This collection of original essays, from both established scholars and newcomers, takes up a debate that has recently flared up in philosophy, sociology, and disability studies on whether disability is intrinsically a harm that lowers a person's quality of life. While this is a new question in disability scholarship, it is also touches on one of the oldest philosophical questions: What is the good human life? Historically, philosophers have not been interested in the topic of disability, and when they are (...) it is usually only in relation to questions such as euthanasia, abortion, or the moral status of disabled people. Consequently, implicitly or explicitly, disability has been either ignored by moral and political philosophers or simply equated with a bad human life, a life not worth living. This collection takes up the challenge that disability poses to basic questions of political philosophy and bioethics, among others, by focusing on fundamental issues as well as practical implications of the relationship between disability and the good human life. (shrink)

This text introduces university students to the philosophical ethos of critical thinking, as well as to the essential skills required to practice it. The authors believe that Critical Thinking should engage students with issues of broader philosophical interest while they develop their skills in reasoning and argumentation. The text is informed throughout by philosophical theory concerning argument and communication—from Aristotle's recognition of the importance of evaluating argument in terms of its purpose to Habermas's developing of the concept of communicative rationality. (...) The authors' treatment of the topic is also sensitive to the importance of language and of situation in shaping arguments, and to the necessity in argument of some interplay between reason and emotion. Unlike many other texts in this area, then, Good Reasons for Better Arguments helps to explain both why argument is important and how the social role of argument plays an important part in determining what counts as a good argument. If this text is distinctive in the extent to which it deals with the theory and the values of critical thinking, it is also noteworthy for the thorough grounding it provides in the skills of deductive and inductive reasoning; the authors present the reader with useful tools for the interpretation, evaluation and construction of arguments. A particular feature is the inclusion of a wide range of exercises, rich with examples that illuminate the practice of argument for the student. Many of the exercises are self testing, with answers provided at the back of the text; others are appropriate for in-class discussion and assignments. Challenging yet accessible, Good Reasons for Better Arguments brings a fresh perspective to an essential subject. (shrink)

Disability & Justice: The Capabilities Approach in Practice is an interdisciplinary examination of the practical application of the capabilities approach viewed through the lens of the experience of disability. Careful and critical examination of vital foundational concepts is undertaken prior to contextualizing the experience of disability and how we might begin to promote an inclusive society through an application of the capabilities approach.

The defence of necessity has had a long, though confused, legal career. Like self-defence, consent, duress, insanity and mistake of law, necessity is rooted in moral intuitions about when conduct which causes harm to another's person or property is not wrong, or should be tolerated, permitted or praised. If a man is literally starving to death and steals a loaf of bread, we are reluctant to say that his extreme circumstances should make no difference at all to the way we (...) treat him at trial. And if two men, adrift at sea, are clinging to a log which can only support the weight of one, we are once again reluctant to say that if one pushes the other off the log, it is just a case of murder. These intuitions are deepseated; but it is extremely difficult to articulate the defence they seem to support, or to isolate the circumstances which mark the difference between a situation where the defence ought to apply and where it ought not. (shrink)

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R. E. Jennings has recently provided us with two formal renderings of the motto of the view he calls ‘pseudo-subjectivism’, viz., ‘One ought to do what one thinks one ought to do’. These renderings are.