The problem of weakness of the will is often thought to arise because of an assumption that freely, deliberately and intentionally doing something must correspond to the agent's positive evaluation of doing that thing. In contemporary philosophy, a very common response to the problem of weakness has been to adopt the view that free, deliberate action does not need to correspond to any positive evaluation at all. Much of the support for this view has come from the difficulties the denial (...) of it has been thought to give rise to, both with respect to giving an account of weakness, as well as explaining the future-directed nature of intentions. In this paper I argue that most of these difficulties only arise for one particular version of the view that free, deliberate action must correspond to a positive evaluation, a version associated with Donald Davidson's account of weakness. However, another version of this view is possible, and I argue that it escapes the standard objections to the Davidsonian account. (shrink)

In some practical uncertain situations decision makers are presented with described events that are out of sequence when having to make a causal attribution. A theoretical perspective concerning the causal coherence of the explanation is developed to predict the effect of this on causal attribution. Three experiments investigated the effect on causal judgement when the described order of events did not correspond to their causal order. Participants had to judge the relative probability of two possible causes of an outcome in (...) scenarios in which presentation order varied. All three experiments found that there was a preference to judge that the cause associated with events described in causal order was more responsible for the outcome when events associated with one cause were interleaved in their presentation order with those from a second cause. This occurred when there was a strong causal relationship between events. The results were consistent with the causal coherence explanation. (shrink)

RESUMEN El presente artículo intenta desarrollar los elementos de una concepción del conocimiento que resulte operativa para una versión epistémica de la democracia deliberativa. Se intenta superar algunas limitaciones de los modelos epistémico-deliberativos actuales y profundizar la relación entre conocimiento, deliberación y legitimidad. ABSTRACT The article develops the elements of a conception of knowledge that turns out to be operative for an epistemic version of deliberative democracy. It attempts to overcome some of the limitations of current deliberative-epistemic models and carry (...) out an in-depth study of the relation among knowledge, deliberation, and legitimacy. (shrink)

Despite All Critique (2014) -- World Politics and Western Reason (1980) -- The Doubled Outsides of the Modern International (2005) -- The Subject of Security (1995) -- The Protection of Nature and the Nature of Protection (2005) -- Social Movements/World Politics (1994) -- Europe is Not Where It is Supposed to Be (2000) -- They Seek it Here, They Seek it There : Looking for Politics in Clayoquot Sound (2003) -- Violence, Modernity, Silence : From Weber to International Relations (1993) (...) -- Hobbes, Origins, Limits (2011) -- War, Terror, Judgement (2002) -- International, Imperial, Exceptional (2005) -- Which Democracy for Which Demos? (2013) -- The Political Theory of Boundaries and the Boundaries of Political Theory : Interview With Raia Prokhovnik (2012). (shrink)

RésuméJe soutiendrai que la façon dont Davidson rend compte de l'intention pure peut être comprise comme une analyse de l'intention comme étant relative à un jugement dans une perspective en première personne. Selon Davidson, avoir la pure intention de faire A, c'est formuler un jugement tout bien considéré qu'il est désirable de faire A. Dans cette analyse anti-réductionniste, l'intention est traitée comme un état irréductible du sujet. J’établirai une comparaison entre cette analyse et celle de Wright et je montrerai comment (...) la position de Davidson peut être considérée comme une analyse non-réductionniste rapportant l'intention au jugement, selon les directions suggérées par Wright. J'expliquerai ensuite comment cette analyse peut aider à éclaircir diverses difficultés qui se présentent dans la conception que Davidson se fait ultérieurement de la signification et du contenu mental. (shrink)

Judgment aggregation theory generalizes social choice theory by having the aggregation rule bear on judgments of all kinds instead of barely judgments of preference. The theory derives from Kornhauser and Sager’s doctrinal paradox and Pettit’s discursive dilemma, which List and Pettit turned into an impossibility theorem – the first of a long list to come. After mentioning this formative stage, the paper restates what is now regarded as the “canonical theorem” of judgment aggregation theory. The last part of paper discusses (...) how judgment aggregation theory connects with social choice theory and can contribute to it; it singles out two representative applications, one to Arrow’s impossibility theorem and the other to the group identification problem. (shrink)

RésuméJe soutiendrai que la façon dont Davidson rend compte de l'intention pure peut être comprise comme une analyse de l'intention comme étant relative à un jugement dans une perspective en première personne. Selon Davidson, avoir la pure intention de faire A, c'est formuler un jugement tout bien considéré qu'il est désirable de faire A. Dans cette analyse anti-réductionniste, l'intention est traitée comme un état irréductible du sujet. J’établirai une comparaison entre cette analyse et celle de Wright et je montrerai comment (...) la position de Davidson peut être considérée comme une analyse non-réductionniste rapportant l'intention au jugement, selon les directions suggérées par Wright. J'expliquerai ensuite comment cette analyse peut aider à éclaircir diverses difficultés qui se présentent dans la conception que Davidson se fait ultérieurement de la signification et du contenu mental. (shrink)

Realists about aesthetic judgment believe something like the following: for an aesthetic judgment of be correct, it must respond to the intrinsic aesthetic properties possessed by the object in question (e.g., Meskin et al., 2013; Kieran 2010). However, Cutting’s (2003) empirical research on aesthetic judgment puts pressure on that position. His work indicates that unconscious considerations extrinsic to an artwork can underpin said judgements. This paper takes Cutting’s conclusion a step further: If philosophers grant that it’s possible to appreciate (...) artwork on the basis of unconscious biases, then we never can be fully confident that our aesthetic judgment is undergirded by the intrinsic aesthetic properties of an artwork. Furthermore, if judgment on the basis of unconscious, external reasons cannot be ruled out, we cannot be confident that our aesthetic judgments are ‘correct’. I argue that Cutting’s research is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the extrinsic, unconscious factors that influence aesthetic judgment. Expectation bias formed via social influence and context greatly influence aesthetic judgments and are unavoidable: we inevitably form expectations based on all kinds of contextual cues independently of any actual exposure to the item in question. Such factors make it terribly difficult to be confident in our aesthetic judgments. Even if there are objective properties that mark out some items as aesthetically superior to others, we cannot be sure that our judgments are responding to those properties. (shrink)

At the outset of The Possibility of Altruism Thomas Nagel charts two paths out of the fundamental dilemma confronting metaethics. The first path rejects the claim that a persuasive account of the motivational backing of ethical judgments must involve an agent’s desires. But it is the second path, a path that Nagel charts but does not himself take, that is the focus of this essay. This path retains the standard account, upon which all motivation involves desire, but denies that desires (...) are given prior to reason. Instead, these attitudes that motivate are themselves open to rational assessment. One reason for this focus is that many philosophers, including Quinn, Raz, and Scanlon, have come to reject the claim Nagel takes to block this path – that desires are somehow given prior to reason, hence are not in the relevant way proper objects of rational assessment. A second reason is that unlike the first path, this second does not require the rejection of the belief-desire theory, only the rejection of one assumption about the nature of conative attitudes. Unlike Nagel’s chosen path, then, the second holds out the prospect of reconciling ethical objectivity, internalism, and the belief-desire theory within a unified account. I argue that the account of desire found in Quinn, Raz, and Scanlon, augmented by aspects of Davidson’s account of propositional attitudes, yields a coherent account of the involvement of reason even in basic desires, an account that is well suited to Nagel’s intriguing path not taken. (shrink)

‘Judgment’ is Brentano’s terms for any mental state liable to be true or false. This includes not only the products of conceptual thought, such as belief, but also perceptual experiences, such as seeing that the window was left open. ‘Every perception counts as a judgment,’ writes Brentano (1874: II, 50/1973a: 209). Accordingly, his theory of judgment is not exactly a theory of the same phenomenon we call today ‘judgment,’ but of a larger class of phenomena one (perhaps the main) species (...) of which is what we call judgment. Even if we keep this in mind, though, the profound heterodoxy of Brentano’s theory of judgment is still striking. Brentano develops this heterodox theory in some detail already in the Psychology from Empirical Standpoint (Brentano 1874/1973a). But he continued to work out its details, and various aspects of it, until his death. Many of the relevant articles, notes, and fragments of relevance have been collected by Oskar Kraus in 1930 and published under the title Truth and Evidence (Brentano 1930/1966b). Kraus prefaces this volume with an elaborate reconstruction, of dubious plausibility, according to which Brentano’s accounts of judgment and truth have gone through four distinct stages. In reality, there is a unified underlying conviction underwriting Brentano’s work both on judgment and on truth (see CHAP. 20 on the latter). Here I present this unified core of this highly original theory of judgment, which can be captured in terms of three main theses. The first is that contrary to appearances, all judgments are existential judgments (§1). The second is that the existential force of judgment is indeed a force, or mode, or attitude – it does not come from the judgment’s content (§2). The third is that judgment is not a propositional attitude but an ‘objectual’ attitude (§3). (shrink)

What is it to make a moral judgement? There are two standard views, cognitivist and non-cognitivist, plus hybrid options according to which moral judgements have cognitivist and non-cognitivist components. In this context, cognitivism is typically defined as the theory that moral judgements are beliefs. This chapter aims to clarify what it means for a moral judgement to be a belief. It begins by identifying a tension between three claims: cognitivism, an account of belief, and an account of moral (...) judgement. All three claims are plausible, but the question is whether they can be reconciled. In order to do so, the chapter distinguishes between broad and narrow belief. It gives an example of a mental state that is a broad belief but not a narrow belief, a moral ‘ulief’. The chapter sets out new definitions of cognitivism and non-cognitivism and draws out some further implications of the argument. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Judgement and Sense in Modern French Philosophy: A New Reading of Six Thinkers by Henry Somers-HallClayton CrockettSOMERS-HALL, Henry. Judgement and Sense in Modern French Philosophy: A New Reading of Six Thinkers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 264 pp. Cloth, $99.99Henry Somers-Hall's book examines how French philosophers in the twentieth century develop a logic of thinking based on sense that is both influenced by but also counters Kant's paradigm (...) of thinking, which is based on judgment. Beginning with Kant and German idealism, including the German responses to Kant in the work of Hölderlin, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, this book then carefully draws out the ways that Bergson, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze all work against this understanding of thinking as judging by showing how our experience and our thought precede the categories of judgment.In chapter 1, Somers-Hall carefully sets out Kant's model of thinking and shows how the categories of philosophical thought are fundamentally based on how we judge our sensible intuitions. Judgment is at the center of Kant's thought, and this is apparent in the Critique of Pure Reason, including the famous Transcendental Deduction. Our knowledge has a legislative function in relation to objects, and conscious synthesis takes the form of a judgment. Despite their criticisms of Kant, later German idealists do not fundamentally depart from this modality of judgment that takes place at the center of their philosophy. Even though they put Kant's concepts in motion, it remains a structure of judgment that is understood as dynamic.Chapter 2 turns to Bergson, to show how his emphasis on immediate experience precedes categorical judgement. Bergson distinguishes between temporal and spatial multiplicities, and argues that temporal multiplicities that are expressed in terms of duration underlie the spatial ones that contribute to judgment. Duration is a deeper experience of time that is associated with life. Somers-Hall in chapter 3 examines Sartre's writings on imagination to show how consciousness is a pure relation and an affective mode of thinking that underlies the categorial mode of judgment.Most of these French philosophers develop their accounts of noncategorial sense in either explicit or implicit relation to Kant's philosophy. Merleau-Ponty is no exception, and in chapter 4 we see how it is the organization of perception that gives sense to the world, and this precedes and generates "our reflective categories of judgement." Judgment emerges out of perception, although Merleau-Ponty grounds perception in the embodied person. Derrida does not ground sense or [End Page 365] thinking in a body, but looks for noncategorial grounds that make possible "surface structures of thinking." In chapter 5, Somers-Hall elaborates Derrida's famous nonconcept of différance, which underlies and makes possible our concepts of voice and writing that appear to be oppositions but in fact are not because they rely on each other. Différance is not a concept; it is prior to conceptual determination, and it "operates as an 'origin' that has none of the traits of the structure of judgement."Foucault relies on Kant for his three epistemes of resemblance, representation, and the human being, modern man. Chapter 6 shows how Foucault is concerned in both his archaeology and his genealogy with opening up the structures of power that make any juridical ordering possible. Here a productive biopower works beneath what we recognize more explicitly as "juridico-discursive power" in both positive and negative ways that escape the grasp of a philosophy that is solely based on judgment.In chapter 7 Somers-Hall shows how Deleuze's concept of intensity underlies all forms of representational judgment. Intensity operates according to a process of differentiation that produces a logic of sense, which we miss when we grasp onto a "dogmatic image of thought" that "prevents a genuine encounter with the world [that] conditions us to understand it in terms of unified subjects who make sense of the world in terms of judgements." We think in response to a shock or an encounter with something in the world that forces us to think and to make sense. We form judgments retroactively, by reducing differences to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 11.2 (2004) 165-173 [Access article in PDF] Professional Judgment, Critical Realism, Real People, and, Yes, Two Wrongs Can Make a Right! K.W.M. Fulford Anthony Colombo Keywords values, values-based practice, models of disorder, concept of mental illness, user-centred practice, patient-centred practice, multidisciplinary teamwork We are grateful to our four commentators for putting much-needed conceptual air and space around the models project. Published originally as an empirical (...) study of the different implicit models of disorder, held by users of services, carers, nurses, psychiatrists, and social workers (Colombo et al. 2003), our paper outlined the philosophical roots of the models project in linguistic analytic philosophy of the "Oxford school" (Fulford and Colombo 2004). Our four commentators provide extra dimensions of understanding, respectively from professional education (Williams 2004), sociology (Bendelow 2004), Heideggerian phenomenology (Heginbotham 2004), and mental health policy and practice (Williamson 2004).Since the original study, the models project has been taken forward as a key contribution to a range of philosophy-into-practice initiatives called, collectively, Values-Based Practice. In this brief response, we outline the key features of Values-Based Practice and indicate how these connect with some of the many thoughtful points about models made by our commentators. Values-Based Practice Values-Based Practice, then, is the theory and skills-base for effective health care decision making where different, and hence potentially conflicting, values are in play (Fulford 2004). Premised on the democratic meta-value of equal respect for all voices, Values-Based Practice relies, much as a political democracy relies, on good process rather than preset outcomes for its practical effectiveness. The ten pointers to good process in Values-Based Practice are summarized in Figure 1. We return to the implications of these for the work on models below.Relying on good process may be thought to be a recipe more for relativism and indecision in clinical decision making than for practical effectiveness. To the contrary, however, the 'values democracy' of Values-Based Practice, again like a political democracy, carries a number of clear and coherent implications for policy and practice in health care. [End Page 165] Click for larger viewFigure 1 10 Pointers to Good Process in VBP [End Page 166]Examples of the implications of Values-Based Practice for policy and practice are given in the Values Framework shown in Figure 2. This is a policy framework for the development of Values-Based Practice in mental health produced by a project group in the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE), the section of the UK's National Health Service (NHS) responsible for implementing government policy on mental health as embodied in the National Service Framework for Mental Health (Department of Health 1999) and subsequent policies. The framework gives three key principles of Values-Based Practice (the three Rs of recognition, raising awareness, and respect) and then summarizes some of the specific implications of the approach. Racism, for example, is incompatible with Values-Based Practice because racism is by definition intolerant of diversity. Again, we indicate some of the policy implications of Values-Based Practice for the points about models made by our commentators below.Training for mental health practitioners in Values-Based Practice will be rolled out from April 2005, through both voluntary and statutory bodies, in each of the eight regions of the National Health Service of England and Wales. This roll out will be supported by training methods developed and piloted in a unique joint venture between Warwick University's Department of Philosophy and Medical School, and an in-service training provider, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (Fulford, Williamson, and Woodbridge 2002; Woodbridge and Fulford 2003). These training methods are the basis of a detailed workbook for Values-Based Practice (Woodbridge and Fulford 2004). The workbook will be launched in July 2004 at a conference in London by the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, Rosie Winterton. Professional Training and Professional Judgment The models project has been central to the development of... (shrink)

Originally published in 1967, this book aims to develop an ethical theory which remedies the defects of Utilitarianism while recognising the truths upon which Utilitarians have insisted. Its thesis is offered as a challenge to all schools of moral philosophy which have flourished in the twentieth century. Dr Grice argues that there are two kinds of Judgement of moral obligation. Social Contract theory, in a form which avoids the classical objections, is employed in setting out the ground of basic obligations; (...) and the ultra obligations of individual men are found to be grounded in their own characters. He then demonstrates that the theory offered, unlike Utilitarianism, throws light on judgements of rights and justice. Moral good is seen eventually as the coping stone, not the foundation stone of morality. (shrink)

Clinical ethical support services (CESS) represent a multifaceted field of aims, consultancy models, and methodologies. Nevertheless, the overall aim of CESS can be summed up as contributing to healthcare of high ethical standards by improving ethically competent decision-making in clinical healthcare. In order to support clinical care adequately, CESS must pay systematic attention to all real-life ethical issues, including those which do not fall within the ‘favourite’ ethical issues of the day. In this paper we attempt to capture a comprehensive (...) overview of categories of ethical tensions in clinical care. We present an analytical exposition of ethical structural features in judgement-based clinical care predicated on the assumption of the moral equality of human beings and the assessment of where healthcare contexts pose a challenge to achieving moral equality. The account and the emerging overview is worked out so that it can be easily contextualized with regards to national healthcare systems and specific branches of healthcare, as well as local healthcare institutions. By considering how the account and the overview can be applied to i) improve the ethical competence of healthcare personnel and consultants by broadening their sensitivity to ethical tensions, ii) identify neglected areas for ethical research, and iii) clarify the ethical responsibility of healthcare institutions' leadership, as well as specifying required institutionalized administration, we conclude that the proposed account should be considered useful for CESS. (shrink)

The relevance of Kant to Plessner’s work was long all but ignored and there is hardly any mention of Plessner in the Kant literature. The Plessner renaissance beginning in the 1990s, however, has brought with it a stronger focus on the methodological construction of his theory, so that the Kant connection has at least been acknowledged, but the particular relevance of Kant’s Critique of Judgement has not been systematically explicated. In this essay, I investigate the connection between Kant’s notion of (...) reflective—specifically teleological—judgment and Plessner’s theory. I begin by setting out the characteristics of teleological judgment, with two points being of particular importance: the temporal structure of the final cause and Kant’s reference to an understanding other than the human, that is, to an ordering power other than the human. In a second step, I work out Plessner’s conceptualization of the spatiotemporal appearance of organisms and the way he understands the other of human understanding as nature’s—or history’s—historically evolved and mutable capacity for self-order. He arrives at these conclusions by way of a methodologically controlled process of questioning derived from Kant, which he calls the “principle of the open question.”. (shrink)

This article builds on Arendt’s development of a Kantian politics from out of the conception of reflective judgment in the Critique of Judgment. Arendt looks to Kant’s analysis of the beautiful to explain how political thought can be conceived. And yet Arendt describes such Kantian reflection as an empirical undertaking that justifies itself only in relation to the abstract principle of the moral law. The problem for such an account is that the autonomy of the moral law appears to be (...) at odds with the social cohesion of Kantian political life. The ensuing contradiction can be deemed the antinomy of political judgment. Kant’s conception of reflective judgment offers such an inquiry considerably more to work with than Arendt uncovers. In particular, the regulative principle of the purposiveness of nature that is shown to direct all reflection can be seen to offer the solution to this antinomy. (shrink)

The literature on bioethics is diverse and confusing in its treatment of appropriate components for decision making. As a result, the literature on teaching bioethics is also confusing, even contradictory, in presenting an ‘appropriate’ framework within which learners may come to understand the nature and process of bioethics. The article sets out five decision components which are seen as common to all decision making. These components are then shown to have a significant influence both on bioethics decision making and on (...) bioethics teaching. They are also shown to play a role in breaking down the separatism evidenced in contemporary bioethics literature aimed at individual professions. Keywords: bioethics, decision analysis, decision components, decision making, teaching CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The theses and program below ask about judgment and tradition in a self-consciously plural world. The little program points down a path I am exploring in a pair of texts, one on notions of identity in the history of philosophy, and one on the identity of buildings and places. The underlying issue of those texts is: what will replace the old notion of a particular identity? Places, persons, and communities do not and have never had such simple identities as our (...) concepts often made them out to have. But our world today defies the application of universal categories and judgments to fixed particulars. Our places and identities become complexly multiplied, they interpenetrate, the electronic no-place / all-place opens before us. Yet at the same time exclusions and particularities assert themselves everywhere. If universal judgment seems unlikely, relativism is one response, but relativism remains within the horizon of universals and particulars. What kinds of identity can provide standpoints for describing and judging today? (shrink)

Clinical ethical support services (CESS) represent a multifaceted field of aims, consultancy models, and methodologies. Nevertheless, the overall aim of CESS can be summed up as contributing to healthcare of high ethical standards by improving ethically competent decision‐making in clinical healthcare. In order to support clinical care adequately, CESS must pay systematic attention to all real‐life ethical issues, including those which do not fall within the ‘favourite’ ethical issues of the day. In this paper we attempt to capture a comprehensive (...) overview of categories of ethical tensions in clinical care. We present an analytical exposition of ethical structural features in judgement‐based clinical care predicated on the assumption of the moral equality of human beings and the assessment of where healthcare contexts pose a challenge to achieving moral equality. The account and the emerging overview is worked out so that it can be easily contextualized with regards to national healthcare systems and specific branches of healthcare, as well as local healthcare institutions. By considering how the account and the overview can be applied to i) improve the ethical competence of healthcare personnel and consultants by broadening their sensitivity to ethical tensions, ii) identify neglected areas for ethical research, and iii) clarify the ethical responsibility of healthcare institutions' leadership, as well as specifying required institutionalized administration, we conclude that the proposed account should be considered useful for CESS. (shrink)

Despite the importance of the Judgement of Paris in the story of the Trojan War, the Iliad has only one explicit reference to it. This occurs, rather out of the blue, in the final book of the poem in a dispute among the gods about the treatment of Hector's body. Achilles keeps dragging the body around behind his chariot, but Apollo protects it with his golden aegis. Apollo then speaks among the gods and attacks the conduct of Achilles, claiming at (...) the end that he offends the dumb earth. Other gods too have their concerns about what is going on, and they keep trying to get Hermes to snatch the body away. The three most powerful divine enemies of Troy, however, Hera, Poseidon and Athena, will have none of this. They remain as hostile to Troy and Priam and his people as they ever were, and it is in this context that the Judgement of Paris is mentioned: ἔνθ' ἄλλοις μὲν πᾶσιν ἑήνδανɛν, οὐδέ πoθ' Ἥρῃοὐδὲ Ποσɛιδάων' οὐδὲ γλαυκώπιδι κούρῃ,ἀλλ' ἔχον ὥς σϕιν πρῶτον ἀπήχθɛτο Ἴλιος ἱρὴκαὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς Ἀλɛξάνδρου ἕνɛκ' ἄτης,ὃς νɛίκɛσσɛ θɛάς, ὅτɛ οἱ μέσσαυλον ἵκοντο,τὴν δ' ᾔνησ' ἥ οἱ πόρɛ μαχλοσύνην ἀλɛγɛινήν.And this was pleasing to all the others, but never to Heranor to Poseidon, nor to the flashing-eyed maiden,but they remained hostile to sacred Ilios as in the beginning,and to Priam and to his people, because of Alexander's folly,he who insulted the goddesses when they came to his inner courtyardand praised her who provided his grievous lust. (shrink)

This anthology assembles original contributions by leadinganalytical philosophers to a broad range of topics on whichSuppes set out ideas which still point the way ahead. All the papersincluded were originally given at the 1st International LauenerSymposium on Analytical Philosophy, which accompanied the Presentationof the first Lauener Prize to Patrick Suppes. His detailedcommentaries on each of the revised articles as well as the addedinterview elicit a spirit of constructive academic conversation.The book joins together contributions by Patrick Suppes, DagfinnFllesdal, Nancy Cartwright, Wilhelm (...) K. Essler, Steven French,Stephan Hartmann, and Michael Frauchiger. The collection as awhole puts a different and stimulating perspective on a varietyof issues in the methodology of science and philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:86 GOING OUT THE WINDOW: A COMMENT ON TWEYMAN Whether your scepticism be as absolute and sincere as you pretend, we shall learn bye and bye, when the company breaks up: We shall then see, whether you go out at the door or the window; and whether you really doubt; if your body has gravity, or can be injured by its fall; according to popular opinion, derived from our (...) fallacious senses and more fallacious experience. My paper is divided into two sections. In the first section I will summarize and comment on Stanley 2 Tweyman' s paper and in the second section present an alternative reading of Parts X and XI of the Dialogues. SECTION I In his paper Tweyman claims that, although Philo's argument in Parts I-IX of the Dialogues are Pyrrhonian, in Parts X and XI a major change of strategy occurs in which Pyrrhonian arguments are replaced by hypothetico-deductive ones. Recent scholarship on Hume's Dialogues has revolved around two questions: (1) the identification of the sources and personages of the Dialogues and (2) Hume's attitude toward religion. Tweyman and I agree that Philo speaks for Hume. We differ on the character of Philo's challenge to Cleanthes' experimental theism. Philo's methodological shift in Parts X and XI is said to consist in his presentation of scientific hypotheses for appraisal, in contrast to the alternative hypotheses of the earlier Parts, where sceptical arguments are used to undermine Cleanthes' position. I take it that the scientific hypotheses in question are construed realistically 87 and not instrumentally; they are supposedly true or false and permit deductions to be made from them. The first evidence of the methodological shift, we are told, occurs in Part VIII in which Philo speaks in the third and not the first person, "a clear signal to the reader... that his Pyrrhonism... has now been abandoned." (Tweyman, 77) I find this claim unconvincing since in the majority of instances throughout the passage Philo writes in first-person fashion (D 186). Any detectable changes here seem to me to be purely stylistic in character. Tweyman uses the terms 'scepticism' and 'Pyrrhonism' interchangeably. His account of Pyrrhonism involves two theses, the second of which is derived from the first: (1) scepticism involves suspense of judgment between alternative beliefs; and (2) Philo presents his "position in order to show that the hypothesis advanced by Cleanthes is false." (Tweyman, 76) In his sceptical mode in Parts I-IX Philo makes no truth claim for the hypotheses he sets out. But, according to Tweyman,...this does not establish that Philo is a Pyrrhonian throughout the Dialogues, and that he always supports positions... to argue against the hypothesis advanced by Cleanthes. (Tweyman, 76) Tweyman gives two examples of Philonian scepticism in Parts I-VIII. The first is the debate in Part IV over the deity's relation to the world. Cleanthes contends that the deity is external to his creation, and Philo questions the validity of Cleanthes' causal inferences. (D 160) The second is the argument in Parts VI and VII in which Philo argues that the available data do not support the hypothesis of an intelligent designer. I find the account at this point unexceptionable. 88 The first example in which Philo's arguments become "distinctly un-Pyrrhonian" (Tweyman, 77) is the passage in which Philo details the 'inconveniences' of anthropomorphism. Philo begins by saying:...you can still persevere in your anthropomorphism and assert the moral attributes of the Deity, his justice, benevolence, mercy, and rectitude, to be of the same nature with these virtues in human creatures? (D 198) But, he continues, "the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity." ( Ibid. ) Cleanthes' has asserted human happiness, a thesis which Philo denies. We are no longer dealing with an alternative hypothesis designed to undermine Cleanthes' account but with "the hypothetico-deductive method for testing Cleanthes' hypothesis." (Tweyman, 78) Part XI divides into the three sections which are each discussed to show that Philo's arguments are not Pyrrhonian. since the argument is similar in all three cases, I will remark only on the discussion of the 'indifference hypothesis,' Philo's argument that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:86 GOING OUT THE WINDOW: A COMMENT ON TWEYMAN Whether your scepticism be as absolute and sincere as you pretend, we shall learn bye and bye, when the company breaks up: We shall then see, whether you go out at the door or the window; and whether you really doubt; if your body has gravity, or can be injured by its fall; according to popular opinion, derived from our (...) fallacious senses and more fallacious experience. My paper is divided into two sections. In the first section I will summarize and comment on Stanley 2 Tweyman' s paper and in the second section present an alternative reading of Parts X and XI of the Dialogues. SECTION I In his paper Tweyman claims that, although Philo's argument in Parts I-IX of the Dialogues are Pyrrhonian, in Parts X and XI a major change of strategy occurs in which Pyrrhonian arguments are replaced by hypothetico-deductive ones. Recent scholarship on Hume's Dialogues has revolved around two questions: (1) the identification of the sources and personages of the Dialogues and (2) Hume's attitude toward religion. Tweyman and I agree that Philo speaks for Hume. We differ on the character of Philo's challenge to Cleanthes' experimental theism. Philo's methodological shift in Parts X and XI is said to consist in his presentation of scientific hypotheses for appraisal, in contrast to the alternative hypotheses of the earlier Parts, where sceptical arguments are used to undermine Cleanthes' position. I take it that the scientific hypotheses in question are construed realistically 87 and not instrumentally; they are supposedly true or false and permit deductions to be made from them. The first evidence of the methodological shift, we are told, occurs in Part VIII in which Philo speaks in the third and not the first person, "a clear signal to the reader... that his Pyrrhonism... has now been abandoned." (Tweyman, 77) I find this claim unconvincing since in the majority of instances throughout the passage Philo writes in first-person fashion (D 186). Any detectable changes here seem to me to be purely stylistic in character. Tweyman uses the terms 'scepticism' and 'Pyrrhonism' interchangeably. His account of Pyrrhonism involves two theses, the second of which is derived from the first: (1) scepticism involves suspense of judgment between alternative beliefs; and (2) Philo presents his "position in order to show that the hypothesis advanced by Cleanthes is false." (Tweyman, 76) In his sceptical mode in Parts I-IX Philo makes no truth claim for the hypotheses he sets out. But, according to Tweyman,...this does not establish that Philo is a Pyrrhonian throughout the Dialogues, and that he always supports positions... to argue against the hypothesis advanced by Cleanthes. (Tweyman, 76) Tweyman gives two examples of Philonian scepticism in Parts I-VIII. The first is the debate in Part IV over the deity's relation to the world. Cleanthes contends that the deity is external to his creation, and Philo questions the validity of Cleanthes' causal inferences. (D 160) The second is the argument in Parts VI and VII in which Philo argues that the available data do not support the hypothesis of an intelligent designer. I find the account at this point unexceptionable. 88 The first example in which Philo's arguments become "distinctly un-Pyrrhonian" (Tweyman, 77) is the passage in which Philo details the 'inconveniences' of anthropomorphism. Philo begins by saying:...you can still persevere in your anthropomorphism and assert the moral attributes of the Deity, his justice, benevolence, mercy, and rectitude, to be of the same nature with these virtues in human creatures? (D 198) But, he continues, "the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity." ( Ibid. ) Cleanthes' has asserted human happiness, a thesis which Philo denies. We are no longer dealing with an alternative hypothesis designed to undermine Cleanthes' account but with "the hypothetico-deductive method for testing Cleanthes' hypothesis." (Tweyman, 78) Part XI divides into the three sections which are each discussed to show that Philo's arguments are not Pyrrhonian. since the argument is similar in all three cases, I will remark only on the discussion of the 'indifference hypothesis,' Philo's argument that... (shrink)

Ramsey's “Facts and Propositions” is terse, allusive, and dense. The paper is far from easy to understand. The present essay is an effort, largely following Brian Loar's account,1 to say what Ramsey's goal is, to spell out what he took to be the means to accomplish it, and to show how those means, at least in the terms of F&P, cannot accomplish that end. I also contrast Loar's own account of judgment, explicitly modeled on Ramsey's view, with the latter. The (...) exercise is not at all academic. Loar makes clear the striking depth and originality of Ramsey's insights. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a new kind of conciliatory answer to the problem of peer disagreement. Instead of trying to guide an agent’s updating behaviour in any particular disagreement, I establish constraints on an agent’s expected behaviour and argue that, in the long run, she should tend to be conciliatory toward her peers. I first claim that this macro-approach affords us new conceptual insight on the problem of peer disagreement and provides an important angle complementary to the standard micro-approaches (...) in the literature. I then detail the import of two novel results based on accuracy-considerations that establish the following: An agent should, on average, give her peers equal weight. However, if the agent takes herself and her advisor to be reliable, she should usually give the party with a stronger opinion more weight. In other words, an agent’s response to peer disagreement should over the course of many disagreements average out to equal weight, but in any particular disagreement, her response should tend to deviate from equal weight in a way that systematically depends on the actual credences she and her advisor report. (shrink)

Ramsey's “Facts and Propositions” is terse, allusive, and dense. The paper is far from easy to understand. The present essay is an effort, largely following Brian Loar's account,1 to say what Ramsey's goal is, to spell out what he took to be the means to accomplish it, and to show how those means, at least in the terms of F&P, cannot accomplish that end. I also contrast Loar's own account of judgment, explicitly modeled on Ramsey's view, with the latter. The (...) exercise is not at all academic. Loar makes clear the striking depth and originality of Ramsey's insights. (shrink)

According to the judgement of the European Court of Justice in 2014, human parthenogenetic stem cells are excluded from the patenting prohibition of procedures based on hESC by the European Biopatent Directive, because human parthenotes are not human embryos. This article is based on the thesis that in light of the technological advances in the field of stem cell research, the attribution of the term ‘human embryo’ to certain entities on a descriptive level as well as the attribution of a (...) normative protection status to certain entities based on the criterion of totipotency, are becoming increasingly unclear. The example of human parthenotes in particular demonstrates that totipotency is not at all a necessary condition for the attribution of the term ‘human embryo’. Furthermore, the example of hiPSC and somatic cells particularly shows that totipotency is also not a sufficient condition for the attribution of a normative protection status to certain entities. Therefore, it is not a suitable criterion for distinguishing between human embryos worthy of protection and human non-embryos not worthy of protection. Consequently, this conclusion has repercussions for the patenting question. The strict delineation between an ethically problematic commercial use of human embryos and the concomitant patenting prohibition of hESC-based procedures and an ethically unproblematic commercial use of human non-embryos and the therefore either unrestrictedly permitted or even unregulated patenting of procedures based on these alleged alternatives becomes increasingly blurred. (shrink)

"In this paper I am arguing for hermeneutic responsibility in political judgment, as it can be attributed to Arendt’s work. Political judgment is reflective judgment relying on representation by imagination and therefore only has exemplary validity. Along the line of Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy I point out her argument for a different generality in politics than the generality of concepts. This generality of political judgment always refers back to the particular. Only by this reference to the particular, namely (...) to facts and situations of direct interaction, can the spectator, who undertakes the political judgment, create the public realm where action takes place. However, this task attributed to the spectator also implies the task of reshaping the public realm. These acts of giving an account of and reconsidering all over again facts handed over by narration and testimony imply the hermeneutic responsibility to unceasingly retrieve factual truth which is rooted in direct interaction. Keywords: Hannah Arendt, factual truth, reproductive imagination, political judgment, hermeneutic responsibility. ". (shrink)

An Important distinction between statements of fact and statements of value is widely recognised. Some philosophers are now saying that the distinction has been treated as more determinate than it is, but most philosophers would agree that the distinction is definite and important. The major contributions to Anglo-Saxon moral philosophy of this century have set out to illuminate the nature of this distinction. Ethical statements have been thevalue statements mainly at issue, but on the whole the aim has not been (...) to show wherein they differ from other value statements, but to show what distinguishes them in common with other value statements from factual statements. The characterisations of ethical statements which have become famous areones which if they apply to ethical statements at all apply equally to many other value statements as well. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss two questions. What does Kant understand by mechanical explanation in the Critique of judgment? And why does he think that mechanical explanation is the only type of the explanation of nature available to us? According to the interpretation proposed, mechanical explanations in the Critique of judgment refer to a particular species of empirical causal laws. Mechanical laws aim to explain nature by reference to the causal interaction between the forces of the parts of matter and (...) the way in which they form into complex material wholes. Just like any other empirical causal law, however, mechanical laws can never be known with full certainty. The conception according to which we can explain all of nature by means of mechanical laws, it turns out, is based on what Kant calls ‘regulative’ or ‘reflective’ considerations about nature. Nothing in Kant’s Critique of judgment suggests that these considerations can ever be justified by reference to how the natural world really is. I suggest that what, upon first consideration, appears to be a thoroughly mechanistic conception of nature in Kant is much more limited than one might have expected. (shrink)

Philosophical aesthetics have seen an amazing revival over the past decade, as a radical questioning of the very grounds of Western epistemology has revealed that descriptions of what used to be seen as specific to aesthetic experience can instead be viewed as a general model for human cognition. In this revival, no text in the classical corpus of Western philosophy has been more frequently discussed and debated than the dense, complex paragraphs inserted into Kant's Critique of Judgment as sections 23-29: (...) the Analytic of the Sublime. This book is a rigorous explication de texte, a close reading of these sections. The Analytic of the Sublime, he points out, tries to argue that human thought is always constituted through a similar incompatibility between different intellectual and affective faculties. These lessons thus try to isolate the analysis of a differend of feeling in Kant's text, which is also the analysis of a feeling of differend, and to connect this feeling with the transport that leads all thought (critical thought included) to its limits. (shrink)

Experimental investigations into children’s interpretation of scalar terms show that children have difficulties with scalar implicatures in tasks. In contrast with adults, they are for instance not able deriving the pragmatic interpretation that “some” means “not all” (Noveck, 2001; Papafragou & Musolino, 2003). However, there is also substantial experimental evidence that children are not incapable of drawing scalar inferences and that they are aware of the pragmatic potential of scalar expressions. In these kinds of studies, the prime interest is to (...) discover what conditions facilitate implicature production for children. One of the factors that seem to be difficult for children is the generation of the scalar alternative. In a Felicity Judgment Task (FJT) the alternative is given. Participants are presented with a pair of utterances and were asked to choose the most felicitous description. In such a task, even five-year-old children showed a very good performance (Chierchia et al., 2001; Foppolo, Guasti, & Chierchia, 2012). Our study wants to build on this tradition, by using a FJT where not only “some-all” choices are given, but also “some-many” and “many-all”. We compared performance of 59 five-year-old children with 34 11-year-old children. The results indicated that performance of both age-groups was clearly above chance. With respect to the ‘some-all’ choice, we find in both age-groups very high accuracy, replicating Foppolo et al. (2012). However, for the five-year-old children, the critical and ambiguous items were more difficult than the control items and they also performed worse on these two items than the eleven-year-old children. Interestingly with respect to the issue of scalar diversity, the eleven-year-old children were also presented temporal items, which turned out to be more difficult than the quantitative ones. (shrink)

It is often debated whether what we ought, politically, to do is determined by standards that are independent of any actual political process or whether, by contrast, judgments reached in actual democratic processes have constitutive importance in determining what we should do. This paper argues that this is not an exclusive disjunction and that, consistently with there being independent standards, constitutively authoritative judgments can enter into the truth-conditions pertaining to claims about what we ought, politically, to do. The crucial objection (...) to constitutive judgment is that it involves an unacceptable form of bootstrapping, according to which reasons arise out of nothing. To circumvent this objection, the paper deploys John Broome's notion of a wide-scope 'normative requirement'. Normative requirements affect what ought to be done without altering the balance of reasons and defuse the bootstrapping objection by blocking the derivation of all-things-considered conclusions. To show that politics involves constitutive authority of this kind, the paper defends two illustrative normative requirements applicable to the political process that give constitutive roles to political judgments of various kinds. Throughout, the discussion is enlivened by comparisons to the judgments of a baseball umpire, which have been illuminatingly discussed by Robert Brandom. (shrink)

Gittins, Anthony J By its achievements and the transformations that would not have happened without it, Alcoholics Anonymous has always impressed me, as do the people who belong to it. And yet there is little structure, few rules, and no rush to judgment involved. It is a 'fellowship' rather than an organisation, and a society of peers rather than a clash of personalities. Its success is attributed to the sharing of experiences, the moral support of the sponsors and the community, (...) the strength and determination - rather than the weakness or the history - of its members, and the sense of hope it inspires and maintains in those who refuse to give up, one day at a time. To admit or acknowledge powerlessness over alcohol or any addiction is not to identify oneself as without all power. On the contrary, those who acknowledge weakness in one area and yet show determination succeed partly because of the power of the wider group and partly because of the power of their own personal dedication and perseverance. Members of AA know that they are only a day or a drink from disaster, and yet, curiously, this is their strength; by keeping that awareness clearly before them, they are unlikely to become arrogant or independent of a support group. (shrink)

This paper critiques the All-Subjected Principle. The All-Subjected Principle is one of the most prominent answers to the Boundary Problem, which consists in determining who should be entitled to participate in which democratic decision. The All-Subjected Principle comes in many versions, but the general idea is that all people who are subjected in a relevant sense with regard to a democratic decision should be entitled to participate in that decision. One respect in which versions of the All-Subjected Principle differ concerns (...) how to best understand ‘subjectedness’. One view spells out ‘subjectedness’ in terms of legal bindingness. Another view understands ‘subjectedness’ in terms of coercion. I argue that the All-Subjected Principle is extensionally inadequate on both views in that it yields verdicts that are at odds with our considered judgements about certain cases. These cases involve legal norms of referral or international administrative assistance. (shrink)

This paper will discuss the role of compassion in ethics in general and in healthcare ethics in particular. My thesis is that compassion:1) as Rousseau pointed out, is a natural trait common to all higher animals ;2) can and does serve as one of the most important motivators and modulators of ethics in both theoretical and applied aspects;3) must be controlled by, and in turn control, reason if it is to serve its ethical as well as natural purposes; and4) as (...) a natural trait has survival value and, by virtue of being a natural trait, cannot be an obligation although there may very well be an obligation to do all that is necessary to nurture and not crush this sentiment. (shrink)

This new translation is an extremely welcome addition to the continuing Cambridge Edition of Kant’s works. English-speaking readers of the third Critique have long been hampered by the lack of an adequate translation of this important and difficult work. James Creed Meredith’s much-reprinted translation has charm and elegance, but it is often too loose to be useful for scholarly purposes. Moreover it does not include the first version of Kant’s introduction, the so-called “First Introduction,” which is now recognized as indispensable (...) for an understanding of the work. Werner Pluhar’s more recent translation, which does include the First Introduction, is highly accurate when it confines itself to rendering Kant’s German. However, it is often more of a reconstruction than a translation, containing so many interpretative interpolations that it is often difficult to separate out Kant’s original text from the translator’s contributions. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews have provided a translation that compares to or exceeds Pluhar’s in its literal approach to the German, but that confines all interpretative material to footnotes and endnotes, so that the text itself, with all its unclarities and ambiguities, lies open to view. In addition, Guyer, as editor of the volume, has provided a great deal of valuable supplementary material. This includes an introduction with an outline of the work and details of the history of its composition and publication, and a wealth of endnotes offering clarifications of the text, background information, and, most strikingly, many references to related passages in Kant’s voluminous writings, particularly in connection with Kant’s earlier writings related to aesthetics. The edition also records differences among the first three editions of the work, and—of particular interest—erasures from and additions to Kant’s manuscript of the First Introduction. Although the introduction and endnotes reflect interpretative views that are sometimes disputable, this supplementary material makes the present edition into a valuable resource even for those able to read the text in German. (shrink)

Implicit cognition is cognition that happens automatically and (typically) non-consciously. In moral psychology, implicit cognition is almost always understood in terms of dual process models of moral judgment. In this chapter, we address the question whether implicit moral judgment is usefully cashed out in terms of automatic (“type 1”) processes, and what the limitations of this approach are. Our chapter has six sections. In (1), we provide a brief overview of dual process models of domain-general (moral and non-moral) cognition. (2) (...) reviews a recent debate regarding the soundness of dual process models to begin with. Section (3) is about dual process accounts of moral judgment specifically. The last three sections then survey attempts to go beyond a simplistic automatic/controlled (“type 2”) distinction in conceptualizing implicit moral cognition. Recently, three main theoretical approaches have emerged, which all revolve around the questions whether type 2 processing can successfully penetrate implicit moral cognition. First, rational learning approaches highlight how episodes of moral learning can feed back into and shape our moral intuitions (4). Second, so-called triple process models suggest that automatic cognitive outputs can under certain circumstances be reined in by reflective cognition (5). Finally, recent evidence shows that moral reasoning is not as impotent as earlier developments in empirical moral psychology claimed to demonstrate (6). (shrink)

Should I believe something if and only if it’s true? Many philosophers have objected to this kind of truth norm, on the grounds that it’s not the case that one ought to believe all the truths. For example, some truths are too complex to believe; others are too trivial to be worth believing. Philosophers who defend truth norms often respond to this problem by reformulating truth norms in ways that do not entail that one ought to believe all the truths. (...) Many of these attempts at reformulation, I’ll argue, have been missteps. A number of these different reformulations are incapable of carrying out a central role a truth norm is meant to play, that of explaining justification. The truth norm I’ll defend, however, avoids the implausible results of a prescription to believe all the truths, but doesn’t thereby fail to explain justification. This norm, introduced by Conor McHugh, states that if one has some doxastic attitude about p—i.e. if one believes, disbelieves, or suspends judgement about whether p—then one ought to believe that p if and only if p is true. (shrink)

When I began working on my dissertation on Kant’s aesthetic theory in 1971, I was able to read virtually all of the extant literature on the Critique of Judgment in English, German, andFrench going back to Hermann Cohen’s Kants Begr¨undung der A¨ sthetik of 1889, while also reading most of what I wanted to read of eighteenth-century British and German aesthetics before Kant—not because I had paid my dues to Evelyn Wood, but just because there was not all that much (...) to read.1 I pity the graduate student who sets out to write a dissertation on the third Critique now: since Donald Crawford, Francis Coleman, Jens Kulenkampff, Eva Schaper, and I published books on Kant’s aesthetics between 1974 and 1979 there has been a continuing flood of articles (this journal receives more submissions on Kant’s aesthetics annually than on any other historical topic) and books, a flood that has only accelerated since 2000. Confining myself only to monographs and anthologies on Kant’s aesthetics or the third Critique as a whole (but not those devoted exclusively to teleology) in English, German, and French on my shelves, and no doubt missing some, at least in German and French, I find twenty-eight monographs and anthologies published in the period between 1980 and 1999 and another twenty-seven just since 2000. (Indeed, two more have arrived on my desk since this article was written.)3 Someone setting out to work on the third Critique now has at least as many books from the last decade alone to read as I had in 1971 from the eight preceding decades. The present review will make only a small dent in this pile: I will discuss just five monographs and one introduction to the third Critique, all published in English in 2006 and 2007. (shrink)

Evidences are important proofs to support judicial trials. Automatically extracting evidences from judgement documents can be used to assess the trial quality and support “Intelligent Court”. Current evidence extraction is primarily depended on sequence labelling models. Despite their success, they can only assign a label to a token, which is difficult to recognize nested evidence entities in judgment documents, where a token may belong to several evidences at the same time. In this paper, we present a novel evidence extraction architecture (...) called ATT-MRC, in which extracting evidence entities is formalized as a question answer problem, where all evidence spans are screened out as possible correct answers. Furthermore, to address the data imbalance problem in the judgement documents, we revised the loss function and combined it with a data enhancement technique. Experimental results demonstrate that our model has better performance than related works in evidence extraction. (shrink)

Human beings orient themselves in the world via judgments; factual, moral, prudential, aesthetic, and all kinds of mixed judgments. Particularly for normative orientation in complex and contested contexts of action, it can be challenging to form judgments. This paper explores what one can reasonably expect from a theory of the power of judgment from a Kantian approach to ethics. We reconstruct practical judgments on basis of the self-reflexive capacities of human beings, and argue that for the subject to see himself (...) as committed to prudential goods it is necessarily implied that he understands himself as committed to moral judgment. However, to understand the normativity of understanding oneself as a being with practical commitments at all, the aesthetic judgment is introduced: the power of judgment in its pure form of selfreflexivity. We claim that aesthetic reflection and judgment is conditional on the possibility for human beings to enter the space of reasons, and therewith for practical self-understanding as such. The paper concludes with a preliminary sketch of different conceptual possibilities in fleshing out the role of the power of judgment in its aesthetic employment in developing mixed judgments. (shrink)

Most of those who hold that emotions involve appraisals also accept that the content of emotions is nonconceptual. The main motivation for nonconceptulism regarding emotions is that it accounts for the difference between emotions and evaluative judgements. This paper argues that if one assumes a broadly Fregean account of concepts, there are good reasons to accept that emotions have nonconceptual contents. All the main arguments for nonconceptualism regarding sensory perception easily transpose to the case of emotions. The paper ends (...) by responding to two important objections: firstly, that nonconceptualism rules out the possibility that emotions justify evaluative judgements and secondly, that nonconceptualism cannot account for the fact that some emotions have conceptually articulated cognitive bases. (shrink)

This paper argues against Julian Savulescu's principle of procreative beneficence. It maintains that prospective parents have no obligation at all to choose the child, out of a range of possible children, who is likely to lead the best life. This is because a standpoint that the author labels "the internal perspective" is a perfectly appropriate one for parents to adopt when thinking about their own future children. It is only policy makers who are obliged to take up an opposing standpoint--"the (...) external perspective"--and to be motivated by the sorts of "better for" judgements that that perspective delivers. (shrink)

This paper explicates the role of language and communication in Kant’s account of objective judgment and objective reference. I take it that the basic units of proper objective reference for Kant are objective judgments, which according to Kant are acts of relating given cognitions to other cognitions in the unity of apperception. The question is, does language play any role in this activity, or is this activity reflected in language somehow? I argue that, unlike early critics such as Herder and (...) Hamann (and many after them) have suggested, Kant does not overall neglect language and communication in his philosophy, but rather can be taken to give an account of how it is possible to use language objectively and communicate objective judgments in the first place. Even though I do not find it a plausible view that according to Kant there is no thinking at all without or prior to language, Kant’s account does not rule out the importance of language for our thinking, judging and communicating. My claim is that Kant’s account of categorical experience as universal and necessary cognition of objects provides a ground for languages and their objective use, that is, for the possibility of objective reference in language. (shrink)

The study is carried out in five chapters, with the first two offering a reconsideration of the function of the imagination in the Transcendental Deduction and Schematism of the first Critique. The last three follow the order of topics discussed by Kant in the third Critique in regard to judgments of taste, the sublime, and teleology; they conclude with an interpretation of "productive imagination" as a "model for the ideal of intellectual intuition". The comparison between "human and divine spontaneity" is (...) introduced in the first chapter, where Gibbons notes that while we have "Kant's explicit and repeated emphasis on the difference" between these, "in considering the similarity of these types of spontaneity," she wishes "to correct a possible imbalance in Kant's exposition": there are, she suggests, "formal similarities between these types of spontaneity". The main thrust of the first chapter is to respond to a particular reading of Kant—namely, to those unsympathetic interpreters who see in the Deductions an "imaginary subject of transcendental psychology" and also to those who give a "sympathetic reading" but do so in terms of an identification of "all aspects of synthesis with concept application," thereby reducing the "role of the transcendental synthesis of the imagination to that of unifying a manifold of intuition under a concept". Gibbons holds instead that the "theory of synthesis... focuses on the nature of human cognition and what is required for us to know anything about objects" and, further, that it presupposes "the broader function of the imagination as grounding the possibility of concept-application in the first place". (shrink)

This essay offers a critical appraisal of some claims recently advanced by Crispin Wright and others in support of a response-dispositional (RD) approach to issues in epistemology, ethics, political theory, and philosophy of the social sciences. These claims take a lead from Plato's discussion of the status of moral value-judgements in the Euthyphro and from Locke's account of 'secondary qualities' such as colour, texture and taste. The idea is that a suitably specified description of best opinion (or optimal response) (...) for some given area of discourse will provide all that is needed in the way of objectivity while avoiding the problems raised by anti-realists like Michael Dummett with respect to the existence of truth-values that transcend our utmost powers of recognition or verification. I focus on three main areas - mathematics, morals and constitutional law - and argue that an RD approach falls short in certain crucial respects. That is to say, it works out either as a trivial (tautological) claim to the effect that 'best judgement' cannot - per definiens - diverge from truth under conditions of idealized epistemic warrant, or as an approach that leans strongly towards the anti-realist side of the argument. Thus the promised 'third way' - here as in other present-day contexts of debate - most often carries no substantive implications for our thinking about truth, moral virtue, or justice. Elsewhere, especially when applied to juridical matters, it lays chief stress on the truth-constitutive role of human judgements or responses, and hence the impossibility of appealing to standards of natural justice beyond some existing highest authority or source of constitutional warrant. This point is made with specific reference to recent events surrounding the 'election' (or leverage-into-office) of President George W. Bush. In such cases, I conclude, an RD approach would tend strongly to endorse the view that 'best opinion' - as enshrined, say, in the deliverance of US Supreme Court justices - is the furthest we can get towards an adequate assessment of the moral and political issues. Key Words: anti-realism • ethics • judgement • mathematics • political theory • realism • response-dependence. (shrink)

If asked to explain why the Golds’ treatment of other colors in Red Rising is wrong, it is tempting to say something like “they are all human beings, and it is wrong to treat humans in this way!” In this essay, I’ll argue that this simple answer is considerably complicated by the fact that the different colors might not be members of the same biological species, and it is in fact unclear whether any of them are the same species as (...) current humans. Explaining why exactly this is so will lead us to an exploration the long-running debate in biology and philosophy over what exactly it means for two organisms to be “members of the same species.” I’ll begin by discussing the biological essentialism of Aristotle and his followers, who held that an individual organism’s species was determined by essence. One can easily imagine that the Golds might find this attractive, since it would suggest that their “superior” mental and physical capacities made them a different (and probably “higher”) species of humanity than the other colors. Unfortunately for Aristotle, this turns out to be inconsistent with Charles Darwin’s account of evolution by natural selection. This development has led many modern biologists and philosophers of biology to conceptualize species not as an abstract “form” that serves to classify organisms, but rather as a concrete collection of organisms relatively close to each other in space and time. In contrast to biological essentialism, this view of “species as concrete individual” might seem to support the Reds’ claim to the “same species” as the Gold, since they are both part of the same overarching society. Next, I’ll consider how we might tell where one species “ends” and another one “begins.” As it turns out, biologists have many ways of answering his question, each of which makes different judgments about the species of Red Rising’s characters. So, for example, the “Biological Species Concept” bases judgements about species membership on the ability to produce fertile offspring. This concept is far from perfect, however, for reasons that Red Rising makes clear: it doesn’t deal clearly with cases where reproduction is possible but very difficult (a Red and a Gold having a child) or for organisms that do not reproduce sexually (such as Pinks). I’ll then explore a few prominent alternatives to BSC, including both genetically and ecologically based species concepts, and consider their consequences for the society of Red Rising. I’ll conclude by advocating for a “pluralism” about species membership, and will suggest that the people of Red Rising (as well as in the real world) should beware of basing arguments for moral or political equality on the all-too-slippery notion of “shared humanity.” Instead, they should focus on the qualities that make the lives of the individuals (regardless of their species) worth caring about, such as their shared desires to avoid suffering and to lead fulfilling, meaningful lives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment: Critical EssaysTed KinnamanPaul Guyer, editor. Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment: Critical Essays. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Pp. xxiii + 253. Cloth, $75.95. Paper, $27.95.The volume under review is a collection of essays on a wide range of topics concerning Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment. All the papers included here have been published previously, although many (...) of them in places where they might not be easily accessible to English-speaking philosophers. While some of the articles will be familiar to Kant scholars, this collection should be useful to specialists and valuable to students first delving into the third Critique.One essay in the volume, Guyer's own piece on "Kant's Principles of Reflecting Judgment," will be of particular interest to Kant scholars. Guyer's thesis here is that the account of reflecting judgment Kant offers in the Critique of the Power of Judgment is both continuous with the account of regulative principles of reason in the Critique of Pure Reason and the basis of the unity of the third Critique as a whole. He supports this by demonstrating how each of the sorts of judgment discussed in the work can be seen as an application of the broader account of reflecting judgment in general. Guyer identifies five such applications, and shows that each of them has three features central to regulative principles: they set a goal of constructing a system within a certain specific range of cognitions; they require the suitability of objects for attainment of the goal in question, and thus are transcendental [End Page 499] and not merely logical principles; and they supply heuristic advice for the investigation of nature. Thus every form of judgment can with justice be considered as an instance of the general activity of reflecting, that is, finding a universal for a given particular.Several of the essays included here concern the most prominent issues relating to the Analytic of the Beautiful. Nick Zangwill's piece deals with the disinterestedness of aesthetic judgment, while Christopher Janaway's "Kant's Aesthetics and the Empty Cognitive Stock" debunks what he sees as misguided readings of the role of concepts in judgments of taste. In "The Idealism of Purposiveness," an excerpt from his 1993 book Kantian Aesthetics Pursued (Edinburgh, 1993), Anthony Savile criticizes what he calls the "established reading" of Kant's claim that beautiful objects exhibit "purposiveness without purpose." On this reading, to say that a thing is purposive without purpose is to say that it appears to be designed, but to no particular purpose. Savile argues instead that we should take purposiveness without purpose to indicate that an object is suitable for a function, but not as a result of conscious design. Articles by Eva Schaper (from her well-known book on Kant's aesthetics) and Malcolm Budd discuss the distinction between free and dependent beauty and the account of the sublime, respectively.Some of the other selections in the volume are interesting for their focus on somewhat neglected aspects of the third Critique. One such aspect is the role of the imagination in Kant's account of aesthetic appreciation, and by extension in cognition more generally. In "Imaginative Freedom and the German Enlightenment," Jane Kneller argues that appreciation of the role of imaginative freedom in Kant's account of aesthetic judgment helps to connect Kant to the Enlightenment rationalist tradition that saw the value of art in its ability to educate and improve those who appreciate it. This education cannot, of course, be of the most straightforward nature, since Kant emphatically argues that to judge a thing beautiful is altogether different from judging it morally good. Instead, Kneller argues, our awareness of our own imaginative freedom provides us with evidence of our ability to realize the "highest good" on earth, evidence otherwise denied us in Kant's philosophy. Also addressing the theme of imagination is Donald Crawford's "Kant's Theory of Creative Imagination," in which he points out striking parallels between Kant's account of the imagination's role in mathematics and in the creation of fine art.Another aspect of Kant... (shrink)