This major new study by one of the most penetrating and persistent critics of philosophical and scientific orthodoxy, returns to Aristotle in order to examine the salient categories in terms of which we think about ourselves and our nature, and the distinctive forms of explanation we invoke to render ourselves intelligible to ourselves. The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind Written by one of the world’s leading philosophers, the co-author (...) of the monumental 4 volume _Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations_ Uses broad categories, such as substance, causation, agency and power to examine how we think about ourselves and our nature Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of human nature are sketched and contrasted Individual chapters clarify and provide an historical overview of a specific concept, then link the concept to ideas contained in other chapters. (shrink)

This major study examines the most fundamental categories in terms of which we conceive of ourselves, critically surveying the concepts of substance, causation, agency, teleology, rationality, mind, body and person, and elaborating the conceptual fields in which they are embedded. The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind Written by one of the world’s leading philosophers, the co-author of the monumental 4 volume _Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations_ Uses broad (...) categories, such as substance, causation, agency and power to examine how we think about ourselves and our nature Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of human nature are sketched and contrasted Individual chapters clarify and provide an historical overview of a specific concept, then link the concept to ideas contained in other chapters. (shrink)

This major new study by one of the most penetrating and persistent critics of philosophical and scientific orthodoxy, returns to Aristotle in order to examine the salient categories in terms of which we think about ourselves and our nature, and the distinctive forms of explanation we invoke to render ourselves intelligible to ourselves. The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind Written by one of the world’s leading philosophers, the co-author (...) of the monumental 4 volume _Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations_ Uses broad categories, such as substance, causation, agency and power to examine how we think about ourselves and our nature Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of human nature are sketched and contrasted Individual chapters clarify and provide an historical overview of a specific concept, then link the concept to ideas contained in other chapters. (shrink)

In recent years philosophers have given much attention to the ‘ontological problem’ of events. Donald Davidson puts the matter thus: ‘the assumption, ontological and metaphysical, that there are events is one without which we cannot make sense of much of our common talk; or so, at any rate, I have been arguing. I do not know of any better, or further, way of showing what there is’. It might be thought bizarre to assign to philosophers the task of ‘showing what (...) there is’. They have not distinguished themselves by the discovery of new elements, new species or new continents, nor even of new categories, although there has often been more dreamt of in their philosophies than can be found in heaven or earth. It might appear even stranger to think that one can show what there actually is by arguing that the existence of something needs to be assumed in order for certain sentences to make sense. More than anything, the sober reader will doubtlessly be amazed that we need to assume, after lengthy argument, ‘that there are events’. (shrink)

Following promulgation of the Nuremberg code in 1947, the ethics of research on human subjects has been a challenging and often contentious topic of debate. Escalation in the use of research participants in low-income countries over recent decades , has intensified the debate on the ethics of international research and led to increasing attention both to exploitation of vulnerable subjects and to considerations of how the 10:90 gap in health and medical research could be narrowed. In 2000, prompted by the (...) discussions over several years that led to the US NIH launching a capacity building programme on research ethics for members of research ethics committees in developing countries, we advanced a ‘new look’ for the ethics of international research.1 Since then progress has been made on several fronts.First, our ideas—considered somewhat radical and impractical at the time—have been provocatively addressed by scholars who have either contested them or advanced similar conceptions of what obligations international researchers have to research participants and communities in low income countries before, during and after clinical trials. Second, those researchers who have been sympathetic to our ideas have either endeavoured to put these into practice or have investigated the feasibility of doing so. Third, the intractability of the 10/90 gap and the escalation of interest in global health have sensitised many to the need to amplify the uptake of these ideas in practice.Here, we briefly review the conceptual and practical developments in international research ethics. While much conceptual progress has been made (and the concepts are now appearing …. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that games and sports that harm nonhuman animals are unethical because they exceed the permissible limits of optional harm and the more harm the game imposes on the nonhuman animal(s) it objectifies the worse the ethical transgression. Factors in the analysis include the nature of games and sports, the ontology of beings (i.e., human and nonhuman animals) in games, the mitigating power of informed consent among human game-players and its absence among nonhuman game players, (...) harm, and intent. (shrink)

As a preliminary step to beginning to assess the usefulness of clinical vignettes to measure ethical sensitivity in undergraduate medical students, five clinical vignettes with seven to nine ethical issues each were created. The ethical issues in the vignettes were discussed and outlined by an expert panel. One randomly selected vignette was presented to first, second and third year students at the University of Toronto as part of another examination. The students were asked to list the issues presented by the (...) patient problem. Responses from 281 students were obtained. These students identified an average of 2.72 ethical issues per vignette. Each response was classified under the domains of autonomy, beneficence and justice. Comparisons were made between classes and between vignettes. There was considerable variation between classes and the responses to different vignettes seem to indicate that different vignettes measure the various domains in different ways. It does appear that the use of vignettes is one way to measure aspects of ethical sensitivity in medical students but more study is required to clarify exactly what is being measured. (shrink)

The equation of the world with 'life' and 'life' with consciousness ramified into the baffling account Wittgenstein gave of the 'philosophical self '. The physical world, as Descartes argued, is made of material substance, and the mental world 'is liable to be imagined as gaseous, or rather, aethereal'. Conceiving of consciousness as a private realm populated by private experiences, one is bound to be puzzled at its evolutionary emergence. Consciousness is attributable to an organism as a whole, not to its (...) parts, no matter how complex. And it is attributable to the organism on the grounds of the behaviour of the organism, its exercise of its perceptual faculties, its susceptibility to sensation, and its voluntary action. A venerable tradition going back at least as far as Descartes conceived of consciousness as the immovable rock against which the waves of scepticism break. (shrink)

Owen Flanagan is a highly prolific writer and speaker whose work brings together results of research in several empirical disciplines overlapping with philosophy, particularly neuroscience and other areas of psychology. This book of thirteen essays, most of them revisions of work published elsewhere, exhibits both his intellectual and his stylistic range. Many of the essays are light and chatty, others analytical and slower-going.

In his discussion of Roman military institutions Polybius described how the desire for fame might inspire Roman soldiers to heroic feats of bravery, including single combat: τ δ μέγιστον, ο νέοι παρορμνται πρς τ πν πομένειν πρ τν κοινν πραγμάτων χάριν το τυχεν τς συνακολουθούσης τος γαθος τν νδρν εκλείας. πίστιν δ' χει τ λεγόμενον κ τούτων. πολλο μν γρ μονο-μάχησαν κουσίως ωμαίων πρ τς τν λων κρίσεως κτλ. Modern scholars, however, have taken little notice of this remark and some (...) have tried to belittle the importance of single combat at Rome. Thus G. Dumézil alleged that the Romans fought few single combats and that this was significant for their outlook upon war, while R. Bloch described the duels in the seventh book of Livy as ‘un mode de combat absolument étranger à la tradition romaine, mail auquel les Romains ont été contraints par les habitudes et par les défis des Celtes’. W. V. Harris is the only scholar to have understood the importance of monomachy in the Roman Republic, but even he has not assembled all the evidence necessary for an accurate assessment of the phenomenon. This essay is intended to provide a full treatment and thus to make some contribution in a limited but interesting area to our understanding of Roman attitudes to warfare. I have included a list and discussion of all instances of single combat from the Roman Republic which I have discovered and have argued that the custom continued from prehistoric times at least to 45 b.c. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAdopting a temporally distant perspective on stressors reduces distress in adults. Here we investigate whether the extent to which individuals project themselves into the future influences distancing efficacy. We also examined modulating effects of age across adolescence and reactive aggression: factors associated with reduced future-thinking and poor emotion regulation. Participants read scenarios and rated negative affect when adopting a distant-future perspective, near-future perspective, or when reacting naturally. Self-report data revealed significant downregulation of negative affect during the distant-future condition, with a (...) similar though non-significant skin conductance pattern. Importantly, participants who projected further ahead showed the greatest distress reductions. While temporal distancing efficacy did not vary with age, participants reporting greater reactive aggression showed reduced distancing efficacy, and projected themselves less far into the future. Fi... (shrink)

Herein I address and extend the sparse literature on deception in sports, specifically, Kathleen Pearson’s Deception, Sportsmanship, and Ethics and Mark J. Hamilton’s There’s No Lying in Baseball. On a Kantian foundation, I argue that attempts to deceive officials, such as framing pitches in baseball, are morally unacceptable because they necessarily regard others as incompetent and as a mere means to one’s own self-interested ends. More dramatically I argue, contrary to Pearson and Hamilton, that some forms of competitor-to-competitor deception are (...) similarly unacceptable. Specifically, I offer a ‘principle of caustic deceit’ according to which any strategic deception that divorces a game from its constitutive skills is morally untoward and ought to be met with negative social pressure at least, and/or legislated out of existence. The problem with these forms of strategic deception is that they treat one’s opponents, again in the Kantian sense, as a mere means to one’s own self-interested ends. (shrink)

Even though integrity is widely considered to be an essential aspect of research, there is an ongoing debate on what actually constitutes research integrity. The understanding of integrity ranges from the minimal, only considering falsification, fabrication and plagiarism, to the maximum, blending into science ethics. Underneath these obvious contrasts, there are more subtle differences that are not as immediately evident. The debate about integrity is usually presented as a single, universal discussion, with shared concerns for researchers, policymakers and ‘the public’. (...) In this article, we show that it is not. There are substantial differences between the language of research integrity in the scientific arena and in the public domain. Notably, scientists and policymakers adopt different approaches to research integrity. Scientists tend to present integrity as a virtue that must be kindled, while policy documents and newspapers stress norm enforcement. Rather than performing a conceptual analysis through philosophical reasoning and discussion, we aimed to clarify the discourse of ‘scientific integrity’ by studying its usage in written documents. To this end, large numbers of scientific publications, policy documents and newspaper articles were analysed by means of scientometric and content analysis techniques. The texts were analysed on their usage of the term ‘integrity’ and of frequently co-occurring terms and concepts. A comparison was made between the usage in the various media, as well as between different periods in which they were published through co-word analysis, mapping co-occurrence networks of significant terms and themes. (shrink)

In worlds that lack life, there is no value. For all that, there is no mystery about 'the existence of values in a world of facts'. The world does not consist of facts, rather true descriptions of the world consist of statements of fact. It is as much a fact concerning the world that there are things that are of value to living things, that human beings value things and possess valuable characteristics, perform valuable deeds, stand in valuable relationships to (...) others, as it is a fact that there is life on earth. (shrink)

Throughout its long history metaphysics has been variously conceived. At its most sublime, it has been taken to be the study of the super‐sensible, in particular of the existence of a god, the nature of the soul, and the possibility of an afterlife. When the young Ludwig Wittgenstein entered the lists, it was entirely reasonable to conceive of metaphysics in this manner. Its subject matter was held to be the language‐independent and thought‐independent de re necessities of the world. The Tractatus (...) is dominated by three problems: first, the nature of logic and logical necessity; secondly, the essence of the proposition and hence the characterization of the general propositional form; and thirdly, the intentionality of the proposition. Logical propositions are combinations of elementary propositions by means of truth‐functional logical connectives. The metaphysics adumbrated in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein thought, was required for the possibility of representation and for the possibility of logic. (shrink)

My objective in this project is to explore the concept of moral luck as it relates to sports. I am especially interested in constitutive luck. As a foundation I draw from both Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel’s classic handling of moral luck, generally. Within the philosophy of sport are similar explorations of this nexus by Robert Simon and David Carr that also factor into the present work. My intent is to put a new lens in front of a puzzle drawn (...) from Torbjörn Tännsjö’s well-known article ‘Is Our Admiration of Sports Heroes Facistoid?’ Specifically, the idea that we might admire an athlete who excels without having worked hard for it. If we may call this puzzle ‘the talent problem,’ the questions driving the present work are as follows: what is the relationship between moral luck and the talent problem, and can this relationship provide a prescription for morally assessing the talent problem? The thesis that this exploratory work suggests that more complex games (and... (shrink)

Students of the play have not appreciated the merits of W. Dindorf's proposal to delete lines 895–7: his conjecture is not reported by most editors; when reported it is not accepted; and it has been taken seriously perhaps only in aniobiter dictumof Wecklein. Nevertheless, the arguments in its favour are even more powerful than Dindorf realised.

This is a critique of Timothy Hsiao’s ‘A Moral Defense of Trophy Hunting.’ I argue that Hsiao’s arguments on pain, consciousness, behavior, cruelty, and necessity all fail. More importantly, I argue against his broader conclusion that non-human animals ‘do not have any inherent moral significance.’ My conclusion is that Hsiao’s moral defense of trophy hunting fails.

Herein I engage with the very difficult question of whether the duty to aid (sometimes called a duty of assistance or a duty of beneficence) extends so far as to justify harming persons, perhaps even lethally, in order to protect wild animals. I argue that this question is not nearly as settled as our intuitions may suggest and that Shelly Kagan’s arguments on Defending Animals, contained in his book How to Count Animals, More or Less, provide a rich substrate in (...) which to cultivate ideas on this subject (2019, pp. 248–279). My intuition is that killing a person, even one ‘guilty’ of trying to kill an animal for sport or leisure, is far beyond what a duty to aid can command, though admittedly I find my own intuition somewhat morally dumbfounding. I argue further that Tom Regan’s ‘worse-off principle’ may ease the ever-uncomfortable sense of moral dumbfounding by providing a surer foundation for the intuitive sense that we cannot ethically go so far as to threaten a person with lethal force in defense of nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, Volume 41, Issue 2, Page 177-191, July 2014.

Collection of addresses of the general presidents of the Indian Philosophical Congress.

The relationship between place and remembering has been a long-standing matter of phenomenological concern. The role of the 'lived body' in mediating acts of remembering in context is clearly crucial. In this paper we contribute to an 'expanded view of memory' by describing how remembering difficult or problematic events -- 'vital memories' -- draws upon inter-subjective and inter-objective relations. We discuss two conceptual tools that provide an analytic framework -- the concept of 'life space' drawn from Kurt Lewin and the (...) idea of the 'setting specificity' of remembering. From this perspective we can see that the 'lived body' does not constitute a singular unity but rather a 'plurality' of potential bodies that have 'operative solidarity' with the material relations in which they are constituted. Drawing on the work of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, we argue that 'body memories' need to be analysed from within the embodied material-relational perspective wherein they are afforded. (shrink)