This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

abstract Can torture be morally justified? I shall criticise arguments that have been adduced against torture and demonstrate that torture can be justified more easily than most philosophers dealing with the question are prepared to admit. It can be justified not only in ticking nuclear bomb cases but also in less spectacular ticking bomb cases and even in the so‐called Dirty Harry cases. There is no morally relevant difference between self‐defensive killing of a culpable aggressor and torturing someone who is (...) culpable of a deadly threat that can be averted only by torturing him. Nevertheless, I shall argue that torture should not be institutionalised, for example by torture warrants. (shrink)

Human rights are often taken for granted, but "What is the basis of human rights?" This is no easy answer, De Xiao Weiqi, in his 2004 book of this difficult the problem. He considered the following four main theories: First, the external theory: the root cause of human rights outside the law, such as human rights divine theory; Second, the intrinsic theory: the root cause of human rights within the law - law positivism ; three, rationalist approaches: human rights is (...) based on rational intuition ; Fourth, experience-based approaches: human rights from human experience, especially experience the experience of injustice. He made ​​the first three theories are severely criticized, and to promote a fourth to experience-based approaches. This paper points out that although the experience of Germany and Xiao Weiqi theory have many advantages, but it is evidence of human rights legislation are vague and inconsistent standards of the Department, and its invention on human rights can not provide more solid foundation. In fact, these issues are perceived more or less de Xiao Weiqi, he repeatedly pointed out that the need for external to the human rights legal standards, I think the divine rights theory is to provide a basis for human rights may be one of the world. De Xiao Weiqi theory of divine criticism of human rights have a good reminder, but I think it still can not rule out the Christ-centered Christian contemporary human rights theory. Human rights are often taken for granted but in fact the origin or foundation of human rights is not an easy question. Alan Dershowitz tries to tackle this thorny issue in his 2004 book: Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights. He mainly considers four theories: 1) externalism, eg, the divine source of human rights theory; 2) Internalism, eg, legal positivism; 3) Rationalism, eg, the claim that human rights are founded upon rational intuitions; 4) Experiential approach, ie, human rights are derived from our historical experience of serious wrongs or injustice. He severely criticizes the first three theories, and defends the fourth. In this article, I will point out that despite quite a few merits of Dershowitz's theory; his criteria for the validation of human rights are vague or even inconsistent. His general stance of constructivism towards moral and human rights claims, moreover, are unable to provide solid foundations for human rights. In fact Dershowitz is to some extent aware of these problems, and he feels that human rights do need an objective external source, if only it is possible. I think the theistic worldview is indeed able to provide this objective external source. Dershowitz has raised a lot of good questions for the divine source theory but I argue that in the end they cannot exclude the possibility of a contemporary Christocentric theory of human rights. (shrink)

abstract Can torture be morally justified? I shall criticise arguments that have been adduced against torture and demonstrate that torture can be justified more easily than most philosophers dealing with the question are prepared to admit. It can be justified not only in ticking nuclear bomb cases but also in less spectacular ticking bomb cases and even in the so‐called Dirty Harry cases. There is no morally relevant difference between self‐defensive killing of a culpable aggressor and torturing someone who is (...) culpable of a deadly threat that can be averted only by torturing him. Nevertheless, I shall argue that torture should not be institutionalised, for example by torture warrants. (shrink)

I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to (...) the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B. We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?". (shrink)

What is the basis for arguing that a volunteer army exploits citizens who lack civilian career opportunities? How do we determine that a doctor who has sex with his patients is exploiting them? In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking unfair advantage. Among the first political philosophers to examine this important topic (...) from a non-Marxist perspective, Wertheimer writes about ordinary experience in an accessible yet philosophically penetrating way. He considers whether it is seriously wrong for a party to exploit another if the transaction is consensual and mutually advantageous, whether society can justifiably prohibit people from entering into such a transaction, and whether it is wrong to allow oneself to be exploited. Wertheimer first considers several contexts commonly characterized as exploitive, including surrogate motherhood, unconscionable contracts, the exploitation of student athletes, and sexual exploitation in psychotherapy. In a section outlining his theory of exploitation, he sets forth the criteria for a fair transaction and the point at which we can properly say that a party has consented. Whereas many discussions of exploitation have dealt primarily with cases in which one party harms or coerces another, Wertheimer's book focuses on what makes a mutually advantageous and consensual transaction exploitive and analyzes the moral and legal implications of such exploitation. (shrink)

It’s widely accepted that we have most reason to accept theories that best fulfill the following naturalistically respectable criteria: (1) internal consistency, (2) consistency with the facts, and (3) exemplification of the theoretical virtues. It’s also widely accepted that metaphysical theories are necessarily true. I argue that if you accept the aforementioned criteria, you have most reason to reject that metaphysical theories are necessarily true. By applying the criteria to worlds that are all prima facie possible, I show that contingent (...) local matters of particular fact partly determine which theory of composition we should accept at a world. For instance, I argue that when we apply the criteria to our world, we should accept Mereological Nihilism. Furthermore, even if you think that the worlds I mention, such as gunky worlds, are impossible, you should still reject the brute principle that metaphysical theories are necessarily true. Instead, you should only accept that a theory of composition is necessarily true if contingent local matters of particular fact at possible worlds cannot tell in favor of one theory of composition over another. (shrink)

Introduction: Natural necessity, being, and becoming -- Accentuate the negative -- Diffracting dialectic -- Opening totality -- Constellating ethics -- Metacritique I : philosophy's primordial failing -- Metacritique II : dialectic and difference -- Conclusion: Natural necessity and the grounds of justice : natural necessity as material meshwork.

Church's Thesis asserts that the only numeric functions that can be calculated by effective means are the recursive ones, which are the same, extensionally, as the Turing-computable numeric functions. The Abstract State Machine Theorem states that every classical algorithm is behaviorally equivalent to an abstract state machine. This theorem presupposes three natural postulates about algorithmic computation. Here, we show that augmenting those postulates with an additional requirement regarding basic operations gives a natural axiomatization of computability and a proof of Church's (...) Thesis, as Gödel and others suggested may be possible. In a similar way, but with a different set of basic operations, one can prove Turing's Thesis, characterizing the effective string functions, and--in particular--the effectively-computable functions on string representations of numbers. (shrink)

It’s widely accepted that we have most reason to accept theories that best fulfill the following naturalistically respectable criteria: internal consistency, consistency with the facts, and exemplification of the theoretical virtues. It’s also widely accepted that metaphysical theories are necessarily true. I argue that if you accept the aforementioned criteria, you have most reason to reject that metaphysical theories are necessarily true. By applying the criteria to worlds that are all prima facie possible, I show that contingent local matters of (...) particular fact partly determine which theory of composition we should accept at a world. For instance, I argue that when we apply the criteria to our world, we should accept Mereological Nihilism. Furthermore, even if you think that the worlds I mention, such as gunky worlds, are impossible, you should still reject the brute principle that metaphysical theories are necessarily true. Instead, you should only accept that a theory of composition is necessarily true if contingent local matters of particular fact at possible worlds cannot tell in favor of one theory of composition over another. (shrink)

Alan H. Goldman argues for the internalist or subjectivist view of practical reasons on the grounds that it is simpler, more unified, and more comprehensible ...

In a discussion of rule-following inspired by Wittgenstein, Kripke asks us to consider the relation which holds between meaning plus by ‘+’ and answering questions like, ‘What is the sum of 68 and 57?’. A dispositional theory has it that if you mean plus by ‘+’ then you will probably answer, ‘125’. That is because, according to such a theory, to mean plus by ‘+’is, roughly speaking, to be disposed, by and large, and among other things, to answer such questions (...) with the correct sum. Kripke wants to emphasize, by contrast, that if you mean plus by ‘+’ then, faced with the question, ‘What is 68 + 57?’ yououghtto answer, ‘125’. One could sum up the assumption about meaning which appears to underpin this criticism of dispositional theories in terms of the slogan that meaning is normative. Allan Gibbard gives us a way of reading that slogan which is suggested by Kripke's brief remarks:The crux of the slogan that meaning is normative … might be another slogan: thatmeansimpliesought. To use roughly Kripke's example, from statements saying what I mean by the plus sign and other arithmetic terms and constructions, it will follow that Ioughtto answer ‘7’ when asked ‘What's 5 + 2?’. (shrink)

Four important arguments for probabilism—the Dutch Book, representation theorem, calibration, and gradational accuracy arguments—have a strikingly similar structure. Each begins with a mathematical theorem, a conditional with an existentially quantified consequent, of the general form: if your credences are not probabilities, then there is a way in which your rationality is impugned. Each argument concludes that rationality requires your credences to be probabilities. I contend that each argument is invalid as formulated. In each case there is a mirror-image theorem and (...) a corresponding argument of exactly equal strength that concludes that rationality requires your credences not to be probabilities. Some further consideration is needed to break this symmetry in favour of probabilism. (shrink)

Explores language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. Gold Winner for Philosophy, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards To commemorate the 2015 centenary of the birth of Alan Watts (1915–1973), Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice have assembled a much-needed collection of Watts’s scholarly essays and lectures. Compiled from professional journals, monographs, scholarly books, conferences, and symposia proceedings, the volume sheds valuable light on the developmental arc of Watts’s thinking (...) about language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. This definitive collection challenges Watts’s reputation as a “popularizer” or “philosophical entertainer,” revealing his concerns to be much more expansive and transdisciplinary than is suggested by the parochial “Zen Buddhist” label commonly affixed to his writings. The editors’ authoritative introduction elucidates contemporary perspectives on Watts’s life and work, and supports a bold rethinking of his contributions to psychology, philosophy, and religion. Peter J. Columbus is Administrator of the Shantigar Foundation in Rowe, Massachusetts. Donadrian L. Rice is Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. Together they are the coeditors of Alan Watts—Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

This paper lays out the basic structure of any view involving coincident entities, in the light of the grounding problem. While the account is not novel, I highlight fundamental features, to which attention is not usually properly drawn. With this in place, I argue for a number of further claims: The basic differences between coincident objects are modal differences, and any other differences between them need to be explained in terms of these differences. More specifically, the basic difference is not (...) a difference in sort. A number of recent defenses of coincidence, which share the basic structure I outline, misidentify what, in their accounts, plays the basic role of addressing the grounding problem. More tentatively, I argue Coincident entities differ only in these modal properties, and properties they entail. In particular, they do not differ in properties like ‘being a tree,’ ‘being a statue,’ or aesthetic properties, and finally in light of how the account of coincidence offered addresses the grounding problem, the grounding problem provides no reason to prefer monism to pluralism. (shrink)

Pragmatism established a philosophical presence over a century ago through the work of Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey, and has enjoyed an unprecedented revival in recent years owing to the pioneering efforts of Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. The essays in this volume explore the history and themes of classic pragmatism, discuss the revival of pragmatism and show how it engages with a range of areas of inquiry including politics, law, education, aesthetics, religion and feminism. Together they provide (...) readers with an overview of the richness and vitality of pragmatist thinking and the influence that it continues to exert both in philosophy and other disciplines. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of pragmatism, American philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

The widespread confusion of Nature with God and "natural" with holy has far-reaching negative consequences, from misinformation about everyday food and health choices to mistaken justifications of sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies.

There has been an upsurge of interest in Rorty's contribution to philosophy in recent years, and his extensive influence is now widely acknowledged. Clear division of RR's work to give people a way in to the study of this wide-ranging philosopher. Five parts dealing with: (1) Rorty's early work (2) key texts (3) Rorty's unique pragmatist approach to key philosophical themes (4) reactions to, and appropriations of, Rorty's work, and (5) a selection of essays dealing with the practical application of (...) Rorty's work to a selection of issues in culture, ethics, and politics. The clear presentation of Rorty's diverse work makes the volume ideal for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate-level courses in philosophy (with strong potential interest from those studying Law, Literature, Feminism and Aesthetics, to name a few). (shrink)

When does a woman give valid consent to sexual relations? When does her consent render it morally or legally permissible for a man to have sexual relations with her? Why is sexual consent generally regarded as an issue about female consent? And what is the moral significance of consent? These are some of the questions discussed in this important book, which will appeal to a wide readership in philosophy, law, and the social sciences. Alan Wertheimer develops a theory of (...) consent to sexual relations that applies to both law and morality in the light of the psychology of sexual relations, the psychology of perpetrators, and the psychology of the victims. He considers a wide variety of difficult cases such as coercion, fraud, retardation, and intoxication. We can all agree that 'no' means 'no'. This book suggests that the difficult question is whether 'yes' means 'yes'. (shrink)

Abstract This paper examines the treatment of thick ethical concepts in Williams's work in order to evaluate the consistency of his treatment of ethical and epistemic concepts and to assess whether the idea of a thick concept can be extended from ethics to epistemology. A virtue epistemology is described modeled on a cognitivist virtue ethics. Williams's genealogy of the virtues surrounding propositional knowledge (the virtues of ?truthfulness?) is critically evaluated. It is concluded that this genealogy is an important contribution to (...) the project of virtue epistemology. Thick concepts must not only feature in the account but will sustain more of the marks of objectivity than their ethical counterparts. This is so even on Williams's demanding assumptions. (shrink)

Sport categorization is often justified by benefits such as increased fairness or inclusion. Taking inspiration from John Rawls, Sigmund Loland’s fair equality of opportunity principle in sport (FEOPs) is a tool for determining whether the existence of an inequality ethically justifies the institution of a new category in any given sport. It is an elegant ethical normative framework, but since FEOPs does not account explicitly for athlete safety (i.e. athlete physical and mental wellbeing), we are left in an ethically dubious (...) situation where the risk of harm associated with a categorization regime might in fact prove to be greater than the risk of harm present within the sport before its introduction. To address this critical gap, I propose the ‘scales of ignorance’ ethical normative framework to weigh the relative risk of harm within a sport, crucially inserting athlete safety into the discourse surrounding ethical justification for categorization in sport. The current paper is the first explicit formulation of assessment and ethical justification of risk of harm in the familiar logic of FEOPs. The scales of ignorance framework can also be used independently of Loland’s approach. Two new concepts are also proposed: ‘insidious risk of harm’ and ‘pernicious risk of harm’. (shrink)

The period following World War Two required a major reassessment of the very nature of political philosophy and political ideas and witnessed the emergence or reemerging of major concepts, such as political freedom, liberty and justice. In this clear and engaging introduction to recent political philosophy Alan Haworth explores the following topics: The philosophical nature of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt's explanation of totalitarianism in the context of Hitler and Stalin's regimes Karl Popper and the idea of the open society The (...) themes of authenticity, freedom and power in the work of Sartre and Foucault The Enlightenment and its relevance to liberalism in post-war political philosophy Rawls and the search for principles of justice Nozick's libertarianism and Sandel's communitarianism Persons, liberty and reason Global justice and the nation state Habermas and the continuation of the Enlightenment project. Haworth skillfully blends assessment of the ideas of important philosophers and political theorists with analysis of fundamental concepts in political philosophy such as freedom, justice and reason, making Political Philosophy After 1945 ideal reading for all students of political philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

Though less well known than his other work, Turings 1938 Princeton Thesis, this title which includes his notion of an oracle machine, has had a lasting influence on computer science and mathematics. It presents a facsimile of the original typescript of the thesis along with essays by Appel and Feferman that explain its still-unfolding significance.

Hegel and the Spirit explores the meaning of Hegel's grand philosophical category, the category of Geist, by way of what Alan Olson terms a pneumatological thesis. Hegel's philosophy of spirit, according to Olson, is a speculative pneumatology that completes what Adolf von Harnack once called the "orphan doctrine" in Christian theology--the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Olson argues that Hegel's development of philosophy as pneumatology originates out of a deep appreciation of Luther's dialectical understanding of Spirit and that Hegel's (...) doctrine of Spirit is thus deeply interfused with the values of Würtemberg Pietism. Olson further maintains that Hegel's Enzyklopdie is the post-Enlightenment philosophical equivalent of a Trinitätslehre and that his Rechtsphilosophie is an ecclesiology. Thus Hegel and the Spirit demonstrates the truth of Karl Barth's observation that Hegel is the potential Aquinas of Protestantism. Exploring Hegel's philosophy of spirit in historical, cultural, and personal religious context, the book identifies Hegel's relationship with Hölderlin and his response to Hölderlin's madness as key elements in the philosopher's religious and philosophical development, especially with respect to the meaning of transcendence and dialectic. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: From Liberalism to Republican Liberalism Cohen's Critique of Rawls A Liberal Republican Political Economy Liberal and Republican Approaches to Effective Political Agency The Republican Alternative Conclusion References.

Angela Ballantyne (2010) argues that international research is exploitative when the transactions between researchers and participants who lack basic goods do not provide participants with the maxi...

According to finite frequentism, the probability of an attribute A in a finite reference class B is the relative frequency of actual occurrences of A within B. I present fifteen arguments against this position.

This essay examines and compares two paradigms of technology, nature, and social life, and their associated environmental impacts. I explore moving from technocratic paradigms to the emerging ecological paradigms of planetary person ecosophies. The dominant technocratic philosophy's guiding policy and technological power is mechanistic. It conceptualizes nature as a resource to be controlled for human ends. Its global practices are drastically altering the integrity of the planet's ecosystems. In contrast, the organic, planetary person approaches respect the intrinsic values of all (...) beings. Deep ecology movement principles give priority to community and ecosystem integrity. These deep ecology movement principles guide the design and applications of technology by principles following from ecological understanding. I describe this shift in philosophical paradigms and how it affects our perceptions, values, and actions. (shrink)

Part I. Philosophy of novels. 1. Introduction: philosophical content and literary value -- 2. Interpreting novels -- 3. The sun also rises: incompatible interpretations -- 4. The appeal of the mystery -- Part II. Philosophy in novels. 5. Moral development in Pride and prejudice -- 6. Huckleberry Finn and moral motivation -- 7. What we learn about rules from The cider house rules -- 8. Nostromo and the fragility of the self.

The themes of the book—the value of knowledge and epistemic appraisal broadly conceived—are introduced in this chapter. The Meno problem is explained and related to the swamping problem as discussed by Jonathan Kvanvig. The stance of virtue epistemologists is outlined. This is followed by a brief discussion of the role of truth in epistemic appraisal. The remainder of the introduction summarises the contributions to the book.