“I promise to mow your lawn, but I don’t know whether I will.” Call promises of this form, “Moorean”, based on their resemblance to Moore’s paradox. Moorean promises sound absurd. But why? In the literature on assertion, many have used Moore’s paradox to motivate a knowledge norm of assertion. I put forward an analogous norm on promising, according to which one should only make a promise if one knows one will fulfill it. A knowledge norm explains why Moorean (...) promises are absurd; it accounts for a variety of linguistic data; and it sheds light on how promises generate obligations. (shrink)

Based on the claim that animals have rights, Tom Regan ultimately endorses some radical conclusions: we ought to be vegans; it’s wrong to wear leather; we shouldn’t care about conserving species, but about respecting the rights of individual animals; etc. For many, these conclusions are unbelievable, and incredulous stares abound. Incredulous stares are not arguments, but they do force us to consider whether it might be reasonable for some people to reject Regan’s conclusions based on their considered beliefs. My aim (...) here is to argue that it is. The argument is based on an analogy between Regan's defense of animal rights and David Lewis's defense of modal realism. In short, if it's reasonable to reject modal realism based on its incredible implications, then it’s probably reasonable to reject the thesis that animals have rights, and to instead accept a moral theory that, while much less elegant, doesn’t require abandoning any of our Moorean beliefs. (shrink)

Humans have faced urgent crises over the past two years, and in the midst of those we still have the threat of climate change and other big, systemic problems facing our world. In this time of chaos and crisis, how do activists find the strength to carry on? In answer to this question, environmental philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore has assembled a collection of short essays that offer courage, hope, and even some laughter to the people who have for years (...) been working for environmental sanity and social justice. Earth's weary lovers, as Moore calls them, are tired, perplexed, and battered from all directions. Their hearts have so often been broken; it's hard to go on, but it is morally impossible to quit. To these weary activists, Moore brings encouragement to join or keep on with the struggle-not entertaining distractions, but deep and honest reasons to remember that the struggle matters, now and in the future. Moore's essays are matched with drawings by Canadian artist Bob Haverluck; together, they invite readers to take heart. Taking heart is not hope exactly, but maybe it's courage. Not reassurance, but reason to persevere. Not the promise of good results-it does not depend on winning odds-but a call to integrity. Not strength, but stubbornness, which might be just as good. Not solutions to the planetary crisis, but some modest advice for the inevitable crisis of the heart. Not good cheer entirely, but a chance to grin, and gladness to be part of this strange and necessary work for the endangered Earth. (shrink)

Democracies have a problem with expertise. Expert knowledge both mediates and facilitates public apprehension of problems, yet it also threatens to exclude the public from consequential judgments and decisions located in technical domains. This book asks: how can we have inclusion without collapsing the very concept of expertise? How can public judgment be engaged in expert practices in a way that does not reduce to populism? Drawing on deliberative democratic theory and social studies of science, Critical Elitism argues that expert (...) authority depends ultimately on the exercise of public judgment in a context in which there are live possibilities for protest, opposition and scrutiny. This account points to new ways of looking at the role of civil society, expert institutions, and democratic innovations in the constitution of expert authority within democratic systems. Using the example of climate science, Critical Elitism highlights not only the risks but also the benefits of contesting expertise. (shrink)

A. W. Moore argues in this bold, unusual, and ambitious book that it is possible to think about the world from no point of view. His argument involves discussion of a very wide range of fundamental philosophical issues, including the nature of persons, the subject-matter of mathematics, realism and anti-realism, value, the inexpressible, and God. The result is a powerful critique of our own finitude.

Patients who experience difficulty making medical decisions are often referred to as “ambivalent.” However, the current lack of attention to the nuances between a cluster of phenomena that resemble...

The article explores the agreements and disagreements between the author and the authors of Responsible Brains on how neuroscience relates to moral responsibility. The agreements are fundamental: neuroscience is not the harbinger of revolutionary revision of our views of when persons are morally responsible for the harms that they cause. The disagreements are in the details of what is needed for neuroscience to be the helper of the moral sciences.

A persistent challenge for nominally behavioral viewpoints in philosophical psychology is how to make sense of psychological terms that appeal to the mental. Two such viewpoints, logical behaviorism and conceptual analysis, hold that psychological terms appealing to the mental must be taken to mean (i.e., refer to) something that is publicly observable, such as underlying physiological states, publicly observable behavior, or dispositions to engage in publicly observable behavior, rather than mental events per se. However, they do so for slightly different (...) reasons. A third viewpoint, behavior analysis, agrees that (a) some terms are functionally related to (i.e., occasioned by) the link between publicly observable behavior and publicly observable features of the environment, (b) some terms are dispositional, and (c) a purely private language could not arise. However, behavior analysis also recognizes that some psychological terms relate to private behavioral events, such as occur when speakers report internal sensations or engage in covert behavior. (shrink)

This book brings together the leading researchers on these issues and for the first time in literature, illustrates how a unified approach based on the idea of ...

This book draws together a distinguished group of philosophers and theologians to present new thinking on realism and religion.

Hybrid deduction-refutation systems are presented for four first degree entailment based logics. The hybrid systems are shown to deductively and refutationally sound and complete with respect to their logics. The proofs of completeness are presented in a uniform way. This paper builds on work in [6], where Goranko presented a deductively and refutationally sound and complete hybrid system for classical logic.

James Moore states that "some of the most distinctive and central arguments of Hutcheson's philosophy - the importance of ideas brought to mind by the internal senses, the presence in human nature of calm desires, of generous and benevolent instincts - will be found to emerge in the course of these writings.""--Jacket.

This paper explores the relationship between mania, or pathologically elevated mood, and philosophical theories of well-being. A patient, Mr. M., is described who oscillated between periods when he refused medication and periods when he was willing to accept it, and whose desires and life objectives were radically different in his medicated and unmedicated states. The practical dilemmas this raised are explored in terms of the three principal philosophical theories of well-being: hedonism, the desire fulfillment theory, and objectivism. None of these (...) adequately accounted for Mr. M.'s case: hedonism, because pleasure is increased in mildly manic states; desire fulfillment theories, because these suggest that an unending cycle of treatment and nontreatment would be in Mr. M.'s best interests; and objectivism, because, in a form that would be applicable to Mr. M., that theory brings with it substantial risks of paternalism. Four further philosophical approaches are explored briefly—approaches focusing on autonomy, rationality, personal identity, and illness, respectively—but these also provide no straightforward resolution of the clinical dilemmas. It is concluded that philosophical analysis, even if it does not resolve cases like Mr. M.'s, can deepen our understanding of the issues involved in clinical decision making in psychiatry, especially the importance of sensitivity to the patient's wishes and values; and conversely, that mild mania is an important "real life" case against which philosophical theories of well-being can be tested. (shrink)

This volume provides an introduction to the philosophy of education, which will enable students meeting the subject for the first time to find their way among the many specialized volumes. It deals in a non-technical way with the more important issues raised in a philosophical approach to education, and gives a clear idea of the scope of the subject. After discussing different theories of the aims of education, whether mechanistic or organic, the author addresses practical issues - for example, about (...) the curriculum, the distinction between education and indoctrination, the role of authority and discipline, and the place of religious and moral teaching. Finally he deals with some important aspects of education and the influence of different political structures on the philosophy of education. (shrink)

In the past, hypothesis testing in medicine has employed the paradigm of the repeatable experiment. In statistical hypothesis testing, an unbiased sample is drawn from a larger source population, and a calculated statistic is compared to a preassigned critical region, on the assumption that the comparison could be repeated an indefinite number of times. However, repeated experiments often cannot be performed on human beings, due to ethical or economic constraints. We describe a new paradigm for hypothesis testing which uses only (...) rearrangements of data present within the observed data set. The token swap test, based on this new paradigm, is applied to three data sets from cardiovascular pathology, and computational experiments suggest that the token swap test satisfies the Neyman Pearson condition. (shrink)

Dominic Wilkinson suggests that one of Schubert’s songs has relevance for neonatologists today. In the song, Schubert suggests that death sometimes comes as a friend. Wilkinson ponders whether the song has a message for doctors and parents, who sometimes struggle to figure out whether death is an enemy or a friend to a dying baby. Wilkinson reflects on the case of baby ‘Hal’, who was born with serious cardiomyopathy. Hal’s parents and doctors disagree about whether to withdraw life-support. Through his (...) recreations of their discussions, Wilkinson shows how hard it is to confront—and maybe even welcome—death for a child. While adults often frame their own decision to forego life-sustaining treatment with thoughts that they have lived a good life, death in childhood can seem unfair because it robs the child of their opportunity to live a good or completed life. Much as we try, we cannot really imagine what a critically ill neonate experiences or desires. We have very little insight into Hal’s interests or subjective experience. Without direct access to the child’s experience, it is impossible to know whether, like an adult, a child would choose to allow death to occur. We cannot verify the claim that the child’s death was good in the sense that it was good for them. Wilkinson proposes that a prolonged dying process …. (shrink)

Moore, Gerard Review of: Lost in translation: The English language and the catholic mass, by Gerald O'Collins, with John Wilkins, pp. 122, paperback, $29.95.