If the bindingness of morality was to rest on something as ‘subjective’ as the non-cognitivist says it does, the grouse goes, and morality itself would come down crashing. Nothing less than an ‘objective’ source of normativity, it is supposed, could hold morality in orbit. Some of these worries automatically morph into worries about the projectivist model of normativity of law as well: one which understands the authority or normativity of law in terms of subjective attitudes taken towards the law. As (...) well as the stock worries about non-cognitivism, there are some additional ones that the projectivist model brings in its wake that it cannot account for the ‘uniform’ bindingness of law and that a subjective source of normativity of law based on mental states is unintelligible. This essay makes the case for acquitting the projectivist model of normativity of law from the above charges. But the route to that necessarily leads through first acquitt... (shrink)

Ben Spiecker; Indoctrination, Intellectual Virtues and Rational Emotions, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 261–266, ht.

I argue that philosophical practice is a clinically active and influential endeavor, with both positive (therapeutic) and negative (detrimental) psychological possibilities. Though some have explicitly taken the clinical aspects of philosophy into the therapeutic realm via the new field of philosophical counseling, I am interested in the clinical context of philosophers as philosophers, engaged in standard, philosophical pursuits. In arguing for the clinical implications of philosophical practice I consider the relation between philosophical despair and depression, the cognitive etiology of depression (...) and other clinical disorders, selected DSM‐IV entries, attribution theory, and cognitive therapy. (shrink)