This article is an attempt to deepen our understanding of trust. To this end, several elements frequently present in trust-relationships are first identified, and then three underappreciated puzzles about trust are described. Next, it is argued that certain leading analyses of trust are unsatisfactory, in part, because they are unable to solve these puzzles succesfully. Finally, an alternative way of thinking about trust is proposed. It is argued that this new way of thinking about trust is bothindependently plausible and better (...) able to solve these puzzles about trust. (shrink)

Shelly Kagan argues in his ‘What's Wrong with Speciesism?’ for four provocative claims: 1. speciesism is not necessarily a mere prejudice; 2. most people are not speciesists; 3. ‘modal personism’ more closely reflects what most people believe, and 4. modal personism might be true. In this article, I object to Kagan's account of what constitutes a ‘mere prejudice’, and I object to the sort of argument he uses to show that most people are not speciesist. I then attempt to motivate, (...) and defend what I take to be the best version of modal personism; answer several problems for the view; and raise other problems that I think are harder to answer. (shrink)

Humane farming can be defined as the practice of raising animals for food in an environment that is good for them and where they are killed in a manner that is relatively painless. Many people who oppose factory farming think that humane farming is morally permissible, even morally laudable. In what follows, I focus on one argument in support of humane farming that emphasizes its good consequences, not only for producers, and consumers, but for the animals themselves. I discuss problems (...) for this argument and explain how it can be revised to overcome those problems. In the end, I explain why even the strongest version of the good‐consequences argument fails to show that most cases of humane farming are morally permissible. However, my objections to this argument suggest that humane farming may be morally permissible in rare cases. (shrink)

It seems clear that a fortunate life for a human being is very different from a fortunate life for a dog. But it is not clear what the appropriate measure is for determining whether a life is fortunate or not. Jeff McMahan rejects the Species Norm Account and defends the Intrinsic Potential Account of overall lifelong fortune. In this article, I argue that the Intrinsic Potential Account fails. More specifically, I will argue that it is vulnerable to numerous counterexamples; fails (...) for the same basic reason that McMahan rejects the Species Norm Account; and is insensitive to a consideration that is morally significant. (shrink)

In this updated second edition, Debating Health Care Ethics explores contemporary moral challenges in health care, providing students with the essential tools to understand and critically evaluate the leading arguments in the field and to develop their own arguments on important moral problems in health care. Written in a clear and concise way, the textbook’s first three chapters explore the nature of arguments and ethical theories, while the remaining chapters introduce students to moral problems in health care through case studies (...) and dramas that feature complex scenarios involving patients, family members, and health care providers. Each case study and drama is followed by a lively debate where the authors defend their unique approaches to the dilemma. This new edition now includes more gender inclusive dramas, an expanded discussion of feminist ethics, a case study on euthanasia that highlights changes to Canadian law, and an update on fetal consciousness that informs the debate on abortion. Emphasizing critical issues in health care from a Canadian perspective, this essential textbook will benefit students in philosophy, nursing, and health studies. (shrink)

Joseph Ogbonnaya’s edited volume Perspectives on Psychic Conversion offers a rich and multifaceted exploration of the concept of psychic conversion, building on Bernard Lonergan’s triad of intellectual, moral, and religious conversions. The collection of seventeen essays provides a comprehensive examination of the role and implications of psychic conversion across various fields, making it a pivotal read for scholars and practitioners interested in theology, psychology, and social transformation.

Esse artigo foi originalmente publicado como capítulo do livro Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, organizado por Steven T. Katz e publicado pela Oxford University Press em 1978. O texto trata de questões epistemológicas da mística e problematiza uma série de concepções dessa temática, tendo por principal objetivo marcar uma maneira de abordar os dados fornecidos pelos místicos, concentrando-se especialmente na tentativa de defender a concepção de que assim como as ideias são mediadas por contextos culturais, sociais e religiosos, as experiências (...) místicas são vivenciadas, ou como prefere dizer o autor, interpretadas, de formas diferenciadas de acordo com esses mesmos contextos. (shrink)

This book develops the idea that meaningfulness is specified as a relation between an acknowledged appeal and an adopted attitude. In the Axial Age classics and again in modern refoundings of philosophy and theology, ideals of a fully commanding supreme appeal and a fully adequate orientation to the world in cognizance of that appeal--a sovereign attitude--are intellectually and spiritually central. Some of the most fundamental challenges of pluralism stem from differences in appeal and attitude ideals.

Life is characterized by a selectivity for asymmetric molecules. A great deal of theoretical and experimental work has yet to explain why living organisms utilize only L‐amino acids in proteins and D‐sugars in RNA and DNA. Also unknown is how a form of life based on asymmetric molecules evolved from an environment containing a racemic mixture of prebiotic molecules. By what mechanism did this selectivity for asymmetric molecules take place?

My dissertation has two main parts. In the first half, I draw out an underlying presupposition of Descartes' philosophy: what I term "atomism of thought." Descartes employs a radical procedure of doubt in order to show that the first principle of his philosophy, the cogito, is an unshakeable foundation of knowledge. In the dialogue that follows his dissemination of the Meditations, Descartes reveals that a whole set of concepts and rational principles innate in our minds are never doubted. These fundamental (...) units of thought are indivisible, distinct, and isolated, and enable the possibility of any rational demonstration. Atoms of thought are perfectly individuated because God has created them as such. Likewise, our minds have been fashioned such that we necessarily have a clear and distinct perception every time we alight upon these simple notions. In the second part of the dissertation, I take up critiques of Descartes' view given by Nietzsche and Heidegger. In the chapter on Nietzsche, I attempt to fill a lacuna in scholarship about Nietzsche's commentary on Descartes. More specifically, I argue that once the foundation of God is displaced, the basis for accepting atomism of thought dissolves. In the final chapter, I analyze Heidegger's critique of Cartesian atomism. I first look at Heidegger's critique of classical truth as correspondence from Being and Time, and show how it is relevant to a critique of atomism. Then I show how the early Heidegger's holistic philosophical framework can provide an alternative that avoids the pitfalls of atomism. While I limit the scope of my analysis to Descartes' particular formulation, atomism of thought was an influential doctrine throughout modern philosophy. This aspect of Cartesianism has persisted and continues to be a significant theoretical underpinning of many contemporary views. It is my contention that Nietzsche and Heidegger have important contributions to make to this area of thought, and the relative neglect of their work in recent scholarship is a detrimental oversight. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Location of the Houses of Cicero and Clodius and the Porticus Catuli on the Palatine Hill in RomeSteven M. CeruttiThe location of cicero’s house on the Palatine hill in Rome is a matter of more than ordinary interest, inasmuch as he locates it for us in relation to a number of other important houses and buildings, and recent archaeological investigations at the southwest corner of the hill can (...) be used to throw fresh light on this question. Cicero’s house almost certainly stood along the higher leg of the Clivus Victoriae, along the northwest side of the hill running from the north corner to the precinct of the Magna Mater. Here it would have overlooked the Forum Romanum, as Cicero says in conspectu prope totius urbis (Dom. 100). 1 On one side it adjoined the Porticus Catuli, which Clodius enlarged by the addition of a part of Cicero’s property, but only a fraction (vix pars aedium mearum decima,Dom. 116), after destroying Cicero’s house during Cicero’s self-imposed exile in 58 B.C. However, since Cicero regarded his as a large and noble house (Dom. 115; cf. Har. Resp. 16, Fam. 6.18.5), that tenth might have been a not inconsiderable parcel. Furthermore, in De Haruspicum Responso (49) Cicero tells us that Clodius announced in public assembly that he wished to build on the Carinae on the Mons Oppius a second porticus quae Palatio responderet. In context he clearly means that Clodius hoped to drive Pompey into exile as he had Cicero, to destroy Pompey’s Domus Rostrata, and to use the land for the construction of a porticus, perhaps in conjunction with the Temple of Tellus that was located nearby, that would match the Porticus Catuli as he had rebuilt it. 2 This has been taken to mean that Cicero’s house on the Palatine faced the Carinae, but that is not necessarily the case, as before the removal of the Velia in the 1930s the view from the Palatine to the Carinae was not uninterrupted, and it is questionable whether any significant [End Page 417] part of the Carinae was in view of the Palatine. 3 But since we cannot bound the Carinae, the question must be left open.On another side Cicero’s house adjoined the house of Q. Seius Postumus, which Cicero seems to have thought architecturally in a class with his own (Dom. 115). Seius’ house, either on the opposite side or in back, adjoined that of P. Clodius Pulcher, for when Clodius wanted to enlarge his house by annexing that of Seius, and Seius was reluctant to part with his house, Clodius threatened to block his light, presumably by the construction of walls that would cover windows that let into open areas such as gardens in his own house. 4 Cicero’s house, when it was later rebuilt, also adjoined that of his brother Quintus, closely enough that Cicero says he and his brother would be contubernales, once his brother’s house was finished, and the adherents of Clodius set fire to the building in progress in November 57 while they were trying to discourage Cicero from rebuilding (Att. 4.3.2; QFr. 2.4.2, 2.5.3). From this it seems almost certain that Cicero must have ceded a slice of his plot to his brother when the time for rebuilding came. Space on the Palatine had long been expensive and difficult to obtain, and at that time Marcus Cicero was worried about his financial condition and complained that the indemnity awarded him by the Senate was woefully inadequate (Att. 4.2.5). One might also imagine that the brothers’ houses adjoined at the rear, facing on different streets, but given the space available between the two legs of the Clivus Victoriae and the Via Nova, that is less likely. 5Clodius’ object in acquiring the houses of Seius and Cicero, although in the case of the latter ostensibly to enlarge the Porticus Catuli and to build a temple of Libertas (Dom. 108), was actually, Cicero asserts, to enlarge his own house and to make it one of the most sumptuous residences in the... (shrink)

One of the welcome features of Leibniz research over the past quarter century has been the abandonment of the old "chicken vs. egg" debate about whether Leibniz's logic precedes and grounds his metaphysics or vice versa. Scholars such as Robert M. Adams, Daniel Garber, and Donald Rutherford, among others, have brought our attention to what might be called the systematic "holism" of Leibniz's thought and the way in which its various elements—logical, physical, metaphysical, and theological—reinforce each other. Rutherford, in particular, (...) has argued persuasively that if anything is central to Leibniz's project and its systematicity, it is his philosophical theology, and especially his theodicy.Paul Rateau's book is an important contribution to our understanding of Leibniz's thinking about the problem of evil and the way in which it relates to so many other aspects—philosophical, political, theological—of his system. It is, without question, the most thorough, careful, and philosophically astute study to date of Leibniz's theodicy and its ramifications. It is also an exceedingly well-written and fascinating book. (shrink)

As an exercise in the ‘theology of disclosure’, the present essay proposes a kind of phenomenological analysis of the act of reading the Bible as Scripture with the goal of bringing to light the theoretical commitments which it implicitly demands. This sort of analysis can prove helpful for the continuing disputes among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox insofar as it is relevant for one of the principal points of controversy between them: namely, the relationship between Scripture, Tradition, and Church as theological (...) authorities. It proceeds by analyzing both the objective and subjective ‘poles’ of the act, and it illuminates the presence of the Church and her Tradition on both sides. The Church—i.e., the community of God’s people—is both that which is immediately encountered in the text, as well as the factor which enables scriptural reading in the first place. The article terminates with an application of the insights of the preceding discussion to the controversy about icons. (shrink)

In this dissertation I argue that the concept of a moral right is best explicated by means of the concept of morally legitimate coercion. This thesis, which I call the enforceability thesis, says that to have a right is to have a claim such that one would be justified in pursuing a course of action up to and including harm should the claim be dissatisfied. I contend that this thesis, if it is true, explains much about our intuitions concerning moral (...) rights, accounts for the historical importance of rights-talk in the context of events such as revolutions and political reforms, and explains why rights are a necessary part of the moral vocabulary. If rights do not set out conditions under which coercion is morally appropriate, then they do nothing that other moral concepts could not do. ;Drawing on the work of H. L. A. Hart, John Rawls, and others, I argue that the philosophical strength and practical efficacy of rights on the enforceability thesis is best realized when rights are treated as action-guiding principles set within a framework of moral decision making under reflective equilibrium. Using the process of reflective equilibrium as a backdrop, I argue that rights can have sufficient normative force to play an important role in moral and political theory without being either impracticably stringent or subject to so many exceptions that they lose their efficacy. ;With this background in place I next set out and argue for a view of human rights which, because human rights turn out to be best understood as rights to primary goods, I call the theory of primary rights. The account I give of primary rights emphasizes their justificatory place in arguments for coercion, their importance to the moral integrity of the individual, and the practical applicability of the overarching theory of rights developed in this dissertation. (shrink)

Ἠλ. ὑμᾶς δὲ κωκυτοῖς ἐπανθίζειν νόμος, 150παιᾶνα τοῦ θανόντος ἐξαυδωμένας.Χο. ἵετε δάκρυ καναχὲς ὀλόμενονὀλομένωι δεσπόταιπρὸς ῥεῦμα τόδε κεδνῶν κακῶν τ’ἀπότροπον, ἄγος ἀπεύχετον 155κεχυμένων χοᾶν.κλύε δέ μοι σέβας, κλύ’, ὦ δέσποτ’, ἐξἀμαυρᾶς φρενός.ὀτοτοτοτοτοτοῖ⋅ἴτω τις δορυσθενὴς ἀνὴρ 160ἀναλυτὴρ δόμων †Σκυθιτά τ’ ἐν χεροῖνπαλίντον’ ἐν ἔργωι† βέλη ’πιπάλλων Ἄρηςσχέδιά τ’ αὐτόκωπα νωμῶν ξίφη.152–63 lectio dubia 154 ῥεῦμα Weil: ἔρυμα Μ κεδνῶν κακῶν τ᾽ Schütz: κακῶν κεδνῶν τ᾽ Μ; locum interpr. DoddsCQ3, 13–15 155 ἄγος ΜΣ: ἄλγος Μ; ἄγος χοᾶν ad ῥεῦμα adpositum est 157 (...) μου Blaydes σέβας κλύ᾽ Bamberger: κλύε σέβας Μ 160 ἴτω Bothe: ἰὼ Μ 161 seq. Σκυθιτά, supra ιτ scr. ης, Μ; Σκύθης an Σκυθικά incertum; fort. Σκυθικά τ᾽ ἐν χεροῖν | ἐναργῶς βέλη κτλ., del. παλίντονα tamquam e schol. ad Σκυθικά illatum 163 ξίφη Pauw ex ΜΣ: βέλη Μ. (shrink)

No volume by single scholar can recreate the incessant dialectic of contemporary philosophic inquiry; hence we are offering a series that is a collaboration of many hands. The present series is intended to provide students, teachers, and interested nonprofessionals with collections of essays in every major problem area of contemporary philosophy. Each volume is devoted to a single set of interconnected issues; each issue is currently that subject of intense philosophic discussion. In making relatively inaccessible essays available, this series will (...) enable teachers of philosophy to find strategic or supplementary materials for a wide range of courses. To the student it offers the luxury of possessing essays formerly buried in bound journals or closeted in library reserves. To readers other than teachers and students, the series offers an opportunity to explore contemporary philosophy at first hand. To all readers, it offers original formulations of new ideas and fresh insight into topics of ancient ancestry. -Introduction / Frank A. Tillman. (shrink)

This volume surveys the interpretation of St. Paul by patristic and medieval exegetes. It also examines the use of Paul by medieval reformers, canon lawyers, and spiritual teachers and Paul’s portrayal in medieval literature and art.

The New Semantics (NS) introduced by Kripke and Putnam is often thought to block antiphysicalist arguments that involve an inference from an explanatory gap to a failure of supervenience. But this “NS Rebuttal” depends upon two assumptions that are shown to be dubious. First, it assumes that mental-kind terms are among the kinds of terms to which NS analysis is properly applied. However, there are important differences in this regard between the behavior of notions like ‘pain’ and notions like ‘water’, (...) as Kripke himself has argued. Second, even on the assumption that NS analysis is appropriate to mental-kind terms, it is further assumed that this would block the anti-physicalist premise that an abiding and principled explanatory gap would entail a failure of metaphysical supervenience. But the paradigm examples of NS analysis show nothing of the sort. What they show is that there are a posteriori necessities (e.g., “water contains hydrogen”) that cannot be inferred from the sense of natural kind terms. But they do not show that such necessities cannot be derived from an adequate scientific understanding of the phenomena in question. Indeed, such derivations are often available with kinds like water, but seem unavailable with mental kinds like ‘pain’ and ‘belief’. (shrink)