If God is morally perfect then He must perform the morally best actions, but creating humans is not the morally best action. If this line of reasoning can be maintained then the mere fact that humans exist contradicts the claim that God exists. This is the ‘anthropic argument’. The anthropic argument, is related to, but distinct from, the traditional argument from evil. The anthropic argument forces us to consider the ‘creation question’: why did God not (...) create other gods rather than humans? That is, if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect then why didn’t He create a world populated exclusively by beings that are perfect in the same way that He is—ontological equivalents— rather than choosing to create humans with finite natures and all the suffering that this entails? (shrink)

Malebranche’s so-called conservation is continuous creation (CCC) argument has been celebrated as a powerful and persuasive argument for Occasionalism—the claim that only God has and exercises causal powers. In this paper I want to examine the CCC argument for Occasionalism by comparing it to Jaegwon Kim’s so-called Supervenience argument against non-reductive physicalism. Because the arguments have deep similarities it is interesting and fruitful to consider them in tandem. First I argue that both the CCC (...) class='Hi'>argument and the Supervenience argument turn on the same general principle, what Kim calls Edward’s Dictum. It is doubtful that Malebranche or Kim succeed in grounding Edward’s Dictum, though Malebranche, I think, has more resources at his disposal to make his case. Even if this worry is waived, however, I argue that the completion of Stage 1 of the Supervenience argument can be used to raise a further worry for the CCC argument that cannot easily be resolved. (shrink)

In recent years Mullins and Craig have argued that there is a problem for a timeless God creating, with Mullins formulating the argument as follows: (1) If God begins to be related to creation, then God changes. (2) God begins to be related to creation. (3) Therefore, God changes. (4) If God changes, then God is neither immutable nor timeless. (5) Therefore, God is neither immutable nor timeless. In this paper I argue that all the premises, (1), (...) (2), and (4) are false, and then provide a revised formulation of the argument which more clearly represents what Mullins and Craig wish to argue, given the explication and commentary they give when discussing this objection to timelessness. I then call into question this argument, and conclude by stating what I think Mullins and Craig should really be arguing given the specific views they have about creation ex nihilo and in virtue of what timelessness requires. (shrink)

I argue against responsibility arguments that offer a defence of abortion even on the assumption that the fetus is a person. I focus on argumentation originally offered by Judith Jarvis Thomson and then later defended by David Boonin. I offer thought experiments meant to show that, under certain conditions, one bears moral responsibility for creating a fetus. I then offer a positive argument for when one is morally responsible for the creation of a fetus. This argument relies (...) on the presence of other forms of sex that reasonably approximate the goods of penile-vaginal intercourse. Given the presence of these options, sexual partners who engage in penile-vaginal intercourse bear moral responsibility for the creation of the fetus. While I do not think this argument settles the abortion debate – there still may be other ways to successfully defend abortion – it does explain why responsibility arguments like those offered by Thomson fail. (shrink)

This paper is based on the comments I gave to Alfred Mele regarding his original Zygote Argument during my presentation at a small workshop on manipulation arguments in Budapest back in 2012. After those comments, Mele changed the conclusion of his original Zygote Argument (OZA) from a positive, explanatory conclusion to a negative, non-explanatory conclusion--and, correspondingly, redefined 'incompatibilism' so that it would no longer refer in his work to the view that determinism precludes (undermines, eliminates, destroys, etc.) free (...) will, but refers narrowly to the perhaps spurious association claim that appears in the conclusion of the revised Zygote Argument (Mele 2013+). Yet, over the last decade, Mele has made no comment in print about the changes he made, the invalidity objection that led to them, nor to the fact that his revised Zygote Argument was originally presented by me as a (non-optimal) reaction to my invalidity objection to his original Zygote Argument. To my knowledge, Mele has only mentioned this 2015 paper once, at it was not in the context of understanding manipulation arguments; it was, rather, in the context of defending his revised, non-explanatory definition of 'incompatibilism' at the opening of Aspects of Agency (p. 6, n. 4). There, Mele singles out *just this 2015 paper* as a place where they'll find what Mele degrades as a type of nonstandard/nontraditional definition of 'incompatibilism' that he rejects. This is notable because Mele provides no empirical evidence that his preferred definition is standard, and most (including Lehrer, who coined the term) reject the negative, non-explanatory, association-based definition that Mele came to endorse in the aftermath of my invalidity objection to OZA. So, if Mele had a genuine concern about philosophers who use the term 'incompatibilism', then Mele could have--and should have--named almost any leading figure in free will for this purpose (since most--including Pereboom, Vihvelin, Haji, etc.) reject the non-explanatory definition that Mele-2013+ now endorses. Yet, for untold reasons, Mele isolated the working definition of 'incompatibilism' used in one paper by one unemployed junior researcher to use as his example--even though Neil Levy had used this same definition in previously published work (eg. Levy 2011). Moreover, if Mele were genuinely interested in helping his readers understand the ambiguity of terms like 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism' it is a mystery that he referenced a paper in which nothing of substance hung on the definitions given to these terms -- especially considering that he might have instead pointed them to my OTHER 2015 paper, "A Critique of Vihvelin's Three-Fold Classification" in which the MAIN AIM of the paper is to expose the difficulties facing anyone who wants to define the terms 'compatibilism' and 'incompatibilism' in a way that everyone will accept (including a critique of the negative, non-explanatory "incompossibilist" definition that Mele adopted after my objection to OZA). By all appearances, Mele's main aim in citing specifically THIS paper and none of my other work was to give readers the false impression that my working definition of 'incompatibilism' played some role in my charge that his argument is invalid (which it doesn't, given that the term doesn't appear in either the premises or conclusion of that argument). Mele adds to this unseemly rhetorical campaign in his book *Manipulation Agents* where he mentions an invalidity objection in the intro (p. 84) and then discusses that objection in the final lines of Chapter 5 of the book (p. 120-121). The invalidity objection discussed here is completely pedantic, has never been seriously raised in the primary literature (and was previously addressed in multiple places my multiple philosophers, including me), and has nothing whatever to do with my invalidity objection. In other words, Mele was content to discuss an invalidity objection that no one has ever had to an argument that is clearly valid while completely ignoring the ONLY substantive invalidity objection to his argument in print. This is unfortunate, because it has led to serious confusion --including the patently false description of my invalidity objection to OZA as an objection to the revised version of the Zygote Argument that Mele adopted in *response* my objection (e.g., Capes mistakenly claims "Mickelson (2015) contends that arguments like this [i.e. like the revised Zygote Argument] are invalid. But that’s because she defines “incompatibilism” differently than I’ve defined it here" in his "Manipulation Arguments and Direct Arguments" chapter in the 2023 Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Free Will; I did not say this, and the definition of 'incompatibilism' is irrelevant to my objection). In "The Zygote Argument Is Invalid--Now What?", I simply use the invalidity of the simple 2-premise Zygote Argument as a foil to make a series of more philosophically significant points (e.g. regarding the dialectical structure of the free-will debate, the role of best-explanation reasoning, and to develop the first-ever "master manipulation argument"). Mele has yet to address my reasons for calling attention to the non-trivial invalidity of his OZA or to any of my answers to the "Now What?" question in this paper, even though this question and my proposed answers to this question are the paper's main point. For those interested in a more recent discussion of how the logical and metaphilosophical observations made in this "Now What?" paper have helped to move the free-will debate forward, I suggest looking at the discussions of the "paradigm shift" in the free-will debate that helps to explain why the free-will debate has become mired in stalemates and empty verbal disputes that are found, for example, in my contributions to the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Free Will (Intro and Chapter 4, 2023) and my paper "Free Will, Self-Creation, and the Paradox of Moral Luck" (2019). (shrink)

My purpose is to analyze lawyers creating meaning in three well-known cases in Anglo-American legal history: Commonwealth v. Woodward (1997) the famous Boston ‘nanny’ case, the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial (1995), and the John Peter Zenger Libel Case in Colonial New York (1734). In each case, creative lawyers were able to shift the question before the jury from the formal legal question—did Woodward and Simpson commit murder? Did Zenger publish libelous material?—to issues of vengeance and catharsis, and of the ability (...) of the legal system to represent the community’s sense of justice. (shrink)

In Descartes theological writing, he promotes two jointly puzzling theses: T1) God freely creates the eternal truths (i.e. the Creation Doctrine) and T2) The eternal truths are necessarily true. According to T1 God freely chooses which propositions to make necessary, contingent and possible. However the Creation Doctrine makes the acceptance of T2 tenuous for the Creation Doctrine implies that God could have acted otherwise--instantiating an entirely different set of necessary truths. Jonathan Bennett seeks to reconcile T1 and (...) T2 by relativizing modality to human understanding. I argue that Bennett’s approach to Cartesian modality is misplaced: One does not have to resort to conceptualism about modality in order to explain the subjective language found in Descartes or to reconcile Descartes’ Creation Doctrine with the necessity of the eternal truths. After showing that Bennett’s argument implies that Descartes held the non-eternality of the eternal truths and the independence of the eternal truths from God, I show that if one understands Descartes’ use modal terms as indexed to God’s willing, then apparent contradictions vanish. In addition, I show that if one evaluates the truth value of modal propositions ‘non-bivalently’, then one can also unravel the apparent contradiction. One can reconcile Descartes’ Creation Doctrine (T1) and the necessity of the eternal truths (T2) without Bennett’s conceptualism. (shrink)

The consensus is that repeatable artworks cannot be identified with particular material individuals. A perennial temptation is to identify them with types, broadly construed. Such identification, however, faces the so-called “Creation Problem.” This problem stems from the fact that, on the one hand, it seems reasonable to accept the claims that (1) repeatable artworks are types, (2) types cannot be created, and (3) repeatable artworks are created, but, on the other hand, these claims are mutually inconsistent. A possible solution (...) to the Creation Problem is to argue that claim (2) can be rejected because (a) the only motivation for it is that a type, being abstract, cannot stand in causal relations, but (b) this motivation is ungrounded, since types can, in fact, stand in such relations. Clearly, in order for this solution to be successful, it is necessary to substantiate the possibility of types to be causally efficacious. In this essay, I examine an attempt to do this with the help of Yablo’s principle of proportionality, which has been undertaken by Walters (2013) and, more recently, Juvshik (2018). Although the argument they advance may seem to provide strong support for the causal efficacy of types, I think it actually fails to do this. To explain why this is so, I first show that this argument commits us to the existence of widespread causal overdetermination involving types and then argue that this commitment is both epistemically and ontologically problematic. (shrink)

In this work I present a detailed critique of the dignity-related arguments that have been advanced against the creation of human–nonhuman chimeras that could possess human-like mental capacities. My main claim is that the arguments so far advanced are incapable of grounding a principled objection against the creation of such creatures. I conclude that these arguments have one, or more, of the following problems: they confuse the ethical assessment of the creation of chimeras with the ethical assessment (...) of how such creatures would be treated in specific contexts, they misrepresent how a being could be treated solely as means towards others’ ends, they fall short of demonstrating how humanity’s dignity would be violated by the creation of such entities, and they fail to properly characterise the moral responsibilities that moral agents have towards other moral agents and sentient beings. (shrink)

This paper challenges the notion that the only way to progress to a post-capitalist society is through the wholesale destruction of the capitalist economic system. Instead, I argue that Craft —an existential state and praxis informed by the creation and maintenance of objects of utility—is uniquely situated to effectively reclaim these systems due to its its focus on materiality over abstraction and its unique position as a socially aware form of praxis. This argument focuses not on competition, but (...) on hyper-abstraction as the key driver of capitalist exploitation and its most glaring ethical flaw. Karl Marx's work on commodity fetishism is key to understanding this misguided form of abstraction which displaces commodities so far from their functional form that they feed into what Martin Heidegger termed gestell , or enframing. Postmodern attempts to destabilize capitalist influence in the fine arts, like the de-objectification of the 1960s described by Ursula Meyer, often fell victim to the same fetishistic mindset and simply increased the hold of capitalism within the arts. The enframing worldview that Heidegger warns us about is fed by hyper-abstraction, and while he directly offers up art as the remedy to this situation via poiēsis , key moments in his writings on the related notion of geschick support this new notion of Craft , rather than the fine arts, as a more capable system for the rehabilitation of modern society. (shrink)

It is argued that persuasive advertising overrides the autonomy of consumers, in that it manipulates them without their knowledge and for no good reason. Such advertising causes desires in such a way that a necessary condition of autonomy — the possibility of decision — is removed. Four notions central to autonomous action are discussed — autonomous desire, rational desire and choice, free choice, and control or manipulation — following the strategy of Robert Arrington in a recent paper in this journal. (...) Replies are made to Arrington's arguments in favour of advertising. It is also claimed that the argument developed by Philip Nelson, which concludes that even if persuasive advertising does override autonomy, it is still in the interests of consumers to be subjected to it, is seriously mistaken. Finally, some caveats concerning informative advertising are presented. (shrink)

The institution of government requires justification. It is a human creation, the product of deliberate human action. Acts are performed in its name, and these acts have huge consequences on the lives of people. The act of creating -- or deliberately maintaining -- government, as well as the acts typically performed in the name of government, may and should be evaluated as to morality, and as to appropriateness for achieving intended goals. This book challenges the almost universally held belief (...) that creating and maintaining governments is morally acceptable. (shrink)

The U.S. Constitution employs a utilitarian view in authorizing Congress to establish patents and copyrights. Let us refer to this way of justifying copyright as the Incentives Argument, or more extensively, the Incentives Argument for Intellectual Property Rights. While seemingly straightforward, the Incentives Argument has been widely criticized in philosophical literature on intellectual property. Scholars have come to prefer Neo-Lockean labor-desert accounts, grounding intellectual property rights in the author's natural ownership claims over his creations. Neo-Lockean accounts are (...) thought to avoid some of the problems classically associated with utilitarian arguments, such as vulnerability to empirical evidence and an inability to make sense of rights or duties morally prior to consequential considerations. Fortunately, many criticisms articulated by opponents of the Incentives Argument can be answered by a strategic retreat to the version of utilitarianism found in the work of John Stuart Mill. I argue that not only does a Millian account of the Incentives Argument prove less vulnerable to oft-cited criticisms, but also allows for a more robust account of how the audience benefits from a proliferation of creative works. Mill's focus on the importance of critical self-development allows for a deeper analysis of how creative works benefit members of the audience as individuals and as a community. Within a Millian framework, viewing the audience as mere passive consumers of media fails to take into account the impact of expressive acts on an individual's critical self-development. Instead, one must see members of the audience as active participants in the creation of meaning and the common culture. Construing the community that receives creative works as an Active Audience alters the landscape of copyright, and the Incentives Argument, making balancing the desires of creators and the desires of audience members a key priority. (shrink)

Social media has redefined the thinking around the capacity and intensity of interaction among individuals and groups of people across national and international borders. Messages on social media are instantaneous, unhinged to interpretation and inherently dialogic. Through app designs that encourage near addiction to use in various platforms, it is becoming more probable that public debates and social protests start, are fanned and may even be resolved online in these platforms. Many state actors including politicians, religious leaders and social commentators (...) have exploited social media to drive their agenda; personal or otherwise. The anonymity and direct accessibility granted by social media to these actors have given them a brazen green light to promote hate online and a platform for divisive and anarchist agenda. In this paper, I explore the dynamics of hate in social media; how the “Other” is created and used as the target for hate online using the case of electioneering in Kenya. I will attempt to provide a structure profile of social media communication in Kenya during the electioneering period while correlating this to the functional features that facilitated hate on social media. I will deconstruct how the “Other” is created by examining discourse arguments and the underlying subjective benefits in the creation of the “Other”. I will then show how anonymity and publicity interact to promote the process of hate online. This paper employs a phenomenological approach, first propounded by Edmund Husserl, to illustrate how misinformation creates the “Other” and to profile how hate that is spread online is a by-product of this misinformation. The research validity in this paper is premised on the currency of social media as a new dynamic in communication requiring rigorous academic inquiry. (shrink)

Must opponents of creating conscious artificial agents embrace anti-natalism? Must anti-natalists be against the creation of conscious artificial agents? This article examines three attempts to argue against the creation of potentially conscious artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of these questions. The examination reveals that the argumentative strategy each author pursues commits them to the anti-natalist position with respect to procreation; that is to say, each author's argument, if applied consistently, should lead them to embrace the conclusion (...) that procreation is, at best, morally problematic. However, the article also argues that anti-natalists can find the production of some possible artificially conscious AI permissible. Thus, the creation of potentially conscious AI could be accepted by both friends and foes of anti-natalism. (shrink)

In his review of my book, Terry Godlove raises some robust objections to the exegesis of Kant that I present in my recent book, Kant and the Creation of Freedom: a Theological Problem (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). I respond to these criticisms in this article. Properly to locate Godlove’s exegetical objections, I dedicate the first section to setting out the arc of the argument I trace. I then set out and treat in turn Godlove’s main objections (...) to my exegesis: that it depends upon an interpretation of transcendental idealism which makes the doctrine ‘flatly inconsistent and probably just silly’; that I neglect the most plausible account interpretation of Kant’s various statements about transcendental idealism; and that I ‘pick and choose’ supporting texts too narrowly, leading to an unbalanced presentation, which is too convenient to my thesis. I conclude with some general methodological reflections—stimulated by Godlove, but not aimed at him—about how historical philosophical texts are often treated. I express some anxieties about the principle of charity that underlies much current exegesis, and ‘rational reconstruction’ of historical texts, and I propose a case for what might be called ‘creative decomposition’ (not of the text, but of the self). (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological CategoryMax RosenkrantzThomas Dixon. From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. x + 287. Cloth, $60.00Thomas Dixon's From Passions to Emotions defends a provocative set of theses. (1) The concept of "emotion" is of relatively recent vintage, having been designed by secular Scottish writers in the (...) first half of the nineteenth century. (2) That concept embraces a range of phenomena that earlier Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas understood in terms of a manifold of concepts such as "appetites," "passions," "affections," and "sentiments." (3) The concept of "emotion" is too crude an instrument for understanding human psychology. Further, (4) today the secular conceptual framework has completely displaced the religious one. This has nothing to do with the former's greater proximity to the truth, as is shown by the persistence of cogent Christian theories in the second half of the nineteenth century, the period of secularism's triumph; and (5) The opposition between reason and emotion arises only when theorists begin to think of "emotions" rather than "appetites," "passions," "affections," and "sentiments." Christian writers did not see the passions as simply the enemies of reason.The basis for Dixon's argument is his interpretation of nineteenth-century psychological theory in the English speaking world. Specifically he argues that the concept of "emotion" was invented by the Scottish thinker Thomas Brown (1778-1820). Brown's innovation was then appropriated and developed by Spencer, Darwin, and William James. The foil for this story is the Christian tradition represented most compellingly by Augustine and Aquinas and carried on by a host of lesser nineteenth-century figures. In my judgment, the story thus told cannot bear the weight Dixon places upon it.The centerpiece of Dixon's argument is his claim that Brown "invents" (109) the emotions and thereby initiates a conceptual revolution in western thought. While Dixon may be right in asserting that Brown is the first to use the word 'emotion' in a systematic fashion, this achievement is merely terminological. Brown deploys the term to develop a mechanistic account of human nature, one in which the springs of action are located not in the will and reason, but in the emotions. Replace 'emotion' in the preceding sentence with 'passion' and one gets a concise characterization of Hobbes's view. Dixon is aware that Brown and others work within a Hobbesian framework (250) but does not attend to that framework. Thus his claims for the significance of the developments he describes fail to convince. The real innovation in psychological theory—as in so much else—took place in the seventeenth century.Just as Dixon overestimates the importance and originality of the Scottish writers he discusses, so too he overestimates the intellectual importance of Augustine and Aquinas. His presentation of their views (26-62) is accurate, but he does not note that they take over the Platonic-Aristotelian view of the soul according to which reason can and should penetrate, educate and direct the passions. Thus the guiding thought that structures the work—the nineteenth century witnesses an ultimately successful revolt against Christian psychology—must be rejected. The revolt is against ancient, pre-Christian modes of thought and is undertaken and largely won in the seventeenth century. The events Dixon describes are skirmishes in that larger campaign.The rest of the theses Dixon defends can be dispatched with more quickly. The idea that the modern concept of "emotion" is insufficiently subtle is averted to frequently, but never adequately defended. At no point does Dixon demonstrate, or even claim to demonstrate, that Christian thinkers recognized something secular thinkers miss. Roughly the same can be said for his claims about the persistence of Christian psychology in the nineteenth century. What Dixon means is not just that such thinkers exist, but that their thought remains vibrant. Again I see no argument for such a verdict. Finally, there is the matter of the opposition between reason and passion. To his credit Dixon rejects the view according to which almost all Western thought is hostile to the passions. As he shows, this... (shrink)

It’s constitutive of classical theism that there is a necessarily existent personal god who is also the creator of the universe, where the latter claim includes at least the following three theses: (i) God is wholly distinct from the natural world; (ii) God is the originating or sustaining cause of the natural world; and (iii) God created the natural world ex nihilo, i.e., without the use of pre-existing materials. Call this tripartite component of classical theism the classical view of (...) class='Hi'>creation. In this paper, I offer a new argument against classical theism. In particular, I argue that creation ex nihilo is prima facie impossible, and that since the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is constitutive of classical theism, classical theism is false. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the last century, with the development of the Theory of Relativity, an ever-growing gap has come into being between our knowledge about the structure of the world around us and our ability to conceptualize it. Because language plays a major role in our ability to describe the world and our role within it, a need has been created to match the capabilities of language to the knowledge we currently possess about the world we inhabit. This article (...) will focus on two main arguments: (A) our ability to describe and conceptualize the world using a language that is limited, problematic and finite and (B) The possibility of developing a new language based on other principles than those governing verbal speech, which can deal with these limitations and problems and which is better suited to describing the world as we know it today. (shrink)

The design argument for the existence of God is often criticized for resting on anthropocentrism. Some critics maintain that anthropocentrism explains the origin of the design argument. Such critics commit the genetic fallacy. Others say anthropocentrism explains the appeal of the belief that human beings are ends especially worthy of creation. They fail to appreciate that the design argument need not be framed in terms of the fitness of the universe for humanity. Lastly, some say the (...) design argument requires a picture of value according to which it was true, prior to the coming-into-being of the universe, that our sort of universe is worthy of creation. Such a picture, they say, is mistaken, though our attraction to it can be explained in terms of anthropocentrism. This is a serious criticism. To respond to it, proponents of the design argument must either defend an objectivist conception of value or, if not, provide some independent reason for thinking an intelligent designer is likely to create our sort of universe. (shrink)

There are two ways in which Ghazali contributes to the discussion of whether God exists: by arguing for the existence of God, and by arguing against certain views which, in his opinion, stand in the way of truly believing that God exists. In this paper I examine Ghazali’s argument from creation and his refutation or the philosophers’ second proof for the eternity or the world. My purpose will be to argue that: firstly, Ghazali’s argument and his refutation (...) are based on incompatible views of time, and cannot, therefore, both be maintained. Secondly, Ghazali fails to establish the one interesting premiss which he employs in his argument from creation. (shrink)

In the last twenty years analytic philosophy has seen a rising interest in the philosophy of religion in general and in rational reconstructions of religion related arguments and Christian doctrines. In this short note I like to point to a problem that although cosmological arguments play a great role in the present discussion has not received the attention, I believe, it deserves.[1] An old objection to cosmological arguments, named “the Carriage Objection” by Schopenhauer[2], charges them as being arbitrary: the arguments (...) are employed to carry you to the existence of God, but no further (as the carriage carries you to some destination to be dismissed then, therefore the name of the objection). A simple cosmological argument claims the existence of the universe to require explanation, and offers God as the cause of the universe. The Carriage Objection now asks why the principle of sufficient explanation that carried the argument forth to God will not carry us on to a sufficient explanation of God, and then on – ad infinitum . The regress is considered to be vicious. If one was to accept some brute fact (like the existence of God) then why not stop with the brute fact of the existence of the universe? (shrink)

In al-Kindi's treatise On First Philosophy, he advances three arguments in favour of the temporal origination of the universe. In this paper, I shall be concerned only with the first of these, namely, the argument based on the necessary concomitance of body, motion, and time. I shall argue that it does not appear to successfully establish that theuniverse began toexistin tempore. Inthecourse of discussion, however, it will become clear that I am not persuaded that recent set theoretic criticisms of (...) this argument are cogent. My conclusion, nevertheless, will be that one is not rationally justified in inferring that the universe was created by God ex nihilo in the finite past on the basis of this argument. (shrink)

The standard form of act-consequentialism requires us to perform the action with the best consequences; it allows choice between moral options only on those rare occasions when several actions produce equally good results. This paper argues for moral options and thus against act-consequentialism. The argument turns on the insight that some valuable things cannot exist unless our moral system allows options. One such thing is the opportunity for individuals to enact plans for their life from among alternatives. Because planning (...) one’s life has value, and because it requires moral options, a world governed by a moral system that admits of options is better than one governed by act-consequentialism. The paper argues that these facts entail that morality admits of a significant number of moral options; act-consequentialism is false. (shrink)

KANT'S argument in the early sections of the Critique of Pure Reason reveals the crucial inadequacy of empiricism as it had previously been elaborated by such founding fathers of the empiricist movement as Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. This inadequacy lies above all in a dogmatic and barely questioned commitment to the idea that human experience must be understood as a passive process, and that the experiencing human mind can therefore only be seen as a rather puzzling kind of object (...) or else as a location in which our externally-originating "impressions" or "ideas" come in some way to be interrelated. Kant shows that the possibility of our being aware of ourselves as selves, and therefore of our being able to "have" any experience of something "external" to ourselves, depends on our possession of certain concepts of "objects of experience" which exist quite separately from ourselves and quite independently of any particular experience which we may happen to have of them. If we did not think in some such way as this it would be impossible for us to have any experience at all. That Kant may have been over-zealous or overscholastic in his elaboration of the actual kinds of concept--the a priori "categories" or "pure concepts of understanding"--which contribute to our possession of self-awareness or subjectivity can perhaps be allowed to be secondary to these more important considerations. (shrink)

I am in general a great admirer of the work of Savulescu and Harris, not because I think their conclusions are often right but because they state these conclusions and their arguments very clearly. In their joint paper “The Creation Lottery,” they do, nevertheless, tendentiously overstate their case both with regard to the conclusions that flow from identifying natural reproduction as a creation lottery and in seeing their exchange as an example of good method in bioethics. In the (...) following short comment I want to point to some of the problematic areas in S&H's arguments. (shrink)

Maimonides real opinion regarding it. Then, as now, the Aristotelian theory of an eternal material universe seemed more plausible to many people than did the Biblical view of creation exnihilo. While creation is the orthodox view in both Judaism and Christianity, the tension between those two explanatory models goes back a long way. 1 Referring to the heretical views of Elisha ben Abuya, in the early Talmudic period, David Hartman argues as follows.

Challenging commonly held biological, religious, and ethical beliefs, internationally well known historian of science Roger Smith boldly argues that human nature is not some "thing" awaiting discovery but is active in understanding itself. According to Smith, "being human" is a self-creation made possible through a reflective circle of thought and action, with a past and a future, and studying this "history" from a range of perspectives is fundamental to human self-understanding. Smith's argument brings together historical and contemporary debates (...) concerning materialism and human nature and the relations of the different fields of knowledge. He draws on classic writings from across the human sciences, touching on sociology, anthropology, brain sciences, history, philosophical hermeneutics, and critical theory, and demonstrates that there is no position outside history for an absolutely objective or eternally valid view of human nature. The question "what is human?" does not have and could not possible have one answer. Instead, there exists a variety of answers for different purposes, and there are good reasons for the many conceptions of what it is to be human. Smith does not treat human nature as only biological, economic, or moral, but as a multidimensional subject that should be considered in its proper historical context. By understanding this context, Smith believes, we can come to a truer understanding of ourselves. Persuasively and elegantly written, _Being Human_ takes an important new turn in the philosophical study of being human. (shrink)

The broad aim of this paper is to track the evolution of adult literacy policy in the UK across three decades, highlighting convergences between policy phases and the promotion of democratic learning spaces. It is anchored onto the argument that, although it is generally accepted that democratic learning spaces are perceived as beneficial to adult literacy learners, policy has often deterred its promotion and, therefore, implementation. The paper identifies three block phases of adult literacy development: the seventies to mid-eighties, (...) the mid-eighties to mid-nineties and the mid-nineties to the Moser Committees. The features of each of these phases are highlighted to map out convergences and divergences to the ethos of democratic learning spaces. The paper argues that, with the evolution of policy in adult literacy, the ethos of democratic learning space continuously diminished, such that as policy evolved year on year, the principle of democratic learning space found itself at counterpoint to policy. We draw on two theoretical frameworks, the NLS view of literacy and Bourdieu’s capital framework to explain these divergences and conclude that the dominant perception of literacy and the prioritised capital in the context of policy appear to limit the vestiges of democratic learning spaces. Keywords: Adult literacy, policy, democratic learning spaces, cultural dissonance, human capital, social capital. (shrink)

The paper presents George Steiner’s view of the right conditions for the contemplation of art. The position has been presented as motivated by a certain concept of artistic creation and the reception of art.Steiner’s vision of art finds its legitimacy in a belief which describes the linguistic activity of man as one which is at the same time creative and conditioned by external discourses. In this view both the speaking subject and the subject of an artistic activity are motivated (...) by a desire to become independent from an impartial discourse of mind. An artist is someone who opposes the past and present forms of expression in an attempt to incarnate a sense which in the light of the established forms of discourse appears inexpressible. The key point of Steiner's concept is his argumentation in favor of the ambiguity of dividing the human activity into the original and the derived. An artist, a recipient of art or a theorist do not have the tools which could point at the divide.The analysis sets out to make an outline of Steiner’s rendition of the problem of interpretation and development o art. The originality of the position on the issue results from attributing a major significance to interpretative errors for the survival and the constant appeal of art. The process of interpretation is also described as one which yields to no theoretical taxonomy. According to Steiner, a recipient of art disposes of no tools that would warrant access to a transcendental sense of a work of art. Therefore, it ought to be ascertained that a reliable act of reception is one which does not pursue agreement with its object. The recipient must remain detached from the work of art. Paradoxically, only thanks to such an attitude can they make art part of their experience. (shrink)

Kant argues that any argument for a transcendent God presupposes the logically flawed ontological argument. The teleological argument cannot satisfy the demands of reason for a complete explanation of the meaning and purpose of our universe without support from the cosmological argument. I avoid the assumption of a perfect being, and hence the ontological argument, in my version of the cosmological argument. The necessary being can be identified with the creator of the universe by (...) adding analogical mental relations. The creation of the universe is then shown to reflect modern scientific cosmology as well as stories and metaphors in the Eastern and Western religious traditions and to resolve the problem of evil. (shrink)

On 19 December 2005 the recommendations of the Lockhart Review were released. One of the key recommendations was that current laws be amended to permit the creation of embryonic stem cells by somatic cell nuclear transfer. The Lockhart Report analysed the ethical arguments for and against the creation of embryos by nuclear transfer. It rationalised that, although there were various objections to such technology from some sections of Australian society, the good that this science has the potential to (...) produce in the form of stem cell therapies to assist with or cure disease should prevail This article will critically analyse the ethical arguments presented to the Lockhart Review and assess how the Review Committee resolved the debate as to the ethical status of a preimplantation embryo. It will be contended that the recommendations for reform should be fully implemented by the Federal Government, to enable scientists to have full access to both embryonic and adult stem cells, including custom-made stem cell lines created through the SCNT process, to allow medical research to progress to its fullest potential. (shrink)

In her paper “Creative Evolution and the Creation of Man,” one of the arguments Colebrook puts forth is that as a means of challenging the mechanistic and teleological conception of Darwinian evolution, creative evolution takes an antihumanist position by positing that there is an absence of end, thus “man” is able to create his own end. But in taking this position, Colebrook points out that creative evolution re-establishes the humanistic discourse on the human that it was attempting to challenge. (...) To elucidate Colebrook's argument, this paper draws on the work of Derrida to “play” with the notion of style in order to reflect on the ways in which philosophical deductive argumentation and reasoning constitute and perpetuate humanist and metaphysical discourses on the human, and the ends of “man.”. (shrink)

This piece offers a retrospective review of a plenary speech at the 1969 Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association by the leading environmentalist of the Nixon administration, attorney and judge Russell Train. Train's talk, titled “Prescription for a Planet,” can be seen as an early argument for uniting environmental health and public health as the two main determinants of both individual and population health and for the inclusion of these fields in the then‐new field of “bioethics.”.

Artifactualism about fictional characters, positing Harry Potter as an abstract artifact created by J. K. Rowling, has been criticized on the grounds that the idea of creating such objects is mysterious and problematic. In the light of such qualms, it is worth homing in on an argument in favor of artifactualism, showing that it is the best way to include the likes of Harry Potter in our ontology precisely because it incorporates authorial creation. To that end, I will (...) be exploring Kripke’s fleeting remarks in the Addenda to his “Naming and Necessity” lectures about expressions like ‘unicorn’ and ‘Harry Potter’. Elsewhere, Kripke motivates artifactualism by suggesting that incorporating authorial creation (as artifactualism does) is a move that is intuitive and natural; but beyond this, he doesn’t provide any arguments in favor of such a move. My purpose in this paper is to construct such an argument based on considerations about Kripke’s general view about proper names, in particular, his seminal causal-historical chain account of reference determination, and its consequences for fictional names as well as nonfictional names without bearers such as ‘Vulcan’. (shrink)

Kant rejects the ontological argument on the grounds that the ontological argument inescapably must assume that existence is a “determination” or “real predicate,” which it is not. Most understand Kant’s argument for this claim to be premised upon his distinctive proto-Fregean theory of existence. But this leaves Kant dialectically vulnerable: the defender of the ontological argument can easily reject this as question-begging. I show that Kant relies upon two distinct arguments, both of which contend that the (...) claim that existence is a determination is inconsistent with bedrock ontological set pieces assumed by rationalist defenders of the ontological argument. (shrink)

Upshot: Poerksen’s discursive constructivism reconstructs radical constructivist foundations and applies them to several subjects of research in the field of journalism and media studies. The author combines epistemological arguments with practical advice for journalists, which makes the book not only valuable for interested followers of RC in general but also for communication scientists and media practitioners.

Eugenics is often referred to in debates on the ethics of reproductive technologies and practices, in relation to the creation of moral boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable technologies, and acceptable and unacceptable uses of these technologies. Historians have argued that twentieth century eugenics cannot be reduced to a uniform set of practices, and that no simple lessons can be drawn from this complex history. Some authors stress the similarities between past eugenics and present reproductive technologies and practices (what I (...) define throughout the paper as ‘the continuity view’) in order to condemn the latter. Others focus on the differences between past and present practices (what I define throughout the paper as ‘the discontinuity view’) in order to defend contemporary reproductive technologies. In this paper, I explore the meanings of the word ‘eugenics’ and the relationship between its past and present uses in terms of contemporary debates on reproductive technologies and practices. I argue that moral disagreement about present technologies originate in divergent views of condemnable and justifiable features of the past. (shrink)

Abstract artifacts such as musical works and fictional entities are human creations; they are intentional products of our actions and activities. One line of argument against abstract artifacts is that abstract objects are not the kind of objects that can be created. This is so, it is argued, because abstract objects are causally inert. Since creation requires being caused to exist, abstract objects cannot be created. One common way to refute this argument is to reject the causal (...) inefficacy of abstracta. I argue that creationists should rather reject the principle that creation requires causation. Creation, in my view, is a non-causal relation that can be explained using an appropriate notion of ontological dependence. The existence and the creation of abstract artifacts depend on certain individuals with appropriate intentions, along with events of a certain kind that include but are not limited to creations of certain concrete objects. (shrink)

The healthcare system—the assemblage of hospitals, insurers, professional associations, policymakers, patients, caregivers, and other entities oriented toward health in the United States—does more than cure illness. It is, and in some cases ought to be but falls short, attentive to endpoints other than cure, such as comfort, participation in desired activities, and the creation of families—things that may broadly be understood as promoting well-being. In the United States, health care utilization is prohibitively expensive. As a result, most people can (...) only access care through insurance. While the care available within the broad U.S. healthcare system may be oriented toward a wide variety of endpoints, insurance... (shrink)

Life as Art synthesizes a number of aesthetic theories in philosophy after 1850 and shows the ways in which they contribute to a unified field of analysis and potential implementation. The book is framed both as a secondary text, analyzing 19th and 20th Century aesthetics, and a primary argument for the viability of life as art as a unified philosophical position.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:305 HUME, HENRY MORE AND THE DESIGN ARGUMENT This paper is a contribution to research on the sources of Hume's statement of the design argument, whose analysis is the great subject of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. My surmise is that Hume's statement is probably his own. It is not a direct quotation from any source, but more 2 likely a fabrication drawn from several sources which presents (...) the strongest statement Hume could devise. My aim here is to demonstrate that one of Hume's sources is the works of Henry More (16141687 ). By a comparison of their language I mean to show the extent to which Hume drew on More for his formulation of the design argument. One of More's works, Divine Dialogues (1688), could have been Hume's modern example for treating the design 4 argument in a dialogue. It could have given Hume pointers for the organization, tone and characters of his own Dialogues. On a large view, the whole of Pialogues Concerning Natural Religion, with their artful match of position and counter-position, can be seen as a statement of the design argument. But on a close view, we can distinguish specific elements in Hume's statement; and for three of these elements we can show a close parallelism between Hume and More. The elements in Hume's statement to be considered here are.· (1)Cleanthes' introduction of the design argument in Part II, paragraph 5; (P 143) (2)"instances of design" offered by Cleanthes; (D 154, 185) and 306 (3) completing Hume's exposition of the design argument, Parts X and XI of the Dialogues, with their questions about the implications of human misery and the ill-workings of the world for the wisdom and benevolence of the universe maker (D 193-213). In addition to parallelisms between Hume and More at these points, there are a few straws in the wind that are worthy of mention. To pave the way for these comparisons, let me set out More's statements of the design argument. There are three of them. (1) More's first statement of the design argument occurs in An Antidote against Athéisme, (1652). The second of this work's three books is devoted to the design argument. Here is one of the earliest statements of the design argument in English; and it may be its first statement in an English work that is philosophical, rather than devotional or theological, and intended to convince solely on the basis of reasonable arguments. More sets out of the argument in three parts. First, there is the introductory remark: "...I would have my atheist walk with me awhile in the wide theater of this outward world, and diligently to attend to those many and most manifest marks and signs that I shall point to in this outward frame of things, that naturally signify unto us that there is a God" (AA 37-38). The 'walk' covers the next sixty pages, wherein More lists feature after feature of the world that he finds to instance divine design. At the end of this extensive catalogue, More then draws his conclusion: Wherefore the whole creation in general and every part thereof being so ordered as if the most exquisite reason and knowledge had contrived 307 them, it is natural to conclude that all this is the work of a wise God, as at first sight to acknowledge that those inscribed urns and coins digged out of the earth were not the products of unknowing nature, but the artifice of man (AA 97). (2)More's second statement of the design 7 argument is in The Immortality of the Soul (1659). More establishes to his satisfaction that matter is in motion, because "...when God created it, he D superadded an impress of Motion upon it...." That conclusion paves the way for the following paragraph: We have discovered out of the simple phenomenon of motion, the necessity of the existence of some incorporeal essence distinct from matter: but there is a further assurance of this truth, from the consideration of the order and admirable effect of this motion in the world. Suppose matter could move itself, would mere... (shrink)

Malebranche presents two major arguments for occasionalism: the “no necessary connection” argument (NNC) and the “conservation is but continuous creation” argument (CCC). NNC appears prominently in his Search After Truth but virtually disappears and surrenders the spotlight to CCC in his later major work, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion . This paper investigates the possible reasons and motivations behind this significant shift. I argue that the shift is no surprise if we consider the two ways in (...) which the CCC is preferable to NNC: it is not only more effective against opponents but also more consistent with his own views on freedom. (shrink)

Summary Verbs of creation (create, make, paint) are not transparent. The object created does not exist during the event time but only thereafter. We may call this type of opacity temporal opacity. I is to be distinguished from modal opacity, which is found in verbs like owe or seek. (Dowty, 1979) offers two analyses of creation verbs. One analysis predicts that no object of the sort created exists before the time of the creation. The other analysis says (...) that the object exists throughout the act of creation. I investigate three theories: Theory I says that no object of the sort created and which is caused by the very act of creation exists before the creation. In this theory, verbs of creation must embed a property. Theory II can regard the indefinite object of a creation verb as a quantifier and gives it wide scope with respect to the verb. The theory has to make sure that the objects quantified over exist only after the event. While Theory I and II start from the assumption that the extension of all nouns depend on time, Theory III says that Individual Level predicates do not depend on time. This ontology will enable us to treat verbs of creation as first order relations. The theory will entail that a picture does not mean the same as there is a picture. The paper discusses various approaches to the problem: Krifka, Parsons, Landman, Kratzer and Zucchi. (shrink)

Christopher Insole argues that we have underestimated the importance of the following theological problem in the development of Kant’s mature, critical philosophy: “How can it be said that we are free, given that we are created by God?” (p. 5). The author makes a strong case that this problem was formative for a range of Kant’s pre-critical views. What role it continues to play in the 1780s and beyond will be, as the author himself notes, controversial. Chapters 1–3 contain lucid (...) and, especially for those familiar only with Kant’s critical period, helpful discussions of several pre-critical texts together with an engagement with selected secondary literature. Thus, readers who know only Kant’s destruction of the divine proofs, in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), may be surprised to find him defending versions of the ontological and cosmological proofs in The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763). Here Insole’s exposition is nuanced... (shrink)

William Lane Craig claims that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is strongly supported by the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. In the present paper, I critically examine Craig’s arguments for this claim. I conclude that they are unsuccessful, and that the Big Bang theory provides no support for the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Even if it is granted that the universe had a “first cause,” there is no reason to think that this (...) cause created the universe out of nothing. As far as the Big Bang theory is concerned, the cause of the universe might have been what Adolf Grünbaum has called a “transformative cause”---a cause that shaped something that was “already there.”. (shrink)

The exegetical stories of Genesis Rabbah 8 portray God as engaged in an ethical debate over the implications of humanity's creation. These stories narrativize the necessity of favoring mercy over justice. The Deity must mobilize the attribute of mercy to overcome the justice problem of human fallibility. These stories rehearse the conflict of values in an "organic" fashion as opposed to discursive argumentation over abstract principles, and suggest a virtue theory grounded in mercy and kindness without being inflexible or (...) absolutist. As such, mercy and kindness should be inculcated not over and above Jewish law but prior to the law. (shrink)