Michael Tonry and Franklin E. Zimring, eds., Reform and Punishment: Essays on Criminal Sentencing Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press, 1983, viii + 210 pp.

This volume presents a series of influential essays by Paul Boghossian on the theory of content and on its relation to the phenomenon of a priori knowledge. The essays are organized under four headings: the nature of content; content and self-knowledge; knowledge, content, and the a priori; and colour concepts.

Should a principle of charity be applied to the interpretation of the colour concepts exercised in visual experience? We think not. We shall argue, for one thing, that the grounds for applying a principle of charity are lacking in the case of colour concepts. More importantly, we shall argue that attempts at giving the experience of colour a charitable interpretation either fail to respect obvious features of that experience or fail to interpret it charitably, after all. Charity to visual experience (...) is therefore no motive for resisting the natural, Galilean response to a scientific understanding of light and vision. The best interpretation of colour experience ends up convicting it of widespread and systematic error. (shrink)

For almost half a century, the person most responsible for fomenting brouhahas regarding degrees of plasticity in the writing of histories has been Hayden White. Yet, despite the voluminous responses provoked by White’s work, almost no effort has been made to treat White’s writings in a systematic yet sympathetic way as a philosophy of history. Herman Paul’s book begins to remedy that lack and does so in a carefully considered and extremely scholarly fashion. In his relatively brief six chapters (...) (plus an introduction), Paul packs a wealth of information. He convincingly demonstrates that a guiding theme of White’s work from earliest times has been that historians have no choice but to impose a structure on historical data and thus bear responsibility for structures so imposed. As such, a key philosophical question concerns on what bases White contends that a freedom of choice exists regarding forms given to recorded histories. This essay focuses on how Paul argues for a unified vision that answers this question, as well as how he offers an original and comprehensive conception of White’s writings. (shrink)

Early in World War I, Virginia Woolf wrote these words: ‘The future is dark, which is on the whole, the best thing the future can be […]’. It is tempting to assume that darkness simply hides the unknown and the threatening. It is more challenging to think of it as Woolf did: rich with possibility in even the most desperate times.We live in what many would readily describe as dark times. These times have brought (among much else) a once-in-a-century public (...) health crisis, the continued redemption of toxic white supremacy, declining trust in and support for public institutions, and growing evidence of impending climate devastation. ‘Dark Futures’ will consider some of the scenes of this devastation and mine them for insights into our predicaments and our prospects. (shrink)

The paper is a defense of the project of explaining the a priori via the notion of meaning or concept possession. It responds to certain objections that have been made to this project—in particular, that there can be no epistemically analytic sentences that are not also metaphysically analytic, and that the notion of implicit definition cannot explain a priori entitlement. The paper goes on to distinguish between two different ways in which facts about meaning might generate facts about entitlement—inferential and (...) constitutive. It concludes by outlining a theory of the latter. (shrink)

The paper asks under what conditions deductive reasoning transmits justification from its premises to its conclusion. It argues that both standard externalist and standard internalist accounts of this phenomenon fail. The nature of this failure is taken to indicate the way forward: basic forms of deductive reasoning must justify by being instances of 'blind but blameless' reasoning. Finally, the paper explores the suggestion that an inferentialist account of the logical constants can help explain how such reasoning is possible.

In this article, I show how it is possible, working from a Thomistic perspective, to affirm the existence of animal rights. To start, I show how it is possible to ascribe indirect rights to animals—in particular, the indirect right to not be treated cruelly by us. Then, I show how it is possible to ascribe some direct rights to animals using the same reasoning that Aquinas offers in defending the claim that animals have indirect rights. Next, I draw on elements (...) of Aquinas’s metaphysical worldview in order to buttress the claim that animals have direct rights. I then respond to an attempt to ground the ethical treatment of animals, but not direct rights for animals, in natural law. In conclusion, I affirm that it is permissible to use animals to further the human good so long as in doing so we respect the direct rights that they possess. (shrink)

I believe that the notion of epistemic transparency does play an important role in our ordinary conception of mental content and I want to say what that role is. Unfortunately, the task is a large one; here I am able only to begin on its outline. I shall proceed somewhat indirectly, beginning with a discussion of externalist conceptions of mental content. I shall show that such conceptions violate epistemic transparency to an extent that has not been fully appreciated. Subsequently, I (...) shall look at the implications of this violation and at the reconstructive project that a rejection of transparency entails. I am inclined to think it unlikely that we will get a conception of propositional content that underwrites epistemic transparency. But I am concerned that we have not fully appreciated the role that transparency currently plays and the work that would need to be done were we to discard it. (shrink)

Compatibilism combines an externalist view of mental content with a doctrine of privileged self‐knowledge. The essay presents a reductio of compatibilism by arguing that if compatibilism were true, we would be in a position to know certain facts about the world a priori, facts that no one can reasonably believe are knowable a priori. Whether this should be taken to cast doubt on externalism or privileged self‐knowledge is not discussed. Consideration is given to the ’empty case’—the case in which a (...) thinker expresses what he takes to be a genuine thought concerning a natural kind but where there is in fact no relevant natural kind, so that the putative natural kind term fails to refer. It is argued that, in such a case, on an externalist conception of natural kind terms, the thinker is deluded in taking himself to be expressing a complete thought, and that such delusions are not compatible with privileged self‐knowledge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 233-244 [Access article in PDF] Joseph Butler on Forgiveness: A Presupposed Theory of Emotion Paul A. Newberry "I forgive him as far as humanity can forgive. I would do him no injury." Mrs. Dale in Anthony Trollope's The Last Chronicle of Barset, 1867. In the recent philosophical literature on forgiveness, a topic of great concern is the proper characterization of (...) forgiveness or, said in another way, the proper definition of forgiveness. Forgiveness has been defined in a multitude of ways: among others, as the overcoming of resentment, the overcoming of moral hatred, as a speech act, and as forbearance. Of these definitions the one that enjoys anything close to a kind of consensus is that forgiveness is the overcoming of resentment. This position, with various qualifications and stipulations, is held by numerous philosophers, among them R. S. Downie, Kathleen Dean Moore, A. C. Ewing, Martin Hughes, and Jeffrie Murphy. 1 The progenitor of this view is widely acknowledged to be Joseph Butler, who wrote sermons on both resentment and forgiveness nearly three hundred years ago. 2In this paper I will demonstrate that the attribution of this definition of forgiveness to Butler is in error: he did not define forgiveness as the overcoming of resentment but rather as the checking of revenge, or forbearance. Aside from the goal of setting the historical record straight, I have a broader and more important purpose in this essay. One sees that such an interpretation of Butler must provoke two questions. First, why did Butler define forgiveness only in terms of how one is to act, therefore paying no attention, apparently, to how one feels? Second, how do Murphy and the others incorrectly attribute this view to Butler? [End Page 233] I contend that these answers can be addressed if we take a close look at the role of emotions and theories of emotion in the definitions offered by Butler and Murphy (as representative of the group). I will attempt to establish that Butler's definition of forgiveness as the checking of revenge presupposes a feeling theory of emotions which is distinct from and in conflict with--in many ways pertinent to forgiveness--the cognitive theory of emotions presupposed by Murphy's definition. If I am successful in showing this claim to be plausible, then I will also have demonstrated that more attention needs to be paid to theories of emotion underlying work on forgiveness. But since the misinterpretation of Butler is widespread among contemporary writers on forgiveness and not peculiar to Murphy, my claim is a gesture toward what I take to be a problem greater than mere misinterpretation. Given the fact that a feeling theory of emotions was the predominant theory among philosophers in Butler's day until the end of the nineteenth century and that cognitive theory is currently a dominant philosophical theory, I fear that what has happened is that modern commentators on Butler are unaware that they are imposing their own presupposed theories of emotion onto a text from an earlier historical period.The plan of the paper is first to show by careful exegesis how Butler characterizes forgiveness and then, after a brief sketch of the difference between feeling theory and cognitive theory, to demonstrate how Butler's definition presupposes the former and Murphy's the latter. I will conclude with a few remarks about the import of these findings.Joseph Butler's treatment of forgiveness is found in a collection of his sermons first published as Fifteen Sermons in 1726. 3 Included in this collection are two sermons of primary importance to the topic of forgiveness: a sermon on resentment (Sermon VIII) and a subsequent sermon on forgiveness (Sermon IX). An understanding of Butler's definition of forgiveness properly begins with his sermon on resentment in which he distinguishes between two different kinds of resentment. One kind he calls "hasty and sudden" resentment, the other "settled and deliberate" resentment. 4 Hasty and sudden resentment is generally (and naturally) the result of sudden hurt or violence. 5... (shrink)

This paper argues that, given a certain apparently inevitable thesis about content, we could not know our own minds. The thesis is that the content of a thought is determined by its relational properties.

Samuelson's text was first published in 1948, and it immediately became the authority for the principles of economics courses. The book continues to be the standard-bearer for principles courses, and this revision continues to be a clear, accurate, and interesting introduction to modern economics principles. Bill Nordhaus is now the primary author of this text, and he has revised the book to be as current and relevant as ever.

The focus of discussion about the ethical issues associated with the COVID-19 pandemic has been on the great suffering to which it has given rise. However, there may be some unexpected positive outcomes that also emerge from the global disaster. The rupturing of entrenched systems and processes, the challenging of certainties that seemed beyond question, and the disruption of the assumed consensus of modernity may contribute to a rediscovery of the challenges that compose an ethical life. Elements of such a (...) process are evident in the surge of community support and mutual caring, of spontaneous acts of joyous solidarity, of suspension of past conflicts, and exploration of new forms of reconciliation. The experiences are tentative and the outcomes uncertain, but at least for a moment the hope of a new way forward has been raised. (shrink)

It is very common these days to come across the claim that the notions of mental content and linguistic meaning are normative notions. In the work of many philosophers, it plays a pivotal role. Saul Kripke made it the centerpiece of his influential discussion of Wittgenstein’s treatment of rulefollowing and private language; he used it to argue that the notions of meaning and content cannot be understood in naturalistic terms. Kripke’s formulations tend to be in terms of the notion of (...) linguistic meaning, but his argumentative strategy makes it clear that he holds both versions of the claim.... (shrink)

In this article, Whitehead's transition from a Philosophy of Evolution to a Philosophy of Organism is studied primarily on the basis of the evidence provided by the first two volumes of The Harvard Lectures of Alfred North Whitehead, especially the second volume that deals with the period 1925–1927 and that is subtitled General Metaphysical Problems of Science.

In this chapter a new problem about rule-following is outlined, one that is distinct both from Kripke’s and Wright’s versions of the problem. This new problem cannot be correctly responsed to, as Kripke’s can, by invoking Wright’s Intentional Account of rule-following. The upshot might be called, following Kant, an antinomy of pure reason: we both must — and cannot — make sense of someone’s following a rule. The chapter explores various ways out of this antinomy without here endorsing any of (...) them. (shrink)

For nearly a century, and until very recently, the majority of U.S. states required a blood test for marriage license applicants. The tests identified people with conditions formerly designated as "venereal diseases," most importantly gonorrhea and syphilis. Those who tested positive were barred from civil marriage. Although the premarital testing requirement is no longer a feature of state law, numerous related enactments are common features of law in most states.The historical literature describing the rise and fall of laws prescribing marriage (...) restrictions related to VD has treated those enactments as public health measures, meant primarily to forestall the spread of disease to intimate partners. But laws to... (shrink)

An irrealist conception of a given region of discourse is the view that no real properties answer to the central predicates of the region in question. Any such conception emerges, invariably, as the result of the interaction of two forces. An account of the meaning of the central predicates, along with a conception of the sorts of property the world may contain, conspire to show that, if the predicates of the region are taken to express properties, their extensions would have (...) to be deemed uniformly empty. The question then becomes whether the predicates are best understood as expressing properties, and hence as founded on error, or whether they ought to be understood along non-factualist lines.z Historically, irrealist models were developed primarily in connection with evaluative discourse, although as physicalism has flourished and as reductionist programs have failed, their application has been extended to many other domains. Indeed, it is one of the more influential suggestions in contemporary philosophy of mind that they apply even to ordinary belief/desire psychology. A correct understanding of the semantics and metaphysics of content-based psychology leaves us, so the proponents of the in-. (shrink)

Only in recent years have developmental psychologists begun advocating and exploring dual-process theories and their applicability to cognitive development. In this paper, a dual-process model of developments in two processing systems—an “analytic” and an “experiential” system—is discussed. We emphasise the importance of “metacognitive intercession” and developments in this ability to override experiential processing. In each of two studies of sunk cost decisions, age-related developments in normative decisions were observed, as were declines in the use of a “waste not” heuristic. In (...) the second study, children and adolescents were presented with arguments for normative and non-normative sunk cost decisions. Following argument evaluation, participants were re-presented the original problems and a set of novel, transfer problems. Results indicated that post-argument improvements were most apparent during adolescence. Age-related improvements were most noticeable on the transfer problems. In general, the findings suggest that the ability to metacognitively intercede (i.e., reflect on arguments; inhibit experientially produced responses) emerges towards middle adolescence. However, even by the end of adolescence, in the absence of significant contextual cues and motivation, this ability is infrequently utilised. (shrink)

In this paper, we look at Richard Dawkins’ “Spectrum of Theistic Probabilities” from his book “The God Delusion”. The spectrum is edited to account for a mathematical error by Richard Dawkins. Correcting this oversight leads to 2 new theological positions being discovered. One of these positions is defended in detail. In its defense, we argue against a potential flaw of the position and also list a merit for the position among other arguments for the position. The merit involves a rebuttal (...) for Pascal’s wager found in no other piece of literature. (shrink)

These essays examine the ways in which the consideration of ethical questions is shaped by the structures of knowledge and communication at work in clinical ...

The authors investigated the ontological argument computationally. The premises and conclusion of the argument are represented in the syntax understood by the automated reasoning engine PROVER9. Using the logic of definite descriptions, the authors developed a valid representation of the argument that required three non-logical premises. PROVER9, however, discovered a simpler valid argument for God's existence from a single non-logical premise. Reducing the argument to one non-logical premise brings the investigation of the soundness of the argument into better focus. Also, (...) the simpler representation of the argument brings out clearly how the ontological argument constitutes an early example of a ?diagonal argument? and, moreover, one used to establish a positive conclusion rather than a paradox. (shrink)

This article reflects on the assumption underlying the argument of Little et al. that "contested understandings" in the clinic are susceptible to reconciliation within a liberal framework described as "pragmatic pluralism". It is argued that no such reconciliation is possible or desirable because it is of the nature of the clinic that it provides a forum for multiple voices, ethical and cultural perspectives, and conceptual frameworks, and this is the source of its fecundity and creativity. Medicine itself cannot be represented (...) by a single discourse, precisely because it is itself an unruly collection of practices that, despite their heterogeneity, are able to engage in productive dialogues with each other. The heteroglossia of the clinic, therefore, is not a problem to be overcome. Rather, it is a rich resource to be mobilized in accordance with its multiple inherent purposes. (shrink)

The dispute between realists about color and anti-realists is actually a dispute about the nature of color properties. The disputants do not disagree over what material objects are like. Rather, they disagree over whether any of the uncontroversial facts about material objects--their powers to cause visual experiences, their dispositions to reflect incident light, their atomic makeup, and so on--amount to their having colors. The disagreement is thus about which properties colors are and, in particular, whether colors are any of the (...) properties in a particular set that is acknowledged on both sides to exhaust the properties of material objects. In a previous paper we discussed at length one attempt to identify colors with particular properties of material objects--namely, with their dispositions to cause visual experiences. Here we shall discuss a different and perhaps more influential version of realism, which says that the colors of material objects are microphysical properties of their surfaces. We shall call this theory physicalism about color (physicalism, for short). In order to evaluate this theory, however, we shall first have to clarify some methodological issues. Our hope is that we can bring some further clarity to the question of color realism, whether or not we succeed in our critique of the physicalists' answer. (shrink)

This review essay examines the emergence of the patient narrative or “pathography” in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in relation to the great cultural, epistemological, and ethical transformations that enabled the formation of modern medicine. John Wiltshire’s book provides an historical overview of this complex process, as well as laying the basis for a contemporary critique of some of its key assumptions.

Over the past thirty years, the doctrine of informed consent has become a focal point in discussions of medical ethics. The literature of informed consent explores the evolution of the principle of autonomy, purportedly emerging from the mists of 19th Century medical practice, and finding its earliest articulation in legal cases where wronged citizens asserted their rights against medical authority. A commonplace, if not obligatory, feature of that literature is a reference to the case of Mary Schloendorff and the opinion (...) written by Judge Benjamin Cardozo by which the case is remembered. Commentators today applaud the prescience of Cardozo for an early articulation of what eventually would become bioethical orthodoxy concerning informed consent and its place as a bulwark of patient autonomy. They inevitably quote Cardozo's famous statement, “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body.”. (shrink)

This paper is the reprinting under a new title of the “Foreword” of Paul A. Weiss's Life, Order, and Understanding: A Theme in Three Variations, published in 1970 as volume 8 supplement of The Graduate Journal of the University of Texas (Austin, Texas, #5.00 [hardcover], #2.50 [paperback], 157 pages). We reprint this paper here for two reasons. The first is that its beautiful, scientifically grounded imagery of living systems in relation to wave dynamics provides a significant supplement to this (...) issue of Zygon on human values in the context of thermodynamics. The second is that it is hoped this foreword will serve better than would a book review to introduce Zygon readers to the philosophical and scientific wisdom contained in Life, Order, and Understanding.–Editor. (shrink)

When Benjamin Franklin suggested that man is by nature a tool-making animal, he summed up what was for his fellow Americans the common sense of the matter. It is not, then, surprising that, when Britain's colonists in North America broke with the mother country over the issue of an unrepresentative parliament's right to tax and govern the colonies, they defended their right to the property they owned on the ground that it was in a most thorough-going sense an extension of (...) themselves: the fruits of their own labor. This understanding they learned from John Locke, who based the argument of his Two Treatises of Government on the unorthodox account of providence and of man's place within the natural world that Sir Francis Bacon had been the first to articulate. All of this helps explain why the framers of the American constitution included within it a clause giving sanction to property in ideas of practical use. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years, the doctrine of informed consent has become a focal point in discussions of medical ethics. The literature of informed consent explores the evolution of the principle of autonomy, purportedly emerging from the mists of 19th Century medical practice, and finding its earliest articulation in legal cases where wronged citizens asserted their rights against medical authority. A commonplace, if not obligatory, feature of that literature is a reference to the case of Mary Schloendorff and the opinion (...) written by Judge Benjamin Cardozo by which the case is remembered. Commentators today applaud the prescience of Cardozo for an early articulation of what eventually would become bioethical orthodoxy concerning informed consent and its place as a bulwark of patient autonomy. They inevitably quote Cardozo's famous statement, “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body.”. (shrink)

Following Oliver Ramsbotham’s observation that conflict resolution and analysis have not taken radical disagreement seriously enough, and in light of his lament that he has not yet found an adequate philosophy of radical disagreement, this article claims that the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre provides some coreelements of any adequate philosophy of radical disagreement. MacIntyre’s theory suggests that the problem of radical disagreement is in fact more radical thanRamsbotham affirms. Ramsbotham’s account of the strategic engagement of discourses (SED) approach is critiqued (...) in light of MacIntyre’s diagnosis of radical disagreement, which calls into question its theoretical and philosophical basis. The main problem is held to be that of internal radical disagreement, which SED appears to skirt over. This is elucidated through a brief exploration of two philosophical approaches to moral-political disagreement in relation to Israeli peace activism and the Colombian conflict. (shrink)

This is a critical discussion of Jerry Fodor and Ernie Lepore's "Holism". The paper questions the existence of a slippery slope from some inferential liaisons are constitutive of meaning' to all inferential liaisons are constitutive of meaning'. "Interalia", it defends the existence of an analytic/synthetic distinction.

Reply to Schiffer's comment on Externalism and Inference.

Dual-process theories of conditional reasoning predict that relationships among four basic logical forms, and to intellectual ability and thinking predictions, are most evident when conflict arises between experiential and analytic processing (e.g., Stanovich & West, 2000). To test these predictions, 210 undergraduates were presented with conditionals for which the consequents were either weakly or strongly associated with alternative antecedents (i.e., WA and SA problems, respectively). Consistent with predictions, modus ponens inferences were not related to inferences on the uncertain forms (affirmation (...) of the consequent, denial of the antecedent). On WA problems, modus tollens, affirmation of the consequent, and denial of the antecedent were related to each other and to verbal ability. Modus ponens was linked to verbal ability only when disabling conditions were activated. In accord with the predictions of Stanovich and West (2000), on most problems, thinking dispositions predicted variance in inferences independently from verbal ability. We argue that a largely automatic experiential processing system governs performance on modus ponens, unless disablers are activated. Consciously controlled analytic processing predominates on the uncertain forms and, under some conditions, on modus tollens. (shrink)

The discipline of economics can benefit from a more explicit, systematic, and sustained concern with ontology; that is, with the philosophical analysis of the nature of the social world. Contrary to the argument advanced in these pages by Gerry Steele , critical-realist ontological analysis encourages fruitful economic research in a number of ways: by helping to identify research methods suitable for analyzing economic issues; by promoting the development of key substantive economic concepts; and by helping to reveal and resolve inconsistencies (...) in existing research. (shrink)