Why are mistaken beliefs about Covid-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only a part of individual differences in the susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to be more susceptible (...) to believing Covid-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about Covid-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

Following the centenary year of the publication of the first edition of Karl Barth’s Der Römerbrief, this article attempts to look at what a contemporary South African audience could potentially learn from Barth’s reading of Romans 12. This article begins with a few preliminary remarks on the reading of Barth in both apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, and asks whether his theology still has any role to play in current theological and ethical discourses. After arguing that Barth might still have (...) ‘a’ contribution to make, this article provides an in-depth exposition and analysis of Barth’s reading of Romans 12. Here it is shown how, in his commentary on this chapter, Barth maintains that worship, that is, the offering of our bodies as ‘living sacrifices’ to God, should be seen as the primary ethical act, which precedes and renders possible all other secondary ethical conduct. This is then followed by the last section of this article, which explores the possible meaning and relevance of Barth’s insights for life in present-day South Africa. (shrink)

Beneath the stylized violence and thrilling car crashes, the Mad Max films consider universal questions about the nature of human life, order and anarchy, justice and moral responsibility, society and technology, and ultimately, human redemption. In Mad Max and Philosophy, a diverse team of political scientists, historians, and philosophers investigates the underlying themes of the blockbuster movie franchise, following Max as he attempts to rebuild himself and the world. -/- This book guides you through the barren wastelands of a post-apocalyptic (...) future as you explore ethics and politics in The Wasteland, the importance of costumes and music, humankind's relationship with nature, commerce, gender, religion, madness, and more. (shrink)

Pots and Poetry and other essays is a collection of some of South African philosopher Martin Versfeld's most popular works, as well as three previously uncollected essays.

Thus, Meyers provides a valuable account, not only of current medical attitudes, but also of relevant case and statute law as it stands at present.

Based on a survey of editors, publishers and staff members of 300 newspapers, this work documents the ethical confusion in the American press in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the Pentagon Papers controversy. It provides an analytical and historical framework to show how the press reached this point and argues for an ethical audit to give publications an independent check on their moral condition.

Identitat ist unter den Bedingungen der Postmoderne kein festes Ganzes mehr. Die unuberschaubare Anzahl an Moglichkeiten in Ausbildung, Studium, Beruf, aber auch Partnerschaft und Lebensformen fuhren zu der Einsicht, dass Identitat sich immer neu konstituieren muss. Tatsachlich ist Identitat das, was mich als unverwechselbares Ich korperlich und geistig - und das heisst: leiblich - konstituiert. Zugleich entzieht sie sich mir und muss immer wieder neu errungen werden. Dies gilt gerade dann, wenn fruhere Ideale zusammenbrechen oder das zuvor Selbstverstandliche nicht mehr (...) tragt. Identitat und Identitatsbildung betreffen den Einzelnen ebenso wie politische oder religiose Gemeinschaften. In Zeiten, in denen vieles in Bewegung ist, ist Identitat eng verbunden mit der Frage nach den gemeinsamen Werten - das, wofur es sich zu leben lohnt und was wir an die nachste Generation weitergeben mochten. Besondere Beachtung verdienen in diesem Kontext phanomenologische Ansatze, die den leiblichen, sinnlichen und affektiven Dimensionen des Lebens Rechnung tragen. Auf diese Weise lassen sich Erfahrungen, die unsere Identitat begrunden und ausmachen, als Momente einer breiter angelegten Spiritualitat der Wahrnehmung verstehen. Mit Beitragen von Johannes Bundgens, Natalie Depraz, Stephan Gratzel, Caroline Horch, Antje Kapust, Rolf Kuhn, Elmar Nass, Simone Paganini, Michaela Puzicha, Bertin Rautenberg, Holger Zaborowski u. a. (shrink)

The strained relation between Samaritans and Jews as a fruit of long-term process from the division of the United Kingdom of Israel (ca. 931 B.C.E) became a dominant issue since the post-exilic period and became more pronounced in the first century C.E. Beside the Old Testament, the story of their relation which was full of conflict can be traced to extra-biblical sources. One of them is Flavius Josephus’ works (ca. 70 to 100 C.E), i.e., Jewish War and Jewish Antiquities. The (...) root of the conflict is related to the presence of the Second Jerusalem Temple. The peak of the conflict is the construction of the Mount Gerizim temple in which some Jews regarded the adherents of the Samaritan cult as schismatic. The founding of this rival temple of Jerusalem aggravated the bad relations between Samaritans and Jews. The destruction of the Mount Gerizim temple by John Hyrcanus was a crucial incident for their relations. The conflict between Samaritans and Jews still continued in the Roman period. By historical approach, this study would setforth the examination of some Josephus’ accounts regarding the historical process of the estrangement and rivalry between Samaritans and Jews which resulted in the final split in second century B.C.E. Keywords: Samaritans, Jews, Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, Temple, Jerusalem, Mount Gerizim. Abstrak: Relasi tegang antara orang Samaria dan Yahudi merupakan buah dari proses yang panjang sejak pecahnya Kerajaan Israel Raya (sekitar 931 B.C.E). Relasi mereka ini menjadi masalah dominan sejak periode setelah pembuangan dan semakin jelas pada abad pertama masehi. Di samping Perjanjian Lama, kisah tentang relasi mereka yang penuh konflik dapat dilacak dalam sumber-sumber di luar Alkitab. Salah satunya adalah karya dari Flavius Josephus (sekitar 70 sampai 100 M), yaitu Perang Yahudi dan Sejarah Yahudi. Akar dari konflik itu adalah kehadiran Bait Allah Yerusalem Kedua. Puncak dari konflik itu adalah pembangunan Bait Allah di Gunung Gerizim di mana sejumlah orang Yahudi kemudian menganggap pengikut ibadah orang Samaria sebagai skismatis. Pendirian tandingan Bait Allah Yerusalem ini memperparah relasi buruk antara Samaria dan Yahudi. Penghancuran Bait Allah di Gunung Gerizim oleh Yohanes Hyrcanus menjadi insiden krusial bagi relasi mereka. Konflik antara orang Samaria dan Yahudi masih terus berlangsung pada periode Romawi. Dengan pendekatan historis, studi ini akan memaparkan penelitian kisah-kisah dari karya Josephus berkaitan dengan proses perpecahan dan persaingan antara orang Samaria dan Yahudi memuncak pada perpecahannya pada abad II SM. Kata-kata Kunci: Samaria, Yahudi, Flavius Josephus, Sejarah Yahudi, Bait Allah, Yerusalem, Gunung Gerizim. (shrink)

The inclusion of engineering standards in US science education standards is potentially important because of how limited engineering education for K-12 learners is, despite the ubiquity of engineering in students’ lives. However, the majority of learners experience science education throughout their compulsory schooling. If improved engineering literacy is to be achieved, then its inclusion in science curricula is perhaps the most efficient means. One significant challenge that arises, however, is in the framing of engineering relative to science by both teachers (...) and curriculum. Science and engineering are both distinct and interdependent. The nature of the contributions of science and engineering to one another has been an area of some examination in philosophy of technology and engineering, but little framing of this relationship has been conducted with K-12 science and engineering education contexts in mind. Nature of science is a critical layer of scientific understanding that has been used to explicitly support literacy in K-16 science classrooms for decades. However, engineering cannot be authentically and appropriately supported by NOS framing. There is an immediate need for discourse on the nature of engineering knowledge but not in isolation of NOS. Given the increasing inclusion of engineering in science classrooms, relationships between NOS and NOEK are in need of explication and argument. Our purpose is to promote a discussion about NOS, engineering, and the relationship between them without misrepresenting engineering as a subdomain of science or as an oversimplification of itself. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to formulate first-order Peano arithmetic within the resources of relevant logic, and to demonstrate certain properties of the system thus formulated. Striking among these properties are the facts that it is trivial that relevant arithmetic is absolutely consistent, but classical first-order Peano arithmetic is straightforwardly contained in relevant arithmetic. Under, I shall show in particular that 0 = 1 is a non-theorem of relevant arithmetic; this, of course, is exactly the formula whose unprovability was (...) sought in the Hilbert program for proving arithmetic consistent. Under, I shall exhibit the requisite translation, drawing some Goedelian conclusions therefrom. Left open, however, is the critical problem whether Ackermann’s rule γ is admissible for theories of relevant arithmetic. The particular system of relevant Peano arithmetic featured in this paper shall be called R♯. Its logical base shall be the system R of relevant implication, taken in its first-order form RQ. Among other Peano arithmetics we shall consider here in particular the systems C♯, J♯, and RM3♯; these are based respectively on the classical logic C, the intuitionistic logic J, and the Sobocinski-Dunn semi-relevant logic RM3. And another feature of the paper will be the presentation of a system of natural deduction for R♯, along lines valid for first-order relevant theories in general. This formulation of R♯ makes it possible to construct relevantly valid arithmetical deductions in an easy and natural way; it is based on, but is in some respects more convenient than, the natural deduction formulations for relevant logics developed by Anderson and Belnap in Entailment. (shrink)

How is women’s conception of self affected by the caregiving responsibilities traditionally assigned to them and by the personal vulnerabilities imposed on them? If institutions of male dominance profoundly influence women’s lives and minds, how can women form judgments about their own best interests and overcome oppression? Can feminist politics survive in face of the diversity of women’s experience, which is shaped by race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, as well as by gender? Exploring such questions, leading feminist thinkers have (...) reinvigorated work on the concept of self and personal identity, as demonstrated by the discussions in this insightful volume.The concerns that animate feminist scholarship have prompted feminist philosophers to sideline the theme of individualism and to focus on the theme of intersubjectivity. In conceptualizing the self, the contributors to this volume highlight emotional bonds among people, the stories people tell one another, and the systems of categories and behavioral norms that unite and divide groups of people. Topics addressed include sexual violence and the self, the social self and autonomy, the narrative self and integrity, self-ownership and the body, forgetting yourself and your race, group membership and personal identity, grief and gender, sympathy and women’s diversity, emotion and emancipatory epistemology, and dependency and justice. This volume will be important reading for students of feminist theory, ethics, and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

Since the introduction of radio and television news, journalism has gone through multiple transformations, but each time it has been sustained by a commitment to basic values and best practices. Journalism Ethics is a reminder, a defense and an elucidation of core journalistic values, with particular emphasis on the interplay of theory, conceptual analysis and practice. The book begins with a sophisticated model for ethical decision-making, one that connects classical theories with the central purposes of journalism. Top scholars from philosophy, (...) journalism and communications offer essays on such topics as objectivity, privacy, confidentiality, conflict of interest, the history of journalism, online journalism, and the definition of a journalist. The result is a guide to ethically sound and socially justified journalism-in whatever form that practice emerges. Journalism Ethics will appeal to students and teachers of journalism ethics, as well as journalists and practical ethicists in general. (shrink)

Meyers examines the question of personal autonomy. She observes the effects of childrearing practices and sexual biases, and reflects upon the results in women. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This paper addresses a theory of intergenerational justice that we refer to as “needs-based sufficientarianism”. According to needs-based sufficientarianism, the present generation ought to enable future generations to meet their basic needs — for example, their needs for drinkable water, food and health care. Our aim is to explain and defend this theory in a programmatic way. First, we introduce what we regard as the most plausible variant of needs-based sufficientarianism. Then we argue that this variant is superior to several (...) alternative ways of thinking about intergenerational justice. In particular, we defend basic needs as the currency of intergenerational justice and sufficiency as its principle. Our arguments for these claims are neither fully comprehensive nor fully conclusive. Yet, we hope that they suffice to show that needs-based sufficientarianism is a major contender, with significant pro tanto advantages over other views. (shrink)

Bereby‐Meyer, Hayakawa, Shalvi, Corey, Costa and Keysar investigate lying for self‐serving reasons. Participants in their experiments had to report the outcome of rolling a die only known to them. They inflated their outcomes less, and thus lied less, when using a foreign language than when using their native language. The authors suggest that lying for self‐serving reasons is an automatic tendency that can be overcome by speaking in a foreign language. [71].

In their struggle against the capitalist colonization of desire, Christianity and Buddhism offer similar strategies of fundamental formation or transformation of human desire. This article examines three specific features in which Christianity and Buddhism share a broad and deep resemblance in their analysis of on the dynamics of human desire and its transformation. First, both traditions identify distorted human desire as a source of bondage (or suffering), which affects the mind (intellectual), the heart (affective) and the body. Second, in terms (...) of the strategy of liberation from this bondage, both agree that human desiring constitutes the most effective internal force available in the human make up itself. Thus, the liberation process is not aimed at wiping out human desire but rather at channeling the very power of human desiring through a process of education whose dynamics are understood as an ascent or a journey that leads to higher (or deeper) Reality. Third, with regard to the direction of liberation, both traditions assert that this process should be directed not only toward the self but also towards others. Here the benefit for others, the virtue of caritas in Christianity and bodhicitta in Buddhism, constitutes a fundamental part of the direction of this process of formation. Keywords: Christianity, Buddhism, desire, capitalism, bondage,transformation, caritas, bodhicitta. Abstrak: Dalam perlawanan mereka terhadap kolonisasi hasrat oleh kapitalisme, tradisi Budhis dan Kristiani menawarkan cara-cara yang mirip untuk mendidik atau mentransformasi hasrat manusia. Artikel ini membahas tiga unsur penting yang sama dari analisis Budhisme dan Kristianitas mengenai dinamika hasrat manusia dan transformasinya. Pertama, kedua tradisi ini mengidentifikasi hasrat manusia yang rusak atau salah arah sebagai sebab dasariah dari penderitaan manusia. Kerusakan hasrat ini juga mempengaruhi dimensi intelektual, afektif dan juga tubuh manusia. Kedua, perihal cara pembebasan dari penderitaan ini, kedua tradisi ini juga sepakat bahwa hasrat manusia merupakan dayainternal paling efektif dalam diri manusia sendiri. Karena itu, proses pembebasan ini tidak dimaksudkan untuk membuang hasrat dari kemanusiaan, melainkan untuk menyalurkan daya hasrat ini melalui proses transformasi yang berdinamika “mendaki,” sebuah perjalanan menuju Realitas yang lebih tinggi atau dalam. Ketiga, mengenai arah pembebasan ini, kedua tradisi menekankan bahwa proses ini ditujukan tidak hanya untuk diri sendiri melainkan juga sesama. Dalam hal ini, kepentingan sesama seperti diungkapkan oleh keutamaan caritas dalam Kristianitas dan bodhicitta dalam Budhisme merupakan bagian dasariah dari arah transformasi hasrat manusia itu sendiri. Kata-kata kunci: Kristianitas, Budhisme, hasrat, kapitalisme, penderitaan, transformasi, caritas, bodhicitta. (shrink)

The survival and significance of the Latin American liberation theology movement relies, to some extent, on the power of the narratives of martyrdom. Precisely by relying on these narratives, through the dynamics of the theological category of memory that leads to solidarity, liberation theology situates itself in the tension between modernity and postmodernity. The categories of narrative, memory and solidarity, which are at play in the whole dynamic of martyrdom, constitute a postmodern way of doing a modern liberation theology. Liberation (...) theology will only be able to retain its “liberative” and “theological” element insofar as it continues to be “modern” and “postmodern” at the same time. Against the postmodern disbelief in the possibility of human emancipation, liberation theology continues to labor precisely under principium liberationis grounded in the promise of liberation contained in God’s revelation in the Scriptures. However, against the “modern” conception of emancipation based on reason and governed by the idea of progress, liberation theology envisions liberation as an integral process which takes place in a concrete, particular historical reality and under the eschatological promise of God. Keywords: liberation theology, martyrdom, modern, postmodern, narrative, memory, solidarity. Abstrak: Relevansi dan pertumbuhan teologi pembebasan, sampai tingkat tertentu, juga bergantung pada kekuatan kisah kemartiran. Dengan mendasarkan diri pada kisah (narrative) yang diolah lewat kategori pengingatan (memory) yang mengarah pada solidaritas, teologi pembebasan menempatkan diri dalam tegangan antara modernitas dan posmodernitas. Kategori kisah, pengingatan, dan solidaritas, yang berada dalam jantung narasi kemartiran, mengetengahkan sebuah cara posmodern untuk melakukan teologi pembebasan yang modern. Teologi pembebasan hanya akan berhasil mempertahankan unsur “teologi” dan “pembebasan” sejauh bersifat modern dan posmodern pada saat yang sama. Melawan ketidakpercayaan posmodernitas terhadap kemungkinan proyek pembebasan, teologi pembebasan mempertahankan prinsip pembebasan atas dasar isi pewahyuan Allah dalam Kitab Suci. Akan tetapi, melawan pemahaman modern tentang pembebasan berdasarkan akalbudi dan kemajuan, teologi pembebasan memahami pembebasan sebagai sebuah proses integral yang terjadi dalam waktu dan tempat yang nyata, dalam realitas sejarah yang partikular dan dalam kerangka janji eskatologis Allah. Kata-kata kunci: teologi pembebasan, kemartiran, modern, posmodern, narasi, pengingatan, solidaritas. (shrink)

Homosexuality is not easily accepted in the Catholic Church. There are at least three major schools concerning the attitude towards homosexuality based on their respective theological methodologies (scientia fidei). The first school is encapsulated in the Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (1986), which rejects homosexual persons and same-sex sexual relationships. The second school is put forward by John J. McNeill (1993), a moralist who embraces homosexual persons and same-sex sexual relationships. (...) The last one is represented by the document of Amoris Laetitia (2016), which accepts homosexual persons but disapproves of same-sex sexual relationships. These three major schools refer to the interpretation of the document Persona Humana article 8 (1975). A survey of 566 respondents was conducted from the 8th to the 15th of November in 2022. The results show that 74.2% of respondents have a form of acceptance in accordance with Amoris Laetitia, 14.5% with the Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, and 5.5% with the thoughts of John J. McNeill. Our study concluded that accepting homosexual persons and rejecting homosexual acts is the reference for ad experimentum moral decisions in the context of the Archdiocese of Jakarta in 2022. Abstrak Homoseksualitas tidak begitu mudah diterima dalam Gereja Katolik. Setidaknya ada tiga aliran yang berbeda sikap terhadap homoseksualitas berdasarkan pandangan teologi (scientia fidei) masing-masing. Aliran pertama terwakili oleh dokumen Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (1986) yang menolak pribadi homoseksual dan hubungan seksual sesama jenis. Aliran kedua diwakili oleh seorang moralis bernama John J. McNeill (1993) yang menerima pribadi homoseksual dan hubungan seksual sesama jenis. Aliran ketiga terwakili oleh dokumen Amoris Laetitia (2016) yang menerima pribadi homoseksual namun menolak hubungan seksual sesama jenis. Ketiga aliran besar ini mengacu pada penafsiran dokumen Persona Humana artikel 8 (1975). Sejak tanggal 8 sampai dengan 15 November 2022 kami melakukan survei terhadap 566 responden. Hasil survei menunjukkan sebanyak 74.2% responden memiliki bentuk penerimaan sesuai dengan Amoris Laetitia; sebanyak 14.5% responden memiliki bentuk penerimaan sesuai dengan dokumen Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons; dan sebanyak 5.5% responden memiliki bentuk penerimaan sesuai dengan pemikiran John J. McNeill. Kami menyimpulkan bahwa sikap menerima pribadi homoseksual dan menolak tindakan homoseksual merupakan rujukan keputusan moral ad experimentum dalam konteks Keuskupan Agung Jakarta di tahun 2022. Kata-kata Kunci: Homoseksualitas, Persona Humana, Amoris Laetitia, John J. McNeill, sensus fidei, scientia fidei. (shrink)

Adapting critical methods from such wide-ranging fields as anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, biology, and other sciences, Schapiro appraises fundamental semantic terms such as "organic style," "pictorial style", "field and vehicle," and "form and content"; he elucidates eclipsed intent in a well-known text by Freud on Leonardo da Vinci, in another by Heidegger on Vincent van Gogh.

This book provides a systematic introduction to the debate on historical emissions and climate change, for students, researchers and policymakers.

Spricht man über die Aufklärung, taucht man, wie meist in der Philosophie in eine Männerwelt, Frauen sind darin Randfiguren. In einer Zeit, als die Männer die Grundlagen der modernen Zivilisation legten, hat man Frauen eine Nebenrolle zugewiesen. Trotzdem haben Aufklärerinnen durch ihr Denken, ihr Werk und ihr Beispiel viele weitere Generationen beeinflusst. Der Titel Aufklärerinnen beschreibt Philosophinnen, Literatinnen und Wissenschaftlerinnen, die in dieser Umbruchphase etwas bewegen wollten. Mangelnder Frauenbildung, wirtschaftlicher Abhängigkeit und ehelicher Unterwerfung hatten sie den Kampf angesagt. Und das (...) in einer Zeit, die den Frauen mehr denn je ein bürgerliches Korsett aufgezwungen hat. When one speaks about the Enlightenment, one is immersed, as is usually the case in philosophy, in a man's world; women are marginal figures in it. At a time when men were laying the foundations of modern civilisation, women were assigned a supporting role. Nevertheless, women Enlightenment thinkers have influenced many more generations through their thinking, their work and their example. The title Women Enlighteners describes female philosophers, writers and scientists who wanted to make a difference during this period of upheaval. They declared war on the lack of female education, economic dependence and marital subjugation. And they did so in a time that imposed a bourgeois corset on women more than ever before. (shrink)

Theodor Geiger (1891-1952) zählt zu den vernachlässigten Klassikern der deutschen Soziologie. Realismus und Ideologiekritik bilden die Klammer für ein Opus, das von der Schichtungs-, Rechts- und Erziehungssoziologie über Fragen zur Eugenik bis hin zur Erkenntnis-, Modernitäts- und Demokratietheorie reicht. Die vorliegende Studie ist der Versuch, trotz der zahlreichen Wechselfälle in Geigers Leben eine Gesamtwürdigung seines umfangreichen und heterogenen Werkes vorzulegen. Berücksichtigt werden die zum Teil schwer zugänglichen Schriften aus dem skandinavischen Exil sowie einige bislang unveröffentlichte Arbeiten aus dem Nachlass. Dies (...) erlaubt es, wissenschaftsbiographisch aufschlussreiche Aspekte aus der Zeit der nationalsozialistischen Machtergreifung zu erhellen. Der Vergleich mit alten und neuen Klassikern macht deutlich, dass dem "Querdenker" Geiger innerhalb der frühen deutschen Soziologie eine Ausnahmerolle zukommt. So ist er zum einen Pionier einer kritischen Problem- und Wirklichkeitswissenschaft, der danach strebt, die Soziologie mit den Mitteln der empirischen Sozialforschung und der Sozialstatistik auf eine methodisch kontrollierte Grundlage zu stellen. Zugleich ist Geiger aber auch Machtkritiker, Wertnihilist und Modernist. Als Ausdruck dieser Grundposition lässt sich nicht nur die entschiedene Gegnerschaft zu Kulturkritik, Gemeinschaftsschwärmerei und der NS-Ideologie verstehen, sondern auch sein Beitrag zur Entwicklung einer "realistischen" Demokratiekonzeption. (shrink)

Adapting critical methods from such wide-ranging fields as anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, biology, and other sciences, Schapiro appraises fundamental semantic terms such as "organic style," "pictorial style", "field and vehicle," and "form and content"; he elucidates eclipsed intent in a well-known text by Freud on Leonardo da Vinci, in another by Heidegger on Vincent van Gogh.

This is a reissue, with new introduction, of Susan Sauvé Meyer's 1993 book, in which she presents a comprehensive examination of Aristotle's accounts of voluntariness in the Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics. She makes the case that these constitute a theory of moral responsibility--albeit one with important differences from modern theories. Highlights of the discussion include a reconstruction of the dialectical argument in the Eudemian Ethics II 6-9, and a demonstration that the definitions of 'voluntary' and 'involuntary' in Nicomachean Ethics (...) III 1 are the culmination of that argument. By identifying the paradigms of voluntariness and involuntariness that Aristotle begins with and the opponents (most notably Plato) he addresses, Meyer explains notoriously puzzling features of the Nicomachean account--such as Aristotle's requirement that involuntary agents experience pain or regret. Other familiar features of Aristotle's account are cast in a new light. That we are responsible for the characters we develop turns out not to be a necessary condition of responsible agency. That voluntary action has its "origin" in the agent and that our actions are "up to us to do and not to do"--often interpreted as implying a libertarian conception of agency--turn out to be perfectly compatible with causal determinism, a point Meyer makes by locating these locutions in the context of Aristotle's general understanding of causality. While Aristotle does not himself face or address worries that determinism is incompatible with responsibility, his causal repertoire provides the resources for a powerful response to incompatibilist arguments. On this and other fronts Aristotle's is a view to be taken seriously by theorists of moral responsibility. (shrink)

Climate change can be interpreted as a unique case of historical injustice involving issues of both intergenerational and global justice. We split the issue into two separate questions. First, how should emission rights be distributed? Second, who should come up for the costs of coping with climate change? We regard the first question as being an issue of pure distributive justice and argue on prioritarian grounds that the developing world should receive higher per capita emission rights than the developed world. (...) This is justified by the fact that the latter already owns a larger share of benefits associated with emission generating activities because of its past record of industrialisation. The second question appears to be an issue of compensatory justice. After defining what we mean by compensation, we show that different kinds of compensatory principles run into problems when used to justify payments by historical emitters of the North to people suffering from climate change in the South. As an alternative, we propose to view payments from wealthy countries for adaptation to climate change in vulnerable countries rather as a measure based on concerns of global distributive justice. (shrink)

We provide a new link between deductive and probabilistic reasoning fallacies. Illusory inferences from disjunction are a broad class of deductive fallacies traditionally explained by recourse to a matching procedure that looks for content overlap between premises. In two behavioral experiments, we show that this phenomenon is instead sensitive to real-world causal dependencies and not to exact content overlap. A group of participants rated the strength of the causal dependence between pairs of sentences. This measure is a near perfect predictor (...) of fallacious reasoning by an independent group of participants in illusory inference tasks with the same materials. In light of these results, we argue that all extant accounts of these deductive fallacies require non-trivial adjustments. Crucially, these novel _indirect_ illusory inferences from disjunction bear a structural similarity to seemingly unrelated _probabilistic reasoning_ problems, in particular the conjunction fallacy from the heuristics and biases literature. This structural connection was entirely obscure in previous work on these deductive problems, due to the theoretical and empirical focus on content overlap. We argue that this structural parallelism provides arguments against the need for rich descriptions and individuating information in the conjunction fallacy, and we outline a unified theory of deductive illusory inferences from disjunction and the conjunction fallacy, in terms of Bayesian confirmation theory. (shrink)

The roots and evolution of two concepts usually thought to be Western in origin-musica mundana (the music of the spheres) and musica humana (music's relation to the human soul)-are explored. Beginning with a study of the early creeds of the Near East, Professor Meyer-Baer then traces their development in the works of Plato and the Gnostics, and in the art and literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Previous studies of symbolism in music have tended to focus on (...) a single aspect of the problem. In this book the concepts of musica humana and musica mundane are related to philosophy, aesthetics, and the history of religion and are given a rightful place in the history of civilization. Originally published in 1970. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Integrity is often conceived as a moral virtue that pertains to the coherence between one’s moral convictions and actions, as well as consistency in convictions over time. By contrast, I argue that integrity is primarily an epistemic virtue. To act with integrity, an individual or organisation must engage in responsible inquiry; that is, the collection, processing, sharing, and storage of information in ways that promote truth. Organisational structures such as division of labour and hierarchy present challenges to responsible inquiry, thereby (...) making epistemic integrity in organisations inherently vulnerable and increasing the risk of unintentional unethical behaviour. This epistemic perspective on organisational integrity emphasises the importance of developing virtuous epistemic infrastructure and an ethical epistemic culture. By aligning their beliefs with facts, organisations can also improve moral behaviour and reduce the risk of culpable ignorance. (shrink)