This Sage handbook offers a panoramic view of the broad field of international relations by integrating three distinct but interrelated foci. It retraces international relations' historical devolopment as a professional field of study, expolores the philosophical foundations of international relations, and interrogates the sociological mechanisms through which scholarship is produced and the field is structured. The 41 chapters are structured into five parts: 01. Reflections on a disciplinary practice02. Imagining the international, acknowledging the global03. The search for (an) identity04. International (...) relations as a profession05. Looking ahead: the future of meta-analysis. (shrink)

The series friends, rivals, enemies is a seemingly ‘natural’ classification for the relations of states, while the parallel series kin, neighbors, strangers functions as an informal classification system for social relations in general. That we may owe foreigners the hospitality due to strangers has become a matter of discussion among normative theorists, thanks to Kant's Perpetual Peace. Thus the conjunction of friendship and hospitality calls for a conceptual assessment. This assessment uses Aristotle's treatment of friendship (and Derrida's treatment of Aristotle's (...) ‘familial schema’) to establish three primary models of social relations (father to sons, husband to wife, brother to brother). Only ‘brothers’ (agents modeled as brothers) can be friends, rivals, or enemies. Only ‘fathers’ can be hosts who offer strangers the hospitality of the household. By the same token, only ‘fathers’ can be guests or take hostages. Such an assessment brings the conceptual concerns of two fields — international relations and political theory — closer together. In so doing, it rejects anarchy's conceptual hegemony in the field of international relations. (shrink)

Seyla Benhabib has displayed a deeply normative concern for the origin, properties, condition and destiny of the modern world in work running from Critique, Norm, and Utopia (1986), to Situating the Self (1992), The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (1996), and Another Cosmopolitanism (2006). I hope to show that Benhabib's view of modernity is ambiguous, and that inconsistencies in her position reach back, through Habermas and Weber, to Kant. I begin with a sketch of Benhabib's sense of what modernity is (...) about, turn then to what I think makes her position ambiguous, and conclude with a discussion of what I think is missing in her treatment of modernity. The gap I identify is strikingly pointed up when she uses the term modernism but does not talk about modernism at all. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

In this provocative book, philosopher Nicholas Agar defends the idea that parents should be allowed to enhance their children’s characteristics. Gets away from fears of a Huxleyan ‘Brave New World’ or a return to the fascist eugenics of the past Written from a philosophically and scientifically informed point of view Considers real contemporary cases of parents choosing what kind of child to have Uses ‘moral images’ as a way to get readers with no background in philosophy to think about (...) moral dilemmas Provides an authoritative account of the science involved, making the book suitable for readers with no knowledge of genetics Creates a moral framework for assessing all new technologies. (shrink)

In this provocative book, philosopher Nicholas Agar defends the idea that parents should be allowed to enhance their children’s characteristics. Gets away from fears of a Huxleyan ‘Brave New World’ or a return to the fascist eugenics of the past Written from a philosophically and scientifically informed point of view Considers real contemporary cases of parents choosing what kind of child to have Uses ‘moral images’ as a way to get readers with no background in philosophy to think about (...) moral dilemmas Provides an authoritative account of the science involved, making the book suitable for readers with no knowledge of genetics Creates a moral framework for assessing all new technologies. (shrink)

Proposals to make us smarter than the greatest geniuses or to add thousands of years to our life spans seem fit only for the spam folder or trash can. And yet this is what contemporary advocates of radical enhancement offer in all seriousness. They present a variety of technologies and therapies that will expand our capacities far beyond what is currently possible for human beings. In _Humanity's End,_ Nicholas Agar argues against radical enhancement, describing its destructive consequences. Agar examines (...) the proposals of four prominent radical enhancers: Ray Kurzweil, who argues that technology will enable our escape from human biology; Aubrey de Grey, who calls for anti-aging therapies that will achieve "longevity escape velocity"; Nick Bostrom, who defends the morality and rationality of enhancement; and James Hughes, who envisions a harmonious democracy of the enhanced and the unenhanced. Agar argues that the outcomes of radical enhancement could be darker than the rosy futures described by these thinkers. The most dramatic means of enhancing our cognitive powers could in fact kill us; the radical extension of our life span could eliminate experiences of great value from our lives; and a situation in which some humans are radically enhanced and others are not could lead to tyranny of posthumans over humans. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Choice and Virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics ALFRED R. MELE COM~rNTATORS ON THr Nicomachean Ethics (NE) have long been laboring under the influence of a serious misunderstanding of one of the key terms in Aristotle's moral philosophy and theory of action. This term is prohairesis (choice), the importance of which is indicated by Aristotle's assertions that choice is the proximate efficient cause of action (NE 6. 1139a31--32) and (...) that in which "the essential elements of virtue and character" lie (NE 8. x163a2'~-23). The accepted view is that Aristotle employs two importantly different notions of choice in the NE, one on which the term refers exclusively to means or things which are pros (toward, related to)' ends and another on which it does not have this reference? This "two notion" interpretation is motivated by the following three considerations: i. Aristotle's good or virtuous agent is said (NE 2. 11o5a28-33, cf. NE 6. 1144ax8-2o ) to choose actions for their own sakes; but, according to the This paper is derived in part from a chapter of my doctoral dissertation, which was submitted to the University of Michigan in January of 1979. 1 would like to express my gratitttde to the chairman of my dissertation committee, Nicholas P. White, for his comments and criticisms on the relevant sections during the preparation of my dissertation and to theJHP's anonymous reviewers for their helpful criticisms and queries. ' It has often been pointed out that things which are pros an end are not necessarily "means," in the ordinary sense of the word. E.g., constituents of an end are pros the end, but they are not means to it. See, e.g., Nicomachean Ethics, Book 6, trans. Leonard H. G. Greenwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19o9), pp. 46-47, 53ff.: and John M. Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), pp. 1o-22. ' Among the many proponents of this "two notion" interpretation are William D. Ross and Donald J. Allan. See Ross, Aristotle, 5th ed. (London: Methuen, t953), p. 2oo. See Allan, The Philosophy of Aristotle, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 197o), p. 132; idem, "Aristotle 's Account of the Origin of Moral Principles," Xlth International Congress of Philosophy 12 (1953):124; idem, "The Practical Syllogism," in Autour d'Aristote, Studies for A. Mansion (Louvain : Publications Universitaires, 1955). Richard Sorabji, in "Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue" (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 74 l t973-74]:t t6), says that he has noticed sixteen commentators who take this view. [4o5] 406 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY so-called formal account of prohairesis (NE 3. 2-3, 6. 2), the object of choice is what has been decided upon by deliberation (bouleuais), and what is decided upon by deliberation is a "means" to an end. 2. Aristotle says that choice is "closely bound up with virtue" and "discriminates characters better than actions do" (1 1t lb5; cf. t i lob3t, 1117a 5, 1163a22, 1t64bi); but commentators argue that these claims about choice are false unless choice is "of ends." 3. Though Aristotle holds that the impetuous akrat~s (incontinent agent) does not deliberate (e.g., t 152a 18-19), he says that the akrat~s' choice is good (1152ax5--17; cf. l l51a5-- 7, 29--32); and this appears to contradict his position in Book 3 that the object of choice is what is decided upon by deliberation, s In this paper I shall show that only one (philosophically significant) notion ofprohairesis is employed in the NE, namely, the notion developed in the "formal account" of deliberation and choice (3- 2-3, 6. 2), according to which choice is specifically of things which are pros ends. This point has several interesting applications. For example, it makes it easier to find in Aristotle (as I shall briefly explain) a comprehensive theory of practical reasoning or inference rather than several unconnected accounts of what practical inference is like in different types of cases; and it is helpful in clarifying what is involved in the evaluation of character on Aristotle's view (see Sec. ~). However, though I do think that the main point to be made... (shrink)

It is often said that normative properties are “just too different” to reduce to other kinds of properties. This suggests that many philosophers find it difficult to believe reductive theses in ethics. I argue that the distinctiveness of the normative concepts we use in thinking about reductive theses offers a more promising explanation of this psychological phenomenon than the falsity of Reductive Realism. To identify the distinctiveness of normative concepts, I use resources from familiar Hybrid views of normative language and (...) thought to develop a Hybrid view of normative concepts. In addition to using this new Hybrid view to explain why reductive theses are difficult to believe, I show how to preserve several patterns of inference involving normative concepts that, intuitively, it is possible to make, and hence answer an important recent challenge to Hybrid views from Mark Schroeder. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to transcend the assumption that stakeholder engagement is necessarily a responsible practice. Stakeholder engagement is traditionally seen as corporate responsibility in action. Indeed, in some literatures there exists an assumption that the more an organisation engages with its stakeholders, the more it is responsible. This simple 'more is better' view of stakeholder engagement belies the true complexity of the relationship between engagement and corporate responsibility. Stakeholder engagement may be understood in a variety of different (...) ways and from a variety of different theoretical perspectives. Stakeholder engagement may or may not involve a moral dimension and, hence, is primarily a morally neutral practice. It is therefore argued that stakeholder engagement must be seen as separate from, but related to, corporate responsibility. A model that reflects the multifaceted relationship between the two constructs is proposed. This model not only allows the coincidence of stakeholder engagement with corporate responsibility, but also allows for the development of the notion of corporate irresponsibility. (shrink)

In this article, we explain the mechanisms that allow social enterprises to balance their missions, and the risk of mission drift as organizations grow. We empirically explore Incubator-BUS (I-BUS), a student organization within a private Brazilian university, which sought to incubate cooperatives for vulnerable groups. Although initially successful in balancing its missions, I-BUS then failed. We show how scaling-up can complicate the balancing of different missions within the same organization. We propose that, to balance their missions, social enterprises—especially recently formed (...) and democratically managed enterprises—need not only “spaces of negotiation,” as suggested in the literature, but also “herding spaces” that connect an organization to its institutional context. We indicate why herding spaces are critical, but then show how scaling-up can result in organizational “compartmentalization” that undermines them. (shrink)

A fluent and accurate new translation of the dialogue that, all of Plato's works, has seemed to speak most directly to the interests of contemporary analytical philosophers. White's extensive introduction explores the dialogue's center themes, its connection with related discussions in other dialogues, and its implication for the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics.

Trust is a fundamental aspect of the moral treatment of stakeholders within the organization–stakeholder relationship. Stakeholders trust the organization to return benefit or protections from harm commensurate with their contributions or stakes. However, in many situations, the firm holds greater power than the stakeholder and therefore cannot necessarily be trusted to return the aforementioned duty to the stakeholder. Stakeholders must therefore rely on the trustworthiness of the organization to fulfill obligations in accordance to Phillips’ principle of fairness (Business Ethics Quarterly7(1), (...) 1997, 51–66), particularly where low-power stakeholders may not be fully consenting (Van Buren III, Business Ethics Quarterly11(3), 2001, 481–499). The construct of organizational trustworthiness developed herewith is presented as a possible solution to the problem of unfairness in organization–stakeholder relations. While organizational trustworthiness does not create an ethical obligation where none existed before, stakeholders who lack power will likely be treated fairly when organizational trustworthiness is present. (shrink)

Are bacteriophage T4 and the long-nosed elephant fish valuable in their own right? Nicholas Agar defends an affirmative answer to this question by arguing that anything living is intrinsically valuable. This claim challenges received ethical wisdom according to which only human beings are valuable in themselves. The resulting biocentric or life-centered morality forms the platform for an ethic of the environment. -/- Agar builds a bridge between the biological sciences and what he calls "folk" morality to arrive at a (...) workable environmental ethic and a new spectrum--a new hierarchy--of living organisms. The book overturns common-sense moral belief as well as centuries of philosophical speculation on the exclusive moral significance of humans. Spanning several fields, including philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science, and other areas of contemporary analytic philosophy, Agar analyzes and speaks to a wide array of historic and contemporary views, from Aristotle and Kant, to E. O. Wilson, Holmes Rolston II, and Baird Callicot. The result is a challenge to prevailing definitions of value and a call for a scientifically-informed appreciation of nature. (shrink)

This paper reviews the recent literature on exploitation. It distinguishes between three main species of exploitation theory: teleology-based accounts, respect-based accounts, and freedom-based accounts. It then addresses the implications of each.

This paper considers challenges resulting from the use of advanced artificial judicial intelligence (AAJI). We argue that these challenges should be considered through the lens of value alignment. Instead of discussing why specific goals and values, such as fairness and nondiscrimination, ought to be implemented, we consider the question of how AAJI can be aligned with goals and values more generally, in order to be reliably integrated into legal and judicial systems. This value alignment framing draws on AI safety and (...) alignment literature to introduce two otherwise neglected considerations for AAJI safety: specification and assurance. We outline diverse research directions and suggest the adoption of assurance and specification mechanisms as the use of AI in the judiciary progresses. While we focus on specification and assurance to illustrate the value of the AI safety and alignment literature, we encourage researchers in law and philosophy to consider what other lessons may be drawn. (shrink)

The rapid developments in technologies -- especially computing and the advent of many 'smart' devices, as well as rapid and perpetual communication via the Internet -- has led to a frequently voiced view which Nicholas Agar describes as 'radical optimism'. Radical optimists claim that accelerating technical progress will soon end poverty, disease, and ignorance, and improve our happiness and well-being. Agar disputes the claim that technological progress will automatically produce great improvements in subjective well-being. He argues that radical optimism (...) 'assigns to technological progress an undeserved pre-eminence among all the goals pursued by our civilization'. Instead, Agar uses the most recent psychological studies about human perceptions of well-being to create a realistic model of the impact technology will have. Although he accepts that technological advance does produce benefits, he insists that these are significantly less than those proposed by the radical optimists, and aspects of such progress can also pose a threat to values such as social justice and our relationship with nature, while problems such as poverty cannot be understood in technological terms. He concludes by arguing that a more realistic assessment of the benefits that technological advance can bring will allow us to better manage its risks in future. (shrink)

There is an extensive literature on time travel in both philosophy and physics. Part of the great interest of the topic stems from the fact that reasons have been given both for thinking that time travel is physically possible—and for thinking that it is logically impossible! This entry deals primarily with philosophical issues; issues related to the physics of time travel are covered in the separate entries on time travel and modern physics and time machines. We begin with the definitional (...) question: what is time travel? We then turn to the major objection to the possibility of backwards time travel: the Grandfather paradox. Next, issues concerning causation are discussed—and then, issues in the metaphysics of time and change. We end with a discussion of the question why, if backwards time travel will ever occur, we have not been visited by time travellers from the future. (shrink)

In this superb introduction, Nicholas Dent covers the whole of Rousseau's thought. Beginning with a helpful overview of Rousseau's life and works, he introduces and assesses Rousseau's central ideas and arguments. These include the corruption of modern civilization, the state of nature, his famous theories of _amour de soi _and _amour propre_, education, and his famous work _Emile_. He gives particular attention to Rousseau's theories of democracy and freedom found in his most celebrated work, _The Social Contract_, and explains (...) what Rousseau meant by the 'general will'. (shrink)

The development of an ethical perspective of HRM that is both employee centered and explicitly normative and, as such, distinct from dominant and criticalperspectives of HRM has progressed in recent years. Reliance on the traditional “threesome” of rights/justice theories, deontology and consequentialism, however, has limited debate to micro-level issues and the search for a “solution.” By understanding the employment relationship as a stakeholder relationship, we open the ethical analysis of HRM to the pluralism and pragmatism that stakeholder theory has to (...) offer. In doing this, we can address both the broader need for HRM to offer a more comprehensive account of our humanity and the specific requisite for HRM to treat employees as moral persons with “names and faces.”. (shrink)

Metaethical non-analytical naturalism consists in the metaphysical thesis that normative properties are identical with or reducible to natural properties and the epistemological thesis that we cannot come to a complete understanding of the nature of normative properties via conceptual analysis alone. In On What Matters, Derek Parfit (2011) argues that non-analytical naturalism is either false or incoherent. In § 1, I show that his argument for this claim is unsuccessful, by showing that it rests on a tacit assumption about the (...) nature of normative thought that non-analytical naturalists need not accept. In § 2, I show that escaping Parfit’s argument in this way is no ad hoc maneuver; as I demonstrate, the idea that non-analytical naturalists can exploit to escape Parfit’s argument is a familiar one. (shrink)

A reconsideration of the crucial historical role of slavery in the consolidation of the global regime of capital accumulation provides a vital source of Marxian critique for our postcolonial present. The Atlantic slave trade literally transformed African men and women into human commodities. The reduction of human beings into human commodities, or ‘human capital’ – indeed, into labour and nothing but labour – which was the very essence of modern slavery, served as a necessary prerequisite for the consolidation and perfecting (...) of what Marx called ‘labour in the abstract’, and requires us to re-situate enslaved labour as the defining and constitutive limit for how we comprehend labour as such under capitalism. The production of labour in the abstract, or labour ‘in general’, depended nonetheless upon concrete productions of sociopolitical difference, particularly the branding of race. The term ‘Black’, which was devised to literally and figuratively brand the flesh of enslaved people, was also contrived to signify their particular sociopolitical condition of brutal degradation as the ultimate limit for the subjugation of labour. Blackness names that limit. Thus, Blackness is in fact necessary for apprehending labour as such under capitalism. Marx’s scathing critique of wage labour is always haunted by the long shadow of slavery as its limit figure. If we comprehend labour to be the antithesis of capital, then to the extent that Blackness names the ultimate condition of labour’s subordination and subjection to capital, we need to recognise the tendency for all labour under capital to be pressed toward a sociopolitical condition of Blackness (or approximating Blackness), where Blackness does not name any kind of essential identity but the racialised sociopolitical condition of that subordination/subjection. Consequently, the labour theory of value – which has always been in fact, more accurately, a value theory of labour – must be complemented with what we might posit to be a racial theory of labour. Such an ostensibly historical perspective on the foundational role of slavery in the genesis of capitalism is no mere scholastic exercise in the historiography of ‘primitive accumulation’, however, but rather must be re-purposed toward the ends of elaborating what has remained an as-yet underdeveloped Marxian theory of migrant labour. Extrapolating key insights from Marx’s corpus for the formulation of a racial theory of labour, this essay is ultimately concerned with the ways that slavery supplies capitalism with a defining horizon for all labour, and thus how this insight might instructively serve to comprehend the racialised subordination of migrant labour within our global/postcolonial sociopolitical order. (shrink)

Despite significant scholarly debate about knowledge production in the management discipline through the peer-review journal processes, there is minimal discussion about the ethical treatment of the research subject in these publication processes. In contrast, the ethical scrutiny of management research processes within research institutions is often highly formalized and very focused on the protection of research participants. Hence, the question arises of how management publication processes should best account for the interests of the research subject, both in the narrow sense (...) of specific research participants and in the broader understanding of the subject of the research. This question is particularly pertinent in light of significant codification of research ethics within academic institutions, and increasing self-reflection within the management discipline about the “good” of management research and education. Findings from a survey and interviews with management journal editors reveal a complex scenario; many editors believe that a formalized requirement within the journal publication process may have detrimental outcomes and, in fact, diminish the ethical integrity of management scholarship. Building on these findings, this paper argues that ethical concern for the research subject merely in terms of institutional rule compliance and avoidance of harm to individual participants is insufficient, and calls for explicitly positive engagement with both the individual and the collective subject of management research should receive due ethical consideration. An alternative model involving reflexive ethical consideration of research subjects across the publication process—with implications for role of authors, reviewers, editors, and research subjects—is outlined. (shrink)

In this short discussion note, I cast doubt upon the common view that social groups persist throughout changes in their membership, by virtue of the maintenance of their structure and/or function. I offer two counterexamples, and consider two possible responses to a natural objection to them, neither of which support the view that it is a metaphysical truth that social groups persist through changes in their membership, or persist by virtue of the maintenance of their structure and/or function.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A bold work from the author of The Black Swan that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, (...) Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one’s own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life. As always both accessible and iconoclastic, Taleb challenges long-held beliefs about the values of those who spearhead military interventions, make financial investments, and propagate religious faiths. Among his insights: • For social justice, focus on symmetry and risk sharing. You cannot make profits and transfer the risks to others, as bankers and large corporations do. You cannot get rich without owning your own risk and paying for your own losses. Forcing skin in the game corrects this asymmetry better than thousands of laws and regulations. • Ethical rules aren’t universal. You’re part of a group larger than you, but it’s still smaller than humanity in general. • Minorities, not majorities, run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities imposing their tastes and ethics on others. • You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. “Educated philistines” have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb diets. • Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find). A simple barbell can build muscle better than expensive new machines. • True religion is commitment, not just faith. How much you believe in something is manifested only by what you’re willing to risk for it. The phrase “skin in the game” is one we have often heard but rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but it’s also an astonishingly rich worldview that, as Taleb shows in this book, applies to all aspects of our lives. As Taleb says, “The symmetry of skin in the game is a simple rule that’s necessary for fairness and justice, and the ultimate BS-buster,” and “Never trust anyone who doesn’t have skin in the game. Without it, fools and crooks will benefit, and their mistakes will never come back to haunt them.”. (shrink)

In his interrogation of Meletus in Plato’s version of Socrates’ defense speech, Socrates offers an interesting argument that promises to provide important evidence for his views about crime and punishment—if only we can understand how the argument is supposed to work. It is our project in this paper to do that. We argue that there are two main problems with the argument: one is that it is not obvious how to make the argument valid; the other is that the argument (...) seems to rely on a distinction that Socrates himself rejects ––a distinction between voluntary and involuntary wrongdoing. Earlier discussions of the argument require Socrates to be using a premise here that he regards as false. In this paper, we argue that Socrates actually regards the critical premise as true, and thus we end up providing a significantly new interpretation of Socrates’ view that all wrongdoing is involuntary. We claim, that even this position must accommodate the idea that some people really do voluntary harm to others. (shrink)

The Revenge Problem threatens every approach to the semantic paradoxes that proceeds by introducing nonclassical semantic values. Given any such collection Δ of additional semantic values, one can construct a Revenge sentence:This sentence is either false or has a value in Δ.TheEmbracing Revengeview, developed independently by Roy T. Cook and Phlippe Schlenker, addresses this problem by suggesting that the class of nonclassical semantic values is indefinitely extensible, with each successive Revenge sentence introducing a new ‘pathological’ semantic value into the discourse. (...) The view is explicitly motivated in terms of the idea that every notion thatseemsto be expressible should, if at all possible,beexpressible. Extant work on the Embracing Revenge view has failed to live up to this promise, since the formal languages developed within such work are expressively impoverished. We rectify this here by developing a much richer formal language, and semantics for that language, and we then prove an extremely powerful expressive completeness result for the system in question. (shrink)

This chapter discusses ontological commitment to properties, understood as ontological correlates of predicates. We examine the issue in four metaontological settings, beginning with an influential Quinean paradigm on which ontology concerns what there is. We argue that this naturally but not inevitably avoids ontological commitment to properties. Our remaining three settings correspond to the most prominent departures from the Quinean paradigm. Firstly, we enrich the Quinean paradigm with a primitive, non-quantificational notion of existence. Ontology then concerns what exists. We argue (...) that this strengthens the Quinean case against ontological commitment to properties while also newly distinguishing between stronger and weaker forms of nominalism. Secondly, we enrich the Quinean paradigm with the ideology of fundamentality. Ontology then centrally concerns what’s fundamental. We argue that this leaves ontological commitment to properties wide open although Bradleyan regress threatens. Thirdly, we enrich the Quinean paradigm with primitive higher-order quantifiers. Ontology then expands to concern what there higher-order is and what there first-order is. We argue that this naturally but not inevitably incurs ontological commitment to properties. (shrink)

In his highly engaging book, Speech and Morality, Terence Cuneo advances a transcendental argument for moral realism from the fact that we speak. After summarizing the major moves in the book, I argue that its master argument is not as friendly to non-naturalist versions of moral realism as Cuneo advertises and relies on a diet of insufficient types of speech acts. I also argue that expressivists have compelling replies to each of Cuneo's objections individually, but taken together, Cuneo's objections provide (...) the resources for issuing a new and interesting challenge to expressivists. (shrink)

This article explores home dissatisfaction using methods modelled on those used to understand negative body image and its causes. We found that a substantial proportion of UK participants (13–39%) expressed dissatisfaction with their homes. Although the strongest association was between home dissatisfaction and reported physical problems, there was evidence that dissatisfaction is also predicted by experiencing pressure from the media and your family to improve your home, as well as reporting a greater tendency to compare your home to others’. The (...) results of the study provide initial evidence for a sociocultural explanation of home dissatisfaction, analogous to sociocultural explanations of body dissatisfaction. (shrink)

A prolonged debate about the nature of norms has been conducted in terms of the scope of a modal operator. Here I argue that the features of what I call Normative Focus are more fundamental than scope. We shall see limitations of scope contrasted with better analysis in terms of Normative Focus. Some authors address such limitations by extending what they mean by scope. I show that scope is still not doing the work: what does it is their elicitation of (...) our tacit knowledge of Normative Focus. Finally, I show that scope cannot capture Normative Focus because scope allows us to make only one distinction where we need to make three. So we should leave scope to the philosophers of language and turn instead to the ontology of Normative Focus. (shrink)

O presente estudo tem o objetivo de estabelecer um paralelo entre o Direito e a linguagem com base em reflexões apontadas nos Ensaios de Michel de Montaigne, filósofo de influência cética que viveu no século XVI. O texto demonstra que os problemas de linguagem se estendem ao campo jurídico, uma vez que o Direito é constituído por enunciados linguísticos. A metodologia empregada foi a revisão bibliográfica, tendo como principal fonte os Ensaios no original em francês, além de bibliografia secundária formada (...) majoritariamente por comentadores contemporâneos da obra de Montaigne. (shrink)