This article analyses Ukraine’s language policies from 2002 to 2022 within a framework of liberalism, while avoiding making normative judgements or recommendations, updating the discussion raised in Kymlicka and Opalski’s Can Liberal Pluralism be Exported? The analysis takes into consideration Ukraine’s present and historic position, including the challenge that postcolonial nation building can pose for achieving liberalism and linguistic justice. The paper focuses on three main areas of language policy: education, businesses and media, and assesses if they can be described (...) as liberal orthodox, pluralist or illiberal. The article begins by defining liberalism and illiberalism, discussing the context of Ukraine’s linguistic diversity and postcolonial context, before outlining the language situation until EuroMaidan. Then, the main issue of language policy in the areas of education, business and media is analysed, before considering whether Ukrainian language laws might be considered liberal or illiberal. Finally, potential future trajectories are outlined. (shrink)

This essay offers an interpretation of Descartes’ treatment of the concepts of place and space in the Principles of Philosophy. On the basis of that interpretation, I argue that his understanding and application of the concept of space supports a pluralist interpretation of Descartes on extended substance. I survey the Scholastic evolution of issues in the Aristotelian theory of place and clarify elements of Descartes’ appropriation and transformation thereof: the relationship between internal and external place, the precise (...) content of the claim that space and body are really identical, and the way we conceptually distinguish space from body. Descartes applies his concept of space in ways that illuminate the metaphysical structure of extension. In particular, he uses the concept to specify the degree to which finite parts of matter are independent of each other. I argue that for Descartes, conceiving extension as indivisible is an artifact of conceiving it as a space. That is, pace the monistic reading of Cartesian extended substance, regarding extension as indivisible is an artifact of conceiving it in a way more removed from its real nature. (shrink)

The search for valuable new products from among the world’s stock of natural biological resources is mostly carried out by people from wealthy countries, and mostly takes place in developing countries that lack the research capacity to profit from it. Surely, the indigenous people should receive some compensation from it. But we must build a robust defense for this intuition, rooted in the Western moral traditions that are widely accepted in wealthy countries, if we are to put it into (...) practice and enforce it. (shrink)

What is and what ought to be the relationship between empirical research and normative analysis with respect to migration policies? The paper addresses this question from the perspective of political theory, asking about the place of empirical research in philosophical discussions of migration, and, for the most part, leaving to others questions about what role, if any, normative considerations do and should play in empirical research on migration. At the outset the paper also takes note of one important way (...) in which empirical research can and should contribute to normative discussions of migration, quite apart from its role in contributing to political philosophy. DOI: 10.17879/15199614880. (shrink)

To date, both the United States federal government and twenty-one individual states have passed Religious Freedom Restoration Acts that aim to protect religious persons from having their sincere beliefs substantially burdened by governmental interests. RFRAs accomplish this by offering a three-pronged exemption test for religious objectors that is satisfied only when (1) an objector has a sincere belief that is being substantially burdened; (2) the government has a very good reason (e.g., health or safety) to interfere; and (3) there is (...) a reasonable alternative to serve the compelling interest. Legal balancing tests like those found in RFRA are content neutral insofar as they sideline the belief-content of conscientious objections as irrelevant when determining the permissibility of granting legal accommodations. However, some theorists worry that this legal picture may be backward: perhaps balancing tests should be content non-neutral given the usual features of conscientious objections. For example, Yossi Nehushtan contends that, contrary to their typical codification, religious conscience beliefs seem undeserving of special legal accommodations because they possess uniquely strong empirical and theoretical ties to intolerance. Thus, the illiberally intolerant content of these conscientious objections might actually give the state a reason to refuse to grant legal exemptions. In this paper, I offer a cursory defense of content neutrality with respect to balancing tests like those found in RFRA. To begin, I outline Nehushtan’s argument for content non-neutrality. The cornerstone of his argument is that illiberal intolerance is intolerable such that conscientious objections that are based upon illiberally intolerant values provide the state with strong, normally prevailing reason not to grant an exemption. I argue that, even when the illiberally intolerant content of one’s conscience constitutes a weighty and relevant factor in determining the permissibility of granting a legal exemption, there remain significant problems. It is difficult, for example, to determine which views are illiberally intolerant and difficult to say whether illiberally intolerant views can effectively serve as the principled demarcating line in balancing tests. To conclude, I offer several cursory arguments in favor of adopting content-neutral approaches without necessarily making a comprehensive case. By drawing on the work of Amy Sepinwall, Nadia Sawicki, and Nathan Chapman, I show that content-neutral approaches can help to safeguard robust protections for conscience by permitting atypical exercises of conscience, protect minority thoughts and practices from being coercively supplanted by majoritarian understandings of morality, appropriately maintain the skepticism and humility that we owe each other as compatriots in a pluralistic society, and allow the kind of justifiable civil disobedience that has an important place in political history among other things. (shrink)

This chapter is a call to philosophers to philosophize for their cities and not merely in them. As business-model approaches to higher education increasingly dominate, the place for philosophy within the Academy is likely to continue shrinking. It is the argument of this chapter that demonstrating the importance of philosophy demands a that we shift our focus from the problems and concerns of our colleagues to those of our neighbors. The chapter concludes with some examples of what a more (...) urban-oriented philosophy might involve. (shrink)

What does Wittgenstein say about the learning child? In the Philosophical Investigations, he writes, ‘An important part … will consist in the teacher’s pointing to the objects, directing the child’s attention to them, and at the same time uttering a word.’ Here Wittgenstein is describing what is called ‘joint attention’ which is agreed to be a rich resource for learning in children. In this essay, I explore the developmental significance of this passage particularly with regards the learning that occurs in (...) the pre-linguistic child during joint attention. I refer to critical remarks elsewhere in the PI which can help further convey what Wittgenstein means when he talks about attentional capacities and how they develop, including the relevant ability for responsiveness required for the learning to proceed. These considerations should motivate a defence of the social initiation model of learning contra Luntley’s mentalist-individualist account, this despite conceding that certain prior capacities do play a role, though not a central one since these do not pick out the relevant ability (responsiveness) required for learning to take place in the child. (shrink)

The semantics of racial slurs has recently become a locus of debate amongst philosophers. While everyone agrees that slurs are offensive, there is disagreement about the linguistic mechanism responsible for this offensiveness. This paper places the debate about racial slurs into the context of a larger issue concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics, and argues that even on minimalist assumptions, the offensiveness of slur words is more plausibly due to their semantic content rather than any pragmatic mechanism. Finally, I (...) note that slurs make a good test case for expanding our semantic theories beyond the truth conditional tradition of Frege, which will be necessary in order to broaden the types of expressions handled by semantic theories. (shrink)

Note that this paper is 35 pages, and had been replaced in many places w/ a draft w/o authorization. -/- The academy, broadly construed to include faculty, administrators at all levels, and editors, referees, and publishers of academic work, is beset by more ills bespeaking of a fundamental lack of integrity than can possibly be enumerated in a single monograph; nevertheless, as the need is urgent, and everyone seems to prefer either silence or piecemeal treatments, myself heretofore included, five ills (...) are enumerated herein, then traced to seven deadly sins that beset the entire enterprise—although not in its entirety, of course—and some surprisingly simple, commonsensical, and practicable solutions are advanced. (shrink)

What is properly Emersonian about moral perfectionism? Perhaps the best answer is: not much. Stanley Cavell's signature concept, which claims close kinship to Emerson's ethical philosophy, seems upon careful examination to be rather far removed from it. Once we get past the broad, unproblematic appeals to Emerson's “unattained but attainable self,” and consider the specific content and implications of perfectionism, the differences between the two thinkers become too substantive – and too fraught with serious misunderstandings – to be ignored. It (...) is above all Cavell's complete disregard for the Emersonian “moral sentiment” that jeopardizes his claim to be a continuator of Emerson's legacy in ethical philosophy. I would not deny that Cavell's own work stands as an extraordinary contribution to contemporary ethics. Nor would I dispute his title as the living philosopher who has done more than any other to restore Emerson to his rightful place in the history of American philosophy, as a thinker worthy of the highest consideration. Still less would I discount the boldness and originality of Cavell's readings of Emerson. What I am contesting, rather, is the propriety of attaching the label “Emersonian” to the notion of perfectionism, especially in view of its strong anti-metaphysical bias. The Emerson canon provides ample grounds for rejecting Cavell's claim as largely unsubstantiated and in a number of crucial ways inconsistent with the moral sentiment's firm grounding of ethics in ontology. (shrink)

This work titled "An Ethical Overview on Cloning in Nigeria" analyzed the debate on cloning for which many scholars believe that cloning is not just ethically and morally acceptable, but beneficial in that they allow otherwise infertile couples to have children and permit the study of genetic diseases and indeed genetic development. This work examined cloning from an ethical/moral perspective and held the view that there is everything inherently wrong with the idea of human cloning. As a scientific discovery, it (...) violates the dignity, respect, and value of human life and concluded that cloning coupled with its related procedures, placed the human offspring at risk of genuine harm. Also, it is shown that Cloned offspring's run the risk of misplaced or distorted genealogy. The work relied on library materials, analysis, critical exposition, and evaluative methods to achieve its objectives. (shrink)

African societies are becoming aware of the shortcomings of Western capitalist value system, because of its aftermath on individual, society, and environment. Many of African conservationist values, moral attitudes and ways of life have been destroyed by the exploitative capitalist ethos of European colonialism and modernity. Three decades of African countries trying to build their economies like the Western models have left her people wallowing in poverty, and her environment exposed to hazards. With this new imbibed Western values, African population (...) will continue to rise, as well as innovation in science and technology, thus, there is a growing need to put adequate measures in place against further environmental degradation. This paper tends to show the ethical implication of environmental crises on African societies. It concludes with the need for Africans to jettison western anthropocentric, capitalist and individualist values for her communal values. This paper further acknowledges that due to modernity, African value systems such as taboo and totems are being outdated. This paper proposes that scientific methods of environmental conservation and Christian ethics in the spirit of African communitarianism can go a long way in curbing ecological problems within the continent. This work is carried out with the philosophical method of analysis and exposition. (shrink)

Estimates of the burden of disease assess the mortality and morbidity that affect a population by producing summary measures of health such as quality-adjusted life years and disability-adjusted life years. These measures typically do not include stillbirths among the negative health outcomes they count. Priority-setting decisions that rely on these measures are therefore likely to place little value on preventing the more than three million stillbirths that occur annually worldwide. In contrast, neonatal deaths, which occur in comparable numbers, have (...) a substantial impact on burden of disease estimates and are commonly seen as a pressing health concern. In this article we argue in favor of incorporating unintended fetal deaths that occur late in pregnancy into estimates of the burden of disease. Our argument is based on the similarity between late-term fetuses and newborn infants and the assumption that protecting newborns is important. We respond to four objections to counting stillbirths: that fetuses are not yet part of the population and so their deaths should not be included in measures of population health; that valuing the prevention of stillbirths will undermine women's reproductive rights; that including stillbirths implies that miscarriages should also be included; and that birth itself is in fact ethically significant. We conclude that our proposal is ethically preferable to current practice and, if adopted, is likely to lead to improved decisions about health spending. (shrink)

Birch et. al. see their model as incompatible with higher-order-thought (HOT) theories of consciousness, on which a state is conscious if one is in some suitable way aware of that state. They see higher-order (HO) awareness as an “extra ingredient”. But since Birch et al go on to say that “[t]his is not the place for a detailed discussion of HOT theories,” they don’t address why they take HO awareness to be an extra ingredient or why HOT theorists are (...) convinced that it’s needed. In this commentary we argue that higher-order theories are a crucial for understanding consciousness. (shrink)

We have previously argued that historical cases must be rendered canonical before they can plausibly serve as evidence for philosophical claims, where canonicity is established through a process of negotiation among historians and philosophers of science (Bolinska and Martin, 2020). Here, we extend this proposal by exploring how that negotiation might take place in practice. The working stock of historical examples that philosophers tend to employ has long been established informally, and, as a result, somewhat haphazardly. The composition of (...) the historical canon of philosophy of science is therefore path dependent, and cases often become stock examples for reasons tangential to their appropriateness for the purposes at hand. We show how the lack of rigor around the canonization of case studies has muddied the waters in selected philosophical debates. This, in turn, lays the groundwork for proposing ways in which they can be improved. (shrink)

Data is very important in any research experiment because it occupies a central place in making decisions based on findings resulting from the analysis of such data. Given its central role, it follows that such an important asset as data, deserve effective management in order to protect the integrity and provide an opportunity for effective problem-solving. The main thrust of this paper was to examine data management practices that should be adopted by scholars in maintaining the quality of their (...) research data. In achieving this, various concepts related to this paper were clarified. Various data management practices were also discussed beginning from data generation to data shredding. Based on the underlying observations from the light of the discussions made in this paper, it was recommended among others that: tertiary institutions in every part of the world should endeavour to establish a data management unit that will be saddled with the primary duty of formulating research data management policies, and the hosting of research data; every Journal should as a matter of compulsion, require the submission of data set corresponding to empirical papers submitted by authors and scholars. (shrink)

Pascal’s wager has received the attention of philosophers for centuries. Most of its criticisms arise from how the wager is often framed. We present Pascal’s wager three ways: in isolation from any further apologetic arguments, as leading toward a regimen intended to produce belief, and finally embedded in a larger apology that includes evidence for Christianity. We find that none of the common objections apply when the wager is presented as part of Pascal’s larger project. Pascal’s wager is a successful (...) argument in its proper place. However, the most interesting features of our first two presentations of the wager turn out to be either irrelevant or missing from our reading: infinite utility and the relativity of evidence. The successful wager is a boring wager. Still, this study shows us how the wager might profitably be incorporated into different apologetic contexts and why it often can’t. (shrink)

Theologians often reflect on the ethical uses and impacts of artificial intelligence, but when it comes to artificial intelligence techniques themselves, some have questioned whether much exists to discuss in the first place. If the significance of computational operations is attributed rather than intrinsic, what are we to say about them? Ancient thinkers—namely Augustine of Hippo (lived 354–430)—break the impasse, enabling us to draw forth the moral and metaphysical significance of current developments like the “deep neural networks” that are (...) responsible for some of the most remarkable achievements of the past few years. First, Augustine’s theology of the natural world’s rationes seminales makes sense of neural networks’ success by explaining the world as a kaleidoscopic refraction of divine Wisdom rather than as a collection of discrete objects standing in crisp relations. Second, his account of interpretive judgment as a moral act bound up with love reveals how our training and use of AI relates to the Christian’s assimilation to Wisdom. The contingent meaning of the neural network reveals AI’s potential either for standing between us and the world or in some sense facilitating a Christian’s regathering of the created echoes of divine Wisdom throughout his or her journey into the Trinity. (shrink)

There are two primary roles of universities – a place of learning and where new ideas and technologies are created. Universities profit from teaching and learning, research, and technology positions. It is the responsibility of institutions of higher learning to produce capable and self-directed learners who are confident and capable of contributing to society through leadership or civic engagement. Universities also prepare students for high-level employment. These institutions are also there to generate new knowledge, shift paradigms, assist society in (...) fulfilling its evolving needs and tackle new problems. Universities have further been tasked with developing highly competent staff and research output to attain their stated objectives. (shrink)

Andrea Westlund's account of love involves lovers becoming a Plural Subject mirroring Margaret Gilbert's Plural Subject Theory. However, while for Gilbert the creation of a plural will involves individuals jointly committing to pool their wills and the plural will directly normatively constraining those individuals, Westlund, in contrast, sees the creation of a plural will as a continual process thus rejecting the possibility of such direct normative constraint. This rejection appears to be required to explain the flexibility that allows for a (...) central place for reciprocity in loving relationships. However, this paper argues against the existence of such flexibility and presents instead the case that variance in the normative pain of rebelling against the collective will can be accommodated by replacing Gilbert's notion of all-or-nothing pooling of wills with an account that see wills as becoming entangled through levels of identification with the plural subject. (shrink)

Education is a necessary tool for national development and for development to take place, it is important that teachers who are the driving force of passing instructions to students in the school must be properly mentored for them to carry out their assignments. It is on the basis of this background that this study was conducted. Descriptive survey research design was found suitable for the study. A multistage sampling technique was employed in this research and 100 respondents were selected (...) for the study. Four research questions and hypotheses were raised and formulated and a questionnaire titled mentoring strategies and school effectiveness was developed for data gathering. The instument was validated and the reliability co-efficient of .84 was achieved. The finding revealed that there was significant relationship between mentoring strategies and secondary school effectiveness in Ilorin East, Kwara State. It was recommended among other things that teachers should be trained using mentoring strategies and that school administrators should ensure activities which will involve pairing new with experienced teachers so that they will gain new experience from the models. (shrink)

All parties involved in researching, developing, manufacturing, and distributing COVID-19 vaccines need guidance on their ethical obligations. We focus on pharmaceutical companies' obligations because their capacities to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute vaccines make them uniquely placed for stemming the pandemic. We argue that an ethical approach to COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution should satisfy four uncontroversial principles: optimising vaccine production, including development, testing, and manufacturing; fair distribution; sustainability; and accountability. All parties' obligations should be coordinated and mutually consistent. For (...) instance, companies should not be obligated to provide host countries with additional booster shots at the expense of fulfilling bilateral contracts with countries in which there are surges. Finally, any satisfactory approach should include mechanisms for assurance that all parties are honouring their obligations. This assurance enables countries, pharmaceutical companies, global organisations, and others to verify compliance with the chosen approach and protect ethically compliant stakeholders from being unfairly exploited by unethical behaviour of others. (shrink)

Human beings by nature are rational beings. They are endowed with the gift of intellect in order to known, discern, and examine their self, reality, and God. The proper end of man’s intellectual endeavor is the Truth. However, attaining the truth is not an immediate and simple endeavor. The history of man reveals how various thinkers have debated and argued concerning the truth. Especially during the medieval and enlightenment period where the critical clash between faith and reason took place. (...) The medieval period thinkers emphasized the authority of faith in understanding the truth who is God. on the other hand, the enlightenment thinkers abandoned the eligibility of faith and solely relied on the capacity of reason. hence, the problem is: Which among these two modes of learning – faith and reason - will enable man to elevate himself towards the truth? This controversy was being addressed by Pope John Paul II on his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio. In the letter, he emphasized the mutual relationship between faith and reason. These two are distinct yet complementary factors in journeying towards the truth. This relationship is also understood under the context of Aristotle’s theory of the golden mean. This theory suggests that man should strike the mean and avoid the two vices: excess and defect. By moderation, man will become virtuous. Applying to the dialogue between faith and reason, man should avoid exceeding in giving authority to either of the two. Excess in faith would result to fideism and excess in reason would result to rationalism. Hence, man should observe moderation in order to have a harmonious dialogue between faith and reason. In this paper, the researcher will expose the relevance of Aristotle’s theory of moderation towards harmonizing the dialogue between faith and reason as seen in the Fides et Ratio of Karol Wojtyla. First, the researcher will discuss Aristotle’s theory of the Golden Mean; second, the researcher will expose the relationship between faith and reason in Pope John Paul II’s fides et ratio; and third will be the application of Aristotelian Moderation in the context of the dialogical encounter between faith and reason. -/- . (shrink)

Recent scholarship in intellectual humility (IH) has attempted to provide deeper understanding of the virtue as personality trait and its impact on an individual's thoughts, beliefs, and actions. A limitations-owning perspective of IH focuses on a proper recognition of the impact of intellectual limitations and a motivation to overcome them, placing it as the mean between intellectual arrogance and intellectual servility. We developed the Limitations-Owning Intellectual Humility Scale to assess this conception of IH with related personality constructs. In Studies 1 (...) (n= 386) and 2 (n = 296), principal factor and confirmatory factor analyses revealed a three-factor model – owning one's intellectual limitations, appropriate discomfort with intellectual limitations, and love of learning. Study 3 (n = 322) demonstrated strong test-retest reliability of the measure over 5 months, while Study 4 (n = 612) revealed limitations-owning IH correlated negatively with dogmatism, closed-mindedness, and hubristic pride and positively with openness, assertiveness, authentic pride. It also predicted openness and closed-mindedness over and above education, social desirability, and other measures of IH. The limitations-owning understanding of IH and scale allow for a more nuanced, spectrum interpretation and measurement of the virtue, which directs future study inside and outside of psychology. (shrink)

Edwin Arthur Burtt , who spent the majority of his professional life at Cornell University, is most widely known as the philosopher and author of the works entitled The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science and The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha . These titles reflect the breadth of his philosophical interests, ranging from the philosophy of science to the philosophy of religion. These were recurrent themes in his voluminous publications appearing from the early 1920s to the late 1980s. ;Thus (...) far, no attempt has been made to examine Burtt's life's thought as a whole. This may be due to his eclecticism and penchant for incorporating ideas into Western philosophy from such diverse sources as psychoanalytic theory and Eastern philosophy and religion. Moreover, he was a philosophic activist. He sought to address the serious problems of the twentieth century, in particular the experience of the two World Wars and the threat of annihilation posed by the development of nuclear weapons. Scholars have therefore tended to refer to his works as isolated entities. His influence has been strongest at each end of the spectrum of his philosophic interests, and he is either treated as a philosopher of science or a philosopher of religion. ;This thesis aims to remedy this situation by treating Burtt's work as a whole. Throughout his seventy year philosophic odyssey there is a connecting thread, namely, his determination to develop a post-empiricist metaphysics which would receive its political expression in a world community. In his view, modern science had displaced humanity from its central place and moral significance in the ancient and medieval universe. ;For Burtt science and empiricism can only ever provide partial truth and only speak of partial realities. It was from this starting point that Burtt, after several detours, arrived at his theory of expanding awareness--his most original contribution to philosophy and the cornerstone of his mature thought. The practice of this theory, he believed, would lead to a philosophic regeneration which, in turn, would give rise to a post-scientific, or post-empiricist, metaphysics which could restore humanity to an experience of "at-home-ness" in the universe. He also believed this restoration could help resolve the critical problems facing humanity in the late twentieth century and in the future. (shrink)

This book is the outcome of a series of lectures on art-related topics which Margolis gave in various places, including Finland, Russia, Japan and the USA, from 1995 through 1997. Mainly these lectures vividly distill views which Margolis has developed more fully elsewhere. Also, as his readers know, Margolis has an unusually allencompassing and closely integrated series of views on almost all of the main issues concerning both art and philosophy generally. Thus the task of a reviewer of this book (...) is the difficult one of somehow coming to terms and finding something useful to say (in a brief compass) on the full sweep of Margolis's philosophy as encapsulated by these lectures. (shrink)

The task of this dissertation is to explore in detail and on behalf of certain historical examples, Hegel's famous and haunting words about art as a thing of the past. In accordance with Hegel, I argue that a philosophical approach is indeed necessary in order to critically account for the work of Yves Klein and Joseph Beuys, two of the most important European artists around the nineteen sixties, the decade that admittedly hosted the latest art movements. In contrast to (...) Hegel, I claim that art is not a thing of the past. For, an extended concept of art, going at least back to the ancient Greek t3&d12;cn h , techne, gained prominence in the work of two major European twentieth century philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. The European artistic heritage, an important part of which was formed by the legacies of Klein and Beuys, engages us today to a reconsideration of Heidegger's and Derrida's writings with the question of art in mind. The example of these thinkers demonstrates that, in the era of absolute spirit, philosophy itself is radically transformed to a less exclusively defined practice, akin, from many points of view, to literature and poetic diction. Thinking of art and philosophy in the limits of what their conceptual designations have traditionally specified, can creatively reform our understanding of them, of their role and of their close relation, while revealing their pertinence to our times. (shrink)

This book investigates law's interaction with practical reasons. What difference can legal requirements—e.g. traffic rules, tax laws, or work safety regulations—make to normative reasons relevant to our action? Do they give reasons for action that should be weighed among all other reasons? Or can they, instead, exclude and take the place of some other reasons? The book critically examines some of the existing answers and puts forward an alternative understanding of law's interaction with practical reasons. -/- At the outset, (...) two competing positions are pitted against each other: Joseph Raz's view that (legitimate) legal authorities have pre-emptive force, namely that they give reasons for action that exclude some other reasons; and an antithesis, according to which law-making institutions (even those that meet prerequisites of legitimacy) can at most provide us with reasons that compete in weight with opposing reasons for action. These two positions are examined from several perspectives, such as justified disobedience cases, law's conduct-guiding function in contexts of bounded rationality, and the phenomenology associated with authority. -/- It is found that, although each of the above positions offers insight into the conundrum at hand, both suffer from significant flaws. These observations form the basis on which an alternative position is put forward and defended. According to this position, the existence of a reasonably just and well-functioning legal system constitutes a reason that fits neither into a model of ordinary reasons for action nor into a pre-emptive paradigm—it constitutes a reason to adopt an (overridable) disposition that inclines its possessor towards compliance with the system's requirements. (shrink)

Joseph Raz’s much discussed service conception of practical authority has recently come under attack from Stephen Darwall, who proposes that we instead adopt a second- personal conception of practical authority.1 We believe that the best place to start understanding practical authority is with a pared back conception of it, as simply a species of normative authority more generally, where this species is picked out merely by the fact that the normative authority in question is authority in relation to (...) action, rather than belief. We do not wish to deny that there might be properties of practical authority (as distinct from the species of authority that is concerned with belief) that are peculiar to it, but, unlike both Raz and Darwall, we do not believe that such features play a role in defining or delimiting practical authority. (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)

Academic study of religion, embracing what at the University of Dhaka is called World Religions and Culture, is a relatively new eld of scholarship in the world. It is only beginning to emerge in Bangladesh and other South asian countries. as distinguished om the theological study of reli‐ gion, which favours one’s own faith tradition, academic study of religion uses the same descriptive, analytic and critical academic criteria and methods to study any form of religious life, including one’s own. In (...) this paper, there has been an e ort to discuss the basic di erences between these two sorts of study. The paper then explores the brief history of academic study of religion in the modern world and how it came into being at Dhaka University (DU) as the Department of World Religions & Culture (WRC) under the faculty of arts. Finally, the crucial role of late Professor Dr. Joseph T. O’Connell (1940–2012) in forming the Department and its a liated Centre for Inter‐religious & Intercultural Dialogue (CIID) as an academic place for the study, teaching and doing research on the di erent religious issues for the promotion of multi‐religious and multi‐ cultural peace and harmony in Bangladesh is discussed. The paper has been written on the bases of the o cial documents of Dhaka University as for the existence of WRC and CIID, academic activities and works of faculty members of WRC, especially of Professor Dr. Joseph T. O’Connell, along with other primary and secondary literary sources relevant to the academic study of religion. (shrink)

The term “dictator” may have a strong impression on many of us because it is usually associated with destructive consequences, like the Holocaust directed by Adolf Hitler and the Great Purge ordered by Joseph Stalin. Yet, little is known about how a dictator-to-be can harness the power and rise into power. This chapter proposes a psycho-political mechanism that enables a dictator-to-be to harness the power generated from disinformation-induced hysteria. The conceptual framework is constructed using the mindsponge-based analytical framework and (...) the SM3D theory (Serendipity-Mindsponge-3D). The framework can help examine cases of dictatorship and prospect potential dictators, which gives our societies insights and preparations to reduce the possible rise of dictatorship in the future. This chapter is placed at the end of the book to wrap up the process of describing and discussing the mindsponge thinking approach in the book from simplicity to complexity. (shrink)

The article aims to assess a change in the EU’s soft power in the Western Balkan and Eastern Partnership states in the light of the crises the bloc has undergone in recent years. Generally agreeing with the common argument that the EU’s attractiveness for those countries has decreased, the author challenges the popular wisdom that such a decrease is likely to reverse those states’ pro-EU foreign policy orientations. To prove it, the author applies Joseph Nye’s and Alexander Vuving’s “power (...) currencies” approach to operationalize soft power, considering the bloc’s attraction as a combination of “brilliance” (the actor’s relationship with its work), “benignity” (the actor’s relationship with other actors) and “beauty” (the actor’s relationship with values and ideas). Elaborating on the crises’ influence on each of these currencies, the author shows that their lessening, first, has mainly taken place in absolute rather than relative terms, so the EU’s attractiveness remains strong compared to that of its competitors, and second, it has primarily affected the bloc’s soft power potential rather than its actual behavior towards the target countries. (shrink)

Psychology considered as a natural science began as Aristotelian "physics" or "natural philosophy" of the soul, conceived as an animating power that included vital, sensory, and rational functions. C. Wolff restricted the term " psychology " to sensory, cognitive, and volitional functions and placed the science under metaphysics, coordinate with cosmology. Near the middle of the eighteenth century, Krueger, Godart, and Bonnet proposed approaching the mind with the techniques of the new natural science. At nearly the same time, Scottish thinkers (...) placed psychology within moral philosophy, but distinguished its "physical" laws from properly moral laws. British and French visual theorists developed mathematically precise theories of size and distance perception; they created instruments to test these theories and to measure visual phenomena such as the duration of visual impressions. By the end of the century there was a flourishing discipline of empirical psychology in Germany, with a professorship, textbooks, and journals. The practitioners of empirical psychology at this time typically were dualists who included mental phenomena within nature. Accordingly, psychology as a natural scientific disciplines was not invented in the 18th and 19th centuries, but *remade* from the extant empirical psychology. (shrink)

The papers of this special issue are the outcome of a two-­‐day conference entitled “The Second-­‐Person Standpoint in Law and Morality,” that took place at the University of Vienna in March 2013 and was organized by the ERC Advanced Research Grant “Distortions of Normativity.” -/- The aim of the conference was to explore and discuss Stephen Darwall’s innovative and influential second-­‐personal account of foundational moral concepts such as „obligation“, „responsibility“, and „rights“, as developed in his book The Second-­‐Person Standpoint: (...) Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Harvard University Press 2006) and further elaborated in Morality, Authority and Law: Essays in Second-­‐Personal Ethics I and Honor, History, and Relationships: Essays in Second-­‐Personal Ethics II (both Oxford University Press 2013). -/- With the second-­‐person standpoint Darwall refers to the unique conceptual normative space that practical deliberators and agents occupy when they address claims and demands to one another (and to themselves). The very first sentence of Darwall’s examination of the second-­‐personal conceptual paradigm summarizes the gist of the argument succinctly when he claims that “the second-­‐person standpoint [is] the perspective that you and I take up when we make and acknowledge claims on one another’s conduct and will.” (Darwall 2006, 3) The Second-­‐Person Standpoint reminds us that this perspective has been ignored for much too long and that it better take centre stage in any philosophical analysis of moral phenomena, in order to yield a satisfying account of morality as a social institution. The negative part of Darwall’s strategy is to show that neither a purely first-­‐personal approach (represented by Kant and contemporary Kantians), nor a third-­‐personal state-­‐of-­‐affairs-­‐perspective (represented by most varieties of contemporary consequentialism) are capable of accounting for the categorical bindingness characteristic of moral obligation. The latter feat can only be accomplished, and this is the positive part of Darwall’s argument, when those second-­‐ personal normative “felicity conditions” and conceptual presuppositions are acknowledged and spelled out that are already presupposed in every instance of issuing (putatively valid) claims and demands. It is especially second-­‐personal competence and second-­‐personal authority that are the bedrock of these normative conceptual presuppositions, without which engaging in any meaningful address would be impossible. Kantians and utilitarians alike have neglected this critical dimension of the normative landscape. -/- In addition to working out an original conception of moral obligation, the first eight chapters of The Second-­‐Person Standpoint articulate this fundamental insight with respect to a variety of traditional projects in ethical theory such as developing accounts of moral responsibility, rights, dignity, and autonomy. In this context, special emphasis is to be awarded, on the one hand, to Darwall’s refreshing second-­‐personal interpretation of Strawson’s influential account of reactive attitudes and moral responsibility and, on the other, to his historically well-­‐informed reconstruction of Samuel Pufendorf’s often neglected version of an enlightened theistic voluntarism concerning moral authority. Darwall dedicates the second part of The Second-­‐Person Standpoint to the urgent question: how should one respond to the sceptical challenge that expresses utter indifference to the second-­‐person standpoint, including all its multifarious normative presuppositions and implications? What commits us to all this? It is at this point that Darwall, firstly, refines his criticisms of the Kantian, first-­‐personal, paradigm of normativity and emphasizes that only if one already incorporates the second-­‐personal conceptual apparatus into a Kantian analysis of moral obligation is the latter going to yield a convincing account. Secondly, and this certainly is one of the highlights of Darwall’s theory, the Second-­‐Person Standpoint employs themes from Fichte’s philosophy of right in order to strengthen the case for the inescapability of taking up the second-­‐person standpoint of moral obligation. In his contribution for this special issue Darwall further develops his diagnosis that Fichte’s thought offers in many respects a more promising, since more second-­‐personal, foundation of morality than, for example, Kant’s. -/- By now, the impact of Darwall’s second-­‐person standpoint theory has far transcended the confines of contemporary debates on moral obligation. Darwall has put to use the second-­‐personal apparatus to critical engagements with Joseph Raz’s theory of legal authority and Derek Parfit’s convergence arguments for his recent Triple Theory of moral wrongness. The constant theme that unifies all these diverse applications remains the one so impressively presented in The Second-­‐Person Standpoint: without paying attention to the “interdefinable” and “irreducible” circle of (four) foundational second-­‐ personal concepts (valid demand, practical authority, second-­‐personal reason, and accountability), neither superior epistemic status (Raz) nor the identification of optimific states of affairs (Parfit) are potent enough sources to generate anything close to the authority relationships that underlie the idea involved in obligating ourselves and one another. Given all of the above, it comes as no surprise that Darwall reserves his strongest sympathies for a specific ethical theory, namely contractualism. Our commitment to equal basic second-­‐personal authority, that Darwall arrives at through his Fichtean rectification of the Kantian project, leads him to the endorsement of a contractualist paradigm in the spirit of broadly Rawls and Scanlon. -/- . (shrink)

A longstanding orthodoxy holds that the Mohists regard the promotion of li (benefit, 利) as their ultimate normative criterion, meaning that they measure what is yi (just, 義) or buyi (unjust, 不義) depending on whether it maximizes li or not. This orthodoxy dates back at least to Joseph Edkins (1859), who saw Mozi as a utilitarian and an ally of Bentham. In this paper, we will argue that this orthodoxy should be reconsidered because it does not square with several (...) passages from the Mozi. That the Mohists place a strong weight on the promotion of ‘li for the whole world (tianxia zhi li, 天下之利)’ is uncontroversial. We argue, however, that in certain cases the Mohist moral calculus diverges in its rationale or outcome from li-promotionalism. This position rejects the orthodoxy by showing that Mohism and li-promotionalism are not entirely coterminous. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to show that some parts of J. M. Bocheński’s account of the logic of religion are useful for epistemological investigation of a religious belief, particularly for the questions of realistic and cognitive interpretations of a religious discourse, the problems of justification and warrant of a religious belief and for the problem of the place of criticism in a religious discourse. Referring to Bocheński's understanding of the structure of religious/theological thinking, I present the criteria (...) for the gradual rationality of religion and claim that religions may differ in rationality and that there may be a rational and critical religion that uses the achievements of science and philosophy - contrary to what the New Atheists claim. (shrink)

This Article falls into three general parts. The first part starts with an important question: is the insanity defense constitutionally required? The United States Supreme Court will finally try to answer this question next term in the case of Kahler v. Kansas. -/- I say “finally” because the Court refused to answer this question in 2012 when it denied certiorari to an appeal brought by John Joseph Delling, a severely mentally ill defendant who was sentenced to life in prison (...) three years earlier for two murders. Delling never had the opportunity to plead the insanity defense because his home state, Idaho, had abolished it in 1982. -/- By depriving Delling of the right to plead insanity, Idaho violated Delling’s Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and his Eighth Amendment right against “cruel and unusual” punishment. Naturally, the same is true for many other mentally ill and disabled defendants who have been prosecuted in Idaho and in the other three states that have abolished the insanity defense: Kansas, Montana, and Utah. -/- The second general part of this Article notes an insight that I stumbled upon in the course of researching the first part: the insanity defense and the mistake of law defense both require ignorance of the law, what I refer to as “normative ignorance.” Indeed, normative ignorance is what makes both of these defenses exculpatory in the first place. -/- Given this critical connection, there is a way for Idaho, Kansas, Montana, and Utah to resume compliance with the Constitution. Instead of reinstating the insanity defense per se, which might be politically unpopular, they should just broaden their mistake of law defense to include normative ignorance caused by cognitive incapacity that is itself caused by mental illness or disability. -/- Still, this Article is not merely directed at these four western states. It is directed at the other forty-six states as well. Because they already have an insanity defense, they need not incorporate it into their mistake of law defense. But in the third general part, I will argue that they should still expand their mistake of law defense to cover defendants who either lack a reasonable opportunity to learn the law or reasonably but mistakenly infer from widely accepted norms or ethics that their conduct is lawful. (shrink)

Three decades ago, William Ramsey, Steven Stich & Joseph Garon put forward an argument in favor of the following conditional: if connectionist models that implement parallelly distributed processing represent faithfully human cognitive processing, eliminativism about propositional attitudes is true. The corollary of their argument (if it proves to be sound) is that there is no place for folk psychology in contemporary cognitive science. This understanding of connectionism as a hypothesis about cognitive architecture compatible with eliminativism is also endorsed (...) by Paul Churchland, a radical opponent of folk psychology and a prominent supporter of eliminative materialism. I aim to examine whether current connectionist models based on long-short term memory (LSTM) neural networks can back up these arguments in favor of eliminativism. Nonetheless, I will rather put my faith in the eliminativism of the limited domain. This position amounts to the claim that even though connectionist cognitive science has no need whatsoever for folk psychology qua theory, this does not entail the illegitimacy of folk psychology per se in other scientific domains, most notably in humanities, but only on condition that one regards folk psychology as mere heuristics. (shrink)

English interpretations, appropriations, and transpositions of the figure of Don Quixote play a pivotal role in eighteenth-century constructions of so-called English national character. A corpus of quixotic narratives worked to reinforce the centrality of Don Quixote and the practice of quixotism in the national literary landscape. They stressed the man from La Mancha’s eccentricity and melancholy in ways inextricable from English self-constructions of these traits.2 This is why Stuart Tave is able to write that eighteenth-century Britons could “recast” Don Quixote (...) in a fashion that followed “national pride” in the “freedom” of their humors.1 However, Don Quixote’s integral place in patriotic self-constructions was troubled by gender. While national character was construed as masculine by default, quixotism’s association with masculinity was complicated by the potential passive penetrability of quixotism and the proliferation of narratives about female quixotic readers. This essay will analyze these tensions. Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759–67) are key examples of quixotic texts that respond to the figure of the female quixote by interrogating the relationship between Englishness, masculinity, and quixotism. (shrink)

The dissertation traces the development of what I call “the problem of partiality” through the work of certain key figures in the British Moralist tradition: John Locke, Catharine Trotter Cockburn, Anthony Ashley Cooper (the Third Earl of Shaftesbury), Francis Hutcheson, John Gay, David Hume, Joseph Butler, and Adam Smith. On the one hand, we are committed to impartiality as a constitutive norm of moral judgment and conduct. On the other hand, we are committed to the idea that it is (...) permissible, or even obligatory, to expend disproportionate resources promoting the good of our loved ones over the good of strangers. However, these two commitments conflict with one another. This problem challenges us to provide an account of the scope and limits of reasonable partiality that does justice to both commitments. I argue that confronting this tension is a central project of early modern ethics. I offer a rereading of the British Moralist tradition, centered on debates about partiality, and thereby shift discussion of the tradition away from concerns about meta-ethics and moral epistemology, to issues of practical ethics. The topic of partiality remains central in contemporary ethics, as is evident in ongoing debates about the place of empathy in moral judgment, and the role of love in shaping our moral commitments. Though the aim of the dissertation is not to settle questions about the scope and limits of reasonable partiality, the focus here remains fixed on how the concept of partiality was problematized in our ethical thought, and how it informs our discussions in normative ethics and moral psychology. Alongside building a bridge between early modern scholarship and recent work in ethics, the dissertation casts light on two understudied figures in the British Moralist tradition – Cockburn and Gay – who contributed greatly to debates about partiality. By examining their contributions, I reconsider their place in the history of modern ethics and therefore provide a more contextualized account of philosophical thought in the period. (shrink)

In Search of the Girl Soldiers of Aboke Abstract In a story about class, power, belonging, disappearance, and political tension, journalist Els De Temmerman tells the story of one hundred and thirty-nine girls abducted from the Aboke School in Uganda, raped, given as wives to the soldiers, and forced to kill other children. Collectively, their stories become the voice of all children abducted into heinous armies; this is a summary of their disappearance, struggle, death, and, for some, liberation. The Lord’s (...) Resistance Army is run by Joseph Kony, a man with meager education and plans to “overthrow the government in Uganda and then rule the country by the Ten Commandments” (Temmerman 15). Temmerman begins each chapter with a Scripture, such as “‘The lion has come up from the thicket, and the destroyer of the gentiles is on his way; he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate’” (Temmerman 1). Kony believes his twisted movement has Biblical backing, thus justifying their crimes. These Scriptures describe what is taking place throughout Uganda. Like Ocol in Ugandan Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino, the LRA think they are bringing civilization, “drunk with the illusion of real power” (p’Bitek 136), cleansing the world of evil. They believe that they are God’s chosen people. This is also the story of Sister Rachele’s plea to the Pope and the rulers of nations to rescue these children. President Obama is the first U. S. President to send in American troops. In Search of the Girl Soldiers of Aboke Works Cited . (shrink)

Controversially, psychologist and public intellectual Jordan Peterson advises “enforced monogamy” for societies with high percentages of “incels.” As Peterson’s proposal resonates in manosphere circles, this chapter reconstructs and briefly evaluates the argument for it. Premised on the moral importance of civilizational sustainability, advocates argue that both polygamous and socially monogamous but sexually liberal mating patterns result in unsustainable proportions of unattached young men. Given the premises, monogamous societies are probably justified in maintaining their anti-polygamist social and legal norms. The case (...) for imposing stricter sexual norms on socially monogamous but sexually liberal societies is weaker, however, as male involuntary celibacy in those places isn’t as directly caused by male intrasexual competition, and since less intrusive social interventions are more likely to ameliorate “the incel problem.”. (shrink)

This monograph traces the history of the concept of Gay Science, made popular by Friedrich Nietzsche through his book The Gay Science. Contrary to Nietzsche’s mistaken notion of the concept, it did not refer to a Troubadour poetics, but rather to a post-Troubadour poetics of recuperation—the complete opposite of what Nietzsche had thought. This poetry was not sung to young maidens, but instead to the Virgin Mary. The poetics of the Gay Science is found in an eight hundred page compendium (...) entitled Las leys d’amors, compiled in 1536 by Guilhem Molinier, and edited by Joseph Anglade in 1919. This post-Troubadour poetics gave rise to two schools of gaya sciensa, one in Toulouse (“Consistoire du Gai Savoir” in 1323) and the other in Barcelona (“Consistori de Barcelona” in 1338), where floral games took place. The aim here, then, is to trace the genealogy of the gay science through the cultural history of Toulouse, Barcelona, the Spanish poets of the 15th century, and its last “inheritor,” Nietzsche. -/- . (shrink)

The choice of tracking Hegel’s reception in the Arab world in order to explore the connections between modernity and colonialism is an excellent one, since it was Hegel himself who inaugurated the explicit philosophical discourse of modernity (Habermas 1990: 4-5). Ventura’s book is divided into three parts of roughly equal length of around fifty pages each. The first part provides an overview of Hegel’s philosophy of history, and of the place of Arab peoples and Islam in his philosophy of (...) history. This section allows Ventura to put forward some of her own interpretations in relation to questions that are the objects of controversy in the secondary literature on Hegel. In general, Ventura’s account of Hegel’s views on Arabs and Islam draws attention to the internal differentiation which characterized ‘Orientalism’ as a discourse. The second part of the book deals with the indirect reception of Hegel in nineteenth century Ottoman Syria (which encompassed modern day Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan). Ventura’s salutary emphasis on internal differentiation is one of the strengths of this part of the book. She emphasizes the differences between the American Protestant missionaries who founded the Syrian Protestant College in 1866 and the French Jesuits who founded the Université Saint-Joseph in 1880. Ventura argues that the American Protestant missionaries were influenced by Hegel (58), whereas the French Jesuits were not (59). The third part of the book attempts to provide an account of the direct reception of Hegel in the Arab world which, according to Ventura, only begins in the 1960s and 1970s. Ventura’s account of the contemporary reception of Hegel is based on the research that she conducted in Syria and Lebanon in 2009-2010, which involved conducting interviews with prominent Syrian and Lebanese philosophers and examining libraries. While the title of the book might suggest that it aims to provide an account of the reception of Hegel in the Arab world as a whole, the focus is really on the reception of Hegel in modern day Syria and Lebanon, with Egypt being given rather cursory treatment. (shrink)

This chapter takes the form of a discussion between the editors of this volume and Joseph Agassi, regarding the relationship between methodological individualism and institutional individualism. The focus is on Agassi’s interpretation of traditional methodological individualism in terms of psychologism; the role of institutions and structural factors in social explanation; Popper’s theory of World 3; the application of Weber’s interpretative approach—Verstehen—to typical ways of thinking and acting; and the Austrian School of economics.

We examine two competing solutions to Benardete paradoxes: causal finitism, according to which nothing can have infinitely many causes, and the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis (UPD), according to which such paradoxes are logically impossible and no metaphysical thesis need be adopted to avoid them. We argue that the UPD enjoys notable theoretical advantages over causal finitism. Causal finitists, however, have levelled two main objections to the UPD. First, they urge that the UPD requires positing a ‘mysterious force’ that prevents paradoxes from (...) arising. Since such a force is implausible, the UPD is in trouble. Second, they employ recombination or patchwork principles to argue that paradoxical situations would be possible if causal finitism were false. Since such situations are not possible, causal finitism is true, and so a substantive metaphysical thesis is needed to avoid the paradoxes. We argue that the UPD proponent can successfully respond to these objections. (shrink)

Benardete paradoxes involve a beginningless set each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. Such paradoxes have been wielded on behalf of arguments for the impossibility of an infinite past. These arguments often deploy patchwork principles in support of their key linking premise. Here I argue that patchwork principles fail to justify this key premise.

The modal ontological argument (MOA) proceeds from God’s possible existence to God’s actual existence. A prominent objection to the MOA is that it suffers from a symmetry problem: an exactly parallel modal ontological argument can be given for God's non-existence. Several attempts have been made to break the symmetry between the arguments. This draft is a mostly comprehensive survey of those attempts. -/- The draft was initially written as a supplement to the 2024 Summer edition of the SEP entry on (...) Ontological Arguments. However, the draft is not included in the SEP entry. (shrink)