Dieses Werk ist ein Reproduktion des Originals, das vor 1903 veröffentlicht wurde. Rabbi Nathan war ein wichtiger jüdischer Gelehrter und Schriftsteller. In 'Rabbi Nathans System der Ethik und Moral' beschreibt er seine Ansichten und Lehren über Ethik und Moral. Das Werk ist ein wichtiger Beitrag zur Entwicklung der jüdischen Moraltheologie und bietet einen Einblick in die vielfältigen und tiefgründigen Debatten, die in der jüdischen Welt seit Jahrhunderten geführt werden. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, (...) and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

I propose and defend a novel view called “de se consequentialism,” which is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it demonstrates—contra Doug Portmore, Mark Schroeder, Campbell Brown, and Michael Smith, among others—that agent-neutral consequentialism is consistent with agent-centered constraints. Second, it clarifies the nature of agent-centered constraints, thereby meriting attention from even dedicated nonconsequentialists. Scrutiny reveals that moral theories in general, whether consequentialist or not, incorporate constraints by assessing states in a first-personal guise. Consequently, de se consequentialism enacts constraints through the (...) very same feature that nonconsequentialist theories do. (shrink)

While it is tempting to suppose that an act has moral worth just when and because it is motivated by sufficient moral reasons, philosophers have, largely, come to doubt this analysis. Doubt is rooted in two claims. The first is that some facts can motivate a given act in multiple ways, not all of which are consistent with moral worth. The second is the orthodox view that normative reasons are facts. I defend the tempting analysis by proposing and defending a (...) heterodox account of both normative and motivating reasons that is inspired by Donald Davidson’s primary reasons. We should adopt the heterodox view, I argue, because it addresses an overlooked but fatal defect in the orthodox conception of reasons, of which challenges to the tempting analysis are a special case. (shrink)

Inflicting harm is generally preferable to inflicting death. If you must choose between the two, you should generally choose to harm. But prenatal harm seems different. If a mother must choose between harming her fetus or aborting it, she may choose either, at least in many cases. So it seems that prenatal harm is particularly objectionable, sometimes on a par with death. This paper offers an explanation of why prenatal harm seems particularly objectionable by drawing an analogy to the all-or-nothing (...) problem. It then argues that this analogy offers independent support for the ‘voluntarist’ view that at least some parental role obligations are grounded in the choice to be a parent. (shrink)

I argue that Davidson's conception of motivating reasons as belief-desire pairs suggests a model of normative reasons for action that is superior to the orthodox conception according to which normative reasons are propositions, facts, or the truth-makers of such facts.

Many philosophers think that punishment is intentionally harmful and that this makes it especially hard to morally justify. Explanations for the latter intuition often say questionable things about the moral significance of the intent to harm. I argue that there’s a better way to explain this intuition.

This book argues that Hume is a radical epistemic skeptic who gives only practical reasons for retaining belief in sensory beliefs and the deliverances of reason. He advises us to take a moderate approach to the demands of philosophy, since they sometimes diverge from the demands of life.

Some have attempted to explain why it appears that action based on deferential moral belief lacks moral worth by appealing to claims about an attitude that is difficult to acquire through testimony, which theorists have called “moral understanding”. I argue that this state is at least partly non-cognitive. I begin by employing case-driven judgments to undermine the assumption that I argue is responsible for the strangeness of deferential moral belief: the assumption that if an agent knows that some fact gives (...) them a moral reason to act in some way, then they’re in a position to act that way for the moral reason given by that fact. I then argue that cases from non-moral epistemology concerning properly-based belief give us independent reason to reject this assumption and conclude by sketching a Davidson-inspired account of normative reasons that explains why acting for moral reasons requires the right non-cognitive state, which is worth calling a kind of moral understanding. (shrink)

The wrong kind of reason (WKR) problem is a problem for attempts to analyze normative properties using only facts about the balance of normative reasons, a style of analysis on which the ‘Reasons First’ programme depends. I argue that this problem cannot be solved if the orthodox view of reasons is true --- that is, if each normative reason is numerically identical with some fact, proposition, or state-of-affairs. That’s because solving the WKR problem requires completely distinguishing between the right- and (...) wrong-kind reasons for an attitude. I argue that some facts give both right- and wrong-kind reasons for an attitude. Consequently, no such distinction between the two types of reasons is complete if reasons are facts or the like. I conclude by suggesting that reasons and facts are related by constitution, not identity. (shrink)

Most punishment theorists seem to accept the following claim: punishment is intended to harm the punishee. A significant minority of punishment theorists reject the claim, though. I defend the claim from objections, focusing mostly on recent objections that haven’t gotten much attention. My objective is to reinforce the already strong case for the intentions claim. I first clarify what advocates of the intentions claim mean by it and state the standard argument for it. Then I critically discuss a wide variety (...) of objections to the claim and to the standard argument for it. (shrink)

A paradox about sets of properties is presented. The paradox, which invokes an impredicatively defined property, is formalized in a free third-order logic with lambda-abstraction, through a classically proof-theoretically valid deduction of a contradiction from a single premise to the effect that every property has a unit set. Something like a model is offered to establish that the premise is, although classically inconsistent, nevertheless consistent, so that the paradox discredits the logic employed. A resolution through the ramified theory of types (...) is considered. Finally, a general scheme that generates a family of analogous paradoxes and a generally applicable resolution are proposed. (shrink)

I argue that legal punishment is morally wrong because it’s too morally risky. I first briefly explain how my argument differs from similar ones in the philosophical literature on legal punishment. Then I explain why legal punishment is morally risky, argue that it’s too morally risky, and discuss objections. In a nutshell, my argument goes as follows. Legal punishment is wrong because we can never sufficiently reduce the risk of doing wrong when we legally punish people. We can never sufficiently (...) reduce this risk because wrongful punishment is much worse than wrongful non-punishment and because punishment’s permissibility depends on the answers to a variety of difficult philosophical questions about which we’re fallible. (shrink)

The scope and severity of the opioid epidemic in the United States has prompted significant legislative intrusion into the patient-physician relationship. These proscriptive regulatory regimes mirror earlier legislation in other politically-charged domains like abortion and gun regulation. We draw on lessons from those contexts to argue that states should consider integrating their responses to the epidemic with existing medical regulatory structures, making physicians partners rather than adversaries in addressing this public health crisis.

Philosophers have recently come to focus on explaining the phenomenon of ​bad beliefs,​ beliefs that are apparently true and well-evidenced but nevertheless objectionable. Despite this recent focus, a consensus is already forming around a particular explanation of these beliefs’ badness called ​moral encroachment​, according to which, roughly, the moral stakes engendered by bad beliefs make them particularly difficult to justify. This paper advances an alternative account not just of bad beliefs but of bad attitudes more generally according to which bad (...) beliefs’ badness originates not in a failure of sufficient evidence but in a failure to respond adequately to reasons. I motivate this alternative account through an analogy to recent discussions of moral worth centered on the well-known grocer case from Kant’s ​Groundwork​, and by showing that this analogy permits the proposed account to generalize to bad attitudes beyond belief. The paper concludes by contrasting the implications of moral encroachment and of the proposed account for bad attitudes’ blameworthiness. (shrink)

A major point of debate about morally good motives concerns an ambiguity in the truism that good and strong-willed people desire to do what is right. This debate is shaped by the assumption that “what’s right” combines in only two ways with “desire,” leading to distinct de dicto and de re readings of the truism. However, a third reading of such expressions is possible, first identified by Janet Fodor, which has gone wholly unappreciated by philosophers in this debate. I identify (...) Fodor’s nonspecific reading of “desire to do what’s right” and briefly discuss its merits. (shrink)

Paradoxes of nested modality, like Chisholm’s paradox, rely on S4 or something stronger as the propositional logic of metaphysical modality. Sarah-Jane Leslie’s objection to the resolution of Chisholm’s paradox by means of rejection of S4 modal logic is investigated. A modal notion of essence congenial to Leslie’s objection is clarified. An argument is presented in support of Leslie’s crucial but unsupported assertion that, on pain of inconsistency, an object’s essence is the same in every possible world. A fallacy in the (...) argument is exposed. Alternative interpretations of Leslie’s objection are provided and are found to involve equivocation between different notions of “essence.” A material artifact’s modal essence, as distinct from its quiddity essence, could have been different than it is. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to explain why Locke thinks religious belief requires evidence and, on his view, what evidence there is for religious belief. I will explain and defend Locke’s view that revelation can provide evidence for religious beliefs so long as there is evidence that God revealed it. Further, I will show how he takes the historical evidence of the miracles of Jesus as justification for belief in Christianity.

Norms provide a valuable mechanism for establishing coherent cooperative behaviour in decentralised systems in which there is no central authority. One of the most influential formulations of norm emergence was proposed by Axelrod :1095–1111, 1986). This paper provides an empirical analysis of aspects of Axelrod’s approach, by exploring some of the key assumptions made in previous evaluations of the model. We explore the dynamics of norm emergence and the occurrence of norm collapse when applying the model over extended durations. It (...) is this phenomenon of norm collapse that can motivate the emergence of a central authority to enforce laws and so preserve the norms, rather than relying on individuals to punish defection. Our findings identify characteristics that significantly influence norm establishment using Axelrod’s formulation, but are likely to be of importance for norm establishment more generally. Moreover, Axelrod’s model suffers from significant limitations in assuming that private strategies of individuals are available to others, and that agents are omniscient in being aware of all norm violations and punishments. Because this is an unreasonable expectation, the approach does not lend itself to modelling real-world systems such as online networks or electronic markets. In response, the paper proposes alternatives to Axelrod’s model, by replacing the evolutionary approach, enabling agents to learn, and by restricting the metapunishment of agents to cases where the original defection is observed, in order to be able to apply the model to real-world domains. This work can also help explain the formation of a “social contract” to legitimate enforcement by a central authority. (shrink)

In mid-2019, the controversy regarding South African runner Caster Semenya’s eligibility to participate in competitions against other female runners culminated in a Court of Arbitration for Sport judgement. Semenya possessed high endogenous testosterone levels (arguably a performance advantage), secondary to a disorder of sexual development. In this commentary, Aristotelean teleology is used to defend the existence of ‘male’ and ‘female’ as discrete categories. It is argued that once the athlete’s sex is established, they should be allowed to compete in the (...) category of their sex without obligatory medical treatment. Indeed, other athletes who possess advantageous genetic or phenotypic traits that fall outside of the human norm have been allowed to compete as humans without restraint. In both cases, if an athlete possesses the essential attributes of being a human or being male or female they should be permitted to compete in those respective categories; athletes’ eligibilities should not be based upon accidental attributes. (shrink)

This paper is on Descartes’ account of modality and, in particular, his account of the necessity of the laws of nature. He famously argues that the necessity of the “eternal truths” of logic and mathematics depends on God’s will. Here I suggest he has the same view about the necessity of the laws of nature. Further, I argue, this is a plausible theory of laws. For philosophers often talk about something being nomologically or physically necessary because of the laws of (...) nature, but this necessity is thought to be metaphysically contingent. However, they struggle to explain how the laws could be genuinely necessary while being metaphysically contingent. The chief advantage of Descartes view, I argue, is that God’s will can plausibly explain both the necessity of the laws and the contingency of the laws. So, Descartes’ theistic account of laws provides a plausible explanation, perhaps the best explanation, of the contingent-necessity of laws of nature. (shrink)

Drawing on work in the Philosophy of Race, this chapter argues that the existence of races in heaven is either incompatible or only questionably compatible with the mainstream Christian view of the afterlife. However, it also argues that there is a phenomenon adjacent and related to race that can exist in the afterlife, namely racial identity. If one thinks of racial identity as a kind of practical identity, it turns out that racial identity is primarily psychological. Thus, its existence in (...) heaven is compatible with the mainstream Christian view that people with some semblance of human psychology continue on after death. Furthermore, the chapter offers reasons to think that we will need racial identities in the afterlife to facilitate forgiveness and reconciliation. Finally, it suggests that preserving racial identities from this life to the next is, on balance, preferable. (shrink)

The guiding theme of this collection is the concept of the "poetic imagination." Here the emphasis is on a group of writers and thinkers that have embraced, each in his own way, such a concept only to have been misunderstood or ignored by their later readers and interpreters and thus to have been disregarded or held to be irrelevant in the present academic climate. These essays demonstrate that the community of literature is a living one, in which the present can (...) speak to and even modify the past, as the past can speak to and modify the present and the future. (shrink)

Conciliationists about peer disagreement claim that, when epistemic peers (that is, people who are equally intelligent, aware of the same relevant evidence, and so on) disagree, the rational response is for each to lower their confidence in their initial views – perhaps even suspending judgment on the matter entirely. While conciliationism in cases of disagreement among individual peers remains controversial, the case for conciliation in other types of disagreement has been underexplored. This chapter aims to explore this territory, making the (...) case for conciliationism in intra-group disagreements. (shrink)

Raymond Aron and his Dialogues in an Age of Ideologies examines the thought and rhetoric of the most interesting thinker of the twentieth century of whom no one has heard. This book investigates Raymond Aron's conversations on politics during the Cold War with several of his more well-known interlocutors including Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Hayek, and Charles de Gaulle. Through exploring these dialogues on the subjects of Marxism, freedom, and nationalism, we see the prudence of Aron's politics of understanding as well (...) as the emphasis he places on and virtue he demonstrates in public discourse. Through his dialogues, Aron shows us not only how to think politically but also how to engage in constructive public debate. He stands as a model for us to emulate in our own age of ideologies. (shrink)

Frege believes that the content of declarative sentences divides into a thought and its ‘colouring’, perhaps combined with assertoric force. He further thinks it is important to separate the thought from its colouring. To do this, a criterion which determines sameness of sense between sentences must be deployed. But Frege provides three criteria for this task, each of which adjudicate on different grounds. In this article, rather than expand on criticisms levelled at two of the criteria offered, the author focuses (...) on the most promising candidate. As it stands, this criterion has problems, but not insuperable ones. He suggests an adjusted criterion that relies on the epistemic notion of triviality. He recommends this criterion as both harmonious with Frege’s broader thought and preferable to alternatives offered. The moral is that Frege individuates thoughts by deploying an epistemic concept, and this is the only suitable way for him to do so. (shrink)

Some rules seem more important than others. The moral rule to keep promises seems more important than the aesthetic rule not to wear brown with black or the pool rule not to scratch on the eight ball. A worrying number of metaethicists are increasingly tempted to explain this difference by appealing to something they call “authoritative normativity” – it’s because moral rules are “authoritatively normatively” that they are especially important. The authors of this chapter argue for three claims concerning “authoritative (...) normativity”: (1) that motivation for it originates in a parochial conception of “normative flavours”; (2) that arguments against alternative ways of explaining e.g., morality’s importance are overblown; and (3) that there are strong reasons against theorizing in terms of “authoritative normativity”. The overarching aim is not to show that “authoritative normativity” is incoherent or entirely unmotivated. Rather, it is to discuss some of “authoritative normativity’s” deeper commitments to correct the impression that is it largely benign or that it is entailed by familiar and popular “metanormative” positions. Authoritative normativity, it seems to us, is a solution in search of a problem. (shrink)

Theories of grounded and embodied cognition offer a range of accounts of how reasoning and body‐based processes are related to each other. To advance theories of grounded and embodied cognition, we explore the cognitive relevance of particular body states to associated math concepts. We test competing models of action‐cognition transduction to investigate the cognitive relevance of directed actions to students’ mathematical reasoning in the area of geometry. The hypotheses we test include (1) that cognitively relevant directed actions have a direct (...) effect on performance (direct cognitive relevance hypothesis), (2) that cognitively relevant directed actions lead to more frequent production of gestures during explanations, which leads to improved performance (mediated cognitive relevance hypothesis), and (3) that performance effects of directed actions are influenced by the presence or absence of gesture production during mathematical explanations (moderated cognitive relevance hypothesis). We explore these hypotheses in an experiment where high school students (N = 85) evaluated the truth of geometry conjectures after performing cognitively relevant or cognitively irrelevant directed actions while playing a movement‐based video game. Contrary to the direct and mediated cognitive relevance hypotheses, we found no overall differences in performance or gesture production between relevant and irrelevant conditions. Consistent with the moderated cognitive relevance hypothesis, cognitive relevance influenced mathematical performance, as measured by the accuracy of students’ intuitions, insights, and the validity of their proofs, provided that students produced certain kinds of gestures during mathematical explanations (i.e., with explanatory gestures as the moderator). Implications for theories of grounded and embodied cognition and the design of embodied forms of educational interventions are discussed. (shrink)

Many studies have shown that women are more likely than men to be living kidney donors, and the discrepancy is particularly marked in heterosexual couples: wives are more likely than husbands to donate a kidney to their spouse. This ‘ Gender Kidney Donation Gap’ can be understood in terms of Carol Gilligan’s claims about gender differences in ethical decision-making style, making it appropriate to analyse responses to this imbalance using an ethic of care. This article centres the vast majority of (...) living donors, those who donate in the context of a significant pre-existing relationship. A cost-neutral approach is unfair on donors who make society richer and healthier by helping a loved one. However, models of kidney sale fail to offer an acceptable alternative, either (a) compelling donors to sell into a pool where they do not know the recipient or (b) allowing affluent individuals unfair access to kidneys. Drawing on surrogacy law in England and Wales, a model of compensation is proposed that includes a range of non-financial benefits. This option celebrates donation and expresses gratitude to all donors while avoiding the pitfalls of the marketplace, with an emphasis on fair treatment of donors. Nevertheless, if more generous treatment led to a 10% increase in directed donation, then it would be equivalent to doubling ‘altruistic’ stranger donations. As long as the Gender Kidney Donation Gap persists, the best response is to minimise the discomfort and disruption caused to donors by their profound act of kindness. (shrink)

By and large, shame is not a neutral situation as, for instance, a malady can be. One can be ill without being aware of it, while shame implies both a painful emotion and an awareness that the source of that emotion is in one's own deeds or character, the perception that the cause of that painful emotion is in one's own acts or state which, as such, are improper.

Frege held that the bare demonstrative ‘that’ is incomplete, and that it is the word together with a gesture that serves as the designating expression, and likewise that it is the word ‘yesterday’ together with the time of utterance that designates the relevant day. David Kaplan’s original theory of indexicals holds that Frege’s supplementation thesis is correct about demonstratives but incorrect about ‘yesterday’. Kaplan’s account of demonstratives deviates from Frege’s in treating supplemented demonstratives as directly referential, hence rigid. It is (...) argued here that the gesture or other demonstration that accompanies an utterance of ‘that’ is not part of the designating expression but instead part of the utterance context. (shrink)

In a previous paper, I addressed the question: Will there be races in heaven? (Placencia, 2021 ). There I argued that the answer to that question depends on one’s view of heaven and one’s account of race. After sorting out these concepts, I defended the conclusion that racial identity, but not race, is compatible with the mainstream Christian account of the afterlife. However, I left open the question of whether deflationary realist races (what I will refer to as minimalist races (...) in this chapter) are compatible with the Christian view of the afterlife. Here, I revisit this question from an Eastern Christian perspective. This tradition has a robust theology of bodies in the afterlife that can guide us toward a more substantive answer -- namely, there will be (minimalist) races in heaven. (shrink)

Over the past century, six studies – the most recent data from 2000 – and one review have comprehensively examined the content of medical oaths and oath-taking practices, all focusing on North Amer...

Informed consent, when given by proxy, has limitations: chiefly, it must be made in the interest of the patient. Here we critique the standard approach to parental consent, as present in Canada and the UK. Parents are often asked for consent, but are not given the authority to refuse medically beneficial treatment in many situations. This prompts the question of whether it is possible for someone to consent if they cannot refuse. We present two alternative and philosophically more consistent frameworks (...) for paediatric proxy consent. The first allows meaningful consent (parents may say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to treatment), provided that parents are medically informed/competent and intend the health and well-being of their child. In the second solution, medical practitioners or the state consent for treatment, with parents only being consulted to help give insight to the child’s circumstances. While we contend that either of these two options is superior to the insincerity of the present paradigm, we suggest that the first solution is preferable. (shrink)

In _The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought,_ Chris L. Firestone, Nathan A. Jacobs, and thirteen other contributors examine the role of God in the thought of major European philosophers from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. The philosophers considered are, by and large, not orthodox theists; they are highly influential freethinkers, emancipated by an age no longer tethered to the authority of church and state. While acknowledging this fact, the contributors are united in arguing that this is (...) only one side of a complex story. To redress the imbalance of attention to secularism among crucial modern thinkers and to consolidate a more theologically informed view of modernity, they focus on the centrality of the sacred in the thought of these philosophers. The essays, each in its own way, argue that the major figures in modernity are theologically astute, bent not on removing God from philosophy but on putting faith and reason on a more sure footing in light of advancements in science and a perceived need to rethink the relationship between God and world. By highlighting and defending the theologically affirmative dimensions of thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, F. W. J. Schelling, G. W. F. Hegel, and others, the essayists present a forceful and timely correction of widely accepted interpretations of these philosophers. To ignore or downplay the theological dimensions of the philosophical works they address, they argue, distorts our understanding of modern thought. "Over the past twenty-five years there has been a gradual change in the study of modern philosophy toward recognizing the centrality of our relation to God in the work of most of the major modern thinkers of the period. _The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought_ is a timely and useful collection that has the potential to crystallize this important development in the study of modern philosophy." —_John E. Hare, Yale Divinity School_. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume will be essential reading for students and scholars working on Greco-Roman philosophy, Roman rhetoric, and the history and literary culture of the Roman Republic. It showcases innovative methodological approaches to Cicero the philosopher and defines new directions for the immediate future of the field.