Embora elaborada principalmente na década de 1970 a ética de Hans Jonas permanece atual e é particularmente relevante pelo uso da metafísica em um contexto pós-moderno (algo inusitado e ousado) e por sua teoria dos valores que podem ser atribuídos ao ser e ao não-ser. Pretende-se aqui apresentar as limitações que Jonas detectou nas éticas tradicionais (judaico-cristã, kantiana, por exemplo) e analisar as soluções por ele propostas (notadamente heurística do medo e futurologia comparada). Compreender também a fundamentação de tais soluções (...) (um dos maiores desafios da ética jonasiana). A pesquisa baseou-se em uma revisão bibliográfica que envolve a fonte primária, a obra de Jonas, e fontes secundárias. Constatou-se que a ética de Jonas surge da detecção de um niilismo tanto prático quanto teórico que permitiu um avanço desenfreado da técnica. É necessário então submeter a atividade humana à ética novamente. Para tanto foi utilizada uma ontologia que atribui relevância ética ao metabolismo (e não à razão). Deste modo, a ética da responsabilidade objetiva combater o niilismo e o ceticismo moral e supervisionar o progresso técnico, garantindo assim a existência de uma vida humana autêntica e de uma natureza que tem a si própria como fim. (shrink)

Analyzing the position of two philosophers whose views are recognizably divergent, W. O. Quine and M. Dummett, we intend to support a striking point of agreement between them: the idea that our logical principles constitute our principles about what there is, and therefore, that logic is metaphysics.

Disagreement over what exists is so fundamental that it tends to hinder or even to block dialogue among disputants. The various controversies between believers and atheists, or realists and nominalists, are only two kinds of examples. Interested in contributing to the intelligibility of the debate on ontology, in 1939 Willard van Orman Quine began a series of works which introduces the notion of ontological commitment and proposes an allegedly objective criterion to identify the exact conditions under which a theoretical discourse (...) signals an assumption of existence. I intend to present the concept of ontological commitment and the Quinean criterion, to expose and evaluate some of the many criticisms to which the criterion has subject and to situate it in the context of Quine’s philosophy. As a product of such analyses, I hope to contribute to the discussion on the application and relevance of the notion of ontological commitment. (shrink)

Este artigo propõe a adoção do método da análise de conceitos conforme apresentada por John Wilson, como metodologia pedagógica e principal conteúdo para a disciplina de filosofia no ensino médio.

Parece um fato bastante trivial que quando uma teoria científica se torna obsoleta, por ter sido substituída por outra, isto não tem nenhuma consequência para os objetos técnicos compatíveis com a teoria antiga. Pretendo, neste ensaio, responder à questão bem menos óbvia de por que isto se dá. Como subproduto, apresento uma defesa da teoria da ciência de Thomas Kuhn. Para tanto, inicio mostrando como a teoria de Kuhn foi motivada por considerações sobre a história da ciência. Em seguida, defendo (...) um pressuposto sobre como se dá a relação entre ciência e tecnologia. Continuo, apresentando uma distinção entre conteúdo factual e conceitual na ciência. E. (shrink)

The main objective of this PhD Thesis is to present a method of obtaining strong normalization via natural ordinal, which is applicable to natural deduction systems and typed lambda calculus. The method includes (a) the definition of a numerical assignment that associates each derivation (or lambda term) to a natural number and (b) the proof that this assignment decreases with reductions of maximal formulas (or redex). Besides, because the numerical assignment used coincide with the length of a specific sequence of (...) reduction - the worst reduction sequence - it is the lowest upper bound on the length of reduction sequences. The main commitment of the introduced method is that it is constructive and elementary, produced only through analyzing structural and combinatorial properties of derivations and lambda terms, without appeal to any sophisticated mathematical tool. Together with the exposition of the method, it is presented a comparative study of some articles in the literature that also get strong normalization by means we can identify with the natural ordinal methods. Among them we highlight Howard[1968], which performs an ordinal analysis of Godel’s Dialectica interpretation for intuitionistic first order arithmetic. We reveal a fact about this article not noted by the author himself: a syntactic proof of strong normalization theorem for the system of typified lambda calculus λ⊃ is a consequence of its results. This would be the first strong normalization proof in the literature. (written in Portuguese). (shrink)

We are in the information age. Nowadays, the information is a high power commodity. Your domain and handling have high economic, political, social value. However, we still know little about it. What is the information? How do we store it, retrieve it and manipulate it? Everyone have or should have equal access to information? What is the relationship between information and knowledge? How can both influence and be influenced by the action? Can they are modeled? The models can contribute to (...) your understanding? Information and knowledge can consolidate or destroy friendships? What are the most efficient means to produce, store, organize and retrieve knowledge and information? Such questions permeate the content of this book, bringing together Brazilian and foreign authors, seeking to contribute to the improvement of the understanding of each of the concepts involved and the relationships between them. This work is the result of EIICA IX, International Meeting information, knowledge and action, held between December, 2nd and 4th 2015, at the Faculty of Philosophy and Science of UNESP/ Marília. (shrink)

É bem conhecida a divergência entre as posições de Gottlob Frege e Bertrand Russell com relação ao tratamento semântico dado a sentenças contendo termos singulares indefinidos, ou seja, termos singulares sem referência ou com referência ambígua, tais como ‘Papai Noel’ ou ‘o atual rei da França’ ou ‘1/0 ’ ou ‘√4’ ou ‘o autor de Principia Mathematica’. Para Frege, as sentenças da linguagem natural que contêm termos indefinidos não formam declarações e portanto não são nem verdadeiras nem falsas. Já para (...) as sentenças da matemática, Frege defende que elas precisam ser corrigidas através da convenção forçada de uma referência não ambígua. Russell, por outro lado, aceita os termos indefinidos e propõe, através de sua teoria das descrições definidas, uma maneira de avaliar as sentenças em que eles ocorrem; e Quine amplia a teoria de Russell para abranger também os nomes com problemas de referência. Na prática da matemática são comuns os termos singulares indefinidos, sem referência, tais como ‘1/0 ’, ou com referência ambígua, tais como ‘√4’. Apesar de não haver uma sistematização rigorosa desta situação entre os matemáticos, há, no entanto, um conjunto de regras convencionais que tradicionalmente costumam ser aplicadas no tratamento matemático dos termos indefinidos. Nossa proposta é tomar a convenção matemática como inspiração e modelo para apresentar uma interpretação semântica formal para as descrições definidas e os nomes e utilizá-la como um argumento que favorece a abordagem de Russell relativamente à de Frege. (shrink)

Much of the ontology made in the analytic tradition of philosophy nowadays is founded on some of Quine’s proposals. His naturalism and the binding between existence and quantification are respectively two of his very influential metaphilosophical and methodological theses. Nevertheless, many of his specific claims are quite controversial and contemporaneously have few followers. Some of them are: (a) his rejection of higher-order logic; (b) his resistance in accepting the intensionality of ontological commitments; (c) his rejection of first-order modal logic; and (...) (d) his rejection of the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements. I intend to argue that these controversial negative claims are just interconnected consequences of those much more accepted and apparently less harmful metaphilosophical and methodological theses, and that the glue linking all these consequences to its causes is the notion of extensionality. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to support the logical incompatibility of the opposing views as a criterion for characterizing disagreements as genuinely metaphysical. That is, I intend to argue that a specific dispute is a metaphysical disagreement only when the conflicting views are governed by different logics. If correct, this criterion would not only help to separate merely verbal from genuine metaphysical debates, but it also would ground an argument against deflationism, guaranteeing the substantiality and relevance of metaphysics. I (...) intend to clarify the criterion, to present its basic foundations and commitments, to give some logical and metaphysical motivations for its adoption and some examples of its application. (shrink)

Artigo de divulgação científica que reflete sobre a relação entre o conhecimento científico e as teses deterministas e fatalistas.

Gilles Deleuze was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth-century, and Smith is widely recognized to be one of his most penetrating interpreters, as well as an important philosophical voice in his own right. Combining his most important pieces over the last fifteen years along with two new essays, this book is Smith 's definitive treatise on Deleuze. The essays are divided into four sections, which cover Deleuze's use of the history of philosophy, an overview of his philosophical (...) system, an analysis of several Deleuzian concepts, as well as an assessment of his position within contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

The concept of mechanism in biology has three distinct meanings. It may refer to a philosophical thesis about the nature of life and biology (‘mechanicism’), to the internal workings of a machine-like structure (‘machine mechanism’), or to the causal explanation of a particular phenomenon (‘causal mechanism’). In this paper I trace the conceptual evolution of ‘mechanism’ in the history of biology, and I examine how the three meanings of this term have come to be featured in the philosophy of biology, (...) situating the new ‘mechanismic program’ in this context. I argue that the leading advocates of the mechanismic program (i.e., Craver, Darden, Bechtel, etc.) inadvertently conflate the different senses of ‘mechanism’. Specifically, they all inappropriately endow causal mechanisms with the ontic status of machine mechanisms, and this invariably results in problematic accounts of the role played by mechanism-talk in scientific practice. I suggest that for effective analyses of the concept of mechanism, causal mechanisms need to be distinguished from machine mechanisms, and the new mechanismic program in the philosophy of biology needs to be demarcated from the traditional concerns of mechanistic biology. (shrink)

In general, we think that when it comes to the good of another, we respect that person’s will by acting in accordance with what he wills because he wills it. I argue that this is not necessarily true. When it comes to the good of another person, it is possible to disrespect that person’s will while acting in accordance with what he wills because he wills it. Seeing how this is so, I argue, enables us to clarify the distinct roles (...) that the wills of competent and incompetent people should play in third-party deliberations about their welfare. (shrink)

One challenge to the rationality of religious commitment has it that faith is unreasonable because it involves believing on insufficient evidence. However, this challenge and influential attempts to reply depend on assumptions about what it is to have faith that are open to question. I distinguish between three conceptions of faith each of which can claim some plausible grounding in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Questions about the rationality or justification of religious commitment and the extent of compatibility with doubt look different (...) on accounts of faith in which trust or hope, rather than belief, are the primary basis for the commitments. On such accounts, while the person of faith has a stake in the truth of the content, practical as well as epistemic considerations can legitimately figure in normative appraisals. Trust and hope can be appropriate in situations of recognized risk, need not involve self-deception, and are compatible with the idea that one's purely epistemic opinions should be responsive only to evidence.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: dissolving the problem of faith and reasonVolume 49, Issue 1DANIEL J. MCKAUGHAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000200Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: dissolving the problem of faith and reasonVolume 49, Issue 1DANIEL J. MCKAUGHAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000200Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: dissolving the problem of faith and reasonVolume 49, Issue 1DANIEL J. MCKAUGHAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000200Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

The controversy over the old ideal of “value-free science” has cooled significantly over the past decade. Many philosophers of science now agree that even ethical and political values may play a substantial role in all aspects of scientific inquiry. Consequently, in the last few years, work in science and values has become more specific: Which values may influence science, and in which ways? Or, how do we distinguish illegitimate from illegitimate kinds of influence? In this paper, I argue that this (...) problem requires philosophers of science to take a new direction. I present two case studies in the influence of values on scientific inquiry: feminist values in archaeology and commercial values in pharmaceutical research. I offer a preliminary assessment of these cases, that the influence of values was legitimate in the feminist case, but not in the pharmaceutical case. I then turn to three major approaches to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate influences of values, including the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values and Heather Douglas’ distinction between direct and indirect roles for values. I argue that none of these three approaches gives an adequate analysis of the two cases. In the concluding section, I briefly sketch my own approach, which draws more heavily on ethics than the others, and is more promising as a solution to the current problem. This is the new direction in which I think science and values should move. (shrink)

Nihilism is the thesis that no composite objects exist. Some ontologists have advocated abandoning nihilism in favor of deep nihilism, the thesis that composites do not existO, where to existO is to be in the domain of the most fundamental quantifier. By shifting from an existential to an existentialO thesis, the deep nihilist seems to secure all the benefits of a composite-free ontology without running afoul of ordinary belief in the existence of composites. I argue that, while there are well-known (...) reasons for accepting nihilism, there appears to be no reason at all to accept deep nihilism. In particular, deep nihilism draws no support either from the usual arguments for nihilism or from considerations of parsimony. (shrink)

Objective reasons are given by the facts. Subjective reasons are given by one’s perspective on the facts. Subjective reasons, not objective reasons, determine what it is rational to do. In this paper, I argue against a prominent account of subjective reasons. The problem with that account, I suggest, is that it makes what one has subjective reason to do, and hence what it is rational to do, turn on matters outside or independent of one’s perspective. After explaining and establishing this (...) point, I offer a novel account of subjective reasons which avoids the problem. (shrink)

Although it may seem like a truism to assert that biology is the science that studies organisms, during the second half of the twentieth century the organism category disappeared from biological theory. Over the past decade, however, biology has begun to witness the return of the organism as a fundamental explanatory concept. There are three major causes: (a) the realization that the Modern Synthesis does not provide a fully satisfactory understanding of evolution; (b) the growing awareness of the limits of (...) reductionism in molecular biology; and (c) the renewed interest in the nature of life as a genuine scientific problem. This essay examines these recent developments and considers the new epistemological roles being played by the organism in each of them. It also reflects on what the present resurgence of the organism means for the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

In this article we focus on three key precepts shared by Confucianism and the African ethic of Ubuntu: the central value of community, the desirability of ethical partiality, and the idea that we tend to become morally better as we grow older. For each of these broad similarities, there are key differences underlying them, and we discuss those as well as speculate about the reasons for them. Our aim is not to take sides, but we do suggest ways that Ubuntu (...) and Confucianism might have something to learn from each other and perhaps come closer. We hope that our preliminary reflections can inspire further debate and thinking on a theme – dialogues between long-standing and large-scale non-Western traditions – that is bound to increase in importance as non-Western societies play a greater role in the global system and as the search continues for a 'global ethic'. (shrink)

The machine conception of the organism (MCO) is one of the most pervasive notions in modern biology. However, it has not yet received much attention by philosophers of biology. The MCO has its origins in Cartesian natural philosophy, and it is based on the metaphorical redescription of the organism as a machine. In this paper I argue that although organisms and machines resemble each other in some basic respects, they are actually very different kinds of systems. I submit that the (...) most significant difference between organisms and machines is that the former are intrinsically purposive whereas the latter are extrinsically purposive. Using this distinction as a starting point, I discuss a wide range of dissimilarities between organisms and machines that collectively lay bare the inadequacy of the MCO as a general theory of living systems. To account for the MCO’s prevalence in biology, I distinguish between its theoretical, heuristic, and rhetorical functions. I explain why the MCO is valuable when it is employed heuristically but not theoretically, and finally I illustrate the serious problems that arise from the rhetorical appeal to the MCO. (shrink)

Invited contribution to The Aim of Belief, a special issue of Teorema, guest-edited by J. Zalabardo.

This article explores the ethical architecture of the ‘beneficiary pays’ principle, which holds that agents can come to possess remedial obligations of corrective justice to others through the involuntary receipt of benefits stemming from injustice. Advocates of the principle face challenges of both persuasion and limitation in seeking to convince those unmoved of its normative force, and to explain in which cases of benefiting from injustice it does and does not give rise to rectificatory obligations. The article considers ways in (...) which advocates of the principle might seek to win over those sceptical of its merits by employing a modified principle which sidesteps the issue of enforceability, before considering the question of whether the argument can be expanded from cases of benefiting from wrongdoing specifically to other sorts of situation where one agent involuntarily benefits from another's loss. (shrink)

A lot of philosophers engage in debates about what claims are “metaphysically necessary”, and a lot more assume with little argument that some classes of claims have the status of “metaphysical necessity”. I think we can usefully replace questions about metaphysical necessity with five other questions which each capture some of what people may have had in mind when talking about metaphysical necessity. This paper explains these five other questions, and then discusses the question “how much of metaphysics is metaphysically (...) necessary?”, and each of its five replacements. (shrink)

A lot of good philosophy is done in the armchair, but is nevertheless a posteriori. This paper clarifies and then defends that claim. Among the a posteriori activities done in the armchair are assembling and evaluating commonplaces; formulating theoretical alternatives; and integrating well-known past a posteriori discoveries. The activity that receives the most discussion, however, is the application of theoretical virtues to choose philosophical theories: the paper argues that much of this is properly seen as a posteriori.

Call the view that it is possible to acquire aesthetic knowledge via testimony, optimism, and its denial, pessimism. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for pessimism. It works by turning attention away from the basis of the relevant belief, namely, testimony, and toward what that belief in turn provides a basis for, namely, other attitudes. In short, I argue that an aesthetic belief acquired via testimony cannot provide a rational basis for further attitudes, such as admiration, and that (...) the best explanation for this is that the relevant belief is not itself rational. If a belief is not rational, it is not knowledge. So, optimism is false. After addressing a number of objections to the argument, I consider briefly its bearing on the debate concerning thick evaluative concepts. While the aim is to argue that pessimism holds, not to explain why it holds, I provide an indication in closing of what that explanation might be. (shrink)

In this article we develop and defend what we call the “Trust View” of promissory obligation, according to which making a promise involves inviting another individual to trust one to do something. In inviting her trust, and having the invitation accepted (or at least not rejected), one incurs an obligation to her not to betray the trust that one has invited. The distinctive wrong involved in breaking a promise is a matter of violating this obligation. We begin by explicating the (...) core notion of “inviting someone to trust one to do something”, suggesting that it involves signaling to the other individual one's recognition of the importance the relevant action has for her, and one’s willingness to license her to have faith or optimism in one's character with regard to the performance of that action. We then turn to a defense of the Trust View, arguing that it has considerable appeal in its own right, that it is distinct from and superior to three similar accounts (T.M. Scanlon's Assurance View, Judith Jarvis Thomson's Reliance View and David Owens' Authority View), and that several objections to it can be answered. (shrink)

Words, languages, symphonies, fictional characters, games, and recipes are plausibly abstract artifacts— entities that have no spatial location and that are deliberately brought into existence as a result of creative acts. Many accept that composition is unrestricted: for every plurality of material objects, there is a material object that is the sum of those objects. These two views may seem entirely unrelated. I will argue that the most influential argument against restricted composition—the vagueness argument—doubles as an argument that there can (...) be no abstract artifacts. There is no way to resist the vagueness argument against abstract artifacts that does not also undermine the vagueness argument against restricted composition. (shrink)

Subjects appear to take only evidential considerations to provide reason or justification for believing. That is to say that subjects do not take practical considerations—the kind of considerations which might speak in favour of or justify an action or decision—to speak in favour of or justify believing. This is puzzling; after all, practical considerations often seem far more important than matters of truth and falsity. In this paper, I suggest that one cannot explain this, as many have tried, merely by (...) appeal to the idea that belief aims only at the truth. I appeal instead to the idea that the aim of belief is to provide only practical reasons which might form the basis on which to act and to make decisions, an aim which is in turn dictated by the aim of action. This, I argue, explains why subjects take only evidential considerations to favour of or justify believing. Surprisingly, then, it turns out that it is practical reason itself which demands that there be no practical reasons for belief. (shrink)

Psychiatric and neurological disorders have historically provided key insights into the structure-function rela- tionships that subserve human social cognition and behavior, informing the concept of the ‘social brain’. In this review, we take stock of the current status of this concept, retaining a focus on disorders that impact social behavior. We discuss how the social brain, social cognition, and social behavior are interdependent, and emphasize the important role of development and com- pensation. We suggest that the social brain, and its (...) dysfunction and recovery, must be understood not in terms of specific structures, but rather in terms of their interaction in large-scale networks. (shrink)

We distinguish and discuss two different accounts of the subject matter of theories of reference, meta-externalism and meta-internalism. We argue that a form of the meta- internalist view, “moderate meta-internalism”, is the most plausible account of the subject matter of theories of reference. In the second part of the paper we explain how this account also helps to answer the questions of what kind of concept reference is, and what role intuitions have in the study of the reference relation.

We offer a relatively simple and straightforward argument that each of us ought to be vegan. We don’t defend this position by appealing to ‘animal rights’ or the view that animals and humans are ‘moral equals’. Rather, we argue that animal agriculture causes serious harms to other animals (such as pain, suffering and death) and these harms are morally unjustified or caused for no good reason. This is true for both ‘factory farming’ and smaller, so-called ‘humane’ farms. We argue that (...) attempts to justify these harms don’t succeed, and conclude that raising and killing animals for food is wrong. -/- In the second part of our essay we explain how this argument relates to the choices of individuals to buy and consume animal products. Since most people don’t raise and kill animals themselves, the argument above doesn’t directly address individuals’ daily choices. To address this concern, we offer a plausible, general moral principle that describes when consumers should not purchase or consume a product: most simply, we should not support those who act wrongly by seriously harming others, provided we can safely and easily do so. Since, for most people, it is safe and relatively easy to not support those who do wrong by raising and killing animals so they can be eaten, we should not buy or consume animal food products. -/- After making our case that we ought to be vegan, we respond to some of the more challenging objections to our argument. We argue that these objections don’t succeed and so, given our previous argument, nearly everyone is morally obligated to eat a vegan diet. (shrink)

Biological atomism postulates that all life is composed of elementary and indivisible vital units. The activity of a living organism is thus conceived as the result of the activities and interactions of its elementary constituents, each of which individually already exhibits all the attributes proper to life. This paper surveys some of the key episodes in the history of biological atomism, and situates cell theory within this tradition. The atomistic foundations of cell theory are subsequently dissected and discussed, together with (...) the theory’s conceptual development and eventual consolidation. This paper then examines the major criticisms that have been waged against cell theory, and argues that these too can be interpreted through the prism of biological atomism as attempts to relocate the true biological atom away from the cell to a level of organization above or below it. Overall, biological atomism provides a useful perspective through which to examine the history and philosophy of cell theory, and it also opens up a new way of thinking about the epistemic decomposition of living organisms that significantly departs from the physicochemical reductionism of mechanistic biology. (shrink)

Creationism about fictional entities requires a principle connecting what fictions say exist with which fictional entities really exist. The most natural way of spelling out such a principle yields inconsistent verdicts about how many fictional entities are generated by certain inconsistent fictions. Avoiding inconsistency without compromising the attractions of creationism will not be easy.

Lewis is famous as a contemporary philosophical system-builder. The most obvious way his philosophy exhibited a system was in its content: Lewis’s metaphysics, for example, provided answers to many metaphysical puzzles in an integrated way, and there are illuminating connections to be drawn between his general metaphysical views and, for example, his various views about the mind and its place in nature.

This article explores the law and ethics of lobbying. The legal discussion examines disclosure regulations, employment restrictions,bribery laws, and anti-fraud provisions as each applies to the lobbying context. The analysis demonstrates that given the social value placed on the First Amendment, federal law generally affords lobbyists wide latitude in determining who, what, when, where, and how to lobby.The article then turns to ethics. Lobbying involves deliberate attempts to effect changes in the law. An argument is advanced that because law implicates (...) the use of force and because law ideally reflects the values of a democratic society, seeking to slant the law to serve a client’s narrow interests cannot provide an adequate ethical end for a lobbyist. On the contrary, a lobbyist has an affirmative moral duty to seek reasonably balanced and just laws. The article examines, refines, and defends this proposition in a number of settings. (shrink)

This study focuses on the differences in the perception of business ethics across two groups of management students from France and Romania (n = 220). Data was collected via the ATBEQ to measure preferences for three business philosophies: Machiavellianism, Social Darwinism, and Moral Objectivism. The results show that Romanian students present more favorable attitudes toward Machiavellianism than French students; whereas, French students valued Social Darwinism and Moral Objectivism more highly. For Machiavellianism and Moral Objectivism the results are consistent with the (...) literature and our hypotheses. However, contrary to our expectations, we find that Social Darwinism is more important in France than Romania. The results indicate that religious practice does not influence preferences for the three business philosophies. In terms of gender differences, women have less favorable attitudes toward Machiavellianism and more favorable attitudes toward Moral Objectivism than men. (shrink)

This paper will attempt to assess the primary differences between what I take to be the two primary philosophical "traditions" in contemporary French philosophy, using Derrida (transcendence) and Deleuze (immanence) as exemplary representatives. The body of the paper will examine the use of these terms in three different areas of philosophy on which Derrida and Deleuze have both written: subjectivity, ontology, and epistemology. (1) In the field of subjectivity, the notion of the subject has been critiqued in two manners, either (...) by appealing either to the transcendence of the other (Levinas, Derrida) or to the immanent jlux of experience itself, in relation to which the Ego itself is trancendent (Deleuze, Foucault, Sartre, James). (2) In the field of ontology, a purely "immanent" ontology would be an ontology in which there is neither a "beyond" or an "otherwise" Being, nor "interruptions" in Being, both of which would require an appeal to a formal element of transcendence (Deleuze). Such a "transcendent" and aporetic structure, which can never appear or be present as such within Being, is what lies at the basis of the project of deconstruction, with its attendant aporias (Derrida). (3) This distinction, finally, finds parallels in Kant's epistemology, for whom the possible experience is conditioned by purely immanent criteria (Deleuze), whereas what goes beyond the limits of possible experience is transcendent (Derrida). Drawing on these three thread of analysis, the paper concludes with an assessment of what is at stake in the ethical differences between the two traditions. The question of "transcendence" is "What mast I do?", which is the question of morality (a duty or obligation that is beyond being, an "ought" beyond the "is"). The question of "immanence" is "What can I do?" (my power or capacity as an existing individual within being). For Levinas and Derrida, ethics precedes ontology because it is derived from an element of transcendence (the Other); for Deleuze, ethics is ontology because it is derived from the immanent relation of beings to Being at the level of their existence (Spinoza). (shrink)

When, if ever, can healthcare provider's lay claim to knowing what is best for their patients? In this paper, I offer a taxonomy of clinical disagreements. The taxonomy, I argue, reveals that healthcare providers often can lay claim to knowing what is best for their patients, but that oftentimes, they cannot do so *as* healthcare providers.

The dilemma of free will is that if actions are caused deterministically, then they are not free, and if they are not caused deterministically then they are not free either because then they happen by chance and are not up to the agent. I propose a conception of free will that solves this dilemma. It can be called agent causation but it differs from what Chisholm and others have called so.

A range of important ethical issues emerges from a consideration of the past interaction between colonizing and colonized peoples. This article first seeks to describe the key characteristics of colonialism as a system of domination and subjugation, before considering the legitimacy of contemporary judgments on the morality of historical colonialism. It then examines how the particular character of colonialism complicates arguments relating to the rectification of injustice. It concludes by asking what lessons those interested in ethics can learn from the (...) diverse body of work produced by writers in the postcolonial tradition. (shrink)

Berkeley argues that claims about divine predication (e.g., God is wise or exists) should be understood literally rather than analogically, because like all spirits (i.e., causes), God is intelligible only in terms of the extent of his effects. By focusing on the harmony and order of nature, Berkeley thus unites his view of God with his doctrines of mind, force, grace, and power, and avoids challenges to religious claims that are raised by appeals to analogy. The essay concludes by showing (...) how a letter, supposedly by Berkeley, to Peter Browne ("discovered" in 1969 by Berman and Pittion) is, in fact, by John Jackson (1686-1763), controversial theologian and friend of Samuel Clarke. (shrink)

This paper examines the intersecting of the themes of temporality and truth in Deleuze's philosophy. For the ancients, truth was something eternal: what was true was true in all times and in all places. Temporality (coming to be and passing away) was the realm of the mutable, not the eternal. In the seventeenth century, change began to be seen in a positive light (progress, evolution, and so on), but this change was seen to be possible only because of the immutable (...) laws of nature that govern change. It was not until philosophers such as Bergson, James, Whitehead – and then Deleuze – that time began to be taken seriously on its own account. On the one hand, in Deleuze, time, freed from its subordination to movement, now becomes autonomous: it is the pure form of change (continuous variation) that lies at the basis of Deleuze's metaphysics in Difference and Repetition (and is explored more thematically in The Time-Image). As a result, on the other hand, the false, freed from its subordination to the form of the true, assumes a power of its own (the power of the false), which in turn implies a new ‘analytic of the concept’ that Deleuze develops in What Is Philosophy? (shrink)

Reprinted in Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology, Volume 1: Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, Oxford 2009, ed. Michael Rea. A popular argument for the divinity of Jesus goes like this. Jesus claimed to be divine, but if his claim was false, then either he was insane (mad) or lying (bad), both of which are very unlikely; so, he was divine. I present two objections to this argument. The first, the dwindling probabilities objection, contends that even if we make generous probability assignments (...) to the relevant pieces of evidence for Jesus’ divinity, the probability calculus tell us to suspend judgement on the matter. The second, and more telling objection in my opinion, the merely mistaken objection, contends that it is no less plausible to suppose that Jesus was neither mad nor bad but merely mistaken than that he was divine. (shrink)