According to Joseph Heath, privatizations should be judged on a case-by-case basis with appeal to the Pareto criterion. This approach, or so I argue, amounts to a depoliticization of privatization. While Heath’s approach is effective and at times illuminating, I show that a consistent application of his methodology is self-defeating in that it eventually requires a politicization of privatization. With appeal to transaction cost theory, I show there are social costs associated with affirming the competitive pressures of the market. (...) Subsequently, I argue that while private actors may, according to Heath, pursue efficiency with appeal to an adversarial morality, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are much more constrained in how they may achieve such gains. Due to the pressures of liberal neutrality, SOEs may chase efficiency only without setting actors back. Conversely, the private sector’s potential for success is predicated on its ability to compete for Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, which specifically allows for win-lose interactions. While SOEs are often no more able than the private sector to achieve Pareto optima, this discrepancy makes it so that SOEs produce gains that are ex-ante lower but more equal, whereas the private sector produces gains that are ex-ante higher but more unequal. Thus, the social cost of affirming the competitive pressures of the market is ex-ante inequality. If this premise is accepted, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that a consistent case-by-case approach requires a structural, political view on how privatizations affect the state’s ex-post Pareto-enhancing abilities. (shrink)

Cost-benefit analysis —understood as a technique for evaluating governmental policies in light of individual well-being—rests upon a preference view of welfare. A policy’s effect on a given individual is measured, on a money scale, with reference to her preferences as between money and other goods, captured in her “utility” function. This chapter describes the methodology of CBA, and discusses the various conditions on individual preferences that are required for the existence of an individual utility function, for the use of money (...) as a scale for measuring policy effects, and for a nexus between an individual’s preference-satisfaction and her well-being. The chapter then turns to the topic of interpersonal welfare comparisons. Although CBA is often defended with reference to the criterion of Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, which eschews such comparisons, a more plausible defense embraces them and sees CBA as an approximation to a social welfare function. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and CharacterIvan A. BoldyrevMark D. White. Kantian Ethics and Economics: Autonomy, Dignity, and Character. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 270. Cloth, $55.00.This remarkable book provides a new ethical perspective for economics based on Kantian ethics of autonomy and dignity. There are two main messages in it that I find particularly important. First, Mark White derives from Kant the (...) idea of irreducible moral principles that govern the behavior of economic agents independently of welfarist and, more generally, consequentialist concerns. These principles of duty and the “incomparable worth” (21) of human dignity, as well as justice or rights, may not be economically traded off against some other motivations; hence, they simply evade economic reasoning altogether.Second, White endorses a version of libertarian Kantianism that treats people as individuals in essence (“autonomous”) and social in orientation (respecting the rights and the choices of the others). In discussing individualism, White attacks the conventional wisdom of economics and claims that preferences alone do not account for the identity of individuals [End Page 298] in space and time, although their unique characters do. Persons should be given free choice (absent in deterministic rational-choice models) and hence responsibility for their choices that incorporates the social factors in decision-making. However, White never mentions the almost insurmountable difficulties associated with fleshing out the truly individual features of a given person. Although he allows for a person’s identity and character changing over time, he does not recognize that character itself is in many respects a social construction.White criticizes paternalistic economic policies that suggest manipulating choice environments in order to follow the “true” preferences of the individuals. Instead, real consent, as satisfying both relevant preferences and principles (e.g. rights and human dignity), is, in his view, the sole criterion for justifying particular policy measures—not Pareto-efficiency or Kaldor-Hicks compensation. Economists’ obsession with efficiency leading to the misconceived notions such as “efficient level of crime” or “manageable level of terrorism” is also severely criticized.For White, the most popular formalistic version of the categorical imperative is less important than the other two—prohibiting treating other people simply as means and instituting the “Kingdom of Ends.” Formalism is reserved merely for the negative evaluation of actions and providing strict perfect duties that give clear guidance concerning what should not be done. White’s “Kantian-economic” model of decision-making incorporates perfect duties as constraints, and imperfect (positive) duties as preferences. He also stresses that for Kant, duties derived from the imperative depend on empirical knowledge, the context of decision-making, and judgment as a unique personal interpretation of the moral law. He further emphasizes the intersubjective role of Kantian morality: moral law should be universalizable to all rational persons (the “Kingdom of Ends” formula of the imperative), whereas rationality means not just following the patterns of behavior developed in the preference-oriented choice model, but rather acting on one’s beliefs and desires or choosing not to follow them, thus exhibiting genuine autonomy.The new and important contribution to the discussion is an explicit treatment of will as an inner faculty that, together with judgment, constitutes a person’s character or “self,” and helps to overcome the mere inclination to follow duty. Will is the missing link between decision and action and should be “well-trained” for bringing about true morality.The book is clearly written, and the author has upheld the interdisciplinary appeal of the topic, demonstrating an outstanding knowledge of the vast literature on ethics (both Kantian and not) and economics. White’s emphasis on the irreducibility of moral principles is absolutely relevant for current economic and political debates. However, some reservations are in order.There is an ambiguity concerning the status of his analysis. If in its positive aspect White’s recommendations for economists is to accept the Kantian vision of morality, then almost no arguments are given for this, and his modifications of the standard choice model are introduced in an ad hoc manner, just to reconcile it with the Kantian framework. Are an individual’s decisions to act on principles and to overcome mere inclinations really... (shrink)

This paper shows that implicit assumptions about the numeraire good in the Kaldor-Hicks efficiency-equity analysis involve a "same-yardstick" fallacy (a fallacy pointed out by Paul Samuelson in another context). These results have negative implications for cost-benefit analysis, the wealth-maximization approach to law and economics, and other parts of applied welfare economics--as well as for the whole vision of economics based on the "production and distribution of social wealth.".

Humean accounts of laws of nature fail to distinguish between dynamic laws and static initial conditions. But this distinction plays a central role in scientific theorizing and explanation. I motivate the claim that this distinction should matter for the Humean, and show that current views lack the resources to explain it. I then develop a regularity theory that captures this distinction. My view takes empirical accessibility to be one of the primary features of laws, and I identify features laws must (...) have to be empirically accessible. I then argue that laws with these features tend to be dynamic. _1_ The Best System _1.1_ Orthodox Humeanism _2_ The Best Is Not Good Enough _2.1_ Laws and boundary conditions _2.2_ Laws and scientific practice _2.3_ An illustrative example _3_ Laws and Epistemic Roles _3.1_ The epistemic criterion _3.2_ The epistemic role account _3.3_ Scientific virtues _3.4_ Applying the epistemic role account _4_ Conclusion. (shrink)

Moriarty argues that the Market Failures Approach to business ethics is inapplicable to “real world” problems, because it treats “market failure” as a failure to achieve Pareto efficiency. Depending upon how it is applied, Pareto efficiency is either trivially easy to satisfy or else so demanding that no real-world market could ever satisfy it. In this Commentary, I argue that Moriarty overstates these difficulties. The regulatory structure governing markets is best understood as an attempt to maximize the number of Pareto-improving (...) exchanges that occur. There is no reason to think business self-regulation cannot be guided by the same normative-conceptual framework. (shrink)

The tension between equity and excellence is fundamental in science policy. This tension might appear to be resolved through the use of merit-based evaluation as a criterion for research funding. This is not the case. Merit-based decision making alone is insufficient because of inequality aversion, a fundamental tendency of people to avoid extremely unequal distributions. The distribution of performance in science is extremely unequal, and no decision maker with the power to establish a distribution of public money would dare (...) to match the level of inequality in research performance. We argue that decision makers who increase concentration of resources because they accept that research resources should be distributed according to merit probably implement less inequality than would be justified by differences in research performance. Here we show that the consequences are likely to be suppression of incentives for the very best scientists. The consequences for the performance of a national research system may be substantial. Decision makers are unaware of the issue, as they operate with distributional assumptions of normality that guide our everyday intuitions. (shrink)

This paper is a reply to D'Costa's article ("Religious Studies," 32, pp. 223-32) in which he argues that there is no such position as religious pluralism because in distinguishing between, e.g., Christianity or Buddhism, and Nazism or the Jim Jones cult, a criterion is involved and to use a criterion is a form of exclusivism. In reply I point out that this sense of 'exclusivism', as consisting in the use of criteria, is self-destructive; that the pluralistic hypothesis, as (...) a meta-theory about the religions, has a different logical status from the creeds of the historical religions; and I also show the origin of the ethnical criterion used by the religious pluralist who stands within one or other of the great world faiths. (shrink)

Reincarnation has not been entirely neglected in the philosophy of religion but it has not always been taken seriously or carefully discussed in relation to its role in believers’ lives. John Hick is exceptional insofar as he gave sustained attention to the belief, at least as it features in the philosophies of Vedānta and Buddhism. While acknowledging the value of Hick’s recognition of the variety of reincarnation beliefs, this article critically engages with certain aspects of his approach. It argues that (...) Hick’s search for a ‘criterion’ of reincarnation is misguided, and that his distinction between ‘factual’ and ‘mythic’ forms of the doctrine is over-simplifying. (shrink)

Scholars have long debated the appropriate balance between efficiency and redistribution. But recently, a wave of critics has argued not only that efficiency is less important, but that efficiency analysis itself is fundamentally flawed. Some say that efficiency is incoherent because there is no neutral baseline from which to judge inefficiency. Others say that efficiency is biased toward those best able to pay (generally, the rich). This essay contends that efficiency is not meaningfully incoherent or biased. The most widely discussed (...) forms of efficiency do not require any particular baseline, and even those that do require a baseline can still serve as useful approximations of more theoretically sound but computationally demanding measures. Moreover, arguments of bias do not account for the source of funds in public projects, produce unintuitive results, and draw an arbitrary cutoff between bias and non-bias that elides important distributional details. Ultimately, the tradeoff between efficiency and redistribution remains the most useful frame for policy debate. (shrink)

The economic analysis of law has gone through a remarkable change in the past decade and a half. The founding articles of the discipline – such classic pieces as Ronald Coase's “The problem of social cost”, Richard Posner's “A theory of negligence” and Guido Calabresi and Douglas Malamed's “Property rules, liability rules, and inalienability: One view of the cathedral” – offered economic analyses of familiar aspects of the common law, seeking to explain, in particular, fundamental features of the law of (...) tort in terms of such economic ideas as transaction costs, Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, or minimizing the sum of the accident costs and avoidance costs. In each case, they argued that the law of torts should be understood as a set of liability rules selected for their incentive effects, rather than as a set of substantive rights and remedies for their violation. These authors claimed to be able to explain most of the features of tort law and, where features were found that did not fit with their preferred explanations, recommended modification. Although they disagreed on important questions, each of the pieces seems to work a manageable structure into what strikes first-year law students as an otherwise random morass of common-law judgments. Generations of legal academics were introduced to these works, and drawn into their way of looking at things. As a student studying first-year torts with Calabresi at Yale, I had the sense that I was in the presence of greatness. (shrink)

How should we make interpersonal comparisons of well-being levels and differences? One branch of welfare economics eschews such comparisons, which are seen as impossible or unknowable; normative evaluation is based upon criteria such as Pareto or Kaldor-Hicks efficiency that require no interpersonal comparability. A different branch of welfare economics, for example optimal tax theory, uses “social welfare functions” to compare social states and governmental policies. Interpersonally comparable utility numbers provide the input for SWFs. But this scholarly tradition has (...) never adequately explained the basis for these numbers. John Harsanyi, in his work on so-called “extended preferences,” advanced a fruitful idea. While an ordinary preference is a ranking of outcomes, an “extended preference” is a ranking of individual histories. To say that individual k has an extended preference for history over means something like the following: k prefers to have the attributes of individual i in outcome x, as opposed to having the attributes of individual j in outcome y. Harsanyi’s proposal was to endow individuals with “extended preferences”; to represent such preferences using “extended” utility functions; and to employ such functions, in turn, as the basis for interpersonal comparisons of well-being levels and differences. Harsanyi’s analysis, however, had various gaps and flaws. In this Article, I both diagnose these difficulties, and show how they can be remedied - yielding a viable account of interpersonal comparisons, one sufficient for the needs of the SWF approach. (shrink)

Faculty of Law and Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto 1. INTRODUCTION The economic analysis of law has gone through a remarkable change in the past decade and a half. The founding articles of the discipline – such classic pieces as Ronald Coase’s “The problem of social cost” (1960), Richard Posner’s “A theory of negligence” (1972) and Guido Calabresi and Douglas Malamed’s “Property rules, liability rules, and inalienability: One view of the cathedral” (1972) – offered economic analyses of familiar aspects (...) of the common law, seeking to explain, in particular, fundamental features of the law of tort in terms of such economic ideas as transaction costs (Coase), Kaldor-Hicks efficiency (Posner), or minimizing the sum of the accident costs and avoidance costs (Calabresi and Malamed). In each case, they argued that the law of torts should be understood as a set of liability rules selected for their incentive effects, rather than as a set of substantive rights and remedies for their violation. These authors claimed to be able to explain most of the features of tort law and, where features were found that did not fit with their preferred explanations, recommended modification. Although they disagreed on important questions,1 each of the pieces seems to work a manageable structure into what strikes first-year law students as an otherwise random morass of common-law judgments. Generations of legal academics were introduced to these works, and drawn into their way of looking at things. As a student studying first-year torts with Calabresi at Yale, I had the sense that I was in the presence of greatness. (shrink)

-/- This unique book develops an operational approach to preference and rationality as the author employs operators over binary relations to capture the concept of rationality. -/- A preference is a basis of individual behavior and social judgment and is mathematically regarded as a binary relation on the set of alternatives. Traditionally, an individual/social preference is assumed to satisfy completeness and transitivity. However, each of the two conditions is often considered to be too demanding; and then, weaker rationality conditions are (...) introduced by researchers. This book argues that the preference rationality conditions can be captured mathematically by “operators,” which are mappings from the set of operators to itself. This operational approach nests traditional concepts in individual/social decision theory and clarifies the underlying formal structure of preference rationality. -/- The author also applies his approach to welfare economics. The core problem of ‘new welfare economics,’ developed by Kaldor, Hicks, and Samuelson, is the rationality of social preference. In this book the author translates the social criteria proposed by those three economists into operational forms, which provide new insights into welfare economics extending beyond ‘new welfare economics.’ . (shrink)

We offer a concise introduction to the methodology of order-ethics and highlight how it connects aspects of economic theory and, in particular, game theory with traditional ethical considerations. The discussion is conducted along the lines of five basic propositions, which are used to characterize the methodological approach of order ethics.

The standard allocative efficiency criteria used by economists (Pareto efficiency and Kaldor-Hicks efficiency) are fundamentally unable to rank a slave-labor system against a free-labor system. Given either set of initial property rights assignments the market can reach (or fail to reach) allocative efficiency (that is, allocate resources to their highest-valued uses), but welfare economics provides no meta-framework for ranking initial assignments. This finding underscores the limits to the usefulness of efficiency criteria: they cannot settle all questions, and unfortunately (...) are least decisive just where the stakes are greatest (namely, where wealth effects of alternative assignments are greatest). Explicitly ethical criteria are needed to make the ranking. Key Words: Pareto efficiency • Kaldor-Hicks efficiency • property rights • welfare economics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What I s Regulation? How Should We Morally Evaluate Regulation? Welfarism; the Pareto Principle; Kaldor‐Hicks Efficiency versus Social Welfare Functions The Two Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics and the Market Failure Framework Externalities Public Goods and Monopoly Power The Coase Theorem Information and Paternalism as Rationales for Regulation Regulatory Forms and Regulatory Choice Criteria References.

The purpose of the paper is a discussion of the meaning and relevance of the Pareto principle in economics. To begin with, the principle is briefly retraced in Pareto’s own writings. Its contemporary meaning was, however, developed in the context of the “New Welfare Economics”. While Pareto technically employed the principle in order to describe an equilibrium situation, Kaldor and Hicks developed it somewhat differently as a yardstick for economic policy formulation. Sometimes, the principle is also discussed as (...) a decision rule, and in this context some critics - though not the present author - believe it to have a conservative bias. Finally, recent discussions center around the incompatibility of the Pareto principle and “liberal” values. This conflict might be of limited relevance, only, due to a misconstrued formalism. (shrink)

The ethics of belief involves an inquiry into what beliefs are legitimate to hold, including religious beliefs. Whatever the criteria determined in such an investigation, adopting a belief that does not meet this criterion is seen as illegitimate and it is considered an ethical violation. English mathematician W. K. Clifford (d. 1879) defines “sufficient evidence” as a criterion in his famous essay, “The Ethics of Belief”. Clifford’s evidence-centered argument becomes one of the most frequent references in the evidentialist (...) objection against theism. It turns out that this argument is not functional in the face of the diversity of beliefs. In this context, different suggestions are presented about what the ethics of belief could be. American philosopher William James (d. 1810), one of the founding names of pragmatism, offers a new proposal. In his classic work, “The Will to Believe”, James claims that Clifford is wrong in seeking the requirement of evidence for all beliefs. Because it is not possible to prove beliefs from the passionate nature of human beings, especially religious beliefs. Following this distinction, James proposes a new criterion for religious beliefs: a religious belief can be vivid or dead, forced or avoidable; and momentous or trivial. If a religious belief is vivid, forced, and momentous, it is necessary to have the courage to believe in it instead of suspending it. James' proposal is often valued as a strong counter-challenge or defense of religious beliefs. However, this argument also has aspects that are open to criticism. One of them is that the will to believe argument concurrently accepts conflicting religious beliefs or, in other words, confronts the issue of religious diversity. According to J. Hick, for example, this argument inevitably results in religious pluralism, even though James does not want to. Contrary to Hick, S. F. Aikin claims that the will to believe does not result in religious pluralism. According to Aikin, who draws attention to the relationship of argument with pragmatism, James obscures religious beliefs and removes them from being claims about truth. Therefore, there is no contradiction in the classical sense. So, which of the objections is valid? Does the will-to-believe argument result in religious pluralism by legitimizing more than one religious belief at the same time, or does it make a purely pragmatic proposition by devaluing religious beliefs? Which religion do I have the right to believe in according to the will to believe? The aim of this article is to provide an answer to the mentioned question. In the article, unlike the current evaluations, it is argued that the argument is closely related to James's theory of knowledge, radical empiricism, not pragmatism as it is usually made. For this purpose, after showing the relationship between the arguments of Clifford and James, the argument will be re-examined in this context and it will be revealed that James has two steps regarding religious beliefs: to make religious beliefs independent from factual beliefs; leaving theism to accept a monistic vision of God and basing religion on mystical experience, which is an emotional experience. As details emerge, it will become clear that James defends a natural religion that excludes traditional religions in his philosophical system and that he defends the beliefs of a humanized religion. With an individual definition of religion based on emotion, James on the one hand ensures the commonality of religious feeling, on the other hand, he makes religion independent from the field of facts. Therefore, with this study, it will be seen that the argument of the will to believe does not aim to legitimize believing in traditional religions, and diversity is not a fundamental problem. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Standards and Assumptions, the Limits of Inclusion, and Pluralism in PsychiatryBennett Knox*, MA (bio)Let me begin by expressing my gratitude to AAPP, PPP, and the Jaspers Award Committee—I am deeply honored to receive this award. So too let me thank Anke Bueter (2022) and Awais Aftab (2022) for their thought-provoking commentaries. Many of the concerns they bring up are ones that I share, so I am delighted to have (...) a chance to discuss them in my response. I will bring up three central issues in turn: 1) the role of shared standards versus background assumptions, 2) the limits of inclusion, and 3) pluralism in psychiatry.Shared Standards or Background Assumptions?Both Bueter and Aftab reference Longino's "shared public standards" criterion for social objectivity (1990, p. 77; 2002, p. 130), which I did not explicitly discuss in the original paper (Knox, 2022). This was a choice I made partly because in the case of psychiatry determining what constitutes an appropriate "shared public standard" is often not at all straightforward, which points to a potential problem for Longino's view. Namely, in some cases it is a matter of dispute whether some assumption shared within a scientific field should be counted as a "shared public standard" (which Longino requires that there be) or a "background assumption" (which she requires be subjected to critical scrutiny). And it is sometimes unclear how we could effectively adjudicate this type of disagreement.Take the example Bueter uses of "psychiatrists aiming for biomedical explanations of a particular mental disorder, whereas the critics value research that does not assume the existence of mental disorders" (2022, p. 273). A conflict along these lines often does arise between advocates of the pathology paradigm and the neurodiversity paradigm with regard to Autism, for example.1 A psychiatrist working within the pathology paradigm may argue that something like "psychiatry must deal only with mental disorders, understood as pathologies" constitutes a shared standard, and so psychiatric research on Autism must understand it as a pathology. An advocate of the neurodiversity paradigm, however, might argue that this same proposition [End Page 275] is merely a normative background assumption shared among many psychiatrists, which ought to be questioned and ultimately rejected. How might we adjudicate this meta-disagreement about the status of this standard/assumption?Bueter gives some helpful guidance on this issue by pointing to Carrier's requirement that participants exhibit the "epistemic attitude" (2013). I agree that if all participants commit themselves to this attitude, then "…differences in conceptual resources and standards of assessment need not make shared deliberation impossible, and the standards can be a subject of discussion themselves" (Bueter 2022, p. 273). For instance, since this attitude requires some commitment to empirical adequacy, we might search for some empirical evidence that favors one paradigm over the other. But advocates of both paradigms might actually agree on all the empirical facts, and yet still have a deep disagreement about which paradigm's understanding should be accepted as a shared standard. If participants are committed to some common standards and goals, we may often be able to resolve this sort of problem. But there is still a danger that we may arrive at an impasse, with no clear idea how to proceed.Though in many cases scientific experts must be allowed some power to set the standards in their domain (lest we dilute that expertise in ways that Aftab rightly points out would be problematic), I would also caution against accepting that something is a legitimate shared public standard just because the members of a scientific community say so. In keeping with the spirit of Longino's reliance on Quine, none of our shared standards are in principle immune from revision—save perhaps a minimal commitment to empirical evidence and rational argument.The Limits of InclusionMy impression is that Longino's response to the "Nazi problem" presented by Hicks (2011) might be to bite the bullet: her account does require allowing Nazi scientists to participate, and perhaps even cultivating their participation. But if (as seems likely) the Nazi shows themself to be unable to adhere to the shared standards... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Acceptance of the Other as a Similarly Valid Path and Awareness of One's Self-Culpability:A Deepening Realization of My Religious Identity through DialogueKenneth K. TanakaAs the title of my paper indicates, two features of my identity have become more vivid as the result of my participation in the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter (IBCTE) sessions. The first of the two stemmed from my rude awakening that not everyone involved with our (...) sessions accepted the assumption that the other was a similarly valid soteriological path.In one of our sessions a few years back, the discussion moved to a topic of the nature of "ultimate path," which, as it turned out, began to raise some extremely sensitive issues. An unusually tense atmosphere hung over the discussion table, a rare turn of events for our usually jovial dialogue group composed mostly of liberal-minded members. One of the Christian members gave voice to her fundamental view that Jesus was the sole path through which one can be saved. It was clearly what anyone would regard as an exclusivist position. In asking for further clarification, she reiterated her view that her Christian faith necessitated that she took that position, and that I as a Buddhist was, therefore, not included in that soteriological scheme. I responded to her that I understood that I would not be in her scheme since I was not Christian, but would I nevertheless be saved? After some hesitation, in so many words, she replied that I would not be! Had she been a member of a more conservative group, it would have been easier to accept that kind of a response, but coming from an academic with liberal leanings, her comments caught me off guard. But on the other hand, I appreciated her honesty in being true to her understanding of the tradition, for it seemed to me that it was not an easy thing for her to say.This short encounter has been etched firmly in my mind and, ironically, remains for me the most memorable moment among all of the IBCTE sessions attended. I did not pursue the matter further at that time (aside from the fact that time had run [End Page 41] out for that particular session), since I was aware that such an exclusive position (as distinguished from those of inclusivism and pluralism) was common among Christians. I just happened to have encountered it in a rather unexpected circumstance and was not prepared with a comeback.This encounter forced me to inquire about my own position concerning the salvation of people other than Buddhists. Would I regard her as not being saved? After some probing and reflection on my part, I can say with little hesitation that I would never be able to say, "no, you are not." I have no basis on which to refute what her time-tested tradition promises. I am not in a position to negate the claims of her tradition or to question the sincerity of her commitment. From my Buddhist perspective there is no universal criterion on which to make judgments about others. My personal view on this issue has been similar to John Hick's pluralism position, but without his insistence that all paths reflect and lead to the same truth.Perhaps, my view reflects a prevailing, modern or postmodern understanding of Shinran (1173–1262), the founder of my tradition (Jodo-Shinshu), who is often portrayed as an extremely liberal thinker as seen in the following words attributed to him from the Tannisho (emphasis added):Now, whether you accept the Nembutsu, entrusting yourself to it, or reject it, that is your own decision.These rather well-known passages reinforce the image of Shinran, particularly in the Jodo-Shinshu community in the United States, as an accommodating and tolerant thinker.However, the picture is a little more complex, for I am also aware that Shinran held what I refer to as an "exceptionalist" view. Based largely on his historical belief that with the arrival of Mappo, the Last Period of the Dharma, there were no other teachings appropriate for the age of spiritual decadence. While he was tolerant of others, thereby allowing even his... (shrink)

I begin by querying whether ‘post-axial’ religions are cosmically optimistic, though what John Hick has in mind is forms of religious beliefs that affirm that there is life after physical death, and the possibility of final fulfilment for all. Hick accepts that ideas of this fulfilment, the ultimate goal of human striving, conflict. I query whether diverse traditions would accept that ‘the Real’ is wholly beyond their conceptions of it, and that their conception is no more authentic than the conceptions (...) held by other traditions. I reject soteriology as a criterion of choice between religions, as the criterion is either presently unverifiable or fails to pick out religions in a distinctive way. I suggest that ethics depends on ontology, or on basic views of human nature, and that Hick actually agrees with this, and in fact holds a personalist view of the metaphysical ground of ethics. This view allows various religions to apprehend aspects of ‘the Real’, but does not allow that all are more or less equally authentic. It is thus pluralistic but not totally egalitarian, though it is also not committed to the view that one tradition is wholly correct. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 130-132 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Faith Among Faiths: Christian Theology and Non-Christian Religions Faith Among Faiths: Christian Theology and Non-Christian Religions. By James L. Fredericks. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1999. 188 pp. "The time has come to recognize that the debate between exclusivists, inclusivists, and pluralists has reached an impasse."This is the starting point and refrain of Faith Among Faiths. While James (...) Fredericks discerns questions and problems relating to all three models for Christian theological attitudes toward religious pluralism, it is predominantly the pluralist approach that he takes to task. In the first part of this slender volume, he offers a summary of some of the main proponents of the pluralist theology of religion. The ideas of John Hick and Paul Knitter are given separate treatment in a chapter on each, with two "other pluralist voices"--Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Stanley Samartha--also discussed at some length. In order to assess the adequacy of these theologies, Fredericks tests them against two important criteria: [End Page 130] responsibility to the Christian tradition as it has articulated itself, and ability to respond creatively to the challenges and opportunities posed by religious plurality today. Regarding the first criterion, most pluralist theologies are shown to fall short of recognizing the full humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ and hence in some measure to break from continuity with Christian faith. In a useful reminder, Fredericks rightly points to the similarities between pluralist Christologies and the nineteenth-century liberal Protestant views of Jesus, and then joins Pannenberg in criticizing this theocentric understanding of Jesus as unbiblical. At the same time, Fredericks attempts to head off the possible charge that he moves toward biblicism or traditionalism by stating that "the traditional teaching about the divinity and the humanity of Jesus is traditional because of the spiritual and ethical implications that flow from it" (p. 124). The evident importance of this assertion makes it regrettable that he does not elaborate or explain it further.Most of Fredericks's criticism of the pluralist approach is based on his second criterion, i.e., the need to take seriously the manifest similarities and differences between religions and, in turn, promote a genuinely fruitful dialogue. From this perspective, the problem with pluralism would be its "domestication of differences" between the religions. When a pluralist such as John Hick proposes that all religions are reflections of the same ultimate reality and that all religious paths lead to the same ultimate goal, Fredericks thus sees a tendency to undermine the importance of religious differences and of the self-understanding of other religions. While this may indeed be a danger lurking in an abstract conception of the pluralist position, I do not believe that it is a necessary or inherent consequence of it. The basic distinction that most pluralists make between the "ultimate reality" itself, which is absolutely transcendent, and the historical manifestations of this "ultimate reality" does not necessarily reduce the different religions to equally adequate or inadequate manifestations of that ultimate reality. On the plane of phenomenal reality, there is still room for a hierarchy of truths and, inter alia, the possibility of growing in one's understanding of truth through dialogue with other religions. There is, moreover, ample evidence of this in the fact that some of the aforementioned pluralists have also written very detailed works on other religions (e.g., Cantwell Smith on Islam) or on particular aspects of other religions (Hick on conceptions of death and the afterlife in world religions). As we have seen in the case with the Buddhist notion of upaya,he recognition of the relative nature of all conditioned reality does not necessarily lead to a relativism in which all differences become insignificant.After criticizing the different pluralist approaches to the theology of religions, Fredericks proposes a shift to comparative theology. He seems to see comparative theology not so much as a new paradigm or orientation within the theology of religions but as a radical alternative to the whole enterprise of the theology of religions... (shrink)

From Yorkshire schoolboy to philosopher and theologian of International renown, John Hick tells his life story in this warm and absorbing autobiography. Painting a vivid picture of Twentieth-century soceity, from 1950s America to racial tensions in England and in apartheid-era South Africa, he recounts the events that have shaped his life, including his early conversion to evangelical Christianity, his role as a conscientious objector in the Second World War, and his gradual often controversial- move towards a religious pluralism embracing all (...) the world faiths. This thoughtful reflection on the changing face of religion and insight into one man's spiritual and intellectual journey will appeal to any concerned with the great human questions, from belief in the Transcendent, to the role of faith, and the nature of death and beyond. (shrink)

The Lancet–O’Neill Institute/Georgetown University Commission on Global Health and Law published its report on the Legal Determinants of Health in 2019. The term ‘legal determinants of health’ draws attention to the power of law to influence upstream social and economic influences on population health. In this article, we introduce the Commission, including its background and rationale, set out its methodology, summarize its key findings and recommendations and reflect on its impact since publication. We also look to the future, making suggestions (...) as to how the global health community can make the best use of the Commission’s momentum in relation to using law and legal tools to advance population health. (shrink)

This a response to D. Z. Phillips's stringent critique of theodicies, including that suggested by myself. I offer counters to his array of arguments, and point to what I see as a fundamental flaw in his philosophy of religion. He appealed to religious language as used by ordinary religious persons. But his account of the meaning of this language was not that of the ordinary religious believer. He thus claimed, by implication, to know better than they did what they really (...) meant. I conclude that he was a non-realist concerning both religious language and the reality of God. (shrink)

Humeans are often accused of positing laws which fail to explain or are involved in explanatory circularity. Here, I will argue that these arguments are confused, but not because of anything to do with Humeanism: rather, they rest on false assumptions about causal explanation. I’ll show how these arguments can be neatly sidestepped if one takes on two plausible commitments which are motivated independently of Humeanism: first, that laws don’t directly feature in scientific explanation and second, the view that explanation (...) is contrastive. After outlining and motivating these views, I show how they bear on explanation-based arguments against Humeanism. (shrink)

A fascinating collection of essays by leading scholars in the field engage with the idea of religious pluralism mooted by John Hick to offer incisive insights on religious pluralism and related themes and to address practical aspects such as interreligious spirituality and worship in a multi-faith context.

In this article, I describe, first, why the American view of the war they were fighting is better described as up-dated 'old war', then I analyse the reality on the ground as a 'new war', and, in the last section, I describe the possibilities for an alternative strategy to reduce the risks posed both to the Iraqi population and to the wider international community, first by Saddam Hussein before the war, and later by the 'new war' itself.

In this paper, I argue that the fetishism objection to moral hedging fails. The objection rests on a reasons-responsiveness account of moral worth, according to which an action has moral worth only if the agent is responsive to moral reasons. However, by adopting a plausible theory of non-ideal moral reasons, one can endorse a reasons-responsiveness account of moral worth while maintaining that moral hedging is sometimes an appropriate response to moral uncertainty. Thus, the theory of moral worth upon which the (...) fetishism objection relies does not, in fact, support that objection. (shrink)

The controversy over the old ideal of “value-free science” has cooled significantly over the past decade. Many philosophers of science now agree that even ethical and political values may play a substantial role in all aspects of scientific inquiry. Consequently, in the last few years, work in science and values has become more specific: Which values may influence science, and in which ways? Or, how do we distinguish illegitimate from illegitimate kinds of influence? In this paper, I argue that this (...) problem requires philosophers of science to take a new direction. I present two case studies in the influence of values on scientific inquiry: feminist values in archaeology and commercial values in pharmaceutical research. I offer a preliminary assessment of these cases, that the influence of values was legitimate in the feminist case, but not in the pharmaceutical case. I then turn to three major approaches to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate influences of values, including the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values and Heather Douglas’ distinction between direct and indirect roles for values. I argue that none of these three approaches gives an adequate analysis of the two cases. In the concluding section, I briefly sketch my own approach, which draws more heavily on ethics than the others, and is more promising as a solution to the current problem. This is the new direction in which I think science and values should move. (shrink)

In this article 1 I have two theological interests and a less direct philosophical one.

Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit in the sense explored by Frankfurt (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005): the models are in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs. We (...) distinguish two ways in which the models can be said to be bullshitters, and argue that they clearly meet at least one of these definitions. We further argue that describing AI misrepresentations as bullshit is both a more useful and more accurate way of predicting and discussing the behaviour of these systems. (shrink)

A central question in the philosophy of science is: What is a law of nature? Different answers to this question define an important schism: Humeans, in the wake of David Hume, hold that the laws of nature are nothing over and above what actually happens and reject irreducible facts about natural modality (Lewis, 1983, 1994; cf. Miller, 2015). According to Non-Humeans, by contrast, the laws are metaphysically fundamental (Maudlin, 2007) or grounded in primitive modal structures, such as dispositional essences of (...) powerful properties (Bird, 2007), necessitation relations (Armstrong, 1983), or primitive subjunctive facts (Lange, 2009). This volume focuses on recent developments in the discussion of Humeanism, specifically on pragmatic versions of the view that put the needs of limited agents like us front and center. (shrink)

Humeans are often accused of accounting for natural laws in such a way that the fundamental entities that are supposed to explain the laws circle back and explain themselves. Loewer (2012) contends this is only the appearance of circularity. When it comes to the laws of nature, the Humean posits two kinds of explanation: metaphysical and scientific. The circle is then cut because the kind of explanation the laws provide for the fundamental entities is distinct from the kind of explanation (...) the entities provide for the laws. Lange (2013) has replied that Loewer’s defense is a distinction without a difference. As Lange sees it, Humeanism still produces a circular explanation because scientific explanations are transmitted across metaphysical explanations. We disagree that metaphysical explanation is such a ready conduit of scientific explanation. In what follows, we clear Humeanism of all charges of circularity by exploring how different kinds of explanation can and cannot interact. Our defense of Humeanism begins by presenting the circularity objection and detailing how it relies on an implausible principle about the transitivity of explanation. Then, we turn to Lange’s (2013) transitivity principle for explanation to argue that it fairs no better. With objections neutral to the debate between Humeanism and anti-Humeanism, we will show that his principle is not able to make the circularity objection sound. (shrink)

Hicks' edition of the De Anima contains valuable commentary from Hicks as well as useful summaries of the views of earlier commentators.

These lectures contain a masterful summing-up of Nicholas Kaldor's critique of the foundations of mainstream economic theory. They provide a clear account of his theoretical structures on regional differences, primary producers and manufacturers, and on differing market structures and the likely course of prices and quantities in different markets over time. The first four lectures are concerned with theory, history and explanation; the fifth consists of a detailed set of integrated policy proposals. The book is rounded off with a (...) brilliant biographical essay by Tony Thirlwall. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars's "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" begins with an argument against sense-datum epistemology. There is some question about the validity of this attack, stemming in part from the assumption that Sellars is concerned with epistemic foundationalism. This paper recontextualizes Sellars's argument in two ways: by showing how the argument of EPM relates to Sellars's 1940s work, which does not concern foundationalism at all; and by considering the view of H.H. Price, Sellars's teacher at Oxford and the only classical (...) datum theorist to receive substantive comment in EPM. Timm Triplett has claimed that Sellars's discussion simply begs the question against Price, but this depends on the mistaken assumption that Sellars's concern is with foundationalism. On the contrary, Sellars's argument concerns the assumption that the innate capacity for sensory experience counts as "thinking in presence" in the way needed for empiricist accounts of content acquisition. Price's distinction between noticing universals and being aware of them encapsulates the tensions empiricists face here. (shrink)

In 2010, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of two different biomedical strategies to prevent HIV infection had positive findings. However, despite ongoing very high levels of HIV infection in some countries and population groups, it has been made clear by regulatory authorities that the evidence remains insufficient to support either product being made available outside of research contexts in the developing world for at least two years. In addition, prevention trials in endemic areas will continue to test new interventions against placebo. (...) But the judgments of evidentiary standards are never value-neutral. Using the recent trials and their contexts as case studies, we examine the basis for these decisions, which will potentially delay access to scientific innovation to the people who are most urgently in need of it. (shrink)

Standard accounts of counterfactuals with metaphysically impossible antecedents take them to by trivially true. But recent work shows that nontrivial countermetaphysicals are frequently appealed to in scientific modeling and are indispensable for a number of metaphysical projects. I focus on three recent discussions of counterpossible counterfactuals, which apply counterpossibles in both scientific and metaphysical modeling. I show that a sufficiently developed modal counterpart theory can provide a semantics for a wide range of counterpossibles without any inconsistent possibilities or other forms (...) of impossible worlds. But such a view faces problems: in order for the metaphysical views I discuss to bear weight, there must be a significant difference between the metaphysical possibilities and impossibilities. I will show how the counterpart-theoretic view delineates the possible from impossible, while still making room for the impossible. (shrink)

Is the Bible the unembellished Word of God or the product of human agency? There are different answers to that question. And they lie at the heart of this book's powerful exploration of the fraught ways in which money, race and power shape the story of Christianity in American public life. The authors' subject is the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC: arguably the latest example of a long line of white evangelical institutions aiming to amplify and promote a (...) religious, political, and moral agenda of their own. In their careful and compelling investigation, Jill Hicks-Keeton and Cavan Concannon disclose the ways in which the Museum's exhibits reinforce a particularized and partial interpretation of the Bible's meaning. Bringing to light the Museum's implicit messaging about scriptural provenance and audience, the authors reveal how the MOTB produces a version of the Bible that in essence authorizes a certain sort of white evangelical privilege; promotes a view of history aligned with that same evangelical aspiration; and above all protects a cohort of white evangelicals from critique. They show too how the Museum collapses vital conceptual distinctions between its own conservative vision of the Bible and 'The Bible' as a cultural icon. This revelatory volume above all confirms that scripture – for all the claims made for it that it speaks only divine truth – can in the end never be separated from human politics. (shrink)

Morally speaking, what should one do when one is morally uncertain? Call this the Moral Uncertainty Question. In this paper, I argue that a non-ideal moral theory provides the best answer to the Moral Uncertainty Question. I begin by arguing for a strong ought-implies-can principle---morally ought implies agentially can---and use that principle to clarify the structure of a compelling non-ideal moral theory. I then describe the ways in which one's moral uncertainty affects one's moral prescriptions: moral uncertainty constrains the set (...) of moral prescriptions one is subject to, and at the same time generates new non-ideal moral reasons for action. I end by surveying the problems that plague alternative answers to the Moral Uncertainty Question, and show that my preferred answer avoids most of those problems. (shrink)