Harris’ reply to our defence of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence’s (NICE) current cost-effectiveness procedures contains two further errors. First, he wrongly draws a conclusion from the fact that NICE does not and cannot evaluate all possible uses of healthcare resources at any one time and generally cannot know which National Health Service (NHS) activities would be displaced or which groups of patients would have to forgo health benefits: the inference is that no estimate is or can be made (...) by NICE of the benefits to be forgone. This is a non-sequitur. Second, he asserts that it is a flaw at the heart of the use of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) as an outcome measure that comparisons between people need to be made. Such comparisons do indeed have to be made, but this is not a consequence of the choice of any particular outcome measure, be it the QALY or anything else. (shrink)

A principal theme of our article is that emotions, including what are called basic emotions, cannot be exhaustively categorized as “innate” or “acquired.” Instead, we argue that basic emotions are more realistically viewed as emergent phenomena, the result of complex interrelations of environmental and organismic factors at all levels of organization. While the commentators apparently accepted the proposed developmental paradigm, they took exception to aspects of our treatment of basic emotions and made a number of helpful comments, to which we (...) respond below. (shrink)

Hayden White wants history to serve life by having it inspire an ethical consciousness, by which he means that in facing the existential questions of life, death, trauma, and suffering posed by human history, people are moved to formulate answers to them rather than to feel that they have no power to choose how they live. The ethical historian should craft narratives that inspire people to live meaningfully rather than try to provide explanations or reconstructions of past events that make (...) them feel as if they cannot control their destiny. This Nietzschean-inspired vision of history is inadequate because it cannot gainsay that a genocidal vision of history is immoral. White may be right that cultural relativism results in cultural pluralism and toleration, but what if most people are not cultural relativists, and believe fervently in their right to specific lands at the expense of other peoples? White does not think historiography or perhaps any moral system can provide an answer. Is he right? This rejoinder argues that the communicative rationality implicit in the human sciences does provide norms about the moral use of history because it institutionalizes an intersubjectivity in which the use of the past is governed by norms of impartiality and fair-mindedness, and protocols of evidence based on honest research. Max Weber, equally influenced by Nietzsche, developed an alternative vision of teaching and research that is still relevant today. (shrink)

This paper is a rejoinder to a critique by richard hull in a previous issue. hull denied the legitimacy of moving from the thesis that there are certain one-to-one correlations between mental and physical properties to the thesis that the mental and physical are one and the same. i argue that the move can be justified if it is taken not as deductive but as inductive. given the right sort of correlations, it may be fruitful to conceive of the (...) mental as identical with the physical. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Rejoinder to MoriThomas M. LennonGianluca Mori and I are broadly in agreement about everything in my paper except the answer to its main question, viz., how Bayle's use of Saint-Evremond is to be understood in the third Eclaircissement. Mori thinks that Bayle's use of Saint Evremond was one of his "provocations aimed at orthodox readers." It is an instance of his thesis that "Bayle's professions of Christian (...) faith, though frequent, are generally far from being above suspicion: indeed almost every one of them raises questions about their actual significance."1 On my view, one line of argument for not taking Bayle's use of Saint-Evremond "at face value in his profession of religious faith... is highly questionable."2 That is, as far as his use of Saint-Evremond is concerned, Bayle should be taken as the fideist that he, here and in many other places, in effect claimed to be.We are in agreement about the nature of the key text itself that Bayle cites from the Conversation. It is a "ridiculous" text, dripping with sarcasm, an ironic parody of the very views that Bayle claims to believe. Moreover, Bayle himself is in agreement with this view of the text, and expresses it in so many words. The knot of our disagreement consists in how Bayle could have used such a text to express fideist views. Mori thinks that the very use of the text itself is sufficient to call those views into doubt. "Bayle was fully aware that the text he presented as a 'clarification' of his fideism had very little right to be considered as Christian orthodoxy,... In a word, Bayle knew full well that his fideism would be regarded as insincere and destructive of faith."3The basis for my view begins with what Bayle says about this text in a statement that Mori has so far not acknowledged either in his book or in his reply to me. Says Bayle after citing Saint-Evremond, "Give this thought a more serious and proper tone and it will become reasonable." It is here that Bayle [End Page 335] acknowledges the inappropriateness of Saint-Evremond's text, but he does so to reject it as it stands. Bayle did not, as Mori claims, present the text "as a clarification of his fideism." Only when the text is given a "more serious and proper tone," that is, when it is stripped of its irony and sarcasm, does it cease to be a parody of his views and become an accurate expression of them. Bayle explicitly dissociates himself from the unamended text, introducing it with the comment that "this thought has been given a ridiculous sense, in the hands of a master."4 But Mori takes this text as it stands to convey Bayle's message, as if Bayle had not commented on it at all. It is as if, to repeat the text at the end of my paper, the Bible were to be cited as stating the claim that there is no God. It does so, of course, but only preceded by the disclaimer that only "the fool hath said in his heart there is no God" (Psalm 14: 1).According to Mori, Bayle's use of Saint-Evremond was provocative. Bayle's text is not provocative, however. Had he intended it to be, he would have directly cited Saint-Evremond, without comment. Instead, he is perfectly clear about whom he is quoting and how that source should be understood. To be sure, such a citation is dramatic, and no doubt designed for effect, but the effect is to show how unexceptional Bayle took his conception of the faith-reason relation to be. Bayle in the Eclaircissement is not trying to convert anyone but to explain his position in a way that makes it acceptable to the Consistory of the Walloon Church. To be sure, it is an irony that Saint-Evremond's text, slightly but importantly corrected, expresses Bayle's view, but it is not an irony in the sense of winking sarcasm.Mori insists that, as a matter of historical fact, Bayle's text was found to be provocative... (shrink)

IN HIS ARTICLE "MIRACLES AND NATURAL EXPLANATION" DAVID BASINGER TAKES ISSUE WITH THE CLAIM I ADVANCED IN MY EARLIER ARTICLE "MIRACLES AND CRITERIA" THAT ONLY A DOGMATIC AND UNCRITICAL ASSUMPTION THAT NATURE IS IN FACT AN ISOLATED SYSTEM CAN EXPLAIN THE INSISTENCE OF SOME PHILOSOPHERS THAT, NO MATTER WHAT THE EVENT AND NO MATTER WHAT THE CONTEXT IN WHICH IT OCCURS, IT IS ALWAYS MORE RATIONAL TO LIVE IN THE FAITH THAT SUCH AN EVENT HAS A NATURAL EXPLANATION RATHER THAN (...) BELIEVE IT A MIRACLE. BASINGER URGES THAT MY ARGUMENT CONTAINS TWO BASIC CONFUSIONS. IN REPLY, I ARGUE THAT BOTH HIS OBJECTIONS ARE MISTAKEN. (shrink)

In a recent article we argued that organizational ecology is not a Darwinian research program. John Lemos criticized our argumentation on various counts. Here we reply to some of Lemos’s criticisms.

Professor Cragg objects to my contention that when judgments about the justice of actions can be paired with judgments about the justice of the states of affairs in which they eventuate it is the latter and not the former which are logically fundamental. He concedes that the justice of actions cannot, in these circumstances, be determined wholly independently of the justice of the states of affairs they help bring about — ‘ … how could an action be evaluated as Just (...) or unjust in the absence of an evaluation of the situation which it was designed to bring about?’ — yet he takes issue with my claim that judgments about the justice of states of affairs can be made ‘without any detour’ through questions about the justice of the actions which bring them about. According to the intermediate position he prefers, judgments about the justice of actions and judgments about the justice of situations are ‘inextricably intertwined.’. (shrink)

In Otsuka ( 1998 ), I endorse an incompatibilist Principle of Avoidable Blame. In this rejoinder to Fischer and Tognazzini ( 2009 ), I defend this principle against their charge that it is vulnerable to Frankfurt-type counterexample.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Rejoinder to Professors Gosling and Taylor Hedonism is for Socrates the radical view that pleasure is the standard according to which one ought to steer one's life, the view that pleasure represents the proper end of human existence. Hedonism is not for Socrates the weaker view that the good life is also the most pleasant. Were it not for the Protagoras, all would agree, I think, that (...) Socrates does not regard pleasure as the highest goal of human life. Perhaps even Gosling and Taylor would concede that but for the Protagoras no reader of Plato would assign to pleasure a pivotal role in Socratic ethics:/ffdon~ as a standard of rightness or goodness is absent from the Apologyand Crito, and is railed against in the Phaedoand the Gorgias.The Gosling-Taylor project of reading all these dialogues in light of the Protagoras's presumed Socratic endorsement of hedonism, and interpreting them so that they are not incompatible with the Protagoras, drains the hedonism in the Protagoras of its radicality and substitutes--without warrant--the weaker, non-Socratic understanding of hedonism. Gosling and Taylor's accusation that I commit an ignoratioelenchiis one example of this sort of softening of the issue. I argue that Socrates (in the Apology) decides what to fear by appealing to the standard of what is right rather than determining what is right by appealing to the standard of fearfulness, and that it is therefore inaccurate to describe him as courageous through fear. Were the question here the weak one of whether the courageous man in fact chooses what is truly least fearful I could agree with Gosling and Taylor that it is irrelevant to consider the standard to which Socrates appeals in making his choice. Yet both in the Protagorasand in the Phaedo--as well as, I believe, in the Apology---what is at stake ~ the standard, the motivation behind the choice. In the Apology Socrates is not, as Gosling and Taylor claim, "motivated by" fear, even though he specifies what he fears. In order to explain what motivates him to fear and then to avoid what he fears, Socrates turns to the notions of duty and honor. Socrates declares (Apology 29b) that it is not because of fear of death or any other danger that he remains steadfast at his post and refuses to relinquish his duty of examining himelf and others; rather, he will obey his superior, whether God or man, becauseto do otherwise is wrong, wicked, and dishonorable. Indeed, it is since disobedience is wrong, wicked, and dishonorable that Socrates fears it more than death. Socrates thus can hardly be said to "leave inexplicit" the criteria that determine for him what is kak0n, nor does he allow any room for pleasure and pain to emerge as those criteria. As I sought to demonstrate in my paper, the philosopher in the Phaedo is characteristically indifferent to pleasure, pain, and fear. Although no human life can be devoid of intercourse with these, the way in which a philosopher negotiates his dealing with pleasures, pains, and fears is by choosing among them through reference to a higher standard. Regarding Gosling and Taylor's claim that I misrepresent their view on the Phaedo I shall of course defer to them. I direct the reader to pp. 522-23 and n. 18 of my paper, however, to explain what aspects of Gosling and Taylor's discussion prompted my interpretation. [117] 118 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 98:1 JANUARY 199 o Professors Gosling and Taylor insist that the Phaedo, in denouncing pleasure, concentrates specifically on bodily pleasure. I maintain that at Phaedo 68-69 what is deplored as spurious aret~ is the very goal of maximization of pleasure and minimization of pain and fear. As in the Protagoras, the calculus in the Phaedo has its eye on the bottom line; the type or quality of the pleasure is not a factor. The hedonism in the Protagoras, I firmly contend, is of the very crudest sort. I do not concede that it is enlightened in any sense--not even in Gosling and Taylor's limited sense in which its criterion of goodness is not immediate pleasure... (shrink)

Volume 27, Issue 3, September 2020, Page 266-268.

The paper is a rejoinder to a challenge against the particularist version of the mental files framework posed by the relationist approach based on the notion of content coordination [such as recent attempt by Rachel Goodman and Aidan Gray in ]. Relationists argue that important explanatory goals of MFF: could be achieved without positing files as mental particulars, as there is a relationist notion of content coordination at hand that can be aptly used for “filing without files”; and should (...) be so achieved, as there are difficulties that afflict the particularist approach to MFF and the relationist account is simply better. However, both claims should be rejected. The particularist approach to MFF, properly interpreted, would not get into the troubles it is accused of generating. Indeed, it is the relationist approach that gets in trouble. Specifically, it lacks resources for explanation of nuances, which can be easily accounted for in terms of particularist interpretation, and, furthermore, it lowers the interdisciplinary standing of the whole framework. The particularist version is therefore better. (shrink)

Beverley Shaw; Sameness and Equality: a rejoinder to John Colbeck, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 18, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 283–285, https://d.

Object of this reply. A chap like myself, who struggles along with an amateur's box of logical tools, is bound to feel uneasy when his arguments are probed by the kind of logical precision-instruments which Professor Hempel manipulates so effortlessly. Yet after painstakingly working over his technical arguments, and after appealing for expert assistance on matters outside my competence,1 I have reached the surprising and agreeable conclusion that my argument stands intact and that Professor Hempel's criticisms reveal once more the (...) hopelessness of the position he defends—or rather, of the position he now defends. (shrink)

Richard Feldman in ‘Actions and De Re Beliefs’ attacks ‘latitudinarian’ accounts of de re belief in terms of de dicta belief, including those defended in print by one or the other of us. Feldman's case against latitudinarian views rests on the claim that such accounts do not allow de re attitudes an explanatory role they obviously can fulfil.

Graff's second point about formalism does not refute my argument that the New Critics upheld the coherence or organicity of a work of art and yet did not ignore its relation to reality. I argued this to be a defensible view also from a parallel with painting. The individual New Critics emphasized one or the other side, in different contexts, and I am not prepared to defend the clarity and consistency of every one of their pronouncements. But even the loosely (...) phrased quotation from Allen Tate's essay "Narcissus as Narcissus" can be defended. In saying that "it [Tate is discussing his own "Ode to the Confederate Dead"] is not knowledge 'about' something else," he means that the poem does not make statements about the solipsism and narcissism that he discusses later. "The poem is rather the fullness of that knowledge"; that is, it is a creation, a new thing which has its meaning as a totality, and that meaning surely refers to the outside world: the cemetery, the dead, the Civil War, and so on. . . . To judge from Graff's book, Poetic Statement and Critical Dogma, we are not so far apart in our estimate of the New Criticism. I also have my troubles , mainly with their psychologism and the dichotomy between emotional and propositional language, but on the points that I discussed in the article—the supposed lack of historical outlook, aestheticism, formalism, and scientism—the New Criticism, has often been misunderstood and misrepresented. It needs and deserves the rehabilitation I have attempted. Rene Wellek, Sterling Professor Emeritus of comparative literature at Yale University, is the author of Theory of Literature and of A History of Modern Criticism, 1750-1950. He has contributed "Notes and Exchanges Between Rene Wellek and Wayne C. Booth" and "The New Criticism: Pro and Contra" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

J Martin Stafford; A Rejoinder to Professor Edgley, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 171–174, https://doi.org/10.1111/.