The main conclusion of this article is that propositional attitudes are physical brain processes that pertain to language. Hence, propositional attitudes cannot be direct manifestations of our mental states, neither direct representations; instead they must be understood as second-order representations. Thus, propositional attitudes cannot serve for explaining our basic mental activity. Otherwise, propositional attitudes must be understood as language shortcuts used for referring to basic mental states, events or processes.

The main conclusion of this article is that propositional attitudes are physical brain processes that pertain to language. Hence, propositional attitudes cannot be direct manifestations of our mental states, neither direct representations; instead they must be understood as second-order representations. Thus, propositional attitudes cannot serve for explaining our basic mental activity. Otherwise, propositional attitudes must be understood as language shortcuts used for referring to basic mental states, events or processes.

Organizations increasingly rely on algorithm-based HR decision-making to monitor their employees. This trend is reinforced by the technology industry claiming that its decision-making tools are efficient and objective, downplaying their potential biases. In our manuscript, we identify an important challenge arising from the efficiency-driven logic of algorithm-based HR decision-making, namely that it may shift the delicate balance between employees’ personal integrity and compliance more in the direction of compliance. We suggest that critical data literacy, ethical awareness, the use of participatory (...) design methods, and private regulatory regimes within civil society can help overcome these challenges. Our paper contributes to literature on workplace monitoring, critical data studies, personal integrity, and literature at the intersection between HR management and corporate responsibility. (shrink)

Welche ideengeschichtlichen Zusammenhänge bestehen zwischen der Philosophie Hegels und seiner Schüler einerseits und den Theorien Saint-Simons und der Saint-Simonisten andererseits? Und welches aktuelle Interesse haben diese Theorien? Diesen Fragen geht der vorliegende Band nach. In ihm wird zum einen untersucht, welche Theoriebildungen die Berührung von hegelschen und saint-simonistischen Ideen auf den Gebieten der Religions- und Geschichtsphilosophie, vor allem aber auf dem Gebiet der Sozialphilosophie begünstigt hat. Zum anderen wird die Frage erörtert, ob zentrale Elemente der hegelschen und der saint-simonistischen Theorie (...) (z.B. ihr Gesellschaftsbegriff, ihr Religionsverständnis und ihre Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie) aus heutiger Sicht anschlussfähig sind. Die vorliegende Aufsatzsammlung ist hervorgegangen aus einer internationalen, multidisziplinären Konferenz, die in Paris stattgefunden hat. (shrink)

This thesis defends egalitarianism about knowledge and belief, on which neither is understood in terms of the other, from what I call the abductive argument. This argument is meant to favour views opposed to egalitarianism: doxasticism, on which knowledge is understood in terms of belief, and epistemicism, on which belief is understood in terms of knowledge. The abductive argument turns on the idea that doxasticism and epistemicism, by contrast with egalitarianism, explain certain data about knowledge and belief. I argue, however, (...) that no versions of doxasticism and epistemicism currently on offer are preferable to egalitarianism on abductive grounds. As part of my argument, I also defend the claim that knowledge, by contrast with belief, is an attitude to a fact and explore the implications of this claim for doxasticism and epistemicism. (shrink)

Encountering Derrida explores the points of engagement between Jacques Derrida and a host of other European thinkers, past and present, in order to counter recent claims that the era of deconstruction is finally drawing to a close. The book rereads Derrida in order to renew deconstruction's various conceptions of language, poetry, philosophy, institutions, difference and the future. This impressive collection of essays from the world's leading Derrida scholars re-evaluates Derrida's legacy and looks forward to the possible futures of deconstruction by (...) confronting various challenges to Derrida's thought. Collectively, the essays argue that Derrida must be read alongside others , an approach that produces some surprising new accounts of this challenging critical thinker. _ _. (shrink)

You omega know something when you know it, and know that you know it, and know that you know that you know it, and so on. This paper first argues that omega knowledge matters, in the sense that it is required for rational assertion, action, inquiry, and belief. The paper argues that existing accounts of omega knowledge face major challenges. One account is skeptical, claiming that we have no omega knowledge of any ordinary claims about the world. Another account embraces (...) the KK thesis, and identifies knowledge with omega knowledge. This position faces counterexamples, and struggles to make sense of inexact knowledge. The paper then develops a new account of knowledge, by proposing the principle of Reflective Luminosity: if you know that you know something, then you omega know it. I argue that Reflective Luminosity allows for omega knowledge while avoiding the problems for KK. (shrink)

We explore the question of whether sustained rational disagreement is possible from a broadly Bayesian perspective. The setting is one where agents update on the same information, with special consideration being given to the case of uncertain information. The classical merging of opinions theorem of Blackwell and Dubins shows when updated beliefs come and stay closer for Bayesian conditioning. We extend this result to a type of Jeffrey conditioning where agents update on evidence that is uncertain but solid (hard Jeffrey (...) shifts). However, merging of beliefs does not generally hold for Jeffrey conditioning on evidence that is fluid (soft Jeffrey shifts, Field shifts). Several theorems on the asymptotic behavior of subjective probabilities are proven. Taken together they show that while a consensus nearly always emerges in important special cases, sustained rational disagreement can be expected in many other situations. (shrink)

Based on ten years of research, The Touch of the Past considers how historically traumatic events uniquely summon forgetting and remembrance. Within a specific focus on events of systemic mass violence, Roger Simon examines how testimonies of historic events influence learning as communities struggle with "difficult histories." The Touch of the Past is a serious and compelling contribution to research in education, historical consciousness, and memory/trauma studies.

Is the brain really a computer? In particular, is our intelligence a computational achievement: is it because our brains are computers that we get on in the world as well as we do? In this paper I will evaluate an ambitious new argument to the contrary, developed in Landgrebe and Smith (2021a, 2022). Landgrebe and Smith begin with the fact that many dynamical systems in the world are difficult or impossible to model accurately (inter alia, because it is intractable to (...) find exact solutions to the differential equations that describe them—meaning we have to approximate—but at the same time they are such that small differences in starting conditions lead to big differences in final conditions, thwarting accurate approximation). Yet we manage to survive and thrive in a world full of such systems. Landgrebe and Smith argue from these premises that it is not because our brains are computers that we get on as well as we do: instead it is because of the various ways that we dynamically couple with such systems, these couplings themselves impossible to model well enough to emulate in silico. Landgrebe and Smith thus defend a dynamical systems model in the lineage of Gibson (1979), Van Gelder (1995), and Thompson (2007), though their focus is on decisively refuting the computationalist alternatives rather than developing the positive account. Here I will defend the claim that human intelligence is genuinely computational (and that whole brain emulation and others forms of AGI may be possible) against this argument. (shrink)

Uno de los mayores logros de la Segunda República española en el ámbito de la educación fue sin duda la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras de la Universidad de Madrid, de la que fue decano Manuel García Morente. El artículo centra la atención sobre todo en la sección de Filosofía, analizando las claves de su éxito. Entre ellas hay que destacar la existencia de un profesorado extraordinario (Zubiri, Gaos, Zambrano) intelectualmente encabezado por Ortega y sabiamente coordinado por el mismo Morente. (...) Será clave también la organización de la docencia, en la que resulta muy visible la mano de Morente, así como la construcción del nuevo edificio de la Facultad y el fomento de la vida universitaria, con iniciativas como el crucero por el Mediterráneo del año 1933. Fue en muchos sentidos una institución ejemplar, destruida por la Guerra Civil, pero de la que no todo se perdió. (shrink)

自史蒂芬·霍金(Stephen Hawking) 的暢銷科普著作《時間簡史》(以下簡稱《簡史》) 在上世紀八十年代末問世以來，至今天二十一世紀，華人基督教界就他宇宙無起點的論述仍有相當之評論，但可惜對評論未有綜合分析。評論者因寫作目的，也甚少交代霍金宇宙學的來龍去脈。故本文嘗試略述霍金宇宙學的歷史 背景及發展經過，繼而舉出華人基督教界的評論，帶出其獨特性，並提出商確的地方，以反省未來可行路向。.

Existing indexing systems used to arrange philosophical works have been shown to misrepresent the discipline in ways that reflect and perpetuate exclusionary attitudes within it. In recent years, there has been a great deal of effort to challenge those attitudes and to revise them. But as the discipline moves toward greater equality and inclusivity, the way it has indexed its work has unfortunately not. To course correct, we identify in this article some of the specific changes that are needed within (...) current indexing systems and propose a new model that could embody them. We use the Diversity Reading List in Philosophy as a case study and PhilPapers as a basis for comparison. The model we propose not only represents the discipline in a more inclusive and fair way, but it is also efficient, easy to use or implement, and adaptable for a variety of contexts. (shrink)

The article provides a moral analysis of the commercial trade of financial claims against private debtors. Secondary debt markets process a type of object that differs from regular commodities. The specificity of debt lies in its peculiar relationality that is in tension with its legal constitution as a commercial object, or with its treatment as a mere thing. The constitution of a credit claim presupposes a corresponding financial liability. Thus, debt relations are constituted by polar correlates of deontic modalities. Debt (...) buyers do not obtain mere monadic objects, but intersubjective rights of action against debtors. In turn, they arguably do not become mere owners of abstract claims, but successors to a position in a preceding social relation that is imbued with moral limitations and responsibilities. Markets for debt should thus be subjected to the deontic logic of credit relations, not to the norms of ownership in things. (shrink)

We propose developing AIs whose only final goal is being shut down. We argue that this approach to AI safety has three benefits: (i) it could potentially be implemented in reinforcement learning, (ii) it avoids some dangerous instrumental convergence dynamics, and (iii) it creates trip wires for monitoring dangerous capabilities. We also argue that the proposal can overcome a key challenge raised by Soares et al. (2015), that shutdown-seeking AIs will manipulate humans into shutting them down. We conclude by comparing (...) our approach with Soares et al.'s corrigibility framework. (shrink)

The Subjection of Women sollte nicht ohne Weiteres als Teil des Werks von John Stuart Mill behandelt werden. Wenn auch weniger explizit und emphatisch als Mill es etwa in der Vorbemerkung zu On Liberty festhält, bekräftigt er in seiner Autobiography den maßgeblichen Beitrag Harriet Taylor MillsTaylor, Harriet an der Entstehung von Subjection. Mill benennt Harriet zwar nicht als Mitverfasserin der Schrift, aber doch als Miturheberin der entwickelten Thesen und Argumente. Die Abhandlung, die Mill 1869 auf Anraten seiner Stieftochter Helen TaylorTaylor, (...) Helen veröffentlicht, entsteht in den Jahren 1860–1861. Mill beginnt mit der Niederschrift also zwei Jahre nach Harriets Tod. Subjection formuliert gleichwohl eine Position, die über Jahre hinweg Gegenstand ausgedehnter Diskussionen zwischen beiden ist. (shrink)

In his 2000 paper, “Determinables are Universals”, Ingvar Johansson defends a version of immanent realism according to which universals are either lowest determinates, or highest determinables – either maximally specific and exact features (like Red27 or Perfectly Circular) or maximally general respects of similarity (like Colored or Voluminous). On Johansson 2000’s view, there are no intermediate-level determinable universals between the highest and the lowest. Let me call this the Protestant Theory of Determinable Universals, because according to it the humble lowest (...) determinates commune directly with the most high determinables. My question here shall be whether the Protestant theory is not too austere, and whether a more Catholic approach, with a richer hierarchy, is called for. I will be arguing that it may be: between Red27 and Colored, we may need Cardinal Red to intervene. I will here develop several challenges to the Protestant view. Each challenge presents a task that determinable universals should perform if we are going to invoke them at all, but that turns out to be something they can only do if we countenance more of them than the austere Protestant allows. In section one I will consider the task of analyzing resemblance relations, in section two I will consider some tasks to do with causation and the laws of nature, and in section three I will consider the task of making sense of the possibility of continuous change in gunky objects. (shrink)

We are partial to people with whom we share special relationships--if someone is your child, parent, or friend, you wouldn't treat them as you would a stranger. But is partiality justified, and if so, why? Partiality presents a theory of the reasons supporting special treatment within special relationships and explores the vexing problem of how we might reconcile the moral value of these relationships with competing claims of impartial morality. Simon Keller explains that in order to understand why we (...) give special treatment to our family and friends, we need to understand how people come to matter in their own rights. Keller first presents two main accounts of partiality: the projects view, on which reasons of partiality arise from the place that people take within our lives and our commitments, and the relationships view, on which relationships themselves contain fundamental value or reason-giving force. Keller then argues that neither view is satisfactory because neither captures the experience of acting well within special relationships. Instead, Keller defends the individuals view, on which reasons of partiality arise from the value of the individuals with whom our relationships are shared. He defends this view by saying that we must accept that two people, whether friend or stranger, can have the same value, even as their value makes different demands upon people with whom they share different relationships. Keller explores the implications of this claim within a wider understanding of morality and our relationships with groups, institutions, and countries. (shrink)

Innerhalb des Gesamtsystems der praktischen Philosophie John Stuart Mills erfüllt der Begriff der Lebenskunst, oder der „art of life“ und der dazugehörigen „theory of life“, eine zentrale systematische Funktion. Die Abschnitte über die Kunst oder das Handwerk des Lebens haben in der Rezeption der Mill’schen Philosophie besondere Bedeutung, weil in ihnen Ansatzpunkte zu finden sind, mit denen sich die mitunter sehr disparaten Positionen Mills innerhalb der praktischen Philosophie in ein kohärentes Gesamtsystem fassen lassen. So werden Grundunterscheidungen innerhalb dieses Theorieelements angeführt, (...) um die Spannung zwischen dem Nutzenprinzip, das die axiologische Grundlage der gesamten praktischen Philosophie Mills darstellt, mit spezifischeren Normen der Gleichheit, Gerechtigkeit und Freiheit aufzulösen. (shrink)

Animals today and tomorrow -- What makes an argument? -- Should animals be used in rodeo sports? -- Should animals be kept as pets? -- Should zoos and safari parks be banned?

Scientific realism driven by inference to the best explanation (IBE) takes empirically confirmed objects to exist, independent, pace empiricism, of whether those objects are observable or not. This kind of realism, it has been claimed, does not need probabilistic reasoning to justify the claim that these objects exist. But I show that there are scientific contexts in which a non-probabilistic IBE-driven realism leads to a puzzle. Since IBE can be applied in scientific contexts in which empirical confirmation has not yet (...) been reached, realists will in these contexts be committed to the existence of empirically unconfirmed objects. As a consequence of such commitments, because they lack probabilistic features, the possible empirical confirmation of those objects is epistemically redundant with respect to realism. (shrink)

– This paper aims to critically reassess established approaches to the teaching and analysis of computer ethics, and to propose a revised methodology, drawing on the practical experience of teaching undergraduates in a culturally diverse, international learning environment., – Theoretical in scope, reviewing concepts and methods in the existing literature and developing an alternative inter-disciplinary and multi-dimensional framework., – Ethical analysis can benefit from broader, inter-disciplinary perspectives that take into account the social and economic context in which information and communication (...) technologies (ICTs) are designed, deployed and used, and the complex forces that drive their development. A richer analysis of this context enables a better understanding of the specific properties and applications of ICTs which, in turn, foreground particular ethical issues. This can result in a more self-reflexive and rounded appreciation of the ethical, legal and professional issues invoked by ICTs., – The paper develops a revised, flexible methodology for doing ethics which can be applied to any case study or domain of application. It outlines some of the key questions and major ethical principles that are generated by ICTs. The paper has pedagogical value for both teachers and students of computer ethics, but has relevance also for information technology professionals and practitioners. (shrink)

Directed duties are duties that an agent owes to some party – a party who would be wronged if the duty were violated. A ‘direction problem’ asks what it is about a duty in virtue of which it is directed towards one party, if any, rather than another. I discuss three theories of moral direction: control, demand and interest theories. Although none of these theories can be rejected out of hand, all three face serious difficulties.

The classic approaches -- Correspondence -- Coherence -- Pragmatism -- Deflationism -- Tarski and the semantic theory of truth -- Summary of part I -- Varieties of enquiry -- Truths of taste; truth in art -- Truth in ethics -- Reason -- Religion and truth -- Interpretations.

I develop a challenge for a widely suggested knowledge-first account of belief that turns, primarily, on unknowable propositions. I consider and reject several responses to my challenge and sketch a new knowledge-first account of belief that avoids it.

This chapter describes how philosophical theorizing about justice can be connected with empirical research in the social sciences. We begin by drawing on some received distinctions between ideal and non-ideal approaches to theorizing justice along several different dimensions, showing how non-ideal approaches are needed to address normative aspects of real-world problems and to provide practical guidance. We argue that there are advantages to a transitional approach to justice focusing on manifest injustices, including the fact that it enables us to set (...) aside some reasonable disagreements about justice. The ‘bottom-up’ approach we advocate, for which we borrow Wolff’s term ‘real-world political philosophy’, is an empirically-informed normative analysis that attends to specific, identifiable injustices, and thus is partial, though not isolationist. We illustrate our approach by considering how different models of the nature of disability suggest different kinds of remedy for injustices faced by persons living with disabilities. We reflect on the nature and significance of vulnerabilities, and we assess the role of public opinion in normative theorizing, suggesting a particular significance for the opinions and experiences of marginalized groups. We finally reflect on the relevance of European legal and institutional frameworks for theorizing justice in Europe. (shrink)

There seems to be an interesting difference between judging someone to be good and judging them to be kind. Both judgements are typically positive, but the latter seems to offer more description of the person: we get a slightly more specific sense of what they are like. Very general evaluative concepts are referred to as thin concepts, whilst more specific ones are termed thick concepts. Examples of the former include good, bad, right and wrong, whilst there are countless examples of (...) the latter: brave, rude, gracious, wicked, sympathetic, mean. Marking this distinction opens up some interesting questions. How do the descriptive and evaluative elements of thick concepts combine? Are these elements separable in the first place? Is there a sharp division between thin and thick concepts? Can we mark interesting further distinctions between how thick ethical concepts work and how their aesthetic and epistemic counterparts work? How, if at all, are thick and thin concepts related to reasons and action?.These questions, and others, touch on some of the deepest philosophical issues about the evaluative and normative. They force us to think hard about the place of the evaluative in a (seemingly) nonevaluative world, and they also raise fascinating issues about how language works.This volume of twelve papers explores the phenomenon of thin and thick concepts. They are accompanied by a large introduction that offers an overview of the current and historic field.Authors: Simon Blackburn, Jonathan Dancy, Timothy Chappell, Matti Eklund, Edward Harcourt and Alan Thomas, Simon Kirchin, Debbie Roberts, Michael Smith, Valerie Tiberius, Pekka Väyrynen Eric Wiland, and Nick Zangwill. (shrink)

In recent years a powerful case has been made in defence of a system of global governance in which supra-state institutions are accountable directly to the citizens of the world. This political vision- calling for what is commonly termed a ‘cosmopolitan democracy‘- has been defended with considerable imagination by thinkers such as Daniele Archibugi, Richard Falk, David Held, and Tony McGrew. At the same time, a number of powerful arguments have been developed in favour of cosmopolitan principles of distributive justice. (...) Philosophers such as Brian Barry, Charles Beitz, Onora O'Neill, Thomas Pogge, Henry Shue, and Peter Singer have developed formidable arguments against wholly local theories of distributive justice and have argued for cosmopolitan conceptions of distributive justice. (shrink)

_The Radical Orthodoxy Reader _presents a selection of key readings in the field of Radical Orthodoxy, the most influential theological movement in contemporary academic theology. Radical Orthodoxy draws on pre-Enlightenment theology and philosophy to engage critically with the assumption and priorities of secularism, modernity, postmodernity, and associated theologies. In doing so it explores a wide and exciting range of issues: music, language, society, the body, the city, power, motion, space, time, personhood, sex and gender. As such it is both controversial (...) and extremely stimulating; provoking much fruitful debate amongst contemporary theologians. To assist those encountering Radical Orthodoxy for the first time, each section has an introductory commentary, related reading and helpful questions to encourage in-depth understanding and further study. (shrink)

Relativistic quantum theory poses a number of conceptual problems over and above the non-relativistic mechanics. From a purely mathematical point of view it is also much more sophisticated. Even the kinematic theory poses considerable difficulties: locality, antimatter, negative energy, and charge are already systematically linked in ways that cannot simply be paraphrased. A further complication is that in the midst of this structure we have what is usually called the Newton-Wigner representation (or, in the case of the Dirac theory, the (...) Foldy-Wouthuysen representation), in which fields and states are no longer covariantly described and where the “local” self-adjoint quantities (NW-local observables) do not obey microcausality, but only satisfy equal-time commutators with respect to a particular inertial frame. If we pass to this represenation, we obtain at a stroke the basic structure of non-relativistic quantum field theory; it is not too hard to descend from that to a many-particle mechanics, and to recover the usual definitions of localization. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that changes are occurring to the earth’s climate and, further, that these changes threaten important human interests. This raises the question of who should bear the burdens of addressing global climate change. This paper aims to provide an answer to this question. To do so it focuses on the principle that those who cause the problem are morally responsible for solving it (the ‘polluterpays’ principle). It argues thatwhilethishasconsiderable appeal it cannot provide a complete account of who (...) should bear the burdens of global climate change. It proposes three ways in which this principle needs to be supplemented, and compares the resulting moral theory with the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between climate change and human rights. It argues that climate change is unjust, in part, because it jeopardizes several core rights – including the right to life, the right to food and the right to health. It then argues that adopting a human rights framework has six implications for climate policies. To give some examples, it argues that this helps us to understand the concept of “dangerous anthropogenic interference” (UNFCCC, Article 2). In addition to this, (...) it argues that if we adopt a human rights framework then any climate policies should also honour human rights, and so mitigation policies, for example, should not compromise people’s enjoyment of their human rights. A third implication, I argue, is that in addition to duties of mitigation and adaptation there will also be – if rights are violated – duties of compensation too. (shrink)

This essay attempts to sharpen significantly the critical debate around Levinas’s work by focussing on the question of politics, which is, it is argued, Levinas’s Achilles’heel. Five problems in Levinas’s treatment of politics are identified and discussed: fraternity, monotheism, and rocentrism, the family, and Israel. It is argued that Levinas’s ethics is terribly compromised by his conception of politics. In order to save Levinasian ethics from this compromise, two possibilities are explored: first, to follow Derrida’s separation of ethical form from (...) political content in his recent reading of Levinas, which allows for a notion of political invention linked to ethical responsibility, and second, to link Levinas’s conception of ethics to what is called in the essay the anarchistic disturbanceof politics. In conclusion, this anarchistic experience of ethics in linked to a quite different understanding of politics as the dissensual space of democracy. (shrink)

What is it for two people to think of an object, natural kind or other entity under the same mode of presentation (MOP)? This has seemed a particularly difficult question for advocates of the Mental Files approach, the Language of Thought, or other ‘atomistic’ theories. In this paper I propose a simple answer. I first argue that, by parallel with the synchronic intrapersonal case, the sharing of a MOP should involve a certain kind of epistemic transparency between the token thoughts (...) of the two thinkers. I then explain how shared words help bring about this transparency. Finally, I show how this account can be extended for thoughts expressed using demonstratives or indexicals. (shrink)

Is morality uniquely human or does morality exist in at least some non-human animals? Are animals full-fledged moral creatures or do they merely exhibit proto-morality—evolutionary building blocks or precursors to morality, but not quite the genuine article? Such questions, prompted by remarkable advances in empirical research into the social and emotional lives of non-human animals, have aroused much recent interest amongst scientists, philosophers, and in the popular media, not least for their apparent bearing on questions of human uniqueness, evolution, and (...) the ethical status of animals. The debate over animal morality has produced many valuable contributions and stimulated new areas for empirical and theoretical research. However, focusing on these questions has led researchers to talk at cross-purposes and down some unproductive paths. The problem concerns the terms ‘morality’ and ‘moral’. (shrink)

Board books with padded covers Full-color 24 pages 6-1/2 (16.5 cm) square Ages 0+. - Adorable illustrated characters introduce important first concepts to your baby or toddler. - First concepts are reinforced with full-color photographs to provide real-world images and context. - Fosters image and word recognition as well as speaking and motor skills. Perfect primers for babies and toddlers! 20 pages.

We prize loyalty in our friends, lovers and colleagues, but loyalty raises difficult questions. What is the point of loyalty? Should we be loyal to country, just as we are loyal to friends and family? Can the requirements of loyalty conflict with the requirements of morality? In this book, originally published in 2007, Simon Keller explores the varieties of loyalty and their psychological and ethical differences, and concludes that loyalty is an essential but fallible part of human life. He (...) argues that grown children can be obliged to be loyal to their parents, that good friendship can sometimes conflict with moral and epistemic standards, and that patriotism is intimately linked with certain dangers and delusions. He goes on to build an approach to the ethics of loyalty that differs from standard communitarian and universalist accounts. His book will interest a wide range of readers in ethics and political philosophy. (shrink)

The descriptions 'good' and 'bad' are examples of thin concepts, as opposed to 'kind' or 'cruel' which are thick concepts. Simon Kirchin provides one of the first full-length studies of the crucial distinction between 'thin' and 'thick' concepts, which is fundamental to many debates in ethics, aesthetics and epistemology.

I argue against the claim that there are principled as well as pragmatic reasons for compromise in politics, even within the context of reasonable moral disagreements such as the abortion controversy.