Inspired by Peter van Inwagen’s “simulacra model” of the resurrection, I investigate whether it could be reasonable to adopt an analogous approach to the problem of evil. Empirically Skeptical Theism, as I call it, is the hypothesis that God shields our lives from irredeemable evils surreptitiously (just as van Inwagen proposes that God shields our bodies from destruction surreptitiously). I argue that EST compares favorably with traditional skeptical theism and with eschatological theodicies, and that EST does not have (...) the negative moral consequences we might suppose. (shrink)

Think of the last thing someone did to you to seriously harm or offend you. And now imagine, so far as you can, becoming fully aware of the fact that his or her action was the causally inevitable result of a plan set into motion before he or she was ever even born, a plan that had no chance of failing. Should you continue to regard him or her as being morally responsible—blameworthy, in this case—for what he or she did? (...) Many have thought that, intuitively, you should not. Recently, Alfred Mele has employed this line of thought to mount what many have taken to be a powerful argument for incompatibilism: the “Zygote Argument”. However, in interesting new papers, John Martin Fischer and Stephen Kearns have each independently argued that the Zygote Argument fails. As I see it, the criticisms of Fischer and Kearns reveal some important questions about how the argument is meant to be—or how it would best be—understood. Once we make a slight (but important) modification to the argument, however, I think we will be able to see that the criticisms of Fischer and Kearns do not detract from its substantial force. (shrink)

The plane was going to crash, but it didn't. Johnny was going to bleed to death, but he didn't. Geach sees here a changing future. In this paper, I develop Geach's primary argument for the (almost universally rejected) thesis that the future is mutable (an argument from the nature of prevention), respond to the most serious objections such a view faces, and consider how Geach's view bears on traditional debates concerning divine foreknowledge and human freedom. As I hope to show, (...) Geach's view constitutes a radically new view on the logic of future contingents, and deserves the status of a theoretical contender in these debates. (shrink)

The most promising way of responding to arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom (in one way or another) invokes a claim about the order of explanation: God knew (or believed) that you would perform a given action because you would, in fact, perform it, and not the other way around. Once we see this result, many suppose, we'll see that divine foreknowledge ultimately poses no threat to human freedom. This essay argues that matters are not so (...) simple, for such reasoning threatens also to reconcile divine prepunishment with human freedom. The question here is this: if you have already been ( justly) punished by God for doing something, how then could you avoid doing that thing? As we'll see, there is a strong argument that seems to show that you couldn't. However, this essay argues that if divine prepunishment rules out human freedom, then so does divine foreknowledge. The arguments are exactly parallel in certain crucial respects. At any rate, investigating the issues surrounding prepunishment can help to throw into relief the various different strategies of response to the foreknowledge argument and can bring out what their costs and commitments really are. In particular, investigating prepunishment can help to bring out the inadequacy of the “Ockhamist” reply to the argument, as well as the sense in which God's past beliefs need to depend on what we do, if we are plausibly to have a choice about those beliefs. (shrink)

Female coital orgasm may be an adaptation for preferentially retaining the sperm of males with “good genes.” One indicator of good genes may be physical attractiveness. Accordingly, R. Thornhill, S. W. Gangestad, and R. Comer (1995) found that women mated to more attractive men reported an orgasm during a greater proportion of copulations than did women mated to less attractive men. The current research replicates this finding, with several design variations. We collected self-report data from 388 women residing in the (...) United States or in Germany. Results support the hypothesis that women mated to more attractive men are more likely to report an orgasm at the most recent copulation than are women mated to less attractive men, after statistically controlling for several key variables. Discussion addresses (a) the inability of the present research to specify the causal link between female orgasm and male attractiveness and (b) the proactive nature of female sexuality documented in recent research guided by an evolutionary perspective. (shrink)

Pendant et juste après l’explosion de 1968, l’extrême droite, au moins dans ses publications, a réussi à reconvertir son obsession algérienne – de la « trahison » de l’Algérie français à la description des hommes Algériens comme une menace pour la France d’alors – dans l’élaboration de grilles d’analyse reposant sur un registre sexué et sexuel permettant de comprendre « Mai » : c’est-à-dire à la fois les événements eux-mêmes et la crise générale qui minait la France.

Is evil a distinct moral concept? Or are evil actions just very wrong actions? Some philosophers have argued that evil is a distinct moral concept. These philosophers argue that evil is qualitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing. Other philosophers have suggested that evil is only quantitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing. On this view, evil is just very wrong. In this paper I argue that evil is qualitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing. The first part of the paper is critical. I argue that (...) Luke Russell’s attempt to show that evil is only quantitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing fails. Russell’s argument fails because it is based on an implausible criterion for determining whether two concepts are qualitatively distinct. I offer a more plausible criterion and argue that based on this criterion evil and wrongdoing are qualitatively distinct. To help make my case, I sketch a theory of evil which makes a genuinely qualitative distinction between evil and wrongdoing. I argue that we cannot characterize evil as just very wrong on plausible conceptions of evil and wrongdoing. I focus on act-consequentialist, Kantian, and contractarian conceptions of wrongdoing. (shrink)

A common objection to representationalism is that a representationalist view of phenomenal character cannot accommodate the effects that shifts in covert attention have on visual phenomenology: covert attention can make items more visually prominent than they would otherwise be without altering the content of visual experience. Recent empirical work on attention casts doubt on previous attempts to advance this type of objection to representationalism and it also points the way to an alternative development of the objection.

This paper defines the form of prior knowledge that is required for sound inferences by analogy and single-instance generalizations, in both logical and probabilistic reasoning. In the logical case, the first order determination rule defined in Davies (1985) is shown to solve both the justification and non-redundancy problems for analogical inference. The statistical analogue of determination that is put forward is termed 'uniformity'. Based on the semantics of determination and uniformity, a third notion of "relevance" is defined, both logically and (...) probabilistically. The statistical relevance of one function in determining another is put forward as a way of defining the value of information: The statistical relevance of a function F to a function G is the absolute value of the change in one's information about the value of G afforded by specifying the value of F. This theory provides normative justifications for conclusions projected by analogy from one case to another, and for generalization from an instance to a rule. The soundness of such conclusions, in either the logical or the probabilistic case, can be identified with the extent to which the corresponding criteria (determination and uniformity) actually hold for the features being related. (shrink)

Central to Fischer and Ravizza's theory of moral responsibility is the concept of guidance control, which involves two conditions: (1) moderate reasons-responsiveness, and (2) mechanism ownership. We raise a worry for Fischer and Ravizza's account of (1). If an agent acts contrary to reasons which he could not recognize, this should lead us to conclude that he is not morally responsible for his behaviour; but according to Fischer and Ravizza's account, he satisfies the conditions for guidance control and is therefore (...) morally responsible. We consider ways in which the account of guidance control might be mended. (shrink)

An attempt to show that Plato has a unified approach to the rationality of belief and the rationality of desire, and that his defense of that approach is a powerful one.

This fascinating volume will be invaluable to neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and philosophers of mind, and to their students and ...

In this re-titled and substantially revised update of his _Classical Philosophy_, Christopher Shields expands his coverage to include the Hellenistic era, and now offers an introduction to more than 1,000 years of ancient philosophy. From Thales and other Pre-Socratics through Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and on to Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Scepticism, _Ancient Philosophy_ traces the important connections between these periods and individuals without losing sight of the novelties and dynamics unique to each. The coverage of Plato and Aristotle also (...) has been expanded. It now includes, for example, updated coverage of Plato's allegories of the cave and the divided line and the metaphor of the sun as well as features of Plato's epistemology. Shields also adds new discussion on Aristotle's theory of virtue and his approach to the Socratic problem of _akrasia_, or weakness of will. In terms of its structure, _Ancient Philosophy_ is presented so that each philosophical position receives: a brief introduction, a sympathetic review of its principal motivations and primary supporting arguments, and a short assessment, inviting readers to evaluate its plausibility. The result is a book that brings the ancient arguments to life, making the introduction truly contemporary. It will serve as both a first stop and a well visited resource for any student of the subject. _Ancient Philosophy_ offers a vivid picture of the ideas that flourished at philosophy's long birth and considers their relevance, both to the historical development of the Western philosophical tradition, and to philosophy today. (shrink)

An overview of Hilary Putnam's engagement with pragmatism.

Teachers are often placed in a space of tensionbetween responding to students as persons andresponding to students through theirinstitutionally-defined roles. Particularlywith respect to eros, which has becomeincreasingly the subject of strictinstitutional legislation and regulation,teachers have little recourse to a language ofresponsibility outside an institutional frame. By studying the significance of communicativeambiguity for responsibility, this paperexplores what is ethically at stake forteachers in erotic forms of communication. Specifically, it is Levinas's own ambiguousunderstanding of the ethical significance oferos, and what we have (...) to learn from it, thatoffers a way of reading the place of eros inresponsibility. I conclude my discussion withsome thoughts on what a renewed understandingof responsibility might mean at the personaland institutional levels. (shrink)

This study investigated the multidimensional structure of judgements of emotional appropriateness, the degree to which an observer judges a target's emotion to conform to observer-valued expectations for emotion in that context. Participants (N=169) were shown one of two brief video clips of an actor either showing anger or neutral expressions in an anger-evoking situation of either low, medium, or high severity. Participants rated the target's emotion on the Perception of Emotion Appropriateness Rating Scale (PEARS), which taps observers’ perceptions of a (...) target's emotional appropriateness for a specific situation. We found that appropriateness ratings are comprised of three factors, assessment of Type Present (type of emotion in expression); Type Absent (missing key emotions); and Intensity (intensity with which the emotion is felt or expressed). Results are discussed in terms of the usefulness of a multidimensional conceptualisation of emotional appropriateness. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

In the opening section of this paper we spell out an account of our na ve view of bodily sensations that is of historical and philosophical significance. This account of our shared view of bodily sensations captures common ground between Descartes, who endorses an error theory regarding our everyday thinking about bodily sensations, and Berkeley, who is more sympathetic with common sense. In the second part of the paper we develop an alternative to this account and discuss what is at (...) stake in deciding between these two ways of understanding our everyday view. In the third and final part of the paper we offer an argument in favour of our alternative. (shrink)

Politics today seems to be marked either by fear or conciliation. The idea of a radical break with the present has, for many, been removed from the agenda. What tie together the thought of Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou is a commitment to politics as offering the possibility of a break with the present. This paper examines their common thought, as well as what divides them, from the perspective of a renewal of the political project of resistance.

Researchers investigating gender and anger have consistently found that White women, but not White men, are evaluated unfavorably when experiencing anger in the workplace. Our project originally aimed to extend findings on White women’s, Black women’s, and White men’s workplace anger by examining whether evaluations are exacerbated or buffered by invalidating or affirming comments from others. In stark contrast to previous research on gender stereotyping and anger evaluations, however, results across four studies (N= 1,095) showed that both Black and White (...) women portrayed as experiencing anger in the workplace were evaluatedmore favorablythan White men doing so. After Study 1’s initial failure to conceptually replicate, we investigated whether perceivers’ evaluations of women’s workplace anger could have been affected by the contemporaneous cultural event of #MeToo. Supporting this possibility, we found evaluations were moderated by news engagement and beliefs that workplace opportunities are gendered. Additionally, we found invalidating comments rarely affected evaluations of a protagonist yet affirming comments tended to favorably affect evaluations. Overall, findings suggest the need for psychologists to consider the temporary, or perhaps lasting, effects of cultural events on research outcomes. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Analytic philosophers have criticized A. N. Whitehead's metaphysics for being obscure, yet several such philosophers have espoused positions in metaphysics and philosophy of mind that were advanced by Whitehead in the 1920s. In this paper, we evaluate the merits and demerits of these criticisms by Bertrand Russell, W. V. Quine, Karl Popper, and others and then demonstrate the affinities and contrasts in the positions advanced by Galen Strawson, David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, and Whitehead regarding so-called ‘analytic panexperientialism’.

This article offers a series of critical theorizations on the biopolitical dimensions of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), with specific attention to what has recently been referred to in the United States as the ‘MRSA Epidemic’. In particular, we reflect on the proliferation of biomedical discourses around the ‘spread’, and the pathogenic potentialities, of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA). We turn to the work of Roberto Esposito and Jean-Luc Nancy to better make sense of how, during this immunological crisis, the individualized (...) fleshy and fluid body is articulated to dimensions of community and corporeal proximity; the body is thus conceived in popular biopolitical framings as a site of transmission, inoculation, and isolation – as a living ecological and pathological vessel. We give emphasis to the spatial relations of flesh, namely in how biomedical ‘experts’ have sought to (bio-)technologize spaces of heightened communal bodily contact (such as playgrounds or gymnasia). (shrink)

Michael Bergmann seeks to motivate his externalist, proper function theory of epistemic justification by providing three objections to the mentalism and mentalist evidentialism characteristic of nonexternalists such as Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. Bergmann argues that (i) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that justification depends on mental states; (ii) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of an epistemic input to a belief-forming process must be due to an essential feature of that input, and, (...) relatedly, that mentalist evidentialism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of doxastic response B to evidence E is an essential property of B–E; and (iii) mentalist evidentialism is “unmotivated”. I object to each argument. The argument for (i) begs the question. The argument for (ii) suffers from the fact that mentalist evidentialists are not committed to the consequences claimed for them; nevertheless, I show that there is, in the neighborhood, a substantive dispute concerning the nature of doxastic epistemic fittingness. That dispute involves what I call “Necessary Fittingness”, the view that, necessarily, exactly one (at most) doxastic attitude ( belief , or disbelief , or suspension of judgment ) toward a proposition is epistemically fitting with respect to a person’s total evidence at any time. Reflection on my super-blooper epistemic design counterexamples to Bergmann’s proper function theory reveals both the plausibility of Necessary Fittingness and a good reason to deny (iii). Mentalist evidentialism is thus vindicated against the objections. (shrink)

My purpose in this paper is to argue that we are not vulnerableto inescapable wrongdoing occasioned by tragic dilemmas. I directmy argument to those who are most inclined to accept tragicdilemmas: those of broadly Nietzschean inclination who reject``modern moral philosophy'''' in favor of the ethical ideas of theclassical Greeks. Two important features of their project are todeny the usefulness of the ``moral/nonmoral distinction,'''' and todeny that what are usually classified as moral reasons always oreven characteristically ``trump'''' nonmoral reasons in anadmirable (...) agent''s deliberations.I show critics of modern moral philosophy such as BernardWilliams that their acceptance of tragic dilemmas underminestheir project of denying the moral/nonmoral distinction and thepriority of moral reasons. The possibility of tragic dilemmasrequires an account of practical deliberation in which moralreasons appear as already in-force obligations, with blame andguilt ready to be invoked, while nonmoral reasons appear as merereasons. This makes moral reasons importantly different fromnonmoral reasons in how they achieve their deliberative weight,and also makes them characteristically weightier. Thus,accommodating tragic dilemmas reinforces the moral/nonmoraldistinction and the priority of moral reasons, the very thingsthese critics want to deny. By accepting the possibility oftragic dilemmas, these critics are undermining their own project.The standard normative theories are dead set against tragicdilemmas, and the critics of modern moral philosophy shouldreject tragic dilemmas for the good of their project. Thus we allshould reject tragic dilemmas. (shrink)

Green consumerism is on the rise in America, but its environmental effects are contested. Does green marketing contribute to the greening of American consciousness, or does it encourage corporate greenwashing? This tenuous ethical position means that eco-marketers must carefully frame their environmental products in a way that appeals to consumers with environmental ethics and buyers who consider natural products as well as conventional items. Thus, eco-marketing constructs a complicated ethical identity for the green consumer. Environmentally aware individuals are already guided (...) by their personal ethics. In trying to attract new consumers, environmentally minded businesses attach an aesthetic quality to environmental goods. In an era where environmentalism is increasingly hip, what are the implications for an environmental ethics infused with a sense of aesthetics? This article analyzes the promotional materials of three companies that advertise their environmental consciousness: Burt's Bee's Inc., Tom's of Maine, Inc., and The Body Shop Inc. Responding to an increasing online shopping market, these companies make their promotional and marketing materials available online, and these web-based materials replicate their printed catalogs and indoor advertisements. As part of selling products to consumers based on a set of ideological values, these companies employ two specific discursive strategies to sell their products: they create enhanced notions of beauty by emphasizing the performance of their natural products, and thus infuse green consumerism with a unique environmental aesthetic. They also convey ideas of health through community values, which in turn enhances notions of personal health to include ecological well-being. This article explicates the ethical implications of a personal natural care discourse for eco-marketing strategies, and the significance of a green consumer aesthetic for environmental consciousness in general. (shrink)

In an interesting passage in the Philebus , Plato associates pure beauty with geometrical forms created by certain measuring tools used both by mathematicians and carpenters. The ‘beauty of figures’ is analysed as' something straight [εθ τι]… and round [περιφερς] and the two- and three-dimensional figures generated from these by [τρνοι] and ruler [κανσ7iota;] and set-squares [γωναι]' He continues: ‘For I maintain that these things are not beautiful in relation to something, as other things are, but they are always beautiful (...) by nature, by themselves…’. (shrink)

The recived view in contemporary philosophy of action, inspired and sustained largely by Donald Davidson and his followers, holds that an action is intentional if and only if it is caused in the right way by beliefs and desires. In what follows below I discuss Merleau-Ponty’s account of bodily intentionality, with the aim of showing that it offers us an account of a form of intentional behavior that cannot be understood in terms of causally efficacious mental states like beliefs or (...) desires. the aim, in short, is to show that, however things may stand with other forms of intentional behavior (deliberate action, for example), bodily intentional behavior is autonomously intentional --- it doesn’t derive its intentionality from the intentionality of mental states. (shrink)

In his highly influential "The Interpretation of Cultures," anthropologist Clifford Geertz argues that the study of culture ought to be "not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning." I argue that the two need not be opposed. The best way of making sense of the social scientific practice of looking at meaning is to see interpretivists as looking at typical mental reactions that people in a given culture have to certain acts and (...) artifacts. I argue that scientific theories of the mental—rather than minimalist—theories are needed for this practice to be successful. (shrink)

Herodotus tells us in book vii, ch. 220, that the Pythian priestess gave the Spartans a warning couched in hexameters, of which the second line begins ἢ μγα στυ ρικυδς. To this text the admirable commentary of How and Wells takes exception in the following note: ‘The synizesis στυ ρικυδς is intolerable. Read δμ' ρικυδς, στυ being a gloss, H. Richards, Cl. Rev. xix. 345.’ Doubtless this union of vowels is harder than that of υω in ρινων or in γενων (...) and δυωδεκμηνον, accepted by Christ in his edition of Pindar . Let us grant that from the point of view of elegance it is even intolerable; the question still remains, should the line be altered? (shrink)

This book will be received ill-naturedly by those who think that a book with such a title ought, mainly anyway, to consist of critical exegesis of the work of its philosophical heroes and/or villains on the “central themes” which Professor Bennett selects for his attention. Such readers are likely to feel that when Bennett attributes this or that view, error, or insight to one of the protagonists, he ought usually t o put the man's name in quotation marks. But such (...) a reaction to this book would be at least churlish, for Bennett explicitly eschews both historical concerns and scholarship except in the limited sense that he sometimes pays close attention to textual details. (shrink)

Blockhead or or Baldhead? Petron. Sat. 39. 12: ‘in Aquario copones et cucurbitae’. Apul.Met. I. 15: ‘nos cucurbitae caput non habemus ut pro te moriamur’. Cucurbita in its literal use is the name of many varieties of the numerous family of Cucurbitaceae, as one may learn, e.g. from Plin. Nat. Hist. xix. It is also the name of the cupping instrument called by Juvenal, xiv. 58, uentosa cucurbita, for which see Mayor's note ad loc. For other metaphorical uses of the (...) name, Forcellini and the Thes. Ling. Lat. cite only the two passages quoted above; of these two, Lewis and Short cite only the former. Lexicographers and editors,1 comparing the one passage with the other, concur in the view that the cucurbita is the symbol of stupidity, and that a stupid man may be called a cucurbita, as in Petronius, or be said cucurbitae caput habere, as in Apuleius. At first sight their interpretation of the Apuleian phrase is plausible, for it makes tolerable sense in the context and appears to be supported by such modern expressions as ‘pumpkin-head’ and Kürbiskopf and κεχλι κολοκνθνιον, all of which liken the head of a stupid man to a pumpkin or other gourd which, though bearing some resemblance to a human head, encloses not a brain but an insensate mass of pulp and seeds. But ‘to have a pumpkin-head’ and ‘to be a pumpkin’ are prima facie very different, for the latter equates the man himself with the cucurbita, whereas it is only qua substitute for a head that the cucurbita can typify stupidity; and when it is further observed that in the Petronian passage cucurbitae so interpreted accords ill with the context, it becomes clear that some other explanation must be sought. (shrink)

Efforts to retrieve John Courtney Murray's thought must address two questions: What has changed in the quarter-century since Murray's death? What resources does his oeuvre offer for the present situation? In examining Murray's contribution to current policy debates about church-state relations, I will first review the historically conscious methodology he drew upon and the details of his argument in favor of religious liberty. However, in the years since Murray wrote, American religious communities have been severely eroded, with the consequence that (...) Murray's argument no longer has the same force. I therefore propose a reformulation of the basis for religious freedom in order to take into account the need to maintain the social conditions necessary for the exercise of religious freedom. Such a reformulation has significant implications with regard to the question of public funding for religiously affiliated private schools. (shrink)