discourse is uniform and determinate enough to vindicate one side (...) or the other of these meta-ethical debates. I suggest that ordinary moral discourse may be much less uniform and determinate than 20th century meta-ethics assumed. (shrink)

On the most popular account of material constitution, it is common for a material object to coincide precisely with one or more other material objects, ones that are composed of just the same matter but differ from it in sort. I argue that there is nothing that could ground the alleged difference in sort and that the account must be rejected.

Michael B. Gill offers a new account of Humean moral pluralism: the view that there are different moral reasons for action, which are based on human sentiments. He explores its historical origins, and argues that it offers the most compelling view of our moral experience. Together, pluralism and Humeanism make a philosophically powerful couple.

Dion is a full-bodied man. Theon is that part of him which consists of all of him except his left foot. What becomes of Dion and Theon when Dion’s left foot is amputated? Employing the doctrine of sortal essentialism, I defend a surprising answer last defended by Chrysippus: that Dion survives while the seemingly unscathed Theon perishes. For replies to critics, see my publications of 1997 and (especially) 2004.

An engaging account of how Shaftesbury revolutionized Western philosophy At the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, developed the first comprehensive philosophy of beauty to be written in English. It revolutionized Western philosophy. In A Philosophy of Beauty, Michael Gill presents an engaging account of how Shaftesbury’s thought profoundly shaped modern ideas of nature, religion, morality, and art—and why, despite its long neglect, it remains compelling today. Before Shaftesbury’s magnum opus, Charactersticks of (...) Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, it was common to see wilderness as ugly, to associate religion with fear and morality with unpleasant restriction, and to dismiss art as trivial or even corrupting. But Shaftesbury argued that nature, religion, virtue, and art can all be truly beautiful, and that cherishing and cultivating beauty is what makes life worth living. And, as Gill shows, this view had a huge impact on the development of natural religion, moral sense theory, aesthetics, and environmentalism. Combining captivating historical details and flashes of humor, A Philosophy of Beauty not only rediscovers and illuminates a fascinating philosopher but also offers an inspiring reflection about the role beauty can play in our lives. (shrink)

Virtually every empirical inquiry of issues relevant to applied business ethics involves the asking of questions that are sensitive, embarrassing, threatening, stigmatizing, or incriminating. Accordingly, questions of this sort are likely to result in unsatisfactory outcomes: 1) many individuals will not respond; and/or, 2) many individuals will not respond candidly. An obvious objective, then, is to use a method to collect information which increases participation, provides absolute anonymity, and does not jeopardize subjects' privacy. The randomized response technique (RRT) is a (...) method designed to realize this promise. We provide here an overview of RRT approaches and applications 'which may be effectively used in empirical examinations of potentially sensitive issues in business ethics. (shrink)

One of the most significant disputes in early modern philosophy was between the moral rationalists and the moral sentimentalists. The moral rationalists — such as Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke and John Balguy — held that morality originated in reason alone. The moral sentimentalists — such as Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson and David Hume — held that morality originated at least partly in sentiment. In addition to arguments, the rationalists and sentimentalists developed rich analogies. The (...) most significant analogy the rationalists developed was between morality and mathematics. The most significant analogy the sentimentalists developed was between morality and beauty. These two analogies illustrate well the main ideas, underlying insights, and accounts of moral phenomenology the two positions have to offer. An examination of the two analogies will thus serve as a useful introduction to the debate between moral rationalism and moral sentimentalism as a whole. (shrink)

I argue that a policy of presumed consent for cadaveric organ procurement, which assumes that people do want to donate their organs for transplantation after their death, would be a moral improvement over the current American system, which assumes that people do not want to donate their organs. I address what I take to be the most important objection to presumed consent. The objection is that if we implement presumed consent we will end up removing organs from the bodies of (...) people who did not want their organs removed, and that this situation is morally unacceptable because it violates the principle of respect for autonomy that underlies our concept of informed consent. I argue that while removing organs from the bodies of people who did not want them removed is unfortunate, it is morally no worse that not removing organs from the bodies of people who did want them removed, and that a policy of presumed consent will produce fewer of these unfortunate results than the current system. (shrink)

Peter Forrest argues that theism is warranted by an inference to the best explanation that does not posit God as a supernatural entity. Lest theists fear that Forrest settles for an ersatz naturalistic conception of God, let me reassure them that his view might be captured by the slogan, "Neither a naturalist nor a supernaturalist be!" Both naturalism and supernaturalism attempt to understand what Forrest calls the "familiar"—the things observable by humans, including the phenomena of consciousness—but they differ about the (...) constraints on acceptable explanations. Naturalism accepts, while supernaturalism rejects, the following constraints: don't posit an "unfamiliar" entity unless a well-confirmed scientific theory provides a "precedent" for it, and don't violate any well-confirmed laws of nature. Forrest's antisupernaturalism accepts, but weakens to : don't posit an unfamiliar kind of entity unless there is some precedent for it, either in the familiar entities we already believe in, or in a well-confirmed scientific theory. Thus, every naturalistic explanation is antisupernaturalist, but some antisupernaturalist ones are not naturalistic because they posit unfamiliar entities on the basis of a commonsense nonscientific theory. (shrink)

When making moral judgments, people are typically guided by a plurality of moral rules. These rules owe their existence to human emotions but are not simply equivalent to those emotions. And people’s moral judgments ought to be guided by a plurality of emotion-based rules. The view just stated combines three positions on moral judgment: [1] moral sentimentalism, which holds that sentiments play an essential role in moral judgment,1 [2] descriptive moral pluralism, which holds that commonsense moral judgment is guided by (...) a plurality of moral rules2, and [3] prescriptive moral pluralism, which holds that moral judgment ought to be guided by a plurality of moral rules. In what follows, we will argue for all three positions. We will not present a comprehensive case for these positions nor address many of the arguments philosophers have developed against them. What we will try to show is that recent psychological work supports sentimentalist pluralism in both its descriptive and prescriptive forms. (shrink)

: We argue that healthy people should be allowed to sell one of their kidneys while they are alive—that the current prohibition on payment for kidneys ought to be overturned. Our argument has three parts. First, we argue that the moral basis for the current policy on live kidney donations and on the sale of other kinds of tissue implies that we ought to legalize the sale of kidneys. Second, we address the objection that the sale of kidneys is intrinsically (...) wrong because it violates the Kantian duty of respect for humanity. Third, we address a range of consequentialist objections based on the idea that kidney sales will be exploitative. Throughout the paper, we argue only that it ought to be legal for an individual to receive payment for a kidney. We do not argue that it ought to be legal for an individual to buy a kidney. (shrink)

This article explores how economic inequality in the United States has led to growing levels of poverty, food insecurity, and obesity for the bottom segments of the economy. It takes the position that access to nutritious food is a requirement for living and for participating fully in the workplace and society. Because of increasing economic inequality in the United States, growing segments of the U.S. economy have become more food insecure and obese, eating unhealthy food for survival and suffering an (...) erosion of “equality of capabilities” that undermines their ability to play a “full and active part in the functioning of community.” Unequal access to nutritious foods in the United States is attributable in part to an industrial food system that is designed to produce short-term profits for industrial food producers, processors, and distributors that extract surplus labor value through market concentration and opportunistic behavior at the expense of the long-term benefits for consumers, food workers, and ecosystems. Economic inequality, food insecurity, and the erosion of equality of capabilities in the United States have given rise to protest movements, social movements, social innovations, and some modest strengthening of regulations to make access to and consumption of healthy food a right for every person. Implications for business and society research are explored. (shrink)

Many philosophers, both past and present, object to materialism not from any romantic anti-scientific bent, but from sheer inability to understand the thesis. It seems utterly inconceivable to some that qualia should exist in a world which is entirely material. This paper investigates the grain objection, a much neglected argument which purports to prove that sensations could not be brain events. Three versions are examined in great detail. The plausibility of the first version is shown to depend crucially on whether (...) one holds a direct or non-direct theory of perception. Only on the latter is this version plausible. An analysis of the second "semantic" version concludes that a materialist description and explanation of the world should not be expected to transparently convey all that would be of interest or importance to human beings. The final version explicitly makes use of Grover Maxwell's non-direct perceptual theory of structural realism. Although a confusion is charged to Maxwell between phenomenal and objective properties, the critical difficulty for the grain objection is its failure to characterize "structure" from a non-percipient point of view. As the grain objection is ultimately found wanting, the real difficulty for materialism crystallizes as its irreconciliability with the mere existence of sentience, which seems to force some sort of emergence upon us. (shrink)

Moral cognitivists hold that in ordinary thought and language moral terms are used to make factual claims and express propositions. Moral non-cognitivists hold that in ordinary thought and language moral terms are not used to make factual claims or express propositions. What cognitivists and non-cognitivists seem to agree about, however, is that there is something in ordinary thought and language that can vindicate one side of their debate or the other. Don Loeb raises the possibility — which I will call (...) “the variability thesis” — that ordinary moral thought and language contains both cognitivist and non-cognitivist elements, and that there is no principled reason for thinking that either the cognitivist or non-cognitivist elements are conceptually more primary or aberrant than the other. According to the variability thesis, cognitivists accurately capture some aspects of what we think and say when we use moral terms and non-cognitivists capture other aspects, but neither side provides a correct analysis of ordinary moral thought and language as a whole. (shrink)

Some children living with life-shortening medical conditions may wish to attend school without the threat of having resuscitation attempted in the event of cardiopulmonary arrest on the school premises. Despite recent attention to in-school do-not-attempt-resuscitation (DNAR) orders, no assessment of state laws or school policies has yet been made. We therefore sought to survey a national sample of prominent school districts and situate their policies in the context of relevant state laws. Most (80%) school districts sampled did not have policies, (...) regulations, or protocols for dealing with student DNARs. A similar majority (76%) either would not honor student DNARs or were uncertain about whether they could. Frequent contradictions between school policies and state laws also exist. Consequently, children living with life-shortening conditions who have DNARs may not have these orders honored if cardiopulmonary arrest were to occur on school premises. Coordinated efforts are needed to harmonize school district, state, and federal approaches in order to support children and families' right to have important medical decisions honored. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper explicates Shaftesbury’s idea that we ought to live our lives as though they are works of art. I show that this idea is central to many of Shaftesbury’s most important claims, and that an understanding of this idea enables us to answer some of the most contested questions in the scholarship on Characteristics.

In the most comprehensive examination to date of Heidegger’s Nazism, Emmanuel Faye draws on previously unavailable materials to paint a damning picture of Nazism’s influence on the philosopher’s thought and politics. In this provocative book, Faye uses excerpts from unpublished seminars to show that Heidegger’s philosophical writings are fatally compromised by an adherence to National Socialist ideas. In other documents, Faye finds expressions of racism and exterminatory anti-Semitism. Faye disputes the view of Heidegger as a naïve, temporarily disoriented academician and (...) instead shows him to have been a self-appointed “spiritual guide” for Nazism whose intentionality was clear. Contrary to what some have written, Heidegger’s Nazism became even more radical after 1935, as Faye demonstrates. He revisits Heidegger’s masterwork, _Being and Time_, and concludes that in it Heidegger does not present a philosophy of individual existence but rather a doctrine of radical self-sacrifice, where individualization is allowed only for the purpose of heroism in warfare. Faye’s book was highly controversial when originally published in France in 2005. Now available in Michael B. Smith’s fluid English translation, it is bound to awaken controversy in the English-speaking world. (shrink)

Many moral philosophers in the Western tradition have used phenomenological claims as starting points for philosophical inquiry; aspects of moral phenomenology have often been taken to be anchors to which any adequate account of morality must remain attached. This paper raises doubts about whether moral phenomena are universal and robust enough to serve the purposes to which moral philosophers have traditionally tried to put them. Persons’ experiences of morality may vary in a way that greatly limits the extent to which (...) moral phenomenology can constitute a reason to favor one moral theory over another. Phenomenology may not be able to serve as a pre-theoretic starting point or anchor in the consideration of rival moral theories because moral phenomenology may itself be theory-laden. These doubts are illustrated through an examination of how moral phenomenology is used in the thought of Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke, Joseph Butler, Francis Hutcheson, and Søren Kierkegaard. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXII, Number 1, April 1996, pp. 23-48 Fantastick Associations and Addictive General Rules: A Fundamental Difference between Hutcheson and Hume MICHAEL B. GILL The belief that God created human beings for some moral purpose underlies nearly all the moral philosophy written in Great Britain in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. David Hume attacks this theological conception of human nature on all fronts. It is (...) out of these attacks that Hume develops his own "science of man" based solely on "experience and observation."1 Francis Hutcheson is often taken to be the most important positive influence on Hume. And there can be no doubt that Hume does take on board several crucial Hutchesonian elements. But Hutcheson's moral theory, like that of most of his contemporaries, is grounded in a theological conception of human nature to which Hume is adamantly opposed.2 In this paper I will examine how Hume's disagreements with Hutcheson embody the anti-theological purpose that defines Hume's work as a whole. I will look, in particular, at Hume's and Hutcheson's different positions on the principles of association. I hope to show how Hume's use of these principles in the Treatise advances his larger goal of placing "the science of man" on "a foundation almost entirely new" (T xvi). I will proceed, first, by explaining Hutcheson's conception of human nature and his use of the principles of association; second, by sketching in broad outline how Hume's accounts of the origins of justice and natural virtue undermine crucial components of Hutcheson's conception of human nature; and third, by elucidating in more detail an aspect of Hume's associationism that is particularly revealing of his distance from Hutcheson. Michael B. Gill is at the Department of Philosophy, Purdue University, 1360 Liberal Arts and Education Building, West Lafayette IN 47907 USA. email: [email protected]. 24 Michael B. Gill I. Hutcheson and Association Hutcheson discusses the mind's tendency to associate in all of his writings, but his most extensive treatment of the matter comes in his Essay on the Passions.3 Hutcheson begins the Essay by telling us that something is good if and only if the perception of it "Causes, or Occasions" a pleasurable feeling, and that something is evil if and only if the perception of it causes or occasions a painful feeling (EP 2). Crucially, Hutcheson denies that all of our pleasures and pains are of the same type (EP 1-8).4 He holds, rather, that there are at least five distinct types of pleasures and pains and that each of them grounds a different irreducible type of good and evil. There are, first, the pleasures and pains caused by things we perceive through the external senses of taste, touch, smell, etc.; things that cause such pleasures are called naturally good, while things that cause such pains are called naturally evil. Second, there are the "Pleasant Perceptions, arising from regular, harmonious, uniform Objects" (EP 5); the things that cause these pleasures are called beautiful.5 Third, there are the pleasures and pains we feel upon perceiving the happiness or misery of other human beings; the things that cause these pleasures are called public goods while those that cause the corresponding pains are called public evils. Fourth, there are pleasures and pains, usually called approval and disapproval, that we feel upon perceiving the actions of others; the actions that cause approval are called virtuous or morally good, while those that cause disapproval are called vicious or morally evil. Finally, there are the pleasures and pains we feel upon perceiving others' moral perceptions of our own actions; the pleasure of perceiving others' approval of one's actions is called the feeling of honor, while the pain of perceiving others' disapproval is called the feeling of shame. For Hutcheson, then, natural goodness, beauty, the public good, virtue and honor are all defined by our pleasures and pains. He does not think, however, that these are defined by just any of our actual or occurrent pleasures and pains. He holds, rather, that they are defined by the pleasures and pains we feel under certain privileged... (shrink)

The Cambridge Platonists were a group of religious thinkers who attended and taught at Cambridge from the 1640s until the 1660s. The four most important of them were Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry More. The most prominent sentimentalist moral philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment – Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith – knew of the works of the Cambridge Platonists. But the Scottish sentimentalists typically referred to the Cambridge Platonists only briefly and in passing. The surface of Hutcheson, (...) Hume, and Smith's texts can give the impression that the Cambridge Platonists were fairly distant intellectual relatives of the Scottish sentimentalists – great great-uncles, perhaps, and uncles of a decidedly foreign ilk. But this surface appearance is deceiving. There were deeply significant philosophical connections between the Cambridge Platonists and the Scottish sentimentalists, even if the Scottish sentimentalists themselves did not always make it perfectly explicit. (shrink)

I aim to show that there are cases in which an ordinary material object exists intermittently. Afterwards there are a few words about the consequences of acknowledging such cases, but what is of more interest is the route by which the conclusion is reached. When deciding among competing descriptions of the cases considered, I have tried to reduce to a minimum the role of intuitive judgment, and I have based several arguments on "metaphysical principles," two of which I have defended.

It is hard to see why the head and other brain-containing parts of a person are not themselves persons, or at least thinking, conscious beings. Some theorists have sought to reconcile us to the existence of thinking person-parts. Others have sought to avoid them but have relied on radical theories at odds with the metaphysic implicit in ordinary ways of thinking. This paper offers a novel, conservative solution, one on which the heads and other brain-containing parts of persons do exist (...) but are neither persons, thinkers, nor conscious beings. A much briefer statement of the solution is found in section 5 of Burke 2004. (shrink)

This article presents the case of an HIV-positive client who reported having sexual relations with an unknowing partner. The issue raised is whether the therapist was required to warn the unknowing partner, similar to the Tarasoff mandate that is imposed on therapists. The case is analyzed from an ethical framework similar to that presented by Beauchamp and Childress. Two opinions are presented, each leading to different conclusions about whether the therapist should inform the unknowing partner. It is concluded that although (...) such analysis is valuable in aiding the therapist in his or her decision-making process, no clear professional standard for the management of the problem is evident. (shrink)

I am sure there are no men marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him. A Leveller Commonplace, circa 1647 ... the day will come when the individual will no more be permitted to bequeath his property to his descendents even by means of a will thatn he has been permitted (since the French Revolution) to bequeath his offices and his status. Emile Durkheim, (...) 1892... despite the ideology of the `open society' and social democratic attacks upon inherited wealth through the imposition of estate and death duties, inheritance remains an important factor in the distribution of control over resources, especially wealth. Roderick Martin, 1977. (shrink)

One of the most intriguing claims of Stoic logic is Chrysippus's denial of the modal principle that the impossible does not follow from the possible. Chrysippus's argument against this principle involves the idea that some propositions are ?destroyed? or ?perish?. According to the standard interpretation of Chrysippus's argument, propositions cease to exist when they are destroyed. Ide has presented an alternative interpretation according to which destroyed propositions persist after destruction and are false. I argue that Ide's alternative interpretation as well (...) as some versions of the standard interpretation conflict with Stoic doctrines about the nature of propositions. I propose another version of the standard interpretation based on Frede's account of the Stoic theory of the proposition. I hold that this version of the standard interpretation both escapes Ide's objections and is consistent with Stoic logic and philosophy of language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 38.4 (2000) 529-548 [Access article in PDF] Shaftesbury's Two Accounts of the Reason to be Virtuous Michael B. Gill College of Charleston 1. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), was the founder of the moral sense school, or the first British philosopher to develop the position that moral distinctions originate in sentiment and not in reason alone. Shaftesbury thus (...) struck the initial blow in the battle waged by sentimentalists such as Hutcheson and Hume against rationalists such as Cudworth and Clarke.Such is a common view of Shaftesbury's place in the history of moral philosophy.1 But while this common view is accurate in a very general sense, it also oversimplifies in a manner that threatens to misrepresent the development of modern ethical theory and obscure what is most interesting about Shaftesbury.2 The view suggests, in particular, that the most important distinction in early modern British moral philosophy was between sentimentalism and rationalism. There was, however, a distinction ontologically deeper than [End Page 529] that, which explains how Shaftesbury, even while developing his moral sense theory, could at times be much closer to his rationalist predecessors Cudworth and Clarke than to his sentimentalist followers Hutcheson and Hume.In this paper I will elucidate this deeper ontological distinction by examining two different accounts that Shaftesbury gives of the reason to be virtuous. Both of Shaftesbury's accounts are in a sense sentimentalist, but only the second of them constitutes a sharp break from his rationalist predecessors. Shaftesbury himself does not seem fully aware of the radical implications of his second account, but the implications are there nonetheless. And by exposing them we will gain a view not only of a crucial ambiguity in Shaftesbury's thought but also of a central faultline in the history of British moral philosophy. We will also come to see that while Shaftesbury does pave the way for a new ontology of morals, he does so more by accident than by design.3 2. Shaftesbury believes that to be virtuous is to have a benevolent character or a deep non-derivative commitment to promote the "publick Interest."4 He also believes that a person who has a benevolent character will always be happier than a person who does not, and that this constitutes a sufficient reason for each of us to "embrace" virtue (Inquiry 48).5 But of course some will deny that the benevolent person is always happiest and so Shaftesbury sets out to prove that there exists between benevolence and happiness a natural and necessary connection.How does Shaftesbury establish the connection between benevolence and happiness? In two different ways.6 The first way of establishing the connection [End Page 530] can be called the teleological account, and the second way can be called the mental enjoyment account. Let us first examine the teleological account.The initial claim of Shaftesbury's teleological account of the reason to embrace virtue is that benevolence is what is most natural for humans, or their proper end or telos.7 As he puts it just after explaining "whatVirtueis," It has been already shewn, that in the Passions and Affections of particular Creatures, there is a constant relation to the Interest of a Species, or common Nature. This has been demonstrated in the case of natural Affection, parental Kindness, Zeal for Posterity, Concern for the Propagation and Nurture of the Young, Love of Fellowship and Company, Compassion, mutual Succour, and the rest of this kind. Nor will any-one deny that this Affection of a Creature towards the Good of the Species or common Nature, is as proper and natural to him, as it is to any Organ, Part or Member of an Animal-Body, or mere Vegetable, to work in its known Course, and regular way of Growth. 'Tis not more natural for the Stomach to digest, the Lungs to breathe, the Glands to separate juices, or other Intrails to perform their several Offices; however they may by particular Impediments... (shrink)