An Eternity 1988 Book of the Year! Since its publication, the New Dictionary of Theology has rapidly established itself as a standard, authoritative reference work in systematic and historical theology. More than 630 articles cover a variety of theological themes, thinkers and movements: from creation to the millennium from Abelard to Zwingli from Third World liberation theology to South African Dutch Reformed theology Firmly anchored in the evangelical tradition, the NDOT is nevertheless wide-ranging in its scope. Over 200 contributors, experts (...) in their individual fields, offer both Western and international perspective. Concise and comprehensive, biblically grounded and historically informed, even-handed and free from unduly technical language, this dictionary has been praised by general readers, pastors and scholars. (shrink)

This study investigates Félix RavaissonRavaisson-Mollien, Félix’s ambiguous relation to F. W. J. Schelling by homing in on the specific relation that holds between habit as a means of demonstrating an underlying identity of mind and world in RavaissonRavaisson-Mollien, Félix’s De l’habitude and Schelling’s use of aesthetic intuitionIntuition as a philosophical method in his 1800 System of Transcendental IdealismIdealism (also German Idealism). I argue that what Schelling found in fine art—the work of genius—RavaissonRavaisson-Mollien, Félix finds in habit, and from this conclude (...) that RavaissonRavaisson-Mollien, Félix offers what we might describe as a romantic conception of habit that brings it into the domain of the pre-rational, pre-reflective spontaneity that Schelling describes in artistic production. (shrink)

Deep ethical interpretivism has been the standard view of the nature of sport in the philosophy of sport for the past seventeen years or so. On this account excellence assumes the role of the foundational, ethical goal that justice assumes in Ronald Dworkin’s interpretivist model of law. However, since excellence in sports is not an ethical value, and since it should not be regarded as an ultimate goal, the case for the traditional account fails. It should be replaced by the (...) shallow interpretivist model that I begin to sketch out and defend here. (shrink)

Donald Davidson has emphasized the importance of what he calls “triangulation” for clarifying the conditions that make thought possible. Various critics have questioned whether this triangular causal interaction between two individuals and a shared environment can provide necessary conditions for the emergence of thought. I argue that these critical responses all suffer from a lack of appreciation for the way triangulation is responsive to the philosophical commitments of Davidson's naturalism. This reply to Davidson's critics helps clarify several metaphilosophical issues concerning (...) the overall significance of this use of triangulation. I illustrate how the network of commitments that make up Davidson's conception of non‐reductive naturalism inform the respective problems and issues that triangulation is introduced to address. This then serves as an example of the way metaphilosophical considerations are useful in clarifying the status of a respective philosophical position and for understanding the philosophical debates surrounding it. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBernard Suits and other formalists endorse both the logical incompatibility thesis and the view that rule-breakings resulting in penalties can be a legitimate part of a game. This is what Fred D’Agostino calls ‘the problem of penalties’. In this paper, I reject both Suits’ and D’Agostino’s responses to the problem and argue instead that the solution is to abandon Suits’ view that the constitutive rules of all games are alike. Whereas the logical incompatibility thesis applies to games in which players’ (...) actions are perfectly controlled, it does not apply to sports. This insight not only justifies the rejection of formalism as a theory about the nature of sport but it also helps explain the greater normative complexity of sports, which in turn leads to the idea that in sports ‘cheating’ should be interpreted as a genus. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 64-66 [Access article in PDF] Response to Bennett Reimer, "Once More with Feeling: Reconciling Discrepant Accounts of Musical Affect" Anne Sinclair Indiana University Mary Reichling's exploration of form, feeling, and isomorphism in the writings of Susanne Langer accomplishes its goal to examine and elucidate aspects of these concepts. I find several of the ideas presented very engaging. Musical form and feeling (...) are very real to me in my experience as a music and liturgy director in the Catholic Church. I wholeheartedly agree with the concept of the processual nature of both, which has been well articulated. In my life experience, the musical form, the feeling inherent in it, and its process of coming to life in a given moment, is a near-weekly event. The church continually solemnizes life events, and musical form is an integral part of that solemnization. My response centers on the following claim: "Feeling is not a product but a process, it follows that the feeling ends when the music stops"; and question, "How can it be educational?"The example of the drama, King Lear, is very interesting. Indeed, as we get caught up in the action of the production, we become connected to the feelings and lives of the characters. I agree that it might be easier to experience feeling in a drama or epic, rather than in the visual arts, or in our sonorous art. The drama connects us to the human condition and we "feel" for the characters. In my position [End Page 64] as a liturgist, I find myself in a situation similar to that of the director of a play. Indeed, at times there is a very fine line between drama and good liturgy. However, in the liturgy we are connecting with real lives, the lives of our assembly members, not the lives of fictitious characters. Good musician liturgists strive to give voice to the emotions of the assembly. While I admit this is not always accomplished in weekly Sunday liturgies, I think especially of funeral liturgies where the music strives to speak of the hope and promise of eternal life for the departed loved one and also of the feelings of grief experienced by the assembled family and friends.I take issue with the idea "that the feeling stops when the music does." Throughout the body of the paper, Reichling highlights Langer's ideas on music's "sonorous image of feeling in an imaginatively perceptible form" and her use of the terms "semblance," "illusion," and "virtual" in regard to feeling. However, in contemplating the points brought forth, I mentally wrestled with the idea of feeling stopping when the music did. Could this position be held because it was based on what might be referred to as a "virtual" experience (for example, a musical concert or show) rather than a "real-life" moment?During the process of this contemplation, I had the occasion to attend the funeral of a friend's husband. This funeral occurred in a faith tradition other than Catholicism and I participated in the service as a member of the congregation. My friend is a music educator, her husband had been a musician, and both had been active in the music ministry of their church for nearly thirty years. As one might imagine, music was a central element in the solemnization of this man's life. The music was brought to life by an extraordinary group of musicians, including many graduate students and faculty members of the Indiana University School of Music. The music was superb and each piece had relevance to the life being celebrated as well as to the moment at hand, saying goodbye. The choir was wonderful, sharing movements from both the Brahms and Fauré Requiems, which were very moving. The soloist was renowned soprano, Sylvia McNair, an "adopted" member of the family since her days years ago as an Indiana University graduate student. Musical form and feeling came together in a powerful way for me during her singing of Fauré's Pie Jesu as she... (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a general theory of competition and contrast it with a corresponding general theory of cooperation. I then use this analysis to critique mutualism. Building on the work of Arthur Applbaum and Joseph Heath I develop an alternative adversarial model of competitive sport, one that helps explain and is partly justified by shallow interpretivism, and argue that this model helps shows that the claim that mutualism provides us with the most defensible ethical ideal of sport is (...) false. By replacing that view with an understanding of sporting adversarial ethics we can appreciate that the ethics of sport are more complex than has been commonly recognized. (shrink)

My main goal here is to develop a functional analysis of cheating and corruption in sports, and to differentiate cheating within the broader category of corruption. Whereas officials can act corruptly, they cannot cheat. In contrast, sports participants, since they occupy two roles, can do both. I argue that although acts of cheating are acts of corruption, not all corrupt acts by competitors are acts of cheating. I also respond to some skeptical challenges and criticisms of the concept of ‘cheating’ (...) by providing some opposing arguments and a provisional definition. I argue that cheating in sports occurs in the context of a complex institutional practice. It transpires due to some failing in the efforts and/or limitations of sports officials to prohibit it. In central cases it consists in both the functional and ethical violation of the constitutional norms of a sport in the service of obtaining unearned victory for the cheater. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, I begin to develop and defend a reformed concept of ‘cheating’ as ‘wrongful competitive norm violating’. I then use this to reject Oliver Leaman’s view that cheating is som...

ABSTRACTIn this article, I begin to develop and defend a reformed concept of ‘cheating’ as ‘wrongful competitive norm violating’. I then use this to reject Oliver Leaman’s view that cheating is som...

In this article I develop my argument for a shallow interpretivist theory of sport by showing that whereas it applies to all oppositional sports, the standard theory of sport for the past twenty ye...

The idea that cheaters cannot (really) win in sports persists among philosophers, mainly due to the lingering influence of Bernard Suits’ logical incompatibility thesis. In this article I explain why the thesis does not apply to sports. I argue that the question whether cheating can be prohibited in sports is empirical rather than analytic, as is the case for games subject to the thesis. Thus, sports rules do not make cheating impossible and since game officials cannot always detect cheating and (...) punish cheaters, cheating is a part of sports and cheaters sometimes win. Even if advances in technology made it impossible for cheaters to evade detection, since in-game officials will never know whether their attempts to provide restorative justice to those victimized by acts of cheating are successful, and since cheaters exploit this fact, it follows that not only is cheating a part of sports, but it always will be. (shrink)

In this paper I explain how to play and administer a game that helps teach students a lesson about the value of cooperation and the role of ethics and the law in obtaining the conditions under which cooperating is reason­able. I also discuss several applications of this Cooperation Game, primarily in courses in social and political philosophy, introductory ethics, and the philosophy of law. The game can usefully be played with a range of groups of students from small tutorial sections (...) to large sections of over one hundred, and the game and post-game analysis can be completed in one or two classes. (shrink)

The interaction between cavity modes and optical transitions leads to new coupled light-matter states in which the energy is periodically exchanged between the matter states and the optical mode. Here we present experimental evidence of optical strong coupling between modes of individual sub-wavelength metamaterial nanocavities and engineered optical transitions in semiconductor heterostructures. We show that this behaviour is generic by extending the results from the mid-infrared to the near-infrared. Using mid-infrared structures, we demonstrate that the light-matter coupling occurs at the (...) single resonator level and with extremely small interaction volumes. We calculate a mode volume of 4.9 × 10 from which we infer that only ~2,400 electrons per resonator participate in this energy exchange process. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Book Review Wayne C. Booth. For the Love ofIt: Amateuring and Its Rivals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). For the Love ofIt is a delightful exposition on life-long music making written with love by amateur cellist Wayne Booth (professor emeritus ofEnglish, University ofChicago). Employing a combination of journal entries, memories, and romantic prose on the topic oftaking up the cello at age thirty-one, he writes insightfully on the (...) challenges and triumphs inherent in amateur pursuits (musical, or otherwise). Written from a classical music perspective, he analyzes the reasons for amateuring, all the while extolling his community offellow amateurs, pro-amateurs, and teachers who make the journey worthwhile. He imparts many valuable insights from which music educators can benefit. I will summarize Booth's main points, highlighting these insights, and conclude with a brief criticism of the book from theperspective ofone who has worked with adult amateurs for more than fifteen jears. Boothplayfullypresentshis text in the form ofa symphony. In the "Overture," he encourages people to pursue actively an amateur love and desires growth in the ranks of amateurs. Just as Christopher Small encouraged a mental shift from to musictothemoreactive gerund formmusicking in his book of that title,1 Booth promotes a shift from the noun amateurto the gerund amateuring. He defines amateuringas doing something for the sheer love of it, adding the caveat: "Amateurs don't just dabble, like serious professionals, they work at learningto do it better^11). This idea of constant improvement is reiteratedthroughout the book with detailedrecounting ofBooth's forty-six years of cello studies, especially his pursuit of excellent thumb position. Why one should study to this degree when full success (that is, professional performance) is out of reach? Booth suggests the following rewards: joyful friendship, spiritual ecstasy, and gratitude for life's mysterious unearned gifts (5, 6). Indeed, throughout the book Booth finds himself "getting better all the time," often "playing better than ever"(58, 112, 123, 137, 140). His feelings ofimprovement and the accompanying self-satisfaction are ajoy to see and reinforce the idea that theserewards make true amateuring worth it. In"First Movement: The Courtship,"music educators find a staunch supporter in Booth and gain insight into the importance of childhood music activities as seen through amateureyes. As Booth wiselystates,"No one inmidlifeis likelyto take up any instrument, let alone the cello, without having fallenin lovewithmusic longbefore"(21). Clearlyfrom a musical family, he describes beautiful childhood memories including dancing with his mother at age five; making up songs; taking piano and clarinet lessons; singing three-part solfège exercises in sixth grade; and hearing his first live orchestra concert, the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski (22-8). These types ofactivities lay an important foundation for the pursuit of music by adults as "amateuring in our early years can lead to a lifetime ofamateuring" (22). Booth is a champion ofmusic education in the schools. Concerned with music program cuts and the prevalence of personal stereos that keep young people from "getting music into their bones, not just their ears," he encourages the funding of music lessons rather than computer games (22). After describing how he was "seducedbythe cello," he concludesthis section with a discussion of how other pleasures rival for the amateur's attention, suggesting that leisure activities often take the form of passive pastimes, not the active work oftrue amateuring. LikeVemon HowardmLearningByAllMeans, Boothgrapples with the concept of work versus play. 2 If amateurs are to spend their leisure hours working diligently at getting better, the work must be©Philosophy ofMusic Education ReviewlO, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 140-143. Book Review 141 experienced as play-something they love to do. While professional musicians are paid to play, often playing for the love ofit fades as themoney blossoms. He maintains the distinction between amateurs and professionals lies not with being paid or unpaid, but with playing for love or solely for money. "My heroes... are the professionals Icallpro-amateurs-thosewillingtojoinamateurs, pursuingthe love together," statesBooth (59, 60). I believe music educators are foremost among these heroes. In "Second Movement: The Marriage," many insights into the teachingofaging amateurs are provided. First, he observes that while his level of cello playing rises with age... (shrink)

Are the circumstances in which moral testimony serves as evidence that our judgement-forming processes are unreliable the same circumstances in which mundane testimony serves as evidence that our mundane judgement-forming processes are unreliable? In answering this question, we distinguish two possible roles for testimony: (i) providing a legitimate basis for a judgement, (ii) providing (‘higher-order’) evidence that a judgement-forming process is unreliable. We explore the possibilities for a view according to which moral testimony does not, in contrast to mundane testimony (...) play role (i), but can play role (ii). We argue that standard motivations for rejecting this hybrid position are unpersuasive but suggest that a more compelling reason might be found in considering the social nature of morality. (shrink)

What is morality? In Practical Expressivism, I argue that morality is a purely natural interpersonal co-ordination device, whereby human beings express their attitudes in order to influence the attitudes and actions of others. -/- The ultimate goal of these expressions is to find acceptable ways of living together. This 'expressivist' model for understanding morality faces well-known challenges concerning 'saving the appearances' of morality, because morality presents itself to us as a practice of objective discovery, not pure expression. -/- This book (...) demonstrates how a properly developed expressivist view can overcome this objection, by showing that even if moral practice is fundamentally expressive, it can still come to possess those features that make it appear objective (features such as talk and thought of moral disagreement, truth and belief, and the applicability of logical notions to moral sentences). The key to this development is to emphasise the unique and intricate practical role that morality plays in our lives. Practical expressivism is also practical in the further sense that it provides repeatable patterns that expressivists can deploy in coming to understand the apparently objective features of morality. (shrink)

It seems that you can be in a position to rescue people in mortal danger and yet have no obligation to do so, because of the sacrifice to you that this would involve. At the same time, if you do save anyone, then you must not leave anyone to die whom it would cost you no additional sacrifice to save. On the basis of these claims, Theron Pummer and Joe Horton have recently defended a ‘conditional obligation of effective altruism’, which (...) requires one to give to the most cost-effective charity if one is going to make a charitable donation at all, all other things equal. Appealing to a distinction between 'thoroughgoing' and 'half-hearted' non-consequentialism, I argue that their inferences don’t go through, and moreover that this sort of argument in general is unlikely to work as a way to defend effective altruism. (shrink)

This book provides an in-depth examination of C.I. Lewis's conceptual pragmatism and its influence on Quine's developing views in epistemology. The author shows how Quine's engagement with problems presented by Lewis, such as analyticity and the empirical given, contribute to the development of his conception of naturalized epistemology.

In this paper I argue that the explanationist argument in favour of moral realism fails. According to this argument, the ability of putative moral properties to feature in good explanations provides strong evidence for, or entails, the metaphysical claims of moral realism. Some have rejected this argument by denying that moral explanations are ever good explanations. My criticism is different. I argue that even if we accept that moral explanations are (sometimes) good explanations the metaphysical claims of realism do not (...) follow. (shrink)

I argue that evolutionary debunking arguments are dialectically ineffective against a range of plausible positions regarding moral truth. I first distinguish debunking arguments which target the truth of moral judgements from those which target their justification. I take the latter to rest on the premise that such judgements can be given evolutionary explanations which do not invoke their truth. The challenge for the debunker is to bridge the gap between this premise and the conclusion that moral judgements are unjustified. After (...) briefly discussing older attempts to bridge this gap, I focus on Joyce’s recent attempt, which rests on the claim that ‘we do not have a believable account of how moral facts could explain the mechanisms and forces which give rise to moral judgements’. I argue that whether or not there is such an account depends on what it is permissible to assume about moral truth in this context. Further, I suggest that it is reasonable to make assumptions about moral truth which allow for the possibility of at least partial moral epistemologies. The residual challenge for the debunker is to show that these assumptions are unreasonable in a way which doesn’t render their debunking argument superfluous. (shrink)

In comparing his conception of empiricism with that of other like-minded philosophers at the end of his 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism,' W. V. Quine famously emphasized the broader scope of his pragmatist commitment in these terms:Carnap, Lewis, and others take a pragmatic stand on the question of choosing between language forms, scientific frameworks; but their pragmatism leaves off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic. In repudiating such a boundary I espouse a more thorough pragmatism.Such remarks have (...) resulted in Quine's work being associated with the American pragmatist tradition, where he is viewed as either continuing or reviving some of the main themes and issues representative of.. (shrink)

Despite emerging attention to Indigenous philosophies both within and outside of feminism, Indigenous logics remain relatively underexplored and underappreciated. By amplifying the voices of recent Indigenous philosophies and literatures, I seek to demonstrate that Indigenous logic is a crucial aspect of Indigenous resurgence as well as political and ethical resistance. Indigenous philosophies provide alternatives to the colonial, masculinist tendencies of classical logic in the form of paraconsistent—many-valued—logics. Specifically, when Indigenous logics embrace the possibility of true contradictions, they highlight aspects of (...) the world rejected and ignored by classical logic and inspire a relational, decolonial imaginary. To demonstrate this, I look to biology, from which Indigenous logics are often explicitly excluded, and consider one problem that would benefit from an Indigenous, paraconsistent analysis: that of the biological individual. This article is an effort to expand the arenas in which allied feminists can responsibly take up and deploy these decolonial logics. (shrink)

This paper shows how reflection on habit leads in nineteenth-century French philosophy to Henri Bergson’s idea of duration in 1888 as a non-quantifiable dimension irreducible to time as measured by clocks. Historically, I show how Albert Lemoine’s 1875 L’habitude et l’instinct was crucial, since he holds – in a way that is both Ravaissonian and Bergsonian avant la lettre – that for the being capable of habit, the three elements of time are fused together. For that habituated being, Lemoine claims, (...) it is not true to say that the past is no longer, nor even that the future is not yet. This historical link between Ravaisson and Bergson, however, only sharpens the philosophical question of how a dynamic conception of habit involves and requires a conception of real duration, of a temporality more original than clock-time, and, conversely, of how reflection on duration prior to clock-time involves a notion of habit. With reference to the work of Gilles Deleuze, the paper concludes by showing that there is an internal connection between these two grand philosophical themes of nineteenth- and then twentieth-century French thought: habit and time. (shrink)

According to Bernard Williams, if it is true that A has a normative reason to Φ then it must be possible that A should Φ for that reason. This claim is important both because it restricts the range of reasons which agents can have and because it has been used as a premise in an argument for so-called ‘internalist’ theories of reasons. In this paper I rebut an apparent counterexamples to Williams’ claim: Schroeder’s example of Nate. I argue that this (...) counterexample fails since it underestimates the range of cases where agents can act for their normative reasons. Moreover, I argue that a key motivation behind Williams’ claim is compatible with this ‘expansive’ account of what it is to act for a normative reason. (Published with Open Access.). (shrink)

The Kantian account of political authority holds that the state is a necessary and sufficient condition of our freedom. We cannot be free outside the state, Kantians argue, because any attempt to have the ‘acquired rights’ necessary for our freedom implicates us in objectionable relations of dependence on private judgment. Only in the state can this problem be overcome. But it is not clear how mere institutions could make the necessary difference, and contemporary Kantians have not offered compelling explanations. I (...) present a detailed analysis of the problems Kantians identify with the state of nature and the objections they face in claiming that the state overcomes them. I then sketch a response on behalf of Kantians. The key idea is that only under state institutions can a person can make claims of acquired right without presupposing that she is by nature exceptional in her capacity to bind others. (shrink)

In this paper I grant the Humean premise that some reasons for action are grounded in the desires of the agents whose reasons they are. I then consider the question of the relation between the reasons and the desires that ground them. According to promotionalism , a desire that p grounds a reason to φ insofar as A’s φing helps promote p . According to motivationalism a desire that p grounds a reason to φ insofar as it explains why, in (...) certain circumstances, A would be motivated to φ. I then give an argument favouring motivationalism, namely that promotionalism entails that agents have reasons to perform physically impossible actions, whereas motivationalism entails that there are no such reasons. Although this is a version of the ‘Too Many Reasons’ objection to promotionalism, I show that existing responses to that problem do not transfer to the case of reasons to perform physically impossible actions. In the penultimate section I consider and reject some objections to motivationalism made by promotionalists. The conclusion is that Humeans about reasons for action should prefer motivationalism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the common practice of employing moral predicates as explaining phrases can be accommodated on an expressivist account of moral practice. This account does not treat moral explanations as in any way second-rate or derivative, since it subsumes moral explanations under the general theory of program explanations (as defended by Jackson and Pettit). It follows that the phenomenon of moral explanations cannot be used to adjudicate the debate between expressivism and its rivals.

Many expressivists have employed a claim about the practicality of morality in support of their view that moral convictions are not purely descriptive mental states. In this paper I argue that all extant arguments of this form fail. I distinguish several versions of such arguments and argue that in each case either the sense of practicality the argument employs is too weak, in which case there is no reason to think that descriptive states cannot be practical or the sense of (...) practicality the argument employs is too strong, in which case there is no reason to think moral convictions are practical. I also discuss and dismiss an attempted patch of such arguments provided by Humean Psychology. The conclusion is that expressivists need to look to sources other than the alleged practicality of morality to support their position. In concluding remarks I suggest one such alternative. (shrink)

I provide a positive expressivist account of the permissibility of ‘standing one’s ground’ in some cases of moral conflict, based in part on an illustrative analogy with political disputes. This account suffices to undermine Enoch’s recent argument against expressivism.

The paper proposes a new method of researching public opinion for the purposes of valuing the outcomes of healthcare interventions. The issue I address is that, under the quality-adjusted life-year system, disabled patients face a higher cost-effectiveness hurdle than able-bodied patients. This seems inequitable. The author considers the alternative approaches to valuing healthcare interventions that have been proposed, and shows that all of them face the same problem. It is proposed that to value an outcome, instead of researching the general (...) public, the population that is to be targeted with the intervention should be researched. (shrink)

Moral discourse is propositionally clothed, that is, it exhibits those features – such as the ability of its sentences to intelligibly embed in conditionals and other unasserted contexts – that have been taken by some philosophers to be constitutive of discourses that express propositions. If there is nothing more to a mental state being a belief than it being characteristically expressed by sentences that are propositionally clothed then the version of expressivism which accepts that moral discourse is propositionally clothed (‘quasi-realism’) (...) is self-refuting. Fortunately for quasi-realists, this view of belief, which I label ‘minimalism’, is false. I present three arguments against it and dismiss two possible defences (the first drawn from the work of Wright, the second given by Harcourt). The conclusion is that the issue between expressivists and their opponents cannot be settled by the mere fact that moral discourse wears propositional clothing. (shrink)

What is the connection between reasons and motives? According to Reasons Internalism there is a non-trivial conceptual connection between normative reasons and the possibility of rationally accessing relevant motivation. Reasons Internalism is attractive insofar as it captures the thought that reasons are for reasoning with and repulsive insofar as it fails to generate sufficient critical distance between reasons and motives. Rather than directly adjudicate this dispute, I extract from it two generally accepted desiderata on theories of normative reasons and argue (...) that a new theory can satisfy both. The new theory locates part of the meaning of normative reason statements in their role in normative discussion. It generates a view of the connection between reasons and motives that is distinct from Reasons Internalism, yet distinctively in its spirit. (shrink)

Most people believe that the rights of others sometimes require us to act in ways that have even substantially sub-optimal outcomes, as viewed from an axiological perspective that ranks outcomes objectively. Bringing about the optimal outcome, contrary to such a requirement, is an ‘optimific wronging’. It is less clear, however, that we are required to prevent optimific wrongings. Perhaps the value of the outcome, combined with the relative weakness of prohibitions on allowing harm as compared to those against doing harm, (...) justifies non-intervention. In this article, I consider arguments to that effect, focusing on a recent paper in this journal by Andreas Mogensen. I argue that while we do not, in general, do wrong by failing to prevent optimific wrongings, we are nevertheless not permitted, in key cases, to refrain from intervening on the grounds that not intervening will secure the optimal outcome. (shrink)

In the work of Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger we find different responses to traditional ideas of ‘creation’. Bergson advances a philosophy of creation, wherein ‘creation’ is presented as the production of a ‘radical’ or ‘absolute’ novelty, not only in art, but in all forms of human experience and biological life. Heidegger, in contrast, comes to criticise ideas of ‘creation’ in art as the expression of an alienated ‘humanism’ and ‘subjectivism’ essential to the modern age. This paper illuminates this divergence (...) by showing how Bergson and Heidegger, despite appearances, grapple with the question of art-production – and with the attendant issues of inheritance and originality – in similar ways. It is only in recognising this proximity, I argue, that it is possible to perceive adequately what essentially distinguishes their approaches: Bergson’s conception of creation as a function of the will. (shrink)

Excerpt from The New Idealism The aim of this book is twofold: to examine the foundations of realism more critically, and to outline a reconstruction of idealism more closely than was possible five years ago. The latest developments of philosophy demand a revision of the whole problem, from a shifted standpoint. Since 1917 realism has gained in solidity and a certain intricate precision. The Critical Realists have discovered a flaw in its theory of perception and tried to mend it (not, (...) I think, with conspicuous success); Professor Whitehead has laid down its first principles once for all; and Professor Alexander has built it up into a system among systems. Realism is ten times more formidable than it was in 1917. And since 1917 the issue has been narrowed down to the field of Space and Time, and it is there that the battle between realism and idealism must be fought. That issue is very clear. For, however realists may differ among themselves, whether they say with Professor Alexander that Space-Time is the ultimate reality, or with Professor Whitehead that the ultimate entities are events, they are all agreed that mind is not the ultimate entity and must be kept out of the problem. "Nature," Professor Whitehead says, "is closed to mind." 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)

Alex Orenstein: “Inscrutability Scrutinized”: This is a reply to Quine's comments on an earlier paper. In his comments on that earlier paper Quine acknowledged that distinguishing the inscrutability of reference from the indeterminacy of meaning might be preferable to other of his ways of referring to this distinction. He also agreed that inscrutability of reference is a strong claim, a “thesis”, proven as per model theory. His examples of inscrutability are examined and supplemented with other examples. By contrast, indeterminacy of (...) meaning is merely a “conjecture,” a product of Quine's distinctive behaviorist approach. It is made clear that Quine's distinctive ‘stimulus meaning’ is a non‐decomposable idiom. Stimulus meaning is no more a species of meaning than toy horse is a species of horse. I exploit a view he introduced elsewhere when discussing choosing between intuitionist and classical logic. Quine's ersatz conception of meaning and its byproducts should be regarded along similar lines as the intuitionism versus classical logic debate: not as “denying a doctrine but as changing the subject.”. (shrink)

There is a distinction between two different ways in which people’s interests might figure as inputs into the reasoning that determines verdicts of moral permissibility and impermissibility. Their interests may receive a certain priority in that reasoning, as for example the interests of the people whose lives are at stake in the famous Bystander example should. Or they may not, as for example the interests in spectacle that people watching on the sidelines might have should not. A theory of rights (...) needs to make sense of this distinction. One of the chief attractions of Alec Walen’s theory of rights in The Mechanics of Claims and Permissible Killing in War is that it promises to do so, thanks to the concept of a claim that it introduces and the structural role this concept plays in the theory. However, I argue here that the substantive content of the mechanics of claims – in particular, a principle Walen calls the ‘welfare principle’ – privileges welfare interests to a degree that threatens to undermine the theory’s advantages. I consider and reject some ways of modifying the welfare principle so as to avoid this implication, suggesting that their failure raises much deeper questions of moral theory that must be confronted if the mechanics of claims is to make good on its promise. (shrink)

This chapter -- the first in the edited collection "The Naturalistic Fallacy" (Cambridge University Press 2019) -- locates the naturalistic fallacy within the context of the other claims Moore defends in Principia Ethica. I explore the notions of “definition” and “analysis” as Moore understood them and set out in detail the multiple interpretations of the fallacy and open question argument. I then take a broad view of the influence of the fallacy on the Century of metaethics that came after Moore, (...) covering topics such as the non-cognitivist appropriation of the open question argument, the mid-Century Humean turn in which the inferential form of the fallacy was dominant, and the fallacy’s role – at the end of the Century – in framing new forms of naturalism. Finally, I argue that these multiple strands of influence demonstrate that, to a large extent, contemporary ethics – and metaethics in particular – can be understood through the framing lens of the naturalistic fallacy. (shrink)

My article does two things: 1) tracks Derrida’s claim that biopolitical and sovereign power use species taxonomies to performatively depoliticize and ignore the reciprocity of creaturely perspectives; and 2) argues Derrida makes possible a deconstruction of species, and demonstrates its necessity for better political futures. To do this, I follow Derrida’s criticism of autopsic logics and the circularity of metaphysics and zoology, and his affirmation of embodied singularity. Finally, I start and end with analyses of cetacean suicide: by privileging how (...) others see themselves and us over our perspective of them, Derrida challenges what counts as political and who decides. (shrink)

: In “Le possible et le réel” Henri Bergson offers an influential critique of the modal category of possibility: traditional ideas that possibility precedes actuality invert the real relation of priority, and express an inability to apprehend the continual creation of unforeseeable novelty in experience. This article shows how Bergson’s ideas concerning possibility and novelty are involved in his inheritance of a modern concept of genius as a principle of fine art production. Only in grasping the nature of Bergson’s philosophy (...) as a ‘metaphysics of genius’, I contend, is it possible to understand adequately not only his critique of prior possibility and conceptions of novelty but also the positive conception of modality that he advances in the essay according to an idea of the retroactivity of the possible. In conclusion, I argue that this reflection on retroactivity represents a new development in Bergson’s thought that he is unable to develop fully precisely because he is tied to an idea of genius interpreted as a function of the will. (shrink)