In Sarsi I seem to discern the firm belief that in philosophising one must support oneself on the opinion of some celebrated author, as if our minds ought to remain completely sterile and barren unless wedded to the reasoning of someone else…that is not how things are. Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze.

In ‘Affectivity in Heidegger I: Moods and Emotions in Being and Time’, we explicated the crucial role that Martin Heidegger assigns to our capacity to affectively find ourselves in the world. There, our discussion was restricted to Division I of Being and Time. Specifically, we discussed how Befindlichkeit as a basic existential and moods as the ontic counterparts of Befindlichkeit make circumspective engagement with the world possible. Indeed, according to Heidegger, it is primarily through moods that the world is ‘opened (...) up’ and revealed to us as a world that is suffused with values and entities that already matter to us. In this companion essay, our aim is to expand our analysis of affectivity in the following ways: first, we revisit our discussion of Befindlichkeit in light of Heidegger's discussion of temporality in Division II of BT; second, we discuss the basic or fundamental mood of boredom and its ontological significance; we conclude by providing a brief characterization of how Heidegger's notion of mood changes in his later thinking. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to enter the conversation about stakeholder theory with the goal of clarifying certain foundational issues. I want to show, along with Boatright, that there is no stakeholder paradox, and that the principle on which such a paradox is built, the Separation Thesis, is nicely self-serving to business and ethics academics. If we give up such a thesis we find there is no stakeholder theory but that stakeholder theory becomes a genre that is quite rich. (...) It becomes one of many ways to blend together the central concepts of business with those of ethics. Rather than take each concept of business singly or the whole of “business” together and hold it to the light of ethical standards, we can use the stakeholder concept to create more fine-grained analyses that combine business and ethics; or more simply, we can tell many more, and more interesting, stories about business. (shrink)

This essay provides an analysis of the role of affectivity in Martin Heidegger's writings from the mid to late 1920s. We begin by situating his account of mood within the context of his project of fundamental ontology in Being and Time. We then discuss the role of Befindlichkeit and Stimmung in his account of human existence, explicate the relationship between the former and the latter, and consider the ways in which the former discloses the world. To give a more vivid (...) and comprehensive picture of Heidegger's account of mood, we focus on the experience of anxiety by articulating both its function within fundamental ontology and, relatedly, its revelatory nature. We conclude by considering the place of emotions in Heidegger's thinking from this period. In a companion essay, ‘Affectivity in Heidegger II: Temporality, Boredom, and Beyond’, we complement our present analysis by revisiting the issue of affectivity in terms of Heidegger's discussion of temporality in Division II of Being and Time. We also expand our present discussion by considering the fundamental mood of boredom and other specific moods that Heidegger considers within his later thinking. (shrink)

I do not approach the question of free will as a scientist, like Colin Blakemore, or a lawyer, like David Hodgson, or philosopher, like Daniel Dennett, but as a priest -- someone who feels responsible for my own actions and who is called upon to counsel and absolve such as come to me with their shame and their guilt. Should I say that their sense of responsibility is illusory? Or should I encourage them to accept responsibility, and then to deal (...) with it in the various ways -- religious, psychological and practical -- that are open to them? (shrink)

We argue that informal logic is epistemological. Two central questions concern premise acceptability and connection adequacy. Both may be explicated in tenns of justification, a central epistemological concept. That some premises are basic parallels a foundationalist account of basic beliefs and epistemic support. Some epistemological accounts of these concepts may advance the analysis of premise acceptability and connection adequacy. Infonnallogic has implications for other aspects of philosophy. If causal interpretations are acceptable premises and thus justified, does the world have a (...) causal structure? If evaluative premises are acceptable, i.e., justified, is value an objective feature of the world? (shrink)

This thesis argues for a reconsideration of the social theories of Max Horkheimer and C. Wright Mills in order to increase our understanding of the ideological forces at play in modern society. Despite clear similarities in their work in terms of both subject matter and perspective, the discipline of political science lacks a critical comparison of their writings. I demonstrate that a comprehensive and comparative reading of Horkheimer and Mills can offer a new way to address many issues that remain (...) at the heart of writings on ideology, the production of knowledge, and the culture industry. Instead of simply studying the concept of ideology as it appears in each theorist's writings, I propose to place their views in dialogue with one another. Taken together, Horkheimer and Mills provide an illuminating and dynamic perspective on the current, and often conflicting approaches to the theory of ideology. ;Much of the current literature on ideology reflects fixed positions with little room for compromise. The impasse in the study of ideology revolves around the conceptualization of ideology as either enabling or constraining critical consciousness. A combination of the writings of Horkheimer and Mills can guide social theorists beyond the present impasse towards a reflexive theory of ideology, one that considers its own social and ethical presuppositions and normative values. (shrink)

The publicity of a moral conception is a central idea in Kantian and contractarian moral theory. Publicity carries the idea of general acceptability of principles through to social relations. Without publicity of its moral principles, the intuitive attractiveness of the contractarian ideal seems diminished. For it means that moral principles cannot serve as principles of practical reasoning and justification among free and equal persons. This article discusses the role of the publicity assumption in Rawls’s and Scanlon’s contractualism. I contend that (...) a regard for publicity and a moral conception’s potential to provide a public basis for justification and agreement account for much of the evolution of Rawls’s account of justice after A Theory of Justice . I also discuss whether contractualism can provide a basis for justification and general agreement under the social conditions that it endorses. I contend that it cannot, and conclude with a discussion showing why this should not be a problem for contractualism. Despite appearances, contractualism is a distinctive form of contractarianism, substantially different from Rawls’s position and the social contract tradition out of which it evolved. Key Words: contractarianism • contractualism • John Rawls • public justification • T.M. Scanlon • justice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Death Perception:How Temporary Ventilator Disconnection Helped my Family Accept Brain Death and Donate OrgansThomas B. FreemanThe night of my nephew’s closed head injury in Boston, I was on call as a neurosurgeon at Tampa General Hospital. I was therefore not shocked at first when my telephone rang at four o’clock in the morning, but I soon understood the severity of the tragic news. The next half hour was a (...) blur of frantic phone calls and devastating decisions leading to surgery to remove a subdural hematoma from my nephew’s head, even though he was only two brain stem reflexes away from brain death.I thought that my experience as a neurosurgeon would somehow help me. However, when my sister–in–law asked me if this was just like the other tragic closed head injuries that I had seen in 26 years of practice, my answer was very simple: this was the only severe closed head injury I had ever seen—in my family. At this point, I was no longer a neurosurgeon. I was an uncle. My nephew’s closed head injury overwhelmed both his brain’s capacity to survive and my entire family’s ability to think rationally or objectively while grieving so intensely.It is in this context that we were asked to consider organ donation. The appeal for organ donation is one of altruism. My nephew’s parents agreed that organ donation would be an important way to honor their son’s life, allow him to make one final contribution to save the lives of several patients, and help to bring peace to the family.I will never forget, however, my niece’s distraught response. She is altruistic by nature, but was tremendously conflicted by the choice to donate her own brother’s organs. At this point, all discussions about organ donation stopped until we could understand the source of her conflict. Since she did not have legal authority regarding the final decision, some family members wondered if organ donation should be allowed if she could not come to terms with the choice. She felt isolated, because she was the only person in the room who was experiencing conflict. As a neurosurgeon, I have always advised other families in this situation that they may have more peace if they can make such decisions unanimously, regardless of who has the ultimate legal authority for decision–making. This helps bring healing to the family, eliminates disruption of family values and unity, and reduces possible feelings of guilt.I asked my niece what she was feeling. She stated something that I had never heard before as a neurosurgeon. She had listened to the words that her brother was brain dead, but she felt that he was somehow still alive, since he was breathing on a ventilator and his heart was beating. She felt powerless due to her inability to do anything more for [End Page 9] him. She also wanted to be there when her brother “died,” which she would recognize by the cessation of his heartbeat. She would not abandon her brother.I searched for a way to respect my niece’s wishes and her legitimate request, while preserving the ability to proceed with organ donation. Solving this conundrum proved to be a pivotal part of the beginning of both her mourning process and acceptance of his death.As an uncle, I experienced the clear dissociation that modern medicine creates between medical care and the natural human process of recognizing and accepting death. My family observed the subtle difference between a deep coma and brain death. They noticed that my nephew’s color had changed when his temperature dropped to 94o F before the heating blanket was placed. They perceived the decrease in muscle tone when he stopped breathing faster than the ventilator rate. Outside of that, there was no significant difference in his appearance when he was “alive” or “dead.”In spite of heroic measures and superlative surgical and medical care, his closed head injury progressed unremittingly until he became brain dead 36 hours later. The diagnosis of “brain death” was pronounced to the family. Accepting the death of someone who is... (shrink)

John Rawls says: “The main problem of distributive justice is the choice of a social system.” Property-owning democracy is the social system that Rawls thought best realized the requirements of his principles of justice. This article discusses Rawls’s conception of property-owning democracy and how it is related to his difference principle. I explain why Rawls thought that welfare-state capitalism could not fulfill his principles: it is mainly because of the connection he perceived between capitalism and utilitarianism.

The most important group of English illuminated manuscripts of the second half of the fourteenth century takes its name from the Bohun family, earls of Hereford, Essex, and Northampton. Seven lavishly illustrated psalters and books of hours constitute the core of the group. These manuscripts are the work of a single group of artists, some of whose hands recur in two or more of the volumes; they are closely related in book design and program of decoration; and finally, they all (...) proclaim their connection with the Bohun family through textual and heraldic references. Yet like all surviving English manuscripts of the period, the Bohun volumes have always appeared to be the work of anonymous artists. My intention in this note is to lift the veil of anonymity from two of their hitherto unidentified illuminators. The names of these individuals can be found, I believe, by analysis of historical documentation already published but not yet considered in conjunction with the illuminations of the extant Bohun books. Knowledge of the names of these artists leads toward the solution of the unresolved problems of the dates, origins, and stylistic continuity of the Bohun manuscripts and reveals previously unsuspected circumstances of patronage and production of richly illustrated books made for the highest levels of the nobility of England during the time of Edward III and Richard II. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a conception of Deleuze’s two volumes dedicated to film – Cinema I: The Movement-Image, and Cinema II: The Time-Image – as protracted expressions of his political philosophy. In this context, I will elaborate the difficult and entwined political claims Deleuze makes on behalf of cinema: that it is capable of engendering a tentative ‘belief in the world’, such as is the necessary correlate of political action; that it captures the contemporary political fact that ‘the people (...) are missing’, as a unified or coherent political agent; and finally that it might reveal those ‘impossible’ or ‘intolerable’ situations which would provoke such a people into being. In advancing this conceptual triumvirate, I will argue that the claims made here on behalf of cinema overspill the art form itself, linking up with Deleuze’s broader political ontology of thought and constituting a generalised political philosophy proper to so-called ‘late-capitalism’. (shrink)

INDICE -/- Note biografiche Introduzione, di Riccardo Faucci -/- Parte I - Da Verri a Toniolo 1. Jeremy Bentham: Contemporary Interpretations, di M.D.A. Freeman 2. Su Helvétius, Beccaria e Bentham, di Letizia Gianformaggio 3. L'etica utilitaristica di Pietro Veti, di Vincenzo Polignano 4. ll liberismo interventista di Vincenzo Emanuele Sergio, di Anna Li Donni 5. Il concetto di " felicità pubblica, nella << Genesi del diritto penale » di Romagnosi, e il rapporto Romagnosi-Bentham, di Robertino Ghiringhelli 6. « La (...) più grande felicità per il maggior numero » all'Accademia dei Georgofili ( 18)0-1850), di Gabriella Gioli 7. Una nota su Manzoni critico dell'utilitarismo, di Maurizio Mori 8. Sul concetto di utile in Francesco Ferrara e in Maffeo Pantaleoni, di Daniela Parisi Acquaviva 9. Sul pensiero sociale cristiano di fronte all'edonismo, di Luciano Avagliano 10. Giuseppe Toniolo e il recupero cattolico dell'utile e del valore, di Anna Camaiti -/- Parte II Aspetti di storia del pensiero economico nell’età classica -/- 1. La filosofia economica di Thomas Hobbes, di Marco Bertozzi 2. Ordinamento del sapere, modelli metodologici ed economia politica in Adam Smith, di Sergio Cremaschi 3. Elementi classici nel pensiero di Adam Smith: giurisprudenza romana e morale stoica, di Gloria Vivenza 4. Il “lusso” negli economisti italiani del Settecento, di Cosimo Perrotta 5. Prezzi naturali, prezzi di mercato e legge degli sbocchi nel dibattito fra Malthus e Ricardo, di Lilia Costabile 6. Marx e la moneta, di Roberto Petrini -/- . (shrink)

We perceive relevance by virtue of inference habits, which may be expressed as Pierce's leading principles or as Toulmin's warrants. Hence relevance in a descriptive sense is a ternary relation between two statements and a set of inference rules. For a normative sense, the warrants must be properly backed. Different types of warrant to empirical generalizations, we introduce L.J. Cohen's notion of inductive support. A to empirical generalizations, we introduce L.J. Cohen's notion of inductive support. A generalization H is supported (...) by evidence E to degree i/in iff E indicates that H passes canonical test i, where there are n canonical tests. In a canonical test, one or more relevant variables, factors which may falsify H, are varied. H passes a test if it is not falsified. The tests are cumulative. Degree of support is relative to the canonical test, and may be modeled as relative to a point in a dialectical situation. A value of a variable at which H is falsified is a rebutting value. A is normatively relevant to B with respect to W iff sup[associated generalization(W), E] = i/n and for j > i, there is a presumption that the values of j are non-rebuting. (shrink)

Liberalism generally holds that legitimate political power is limited and is to be impartially exercised, only for the public good. Liberals accordingly assign political priority to maintaining certain basic liberties and equality of opportunities; they advocate an essential role for markets in economic activity, and they recognize government's crucial role in correcting market breakdowns and providing public goods. Classical liberalism and what I call “the high liberal tradition” are two main branches of liberalism. Classical liberalism evolved from the works of (...) Adam Smith and the classical utilitarian economists; its major 20th century representatives include Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The high liberal tradition developed from John Stuart Mill's works, and its major philosophical representatives in the 20th century are John Dewey and, later, John Rawls. This paper discusses the main distinguishing features of the classical and the high liberal traditions and their respective positions regarding capitalism as an economic and social system. Classical liberals, unlike high liberals, regard economic liberties and rights of private property in productive resources to be nearly as important as basic liberties. They conceive of equality of opportunity in more formal terms, and regard capitalist markets and the price system as essential not only to the allocation of production resources, but also as the fundamental criterion for the just distribution of income, wealth, and economic powers. High liberals, by contrast, regard the economic liberties as subordinate to the exercise of personal and civic liberties. They are prepared to regulate and restrict economic liberties to achieve greater equality of opportunities, reduce inequalities of economic powers, and promote a broader conception of the public good. And while high liberals endorse markets and the price system as essential to allocation of productive resources, they do not regard markets as the fundamental criterion for assessing just distributions of income, wealth, and economic powers and positions of responsibility. The paper concludes with some reflections upon the essential role that dissimilar conceptions of persons and society play in grounding the different positions on economic justice that classical and high liberals advocate. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger's account of attunement [Befindlichkeit] through mood [Stimmung] is unprecedented in the history of philosophy and groundbreaking vis-à-vis contemporary accounts of emotion. On his view, moods are not mere mental states that result from, arise out of, or are caused by our situation or context. Rather, moods are fundamental modes of existence that are disclosive of the way one is or finds oneself [sich befinden] in the world. Mood is one of the basic modes through which we experience the (...) world and through which the world is made present to us. Moreover, moods are the lenses through which things, people, animals, events, and aspects in the world matter to us. In this paper, I make the case that Heidegger's insights with respect to mood can and ought to be extended beyond the narrow scope of his fundamental ontology in which they were developed. I argue that contemporary accounts of mood within psychology ought to take these Heideggerian insights seriously and use them when defining, studying, evaluating, and drawing conclusions about the nature of moods. There are three sections to my paper. In section 1, I delineate Heidegger's account of mood. In section 2, I turn to some key studies on mood in psychology, and I elaborate upon some of the main shortcomings in this literature. In section 3, I suggest how psychology might benefit from understanding and utilizing a Heideggerian-inspired phenomenology of mood. (shrink)

_Abstract: _Yu and Zenker (2022) argue that the oft-made distinction between convergent and linked argument structure is problematic. If their account holds, the linked/convergent distinction, at least as I have characterized it (Freeman 2011), seems to violate the dictum that structural analysis should come before evaluation. In this Reply I defend the position that we do not need to estimate or determine argument strength to determine whether the premises of an argument are linked or convergent. _Résumé_: Yu et Zenker (...) (2022) soutiennent que la distinction souvent faite entre structure d’argumentation convergente et structure d’argumentation liée est problématique. Si leur explication est valable, la distinction liée/convergente, du moins telle que je l’ai caractérisée (Freeman 2011), semble violer le dicton selon lequel l’analyse structurelle doit précéder l’évaluation. Dans cette réponse, je défends la position selon laquelle nous n’avons pas besoin d’estimer ou de déterminer la force de l’argument pour déterminer si les prémisses d’un argument sont liées ou convergentes. (shrink)

Cosmopolitans argue that the account of human rights and distributive justice in John Rawls's The Law of Peoples is incompatible with his argument for liberal justice. Rawls should extend his account of liberal basic liberties and the guarantees of distributive justice to apply to the world at large. This essay defends Rawls's grounding of political justice in social cooperation. The Law of Peoples is drawn up to provide principles of foreign policy for liberal peoples. Human rights are among the necessary (...) conditions for social cooperation, and so long as a decent people respect human rights, a common good, and the Law of Peoples, it is not the role of liberal peoples to impose upon well-ordered decent peoples liberal liberties they cannot endorse. Moreover, the difference principle is not an allocative or alleviatory principle, but applies to design property and other basic social institutions necessary to economic production, exchange and consumption. It presupposes political cooperation—a legislative body to actively apply it, and a legal system to apply it to. There is no feasible global state or global legal system that could serve these roles. Finally, the difference principle embodies a conception of democratic reciprocity that is only appropriate to cooperation among free and equal citizens who are socially productive and politically autonomous. a Footnotesa I am grateful to K. C. Tan for many helpful discussions and criticisms of this essay. I am also grateful to the other contributors to this volume for their comments, and to Ellen Paul for her many helpful suggestions in preparing the final version of this essay. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates how the problematic kinds of epistemic power that physicians have can diminish the epistemic privilege that pregnant women have over their bodies and can put them in a state of epistemic powerlessness. This result, I argue, constitutes an epistemic injustice for many pregnant women. A reconsideration of how we understand and care for pregnant women and of the physician–patient relationship can provide us with a valuable context and starting point for helping to alleviate the knowledge/power problems that (...) are symptomatic of the current system and structure of medicine. I suggest that we can begin to confront this kind of injustice if medicine adopts a more phenomenological understanding of bodies and if physicians and patients—in this case, pregnant women—become what I call “epistemic peers.”. (shrink)

It has long been argued that the institution of judicial review is incompatible with democratic institutions. This criticism usually relies on a procedural conception of democracy, according to which democracy is essentially a form of government defined by equal political rights and majority rule. I argue that if we see democracy not just as a form of government, but more basically as a form of sovereignty, then there is a way to conceive of judicial review as a legitimate democratic institution. (...) The conception of democracy that stems from the social contract tradition of Locke, Rousseau, Kant and Rawls, is based in an ideal of the equality, independence, and original political jurisdiction of all citizens. Certain equal basic rights, in addition to equal political rights, are a part of democratic sovereignty. In exercising their constituent power at the level of constitutional choice, free and equal persons could choose judicial review as one of the constitutional mechanisms for protecting their equal basic rights. As such, judicial review can be seen as a kind of shared precommitment by sovereign citizens to maintaining their equal status in the exercise of their political rights in ordinary legislative procedures. I discuss the conditions under which judicial review is appropriate in a constitutional democracy. This argument is contrasted with Hamilton's traditional argument for judicial review, based in separation of powers and the nature of judicial authority. I conclude with some remarks on the consequences for constitutional interpretation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Moments of Beating Addiction and Inscription in Virginia Woolf’s “A Sketch of the Past”Barbara Claire Freeman (bio)My title, which alludes to the collection of autobiographical essays authored by Virginia Woolf and entitled Moments of Being, implies that being and beating are co-constitutive and that exploring their interdependence may shed light upon the logic that binds the one to the other. In particular, I want to examine the ways (...) in which Woolf’s “A Sketch of the Past”—it is the longest essay in the collection and presumably incomplete, since Woolf wrote the last entry shortly before killing herself in 1941—sets up a complex relationship between beating, writing, and compulsion. For the text in which the phrase “moment of being” first occurs also reveals that the activity of writing, to which Woolf was addicted, has the symbolic valence of beating and functions at the level of language in the same ways that beating functions on the body. I will begin to unpack this perhaps obscure equation by focusing upon the relationship between being and beating in the experiences that define Woolf’s “moments of being.” 1In the opening pages of “A Sketch,” Woolf describes the routine, eminently forgettable aspects of daily life as “a kind of nondescript cotton wool”; the phrase is her “private shorthand” for the general and diffuse “moments of non-being” that predominate in daily life and in which, by contrast, “moments of being” are “embedded” [70]. “Every day,” Woolf notes, “includes much more non-being than being”; and although “the real novelist can somehow convey both sorts of being” [70], Woolf believes that “behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern” [72] and that her vocation as a writer is to discover and communicate it.Though occasionally “moments of being” produce the experience of rapture or ecstasy, an aspect of beating I will presently explore, most frequently they name moments that entail negation and self-shattering. “Moments of being” are moments of extreme violence that “remain interesting” [78] not because they lead to self-transcendence or discovery, but because they provoke a sense of utter helplessness and paralysis. With one exception, Woolf’s “moments” involve memories of being beaten up by life: “a sudden violent shock” occurs “when something happened so violently that I have remembered it all my life” [71]. Woolf’s submission to her brother Thoby’s beating remains in her memory as inaugural:The first: I was fighting with Thoby on the lawn. We were pommelling each other with our fists. Just as I raised my fist to hit him, I felt: why hurt another person? I dropped my hand instantly, and stood there, and let him beat me. I remember the feeling. It was a feeling of hopeless sadness. It was as if I became aware of [End Page 65] something terrible; and of my own powerlessness. I slunk off alone, feeling horribly depressed.[71]The shock of a beating occasions Woolf’s knowledge that rupture may function as a form of revelation; its reception initiates a drive to repeat in words the impact and imprint of the blows she has received. Being beaten not only provides her with a paradigm of being, but institutes a reciprocal and necessary relationship between beating and writing in which the one elicits and engenders the other. 2Another “moment” recounts the experience of being “dragged down, hopelessly, into some pit of absolute despair from which I could not escape” upon hearing about the suicide of a family friend, a certain Mr. Valpy:I overheard my father or mother say that Mr. Valpy had killed himself. The next thing I remember is being in the garden at night and walking on the path by the apple tree. It seemed to me that the apple tree was connected with the horror of Mr. Valpy’s suicide. I could not pass it. I stood there looking at the grey-green creases of the bark—it was a moonlit night—in a trance of horror.... My body seemed paralysed.[71]As Woolf’s body received her brother’s blows, her consciousness receives the shock of overhearing news of a suicide. The memory of Mr... (shrink)

_This article focuses on the poetry of Albert Saijo, one of the lesser-known figures in the Beat literary movement. I suggest here that Saijo’s work should be better-known, and in drawing out some resonances between Saijo’s poetry and Nietzsche’s philosophy, I make a case that Saijo should be taken seriously as a poet and philosopher. Saijo has been described as “a post-apocalyptic wisecracking prophet, speaking the language of the human future,” and here I provide some justification for this statement. One (...) could say that the Beat literary movement developed around the intersection of Existentialism and Zen, and this article explores that juncture in examining the play between language and silence in the writings of Saijo and Nietzsche. In addition to taking Saijo seriously, this article perhaps also opens another perspective on Nietzsche. I draw attention to the rhapsodic nature of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and suggest that the thought of eternal recurrence might be something like a Zen kōan, or even a joke by another post-apocalyptic wisecracking prophet. The thought of eternal recurrence is compared with the bodhisattva vows, and Saijo’s poem on those vows is highlighted as a great example of his “Zensational” rhapsody._. (shrink)

Ethical physicians need to share their biases and prejudices and articulate alternatives and also be tolerant of the decisions of their patients and families.I believe that I am a moral, caring, dedicated doctor working with children and parents who are often faced with ethical problems of large and small dimensions. There is no question that these decisions should be ethical, but, in general, I find ethical theory of little day-to-day use. Indeed, even when an ethicist joins me in a discussion (...) of “What should I do?”, or more appropriately, “What should I advocate be done?”, I usually find their additions to the discussion wanting. Ethical theory gives guidance but does not seem to provide sufficient help in decisions for the individual case: What will be best for the infant with spina bifida while still in utero? Termination of the pregnancy? Birth and long-term care? What is best were that same child already born with a high paraplegia and hydrocephalus? What is best for the infant with a major malformation of the brain and uncontrollable seizures whose only hope for controlling the seizures is removal of half of the brain? What is best for the family in each of these situations and the many others I have encountered? What is best for society?I have been called a Hegelian pragmatist, although my knowledge of Hegel is minimal. I think that the term pragmatist is a badge of honour, because, on the front lines of clinical decision-making, I do not have the philosopher’s luxury of days or weeks for managing words. As a pragmatic doctor, I am forced to be a person of action or inaction. I must make a decision and advocate for the position I take.I am clearly a utilitarian, as I strive to produce the greatest good …. (shrink)

We present a computational model of dialectical argumentation that could serve as a basis for legal reasoning. The legal domain is an instance of a domain in which knowledge is incomplete, uncertain, and inconsistent. Argumentation is well suited for reasoning in such weak theory domains. We model argument both as information structure, i.e., argument units connecting claims with supporting data, and as dialectical process, i.e., an alternating series of moves by opposing sides. Our model includes burden of proof as a (...) key element, indicating what level of support must be achieved by one side to win the argument. Burden of proof acts as move filter, turntaking mechanism, and termination criterion, eventually determining the winner of an argument. Our model has been implemented in a computer program. We demonstrate the model by considering program output for two examples previously discussed in the artificial intelligence and legal reasoning literature. (shrink)

According to current cognitive linguistic theory, the abstract notion of TIME in many languages of the world is expressed through a metonymic relation involving direc-tion, irreversibility, continuity, segmentation, and measurability and one of two possible versions of the TIME AS ORIENTATION IN SPACE metaphor: either the observer moves or time does. In Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Merleau-Ponty argues for the possibility of understanding what he calls 'our primordial experience'of time through an exploration, analysis, comparison, and evaluation of the different metaphors (...) for time, not as they exist in themselves but as they are grounded in what other cognitive linguists have explored with respect to subjectivity, concept formation, and conceptual integration. This 'primordial experience' of time is possible because of the embodiment of ourselves in the world and gives rise to Merleau-Ponty’s theory of an ontology of the flesh; the fact that we are 'of' rather than 'in' the world gives rise to his theory of time as depth. In this paper, I show how Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of time might 1) clarify the picture Lakoff and Johnson give of the existence of time and 2) provide a philosophical foundation that integrates various contemporary cognitive linguistic theories. (shrink)

Animals search for food and shelter by locomotion through time and space. The elemental step is the action-perception cycle, which has three steps. In the first step a volley of action potentials initiated by an act of search triggers the formation of a macroscopic wave packet that constitutes the memory of the stimulus. The wave packet is filtered and sent to the entorhinal cortex, where it is combined with wave packets from all sensory systems. This triggers the second step forming (...) a unified memory that is passed through the hippocampal formation where it is assigned a place in the life-long memory of the subject. In the third step the output of the entorhinal cortex triggers the formation of a global wave packet that synchronizes the oscillatory activity of most of not all of the cerebral cortex. This shared oscillation caries a pattern of amplitude modulation, that can be observed non-invasively from the scalp EEG of human volunteers perceiving the stimulus and correlated with the stimulus. The same dendritic electric currents that drive the output of the brains of the wave packet drive the observed EEG signs. Therefore I postulate that the global wave packet, the third step in the cycle requiring only 0.2 seconds expresses the memory of the global accommodation that initiates the next action-perception cycle. Some unspecified fraction of the AM pattern is available to me the observer, and some other unspecified fraction of the total activity in the subject who is expected to respond to the stimulus. There is reason to hope that these fractions will coincide often enough to support refinements in techniques for extending these correlates of consciousness. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

Yu and Zenker (2022) argue that the oft-made distinction between convergent and linked argument structure is problematic. If their account holds, the linked/convergent distinction, at least as I have characterized it (Freeman 2011), seems to violate the dictum that structural analysis should come before evaluation. In this Reply I defend the position that we do not need to estimate or determine argument strength to determine whether the premises of an argument are linked or convergent. Résumé: Yu et Zenker (2022) (...) soutiennent que la distinction souvent faite entre structure d’argumentation convergente et structure d’argumentation liée est problématique. Si leur explication est valable, la distinction liée/convergente, du moins telle que je l’ai caractérisée (Freeman 2011), semble violer le dicton selon lequel l’analyse structurelle doit précéder l’évaluation. Dans cette réponse, je défends la position selon laquelle nous n’avons pas besoin d’estimer ou de déterminer la force de l’argument pour déterminer si les prémisses d’un argument sont liées ou convergentes. (shrink)

Whistleblower bounty schemes that pay individuals a cash “bounty” for surfacing information about illegal conduct have rapidly gained public and scholarly attention, fueling calls to install a bounty approach across numerous regulatory areas, from workplace safety, environmental protection, and civil rights to political corruption, immigration, and antitrust. Yet despite the enthusiasm, bounty regimes have remained confined to the fraud context. This Article uses this fact as a jumping off point and, looking across the regulatory state, aims to answer some basic (...) questions about bounty regimes that have thus far eluded sustained scholarly attention: What features of a given regulatory area make it more or less conducive to a bounty approach? Given this, how might existing bounty regimes be revised? And if bounty regimes were to break out of the fraud area, where might they most profitably spread? It offers some initial answers to these questions by constructing a simple framework that shows how two features of the regulatory environment - the directness of the harm to be regulated and the determinacy of the legal mandate to be implemented - structure the choice among competing bounty approaches. These aspects of regulatory context, I argue, map onto the two most vexing challenges facing regulatory architects weighing a bounty mechanism or choosing among competing designs: optimizing the quantity and quality of information revelation and maintaining public control over the elaboration of legal mandates. The framework brings into relief some of the fault-lines in the growing scholarly debate about the optimal use and design of bounty schemes, including the choice between a simple cash-for-information scheme and a more elaborate qui tam scheme in which whistleblowers are vested with independent enforcement authority via a private right of action. It also yields a rough regulatory roadmap showing where existing bounty schemes might be revised and also the areas to which a bounty approach might be usefully exported. (shrink)

Individuals are generally held to be morally and legally responsible only for actions carried out freely and deliberately, that is to say, for actions that result from our free choice. However, there is a quite widespread view that all of our actions are the result of the scientific laws that govern our physical bodies. If this should prove to be the case, then human choice would be an illusion, and therefore -- on the generally accepted principle just stated -- personal (...) responsibility would be a meaningless concept and blame and punishment would be inappropriate responses to wicked or criminal acts. In this paper I shall argue that we need to disentangle ‘responsibility’ from ‘choice'. I shall also outline reasons for holding that responsibility is ultimately a first-person matter -- I am responsible if I feel responsible, irrespective of choice -- and I shall briefly consider some of the consequences of this approach. (shrink)

When, in my invitation to commentators, I told them I should write a brief editorial 'reflection', I little realised how shockingly accurate a reflection of JCS and its character -- both its strengths and limitations -- their own brief articles would provide. The disgraceful gender imbalance I mentioned in my introduction; what the commentaries also show is how confined we are to scientific materialism as a basic working paradigm. I knew it of course, and certain correspondents chide me for it (...) regularly, but I confess this exercise brought it home with a fresh force. (shrink)

The nineteenth-century poet, critic and philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, once characterized the mind of William Shakespeare as "oceanic". Oceans, of course, teem with myriad forms of life: is philosophy one such form in the oceanic vastness of Shakespeare 's creative genius? If so, how do we identify philosophic elements in his plays and assess the place they occupy? What sense does it make to speak of "philosophical criticism" of individual plays? How does Shakespeare incorporate epistemologies of his own time and (...) how dramatically appropriate are they? To what extent is Shakespeare of use to contemporary philosophers and how does he anticipate them; and, vice-versa, can such philosophies refine our understanding of certain issues to which literary critics may fail to do justice? That is, can philosophy take us beyond the purely literary examination of plot structure, character, poetic imagery, speech rhythms, dialogues, settings, etc. to grant us new insight into the problematical issues the plays raise? In the time at my disposal, I am going to attempt some answers to at least some of these questions, by dwelling briefly on The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. (shrink)

Acceptability is a thoroughly normative epistemic notion. If a statement is acceptable, i.e. it is proper to take it as a premise, then one is justified in accepting it. We also hold that a statement is acceptable just in case there is a presumption of warrant in its favor. We thus see acceptability connected to epistemic normativity on the one hand and to warrant on the other. But there is a distinct tension in this dual connection. The dominant tradition in (...) modern epistemology sees epistemic justification as an internalist notion. We are justified in holding a belief just in case certain conditions are fulfilled of which we have privileged access. Warrant is an externalist notion. We have no privileged access to the conditions of warrant. Is our understanding of acceptability as both normative and definable in terms of presumption of warrant philosophically coherent? We shall argue that it is a philosophically coherent notion. Presumption of warrant, unlike warrant, is an internalist notion. Our position can be characterized as an externalist internal ism. It avoids the charge brought against externalism of allowing one to be justified in accepting some claim even if one has no evidence for it. We meet the classical internalist challenge that acceptance is normatively proper only if one has done one's epistemic duty and thus one is aware of the normative propriety of the acceptance by providing a non-deontological definition of epistemic justification, and arguing that this is still a sufficiently normative notion for acceptability. (shrink)

This is the first book to offer a philosophical engagement with microaggressions. It aims to provide an intersectional analysis of microaggressions that cuts across multiple dimensions of oppression and marginalization, and to engage a variety of perspectives that have been sidelined within the discipline of philosophy. The volume gathers a diverse group of contributors: philosophers of color, philosophers with disabilities, philosophers of various nationalities and ethnicities, and philosophers of several gender identities. Their unique frames of analysis articulate both how the (...) concept of microaggressions can be used to clarify and sharpen our understanding of subtler aspects of oppression and how analysis, expansion, and reconceiving the notion of a microaggression can deepen and extend its explanatory power. The essays in the volume seek to defend microaggressions from common critiques and to explain their impact beyond the context of college students. Some of the guiding questions that this volume explores include, but are not limited to, the following: Can microaggressions be established as a viable scientific concept? What roles do microaggressions play in other oppressive phenomena like transphobia, fat phobia, and abelism? How can epistemological challenges around microaggressions be addressed via feminist theory, critical race theory, disability theory, or epistemologies of ignorance? What insights can be gleaned from intersectional analyses of microaggressions? Are there domain-specific analyses of microaggressions that would give insight to features of that domain, i.e. microaggressions related to sexuality, athletics, immigration status, national origin, body type, or ability. Microaggressions and Philosophyfeatures cutting-edge research on an important topic that will appeal to a wide range of students and scholars across disciplines. It includes perspectives from philosophy of psychology, empirically informed philosophy, feminist philosophy, critical race theory, disability theory, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

This paper argues that the cognitive sciences need to incorporate aesthetic study of the arts into their methodologies in order to fully understand the nature of human cognitive processes, because the arts reflect insights into human experience that are unobtainable by the methodologies of the natural sciences. These insights differ from those acquired by scientific exploration because they arise not from the conceptual logic of reason but from the precategorial intuition of imagination. Aesthetics provides a methodology whereby we are able (...) to understand how art enables us to experience emotions caused by sense impressions. This methodology lies at the heart of Giambattista Vico’s Principi di scienza nuova (1725-44), which attempts to account for the way we live and participate in cultural, social, and civic communities. Vico’s theory challenges certain Western philosophical presuppositions that still inform much of cognitive science, such as the relation of language to our experience of the natural world, the nature of subjective and objective representations, and the role of the arts in the evolutionary development of the human mind. In basing my approach to literature on Vico’s, Susanne K. Langer’s (1953, 1967) and Merleau-Ponty’s (1962[1945], 1968) theories, I argue that the language of literature is distinguished from conventional language use by its imaginative use of aesthetic patterns that make manifest the inherent character of the external world as we experience it. By introducing the concepts of minding, metaphor, and icon as structures of the imagination, I show how the language of poetic expression in Matthew Arnold’s poem, “Dover Beach,” enables us to apprehend the ways in which we intuitively participate in the reality that underlies our conscious experience. Such participation occurs because sensory impressions of the world we experience cause modifications in the human mind that result in affective responses. Current research in the cognitive sciences increasingly indicates that such modification occurs; aesthetic study of the arts provides a means whereby we can know what it is like to experience such modifications. (shrink)

J. McTaggart argues that the philosophical conception of time is constituted by the notions of fluid and static time. Since, on his view, neither notion is philosophically viable, he concludes that time is nothing but an illusion that arises from our distorted perception of essentially atemporal reality. In the paper, I argue that despite McTaggart’s failure to prove the unreality of time as such, he does succeed in establishing his lesser claim that the concept of fluid time is without any (...) ontological import whatsoever. (shrink)

I first argue that Aristotelian intellectual intuition generates basic beliefs which are not inferred — inductively or deductively — from other beliefs. Both involve synthetic intuitive insight. Epagoge grasps a connection and nous sees its general applicability. I next argue that such beliefs are properly basic by adapting an argument made by Hilary Kornblith. According to Kornblith, the world is objectively divided into natural kinds. We humans perceive the world divided into natural kinds. There is empirical evidence suggesting that we (...) divide the world not only as it is objectively divided, but in making inductive inferences, that is, in inferring that an object will have certain properties on the basis of its having others. This grounds the reliability of inductive inferences. But the leading principles of these inferences are basic beliefs generated through intellectual intuition. Hence intellectual intuition generates certain properly basic beliefs. (shrink)

I argue that, because God is the author of history and has a purpose for his creation, evolution has a plot and can be analyzed with tools drawn from literary criticism. This necessitates engagement with the “epic of evolution” genre of scientific literature. I survey several prominent versions of the epic and distinguish between a purely naturalistic epic of evolution and a goal‐oriented Christian epic of evolution (CEE). In dealing with CEE, I use the thought of J. R. R. Tolkien, (...) along with Kevin Vanhoozer and Dorothy Sayers, to discuss the ways in which we can theologically legitimate speaking of God as the “author” of evolutionary history. (shrink)

In response to Hegel’s thesis concerning the “end of art,” John Sallis suggests that the future or the “promise of art” may be opened in thinking through Heidegger’s essay “The Origin of the Work of Art.” Sallis proposes that this promise of art may lie in the capacity to “set forth various elements through transfigurement into shining.” In this paper I reflect on what this suggestion concerning the promise of art may mean. Furthermore, I propose that “The Origin of the (...) Work of Art” shows a resonance with Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy that Heidegger’s reading of Nietzsche obscures, and that this resonance is suggested in Sallis’ earlier work on Nietzsche’s book. I suggest that the Gestalt configuration of “world” and “earth” in Heidegger’s essay echoes the configuration of the Apollonian and Dionysian in Nietzsche’s thought. I further suggest in the conclusion that this resonance enables one to draw the connection between “The Origin of the Work of Art” and Heidegger’s later work in which the promise of art opens up a different mode of dwelling upon the earth. (shrink)

That red boxer shorts and socks do just as well as fig leaves for concealing modesty in Tom de Freston's recent paintings demonstrates that modesty can also be a source of comedy. Monumental figures and poses that might otherwise inspire awe instead elicit a grimace. Perhaps this humor is not strictly an aesthetic virtue of de Freston's work. Even so, there are many genuinely aesthetically relevant features that we might attend to: representational properties, expressive properties, formal properties, and art-historical properties. (...) In this article, however, I wish to draw attention not to the aesthetic value of de Freston's work but to its educational value. Although these works might be experienced as part of a .. (shrink)