This article attempts to show points of contact between current analytical philosophy and the philosophy of Bernard Lonergan. It does so by focusing on the philosophy of logic. Debates concerning the adequacy and/or completeness of the various logical systems which have been or are being elaborated are an important aspect of analytical philosophy today. Lonergan was also preoccupied with the foundations of logic. This is manifest not only in his 1957 Boston College lectures on the subject, but throughout his philosophical (...) writing. In the article we shall see how Lonergan's cognitional theory can throw light on issues in the philosophy of logic which are of importance to analytical philosophers. The discussion, which will be non-technical in nature, will examine contemporary debates on the principles of excluded middle and non-contradiction, and will also focus on Lonergan's unique contribution to a philosophical analysis of both the importance and the limitations of symbolism in philosophical argument. /// O presente artigo pretende mostrar a existência de pontos de contacto entre a Filosofia Analítica corrente e o pensamento de Bernard Lonergan. Em ordem a isso, o autor do artigo concentra a sua atenção na filosofia da lógica. Com efeito, os debates acerca da adequação e/ou completude dos vários sistemas lógicos já elaborados ou em processo de elaboração constituem um importante aspecto da Filosofia Analítica mais recente. Por seu lado, Bernard Lonergan também se preocupou com os fundamentos da Lógica. Isso é o que se pode ver não apenas mediante as suas conferências pronunciadas no Boston College em 1957 acerca desta matéria, mas ao longo de todos os seus escritos filosóficos. Neste sentido, o artigo pretende sobretudo demonstrar de que modo a teoria cognitiva de Lonergan pode projectar luz sobre diversos problemas candentes em filosofia da lógica, problemas esses que são de grande importância para os filósofos analíticos. Esta discussão, que aqui se apresenta sem recorrer a procedimentos técnicos, examina os debates contemporâneos acerca dos princípios do terceiro excluído e de não-contradição, chamando especialmente a atenção para o contributo de Lonergan para a análise filosófica quer da importância quer dos limites do simbolismo na argumentação filosófica. (shrink)

An introduction to the contemporary epistemology and philosophy of histography of Bernard Lonergan. A comparative analysis of Lonergan's perspective on objectivity in historical knowledge, perspectivism, and the deconstructionist approaches of metahistorians. Beards argues the relevance of Lonergan's contributions to current debates.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this paper, we argue that our moral concern for future well-being should reduce over time due to important practical considerations about how humans interact with spacetime. After surveying several of these considerations (around equality, special duties, existential contingency, and overlapping moral concern) we develop a set of core principles that can both explain their moral significance and highlight why this is inherently bound up with our relationship with spacetime. These relate to the equitable distribution of (1) moral concern in (...) a universe that we can only causally affect in one temporal direction; (2) access to the benefits from using spacetime as a resource; and (3) the burdens of care given (1) and (2). We conclude by considering the practical implications of our argument and find that, while it is often assumed that a preference for present over future well-being weakens the case for existential risk mitigation, this likely is not the case. (shrink)

On certain plausible views, if humanity were to unanimously decide to cause its own extinction, this would not be wrong, since there is no one whom this act would wrong. We argue this is incorrect. Causing human extinction would still wrong someone; namely, our forebears who sacrificed life, limb and livelihood for the good of posterity, and whose sacrifices would be made less morally worthwhile by this heinous act.

The Repugnant Conclusion and its paradoxes pose a significant problem for outcome evaluation. Derek Parfit has suggested that we may be able to resolve this problem by accepting a view he calls ‘Perfectionism’, which gives lexically superior value to ‘the best things in life’. In this paper, I explore perfectionism and its potential to solve this problem. I argue that perfectionism provides neither a sufficient means of avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion nor a full explanation of its repugnance. This is because (...) even lives that are ‘barely worth living’ may contain the best things in life if they also contain sufficient ‘bad things’, such as suffering or frustration. Therefore, perfectionism can only fully explain or avoid the Repugnant Conclusion if combined with other claims, such as that bad things have an asymmetrical value relative to many good things. This combined view faces the objection that any such asymmetry implies Parfit’s ‘Ridiculous Conclusion’. However, I argue that perfectionism itself faces very similar objections, and that these are question-begging against both views. Finally, I show how the combined view that I propose not only explains and avoids the Repugnant Conclusion but also allows us to escape many of its paradoxes as well. (shrink)

Over the past decade, interest in human enhancement has waxed and waned. The initial surge of interest and funding, driven by the US Army’s desire for a ‘Future Force Warrior’ has partly given way to the challenges of meeting operational demands abroad. However the ethical opportunities provided by soldier enhancement demand that investigation of its possibilities continue. Benefits include enhanced decision-making, improved force capability, reduced force size and lower casualty rates. These benefits — and enhancement itself — carry concomitant risks, (...) including morale issues due to tension between enhanced and unenhanced soldiers, the issues of enhanced veterans and ownership of enhanced bodies, challenges to the army’s core values and personal identity issues. A range of measures should be designed to highlight the opportunities offered by enhancement while also minimising the potential risks. This includes providing advice on which areas the army ought to demonstrate restraint in research for ethical reasons. (shrink)

According to Luck egalitarians, fairness requires us to bring it about that nobody is worse off than others where this results from brute bad luck, but not where they choose or deserve to be so. In this paper, I consider one type of brute bad luck that appears paradigmatic of what a Luck Egalitarian ought to be most concerned about, namely that suffered by people who are born to badly off parents and are less well off as a result. However, (...) when we consider what is supposedly unfair about this kind of unequal brute luck, luck egalitarians face a dilemma. According to the standard account of luck egalitarianism, differential brute luck is unfair because of its effects on the distribution of goods. Yet, where some parents are worse off because they have chosen to be imprudent, it may be impossible to neutralize these effects without creating a distribution that seems at least as unfair. This, I argue, is problematic for luck egalitarianism. I, therefore, explore two alternative views that can avoid this problem. On the first of these, proposed by Shlomi Segall, the distributional effects of unequal brute luck are unfair only when they make a situation more unequal, but not when they make it more equal. On the second, it is the unequal brute luck itself, rather than its distributional effects, that is unfair. I conclude with some considerations in favour of this second view, while accepting that both are valid responses to the problem I describe. (shrink)

This is the first complete theory of the morphology of language, a compendium of information on morphological categories and operations.

In the article ‘After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?’ arguments are made in favour of the moral permissibility of intentionally killing newborn infants, under particular conditions. Here we argue that their arguments are based on an indefensible view of personhood, and we question the logic of harm and interest that informs their arguments. Furthermore, we argue that the conclusions here are so contrary to ordinary moral intuitions that the argument and conclusions based upon it—including those which defend more mainstream (...) methods of abortion—should be treated with immediate suspicion. (shrink)

Generally speaking, just war theory (JWT) holds that there are two just causes for war: self-defence and ‘other-defence’. The most common type of the latter is popularly known as ‘humanitarian intervention’. There is debate, however, as to whether these can serve as just causes for preventive war. Those who subscribe to JWT tend to be unified in treating so-called preventive war with a high degree of suspicion on the grounds that it fails to satisfy conventional criteria for jus ad bello; (...) – particularly the just cause and last resort criteria. Francisco di Vitoria held that the only just cause for war was ‘a wrong received’, which renders impossible any justification for preventive war. There are assumptions implicit in recent military practice, however – most notably, the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 – that challenge this ban on preventive war. Interestingly, both supporters and critics attempt to justify their views through the broader logic of JWT; viz., through a conception of what is good for both political communities and individuals, and through a legitimate defence of these goods. Supporters point to situations where so-called rogue states represent ‘grave and imminent risk’ of committing acts of aggression as grounds that justify preventive war; critics argue that to attack another political community on the basis of crimes not yet committed is a breach of the very rights JWT was created to defend. The advocate of preventive war does not appreciate important aspects concerning the morality of war. In the ongoing tension between Iran and The United States and her allies – if the rhetoric is to be believed – I am asked to tolerate a threat to my security and liberty, and to risk suffering aggression in defence of the rights of the antagonistic, but not yet aggressive, state. The crucial question is how such tolerance and risk fit in with the logic of just war: at what point, if any, does the risk of being attacked become great enough to justify declaring war in anticipation? In this paper I highlight some of the theoretical and practical difficulties in determining what counts as a grave and imminent threat, focusing especially on the complicated case of ‘imminence’ in the face of so-called ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. Secondly, I will argue that not only is the notion of preventive war inconsistent with the defence of the rights of political communities that JWT requires; it is also forbidden by the proportionality requirement of jus ad bellum. A risk of being subjected to aggression is the price for global peace. Whilst political communities can do much to prevent aggression and prepare themselves in case it occurs, the conditions for just war require that this prevention and preparation stop short of declaring war. We must live with a certain degree of risk in this area. (shrink)

This essay explores the archive of a 1971 interview of Angela Davis by Swedish journalist Bo Holmström—recorded in Santa Clara County Jail where Davis awaited trial—to examine the relationship between Black radical thought and its social and intellectual mediation, especially when it comes to questions of violence versus nonviolence. Where Holmström invokes the “violence/nonviolence” binary in the interview, Davis pointedly resists its distortions, restoring the record of contemporary and historical conditions of racial terror that both necessitate and criminalize Black self-defense. (...) Decades later, the interview was filtered through the violence/nonviolence binary in editing for the acclaimed 2011 documentary, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, with Davis’s wider conversation with Holmström not only abridged but remixed into a shorter exchange on armed self-defense. Studying the interview from its conditions of possibility through its later remixing, and reading it together with her opening defense statement (1972) and later speeches and writings, the essay excavates and explicates Davis’s original theoretical interventions and indexes a cluster of forces that mediate Black radical thought, Black women’s radical thought more specifically, and prison texts. The final section historicizes Davis’s theorization of the spatial and relational contexts of Black self-defense in Dynamite Hill, Alabama, and in California, and contends that her incisive interventions into the violence/nonviolence binary in 1971 remain critical here and now. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe (1919–2001) was a significant figure in twentieth-century philosophy. Her work is characterized by the attempt to retrieve and deploy some of the insights of Aristotle and Aquinas in the light of the philosophical perspectives of her mentor, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Bernard Lonergan was also a twentieth-century thinker concerned to retrieve and develop perspectives from the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition in the context of modern and post-modern thought. This article attempts to initiate a critical dialogue between the thought of these two philosophers. (...) Anscombe’s philosophical views on topics such as self-knowledge, conscious intention, and the foundations of ethics are discussed and critically evaluated. The article also includes a critical reappraisal of the celebrated debate between Anscombe and C. S. Lewis. (shrink)

Little research has focused on college students'' attitudes toward advertising''s ethical, economic, and social consequences over the last two decades. Exploring and tracking the attitudes of college students toward advertising is important, however, for several reasons. College students represent an important segment of consumers for many marketers, negative attitudes toward advertising on the part of college students could lead to their support for restrictive regulation in the future, and there are potentially negative consequences concerning the effects of advertising that college (...) students uniquely share with other youth markets. The results of this study – a differentiated replication of an earlier study of college students in the late 1970s – indicate the salience of various beliefs that help determine attitudes toward advertising and provide a useful benchmark for future studies. The implications of the study''s findings for advertising practice and future regulation are discussed. (shrink)

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