'By identifying the extent to which Aristotle's thinking about ethics was shaped by notions drawn from the crafts Angier has thrown new light on a surprising number of topics and has deepened our understanding of tensions within Aristotle's thought. It is by now a rare achievement to have said something new, true and important about Aristotle.' -- Alasdair MacIntyre, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, USA.

I evaluate Schurz's proposed meta-inductive justification of induction, a refinement of Reichenbach's pragmatic justification that rests on results from the machine learning branch of prediction with expert advice. My conclusion is that the argument, suitably explicated, comes remarkably close to its grand aim: an actual justification of induction. This finding, however, is subject to two main qualifications, and still disregards one important challenge. The first qualification concerns the empirical success of induction. Even though, I argue, Schurz's argument does not need (...) to spell out what inductive method actually consists in, it does need to postulate that there is something like the inductive or scientific prediction strategy that has so far been significantly more successful than alternative approaches. The second qualification concerns the difference between having a justification for inductive method and for sticking with induction for now. Schurz's argument can only provide the latter. Finally, the remaining challenge concerns the pool of alternative strategies, and the relevant notion of a meta-inductivist's optimality that features in the analytic step of Schurz's argument. Building on the work done here, I will argue in a follow-up paper that the argument needs a stronger dynamic notion of a meta-inductivist's optimality. (shrink)

In Section 1, I outline the history of natural law theory, covering Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Aquinas. In Section 2, I explore two alternative traditions of natural law, and explain why these constitute rivals to the Aristotelian tradition. In Section 3, I go on to elaborate a via negativa along which natural law norms can be discovered. On this basis, I unpack what I call three 'experiments in being', each of which illustrates the cogency of this method. In Section (...) 4, I investigate and rebut two seminal challenges to natural law methodology, namely, the fact/value distinction in metaethics and Darwinian evolutionary biology. In Section 5, I then outline and criticise the 'new' natural law theory, which is an attempt to revise natural law thought in light of the two challenges above. I conclude, in Section 6, with a summary and some reflections on the prospects for natural law theory. (shrink)

This paper concerns the translation and interpretation of a succinct quip of Sextus Clodius, a rhetorician in Antony's entourage, on the subject of Fulvia's swollen cheek. The jest is often interpreted as having suggested that she tempted Clodius’ pen, and various double meanings have been proposed. Contextualization may supply a key. The remark could mean that Fulvia seemed to be testing the point of her stylus, and the dark allusion might then be to reports of the manner in which Fulvia (...) had allegedly mistreated the severed head of Cicero. (shrink)

Literature on the mental capacities and cognitive mechanisms of the great apes has been silent about whether they can act autonomously. This paper provides a philosophical theory of autonomy supported by psychological studies of the cognitive mechanisms that underlie chimpanzee behavior to argue that chimpanzees can act autonomously even though their psychological mechanisms differ from those of humans. Chimpanzees satisfy the two basic conditions of autonomy: (1) liberty (the absence of controlling influences) and (2) agency (self-initiated intentional action), each of (...) which is specified here in terms of conditions of understanding, intention, and self-control. In this account, chimpanzees make knowledge-based choices reflecting a richly information-based and socially sophisticated understanding of the world. Finally, two major theories of autonomy (Kantian theory and two-level theory) are rejected as too narrow to adequately address these issues, necessitating the modifications made in the present approach. (shrink)

In this thesis I investigate the theoretical possibility of a universal method of prediction. A prediction method is universal if it is always able to learn from data: if it is always able to extrapolate given data about past observations to maximally successful predictions about future observations. The context of this investigation is the broader philosophical question into the possibility of a formal specification of inductive or scientific reasoning, a question that also relates to modern-day speculation about a fully automatized (...) data-driven science. I investigate, in particular, a proposed definition of a universal prediction method that goes back to Solomonoff and Levin. This definition marks the birth of the theory of Kolmogorov complexity, and has a direct line to the information-theoretic approach in modern machine learning. Solomonoff's work was inspired by Carnap's program of inductive logic, and the more precise definition due to Levin can be seen as an explicit attempt to escape the diagonal argument that Putnam famously launched against the feasibility of Carnap's program. The Solomonoff-Levin definition essentially aims at a mixture of all possible prediction algorithms. An alternative interpretation is that the definition formalizes the idea that learning from data is equivalent to compressing data. In this guise, the definition is often presented as an implementation and even as a justification of Occam's razor, the principle that we should look for simple explanations. The conclusions of my investigation are negative. I show that the Solomonoff-Levin definition fails to unite two necessary conditions to count as a universal prediction method, as turns out be entailed by Putnam's original argument after all; and I argue that this indeed shows that no definition can. Moreover, I show that the suggested justification of Occam's razor does not work, and I argue that the relevant notion of simplicity as compressibility is already problematic itself. (shrink)

Philosophy written in English is overwhelmingly analytic philosophy, and the techniques and predilections of analytic philosophy are not only unhistorical but anti-historical, and hostile to textual commentary. Analytic usually aspires to a very high degree of clarity and precision of formulation and argument, and it often seeks to be informed by, and consistent with, current natural science. In an earlier era, analytic philosophy aimed at agreement with ordinary linguistic intuitions or common sense beliefs, or both. All of these aspects of (...) the subject sit uneasily with the use of historical texts for philosophical illumination. In this book, ten distinguished philosophers explore the tensions between, and the possibilities of reconciling, analytic philosophy and history of philosophy. Contributors: M. R. Ayers, John Cottingham, Daniel Garber, Gary Hatfield, Anthony Kenny, Steven Nadler, G. A. J. Rogers, Tom Sorell, Catherine Wilson, Yves Charles Zarka. (shrink)

Are democratic ideals better served by elections or sortition? Is the ideal national legislature one that is elected, chosen by lot, or some combination thereof? To answer these questions properly, it is necessary to perform a careful, balanced, and systematic comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of each. To do so, this article uses foundational democratic values—political equality, popular control, deliberative nature, and competency—as measuring sticks. On the basis of these values a purely elected legislature is compared with a purely (...) sortition one, on the assumption that each has the full decision-making powers normally possessed by national legislatures. This big picture will provide a clearer view of the strengths and weaknesses of the respective systems and their trade-offs, as well as the open questions that remain. (shrink)

The last twenty-five years of published literature and curriculum development in bioethics suggest that the field enjoys a successful and stable marriage to philosophical ethical theory. However, the next twenty-five years could be very different. I believe the marriage is troubled. Divorce is conceivable and perhaps likely. The most philosophical parts of bioethics may retreat to philosophy departments, while bioethics continues on its current course toward a more interdisciplinary and practical field.I make no presumption that bioethics is integrally linked to (...) philosophical ethical theory. Indeed, I assume that the connection is contingent and fragile. Many individuals in law, theological ethics, political theory, the social and behavioral sciences, and the health professions carefully address mainstream issues of bioethics without finding ethical theory essential or breathtakingly attractive. This is not surprising. Moral philosophers have traditionally formulated theories of the right, the good, and the virtuous in the most general terms. (shrink)

Putnam construed the aim of Carnap’s program of inductive logic as the specification of a “universal learning machine,” and presented a diagonal proof against the very possibility of such a thing. Yet the ideas of Solomonoff and Levin lead to a mathematical foundation of precisely those aspects of Carnap’s program that Putnam took issue with, and in particular, resurrect the notion of a universal mechanical rule for induction. In this paper, I take up the question whether the Solomonoff–Levin proposal is (...) successful in this respect. I expose the general strategy to evade Putnam’s argument, leading to a broader discussion of the outer limits of mechanized induction. I argue that this strategy ultimately still succumbs to diagonalization, reinforcing Putnam’s impossibility claim. (shrink)

This volume presents a framework of general principles for animal research ethics together with an analysis of the principles' meaning and moral requirements. Tom L. Beauchamp and David DeGrazia's comprehensive framework addresses ethical requirements pertaining to societal benefit and features a thorough, ethically defensible program of animal welfare. The book also features commentaries on the framework of principles by eminent figures in animal research ethics from an array of relevant disciplines: veterinary medicine, biomedical research, biology, zoology, comparative psychology, primatology, law, (...) and bioethics. (shrink)

“Applied ethics” has been the major growth area in North American philosophy in the last decade, yet a robust confidence and enthusiasm over its promise is far from universal in academic philosophy. It is considered nonphilosophical in West Germany, and has largely failed to penetrate British departments of philosophy. Whether it has any intellectually or pedagogically redeeming value is still widely debated in North America, where many who have tried to teach some area of applied ethics for the first time (...) have seen their courses grind to a halt in unresolvable quandaries, practical exigencies, or unavailable technical information. Consequently, some departments are at war over whether to hire or confer tenure on those who teach these subjects. Many also remain unconvinced that philosophical generalizations or theories can play any significant role in applied contexts. They may even doubt both that applied ethics is really ethics and that philosophy should accomodate this creature in its curriculum. (shrink)

Two dogmas lie at the heart of modern work on Aristotle's ethical theory. The first is that that theory is essentially secular or non-theistic. The second is that Aristotle's ethics assumes what Gr...

In this paper I discuss the view that the appropriate concept of competence is a decision‐relative one: that a person may be competent to make one decision but not another. The argument that I present is that neither of the two competing theories supporting the decision‐relative approach, internalism and externalism, can provide a coherent explanation of why a person’s competence should be thought to be relative to a particular decision. On the one hand, internalism, which regards competence as exhaustively a (...) matter of the person’s understanding, fails to identify the specific skills or content that would warrant linking a specific decision with competence, and thus cannot provide an account of decision‐relative that parallels task‐relative. On the other hand, externalism, which regards competence as a matter of the person’s understanding in relation to external elements such as risk, cannot adequately defend why a person’s competence to make a decision should ‘track’ the level of probable harm that results from the decision. (shrink)

Sensation is a concept with a conflicted philosophical history. It has found as many allies as enemies in nearly every camp from empiricism to poststructuralism. Polyvalent, with an uncertain referent, and often overshadowed by intuition, perception, or cognition, sensation invites as much metaphysical speculation as it does dismissive criticism. -/- The promise of sensation has certainly not been lost on the phenomenologists who have sought to ‘rehabilitate’ the concept. In Plastic Bodies, Tom Sparrow argues that the phenomenologists have not gone (...) far enough, however. Alongside close readings of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, he digs into an array of ancient, modern, and contemporary texts in search of the resources needed to rebuild the concept of sensation after phenomenology. He begins to assemble a speculative aesthetics that is at once a realist theory of sensation and a philosophy of embodiment that breaks the form of the ‘lived’ body. Maintaining that the body is fundamentally plastic and that corporeal identity is constituted by a conspiracy of sensations, he pursues the question of how the body fits into/fails to fit into its aesthetic environment and what must be done to increase the body’s power to act and exist. (shrink)

In Rationality and the Genetic Challenge: Making People Better? Matti Häyry provides a clear and informed discussion and analysis of a number of competing answers to the above questions. Häyry describes three main perspectives on the morality of prenatal genetic diagnosis , the “restrictive,” “moderate,” and “permissive” views, and his analysis illuminates that these views can be distinguished in terms of their different “rationalities”—their respective understanding of what counts as a reasonable choice for parents to make in light of PGD.

A critical comment on methods in Nietzsche scholarship, and some suggestions about how to improve things.

Embodiment is a fact of human existence which philosophers should not ignore. They may differ to a great extent in what they have to say about our bodies, but they have to take into account that for each of us our body has a special status, it is not merely one amongst the physical objects, but a physical object to which we have a unique relation. While Descartes approached the issue of embodiment through consideration of sensation and imagination, it is (...) more directly reached by consideration of action and agency: whenever we act upon the world, we act by moving our bodies. So if we can understand what an immaterialist such as Berkeley thinks about agency, we will have gone a fair way to understanding what he thinks about embodiment. §1 discusses a recent flurry of articles on the subject of Berkeley’s account of action. I choose to present Berkeley as a causal-volitional theorist not because I think it is the uniquely correct interpretation of the texts, but because I find it more philosophically interesting as a version of immaterialism. In particular, it raises the possibility of a substantive account of human embodiment which is completely unavailable to the occasionalist. §2 articulates an apparent philosophical problem for Berkeley qua causal-volitional theorist and show that Locke was aware of a related problem and had a solution of which Berkeley would have known. §3 distinguishes two interpretations of Berkeley’s famous denial of blind agency – as the assertion of a weak representational condition or a strong epistemic one – and provide evidence that there was a well-established debate about blind powers in the seventeenth century which took the metaphor of blindness as indicating an epistemic rather than merely representational failing. What remains to do in §4 is to consider whether Berkeley, with his own peculiar commitments, could in fact accept this account of agency. (shrink)

We argue that abduction does not work in isolation from other inference mechanisms and illustrate this through an inference scheme designed to evaluate multiple hypotheses. We use game theory to relate the abductive system to actions that produce new information. To enable evaluation of the implications of this approach we have implemented the procedures used to calculate the impact of new information in a computer model. Experiments with this model display a number of features of collective belief-revision leading to consensus-formation, (...) such as the influence of bias and prejudice. The scheme of inferential calculations invokes a Peircian concept of ‘belief’ as the propensity to choose a particular course of action. (shrink)

I argue that the theory of happiness now dominant among philosophers embraces a flawed, technicizing model that represents happiness as a set of mental states produced by actions and events. This view contrasts with Aristotle’s conception, according to which happiness is not produced by (but is tantamount to) long-term activity and incorporates (but is not reducible to) a set of mental states. I then go on to criticize the skill model of happiness on three main grounds. First, unlike the Aristotelian (...) model, it necessarily instrumentalizes activity while setting no principled limit to the manipulation of human action and experience. Second, and again contra Aristotle, it privileges an efficient (rather than formal) conception of causation while obscuring the way in which happiness is inextricably grounded in its conditions, which in turn has various deleterious upshots. Third and finally, the skill model yields a highly questionable notion of happiness as measurable. (shrink)

This article looks at the Indian canonical sources for Mādhyamika Buddhist refusals to personally endorse truth claims, even about customary matters. These sources, on a natural reading, seem to suggest that customary truth is only widespread error and that the Buddhist should do little more than duplicate, or acquiesce in, what the common man recognizes about it. The combination of those Indian canonical themes probably contributed to frequent Indo-Tibetan Madhyamaka positions on truth, i.e., that the customary is no more than (...) surface level truth, mere consensus amongst the mistaken, or, similarly, that there can be no right answers or truth claims to endorse about customary matters, as there are no sources of knowledge that have them as objects. Tsong kha pa and the dGe lugs pa, by contrast, adopted what I consider to be a philosophically more promising stance, one that recognized the need for a robust normativity: things customary are not just reduced to accepted errors; there are right answers about them that should be endorsed and may well defy current consensus of opinion. Not surprisingly, however, they needed a quite different and even strained exegesis of that same Indian textual legacy. (shrink)

This paper outlines, from a sociological and social psychological perspective, a theoretical framework with which to define and analyse consciousness, emphasizing the importance of language, collective representations, conceptions of self, and self-reflectivity in understanding human consciousness. It argues that the shape and feel of consciousness is heavily social, and this is no less true of our experience of collective consciousness than it is of our experience of individual consciousness. The paper is divided into two parts. Part One argues that the (...) problem of consciousness can be approached fruitfully by beginning with human group and collective phenomena: community, language, language-based communication, institutional and cultural arrangements, collective representations, self-conceptions, and self-referentiality. A collective is understood as a group or population of individuals that possesses or develops collective representations of itself: its values and goals, its structure and modes of operating, its strategies, developments, strengths and weaknesses, etc. Collective reflectivity emerges as a function of an organization or group producing and making use of collective representations of the self in its discussions, critical reflections, and planning. A collective monitors its activities, achievements and failures, and reflects on itself as a defined and on-going collective being. In this perspective, human consciousness is understood as a type of reflective activity: observing, monitoring, judging and re-orienting and re-organizing self; considering what characterizes the self, what self perceives, judges, could do, should do . The reflectivity is encoded in language and developed in conversations about collective selves. Part Two of the paper applies the framework to analysing the individual experience of consciousness, self-representation, self-reference, self-reflectivity and self-development. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Mettle of Moral Fundamentalism: A Reply to Robert Baker*Tom L. Beauchamp (bio)AbstractThis article is a reply to Robert Baker’s attempt to rebut moral fundamentalism, while grounding international bioethics in a form of contractarianism. Baker is mistaken in several of his interpretations of the alleged moral fundamentalism and findings of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. He also misunderstands moral fundamentalism generally and wrongly categorizes it as morally (...) bankrupt. His negotiated contract model is, in the final analysis, itself a form of the moral fundamentalism he declares bankrupt.Robert baker’s imaginative and incisive articles on international bioethics (Baker 1998a & b) are rich in history and philosophy, but they are as profoundly misguided as they are misdirected. In this comment, I will concentrate both on a pivotal interpretation and criticism that he offers of the Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE 1996) and on his philosophical thesis that a moral fundamentalism of principles and rights is bankrupt. Baker seriously misinterprets the ACHRE report, distorts and fails to refute moral fundamentalism, and ultimately embraces a form of the very fundamentalism that he declares bankrupt. These three topics are connected in that Baker’s misconceptions of the ACHRE report launch his critique of moral fundamentalism and his mistaken understanding of moral fundamentalism drives his critique of the ACHRE report. 1 [End Page 389]Some Misunderstandings of the Human Radiation CommitteeBaker proclaims a conflict between ACHRE’s moral fundamentalism and multiculturalism. He presents this conflict as primarily a factual issue regarding whether different cultures and eras accept different moral principles—“the difference claim,” in his vernacular (Baker 1998a, pp. 208–9). This interpretation eventuates in a critique of the work of both ACHRE and Ruth Macklin:[W]hen Macklin and the Radiation Committee consider the challenge of multiculturalism, they construe this challenge, not as dispute about anthropological fact, but as a dispute about philosophical theory. More specifically, they treat any assertion of the difference claim as a form of “ethical relativism.”... They thus respond to the multiculturalist’s factual observations—even to factual observations by anthropologists—as if they were philosophical analyses.(Baker 1998a, p. 209)Baker thinks that a factual question has been fallaciously transformed into a philosophical one. However, this false dilemma is a figment of his fancy. He provides no citation to ACHRE to show that it holds this view, and for an understandable reason: This position is neither stated nor presumed in the Report. ACHRE is quite clear that relativism involves both an anthropological (I would prefer to say historical) dispute about fact and a philosophical dispute about value—and that they are not the same.The Committee and its staff proceeded as follows: They first collected a large body of historical documents and facts about the practices, policies, and values that prevailed during the period they were studying. Chapters 1 through 3 and 5 through 13, 12 of the Report’s 18 chapters, display the results of this empirical work. The Committee concluded, on this basis, that research investigators and government officials were aware of the obligations generated by universal principles. The ACHRE report specifically lists six “basic” moral principles and maintains that these principles were pervasively recognized at the time of the radiation experiments (ACHRE 1996, pp. 114ff, 124). ACHRE received testimony, conducted interviews, and compiled documents that indicated how deeply these principles were woven into the fabric of American culture at the time, so deeply that no responsible research investigator could have been unaware of them. ACHRE did not move beyond its list of six principles to a broader thesis about the (factual) universality of other principles and did not examine other cultures or periods of history; such work would [End Page 390] have exceeded ACHRE’s mandate and would have done more to obscure than to further its arguments.ACHRE also found that some government officials had attempted to hide their wrongdoing—a clear indication that these officials were aware of the relevant moral principles and knew that they should not have been treating persons as they did (ACHRE 1996, pp. 152–53; Chapman 1946). These factual findings were not armchair philosophy or empirical guesswork... (shrink)

In this paper, I tackle Aquinas’s notion of ‘natural inclinations’, specifically as it occurs in his seminal elaboration of the natural law in Summa Theologiae I-II. Question 94. Article 2. Maintaining that it constitutes a departure from Aristotle’s terminology, and is hence puzzling, I go on to investigate a raft of modern, mainly Anglophone, interpretations of the concept. Beginning with Jacques Maritain, I move through the broadly chronological sequence of John Finnis, Jean Porter, Steven Jensen, Justin Matchulat and Stephen Brock. (...) In each case, I argue that – despite these scholars’ philosophical ingenuity and textual facility – there are crucial problems with their respective approaches and construals. I end the paper by outlining my own construal of ‘natural inclinations’, which, even if not bolstered by heavy textual scholarship, is at least coherent and, moreover, avoids the philosophical pitfalls of the above interpretations. (shrink)

Nuffield Council on Bioethics, London * Corresponding author: Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 28 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3JS, UK. Email: hschmidt{at}nuffieldbioethics.org ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract In November 2007, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics published the report Public Health: Ethical Issues . While the report has been welcomed by a wide range of stakeholders, there has also been some criticism. First, it has been suggested that it is not clear why, in developing its ‘stewardship (...) model’, the Council felt the need to go beyond the liberal position developed by John Stuart Mill—what is it that the stewardship model adds? Second, it is suggested that the Report is confused about the concept of paternalism. Third, it is argued that the discussion of the concept of stewardship is lacking in detail and substance. We clarify the Working Party's thinking regarding these three areas, which demonstrates the robustness of the framework set out in the report. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

I begin by detailing the semantic range of the English terms ‘work’ and ‘labour’, in comparison with that of their closest Greek equivalents. Narrowing matters down to work in the sense of ‘occupation’, what is striking about Aristotle, I maintain, is his willingness to sort occupations into a hierarchy. This hierarchy is fourfold. At the bottom we have servile work, which is directed at life’s ‘necessities’, and is founded on mere habit. Then we have technē or skilled work, which typically (...) produces material objects, and requires expertise. Further up the hierarchy we have praxis or morally-informed activity, which reaches its apogee in the life of the politikos or ruler. At the summit of Aristotle’s hierarchy is theōria or intellectual contemplation, which supposedly approximates divine activity. After documenting the resilience of this hierarchy in the Western tradition, I outline three grounds for it – social, metaphysical and psychological – which are manifestly weak. I then elaborate other grounds for it – found both within and outside Aristotle’s texts – which, I argue, are manifestly strong, and thus deserve our endorsement even today. (shrink)

Affirmative action refers to positive steps taken to hire persons from groups previously and presently discriminated against. Considerable evidence indicates that this discrimination is intractable and cannot be eliminated by the enforcement of laws. Numerical goals and quotas are justified if and only if they are necessary to overcome the discriminatory effects that could not otherwise be eliminated with reasonable efficiency. Many past as well as present policies are justified in this way.