Many real-world agents recognise that they impose harms by choosing to emit carbon, e.g., by flying. Yet many do so anyway, and then attempt to make things right by offsetting those harms. Such offsetters typically believe that, by offsetting, they change the deontic status of their behaviour, making an otherwise impermissible action permissible. Do they succeed in practice? Some philosophers have argued that they do, since their offsets appear to reverse the adverse effects of their emissions. But we show that (...) they do not. In practice, standard carbon offsetting does not reverse the harms of the original action, nor does it even benefit the same group as was harmed. Standard moral theories hence deny that such offsetting succeeds. Indeed, we show that any moral theory that allows offsetting in this setting faces a dilemma between allowing any wrong to be offset, no matter how grievous, and recognising an implausibly sharp discontinuity between offsettable actions and non-offsettable actions. The most plausible response is to accept that carbon offsetting fails to right our climate wrongs. (shrink)

One widely used method for allocating health care resources involves the use of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to rank treatments in terms of quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) gained. CEA has been criticized for discriminating against people with disabilities by valuing their lives less than those of non-disabled people. Avoiding discrimination seems to lead to the ’QALY trap’: we cannot value saving lives equally and still value raising quality of life. This paper reviews existing responses to the QALY trap and argues that all (...) are problematic. Instead, we argue that adopting a moderate form of prioritarianism avoids the QALY trap and disability discrimination. (shrink)

This collection of ten original essays was first published in 1977. It engages the 'crisis in sociology' at the most fundamental level of thought and experience. Existential sociology is defined as the study and understanding of all forms of human existence. Without seeking to erect a pristine philosophical sanctuary of its own, Existential Sociology examines and criticizes the underlying philosophical assumptions of previous theories of social science, while elaborating its own approach to human understanding. The contributors are concerned with constructing (...) practical as well as theoretical truths about social life - how we feel, think and act. In contrast to most other sociologies, the emphasis is on the independence and dominance of human feelings over the evaluative and cognitive features of social actions. Students and teachers of sociology and people in related fields interested in the connection between social science and their own subjects will find Existential Sociology useful and absorbing. (shrink)

In a fascinating and challenging article in this journal, Kadri Vihvelin presents a spirited and vigorous critique of the strategy of defending compatibilism about causal determinism and moral responsibility that employs the ‘Frankfurt-examples.’ Here is her presentation of such an example:… Jones … chooses to perform, and succeeds in performing, some action X. Tell the story so that it is vividly clear that Jones is morally responsible for doing X. If you are a libertarian, you may specify that Jones is (...) an indeterministic agent who can choose otherwise, given the actual past and the laws. If you are a compatibilist, you may fill in the details so that Jones does X in a way that satisfies your favorite account of the counterfactual or dispositional facts that make it true that Jones could have done otherwise in the sense you think relevant to responsibility. Now, add to your story the following facts: there is standing in the wings another agent, Black. Black is interested in what Jones does. In particular, he wants Jones to do X and, moreover, Black has it in his power to prevent Jones from doing anything other than X. (shrink)

Donald Capps and John Capps's James and Dewey on Belief and Experience juxtaposes the key writings of two philosophical superstars. As fathers of Pragmatism, America's unique contribution to world philosophy, their work has been enormously influential, and remains essential to any understanding of American intellectual history. In these essays, you'll find William James deeply embroiled in debates between religion and science. Combining philosophical charity with logical clarity, he defended the validity of religious experience against crass forms of scientism. Dewey (...) identified the myriad ways in which supernatural concerns distract religious adherents from pressing social concerns, and sought to reconcile the tensions inherent in science's dual embrace of common sense and the aesthetic. James and Dewey on Belief and Experience is divided into two sections: the former showcases James, the latter is devoted to Dewey. Two transitional passages in which each reflects on the work of the other bridge these two main segments. Together, the sections offer a unique perspective on the philosophers' complex relationship of influence and interdependence. An editors' introduction provides biographical information about both men, an overview of their respective philosophical orientations, a discussion of the editorial process, and a brief commentary on each of the selections. Comparing what these foremost pragmatists wrote on both themes illumines their common convictions regarding the nature of philosophical inquiry and simultaneously reveals what made each a distinctive thinker. (shrink)

In their trenchant panoramic overview – ranging from antiquity to the present-day – John and Anna Rist write with authority and ennui about nothing less than the loss of the foundational culture of the West. The authors characterize this culture as the 'original tradition', viewing its erosion as one which has led to anxiety about the entire value of Western thought. The causes of the disintegration are discussed with an intensity rare in academe. Critics of modernity ordinarily concentrate on (...) the Enlightenment and the book certainly offers deep analysis of Enlightenment thought. But it goes further. Thus the cruelty of modern totalitarianism is now depicted as in the spirit of the French Revolution and its implacable hostility to a vanished primordial heritage, while scientism, bureaucracy and consumerism appear as the only rivals to a threatening nihilism. The book argues that Western thought has created a set of conflicting moral and spiritual customs: to the detriment of coherence, in individual minds as in society and culture. (shrink)

In this article Kobayashi Toshiaki discusses the importance in all periods of Karatani’s oeuvre of the notion of an “exterior” that necessarily falls beyond the bounds of a system, together with the notion of “singularity” as that which cannot be contained within a “universal.” The existential dread vis-à-vis the uncanny other that Karatani in his early works of literary criticism had initially found to be the underlying tone in Sōseki’s works remained with Karatani himself throughout his career and is what (...) had drawn him closer to philosophy. This sense of the “exterior” to—or other than—the normality of consciousness and the meaningfulness of the world is then extended and applied as the “exterior to systems” in his analyses of logical, mathematical, and linguistic systems, in his reading of Marx’s discussion of capitalist economics, and most recently in his analysis of commodity exchange between communities. (shrink)

These days, science is everywhere. It pervades our whole society. Sometimes it is just a clutter of commonplace frivolities, like new fashion fabrics. Sometimes it miraculously preserves our life, like penicillin. Sometimes, like climate change, it looms over us as a portent of doom: sometimes it promises a way of escape from such a fate. Sometimes, like a nuclear warhead, it enshrouds us in political terror: sometimes, like a verification technology, it offers an antidote to such evils. How should we (...) respond to this ambiguous and ubiquitous thing called science? (shrink)

Political short-termism costs the global economy hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars annually, and leads to many millions of deaths from disasters and suboptimal spending. In this paper, I propose a futures assembly explicitly incentivised to promote the interests of future generations as a promising strategy to ameliorate short-termism. The assembly I propose is governed by citizens randomly selected from among the populace, who are rewarded in the future to the extent that they successfully promote the welfare of future (...) generations. The most initially promising such retrospective accountability mechanism is an iterated mechanism, in which each generation of policymakers rewards the previous generation for their policy choices and for their own evaluation of the previous generation. Such an assembly, supplemented with the duties, powers, and tools that I describe, and with appropriate support from archivists and experts, may manage to represent generations many years into the future. (shrink)

Some philosophers hold that the depth of an emotion is a question of how embedded it is among the person’s other mental states. That means, the emotion is inter-connected with other states such that its alteration or removal would lead to widespread changes in the mind. This paper argues that it is necessary to distinguish two different concepts of embeddedness: the inter-connections could either be rational or causal. The difference is non-trivial. This paper argues that the rational approach cannot admit (...) that certain types of recalcitrant emotion are deep without violating requirements of charity in the interpretation of others. Furthermore, it also argues that the causal approach is necessary to explain the depth of even non-recalcitrant emotions. So, if emotional depth is to be conceived as a kind of embeddedness, the relevant concept of embeddedness must be the causal one. (shrink)

Some have put forward a normative principle that it is immoral and highly disrespectful to create free, rational creatures (like human beings) without their prior consent. (See, for instance, Monaghan in Int J Philos Relig 88(2):181–195, 2020) If true, this principle constitutes a new argument against the existence of God since it is logically impossible to acquire the consent of someone before they are created. Thus, God’s existence is taken to be incompatible with creating any persons. I shall examine this (...) normative claim and show that it is not plausible. In the first place, it fails to meet three criteria that are commonplace to the “logical problem of evil.” In the second place, the principle has clear counterexamples that show many plausible exceptions that could justify God in creating persons. (shrink)

In the last century and a half, many have lamented the loss of a sense of the holy (or the sacred)—das Heilige in German—that is, the condition of modernity that Friedrich Nietzsche called the “death or God” or what Friedrich Hölderlin poetized as the “flight of the gods.” Martin Heidegger, even while speaking of the forgetting of Being (Seinsvergessenheit) in the history of Being, and even as he had discoursed on the nihilism of modernity, appropriated this term, das Heilige, as (...) one of his many terms for Being (Sein) as distinct from, and yet granting, beings (Seiende). In what sense, then, is the holy for Heidegger tied to its apparent opposite in the modern world—the sense of desacralization or nihilism in modernity—while also being the Being of beings? And how are we to (co-)respond to the holy in an unholy (desacralized) world? In the following I will attempt to unpack this paradox. Keys to solving this question may be found in the ancient Greek concepts of chaos and chora to which Heidegger’s understanding of the holy is connected. Heidegger’s own concepts of Lichtung (clearing) and Gegend (that-which-regions, regioning) can also be related to his view of the holy. (shrink)

Two strategies used to uncover neural systems for episodic-like memory in animals are discussed: (i) an attribute of episodic memory (what? when? where?) is examined in order to reveal the neuronal interactions supporting that component of memory; and (ii) the connections of a structure thought to be central to episodic memory in humans are studied at a level of detail not feasible in humans. By focusing on spatial memory (where?) and the hippocampus, it has proved possible to bring the strategies (...) together. A review of lesion, disconnection and immediate early-gene studies in animals reveals the importance of interactions between the hippocampus and specific nuclei in the diencephalon (most notably the anterior thalamic nuclei) for spatial memory. Other parts of this extended hippocampal system include the mammillary bodies and the posterior cingulate (retrosplenial) cortex. Furthermore, by combining lesion and immediate early-gene studies it is possible to show how the loss of one component structure or tract can influence the remaining regions in this group of structures. The validity of this convergent approach is supported by new findings showing that the same set of regions is implicated in anterograde amnesia in humans. (shrink)

In response to the recent resurgence of idealism among a cluster of Christian theologians and philosophers, this article raises a difficulty for Christians to be idealists. Unlike traditional accounts of Christianity that must explain why God permits or allows evil, idealists face a different and more difficult problem—namely why does God willfully and directly produce experiences of evil. Because the metaphysics of idealism requires God to produce experiences of evil directly and willfully, it is difficult to reconcile it with the (...) essential goodness of God. The existence of matter, therefore, may play an important role in maintaining God’s innocence while allowing creatures to exercise free will. (shrink)

This dissertation contends that emotions are subject to ethical assessment, not simply as motives or overt expressions, but in their own right. Emotions, I argue, are subject to assessment because they are aspects of a person's character. Specifically, emotions involve voluntary acts of attention, which are due to habituation. These acts show character by manifesting certain stable, deeply-held desires called 'concerns.' This view, dubbed 'Attentional Voluntarism,' is opposed to the prevalent view, dubbed 'Rationalism,' that emotions are subject to assessment because (...) of their propositional content. Rationalism is unable to account for certain kinds of irrational emotion, where one forms an unwarranted emotion to avoid anxiety and secure pleasure. It exaggerates how mature and adaptive these emotions are. Attentional Voluntarism, by contrast, accounts for the childish and even infantile character behind such emotions, because the relevant habits of attention may simply be the residue from previous developmental stages. (shrink)

Reviews the book, Artificial intelligence and human reason: A teleological critique by J. F. Rychlak. There is a frequent lack of communication between artificial intelligence practitioners and critics. Joseph Rychlak's latest book is an attempt to contribute productively to this exchange. He introduces his work by stating: "I think it is relatively easy to write a superficial book "picking" on the computer as somehow inadequate to the description of human beings. Overall, Rychlak provides a sufficiently detailed criticism of computational approaches (...) to intelligence to allow access to the implications of his work by the artificial intelligence practitioner and I recommend his book to this group. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

The EU offers a suitable milieu for the comparison and harmonisation of healthcare across different languages, cultures, and jurisdictions, which could provide improvements in healthcare standards across the bloc. There are specific ethico-legal issues with the use of data in healthcare research that mandate a different approach from other forms of research. The use of healthcare data over a long period of time is similar to the use of tissue in biobanks. There is a low risk to subjects but it (...) is impossible to gain specific informed consent given the future possibilities for research. Large amounts of data on a subject present a finite risk of re-identification. Consequently, there is a balancing act between this risk and retaining sufficient utility of the data. Anonymising methods need to take into account the circumstances of data sharing to enable an appropriate balance in all cases. There are ethical and policy advantages to exceeding the legal requirements and thereby securing the social licence for research. This process would require the examination and comparison of data protection laws across the trading bloc to produce an ethico-legal framework compatible with the requirements of all member states. Seven EU jurisdictions are given consideration in this critique. (shrink)

Jacob (history, New School for Social Research) proposes that the science of the 17th and 18th centuries was eventually accepted because it was made compatible with larger political and economic interests. A celebration of the recently concluded 33 volume edition of the Collected works of John Stuart Mill, produced over a period of nearly 30 years, the last 20 under the guiding genius (and hand) of general editor Robson. Following a tributary history of the project itself, essays cover Mill's (...) career as a thinker and as a bureaucrat and public servant, exploring the effects of the various milieu--domestic, political, administrative, religious, and cultural--in which he moved. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

In this 1976 volume, Professor Ziman paints a broad picture of science, and of its relations to the world in general. He sets the scene by the historical development of scientific research as a profession, the growth of scientific technologies out of the useful arts, the sources of invention and technical innovation, and the advent of Big Science. He then discusses the economics of research and development, the connections between science and war, the nature of science policy and the moral (...) dilemmas of social responsibility in science. Each topic is introduced by reference to easily understandable particular examples, with a large number of illustrations chosen to bring out the concreteness and reality of science as a human activity. Professor Ziman gives a chapter-by-chapter list of suggested topics for oral and written discussion, intended to provoke critical, sceptical attitudes to simplified solutions to real issues, and comments briefly on relevant books and other sources. (shrink)

Can the best arguments for a privation theory of evil be parodied, with equal plausibility, as arguments for a privation theory of good? The privation theory of evil claims that evil has no positive existence, and it is but a privation of good. The privation theory of good claims the opposite. I approach this topic as one element in the so-called evil-God Challenge. Stephen Law has argued that the epistemic support for belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect God (...) (theism) is on a par with the epistemic support for belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, but completely evil-God (maltheism). In fact, he concludes, the arguments for an evil God are symmetrical with, and isomorphic to, those for a good God. The privation theory of evil has often been used to defend theism against the argument from evil. Thus, part of the evil-God Challenge is to evaluate arguments for the privation theory of evil for their vulnerability to maltheist parody. I consider a broad range of arguments for the privation theory of evil, and I argue that most of them are vulnerable to parodic neutralization. Furthermore, I argue that although the thesis of the convertibility of being and goodness is often held to entail the privation theory of evil, or to be entailed by it (or to be equivalent to it), it is independent of the privation theory. I do find that David Oderberg’s recent argument for the privation theory of evil resists any easy maltheist parody, but I argue that it has a defect. I sketch an argument according to which his good-as-fulfillment account is compatible with a perfectly evil god. My tentative conclusion is that the privation theory of evil enjoys little more plausibility than does the privation theory of good. (shrink)

With an inside view from an expert in the field and a clear and engaging writing style, Asian Philosophies, Seventh Edition invites students and professors to think along with the great minds of the Asian traditions. Eminent scholar and teacher John M. Koller has devoted his life to understanding and explaining Asian thought and practice. He wrote this text to give students access to the rich philosophical and religious ideas of both South and East Asia. New to this seventh (...) edition: Added material on Confucianism, including focused coverage of (1) the Analects and society and (2) ren and nature; Additional information on Theravada Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism as well as new in-depth coverage of ecological attitudes in Buddhism; Expanded coverage of ecological attitudes in all of the Asian traditions; Brief excerpts from primary sources to help better explain the key concepts; Added timelines for essential texts in each tradition; Improved Glossary and Pronunciation Guide; Additional text boxes, to help students quickly understand key ideas, texts, and concepts; Updated Further Reading sections. (shrink)

The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill took thirty years to complete and is acknowledged as the definitive edition of J.S. Mill and as one of the finest works editions ever completed. Mill's contributions to philosophy, economics, and history, and in the roles of scholar, politician and journalist can hardly be overstated and this edition remains the only reliable version of the full range of Mill's writings. Each volume contains extensive notes, a new introduction and an index. Many of (...) the volumes have been unavailable for some time, but the Works are now again available, both as a complete set and as individual volumes. (shrink)

The purpose of this book is to give a coherent account of the different perspectives on science and technology that are normally studied under various disciplinary heads such as philosophy of science, sociology of science and science policy. It is intended for students embarking on courses in these subjects and assumes no special knowledge of any science. It is written in a direct and simple style, and technical language is introduced very sparingly. As various perspectives are sketched out in this (...) book, the reader moves towards a consistent conception of contemporary science as a rapidly changing social institution that has already grown out of its traditional forms and plays a central role in society at large. It will appeal to students in a wide range of scientific disciplines and complement well Professor Ziman's earlier books. (shrink)