In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LettersJames L. Walsh, Moira M. McQueen, Kevin O'Rourke, and Jean deBloisEarly Delivery of the Anencephalic InfantMadam:In the March 1994 issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Kevin O'Rourke and Jean deBlois have replied to an article of ours (KIEJ, December 1993) on the early induction of the anencephalic fetus. They agree with our conclusion that such early delivery may be morally acceptable, but argue that our (...) justification is flawed. Exchanges on the subject probably could continue ad nauseam; here we simply state some of the elements of their article that leave us perplexed.1. The phrase "prolonging the life of" (p. 49) has one meaning in the case of artificial life supports, which may be unwarranted interventions, but it has a different meaning when it refers to not interfering with a person's enjoyment of necessary natural means of preserving his or her life. Inducing labor prior to viability, which denies the natural means of life support without a possible substitute, has more in common with smothering a dying patient than the nonemployment of or withdrawing of artificial means of life support. To refer to the death of the fetus here as an effect is rather like saying that I suffocated you and the effect of the suffocation is your death. This is quite different from induction after viability where the induction can have different effects.2. If the authors were correct that "the prohibition on inducing delivery before viability is predicated upon the assumption that the fetus in utero is a human being with the potential for further development" (p. 49) and the anencephalic has none, why is there need to employ the principle of double effect? They say that there is no moral obligation to prolong the life of the anencephalic fetus. Just as there is no need for the principle in cases of withdrawing unwarranted artificial life support, so there would be no need for it here. Because the authors seem to perceive a complete disjunction between direct and indirect killing (allowing to die being in the category of indirect killing), it seems that they are unable to let their argument rest here, but have to justify the death that occurs.3. The example concerning smothering and the nonemployment of aggressive interventions (p. 49) explains well the difference between killing and allowing to die. But allowing to die is not indirectly killing since it occurs as a result of the disease and not from the causality of the agent.4. How can we cause something and not intend it? There are instances in which we simply "permit" evil events, but where we are not the cause. For example, evil events may be attributable to the bad will of others. Legislators make just laws knowing that some people of bad will will break them for their own advantage. Here the legislators really do permit evil. Neither are we the cause of death when we allow a person to die by not imposing unwarranted means of life support; we permit his or her death. But can we so readily designate by "permit" [End Page 184] what we knowingly choose to bring about? O'Rourke and deBlois use interchangeably "indirectly intended" and "unintended" for what is caused by our actions; "indirectly intended" is a better designation than "unintended." The whole package, including all foreseen effects, is intended. Evil "happening" (p. 51) as a result of an action that I place can refer either to evil as caused by my action or to evil as arising from a cause apart from my action. Only in this latter sense do I permit evil and not intend it, either directly or indirectly.5. The fourth condition of the principle of double effect is given as follows: "There must be a proportionately grave reason for placing the act. The greater the evil, the more cogent the reason must be for performing the act" (p. 50). How the authors can abstract from balancing goods and evils here is beyond us.6. We cannot follow the authors' use of the term "morally good" with respect to the induced delivery (p. 50). The problem is concerned with the morally right... (shrink)

This study seeks to present the theory of freedom as found in one line of the Marxist tradition, that which begins with Marx and Engels and continues through Lenin to contemporary Soviet philosophy. Although the primary goal is simply to describe how freedom is con ceived by the thinkers of this tradition, an attempt is also made to ascertain whether or not their views are strongly deterministic, as has often been presumed by Western commentators. is in order regarding the scope (...) of the term 'contemporary A remark Soviet philosophy'. The Soviet stage in Marxist philosophy stretche. s back to the 1917 revolution. However, for the purposes of this study only works published after 1947 were examined, and the vast majority of them date from the 1960's. Apart from the fact that most works of previous periods were not available, bibliographical indications, such as the titles of the articles in Pod znamenem marksizma, did not suggest that the theory of freedom was then a major concern. In fact, even 1947 there was little development of this theme until the upsurge after of works in philosophical anthropology during the last decade. On the other hand, it is not being suggested that the conception of freedom found in recent writings is representative of earlier Soviet philosophy, during the Stalinist 'dead' period or earlier. Only further research could establish that. This work was presented as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, under the direction of Professor J. M. (shrink)

James Walsh and Moira McQueen accurately conclude that the early delivery of anencephalic fetuses is morally acceptable, but the reasoning they use to reach that conclusion is flawed. First, the principle of double effect does not require a weighing of good and evil, but rather seeks a sufficient reason for tolerating the physical evil indirectly intended. Second, the principle of double effect requires a clear distinction between physical and moral causality. Third, the Catholic moral tradition will not admit direct (...) and intended killing of the innocent. Rather, early delivery of anencephalic fetuses is permissible because of the pathology associated with delivery of anencephalic fetuses at full term. Thus, the early delivery of an anencephalic infant is acceptable if the purpose of the moral act is avoiding a pathological condition on the part of the mother. (shrink)

The problems and the keys to their solutions -- Ontology of artworks -- Copyright and its limits -- Token appropriation -- Pattern appropriation -- Appropriation of artistic elements.

The Farm Animal Welfare Council’s concept of a Good Life gives an idea of an animal’s quality of life that is over and above that of a mere life worth living. The concept needs explanation and clarification, in order to be meaningful, particularly for consumers who purchase farm animal produce. The concept could allow assurance schemes to apply the label to assessments of both the potential of each method of production, conceptualised in ways expected to enhance consumers’ engagement such as (...) ‘naturalness’ and ‘freedom’; and the concept of a life worth living as a safeguard threshold below which no animal’s actual welfare should fall, based on each animal’s overall affective states. This may provide a framework for development of the Good Life concept, within scientific and sociological fields, in order to allow reliable and influential use by assessors, consumers and retailers. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that reading literary fiction makes people more virtuous. This essay begins by defending the view that this claim is empirical. It goes on to review the empirical literature and finds that this literature supports the claim philosophers have made. Three mechanisms are identified whereby reading literary fiction makes people more virtuous: empathy is increased when readers enter imaginatively into the lives of fictional characters; reading literary fiction promotes self-reflection; and readers mimic the prosocial behaviour of fictional (...) characters. The paper concludes with a caution: there is a danger that readers could mimic antisocial behaviour displayed in literary fiction. If they do, reading some literary fiction could make readers less virtuous. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Deleuze developed a series of original philosophies of time and applied them successfully to many different fields. Now James Williams presents Deleuze's philosophy of time as the central concept that connects his philosophy as a whole. Through this conceptual approach, the book covers all the main periods of Deleuze's philosophy: the early studies of Hume, Nietzsche, Kant, Bergson and Spinoza, the two great philosophical works, Difference and Repetition and Logic of Sense, the Capitalism and Schizophrenia works (...) with Guattari, and the late influential studies of literature, film and painting.The result is an important reading of Deleuze and the first full interpretation of his philosophy of time. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of aesthetics has explored to what extent ordinary people are committed to aesthetic realism. Extant work has focused on attitudes to normativism – a key commitment of realist positions in aesthetics – the claim that aesthetic judgments/statements have correctness conditions, invariant between subjects, such that there is a fact of the matter in cases of aesthetic disagreement. The emerging picture is that ordinary people strongly and almost universally reject normativism and thus there is no strong realist tendency in (...) ordinary people’s thinking about the aesthetic. This has been taken to dissolve the traditional puzzle in aesthetics of how to best account for the fact that (a) aesthetic judgments seem intersubjectively valid, while (b) aesthetic experience seems subjective. This paper presents studies which further enrich our understanding of ordinary thinking about the aesthetic: ordinary thinking about the aesthetic may not be so vehement in its rejection of normativism; and where previous results suggested that, in many cultures, the dominant trend is to reject correctness conditions for aesthetic judgments, the current results suggest participants think aesthetic judgments have correctness conditions (albeit perhaps very finely relativized to specific circumstances of judgment). (shrink)

In Paradox in Christian Theology I argued that the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation are paradoxical—that is, they appear to involve implicit contradictions—yet Christians can still be rational in affirming and believing those doctrines. Dale Tuggy has characterized my theory of theological paradox as a form of “positive mysterianism” and argues that the theory “faces steep epistemic problems, and is at best a temporarily reasonable but ultimately unsustainable stance.” After summarizing my proposed model for the rational affirmation (...) of theological paradox and considering whether my proposal is indeed a form of “positive mysterianism” as Tuggy defines the term, I address the two main criticisms raised in Tuggy’s paper: first, that the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility cannot bear the weight required by my defense of paradox; and second, that my proposed model is afflicted with epistemic instability. I conclude that Tuggy has failed to show that a mysterian stance with respect to paradoxical Christian doctrines is in principle unreasonable, unnatural, or unsustainable. (shrink)

An ambitious new model of experimentation that will reorient our understanding of the key features of experimental practice. What is experimental knowledge, and how do we get it? While there is general agreement that experiment is a crucial source of scientific knowledge, how experiment generates that knowledge is far more contentious. In this book, philosopher of science James Mattingly explains how experiments function. Specifically, he discusses what it is about experimental practice that transforms observations of what may be very (...) localized, particular, isolated systems into what may be global, general, integrated empirical knowledge. Mattingly argues that the purpose of experimentation is the same as the purpose of any other knowledge-generating enterprise—to change the state of information of the knower. This trivial-seeming point has a non-trivial consequence: to understand a knowledge-generating enterprise, we should follow the flow of information. Therefore, the account of experimental knowledge Mattingly provides is based on understanding how information flows in experiments: what facilitates that flow, what hinders it, and what characteristics allow it to flow from system to system, into the heads of researchers, and finally into our store of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

What is the relationship between, on the one hand, the sorts of causal claims found in the special sciences (and in common sense) and, on the other hand, the world as described by physics? A standard picture goes like this: the fundamental laws of physics are causal laws in the sense that they can be interpreted as telling us that realizations of one set of physical factors or properties “causes” realizations of other properties. Causal claims in the special sciences are (...) then true (to the extent that they are) in virtue of “instantiating” these underlying causal laws; as it is often put, the latter serve as “truth-makers” for the former. The picture is thus one according to which the notion of cause, as it occurs in the special sciences, is reflected or “grounded” in a fairly straightforward and transparent way in a similar notion that occurs in fundamental physics. This paper explores some alternatives to this picture. (shrink)

The view that music can have a positive or negative effect on a person’s character has been defended throughout the history of philosophy. This paper traces some of the history of the ethos theory and identifies a version of the theory that could be true. This version of the theory can be traced to Plato and Aristotle and was given a clear statement by Herbert Spencer in the nineteenth century. The paper then examines some of the empirical literature on how (...) music can affect dispositions to behave and moral judgement. None of this evidence provides much support for the ethos theory. The paper then proposes a programme of research that has the potential to confirm the ethos theory. (shrink)

A revised, expanded and fully up-to-date critical introduction to Deleuze's most important work of philosophyBy critically analysing Deleuze's methods, principles and arguments, James Williams helps readers to engage with the revolutionary core of Deleuze's philosophy and take up positions for or against its most innovative and controversial ideas.

"In this revisionist study, Young denies that Adams was a reactionary critic of democracy and instead contends that he was an idealistic, though often disappointed, advocate of representative government. Young focuses on Adams's belief that capitalist industrial development during the Gilded Age had debased American ideals and then turns to a careful study of Adams's famous contrast of the unity of medieval society with the fragmentation of modern technological society."--BOOK JACKET.

The notion that Jesus Christ is one person with two natures has been the venue of much philosophical theological work in the past 40 years. One mode of engagement with this idea has been to defend the coherence of the idea. This has been done by, for example, revising standard conceptions of divinity and humanity or predicate attribution. Another mode of engagement with the doctrine is to offer models for how the state of affairs of the Incarnation might work. This (...) could involve retrieving models from thinkers of the past. Finally, the constructive mode applies the reasoning of the two natures/one person conception to other areas of Christian theology such as the atonement or the Eucharist. Examples of each of these modes from the contemporary analytic literature are presented. (shrink)

James Adam was a Scottish classics scholar who taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A strong defender of the importance of Greek philosophy in a well-rounded education, Adam published a number of Plato's works including Protagoras and Crito. This two-volume critical edition of the Republic was another major contribution to the field. Though his preface claims 'an editor cannot pretend to have exhausted its significance by means of a commentary,' Adam's depth of knowledge and erudite analysis of the Greek text (...) ensured that his edition remained the standard reference for decades to follow, and it remains a thought-provoking evaluation of one of the great works of Western thought. Volume 1 is devoted to Books 1–5, which discuss justice and the ideal society, while Volume 2 presents Books 6–10, on the place of the philosopher and questions of governance. (shrink)

James Adam was a Scottish classics scholar who taught at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. A strong defender of the importance of Greek philosophy in a well-rounded education, Adam published a number of Plato's works including Protagoras and Crito. This two-volume critical edition of the Republic was another major contribution to the field. Though his preface claims 'an editor cannot pretend to have exhausted its significance by means of a commentary,' Adam's depth of knowledge and erudite analysis of the Greek text (...) ensured that his edition remained the standard reference for decades to follow, and it remains a thought-provoking evaluation of one of the great works of Western thought. Volume 2 examines Books 6–10, which discuss the place of the philosopher and questions of governance. (shrink)

Direct Epistemic Consequentialism faces the Truth Fairy. Indirect Epistemic Consequentialism promises to avoid this issue. But there are worse fairies than the Truth Fairy. There is the Worse Fairy. The case of the Worse Fairy helps demonstrate that epistemic consequentialists who would solve problems like the Truth Fairy by ‘going indirect’ face a dilemma.

An epistemic deontology modelled on Kant’s ethics—in particular the humanity formula of the categorical imperative—is a promising alternative to epistemic consequentialism because it can forbid intuitively impermissible epistemic trade-offs which epistemic consequentialism seems doomed to permit and, most importantly, it can do so in a way that is not ad hoc.

This classic book by Theodor W. Adorno anticipates many of the themes that have since become common in contemporary philosophy: the critique of foundationalism, the illusions of idealism and the end of epistemology.

ABSTRACTWhat is a university? In the nineteenth century John Henry Newman famously spoke of “the idea of a university.” This phrase has dominated all discussions of the nature of the university sin...

Oakeshott’s theory of poetry was a pure theory. But it was so pure a theory it emptied out most of what we would normally mean by poetry, it ignored the history of poetry in extracting a meaning out of it, and it left to one side most of the questions about poetry which are of interest to poets, critics or indeed anyone. This chapter places Oakeshott’s theory of poetry in the context of theories of poetry from Aristotle through Johnson, Wordsworth (...) and Shelley through to figures as varied as Wittgenstein, Leavis, Eliot and Auden in order to suggest that Oakeshott theory was, as a theory of poetry, a provocation, and, as a theory of something undoubtedly worth thinking about, not a theory of poetry at all. (shrink)

This chapter considers the two major ways Oakeshott attempted to make sense of the state, first, in the 1920s and 1930s, as “the whole of moral and social experience”, and second, from the 1950s onwards, as one particular political idea, which was ambiguous and so had to be theorised in terms of a contradiction, or, as he put it in 1975, “an unresolved tension between the two irreconcilable dispositions represented by the words societas and universitas”. In this chapter, both of (...) these theories are fed back into Oakeshott’s major critical recognition that the state was an ambiguous concept. The point is to indicate that the ambiguities Oakeshott’s own writings exhibit were even greater than the ambiguities he was willing to recognise. In order to make sense of the state, we have to struggle with the metaphors and analogies which have been used to make sense of political order ever since the Greeks and Romans spoke of the related but distinct terms stasis and status. As everyone now knows, the concept of the state arose when the standard phrase, “the state of x”, was replaced by the phrase “the state”. I argue that the state is the attempt to strip metaphor out of politics. It allowed us to remove all older and authoritative meanings from politics in order to think again. The state is best seen as the blank slate on which modern political theorists have attempted to inscribe their theories of politics. (shrink)