This expanded edition of C L Hardin's ground-breaking work on colour features a new chapter, 'Further Thoughts: 1993', in which the author revisits the dispute ...

Global migration raises important ethical issues. One of the most significant is the question of whether liberal democratic societies have strong moral obligations to admit immigrants. Historically, most philosophers have argued that liberal states are morally free to restrict immigration at their discretion, with few exceptions. Recently, however, liberal egalitarians have begun to challenge this conventional view in two lines of argument. The first contends that immigration restrictions are inconsistent with basic liberal egalitarian values, including freedom and moral equality. The (...) second maintains that affluent, liberal democratic societies are morally obligated to admit immigrants as a partial response to global injustices, such as poverty and human rights violations. This article surveys the main philosophical arguments for these positions on immigration and discusses the critical responses to these arguments. (shrink)

This paper raises two objections to the freedom of movement argument from the perspective of nonideal philosophy: the argument cannot provide a means for establishing admissions priorities when all prospective immigrants cannot be admitted and it ignores alternative grounds for moral claims to admission in the context of histories of injustice. I develop an alternative admissions-guiding principle that assigns strong moral claims to admission to certain prospective immigrants based on a global extension of the no-harm principle. It claims that a (...) society must admit prospective immigrants if admission is necessary either to prevent that society from harming those immigrants or to compensate immigrants whom it has already harmed. States must fulfill these duties before they may legitimately use immigrant admissions policy in service of other national goals, including the advancement of economic interests. (shrink)

The prevalent views of animal liberty among animal advocates suggest that liberty is merely instrumentally valuable and invasive paternalism is justified. In contrast to this popular view, I argue that liberty is intrinsically good for animals. I suggest that animal well-being is best accommodated by an Objective List Theory and that liberty is an irreducible component of animal well-being. As such, I argue that it is good for animals to possess liberty even if possessing liberty does not contribute towards their (...) subjective well-being, and even in some cases where it has a negative effect upon their subjective well-being. To establish this view I argue that if animals are agents, as I assume they are, then like humans they must be able to determine the course of their own lives (to some extent). Further, having the opportunity to self-determine one’s life just is the very same thing as liberty, and having the opportunity to determine the course of one’s life is intrinsically good. Thus liberty has intrinsic value for humans and animals. So, in addition to the instrumental harms of having one’s liberty restricted, I claim that restricting animals’ liberty in principle harms them because it undermines their capacity for self-determination and fails to acknowledge their authority as agents to make their own choices. (shrink)

It is probably true that the greater number of contemporary American anthropologists feel that “theory” is a very dangerous kind of business which the careful anthropologist must be on his guard against. This statement represents, in the first instance, merely a crude induction from my experience in talking with professional anthropologists. It is, however, symptomatic that not until 1933 did a book by an American anthropologist include the word “theory” in its title. Only a single book published subsequently is explicitly (...) given over to anthropological theory, and this avowedly concentrates upon the historical development of theories rather than upon a fresh and extended analysis of the more abstract aspects of anthropological thought. But because anthropology still painfully remembers the stomach-ache it got from the too easy generalizations of many nineteenth century “arm-chair ethnologists” is insufficient reason, it seems to me, for that almost morbid avoidance of theory which tends to produce acute indigestion from sheer bulk of unordered concrete observations. Landheer has with some justice commented. (shrink)

THE INDICATIVE CONDITIONAL. A PROBABILISTIC CRITERION OF SOUNDNESS FOR DEDUCTIVE INFERENCES Our objective in this section is to establish a prima facie case ...

Like many recent works in legal theory, especially those focusing on the apparently conflicting schools of legal positivism and natural law, Waluchow’s Inclusive Legal Positivism begins by admitting a degree of perplexity about the field; indeed, he suggests that the field has fallen into “chaos”. Disturbingly, those working within legal theory appear most uncertain about what the tasks of their field are. Legal philosophers often seem to suspect strongly that at least their colleagues in the field are confused about those (...) tasks. As a result, many recent books in legal theory are in large part exercises in legal metatheory, devoting many pages to attempts to define the purposes and goals of the field. Waluchow follows this trend and begins by expressing a desire to clarify the issues that separate those trying to give an account of the nature of law. His ultimate goal is to defend a version of legal positivism, inclusive legal positivism, that he thinks is at least implicit in H. L. A. Hart’s work. (shrink)

In response to the concern that ethnically diverse immigrants are not being sufficiently integrated into receiving liberal democratic societies, liberal nationalists have offered two specific naturalization policy proposals. The first would require naturalizing immigrants to assimilate the national culture of the receiving society; the second would encourage newcomers to adopt the prevailing civic national identity. This paper rejects these proposals. In contrast to liberal nationalists, I deny that good citizenship presupposes a common culture or civic national identity and I develop (...) a non-nationalist naturalization model that would encourage immigrants to become integrated into liberal democratic societies by participating in their major socio-economic and political institutions and practices. (shrink)

Critics of ideal theory typically argue that prevailing liberal egalitarian principles were constructed under idealized assumptions and are thus ill suited to real-world circumstances where such assumptions do not apply. Specifically, they raise three related objections: (1) ideal theory cannot help us understand current injustices in the actual, nonideal world; (2) ideal principles are not sufficiently action-guiding; and (3) ideal theory tends to reflect and perpetuate unjust group privilege. This chapter explores recent philosophical work on borders and immigration in light (...) of these criticisms. I argue that prominent arguments on both sides of the open borders debate are subject to the standard criticisms of ideal theory, and thus that a nonideal approach to migration justice is urgently needed. I conclude by suggesting several methodological desiderata for such an approach. (shrink)

This article explores aspects of the textual relationship between women and early modern London by examining three verbal ‘snapshots’ of the city in works either written by women or focusing on women in their urban environment. The first text, Isabella Whitney's ‘Wyll and Testament’ (1573), addresses London from a rural perspective, treating the city as a fickle male to whom she wants to hand back all his treasures. The poem constructs a vivid and ironic social topography, giving a glimpse of (...) the roles of men and women in the Tudor city. The second text is by Mary Carleton, the roguish Restoration figure who defended her apparently ‘counterfeit’ life in the prose of The Case of Madam Mary Carleton (1663). Carleton's London is a place of unwanted seduction and sexual intimidation, highlighting a gendered moral geography even while the memoir itself titillates the reader with the account of her bizarre experiences. Finally, in a coda to the discussions of Whitney and Carleton, early eighteenth-century London is viewed through Jonathan Swift's satirical mock-pastorals of squalid urban life, in which female identity, like the city itself, is a site of violence, disgust and deception. Together, these textual representations of women and early modern London indicate the complex interactions of gender, literature and the early modern city. The analysis of the texts also suggests the significance of the ironic voice as a quintessentially urban literary mode, the prevalence of the idea of woman as a commodified topographical site, and the function of metaphors of courtship or marriage as indicators of the paradoxical attractions of the city. (shrink)

John Henry Newman was a man who sought to integrate life and holiness. He believed that the spiritual life needed to be lived in an active and dynamic way, touching a person’s fundamental attitudes and actions. Although Newman rejected the title of spiritual director as such, it is obvious from his correspondence that directing others through various facets of the Christian life was one of his dominant concerns. Utilizing his Letters and Diaries during his Catholic years , this lecture explores (...) how Newman directed others, the methods he used, and the meaning it has for understanding his life. (shrink)

Over the past decade, the increased involvement of local police in facilitating the deportation of undocumented migrants has played a central role in creating a record-breaking volume of deportations from the United States. In response to this so-called deportation crisis, nearly 600 localities have enacted sanctuary policies that limit their cooperation with federal authorities on immigration matters. This paper explores three moral justifications for sanctuary policies: the public safety, civil disobedience, and collective resistance arguments. Specifically, it addresses two questions: Which (...) justifications are available for which types of sanctuary policies? What must these justifications accomplish in order to be successful? I argue that although common public safety considerations can justify some sanctuary policies, others are best understood as a form of legitimate collective resistance. (shrink)

Many realists have maintained that the success of scientific theories can be explained only if they may be regarded as approximately true. Laurens Laudan has in turn contended that a necessary condition for a theory's being approximately true is that its central terms refer, and since many successful theories of the past have employed central terms which we now understand to be non-referential, realism cannot explain their success. The present paper argues that a realist can adopt a view of reference (...) according to which a theory might plausibly be said to be approximately true even though its central terms do not refer, or alternatively, he may construe reference in such a way as to assign reference to a range of successful older theories which includes Laudan's purported counterexamples. (shrink)

The principle of indifference has fallen from grace in contemporary philosophy, yet some papers have recently sought to vindicate its plausibility. This paper follows suit. In it, I articulate a version of the principle and provide what appears to be a novel argument in favour of it. The argument relies on a thought experiment where, intuitively, an agent’s confidence in any particular outcome being true should decrease with the addition of outcomes to the relevant space of possible outcomes. Put simply: (...) the greater the number of outcomes, the weaker your confidence should be in any one of those outcomes. The argument holds that this intuition favours the principle of indifference. I point out that, in contrast, the intuition is also incompatible with a major alternative to the principle which prescribes imprecise credences: the so-called wide interval view. Consequently, the argument may also be seen as an argument against the wide interval view. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

The emerging discipline of educational neuroscience stands at a crossroads between those who see great promise in integrating neuroscience and education and those who see the disciplinary divide as insurmountable. However, such tension is at least partly due to the hitherto predominance of philosophy and theory over the establishment of concrete mechanisms and agents of change. If educational neuroscience is to move forward and emerge as a distinct discipline in its own right, the traditional boundaries and methods must be bridged, (...) and an infrastructure must be in place that allows for collaborative and productive exchange. In the present paper, we argue that school psychologists have the potential to fulfill this need and represent important agents of change in establishing better connections between research and practice. More specifically, we use theNational Association of School Psychologists (NASP) (2020)Domains of Practice to highlight several areas where school psychology can actively support forging connections between neuroscience and educational practice. School psychologists represent untapped potential in their knowledge, skillset, and placement to serve a vital role in building the bridge between neuroscience and education. (shrink)

All of us make judgments of probability, and we rely on them for our decision-making. This paper argues that such judgments are trustworthy only to the extent that one has good reasons to think that they are produced by maximally inclusive, well calibrated cognitive processes. A cognitive process is maximally inclusive when it takes into account all the evidence which one regards as relevant, and it is well calibrated when anything it would assign, say, an 80% probability to would be (...) true 80% of the time. We further have good reasons to think these judgments are trustworthy when, inter alia, they are produced by processes that have good track records of calibration. Call this inclusive calibrationism—or just “calibrationism” for short. In arguing for calibrationism, I also appeal to various empirical results, including research into probabilistic reasoning funded by the US intelligence community. Together, these ideas and results have implications for some important philosophical problems: the problem of the priors, the problem of unique events and the use of intuition in probabilistic reasoning. These theses and results also imply that our judgments are often less trustworthy than we might hope for potentially many domains, including law, medicine and others—barring good track records, that is. (shrink)

Wellman argues that legitimate states have a presumptive right to close their borders, excluding all prospective immigrants. He maintains that this right is not outweighed by egalitarian considerations because societies can fulfill their duties to outsiders by transferring aid instead of opening borders. I argue that societies cannot discharge their egalitarian duties by providing aid in at least two cases: when opening borders is the only way to fulfill these duties, and when transferring aid is inconsistent with egalitarian commitments. I (...) also consider additional, non-egalitarian moral considerations that may justify a duty to maintain open borders. I conclude that Wellman fails to prove that states have an actual, all things considered right to close their borders. (shrink)

Through close examination of the texts, the author shows how 15th-century philosopher Nicholas of Cusa developed an understanding of uncertainty that opened the way for human intelligence, despite its inherent weaknesses, to find out more about ourselves, the world, and what lies beyond.

À l’origine de ce dossier, on trouve un mot (et une notion) de l’épistémologie féministe, celui de « care » – terme que nous avons choisi de conserver en anglais tant il est impossible de restituer sa polysémie par un seul terme ou même une expression en français. Popularisé par l’ouvrage In a different voice de la psychologue féministe Carol Gilligan en 1982, le care est à la fois une grille de lecture du monde social et un terrain de recherche (...) inscrit dans les expériences ordinaires des ind... (shrink)

Analyzes the varied discourse on values and ethics. Addresses the need for self-scrutiny and explores leadership, the professoriate, and campus culture. Also examines academic integrity, freedom of speech, and the conflict between individual rights and the needs of the academic community.