In this article we argue that the concept of need is as vital for moral theory as it is for moral life. In II we analyse need and its normativity in public and private moral practice. In III we describe simple cases which exemplify the moral demandingness of needs, and argue that the significance of simple cases for moral theory is obscured by the emphasis in moral philosophy on unusual cases. In IV we argue that moral theories are inadequate if (...) they cannot describe simple needs-meeting cases. We argue that the elimination or reduction of need to other concepts such as value, duty, virtue or care is unsatisfactory, in which case moral theories that make those concepts fundamental will have to be revised. In conclusion, we suggest that if moral theories cannot be revised to accommodate needs, they may have to be replaced with a fully needs-based theory. Correspondence:c1 [email protected] g. brock @auckland.ac.nz. (shrink)

Keith Reader's brief, unfinished article ‘Freeze Peach’ situates contemporary controversies surrounding free speech in relation to material and economic concerns. Ian James's response draws attention to the way Keith does this by bringing together four key figures of late twentieth-century philosophy and theory: Louis Althusser, Jean-François Lyotard, Terry Eagleton and Stanley Fish. Ian argues that the conjugation of Marx-inspired theory with thinkers associated with the postmodern would have allowed Keith to develop a uniquely perceptive and productive insight into the present (...) moment of political disorientation, one which demands a renegotiation of the legacies of both modernity and postmodernity. (shrink)

In our philosophical tradition and our wider culture, we tend to think of persons as agents. This agential conception is flattering, but in this paper I will argue that it conceals a more complex truth about what persons are. In 1. I set the issues in context. In 2. I critically explore four features commonly presented as fundamental to personhood in versions of the agential conception: action, capability, choice and independence. In 3. I argue that each of these agential features (...) presupposes a non-agential feature: agency presupposes patiency, capability presupposes incapability, choice presupposes necessity and independence presupposes dependency. In 4. I argue that such non-agential features, as well as being implicit within the agential conception, are as apt to be constitutive of personhood as agential features, and in 5. I conclude. (shrink)

The rubber hand illusion is one of the most commonly used paradigms to examine the sense of body ownership. Touches are synchronously applied to the real hand, hidden from view, and a false hand in an anatomically congruent position. During the illusion one may perceive that the feeling of touch arises from the false hand, and that the false hand is one's own. The relationship between referral of touch and body ownership in the illusion is unclear, and some articles average (...) responses to statements addressing these experiences, which may be inappropriate depending on the research question of interest. To address these concerns, we re-analyzed three freely available datasets to better understand the relationship between referral of touch and feeling of ownership in the RHI. We found that most participants who report a feeling of ownership also report referral of touch, and that referral of touch and ownership show a moderately strong positive relationship that was highly replicable. In addition, referral of touch tends to be reported more strongly and more frequently than the feeling of ownership over the hand. The former observations confirm that referral of touch and ownership are related experiences in the RHI. The latter, however, indicate that when pooling the statements one may obtain a higher number of illusion ‘responders’ compared to considering the ownership statements in isolation. These results have implications for the RHI as an experimental paradigm. (shrink)

Evolutionary developmental biology (“evo-devo”) may provide insights and new methods for studies of cognition and cultural evolution. For example, I propose using cultural selection and individual learning to examine constraints on cultural evolution. Modularity, the idea that traits vary independently, can facilitate evolution (increase “evolvability”), because evolution can act on one trait without disrupting another. I explore links between cognitive modularity, evolutionary modularity, and cultural evolvability. (Published Online November 9 2006).

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Action and Passivity Capability/Incapability and Need Choice, Rationality, Freedom/Constraint Independence and Dependency References Further reading.

Risky behaviour may be associated with visceral experiences, such as increased heart rate. Previous studies examining the relationship between perception of such signals (interoception) and risk-taking typically used behavioural tasks with potential for monetary reward. This approach may be less informative for understanding general risk propensity. In addition, such research does not usually consider the varied ways individuals engage with interoceptive signals. However, examining these different forms of engagement may help us understand how subjective experience of interoception influences risk-taking. As (...) such, we performed two surveys (n = 471, primarily young adults) to examine the relationship between self-reported engagement with interoceptive signals (measured using the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness) and a generalised measure of risk propensity (the General Risk Propensity Scale). Results indicated that different ways of interpreting or engaging with interoceptive signals were differentially associated with risk propensity. In particular, they provide preliminary evidence that those with the ability to ignore or not worry about visceral signals when they are uncomfortable display greater risk propensity (and these effects may possibly be gender-specific). (shrink)

In this paper I introduce my work in ethics, inviting others to draw on my approach to address the ethical issues that concern them. I set up the Centre for Ethical Philosophy at Durham University in 2007 to plug a puzzling gap in philosophical work to help us help the world. In 1. I set out ethical philosophy. In 2. I consider some implications, for example, that to do good we must pay much more attention to the beings around us, (...) less to ourselves. In 3. I consider the implications for how we should think about war and peace. In 4. I draw out some implications for good political practice. In 5. I consider objections and conclude. (shrink)

One of the most striking contributions of particularism to moral philosophy has been its emphasis on the relative opacity of the moral scene to the tools of rational analysis traditionally used by philosophers. Particularism changes the place of the philosopher in relation to the moral life, pointing up the limits to what philosophy can do here. The modern moral philosopher who takes particularism seriously no longer has the luxury, endemic in our tradition, of imagining that moral philosophy can be done (...) with only passing illustrative reference to experience, or that the truth about the whole of our moral life may be read of a list of a priori moral principles, whose rationality is underwritten by the mechanistic account of what it is to follow a rule that pre-Wittgensteinian philosophers took for granted. (shrink)

This book argues that identified weaknesses in recent theological engagement with New Materialism can be successfully addressed by incorporating insights from Relational Christian Realism. Central themes are those of the relational and the apophatic as they represent different but essential strands of a materialist theology. The relational refers to the work of Deleuze and its influence upon key New Materialist thinkers such as De Landa, Bryant, and Braidotti but supplemented from Relational Christian Realism by Latour and Badiou and with reference (...) to the concept of the apophatic as found in Keller and Kearney. Examining the concepts of transcendence, human agency, and a New Enlightenment, the book moves into more practical areas of aesthetics and technology concluding with a response to the contemporary apocalyptic of climate change. Being "beyond in the midst" requires developing spaces of faithful dissent and holding the tension between the relational and the apophatic in theology.<. (shrink)

A threat to women is obscured when we treat “abortion-as-evacuation” as equivalent to “abortion-as-killing.” This holds only if evacuating a fetus kills it. As technology advances, the equivalence will fail. Any feminist account of abortion that relies on the equivalence leaves moral room for women to be required to give up their fetuses to others when it fails. So an account of the justification of abortion-as-killing is needed that does not depend on the equivalence.

Many animals will invent new behaviour patterns, adjust established behaviours to a novel context, or respond to stresses in an appropriate and novel manner. This is the first ever book on the topic of 'animal innovation'. Bringing together leading scientific authorities on animal and human innovation, this book will put the topic of animal innovation on the map, and heighten awareness of this developing field.

In this paper I argue that cosmopolitanism prohibits war and requires a global approach to criminal justice. My argument proceeds by drawing out some implications of the core cosmopolitan intuition that every human being has a moral status which constrains how they may be treated. In the first part of this paper, I describe cosmopolitanism. In the second part, Cosmopolitanism and War, I analyse violence, consider the standards cosmopolitanism sets for its justification, and argue that war fails to meet them. (...) In the third part, Cosmopolitanism and Criminal Justice, I argue that cosmopolitanism implies a moral obligation to deal justly with human wrongdoing wherever it occurs. Cosmopolitan pacifism follows: war is prohibited, and a consistent global criminal justice system is required. In the fourth part, Why No Cosmopolitan Pacifists?, I consider why cosmopolitans tend not to identify as pacifists, and in the final part, Objections, I discuss some objections. (shrink)

Sociality may not be a defining feature of social learning. Complex social systems have been predicted to favour the evolution of social learning, but the evidence for this relationship is weak. In birds, only one study supports the hypothesis that social learning is an adaptive specialisation to social living. In nonhuman primates, social group size and social learning frequency are not correlated. Though cetaceans may prove an exception, they provide a useful group with which to test these ideas.

Until recently, philosophers tended to be suspicious of the concept of need. Contributors to this volume build on recent work establishing its philosophical importance. David Wiggins, Gillian Brock and John O'Neill propose remedies for some mistakes made in ignoring or marginalising need, for example in need-free theories of rationality or justice. Christopher Rowe, Soran Reader and Sarah Miller highlight insights that emerge when the concept of need is explored through Plato, Aristotle and Kant - and others that emerge when historical (...) work is seen through the lens of need. Jonathan Lowe and Garrett Thomson consider the role need plays in the philosophies of action and mind. Bill Wringe, David Braybrooke and Sabina Alkire debate how our obligations relating to need are best understood and articulated, and how we can best ensure they are fulfilled, exploring for example how talk of need is related to talk of rights, well-being or capability. (shrink)

Aristotle’s account of human needs is valuable because it describes the connections between logical, metaphysical, physical, human and ethical necessities. But Aristotle does not fully draw out the implications of the account of necessity for needs and virtue. The proper Aristotelian conclusion is that, far from being an inferior activity fit only for slaves, meeting needs is the first part of Aristotelian virtue.

Evolutionary questions require specialized approaches, part of which are comparisons between close relatives. However, to understand the origins of human tool behavior, comparisons with solely chimpanzees are insufficient, lacking the power to identify derived traits. Moreover, tool use is unlikely a unitary phenomenon. Large-scale comparative analyses provide an alternative and suggest that tool use co-evolves with a suite of cognitive traits.

Our aims in this paper are: (1) to indicate some of the many ways in which needs are an important part of the moral landscape, (2) to show that the dominant contemporary moral theories cannot adequately capture the moral significance of needs, indeed, that the dominant theories are inadequate to the extent that they cannot accommodate the insights which attention to needs yield, (3) to offer some sketches that should be helpful to future cartographers charting the domain of morally significant (...) needs, and (4) to consider some anticipated objections to our project and offer some replies. (shrink)