Associative duties are agent-centered duties to give defeasible moral priority to our special ties. Our strongest associative duties are to close friends and family. According to reductionists, our associative duties are just special duties—i.e., duties arising from what I have done to others, or what others have done to me. These include duties to abide by promises and contracts, compensate our benefactors in ways expressing gratitude, and aid those whom we have made especially vulnerable to our conduct. I argue, though, (...) that reductionism faces a problem: special duties are not strong enough to account for the strength of our associative duties. At the bar of associative duties, we are required to do what no special duty can warrant. I then present an alternative reductionist analysis of associative duties—the ‘Identity-Enactment Account’—which not only accounts for the peculiar strength of our associative duties, but also characterizes them in an intuitively compelling way. On this account, our strongest associative duties are special duties to protect or promote the welfare of the duty’s beneficiary by adopting and enacting a practical identity in which the duty’s beneficiary features prominently. There are persons who can legitimately demand a prominent place in our mental lives, for the protection and intimacy it affords. They can, in effect, legitimately demand to be among our nearest and dearest. The correlative of such a demand is, on our part, an associative duty we have toward them. (shrink)

The Swedish philosopher Hägerström, who was professor in Uppsala during the first quarter of the present century, devoted much attention to the philosophical and psychological analysis of moral and legal phenomena. Hägersträm is a difficult writer. He had steeped himself in the works of German philosophers and philosophical jurists, and his professional prose-style both in German and in Swedish had been infected by them so that it resembles glue thickened with sawdust. But he enjoys a very high reputation (...) in his own and adjacent countries, and it seems to me that this is well deserved. I think, therefore, that it may be interesting and useful to try to provide English philosophers with an outline in my own words of Hägerström's doctrines, as I understand them, about the topic named in the title of this paper. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of the virtuous person, which I take to be the same as the good person. I argue that goodness in a person is based on her desires. Contra Aristotelians, I argue that one does not need practical wisdom to be good. There can be a perfectly good person with mental retardation or autism, for example, whether or not such conditions are compatible with the Aristotelian kind of wisdom. Contra Kantians, I argue that the sense of (...) duty - which does exist! - is compatible with a desire-based moral psychology. (shrink)

In 2018, William Lane Craig and Erik J. Wielenberg participated in a debate at North Carolina State University, addressing the question: "God and Morality: What is the best account of objective moral values and duties?" Craig argued that theism provides a sound foundation for objective morality whereas atheism does not. Wielenberg countered that morality can be objective even if there is no God. This book includes the full debate, as well as endnotes with extended discussions that were not included in (...) the debate. It also includes five chapters by other philosophers who have written substantive responses to the debate - J. P. Moreland, David Baggett, Mark Linville, Wes Morriston, and Michael Huemer. The book provides crucial resources for better understanding moral realism and its dependence on, or independence from, theistic foundations. Key Features A valuable debate about whether or not God is the best explanation for objective morality, bringing together theists and atheists working on the same subject who normally are not in conversation with each other. Includes clear coverage of ontological and epistemological issues in metaethical theories, focusing on Divine Command Theory and Non-natural Robust Moral Realism. Engaging and accessible throughout, making the book well suited for undergraduate and seminary classrooms. (shrink)

Can there be a duty to forgive those who have wronged us? According to a popular view amongst philosophers working on forgiveness the answer is no. Forgiveness, it is claimed, is always elective. This view is rejected by Gamlund (2010a; 2010b) who argues that duties to forgive do exist and then provides conditions that are relevant to determining whether forgiveness is obligatory or supererogatory. In this paper I will argue that the conditions that Gamlund provides do not provide a (...) plausible account of the connection between forgiveness and duty. The problems I will raise against Gamlund’s view is a problem that faces any moral view that makes room for supererogation. I will then investigate whether the existing solutions to this problem provide a more plausible account of the connection between forgiveness and obligation. I will argue that the two most prominent solutions, The Favouring Reasons View and The Sacrifice View, produce implausible results when applied to the case of forgiveness. However, an alternative view, The Freedom View, can provide plausible results when applied to the case of forgiveness. This gives us defeasible reason to favour this as a general solution to The Problem of the Good Ought Tie-Up. (shrink)

I defend an account of moral responsibility for implicit bias that is sensitive to both normative and pragmatic constraints: an acceptable theory of moral responsibility must not only do justice to our moral experience and agency, but also issue directives that are psychologically effective in bringing about positive changes in judgment and behavior. I begin by offering a conceptual genealogy of two different concepts of moral responsibility that arise from two distinct sources of philosophical concerns. We are morally responsible (...) for our actions in first sense only when those actions reflect our identities as moral agents—that is, when they are attributable to us as manifestations of our character, attitudes, ends, commitments, or values. On the other hand, we are responsible in the second sense when it is appropriate for others to enforce certain demands and expectations on those actions—in other words, to hold us accountable for them. I argue that we may sometimes lack attributability for actions caused by implicit bias, but that even then we are still accountable for them. Next, I expand beyond individual actions at a particular time to patterns of action across time, to consider what we can reasonably be expected to do when it comes to avoiding and eliminating implicit bias in our selves. By thinking of these expectations as grounded in imperfect duties, I show, we can expand our moral repertoire to include non-appraising critical moral responses, in addition to appraisal-based responses such as blame and punishment. Finally, I move beyond the actions of individuals to address the question of responsibility for eliminating the social conditions that breed implicit biases in the first place. I argue that accountability requires us not only to conform to a system of demands and expectations, but also to collectively organize to reform the system itself. By elaborating these multiple dimensions of moral responsibility—attributability versus accountability, particular versus patterns of action, individual versus collective—I demonstrate that the project of developing better practices of moral responsibility is continuous with, and thus contributes to, larger struggles for social equality and justice. (shrink)

What do we owe to our descendants? How do we balance their needs against our own? Tim Mulgan develops a new theory of our obligations to future generations, based on a new rule-consequentialist account of the morality of individual reproduction. He also brings together several different contemporary philosophical discussions, including the demands of morality and international justice. His aim is to produce a coherent, intuitively plausible moral theory that is not unreasonably demanding, even when extended to cover future people. (...) While the book focuses on developing this new account, there are also substantial discussions of alternative views, especially contract-based accounts of intergenerational justice and competing forms of consequentialism. (shrink)

The standard account of supererogation holds that Liv is not morally required to jump on a grenade, thereby sacrificing her life, to save the lives of five soldiers. Many proponents defend the standard account by appealing to moral rationalism about requirement. These same proponents hold that Bernie is morally permitted to jump on a grenade, thereby sacrificing his life, to spare someone a mild burn. I argue that this position is unstable, at least as moral rationalism is ordinarily defended. The (...) proponent of the standard account of supererogation must either reject moral rationalism or endorse that Bernie is morally required to remain in safety. Along the way, this paper brings together three neglected topics: going *too far* beyond the call of duty, moral rationalism about *permission*, and how to weigh reasons when some reasons have a different proportion of justifying and requiring weight than others. (shrink)

Richard Henson attempts to take the sting out of this view of Kant on moral worth by arguing (i) that attending to the phenomenon of the overdetermination of actions leads one to see that Kant might have had two distinct views of moral worth, only one of which requires the absence of cooperating inclinations, and (ii) that when Kant insists that there is moral worth only when an action is done from the motive of duty alone, he need not (...) also hold that such a state of affairs is morally better, all things considered, than one where supporting inclination is present. Henson's proposals seem to me both serious and plausible. I do not think that either of his models, in the end, can take on the role Kant assigns to moral worth in the argument of the Groundwork. But seeing the ways Henson's account diverges from Kant's makes clearer what Kant intended in his discussion of those actions he credits with moral worth. [...] An action has moral worth if it is required by duty and has as its primary motive the motive of duty. The motive of duty need not reflect the only interest the agent has in the action (or its effect); it must, however, be the interest that determines the agent's acting as he did. (shrink)

My purpose is to account for some oddities in what Kant did and did not say about "moral worth," and for another in what commentators tell us about his intent. The stone with which I hope to dispatch these several birds is-as one would expect a philosopher's stone to be-a distinction. I distinguish between two things Kant might have had in mind under the heading of moral worth. They come readily to mind when one both takes account of what he (...) actually said about it and notices a fact which he did not seem to notice: namely, that dutiful action- action which, whatever its motive, fulfills a duty-can be over- determined, and determined in particular by both respect for duty and some consortium of inclinations and prudenc. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that morality does not demand that we do our very best, but our most significant moral traditions do not easily accommodate this intuition. I will argue that the underlying problem is not specific to any particular tradition. Rather, it will be difficult for any moral theory to account for binary moral concepts like permissible/impermissible while also accounting for scalar moral concepts like better/worse. If only the best is considered permissible, morality will seem either unreasonably demanding or (...) implausibly minimal. But if we draw a line of duty below the optimal, then we must explain how the act that is worse is nonetheless permissible. Some have tried to explain this by appealing to non-moral considerations, and others have appealed to agent-relative moral considerations. I argue that no such approach will work. We should instead exploit the distinction between reasons for performing an act and reasons for holding someone accountable for an act’s performance. This approach will also help to clear up a confusion regarding the notion of a moral demand. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical discourse on global responsibility has sustained a nearly unwavering focus on justice. In response, I investigate an underrepresented element in global justice discussions: insights from feminist philosophy, and more specifically, from the ethics of care. I assess current theories of cosmopolitanism, criticizing the shortcomings of cosmopolitan justice from the perspective of cosmopolitan care. Through the concepts of dependence, vulnerability, and need, I develop a feminist global obligation--the global duty to care--and explore the distinctive vision it offers (...) as the ground and content of a feminist theory of global responsibility. (shrink)

Both Ambrose St. John (1815–1875) and John Henry Newman (1801–1890), who were received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, became members of the Birmingham Oratory. Newman’s closest companion for over three decades, St. John’s death was extremely painful for Newman, not only because it was unexpected, but because of his devotion to Newman as well as his dedication to his spiritual duties. Along with presenting Newman’s narrative of the last few weeks of St. John’s life, this essay raises the (...) question: why did Newman write this “account.”. (shrink)

According to the expression account, assertion is the linguistic expression of belief. Given the knowledge rule of belief, this entails that knowledge is a normative requirement of sincere assertions. On this account, which is defended in Hindriks, knowledge can be a normative requirement of sincere assertions even though there is no knowledge rule that is constitutive of assertion. Ball criticizes this claim arguing that the derivation of the knowledge rule equivocates between epistemic and moral senses of obligation. In response, we (...) resist the charge of equivocation. Ball does not, after all, demonstrate that the distinction matters in the context at issue. In addition to this, we argue that it is a virtue of the account that the knowledge rule is restricted in application to sincere assertions. The case we present to illustrate this is that of the virtuous liar who knows what he believes, and is insincere because that is the right thing to do in the situation. It makes no sense, we suggest, to criticize the liar for not knowing that which he asserts. After all, it is his moral duty to assert what he knows to be false. Furthermore, his epistemic standing is impeccable, as he knows what he believes. (shrink)

Philosophers often discuss altruism, how it is to be understood, explained, justified, evaluated, etc. Few refer to any experimental data on helping behaviour. I will argue that some of these data seem at least initially to present a challenge to various philosophical accounts of altruism. Put very broadly, when one looks at various philosophical accounts of altruism in light of various data on helping behaviour, one might wonder whether many philosophical accounts fall prey to (...) the 'fundamental attribution error', overestimating people's character and personal dispositions as the basis of their actions and underestimating the role of persons' situations and their construals of them in determining what they do. (shrink)

The book has three main aims. The first is give a philosophical account of the nature of art appreciation, as well as, aesthetic appreciation outside the arts. The second aim is to examine the ways in which the artist's intention is relevant to interpreting, appreciating and evaluating works of art. Finally, to explore some of the ways that certain works of art can provide a unique form of understanding of human behavior or morality and of life.

BACKGROUND: Representing is about theories and theory formation. Philosophy of science has a long-standing interest in representing. At least since Ian Hacking's modern classic Representing and Intervening analytical philosophers have struggled to combine that interest with a study of the roles of intervention studies. With few exceptions this focus of philosophy of science has been on physics and other natural sciences. In particular, there have been few attempts to analyse the use of the notion of intervention in other disciplines where (...) intervention studies are important, such as in nursing research. One unintended consequence of this is that the relations between representing and intervening tend to be less understood outside the natural sciences. OBJECTIVES AND DESIGN: This article highlights a number of possible topics on which nursing science and analytic philosophy of science can fruitfully interact. The basic idea is simple. Building on a characterisation of interventions in terms of what is intervened on and with respect to what, we suggest that interventions in nursing research typically are a blend of varieties belonging to the three dimensions of agency, epistemology, and ontology. The details of the blend determine the relation of the particular intervention study to traditional representational categories such as inductivism and hypothetico-deductive method, and have a bearing on its explanatory power and other more theory independent features of research as well. The framework we suggest should be relevant for nurse researchers who want to adopt a more general and analytically entrenched perspective on representing and intervening than the methodological boundaries in nursing research typically allow. (shrink)

There is an influential story about learning that retains a grip on the public mind. Main elements of this story include: the best learning resides in individual minds not bodies; it centres on propositions (true, false; more certain, less certain); such learning is transparent to the mind that has acquired it; so the acquisition of the best learning alters minds not bodies. Implications of these basic ideas include: the best learning can be expressed verbally and written down in books, etc.; (...) the process and product of learning can be sharply distinguished; and, though residing in minds and books, the best learning can be applied, via bodies, to alter the external world. The pervasive influence of this story is apparent in many writings about learning, including philosophical writings. A number of basic assumptions about learning underpin this story. The central purpose of this paper is to further delineate and then challenge each of these basic assumptions. The main implication of challenging these basic assumptions is that a somewhat different philosophical understanding of learning emerges. This different understanding of learning may offer fresh insights on current educational issues. (shrink)

Explanatory economic analysis of the common law has long been subject to deep philosophical skepticism for two reasons. First, common law decisions appear to be cast in the language of deontic morality, not the consequentialist language of efficiency. For this reason, philosophers have claimed that explanatory economic analysis cannot satisfy the transparency criterion, which holds that a legal theory's explanation must provide a plausible account of the relationship between the reasoning it claims judges actually use to decide cases and (...) the express reasoning judges provide in their opinions. Philosophers have doubted that the economic analysis has a plausible account of why judges would use deontic moral terms to explain cases they decide using consequentialist economic reasoning, arguing instead that only a deontic moral account of judicial reasoning can be squared with the judicial use of deontic moral language. Second, the common law has a bilateral structure, in which a plaintiff's right to recover and a defendant's duty to compensate are treated as correlative. Philosophers have observed that this structure seems custom tailored to retrospective moral rights adjudication and ill suited to prospective efficient regulation. Recently, two philosophers, Jules L. Coleman and Stephen A. Smith, have developed these ideas into a full-scale assault on the explanatory credentials of the economic analysis. I defend the economic analysis by arguing that the bilateral structure of the common law either constitutes a "second best" approach to providing incentives for efficient behavior, as economic analysts have maintained, or that it is the vestigial remnant of the common law's originally deontic conception. I also claim that the economic analysis satisfies the transparency criterion by arguing that terms with a deontic plain meaning have acquired a consequentialist contextual meaning within the common law. Although this "contextualist convergence" thesis is counterintuitive, I build on Coleman's semantic theory to explain how it is possible. To demonstrate that it is plausible as well, I argue that evolutionary forces would have naturally led to this result over the course of the common law's development. In particular, I claim that the substantial indeterminacy of deontic moral theory, and the superior determinacy of the economic analysis, explains why judges would be intuitively attracted to reasoning that is best reconstructed in economic terms, notwithstanding the superior normative force of deontic moral theory. Thus, the core of my defense of explanatory economic analysis is that its critics overlook the central theoretical and practical role determinacy plays in explanation and justification generally, and in the explanation of judicial reasoning in particular, where determinacy is prized, if not above all else, no less than any other virtue. (shrink)

There is an influential story about learning that retains a grip on the public mind. Main elements of this story include: the best learning resides in individual minds not bodies; it centres on propositions ; such learning is transparent to the mind that has acquired it; so the acquisition of the best learning alters minds not bodies. Implications of these basic ideas include: the best learning can be expressed verbally and written down in books, etc.; the process and product of (...) learning can be sharply distinguished; and, though residing in minds and books, the best learning can be applied, via bodies, to alter the external world. The pervasive influence of this story is apparent in many writings about learning, including philosophical writings. A number of basic assumptions about learning underpin this story. The central purpose of this paper is to further delineate and then challenge each of these basic assumptions. The main implication of challenging these basic assumptions is that a somewhat different philosophical understanding of learning emerges. This different understanding of learning may offer fresh insights on current educational issues. (shrink)

The U.S. Constitution employs a utilitarian view in authorizing Congress to establish patents and copyrights. Let us refer to this way of justifying copyright as the Incentives Argument, or more extensively, the Incentives Argument for Intellectual Property Rights. While seemingly straightforward, the Incentives Argument has been widely criticized in philosophical literature on intellectual property. Scholars have come to prefer Neo-Lockean labor-desert accounts, grounding intellectual property rights in the author's natural ownership claims over his creations. Neo-Lockean accounts are (...) thought to avoid some of the problems classically associated with utilitarian arguments, such as vulnerability to empirical evidence and an inability to make sense of rights or duties morally prior to consequential considerations. Fortunately, many criticisms articulated by opponents of the Incentives Argument can be answered by a strategic retreat to the version of utilitarianism found in the work of John Stuart Mill. I argue that not only does a Millian account of the Incentives Argument prove less vulnerable to oft-cited criticisms, but also allows for a more robust account of how the audience benefits from a proliferation of creative works. Mill's focus on the importance of critical self-development allows for a deeper analysis of how creative works benefit members of the audience as individuals and as a community. Within a Millian framework, viewing the audience as mere passive consumers of media fails to take into account the impact of expressive acts on an individual's critical self-development. Instead, one must see members of the audience as active participants in the creation of meaning and the common culture. Construing the community that receives creative works as an Active Audience alters the landscape of copyright, and the Incentives Argument, making balancing the desires of creators and the desires of audience members a key priority. (shrink)

The best philosophical account of human rights regards them as protections of the values we attach to human agency. The international law of human rights is embodied in a large number of declarations, conventions, covenants, charters, and judicial decisions. There are many discrepancies between the lists of human rights that emerge from these two authoritative sources. This lecture explores the significance of these discrepancies.

There is a surprising absence of systematic theological reflection on what the church’s response to refugees should be and how its response relates to wider debates on the duty of care to refugees. This article situates theological concerns within wider philosophical debate on what the duty of care to refugees consists of. The first section critically reviews the debate on how liberal democracies should respond to refugees. The second section, following Georgio Agamben’s characterisation of refugees as ‘bare (...) life’, argues that refugees unveil a deep contradiction in contemporary patterns of political sovereignty. It closes by arguing that while a theological account of political authority points to some roads beyond the crisis, the first task of the church is to properly order its own duty of care to refugees. The last section consists of an exegesis of the second clause of the Lord’s Prayer as a way of giving an account of what such care involves. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory usually focuses on the moral responsibility of corporations towards their stakeholders. This article takes the reverse perspective to shed light on the moral responsibility of stakeholders—specifically, investors or 'financiers'. It explicates a distinction between two types of financiers, creditors and shareholders. Many intuitively judge that shareholders have greater or more extensive moral responsibility for the actions of the corporations they invest in than do bondholders and other creditors. Examining the merits of possible arguments for or against treating owners (...) and creditors differently elucidates which arguments can support the moral duties of investors generally, and different duties for different groups of investors specifically. The paper considers three possible lines of arguments, rooting investors' responsibility, respectively, in how they enable corporate conduct, how they benefit from it, and to what extent they are complicit in it. The paper argues that a notion of complicity is the only tenable ground for holding investors liable; sketches an account of complicity based on the recent philosophical literature on collective intention and collective action; and concludes that shareholders but not creditors can generally be seen as complicit on this account. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophical accounts of the applicability of mathematics in physical sciences and the empirical world are based on formalized relations between the mathematical structures and the physical systems they are supposed to represent within the models. Such relations were constructed both to ensure an adequate representation and to allow a justification of the validity of the mathematical models as means of scientific inference. This article puts in evidence the various circularities (logical, epistemic, and of definition) that are present (...) in these formal constructions and discusses them as an argument for the alternative semantic and propositional-structure accounts of the applicability of mathematics. (shrink)

정치적 의무(political obligation)를 정당화하는 것은 시민이 왜 국가의 법을 준수해야 하는지와 관련되는 정치철학의 중요한 주제이다. 정치적 의무에 관한 철학적인 작업은, 보통 계약론적 설명, 공정성에 근거한 설명, 감사에 근거한 설명 등으로 분류된다. 이런 통상적인 입장들 외에도 이른바 연대주의(associativism)가 있다. 필자의 주된 목표는 정치적 의무에 대한 연대주의적 설명의 가능성을 적극적으로 타진하는 것이다. 연대주의자들은 우리가 어떤 공동체나 집단의 멤버로 속하게 되면 바로 거기에서 도출되는 특정한 의무들이 있다는 점에 주목한다. 예를 들어 가족이나 친구 같은 특별하고 개인적인 관계에서 상대방에 대한 그리고 그 관계를 유지해야 할 (...) 의무가 발생하는 것과 마찬가지로, 공적이고 정치적인 관계에서도 국가와 국민에 대한 의무가 발생한다는 것이다. 웰먼은 어떤 연합이나 관계가 진정한 도덕적 의무를 발생시킬 수 없다는 점, 그리고 개인적인 관계와 국가 같은 넓은 연합 사이에는 유비가 성립할 수 없다는 점을 근거로 연대주의적 설명의 한계를 지적한다. 필자는 이에 대하여 다음과 같이 대응한다. 첫째, 특정한 연합이나 관계를 하나의 실질적인 가치를 실현하는 것으로 이해할 경우, 이에 상응하는 도덕적 의무의 가능성을 타진할 수 있다. 둘째, 연대주의자들은 웰먼이 지적하는 유비를 상정하지 않고서도 정치적 의무를 충분히 설명할 수 있다. 연대주의자들이 웰먼의 비판을 이런 방식으로 피할 수 있다고 해서 그들의 입장이 완벽하게 정당화되는 것은 아니다. 필자는 연대주의자들이 더 해결해야 할 문제가 무엇인지 살펴본다. (shrink)

Starting from certain metalogical results, I argue that first-order logical truths of classical logic are a priori and necessary. Afterwards, I formulate two arguments for the idea that first-order logical truths are also analytic, namely, I first argue that there is a conceptual connection between aprioricity, necessity, and analyticity, such that aprioricity together with necessity entails analyticity; then, I argue that the structure of natural deduction systems for FOL displays the analyticity of its truths. Consequently, each philosophical approach to (...) these truths should account for this evidence, i.e., that first-order logical truths are a priori, necessary, and analytic, and it is my contention that the semantic account is a better candidate. (shrink)

Viewed in its entirety, moral philosophizing, and the moral behavior of people throughout history, presents a curious puzzle. On the one hand, interpersonal duties display a remarkably stable core content: morality the world over enjoins people to keep their word; refrain from violence, theft and cheating; and help those in need. On the other hand, the asserted motives that drive people’s moral actions evince a dazzling diversity: from empathy or sympathy, to practical or prudential reason, to custom and honor, cultural (...) identity, excellence and independence, faith and spirituality, narrative and beauty, and more besides. I term this twin phenomenon—a core of fixed moral duties driven by diverse motives—“moral motive pluralism.” In this article, I marshal evidence to show the prevalence of the phenomenon. Contrary to widespread assumptions, across generations and cultures, diverse motives drive different people to perform their moral duties. But despite this diversity, each different motive impels conscientious compliance with the same core moral duties. I argue this phenomenon undermines key types of evidence commonly employed to justify popular moral philosophies, and provides us with reason to seriously consider certain sorts of ethical theories—especially “functionalist” accounts of morality. (shrink)

Influential moral theories in the contemporary West face problems making sense of the conflict between the interests of animals and people’s interests in culture. They have trouble explaining either the existence of strong direct duties to animals or the importance of people’s right to culture (and frequently both). In this chapter I aim to advance a relational ethic, grounded on the African philosophical tradition, that offers a promising alternative. I contend that duties toward animals and rights to culture are (...) potentially conflicting normative branches springing from the common root of a demand to prize communal relationship. In addition to showing that communion makes good sense of the strength of some direct duties to animals and the moral significance of culture, I argue that it accounts well for how to understand the way in which they can clash and how to address it practically. (shrink)

In his influential essay, “Plotinus’s Metaphysics: Emanation or Creation?” Lloyd Gerson raises the question of whether Plotinus’ account of the procession of all things from the One is actually a type of creationist metaphysics rather than an alternative to it. This paper is a reexamination of this question. As with most philosophical questions, much depends on how the terms are defined. Therefore, the first part of this paper will draw on Thomas Aquinas for a philosophical definition of creation (...) and for the judgment that the philosophical understanding of creation can be and was achieved without the aid of divine revelation. The second part will argue that, according to Aquinas’ definition, Plotinus presents a philosophical account of creation. The issues of pantheism, negative theology, the freedom of the One, and the generation of Nous are all discussed. Some use is made of Avicenna as bridge figure between Aquinas and Plotinus. (shrink)

This book demonstrates the importance of a duty-based approach to morality. The dominance of what has been labeled “rights talk” leads to the neglect of duties without corresponding rights and stimulates the proliferation of questionable human rights. Therefore, this book argues for a duty-based perspective on morality in order to, first, salvage duties of virtue, and, second, counter the trend of rights-proliferation by providing some conceptual clarity concerning rights and duties that will enable us to differentiate between genuine (...) and spurious rights-claims. The argument for this duty-based perspective is made by examining two particularly contentious duties: duties to aid the global poor and civic duties. These two duties serve as case studies and are explored from the perspectives of political theory, jurisprudence and moral philosophy. The argument is made that both these duties can only be adequately defined and allocated if we adopt the perspective of duties, as the predominant perspective of rights either does not recognize them to be duties at all or else leaves their content and allocation indefinite. This renewed focus on duties does not wish to diminish the importance of rights. Rather, the duty-based perspective on morality will strengthen human rights discourse by distinguishing more strictly between genuine and inauthentic rights. Furthermore, a duty-based approach enriches our moral landscape by recognizing both duties of justice and duties of virtue. The latter duties are not less important or supererogatory, but function as indispensable complements to the duties prescribed by justice. In this perceptive and exceptionally lucid book, Eric Boot argues that a duty-focused approach to morality will remedy the shortcomings he finds in the standard accounts of human rights. The study tackles staple philosophical topics such as the contrasts between duties of virtue and duties of justice and imperfect and perfect obligations. But more importantly perhaps, it also confronts the practical question of what our human rights duties are and how we ought to act on them. Boot's book is a splendid example of how philosophy can engage and clarify real world problems. Kok-Chor Tan, Department of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania A lively and enjoyable defence of the importance of our having duties to fellow human beings in severe poverty. At a time when global justice has never been more urgent, this new book sheds much needed light. Thom Brooks, Professor of Law and Government and Head of Durham Law School, Durham University. (shrink)

When read as demands for justification, these questions seem absurd. We don’t normally ask people to substantiate assertions like “I think it will rain tomorrow” or “I have a headache”. There is, at the very least, a strong presumption that sincere self-attributions about one’s thoughts and feelings are true. In fact, some philosophers believe that such self-attributions are less susceptible to doubt than any other claims. Even those who reject that extreme view generally acknowledge that there is some salient epistemic (...) difference between (a) one’s belief that she thinks it will rain tomorrow, or that she has a headache, and (b) her belief that it is raining, or that another person has a headache. (shrink)

Children have special duties to their parents: there are things that we ought to do for our parents, but not for just anyone. Three competing accounts of filial duty appear in the literature: the debt theory, the gratitude theory and the friendship theory. Each is unsatisfactory: each tries to assimilate the moral relationship between parent and child to some independently understood conception of duty, but this relationship is different in structure and content from any that we are (...) likely to share with anyone apart from a parent. A more promising account will concentrate on what is unique about the parent-child relationship. I articulate and defend the 'special goods theory', according to which filial duties arise from the distinctive kinds of goods that healthy parent-child relationships typically involve. (shrink)

Many philosophers have objected to Kant’s account of duties regarding non-human nature, arguing that it does not ground adequate moral concern for non-human natural entities. However, the traditional interpretation of Kant on this issue is mistaken, because it takes him to be arguing merely that humans should abstain from animal cruelty and wanton destruction of flora solely because such actions could make one more likely to violate one’s duties to human beings. Instead, I argue, Kant’s account of duties regarding nature (...) grounds much stronger limitations on how humans may treat non-human animals and flora, since such duties are rooted in the imperfect duty to increase one’s own moral perfection. This duty proscribes actions affecting non-human nature that decrease one’s moral perfection, such as those that cause organisms unnecessary harm. Moreover, the duty to moral perfection prescribes (but does not strictly require) actions affecting non-human nature that increase one’s moral perfection, such as those that benefit organisms. Given this interpretation, I show that, contrary to a widely held view, Kant’s moral philosophy can ground a coherent and robust approach to environmental ethics. (shrink)

In cross-cultural studies of well-being psychologists have shown ways in which well-being or its constituents are tailored by culture (Arrindell et. al. 1997, Diener and Diener 1995, Kitayama et. al. 2000, Oishi & Diener 2001, Oishi et. al. 1999). Some psychologists have taken the fact of cultural variance to imply that there is no universal notion of well-being (Ryan and Deci, 2001, Christopher 1999). Most philosophers, on the other hand, have assumed that there is a notion of well-being that has (...) universal application. Given the facts about cultural variance, is this a mistake? What are the implications for philosophers of the existence of cultural differences in well-being? In answer to these questions I distinguish two different philosophical projects in the area of well-being. One of these projects seeks to provide a formal analysis of well-being. I argue that this project is not undermined by the kinds of cultural differences that have been discovered and that, therefore, there might be a universal notion of well-being. The other project seeks to provide a substantive account of well-being. Cultural differences are relevant here, but not always as directly relevant as one might have assumed. The main goal of this paper, then, is to argue that the implications of cultural differences for the philosophical project are limited and to clear the ground for a universal notion of well-being. In service of this main goal, the paper takes on three subsidiary tasks. First, I clarify the basic question or questions that philosophers are trying to answer when they talk about well-being. Second, I provide a.. (shrink)

Augustine’s insights into the will and its free decision have long been a focus of controversy since his lifetime. Nonetheless, in modern scholarship, little effort has been made to clarify the actual function of the will as a psychological force in the life of mind. It has often been taken for granted that the will is an independent faculty which underlies our moral responsibility by its free choice. Accordingly, much ink has been spilled over issues such as necessity and freedom, (...) grace and free will, sin and evil will etc. This philosophical inquiry distinguishes itself from its antecedents by adopting a psychological focus on the function of the will. It attempts to explicate why uoluntas, and not other psychological activities, is the locus of moral responsibility in Augustine’s philosophical psychology. The work is thus split into two parts, each consisting of four chapters: the first part devoted to the will’s operation as a psychological dynamism, and the second to the traditional consideration of the will as a moral faculty. In the first part, the dissertation systematically investigates the psychological phenomenon of the will in its relationship to other psychological activities, from irrational affection to intellectual cognition. This phenomenological approach starts with Augustine’s unusual conception of concupiscentia carnis in his debates with Julian of Eclanum. According to Augustine’s philosophical interpretation of this biblical term, concupiscentia carnis as an uncontrollable tendency defines the essential infirmity of the will and forms the starting-point of further affective expressions of the soul. Then, the analysis advances to the role of the will in the formation of affection. It reveals the implicit approval that is entailed in the unvoluntary pre-volitional movements of the soul. This explains the superficial discrepancy between Augustine’s accounts of affection as can be found in Books IX and XIV of De ciuitate Dei. This general account of Augustine’s theory of emotion is followed by an in-depth examination of the feeling of shame so as to display the will’s actual contribution in a reflective affection. Augustine convincingly proves that shame reflects the powerlessness of the will in confrontation with concupiscentia carnis as well as the will’s effort to regain its dignity. To complete the foray into Augustine’s philosophy of the soul, his reflections on intellect and will in the process of moral decision are called into question. By reconsidering Augustine’s account of his own conversion and his reflections on our journey to the happy life, my analyses show that neither intellectualitic nor voluntaristic interpretations do justice to his understanding of moral decision. The voluntaristic interpretation overlooks the intellectual perspective of happy life and Augustine’s emphasis on the necessity of a knowledge of the good for our moral behaviour. On the other hand, the intellectualistic account unjustly ignores Augustine’s insights into the severe destructiveness of the failure of the will and the dilemma of two wills at war. To summarize, the phenomenological approach in Part I reveals the omnipresent feature of the will in mental life. The implications of this psychological feature of the will are twofold. It indicates the independence of the will as well as the limitations of the will by its actual conditions. The second part of this work investigates the moral significance of Augustine’s psychological insights into the function of the will. What bridges the gap between uoluntas as a psychological power and uoluntas as a moral faculty is Augustine’s most controversial conception of freedom. The dissertation first scrutinizes Augustine’s arguments for the independence of the will as reconstructed and assumed in the first part. By metaphysical arguments, Augustine reveals that nothing external, neither inferior nor superior being, can force the will to attain a particular disposition. For this cannot happen in a world governed by the divine order. In his analyses of the phenomenon of two contradictory wills, Augustine shows that the will is conditioned but not compelled by other internal forces. However, this merely represents the negative aspect of the will’s freedom, or libertas a coactione. At the same time, the positive aspect of Augustinian uoluntas has frequently been misinterpreted as a faculty of choice, or libertas indifferentiae. A careful reading shows that the free decision of the will is essentially a capacity to pursue one’s own happiness. In accord with this eudemonistic emphasis, the genuine freedom is the freedom to will and to accomplish the good, which alone guarantees the happy life. This original interpretation of freedom offers powerful support to Augustine’s account of moral agency. One is not only held responsible for his voluntary evildoings which he could have avoided, but also for the necessary conditions of life, i.e., ignorantia and difficultas as effects of original sin. For as argued earlier, even the presence of concupiscentia carnis as the inherent infirmity of the will contains the least assent of the will. This assent establishes the moral agency in evil willing. To account for our agency in the good will, the dissertation addresses the problem of compatibility between divine grace and freedom of will. My analysis shows that Augustine’s rigid position in the last years of his life is also philosophically defensible. An internal function of the grace upon the faculty of the will will not destroy its freedom to attain its own disposition. This philosophical analysis concludes by highlightling the close affiliation between the will and the self in Augustinian uoluntas. “I know nothing I could call my own if the will by which I’m willing or unwilling is not my own.”. By consent or dissent of the will, we identify ourselves with mental images, affective movements, practical reasoning and other psychological activities, either implicitly or explicitly. Augustine’s realistic conceptions of the will and its conditioned freedom provide a subtle and rich picture of human nature, which is still relevant to our own theoretical reflections on the self. 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Philosophical accounts of perception in the tradition of Kant and Reid have generally supposed that an event of making a judgment is a key element in every perceptual experience. An alternative very austere view regards perception as an event containing nothing judgmental, nor anything conceptual. This account of perception as nonconceptual is discussed first historically as found in the philosophies of Locke and (briefly) Berkeley, and then examined in the contemporary work of Chisholm and Alston.

Raw Feeling:. Philosophical Account of the Essence of Consciousness. Robert Kirk. Oxford, NY: Clarendon Press, 1994‐ ix. 251 pp. 42.00 (cloth).

This chapter contains sections titled: Definitions Justification and the Duty to Obey.

The book A critical overview of biological functions is a short monograph by J. Garson, which provides a survey of the views on biological functions in the analytic tradition of philosophy. The notion of function is ubiquitous in biology and all of its subfields. Behind the notion of biological functions lurks the shadow of final causes. Overcoming this shadow is a challenge that has stimulated many philosophers and the literature on this topic is very rich. In the analytic tradition, researchers (...) focus on providing naturalized accounts of functions. To do so, the main difficulty is to provide accounts of functions that exclude the use of final causes. The outcome of this collective work is a diversity of accounts of functions. Some of these accounts are fairly recent while others have been proposed several decades ago and are the object of many discussions. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept the idea that there are duties to promote or create just institutions. But are the addressees of such duties supposed to be individuals – the members of the citizenry? What does it mean for an individual to promote or create just institutions? According to the ‘Simple View’, the citizenry has a collective duty to create or promote just institutions, and each individual citizen has an individual duty to do their part in this collective project. The (...) simple view appears to work well with regard to – you guessed it – ‘simple’ scenarios but it is riddled with further questions and problems. In this chapter, we raise five problems for the Simple View: (a) We suggest that one cannot develop a view concerning the citizenry’s duty to promote just institutions in isolation from a conception of the ontological relationship between the state and its citizens; (b) We argue that it is not obvious that the citizenry is the right entity to be attributed duties in the first place; (c) We show that a plausible account of collective duties to promote just institutions must not remain silent on the complexities and difficulties amorphous, unorganized group face in vis-à-vis collective action; (d) We contend that without allocation principles for contributory duties amongst the citizenry, or – alternatively – a method for practical deliberation that is action-guiding in collective action contexts, the claim that the citizens have a collective duty to promote just institutions remains moot; and, finally, (e) We demonstrate that the problem of reasonable disagreement is a serious threat to a collective duty to promote or create just institutions – it potentially undermines such a duty altogether and allows for conflicting contributory duties amongst the citizenry. We hope that our discussion will ultimately help improve existing theories and conceptual frameworks with a view to better understanding citizens’ obligations to promote justice under non-ideal conditions. (shrink)

Do adult children have a particular duty, or set of duties, to their aging parents? What might the normative source and content of filial obligation be? This chapter examines Kant’s duty of beneficence in The Doctrine of Virtue and the Groundwork, suggesting that at its core, performance of filial duty occurs in response to the needs of aging parents. The duty of beneficence accounts for inevitable vulnerabilities that befall human rational beings and reveals moral agents (...) as situated in communities of dependence and mutual aid. Other accounts of filial obligation, such as those based on a notion of gratitude, virtue, or friendship, generate various difficulties and fail to adequately address and emphasize four morally significant features of the adult child/ aging parent relationship. First, the relationship between adult children and their aging parents is one of dependency created by the increasing frailty and need of those parents. Second, the obligations that adult children have to aging parents take place in the context of a relationship not voluntarily assumed, but not coerced. Third, given a cultural tendency toward paternalistic care of elderly individuals, the content of filial obligation should safeguard against such treatment. Fourth, because dependency relations between adult children and aging parents can involve an immense degree of sacrifice on the part of the caretaker, an acknowledgment of duties should be accompanied by a concurrent acknowledgment of the necessary limitation of duties. Addressing these four issues is essential in offering a coherent account of the normative source, content, nature, and scope of adult children’s duty to care for their aging parents. This essay demonstrates that the Kantian duty of beneficence, when functioning as the philosophical foundation of filial obligation, allows for ample light to be shed upon and for proper analysis to take place of these four issues. (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of perception in the tradition of Kant and Reid have generally supposed that an event of making a judgment is a key element in every perceptual experience. An alternative very austere view regards perception as an event containing nothing judgmental, nor anything conceptual. This account of perception as nonconceptual is discussed first historically as found in the philosophies of Locke and (briefly) Berkeley, and then examined in the contemporary work of Chisholm and Alston.

Robert Kirk uses the notion of "raw feeling" to bridge the intelligibility gap between our knowledge of ourselves as physical organisms and our knowledge of ..

There is much philosophical literature on the duty to rescue. Individuals who encounter and could save, at relatively little cost to themselves, a person at risk of losing life or limb are morally obligated to do so. Yet little has been said about the other side of the issue. There are cases in which the need for rescue could have been reasonably avoided by the rescuee. We argue for a duty to take rescue precautions, providing an account (...) of the circumstances in which it arises. This novel duty has important implications for public policy. We apply it to the situation of some of the uninsured in the United States. Given the US clinician's duty to provide emergency care to all people regardless of ability to pay, some of the uninsured have a moral duty to purchase health insurance. We defend the duty against objections, including the possibility that a right to rescue can be waived, thus undermining a duty to take rescue precautions, that the duty of many professionals is voluntarily incurred, and that a distinction between actively assumed and passively assumed risks matters morally. (shrink)

Hermeneutic theory and the study of Jewish theology : toward a new model of Jewish theological language -- Jewish theology as a religious and doxastic practice -- Forms of theological language in Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael -- Forms of theological language in Franz Rosenzweig's The star of redemption.

Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) is considered a ‘mechanistic science,’ in that it causally explains morphological evolution in terms of changes in developmental mechanisms. Evo-devo is also an interdisciplinary and integrative approach, as its explanations use contributions from many fields and pertain to different levels of organismal organization. Philosophical accounts of mechanistic explanation are currently highly prominent, and have been particularly able to capture the integrative nature of multifield and multilevel explanations. However, I argue that evo-devo demonstrates the need (...) for a broadened philosophical conception of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation. Mechanistic explanation (in terms of the qualitative interactions of the structural parts of a whole) has been developed as an alternative to the traditional idea of explanation as derivation from laws or quantitative principles. Against the picture promoted by Carl Craver, that mathematical models describe but usually do not explain, my discussion of cases from the strand of evo-devo which is concerned with developmental processes points to qualitative phenomena where quantitative mathematical models are an indispensable part of the explanation. While philosophical accounts have focused on the actual organization and operation of mechanisms, properties of developmental mechanisms that are about how a mechanism reacts to modifications are of major evolutionary significance, including robustness, phenotypic plasticity, and modularity. A philosophical conception of mechanisms is needed that takes into account quantitative changes, transient entities and the generation of novel types of entities, feedback loops and complex interaction networks, emergent properties, and, in particular, functional-dynamical aspects of mechanisms, including functional (as opposed to structural) organization and distributed, system-wide phenomena. I conclude with general remarks on philosophical accounts of explanation. (shrink)

There is virtually no philosophical consensus on what, exactly, imperfect duties are. In this paper, I lay out three criteria which I argue any adequate account of imperfect duties should satisfy. Using beneficence as a leading example, I suggest that existing accounts of imperfect duties will have trouble meeting those criteria. I then propose a new approach: thinking of imperfect duties as duties held by groups, rather than individuals. I show, again using the example of beneficence, that this (...) proposal can satisfy the criteria, explaining how something can both have the necessity characteristic of duty, while also allowing agents the latitude which seems to attach to imperfect duties. (shrink)

Prophecy is conspicuous by its complete absence from all three of the commentaries on De Anima by Averroes. However, prophecy and philosophical metaphysics are discussed by him in his Commentary on the Parva Naturalia, a work written before his methodological work on philosophy and religion, the Faṣl al-maqāl, generally held to have been written ca. 1179-1180. The analyses and remarks of Averroes presented in that Commentary have been characterized by Herbert Davidson as “extremely radical” to the extent that “The (...) term prophet would, on this reading, mean nothing more than the human author of Scripture; and the term revelation would mean a high level of philosophical knowledge”. In the present article I discuss Averroes on method in matters of religion and philosophy as well as prophecy in philosophically argumentative works and in dialectical works, with particular consideration of the reasoning of his Commentary on the Parva Naturalia. I conclude that Averroes found in philosophy and its sciences the most complete and precise truth content and highest levels of knowledge and understanding and from them constructed his worldview, while he found prophecy and religion to be like an Aristotelian practical science in that they concern good and right conduct in the achievement of an end attained in action, not truths to be known for their own sake. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the nature of crimes against humanity. The various definitions that have been used, or alluded to, in the legal literature are outlined, and it is suggested that they fall neatly into two camps by interpreting ‘humanity’ differently. It is proposed that any theory which adequately captures the nature of this crime must distinguish it qualitatively from other ‘lower’ crimes, and that only members of one camp can do this. I go on to argue for one (...) particular way of treating the crime – regarding it as a crime which hurts all humanity – and recommend adopting a view under which we would regard all humanity as one entity. (shrink)