According to the thesis of the guise of the normative, all desires are associated with normative appearances or judgments. But guise of the normative theories differ sharply over the content of the normative representation, with the two main versions being the guise of reasons and the guise of the good. Chapter 6 defends the comparative thesis that the guise of reasons thesis is more promising than the guise of the good. The central idea is that observations from the theory of (...) content determination can be used in order to constrain possible theories of the representational contents associated with desire. The authors argue that the initially most promising versions of the guise of the good fail to meet these constraints, and then explain the steep challenge confronting any who wish to craft a new guise of the good theory which meets the constraints while also preserving the initial motivations for adopting any guise of the normative theory at all. But a simple version of the guise of reasons not only avoids the troubles besetting the guise of the good but proceeds immediately from a deep diagnosis of the source of its difficulties. (shrink)

The meeting focused on uses of ontologies, with a special focus on spatial ontologies, in addressing the ever increasing needs faced by biology and medicine to cope with ever expanding quantities of data. To provide effective solutions computers need to integrate data deriving from myriad heterogeneous sources by bringing the data together within a single framework. The meeting brought together leaders in the field of what are called "top-level ontologies" to address this issue, and to establish strategies among leaders in (...) the field of biomedical ontology for the creation of interoperable biomedical ontologies which will serve the goal of useful data integration. (shrink)

Report on Dagstuhl Seminar 07132, Schloss Dagstuhl, March 27-30 , 2007.

The intentionalist about consciousness holds that the qualitative character of experience, “what it’s like,” is determined by the contents of a select group of special intentional states of the subject. Fred Dretske (1995), Mike Thau (2002), Michael Tye (1995) and many others have embraced intentionalism, but these philosophers have not generally appreciated that, since we are intimately familiar with the qualitative character of experience, we thereby have special access to the nature of these contents. In this paper, we take (...) advantage of this fact to show that intentionalism is incompatible with the idea that these contents are singular or general propositions, and thus that intentionalism is incompatible with one dominant trend in thinking about contents in general. In particular, there appear to be insoluble difficulties in explaining how the phenomenology of place and time can be explained by any intentionalist theory appealing to singular or general propositions. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Ontologies play a major role in life sciences, enabling a number of applications, from new data integration to knowledge verification. SNOMED CT is a large medical ontology that is formally defined so that it ensures global consistency and support of complex reasoning tasks. Most biomedical ontologies and taxonomies on the other hand define concepts only textually, without the use of logic. Here, we investigate how to automatically generate formal concept definitions from textual ones. We develop a method that uses (...) machine learning in combination with several types of lexical and semantic features and outputs formal definitions that follow the structure of SNOMED CT concept definitions. RESULTS: We evaluate our method on three benchmarks and test both the underlying relation extraction component as well as the overall quality of output concept definitions. In addition, we provide an analysis on the following aspects: How do definitions mined from the Web and literature differ from the ones mined from manually created definitions, e.g., MeSH? How do different feature representations, e.g., the restrictions of relations' domain and range, impact on the generated definition quality?, How do different machine learning algorithms compare to each other for the task of formal definition generation?, and, What is the influence of the learning data size to the task? We discuss all of these settings in detail and show that the suggested approach can achieve success rates of over 90%. In addition, the results show that the choice of corpora, lexical features, learning algorithm and data size do not impact the performance as strongly as semantic types do. Semantic types limit the domain and range of a predicted relation, and as long as relations' domain and range pairs do not overlap, this information is most valuable in formalizing textual definitions. CONCLUSIONS: The analysis presented in this manuscript implies that automated methods can provide a valuable contribution to the formalization of biomedical knowledge, thus paving the way for future applications that go beyond retrieval and into complex reasoning. The method is implemented and accessible to the public from: https://github.com/alifahsyamsiyah/learningDL. (shrink)

Responsible research and innovation (RRI) is a governance framework promoted by influential policy makers such as the European Commission and academics from the fields of science and technology studies and management. This book is the first text to serve industry. Inspired by existing Corporate Responsibility standards and principles, it offers a selection of tools that can assist practitioners in implementing RRI in business and industry. -/- Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is integrative. It is a convergence of Technology Assessment (TA) (...) and Ethics, including corporate responsibility. The task of linking RRI to existing frameworks has only just begun. This book is a welcome example, showing how Corporate Responsibility tools can drive the implementation of RRI. Prof. Armin Grunwald, Head of the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag and Head of the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. -/- This is a simple, short, yet encyclopaedic work designed to help business implement RRI using the many tools of Corporate Responsibility (CR) already in place, everything from ISO9001 to the Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability. It makes clear the ways in which RRI is an extension of ideas already well-developed in CR. I learned a lot reading it. Prof. Michael Davis, Senior Fellow, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. (shrink)

MICHAEL D. RESNIK, Frege and the philosophy of mathematics. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1980. 244 pp. $16.50. HANS D. SLUGA, Gottlob Frege. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. xi + 203 pp. £ 12.95.

Fitting Attitudes accounts of value analogize or equate being good with being desirable, on the premise that ‘desirable’ means not, ‘able to be desired’, as Mill has been accused of mistakenly assuming, but ‘ought to be desired’, or something similar. The appeal of this idea is visible in the critical reaction to Mill, which generally goes along with his equation of ‘good’ with ‘desirable’ and only balks at the second step, and it crosses broad boundaries in terms of philosophers’ other (...) commitments. For example, Fitting Attitudes accounts play a central role both in T.M. Scanlon’s [1998] case against teleology, and in Michael Smith [2003], [unpublished] and Doug Portmore’s [2007] cases for it. And of course they have a long and distinguished history. (shrink)

How are the teachings of a thirteenth-century master relevant today? Twenty contemporary writers unpack Dogen's words and show how we can still find meaning in his teachings. Engaging Dogen's Zen is a practice oriented study of Shushogi (a canonical distillation of Dogen's thought used as a primer in the Soto School of Zen) and Fukanzazengi (Dogen's essential text on the practice of "just sitting," a text recited daily in the Soto School of Zen). It is also a study of the (...) entire self. Here, the principles of Soto Zen practice are unpacked and explained by leading contemporary Buddhists from the living tradition--monks, priests, academics, and community teachers. Tackling Dogen's approach to key issues, such as the preeminence of shikantaza, universal buddha nature, and what it means to be a Mahayana Buddhist, the contributors to the volume help Zen practitioners and any who are trying to deepen their lives to appreciate better the teachings of Soto Zen and make these teachings part of their lives. By revisiting what remains precious in Shushogi and Fukanzazengi, we let them breathe just as we learn to breathe in zazen. We find that Soto practice not only engages Dogen and Sakyamuni, but all of our sisters and brothers, and indeed the great earth itself. Includes essays from Kosho Itagaki, Taigen Dan Leighton, Tenshin Charles Fletcher, Shudo Brian Schroeder, Glen A. Mazis, David Loy, Drew Leder, Steven DeCaroli, Steve Bein, John Maraldo, Michael Schwartz, Tetsuzen Jason M. Wirth, Leah Kalmanson, Erin Jien McCarthy, Dainen David Putney, Steven Heine, Graham Parkes, Mark Unno, Shudo Brian Schroeder, and Kanpu Bret W. Davis. (shrink)

Michael Ridge claims to have ‘finessed’ the Frege-Geach Problem ‘on the cheap’. In this short paper I explain a couple of the reasons why this thought is premature.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nāgārjuna and the Doctrine of "Skillful Means"John SchroederAlthough a number of Buddhist scholars have examined the doctrine of "skill-in-means" (upāya-kauśalya) in Mahāyāna Buddhist literature, it is surprising that no one has yet developed this important concept in relation to Nāgārjuna. Given that upāya is a central doctrine in the early Mahāyāna texts, and given that Nāgārjuna is a central philosopher of this tradition, it is unfortunate that scholars pay (...) little attention to how upāya influenced Nāgārjuna's thought. Michael Pye's Skilful Means is the only significant study of upāya to date, and it notes how scholars consistently overlook its importance:'Nirvāṇa;, 'bodhisattva', 'emptiness' (Skt. śūnyatā) and so on have all been considered in this way and that, but apart from occasional references and brief definitions 'skilful means' has scarcely been attended to at all. A concept which has been used to explain the very existence of Buddhism as a functioning religious system demands closer attention.(Pye 1978, p. 2)This lack of attention to upāya certainly applies to Nāgārjuna, who is usually depicted in the West as someone engaged in a metaphysical dispute. According to most Western scholars, Nāgārjuna not only does metaphysics but actually believes that liberation depends on it. Whether he is depicted as a conventionalist, an absolutist, a nihilist, or a deconstructionist, and whether or not his dialectic of "emptiness" (śūnyatā) undermines all positive philosophical positions, it is commonly assumed that Nāgārjuna is dealing with important metaphysical problems and that he thinks Buddhist praxis is somehow incomplete without it.If we read Nāgārjuna as primarily concerned with upāya, however, then this way of framing his project is mistaken. What is interesting about upāya is that it has little in common with traditional Western metaphysics: it is not concerned with the nature of space and time, causality, personal identity, or consciousness, and it resists the tendency to conceptualize liberation apart from Buddhist praxis. To think otherwise is to assume that the Dharma can be abstracted from its soteriological and rhetorical context and that Buddhism can be preached without any particular audience in mind. Most contemporary Western Nāgārjuna scholars adopt this unskillful position by privileging metaphysics over praxis and by telling us that liberation requires a correct understanding of certain metaphysical problems. Given the Buddhist insistence on the indispensable nature of practice, however, and given Nāgārjuna's own position within the Mahāyāna tradition, it is highly unlikely that he is raising traditional metaphysical questions, and even more unlikely that he thinks that Buddhist soteriology depends on it. [End Page 559]The purpose of this article, then, is to offer a different account of Nāgārjuna from the one that is found in contemporary Western scholarship. While most scholars relate Nāgārjuna to metaphysics and wonder how "emptiness" undermines all traditional philosophical views and doctrines, a "skillful means" reading will relate Nāgārjuna's philosophy solely to issues of Buddhist practice. It will not ask what it means for causality, truth, the self, or consciousness to be "empty" in a very general sense, but how "emptiness" relates to the soteriological practices of Buddhism and what it means for those practices to be "empty" of inherent nature.Contrary to what one may think, this does not turn Nāgārjuna into a non-philosopher. "Skill-in-means" is philosophy, albeit in a different sense from the way it is traditionally conceived. Western philosophy traditionally favors theoretical reflection over praxis and devotes most of its intellectual effort to solving metaphysical problems, often with the assumption that these problems need to be solved in order to live a meaningful life. What distinguishes the doctrine of upāya (and perhaps the entire Buddhist tradition) from this approach is that it shuns any attempt to understand Buddhism apart from its practices. Taking its cue from the Buddha's refusal to speculate on non-soteriological problems, upāya rejects the idea that metaphysics precedes praxis or that liberation requires theoretical speculation. It... (shrink)

This is an early draft of a joint critical notice I am writing of Jonathan Dancy’s Ethics Without Principles and Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge’s Principled Ethics, for Noûs.

mark schroeder University of Southern California 1 When Samuel Clarke gave his second Boyle lectures in 1705, he alleged in favor of his nonreductive, rationalist, intuitionist view that only ‘the extremest stupidity of mind, corruption of manners, or perverseness of spirit, can possibly make any man entertain the least doubt’ concerning it.1 Michael Huemer’s Ethical Intuitionism is offered in the same spirit, though he makes no assurances concerning the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation.2 Not only are (...) competing metaethical views false, he alleges, those who accept them do not even do so on the basis of rational arguments (240). They are driven by bias (247), cynicism (242), and scientism (244), combined with a desire to be politically correct (albeit not in a ‘simplistic way’ (245)). Moreover, the persistence of non-intuitionist metaethical views, he suggests, has a pernicious effect on our society, encouraging vice and immorality (248). According to Huemer, what is important about intuitionism (his favored position) is that the dispute between intuitionism and ‘all other views’ is that ‘[a]nti-realist theories about value undermine our moral beliefs, our moral motivation, and even our sense of the meaning of life’ (248). He contends that ‘anti-realism really boils down to the view that nothing matters’ (249), despite explicitly acknowledging that most anti-realists would deny this, and apparently forgetting that among his targets of criticism in the book were supposed to be some realist views, as well—of the reductive variety. Although he calls his view ‘intuitionism,’ Huemer makes clear early on that what he wants to defend is not an epistemological view at all, but a metaphysical one. The main divide between metaethical views, in.. (shrink)

This article is a joint critical notice of Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge's book Principled Ethics and Jonathan Dancy's book Ethics Without Principles.

In this article we study several reduction principles in the context of Simpson’s set theory ATR0S\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ATR_{0}^{S}$$\end{document} and Kripke-Platek set theory KP (with infinity). Since ATR0S\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ATR_{0}^{S}$$\end{document} is the set-theoretic version of ATR0 there is a direct link to second order arithmetic and the results for reductions over ATR0S\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$ATR_{0}^{S}$$\end{document} are as expected and more or less (...) straightforward. However, over KP we obtain several interesting new results and are lead to some open questions. (shrink)

Explores the philosophical dimensions and implications of integral theory. Dancing with Sophia is the first book of essays to focus on the philosophical dimensions and implications of integral theory. A metatheory that organizes first order theories and disciplines into higher order modes of knowing and insight needed to address the complexity of today’s world, integral theory has already impacted a wide range of disciplines, from psychology to business to religious studies to art. Included here are perspectives by scholars in the (...) continental, comparativist, and process traditions who dive into integral theory’s postmetaphysical claims in order to mine, extend, and critique its philosophical merits. On the verge of its own emergence, integral philosophy promotes modes of creative critical thought oriented toward the multidimensional flourishing of planetary well-being, and Dancing with Sophia will be of interest to scholars in philosophy; religious studies; transpersonal, developmental, and humanist psychology; and more. “Integral theory is a bold and provocative endeavor. It challenges one to think past the norm, to sail beyond the horizon and risk encountering the Scylla and Charybdis of what is academically acceptable—or at least familiar—and what is possible, in ways that only are now beginning to dawn on both thinking and dwelling. If it is nothing else, integral theory is the movement beyond the purely intellectual into the lived experience. This is its ‘meta-’ dimension properly understood.” — from the Foreword by Brian Schroeder. (shrink)

A collection, edited by David Bain, Michael Brady, and Jennifer Corns, originating in our Value of Suffering Project. Table of Contents: Michael Wheeler - ‘How should affective phenomena be studied?’; Julien Deonna & Fabrice Teroni – ‘Pleasures, unpleasures, and emotions’; Hilla Jacobson – ‘The attitudinal representational theory of painfulness fleshed out’; Tim Schroeder – ‘What we represent when we represent the badness of getting hurt’; Hagit Benbaji – ‘A defence of the inner view of pain’; Olivier Massin (...) – ‘Suffering pain’; Frederique de Vignemont – ‘The value of threat’; Colin Leach – ‘Bad feelings can be good and good feelings can be bad’; Tasia Scrutton – ‘Mental suffering and the experience of beauty’; Brock Bastian – ‘From suffering to satisfaction: why we need pain to feel pleasure’; Marilyn McCord Adams – ‘Pain and moral agency’; Jennifer Corns – ‘Hedonic rationality’; Jonathan Cohen & Matthew Fulkerson – ‘Suffering and rationality’; Tom McClelland – ‘Suffering invites understanding’; Michael Brady – ‘Suffering as a virtue’; Glen Pettigrove TBA. Further authors TBA. (shrink)

I first clarify the idea that blameworthiness requires consciousness as the view that one can be blameworthy only for what is a response to a reason of which one is conscious. Next I develop the following argument: blameworthiness requires exercising control in a way distinctive of persons and doing this, in view of what it is to be a person, requires responding to a reason of which one is conscious. Then I defend this argument from an objection inspired by Arpaly (...) and Schroeder according to which responding to moral reasons suffices for exercising control distinctive of persons. (shrink)

In some presentations of classical and intuitionistic logics, the objectlanguage is assumed to contain (two) truth-value constants: ⊤ (verum) and ⊥ (falsum), that are, respectively, true and false under every bivalent valuation. We are interested to define and study analogical constants ‡, 1 ≤ i ≤ n, that in an arbitrary multi-valued logic over truth-values V = {v1,..., vn} have the truth-value vi under every (multi-valued) valuation. As is well known, the absence or presence of such constants has a significant (...) deductive impact on the logics studied. We define such constants proof-theoretically via their associated I/E-rules in a natural-deduction proof system. In particular, we propose a generalization of the notions of contradiction and explosiveness of a logic to the context of multi-valued logics. (shrink)

According to the received account of guilt in the philosophical literature, one cannot feel guilt unless one takes oneself to have done something morally wrong. But ordinary people feel guilt in many cases in which they do not take themselves to have done anything morally wrong. In this paper, I focus on one kind of guilt without perceived wrongdoing, guilt about being merely causally responsible for a bad state-of-affairs. I go on to present a novel account of guilt that explains (...) guilt about mere causal responsibility, according to which guilt represents part of the self as bound up with what is bad. (shrink)

The relation between the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions is "the great problem" of Western philosophy, according to Emmanuel Levinas. In this book Brian Schroeder, Silvia Benso, and an international group of philosophers address the relationship between Levinas and the world of ancient thought. In addition to philosophy, themes touching on religion, mythology, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and politics are also explored. The volume as a whole provides a unified and extended discussion of how an engagement between Levinas and thinkers (...) from the ancient tradition works to enrich understandings of both. This book opens new pathways in ancient and modern philosophical studies as it illuminates new interpretations of Levinas' ethics and his social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Excerpt from Die Ethik des Aristoteles: In Ihrer Systematischen Einheit und in Ihrer Geschichtlichen Stellung Untersucht 1. Die Tapferkeit. Keine systematische Anordnung der Tugenden Die sittliche Gesinnung als Motiv der Tapferkeit - die Tapferkeit als richtiges Masshalten. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing (...) imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.". (shrink)

Concepts and Cases in Nursing Ethics is an introduction to contemporary ethical issues in health care, designed especially for Canadian audiences. The book is organized around six key concepts: beneficence, autonomy, truth-telling, confidentiality, justice, and integrity. Each of these concepts is explained and discussed with reference to professional and legal norms. The discussion is then supplemented by case studies that exemplify the relevant concepts and show how each applies in health care and nursing practice. This new fourth edition includes an (...) added chapter on end-of-life issues, and it is revised throughout to reflect the latest developments on topics such as global health ethics, cultural competence, social media, and palliative sedation. (shrink)

Machine learning algorithms pervade contemporary society. They are integral to social institutions, inform processes of governance, and animate the mundane technologies of daily life. Consistently, the outcomes of machine learning reflect, reproduce, and amplify structural inequalities. The field of fair machine learning has emerged in response, developing mathematical techniques that increase fairness based on anti-classification, classification parity, and calibration standards. In practice, these computational correctives invariably fall short, operating from an algorithmic idealism that does not, and cannot, address systemic, Intersectional (...) stratifications. Taking present fair machine learning methods as our point of departure, we suggest instead the notion and practice of algorithmic reparation. Rooted in theories of Intersectionality, reparative algorithms name, unmask, and undo allocative and representational harms as they materialize in sociotechnical form. We propose algorithmic reparation as a foundation for building, evaluating, adjusting, and when necessary, omitting and eradicating machine learning systems. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to present the distinct ways in which Wolff, Baumgarten, and Kant understand the relationship between necessitation, constraint, and reluctant action in an effort to illustrate the subtle ways in which their conceptions of obligation differ from each another. Whereas Wolff conceives of natural or moral obligation as incompatible with constraint, Baumgarten holds that constraint and reluctant action are, in some instances, compatible with natural obligation. Kant departs from Baumgarten by conceiving of obligation as necessarily (...) involving constraint: as Kant’s reply to Schiller’s famous objection reveals, obligation must take on the character of constraint to reluctant action on account of the fact that human beings possess inclinations that always threaten to impel them in directions that oppose morality. (shrink)

Call "radical moral theorizing" the project of developing a moral theory that not only tries to conform to our existing moral intuitions, but also manifests various theoretical virtues: consistency, simplicity, explanatory depth, and so on. Many moral philosophers assume that radical moral theorizing does not require any particular metaethical commitments. In this paper, I argue against this assumption. The most natural justification for radical moral theorizing presupposes moral realism, broadly construed; in contrast, there may be no justification for radical moral (...) theorizing if moral anti-realism is true. (shrink)

Commentators disagree about the extent to which Kant’s ethics is compatible with consequentialism. A question that has not yet been asked is whether Kant had a view of his own regarding the fundamental difference between his ethical theory and a broadly consequentialist one. In this paper I argue that Kant does have such a view. I illustrate this by discussing his response to a well-known objection to his moral theory, namely that Kant offers an implicitly consequentialist theory of moral appraisal. (...) This objection was most famously raised by Mill and Schopenhauer, but also during Kant’s time by Pistorius and Tittel. I show that Kant’s response to this objection in the second Critique illustrates that he sees the fundamental difference between his moral theory and a broadly consequentialist one to be one that concerns methodology. (shrink)

From the concrete experience of war, Michael S. Yandell constructs a phenomenology of “negative revelation” in which false or distorted claims of goodness and justice disintegrate and become meaningless, adding depth to the term moral injury.

Using William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the play-within-the play, The Murder of Gonzago, as a case study, this essay argues that theatrical utterances constitute a special case of language usage not previously elucidated: the utterance of a statement with propositional content in theatre functions as an event. In short, the propositional content of a particular p (e.g. p1, p2, p3 …), whether or not it is true, is only understood—and understood to be true—if p1 is uttered in a particular time, place, (...) and situation (i.e. during a theatrical event); otherwise, the propositional content in those theatrical utterances can either be false or contingently true. (shrink)

Imagine you are walking down a city street. It is windy and raining. Amidst the bustle you see a young woman. She sits under a railway bridge, hardly protected from the rain and holds a woolen hat containing a small number of coins. You can see that she trembles from the cold. Or imagine seeing an old woman walking in the street at dusk, clutching her bag with one hand and a walking stick with the other. A group of male (...) youths walk behind her without overtaking, drunk and in the mood for mischief. It doesn't need an academic to say what vulnerability is. We can all see it, much more often than we care to. (shrink)

Nature and civilisation -- Climate and the forms of the atmosphere -- Surface and the forms of the land -- Living forms -- The forms of metabolism -- Humans - anatomical and cultural forms -- City forms -- The forms of information, energy and ecology -- Emergence.

An Essay on Human Action seeks to provide a comprehensive, detailed, enlightening, and (in its detail) original account of human action. This account presupposes a theory of events as abstract, proposition-like entities, a theory which is given in the first chapter of the book. The core-issues of action-theory are then treated: what acting in general is (a version of the traditional volitional theory is proposed and defended); how actions are to be individuated; how long actions last; what acting intentionally is; (...) what doing one thing by doing another is; what basic action is; and what omitting to do something is. Attention is also given to the concepts of causation, intention, volition, deciding, choosing, and trying. Finally, a libertarian account of free action is tentatively proposed and defended. (shrink)

edited by Tuija Takala and Matti Häyry, welcomes contributions on the conceptual and theoretical dimensions of bioethics.

This a clear and concise introduction to Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.ichael Watts uses Kierkegaard's own writings to introduce his theoriesbout living a truthfu; and spiritual life, while explaining the enormousnfluence of the philosopher's personal life on his work and beliefs. As theounder of 20th century existentialism, and the first philosopher to definehe idea of angst, Kierkegaard's profound influence on modern life is clearlyefined in accessible terms in this guide for students and general readers.

In the Book of Common Prayer’s Rite II version of the Eucharist, the congregation confesses, “we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed”. According to this confession we wrong God not just by what we do and what we say, but also by what we think. The idea that we can wrong someone not just by what we do, but by what think or what we believe, is a natural one. It is the kind of wrong we feel (...) when those we love believe the worst about us. And it is one of the salient wrongs of racism and sexism. Yet it is puzzling to many philosophers how we could wrong one another by virtue of what we believe about them. This paper defends the idea that we can morally wrong one another by what we believe about them from two such puzzles. The first puzzle concerns whether we have the right sort of control over our beliefs for them to be subject to moral evaluation. And the second concerns whether moral wrongs would come into conflict with the distinctively epistemic standards that govern belief. Our answer to both puzzles is that the distinctively epistemic standards governing belief are not independent of moral considerations. This account of moral encroachment explains how epistemic norms governing belief are sensitive to the moral requirements governing belief. (shrink)