One of the primary motivations behind moral anti-realism is a deep-rooted scepticism about moral knowledge. Moral realists attempt counter this worry by sketching a plausible moral epistemology. One of the most radical proposals in the recent literature is that we know moral facts by perception – we can literally see that an action is wrong, etc. A serious objection to moral perception is the causal objection. It is widely conceded that perception requires a causal connection between the perceived and the (...) perceiver. But, the objection continues, we are not in appropriate causal contact with moral properties. Therefore, we cannot perceive moral properties. This papers demonstrates that the causal objection is unsound whether moral properties turn out to be secondary, natural properties; non-secondary, natural properties; or non-natural properties. 1. (shrink)

In this article, I look at recent developments in the field of the Philosophy of the relationship between morality, understood in a realist manner, and the primary object of religious belief in the monotheistic religions, God. Some contemporary solutions to the Euthyphro dilemma and versions of moral arguments for the existence of God are discussed.

This paper discusses the place of philosophical naturalism in the philosophy of law, with special reference to Scandinavian Realism. Hägerström originated a non-cognitivist analysis of certain fundamental legal concepts, but he also proposed an error theory. The two approaches are incompatible, but were not always clearly distinguished. Among his followers, Olivecrona and Ross gradually abandoned the latter, at least from the late 1940s. Many accounts of their views are unclear, because the presence of these two kinds of analysis, their incompatibility, (...) and the gradual abandonment of one, has often been overlooked. A corollary of the discussion is that there are some important corrigenda in the entry “Naturalism in legal philosophy” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (shrink)

Are the rights, duties, and virtues of citizenship grounded exclusively in considerations of justice, or do some or all of them have other sources? This question is addressed by distinguishing three different accounts of the justification of these rights, duties, and virtues, namely, the justice account, the common-good account, and the equal-membership account. The common-good account is rejected on the grounds that it provides an implausible way of understanding what it is to act as a citizen. It is then argued (...) that the justice account and the equal-membership account provide complementary perspectives that differ in terms of the scope of the duties they ground: the latter offers an analysis of the duties that citizens proper (those with an unconditional right of residence and full political rights) owe to each other, whereas the former provides an analysis of the duties that those who are under the jurisdiction of the same state, whether fellow citizens or not, owe to each other. The article concludes by arguing that the distinction between the justice account and the equal-membership account cuts across the traditional one that is drawn between liberal and republican theories of citizenship. (shrink)

Is the human tendency toward musicality better thought of as the product of a specific, evolved instinct or an acquired skill? Developmental and evolutionary arguments are considered, along with issues of domain‐specificity. The article also considers the question of why humans might be consistently and intensely drawn to music if musicality is not in fact the product of a specifically evolved instinct.

Carl Henry devotes a few chapters directly (and a few indirectly) in volume 6 of his God, Revelation, and Authority [GRA] to the problem of evil [POE]. The author examines Henry’s contribution as a theologian, noting that GRA is a work of theology, not philosophy proper. However, Henry had a PhD in Philosophy (Boston, 1949), and one finds present several presuppositions and control beliefs that are philosophically motivated. Observation of the text reveals several of these. Chief here is Henry’s working (...) assumption that to understand and explain the nature of evil, one must first understand and explain the nature, origin and etiology of good. This point and its implications are developed at length in this article. Unsurprising is Henry’s contribution exhibiting an awareness of methods and theodical approaches traditionally used by philosophers of religion such as Rowe, Plantinga, and Hick. Surprising is the fact that Henry does not clearly take a side on the nature of human free will. What he does say seems to underdetermine his exact position. Finally, the importance of Kant vis a vis Henry’s theodicy and entire theological program is emphasized as well. (shrink)

David Lewis claims that his theory of modality successfully reduces modal items to nonmodal items. This essay will clarify this claim and argue that it is true. This is largely an exercise within ‘Ludovician Polycosmology’: I hope to show that a certain intuitive resistance to the reduction and a set of related objections misunderstand the nature of the Ludovician project. But these results are of broad interest since they show that would-be reductionists have more formidable argumentative resources than is often (...) thought. Lewis’s reduction depends on a set of methodological commitments each of which is fairly plausible or at least currently popular, and none of which is particular to modality. The choice of which of these commitments to reject I leave to the discerning antireductionist. The essay proceeds as follows: §1 discusses reduction generally and one or two relevant puzzles; §2 discusses Lewis’s reduction in particular; the longest section, §3 replies to four objections. (shrink)

I'd like to trace here a great rhetorical-philosophical project which runs through the writings of Plato – his attempt to moralize norms of honor and glory, his attempt to harness the powerful feelings of shame and glory to the ineffectual norms of justice.

This article proposes a new definition of information security, the ‘Appropriate Access’ definition. Apart from providing the basic criteria for a definition—correct demarcation and meaning concerning the state of security—it also aims at being a definition suitable for any information security perspective. As such, it bridges the conceptual divide between so-called ‘soft issues’ of information security and more technical issues. Because of this it is also suitable for various analytical purposes, such as analysing possible security breaches, or for studying conflicting (...) attitudes on security in an organization. The need for a new definition is demonstrated by pointing to a number of problems for the standard definition type of information security—the so-called CIA definition. Besides being too broad as well as too narrow, it cannot properly handle the soft issues of information security, nor recognize the contextual and normative nature of security. (shrink)

If good taste is a virtue, then an account of good taste might be modelled on existing accounts of moral or epistemic virtue. One good reason to develop such an account is that it helps solve otherwise intractable problems in aesthetics. This paper proposes an alternative to neo-Aristotelian models of good taste. It then contrasts the neo-Aristotelian models with the proposed model, assessing them for their potential to contend with otherwise intractable problems in aesthetics.

This paper aims to connect philosophy of chemistry, green chemistry, and moral philosophy. We first characterize chemistry by underlining how chemists: co-define chemical bodies, operations, and transformations; always refer to active and context-sensitive bodies to explain the reactions under study; and develop strategies that require and intertwine with a molecular whole, its parts, and the surroundings at the same time within an explanation. We will then point out how green chemists are transforming their current activities in order to act upon (...) the world without jeopardizing life. This part will allow us to highlight that green chemistry follows the three aforementioned characteristics while including the world as a partner, as well as biodegradability and sustainability concerns, into chemical practices. In the third part of this paper, we will show how moral philosophy can help green chemists: identify the consequentialist assumptions that ground their reasoning; and widen the scope of their ethical considerations by integrating the notion of care and that of vulnerability into their arguments. In the fourth part of the paper, we will emphasize how, in return, this investigation could help philosophers querying consequentialism as soon as the consequences of chemical activities over the world are taken into account. Furthermore, we will point out how the philosophy of chemistry provides philosophers with new arguments concerning the key debate about the ‘intrinsic value’ of life, ecosystems and the Earth, in environmental ethics. To conclude, we will highlight how mesology, that is to say the study of ‘milieux’, and the concept of ‘ecumeme’ proposed by the philosopher and geographer Augustin Berque, could become important both for green chemists and moral philosophers in order to investigate our relationships with the Earth. (shrink)

Aesthetics is a vexed topic in philosophy, with a long history. For my purposes, an aesthetic experience is a foundational affective response to an object, to which terms such as “ugly”, “beautiful”, “pretty” or “harmonious” are applied. These terms are derived from a Discourse of aesthetics; some remain constant, others change from generation to generation. Aesthetics and ethics have been linked in Western thought since the days of Plato and Aristotle. This essay examines what is happening to that link in (...) contemporary experience. It emphasises the ways in which the popular media exploit aesthetic appeal to penetrate their market, and to exploit and frame intuitive responses to current and past events. Production values, the artfulness of editors and the financial interests of producers and directors thus do much to determine contemporary aesthetic and ethical judgements. That which is beautifully presented invites the ethical involvement of the audience. Events whose images are beautifully presented constitute “hyperevidence”, a pre-judged, reinforced and amplified illusion of reality and participation. Understanding how aesthetic excellence draws audiences into ethical relationship with what is presented becomes an important part of education in ethics, including bioethics. (shrink)

In The Ends of Harm Victor Tadros develops an alternative to consequentialist, and non-consequentialist retributivist, accounts of the justifiability of punishment: the duty view. Crucial to this view is the claim that wrongdoers incur an enforceable duty to remedy their wrongs. They cannot undo them, but they can do something that is almost as good—namely, by submitting to appropriate punishment, which will deter potential wrongdoers in the future, reduce their victim’s risk of suffering similar wrongs again. Admittedly, this involves harming (...) wrongdoers as a means to an end, but according to Tadros the ‘means principle’ that we should not harm others as a means, properly construed, does not apply to cases where the victim has an enforceable duty to bear the kind of harm that he or she is being made to suffer. In this article, I shall express reservations about Tadros’ defense and interpretation of the means principle. In presenting his position, Tadros also sets out some interesting anti-retributivist considerations casting doubt on the idea that wrongdoers’ suffering is non-instrumentally good. I shall challenge these. Finally, I shall suggest that the duty view may have counterintuitive implications in relation to wrongs where the offender helps to lower the risk that victims will be subjected to similar wrongs in ways other than by being punished. (shrink)

With regard to intrinsically morally relevant factors it is natural to suppose that if a variation in a given factor makes a moral difference anywhere, then it makes the same moral difference everywhere (henceforth: the constancy assumption). Jonathan Dancy (and other moral particularists) reject the constancy assumption. Partly on the basis thereof, they infer that ethical decisions should be made “case by case, without the comforting support of moral principles”. In this article, I challenge Dancy's defence and use of a (...) denial of the constancy assumption on three points. First, Dancy's appeal to moral intuitions do not justify denying a significant version of the constancy assumption. Second, if we reject the constancy assumption, surprisingly, it may in one crucial respect be very hard to defend moral particularism as commonly articulated. Third, rejecting the constancy assumption does not motivate seeing moral reasoning as essentially a case‐by‐case matter. (shrink)

The paper discusses normative systems and their revision within an algebraic framework. If a system is logically well-formed, certain norms, called connecting norms, determine the system as a whole. It is maintained that, if the system is well-formed, a relation at least as low as determines a lattice or quasi-lattice of its connecting norms. The ideas are presented mainly in the form of comments on a legal example concerning acquisition of movable property by extinction of another person's previous rights.

Subjectivism about welfare is the view that something is basically good for you if and only if, and to the extent that, you have the right kind of favorable attitude toward it under the right conditions. I make a presumptive case for the falsity of subjectivism by arguing against nearly every extant version of the view. My arguments share a common theme: theories of welfare should be tested for what they imply about newborn infants. Even if a theory is intended (...) to apply only to adults, the fact that it is false of newborns may give us sufficient reason to reject it. (shrink)

This paper discusses the possible inspirations that might be derived from the viewpoints of Eastern Philosophy in contemporary studies of consciousness. First of all, two notions of consciousness are introduced, one of which can be explained by science. The other however cannot, and as such is also called the ?Hard Problem?. Secondly, the special features shared by morality and the ?Hard Problem of Consciousness? are discussed. Thirdly, I discuss the conventional routes Oriental philosophy takes toward an exploration of the human (...) mind, and consequently point out that Oriental philosophy views consciousness as the fundamental feature of moral beings. One of the reasons that human beings can pursue meaningful life is because of the necessary existence of conscious experience. It is our conscious experience that makes a life of value possible. Therefore, in Oriental philosophy matters of consciousness revolve around aspects of morality and spirituality, and the training of the abilities of consciousness is emphasized over knowledge. Finally, this paper concludes with a comparison of the different approaches Oriental philosophy and current Western academics take in their study of consciousness. Hopefully, one day consciousness can be fully explored from more diverse viewpoints to gain a more comprehensive understanding and so further the happiness of humanity. (shrink)

Intuitions are widely assumed to play an important evidential role in ethical inquiry. In this paper I critically discuss a recently influential claim that the epistemological credentials of ethical intuitions are undermined by their causal pedigree and functional role. I argue that this claim is exaggerated. In the course of doing so I argue that the challenge to ethical intuitions embodied in this claim should be understood not only as a narrowly epistemological challenge, but also as a substantially ethical one. (...) I argue that this fact illuminates the epistemology of ethical intuitions. (shrink)

Darwin’s treatment of morality in The Descent of Man has generated a wide variety of responses among moral philosophers. Among these is the dismissal of evolution as irrelevant to ethics by Darwin’s contemporary Henry Sidgwick; the last, and arguably the greatest, of the Nineteenth Century British Utilitarians. This paper offers a re-examination of Sidgwick’s response to evolutionary considerations as irrelevant to ethics and the absence of any engagement with Darwin’s work in Sidgwick’s main ethical treatise, The Methods of Ethics . (...) This assessment of Sidgwick’s response to Darwin’s work is shown to have significance for a number of ongoing controversies in contemporary metaethics. (shrink)

T. M. Scanlon's buck-passing account of value (BPA) has been subjected to a barrage of criticisms. Recently, to be helpful to BPA, Roger Crisp has suggested that a number of these criticisms can be met if one makes some revisions to BPA. In this paper, I argue that if advocates of the buck-passing account accepted these revisions, they would effectively be giving up the buck-passing account as it is typically understood, that is, as an account concerned with the conceptual priority (...) of reasons or the right vis-à-vis value or the good. I conclude by addressing some of the broader implications of my arguments for the current debate about the buckpassing account of value. (shrink)

It is common for people to be sensitive to aesthetic qualities in one another’s speech. We allow the loveliness or unloveliness of a person’s voice to make impressions on us. What is more, it is also common to allow those aesthetic impressions to affect how we are inclined to feel about the speaker. We form attitudes of liking, trusting, disliking or distrusting partly in virtue of the aesthetic qualities of a person’s speech. In this paper I ask whether such attitudes (...) could ever be legitimate. This is a microcosm of the broader issue of whether people’s aesthetic qualities in general can justify the interpersonal valuing-attitudes that they so often cause. I draw from recent discussions of body aesthetics to articulate a pair of challenges. One challenge says that aesthetic judgements of speech are reliant on unjustifiable prejudices. The other holds that a person’s aesthetic qualities are irrelevant to whether they should be liked. Against these challenges I argue that some speech can bear aesthetic qualities which are not reliant on prejudice and which are relevant to whether the speaker should be liked. I develop this argument through an analysis of the concept of lyricism. (shrink)

In a series of articles, Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons have argued that Richard Boyd’s defence of moral realism, utilizing a causal theory of reference, fails. Horgan and Timmons construct a twin Earth-style thought experiment which, they claim, generates intuitions inconsistent with the realist account. In their thought experiment, the use of (allegedly) moral terms at a world is causally regulated by some property distinct from that regulating their use here on Earth; nevertheless, Horgan and Timmons claim, it is intuitive (...) that the inhabitants of this world disagree with us in their moral claims. Since any disagreement would be merely verbal were the alleged moral facts identical to or constituted by different natural facts, the identity or constitution claim must be false. I argue that their argument fails. Horgan and Timmons’ thought experiment is underdescribed; when we fill out the details, I claim, we shall see that the challenge to moral realism fades away. I sketch two possible interpretations of the (apparently) moral claims of the inhabitants of moral Twin Earth. On one interpretation, they fail to disagree with us because they actually agree with us; on the other, they fail to disagree with us because they are not moralizers at all. Which interpretation is true, I argue, will depend on the facts that explain the differences between us and the inhabitants of moral twin Earth. (shrink)

In this essay, I defend the Moorean position on organic unities. I will present some plausible examples of organic unites and consider some objections to them. In particular, I will consider an objection from evaluative inadequacy and an objection from Holism or Conditionalism. I will also examine one line of criticism that claims the Moorean position is incoherent.

Is consciousness intrinsically valuable? Some theorists favor the positive view, according to which consciousness itself accrues intrinsic value, independent of the particular kind of experience instantiated. In contrast, I favor the neutral view, according to which consciousness is neither intrinsically valuable nor disvaluable. The primary purpose of this paper is to clarify what is at stake when we ask whether consciousness is intrinsically valuable, to carve out the theoretical space, and to evaluate the question rigorously. Along the way, I also (...) show why the neutral view is attractive and why certain arguments for the positive view do not work. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The literature surrounding Horgan and Timmons’s Moral Twin Earth scenarios has focused on whether such scenarios present a metasemantic problem for naturalist realists. But in Choosing Normative Concepts, Eklund uses a similar scenario to illuminate a novel, distinctly metaphysical problem for normative realists of both naturalist and non-naturalist stripes. The problem is that it is not clear what would suffice for the sort of ardent realist view that normative realists have in mind – the view that reality itself favors (...) certain ways of acting and valuing. Eklund then offers a metasemantic view that he thinks can provide the best solution to this problem. In this reply to Eklund, I argue that Eklund’s treatment of the problem and his solution re-entangle metaphysical and metasemantic issues that ought to be kept separate. I also argue that there is a purely metaphysical solution to the problem at hand, which Eklund’s own solution seems to implicitly rely upon. While these criticisms do not suggest that Eklund’s positive view is false, they do undermine some of the broader lessons that Eklund hopes to draw from the view. (shrink)

Analytic reductivism in metaethics has long been out of philosophical vogue. In Confusion of Tongues: A Theory of Normativity (2014), Stephen Finlay tries to resuscitate it by developing an analytic metaethical reductive naturalistic semantics for ‘good.’ He argues that an end-relational semantics is the simplest account that can explain all of the data concerning the term, and hence the most plausible theory of it. I argue that there are several assumptions that a reductive naturalist would need to make about contextual (...) parameter completion to derive reductive naturalism from an end-relational semantics—assumptions that nonnaturalists might forcefully resist. I also argue for the claim that an end-relational semantics could provide surprising resources for nonnaturalists to address semantic worries about their views—the upshot of which paints the way for a new and sophisticated nonnaturalism about the semantics of moral discourse. Nonnaturalists have long suspected that they need not worry about semantics and this paper lends support to that suspicion. (shrink)

To be able to understand the history of bioethics, it is necessary to provide an overview of the mainstreams in philosophy which influenced them. That way one can clarify the theoretical origins of several ways of thought in bioethics as well as pinpoint certain problems within the field of bioethics. This paper will give a brief overview of moral theories in the history of philosophy and the way the have influenced ethical thought on biotechnology.

A book so overall critical as The Idea of Justice by A. Sen requires a Popper inspired examination. The results are that his rejection of Rawls is flawed and that he entirely lacks meta-ethics. The continental Weberian approach to normative enquiry has been severely neglected by many scholars in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, trying in vain to identify the true nature of justice. Instead of searching for a Platonic idea of justice, one should examine today’s conflicts over justice looking to the (...) ultimate values of people. (shrink)

Some philosophers have claimed that pleasures and pains are characterized by their particular or . Most contemporary writers reject this view: they hold that hedonic states have nothing in common except being liked or disliked (alternatively: pursued or avoided) for their own sake. In this article, I argue that the hedonic tone view has been dismissed too quickly: there is no clear introspective or scientific evidence that pleasures do not share a phenomenal quality. I also argue that analysing hedonic states (...) in terms of liking or wanting is implausible. If it is correct that pleasures and pains are not united by any particular hedonic tone, we should instead simply conclude that there are several different hedonic tones. This pluralistic understanding of the hedonic tone view has generally been overlooked in the literature, but appears to be fairly plausible as a philosophical account of pleasure and pain. (shrink)

Might there be knowledge of non-instrumental values? Arguments are give for two principal claims. One is that if there is such knowledge, it typically will have features that do not entirely match those of other kinds of knowledge. It will have a closer relation to the kind of person one is or becomes, and in the way it combines features of knowing-how with knowing-that. There also are problems of indeterminacy of non-instrumental value which are not commonly found in other things (...) that we can know about. The second claim is that there is a strong prima-facie case for holding that there is such knowledge, and that the usual arguments against this are all faulty. (shrink)

I argue in this text that the economic mind is a culturally hegemonic, naturalistic interpretation of the behavior produced by the revolutionary nature of the economic and technical developments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite persistent criticism, people fulfilled the predictions of the economic model of a human being for so long that they committed an attribution error and took it to be the adequate vision of human nature. Neoclassical economic theory played a significant, even if involuntary, role (...) in the spread of this illusion. I also claim that the concept of economic mind—as the dominant interpretation of human nature—currently functions as a self-fulfilling prophecy, reproducing behaviors that would have a chance to change (refuting the theory developed on their basis), were it not for the popularity of this concept as commonsensical definition of human nature. (shrink)

A pertinent concern in the human enhancement debate is that human enhancement technologies (HET) are intrinsically bad and, hence, morally impermissible. This article evaluates the related claims about the intrinsic badness of HET by looking into philosophical theories of intrinsic value. It investigates how well-established conceptions of intrinsic value map onto typical bioconservative arguments about HET's intrinsic badness. Three predominant variants of these arguments are explored and found wanting: (i) HET are intrinsically bad owing to their unnaturalness; (ii) the pursuit (...) of HET reveals intrinsically bad character (“the desire for mastery”); and (iii) HET will necessarily undermine intrinsically valuable things (e.g., human dignity). My analysis shows that the debate on intrinsic value places serious constraints on claims about the intrinsic badness of HET. More specifically, the analysis shows that bioconservative arguments are, for the most part, inconsistent, misconceived, and overly speculative. Enhancement interventions cannot be bearers of intrinsic value on any of its plausible understandings, and, even if we could grant such a possibility, there are no compelling reasons to presume that the intrinsic value of HET would be necessarily negative. As a result, claims regarding their moral impermissibility are unwarranted. (shrink)

Recent work within such disparate research areas as the epistemology of perception, theories of well-being, animal and medical ethics, the philosophy of consciousness, and theories of understanding in philosophy of science and epistemology has featured disconnected discussions of what is arguably a single underlying question: What is the value of consciousness? The purpose of this paper is to review some of this work and place it within a unified theoretical framework that makes contributions (and contributors) from these disparate areas more (...) visible to one another. (shrink)

Franz Brentano is well known for highlighting the importance of intentionality, but he said curiously little about the nature of intentionality. According to Mark Textor, there is a deep reason for this: Brentano took intentionality to be a conceptual primitive the nature of which is revealed only in direct grasp. Although there is certainly textual support for this interpretation, it appears in tension with Brentano’s repeated attempts to analyze intentionality in terms of ‘notional constituents’ – aspects of intentionality which cannot (...) come apart in reality but which can be conceptually distinguished. After bringing out this tension, I explore some options for resolving it, ultimately offering my own favored interpretation. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the possibility of explaining why there is such a thing as the good in naturalistic terms. More specifically, I seek an explanation of the fact that some things are good-for human beings and the other animals in the final sense of good: worth aiming at. I trace the existence of the final good to the existence of conscious agents. I propose that the final good for an animal is her own well-functioning as the kind of (...) creature she is, taken as an end of action, and that having this as her final good makes her better at the activity she is necessarily engaged in, namely, living. (shrink)

Disgust is an emotion that is visceral, reactive, and uncomfortable. It is also purposively aroused by art in ways that contribute substantially to the meaning of a work. In such cases “aesthetic disgust” is a component of understanding and appreciation. Disgust comes in many varieties, including the humorous, the horrid, and the tragic. The responses it elicits can be strong or subtle, but few are actually pleasant. Therefore aesthetic disgust raises an ancient question: how is it that emotions aroused in (...) practical life become the focus of pleasure or enjoyment when they are aroused by art? This paper reviews a number of accounts of aesthetic satisfaction in disgust, arguing that the most profound uses convey an immediate and visceral grasp of physical vulnerability and mortality. (shrink)

Following Moore, value invariabilists deny that the intrinsic value of something can be affected by features extrinsic to it. The primary focuses of this paper are (i) to examine the invariabilistic thesis and expand upon how we ought to understand it, in light of contemporary axiological distinctions, and (ii) to argue that distinguishing between different kinds of invariabilism provides resources to undermine a prominent argument against variabilism. First, I use two contemporary axiological distinctions to clarify what kind of value the (...) invariabilism debate concerns (final value). Then I show how the distinction between personal value and value simpliciter reveals different variabilistic theses, depending on what type of final value one thinks may be affected by extrinsic features. Using this insight, I challenge an argument for final value simpliciter invariabilism. Variabilists offer the example of the vicious being pleased as a counterexample to the claim that pleasure’s final value is invariant to contextual changes. The argument that I examine purports to show that this case actually supports invariabilism about pleasure’s final value simpliciter, because the best explanation for why the vicious being pleased is a fitting object of indignation is that the vicious person’s pleasure is finally valuable simpliciter. I argue that this argument fails because the vicious person’s pleasure being finally personally good for them better explains why an attitude of indignation is fitting. I address two objections and conclude with remarks about how my results might inform future research on value invariabilism. (shrink)