This paper deals with the policy of affirmative action as an additional means for achieving equality of opportunity in society. It assumes that in modem society-at least in principle-the superior positions are distributed according to merit, and on the basis of fair competition. I argue that formal equality of opportunity injects apparently neutral requirements, such as experience, into the selection procedure for top positions, that, in fact, act particularly against women, since they allow the past employment situation (...) to affect the new selection. I use a statistical argument to show that without preferential treatment towards women, they will not overcome structural obstacles that prevent them from getting top positions. I also use the same argument to show that affirmative action at present contributes to equality of opportunity in the future. (shrink)

This paper deals with the policy of affirmative action as an additional means for achieving equality of opportunity in society. It assumes that in modem society-at least in principle-the superior positions are distributed according to merit, and on the basis of fair competition. I argue that formal equality of opportunity injects apparently neutral requirements, such as experience, into the selection procedure for top positions, that, in fact, act particularly against women, since they allow the past employment situation (...) to affect the new selection. I use a statistical argument to show that without preferential treatment towards women, they will not overcome structural obstacles that prevent them from getting top positions. I also use the same argument to show that affirmative action at present contributes to equality of opportunity in the future. (shrink)

As interpersonal, racial, social, and international conflicts intensify in the world, it is important to safeguard the mental health of individuals affected by them. According to a Buddhist notion “if you want others to be happy, practice compassion; if you want to be happy, practice compassion,” compassion practice is an intervention to cultivate conflict-proof well-being. Here, compassion practice refers to a form of concentrated meditation wherein a practitioner attunes to friend, enemy, and someone in between, thinking, “I’m going to help (...) them.” The compassion meditation is based on Buddhist philosophy that mental suffering is rooted in conceptual thoughts that give rise to generic mental images of self and others and subsequent biases to preserve one’s egoism, blocking the ultimate nature of mind. To contextualize compassion meditation scientifically, we adopted a Bayesian active inference framework to incorporate relevant Buddhist concepts, including mind, compassion, aggregates, suffering, reification, conceptual thoughts, and superimposition. In this framework, a person is considered a Bayesian Engine that actively constructs phenomena based on the aggregates of forms, sensations, discriminations, actions, and consciousness. When the person embodies rigid beliefs about self and others’ identities and the resulting ego-preserving bias, the person’s Bayesian Engine malfunctions, failing to use prediction errors to update prior beliefs. To counter this problem, after recognizing the causes of sufferings, a practitioner of the compassion meditation aims to attune to all others equally, friends and enemies alike, suspend identity-based conceptual thoughts, and eventually let go of any identity-grasping belief and ego-preserving bias that obscure reality. We present a brain model for the Bayesian Engine of three components: Relation-Modeling, Reality-Checking, and Conflict-Alarming, which are subserved by the Default-Mode Network, Frontoparietal Network and Ventral Attention Network, and Salience Network, respectively. Upon perceiving conflicts, the strengthening or weakening of ego-preserving bias will critically depend on whether the SN up-regulates the DMN or FPN/VAN, respectively. We propose that compassion meditation can strengthen brain regions that are conducive for suspending prior beliefs and enhancing the attunements to the counterparts in conflicts. (shrink)

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. David Miller’s political philosophy of immigration employs two complementary argumentative strategies to challenge open border theories. The first strategy is to defeat the principled case for open borders, such as the global equality of opportunity argument for more lax immigration control. The second strategy is to establish the democratic community’s prima facie right to determine the shape of its future, including membership and the right to exclude. First, I (...) argue that Miller’s conception of global equality of opportunity is overly narrow and that his objections to the principle, to the metric and to what counts as feasible political action misfire against other, more plausible, accounts. Second, I argue that his democratic interpretation of collective self-determination does not solve the pressing question concerning the morally justified scope and content of self-determination and the moral limits of the right to exclude. I conclude by questioning Miller’s general strategy: whether theories of immigration should be engaged in an exercise of shifting the burden of proof between open and closed borders. By contrast, I argue that a more desirable task for the political philosophy of immigration is to find ways in which the joint requirement of global equality of opportunity and collective self-determination can be coherently upheld. (shrink)

Patriarchy is a feature of Northern Ireland life. This is especially true in the Churches’ sector, which has negotiated itself out of being characterized as a public institution, thus ensuring that the equality legislation, statutory for public bodies since the implementation of the Northern Ireland Act, is not applicable. The legacy of colonialism and a literal approach to biblical interpretation has reinforced patriarchal models of power in the public and private sphere, while arousing suspicion, even antipathy, toward feminism. In (...) a society where a ‘them and us,’ power over, mindset and culture has predominated the violence of sexism, sectarianism, racism and homophobia is very much in evidence. Inter-church women’s groups, engaged in the Irish School of Ecumenics praxis based peacebuilding programme, have been undermining patriarchy’s hold in Church and community. Their alternative voices, and counter-cultural actions, witness to the need for an active non-violent, just and egalitarian society. (shrink)

In thinking about Rancière and Law, as this collection exhorts us to do, I have turned my attention to one of the most well-known areas of Rancière’s writings, the Rights of Man. In “Who is the Subject of the Rights of Man?”, Rancière aimed a broadside at the rights-scepticism which can be traced in much of critical theory to the writings of Hannah Arendt, and an older tradition on the right exemplified by Edmund Burke and Jeremy Bentham. Rancière’s writings and (...) thought cover a wide range of areas, but it is the famous focus on rights which interests me here, as it brings to bear the problematisation of the ‘subject’ which Rancière develops in his writings. Rancière does not take an ontological view of the subject. Rancière’s writings on human rights attempt to get out of an ontological trap he sees being promulgated in relation to them. These writings on rights and the subject illustrate Rancière’s conception of politics as a process, which emphasises a dynamic staging of conflicts and the impossibility of stepping outside that discussion and conflict. My starting point is Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. This eighteenth century piece of literature is key for the discussion about the subject of human rights, and the paradoxes which those rights contain. This novel was used in United Nations debates to justify parts of the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In basing the subject of human rights in part on the eponymous hero of the same novel, the drafting committee constructed a vision of the human subject which conflated the figures of man and citizen. The subject of human rights was not a natural man, but intimately connected and indivisible from the society in which he was living. I connect Arendt’s critique of the right to have rights to these debates at the United Nations, illustrating how they lend support to Arendt’s criticisms of human rights. I then outline Rancière’s counter-critique of Arendt, and his defence of politics and rights. I show how Rancière’s distinction between politics and the police envisions a subject which is created through ‘dissensual’ acts. These acts of ‘dissensus’ are the very divisions, the strife or the conflict which constitutes the stage on which politics occurs. Rancière’s subject does not need to act politically in an existing public sphere where individuals recognise each other as equal and distinct. Rather, the acts they commit help contest the very meaning of rights and politics; a politics which always entails the verification of equality as such. I want to turn to the consequences of this processual politics. I use Rancière’s writings on politics and his defence of rights to illustrate how, in his schema, political subjects can be formed and new subjects hitherto unrecognised can be created through dissensual acts. I argue that in Rancière, any judgment on the quality of a political act, and the subject it can create, is necessarily made ex post facto. Rancière’s separation of politics from ethics forces us to avoid pre-judgments of the political nature of acts. This carries the risk that the reader of Rancière will interpret only the acts they are already sympathetic towards as ‘political’ and dissensual. The political remains in the eye of the beholder. As a result, this processual politics must be supplemented with a later judgment to be able to differentiate between potential political acts. In treating Rancière as a serious thinker of modernity and of rights, we need a way to distinguish between an act which is, for example, carried out by racists or those who oppress rights, and an act carried out by a demonstrator or as an act of resistance against hegemony. I argue that it is possible, following Rancière, to conceive of both as acts of dissensual politics potentially giving rise to political subjects. This in turn highlights the key issue for me in relation to Rancière’s thought. How can we distinguish between the quality of actors who act politically, without falling back on a presumed political sphere or modern liberal political philosophy? I conclude that a stronger questioning of the types of judgment needed to differentiate between political acts is required to avoid Rancière’s thought being used to justify forms of action the reader finds sympathetic. (shrink)

The idea that all human beings have equal moral worth has been challenged by insisting that this is utterly counter-intuitive in the case of individuals like, for instance, Hitler on the one hand and Schweitzer on the other. This seems to be confirmed by a hypothetical in which one can only save one of the two: intuitively, one clearly should save Schweitzer, not Hitler, even if Hitler does not pose a threat anymore. The most natural interpretation of this intuition (...) appeals to unequal moral worth. Jeremy Waldron has recently tried to meet this challenge by giving a different interpretation, thereby trying to explain away the counter-intuitive implications of the basic equality doctrine in this case, and by suggesting that the rejection of basic equality comes with counter-intuitive implications of its own. I shall argue that Waldron’s response to the challenge fails on both counts. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are cases, which various guise of the good-theses concerning desires, intentions and actions would not allow. In these cases the agent acts for considerations that the agent does not regard as good reasons. The considerations render the actions intelligible but not desirable. These cases are atypical, but nonetheless show that those guise of the good-theses which do not allow them, should be revised. In typical cases the intelligibility of desires, intentions and actions co-varies with their (...) desirability: there are both unintelligible cases without suitable desirability characteristics and cases where desirability characteristics make the desire, intention and action intelligible. The claim here is that there are further more atypical and puzzling, but equally possible cases, where intelligibility and desirability come apart. The paper first introduces the Guise of the Good - debates about desires, intentions, and actions, and suggests distinguishing the category of “acting for a reason” from “acting for a consideration not taken to be a reason”. It then argues that while desirability entails intelligibility, and lack of intelligibility entails lack of desirability, these two cases leave conceptual room for a third category, which is that of intelligibility without desirability. This is so, whether we examine objective or subjective intelligibility and desirability. The claim is meant to apply mutatis mutandis to characteristics of desires, intentions and actions. The paper then provides possible cases of intelligibility without desirability, and defends the view against some objections. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Psychiatric Treatment and the Problem of Equality:Whose Justice, Which Rationality?Floris Tomasini (bio)KeywordsInvoluntary treatment, democracy, equality, impartialityCraig Edwards in his article "Ethical Decisions in the Classification of Mental Conditions As Mental Illness" provides the reader with a socially normative, rather than a naturalistic understanding of mental illness, one that, in particular, promotes a normative understanding of mental illness as a form of evaluating dysfunctional personhood. In doing so, (...) Edwards is not interested in undermining psychiatric expertise, but exploring some of the practical consequences that flow from it, such as involuntary psychiatric treatment.My concern about psychiatric treatment in general and involuntary psychiatric treatment in particular, is three-fold, the third concern adding to the arguments already rehearsed by Edwards and others. The first concern is about the value neutrality of mental illness. Any dysfunctional conception of mental illness is not value neutral according to Fulford; dysfunction is, straightaway, a normative concept and is heavily influenced by a patient's desires and values. The second concern is about competing and conflicting values that arise in a person's psychiatric treatment. Again, there exists a legitimate variation in people's evaluative judgments about mental health conditions, for which a degree of democratic compromise might be required in negotiating conflicting values in a person's psychiatric treatment (Fulford and Colombo 2004). Without wishing to examine any of the philosophical foundations or counter-arguments to these claims in this short discussion paper, my third concern is about how to ethically negotiate between conflicting values in a person's psychiatric treatment. In other words, what might democratic compromise consist in? How might democratic compromise be implemented in terms of an ethically relevant principle?Any democratic enterprise, by definition, favors or is characterized by social equality and is egalitarian in nature (New Oxford English Dictionary 1999, 490). To be able to negotiate in the spirit of democratic compromise between competing and conflicting values in the process of psychiatric treatment, a principle of equal consideration of interests is vital.The essence of the principle of equal consideration of interests is that we give equal weight in our [End Page 101] moral deliberation to the like interests of all those affected by our actions (Singer 1979, 19). In other words, an interest is an interest whoever's interest that may be. So, for example, if the principle is about relieving pain, then the moral principle is about relieving the undesirability of pain as such, and not the undesirability of A's pain, which might be different from the undesirability of B's pain. Naturally, one may be able to distinguish that A's pain is greater than B's pain, in which case, under the equal consideration of interests principle, A's pain should be given greater weighting than B's pain in any conflict of interests. In short, in the evaluation of like interests, major interests outweigh minor interests.The significance of the principle of equal consideration of interests in decisions about mental health treatment in general, and about involuntary psychiatric detention and treatment more specifically, is that it should be possible (in theory at least) to able to democratically arbitrate on the basis of utility, whose interests take precedence when legitimate conflicts arise. The great practical advantage to the principle of equal consideration of interests is that it weighs' interests impartially—like well-balanced weighing scales; they favor where the interest is stronger or where several interests combine to outweigh a smaller number of similar interests. Most important, in the case of psychiatric treatment, it is a principle that takes no account of whose interests they are, avoiding any discriminatory stigma that may arise because of having made certain assumptions about being mentally ill. From the point of view of the equal consideration of interests, who the bearer is and how they are classified is, in itself, incidental to what the actual bearer's interests are and how they compete and conflict with others who have like interests. There are a number of practical consequences that flow from the principle of equal consideration when applied to psychiatric treatment (voluntary and involuntary) that need to be pinned down.Simple Negative DiscriminationClearly... (shrink)

I recently took issue with Kathryn George's contention that vegetarianism cannot be a moral obligation for most human beings, even assuming that Tom Regan's stringent thesis about the equal inherent value of humans and many sentient nonhumans is correct. I argued that both Regan and George are incorrect in claiming that his view would permit moral agents to kill and eat innocent, non-threatening rights holders. An unequal rights view, by contrast, would permit such actions if a moral agent's health or (...) life is at stake. I then argued that current nutritional research does not support Professor George's claim that some wealthy adult males (and many fewer wealthy women) are the only persons whose health does not require the consumption of nonhuman animals and their products. In her 1992 response to my critique, George did not address my moral argumentation. She concentrated her entire paper on a wholesale rejection of my discussion of nutrition. Although she now takes a somewhat more moderate position on who can safely contemplate strict vegetarianism, she still believes that most people are not in a position to follow such a diet. In my counter-reply, I argue that her rejection is based upon numerous distortions, omissions, and false charges of fallacy. She even devotes a substantial section of her paper to criticizing me for saying the opposite of what I actually wrote. As I did in my earlier paper, I cite current research, including George's own preferred source on the topic of vegetarianism, to support my view. I conclude that Professor George has still not shown that for most human beings it is dangerous to follow a diet that omits nonhuman animals and their products. Moral agents who take the rights of humansand nonhumans seriously will find vegetarianism well worth considering. (shrink)

The conditional probability of h given e is commonly claimed to be equal to the probability that h would have if e were learned. Here I contend that this general claim about conditional probabilities is false. I present a counter-example that involves probabilities of probabilities, a second that involves probabilities of possible future actions, and a third that involves probabilities of indicative conditionals. In addition, I briefly defend these counter-examples against charges that the probabilities they involve are illegitimate.

We can see from the analysis set out here that the two accounts that were the focus of consideration are complementary to one another. It has been my contention that a problem like specifying a concept such as ‘refrain’ is highly complex. One part of it is the problem of determining the relation between the action (or event) and the result. Another part of the problem is that of describing the event itself; what kind of an event is it? (...) These two projects are related and so it is clear that the results must be consistent. However, it is equally clear that the definition which is useful for one project is not the same as that which is helpful for another. The point is that it should not be assumed that an account that initially looks incompatible with one's own must be refuted. It is sometimes better to consider what is needed for a complete account, and whether many different approaches may contribute pieces to the puzzle.We have here one puzzle piece: an analysis of refraining. It should not be assumed that we have thereby completed the puzzle of omission, but omission can be approached the same way; that is, by coordinating parallel projects.Accordingly, the first benefit of the present analysis is that it sets up an approach which is modular in nature. It allows for parallel projects to be pursued separately and coordinated. This kind of approach is sorely needed in this area to counter unproductive dispute.To see how such an approach can be applied to further problems profitably consider the following persistent controversy. Many philosophers are at odds over the importance of the notion of duty, or more informally, reasonable expectation in the understanding of refraining. A number of them (e.g., Hart and Honore, John Casey, and Phillipa Foot) hold that the determining feature for the ascription of responsibility to an agent for not doing something to prevent a harm (say, a death) is the presence of a duty or reasonable expectation that the agent do something about the situation. For example, John Casey holds, “If a man does not do x, we cannot properly say that his not doing x is the cause of some result y, unless in the normal course of events he could have been expected to do x.” Casey, Actions and Consequences (1978).Other philosophers object that a person can cause a result by refraining from (causally) preventing it, and that such an event can be explained without any reference to duty. These two views appear to conflict, but in fact they are both right (but both incomplete). The reason that the above statements are generally thought to constitute a disagreement is that ‘refrain’ is generally taken as the fundamental term of analysis for omissions. Thus, if Casey says, “If a man does not do x...” he is taken to mean “...if a man refrains from doing x...” But he need not mean that. He may mean to say only that the man failed to do x. See my analysis in “Contemplating Failure,” supra note 10. Failing to do something can be, and ordinarily is, thought of as stronger than simple nonaction. But it is much weaker than refraining. For one thing, it has no awareness requirement. Thus, an account like Casey's can explain the ascription of responsibility and the presence of an omission where Green's account (or the account offered here) cannot, and vice versa. Casey's view can explain why we hold (or at least that we hold) responsible the night watchman who forgets to check one of the windows, the bookkeeper who (accidentally) omits an entry in the accounts, or the private duty nurse who fails to prevent a death by falling asleep on the job. No refraining is present in any of these cases. Consequently, any thesis based on refraining alone cannot explain them. But in many cases refraining is precisely what is important, and Green (and others of the same persuasion) are correct to point out that no reference to duty is necessarily required to account for these cases. Analysis based on refraining best explains intentional or conscious omission. Analysis based on duty or reasonable expectation is the only way to explain unconscious omission. More often than not, both elements are present. A complete account of omission needs both. So here again, the better way to view these putatively competing accounts is as parallel projects which work toward a common, but complex end. The approach taken here allows for this kind of much needed coordination. The second benefit of the present analysis is that it clarifies and focuses on the significance of the mental element of refraining. Refraining is conscious omission. Consciousness and omission are its distinguishing features. The effects of seeing the concept this way are pervasive. Here is one example. If I refrain from reporting my full income to the IRS, I have committed fraud, and punitive or even criminal sanctions may be reasonable. If I fail to report my full income through ignorance or mistake (say, I misunderstood the instructions) correcting the error and requiring payment is reasonable, but certainly criminal sanction is not. This oversimplifies the distinction, but it illustrates the focus of my pursuit.With regard to positive actions, law and philosophy have long recognized this important distinction as manifested in the difference between negligence and intentional tort, or manslaughter and murder. Due (I think) to the extraordinary flexibility of language and the weakness and variability of social conventions regarding omissions, this distinction has not been clearly articulated. I think such an analysis is worth pursuing. The present account is one step in that pursuit. (shrink)

How democratic progressive politics can happen and how it is happening in very different political arenas.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Multiple Personality and Moral ResponsibilityStephen E. Braude (bio)AbstractThe philosophical literature on multiple personality has focused primarily on problems about personal identity and psychological explanation. But multiple personality and other dissociative phenomena raise equally important and even more urgent questions about moral responsibility, in particular: In what respect(s) and to what extent should a multiple be held responsible for the actions of his/her alternate personalities? Cases of dreaming help illustrate (...) why attributions of responsibility in cases of dissociation do not turn on putative changes in identity, as some have supposed. Instead, it is argued that traditional criteria of rationality and behavioral control apply also to cases of dissociation. It is noted, however, that one can distinguish different kinds of responsibility in cases of dissociation, and that one is responsible for one’s dreams in a different sense from that in which one is responsible for actions one can control and evaluate. It is also argued that in cases of multiple personality it is important to distinguish control over switching of personalities from an alter’s control over its own behavior. Moreover, the author considers reasons for thinking that amnesia is less relevant to attributions of responsibility than many have supposed.Keywordsdissociation, dreaming, rationality, amnesiaIntroductionThe philosophical literature on MPD/DID 1 has focused primarily on problems about personhood, personal identity, and the nature of psychological explanation. Presumably, that is because multiples appear to be (or to harbor) more than one person or more than one distinct moral or prudential agent. But philosophers have had almost nothing to say about problems of responsibility in these cases—in particular, the question: In what respect(s) and to what extent should a multiple be held responsible for the actions of his/her alternate personalities (or alters)?Unlike questions about personhood and identity, this question is not simply an abstract matter that we may ponder at our leisure. Clinicians treating multiples must decide whether it is appropriate—or even just therapeutically beneficial—to hold their patients (or specific alters) responsible for behaviors which they seem unable to control or remember. Similarly, and with increasing frequency, our courts must decide whether a defendant claiming to be a multiple may be held guilty for the actions of one or more alters. In fact, the legal issues can be quite dramatic, and even bizarre. Consider: What sort of individual is standing trial? An alter or the multiple as a whole? Should courts accept the claim that the subject being questioned on the stand is not the same as the subject who committed the crime? If so, other questions come immediately to mind. For example, would it be appropriate for each alter of a criminal defendant to have separate legal council?Undoubtedly, some will have trouble taking that last question seriously. But no matter how [End Page 37] clear its solution may appear to one’s moral or legal intuitions, those intuitions are seldom as straightforward as they seem. Indeed, one cannot explain or defend them without taking a stand, at least provisionally, on a wide range of thorny philosophical problems. Moreover, the aforementioned questions are merely the tip of the iceberg, and our answers to them have implications extending beyond the courtroom. For example, with regard to forensic contexts Slovenko (1991) asks,Should a search or arrest warrant be issued for each personality? Must a Miranda warning be given to each personality of a suspect with MPD? May the other personalities exclude evidence on the ground that they were not properly read their rights at the time of the arrest? Would each one of the personalities have to waive his or her rights, or would one waiver be sufficient? Does the doctrine of double jeopardy bar the trial of a personality when another has been put to trial? Must each personality testifying at trial be sworn in and administered the oath?(22, 25)These questions have obvious analogues in clinical situations, and also in personal contexts, say, between friends or members of a family, one of whom is a multiple. For example, to what extent should a DID patient be held responsible for the sociopathic (or simply counter-therapeutic) behavior of... (shrink)

Tainted political symbols ought to be confronted, removed, or at least recontextualized. Despite the best efforts to achieve this, however, official actions on tainted symbols often fail to take place. In such cases, I argue that political vandalism—the unauthorized defacement, destruction, or removal of political symbols—may be morally permissible or even obligatory. This is when, and insofar as, political vandalism serves as fitting counter-speech that undermines the authority of tainted symbols in ways that match their publicity, refuses to let (...) them speak in our name, and challenges the derogatory messages expressed through a mechanism I call derogatory pedestalling: the glorification or honoring of certain individuals or ideologies that can only make sense when members of a targeted group are taken to be inferior. (shrink)

Kant famously made a distinction between actions from duty and actions in conformity with duty claiming that only the former are morally worthy. Kant’s argument in support of this thesis is taken to rest on the claim that only the motive of duty leads non-accidentally or reliably to moral actions. However, many critics of Kant have claimed that other motives such as sympathy and benevolence can also lead to moral actions reliably, and that Kant’s thesis is false. In addition, many (...) readers of Kant find the claim that we should deny moral worth to a dutiful action performed from friendly inclination highly counterintuitive. Moreover, Kantian commentators disagree about the status of actions in conformity with duty, some claim that these can be taken as equally morally worthy as those performed from duty, while others argue that they are not even permissible. -/- It has also been claimed that Kant’s theory of moral worth should be related to the theory of the Gesinnung developed in the Religion. Thus, some authors claim that, in order for an action to possess moral worth, the agent has to be unconditionally committed to morality, that is, the agent must possess a virtuous character or good fundamental maxim (i.e. a good Gesinnung). However, according to Kant’s radical evil thesis (that is, the thesis that man is evil by nature ), the default position for man is to possess an evil Gesinnung, i.e. a Gesinnung which is only conditionally committed to morality insofar as morality does not demand a great sacrifice of our own happiness. So, an unwelcome consequence of this line of interpretation is that in Kantian ethics morally worthy actions become very rare indeed. -/- The paper is divided in two parts. The first part aims to clarify why Kant thought that only actions from duty are morally worthy, replying to some common objections against Kant’s view. I argue that Kant’s non-accidental condition should not be understood in terms of reliability because such interpretation is incompatible with Kant’s theory of motivation and rational agency. I propose an alternative interpretation which supports Kant’ s claim that only the motive of duty leads nonaccidently to dutiful actions, and thus only actions from duty possess moral worth. I end by showing that although actions in conformity with duty are worthless from the moral point of view, they are not (in many cases) impermissible. The first part concludes that the criterion for the permissibility of actions is different to the criterion for the ascription of moral worth. Thus, rightness, which pertains to actions performed on maxims that can be willed as universal laws, and moral worth, which pertains to actions performed from a sense of duty, should be understood as two different levels of moral assessment. -/- The second part of the paper examines Kant’s conception of virtue with the aim of showing that although only agents with a virtuous character (good Gesinnung) will reliably act from duty, a person with an evil character (evil Gesinnung) could on frequent occasions act from duty. I argue that we should not deny moral worth to actions performed from duty even when the agent has an evil Gesinnung. Goodness of Gesinnung is not a necessary condition of the action of an agent possessing moral worth; reliability of motivation is necessary for the ascription of virtue but not for the ascription of moral worth. It follows that virtue, which refers to the agent’s character or fundamental maxim (i.e. the agent’s Gesinnung), and moral worth are also two different levels of moral assessment. The paper concludes that three levels of moral assessment can be distinguished in Kant’s ethical system: (i) rightness, (ii) moral worth and (iii) moral virtue. Moral virtue is the highest level of moral perfection for a human being. Striving towards virtue requires constant progress and effort and ultimately a ‘revolution of the heart.’ The important point is that even when we are still striving to achieve virtue (i.e. an unconditional commitment to morality), we can ascribe moral worth to actions performed by a genuine sense of duty. It turns out that, contrary to many influential interpretations, Kantian ethics is not merely concerned with the rightness or wrongness of particular actions nor is Kantian ethics primarily an ethic of virtue. Instead, Kant’s ethical system is complex and allows for different levels of moral assessment in which both an action-centred and agent-centred perspective can be integrated. (shrink)

This study is based on a corpus of duel songs from the traditional Ammassalik culture, published by the anthropologists P.-É. Victor and J. Robert-Lamblin. In this culture, the duel is a moment in the development of a quarrel, originating in a conflictual event; one of the partners challenges the other to a song duel. Our study focuses upon the basic argumentative strategies of defense and counter attack used to reject the accusation. The charges range from what may seem to (...) us the most serious ones, to apparently the most frivolous. The defensive strategies range from serious replies to mere jokes, making fun of the opponent. Formally, the reproached action can be denied, or acknowledged and rejected on other grounds. The defendant often just counter-attacks, either by disqualifying the accuser, or by reversing the charge. The data shows that the duel song is not essentially a “court of assize”. Beyond its cathartic function, the duel is show given by the participants to a participating audience. (shrink)

In this paper, we raise two points. First, any rights‐based theory should provide a method by which to guide reasoning in addressing conflicts of rights. The reason, we argue, is that these theories must provide guidance on what should be done. Second, this method must contain two key recommendations: (1) We should try to find a deliberative mechanism through which none of the rights is simply eliminated from the scene; (2) these rights may be balanced against each other to define (...) which right should prevail, but without considering non‐rights‐interests as if they were rights in the process. These recommendations instantiate two crucial principles that underlie our common intuitions on rights, namely, the principle that rights deserve equal respect and the principle that rights should be taken seriously. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE QUEST FOR AN ADEQUATE PROPORTIONALIST THEORY OF VALUE RoNALD H. McKINNEY, S.J. U'IWversity of Scranton Scranton, Pennsylvania EDWARD VACEK shrewdly observes that proportionalism attempts to synthesize the crucial insights of both the teleologist and the deontologist.1 Indeed, Vacek provides a fine summary of this achievement. However, he reflects that the most underdeveloped feature of proportionalism is its value theory by which we are enabled to know how to (...) resolve conflict situations.2 Richard McCormick, among others, has attempted to meet this deficiency by ·adopting John Finnis' notion of associated basic goods. In this essay, I will show how such an ·approach fails to remain true to the basic aims of proportionalism. Nor should this come as a surprise, since Finnis is himself indebted to one of McCormick's archopponents, Germain Grisez. Moreover, I will attempt to outline the elements involved in a non-hierarchfoal theory of value which I will argue to be the only adequate alternative to McCormick 's attempted solution. Deontologists argue that certain acts are right or wrong regardless of the ·consequences. Proportionalists, however, are opposed to such notions as an " intrinsically evil " act or an "absolute" duty, since they recognize the existence of moral dilemmas. A moral dilemma arises whenever there is a situation in which pre-moral values •are in conflcit, i.e., whatever choice one makes will result in the omission or harm of one or other of the values at stake. According to the proportionl Edward Vacek, "Proportionalism: One View of the Debate," Theological Studies 46/2 (June, 1985), 289. 2 Va.eek, 302. 56 PROPORTIONALIST THEORY OF VALUE 57 alist reformulation of the principle of double effect, the permission or oausrution of ontic evil is not necessarily a moral evil as long as there is a proportionate reason justifying,such an action, e.g., when a father shoots an!intruder threatening to harm his family. McCormick's initial description of the requirements of proportionate reason [s ias follows: "a) a v1alue at least equal to that sacrificed is at 1 stake; b) there is no less harmful way of protecting ithe value here and now; c) the manner of its protection here and now will not undermine it in the long run." 8 McCormick argues that it simply will not do to claim that the ontic evil permitted or caused in a conflict situation is always only indirectly intended.4 For, in many instances, this simply is not true. Moreover, he would argue that to intend an end is not necess1arily to desire it as deontologists suppose. What justifies the ontic evil resulting from such actions, then, is solely the proportionate reason for which it is allowed or caused. There are some obvious criticisms that have been hurled at this proportionalist proposal for resolving conflict situations: I) that it leaves itself open to the practical, if not theoretical, difficulty of weighing different values;!2) that it results in the possibility of many resolutions that could go counter to our normal moral intuitions; 8) that there exists an inherent fallibility in the calcul,ation of long-range consequences; and 4) that this uncertainty might easliy promote an undesirable attitude of skeptical relativism. It is perhaps the onslaught of these and other criticisms which prompted McCormick to adopt Finnis' theory of associated basic goods. Lisa Cahill,argues that this new theory constitutes an "abandonment" of McCormick's prior proposal.5 To understand how this new theory leads to inevitable s Richard McCormick, ".Ambiguity in Moral Choice," Doing Evil To Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Oonfiict Situations, eds. R. McCormick and P. Ramsey (Chicago: Loyola U. Press, 1978), 45. 4 McCormick, 35-38. 5 Lisa Cahill, "Theology, Utilitarianism, and Christian Ethics," Theologica,I Studies 42/4 (Dec., 1981), 618-24. 58 RONALD H. MCKINNEY, S.J. inconsistency for McCormick, we must first examine Finnis' position itself. Finnis' Theory of Basic Goods By "value," Finnis refers to any " general form of good that oan be participated iin or realized in indefinitely many ways on indefinitely many occasions." 6 Basic values, moreover, refer to ·intrinsic goods that are desired for their own sake (NL, 62, 65). They are good not because they are... (shrink)

According to the dominant position in the just war tradition from Augustine to Anscombe and beyond, there is no "moral equality of combatants." That is, on the traditional view the combatants participating in a justified war may kill their enemy combatants participating in an unjustified war - but not vice versa (barring certain qualifications). I shall argue here, however, that in the large number of wars (and in practically all modern wars) where the combatants on the justified side violate (...) the rights of innocent people ("collateral damage"), these combatants are in fact liable to attack by the combatants on the unjustified side. I will support this view with a rights-based account of liability to attack and then defend it against a number of objections raised in particular by Jeff McMahan. The result is that the thesis of the moral equality of combatants holds good for a large range of armed conflicts while the opposing thesis is of very limited practical relevance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kenneth Burke on Dialectical-Rhetorical TranscendenceJames P. ZappenKenneth Burke's concept of rhetoric is complex and elusive, increasingly so as it becomes intertwined and infused with dialectic in the long third part of A Rhetoric of Motives and in some essays published shortly thereafter (1951; 1955; 1969b [1950], 183–333).1 The connection between Burke's rhetoric and dialectic is well established (Brummett 1995; Crusius 1986; 1999, 120–21; Wess 1996, 136–216; Wolin 2001, 143–204), (...) and his concept of rhetoric as identification is widely recognized for its broadening of the traditional view of rhetoric as persuasion to include identification as a means of inducing cooperation and building communities (Crusius 1999, 120–21; Hauser 1986, 120–37; Henderson 1988, 33–34). Timothy W. Crusius establishes the fundamental relationship between A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives as dialectical and rhetorical counterparts and explains both the strengths and the limitations of identification as a means of inducing cooperation (1986). According to Crusius, dialectic explores the substance of a person or thing—all that "supports or 'substands'" it—from multiple and shifting perspectives, viewing human action dramatistically as act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose (24–28). Rhetoric complements dialectic and its multiple dramatistic perspectives by promoting "identification" and "cooperation," building "a community, a sense of oneness amid diversity of conflicting interests and values" (28–30). As Crusius and others observe, [End Page 279] however, identification as a means of inducing cooperation is inherently limited since any identification necessarily also entails a division: "Every 'us' requires a 'them'" (29; Biesecker 1997, 47–49; Wolin 2001, 177–78). Thus, for example, while Christianity provides a powerful instance of identification, it also provides an equally powerful illustration of its division from other peoples—"Satan and his counter-kingdom," "the Turk infidel," and "the pagan hordes of Asia" (28–29). For Burke, these divisions were largely political (George and Selzer 2007, 16–57, 110–32; Lentricchia 1983, 21–38). For us, they are differences of gender, culture, and economic and social class (Condit 1992), compounded by political, economic, and religious differences on a global scale. By this account, the first two parts of the Rhetoric offer at best a partial solution to the problem. The third part challenges and mystifies and in itself seems to offer little more than a utopian vision without purpose or outcome (Crusius 1999, 120–21; Wess 1996, 211–16; Wolin 2001, 201–3).2 Situated within the broader context of Burke's work, however, the third part seems rather to offer a bold and creative solution to the problem by merging dialectic and rhetoric with dialogue and poetic myth in a dialectical-rhetorical transcendence—a concept that merits a place alongside identification as a major contribution to rhetorical theory (1969b, 197–208, 221–33).3Burke's concept of dialectical-rhetorical transcendence developed over the course of more than twenty years, from the mid 1930s to the mid 1950s and beyond. Its sources are partly Hegelian and Marxist but increasingly Platonic,4 as Burke comes to perceive the Hegelian and Marxist concepts of history as part of the problem of competing ideologies and his version of Platonic transcendence as the solution—a solution that leads, on the one hand, toward "pure persuasion" and "ultimate identification" and, on the other, toward the pragmatics of a new rhetoric and a revolutionary program of lifelong education (1951; 1955; 1969b, 267–94, 328–33; Biesecker 1997, 43–47; Lee 2004; Wess 1996, 203–5, 211–16; Wolin 2001, 201–3). In the midst of the political divisiveness of the 1930s, Burke glimpsed in Hegel and even Marx the possibility of bridging conflicting ideologies via transcendence, but he turned to Plato in the Grammar and again in the Rhetoric to explain the processes by which opposing ideas and ideologies might merge in transcendent visions or myths that encompass what he perceived to be partial and partisan points of view. In the Grammar, his solution is dialectical—a merger of opposing ideas at higher levels of generalization through a process of linguistic abstraction and transformation that respects a diversity of individual interests, even as it seeks to transcend them in larger [End... (shrink)

SummaryThomas Hobbes's theory of action seems to give up on the idea that actions are ‘up to us’. Thomas Pink has argued that this counter-intuitive stance should be understood as the implication of his radical assault on the scholastic Aristotelian model of action. Hobbes rejects the existence of the immaterial soul. This means that he must also reject the existence of so-called elicited acts of the will, which form the primary locus of human agency. In this paper (...) an alternative interpretation is presented. It is argued that Hobbes's fundamental disagreement with the scholastic tradition is not over the existence of elicited acts of the will but over scope and productiveness of mechanical explanation. Hobbes aims to give an account of human actions as in our control and as ‘up to us’ while at the same time applying and defending his mechanical mode of analysis. This paper contributes to the contextualisation of Hobbes's views and furthers our understanding of his theory of action. (shrink)

Jus post Bellum is, like Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello, a part of just war theory. Jus post Bellum is distinguished from the other parts of just war theory by being primarily concerned with the principles necessary for securing a just and lasting peace after the end of a war. Traditionally, jus post bellum has focused primarily on three goals: [1] compensating those who have been the victims of unjust aggression, while respecting the rights of the aggressors, [2] (...) punishing and rehabilitating those guilty of war crimes and other violations of the principles of Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello and [3] developing measures that will prevent future war and violence (Orend 2000 and May 2012). In this chapter, I outline an account of political forgiveness and explain the role that political forgiveness can have in promoting the goals of jus post bellum. My conception of political forgiveness requires some unpacking. Let me begin with individual forgiveness, which I understand along familiar Butlerian lines as the renunciation of resentment (Butler, Sermon IX in McNaughton 2017: 75-83), though with a bit of a twist. More exactly, ● An individual, I, forgives J for doing F if and only if I renounces all her own warrant for resenting J for doing F. Resentment is a judgment-sensitive attitude, and, therefore, it tends to track judgments concerning its warrant (Scanlon 1998: 20 and Smith 2015). In cases of perfect forgiveness, I’s renunciation causes her to cease feeling resentment toward J for doing F, though, of course, less perfect cases are possible. I reject the idea that there is a sharp discontinuity between individual and political forgiveness, a position argued for by, e.g., Peter Digeser (1998 and 2001). By contrast, I understand political forgiveness as the renunciation of resentment by the relevant political body in question. With greater precision, ● A sovereign political body, P, forgives J for doing F if and only if P renounces all warrant that its citizens have for resenting, as part of their public lives, J for doing F. A little more explanation is in order. Sovereign political bodies, such as national governments, claim degrees of control over the lives of their citizens, in both their public and their private aspects, though the claims with respect to the former tend to be considerably more expansive than the claims with respect to the latter. I assume here that, at least in the case of legitimate governments, these claims of control are often valid. Such governments may reasonably renounce certain grounds for motivating action in the public sphere. For example, governments may renounce all warrant that its citizens have, as part of their public lives, for hating members of marginalized groups. In practice, this means that, while citizens might continue to act in their private lives out of hatred for members of these groups, their appeal to this hatred is seen by the state as irrelevant to matters of law and public policy as well as being wholly out-of-place in public discourse. Political forgiveness toward J for doing F, as I understand it, involves an analogous rejection of resentment, on the part of citizens in their public lives, toward J for doing F. I turn now to the matter of how political forgiveness supports securing a just and lasting peace between former belligerents. With respect to the first goal of jus post bellum, political forgiveness helps to balance compensation for victims and respect for the rights of defeated aggressors by countering the all-too-human tendency to overvalue harms done to oneself and to members of one’s group. As regards the second goal, political forgiveness plays a similar role but also provides a model for rehabilitation by exemplifying among the victorious the behavior to be emulated by the vanquished. Finally, political forgiveness promotes the third goal of jus post bellum by providing a space for nations to meet as moral equals rather than allowing one nation to have the moral high ground over the other. None of this, of course, means that political forgiveness should be unearned or that it should be confused with condonation (Kolnai 1973 and Pettigrove 2004). However, the question of what is required to put oneself in a position to be forgiven as part of jus post bellum is a matter that goes beyond the scope of this chapter. (shrink)

This article gives an analysis of Foucault’s studies of civil society and the various liberalist critiques of government. It follows from Foucault’s genealogical approach that “civil society” does not in itself possess any form of transcendental existence; its historical reality must be seen as the result of the productive nature of the power-knowledge-matrices. Foucault emphasizes that modern governmentality—and more specifically the procedures he names “the conduct of conduct”—is not exercised through coercive power and domination, but is dependent on the freedom (...) and activeness of individuals and groups of society. Civil society is thus analyzed as fundamentally ambivalent: on the one hand civil society is a field where different kinds of technologies of governance meet the lives and wills of groups and individuals, but on the other hand it is a potential field of what Foucault called ‘counter-conduct’ – for both collective action and individual political action. (shrink)

In a recent article, Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve argue that prioritarianism fails to account for the shift in moral significance in gains to individuals in interpersonal as compared to intrapersonal cases. In this article, I show that the priority view escapes this objection but in a way that deprives it of (some of) its anti-egalitarian stance. Despite Otsuka and Voorhoeve, prioritarianism, rightly understood, provides consistent and attractive recommendations in both single- and multi-person cases. Yet prioritarians, the article goes on (...) to show, cannot do so while availing themselves of the leveling down objection (LDO) to egalitarianism. They may not do so because similarly to egalitarianism, prioritarianism also must reject the principle of personal good. That is, egalitarians and prioritarians may sometime recommend certain actions and outcomes even when these are better for no one. Prioritarians may survive the Otsuka–Voorhoeve critique, but to do so they must abandon their anti-egalitarian stance (or at the very least, the LDO). (shrink)

Self-regarding acts are frequently classified as non-moral; even more frequently, they are assumed to have less moral weight than parallel other-regarding acts. I argue briefly against the first claim, and at greater length against the second. Our intuitions about the lesser moral weight of self-regarding acts arise from imperfectly recognized, and morally relevant, differences between acts which are ordinarily described in misleadingly parallel phrases. ‘Love of self,’ for instance, and ‘love of another’ are not symmetrical attitudes, in spite of the (...) symmetrical grammar. More obviously, one cannot steal from, lie to, nor force oneself in the same way one can do these things to others. I conclude, therefore, that difference in moral weight never stems merely from a difference in the person concerned, but rather from differences between the actions themselves; furthermore, that whatever it is wrong to do to a willing other, it is wrong to do to oneself. (shrink)

Expressive theories of state action seek to identify and assess the ‘meaning’ implicit in state action, such as legislation and public policies. In expressive theories developed by relational egalitarians, state action must ‘express’ equal concern and respect for citizens. However, it is unclear how precisely we can determine and assess the meaning of what states do. This paper considers how an expressive theory could be developed, given the commitments of a relational account of equality, and how (...) such a theory would relate to relational egalitarianism more broadly. I suggest that expressive considerations should be tied more closely than they are in the current literature to agents’ attitudes and to their intentions. I discuss a range of real-world policies that are problematic for what they can be taken to express. (shrink)

Affirmative action is often implemented as a way of making redress to victims of past injustices. But critics of this practice have launched a three-pronged assault against it. Firstly, they point out that beneficiaries of preferential policies tend not to benefit to the same extent as they were harmed by past injustices. Secondly, when its defenders point to the wider benefits of affirmative action , critics maintain that such ends could never be sufficiently weighty to permit violating equal (...) treatment. And, thirdly, critics dispute whether the alleged benefits of affirmative action really ensue. I argue this three-pronged assault is flawed at the conceptual level. Firstly, it operates with an impoverished conception of redress. When X wrongs Y, X does not make exhaustive redress to Y by compensating Y for the harm Y suffered due to X’s wrong action. Redress also requires rectification of the wrong: X must put right the wrong done to Y by making adequate amends. While the means of compensation are determined by the extent of the harm for which compensation is due, the adequacy of amends for a wrong is less tightly controlled by the nature of the wrong. So, secondly, it is perfectly right that the choice of amends be informed by the prospect of wider benefits. Whether, thirdly, these benefits are in fact in prospect in the case of affirmative action is an empirical question which philosophy cannot answer. (shrink)

Education is commonly considered to be a transformational practice that contributes both to forging the personality of individuals and to promoting social entanglements. For this reason, education always has a normative character that rests on a particular concept of what humanity and society should be. However, educational policies and practices are frequently unaware of these theoretical presuppositions, and for this reason, they frequently appear to act in a naïve and superficial manner. This is particularly the case for citizenship education, which, (...) if superficially implemented, risks being distorted into a form of civic education that reproduces established norms and social relations, without promoting any meaningful social change. Thus, the first part of this article aims to deepen the notion of citizenship, in particular by studying what the concept of ‘consensus’ means, conceiving of it not as a synonym of social resignation, but rather as a collective conspiracy towards a common political project. Accordingly, the article defines the basic characteristics that education should always possess to effectively promote a democratic and participative citizenship education. In particular, it identifies five constitutive contrasts in relation to the ways in which information is transmitted, reasoned, emotionally perceived, and then discussed and countered both by individuals and society. The article therefore presents an overall theory of education, seen as a momentous practice of dialogue and common action that opens the way for a democracy in progress. (shrink)

McMahan’s own example of a symmetrical defense case, namely his tactical bomber example, opens the door wide open for soldiers to defend their fellow-citizens (on grounds of their special obligations towards them) even if as part of this defense they target non-liable soldiers. So the soldiers on both sides would be permitted to kill each other and, given how McMahan defines “justification,” they would also be justified in doing so and hence not be liable. Thus, we arrive, against McMahan’s intentions, (...) at a moral equality of combatants. In addition, his own account of liability cannot deal adequately with symmetrical defense cases in the first place. This undermines his presupposition that justification defeats liability, which is central to his defense of the moral inequality of combatants. I shall argue that McMahan’s attempts to counter these objections fail and that therefore his general claim of the moral inequality of combatants remains unpersuasive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.2 (2003) 172-176 [Access article in PDF] The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke. Studies in Rhetoric/Communication. Ross Wolin. Series ed. Thomas W. Benson. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. xviii + 256. $34.95, cloth. Ross Wolin's The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke offers its readers an interesting mix of intellectual history and conceptual explication, along with an element of biography, which Wolin performs (...) in an effort to trace the movements of Burke's thought as it developed over time within particular socio-political circumstances. The book is divided into three parts, each corresponding to Wolin's three-part division of Burke's intellectual [End Page 172] career. Part I, "Towards a Better Life through Art, Criticism and Politics," begins with a chapter on Burke's formation as a critic in the bohemian, avant-garde culture of post-World War I Greenwich Village. Wolin offers an account of how the dynamics of this social milieu prompted Burke to incorporate politics into his already established aesthetic interests, and of this fusion's manifestation in left-leaning periodicals of the time. While some might be tempted to see this first chapter as having limited value in comparison to Jack Selzer's richly detailed Kenneth Burke in Greenwich Village : Conversing with the Moderns, 1915-1931, it should be noted that Wolin does a fine job of helping his readers—in chapter one and those which follow—to understand explicitly how specific contexts shaped Burke's ideas and his rhetoric (something that Selzer's book does not do). Wolin is particularly adept at showing how, for Burke, there is an inextricable link between aesthetics, rhetoric, politics, and social life in general. This aesthetic-rhetorical connection to politics and life, argues Wolin, is key to understanding all of Burke's work. According to Wolin, equally important is how this connection informed the essays that comprised Burke's Counter-Statement, which Wolin sees as the seed from which all of Burke's theoretical and critical writings grew. For Wolin, to understand Burke one must understand Counter-Statement, and understand it within the historical circumstances that prompted and shaped its concepts and their rhetorical presentation.Chapter two is thus devoted to a discussion of the significance of Counter-Statement within Burke's oeuvre. It is in Counter-Statement, Wolin contends, that one can discern not only the fundaments of Burke's later work but also the "Critics Credo" that organized Burke's rhetorical efforts from Permanence and Change to The Rhetoric of Religion. Wolin's attempt to demonstrate the operation of this credo in all of Burke's books as an organizing principle pushes the limits of credulity at times, but readers should not let this obscure the insight Wolin offers us into Burke's responses to and interventions in early twentieth-century intellectual culture. Chapters three, four, and five comprise Part II of Wolin's book, "The Tactics of Conflict and Cooperation," which discusses in succession the three books that followed Counter-Statement chronologically: Permanence and Change, Attitudes Towards History, and The Philosophy of Literary Form. In these chapters, Wolin makes numerous interesting and novel points about Burke's thought. In the chapter on Permanence and Change, for example, Wolin highlights the conception of ethics implicit in that work, one that has its roots in poetics (particularly tragedy) and which refuses "to supplant traditional [End Page 173] ethics with another system [that is] equally fixed" (77). Although he does not state this, implicit in Wolin's reading is the suggestion that within Burke's work lies an alternative to the neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics and Habermasian universal pragmatics so many rhetorical scholars seem to embrace when theorizing a rhetorical ethics. (A "dramatistic" ethics of discourse and public life is, I think, an untapped potential of Burke's work.) Part III, "The Tactics of Motivation," offers similarly insightful and contextualized readings of A Grammar of Motives, A Rhetoric of Motives, The Rhetoric of Religion, and Language as Symbolic Action. Particularly interesting is Wolin's discussion in chapter seven of the importance of style... (shrink)

In Paradoxa Stoicorum, the Roman philosopher Cicero defends six important Stoic theses. Since these theses seem counterintuitive, and it is not likely that the average person would agree with them, they were generally called "paradoxes". According to the third paradox, (P3), (all) transgressions (wrong actions) are equal and (all) right actions are equal. According to one interpretation of this principle, which I will call (P3′), it means that if it is forbidden that A and it is forbidden that B, then (...) not-A is as good as not-B; and if it is permitted that A and it is permitted that B, then A is as good as B. In this paper, I show how it is possible to prove this thesis in dyadic deontic logic. I also try to defend (P3′) against some philosophical counterarguments. Furthermore, I address the claim that (P3′) is not a correct interpretation of Cicero’s third paradox and the assertion that it does not matter whether (P3′) is true or not. I argue that it does matter whether (P3′) is true or not, but acknowledge that (P3′) is perhaps a slightly different principle than Cicero’s thesis. The upshot is that (P3′) seems to be a plausible principle, and that at least one part of paradox III in Cicero’s Paradoxa Stoicorum appears to be defensible. (shrink)

Margaret Archer and Pierre Bourdieu have advanced what seem at first sight to be incompatible theories of human agency. While Archer places heavy stress on conscious reflexive deliberation and the consequent choices of identity and projects that individuals make, Bourdieu's concept of habitus places equally heavy stress on the role of social conditioning in determining our behavior, and downplays the contribution of conscious deliberation. Despite this, I argue that these two approaches, with some modification, can be reconciled in a single (...) emergentist theory of human action that is sketched out in this article. It examines how human dispositions and our reflexive decisions are related to the determination of human action, linking dispositions and decisions to their neural base in human physiology and to the social factors that influence them. As a result, it argues, we can see human action as the outcome of a continuous interaction between dispositions and reflexivity. The article goes on to relate this explanation back to Bourdieu's concept of the habitus and Archer's account of reflexivity. It argues that the weaknesses in Bourdieu's theory of action can be resolved by a reasonable reinterpretation of the habitus that makes it consistent with the emergentist theory and creates space for human choices as well as social influences on our behavior. This opens up a role for the sort of reflexive deliberations advocated by Archer and thus to a reconciliation of the key contributions of both Archer and Bourdieu. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle claimed that intelligent actions and activities are not merely the external signs of inner mental workings but rather that such actions and activities are the workings of the mind itself. In this thesis I propose an interpretation and defence of sich claim, against a common an, in my view, mistaken way of understanding Ryle's position. In chapter [1]. I introduce the argumentative thread of this thesis and a more detailed overview of the chapters. In chapter [2], I criticise (...) Stanley and Williamson's understanding of Ryle's argument and position. In chapters [3]-[5] I examine Ryle's position and provide a way of understanding his view against what I take his main opponent, INTELLECTUALISM, to be. Chapter [6] offers an argument against INTELLECTUALISM as a way of motivating a Rylean account intelligent actions and activities. I conclude in chapter [7] with a response to purported counter-examples to the view I propose. (shrink)

This paper puts Jane Bennett’s vital materialism into dialogue with Luce Irigaray’s ontology of sexuate difference. Together these thinkers challenge the image of dead or intrinsically inanimate matter that is bound up with both the instrumentalization of the earth and the disavowal of sexual difference and the maternal. In its place they seek to affirm a vital, generative materiality: an ‘active matter’ whose differential becomings no longer oppose activity to passivity, subject to object, or one body, self or entity to (...) its ‘other’. For both thinkers, displacing the hylomorphic conceptual structures that have tended to dominate western metaphysical thought is inseparable from critiquing the model of the individual subject as bounded, autonomous and self-identical. Such individualism is countered by the relational ontologies figured in Bennett’s ‘distributed agencies’ and Irigaray’s ‘placental economy’, and by a shared attentiveness to the capacities of the human body to bear others within. Nonetheless, this paper argues that each thinker renders this ‘other within’ in very different ways. On the one hand, Bennett’s approach complements and expands Irigaray’s notion of the elemental by affording a greater attentiveness to inorganic and non-sexuate matters. On the other, Irigaray’s conception of generative relationality and the ontological priority of the in-between allows us to think such material entanglements in ways that more fully displace the twinned logics of individualism and instrumentalization. Her project thereby affirms the relational and irreducible differences on which the ‘vitality’ of a vital materiality depends. If there is no more “earth” to press down/repress, to work, to represent, but also and always to desire, no opaque matter which in theory does not know herself, then what pedestal remains for the ex-sistence of the “subject”? If the earth turned and more especially turned upon herself, the erection of the subject might thereby be disconcerted and risk losing its elevation and penetration. For what would there be to rise up from and exercise his power over? And in? Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman Jane Bennett has recently argued that “the image of dead or thoroughly instrumentalized matter feeds human hubris and our earth-destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption”, continuing that: “The figure of an intrinsically inanimate matter may be one of the impediments to the emergence of more ecological and more materially sustainable modes of production and consumption”.11J. Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010, ix. Henceforth VM. View all notes This insight is prefigured and re-affirmed by the work of Irigaray. Her sustained analysis of western thought and culture shows how its constitutive disavowal of sexual difference and the maternal is inextricably bound up with an equally deep-rooted disavowal of matter and corporeality. As the above passage from Speculum suggests,22L. Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. G. Gill, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, 133. Henceforth S. View all notes Irigaray seeks to expose woman's reduction to an object for a subject and a maternal-material resource for man's speculations; but in disentangling woman from her symbolic identification with the earth, she also seeks to release the earth from its identification with a passive and manipulable matter. Her work thus bears directly on the revaluation required to transform human beings' relations to materiality: both their own, and that of the earth they inhabit. At the centre of this revaluation is Irigaray's work to displace the image of dead or intrinsically inanimate matter that Bennett also critiques, and to affirm instead a sexuate materiality that is both living and generative. Her consistent troubling of hylomorphism is as unsettling for the subject as her question: “But what if the ‘object’ started to speak?” This question is echoed in Bennett's concern with “the moment when the object becomes the Other, when the sardine can looks back, when the mute idol speaks”.33 VM, 2, citing W.J.T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2005, 157. View all notes As this passage indicates, Bennett's own project is more concerned with the agency of non-human materialities – including their role in the constitution of the human – than with specifically sexed bodies or a materiality inflected by sexual difference. It is these crucial differences in emphasis, I will suggest, that allow the work of these two thinkers to be brought together in productive dialogue. On the one hand, Bennett's approach affords a greater attentiveness to inorganic and non-sexuate matter; on the other, Irigaray's twinned ontology of sexual difference and maternal relation is better able to affirm the relational differences on which the “vitality” of a vital materiality depends. The paper begins by outlining several key elements of Irigaray's philosophy of sexual difference to show how it leads necessarily to a rethinking of matter. This rethinking is especially helpful for shifting away from the hylomorphism that has been a dominant strand in western thought, informing an understanding of the earth as a fundamentally inert and ever-ready resource. As I will show, the figures through which Irigaray re-articulates female specificity also allow her to refigure the earth as active matter that “turns upon herself ” in generative flux. In the second section, I will situate Irigaray's re-thinking of matter in relation to Bennett's “vital materiality”.44Bennett can be aligned with a number of thinkers who have come to be grouped under the heading “new materialisms”. See S. Alaimo and S. Hekman, eds., Material Feminisms, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008; D. Coole and S. Frost, eds., New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. View all notes An advantage of this concept is that it refuses the separation between humans and matter still implicit in concepts such as “the environment”. By attending to “our own constitution as vital materiality”, as well as the ways our “own” bodies are never “fully or exclusively human”, Bennett adjusts the status of human actants while re-evaluating non-human bodies “as actants rather than as objects”. As I will show, her approach provides a constructive critical perspective on Irigaray's work by drawing attention to the specifically non-sexuate nature of the elemental. Equally, however, Irigaray's insistence on sexuate difference problematises any appeal to a generic notion of “the human”. This is especially helpful, I will suggest, in relation to contemporary descriptions of climate change as “anthropogenic”. By homogenising human beings, such descriptions make it more difficult to address the ways in which current ecological problems are inseparable from global patterns of social, political and economic inequity. For both thinkers, challenging hylomorphism needs to be matched with a critique of the dominant modern model of the subject as bounded, autonomous and self-identical. And for both, this model is displaced and undone by the capacity of the human body to bear others within, in ways that engender and sustain human life. Yet as I will discuss in the final two sections, each thinker renders this “other within” in very different ways, with significant implications for the ethics and politics of a “vital materiality”. In the end it is Irigaray's rendering of a distinctively female capacity to bear an other within, explored via the generative relationality of a placental economy, that more fully escapes the individualism of the One and the Same. Together, Irigaray and Bennett show that to take seriously the ecological crises that currently confront us means overcoming the disavowal of both human beings' own fundamental materiality and our dependency on the sustaining materialities of the earth. In contrast, a dominant strand in contemporary responses to these crises is an environmental politics of “enlightened self-interest”55I borrow this phrase from H. Kopnina's critical discussion in “Forsaking Nature? Contesting ‘Biodiversity’ Through Competing Discourses of Sustainability”, Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 7, no. 1 : 51–63. that precludes any serious re-evaluation of human beings' relations to matter and the earth. If human beings can be persuaded that current levels of environmental degradation are damaging to them, threatening perhaps their very survival, they are more likely to take decisive steps to alter their behaviour. Insofar as such approaches demand action only for the sake of human interests and ends, they are both anthropocentric and spring from the same instrumentalising rationality that has engendered the ecological crises we currently face. They may well be successful in prompting action. But by foregrounding the survival of “the human species” per se, such approaches foreclose discussion of whose interests are served if survival is all that is allowed to be at stake, and whose lives are thereby consigned to ongoing exploitation. Moreover, as I will argue below, the instrumental rationality that serves survival is at odds with an affirmation of life, as a becoming that depends on difference. With this in mind, I will problematise Bennett's proposed politics of “expanded self-interest”, while seeking to retain many of the insights her approach brings. To more fully displace the “rational” self-interest that has encouraged human exploitation of the earth, we might take up Bennett's “vital materiality” in ways informed by Irigaray's conception of generative difference and the relational space-time of the in-between. (shrink)

The article scrutinizes the impact of the 1968 student protests on architectural education and epistemology within the Italian and American context, the advocacy planning movement and the relationship of architecture and urban planning with the socio-political climate around 1968. It aims to demonstrate how the concepts of urban renewal and ‘nuova dimensione’ were progressively abandoned in the USA and Italy respectively. It presents how the critique of these concepts was related to the conviction that they were incompatible with socially effective (...) architecture and urban design approaches. The article sheds light on the complexity of the reorientations that took place in both contexts, taking into consideration the impact of student protests, and the 1968 Civil Rights Action the architects and urban planners’s task on the curricula of schools of architecture. It also investigates certain counter-events and counter-publications in the USA and Italy, shedding light on how they reinvented the relationship between architecture and democracy. It reveals the tensions between enhancing equality in planning process and local bureaucracy in the case of advocacy planning strategies. (shrink)

Respect for patient autonomy is a central principle of medical ethics. However, there are important unresolved questions about the characteristics of an autonomous decision, and whether some autonomous preferences should be subject to more scrutiny than others. In this paper, we consider whether _inappropriately adaptive preferences_—preferences that are based on and that may perpetuate social injustice—should be categorised as autonomous in a way that gives them normative authority. Some philosophers have argued that inappropriately adaptive preferences do not have normative authority, (...) because they are only a reflection of a person’s social context and not of their true self. Under this view, medical professionals who refuse to carry out actions which are based on inappropriately adaptive preferences are not in fact violating their patient’s autonomy. However, we argue that it is very difficult to articulate a systematic and principled distinction between normal autonomous preferences and inappropriately adaptive preferences, especially if this distinction needs to be useful for clinicians in real-life situations. This makes it difficult to argue that inappropriately adaptive preferences are straightforwardly non-autonomous. Given this problem, we argue that there are significant theoretical issues with contemporary understandings of autonomy in bioethics. We discuss what this might mean for the practice of medicine and for medical ethics education. (shrink)

In analyzing the development of the concept of civil rights since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, two historical accounts seem available. According to the first account, the concept initially encompassed a relatively limited set of rights, associated with the ability of all citizens to engage in the productive activities of the economy and avail themselves of the protection of the legal system. Then the concept gradually expanded to include what had initially been thought of as political rights, such as (...) the right to vote, and then to identify the entire set of rights to equal treatment in all domains of life outside a relatively narrowly-defined private sphere. According to the second account, the concept of civil rights was fuzzy from the outset; although political actors spoke as if they had a clear understanding of distinctions among civil, political, and social rights, close examination of their language shows that the distinctions tended to collapse under slight pressure. (shrink)

What do biologists mean when they say that to live is to react? Why was the termabreaction invented and later abandoned by the first generation of psychoanalysts? What is meant byreactionary politics? These are but a few of the questions the internationally renowned scholar JeanStarobinski answers in his conceptual history of the word pair, action and reaction.Not simply ahistory of ideas, Action and Reaction is also a semantic and philological history, a literaryhistory, a history of medicine, and a (...) history of the biological sciences. By concentrating on themoment when scientific language and ordinary language diverge, Starobinski uncovers a genealogy ofthe human and natural sciences through their usage of action and reaction as metaphors. Newton's law-- to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction -- becomes a point of departure for anexploration of the lexical and metaphorical traces left in its wake. Starobinski analyzes thescientific, literary, and political effects of the use of the terms action and reaction to describeand explain the material universe, the living body, historical events, and psychological behavior.In what he calls a "polyphonic score" -- a kind of mosaic -- he uses his subject to offer newinsights into the work of philosophers (Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Nietzsche, Jaspers), scientists(Newton, Bichat, Bernard, Bernheim, Freud), and writers (Diderot, Constant, Balzac, Poe, Valry).Ultimately, the book explores the power and danger of metaphorical language and questions theconvergence and collapse of scientific and moral explanations of the universe. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE QUEST FOR AN ADEQUATE PROPORTIONALIST THEORY OF VALUE RoNALD H. McKINNEY, S.J. U'IWversity of Scranton Scranton, Pennsylvania EDWARD VACEK shrewdly observes that proportionalism attempts to synthesize the crucial insights of both the teleologist and the deontologist.1 Indeed, Vacek provides a fine summary of this achievement. However, he reflects that the most underdeveloped feature of proportionalism is its value theory by which we are enabled to know how to (...) resolve conflict situations.2 Richard McCormick, among others, has attempted to meet this deficiency by ·adopting John Finnis' notion of associated basic goods. In this essay, I will show how such an ·approach fails to remain true to the basic aims of proportionalism. Nor should this come as a surprise, since Finnis is himself indebted to one of McCormick's archopponents, Germain Grisez. Moreover, I will attempt to outline the elements involved in a non-hierarchfoal theory of value which I will argue to be the only adequate alternative to McCormick 's attempted solution. Deontologists argue that certain acts are right or wrong regardless of the ·consequences. Proportionalists, however, are opposed to such notions as an " intrinsically evil " act or an "absolute" duty, since they recognize the existence of moral dilemmas. A moral dilemma arises whenever there is a situation in which pre-moral values •are in conflcit, i.e., whatever choice one makes will result in the omission or harm of one or other of the values at stake. According to the proportionl Edward Vacek, "Proportionalism: One View of the Debate," Theological Studies 46/2 (June, 1985), 289. 2 Va.eek, 302. 56 PROPORTIONALIST THEORY OF VALUE 57 alist reformulation of the principle of double effect, the permission or oausrution of ontic evil is not necessarily a moral evil as long as there is a proportionate reason justifying,such an action, e.g., when a father shoots an!intruder threatening to harm his family. McCormick's initial description of the requirements of proportionate reason [s ias follows: "a) a v1alue at least equal to that sacrificed is at 1 stake; b) there is no less harmful way of protecting ithe value here and now; c) the manner of its protection here and now will not undermine it in the long run." 8 McCormick argues that it simply will not do to claim that the ontic evil permitted or caused in a conflict situation is always only indirectly intended.4 For, in many instances, this simply is not true. Moreover, he would argue that to intend an end is not necess1arily to desire it as deontologists suppose. What justifies the ontic evil resulting from such actions, then, is solely the proportionate reason for which it is allowed or caused. There are some obvious criticisms that have been hurled at this proportionalist proposal for resolving conflict situations: I) that it leaves itself open to the practical, if not theoretical, difficulty of weighing different values;!2) that it results in the possibility of many resolutions that could go counter to our normal moral intuitions; 8) that there exists an inherent fallibility in the calcul,ation of long-range consequences; and 4) that this uncertainty might easliy promote an undesirable attitude of skeptical relativism. It is perhaps the onslaught of these and other criticisms which prompted McCormick to adopt Finnis' theory of associated basic goods. Lisa Cahill,argues that this new theory constitutes an "abandonment" of McCormick's prior proposal.5 To understand how this new theory leads to inevitable s Richard McCormick, ".Ambiguity in Moral Choice," Doing Evil To Achieve Good: Moral Choice in Oonfiict Situations, eds. R. McCormick and P. Ramsey (Chicago: Loyola U. Press, 1978), 45. 4 McCormick, 35-38. 5 Lisa Cahill, "Theology, Utilitarianism, and Christian Ethics," Theologica,I Studies 42/4 (Dec., 1981), 618-24. 58 RONALD H. MCKINNEY, S.J. inconsistency for McCormick, we must first examine Finnis' position itself. Finnis' Theory of Basic Goods By "value," Finnis refers to any " general form of good that oan be participated iin or realized in indefinitely many ways on indefinitely many occasions." 6 Basic values, moreover, refer to ·intrinsic goods that are desired for their own sake (NL, 62, 65). They are good not because they are... (shrink)

This paper interprets facts about actions and responsibility in terms of Kant’s category of the ‘intelligible,’ but is also broadly naturalistic in its approach. It analyses intelligible facts in terms of two elements, the institutional and the normative. First, I draw on John Searle’s account of institutional facts. Searle emphasises that neither the meaning of a word nor my possession of something is a matter of empirical facts concerning the entity itself. Instead, to understand the nature of such facts, we (...) must take account of people’s shared beliefs. Kant’s account of property relations can, in part, be understood as an institution in Searle’s sense. Drawing on the work of Tamar Schapiro and Arthur Ripstein, I extend this idea to illuminate our ‘ownership’ of our deeds. Second, and more briefly, I present a normative element. Institutional facts need not, in themselves, be morally compelling. Under conditions of relative freedom and equality, however, I argue that practices of responsibility can be seen as a practical manifestation of critique. This generates a critical self-reflexivity that, I suggest, provides normative warrant to the practices of action and responsibility that we institute among ourselves. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to consider whether, when, and why it is morally right to treat members of socially disadvantaged racial or ethnic groups favorably when allocating scarce medical resources. Since the COVID 2019 pandemic has had different impacts on racial and ethnic groups, some U.S. states have given racial and ethnic minorities preferential access to COVID-19 vaccines, leading to controversy over the moral and legal permissibility of doing so. I examine three arguments for affirmative action—the compensation, (...) equality-of-opportunity, and antidiscrimination arguments—and argue that both the equality-of-opportunity and antidiscrimination arguments have the potential to provide well-founded justification for race-based affirmative action for the allocation of scarce medical resources. I also consider further moral requirements that instances of affirmative action based on both or either of the two arguments should comply with for them to be justified. (shrink)

Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) discussed the main issues of the science of kalām in the first period and expressed his best views on these issues in response to the sects that he accepted as bid'ah (innovation). Later, kalām scholars tried to justify these views by using different arguments according to the changing conditions and time. Undoubtedly, one of the most important opinions that Abū Ḥanīfa expressed and passed on to the next generations from the perspective of the science of kalām (...) is those related to faith. In fact, faith is the strongest and most deep-rooted bond a believer establishes with his/her Creator. The individual shapes his world and the hereafter through this bond. On the other hand, faith is a phenomenon that does not contain doubt but carries certainty. In this respect, a person is included in the same category as a believer after she has firmly believed, and is called a believer or a Muslim, as the Qur'an puts it. Because no matter what race or color he is, he takes the same name because he believes in the same principles. Abū Ḥanīfa, who lived in a time when Muslims differed among themselves and differences of opinion increased, accepted faith as a common denominator by emphasizing the common values of Islam. Abū Ḥanīfa refers to this as "equality in faith". The issue of equality in faith, which is discussed as a result of the differentiation in matters related to the nature of faith, is shaped according to whether the action is counted as part of faith or not. Since Abū Ḥanīfa did not consider deeds a part of faith, so he advocated equality in faith. This view was adopted later by many scholars in the Māturīdī tradition. In the Hanafī-Māturīdī tradition, it can be said that the issue of equality in faith as well as issues such as confirmation and certainty in faith were shaped by the opinions of Abū Ḥanīfa. When equality in faith is accepted, one is not allowed to question the faith of another and say that his/her own faith is superior to the other because only God can know it. On the other hand, the understanding of equality in faith prevents external appearance and formalism from being decisive in one's religious life. Thus, a believer cannot accuse his brother who has deficiencies in his deeds but has faith of being infidel. When Abū Ḥanīfa's view of equality in faith is interpreted according to contemporary paradigms, his emphasis on human love, tolerance, and unity of the ummah, which has validity today, can clearly be observed. Therefore, it is seen that the reflection of a theological issue on social life is stressed in his opinion. This paper aims to study the issue of "equality in faith", one of the issues related to faith, and its reflection on social life by using the texts which are attributed to Abū Ḥanīfa. (shrink)

The suffering of womanhood and maltreatment are apparent when reading ancient writings. In Luke 13:10–17, it is possible to see how a number of women who suffered illnesses were treated in the hands of religious elites of the ancient world. However, the woman in Luke’s encounter with the Lukan Jesus during her illness redefined how religious leaders should deal with the suffering of womanhood. The woman was healed and treated with dignity by the Lukan Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. (...) Using socio-historical interpretation, the Lukan Jesus in the Gospel of Luke demonstrated that religion should be used to alleviate the suffering of women, not to exacerbate it. The lesson derived from the Lukan Jesus’ action and words on the suffering woman in Luke 13:12 is significant for the African religious setting in an endeavour to alleviate women’s suffering in Africa in the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic era.Contribution: This article adds to the ongoing discussion in biblical studies about gender equality, specifically in Africa where diseases such as COVID-19 have highlighted the need for change. It argues that African women should resist negative male dominance in society, similar to the woman in Luke, and work towards empowering women in Africa to achieve freedom and equality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:332 BOOK REVIEWS toral inventions (such as basic Christian communities), and the religious backgrounds of millions who help to make up the churches, Catholic and Protestant, of the United States. Providence College Providence, RI EDWARD L. CLEARY, O.P. Springs of Action: Understanding Intentional Behavior. By ALFRED R. MELE. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. 272 + ix. $39.95 (cloth). Alfred Mele's overarching aim in this (...) book is to offer an account of the role of intentions in the explanation of intentional action. He works within the familiar terms of causal theories of action, and is particularly indebted to Donald Davidson. In Part I, Mele borrows a set of theses from Davidson's desire/belief model of intentional action, and in the process of addressing problems associated with these theses, he progressively refines an account of action that understands an agent's reasons to have explanatory force by virtue of being among the causes of action. In Part II, Mele argues that desire/belief models are insufficient as they stand and need to be filled out by recognizing that intentions provide a crucial link between reasons and actions. The discussion begins with the vexed question of how the content of mental states can be relevant to the causal explanation of action. We constantly appeal to our desires, beliefs, plans, and so on (i.e., to various propositional, or intentional, attitudes) in explaining our behavior. But how does, say, my appetite for good wine and my belief that the house chardonnay is such a wine figure in the causal order that brings about my act of ordering a glass of it? Presumably, these intentional states supervene upon certain physical states of my body, and the latter do the causal work of producing wine-ordering behavior. However, there are good reasons to think that, with certain sorts of changes in my history and environment (viz., of the sort described in twin earth thought experiments), these physical states could be the realization of different intentional states. So can a causal theory of action actually accord my desires and beliefs any role in explaining my action? Mele argues that even if we hold (with externalists) that the agent's history and environment help to fix the content of her intentional states, we can nonetheless say that unless the agent had intended what she did, she would not have acted as she did. The behavior is intentional action by virtue of issuing (in the right way) from physical processes BOOK REVIEWS 333 that realize the agent's reasons for acting, and these processes realize these reasons only if the processes have an appropriate causal history. The result is that what we desire, believe, and intend does after all make a systematic difference in what we do. Mele makes some helpful refinements in the standard account of the causal role of desire in intentional action. It has typically been claimed that when an agent's wants compete, the "strongest" of them deter· mines the action; if an agent wants to do A more than anything else that she takes herself to be able to do, then if she acts intentionally she will do A. Mele points out that this general claim must be qualified so as to index desires to times, to accommodate both unsuccessful at· tempts and the agent's estimates of the likelihood of success, and to deal with the complex relations between desires. He explores the way in which agents are able to control the motivational strength of their desires, and he works out a definition of irresistible desire. One of the deepest challenges to the claim that action is caused by what we most desire arises in considering "motivational ties." How, on this account, is intentional action possible when we equally desire each of two incompatible alternatives? An arbitrary decision procedure can be adopted (e.g., a coin toss), but this alone does not en· hance the attractiveness of the randomly selected alternative. Here Mele introduces his thesis about intentions: viz., that intentions have an "executive quality that is not reducible to desire-strength" (p. 72), so that even when there is no preponderant motivation to do A... (shrink)

This monograph proposes a new way of implementing interaction in logic. It also provides an elementary introduction to Constructive Type Theory. The authors equally emphasize basic ideas and finer technical details. In addition, many worked out exercises and examples will help readers to better understand the concepts under discussion. One of the chief ideas animating this study is that the dialogical understanding of definitional equality and its execution provide both a simple and a direct way of implementing the CTT (...) approach within a game-theoretical conception of meaning. In addition, the importance of the play level over the strategy level is stressed, binding together the matter of execution with that of equality and the finitary perspective on games constituting meaning. According to this perspective the emergence of concepts are not only games of giving and asking for reasons, they are also games that include moves establishing how it is that the reasons brought forward accomplish their explicative task. Thus, immanent reasoning games are dialogical games of Why and How. (shrink)