Informed consent is a central topic in contemporary biomedical ethics. Yet attempts to set defensible and feasible standards for consenting have led to persistent difficulties. In Rethinking Informed Consent in Bioethics Neil Manson and Onora O'Neill set debates about informed consent in medicine and research in a fresh light. They show why informed consent cannot be fully specific or fully explicit, and why more specific consent is not always ethically better. They argue that consent needs distinctive communicative transactions, by (...) which other obligations, prohibitions, and rights can be waived or set aside in controlled and specific ways. Their book offers a coherent, wide-ranging and practical account of the role of consent in biomedicine which will be valuable to readers working in a range of areas in bioethics, medicine and law. (shrink)

This book challenges the view that bad beliefs - beliefs that blatantly conflict with easily available evidence - can largely be explained by widespread irrationality, instead arguing that ordinary people are rational agents whose beliefs are the result of their rational response to the evidence they're presented with.

On normative order -- On institutional order-- Law and the constitutional state -- A problem : rules or habits? -- On persons -- Wrongs and duties -- Legal positions and relations : rights and obligations -- Legal relations and things : property -- Legal powers and validity -- Powers and public law : law and politics -- Constraints on power : fundamental rights -- Criminal law and civil society : law and morality -- Private law and civil society : law (...) and economy -- Positive law and moral autonomy -- On law and justice -- Law and values : reflections on method. (shrink)

The Taming of the True poses a broad challenge to realist views of meaning and truth that have been prominent in recent philosophy. Neil Tennant argues compellingly that every truth is knowable, and that an effective logical system can be based on this principle. He lays the foundations for global semantic anti-realism and extends its consequences from the philosophy of mathematics and logic to the theory of meaning, metaphysics, and epistemology.

Neil Van Leeuwen argues that many religious people do not act and infer as we would expect believers to act and infer, and on this basis argues that they are not genuine believers. They take some other, nondoxastic, attitude to the claims they profess to believe. In this short commentary, I argue that in many (but far from all) such cases, the content, and not the attitude, explains the departures from the inferential and behavioral stereotype we associate with belief.

This book discusses theories of legal reasoning and provides an overall view of the rhetoric of legal justification. It shows how and why lawyers arguments can be rationally persuasive even though rarely, if ever, logically conclusive or compelling. It examines the role of "legal syllogism" and universality of legal reasoning, looking at arguments of consequentialism and principle, and concludes by questioning the infallibility of judges as lawmakers.

Incentives and reasons -- Values and human nature -- Right and wrong -- Questions of trust -- Autonomy and freedom -- Obedience, freedom, and engagement : or utility? -- Society, property, and commerce -- On justice -- Using freedom well -- Judging : legal cases and moral questions -- Practical reason, law, and state.

Abstract The typical explanation of an event or process which attracts the label ‘conspiracy theory’ is an explanation that conflicts with the account advanced by the relevant epistemic authorities. I argue that both for the layperson and for the intellectual, it is almost never rational to accept such a conspiracy theory. Knowledge is not merely shallowly social, in the manner recognized by social epistemology, it is also constitutively social: many kinds of knowledge only become accessible thanks to the agent's embedding (...) in an environment that includes other epistemic agents. Moreover, advances in knowledge typically require ongoing immersion in this social environment. But the intellectual who embraces a conspiracy theory risks cutting herself off from this environment, and therefore epistemically disabling herself. Embracing a conspiracy theory therefore places at risk the ability to engage in genuine enquiry, including the enquiry needed properly to evaluate the conspiracy theory. (shrink)

This book was written with my University of Mississippi "Philosophy of Religion" students in mind. Many of them have no prior experience with philosophy. That is why Chapter One begins with a crash course in philosophy, with an emphasis on the basic concepts in logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. While not all students may need to cover that material, quite a few will. And for the rest, a refresher never hurts. I am sure this applies to many "Philosophy of Religion" courses (...) taught elsewhere. With that in mind, instructors are advised to begin with Chapter One. The subsequent chapters have been arranged in sequence, with each chapter building on the prior ones. However, the chapters are not that tightly bound, so instructors could cover the chapters out of sequence without much disruption. Key terms are underlined. Sometimes the key terms also occur with an associated hyperlink. Other terms have a hyperlink without a corresponding key term. In the print the hyperlink is included as a footnote, in the ebooks the term is hyperlinked [Production - check the ebooks will have hyperlinbks - amend wording here if not]. In general, the hyperlinks follow a pattern. First, key terms are often linked to entries in online academic encyclopedias - either The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, or The Encyclopedia Britannica. [Students are recommended also to consult The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967), edited by Paul Edwards; it is still an excellent resource and has entries corresponding to many key terms. Almost every university library has a copy.] Second, named individuals are sometimes linked to an encyclopedia entry. In both sorts of cases, the URL is provided in an endnote at the end of each chapter. No other description of the contents of the web page will be given. In most other cases, a short description of the contents of the web page is provided in the endnote. Each chapter includes an annotated bibliography for more advanced material. Helpful material is also available on the website for this book. This material includes a glossary, a sample syllabus (with recommended readings), study questions, and a test bank, among other features. (shrink)

On his death in 2007, Richard Rorty was heralded by the New York Times as “one of the world’s most influential contemporary thinkers.” Controversial on the left and the right for his critiques of objectivity and political radicalism, Rorty experienced a renown denied to all but a handful of living philosophers. In this masterly biography, Neil Gross explores the path of Rorty’s thought over the decades in order to trace the intellectual and professional journey that led him to that (...) prominence. The child of a pair of leftist writers who worried that their precocious son “wasn’t rebellious enough,” Rorty enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen. There he came under the tutelage of polymath Richard McKeon, whose catholic approach to philosophical systems would profoundly influence Rorty’s own thought. Doctoral work at Yale led to Rorty’s landing a job at Princeton, where his colleagues were primarily analytic philosophers. With a series of publications in the 1960s, Rorty quickly established himself as a strong thinker in that tradition—but by the late 1970s Rorty had eschewed the idea of objective truth altogether, urging philosophers to take a “relaxed attitude” toward the question of logical rigor. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, he argued that philosophers should instead open themselves up to multiple methods of thought and sources of knowledge—an approach that would culminate in the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature , one of the most seminal and controversial philosophical works of our time. In clear and compelling fashion, Gross sets that surprising shift in Rorty’s thought in the context of his life and social experiences, revealing the many disparate influences that contribute to the making of knowledge. As much a book about the growth of ideas as it is a biography of a philosopher, Richard Rorty will provide readers with a fresh understanding of both the man and the course of twentieth-century thought. (shrink)

Introduction : the existence of mental illness -- The likeness argument -- The categorical argument -- Metaphor -- Two metaphors from physical medicine -- The metaphor of mental illness -- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, social construction, and metaphor -- Metaphors and models.

In addition to the Frege point, Frege also argued for the force-content distinction from the fact that an affirmative answer to a yes-no question constitutes an assertion. I argue that this fact more readily supports the view that questions operate on and present assertions and other forceful acts themselves. Force is neither added to propositions as on the traditional view, nor is it cancelled as has recently been proposed. Rather higher level acts such as questioning, but also e.g. conditionalizing, embed (...) assertive or directive acts that are forceful and committal, while suspending commitment to them. The Frege point confounds different varieties of force and the question whether something is merely presented for consideration with the question what is so presented. Force is representational: through assertoric and directive force indicators subjects non-conceptually present positions of theoretical or practical knowledge, while interrogative acts indicate positions of wondering which strive for such knowledge. (shrink)

Frege argued for the force-content distinction not only by appealing to the logical and fictional contexts which are most closely associated with the “Frege point", but also based on the fact that an affirmative answer to a yes-no question constitutes an assertion. Supposedly this is only intelligible if the question contains a forceless thought or proposition which an affirmative answer then asserts. Against this I argue that this fact more readily supports the view that questions operate on assertions and other (...) forceful acts themselves. Force is neither added to propositions as on the traditional view, nor is it cancelled as has recently been proposed. Rather higher-level acts such as questioning, but also e.g. conditionalizing, embed and present assertoric or directive acts that are forceful and committal, while suspending commitment to them. The Frege point confounds different varieties of force and the question whether something is merely presented for consideration with the question what is so presented. Force is representational: through assertoric and directive force indicators subjects non-conceptually present positions of theoretical or practical knowledge, while interrogative acts indicate positions of wondering which strive for such knowledge. (shrink)

Raimo Tuomela’s most important contribution to the philosophy of collective intentionality was his development of the notion of the we-mode. In my chapter I extend the notion of we-mode to that of role-mode, the mode in which individual and collective subjects feel, think and act as occupants of roles within groups and institutional structures. I focus on how being in role-mode is manifest in the minds of subjects and on the following points. First, I argue that both we-mode and role-mode (...) are best thought of as further modifications of I-consciousness, respectively we-consciousness. Second, role-mode is further characterized by the fact that subjects will take positions as role occupants that they won’t take as mere individuals, or we-mode group members, or in other roles. Third, such divergences are only possible against a background of agreements between positions taken in different modes. Fourth, such divergences are also grounded in decision making procedures and the accessibility and admissibility of sources of evidence. Fifth, role-mode goes all the way down, that is, it is also manifest in how subjects feel, move and comport themselves when they occupy their roles. To put it into fashionable jargon, it is embodied and enacted. (shrink)

McKenna’s critique (rather than criticisms) of idealized approaches to epistemology is an important contribution to the literature. In this brief discussion, I set out his main concerns about more idealized approaches, within and beyond social epistemology, before turning to some issues I think he neglects. I suggest that it’s important to pay attention to the prestige hierarchy in philosophy, and to how that hierarchy can serve ideological purposes. The greater prestige of more abstract approaches plays a role in determining what (...) issues and what voices we attend to. (shrink)

Harry S. Broudy has studied the utility of general education through the development and testing of his Newspaper Test of the Uses of Schooling (NPT). The results of research with a new version of the NPT are reported in this essay and some options for future research are presented. The results of the study indicate that continued development and testing of the NPT will prove important. Promising new versions of the test are suggested for future research to pursue, including a (...) Hypertest version. Additional instruments and research strategies are also suggested that could be used to broaden the "search for evidence" of the uses of schooling. (shrink)

We can infer moral conclusions from nonmoral evidence using a three-step procedure. First, we distinguish the processes generating belief so that their reliability in generating true belief is statistically predictable. Second, we assess the processes’ reliability, perhaps by observing how frequently they generate true nonmoral belief or logically inconsistent beliefs. Third, we adjust our credence in moral propositions in light of the truth ratios of the processes generating beliefs in them. This inferential route involves empirically discovering truths of the form (...) “Process P, which generates belief in moral proposition M, has truth ratio T", and using them to discover probabilities for moral propositions. The inferential route is noncircular, and progress along it is driven fundamentally by induction. (shrink)

Introduction HLA Hart: A biographical sketch Jurisprudence is the theoretical study of a practical subject. Its object is to achieve a systematic and ...

In this paper I outline the PAIR account of joint attention as a perceptual-practical, affectively charged intentional relation. I argue that to explain joint attention we need to leave the received understanding of propositions and propositional attitudes and the picture of content connected to it behind and embrace the notions of subject mode and position mode content. I also explore the relation between joint attention and communication.

Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman.

Essays devoted to the work of the late Neil Wilson, Canadian philosopher and contributor to the field of semantic analysis that emerged from the fusion of logic, pragmatism, and ontology. Many of the essays in this volume take their initial inspiration from Wilson's seminal work Substances Without Substrata.

Most philosophers think that phenomenal consciousness underlies, or at any rate makes a large contribution, to moral considerability. This paper argues that many such accounts invoke question-begging arguments. Moreover, they’re unable to explain apparent differences in moral status across and within different species. In the light of these problems, I argue that we ought to take very seriously a view according to which moral considerability is grounded in functional properties. Phenomenal consciousness may be sufficient for having a moral value, but (...) it may not be necessary, and it may contribute relatively little to our overall considerability. (shrink)

1. T. Kommentar zum 7. Buch der Metaphysik.

In one version of the Narcissus myth, Narcissus spurns a young suitor, Aminias, who is heartbroken as a result. Narcissus offers Aminias a sword to deal with his misery, which Aminias duly uses to...

Are moral properties intellectually indispensable, and, if so, what consequences does this have for our understanding of their nature, and of our talk and knowledge of them? Are mathematical objects intellectually indispensable, and, if so, what consequences does this have for our understanding of their nature, and of our talk and knowledge of them? What similarities are there, if any, in the answers to the first two questions? Can comparison of the two cases shed light on which answers are most (...) plausible in either case? This chapter – the introduction to the volume Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics – elucidates these questions and sketches their history. (shrink)

This essay offers a critical examination of Neil Ormerod’s treatment of the debate between Lonergan and Gilson on the question of being. Although this debate concerns a highly technical issue of metaphysics and epistemology, it remains germane and relevant, especially within the field of Christian thought. In Ormerod’s careful and for the most part generous examination of this debate, he argues that being for Gilson is perceived through the senses, whereas for Lonergan being is intended in the questions that (...) arise from the relevant sense data. Where Gilson’s philosophy gives priority to the metaphysics of being, Lonergan gives priority to epistemology and cognitional theory. In arguing for the superiority of Lonergan’s approach to the question of being, Ormerod relies on a fundamental misunderstanding of Gilson’s metaphysics. By appeal to the more recent work of Kenneth Schmitz, this essay proposes a proper understanding of Gilson’s metaphysics as a basis for a more conciliatory relationship between these two giants in modern Christian philosophy who too often are pitted against one another. (shrink)

An account of how a rational agent should revise beliefs in the light of new evidence.

We examine the sense in which logic is a priori, and explain how mathematical theories can be dichotomized non-trivially into analytic and synthetic portions. We argue that Core Logic contains exactly the a-priori-because-analytically-valid deductive principles. We introduce the reader to Core Logic by explaining its relationship to other logical systems, and stating its rules of inference. Important metatheorems about Core Logic are reported, and its important features noted. Core Logic can serve as the basis for a foundational program that could (...) be called Natural Logicism, an exposition of which will build on the (meta)logical ideas explained here. (shrink)

Parents play a critical role in their child’s personal development and day-to-day experiences. However, as digital technologies are increasingly embedded in most New Zealand children’s everyday life activities parents face the task of ensuring their child’s online safety. To do so, they need to understand the way their child engages with and through these tools and make sense of the rapidly changing, and more technically complex, nature of digital devices. This presents a digital parenting dilemma: maximising children’s online opportunities while (...) minimising online risks and potential harm. This factsheet presents evidence about digital parenting in New Zealand based on nationally representative data collected from parents, caregivers and whānau and their children aged 9-17. It uses measures from the Global Kids Online project to explore the prevalence of different practices used by New Zealand parents to influence or mediate children’s internet use. (shrink)

Awarding rights to rivers, forests, and other environmental entities (EEs) is a new and increasingly popular approach to environmental protection. The distinctive feature of such rights of nature (RoN) legislation is that direct duties are owed to the EEs. This paper presents a novel rebuttal of the strongest argument against RoN: the no interest argument. The crux of this argument is that because EEs are not sentient, they cannot possess the kinds of interests necessary to ground direct duties. Therefore, they (...) cannot be legitimate rights-bearers. After considering and rejecting standard responses to this argument, the paper challenges its fundamental assumption: that rights-correlative duties must be grounded in the interests of the rights-bearer. The paper then presents the RoN critic with a dilemma. The critic must either accept that EEs are legitimate rights-bearers, or delegitimise many well-established rights-bearers along with EEs. Either way, the no interest argument loses its force. (shrink)

John McDowell claims that virtuous people recognize moral reasons using a perceptual capacity that doesn't include desire. I show that the phenomena he cites are better explained if desire makes us see considerations favoring its satisfaction as reasons. The salience of moral considerations to the virtuous, like the salience of food to the hungry, exemplifies the emotional and attentional effects of desire. I offer a desire-based account of how we can follow uncodifiable rules of common-sense morality and how some reasons (...) can be silenced in deliberation. I conclude by arguing that animals can be virtuous by having the right desires. (shrink)

This volume capitalizes on a growth of interest in Nietzsche's work on morality from two sides -- from scholars of the history of philosophy and from ...

This essay discusses the moral costs and benefits of sexual technology. It starts with first-wave sexual technology, such as dating apps, messaging apps, and social networks, and then discusses second-wave sexual technology, which offers users more immersive experiences, such as virtual reality and sex robots. The paper argues that, overall, such technologies provide more benefits than they incur costs. Finally, the paper discusses the rise of a new identity—digisexuality, explaining that digisexuals are people who consider sexual technology an essential part (...) of who they are, and who might forego relationships with other people. The paper argues that the development of this new identity is a good thing, and that reasons against it are not convincing. (shrink)

This article addresses two areas of continuing controversy about consent in clinical research: the question of when consent to low risk research is necessary, and the question of when consent to research is valid. The article identifies a number of considerations relevant to determining whether consent is necessary, chief of which is whether the study would involve subjects in ways that would (otherwise) infringe their rights. When consent is necessary, there is a further question of under what conditions consent is (...) valid or successful in waiving a right. The most influential account of validity conditions is non-moralized, in the sense that the conditions make no essential reference to whether the researcher soliciting consent has obtained it in a way that wrongs the subject. The article examines the implications of this account, and compares it with recent accounts that moralize some of the validity conditions. -/- . (shrink)

This factsheet presents findings from a quantitative study looking at adults’ experiences of sending and sharing potentially harmful digital communications in New Zealand. Typically research into harmful digital communications focuses on the experiences of those on the receiving end – the victims. However, to better address the distress and harm caused, information is needed about the people sending and sharing potentially harmful messages and posts. In this study we asked adult New Zealanders whether they had sent potentially harmful digital communications (...) in the previous year and if so, how often they had done this, who they were sent to, the channel(s) they used, and the reason for doing this. (shrink)