The Farm Animal Welfare Council’s concept of a Good Life gives an idea of an animal’s quality of life that is over and above that of a mere life worth living. The concept needs explanation and clarification, in order to be meaningful, particularly for consumers who purchase farm animal produce. The concept could allow assurance schemes to apply the label to assessments of both the potential of each method of production, conceptualised in ways expected to enhance consumers’ engagement such as (...) ‘naturalness’ and ‘freedom’; and the concept of a life worth living as a safeguard threshold below which no animal’s actual welfare should fall, based on each animal’s overall affective states. This may provide a framework for development of the Good Life concept, within scientific and sociological fields, in order to allow reliable and influential use by assessors, consumers and retailers. (shrink)

Animals are usually considered to lack the status of autonomous agents. Nevertheless, they do appear to make ostensible choices. This article considers whether, and how, I should respect animals' choices. I propose a concept of volitionality which can be respected if, and insofar as, doing so is in the best interests of the animal. Applying that concept, I will argue that an animals' choices be respected when the relevant human decision maker's capacities to decide are potentially challenged or compromised. For (...) example, it will be best to respect the animals' choice when the human decision maker: lacks accurate knowledge of the animal's subjective experiences; does not know what will lead to desirable experiences or allow for the avoidance of undesirable ones; is biased; is less aware of the animal's specific situation; cannot appreciate all elements comprehensively, including considering any value to the animal being allowed to make and implement a choice, such as where a lack of control or liberty would be unpleasant or where an animal would usefully learn from the process of choice-making; and when the animal's choice is achievable. This additionally suggests that we may often beneficially choose to set up situations that empower animals to make better choices. (shrink)

Profit is a concept that both causes and manifests deep conflict and division. It is not merely that people disagree over whether it is good or bad. The very meaning of the concept and its role in competing theories necessitates the deepest possible disagreement; people cannot agree on what profit is. Still, simply learning the starkly different sentiments expressed about profit gives us some feel for the depth of the conflict. Friends of capitalism have praised profit as central to the (...) achievement of prosperity and to civilized modern life. Calvin Coolidge, that silent sentinel of American business, said, “Profit and civilization go hand in hand.” F. A. Hayek tells us that in the evolution of the structure of human activities, profitability works as a signal that guides selection towards what makes man more fruitful; only what is more profitable will, as a rule, nourish more people, for it sacrifices less than it adds. (shrink)

The United States has never been culturally or religiously homogeneous, but its diversity has greatly increased over the last century. Although the U.S. was first a multicultural nation through conquest and enslavement, its present diversity is due equally to immigration. In this paper I try to explain the difference it makes for one area of thought and policy – equal opportunity – if we incorporate cultural and religious pluralism into our national self-image. Formulating and implementing a policy of equal opportunity (...) is more difficult in diverse, pluralistic countries than it is in homogeneous ones. My focus is cultural and religious diversity in the United States, but my conclusions will apply to many other countries – including ones whose pluralism is found more in religion than in culture. (shrink)

This fully revised and extended edition of James Nickel's classic study explains and defends the conception of human rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent human rights treaties. Combining philosophical, legal, and political approaches, Nickel addresses questions about what human rights are, what their content should be, and whether and how they can be justified.

What do the rules of logic say about the meanings of the symbols they govern? In this book, James W. Garson examines the inferential behaviour of logical connectives, whose behaviour is defined by strict rules, and proves definitive results concerning exactly what those rules express about connective truth conditions. He explores the ways in which, depending on circumstances, a system of rules may provide no interpretation of a connective at all, or the interpretation we ordinarily expect for it, or (...) an unfamiliar or novel interpretation. He also shows how the novel interpretations thus generated may be used to help analyse philosophical problems such as vagueness and the open future. His book will be valuable for graduates and specialists in logic, philosophy of logic, and philosophy of language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Karl Barth and Christian Ethics: Living in Truth by William WerpehowskiJames W. SkillenKarl Barth and Christian Ethics: Living in Truth William Werpehowski BURLINGTON, VT: ASHGATE, 2014. 172 PP. $54.95 (PAPERBACK), $153.00 (CLOTH)In this two-part volume, William Werpehowski aims in part 1 to elucidate Karl Barth's "approach to the nature and source of the good, the divine command in its relation to the personal history of a moral agent, (...) and the place of narrative in Christian ethics" (xii). The author does this both by exposition of Barth's writings and by engaging with the arguments of other students of Barth, including James Gustafson, Stanley Hauerwas, John Webster, Matthew Rose, and Gerald McKenny. The titles of the chapters of part 1 indicate the ground being covered: "Divine Commands and Philosophical Dilemmas," "Command and History," "Narrative and Ethics," and "Realism and Discernment." In part 2 the author presents diverse essays on "virtue, moral practices, and discernment," most of which deal with the rearing and education of children, which shows the author's sympathy with Barth even as he draws on other traditions of Christian ethics.Werpehowski's exposition is generally clear and detailed as he seeks to explain and defend Barth's identification of the norm for human ethics with the subject, Jesus Christ. According to Barth, "humanity's obedience to God … must always be obedience to and conformity with Jesus Christ. He is the criterion by which is measured all demands on our behavior" (6). Furthermore, "God's eternal will is for humanity in Jesus Christ; the normative criterion is identical to God's will and the history it accomplishes" (7). Although the response to God's electing love in Christ should be willing obedience, Barth (with Werpehowski) does not deal substantively with the accountability of those who do not so respond. In the end, for Barth, God's "Yes" in Christ always trumps God's "No" to sin (see 65–69).At times the author's defense of Barth appears to be more a deflection of, than an engagement with, the criticism. One example: the author offers a brief summary of Nigel Biggar's sympathetic criticism of Barth at the point where he believes Barth deals inadequately with human responsibility and accountability. Werpehowski acknowledges the legitimacy of Biggar's point—"that the temporal world of eternal grace may be depicted as our one common world only if creaturely rationality and non-arbitrary moral justification are prominently affirmed" (63); he states that Biggar is trying to save Barth "at his best" from a weakness in his position. Yet Werpehowski's next step is to say that Biggar's correction "is in danger of being an overcorrection" because his [End Page 212] moral justification requirement "belongs more to the periphery of the ethics of [Barth's] divine command" (64). That requirement, says Werpehowski, "must be governed by the central significance of the gracious God who commands in the reality of the ethical event" (64).Werpehowski's book is worthy of careful study, especially by those who want to understand Barth in relation to other ethicists. A criticism I have concerns the limits of Barth's ethics with respect to human institutions and social practices for which humans bear communal responsibility. Werpehowski acknowledges that those limits are due to Barth's focus on the relation of Christ to the individual person in the "ethical event." By contrast, at a few points in part 2, Werpehowski draws in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who insists that it is in "friendships, families, work, citizenship, and life in the church" where Christ is present preserving and reconciling the world to God (141). Despite all the attention in recent decades to Christian social and political ethics, the author does little with that subject in either his assessment of Barth or in the chapters of part 2.James W. SkillenPresident (retired), Center for Public JusticeCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

It is nearly 10 years since Patrick Haggard and colleagues first reported the ‘intentional binding’ effect . The intentional binding effect refers to the subjective compression of the temporal interval between a voluntary action and its external sensory consequence. Since the first report, considerable interest has been generated and a fascinating array of studies has accumulated. Much of the interest in intentional binding comes from the promise to shed light on human agency. In this review we survey studies on intentional (...) binding, focusing, in particular, on the link between intentional binding and the sense of agency . We suggest that, whilst it is yet to be fully explicated, the link between intentional binding and the sense of agency is compelling. We conclude by considering outstanding questions and future directions for research on intentional binding. (shrink)

Designed for use by philosophy students, this book provides an accessible, yet technically sound treatment of modal logic and its philosophical applications. Every effort has been made to simplify the presentation by using diagrams in place of more complex mathematical apparatus. These and other innovations provide philosophers with easy access to a rich variety of topics in modal logic, including a full coverage of quantified modal logic, non-rigid designators, definite descriptions, and the de-re de-dictio distinction. Discussion of philosophical issues concerning (...) the development of modal logic is woven into the text. The book uses natural deduction systems and also includes a diagram technique that extends the method of truth trees to modal logic. This feature provides a foundation for a novel method for showing completeness, one that is easy to extend to systems that include quantifiers. (shrink)

At present, Third World countries owe over one trillion dollars to the developed Western nations; much of the debt is held by the leading international commercial banks. The debt of six Latin American countries alone — Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela — is over $330 billion, of which $240 billion is owed to commercial banks. Let us immediately narrow our focus to loans made by the major international commercial banks to Third World governments. We shall not be concerned (...) with government-to-government loans, or private-party-to-private-party loans, or with debt owed to the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. The bank-to-government loans — the so-called “sovereign loans” — are the most economically troublesome and morally interesting. The largest lenders, at least with respect to the Latin American countries, are the American banks Citibank, Chase Manhattan, Bank of America, Manufacturers Hanover, and Chemical Bank. About fifteen Third World countries have serious debt problems, including the largest: Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. (shrink)

For more than forty years, The Universe Next Door has set the standard for an introduction to worldviews. This sixth edition uses James Sire's widely influential model of eight basic worldview questions to examine prominent worldviews that have shaped the Western world, critiquing each worldview within its own frame of reference and in comparison to others.

The concept of hegemonic masculinity has influenced gender studies across many academic fields but has also attracted serious criticism. The authors trace the origin of the concept in a convergence of ideas in the early 1980s and map the ways it was applied when research on men and masculinities expanded. Evaluating the principal criticisms, the authors defend the underlying concept of masculinity, which in most research use is neither reified nor essentialist. However, the criticism of trait models of gender and (...) rigid typologies is sound. The treatment of the subject in research on hegemonic masculinity can be improved with the aid of recent psychological models, although limits to discursive flexibility must be recognized. The concept of hegemonic masculinity does not equate to a model of social reproduction; we need to recognize social struggles in which subordinated masculinities influence dominant forms. Finally, the authors review what has been confirmed from early formulations and what needs to be discarded. The authors suggest reformulation of the concept in four areas: a more complex model of gender hierarchy, emphasizing the agency of women; explicit recognition of the geography of masculinities, emphasizing the interplay among local, regional, and global levels; a more specific treatment of embodiment in contexts of privilege and power; and a stronger emphasis on the dynamics of hegemonic masculinity, recognizing internal contradictions and the possibilities of movement toward gender democracy. (shrink)

This book on modal logic is especially designed for philosophy students. It provides an accessible yet technically sound treatment of modal logic and its philosophical applications. Every effort is made to simplify the presentation by using diagrams instead of more complex mathematical apparatus. These and other innovations provide philosophers with easy access to a rich variety of topics in modal logic, including a full coverage of quantified modal logic, non-rigid designators, definite descriptions, and the de-re de-dicto distinction. Discussion of philosophical (...) issues concerning the development of modal logic is woven into the text. The book uses natural deduction systems, which are widely regarded as the easiest to teach and use. It also includes a diagram technique that extends the method of truth trees to modal logic. This provides a foundation for a novel method for showing completeness that is easy to extend to quantifiers. This second edition contains a new chapter on logics of conditionals, an updated and expanded bibliography, and is updated throughout. (shrink)

According to a traditional view, scientific laws and theories constitute algorithmic compressions of empirical data sets collected from observations and measurements. This article defends the thesis that, to the contrary, empirical data sets are algorithmically incompressible. The reason is that individual data points are determined partly by perturbations, or causal factors that cannot be reduced to any pattern. If empirical data sets are incompressible, then they exhibit maximal algorithmic complexity, maximal entropy and zero redundancy. They are therefore maximally efficient carriers (...) of information about the world. Since, on algorithmic information theory, a string is algorithmically random just if it is incompressible, the thesis entails that empirical data sets consist of algorithmically random strings of digits. Rather than constituting compressions of empirical data, scientific laws and theories pick out patterns that data sets exhibit with a certain noise.Author Keywords: Algorithmic randomness; Compression; Empirical data; Information; Law; Pattern. (shrink)

William James and Education is a dynamic collection of original essays spotlighting William James as a role model for bringing philosophy to bear on the persistent issues of life and education. Using James's philosophical ideas, the contributors evade the polarization and superficiality that permeate the debate around such educational issues as standards versus diversity, cultural consensus versus multiculturalism, religion versus science, and individual freedom versus social determinism. The result is a synthetic collection of essays offering original, unique, (...) and useful insights. One of the most influential of American philosophers, William James is relevant today because he provides a way of understanding human behavior that is both rigorous and humane. James shows how we may soften and sometimes harmonize rigid ideological divisions, such as those plaguing contemporary education, with a pragmatic approach to issues of theory and practice. By reconsidering some of the roots of American thought in James's work, this volume points the way to valuing both uniqueness and universality, among other seemingly opposing concerns. The result is a lively weave of historical and contemporary thought, providing philosophical perspectives on the critical issues facing educators today. (shrink)

Preface to the fifth edition -- A world of difference -- A universe charged with the grandeur of God : Christian theism -- The clockwork universe : deism -- The silence of finite space : naturalism -- Zero point : nihilism -- Beyond nihilism : existentialism -- Journey to the east : eastern pantheistic monism -- A separate universe : the New Age spirituality without religion -- The vanished horizon : postmodernism -- A view from the Middle East : Islamic (...) theism -- The examined life. (shrink)

The experience of causation is a pervasive product of the human mind. Moreover, the experience of causing an event alters subjective time: actions are perceived as temporally shifted towards their effects [Haggard, P., Clark, S., & Kalogeras, J.. Voluntary action and conscious awareness. Nature Neuroscience, 5, 382-385]. This temporal shift depends partly on advance prediction of the effects of action, and partly on inferential "postdictive" explanations of sensory effects of action. We investigated whether a single factor of statistical contingency could (...) explain both these aspects of causal experience. We studied the time at which people perceived a simple manual action to occur, when statistical contingency indicated a causal relation between action and effect, and when no such relation was indicated. Both predictive and inferential "postdictive" shifts in the time of action depended on strong contingency between action and effect. The experience of agency involves a process of causal learning based on statistical contingency. (shrink)

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 49, Issue 4, Page 768-792, December 2021.

One thing that would profit both the frustrated readers of Sellars and Sellars himself would be a careful attempt to explicate and evaluate critically the many interrelated theses stated and defended by Sellars. But, so far as I know, there has been little work of this kind done. I know only of two fine reviews by Keith Lehrer and Gilbert Harman, and a very helpful expository article by Richard Bernstein that deal directly and in some detail with Sellars' work. This (...) is not to mention, however, the many philosophers, including myself, who have been influenced by his work. What I believe would be most helpful at this point would be a critique of some central thesis in Sellars' work, that is, an attempt to raise objections to this thesis and to refute the replies that can be anticipated, based upon other of Sellars' claims. This is what I shall try to do in this paper. My hope is that it will further the understanding of his complex philosophy, and help carry forward discussion of the philosophical issues involved. (shrink)

Given the recent ethics scandals in the United States, there has been a renewed focus on understanding the antecedents to ethical decision-making in the research literature. Since ethical norms and standards of behavior are not universally consistent, an individual’s choice of referent may exert a large influence on his/her ethical decision-making. This study used a social identity theory lens to empirically examine the relative influence of the macro- and micro-level variables of national culture and peers on an individual’s intention to (...) behave ethically. Our sample consisted of respondents from Germany, Italy, and Japan. The results indicated that both national culture and peers were found to act as significant referents in ethical decision-making dilemmas. Although peers exerted a much stronger influence on an individual’s ethical decision-making, the impact of peers varied depending on the national culture levels of individualism and power distance. (shrink)

Most important, James W. Walters compares and contrasts Buber's and feminism's personalist ethics in light of two considerations: the lack of attention by ...

Nevertheless, despite whatever optimism about the future unification of sciences is justified, there are now, as there have been for centuries, difficult problems confronting the materialist. Perhaps the crucial problem concerns the status of sensations, a problem clearly evident as far back as Hobbes who said that sense is "some internal motion in the sentient, generated by some internal motion, of the parts of the object, and propagated through all the media to the innermost part of the organ." Here Hobbes (...) reduces sense to physical motion. But he is also found to say that sense is not motion, but "in all cases, is nothing else but original fancy," or, he says elsewhere, "phantasms" caused by internal motions. He is then directly faced with the problem of reconciling appearances and sensations with his avowed materialism. Neither Hobbes nor any one else has solved this problem, although there have recently been some novel and instructive attempts to do so. (shrink)

Behavior genetics is a controversial science. For decades, scholars have sought to understand the role of heredity in human behavior and life-course outcomes. Recently, technological advances and the rapid expansion of genomic databases have facilitated the discovery of genes associated with human phenotypes such as educational attainment and substance use disorders. To maximize the potential of this flourishing science, and to minimize potential harms, careful analysis of what it would mean for genes to be causes of human behavior is needed. (...) In this paper, we advance a framework for identifying instances of genetic causes, interpreting those causal relationships, and applying them to advance causal knowledge more generally in the social sciences. Central to thinking about genes as causes is counterfactual reasoning, the cornerstone of causal thinking in statistics, medicine, and philosophy. We argue that within-family genetic effects represent the product of a counterfactual comparison in the same way as average treatment effects (ATEs) from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Both ATEs from RCTs and within-family genetic effects are shallow causes: They operate within intricate causal systems (non-unitary), produce heterogeneous effects across individuals (non-uniform), and are not mechanistically informative (non-explanatory). Despite these limitations, shallow causal knowledge can be used to improve understanding of the etiology of human behavior and to explore sources of heterogeneity and fade-out in treatment effects. (shrink)

TheJournal of Religious Ethicshas published only two full‐length articles focusing on American Indian religious ethics in the last decade. This may signal that the field is uneasy about integrating American Indian religious ethics into its broader discourse. To fill this research lacuna and take a step toward normalizing religious‐ethical engagement with American Indian ethics, this article argues that the field needs an intentionally anticolonial, self‐aware approach to understanding American Indian religious ethics—one that decenters methods and approaches that may facilitate the (...) analysis of Christian texts, groups, and phenomena, yet limit insights into the religious‐moral beliefs and practices of Native Americans. The article first shows examples of how religious‐ethical methods, definitions, and epistemological starting points can obfuscate rich and accurate understandings of Native American religious‐ethical systems and phenomena. Next, it turns to historical and anthropological studies and Native American philosophy and ethics to outline an interdisciplinary framework for integrating American Indian traditions into the discourses of religious ethics. (shrink)

For many years there has been a debate about the role of the parietal lobe in the generation of behavior. Does it generate movement plans (intention) or choose objects in the environment for further processing? To answer this, we focus on the lateral intraparietal area (LIP), an area that has been shown to play independent roles in target selection for saccades and the generation of visual attention. Based on results from a variety of tasks, we propose that LIP acts as (...) a priority map in which objects are represented by activity proportional to their behavioral priority. We present evidence to show that the priority map combines bottom-up inputs like a rapid visual response with an array of top-down signals like a saccade plan. The spatial location representing the peak of the map is used by the oculomotor system to target saccades and by the visual system to guide visual attention. (shrink)

It is commonly asserted that “death is not a welfare issue” and this has been reflected in welfare legislation and policy in many countries. However, this creates a conflict for many who consider animal welfare to be an appropriate basis for decision-making in animal ethics but also consider that an animal’s death is ethically significant. To reconcile these viewpoints, this paper attempts to formulate an account of death as a welfare issue. Welfare issues are issues that refer to evaluations concerning (...) an animal’s interests. This includes evaluations that refer only to comparisons between the presence and absence of states, including positive states. This means that an animal’s death may be a welfare issue insofar as it leads to the exclusion of relevant positive states. This allows us to deny that death is necessarily not a welfare issue. (shrink)

This article uses the case of “social impact bonds” (SIBs) to explore the role of social science methods in new markets in “social investment.” Pioneered in the UK in 2010, SIBs use private capital to fund social programs with governments paying returns for successful outcomes. Central to the SIB model is the question of evaluation and the method to be used in determining program outcomes and investor returns. In the United States, the randomized controlled trial (RCT) has been the dominant (...) method. However, this has not been without controversy. Some SIB practitioners and investors have argued that, while this may be the perfect tool, the need to grow the SIB market demands a more pragmatic approach. Drawing from a three-year study of SIBs, and informed by Science and Technology Studies (STS)-inspired work on valuation and the social life of methods, the article explores RCTs as both a valuation technology central to SIB design and the object of a micropolitics of valuation which has impeded market growth. It is the relationship between, and the politics of, evaluation and valuation that is a key lesson of the SIB experiment and an important insight for future research on “social investment” and other settings where methods are constitutive of financial value. (shrink)

Designed for use by philosophy students, this 2006 book provides an accessible, yet technically sound treatment of modal logic and its philosophical applications. Every effort has been made to simplify the presentation by using diagrams in place of more complex mathematical apparatus. These and other innovations provide philosophers with easy access to a rich variety of topics in modal logic, including a full coverage of quantified modal logic, non-rigid designators, definite descriptions, and the de-re de-dictio distinction. Discussion of philosophical issues (...) concerning the development of modal logic is woven into the text. The book uses natural deduction systems and also includes a diagram technique that extends the method of truth trees to modal logic. This feature provides a foundation for a novel method for showing completeness, one that is easy to extend to systems that include quantifiers. (shrink)

Herman Dooyeweerd writes that “the idea of cosmic time constitutes the basis of the philosophical theory of reality in [A New Critique of Theoretical Thought].” My aim is to present and defend the hypothesis that Dooyeweerd’s idea of time is, in part, mistaken at its foundation. His idea of a cosmic temporal coherence of diverse modal aspects arose from the absolutization of a concept of temporal universality that he adopted uncritically as the transcendental basic Idea of cosmic time. My immanent-critical (...) assessment leads to the hypothesis that temporality should be recognized as the first modal aspect, which, for Dooyeweerd, has been lost to view. Recovering both the sphere sovereignty of the temporal aspect and the equal universality of all aspects opens the way to a resolution of Dooyeweerd’s temporal/supratemporal dialectic and to a new perspective on naive experience and the meaning of humans as God’s image. (shrink)