Criticising judges : fair game or off-limits? -- Academics and judges -- Are the judges too powerful? -- Magna Carta and compensation culture -- Does judicial review undermine democracy? -- Liability of public authorities in negligence -- The shifting sands of statutory interpretation -- Time to call it a day : some reflections on finality and the law -- The globalisation of law -- Recent developments in commercial law conference -- The contribution of construction cases to the development of the (...) common law -- What is wrong with human rights? -- Human rights in an age of terrorism -- Religion and the law : some current problems -- The extraterritorial application of the European Convention on Human Rights : now on a firmer footing, but is it a sound one? -- Magna Carta--liberties, customs, and the free flow of trade -- Delay too often defeats justice -- Magna Carta and religion -- Runnymede -- Advocates as protectors of the rule of law -- Litigators--survive and thrive -- The Jackson reforms and civil justice -- Sharpening the public gaze : advances in open justice in England and Wales -- Threats to justice in the twenty-first century -- Halsey 10 years on---the decision revisited -- Arbitration versus litigation -- Arbitration after Brussels I reform -- School speech day -- How my classical education has affected my life -- Valedictory -- Changes in the law in the last 50 years. (shrink)

Errol Lord offers a new account of the nature of rationality: what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons, and dispels doubts about whether we ought to be rational.

Father Lord, author of Armchair Philosophy, herein offers to a wider audience some notes from a recent talk to the Philosophers in St. Louis. He believes that writing is necessary not only to express, but also really to assimilate philosophy.

Father Lord, author of Armchair Philosophy, herein offers to a wider audience some notes from a recent talk to the Philosophers in St. Louis. He believes that writing is necessary not only to express, but also really to assimilate philosophy.

My dissertation is a systematic defense of the claim that what it is to be rational is to correctly respond to the reasons you possess. The dissertation is split into two parts, each consisting of three chapters. In Part I--Coherence, Possession, and Correctly Responding--I argue that my view has important advantages over popular views in metaethics that tie rationality to coherence (ch. 2), defend a novel view of what it is to possess a reason (ch. 3), and defend a novel (...) view about what it is to act and hold attitudes for normative reasons (ch. 4). In Part II--Foundationalism, Deception, and The Importance of Being Rational--I argue that foundationalists about epistemic rationality should think that the foundational beliefs are held for sufficient reasons (ch. 5), argue that my view solves the New Evil Demon problem for externalism (and solves a related and underapprieciated problem) (ch. 6), and argue that my view can vindicate the thought that we ought to be rational (ch. 7). (shrink)

Free speech is a great value and forms the life blood of a civilised society. It is however, one of several values and may sometimes come into conflict with them. In those cases it may need to be restricted. Hate speech is one such case and the author argues that it can and should be prohibited.

Errol Lord explores the boundaries of epistemic normativity. He argues that we can understand these better by thinking about which mental states are competitors in rationality’s competition. He argues that belief, disbelief, and two kinds of suspension of judgment are competitors. Lord shows that there are non-evidential reasons for suspension of judgment. One upshot is an independent motivation for a certain sort of pragmatist view of epistemic rationality.

This book is meant for sincere students, and especially for those who have some glimmering of what Krishna meant, when in Bhagavad-Gita, he said that after a while spiritual knowledge grows up within and illuminates with its rays all subjects and objects.

We argue for a novel view of suspending judgment properly--i.e., suspending judgment in an ex post justified way. In so doing we argue for a Kantian virtue-theoretic view of epistemic normativity and against teleological virtue-theoretic accounts.

It is a truism that we ought to be rational. Despite this, it has become popular to think that it is not the case that we ought to be rational. In this paper I argue for a view about rationality—the view that what one is rationally required to do is determined by the normative reasons one possesses—by showing that it can vindicate that one ought to be rational. I do this by showing that it is independently very plausible that what (...) one ought to do is determined by the normative reasons one possesses. Thus, the paper also makes a contribution tos the debate about the nature of our obligations. (shrink)

Objectivists about obligation hold that obligations are determined by all of the normatively relevant facts. Perspectivalists, on the other hand, hold that only facts within one’s perspective can determine what we are obligated to do. This chapter argues for a perspectivalist view. It argues that what you are obligated to do is determined by the normative reasons you possess. This view is anchored in the thought that our obligations have to be action-guiding in a certain sense—we have to be able (...) to act for the reasons that obligate us. The chapter argues that we have this ability—the ability to act for the right reasons—only if we possess those reasons. Thus, objectivism is false. The second half of the chapter argues that problems having to do with new information do not plague the particular perspectival view presented. (shrink)

Originally published in 1934, this book presents the content of the Rede Lecture for that year, which was delivered by Lord Macmillan at Cambridge University. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in law, philosophy and psychology.

Normative reasons have become a popular theoretical tool in recent decades. One helpful feature of normative reasons is their weight. The fourteen new essays in this book theorize about many different aspects of weight. Topics range from foundational issues to applications of weight in debates across philosophy.

Objectivists about obligation hold that obligations are determined by all of the normatively relevant facts. Perspectivalists, on the other hand, hold that only facts within one's perspective can determine what we are obligated to do. In this paper I argue for a perspectivalist view. On my view, what you are obligated to do is determined by the normative reasons you possess. My argument for my view is anchored in the thought that our obligations have to be action-guiding in a certain (...) sense--we have to be able to act for the reasons that obligate us. I argue that we have this ability--the ability to act for the right reasons--only if we possess those reasons. Thus, objectivism is false. In the second half of the paper I argue that problems having to do with new information do not plague my particular perspectival view. (shrink)

Can one know aesthetic facts on the basis of testimony? Optimists say that we can. Pessimists say that we cannot. Daniel Whiting has recently put forth a new argument for pessimism about the epistemic power of aesthetic testimony. He seeks to establish pessimism by arguing that testimonial beliefs cannot justify the downstream reactions that would otherwise be justified if one had aesthetic knowledge. In this paper, I will show that there is a plausible alternative explanation of the data that Whiting (...) appeals to. The views that provide this explanation are not only compatible with optimism, but they also provide a nice explanation of why it is plausible that we often know aesthetic facts on the basis of testimony. (shrink)

It’s an undeniable fact about our moral lives that we are partial towards certain people and projects. Despite this, it has traditionally been very hard to justify partiality. In this paper I defend a novel partialist theory. The context of the paper is the debate between three different views of how partiality is justified. According to the first view, partiality is justified by facts about our ground projects. According to the second view, partiality is justified by facts about our relationships (...) with the things that we are partial towards. And according to the third view, partiality is justified by facts about the things that we are partial towards. I argue that all three views contain part of the truth. We can see this by adopting a more sophisticated view of the weight of reasons. Once we do this, it will be clear that both facts about individuals and facts about relationships play a role in explaining why we often have stronger reason to act well towards those things we are partial towards. Further, I argue, facts about projects help explain why facts about relationships play the role that they do in determining the strength of our reasons. (shrink)

You are irrational when you are akratic. On this point most agree. Despite this agreement, there is a tremendous amount of disagreement about what the correct explanation of this data is. Narrow-scopers think that the correct explanation is that you are violating a narrow-scope conditional requirement. You lack an intention to x that you are required to have given the fact that you believe you ought to x. Wide-scopers disagree. They think that a conditional you are required to make true (...) is false. You aren’t required to have any particular attitudes. You’re just required to intend to x or not believe you ought to x. Wide-scope accounts are symmetrical insofar as they predict that you are complying with the relevant requirement just so long as the relevant conditional is true. Some narrow-scopers object to this symmetry. However, there is disagreement about why the symmetry is objectionable. This has led wide-scopers to defend their view against a number of different symmetry objections. I think their defenses in the face of these objections are, on the whole, plausible. Unfortunately for them, they aren’t defending their view against the best version of the objection. In this paper I will show that there is a symmetry objection to wide-scope accounts that both hasn’t been responded to and is a serious problem for wide-scope accounts. Moreover, my version of the objection will allow us to see that there is at least one narrow-scope view that has been seriously underappreciated in the literature. (shrink)

There are parallel debates in metaethics and aesthetics about the rational merits of deferring to others about ethics and aesthetics. In both areas it is common to think that there is something amiss about deference. A popular explanation of this in aesthetics appeals to the importance of aesthetic acquaintance. This kind of explanation has not been explored much in ethics. This chapter defends a unified account of what is amiss about ethical and aesthetic deference. According to this account, deference is (...) a non-ideal way of thinking about ethics and aesthetics because it does not allow us to possess the full range of reasons provided by the ethical and aesthetic facts. It has this feature because it does not acquaint us with ethical and aesthetic facts. It is argued further that despite this defect, there is no general obligation not to defer. The upshot is a moderate optimism about ethical and aesthetic deference. (shrink)

You are irrational when you are akratic. On this point most agree. Despite this agreement, there is a tremendous amount of disagreement about what the correct explanation of this data is. Narrow-scopers think that the correct explanation is that you are violating a narrow-scope conditional requirement. You lack an intention to x that you are required to have given the fact that you believe you ought to x. Wide-scopers disagree. They think that a conditional you are required to make true (...) is false. You aren’t required to have any particular attitudes. You’re just required to intend to x or not believe you ought to x. Wide-scope accounts are symmetrical insofar as they predict that you are complying with the relevant requirement just so long as the relevant conditional is true. Some narrow-scopers object to this symmetry. However, there is disagreement about why the symmetry is objectionable. This has led wide-scopers to defend their view against a number of different symmetry objections. I think their defenses in the face of these objections are, on the whole, plausible. Unfortunately for them, they aren’t defending their view against the best version of the objection. In this paper I will show that there is a symmetry objection to wide-scope accounts that both hasn’t been responded to and is a serious problem for wide-scope accounts. Moreover, my version of the objection will allow us to see that there is at least one narrow-scope view that has been seriously underappreciated in the literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.2 (2004) 232-233 [Access article in PDF] Giuseppina D'Oro. Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience. New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. xi + 179. Cloth, $80.00. There is a resurgence of interest in Collingwood among philosophers and political theorists in the English-speaking world. One of the scholars leading this resurgence is Giuseppina D'Oro, whose fine monograph on Collingwood's metaphysics and epistemology appears in the (...) series "Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy." D'Oro's prose is lucid and tightly argued: her analyses of the problems that concerned Collingwood, as well as her reinterpretations and supporting arguments, are a thoughtful model of clarity.Collingwood is generally ignored except by philosophers of art and history; D'Oro aims to reassess Collingwood's important metaphysical and epistemological views and raise awareness of them. Arguing that, when not ignored, these aspects of Collingwood's philosophy often have been misinterpreted, D'Oro supplies a reconstruction and defense of Collingwood's conception of philosophical thought. Admirably and insightfully, she contextualizes his concerns within the past three centuries of philosophy and also within influential contemporary discussions (addressing, for example, relationships to Locke, Hume, Kant, Prichard, Russell, Ryle, Ayer, James, Rorty, and Quine). D'Oro demonstrates that Collingwood provides crucial contributions to both the history of philosophy and contemporary debates.For D'Oro, Collingwood's key text is his An Essay on Philosophical Method (1933), which is concerned with the proper subject matter, method, and task of philosophy. This work, [End Page 232] with its distinction between philosophical and empirical concepts, introduces into Collingwood's metaphysics the Kantian element that D'Oro emphasizes to support her original interpretation. Collingwood's metaphysics, like Kant's, is described as a "descriptive metaphysics" or "metaphysics of experience" (2-3) which was intended to reform, not jettison, metaphysics. Conceptual rather than ontological, Collingwood's metaphysics is an epistemological project that reveals not the "structure of reality," but the "structure of experience" (2). According to Collingwood, all knowledge is based on presuppositions and conditioned by them; thus, metaphysics cannot be a presuppositionless "study of pure being" (3) or things-in-themselves. Rather, Collingwood's Kantian metaphysics aims to uncover the absolute presuppositions behind various aspects of experience, presuppositions that ground or make possible diverse forms of knowledge and that structure different domains of inquiry. D'Oro here argues intriguingly against a view of much Collingwood scholarship: that for the later Collingwood of An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), metaphysics is the study of the historically relative presuppositions adopted by diverse people of different historical eras or epochs, i.e., metaphysics entails historical relativism. Instead, D'Oro contends, metaphysics for Collingwood is the second-order study of the absolute presuppositons that provide the conditions for the possibility of disciplinary knowledge. Furthermore, she argues, this metaphysical view is consistent with An Essay on Philosophical Method. Contra some commentators, there is no "early" and "late" Collingwood, and the notion that he ultimately experienced a "radical conversion" (79) to historical relativism is false.Collingwood's metaphysics of experience entails that domains of inquiry such as art, religion, natural science, and history are governed by distinct presuppositions or a priori principles and thus provide complementary, not competing, accounts of reality. Hence, history deals with actions and presupposes that their causes are freely chosen reasons or motives; natural science deals with events and presupposes that they are caused by empirical regularities in nature. These presuppositional distinctions are philosophical and conceptual rather than empirical, and different areas of knowledge may address the same empirical objects in different ways.This truncated summary hardly does justice to the rich totality of D'Oro's book, much of which provocatively works out the implications of her reinterpretation. Among other things, she defends Collingwood against metaphysical realism, neo-empiricism, and logical positivism; addresses his idiosyncratic "'rehabilitation' of the ontological proof" (67); argues against the common view that his philosophy of history promotes "re-enactment" as a methodological procedure for historical practice; and explores his non-dualist and non-physicalist resolution of the mind/body problem.Perhaps... (shrink)

It is often assumed that believing that p for a normative reason consists in nothing more than (i) believing that p for a reason and (ii) that reason’s corresponding to a normative reason to believe that p, where (i) and (ii) are independent factors. This is the Composite View. In this paper, we argue against the Composite View on extensional and theoretical grounds. We advocate an alternative that we call the Prime View. On this view, believing for a normative reason (...) is a distinctive achievement that isn’t exhausted by the mere conjunction of (i) and (ii). Its being an achievement entails that (i) and (ii) are not independent when one believes for a normative reason: minimally, (i) must hold because (ii) holds. Apart from its intrinsic interest, our discussion has important upshots for central issues in epistemology, including the analysis of doxastic justification, the epistemology of perception, and the place of competence in epistemology. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that many types of attitudinal incoherence are irrational, but there is controversy about why they are. Some think incoherence is irrational because it violates certain wide-scope conditional requirements, others (‘narrow-scopers’) that it violates narrow-scope conditional requirements. In his paper ‘The Scope of Rational Requirements’, John Brunero has offered a putative counter-example to narrow-scope views. But a narrow-scoper should reject a crucial assumption which Brunero makes, namely, the claim that we always violate conditional narrow-scope requirements when we (...) do not comply with them. I show how Brunero's objection can be met by denying this claim, and I provide independent arguments in favour of denying it. (shrink)

It’s natural to say that when it’s rational for me to φ, I have reasons to φ. That is, there are reasons for φ-ing, and moreover, I have some of them. Mark Schroeder calls this view The Factoring Account of the having reasons relation. He thinks The Factoring Account is false. In this paper, I defend The Factoring Account. Not only do I provide intuitive support for the view, but I also defend it against Schroeder’s criticisms. Moreover, I show that (...) it helps us understand the requirements of substantive rationality, or what we are rationally required to do when responding to reasons. (shrink)

The post-Gettier literature contained many views that tried to solve the Gettier problem by appealing to the notion of defeat. Unfortunately, all of these views are false. The failure of these views greatly contributed to a general distrust of reasons in epistemology. However, reasons are making a comeback in epistemology, both in general and in the context of the Gettier problem. There are two main aims of this paper. First, I will argue against a natural defeat based resolution of the (...) Gettier problem. Second, I will defend my own defeat based solution. This solution appeals to a modal anti-luck condition. I will argue that this condition captures anti-luck intuitions and has virtues that rival modal anti-luck conditions lack. (shrink)

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 92, Issue 2, Page 365-377, June 2014.

Reasons fundamentalists maintain that we can analyze all derivative normative properties in terms of normative reasons. These theorists famously encounter the Wrong Kind of Reasons problem, since not all reasons for reactions seem relevant for reasons-based analyses. Some have argued that this problem is a general one for many theorists, and claim that this lightens the burden for reasons fundamentalists. We argue in this paper that the reverse is true: the generality of the problem makes life harder for reasons fundamentalists. (...) We do this in two stages. First, we show that reflection on the generality of the distinction between wrong-kind reasons and right-kind reasons shows that not all right-kind reasons are normative reasons. So, not only do reasons-based analyses require a distinction between right-kind reasons and wrong-kind reasons, they also need a distinction between normative right-kind reasons from nonnormative right-kind reasons. We call this the Right Kind of Reasons Problem. In the second stage of the paper, we argue that reasons fundamentalism places tight constraints on its proper solution: in particular, it forbids one from appealing to anything normative to distinguish normative RKRs from nonnormative RKRs. It hence seems that reasons fundamentalists can only appeal to natural facts to solve the problem, but it is unclear which ones can do the job. So, reflection on the generality of the distinction only multiplies the fundamentalist’s problems. We end by exploring several solutions to these problems, and recommend a form of constitutivism as the best. (shrink)