ABSTRACT Offsetting is a very ineffective way to do good. Offsetting your lifetime emissions may increase aggregated life expectancy by at most seven years, while giving the amount it costs to offset your lifetime emissions to a malaria charity saves in expectation the life of at least one child. Is there any moral reason to offset rather than giving to some charity that does good so much more effectively? There might be such a reason if your offsetting compensated or somehow (...) benefitted the victims of your emission, since that could mean that you would satisfy the duty not to harm others by emitting and offsetting. But that is typically not true. If your emission harms some person and your offsetting benefits some person, then these are most likely different people. Hence, I conclude, we have a stronger reason to give to effective charities than we have to offset our emissions. (shrink)

Both Philip and Andrew are philosophy students whose interests converge around the philosophy of technology broadly understood. Philip's interest is specifically aimed toward the ethics of Transhumanism and depictions of Transhumanism in works of fiction. On the other hand, Andrew finds himself more focused on religious behavior in the technological world. While the two perspectives might not seem that close, there is certain to be an overlap in Andrew and Philip's shared understanding of how technological phenomena play a crucial role (...) concerning religion and society. (shrink)

Signing Ceremony of MOU on Professional Legal Diploma, Government of Dubai 2020.

The Precautionary Principle (PP) is an influential principle of risk management. It has been widely introduced into environmental legislation, and it plays an important role in most international environmental agreements. Yet, there is little consensus on precisely how to understand and formulate the principle. In this paper I prove some impossibility results for two plausible formulations of the PP as a decision-rule. These results illustrate the difficulty in making the PP consistent with the acceptance of any trade-offs between catastrophic risks (...) and more ordinary goods. (shrink)

This classic collection of essays, first published in 1968, represents H.L.A. Hart's landmark contribution to the philosophy of criminal responsibility and punishment. Unavailable for ten years, this new edition reproduces the original text, adding a new critical introduction by John Gardner, a leading contemporary criminal law theorist.

Jordan agreed to extensive liberalization undertakings under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (“GATS”) that would open some sectors that were previously closed or restricted to foreign suppliers and investors. It undertook horizontal commitments in cross-border movement of individuals and commercial presence covering all types of services.

The veil of ignorance argument was used by John C. Harsanyi to defend Utilitarianism and by John Rawls to defend the absolute priority of the worst off. In a recent paper, Lara Buchak revives the veil of ignorance argument, and uses it to defend an intermediate position between Harsanyi's and Rawls' that she calls Relative Prioritarianism. None of these authors explore the implications of allowing that agent's behind the veil are averse to ambiguity. Allowing for aversion to ambiguity---which is both (...) the most commonly observed and a seemingly reasonable attitude to ambiguity---however supports a version of Egalitarianism, whose logical form is quite different from the theories defended by the aforementioned authors. Moreover, it turns out that the veil of ignorance argument neither supports standard Utilitarianism nor Prioritarianism unless we assume that rational people are insensitive to ambiguity. (shrink)

I defend a weak version of the Pigou-Dalton principle for chances. The principle says that it is better to increase the survival chance of a person who is more likely to die rather than a person who is less likely to die, assuming that the two people do not differ in any other morally relevant respect. The principle justifies plausible moral judgements that standard ex post views, such as prioritarianism and rank-dependent egalitarianism, cannot accommodate. However, the principle can be justified (...) by the same reasoning that has recently been used to defend the core axiom of ex post prioritarianism and egalitarianism, namely, Pigou-Dalton for well-being. The arguably biggest challenge for proponents of Pigou-Dalton for chances is that it violates State Dominance for social prospects. However, I argue that we have independent reason for rejecting State Dominance for social prospects, since it prevents a social planner from properly respecting people's preferences. (shrink)

Part of a book symposium for Peter Langland-Hassan's Explaining Imagination (2020).

Bartha and DesRoches (2021) and Steel and Bartha (2023) argue that we should understand the precautionary principle as the injunction to maximise lexical utilities. They show that the lexical utility model has important pragmatic advantages. Moreover, the model has the theoretical advantage of satisfying all axioms of expected utility theory except continuity. In this paper I raise a trilemma for any attempt at modelling the precautionary principle with lexical utilities: it permits choice cycles or leads to paralysis or implies that (...) the smallest value difference that is possible in a context has extreme axiological implications. (shrink)

Ingenieur- und Naturwissenschaften sind Knoten eines engen Beziehungsgeflechts, in dem Mensch und Gesellschaft, Natur und Kultur weitere Knoten sind. Entwicklungen in diesen beiden Bereichen haben somit stets Auswirkungen sowohl auf die anderen Knoten als auf das Beziehungsgeflecht als Ganzes. Ingenieur- und Naturwissenschaften sind als ars humana zudem stets eine Form menschlicher Handlung. Damit werden sie zu einem Schlüsselproblem der theoretischen und praktischen Philosophie. Denn der Mensch, seine Handlungen und seine Eingliederung in die Gesellschaft stehen ebenso wie die Natur und die (...) Kultur seit jeher im Zentrum philosophischer Untersuchungen. Die Philosophie vermag diese beiden Wissenschaftsbereiche zu fundieren und kritisch zu begleiten. Philosophie, Ingenieur- und Naturwissenschaften haben das Vermögen, sich gegenseitig zu befruchten. In Anbetracht der humanen, sozialen und ökologischen Probleme des 21. Jhds. ist die fachbereichsübergreifende und partnerschaftliche Zusammenarbeit dieser drei Schlüsselbereiche unabdingbar. Sie ist eine nicht hintergehbare Grundbedingung aller Entwicklungen, die den Anspruch erheben, nachhaltig zu sein und damit dem normativen Leitziel folgen, heutigen und zukünftigen Generationen bedingungslos ein menschenwürdiges Leben zu ermöglichen. Ingenieure und Naturwissenschaftler können dabei einen wesentlichen Beitrag leisten. Die folgenden zehn Thesen begründen die Bedeutung einer an Nachhaltigkeit orientierten philosophischen Grundbildung von Ingenieuren und Naturwissenschaftlern. (shrink)

This paper advances a theory of disease as domino dysfunction. It is often argued that diseases are biological dysfunctions. However, a theory of disease as biological dysfunction is complicated by some plausible cases of dysfunction, which seem clearly non-pathological. I argue that pathological conditions are not just dysfunctions but domino dysfunctions, and that domino dysfunctions can be distinguished on principled biological grounds from non-pathological dysfunctions. I then show how this theory can make sense of the problem cases; they are not (...) diseases because they are not domino dysfunctions. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that we should use a lottery to decide who gets a good to which two persons have an equal claim but which only one person can get. Some philosophers think that we should save identified persons from harm even at the expense of saving a somewhat greater number of statistical persons from the same harm. I defend a principled way of justifying both judgements, namely, by appealing to the decreasing marginal moral value of survival chances. I identify (...) four desiderata that, I contend, any such justification should satisfy, and explain how my account meets these desiderata, unlike some previous accounts. (shrink)

Considerations of dynamic inconsistency have figured prominently in debates over the rationality of preferences that violate the separability conditions characteristic of expected utility theory. These debates have mostly focused on risk- and ambiguity averse preferences, but analogous considerations apply to preferences for fairness. We revisit these debates in the context of a specific hypothesis regarding the violations of separability by such preferences, namely that they are potentially both explained and rationalised by attitudes to the chances of goods that motivate a (...) preference for equality in the distribution of chances across people and possible events. Our main aim is to argue that, first, when these violations of static separability are motivated by such attitudes to chances, then they need not result in dynamically inconsistent behaviour. Second, and more generally, considerations of dynamic consistency do not, we argue, undermine the rationality of such attitudes towards the distribution of chances, despite the fact that such attitudes give rise to violations of the static separability assumptions of expected utility theory. (shrink)

A moderately risk averse person may turn down a 50/50 gamble that either results in her winning $200 or losing $100. Such behaviour seems rational if, for instance, the pain of losing $100 is felt more strongly than the joy of winning $200. The aim of this paper is to examine an influential argument that some have interpreted as showing that such moderate risk aversion is irrational. After presenting an axiomatic argument that I take to be the strongest case for (...) the claim that moderate risk aversion is irrational, I show that it essentially depends on an assumption that those who think that risk aversion can be rational should be skeptical of. Hence, I conclude that risk aversion need not be irrational. (shrink)

This article aims to read feminist new materialisms (Barad), together with ‘postulated’ linguistic or cultural primacy of Queer Theory (Butler), to show how both are engaged in similar critical-ethical endeavours. The central argument is that the criticism of Barad and new materialisms misses Butler’s materialistic insights due to a narrow interpretation of Butler's alleged social-constructivist position. There is, therefore, a specific focus on where they both make similar ethical appeals. Moreover, the article relies on Adorno's negative dialectic to highlight an (...) interpretation of Barad and Butler as being part of the same dialectical movement, in which materialism and idealism fluctuate in their mutual criticisms, thus continuing the procession towards 'new knowledge' and emancipation, or freedom, through their motions back and forth. (shrink)

Dr Peter Sjöstedt-H reviews Dr Andrew R. Gallimore's book, Alien Information Theory. -/- This was published on PsyPressUK on 13 June 2019.

According to the orthodox treatment of risk preferences in decision theory, they are to be explained in terms of the agent's desires about concrete outcomes. The orthodoxy has been criticised both for conflating two types of attitudes and for committing agents to attitudes that do not seem rationally required. To avoid these problems, it has been suggested that an agent's attitudes to risk should be captured by a risk function that is independent of her utility and probability functions. The main (...) problem with that approach is that it suggests that attitudes to risk are wholly distinct from people's (non-instrumental) desires. To overcome this problem, we develop a framework where an agent's utility function is defined over chance propositions (i.e., propositions describing objective probability distributions) as well as ordinary (non-chance) ones, and argue that one should explain different risk attitudes in terms of different forms of the utility function over such propositions. (shrink)

If I were asked to put forward an ethical principle which I considered to be especially certain, it would be that no one can be responsible, in the properly ethical sense, for the conduct of another. Responsibility belongs essentially to the individual. The implications of this principle are much more far-reaching than is evident at first, and reflection upon them may lead many to withdraw the assent which they might otherwise be very ready to accord to this view of responsibility. (...) But if the difficulties do appear to be insurmountable, and that, very certainly, does not seem to me to be the case, then the proper procedure will be, not to revert to the barbarous notion of collective or group responsibility, but to give up altogether the view that we are accountable in any distinctively moral sense. (shrink)

This essay rethinks the concept of biocommunism by rearticulating it via a sensitivity towards individual suffering rather than the human species as a whole. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part outlines Marx’s concept of alienation because of the central role that the fourth kind of alienation plays in Dyer-Witheford’s original conception of biocommunism. The second part briefly elaborates on the discussion of species in the Kyoto School. These two parts lead to the third part, where a (...) novel interpretation of biocommunism is outlined, focusing on individual suffering rather than the human species. (shrink)

In this field questions arise which are certainly difficult; but as I listened last time to members of the group, I felt that the main difficulty perhaps lay in determining precisely what questions we are trying to answer. I have the conviction that if we could only say clearly what the questions are, the answers to them might not appear so elusive. So I have begun with a simple list of questions about discretion which in one form or another were, (...) as it seemed to me, expressed by the group last time. I may indeed have omitted something and inserted something useless: if so, no doubt I shall be informed of this later. The central questions then seem to me to be the following: 1. What is discretion, or what is the exercise of discretion? 2. Under what conditions and why do we in fact accept or tolerate discretion in a legal system? 3. Must we accept discretion or tolerate discretion, and if so, why? 4. What values does the use of discretion menace, and what values does it maintain or promote? 5. What can be done to maximize the beneficial operation of the use of discretion and to minimize any harm that it does? (shrink)

I argue, first, that the deprived individuals whose predicaments Nussbaum cites as examples of "adaptive preference" do not in fact prefer the conditions of their lives to what we should regard as more desirable alternatives, indeed that we believe they are badly off precisely because they are not living the lives they would prefer to live if they had other options and were aware of them. Secondly, I argue that even where individuals in deprived circumstances acquire tastes for conditions that (...) we regard as bad, they are typically better off having their acquired preferences satisfied. If they are badly off it is because they cannot get what we and they, would regard as more desirable alternatives. Preference utilitarianism explains why individuals in such circumstances are badly off whether they have adapted to their deprived circumstances or not. Even if they prefer the conditions of their lives to all other available alternatives, most would prefer alternatives that are not available to them which would, on the preferentist account, make them better off. And that, on the preferentist account, is the basis for a radical critique of unjust institutions that limit people's options and prevent them from getting what they want. (shrink)

Catastrophic risk raises questions that are not only of practical importance, but also of great philosophical interest, such as how to define catastrophe and what distinguishes catastrophic outcomes from non-catastrophic ones. Catastrophic risk also raises questions about how to rationally respond to such risks. How to rationally respond arguably partly depends on the severity of the uncertainty, for instance, whether quantitative probabilistic information is available, or whether only comparative likelihood information is available, or neither type of information. Finally, catastrophic risk (...) raises important ethical questions about what to do when catastrophe avoidance conflicts with equity promotion. (shrink)

Dieser Text beinhaltet nichts Neues. Nur hinlänglich Bekanntes, Erinnerungen an Gelesenes und Reflektiertes, vor allem zur Philosophie der Kunst mit ihrer zentrale Frage, was Kunst ist. Und eng damit verknüpft die Frage, was ein Kunstwerk ist und was einen Künstler und eine Künstlerin auszeichnet. In diesem Essay wird es aber nicht um die Kunst im Allgemeinen gehen, sondern um die abstrakte Kunst und die abstrakte Malerei im Besonderen. Was zeichnet sie aus und was ist ihr Wesen? Ist es die Freiheit?

This book is a translation of W.V. Quine's Kant Lectures, given as a series at Stanford University in 1980. It provide a short and useful summary of Quine's philosophy. There are four lectures altogether: I. Prolegomena: Mind and its Place in Nature; II. Endolegomena: From Ostension to Quantification; III. Endolegomena loipa: The forked animal; and IV. Epilegomena: What's It all About? The Kant Lectures have been published to date only in Italian and German translation. The present book is filled out (...) with the translator's critical Introduction, "The esoteric Quine?" a bibliography based on Quine's sources, and an Index for the volume. (shrink)

We present an epistemological schema of natural sciences inspired by Peirce's pragmaticist view, stressing the role of the \emph{phenomenological map}, that connects reality and our ideas about it. The schema has a recognisable mathematical/logical structure which allows to explore some of its consequences. We show that seemingly independent principles as the requirement of reproducibility of experiments and the Principle of Sufficient Reason are both implied by the schema, as well as Popper's concept of falsifiability. We show that the schema has (...) some power in demarcating science by first comparing with an alternative schema advanced during the first part of the 20th century which has its roots in Hertz and has been developed by Einstein and Popper. Further, the identified differences allow us to focus in the construction of Special Relativity, showing that it uses an intuited concept of velocity that does not satisfy the requirements of reality in Peirce. While the main mathematical observation connected with this issue has been known for more than a century, it has not been investigated from an epistemological point of view. A probable reason could be that the socially dominating epistemology in physics does not encourage such line of work. We briefly discuss the relation of the abduction process presented in this work with discussions regarding ``abduction'' in the literature and its relation with ``analogy''. (shrink)

This volume offers a collection of in-depth explorations of pragmatism as a framework for discussions in philosophy of science and metaphysics. Each chapter involves explicit reflection on what it means to be pragmatist, and how to use pragmatism as a guiding framework in addressing topics such as realism, unification, fundamentality, truth, laws, reduction, and more. -/- .

An exploration into the reciprocity between Nietzsche's drug use and his philosophy.

With the coronavirus pandemic and the Omicron variant once again forcing countries into lockdown, this essay seeks to outline a Foucauldian critique of various legal measures taken by the Danish government to cope with COVID-19 during the first year and a half of the pandemic. The essay takes a critical look at the extra-legal measures employed by the Danish government, as the Danish politicians attempted to halt the spread of the, now almost forgotten, Cluster 5 COVID-19 variant. This situation will (...) serve as a critical point from where to start using Foucault’s writings on life and biopolitics in order to expose various legally problematic governmental decisions that became visible during the handling of COVID-19 in general and the Cluster 5 mutation in particular. Reframing the pandemic within Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, this essay concludes that the state of exception has led to an increase in biopolitical logic, where some lives have come to matter more than others. As a critical counterpoint to this logic, the conclusion suggests that the notion of biocommunism could provide a suitable reconfiguration of communism. A reconfiguration that could mitigate some of the issues related to biopolitics is uncovered earlier in the essay. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that indeterminacy and indeterminism make most ordinary counterfactuals false. I argue that a plausible way to avoid such counterfactual skepticism is to postulate the existence of primitive modal facts that serve as truth-makers for counterfactual claims. Moreover, I defend a new theory of ‘might’ counterfactuals, and develop assertability and knowledge criteria to suit such unobservable ‘counterfacts’.

I anledning af Judith Butlers forelæsning om klimasorg på KU er jeg blevet bedt om at besvare spørgsmålet om, hvad man kan bruge Butlers tænkning til i dag og om den stadig er aktuel. Min første tanke var at besvare spørgsmålet med svaret: Man kan bruge Butlers tænkning til ALT! Men for at fokusere mit svar, har jeg besluttet mig for at gennemgå Butlers tænkning i forhold til spørgsmålet om prekære liv og vold og ikke-vold, og hvordan disse emner udspringer (...) af Butlers tænkning om køn i 1990’erne. /// In connection with Judith Butler's lecture on climate grief at KU, I have been asked to answer the question of how Butler's thinking could be used today and whether it is still relevant. My first thought was to answer the question with the answer: You can use Butler's thinking for EVERYTHING! However, to focus my answer, I have decided to review Butler's thinking in relation to the issues of precarious lives and violence and non-violence and how these issues stem from Butler's thinking on gender in the 1990s. (shrink)

A mildly chronological overview of the philosophers who may have been inspired by the use of psychoactive chemicals, inc. Plato, de Quincey, Davy, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, Bergson, Benjamin, Jünger, Paz, Marcuse, Sartre, Foucault; and a mention of the Outsight project. -/- This article was based on a talk given for the University of Exeter Philosophy Society and at the ICPR2016 conference.

This public article presents three arguments for the plausibility of panpsychism: the view that sentience is a fundamental and ubiquitous element of actuality. Thereafter is presented a brief exploration of why panpsychism has been spurned. The article was commissioned by High Existence. -/- – Introduction – 1. The Genetic Argument – 2. The Abstraction Argument – 3. The Inferential Argument – Why Panpsychism is Spurned – End Remarks.

Rowe has recently argued that pure risk of harm cannot itself be a harm. I respond to Rowe and argue that given an appropriate understanding of objective probabilities, pure objective risk of harm can itself be a harm.

Hồ Mạnh Tùng và Hồ Mạnh Toàn đều là các nhà nghiên cứu trẻ trong lĩnh vực khoa học xã hội ở độ tuổi dưới 30. Mặc dù mới tham gia nghiên cứu khoa học chưa lâu, nhưng 2 anh em nhà họ Hồ đã có thành tích khoa học ấn tượng.

How do people decide what category an artifact belongs to? Previous studies have suggested that adults and, to some degree, children, categorize artifacts in accordance with the design stance, a categorization system which privileges the designer’s original intent in making categorization judgments. However, these studies have all been conducted in Western, technologically advanced societies, where artifacts are mass produced. In this study, we examined intuitions about artifact categorization among the Shuar, a hunter-horticulturalist society in the Amazon region of Ecuador. We (...) used a forced-choice method similar to previous studies, but unlike these studies, our scenarios involved artifacts that would be familiar to the Shuar. We also incorporated a community condition to examine the possible effect of community consensus on how artifacts are categorized. The same scenarios were presented to university student participants in the UK. Across populations and conditions, participants tended to categorize artifacts in terms of a creator’s intent as opposed to a differing current use. This lends support to the view that the design stance may be a universal feature of human cognition. However, we conclude with some thoughts on the limitations of the present method for studying artifact concepts. (shrink)

A social planner who evaluates risky public policies in light of the other risks with which their society will be faced should judge favourably some such policies even though they would deem them too risky when considered in isolation. I suggest that a longtermist would—or at least should—evaluate risky polices in light of their prediction about future risks; hence, longtermism supports social risk-taking. I consider two formal versions of this argument, discuss the conditions needed for the argument to be valid, (...) and briefly compare these conditions to some risky policy options with which actual public decision-makers are faced. (shrink)

Philosophers of science often make reference — whether tacitly or explicitly — to the notion of a scientific community. Sometimes, such references are useful to make our object of analysis tractable in the philosophy of science. For others, tracking or understanding particular features of the development of science proves to be tied to notions of a scientific community either as a target of theoretical or social intervention. We argue that the structure of contemporary scientific research poses two unappreciated, or at (...) least underappreciated, challenges to this concept of the “scientific community” in the philosophy of science. In particular, we will present two case studies from robotics research, broadly construed, which show that (1) the boundedness of the scientific community is threatened when private citizens can develop scientific and technological advances at minimal expense (democratization), and (2) the discreteness of scientific research programs is threatened by the complexly interrelated environment of contemporary scientific work (interconnectivity). Taken together, the extent of democratization and interconnectivity present a significant challenge for any practically oriented philosophy of science, one which we hope will be taken on directly by philosophers in the future. (shrink)

A liberalism which scorns all individualism is fundamentally misguided. This is the chief thesis of this paper. To argue for it, I look closely at some key concepts. The concepts of morislity and individualism are crucial. I emphasize Dewey on the "individuality of the mind" and a Deweyan discussion of language, communication, and community. The thesis links individualism and liberalism, and since appeals to liberalism have broader appeal in the present context of discussions, I start with consideration of liberalism. The (...) aim is to dispute overly restrictive conceptions and explore a broader perspective. To bring the argument to a close, attention turns first to Dewey on value inquiry, to Dewey's "democratic individualism" (cf. Dewey 1939, 179), and to the concept of moral community. Disputing the acquisitiveness of utilitarian influences in classical liberalism, a Deweyan argument from the nature of moral community supports re-emphasis on individualism in contemporary liberal thought. (shrink)

: The idea of enhancing our mental functions through medical means makes many people uncomfortable. People have a vague feeling that altering our brains tinkers with the core of our personalities and the core of ourselves. It changes who we are, and doing so seems wrong, even if the exact reasons for the unease are difficult to define. Many of the standard arguments against neuroenhancements—that they are unsafe, that they violate the distinction between therapy and enhancements, that they undermine equality, (...) and that they will be used coercively—fail to show why the use of any such technologies is wrong in principle. Two other objections—the arguments that such changes undermine our integrity and that they prevent us from living authentic lives—will condemn only a few of the uses that are proposed. The result is that very few uses of these drugs are morally suspect and that most uses are morally permissible. (shrink)

What role does the wild duck play in Ibsen's famous drama? I argue that, besides mirroring the fate of the human cast members, the duck is acting as animal subject in a quasi-experiment, conducted in a private setting. Analysed from this perspective, the play allows us to discern the epistemological and ethical dimensions of the new scientific animal practice (systematic observation of animal behaviour under artificial conditions) emerging precesely at that time. Ibsen's play stages the clash between a scientific and (...) a romantic understanding of animals that still constitutes the backdrop of most contemporary debates over animals in research. Whereas the scientific understanding reduces the animal's behaviour, as well as its environment, to discrete and modifiable elements, the romantic view regards animals as being at one with (or violently disconnected from) their natural surroundings. (shrink)

A Conspectus of A. N. Whitehead's Metaphysics .

Een vrije en veerkrachtige samenleving ontstaat niet vanzelf en blijft niet vanzelf bestaan. In dit themanummer verkennen we de publieke onderwijstaak van het hoger beroepsonderwijs om studenten te onderwijzen de gemeenschappelijke wereld én het publieke gesprek over die wereld centraal te stellen. Met dit themanummer willen wij iets tegenover het vigerende marktdenken zetten. We laten ons hierbij inspireren door het gedachtegoed van Hannah Arendt (1906–1975). Ze heeft uitgebreid geschreven over ‘het publieke’. Ze verbindt de inzet van wetenschappelijke kennis en technologie (...) met het politieke vraagstuk: willen we daadwerkelijk leven in de wereld die we aan het scheppen zijn? Arendts gedachtegoed biedt volop handvatten om op verschillende niveaus van het hoger beroepsonderwijs deze taak te doordenken en invulling te geven. (shrink)

The doctrine that Christ is really present in the Eucharist appears to entail that Christ's body is not only multiply located but present in different ways at different locations. Moreover, the doctrine poses an even more difficult meta-question: what makes a theological explanation of the Eucharist a ‘real presence’ account? Aquinas's defence of transubstantiation, perhaps the paradigmatic account, invokes Aristotelian metaphysics and the machinery of Scholastic philosophy. My aim is not to produce a ‘rational reconstruction’ of his analysis but rather (...) to suggest a metaphysically innocent alternative that will ‘save the phenomena’ of religious belief and practice.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.The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Your 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. The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Available 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. The real presenceVolume 49, Issue 1H. E. BABER DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000121Available 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)

Neoclassical economists use expected utility theory to explain, predict, and prescribe choices under risk, that is, choices where the decision-maker knows---or at least deems suitable to act as if she knew---the relevant probabilities. Expected utility theory has been subject to both empirical and conceptual criticism. This chapter reviews expected utility theory and the main criticism it has faced. It ends with a brief discussion of subjective expected utility theory, which is the theory neoclassical economists use to explain, predict, and prescribe (...) choices under uncertainty, that is, choices where the decision-maker cannot act on the basis of objective probabilities but must instead consult her own subjective probabilities. (shrink)

Presence as ordinarily understood requires spatio-temporal proximity. If however Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is understood in this way it would take a miracle to secure multiple location and an additional miracle to cover it up so that the presence of Christ where the Eucharist was celebrated made no empirical difference. And, while multiple location is logically possible, such metaphysical miracles—miracles of distinction without difference, which have no empirical import—are problematic. I propose an account of Eucharist according to which Christ (...) is indeed really and objectively present in the religiously required sense, without benefit of metaphysical miracles. According to the proposed account, which draws upon Searle’s discussion of “social ontology” in The Construction of Social Reality and The Making of the Social World, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is an institutional fact. I argue that such an account satisfies the requirements for a real presence doctrine. (shrink)

I argue on utilitarian grounds that while traditional constraints on heterosexual activity, including the prohibition of pre-marital sex and divorce may be justified by appeal to purely secular principles, no comparable prohibitions are justified as regards homosexual activity. Homosexuality is in this respect.