"Case notes." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (199), pp. 34–35.

This paper presents an extension of Putnam's account of how substance terms such as ‘water’ and ‘gold’ function and of how a posteriori necessary truths concerning the underlying microstructures of such kinds may be derived. The paper has three aims. I aim to refute a familiar criticism of Putnam's account: that it presupposes what Salmon calls an ‘irredeemably metaphysical, and philosophically controversial, theory of essentialism’. I show how all of the details of Putnam's account—including those that Salmon believes smuggle in (...) such essentialist commitments—can be squared with a rejection of any such essentialist metaphysics. I aim to reveal why Steward is wrong to suppose that, by helping himself to the claim that ‘H2O’ is a rigid designator of a substance, Kripke, too, presupposes something controversially ‘metaphysical’. I aim to show how my proposed account also sidesteps a variety of objections raised by Needham and others who argue that Kripke's and Putnam's accounts of how ‘water’ and.. (shrink)

Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism aims to show that naturalism is, as he puts it, ‘incoherent or self defeating’. Plantinga supposes that, in the absence of any God-like being to guide the process, natural selection is unlikely to favour true belief. Plantinga overlooks the fact that adherents of naturalism may plausibly hold that there exist certain conceptual links between belief content and behaviour. Given such links, natural selection will favour true belief. A further rather surprising consequence of the (...) existence of such links is this: even if semantic properties are epiphenomenal, unguided evolution will still favour true belief. (shrink)

Law's article begins by restating the classical ANT position that objects do not exist `in themselves' but are the effect of a performative stabilization of relational networks. In addition, these material enactments inevitably have a spatial dimension; they simultaneously establish spatial conditions for objectual identity, continuity, and difference. Space must not be reified as a natural, pre-existing container of the social and the material, but is itself a performance. Moreover, there are multiple forms of spatiality beyond the Euclidean space (...) of regions, and objects may exist and achieve homeomorphism within several different spatial systems. Technologies such as the Zimbabwe Bush Pump present a fluid object which is able to exist and cohere without the presence of fixed boundaries or the permanence of a particular functional definition. The network logic, however, which gravitates towards stability and functionality, tends to exclude and silence this spatial Other. An alternative political ontology is needed which goes beyond the reification of network space in order to give voice to the fluid objects which escape its unidimensional functionality. (shrink)

Let (leeway) incompatibilism be the thesis that causal determinism is incompatible with the freedom to do otherwise. Several prominent authors have claimed that incompatibilism alone can capture, or at least best captures, the intuitive appeal behind Jorge Luis Borges's famous “Garden of Forking Paths” metaphor. The thought, briefly, is this: the “single path” leading up to one's present decision represents the past; the forking paths that one must decide between represent those possible futures consistent with the past and the laws (...) of nature. But if determinism is true, there is only one possible future consistent with the past and the laws and, hence, only one path to choose from. That is, if determinism is true, then we are not free to do otherwise. In this paper, I argue that this understanding of the Garden of Forking Paths faces a number of problems and ought to be rejected even by incompatibilists. I then present an alternative understanding that not only avoids these problems but still supports incompatibilism. Finally, I consider how various versions of (leeway) compatibilism fit with the Garden of Forking Paths as well as the broader question of whether metaphors, however intuitive, have any dialectical force in the debates over freedom. (shrink)

An in-depth study of Kierkegaard's thinking on Christology, emphasising the radical nature of his approach to the incarnation, with an emphasis on the call of the Christian believer to a life of 'kenotic' (self-emptying) discipleship in imitation of Christ.

This paper investigates force shift, a phenomenon in which the canonical discourse conventions, or force, associated with a clause type can be overridden to yield polar questions with the help of additional force-indicating devices. Previous studies attribute force shift to the presence of a complex question force component operating on semantic content. Based on utterance particles and particle clusters in Cantonese, we analyze force shift as resulting from compositional operations on force-bearing expressions. We propose that a simplex force, such as (...) assertion or question, denotes unanchored sentence acts, while a force-shifting particle like Cantonese _ho2_ is an anchoring function anchoring a sentence act to the speaker while querying whether or not the addressee can perform the sentence act. The proposed semantics makes predictions about _ho2_’s interactions with addressee-changing operations and imperatives, as well as about a larger family of force shift phenomena. (shrink)

Inter‐personal morals should be understood and described in the language of duties, not rights. Rights are self‐centred, duties other‐centred. Whereas duties are primarily a moral construct, rights are primarily a legal construct. There is an important distinction between the language appropriate for inter‐personal morals, and the language appropriate for the morals of the State. The first principle of the morals of the State is that the State holds its power as trustee for the people; otherwise we would face arbitrary and (...) capricious rule. In this setting it is natural and proper to speak of rights—the rights of the citizen beneficiaries against their trustee, the State. However, inter‐personal morals and the morality of the State are inter‐dependent. Without a duty‐based personal morality, the laws which the State makes will tend more and more to be oppressive and contemptuous. And the laws of the State must themselves leave room for personal moral commitment, freely entered into, to flourish. (shrink)

This article deals with the housing framework of laws, that is, constitutions. It distinguishes between constitution referring to the de jure, formal, written book of laws and codes that assume supreme authority within any structure, and constitution which defines a body of informal, conditional rules and laws that do not have supreme authority but are abided by, owing to various objective, subjective factors. Constitution reflects the gap between aspiration and actuality, and constitution attracts a higher degree of compliance and implementation. (...) Studies have indeed found a negative relationship between formal rights protection and actual rights observance. The article reveals that rights guarantees are more prone to failure than success as they depend substantially on environmental and institutional conditions. This article emphasizes a symbiosis between judicialization and constitutionalization while a policy question needs to be judicial in nature if the judiciary has to decide on it. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Language & Logic -- Glossary -- Aristotle's syllogisms -- Russell's paradox & Frege's logicism -- profile: Aristotle -- Russell's theory of description -- Frege's puzzle -- Gödel's theorem -- Epimenides' liar paradox -- Eubulides' heap -- Science & Epistemology -- Glossary -- I think therefore I am -- Gettier's counter example -- profile: Karl Popper -- The brain in a vat -- Hume's problem of induction -- Goodman's gruesome riddle -- Popper's conjectures & refutations -- Kuhn's scientific revolutions -- Mind (...) & Metaphysics -- Glossary -- Descartes mind-body problem -- Brentano's intentionality -- Fodor's language of thought -- Parfit's persons -- profile: René Descartes -- Chalmer's zombies -- Zeno's paradoxes -- Kant's left hand -- Theseus' ship -- Laplace's demon, determinism, & free will -- Ryle's ghost in the machine -- Ethics & Political Philosophy -- Glossary -- Aristotle's ethics -- States of nature and the social contract -- Kant's categorical imperative -- profile: Immanuel Kant -- Mill's utilitarianism -- Marx's historical materialism -- The trolley problem -- Religion -- Glossary -- Aquinas' five ways -- Anselm's ontological argument -- profile: Thomas Aquinas -- Epicurus' riddle -- Paley's watchmaker -- Pascal's wager -- Hume against miracles -- Grand Moments -- Glossary -- Socrates' method -- Plato's cave -- Aristotle's four causes -- Lucretius' atomism -- profile: Ludwig Wittgenstein -- Berkeley's idealism -- Kant's synthetic a priori -- Hegel's dialectic -- James' pragmatism -- Moore's common sense -- Wittgenstein's picture theory of language -- Continental Philosophy -- Glossary -- Nietzsche's Superman -- profile: Friedrich Nietzsche -- Derrida's deconstruction -- Heidegger's nothing -- Sartre's bad faith. (shrink)

All insects appear to have a transport lipoprotein in the hemolymph (blood) that is responsible for moving hydrophobic materials through aqueous compartments. This has been called lipophorin because it is believed to be a reversible transport shuttle. Since most insects undergo some degree of metamorphosis from larval stages to the adult, the need to transport hydrophobic materials or the nature of these materials may change in the course of the life span. This is especially marked in the case of the (...) holometabolous insects – those which undergo drastic change of form, e.g. caterpillar‐pupa‐adult moth. We have found that lipophorin undergoes a molecular metamorphosis paralleling that of the insect. (shrink)

We present a model of similarity‐based retrieval that attempts to capture three seemingly contradictory psychological phenomena: (a) structural commonalities are weighed more heavily than surface commonalities in similarity judgments for items in working memory; (b) in retrieval, superficial similarity is more important than structural similarity; and yet (c) purely structural (analogical) remindings e sometimes experienced. Our model, MAC/FAC, explains these phenomena in terms of a two‐stage process. The first stage uses a computationally cheap, non‐structural matcher to filter candidate long‐term memory (...) items. It uses content vectors, a redundant encoding of structured representations whose dot product estimates how well the corresponding structural representations will match. The second stage uses SME (structure‐mapping engine) to compute structural matches on the handful of items found by the first stage. We show the utility of the MAC/FAC model through a series of computational experiments: (a) We demonstrate that MAC/FAC can model patterns of access found in psychological data; (b) we argue via sensitivity analyses that these simulation results rely on the theory; and (c) we compare the performance of MAC/FAC with ARCS, an alternate model of similarity‐based retrieval, and demonstrate that MAC/FAC explains the data better than ARCS. Finally, we discuss limitations and possible extensions of the model, relationships with other recent retrieval models, and place MAC/FAC in the context of other recent work on the nature of similarity. (shrink)

This study examines the socioeconomic and familial background of Irish Catholic priests born between 1867 and 1911. Previous research has hypothesized that lack of marriage opportunities may influence adoption of celibacy as part of a religious institution. The present study traced data from Irish seminary registries for 46 Catholic priests born in County Limerick, Ireland, using 1901 Irish Census returns and Land Valuation records. Priests were more likely to originate from landholding backgrounds, and with landholdings greater in size and wealth (...) than the local average. Priests were found to originate from families with more sons than the national average, but with similar numbers of daughters. These findings are discussed in relation to competition for resources and lineage survival strategies. (shrink)

Natural Law and Natural Rights is widely recognised as a seminal contribution to the philosophy of law, and an essential reference point for all students of the subject. This new edition includes a substantial postscript by the author responding to thirty years of comment, criticism, and further work in the field.

I discuss three tiers of technological innovation: mild innovation, or the acceleration by technology of a human activity aimed at a good; moderate innovation, or the obviation by technology of an activity aimed at a good; and radical innovation, or the altering by technology of the human condition so as to change what counts as a good. I argue that it is impossible to morally assess proposed innovations within any of these three tiers unless we rehabilitate a natural-law ethical (...) framework. And I offer some moral starting points within such a framework, in connection with innovations of each of the three types. (shrink)

Now available Open Access! See the Bloomsburycollections URL below. -/- Correct bibliographical information is as follows: Gottfried Achenwall, _Natural Law: A Translation of the Textbook for Kant's Lectures on Legal and Political Philosophy_, edited by Pauline Kleingeld, translated by Corinna Vermeulen, with an Introduction by Paul Guyer. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. -/- As the first translation into any modern language of Achenwall’s Ius naturae, from the 1763 edition used by Immanuel Kant, this is an essential work for anyone interested in Kant, (...) the natural law tradition or the history of legal and political theory. For over twenty years, Kant used this book as the basis for his lectures on natural law. It influenced his legal and political philosophy as well as his ethics, and it is indispensable for understanding Kant’s Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law and his Metaphysics of Morals. -/- Articulating his theory of natural law with clear definitions and precise distinctions, Achenwall offers a lucid account that includes instructive comparisons with the work of Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Wolff and others. The volume also contains an Introduction by the eminent Kant scholar Paul Guyer, comparing Achenwall’s theory to the legal and political philosophy of Kant’s Doctrine of Right, and a concordance correlating Achenwall’s Natural Law to Kant’s Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law. (shrink)

Natural law theory has been undergoing a revival, especially in political philosophy and jurisprudence. Yet, most fundamentally, natural law theory is not a political theory, but a moral theory, or more accurately a theory of practical rationality. According to the natural law account of practical rationality, the basic reasons for actions are basic goods that are grounded in the nature of human beings. Practical rationality aims to identify and characterize reasons for action and to explain how choice (...) between actions worth performing can be appropriately governed by rational standards. These standards are justified by reference to features of the human goods that are the fundamental reasons for action. This book is a defence of a contemporary natural law theory of practical rationality, demonstrating its inherent plausibility and engaging systematically with rival egoist, consequentialist, Kantian and virtue accounts. (shrink)

It is widely held that, in his pre-Critical works, Kant endorsed a necessitation account of laws of nature, where laws are grounded in essences or causal powers. Against this, I argue that the early Kant endorsed the priority of laws in explaining and unifying the natural world, as well as their irreducible role in in grounding natural necessity. Laws are a key constituent of Kant’s explanatory naturalism, rather than undermining it. By laying out neglected distinctions Kant draws among (...) types of natural law, grounding relations, and ontological levels, I show that his early works present a coherent and sophisticated laws-first account of the natural order. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to fill a certain gap in the assessment of relativism by drawing on Joseph Ratzinger’s (1927–2022) criticism of the normative transformation since Kant. During the Enlightenment, Natural Law was doubted as a cultural feature of Christianity that had no bearing on pluralist society. Consequently, this jurisprudential tradition underwent de-Hellenization and branched out in radical directions, the most decisive of which was Kant’s post-metaphysical system of natural values. Positivism and German Idealism attempted to (...) restore the unity of philosophy that Kant’s philosophy had disrupted. Yet even more influentially, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was Marxism that relativized the doxological aspect of normativity by emphasizing the importance of praxis. Since philosophy became neither an exact science as Kant had conceived it to be, nor a practical programme for social justice as Marxism had promised, the Existentialists, and particularly Sartre, advocated a more radical philosophy of freedom. Ratzinger argues that despite the nuances of post-Kantian philosophy, Positivism, Existentialism, and Marxism failed to comprehend the human condition and that the positivist method resulted in an overwhelming relativism that has reduced normativity to a matter of correct procedures rather than regarding it as the foundation of the inviolable dignity of the human being. (shrink)

Natural law is a perennial though poorly represented and understood issue in political philosophy and the philosophy of law. In this 2006 book, Mark C. Murphy argues that the central thesis of natural law jurisprudence - that law is backed by decisive reasons for compliance - sets the agenda for natural law political philosophy, demonstrating how law gains its binding force by way of the common good of the political community. Murphy's work ranges over the central questions (...) of natural law jurisprudence and political philosophy, including the formulation and defense of the natural law jurisprudential thesis, the nature of the common good, the connection between the promotion of the common good and requirement of obedience to law, and the justification of punishment. (shrink)

This major contribution to the history of philosophy provides the most comprehensive guide to modern natural law theory available, sets out the full background to liberal ideas of rights and contractarianism, and offers an extensive study of the Scottish Enlightenment. The time span covered is considerable: from the natural law theories of Grotius and Suarez in the early seventeenth century to the American Revolution and the beginnings of utilitarianism. After a detailed survey of modern natural law theory, (...) the book focuses on the Scottish Enlightenment and its European and American connections. Knud Haakonssen explains the relationship between natural law and civic humanist republicanism, and he shows the relevance of these ideas for the understanding of David Hume and Adam Smith. The result is a completely revised background to modern ideas of liberalism and communitarianism. (shrink)

In this book, Buckle provides a historical perspective on the political philosophies of Locke and Hume, arguing that there are continuities in the development of seventeenth and eighteenth-century political theory which have often gone unrecognized. He begins with a detailed exposition of Grotius's and Pufendorf's modern natural law theory, focussing on their accounts of the nature of natural law, human sociability, the development of forms of property, and the question of slavery. He then shows that Locke's political theory (...) takes up and develops these basic themes of natural law. The author argues further that, rather than being a departure from this tradition, the moral sense theory of Hutcheson and Hume represents a not entirely successful attempt to underpin the natural law theory with an adequate moral psychology. (shrink)

This new edition includes a substantial postscript by the author, in which he responds to thirty years of discussion, criticism and further work in the field to ...

Contemporary social theory and natural law : Jurgen Habermas -- A natural-law critique of modern social theory : Karl Lowith, Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin -- Natural law and the question of universalism -- Modern natural law I : Hobbes and Rousseau on the state of nature and social life -- Modern natural law II : Kant and Hegel on proceduralism and ethical life -- Classical social theory I : Marx, Tonnies and Durkheim on alienation, (...) community and society -- Classical social theory II : Simmel and Weber on the universality of sociability and reasonableness -- Social theory as the natural law of 'artificial' social relations. (shrink)

This book provides the first systematic, book-length defence of natural law ideas in ethics, politics and jurisprudence since John Finnis's influential Natural Law and Natural Rights. Incorporating insights from recent work in ethical, legal and social theory, it presents a robust and original account of the natural law tradition, challenging common perceptions of natural law as a set of timeless standards imposed on humans from above. Natural law, Jonathan Crowe argues, is objective and normative, (...) but nonetheless historically extended, socially embodied and dependent on contingent facts about human nature. It reflects the ongoing human quest to work out how best to live flourishing lives, given the natures we have and the social environments we inhabit. The nature and purpose of law can only be adequately understood within this wider context of value. Timely, wide-ranging and clearly written, this volume will appeal to those working in law, philosophy and religious studies. (shrink)

This essay systematically reformulates an earlier argument about Locke and new world slavery, adding attention to Indians, natural law, and Locke's reception. Locke followed Grotian natural law in constructing a just-war theory of slavery. Unlike Grotius, though, he severely restricted the theory, making it inapplicable to America. It only fit resistance to "absolute power" in Stuart England. Locke was nonetheless an agent of British colonialism who issued instructions governing slavery. Yet they do not inform his theory--or vice versa. (...) This creates hermeneutical problems and raises charges of racism. If Locke deserves the epithet "racist," it is not for his having a racial doctrine justifying slavery. None of this makes for a flattering portrait. Locke's reputation as the champion of liberty would not survive the contradictions in which new world slavery ensnared him. Evidence for this may be found in Locke's reception, including by Southern apologists for slavery. (shrink)

This major addition to Ideas in Context examines the development of natural law theories in the early stages of the Enlightenment in Germany and France. T. J. Hochstrasser investigates the influence exercised by theories of natural law from Grotius to Kant, with a comparative analysis of the important intellectual innovations in ethics and political philosophy of the time. Hochstrasser includes the writings of Samuel Pufendorf and his followers who evolved a natural law theory based on human sociability (...) and reason, fostering a new methodology in German philosophy. This book assesses the first histories of political thought since ancient times, giving insights into the nature and influence of debate within eighteenth-century natural jurisprudence. Ambitious in range and conceptually sophisticated, Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment will be of great interest to scholars in history, political thought, law and philosophy. Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment has been selected as the winner of the annual Morris D. Forkosch Prize for the best book in intellectual history published in 2000. (shrink)

This book represents a unique attempt to reconcile the traditional oppositions of the natural law and social utopian traditions, providing basic insights into the meaning of human rights in a socialist society.

It is often presumed that the laws of nature have special significance for scientific reasoning. But the laws' distinctive roles have proven notoriously difficult to identify--leading some philosophers to question if they hold such roles at all. This study offers original accounts of the roles that natural laws play in connection with counterfactual conditionals, inductive projections, and scientific explanations, and of what the laws must be in order for them to be capable of playing these roles. Particular attention is (...) given to laws of special sciences, levels of scientific explanation, natural kinds, ceteris-paribus clauses, and physically necessary non-laws. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law The Meaning of the Natural Law Thesis Natural Law Theory and Legal Positivism Defending the Natural Law Thesis Note References.

"Public reason" is one of the central concepts in modern liberal political theory. As articulated by John Rawls, it presents a way to overcome the difficulties created by intractable differences among citizens' religious and moral beliefs by strictly confining the place of such convictions in the public sphere. Identifying this conception as a key point of conflict, this book presents a debate among contemporary natural law and liberal political theorists on the definition and validity of the idea of public (...) reason. Its distinguished contributors examine the consequences of interpreting public reason more broadly as "right reason," according to natural law theory, versus understanding it in the narrower sense in which Rawls intended. They test public reason by examining its implications for current issues, confronting the questions of abortion and slavery and matters relating to citizenship. This energetic exchange advances our understanding of both Rawls's contribution to political philosophy and the lasting relevance of natural law. It provides new insights into crucial issues facing society today as it points to new ways of thinking about political theory and practice. (shrink)

Natural law theory is enjoying a revival of interest in a variety of scholarly disciplines including law, philosophy, political science, and theology and religious studies. This volume presents twelve original essays by leading natural law theorists and their critics. The contributors discuss natural law theories of morality, law and legal reasoning, politics, and the rule of law. Readers get a clear sense of the wide diversity of viewpoints represented among contemporary theorists, and an opportunity to evaluate the (...) arguments and counterarguments exchanged in the current debates between natural law theorists and their critics. Contributors include Hadley Arkes, Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., John Finnis, Robert P. George, Russell Hittinger, Neil MacCormick, Michael Moore, Jeffrey Stout, Joseph Raz, Jeremy Waldron, Lloyd Weinreb, and Ernest Weinrib. (shrink)

Metaphysical schemata and intellectual traditions -- Laws of nature : the scientific concept -- Natural law : disputed moments of transition -- Natural rights : origins and grounding.

This book critically and constructively explores the resources offered for natural law doctrine by classical thinkers from three traditions: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic. Three scholars each offer a programmatic essay on natural law doctrine in their particular religious tradition and then respond to the other two essays.

This Major Reference series brings together a wide range of key international articles in law and legal theory. Many of these essays are not readily accessible, and their presentation in these volumes will provide a vital new resource for both research and teaching. Each volume is edited by leading international authorities who explain the significance and context of articles in an informative and complete introduction.