This study argues for the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth as a radical Jewish pacifist who angered both the orthodox religious establishment and those who advocated violent insurrection against the Romans. The author asserts that Jesus' views were based on belief in a non-retributive, omnibenevolent God, challenging not only the Mosaic Law but assumptions about eternal punishment and the divine sanction of the state and its retributive institutions of war and punishment. The volume also interprets Paul as being the (...) first Christian revisionist. As a result, orthodox Christianity, through the influence of Paul (and thus Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin), has mistakenly promoted the "just war" and "divinely ordained state" doctrines in the name of a thinker whose conclusions were in the opposite direction. (shrink)

We argue that work on norms provides a way to move beyond debates between proponents of individualist and structuralist approaches to bias, oppression, and injustice. We briefly map out the geography of that debate before presenting Charlotte Witt’s view, showing how her position, and the normative ascriptivism at its heart, seamlessly connects individuals to the social reality they inhabit. We then describe recent empirical work on the psychology of norms and locate the notions of informal institutions and soft structures with (...) respect to it. Finally, we argue that the empirical resources enrich Witt’s ascriptivism, and that the resulting picture shows theorists need not, indeed should not, choose between either the individualist or structuralist camp. (shrink)

This is the annotated bibliography that accompanied Volume 2 of American Association of Philosophy Teachers Studies in Pedagogy, a special issue on teaching Plato. It includes sections covering teaching several specific dialogues: Republic, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Lysis, as well as sections on "Socrates as Teacher" and general articles on teaching Plato.

In May 2010, philosophers, family and friends gathered at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the career and retirement of Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of the world's leading figures in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Plantinga has earned particular respect within the community of Christian philosophers for the pivotal role that he played in the recent renewal and development of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Each of the essays in this volume engages with some (...) particular aspect of Plantinga's views on metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of religion. Contributors include Michael Bergman, Ernest Sosa, Trenton Merricks, Richard Otte, Peter VanInwagen, Thomas P. Flint, Eleonore Stump, Dean Zimmerman and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The volume also includes responses to each essay by Bas van Fraassen, Stephen Wykstra, David VanderLaan, Robin Collins, Raymond VanArragon, E. J. Coffman, Thomas Crisp, and Donald Smith. (shrink)

Co-authored letter to the APA to take a lead role in the recognition of teaching in the classroom, based on the participation in an interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom back in 1995. At the time of this writing, the late Myles Brand was the President of Indiana University and a member of the IU Department of Philosophy.

Saigle, Dubljevic, and Racine (2018) claim that Libet-style experiments are insufficient to challenge that agents have free will. They support this with evidence from experimen- tal psychology that the folk concept of freedom is consis- tent with monism, that our minds are identical to our brains. However, recent literature suggests that evidence from experimental psychology is less than determinate in this regard, and that folk intuitions are too unrefined as to provide guidance on metaphysical issues like monism. In light of (...) this, it is worthwhile to examine the authors’ insuf- ficiency claim under the assumption that monism is false and dualism true (our minds are not identical to our brains). We conclude that, were dualism true, then Libet- style experiments would tell us no more about freedom and moral responsibility than what the authors initially claimed, thus further bolstering their point that Libet-style experiments are ill-suited to speak to the free will of agents. In what follows we first discuss some of the reasons to be skeptical of using folk intuitions to make claims about the nature of freedom and moral responsibility. We then draw from the work of E. J. Lowe to demonstrate that Libet-style experiments would likely give the same results regardless of the truth of monism or dualism. (shrink)

I argue for the Wittgensteinian thesis that mathematical statements are expressions of norms, rather than descriptions of the world. An expression of a norm is a statement like a promise or a New Year's resolution, which says that someone is committed or entitled to a certain line of action. A expression of a norm is not a mere description of a regularity of human behavior, nor is it merely a descriptive statement which happens to entail a norms. The view can (...) be thought of as a sort of logicism for the logical expressivist---a person who believes that the purpose of logical language is to make explicit commitments and entitlements that are implicit in ordinary practice. The thesis that mathematical statements are expression of norms is a kind of logicism, not because it says that mathematics can be reduced to logic, but because it says that mathematical statements play the same role as logical statements. ;I contrast my position with two sets of views, an empiricist view, which says that mathematical knowledge is acquired and justified through experience, and a cluster of nativist and apriorist views, which say that mathematical knowledge is either hardwired into the human brain, or justified a priori, or both. To develop the empiricist view, I look at the work of Kitcher and Mill, arguing that although their ideas can withstand the criticisms brought against empiricism by Frege and others, they cannot reply to a version of the critique brought by Wittgenstein in the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. To develop the nativist and apriorist views, I look at the work of contemporary developmental psychologists, like Gelman and Gallistel and Karen Wynn, as well as the work of philosophers who advocate the existence of a mathematical intuition, such as Kant, Husserl, and Parsons. After clarifying the definitions of "innate" and "a priori," I argue that the mechanisms proposed by the nativists cannot bring knowledge, and the existence of the mechanisms proposed by the apriorists is not supported by the arguments they give. (shrink)

Este libro es un ensayo filosófico que expresa la relevancia que para John Stuart Mill tiene la educación, hasta el punto de considerarla como un derecho fundamental de las personas, teniendo en cuenta que en su tiempo no existían los hoy conocidos Derechos Humanos. Stuart Mill se adelanta a nuestra época y presenta a la educación como ese derecho básico de toda persona que ha de ser protegido, potenciado y proporcionado por los diversos Estados.

In 2005, Charles Mills published “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology” in Hypatia: a withering critique of much of contemporary political philosophy and ethics. For Mills such work in philosophy failed to attend to the realities of social life and politics, and in remaining silent on actual issues of domination and oppression served an ideological role in supporting the interests of white bourgeois men. Around the time that Charles Mills launched his broadside against ideal theory, trans theorists had been (...) fighting their own battle against the abstraction of theory from the realities of trans lives and oppression. Vivian Namaste (2000) and Jay Prosser (1998) argued that contemporary gender theory failed to justice to the actuality of trans life, retreating instead to understanding trans life through literary archetypes and idealized radical figures. In this chapter I’ll compare Mills’ critique of ideal theory with the transfeminist critique of 1990s gender theory, arguing that they share much in common. Centrally, both critiques share an underlying commitment to theory needing to be grounded in the actuality of oppression and power relations. This common thread, I suggest, must continue to guide transfeminist thought and action: contra Marquis Bey (2022) transfeminist thought and praxis must continue to be about trans lives, about the oppression of trans women, and about ways of actually achieving liberation from our current dire position. (shrink)

El estudio que se desarrolla aquí muestra los aspectos generales del pensamiento de John Stuart Mill relacionados con la religión, tales como la existencia de Dios, los atributos de Dios, características del Cristianismo y cuestiones similares. Igualmente muestra la hipótesis de la utilidad de la religión para las personas.

Part of John Andrew Rice’s legacy, besides being a founder of Black Mountain College, is his vision of what a small liberal arts college curriculum should be. This vision helps shed light on some possible avenues by which to answer the following important questions: What implications do John Dewey’s progressive educational ideas have for experimenting with curricular design at small colleges? Does the college teacher’s struggle for improvement or growth depend on her having a belief that there is an ideal (...) liberal arts college curriculum? Probably the best known of such ready-made curricula is the Great Books Program, which employs a list of classic primary-source texts as the entry point into highly engaged dialogue, scholarship and learning guided by a teacher or tutor. In order to answer these questions, the paper turns to the historical debate between John Dewey and Robert Maynard Hutchins over the relative merits of progressive educational ideals and the Great Books approach. Most who have commented on this debate emphasize the differences between Dewey and Hutchins’ views.[ii] While Dewey emphasized learning through practical problem solving, in a dynamic mix of subject matter and method, Hutchins stressed exposure to and discussion of at least one-hundred primary texts in the Western canon, from Plato and Aristotle to Emerson and J.S. Mill. Hutchins resisted what he saw as the progressive educator’s push to transform the proper end of educating the whole person into training her for a particular vocation. In response, Dewey criticized Hutchins’ insistence that there existed a “hierarchy of truths” and that higher learning should remain aloof to the concerns of everyday life. Few commentators, however, mention the significant areas of agreement between the pedagogical approaches of Dewey and Hutchins, as well as other Great Books scholars. Since Rice praised the ideas of at least one Great Books proponent (Stringfellow Barr of St. John’s College), a more positive reconstruction of the Dewey-Hutchins exchange helps us to see how Dewey’s ideas informed Rice’s vision for the experimental college at Black Mountain—or so I argue.[iii]. (shrink)

Open Access: This essay argues that Claudia Card numbers among important contributors to nonideal ethical theory, and it advocates for the worth of NET. Following philosophers including Lisa Tessman and Charles Mills, the essay contends that it is important for ethical theory, and for feminist purposes, to carry forward the interrelationship that Mills identifies between nonideal theory and feminist ethics. Card's ethical theorizing assists in understanding that interrelationship. Card's philosophical work includes basic elements of NET indicated by Tessman, (...) Mills, and others, and further offers two important and neglected elements to other nonideal ethical theorists: her rejection of the “administrative point of view,” and her focus on “intolerable harms” as forms of “extreme moral stress” and obstacles to excellent ethical lives. The essay concludes that Card's insights are helpful to philosophers in developing nonideal ethical theory as a distinctive contribution to, and as a subset of, nonideal theory. (shrink)

What are we to make of the cultural nonconformity of hardcore/punks? Is there any ethical value in the pursuit of cultural nonconformity? Distinct moral justifications can be teased from the lyrics of the hardcore/punk bands that we have grown up with and still love. The best explanation of what makes cultural nonconformity morally valuable, we believe, comes from John Stuart Mill: that it opens up new cultural space to oneself and to others, permitting "new and original experiments of living.".

In this paper, I examine whether John Stuart Mill’s account of free speech can survive three main challenges posed by social media. First, I consider the problem of social media failing to distinguish between emotive and factual language. Second, I look at the problem of algorithms creating moralism. I then turn to a potential objection to my first two challenges. The objection elucidates the benefits of social media’s emotional and algorithmic character, amplifying arguments and increasing public engagement. However, I take (...) issue with this objection on consequentialist terms. I finally return to the third challenge, where I focus on how anonymity removes the consequences to our words; I contend that this final failure is the ultimate reason why Mill’s account cannot persist in the modern age. In conclusion, I argue that Mill’s account cannot withstand the problems posed by social media. (shrink)

Modern bioethics is clearly dominated by deontologists who believe that we have some way of identifying morally correct and incorrect acts or rules besides taking account of their consequences. Robert M. Veatch is one of the most outspoken of those numerous modern medical ethicists who agree in rejecting all forms of teleological, utilitarian, or consequentialist ethical theories. This paper examines his critique of utilitarianism and shows that the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill is either not touched at all by his (...) critique or can be defended against it. This article argues that the dominant deontological majority is mistaken and that a utilitarian theory of moral action very much like Mill’s is precisely what is needed by modern medical ethics and by those medical practitioners who are resolved to practice medicine in a reasonable and morally acceptable manner. (shrink)

The passage of Mill’s Utilitarianism that sets out the condition in which one pleasure has a superior quality than another stokes interpretive controversy. According to the Lexical Interpretation, Mill takes one pleasure, P1, to be of a superior quality than another, P2, if, and only if, the smallest quantity of P1 is more valuable than any finite quantity of P2. This paper argues that, while the Lexical Interpretation may be supported with supplementary evidence, the passage itself does not rule out (...) qualitative superiority without lexical dominance, as it only requires P1 to be more valuable than any quantity of P2 that it is possible for someone to experience. Some will object that this concession to opponents of the Lexical Interpretation still renders Mill’s condition for qualitative superiority too demanding to be plausible. However, if Mill’s qualitative rankings apply to higher-order pleasures taken in modes of existence as such rather than to the pleasures of different activities chosen from within these modes, the objection loses much of its force. One upshot is that Mill may have more to contribute to debates in contemporary population axiology than is usually acknowledged. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill fue un reformador social. Como gran parte de los pensadores del siglo XIX, creía en la idea de progreso. Consideraba que se estaba viviendo un tiempo de transición, en el que se daba una tendencia hacia un mejor y más feliz estado de cosas, aunque también percibía que la época era de riegos y amenazas. No se pensaba ni como filósofo ni como académico ni como político, se veía a sí mismo como un reformador social, cuya función (...) era educar a la opinión ilustrada y progresista. El propósito de sus textos es persuadir y, con ello, ayudar a transformar. Sus tesis defienden la necesidad de organizar la sociedad moderna bajo ciertos principios para que pueda alcanzar un estado superior de progreso social y moral. -/- Contra la acusación de que John Stuart Mill es un pensador ecléctico, contradictorio y que no añade nada a los clásicos, el libro que el lector tiene en sus manos muestra que su originalidad no consistió en haber creado nuevos conceptos, sino en haber transformado conceptos fundamentales de la filosofía social, moral y política, matizándolos, otorgándoles nuevos sentidos y abriéndoles nuevas posibilidades. Fue un utilitarista, pero la doctrina utilitarista salió renovada de sus escritos. Fue un liberal, pero en un sentido nuevo de liberal, ni clásico ni contractualista. Fue demócrata, aunque en un sentido distinto del de la voluntad general de Rousseau. Fue socialista, pero un socialista cualificado. -/- Como educador de la opinión ilustrada, tuvo un éxito extraordinario. Sus libros tuvieron una gran acogida y su nombre gozó de prestigio, admiración y respeto en Inglaterra. Su pensamiento filosófico sigue mereciendo la mayor atención e inspirando y fascinando a muchos. Sus ideas políticas han tenido una influencia innegable en el mundo contemporáneo. (shrink)

Some critics of Mill understand him to advocate the forced assimilation of people he regards as uncivilized, and to defend toleration and the principle of liberty only for civilized people of the West. Examination of Mill’s social and political writings and practice while serving the British East India Company shows, instead, that Mill is a ‘tolerant imperialist’: Mill defends interference in India to promote the protection of legal rights, respect and toleration for conflicting viewpoints, and a commercial society that can (...) cope with natural threats. He does not think the principle of liberty is waived for the uncivilized, or that the West should forcibly reshape them in its own monistic image. Mill’s tolerant imperialism reflects a tension between liberty and moral development that surfaces also when Mill thinks about the scope of government in civilized societies. (shrink)

This study is about Brentano’s criticism of a version of phenomenalism that he calls “mental monism” and which he attributes to positivist philosophers such as Ernst Mach and John Stuart Mill. I am interested in Brentano’s criticism of Mill’s version of mental monism based on the idea of “permanent possibilities of sensation.” Brentano claims that this form of monism is characterized by the identification of the class of physical phenomena with that of mental phenomena, and it commits itself to a (...) form of idealism. Brentano argues instead for a form of indirect or hypothetical realism based on intentional correlations. (shrink)

This article is part of a larger project in which I attempt to show that Western formal logic, from its inception in Aristotle onward, has both been partially constituted by, and partially constitutive of, what has become known as racism. In contrast to this trend, the present article concerns the major philosopher whose contribution to logic has been perhaps the most derided and marginalized, and yet whose character and politics are, from a contemporary perspective, drastically superior—John Stuart Mill. My approach (...) to my core concern will be one of narrowing concentric circles. I will begin with Mill’s occasional political writings that bear on the issue of racism, including “The Negro Question.” From there, the core of the article will explore the political dimensions of Mill’s A System of Logic. (shrink)

Working within the broad lines of general consensus that mark out the core features of John Stuart Mill’s (1806–1873) logic, as set forth in his A System of Logic (1843–1872), this chapter provides an introduction to Mill’s logical theory by reviewing his position on the relationship between induction and deduction, and the role of general premises and principles in reasoning. Locating induction, understood as a kind of analogical reasoning from particulars to particulars, as the basic form of inference that is (...) both free-standing and the sole load-bearing structure in Mill’s logic, the foundations of Mill’s logical system are briefly inspected. Several naturalistic features are identified, including its subject matter, human reasoning, its empiricism, which requires that only particular, experiential claims can function as basic reasons, and its ultimate foundations in ‘spontaneous’ inference. The chapter concludes by comparing Mill’s naturalized logic to Russell’s (1907) regressive method for identifying the premises of mathematics. (shrink)

In this article, we address the relevance of J.S. Mill’s political philosophy for a framework of public health ethics. In contrast to some readings of Mill, we reject the view that in the formulation of public policies liberties of all kinds enjoy an equal presumption in their favor. We argue that Mill also rejects this view and discuss the distinction that Mill makes between three kinds of liberty interests: interests that are immune from state interference; interests that enjoy a presumption (...) in favor of liberty; and interests that enjoy no such presumption. We argue that what is of focal importance for Mill in protecting liberty is captured by the essential role that the value of self-determination plays in human well-being. Finally, we make the case for the plausibility of a more complex and nuanced Millian framework for public health ethics that would modify how the balancing of some liberty and public health interests should proceed by taking the thumb off the liberty end of the scale. Mill’s arguments and the legacy of liberalism support certain forms of state interference with marketplace liberties for the sake of public health objectives without any presumption in favor of liberty. (shrink)

There is a common view that the utilitarian theory of John Stuart Mill is morally realist and involves a strong kind of practical obligation. This article argues for two negative theses and a positive thesis. The negative theses are that Mill is not a moral realist and that he does not believe in certain kinds of obligations, those involving external reasons and those I callrobustobligations, obligations with a particular, strong kind of practical authority. The positive thesis is that Mill's metaethical (...) position can be interpreted as a Humean constructivist view, a metaethical view that is constructivist about value and entails the existence of practical reasons, but not external reasons or robust obligations. I argue that a Humean constructivist reading of Mill's theory is reasonable, and strengthens Mill's argument from desire for the value of happiness, an important but notoriously weak aspect of his theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine how philosophers before and after G. E. Moore understood intrinsic value. The main idea I wish to bring out and defend is that Moore was insufficiently attentive to how distinctive his conception of intrinsic value was, as compared with those of the writers he discussed, and that such inattentiveness skewed his understanding of the positions of others that he discussed and dismissed. My way into this issue is by examining the charge of inconsistency that Moore (...) levels at the qualitative hedonism outlined by J. S. Mill in Utilitarianism. Along the way I suggest that there are a number of ways in which Moore was unfair in rejecting qualitative hedonism as inconsistent. I close by relating the issues that arise in discussion of Moore to contemporary debates on value and reasons. (shrink)

In this chapter, I will explore the intersection of philosophy and childhood through the intriguing case study of J. S. Mill, who was almost completely denied a childhood—in the nineteenth-century sense of a qualitatively distinct period inclusive of greater play, imaginative freedom, flexibility, and education. For his part, Mill’s lack of such a childhood was the direct result of his father, James Mill (economic theorist and early proponent of Utilitarianism), who in a letter to Jeremy Bentham explicitly formulates a plan (...) to raise his son as an experiment in the Utilitarian “science” of ethics. More specifically, although James Mill’s end was to create a near-superhuman champion of Utilitarianism, his means to that end included denying John access to other children and the Romantic poetry of his contemporaries. Despite this oppressive lack of a childhood, however, J. S. Mill went on to become perhaps the most influential social and political reformer in British history, especially in regard to gender relations through his groundbreaking work for women’s suffrage. This begs the central question of this chapter, namely how could a philosopher’s tyrannized childhood nevertheless lead to his later overturning of such tyranny in the political sphere? (shrink)

Joseph Persky's excellent book, The Political Economy of Progress: John Stuart Mill and Modern Radicalism, shows that J. S. Mill's support for socialism is a carefully considered element of his political and economic reform agenda. The key thought underlying Persky's argument is that Mill has an ‘evolutionary theory of justice’, according to which the set of institutions and practices that are appropriate to one state of society should give way to a new set of institutions as circumstances change and the (...) people themselves improve. However, Persky does not spend a great deal of time discussing Mill's theory of reform, in particular the principles he believes should guide our reform efforts. Reflecting on these principles – notably his principle of impartiality or equal treatment – shows the consistency of Mill's thought over time. (shrink)

Should positional sexual misconduct (sexual advances or interaction where one party is known, or should be known, to have a significant power over the other) be included in the list of morally forbidden behaviours? I explore benefits and costs of this moral reform with the help of J. S. Mill.

J. S. Mill lays great emphasis on the importance of the notion of the individual as a progressive being. The idea that we need to conceive the self as an object of cultivation and perfection runs through Mill’s writings on various topics, and has played a certain role in recent interpretations. In this paper I propose a specific interpretation of Mill’s understanding of the self, along the lines of what Stanley Cavell identifies as a “perfectionist” concern for the self. Various (...) texts by Mill, ranging from the Logic to On Liberty, show an understanding of the self in which both the theoretical and the practical domain are presented as being internally connected to the transformation of the self. Mill elaborates a criticism of a notion of truth articulated by doctrines having a life independent of the self, as well as a notion of choice which is not the expression of one’s inner self. This internal relation of truth and choice to the self generates a special dialectic within the self, which Mill explores in On Liberty’s second and third chapters by means of several contrasts, such as passive vs. active knowledge, living vs. dead beliefs, or being oneself vs. liking and choosing in crowds. (shrink)

Este texto analiza las concepciones que J. S. Mill y K. Marx defienden sobre la libertad, con el fin de establecer si entre ellas hay puntos de convergencia, a pesar de las diferentes motivaciones que las impulsan. En este sentido, la tesis que se propone es que ambos pensadores coinciden en la defensa que realizan de la libertad, dado que le otorgan un papel destacado a la autodeterminación, el libre desarrollo de la individualidad y a la existencia de condiciones materiales (...) para su concreción. Así las cosas, las distancias que las separan no constituyen ningún óbice al momento de abogar por lo que consideran como el valor fundamental del ser humano. (shrink)

The guise of the good doctrine is the view that whatever we desire, we desire it under the guise of the good, i.e. it appears good to us in some way. In this paper I first clarify the role that the doctrine of the guise of the good plays in the first step of J. S. Mill’s proof of the principle of utility (in which he shows that one’s happiness is desirable as an end). Then I provide textual evidence in (...) favour of ascribing the doctrine to Mill, arguing that he commits to it to the extent that he equates finding something pleasant and thinking it desirable. Finally I counter two potential sources of evidence against ascribing the guise of the good to Mill: apparent desires based on ‘fixed ideas’, and those habitual desires which are no longer associated with finding their objects pleasant. I argue that ‘fixed ideas’ do not feed actual desires, and that the habitual desires which seem to escape the guise of the good, even if not uncommon, have a secondary status as desires. (shrink)

There is strong disagreement about whether indicative conditionals have truth values. In this paper, I present a new argument for the conclusion that indicative conditionals have truth values based on the claim that some true statements entail indicative conditionals. I then address four arguments that conclude that indicative conditionals lack truth values, showing them to be inadequate. Finally, I present further benefits to having a worldly view of conditionals, which supports the assignment of truth values to indicative conditionals. I conclude (...) that certain types of account of indicative conditionals, which have been ignored in the literature partly on the basis of assigning truth values to indicative conditionals, deserve consideration. (shrink)

In this Article, I propose a novel law and economics explanation of a deeply puzzling aspect of business organization in market economies. Why are virtually all firms organized as capital-managed and -owned (capitalist) enterprises rather than as labor-managed and -owned cooperatives? Over 150 years ago, J.S. Mill predicted that efficiency and other advantages would eventually make worker cooperatives predominant over capitalist firms. Mill was right about the advantages but wrong about the results. The standard explanation is that capitalist enterprise is (...) more efficient. Empirical research, however, overwhelmingly contradicts this. But employees almost never even attempt to organize worker cooperatives. I critique the explanations of the three leading analysts of the subject (N. Scott Arnold, Henry Hansmann, and Gregory Dow), all of whom offer are different transactions cost accounts, as logically defective and empirically inadequate. I then propose an explanation that has been oddly neglected in the literature, that the rarity of cooperatives is explained by the collective action problem identified by writers such as Mancur Olson. Labor management is a public good that generates the n-person prisoner’s dilemma which gives rational actors the incentive to create it in suboptimal (or no) amounts. I support this by reference to the empirical facts about the origin of existing cooperatives and show that this explanation requires no strong version of a questionable rational choice theory. This explanation is supplemented by the mere exposure or familiarity effect derived from social and cognitive psychology, which turns on the fact that labor managed firms are rare, in part because of the public goods problem, thus unfamiliar, which makes them less attractive and thus more likely to be rare. My account points advocates of labor management towards solutions such as institutional changes in incentives, which, however, themselves involve public goods issues. (shrink)

William Whewell raised a series of objections concerning John Stuart Mill’s philosophy of science which suggested that Mill’s views were not properly informed by the history of science or by adequate reflection on scientific practices. The aim of this paper is to revisit and evaluate this incisive Whewellian criticism of Mill’s views by assessing Mill’s account of Michael Faraday’s discovery of electrical induction. The historical evidence demonstrates that Mill’s reconstruction is an inadequate reconstruction of this historical episode and the scientific (...) practices Faraday employed. But a study of Faraday’s research also raises some questions about Whewell’s characterization of this discovery. Thus, this example provides an opportunity to reconsider the debate between Whewell and Mill concerning the role of the sciences in the development of an adequate philosophy of scientific methodology.Keywords: Inductivism; Experiment; Theory; Methodology; Electromagnetism. (shrink)

Mill thinks our attitudes should be held in a way that’s active and ‘alive’. He believes attitudes that lack these qualities—those held dogmatically, or in unreflective conformity—are inimical to our well-being. This claim then serves as a premiss in his argument for overarching principles of liberty. He argues that attitudinal vitality, in the relevant sense, relies upon people experiencing attitudinal conflict, and that this necessitates a prioritization of personal liberties. I argue that, pace Mill, contestation isn’t required for attitudinal vitality. (...) I describe one species of attitudinal vitality that isn’t reliant upon conflict. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Worin besteht Mills Argument für den Utilitarismus? Im psychologischen Teil des Arguments plädiert Mill für eine aggregierte Beschreibung unserer hedonistischen Werte ("Das allgemeine Glück ist ein Gut für die Gesamtheit aller Personen"). Von hier aus steuert er im normativen Teil des Arguments auf eine aggregierte Bewertung zu ("Das allgemeine Glück ist ein Gut"). Mills Übergang von Beschreibung zu Wertung beruht auf zwei versteckten Annahmen: Die erste sagt (gegen den Nihilisten), dass es Werte gibt; die zweite sagt (gegen Wert-Metaphysiker), (...) dass die Antwort auf die Frage nach Werten nicht völlig unabhängig von dem sein kann, was wir alle de facto für wert erachten. Diese beiden Voraussetzungen scheinen keine inhaltlichen Aussagen zur Moral zu enthalten. Doch wer sie teilt, wird von Mills Argument überraschend weit in die Gefilde der Moral getrieben. Sein Argument ist besser, als die meisten Interpreten glauben. (shrink)

Argument that full grounds modally entail what they ground.

The theory of proper names proposed by J.S. Mill in A system of logic (1843), and discussed in S. Kripke’s Naming and necessity (1980), is shown to be predated by A. Rosmini’s Nuovo saggio sull’origine delle idee (1830) and T. Reid’s Essays on the intellectual powers of man (1785). For philological reasons, Rosmini probably did not obtain his view of proper names from Reid. For philosophical reasons, it is unlikely that he got it from Hobbes, Locke, Smith, or Stewart. Although (...) not explicitly indicated by Rosmini himself, he may have been influenced by St. Thomas, who in Summa theologica discusses suppositum and natura in relation to the equivocal functions of the terms ”God” and ”sun” as common and proper names. As previously observed, forerunners of the idea can be found in Antiquity, in Plato’s Theaetetus and Aristotle’s Metaphysics. From a historical point of view, the fully developed ”Millian” opinion that connotation is not a fundamental aspect of proper names, and that their referents are not fixed by description, could more accurately be termed the Reid-Rosmini-Mill theory. (shrink)

Characterization of a form of explanation involving grounding on the model of mechanistic causal explanation.

Discussion of the challenge that acquaintance with the nature of experience poses to physicalism.

Discussion of partial grounds that aren't parts of full grounds; definition of full grounding in terms of partial grounding.

Discussion of a metaphysical sense of 'inheritance' and cognate notions relevant to fundamentality.

Amendment of the Witmer, Butchard, and Trogdon (2005) account of intrinsic properties with the aim of neutrality between competing theories of what is fundamental.

Argument that priority monism is best understood as being a contingent thesis.

O objetivo deste texto é responder a uma objeção comum à doutrina utilitarista. Essa doutrina é comumente descrita como aquela que aceita que a ação moralmente correta é a que promove a maior felicidade possível para as pessoas envolvidas. A objeção que trabalhamos aqui nega a afirmação utilitarista de que a felicidade é o único fim da vida humana. Diferentes respostas podem ser formuladas de acordo com o modo que definimos o bem ou a felicidade. Sustentaremos que a versão da (...) lista objetiva, que não identifica felicidade com um bem particular, mas com várias coisas que podem ser desejadas como fins, é a única que pode tornar plausível a afirmação de que a felicidade é a única coisa desejável como fim. (shrink)

Defense of a psychological account of what it is for an artwork to be complete.

In this paper we aim to think systematically about, formulate, and begin addressing some of the challenges to applying theories of moral responsibility to behaviors shaped by a particular subset of unsettling psychological complexities: namely, implicit biases.