This essay goes through Frederick 2015 (the critique) in some detail, responding to the various paraphrases and criticisms therein. It is argued that in each case the critique is mistaken about what Lester 2012 (Escape from Leviathan: EfL) says, or about what the critique presents as a sound criticism, or both. Introduction: the three problems with the critique and the philosophical problem that EfL is attempting to solve. “Abstract”: the critique’s confusion about EfL’s aprioristic theory of instrumental rationality. There (...) are then detailed replies (too many and too diverse to summarise) to quotations from the critique’s confused interpretations and criticisms under the following headings (quoted from the critique): “2. Instrumental Rationality”; 3. Weakness of Will”; “4. Desires and Values”; “5. Free Will”; “6. Self-Interest”; “7. Maximisation”; “8. Morals”. Finally, in “9. Conclusion”, the philosophical problem for economics is briefly restated. The philosophical interpretation of homo economicus in EfL (as with its overall philosophical theory of libertarianism) has yet to be given adequate critical consideration. (shrink)

Early in Peter Abelard's Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian, the philosopher and the Christian easily come to agreement about what the point of ethics is: “[T]he culmination of true ethics … is gathered together in this: that it reveal where the ultimate good is and by what road we are to arrive there.” They also agree that, since the enjoyment of this ultimate good “comprises true blessedness,” ethics “far surpasses other teachings in both usefulness and worthiness.” (...) As Abelard understood them, both fundamental elements of his twelfth-century ethical culture — Greek philosophy and Christian religion — held a common view of the nature of ethical inquiry, one that was so obvious to them that his characters do not even state it in a fully explicit way. They take for granted, as we take the ground we stand on, the premise that the most important function of ethical theory is to tell you what sort of life is most desirable, or most worth living. That is, the point of ethics is that it is good for you, that it serves your self-interest. (shrink)

Understanding how people comprehend visual narratives (including picture stories, comics, and film) requires the combination of traditionally separate theories that span the initial sensory and perceptual processing of complex visual scenes, the perception of events over time, and comprehension of narratives. Existing piecemeal approaches fail to capture the interplay between these levels of processing. Here, we propose the Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT), as applied to visual narratives, which distinguishes between front-end and back-end cognitive processes. Front-end processes occur (...) during single eye fixations and are comprised of attentional selection and information extraction. Back-end processes occur across multiple fixations and support the construction of event models, which reflect understanding of what is happening now in a narrative (stored in working memory) and over the course of the entire narrative (stored in long-term episodic memory). We describe relationships between front- and back-end processes, and medium-specific differences that likely produce variation in front-end and back-end processes across media (e.g., picture stories vs. film). We describe several novel research questions derived from SPECT that we have explored. By addressing these questions, we provide greater insight into how attention, information extraction, and event model processes are dynamically coordinated to perceive and understand complex naturalistic visual events in narratives and the real world. (shrink)

Business ethics as an applied inquiry requires an expanded normative method which allows both philosophical and religious ethical considerations to be employed in resolving complex issues or cases. The proposed foundational normative method provides a comprehensive framework composed of major philosophical and religious ethical theories. An extensive rationale from the current trends in business ethics and metaethical considerations supports the development of this method which is illustrated in several case studies. By using this method, scholars and business persons gain greater (...) certitude about the ethical quality of their deliberations and decision making than what may be achieved with current nonsystematic or nascent normative methods. (shrink)

Religions; Islam; relations; Christianity; Judaism; Christianity and other religions; Other (Philosophy); religious aspects; Islam.

David Friedman posed a number of libertarian philosophical problems (Friedman 1989). This essay criticizes Walter Block’s Rothbardian responses (Block 2011) and compares them with J C Lester’s critical-rationalist, libertarian-theory responses (Lester [2000] 2012). The main issues are as follows. 1. Critical rationalism and how it applies to libertarianism. 2.1. How libertarianism is not inherently about law and is inherently about morals. 2.2. How liberty relates to property and can be maximized: carbon dioxide and radio waves. 2.3. Applying the (...) theory to flashlights. 2.4. Applying the theory to the probability of imposed risks. 2.5. “Homesteading” or initial acquisition. 2.6 What is “essential” for a “true libertarian.” 2.7. Crime and punishment. 2.8. Extent of punishment. 2.9. The libertarian response to a madman with a gun. 2.10. How contradictions in rights are possible. 2.11. The draft. 3.1. Utilitarian libertarianism and “nose counting”. 3.2. How interpersonal comparisons of utility are possible and utility monsters are not a threat. 3.3. Why it is not utilitarian in practice to kill an innocent prisoner to prevent a riot. 3.4. Why David Friedman should not be forced to give up one of his eyes. 3.5. How utilitarians can be libertarians. Conclusion: a proper theory of liberty combined with critical rationalism offers superior solutions to Friedman’s problems. Appendix: replies to two commentators. (shrink)

We show that data collected from corpuses of documents violate the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt version of Bell’s inequality and therefore indicate the presence of quantum entanglement in their structure. We obtain this result by considering two concepts and their combination and coincidence operations consisting of searches of co-occurrences of exemplars of these concepts in specific corpuses of documents. Measuring the frequencies of these co-occurrences and calculating the relative frequencies as approximate probabilities entering in the CHSH inequality, we obtain manifest violations of the (...) latter for all considered corpuses of documents. In comparing these violations with those analogously obtained in an earlier work for the same combined concepts in psychological coincidence experiments with human participants, also violating the CHSH inequality, we identify the entanglement as being carried by the meaning connection between the two considered concepts within the combination they form. We explain the stronger violation for the corpuses of documents, as compared to the violation in the psychology experiments, as being due to the superior meaning domain of the human mind and, on the other side, to the latter reaching a broader domain of meaning and being possibly also actively influenced during the experimentation. We mention some of the issues to be analyzed in future work such as the violations of the CHSH inequality being larger than the ‘Cirel’son bound’ for all of the considered corpuses of documents. (shrink)

Frederick 2013 (the critique) offers criticisms of the Escape from Leviathan (EfL) theory of libertarian liberty and also of its compatibility with preference-utilitarian welfare and private-property anarchy. This reply to the critique first explains the underlying philosophical problem with libertarian liberty and EfL’s proposed solution. It then goes through the critique in detail showing that it does not grasp the problem or the solution and offers only misrepresentations and unsound criticisms.

This is an attempt to clarify the nature of extreme, or complete, “wokeness” in its modern sense. The central thesis is that it is an inverted form of fascism, and thereby even worse than some of its critics assume. In fact, it is far worse than ordinary fascism whether or not it is correct to see it as an inverted form. As this is a thesis, it is not a definition. Therefore, this thesis could certainly be mistaken. But if it (...) is, then sound criticisms of the explanation would be needed to refute it. (shrink)

Lester Crocker addresses these questions in an overview of ethical thought in eighteenth-century France.

The two purposes of this essay. The general philosophical problem with most versions of social libertarianism and how this essay will proceed. The specific problem with liberty explained by a thought-experiment. The positive and abstract theory of interpersonal liberty-in-itself as ‘the absence of interpersonal initiated constraints on want-satisfaction’, for short ‘no initiated impositions’. The individualistic liberty-maximisation theory solves the problems of clashes, defences, and rectifications without entailing interpersonal utility comparisons or libertarian consequentialism. The practical implications of instantiating liberty: three rules (...) of liberty-in-practice, 1) initial ultimate control of one’s body, 2) initial ultimate control of one’s used resources, 3) consensual interpersonal interactions and resource transfers. These rules are economically efficient and maximise general want-satisfaction. Private property and legal remedies are additional practical institutional aspects, but to which ‘initiated impositions’ then apply prima facie. Libertarian law is often mistaken for complete libertarianism. Moral explanations are a separate issue. The three main moral theories imply libertarianism, but it can be morally posited independently of them. Critical rationalism and its application. No empirical or argumentative support for theories. An important ambiguity with ‘justification’. How the epistemology applies to the theory of liberty and its application but remains separable in principle. Conclusion: there are further published explanations but this should be enough to generate useful criticism. Appendix replying to some typical comments. (shrink)

Until quite recently, it has appeared that eleutheric-conjectural libertarianism (ECL) could not avoid some degree of, very broad, interpersonal utility comparisons (IUCs). And this has been objected to by some of its libertarian critics, notably economists and propertarians. Indeed, this aspect does make the theory less compatible with economics than the rest of the theory and it is thereby a significant problem. This is because one of the main problems that ECL is intended to solve is how an abstract theory (...) of liberty can be compatible with the pro-free-market conclusions of many economists. Being more compatible with economics should make ECL theory more comprehensive, comprehensible, and cogent. (shrink)

Liberty is what libertarians advocate. Both because of the inherent value of human liberty and because of the increasing wealth and welfare it brings to all. They see the aggressive coercion of the state as the main enemy of liberty. The solution is to roll back the state until there is little or no state left. Libertarianism has been rapidly growing since the 1970s. But it is still not commonly understood or even given a proper hearing. However, you will increasingly (...) come across it. Often it will be through state enthusiasts disingenuously claiming to be libertarians . At other times it will be through state enthusiasts attacking libertarianism as an extremist ideology. And very occasionally it will be real libertarians explaining and defending their views. J C Lester is a libertarian philosopher who has been writing about why liberty is preferable to politics for many years. This book contains many of his shorter writings on the subject. These range from the populist to the philosophical. Together they function as a miscellaneous introduction to libertarianism. The various different topics and approaches should give the reader a good cross-reference grasp of the subject. (shrink)

Biological science does not try to distinguish between health and disease. Biology is concerned with the interaction between living organisms and their environment. What we call health or disease is quite irrelevant.These reactions between the individual and his environment are complex. The individual and his surroundings form an integrated system which we can arbitrarily divide into two parts. There is an “external” component, by which we mean such factors as light, heat, percentage of oxygen in the air, quantity of minerals (...) or vitamins in food, micro-organisms in food or air, and so on. These can induce changes in what we arbitrarily call the “internal” component. Here we include such crude factors as anatomical structures, or finer details like composition of intercellular fluid, or secretions of glands, or changes of electrical potential in nerve or muscle. (shrink)

It is vital that social workers have a deep and critical understanding of the social work value-base, and are able to analyse and apply values and ethics to their everyday practice. This fully-revised edition of one of our best-selling titles identifies current issues in social work and then applies an ethical dimension. These issues are then investigated further within an anti-discriminatory framework and against the background of the code of practice for social care workers and employers. Traditional value perspectives are (...) clearly explained and current developments in virtue theory and the ethics of care for social work are also introduced. (shrink)

In _Ecce Homo_ Friedrich Nietzsche calls himself "the first immoralist" and adds "that makes me the annihilator _par excellence_". Lester Hunt examines this and other radical claims in order to show that Nietzsche does have a coherent ethical and political philosophy. He uses Nietzsche's writings as a starting point for a critique of a wider, contemporary ethical project - one that should inform our lives as well as our thoughts.

contemporary ethical project--one that should inform our lives as well as our thoughts.

Epistemology is often a problem for libertarianism. Many libertarian texts assume that they need to do more than explain and defend the libertarian conjecture. Instead, they try to offer epistemological support for it (whether empirically or morally); which falsificationism and, more broadly, critical rationalism explains is not possible. Moreover, they often mistake this attempt at support for an explanation of libertarianism (which ought to include an abstract theory of liberty and how it relates to liberty in practice). Therefore, when a (...) criticism of falsificationism appears on a libertarian website it seems useful to reply to it (even though no discussion of libertarianism itself is involved). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.3 (2000) 259-285 [Access article in PDF] The Personal, the Political, and Others: Audre Lorde Denouncing "The Second Sex Conference" 1 Lester C. Olsen Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference--those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older--know (...) that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish.--Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider 112Fifty years ago, in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir's book entitled The Second Sex was published in France. She did not consider herself a philosopher because, to her, a philosopher was "someone who has built a great system" (Simons and Benjamin 1979, 338). Her book, nonetheless, became a milestone in feminist philosophy, for it synthesizes elements of existentialism, phenomenology, and socialism in an account of women's situation in society. Central to this account is Beauvoir's concentration upon representations of "self" and "other." For example, Beauvoir affirmed, "The category of the Other is as primordial as consciousness itself. In most primitive societies, in the most ancient mythologies, one finds the expression of a duality--that of the Self and the Other. This duality was not originally attached to the division of the sexes; it was not dependent upon any empirical facts" (1993, xl). In an interview, Beauvoir stressed, "I believe that the Other is not simply an idealist relationship, it is a materialist relationship" (Simons and Benjamin 1979, 345). To develop her analysis, Beauvoir drew upon another binary, "master" and "slave." However, she concentrated on how women, as a category, had been subordinated as men's "other."Twenty years ago, in 1979, Audre Lorde delivered her best-known speech, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," at an international conference held in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of [End Page 259] Beauvoir's book. According to conference organizer Jessica Benjamin and reporter Lilly Rivlin, writing together in Ms. magazine, "[M]ore than 800 women from all over the world gathered at a conference on feminist theory, 'The Second Sex--Thirty Years Later,' sponsored by the New York Institute for the Humanities" (1980, 48). Like most of the conference participants, Lorde was a woman, a feminist, a socialist, a public intellectual, and an activist scholar. Lorde may have participated in the conference as a "consultant," a poet at a public reading, and a speaker at a plenary session 2 because her feminist philosophy is of resonance to Beauvoir's. Both women rejected biology as the basis for women's situation, believing instead that material conditions are most fundamental. Both commented upon the power of symbolism, especially myths about others, in perpetuating social inequalities and failing to differentiate categories for others. Both saw the relationship between "self" and "other" as a vital and creative tension.To understand this tension, Beauvoir drew explicitly on Hegel's ideas as they were treated in Sartre's oeuvre (Lloyd 1983). In contrast, Lorde may have drawn upon conceptions of double consciousness among black public intellectuals in the United States (Henderson 1989, 17-21). Unlike Beauvoir, Lorde was a lesbian, a mother, and a black woman for whom Beauvoir's analogies between the status of women and the status of "Negroes" were problematic. Confronting the conference participants on the last day, during the last panel entitled "The Personal and the Political," Lorde condemned the conference for its limited range of speakers, its substance, its very structure. Lorde examined the ramifications of failing to include others as equals. For in failing to do so, the conference had employed the same tools of oppression over others that the participants deplored in the politics of patriarchy. Lorde challenged the conference participants, who presumably understood that Beauvoir had represented woman as... (shrink)

A -/- abortion and infanticide/ academic freedom/ academics/ action/ act-omission doctrine/ addiction and dependence/ adoption/ advertising/ affirmative action/ age of consent/ age of criminal responsibility/ age of majority/ agent/ aggression/ agriculture/ aid, foreign/ AIDS/ air/ akrasia/ allies/ altruism/ American Civil War (1861-1865)/ American exceptionalism/ American War of Independence (1775–1783)/ anarchic social order/ anarcho-capitalism/ anarchy/ animal rights/ animal welfare/ apartheid/ apathy/ appeasement/ apriorism/ aristocracy/ arms trade/ arms race/ artificial intelligence/ arts and sciences/ assassination/ asset stripping/ asylum seekers/ atomism, social/ Austrian School (...) of economics/ authoritarianism/ authority/ autonomy, intellectual/ axis/ -/- B -/- balance of trade/ balance of power (international)/ banking/ bankruptcy, insolvency, and limited liability/ barriers to entry/ begging/ belief/ betting/ big business/ bigotry/ biodiversity/ bioethics/ black market/ blackmail/ blasphemy/ booms and slumps/ borders, political/ boxing and dangerous sports/ boycott/ bribery/ British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)/ BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy)/ bureaucracy/ business cycles/ . (shrink)

In _Ecce Homo_ Friedrich Nietzsche calls himself "the first immoralist" and adds "that makes me the annihilator _par excellence_". Lester Hunt examines this and other radical claims in order to show that Nietzsche does have a coherent ethical and political philosophy. He uses Nietzsche's writings as a starting point for a critique of a wider, contemporary ethical project - one that should inform our lives as well as our thoughts.

We investigate the hypothesis that within a combination of a ‘number concept’ plus a ‘substantive concept’, such as ‘eleven animals’, the identity and indistinguishability present on the level of the concepts, i.e., all eleven animals are identical and indistinguishable, gives rise to a statistical structure of the Bose–Einstein type similar to how Bose–Einstein statistics is present for identical and indistinguishable quantum particles. We proceed by identifying evidence for this hypothesis by extracting the statistical data from the World-Wide-Web utilizing the Google (...) Search tool. By using the Kullback–Leibler divergence method, we then compare the obtained distribution with the Maxwell–Boltzmann as well as with the Bose–Einstein distributions and show that the Bose–Einstein’s provides a better fit as compared to the Maxwell–Boltzmann’s. (shrink)

This beautiful, inspiring book features 160 impactful, practical ways to transform everyday tasks into enjoyable, indulgent moments that reduce stress and leave you feeling balanced, connected, and ready to take on the day. In Rituals for Life, you’ll discover how to transform everyday activities such as waking, bathing, eating, and walking into mindfulness exercises. With 160 rituals throughout, you’ll learn how to infuse meaning into your daily life and improve your sense of health, empowerment, peace, prosperity, gratitude, intentionality, groundedness, and (...) renewal. Examples of rituals include: -Greet the dawn -Walk through green space to reflect, refresh, and restore healthy well-being -Heat or cool your body with Ayurvedic spices -Use your breath to find bliss -Create a personal ceremony to bless your healthy body and creative mind Within each chapter, you’ll find suggested ritual sequences to further guide and structure your days. You’ll also discover how to select rituals from the book to create your own unique routines that fit your mood, needs, interests, and desires. With Rituals for Life, you’ll transform mundane tasks into inspiring, enriching ways to savor life and enhance your overall well-being. (shrink)

The context of social work practice -- Anti-oppressive practice -- Principles and consequences -- Being accountable -- Managing risk -- Advocacy and social work -- The ethics of partnership working -- Ethics in social work organisations -- Globalisation : cultures, values and relativism.

This replies to Block 2019 (B19), which responds to Lester 2014 (L14). The main issues in the, varyingly sized, sections are as follows. 1 Further explanations of critical rationalism, the theory of liberty, and problems with the non-aggression principle. 2.1 The relationships among law, morality, and libertarianism. 2.2 The objective invasiveness of low-level radiation and that it is therefore an initiated imposition (albeit trivial) if someone inflicts it on non-consenting people. 2.3 The objective and subjective aspects of initiated impositions; (...) and how clashes can be resolved. 2.4 How liberty relates to risk and self-ownership. 2.5 Libertarian initial acquisition versus absolute property rights by labour-mixing. 2.6 Organisational note. 2.7 Libertarianism and mens rea. 2.8 Libertarian rectification versus lex-talionis doubling. 2.9 Indirectly clashing rights, self-preservation, trespasser-hiker, flagpole-grasper, and landmine-layer. 2.10 A logical point is not a moral point. 2.11 Pacifism and libertarianism. 3.1 A weak criticism of utilitarianism. 3.2 Hedonometers; approximate interpersonal comparisons of utility imply libertarianism; what a libertarian is; libertarian rankings. 4. Libertarian philosophy versus propertarian dogma. Coda: the need to take seriously the philosophical problems with propertarian-justificationist libertarianism. (shrink)

Libertarianism—and classical liberalism generally—entails (or presupposes) a specific, but implicit, conception of liberty. Imagine two lists of property-rights: one list is all those that currently appear to be libertarian (self-ownership, property acquired by use of natural resources, property acquired by consensual exchange, etc.); the other list is all those that currently appear not to be libertarian (aggressively imposed slavery, property acquired by theft or fraud, property acquired by coerced transfers due to welfare claims, etc.). What determines into which list a (...) property-right is to be assigned? If libertarianism is really about liberty, then the determining factor must be whether the property-right somehow fits what liberty is in a more abstract sense than property. It greatly clarifies matters to have an explicit theory of this entailed conception of abstract liberty and how it relates to its practical application and to morality. (shrink)

Contra critical rationalism, the response begins by referring to “the variety of internalist and externalist versions of foundationalism” (Liberty, December 2002). But it makes no attempt to explain or defend any of them. Hence, no further criticism is due here. The response then argues that, “The critical rationalist method seems to suggest that Lester’s extreme compatibility thesis is probably false” because—quoting Escape from Leviathan (EfL)—“bold universal theories might be false, and probably are” and yet “he doesn’t think the thesis (...) is probably false”. And so this is, by implication, an inconsistent belief. But the Compatibility Thesis (CT) is not one of the “bold universal theories” of science. The review and the response appear, at times, to assume that the CT is a bold universal theory about the perfect compatibility of applying the relevant conceptions, or theories, of rationality, liberty, welfare, and anarchy. Then, at other times, they assert that it is not bold at all but merely about definitions designed to be compatible. In fact, the CT asserts both that there are no theoretical incompatibilities among relevant and plausible versions of the theories, and that there are no actual long-term, systemic, and practical conflicts among applying them. That is still a bold theory (perhaps even most libertarians would disagree with it), but it’s not a universal thesis of perfect compatibility. And if it were good practice to reject a theory just because of its boldness, then all scientific theories would be immediately rejected without even trying to produce a falsification. In any case, as stated in the reply to the review, anyone’s mere beliefs are irrelevant to the truth of objective theories and the soundness of objective arguments. (shrink)