Euclid’s Elements inspired a number of foundationalist accounts of mathematics, which dominated the epistemology of the discipline for many centuries in the West. Yet surprisingly little has been written by recent philosophers about this conception of mathematical knowledge. The great exception is Imre Lakatos, whose characterisation of the Euclidean Programme in the philosophy of mathematics counts as one of his central contributions. In this essay, we examine Lakatos’s account of the Euclidean Programme with a critical eye, and suggest an alternative (...) picture which builds on his work, but differs in a number of important respects. (shrink)

For children, the collateral damage of the COVID-19 pandemic response has been considerable. In this paper, we use the framework of evidence-based medicine to argue that child abuse is another negative side effect of COVID-19 lockdowns. While it was certain that school closures would have profound social and economic costs, it remains uncertain whether they have any effect on COVID-19 transmission. There is emerging evidence that lockdowns significantly worsened child abuse on a global scale. Low-income and middle-income countries are particularly (...) vulnerable to increases in child abuse. The best available external evidence from systematic research during the pandemic demonstrates an increase in the risk of child maltreatment, an increase in child maltreatment hospitalisations and a concerning decrease in official child maltreatment referrals. The paradoxical phenomenon of increased hospitalisations and decreased reports is unlikely to be explained by a genuine decrease in child abuse. We conclude that lockdowns have an unacceptably high risk of negative side effects for children, as evidenced by child abuse, the true extent of which appears to be masked by lockdown-related disruptions to schools and other surveillance systems. The desire for a sense of security may be a tempting bias towards emphasising the resilience of children, but it is ethically problematic to push children towards abuse in the name of public health. It is our view that the collateral damage of prolonged school closures for society’s most vulnerable members is a powerful ethical consideration against any pandemic response which involves their use. (shrink)

The Euclidean Programme embodies a traditional sort of epistemological foundationalism, according to which knowledge – especially mathematical knowledge – is obtained by deduction from self-evident axioms or first principles. Epistemologists have examined foundationalism extensively, but neglected its historically dominant Euclidean form. By contrast, this book offers a detailed examination of Euclidean foundationalism, which, following Lakatos, the authors call the Euclidean Programme. The book rationally reconstructs the programme's key principles, showing it to be an epistemological interpretation of the axiomatic method. It (...) then compares the reconstructed programme with select historical sources: Euclid's Elements, Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Descartes's Discourse on Method, Pascal's On the Geometric Mind and a twentieth-century account of axiomatisation. The second half of the book philosophically assesses the programme, exploring whether various areas of contemporary mathematics conform to it. The book concludes by outlining a replacement for the Euclidean Programme. (shrink)

It is widely accepted in epistemology that knowledge is factive, meaning that only truths can be known. We argue that this theory creates a skeptical challenge: because many of our beliefs are only approximately true, and therefore false, they do not count as knowledge. We consider several responses to this challenge and propose a new one. We propose easing the truth requirement on knowledge to allow approximately true, practically adequate representations to count as knowledge. In addition to addressing the skeptical (...) challenge, this view also coheres with several previous theoretical proposals in epistemology. (shrink)

We describe food transfer patterns among Ache Indians living on a permanent reservation. The social atmosphere at the reservation is characterized by a larger group size, a more predictable diet, and more privacy than the Ache typically experience in the forest while on temporary foraging treks. Although sharing patterns vary by resource type and package size, much of the food available at the reservation is given to members of just a few other families. We find significant positive correlations between amounts (...) transferred among pairs of families, a measure of the "contingency" component required of reciprocal altruism models. These preferred sharing partners are usually close kin. We explore implications of these results in light of predictions from current sharing models. (shrink)

Approximation involves representing things in ways that might be close to the truth but are nevertheless false. Given the widespread reliance on approximations in science and everyday life, here we ask whether it is conceptually possible for false approximations to qualify as knowledge. According to the factivity account, it is impossible to know false approximations, because knowledge requires truth. According to the representational adequacy account, it is possible to know false approximations, if they are close enough to the truth for (...) present purposes. In this paper, we adopt an experimental methodology to begin testing these two theories. When an agent provides a false and practically inadequate answer, both theories predict that people will deny knowledge. But the theories disagree about an agent who provides a false but practically adequate answer: the factivity hypothesis again predicts knowledge denial, whereas the representational adequacy hypothesis predicts knowledge attribution. Across two experiments, our principal finding was that people tended to attribute knowledge for false but practically adequate answers, which supports the representational adequacy account. We propose an interpretation of existing findings that preserves a conceptual link between knowledge and truth. According to this proposal, truth is not necessary for knowledge, but it is a feature of prototypical knowledge. (shrink)

The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a (...) robust argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

Nearly all philosophers agree that only true things can be known. But does this principle reflect actual patterns of ordinary usage? Several examples in ordinary language seem to show that ‘know’ is literally used non-factively. By contrast, this paper reports five experiments utilizing explicit paraphrasing tasks, which suggest that non-factive uses are actually not literal. Instead, they are better explained by a phenomenon known as protagonist projection. It is argued that armchair philosophical orthodoxy regarding the truth requirement for knowledge withstands (...) current empirical scrutiny. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind typically group experiential states together and distinguish these from intentional states on the basis of their purportedly obvious phenomenal character. Sytsma and Machery (Phil Stud 151(2): 299–327, 2010) challenge this dichotomy by presenting evidence that non-philosophers do not classify subjective experiences relative to a state’s phenomenological character, but rather by its valence. However we argue that S&M’s results do not speak to folk beliefs about the nature of experiential states, but rather to folk beliefs about the entity (...) to which those experiential states are attributed. In two experiments, we demonstrate that ordinary attributions of subjective experiences (of smell and felt emotions) to a simple robot are not sensitive to valence, but instead respond to functional assumptions about the entity to which the states are (or are not) attributed. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been much concern expressed about the under-representation of women in academic philosophy. Our goal in this paper is to call attention to a cluster of phenomena that may be contributing to this gender gap. The findings we review indicate that when women and men with little or no philosophical training are presented with standard philosophical thought experiments, in many cases their intuitions about these cases are significantly different. In section 1 we review some of the (...) data on the under-representation of women in academic philosophy. In section 2 we explain how we use the term 'intuition,' and offer a brief account of how intuitions are invoked in philosophical argument and philosophical theory building. In the third section we set out the evidence for gender differences in philosophical intuition and mention some evidence about gender differences in decisions and behaviors that are (or should be) of considerable interest to philosophers. In the fourth section, our focus changes from facts to hypotheses. In that section we explain how differences in philosophical intuition might be an important part of the explanation for the gender gap in philosophy. The fifth section is a brief conclusion. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have empirically challenged the connection between intuition and philosophical expertise. This paper reviews these challenges alongside other research findings in cognitive science on expert performance and argues for three claims. First, evidence taken to challenge philosophical expertise may also be explained by the well-researched failures and limitations of genuine expertise. Second, studying the failures and limitations of experts across many fields provides a promising research program upon which to base a new model of philosophical expertise. Third, a model (...) of philosophical expertise based on the limitations of genuine experts may suggest a series of constraints on the reliability of professional philosophical intuition. Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. — Bertrand Russell, On the Value of Scepticism. (shrink)

It is often thought that judgments about what we ought to do are limited by judgments about what we can do, or that “ought implies can.” We conducted eight experiments to test the link between a range of moral requirements and abilities in ordinary moral evaluations. Moral obligations were repeatedly attributed in tandem with inability, regardless of the type (Experiments 1–3), temporal duration (Experiment 5), or scope (Experiment 6) of inability. This pattern was consistently observed using a variety of moral (...) vocabulary to probe moral judgments and was insensitive to different levels of seriousness for the consequences of inaction (Experiment 4). Judgments about moral obligation were no different for individuals who can or cannot perform physical actions, and these judgments differed from evaluations of a non-moral obligation (Experiment 7). Together these results demonstrate that commonsense morality rejects the “ought implies can” principle for moral requirements, and that judgments about moral obligation are made independently of considerations about ability. By contrast, judgments of blame were highly sensitive to considerations about ability (Experiment 8), which suggests that commonsense morality might accept a “blame implies can” principle. (shrink)

We report two experiments exploring the perception of how contemporary philosophy is often conducted. We find that (1) participants associate philosophy with the practice of conducting thought experiments and collating intuitions about them, and (2) that this form of inquiry is viewed much less favourably than the typical form of inquiry in psychology: research conducted by teams using controlled experiments and observation. We also found (3) an effect whereby relying on intuition is viewed more favorably in the context of team (...) inquiry than in individual inquiry and (4) that greater prior exposure to philosophy lowered one’s opinion of inquiry driven by intuitions and thought experiments. Finally with respect to participant gender, we found that (5) women favored observation over intuition more than men did, and (6) tended to view a question pursued by a research team as more important than men viewed it. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the issue of the underrepresentation of women in philosophy by presenting an account regarding gender differences in philosophical institutions. It begins with an analysis of data on the gender gap in academic philosophy; followed by a discussion about the term “intuition,”as well as the tendency to appeal to intuitions during philosophical arguments. It then presents empirical data about gender differences derived from a series of experiments such as a Gettier-style case study of Christina Starmans and Ori Friedman, (...) a philosophical thought experiment of Geoffrey Holtzman, and one of David Pizarro about moral responsibility and causal deviance, among others; one hypothesis derived from these studies pertains to the distinct differences between women and mens' intuitions regarding philosophy, with the instructors deciding that the mens' are more correct. (shrink)

One recent trend in contemporary epistemology is to study the way in which the concept of knowledge is actually applied in everyday settings. This approach has inspired an exciting new spirit of collaboration between experimental philosophers and traditional epistemologists, who have begun using the techniques of the social sciences to investigate the factors that influence ordinary judgments about knowledge attribution. This paper provides an overview of some of the results these researchers have uncovered, suggesting that in addition to traditionally considered (...) factors like evidence and justification, a number of important non-truth-conducive factors play significant roles in determining when people ascribe knowledge. The present review focuses on four non-traditional factors: pragmatic load (in relation to contextualism and interest-relative invariantism), moral judgment, performance errors, and demographic variation. (shrink)

We accomplish three things in this paper. First, we provide evidence that the motivational internalism/externalism debate in moral psychology could be a false dichotomy born of ambiguity. Second, we provide further evidence for a crucial distinction between two different categories of belief in folk psychology: thick belief and thin belief. Third, we demonstrate how careful attention to deep features of folk psychology can help diagnose and defuse seemingly intractable philosophical disagreement in metaethics.

In disputes about the ontology of music, musical idealism—that is, the view that musical compositions are ideas—has proven to be rather unpopular. We argue that, once we have a better grip on the ontology of ideas, we can formulate a version of musical idealism that is not only defensible, but plausible and attractive. We conclude that compositions are a particular kind of idea: they are completed ideas for musical manifestation.

The ethical question is whether university mask mandates should be relaxed. I argue that the use of face masks by healthy individuals has uncertain benefits, which potential harms may outweigh, and should therefore be voluntary. Systematic reviews by the World Health Organization (WHO) and Cochrane Acute Respiratory Infections concluded that the use of face masks by healthy individuals in the community lacks effectiveness in reducing viral transmission based on moderate-quality evidence. The only two randomized controlled trials of face masks published (...) during the pandemic found little to no benefit. Without high-quality evidence, it is difficult to justify a requirement rather than a recommendation. Notwithstanding, one might argue that the precautionary principle justifies mask mandates. If the precautionary principle can justify implementing mask mandates due to the risk of forgoing possible benefit, then it might also be able to justify not implementing mask mandates due to the risk of potential harm caused by the intervention. It is commonly thought that there is little to lose from the use of face masks, but this is not necessarily true. It is possible that masks have done more harm than good. (shrink)

This is the general introduction to the edited collection "A companion to Experimental Philosophy".

O presente artigo buscará investigar como é possível uma espiritualidade sem Deus em Ferry e Sponville. Passando pelos humanismos renascentistas e iluministas, até a fase da desconstrução com Nietzsche, chegaremos numa terra devastada, sem quaisquer ídolos a se prostrar de joelhos. Em meio aos escombros da terra devastada ainda haveria um algo a se agarrar como profusão de uma experiência com o sagrado: o amor. Não mais um amor abstrato, mas um amor prático, do cotidiano, amor ao próximo, amor aos (...) familiares. (shrink)

O presente artigo busca aproximar Adorno de Nietzsche, não como a exaltar ressentimentos e picuinhas, mas como a dialogar aspectos da crítica de ambos a uma cultura igualitária formadora de uma humanidade decaída e violenta, além de dócil e pouco crítica. Como leitor de Nietzsche, Adorno acertou ao indicar os processos de nivelamento social promovidas pelas sociedades econômicas contemporâneas. Assim como sua racionalização instrumental que culminou na barbárie(1939-1945). Exporemos uma crítica que busque diminuir os esteriótipos dos autores aproximando mais, o (...) social, de Nietzsche, e o sujeito individual, de Adorno. No fim, tentaremos demonstrar como o conceito de solidariedade em Adorno não resolve melhor a questão ética, que a avaliação como valor para a construção de valores, sendo a proposição imoralista de Nietzsche, muito mais um recurso provocativo, que uma assertiva de caráter fundamental. (shrink)

O presente artigo pretende fazer uma defesa da matemática, em especial, da matemática pura. Partindo de problemas colocados por Kant no que concerne às condições de um pensamento puro a priori, seguindo por indagações promovidas por Leibniz no sentido da construção de uma linguagem artificial capaz de acessar de forma mais segura o mundo, e atormentados pela desconexão estrutural entre a linguagem humana natural e o mundo, elencada pelo debate da Filosofia da Linguagem promovida pela Tradição Analítica, se quis realizar (...) uma investigação no sentido de procurar um conhecimento que fosse essencialmente a priori. Apesar do projeto logicista de Frege, ainda não foi possível uma linguagem totalmente artificial que expressasse o mundo sem suas ambiguidades. Entretanto, pistas indicam que a matemática pura, que tem como substrato a lógica, é uma linguagem formal poderosamente capaz de construir axiomas. (shrink)

Research in experimental epistemology has revealed a great, yet unsolved mystery: why do ordinary evaluations of knowledge ascribing sentences involving stakes and error appear to diverge so systematically from the predictions professional epistemologists make about them? Two recent solutions to this mystery by Keith DeRose (2011) and N. Ángel Pinillos (2012) argue that these differences arise due to specific problems with the designs of past experimental studies. This paper presents two new experiments to directly test these responses. Results vindicate previous (...) findings by suggesting that (i) the solution to the mystery is not likely to be based on the empirical features these theorists identify, and (ii) that the salience of ascriber error continues to make the difference in folk ratings of third-person knowledge ascribing sentences. (shrink)

According to a prominent claim in recent epistemology, people are less likely to ascribe knowledge to a high stakes subject for whom the practical consequences of error are severe, than to a low stakes subject for whom the practical consequences of error are slight. We offer an opinionated "state of the art" on experimental research about the role of stakes in knowledge judgments. We draw on a first wave of empirical studies--due to Feltz & Zarpentine (2010), May et al (2010), (...) and Buckwalter (2010)--which cast doubt on folk stakes sensitivity, and a second wave of empirical studies--due to Pinillos (2012) and Sripada & Stanley (2012)--said to vindicate it, as well as new studies of our own. We conclude that the balance of evidence to date best supports Folk stakes insensitivity, or that all else equal, stakes do not affect knowledge ascription. (shrink)

Pedagogy is a pillar of human culture and society. Telling each other information and showing each other how to do things comes naturally to us. A strong case has been made that declarative knowledge is the norm of assertion, which is our primary way of telling others information. This article presents an analogous case for the hypothesis that procedural knowledge is the norm of instructional demonstration, which is a primary way of showing others how to do things. Knowledge is the (...) norm of telling and showing. It is the prime pedagogical principle. (shrink)

Many have argued we have a moral obligation to assist others in need, but given the scope of global suffering, how far does this obligation extend? According to one traditional philosophical view, the obligation to help others is limited by our ability to help them, or by the principle that “ought implies can”. This view is primarily defended on the grounds that it is a core principle of commonsense moral psychology. This paper reviews findings from experimental philosophy in cognitive science (...) demonstrating that “ought implies can” is rejected by moral psychology. Researchers find that moral obligations are ascribed to agents who cannot fulfill them, suggesting that moral requirements do sometimes extend beyond what we are able to do. This research furthers our understanding of moral obligation, identifies an important need for further cross-cultural work in moral psychology, and demonstrates a way in which scientific experimentation can be applied to improve upon the conceptual analysis of important philosophical concepts in normative ethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Central to the United Nations Framework setting out the human rights responsibilities of corporations proposed by John Ruggie is the principle that corporations have a responsibility to respect human rights in their operations whether or not doing so is required by law and whether or not human rights laws are actively enforced. Ruggie proposes that corporations should respect this principle in their strategic management and day-to-day operations for reasons of corporate (enlightened) self-interest. This paper identifies this as a serious weakness (...) and argues that identifying the responsibility to respect human rights as an explicitly ethical obligation to be respected for that reason would provide a much stronger justificatory foundation for respecting the principle seen from a corporate perspective, given that corporations are accountable to their shareholders for their deployment of the firm’s financial resources. (shrink)

Wesley Salmon is renowned for his seminal contributions to the philosophy of science. He has powerfully and permanently shaped discussion of such issues as lawlike and probabilistic explanation and the interrelation of explanatory notions to causal notions. This unique volume brings together twenty-six of his essays on subjects related to causality and explanation, written over the period 1971-1995. Six of the essays have never been published before and many others have only appeared in obscure venues. The volume includes a (...) section of accessible introductory pieces, as well as more advanced and technical pieces, and will make essential work in the philosophy of science readily available to both scholars and students. (shrink)

Recent theories of epistemic contextualism have challenged traditional invariantist positions in epistemology by claiming that the truth conditions of knowledge attributions fluctuate between conversational contexts. Contextualists often garner support for this view by appealing to folk intuitions regarding ordinary knowledge practices. Proposed is an experiment designed to test the descriptive conditions upon which these types of contextualist defenses rely. In the cases tested, the folk pattern of knowledge attribution runs contrary to what contextualism predicts. While preliminary, these data inspire prima (...) facie skepticism for the contextualist hypothesis regarding folk knowledge claims, as well as challenge certain predictions made by recent theories of subject-sensitive invariantism. It is further argued that such results raise methodological questions concerning the practice of relying on an assumption of intuitions, with respect to ordinary language practices, as evidence for philosophical conclusions regarding knowledge. (shrink)

Through his S–R model of statistical relevance, Wesley Salmon offers a solution to the scientific explanation of objectively improbable events.

Not since Ernest Nagel’s 1939 monograph on the theory of probability has there been a comprehensive elementary survey of the philosophical problems of probablity and induction. This is an authoritative and up-to-date treatment of the subject, and yet it is relatively brief and nontechnical. Hume’s skeptical arguments regarding the justification of induction are taken as a point of departure, and a variety of traditional and contemporary ways of dealing with this problem are considered. The author then sets forth his own (...) criteria of adequacy for interpretations of probability. Utilizing these criteria he analyzes contemporary theories of probability, as well as the older classical and subjective interpretations. (shrink)

We give a new Esakia-style duality for the category of Sugihara monoids based on the Davey-Werner natural duality for lattices with involution, and use this duality to greatly simplify a construction due to Galatos-Raftery of Sugihara monoids from certain enrichments of their negative cones. Our method of obtaining this simplification is to transport the functors of the Galatos-Raftery construction across our duality, obtaining a vastly more transparent presentation on duals. Because our duality extends Dunn's relational semantics for the logic R-mingle (...) to a categorical equivalence, this also explains the Dunn semantics and its relationship with the more usual Routley-Meyer semantics for relevant logics. (shrink)

A central theoretical motivation for epistemic contextualism is that it can explain something that invariantism cannot. Specifically, contextualism claims that judgments about “knowledge” are sensitive to the salience of error possibilities and that this is explained by the fact that salience shifts the evidential standard required to truthfully say someone “knows” something when those possibilities are made salient. This paper presents evidence that undermines this theoretical motivation for epistemic contextualism. Specifically, it demonstrates that while error salience does sometimes impact “knowledge” (...) judgments as contextualism predicts, it does so in ways that are consistent with invariantism and does not require positing any additional contextualist semantics to explain. These results advance our understanding of the pathways by which error possibility affects “knowledge” judgments, answer a major challenge to invariantism, and suggest several methodological improvements for the study of knowledge attribution. (shrink)

Epistemic contextualism is the theory that “knows” is a context sensitive expression. As a linguistic theory, epistemic contextualism is motivated by claims about the linguistic behavior of competent speakers. This chapter reviews evidence in experimental cognitive science for epistemic contextualism in linguistic behavior. This research demonstrates that although some observations that are consistent with epistemic contextualism can be confirmed in linguistic practices, these observations are also equally well explained both by psychological features that do not provide support for contextualism and (...) by rival theories that are inconsistent with contextualism. I conclude that the motivation for epistemic contextualism is underdetermined by existing experimental evidence, yielding little reason to accept it as an account of our actual linguistic practices. (shrink)

The term “Gettier Case” is a technical term frequently applied to a wide array of thought experiments in contemporary epistemology. What do these cases have in common? It is said that they all involve a justified true belief which, intuitively, is not knowledge, due to a form of luck called “Gettiering.” While this very broad characterization suffices for some purposes, it masks radical diversity. We argue that the extent of this diversity merits abandoning the notion of a “Gettier case” in (...) a favour of more finely grained terminology. We propose such terminology, and use it to effectively sort the myriad Gettier cases from the theoretical literature in a way that charts deep fault lines in ordinary judgments about knowledge. (shrink)

The overcoming of man in the beyond of man is glimpsed in Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, from Memoirs of the Underground and its philosophical translation Genealogia da Moral, to The Idiot and the considerations of The Antichrist. The child reverberates a trait of overcoming resentment, incorporating, philosophically literarily, a deal with life intensified with lightness and vigor, completely ready, without pretensions beyond the world or professions of faith. The beatitude of Jesus takes shape when his childishness as surrender to the present (...) embodies his redemption as attachment and love to men. Love as a practice of forgiveness is only possible when resentment is no longer the most active mark of life. (shrink)

the present article intends to outline feuerbach's humanism in his the essence of christianity in dialogue with the nietzschean notion of the death of god. for it is with the death of god and the fall of all idols that it is possible to glimpse god, not as the absolute transcendent, but as a human creation, all too human. a projection of the self into a safe and magnanimous outside, anchorage of all human desires, from magical and miraculous powers to (...) the rapture of body and soul in a sanctifying and eternal peace. as god, man works the miracle of existing in the comforting fantasy of a supreme being, nothing more than himself. (shrink)

Drawing from Goffman’s original observations on stigma and the consequences of interactions between the stigmatized and supportive or stigmatizing audiences, we conduct a 20-year review of the diverse literature on stigma to revisit the collective nature of stigmatization processes. We find that studies on stigma’s origins, responses, processes, and outcomes have diverged from Goffman’s relational view of stigma as they have overlooked important relational mechanisms explaining the processes of (de)stigmatization. We draw from those conclusions to justify the need to study (...) stigma as a collective phenomenon. We develop a relational perspective on stigma based on understanding how attributes are stigmatized (or not) by audiences in their interactions. We argue that to advance stigma research, it is necessary to build on Goffman’s theory to include the stigmatizers (i.e., the normal) and supporters (i.e., the wise); how they create, sustain, or remove stigma; and how they relate to the stigmatized (i.e., the targets). Accordingly, we provide a research agenda on stigma as a collective phenomenon that theorizes a relational perspective, proposes a typology of how audiences relate to stigmatization, and identifies patterns of relations between audiences. We thus offer a missing piece to existing accounts of stigma by focusing on the key role of audiences (i.e., stigmatizers or supporters of the stigmatized) rather than on the targets of stigma (i.e., the own). (shrink)

This study focuses on the practice of punishment, as it is inflicted by the state. The author's first-hand experience with penal reform, combined with philosophical reflection, has led him to develop a theory of punishment that identifies the principles of sentencing and corrections on which modern correctional systems should be built. This new theory of punishment is built on the view that the central function of the law is to reduce the need to use force in the resolution of disputes. (...) Professor Cragg argues that the proper role of sentencing and sentence administration is to sustain public confidence in the capacity of the law to fulfil that function. Sentencing and corrections should therefore be guided by principles of restorative justice. He points out that, although punishment may be an inevitable concomitant of law enforcement in general and sentencing in particular, inflicting punishment is not a legitimate objective of criminal justice. The strength and appeal of this account is that it moves well beyond the boundaries of conventional discussions. It examines punishment within the framework of policing and adjudication, analyses the relationship between punishment and sentencing, and provides a basis for evaluating correctional practices and such developments as electronic monitoring. (shrink)