This new essay collection by distinguished philosopher Margaret Gilbert provides a richly textured argument for the importance of joint commitment in our personal and public lives. Topics covered by this diverse range of essays range from marital love to patriotism, from promissory obligation to the unity of the European Union.

One of the most distinguished living social philosophers, Margaret Gilbert develops and extends her application of plural subject theory of human sociality, first introduced in her earlier works On Social Facts and Living Together. Sociality and Responsibility presents an extended discussion of her proposal that joint commitments inherently involve obligations and rights, proposing, in effect, a new theory of obligations and rights. In addition, it demonstrates the extensive range and fruitfulness of plural subject theory by presenting accounts of social (...) rules, scientific change, political obligation, collective remorse, collective guilt, shared intention and an important class of rights and obligations. (shrink)

What is it for a group to believe something? A summative account assumes that for a group to believe that p most members of the group must believe that p. Accounts of this type are commonly proposed in interpretation of everyday ascriptions of beliefs to groups. I argue that a nonsummative account corresponds better to our unexamined understanding of such ascriptions. In particular I propose what I refer to as the joint acceptance model of group belief. I argue that group (...) beliefs according to the joint acceptance model are important phenomena whose aetiology and development require investigation. There is an analogous phenomenon of social or group preference, which social choice theory tends to ignore. (shrink)

The moral expertise of clinical ethicists is not a question of mastering codelike theories and lawlike principles. Rather, ethicists are architects of moral space within the health care setting, as well as mediators in the conversations taking place within that space.

This book is about the methods used for unifying different scientific theories under one all-embracing theory. The process has characterized much of the history of science and is prominent in contemporary physics; the search for a 'theory of everything' involves the same attempt at unification. Margaret Morrison argues that, contrary to popular philosophical views, unification and explanation often have little to do with each other. The mechanisms that facilitate unification are not those that enable us to explain how or (...) why phenomena behave as they do. A feature of this book is an account of many case studies of theory unification in nineteenth- and twentieth-century physics and of how evolution by natural selection and Mendelian genetics were unified into what we now term evolutionary genetics. (shrink)

This paper argues for a methodological point that bears on a relatively long-standing debate concerning collective beliefs in the sense elaborated by Margaret Gilbert: are they cases of belief or rather of acceptance? It is argued that epistemological accounts and distinctions developed in individual epistemology on the basis of considering the individual case are not necessarily applicable to the collective case or, more generally, uncritically to be adopted in collective epistemology.

The underdetermination of scientific theory choice by evidence is a familiar but multifaceted concept in the philosophy of science. I answer two pressing questions about underdetermination: “What is underdetermination?” and “Why should we care about underdetermination?” To answer the first question, I provide a general definition of underdetermination, identify four forms of underdetermination, and discuss major criticisms of each form. To answer the second question, I then survey two common uses of underdetermination in broader arguments against scientific realism and in (...) support of the use of values in scientific theory choice. I conclude that philosophers should also care about underdetermination because it impacts scientists in their practice. (shrink)

This article will compare and contrast two very different accounts of convention: the game-theoretical account of Lewis in Convention, and the account initially proposed by Margaret Gilbert (the present author) in chapter six of On Social Facts, and further elaborated here. Gilbert’s account is not a variant of Lewis’s. It was arrived at in part as the result of a detailed critique of Lewis’s account in relation to a central everyday concept of a social convention. An account of convention (...) need not be judged by that standard. Perhaps it reveals the nature of an important phenomenon. Looked at in that light, these very different accounts are not incompatible. Indeed, neither should be ignored if one is seeking to understand the way in which human beings arrive at some degree of social order. (shrink)

Forgiveness and Retribution: Responding to Wrongdoing argues that ultimately, forgiveness is always the appropriate response to wrongdoing. In recent decades, many philosophers have claimed that unless certain conditions are met, we should resent those who have wronged us personally and that criminal offenders deserve to be punished. Conversely, Margaret Holmgren posits that we should forgive those who have ill-treated us, but only after working through a process of addressing the wrong. Holmgren then reflects on the kinds of laws and (...) social practices a properly forgiving society would adopt. (shrink)

Many contexts shape and limit moral thinking in philosophy and life. Human conditions of vulnerability and interdependency, of limited awareness and control, of imperfect insight into ourselves and others are inevitable contexts that neither moral thought nor theory should forget. To be truly reflective, moral thinking and moral philosophy must become aware of the contexts that bind our thinking about how to live. This collection of essays by Margaret Urban Walker seek to show how to do this, and why (...) it makes a difference. Contingent and changeable contexts that shape moral thinking include our individual histories, our social positions, and institutional roles, relationships, cultural settings, and social arrangements, and the specific moral idioms we pick up along the way. The paradigms and specialized language of ethical theory are contexts, too; they shape how moral theory looks and what or whom it looks at. Ethical theory and practice are meaningless without these Moral Contexts. (shrink)

A number of authors, Including Thomas Schelling and David Lewis, have envisaged a model of the generation of action in coordination problems in which salience plays a crucial role. Empirical studies suggest that human subjects are likely to try for the salient combination of actions, a tendency leading to fortunate results. Does rationality dictate that one aim at the salient combination? Some have thought so, Thus proclaiming that salience is all that is needed to resolve coordination problems for agents who (...) are rational in the sense of game theory. I argue against this position; rational agents will not necessarily aim for the salient. It remains to explain how the salient comes to be chosen by human beings. Various possibilities are noted. One involves a mechanism invoked by Hume and Wittgenstein in other contexts: we may project an unreasoned compulsion onto reason, falsely believing that rationality dictates our choice of the salient. (shrink)

This chapter is concerned with moral arguments about membership in a national community, focusing on David Miller's On Nationality and Tom Hurka's article ‘The Justification of National Partiality’. It examines the bonds of attachment that co‐nationals feel towards those who share the same national identity, and the moral importance that should be placed on that.

For those open to the possibility that philosophical thought can improve life, David Hume's Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary have something to say. In the first comprehensive study of the Essays, Margaret Watkins engages closely with these neglected texts and shows how they provide important insights into Hume's perspective on the breadth and depth of human life, arguing that the Essays reveal his continued commitment to philosophy as a discipline that can promote both social and individual progress. Addressing topics (...) such as politics, war, slavery, the priesthood, the development of industry, aesthetics, emotional disorders, egoism, friendship, sexuality, gender relations, and the nature of philosophy itself, the volume examines Hume's purposes and aims against the backdrop of the eighteenth century society in which he lived. It will be of interest to scholars of modern thought in philosophy, politics, history, and economics. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr has criticised the methodology of population genetics for being essentialist: interested only in “types” as opposed to individuals. In fact, he goes so far as to claim that “he who does not understand the uniqueness of individuals is unable to understand the working of natural selection” (1982, 47). This is a strong claim indeed especially since many responsible for the development of population genetics (especially Fisher, Haldane, and Wright) were avid Darwinians. In order to unravel this apparent incompatibility (...) I want to examine the possible sources and implications of essentialism in this context and show why the kind of mathematical analysis found in Fisher's work is better seen as responsible for extending the theory of natural selection to a broader context rather than inhibiting its applicability. (shrink)

This chapter examines one of the most serious problems with the principle of self‐determination, viz., that this concept does not tell us who the peoples are that are entitled to self‐determination or the jurisdictional unit that they are entitled. It examines indigenous, historical, superior culture, and occupancy arguments for rights to a particular territory and suggests normative principles for thinking about jurisdictional units.

"Most modern legal theorists seek to limit their enquiries to a particular sort of law, on the assumption that law is necessarily restricted in its interactions with other social practices. margaret Davies deliberately - and provocatively - questions the usefulness of such 'positivist' dogmas, asserting that the law can and should be seen as multi-dimensional. Davies argues that the law is everywhere - in metaphysics, the social environment, language and the psyche. In a persuasive meeting of postmodern discourse, deconstruction, (...) feminism and legal theory, Davies creates new ways of thinking about the law by creating links with other practices and disciplines where none previously existed. This is a powerful critique of the ideology and theory of law in the West, providing a much-needed link between conventional legal philosophy and modern movements in legal theory." --From back cover. (shrink)

This book explores society’s problems with interpersonal communication amid increasingly technological environments. The author argues that the work of Gabriel Marcel reveals the root of our issues with communication to be issues with being with others, ultimately suggesting that seeking communion is a way to bridge our disconnections.

Some very persuasive arguments have been put forward in recent years in support of the disunity of science. Despite this, one is forced to acknowledge that unification, especially the practice of unifying theories, remains a crucial aspect of scientific practice. I explore specific aspects of this tension by examining the nature of theory unification and how it is achieved in the case of the electroweak theory. I claim that because the process of unifying theories is largely dependent on particular kinds (...) of mathematical structures it is possible to have a theory that displays a degree of unity at the level of theoretical structure without an accompanying ontological unity or reduction. As a result, unity and disunity can coexist not only within science but within the same theory. (shrink)

Governments in New Zealand have legislated a large number of settlements extinguishing many hundreds of claims taken by Māori against the Crown for breaches of the country’s founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. They portray settlements as a great success for Māori and the Crown. Māori disagree. Settlements are government-determined and imposed on Māori using a smoke and mirrors approach that masks successive governments’ true intentions: to claw back Māori legal rights; to extinguish all claims; and to maintain White control (...) over Māori. In short, to uphold the Doctrine of Discovery in further breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Māori claimants and negotiators report being enticed into the process by false promises only to become traumatised and disenchanted. Yet many take a pragmatic stance and sign settlements, making the best they can out of a bad deal that goes nowhere near compensating for their actual loss. They know that despite what legislation may say, the settlements are not full, not fair and not final and that, like all previous settlements, they will be revisited. They also know that unless fundamental changes are made to the constitutional makeup of the country, there is no prospect of justice and reconciliation for Māori. (shrink)

In this interview, Margaret A. Simons describes her path to philosophy and existentialism, her struggles in the male-dominated field in the 1960s and 1970s, and her political activism in the civil rights and women’s liberation movements. She also discusses her encounters with Simone de Beauvoir and Beauvoir’s refusal to own her philosophical originality, suggesting that Beauvoir may have adopted a more conventional narrative of a female intellectual to circumvent the public’s resistance to her radical ideas in the 1950s.

In a 1998 book, the psychologist Virginia Valian asked the question of her title, Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women (Valian 1998). This question has become perennial specifically within the profession of philosophy, where the advancement, or just the representation, of women seems a bit worse than slow. While the past decades have seen advances in our numbers within professional philosophy, in recent years we seem to be stuck.

This concise anthology collects important historical and contemporary readings on the central ethical theories, including Divine Command Theory, Consequentialism, Deontology, Virtue Ethics, and Feminist Ethics. Each section includes two or three of the most important contributions to the field, together with brief introductions from the editors. This new third edition offers expanded coverage of meta-ethics through the addition of thought-provoking readings from Susan Wolf, Gilbert Harman, and others. The number of selections from women authors has also increased.

This essay argues that feminist ethics offers a model of moral philosophy that is enriched by empirical information and critical thought about actual social and moral forms of life and their distributions of authority, privilege and power. Feminist ethics is committed to revealing the ways that these social realities affect both moral philosophy and ethical thinking. Through analysis of a series of diverse examples of claims in contemporary moral philosophy, I illustrate the pitfalls of failing to test philosophical generalizations about (...) moral thinking and moral recognition in light of the realities of human social life and the pervasive presence of social hierarchies that shape moral attitudes as well as social interactions. In conclusion, I argue briefly for a non-ideal, nonfoundationalist, reflexively critical, and naturalized approach to philosophical theory in ethics and to everyday moral thinking. (shrink)

CITATION: Horn, L. M. 2015. Promoting responsible research conduct in a developing world academic context. South African Journal of Bioethics and Law, 6:21-24, doi:10.7196/SAJBL.256.

Interest in philosophical anthropology in the early twelfth century was limited to the logical question of how to think and speak about dead humans. This question was prompted by the logic of living and dead humans based on the doctrine of substance found in Aristotle’s Categories and in the division of substance, as outlined by Porphyry to exemplify the logic of genus and species relations in the Isagoge. Abelard held the view that there is no such thing as a dead (...) human, and this provoked an intense response from his contemporaries. Abelard’s contemporaries, including Alberic of Paris and other anonymous authors, mounted a number of arguments against Abelard’s views. The stakes were high for them: as realists about species and genera, Abelard’s denial that there are dead humans threatened their entire interpretation of the structure of species and genera, and thereby their theory of universals. (shrink)

This book addresses one of the most urgent questions in American society today, one that is currently in the spotlight and hotly debated on all sides: Who shall rule the schools--parents or educators? _School Choice or Best Systems: What Improves Education?_ presents an overview of research and practical applications of innovative--even radical--school reforms being implemented across the United States. These fall along a continuum ranging from "parental choice" to "best systems." At the one extreme are schools of choice, which allow (...) parents to choose and even govern schools for their children. These include charter schools, traditional private and parochial schools, schools that are privately governed but publicly funded through vouchers, and those that are funded by private scholarships provided by both corporations and wealthy individuals. At the other extreme are centralized state or district systems, based on reform initiatives and new systems of education that have been developed in response to views of citizens and legislators that schools can do much better. These schools, which specify uniform goals, policies, and programs for each school, are highly innovative systems based on research or representing advanced thinking about "what works," and have attracted wide interest. Important questions related to schools of choice and best systems are addressed: How can we choose among schools of choice and best systems? Among the various approaches within each of these alternatives? How can we understand their guiding principles and operational practices? What results do they produce? How can we evaluate their claims? In choosing among the alternatives, how should issues of student achievement, accountability, costs, feasibility, and equity be factored in? This volume brings together leading researchers and education leaders who have carried out the latest studies and advances in the field, providing a forum for them to set forth the arguments and evidence that will be most helpful in making choices for tomorrow's schools. It does not provide a single "right" answer--values and preferences differ across parents, schools, districts, and states. However, there are benefits for all from seeing the rigorous research, challenging thinking, and alternate points of view this volume presents. (shrink)

This article outlines the two central theories in the ethics of secession and examines whether or under what conditions these normative theories would be satisfied in a post-invasion Iraq.

The goal of this pilot study is to investigate expressions of the collective disquiet of people in the first months of Covid-19 pandemic, and to try to understand how they manage covert risk, especially with religion and magic. Four co-authors living in early hot spots of the pandemic speculate on the roles of science, religion, and magic, in the latest global catastrophe. They delve into the consolidation that should be occurring worldwide because of a common, viral enemy, but find little (...) evidence for it. They draw parallels to biblical works, finding evidence of a connection between plague and “social strife.” They explore changes in the purviews of science, religion, and magic, and how and why they have changed, as three systems of covert risk management. They speculate on the coming wave of grief when the world populations finally decide that too many people have died, and they envision cultural changes on the other side of the pandemic, to lifestyles, travel, reverse urbanization, and living and working in smaller communities. Using an unusual approach named “crowd-sourced ethnography”, they conduct un-traditional ethnography and speculate on management of covert risk in their native countries. (shrink)

The paper analyses the interrelationship between Armstrong’s egalitarian theory and his treatment of the ‘attachment theory’ of resources, which is the dominant rival theory of resources that his theory is pitched against. On Armstrong’s theory, egalitarianism operates as a default position, from which special claims would need to be justified, but he also claims to be able to incorporate 'attachment' into his theory. The general question explored in the paper is the extent to which ‘attachment’ claims can be ‘married’ to (...) an egalitarian theory. The more specific argument is that a properly constrained attachment theory is more plausible than Armstrong’s egalitarian theory. It also criticizes attachment and improvement accounts as justifying permanent sovereignty over resources. The paper argues that neither of those arguments aim to justify the international doctrine of permanent sovereignty. (shrink)

This chapter examines arguments that link national community with a particular type of culture, and then links culture with something that is valued. Versions of this argument have been put forward by Tamir, Miller, Kymlicka, MacCormick, Margalit, and Raz. This chapter argues that it is important to distinguish between a culture and national identity.

This chapter summarizes the central argument of the book, and emphasizes the practical need for a theory of territory, as conflict over land is likely to increase. It also argues that conflict is exacerbated by the lack of consensus on the normative importance of land and the appropriate relationship between land, the state and people.

This chapter examines the dominant conception of self‐determination in the decolonization period, and in much international law and practice, according to which self‐determination occurs within existing administrative units and there is civic integration within that territory. This chapter argues that this conception of self‐determination is only appropriate in a limited range of cases.

This paper is interested in place-related attachments. It discusses the way in which territory or land is treated in theories of global distributive justice, and argues that this fails to capture the normatively significant relationship between peoples and places. This paper argues that any adequate theory of justice in territory has to begin by recognizing that territory is a claimant-relative good, and that this should be an important point of departure for theorizing about land and justice. Not only do the (...) current theories of distributive justice fail to acknowledge the claimant-relative nature of territory, but they do not offer a good way to incorporate place-related attachments in their theories. (shrink)

This chapter examines Will Kymlicka's argument in Liberalism, Community and Culture and Joseph Raz's argument in The Morality of Freedom, both of which justify liberal political principles in terms of a conception of the good life as embodying autonomy.

In his recent book Foundations of Space-Time Theories Michael Friedman argues for a realism about theoretical structure based on specific methodological practices concerning theory unification. Theoretical structures that are essential to the unifying process are to be given a literal realistic interpretation while the remaining ones can be considered as having merely representational status. Friedman’s account of unification involves the notion of a literal reduction or identification of observational properties of entities or objects with their theoretical counterparts. The relationship between (...) these two levels of theory can be construed as that of submodel to model. Once the appropriate reductions are achieved we are then free to conjoin certain theoretical structures with others thereby enabling us, over time, to produce a unified theory encompassing a variety of domains.The alternative to this view Friedman describes as the representationalist approach. Instead of characterizing the relationship between observational and theoretical structures as that of submodel to model the observational properties are simply correlated by way of an embedding (as opposed to an identity) map with their appropriate theoretical counterparts. (shrink)

This article discusses the place of sedation in the care of the terminally ill, as used in the practice of palliative care using case studies, clinical pragmatism forms the theoretical framework from which to elucidate the varying part that sedation plays in the overall management of a person facing the end of life. We contend that when used appropriately, sedation is an ethical and legitimate intervention that enhances comfort at the end of life and ought not sedate the person onto (...) “oblivion”. (shrink)

During the COVID-19 epidemic, the name of the 19th-century English physician John Snow (1813-1858) has cropped up to a surprising extent, notably in connection with the severe cholera epidemic of 1854 in the district of Golden Square, London. It is repeatedly stated that Snow brought this epidemic of waterborne disease to an end by removing the handle of the Broad Street pump. It is also widely known that this story is a myth. Nonetheless, the Broad Street pump story as told (...) by Snow's close friend Benjamin Ward Richardson remains embedded, partly, it is argued, because of its appeal to areas of the cultural consciousness. In America, Snow and his work on the epidemiology of cholera, including the Broad Street pump story, achieved a serious status which has endured, in one form or another, to the present day. In contrast to Britain, the heroic age of public health in America coincided with the optimism of the bacteriological revolution and higher hopes for medical science. However, this rapidly changing environment exacerbated differences of opinion as to what the small and emergent specialty of epidemiology should look like, what its project was, and where it should be based. Different versions of Snow's persona came to represent basic and often conflicting conceptions of epidemiology and the status (or lack of it) of its practitioners. For many, consciously or otherwise, the removal of the Broad Street pump handle remained an individualistic triumph, a single human intervention which resembled modern medicine in providing a “cure.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Change of Perspective in Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.11-23Margaret Worsham MusgroveIn the first of the trojan stories which dominate Metamorphoses books 12 and 13, Ovid recounts a well-known Homeric episode, the omen of the snake at Aulis; a snake climbs into a tree and eats a nestful of eight baby birds plus their mother. According to Calchas' interpretation, this omen symbolized the nine years the Greeks would besiege Troy before taking (...) it in the tenth, and is recalled for the despairing Greek army by Odysseus at Iliad 2.299-329. Ovid's version follows the Homeric story closely, with several verbal parallels. But readers of the Metamorphoses may also see another intertext, the second book of Vergil's Aeneid, Aeneas' account of the fall of Troy, the same event to which the omen looks forward.1 By playing on his readers' knowledge of the Aeneid, Ovid introduces a competing voice into his version, while ostensibly retaining the familiar Homeric story. The present paper will discuss how this intertext is activated to influence our reading of Ovid's "Iliad."2That Ovid's readers might hear Vergilian echoes in a reference to the fall of Troy should not be unexpected. In Vergil's Aeneid, the Trojan War and its aftermath had been transformed into a Trojan experience, seen through Trojan eyes. In the Iliadic section of Ovid's post-Vergilian epic, Ovid must balance his Greek-centered stories, told in greatly condensed form, with the expectations of his Roman readers. By alluding to [End Page 267] the other side of the war, Ovid is able to restore some of the layers of complexity which his brevity has removed from his Greek models, and to remind his readers of the problematic nature of victory and conquest, as Vergil had done. In the process, Ovid shows himself to be an extremely close reader of both Homer and Vergil; his use of the two of them together in this episode can even help elucidate the relationship between his two great epic predecessors.Ovid and HomerOvid's account of the omen nearly parallels Odysseus' speech in Homer; Ovid is more compact, but agrees with Homer in many respects. The visual perspective of both passages is emphatically Greek. In Homer, the story is told by an eyewitness, Odysseus, who reminds the Greek army that they had all observed the omen:(Iliad 2.301-2)Ovid, although telling the story in his own, or "first-level," narrative voice, notes that "the Greeks saw" the omen: Danai videre (Met. 12.13). In both scenes, the snake appears suddenly at a sacrifice and creeps into a plane-tree near the altar.(Iliad 2.305-10)hic patrio de more Iovi cum sacra parassent, ut vetus accensis incanduit ignibus ara, serpere caeruleum Danai videre draconem in platanum, coeptis quae stabat proxima sacris.(Met. 12.11-14)Ovid's specification that the sacrifice was being made to Jupiter illustrates an efficient technique of condensation. Although Homer says the sacrifice was generally "to the immortals" (athanatoisi, Iliad 2.306), the snake was sent by Zeus, who is also credited with its metamorphosis [End Page 268] (Iliad 2.309, 318). The presence of Zeus is necessary for the prophetic function of the snake, in Kirk's words (1985, ad Iliad 2.307-18), "since only he could determine or recognize in advance the outcome of the war." Ovid allows time for only one mention of a divinity in this scene, but includes the one deity crucial to the Homeric episode.3 When Ovid introduces the birds, every element of his sentence can be paralleled in Homer's lines:(Iliad 2.311-13)nidus erat volucrum bis quattuor arbore summa(Met. 12.15)Both Homer and Ovid place the verb "be" near the beginning of the line, followed by words for the birds themselves; both note the birds' location (the top of the tree) and number (eight, for the moment). Thus Ovid sets the stage for the portent.4But we should also consider the Homeric details which Ovid omits. First, he omits Homer's pathetic details of the birds and of their mother.(Iliad 2.314-17)Homer's... (shrink)

The issue of genetic discrimination has attracted growing attention and has been the focus of a recent major Australian inquiry. It is, however, a complex and loaded notion, open to interpretation. This paper explores the concept of genetic discrimination in both its theoretical and practical dimensions. It examines its conceptual underpinnings, how it is understood, and how this understanding fits within the legal framework of disability discrimination. The paper also examines the phenomenon in practice, including the ‘fear factor’ and the (...) resulting implications for the development of regulatory policy. The paper argues that we need to be discerning in our interpretation of this term, and differentiate between discriminatory conduct which is legal and illegal. Further, it is argued that a concerted societal response to the ‘problem’ of genetic discrimination is needed involving targeted legal reforms as well as broader non-legal strategies. (shrink)

Popkin analyzes the role of international actors, notably the United States and the United Nations, and the contributions and limitations of international assistance in efforts to establish accountability and reform the justice system in El Salvador. The author discusses the essential role of civil society in attempts to establish accountability and an effective justice system for all, and looks at the reasons for and the consequences of the limited role played by Salvadorean civil society. She also addresses the challenges facing (...) democratic reform efforts in the context of a postwar crime wave. _Peace Without Justice_ grew out of Margaret Popkin’s extensive experience working as a human rights advocate in El Salvador during the armed conflict and interviews with a variety of Salvadorans and others involved in justice reform and in negotiating and implementing the peace accords. (shrink)

The international community has yet to develop a broadly accepted philosophical rationale for the extraterritorial adjudication of war crimes. Instead, several justifications exist in a state of tension that produces uncertainties in the applicable legal doctrines and policies. This article explains how the competition between the “atrocities” approach on the one hand, and the statist and humanitarian rationales on the other, causes instability in the regime. It advocates for increased attention to the philosophical grounding of extraterritorial war crimes trials, particularly (...) in light of the increasing frequency of such trials before international courts as well as national courts exercising universal jurisdiction. (shrink)

This discussion responds to a collection of papers that relate in one way or another to the author’s work in the philosophy of social phenomena. It focuses on those passages that deal most directly with that work. After making some general points that respond to remarks in several of the papers, it turns to the individual papers. The subjects discussed include coordination, conversation, collective beliefs and emotions, joint commitment, obligations and rights, patriotism, promises, the pronoun “we”, and what it is (...) to tell someone something. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 407 [Access article in PDF] Reply By Margaret J. Osler and Richard A. Watson In his comments on our historiographical Notes in the October 2002 issue of JHP, A. P. Martinich misrepresents our position by erroneously claiming that we presume a sharp dichotomy between the analytic history of philosophy and the historical history of philosophy. Neither of us accepts such (...) a premise. Once that misreading is eliminated there are few disagreements between each of us and Martinich.We agree that any meaningful history of philosophy must be both philosophically sophisticated and historically grounded. History without philosophy would be nothing but chronicle; history of philosophy without historical context would describe a series of moves, but explain nothing. A desideratum of both history and philosophy is careful reading, exposition, and analysis of texts.... (shrink)