Correspondence to: John Harris The Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, Institute of Medicine Law and Bioethics, School of Law, University of Manchester, Williamson Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 0JH, UK; john.m.harris@man.ac.ukClaxton and Culyer1 have written an interesting and considered response, as people intimately connected to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence , to the two editorials that I wrote on recent NICE decisions. Before commenting on their response, I would like to consider a point they (...) made, which echoes a point already made by Rawlins and Dillon,2 about the tone of my editorials. Claxton and Culyer accuse me of making “personally abusive charges”. In my original editorial, I criticised an institution, NICE, in robust terms, but in doing so I was continuing a long and respected tradition in English philosophy. Consider the following extract from Jeremy Bentham:" In English law, fiction is a syphilis, which runs in every vein, and carries into every part of the system the principle of rottenness...Fiction of use to justice? Exactly as swindling is to trade...It affords presumptive and conclusive evidence of moral turpitude in those by whom it was invented and first employed.3"My remarks were not an ad hominem criticism of anyone but directed at the published, but anonymous statements of an institution—a body corporate. In robustly criticising NICE, I no more attacked any individual associated with NICE than I attacked Tony Blair or the various ministers of state who are ultimately responsible for NICE. And, contra Claxton and Culyer’s claims, I have not denigrated the views of people who beg to differ from me.i If the apologists for NICE, whether they are Tony Culyer or Tony Blair, choose to identify themselves with criticism of NICE, that is entirely a matter for them. The only ad hominem remarks in this entire exchange have been made by Rawlins and Dillon, and Claxton and Culyer. The idea that criticism of the anonymously authored publications of …. (shrink)

This review essay discusses three recent books on the Green New Deal, written, respectively, by Naomi Klein, Jeremy Rifkin, and Kate Aronoff and a few other democratic socialists. It argues that the New Deal offers a better model of how to envision the change required for deep carbonization than the vision of war mobilization after Pearl Harbor since it emphasizes not only the need for massive introduction of green technology but also the importance of broad social change constituting a (...) just transition. The essay argues that the GND should be placed in a global context so that the adoption of the GND in the Global North would lead to much greater funding of green developments in the less industrialized countries of the Global South. (shrink)

Bestselling author Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith-that a moral system cannot be based on science.

We argue, contrary to epistemological orthodoxy, that knowledge is not purely epistemic—that knowledge is not simply a matter of truth‐related factors (evidence, reliability, etc.). We do this by arguing for a pragmatic condition on knowledge, KA: if a subject knows that p, then she is rational to act as if p. KA, together with fallibilism, entails that knowledge is not purely epistemic. We support KA by appealing to the role of knowledge‐citations in defending and criticizing actions, and by giving a (...) principled argument for KA, based on the inference rule KB: if a subject knows that A is the best thing she can do, she is rational to do A. In the second half of the paper, we consider and reject the two most promising objections to our case for KA, one based on the Gricean notion of conversational implicature and the other based on a contextualist maneuver. (shrink)

In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that free will is an illusion but that this truth should not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom; indeed, this truth can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have gained a degree of prominence across recent moral enhancement literature as a possible intervention for dealing with antisocial and aggressive impulses. This is due to serotonin's purported capacity to modulate persons’ averseness to harm. The aim of this article is to argue that the use of SSRIs is not something worth getting particularly excited about as a practicable intervention for moral enhancement purposes, and that the generally uncritical enthusiasm over serotonin's potential as a moral (...) enhancer is a consequence of the paucity of viable options for envisaging practicable moral enhancement interventions. While there are many conceptual issues raised by the idea of moral enhancement generally, and by the idea of serotonin as a morally affective agent, the aim here is to look at practical concerns. It is argued that SSRIs do not, nor cannot in the reasonably foreseeable future, be made to work as a reliably safe or reliably effective means for moral enhancement, even within the very limited remit of treating “reactive” aggression. SSRIs might be effective as a limited and partial mental health intervention (even this is questionable), but not as a generally effective moral enhancement technology. (shrink)

Knowing how to be good, or knowing how to go about trying to be good, is of immense theoretical and practical importance. And what goes for trying to be good oneself, goes also for trying to provide others with ways of being good, and for trying to make them good whether they like it or not. This is what is meant by 'moral enhancement'. John Harris explores the many proposed methodologies or technologies for moral enhancement: traditional ones like good (...) parenting and education; newer ones like chemical or biological intervention; modifying the environment to make bad outcomes of all sorts less likely; experimentation with political and social systems. The issue of whether and to what extent moral enhancement is possible is the subject of this book. (shrink)

We introduce a St. Petersburg-like game, which we call the ‘Pasadena game’, in which we toss a coin until it lands heads for the first time. Your pay-offs grow without bound, and alternate in sign (rewards alternate with penalties). The expectation of the game is a conditionally convergent series. As such, its terms can be rearranged to yield any sum whatsoever, including positive infinity and negative infinity. Thus, we can apparently make the game seem as desirable or undesirable as we (...) want, simply by reordering the pay-off table, yet the game remains unchanged throughout. Formally speaking, the expectation does not exist; but we contend that this presents a serious problem for decision theory, since it goes silent when we want it to speak. We argue that the Pasadena game is more paradoxical than the St. Petersburg game in several respects. We give a brief review of the relevant mathematics of infinite series. We then consider and rebut a number of replies to our paradox: that there is a privileged ordering to the expectation series; that decision theory should be restricted to finite state spaces; and that it should be restricted to bounded utility functions. We conclude that the paradox remains live. (shrink)

In this retitled and revised version of Harris's original text Wonderwoman and Superman, the author discusses the ethics of human biotechnology and its implications relative to human evolution and destiny.

Since the birth of the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1977, we have seen truly remarkable advances in biotechnology. We can now screen the fetus for Down Syndrome, Spina Bifida, and a wide range of genetic disorders. We can rearrange genes in DNA chains and redirect the evolution of species. We can record an individual's genetic fingerprint. And we can potentially insert genes into human DNA that will produce physical warning signs of cancer, allowing early detection. In fact, biotechnology (...) has progressed to such a point that virtually any kind of genetic manipulation, if not already possible, is just around the corner. But these breakthroughs also raise serious ethical and moral dilemmas that we are only now beginning to confront. In Wonderwoman and Superman, noted medical ethicist John Harris offers the first thorough analysis of the moral dilemmas created by the revolution in molecular biology. Covering a wide array of recent innovations, Harris discusses, for example, the moral decisions involved and the consequences of creating egg and embryo banks. Who should be allowed to use such resources? Should recipients be screened? Should such banks be open for public or private use? And does it cheapen life to make embryos available for sale? In another chapter, Harris examines the question of conceiving children chiefly for organ donation, focusing on the recent case of a woman who wanted to have a second child to provide a bone marrow donor for her first child sick with leukemia (she intended to abort the fetus if its bone marrow did not genetically match that of her living child). In this case, the medical staff had to decide whether they should perform in-vitro fertilization, knowing that the mother did not satisfy the clinic's criteria (there was no father), and also knowing the potential for abortion. Discussing the ethics of the mother's choice and the clinic's choice, Harris asks whether it is morally correct to create a child as an organ donor, whether the future child would suffer, whether it is worth any suffering to be born, and who has the right to weigh the various factors (both moral and physiological) involved in making these decisions. Delving into a multitude of issues such as when life begins, when suffering is needless, and whether we should play God, Wonderwoman and Superman provides not only a thought-provoking inquiry into the potential and actual ethical dilemmas created by the many advances in biotechnology, but challenges us to learn to choose responsibly and to face the moral implications of the choices that confront us. (shrink)

Bioethicists invoke a duty to rescue in a wide range of cases. Indeed, arguably, there exists an entire medical paradigm whereby vast numbers of medical encounters are treated as rescue cases. The intuitive power of the rescue paradigm is considerable, but much of this power stems from the problematic way that rescue cases are conceptualized—namely, as random, unanticipated, unavoidable, interpersonal events for which context is irrelevant and beneficence is the paramount value. In this article, I critique the basic assumptions of (...) the rescue paradigm, reframe the ethical landscape in which rescue obligations are understood, and defend the necessity and value of a wider social and institutional view. Along the way, I move back and forth between ethical theory and a concrete case where the duty to rescue has been problematically applied: the purported duty to regularly return incidental findings and individual research results in genomic and genetic research. (shrink)

This study examines the ethical values of respondents by level in the organizational hierarchy of a single firm. It also explores the possible impacts of gender, education and years of experience on respondents' values as well as their perceptions of how the organization and professional associations influence their personal values. Results showed that, although there were differences in individuals' ethical values by hierarchical level, significantly more differences were observed by the length of tenure with the organization. While respondents, as a (...) whole, were rather ambivalent in their perception of the organization's and professional associations' influence on their values, sales/service persons frequently felt pressured to modify their values in order to achieve company goals. (shrink)

Harris proposes a new theory of communication, beginning with the premise that the mental life of an individual should be conceived of as a continuous attempt to integrate the present with the past and future.

In this paper, we offer a brief, critical survey of contemporary work on truth. We begin by reflecting on the distinction between substantivist and deflationary truth theories. We then turn to three new kinds of truth theory—Kevin Scharp's replacement theory, John MacFarlane's relativism, and the alethic pluralism pioneered by Michael Lynch and Crispin Wright. We argue that despite their considerable differences, these theories exhibit a common "pluralizing tendency" with respect to truth. In the final section, we look at the underinvestigated (...) interface between metaphysical and formal truth theories, pointing to several promising questions that arise here. (shrink)

The eighteenth century was a time of brilliant philosophical innovation in Britain. In Of Liberty and Necessity James A. Harris presents the first comprehensive account of the period's discussion of what remains a central problem of philosophy, the question of the freedom of the will. He offers new interpretations of contributions to the free will debate made by canonical figures such as Locke, Hume, Edwards, and Reid, and also discusses in detail the arguments of some less familiar writers. (...) class='Hi'>Harris puts the eighteenth-century debate about the will and its freedom in the context of the period's concern with applying what Hume calls the "experimental method of reasoning" to the human mind. His book will be of substantial interest to historians of philosophy and anyone concerned with the free will problem. (shrink)

The article explores an aspect of spiritual intelligence characterized as a lifelong search for meaning. Slow knowing involves wrestling with perplexity. Periods of such tarrying gradually facilitate an unfolding of meaning. More than just the content of one's knowledge, it is the relationship, the how or manner of one's relationship with meaning that grounds the spiritual generativity of the seeking. Slow knowing is presented as an existential orientation, a lifelong process akin to ongoing conversion. Part 1 distinguishes such slow knowing (...) from other senses of slow in current discourse (Kahneman's fast/slow thinking framework, and meditative concepts of slow mind). Part 2 explores slow knowing through the lenses of lectio divina and the use of metaphor in religious language. Slow knowing is characterized as having both individual and social dimensions. The article concludes with the concern that the conditions needed for slow knowing—and thus for spiritual intelligence—are undermined by the hasty pace of contemporary life. (shrink)

The article explores the interaction of verbal and nonverbal semantic levels in the performance of Christian ritual. The article maps the distinction between theoretical and performative knowledge onto Barnard and Teasdale's Interacting Cognitive Systems model to give a (partial) account of how meaning emerges in ritual participation. With Christian ritual, both know-how and know-that are needed. Above all, it is their interaction that generate the richness of meaning in ritual performance. Three core claims are made. First, many contemporary concepts of (...) ritual have at least one flaw in that they do not grasp the relationality between verbal and nonverbal, wherein both dimensions have a semantic integrity of their own. Second, there is an ideological valuation of the semantic levels. The experiential level is not only meaningful in its own right, but the fundamental ground of spiritual knowing. Third, combining learning styles and kinds of attention can be valuable for eliciting the full semantic richness of ritual participation. (shrink)

This introductory article to the thematic section on “Spiritual Intelligence” sets out the ways in which spiritual intelligence is currently conceptualized. Most prominently, spiritual intelligence is understood as an adaptive intelligence which enables people to develop their values, vision, and capacity for meaning. Questions arise as to whether spiritual intelligence is a distinct form of intelligence, and how to frame it if it is. It is questionable whether psychometric approaches justify concluding there is a distinct spiritual intelligence, and the authors (...) reject any notion of a God spot in the brain specifically dedicated to spiritual intelligence, which is a much more broadly embodied phenomenon. The authors suggest that spiritual intelligence most likely makes use of existing cognitive architecture, though applied in a distinctive way. This article finishes with a brief introduction to the four main articles in this thematic section, which present spiritual intelligence as a kind of participation in transcendent being. The four articles approach the cognitive, embodied, meditative, and ritual aspects of spiritual intelligence as participation. (shrink)

This article explores three aspects of Masterman's language work and applies them to questions of spiritual intelligence: metaphor, coherence, and ambiguity. First, metaphor, which is ubiquitous in ordinary language, both leads and misleads in religious and scientific understanding. Masterman's case for a “dual-approach” to thinking, both speculative and critical, is explored and tied to concepts of moral-spiritual development per Pierre Hadot and Hannah Arendt. Second, Masterman's work on machine translation presents semantic disambiguation as an emerging coherence wherein one gradually hones (...) in on meaning through features of ordinary language (like redundancy and repetition). This is applied to the problem of comprehending difficult spiritual language, and tied to spiritual stretching and spiritual cartography. Third, Masterman's work with thesauri, rather than relying on words as having fixed meanings, appeals to a concept of semantic spaces, nebulae of variously interconnected meanings. This is constructed into an exhortation to reambiguate overfamiliar religious language, to reinvest one's quotidian surroundings with spiritual meaning through defamilarization. (shrink)

The long-standing overarching policy governing research with human subjects conducted and supported by most federal agencies and departments in the United States, known as the Common Rule, has recently been revised, with most requirements slated to become effective in 2018. Although there are multiple alterations to the current regulations, some of the most significant changes aim to enhance consent for research. While some of the particular provisions in this regard will be easy to apply and promise to help meet this (...) goal, others may be more challenging to implement despite their intuitive appeal. In this article, I examine some of the provisions in the revised Common Rule that relate to consent: new required consent elements; the goal of comprehension in the consent process; consent forms; and broad consent. By raising issues about these provisions now and suggesting possible ways to overcome their potential shortfalls, the hope is that future efforts can be taken to help clarify and appropriately implement them. (shrink)

Predicates of personal taste have attracted a great deal of attention from philosophers of language and linguists. In the intricate debates over PPT, arguably the most central consideration has been which analysis of PPT can best account for the possibility of faultless disagreement about matters of personal taste. I argue that two models of such disagreement—the relativist and absolutist models—are empirically inadequate. In their stead, I develop a model of faultless taste disagreement which represents it as involving a novel incompatibility (...) relation between preferences that I call type-noncotenability. This model is available to all parties in the ongoing debates about PPT, but it points up an advantage enjoyed by expressivist accounts of PPT. In closing, I consider four objections against the model that, while failing to fully undermine it, open up promising avenues of inquiry about the nature of disagreement. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a theory of living organisms that captures the insights of both traditional Aristotelian hylomorphism and John Dupré's “biological processualism”. Like traditional Aristotelian hylomorphism, the proposed theory understands material objects to be comprised of both matter and form. Unlike contemporary structural varieties of hylomorphism, however, it does not understand the form of a material object to be a relation, configuration, or structure exhibited by its parts but an activity or process in which its matter is continuously (...) engaged. Following Mark Steen, I call the proposed theory “Hyloenergeism”. As a version of hylomorphism, hyloenergeism better captures the inherent dynamism of living organisms than contemporary structural approaches. And it does so not by abandoning the substantialist paradigm, as Dupré's biological processualism does, but by reconceptualizing the nature of material substances as possessing a processual core. Hyloenergeism, then, paves a middle way for those looking for a substance view of living organisms sensitive to the concerns raised by contemporary processualist philosophers of biology. (shrink)

Intuitionists and classical logicians use in common a large number of the logical axioms, even though they supposedly mean different things by the logical connectives and quantifiers — conquans for short. But Wittgenstein says The meaning of a word is its use in the language. We prove that in a definite sense the intuitionistic axioms do indeed characterize the logical conquans, both for the intuitionist and the classical logician.

:The term “moral bioenhancement” conceals a diverse plurality encompassing much potential, some elements of which are desirable, some of which are disturbing, and some of which are simply bland. This article invites readers to take a better differentiated approach to discriminating between elements of the debate rather than talking of moral bioenhancement “per se,” or coming to any global value judgments about the idea as an abstract whole. Readers are then invited to consider the benefits and distortions that come from (...) the usual dichotomies framing the various debates, concluding with an additional distinction for further clarifying this discourse qua explicit/implicit moral bioenhancement. (shrink)

In this issue of CQ we introduce a new feature, in which noted bioethicists are invited to reflect on vital current issues. Our first invitee, John Harris, will subsequently assume editorship of this section.

This paper offers an account of data manipulation in scientific experiments. It will be shown that in many cases raw, unprocessed data is not produced, but rather a form of processed data that will be referred to as a data model. The language of data models will be used to provide a framework within which to understand a recent debate about the status of data and data manipulation. It will be seen that a description in terms of data models allows (...) one to understand cases in which data acquisition and data manipulation cannot be separated into two independent activities. (shrink)

The chapter will argue that the way current enthusiasm for moral enhancement is articulated in the extant literature is itself morally problematic. The moral evaluation of the discourse will proceed through three stages. First, we shall look at the chequered history of various societies’ attempts to cast evil, character, and generally undesirable behaviour, as biological problems. As will be argued, this is the larger context in which moral enhancement discourse should be understood, and abuses in the recent past and present (...) should therefore be highlighted. Second, it will be argued that, given moral functioning's profoundly contextual and responsive qualities, any notion of a fine-grained, powerfully efficacious moral enhancement is both unrealistic and, actually, incoherent. Since enthusiasts’ hopes are unrealistic and incoherent, such enhancement would not even be capable of providing the transformative ends that supposedly justify the sometimes extreme prescriptions set forward. Finally, the chapter concludes with the claim that moral enhancement enthusiasm actually serves to trivialise the evils of this world, and not only to trivialise the hard-won efforts required to diminish and overcome such evils, but to misdirect attention away from the real hard work that needs to be done in facing such evils. (shrink)

Issues pertaining to sex and gender continue to be some of the most hotly debated topics of our time. While many of the most heated disputes occur at the level of politics and public policy, metaphysics, too, has a crucial role to play in these debates. In this essay, I explore several key metaphysical debates concerning sex and gender through the lenses of two important areas in contemporary metaphysics: the metaphysics of essence and the ontology of the human person. The (...) goal here is not to advocate any particular position on these issues, but to show how the tools of contemporary metaphysics can help to offer a more comprehensive map of the conceptual terrain, indicating where major areas of agreement can be found and where the most important disagreements really lie. (shrink)

: The concept of the person has come to be intimately connected with questions about the value of life. It is applied to those sorts of beings who have some special value or moral importance and where we need to prioritize the needs or claims of different sorts of individuals. "Person" is a concept designating individuals like us in some important respects, but possibly including individuals who are very unlike us in other respects. What are these respects and why are (...) they important? This paper sets out to answer these questions and to develop a coherent and useful concept of the person. (shrink)

The theories of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker arise from an existential and psychological analysis of the death terror/anxiety deep in the unconscious of every human. Becker details how this anxiety governs the ideologies and behaviors of our species—something now confirmed by thousands of experiments performed by psychologists engaged in contemporary terror management theory (TMT). Humans manage their anxiety through what Becker terms “hero systems”—concepts, beliefs, and myths we create to give us a sense of significance and meaning during, and even (...) beyond our mortal lives. Today, many dominant economic, technological, and religious hero systems seek to confirm our significance by denying that we are—like all other species—animals who must exist in a decaying, mortal body. Becker shows how this attempt to deny our “creatureliness” (basic biological nature) causes humans to stand against the natural world we are embedded in, leading to an assault on the planet and nonhuman animals. As a result, Becker believed pacifism was the only hero system capable of keeping humankind from destroying itself and the earth. Pacifism is the precursor to the more encompassing ethical concept of “reverence for life,” advocated by Dr. Albert Schweitzer. By respecting the will-to-live in all sentient beings, reverence for life transcends concern for humans alone and extends moral and physical safeguards to life as such. Confronting the fact that humans are increasingly alienated from their commodified world and their own being, reverence for life stands as a vital solution to many of our modern problems. And following contemporary TMT research, reverencing life can also expand one’s self-esteem, which research shows lowers death anxiety, reduces aggression, and offers authentic meaning to life itself. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship of mourning and the gift in the work of Jacques Derrida. I argue that mourning is not a Derridean gift, but mourning does open us to the gift. Reading the works of Aristotle, Cicero, and Kierkegaard on friendship and love to the dead in the wake of Derrida’s Politics of Friendship makes this relation among mourning and the gift apparent for he presents mourning as the opening to a democracy to-come whose logic is the gift. (...) Through these accounts, I maintain that in preparing us for the gift, mourning the dead other can help us to relate better with the living other in ethical, political, and ontological terms. (shrink)

In The Metaphysics of Truth, Doug Edwards offers a sustained case against deflationism about truth and in favour of his preferred pluralist theory of truth. Here, I take up three of the main components of that case. The first is Edwards' account of the distinctive metaphysical commitments of deflationism. His views about this issue have changed over the past few years, and I detail these changes as well as a concern for the views that he develops in the book. Second, (...) I take up the argument that Edwards offers for thinking that deflationism is, in a certain sense, internally unstable. I explain why this argument is inconclusive, outlining three responses to it on behalf of the deflationist. Third, I consider Edwards' novel argument for truth pluralism, which acts as an indirect argument against deflationism. After sorting out some interpretive nuances related to the use of definite descriptions in this argument, I show how the deflationist can resist it. Having responded to Edwards' critique of deflationism, I close by briefly explaining why I take the methodology of deflationism to be especially promising, insofar as it underscores the significance of empirically-informed inquiry about truth. (shrink)

Cloning - few words have as much potential to grip our imagination or grab the headlines. No longer the stuff of science fiction or Star Wars - it is happening now. Yet human cloning is currently banned throughout the world, and therapeutic cloning banned in many countries. In this highly controversial book, John Harris does a lot more than ask why we are so afraid of cloning. He presents a deft and informed defence of human cloning, carefully exposing the (...) rhetorical and highly dubious arguments against it. He begins with an introduction to what a human clone is, before tackling some of the most common and frequently bizarre criticisms of cloning: Is it really wicked? Can we regulate it? What about the welfare of cloned children? Does it turn human beings into commodities? Dismissing one by one some of the myths about human cloning, in particular that it is degrading and unsafe, he astutely argues that some of our most cherished values, such as the freedom to start a family and the freedom from state control, actually support the case for human cloning. Offering a brave and lucid insight into this ethical minefield, John Harris at last shows that far from ending the diversity of human life or creating a race of super-clones, cloning has the power to improve and heal human life. (shrink)

Cadaver organs should be automatically availableThe shortage of donor organs and tissue for transplantation constitutes an acute emergency which demands radical rethinking of our policies and radical measures. While estimates vary and are difficult to arrive at there is no doubt that the donor organ shortage costs literally hundreds of thousands of lives every year. “In the world as a whole there are an estimated 700 000 patients on dialysis . . .. In India alone 100 000 new patients present (...) with kidney failure each year” . Almost “three million Americans suffer from congestive heart failure . . . deaths related to this condition are estimated at 250 000 each year . . . 27 000 patients die annually from liver disease . . .. In Western Europe as a whole 40 000 patients await a kidney but only . . . 10 000 kidneys”1 become available. Nobody knows how many people fail to make it onto the waiting lists and fail to register in the statistics. “As of 24th November 2002 in the United Kingdom 667 people have donated organs, 2055 people have received transplants, and 5615 people are still awaiting transplants.”2Conscious of the terrible and unnecessary tragedy that figures like these represent I have been advocating for more than 20 years now some radical measures to stem this appalling waste of human life. The measure which is the subject of Hamer and Rivlin’s paper 3 concerns the automatic availability of all cadaver organs—a measure, which I first advocated publicly in 1983.4THE AUTOMATIC AVAILABILITY OF DONOR ORGANSWe need to begin by being clear about just what it is I propose and why. At the moment in the United Kingdom we …. (shrink)

When philosophers put forward claims for or against 'property', it is often unclear whether they are talking about the same thing that lawyers mean by 'property'. Likewise, when lawyers appeal to 'justice' in interpreting or criticizing legal rules we do not know if they have in mind something that philosophers would recognize as 'justice'. J. W. Harris here examines the legal and philosophical underpinnings of the concept of property and offers a new analytical framework for understanding property and justice.

is it possible to have a first-person experience of our own agency? In nineteenth-century France, this question was subject to intense philosophical debate. The two figures primarily associated with each side of the debate were Maine de Biran and Charles Renouvier. Biran developed powerful objections to Hume's arguments that purported to prove the impossibility of the experience of one's inner causal force. These objections were the match that lit this philosophical fire, and formed the foundation of the philosophy of the (...) French spiritualist school; a school that included Félix Ravaisson, Jules Lachelier, Émile Boutroux, and Henri Bergson.1... (shrink)

We often hear stories of people in terrible and seemingly intractable situations that are preyed upon by individuals offering empty promises of help. Frequently these cases are condemned as "exploiting the hope" of another. These accusations are made in a range of contexts, including human smuggling, the beauty industry, and unproven medical interventions. This concept is meant to do heavy lifting in public discourse, identifying a specific form of unethical conduct. However, it is poorly understood what is intended to be (...) wrong by exploiting hope, the range of activities that can accurately be captured under this concept, and what should be done about it. Thus, it is an ethical concept that is ripe for extended analysis and discussion. (shrink)

This book offers a sustained, interdisciplinary examination of taste. It addresses a range of topics that have been at the heart of lively debates in philosophy of language, linguistics, metaphysics, aesthetics, and experimental philosophy. Our everyday lives are suffused with discussions about taste. We are quick to offer familiar platitudes about taste, but we struggle when facing the questions that matter--what taste is, how it is related to subjectivity, what distinguishes good from bad taste, why it is valuable to make (...) and evaluate judgments about matters of taste, and what, exactly, we mean in speaking about these matters. The essays in this volume open up new, intersecting lines of research about these questions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. They address the notion of aesthetic taste; connections between taste and the natures of truth, disagreement, assertion, belief, retraction, linguistic context-sensitivity, and the semantics/pragmatics interface; experimental inquiry about taste; and metaphysical questions underlying ongoing discussions about taste. Perspectives on Taste will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in aesthetics, philosophy of language, linguistics, metaphysics, and experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Animalism, the view that human persons are human animals in the most straightforward, non-derivative sense, is typically taken to conflict with the intuition that a human person would follow her functioning cerebrum were it to be transplanted into another living human body. Some animalists, however, have recently called into question the incompatibility between animalism and this “Transplant Intuition,” arguing that a human animal would be relocated with her transplanted cerebrum. In this paper, we consider the prospects for this cerebrum transplant-compatible (...) variant of animalism, which we call “Transplanimalism.” After presenting its account of three related thought experiments, and outlining its key advantages over Standard Animalism, we raise two concerns for Transplanimalism. First, we argue that Transplanimalism, like other closest-continuer accounts of the human person, encounters difficulties with symmetrical fission cases. Second, we introduce a new thought experiment that pushes Transplanimalism into surprisingly counterintuitive results. As a result of these concerns, we conclude that, despite its attractiveness, animalists should not endorse Transplanimalism. (shrink)