Many people believe the morality of abortion stands or falls on the moral status of the fetus, with abortion opponents arguing fetuses are persons with a right to life. Judith Jarvis Thomson bypasses this debate, arguing that even if we assume fetuses have a right to life, this is not a right to use other people’s bodies. Recently Perry Hendricks attempts to bypass discussion of rights, assuming that if he can show that some people have a right to use other’s (...) bodies, then we ought to restrict abortion (and perhaps compel organ donation, charity, etc.). Hendricks attempts to illustrate this by way of a Feinberg-style cabin case. I argue Hendricks’ restrictivist argument fails. (shrink)

What is biological complexity? How many sorts exist? Are there levels of complexity? How are they related to one another? How is complexity related to the emergence of new phenotypes? To try to get to grips with these questions, we consider the archetype of a complex biological system, Escherichia coli. We take the position that E. coli has been selected to survive adverse conditions and to grow in favourable ones and that many other complex systems undergo similar selection. We invoke (...) the concept of hyperstructures which constitute a level of organisation intermediate between macromolecules and cells. We also invoke a new concept, competitive coherence, to describe how phenotypes are created by a competition between maintaining a consistent story over time and creating a response that is coherent with respect to both internal and external conditions. We suggest how these concepts lead to parameters suitable for describing the rich form of complexity termed hypercomplexity and we propose a relationship between competitive coherence and emergence. (shrink)

In “Abortion and Ownership” John Martin Fischer argues that in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist case you have a moral obligation not to unplug yourself from the violinist. Fischer comes to this conclusion by comparing the case with Joel Feinberg’s cabin case, in which he contends a stranger is justified in using your cabin to stay alive. I argue that the relevant difference between these cases is that while the stranger’s right to life trumps your right (...) to property in the cabin case, the violinist’s right to life does not trump your right to liberty in the violinist case. (shrink)

This volume describes the current "main contenders," including neo-Piagetian, neo-connectionist, neo-innatist and sociocultural models.

Many philosophers have noted that normative error theorists appear to be committed to saying ‘Error theory is true, but I have no reason to believe it’, which seems paradoxical. In defence of error...

Normative pluralism is the view that practical reason consists in an irreducible plurality of normative domains, that these domains sometimes issue conflicting recommendations and that, when this happens, there is never any one thing that one ought simpliciter to do. Here I argue against this view, noting that normative pluralism must be either unrestricted or restricted. Unrestricted pluralism maintains that all coherent standards are reason-generating normative domains, whereas restricted pluralism maintains that only some are. Unrestricted pluralism, depending on how it (...) is cashed out, is either nihilism about practical reason or else it is subjectivism. Neither view is consistent with normative pluralism; hence, pluralism must be restricted. Restricted pluralism, however, faces two problems. The first stems from the question: “Why is it that some standards are normative domains while others are not?” The question seems to demand an answer, but it is hard to give any answer without appealing to considerations that imply facts about what we ought simpliciter to do. Second, restricted pluralism has difficulty accounting for our intuitions about cases in which one option is optimal in all domains, but not better than each alternative in any one domain. The unique option that is optimal in every domain seems better than its competitors, though it isn’t better within any domain. This is different than the widely discussed argument from notable-nominal comparisons. So I conclude that we have good reason to reject restricted pluralism, the only form of normative pluralism really worthy of that name. (shrink)

Swiss and Japanese villagers have learned the relative benefi ts and costs of privateproperty and communal-property institutions related to various types of land and uses of land. The villagers in both settings have chosen to retain the institution of communal property as the foundation for land use and similar important aspects of village economies.1..

Epistemic injustice occurs when we fail to appropriately respect others as epistemic agents. Philosophers building on the work of Miranda Fricker, who introduced the concept, have focused on epistemic injustices involving certain social categories, particularly race and gender. Can there be epistemic injustice attached to political conviction and affiliation? I argue yes: politics can be a salient social category that draws epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustices might also be intersectional, based on the overlap of politics and some other identity category like (...) race or sex. Further, and more provocatively, I argue that political minorities in academia, in particular conservatives and libertarians, are most likely the victims of epistemic injustice on the basis of their politics. Such epistemic injustices might even be routine. Although more limited in scope and severity than other forms of epistemic injustice, political epistemic injustices in academia ought to be of special concern from a standpoint of social justice because of the academy’s central role in knowledge production and dissemination. (shrink)

Many philosophers have thought that aggregates of small, broadly dispersed evils don’t pose the same sort of challenge to theism that horrendous evils like the Nazi Holocaust do. But there are interesting arguments that purport to show that large enough aggregates of small evils are morally and axiologically equivalent to horrendous evils. Herein lies an intriguing and overlooked strategy for defending theism. In short: small evils, or aggregates of such evils, don’t provide decisive evidence against theism; there’s no relevant difference (...) between horrendous evils and aggregates of small evils; hence horrendous evils must not provide decisive evidence against theism, either. (shrink)

The word ‘extremist’ is often used pejoratively, but it’s not clear what, if anything, is wrong with extremism. My project is to give an account of moral extremism as a vice. It consists roughly in having moral convictions so intense that they cause a sort of moral tunnel vision, pushing salient competing considerations out of mind. We should be interested in moral extremism for several reasons: it’s consequential, it’s insidious – we don’t expect immorality to arise from excessive devotion to (...) morality – and it’s yet to attract much philosophical attention. I give several examples of moral extremism from history and explore their social-political implications. I also consider how we should evaluate people who miss the mark, being either too extreme in the service of a good cause or inconsistent with their righteous convictions. I compare John Brown and John Quincy Adams, who fell on either side of this spectrum, as examples. (shrink)

This article proposes that we recognize ‘accountability’ as a forward-looking virtue, which disposes its possessors to live accountably in relation to those to whom they are rightly answerable, and which can be sub-divided into ‘particular accountability’, exercised within specific and limited relationships, and ‘ultimate accountability’, regarding the shape of one’s life as a whole. The article then proposes that these two forms of accountability find close analogues in two virtues which Thomas Aquinas described as ‘annexed to justice’, namely ‘obedience’ and (...) ‘religion’. (shrink)

The present ecological crisis imposes a rethinking of the relation between the human being and the rest of nature. Traditional theological articulations of this relation have proven problematic where they foster separatism and anthropocentrism, which give a false report on the relation and have a negative impact on thinking and acting in relation to nature. One place to begin rethinking is through an exploration of the affirmation that the human being is “made in the image of God,”imago dei. Some ways (...) of construing the theological meaning of this designation are more helpful than others. Science has recognized the extent to which the human being is not only dependent upon but even emergent from nature. We are made of the same “stuff” that makes up the rest of the universe. We are nature. The place of the human being is much more modest, recent, and precarious than usually acknowledged in theological reflection. New ways of interpreting our role within nature must evolve out of this new understanding. Philip Hefner has proposed that we think of the human being as created co-creator. His is a distinctive and promising contribution. This essay responds with both affirmations and friendly questions. (shrink)

Although wisdom might be considered a quaint concept in a post-industrialised, instrumental and secular world, it deserves serious consideration. This is done primarily from a philosophical perspective and is intended to encourage the reintroduction of wisdom into educational and developmental programmes, especially for managers and leaders. Mindful of the potential naïvete of transplanting systems of thinking from one epoch to another, we nonetheless examine the relevance of pre-modern thought to the post-modern condition. This is done by radically reinterpreting classical Greek (...) texts as Pierre Hadot has done to derive a meaning of "philosophy" and the place of wisdom in the ancient world. The concepts of wisdom, virtue and enacted ethics derived from this re-interpretation are then applied to an ethnographic case study involving a senior executive. This study suggests that a Stoical "wisdom of the moment" philosophy may characterize contemporary leadership practice. (shrink)

This paper investigates some delicate tradeoffs between the generality of an algorithmic learning device and the quality of the programs it learns successfully. There are results to the effect that, thanks to small increases in generality of a learning device, the computational complexity of some successfully learned programs is provably unalterably suboptimal. There are also results in which the complexity of successfully learned programs is asymptotically optimal and the learning device is general, but, still thanks to the generality, some of (...) those optimal, learned programs are provably unalterably information deficient—in some cases, deficient as to safe, algorithmic extractability/provability of the fact that they are even approximately optimal. For these results, the safe, algorithmic methods of information extraction will be by proofs in arbitrary, true, computably axiomatizable extensions of Peano Arithmetic. (shrink)

Hay and, then, Johnson extended the classic Rice and Rice-Shapiro Theorems for computably enumerable sets, to analogs for all the higher levels in the finite Ershov Hierarchy. The present paper extends their work to analogs in the transfinite Ershov Hierarchy. Some of the transfinite cases are done for all transfinite notations in Kleene's important system of notations, equation image. Other cases are done for all transfinite notations in a very natural, proper subsystem equation image of equation image, where equation image (...) has at least one notation for each constructive ordinal. In these latter cases it is open as to what happens for the entire set of transfinite notations in equation image. (shrink)

In the year 308 CE, the African army raised to the purple the agens vices praefectorum praetorio Lucius Domitius Alexander. This rather unique case of a vicarius becoming emperor is deserving of investigation. Scholarly interest on the matter has traditionally focused on the broader political significance, treating Alexander as a traditional usurper. This paper argues that, contrary to traditional studies, the regime of Alexander focused on very local, African tropes. The uniqueness of the advertisement suggests that this African usurpation (...) was the product of discontent internal to Africa; in other words, it is a departure from the usurpations of the third century. The achievements of Diocletian, who supposedly stabilized the Empire, ended when he withdrew, and the rebellion of 308–310 demonstrates that there remained unaddressed tensions between the provinces and the remaining tetrarchs. (shrink)

What does it mean to object to a moral theory, such as maximizing consequentialism, on the grounds that it is too demanding? It is apparently to say that its requirements are implausibly stringent. This suggests an obvious response: Modify the theory so that its requirements are no longer as stringent. A consequentialist may do this either by placing the requirement threshold below maximization – thereby arriving at satisficing consequentialism – or, more radically, by dispensing with deontological notions such as “requirement” (...) altogether – thereby arriving at scalar consequentialism. Suppose, however, that a moral theory’s demandingness is not a matter of its requirements being stringent, but whether it entails that we have most reason, all things considered, to undertake burdensome actions. If this is the right account of demandingness – as I shall argue – then neither modification necessarily alleviates demandingness. We are led to the surprising conclusion that neither satisficing consequentialism nor scalar consequentialism is inherently less demanding than their more familiar maximizing counterpart. They are less demanding only when supplemented with ancillary, and controversial, assumptions. (shrink)

The kalām cosmological argument proceeds from the claims that everything with a beginning has a cause of its existence, and that the universe has a beginning. It follows that the universe has a cause of its existence. Presumably, this cause is God. Some defenders of the argument contend that, since we don’t see things randomly coming into existence, we know from experience that everything with a beginning has a cause of its existence. Against this, some critics argue that we may (...) not legitimately move from observations of material things within the universe to conclusions about the universe itself. I argue that these critics are mistaken. We can after all draw cosmic conclusions from everyday experiences in support of the kalām argument. (shrink)

En el presente estudio se abordarán los crímenes cometidos por mujeres durante los últimos años de la España de la Restauración y la Dictadura de Primo de Rivera. De igual modo, se profundizará en la dicotomía espacial y discursiva que suponen estas acciones al ser cometidas en el ámbito de lo privado, pero pronto extrapoladas a lo público con fines sen­sacionalistas. Recortes de prensa, fragmentos literarios y pun­tualmente sentencias judiciales serán las fuentes de las que nos valdremos para desarrollar esta (...) investigación con el objeto de profundizar en esta difusa línea divisoria de actuación dialécti­ca. Contra los preceptos definidos por el discurso dominante en torno al «sexo femenino» que encasillaba a las mujeres en una concepción de perpetua debilidad, belleza y letargo, la trans­gresión nacida en el seno de lo privado se hará pública demos­trando que las idealizaciones creadas sobre ellas poco tenían que ver con la realidad. (shrink)