Everyone agrees that justice is a profoundly important value. People march and protest to demand it; more than a few have died in its pursuit. Yet when we stop to reflect on what makes for justice, or try to state in a clear way what we mean when we speak of justice, we may be perplexed. But if you are going to die in defense of some value, it is important for you to have a fairly clear conception of what (...) that value is. This book is an attempt to explain and defend, in clear and precise terms, a novel and controversial view about what makes for distributive justice in a country. The theory is a form of desertism, according to which justice reigns in a country when the government ensures that citizens receive the benefits and burdens they deserve. (shrink)

Still the German philosopher Martin (1889-1976), not Harvey down at the bakery. Dallmayr (political theory, U. of Notre Dame) explores his alternative political ideas, at odds both with traditional metaphysics and with the prevailing ideologies of our time, without getting tangled up in the usual controversy of his adherence to Nazism after 1933. He identifies Heidegger's his views on democracy, public ethics and justice, and political agency and community, and suggests how they might contribute to modern thought. Annotation copyright by (...) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

Among philosophers, there are at least two prevalent views about the core concept of intentional action. View I (Adams 1986, 1997; McCann 1986) holds that an agent S intentionally does an action A only if S intends to do A. View II (Bratman 1987; Harman 1976; and Mele 1992) holds that there are cases where S intentionally does A without intending to do A, as long as doing A is foreseen and S is willing to accept A as a consequence (...) of S’s action. Joshua Knobe (2003a) presents intriguing data that may be taken to support the second view.1 Knobe’s data show an asymmetry in folk judgements. People are more inclined to judge that S did A intentionally, even when not intended, if A was perceived as causing a harm (e.g. harming the environment). There is an asymmetry because people are not inclined to see S’s action as intentional, when not intended, if A is perceived as causing a benefit (e.g. helping the environment). In this paper we will discuss Knobe’s results in detail. We will raise the question of whether his ordinary language surveys of folk judgments have accessed core concepts of intentional action. We suspect that instead Knobe’s surveys are tapping into pragmatic aspects of intentional language and its role in moral praise and blame. We will suggest alternative surveys that we plan to conduct to get at this difference, and we will attempt to explain the pragmatic usage of intentional language. (shrink)

Bergmann has proposed an ontology that contains an entity many find strange: particularity. And in fact, Bergmann, too, seems to find it strange. He proposes a phenomenological method in ontology, and holds, as he therefore should, that particularity is presented. Nonetheless, he also holds that it is ineffable, that its presence in a particular is an unsayable state of affairs, and that it is something which is not a thing and yet is also not nothing. Bergmann’s position has been long (...) developing, but especially in three recent essays. The aim of the present essay is to explore these views. We shall examine Bergmann’s method, and some criticisms of it by Rosenberg, in order to see whether we cannot get a better grasp of particularity. Specifically, we shall try to see whether it is not, after all, effable. It will turn out that this disagreement on the effability of particularity is really three disagreements: one concerning whether a particular can be thought apart from particularity, a second concerning the analysis of intentionality, and a third concerning whether, in the ontologically important sense of ‘different’, entities that are different are separable. (shrink)

There is a terminological matter that should be settled before getting down to business. Lopes himself is not confused about this, but a reader—especially one who doesn't pay much attention to footnotes —might easily be.

My purpose in this paper is to argue that the classical notion of entailment is not suitable for non-bivalent logics, to propose an appropriate alternative and to suggest a generalized entailment notion suitable to bivalent and non-bivalent logics alike. In classical two valued logic, one can not infer a false statement from one that is not false, any more than one can infer from a true statement a statement that is not true. In classical logic in fact preserving truth and (...) preserving non-falsity are one and the same thing. They are not the same in non-bivalent logics however and I will argue that the classical notion of entailment that preserves only truth is not strong enough for such a logic. I will show that if we retain the classical notion of entailment in a logic that has three values, true, false and a third value in between, an inconsistency can be derived that can be resolved only by measures that seriously disable the logic. I will show this for a logic designed to allow for semantic presuppositions, then I will show that we get the same result in any three valued logic with the same value ordering. I will finally suggest how the notion of entailment should be generalized so that this problem may be avoided. The strengthened notion of entailment I am proposing is a conservative extension of the classical notion that preserves not only truth but the order of all values in a logic, so that the value of an entailed statement must alway be at least as great as the value of the sequence of statements entailing it. A notion of entailment this strong or stronger will, I believe, be found to be applicable to non-classical logics generally. In the opinion of Dana Scott, no really workable three valued logic has yet been developed. It is hard to disagree with this. A workable three valued logic however could perhaps be developed however, if we had a notion of entailment suitable to non-bivalent logics. (shrink)

In his 2018 book Why Does Inequality Matter? T. M. Scanlon discusses the question how significant differences of economic advantage can be justified. He surveys a variety of possible justifications. In Chapter 8—‘Desert’—he focuses on the idea that a desertist theory of justice might attempt to justify such differences in certain cases by claiming that those who have more in those cases deserve to have more; while those who have less deserve to have less. Scanlon rejects this sort of attempted (...) justification. Scanlon claims that desert ‘plays no role in distributive justice’. He seems to think that in order to explain how it could be just for people to receive unequal benefits, we will need to appeal to some conception of distributive justice that does not involve desert. In my 2016 book Distributive Justice: Getting What We Deserve from Our Country I presented what I took to be a thoroughly desertist theory of distributive justice—apparently a theory of precisely the sort Scanlon means to reject. Scanlon does not mention my theory. My aim in the present paper is to explain how my desertist theory avoids Scanlon’s objections. First I explain the conception of desert that Scanlon has in mind; then I present the core of Scanlon’s objections to desertist theories of distributive justice. Finally, I show that his objections have no application to the form of desertism that I proposed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 24-42 [Access article in PDF] Emmanuel Levinas and Iris Murdoch: Ethics as Exit? C. Fred Alford THE LEVINAS EFFECT it has been called, the ability of Emmanuel Levinas's texts to say anything the reader wants to hear, so that Levinas becomes a deconstructionist, theologian, proto-feminist, or even the reconciler of postmodern ethics and rabbinic Judaism. Talmudic scholar and postmodern philosopher, Levinas has become (...) everything to everyone. Abstract and evocative, writing in what can only be described as the language of prophecy, we pretend we understand what he is talking about, writing in much the same style, so as to say whatever we wanted to say in the first place. Even those who disagree with Levinas generally criticize him from within the framework of his project, sharing his assumptions while trying to make Levinas more Levinassian. 1How might one disrupt the Levinas Effect? By disrupt, I mean criticize Levinas sympathetically, from a perspective outside his "system," but not outside his world. Levinas's world is one in which the self is the enemy not only of the other, but of authentic existence. Iris Murdoch shares this view with Levinas. Like Levinas, Murdoch sees the self as the enemy. "Unselfing," as she calls it, is the means; the end is to overcome totality, which means the subjection of the other to my categories and my experience. Levinas means much the same thing by totality. It is his philosophical idée maîtresse, the troubling tendency of Western thought from Plato to Hegel and beyond."What breaks the drive of consciousness to totality is not an appeal to an abstract social or linguistic whole, but an encounter with the concrete other person." Levinas did not say this, nor did Iris Murdoch. Maria Antonaccio says it in a book about Murdoch, in which she compares Murdoch's views to those of Levinas. What they share, says [End Page 24] Antonaccio, is this critique of totality, even if "Murdoch would reject the language of command, lordship and accusation that pervade Levinas's account." 2Certainly Levinas's language of persecution is one of the most striking aspects of his account, and I will not ignore it. But it is not the most important thing that distinguishes him from Murdoch. One might argue that it is the "concrete other person" that distinguishes Levinas from Murdoch, for in many respects the other is an abstraction for Levinas. "The best way of encountering the Other is not even to notice the color of his eyes!" says Levinas. 3 Only at a distance is the other abstract enough to remind us of infinity.This distinction comes closer to capturing the difference between them. Even more important, Levinas shares Sartre's nausea at the thingyness of the world. Levinas calls it the il y a, the "there is." It is this that makes his account closer to Sartre's than one might imagine, and more distant from Murdoch. This does not, of course, make Levinas wrong. The comparison with Murdoch is a way of getting out from under the Levinas Effect.My goal is to better understand Levinas by comparing him with Murdoch. This requires that Murdoch's philosophy be seriously considered, but perhaps not as seriously as that of Levinas. Murdoch is the other, Levinas the subject. Possibly we will end up understanding the other better than the subject. I The outlines of Levinas's philosophy will be familiar to many readers. I will elaborate upon a story told by Levinas to recount it. 4 Imagine that someone rings your doorbell and disturbs your work. As you walk to the door you are distracted, still thinking about your latest project. It takes you a moment to recognize your neighbor at the door, the one who lives upstairs; as soon as you recognize his face you invite him in. You talk for a while. He tells you his problem, you tell him what you might do to help him. You share some pleasant conversation, and soon enough your neighbor leaves. What you originally experienced... (shrink)

Fred Feldman is known for the view that consequentialists should admit a fundamental role for desert in moral evaluation. But this book sketches a different desertism. It is a theory of what Feldman calls “political-economic distributive justice,” according to which such justice is a matter of getting what one deserves. The view, briefly stated in Feldman’s theoretical vocabulary, is this: First, there is perfect political-economic distributive justice in a country if and only if, and in virtue of the fact (...) that, in every case in which a citizen of that country deserves a political-economic desert, he or she receives that desert from the appropriate political-economic distributor. Second, there is greater political-economic distributive justice in one imperfectly just group than another when the situation of the first more closely approximates perfect political economic justice than does the situation of the second. These claims require unpacking. I will focus, with Feldman, on the first and central claim. What does it mean? Perhaps the best way to capture the basic idea behind Feldman’s view is to cite the case used to motivate it: a hurricane causes enormous damage to a farm, which the farm family needs some assistance to repair. Feldman says that they “need to get some help from someone—presumably their community, and they deserve it because they need it”. Many people do not have devastated farms. But, Feldman says, they “are like the farmers in this somewhat more abstract respect: since they are vulnerable to natural disasters... and since they are individually unable to protect themselves against these natural disasters, they deserve to be embedded in a community that will do its best to ensure that help will be provided to members who are adversely affected by such things”. Everyone is vulnerable to natural disasters, and on Feldman’s view, everyone deserves for that very reason assurance of assistance, guaranteed by their community. (shrink)

This chapter discusses LEGO set #21103, the DeLorean Time Machine. It also explains whether the original Cuusoo DeLorean is the same model as, or numerically identical to, set #21103, even if they are not qualitatively identical. If they are the same model, that would explain why Team BTTF deserves creative credit. The chapter considers the question of why a creator deserves credit, including public recognition and royalties. John Locke maintained that property rights are natural rights. Some have extended Locke's view (...) to include intellectual property, including industrial design. The creator of a new design mixes her labor with materials, therefore acquiring a right to what she is produced. By mixing their labor with 403 LEGO bricks, the original Cuusoo designers, Sakuretsu and Masashi Togami, would acquire property rights to what they produce. (shrink)

Fred Feldman has argued that consequentialists can answer the well-known by replacing the utilitarian axiology with one that makes the value of receiving pleasures and pains depend on how deserved it is. It is shown that this proposal is open to three interpretations: the Fit-idea, which operates with the degree of fit between what recipients get and what they deserve; the Merit-idea, which operates with the magnitude of the recipients' desert or merit; and the Fit-Merit idea which is a (...) combination of and. It is argued that none of these ideas will do, among other things because they fail to take into account the fact that justice involves inter-personal comparisons. (shrink)

There are many teaching techniques designed to elicit student participation in a philosophy classroom. In this paper I present a student-centered discussion model that makes the students directly responsible for most aspects of discussion. I used this model in a first year seminar devoted to the nature of art, and I explain how this collaborative model has certain advantages over other collaborative learning models, how I implemented it in the course, and the results I observed. The model I discuss here (...) is similar in some ways to other collaborative learning techniques, but I highlight some of its unique features and discuss how it might be implemented in other philosophy courses. (shrink)

The life story of a German-American scholar deeply involved, over several decades, in evolving intellectual trends and movements and profoundly affected by successive geopolitical events and calamities.

Philosophical interest in situated cognition has been focused most intensely on the claim that human cognitive processes extend from the brain into the tools humans use. As we see it, this radical hypothesis is sustained by two kinds of mistakes, the confusion of coupling relations with constitutive relations and an inattention to the mark of the cognitive. Here we wish to draw attention to these mistakes and show just how pervasive they are. That is, for all that the radical philosophers (...) have said, the mind is still in the head. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 97 Heft: 1 Seiten: 7-31.

Globalization is often seen as a process of universal standardization under the auspices of market economics, technology, and hegemonic power. Resisting this process without endorsing parochial self-enclosure, Fred Dallmayr explores alternative visions that are rooted in distinct vernacular traditions and facilitate cross-cultural learning in an open-ended global arena.

Fred Dretske began his review of my book, The Fragmentation of Reason, with the warning that it would ‘get the adrenalin pumping’ if you are a fan of episte- mology in the analytic tradition (Dretske 1992). Well, if my book got the adrenalin pumping, this one will make your blood boil. Bishop and Trout (B&T) adopt the label ‘Standard Analytic Epistemology (SAE)’ for ‘a contin- gently clustered class of methods and theses that have dominated English- speaking epistemology for much (...) of the past century’(p. 8), and they make a spirited case for the view that SAE should be abandoned; it’s just not worth doing. According to B&T, ‘the main problem with SAE is methodological: its goals and methods are beyond repair’ (p. 22). For them, the primary goal of an epistemology worth having is prescriptive; it should tell us how to go about the business of reasoning. They are ‘driven by a vision of what epistemology could be —normatively reason guiding and genuinely capable of benefiting the world’ (p. 7). For the most part, they maintain, SAE does not even try to guide.. (shrink)

According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Institute, regular Daily Show viewers seem to learn about current events from the self‐billed “fake news” program. The question of how fake news can inform people about real news touches on a question posed by philosophers: How do we learn truth from a work of fiction, something typically full of falsehoods? After all, a typical work of fiction is about pretend characters in pretend situations doing pretend things. Where's the truth in (...) such a story, where's the reality? If fake news is classified as fiction, and if we can understand how fiction conveys truth, then we can understand how The Daily Show conveys real news to its viewers. Along the way, this chapter looks at many examples to see just how The Daily Show pulls this off. (shrink)

John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler's recently published Anthropic Cosmological Principle is an encyclopedic defense of melioristic evolutionary cosmology. They review the history of the idea from ancient times to the present, and defend both a “weak” version, and two “strong” versions of the anthropic principle. I argue the weak version of the anthropic principle is true and important, but that neither of the two strong versions are well grounded in fact. Their “final” anthropic principle is a revision of (...) Teilhard de Chardin's evolutionary cosmology. They rectify Teilhard's factual errors but commit even more serious psychological and religious errors of their own. (shrink)

Summary: A review of the cognitivist/extended cognition and extended mind landscape.

We consider two categorical syllogisms, valid or invalid, to be equivalent if they can be transformed into each other by certain transformations, going back to Aristotle, that preserve validity. It is shown that two syllogisms are equivalent if and only if they have the same models. Counts are obtained for the number of syllogisms in each equivalence class. For a more natural development, using group-theoretic methods, the space of syllogisms is enlarged to include nonstandard syllogisms, and various groups of transformations (...) on that space are studied. (shrink)