I respond to Daniel and Frances Howard-Snyder’s criticisms of my arguments in another place for the conclusion that human supplicants would have little responsibility (if any) for the result of answered petitionary prayer, and criticize their defense of the claim that God would have good reasons for creating an institution of petitionary prayer.

Several prominent theorists have recently advocated reconceptualizing rape as “nonconsensual sex,” omitting the traditional “force” element of the crime. I argue that such a conceptualization fails to capture what is distinctively problematic about rape for women and why rape is pivotal in supporting women’s gender oppression. I argue that conceptualizing rape as coerced sex can replace both the force and nonconsent elements and thereby remedies some of the main difficulties with extant definitions, especially in recognizing “acquaintance” rape as such. I (...) argue that this approach helps explain its distinctive badness both for the individual victims and for women as a group. (shrink)

A plausible explanation of the wrongfulness of threatening, advanced most explicitly by Mitchell Berman, is that the wrongfulness of threatening derives from the wrongfulness of the act threatened. This essay argues that this explanation is inadequate. We can learn something important about the wrongfulness of threatening (with implications for thinking about coercion) by comparing credible threats to some other claims of impending harm. A credible bluff threat to do harm is likely to be more and differently wrongful than making intentionally (...) false warnings about other sources of harm. This essay surveys some examples to secure this point, shows that Berman's moralized account of their wrongfulness is wanting, and offers the outline of an approach better suited to explain the wrongfulness of threatening.1. (shrink)

Albert Einstein’s bold assertion of the form invariance of the equation of a spherical light wave with respect to inertial frames of reference became, in the space of 6 years, the preferred foundation of his theory of relativity. Early on, however, Einstein’s universal light-sphere invariance was challenged on epistemological grounds by Henri Poincaré, who promoted an alternative demonstration of the foundations of relativity theory based on the notion of a light ellipsoid. A third figure of light, Hermann Minkowski’s lightcone also (...) provided a new means of envisioning the foundations of relativity. Drawing in part on archival sources, this paper shows how an informal, international group of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers, including Einstein, Paul Langevin, Poincaré, Hermann Minkowski, Ebenezer Cunningham, Harry Bateman, Otto Berg, Max Planck, Max von Laue, A. A. Robb, and Ludwig Silberstein, employed figures of light during the formative years of relativity theory in their discovery of the salient features of the relativistic worldview. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the roles of ether and electrons in relativity theory. One of the most radical moves made by Albert Einstein was to dismiss the ether from electrodynamics. His fellow physicists felt challenged by Einstein’s view, and they came up with a variety of responses, ranging from enthusiastic approval, to dismissive rejection. Among the naysayers were the electron theorists, who were unanimous in their affirmation of the ether, even if they agreed with other aspects of Einstein’s theory of relativity. (...) The eventual success of the latter theory (circa 1911) owed much to Hermann Minkowski’s idea of four-dimensional spacetime, which was portrayed as a conceptual substitute of sorts for the ether. (shrink)

The two greatest mathematicians of the early twentieth century, David Hilbert and Henri Poincaré transformed the mathematics of their time. Their personal interaction was infrequent, until Hilbert invited Poincaré to deliver the first Wolfskehl Lectures in Göttingen in the spring of 1909. A correspondence ensued, which fixed the content and timing of the lecture series. A close reading of the exchange throws light on what Hilbert wanted Poincaré to talk about, and on what Poincaré wanted to present to Hilbert and (...) his colleagues. To answer the latter question, reference is made to the published version of Poincaré’s six talks, with a focus on two of them, concerning the propagation of Hertzian waves, and the theory of relativity. (shrink)

Albert Einstein's bold assertion of the form-invariance of the equation of a spherical light wave with respect to inertial frames of reference became, in the space of six years, the preferred foundation of his theory of relativity. Early on, however, Einstein's universal light-sphere invariance was challenged on epistemological grounds by Henri Poincaré, who promoted an alternative demonstration of the foundations of relativity theory based on the notion of a light-ellipsoid. Drawing in part on archival sources, this paper shows how an (...) informal, international group of physicists, mathematicians, and engineers, including Einstein, Paul Langevin, Poincaré, Hermann Minkowski, Ebenezer Cunningham, Harry Bateman, Otto Berg, Max Planck, Max Laue, A. A. Robb, and Ludwig Silberstein, employed figures of light during the formative years of relativity theory in their discovery of the salient features of the relativistic worldview. (shrink)

We investigate the causal uncertainty surrounding the flash crash in the U.S. Treasury bond market on October 15, 2014, and the unresolved concern that no clear link has been identified between the start of the flash crash at 9:33 and the opening of the U.S. equity market at 9:30. We consider the contributory effect of mini flash crashes in equity markets, and find that the number of equity mini flash crashes in the three-minute window between market open and the Treasury (...) Flash Crash was 2.6 times larger than the number experienced in any other three-minute window in the prior ten weekdays. We argue that (a) this statistically significant finding suggests that mini flash crashes in equity markets both predicted and contributed to the October 2014 U.S. Treasury Bond Flash Crash, and (b) mini-flash crashes are important phenomena with negative externalities that deserve much greater scholarly attention. (shrink)

Conditionalists say that the value something has as an end—its final value—may be conditional on its extrinsic features. They support this claim by appealing to examples: Kagan points to Abraham Lincoln’s pen, Rabinowicz and Rønnow-Rasmussen to Lady Diana’s dress, and Korsgaard to a mink coat. They contend that these things may have final value in virtue of their historical or societal roles. These three examples have become familiar: many now merely mention them to establish the conditionalist position. But the widespread (...) faith in such cases is, I believe, unjustified. This is because, surprisingly, the pen, the dress, and the coat cannot have final value. I argue that the problem is internal: these cases are ruled out by every conditionalist account of final value. Further, the problem with these well-known cases applies to most other supposed examples of extrinsic, final goods. Thus nearly all cases given to support the conditionalist view cannot succeed. I suggest a kind of diagnosis: I claim that these examples are best seen as instances of sentimental value, rather than final value. I close by providing a brief account of sentimental value and explain how it relates to instrumental, intrinsic, and final goodness. (shrink)

Mooreans claim that intrinsic goodness is a conceptual primitive. Fitting-attitude theorists object: they say that goodness should be defined in terms of what it is fitting for us to value. The Moorean view is often considered a relic; the fitting-attitude view is increasingly popular. I think this unfortunate. Though the fitting-attitude analysis is powerful, the Moorean view is still attractive. I dedicate myself to the influential arguments marshaled against Moore’s program, including those advanced by Scanlon, Stratton-Lake and Hooker, and Jacobson; (...) I argue that they do not succeed. (shrink)

Moore's moral programme is increasingly unpopular. Judith Jarvis Thomson's attack has been especially influential; she says the Moorean project fails because ‘there is no such thing as goodness’. I argue that her objection does not succeed: while Thomson is correct that the kind of generic goodness she targets is incoherent, it is not, I believe, the kind of goodness central to the Principia. Still, Moore's critics will resist. Some reply that we cannot understand Moorean goodness without generic goodness. Others claim (...) that even if Moore does not need Thomson's concept, he still requires the objectionable notion of absolute goodness. I undermine both these replies. I first show that we may dispense with generic goodness without losing Moorean intrinsic goodness. Then, I argue that though intrinsic goodness is indeed a kind of absolute goodness, the objections marshalled against the concept are unsound. (shrink)

We apply the analysis that we have developed over the course of several publications on the significance of ignorance for decision-making, especially in surrogate (and, thus, in political) contexts, to political decision-making, such as it has been, during the COVID-19 pandemic (see Scheall 2019; Crutchfield and Scheall 2019; Scheall and Crutchfield 2020; Scheall 2020). Policy responses to the coronavirus constitute a case study of the problem of policymaker ignorance. We argue that political responses to the virus cannot be explained by (...) assuming that the interests of policymakers were at loggerheads with those of their constituents at the beginning of the crisis. In order to explain the responses of policymakers, it is necessary to recognize the effects of relevant ignorance on their incentives to pursue different policy objectives. We discuss the knowledge that policymakers required at the start of the pandemic in order to deliberately realize the goal of limiting overall human suffering and the spontaneous forces that could have facilitated the realization of this goal. The problem of policymaker ignorance implies that policymakers have not earnestly pursued the goal of limiting overall suffering due to the novel coronavirus, but have repeatedly resorted to the pursuit of relatively less epistemically burdensome goals. The problem of policymaker ignorance explains why policymakers have focused primarily on limiting one kind of suffering – physical suffering due to the virus – and have mostly ignored related kinds of suffering, i.e., the economic, sociological, psychological, and physical suffering caused by policies to limit physical suffering from the virus. The problem of policymaker ignorance also helps to explain why policymakers relied on the relatively blunt instrument of economic lockdown rather than more focused protection policies, and why they continue to resort to lockdowns, despite the emerging scientific evidence of their ineffectiveness at mitigating physical suffering due to the virus. (shrink)

After briefly outlining the fine-tuning argument (FTA), I explain how it relies crucially on the claim that it is not improbable that God would design a fine-tuned universe. Against this premise stands the divine psychology objection: the contention that the probability that God would design a fine-tuned universe is inscrutable. I explore three strategies for meeting this objection: (i) denying that the FTA requires any claims about divine psychology in the first place, (ii) defining the motivation and intention to design (...) a fine-tuned universe into the theistic hypothesis, and (iii) providing arguments that the relevant probability is not terribly low. While I reject the first two, I conclude, in line with the third, that considerations about life's objective value establish that it is not absurdly improbable that God would design a fine-tuned universe, whether one regards the FTA as an inference merely to a cosmic designer, or to theism proper. Accordingly, the divine psychology objection fails. (shrink)

In this article, we apply the literature on the ethics of choice-architecture (nudges) to the realm of virtual reality (VR) to point out ethical problems with using VR for empathy-based nudging. Specifically, we argue that VR simulations aiming to enhance empathic understanding of others via perspective-taking will almost always be unethical to develop or deploy. We argue that VR-based empathy enhancement not only faces traditional ethical concerns about nudge (autonomy, welfare, transparency), but also a variant of the semantic variance problem (...) that arises for intersectional perspective-taking. VR empathy simulations deceive and manipulate their users about their experiences. Despite their often laudable goals, such simulations confront significant ethical challenges. In light of these goals and challenges, we conclude by proposing that VR designers shift from designing simulations aimed at producing empathic perspective-taking to designing simulations aimed at generating sympathy. These simulations, we claim, can avoid the most serious ethical issues associated with VR nudges, semantic variance, and intersectionality. (shrink)

This manuscript consists of two parts, Part I. and Part II. Part I., written by the same author and titled "THE PERSECUTED CHURCH: THE CLANDESTINE CATHOLIC CHURCH (ECCLESIA SILENTII) IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA DURING COMMUNISM 1948 – 1991," was published in the January issue of the Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe (OPREE), ISSN: 2693-2148.2 It includes a brief historical overview and introduces the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii) in Czechoslovakia during Communism from 1948 to 1991. Part II. directly follows Part (...) I. and continues with the following sections: Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References. Part II considers the collapse of the Czech Roman Catholic Church and the end destruction of the Clandestine Catholic Church by the Holy See, along with the process of secularization after the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia from 1991 to 2021. (shrink)

Against interpretations of Kant that would assimilate the universality claim in judgments of taste either to moral demands or to theoretical assertions, I argue that it is for Kant a normative requirement shared with ordinary empirical judgments. This raises the question of why the universal agreement required by a judgment of taste should consist in the sharing of a feeling, rather than simply in the sharing of a thought. Kant’s answer is that in a judgment of taste, a feeling assumes (...) the role of predicate. Such a solution presents a problem as serious as the one it purports to solve. (shrink)

British writers of the eighteenth century such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson are widely thought to have used the notion of disinterestedness to distinguish an aesthetic mode of perception from all other kinds. This historical view originates in the work of Jerome Stolnitz. Through a re-examination of the texts cited by Stolnitz, I argue that none of the writers in question possessed the notion of disinterestedness that has been used in later aesthetic theory, but only the ordinary, non-technical concept, and that (...) they did not use this notion to define a specifically aesthetic mode of perception or a specifically aesthetic mode of anything else. The nearest thing that they had to the Stolnitzian conception of “the aesthetic” was their conception of taste, which differs from the former in some essential respects. (shrink)

Economistic Business Ethics Denial (BED) is the belief that contemporary business has features that make it systematically incompatible with ethics. Using over 1200 participants across seven separate samples we established the substantive validity of a BED Scale, confirmed its theorized structure, psychometric properties, convergent, and discriminant validity. The results suggest that the scale assesses four correlated factors of economistic BED. The scale can be used in future research on ethical decision making in business, and business ethics education.

In Algorithms & Autonomy, Rubel, Castro, and Pham (hereafter RCP), argue that the concept of autonomy is especially central to understanding important moral problems about algorithms. In particular, autonomy plays a role in analyzing the version of social contract theory that they endorse. I argue that although RCP are largely correct in their diagnosis of what is wrong with the algorithms they consider, those diagnoses can be appropriated by moral theories RCP see as in competition with their autonomy based theory. (...) Most notably, proponents of consequentialism and virtue ethics can appropriate RCPs insights. This is good news because RCP’s social contract theory is vulnerable to a well known class of counterexamples. The most significant contribution of RCP, if I am right, is in their identification, presentation, and evaluation of concrete cases involving algorithms and not in the more controversial claims about theoretical ethics that RCP themselves see as central to what they are doing. (shrink)

According to Kant, the singular judgement ‘This rose is beautiful’ is, or may be, aesthetic, while the general judgement ‘Roses in general are beautiful’ is not. What, then, is the logical relation between the two judgements? I argue that there is none, and that one cannot allow there to be any if one agrees with Kant that the judgement ‘This rose is beautiful’ cannot be made on the basis of testimony. The appearance of a logical relation between the two judgements (...) can, however, be explained in terms of what one does in making a judgement of taste. Finally, I describe an analogy between Kant's treatment of judgements of taste and J. L. Austin's treatment of explicit performative utterances, which I attribute to a deeper affinity between their respective projects. (shrink)

For anyone approaching the Encheiridion of Epictetus for the first time, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding a complex philosophical text. Including a full translation and clear explanatory commentaries, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' introduces readers to a hugely influential work of Stoic philosophy. Scott Aikin and William O. Stephens unravel the core themes of Stoic ethics found within this ancient handbook. Focusing on the core themes of self-control, seeing things as they are, living according to nature, owning one's roles (...) and fulfilling the responsibilities that those roles entail, the authors elucidate the extremely challenging ideas in Epictetus's brisk chapters. Divided into five distinct parts, this book provides readers with: -/- - A new translation of the Encheiridion by William O. Stephens. - A new introduction to ancient Stoicism, its system of concepts, and the ancient figures who shaped it. - A fresh treatment of the notorious and counter-intuitive 'Stoic paradoxes'. - An accessible overview of the origin and historical context of the Encheiridion. - Detailed commentaries on each chapter of the Encheiridion that clarify its recurring themes and highlight their interconnections. - Careful attention to the presentation of the arguments embedded in Epictetus's aphoristic style. - A thoughtful discussion of serious criticisms of Epictetus's Stoicism and replies to these objections. -/- Written with clarity and authority, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' provides a foundation from which readers can understand this important text and engage with the fundamental questions of Stoic philosophy and ethics. This guide will aid teachers of Epictetus, students encountering Stoicism for the first time, and readers seeking a greater understanding of Stoic ethics. (shrink)

Kant’s argument in § 38 of the *Critique of Judgment* is subject to a dilemma: if the subjective condition of cognition is the sufficient condition of the pleasure of taste, then every object of experience must produce that pleasure; if not, then the universal communicability of cognition does not entail the universal communicability of the pleasure. Kant’s use of an additional premise in § 21 may get him out of this difficulty, but the premises themselves hang in the air and (...) have no independent plausibility. What Kant offers as a proof of our right to make judgments of taste is more charitably construed as an indirect argument for the adequacy of a speculative explanation of a *presumed* right to make judgments of taste. (shrink)

Peter Geach’s distinction between logically predicative and logically attributive adjectives has gained a certain currency in philosophy. For all that, no satisfactory explanation of what an attributive adjective is has yet been provided. We argue that Geach’s discussion suggests two different ways of understanding the notion. According to one, an adjective is attributive just in case predications of it in combination with a noun fail to behave in inferences like a logical conjunction of two separate predications. According to the other, (...) an adjective is attributive just in case it cannot be applied in a truth-value-yielding fashion unless combined with a noun. The latter way of understanding the notion has been largely neglected by Geach’s critics, but we argue that taking account of it shows the misguided nature of some of their objections, and also yields a more satisfactory explanation of attributivity than does the other. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the topic of skepticism is central to Hegel’s philosophical work. However, I contend that in returning to the subject of skepticism throughout his career, Hegel does not treat skepticism simply as an epistemological challenge to be overcome on the way to truth, as some commentators suggest, but as part of the very truth which it is philosophy’s task to explain. I make this case by considering three texts through which Hegel develops the connection between (...) skepticism and the ‘negative’ or ‘dialectical’ dimension of reality: “Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy” (1802), the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), and the Encyclopedia Logic (1817). In this, I also demonstrate how the topic of skepticism informs the development of Hegel’s speculative metaphysics throughout his career and, thus, present a problematic that sheds light on the important continuity between these different phases of Hegel’s project. (shrink)

How should we conceive of policymakers for the purposes of political analysis? In particular, if we wish to explain and predict political decisions and their consequences, if we wish to ensure that political action is as effective as it can be, how should we think of policymakers? Should we think of them as they are commonly conceived in traditional political analysis, i.e., as uniquely knowledgeable and as either altruistic (i.e., as motivated to realize goals associated with their constituents’ interests) or (...) knavish (i.e., as motivated to realize goals associated with their own personal interests), or should we treat them as possibly ignorant with respect to their political tasks? -/- It is always an open question whether policymakers possess the knowledge required to realize some policy objective. It should never be assumed a priori that policymaker knowledge is adequate to the policy tasks with which policymakers are charged. Politicians need knowledge concerning the causes of social phenomena adequate to control events sufficiently well to ensure the success of their policies. No argument has ever been offered for the standard, if only implicit, assumption that policymakers, somehow automatically, possess this knowledge. In many contexts, there is no reason to believe that policymakers possess or can acquire this knowledge. Indeed, a bit of reflection reveals how unlikely it is that and how rare the circumstances must be in which policymakers meet this condition, which political philosophers, theorists, economists, and other political thinkers have traditionally assumed as a matter of course. -/- The main purpose of the book is to encourage a conversation among scholars and students of political inquiry (in philosophy and political theory, political science, economics and political economy) concerning the best way to conceive of policymakers for the purposes of such inquiry. -/- The book defends an alternative, more realistic, method of political analysis. The book argues against the false assumption that policymakers are epistemically privileged. The book presents and defends the alternative assumption that, with respect to the knowledge required to discharge their political tasks effectively, policymakers are at least as ignorant as constituents. -/- The book further argues that whether policymakers are altruistic or knavish is, in the first instance, a function of the nature and extent of their ignorance with regard to constituent-minded policy goals. Policymakers who possess the knowledge required to be effectively altruistic are more likely to be altruistic, other things the same, than policymakers who are ignorant of the knowledge that successful altruism requires. -/- This being said, my goal is more to leave readers thinking about and inclined to debate these profound issues than to prescribe a particular methodological conclusion (even less to advocate a particular political conclusion). The book is a heuristic for spurring further conversation. It makes of readers fellow interlocutors partnered with the characters (and the author!) of the dialogue. -/- The vehicle for this analysis is a conversation between four friends, philosophy graduate students, with different interests, different levels and kinds of experience, and different political preferences. The four friends consider how politicians should be conceived for the purposes of analyzing political decision-making and its consequences. -/- In his famous Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, David Hume concluded that the assumption of an all-knowing and all-powerful God was neither necessary nor sufficient to explain natural phenomena. Dialogues concerning Natural Politics does for social science what Hume did for natural science. Both books undermine the assumption that some epistemically privileged being – God in the case of natural phenomena and God-like politicians in the case of social phenomena – must be invoked to explain relevant phenomena. (shrink)

I maintain that intrinsic value is the fundamental concept of axiology. Many contemporary philosophers disagree; they say the proper object of value theory is final value. I examine three accounts of the nature of final value: the first claims that final value is non‐instrumental value; the second claims that final value is the value a thing has as an end; the third claims that final value is ultimate or non‐derivative value. In each case, I argue that the concept of final (...) value described is either identical with the classical notion of intrinsic value or is not a plausible candidate for the primary concept of axiology. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a critical interpretation of Hegel’s claims regarding the presuppositionless status of the Logic. Commentators have been divided as to whether the Logic actually achieves the status of presuppositionless science, disagreeing as to whether the Logic succeeds in making an unmediated beginning. I argue, however, that this understanding of presuppositionless science is misguided, as it reflects a spurious conception of immediacy that Hegel criticizes as false. Contextualizing Hegel’s remarks in light of his broader approach to the (...) problem of beginning, I contend that Hegel’s Logic is presuppositionless not in the sense that it satisfies a formal epistemological demand to begin free from all mediation, but in that its self-mediating structure facilitates an immanent deduction of the categories. (shrink)

In his 1802 article for the Critical Journal, “Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy,” Hegel attempts to articulate a form of skepticism that is “at one with every true philosophy.” Focusing on the priority that Hegel gives to ancient skepticism over its modern counterpart, Michael Forster and other commentators suggest that it is Pyrrhonism that Hegel views as one with philosophy. Since Hegel calls attention to the persistence of dogmatism even in the work of Sextus Empiricus, however, I argue that it (...) is only a sublated form of Pyrrhonism, what in the Phenomenology of Spirit he calls “self-completing skepticism,” that Hegel takes to be part of genuine philosophical cognition. In this way, I hope to show that the insight that motivates Hegel’s engagement with skepticism in the 1802 essay comes to inform the philosophical itinerary of the Phenomenology of Spirit. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to argue for psychological egoism, i.e., the view that the ultimate motivation for all human action is the agent’s self-interest. Two principal opponents to psychological egoism are considered. These two views are shown to make human action inexplicable. Since the reason for putting forward these views is to explain human action, these views fail. If psychological egoism is the best explanation of human action, then humans will not differ as regards their motivations for their (...) actions. However, humans will differ as regards their knowledge of what is in fact in their self-interest. (shrink)

I develop and defend a maximizing theory of moral motivation: I claim that consequentialists should recommend only those desires, emotions, and dispositions that will make the outcome best. I advance a conservative account of the motives that are possible for us; I say that a motive is an alternative if and only if it is in our psychological control. The resulting theory is less demanding than its competitors. It also permits us to maintain many of the motivations that we value (...) most, including our love for those most important to us. I conclude that we are closer to meeting morality’s demands on our character than has been appreciated. (shrink)

Apophaticism -- the view that God is both indescribable and inconceivable -- is one of the great medieval traditions of philosophical thought about God, but it is largely overlooked by analytic philosophers of religion. This paper attempts to rehabilitate apophaticism as a serious philosophical option. We provide a clear formulation of the position, examine what could appropriately be said and thought about God if apophaticism is true, and consider ways to address the charge that apophaticism is self-defeating. In so doing (...) we draw on recent work in the philosophy of language, touching on issues such as the nature of negation, category mistakes, fictionalism, and reductionism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that J. L. Schellenberg’s Divine Hiddenness Argument is committed to a problematic implication that is weakened by research in cognitive psychology on affective forecasting. Schellenberg’s notion of a nonresistant nonbeliever logically implies that for any such person, it is true that she would form the proper belief in God if provided with what he calls “probabilifying” evidence for God’s existence. In light of Schellenberg’s commitment to the importance of both affective and propositional belief components for (...) entering into the proper relationship with God, this implication of his argument becomes an affective prediction or forecast. However, research in cognitive psychology has shown that in multiple and varied circumstances humans often make inaccurate predictions of their future affective states or reactions. Thus, this research provides strong empirical reasons to doubt that the implication is warranted. (shrink)

Many philosophers, psychologists, and medical practitioners believe that killing is no worse than letting die on the basis of James Rachels's Bare-Difference Argument. I show that his argument is unsound. In particular, a premise of the argument is that his examples are as similar as is consistent with one being a case of killing and the other being a case of letting die. However, the subject who lets die has both the ability to kill and the ability to let die (...) while the subject who kills lacks the ability to let die. Modifying the latter example so that the killer has both abilities yields a pair of cases with morally different acts. The hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die is the best explanation of this difference. (shrink)

Este trabalho tem por objetivo a compreensão da ação em Aristóteles. Para este fim será utilizado o livro III da Ética a Nicômaco, passando antes por uma breve definição da virtude, tal como aparece no livro II, a qual, pode-se dizer ser o bem para a ação, na medida em que é aquilo que se deve alcançar com ela. No campo específico da ação será visto como ela pode ser distinguida entre voluntária, involuntária e não-voluntária. Neste espectro insere-se igualmente a (...) discussão sobre o que significa agir por e na ignorância. Além disso, se abordará também a questão relacionada à deliberação e à escolha.: This study aims to understand the action in Aristotle. For this purpose, we will use the book III of the Nicomachean Ethics, after doing a brief definition of virtue, as it appears in the Book II, which can be said to be the good for the action, as that is what should be reached by her. In the specific field of action, it will be seen how she can be distinguished between voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary. This spectrum is also part of the discussion about what it means to act by and in the ignorance. In addition, the study will also address the issue related to deliberation and choice. Keywords: Deliberation, Choice, Action, Nicomachean Ethics. (shrink)

Maureen Donnelly has recently argued that directionalism, the view that relations have a direction, applying to their relata in an order, is unable to properly treat certain symmetric relations. She alleges that it must count the application of such a relation to an appropriate number of objects in a given order as distinct from its application to those objects in any other ordering of them. I reply by showing how the directionalist can link the application conditions of any fixed arity (...) relation, no matter its arity or symmetry, and its converse(s) in such a way that directionalism will yield the correct ways in which it can apply. I thus establish that directionalism possesses the same advantage Donnelly's own account of relations, relative positionalism, has over traditional positionalist accounts of relations, which do not properly treat symmetric relations. I then note some advantages that directionalism has over its closest competitors. This includes Donnelly's relative positionalism, since directionalism is not, like relative positionalism, committed to the involvement of relative properties in every irreducibly relational claim. I close by conceding that, as Donnelly notes, directionalism is committed to the primitive relation of order-sensitive relational application. But I don't find this notion as mysterious as Donnelly does. I conclude that, even if one construes this feature of directionalism as a drawback, the two views are at worst at a draw, other things being equal, since this drawback is mitigated by the advantage directionalism has over relative positionalism. (shrink)

Recent accounts of coercion can be mapped onto two different axes: whether they focus on the situation of the coercee or the activities of the coercer; and whether or not they depend upon moral judgments in their analysis of coercion. Using this analysis, I suggest that almost no recent theories have seriously explored a non-moralized, coercer-focused approach to coercion. I offer some reasons to think that a theory in this underexplored quadrant offers some important advantages over theories confined to the (...) other quadrants. In particular I suggest that much of our interest in coercion depends on facts about the coercer, such as the sorts of powers coercers must possess to be able to coerce, and on the coercer's intention in using those powers to constrain or alter the coercee's activities. (shrink)

I defend a new version of the non-identity theodicy. After presenting the theodicy, I reply to a series of objections. I then argue that my approach improves upon similar approaches in the literature.

This research examines the most important historical, political, economic, social, cultural, and religious factors before, during, and after the reign of Communism in Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 2021 and their effect on the extreme increase in atheism and decrease in Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism, in the present-day Czech Republic. It devotes special attention to the role of the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii) and the changing policies of the Holy See vis-à-vis this Church, examining these policies' impact on the continuing (...) decline of Roman Catholicism in the Czech Republic after the collapse of Communism. The article also deals with Pope Pius XII's Secret Mandates of 1948-1950, the Second Vatican Council, and the Holy See's Ostpolitik. Scholars, who previously relied only on the views of the Czechs, blame the unprecedented drop in Christianity, the near-total destruction of the Catholic Church, and the rise in atheism on the Czechoslovak communist government's four decades of totalitarianism. Although the increase in atheism and decrease in Christianity were substantial during the era of Communism from 1948 to 1989, our data indicate that the decline in Christianity, particularly the historically predominating Roman Catholicism, did not commence with the 1948 communist coup d’état but traces its origins to the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the conclusion of WWI and the establishment of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1918. What's more, this research shows that the most significant and unprecedented steep deterioration of the Christian Faith, namely Roman Catholicism, did not occur during the era of Communism but only after the Czechoslovak communist government collapsed in 1989. This massive decay did not happen even during the most extraordinary communist persecution of the Catholic Church during the era of Stalinism in Czechoslovakia. This research further finds that the Holy See's ill-advised policies and systematic, sustained, and prevalent failures in leadership, guidance, and teachings are responsible for the near destruction of the Roman Catholic Church and especially the end destruction of the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii), in the Czech and Slovak Republics after the fall of Communism. These failures furthermore contributed to the Czech Republic, the historical lands of Bohemia and Moravia that once were in the center of Christendom, degenerating into the most atheist country in Europe and the world today. (shrink)

Three objections to the epistemic theory of argument are presented and briefly rebutted. In light of this reply, a case for argumentative eclecticism is made.

O conceito de self-ownership é frequentemente utilizado nos campos da Ética e da Filosofia Política para justificar ou negar a justeza de determinadas situações, atos ou práticas. As críticas a tal conceito são predominantemente focadas em seus corolários. No presente artigo a análise se concentra sobra as condições de possibilidade da existência de uma relação de propriedade de si mesmo – auto-propriedade – procurando-se demonstrar a impossibilidade de tal relação pela ausência de multiplicidade de elementos que possam constituir um proprietário (...) e uma propriedade. A propriedade de si mesmo é fundada em um dualismo ontológico, cuja ilusão procura se respaldar na percepção de si como um outro na constituição da identidade e na confusão da relação genitiva com uma relação de propriedade. (shrink)

There are two ways to characterize symmetric relations. One is intensional: necessarily, _Rxy_ iff _Ryx_. In some discussions of relations, however, what is important is whether or not a relation gives rise to the same completion of a given type (fact, state of affairs, or proposition) for each of its possible applications to some fixed relata. Kit Fine calls relations that do ‘strictly symmetric’. Is there is a difference between the notions of necessary and strict symmetry that would prevent them (...) from being used interchangeably in such discussions? I show that there is. While the notions coincide assuming an intensional account of relations and their completions, according to which relations/completions are identical if they are necessarily coinstantiated/equivalent, they come apart assuming a hyperintensional account, which individuates relations and completions more finely on the basis of relations’ real definitions. I establish this by identifying two definable relations, each of which is necessarily symmetric but nonetheless results in distinct facts when it applies to the same objects in opposite orders. In each case, I argue that these facts are distinct because they have different grounds. (shrink)

Resumo Este trabalho retoma o tema dos preconceitos sociais de grupo na filosofia, esclarecendo seu modo de funcionamento a partir das identificações sociais e destacando que os discursos de preconceito – xenophobia, racismo, homofobia etc. – seguem o mesmo paradigma, independentemente de seu conteúdo. Primeiramente procederemos a um breve delineamento histórico do conceito de preconceito na filosofia, a fim de delimitar o escopo do trabalho no preconceito social de grupo. Em seguida, a discussão se dará sobre a constituição da identidade (...) de grupo e a exclusão do outro dela decorrente. Por fim, chegaremos à conclusão de que os diversos tipos de preconceito não só possuem uma estrutura similar como seguem a mesma lógica e funcionam conjuntamente para a hierarquização complexa da sociedade por meio da interseccionalidade. Abstract This paper takes up the issue of social prejudice in philosophy, clarifying its way of functioning by the means of social identifications as well as highlighting that the discourses of prejudice – xenophobia, racism, homophobia etc. – follow the same paradigm, regardless of their content. First, we will briefly delineate the concept of prejudice throughout the history of philosophy, in order to delimit the scope of this work in the group-related social prejudice. Then, the discussion will follow to the constitution of the group identity and the exclusion of the others from it. Finally, we will conclude that the different types of prejudice not only have a similar structure but follow the same logic and work together for the complex hierarchization of society through intersectionality. (shrink)