Can war be justified? Pacifists answer that it cannot; they oppose war and advocate for nonviolent alternatives to war. But defenders of just war theory argue that in some circumstances, when the effectiveness of nonviolence is limited, wars can be justified. -/- In this book, two philosophers debate this question, drawing on contemporary scholarship and new developments in thinking about pacifism and just war theory. Andrew Fiala defends the pacifist position, while Jennifer Kling defends just war traditions. Fiala (...) argues that pacifism follows from the awful reality of war and the nonviolent goal of building a more just and peaceful world. Kling argues that war is sometimes justified when it is a last-ditch, necessary effort to defend people and their communities from utter destruction and death. Pulling from global traditions and histories, their debate will captivate anyone who has wondered or worried about the morality of political violence and military force. Topics discussed include ethical questions of self-defense and other-defense, the great analogy between individuals and states, evolving technologies and methods of warfighting, moral injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, broader political and communal issues, and the problem of regional security in a globalizing world. The authors consider cultural and religious issues as well as the fundamental question of moral obligation in a world saturated in military conflict. The book was written in the aftermath of the war on terrorism and includes reflection on lessons learned from the past decades of war, as well as hopes for the future in light of emerging threats in Europe and elsewhere. -/- The book is organized in a user-friendly fashion. Each author presents a self-contained argument, which is followed by a series of responses, replies, and counter-arguments. Throughout, the authors model civil discourse by emphasizing points of agreement and remaining areas of disagreement. The book includes reader-friendly summaries, a glossary of key concepts, and suggestions for further study. All of this will help students and scholars follow the authors’ dialogue so they may develop their own answer to the question of whether war can be justified. (shrink)

Andrew Fiala's Against Religion, Wars, and States: The Case for Enlightenment Atheism, Just War Pacifism, and Liberal-Democratic Anarchism argues that we need to overcome the idea of the nation-state and look toward global justice, that we need to develop a more critical stance toward religion while embracing enlightened humanism and natural science, and that we need to look beyond violent solutions to social problems in order to build world peace.

We develop a partial solution to the meta-problem of consciousness that builds on our previous psychological account of an apparent explanatory gap. Drawing from empirical work on explanatory cognition and conceptual development, we sketch a profile of cognitive systems for which primitive concepts facilitate explanatory gaps. This account predicts that there will be multiple explanatory gaps. We suggest that this is borne out by the existence of primitivist theories in multiple philosophical domains.

Edward Erwin's clear analysis addresses some of the fundamental questions on behavior therapy that remained in 1978, when this book was first published.

Consciousness often presents itself as a problem for materialists because no matter which physical explanation we consider, there seems to remain something about conscious experience that hasn't been fully explained. This gives rise to an apparent explanatory gap. The explanatory gulf between the physical and the conscious is reflected in the broader population, in which dualistic intuitions abound. Drawing on recent empirical evidence, this essay presents a dual-process cognitive model of consciousness attribution. This dual-process model, we suggest, provides an important (...) part of the explanation for why dualism is so attractive and the explanatory gap so vexing. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the difficulty of distinguishing between science fiction and philosophy. The boundary between these genres is somewhat vague. There is a “neutral zone” separating the genres. But this neutral zone is often transgressed. One key distinction considered here is that between entertainment and edification. Another crucial element is found in the importance of the author’s apparent self-consciousness of these distinctions. Philosophy seeks to edify, and philosophers are often deliberately focused on thinking about the question of the (...) borders that distinguish genres. Science fiction is more interested in entertainment, and narrative authors tend to care less about policing the border. This distinction is a pragmatic one. And canonical authors often violate the boundary. I examine key authors to make this point, including Plato, Kant, and H.G. Wells. My discussion shows that these canonical authors wandered into the neutral zone in their own work, reminding us that the boundaries we draw around genres are arbitrary and subject to transgression. (shrink)

Although jus in bello violations create transgressive acts that cause moral injury, the primary consideration in thinking about moral injury should be jus ad bellum. If one is fighting in an ad bellum just war, then transgressive acts can be rationalized in a way that allows for consolation. But for morally sensitive combatants engaged in an ad bellum unjust war, consolation is more difficult since there is no way to justify or rationalize morally problematic deeds committed in defense of an (...) unjust cause. Morally serious combatants should consider the question of jus ad bellum as they struggle to deal with moral injury, along with other values such as obedience and loyalty. Such an inquiry can produce further trauma when the justness of the war is called into question. The paper examines moral injury and justice in war, grounding the discussion in concrete examples: the Second World War, the Vietnam War, and the U.S. war in Iraq. It concludes that in a democracy, ordinary citizens should demonstrate solidarity with combatants suffering moral injury, since those combatants serve in wars—even unjust wars—authorized by us and fought in our names. (shrink)

Political philosophy is a paradoxical attempt to bring reason to bear upon a subject matter that is irrational. This problem has been side-stepped by many contemporary political thinkers. Political theorists like Iris Young, Michael Sandel, Jean Elshtain, Robert Bork, and Richard Peterson acknowledge that contemporary political life, with its lack of democratic participation and its undemocratic, bureaucratic institutions, is undergoing a legitimation crisis. These theorists offer philosophical analyses of this crisis in order to arrive at its rational resolution. This approach (...) forgets, however, that there can be no rational resolutions within the political realm. Politicalphilosophy alone cannot resolve the legitimation crisis. This is especially so because the contemporary legitimation crisis arises, in part, from a lack of rationality on the part of both agents and institutions. Yet, we cannot fully give up on the enterprise of political philosophy. To do so would be to acquiesce to irrationality and the lack of legitimation found in contemporary political life. This paper argues that political philosophers, at their best, must adopt a deliberately ironic disposition: while demanding rational analyses of political life, they must acknowledge that rational analysis may itself be ineffectual in political life. (shrink)

A discussion of José-Antonio Orosco’s new book, Star Trek’s Philosophy of Peace and Justice: A Global, Anti-Racist Approach. Orosco has been finding wisdom in Star Trek episodes since he watched late night reruns with his mother. Then, recently, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek’s debut, Orosco began to teach the series as source material for peace philosophy. Philosophical concepts can be brought to bear on Star Trek stories; but Orosco argues that the stories also assert philosophical meanings (...) that are instructive to peace studies. Martin Luther King Jr. was a fan of the first season, famously encouraging the late Nichelle Nichols (1932-2022) to persist in the role of Nyota Uhura after she had decided to resign. In our book discussion, Orosco centers the importance of Critical Race Theory as a tool for exploring Star Trek’s presentation of peace and justice. Andrew Fiala questions Orosco about Star Trek’s militarism. Jennifer Kling asks how the treatment of refugees intersects with Starfleet’s Prime Directive, which commands noninterference with intergalactic populations. (shrink)

This paper argues that it is not incoherent to think that abortion should be “legal but rare.” The argument draws upon virtue ethics, feminism, critical theory, and the theory of biopolitics to argue that the idea that abortion should be legal but rare is best understood as aiming at the elimination of unwanted pregnancies. Some pro-choice defenders of abortion rights worry that the “legal but rare” idea stigmatizes women who choose abortion. But when this idea is unpacked using the tools (...) of intersectional analysis, biopolitical theory, and virtue ethics it can be understood as pointing toward a transformation of social reality that empowers women. (shrink)

This paper argues for a pragmatic resolution to the conflict between justice and forgiveness. Authors such as Derrida, who see a paradox or aporia in the conflict between justice and forgiveness, often conceive each value in absolute terms. A pragmatic approach deemphasizes absolutism and focuses instead on pluralism and sensitivity to context. One useful example of a pragmatic approach is found in care ethics, as described by Noddings. Care ethics emphasizes the concrete specificity of relationships and the needs and interests (...) of individuals, while downplaying abstract and absolute moral principles. This approach is described in opposition to more traditional religious and moral theories that hold justice or forgiveness as abstract and mutually opposed values. (shrink)

This book explores the idea of religious pluralism while defending the norms of secular cosmopolitanism, which include liberty, tolerance, civility, and hospitality. The secular cosmopolitan ideal requires us to be more tolerant and more hospitable toward religious believers and non-believers from diverse traditions in our religiously pluralistic world. Some have argued that the world s religions can be united around a common core. This book argues that it is both impossible and inadvisable either to reduce religion to one thing or (...) to deny religion. Instead, the book affirms non reductive pluralism and seeks to understand how we should live in a pluralistic world. Building on work in the sociology of religion and philosophy of religion, the book examines the grown of religious diversity in the contemporary world. It argues that religious toleration, hospitality, and compassion must be extended in a global direction. Secular cosmopolitanism recognizes that each person has a right to his or her deepest beliefs and that the diversity of the world s religious and non-religious traditions cannot be reduced or eliminated. ". (shrink)

The relation between universal and particular is considered to be the Achilles’ heel of universal realism. However, modern universal realism with facts does not have the difficulties which traditional Platonic universal realism had. Its exemplification relation connecting particulars and universals in atomic facts is very different from Platonic participation. Bradley’s regress argument against the exemplification relation can be refuted in two different ways. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to avoid the assumption of an exemplification relation and thus to go without (...) the Achilles’ heel altogether. (shrink)

_Why originalism is a flawed, incoherent, and dangerously ideological method of constitutional interpretation__ “Chemerinsky... offers a concise, point-by-point refutation of the theory [of originalism]. He argues that it cannot deliver what it promises—and if it could, no one would want what it is selling.”—David Cole, _New York Review of Books__ Originalism, the view that the meaning of a constitutional provision is fixed when it is adopted, was once the fringe theory of a few extremely conservative legal scholars but is now (...) a well-accepted mode of constitutional interpretation. Three of the Supreme Court’s nine justices explicitly embrace the originalist approach, as do increasing numbers of judges in the lower courts. Noted legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky gives a comprehensive analysis of the problems that make originalism unworkable as a method of constitutional interpretation. He argues that the framers themselves never intended constitutional interpretation to be inflexible and shows how it is often impossible to know what the “original intent” of any particular provision was. Perhaps worst of all, though its supporters tout it as a politically neutral and objective method, originalist interpretation tends to disappear when its results fail to conform to modern conservative ideology. (shrink)

This paper proposes the ‘AGENCY model’ of conscious state attribution, according to which an entity's displaying certain relatively simple features (e.g. eyes, distinctive motions, interactive behavior) automatically triggers a disposition to attribute conscious states to that entity. To test the model's predictions, participants completed a speeded object/attribution task, in which they responded positively or negatively to attributions of mental properties (including conscious and non-conscious states) to different sorts of entities (insects, plants, artifacts, etc.). As predicted, participants responded positively to conscious (...) state attributions only for those entities that typically display the simple features identified in the AGENCY model (eyes, distinctive motion, interaction) and took longer to deny conscious states to those entities. (shrink)

There is no grand narrative or master plan for historical progress. Contemporary discussions of progress and enlightenment reflect an improved version of an old debate, which has progressed beyond older debates about metaphysical optimism and pessimism. Responding to recent work by John Gray, Steven Pinker, and others, this paper describes meliorism as a middle path between optimism and pessimism. Meliorism is pragmatic, humanistic, secular, and historically grounded. The epistemic modesty of meliorism develops out of understanding the long history of debates (...) about progress and enlightenment, including the history of meliorism itself. The paper provides a historical account of the development of meliorism, while arguing that understanding this history helps us make progress in thinking about progress. (shrink)

Hegel did not have an adequate appreciation of linguistic diversity. This lapse is linked to Hegel’s Eurocentric view of history and culture. Hegel’s view of language is considered within the context of Leibniz’s hope for a universal philosophical language, the metacritique of Kant, and Fichte’s linguistic nationalism. Hegel overcomes the sort of nationalism found in Fichte. And Hegel aspires toward the universal while recognizing the importance of concrete historical language. However, he does not achieve the sort of appreciation of linguistic (...) diversity we find in Humboldt. The paper concludes that Humboldt can thus be used to critique Hegel’s Eurocentrism without anachronism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT An ontological analysis of time and of serial order is offered within the framework of a comprehensive ontology wherein the category of facts plays a crucial role. It is applied to distinguish them while various ways and contexts in which both have been mixed up in past and in present philosophy are discussed. The good reasons for that mix-up and the astonishing difficulty of keeping them apart are considered. The focus is more on the ontology of order than on (...) the ontology of time. The latter is too wide a subject. It turns out that order has not really been grounded even in set theory. The ontology of serial order expounded is new. It is also needed for the adequate ontological analysis of relational facts. (shrink)

RésuméOn a beaucoup insisté ces derniers temps sur la nécessité pour la science et la philosophie de rester ouvertes, c'est‐à‐dire d'être prêtes à remettre en question leurs principes les mieux établis.L'auteur cherche à montrer, par un certain nombre d'exemples, que la tendance opposée est également légitime et garantit la cohérence de la connaissance.La méthode axiomatique, forme mathématique privilégiée de la connaissance dialectique, satisfait remarquablement à ces deux exigences. — F. F.

`Erwin′s argumentative skills and knowledge of the literature are remarkable and most of his original claims are persuasive....The merit of the analysis Erwin offers is to provide a well-informed and accessible account of the current state of psychotherapy, its history and its philosophical grounds′ - Metapsychology Online `For those readers who favour an empirical-scientific approach to counselling and therapy, and who view therapy, at least potentially or in principle, as an objective science, this will no doubt be a (...) very useful and informative book... We should be grateful that Erwin has set out more fully than anyone to date the specifically philosophical case for a "science of therapy"; and those of a New Paradigm persuasion at least now know the nature of the arguments they will have to refute in order to sustain their position. I look forward with eager anticipation to their efforts, and to an emerging and fruitful engagement between philosophy and therapy - for both have a great deal to learn from each other′ - Counselling, The Journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy This pioneering book analyzes the interface between philosophy and psychotherapy. The first authoritative work to apply rigorous philosophical discipline to therapeutic claims and counter-claims, it will encourage psychotherapists, counsellors and applied psychologists to examine their practice and clarify their thinking. Edward Erwin discusses some of the key philosophical issues that have a particular relevance to psychotherapeutic theory - autonomy and free choice, the nature of the self, epistemology, and values and morals - as well as examining specific interdisciplinary issues that cut across the boundaries between philosophy and psychotherapy. Finally, he looks at the `crisis′ in psychotherapy today, offering a valuable philosophical insight into the debate about the proliferation and efficacy of therapeutic approaches. (shrink)

Parmenides advances four arguments against becoming. Two of these are sound. Plato's and Aristotle's attempt to refute them fail. They react to Parmenides' challenge by differentiating and grading being and existence. Thus they deviate from Parmenides' strict concept of existence which is the only reasonable one. What's wrong with Parmenides' train of thought is a decisive premise: that becoming is a transition from non-existence to existence. The reality of becoming can be maintained if this premise is given up. One has (...) to see that becoming is a purely temporal affair not involving existence and that existence is timeless. Time and existence are independent of each other. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultation service remains undeveloped in developing countries. It is recognised that its introduction poses challenges. Malaysia, a multicultural society with diverse religions, values and perceptions further complicate the introduction of formal clinical ethics consultation service. Clinicians attending a national congress workshop completed a Strengths–Weaknesses–Opportunities–Threats analysis. The aim was to gain insight into clinician’s expectations and promote initiatives leading to the introduction of clinical ethics consultation service. Clinicians agree that clinical ethics consultation service can improve quality of care, reduce (...) healthcare costs and advocate for patients and providers. The analysis highlighted constraints in sufficient critical mass of relevant expertise and restricted opportunities for training. The opportunities lie in education, curriculum development and availability of dedicated proponents. Cultural barriers, limited resources, lack of awareness, differenc... (shrink)

This paper considers the extent to which we already live in a cosmopolitan era. Resurgent nationalism is explained as a reactionary response to the success of cosmopolitanization. Cosmopolitanization is further explained as a dialectical process. Contemporary cosmopolitanism emerges against the backdrop of Eurocentric globalization associated with the colonial era. While the Eurocentric legacy must be rejected, it has left us with a cosmopolitan world. Other dialectical processes emerge in consideration of the importance of local and multicultural issues. Cosmopolitanization is a (...) process that must work to connect global processes with local concerns. The paper situates this argument in consideration of events in Peru, in connection with the rise of Donald Trump in the United States, and in relation to several examples of the cosmopolitan dialectic. Despite some dialectical setbacks, the paper concludes that we are already operating in a world in which globally diverse ideas and practices are already in dialogue. The challenge is to continue the cosmpolitanizing conversation, while remaining responsive to the needs of local communities. (shrink)