The International Research library of Philosophy collects in book form a wide range of important and influential essays in philosophy, drawn predominantly from English language journals. Each volume in the library deals with a field of enquiry which has received significant attention in philosophy in the last 25 years and is edited by a philosopher noted in that field.

If contemporary analytic philosophy can be said to have a philosophical ideology, it undoubtedly is naturalism. Naturalism is often invoked as a motivating ground for many philosophical projects, and “naturalization” programs abound everywhere, in theory of knowledge, philosophy of mind, theory of meaning, metaphysics, and ethics. But what is naturalism, and where does it come from? This paper examines the naturalism debate in midtwentieth-century America as a proximate source of contemporary naturalism. Views of philosophers like Roy Wood Sellars, John Dewey, (...) John Herman Randall, Sydney Hook, and Ernest Nagel are cited, and some of the central tenets of naturalism, such as an adherence to “scientific method” as the sole source of knowledge and the causal/ explanatory closure of the natural world, are explored. The paper ends with a brief discussion of how certain naturalistic constraints lead to some of the problems currently debated in metaethics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

It is commonly suggested that empathy is a morally important quality to possess and that a failure to properly empathize with others is a kind of moral failure. This suggestion assumes that empathy involves caring for others’ well-being. Skeptics challenge the moral importance of empathy by arguing that empathy is neither necessary nor sufficient to care for others’ well-being. This challenge is misguided. Although some forms of empathy may not be morally important, empathy with another’s basic well-being concerns is both (...) necessary and sufficient to care for another’s well-being, provided that one’s empathy is both cognitive and affective. I further defend the idea that empathy of this form is a moral virtue. In doing so, I address three challenges to empathy’s status as a virtue: (1) that empathy is unnecessary for being ethical, (2) that it is not useful for promoting ethical behavior, and (3) that an empathetic person can lack other traits central to being virtuous, such as being motivated by the moral good and being disposed to do virtuous things whenever appropriate opportunities arise. I argue that these challenges are mistaken. (shrink)

This research was focused on investigating why some consumers might support cause-related marketing campaigns for reasons other than personal benefit by examining the influence of moral emotions and cultural orientation. The authors investigated the extent to which moral emotions operate differently across a cultural variable (US versus Korea) and an individual difference variable (self-construal). A survey method was utilised. Data were collected from a convenience sample of US ( n = 180) and Korean ( n = 191) undergraduates. Moral emotions (...) significantly influenced purchase intention for a social-cause product. The influence of an ego-focused moral emotion (i.e., pride) on purchase intention was greater for US than Korean participants. The influence of another-focused moral emotion (i.e., guilt) on purchase intention was greater for high-interdependent participants than for low-interdependent participants. The findings of this research provide important and relevant implications to marketers and policy makers in developing persuasive messages and customer relationship programmes. (shrink)

Descartes is often thought to bifurcate sensory experience into two distinct cognitive components: the sensing of secondary qualities and the more or less intellectual perceiving of primary qualities. A closer examination of his analysis of sensory perception in the Sixth Replies and his treatment of sensory processing in the Dioptrics and Treatise on Man teIls a different story. I argue that Descartes offers a unified cognitive account of sensory experience according to which the senses and intellect operate together to produce (...) a fundamentally imagistic representation of the world in both its primary and secondary quality aspects. At stake here is not only our understanding of the cognitive structure of sensory experience but the relation of sense and intellect more generally in the Cartesian mind. The deep bifurcation in the Cartesian mind is not between the sensory perception of primary and secondary qualities but between sensory perception and purely intellectual perception. (shrink)

One challenge to the idea that animals have a moral right to life claims that any such right would require us to intervene in the wild to prevent animals from being killed by predators. I argue that belief in an animal right to life does not commit us to supporting a program of predator-prey intervention. One common retort to the predator challenge contends that we are not required to save animals from predators because predators are not moral agents. I suggest (...) that this retort fails to overcome the predator challenge. I seek to articulate a more satisfactory argument explaining why we are not required to save wild prey from predators and how this position is perfectly consistent with the idea that animals have a basic right to life. (shrink)

The contributors consider the idea of Christian philosophy in light of current debates in such areas as philosophy of religion, moral theory, epistemology, and metaphysics in order to show that these important historical questions continue to press upon us today.

Welcome to the family -- The sources of new phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger -- How to be a phenomenological heretic: the origins and development of new phenomenology -- Phenomenology and onto-theology -- Phenomenology and theology reconsidered -- New phenomenology on the existence and nature of God -- The call, prayer, and Christian philosophy -- Proposals for new phenomenology and analytic philosophy of religion -- Normativity: ethics, politics, and society -- Possible futures for new phenomenology.

Being robustly committed to state neutrality which does not permit the promotion of liberal-perfectionist ideals and denying that there is anything normatively relevant or ‘special’ about religion leaves liberal-egalitarians embroiled in a paradox. If religion is not special, how and why do liberal states afford it differential treatment (in comparison with non-religious analogues like secular doctrines or deeply-held beliefs of individual conscience)? This paper explores liberal-egalitarian strategies for resolving this paradox with predominant reference to the disaggregation strategy advanced by Cécile (...) Laborde. After discussing the novelty and advantages of disaggregation relative to other liberal-egalitarian strategies, the paper distinguishes between the coverage and the basis in justification of differential treatment to argue that disaggregation does not ultimately succeed in solving the latter. Despite this, reflecting on the clarifications achieved through disaggregation and the deeper issues of justification and justice emerging therefrom, the paper concludes by proposing the need to consider a lateral solution to the paradox and speculating on what this might look like. (shrink)

This article addresses the exclusivism–inclusivism debate about religious reasons in law within a justificatory liberal framework. The question of whether religious reasons have justificatory capacity for attaining public justification has increasingly been seen as a matter of how public justification is understood between two rival models: the consensus model being aligned with exclusivism, the convergence model with inclusivism. More recently, however, that alignment has been challenged with attempts to show that consensus can reach an equivalent degree of inclusivism as convergence. (...) Against this, I contend that the purported equivalence is misplaced. First, I identify a crucial ambiguity about public justification and two corresponding domains. Upon demonstrating these to be mutually independent and severable, I conclude that the moves to equalize the models are confined within the more narrow domain while, in the more fundamental domain, the choice of model continues to prove determinative as to the exclusivist or inclusivist valence of justificatory liberalism. (shrink)

A new study of Porphyrian soteriology, or the concept of the salvation of the soul, in the thought of Porphyry of Tyre.

Less than one percent of U.S. philosophers are Asian American. This essay contends that the low percentage cannot be fully explained by considerations of demographics, immigration, and "Asian culture." Completeness of explanation requires reference to racial politics and Orientalism in their historic and national dynamics. It also requires reference to various kinds of identity derogation specific to the academy and to philosophy, in particular. The essay concludes with reflection on how the "model minority" discourse adds another layer of complication to (...) the way Asian American philosophers and philosophy students negotiate their way through the academy. (shrink)

This paper argues that (cardinal) numbers are originally given to us in the context ‘Fs exist n-wise’, and accordingly, numbers are certain manners or modes of existence, by addressing two objections both of which are due to Frege. First, the so-called Caesar objection will be answered by explaining exactly what kind of manner or mode numbers are. And then what we shall call the Functionality of Cardinality objection will be answered by establishing the fact that for any numbers m and (...) n, if there are exactly m Fs and also there are exactly n Fs, then m = n. (shrink)

Consider the following argument written on the board in room 227: 1 = 1. So, the argument on the board in room 227 is not valid. This argument generates a paradox. The aim of this paper is to present a resolution of this paradox and related paradoxes of validity, including a version of the Curry paradox. The proposal stresses the close connections between these validity paradoxes and paradoxes of truth and paradoxes of denotation. So a more general aim is to (...) provide a unified response to semantic paradox. The positive proposal is in part inspired by a brief, tantalizing suggestion of Gödel’s, that the paradoxes might appear “as something analogous to dividing by zero”—so that the concept of validity, for example, is everywhere applicable except for certain singular points or singularities. A second central claim is that ‘valid’ is a context-sensitive predicate. The key notions of this contextual-singularity theory are presented and applied to a variety of cases. Any purported solution to paradox must deal with the phenomenon of revenge, and a response to revenge is outlined. The paper closes with remarks about the accommodation of Tarski’s claim that natural languages are universal. (shrink)

The teaching of professional rules, procedures and standards, as well as the existence of ethics committees and legal advisers to achieve desired behaviours for a given profession, produces an unforeseen by-product of altering the way individuals relate to ethics. The institutionalization of a moral voice, a kind of artificial conscience for the legally defined ‘artificial person’, tends to do the ethical thinking for the individual who thinks being moral means methodically following the professionally approved rules. Professionalism and the type of (...) methodological reason it requires are becoming a substitute for internal moral reasoning and personal responsibility, despite the belief that we are becoming more morally responsibly through professional behaviour. (shrink)

There is nothing like an overwhelming consensus of opinion to encourage a less than rigourous approach to analyzing complex ethical issues. Unfortunately, this is nowhere more apparent than in the discussion of human reproductive cloning contained in the federal House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs’ report on human cloning, released last August The report may well fulfil the first half of its project, namely the empirical task of adequately summarizing and categorizing the various submissions made to (...) the Committee. However, it is clearly inadequate as a discussion of the ethical and legal permissibility of human reproductive cloning. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the possible impact of thinking phenomenologically about faith in a postmodern/post-secular age. Following Merold Westphal’s encouragement that philosophy of religion should be more ‘personal’, I offer a phenomenological reflection on my own experience of the difficulties and complexities that accompany being a postmodern phenomenologist and a Pentecostal Christian. Working through the possible conflicts that can arise when these two identities are brought together, I propose an account of Kierkegaardian postmodernism that resolves the conflict without, thereby, (...) eliminating the existential and theological difficulties that accompany religious existence in a postmodern/post-secular world. Ultimately, then, I show that personal engagement with religious existence is not excluded by postmodern phenomenology, but is in fact crucial for an appropriately postmodern/post-secular approach to phenomenological philosophy of religion itself. I conclude by proposing a possible account of God that reflects both phenomenological rigor and existential awareness. (shrink)

In recent years, the far right “culture war” has to an increasing extent been allowed to set the terms for cultural policy debates, in Sweden and internationally. In the Swedish context, empty accusations against public cultural institutions of “wokeist” bias and “cancel culture” have found support in a public report from the governmental Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis, which claims that national public funding bodies are imposing politically correct demands on their applicants, with a “detrimental influence” on the freedom of (...) art. This article shows that the ACPA lacks grounds for these claims. Taking its cue from the ACPA’s report, it instead focuses on the fundamental and contested concept of the freedom or the autonomy of art. It seeks to outline what would need to characterise a critical concept of the autonomy of art today, and asks what the political implications would be of a rigorous understanding of such a concept. It argues that cultural policy should be understood as a project of cultural democratization, which should in turn be understood as a project of autonomy. (shrink)

How does mind fit into nature? Philosophy has long been concerned with this question. No contemporary philosopher has done more to clarify it than Jaegwon Kim, a distinguished analytic philosopher specializing in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. With new contributions from an outstanding line-up of eminent scholars, this volume focuses on issues raised in Kim's work. The chapters cluster around two themes: first, exclusion, supervenience, and reduction, with attention to the causal exclusion argument for which Kim is widely celebrated; and (...) second, phenomenal consciousness and qualia, with attention to the prospects for a functionalist account of the mental. This volume is sure to become a major focus of attention and research in the disciplines of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This essay critically examines the political philosophy of John Dewey in relation to U.S. imperialism in the Asia-Pacific. First, using the work of Louis Menand and Robert Brandom's critical refinement of it, the significance of U.S. imperialism for pragmatism is discussed. Second, the essay argues that Dewey's work reveals a structured and generative absence of reflection on the expansion of American racial hegemony across the Pacific in spite of Dewey's serious engagement with Asia and especially China. The configuration of this (...) absence can be traced to his antidemocratic philosophical rendering of the classic frontier chronology of the U.S. nation-state. (shrink)

The principle of fairness holds that individuals (beneficiaries) who benefit from a cooperative scheme of others (cooperators) have an obligation to do their share in return for their benefit. The original proponent of this principle, H. L. A. Hart suggests ‘mutuality of restrictions’ as a moral basis because it is fair to mutually restrict the freedom of both beneficiaries and cooperators; so called the fairness obligation. This paper explores ‘mutuality of restrictions’, which is interpreted as a right-based and an equality-based (...) justification of the fairness obligation. It is not argued whether both ways of justifying the obligation makes a success, but that they are in need of presupposing that there is a duty for beneficiaries to do their share in return for their benefit. This suggests turning to a duty-based justification of the fairness obligation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Definitions Justification and the Duty to Obey.

Recent work in philosophy of race involves Native American, Africana, and Latin American critiques of the sociohistorical specificity underlying allegedly universalist moral and political philosophy in the U.S. and the West generally. Joining the discussion, this essay explores American orientalism in terms of the imperialist expansion of the U.S. across the Pacific since the late 19th century. Toward this end, Hawai'i, Guam, and thereby the U.S. itself are conceptualized as geopolitical gestalts. No full story of the Rawlsian basic structure of (...) 20th-century America will be complete without attention to the dynamics of U.S. imperialism in the Asia-Pacific. (shrink)

John Locke's name is invariably included on lists of the modern fathers of social contract thought. This chapter begins with a brief discussion on the basics of social contract thought and the specific ways in which Locke's political philosophy participates in the social contract tradition. In Locke's day, and for well over a century before Locke, social contract theories almost always involved historical claims as well, with the precise relationship between the historical and normative wings of the theory varying considerably (...) between theories. The political voluntarism of Locke's social contract theory is utterly non‐historical and thoroughly individualist. To join an existing society simply involves consenting to the standing terms of the social contract of that society. Locke voices the now familiar democratic insistence that representative government must involve only "fair and equal representation". (shrink)

As increasing proportions of our global population age, transgender people are experiencing higher rates of dementia, and many are afraid to enter long-term care. Structural interventions such as advance directives may help mitigate fears around entering long-term care by managing specific anxieties that transgender people may have about dementia, loss of decision-making capacity, and discrimination in long-term care settings.

In this paper, I raise some interconnected concerns for Paul Horwich’s minimal theory of truth, framed by these three questions: How should the minimal theory be formulated? How does the minimal theory address the liar paradox? What is the explanatory role of the concept of truth? I conclude that we cannot be linguistic or conceptual deflationists about truth.