In my book God’s Call1 I gave an historical account of the debate within twentieth century analytic philosophy between moral realism and expressivism. Moral realism is the view that moral properties like goodness or cruelty exist independently of our making judgements that things have such properties. Such judgements are, on this theory, objectively true when the things referred to have the specified properties and objectively false when they do not. Expressivism is the view that when a person makes a moral (...) judgment, she is expressing emotion or desire or will. I used the term ‘orectic’ to refer to these mental states, because we do not have in English a sufficiently general term. In God’s Call, I started with a moral realist whom I called a ‘platonist’, G. E. Moore, and then I traced the argument through the emotivists, A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson, and the prescriptivist, R. M. Hare, and Iris Murdoch, whom I called a ‘humble platonist’, and J. L. Mackie’s ‘error theory’, and John McDowell, whose theory I call ‘disposition theory’, and David Brink, the ‘new-wave realist’, and Allan Gibbard, who calls his own theory ‘ norm expressivism ’. My project was to collect together the concessions that the two sides of the debate have made to each other over the course of this history, and then to construct a position which molds these concessions into a single coherent theory. I called this theory ‘prescriptive realism’. (shrink)

Kant both says that we should recognize our duties as God’s commands, and objects to the theological version of heteronomy, ‘which derives morality from a divine and supremely perfect will’. In this paper I discuss how these two views fit together, and in the process I develop a notion of autonomous submission to divine moral authority. I oppose the ‘constitutive’ view of autonomy proposed by J. B. Schneewind and Christine Korsgaard. I locate Kant’s objection to theological heteronomy against the background (...) of Crusius’s divine command theory, and I compare Kant’s views about divine authority and human political authority. (shrink)

In the March 1971 issue of Dialogue Professors E.H. Madden and P.H. Hare attempt with much ingenuity and resource to resuscitate a pre-Humean theory of causal connection. Firmly disowning the “epistemological and metaphysical disasters” that have led to “terrible consequences”,, and making only a mildly favourable gesture in the direction of Michotte, they yet claim that the defence of Hume by modern regularists, even when abetted by the weapons of phenomenology, can be refuted by such indubitable facts as that (...) we observe avalanches destroying villages, waves eating away the shoreline and the “wind-bending-the-trees”. (shrink)

In the 1963 Philosophical Lecture, Henriette Hertz Trust, of the British Academy, Hare defends the distinction between descriptive and evaluative meaning. He attacks descriptivists on the grounds that they confuse a logical connection between the word "good" and other words with a logical connection between the word "good" and certain things. The paper presupposes an acquaintance with the debate over descriptivism, and it is never clear precisely what view Hare is attacking.—A. E. J.

Psychopathy is a disorder characterized by severe and frequent moral violations in multiple domains of life. Numerous studies have shown psychopathy-related limbic brain abnormalities during moral processing; however, these studies only examined negatively valenced moral stimuli. Here, we aimed to replicate prior psychopathy research on negative moral judgments and to extend this work by examining psychopathy-related abnormalities in the processing of controversial moral stimuli and positive moral processing. Incarcerated adult males (N = 245) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging protocol (...) on a mobile imaging system stationed at the prison. Psychopathy was assessed using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R). Participants were then shown words describing three types of moral stimuli: wrong (e.g., stealing), not wrong (e.g., charity), and controversial (e.g., euthanasia). Participants rated each stimulus as either wrong or not wrong. PCL-R total scores were correlated with not wrong behavioral responses to wrong moral stimuli, and were inversely related to hemodynamic activity in the anterior cingulate cortex in the contrast of wrong > not wrong. In the controversial > noncontroversial comparison, psychopathy was inversely associated with activity in the temporal parietal junction and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results indicate that psychopathy-related abnormalities are observed during the processing of complex, negative, and positive moral stimuli. (shrink)

This study investigated the performance of boys with psychopathic tendencies and comparison boys, aged 9 to 17 years, on two tasks believed to be sensitive to amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex func- tioning. Fifty-one boys were divided into two groups according to the Psychopathy Screening Device (PSD, P. J. Frick & R. D. Hare, in press) and presented with two tasks. The tasks were the gambling task (A. Bechara, A. R. Damasio, H. Damasio, & S. W. Anderson, 1994) and the (...) Intradimensional/ Extradimensional (ID/ED) shift task (R. Dias, T. W. Robbins, & A. C. Roberts, 1996). The boys with psychopathic tendencies showed impaired performance on the gambling task. However, there were no group differences on the ID/ED task either for response reversal or extradimensional set shifting. The implications of these results for models of psychopathy are discussed. (shrink)

Can original philosophy be done while simultaneously engaging in the history of philosophy? Such a possibility is questioned by analytic philosophers who contend that history contaminates good philosophy, and by historians of philosophy who insist that theoretical predecessors cannot be ignored. Believing that both camps are misguided, the contributors to this book present a case for historical philosophy as a valuable enterprise. The contributors include: Todd L. Adams, Lilli Alanen, Jos? Bernardete, Jonathan Bennett, John I. Biro, Phillip Cummins, Georges Dicker, (...) Daniel A. Dombrowski, Daniel Garber, Josiah Gould, Jorge J.E. Gracie, Daniel Graham, Charles Griswold, James Lawler, Rudolf Luthe, Edward H. Madden, George Mavrodes, Gerald E. Myers, Jonathan R?e, Frithjof Rodi, Kenneth L. Schmitz, Vladimir Shtinov, David G. Stern, Robert Turnbull, James Van Cleve, Frederick Van De Pitte, Henry Beatch, and Richard Watson. (shrink)

Philosophy of language, according to Hare, contributes significantly to ethics, because it provides a logical structure for moral thinking. Referring to J. L. Austin's theory of speech acts, Hare distinguishes two kinds or genera of speech acts, the descriptive and the prescriptive; and he also discusses Austin's distinction between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Moral judgements, e.g. those judgements expressed by ‘ought’, are prescriptive speech acts, but they also have a descriptive meaning. This is because moral judgements share with (...) normative judgements the logical feature Hare calls universalizability. Alongside prescriptivity and universalizability, a third element of Hare's account of moral judgement is the identification of one's will with that of another moral agent's will in hypothetical situations. (shrink)

This study investigates the performance of psychopathic individuals on tasks believed to be sensitive to dorsolateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) functioning. Psychopathic and non-psychopathic individuals, as defined by the Hare psychopathy checklist revised (PCL-R) [Hare, The Hare psychopathy checklist revised, Toronto, Ontario: Multi-Health Systems, 1991] completed a gambling task [Cognition 50 (1994) 7] and the intradimensional/extradimensional (ID/ED) shift task [Nature 380 (1996) 69]. On the gambling task, psychopathic participants showed a global tendency to choose disadvantageously. Specifically, (...) they showed an impaired ability to show learning over the course of the task. On the ID/ED task, the performance of psychopathic individuals was not significantly different from incarcerated controls on attentional set-shifting, but significant impairments were found on response reversal. These results are interpreted with reference to an OFC and amygdala dysfunction explanation of psychopathy. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

There are methodological problems with the new techniques reviewed by Posner & Raichle. Some brain mechanisms are not detected by the temporal and spatial resolution. Questions are also raised by the stimulation paradigms.

This volume marks a unique collaboration by internationally distinguished scholars in the history, rhetoric, philosophy, and sociology of science. Converging on the central issues of rhetoric of science, the essays focus on figures such as Galileo, Harvey, Darwin, von Neumann; and on issues such as the debate over cold fusion or the continental drift controversy. Their vitality attests to the burgeoning interest in the rhetoric of science.

Abstract‘Yellow Rain’, an alleged biological warfare agent thought to be utilized in parts of both South East Asia and Afghanistan, may be composed in part of the mycotoxins, trichothecenes. However, more recent analyses suggest that the ‘Rain’ was mainly honey bee excreta. The history of the controversy together with the biological effects, chemistry as well as the fungi producing these mycotoxins and agricultural commodities affected by trichothecenes are reviewed.

This article argues for two theses. The first is that many of the sociological factors endemic in the philosophical community function as barriers to the recruitment of members of minority groups in the profession and to their functioning as public intellectuals. The division into familial groups, the fights for security and success, and the weakness of the federal organization of the American Philosophical Association all contribute to these barriers. The second is that sociology has a place in philosophy, even though (...) it should not be confused with it. This means that philosophers need to consider social phenomena. (shrink)

The primary function of a book review is to articulate and present an understanding of the book's thesis and argument, and to make a judgment as to its value, so that readers will themselves understand and be guided by the understanding and judgment of the reviewer. Reviews are supposed to be interpretations created for the sake of a potential audience for a book. Unfortunately, most reviews fail to fulfill this function insofar as they merely paraphrase the text they are supposed (...) to interpret, fail to provide an understanding of it, or are so critical that they miss the significance of the book. In short, they fail to provide the kind of interpretation that constitutes their proper hermeneutic task. Glover's .. (shrink)