The present paper investigates the question of whether right-libertarians must accept easements by necessity. Since easements by necessity limit the property rights of the owner of the servient tenement, they apparently conflict with the libertarian homestead principle, according to which the person who first mixes his labor with the unowned land acquires absolute ownership thereof. As we demonstrate in the paper, however, the homestead principle understood in such an absolutist way generates contradictions within the set of rights distributed (...) on its basis. In order to avoid such contradictions, easements by necessity must be incorporated into the libertarian theory of property rights and the homestead principle must be truncated accordingly. (shrink)

Individuals sometimes do things that they know will violate the terms of a statute. Most scholars deny that such actions are always morally wrong, but a coherent theoretical account of the relationships between 1) moral obligation, 2) legal obligation, and 3) criminal wrongdoing that can robustly classify hard cases has been elusive. This article starts with a Kantian account of the relationship between law and morality, and it proposes two closely related standards: one for legal obligation, and another for criminal (...) wrongdoing. It then tests the plausibility and resilience of these standards by using them to generate illuminating new analyses of classic hypothetical cases involving alleged crimes committed under circumstances of necessity. These analyses offer reason to believe that the standards proposed in this article can anchor a Kantian theory of criminal responsibility that is simultaneously rigorous and humane. (shrink)

According to Alberto Coffa in The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap, Kant’s account of mathematical judgment is built on a ‘semantic swamp’. Kant’s primitive semantics led him to appeal to pure intuition in an attempt to explain mathematical necessity. The appeal to pure intuition was, on Coffa’s line, a blunder from which philosophy was forced to spend the next 150 years trying to recover. This dismal assessment of Kant’s contributions to the evolution of accounts of mathematical necessity (...) is fundamentally backward-looking. Coffa’s account of how semantic theories of the a priori evolved out of Kant’s doctrine of pure intuition rightly emphasizes those developments, both scientific and philosophical, that collectively served to undermine the plausibility of Kant’s account. What is missing from Coffa’s story, apart from any recognition of Kant’s semantic innovations, is an attempt to appreciate Kant’s philosophical context and the distinctive perspective from which Kant viewed issues in the philosophy of mathematics. When Kant’s perspective and context are brought out, he can not only be seen to have made a genuinely progressive contribution to the development of accounts of mathematical necessity, but also to be relevant to contemporary issues in the philosophy of mathematics in underappreciated ways. (shrink)

In the Prior Analytics Aristotle famously endorses the validity of the mixed modal syllogism Barbara lxl, but in the Posterior Analytics we appear to find Aristotle arguing that since demonstrations are only of what cannot be otherwise, both premises need to be necessary. One would almost think that Aristotle had forgotten what he said about mixed modal syllogisms were it not for the fact that he also appears to refer to it directly in Posterior Analytics i.6. This is puzzling. In (...) this paper I will consider evidence for and against taking both premises to be necessary and conclude that, in accordance with Barbara lxl, the major premise of a demonstration needs to be necessary but the minor premise need not be, and this because the minor term – which denotes the object of inquiry and that to which the demonstrator is trying to demonstrate that something belongs necessarily – may be an accidental term. In particular, I will be offering an original interpretation of Aristotle’s arguments against circular demonstration in Posterior Analytics i.3, which only makes sense if the minor premise is not necessary. (shrink)

In his _Being Known_ Peacocke sets himself the task of answering how we come to know about metaphysical necessities. He proposes a semantic principle-based conception consisting of, first, his Principles of Possibility which pro­vide necessary and sufficient conditions for a new concept 'admissibility', and second, characterizations of possibility and of necessity in terms of that new con­cept. I focus on one structural feature; viz. the recursive application involved in the specification of 'admissibility'. After sketching Peacocke’s proposal, I intro­duce a (...) fictional protagonist, Cautious Peacocke, whose coherence I claim shows that Peacocke s proposal cannot be made good. I conclude with the conjecture that similar failure will attend any such semantic-based attempts to ground the epistemology of metaphysical necessity. -/- Dans son livre intitulé Being Known, C. Peacocke se propose de repondre à la question de savoir comment nous en venons a connaitre des nécessités métaphysiques. Il développe une conception sémantique reposant sur des principes comprenant, d’une part, ses Principes de Possibilité — qui fournissent les conditions nécessaires et suffisantes pour un nouveau concept, « l’admissibilité » — et d’autre part des caractérisations de la possibilité et de la nécessité a l’aide de ce nouveau concept. Je me concentre sur une caractéristique structurelle, a savoir l’application récursive a l’œuvre dans la spécification de «l’admissibilité ». Apres avoir esquisse la proposition de Peacocke, j’introduis un personnage fictif, Peacocke-prudent. Je soutiens que la cohérence de ce personnage montre que la proposition de Peacocke ne peut pas être satisfaite. Je conclus en conjecturant qu’un échec similaire se présentera pour toutes les tentatives de fonder l’épistemologie de la nécessité métaphysique sur de telles bases semantiques. (shrink)

The nature of health care, a multifaceted system of reimbursements, subsidies, levels of care, and trade-offs between economics, values and social goods, makes it both a problematic area of policy and critical to the well-being of society. In the United States, provision of health care is not a right as in some countries, but occurs as a function of a complex set of cross-subsidized mechanisms that, according to some analysts, exclude from coverage those who may be in the most need (...) of it. Accordingly, this article examines some of the issues involved in making decisions on how to justly expand health insurance. (shrink)

Howe et al. fail to provide evidence that practice is sufficient and ignore evidence of high ability before instruction. They unsuccessfully discount savants; provide weak evidence against heritability of music, criticize retrospective evidence selectively, using it when it supports their position; and ultimately both accept and deny talent. Finally, they conflate a scientific question with one of policy.

Engaging, interdisciplinary work exploring the influence of the Jansenist tradition on Alexis de Tocqueville's life and works. The most comprehensive treatment of the subject to date.

When we quote Luther’s dictum, “Here I stand. I can do no other,” we refer to the composure of someone who experiences the necessity to follow a particular course of action against all odds. The incapacity of alternative action is not regarded as a deficit; in such cases, it seems to “lend some added weight” to the decision. This paper deals with the question what kind of value is attributed to experiences of practical necessities or incapacities, in particular, if (...) these derive from an individual’s psychological “structure” and the limits of someone’s personality. Finally, it distinguishes between different types of added weight that are related to different forms of personal and normative necessities. This weight can be legitimately attributed to the virtue of standing for something and being an example of what everybody should do, but it can also be attributed to the valid claim of standing by the demarcation line of one’s personality and defending it against the threat of losing oneself. (shrink)

The necessity constraint is at the heart of the ethics of both self-defense and war, and yet we know little about it. This article seeks to remedy that defect. It proceeds in two stages: first, an analysis of the concept of necessity in self-defense; second, an application of this analysis to war, looking at both its implications for just war theory and its application in the laws of war.