In this well-researched, comprehensive study of J.S. Mill, Professor Habibi argues that the persistent, dominant theme of Mill's life and work was his passionate belief in human improvement and progress. Several Mill scholars recognize this; however, numerous writers overlook his 'growth ethic', and this has led to misunderstandings about his value system. This study defines and establishes the importance of Mill's growth ethic and clears up misinterpretations surrounding his notions of higher and lower pleasures, positive and negative freedom, the (...) status of children, the legitimacy of authority, and support for British colonialism. Drawing from the entire corpus of Mill's writings, as well as the extensive secondary literature, Habibi has written the most focused, sustained analysis of Mill's grand, leading principle. This book will be useful to college students in philosophy and intellectual history as well as specialists in these fields. (shrink)

This essay presents a critical analysis of Sen's theory of human rights. I pay particular attention to his attack on Jeremy Bentham's denunciation of natural rights and the charge that preexisting universal rights are without foundation. I begin by providing some context for understanding Sen's approach to the debate about human rights. I then present a brief overview of rights theory and define the important terms, and also present Bentham's understanding of the 'foundational problem' and why he regards it as (...) a dangerous problem. I offer a short overview of the human rights movement that covers its progress since Bentham's time. I then present a critique of Sen's defense of human rights and conclude that Sen's efforts to invalidate Bentham do not succeed. Bentham's contribution to the debate over human rights remains relevant. (shrink)

This paper examines the political philosophy of Liberalism with particular focus on the principles of liberal neutrality and value pluralism. These principles, which are advocated by the most prominent contemporary liberal theorists mark a significant departure from classical liberalism and its monistic approach to seeking truth and the good. I argue that the shift to neutrality and pluralism have done a disservice to liberalism and that the cultivation of discrimination skills is needed to deal with the complex tasks of making (...) decisions intelligently and effectively. (shrink)

The chapter examines the complex problems surrounding Mill's active support for colonialism and empire. How did he rationalize his role in the colonial project, and reconcile his liberal values with the injustices and indignities of conquest, subjugation, and exploitation? These are the crucial questions of Mill's moral legacy that I address. Mill saw colonialism in moral terms. He justified it as an educational, civilizing mission and stimulus to development, freedom, and happiness. His utilitarian calculus was based on existing realities, rather (...) than theoretical ideals. This chapter is divided into four parts. After explaining the paradox, I examine Mill's time and place for the key ideas shaping his understanding of colonialism. I then explore his life experiences and how his thought evolved. I argue that Mill's qualified support for colonialism is consistent with his belief that progress and 'the improvement of mankind' are major components of his utilitarian value system. I conclude by analyzing how Mill might respond to some criticisms. (shrink)

The article shows that Mill's ethical theory is intimately connected with his theory of human improvement. This can be discerned by analyzing how his utilitarianism differs from Bentham's version. Mill regards the received doctrine as inadequate and he defends it against its critics by making major changes. The article argues that Mill's introduction of qualitative distinctions among pleasures and his emphasis on the higher pleasures were designed to accommodate utilitarianism to his belief in self-cultivation and progress. It concludes that Mill's (...) revisions make utilitarianism more plausible, although problems remain. (shrink)

Donation after cardiac death protocols are widely accepted, so arguments for them have apparently been persuasive. But this does not mean they are sound.

C. L. Hardin has argued that the colour opponency of the vision system leads to chromatic subjectivism: chromatic sensory states reduce to neurophysiological states. Much of the force of Hardin's argument derives from a critique of chromatic objectivism. On this view chromatic sensory states are held to reduce to an external property. While I agree with Hardin's critique of objectivism it is far from clear that the problems which beset objectivism do not apply to the subjectivist position as well. I (...) develop a critique of subjectivism that parallels Hardin's anti-objectivist argument. (shrink)

The three major classical accounts of the morality of abortion are all subject to at least one major problem. Can we do better? This article aims to discuss three accounts that purport to be superior to the classical accounts. First, it discusses the future of value argument for the immorality of abortion. It defends the claim that the future of value argument is superior to all three of the classical accounts. It then goes on to discuss Warren's attempt to fix (...) up her personhood account and David Boonin's attempt to fix up Tooley's desire account. Warren claims that her updated version of a personhood account is superior to any potentiality account, such as the future of value account. The article evaluates her claim. Boonin argues that his improved desire view both deals adequately with the apparent counterexamples to Tooley's original account and also is superior to the future of value account. The article evaluates his views as well. (shrink)

John Lizza says that to define death well, we must go beyond biological considerations. Death is the absence of life in an entity that was once alive. Biology is the study of life. Therefore, the definition of death should not involve non-biological concerns.

Since the publication of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's Basic color terms in 1969 there has been continuing debate as to whether or not there are linguistic universals in the restricted domain of color naming. In this paper I am primarily concerned with the attempt to explain the existence of basic color terms in languages. That project utilizes psychological and ultimately physiological generalizations in the explanation of linguistic regularities. The main problem with this strategy is that it cannot account for (...) a particular subset of basic color words: words that the Berlin-Kay tradition calls “composite”. The existence of such words does not compromise the claim that there are basic color words. It does suggest that such words—and basic terms in general—require a more complex type of explanatory strategy than much contemporary work on color naming supposes. It is my main contention that the central problems with the Berlin-Kay tradition arise from the difficulty of linking conceptually and empirically disparate domains: linguistic, psychological, physiological. What is needed is not an attempt to reduce color naming to biology or to culture but, rather, an adequate conceptual account of how people may come to have and use basic color terms—an account which stands between the biological and the cultural. (shrink)

It is common to view appeals to popularity as fallacious. We argue this is a mistake and that Condorcet’s jury theorem can be used to justify at least some appeals to popularity as legitimate inferences. More importantly, the conditions for the application of Condorcet’s theorem can be used as critical tools when evaluating appeals to popularity. The application of these three concepts to appeals to popularity provide a more fine-grained critical strategy for argument evaluation and, also, allow us to see (...) the real problems that often arise with such appeals more clearly. (shrink)

In Color for Philosophers C. L. Hardin argues that chromatic objectivism?a view which identifies colour with some or other property of objects?must be false. The upshot of Hardin's argument is this: there is, in fact, no principled correlation between physical properties and perceived colours. Since that correlation is a minimal condition for objectivism, objectivism is false. Mohan Matthen, who accepts Hardin's conclusion for what can be called "simple objectivism," takes it that an adaptationist theory of biological function applied to colour (...) is able to surmount the problems Hardin describes. It is Matthen's view that I am primarily concerned with in this paper. I will argue that it entails an overly simple view of adaptive value?as, perhaps, do all objectivist views. (shrink)

How can the abortion issue be resolved? Many believe that the issue can be resolved if, and only if, we can determine when human life begins. Those opposed to abortion choice typically say that human life begins at conception. Many who favor abortion choice say that we will never know when human life begins. The importance of the when-does-human-life-begin issue is not so much argued for as it is taken to be self-evident. Furthermore, belief that this issue is fundamental is (...) taken for granted – at least outside of philosophy – by many of the people who seem to disagree about almost everything else concerning abortion. It has been my experience that – with rare exceptions – even those who insist that the issue of abortion should focus on the interests of pregnant women believe that this focus is warranted because fetuses are either not yet fully alive or not yet fully human. (shrink)

We need to reconsider and reconceive the path that will take us from innate perceptual saliencies to basic colour language. There is a space between the perceptual and the linguistic levels that needs to be filled by an account of the rules that people use to generate relatively stable reference classes in a social context.

Normative philosophy believes that argumentation concerning values is rational because there is a deeper value to which all are committed. Citing Ronald Dworkin’s 1977’s Taking Rights Seriously, Will Kymlicka suggests that this “ultimate value” is equality. Having a standard enables rationality because it enables competing theories to show “that one of the theories does a better job living up to the standard that they all recognize”. The measure for whether an argument weighs as much as it claims is how well (...) it accounts for treating people equally and fairly. Fair and equal treatment is measurable enough, and for the same reason values generally are: it helps form the reality of... (shrink)

Conversion of slowly accruing conventionally randomized studies to a prerandomized design has apparently been successful in increasing accrual enough so that some of these studies can be completed. Ellenberg (1984) has pointed out some of the ethical dangers of prerandomization. This paper argues that prerandomization must be either unsuccessful or unethical: either conversion to prerandomization will result in no significant increase in the rate of completion of the study or a significant increase in accrual rate will be achieved either at (...) the price of an inadequate attempt to obtain informed consent, at the price of the deceit of patients, or at the price of violations of patient autonomy. The argument of the paper can be sketched as follows: For any given randomized study, either patients prefer one treatment arm to the other or they do not. On the one hand, if they do, then conventional randomization fails. But prerandomization, if done ethically, will fail also. Hence, if prerandomization succeeds in this sort of case, then the trial has been conducted unethically. On the other hand, if patients do not prefer One arm to the other, then prerandomization will succeed. So will conventional randomization. Hence, prerandomization is either unnecessary or unethical. Ellenberg's concerns count as good moral reasons for not prerandomizing if prerandomization is unnecessary. It follows that prerandomization is always wrong. (shrink)

"Any man-any artist, as Nietzsche or Cezanne would say- climbs the stairway in the tower of his perfection at the cost of a struggle with a deunde-not with an angel, as some have maintained, or with his muse. This fundamental distinction must be kept in mind if the root of a work of art is to be grasped." -Frederico Garcia Lorca.

ABSTRACTEmpathy involves a mapping between the emotions observed in others and those experienced in one’s self. However, effective social functioning also requires an ability to differentiate one’s...

Rhetoric, like any other practice, is always to be used to serve the ends of justice, and for that alone.People will be responsible for the needs of others only when they are responsive to the feelings of need, anxiety, and desire in real other people who work in real material conditions. This direct response will take place only when people are fully responsive to, and fully responsible for, their own feelings. This responsibility for individual feeling, for full complexity and depth (...) of individual feeling, is thus of political not simply personal importance.To theorize justice rhetorically, this article reviews two major theories of rhetoric that address justice: the New Rhetoric of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie .. (shrink)

BRICS has philosophical significance. It creates new pressure on cross-cultural skill. This is analysed here as requiring transduction: a variety of defeasible practical reasoning. This replaces a simplistic model of the relation between knowledge and action with a more realistic and contemporary model. The transduction format has utility in cross-cultural training.

Theabstract variable binding calculus (VB-calculus) provides a formal frame-work encompassing such diverse variable-binding phenomena as lambda abstraction, Riemann integration, existential and universal quantification (in both classical and nonclassical logic), and various notions of generalized quantification that have been studied in abstract model theory. All axioms of the VB-calculus are in the form of equations, but like the lambda calculus it is not a true equational theory since substitution of terms for variables is restricted. A similar problem with the standard formalism (...) of the first-order predicate logic led to the development of the theory of cylindric and polyadic Boolean algebras. We take the same course here and introduce the variety of polyadic VB-algebras as a pure equational form of the VB-calculus. In one of the main results of the paper we show that every locally finite polyadic VB-algebra of infinite dimension is isomorphic to a functional polyadic VB-algebra that is obtained from a model of the VB-calculus by a natural coordinatization process. This theorem is a generalization of the functional representation theorem for polyadic Boolean algebras given by P. Halmos. As an application of this theorem we present a strong completeness theorem for the VB-calculus. More precisely, we prove that, for every VB-theory T that is obtained by adjoining new equations to the axioms of the VB-calculus, there exists a model D such that T s=t iff D s=t. This result specializes to a completeness theorem for a number of familiar systems that can be formalized as VB-calculi. For example, the lambda calculus, the classical first-order predicate calculus, the theory of the generalized quantifierexists uncountably many and a fragment of Riemann integration. (shrink)

The disk that rotates in an inertial frame in special relativity has long been analysed by assuming a Lorentz contraction of its peripheral elements in that frame, which has produced widely varying views in the literature. We show that this assumption is unnecessary for a disk that corresponds to the simplest form of rotation in special relativity. After constructing such a disk and showing that observers at rest on it do not constitute a true rotating frame, we choose a “master” (...) observer and calculate a set of disk coordinates and spacetime metric pertinent to that observer. We use this formalism to resolve the “circular twin paradox”, then calculate the speed of light sent around the periphery as measured by the master observer, to show that this speed is a function of sent-direction and disk angle traversed. This result is consistent with the Sagnac Effect, but constitutes a finer analysis of that effect, which is normally expressed using an average speed for a full trip of the periphery. We also use the formalism to give a resolution of “Selleri’s paradox”. (shrink)

The surgical treatment of breast cancer has changed in recent years. Analysis of the research that led to these changes yields apparently good arguments for all of the following: (1) The research yielded very great benefits for women. (2) There was no other way of obtaining these benefits. (3) This research violated the fundamental rights of the women who were research subjects. This sets a problem for ethics at many levels.

This book contains essays written over twenty years that appear in book form for the first time.

Our generation is turning to mentoring as an instrument of God to repair the ruin of our personal losses.

In Basic Color Terms, Berlin and Kay argued for a restricted number of "basic" color words—words they claimed to be culturally universal. This claim about language was buttressed by psychologist Eleanor Rosch's famous work on color prototypes. Together, the works of Berlin and Kay and Rosch are the foundation for a contemporary research tradition investigating the biological foundations of color naming. In this article, the author describes some common objections to the works of Berlin and Kay and Rosch and argues (...) that they are not significant. The claim that explanations of color naming ought to be strictly cultural also is discussed and rejected. (shrink)

We want God to make sense, to be reasonable, to act according to how we think God should act. This kind of thinking, though, is not far from where we live today. If I give money to the church, then God will bless me financially. If I have my “quiet time” in scripture, then God will bless my day. If I raise my children right, then surely they will turn out right. In themselves these actions are good and right; however, (...) we have to ask ourselves, “Do our motives emerge from the desire to give a place to the mystery of faith, or, rather, to conquer mystery?”. (shrink)

Art, beauty, and the voice of God. And what of beauty?