We take no issue with John Nolt's calculations in ‘How harmful are the average American's greenhouse gas emissions?’. That is, we accept that over the course of a typical American life...

Reflection Principles are commonly thought to produce only strong axioms of infinity consistent with V = L. It would be desirable to have some notion of strong reflection to remedy this, and we have proposed Global Reflection Principles based on a somewhat Cantorian view of the universe. Such principles justify the kind of cardinals needed for, inter alia , Woodin’s Ω-Logic.

Evolutionary fitness threats and rewards are associated with subjectively unpleasant and pleasant sensations, respectively. Initially, these correlations appear explainable via adaptation by natural selection. But here I analyse the major metaphysical perspectives on consciousness – physicalism, dualism, and panpsychism – and conclude that none help to understand the adaptive-seeming correlations via adaptation. I also argue that a recently proposed explanation, the phenomenal powers view, has major problems that mean it cannot explain the adaptive-seeming correlations via adaptation either. So the mystery (...) – call it the evolutionary paradox of consciousness – remains. Some have used this mystery to argue for non-naturalistic (e.g. theistic) explanations. But I propose a naturalistic, non-adaptive explanation of the adaptive-seeming correlations: namely, ‘sensational associative learning’ during development. In this perspective, pairing of particular sensations with unconditioned stimuli – fitness rewards or threats – cause the sensations themselves to come to be interpreted as good or bad, respectively. Sensations, like colours, that are not reliably paired with either fitness rewards or threats remain largely unvalenced. Sensational associative learning also provides explanations for adaptive-seeming structural aspects of sensations, such as the observation that sounds of different pitch are experienced as ordinal in correspondence to their wavelengths while the same is not true of colours of different hue. The sensational associative learning perspective appears compatible with physicalism, panpsychism, and dualism (though not epiphenomenalism). (shrink)

This study aimed to explore postgraduate students’ lived experiences of managing research ethics committee processes. Whilst there is a wide range of research that explores ethics principles/guidan...

인간의 이성적 의식과 법의 관계를 밝히고 법의 해석 과 판단에 인간의 의식이 어떻게 작용하는가를 고찰 한 저술. 제1부에서는 법의 형이상학적인 측면에서 법의 실체, 그리스의 법, 데카르트의 법, 로크와 법, 칸트와 법, 헤겔과 법, 아담스미스의 법의 경제, 중국의 도덕과 법사상을 다루었다. 제2부에서는 심리학적 분석으로 헌법의 심리학적 해석, 법의 판결절차, 증거법, 형법과 죄, 청소년과 가족법, 조세법, 플라톤의 법, 칸트의 도덕론의 경험적 확인, 헤겔의 자아와 노동법, 법의 4차원에 대해 다뤘다.

It has sometimes been claimed (usually without evidence) that the harm caused by an individual's participation in a greenhouse-gas-intensive economy is negligible. Using data from several contemporary sources, this paper attempts to estimate the harm done by an average American. This estimate is crude, and further refinements are surely needed. But the upshot is that the average American is responsible, through his/her greenhouse gas emissions, for the suffering and/or deaths of one or two future people.

Inleidend overzicht van de wijsgerige ethiek.

This book explores the question of how international law is applied by domestic courts. Through case studies and analysis the contributors consider how traditions and diversity affect the interpretation of international law, from a mixture of doctrinal, practical, and theoretical approaches.

This influential study of Kant in which Strawson seeks to detach the true analytical and critical achievement of Kant's work from the unacceptable metaphysics with which it is entangled. This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information.Visit our eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.

t. 1. Dialog s V. V. Davydovym -- t. 2. Nereshennye problemy razvivai︠u︡shchego obrazovanii︠a︡.

Together again for the first time, Marx and Durkheim join forces in the pages of Disintegration: Bad Love, Collective Suicide, and the Idols of Imperial Twilight for a dialectical exploration of the moral economy of neoliberalism, animated, as it is not only by the capitalist chase for surplus value, but also by an immortal vortex of sacred powers. Classical sociology and psychoanalysis are reconstituted within Hegelian social ontology and dialectical method that differentiates between the ephemeral and free and the eternal (...) and fixed aspects of modern life. (shrink)

A standard view in philosophy is that knowledge entails justification. Yet recent research suggests otherwise. We argue that this admirable and striking research suffers from an important limitation: participants were asked about knowledge but not justification. Thus it is possible that people attributed knowledge partly because they thought the belief was justified. Perhaps though, if given the opportunity, people would deny justification while still attributing knowledge. It is also possible that earlier findings were due to perspective taking. This paper reports (...) further research that directly addresses these questions. Our findings support the hypothesis that knowledge entails justification on the ordinary view. (shrink)

Climate change will cause large numbers of casualties, perhaps extending over thousands of years. Casualties have a clear moral significance that economic and other technical measures of harm tend to mask. They are, moreover, universally understood, whereas other measures of harm are not. Therefore, the harms of climate change should regularly be expressed in terms of casualties by such agencies such as IPCC’s Working Group III, in addition to whatever other measures are used. Casualty estimates should, furthermore, be used to (...) derive estimates of casualties per emission source up to a given date. Such estimates would have wide margins of error, but they would add substantially to humanity’s grasp of the moral costs of particular greenhouse gas emissions. (shrink)

George Berkeley is one of the greatest and most influential modern philosophers. In defending the immaterialism for which he is most famous, he redirected modern thinking about the nature of objectivity and the mind's capacity to come to terms with it. Along the way, he made striking and influential proposals concerning the psychology of the senses, the workings of language, the aims of science, and the scope of mathematics. In this Companion volume a team of distinguished authors not only examines (...) Berkeley's achievements but also his neglected contributions to moral and political philosophy, his writings on economics and development, and his defense of religious commitment and religious life. The volume places Berkeley's achievements in the context of the many social and intellectual traditions - philosophical, scientific, ethical, and religious - to which he fashioned a distinctive response. (shrink)

The move from good to ought, a premise form found in many justifications of environmental ethics, is itself in need of justification. Of the potential moves from good to ought surveyed, some have considerable promise and others less or none. Those without much promise include extrapolations of obligations based on human goods to nonsentient natural entities, appeals to educated judgment, precautionary arguments, humanistic consequentialist arguments, and justifications that assert that our obligations to natural entities are neither directly to those entities (...) nor derived from our obligations to humans. Some arguments that extrapolate obligations based on goods involving sentience from humans to sentient animals are promising, but whether they are sufficient is controversial. Gandhian andAristotlian arguments are also promising, provided we can justify their ought premises. (shrink)

Doctors’ strikes are legally permissible in the UK, with the situation differing in other countries. But are they morally permissible? Doug McConnell and Darren Mann have systematically attempted to dismiss the arguments for the moral impermissibility of doctors’ strikes and creatively attempted to provide further moral justification for them. Unfortunately for striking doctors, they fail to achieve this. Meanwhile, junior doctors’ strikes have continued in the UK through 2023 and have now extended into 2024. In this response, which focuses on (...) the UK situation and specifically junior doctors’ strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, I will demonstrate a central problem with their arguments—namely that they underplay the harms caused by prolonged doctors’ strikes by ignoring the harms to patients with cancer. This weakens their conclusion that strikes are morally permissible in terms of the conditions and thresholds they set. I then provide a psychological critique of their justification for strikes in terms of the interests of the public. It follows that invoking the controversial concept of supererogatory action is ungrounded but also absurd when you consider time-critical cancer care. If those representing striking doctors wish to maintain a modicum of moral respectability, they should mitigate for patients with cancer and negotiate reasonably and with urgency. (shrink)

Suppose, as biocentrists do, that even microorganisms have a good of their own - that is, some objective form of welfare. Still, human welfare is vastly greater and more valuable. If it were infinitely greater, individualistic biocentrism would be pointless. But consideration of the facts of evolutionary history and of the conceptual relations between infinity and incommensurability reveals that there are no infinite welfare differences among living things. It follows, in particular, that there is some very large number of bacteria (...) whose aggregate overall welfare is not less than the welfare of a human being. (shrink)

People tend to rank values of all kinds linearly from good to bad, but there is little reason to think that this is reasonable or correct. This book argues, to the contrary, that values are often partially ordered and hence frequently incomparable. Proceeding logically from a small set of axioms, John Nolt examines the great variety of partially ordered value structures, exposing fallacies that arise from overlooking them. He reveals various ways in which incomparability is obscured: using linear indices to (...) summarize partially ordered data, relying on an inadequately defined concept of parity, or conflating incomparability with vagueness. Incomparability can enrich and clarify a range of topics including the paradoxes of Derek Parfit, rational decision theory, and the infinite values of theology. Finally, Nolt shows how to generalize many of the concepts introduced earlier, explores the intricate depths of certain noteworthy partially ordered value structures, and argues for the finitude of value. Incomparable Values will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in ethics, value theory, rational decision theory, and logic. (shrink)

I am grateful to all the respondents to ‘How harmful are the average American's greenhouse gas emissions?’. Their comments were individually and collectively very rich. Since there is...

The move from good to ought, a premise form found in many justifications of environmental ethics, is itself in need of justification. Of the potential moves from good to ought surveyed, some have considerable promise and others less or none. Those without much promise include extrapolations of obligations based on human goods to nonsentient natural entities, appeals to educated judgment, precautionary arguments, humanistic consequentialist arguments, and justifications that assert that our obligations to natural entities are neither directly to those entities (...) nor derived from our obligations to humans. Some arguments that extrapolate obligations based on goods involving sentience from humans to sentient animals are promising, but whether they are sufficient is controversial. Gandhian andAristotlian arguments are also promising, provided we can justify their ought premises. (shrink)

Broad in scope, this introduction to environmental ethics considers both contemporary issues and the extent of humanity’s responsibility for distant future life. John Nolt, a logician and environmental ethicist, interweaves contemporary science, logical analysis, and ethical theory into the story of the expansion of ethics beyond the human species and into the far future. Informed by contemporary environmental science, the book deduces concrete policy recommendations from carefully justified ethical principles and ends with speculations concerning the deepest problems of environmental ethics. (...) Pedagogical features include chapter outlines, annotated suggestions for further readings, the explanations of key terms when first mentioned, and an extensive glossary. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists often hold that organisms, species, ecosystems, and the like have goods of their own. But, even given that such goods exist, whether we ought to value them is controversial. Hence an environmental philosophy needs, in addition to an account of what sorts of values there are, an explanation what, how and why we morally ought to value—that is, an account of moral valuing. This paper presents one such an account. Specifically, I aim to show that unless there are (...) eternal goods (and maybe even if there are), we have a duty of self-transcendence toward nature—that is, a duty to value nature's goods as ends. This duty is owed, however, not to nature, but to ourselves. It is grounded in what I call an imperative of hope. The argument, in a nutshell, is that we have a duty to ourselves to (in a certain sense) optimize hope. This optimization requires self-transcendence toward entities whose goods are more diverse and enduring than any human goods. But unless there are eternal goods, such goods occur only in nature. (shrink)

The introduction of novel diagnostic techniques in clinical domains such as genomics and radiology has led to a rich ethical debate on how to handle unsolicited findings that result from these innovations. Yet while unsolicited findings arise in both genomics and radiology, most of the relevant literature to date has tended to focus on only one of these domains. In this article, we synthesize and critically assess similarities and differences between “scanning the body” and “sequencing the genome” from an ethical (...) perspective. After briefly describing the novel diagnostic contexts leading to unsolicited findings, we synthesize and reflect on six core ethical issues that relate to both specialties: terminology; benefits and risks; autonomy; disclosure of unsolicited findings to children; uncertainty; and filters and routine screening. We identify ethical rationales that pertain to both fields and may contribute to more ethically sound policies. Considerations of preserving public trust and ensuring that people perceive healthcare policies as fair also support the need for a combined debate. (shrink)