In this chapter, Daniel Layman argues that there is not one Lockean conception of IR but rather (at least) two mutually incompatible conceptions: one a Ciceronian moral cosmopolitanism and the other a colonialism centered on British interests. Opposing Locke’s philosophical writings with his economic works, Layman’s reading acknowledges the contradictions and incoherence present in Locke’s IR theory.

Two principal sources of imprecision in legal drafting (vagueness and ambiguity) are identified and illustrated. Virtually all of the ambiguity imprecision encountered in legal discourse is ambiguity in the language used to express logical structure, and virtually all of the imprecision resulting is inadvertent. On the other hand, the imprecision encountered in legal writing that results from vagueness is frequently, if not most often, included there deliberately; the drafter has considered it and decided that the vague language best accomplishes the (...) purpose at hand. This paper focuses on the use of some defined terminology for minimizing inadvertent ambiguity in the logical structure of legal discourse, where desired by the drafter. The current set of signaled structural definitions that are included in the A-Hohfeld language are first set forth and their use is illustrated in an extensive example from the treaty establishing the European Economic Community. The use of definitions in legal writing is widespread, butaddressed almost exclusively to controlling the vagueness of substantive legal terms; they are seldom used for structural purposes. Furthermore, their use in American legislative drafting is unsignaled. Here, attention is devoted to the relatively-neglected domain in legal discourse of imprecisely expressed logical structure, and the remedy offered, where desired by the drafter, is a set of signaled structuraldefinitions for use in controlling such imprecision. (shrink)

Different legal expert systems may be incompatible with each other: A user in characterizing the same situation by answering the questions presented in a consultation can be led to contradictory inferences. Such systems can be “synthesized” to help users avoid such contradictions by alerting them that other relevant systems are available to be consulted as they are responding to questions. An example of potentially incompatible, related legal expert systems is presented here ‐ ones for the New Jersey murder statute and (...) the celebrated Quinlan case, along with one way of synthesizing them to avoid such incompatibility. (shrink)

Intended for the first course in logic, The Power of Logic (POL) is written with the conviction that logic is the most important course that college students take. POL preserves the balance between informal and formal logic. Layman;s direct and accessible writing style, along with his plentiful examples, imaginative exercises, and POL;s accompanying Logic Tutor make this the best text for logic classes today.day.

According to John Locke, the conditions of human happiness establish the content of natural law, but God’s commands make it morally binding. This raises two questions. First, why does moral obligation require an authority figure? Second, what gives God authority? I argue that, according to Locke, moral obligation requires an authority figure because to have an obligation is to be accountable to someone. I then argue that, according to Locke, God has a kind of parental authority inasmuch as he is (...) bound by covenant to guide us by revealing the content of the moral law. (shrink)

Was Robert Boyle an occasionalist? And if so, what kind of occasionalist was he? These questions have long troubled commentators, as Boyle’s texts often seem to offer both endorsements of occasionalism and affirmations of bodies’ causal powers. I argue that Boyle’s position is best understood as reductive occasionalism, according to which bodily powers are relations between bodies and God’s action in the world, and there is no causal efficacy in bodies that is not strictly identical to God’s nomological causal efficacy.

It is traditional to ascribe to Locke the view that every person who acquires natural property rights by labouring on resources is obligated to leave sufficient resources for everyone else. But during the last several decades, a number of authors have contributed to a compelling textual case against this reading. Nevertheless, Locke clearly indicates that there is something wrong with distributions in which some suffer while others thrive. But if he does not endorse the traditional proviso, what exactly is the (...) problem? In this paper, I offer a solution to this puzzle. I argue that according to Locke, once people use their natural rights to acquire large properties, many individuals are unable to enjoy the material and moral wellbeing, or “preservation,” that is the end of natural law. For even if such large properties pose no problem for material preservation, they foster arbitrary power that offends against moral preservation. (shrink)

John Locke held that every person has a natural duty to use her property efficiently, and that consent is required for legitimate political power. On the face of it, these two positions seem to be in tension. This is because, (1) according to Locke, it is nearly impossible to use resources efficiently unless one lives within a political community, and (2)the waste restriction is enforceable. Consequently, it might seem that persons living outside civil society may be forced to submit to (...) civil power, in violation of the consent requirement. I argue that this tension is only apparent; although the waste restriction is enforceable, the consent requirement is safe. But in the course of resolving this difficulty, three significant, but little-noticed, features of Locke's doctrine of consent to government come to light: (A) consent is conceptually necessary, and not just morally required, for persons to be subject to political power; (B) most people living outside civil society have a moral obligation to enter civil society if they can; and (C) consent to government can bind under duress so long as the duress does not render anyone dependent on the arbitrary wills of others. (shrink)

Capitalism in the western world is currently facing a crisis of legitimacy in the face of rampant and growing inequality. In response, people are challenging the status quo and demanding their economic rights. But what economic rights do we have, and why? This book explores how four remarkable thinkers answered these questions during the nineteenth century's industrial revolution and how their ideas can provide a blueprint for economic justice today.

What gives some people the right to issue commands to everyone else and force everyone else to obey them? And why should people obey the commands of those with political power? These two key questions are the heart of the issue of political authority, and, in this volume, two philosophers debate the answers. Michael Huemer argues that political authority is an illusion and that no one is entitled to rule over anyone. He discusses and rebuts the major theories supporting political (...) authority's rightfulness: implicit social contract theory, hypothetical contract theories, democratic theories of authority, and utilitarian theories. Daniel Layman argues that democratic governments have authority because they are needed to protect our rights and because they are accountable to the people. Each author writes two replies directly addressing the arguments and ideas of the other. Key Features Covers a key foundational problem of political philosophy: the authority of government. Debate format ensures a full hearing of both sides. A Glossary includes key concepts in political philosophy related to the issue of authority. Annotated Further Reading sections point students to additional resources. Clear, concrete examples and arguments help students clearly see both sides of the argument. A Foreword by Matt Zwolinski describes a broader context for political authority and then traces the key points and turns in the authors' debate. (shrink)

This book explores a wide range of philosophical issues in their connection with theism, including views of free will, ethical theories, theories of mind, naturalism, and karma-plus-reincarnation. In this clear and logical guide, C. Stephen Layman takes up eight important philosophical questions about God: Does God exist? Why does God permit evil? Why think God is good? Why is God hidden? What is God's relationship to ethics? Is divine foreknowledge compatible with human free will? Do humans have souls? Does (...) reincarnation provide the best explanation of suffering? Based on more than thirty years of experience in teaching undergraduates and in leading philosophical discussions related to God, Layman has arranged the text to deal with each of these eight questions in one or two chapters apiece. Many philosophical works take up questions about God, but the chapters of this book plunge the reader very quickly into the arguments relevant to each question. Layman presents the arguments cogently and simply, yet without oversimplifying the issues. The book emphasizes strengths and weaknesses of both theism and its metaphysical rivals. Readers will gain a clearer understanding of theism and naturalism, and of their sometimes surprising implications. (shrink)

Theists may argue that, although theism does not explain the presence of all evils well, it provides an explanation that is as good as (or better than) the explanation provided by some (or all) of theism’s metaphysical rivals. Let us call this approach “The Comparative Response” since it involves comparing theistic explanations of evil with explanations provided by theism’s metaphysical rivals. The Comparative Response has received little attention in recent discussions of the problem of evil, and I propose to develop (...) it in this paper. Specifically, I shall argue that although theism may not explain all evils well, on the whole theism explains the presence of moral evil as well as (or better than) naturalism does. (shrink)

A layman's guide to the mechanics of Gödel's proof together with a lucid discussion of the issues which it raises. Includes an essay discussing the significance of Gödel's work in the light of Wittgenstein's criticisms.

On the side of Niels Bohr, not to mention a few other physicists, there is an honest acknowledgment of a difficulty in understanding Einstein's objection to the “completeness” of the Ψ-function description of the quantum phenomenon. Yet the weight which Bohr himself attaches to Einstein's insistence may indicate that if the latter's difficulty could be understood, then, through the cooperation of understanding physicists, another great accomplishment of unification might be obtained which would be as fruitful for the future as either (...) or both the general theory of relativity and Bohr's statistical theory have been to the present. (shrink)

C. Stephen Layman contends that an argument supporting theism over naturalism can be constructed based on three defensible, non–question-begging premises about the moral order. Previous critics of Layman’s argument have challenged the truth of these premises. We stipulate them arguendo but go on to show that there is a deeper problem: a fourth premise introduced to complete the argument—the “completion premise,” as we call it—is true only if we assume that God exists or we concede that there is (...) no afterlife. We close with suggestions for how Layman’s argument must be strengthened to meet with dialectical success. (shrink)

A layman's view of history.--Old age.--The education of Henry Adams.--Mont-Saint Michel and Chartres.--The Phi beta kappa ideal.--Pieces written during the war: The pathos of America. Sub specie æternitatis. The wisdom of the ages.

Background Discussions on ethical aspects of life-and-death decisions within the hospital are often made in plenary. The prehospital physician, however, may be faced with ethical dilemmas in life-and-death decisions when time-critical decisions to initiate or refrain from resuscitative efforts need to be taken without the possibility to discuss matters with colleagues. Little is known whether these considerations regarding ethical issues in crucial life-and-death decisions are documented prehospitally. This is a review of the ethical considerations documented in the prehospital medical records (...) of patients in a Danish prehospital setting for whom the decision to resuscitate or not was made at the scene. Methods The study is based on discharge summaries of all patients subjected to crucial life-and-death decisions by the Mobile Emergency Care Unit in Odense in the years 2010 to 2014. The medical records with possible documentation of ethical issues were independently reviewed by two philosophers in order to identify explicit ethical or philosophical considerations pertaining to the decision to resuscitate or not. Results In total, 1275 patients were either declared dead at the scene without exhibiting layman’s reliable signs of death or admitted to hospital following resuscitation. In a total of 62 patients, 85 specific ethical issues related to resuscitation were documented. The expressions of the ethical considerations were generally vague or unclear and almost exclusively concerned the interests of the patient and not the relatives. In the vast majority of cases where an ethical content was identified, the ethical considerations led to a decision to terminate treatment. Conclusions A strengthened practice of documenting ethical considerations in prehospital life-and-death decision-making in the patient’s medical records is required. We suggest that a template be implemented in the prehospital medical records describing the basis for any ethical decisions. This template should contain information regarding the persons involved in the deliberations and notes on ethical considerations. The documentation should include considerations concerning the patient’s end-of-life wishes, the estimations of the quality of life before and after the incident, and a summary of other ethical concerns taken into account, such as the integrity of the patient and frame of mind of relatives. (shrink)

Dr. Littleton's book is valuable as a brief but stimulating introduction for the non-scientific layman to various physical data. However, the author's central purpose is to demonstrate that science and religion are compatible by using these data as proof that "science" recognizes the infinite. While some enlightening points are made, Dr. Littleton vitiates his main purpose by making highly problematic philosophical statements with no reasoned support at all.—S. A. S.

A provocative critical study of the concept of measurement as applied to the major sciences, particularly physics and psychology, written for the layman by a scientist engaged in industrial research. The book suggests that the professional philosopher or pure scientist can easily overlook significant problems with which his colleagues in industry are forced to deal. --D. S.

This study originally appeared in German in 1963. It was revised for the English edition and the translation is smooth. It is an introduction aimed at the layman. The language is simple and, except for the most important of Teilhard's terms, technical terms are scrupulously avoided. The book is organized around what Wildiers feels are Teilhard's major motivating concerns: God and the universe, or love of God vs. love of world. Wildiers explains how Teilhard sees the universe evolving from (...) the geosphere through the biosphere and noosphere and converging toward a specific end, the omega point, which Teilhard identifies with the parousia. Man has a unique position in this scheme. He represents the noosphere and is, in a sense, evolution in charge of itself. Wildiers shows how Teilhard's original concern was scientific and how he tenaciously made use of a phenomenological scientific methodology even in his most speculative theological reflections. Teilhard's christology, philosophy of history, and concept of evil are also discussed. The book does perhaps leave the reader "introduced," but there is no substitute for discovering Teilhard for oneself.--S. O. H. (shrink)

A provocative critical study of the concept of measurement as applied to the major sciences, particularly physics and psychology, written for the layman by a scientist engaged in industrial research. The book suggests that the professional philosopher or pure scientist can easily overlook significant problems with which his colleagues in industry are forced to deal. --D. S.

Problem: Starting with his personal experience the author pursues the question: How can we alter our way of living, sensoriality and reflective skills so that we can handle today’s information flows, which nowadays are so large that they create confusion and ineffective educational actions? Method: The approach to follow is called “parenthesism,” a practice based on Maturana’s theoretical frameworks of the “biology of cognition” and the “biology of love.” Results: One of the findings when a person lives in parenthesism is (...) the ability to see their own dogmatism and stubbornness when that person would otherwise be blind to his/her own convictions. Implications: Many aspects of this essay, and this manner of thinking, are circular and tautological, and hence may appear illogical to the reader. However, the author claims that existence is not solely logical, and that in a complex matrix circular and recursive relationships are common, and that these can best be understood through circular and recursive logics. Furthermore the relevance of parenthesism for UNESCO’s view on learning paradigms is reviewed in this light. (shrink)

An Indian student, returning, after completing his course at a British university, to his own land, told his tutor that in India at least he would find once more that truth was one and indivisible. On being asked what he meant, his reply was that in England everyone separated scientific from religious truth, but that to Indian thought they were one. So familiar is this dualism of truth to us that we pass over its strangeness without question. In the Middle (...) Ages Europe was of the same opinion as India is now. What then is the reason for the rent we have torn in the seamless vesture of truth? The answer is found by retracing our steps to the days when the old wineskins of theology were bursting under the pressure of the Revival of Learning, and, more important still, the layman was becoming the scholar. The Reformation issued no general licence to every man to think as he liked, but it at least allowed freedom of thought within certain bounds. Had Thomas Hobbes, for example, been born in 1488 instead of 1588, he would hardly have lived to die abed at the age of 91. Hobbes was not a great thinker, but he was a great iconoclast, and he created a critical temper of thought which showed itself in many who were in no sense Hobbists. (shrink)

The question concerning the meaning of life is important, but it immediately confronts the present authors with insurmountable obstacles from a philosophical standpoint, as it would require us to define not only what we hold to be life, but what we hold to be meaning in addition, requiring us to do both in a properly researched context. We unconditionally surrender to that challenge. Instead, we offer a vernacular, armchair approach to life’s origin and meaning, with some layman’s thoughts on (...) the meaning of origins as viewed from the biologist’s standpoint. One can observe that biologists generally approach the concept of biological meaning in the context of evolution. This is the basis for the broad resonance behind Dobzhansky’s appraisal that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Biologists try to understand living things in the historical context of how they arose, without giving much thought to the definition of what life or living things are, which for a biologist is usually not an interesting question in the practical context of daily dealings with organisms. Do humans generally understand life’s meaning in the context of history? If we consider the problem of life’s origin, the question of what constitutes a living thing becomes somewhat more acute for the biologist, though not more answerable, because it is inescapable that there was a time when there were no organisms on Earth, followed by a time when there were, the latter time having persisted in continuity to the present. This raises the question of where, in that transition, chemicals on Earth became alive, requiring, in turn, a set of premises for how life arose in order to conceptualize the problem in relation to organisms we know today, including ourselves, which brings us to the point of this paper: In the same way that cultural narratives for origins always start with a setting, scientific narratives for origins also always start with a setting, a place on Earth or elsewhere where we can imagine what happened for the sake of structuring both the problem and the narrative for its solution. This raises the question of whether scientific origins settings convey meaning to humans in that they suggest to us from what kind of place and what kinds of chemicals we are descended, that is, to which inanimate things we are most closely related. (shrink)