Sherman presents a slightly revised definition of empathy, in which empathy is the cognitive ability to place oneself in the world of another, imagining all of the realities, feelings, and circumstances of that person in the context of their world.

How best to introduce philosophical ideas? Is the best and only way by studying the history of philosophy and its rational arguments and discussions? But can literature, usually hived off from philosophy, be used instead and can this be as effective as rational argument? This paper explores these questions. First it considers a text which introduces philosophy through the analysis of literature, in particular James Joyce's 'Araby', arguing that the traditional analytic approach employed by the text, by concentrating on epistemology, (...) obscures other philosophical insights offered by Joyce. It then turns to French philosophy and literature and suggests that Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus by 'blurring' the analytic distinction between philosophy and literature have much to offer to the grasping and understanding of philosophical ideas and principles. (shrink)

One of the most significant disputes in early modern philosophy was between the moral rationalists and the moral sentimentalists. The moral rationalists — such as Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke and John Balguy — held that morality originated in reason alone. The moral sentimentalists — such as Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson and David Hume — held that morality originated at least partly in sentiment. In addition to arguments, the rationalists and sentimentalists developed rich analogies. The (...) most significant analogy the rationalists developed was between morality and mathematics. The most significant analogy the sentimentalists developed was between morality and beauty. These two analogies illustrate well the main ideas, underlying insights, and accounts of moral phenomenology the two positions have to offer. An examination of the two analogies will thus serve as a useful introduction to the debate between moral rationalism and moral sentimentalism as a whole. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that contemplation of an imaginary particular may have cognitive and motivational effects that differ from those evoked by an abstract description of an otherwise similar state of affairs. In his Treatise on Human Nature, Hume ([1739] 1978) writes forcefully of this.

The paper begins by situating Singer within the British meta-ethical tradition. It sets out the main steps in his argument for utilitarianism as the ‘default setting’ of ethical thought. It argues that Singer’s argument depends on a hierarchy of reasons, such that the ethical viewpoint is understood to be an adaptation – an extension – of a fundamental self-interest. It concludes that the argument fails because it is impossible to get from this starting-point in self-interest to his conception of the (...) ethical point of view. The fundamental problem is its mixing the immiscible: the Humean subordination of reason to interest with the Kantian conception of reason as universal and authoritative. (shrink)

There has emerged in recent years the recognition that the characteristically Buddhist doctrine of svasa vitti 2 (‘apperception’, as I will render it for reasons to become clear presently) was vari...

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Barry Stroud’s book _The Quest for Reality_1 is, I think, the most substantial study of colour realism that has yet been written. It subjects to fundamental criticism a tradition that found its classic expression in Descartes and Locke and which in many ways remains standard today; it argues to be flawed not only the traditional rejection of colours as mere ideas or features of ideas in the mind, but also the view that colours are dispositions or powers in objects to (...) produce ideas in us—which in other quarters sometimes passes as a form of colour realism. Stroud rejects subjectivism, dispositionalism, relativism, and reductionism; but he is deliberately reticent about offering any positive account of what we believe to exist when believe colours to exist (after all, he says, in quiet allusion to Butler, everything is what it is and not another thing). And he is resolute in denying that we can give a philosophical argument to establish such belief as true. Stroud’s general conclusion can be seen as occupying a middle ground between what we might call dogmatic anti-realism and dogmatic realism. He argues (in Ch. 7) that anti-realism (or what Stroud calls the ‘unmasking’ of colours) is a view that cannot be affirmed without a kind of self-refutation—for ‘no one could abandon all beliefs about the colours of things and still _understand_ the colour terms’ (168, my emphasis). On the other hand (in Ch. 9), it remains in some sense a ‘possibility’ (204) that everyday colour beliefs might actually all be false. Stroud’s final judgment is not that we shall or should abandon the ‘Quest for Reality’, though he has expressed many reservations about it.2 The. (shrink)

I describe and defend the view in a philosophy of mind that I call 'Normative Essentialism', according to which propositional attitudes have normative essences. Those normative essences are 'horizontal' rational requirements, by which I mean the requirement to have certain propositional attitudes given other propositional attitudes. Different propositional attitudes impose different horizontal rational requirements. I distinguish a stronger and a weaker version of this doctrine and argue for the weaker version. I explore the consequences for knowledge of mind, and I (...) then consider objections to the view from mental causation, from empirical psychology, and from animals and small children. (shrink)

Incompatibilism is the view that privileged knowledge of our own mental states cannot be reconciled with externalism regarding the content of mental states. Davidson has recently developed two arguments that are supposed to disprove incompatibilism and establish the consistency of privileged access and externalism. One argument criticizes incompatibilism for assuming that externalism conflicts with the mind‐body identity theory. Since mental states supervene on neurological events, Davidson argues, they are partly ‘in the head’ and are knowable just by reflection. Another argument (...) rejects incompatibilism by repudiating the object perception model of introspection. Once extemalism is freed from the internalist idea that thoughts take objects which are inner epistemological intermediaries, Davidson maintains, it poses no threat to privileged self‐knowledge. It is argued that neither of these arguments is successful, since both disprove assumptions irrelevant to incompatibilism. Moreover, it is indicated how Davidson would have to go about defending his positive account of privileged self‐knowledge against the principal incompatibilist arguments. (shrink)

Common wisdom tells us that we have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. These senses provide us with a means of gaining information concerning objects in the world around us, including our own bodies. But in addition to these five senses, each of us is aware of our own body in way in which we are aware of no other thing. These ways include our awareness of the position, orientation, movement, and size of our limbs (proprioception and kinaesthesia), (...) our sense of balance, and our awareness of bodily sensations such as pains, tickles, and sensations of pressure or temperature. We can group these together under the title. (shrink)

Wegner (Wegner, D. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. MIT Press) argues that conscious will is an illusion, citing a wide range of empirical evidence. I shall begin by surveying some of his arguments. Many are unsuccessful. But one—an argument from the ubiquity of self-interpretation—is more promising. Yet is suffers from an obvious lacuna, offered by so-called ‘dual process’ theories of reasoning and decision making (Evans, J., & Over, D. (1996). Rationality and reasoning. Psychology Press; Stanovich, K. (1999). Who is (...) rational? Studies of individual differences in reasoning. Lawrence Erlbaum; Frankish, K. (2004). Mind and supermind. Cambridge University Press). I shall argue that this lacuna can be filled by a plausible a priori claim about the causal role of anything deserving to be called ‘a will.’ The result is that there is no such thing as conscious willing: conscious will is, indeed, an illusion. (shrink)

This paper rejects Hume's famous claim that we never perceive our selves, by arguing that, under conditions specified, our perception of our bodies is perception of our selves. It takes as its point of departure Quassim Cassam's defence of a position to a similar effect but puts a different interpretation on the distinction between perceiving the body as an object, having spatial attributes, and perceiving it as a self or subject of experiences.

Several areas of expanding corporate responsibilities are evident from current practices. This article penetrates one such field, economic compensation through litigation, and discusses the possibility and desirability of reversing the trend. In court, companies are fined increasing amounts for an ever wider range of faults, or they settle out of court under this legal threat. This is not a local American problem, but European companies are increasingly involved because of globalization. The development in Europe is also driven by the same (...) factors as in America – the mechanics of litigation and conventional ethics. The greed of plaintiffs and lawyers can mobilize the perceived virtue of sympathizing with a victim. Therefore it seems likely that a precondition for tort reform is an ethical reevaluation. Is it desirable and politically possible to make the individual more responsible for his own fate? (shrink)

This paper engages with a specific problem concerning the relationship between descriptive and normative claims. Namely, if we understand that descriptive claims frequently contain normative assertions, and vice versa, how then do we interpret the traditionally rigid distinction that is made between the two, as ’Hume’s law’ or Moore’s ’naturalistic fallacy’ argument offered. In particular, Kripke’s interpretation of Wittgenstein’s ’rule-following paradox’ is specially focused upon in order to re-consider the rigid distinction. As such, the paper argues that if descriptive and (...) normative claims are not mutually exclusive, then we need a new framework with which to understand this relationship. In this regard, the paper borrows from concerns with vagueness, particularly using a degree-theoretic approach in terms of subjective probability, in an attempt to graphically figure out these differences. Consequently, the paper tentatively proposes the hyperbola model in which degrees of normativity and degrees of descriptivity could be expressed and measured. It is hoped, as a result, that this tentative proposal will contribute to deepening the debate on vagueness in general. (shrink)

Kantian moral theories must explain how their most basic moral values of dignity and autonomy should be interpreted and applied to human conditions. One place Kantians should look for inspiration is, surprisingly, the utilitarian tradition and its emphasis on generally accepted, informally enforced, publicly known moral rules of the sort that help us give assurances, coordinate our behavior, and overcome weak wills. Kantians have tended to ignore utilitarian discussions of such rules mostly because they regard basic moral principles as a (...) priori requirements that cannot be tailored to human foibles and limitations. I argue that Kantian moral theories should incorporate public moral rules as mid-level moral requirements for embodied and socially embedded human agents. I explain how certain specific moral judgments about how we ought to act are justified by public moral rules, which are themselves justified by more fundamental moral requirements. (shrink)

How can Deleuzians make his philosophy as accessible as possible to political theorists and democratic publics? This essay provides principles to enter Deleuze's political vision, namely, to research the etymology of words, to discover the image beneath concepts, to diagram schemata using rigid lines, supple lines and lines of flight, and to construct rules that balance experimentation and caution. The essay then employs this method to explicate a fecund sentence about politics in A Thousand Plateaus and presents a case why (...) Deleuze deserves greater visibility in the political theory canon. (shrink)

The ArgumentBesides the well-known advocate of unified field theories, there was “another Einstein,” who was skeptical of the continuum as a foundational element in physics. This paper presents evidence for the existence of this “other Einstein,” and of the debate between the two Einsteins that lasted most of Einstein's life.

The explanation of promising is fraught with problems. In particular the problem that promises can be valid even when nothing good comes of keeping the promise , and the bootstrapping problem with explaining how the mere intention to put oneself under an obligation can create such an obligation have been recognized since Hume’s famous discussion of the topic. In part 1, I showed that two main views of promising which attempt to solve these problems fall short of explaining the promissory (...) obligation nonetheless. In this second part, I will explain what it takes to show that there is such an obligation to keep one’s promises, and discuss a further account of promissory obligation – the normative powers account – which perhaps stands a chance to solve both the bootstrapping and the bare wrongings problem , and to successfully explain promissory obligation. It comes in at least two different forms: one which regards the normative power to promise as based on our ability to form special relationships, and another which regards the promisee’s ‘authority interest’ as the basis. (shrink)

Norms—that is, specifications of what we ought to do—play a critical role in the study of informal argumentation, as they do in studies of judgment, decision-making and reasoning more generally. Specifically, they guide a recurring theme: are people rational? Though rules and standards have been central to the study of reasoning, and behavior more generally, there has been little discussion within psychology about why (or indeed if) they should be considered normative despite the considerable philosophical literature that bears on this (...) topic. In the current paper, we ask what makes something a norm, with consideration both of norms in general and a specific example: norms for informal argumentation. We conclude that it is both possible and desirable to invoke norms for rational argument, and that a Bayesian approach provides solid normative principles with which to do so. (shrink)

Truth monism is the idea that only true beliefs are of fundamental epistemic value. The present paper considers three objections to truth monism, and argues that, while the truth monist has plausible responses to the first two objections, the third objection suggests that truth monism should be reformulated. On this reformulation, which we refer to as accuracy monism, the fundamental epistemic goal is accuracy, where accuracy is a matter of “getting it right.” The idea then developed is that accuracy is (...) a genus with several species. Believing truly is a prominent species, but it is not the only one. Finally, it is argued that accuracy monism is equally good or better than both traditional truth monism and its main dialectical rival, value pluralism, when it comes to satisfying three important axiological desiderata. (shrink)

A central aspect of desire is the alluringness with which the desired object appears to the desirer. But what explains the alluringness of desire? According to the standard view, desire presents its objects with a certain allure because desire involves believing that the desired object is good. However, this cannot explain how those who lack the cognitive sophistication required for evaluative concepts can nonetheless have desires, how nihilists can continue to have desires, nor how we can desire things we believe (...) to be evaluatively neutral or even evaluatively bad. A variation on the standard view ? that desire presents its objects with a certain allure because desire involves being in a belief-like state that represents the desired object to be good ? avoids these problems, but still falsely entails that desire is subject to the norm of truth. Indeed, I argue that ultimately such cognitive accounts of the alluringness of desire have seemed compelling only because of the difficulty of providing an intelligible non-cognitive alternative and I proceed to make such an alternative account of the alluringness of desire explicit in broad outline, arguing that it promises a more faithful understanding of the phenomena. (shrink)

Normativism, the approach that judges human rationality by comparison against normative standards, has recently come under intensive criticism as unsuitable for psychological enquiry, and it has been suggested that it should be replaced with a descriptivist paradigm. My goal in this paper is to outline and defend a meta-theoretical framework of such a paradigm, grounded rationality, based on the related principles of descriptivism and (moderate) epistemic relativism. Bounded rationality takes into account universal biological and cognitive limitations on human rationality. Grounded (...) rationality accepts universal constraints but adds cognitive variability: Within-individual variability (dual processing), and individual as well as cultural differences. I discuss the implications of grounded rationality to dual processing, proposing that investing limited cognitive resources in analytic processing might be less instrumentally rational for individuals with low cognitive ability. (shrink)

This paper considers the question of whether there is a human-animal or ‘anthropological difference'. It starts with a historical introduction to the project of philosophical anthropology. Section 2 explains the philosophical quest for an anthropological difference. Sections 3-4 are methodological and explain how philosophical anthropology should be pursued in my view, namely as impure conceptual analysis. The following two sections discuss two fundamental objections to the very idea of such a difference, biological continuity and Darwinist anti-essentialism. Section 7 discusses various (...) possible responses to this second objection - potentiality, normality and typicality. It ends by abandoning the idea of an essence possessed by all and only individual human beings. Instead, anthropological differences are to be sought in the realm of capacities underlying specifically human societies. The final section argues that if there is such a thing as the anthropological difference, it is connected to language. But it favours a more modest line according to which there are several anthropological differences which jointly underlie the gap separating us from our animal cousins. (shrink)

The question I raise is whether Mark Balaguer’s event-causal libertarianism can withstand the disappearing agent objection. The concern is that with the causal role of the events antecedent to a decision already given, nothing settles whether the decision occurs, and so the agent does not settle whether the decision occurs. Thus it would seem that in this view the agent will not have the control in making decisions required for moral responsibility. I examine whether Balaguer’s position has the resources to (...) answer this objection. (shrink)

This paper contends that law is in essence an evolutionary phenomenon that can, and indeed should, be studied in the light of biological mechanisms. Law can be seen as an extended phenotype of underlying genes. In addition, legal systems can be seen as congruous to genetic mechanisms. Properties of genes have an impact on legal systems in a fractal-like manner. Hence, it is not surprising that notions of stability, replication, and reciprocity that are important in biological systems will also be (...) important in legal systems. As a result legal systems can be constructed in a way that is congruent with the genetic advantage of group members. Law, exposure, and punishment can diminish deviant behaviour and restore balance. Law may not be particularly subject to natural selection, but it will certainly be built on the foundations of natural selection. (shrink)

Theses claiming a constitutive or necessary role for belief-desire pairs in the rationalizing, motivation or explanation of action, are generally known as Humean. The main purpose of this short paper is clearly to present the basic versions of Humeanism and lay bare their commitments and interrelations in preparation for a short general introduction to the debate over belief-desire explanation of action. After this, some influential arguments for and against a Humean account of action explanation are briefly discussed.

On Michael Walzer's influential account, "dirty hands" characterizes the political leader's choice between absolutist moral demands (to abstain from torture) and consequentialist political reasoning (to do what is necessary to prevent the loss of innocent lives). The impulse to torture a "ticking bomb terrorist" is therefore at least partly pragmatic, straining against morality, while the desire to uphold a ban on torture is purely and properly a moral one. I challenge this Machiavellian view by reinterpreting the dilemma in the framework (...) of the Humean theory of justice and moral sentiment. By interpreting the ticking bomb scenario as a dramatic narrative, I argue that it appeals to properly moral sensibilities, which speak in favour of the use of force against the terrorist. The absolute ban on torture, by contrast, is an artificial virtue and a product of political prudence. On this account, the ticking bomb terrorist dilemma therefore imposes a different burden on the political leader from Walzer's version: an ethic of political responsibility demands that the political leader be prepared to sacrifice her moral soul by upholding the law against moral but politically imprudent demands to break it; while the ticking bomb romance appeals to her feelings of compassionate moral concern towards particular individuals. She dirties her hands morally, not by authorizing torture, but by allowing the terrorist's bomb to detonate and take the lives of the innocent. (shrink)

In this article we discuss what are the implications for improving the design of corporate ethics programs, if we focus on the moral motivation accounts offered by main ethical theories. Virtue ethics, deontological ethics and utilitarianism offer different criteria of judgment to face moral dilemmas: Aristotle's virtues of character, Kant's categorical imperative, and Mill's greatest happiness principle are, respectively, their criteria to answer the question "What is the right thing to do?" We look at ethical theories from a different perspective: (...) the question we ask is "Why should I do the right thing?" In other words, we deal with the problem of moral motivation, and we examine the different rationale the main ethical theories provide. We then point out the relation between moral motivation and the concept of rationality in the different approaches - is acting morally seen as an expression of rational behavior? Our analysis of moral motivation provides a useful framework to improve the understanding of the relationships between formal and informal elements of corporate ethics programs, emphasizing the importance of the latter, often overlooked in compliance-focused programs. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of moral imagination can provide a unifying approach to enhance the effectiveness of corporate ethics programs, by providing an intangible asset that supports the implementation of their formal components into management decision making. (shrink)

This paper presents an argument for reconceptualizing (human) intelligence as intellectual virtue, and makes some proposals as to how we would understand intellectual virtue if feminist values were taken into account. Several abilities are identified which are closely connected to one aim that is common to most feminists: the building of communities in which well-being is possible.

Drawing on Bernard Lonergan's Method in Theology (1972) I argue that theology can be taught because personal knowledge, of which it is an instance, is at the heart of academic inquiry; and it should be taught because critical engagement with basic ways of taking one's life as a whole (religion in a broad sense) furnishes a critique of the typical oversights of contemporary culture. The appropriation of one's subjectivity entails an awareness of an existential dialectic that pushes towards a decisive (...) option for affirming the possibility and worth of growth in one's powers of self-determination and self-transcendence. Thus conversion—precisely defined in terms of this dialectic—has moral and intellectual dimensions whose promotion goes to the heart of the academic enterprise. By separating out those disciplines (systematics, for example) which are mediated by the existential stance taken by the scholar, Lonergan allows theology to be seen as one world view among others. (shrink)

After a brief review of the notions of necessity and a priority, this paper scrutinizes Kripke's arguments for supposedly contingent a priori propositions and necessary a posteriori propositions involving proper names, and reaches a negative conclusion, i.e. there are no such propositions, or at least the propositions Kripke gives as examples are not such propositions. All of us, including Kripke himself, still have to face the old question raised by Hume, i.e. how can we justify the necessity and universality of (...) general statements on the basis of sensory or empirical evidence? (shrink)

The chapter on temporality in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception , is situated in a section titled, “Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World.” As such, Merleau-Ponty’s task in the chapter on temporality is to bring these two positions together, in other words, to articulate the manner in which time links the cogito (Being-for-Itself) with freedom (Being-in-the-World). To accomplish this, Merleau-Ponty proposes a subject located at the junction of the for-itself and the in-itself, a subject which has an exterior that makes it possible for others (...) to have an interior. This analysis will take Merleau-Ponty to an impasse where, on the one hand, there appears to be an objective world and the time of objects in that world, and on the other, there is the subject’s notion of events and the passing of time. Referring to Bergson’s notion of time, this essay proposes that there must be a temporal interval between perception, feeling and action in order for the subject to be “temporal by means of an inner necessity,” as Merleau-Ponty prescribes. (shrink)

Derek Parfit is surely right when he says, at the beginning of Reasons and Persons, that many of us want to know what we have most reason to do. Several theories attempt to answer this question, and Parfit begins his discussion with the best-known case: the Self-interest Theory, or S. When applied to actions, S claims that “ What each of us has most reason to do is whatever would be best for himself, and It is irrational for anyone to (...) do what he believes will be worse for himself” . Objections to this theory are of many kinds, and in the first part of his book Parfit examines the objection that S is, in various ways, self-defeating. One such objection is that S implies we sometimes cannot avoid acting irrationally, but Parfit claims it is not a good objection to S that it has this implication. I disagree. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the objection in more detail , and then to argue that each of Parfit's responses to the objection is inadequate. (shrink)

Duncan MacIntosh has argued that David Gauthier's notion of a constrained maximization disposition faces a dilemma. For if such a disposition is revocable, it is no longer rational come the time to act on it, and so acting on it is not (as Gauthier argues) rational; but if it is not revocable, acting on it is not voluntary. This paper is a response to MacIntosh's dilemma. I introduce an account of rational intention of a type which has become increasingly and (...) independently prominent in the literature, and argue that, on this account, rational and voluntary constraint is possible. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Cet article présente une critique de la position dite de l’ «ironie morale», une position philosophique passablement répandue dans la culture intellectuelle con temporaine et dont la caractéristique centrale est de mettre en question de façon radicale le concept de vérité morale. En m’appuyant sur la lecture de Foucault pro posée par Robert Réal Fillion, je dégage les présuppositions qui sont au cœur de la position en question. Je souligne ensuite ses implications pragmatiques; en acceptant le gambit épistémologique, crucial (...) en l’occurrence, selon lequel toutes les affirmations d’ordre moral sont en dernière analyse des descriptions fausses, nous renonçons en fait à notre capacité de juger d’une manière signifiante qu’un état de choses, une ligne de conduite, etc., est qualitivement supérieur à un autre. La question ici posée est donc la suivante: étant admis que la conception ironique de la moralité implique cette perte considérable, les raisons fournies en sa faveur sont-elles suffisamment bonnes pour étayer une attitude aussi forte et aussi radicale à l’endroit de la moralité et de la vérité? Ma thèse est qu’elles ne le sont pas et qu’en réalité on s’abuse en acceptant pour nécessaire et inévitable cette conception débilitante de la moralité. Les raisons sur la foi desquelles cette conclusion est admise semblent inattaquables à première vue, mais il se révèle à y regarder de plus près qu’elles sont non concluantes et inadéquates, ou qu’elles requièrent à tout le moins une révision sérieuse. (shrink)

This article examines the development of Russell's treatment of propositions, in relation to the topic of psychologism. In the first section, we outline the concept of psychologism, and show how it can arise in relation to theories of the nature of propositions. Following this, we note the anti-psychologistic elements of Russell's thought dating back to his idealist roots. From there, we sketch the development of Russell's theory of the proposition through a number of its key transitions. We show that Russell, (...) in responding to a variety of different problems relating to the proposition, chose to resolve these problems in ways that continually made concessions to psychologism. (shrink)

Roger Ames and David Hall’s Focusing the Falimiar makes a significant contribution to revealing the holistic and dynamic worldview entailed in the Confucian classic--the Zhongyong. Yet their emphasis on metaphysics eclipses an important dimension of the book—the “gongfu” (kungfu) instruction dimension. In this paper, the author first explains this concern by discussing Ames’ and Hall’s translation of the key terms of the book, namely “zhong,” “yong,” and “cheng.” Then he shows that their work, though falls short of revealing the gongfu (...) dimension, has laid the groundwork for taking the further step. (shrink)

This essay shall discuss the moral feeling of being morally moved (daode gandong 道德感动) and explore its philosophical significances in understanding the nature of virtue ethics, especially that of Confucian ethics as exemplary ethics. I would like to argue that the feeling of being morally moved, similar to other feelings such as resentment or indignation, should be seen as one of the most important testimonies or manifestations of our morality or moral consciousness. It has played a very important role of (...) moral judgment and moral cultivation in the history of Chinese moral philosophy and in its everyday moral practices. Instead of being a testimony of morality as cold laws or norms, being morally moved is a testimony to our moral virtues, and it should be a living motive of our moral actions as well. (shrink)

There is disagreement among contemporary theorists regarding human well-being. On one hand there are “substantive good” views, according to which the most important elements of a person’s well-being result from her nature as a human, rational, and/or sentient being. On the other hand there are “agent-constituted” views, which contend that a person’s well-being is constituted by her particular aims, desires, and/or preferences. Each approach captures important features of human well-being, but neither can provide a complete account: agent-constituted theories have difficulty (...) accounting for the normativity of their claims, and substantive good theories have difficulty accounting for how a person’s actually adopted aims shape what is good for her and hence what she has reason to do. I articulate and defend a hybrid view that equals these approaches in systematicity and completeness of explanation yet seeks to surpass them in coherence with our ordinary judgments about what human well-being consists in. This hybrid view maintains, with agent-constituted theories, that a person’s well-being is (1) significantly constituted by her actually adopted aims; (2) deeply contingent; (3) agent-relative; (4) significantly dependent on spatially and temporally remote events; and (5) significantly independent of her experiences. The hybrid view also maintains, with substantive good theories, that a person’s well-being is (6) in part determined by facts independent of her aims, desires, and preferences; (7) such that all her aims are subject to critical evaluation and revision; and (8) constituted by her aims only if these aims are choiceworthy. (shrink)

It is arguable that some of the most profound and perennial issues and problems of philosophy concerning the nature of human agency, the role of reason and knowledge in such agency and the moral status and place of responsibility in human action and conduct receive their sharpest definition in Plato's specific discussion in the Republic of the human value of physical activities. From this viewpoint alone, Plato's exploration of this issue might be considered a locus classicus in the philosophy of (...) sport. Indeed, it is in this place that Plato offers a highly distinctive account of the value of physical education in terms of its vital contribution to the development of a part of the soul that he characterises in terms of ?spirit?, ?energy? and/or ?initiative?. Drawing on more recent work in ethics and philosophy of action, this paper sets out to revisit and evaluate Plato's argument. While concluding that Plato's case ultimately flounders on fundamental uncertainty regarding the logical role of spirit in the explanation of agency, the paper concludes that there is much to be learned ? in the philosophy of sport and elsewhere ? from the instructive failures of Plato's argument. (shrink)

Philosophical theorizing is often, either tacitly or explicitly, guided by intuitions about cases. Theories that accord with our intuitions are generally considered to be prima facie better than those that do not. However, recent empirical work has suggested that philosophically significant intuitions are variable and unstable in a number of ways. This variability of intuitions has led naturalistically inclined philosophers to disparage the practice of relying on intuitions for doing philosophy in general (e.g. Stich & Weinberg 2001) and for doing (...) moral philosophy in particular (Appiah 2008; Doris & Stich 2005; Horowitz 1998; Nadelhoffer & Feltz 2008; Sinnott Armstrong 2008). In this paper, we will draw on naturalistic considerations to offer some solace to philosophers who rely on intuitions. We wouldn’t call this a defense of intuitions, exactly, since we are sympathetic with much of the naturalists’ critique. But we want to introduce into the debate some neglected naturalistic reasons to be optimistic about intuitions, focusing especially on ethical intuitions. (shrink)

Recent advances in evolutionary biology and ethology suggest that humans are not the only species capable of empathy and possibly morality. These findings are of no little consequence for theology, given that a nonhuman animal as a free moral agent would beg the question if human beings are indeed uniquely created in God's image. I argue that apes and some other mammals have moral agency and that a traditional interpretation of the imago Dei is incorrectly equating specialness with exclusivity. By (...) framing the problem in terms of metaphor, following the work of Paul Ricoeur and Sallie McFague, I propose that the concept of the imago Dei could be extended to accommodate moral species other than our own. (shrink)

A debate has simmered concerning the nature of clinical reasoning, especially diagnostic reasoning: Is it a “science” or an “art”? The trend since the seventeenth century has been to regard medical reasoning as scientific reasoning, and the most advanced clinical reasoning is the most scientific. However, in recent years, several scholars have argued that clinical reasoning is clearly not “science” reasoning, but is in fact a species of narratival or hermeneutical reasoning. The study reviews this dispute, and argues that in (...) a theoretical sense, the dispute rests upon a naïve—but very popular—caricature of what constitutes “science reasoning.” But, if the dispute rests upon just such a caricature, why is it so persistent? The study concludes by suggesting that we, as patients and as physicians, have deep psychological tendencies that incline us to adopt the very naïve “science” concept/model of diagnostic reasoning, even if (or when) we understand its inaptness. (shrink)

Abstract Fodor defines epistemic boundedness as a condition wherein there are epistemi?cally significant constraints on the beliefs that a mind is capable of entertaining. He discusses a type of (epistemic) boundedness wherein a hypothesis cannot be entertained because it is inexpressible in terms of the mind's stock of concepts. In addition to this semantic boundedness, I describe a number of different sources of boundedness having to do with syntactic, abductive, and implementational limitations. I also discuss the similarities and differences between (...) individual and social limitations on our epistemic possibilities. (shrink)