Peter Jones has consistently defended the position that liberalism must maintain the distinction between the right and the good if it is to be qualitatively different from alternative political theories, and thus resist the charge that liberals are just like any other political theorists in wanting to impose their views on others. In this paper, I not only add my voice to the many who have already challenged the viability of that distinction, but also additionally argue that it is both (...) unnecessary and undesirable to hold that so much of importance hangs on whether or not it can be sustained. I suggest that the dichotomy between neutralist or impartialist liberalism, on the one hand, and what Jones characterizes as the desire ?merely to impose a favoured form of life upon others?, on the other hand, is too sharp, and hence at best misleading and at worst mistaken. This is because, or so I argue, not all forms of favouring some values or ideals over others can plausibly be presented as the imposition of a favoured form of life. Rather, we risk trivializing what is objectionable about imposing a particular form of life on people against their will if we treat every departure from strict liberal neutrality as necessarily instances of such an illiberal imposition. (shrink)

"In the 25 essays that comprise this grimly fascinating volume, Reed shines a light into some very dark corners. From its opening tale of South African baboons with a taste for human babies to a thoroughly icky account of a middle-aged woman's seduction of young boys, these are literary snapshots of the world at its worst."--Amazon.com.

The idea that humans should abandon their individuality and use technology to bind themselves together into hivemind societies seems both farfetched and frightening – something that is redolent of the worst dystopias from science fiction. In this article, we argue that these common reactions to the ideal of a hivemind society are mistaken. The idea that humans could form hiveminds is sufficiently plausible for its axiological consequences to be taken seriously. Furthermore, far from being a dystopian nightmare, the hivemind (...) society could be desirable and could enable a form of sentient flourishing. Consequently, we should not be so quick to deny it. We provide two arguments in support of this claim – the axiological openness argument and the desirability argument – and then defend it against three major objections. (shrink)

In Leo Szilard’s 1929 thought experiment, a Maxwell demon manipulates a one-molecule gas to reverse the second law of thermodynamics. The demon must fail, Szilard argued, since there is hidden entropy creation in the demon’s collecting of information. This thought experiment is an inconsistent muddle of improper idealizations. It diverted an already successful literature of exorcism into degenerating speculations about about a connection between thermodynamic entropy and information. These confusions persist today in a voluminous literature. Narrative conventions in a thought (...) experiment allow thought experimenters great latitude in deciding which processes are typical and bear generalization and which can be idealized away as incidental. For its abuse of this latitude and the extent of the harm it caused, this thought experiment merits the distinction of the worst thought experiment in science. (shrink)

Why is the human imagination to blame for the worst crimes of the twentieth century? Why is progress a pernicious myth? Why is contemporary atheism just a hangover from Christian faith? John Gray, author of Straw Dogsand Black Mass, is one of the most original and iconoclastic thinkers of our time. In this pugnacious and brilliantly readable collection of essays from across his career, he smashes through humanity's most cherished beliefs to overturn our view of the world, and (...) our place in it. 'If humans are different from other animals it is chiefly in being governed by myths, which are not creations of the will but creatures of the imagination.' 'No traditional myth is as untruthful as the modern myth of progress. All prevailing philosophies embody the fiction that human life can be altered at will. Better aim for the impossible, they say, than submit to fate. Invariably, the result is a cult of human self-assertion that soon ends in farce.'. (shrink)

This stimulating collection is devoted to the life and work of the most flamboyant of twentieth-century philosophers, Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend's radical epistemological claims, and his stunning argument that there is no such thing as scientific method, were highly influential during his life and have only gained attention since his death in 1994. The essays that make up this volume, written by some of today's most respected philosophers of science, many of whom knew Feyerabend as students and colleagues, cover the diverse (...) themes in his extensive body of work and present a personal account of this fascinating thinker. (shrink)

In this commentary, I critically discuss the respective views of Gert and Beauchamp–Childress on the nature of so-called common morality and its promise for enriching ethical reflection within the field of bioethics. Although I endorse Beauchamp and Childress’ shift from an emphasis on ethical theory as the source of moral norms to an emphasis on common morality, I question whether rouging up common morality to make it look like some sort of ultimate and universal foundation for morality, untouched by the (...) dialectics of time and reflective equilibrium, was an equally good move. As for Gert’s magisterial conception of common morality, I conclude that certain elements of his system are controversial at best and woefully inadequate at worst. He has a tendency to find in common morality what he himself put there, and his highly restricted conception of duties of assistance strikes this reader as ad hoc, inadequately defended, and unworthy of a project whose goal is to lessen the amount of misery in the world. (shrink)

George Berkeley notoriously claimed that his immaterialist metaphysics was not only consistent with common sense but that it was also integral to its defense. Roberts argues that understanding the basic connection between Berkeley's philosophy and common sense requires that we develop a better understanding of the four principle components of Berkeley's positive metaphysics: The nature of being, the divine language thesis, the active/passive distinction, and the nature of spirits. Roberts begins by focusing on Berkeley's view of the nature of being. (...) He elucidates Berkeley's view on Locke and the Cartesians and by examining Berkeley's views about related concepts such as unity and simplicity. From there he moves on to Berkeley's philosophy of language arguing that scrutiny of the famous "Introduction" to the Principles of Human Knowledge reveals that Berkeley identified the ideational theory of meaning and understanding as the root cause of some of the worst of man's intellectual errors, not "abstract ideas." Abstract ideas are, rather, the most debilitating symptom of this underlying ailment. In place of the ideational theory, Berkeley defends a rudimentary "use theory" of meaning. This understanding of Berkeley's approach to semantics is then applied to the divine language thesis and is shown to have important consequences for Berkeley's pragmatic approach to the ontology of natural objects and for his approach to our knowledge of, and relation to other minds, including God's. Turning next to Berkeley's much aligned account of spirits, the author defends the coherence of Berkeley's view of spirits by way of providing an interpretation of the active/passive distinction as marking a normative distinction and by focusing on the role that divine language plays in letting Berkeley identify the soul with the will. With these four principles of Berkeley's philosophy in hand, he then returns to the topic of common sense and offers a defense of Berkeley's philosophy as built upon and expressive of the deepest metaphysical commitments of mainstream Christianity. Roberts' reappraisal of this important figure should appeal to all historians of philosophy as well as scholars in metaphysics and philosophy of language. (shrink)

The worst possible way to resolve this issue is to leave it up to individual choice. There is no known social good coming from the conquest of death (Bailey, 1999). - Daniel Callahan Dramatically extending the human lifespan seems increasingly possible. Many bioethicists object that life-extension will have Malthusian consequences as new Methuselahs accumulate, generation by generation. I argue for a Life-Years Response to the Malthusian Objection. If even a minority of each generation chooses life-extension, denying it to them (...) deprives them of many years of extra life, and their total extra life-years are likely to exceed the total life-years of a majority who do not want life-extension. This is a greater harm to those who want extended life than the Malthusian harms to those who refuse extended life, both because losing an extra year of life is worse than enduring a year of Malthusian conditions, and because the would-be Methuselahs have more life-years at stake. Therefore, even if life-extension seems likely to cause severe overcrowding and resource shortages, that threat is not sufficient to justify society in restricting the development or availability of life-extension. (shrink)

Business bluffing as a subject has been mentioned in various journals for at least the past 16 years. Its treatment has become one of apparent serious intent to identify it as a subject matter unto itself. Definitionally and theoretically, its essence has been specified but seemingly without due regard to its true nature. Business bluffing is an act of puffing at best and misrepresentation or fraud at worst. In either case, its legality and morality are already well defined and (...) discussions of the subject should be directed along these established pathes. A businessman is admonished to judge things as they are, to speak of them, when properly called thereto, according to such judgment, neither adding or diminishing, neither depreciating a commodity, nor putting false color upon it. (Plain and Serious Hints and Advice for the Tradesman's Prudent and Pious Conduct, Dr. Isaac Watts, 1747.). (shrink)

Black hole thermodynamics is regarded as one of the deepest clues we have to a quantum theory of gravity. It motivates scores of proposals in the field, from the thought that the world is a hologram to calculations in string theory. The rationale for BHT playing this important role, and for much of BHT itself, originates in the analogy between black hole behavior and ordinary thermodynamic systems. Claiming the relationship is “more than a formal analogy,” black holes are said to (...) be governed by deep thermodynamic principles: what causes your tea to come to room temperature is said additionally to cause the area of black holes to increase. Playing the role of philosophical gadfly, we pour a little cold water on the claim that BHT is more than a formal analogy. First, we show that BHT is often based on a kind of caricature of thermodynamics. Second, we point out an important ambiguity in what systems the analogy is supposed to govern, local or global ones. Finally, and perhaps worst, we point out that one of the primary motivations for the theory arises from a terribly controversial understanding of entropy. BHT may be a useful guide to future physics. Only time will tell. But the analogy is not nearly as good as is commonly supposed. (shrink)

Many philosophers conceive of freedom as non-interference. Such conceptions unify two core commitments. First, they associate freedom with non-constraint. And second, they take seriously a distinction between the interpersonal and the non-personal. As a result, they focus our attention exclusively on constraints attributable to other people’s choices – that is, on interference. I argue that these commitments manifest two distinct concerns: first, for a wide range of options; and second, for other people’s respect. However, construing freedom as non-interference unifies these (...) concerns in a way that does justice to neither. In particular, it focuses our attention on phenomena that are at best tangential, and at worst hostile, to our interest in respect. If we wish to preserve the distinctive significance of the interpersonal, we would be better served by a conception of freedom that focuses immediately on what I call "the social conditions of respect.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXII, Number 2, November 1996, pp. 325-337 Hume's Aesthetic Theism JOHN IMMERWAHR When it comes to religion, Hume's motto is corruptio optimi pessima, "the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst" (NHR 338,339, SScE 73).1 He warmly endorses what he calls "true religion" and strongly attacks false religion, superstition and priestcraft. Hume's distaste for false religion is obviously sincere, but scholars (...) have sometimes wondered how seriously to take Hume's "veneration for true religion" (DNR 219). Are his favorable comments about true religion honest or is this just one more smokescreen?2 In fact, Hume tells us very little about what he calls "true religion," "true theism" or "genuine piety." At one point Hume even drafted an apology to readers of his History of England for the fact that "the Mischiefs which arise from the Abuses of Religion, are so often mentioned, while so little in comparison is said of the salutary Consequences which result from true & genuine piety."3 In what follows I look at a number of the passages where Hume does discuss true religion, in an attempt to ask what makes true religion true.4 In brief, his answer is that the superiority of genuine theism results from its moral qualities rather than its epistemological warrant.5 Unlike other forms of religion, true religion is based on the calm passions rather than the violent ones and as such it alone is able to perform "the proper Office of religion" which is to reinforce and support morality.6 While Hume never wavers from his position that morality does not require any religious or theological commitment, he does feel that at least this one approach to religion has a positive moral contribution to make. John Immerwahr is at the Department of Philosophy, Villanova University, Villanova PA 19085-1699 USA. Email: [email protected] 326 John Immerwahr True religion in Hume's writings Scattered through Hume's writings are a number of references to a minimalistic religion that is immune from the usual Humean critiques. The exempted form of religion is what Gaskin describes as an "attenuated Deism," which includes a conviction of the existence of God as the cause of order in the universe, together with a commitment to a secular human morality.7 Here are a few passages where this form of religion is mentioned: The Natural History of Religion: The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion. (NHR 309) History of England: In every religion, except the true, [the diligence of the clergy] is highly pernicious, and it has even a natural tendency to pervert the true, by infusing into it a strong mixture of superstition, folly, and delusion. (HE III 135) Dialogues concerning Natural Religion: Philo: All the new discoveries in astronomy, which prove the immense grandeur and magnificence of the works of Nature, are so many additional arguments for a Deity, according to the true system of Theism. (DNR 165) It is, of course, dangerous to take anything Hume says about religion at face value. On the one hand, Hume's religious works, such as his essay on miracles, were a major force in attracting the kind of literary reputation which he so much desired. On the other hand, he lived with the constant possibility of persecution by the ultra-conservative wing of the Scottish church.8 One of his self-protective techniques is to criticize one religious position only from the framework of another. This allows him a certain "deniability" in that he can always say that he was only criticizing a specific form of religion, not religion generally.9 At least some of what he says about true religion can probably be written off as protective coloration. Nonetheless, if we take seriously what Hume says about the "suitable notions of [God's] divine perfections" (DNR 88) we come up with a model of true religion that is compatible with Hume's overall perspective. The justifiability of true theism What makes true religion true? Hume tells... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Abailard and the Problem of Universals JOHN F. BOLER ABAILARD t IS A CLEVERman, but in one respect he is just like the rest of us: Given one clear idea of which he is convinced, he tends to become intolerant, thinking the worst of everyone else. Abailard's clear idea goes something as follows. In what does universality consist? It consists, says Abailard, in the signifying of many (...) things by one sign? Abailard's predecessors had been searching for some thing which was universal. But a sign must signify many things to be universal; and furthermore, the sign itself, as a thing--a noise, gesture, or statue--is individual. ~ It may help to describe the model which crops up here and there in Abailard's examples and which, I think, dominates his analysis. Consider, then, a statue which is not meant to stand for any one particular individual: for example, the Minute Man at Concord, Massachusetts.* First of all, the statue is an individual thing. Second, just as a piece of metal, it need not stand for anything--anymore than a bird bath would, had the town council decided to build that instead. What is more, it is information from other sources which leads us to take the statue as "general" rather than as depicting some individual (like Nathan Hale). And even though the statue stands for "all" minute men, not only is the statue an individual thing but all those things for which it stands are (or were) individuals. And finally, we might also point out that the statue must be taken as signifying; it does not have "representative" qualities in quite the same way that it has properties like weight and shape. t The text of Abailard to which I have referred is: Peter Abaelards Philosophische Schrqte, herausgegeben yon Dr. Bernhard Geyer, I Die Logica "Ingredientibus,'" II Die Logica "'Nostrorum Petitioni Sociorum" which is to be found in Beitraege zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Band XXI (1933). A partial translation of this text appears in R. McKeon, Selections from Medieval Philosophers (New York: Scribners, 1929), II, 208-258. Hereafter I shall refer to the latin text as "G" followed by the page number and lines; and to the translation, where possible, as "'M" with the page number. 9Abailard feels that when Aristotle says that a universal is what is fitted for being predicated of many things, it is the signifying of many things which is at stake; and he chides Aristotle for seeming to ascribe universality to things as well as to words. G ~ (M 221). The reference to Aristotle is On Interpretation, 17a (38-40). *See note 7, below. 9I have interpolated on two passages: G 22t~-~ (M 241-242), and G 522*t-=. [37] 38 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The upshot of Abailard's insight is that universality pertains to the interpretation of signs: the effort to locate universal things is misguided. Some want to say that the universal is a collection; but do collections signify their members? ~ Some want to say that the universal is a substance of which individuals are accidents; but is a substance predicated of its accidents? e And some want to say that universals are words--that is noises; but noises are also individual things. ~ In short, to signify or to show ("monstrare") pertains to words; to be signified or shown pertains to things. 8 And to transfer the properties of one to the other leads to hopeless difficulties. ~ One can understand Abailard's exultation (and exaltation) at having shown both sides of a seething controversy to be equally misguided? ~ But what then remains as the problem of universals? It is this: one would expect that every sign would have some subject which it signifies; but universals seem to lack a proper subject. And does this not mean that universals are fictions (like goat-stag or chimera)? = Having thus set out rather baldly what I take to be Abailard's "clear idea," let me now try to show more fully how he goes about establishing the problem and providing for a solution. Abailard's position on universals is set forth in his two logic books, both of which begin... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 26 (2006) 213-216 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Reviewed byJohn Berthrong Boston University School of TheologyDialogues at One Inch Above the Ground: Reclamations of Belief in an Interreligious Age. By James W. Heisig. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003. 215 pp.Few scholars are better prepared than James W. Heisig to write about the current state of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, and few have written more insightfully about the historical, theological, (...) religious, and spiritual factors that have made Buddhist-Christian dialogue so intriguing for the last four decades. Heisig is the director of the Nanzan Institute, one of the premier institutions in the world dedicated to cultivating dialogue primarily between Christians and Buddhists, but also with people of other traditions and no religious belief at all.The title of the book is taken from the writings of the famous medieval poet Saigyō, who said that he tried to live at "one inch above the ground." Heisig follows Saigyō's advice by focusing many of his articles on themes such as health and ecology rather than abstruse metaphysical discussions of the intricacies of Buddhist and Christian doctrines, although, as one would expect, he shows a deft hand at explaining the philosophical and theological dimensions of living life at one inch above the ground.The opening two chapters on how we can collectively view the current ecological crisis demonstrate Heisig's sure hand at moving between profound meditations on current events and demonstrating how these problems can be even better understood in terms of spiritual and religious insights. Heisig argues that having two eyes, one Buddhist and one Christian, might just help us walk better on the ground, especially a ground that is being harmed on a daily basis by human disregard for the natural environment. His essay on the interpretation of the Buddhist principle of sufficiency is based on the injunction that we should learn to "consider how much is enough." The following essay demonstrates how hard-headed he can be with his call for us not to move from an uncaring contempt for nature to an equally ill-conceived sentimentalization of nature.There are so many insightful and clever features to the essays in the book that it is hard to pick out any one essay for special comment, but one of my favorites, high-lighting [End Page 213] Heisig's rhetorical powers, is "Six Sūtras on Dialogue" (pp. 139–157). This essay demonstrates what a Christian theologian might learn from engaging in interreligious dialogue. Moreover, it even takes the form, as Heisig explains, of the traditional Buddhist sūtra of six teachings on the nature of dialogue. Dialogue, according to Heisig (echoing Alfred North Whitehead), "is an adventure of ideas" (p. 141). The first teaching is "The spirit of interreligious dialogue need not be born of traditions in order to be reborn there" (p. 145). One of the strong points Heisig makes over and over again is that we now live with increasing self-awareness in a religiously pluralistic world. Actually, we always have, though various theological traditions have been adept at either ignoring or rejecting the notion that there could be anything positive about religious pluralism. At its worst, pluralism simply demonstrated the spiritual depravity and turbidity of humankind, and at best, it could simply be ignored as unworthy of serious comment. With the growing social, political, economic, military, and cultural interconnections of the modern world, no one can ignore pluralism. Theologians and religious leaders, in particular, need to think about religious pluralism even if this dialogue is not something that was "born" within their traditional theological discourse.The second teaching is a corroloary of the first: "Dialogue is primarily a minority enterprise that stands free of the obligations of institutional religion" (p. 147). Now, the leaders of institutional religion might dispute this point, but again Heisig is correct in noting that people are going to talk to their neighbors regardless of what they are told to do by worried religious authorities. He makes the... (shrink)

Polanyi’s philosophy requires a synthesis of ontology and epistemology through the resonances that structure personal knowing. Its convivial elements make it political; self-conscious circularity distances it from metaphysical realism; the paradox of self-set standards accomodates dissent. The roles of reality, knowledge and truth in metaphysical realism are better understood in terms of resonance, trust and worthwhileness if we follow Polanyi’s lead. This more humane vocabulary saves us from the tyrannies of the truths and realities others would impose upon us. Polanyi (...) points the way towards a position that avoids the worst of both absolutism and relativism. (shrink)

"A blab droid is a robot with a body shaped like a pizza box, a pair of treads, and a smiley face. Guided by an onboard video camera, it roams hotel lobbies and conference centers, asking questions in the voice of a seven-year-old. "Can you help me?" "What is the worst thing you've ever done?" "Who in the world do you love most?" People pour their hearts out in response. This droid prompts the question of what we can hope (...) from social robots. Might they provide humanlike friendship? Philosopher John Campbell doesn't think so. He argues that, while a social robot can remember the details of a person's history better than some spouses can, it cannot empathize with the human mind, because it lacks the faculty for thinking in terms of singular causation. Causation in Psychology makes the case that singular causation is essential and unique to the human species. From the point of view of practical action, knowledge of what generally causes what is often all one needs. But humans are capable of more. We have a capacity to imagine singular causation. Unlike robots and nonhuman animals, we don't have to rely on axioms about pain to know how ongoing suffering is affecting someone's ability to make decisions, for example, and this knowledge is not a derivative of general rules. The capacity to imagine singular causation, Campbell contends, is a core element of human freedom and of the ability to empathize with human thoughts and feelings"--. (shrink)

Theoretical justification for the Business Ethics Index (BEI) from the emerging economics of trust literature is discussed. The BEI results for 2007, 2008, and 2009 are presented. While the Personal/Past BEI component shows no significant difference from the previous years, the Vicarious/Past component shows a dramatic drop to levels previously never recorded.However, when it came to the perception of the future business ethical behavior, respondents were significantly more optimistic than in previous measurements.This finding was more than a little surprising given (...) the depth of the economic crisis. A possible explanation is that consumers hopefully perceived the economic crisis as already abating and/or that at least the worst was over. (shrink)

Kant states that necessity and strict universality are criteria of a priori knowledge. Interpreting this dictum standardly and straightforwardly in respect of necessity, it is inconsistent with there being necessary a posteriori truths or contingent a priori truths (cf Kripke). This straightforward interpretation may convict Kant of understandable error (at worst) in the case of necessity, but it is so uncharitable in the case of strict universality that we ought to seek an alternative. I offer a charitable interpretation of (...) the doctrine that necessity and strict universality are sufficient conditions of a priority, commenting briefly on comparable necessary conditions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:John P. Sisk DOCTOR JOHNSON KICKS A STONE Readers OF Boswell's Life ofJohnson will remember the great Doctor's refutation of Bishop Berkeley's idealism. He and Boswell had just come out of a church in Harwich and were discussing the Bishop's "ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter." Boswell observed "that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it." To mis (...) Johnson responded, "striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, T refute it thus.'" For Boswell diis was an argument from first principles diat are as fundamental to metaphysics as axioms are to mathematics. To use Johnson's own phrase, it is an argument based on "the experience of mankind" — the ground upon which he confidendy stood when he expressed his disapproval of such other phUosophical contemporaries as Hume, Voltaire, and Rousseau (the latter "a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society"). Or as WalterJackson Bate puts it in TheAchievement ofSamuelJohnson, the first principle ofhis thinking was "To go back to the living and concrete nature of experience."1 Boswell thought Johnson a philosopher, though he admits in a famous passage that his table manners might have suggested otherwise. Apparently G. K. Chesterton thought he had some claim to the term, for he called Johnson's novel Rasselas "a sort of philosophical satire on philosophy." Most likelyJohnson thought ofhimselfas among many other things a philosopher: the humanities had not yet setded snugly into dieir modern compartments. Now, of course, any undergraduate student of philosophy is willing to believe that Johnson's argument against Berkeley isn't worth much (he may be no less willing to believe that the Bishop's argument isn't worth much eitiier). He may also know that in the perspective of die modern physicist Johnson's stone was not as solid as Johnson thought it was — though it is likely he would have thought diis information 65 66Philosophy and Literature no more relevant to die argument dian Thaïes' belief diat all diings are made of water or Pydiagoras' diat all diings are numbers. The important thing was whether a drinker violated die experience of mankind. When the Scotchman Lord Hunderland praised the ancient philosophers for the candor and good humor widi which they disputed with one anotherJohnson would have none of it: "They disputed with good humour upon dieir fanciful dieories," he said, "because diey were not interested in the truth of them." It is not hard to imagine the Doctor's reaction to our own fanciful theories in philosophy, linguistics, and literary criticism. Suppose him at the Mitre Tavern for an evening's defense of die experience of mankind against die ingenious sophistries of a company made up ofJacques Derrida, Geoffrey H. Hartman, Stanley Fish, Michel Foucault, Paul de Man, and Jacques Lacan — the lot of them variously committed to the belief diat the proper job of philosophy is not the pursuit of the truth but the pursuit of die trudi about die pursuit of die truth. Johnson eyes die group warily, expecting the worst. There are too many Frenchmen present, and as he made clear at supper one July evening in the Turk's Head coffee house, French writers are superficial "because they are not scholars, and so proceed upon the mere power of dieir own minds." Nevertheless, the assembled gendemen present their positions: we are all prisoners ofthe total epistemological environment of our age, our episteme; locked linguistically into interpretive communities, we cannot know die text in itself; die proper function of the critic is creative free play, the text being merely a convenient occasion; language, being self-referential, cannot reveal a subject; human agency is a flattering but deceptive myth; transcendent systems of thought are impossible; if literature touches reality anywhere we cannot know it. MeanwhileJohnson, than whom no man ever had "a more ardent love of literature, or a higher respect for it," is in high dudgeon, kicking figurative stones right and left, no real ones being available inside the Mitre. His adversaries observe him with indulgent good humor, amused but not impressed with this crude bourgeois display, having... (shrink)

The politics of Plato's Republic has been all but universally condemned by modern liberal readers as totally and odiously inimical to democratic ideals. Plato's proposals for government by an unelected elite class of guardians, for censorship and indoctrination, for occupational restrictions, etc., are seen at best as stifling freedom and individual initiative and at worst as totalitarian. It has seldom or never been noticed, however, how much his polity resembles our own, for better or worse. American democracy, present and (...) past, has endorsed most of the basic political principles of the Republic. If often only tacitly, we recognize natural inequalities among people; that some are more fit than others for some occupations, including governing; and that indoctrination and censorship are desirable in some circumstances. Most important, though little recognized outside political theory, is the fact that the United States, like most modern democracies, has a guardianship form of government, comparable to that outlined in the Republic, in which the electoral franchise has little significance. Making due allowance for our own ideological myths on the one hand and for Platonic whimsy on the other, it can be seen that Plato's Republic and ours are, paradoxically, much the same in both aims and means. (shrink)

The worst thing that can happen to us is to be blessed with a life of unending luxury, comfort, and wealth, for such a life would make one weak and lazy. But worst of all, the longer we experience a comfortable and easy life, the harder it will hit us when our luck fi nally changes, as it surely one day will.

The worst thing that can happen to us is to be blessed with a life of unending luxury, comfort, and wealth, for such a life would make one weak and lazy. But worst of all, the longer we experience a comfortable and easy life, the harder it will hit us when our luck fi nally changes, as it surely one day will.

Preface The status of sovereignty as a highly ambiguous concept is well established. Pointing out or deploring, the ambiguity of the idea has itself become a recurring motif in the literature on sovereignty. As the legal theorist and international lawyer Alf Ross put it, “there is hardly any domain in which the obscurity and confusion is as great as here.” 1 The concept of sovereignty is often seen as a downright obstacle to fruitful conceptual analysis, carried over from its proper (...) setting in history to “plague and befog contemporary thought.” 2 . . . So contested is the concept that, rather than pursuing the contestation, many political theorists think we should give up so protean a notion. Granting that the debate on the relevance of sovereignty frustratingly oscillates between claims that it will either continue to exist or that it is about to disappear, forgetting it altogether, and thereby escaping this seemingly endless argument, can easily appear as the most urgent task for political theory . The following argument makes a case that the “urgent task” is not the abandonment of the concept of sovereignty, but an understanding of its essential philosophical nature as an integrated and evolving expression of practical reason. Sovereignty is neither ambiguous nor obscure once its fundamental presuppositions are laid bare and its many philosophical and historical manifestations shown to be the product, in actuality, of a single, dialectally dynamic but integrated set of metaphysical elements. This is the first of three arguments describing the evolution of international law as a manifestation of practical reason through an application of philosophical method to the source , locus , and scope of the concept of sovereignty. It moves from a dialectic balance favoring utility to a balance dominated by legal right to a dialectic of duty to humanity and nature. All three arguments are meant to be a contribution to the new field of International Legal Philosophy as defined by Phillip Allott. 4 This field combines a sensitivity to legal practice with an effort to understand the underlying philosophical determinants of empirical choice and behavior. One purpose of international legal philosophy is to “remove” from the minds of those who study the law what Diderot defined as “the sophism of the ephemeral,” and what Allott calls “the disempowering idea that what xii Preface happens to exist now is inevitable and permanent.” 5 A core imperative is to “reunderstand what it is to be a thinking being” 6 and to rediscover the dialectic between the private and the public as it determines, and is redetermined by, legal practice. This requires a “revolution in the human mind” 7 so that we may transcend the current dependence on positivist methods and empirical fact as an end-in-itself, and try to understand the underlying and more constant and essential ideas and inherent dialectics that constitute the substructure or “metaphysics” of international law. I will approach this “revolution” with the use of R. G. Collingwood’s philosophical method 8 and the philosophy of David Hume, applied to international law as an expression of practical reason. The goal of philosophical method is the construction of a comprehensive policy argument (CPA) for a public policy or legal issue. In addition to the conventional use of empirical models and their logic of investigation in the study of policy and law, CPA requires that an underlying philosophical logic of concepts be deciphered to identify the ideas within the issue, and their definition, overlap, and systematic interdependence. Philosophical method is a means with which to interpret and understand competing systematic and complete conceptual logics, existing at the core of an issue and pertinent to policy change. Philosophical method is therefore not meant to be a replacement for the empirical investigation of a policy or legal issue, or the use of scientific method in social studies. Rather, it is a complimentary and prerequisite method that seeks to transcend the limitations of positivism and present a more complete understanding of the philosophical presuppositions of positivist ideas like power, interest, or strategic rationality. Philosophical method is meant to be used with the facts of the policy or legal issue to match an illuminating logic of concepts with a pertinent logic of investigation . Within the CPA, the use of philosophical method and the metaphysics of a policy or legal issue is assumed to be critical to the full understanding of the overlapping concepts, dialectics, and scale of forms that determine, and are determined by, the empirical context of the policy or legal topic. Specifically, instead of utilizing bits and pieces of various theoretical arguments to address narrowly focused empirical questions, as positivism prescribes, I will address the evolution of international law as practical reason in three phases. Each will be approached through a single integrated logic of philosophical concepts from a particular philosopher (i.e., David Hume, G. W. F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant). This philosophically holistic approach to the law is based on the assumption that only through the use of a single integrated argument in legal analysis can sovereignty, or any concept, be understood as a truly systematic and logical whole. A complete philosophical paradigm has a dialectic integrity and systematic logic that can more adequately describe the evolving essence of a concept like sovereignty. This approach also has the advantage of generating a number of distinct holistic descriptions of the law through the application of different philosophical systems, one at a time, to its factual structure. 9 Positivism does not seek Preface xiii holism, and rejects the idea that “theory” has such a characteristic. The essential or comprehensive substructure of any idea is therefore ignored in a method that recommends the observation of empirical problems through the use of whatever hodgepodge of theoretical elements is seen fit to frame its superstructure. This failure to deal with metaphysics has retarded both an essential understanding of international law as a species of legal system, and any holistic and dialectical conceptualization of its inherent concepts, like sovereignty. A second positivist convention expects modern theorists to create new theory rather than to refine and apply that of existing philosophy. This predisposition is driven by the positivist goal of discovery that ignores refinement as a possible purpose of philosophical analysis. Collingwood argues that philosophy must take that set of ideas already known and utilize existing systematic philosophical arguments to refine them so that they evolve closer to their essence as concepts. Considering this imperative, the idea of sovereignty can be assumed to have had valid usage for hundreds of years, over which time, the concept has evolved to mean different things, each a refinement of the definition that preceded it. Transcending positivism means that the scholar’s search is not for “new” material, but to decipher the metaphysical essence of a concept as it has been made manifest over time and context. These manifestations are rooted, and refined from, the known terms of that concept’s inherent idea(s). Rather than depending exclusively on positivism and its conventions, my work utilizes, in addition to Collingwood, the intact philosophical systems of Hume, Hegel, and Kant to trace the refinement of international law as a product of human practical reason. These paradigms, or integrated systems of logical concepts, will be applied to legal practice individually, so that each CPA can be deciphered separately. This provides a set of integrated and logically intact paradigms for the evolutionary stages of practical reason in international law. Because each argument is applied systematically, a deeper understanding of the source, locus, and scope in the development of law in general, and international law in particular, is possible where it is not with the application of various disconnected components of many theories. Each CPA based on Hume, Hegel, or Kant can then be used to describe a distinct context that its logic of concepts best illuminates; specifically, the (1) genesis, (2) contemporary dilemmas, and (3) future of the international legal system. By widening the perspective of international lawyers and policymakers, they can more easily perceive the dialectic of ideas that has created, and is refined by, the legal practice in which they participate. We also move toward Allott’s goal of “human self-perfecting.” 10 And, in addition, by providing a more complete knowledge of the origins of legal practice and its evolution, we illuminate the practical possibilities for what we might “choose to be” 11 in the future. To achieve this, the essential metaphysical elements of state sovereignty and its inherent evolutionary scale of forms will be deciphered and described. This will transform what appears to be a multitude of definitions and xiv Preface practical realizations of the concept of sovereignty into a set of interdependent manifestations of a single substructure, made of a single set of dialectic elements. The interpretation of international law through practical reason sorts and integrates a diverse and discordant literature and defines state sovereignty as a single concept evolving on a scale of forms that allows it to exhibit diverse character traits, all arising from different combinations of common and essential metaphysical elements. This approach, compared to positivist methods and legal realism, allows one to transcend current agreement that sovereignty is, at best, a narrowly focused set of empirical characteristics or, at worst, “organized hypocrisy.” 12 This method also encourages the scholar and practitioner to understand the predispositions and pitfalls of the concept of sovereignty, as well as its potential future paths, more effectively. The use of philosophical method to create policy paradigms out of preexisting philosophical systems and apply these to international law will be called Philosophical-Policy & Legal Design . This approach allows the use of preexisting and complete philosophical arguments that provide an adequate logic of concepts to chart the evolution of the idea of sovereignty along its scale of forms. An examination of the source of practical reason in human social convention with the employment of a philosophical-policy drawn from Hume’s logic of concepts about human nature will demonstrate this new approach. Why Hume? Because, up to now, without an adequate substructure we have arguments, like Brunne é’ s and Troope’s, 13 that may correctly identify international law as an “interactional” system, but cannot present any argument as to why it is, where this empirical reality comes from, or what its implications are for the future. Comparatively, Hume provides a logic of philosophical concepts that answers these concerns. First, he fulfills the requirements for a fuller understanding of the origin and evolution of law from social convention and the dependence of social convention on the human imperative for society. Second, he offers a more adequate delineation of the overlapping concepts of the law in terms of the ideas and institutions that deal with norms and justice (e.g., principle, process, practice, rule, power, interest). Third, he provides a fundamental understanding of the essential dialectics at the core of a conceptualization of the law with both unconscious and conscious human participation (i.e., passion. (shrink)

F. H. Bradley has assured us that where all is bad it must be good to know the worst. In the case before us the worst is that Jonathan Edwards, from whatever perspective he is viewed, represents an imposing enigma. I confess at the outset that the enigma is one I am unable entirely to dispel, although I am confident that I can explain what is enigmatic about his thought, his approach, his caste of mind, and that I (...) can do so "not through a glass darkly." The central problem is this: Edwards, on the one hand, accepted totally the tradition established by the Reformers with respect to the absolute primacy and authority of the Bible, and he could approach the biblical writings with that conviction of their inerrancy and literal truth which one usually associates with Protestant fundamentalism. On the other hand, Edwards insisted vigorously on the criteria of reason and experience, and he was without equal on the American scene up to the time of Charles Peirce in his capacity for philosophical analysis, for sustaining a logical argument, and for expressing his conclusions with the most painstaking attention to subtle nuances of meaning and rhetorical effectiveness. Moreover, he insisted on the use of philosophical concepts and principles in considering the "things of religion" and his speculations about creation, his estheticism, and pantheism caused deep anxiety in the minds of traditional Calvinists, whose theology was as literal as their biblical exegesis. This double-barrelled character of his approach has led critics to define him as a reactionary and "medieval" thinker who had lost touch with those currents of thought which would eventually lead to the "modern" point of view. Without pausing to evaluate that charge at this point, one thing at least is clear: in relation to his contemporaries Edwards was alone in his attempt to make the religious tradition intelligible in those philosophical terms first laid down by Augustine and Anselm in their enterprise of "faith seeking understanding.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Whisper Before You GoJohn K PettyDavid came with a bang.1A momentary prelude from a dysphonic chorus of pagers announce “Level 1 Pediatric Trauma—MVC ejected” before the abrupt crescendo of the trauma bay doors opening. He is maybe two. Maybe three–years–old. It is hard to tell when a child is strapped in, strapped down, nonverbal, intubated, and alone.The flight team speaks for him, “Four–year–old boy improperly restrained in a single–vehicle (...) crash into a ditch. He was partially ejected. He was unresponsive and pulseless at the scene. He got CPR and code drugs, and they got a pulse back. Emergency medical service (EMS) took him to the nearest hospital where they needled his chest, called for air transport, and scanned him up. He has been shocky for us since we picked him up. Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) has been three the whole time. They said his head scan showed subarachnoid hemorrhage.”With the words of the flight team as background narrative, we get about doing our thing—hopefully more method and less madness. Bang, bang, bang! Check the tube. Vital signs. IV fluids. Place a chest tube. Hang the blood. Quick X–ray. Neuro exam—nothing. Get him off the board. Warm him up. Place the orogastric (OG) tube. Bang, bang, bang!The neurosurgery resident opens the CT scans from the other hospital. The brain and cervical spine scans show a disaster: some swelling and bleeding in the higher brain, but the worst damage is in the lower brain, brainstem, and top of the spinal cord. I have heard a neurosurgeon describe this pattern before as “internal decapitation.” Such language never makes it into the patient’s chart. For David the last two words of the neurosurgery consult note will eventually read, “Prognosis grim.”He remains unstable in the trauma bay. Inaction is death. We ultrasound his heart, abdomen, and pelvis. He has fluid that shouldn’t be around his heart. He is dying of the neuro injury we cannot control, but the pericardial fluid might be giving him shock, and we can control that. We can’t ignore the fluid. Shouldn’t ignore it. At least, wouldn’t ignore it. So, we bang up to the operating room. Squeezing blood. Spiking fluid. Oxygen tank and crash cart. Up we go.In the operating room, we do much and we do well. We release the fluid around the heart and find it was CPR, not heart injury that put it there. In the pericardial flash we get a view of the cardiac athlete, pounding like the 26th mile of the marathon. We explore the abdomen and find it swollen but innocent of an injury that would take his life. We place our lines and tubes as the neurosurgeons place theirs. If nothing else, we will be able to measure what lies ahead.“Good work, team,” and we bump the door on the way to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU).The care in the PICU is more Apache brave than Gaelic knight—more bottles, fewer scissors. The curtains and carpets mute the tones. Our efforts continue, but I get a word that David’s father has arrived. He is sitting in a small, private waiting room off of the main PICU waiting room. The PICU staff colloquially refer to this as “the bad news room.” I take a seat next to a solitary man who is having the worst day of his life. His worst day so far.“I am Dr. Petty, and I am one of the doctors who is taking care of your son. I am very sorry about what has happened. Maybe you can tell me a little bit about what you understand is going on, and I’ll tell you what I know.” [End Page 17]He tells me that his wife was driving David back from her sister’s house, just the two of them. He doesn’t know what happened, but he got a call from the other hospital about the crash. His wife was badly hurt. He heard that David had died, but they got him back. Both were transferred up to the... (shrink)

Abstract.The Judeo-Christian, Enlightenment, and postmodernist paradigms have become intellectually and ethically exhausted. They are obviously failing to provide a conceptual framework conducive to eliminating some of humanity's worst scourges, including war and environmental destruction. This raises the issue of a successor, which necessitates a reexamination of first principles, starting with our concept of God. Pantheism, which is differentiated from panentheism, denies the existence of a transcendent, supernatural creator and instead asserts that God and the universe are one and the (...) same. Understood via intuition, modern cosmology, and other natural sciences, it offers an alternative worldview that posits the divine and sacred nature of the universe/creation. By asserting the fallacy of the creator/creation dichotomy and any attempts to anthropomorphize or personalize God, pantheism precludes hubris stemming from erroneous notions of divine favoritism. The links between Judeo-Christianity and the Enlightenment are traced and a case made that the latter has resulted in the equally erroneous and hubristic notion of human ascendancy to a Godlike status, with the concept of progress providing a secular version of the Christian belief in salvation. By reestablishing the natural sciences’metanarrative, even as it asserts the divinity of the material universe, pantheism simultaneously demotes postmodernism and reconciles science with religion. Pantheism provides a theological foundation for deep ecology and also stakes out a viable third position in relation to the ongoing dispute between advocates of intelligent design and the scientific establishment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy by Philip KitcherJohn CappsPhilip Kitcher. Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, 456 pp with index.Reading Philip Kitcher's new collection Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy, one can't help but think "well, we're all pragmatists now." Indeed, the list of prominent philosophers who've embraced some form of pragmatism seems to grow (...) longer every year. This list includes not only 20th century greats such as Quine and Rorty (among others), but also living philosophers such as Hilary Putnam, Robert Brandom, Jürgen Habermas, Simon Blackburn, and Huw Price, to name just a few. With this collection of papers Kitcher places himself firmly in the pragmatist camp.Sometimes "pragmatism" is used in ways that are at best vacuous and at worst misleading; and, of course, pragmatism comes in many different flavors and strengths. The danger of dilution makes Kitcher's collection all the more notable. In this set of 17 essays—most written in the last five years, most but not all reprinted from other sources— Kitcher does two noteworthy things: first, he clearly articulates a robust theoretical position, which he calls "pragmatic naturalism" and, second, he gives sensitive and thoughtful readings of classical American pragmatists (particularly Dewey, whom he calls "the most important philosopher of the twentieth century" (211), but also James).Kitcher made his reputation for work in the philosophy of science and philosophy of biology. His earliest writings critiqued sociobiology and creationism; later work aimed to give a clear-eyed account of how science could be a rational, objective enterprise, notwithstanding the cultural critiques of the 1980s and 1990s. More recently, he has argued for how science can play a responsible role in democratic societies—and, conversely, how democracy can play a responsible role in guiding scientific inquiry. With this more recent work (from approximately Science, Truth and Democracy (2003) onward) there is a clear connection to Dewey and his focus on the relation between science, democracy, and philosophy. [End Page 443]In defending a "pragmatic naturalism" Kitcher makes several specific commitments. He is committed, first of all, to what he calls "real realism": a "piecemeal" and "modest" approach "that grants a license to take seriously the claims of the most successful sciences at face value" (128). Rejecting anti-realism and constructivism, Kitcher defends the "natural epistemological attitude" (72) which holds that in fact we do spend a lot of time actually representing the world around us and that these representations can be more or less accurate. Second, he is committed to a "modest correspondence theory of truth" that, while entailing an objective reference relation between our words and the mind-independent reality they refer to, does not "suppose there are entities, facts, to which true sentences correspond" (111). Kitcher argues that a modest correspondence theory is necessary to explain why we act as we do, especially when engaged in real-life inquiries that are more complex than the typical set pieces used in philosophical writing. Third, Kitcher is committed to a kind of naturalism, particularly a kind of epistemological naturalism, that blurs the distinction between philosophy and science so that science can provide support for philosophical theories as well as be an example of how successful inquiry is organized.Finally, Kitcher is committed to pragmatism in at least two senses. First, pragmatism is anti-metaphysical:It eschews any grand metaphysical premises in favor of a return to the everyday experiences of ordinary people: in the spirit of James and Dewey, it attempts not to substitute a new, improved metaphysics for a faulty one, but to strip away the metaphysical trappings that impede a satisfactory appraisal of inquiry.(xxi)Second, pragmatism provides an account of "the epistemic good" that is the goal of inquiry. Kitcher credits pragmatists with grounding "the epistemic good" in the common good and, given how the common good evolves and changes over time, this means that:There are many different ways to identify the boundaries of objects and their divisions into kinds, and that these should appropriately evolve in the course of inquiry, so as to facilitate achieving the... (shrink)

BackgroundThe Public Health Service Increased Risk designation identified organ donors at increased risk of transmitting hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and human immunodeficiency virus. Despite clear data demonstrating a low absolute risk of disease transmission from these donors, patients are hesitant to consent to receiving organs from these donors. We hypothesize that patients who consent to receiving offers from these donors have decreased time to transplant and decreased waitlist mortality.MethodsWe performed a single-center retrospective review of all-comers waitlisted for liver transplant from (...) 2013 to 2019. The three competing risk events (transplant, death, and removal from transplant list) were analyzed. 1603 patients were included, of which 1244 (77.6%) consented to offers from increased risk donors.ResultsCompared to those who did not consent, those who did had 2.3 times the rate of transplant (SHR 2.29, 95% CI 1.88–2.79, p < 0.0001), with a median time to transplant of 11 months versus 14 months (p < 0.0001), as well as a 44% decrease in the rate of death on the waitlist (SHR 0.56, 95% CI 0.42–0.74, p < 0.0001). All findings remained significant after controlling for the recipient age, race, gender, blood type, and MELD. Of those who did not consent, 63/359 (17.5%) received a transplant, all of which were from standard criteria donors, and of those who did consent, 615/1244 (49.4%) received a transplant, of which 183/615 (29.8%) were from increased risk donors.ConclusionsThe findings of decreased rates of transplantation and increased risk of death on the waiting list by patients who were unwilling to accept risks of viral transmission of 1/300–1/1000 in the worst case scenarios suggests that this consent process may be harmful especially when involving “trigger” words such as HIV. The rigor of the consent process for the use of these organs was recently changed but a broader discussion about informed consent in similar situations is important. (shrink)

Many believe that at the end of her life Mary was assumed bodily ‘into heaven’ where she remains exalted by her divine son. This claim, magisterially entitled The Doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, strikes some as absurd. Even many traditional Christians are opposed to, or have doubts about this aspect of Catholic doctrine of the Theotokos[the one who ‘gave birth to’ God]).Typically critics regard the doctrine as being at best a sentimental piety and at worst (...) a neo–Pagan accretion entirely lacking in support from any appropriate quarter. Others go further, however; suggesting that it is not simply without biblical or other evidential warrant but is in some way incoherent. Here I explore some of the sources of difficulties that confront any attempt to present and defend the doctrine.Ancient and mediaeval accounts often relate narratives of Mary’s final days. Significantly, however, they also reason that given Mary’s unique status the Assumption must have happened because it should have done. I consider this style of deductive theology before examining certain historical presentations, in which I argue that there may be material evidence of the tradition as far back as the end of the persecution of Diocletian around the time of the Edict of Milan.Thereafter I take up the philosophical problems, exploring various possibilities and suggesting that acknowledging Aquinas’s insistence on the impoverished nature of disembodied human souls, and their need of resurrected embodiment is consistent with Mary’s unique role that the mode of her present existence is of a different order to that of other separated subjects. (shrink)

Many believe that at the end of her life Mary was assumed bodily ‘into heaven’ where she remains exalted by her divine son. This claim, magisterially entitled The Doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, strikes some as absurd. Even many traditional Christians are opposed to, or have doubts about this aspect of Catholic doctrine of the Theotokos[the one who ‘gave birth to’ God]).Typically critics regard the doctrine as being at best a sentimental piety and at worst (...) a neo–Pagan accretion entirely lacking in support from any appropriate quarter. Others go further, however; suggesting that it is not simply without biblical or other evidential warrant but is in some way incoherent. Here I explore some of the sources of difficulties that confront any attempt to present and defend the doctrine.Ancient and mediaeval accounts often relate narratives of Mary’s final days. Significantly, however, they also reason that given Mary’s unique status the Assumption must have happened because it should have done. I consider this style of deductive theology before examining certain historical presentations, in which I argue that there may be material evidence of the tradition as far back as the end of the persecution of Diocletian around the time of the Edict of Milan.Thereafter I take up the philosophical problems, exploring various possibilities and suggesting that acknowledging Aquinas’s insistence on the impoverished nature of disembodied human souls, and their need of resurrected embodiment is consistent with Mary’s unique role that the mode of her present existence is of a different order to that of other separated subjects. (shrink)

The fundamental requirement of Anglo-American criminal law is that crime must consist of the concurrence of a guilty mind—a mens rea—with a guilty act—an actus reus. And yet, the criminal law is shot through with discordant lumps of strict liability—crimes for which no mens rea is required. Ignoring the conventional normative objections to this aberration, I distinguish two different types of strict criminal liability: the type that arose at common law and the type associated with the public welfare offenses that (...) are the product of twentieth and twenty-first century legislation. Using famous cases as exemplars, I analyze the two types of strict liability, and then examine the purposes served and incentives created by subjecting individuals to strict liability. I conclude that common law strict liability is rational in that it advances the purposes of the criminal law, while the public welfare offenses are at best pointless and at worst counterproductive. I suggest that in this respect the common law contains more wisdom than the results of the legislative process. (shrink)

In a lively, interesting, and provocative paper Tuija Takala charges Julian Savulescu and me with bringing utilitarianism into disrepute and indeed with attempting to shoot it down, presumably in flames.1 Takala does not mince words. When she suggests that in our writings “utilitarianism is turning into the monster its critics always thought it was”, she is associating herself with those who charge us with propounding, again her words, the “inhumane theory that allows the sacrifice of minorities, the killing of the (...) innocent, and simplistic calculations on the value of life”. Perhaps surprisingly for someone who identifies herself strongly with utilitarianism, Takala seems to take the worst and most ignorant critics of consequentialism generally, and of utilitarianism in particular, at face value and suggests that because their lazy, tendentious, and misdirected attacks on those they take to be utilitarians are often made against Savulescu and me that we somehow bear responsibility for this and for any charges they make, however ill judged or poorly supported by evidence. (shrink)

This paper applies an eight-step model of crisis management to the Gulf Oil disaster and discusses potential legal liabilities for BP. The eight steps are: ascertaining the facts, portraying the problem, allocating responsibility, responding to critics, adopting new policies, implementing new procedures, utilizing political/legal tactics, and costs in money and credibility. While crisis management responses often fall into either uniformly positive or uniformly negative patterns and outcomes, the BP case falls into a more complex pattern, where the company did some (...) things well and other things poorly, with BP making its worst mistakes in the pre-crisis stage. After examining BP’s response, the longer version of this paper examines the regulatory role and the application of the capture theory to the Minerals Management Service of the Department of Interior. That section and associated references are available upon request to the author. (shrink)

A rhizome may be broken, shattered at a given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. You can never get rid of ants because they form an animal rhizome that can rebound time and again after most of it has been destroyed... There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome. That is why (...) one can never posit a dualism or a dichotomy, even in the rudimentary form of the good and the bad. You may make a rupture, draw a line of flight, yet there still is a danger that you will stratify again everything, from Oedipal resurgences to fascist concretions. Groups and individuals contain microfascisms just waiting to crystallize. Yes, couch grass is also a rhizome.Edited by Sylvere Lotringer, On the Line was the first book published in the new "Foreign Agents" series in 1983. It gathers together two seminal texts that Deleuze and Guattari would later elaborate on in A Thousand Plateaus. First delivered in French by Deleuze at the "Schizo-Culture" conference organized by Semiotext at Columbia University in 1975, "Rhizome" introduced a new kind of thinking in philosophy, both non-dialectical and non-hierarchical. The two didn't expect this neo-anarchical blue-print would eventually offer an early template for the understanding of the internet. "Rhizome" substitutes pragmatic, "couch grass," free-floating logic to the binary, oppositional, and exclusive model of the tree.In "Politics," superceding the Marxist concept of class, Deleuze envisages the social macrocosm as a series of lines, and reinvent politics as a process of flux whose outcome will always be unpredictable. It is, he emphasizes, the end of the idea of revolution, but not of the "becoming revolutionary." Throughout, he keeps dispelling the notion of capitalism as a repressive machine only meant to extract surplus value from exploited workers and suggest that it could be opposed from within by redirecting the creativity and multiplicity of its flows.The multiple must be made, not always by adding another dimension, rather in the simplest way, by dint of sobriety... A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radices. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes... Even some animals are, in their pack forms. Rats are rhizomes. Burrows are too, in all their function of shelter, supply, movement, evasion and breakout... The rhizome includes the best and the worst: potato and couch grass. (shrink)

Hayek's reputation has gone through a remarkable cycle. An eminent exponent of the Austrian theory of business cycles in the 1930s, he was worsted in the controversy over Keynes' _Treatise on Money_. Following this defeat, Hayek retreated into capital theory, an esoteric branch of economics in which few economists then took an active interest. He gave up economics altogether after the war and turned to psychology, political philosophy, philosophy of law and the history of ideas. However, in 1974 he won (...) the Nobel Prize and returned to mainstream economics as a leading critic of Keynesianism and an advocate of free banking as the answer to inflation. Today Hayek reigns supreme as the kind of moral philosopher and political economist that economics has not seen since Adam Smith. Also forthcoming in this series is _Paul A. Samuelson, 2nd Series_. (shrink)

A single mother is a person who is accountable for raising their children alone because they do not have a husband or live-in partner. Single mothers claim to have no co-parenting relationships at all, comparing single parents to those who are married, cohabiting, or without children, single parents experience the worst work-life balance. A single parent may feel overwhelmed by the demands of juggling child care, a career, paying bills, and maintaining household responsibilities. Single-parent households frequently deal with several (...) extra obligations and possible complications that other families would not. The study also emphasizes the difficulties and coping mechanisms faced by contractual single parents as well as their lived experiences. The study's findings, which were based on an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, were as follows: (1) Work-life balance can be difficult for single parents. They struggle to keep their jobs while taking care of their family because they are the only ones in charge of the children. (2) Single contractual mothers face particular difficulties due to a lack of resources for basic expenses. (3) Contractual single women lean on their kids, the good people in their lives, and their faith in God to get through problems. (shrink)

“Woke” and cancel culture have become mainstream methods for ideological leftists to express their sense of hopelessness and frustration. And while many agree that improving social harmony is an admirable goal, policing the use of pronouns while carefully maintaining the status quo of capitalism’s production, destruction and inequality does little to address the underlying structural problems that create the conditions for social disharmony. It is on this point that Žižek finds agreement with commentators on the ideological right. But at both (...) ends of the ideological spectrum we find little to hope for. This paper is about what happens when important discussions are hijacked by extremists on both ends of the political spectrum. Surely, there must be more than politically correct totalitarianism and the irrational outbursts of conspiratorial fanatics. As Žižek has long argued, we should, perhaps, hold out for the worst option in the hope that real change might still be possible. I make this case with reference to popular events and culture, and a wide array of Žižek’s scholarly and popular works. (shrink)

The esteemed psychologist and thinker John Dewey headed for previously unexplored philosophical territory with this influential work. Written shortly after World War I, it embodies Dewey's system of pragmatic humanism and maintains that individuals can attain "a more ordered and intelligent happiness" by reconsidering the ultimate effects of their deepest beliefs and feelings. With its promise of achieving an understanding of the past and attaining a brighter future, Reconstruction in Philosophy remains ever relevant. "A modern classic." — Philosophy and (...) Phenomenological Research. (shrink)

This article examines the question of whether the atheist and the believer can understand each other, to the point of being friends intellectually. The answer is no. The atheist and the believer can be best enemies, but their epistemic disagreement is definitely radical. For it is not a disagreement on religious belief itself, but about what allows the believer to believe. The article examines some aspects of John Greco’s concept of ”friendly theism’, the discussion of conciliationism and anti-conciliatonism, and (...) the epistemic role of the Holy Spirit. (shrink)

This article argues that Rawlsian liberal political institutions are incapable of ensuring that the basic welfare needs of the worst off are met. This argument consists of two steps. First, I show that institutions are incapable of ensuring that the basic needs of the worst off are met without pursuing certain non-taxation-based courses of action that are designed to alter the work choices of citizens. Second, I argue that such actions are not permissible for Rawlsian institutions. It follows (...) that a state governed by a Rawls-type political conception of justice is parasitic on the willingness of citizens to be sufficiently motivated by concern for the worst off, but it cannot require or even encourage them to be so motivated. (shrink)

In any complex human society, distinct persons may have strikingly different standards of living. Those who lead the most undesirable, poorest lives in society can be called the worst off. Given that we almost always do not want to be, but some have to be, the worst off, we may want to find a right way to treat the worst off. In the West, John Rawls has proposed a conception of justice as fairness, and in the (...) East, Confucius and Mencius have developed conceptions of ren and yi partly in order to deal with social injustice in the distribution of benefits and the problem of the worst off. Their conceptions and proposed solutions provide valuable ideas, which through comparison may be better assessed and then employed, or even combined, to address the problem. In this essay, I try to examine and compare their conceptions of distributive justice and the worst off, and then expound their suggested solutions to the problem and propose a provisional answer on the basis of those ideas. (shrink)

Though John Stuart Mill's long employment by the East India Company did not limit him to drafting despatches on relations with the princely states, that activity must form the centrepiece of any satisfactory study of his Indian career. As yet the activity has scarcely been glimpsed. It produced, on average, about a draft a week, which he listed in his own hand. He subsequently struck out items that he sought to disown in consequence of substantial revisions made by the (...) Company's directors or the Board of Control. He also listed items that achieved publication as parliamentary papers and they amount to about ten per cent of his drafts. The two lists, published in the most recent volume of his Collected Works, reveal, at the least, the ‘political’ despatches from which he did not seek to dissociate himself. The despatches were not entirely his work and authorship in the conventional sense may not be assumed. They were the product of an elaborate process, in which many hands were engaged. At worst, they were his work in much the same way that an Act of Parliament is the work of the Crown Solicitor who drafts the bill. At best they were his as are the drafts of a civil servant who believes in policy statements that he prepares for his political masters. The greatest English philosopher and social scientist of the nineteenth century was, in his daily occupation, an employee. His Company was charged with initiating policies for the Indian states and they were subject to the control of a minister of the Crown. (shrink)