Theory argues that rights-based judicial review fails because it does not have popular support. However, examining actual events in battles over freedom of speech, privacy and civil rights demonstrates that this theory often fails when applied. Those arrested during the First World War in America often only received redress through administrative agencies. Civil rights protestors' experiences prove that the federal courts were the only ones generally to protect their rights, and that the legislatures failed to act. Similarly, judicial review increased (...) the freedom of the press during the 1960s, which in turn boosted the civil rights movement. Finally, it was the courts which helped Americans to realize their right to privacy. Included in that right to privacy was the right for people to marry regardless of their race. Overall, courts and administrative agencies, particularly at the federal level, do a better job at protecting rights than legislatures. (shrink)

Epistemologists have a special fondness for David Hume. Even Kant-obsessed a priorists admire the honesty, directness and elegance of his thinking. He is the Mozart of analytic philosophy rather than the Bach. Sparkling ideas, icy clarity and popular delivery make his writings the standard for good philosophy. 'Try to think like Hume' is pretty decent advice. But is that his only use today—to be emulated in style and approach? This volume is a collective 'no'. A team of top epistemologists and (...) historians join forces to demonstrate the relevance of Humean ideas to the most current questions and debates. Hume dribbles into the following themes, much to the advantage of each: knowledge, belief, inquiry and suspension, reason and reasons, scepticism, hinge epistemology, naturalized epistemology, the ethics of belief and moral epistemology, virtue and vice epistemology, the epistemology of testimony. Epistemologists who discount history and historians who halt at 1950 should gallop to this volume and start reading. Neither perspective will survive. (shrink)

In the last decade, the familiar problem of the regress of reasons has returned to prominent consideration in epistemology. And with the return of the problem, evaluation of the options available for its solution is begun anew. Reason’s regress problem, roughly put, is that if one has good reasons to believe something, one must have good reason to hold those reasons are good. And for those reasons, one must have further reasons to hold they are good, and so a regress (...) of reasons looms. In this new study, Aikin presents a full case for infinitism as a response to the problem of the regress of reasons. Infinitism is the view that one must have a non-terminating chain of reasons in order to be justified. The most defensible form of infinitism, he argues, is that of a mixed theory – that is, epistemic infinitism must be consistent with and integrate other solutions to the regress problem. (shrink)

Scientistic conceptualisations hold to the positivistic positions that science is limitless in its potential representations of material phenomena and that it is the only sure path to knowledge. In recent popular scientific literature, these presuppositions have been reaffirmed to the detriment of both philosophy and theology. This article argues for the contrary position by a meta-analysis of empirical science from a Thomist perspective. Identifying empirical science as limited in its method and bound to the material sphere of being alone, we (...) posit that rather than standing as the sole path to the knowledge of being, empirical science is constrained at its frontiers. It is subsequently contended that far from empirical science having the explanatory ability to respond to all presenting scientific problems in principle, fundamentals without the grasp of the methodology of empirical science exist. To relate the article’s meta-analysis to scientific praxis, physical cosmology – as the most foundational empirical science – is exemplified in the discussion.Keywords: Philosophy; Religion; Science; Scientism; Thomism; Metaphysics; Epistemology. (shrink)

An examination of the history and arguments behind W.K. Clifford and William James's landmark essays and subsequent impact on the importance of knowledge-based evidence.

What follows is a taxonomy of arguments that regresses of inferential justification are vicious. They fall out into four general classes: conceptual arguments from incompleteness, conceptual arguments from arbitrariness, ought-implies-can arguments from human quantitative incapacities, and ought-implies can arguments from human qualitative incapacities. They fail with a developed theory of "infinitism" consistent with valuational pluralism and modest epistemic foundationalism.

Free speech fallacies are errors of meta-argument. One commits a free speech fallacy when one argues that since there are apparent restrictions on one’s rights of free expression, procedural rules of critical exchange have been broken, and consequently, one’s preferred view is dialectically better off than it may otherwise seem. Free speech fallacies are meta-argumentative, since they occur at the level of assessing the dialectical situation in terms of norms of argument and in terms of meta-evidential principles of interpreting how (...) and why people follow (or fail to follow) argumentative rules. Our plan here is to begin with a brief explanation of meta-argument and meta-argumentative fallacy. We will then turn to the variety of forms of the free speech fallacy, which we will explain as meta-argumentatively erroneous. (shrink)

Arguments are weakly meta-argumentative when they call attention to themselves and purport to be successful as arguments. Arguments are strongly metaargumentative when they take arguments (themselves or other arguments) as objects for evaluation, clarification, or improvement and explicitly use concepts of argument analysis for the task. The ambitious meta-argumentation thesis is that all argumentation is weakly argumentative. The modest meta-argumentation thesis is that there are unique instances of strongly meta-argumentative argument. Here, we show how the two theses are connected and (...) both are plausible. (shrink)

Positive psychology is an approach to psychology that focuses on the utilization of strengths, positive emotions, well-being, and personal growth to help individuals thrive, flourish, and achieve optimal functioning. The following case study highlights how positive psychology theories and techniques, specifically strengths-development and gratitude interventions, were implemented into a sport psychology intervention by a trainee sport and exercise psychologist. It is hoped that other practitioners may find the case study a useful insight into how they may be able to incorporate (...) positive psychology into their practice. (shrink)

Anti-individualism is the thesis that features of the social and physical environments contribute to determining the contents of our beliefs. The notion of content implicit in the thought experiments supporting anti-individualism is tied to explications of how our terms and the concepts they express are correctly applied. Since anti-individualists should regard these explications as a subject of ongoing dispute, they should claim that sameness and difference of content is not always detectable upon reflection. Many philosophers accordingly worry that anti-individualists cannot (...) accommodate the use of belief attributions to characterize individual points of view. The key to these objections is the thesis that belief attributions have the same truth-value if they attribute beliefs with the same content. When the semantic and metaphysical motivations for this assumption are discredited, anti-individualism's alleged problems with characterizing individual points of view may be solved without introducing an additional notion of "cognitive" content which tracks differential dubitability judgments. The resulting account of belief requires a new account of understanding and responsibility to evaluation which emphasizes participation in ongoing attempts to formulate explications rather than knowledge thereof. (shrink)

"One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades."--John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as "a magisterial critique of top-down social planning" by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail--sometimes catastrophically--in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. "Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp (...) relief the nature of the world we now inhabit."--New Yorker "A tour de force."-- Charles Tilly, Columbia University. (shrink)

Scholars in philosophy, political science, and the policy community have recently advocated for a ‘sticks and carrots’, or conditional-coercion, approach to human rights violations. On this model, rights violators (usually states) are conceived of as rational agents who should be rewarded for good behavior and punished for bad behavior by other states seeking to improve human rights abroad. External states concerned about human rights abroad should impose punishments against foreign rights violators, and these punitive measures should not be lifted until (...) rights violations in target countries cease. Against these scholars, I argue that the conditional-coercion model is mistaken. In this article, I explicate the ‘sticks and carrots’ approach to human rights, criticize it on both theoretical and empirical grounds, and suggest an alternative approach that I term rights diagnostics. The model I propose is sensitive to the internal political struggles in rights violating states and the incentive structures faced by rights violators. This model takes account of relevant empirical evidence on the role of external coercion and inducements in producing institutional change. I conclude by sketching an institutional design that would potentially implement ‘rights diagnostics’ policy.1. (shrink)

Part one attempts to diffuse five different forms of truth skepticism, broadly conceived: the view that truth is indefinable, that it is unknowable, that it is inextricably metaphysical, that there is no such thing as truth, and the view that truth is inherently paradoxical, and so must either be abandoned, or revised. An intriguing formulation of the last of these views is due to Alfred Tarski, who argued that the Liar paradox shows natural languages to be inconsistent because they contain (...) defective, and ultimately incoherent, truth predicates. I argue in response that on a plausible interpretation of his puzzling notion of an inconsistent language, Tarski’s argument turns out to be logically valid, but almost certainly unsound, since one of its premises can be seen to be indefensible. Similar results are achieved for other forms of truth skepticism. (shrink)

What is morality? How many moral values are there? And what are they? According to the theory of morality-as-cooperation, morality is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. This theory predicts that there will be as many different types of morality as there are different types of cooperation. Previous research, drawing on evolutionary game theory, has identified at least seven different types of cooperation, and used them to explain seven different (...) types of morality: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. Here we explore the conjecture that these simple moral ‘elements’ combine to form a much larger number of more complex moral ‘molecules’, and that as such morality is a combinatorial system. For each combination of two elements, we hypothesise a candidate moral molecule, and successfully locate an example of it in the professional and popular literature. These molecules include: fraternity, blood revenge, family pride, filial piety, gavelkind, primogeniture, friendship, patriotism, tribute, diplomacy, common ownership, honour, confession, turn taking, restitution, modesty, mercy, munificence, arbitration, mendicancy, and queuing. These findings indicate that morality – like many other physical, biological, psychological and cultural systems – is indeed a combinatorial system. Thus morality-as-cooperation provides a principled and powerful theory, that explains why there are many moral values, and successfully predicts what they will be; and it generates a systematic framework that has the potential to explain all moral ideas, possible and actual. Pursuing the many implications of this theory will help to place the study of morality on a more secure scientific footing. (shrink)

This essay assesses the rationale for regulating research administrators as carefully as they regulate researchers. The reasons for such regulation are identical: protecting scientific integrity, ensuring responsible use of public funds, addressing the lack of effective recourse for victims, creating negative consequences for misbehaving actors, and addressing high incentives for misconduct. Whereas the reasons compelling us to regulate research administrators are obvious, counterarguments to administrative oversight are based on suggestions that the incidence and prevalence of cases of administrative misconduct are (...) too low to warrant formal regulation. I briefly describe examples of the phenomenon drawn from publicly available records. My analysis suggests that the misconduct of research administrators is both serious and worthy of better oversight. Improved oversight of research administration will help steward tax dollars appropriately and enhance the overall integrity of the scientific record and of the free pursuit of knowledge more generally. (shrink)

This article presents the results of a study that investigated the roles that one's money ethic, religiosity and attitude toward business play in determining consumer attitudes/beliefs in various situations regarding questionable consumer practices. Two dimensions of religiosity - intrinsic and extrinsic religiousness - were studied. A global scale of money ethic was examined, as was a global measure of attitude toward business. Results indicate that both types of religiosity as well as one's money ethic and attitude toward business were significant (...) determinants of at least some types of consumer ethical beliefs. (shrink)

The straw man fallacy consists in inappropriately constructing or selecting weak versions of the opposition's arguments. We will survey the three forms of straw men recognized in the literature, the straw, weak, and hollow man. We will then make the case that there are examples of inappropriately reconstructing stronger versions of the opposition's arguments. Such cases we will call iron man fallacies.

The present study uses cross‐cultural samples of marketing practitioners from two European Union (EU) nations (the United Kingdom and Spain) and China to examine the relationships between moral intensity, personal moral philosophies and ethical decision making. Additionally, cross‐cultural comparisons were made regarding intentions, personal moral philosophies and moral intensity. Results indicate that both samples tend to use the perceived harm construct (e.g. magnitude of consequences, probability of effect, temporal immediacy and concentration of effect) to determine intentions in situations involving ethical (...) issues. However, social consensus tends to be situation‐specific for both groups and proximity seems not to be used at all when making decisions in situations involving ethics. As for personal moral philosophies, idealism is only used by the EU sample; however, for both samples, the use of relativism depends upon the specific situation. (shrink)

There has been a promising discussion brewing recently about whether there is an ethics of inquiry—that is, a unique set of ethical rules that constrains inquirers specifically in their role as inquirers. Most prominently, Philip Kitcher has proposed that there is indeed an ethics of inquiry. He argues that, given the intellectual climate of many modern societies, certain research programs are likely to encourage further social injustice against members of already disadvantaged groups; in such cases, inquirers are obligated to refrain (...) from that research, regardless of its expected or likely results. Kitcher has in mind scientific research regarding the natural capacities of members of traditionally underprivileged social groups; he thinks that, given the degree of prejudice and discrimination that obtains in many societies, research into the possibility of a biological basis for differences in accomplishment among different races and sexes should be prohibited, even where the proposed research promises to debunk racist and sexist views. (shrink)

Entry in International Encyclopedia of Ethics on Ethical considerations bearing on Argumentation.

Studies of the Early Modern debate concerning absolute and relative space and motion often ignore the significance of the concept of true motion in this debate. Even philosophers who denied the existence of absolute space maintained that true motions could be distinguished from merely apparent ones. In this paper, I examine Berkeley's endorsement of this distinction and the problems it raises. First, Berkeley's endorsement raises a problem of consistency with his other philosophical commitments, namely his idealism. Second, Berkeley's endorsement raises (...) a problem of adequacy, namely whether Berkeley can provide an adequate account of what grounds the distinction between true and merely apparent motion. In this paper, I argue that sensitivity to Berkeley's distinction between what is true in the metaphysical, scientific, and vulgar domains can address both the consistency and the adequacy problems. I argue that Berkeley only accepts true motion in the scientific and vulgar domains, and not the metaphysical. There is thus no inconsistency between his endorsement of true motion in science and ordinary language, and his metaphysical idealism. Further, I suggest that sensitivity to these three domains shows that Berkeley possesses resources to give an adequate account of how true motions are discovered in natural science. (shrink)

There is a wealth of evidence which indicates that arguments are not very efficient tools for changing minds. Against this skepticism, Novaes (2023) presents evidence that, given the right social context, arguments sometimes play a significant role in belief revision. However, drawing on Levy (2021), I argue that the evidence Novaes cites is compatible with the view that it is not arguments that change individual minds but instead belief outsourcing that occurs alongside the consideration of arguments.

Presents wide-ranging and up-to-date interpretations of the Zhuangzi, the Daoist classic and one of the most elusive works ever written.

Ralph Johnson has proposed a “two tiered” conception of argument, comprising of the illative core and the dialectical tier. This paper's two-part thesis is that (i) the dialectical tier is best understood as an epistemic requirement for argument, and (ii) once understood epistemically, the dialectical tier requirement can be defended against the leading objections.

As one component of a broader social and normative response to the problem of suicide, scientism served to minimize sociopolitical and religious conflict around the issue. As such, it embodied, and continues to embody, a number of interests and values, as well as serving important social functions. It is thus comparable with other normative frameworks and can be appraised, from an ethical perspective, in light of these values, interests, and functions. This work examines the key values, interests, and functions of (...) scientism in suicidology and argues that although scientism has had some social benefit, it primarily serves to maintain political and professional interests and has damaging implications for suicide research and prevention. (shrink)

I have argued elsewhere that the psychological criterion of personalidentity entails that a person is not an object, but a series ofpsychological events. As this is somewhat counter-intuitive,I consider whether the psychological theorist can argue that a person, while not a substance, exists in a way that is akin to theway that substances exist. I develop ten criteria that such a`quasi-substance' should meet, and I argue that a reasonablecase can be made to show that the psychological theorist's conception of a (...) person meets these criteria. (shrink)

His first point is that true exhibits pathologies that smidget doesn’t. If smidget is undefined for Charlie, then the sentence Charlie is a smidget is undefined, and there is no basis for accepting either it or its negation. There is no pathology here; it is simply a case in which a sentence and its negation must both be rejected. With smidget there is no paradoxicality analogous to Liar sentences and no circularity corresponding to Truth Tellers. Gupta concludes that true and (...) smidget must be very different. (shrink)

The Routledge Companion to Pragmatism offers 44 cutting-edge chapters--written specifically for this volume by an international team of distinguished researchers--that assess the past, present, and future of pragmatism. Going beyond the exposition of canonical texts and figures, the collection presents pragmatism as a living philosophical idiom that continues to devise promising theses in contemporary debates. The chapters are organized into four major parts: Pragmatism's History and Figures Pragmatism and Plural Traditions Pragmatism's Reach Pragmatism's Relevance Each chapter provides up-to-date research tools (...) for philosophers, students, and others who wish to locate pragmatist options in their contemporary research fields. As a whole, the volume demonstrates that the vitality of pragmatism lies in its ability to build upon, and transcend, the ideas and arguments of its founders. When seen in its full diversity, pragmatism emerges as one of the most successful and influential philosophical movements in Western philosophy. (shrink)

This study renders the complex corpus of the Guodian texts into a more easily manageable form, incorporating the past several years of scholarly activity on these texts and providing them with a comprehensive introduction along with a complete and well-annotated translation into English.

W.V.O. Quine's doctrines of the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference are among the most famous and influential theses in philosophy in the past fifty years. Although by no means universally accepted, the arguments for them have been widely regarded as powerful challenges to our most fundamental beliefs about meaning and reference — including the belief that many of our words have meaning and reference in the sense in which we ordinarily understand those notions, as well as beliefs (...) about the particular things meant and referred to in specific cases, such as my belief that in the past my son Brian often referred with affection to his pet rabbit Bigwig. If Quine's doctrines, and the arguments for them, are correct, then beliefs such as these cannot be accepted as true.One might expect that with consequences like these Quine's theses would widely be regarded as obviously incorrect. (shrink)