When firms face crisis, the instant and open channels of social media communication create a double-edged sword. While corporations can more quickly communicate with stakeholders, any missteps will have drastic and nearly immediate repercussions. What are the relationships among social media, subjective norms, attitudes, and intentions during corporate crisis? We explore this phenomenon via a study of a crisis faced by Lowe’s, an international home improvement store, and how current and potential customers reacted. By utilizing a structural equations model to (...) examine an integrated model of multiple constructs, we find that Facebook usage is associated with behavioral intent, perceptions of ethicality, and attitudes toward the organization. Counter intuitively, we find that an increase in participant Facebook usage is negatively related to felt subjective norms. Our findings indicate that beyond the traditional relationships examined by the Theory of Reasoned Action (e.g., norms, attitudes, and behavioral intent), that social media and subjective norms have a strong relationship with general attitudes and ethical attitudes toward an organization. (shrink)

Hume's Principle requires the existence of the finite cardinals and their cardinal, but these are the only cardinals the Principle requires. Were the Principle an analysis of the concept of cardinal number, it would already be peculiar that it requires the existence of any cardinals; an analysis of bachelor is not expected to yield unmarried men. But that it requires the existence of some cardinals, the countable ones, but not others, the uncountable, makes it seem invidious; it is as if (...) an analysis of people required that there be men but not women, or whites but not blacks. If we deprive the Principle of existential commitments, it will cease to yield Dedekind's axioms for the natural numbers and so fail a good test of material adequacy. But since there are cardinals no second-order theory guarantees, neither can the Principle be beefed up to require all cardinals. (shrink)

This study is an unusual contribution to the philosophy of mind in that it argues for the sometimes unfashionable view of dualism: that mind and matter are distinct and separate entities as Descartes believed. The author takes as his point of departure the imaginative hypothesis of disembodiment, which establishes the possibility of the mind's being a quite non-material thing. There are clear casual correlations between what is physical and what is mental, and the most serious issue confronting dualism since Descartes (...) has been how such an interaction is possible. Dr Hart sets out to answer this question by showing that the issue is as much about the nature of causation as it is about the natures of mind and matter. (shrink)

Plato's Euthyrphro, Apology, andCrito portray Socrates' words and deeds during his trial for disbelieving in the Gods of Athens and corrupting the Athenian youth, and constitute a defense of the man Socrates and of his way of life, the philosophic life. The twelve essays in the volume, written by leading classical philosophers, investigate various aspects of these works of Plato, including the significance of Plato's characters, Socrates's revolutionary religious ideas, and the relationship between historical events and Plato's texts.

Examines the relations between logic and philosophy over the last 150 years. Logic underwent a major renaissance beginning in the nineteenth century. Cantor almost tamed the infinite, and Frege aimed to undercut Kant by reducing mathematics to logic. These achievements were threatened by the paradoxes, like Russell's. This ferment generated excellent philosophy by excellent philosophers up to World War II. This book provides a selective, critical history of the collaboration between logic and philosophy during this period. After World War II, (...) mathematical logic became a recognized subdiscipline in mathematics departments, and consequently but unfortunately philosophers have lost touch with its monuments. This book aims to make four of them more accessible to philosophers, making available the tools necessary for modern scholars of philosophy to renew a productive dialogue between logic and philosophy. (shrink)

Recognized as one of the leading philosophers and Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, Emil Ludwig Fackenheim has been widely praised for his boldness, originality, and profundity. As is well-known, a striking feature of Fackenheim's thought is his unwavering contention that the Holocaust brought about a radical shift in human history, so monumental and unprecedented that nothing can ever be the same again. Fackenheim regarded it as the specific duty of thinkers and scholars to assume responsibility to probe this historical (...) event for its impact on the human future and to make its immense ramifications evident. In Emil Fackenheim's Post-Holocaust Thought and Its Philosophical Sources, scholars consider important figures in the history of philosophy--including Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Strauss--and trace how Fackenheim's philosophical confrontations with each of them shaped his overall thought. This collection details which philosophers exercised the greatest influence on Fackenheim, and how he diverged from them. Incorporating widely varying approaches, the contributors in the volume wrestle with this challenge historically, politically, and philosophically in order to illuminate the depths of Fackenheim's own thought. (shrink)

This book provides a distinctive account of Edward Said's critique of modern culture by highlighting the religion-secularism distinction on which it is predicated. This distinction is both literal and figurative. It refers, on the one hand, to religious traditions and to secular traditions and, on the other hand, to tropes that extend the meaning and reference of religion and secularism in indeterminate ways. The author takes these tropes as the best way of organizing Said's heterogeneous corpus - from Joseph Conrad (...) and the Fiction of Autobiography, his first book, to Orientalism, his most influential book, to his recent writings on the Palestinian question. The religion-secularism distinction, as an act of imagination and narrative continuity, lies behind Said's cultural criticism, his notion of intellectual responsibility, and his public controversy with Michael Walzer about the meaning and the uses of the Exodus story and about the question of Palestine. (shrink)

Keith Hossack's thesis is that knowledge is a conceptually primitive and metaphysically fundamental relation between a mind and a fact. He argues that in terms of the simple relation of knowledge we can analyze central notions of epistemology , of semantics , of modality and a priori knowledge , of psychology , and of linguistics . He does so in a framework that includes a fairly rich faculty psychology and that stresses causation: knowledge can be caused by belief, but because (...) knowledge is simple, it is not any kind of belief. He regards his enterprise as metaphysics, and he proceeds in a rather grand manner. The beginning of his Preface might remind one of the opening paragraphs of Leibniz's The Monadology.If knowledge is a simple relation between minds and facts, then we want to know a bit about facts. Hossack takes facts to consist in universals being instantiated among things. He favours a view of universals as respects in which things resemble each other , but his theory is at least officially silent about which universals exist, leaving that as a matter for scientific inquiry . But he takes metaphysics to be a science . Here he is being coy, and it is worth making out how. Hossack uses multigrade relations; these are relations of no fixed polyadicity that for any natural number n may be instantiated by n things. Vectors are bearers of such relations. The relation among working men of uniting to form a union is a multigrade relation, and the founders of the International Workers of the World are a vector bearing this relation. (shrink)

Transoral laser microsurgery applies to the piecemeal removal of malignant tumours of the upper aerodigestive tract using the CO2 laser under the operating microscope. This method of surgery is being increasingly popularised as a single modality treatment of choice in early laryngeal cancers (T1 and T2) and occasionally in the more advanced forms of the disease (T3 and T4), predomi- nantly within the supraglottis. Thomas Kuhn, the American physicist turned philosopher and historian of science, coined the phrase ‘paradigm shift’ in (...) his groundbreaking book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He argued that the arrival of the new and often incompatible idea forms the core of a new paradigm, the birth of an entirely new way of thinking. This article discusses whether Steiner and col- leagues truly brought about a paradigm shift in oncological surgery. By rejecting the principle of en block resection and by replacing it with the belief that not only is it oncologically safe to cut through the substance of the tumour but in doing so one can actually achieve better results, Steiner was able to truly revolutionise the man- agement of laryngeal cancer. Even though within this article the repercussions of his insight are limited to the upper aerodigestive tract oncological surgery, his willingness to question other peoples’ dogma makes his contribution truly a genuine paradigm shift. (shrink)

More than 50 years after it was first published, The Concept of Law remains the most important work of legal philosophy in the English-speaking world. In this volume, written for both students and specialists, 13 leading scholars look afresh at Hart's great book. Unique in format, the volume proceeds sequentially through all the main ideas in The Concept of Law: each contributor addresses a single chapter of Hart's book, critically discussing its arguments in light of subsequent developments in (...) the field. Four concluding essays assess the continued relevance for jurisprudence of the 'persistent questions' identified by Hart at the beginning of The Concept of Law. The collection also includes Hart's 'Answers to Eight Questions', written in 1988 and never before published in English. Contributors include Timothy Endicott, Richard HS Tur, Pavlos Eleftheriadis, John Gardner, Grant Lamond, Nicos Stavropoulos, Leslie Green, John Tasioulas, Jeremy Waldron, John Finnis, Frederick Schauer, Pierluigi Chiassoni and Nicola Lacey. (shrink)

This festschrift collects a number of insightful essays by a group of accomplished Christian scholars, all of who have either worked with or studied under Hendrik Hart during his 35-year tenure as Senior Member in Systematic Philosophy at the Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto, Canada.

This volume is a collection of essays by various contributors in honor of the late Laurence Berns, Richard Hammond Elliot Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. The essays address the literary, political, theological, and philosophical themes of his life's work as a scholar, teacher, and constant companion of the "great books.".

Earp, Lewis, and Hart make a comprehensive and compelling argument for ending the “war on drugs,” highlighting the importance of both ending the criminalization of people who use drugs, and...

In this work, Mercedes Rubio argues that St. Thomas Aquinas’s In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3 is his final reading of Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed on the topic of the knowledge of God. According to Rubio, this text reveals the influence of the Guide on Aquinas’s doctrine of the divine attributes, his understanding of the role of faith and his Five Ways.Rubio’s central thesis is most likely to be met with skepticism, since many scholars who (...) work on both Aquinas and Maimonides readily acknowledge Maimonides’ influence on the development of a number of Aquinas’s ideas, including the Five Ways. With respect to her central thesis, then, Rubio painstakingly reconstructs the history of the Quaestio, arguing that it was written around 1266, roughly fourteen years after the original Commentary was composed, and then inserted back in the Commentary on the Sentences. Rubio argues further that Aquinas wrote the Quaestio in order to respond to allegations against the writings of Peter of Tarantasia to the effect that. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sense and Sensibility: IARPT’s Four Existential OrientationsWilliam David Hart (bio)I. Introduction: IARPT’s Liberal HorizonThe concerns of the Institute of American Religious and Philosophical Thought are worlds apart from the preoccupations that animate the characters in Jane Austen’s novels. This is not to say that IARPT is disinterested in romance, love, and heartbreak. It is to say, rather, that Sense and Sensibility, the title of Austen’s 1811 novel, is (...) a good cover term for the matters that I wish to address. I say this despite the fact that many characters in the novel, especially Fanny Dashwood, are insufferable members of a British ruling class that, along with its wealth-hording, patriarchy-sustaining institution of primogeniture, needed to be expropriated by the working class. I say this despite the fact that the sensibility of the British aristocracy, as is true of all aristocracies, is off-putting. With this proviso, it is precisely the sense and sensibility of the Institute (the love, romance and, perhaps, tragedy) that I wish to survey through a focus on what I take to be its animating existential concerns. I call these orientations existential rather than merely intellectual because they go beyond ideas, professional commitments, and implicate the entire range of life dispositions. These orientations are habit-forming.Constitutive of these orientations are anxieties regarding the meaning and significance of those things for which we live and die. The sheer fact of consciousness, of conscious matter, of matter conscious of its consciousness and the wonder and awe this inspires as we consider the very existence of things is part of our existential ensemble too. For some of us wonder and awe before the groundless gratuity of existence, let’s call this ontological curiosity, compete with death anxiety and its intimations for preeminence in how we imagine the meaning and significance of our life. This is not a binary matter. For some people, perhaps for most, the joy of existence larded as it is with terrible things exceeds, as the case make be, the quiet desperation, sorrow, or terror, and the emptiness at the center of all things. My exploration focuses on the anxieties rather than the curiosity. I take it for granted that the deep source of anxiety is mortality and its various intimations. Our quest for lives of meaning and significance is threatened by the “horrid d’s”1 of death, disease, dread, despair, [End Page 5] and disappointment. Various thinkers have theorized how we cope with this anxiety. Some argue that denial is a dominant way of dealing with death, which they take to be foundational to the other meaning and significance-threatening phenomena.2 Where the answers to these threats provided by traditional religions are found lacking or otherwise no longer credible, denial expresses itself in the form of various immortality projects: typically, the puritanical, maniacal, and methodical pursuit of health and wealth, in consumerism of all kinds, from the hottest new diet, to a Peloton exercise bike, to a Tesla. And then there is the pursuit of fame and celebrity, which many people can no longer distinguish, the hope, captured so well in the theme song for the television series, Fame. “Fame / I’m going to live forever / Baby, remember my name.”3 We want to be remembered. Whether by future generations or, inside the digital clouds of Instagram or TikTok, or, as some would have it, within the consequent nature of God. Of course, for some populations, death is not so easily denied. Death has an in their face immediacy, insistence, and oppugnancy that rips through flesh and leaves its subject not merely anxious but dead. I speak, for example, of the mind-numbing repetitiveness with which police kill Black people. Or the myriad ways, including environmental racism, in which Blacks are subject to premature death. Some thinkers even theorize that death is the existential horizon for Black people in an ontologically distinctive way.4 Thus the March 2020 police-raid killing of Breonna Taylor in her home may be a statistical anomaly but is experienced as a monstrous revelation of the nature of things, of Black social life as social death. This is not a... (shrink)

D'après beaucoup de commentateurs de nos jours la théorie de Leibniz que dans toute vérité, le prédicat est continu dans le sujet, se base sur le Principe de l'Identité et méne vers Pessentialisme ou le supère-essentialisme. Ils prétendent que pour Dieu toutes les vérités peuvent ètre réduites à des identìtés explicites, tous les sujets à leurs attributs constitutifs, toutes les substances à des perceptions et des appétions. Cette reduction élimine “Celui Qui Contient” les concepts, le substratum persistant. Leibniz lui-mème vacille, (...) disant parfois que mème Dieu ne peut pas mener à bonne fin la reduction mais dois se fier à une “Vision” de la substance elle-mème, et à scs perceptions et appétitions. L'article present vise à examiner les idées rivalisantes offenes par Leibniz sur la connaissance possedée par Dieu des propositions contingentes et des substances créés. Il note aussi les consequences de les vues pour le pourvoir de contenir des concepts et pour Pessentialisme ainsi que pour l'individuation des monades et pour les sujets de jugements ethiques. (shrink)

Quoique leibniz donne l'apprence de baser sa philosophie sur le principe de l'identite, c'est pourtant sur celui de la raison suffisante qu'il insiste le plus dans son oeuvre. ce principe de la raison suffisante joue un role majeur parce que leibniz derive sa conception de la substance d'une analogie entre le sujet et les attributs des propositions et les concepts de substance et leurs attributs. cette analogie mene a une theorie de retenue de la verite et a une autre qui (...) affirme que les attributs sont inherents a la substance: theories compatibles avec la raison suffisante mais non avec celle de l'identite. leibniz n'a ps compris la conception de la substance chez spinoza dans laquelle les attributs sont identiques a la substance. le raisonnement de leibniz contre spinoza n'est donc guere convainquant. je suggere que la raison de ce malentendu ne releve pas uniquement de la logique de leibniz, mais aussi d'une theologie basee sur une ame d'une immortalite qui persiste et sur la theorie d'une morale vengeresse. (shrink)

Quelle différence y a-t-il entre des règles de droit et des ordres appuyés de menaces? Qu'est-ce qu'une obligation juridique et en quoi se trouve-t-elle apparentée à une obligation morale? Quelle est la nature des règles et dans quelle mesure le droit consiste-t-il en des règles? Qu'est-ce que la justice et en quoi diffère-t-elle du reste de la morale?Au cours d'une discussion approfondie et séparée de ces problèmes récurrents, l'auteur relève une série d'éléments d'une importance essentielle pour la compréhension du droit, (...) et réalise un nouveau départ dans la théorie du droit. L'ouvrage comporte une nouvelle analyse des notions de validité juridique, de souveraineté, et de fondement d'un système juridique, un nouvel examen du droit naturel et du positivisme juridique, une discussion originale des limites du formalisme dans l'élaboration de la décision judiciaire, et un examen de la nature du droit international.Le texte est complété par des notes bibliographiques détaillées et la discussion de thèses émises par des auteurs contemporains et plus anciens. Cette deuxième édition s'accompagne en outre d'une postface posthume, publiée sous la responsabilité de P.A. Bulloch et J. Raz. (shrink)

The book provides a series of approaches to the ancient question of whether and how God is a matter of "experience," or, alternately, to what extent the notion of experience can be true to itself if it does not include God. On the one hand, it seems impossible to experience God: the deity does not offer Himself to sense experience. On the other hand, there have been mystics who have claimed to have encountered God. The essays in this collection seek (...) to explore the topic again, drawing insights from phenomenology, theology, literature, and feminism. Throughout, this stimulating collection maintains a strong connection with concrete rather than abstract approaches to God. The contributors: Michael F. Andrews, Jeffrey Bloechl, John D. Caputo, Kristine Culp, Kevin Hart, Kevin L. Hughes, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Crystal Lucky, Renee McKenzie, Kim Paffenroth, Michael Purcell, Michael J. Scanlon, O.S.A., James K. A. Smith. (shrink)

In this work, Mercedes Rubio argues that St. Thomas Aquinas’s In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3 is his final reading of Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed on the topic of the knowledge of God. According to Rubio, this text reveals the influence of the Guide on Aquinas’s doctrine of the divine attributes, his understanding of the role of faith and his Five Ways.Rubio’s central thesis is most likely to be met with skepticism, since many scholars who (...) work on both Aquinas and Maimonides readily acknowledge Maimonides’ influence on the development of a number of Aquinas’s ideas, including the Five Ways. With respect to her central thesis, then, Rubio painstakingly reconstructs the history of the Quaestio, arguing that it was written around 1266, roughly fourteen years after the original Commentary was composed, and then inserted back in the Commentary on the Sentences. Rubio argues further that Aquinas wrote the Quaestio in order to respond to allegations against the writings of Peter of Tarantasia to the effect that. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Tradition has it that ‘deuteros plous’, an idiomatic expression used by Plato most famously at Phaedo 99c–d, refers to the use of oars to get to one’s destination in the absence of suitable wind for sailing. The nautical motif is a gesture towards the seafaring credentials of Holger Thesleff, the scholar to whom the volume pays tribute, the author, most notably for this occasion, of three books and several articles on the style, chronology and metaphysical outlook of Plato’s dialogues, now (...) conveniently gathered together in a single volume, Platonic Patterns: A Collection of Studies by Holger Thesleff. But the expression also points towards the... (shrink)

The article presents the author's perspectives regarding the book "The Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory," by Terence Wilmot Hutchison. He emphasizes two important general themes that emerge from the symposium in total, the great breadth of Hutchison's contribution to economic methodology and a brief introduction on the four individual papers. He mentions some people including Roger Backhouse, John Hart and Ross Emmett as well as the comments of each about Hutchison's works.

This paper discusses the first incarnation of what came to be known as the “Frege-Geach” point. The point was made by Peter Geach in his 1960 essay “Ascriptivism”, and developed in “Assertion”, a 1965 piece. Geach’s articles launch a wholesale attack on theories of non-descriptive performances advanced by “some Oxford philosophers” whom he accuses of ignoring “the distinction between calling a thing ‘P’ and predicating ‘P’ of a thing”. One view that Geach specifically targets is H. L. A. Hart’s (...) claim that sentences of the form “X φ-ed” are not primarily descriptive but ascriptive of responsibility for actions. Hart explicitly accepted Geach’s criticism, and disowned his essay. I argue that he was wrong to do so. Perhaps the essay was worth retracting, but not because of Geach’s objections. I begin by restating and refining Geach’s arguments, in order to bring out the flaw he claimed to have detected in the “pattern of philosophising” that he took Hart’s essay to exemplify. I go on to argue that Geach’s original point poses no obstacle either to non-descriptivism in general, or to Hart’s sui generis non-descriptivist claim in particular. (shrink)

This work presents, interprets, and largely defends the legal philosophy of H.L.A. Hart, except for his account of causation. Hart is considered by many persons to be the most important English writer on jurisprudence in the 20th century. The book considers his general theory of law, his theory of rights and of the enforcement of morality, and his analysis of the conditions of legal resposibility and the justification of punishment.

In our recent article, together with more than 60 of our colleagues, we outlined a proposal for drug policy reform consisting of four specific yet interrelated strategies: (1) de jure decriminalization of all psychoactive substances currently deemed illicit for personal use or possession (so-called “recreational” drugs), accompanied by harm reduction policies and initiatives akin to the Portugal model; (2) expunging criminal convictions for nonviolent offenses pertaining to the use or possession of small quantities of such drugs (and releasing those serving (...) time for these offenses), while delivering retroactive ameliorative relief; (3) the ultimate legalization and careful regulation of currently illicit drugs; and (4) the delivery of a new “Marshall Plan” focused on community-building initiatives, expanded harm reduction programs, and social and health care support efforts (Earp et al. 2021). We were gratified to see so many thoughtful commentaries on our proposal, and we respond to them in part in this reply. (shrink)

I propose and defend a proof-based account of legal exceptions. The basic thought is that the characteristic behaviour of exceptions is to be explained in terms of the distinction, relative to some given decision-type C in some decision-making context, between two classes of relevant facts: those that may, and those that may not, remain uncertain if a token decision C is to count as correctly made. The former is the class of exceptions. A fact F is an exception relative to (...) some decision-type C, I claim, if (i) the ascertainment of F is sufficient for a token decision C not to count as correctly made, and (ii) the ascertainment of the negation of F is not necessary for a token decision C to count as correctly made. I also recuperate, reconstruct and discuss some of HLA Hart’s early views on defeasible judicial decisions. These two projects are closely connected: the latter is a vehicle for the former. (shrink)

Aesthetics in philosophy of mathematics is too narrowly construed. Beauty is not the only feature in mathematics that is arguably aesthetic. While not the highest aesthetic value, being interesting is a sine qua non for publishability. Of the many ways to be interesting, being explanatory has recently been discussed. The motivational power of what is interesting is important for both directing research and stimulating education. The scientific satisfaction of curiosity and the artistic desire for beautiful results are complementary but both (...) aesthetic. (shrink)

This collection of reprinted social philosophy broadly surveys and introduces problems and positions vis-à-vis the concept of right. Using the tools of ordinary language analysis, M. MacDonald evaluates the attempts of other writers to resolve the tensions between civil and moral responsibility. H. L. A. Hart argues that "... if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right." His laudatory deductive exercise and categorization of rights suggests no leads for answering (...) the hypothetical he poses. While MacDonald and Hart raise no gut issues, G. Vlastos gives a common sense analysis of the main stream of classical debate, couching his inquiry in terms of conflicts between collective and distributive justice. His article both includes the scope and surpasses the stopping points of the earlier selections. Through leading to a philosophical discussion of the workings of the denial of human rights within the segregationist position, R. Wasserstrom unmasks the practical stakes involved in what the others leave as an academic problem. H. Morris's witty analysis of a hypothetical "right to be punished" lays bare the fact that social institutions embody some concept of right, duty, and obligation. He leaves the reader with the unanswered but clearly indicated question of which concept of right does one want society to sanction. Also included are: J. Locke's The Second Treatise of Civil Government, Chapters two and five; J. Bentham's Anarchical Fallacies; The Virginia Declaration of Rights ; Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens ; Universal Declaration of Human Rights ; and a portion of the Declaration of Independence of the U.S.A.--M. D. P. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUME ON BLAME AND EXCUSE17. Hume's account of blame and excuse differs in fundamental respects from many contemporary ones. Many contemporary views, ultimately derived from the Kantian dictum that 'ought' implies 'can', base excuses on the nonvoluntary character of an action. For example, H. L. A. Hart argues that the basic requirements for responsibility are that a person have the capacity and a fair opportunity to do what (...) is required. A person is to be excused for an action if he lacked either the capacity or opportunity to do what was required. As these are conditions for an action being voluntary in a suitably narrow sense, Hart primarily bases excuses on the nonvoluntary character of actions. Likewise, Richard Brandt's view, which in many respects is similar to Hume's, requires that the manifestation of a character trait be subject to a high degree of voluntary control before blame.2 is appropriate. Hume, however, explicitly denies that either a character trait or its manifestation in conduct need be subject to voluntary control for blame to be appropriate. The nonvoluntary character of an action does not necessarily excuse one from blame. Hume makes four key claims about blame and excuse. (1) The ultimate objects of praise and blame are mental qualities, not actions. (2) Actions are considered only as signs of mental qualities. (3) The possession and expression of these mental qualities may be appropriate objects of praise or blame even if they are nonvoluntary. (4) Persons have excuses if their actions do not indicate enduring mental qualities. These points need to be substantiated and explained. The first two claims may be considered together. That Hume holds mental qualities are the ultimate objects of praise and blame and that actions are considered only as signs of mental qualities is indisputable. 18. 'Tis evident, that when we praise any actions, we regard only the motives that produced them, and consider the actions as signs or indications of certain principles in the mind and temper. The external performance has no merit. We must look within to find the moral quality. This we cannot do directly; and therefore fix our attention on actions, as on external signs. But these actions are still considered as signs; and the ultimate object of our praise and approbation is the motive, that produced them. For present purposes, only two points need be noted about this passage. First, it clearly states that the ultimate objects of praise and, as he indicates in his following 4 paragraph, blame are always mental qualities. The expression mental qualities is vague, perhaps deliberately so. Sometimes Hume uses the term motive instead. By 'motive' he does not intend any passing desire or further intention which one may have in acting, e.g., embarrassing others. For Hume, some motives are not even dispositions to act. Second, actions or external performances have no merit. They are only signs of mental qualities. Even if the concept of an action includes more than the external behavior, such as the intention, it does not include motives or desires. A difference in intention may entail a difference in action, but a difference in motive does not. The same action may be performed from different motives. Hence, actions are not logically connected with the objects of praise and blame. Hume's claim that actions themselves have no merit, it might be objected, is incorrect. People do constantly evaluate actions. If they did not, then actions would not be considered untoward and a basis for attributing blame. However, Hume does not deny that actions may be evaluated in some way or other, only that they alone have merit or are appropriate objects of praise and blame. Actions may be evaluated without reference to mental qualities, for example, as right or wrong, useful or unuseful. Hume is 19. chiefly concerned with evaluating actions as virtuous or vicious. The terms virtuous and vicious as applied to actions involve an element of praise and blame, whereas the terms right and wrong, at least in most of their uses, do not. Thus, Hume is not denying that actions alone may have merit in the sense of value or utility. Rather, he is denying that actions... (shrink)

The law within each legal system is a function of the practices of some social group. In short, law is a kind of socially grounded norm. H.L.A Hart famously developed this view in his book, The Concept of Law, by arguing that law derives from a social rule, the so-called “rule of recognition.” But the proposition that social facts play a foundational role in producing law is a point of consensus for all modern jurisprudents in the Anglo-American tradition: not (...) just Hart and his followers in the positivist school, most prominently Joseph Raz and Jules Coleman, but also the anti-positivist Ronald Dworkin, who argues that law necessarily synthesizes moral considerations with social facts. But which group’s practices ground each legal system? In particular, which group’s practices undergird U.S. law? Positivists since Hart have universally pointed to either officials or judges as the “recognitional community” (my term): the group such that its rules, conventions, cooperative activities, or practices in some other sense are the social facts from which the law of a given legal system derives. So Hart and all other positivists would identify either U.S. officials or U.S. judges as the recognitional community for U.S. law. This Article grapples with the tension between the positivist’s official- or judge-centered account of the recognitional community and the “popular constitutionalism” now so widely defended by constitutional scholars such as Larry Kramer, Robert Post, Reva Siegel, Mark Tushnet, Jeremy Waldron, and many others. Surely the popular constitutionalist would want to claim that U.S. citizens, not judges or officials, are the recognitional community for U.S. law. I term this position “deep popular constitutionalism.” Indeed, it turns out that Dworkin’s account of law, in its ambition to generate associative moral obligations for the citizenry as a whole, implies deep popular constitutionalism. Here there is a disagreement, hitherto unnoticed, between Dworkin and the positivists. My solution to this disagreement – to the debate between deep popular constitutionalists and deep official or judicial supremacists -- is to dissolve it by providing a group-relative account of law. Social norms, such as norms of dress or eating, are clearly group-relative. A particular dressing or eating behavior may be socially appropriate relative to one group’s norms, yet socially inappropriate relative to another’s. This Article extends the group-relative view from social norms to law itself, with a particular focus on U.S. law and constitutionalism. Part I surveys the jurisprudential literature. It shows how Hart and successor positivists identify the rule of recognition as a social practice engaged in by officials or some subset of officials (judges), rather than citizens generally, and argues that Dworkin by contrast sees the citizenry as a whole as his recognitional community. Parts II and III defend a group-relative account of law. Part II argues, with reference to the U.S. experience, that multiple groups can simultaneously instantiate the kind of social fact that undergirds law, be it a convention, a social norm, a “shared cooperative activity” (SCA), or something else. At many points in U.S. constitutional history, multiple official or citizen groups, defined along departmental, partisan, regional, state-federal, religious, or other lines, have accepted competing rules of recognition for U.S. law. Part III argues that “law” functions, primarily, as either an explanatory or a normative construct, and that insisting on a single recognitional community for each legal system would be arbitrary, both for explanatory purposes and for normative purposes. Part IV considers the many implications of the group-relative account for U.S. constitutional theory – in particular, for popular constitutionalism. (shrink)

This chapter is an essay in a volume that examines constitutional law in the United States through the lens of H.L.A. Hart's "rule of recognition" model of a legal system. My chapter focuses on a feature of constitutional practice that has been rarely examined: how jurists and scholars argue about interpretive methods. Although a vast body of scholarship provides arguments for or against various interpretive methods -- such as textualism, originalism, "living constitutionalism," structure-and-relationship reasoning, representation reinforcement, minimalism, and so (...) forth -- very little scholarship shifts to the meta-level and asks: What are the considerations that jurists and scholars bring to bear in arguing that one or another interpretive method is legally favored? And can we "make sense" of this body of argument? Is there a model of legal discourse that both accurately describes how U.S. jurists and scholars actually argue about interpretive methods, and that vindicates this discourse (in the sense of seeing these actors as making valid arguments)? I find that Hart's rule-of-recognition model fails to describe or vindicate how U.S. jurists and scholars argue about interpretive methods. The problem, in a nutshell, is that Hart sees legal argument as asserting or presupposing the social fact of contemporary official acceptance of a rule of recognition. By contrast, jurists and scholars typically point to social facts other than contemporary official acceptance in arguing for the legal status of an interpretive method -- for example, the fact that the method is supported by Framers' intent, or by U.S. culture and tradition, or by precedent. Further, jurists and scholars very often argue that some interpretive method is legally favored even though the method is controversial. On Hart's model, such a claim is problematic -- because, on his model, the content of the rule of recognition is not controversial, but rather a matter of consensus among officials. The upshot may just be that Hart's model is a failure. However, another possibility is to adopt an "error theory" of U.S. constitutional discourse. It may perhaps be the case that U.S. jurists and scholars often make claims for the favorable legal status of some interpretive method that are inconsistent with the best understanding of the nature of law. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of StructureNicholas SmithVerity Harte. Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure. Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. x + 311. Cloth, $45.00.In this book, Verity Harte seeks to provide an account of Plato's view of mereology. According to Harte, Plato presents two distinct models about the relation of part to whole, but actually only ever accepts (...) one of these two models. Plato presents one model in the Parmenides, Theaetetus, and one passage in the Sophist. In this model, which Harte compares to a conception of part and whole recently advanced by David Lewis, the whole is simply identical to its collective parts and Plato attends to this model only to call attention to its problems. Harte explicates Plato's presentation of this model in the last section of Chapter 1 and in Chapter 2 of her book. The second model—the only one Plato actually accepts, according to Harte—Plato initially outlines in the Parmenides, but then explicates in finer detail in the Sophist, Philebus, and Timaeus. In this conception, wholes are now understood as "structures, the identity of whose parts is determined only in the context of the whole they compose" (3). Harte presents her evidence for Plato's endorsement of this model in Chapters 3 and 4, and then draws conclusions in Chapter 5.The book has several significant virtues, including especially clarity of exposition, and care and thoroughness in the review of the relevant texts from Plato's later dialogues. But this same care and attention to detail does not at all extend to any of Plato's discussions of part and whole in earlier works, and Harte's peremptory refusal to consider the relevant passages in these other works is puzzling, at best.Indeed, Harte bothers to identify only two such passages from earlier works, and then only to explain why they and other passages like them do not merit further attention: the Republic's famous division of the soul into three parts in Book IV and the consideration of virtue as a whole and the several virtues as parts of that whole in the Protagoras. Harte acknowledges that Plato explicitly supplies, in the Protagoras discussion, two different sorts of relations of part and whole, in distinguishing the way in which parts of gold form a larger whole, and the way the parts of the face are related to the whole face (349d4-8), but seems oblivious to the clear implication that—at least when he wrote the Protagoras, and contrary to Harte's primary thesis—Plato recognized more than one way in which wholes could be composed of parts. But Harte dismisses the significance of both discussions by noting, first, that the "principle of opposition" given in the Republic by which Plato divides the soul provides "at most, a sufficient, and not necessary, condition on something having parts" and concludes that it thus "cannot be used to establish general claims about parts" (2). Harte never mentions that this same view of the partitioned soul seems to reappear in the Phaedrus and Timaeus—a dialogue in which the allegedly preferred conception of mereology is presented—and also passes over the Republic's representation of the tripartition of the kallipolis, and Plato's conception of the citizen as a part of a state. As for the Protagoras's discussion of the relationships between the virtues, Harte says only that "there is here no discussion of the nature of parts or of the relation between parts and whole" (2). She concludes that "in both works the focus of discussion is the examples themselves (the soul, the virtues) and not wholes of parts as such" (2). Harte fails to notice, however, that the arrangement of virtues into parts and wholes may also be found in the Laches (190a1-199e7), [End Page 333] Meno (78d7-e2), and especially the Euthyphro (12c2-d2), in which the relation of piety to justice as part to whole is likened to the relationships between reverence and fear and odd numbers and numbers, which are plainly not examples of part-whole relationships between virtues.Harte is well... (shrink)

When I was asked to review this book, I thought it was to be a single essay, since the title gave no indication that the relation of David Lyons to the book was that of editor to a collection to which he also contributes. Most of the essays are so well known that no descriptive comment is necessary and no critical one adequate in a review of this length. The essays included are as follows: H. L. A. Hart's "Are (...) There Any Natural Rights?" and "Bentham on Legal Rights"; Rawls on "Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice" which anticipates the central position of his A Theory of Justice; Richard Wasserstrom on "Rights, Human Rights and Racial Discrimination"; Joel Feinberg on "The Nature and Value of Rights"; Ronald Dworkin "Taking Rights Seriously"; Thomas E. Hill, Jr., "Servility and Self-Respect"; Robert Nozick, "The Entitlement Theory"; David Lyons's "Rights, Claimants and Beneficiaries" and "Human Rights and the General Welfare". David Lyons also has a useful introduction which raises and discusses the main points in the essays. (shrink)

Before he became infamous for character assassination disguised as literary executorship, Rufus W. Griswold established his reputation in America as a critic and early literary anthologist. In 1842, Griswold released the first edition of his massive Poets and Poetry of America with prominent Philadelphia publisher Carey and Hart. At nearly five hundred royal octavo pages—complete with elaborate frontispiece; ornamental title page with an etching by George Hewitt Cushman after Thomas Creswick; twelve-page, double-columned “historical introduction”; authorial headnotes; and selections of (...) verse from more than one hundred poets active in the roughly seventy years since American independence—Griswold’s volume was... (shrink)

Geoffrey Rose’s prevention paradox points to a tension between two prima facie plausible moral principles: that we should save the greater number and that weshould save the most at risk. This paper argues that a novel moral theory, ex-ante contractualism, captures our intuitions in many prevention paradox cases, regardless of our interpretation of probability claims. However, it goes on to show that it might be impossible to square ex-ante contractualism with all of our moral intuitions. It concludes that even if (...) ex-ante contractualism cannot furnish an entire ethics of risk, it does identify important considerations for any such theory. (shrink)

Geoffrey Rose’s prevention paradox points to a tension between two prima facie plausible moral principles: that we should save the greater number and that weshould save the most at risk. This paper argues that a novel moral theory, ex-ante contractualism, captures our intuitions in many prevention paradox cases, regardless of our interpretation of probability claims. However, it goes on to show that it might be impossible to square ex-ante contractualism with all of our moral intuitions. It concludes that even if (...) ex-ante contractualism cannot furnish an entire ethics of risk, it does identify important considerations for any such theory. (shrink)