In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Development of Moral Theology: Five Strands by Charles E. CurranChristopher LibbyThe Development of Moral Theology: Five Strands Charles E. Curran washington, dc: georgetown university press, 2013. 306 pp. $29.95At least two entwined questions dominate Charles Curran’s The Development of Moral Theology: first, what differentiates Catholic moral theology from other approaches to Christian ethics, and second, how we should understand, evaluate, and appropriate that tradition in light of (...) its own pluralism and that of the broader society? Curran engages both of these concerns by critically tracing five historical strands that have shaped moral theology: sin, reconciliation, and the manuals of moral theology; Thomas Aquinas and the Thomistic tradition; natural law; the papal teaching office; and the Second Vatican Council.The bulk of Curran’s discussion consists of chapter-length treatments of each of these strands. This approach lends analytical clarity to a tradition with a varied, [End Page 219] complex history, and provides the foundation for his later synthetic, evaluative discussion. The first chapter is characteristic of the manner in which subsequent chapters proceed: Curran begins with biblical treatments of the rupturing effects of sin before moving on to the emergence of formalized approaches to dealing with sin via penitential processes and, later, the manuals of moral theology. Incorporated into this historical discussion are evaluative and prescriptive claims. For example, in contrast to the dynamic and rich biblical understanding of the nature of sin, Curran suggests that the manuals of moral theology both possess an insufficiently full understanding of the reality of sin and conversion and distort the meaning of sin by focusing on the objective act alone (24).The second through fourth chapters proceed in similar fashion, with critical readings of the varied history of each strand that underscore the internal pluralism of Catholic moral theology. Thus, chapter 2 shows that, while there is but one Thomas Aquinas, there are numerous Thomisms, and chapter 3 denies the presence of a unified, coherent theory of natural law, closing by arguing that this lack of coherence is synchronically discernible in contrasts between recent papal social and sexual teachings.Following a similar treatment of the papal teaching office in chapter 4, Curran discusses the significance of Vatican II in chapter 5 before offering a broad evaluation of his historical surveys in the conclusion. There he calls for Church hierarchy to be more forthright in its recognition of the tradition’s internal diversity, more open to dissent and disagreement, and receptive to the power of the Holy Spirit as the primary force enabling the Church as a people to live hopefully as mediating God’s presence in the world.There is much to be learned from Curran’s impressive knowledge of his tradition. This is a text that will be especially valuable to graduate students and scholars and teachers of Christian ethics; the chapters on Aquinas and the Thomistic tradition, natural law, and Vatican II will have a particularly wide appeal. Nevertheless, I fear the book is less than the sum of its very informative parts. The lack of an initial chapter establishing the meaning and significance of Curran’s study or of a conceptual framework to guide the reader in navigating deep and what are sure to many to be unfamiliar historical waters may leave some readers disoriented. Such a chapter would have been helpful in establishing a broader context for the study and identifying themes that arise repeatedly in the course of the discussion, for example: the nature of authority and dissent, the relationship between philosophy and theology, the relationship between truth and historical consciousness, and the nature of tradition as “living,” to name a few. As it is, such themes emerge only gradually for the reader, rendering engagement with the text as a whole a less rewarding experience than it might otherwise be. [End Page 220]Christopher LibbyMissouri Valley CollegeCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This book is about fundamental questions in normative ethics. It begins with the idea that we often respond to ethical theories according to how principled or pragmatic they are. It clarifies this contrast and then uses it to shed light on old debates in ethics, such as debates about the rival merits of consequentialist and deontological views. Using the idea that principled views seem most appealing in dilemmas of acquiescence, it goes on to develop a novel theory of pattern-based reasons. (...) These are reasons to play one’s part in some larger pattern of action because of the goodness or rightness of that pattern. Existing accounts of pattern-based reasons usually assume that such reasons can exist only in cooperative contexts. This book rejects that assumption, and claims instead that we can have pattern-based reasons even when the other agents involved in the pattern are wholly unwilling to cooperate. The result is a pluralist teleological structure for ethics, with similarities to some forms of Rule Consequentialism. Woodard claims that this structure achieves an attractive balance between the two virtues of being pragmatic and being principled. (shrink)

This is a book about sensory states and their apparent characteristics. It confronts a whole series of metaphysical and epistemological questions and presents an argument for type materialism: the view that sensory states are identical with the neural states with which they are correlated. According to type materialism, sensations are only possessed by human beings and members of related biological species; silicon-based androids cannot have sensations. The author rebuts several other rival theories, and explores a number of important issues: the (...) forms and limits of introspective awareness of sensations, the semantic properties of sensory concepts, knowledge of other minds, and unity of consciousness. The book is a significant contribution to the philosophy of mind, and has much to say to psychologists and cognitive scientists. (shrink)

ABSTRACTI argue that the apparently exclusive choice between Suits’ utopia of gameplay and death by suicide is a false dilemma, one which obscures a ‘third way’ of positive boredom. Further, I offe...

Georg Lukács wrote that "there is autonomy and 'autonomy.' The one is a moment of life itself, the elevation of its richness and contradictory unity; the other is a rigidification, a barren self-seclusion, a self-imposed banishment from the dynamic overall connection." Though Lukács' concern was with the conditions for the possibility of art, his distinction also serves as an apt description of the way that Hegel and Hegelians have contrasted their own interpretations of self-determination with that of Kant. But it (...) has always been difficult to see how elevation is possible without seclusion, or how rigidification can be avoided without making the boundaries of the self so malleable that its autonomy looks like a mere cover for the power of external forces. Yeomans explores Hegel's own attempts to grapple with this problem against the background of Kant's attempts, in his theory of virtue, to understand the way that morally autonomous agents can be robust individuals with qualitatively different projects, personal relations, and commitments that are nonetheless infused with a value that demands respect. In a reading that disentangles a number of different threads in Kant's approach, Yeomans shows how Hegel reweaves these threads around the central notions of talent and interest to produce a tapestry of self-determination. Yeomans argues that the result is a striking pluralism that identifies three qualitatively distinct forms of agency or accountability and sees each of these forms of agency as being embodied in different social groups in different ways. But there is nonetheless a dynamic unity to the forms because they can all be understood as practical attempts to solve the problem of autonomy, and each is thus worthy of respect even from the perspective of other solutions."Everyone recognizes the importance of Hegel's critique of Kantian morality as empty, but until now there has not been a fully worked out presentation of how Hegel's views in his discussion of Sittlichkeit actually provide the missing content. Yeomans has finally provided us with a reconstruction of Hegel's mature position that makes good on all the promissory notes that Hegel gives in his famous descriptions of his alternative to Kantian ethics. Yeomans offers a compelling account of Hegel's view of individuality, societal differentiation and its roots in Kantian and Fichtean moral theory. The book will be a major contribution to the scholarship on Hegel's practical philosophy." - Dean Moyar, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkins University -/- "Yeomans' book is a subtle, detailed and original explication of some key ideas having to do with how Hegel's general philosophy of action relates to his social and political philosophy. It is attentive to Hegel's texts, and it ties its discussions into all the relevant contemporary themes in philosophy. It is very ambitious in its attempt to make Hegel's theory into a real competitor to other views that are currently in wide play in the philosophical world. It will very likely become one of the key texts in the secondary literature on Hegel." - Terry Pinkard, University Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University. (shrink)

Fallacies and Argument Appraisal presents an introduction to the nature, identification, and causes of fallacious reasoning, along with key questions for evaluation. Drawing from the latest work on fallacies as well as some of the standard ideas that have remained relevant since Aristotle, Christopher Tindale investigates central cases of major fallacies in order to understand what has gone wrong and how this has occurred. Dispensing with the approach that simply assigns labels and brief descriptions of fallacies, Tindale provides fuller (...) treatments that recognize the dialectical and rhetorical contexts in which fallacies arise. This volume analyzes major fallacies through accessible, everyday examples. Critical questions are developed for each fallacy to help the student identify them and provide considered evaluations. (shrink)

Recent work in argumentation theory has emphasized the nature of arguers and arguments along with various theoretical perspectives. Less attention has been given to the third feature of any argumentative situation - the audience. This book fills that gap by studying audience reception to argumentation and the problems that come to light as a result of this shift in focus. Christopher W. Tindale advances the tacit theories of several earlier thinkers by addressing the central problems connected with audience considerations (...) in argumentation, problems that earlier philosophical theories overlook or inadequately accommodate. The main tools employed in exploring the central issues are drawn from contemporary philosophical research on meaning, testimony, emotion and agency. These are then combined with some of the major insights of recent rhetorical work in argumentation to advance our understanding of audiences and suggest avenues for further research. (shrink)

In July 2018, the Nuffield Council of Bioethics released its long-awaited report on heritable genome editing. The Nuffield report was notable for finding that HGE could be morally permissible, even in cases of human enhancement. In this paper, we summarise the findings of the Nuffield Council report, critically examine the guiding principles they endorse and suggest ways in which the guiding principles could be strengthened. While we support the approach taken by the Nuffield Council, we argue that detailed consideration of (...) the moral implications of genome editing yields much stronger conclusions than they draw. Rather than being merely ‘morally permissible’, many instances of genome editing will be moral imperatives. (shrink)

A familiar feature of our moral responsibility practices are pleas: considerations, such as “That was an accident”, or “I didn’t know what else to do”, that attempt to get agents accused of wrongdoing off the hook. But why do these pleas have the normative force they do in fact have? Why does physical constraint excuse one from responsibility, while forgetfulness or laziness does not? I begin by laying out R. Jay Wallace’s (Responsibility and the moral sentiments, 1994 ) theory of (...) the normative force of excuses and exemptions. For each category of plea, Wallace offers a single governing moral principle that explains their normative force. The principle he identifies as governing excuses is the Principle of No Blameworthiness without Fault: an agent is blameworthy only if he has done something wrong. The principle he identifies as governing exemptions is the Principle of Reasonableness: an agent is morally accountable only if he is normatively competent. I argue that Wallace’s theory of exemptions is sound, but that his account of the normative force of excuses is problematic, in that it fails to explain the full range of excuses we offer in our practices, especially the excuses of addiction and extreme stress. I then develop a novel account of the normative force of excuses, which employs what I call the “Principle of Reasonable Opportunity,” that can explain the full range of excuses we offer and that is deeply unified with Wallace’s theory of the normative force of exemptions. An important implication of the theory I develop is that moral responsibility requires free will. (shrink)

in a nachlass fragment of 1888, Nietzsche refers to psychology as "Affektenlehre"—the doctrine or theory of the affects.1 Given his contention elsewhere that psychology represents the "path to the fundamental problems", it should come as no surprise that Nietzsche makes reference to affects in numerous prominent passages, and throughout some of his most important works.2 Yet, as Peter Poellner has claimed, one might "feel that not much is gained by [Nietzsche's] assertions in the absence of a detailed account of what (...) 'affects' are supposed to be". Literature on the topic has focused predominantly on the roles ascribed to affects in his moral... (shrink)

The debate over whether Frankfurt-style cases are counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities has taken an interesting turn in recent years. Frankfurt originally envisaged his attack as an attempting to show that PAP is false—that the ability to do otherwise is not necessary for moral responsibility. To many this attack has failed. But Frankfurtians have not conceded defeat. Neo-Frankfurtians, as I will call them, argue that the upshot of Frankfurt-style cases is not that PAP is false, but that it (...) is explanatorily irrelevant. Derk Pereboom and David Hunt’s buffer cases are tailor made to establish this conclusion. In this paper I come to the aid of PAP, showing that buffer cases provide no reason for doubting either its truth or relevance with respect to explaining an agent’s moral responsibility. (shrink)

Olga Plümacher (1839–1895) published a book entitled Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart in 1884. It was an influential book: Nietzsche owned a copy, and there are clear cases where he borrowed phraseology from Plümacher. Plümacher specifies philosophical pessimism as comprising two propositions: ‘The sum of displeasure outweighs the sum of pleasure’ and ‘Consequently the non-being of the world would be better than its being’. Plümacher cites Schopenhauer as the first proponent of this position, and Eduard von Hartmann as the (...) thinker who has developed it to its fullest potential. She heavily criticizes Schopenhauer in many respects, not for being a pessimist, but rather for not achieving as good a pessimism as he might have done, on the following major grounds: that his account of pleasure as merely privative is implausible, that he has a confused account of individuation, that his retention of a Christian notion of guilt is gratuitous, that he lapses into the self-pitying subjectivity of the condition she calls Weltschmerz, and that his philosophy leads to quietism, and is thus inferior to von Hartmann’s combination of pessimism and optimism, which allows for social progress. (shrink)

This article analyzes the relative effectiveness and limitations of companies’ voluntarily produced transparency reports in promoting change in firm and government behavior. Such reports are published by telecommunications companies and disclose how often and on what grounds government agencies compel customer data from these companies. These reports expose corporate behaviors while lifting the veil of governmental secrecy surrounding these kinds of compulsions. Fung, Graham, and Weil’s “targeted transparency” model is used to evaluate the extent to which these reports affect behavior. (...) From the analysis, it is evident that telecommunications companies’ transparency reports are only partially effective; while firms may modify their reports to present more information, these reports do not necessarily induce government to more broadly reveal its own activities. The article ultimately suggests that voluntarily produced transparency reports may become more comparable with one another as a result of either corporate reports evolving in consultation with external stakeholders or following a crisis that prompts government or industry to adopt a given standard. Such standards may positively influence the effectiveness of reports while concealing as much about firm behaviors as they purport to reveal. (shrink)

Why think that conscious experience of reality is any more epistemically valuable than testimony about it? I argue that conscious experience of reality is epistemically valuable because it provides cognitive contact with reality. Cognitive contact with reality is a goal of experiential inquiry which does not reduce to the goal of getting true beliefs or propositional knowledge. Such inquiry has awareness of the truth-makers of one’s true beliefs as its proper goal. As such, one reason why conscious experience of reality (...) is more epistemically valuable than testimony about reality is that it gives us more epistemic goods than only true belief or propositional knowledge. I defend this view from two rival accounts. First, that while conscious experience of reality has greater value than testimony, its value is only eudaimonic. Second, that while it has greater epistemic value than testimony, this value is not distinctive: for it only promotes truth better than testimony. (shrink)

Prioritarianism itself is not committed to any particular claim about how moral importance decreases. It could decrease quickly or slowly, for example, and at a uniform or a variable rate. The defining feature of the view is just the claim that, somehow, moral importance decreases with the increasing advantage of the recipient.

Natural Law Today gives a strong voice to classical natural law theory as the best answers to the fundamental questions of ethics and as the best framework for political and social life. It explains various aspects of that theory and defends it against common misperceptions and criticisms.

The feeling that one was ‘born in the wrong time’ we call malchronia. This is distinct from mere nostalgia, in that it may generate the longing to transcend the temporal present in favor of a time of which one has had no experience, or even a timeless state of being. Implicit in malchronetic longing is the rejection of one’s experience of one’s own time, making it a revolutionary and utopian inclination. In this article we examine two dominant strategies—primitive weapons in (...) the war on time, really—that have been developed in the hopes of delivering individuals to a future beyond the reach of their natural life spans: cryonics and bionics. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact on firm value created by investor reaction to same day news of corporate social responsibility and corporate social irresponsibility activities. First, using trading volume, the authors establish that the perceived value of moral capital generated by news involving institutional stakeholders is less clear to investors than that of the news involving technical stakeholders. Subsequently, the authors analyze abnormal returns from 565 unique firm events—each comprising at least one positive and one negative stakeholder news item. Using (...) signaling theory, the authors demonstrate that news of the number of CSR activities involving institutional groups counteracts the effects of same day CSiR news in an inverted U-shaped fashion. In contrast, they find that news of the number of CSR activities involving technical groups mitigates the effects of same day CSiR news in a U-shaped fashion. (shrink)

Do you feel like you're the only person at your office without an "I Voted " sticker on Election Day? It turns out that you're far from alone - 100 million eligible U.S. voters never went to the polls in 2016. That's about 35 million more than voted for the winning presidential candidate. In this book, Christopher Freiman explains why these 100 million need not feel guilty. Why It's OK to Ignore Politics argues that you're under no obligation to (...) be politically active. Freiman addresses new objections to political abstention as well as some old chestnuts. He also synthesizes recent empirical work showing how our political motivations distort our choices and reasoning. Because participating in politics is not an effective way to do good, Freiman argues that we actually have a moral duty to disengage from politics and instead take direct action to make the world a better place. Key Features: Makes the case against a duty of political participation for a non-expert audience Presupposes no knowledge of philosophy or political science and is written in a style free of technical jargon Addresses the standard, much-repeated arguments for why one should vote Presents the growing literature on politically motivated reasoning in an accessible and entertaining way Covers a significant amount of new ground in the debate over a duty of political participation Challenges the increasingly popular argument from philosophers and economists that swing state voting is effective altruism Discusses the therapeutic benefits of ignoring politics--it's good for you, your relationships, and society as a whole. (shrink)

Seth Shabo has presented a new argument that attempts to codify familiar worries about indeterminism, luck, and control. His ‘Assimilation Argument’ contends that libertarians cannot distinguish overtly randomized outcomes from exercises of free will. Shabo claims that the argument possesses advantages over the Mind Argument and Rollback Argument, which also purport to establish that indeterminism is incompatible with free will. I argue first that the Assimilation Argument presents no new challenges over and above those presented by the Rollback Argument, and (...) second that the Rollback Argument itself neither presents a deep challenge to, nor raises the cost of, accepting libertarianism. (shrink)

Visual experience is shaped by a number of factors that are independent of the external objects that we perceive—factors like lighting, angle of view, and the sensitivities of photoreceptors in the retina. This paper seeks to catalog, analyze, and explain the fluctuations in visual phenomenology that are due to such factors.

The first book of its kind, Buddhist Moral Philosophy: An Introduction introduces the reader to contemporary philosophical interpretations and analyses of Buddhist ethics. It begins with a survey of traditional Buddhist ethical thought and practice, mainly in the Pali Canon and early Mahāyāna schools, and an account of the emergence of Buddhist moral philosophy as a distinct discipline in the modern world. It then examines recent debates about karma, rebirth and nirvana, well-being, normative ethics, moral objectivity, moral psychology, and the (...) issue of freedom, responsibility and determinism. The book also introduces the reader to philosophical discussions of topics in socially engaged Buddhism such as human rights, war and peace, and environmental ethics. (shrink)

Recent debate on the relationship between cyber threats, on the one hand, and both strategy and ethics on the other focus on the extent to which ‘cyber war’ is possible, both as a conceptual question and an empirical one. Whether it can is an important question for just war theorists. From this perspective, it is necessary to evaluate cyber measures both as a means of responding to threats and as a possible just cause for using armed kinetic force. In this (...) paper, I shift the focus away from ‘war’ as such in order to ask whether some cyber threats might justifiably be characterized as a form of ‘violence.’ Some theorists argue that the term violence ought to be defined so as to encompass things like ‘structural’ harm or harm by neglect and thereby question implicitly the focus of just war theorists on armed force. This paper draws on a theory of violence I developed elsewhere as a defence of just war theory’s narrow understanding of violence. According to the ‘Double-Intent’ theory, a distinctive form of ‘Violent Agency’ is the factor uniting the category of violence while partly accounting for the peculiar moral connotations of the term. Here, I argue that the resulting definition of violence reshapes the category in a way that includes some forms of cyber-attack. This may help us to see where cyber might fit in relation to just war theory and the ethics of kinetic attack. (shrink)

It is argued that the social significance of nanotechnologies should be understood in terms of the politics and ethics of uncertainty. This means that the uncertainties surrounding the present and future development of nanotechnologies should not be interpreted, first and foremost, in terms of concepts of risk. It is argued that risk, as a way of managing uncertain futures, has a particular historical genealogy, and as such implies a specific politics and ethics. It is proposed, instead, that the concepts of (...) contingency and of finitude must be central to any understanding of the ethical significance of nanotechnologies, as these concepts can be used to understand the basis of recent work in science and technology studies, and the sociology of knowledge more widely, which details the multi-dimensional social nature of technological uncertainty. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that population-level time perspectives can be approximated using “big data” on search engine queries, and that these indices, in turn, predict the per-capita Gross Domestic Product of countries. Although these findings seem to support Baumard's suggestion that affluence makes people more future-oriented, they also reveal a more complex relationship between time perspectives and economic outputs.

It is widely believed that many of the competing accounts of scientific explanation have ramifications which are relevant to the scientific realism debate. I claim that the two issues are orthogonal. For definiteness, I consider Cartwright's argument that causal explanations secure belief in theoretical entities. In Section I, van Fraassen's anti-realism is reviewed; I argue that this anti-realism is, prima facie, consistent with a causal account of explanation. Section II reviews Cartwright's arguments. In Section III, it is argued that causal (...) explanations do not license the sort of inferences to theoretical entities that would embarass the anti-realist. Section IV examines the epistemic commitments involved in accepting a causal explanation. Section V presents my conclusions: contra Cartwright, the anti-realist may incorporate a causal account of explanation into his vision of science in an entirely natural way. (shrink)

Advertising and other forms of promotional activity have proliferated to such an extent that they may constitute a form of social pollution (Kitchen, 1994). The quantity and tone of communications to which consumers are exposed may have a subtle but pervasive effect on the social ecology of the developed world. Not only are Marketing Communications delivered in unprecedented quantities (Kitchen, 1994); but their tone is increasingly difficult to categorise in the Postmodern Marketing era (Brown, 1994). Notably, there has been very (...) little research conducted on this seeming "Leviathan" (Kitchen, 1994, after Hobbes, 1651) effect. Ethical concerns of professional marketing bodies such as the MRS and CIM are focussed on the conduct of professionals with regard to law and notions of moral decency in human exchange relationships (see MRS code of conduct, ASA and IBA guidelines). There is less emphasis on the ethical implications for society of the totality of Marketing Communication activities. This paper examines the distinctively Postmodern concept of the Communications Leviathan and discusses contemporary ethical issues, drawing perspectives where possible from Postmodern critical theory, Enlightenment philosophy, cognitive psychology and classical ethical works of Plato and Aristotle. (shrink)

Kant is clear that the concept of the 'highest good' involves both a demand, that we follow the moral law, as well as a promise, that happiness will be the outcome of being moral. The latter element of the highest good has troubled commentators, who tend to find it metaphysically extravagant, involving, as it does, belief in God and an afterlife. Furthermore, it seems to threaten the moral purity that Kant demands: that we obey the moral law for its own (...) sake, not out of interest in the consequences. Those commentators brave enough to tackle the issue look to the concept of the highest good either to add content to the moral law (Silber), or to provide rational motivation, in a way that does not violate moral purity (Beiser and Wood). I argue that such interpretations, although they may be plausible reconstructions, are unable to account for certain conceptual and textual problems. By placing Kant's thought against the background of medieval theology, I argue that the hope for the summum bonum is irreducibly important for Kant, even where its function is not that of providing the content or motivational force of the moral law. Kant is not only concerned with the shape of our duties and motivations, but the shape of the universe within which these emerge. (shrink)

The ability of international ethics and political theory to establish a genuinely critical standpoint from which to evaluate uses of armed force has been challenged by various lines of argument. On one, theorists question the narrow conception of violence on which analysis relies. Were they right, it would overturn two key assumptions: first, that violence is sufficiently distinctive to merit attention as a category separate from other modes of human harming; second, that it is troubling in a special way that (...) makes acts of violence peculiarly hard to justify. This paper defends a narrow understanding of violence and a special ethics governing its use by arguing that a distinctive form of ‘Violent Agency’ is the factor uniting the category while partly accounting for the fearful connotations of the term. Violent Agency is defined first by a double intention (1) to inflict harm using a technique chosen (2) to eliminate or evade the target’s means of escaping it or defending against it. Second, the harms it aims at are destructive (as opposed to appropriative). The analysis offered connects the concept of violence to themes in international theory such as vulnerability, security, and domination, as well as the ethics of war. (shrink)

Normal 0 0 1 85 487 UBC 4 1 598 11.773 0 0 0 Under what conditions is the failure to have evidence that p evidence that p is false? Absent evidence reasoning is common in many sciences, including astronomy, archeology, biology and medicine. An often-repeated epistemological motto is that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Analysis of absent evidence reasoning usually takes place in a deductive or frequentist hypothesis-testing framework. Instead, I develop a Bayesian analysis of (...) this motto and prove that, under plausible assumptions about the nature of evidence, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. (shrink)

Through a wide-ranging study of primary sources, Christopher Fox identifies and details a decisive moment in the history of the concept of the self. A key figure here is John Locke; the crucial document, his chapter on "Identity and Diversity" added to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1694). Locke's new concept of "identity of consciousness" was hotly debated for the next half century in philosophical, theological, and literary circles, and Fox makes a significant contribution in (...) drawing attention to this controversy. By situating The Memoirs of Scriblerus in the debates, Fox also brings needed attention to a Scriblerian performance that deserves to be better known today. Fox's book is necessary reading for anyone interested in the eighteenth century, in Locke and the Scriblerians, and in the larger history of the concepts of "self" and "consciousness." Through a wide-ranging study of primary sources, Christopher Fox identifies and details a decisive moment in the history of the concept of the self. A key figure here is John Locke; the crucial document, his chapter on "Identity and Diversity" added to the second edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1694). Locke's new concept of "identity of consciousness" was hotly debated for the next half century in philosophical, theological, and literary circles, and Fox makes a significant contribution in drawing attention to this controversy. By situating The Memoirs of Scriblerus in the debates, Fox also brings needed attention to a Scriblerian performance that deserves to be better known today. Fox's book is necessary reading for anyone interested in the eighteenth century, in Locke and the Scriblerians, and in the larger history of the concepts of "self" and "consciousness.". (shrink)

:It is often claimed that libertarianism offers an unattractive conception of free will and moral responsibility because it renders free agency inexplicable and irrational. This essay aims, first, to show that the soundness of these objections turns on more basic disagreements concerning the ideals of free agency and, second, to develop and motivate a truly libertarian conception of the ideals of free agency. The central contention of the essay is that the heart of libertarians’ ideal of free agency is the (...) ideal of agential fundamentality. (shrink)

In February 54b.c. Cicero concludes a missive to his brother with a passing and – for us – tantalizing remark:Lucreti poemata ut scribis ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, multae tamen artis. sed cum veneris. virum te putabo si Sallusti Empedoclea legeris; hominem non putabo. Quintus had, it seems, readDe rerum natura, or at least parts thereof, just before he left Rome for an undisclosed location nearby, and he shared his enthusiasm with his brotherper codicillos. Meanwhile, he was corresponding with Julius (...) Caesar, whose staff in Gaul he was about to join. When, a few months later, he was stationed with Caesar, he was involved in another literary affair, this time concerning his brother who wrote to him, inquiring about his autobiographicalDe temporibus suis:quo modo nam, mi frater, de nostris versibus Caesar? nam primum librum se legisse scripsit ad me ante, et prima sic ut neget se ne Graeca quidem meliora legisse; reliqua ad quendam locum ῥᾳθυμότερα (hoc enim utitur verbo). dic mihi verum: num aut res eum aut χαρακτὴρ non delectat?(Q.fr.2.15.5). (shrink)

This essay examines several competing accounts of what makes life go well for non-human animals, including prominent subjective and objective theories of animal well-being.