In his Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke puts forth a series of arguments against theories of proper names he calls Frege-Russell theories. As the title reveals, Kripke takes Gottlob Frege's theory of sense and Bedeutung to be a good representative of these theories. In this essay, I characterize how Frege might have answered Kripke. I agree with Kripke that presumably Frege thought that the sense of a proper name is the same as some definite description. I, however, question his (...) assumption that Frege's theory of proper names was a theory of meaning as he uses the term. I go even further and suggest that it is not so obvious that Frege thought, at least always, that the role of the concept of sense in his theory is a semantic concept at all. This constitutes the heart of my reconstruction of Frege's answer. I argue that this, together with Frege's conception of natural languages, would have allowed him to hold that the sense of a proper name may sometimes be the same as the sense of an indefinite or even a wrong description. This makes Frege's theory immune to Kripke's counter-arguments. (shrink)

Steven Pinker has said that one of the most important questions humans can ask of themselves is whether moral progress has occurred or is likely to occur. Buchanan and Powell here address that question, in order to provide the first naturalistic, empirically-informed and analytically sophisticated theory of moral progress--explaining the capacities in the human brain that allow for it, the role of the environment, and how contingent and fragile moral progress can be.

Desire theories of well-being claim that how well our life goes for us is solely determined by the fulfilment and frustration of our desires. Several writers have argued that these theories are incorrect because they fail to capture the harms of self-sacrifice and severe depression. In this paper, I argue that desire theories of well-being can account for the harm of both phenomena by rejecting proportionalism about desire and motivation. This is the view that desires always motivate proportionally to their (...) strength. If we reject this view, then we can explain the harm of many cases of self-sacrifice as arising when we act upon our weaker desires and thereby frustrate our stronger desires. Moreover, the harm of many cases of severe depression can be explained by its suppression of the motivational force of desires. This inevitably frustrates desires that we are left unmotivated to fulfil. I argue that this approach captures the experiential quality of self-sacrifice and severe depression better than rival views that seek to problematise these phenomena for desire theories of well-being. Moreover, these theories have sufficient conceptual resources to account for residual cases of self-sacrifice and severe depression that are less well explained by this approach. (shrink)

Liberal proponents of genetic engineering maintain that developing human germline modification technologies is morally desirable because it will result in a net improvement in human health and well-being. Skeptics of germline modification, in contrast, fear evolutionary harms that could flow from intervening in the human germline, and worry that such programs, even if well intentioned, could lead to a recapitulation of the scientifically and morally discredited projects of the old eugenics. Some bioconservatives have appealed as well to the value of (...) retaining our “given” human biological nature as a reason for restraining the development and use of human genetic modification technologies even where they would tend to increase well-being. In this article, I argue that germline intervention will be necessary merely to sustain the levels of genetic health that we presently enjoy for future generations—a goal that should appeal to bioliberals and bioconservatives alike. This is due to the population-genetic consequences of relaxed selection pressures in human populations caused by the increasing efficacy and availability of conventional medicine. This heterodox conclusion, which I present as a problem of intergenerational justice, has been overlooked in medicine and bioethics due to certain misconceptions about human evolution, which I attempt to rectify, as well as the sordid history of Darwinian approaches to medicine and social policy, which I distinguish from the present argument. (shrink)

This is a contribution to a Book symposium on The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays by Paul Russell. Russell provides replies to three critics of The Limits of Free Will. The first reply is to Robert Wallace and focuses on the question of whether there is a conflict between the core compatibilist and pessimist components of the "critical compatibilist" position that Russell has advanced. The second reply is to Angela Smith's discussion of the "narrow" interpretation of (...) moral responsibility responsibility (as defended by R. Jay Wallace) and how best to respond to it. The third and last reply is concerned with Christopher Bennett's criticism of Russell's views concerning "motivational scepticism" and the possibility of pure practical reasons. (shrink)

This chapter critically examines the evolutionary assumptions that underlie the notion that nature is like a master engineer. It compares and contrasts intentional genetic modification (IGM) with unintentional genetic modification (UGM) as to their potential for improving human life. The chapter first argues for two main theses. First, UGM operates under constraints that severely limit its ability to realize what human beings rightly value, including their own survival and improvement. Because IGM can remove these constraints, it is potentially more effective (...) in promoting human well‐being. Second, IGM is also potentially morally preferable to UGM, since the latter is wantonly destructive of life, often involves suffering on a massive scale. The chapter then articulates the kernel of truth in appeals to the wisdom of nature, arguing for the need to develop appropriate cautionary heuristics for IGM. (shrink)

The study extends and tests the issue contingent four-component model of ethical decision-making to include moral obligation. A web-based questionnaire was used to gauge the influence of perceived importance of an ethical issue on moral judgment and moral intent. Perceived importance of an ethical issue was found to be a predictor of moral judgment but not of moral intent as predicted. Moral obligation is suggested to be a process that occurs after a moral judgment is made and explained a significant (...) portion of the variance in moral intent. (shrink)

During the past decade, debate has intensified about the role of long-term opioid therapy in the management of chronic nonmalignant pain. Specialists in pain management have discussed the issues extensively and now generally agree that a selected population of patients with chronic pain can attain sustained analgesia without significant adverse consequences. This perspective, however, is not uniformly accepted by pain specialists and has not been widely disseminated to other disciplines or the public. Rather, the more traditional perspective, which ascribes both (...) transitory benefit and substantial cumulative risk to long-term opioid therapy, continues to predominate. According to this perspective, the inevitability of tolerance limits the possibility of sustained efficacy, and other pharmacological properties increase the likelihood of adverse outcomes, including persistent side-effects, impairment in physical and psychosocial functioning, and addiction. If accurate, these outcomes would indeed justify the withholding of opioid therapy for all but the most extreme cases of chronic nonmalignant pain. (shrink)

Some hold that the lesson of Russell’s paradox and its relatives is that mathematical reality does not form a ‘definite totality’ but rather is ‘indefinitely extensible’. There can always be more sets than there ever are. I argue that certain contact puzzles are analogous to Russell’s paradox this way: they similarly motivate a vision of physical reality as iteratively generated. In this picture, the divisions of the continuum into smaller parts are ‘potential’ rather than ‘actual’. Besides the intrinsic (...) interest of this metaphysical picture, it has important consequences for the debate over absolute generality. It is often thought that ‘indefinite extensibility’ arguments at best make trouble for mathematical platonists; but the contact arguments show that nominalists face the same kind of difficulty, if they recognize even the metaphysical possibility of the picture I sketch. (shrink)

First published in 1954, _Human Society in Ethics and Politics_ is Bertrand Russell’s last full account of his ethical and political positions relating to both politics and religion. Ethics, he argues, are necessary to man because of the conflict between intelligence and impulse – if one were without the other, there would be no place for ethics. Man’s impulses and desires are equally social and solitary. Politics and ethics are the means by which we as a society and as (...) individuals become socially purposeful and moral codes inculcate our rules of action. (shrink)

Russell Goodman examines the curious reemergence of pragmatism in a field dominated in the past decades by phenomenology, logic, positivism, and deconstruction. With contributions from major contemporary and classical thinkers such as Cornel West, Richard Rorty, Nancy Fraser, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Ralph Waldo Emerson Russell has gathered an impressive chorus of philosophical voices that reexamine the origins and complexities of neo-pragmatism. The contributors discuss the relationship between pragmatism and literary theory, phenomenology, existentialism, and the work of Ralph (...) Waldo Emerson. They question the meaning of pragmatics, what it is to be practical, and ask provocative questions such as: what is reading? and whether or not democracy is a precondition for the functioning of intelligence. This work places this reemergent and interesting neo-development in its proper context and will provide readers with a strong sense of the movement's foundations, history, and subtlities. (shrink)

Sexual perversity has traditionally been defined in terms of violating externally imposed criteria for natural or normal sex. The theory proposed here views sexual desires in terms of their own internal structure, such that perverse desires are those which are self-defeating because they are contradictory. Sadism, masochism, and certain private acts between consenting heterosexual and homosexual adults are shown to be perverse in illustrating the use of this hopefully nonideological method.

The biomedical enhancement of human capacities has emerged as one of the most philosophically invigorating areas of contemporary bioethical research. In exploring the ethical dimensions of emerging biotechnologies and human–machine interfaces, the literature on human enhancement has made significant contributions to traditional problems in moral philosophy. One such area concerns the enhancement of cognitive capacities that bear on moral status. Could biotechnological or other forms of neurocognitive intervention result in the creation of ‘postpersons’ who possess a moral status that is (...) higher than that of ‘mere persons’? If the creation of postpersons with a higher moral status is indeed possible, is it morally wrong to bring this about? Nicholas Agar takes up these two questions in his Feature Article for this issue, in which he defends affirmative answers to both.Most moral philosophers in the Kantian tradition would agree that were we to enhance the cognitive capacities of a non-rational sentient creature so as to confer on it the psychological properties associated with personhood, we will have increased that creature's intrinsic moral worth relative to non-rational sentient beings, and thus we will have enhanced its moral status. Virtually all parties to the moral status enhancement debate agree on this much. Why then would it not be similarly possible in principle to enhance the cognitive capacities of mere persons so as to create postpersons who possess a higher moral status than that of mere persons? While this may seem like a reasonable extrapolation from the first scenario, it is here that moral philosophical boats begin to diverge.Allen Buchanan was the first to address systematically the possibility of moral status enhancement1 and his work …. (shrink)

This paper examines the early aesthetic writings of Joseph Margolis from the late 1950s to the mid‐1960s in order to argue for the relevance of these works in understanding Margolis’s later, more well‐known views in the philosophy of art. Specifically, the paper addresses Margolis’s early essays on the definition and ontology of art and aesthetic perception. These essays not only show Margolis engaged in the most significant debates in mid‐century analytic aesthetics but also provide important indications of the limitations of (...) that approach to thinking about the arts that informs the development of Margolis’s later cultural realism. (shrink)

This paper identifies two central modes of discourse in contemporary pragmatist aesthetics: Cultural Emergentism and Experiential Somaesthetics. Whereas Cultural Emergentism focuses on developing a non-reductive ontology of culture, Experiential Somaesthetics preserves the traditional pragmatist emphasis on embodied experience and examines the place that the care and cultivation of the living soma has in improving our aesthetic transactions.

Huit conférences du philosophe prix Nobel, et une question : la philosophie peut-elle être une science? Pour assurer la validité de ses recherches, la philosophie doit s'appuyer sur une méthode, "quelque chose de parfaitement défini, susceptible de se ramasser en formules, et capable de fournir toute la connaissance scientifique objective qu'il est possible d'atteindre". Tel est l'objectif de ce recueil consacré aux notions de logique, d'infini, de connaissance du monde extérieur, et de liberté, qui comprend notamment une conférence devenue célèbre, (...) "L'essence de la philosophie : la logique", dont Wittgenstein, qui était l'un des disciples de Russell, s'inspirera pour écrire son Tractatus logico-philosophicus. (shrink)

This succinct but illuminating book defends the free market, while criticizing a narrowly economistic understanding of man and society. Baldacchino argues that a sound economy has ethical and cultural prerequisites that are integral to its survival. Includes an introduction by Russell Kirk. _From the Introduction: _ “Any society’s moral order develops from its religion, its philosophy, its humane literature. The discipline of political economy, little understood until the latter half of the eighteenth century, is no independent creation: what economic (...) views one holds must depend upon one’s apprehension of human nature. An economic system indifferent to morality will not long endure. For proof of these theses, read with attention Baldacchino’s succinct study, the work of a sound scholar endowed with a philosophical habit of mind.”–_Russell Kirk_. (shrink)

Certain messages, even when not directly payoff relevant, can be a credible form of communication in light of natural social preferences. Social image concerns and other-regarding preferences interact to create incentives to communicate about how one feels about other people. Recognizing the prevalence of the incentive to communicate about one’s social preferences suggests that many social and economic phenomena—from norms of etiquette to cooperation to gift exchange—should be seen, in part, as forms of signaling. These behaviors may be surprisingly robust (...) to material costs, yet sensitive to context. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References.