Once upon a time it was assumed that speaking literally and directly is the norm and that speaking nonliterally or indirectly is the exception. The assumption was that normally what a speaker means can be read off of the meaning of the sentence he utters, and that departures from this, if not uncommon, are at least easily distinguished from normal utterances and explainable along Gricean lines. The departures were thought to be limited to obvious cases like figurative speech and conversational (...) implicature. However, people have come to appreciate that the meaning of a typical sentence, at least one we are at all likely to use, is impoverished, at least relative to what we are likely to mean in uttering it. In other words, what a speaker normally means in uttering a sentence, even without speaking figuratively or obliquely, is an enriched version of what could be predicted from the meaning of the sentence alone. This can be because the sentence expresses a “minimal” (or “skeletal”) proposition or even because it fails to express a complete proposition at all.1 Indeed, it is now a platitude that linguistic meaning generally underdetermines speaker meaning. That is, generally what a speaker means in uttering a sentence, even if the sentence is devoid of ambiguity, vagueness, or indexicality, goes beyond what the sentence means. The question is what to make of this Contextualist Platitude, as I’ll call it. It may be a truism, but does it require a radical revision of the older conception of the relation between what sentences mean and what speakers mean in uttering them? Does it lead to a major modification, or perhaps even outright rejection, of the semantic-pragmatic distinction? I think.. (shrink)

Anna Mahtani describes a puzzle meant to show that the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle is incomplete as it stands and, since it cannot be completed in a satisfactory manner, decades of debate in welfare economics and ethics are undermined. In this paper, we provide a better solution to the puzzle which saves the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle from this challenge. We also explain how the plausibility of our solution is reinforced by its similarity to a standard solution to an analogous puzzle in (...) quantified epistemic logic. We also show that even if the puzzle were to remain unsolved, its impact on welfare economics and ethics would be limited. (shrink)

According to contractualist theories in ethics, whether an action is wrong is determined by whether it could be justified to others on grounds no one could reasonably reject. Contractualists then think that reasonable rejectability of principles depends on the strength of the personal objections individuals can make to them. There is, however, a deep disagreement between contractualists concerning from which temporal perspective the relevant objections to different principles are to be made. Are they to be made on the basis of (...) the prospects the principles give to different individuals ex ante or on the basis of the outcomes of the principles ex post? Both answers have been found to be problematic. The ex ante views make irrelevant information about personal identity morally significant and lead to objectionable ex ante rules, whereas ex post views lead to counterintuitive results in the so-called different harm and social risk imposition cases. The aim of this article is to provide a new synthesis of these views that can avoid the problems of the previous alternatives. I call the proposal ‘risk-acknowledging’ ex post contractualism. The crux of the view is to take into account in the comparisons of different objections both the realized harms and the risks under which individuals have to live. (shrink)

Ex ante contractualism holds that in situations involving risk we ought to act in accordance with principles that license the action that satisfies the strongest individual claim, where those claims are a function of the expected value that a given policy gives each person ex ante. I here challenge ex ante contractualism on contractualist grounds. I argue that adopting ex ante contractualism would have far reaching implications that contractualists, or many nonconsequentialist in general, would find very hard to accept. I (...) conclude that to block these implications, contractualists should adopt an ex post approach to deal with decisions under risk. (shrink)

Individuals convicted of crimes are often subject to numerous restrictions — on housing, employment, the vote, public assistance, and other goods — well after they have completed their sentences, and in some cases permanently. The question of whether — and if so, when — ex-offender restrictions are morally permissible has received surprisingly little philosophical scrutiny. This article first examines the significance of completing punishment, of paying one's debt to society, and contends that when offenders' debts are paid, they should be (...) restored to full standing as citizens. Thus all ex-offender restrictions are presumptively unjustified. Nonconsequentialist defences of these restrictions are ultimately unsuccessful in defeating the presumption against them. In a limited range of cases, consequentialist considerations — namely, of risk reduction — may be sufficient to override the presumptive case against these restrictions. The article concludes by suggesting a number of criteria for assessing whether particular restrictive measures are permissible on grounds of risk reduction. (shrink)

The concept of ‘pareto superiority’ plays a central role in ethics, economics, and law. Pareto superiority is sometimes taken as a relation between outcomes, and sometimes as a relation between actions—even where the outcomes of the actions are uncertain. Whether one action is classed as (ex ante) pareto superior to another depends on the prospects under the actions for each person concerned. I argue that a person’s prospects (in this context) can depend on how that person is designated. Without any (...) constraints on acceptable designators, then, the concept of pareto superiority is ill defined and gives inconsistent results. I consider various ways of completing the definition and draw out some surprising implications. (shrink)

Prioritarianism is a variant of utilitarianism. It differs from utilitarianism in that benefiting individuals matters more the worse off these individuals are. On this view, there are two standard ways of handling risky prospects: Ex-Post Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off in final outcomes and then values prospects by the expectation of the sum total of those adjusted values, whereas Ex-Ante Prioritarianism adjusts for prioritizing the worse off on each individual's expectation and then values prospects by the sum total (...) of those adjusted expectations. A standard objection to Ex-Post Prioritarianism is that it violates Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. In this article, I argue that Ex-Ante Prioritarianism suffers from much the same problem: it violates a sequential version of Ex-Ante Pareto, that is, it prescribes sequences of choices that worsen the expectations for everyone. (shrink)

This chapter discusses desire theory and how the temporal gap between desires and the states of affairs that satisfy them affects this theory. Satisfaction is not that important in desire theory because even if getting what we want fails to satisfy, we are better off for having got it. The rationale for rejecting hedonistic accounts of well-being in favor of desire theories is the intuition that states of affairs that are not “like” anything for us can harm and benefit us. (...) Sumner, however, suggests that even if we grant the desire theorist’s fundamental assumption that they can make a difference to our well-being, the prospective character of desire, which opens a temporal gap between desires and the states of affairs that satisfy them, undermines the account. (shrink)

Automated decision making for sentencing is the use of a software algorithm to analyse a convicted offender’s case and deliver a sentence. This chapter reviews the moral arguments for and against employing automated decision making for sentencing and finds that its use is in principle morally permissible. Specifically, it argues that well-designed automated decision making for sentencing will better approximate the just sentence than human sentencers. Moreover, it dismisses common concerns about transparency, privacy and bias as unpersuasive or inapplicable. The (...) chapter also notes that moral disagreement about theories of just sentencing are plausibly resolved by applying the principle of maximising expected moral choiceworthiness, and that automated decision making is better suited to the resulting ensemble model. Finally, the chapter considers the challenge posed by penal populism. The dispiriting conclusion is that although it is in theory morally desirable to use automated decision-making for criminal sentencing, it may well be the case that we ought not to try. (shrink)

The mental patients' liberation movement, which started in the early 1970s, is a political movement comprised of people who have experienced psychiatric treatment and hospitalization. Its two main goals are developing self-help alternatives to medically-based psychiatric treatment and securing full citizenship rights for people labeled "mentally ill." The movement questions the medical model of "mental illness," and insists that people who have been labeled as "mentally ill" speak on their own behalf and not be represented by others who claim to (...) speak "for" them. The movement has developed its own philosophy, and operates a variety of self-help and mutual support programs in which ex-patients themselves control the services that are offered. Despite obstacles, the movement continues to grow and develop. (shrink)

Communication and behaviour of animals living ex situ has been one of the major sources of knowledge about wild animals. Nevertheless, it is also acknowledged that depending on the environment that the animals inhabit, there are differences in their communication and behaviour. With some species it is difficult to reproduce their natural environment to an extent that excludes deviations from the behaviour and communication exhibited by animals living in situ. In zoological gardens, welfare measures are introduced in order to counteract (...) the effects of the captive environment and to grant an individual’s good physical and psychological well-being. The relation between good welfare and species-specific communication and behaviour is discussed, and as a result, a general model of ex situ animal communication and behaviour is proposed. The suggested model is inclusive of differences between captive animals and free-ranging animals and serves to explain the welfare-related reasons underlying individual animal’s deviations from species-specific behaviour and communication. (shrink)

This essay explores the nihilistic coincidence of the ascetic ideal and Nietzsche’s localization of science in the conceptual world of anarchic socialismas Nietzsche indicts the uncritical convictions of modern science by way of a critique of the causa sui, questioning both religion and the enlightenment as well asboth free and unfree will and condemning the “poor philology” enshrined in the language of the “laws” of nature. Reviewing the history of philosophical nihilismin the context of Nietzsche’s “tragic knowledge” along with political (...) readings of nihilism, willing nothing rather than not willing at all, today’s this-worldly and very planetary nihilism includes the virtual loci of technological desire (literally willing nothing) as well as the perpetual and consequently pointless threat of nuclear annihilation and the routine or ordinary annihilation of plant and animal life as of inorganic nature. (shrink)

One might naturally suppose that philosophers of art would take a strong interest in the idea of creation in the context of art. In fact, this has often not been the case. In analytic aesthetics, the issue tends to dwell on the sidelines and in continental aesthetics a shadow has sometimes been cast over the topic by the notion of the “death of the author” and by the claim, as Roland Barthes put it, that the author is only ever able (...) to “imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original”. This paper explains the understanding of artistic creation developed by the French art theorist André Malraux in his well-known book The Voices of Silence. Malraux argues that the true artist is involved in a creative act in the full sense of the term – creation ex nihilo – despite the debt he or she often owes to other artists. The paper also comments briefly on possible reasons why traditional post-Enlightenment aesthetics has said so little about the topic in question. (shrink)

This paper is part of an attempt to clarify the relationship between explanatory reasons and justificatory reasons for actions of various kinds. It draws on a distinction between two notions of rationalization, viz., ex ante and ex post rationalization, to recast the akratic case on the one hand and to explicate an adequate sense in which an explanatory but non-justificatory reason for an action rationalizes the latter on the other hand. The explication is helped by analysis of a hypothetical example, (...) and the name "quasi-rational" is legitimated for the type of actions this example represents. Last, but not least, the paper demonstrates that an implication of the argument is the falsity of one well-known principle in Davidson's action theory, i.e., the principle claiming that the (primary) reason for an action is also its cause. (shrink)

A number of theologians have propounded what we will call proposition : If God creates from an internal necessity, then God cannot have aseity. According to, there is inconsistency between divine aseity and the idea that God creates from an internal necessity. In this article, however, I develop an argument for the consistency of divine aseity and the idea that God creates from an internal necessity, thus claiming that proposition is false. The argument is founded upon the doctrine of creatio (...) ex nihilo along with two operative principles implied by this doctrine. (shrink)

This essay explores the nihilistic coincidence of the ascetic ideal and Nietzsche’s localization of science in the conceptual world of anarchic socialismas Nietzsche indicts the uncritical convictions of modern science by way of a critique of the causa sui, questioning both religion and the enlightenment as well asboth free and unfree will and condemning the “poor philology” enshrined in the language of the “laws” of nature. Reviewing the history of philosophical nihilismin the context of Nietzsche’s “tragic knowledge” along with political (...) readings of nihilism, willing nothing rather than not willing at all, today’s this-worldly and very planetary nihilism includes the virtual loci of technological desire (literally willing nothing) as well as the perpetual and consequently pointless threat of nuclear annihilation and the routine or ordinary annihilation of plant and animal life as of inorganic nature. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an analysis of a passage from Eckhart’s commentary on the verse of the Genesis In principio creavit caelum et terram that has not received, in my opinion, sufficient attention so far. In this passage, Eckhart points out that the principium through which God created the world is the ideal model, i.e. the ratio essendi of a thing as well as its ratio cognoscendi. It is also the cause of the essence of the thing and, as (...) Aristotle says, of its definition and its scientific proof. Eckhart also quotes Averroes, according to whom philosophers have always searched for the quiddity of a sensible thing because it could lead to knowledge of the first cause of being. By this, Eckhart warns, Averroes does not mean God, as some erroneously think, but the ratio idealis of sensible things, which is expressed by their definition. Joseph Koch’s critical edition does not identify who the plerique erra... (shrink)

This paper looks to revive and advance dialogue surrounding John Nijenhuis’s case against ‘existence language’ as a rendering of Aquinas’s esse. Nijenhuis presented both a semantic/grammatical case for abandoning this practice as well as a more systematic argument based on his reading of Thomist metaphysics. On one hand, I affirm the important distinction between being and existence and lend qualified support to his interpretation of the quantitiative/qualitative correlation between esse and essentia in Aquinas’s texts. On the other hand, I take (...) issue with Nijenhuis’s relegation of exist(ence) to a second-rate ontological principle, and to this end undertake a brief historical and etymological survey, noting its emergence in Greek thought (ὑπάρχϵιν, ἥπαρξις), its translation into medieval Latin (ex(s)istere, ex(s)istentia) and thus something of the pedigree of this terminology in modern usage. I conclude with some brief remarks on the task of exegeting Aquinas vis-à-vis the revivification of contemporary metaphysical ontology in general. (shrink)

Social theorists, drawing on the study of complex dynamical systems to address global processes, tend to evoke an immanent globality devoid of a constitutive otherness or outside. However, as well as dealing with the internal dynamics of systems, complexity studies point to the mutual implication of systems and their surroundings: a concern that resonates with the interest in the convolutions of the inside–outside relationship prominent in post-structural philosophies. This article, looking at theories about the dynamical characteristics of the solar system, (...) galaxy and universe, develops the idea of an ex-orbitant globality that treats the earth as a system in active and ongoing interchange with its cosmic environment. A sense of the inevitable excess and unpredictability that attends this openness to the cosmos and to further other-than-human influences, it is suggested, has repercussions for the way we respond to environmental change injecting an element of abyssal undecidability into all our deliberations. (shrink)

William Lane Craig claims that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is strongly supported by the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. In the present paper, I critically examine Craig’s arguments for this claim. I conclude that they are unsuccessful, and that the Big Bang theory provides no support for the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Even if it is granted that the universe had a “first cause,” there is no reason to think that this cause created (...) the universe out of nothing. As far as the Big Bang theory is concerned, the cause of the universe might have been what Adolf Grünbaum has called a “transformative cause”---a cause that shaped something that was “already there.”. (shrink)

Frances Kamm distinguishes between changes or enhancements that are made before a child exists (ex ante changes) and those that are made once a child exists (ex post changes), and she argues that ex ante changes do not show disrespect or, as Michael Sandel would put it, lack of love, for a person, since the person does not yet exist. In this paper, I argue that it is important to distinguish between ex ante enhancements that are morally neutral and those (...) that are morally dubious, and that the latter ones are morally objectionable even if the persons do not yet exist. (shrink)

Creatio ex nihilo sounds like a philosophical teaching, but philosophy has been utterly unprepared to offer proper expression for an origination which presupposes nothing at all! Yet each of the Abrahamic faiths insists on such an origination, so it proved serendipitous when sufficient contact opened between these diverse religious traditions to allow thinkers to assist one another in what proved to be a shared task—and indeed gain assistance from others as well, as Sara Grant elucidates the sui generis relation between (...) creatures and creator using Shankara's “non‐duality”. With Robert Dobie's help, we shall can find ourselves attaining mutual illumination from witnessing Meister Eckhart and Ibn ’Arabi struggle with the same conundrum, reminding us how we will invariably falsify this crucial relating if we insist on thinking of Creator and creatures as “two things”, inevitably yielding a creator who must be the “biggest of all”. Yet this witness of classical explorers from different traditions may embolden contemporary thinkers to try their hand as well. (shrink)

This article examines the potential implications of the implementation of artificial intelligence in health care for both its delivery and the medical profession. To this end, the first section explores the basic features of AI and the yet theoretical concept of autonomous AI followed by an overview of current and developing AI applications. Against this background, the second section discusses the transforming roles of physicians and changes in the patient–physician relationship that could be a consequence of gradual expansion of AI (...) in health care. Subsequently, an examination of the responsibilities physicians should assume in this process is explored. The third section describes conceivable practical and ethical challenges that implementation of a single all-encompassing AI healthcare system would pose. The fourth section presents arguments for regulation of AI in health care to ensure that these applications do not violate basic ethical principles and that human control of AI will be preserved in the future. In the final section, fundamental components of a moral framework from which such regulation may be derived are brought forward, and some possible strategies for building a moral framework are discussed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 577-593 [Access article in PDF] Machina Ex Deo: William Harvey and the Meaning of Instrument Don Bates Introduction Since our clocks do consistently disclose each hour of the day and night--do they not seem to partake of another body (beyond the elements), and that more divine? But if, under the dominion and management of [our human] Art, such splendid things are (...) daily achieved beyond the powers of the objects themselves,... And if, in serving men they carry out such things as are to be marvelled at, what I ask, may we expect from them when they be instruments in the hand of God? These words come near the end of William Harvey's De generatione animalium. 1 As he does often in this work, he is arguing that it is possible for a material object to behave supra vires elementorum, i.e., in a manner that exceeds what can be explained merely from the qualities of the elements from which it is made. In fact, just before this, he argues that human craftsmanship enables the elements of air and water to make ships sail in opposite directions, fire to do one sort of thing in the kitchen, another in the shops of metal-workers, including the production of iron, which in its turn peacefully tills the soil or besieges the town in war. So if even human Art is capable of making something as wonderful as a clock out of the elements, how much more might God be able to do with them? [End Page 577]Not only is it entirely conceivable that the (divinely) artful manipulation of these same elements can account for the wonders of God's nature--such as the generation of a chick out of an egg--there is also no need to infer the existence of additional entities such as faculties, qualities, agents, and the like. All that is needed is the concept of "instrument." Today such things as his appeal to a clock, his reference to "art," and the word "instrument" itself, are liable to arouse in our minds a fairly mechanical sort of image. Therefore, we need to put this idea in its intellectual context, by looking at where Harvey's notion of instrument is coming from.First, our much more mechanical world view was just coming into being as Harvey (1578-1657) wrote these words. Although the philosophy of his younger contemporary, René Descartes (1596-1650) was not yet in full bloom (he died a year before Harvey's book appeared), Cartesianism was certainly on the explanatory horizon, 2 as was the work of another contemporary and contributor to the "new philosophy," Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655). 3 And, of course, Harvey had certainly known Francis Bacon (1561-1626). 4 Nevertheless, Harvey was a devout Aristotelian who was adamantly opposed to the efforts of these contemporaries to replace Aristotle. 5 Moreover, it was from the Aristotelian tradition, not from the new mechanics, that Harvey had derived the concept of instrument.If, broadly speaking, the "new philosophy" was about a universe that was built like a clock, then the "old" natural philosophies, whether dominated by Platonism, Aristotelianism, Christian theology, or some combination, were about a universe that was socially constructed. 6 Not only was man at the center, to a large extent the workings of the universe were envisioned in terms of social experience. The regularity, predictability, harmony, and wonder of natural phenomena seemed best explained in the language of reason, moral values, motives, responsibilities, hierarchies, laws (in the social sense), and the like, explanatory resources that, in the late ancient and medieval intellectual cultures of Europe, far outweighed either those that appealed to the passively material and the mechanical, or to the random and the chance.But very central to that social model of nature was the concept of instrument, which gave to it something of a mechanical twist. To see how this was so, we need to go back temporarily to the works of Aristotle, the influence of... (shrink)

This argument explores transcultural commonalities among civic arguments from divination in global antiquity. In the ancient world, proponents engaged in kisceral arguments deriving from divinatory signs: arguments ex divinatione regarding prospective civic action. Under ideal circumstances, their aim was to help insure that the collective action of human political organizations was aligned with the natural synchrony of the cosmos. Thus, civic arguments from divination were employed to anticipate the future’s course based on the signs the system produced holistically. In ancient (...) Mesopotamia, China, and Rome, divination was employed as a tool for aligning the order of human society to that of a conception of metaphysical or cosmic order. By comparing these argumentative examples and rationales, we see a broader context for the way in which humans made arguments toward political futurity outside more conventional syllogistic formulations concerning causation. Rather, the argumentative strategies of many ancient cultures embraced an understanding of the future as the logical outcome of a holistic dynamism in kairotic time. (shrink)

Guidé par l’extension de l’usage et des acceptions du signifiant « ex », l’auteur, à partir d’une longue expérience clinique auprès des couples et des familles, met en correspondance des phénomènes psychiques peu conscients des individus, enfants ou parents, et des groupes familiaux qu’ils constituent, avec des transformations sociales ou sociétales modifiant les bases historiques des sentiments d’identité. L’ensemble souligne la fréquence de troubles narcissiques et notamment du sentiment de la constance et de la valeur de soi, essentiel à ce (...) qui fait, au-delà du désir, la dimension « conjugale » du choix amoureux et du choix de type de lien. L’évolution perceptible de la temporalité y joue un grand rôle, déplaçant les identifications vers une adolescence modélisée. S’agit-il d’un ébranlement passager du sentiment identitaire, du renouvellement d’une pluralité de modalités identitaires ou d’une évolution anthropologique? (shrink)

Unreasonable expectations about the nature and character of scientific knowledge support the widespread political assumption that predictive scientific assessments are a necessary precursor to environmental decision making. All too often, the practical outcome of this assumption is that scientific uncertainty becomes a ready-made dodge for what is in reality just a difficult political decision. Interdisciplinary assessments necessary to address complex environmental policy issues invariably result in findings that are inherently contestable, especially when applied in the unrestrained realm of partisan politics. (...) In this article, the authors argue that predictive scientific assessments are inherently limited in the extent to which they can guide policy development and that rigorous scientific assessments can be much more valuable in the role of ex post policy evaluation than they can in the context of ex ante policy formulation. (shrink)

“A major scholarly achievement”; “The long awaited result of painstaking and careful work, which surpasses all expectations and justifies all the effort and funds invested in it”; “An indispensable tool for understanding Leibniz’s thinking”; “A landmark in Leibniz research”; “A gift that contains hitherto unpublished pearls and reveals hitherto unsuspected patterns in the thinking of one of the greatest and most complex human minds”; “An inexhaustible treasure whence generations of philosophers will draw profound insights and wisdom”— these and many other (...) superlatives have been competing in my mind as I perused again and again the 3500++ pages of Volume 4 of Series VI of the Academy Edition of Leibniz’s writings, the work I am about to review here. (shrink)

When I assertively utter the sentence `Spot is a cat', the sentence I utter expresses a proposition. The truth condition of the proposition so expressed is determined by the semantic values of the singular term, `Spot', and the predicate, `is a cat'. If `Spot' refers to a certain particular entity E and `is a cat' expresses a certain particular property P, then the proposition in question is true if and only if E has P. Such is the theoretical cash value (...) of reference. The referent of a given singular term generally figures in this manner in the truth condition of the proposition expressed by any sentence containing the singular term outside direct quotations and other referentially opaque contexts.1 Given this understanding of the notion of reference, I wish to address an important question: How is the reference of a proper name determined? (shrink)

Ex 5,22-6.1 presents Moses appealing to the Lord and God's answer to the prophet. Moses' prayer is configured as a cry of despair stemming from a bewilderment of his vocation as a promoter of liberty, subdued by human conditions. The prophet of failure is paradoxical, since it reveals both as a personal and divine failure. For these reasons, Moses has faith put to the test. His reaction shown by a fiery prayer and full of fervor. God responds with the renewal (...) of the promise of liberation. (shrink)

I have experienced the tribulations of fate.Victories and defeats, revolutions and restorations.Inflations and deflations, bombings,Defamations, broken regimes and broken pipes,Hunger and cold, internment and solitary confinement.Through it all I have passed,And through me it all has passed.I am acquainted with the abundant varieties of terror,The terror from above and the terror from below,Terror on the land and terror from the air,Terror legal and extra-legal,Brown, red and checkered terror,And worst of all, the terror none dares to name.I am acquainted with them (...) all and know their grip. (shrink)

This article makes the following three programmatic points. First, an understanding of divine transcendence, prominent in Christian theology's apophatic strain, developed in tandem, both historically and logically, with ideas about creation that eventuated in a creation ex nihilo viewpoint. Such an account of divine transcendence, second, fosters an account of creation that typically mixes both natural and personalistic images and categories. The loss of such an account of transcendence since the early modern period, I suggest thirdly and in conclusion, is (...) therefore responsible in great part for the dualistic, mutually exclusive alternation between a deistic, interventionist God and pantheism so common in modern Christian thought. (shrink)