In comparison to Aristotle, Plato's general understanding of law receives little attention in legal theory, due in part to ongoing perceptions of him as a mystic or a totalitarian. However, some of the critical or communitarian themes that have guided theorists since Aristotle find strong expression in Plato's work. More than any thinker until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Plato rejects the rank individualism and self-interest which, in his view, emerge from democratic legal culture. He rejects schisms between legal norms (...) and community values, institutional separation of law from morals, intricate regimes of legislation and adjudication, and a culture of rampant litigation. He rejects the alienation of individuals, from each other and from their communities, that is so easily bred within highly complex political and legal systems. An understanding of his approach to some of the classic questions of legal theory provides insight not only into some central ideas of his own thought, but also into the roots of critical and communitarian critiques of law. (shrink)

Justice, Sustainability, and Security not only enhances our knowledge of these issues, but it teases out our moral dimensions and offer prescriptions for how governments and global actors might craft their policies to better consider their effects on the global human condition.

Abstract Finding a moral justification for humanitarian intervention has been the objective of a great deal of academic inquiry in recent years. Most of these treatments, however, make certain arguments or assumptions about the morality of humanitarian intervention without fully exploring their precise philosophical underpinnings, which has led to an increasingly disjointed body of literature. The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to suggest that the conventional arguments and assumptions made about the morality of humanitarian intervention can be encompassed in (...) what is essentially a consequentialist framework. After a brief examination of consequentialist ethics, this essay reveals a number of morally relevant factors concerning humanitarian intervention, wherein I suggest that the general consensus in the literature on these factors constitutes ?commonsense morality?. In doing so, I argue that consequentialism as a theory of the right provides the best fit with commonsense morality on humanitarian intervention. This is important not only to reveal the precise philosophical underpinnings of the debate, but also to bring ethical, prudential and political considerations together in a coherent ethical discourse. (shrink)

Armed reprisals are the limited use of military force in response to unlawful actions perpetrated against states. Historically, reprisals provided a military remedy for states that had been wronged by another state without having to resort to all-out war in order to counter or deter such wrongful actions. While reprisals are broadly believed to have been outlawed by the UN Charter, states continue to routinely undertake such self-help measures. As part of the roundtable, “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” this essay (...) examines the doctrine of armed reprisals in light of recent instances of states using force “short of war” in this manner. We argue that the ban on reprisals has been largely ignored by states, and that recent attempts to apply the laws of armed conflict to the cyber domain are further weakening this prohibition. We conclude that this is a potentially dangerous development that lowers the bar for resorting to military force, risking escalation and thereby further destabilizing the international system. (shrink)

Despite the positive effects of including patients’ preferences into therapy on psychotherapy outcomes, there are still few thoroughly validated assessment tools at hand. We translated the 18-item Cooper-Norcross Inventory of Preferences into German and aimed at replicating its factor structure. Further, we investigated the reliability of the questionnaire and its convergence with trait measures. A heterogeneous sample of N = 969 participants took part in our online survey. Performing ESEM models, we found acceptable model fit for a four-factor structure similar (...) to the original factor structure. Furthermore, we propose an alternative model following the adjustment of single items. The German C-NIP showed acceptable to good reliability, as well as small correlations with Big-Five personality traits, trait and attachment anxiety, locus of control, and temporal focus. However, we recommend further replication of the factor structure and further validation of the C-NIP. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that a particular war is just or unjust, that terrorism is always wrong, or that torture can sometimes be morally justified? What are the moral bases for the possession or use of nuclear weapons, intervening in other nations' civil wars, or being a bystander to genocide? Such questions take us to the heart of what is morally right and wrong behaviour in our world. Global Violence: Ethical and Political Issues provides readers with the analytical (...) tools to better understand the suppositions that underlie the debates about such questions, as well as equipping them to advance their own reasoned and informed moral analyses of these topics. The book engages different normative approaches from the fields of ethics, international relations and political philosophy and uses them to examine a set of case studies on the subjects of inter-state and civil war, nuclear weapons, terrorism, torture and genocide. (shrink)

What does it mean to say that a particular war is just or unjust, that terrorism is always wrong, or that torture can sometimes be morally justified? What are the moral bases for the possession or use of nuclear weapons, intervening in other countries’ civil wars, or being a bystander to genocide? Such questions take us to the heart of what is morally right and wrong behaviour in our world. Global Violence: Ethical and Political Issues provides readers with the analytical (...) tools to better understand the suppositions that underlie the debates about such questions, as well as advances its own reasoned and informed ethical analyses of these topics. The book engages different normative approaches from the fields of ethics, political theory, and international relations and uses them to examine a set of case studies on the subjects of inter-state and civil war, nuclear weapons, terrorism, torture and genocide. (shrink)

Legal scholars’ interest in Shakespeare has often focused on conventional legal rules and procedures, such as those of The Merchant of Venice or Measure for Measure. Those plays certainly reveal systemic injustice, but within stable, prosperous societies, which enjoy a generally well-functioning legal order. In contrast, Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy explores the conditions for the very possibility of a legal system, in terms not unlike those described by Hobbes a half-century later. The first tetralogy's deeply collapsed, quasi-anarchic society lacks any (...) functioning legal regime. Its power politics are not, as in many of Shakespeare's other plays, merely latent, lurking beneath the patina of an otherwise functioning legal order. They pervade all of society. Dissenting from a long critical tradition, this article suggests that the figure of Henry VI does not merely represent antiquated medievalism or inept rule. Through Henry's constant recourse to legal process, arbitration and anti-militarism, the first tetralogy goes beyond questions about how to establish a functioning legal order. It examines the possibility, and meaning, of a just one. (shrink)

Introduction -- Nietzsche's echo -- Injustice as the negation of justice -- Injustice as disunity -- Injustice as mismeasurement -- Injustice as unity -- Injustice as measurement -- Measurement and modernity.

The Logic of Liberal Rights uses basic logic to develop a model of argument presupposed in all disputes about civil rights and liberties. No prior training in logic is required, as each step is explained. This analysis does not merely apply general logic to legal arguments but is also specifically tailored to the issues of civil rights and liberties. It shows that all arguments about civil rights and liberties presuppose one fixed structure and that there can be no original argument (...) in rights disputes, except within the confines of that structure. Concepts arising in disputes about rights, like 'liberal' or 'democratic', are not mere abstractions but have a fixed and precise character. This book integrates themes in legal theory, political science and moral philosophy, as well as the philosophy of logic and language. For the advanced scholar, the book provides a model presupposed by leading theoretical schools . For the student it provides a systematic theory of civil rights and liberties. Examples are drawn from the European Convention in Human Rights but no special knowledge of the Convention is assumed, as the issues analysed arise throughout the world. Such issues include problems of free speech, religious freedom, privacy, torture, unlawful detention and private property. (shrink)

This article explores the extent to which the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 coheres with the normative precepts of liberalism as an international political theory. Beginning with a Lockean liberal theory of the state, this article first examines the evolution of international liberalism in order to identify the fundamental normative postulates of liberal theory as it pertains to international relations, especially regarding the use of military force. The article then advances two interrelated arguments: First, that the underpinnings of the (...) decision to invade Iraq embodied in the Bush Doctrine draw heavily from the liberal tradition, though still depart from it in important ways. Second, that the Bush Doctrine as manifested in the Iraq war reflects in many ways the liberal thinking that prevailed during the interwar years and is therefore susceptible to a similar charge of ‘utopianism’ that was leveled against interwar liberalism by E. H. Carr in his Twenty Years' Crisis. (shrink)

Bullying often results in negative coping in victims, including an increased consumption of alcohol. Recently, however, an increase in alcohol use has also been reported among perpetrators of bullying. The factors triggering this pattern are still unclear. We investigated the role of empathy in the interaction between bullying and alcohol use in an adolescent sample (IMAGEN) at age 13.97 (±0.53) years (baseline (BL), N = 2165, 50.9% female) and age 16.51 (±0.61) years (follow-up 1 (FU1), N = 1185, 54.9% female). (...) General empathic distress served as a significant moderator of alcohol use in perpetrators (F9, 493 = 17.978, p < 0.01), which was specific for males and FU1. Male perpetrators, who are generally less sensitive to distress, might thus be more vulnerable to alcohol abuse. (shrink)

Anesthesiology training programs are tasked with equipping trainees with the skills to become medically and ethically competent in the practice of anesthesia and to be prepared to obtain board certification, yet there is currently no standardized ethics curriculum within anesthesia training programs in the United States. To bridge this gap, and to provide a validated ethics curriculum to meet the aforementioned needs, in July 2021, a survey was sent to anesthesia scholars in the field of biomedical ethics to identify key (...) areas that should be included in such an ethics curriculum. The responses were rated on a Likert scale and ranked. This paper identifies the top ten topics identified as high priority for inclusion in an anesthesiology training program and consequently deemed most relevant to meet the educational needs of graduates of an anesthesiology residency: (1) capacity to consent; (2) capacity to refuse elective versus lifesaving treatment; (3) application of surrogate decisionmaking; (4) approach to do not resuscitate (DNR) status in the operating room; (5) patient autonomy and advance directives; (6) navigating patient beliefs that may impair care; (7) “futility” in end-of-life care: when to withdraw life support; (8) disclosure of medical errors; (9) clinical criteria for “brain death” and consequences of this definition; and (10) the impaired anesthesiologist. (shrink)

Extensive research has demonstrated that rs1360780, a common single nucleotide polymorphism within the FKBP5 gene, interacts with early-life stress in predicting psychopathology. Previous results suggest that carriers of the TT genotype of rs1360780 who were exposed to child abuse show differences in structure and functional activation of emotion-processing brain areas belonging to the salience network. Extending these findings on intermediate phenotypes of psychopathology, we examined if the interaction between rs1360780 and child abuse predicts resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the amygdala (...) and other areas of the salience network. We analyzed data of young European adults from the general population (N = 774; mean age = 18.76 years) who took part in the IMAGEN study. In the absence of main effects of genotype and abuse, a significant interaction effect was observed for rsFC between the right centromedial amygdala and right posterior insula (p <.025, FWE-corrected), which was driven by stronger rsFC in TT allele carriers with a history of abuse. Our results suggest that the TT genotype of rs1360780 may render individuals with a history of abuse more vulnerable to functional changes in communication between brain areas processing emotions and bodily sensations, which could underlie or increase the risk for psychopathology. (shrink)

The article discusses some of Heinz Post's views on correspondence and whether revolutions occur in science a la Kuhn. For example Post points out that the periodic table of the chemical elements has withstood any revolutions. Specific issues examined include the Paneth-Fajans controversy, the extent to which quantum mechanics provides an explanation for the periodic table and ab initio calculations in quantum chemistry.

Cinq études sur l'un des textes fondamentaux de la pensée hégélienne. La "Philosophie du droit" et la philosophie de l'histoire hégélienne, par Eric Weil. La forme logique et systématique de la "Philosophie du droit", par Karl-Heinz Ilting. Dialectique et conflit - Elément d'une sociologie des conflits dans la "Philosophie du droit" de Hegel, par Eugène Fleischmann. Le prince hégélien, par Bernard Bourgeois. De quelques malentendus entre Hegel et les juristes, par Jean-Louis Gardies.

Most Western democracies and international institutions have currently adopted a range of policies aimed at regulating hate speech. However, the kinds of target groups that hate speech regulations seek to protect have not been clearly defined yet. In a series of publications, Eric Heinze has challenged the coherence of such regulations. His core thesis is that hate speech laws have simply no place in longstanding, stable, and prosperous democracies. In this paper, I examine the three main charges (...) class='Hi'>Heinze raises against hate speech laws—namely, discriminatory selectivity, impermissible censorship, and arbitrariness—and I seek to demonstrate that none of them can withstand critical analysis. (shrink)

Here I consider the two most venerated arguments about the existence of God: the Ontological Argument and the Argument from Evil. The Ontological Argument purports to show that God’s nature guarantees that God exists. The Argument from Evil purports to show that God’s nature, combined with some plausible facts about the way the world is, guarantees (or is very compelling grounds for thinking) that God does not exist. Obviously, both arguments cannot be sound. But I argue here that they are (...) both unsound for the very same reason. (shrink)

There are many alleged problems with trusting another person’s moral testimony, perhaps the most prominent of which is that it fails to deliver moral understanding. Without moral understanding, one cannot do the right thing for the right reason, and so acting on trusted moral testimony lacks moral worth. This chapter, however, argues that moral advice differs from moral testimony, differs from it in a way that enables a defender of moral advice to parry this worry about moral worth. The basic (...) idea is that an advisor and an advisee can together constitute a joint agent, and that this joint agent’s action can indeed have moral worth. So while the advisee himself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone he lacks the right reason), and while the advisor herself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone she does not do the right thing), they together do the right for the right reason. (shrink)

This paper argues that the classification of propositional attitudes into the de re, de dicto, and de se is incomplete. De se attitudes are widely agreed to be closely connected to de re attitudes. But there is a species of belief that is linked to agent-centered action in the way that de se beliefs are, but is also associated with entities, places, and especially times, under a description. These mark out a fourth kind. One way to think about what makes (...) them distinctive is that, despite being ‘essentially indexical’ they can be retained across different contexts of evaluation without having diagonal content. The paper also discusses the connection between such beliefs and the kinds of utterances (like ‘Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today’) that are contested as examples of what David Kaplan called ‘monsters.’. (shrink)

No citizen should be denied the right to vote due solely to her age. We can see this by showing that all objections to it fail. It might be objected that it is not unjust to so deprive children because children as a group are unintelligent or irrational, have their interests already represented by the parents, or are justly deprived of many other rights, among other reasons. But all these objections fail because there is no evidence to support it, even (...) if true, this would not justify disenfranchisement, or, most prominently argued here, they deprive individuals of political rights based upon their membership in a group. The voting age should be abolished. (shrink)

This paper argues that under some conditions, when one person acts on the direction of another person, the two of them thereby act together, and that this explains why both the director and the directee can be responsible for what is done. In other words, a director and a directee can be a joint agent, one whose members are responsible for what they together do. This is most clearly so when the directive is a command. But it is also sometimes (...) so when the directive is a bit of advice. (shrink)

This Element introduces the philosophical literature on models, with an emphasis on normative considerations relevant to models for decision-making. Chapter 1 gives an overview of core questions in the philosophy of modeling. Chapter 2 examines the concept of model adequacy for purpose, using three examples of models from the atmospheric sciences to describe how this sort of adequacy is determined in practice. Chapter 3 explores the significance of using models that are not adequate for purpose, including the purpose of informing (...) public decisions. Chapter 4 provides a basic framework for values in modelling, using a case study to highlight the ethical challenges in building models for decision making. It concludes by establishing the need for strategies to manage value judgments in modelling, including the potential for public participation in the process. (shrink)

Autant d'études classiques qui accompagnent les grands ouvrages d'Eric Weil, Logique de la philosophie, Philosophie morale, Philosophie politique.

Haunted by dreams of a powerful red tide, Odd Thomas, accompanied by two otherworldly sidekicks--his dog Boo and the Chairman of the Board--is drawn to a small California coastal town, where nothing is at it appears and where he confronts overwhelming and sinister forces out to stop his quest.

This junior/senior level text is devoted to a study of first-order logic and its role in the foundations of mathematics: What is a proof? How can a proof be justified? To what extent can a proof be made a purely mechanical procedure? How much faith can we have in a proof that is so complex that no one can follow it through in a lifetime? The first substantial answers to these questions have only been obtained in this century. The most (...) striking results are contained in Goedel's work: First, it is possible to give a simple set of rules that suffice to carry out all mathematical proofs; but, second, these rules are necessarily incomplete - it is impossible, for example, to prove all true statements of arithmetic. The book begins with an introduction to first-order logic, Goedel's theorem, and model theory. A second part covers extensions of first-order logic and limitations of the formal methods. The book covers several advanced topics, not commonly treated in introductory texts, such as Trachtenbrot's undecidability theorem. Fraissé's elementary equivalence, and Lindstroem's theorem on the maximality of first-order logic. (shrink)

This is a book about Kant's views on causality as understood in their proper historical context. Specifically, Eric Watkins argues that a grasp of Leibnizian and anti-Leibnizian thought in eighteenth-century Germany helps one to see how the critical Kant argued for causal principles that have both metaphysical and epistemological elements. On this reading Kant's model of causality does not consist of events, but rather of substances endowed with causal powers that are exercised according to their natures and circumstances. This (...) innovative conception of Kant's view of causality casts a light on Kant's philosophical beliefs in general, such as his account of temporality, his explanation of the reconciliation of freedom and determinism, and his response to the skeptical arguments of Hume. (shrink)

Even though Kant’s theory of cognition (Erkenntnis) is central to his Critique of Pure Reason, it has rarely been asked what exactly Kant means by the term “cognition”. Against the widespread assumption that cognition (in the most relevant sense of that term) can be identified with knowledge or if not, that knowledge is at least a species of cognition, we argue that the concepts of cognition and knowledge in Kant are not only distinct, but even disjunct. To show this, we (...) first (I) investigate Kant’s explicit characterizations of the nature of cognition. As it turns out, he introduces several different notions that must be carefully distinguished before identifying the one that is central to his project in the first Critique. We then (II) consider the basic features of Kant’s conception of knowledge, indicating both how it involves assent and objective justification and how it relates to our contemporary conception. Next (III), we compare and contrast Kant’s understanding of cognition and his conception of knowledge in a way that allows us to present their fundamental differences and connections. We argue that while cognition, in the most relevant sense, is a species of representation that differs from other representations in that it involves the conceptual determination of a sensibly given object, knowledge (for Kant) is a kind of assent to a judgment that requires consciousness of a sufficient epistemic ground. Finally (IV), by appreciating the differences between cognition and knowledge, we explain several of the implications this conception of cognition has for some of Kant’s main claims in the Critique of Pure Reason as a whole. Among other things, we show how Kant can deny cognition of specific things in themselves while allowing philosophical knowledge about things in themselves in general (e.g. that they exist, are not in space and time, etc.). (shrink)

This contribution to the special issue is an historical account of Paulo Freire’s pedagogical and administrative praxis before his forced exile in 1964. It relies on interviews collected during a field trip in 1976, a conversation with Paulo Freire in Geneva one year later and on the secondary literature up to date. Being the head of the first Extension Service of a major Brazilian university in the early 1960s gave Freire and his collaborators the space and time to experiment with (...) the today world famous literacy method bearing his name. The concept of ‘Field of Cultural Production’ (Bourdieu) is used to elucidate better Freire and his team’s avant-gardist production within the spaces opened up by Brazil’s popular movements in the early sixties. The contribution shows how the ‘Paulo Freire System’ developed in the praxis of a cultural movement and received its academic consecration in an incremental and eclectic style. (shrink)