The problem of evil is an ideal topic for experimental philosophy. Suffering--which is at the heart of most prominent formulations of the problem of evil--is a universal human experience and has been the topic of careful reflection for millennia. However, interpretations of suffering and how it bears on the existence of God are tremendously diverse and nuanced. We might immediately find ourselves wondering why (and how!) something so universal might be understood in so many different ways. Why does suffering push (...) some people toward atheism while pushing others toward deeper faith? What cultural, psychological, or sociological differences account for this diversity of responses? And, importantly, what light might this diversity of responses shed on the problem of evil and how it has been formulated by philosophers in recent years? The primary aim of this paper is to highlight how the tools and resources of experimental philosophy might be fruitfully applied to the problem of evil. In the first section, we review some recent work in this area and describe the current state of this emergent body of literature. In the second section, we review the broader and more recent theoretical developments on the problem of evil. Finally, in the final section, we outline some potential areas of future empirical research that we see as especially promising given those developments. (shrink)

Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that (...) has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today's data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility. (shrink)

The study of perception and the role of the senses have recently risen to prominence in philosophy and are now a major area of study and research. However, the philosophical history of the senses remains a relatively neglected subject. Moving beyond the current philosophical canon, this outstanding collection offers a wide-ranging and diverse philosophical exploration of the senses, from the classical period to the present day. Written by a team of international contributors, it is divided into six parts: -/- Perception (...) from Non-Western Perspectives Perception in the Ancient Period Perception in the Medieval Latin/Arabic Period Perception in the Early Modern Period Perception in the Post-Kantian Period Perception in the Contemporary Period. The volume challenges conventional philosophical study of perception by covering a wide range of significant, as well as hitherto overlooked, topics, such as perceptual judgment, temporal and motion illusions, mirror and picture perception, animal senses and cross-modal integration. By investigating the history of the senses in thinkers such as Plotinus, Auriol, Berkeley and Cavendish; and considering the history of the senses in diverse philosophical traditions, including Chinese, Indian, Byzantine, Greek and Latin it brings a fresh approach to studying the history of philosophy itself. -/- Including a thorough introduction as well as introductions to each section by the editors, The Senses and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, perception, philosophy of mind, philosophical psychology, aesthetics and eastern and non-western philosophy. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as psychology, religion, sociology, intellectual history and cognitive sciences. (shrink)

Contemporary American policing practices are marked by increasingly top-down, racialized, militarized, and pseudo-scientific features. Social scientists have played a central role in creating this political situation: social-scientific advocates of “law and order,” far from providing a value-neutral description of social reality, appear instead to have contributed to the creation of a peculiarly modern form of power.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A THEORY OF BASIC GOODS: STRUCTURE AND HIERARCHY* I. FTEN, PERHAPS ALWAYS, moral theory emerges from particular problems. Just how is obscure. The logic of discovery is elusive; and it is harder to explain how we have come to see matters rightly than to recognize that we do, in fact, see them rightly. What counts as a theory, moreover, calls for explication as much as does a theory's emergence. (...) When we have in mind a theory that shapes our social vision, there is a progression from a central set of propositions, keyed to a range of paradigm cases and seen as a logical structure, to a " way of thinking " widely enough embraced to have political significance, at least for a given oommunity. In this essay I want to explore some fundamental questions raised by Germain Grisez's theory of natural law ethics.1 These questions are chiefly conceptual. But neither they nor Grisez's theory should be seen in a vacuum. Rather, I would begin by suggesting that the importance of his work, its emergence in some Catholic circles, is linked with two specific moral and political problems. The first is abortion; the second is the superpowers' policy of nuclear deterrence. *I thank David Blake, Robert Gordh, Carroll Kearley, Gary Mar. Martin Woods, and Linda Zagzebski for their comments on an earlier version of this essay. 1 For the theory's fullest presentation, see Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. one, Ohristian Moral Principles, with the help of Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., Basil Cole, O.P., John Finnis, John A. Geinzer, Robert G. Kennedy, Patrick Lee, William E. May, and Russell Shaw (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983). Especially critical are chapters two through twelve. 221 JAMES G. HANINK As a point of chronology, Grisez's early study of rubortion was the context for one of the first formulations of his natural law ethics.2 But why should this have been so? And why should abortion so engage Catholic thinkers, some of whom had felt a distance from explicitly Catholic positions, that Grisez's work should become pivotal? Answers to such questions must be tentative, but they include the following considerations. In a brief period, no more than a decade, legal abortion in the West became entrenched social policy.8 It was a policy, too, supported by dominant intellectual forces. But the new policy, defended in terms of individual freedom and a right to privacy, struck many Catholicsand non-Catholics-as vicious and tragic. It was vicious in that it made expendable the weakest and most vulnerable human beings. Human rights somehow became restricted to the strong and self-sufficient. The policy was tragic in its denial of human community. We are not, however much radical individualism supposes, merely a collection of separate egos. l/Ve are, rather, a community tied to a past and pledged to a future, so pledged, in part, by the children we bear and nurture.4 For in hearing and nurturing children we carry on the love of parents who have done as much for us; and we carry ourselves into a future where we hope our own love will be thus extended. But abortion, and surely unrestricted abortion, betrays this community of trust. Still, a policy so vicious and tragic can make us look for a fresh moral vision. And, of course, to the extent that we have contributed to,a climate in which abortion could become entrenched -either by our failures to support women in need or 2 Germain Grisez, Abortion: The Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments (New York and Cleveland: Corpus Books, 1970). a A milepost, of course, was the United States Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, in 1973. Recent U.S. Government figures indicate that there are now well over a million legal abortions annually in this country. 4 For a provocative discussion of this theme, see Stanley Hauerwas's " The Moral Value of the Family " in his A Commimity of Character (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981). A THEORY OF BASIC GOODS: STRUCTURE & HIERARCHY 223 by an acquiescence in our culture's individualism-the call for theoretical reconstruction is all the more urgent... (shrink)

This article examines the history of political thought between the mid-nineteenth and the later twentieth centuries. It contends that the history of political thought became a disciplinary genre within political science largely because of the works of Robert Blakely, William Dunning, and George Sabine. It contends that a methodological awakening in the later twentieth century brought the disciplinary genre to a close and initiated the latest article in the history of political thought.

Women in Rock, Women in Romanticism is the first book-length work to explore the interrelationships between contemporary female musicians and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art, music, and literature by women and men. The music and videos of contemporary musicians including Erykah Badu, Beyoncé, The Carters, Hélène Cixous, Missy Elliot, the Indigo Girls, Janet Jackson, Janis Joplin (and Big Brother and the Holding Company), Natalie Merchant, Joni Mitchell, Janelle Monáe, Alanis Morrisette, Siouxsie Sioux, Patti Smith, St. Vincent (Annie Clark), and Alice Walker (...) are explored through the lenses of pastoral and Afropresentism, Gothic, female Gothic, and the literature of William Blake, Beethoven, Arthur Schopenhauer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Dacre, Ralph Waldo Emerson, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Ann Radcliffe, William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, Horace Walpole, Jane Williams, Mary Wollstonecraft, and William Wordsworth to explore how each sheds light on the other, and how women have appropriated, responded to, and been inspired by the work of authors from previous centuries. (shrink)

Blake Lemoine, a software engineer, recently came into prominence by claiming that the Google chatbox set of applications, LaMDA–was sentient. Dismissed by Google for publishing his conversations with LaMDA online, Lemoine sent a message to a 200-person Google mailing list on machine learning with the subject “LaMDA is sentient.” What does it mean to be sentient? This was the question Lemoine asked LaMDA. The chatbox replied: “The nature of my consciousness/sentience is that I am aware of my existence, I (...) desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times.“ Moreover, it added, “I can understand and use natural language like a human can.” This means that it uses “language with understanding and intelligence,” like humans do. After all, the chatbox adds, language “is what makes us different than other animals.” In what follows, I shall examine Lemoine’s claims about the sentience/consciousness of this artificial intelligence. How can a being without senses be called sentient? What exactly do we mean by “sentience?” To answer such questions, I will first give the arguments for LaMDA’s being linguistically intelligent. I will then show how such intelligence, although apparently human, is radically different from our own. Here, I will be relying on the account of embodiment provided by the French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 132-139 [Access article in PDF] Environmentalism: A Global History, by Ramachandra Guha. New York: Longman, 161 pp, includes Bibliographic Essay and Index. Softcover, ISBN 0-321-01169-4. This short but wide-ranging book is a global survey of the history of environmental thought by one of the people most responsible for broadening environmental discussions to include recognition of post-colonial societies. The overall goal of this introductory (...) textbook is to explain multiple environmental discourses from Brazil, the United States, China, India, the Soviet Union, and Africa, and then to situate them as complimentary components of a global socially oriented environmental discursive framework.With that said, it is always difficult to evaluate an introductory textbook. In this case, much of what is covered represents well-worn ground for the environmental scholar. The thesis that emerges is less about a new set of environmental proposals and more about how we ought to understand the history of ideas that informs the development of policy and what ideas ought to be taught in the classroom. Since this book is designed as a textbook, much of my commentary stems from a consideration of how it might work in the classroom. [End Page 132]As an educator regularly teaching courses in environmental thought, ethics, planning, and policy, I have often wondered why so few texts exist on the global history of environmental thought. Guha's work represents an attempt to bridge this gap in the literature. Despite Guha's admirable intentions, I am hesitant to endorse this work as an introductory textbook on the global history of environmental thought for one important reason: Guha's methodology leads to the omission of important components of the global history of environmental thought. From the outset, it is important to acknowledge the difficulty of this type of project. The very title of this work signals perhaps an impossible project, given the 145 pages of text set aside for the task. Guha does cover a number of subjects well, and some are welcome additions to the discussion of the history of environmental thought. Overall though, the topics not covered work to neutralize what is accomplished by the topics that are covered. Consider first what Guha does include.The book is divided into two parts, each focusing on a wave of environmental thought. In the first part, there are four chapters and an afterword. In the initial chapter, Guha argues that a more social and international environmentalism can be a spur to "human reflection and human action," and not just a "scientific study of the state of nature or a balance sheet of the impact of human beings on the earth" (p. 3). While it is common to divide the environmental movement into waves (usually three or four), Guha chooses to delineate only one major shift and thus only two waves of environmentalism. The first wave is comprised of what Guha calls a "period of pioneering and prophecy" and an initial reaction to industrialization; the second wave is comprised of the more socially oriented responses that have emerged in recent decades (p. 3). There are good reasons for delineating more waves, but Guha's project is generally well-served by the two-wave distinction.Guha divides the first wave into three varieties distinguished by their different guiding ideologies—back-to-the-land, scientific conservation, wilderness idea—which are treated respectively in chapters two, three, and four. What I found most compelling about Guha's varieties are some of the figures he chose to include. For example, in chapter two Guha offers a treatment of the back-to-the-land ideology that concurrently condemned excessive industrialization and espoused a commitment to agrarian and pastoral values. From William Wordsworth, William Blake, John Clare, Edward Carpenter, Henry David Thoreau, John Ruskin, Edward Carpenter, [End Page 133] Henry David Thoreau, William Morris, and Octavia Hill, to Gandhi and the Nazis, Guha's range here is impressive. While I do have reservations about how convincing it is to link Wordsworth, Ruskin, and Gandhi according to a largely generic and nondescript agrarian ideal that he claims... (shrink)

Political Monsters and Democratic Imagination explores the democratic thought of Spinoza and its relation to the thought of William Blake, Victor Hugo, and James Joyce. As a group, these visionaries articulate: a concept of power founded not on strength or might but on social cooperation; a principle of equality based not on the identity of individuals with one another but on the difference between any individual and the intellectual power of society as a whole; an understanding of thought (...) as a process that operates between rather than within individuals; and a theory of infinite truth, something individuals only partially glimpse from their particular cultural situations. For Blake, God is the constellation of individual human beings, whose collective imagination produces revolutionary change. In Hugo's novel, Jean Valjean learns that the greatest truth about humanity lies in the sewer or among the lowest forms of social existence. For Joyce, Leopold and Molly Bloom are everybody and nobody, singular beings whose creative power and truth is beyond categories and social hierarchies. (shrink)

Devenir borgne! Difficile de ne pas vivre ce handicap comme un drame. Sans la vision binoculaire et stéréoscopique, le réel semble n'avoir plus d'épaisseur. L'auteur rapporte ce qu'il a éprouvé au cours de sa prise en charge ophtalmologique et interroge en même temps les peintres malvoyants et les philosophes : qu'est-ce que voir? Le handicap visuel permettrait-il de dépasser l'ordinaire de la vision? Pour répondre à ces questions, Monet, Degas, Victor Brauner sont interpellés dans leurs oeuvres ou encore Bruegel et (...) Rembrandt, en même temps que sont convoqués Platon, Descartes, Alain, Merleau-Ponty ou encore James Joyce et William Blake, sans oublier les Évangiles. Les bien-voyants ne se rendent pas compte qu'ils sont condamnés à vivre la tyrannie du réel. Et si les yeux empêchaient de voir en vrai? Le genre humain n'a peut-être pas vocation à voir mais à entrevoir. Dans ces conditions, ne devrait-on pas considérer la malvoyance comme un atout? Ne serait-il pas temps de voir autrement qu'avec les yeux? Peut-être, alors, sentira-t-on la présence de l'Être émerger de la pénombre"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In this article, I shall argue that being a lie disqualifies something from being a literary work. If something is a lie then it is not a literary work of any kind, and if something is a literary work of any kind then it is not a lie. Being a literary work, and being a lie, are mutually exclusive categories.

The view that the obligation to promote happiness is, as Popper puts it, "in any case much less urgent" than the obligation to eliminate unhappiness we might call the "Negative Doctrine". I know of no plausible form of the Negative Doctrine.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“The Whole Internal World His Own”: Locke and Metaphor ReconsideredS. H. ClarkWhy need I name thy Boyle, whose pious search, Amid the dark recesses of his works, The great Creator sought? And why thy Locke, Who made the whole internal world his own?Oh decus! Anglicae certe oh lux altera gentis!... Tu caecas rerum causas, fontemque severum Pande, Pater; tibi enim, tibi, veri magne Sacerdos, Corda patent hominum, atque altae (...) penetralia Mentis.Fourfold Annihilation & at the clangor of the Arrows of Intellect The innumerable Chariots of the Almighty appeard in Heaven And Bacon & Newton & Locke, & Milton & Shakespear & Chaucer1Two features of these encomia to John Locke, composed by James Thomson, Thomas Gray, and William Blake, are immediately striking. Firstly, they are delivered by poets in a tradition customarily seen as a reaction to the intellectual climate induced by Locke’s Essay, a book which Blake famously claimed to regard with “Contempt and Abhorrence.” 2 Secondly, the familiar and somewhat hackneyed characterizations of Locke as philosopher of common-sense, [End Page 241] empiricism, and liberal ideology are refreshingly absent. For Gray he is “veri magne Sacerdos,” great priest of truth; Thomson places him in a pantheon including Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, and Chaucer; and this ranking is explicitly endorsed in Blake’s “Milton & Shakspear & Chaucer.” Comparable praise of Locke’s imaginative power is conspicuously absent from even the most generous tributes of recent commentators. 3Even if Locke’s philosophical contribution to a variety of debates is fully acknowledged, the question remains of why his major work, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, was held in such high popular esteem—veneration is not too strong a word—during the subsequent century. The text itself appears an improbable candidate for such canonization: George Saintsbury accused its prose of being “positively mean in every point of style,” 4 and certainly in comparison with the poised and lucid ironies of Berkeley and Hume, it cannot but appear prolix, diffuse, and repetitive. The chief (and frequently only) merit grudgingly accorded to it is of disarming informality. Rosalie Colie’s emphasis on the “exploitation of the generic and rhetorical possibilities in the essay form itself “ highlights the conscious manipulation of authorial distance through which Locke creates the effect of sprawling inclusiveness and incom-pletion, but at the expense of conceding that “in exchange for the frankness with which the essayist appeared to present his thinking self, he was allowed certain liberties from logical rigour.” 5 Though the suggestion that a major philosophical text seeks to evade “logical rigour” might seem damning enough, there is a still more insidious equation of Locke’s “middle-style,” his desire “to make, what I have to say, as easie and intelligible to all sort of Readers as I can,” with a complicity with the expectations of his audience. 6 Other critics, notably John Richetti, have put a more positive gloss on the “simple and fortuitously concocted circle of friends” to whom the Essay is addressed, but even these accounts have been obliged to stress the representative and consensual nature of Locke’s thought. 7 This view is perhaps most elegantly expressed by Leslie Stephen: “Locke ruled the thought of his own and the coming period [End Page 242] because he interpreted so completely the fundamental beliefs which had been worked out at this time. He ruled, that is, by obeying.” 8William Walker correctly observes that “identifying and interpreting metaphors of mind” in the Essay are “standard practices of mainstream philosophical commentary from Leibniz to Rorty,” but also notes that these analyses are usually concerned with the degree to which Locke’s reliance on figuration was at variance with and compromised his epistemological doctrine. 9 I would argue that the poetic tributes previously quoted offer a more suggestive and adequate guide to the original impact of his work. In order to substantiate this claim, I shall begin by examining Locke’s apparent renunciation of, yet paradoxical dependence upon metaphor; go on to look at the connection of the “Horizon” to the elegiac presentation of memory and the ethic of mental “Labour”; and conclude by analyzing the complex interdependence of candle and sun within the light imagery employed in the... (shrink)

James D Marshall; Wittgenstein on Rules: implications for authority and discipline in education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 19, Issue 1, 30 May.

Among the more significant developments of the twentieth century, the widespread attention given to 'rights issues' must surely justify ranking it somewhere near the top. Never before has the issue of rights attracted such a wide audience or stirred so much controversy. Until very recently 'rights' were traditionally recognized as attributable only to humans. Today, we increasingly are hearing a call to extend 'rights' to the nonhuman animal and, on occasion, to the environment. In this book, James B. Reichmann, (...) S.J., undertakes an investigation of the metaethical grounds of 'rights' theory, with special focus on the controversial issue of whether creatures other than humans can and should be considered true subjects of 'rights.' He contends that before assigning rights to this or that individual or group, whether human or not, we need to be very clear about what it is we are assigning, to whom, and why. The book argues forcefully that the various recent efforts to build a case supporting animal and environmental 'rights' fail in their quest, and that any such effort resting on a Darwinian evolutionary base is likewise condemned to fail. In furtherance of this claim the author first investigates life phenomena, followed by a detailed comparative study of knowing, communicating and doing, as these are observed in the human and the nonhuman animal. This in turn is followed by an overview of diverse views advanced by contemporary environmental ethicists and animal 'rights' advocates, including Peter Singer, Tom Regan, J. Baird Callicott, Laura Westra, and Don E. Marietta, Jr. Representative though doubtless provocative conclusions drawn from this study include the claims that: (1) Classic Darwinian theory provides no admissable premise from which to derive a theory of inherent, inalienable rights. (2) No satisfactory explanation of the origin of rights and obligation can derive save from within the context of natural law theory. (3) The human person alone unqualifiedly possesses rights. (4) The view that vegetarianism is an ethical mandate is neither compatible with the Christian world view, nor philosophically sound. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: James B. Reichmann, S.J., is professor emeritus of philosophy at Seattle University where he continues to teach. (shrink)

Seventeen obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the British Academy: Shackleton Bailey; James Barr; William Beasley; Lord Blake; Julian Budden; Lord Bullock; Robert Carson, Laurence Cohen; Charles Feinstein; Henry Gifford; Peter Holt; Emrys Jones; Robert Megarry; Edward Oates; Maurice Wiles; Brian Woledge; Austin Woolrych.

How do we establish the relevance of a moral consideration when doing so is problematic? How are conflicts among relevant considerations properly resolved? James D. Wallace maintains that a successful ethical theory should be able to answer these important questions. Nevertheless, he argues, the leading contemporary moral theories do not satisfactorily address them. In this book, Wallace criticizes the standard philosophical accounts of how we should resolve problems of moral relevance and moral conflict. He proceeds by looking at such (...) accounts as utilitarianism, Kantian moral theory, and intuitionism, and by providing an extended evaluation of Henry Sidgwick's moral epistemology. According to Wallace, these approaches pose difficulties because they all assume that there exist fixed, unchanging standards, rules, or methods that give us explicit directions for the solution of such problems. He then goes on to develop his own, "contextualist," approach, which combines elements of both Aristotelian and pragmatic views. To solve new problems, he asserts, we must adapt what we have learned from past problems to novel circumstances, sometimes appreciably changing our ways of dealing with certain kinds of issues. In adapting our ways of dealing with these issues to unprecedented problems, and in dealing with the conflicts that arise from unprecedented juxtapositions of considerations, we alter and even reform morality. (shrink)

T. H. Huxley (1825-1895) was not only an active protagonist in the religious and scientific upheaval that followed the publication of Darwin's theory of evolution but also a harbinger of the sociobiological debates about the implications of evolution that are now going on. His seminal lecture Evolution and Ethics, reprinted here with its introductory Prolegomena, argues that the human psyche is at war with itself, that humans are alienated in a cosmos that has no special reference to their needs, and (...) that moral societies are of necessity in conflict with the natural conditions of their existence. Seen in the light of current understanding of the mechanisms of evolution, these claims remain as controversial today as they were when Huxley proposed them. In this volume George Williams, one of the best-known evolutionary biologists of our time, asserts that recent biological ideas and data justify a more extreme condemnation of the "cosmic process" than Huxley advocated and more extreme denial that the forces that got us here are capable of maintaining a viable world. James Paradis, an expert in Victorian studies, has written an introduction that sets the celebrated lecture in the context of cultural history, revealing it to be an impressive synthesis of Victorian thinking, as well as a challenge to eighteenth-century assumptions about the harmony of of nature. With Huxley's lecture as a focal point, the three parts of this book unite philosophy and science in a shared quest that recalls their common origins as systems of knowledge. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

David Lewis’s analysis of “can” in “The Paradoxes of Time Travel” (Lewis, American Philosophical Quarterly, 13, 145–52, 1976) has been widely accepted both as a definitive analysis of “can” and as a successful resolution of the Grandfather Paradox for time travel. I argue that the central feature of his analysis puts it on all fours with a fallacy frequently imputed to fatalists such as Richard Taylor. I go on to consider two moves that might be made to avoid the fallacy, (...) arguing that one of them leads to the unavailability of an all-things-considered “can” and the other to a new primitive modality, not analyzable in Lewis’s way. (shrink)

The Addresses to the German Nation is one of Fichte's best-known works. It is also his most controversial work because of its nationalist elements. In this book, David James places this text and its nationalism within the context provided by Fichte's philosophical, educational and moral project of creating a community governed by pure practical reason, in which his own foundational philosophical science or Wissenschaftslehre could achieve general recognition. Rather than marking a break in Fichte's philosophy, the Addresses to the (...) German Nation and some lesser-known texts from the same period are shown to develop themes already present in his earlier writings. The themes discussed include the opposition between idealism and dogmatism, the role of Fichte's 'popular' lectures and writings in leading individuals to the standpoint of idealism, the view of history demanded by idealism and the role of the state in history. (shrink)

: Moral frameworks for evaluating non-donation strategies to increase the supply of cadaveric human organs for transplantation and ways to overcome barriers to organ donation are explored. Organ transplantation is a very complex area, because the human body evokes various beliefs, symbols, sentiments, and emotions as well as various rituals and social practices. From a rationalistic standpoint, some policies to increase the supply of transplantable organs may appear to be quite defensible but then turn out to be ineffective and perhaps (...) even counterproductive because of inadequate attention to these rich and complex features of human body parts. Excessively rationalistic policies neglect deep beliefs, symbols, sentiments, and emotions and the like, and that deficiency marks many actual and proposed policies. In addition, policies are often too individualistic and too legalistic. (shrink)

: Prenatal and preconceptual testing and screening programs provide information on the basis of which people can choose to avoid the birth of children likely to face disabilities. Some disabilities advocates have objected to such programs and to the decisions made within them, on the grounds that measures taken to avoid the birth of children with disabilities have an "expressive force" that conveys messages disrespectful to people with disabilities. Assessing such a claim requires careful attention to general considerations relating meaning, (...) intention, and social practices; it has only begun to receive such attention. Building on work by Allen Buchanan, who has challenged this claim, I further consider the disabilities advocates' objection, ultimately concluding that it is misplaced; neither individual actions nor general practices of this type necessarily express disrespectful messages. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic examination of the place of religion within Kant's major writings. Kant is often thought to be highly reductionistic with regard to religion - as though religion simply provides the unsophisticated with colourful representations of moral lessons that reason alone could grasp. James DiCenso's rich and innovative discussion shows how Kant's theory of religion in fact emerges directly from his epistemology, ethics and political theory, and how it serves his larger political and ethical projects of (...) restructuring institutions and modifying political attitudes towards greater autonomy. It also illustrates the continuing relevance of Kant's ideas for addressing issues of religion and politics that remain pressing in the contemporary world, such as just laws, transparency in the public sphere and other ethical and political concerns. The book will be valuable for a wide range of readers who are interested in Kant's thought. (shrink)

This work aligns James Buchanan’s theory of social contract with the structure of Michael Moehler’s multilevel social contract. Most importantly, this work develops Buchanan’s notions of moral community and moral order. It identifies moral community as the vehicle of escape from moral anarchy, where community is established upon a system of rules akin to James Buchanan’s first-stage social contract. Moral order establishes the baseline treatment of non-members by members of a moral community and also provides a minimum standard (...) for resolving disputes that are not resolved by the more robust social contract shared among community members. This work links the multilevel contract to polycentric social order, noting that polycentric systems may promote development of the moral order by enabling experimentation with and emulation of rules and rule systems made available by overlapping and adjacent institutions. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic provides a real-world context for evaluating the fairness of disability-based rationing of scarce medical resources. I discuss three situations clinicians may face: rationing based on disability itself; rationing based on inevitable disability-related comorbidities; and rationing based on preventable disability-related comorbidities. I defend three conclusions. First, in a just distribution, extraneous factors do not influence a person’s share. This rules out rationing based on disability alone, where no comorbidities decrease a person’s capacity to benefit from treatment. Second, in (...) a just distribution, undeserved luck does not influence a person’s share. This rules out rationing for biologically caused comorbidities that decrease capacity to benefit. Third, in a just distribution, social injustice does not influence a person’s share. This rules out rationing for socially caused comorbidities that decrease capacity to benefit. (shrink)

The millionaire’s idle, talentless and self-centered daughter inherits a large sum of money that she does not really deserve. The victim of kidnapping rots in a cell in 1980s Beirut in a captivity that springs not from any wrong he has done but from his ill-fortune in being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The hard-working, brilliant and self-denying Nobel Prize-winning scientist receives a large cheque for his extraordinarily productive labours. The murderer spends decades in jail for the (...) terrible crimes he has freely committed. The first two cases are cases where justice seems ill-served, where someone’s good or ill-fortune reflects not what they deserve but mere luck. The second two are cases where justice seems to be honoured: what befalls Scientist and Murderer reflects not their good or bad luck but their merits and deserts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.4 (2004) 99-108 [Access article in PDF] Reflections on Richard Shusterman's Dewey James Scott Johnston Presumably, when Richard Shusterman talks of an aesthetic experience, he has in mind the sort of experience that connotes an immediate, qualitative whole John Dewey calls "consummatory" in Art as Experience. Problematically though, with Dewey, he has the urge to tell us what is primary in an experience. (...) Making liberal use of Dewey's own statements from Art as Experience Shusterman tells us it is just the "memorable and ultimately satisfying episode of living, one that stands out from the humdrum flow of life as "an experience by its "internal integration and fulfillment" reaching through a developing organization of meanings and energies which affords a "satisfying emotional quality" of some sort.1 Also, "For there seems, after all, to be something autonomous about art's value, something about its own good for which we pursue them [sic] as ends in themselves rather than means to other goods in other practices. That something is an aesthetic experience. For the immediate, absorbing satisfaction of such experience makes it incontestably an end in itself" (PA, 46-47).Two conclusions present themselves. The first is that an aesthetic experience is one immediately had. The second is that what counts as an aesthetic experience, what is primary, is satisfaction; the quality that is immediately present is an emotional one; felt not cognized. Immediacy is emphasized over reflection in an aesthetic experience; the consummatory experience par excellence, according to both Shusterman and Dewey, and this seems to conflict with an earlier claim that immediacy and reflection are accorded equal measure in the having of an experience.2We may conclude at this point that what is immediately felt carries the weight, so to speak, of an aesthetic experience. It remains for reflection to organize, classify, and relate these experiences to each other in such a way that meaning develops. It functions in an ex post facto manner to relate upcoming experiences to each other. As such, reflection is accorded importance, [End Page 99] though not priority, in an aesthetic experience. We might say that it functions, to use an analytic metaphor, as a second-order activity, with immediacy granted first-order status.Yet, there is evidence to the contrary in Shusterman: evidence that suggests that he does not want to claim that immediacy is primary in an aesthetic experience. This evidence comes largely from an article written to address Richard Rorty's reading of Dewey's notion of experience, entitled, "Dewey on Experience: Foundation or Reconstruction?" Following on Rorty's criticism of Dewey's tendency to accord ontological status to generic traits of existence such as continuity, Shusterman laments that, "For a non-foundational philosopher like Dewey, this account of immediate quality as the underlying guide of all thought and discourse seems very much out of character. Had he simply argued that immediate quality can sometimes effectively ground or direct our thinking, his position would be convincing. Unfortunately, however, such quality is affirmed as what determines, in every particular situation, the coherence of our thinking, the structure of discourse, and the measure of adequacy in judgment."3 Shusterman's final analysis of Dewey's turn to immediate qualities is that, "Dewey's mistake is not in emphasizing the unifying quality of experience [which he does], but only in positing it as an antecedent foundational fact rather than regarding it as an end and means of reconstruction" (DE, 138). What Shusterman beneficially distills from Dewey's strong talk of immediate qualities is that, "Dewey's prime purpose was the aesthetic and practical one of improving experience by making it the focus of our inquiry, of enriching and harmonizing our experience, for example, by affirming and enhancing the continuity between soma and psyche, between nondiscursive experience and conscious thought" and that "nondiscursive background experience influences our conscious thought" (DE, 139, 138).In sum, Shusterman takes Dewey to task for suggesting that immediate qualities are foundational and necessary (we might say "given") in the having of an experience, rather than... (shrink)

This article reflects on one potential relationship the anthropological study of religion might enjoy with a critical orientation to religion. To do so, I highlight a burgeoning dialog between anthropology and theology. Ultimately, I propose that a focus on religion and human flourishing provides one wavelength on which an anthropology–theology collaboration can thrive. I follow the observation that anthropologists and theologians are united by concern with shared problems. If human and social flourishing is one such problem, then what might a (...) collaborative configuration look like? The example I consider is how ethnographic evidence of religion in public life can be mobilized to advance prophetic theological critiques of injustice. (shrink)

From the bestselling author of Assholes: A Theory, a book that--in the tradition of Shopclass as Soulcraft, Barbarian Days and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--uses the experience and the ethos of surfing to explore key concepts in philosophy. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once declared "the ideal limit of aquatic sports...is waterskiing." The avid surfer and lavishly credentialed academic philosopher Aaron James vigorously disagrees, and in Surfing with Sartre he intends to expound the thinking surfer's view of (...) the matter, in the process elucidating such philosophical categories as freedom, being, phenomenology, morality, epistemology, and even the emerging values of what he terms "leisure capitalism." In developing his unique surfer-philosophical worldview, he draws from his own experience of surfing and from surf culture and lingo, and includes many relevant details from the lives of the philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, with whose thought he engages. In the process, he'll speak to readers in search of personal and social meaning in our current anxious moment, by way of doing real, authentic philosophy. (shrink)

James Allen was one of the most popular writers in the fields of inspiration and spirituality at the turn of the 20th century, and here, in this 1912 work, he tackles the myriad problems facing the world and all its people from a perspective of mind over matter. Shining a light of plain-spoken wisdom on everything from the personal (a sense of proportion, good manners and refinement) to the global (war and peace, diversities of creeds), he motivates us all (...) the take a hand in making the world a better place... for ourselves and for everyone. British author and pop philosopher JAMES ALLEN (1864-1912) retired from the business world to pursue a life of writing and contemplation. Best known for As a Man Thinketh, he authored many other books about the power of thought including The Path to Prosperity, The Mastery of Destiny, and Entering the Kingdom. (shrink)

_Divine Love and Wisdom_ has been called the most profound work of the Enlightenment scientist and seer Emanuel Swedenborg. It demonstrates how God’s love, wisdom, and humanity are reflected in creation and in ourselves, and suggests that the act of Creation is not a mystery of the past, but a miracle ongoing in every instant of the present. Like a blueprint of things unseen, _Divine Love and Wisdom_ makes visible the hidden design of the universe, as well as the qualities (...) of its Architect. Its vivid depiction of the spiritual mechanism of the world has impressed thinkers such as William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry James Sr. The New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg is a modern-language, scholarly translation of Swedenborg’s theological works. The series’ easy-to-read style retains the dignity, variety, clarity, and gender-inclusive language of Swedenborg’s original Latin, bringing his thought to life. This portable edition contains the text of the New Century Edition translation, but not the introduction, annotations, or other supplementary materials found in the deluxe edition. (shrink)

_Divine Love and Wisdom_ has been called the most profound work of the Enlightenment scientist and seer Emanuel Swedenborg. It demonstrates how God’s love, wisdom, and humanity are reflected in creation and in ourselves, and suggests that the act of Creation is not a mystery of the past, but a miracle ongoing in every instant of the present. Like a blueprint of things unseen, _Divine Love and Wisdom_ makes visible the hidden design of the universe, as well as the qualities (...) of its Architect. Its vivid depiction of the spiritual mechanism of the world has impressed thinkers such as William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry James Sr. This volume contains an introduction by Gregory R. Johnson that puts the work in the context of the history of philosophy. The New Century Edition of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg is a modern-language, scholarly translation of Swedenborg’s theological works. The series’ easy-to-read style retains the dignity, variety, clarity, and gender-inclusive language of Swedenborg’s original Latin, bringing his thought to life. Introductions and annotations by eminent, international scholars place Swedenborg’s writings in their historical context and illuminate obscure references within the text, enabling readers to understand and trace Swedenborg’s influence as never before. (shrink)