In Ethics and the Autonomy of Philosophy, Bernard Walker sets out with two objectives. First, Walker argues that ethics is autonomous as a discipline. Oftentimes ethics books, from a Christian perspective, lean toward grounding ethics in theology or in biblical proof texting. Walker departs from this tradition. Ethics grounded in theology entails a limited scope for those doing ethics in that the Christian God must be assumed for both Christian and non-Christian when at the table of ethical dialogue. For (...) the non-Christian, this loads the dice and shuts down ethical consensus and dialogue, if not ethical truth. With that said, this book does not depart from Christian ethical views on such issues as the sanctity of life, antiracism, the death penalty, the objectivity of ethics, and the importance of integrating faith into ethics; however, Walker does so from a common denominator of philosophy rather than theology. Second, Walker ventures into the streets and engages the man/woman on the streets approach to ethics and ethical decision-making. He points out the shortcomings of the ubiquitous views of the man/woman on the streets, viz., cultural relativism, skepticism, and the attitude that ethics is merely a matter of personal choice. (shrink)

This concerns the dignity and the degradation of labour. Work has great power to undermine or to foster happiness. Bernard feels the moral dimension of labour has been neglected in political theory and practice and he aims to restore productive labour to its place in moral and political debate.

We are bombarded with epistemic norms. Respect your evidence. Don’t believe in contradictions. Don’t arbitrarily change beliefs. But how do such norms get their normative force? Why should we respect our evidence, for example? In this paper I offer a familiar type of answer, epistemic instrumentalism. Epistemic instrumentalism holds that epistemic norms get their normative force by being useful. You should respect your evidence because it will help you achieve some valuable ends. This answer, while familiar, is not very popular. (...) There is a widely accepted objection to epistemic instrumentalism, the too few reasons objection. The objection looms so large that standard developments of instrumentalism have become bloated with philosophical machinery to respond to it. This does a disservice to epistemic instrumentalism. Rather than focusing completely on the objection, I focus on describing a simple model for how conforming to the epistemic norms is broadly useful. Once I describe the simple model, the too few reasons objection becomes much easier to answer. This strategy results in a well-motivated philosophical theory based on uncontroversial facts that has many advantages over rival theories. (shrink)

To speak of patients' choices is to obscure the distinction between request and refusal of treatment. The distinction is particularly crucial for questions of killing or letting die.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION, AND REPRESENTATION IN THE SEMIOTIC OF JOHN POINSOT1 }AMES BERNARD MURPHY Dartmouth College Hanover, New Hampshire 1) Language and the Semiotic of John Poinsot HE SEMIOTIC of John Poinsot is to the study of gns what physics is to the study of nature. Physics is oth the most fundamental and the most general science of nature. All natural processes, from the motion of planets to the (...) division of cells, are governed by, but not only by, laws of physics. Similarly, the semiotic of John Poinsot (traditionally known by his Dominican name, John of St. Thomas) is the most fundamental and general science of signs. The actions of all signs -from natural signs such as footprints and symptoms of disease, to signs of communication, such as logical operators and linguistic signs, to signs in cognition, such as concepts and percepts -are governed by, but not only by, the fundamental relational logic of semiosis set forth in his Ars Logica [1632]. If C. S. Peirce can be said to give us a chemistry of sixty-six signcompounds, John Poinsot, suitably revised, gives us the basic physical laws of motion that bring sign, object, and mind into relation.2 i The author would like to acknowledge gratefully the fellowships received from the American Council of Learned Societies and from Dartmouth College supporting the research of this article. I also wish to acknowledge the help of my research assistant, Daniel Glazer, in hunting down many essential books and articles. John Deely assisted by correcting my discussion of some of the finer points of Poinsot's theory as well as by providing many other helpful suggestions for revision. 2 The first modern author to point this out was Jacques Maritain, especially in "Signe et symbole," Revue Thomiste 44 (April 1938), pp. 299-300 and 569 570 JAMES BERNARD MURPHY What I wish to explore here is the question: To what extent does the semiotic of John Poinsot account for the meaning of linguistic signs? In one sense, we cannot expect such a fundamental and general theory of the action of signs to tell us much about language. Language is a surpassingly complex and, in many ways, a unique sign-system. Expecting a general theory of signs to capture the meaning of the linguistic sign is like expecting physics to explain reproductive biology. In another sense, though, we ought to expect his semiotic to illuminate that preeminent system of signs, human language. For in addition to "Le Langage et la theorie du signe," Anne.:re au chapitre II of Quatre essais sur!'esprit dans sa condition charnelle (Nouvelle edition revue et augmentee; Paris: Alsatia, 1956), pp. 113-124. This latter essay appears in a modestly amplified English version, " Language and the Theory of Sign," from Language : An Enquiry into Its Meaning and Function, edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), pp. 86-101; and, fully annotated in relation to Poinsot's Tractatus de Signis, it has been reprinted in Frontiers in Semiotics, edited by John Deely, Brooke Williams, and Felicia Kruse (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 51-62. Following Maritain, a number of authors have attempted to apply Poinsot's semiotic to contemporary debates. I note the principal ones in chronological order: John A. Oesterle, " Another Approach to the Problem of Meaning," The Thomist 7 (1944), pp. 233-263; John Wild, "An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Signs," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 8 (December 1947), pp. 217-244; Henry B. Veatch, Intentional Logic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952). Poinsot's Treatise on Signs was originally published in 1632 as a small part of volume 2 in the original five volumes (Alcala, Spain: 1631-1635) of his philosophical writings. These five volumes have been published as three volumes under the title Cursus Philosophicus Thomisticus in the modern edition by Beatus Reiser (Turin: Marietti, 1930, 1933, 1937). The first independent presentation of Poinsot's complete Tractatus de Signis was prepared by John Deely in consultation with Ralph A. Powell and published in bilingual critical edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). Since the publication of this edition of the Tractatus, two major critiques and reconstructions of Poinsot's analysis... (shrink)

Despite their obvious importance to social and political life, custom and customary law have largely escaped philosophical scrutiny. There are important recent philosophical analyses of convention, but none of custom. And customary law has been recently neglected by the dominant legal positivism. One reason for the neglect of custom is the familiar dichotomy between nature and convention. Social practices are said to be either by nature, and therefore assumed to be unalterable, or they are said to be by convention, and (...) therefore assumed to be created at will. But customs arise neither simply from nature nor from deliberate stipulation, so they are excluded by the familiar opposition of nature and convention. Custom is a notoriously vague concept: custom seems both to be natural and conventional. I attempt to show how custom bridges human nature and social norms. I argue that custom must be analyzed into two more logically basic concepts: habit and convention. Custom is a habitual convention and a conventional habit. I discuss habit and convention in relation to contemporary psychology and analytic philosophy. Habit roots custom in the physiology of human nature while convention links custom to social norms. Aristotle pioneered this approach to custom by using two words to describe what we call custom: ethos and nomos. Ethos focuses our attention on the habitual dimension of custom while nomos focuses our attention on the conventional dimension of custom. I argue that the function of law is to remedy the deficiencies of custom: law is custom’s instrument for shaping its own evolution. (shrink)

A fierce debate about civic education in American public schools has erupted in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Many liberals and conservatives, though they disagree strongly about which civic virtues to teach, share the assumption that such education is an appropriate responsibility for public schools. They are wrong. Civic education aimed at civic virtue is at best ineffective; worse, it is often subversive of the moral purpose of schooling. Moreover, the attempt to impose these partisan conceptions (...) of civic virtue on America's students violates the civic trust that underpins vibrant public schools. (shrink)

Philosophy has always been parasitic on other bodies of knowledge, especially religious thought. Greek philosophy in Italy emerged as a purification of Orphic religious traditions. Orphic votaries adopted various disciplines in the attempt to become divine, which led Pythagoras and Empedocles to define philosophy as a path to divinity. According to Plato and Aristotle, the goal of philosophy is to become “as much like a god as is humanly possible.” Classical Greek philosophy is not the study of the divine but (...) the project of becoming divine, a project which it shares with Christianity. Greek philosophy and Christianity have different paths to the divine, but they share a common aspiratio. (shrink)

Beliefs should conform to some norms. Epistemic instrumentalism holds that your beliefs should conform to these epistemic norms just because conforming is useful. But there seems to be cases where conforming to the epistemic norms isn’t useful at all, as in so-called “too-few-reasons” cases. In response to these cases, universal epistemic instrumentalists argue that despite first appearances, it is always useful to conform to the epistemic norms. I argue that all current versions of this universalist response are objectionable. I conclude (...) with a conjecture about why no version of universalism will succeed. (shrink)

Insights into the problem of our relation to language Kenneth Burke and Contemporary European Thought: A Rhetoric in Transition reflects the present transitional nature of rhetoric and society. Its purpose is to relate the rhetorical theory of Burke to the theories of four major European philosophers--Jürgen Habermas, Ernesto Grassi, Foucault, and Jacques Derrida--as they discuss the nature of language and its central role in society. This book describes a rhetorical world in transition but not a world in chaos. It points (...) to the centrality of symbolism in theories of language and rhetoric and illustrates Burke's influence as a pivotal things and theorist in the communication arts and sciences, suggesting that the observations regarding shifting paradigms and perspectives made by other scholars are indeed emergent in the realm of rhetoric. It also regards the powerful impact of language and symbolic action in both the critique and construction of human knowledge and augurs a central role for rhetoric in the intellectual and social transformations of this and the next century. (shrink)

Social psychologists have performed many well-known experiments demonstrating that experimental subjects will perform in ways that are normatively inconsistent even across very similar situations. Situationist social psychologists and philosophers have often interpreted these findings to imply that most people lack general moral dispositions. These situationists have argued that our moral dispositions are at best narrowly local traits; they often describe our moral characters as fragmented. In this paper, I offer an alternative hypothesis for the same experimental results. I argue that (...) these normative inconsistencies in behavior might well be produced by habit interference: experimental subjects err by over-generalizing dispositions formed in prior situations. I ground this alternative hypothesis in the long tradition of transfer of learning studies, which demonstrated that cognitive inconsistency was often the result of habit interference and, hence, overly generalized dispositions. I shall thus explore the analogy between moral and cognitive inconsistency to show why social psychology might well benefit from adopting the experimental design of the classic transfer of learning studies. (shrink)

For a long time, it seemed that Aristotelians and Kantians had little to say to each other. When Kant the moralist was known in the English-speaking world primarily from his Groundwork and his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant's conceptual vocabulary of “duty,” “law,” “maxim,” and “morality” appeared quite foreign to Aristotle's “virtue,” “end,” “good,” and “character.” Yet ever since philosopher Mary Gregor's Laws of Freedom, published in 1963, made Kant's The Metaphysics of Morals central to the interpretation of his ethical (...) thought, it has become clear that such “Aristotelian” terms as virtue, end, good, happiness, and character are also central to Kant. Aristotelians and Kantians now see that they have plenty to say to each other, and they have gone from being adversaries to sharing a sometimes unprincipled urge to merge central aspects of Aristotle's and Kant's ethical thought. (shrink)

The goal of human life, according to Plato, Aristotle, and the Bible, is to become as much like god as possible. This book, written in vivid and lucid English, illuminates Greek philosophy by showing how it grows out of ancient Greek religion and how it compares to biblical religion.

NO THREE CONCEPTS ARE MORE CENTRAL to legal theory than nature, custom, and stipulation; thus the familiar expressions "natural law," "customary law," and stipulated or "positive law." The problem is that conflicting claims are made for natural law, customary law, and positive law. I will argue that to make sense of these conflicting claims we must first make a distinction between law as a species of social order and jurisprudence as the explanation of law. For example, the debate between the (...) advocates of legal positivism and the advocates of natural law reflects a confusion between law and jurisprudence: law as social order is essentially stipulated, but the jurisprudential explanation of law requires the three categories of nature, custom, and stipulation. Thus legal positivists rightly insist that all law is stipulated, but advocates of natural law rightly insist that the explanation of law requires the use of a notion of nature. Conversely, the legal positivists wrongly insist that jurisprudence must be restricted to the consideration of stipulated "norms" or "rules," and the natural law theorists wrongly insist that "nature" can stipulate a code of law. Finally, the historical school's emphasis on "customary law" reflects the same confusion between law and jurisprudence: there is no such thing as "customary law," but custom is an essential category of jurisprudence. Only by clarifying the distinction between law and jurisprudence can we begin to reconcile these three schools of legal theory. (shrink)

I use the theory of the division of labor as a case-study in the logic of social explanation and to test the explanatory power of a new Aristotelian model for social theory. The classical political economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx argue that the divisions of labor is both efficient and natural. I claim that this explanation suffers from a two-fold reductionism: the moral dimension of the division of labor is reduced to technical efficiency; and the customary and stipulated (...) dimensions of the division of labor are reduced to nature. This reductionism collapses two important Aristotelian distinctions: that between moral reason and technical reason ; and that between nature , custom , and deliberate stipulation . I revise these concepts in the light of modern natural, social and philosophical sciences into a framework for social theory: I show that, in human conduct, technical reason always presupposes moral reason; and I show that every social institution is the joint product of nature, custom, and stipulation: just as custom presupposes nature, so stipulation presupposes custom. I then use this framework to criticize Aristotle as well as classical political economy. By transcending the positivist dichotomy of ends and means, I restore moral reason to supremacy over technique. By transcending the Sophistic dichotomy between nature and convention, I restore custom to its rightful place at the center of social theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJohn Tomasi argues that a theory of justice should include economic liberty since it provides people with a way of living self-authored lives. However, as Aristotelians have pointed out, even seemingly neutral theories of justice rely on non-neutral conceptions of the good. In Tomasi's case, the ideal of self-authorship assumes that it is good to exert economic agency and in so doing, exercise one's economic liberty. Thus, Tomasi equates self-authorship with participation in market activities, tacitly universalizing what is, in fact, (...) a narrow and objectionable conception of the good. (shrink)

Donald Green and Ian Shapiro discover a curious gulf between the prestige of rational choice approaches and the dearth of solid empirical findings. But we can understand neither the prestige of rational choice theory nor its pathologies unless we see it as a variant of the equilibrium analysis found in physics, economics, and biology. Only such a global perspective on rational choice theory will reveal its core assumptions and the likely shape of its future in political science. In this light, (...) the growing dominance of rational choice theory in political science is all but inevitable and its pathologies are all but inescapable. (shrink)

In this book, the author defends the substantial unity of a human person whose life endures through time. Because a human being is an irreducible whole (including biological, psychological, and narrative powers), our lives can have personal coherence over time. The whole temporal expanse of a life is prior to any of its stages, just as a whole human person is prior to any of her organs or powers. We can tell stories about our past, present, and future only because (...) we possess a certain kind of complex unity at any one time. What we are as human beings makes it possible for us to lead the life of a human person. (shrink)

The series "Philosophers and Law" selects and makes available the most important essays in English that deal with the application to law of the work of major philosophers for whom law was not a main concern. The essays are based on scholarly study of particular philosophers and deal with both the nature and role of law and the application of philosophy to specific areas of law.

Although many modern philosophers of law describe custom as merely a minor source of law, formal law is actually only one source of the legal customs that govern us. Many laws grow out of custom, and one measure of a law's success is by its creation of an enduring legal custom. Yet custom and customary law have long been neglected topics in unsettled jurisprudential debate. Smaller concerns, such as whether customs can be legitimized by practice or by stipulation, stipulated by (...) an authority or by general consent, or dictated by law or vice versa, lead to broader questions of law and custom as alternative or mutually exclusive modes of social regulation, and whether rational reflection in general ought to replace sub-rational prejudice. Can legal rules function without customary usage, and does custom even matter in society? The Philosophy of Customary Law brings greater theoretical clarity to the often murky topic of custom by showing that custom must be analyzed into two more logically basic concepts: convention and habit. James Bernard Murphy explores the nature and significance of custom and customary law, and how conventions relate to habits in the four classic theories of Aristotle, Francisco Suarez, Jeremy Bentham, and James C. Carter. He establishes that customs are conventional habits and habitual conventions, and allows us to better grasp the many roles that custom plays in a legal system by offering a new foundation of understanding for these concepts. (shrink)

Readily available data are used to provide relevant decision making information on the highly subjective issue of animal rights. Two examples of alleged crowding; cattle being finished in concrete lots, and broilers in confined operations were evaluated to determine the impact on producers and consumers from increasing space per animal. It is concluded that similar policy changes, such as doubling floor space, can lead to dramatic differences in economic impact depending on the industry affected. It is shown that economic analysis (...) can provide valuable information in estimating the tradeoffs in moral issues. (shrink)

Census data from Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom make clear that the irreligious as well as those who indicate No Religion in censuses are growing rapidly. Despite being dominated by young males, we find that the demographics of those who identify with some form of irreligion or who indicate they have no religion are becoming more gender balanced and are rising in age. However, we also find that atheists, agnostics, and humanists are not having children, meaning their current remarkable (...) rate of growth will fall off in the near future. In contrast, ‘Nones’ are more fertile than the population at large. However, because more than a few Nones hold religious beliefs, it is difficult to predict how the growth of this portion of the population will impact the future growth of irreligion. We conclude that more empirical work needs to be carried out on the Nones. (shrink)

“[A] murder prosecution is a poor way to design an ethical and moral code for doctors,” observed the California Court of Appeal in 1983. Yet, physicians who have chosen to help terminally ill patients to commit suicide have trespassed on illegal ground. When skilled medical care fails to relieve the pain of terminally ill patients, some people believe that physicians may assist in these suicides. Others reject any kind of physician involvement. The debate on assisted suiczide and active euthanasia has (...) focused on whether these acts can ever be acceptable. We propose to shift the debate to a less divisive issue: whether a caring physician who provides a suffering and ill patient with a prescription for a lethal dose of medication should be prosecuted as a felon. Even assisted suicide's opponents may object to such criminal prosecution. We propose to modify existing criminal laws to give physicians who assist their terminally ill patients in suicide, under carefully defined circumstances, a legal defense against criminal charges. (shrink)

W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the most profound and influential African-American intellectuals of the twentieth century. This volume addresses the complexities of Du Bois' legacy, showing how his work gets to the heart of today's theorizing about the color line.

The patient-physician relationship, as formulated in the traditional biomedical model of medicine, is inherently flawed. In entering this relationship, most patients seek simply to be delivered from illness back to normal psychosocial functioning. The physician, however, almost invariably responds with a purely biologic approach to diagnosis and treatment that often does not effectively address the patient's needs. This precludes the opportunity for a consensus between them, and may in fact lead to the physician manipulating the patient's decisions about the course (...) of therapy. The relationship should be reshaped within a new scientific model of patient care that combines the biomedical analysis of disease with an empathic understanding of the patient's illness experience. Truly informed consent is viewed as a natural outcome of the application of this more comprehensive framework. (shrink)

“[A] murder prosecution is a poor way to design an ethical and moral code for doctors,” observed the California Court of Appeal in 1983. Yet, physicians who have chosen to help terminally ill patients to commit suicide have trespassed on illegal ground. When skilled medical care fails to relieve the pain of terminally ill patients, some people believe that physicians may assist in these suicides. Others reject any kind of physician involvement. The debate on assisted suiczide and active euthanasia has (...) focused on whether these acts can ever be acceptable. We propose to shift the debate to a less divisive issue: whether a caring physician who provides a suffering and ill patient with a prescription for a lethal dose of medication should be prosecuted as a felon. Even assisted suicide's opponents may object to such criminal prosecution. We propose to modify existing criminal laws to give physicians who assist their terminally ill patients in suicide, under carefully defined circumstances, a legal defense against criminal charges. (shrink)

Toward A Sociological Imagination builds on the ideas C. Wright Mills expressed in The Sociological Imagination for an approach to the scientific method broad enough to open up to the full range of knowledge within the sociology discipline. In this book, nine sociologists and one philosopher provide detailed tests of the utility of the approach within diverse substantive sociological areas.