The overarching goal of this book is to differentiate and provide a highly detailed descriptive account of a specific class of arguments. To simplify, let us consider the following example: suppose one aims to persuade that “Julius Caesar was a criminal.” To support that claim various arguments may be formulated, such as: a) Joseph Stalin murdered his political opponents who openly opposed him, thus he was a criminal. Julius Caesar did the same. Therefore, if Stalin was a criminal, then Caesar (...) was also a criminal. b) Most historians studying the history of the Roman Empire consider Julius Caesar to be a criminal, so he was one. c) The majority of people believe Julius Caesar was a criminal, so he was one. d) Anyone who murders or orders the killing of others is a criminal—regardless of whether it’s in defense of the country or to maintain power. Julius Caesar issued orders resulting in thousands of deaths, so he was a criminal. Argumentation theory distinguishes and extensively describes different types of arguments, each with its own definition, argumentation scheme, subtypes, and criteria for evaluation. We may, therefore, identify that: example (a) employs the argument from analogy, (b) is an argument from authority (ad auctoritate), and (c) is an argument from popular opinion (ad populum). What about (d)? Is there a theory for such arguments? Argument in the example (d) establishes the meaning of “criminal” by extending it to those who lead troops into battle or kill in self-defense, and in this way, Caesar can also be included in the extension of a “criminal” (regardless of whether he committed genocide or simply won battles). Although there are many concepts in argumentation theory and informal logic that explain various aspect of such arguments (e.g., persuasive definitions and persuasive quasi-definitions, attributions, classification arguments, etc.) there is no theory for such arguments—or rather—there was no until now. This book is aimed to provide a concept, classification, and assessment criteria for arguments which fix the meaning to support persuasion—namely, semantic arguments. Semantic arguments manifest themselves as a common and very powerful means of persuasion in various areas of human activity, including political discourse, advertising, science, law, and philosophy. This can be illustrated through an analysis of some examples: e.g., the redefinition of “planet” proposed in 2008 to exclude Pluto from the scope of this concept, the redefinition of the term “wetland” put forward by G.W. Bush in 1988, modifications of the definition of “human being” in disputes about abortion, or the definition of “vehicle” in cases of accidents involving electric scooters. The book’s goal is to provide a model of semantic argument—differentiating arguments that fix meaning for persuasive purposes, providing definition and scheme, constructing a comprehensive classification, and developing assessment criteria. This broader aim also fills a gap in argumentation theory regarding our understanding of semantic arguments and their actual and potential applications. (shrink)

Who is morally permitted to tell jokes about Jews? Poles? Women? Only those in the group? Only those who would be punching up? Anyone, since they are just jokes? All of the standard approaches are too broad or too narrow. In on the Joke provides a more sophisticated approach according to which each person possesses "joke capital" that can serve as "comic insurance" covering certain jokes in certain contexts. When Bob tells a joke about Jews, we can never know exactly (...) what Bob is intending since we cannot see inside Bob’s mind. But we could reasonably infer, if we knew Bob himself was Jewish, if he worked tirelessly for Jewish causes, or was a card-carrying Neo-Nazi. Each would affect his joke capital, and, in certain circumstances, we would have a moral standing to demand to see his ledger to see how much joke capital he had with respect to Jews. The permissibility of that joke depends upon four factors: the joke, the teller of the joke, the audience, and the setting. The view developed in In on the Joke is the only view that clearly explains how each of these components work together in an integrated, effective ethic of humor. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers have disagreed about whether "the folk" are intuitively incompatibilists or compatibilists, and they have disagreed about the role of abstraction in generating such intuitions. New experimental evidence using Construal Level Theory is presented. The experiments support the views that the folk are intuitively both incompatibilists and compatibilists, and that abstract mental representations do shift intuitions, but not in a univocal way.

The “welcome return” to “substantive political philosophy” that Rawls'sA Theory of Justicewas said to herald has resulted in forty years of proposals seeking to show that philosophical reflection leads to the demonstrable truth of almost every and any conceivable view of the justice of property rights. Select any view—from the justice of unregulated capitalist markets to the most extreme forms of egalitarianism—and one will find that some philosophers have proclaimed that rational reflection uniquely leads to its justice. This is, I (...) believe, a sort of ideological thinking masquerading as philosophizing. In this paper, using some tools from game theory as well as experimental findings, I seek to sketch a non-ideological approach to the question of the justification of property rights. On this approach the aim of political philosophy is, first and foremost, to reflect on whether our social rules of property are within the “optimal eligible set” of rules acceptable to all. (shrink)

A response to a recent critique by Cem Bozşahin of the theory of syntactic semantics as it applies to Helen Keller, and some applications of the theory to the philosophy of computer science.

The Middle Included is a systematic exploration of the meanings of logos throughout Aristotle’s work. It claims that the basic meaning is “gathering,” a relation that holds its terms together without isolating them or collapsing one to the other. This meaning also applies to logos in the sense of human language. Aristotle describes how some animals are capable of understanding non-firsthand experience without being able to relay it, while others relay it without understanding. Aygün argues that what distinguishes human language, (...) for Aristotle, is its ability to both understand and relay firsthand and non-firsthand experiences. This ability is key to understanding the human condition: science, history, news media, propaganda, gossip, utopian fiction, and sophistry, as well as philosophy. Ömer Aygün finds Aristotle’s name for this peculiar but crucial human ability of “gathering” both experiences is logos, and this leads to a claim about the specificity of human rationality and language. (shrink)

The paper examines today’s debate on the new responsibilities of Internet service providers in connection with legal problems concerning jurisdiction, data processing, people’s privacy and education. The focus is foremost on the default rules and safe harbour clauses for ISPs liability, set up by the US and European legal systems. This framework is deepened in light of the different functions of the services provided on the Internet so as to highlight multiple levels of control over information and, correspondingly, different types (...) of liability. The new responsibilities of ISPs concern the original “end-to-end” architecture of the medium and policies on design rather than responsibility for user content and individual messages. (shrink)

In order to present a hopefully comprehensive framework of what is the stake of the growing use of robot soldiers, the paper focuses on: the different impact of robots on legal systems, e.g., contractual obligations and tort liability; how robots affect crucial notions as causality, predictability and human culpability in criminal law and, finally, specific hypotheses of robots employed in “just wars.” By using the traditional distinction between causes that make wars just and conduct admissible on the battlefield, the aim (...) is to clarify how advancement of military robotics technology is transforming a 2,000-year-old legal debate on the concept of “just war.” For the first time, legal systems will hold political authorities and military commissioners responsible for what an artificial soldier autonomously decides to do. The paper examines how the new scenario affects both principles of military conduct and notions of justice in resorting to war. (shrink)

What psychological and philosophical significance should we attach to recent efforts at computer simulations of human cognitive capacities? In answering this question, I find it useful to distinguish what I will call "strong" AI from "weak" or "cautious" AI. According to weak AI, the principal value of the computer in the study of the mind is that it gives us a very powerful tool. For example, it enables us to formulate and test hypotheses in a more rigorous and precise fashion. (...) But according to strong AI, the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather, the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind, in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to. (shrink)

A chapter reviewing recent experimental work on people's conceptions of ownership rights.

The central question of the branch of metaethics we may call philosophical moral psychology concerns the nature or essence of moral judgment: what is it to think that something is right or wrong, good or bad, obligatory or forbidden? One datum in this inquiry is that sincerely held moral views appear to influence conduct: on the whole, people do not engage in behaviours they genuinely consider base or evil, sometimes even when they would stand to benefit from it personally. Moral (...) judgments thus appear to be motivationally effective, at least to an extent. This motivational success would be readily explained if they simply were motivationally effective psychological states, such as desires. This is what Hobbes seems to do when he claims that "whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate and aversion, evil."1 But this is far too quick. We know that moral judgments can also fail to lead to corresponding action. For example, since it is conceptually possible – not to mention all too common in the actual world – to think that something is wrong and yet want to do it, thinking that something is wrong cannot simply consist in aversion toward it, unlike Hobbes seems to have thought. In this way, reflection on the various.. (shrink)

Language was central to Hobbes's understanding of human beings and their mental abilities, and criticism of other philosophers' uses of language became a favorite critical tool for him. This paper connects Hobbes's theories about language to his criticisms of others' language, examining Hobbes's theories of propositions and truth, and how they relate to his claims that various sorts of proposition are absurd. It considers whether Hobbes in fact means anything more by 'absurd' than 'false'. And it pays particular attention to (...) Hobbes's categorization of causes of absurdity and of types of incoherent proposition, arguing that Hobbes's approach is only loosely related to later discussions of category mistakes. (shrink)

Informal political representation can be a political lifeline, particularly for oppressed and marginalized groups. Such representation can give these groups some say, however mediate, partial, and imperfect, in how things go for them. Coeval with the political goods such representation offers these groups are its particular dangers to them. Mindful of these dangers, skeptics challenge the practice for being, inter alia, unaccountable, unauthorized, inegalitarian, and oppressive. These challenges provide strong pro tanto reasons to think the practice morally impermissible. This paper (...) considers the question: On what conditions is the informal political representation of oppressed and marginalized groups permissible? By responding to skeptics’ challenges, I develop a systematic account of moral constraints that, if adopted, would make such representation permissible. The account that emerges shows that informal political representatives (IPRs) must aim to fulfill two sets of sometimes conflicting duties to the represented: democracy within duties, which concern how the representative treats and relates to the represented, and justice without duties, which concern how the representative’s actions advance the aims of the representation. (shrink)

Scholars have long posited justice as a core value of public relations. However, that value has been criticized as being improbably idealistic. Philosopher David Hume locates the origins of justice within the need for property and the reliable exchange of resources. Hume thus embeds the origins of justice within a staple of public relations theory: resource dependency theory. Additionally, Hume believes a respect for justice to be the foundation of a positive reputation. This grounding of the quest for justice in (...) resource dependency and reputation helps establish a realistic basis for accepting justice as a core value of public relations. (shrink)

This paper offers a defence of the Communicative Theory of Punishment against recent criticisms due to Matt Matravers. According to the Communicative Theory, the intentional imposition of suffering by the judiciary is justified because it is intrinsic to the condemnation and censure that an offender deserves as a result of wrongdoing. Matravers raises a number of worries about this idea – grounded in his thought that suffering isn’t necessary for censure, and as a consequence sometimes the imposition of suffering can (...) be unjust. I respond by arguing that the imposition of suffering is an essential part of a suite of emotional responses that wrongdoing merits. As a result, and contrary to what Matravers suggests, words are not enough for censure and condemnation. (shrink)

Anger is often an appropriate reaction to harms and injustices, but is it a politically beneficial one? Martha Nussbaum (Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (1), 41–56, 2015, Anger and Forgiveness. Oxford University Press, 2016) has argued that, although anger is useful in initially recruiting agents for action, anger is typically counterproductive to securing the political aims of those harmed. After the initial shockwave of outrage, Nussbaum argues that to be effective at enacting positive social change, groups and individuals (...) alike, must move quickly out of the state of anger. Feminist theorists (Frye, The Politics of Reality. Crossing Press, 1983; Lorde, 1997; Narayan, Hypatia 3 (2): 31–48, 1988) on the other hand have for long highlighted the efficacy of anger, as well as its moral and epistemic value, in fighting against the oppressive status quo. It might be thought therefore that for political action to be effective, a continued state of anger is preferable. Protestors must after all create and sustain a sense of moral obligation and justice. A main way of doing so is to promote successive moral shocks that trigger outrage (Jasper, Emotion Review 6 (3): 208–213, 2014). I present a novel, empirically informed defense of anger’s efficacy in political action. Nussbaum holds a traditional view on the nature of anger, inherited from Aristotle and the Stoics, which holds that anger constitutively involves a desire for retribution. The view that anger is counterproductive falls out of this and is dominant in academic work as well as in our personal and political lives. Based on work in social psychology, I argue that we need to reconsider this. In doing so, I highlight anger’s aim for recognition, rather than retribution, as key. Furthermore, I uncover conditions for anger’s political efficacy, as well as reasons for why the traditional view of anger has been so pervasive. (shrink)

In 2014, questionable police killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice sparked mass protests and put policing at the center of national debate. Mass protests erupted again in 2020 after the brutal police killing of George Floyd. These and other incidents have put a spotlight on a host of issues that threaten the legitimacy of policing—excessive force, racial bias, over-policing of marginalized communities, historic injustices that remain unaddressed, and new technology that increases police powers. This introduction gives an (...) overview of these ethical challenges facing police today and the democratic institutions that oversee them. It then outlines the various interdisciplinary perspectives—from Black studies, criminology, history, law, philosophy, political science, and sociology—collected in the volume. Together, these contributions aim to clarify the question of which ethical principles should guide police, where current practices fall short, and what strategies hold the most promise for addressing these failures. (shrink)

Human activity has reshaped all parts of the Earth system. For this reason, a vast majority of geologists at the 35th International Geological Congress in Cape Town (September 2016) spoke out in favor of changing the classification of geological epochs and of declaring a new world age – the Anthropocene. This chapter points at implications that the proclamation of the Anthropocene should have for the currently relevant concept of democracy. In particular, it is argued that the transition into a new (...) phase of geology also necessitates a further advancement of our form of government. Democracy, as it has been conceived of and practiced until now, has to a large extent ignored the problem of ‘presentism’. This chapter suggests an extension of the 300-years-old separation of powers between the legislative, executive and judicial branch. It is argued that in order to make our political system more future-oriented, there is a need for a new (fourth) branch which ensures that the interests of future generations be taken into account within today's decision-making process. A newly-established ‘future council’ should have the right to introduce legislation, integrating the competences of this new institution with those of parliament. The chapter concludes with a discussion about the legitimacy of offices for future generations (OFGs) as the embodiment of the proposed future branch. (shrink)

This paper critiques of the privileging of seriousness in modern scholarship and particularly in the humanities, on account of its purported neutrality and objectivity, the resulting foreclosing of all other emotions and insights, and the potentially subversive and enriching potential of laughter, as discussed in Karl Marx’s dichotomy of laughter and seriousness.

This essay explains various significant errors, imprecisions, and omissions concerning libertarianism in Long 2013. The “right not to be aggressed against” is not, as such, the libertarian right because the ‘right to liberty’ must be that right (although not being aggressed against can charitably be interpreted as equivalent). There are non-libertarian rights, but they don’t override the right to liberty. Unsupported assumptions are inevitable because justifications are impossible. Rights should not be “defined” but, rather, morally and metaphysically theorised—with criticism permanently (...) invited. Moral and legal permissibility need to be clearly distinguished. The conceptions of “aggression” and “force” are normative and confused. It is possible to advocate the right to liberty on no grounds whatsoever and also to conjecture that liberty (deontologically) and welfare (consequentially) are systematically compatible in practice for theoretical and causal reasons. The rejection of positive rights is “privileging” and not “conceptual”. Libertarian property needs to be derived from an explicit, non-normative, theory of libertarian liberty. Long 2013’s overall account is “mysterious” and “one-sided”. (shrink)

Purpose. The purpose of the study lies in critical reconstruction of Thomas Hobbes’s social contract theory as an important principle not only of modern political anthropology, but also of modern and postmodern social projects. As well as, in the unfolding of the fundamentally important both for the newest social-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological discourses of the thesis that each individual is the origin of both personal and institutional freedom and justice, making the contract first of all with himself, with his desires and (...) sorrows and then with other people and the state. Theoretical basis. The principle of social contract offered by Hobbes became a new social, methodologically significant and relevant principle of regulation of activity, which indicates essential for the modern political philosophy and the philosophy of law transition from teleological to legal ideas of justice. For an in-depth study of the philosophical and anthropological aspects of Hobbes’s contractualism, we used the historical-comparative and contextualization method, as well as the works of leading native and foreign researchers of Hobbes, who uphold the provisions on the organic affiliation of fundamental socio-philosophical and philosophical-anthropological questions about the nature of man, the relation of coercion, freedom and justice with the discourse of social contract. Originality. On the basis of a consistent analysis of the anthropological component of Hobbes’s theory of social contract, an in-depth understanding of modern contractualism and contemporary discussions in the field of its existential and anthropological component is offered, as well as the thesis that political anthropology is the core of the philosophical anthropology because it makes possible the methodologically important understanding of the basic problems of human existence – the interaction of justice and freedom, self-interest and public good, as well as it quite clearly outlines the ways to overcome the dilemmas of liberalism and communitarianism, individualism and holism. Conclusions. Political anthropology of T. Hobbes constructed in the context of a modern social project, justified the issue of interaction between freedom and justice, which is fundamentally important to nowadays, through the search for such a way of social relations, in which an individual, being in the realm of social existence, would seek to limit his own selfishness and freedom for the sake of the common will of the majority. Thanks to Hobbes, the idea of external humility in disobedience to the inner, of freedom of conscience as a "human and citizen", of an understanding of individual independence, which is not just a permissible but accepted by state power, has been acquired with exceptional theoretical and practical meaning. Thanks to Hobbes’s works, the essence was revealed by the relationship between the cooperative and the conflicted vision of man. (shrink)

La filosofía moral de Adam Smith se fundamenta en el papel de la imaginación para explicar el orden social en un nivel macro, y como mecanismo de identificación afec tiva en un nivel micro. En ambos casos, el rol de la imaginación en nuestra psicología moral refuta la tesis de un _homo economicus_, o de que el ser humano está motiva do a entrar en sociedad por su interés personal. Esto sirve de premisa para refutar la posición hobbesiana de un (...) estado de naturaleza histórico que está en la base de nuestros juicios morales que fundan la sociedad civil y la necesidad del magistrado. (shrink)

Positive arguments on behalf of passion are scarce in liberal political theory. Rather, liberal theorists tend to push passion to the margins of their theories of politics, either by ignoring it or by explicitly arguing that passion poses a danger to politics and is best kept out of the public realm. The purpose of this essay is to criticize these marginalizations and to illustrate their roots in impoverished conceptions of passion. Using a richer conception of passion as the desire for (...) an envisioned good, I argue that it is neither possible nor desirable to eliminate passion from politics. Passion should therefore be established as a central category of analysis in political theory alongside other key concerns. Key Words: passion • reason • politics • liberalism • eros. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ecological Ethics: An IntroductionDavid Keller (bio)Patrick Curry, Ecological Ethics: An Introduction. Malden, Massachusetts: Polity Press, 2007, 173pages.Were I in Bath having drinks with Patrick Curry, we would have much to agree about. Explaining his choice of title of his book, Ecological Ethics, he rightly points out that the more common descriptor "environmental ethics" presupposes a dualism between human beings and the nonhuman environment—an assumption which is itself anthropocentric (...) (p. 4). For philosophers interested in studying the human/ nonhuman dynamic, the legitimacy of anthropocentrism is itself an open question. Because the word 'ecology' treats humans, as biota, as integral parts of ecological systems, the phrase "ecological ethics" is less presumptuous and hence more accurate. The word 'ecological' also has the benefit of conveying the message that the subject is notgoing to involve extending moral considerability from humans out into the "environment." Instead, ecological systems as the locus of value provide the starting point for the elaboration of ethics (p. 2). For Curry, as for Leopold (1960) and Callicott (1989), "ecological community" is coextensive with the ethical community.To correlate the ethical community with the biotic community within the rubric of "ecological ethics" is nothing novel. Curry's claim that "there is something ancient about an ecological ethic" (p. 7) got me thinking: [End Page 153]prior to Abrahamic monotheism and Greek rationalism, ancient peoples, particularly nomadic hunter-gatherers, probably considered themselves as integral parts of what encompassed them, moving with herds, in concert with meteorological and seasonal changes, seeing themselves as one amongst other living beings. They probably did not see themselves apart from the "environment" as we have learned to do. Then with the advent of agriculture, linear furrows and controlled inundations must have fostered an addictive sense of security from flood and famine. Later, the innovations of industrial civilization further distanced us from the caprice of nature's wild vicissitudes. Yet that comfort comes at the expense of lost awareness of our responsibilities as bioticcitizens. Therefore, Curry says, following Sylvan (1973), we need a new ecological ethic since traditional Western morality "is no longer up to the job" (ibid.).Curry remarks that ethics, cast in this light, is not something "optional," something to be addressed after one's belly is full, debts settled, and lodging secured. Rather, ethics cuts directly to the core of human action, of all human activity (p. 5)—a claim reminiscent of Socrates' exhortation to Thrasymachus that it is no small matter that they are discussing, nothing of less importance than the right way to live one's life (Plato 2005, p. 603).Over the first sips of ale, I would praise him for giving his book a simple and straightforward structure that makes a challenging subject accessible, especially to students. After laying down the groundwork of basic concepts in moral philosophy (chapter 3)—objectivism versus relativism, the problem of the is/ought gap, religious morality and environmental philosophy (domination, stewardship, and managerialism), and virtue and rule-based ethics (chapter 4)—Curry addresses axiology (chapter 5). Are humans the sole locus of value (anthropocentrism), or are there other entities worthy of some sort of moral consideration who themselves do not carry the burden of moral responsibility (zoocentrism, biocentrism, ecocentrism)? Curry answers the latter in the affirmative, arguing that ontological interconnectedness of humans with other living beings within ecological systems discloses that something greater than humanity is the locus of value (p. 46).The most useful part of the book for my students out in Utah would be the middle chapters (6–8) in which Curry casts degrees of nonanthropocentrism [End Page 154]in shades of green. These shades range from light green or "shallow" anthropocentric ethics such Bookchin's Social Ecology (p. 50), Hardin's Lifeboat Ethics (pp. 52–54), and mainstream environmentalism (p. 51), through medium green ethics based on the extension of traditional human-oriented moral philosophy to nonhumans such as Singer's Animal Liberation (pp. 56–59), Regan's Animal Rights (pp. 59–60), and Taylor's Biocentrism (pp. 60–62). Curry proceeds to the dark green ethics of ecocentrism, such as Land Ethics (pp. 65–68), the Gaia Hypothesis (pp. 68–71... (shrink)

The foundations of research ethics are riven with fault lines emanating from a fear that if research is too closely connected to weighty social purposes an imperative to advance the common good through research will justify abrogating the rights and welfare of study participants. The result is an impoverished conception of the nature of research, an incomplete focus on actors who bear important moral responsibilities, and a system of ethics and oversight highly attuned to the dangers of research but largely (...) silent about threats of ineffective, inefficient, and inequitable medical practices and health systems. -/- In For the Common Good: Philosophical Foundations of Research Ethics, Alex John London defends a conception of the common good that grounds a moral imperative with two requirements. The first is to promote research that generates the information necessary to enable key social institutions to effectively, efficiently, and equitably safeguard the basic interests of individuals. The second is to ensure that research is organized as a voluntary scheme of social cooperation that respects its various contributors' moral claims to be treated as free and equal. Connecting research to the goals of a just social order grounds a framework for assessing and managing research risk that reconciles these requirements and justifies key oversight practices in non-paternalistic terms. Reconceiving research ethics as resolving coordination problems and providing credible assurance that these requirements are being met expands the issues and actors that fall within the purview of the field and provides the foundation for a more unified and coherent approach to domestic and international research. -/- This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. (shrink)

La teleosemántica es una teoría teleológica de las representaciones mentales, propugnada por David Papineau, que tiene como propósito ofrecer una explicación naturalista y evolucionista de dichas representaciones, en particular de las creencias. Mi objetivo será analizar las creencias y su relación con la verdad en la obra de Papineau. Según Papineau, los contenidos y las representaciones mentales, específicamente las creencias, cumplen funciones derivadas de la evolución biológica de la especie, y correlativamente, la finalidad de las creencias y los contenidos proviene (...) de las funciones biológicas que cada una de ellas tiene. De acuerdo a Papineau, para que las creencias cumplan sus funciones biológicas deben ser verdaderas, es decir, corresponder con la realidad. Defenderé la idea de que, a diferencia de lo que plantea la teleosemántica, la verdad y la falsedad, o más específicamente, los enunciados verdaderos y falsos son doxásticos, es decir, son enunciados que expresan creencias. Las creencias no tienen que ser verdaderas, sino más bien útiles, de manera que el que sean verdaderas o no es un producto secundario de la creencia. (shrink)

Collection of papers presented at the 2nd and 3rd Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

Natural rights play a fundamental role in the political, legal, and economic system of John Locke. Many of his views are based on natural rights. Although Locke is not the first scholar to discuss natural rights, and before him, other thinkers have theorized about it in different eras and intellectual traditions, it must be claimed that Locke is a modern natural rights theorist and has presented a novel interpretation of this theory. Locke's natural rights are based on equality and individual (...) independence. Freedom, life, and property are the three basic pillars of Locke's theory. However, many international charters that defend human rights also in some way protect personal freedom, life, and property of individuals around the world. One of the international agreements is the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the United Nations, which defends the freedom and security of children worldwide and guarantees their basic rights. In this convention, natural rights patterns, especially those of Locke, can be seen, and he is also considered the spiritual father of human rights and one of the sources of modern human rights, the foundations of natural rights. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to examine the foundations of natural rights in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and compare them with the foundations of John Locke. (shrink)

This book develops a novel approach to distributive justice by building a theory based on a concept of desert. As a work of applied political theory, it presents a simple but powerful theoretical argument and a detailed proposal to eliminate unmerited inequality, poverty, and economic immobility, speaking to the underlying moral principles of both progressives who already support egalitarian measures and also conservatives who have previously rejected egalitarianism on the grounds of individual freedom, personal responsibility, hard work, or economic efficiency. (...) By using an agnostic, flexible, data-driven approach to isolate luck and ultimately measure desert, this proposal makes equal opportunity initiatives both more accurate and effective as it adapts to a changing economy. It grants to each individual the freedom to genuinely choose their place in the distribution. It provides two policy variations that are perfectly economically efficient, and two others that are conditionally so. It straightforwardly aligns outcomes with widely shared, fundamental moral intuitions. Lastly, it demonstrates much of the above by modeling four policy variations using 40 years of survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. (shrink)

В монографии представлены несколько смысловых блоков, связанных с восприятием и интерпретацией человеком исторического бытия. Ранние греческие мыслители пытались получить доступ к исходникам (началам) бытия, и эти интенции легли в основу научного знания, а также привели к появлению метафизики. В классической (и в неклассической) метафизике за основу была принята догма Пифагора и Платона о неизменности подлинной реальности, из чего следовало отрицание бытийного характера времени. Автор монографии отказывается от этой догмы и предлагает стратегию обновления метафизики и перехода ее к новому — постнеклассическому (...) — этапу. Поскольку трансформационный потенциал реальности наиболее явно представлен в историческом становлении, авторская стратегия реализуется в метафизике истории. При этом выявляются начала истории, в каком качестве выступают «дух», «культурно-историческая матрица» и «метафизический проект организации бытия» («онтологический проект»). Исследуются формы и механизмы «работы» человека с прошлым, обсуждаются вопросы, связанные с постижением логики исторического процесса, а также с ролью (творческой) личности в истории. Анализируются причины цивилизационных кризисов и очерчиваются возможные пути их разрешения, предлагается метафизическая интерпретация социальных и военных конфликтов. Завершает исследование рассмотрение трансформации человеческого естества под влиянием информационных, био- и нанотехнологий. (shrink)

Vitoria and Suárez defend the categorical immunity of the innocent not to be intentionally killed. But they allow for inflicting collective punishment on the innocent and the noninnocent alike during and after a just war. So they allow for deliberately harming them. Inflicting harm on the innocent can often result in their death. Hence, holding both claims seems incoherent. First, the objections against using the term “innocent” are explained. Second, their views on just war are explored. And third, by appealing (...) to Aquinas' double-effect reasoning, it is shown how they try to avoid the above-mentioned incoherence. Still, their appeal might be insufficient to palliate the tension between the above-mentioned claims. If just wars are possible, the deliberate harming of the innocent is reasonably unavoidable for defeating and punishing those who wage them. Hence, defenders of just wars, whether from a religious or a secular perspective, must live with such a tension. (shrink)

Collection of papers presented at the First Budapest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy.

I propose to examine here, at the outset, what I call the asymmetry in Thomas Hobbes's thought between his treatment of civil war and war between states, that is to say, between the departure from the state of nature - when that is a condition prevailing between individuals - and the permanency in the state of nature when it forms a condition existing between states. Secondly, I will address the Kantian progression beyond this asymmetry through the dual introduction of the (...) idea of progress and of ‘cosmo-political’ peace. The attention given in recent years by Habermas to the Kantian idea of perpetual peace [Habermas, 1996], the recent events in Kosovo and Chechnya, and their implications for the shape of an international penal tribunal to judge crimes against humanity, invigorate the questions of civil peace and of rights which transcend state frontiers. (shrink)

Arguing that our attachment to Aristotelian modes of discourse makes a revision of their conceptual foundations long overdue, the author proposes the consideration of unacknowledged factors that play a central role in argument itself. These are in particular the subjective imprint and the dynamics of argumentation. Their inclusion in a four-dimensional framework and the focus on thesis validity allow for a more realistic view of our discourse practice. Exhaustive analyses of fascinating historical and contemporary arguments are provided. These range from (...) Columbus’s advocacy of the Western Passage to India, over the trial of King Louis XVI during the French Revolution, to today’s highly charged controversies surrounding euthanasia and embryo research. Excavating foundational issues such as the purpose of argument itself and the contested role of argument as a generator of knowledge, the book culminates in a discussion of the relationship between rationality and reasonableness and criticizes the restrictions of ‘rational’ argument relying on fixed logical, economic or cultural criteria that in reality are mutable. Here, a true, open argument requires the infusion of Paul Lorenzen’s principle of ‘transsubjectivity’, which recognizes but transcends the partiality of the individual and which can be seen in the pragmatic and expanding consensus that humanity can control itself to safeguard the future of a fragile, damaged world. (shrink)

An influential tradition in moral philosophy attempts to explain an immoral action by reference to the defect in reasoning on the part of an immoral agent. On this view, the requirements of morality are not only sanctioned by the more general requirements of rationality, but the violations of the moral requirements would be indicative of a rational failure. In this article I argue that ascription of irrationality to amoral individuals (e.g., psychopaths) is either empirically false, or else, conceptually problematic. An (...) interpretation of irrationality in its instrumental sense fails to do justice to the results of the research concerning the intelligence of some amoralists, whereas the suggestion that the alleged cognitive deficiency lies at the level of final ends and ultimate values faces serious theoretical difficulties. All attempts to construe the notion of an external reason for action without reference to the agent's actual goals and values bespeak an objectivist's bias, rest on controversial assumptions, and tend to alienate the agent from the proposed set of reasons. The argument is partly based on the analysis of reasoning of Ted Bundy, a notorious serial murderer, who presents a rather sophisticated justification for his criminal behavior. (shrink)

Adherence to certain religious beliefs is often cited as both an efficient deterrent to immoral behavior and as an effective trigger of morally praiseworthy actions. I assume the truth of the externalist theory of motivation, emphasizing emotions as the most important non-cognitive elements that causally contribute to behavioral choices. While religious convictions may foster an array of complex emotions in a believer, three emotive states are singled out for a closer analysis: fear, guilt and gratitude. The results of recent empirical (...) studies are examined to evaluate the relative motivational efficiency of all three emotions, as well as the likely negative psychological side-effects of these affective states, such as aggres­sion and depression. While an action motivated by fear of punishment can be seen as a merely prudential strategy, the reparatory incentive of a guilty subject and a desire to reciprocate of the one blessed by undeserved favors are more plausible candidates for the class of genuine moral reactions. The available evidence, how­ever, does not warrant a conclusion that a sense of guilt before God or as a sense of gratefulness to wards God, may produce a statistically significant increase in the frequency of prosocial actions aimed at other humans. (shrink)

: The essay theorizes the logic of masculinist protection as an apparently benign form of male domination. It then argues that authoritarian government is often justified through a logic of masculinist protection, and that this is the form of justification for the security regime that has emerged in the United States since September 11, 2001. I argue that those who live under a security regime live within an oppressive protection racket. The paper ends by cautioning feminists not ourselves to adopt (...) a stance of protector toward women in so-called less developed societies. (shrink)

Contemporary virtue ethics was revolutionized by Alasdair MacIntyre’s reconfiguration using practices as the starting point for understanding virtues. However, MacIntyre has very pointedly excluded the professions of the financial world from the reformulation. He does not count these professions as practices, and further charges that virtue would actually hinder or even rule out one’s pursuit of these professions. This paper addresses three tasks, in regard to the financial profession of investment advising. First, the paper lays out MacIntyre’s soon-to-be-published charges against (...) the investment world, as specified to this profession. Second, it sets forth the role function of investment advising and shows that it does possess internal goods—the crucial aspect of practices disputed by MacIntyre in this case—including goods of production and goods of performance. Third, it demonstrates that this function, and the goods tied to it, cannot be achieved apart from the virtuous pursuit of the profession, thereby showing that MacIntyre’s charges are mistaken. Investment advising is shown to be a virtue-based practice, and the groundwork is laid for showing that other financial professions are so, as well. (shrink)

ABSTRACTLate Enlightenment German materialism has hardly attracted any scholarly attention in the past, in spite of the fact that there were quite a few exponents of it. In this paper, I identify the philosophically most important ones and examine to what extent they were connected with each other. In fact, there are local concentrations of materialists at universities and academic circles in Göttingen, Halle, and Gießen. I then discuss the spectrum of materialist positions held by them, from empiricist naturalism in (...) the case of Michael Hißmann to emergentism and Spinozism in the case of Karl von Knoblauch. Finally, I examine how German materialists conceived of the nature of soul and its immortality. It turns out that most of them were mortalists, with the exception of August Wilhelm Hupel, and some of them also endorsed Socinianism. (shrink)

Christopher Wellman and some allied scholars argue that a ‘samaritan theory’ can justify state coercion. They also suppose that states may provide robust, social egalitarian welfare provisions for a variety of reasons that would arise within samaritan states. However, the most promising reasons—samaritanism itself, natural socialism, relational equality, and anti-crime paternalism—cannot support robust provision without discarding the strong presumption favoring individual liberty which must motivate the samaritan theory. Consequently, a samaritan state cannot be a robust social welfare state.

The paper describes a project in which the thesis of the social determinants of health is used in order to help identify groups that will be among the least advantaged members of society, when disadvantage is understood in terms of lack of genuine opportunity for secure functioning. The analysis is derived from the author's work with Avner de-Shalit in Disadvantage (Oxford University Press, 2007).