Binmore argues that game theory provides a systematic tool for investigating ethical matters.

concepts typically are defined in terms of lacking physical or perceptual referents. We argue instead that they are not devoid of perceptual information because knowledge of real-world situations is an important component of learning and using many abstract concepts. Although the relationship between perceptual information and abstract concepts is less straightforward than for concrete concepts, situation-based perceptual knowledge is part of many abstract concepts. In Experiment 1, participants made lexical decisions to abstract words that were preceded by related and unrelated (...) pictures of situations. For example, share was preceded by a picture of two girls sharing a cob of corn. When pictures were presented for 500 ms, latencies did not differ. However, when pictures were presented for 1,000 ms, decision latencies were significantly shorter for abstract words preceded by related versus unrelated pictures. Because the abstract concepts corresponded to the pictured situation as a whole, rather than a single concrete object or entity, the necessary relational processing takes time. In Experiment 2, on each trial, an abstract word was presented for 250 ms, immediately followed by a picture. Participants indicated whether or not the picture showed a normal situation. Decision latencies were significantly shorter for pictures preceded by related versus unrelated abstract words. Our experiments provide evidence that knowledge of events and situations is important for learning and using at least some types of abstract concepts. That is, abstract concepts are grounded in situations, but in a more complex manner than for concrete concepts. Although people's understanding of abstract concepts certainly includes knowledge gained from language describing situations and events for which those concepts are relevant, sensory and motor information experienced during real-life events is important as well. (shrink)

The principal aim of this volume is to elucidate what freedom, sovereignty, and autonomy mean for Nietzsche and what philosophical resources he gives us to re ...

An important question in the debate over embodied, enactive, and extended cognition has been what has been meant by “cognition”. What is this cognition that is supposed to be embodied, enactive, or extended? Rather than undertake a frontal assault on this question, however, this paper will take a different approach. In particular, we may ask how cognition is supposed to be related to behavior. First, we could ask whether cognition is supposed to be behavior. Second, we could ask whether we (...) should attempt to understand cognitive processes in terms of antecedently understood cognitive behaviors. This paper will survey some of the answers that have been given in the embodied, enactive, and extended cognition literature, then suggest reasons to believe that we should answer both questions in the negative. (shrink)

This book examines the hypothesis of "direct compositionality", which requires that semantic interpretation proceed in tandem with syntactic combination. Although associated with the dominant view in formal semantics of the 1970s and 1980s, the feasibility of direct compositionality remained unsettled, and more recently the discussion as to whether or not this view can be maintained has receded. The syntax-semantics interaction is now often seen as a process in which the syntax builds representations which, at the abstract level of logical form, (...) are sent for interpretation to the semantics component of the language faculty. In the first extended discussion of the hypothesis of direct compositionality for twenty years, this book considers whether its abandonment might have been premature and whether in fact direct compositionality is not after all a simpler and more effective conception of the grammar than the conventional account of the syntax-semantics interface in generative grammar. It contains contributions from both sides of the debate, locates the debate in the setting of a variety of formal theories, and draws on examples from a range of languages and a range of empirical phenomena. (shrink)

A rigorous and wide-ranging discussion of the most ballyhooed emotion of all--and its surprising role in making us who we are. With Robert Solomon, Verna Gehring, and John Loughney.

Are moral systems actually impediments to leading a truly good human life? What is good and what is not good? Do we need anyone to tell us these things? With Russ Shaffer-Landau, Bryan Van Norden, and Richard Garner.

One trend in recent work on topic of the multiple realization of psychological properties has been an emphasis on greater sensitivity to actual science and greater clarity regarding the metaphysics of realization and multiple realization. One contribution to this trend is Bechtel and Mundale’s examination of the implications of brain mapping for multiple realization. Where Bechtel and Mundale argue that studies of brain mapping undermine claims about the multiple realization, this paper challenges that argument.

Now available Open Access! See the Bloomsburycollections URL below. -/- Correct bibliographical information is as follows: Gottfried Achenwall, _Natural Law: A Translation of the Textbook for Kant's Lectures on Legal and Political Philosophy_, edited by Pauline Kleingeld, translated by Corinna Vermeulen, with an Introduction by Paul Guyer. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. -/- As the first translation into any modern language of Achenwall’s Ius naturae, from the 1763 edition used by Immanuel Kant, this is an essential work for anyone interested in (...) Kant, the natural law tradition or the history of legal and political theory. For over twenty years, Kant used this book as the basis for his lectures on natural law. It influenced his legal and political philosophy as well as his ethics, and it is indispensable for understanding Kant’s Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law and his Metaphysics of Morals. -/- Articulating his theory of natural law with clear definitions and precise distinctions, Achenwall offers a lucid account that includes instructive comparisons with the work of Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Wolff and others. The volume also contains an Introduction by the eminent Kant scholar Paul Guyer, comparing Achenwall’s theory to the legal and political philosophy of Kant’s Doctrine of Right, and a concordance correlating Achenwall’s Natural Law to Kant’s Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law. (shrink)

Peter Baumann uses the Monty Hall game to demonstrate that probabilities cannot be meaningfully applied to individual games. Baumann draws from this first conclusion a second: in a single game, it is not necessarily rational to switch from the door that I have initially chosen to the door that Monty Hall did not open. After challenging Baumann's particular arguments for these conclusions, I argue that there is a deeper problem with his position: it rests on the false assumption that what (...) justifies the switching strategy is its leading me to win a greater percentage of the time. In fact, what justifies the switching strategy is not any statistical result over the long run but rather the "causal structure" intrinsic to each individual game itself. Finally, I argue that an argument by Hilary Putnam will not help to save Baumann's second conclusion above. (shrink)

First year university students enrolled on courses which have remained male dominated, including engineering, physics and computer science and two courses, law and medicine, on which females now outnumber males , completed a questionnaire concerned with the reasons why they chose their particular course. Analyses were carried out using a stepwise discriminant function analysis. The results of this study indicate that the reasons women favour law and medicine, rather than more technological courses, is that the former courses are seen as (...) leading to work that contributes to playing a useful social role and that allows a higher level of social contact. It is concluded that although women tend to avoid technological courses this is not a negative choice, rather they positively choose courses which lead to careers with higher levels of social involvement. (shrink)

I argue for two propositions. First, contrary to the common wisdom, we may justly punish individuals who are not morally responsible for their crimes. Psychopaths – individuals who lack the capacity to feel sympathy – help to prove this point. Scholars are increasingly arguing that psychopaths are not morally responsible for their behavior because they suffer from a neurological disorder that makes it impossible for them to understand, and therefore be motivated by, moral reasons. These same scholars then infer from (...) this conclusion that they must also lack criminal responsibility and therefore that our continuing to punish psychopaths for their crimes is unjust. My response is that this inference is entirely fallacious. -/- Criminal responsibility turns out to be quite distinct from moral responsibility. The two kinds of responsibility require very different conditions to be satisfied. In particular, criminal responsibility, unlike moral responsibility, does not require an agent be able to grasp and follow moral reasons; it requires only that the individual be able to grasp and follow criminal laws. Once this point is recognized, it becomes much easier to accept my thesis: while the subset of psychopaths who commit crimes are not morally responsible for their criminal behavior because they cannot understand moral reasons, they are still criminally responsible because they can understand what the consequences will be if they get caught. For this reason, even though I concede that psychopaths are not morally responsible for the crimes that they commit, our practice of punishing them for these crimes is still just. -/- Second, I argue that psychopathy is a mental illness and should be recognized as such. One reason that it should be recognized as a mental illness is simply because it is; it satisfies the main criteria for inclusion in the DSM-IV, the “bible” of mental disorders. The other reason is more practical than conceptual. It starts with two facts: the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the preventive detention of any individual who is not a criminal suspect is not constitutional unless the individual is not only dangerous but also mentally ill; and psychopathy is not currently considered to be a mental illness. So, as things now stand, we cannot preventively commit dangerous psychopaths – that is, psychopaths who have clearly indicated that they will be committing serious crimes. Instead, we must wait for them to commit the crimes before we can lock them up. Unfortunately, this incarceration always comes too late for the victims. It would therefore be better if we could lock them up before they actually inflict any harm. Once again, then, I propose that the legal and psychological communities classify psychopathy as a mental illness. (shrink)

Ever since its first documented live birth in 2014, the use of uterine transplantation (UTx) for the treatment of absolute uterine factor infertility (UFI) has seen major clinical advances, which include the use of alternative surgical approaches, different donor states, and diverse patient populations. In addition to the thorough research programs that developed the technique, this accomplishment has occurred in large part following a number of ethical frameworks, such as the Montreal Criteria and the Indianapolis Consensus, which paved the way (...) to transition from experimental animal trials to human ones. To date, over 60 uterine transplants have been performed in the world, and at least 18 births have been thus far confirmed. While the procedure remains experimental, the vast knowledge and procedural experience amassed over the last 20 years of rigorous research have hinted at the next step of discovery. In particular, advancing social circumstances have prompted the question regarding the use of this technology in transgender individuals. Though the potential use of uterine transplants in the transgender population has been hypothesized, no in‐depth ethical framework has been developed towards this purpose. Herein, we explore the ethical issues revolving around the use of this technology in this patient population and provide key insights that may advance this cause. (shrink)

In this Article, I will argue that a person may be deserving of criminal punishment even in certain situations where she is not necessarily morally responsible for her criminal act. What these situations share in common are two things: the psychological factors that motivate the individual’s behavior are environmentally determined and her crime is serious, making her less eligible for sympathy and therefore less likely to be acquitted. -/- To get to this conclusion, I will proceed in four steps. In (...) Part II, I will offer the first two of these steps. First, I will argue that our foundational assumption that moral responsibility is necessary for just blame and punishment is not self-evident and is actually rather difficult to explain and justify. Second, I will offer an explanation and justification that appeals to our moral psychology. Specifically, I will argue that we subscribe to this assumption ultimately because we sympathize with agents who lack responsibility for their actions. -/- Third, in Part IV, I aim to show that even if moral responsibility is not conceptually — only “emotionally” — necessary for just blame and punishment, the traditionally recognized criminal excuses are not at risk because, contrary to popular wisdom, they do not really rely on this assumption to begin with. Instead, they stand less for the metaphysical proposition that we should refrain from blaming and punishing the non-responsible and more for the normative/ethical proposition that we should refrain from blaming and punishing those whom we cannot reasonably expect to have acted better. I will further argue that the latter proposition does not necessarily reduce to the former. -/- Fourth, once I have defended my account of the excuses, I will question in Parts V and VI the increasingly popular notion that we should add certain conditions or circumstances to the list of recognized excuses. I will focus on one in particular — the psychological theory of “situationism” — and will argue that, despite its initial plausibility, it should be kept off the list. While situationism arguably does negate moral responsibility, it does not negate criminal responsibility. -/- Of course, this is a controversial point. Criminal responsibility is almost universally thought to require moral responsibility. But in a previous article, "Dangerous Psychopaths: Criminally Responsible But Not Morally Responsible, Subject to Criminal Punishment And to Preventive Detention," 48 San Diego L. Rev. 1299, I used personality psychology to drive a wedge between the two. In this article, I will use the opposite end of the psychological spectrum — social psychology — to drive the same important wedge. (shrink)

Alleged counter-examples deployed in Park [Erkenntnis 60: 229–240] against the account of selective hypothetico-deductive confirmation offered in Gemes [Erkenntnis 49: 1–20] are shown to be ineffective. Furthermore, the reservations expressed in Gemes [ibid] and [Philosophy of Science 62: 477–487] about hypothetico-deductivism are retracted and replaced with the conclusion that H-D is a viable account of confirmation that captures much of the practice of working scientists. However, because it cannot capture cases of inference to the best explanation and cases of the (...) observational confirmation of statistical hypotheses, it is concluded that H-D cannot supply a complete theory of confirmation. (shrink)

A: Excuse me, but we're just trying to find the right bus that takes us to the boat for Upolu. We were told that it stops here in front of the village store, but we've been waiting since 9 o'clock this morning and we'd like to know if there is going to be a bus before this evening or if we'll have to wait until tomorrow for a bus. I: Yes.

For over a century now, American scholars (among others) have been debating the merits of “bad Samaritan” laws — laws punishing people for failing to attempt easy and safe rescues. Unfortunately, the opponents of bad Samaritan laws have mostly prevailed. In the United States, the “no-duty-to-rescue” rule dominates. Only four states have passed bad Samaritan laws, and these laws impose only the most minimal punishment — either sub-$500 fines or short-term imprisonment. -/- This Article argues that every state should criminalize (...) bad Samaritanism. There are three main reasons. First, criminalization is required by the supreme value that we place on protecting human life, a value that motivates laws against both homicide and manslaughter. Second, criminalization is recommended by the “proportionality principle” — i.e., the principle that a law’s level of punishment should be directly proportional to the moral severity of the offense. Third, criminalization would yield a number of significant benefits, including helping to minimize needless deaths and injuries and providing society with an institutional outlet for its outrage against bad Samaritans. -/- Still, many objections have been leveled against bad Samaritan laws. This Article will argue that while some of these objections — for example, the objections involving foundational criminal law principles such as the actus-reus requirement, the harm principle, and causation — are all easily refuted, five other objections are not. These five objections involve pragmatic considerations such as the difficulties with obtaining evidence against bad Samaritans and psychological considerations such as people’s understandable reasons for not wanting to “get involved.” This Article will then put these five objections into reflective equilibrium with the moral arguments for bad Samaritan laws and conclude that while bad Samaritanism should indeed be criminalized, the punishment that convicted bad Samaritans receive should be mild — certainly milder than the level of punishment recommended by the “proportionality principle.” The corollary of this conclusion is that the criminal law should sometimes abandon the proportionality principle. (shrink)

Suppose you are at the gym trying to see some naked beauties by peeping through a hole in the wall. A policeman happens by, he asks you what you are doing, and you honestly tell him. He then arrests you for voyeurism. Are you guilty? We don’t know yet because there is one more fact to be considered: while you honestly thought that a locker room was on the other side of the wall, it was actually a squash court. Are (...) you guilty now? -/- Probably. You might argue that your scopophiliac ambition was impossible to satisfy given that you were peeping into a squash court, not a locker room. But this “Impossibility Defense” would fail because most jurisdictions follow the very influential Model Penal Code (MPC), which says that what is important about attempt is not the likelihood of success but rather what was going on in your head. You tried to peer into a locker room with the intention of seeing some nudity; that is enough for culpability. The fact that you were mistaken about the location does not exonerate you. -/- But now suppose that the particular jurisdiction you are in does not criminalize voyeurism. While most people think that voyeurism is just plain wrong, if not disgusting, the legislature just never got around to drafting a statute against it. Are you guilty now? The answer is no. But you might just be out of luck and convicted anyway. -/- The reason for this strange conclusion is that most jurisdictions have followed the Model Penal Code in yet another respect: along with the MPC’s “subjectivist” emphasis on what is in your head, they have followed the MPC’s lead in abolishing the Impossibility Defense entirely. As a result, people who believe that they are breaking laws when they really are not may still be subject to arrest, prosecution, and conviction respectively by police, prosecutors, and judges/juries merely if all three parties regard your conduct — especially your trying to violate a law that you mistakenly believed in — as morally reprehensible. The best, if not only, defense against this charge is the Impossibility Defense, but — again — most jurisdictions have decided to make this defense unavailable to defendants. -/- Depriving eligible defendants of the Impossibility Defense is unjust. It violates one of the most basic principles of criminal justice: the legality principle. The legality principle says that there cannot be just punishment without a crime, and there should not be a crime without an explicit law designating it as such. So you cannot be charged with, and convicted of, attempted voyeurism if voyeurism, reprehensible as it may be, was not explicitly prohibited at the time that you made the attempt. -/- If we believe in the legality principle, then we must restore the Impossibility Defense. Without the latter, too many defendants are being — and will continue to be — punished for attempts to perform acts that were not themselves illegal but which various parties in the criminal justice system (except the legislature) thought should be illegal based on their extralegal, moral prejudices. -/- In addition to the MPC, the principal obstacle to resurrecting the Impossibility Defense is a good deal of conceptual confusion that permeates relevant cases and scholarship. Too many courts and academics have conflated “factual impossibility” with “legal impossibility” and have fallaciously inferred “hybrid impossibility” from “hybrid mistakes” (that is, legal mistakes that derive from factual mistakes). One of the principal goals of this Article, then, is to clear up all of this confusion. I will explicate in the simplest possible terms (a) the difference between factual impossibility and legal impossibility, (b) why only legal impossibility qualifies as exculpatory, and (c) why hybrid impossibility simply does not exist. (shrink)

Residential rent control is a contentious issue in many jurisdictions throughout the world. While tenant groups have often argued vociferously in defence of control, landlord groups and the vast majority of economists have been equally vehement in their criticisms. This paper examines some key normative issues involved in rent control. In particular I examine arguments in favor of control based on the alleged unfairness of winfall profits, upon affordability, and finally on the creation of rights to security of tenure. Various (...) objections by libertarian and free market philosophers and economists are examined. I conclude with a somewhat limited defense of rent control as used in specific situations as part of a more comprehensive policy to satisfy the normative demands at the root of tenant pressure for rent control. (shrink)

BackgroundOver the past two decades, Uganda has experienced a significant increase in clinical research driven by both academia and industry. This has been combined with a broader spectrum of research proposals, with respect to methodologies and types of intervention that need evaluation by Research Ethics Committees (RECs) with associated increased requirement for expertise. We assessed the competencies of REC members regarding review of research protocols with complex and emerging research study designs. The aim was to guide development of a training (...) curriculum to improve the quality of scientific and ethical review.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional study design, with quantitative data collection methods. Research Ethics Committee members completed a structured pre-coded questionnaire on current competence with complex and emerging study design. REC members were asked to outline a list of additional topics for which they needed training. Data from coded questions were entered into Epidata Version 3.1 and then exported to STATA Version14.1 for analysis. Descriptive analysis was performed and findings are presented using percentages and frequencies.ResultsWe enrolled 55 REC members from 6 RECs who have a total of 97 members. The majority of whom were males (56.4%, n = 31/55). The level of competence for review of selected study design was lowest for Controlled Human Infection Model (10.9%, n = 6) and reverse pharmacology design (10.9%, n = 6), and highest for cluster randomized study design (52.7%, n = 29) and implementation science research (52.7%, n = 29).ConclusionCompetence for review of research protocols with complex and emerging study design was low among participating REC members. We recommend prioritising training of REC members on complex and emerging study designs to enhance quality of research protocol review. (shrink)

Dans de nombreux domaines, la transparence s’est imposée comme un élément incontournable. Qu’en est-il de son application à la science, et plus particulièrement à l’expertise scientifique en tant que contexte paradigmatique des relations entre science et société ? En analysant le cas des controverses publiques sur le réchauffement climatique d’origine anthropique, cet article veut souligner les difficultés de mise en œuvre de la transparence pour formuler une éthique de l’expertise et proposer des pistes pour y remédier.

Contemplating Suicide: The Language and Ethnics of Self Harm By Gavin J. Fairbairn Routledge, 1995. Pp. xxx. ISBN 415?10606. £12.95(pbk). Religious Transformation in Western Society. The End of Happiness By Harvie Ferguson, Routledge, 1992. Pp. xvi + 269. ISBN 0?415?02574?5. £XX.xx. Feminism and the Self: The Web of Identity By Morwenna Griffiths Routledge, 1995. Pp. 191. ISBN 0?415?09821?1. £12.99 (pbk). Faith, Scepticism and Personal Identity. A Festschrift for Terence Penelhum Edited by J.J. Macintosh and H. A. Meynell University of Calgary (...) Press, 1994. Pp. vii + 304. CAN$27.95. The Shape of Space (second edition) By Graham Nerlich Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 0?521?45645?2. Logical Learning Theory: A Human Teleology and its Empirical Support By Joseph F. Rychlak University of Nebraska Press, 1994. Pp. 387. ISBN 0?8032?3904?1. £32.95 Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief By Alan P.F. Sell University of Wales Press, 1995. Pp. x + 338. (shrink)

L’autocensure a été définie pour l’instant comme la valorisation de l’inhibition consciente du langage et des faits au profit d’une survalorisation de l’effet ou de la récompense associée à cette inhibition. Jusqu’à présent, le concept de conscience (ses degrés, ses rapports, son histoire) n’a pas fait l’objet d’une étude précise. Si le processus d’autocensure est assurément un processus conscient, il nous faut dès à présent définir ce que signifie la conscience dans l’histoire du sujet historique et politique. Ce sujet particulier (...) utilise le phénomène de conscience pour se déterminer à reproduire ou bien, à faire vaciller le rapport dialectique qu’il entretient avec le monde social-historique. (shrink)

Although the path-integral formalism is known to be equivalent to conventional quantum mechanics, it is not generally obvious how to implement path-based calculations for multi-qubit entangled states. Whether one takes the formal view of entangled states as entities in a high-dimensional Hilbert space, or the intuitive view of these states as a connection between distant spatial configurations, it may not even be obvious that a path-based calculation can be achieved using only paths in ordinary space and time. Previous work has (...) shown how to do this for certain special states; this paper extends those results to all pure two-qubit states, where each qubit can be measured in an arbitrary basis. Certain three-qubit states are also developed, and path integrals again reproduce the usual correlations. These results should allow for a substantial amount of conventional quantum analysis to be translated over into a path-integral perspective, simplifying certain calculations, and more generally informing research in quantum foundations. (shrink)

Prof. Cohen and I answer six questions: (1) Why do we lock people up? (2) How can involuntary civil commitment be reconciled with people's constitutional right to liberty? (3) Why don't we treat homicide as a public health threat? (4) What is the difference between legal and medical approaches to mental illness? (5) Why is mental illness required for involuntary commitment? (6) Where are we in our efforts to understand the causes of mental illness?

Consider the reaction of Trayvon Martin’s family to the jury verdict. They were devastated that George Zimmerman, the defendant, was found not guilty of manslaughter or murder. Whatever the merits of this outcome, what does the Martin family’s emotional reaction mean? What does it say about criminal punishment – especially the reasons why we punish? Why did the Martin family want to see George Zimmerman go to jail? And why were – and are – they so upset that he didn’t? (...) -/- This Article will argue for three points. First, what fuels this kind of outrage is vengeance: the desire to see defendants like George Zimmerman be forced to “pay” for the harms that they needlessly and culpably inflict on others. While this point may seem obvious, it isn’t. Most people repudiate revenge and therefore the notion that it plays any role in the criminal justice system. -/- Second, this attitude toward revenge is misguided and needs to change. We need to recognize that vengeance not only does but should play a significant role in motivating criminal punishment. Our vengeful reactions to harmful crimes are not ugly or shameful; on the contrary, they manifest a deep valuation of victims and a bitter denunciation of individuals who actively renounce this valuation through their criminal behavior. -/- Third, these two points have significant implications for the two main theories of criminal punishment: “retributivism,” which says that criminals should be punished in order to give them their “just deserts,” and “consequentialism,” which says that criminals should be punished in order to bring about such good consequences as deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. Traditionally, these two theories have been at war with one another. But I will show how recognizing revenge as a motivation and justification for punishment can help to end this war and bring these two theories together. (shrink)

Uno de los conceptos más conflictivos quizás dentro de la terminología marxiana es el de sociedad, el cual se encuentra ligado, a nuestro parecer, directamente con la evolución del pensamiento de Marx acerca de los lineamientos metodológicos. En las siguientes páginas mostramos la evolución genealógica del concepto de sociedad –y su herencia desde el pensamiento especulativo hegeliano– a través de los diferentes períodos teóricos que comprende, por una parte la idea de un joven Marx acerca de la sociedad como concreción (...) de un hegelianismo rectificado e identificado con la nueva práctica de la filosofía necesitada del desarrollo del mundo moderno, por otra, una sociedad entendida como el último concepto general a describir de todo procedimiento metodológico de la esencia del capital, posicionada dentro de la estructura categorial como clausura de todas las determinaciones precedentes. (shrink)

Disclosure of true but reputation-damaging information is generally legal. But threats to disclose true but reputation-damaging information unless payment is made are generally criminal. Many scholars think that this situation is paradoxical because it seems to involve illegality mysteriously arising out of legality, a criminal act mysteriously arising out of an independently legal threat to disclose conjoined with an independently legal demand for money. -/- But this formulation is not quite right. The real paradox raised by the different legal statuses (...) of blackmail threats to disclose and disclosure itself involves a contradiction between our strong intuition that blackmail threats should be criminal and some equally strong arguments, all of which depend on the fact that disclosure is legal, that blackmail threats should be legal. So an adequate solution to the real Blackmail Paradox requires us either to drop the intuition or to refute the pro-legalization arguments. -/- This Article will adopt the latter approach. It will explain why the six main arguments for legalizing blackmail threats all fail. In the course of refuting one of these arguments, it will also offer a novel positive justification for criminalizing blackmail threats: they should be criminal for the same reason that menacing, harassment, and stalking are criminal--namely, because they involve the reasonable likelihood, and usually the intent, of putting the victim into a state of especially great fear and anxiety. -/- Of course, one might object that disclosure itself is likely to have the same effect, if not malicious purpose. Yet, again, it is still legal. But this point shows only that we as a society value freedom of speech more than we value freedom from infliction of emotional injury. It does not show that we do not value freedom from infliction of emotional injury sufficiently to protect it when competing moral or institutional interests such as freedom of speech are not at stake. (shrink)

In this article, I reply to commentators Leonard Feldblyum, Robert Holub, and David Owen on my article “The Biology of Evil.” While I concede that Nietzsche often invoked standard degenerationist rhetoric about breeding, I argue that Nietzsche, unlike other degenerationists, never offered any concrete plans for such breeding and was not interested in raising the capacities of average citizens, but rather was concerned with the exceptional few. I argue that these “strokes of luck” do not readily lend themselves to planned (...) breeding programs. I concede that Nietzsche did not favor societies that allowed for the integration of foreign elements, but rather some alternation between regimented hierarchical societies and motley societies. However, against Holub's and Feldblyum's contention that Nietzsche was interested in the alleged Jewish problem of his day, I expand on my claim that, for Nietzsche, the current malaise is more a product of the workings of the ancient than the modern Jews. And against Owen and Holub, I defend the claim that degeneration theory was fundamentally Manichean and that Nietzsche resisted this Manichean tendency. (shrink)

This book upholds the idea of learning and education as a means to individual development and social empowerment. Presenting a holistic picture, it looks at learning as an integral part of one's social and physical life.