Introduction: Natural necessity, being, and becoming -- Accentuate the negative -- Diffracting dialectic -- Opening totality -- Constellating ethics -- Metacritique I : philosophy's primordial failing -- Metacritique II : dialectic and difference -- Conclusion: Natural necessity and the grounds of justice : natural necessity as material meshwork.

The prospect for widespread therapeutic use of human fetal tissues has aroused strong emotions and prompted several objections. Fetal tissue transplantation circumscribed by medical and moral limits will not erode important ethical values, but the pace of scientific research must not preempt public debate and a verdict consistent with societal values.

The authors develop an axiomatic theory of nonexistent objects and and give a formal semantics for the language of the theory.

The Dutch Book argument, like Route 66, is about to turn 80. It is arguably the most celebrated argument for subjective Bayesianism. Start by rejecting the Cartesian idea that doxastic attitudes are ‘all-or-nothing’; rather, they are far more nuanced degrees of belief, for short credences, susceptible to fine-grained numerical measurement. Add a coherentist assumption that the rationality of a doxastic state consists in its internal consistency. The remaining problem is to determine what consistency of credences amounts to. The Dutch Book (...) argument, in a nutshell, says that if your credences do not obey the probability calculus, you are ‘incoherent’—susceptible to sure losses at the hands of a ‘Dutch Bookie’—and thus irrational. Conclusion: rationality requires your credences to obey the probability calculus. And like Route 66, the fortunes of the Dutch Book argument have been mixed. Opinions on the argument are sharply divided. The list of its proponents is quite a ‘who’s who’ of philosophers of probability; they include de Finetti (1937, 1980), Carnap (1950, 1962, and more fully, 1955), Kemeny (1955), Lehman (1955), Shimony (1955), Adams (1962), Mellor (1971), Rosenkrantz (1981), van Fraassen (1989), Jeffrey (1983, 1992). (shrink)

In the last few years, off-line simulation has become an increasingly important alternative to standard explanations in cognitive science. The contemporary debate began with Gordon (1986) and Goldman's (1989) off-line simulation account of our capacity to predict behavior. On their view, in predicting people's behavior we take our own decision making system `off line' and supply it with the `pretend' beliefs and desires of the person whose behavior we are trying to predict; we then let the decision maker reach a (...) decision on the basis of these pretend inputs. Figure 1 offers a `boxological' version of the off-line simulation theory of behavior prediction.(1). (shrink)

Should a philosophical account of perceptual knowledge accord a justificatory role to sensory experiences? This discussion raises problems for an affirmative answer and sets out an alternative account on which justified belief is conceived as well-founded belief and well-foundedness is taken to depend on knowledge. A key part of the discussion draws on a conception of perceptual-recognitional abilities to account for how perception gives rise both to perceptual knowledge and to well-founded belief.

How does the human animal who thinks and loves relate to criminal justice? This essay takes up the idea of a moral psychology of guilt promoted by Bernard Williams and Herbert Morris. Against modern liberal society’s ‘peculiar’ legal morality of voluntary responsibility, it pursues Morris’s ethical account of guilt as involving atonement and identification with others. Thinking of guilt in line with Morris, and linking it with the idea of moral psychology, takes the essay to Freud’s metapsychology in Civilization and (...) Its Discontents. Two conflicting routes to guilt are noted in Freud, one involving internalisation of external anger to suppress destructive instincts, the other loving identification with others in the process of self-formation. This second route is developed through the psychoanalytic thought of Hans Loewald and Jonathan Lear. Following Loewald, the moral psychology of self-formation makes loving identification with others the root of responsibility, guilt and atonement. Following Lear, the moral psychology of guilt developed on these lines renders psychoanalysis part of a broadly understood philosophical project following Aristotelian and Socratic principles. Underlying Morris’s account of guilt is the possibility of ‘prospective identification’, understood as the moral and psychological ground of guilt and reconciliation. This is the rational core of criminal justice, which maintains an uneasy relationship with law’s ‘peculiar’ morality. (shrink)

Drawing upon ancient Hindu philosophy, the author explores the human psyche and the importance of personal identity.

Represents the most comprehensive and current survey of the various challenges to the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution. Incorporates a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, from evolutionary biologists, historians and philosophers of science. These essays constitute the state of the art in the current debate on the status of the Modern Synthesis.

This study explores the way that belief systems, interactions with social or experimental environments, and skills at the “control” level in decision‐making shape people's behavior as they solve problems. It is argued that problem‐solvers' beliefs (not necessarily consciously held) about what is useful in mathematics may determine the set of “cognitive resources” at their disposal as they do mathematics. Such beliefs may, for example, render inaccessible to them large bodies of information that are stored in long‐term memory and that are (...) easily retrieved in other circumstances. In other cases, individuals' reactions to an experimental setting (fear of failure, or the desire to “look mathematical” while being videotaped) may induce behavior that is almost pathological—and at the same time, so consistent that it can be modeled. In general, such “environmental” factors establish the context within which individuals access and utilize the information potentially at their disposal.Protocols illustrating these points are presented and discussed. A model based on an axiomatization of students' beliefs about plane geometry is outlined, and is shown to correspond closely to their problem‐solving performance. A framework is offered for analyzing problem‐solving performance at three qualitatively different levels: access to cognitive resources stored in LTM, executive or control decision‐making, and belief systems. (shrink)

Descartes held that practicing mathematics was important for developing the mental faculties necessary for science and a virtuous life. Otherwise, he maintained that the proper uses of mathematics were extremely limited. This article discusses his reasons which include a theory of education, the metaphysics of matter, and a psychologistic theory of deductive reasoning. It is argued that these reasons cohere with his system of philosophy.

Cultural pluralism is both a fact and a norm. It is a fact that our world, and indeed our society, are marked by a large diversity of cultures delineated in terms of race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, ideology, and other partly interpenetrating variables. This fact raises the normative question of whether, or to what extent, such diversities should be recognized or even encouraged in policies concerning government, law, education, employment, the family, immigration, and other important areas of social concern.

The longstanding interest in business ethics has been given renewed emphasis by high profile scandals in the world of business and finance. At the same time, many economists--dissatisfied with the discipline's emphasis on self-interest and individualism and by the asocial nature of much economic theory--have sought to englarge the scope of economics by looking at ethical questions. In Ethics and Economic Affairs a group of interdisciplinary scholars provide contributions on international interest in this aspect of socio-economics and economic-psychology. The book (...) is divided into four parts. The first looks at Business Ethics and Management. Part Two enlivens the debate with empirical data. The third part examines the implications for economic theory and asks if the integration of ethics in the economy is possible or if they are fundamentally different systems. Part Four introduces perspectives from other disciplines, sets economics within its wider context and looks to the future. The editors have brought together a group of contributors from nine different countries and a broad range of disciplines, including: Norman E. Bowie, Monroe Burk, Amitai Etzioni, Richard H. Guerette, Ralph E. Miner, Lynne M. Rosansky, N. Craig Smith, Roberts Stallaerts, Philip Stone and John Tomer. (shrink)

The themes of the book—the value of knowledge and epistemic appraisal broadly conceived—are introduced in this chapter. The Meno problem is explained and related to the swamping problem as discussed by Jonathan Kvanvig. The stance of virtue epistemologists is outlined. This is followed by a brief discussion of the role of truth in epistemic appraisal. The remainder of the introduction summarises the contributions to the book.

Examines the nature of rhetorical theory and criticism, the rhetoric of science, and the impact of poststructuralism and postmodernism on contemporary accounts of rhetoric.

This paper presents a unified account of the meaning of the spatial relational terms right, left, in front of, behind, above and below. It claims that each term has three types of meanings, basic, deictic and intrinsic, and that the definitions of each type of meaning are identical in form for all six terms. Restrictions on the use of the terms, which are different for above and below than for the rest, are explained by a general constraint on all uses (...) of spatial relational terms, the framework vertical constraint. This constraint depends on the existence of a fourth type of meaning for above and below, one defined by the framework in which the related objects are located. It is argued that a theory centred on the framework vertical constraint is preferable to one centred on the principle of canonical orientation (Levelt, 1984). (shrink)

For centuries tradition had it that knowledge is justified true belief. Then Edmund Gettier produced cases that refute that traditional view – or so most philosophers think. I disagree. The widespread intuition lying behind the so-called ‘Gettier Cases’ is that there is epistemic bad luck (we can unluckily fail to know), but no epistemic good luck (we cannot luckily know). I reject this puritanical intuition. I also question the externalist or reliabilist views of knowledge and/or justification that the Gettier Cases (...) have spawned. (shrink)

''The problem of Transcendence is the problem of our time. " I Needless to say, Transcendence was a particularly lively i~sue when Karl Heim wrote these words in the mid-1930's. Within the province of philosophi cal theology and philosophy of religion, however, it is always the prob lem, as Gordon Kaufman has recently reminded us. 2Por the question concerning the nature and the reality of Transcendence has not only to do with self-transcendence, but with the being of Transcendence-Itself, that is (...) to say, with the nature and the reality of God as experienced and understood at any given time or place. Now there are those today who would claim that any further discus sion of the latter half of this proposition, namely,Transcendence-Itse1f or God, is worthless and quite beside the point. Such persons would claim that the particular logia represented by the theological sciences has collapsed by virtue of its object having disappeared. Indeed, when one surveys the contemporary scene in philosophy and theology, there is a good deal of evidence that this is the case':"" theology of late having be come something of a "spectacle," to use Pritz Buri's term. One of the reasons for this, we here contend, is that the richness and the diversity of the meaning of Transcendence has been lost. And even though we do not here intend to resolve the issue, neither do we assume that such an enqui ry is either impossible or irrelevant. (shrink)

Two criticisms of my argument in "reason and morality" were presented by christopher mcmahon (in "gewirth's justification of morality," "philosophical studies", September 1986). I reply to each criticism, Showing that mcmahon has misconstrued my use of 'ought' as action-Guiding and my universalization of the agent's rights-Judgment, As well as my concept of prudential rights. A general defect is that he has not understood how central to my argument is the agent's conative and rational standpoint.

This is a paper about ‘human rights pluralism’, and about how human rights’ inherent flexibility can be embraced by development policy-makers and practitioners in ways that can aid the goals of both development and human rights. The paper argues that, even though human rights are often expressed in legal terms – terms that are usually associated with the rigidity of obligation – human rights are inherently pluralistic. This is for two reasons. First, upon closer inspection, human rights laws, and especially (...) international human rights laws, far from imposing rigidity, reflect substantial elasticity as regards their statement, interpretation and implementation. And second, in any case, it is and always has been a mistake not to consider human rights laws within the unavoidably influential philosophical, cultural and economic contexts in which they operate. The political, in other words, is both a necessary and desirable dimension of the legal expression of human rights. Drawing upon this conceptual basis, the paper identifies six specific ‘grammatical features’ of human rights and describes how and why they might be profitably employed by development specialists. (shrink)

It is instructive to view the scientific revolution from the point of view of Robert Boyle’s distinction between intermediate and ultimate causes. From this point of view, the scientific revolution involved the identification of intermediate causes and their investigation by way of experiment as opposed to the specification of ultimate causes of the kind involved in the corpuscular matter theories of the mechanical philosophers. The merits of this point of view are explored in this paper by focussing on the hydrostatics (...) of Pascal and Boyle, understood as the experimental investigation of the action of the intermediate causes weight and pressure. The distinctive features of this new science are highlighted by comparing it with two alternative versions of hydrostatics, that of Stevin and that of Descartes. (shrink)

The concept of evolvability—the capacity of a population to produce and maintain evolutionarily relevant variation—has become increasingly prominent in evolutionary biology. Paleontology has a long history of investigating questions of evolvability, but paleontological thinking has tended to neglect recent discussions, because many tools used in the current evolvability literature are challenging to apply to the fossil record. The fundamental difficulty is how to disentangle whether the causes of evolutionary patterns arise from variational properties of traits or lineages rather than being (...) due to selection and ecological success. Despite these obstacles, the fossil record offers unique and growing sources of data that capture evolutionary patterns of sustained duration and significance otherwise inaccessible to evolutionary biologists. Additionally, there exist a variety of strategic possibilities for combining prominent neontological approaches to evolvability with those from paleontology. We illustrate three of these possibilities with quantitative genetics, evolutionary developmental biology, and phylogenetic models of macroevolution. In conclusion, we provide a methodological schema that focuses on the conceptualization, measurement, and testing of hypotheses to motivate and provide guidance for future empirical and theoretical studies of evolvability in the fossil record. (shrink)

The article defends the forms of civil disobedience currently practised by environmental protesters. It reviews the justifications of civil disobedience by Dworkin, Rawls and Singer, and finds them more or less wanting. A new and more extensive justification is provided on the basis of our duties to prevent harm befalling future generations.

Informed consent is central to the bioethical principle of respect for persons, a process that involves a discussion between the physician and patient with disclosure of information sufficient to allow the patient to make an informed decision about her or his care. However, despite the importance of informed consent in clinical practice, the process is often ritualized, perfunctory, and performed by individuals with little or no training in the consent process. This article discusses the lack of medical students’ and residents’ (...) training in informed consent and questions the practice of allowing untrained residents and surrogates to obtain consent from patients. (shrink)