We propose that the prevalent moral aversion to AWS is supported by a pair of compelling objections. First, we argue that even a sophisticated robot is not the kind of thing that is capable of replicating human moral judgment. This conclusion follows if human moral judgment is not codifiable, i.e., it cannot be captured by a list of rules. Moral judgment requires either the ability to engage in wide reflective equilibrium, the ability to perceive certain facts as moral considerations, moral (...) imagination, or the ability to have moral experiences with a particular phenomenological character. Robots cannot in principle possess these abilities, so robots cannot in principle replicate human moral judgment. If robots cannot in principle replicate human moral judgment then it is morally problematic to deploy AWS with that aim in mind. Second, we then argue that even if it is possible for a sufficiently sophisticated robot to make ‘moral decisions’ that are extensionally indistinguishable from (or better than) human moral decisions, these ‘decisions’ could not be made for the right reasons. This means that the ‘moral decisions’ made by AWS are bound to be morally deficient in at least one respect even if they are extensionally indistinguishable from human ones. Our objections to AWS support the prevalent aversion to the employment of AWS in war. They also enjoy several significant advantages over the most common objections to AWS in the literature. (shrink)

A variety of ethical objections have been raised against the military employment of uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs, drones). Some of these objections are technological concerns over UAVs abilities’ to function on par with their inhabited counterparts. This paper sets such concerns aside and instead focuses on supposed objections to the use of UAVs in principle. I examine several such objections currently on offer and show them all to be wanting. Indeed, I argue that we have a duty to protect an (...) agent engaged in a justified act from harm to the greatest extent possible, so long as that protection does not interfere with the agent's ability to act justly. UAVs afford precisely such protection. Therefore, we are obligated to employ UAV weapon systems if it can be shown that their use does not significantly reduce a warfighter's operational capability. Of course, if a given military action is unjustified to begin with, then carrying out that act via UAVs is wrong, just as it would be with any weapon. But the point of this paper is to show that there is nothing wrong in principle with using a UAV and that, other things being equal, using such technology is, in fact, obligatory. (shrink)

In Plato’s Sophist (245e–247e) an argument against metaphysical materialism in the “battle of gods and giants” is presented which is oft the cause of consternation, primarily because it appears the characters are unfair to the materialist position. Attempts to explain it usually resort to restructuring the argument while others rearrange the Sophist entirely to rebuild the argument in a more satisfying form. I propose a different account of the argument that does not rely on a disservice to the materialist nor (...) restructuring Plato’s argument. I contend, instead, that the argument is enthymematic in nature, allowing the definitions employed to flow out of the reasoning as originally presented. Moreover, it suggests that Plato’s idealism was so deeply ingrained that modern defenses of materialism were not even live options. (shrink)

A new powerful military weapon has appeared in the skies of world and with it a new form of warfare has quickly emerged bringing with it a host of pressing ethical questions and issues. Killing By Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military brings together some of the best scholars currently working on these questions.

Are contemporary soldiers exploited by the state and society that they defend? More specifically, have America's professional service members disproportionately carried the moral weight of America's war-fighting decisions since the inception of an all-volunteer force? In this volume, Michael J. Robillard and Bradley J. Strawser, who have both served in the military, examine the question of whether and how American soldiers have been exploited in this way. Robillard and Strawser offer an original normative theory of 'moral exploitation'--the (...) notion that persons or groups can be wrongfully exploited by being made to shoulder an excessive amount of moral weight. They make the case that this exploitation accurately describes the relationship between the United States and the members of its military, and offer a thorough and in-depth analysis of some of the exploitative and misleading elements of present-day military recruitment, the moral burdens soldiers often bear, and the stifling effect that a 'Thank You for Your Service' and 'I support the troops' culture has had on serious public engagement about America's ongoing wars. Robillard and Strawser offer a piercing critique of the pernicious divide between military members and the civilians who direct them. They conclude by arguing for several normative and prudential prescriptions to help close this ever-widening fissure between the U.S. and its military, and within the U.S. itself. In so doing, their work gives a much needed and urgent voice to America's soldiers, the other 1%. (shrink)

Philosophical and ethical discussions of warfare are often tied to emerging technologies and techniques. Today we are presented with what many believe is a radical shift in the nature of war-the realization of conflict in the cyber-realm, the so-called.

Killing bin Laden: A Moral Analysis is a short treatise on the possible ethical justification for the U.S. mission to kill Osama bin Laden. After rejecting the standard justifications most commonly used in support of the killing, Strawser ultimately argues that the killing was ethically permissible as an act of defensive harm on behalf of innocents. The book contends bin Laden was morally responsible for a collection of unjust threats such that he was liable to be killed. Moreover, the (...) many unique features of the bin Laden case -such as the use of pre-emptive harm and the collective agency of al-Qaeda - do not defeat that liability. The monograph also includes discussions of the apparent violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and the morally dubious celebrations of bin Laden's death, among other morally relevant issues. (shrink)

Realism about material objects faces a variety of epistemological objections. Recently, however, some realists have offered new accounts in response to these long-standing objections; many of which seem plausible. In this paper, I raise a new objection against realism vis-à-vis how we could empirically come to know mind-independent essential properties for objects. Traditionally, realists hold kind-membership and persistence as bound together for purposes of tracing out an object’s essential existence conditions. But I propose kind-membership and persistence for objects can conceptually (...) come apart and function epistemologically distinctly from one another—in which case the usual reliance by realists on an assumption of persistence to determine kind-membership conditions is unjustified. Thus, present realist attempts to explain how empirical detection of mind-independent essential properties for objects could possibly occur inevitably results in circularity. The charge against the realist is to explain why we don’t have to first discover persistence conditions for an object before we can ascertain kind-membership conditions for an object. If no answer is forthcoming, then it seems the weight of the epistemological objection to realism is back in full force. (shrink)

Most people believe that killing someone, while generally morally wrong, can in some cases be a permissible act. Most people similarly believe that war, while awful, can be justified. This book addresses both subjects as equal parts in a larger meditation on the ethics of harm and moral responsibility—whether in war collectively or in individual cases of self-defense—and whatever it is that lies in between the two. The book sets out by examining the moral justification for individual defensive killing and (...) then tests its application to collective war as a natural outgrowth of the former. In seeking sincere answers to these morally vexing questions, it offers a novel theory of liability attribution based upon evidence-relative norms: we should only be held morally responsible for what we could possibly know is wrong based on the evidence before us. In developing this theory of liability as it applies to war, Bounds of Defense also gives a robust apologia of what has been called as “revisionist” just war theory and charts a neo-liberal basis for just war theory grounded on the value of individual autonomy along the way. The entire book is an earnest attempt to take individual rights and responsibilities seriously in our thinking over killing and the horrors of war. (shrink)

In Plato’s Sophist (245e–247e) an argument against metaphysical materialism in the “battle of gods and giants” is presented which is oft the cause of consternation, primarily because it appears the characters are unfair to the materialist position. Attempts to explain it usually resort to restructuring the argument while others rearrange the Sophist entirely to rebuild the argument in a more satisfying form. I propose a different account of the argument that does not rely on a disservice to the materialist nor (...) restructuring Plato’s argument. I contend, instead, that the argument is enthymematic in nature, allowing the definitions employed to flow out of the reasoning as originally presented. Moreover, it suggests that Plato’s idealism was so deeply ingrained that modern defenses of materialism were not even live options. (shrink)

This volume collects influential and groundbreaking philosophical work on killing in war. A " of contemporary scholars, this volume serves as a convenient and authoritative collection uniquely suited for university-level teaching and as a reference for ethicists, policymakers, stakeholders, and any student of the morality of war.

In July 2020, more than 1000 companies that advertise on social media platforms withdrew their business, citing failures of the platforms (especially Facebook) to address the proliferation of harmful content. The #StopHateForProfit movement invites reflection on an understudied topic: the ethics of boycotting by corporations. Under what conditions is corporate boycotting permissible, required, supererogatory, or forbidden? Although value-driven consumerism has generated significant recent discussion in applied ethics, that discussion has focused almost exclusively on the consumption choices of individuals. As this (...) article underscores, value-driven consumerism by business corporations complicates these issues and invites further examination. We propose principles for the ethics of boycotting by corporations, indicate how these principles relate to different CSR paradigms, and show how these insights can help assess recent instances of corporate boycotting. (shrink)

The increased use of human biological material for cell-based research and clinical interventions poses risks to the privacy of patients and donors, including the possibility of re-identification of individuals from anonymized cell lines and associated genetic data. These risks will increase as technologies and databases used for re-identification become affordable and more sophisticated. Policies that require ongoing linkage of cell lines to donors’ clinical information for research and regulatory purposes, and existing practices that limit research participants’ ability to control what (...) is done with their genetic data, amplify the privacy concerns. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey: Idealist and Pragmatic Christians on Politics, Philosophy, Religion, and WarBradley BurroughsReinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey: Idealist and Pragmatic Christians on Politics, Philosophy, Religion, and War Kevin Carnahan Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2010. 302 pp. $75.00.In a time when the “war on terror” and the polarization of American political culture have raised acute questions about politics, war, and the use of power, Kevin Carnahan (...) believes ethicists could benefit from the legacies of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey. During a similarly vexed period, Niebuhr and Ramsey found themselves at odds over the morality of the Vietnam War. Carnahan’s project seeks to elucidate the underlying sources of this disagreement, examining in turn how each thinker construes the task of moral theology, the nature of political society, and the moral status of war. Throughout these treatments, Carnahan illustrates how Niebuhr and Ramsey elaborated “overlapping but divergent” positions profoundly influenced by their respective encounters with pragmatism and idealism.Even as he shows how Niebuhr modified the pragmatist inheritance and Ramsey the idealist, Carnahan highlights how both were shaped especially by the way in which these traditions sought to counter specific moral dangers. For pragmatists, the key danger lay in the kind of moral fanaticism that blithely assumes its own righteousness. Sensitized to this threat, Niebuhr articulated a moral theology centered upon an understanding of love as an ideal that is always relevant yet never fully realizable in history, a construal that subverts all pretensions to righteousness. Idealism, on the other hand, sets itself against the danger of atomistic individualism, which Ramsey opposed by depicting social institutions in their essential forms as “‘garments of skin’... with which God... clothed naked human relations” (129) and by characterizing love as fundamentally a matter of upholding the covenants implied in such institutions. Ultimately, Niebuhr’s opposition to fanaticism predisposed him to focus upon the idolatries at play in political society and war and allowed him rather early on to descry the pretentiousness of the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, Ramsey’s thought included a presumption in favor of supporting the policies developed by social and political leaders that led him to defend American intervention in Vietnam until sometime around 1973. [End Page 218]The book’s expository work is generally surefooted and illuminative, although it at times falls into redundancy, baldly reiterating its thesis. Nonetheless, it complements existing scholarship on Niebuhr and Ramsey with an investigation of the philosophical premises of their ethical thought that each was eager to conceal. Such work will benefit scholars of Niebuhr and Ramsey as well as advanced students seeking to grasp the general architecture of their thought. Moreover, many will find Carnahan’s interpretations of Niebuhr and Ramsey impressive. For example, Carnahan portrays Niebuhr as a more Barthian and ecclessially minded thinker than most accounts. Although Carnahan understandably does not treat such indictments in detail, his rendering undercuts charges leveled by many of Niebuhr’s critics, including Bennett, Yoder, and Hauerwas. Unfortunately, though, Carnahan’s arguments on some of these disputed points are predicated upon a relatively narrow selection of essays. Still, the book unsettles assumptions and suggests further possibilities for inquiry.In addition to his expository work, Carnahan also makes a further contribution as he subjects both Niebuhr and Ramsey to constructive criticism that exposes—and identifies ways of reinforcing—some of the weaknesses of pragmatism and idealism. Eschewing a synthesis, Carnahan instead offers a mutually constructive dialogue capable of helping thinkers of both stripes think through the issues that confront contemporary America. Even if he does not elaborate on a more precise application of his insights to contemporary politics, he offers advice helpful to pragmatists and idealists alike and leaves many of us hoping that he has more to say on such matters. [End Page 219]Bradley BurroughsEmory UniversityCopyright © 2012 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Introducing Christian Ethics by Samuel Wells and Ben Quash, and: Christian Ethics: An Introductory Reader ed. by Samuel WellsBradley B. BurroughsReview of Introducing Christian Ethics SAMUEL WELLS AND BEN QUASH Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 400 pp. $49.95Review of Christian Ethics: An Introductory Reader EDITED BY SAMUEL WELLS Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 360 pp. $51.95Whether in a semester-long course or a textbook, the task of introducing Christian ethics generally (...) requires one to choose between various competing priorities. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Introducing Christian Ethics is that it eschews such choices. Instead of settling for an “either/or,” Samuel Wells and Ben Quash repeatedly push for “both/and.” Their introduction not only traces the historical development of Christian ethics, examining major historical thinkers and elucidating the larger arcs that connect them, but also treats the work of contemporary Christian ethicists. Moreover, on the one hand, the authors develop a typology of ethical thought that distinguishes various strands according to the audience to which ethical reflection is directed—universal ethics (which addresses all people), subversive ethics (which addresses the oppressed), and ecclesial ethics (which addresses Christians). On the other hand, the authors also show how notable representatives of these strands approach matters of contemporary ethical concern. To this, Wells adds a sourcebook that allows for readers to interact further with many of the thinkers treated in the introductory text as well as helps to shed further light upon these three strands of Christian ethics. The scope of the project represented by these two books is thus exceptionally ambitious: it strives to provide a comprehensive overview of the field and organize it according to an innovative typology.Introducing Christian Ethics proceeds in three parts. In part 1, Wells and Quash tell “the story of Christian ethics,” exploring the biblical, historical, and philosophical sources from which Christian ethics has most commonly drawn and offering brief depictions of a vast array of Christian thinkers, including Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Reinhold Niebuhr, and many others. Part 2, titled “The Questions Christian Ethics Asks,” lays out the threefold taxonomy of universal, subversive, and ecclesial ethics, illustrating each with reference to thinkers both historical and contemporary. Finally, part 3 turns to “the questions asked of Christian [End Page 233] ethics,” treating issues of “good order” (including the role of the state and the nature of justice), “good life” (economics, poverty, and work), “good relationships” (friendship, marriage, homosexuality), “good beginnings and endings” (contraception, abortion, euthanasia), and “good earth” (animals, crops ecology). For each of the issues treated in part 3, the authors offer an overview and an account of how thinkers from each of the strands of Christian ethics have addressed that topic.Wells and Quash bring an admirably broad view of the field to bear upon this project. Famous thinkers factor prominently. And yet the book also treats the work of those less likely to appear in introductory texts, such as Germain Grisez, John Mbiti, and Stephen Clark. Whether they are of the renowned or lesser-known, the sketches of thinkers that occur throughout the book are on the whole quite accurate. Although there are places where experts might wish to call out slight mischaracterizations, the renderings are precise enough to serve introductory readers. Wells and Quash’s broadness of vision also includes both Protestant and Roman Catholic thought. Whereas Introducing Christian Ethics focuses primarily upon papal encyclicals as exemplifying the latter, Wells’s introductory reader adds selections from Gustavo Gutiérrez, Margaret Farley, Dorothy Day, and others to help exemplify the complexity of Roman Catholic ethical reflection. Eastern Orthodoxy gets shorter shrift, an observation offered as a note to potential readers rather than a criticism.Even as its comprehensiveness equips Introducing Christian Ethics for use in a variety of ways and contexts, the quest for comprehensiveness appears to be at the heart of some of the book’s infelicities. Attempting to treat so many thinkers and concepts, it frequently moves at a brisk pace, touching upon complex phenomena and abruptly moving on. In many places, the questions the book answers for the entry-level readers at which it aims... (shrink)

The prominence of Bayesian modeling of cognition has increased recently largely because of mathematical advances in specifying and deriving predictions from complex probabilistic models. Much of this research aims to demonstrate that cognitive behavior can be explained from rational principles alone, without recourse to psychological or neurological processes and representations. We note commonalities between this rational approach and other movements in psychology – namely, Behaviorism and evolutionary psychology – that set aside mechanistic explanations or make use of optimality assumptions. Through (...) these comparisons, we identify a number of challenges that limit the rational program's potential contribution to psychological theory. Specifically, rational Bayesian models are significantly unconstrained, both because they are uninformed by a wide range of process-level data and because their assumptions about the environment are generally not grounded in empirical measurement. The psychological implications of most Bayesian models are also unclear. Bayesian inference itself is conceptually trivial, but strong assumptions are often embedded in the hypothesis sets and the approximation algorithms used to derive model predictions, without a clear delineation between psychological commitments and implementational details. Comparing multiple Bayesian models of the same task is rare, as is the realization that many Bayesian models recapitulate existing (mechanistic level) theories. Despite the expressive power of current Bayesian models, we argue they must be developed in conjunction with mechanistic considerations to offer substantive explanations of cognition. We lay out several means for such an integration, which take into account the representations on which Bayesian inference operates, as well as the algorithms and heuristics that carry it out. We argue this unification will better facilitate lasting contributions to psychological theory, avoiding the pitfalls that have plagued previous theoretical movements. (shrink)

Semantic pathology is most widely recognized in the liar paradox, where an apparent inconsistency arises in ‘‘liar sentences’’ and their ilk. But the phenomenon of semantic pathology also manifests a sibling symptom—an apparent indeterminacy—which, while not largely discussed (save for the occasional nod to ‘‘truthteller sentences’’), is just as pervasive as, and exactly parallels, the symptom of inconsistency. Moreover, certain ‘‘dual symptom’’ cases, which we call naysayers, exhibit both inconsistency and indeterminacy and also manifest a higher-order indeterminacy between them. In (...) this paper, we explore and lay out the full, broader extent of semantic pathology. We then turn to the best-known attempts to diagnose and treat the phenomenon: consistentist approaches, proposed by Alfred Tarski and Saul Kripke, and an inconsistentist approach, originally presented by Graham Priest and dubbed ‘‘dialetheism’’. We explain the basic elements of each view and argue that each fails to provide an adequate way of dealing with the full extent of semantic pathology. We conclude that a new kind of approach is required and briefly sketch the pretense-based view that we favor. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to explain, motivate, and provide the central details of a specific version of what has come to be called alethic fictionalism—namely, a fictionalist account of truth (or, more accurately, of truth-talk, that fragment of discourse that involves the truth-predicate and other alethic-locutions). Our particular brand of alethic fictionalism is sometimes described as a “pretense theory of truth,” and a catchphrase for our view is “truth is a pretense.” But a more precise label for the (...) view that we will present is “semantic pretense-involving fictionalism about truth-talk.” Our endorsement of this view (for short, our SPIF account) stems from our belief that deflationism is the right approach to take on the topic of truth. This already shifts the focus away from any property of truth, since deflationism “about truth” (or, as we will call this view, T-deflationism) is best understood as an approach to analyzing truth-talk. We arrive specifically at our SPIF account of truth-talk because we also think that versions of T-deflationism should be understood as a kind of fictionalism (which, again, puts the focus on discourse, rather than metaphysics) and because we maintain that a SPIF account is the best variety of fictionalism to apply specifically to truth-talk. We will explain some of our reasons for holding these beliefs below, laying out the basics of our SPIF account of truth-talk and highlighting the merits of endorsing our particular account of that talk. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Rhetoric of Philosophical Politics in Plato's Seventh LetterV. Bradley LewisThe name Syracuse has come to stand as an emblem of the problematic relationship between philosophy and politics. While the sources1 differ on specifics, we can be confident that Plato visited there at least three times between 387 and 362 B.C. On his first trip, during the reign of Dionysius I, he became acquainted with Dion, the tyrant's (...) brother-in-law. When the elder Dionysius died, Dion, a devotee of philosophy, apparently contrived for the old man's son, namesake, and successor to invite Plato back, believing that the young tyrant could be philosophically educated and convinced to lay down tyranny in favor of a new regime based on the rule of law. The plan was defeated, however, by a combination of Dionysius's dissolute life and opposition by Dion's enemies at court. Dion was exiled, and Plato returned to the Academy. Dion implored Plato to return to Syracuse on the basis of reports of Dionysius II's renewed resolution to take up philosophy and by the tyrant himself (who seems to have made some thinly veiled threats against the still-exiled Dion). Plato's second visit to Dionysius was no more successful than the first, however, and he considered himself fortunate to have escaped with his life. After a meeting at which Plato recounted the events of his final trip, Dion marshaled an expeditionary force, which included volunteers from the Academy, and set out to expel Dionysius II by violence. The effort succeeded, but the new regime was itself riven by faction, and Dion was assassinated in 353.2The principal legacy of this ill-starred episode is contained in the letters that have come down to us under the name of Plato, particularly those numbered seven and eight. Scholarly discussion of Plato's Seventh Letter has usually focused on three questions: the doctrinal content of the letter and its relationship to the doctrinal content of the dialogues; the character of the letter as an apologia for Plato's Syracusan activities; and the general authenticity of the letter. While the second of these questions focuses correctly [End Page 23] on the rhetorical character of the letter, it ignores the most obvious aspect, namely, the letter's explicit addressees: the friends and comrades of Dion, and their request for political advice. If we take this rhetorical element with sufficient seriousness, we will see that the content of the letter is fully consistent with the teachings of the political dialogues, a point that tells in favor of the authenticity of the letter. Specifically, a focus on the rhetorical character of the letter reveals that its content is determined mostly by what emerges as an effort by Plato to influence his correspondents by moderating their understandable desire for vengeance and thus to forestall further bloodshed and disorder in Syracuse. What is most important about the letter, then, is not so much its account of Plato's actions in Syracuse, but its unveiling of his intentions with respect to Dion's followers. It is not the philosophical-political blueprint, sketched vaguely in the Seventh Letter, that is most important,3 but the concrete effort to mitigate the passions of his correspondents. Read in this light, the letter becomes even more important, since it contradicts the popular image of Plato as a proponent of dangerous political utopianism and portrays a more subtle relationship between philosophy and politics.1. Dion's intentions, Plato's apologyTo the extent that the rhetoric of the letter has been treated, commentators have usually focused on Plato's (or whoever the author) defense of his own actions in Sicily.4 While there is certainly warrant for this approach, the most important fact about the letter concerns its intended audience, the "relatives and comrades of Dion."5 As Plato explains in the opening of the letter, these are the men who have sought not only his advice, but his cooperation in completing the political project halted by Dion's death at the hands of several of his other purported "allies."The most striking feature of the rhetorical structure is that, while the letter... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Rhetoric of Philosophical Politics in Plato's Seventh LetterV. Bradley LewisThe name Syracuse has come to stand as an emblem of the problematic relationship between philosophy and politics. While the sources1 differ on specifics, we can be confident that Plato visited there at least three times between 387 and 362 B.C. On his first trip, during the reign of Dionysius I, he became acquainted with Dion, the tyrant's (...) brother-in-law. When the elder Dionysius died, Dion, a devotee of philosophy, apparently contrived for the old man's son, namesake, and successor to invite Plato back, believing that the young tyrant could be philosophically educated and convinced to lay down tyranny in favor of a new regime based on the rule of law. The plan was defeated, however, by a combination of Dionysius's dissolute life and opposition by Dion's enemies at court. Dion was exiled, and Plato returned to the Academy. Dion implored Plato to return to Syracuse on the basis of reports of Dionysius II's renewed resolution to take up philosophy and by the tyrant himself (who seems to have made some thinly veiled threats against the still-exiled Dion). Plato's second visit to Dionysius was no more successful than the first, however, and he considered himself fortunate to have escaped with his life. After a meeting at which Plato recounted the events of his final trip, Dion marshaled an expeditionary force, which included volunteers from the Academy, and set out to expel Dionysius II by violence. The effort succeeded, but the new regime was itself riven by faction, and Dion was assassinated in 353.2The principal legacy of this ill-starred episode is contained in the letters that have come down to us under the name of Plato, particularly those numbered seven and eight. Scholarly discussion of Plato's Seventh Letter has usually focused on three questions: the doctrinal content of the letter and its relationship to the doctrinal content of the dialogues; the character of the letter as an apologia for Plato's Syracusan activities; and the general authenticity of the letter. While the second of these questions focuses correctly [End Page 23] on the rhetorical character of the letter, it ignores the most obvious aspect, namely, the letter's explicit addressees: the friends and comrades of Dion, and their request for political advice. If we take this rhetorical element with sufficient seriousness, we will see that the content of the letter is fully consistent with the teachings of the political dialogues, a point that tells in favor of the authenticity of the letter. Specifically, a focus on the rhetorical character of the letter reveals that its content is determined mostly by what emerges as an effort by Plato to influence his correspondents by moderating their understandable desire for vengeance and thus to forestall further bloodshed and disorder in Syracuse. What is most important about the letter, then, is not so much its account of Plato's actions in Syracuse, but its unveiling of his intentions with respect to Dion's followers. It is not the philosophical-political blueprint, sketched vaguely in the Seventh Letter, that is most important,3 but the concrete effort to mitigate the passions of his correspondents. Read in this light, the letter becomes even more important, since it contradicts the popular image of Plato as a proponent of dangerous political utopianism and portrays a more subtle relationship between philosophy and politics.1. Dion's intentions, Plato's apologyTo the extent that the rhetoric of the letter has been treated, commentators have usually focused on Plato's (or whoever the author) defense of his own actions in Sicily.4 While there is certainly warrant for this approach, the most important fact about the letter concerns its intended audience, the "relatives and comrades of Dion."5 As Plato explains in the opening of the letter, these are the men who have sought not only his advice, but his cooperation in completing the political project halted by Dion's death at the hands of several of his other purported "allies."The most striking feature of the rhetorical structure is that, while the letter... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Rhetoric of Philosophical Politics in Plato's Seventh LetterV. Bradley LewisThe name Syracuse has come to stand as an emblem of the problematic relationship between philosophy and politics. While the sources1 differ on specifics, we can be confident that Plato visited there at least three times between 387 and 362 B.C. On his first trip, during the reign of Dionysius I, he became acquainted with Dion, the tyrant's (...) brother-in-law. When the elder Dionysius died, Dion, a devotee of philosophy, apparently contrived for the old man's son, namesake, and successor to invite Plato back, believing that the young tyrant could be philosophically educated and convinced to lay down tyranny in favor of a new regime based on the rule of law. The plan was defeated, however, by a combination of Dionysius's dissolute life and opposition by Dion's enemies at court. Dion was exiled, and Plato returned to the Academy. Dion implored Plato to return to Syracuse on the basis of reports of Dionysius II's renewed resolution to take up philosophy and by the tyrant himself (who seems to have made some thinly veiled threats against the still-exiled Dion). Plato's second visit to Dionysius was no more successful than the first, however, and he considered himself fortunate to have escaped with his life. After a meeting at which Plato recounted the events of his final trip, Dion marshaled an expeditionary force, which included volunteers from the Academy, and set out to expel Dionysius II by violence. The effort succeeded, but the new regime was itself riven by faction, and Dion was assassinated in 353.2The principal legacy of this ill-starred episode is contained in the letters that have come down to us under the name of Plato, particularly those numbered seven and eight. Scholarly discussion of Plato's Seventh Letter has usually focused on three questions: the doctrinal content of the letter and its relationship to the doctrinal content of the dialogues; the character of the letter as an apologia for Plato's Syracusan activities; and the general authenticity of the letter. While the second of these questions focuses correctly [End Page 23] on the rhetorical character of the letter, it ignores the most obvious aspect, namely, the letter's explicit addressees: the friends and comrades of Dion, and their request for political advice. If we take this rhetorical element with sufficient seriousness, we will see that the content of the letter is fully consistent with the teachings of the political dialogues, a point that tells in favor of the authenticity of the letter. Specifically, a focus on the rhetorical character of the letter reveals that its content is determined mostly by what emerges as an effort by Plato to influence his correspondents by moderating their understandable desire for vengeance and thus to forestall further bloodshed and disorder in Syracuse. What is most important about the letter, then, is not so much its account of Plato's actions in Syracuse, but its unveiling of his intentions with respect to Dion's followers. It is not the philosophical-political blueprint, sketched vaguely in the Seventh Letter, that is most important,3 but the concrete effort to mitigate the passions of his correspondents. Read in this light, the letter becomes even more important, since it contradicts the popular image of Plato as a proponent of dangerous political utopianism and portrays a more subtle relationship between philosophy and politics.1. Dion's intentions, Plato's apologyTo the extent that the rhetoric of the letter has been treated, commentators have usually focused on Plato's (or whoever the author) defense of his own actions in Sicily.4 While there is certainly warrant for this approach, the most important fact about the letter concerns its intended audience, the "relatives and comrades of Dion."5 As Plato explains in the opening of the letter, these are the men who have sought not only his advice, but his cooperation in completing the political project halted by Dion's death at the hands of several of his other purported "allies."The most striking feature of the rhetorical structure is that, while the letter... (shrink)

The purpose of this valuable book is to consider recent cultural trends in bioethics from a Catholic perspective. Bioethics is intended for a lay audience interested in understanding bioethical issues from a Catholic perspective.

Review of: Killing by Remote Control: The Ethics of an Unmanned Military, edited by Bradley Jay Strawser. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Michael Robillard and Bradley Strawser’s Outsourcing Duty: The Moral Exploitation of the American Soldier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022) is outstanding. The arguments in it are important, new, and powerful, and it is extremely well-written. It is accessibly written, including eye-opening personal stories (including the authors’ stories), an interesting array of economic and sociological studies, and colorful illustrative quotes from The Bourne Legacy, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Rudyard Kipling’s poem, Tommy. It also includes colorful-and-caustic comments on the (...) Bush- and Obama-administrations’ decisions regarding going to war and staying at war that nicely highlight what is at stake. In short, the book is a tour de force. (shrink)

The desirability of what actually occurs is often influenced by what could have been. Preferences based on such value dependencies between actual and counterfactual outcomes generate a class of problems for orthodox decision theory, the best-known perhaps being the so-called Allais Paradox. In this paper we solve these problems by extending Richard Jeffrey's decision theory to counterfactual prospects, using a multidimensional possible-world semantics for conditionals, and showing that preferences that are sensitive to counterfactual considerations can still be desirability maximising. We (...) end the paper by investigating the conditions necessary and sufficient for a desirability function to be an expected utility. It turns out that the additional conditions imply highly implausible epistemic principles. (shrink)

The Desire-as-Belief thesis (DAB) states that any rational person desires a proposition exactly to the degree that she believes or expects the proposition to be good. Many people take David Lewis to have shown the thesis to be inconsistent with Bayesian decision theory. However, as we show, Lewis's argument was based on an Invariance condition that itself is inconsistent with the (standard formulation of the) version of Bayesian decision theory that he assumed in his arguments against DAB. The aim of (...) this paper is to explore what impact the rejection of Invariance has on the DAB thesis. Without assuming Invariance, we first refute all versions of DAB that entail that there are only two levels of goodness. We next consider two theses according to which rational desires are intimately connected to expectations of (multi-levelled) goodness, and show that these are consistent with Bayesian decision theory as long as we assume that the contents of 'value propositions' are not fixed. We explain why this conclusion is independently plausible, and show how to construct such propositions. (shrink)

Arguing that Kierkegaard (1813-55) can and should be taken seriously as a philosopher even in today's postmodern climate, Strawser (philosophy, Folkuniversitetet, Helsingborg, Sweden) offers evidence that in marking the juncture between objective philosophy and philosophy that recognized its subjective and provisional nature, he represents not a break between the aesthetic and the religious but a bridge between them. Paper edition (unseen), $17.00. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

A quick look at what is happening in the corporate world makes it clear that the stakeholder idea is alive, well, and flourishing; and the question now is not “if ” but “how” stakeholder theory will meet the challenges of its success. Does stakeholder theory’s “arrival” mean continued dynamism, refinement, and relevance, or stasis? How will superior stakeholder theory continue to develop? In light of these and related questions, the authors of these essays conducted an ongoing dialogue on the current (...) state and future of stakeholder thinking. Beginning with a review of research and theory that has developed since the major stakeholder theorizing efforts of the 1990s, the authors individually offer their perspectives on the key issues relevant today to stakeholder thinking, and to suggest possible approaches that might lead toward and enable the continuing development of superior stakeholder theory. (shrink)

How are we to understand the earnest thought of death as developed in Kierkegaard’s discourse “At a Graveside”? Through a careful examination of this signed writing, I shall argue that readers nevertheless encounter an indirect, un-authorized discourse, which presents the occasion for both a variety of moods and the cultivation of spirit. The thought of death calls forth either a certain negative mood or presents a call to action for the good. However, this distinction is problematic insofar as we consider (...) the textuality of Kierkegaard’s discourse, which leaves existing individuals always caught in between the dialectic of mood and spirit. (shrink)

A quick look at what is happening in the corporate world makes it clear that the stakeholder idea is alive, well, and flourishing; and the question now is not “if ” but “how” stakeholder theory will meet the challenges of its success. Does stakeholder theory’s “arrival” mean continued dynamism, refinement, and relevance, or stasis? How will superior stakeholder theory continue to develop? In light of these and related questions, the authors of these essays conducted an ongoing dialogue on the current (...) state and future of stakeholder thinking. Beginning with a review of research and theory that has developed since the major stakeholder theorizing efforts of the 1990s, the authors individually offer their perspectives on the key issues relevant today to stakeholder thinking, and to suggest possible approaches that might lead toward and enable the continuing development of superior stakeholder theory. (shrink)

One might well wonder—is there a category under which every thing falls? Offering an informative account of such a category is no easy task. For nothing would distinguish things that fall under it from those that don’t—there being, after all, none of the latter. It seems hard, then, to say much about any fully general category; and it would appear to do no carving or categorizing or dividing at all. Nonetheless there are candidates for such a fully general office, including (...) thing, being, entity, item, existent, and—especially—object.[ It is not obvious that there is any fully general category (whether object or otherwise). Accordingly, not all accounts of object assign it to a fully general category, instead allowing that there are non-objects. On those views, object does indeed divide. Accounts of object, then, differ with respect to whether there are non-objects. And this is not the only fault line. Other dimensions of difference include what objects there are and what objects are. Accordingly, this entry will survey three broad questions about the category object: What, if any, is its contrast or complement? What is its extension? What is its nature? (shrink)

Troeltsch and Simmel both feared that the loss of religion on a cultural scale would deprive the modern European world of a potentially effective resource for ethical and spiritual unity. To conserve this resource, Simmel argued for a purely formal spirituality that depended upon no doctrines and no institutions. Troeltsch concluded that on a cultural scale, Simmel's program was a recipe for spiritual and ethical suicide; he recommended instead the possibility of a liberal Christianity. In developing this possibility, Troeltsch used (...) Simmel's analysis of symbols of exchange to present a fruitful new sociological conception of the symbol of Christ as a model for shaping the interaction of Christianity and society. (shrink)

How should we think about the many ethical dilemmas that face us today? How should research in current ethical dilemmas be conducted to move beyond impasses in judgment towards developing a consensus for action? According to Anthony Weston, “we need a more expansive view of ethics,” one that incorporates creativity. Following Weston’s lead, I shall discuss our new Honors Interdisciplinary Seminar on Case Studies in Ethics. This course is designed to prepare our students to participate in the Ethics Bowl, which (...) is already a creative act of engagement, but more importantly, we hope to open new possibilities in the study of ethical dilemmas that would allow for creative problem-solving in ethics. In this paper I explain background reasons for the course, the methodsfor preparing students for creative research in ethics, as well as potential problems to be avoided in the process. (shrink)

The author reports on an effort to transform traditional top-down, instructor-centered philosophy courses into courses that are open, learning-centered, and work toward a cooperative goal. After providing the underlying rationale for cooperative philosophy courses, the author describes a cooperative philosophy course where students were assigned with individually (and cooperatively) answering the question “What is Philosophy?” by creating introductory philosophy textbooks. The author provides details on how to guide students to the creation of such introductory textbooks with a variety of practical (...) classroom exercises and suggestions for assessment. Finally, potential future applications for cooperative learning courses are discussed. (shrink)

The author reports on an effort to transform traditional top-down, instructor-centered philosophy courses into courses that are open, learning-centered, and work toward a cooperative goal. After providing the underlying rationale for cooperative philosophy courses, the author describes a cooperative philosophy course where students were assigned with individually (and cooperatively) answering the question “What is Philosophy?” by creating introductory philosophy textbooks. The author provides details on how to guide students to the creation of such introductory textbooks with a variety of practical (...) classroom exercises and suggestions for assessment. Finally, potential future applications for cooperative learning courses are discussed. (shrink)