Based on the communication ethics of Ptahhotep and other inclusivist communication value systems, including several additional non-Western (Confucian, Buddhist, Aborigine, Cree, San, Māori, Ubuntu, and Islamic) as well as Western ones (Stoic, Christian, Kantian, socialist, liberal, and journalistic), we propose seven principles as common ground for the future regulation of media communication on a global scale. All seven are formulated in a manner similar to Ptahhotep’s, providing a flexible range of norms allowing, for example, hate speech to be dealt with (...) by criminalization, or in civil law, or by means of ethics rules and self-regulation, depending on the severity of the involved threats to humanity, to human beings, or to other core values. We reject an often-paralyzing comparative intercultural juxtaposition of individualism versus collectivism, instead suggesting an inclusivist and interculturally principled common ground for the regulation of communication. (shrink)

This paper starts from the assumption that linguistic diversity, and more generally, cultural diversity, are intrinsically good. I will look at their opposites, linguistic and cultural poverty, and the current tendencies towards the latter within the globalization process. I will also briefly explore the relationship between human rights and cultural diversity, which may be viewed as somewhat problematic, but the emphasis will be on what I consider the essential aspect of that relationship, namely, the mutually reinforcing relationship be-tween rights and (...) diversity, and between their opposites, human rights violations and cultural uniformity . In this context, the issue of legislative protection and promotion of cultural diversity will be investigated from a global perspective. Finally, I wish to assess the roles of Africa and of Africanicity with regard to these issues. (shrink)

While philosophers of mind have been arguing over the status of mental representations in cognitive science, cognitive scientists have been quietly engaged in studying perception, action, and cognition without explaining them in terms of mental representation. In this book, Anthony Chemero describes this nonrepresentational approach, puts it in historical and conceptual context, and applies it to traditional problems in the philosophy of mind. Radical embodied cognitive science is a direct descendant of the American naturalist psychology of William James and (...) John Dewey, and follows them in viewing perception and cognition to be understandable only in terms of action in the environment. Chemero argues that cognition should be described in terms of agent-environment dynamics rather than in terms of computation and representation. After outlining this orientation to cognition, Chemero proposes a methodology: dynamical systems theory, which would explain things dynamically and without reference to representation. He also advances a background theory: Gibsonian ecological psychology, "shored up" and clarified. Chemero then looks at some traditional philosophical problems through the lens of radical embodied cognitive science and concludes that the comparative ease with which it resolves these problems, combined with its empirical promise, makes this approach to cognitive science a rewarding one. "Jerry Fodor is my favorite philosopher," Chemero writes in his preface, adding, "I think that Jerry Fodor is wrong about nearly everything." With this book, Chemero explains nonrepresentational, dynamical, ecological cognitive science as clearly and as rigorously as Jerry Fodor explained computational cognitive science in his classic work The Language of Thought. (shrink)

Presents and argues for a novel interpretation of Ross's distinctive contribution to moral theory and meta-ethics.

Utilitarianism is the view according to which the only basic requirement of morality is to maximize net aggregate welfare. This position has implications for the ethics of creating and rearing children. Most discussions of these implications focus either on the ethics of procreation and in particular on how many and whom it is right to create, or on whether utilitarianism permits the kind of partiality that child rearing requires. Despite its importance to creating and raising children, there are, by contrast, (...) few sustained discussions of the implications of utilitarian views of welfare for the matter of what makes a child’s life go well. This paper attempts to remedy this deficiency. It has four sections. Section one discusses the purpose of a theory of welfare and its adequacy conditions. Section two evaluates what prominent utilitarian theories of welfare imply about what makes a child’s life go well. Section three provides a sketch of a view about what is prudentially valuable for children. Section four sums things up. (shrink)

In both The Right and the Good and The Foundations of Ethics, W. D. Ross maintains that any amount of the non-instrumental value of virtue outweighs any amount of the non-instrumental value of pleasure or avoidance of pain. The chapter raises two challenges to the status that Ross accords the value of virtue relative to the value of pleasure (pain). First, it argues that Ross fails to provide a good argument for thinking that virtue is always better than pleasure and (...) that it is in any case implausible to think that any amount of virtue (or avoidance of vice) is better than the avoidance of any amount of pain or suffering. Second, it argues that the inflexibility of Ross’s value theory exhibited in his claim about the relative value of virtue produces tension with and mars the attractive heterarchical structure of his theory of rightness or prima facie duties. (shrink)

In this essay I defend the view that Henry Sidgwick’s moral epistemology is a form of intuitionist foundationalism that grants common-sense morality no evidentiary role. In §1, I outline both the problematic of The Methods of Ethics and the main elements of its argument for utilitarianism. In §§2-4 I provide my interpretation of Sidgwick’s moral epistemology. In §§ 5-8 I refute rival interpretations, including the Rawlsian view that Sidgwick endorses some version of reflective equilibrium and the view that he is (...) committed to some kind of pluralistic epistemology. In§ 9 I contend with some remaining objections to my view. (shrink)

This paper is an examination of the ethical principles of effective altruism as they are articulated by Peter Singer in his book The Most Good You Can Do. It discusses the nature and the plausibility of the principles that he thinks both guide and ought to guide effective altruists. It argues in § II pace Singer that it is unclear that in charitable giving one ought always to aim to produce the most surplus benefit possible and in § III that (...) there is a more attractive set of principles than the ones Singer outlines that ought to guide effective altruists in their philanthropic practices and in their lives more generally. These principles fit better with his practical ambitions and with plausible attitudes about the limits of beneficence. (shrink)

This 1976 book outlines the main themes of his philosophy and seeks to clarify the much-debated question of how operative a role he played, through a detailed study of his personal and intellectual relationships with four younger ...

This book interrogates the ways in which new technological advances impact the thought and practices of humanism. Chapters investigate the social, political, and cultural implications of the creation and use of advanced forms of technology, examining both defining benefits and potential dangers. Contributors also discuss technology's relationship to and impact on the shifting definitions we hold for humankind. International and multi-disciplinary in nature and scope, the volume presents an exploration of humanism and technology that is both racially diverse and gender (...) sensitive. With great depth and self-awareness, contributors offer suggestions for how humanists and humanist organizations might think about and relate to technology in a rapidly changing world. More broadly, the book offers a critical humanistic interrogation of the concept of "progress" especially as it relates to technological advancement. (shrink)

The Trump presidency represents a political reboot that awkwardly exposes the grammar and performance of anti-“other” violence.1 Whether one sees the current political mood as fascistic or populist, or simply a glitch in our democracy, for certain populations such distinctions are mere semantics. The political history of the United States, in which actual, psychological, and rhetorical violence have often been used in support of culturally and racially normative framings of life, such substantive distinctions are of limited value. Furthermore, and this (...) is a vital point, Trumpism has cultural causes and connotations as well as sociopolitical and economic ones. Wrapped in this cultural dimension is a profound... (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Humanism aims to cover the history, the philosophical development, and the influence humanist thought and culture. As a system of thought that values human needs and experiences over supernatural concerns, humanism has gained greater attention amid the rapidly shifting demographics of religious communities, especially in Europe and North America. This outlook on the world has taken on global dimensions as well, with activists, artists, and thinkers forming a humanistic response not only to traditional religion, but to (...) the pressing social and political issues of the 21st century. To address these areas, the chapters in this volume discuss humanism as a global phenomenon-an approach that has often been neglected in more Western-focused works. The Handbook will also approach humanism as both an opponent to traditional religion as well as a philosophy that some religions have explicitly adopted. Sections are divided into regional studies, intellectual histories, humanist organizations and movements, the impact on culture, humanism in the public arena, and influence of humanism on social issues. Keywords: Humanism, atheism, unbelief, free-thought, secularism, philosophy, religious studies, sociology, history. (shrink)

We live in a world of social, political, economic, and religious rupture. Ideologies polarise to fuel confrontation within communities, nations and regions of the world. At this point in the twenty-first century, humanism's focus on reason, ethics and justice offers the potential to rethink and re-engage in new ways. What Is Humanism, and Why Does It Matter? brings together leading humanist thinkers and activists to examine humanism and how it can work in the world. Humanism is often misunderstood. The movement (...) includes both atheists and agnostics, who seek to make ethical sense of the world based on shared human values and a concern for human welfare, happiness and fulfillment. What Is Humanism, and Why Does It Matter? presents an overview and exploration of the meaning and nature of humanism, both as a philosophy and as a way of engaging with the challenges of the world. (shrink)

There is no doubt that the model presented here is incomplete. Many important categories, particularly negation and the adverbials, have been entirely ignored, and the treatment of Tense and the affixes is certainly inadequate. It also remains to be seen how the many constructions that have been ignored here are to be accommodated within the framework that has been outlined. However, the fact that a standard categorial lexicon, plus the four rule schemata, seems to come close to exhaustively specifying the (...) main clause constructions of English, and also seems to explain a number of major constraints on transformations, encourages us to compare the theory with certain alternatives, and to examine its broader implications. (shrink)

Children are routinely treated paternalistically. There are good reasons for this. Children are quite vulnerable. They are ill-equipped to meet their most basic needs, due, in part, to deficiencies in practical and theoretical reasoning and in executing their wishes. Children’s motivations and perceptions are often not congruent with their best interests. Consequently, raising children involves facilitating their best interests synchronically and diachronically. In practice, this requires caregivers to (in some sense) manage a child’s daily life. If apposite, this management will (...) focus partly on a child’s well-being. To be ably executed, an account of children’s well-being will need to be articulated. This chapter focuses on the nature of children’s well-being. It has five sections. The first section clarifies the focus. The second section examines some hurdles to articulating a view of children’s well-being. The third section evaluates some accounts of children’s well-being. The fourth section addresses the view that children possess features essential to them that make their lives on balance prudentially bad for them. The fifth section sums things up. (shrink)

Paul (Noûs 36:578–596, 2002; Noûs 40:623–659, 2006, The Handbook of Mereology, forthcoming) has argued for a bundle theory of objects that analyzes the bundling relation between properties and objects in terms of parthood relations. In this paper I argue that any mereological bundle theory with the explanatory power of Paul’s theory will entail the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII). This is problematic, since similar bundle theories seem to fall to Max Black’s two sphere counterexample to (PII). I argue, (...) however, that a fully developed mereological bundle theory provides a new way of interpreting Black’s two sphere universe that dispels the counterexample. I argue that this solution to Black’s puzzle is superior to other solutions on offer, and consequently that mereological bundle theory is an attractive ontological strategy for friends of (PII). (shrink)

In ‘Sidgwick’s Epistemology’, John Deigh argues that Henry Sidgwick’s The Methods of Ethics ‘was not perceived during his lifetime as a major and lasting contribution to British moral philosophy’ and that interest in it declined considerably after Sidgwick’s death because the epistemology on which it relied ‘increasingly became suspect in analytic philosophy and eventually [it was] discarded as obsolete’. In this article I dispute these claims.

This essay seeks to characterise the essential features of an equitable health care system in terms of the classical Aristotelian concepts of horizontal and vertical equity, the common language of “need” and the economic notion of cost-effectiveness as a prelude to identifying some of the more important issues of value that policy-makers will have to decide for themselves; the characteristics of health that can cause policy to be ineffective ; the information base that is required to support a policy directed (...) at securing greater equity, and the kinds of research that are needed to underpin such a policy. (shrink)

Adolescents are routinely treated differently to adults, even when they possess similar capacities. In this article, we explore the justification for one case of differential treatment of adolescents. We attempt to make philosophical sense of the concurrent consents doctrine in law: adolescents found to have decision-making capacity have the power to consent to—and thereby, all else being equal, permit—their own medical treatment, but they lack the power always to refuse treatment and so render it impermissible. Other parties, that is, individuals (...) who exercise parental responsibility or a court, retain the authority to consent on an adolescent’s behalf. We explore four defences of the doctrine. We reject two attempts to defend the asymmetry in the power to consent to and refuse medical treatment by reference to transitional paternalism. We then consider and reject a stage of life justification. Finally, we articulate a justification based on the distinctiveness of adolescent well-being. (shrink)

This book uncovers and examines the confusion in antiquity between Aristotle's hypothetical syllogistic and Stoic logic, and offers a fresh perspective on the ...

This paper starts from the debate between proponents of a neo-Lockean psychological continuity view of personal identity, and defenders of the idea that we are simple mental substances. Each party has valid criticisms of the other; the impasse in the debate is traced to the Lockean assumption that substance is only externally related to its attributes. This suggests the possibility that we could develop a better account of mental substance if we thought of it as having an internal relation to (...) its states. I suggest that we may be able to do this by relying on the notion of expression. In developing this idea I draw heavily on aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophical psychology, while also developing and criticizing Strawson's account of persons and recent work by Lynne Baker. I conclude by arguing that mental substance, understood in this way, can only be grasped in narrative terms; substantialist and narrative accounts of personal identity, far from being opposed, are mutually supporting and require one another to be coherent. (shrink)

In The Methods of Ethics, Henry Sidgwick maintains that resolution of the free will problem is of “limited” importance to ethics and to practical reasoning. Despite the view’s uniqueness, surprisingly little sustained attention has been paid to Sidgwick’s view. This chapter tries to remedy this situation. Part one clarifies Sidgwick’s argument for the claim that resolving the free will controversy is of only limited importance to ethics. Part two examines and tries to deflect objections to Sidgwick’s position raised by J. (...) B. Schneewind and Roger Crisp while putting forward a different objection. Part three raises objections to Sidgwick’s claim that “it is practically impossible to be guided, either in remunerating services or in punishing mischievous acts, by any other considerations than those which the Determinist interpretation of desert [and responsibility] would include”. The chapter concludes by noting that although Sidgwick’s view is not without its problems, his discussion forces us to consider which aspects of moral thinking (if any) survive the conclusion that free will is illusory. (shrink)

A philosophical discussion of children's well-being in which various existing views of well-being are discussed to determine their implications for children's well-being and a variety of views of children's well-being are considered and evaluated.

The question of modernity has provoked a vigorous debate in the work of thinkers from Hegel to Habermas. Our own self-styled postmodern age has seen no end to this debate, which now receives a major and wide-ranging intervention from the theorist and critic Anthony J. Cascardi. Offering an historical account of the origins and transformations of the rational subject or self as it is represented in Descartes, Cervantes, Pascal, Hobbes and the Don Juan myth, he carries his argument across (...) the fields of epistemology, literature, political science, religion and psychology. The modern subject proves to be positioned within conflicting discourses, in a culture characterised by its 'detotalised totality'. Max Weber's concept of 'world disenchantment' enables Cascardi to make a searching critique of modernity's sense of its absoluteness, divorced from an archaic, 'enchanted' world. He advocates in its place a more fruitful relationship between historical analysis and theoretical speculation, offering constructive new alternatives to current orthodoxy regarding subjectivity and modernity. (shrink)

The Dead Donor Rule is intended to protect the public and patients, but it remains contentious. Here, I argue that we can abandon the Dead Donor Rule. Using Joel Feinberg’s account of harm, I argue that, in most cases, particularly when patients consent to being organ donors, death does not harm permanently unconscious (PUC) patients. In these cases, then, causing the death of PUC patients is not morally wrong. This undermines the strongest argument for the Dead Donor Rule—that doctors ought (...) not kill their patients. Thus, there is nothing wrong with abandoning the Dead Donor Rule with regard to PUC patients. Importantly, the harm-based argument defended here allows us to sidestep the thorny debate surrounding definitions of death. What matters is not when a patient dies but whether their death constitutes some further harm. (shrink)

It is often argued that Henry Sidgwick is a conservative about moral matters, while Peter Singer is a radical. Both are exponents of a utilitarian account of morality but they use it to very different effect. I think this way of viewing the two is mistaken or, at the very least, overstated. Sidgwick is less conservative than has been suggested and Singer is less radical than he initially seems. To illustrate my point, I will rely on what each has to (...) say about the moral demands of suffering and destitution. (shrink)

This paper examines Kierkegaard 's discussion of patience in some of his Upbuilding Discourses, and its connection with his understanding of the nature of selfhood as it appears both in the Discourses and in The Sickness unto Death. That understanding stresses that selfhood is not simply given, but is a task to be achieved—although a task that can only be achieved by the self that is formed in the process of undertaking it. For Kierkegaard, an account of the self that (...) recognizes its essential temporality must give a crucial role to patience as a virtue necessary for the formation and maintenance of personal identity. However, although the self is essentially temporal for Kierkegaard, it is also essentially such as to participate in eternity, and this complexity and tension in his concept of the self gives his understanding of patience a particular character—one that presents an important challenge to some of the dominant assumptions of recent and contemporary philosophy in both the analytic and the continental traditions. (shrink)

In a 2020 article published in volume 9, number 1 of [Filosofia Theoretica]_, _Martin F. Asiegbu and Anthony Chinaemerem Ajah questioned the continued relevance of Afro-communalism. They argued that nothing about communalism makes it African. They also demonstrated how the brand of communalism presented as ‘African’, is too reductive, emphasizes conformism and therefore is against the individual and counter-productive for entire societies in Africa. For the above reasons, they summed that communalism with ‘Afro-’ is irrelevant and needs to end. (...) In a 2021 article published in the same journal in response to the initial submission by Asiegbu and Ajah, Enweh held that their take on Afro-communalism was too harsh. He marshalled out five “issues and difficulties” regarding their critique of the concept. Although Enweh’s critique is a worthwhile invitation to a conversation, which clarifies and complements, his proposal for an interpretative rehabilitation of Afro-communalism in the 21 st century is surely wrongheaded. To respond to Enweh, a review of his critique of Asiegbu and Ajah will foreground the attempt to clarify some parts of Asiegbu and Ajah’s initial position. We will assess Enweh’s arguments in terms of the relevance of the rehabilitation he suggested and question the meaning of what Enweh termed the “amity of ethnic nationalities.” We will argue that Enweh was unable to provide sufficient grounds to show that Asiegbu and Ajah’s critique of Afro-communalism was “uninformed… [and] harsh.” We will also demonstrate that his critique of their views was indefensible just as he was unable to explain what he meant by the alternative model he claimed to introduce in the discussion. (shrink)

This article addresses a tendency within postcolonial studies to place the work of Michel Foucault and Frantz Fanon in opposition. This has obscured the real, and potentially very productive, similarities between them. The most important of these links has to do with their shared critique of the sovereign subject of humanism: for Fanon and Foucault, this critique of the traditional humanist subject provides a way of opposing what they both see as the dangerous nostalgia for a lost moment of origin. (...) Furthermore, Fanon and Foucault both end in a moment of ethics, but it is an ethics without the sort of stable subjects assumed by humanism. I offer a consideration of some of the links that can be found in several texts by Fanon and Foucault. I then attempt to define the term I will be using to describe their shared strategy of an ethics without subjects: the “humanism effect.” I conclude by trying to suggest some of the strategic possibilities of an ethics without subjects in the postcolonial context. (shrink)

Om den engelske filosof Francis Bacon (1561-1624).

The Unspeakable Girl is, to judge a book by its cover, not merely peripheral to Agamben’s oeuvre, but something rather trifling: a philosophical bauble, a curiosity piece. Published in collaboratio...

What is the relationship between contemporary intellectual culture and the European Enlightenment it claims to reject? In Consequences of Enlightenment, Anthony Cascardi revisits the arguments advanced in Horkheimer and Adorno's seminal work Dialectic of Enlightenment. Cascardi argues against the view that postmodern culture has rejected Enlightenment beliefs and explores instead the continuities contemporary theory shares with Kant's failed ambition to bring the project of Enlightenment to completion. He explores the link between aesthetics and politics in thinkers as diverse as (...) Habermas, Derrida, Arendt, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Wittgenstein in order to reverse the tendency to see works of art simply in terms of the worldly practices among which they are situated. (shrink)