The impact moral judgments have on our deliberations and actions seems to vary a great deal. Moral judgments play a large part in the lives of some people, who are apt not only to make them, but also to be guided by them in the sense that they tend to pursue what they judge to be of moral value, and shun what they judge to be of moral disvalue. But it seems unrealistic to claim that moral judgments play a pervasive (...) role in the lives of all or even most people. There are considerable variations in how strong a tendency people have to think in moral terms, and in how such thoughts affect their decisions and actions. For every moral hero who single- mindedly pursues moral values, there are thousands of less com- mitted people who only do so when it does not cost them too much in material comfort, personal relations, or social standing. And of course, what counts as too much varies from person to person. On top of such variations, there are those who consistently display mor- al indifference-people who concede, for example, that certain investment policies have morally problematic consequences, but who can readily and without compunction ignore that in their busi- ness decisions. There even seem to be moral subversives, people who intentionally and knowingly pursue what they acknourledge to be morally u~ong or bad, and do so for that very reason. (shrink)

Practical rationality is best regarded as a virtue: an excellence in the exercise of one’s cognitive capacities in one’s practical endeavors. The author develops this idea so as to yield a Humean conception of practical rationality. Nevertheless, one of the crucial features of the approach is not distinctively Humean and sets it apart from the most familiar neo‐Humean approaches: an agent’s practical rationality has to do with the presence and form of his cognitive activity, as well as with how it (...) engages his emotional and motivational states, rather than with the impact that his actions have on his utility or with how his actions relate to his expected utility. The approach also contrasts with full‐information accounts of rationality. The paper ends with a discussion of our interest in operating with the conception of practical rationality that emerges from this approach, even if it is so demanding that it would be humanly impossible to be perfectly practically rational. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between the ascription of value to an object and an assessment of conative attitudes taken towards that object. It argues that this relationship is captured by an a priori necessary truth that falls out of the mastery conditions for the concept of value: what has value is worth valuing, when valuing is understood to be a relatively stable conative attitude distinct from judging valuable. What kind of assessment of attitude is at stake? How are we (...) to understand the worth-relation that holds between an object and the attitude? It is argued that deontological, evaluative and alethic eluciations of the worth-relation are wrongheaded. We should be looking for a mind-world relation that marks a success in how the emotional and motivational energies integral to valuing are directed: a success that does not consist in meeting a deontic requirement, in exemplifying value, or in representing truly. (shrink)

This paper focuses on value as ascribed to what can be desired, enjoyed, cherished, admired, loved, and so on: value that putatively serves as ground for evaluating such attitudes and for justifying conduct. The main question of the paper is whether such value ascriptions are property ascriptions as traditional cognitivism claims. The paper makes the case that although the linguistic evidence favors traditional cognitivism over non-cognitivism about evaluative language, the main tenet of cognitivism is best restated as the thesis that (...) evaluative terms are linguistically encoded classificatory devices. This opens up the theoretical possibility, for even inflationists about properties, to embrace cognitivism without inviting any metaphysical worries about the properties ascribed in evaluative language. (shrink)

Schmid analyzes the historical and recent controversies over language in the U.S., comparing it to two official multilingual societies: Canada and Switzerland. She also examines how people of different language communities co-exist in, or are divided by, a political community.

Artikkelen drøfter i hvilken grad den norske loven om assistert befruktning for lesbiske par vektlegger forskningsbasert kunnskap om barnas oppvekstvilkår. En kunnskapsteoretisk diskusjon om forholdet mellom forskning og politikk er sentral i denne drøftingen. Artikkelens empiriske grunnlag er i hovedsak dokumenter om lovprosessen, resultater fra forskningsfeltet generelt og tilsva­rende lovprosess i Sverige. Dessuten drøftes kritikken rettet mot forskningsfel­tet. Artikkelen viser at forskningsbasert kunnskap er gitt så lav prioritet i det norske lovarbeidet at det har skapt tvil om kunnskapsstatus på området. (...) Sam­tidig synliggjør artikkelen at det foreligger mer forskning på aktuelle forsk­ningsfelt, som samlet sett går i favør av assistert befruktning for lesbiske par. (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

Joining insights from social science and philosophy, this book offers a nuanced view on the discourse of evil, which has been on the rise in the West in recent years. Exploring the famous 'Pear Theft' episode in St Augustine's Confessions, it looks beyond the theological implications of the event to focus instead on the secular insights that it offers when the event is placed in the context of social thought. With attention to Augustine's lengthy reflections on a seemingly marginal episode, (...) the author contends that it is possible to discern the elements of a convincing account of intentional evil action, the Pear Theft representing a case of joint radical improvisation that lacks collective deliberation. As such, a new perspective emerges on familiar and more intuitive forms of evil in joint action that involve group identification and institutional action. Evil in Joint Action will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and philosophy with interests in ethics, collective action and concepts of evil. (shrink)

Der russische Mediziner D.M. Vellanskij besucht Schellings Vorlesungen zur Natur in Würzburg. Den schellingschen Grundgedanken einer Konformation von Mensch und der ihm zugeordneten gott- und seelendurchwirkten Welt nimmt er mit nach Rußland. Der Rekonstruktion dieses Verständniszusammenhangs ist der vorliegende Band gewidmet.

ABSTRACTSchelling’s first Russian disciple, D.M. Vellanskij, met his teacher at Würzburg in 1803. It was the heyday of Schelling’s philosophy of identity, the identity of spirit and nature, of mind and matter. Yet, teacher and student differ on the labels they applied to this philosophy. Vellanskij thought of it as the peak of human ‘Aufklärung’, whereas Schelling abhorred the term due to controversies going on within German philosophy at the time. The argument put forward here is that Vellanskij was right (...) in using the term ‘Enlightenment’ for Schelling’s philosophy of identity, which conceptualized – via nature – the ideas of free movement, tolerance and human solidarity. (shrink)

Issues such as moral motivation, the nature of desire and the difference between moral and scientific inquiry are discussed in this work, among others.

This chapter defends the thesis that an agent can display more or less rationality in selecting ends, even final ends, against the background of a conception of practical rationality as an excellence in the exercise of cognitive capacities in one’s practical endeavors. It moreover argues that Humeans and anti-Humeans alike should accept this conclusion, while refocusing their disagreement on the question of whether excellence in the exercise of cognitive capacities in one’s practical endeavors invariably yields a configuration of attitudes which (...) precludes that some specific kinds of ends make good sense to the agent, so that having these kinds of ends is a sure sign of irrationality. By way of preliminaries, the chapter also offers a new account of ends and motivates the cognitive excellence conception of practical rationality in preference to conceptions of practical rationality as responsiveness to normative reasons or as coherence of attitudes and actions. (shrink)

Part of Slavoj iek's philosophical background is located in German idealism. In this article, his relation to German idealism is critically assessed, and the key to this assessment is found in iek's favorite medium: film. In film, reality can only appear as a new image, replacing an old reality as fictitious, the real itself, however, remains unreachable by thought. At this point, a parallel with German idealism appears: it was Kant who turned reality into a desert, and Hegel and Schelling (...) who tried to retrieve it. Siding with Adorno and Heidegger, iek reaches a negative conclusion that does justice to neither German idealism nor indeed Schelling. His use of German idealism is one-sided and selective, regardless of the fact that it allows him to formulate an adequate critique of Western society. Perceiving a parallel between iek's conception of cinema and Kantian imagination [Einbildungskraft], the final conclusion is that he approaches German idealism not in terms of its conceptual system-character, but in terms of sensual multiplicity, not seeking unity in it, but precisely fragmentation. (shrink)

Considering Ethics in Dance, Theatre and PerformanceBannonFionaPalgrave Macmillan. 2018. pp. xxi + 250. £59.99.

Globalization has made the protection of human rights and the prevention of violations of these rights more complex in recent years. This article reviews a book that challenges the current ‘wisdom’ of human rights obligations that almost uniquely focus on the behaviour of states in relation to their own populations. The focus of this review is the concept of ‘shared responsibility’ for human rights protection that is an essential topic of the book. It assesses the call for responsibility for those (...) states with the power to influence structures in the international community that perpetrate poverty and human rights violations on a large scale. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay considers definitions of racism which emphasise its behavioural, motivational, and cognitive features. The behavioural definition (‘the failure to give equal consideration, based on the fact of race alone’) is rejected, primarily due to its inability to distinguish between ‘true’and ‘ordinary’racism. It is the former which is morally most objectionable — and which identifies the essence of the racist attitude and belief. The central part of the essay argues in favour of the motivational approach to the definition (‘the (...) infliction of unequal consideration, motivated by the desire to dominate, based on race alone’) and clarifies the way in which racism, thus understood, conflicts with the principle of human equality. Finally, the cognitivist definition (‘unequal consideration, out of a belief in the inferiority of another race’) is also rejected, despite its intuitive appeal. The overall discussion has important implications for moral philosophy. It is shown both that the principle of human equality does not strictly imply equal consideration, and that one may violate the principle of equal perception, yet not deny the principle which, from the perspective of this argument, is the more fundamental element in the principle of human equality, the principle of equal human worth. (shrink)

This chapter, composed of three parts by three different authors, proposes that one of the many possible ways that dance might embody philosophic thought and discourse is via embodying ethical practice. Each author contributes a different perspective on the relationship between dance and ethical activity. The perspectives can be read both as separate ideas and as interrelated thoughts. Einav Katan-Schmid views ‘dance’ as a metaphor for ‘embodied ethics’. She analyses dance as an embodied activity of decision-making which regulates the (...) tension between co-existing physical dynamics. Following from the idea of ‘dancing’, she suggests that one think of ‘embodied ethics’ in performative terms – as a contemplative activity. Aili Bresnahan goes on to show how dance practice provides examples of applied ethics within the traditional western philosophical categories of both virtue ethics and consequentialist ethics. In the third section, Sara Houston argues that dance can encompass an ethics of care. She demonstrates how dance with an ethic of care involves attentiveness, putting person before form, and for the dance artists to give up a degree of control and autonomy over the work made. (shrink)

Golf as Meaningful Play is a philosophical introduction to golf as a sporting practice and source of personal meaning. It addresses topics of interest to both scholars and intellectually curious golfers, including mental aspects of play, the nature of sport, virtues of the game, and golf in film and literature.

Egoism and altruism are unequal contenders in the explanation of human behaviour. While egoism tends to be viewed as natural and unproblematic, altruism has always been treated with suspicion, and it has often been argued that apparent cases of altruistic behaviour might really just be some special form of egoism. The reason for this is that egoism fits into our usual theoretical views of human behaviour in a way that altruism does not. This is true on the biological level, where (...) an evolutionary account seems to favour egoism, as well as on the psychological level, where an account of self-interested motivation is deeply rooted in folk psychology and in the economic model of human behaviour. While altruism has started to receive increasing support in both biological and psychological debates over the last decades, this paper focuses on yet another level, where egoism is still widely taken for granted.Philosophical egoism(Martin Hollis’ term) is the view that, on the ultimate level of intentional explanation, all action is motivated by one of the agent's desires. This view is supported by the standard notion that for a complex of behaviour to be an action, there has to be a way to account for that behaviour in terms of the agent's own pro-attitudes.Psychologicalaltruists, it is claimed, arephilosophicalegoists in that they are motivated by desires that have the other's benefit rather than the agent's own for its ultimate object (other-directed desires). This paper casts doubt on this thesis, arguing that empathetic agents act on other people's pro-attitudes in very much the same way as agents usually act on their own, and that while other-directed desires do play an important role in many cases of psychologically altruistic action, they are not necessary in explanations of some of the most basic and most pervasive types of human altruistic behaviour. The paper concludes with the claim that philosophical egoism is really a cultural value rather than a conceptual feature of action. (shrink)

Schmid divides the book into five main discussions: the historical background of the dialogue; the relation of form and content in a Platonic dialogue and specific structural and aesthetic features of the Laches; the first half of the ...

We argue that there is a conflict among classical theism's commitments to divine simplicity, divine creative freedom, and omniscience. We start by defining key terms for the debate related to classical theism. Then we articulate a new argument, the Aloneness Argument, aiming to establish a conflict among these attributes. In broad outline, the argument proceeds as follows. Under classical theism, it's possible that God exists without anything apart from Him. Any knowledge God has in such a world would be wholly (...) intrinsic. But there are contingent truths in every world, including the world in which God exists alone. So, it's possible that God contingently has wholly intrinsic knowledge. But whatever is contingent and wholly intrinsic is an accident. So, God possibly has an accident. This is incompatible with classical theism. Finally, we consider and rebut several objections. (shrink)

This book critically assesses arguments for the existence of the God of classical theism, develops an innovative account of objects’ persistence, and defends new arguments against classical theism. The authors engage the following classical theistic proofs: Aquinas’s First Way, Aquinas’s De Ente argument, and Feser’s Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Augustinian, Thomistic, and Rationalist proofs. The authors also provide the first systematic treatment of the ‘existential inertia thesis’. By connecting the thesis to relativity theory and recent developments in the philosophy of physics, and (...) by developing a variety of novel existential-inertia-friendly explanations of persistence, they mount a formidable new case against classical theistic proofs. Finally, they defend new arguments against classical theism based on abstract objects and changing divine knowledge. The text appeals to students, researchers, and others interested in classical theistic proofs, the existence and nature of God, and the ultimate explanations of persistence, change, and contingency. (shrink)

I defend a new argument for causal finitism, the view that nothing can have an infinite causal history. I begin by defending a number of plausible metaphysical principles, after which I explore a host of novel variants of the Littlewood-Ross and Thomson’s Lamp paradoxes that violate such principles. I argue that causal finitism is the best solution to the paradoxes.

Popper has proposed a ?theory of situational rationality? as a basis for the social sciences. This theory of rational action is reconstructed and its methodological and substantial implications discussed. It is shown that methodologically Popper's idea of rational action leads to a version of theoretical instrumentalism which is incompatible with his general philosophy of science, and that substantially it implies an unacceptable theory of social institutions. Instrumentalism can be avoided by a more contentful theory of human action encompassing ?non?rational? or (...) ?irrational? kinds of action; Popper's theory of institutions might be improved through a more comprehensive theory of collective action. (shrink)

In the Philosophy of Sport literature, play has been widely conceived, in whole or part, as an autotelic activity; that is, an activity pursued for intrinsic factors. I examine several versions of the conception of play as an autotelic activity. Given these different accounts, I raise the question whether the concept of autotelic play is tenable. I examine three possibilities: (i) accept the concept of autotelic play and reject the possibility of satisfying the conditions for play activities; (ii) accept the (...) concept and acknowledge that play refers to a range of activities ranging from the purely autotelic to something less; and, (iii) reject the definition of play as an autotelic activity and redefine play. I argue that the third option is the best avenue for constructing a viable account of play. In defending this third option, I argue that play activities are value laden, that the value of play is an empirical matter, and that the effect of motivating reasons on behavior is the basis for determining which motivating reasons count as intrinsic or extrinsic. I conclude that the weight of the arguments suggest we would be well-served to redefine and move beyond the notion of autotelic play. (shrink)

El problema ecológico no es nuevo, ha acompañado toda la historia reciente de la humanidad. Sin embargo, lo que es nuevo es el alcance que ha tenido desde la modernización tecnológica e industrial de los siglos XIX y XX y que, si los indicios y la información no son engañosos, amenaza con convertirse en un desastre para toda la humanidad en el siglo XXI. El informe de la ONU de la Conferencia sobre el Cambio Climático, del año 2007, y recientemente (...) el desastre nuclear de Fukushima aportan evidencias en esta dirección. ¿Cómo se llegó a esa problemática, cómo evolucionó el saber al respecto y cómo se deja justificar convincentemente la actuación humana y social? ¿Qué puede hacer un individuo para proyectar una vida más sostenible? ¿Qué es el Antropoceno? ¿Es posible construir una sociedad ecológica y solidaria? Estas y otras preguntas se abordan desde la reflexión filosófica en el presente artículo. (shrink)

Met als uitgangspunt de theorie en wijsbegeerte van het wettenrecht wordt een inzicht gegeven in de ontwikkeling van recht en staat in de 20e eeuw.

Edward Feser defends the ‘Aristotelian proof’ for the existence of God, which reasons that the only adequate explanation of the existence of change is in terms of an unchangeable, purely actual being. His argument, however, relies on the falsity of the Existential Inertia Thesis, according to which concrete objects tend to persist in existence without requiring an existential sustaining cause. In this article, I first characterize the dialectical context of Feser’s Aristotelian proof, paying special attention to EIT and its rival (...) thesis—the Existential Expiration Thesis. Next, I provide a more precise characterization of EIT, after which I outline two metaphysical accounts of existential inertia. I then develop new lines of reasoning in favor of EIT that appeal to the theoretical virtues of explanatory power and simplicity. Finally, I address the predominant criticisms of EIT in the literature. (shrink)