There are important similarities between moral thought and talk and thought and talk about gender: disagreements about gender, like disagreements about morality, seem to be intractable and to outstrip descriptive agreement; and it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be a woman in terms of particular social, biological, or other descriptive features, just as it seems coherent to reject any definition of what it is to be good or right in terms of any set of (...) descriptive properties. These similarities give us reason to investigate the idea that, like moral thought and talk, gender thought and talk is inherently normative. This paper proposes a normative account of gender thought and talk in terms of fitting treatment. On this fitting treatment account, to judge that A is gender G is just to judge that it is fitting to treat A as a G. This account is a descriptive or hermeneutical account of our gender thought and talk rather than an ameliorative account of our gender concepts or a metaphysical account of gender properties in social metaphysics. This paper argues that other descriptive accounts of gender thought and talk face problems that the fitting treatment account overcomes. (shrink)

A popular argument is that peer disagreement about controversial moral topics undermines justified moral belief in a way that peer disagreement about non-moral topics does not undermine justified non-moral belief. Call this argument the argument for moral skepticism from peer disagreement. Jason Decker and Daniel Groll have recently made a companions in guilt response to this argument. Decker and Groll argue that if peer disagreement undermines justified moral belief, then peer disagreement undermines much non-moral justified belief; if the argument for (...) moral skepticism from peer disagreement succeeds, then a kind of non-moral skepticism holds too. And we should not hold that the status of such non-moral beliefs are undermined by peer disagreement. In this paper, I shows that Decker and Groll’s companions in guilt argument fails. I then draw out the implications of my argument for the epistemology of disagreement and the epistemology of moral disagreement more generally. For instance, I then argue that peer disagreement about morality does not undermine all justified moral belief but that peer disagreement about morality does preclude most moral beliefs from being justified and constituting knowledge in a way that peer disagreement about non-moral topics does not preclude most non-moral beliefs from being justified and constituting knowledge. (shrink)

This book is an attack on the widespread assumption that the mind has parts and that it is the interaction between these parts which accounts for the irrational behaviour displayed un self- deception and weakness of will.

Part of the Studies in Crime and Public Policy series, this book, written by one of the top philosophers of punishment, examines the main trends in penal theorizing over the past three decades. Duff asks what can justify criminal punishment, and then explores the legitimacy of actual practices by examining what would count as adequate justification for them. Duff argues that a "communicative conception of punishment," which he presents as a third way between consequentialist and retributive theories, offers the most (...) fruitful way of understanding punishment's meaning and justification. Duff addresses such questions as how much sentences should be constrained by proportionality requirements; what modalities of punishment best communicate their intended meaning; and what decisionmaking procedures he envisions. This book will appeal to criminologists, philosophers, and others interested in theories of punishment. (shrink)

Epistemic decision theorists aim to justify Bayesian norms by arguing that these norms further the goal of epistemic accuracy—having beliefs that are as close as possible to the truth. The standard defense of Probabilism appeals to accuracy dominance: for every belief state that violates the probability calculus, there is some probabilistic belief state that is more accurate, come what may. The standard defense of Conditionalization, on the other hand, appeals to expected accuracy: before the evidence is in, one should expect (...) to do better by conditionalizing than by following any other rule. We present a new argument for Conditionalization that appeals to accuracy‐dominance, rather than expected accuracy. Our argument suggests that Conditionalization is a rule of coherence: plans that conflict with Conditionalization don't just prescribe bad responses to the evidence; they also give rise to inconsistent attitudes. (shrink)

After distinguishing different species of Legal Moralism I outline and defend a modest, positive Legal Moralism, according to which we have good reason to criminalize some type of conduct if it constitutes a public wrong. Some of the central elements of the argument will be: the need to remember that the criminal law is a political, not a moral practice, and therefore that in asking what kinds of conduct we have good reason to criminalize, we must begin not with the (...) entire realm of wrongdoing, but with conduct falling within the public realm of our civic life; the need to look at the different processes of criminalization, and to ask what kinds of consideration can properly figure in those processes; the need to attend to the relationship, and the essential differences, between criminal law and other modes of legal regulation. (shrink)

How can a system of criminal punishment be justified? In particular can it be justified if the moral demand that we respect each other as autonomous moral agents is taken seriously? Traditional attempts to justify punishment as a deterrent or as retribution fail, but Duff suggests that punishment can be understood as a communicative attempt to bring a wrong-doer to repent her crime. This account is supported by discussions of moral blame, of penance, of the nature of the law's demands, (...) and of the proper meaning and purpose of the criminal process of trial and verdict: it deals both with the ideals that should inform a system of criminal law and the extent to which those ideals are actualised in existing institutions and practices. The conclusion is pessimistic: punishment cannot be justified within our legal system; and this gap between the ideal and the actual presents us with serious moral dilemmas. (shrink)

I begin by discussing the ways in which a would-be blamer's own prior conduct towards the person he seeks to blame can undermine his standing to blame her. This provides the basis for an examination of a particular kind of 'bar to trial' in the criminal law – of ways in which a state or a polity's right to put a defendant on trial can be undermined by the prior misconduct of the state or its officials. The examination of this (...) often neglected legal phenomenon illuminates some central features of the criminal law and the criminal process, and some of the preconditions for the legitimacy of the criminal law in a liberal republic. (shrink)

We can gain fresh insights into aspects of criminal liability by focusing first on the prior topic of criminal responsibility, and on the relational dimensions of responsibility: responsibility is responsibility for something, to someone. We are criminally responsible as citizens, to our fellow citizens, for committing 'public' wrongs: I discuss the difficulty of giving determinate content to this idea of public wrongs, and the way in which, whereas moral responsibility is typically strict, criminal responsibility is not. Finally, I explore the (...) grounds on which defendants might deny that they are criminally responsible before the courts that seek to try them. (shrink)

Aim To study the views of people in a largely Muslim country, Kuwait, of the acceptability of a life-ending action such as physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Method 330 Kuwaiti university students judged the acceptability of PAS in 36 scenarios composed of all combinations of four factors: the patient's age (35, 60 or 85 years); the level of incurability of the illness (completely incurable vs extremely difficult to cure); the type of suffering (extreme physical pain or complete dependence) and the extent to (...) which the patient requests a life-ending procedure, euthanasia or PAS (no request, some form of request, repeated requests). In all scenarios, the patients were women who were receiving the best possible care. The ratings were subjected to cluster analysis and analyses of variance. Results Five clusters were found. For 44%, PAS was always very unacceptable, no matter what the circumstances. For 23%, it was unacceptable, but less so if the patient was older or requested it repeatedly. For 16%, it was unacceptable if the patient was young but was acceptable if the patient was elderly. For 5%, it was unacceptable if the patient had extreme pain but was acceptable if completely dependent. For 11%, it was unacceptable if the patient did not request it but acceptable if she did. Conclusion The majority of the Kuwaiti university students opposed PAS either categorically or with a slight variation according to circumstances. Nonetheless, a minority approved of PAS in some cases, particularly when the patient was elderly. (shrink)

After an initial discussion (§i) of what a theory of criminal law might amount to, I sketch (§ii) the proper aims of a liberal, republican criminal law, and discuss (§§iii–iv) two central features of such a criminal law: that it deals with public wrongs, and provides for those who perpetrate such wrongs to be called to public account. §v explains why a liberal republic should maintain such a system of criminal law, and §vi tackles the issue of criminalization—of how we (...) should determine the proper scope of the criminal law. (shrink)

Gender discrimination and sexual harassment of female police officers by their male counterparts remain areas of liability where police departments appeared to have failed to effectively confront the nagging issues. However, the appreciable level of research conducted on these issues in the global North has not been matched by the South, where issues bordering on sexual violence have cultural underpinnings. Drawing from the case of the Nigeria Police Force, feminist analysis was used to explore the lived reality of 43 female (...) officers in a qualitative study. Participants expressed distress in abiding by structural discriminatory regulations against female officers which include non-admittance of married women into the force, forbidding unmarried officers from getting pregnant, and a stipulated minimum of three-year work period before a female officer can marry. Findings also indicated that participants suffer a variety of sexual harassment, intimidation, and, violence from their male colleagues, while they feel constrained in reporting their victimization. Important policy and practical implications requiring the Nigerian police to address hegemonic masculinity and promote gender equality were provided. (shrink)

In this article, we consider two independently appealing theories—the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience—and argue that at least one is false. The Growing-Block view is a theory about the nature of time. It says that past and present things exist, while future things do not, and the passage of time consists in new things coming into existence. Humean Supervenience is a theory about the nature of entities like laws, nomological possibility, counterfactuals, dispositions, causation, and chance. It says that none of (...) these entities are fundamental, since if they were, this would entail the existence of irreducible necessary connections between matters of fact. Instead, these entities supervene on a fundamental, non-nomological ‘Humean mosaic’ of property instances at spacetime points. We will further explain and motivate the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience in Sects. 2 and 3, but first, we turn to our master argument. (shrink)

Gordon's emphasizes that the process of prosecution is crucial to the idea of crime. One who commits a public wrong is properly called to public account for it, and the criminal trial constitutes such a public calling to account. The state is the proper prosecutor of crimes: since a crime is ‘our’ wrong, rather than only the victim's wrong, it is appropriate that we should prosecute it, collectively. The case is not simply V the victim, or P the plaintiff, against (...) D the defendant. It is brought, as the Americans properly have it, by ‘the People’, or by ‘the Commonwealth’, against the defendant. This is a useful way in which to think about crimes and criminalisation. This chapter tries to develop this conception of public wrongs a little further, which also involves complicating it more than a little. It works from a version of liberal communitarianism that rejects the metaphysical version of the individualist's ‘unencumbered self’; but the account sketched here should be compatible with all but the most radically individualist kinds of liberal theory. (shrink)

I discuss two problems for the standard Anglo-American account of recklessness, and the distinctions between intention, recklessness, and negligence. One problem concerns the over-breadth of recklessness as thus defined—that it covers agents whose actions display different kinds of culpability. The other problem concerns the importance attached to awareness of risk in distinguishing recklessness from negligence—that one who is unaware of the risk that he takes or creates sometimes displays just the same kind of fault as an advertent risk-taker. We can (...) work towards solutions to these problems by contrasting the Anglo-American schema with the German schema: this distinguishes intention from negligence. Dolus eventualis, properly understood, constitutes a distinctive kind of fault, which should be distinguished from advertent negligence within the category of what the Anglo-American schema counts as recklessness: this helps to solve the first problem, of over-breadth. As for the second problem, we can see why the difference between advertent and inadvertent risk-taking is not always normatively significant by noticing that an agent’s failure to realise the risk he is creating can itself display a significant fault in the structure of the practical reasoning that informs his action—just the same kind of fault as that displayed by an advertent risk-taker. The upshot of this discussion is a new schema of types of criminal fault; I finally note some problems with the practicability of such a new schema. (shrink)

On the basis of a communicative theory of criminal punishment, I show how mercy has a significant but limited role to play in the criminal law—in particular (although not only) in criminal sentencing. Mercy involves an intrusion into the realm of criminal law of values and concerns that are not themselves part of the perspective of criminal law: a merciful sentencer acts beyond the limits of her legal role, on the basis of moral considerations that conflict with the demands of (...) penal justice. Sometimes, however (but in a decent system of law in a decent society, rarely), that is how citizens should act. Finally, I discuss, and criticise, two attempts to find a place for mercy within a communicative conception of punishment, and argue that repentance is not an appropriate ground for leniency or mercy in sentencing. (shrink)

Nigel Walker’s first principle of criminalization declares that ‘Prohibitions should not be included in the criminal law for the sole purpose of ensuring that breaches of them are visited with retributive punishment’. I argue that we should reject this principle, for ‘mala prohibita’ as well as for ‘mala in se’: conduct should be criminalized in order to ensure (as far as we reasonably can) that those who engage in it receive retributive punishment. In the course of the argument, I show (...) why we should not see the criminal law as consisting in ‘prohibitions’; I explain different species of mala prohibita, and show how their commission does involve genuine wrongdoing; and I show the importance of distinguishing the question of regulation from that of sanction. (shrink)

First paragraph: Some reasons for action are relational. I have a relational reason to Φ when I have reason to Φ in virtue of a relationship in which I stand, or a role that I fill; absent that relationship or that role I would not have that reason to Φ ; others who do not stand in that relationship or fill that role do not have that reason to Φ . I have a relational reason to feed this child -- (...) that he is my child: absent that parental relationship, I might still have a reason to feed him, as might others who are not his parents -- for instance that he is starving; but absent that relationship, I would not have and others cannot have that specific relational reason to feed this child. I have a relational reason to respond to this person's philosophical queries -- that she is my student: absent that pedagogical relationship, I might still have reason to respond to her questions, as might others who are not her teachers -- for instance that it is good to help such seekers after philosophical insight; but absent that relationship, I would not have and others cannot have that specific relational reason to respond to her queries. I have relational reason to pay John ￡10 -- that I borrowed it from him and promised to repay him today: absent that promissory relationship I might still have, and others might have, reason to give him ￡10 -- for instance that he is impoverished and I am (or they are) rich; but absent that promissory relationship, neither I nor others could have that specific relational reason to give him ￡10. (shrink)

The Model Penal Code’s ‘De Minimis’ provisions (§ 2.12) cover different kinds of case in which, for reasons of equity, a prosecution should be dismissed. An exploration of these different cases illuminates some general issues about the structure of the criminal process, and about the processes of criminalization. These include the significance of the difference between dismissing a case and acquitting the defendant, and of the distinction between offences and defences; whether criminal offences should always be so defined that they (...) specify at least a pro tanto wrong, or may sometimes legitimately specify only a prima facie wrong – and whether this is consistent with the presumption of innocence; what kinds of conduct we can properly be expected to answer for in a criminal court; and the proper division of responsibilities between legislatures, prosecutors and courts in determining what kinds of conduct are to be defined and treated as criminal wrongs. (shrink)

Discussions of responsibility typically focus on the person who is held responsible: what are the conditions or criteria of responsibility; what can be done to or demanded of a person who is responsible? This paper shifts focus onto those who hold, rather than those who are held, responsible: what do we owe to those whom we hold responsible? After distinguishing responsibility as answerability from responsibility as liability, it attends mainly to the former, and points out the ways in which it (...) is multiply relational: I am responsible for something to someone who has the standing to call me to account for it, under the norms of some particular practice. Responsibility as thus understood is also reciprocal: if you are to be answerable to me, I must treat you with a certain respect, attend seriously to your answer, and be ready to answer to you myself. The paper explores some of the implications of this point both for our moral dealings with each other, and for criminal law and the criminal trial. (shrink)

Some standards, such as moral and prudential standards, provide genuinely or authoritatively normative reasons for action. Other standards, such as the norms of masculinity and the mafia’s code of omerta, provide reasons but do not provide genuinely normative reasons for action. This paper first explains that there is a similar distinction amongst attitudinal standards: some attitudes (belief, desire) have standards that seem to give rise to genuine normativity; others (boredom, envy) do not. This paper gives a value-based account of which (...) attitudinal standards give rise to genuine normativity. It argues that this account has interesting implications before extending it to provide an account of which action-guiding standards are genuinely normative. It argues that this value-based account of which standards are genuinely normative is more plausible than alternatives suggested in the literature and has interesting implications for genuine normativity in law and aesthetics. (shrink)

We show that five important elements of the ‘nomological package’— laws, counterfactuals, chances, dispositions, and counterfactuals—needn’t be a problem for the Growing-Block view. We begin with the framework given in Briggs and Forbes (in The real truth about the unreal future. Oxford studies in metaphysics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012 ), and, taking laws as primitive, we show that the Growing-Block view has the resources to provide an account of possibility, and a natural semantics for non-backtracking causal counterfactuals. We show (...) how objective chances might ground a more fine-grained concept of feasibility, and furnished a places in the structure where causation and dispositions might fit. The Growing-Block view, thus understood, provides the resources to explain the close link between modality and tense, so that it predicts modal change as time passes. This account lets us capture not only what the future might hold for us, and also what might have been. (shrink)

The fourth volume in the Criminalization series, this volume explores some of the most general principles and theories of criminalization. It includes not only philosophical work, but also historical, legal, and sociological investigations into criminalization, clarifying the state of the discipline today.

This collection of original essays, by some of the best known contemporary criminal law theorists, tackles a range of issues about the criminal law's 'special part' - the part of the criminal law that defines specific offences. One of its aims is to show the importance, for theory as well as for practice, of focusing on the special part as well as on the general part which usually receives much more theoretical attention. Some of the issues covered concern the proper (...) scope of the criminal law, for example how far should it include offences of possession, or endangerment? If it should punish only wrongful conduct, how can it justly include so-called 'mala prohibita', which are often said to involve conduct that is not wrongful prior to its legal prohibition? Other issues concern the ways in which crimes should be classified. Can we make plausible sense, for instance, of the orthodox distinction between crimes of basic and general intent? Should domestic violence be defined as a distinct offence, distinguished from other kinds of personal violence? Also examined are the ways in which specific offences should be defined, to what extent those definitions should identify distinctive types of wrongs, and the light that such definitional questions throw on the grounds and structures of criminal liability. Such issues are discussed in relation not only to such crimes as murder, rape, theft and other property offences, but also in relation to offences such as bribery, endangerment and possession that have not traditionally been subjects for in depth theoretical analysis. (shrink)

The article offers an Aristotelian analysis of emotion-based defences in criminal law: someone who commits an offence is entitled to an excuse if she was motivated by a justifiably aroused and strongly felt emotion that gave her good reason to commit the offence and that might have destabilised the practical rationality even of a ‘reasonable’ person. This analysis captures the logical structure of duress and provocation as excuses—and also shows why provocation is controversial as even a partial defence. This pattern (...) of analysis is then applied to compassion as a motivation for assisting another’s death, in the light of some recent developments in English criminal law’s treatment of assisting suicide: even if we accept that such assistance cannot be justified, we can see how compassion can ground an excuse, and make sense of the Director of Public Prosecution’s recently published Policy for dealing with cases of assistin.. (shrink)

25 leading contemporary theorists of criminal law tackle a range of foundational issues about the proper aims and structure of the criminal law in a liberal democracy. The challenges facing criminal law are many. There are crises of over-criminalization and over-imprisonment; penal policy has become so politicized that it is difficult to find any clear consensus on what aims the criminal law can properly serve; governments seeking to protect their citizens in the face of a range of perceived threats have (...) pushed the outer limits of criminal law and blurred its boundaries. To think clearly about the future of criminal law, and its role in a liberal society, foundational questions about its proper scope, structure, and operations must be re-examined. What kinds of conduct should be criminalized? What are the principles of criminal responsibility? How should offences and defences be defined? The criminal process and the criminal trial need to be studied closely, and the purposes and modes of punishment should be scrutinized. Such a re-examination must draw on the resources of various disciplines-notably law, political and moral philosophy, criminology and history; it must examine both the inner logic of criminal law and its place in a larger legal and political structure; it must attend to the growing field of international criminal law, it must consider how the criminal law can respond to the challenges of a changing world.Topics covered in this volume include the question of criminalization and the proper scope of the criminal law; the grounds of criminal responsibility; the ways in which offences and defences should be defined; the criminal process and its values; criminal punishment; the relationship between international criminal law and domestic criminal law. Together, the essays provide a picture of the exciting state of criminal law theory today, and the basis for further research and debate in the coming years. (shrink)

I am interested in extending modal calculi by adding propositional quantifiers, given by the rules for quantifier introduction: provided that p does not occur free in A.

It is argued that the Tractatus Project of Logical Atomism, in which the world is conceived of as the totality of independent atomic facts, can usefully be understood by conceiving of each fact as a bit in logical space. Wittgenstein himself thinks in terms of logical space. His elementary propositions, which express atomic facts, are interpreted as tuples of co-ordinates which specify the location of a bit in logical space. He says that signs for elementary propositions are arrangements of names. (...) Here, the names are understood as numerical symbols specifying coordinates. It is argued that, using this approach, the so-called colour-exclusion problem, which was Wittgensteins reason for abandoning the Tractatus, is in fact soluble. However, if logical space is a continuum then some coordinates will need to be expressed by numerical symbols that are infinite in size. How is this to be understood in Tractatus terms? It is shown that, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein did recognise the possibility of infinite propositions and sentences expressing them. At first sight his approach to infinite sentences, and the approach of the present paper, seem to differ, but it is argued that the difference is superficial. Finally, we address the question of whether Logical Atomism is viable and this raises issues concerning its relationship to natural science. (shrink)