Results for 'Gary S. Kahn'

984 found
Order:
  1. Kant’s Philosophy of Moral Luck.Samuel Kahn - 2021 - Sophia 60 (2):365-387.
    In the modern moral luck debate, Kant is standardly taken to be the enemy of moral luck. My goal in this paper is to show that this is mistaken. The paper is divided into six sections. In the first, I show that participants in the moral luck literature take moral luck to be anathema to Kantian ethics. In the second, I explain the kind of luck I am going to focus on here: consequence luck, a species of resultant luck. In (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  2. Defending the Traditional Interpretations of Kant’s Formula of a Law of Nature.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2019 - Theoria 66 (158):76-102.
    In this paper I defend the traditional interpretations of Kant’s Formula of a Law of Nature from recent attacks leveled by Faviola Rivera-Castro, James Furner, Ido Geiger, Pauline Kleingeld and Sven Nyholm. After a short introduction, the paper is divided into four main sections. In the first, I set out the basics of the three traditional interpretations, the Logical Contradiction Interpretation, the Practical Contradiction Interpretation and the Teleological Contradiction Interpretation. In the second, I examine the work of Geiger, Kleingeld and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  3. Positive Duties, Kant’s Universalizability Tests, and Contradictions.Samuel Kahn - 2020 - Southwest Philosophy Review 36 (1):113-120.
    In this paper I am going to raise a problem for recent attempts to derive positive duties from Kant’s universalizability tests. In particular, I argue that these recent attempts are subject to reductio and that the most obvious way of patching them renders them impracticable. I begin by explaining the motivation for these attempts. Then I describe how they work and begin my attack. I conclude by considering some patches.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  4. Plato's Theory of Desire.Charles H. Kahn - 1987 - Review of Metaphysics 41 (1):77 - 103.
    My aim here is to make sense of Plato's account of desire in the middle dialogues. To do that I need to unify or reconcile what are at first sight two quite different accounts: the doctrine of eros in the Symposium and the tripartite theory of motivation in the Republic. It may be that the two theories are after all irreconcilable, that Plato simply changed his mind on the nature of human desire after writing the Symposium and before composing the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   25 citations  
  5. Kant’s post-1800 Disavowal of the Highest Good Argument for the Existence of God.Samuel Kahn - 2018 - Kant Yearbook 10 (1):63-83.
    I have two main goals in this paper. The first is to argue for the thesis that Kant gave up on his highest good argument for the existence of God around 1800. The second is to revive a dialogue about this thesis that died out in the 1960s. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I reconstruct Kant’s highest good argument. In the second, I turn to the post-1800 convolutes of Kant’s Opus postumum to discuss his repeated (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  6. Kant and the duty to promote one’s own happiness.Samuel Kahn - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (3):327-338.
    In his discussion of the duty of benevolence in §27 of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argues that agents have no obligation to promote their own happiness, for ‘this happens unavoidably’ (MS, AA 6:451). In this paper I argue that Kant should not have said this. I argue that Kant should have conceded that agents do have an obligation to promote their own happiness.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  7. Kant's Position on the Wide Right to Abortion.Samuel Kahn - 2024 - Kant Studien 115 (2):203-227.
    In this article, I explicate Kant’s position on the wide right to abortion. That is, I explore the extent to which, according to Kant’s practical philosophy, abortion is punishable, even if it involves an unjust infringement of the right to life. By focusing on the state’s right to punish, rather than the right to life or the onset of personhood, I use Kant to expose a novel range of issues and questions about the legal status of abortion (and criminal punishment (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. Why Positive Duties cannot Be Derived from Kant’s Formula of Universal Law.Samuel Kahn - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (3):1189-1206.
    Ever since Hegel famously objected to Kant’s universalization formulations of the Categorical Imperative on the grounds that they are nothing but an empty formalism, there has been continual debate about whether he was right. In this paper I argue that Hegel got things at least half-right: I argue that even if negative duties (duties to omit actions or not to adopt maxims) can be derived from the universalization formulations, positive duties (duties to commit actions or to adopt maxims) cannot. The (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  9. Review of Gary Varner, Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare’s Two-Level Utilitarianism. [REVIEW]Gary Comstock - 2013 - Environmental Values 22 (3):417-420.
    With his 1998 book, In Nature’s Interests? Gary Varner proved to be one of our most original and trenchant of environmental ethicists. Here, in the first of a promised two volume set, he makes his mark on another field, animal ethics, leaving an even deeper imprint. Thoroughly grounded in the relevant philosophical and scientific literatures, Varner is as precise in analysis as he is wide-ranging in scope. His writing is clear and rigorous, and he explains philosophical nuances with extraordinary (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Nary an Obligatory Maxim from Kant’s Universalizability Tests.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2022 - Zeitschrift Für Ethik Und Moralphilosophie 5 (1):15-35.
    In this paper I argue that there would be no obligatory maxims if the only standards for assessing maxims were Kant’s universalizability tests. The paper is divided into five sections. In the first, I clarify my thesis: I define my terms and disambiguate my thesis from other related theses for which one might argue. In the second, I confront the view that says that if a maxim passes the universalizability tests, then there is a positive duty to adopt that maxim; (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  11. Kant’s theory of conscience.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2015 - In Muchnik Pablo & Thorndike Oliver, Rethinking Kant: Volume IV. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 135-156.
    In this paper I discuss Kant’s theory of conscience. In particular, I explicate the following two claims that Kant makes in the Metaphysics of Morals: (1) an erring conscience is an absurdity and (2) if an agent has acted according to his/her conscience, then s/he has done all that can be required of him/her. I argue that (1) is a very specific claim that does not bear on the problem of moral knowledge. I argue that (2) rests on a strongly (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  12. Can Positive Duties be Derived from Kant's Formula of Universal Law?Samuel Kahn - 2014 - Kantian Review 19 (1):93-108.
    According to the standard reading of Kant's formula of universal law (FUL), positive duties can be derived from FUL. In this article, I argue that the standard reading does not work. In the first section, I articulate FUL and what I mean by a positive duty. In the second section, I set out an intuitive version of the standard reading of FUL and argue that it does not work. In the third section, I set out a more rigorous version of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  13. The Apple of Kant's Ethics: i‐Maxims as the Locus of Assessment.Samuel Kahn - 2022 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 104 (3):559-577.
    I want to distinguish between maxims at three levels of abstraction. At the first level are what I shall call individual maxims, or i‐maxims: maxim tokens as adopted by particular rational beings. At the second level are abstract maxims, or a‐maxims: abstract principles distinct from any individual who adopts them. At the third level are maxim kinds, or k‐maxims: sets of various action‐guiding principles that are grouped on the basis of their content. In this paper, I argue for the thesis (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. On the Expressive Limits of Kant’s Universalizability Tests.Samuel Kahn - 2021 - Kant Studien 112 (2):299-304.
    My goal in this piece is to show that there is a problem lurking in the shadows of recent attempts to derive positive duties from Kant’s so-called universalizability tests and, further, to show that the most obvious way of fixing these attempts renders them unable to fulfill their function. I shall begin by motivating and explaining such an attempt.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  15. Korsgaard's Expanded Regress Argument.Samuel Kahn - 2023 - Manuscrito 46 (2):40-65.
    In this discussion note, I aim to reconstruct and assess Korsgaard's recent attempt to extend her regress argument. I begin, in section 1, with a brief recapitulation of the regress argument. Then, in section 2, I turn to the extension. I argue that the extension does not work because Korsgaard cannot rule out the possibility--a possibility for which there is both empirical evidence and argumentative pressure coming directly from the original regress--that we value animality in ourselves qua animality of rational (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16. The Interconnection between Willing and Believing for Kant’s and Kantian Ethics.Samuel Kahn - 2014 - International Philosophical Quarterly 54 (2):143-157.
    In this paper I look at the connection between willing and believing for Kant’s and Kantian ethics. I argue that the two main formulations of the categorical imperative are relativized to agents according to their beliefs. I then point out three different ways in which Kant or a present-day Kantian might defend this position. I conclude with some remarks about the contrast between Kant’s legal theory and his ethical theory.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  17. Consent and the Mere Means Principle.Samuel Kahn - 2024 - Journal of Value Inquiry 58 (3):515-533.
    Kant’s Formula of Humanity can be analyzed into two parts. One is an injunction to treat humanity always as an end. The other is a prohibition on using humanity as a mere means. The second is often referred to as the FH prohibition or the mere means prohibition. It has become popular to interpret this prohibition in terms of consent. The idea is that, if X uses Y's humanity as a means and Y does not consent to it, then X (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  18. Interpreting the probabilities in Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism.Gary Neels - forthcoming - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion:1-13.
    In this paper, I examine Plantinga’s (1993, 2000, 2011) Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN). While there has been much discussion about Plantinga’s use of probabilities in the argument, I contend that insufficient attention has been paid to the question of how we are to interpret those probabilities. In this paper, I argue that views Plantinga defends elsewhere limit the range of interpretations available to him here. The upshot is that the EAAN is more limited in its applicability than Plantinga alleges.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19. Kant, the Practical Postulates, and Clifford’s Principle.Samuel Kahn - 2020 - Contemporary Pragmatism 17 (1):21-47.
    In this paper I argue that Kant would have endorsed Clifford’s principle. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I review Kant’s argument for the practical postulates. In the second, I discuss a traditional objection to the style of argument Kant employs. In the third, I explain how Kant would respond to this objection and how this renders the practical postulates consistent with Clifford’s principle. In the fourth, I introduce positive grounds for thinking that Kant would have (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  20. Carnap on Analyticity and Existence: A Clarification, Defense, and Development of Quine’s Reading of Carnap’s Views on Ontology.Gary Ebbs - 2019 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 7 (5):1-31.
    Does Carnap’s treatment of philosophical questions about existence, such as “Are there numbers?” and “Are there physical objects?”, depend on his analytic–synthetic distinction? If so, in what way? I answer these questions by clarifying, defending, and developing the reading of Carnap’s paper “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” that W. V. Quine proposes, with little justification or explanation, in his paper “On Carnap’s Views on Ontology”. The primary methodological value of studying Quine’s reading of “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” is that it prompts (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  21. Obligatory Actions, Obligatory Maxims.Samuel Kahn - 2021 - Kantian Review 26 (1):1-25.
    In this paper, I confront Parfit’s Mixed Maxims Objection. I argue that recent attempts to respond to this objection fail, and I argue that their failure is compounded by the failure of recent attempts to show how the Formula of Universal Law can be used to demarcate the category of obligatory maxims. I then set out my own response to the objection, drawing on remarks from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals for inspiration and developing a novel account of how the Formula (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  22. Children and Marginalization: Reflections on Arlene Lo’s “Hermeneutical Injustice and Child Victims of Abuse”.Gary Bartlett - 2022 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 11 (12):27-35.
    I am in almost complete agreement with Arlene Lo (2022). Child abuse victims surely suffer hermeneutical injustice if they are denied the concepts necessary to understand their experience, and that injustice is immensely harmful. In this reply, I offer an amendment to Lo’s use of Sally Haslanger’s distinction between manifest and operative concepts. I then raise some wider questions about the hermeneutical marginalization of children. The work that has so far been done on epistemic injustice against children has focused mostly (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23. The Problem of the Kantian Line.Samuel Kahn - 2019 - International Philosophical Quarterly 59 (2):193-217.
    In this paper I discuss the problem of the Kantian line. The problem arises because the locus of value in Kantian ethics is rationality, which (counterintuitively) seems to entail that there are no duties to groups of beings like children. I argue that recent attempts to solve this problem by Wood and O’Neill overlook an important aspect of it before posing my own solution.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  24. Lecture Notes On Eric Schmid's "Prospectus to a Homotopic Metatheory of Language".Jack Kahn - manuscript
    Lecture Notes On Eric Schmid's "Prospectus to a Homotopic Metatheory of Language" Presented at the Book Release Event at Triest Gallery (NYC) on January 19, 2024 -/- Prospectus to a Homotopic Metatheory of Language by Eric Schmid proposes that mathematics does not involve the discovery of a synthetic a priori. In other words, mathematics is not a stable transcendent object of knowledge. Instead, Schmid defines math as a language that depends on an infinitely large network topology of inferences. Importantly, this (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25. Reassessing the foundations of Korsgaard’s approach to ethics.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2017 - Dialegesthai. Rivista Telematica di Filosofia:online.
    In a series of well known publications, Christine Korsgaard argues for the claim that an agent acts morally just in case s/he acts autonomously. Two of Korsgaard's signature arguments for the connection between morality and autonomy are the "argument from spontaneity" and the "regress argument." In this paper, I argue that neither the argument from spontaneity nor the regress argument is able to show that an agent would be acting wrongly even if s/he acts in a paradigmatically heteronomous fashion.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  26. A Brief in Support of Happy’s Appeal.Gary Comstock, Adam Lerner & Peter Singer - 2022 - Nonhuman Rights Project.
    We present ethical reasons that the court should grant the Nonhuman Rights Project’s (NhRP) request for habeas corpus relief for Happy, an elephant. Happy has a basic interest in not being confined, an interest that should be legally protected just as the human interest in not being confined is legally protected. Since the decision in The Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc. v Breheny failed to weigh Happy’s interests properly, we ask this body to correct the error.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  27. Individual Maxim Tokens, not Abstract Maxim Types.Samuel Kahn - 2024 - Kantian Review (3):405-421.
    I argue that Kant’s Categorical Imperative should be applied to individual maxim tokens rather than abstract maxim types. The article is divided into five sections. In the first, I explain my thesis. In the second, I show that my thesis disagrees with Rawls. In the third, I argue for my thesis on the basis of the wording of the Categorical Imperative and on the basis of considerations about autonomy. In the fourth, I argue for my thesis on the basis of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  28. The Guise of the Objectively Good.Samuel Kahn - 2013 - Journal of Value Inquiry 47 (1-2):87-99.
    According to one influential version of the derivation of Kant’s Formula of Humanity, the following claim is true: Agents necessarily represent their ends as objectively good. In this paper I argue that there is good reason to regard GOG as false. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I explain what is at stake in arguing that GOG is false. In the second, I explicate the terminology in this claim. I also contrast the claim with other possible (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  29. Bovine Prospection, the Mesocorticolimbic Pathways, and Neuroethics: Is a Cow’s Future Like Ours?Gary Comstock - 2020 - In L. Syd M. Johnson, Andrew Fenton & Adam Shriver, Neuroethics and Nonhuman Animals. Springer. pp. 73-97.
    What can neuroscience tell us, if anything, about the capacities of cows to think about the future? The question is important if having the right to a future requires the ability to think about one’s future. To think about one’s future involves the mental state of prospection, in which we direct our attention to things yet to come. I distinguish several kinds of prospection, identify the behavioral markers of future thinking, and survey what is known about the neuroanatomy of future-directed (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30. Prenatal Injury.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2024 - Res Philosophica 101 (3):549-568.
    In this article, I confront Jessica Flanigan’s recent attempt to show not merely that women have a right to commit prenatal injury, but also that women who act on this right are praiseworthy and should not be criticized for this injury. I show that Flanigan’s arguments do not work, and I establish presumptive grounds against any such right—namely, prenatal injury, by definition, involves intentional or negligent harm and, as such, may be subsumed under a wider class of actions that are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  31. The Philosophers' Brief in Support of Happy's Appeal.Gary Comstock, Sue Donaldson, Andrew Fenton, Tyler M. John, L. Syd M. Johnson, Robert C. Jones, Will Kymlicka, Letitia M. Meynell, Nathan Nobis, David M. Peña-Guzmán, James Rocha, Bernard Rollin, Jeff Sebo & Adam Shriver - 2021 - New York State Appellate Court.
    We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. The Supreme Court, Bronx County, declined to grant habeas corpus relief and order Happy’s transfer to an elephant sanctuary, relying, in part, on previous decisions that denied habeas relief for the NhRP’s chimpanzee clients, Kiko and Tommy. Those decisions use incompatible conceptions of ‘person’ which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or, in fact, compatible with Happy’s personhood.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32. Rethinking Kant on Duty.Samuel Kahn - 2021 - Review of Metaphysics 74 (296):497-526.
    According to a common caricature of Kant’s ethics, it is synonymous with the Categorical Imperative (CI) and with the sublime and clarion call of duty. But in this paper, I argue that the conjunction of Kant’s concept of duty and his idea of morality as a system of imperatives is unsustainable on the grounds that it commits him to the following two theses: (I) If an agent has a duty to D, then she must be constrained to D, and (II) (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  33. Bovine Prospection, the Mesocorticolimbic Pathways, and Neuroethics: Is a Cow’s Future Like Ours?Gary Comstock - 2020 - In L. Syd M. Johnson, Andrew Fenton & Adam Shriver, Neuroethics and Nonhuman Animals. Springer. pp. 73-97.
    What can neuroscience tell us, if anything, about the capacities of cows to think about the future? The question is important if having the right to a future requires the ability to think about one’s future. To think about one’s future involves the mental state of prospection, in which we direct our attention to things yet to come. I distinguish several kinds of prospection, identify the behavioral markers of future thinking, and survey what is known about the neuroanatomy of future-directed (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  34. Impressions Of Reflection And The End Of Art: A Re-Evaluation Of Hume’s Standard Of Taste.Gary Jaeger - 2004 - Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 1 (1):25-31.
    In his 'Of the Standard of Taste' David Hume seems to make the paradoxical claim that even though the sentiments an agent feels in response to an artwork are subjective and unique, and it cannot be said that such sentiments are either correct or incorrect, there is a standard upon which art can be judged, which is at least partly determined by these sentiments.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  35. Maxim Tokens and Maxim Types.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2024 - Revue Romaine de Philosophie 68 (2):433-446.
    In this article, I argue that Kant’s Categorical Imperative applies to maxim tokens rather than to maxim types. The article has three main parts. In the first, I explain my thesis. In the second, I argue for it. In the third, I argue, further, that, if my thesis is correct, then tokens of different maxim types can have different deontic statuses for different agents.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36. Self-Interest, Justification, and Moral Belief.Samuel Kahn - forthcoming - Res Publica.
    In Nicholas Smyth’s recent article, “When Does Self-Interest Distort Moral Belief,” he argues that self-interest undermines justification for moral belief if it justifies itself. In so doing, he opposes the standard account, which says that, to the extent that a person’s moral belief is explained by her egoistic or parochial interests, that belief is less justified. However, Smyth’s attack on the standard account, and the principle that he proposes to replace it with, do not withstand critical scrutiny, and that is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  37. Positive Duties, Maxim Realism and the Deliberative Field.Samuel Kahn - 2017 - Philosophical Inquiry 41 (4):2-34.
    My goal in this paper is to show that it is not the case that positive duties can be derived from Kant’s so-called universalizability tests. I begin by explaining in detail what I mean by this and distinguishing it from a few things that I am not doing in this paper. After that, I confront the idea of a maxim contradictory, a concept that is advanced by many com- mentators in the attempt to derive positive duties from the universalizability tests. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  38. The Artistic Expression of Feeling.Gary Kemp - 2020 - Philosophia 49 (1):315-332.
    In the past 60 years or so, the philosophical subject of artistic expression has generally been handled as an inquiry into the artistic expression of emotion. In my view this has led to a distortion of the relevant territory, to the artistic expression of feeling’s too often being overlooked. I explicate the emotion-feeling distinction in modern terms, and urge that the expression of feeling is too central to be waived off as outside the proper philosophical subject of artistic expression. Restricting (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  39. Some Contemporary Issues about Ought Implies Can: Where Does Kant Fit in?Samuel Kahn - 2023 - Jahrbuch für Recht Und Ethik 31 (1):187-207.
    Die meisten Philosophen stimmen darin überein, dass Kant sich dem Prinzip „Sollen impliziert Können“, bzw. „ought implies can“ (OIC), verschrieben hat. Allerdings sind sich nur wenige darüber einig, wie die Bedeutung von OIC zu verstehen ist. Außerhalb der Kant-Wissenschaft gibt es Debatten über die Bedeutung von „sollen“, die Bedeutung von „impliziert“ und die Bedeutung von „können“ in diesem Prinzip. Innerhalb der Kant-Forschung besteht kein Konsens darüber, was Kant zu diesen Themen dachte. In diesem Artikel versuche ich, diese Situation zu verbessern. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  40. Nonaccidental Rightness and the Guise of the Objectively Good.Samuel Kahn - 2024 - Journal of Early Modern Studies 13 (2):85-106.
    My goal in this paper is to show that two theses that are widely adopted among Kantian ethicists are irreconcilable. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I briefly sketch the contours of my own positive view of Kantian ethics, concentrating on the issues relevant to the two theses to be discussed: I argue that agents can perform actions from but not in conformity with duty, and I argue that agents intentionally can perform actions they take to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  41. Legal Obligation and Ability.Samuel Kahn - 2024 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 32 (3):333-350.
    In Wilmot-Smith’s recent “Law, ‘Ought’, and ‘Can’,” he argues that legal obligation does not imply ability. In this short reply, I show that Wilmot-Smith’s arguments do not withstand critical scrutiny. In section 1, I attack Wilmot-Smith’s argument for the claim that allowing for impossible obligations makes for a better legal system, and I introduce positive grounds for thinking otherwise. In section 2, I show that, even if Wilmot-Smith had established that impossible obligations make for a better legal system, his subsequent (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  42. Emancipating the Place and Labor: Exploring a Possible Synthesis of David Harvey’s Theory of Capitalist Production of Spaces and Marx-Engels’ Emancipatory Class Politics.Gary Musa - 2019 - Mabini Review 8:67-90.
    With the desperate usurpation of global spaces under the everexpanding capitalist mode of production, the political struggle still necessitates an emancipatory class politics as aimed by Marx and Engels. This paper will be a synthesis of Marxist geographer David Harvey’s theory of capitalist production of space and MarxEngels’ notion of freedom, and their notion of emancipatory class politics. According to David Harvey, its survival as a system is through its widescale control on the production of spaces. I will first expose (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  43. Kant and the trolley.Samuel Kahn - 2021 - Journal of Value Inquiry (3):1-11.
    Thomson's goal in presenting her famous Trolley problem is to evince an explanatory weakness in the principle that killing is worse than letting die. Along the way, she tries to evince a similar weakness in the Kantian principle forbidding the use of people as mere means (henceforth: the Kantian prohibition). However, Thomson's negative assessment of the Kantian prohibition is unwarranted, and that is what this paper aims to show. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I introduce (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44. A reply to Bencivenga, “Consequences in Kantian Ethics.”.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2013 - American Dialectic (1):285-288.
    In Bencivenga’s “Consequences in Kantian Ethics,” he offers a version of Kant’s ethics according to which the most rational approach to living one’s life is “to always imagine what might follow from one’s moves and to choose moves accordingly” (284), but according to which agents always nevertheless must be modest in their judgments about what they ought to do because the actual consequences of their actions might not turn out as they imagined. In this way, he tries to foreground the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  45. Is the Final Chapter of the Metaphysics of Morals also the Final Chapter of the Practical Postulates?Samuel Kahn - 2015 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 89 (2):309-332.
    In this paper I trace the arc of Kant’s critical stance on the belief in God, beginning with the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and culminating in the final chapter of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). I argue that toward the end of his life, Kant changed his views on two important topics. First, despite his stinging criticism of it in the Critique of Pure Reason, by the time of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant seems to endorse the physico-theological argument. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  46. Kantian Ethics and our Duties to Nonhuman Animals.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2024 - Between the Species 27 (1):82-107.
    Many take Kantian ethics to founder when it comes to our duties to animals. In this paper, I advocate a novel approach to this problem. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I canvass various passages from Kant in order to set up the problem. In the second, I introduce a novel approach to this problem. In the third, I defend my approach from various objections. By way of preview: I advocate rejecting the premise that nonhuman animals (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  47. Prenatal Injury.Samuel Kahn - 2024 - Res Philosophica 101 (3):549-568.
    In this article, I confront Jessica Flanigan’s recent attempt to show not merely that women have a right to commit prenatal injury, but also that women who act on this right are praiseworthy and should not be criticized for this injury. I show that Flanigan’s arguments do not work, and I establish presumptive grounds against any such right—namely, prenatal injury, by definition, involves intentional or negligent harm and, as such, may be subsumed under a wider class of actions that are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  48. A Kantian take on fallible principles and fallible judgments.Samuel J. M. Kahn - 2014 - American Dialectic 4 (1):1-27.
    According to Kant, if an agent acts according to his/her conscience, then s/he has done all that s/he ought as far as morality is concerned. But Kant thinks that agents can be mistaken in their subjective determinations of their duties. That is, Kant thinks it is possible for an agent to believe that some action X is right even though it is an objective truth that X is not right; according to Kant, agents do not have infallible knowledge of right (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  49. On the multiple deaths of Whitehead's theory of gravity.Gary Gibbons & Clifford M. Will - 2008 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39 (1):41-61.
    Whitehead's 1922 theory of gravitation continues to attract the attention of philosophers, despite evidence presented in 1971 that it violates experiment. We demonstrate that the theory strongly fails five quite different experimental tests, and conclude that, notwithstanding its meritorious philosophical underpinnings, Whitehead's theory is truly dead.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  50. Defending the possible consent interpretation from actual objections.Samuel Kahn - 2014 - Journal of Early Modern Studies 3 (2):88-100.
    In this paper, I defend the possible consent interpretation of Kant’s formula of humanity from objections according to which it has counterintuitive implications. I do this in two ways. First, I argue that to a great extent, the supposed counterintuitive implications rest on a misunderstanding of the possible consent interpretation. Second, I argue that to the extent that these supposed counterintuitive implications do not rest on a misunderstanding of the possible consent interpretation, they are not counterintuitive at all.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
1 — 50 / 984