Introduction -- Historical essays -- The humanist brain : Alberti, Vitruvius, and Leonardo -- The enlightened brain : Perrault, Laugier, and Le Roy -- The sensational brain : Burke, Price, and Knight -- The transcendental brain : Kant and Schopenhauer -- The animate brain : Schinkel, Bötticher, and Semper -- The empathetic brain : Vischer, Wölfflin, and Göller -- The gestalt brain : the dynamics of the sensory field -- The neurological brain : Hayek, Hebb, and Neutra -- The phenomenal (...) brain : Merleau-Ponty, Rasmussen, and Pallasmaa -- Neuroscience and architecture -- Anatomy : architecture of the brain -- Ambiguity : architecture of vision -- Metaphor : architecture of embodiment -- Hapticity : architecture of the senses -- Epilogue: The architect's brain. (shrink)

We investigate claims about the frequency of "know" made by philosophers. Our investigation has several overlapping aims. First, we aim to show what is required to confirm or disconfirm philosophers’ claims about the comparative frequency of different uses of philosophically interesting expressions. Second, we aim to show how using linguistic corpora as tools for investigating meaning is a productive methodology, in the sense that it yields discoveries about the use of language that philosophers would have overlooked if they remained in (...) their "armchairs of an afternoon", to use J.L. Austin’s phrase. Third, we discuss facts about the meaning of "know" that so far have been ignored in philosophy, with the aim of reorienting discussions of the relevance of ordinary language for philosophical theorizing. (shrink)

There is conflicting experimental evidence about whether the “stakes” or importance of being wrong affect judgments about whether a subject knows a proposition. To date, judgments about stakes effects on knowledge have been investigated using binary paradigms: responses to “low” stakes cases are compared with responses to “high stakes” cases. However, stakes or importance are not binary properties—they are scalar: whether a situation is “high” or “low” stakes is a matter of degree. So far, no experimental work has investigated the (...) scalar nature of stakes effects on knowledge: do stakes effects increase as the stakes get higher? Do stakes effects only appear once a certain threshold of stakes has been crossed? Does the effect plateau at a certain point? To address these questions, we conducted experiments that probe for the scalarity of stakes effects using several experimental approaches. We found evidence of scalar stakes effects using an “evidence seeking” experimental design, but no evidence of scalar effects using a traditional “evidence-fixed” experimental design. In addition, using the evidence-seeking design, we uncovered a large, but previously unnoticed framing effect on whether participants are skeptical about whether someone can know something, no matter how much evidence they have. The rate of skeptical responses and the rate at which participants were willing to attribute “lazy knowledge”—that someone can know something without having to check—were themselves subject to a stakes effect: participants were more skeptical when the stakes were higher, and more prone to attribute lazy knowledge when the stakes were lower. We argue that the novel skeptical stakes effect provides resources to respond to criticisms of the evidence-seeking approach that argue that it does not target knowledge. (shrink)

Despite the language we saw in the previous chapter, which allowed for time apprehension by perception and marking, in Physics iv 14, Aristotle famously argues that time is dependent on nous.

This chapter focuses on the appetite for self-preservation and its central role in Francis Bacon’s natural philosophy. In the first part, I introduce Bacon’s classification of universal appetites, showing the correspondences between natural and moral philosophy. I then examine the role that appetites play in his theory of motions and, additionally, the various meanings accorded to preservation in this context. I also discuss some of the sources underlying Bacon’s ideas, for his views about preservation reveal traces of Stoicism, Telesian (...) natural philosophy, the natural law tradition, as well as late-scholastic ideas. Bacon assumes the existence of two kinds of preservation: self-preservation and preservation of the whole. The appetite through which the whole preserves itself overpowers individual appetites for self-preservation. In Bacon’s theory of motions, the primacy of global preservation – that is, the preservation of the whole – is evidenced by the way matter resists being annihilated, while self-preservation at a local and particular level is revealed through other kinds of motion. Bacon’s notion of appetite reflects a specific metaphysics of matter and motion, in which the preservation of natural bodies follows teleological patterns shared by both nature and humanity: the preservation of the whole is the highest goal, both in moral and natural philosophy. In this chapter, I argue that in Bacon’s natural philosophy different kind of things, including nature and humans, are ruled by patterns that are constitutive of correlated orders, neither of which is reducible to the other: there is no priority of the natural order over the moral, or vice versa. Thus, at a more general level, both are expressions of the same type of divinely imposed, law-like behaviour. (shrink)

This paper aims to reconstruct Francis Hutcheson’s thinking about liberty. Since he does not offer a detailed treatment of philosophical questions concerning liberty in his mature philosophical writings I turn to a textbook on metaphysics. We can assume that he prepared the textbook during the 1720s in Dublin. This textbook deserves more attention. First, it sheds light on Hutcheson’s role as a teacher in Ireland and Scotland. Second, Hutcheson’s contributions to metaphysical disputes are more original than sometimes assumed. To (...) appreciate his independent thinking, I argue, it is helpful to take the intellectual debates in Ireland into consideration, including William King’s defence of free will and discussions of Shaftesbury’s views in Robert Molesworth’s intellectual circle. Rather than taking a stance on the philosophical disputes about liberty, I argue that Hutcheson aims to shift the focus of the debates towards practical questions concerning control of desire, cultivation of habits, and character development. (shrink)

Among the most animating debates in eighteenth-century British ethics was the debate over psychological egoism, the view that our most basic desires are self-interested. An important episode in that debate, less well known than it should be, was the exchange between Francis Hutcheson and John Clarke of Hull. In the early editions of his Inquiry into Virtue, Hutcheson argued ingeniously against psychological egoism; in his Foundation of Morality, Clarke argued ingeniously against Hutcheson’s arguments. Later, Hutcheson attempted new arguments against (...) psychological egoism, designed to overcome Clarke’s objections. This article examines the exchange between these philosophers. Its conclusion, influenced partly by Clarke, is that psychological egoism withstands Hutcheson’s arguments. This is not to belittle those arguments—indeed, they are among the most resourceful and plausible of their kind. The fact that egoism withstands them is thus not a mere negative result, but a stimulus to consider carefully the ways in which progress in this area may be possible. (shrink)

In this article I address a puzzle about one of Francis Hutcheson’s objections to psychological egoism. The puzzle concerns his premise that God receives no benefit from rewarding the virtuous. Why, in the early editions of his Inquiry Concerning Virtue, does Hutcheson leave this premise undefended? And why, in the later editions, does he continue to do so, knowing that in 1726 John Clarke of Hull had subjected the premise to plausible criticism, geared to the very audience for whom (...) Hutcheson’s objection to egoism was written? This puzzle is not negligible. Some might claim that Hutcheson ruins his objection by ignoring Clarke’s criticism. To answer the puzzle we must consider not only Hutcheson’s philosophy but also some theological assumptions of Hutcheson’s time. (shrink)

This work intentionally joins Stephen A. McKnight’s The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon’s Thought in arguing that Sir Francis Bacon was more deeply religious than he is conventionally thought to have been. Though the book is full of interesting suggestions, a lack of breadth, rigor, and precision will leave many readers unconvinced. . . . Those who know the corpus and secondary literature enough to read critically will find here provocative suggestions and intriguing leads. Others will need to (...) be cautious about the book’s arguments and conclusions. (shrink)

According to Frankfurt’s analysis, bullshitting and lying necessarily differ in intention. I argue contra Frankfurt that (i) bullshitting can be lying, and that (ii) bullshitting need involve neither misrepresentation nor intention to deceive. My discussion suggests that bullshit is not capturable by a simple formula and that, although illuminating, Frankfurt’s analysis is limited to one paradigm.

A retrospective essay, written for the 125th anniversary of Ethics.

This paper investigates some examples of Baconian experimentation, coming from Bacon’s ‘scientific’ works, i.e. his Latin natural histories and the posthumous Sylva Sylvarum. I show that these experiments fulfill a variety of epistemic functions. They have a classificatory function, being explicitly used to delimitate and define new fields of investigation. They also play an important role in concept formation. Some of the examples discussed in this paper show how Francis Bacon developed instruments and technologies for the production of new (...) phenomena, using them subsequently to define new concepts. In some other cases, experiments can also play and important role in modeling natural phenomena. In examining the role and functions of Baconian experimentation, this paper uses common topics in philosophy of the scientific experiment. With this, it attempts to bridge the gap between the more historical Baconian studies and the contemporary philosophy of science. My examples are chosen with two purposes. On the one hand I intend to show that Bacon was fully aware of the diversity of epistemic functions experiments can play in the process of discovery. On the other hand, these examples are also chosen with the purpose of illustrating a somewhat more general claim, namely that a thorough investigation of Bacon’s natural and experimental histories can unveil a more complex picture of the relations between theory and experiment than it has been usually assumed. (shrink)

En su más reciente ensayo, Francis Fukuyama aborda uno de los temas centrales de la teoría política contemporánea: los desafíos que representan las exigencias de los grupos identitarios para la democracia liberal.

The first part of this paper will provide a reconstruction of Francis Bacon’s interpretation of Academic scepticism, Pyrrhonism, and Dogmatism, and its sources throughout his large corpus. It shall also analyze Bacon’s approach against the background of his intellectual milieu, looking particularly at Renaissance readings of scepticism as developed by Guillaume Salluste du Bartas, Pierre de la Primaudaye, Fulke Greville, and John Davies. It shall show that although Bacon made more references to Academic than to Pyrrhonian Scepticism, like most (...) of his contemporaries, he often misrepresented and mixed the doctrinal components of both currents. The second part of the paper shall offer a complete chronological survey of Bacon’s assessment of scepticism throughout his writings. Following the lead of previous studies by other scholars, I shall support the view that, while he approved of the state of doubt and the suspension of judgment as a provisional necessary stage in the pursuit of knowledge, he rejected the notion of acatalepsia. To this received reading, I shall add the suggestion that Bacon’s criticism of acatalepsia ultimately depends on his view of the historical conditions that surround human nature. I deal with this last point in the third part of the paper, where I shall argue that Bacon’s evaluation of scepticism relied on his adoption of a Protestant and Augustinian view of human nature that informed his overall interpretation of the history of humanity and nature, including the sceptical schools. (shrink)

In his article, “Equality as a Moral Ideal”, Harry Frankfurt argues against economic egalitarianism and presents what he calls the “doctrine of sufficiency.” According to the doctrine of sufficiency, what is morally important is not relative economic equality, but rather, whether somebody has enough, where “having enough” is a non-comparative standard of reasonable contentment that may differ from person to person given his/her aims and circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to show that Frankfurt’s original arguments in support (...) for his doctrine of sufficiency have critical problems that Frankfurt himself does not properly recognize. In the end, I will argue that in order to solve these problems the doctrine of sufficiency cannot help but to incorporate certain prioritarian commitments – commitments which many would view as implying economic egalitarianism. This is embarrassing for a doctrine whose raison d’être was mainly to defeat economic egalitarianism. (shrink)

Ethical objectivists hold that there is one and only one correct system of moral beliefs. From such a standpoint it follows that conflicting basic moral principles cannot both be true and that the only moral principles which are binding on rational human agents are those described by the single true morality. However sincerely they may be held, all other moral principles are incorrect. Objectivism is an influential tradition, covering most of the rationalist and naturalist standpoints which have dominated nineteenth and (...) twentieth century moral philosophy: there is widespread agreement amongst relativists themselves that objectivism is firmly rooted in common sense. (shrink)

In this well-structured monograph, Stephen A. McKnight seeks to correct the view that Francis Bacon’s use of religious motifs and tropes is “manipulative,” “cynical,” and “disingenuous,” a view McKnight considers the “prevailing” one. To accomplish his goal, McKnight subjects several of Bacon’s works to a close reading. He concludes that the “pervasiveness of religious motifs, scriptural references, and biblical doctrines” in Bacon’s writings “establish the central role religion plays in Bacon’s thought”. McKnight holds that Bacon’s religiosity is not disingenuous, (...) but sincere. . . . . In documenting religious motifs in several of Bacon’s writings, this book is a valuable success. In characterizing Bacon’s religious beliefs and how they influenced the rest of his thought, it is much less convincing. (shrink)

In his writings on school choice and educational justice, Harry Brighouse presents normative evaluations of various choice systems. This paper responds to Brighouse's claim that it is inadequate to criticise these evaluations with reference to empirical data concerning the effects of school choice.

Francis Bacon (15611626) wrote that good scientists are not like ants (mindlessly gathering data) or spiders (spinning empty theories). Instead, they are like bees, transforming nature into a nourishing product. This essay examines Bacon's "middle way" by elucidating the means he proposes to turn experience and insight into understanding. The human intellect relies on "machines" to extend perceptual limits, check impulsive imaginations, and reveal nature's latent causal structure, or "forms." This constructivist interpretation is not intended to supplant inductivist or (...) experimentalist interpretations, but is designed to explicate Bacon's account of science as a collaborative project with several interdependent methodological goals. (shrink)

Francis Bacon was the youngest son of Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the great seal under Elizabeth I. He left Cambridge in 1575, studied law, and entered Parliament in 1581. Though roughly contemporary with Kepler, Galileo, and Harvey, Bacon’s grand schemes for the advancement of knowledge were not driven by their discoveries: he resisted the Copernican hypothesis, and did not give mathematics a central place in his vision of natural philosophy. His active public life, under both Elizabeth and James (...) I, was taken up with political business and legal reform. Bacon achieved high office as Lord Chancellor in 1618, until disgraced by corruption charges. His final years saw a furious spate of writing on natural philosophy, politics, and history. (shrink)

How about a different take on the rich and famous? First the obvious—these novels are primitive superstition that encourages children to believe in fantasy rather than take responsibility for the world-- the norm of course. JKR is just as clueless about herself and the world as all the other monkeys, but about 200 times as destructive as the average American and about 800 times more than the average Chinese. She has been responsible for the destruction of maybe 30,000 hectares of (...) forest to produce these trash novels and all the erosion ensuing (not trivial as its ca. 12 tons/year soil into the ocean for everyone on earth or maybe 100 tons per American, and so about 5000 tons/year for Rowling’s books and movies and her destructive brood of 3 children). Then there is the huge amount of fuel burned and waste made to make and distribute the books and films, plastic dolls etc. She shows her lack of social responsibility by producing children rather than using her millions to encourage family planning or buy up the rain forest. Of course she's not that different from most people--just more destructive. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016). For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2016’ 662p (2016). (shrink)

Admitiendo, con René Schérer, que la filosofía de Deleuze puede leerse como una teoría de la literatura y la escritura, y dado que tal filosofía constituye un punto cimero del pensamiento dedicado a combatir la representación, este ensayo quisiera aplicar dicha teoría al terreno de la imagen pictórica, articulando la lectura que de Bacon realiza el filósofo en torno a un desarraigo -o desterritorialización- del sentido básico, dominante en pintura: la vista, desplazándose así desde un principio la visión por el (...) tacto, lo visible por lo táctil (aquello que, más que resultar palpable, toca), lo óptico por lo háptico. (shrink)

The authors definitely become the voice of countless parents. This book forces us to focus on the family, so neglected today, and emphasises its role in shaping values of future generations.

Focusing on how recent protests centered on global economic and environmental injustices can contribute to furthering deliberative politics and realizing deliberative democracy, Francis Dupuis- D � ri examines the important and historical tension between force and persuasion. However, casting protest as legitimate in the framework of deliberative politics and as serving deliberative democracy obscures its own value in endeavors to achieve social, economic, and environmental justice. Being sympathetic to Dupuis- D � ri � s work, I wish to make (...) several, interrelated conceptual and practical clarifications in order to bring back to the fore the fundamental importance of protest, in terms of contributions not to deliberative politics and deliberative democracy but to public discourse. (shrink)

In this paper I will defend the idea of the success of post-truth as one of the main features of hypermodernity. In order to understand such a claim, I will start by defining “post-truth” and showing the key differences that separate it from simple manipulation or lies. I will explain how post-truth characterizes a whole new way of understanding the difference between truth and falsity: a new attitude of indifference to the sharp distinction that moderns and ancients had placed between (...) these two notions. I will contend that this new attitude had been announced by the work of at least three recent philosophers: Harry Frankfurt, Gianni Vattimo and Mario Perniola. They give different names to “post-truth”, though, and attribute it to different causes (from anti-intellectualism to the new media and to sheer carelessness). After that, I will explore how two key aspects of hypermodernity (according to Gilles Lipovetsky), i.e. hyperindividualism and hyperconsumption, cohere with this spread of post-truth. Finally, I will summarily refer to some political and geopolitical events that corroborate the relevance of post-truth in our hypermodern world. (shrink)

Feminist science critics, in particular Sandra Harding, Carolyn Merchant, and Evelyn Fox Keller, claim that misogynous sexual metaphors played an important role in the rise of modern science. The writings of Francis Bacon have been singled out as an especially egregious instance of the use of misogynous metaphors in scientific philosophy. This paper offers a defense of Bacon.

Both Martin Heidegger and Harry Frankfurt have argued that the fundamental feature of human identity is care. Both contend that caring is bound up with the fact that we are finite beings related to our own impending death, and both argue that caring has a distinctive, circular and non-instantaneous, temporal structure. In this paper, I explore the way Heidegger and Frankfurt each understand the relations among care, death, and time, and I argue for the superiority of Heideggerian version of (...) this nest of claims. Frankfurt claims that we should conceive of the most basic commitments which practically orient a person in the world and define his identity (“volitional necessities”) as naturalistic facts, foundational for and located completely without the normative space of reasons. In support of this he appeals to the supposedly foundational role played in human life by the instinct for self-preservation, what Frankfurt calls the “love of living.” The claim is that in questions of practical identity there is a definite priority of the factual over the normative. Frankfurt’s naturalistic model of volitional necessity is motivated by a misunderstanding of the temporal structure of care, a misunderstanding that helps lead him to an implausible conception of the basic structures of human identity. Heidegger advances an anti-naturalistic conception of caring, one bound up with his way of understanding how human beings relate to their own future. I argue that the existential, temporal, and normative significance that Frankfurt attributes to the naturalized “love of living” is better captured by the Heideggerian claim that human identity is defined by being “for-the-sake-of” certain projects and commitments, a way of being lived out in the way Heidegger calls “being-towards-death.”. (shrink)

Os escritos de Francis Bacon dedicados à filosofia abundam em imagens, metáforas, comparações e alegorias destinadas a ilustrar e apresentar com eloquência suas ideias. Solidamente formado na cultura humanista de seu tempo, Bacon adotou com destreza os recursos da retórica e nutriu-se de um amplo espectro da literatura clássica greco-latina, assim como também dos escritos bíblicos. Em especial, a mitologia clássica (a que dedicou seu De sapientia veterum (1609) - Da sabedoria dos antigos) foi um de seus recursos predilteos (...) na hora de valer-se de alegorias para tornar acessível a um público amplo e não especializado os conteúdos mais inovadores, profundos e abstrusos de sua filosofia.1 Tudo isso converte algumas de suas obras em excelentes peças da literatura filosófica, nas quais Bacon põe em prática sua grande plasticidade como escritor, que, delicadamente e sem tropeços, transporta seus leitores da beleza da poesia e fantasia para os conceitos mais abstratos, sempre em busca de representar suas ideias filosóficas e de transformar a realidade por meio delas. Neste texto, apresentarei brevemente algumas das imagens pelas quais ele quis retratar aspectos fundamentais do seu projeto de restauração do saber. (shrink)

In his paper, "Free Choice, Incommensurable Goods and the Self-Refutation of Determinism,"' Joseph Boyle seeks to show how the argument for the self-refutation of determinism - first articulated over twenty-five years ago - is an argument whose force depends on (first) a proper understanding of just what free choice is, and (secondly) a proper understanding of how free choice is a principle of moral responsibility. According to Boyle, a person can make a genuinely free choice only if he is presented (...) with alternative options that are incommensurable in their goodness or desirability. If the goodness or desirability of alternative options could be commensurated, or compared in accordance with some common standard, then it would be possible in principle for a person to determine which of the two options offered more, and which offered less, of the same sort of good represented by the two options. But if this sort of commensuration or comparison were possible, according to Boyle, then there would really be no need to choose. Rather, the only task that would have to be performed in order to determine the person's selection among alternative options would be the task clarifying or calculating which of the alternative options offered most fully what it is that makes both options desirable in the first place. Once the clarification or calculation is done, there would be no need-and in fact, no possibility--of really choosing: the calculation alone would settle which option is the best option, and thus which option is to be selected. Now if genuinely free choice requires that the choosing person be presented with options that are incommensurable in goodness or desirability, then it also seems to be the case that genuine choice-and the moral responsibility that goes along with it-requires that the person be presented with alternative possibilities from which to choose. And yet some compatibilist thinkers have held that moral responsibility does not really require the presence of alternative possibilities. In particular, Harry G. Frankfurt has sought to show (by means of counter-example) that a person can be a moral agent and morally responsible, even if the person did not, in fact, have any alternative possibilities available to him (that is, even if the person could not have done otherwise). Frankfurt's counter-example offers a direct challenge to the sort of incompatibilism that Boyle seeks to defend; and so Boyle is quite right to address Frankfurt head-on. For if Frankfurt is right, then it is erroneous to hold "the principle of alternative possibilities" (the principle that a person can be morally responsible for what he has done, only if he had alternative possibilities, or only if he could have done otherwise). But if it is erroneous to hold the principle of alternative possibilities, then it also seems erroneous to hold the more robust position that Boyle wishes to defend: namely, the position that moral responsibility requires not only alternative possibilities, but also alternative possibilities representing options that are incommensurable in their goodness. (shrink)

This article begins by tracing two issues to be kept in mind in discussing the theme of love as far back as Aristotle: on the one hand the polysemy of the term philia in Aristotle, and on the other hand the fact that there is a focal or core meaning of philia that provides order to that polysemy. Secondly, it is briefly suggested that the same issues are, mutatis mutandis, central for understanding the discussion of love or Liebe by Hegel, (...) the central classic reference in debates on recognition. Thirdly, by pointing out a certain ambiguity in Harry Frankfurt’s recent work on love, the article focuses more closely on the thought that love in the simple sense which Aristotle had pinpointed as the focal meaning of philia, which is arguably at the core of Hegel’s discussion of Liebe, and which still forms at least one of the core senses of the term, is a ‘personifying’ attitude of recognition. Finally, drawing on the above points the article addresses the question whether love as a form of recognition is restricted to intimate relations such as those between family-members, ‘lovers’, close friends and so on, or whether it has applications in interhuman relations more broadly. The answer to this question, it is suggested, is essential for the viability of ethically substantial notions of solidarity beyond circles of close acquaintances, whether within the civil society, across nations, or towards future generations. (shrink)

Francis Hutcheson's objections to psychological egoism usually appeal to experience or introspection. However, at least one of them is theological: It includes premises of a religious kind, such as that God rewards the virtuous. This objection invites interpretive and philosophical questions, some of which may seem to highlight errors or shortcomings on Hutcheson's part. Also, to answer the questions is to point out important features of Hutcheson's objection and its intellectual context. And nowhere in the scholarship on Hutcheson do (...) we find these questions addressed. This paper addresses them. A fact that emerges is that the apparent errors or shortcomings the questions may highlight are just that – apparent errors or shortcomings; in reality they are nothing of the kind. (shrink)

Le présent article a pour objectif de mettre en évidence un aspect de l’influence de Francis Hutcheson sur la troisième partie du Traité de la Nature Humaine de David Hume, consacrée à la morale : Hume écrit, en effet, que l’être humain est doté d’un sens moral. Cependant, la distinction qu’il opère entre la philosophie de l’anatomiste et celle du peintre, dans cette œuvre, montre qu’il se refuse à suivre totalement l’exemple de Hutcheson. Hume compte bien, au contraire, approfondir (...) et compléter une philosophie morale qu’il trouve encore superficielle chez son contemporain et même si cela implique de devoir toucher et réinterpréter les concepts clés de ce dernier. Pourtant, à y regarder de près, la notion de sympathie contribue, d’un certain point de vue, à rapprocher les deux philosophies. Le sens moral de Hume, dans le Traité, ne serait-il pas bien plus qu’une simple expression vide de contenu, comme on l’a trop souvent supposé ? Et que serait-il alors ? (shrink)

Some of the most forceful objections to William Wollaston's moral theory come from his early critics, namely, Thomas Bott (1688-1754), Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), and John Clarke of Hull (1687-1734). These objections are little known, while the inferior objections of Hume, Bentham, and later prominent critics are familiar. This fact is regrettable. For instance, it impedes a robust understanding of eighteenth-century British ethics; also, it fosters a questionable view as to why Wollaston's theory, although at first well received, soon faded (...) in esteem among philosophers. This paper gives Wollaston's early critics some of the attention they deserve. It reconstructs some of their objections to Wollaston's philosophy, addresses replies to those objections, and shows that despite some minor flaws, the objections succeed. A fact that becomes clear is that Wollaston's philosophy had suffered devastating criticism years before Hume wrote anything against it. (shrink)

In questo saggio si propone una lettura congetturale delle brevi note sulla questione dell’utilità del pensiero filosofico che Hans Jonas appunta in chiusura della conferenza Sulle cause e gli usi della filosofia (1955). A tal fine mi rivolgo innanzitutto alla ricostruzione dell’etica socratica che Jonas elabora nello scritto Virtù e saggezza in Socrate e in seconda battuta alla discussione della dottrina della scienza di Bacon abbozzata in Prospettive filosofiche sulla rilevanza della conoscenza per l’uomo e poi ripresa in scritti successivi. (...) In conclusione offro una ricostruzione dell’idea jonasiana dell’utilità della filosofia come scienza dell’immagine dell’uomo e mostro come tale approccio possa essere significativo anche e soprattutto nell’attuale età tecnologica. -/- English: In this essay I submit an hypothetical reading of the short notes concerning the practical use of phi-losophy which Hans Jonas wrote down at the end of the manuscript Of the causes and uses of phi-losophy. In order to do that, I focus the attention on Socratic Wisdom and Virtue first, where Jonas discussed Socrate’s ethics, and secondly on Jonas’s critique to Francis Bacon's doctrine of science, which he sketched in Some philosophers’ views on the human relevance of knowledge and devel-oped in later writings. My aim is to try and reconstruct Jonas’s ideas concerning the practical value of philosophy as the science of the image of man and to show how this may be relevant to our technological age. (shrink)

This paper argues that ability to do otherwise (in the compatibilist sense) at the moment of initiation of action is a necessary condition of being able to act at all. If the argument is correct, it shows that Harry Frankfurt never provided a genuine counterexample to the 'principles of alternative possibilities' in his 1969 paper ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’. The paper was written without knowledge of Frankfurt's paper.

The Blockage Argument is designed to improve upon Harry Frankfurt’s famous argument against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities by removing the counterfactual intervener altogether. If the argument worked, then it would prove in a way that Frankfurt’s argument does not that moral responsibility does not require any alternative possibilities whatsoever, not even the weakest “flicker of freedom”. -/- Some philosophers have rejected the Blockage Argument solely on the basis of their intuition that the inability to do otherwise is incompatible (...) with moral responsibility. I will argue, however, that it is not merely the inability to do otherwise by itself but rather the inability to do otherwise in combination with the absence of a counterfactual intervener that is incompatible with moral responsibility. If I cannot do otherwise and it is not because of a counterfactual intervener, then it must be the case that I am being forced to choose and therefore act as I do, in which case I cannot be morally responsible for this action. -/- Because the Blockage Argument fails, and because it was really the only way to establish that moral responsibility does not require any alternative possibilities whatsoever, it follows that moral responsibility does indeed require at least one alternative possibility in any given situation. But it turns out that this conclusion does not tip the balance in favor of incompatibilism over compatibilism. It would have if blockage and determinism were equivalent. But they are not. Unlike blockage, determinism is compatible with certain counterfactuals that compatibilists traditionally believed the ability to do otherwise reduces to. So even though moral responsibility is incompatible with blockage, it does not necessarily follow that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism. (shrink)

Examining the moral sense theories of Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith from the perspective of the is-ought problem, this essay shows that the moral sense or moral sentiments in those theories alone cannot identify appropriate morals. According to one interpretation, Hume's or Smith's theory is just a description of human nature. In this case, it does not answer the question of how we ought to live. According to another interpretation, it has some normative implications. In this case, (...) it draws normative claims from human nature. Anyway, the sentiments of anger, resentment, vengeance, superiority, sympathy, and benevolence show that drawing norms from human nature is sometimes morally problematic. The changeability of the moral sense and moral sentiments in Hume's and Smith's theories supports this idea. Hutcheson's theory is morally more appropriate because it bases morality on disinterested benevolence. Yet disinterested benevolence is not enough for morality. There are no sentiments the presence of which alone makes any action moral. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard attempts to reinterpret Kantian ethics in a way that might alleviate Bernard Williams’ famous worry that a man cannot save his drowning wife without determining impartially that he may do so. She does this by dividing a reflective self that chooses the commitments that make up an agent’s practical identity from a self defined as a jumble of desires. An agent, she then argues, must act on the commitments chosen by the reflective self on pain of disintegration. Using (...) Harry Frankfurt’s emphasis on love as a final end, I argue that disintegration as motivation is not a more acceptable motivation than impartiality and so does not adequately address Williams’ criticism. I also argue that the idea of a divided self either leads to an infinite regress or to an implausible description of how our commitments evolve and change. To make this last claim, I discuss a case from John Updike’s novel 'In the Beauty of the Lilies.'. (shrink)