This essay, responding to recent work of David Cummiskey and Barcia Baron, defends the thesis that imperfect duty of beneficence in Kant's The Metaphysics of Morals is a rather minimal, indeterminate requirement but must be supplemented by judgement guided by the values expressed in Kant's formulas of the Categorical Imperative. So understood, Kant's ethics is neither as permissive nor as inflexibly demanding as various commentators have thought. Although Kant does not acknowledge supererogation as a moral category, arguably his position implies (...) that some acts are meritorious and more than required. (shrink)

Thomas E. Hill, Jr.; Servility and Self-Respect, The Monist, Volume 57, Issue 1, 1 January 1973, Pages 87–104, https://doi.org/10.5840/monist197357135.

We address the ethics of scenarios in which one party entraps, intentionally tempts or intentionally tests the virtue of another. We classify, in a new manner, three distinct types of acts that are of concern, namely acts of entrapment, of intentional temptation and of virtue testing. Our classification is, for each kind of scenario, of itself neutral concerning the question whether the agent acts permissibly. We explain why acts of entrapment are more ethically objectionable than like acts of intentional temptation (...) and why these, in turn, are more ethically objectionable than like acts of virtue testing. Along the way, we scrutinize, and eventually reject, the view that acts of entrapment are ethically unacceptable because intentional temptation is involved in entrapment. (shrink)

Objectives: To explore how subjects in a placebo-controlled vitamin A supplementation trial among Ghanaian women aged 15–45 years perceive the trial and whether they know that not all trial capsules are the same, and to identify factors associated with this knowledge.Methods: 60 semistructured interviews and 12 focus groups were conducted to explore subjects’ perceptions of the trial. Steps were taken to address areas of low comprehension, including retraining fieldworkers. 1971 trial subjects were randomly selected for a survey measuring their knowledge (...) that not all trial capsules are the same. The subjects’ fieldworkers were also interviewed about their characteristics and trial knowledge. Factors associated with knowledge were explored using multi-level modeling.Results: Although subjects knew they were taking part in research, most thought they were receiving an active and beneficial medication. Variables associated with knowledge were education and district of residence. Radio broadcasts benefited those with some schooling. Fieldworkers’ characteristics were not associated with subjects’ knowledge.Conclusions: Research and debate on new or improved consent procedures are urgently required, particularly for subjects with little education. (shrink)

This introduction argues for the importance of Suárez’s philosophy for historians of medieval philosophy as well as historians of early modern philosophy. It also provides synopses of each of the essays in the volume and a brief biography of Suárez, placing his life and works into some historical context.

I defend the relatively orthodox view that reasons for action are premises in good practical reasoning, against recent counterexamples that suggest that, like “government house” moral justifications, some reasons are to be ignored in deliberation. I also explain, positively, what is right about the orthodoxy. Unless reasons are premises in good practical reasoning, reasons cannot be normative in the way they are usually taken to be, and relatedly, are unfit to play certain familiar theoretical and related everyday roles that give (...) many appeals to reasons their distinctive point. (shrink)

Consider normative properties and facts, such as facts consisting in something's being what you ought to do, or the property of being morally wrong. Normative naturalism is the view that normative properties and facts such as these exist, and that they are natural properties and facts. Some suspect, however, that normativity is incompatible with a wholly naturalistic worldview: that the normative couldn't be natural because it's somehow “just too different” from the natural. I critically examine recent forms of this “just (...) too different” objection to normative naturalism, with a view to making the debate accessible to a general philosophical audience. (shrink)

With the progress of science we become more and more aware of the undiscovered, and of our feebleness to visualize or express what is dimly known to us. Geologists estimate that man evolved some 1,000,000 years ago on an earth which astronomers say is some 2,000,000,000 years old. Caution is required in accepting such figures, for we must remember how far out Lord Kelvin was in estimating the age of the earth—before the discovery of radium. Man has been civilized for (...) some 5,000 years, and Galileo, with his telescope and revolutionary ideas, lived some 300 years ago. There may be, we are told, a million million years before the sun grows weak and the earth becomes farther from the sun so that all life freezes. Long before this man may use up the metals available for his machines, and those ready sources of energy now so wastefully used, by which he at present multiplies and swarms in cities. In such case he will return through birth control or famine, or both, to a simple, uncrowded, pastoral existence. There is little likelihood of his being able to use atomic energy, other than that which reaches the earth as sun radiation and is available directly or as energy stored in water-power, wood, coal, and oil. (shrink)

Constitutivists attempt to ground reasons for action in the constitutive features of agency. Central to Enoch's famous “shmagency” objection to constitutivism is the idea that constitutivists should worry about the question whether there is reason to be an agent rather than a “shmagent”-where a shmagent is a non-agent being who lacks the constitutive features of agency, but is otherwise as similar to agents as can be. I explain why constitutivism isn’t in trouble even if there’s no reason to be an (...) agent. The nature of agency can in principle ground authoritative reasons for agents to act, even if there isn’t, in addition, a reason to be an agent. Relatedly, I explain why a prominent strand in previous responses to Enoch is misleading in focusing on whether the request for reasons to be an agent, as posed by the shmagent, is even possible or intelligible. Even if the shmagent’s request for reasons is possible and intelligible-as I argue it is-this doesn’t matter for constitutivists, for the request is misguided: constitutivists need no reasons to be an agent. (shrink)

With the progress of science we become more and more aware of the undiscovered, and of our feebleness to visualize or express what is dimly known to us. Geologists estimate that man evolved some 1,000,000 years ago on an earth which astronomers say is some 2,000,000,000 years old. Caution is required in accepting such figures, for we must remember how far out Lord Kelvin was in estimating the age of the earth—before the discovery of radium. Man has been civilized for (...) some 5,000 years, and Galileo, with his telescope and revolutionary ideas, lived some 300 years ago. There may be, we are told, a million million years before the sun grows weak and the earth becomes farther from the sun so that all life freezes. Long before this man may use up the metals available for his machines, and those ready sources of energy now so wastefully used, by which he at present multiplies and swarms in cities. In such case he will return through birth control or famine, or both, to a simple, uncrowded, pastoral existence. There is little likelihood of his being able to use atomic energy, other than that which reaches the earth as sun radiation and is available directly or as energy stored in water-power, wood, coal, and oil. (shrink)

There is a wealth of evidence which indicates that arguments are not very efficient tools for changing minds. Against this skepticism, Novaes (2023) presents evidence that, given the right social context, arguments sometimes play a significant role in belief revision. However, drawing on Levy (2021), I argue that the evidence Novaes cites is compatible with the view that it is not arguments that change individual minds but instead belief outsourcing that occurs alongside the consideration of arguments.

The moral significance of preserving natural environments is not entirely an issue of rights and social utility, for a person’s attitude toward nature may be importantly connected with virtues or human excellences. The question is, “What sort of person would destroy the natural environment--or even see its value solely in cost/benefit terms?” The answer I suggest is that willingness to do so may well reveal the absence of traits which are a natural basis for a proper humility, self-acceptance, gratitude, and (...) appreciation of the good in others. (shrink)

For different reasons, Husserl's original, thought-provoking ideas on the philosophy of logic and mathematics have been ignored, misunderstood, even despised, by analytic philosophers and phenomenologists alike, who have been content to barricade themselves behind walls of ideological prejudices. Yet, for several decades, Husserl was almost continuously in close professional and personal contact with those who created, reshaped and revolutionized 20th century philosophy of mathematics, logic, science and language in both the analytic and phenomenological schools, people whom those other makers of (...) 20th century philosophy, Russell, Frege, Wittgenstein and their followers, rarely, if ever, met. Independently of them, Husserl offered alternatives to the well-trodden paths of logicism, nominalism, formalism and intuitionism. He presented a well-articulated, thoroughly argued case for logic as an objective science, but was not philosophically naive to the point of not seeing the role of subjectivity in shaping the sense of the reality facing objective science. Given the preeminent role that philosophy of logic and philosophy of mathematics have played in transforming the way philosophy has been done since Husserl's time, and given the depth of his insights and his obvious expertise in those fields, his ideas need to be integrated into present-day, mainstream philosophy. Here, philosopher Claire Ortiz Hill and mathematician-philosopher Jairo da Silva offer a wealth of interesting insights intended to subvert the many mistaken idees recues about the development of Husserl's thought and reestablish broken ties between it and philosophy now. (shrink)

This contrasts Kant's view of conscience, and its merits, with alternative views. These alternatives are a popular religious view, a social relativist conception, and Joseph Butler's philosophical account. Kant's view avoids the epistemological problems of the first view, but accepts its idea that conscience is often experienced as an unsolicited voice. Kant denies the metaethical scepticism of social relativists, but agrees with them that conscience expresses a dissonance between our acts and our moral beliefs rather than an independent perception of (...) what is truly right or wrong. Kant agrees with Butler that reason, in due reflection, is the source of justified moral beliefs, but he distinguishes moral reasoning and judgement about what acts are permissible from conscience, which is an inner forum in which a verdict of innocence or guilt is pronounced on the basis of the moral beliefs that we already have. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.2 (2001) 281-299 [Access article in PDF] Eighteenth-Century Anticipations of the Sociology of Conflict: The Case of Adam Ferguson Lisa Hill Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, is a most interesting figure in the history of sociological thought. Though sometimes perceived as a secondary figure, there have been some attempts to recover him as one of, if not (...) the first "sociologist." 1 Much has been written about Ferguson's contribution to modern social science; 2 this article focuses upon his highly prescient work in the area of conflict theory. It is important to note at the outset, however, that Ferguson's inspiration for these apparently novel insights is classical. His early social theory is curious because it "straddles traditions"; 3 on the one hand he owes a profound debt to classical civic humanism, [End Page 281] but on the other his work quite authentically signposts the emergence of social science proper. This bridging of traditions in Ferguson is a key theme of this paper.Ferguson relies heavily upon conflict in his explanation of historical processes and in the securing of social order. Conflict generates many positive unintended consequences; it leads to the formation of the state, formal defense institutions, and large scale communities; and it plays a pivotal role in the development of the moral personality and contributes to the maintenance of stability and social cohesion. Conflict preserves the balance of powers in government and prevents the encroachment of despotism. In this regard, then, conflict cannot be regarded as wholly unnecessary, destructive, or undesirable but as integral to progress and the march towards civilization. 4Gladys Bryson has noted that Ferguson's exposition of conflict was original with him and "set him off from the conventional position of his century." 5 Even so the benefits of conflict and dissension had been canvassed long before by Tacitus and Machiavelli, both of whom influenced Ferguson's analysis. 6 In it he challenges the false dichotomy promulgated by contractarians of tranquil society on the one hand and violent, isolated chaos on the other; rather, he argues, we are social beings with belligerent tendencies. He also confronts the Aristotelian (and later Hobbesian) premise that the key purpose of society is stability and social harmony. Instead, Ferguson lays great stress on the positive benefits of competition and conflict in our social development and in the maintenance of community. Conflict is just as natural as repose and may even be equally desirable. In this Ferguson indicates his debt to Socrates' suggestion that "some circumstances in the lot of mankind" prompt us to be social, while others prompt us "to war and dissension." 7 As a highlander, Ferguson was well acquainted with the realities of conflict. He also had a brief but lively career as chaplain to the Black Watch Regiment, 8 and it seems likely that his unique views on the positive aspects of "opposition" were reinforced by this experience.Because of this emphasis Ludwig Gumplowicz identified Ferguson as the first significant exponent of the "group struggle" theory of social development. 9 [End Page 282] Ferguson's discussion of conflict and its unintended effects is also partly responsible for his modern reputation as "father of sociology"; 10 and although it is doubtful that he deserves the title, Ferguson was probably the first thinker to place so great an emphasis upon the positive aspects of conflict. 11 The discussion also anticipates nineteenth- and twentieth-century conflict theory in positing conflict as an authentic medium, even form, of solidary association, there is an early dialectical historiography in which class conflict is shown to give rise to constitutional government. A particularly interesting aspect of the discussion is Ferguson's anticipation of Norbert Elias's work on the social function of competitive sport, particularly its role in the process of achieving "civilization."Because of Ferguson's providentialism and in particular his emphasis on the virtue of beneficence, 12 John Bernstein has suggested that "Ferguson's admiration for the qualities revealed in conflict constitute... (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of practical reason often refer vaguely to the Kantian conception of reasons as an alternative to various means-ends theories, but it is rarely clear what this is supposed to be, except that somehow moral concerns are supposed to fare better under the Kantian conception. The theories of Nagel, Gewirth, Darwall, and Donagan have been labeled “Kantian” because they deviate strikingly from standard preference models, but their roots in Kant have not been traced in detail and important differences may (...) go unnoticed. All this is not surprising, of course, because Kant’s conception of practical reason is inseparable from his ideas of freedom, which are notoriously difficult and controversial. It is hard enough to characterize these ideas accurately in Kantian terminology, harder still to explain them in terms of contemporary debates about reasons for action. (shrink)

A psychiatrist recounts a case of a man presenting with severe depression who claimed to have abused children and his pet dog.Clinical management of the case hinged on whether this claim was true, a lie or delusional. The uncertainty over this raised complex ethical dilemmas regarding confidentiality and protection of the public.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has developed a novel framework for assessing and communicating uncertainty in the findings published in their periodic assessment reports. But how should these uncertainty assessments inform decisions? We take a formal decision-making perspective to investigate how scientific input formulated in the IPCC’s novel framework might inform decisions in a principled way through a normative decision model.