In this major new work, Matthew Kramer seeks to establish two main conclusions. On the one hand, moral requirements are strongly objective. On the other hand, the objectivity of ethics is itself an ethical matter that rests primarily on ethical considerations. Moral realism - the doctrine that morality is indeed objective - is a moral doctrine. Major new volume in our new series _New Directions in Ethics_ Takes on the big picture - defending the objectivity of ethics whilst rejecting (...) the grounds of much of the existing debate between realists and anti-realists Cuts across both ethical theory and metaethics Distinguished by the quality of the scholarship and its ambitious range. (shrink)

In his provocative book Matthew Kramer offers a systematic theory of freedom that challenges most of the other major contemporary treatments of the topic.

Taking a fresh look at a central controversy in criminal law theory, The Ethics of Capital Punishment presents a rationale for the death penalty grounded in a theory of the nature of evil and the nature of defilement. Original, unsettling, and deeply controversial, it will be an essential reference point for future debates on the subject.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 4, Page 473-483, May 2022. In my recent book Freedom of Expression as Self-Restraint, I expound and defend the moral principle of freedom of expression. This article recounts a few of the main strands of the exposition in that book, and it touches upon the justification for the principle of freedom of expression. Supplementing the abstract ideas broached in the article are several illustrative examples that render the abstractions more accessible.

This chapter contains sections titled: Categorical Prescriptiveness Uniformity as a Moral Matter Uniformity Contrasted with Neutrality The Overridingness of Moral Principles.

This book is the product of a major British Academy Symposium held in 2007 to mark the centenary of the birth of H.L.A. Hart, the most important legal philosopher and one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century. -/- The book brings together contributions from seventeen of the world's foremost legal and political philosophers who explore the many subjects in which Hart produced influential work. Each essay engages in an original analysis of philosophical problems that were tackled (...) by Hart, some essays including extended critical discussions of his major works: The Concept of Law, Punishment and Responsibility, Causation in the Law and Law, Liberty and Morality. All the main topics of Hart's philosophical writings are featured: general jurisprudence and legal positivism; criminal responsibility and punishment; theories of rights; toleration and liberty; theories of justice; and causation in the law. (shrink)

What is objectivity? What is the rule of law? Are the operations of legal systems objective? If so, in what ways and to what degrees are they objective? Does anything of importance depend on the objectivity of law? These are some of the principal questions addressed by Matthew H. Kramer in this lucid and wide-ranging study that introduces readers to vital areas of philosophical enquiry. As Kramer shows, objectivity and the rule of law are complicated phenomena, each comprising a (...) number of distinct though overlapping dimensions. Although the connections between objectivity and the rule of law are intimate, they are also densely multi-faceted. (shrink)

This essay argues against the commonly held view that "ought" implies "can" in the domain of morality. More specifically, I contest the notion that nobody should ever be held morally responsible for failing to avoid the infliction of any harm that he or she has not been able to avoid through all reasonably feasible precautions in the carrying out of some worthwhile activity. The article explicates the concept of a moral right in order to show why violations of moral rights (...) can occur even when no one has acted wrongfully in any fashion. In so doing, it will effectively be maintaining that strict liability (i.e., liability irrespective of the presence or absence of culpability) exists in morality as well as in law. When we take account of the distinction between exoneration and extenuation, we can see that scrupulously thorough precautions are never sufficient to constitute an excuse in morality. Having made that point with some extended examples, the article goes on to consider a number of possible objections - objections that lead into discussions of some basic distinctions within moral philosophy and some central principles within deontic logic. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: The Obligation‐to‐Obey‐the‐Law What the Law Claims Matters of Form References Further Reading.

What are species? Are they objective features of the world? If so, what sort of features are they? Do everyday intuitions that species are real stand up to philosophical and scientific scrutiny? Two rival accounts of species' reality have dominated the discussion: that species are natural kinds defined by essential properties and that species are individuals. Unfortunately, neither account fully accommodates biological practice. In Are Species Real?, Slater presents a novel approach to this question aimed at accommodating the attractions to (...) both realism and antirealism about species. (shrink)

They discuss philosophy and methodology, and such topics as the history of evolution and the evolution of history. Paper edition (unseen), $16.95. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

This chapter contains sections titled: Invariance qua Uniform Applicability Invariance qua Transindividual Concurrence Invariance qua Timelessness and Ubiquity Limits on Invariance Concluding Remarks.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Distinctness of Types of Objectivity Morality and Disagreement Concluding Remarks.

Matthew H. Bowker offers a novel analysis of "experience": the vast and influential concept that has shaped Western social theory and political practice for the past half-millennium. While it is difficult to find a branch of modern thought, science, industry, or art that has not relied in some way on the notion of "experience" in defining its assumptions or aims, no study has yet applied a politically-conscious and psychologically-sensitive critique to the construct of experience. Doing so reveals that most (...) of the qualities that have been attributed to experience over the centuries — particularly its unthinkability, its correspondence with suffering, and its occlusion of the self — are part of unlikely fantasies or ideologies. By analyzing a series of related cases, including the experiential education movement, the ascendency of trauma theory, the philosophy of the social contract, and the psychological study of social isolation, the book builds a convincing case that ideologies of experience are invoked not to keep us close to lived realities and ‘things-in-themselves,’ but, rather, to distort and destroy true knowledge of ourselves and others. In spite of enduring admiration for those who may be called champions of experience, such as Michel de Montaigne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others treated throughout the work, the ideologies of experience ultimately discourage individuals and groups from creating, resisting, and changing our experience, urging us instead to embrace trauma, failure, deprivation, and self-abandonment. (shrink)

We often knowingly teach false science. Such a practice conflicts with a prima facie pedagogical value placed on teaching only what’s true. I argue that only a partial dissolution of the conflict is possible: the proper aim of instruction in science is not to provide an armory of facts about what things the world contains, how they interact, and so on, but rather to contribute to an understanding of how science as a human endeavor works and what sorts of facts (...) about the world science aims to provide. Such an aim legislates for an increased prominence of history and philosophy in even secondary science education. (shrink)

Critical Legal Theory and the Challenge of Feminism provides both a thorough overview and a refinement of the ideas that underlie critical legal theory. Arguing with the rigor of analytic philosophy and the alertness to paradoxes characteristic of deconstructive philosophy, Matthew Kramer begins by exploring the tangled relations between metaphysics and politics. He then attempts to transform the discourses of the critical legal studies movement by laying out a framework of five general themes: contradictions, contingency, patterning, perspective, and ideology. (...) Kramer calls for a more sophisticated awareness of their paradoxes, explaining why the paradoxes are by no means disabling or demobilizing. Finally, Kramer explores some of feminist theory's major controversies and problems, and argues that feminist theory can profit greatly by giving due attention to inescapable paradoxes. The book is an important contribution to political philosophy, jurisprudence, feminist philosophy and metaphysics, with powerful implications for epistemology and literary theory. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉJe soulève des questions concernant l'approche volontariste défendue par Chakravartty à l’égard des positions : supposant que nous reconnaissons une hiérarchie des positions, la position volontariste peut être à la fois vraie et trompeuse en ce qui concerne la viabilité pratique de certains débats dans le domaine de la philosophie des sciences, en particulier le débat sur le réalisme scientifique ou sur la façon de «naturaliser» la métaphysique.

Philosophers have long been interested in a series of interrelated questions about natural kinds. What are they? What role do they play in science and metaphysics? How do they contribute to our epistemic projects? What categories count as natural kinds? And so on. Owing, perhaps, to different starting points and emphases, we now have at hand a variety of conceptions of natural kinds—some apparently better suited than others to accommodate a particular sort of inquiry. Even if coherent, this situation isn’t (...) ideal. My goal in this article is to begin to articulate a more general account of ‘natural kind phenomena’. While I do not claim that this account should satisfy everyone—it is built around a certain conception of the epistemic role of kinds and has an obvious pragmatic flavour—I believe that it has the resources to go further than extant alternatives, in particular the homeostatic property cluster view of kinds. (shrink)

This volume analyzes the biological and philosophical disagreements in evolutionary ethics and points out difficulties with the interpretations. The book is divided into four sections. The first is an historical introduction to the origin of evolutionary ethics, showing how different evolutionary ethics was a hundred years ago, and how distant Huxley is from most of us now. The second section argues for a sociobiological interpretation of evolutionary ethics. The third section presents the view opposite to that of the second section (...) and rejects the sociobiological interpretation. The fourth section deals objectively with many complex and fundamental issues from diverse perspectives. (shrink)

Every problem of dirty hands is a moral conflict in which a highly unpalatable course of conduct is chosen for the sake of fulfilling a stringent moral duty, and in which either the chosen course of conduct is evil or else it would have been evil in the absence of the exigent circumstances to which it is a response. To support this conception of problems of dirty hands, this paper endeavors to elucidate the nature of moral conflicts and the nature (...) of evil. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider ways of responding to critiques of natural kinds monism recently suggested from the pluralist camp. Even if monism is determined to be untenable in certain domains (say, about species), it might well be tenable in others. Chemistry is suggested to be such a monist‐friendly domain. Suggestions of trouble for chemical kinds can be defused by attending to the difference between monism as a metaphysical thesis and as a claim about classification systems. Finally, I consider enantiomers (...) as a test case for the monism/pluralism debate. The question of whether enantiomers differ in kind does not appear easily answerable. I suggest that this legislates for pluralism in chemistry. (shrink)

Emotion and affect play a central role in persuasion, decision-making, and human behavior. Because of ongoing environmental crises, there is a strong need to better understand how emotions shape selection, attention, processing, and effects of environmental communication. Here, I highlight three main areas that contain challenges and opportunities for building a synergistic relationship between the affective sciences and research on strategic environmental communication: (a) identifying the causal effects of emotions in environmental communication; (b) the role of emotions in the durability (...) of environmental messaging effects; and (c) how closing the gap between the laboratory and the field can generate innovative research and more applicable inferences. (shrink)

Michael Ghiselin and David Hull’s individuality thesis is that biological species are individuals. Philosophers often treat the term “individual” as synonymous with “mereological sum” and characterize it in terms of mereology. It is easy to see how the biological project has been interpreted as a mereological one. This chapter argues that this is a mistake, that biological part/whole relations often violate the axioms of mereology. Conflating these projects confuses the central issues at stake in both, and makes the job of (...) evaluating either unnecessarily burdensome. Clarifying this helps identify the genuine metaphysical implications of the individuality thesis, which serves as an exemplar of scientifically informed metaphysics. (shrink)

There is a tension between the “growing block” account of time (closed past, open future) and the possibility of backwards time travel. If Tim the time traveler can someday travel backwards through time, then he has (in a certain sense) already been. He might discover this fact before (in another sense) he goes. Hence a dilemma: it seems that either Tim’s future is determined in an odd way or cases of (temporary) ontic indeterminate identity are possible. Either Tim cannot avoid (...) heading for the past or he is only indeterminately that guy who appeared in the past with many of Tim’s memories. Determinacy in the past implies a degree of determinism in the future; indeterminism about the future seeps back to the past. (shrink)

Joe Campbell has identified an apparent flaw in van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument. It apparently derives a metaphysically necessary conclusion from what Campbell argues is a contingent premise: that the past is in some sense necessary. I criticise Campbell’s examples attempting to show that this is not the case (in the requisite sense) and suggest some directions along which an incompatibilist could reconstruct her argument so as to remain immune to Campbell’s worries.

In line with my 2021 book Freedom of Expression as Self-Restraint – albeit in a much shorter compass – this essay will argue against the moral defensibility of hate-speech laws like those in the United Kingdom and Canada and the Antipodes and most countries of western Europe. Such laws contravene the moral principle of freedom of expression, and therefore contravene one of the central precepts of liberal democracy. Under that principle, a necessary condition for the moral permissibility of any law (...) that proscribes some type or instance of communicative activity is that the activity in question is constitutive of serious communication-independent wrongdoing. Given the centrality of the notion of communication-independent wrongdoing to the principle of freedom of expression, we should begin here with an explication of that notion. (shrink)

In Albert Camus and the Political Philosophy of the Absurd: Ambivalence, Resistance, and Creativity, Matthew H. Bowker takes an interdisciplinary approach to Albert Camus’ political philosophy by reading absurdity itself as a metaphor for the psychosocial dynamics of ambivalence, resistance, integration, and creativity. Decoupling absurdity from its ontological aspirations and focusing instead on its psychological and phenomenal contours, Bowker discovers an absurdist foundation for ethical and political practice.

Consequentialist doctrines have often been criticized for their excessive demandingness, in that they require the thorough instrumentalization of each person’s life as a vehicle for the production of good consequences. In turn, the proponents of such doctrines have often objected to what they perceive as the irrationality of the demandingness of deontological duties. In this paper, I shall address objections of the latter kind in an effort to show that they are unfounded. My investigation of this matter will unfold by (...) reference to a scenario that strikingly and concretely exemplifies the demandingness of deontological duties. That scenario, which involves a situation of torture (specifically, placatory torture – in other words, torture undertaken for the purpose of appeasing people who have demanded that it be administered), will serve as a springboard for my endeavor to vindicate the rationality of deontological absolutes and will help to illuminate the endeavor’s practical implications. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging investigation of many prominent issues in contemporary legal, political, and moral philosophy, Matthew Kramer combines penetrating critiques with original theorizing as he examines the writings of numerous major theorists (including Ronald Dworkin, H. L. A. Hart, Alan Gewirth, David Lyons, Ronald Coase, John Finnis, Jules Coleman, Anthony Kronman, and Richard Posner). While Kramer argues with the rigor that is the hallmark of the tradition of analytic philosophy, his inquiries extend not only to that tradition but also (...) to such other traditions as Aristotelianism and Continental philosophy and Legal Realism. (shrink)

Different chemical species are often cited as paradigm examples of structurally delimited natural kinds. While classificatory monism may thus seem plausible for simple molecules, it looks less attractive for complex biological macromolecules. I focus on the case of proteins that are most plausibly individuated by their functions. Is there a single, objective count of proteins? I argue that the vagaries of function individuation infect protein classification. We should be pluralists about macromolecular classification.

This paper first recapitulates the objections by H.L.A. Hart to the ways in which John Austin’s command model of law obfuscated the importance and the very existence of power-conferring laws. Although those objections are familiar in the world of contemporary legal philosophy, their insightfulness is highlighted here because they contrast so sharply with Hart’s own neglect of power-conferring laws at some key junctures in his theorizing. In the second half of this paper, I ponder a few of the junctures where (...) Hart failed to heed the admonitions which he had so deftly leveled against Austin. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Objectivity qua Rational Requisiteness Objectivity qua Corrigibility Objectivity qua Non‐Illusiveness Objectivity qua Susceptibility to Reasons.

What sort of philosophical work are natural kinds suited for? Scientific realists often contend that they provide the ‘aboutness’ of successful of scientific classification and explain their epistemic utility (among other side hustles). Recent history has revealed this to be a tricky job — particularly given the present naturalistic climate of philosophy of science. As a result, we’ve seen an explosion of different sorts of theories. This phenomenon that has suggested to some that philosophical theorizing about natural kinds has reached (...) a sort of ‘scholastic twilight’ and that the concept (or family of concepts) has outlived its utility: perhaps there’s no work natural kinds are suited for. While I think this pessimistic take is unwarranted, I will argue that it is worth rethinking the roles to which a reasonably naturalistic account of natural kinds can be fruitfully put. Natural kinds deserve a shorter work week. (shrink)