Passion is a hidden issue behind or at the heart of, contemporary theoretical debates about nationalism, identity politics and religious fundamentalism. It is not that reason and passion cannot be conceptually distinguished. They are, however, always entangled in practice - and this entanglement itself requires a conceptual account. So it is my ambition to blur the line between reason and passion: to rationalize (some of) the passions and to impassion reason. Passionate intensity has a legitimate place in the social world. (...) This extension of rational legitimacy to the political passions seems to me a useful revision of liberal theory which has been too pre-occupied in recent years with the construction of dispassionate deliberative procedures. It opens the way for better accounts of social connection and conflict and for more explicit and self-conscious answers to the unavoidable political questions: which side are you on? Key Words: conviction • interest • liberalism • passion • politics • Yeats. (shrink)

In Spheres of Justice, published in 1983, Michael Walzer gives his views on a negative income tax, which is a variation on and an implementation of the idea of a universal basic income. His relevant statements, which are included in the chapters “security and welfare” and “money and commodities”, are ambivalent. This paper discusses the idea of a universal basic income from the perspective of Walzer’s theory of distributive justice. This discussion presents both arguments for and against (...) this idea. (shrink)

The cardinal role that notions of respect and self-respect play in Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has already been abundantly examined in the literature. However, it has hardly been noticed that these notions are also central for Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice. Respect and self-respect are not only central topics of his chapter on “recognition”, but constitute a central aim of his whole theory of justice. This paper substantiates this thesis and elucidates Walzer’s criticism of Rawls’s that (...) we need to distinguish between “self-respect” and “self-esteem”. (shrink)

The cardinal role that notions of respect and self-respect play in Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has already been abundantly examined in the literature. In contrast, it has hardly been noticed that these notions are also central to Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice. Respect and self-respect are not only central topics of his chapter “Recognition”, but constitute a central aim of a “complex egalitarian society” and of Walzer’s theory of justice. This paper substantiates this thesis and elucidates (...) Walzer’s criticism of Rawls that we need to distinguish between “self-respect” and “self-esteem”. (shrink)

Contra Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan, neither classical just war theory nor the contemporary rules of war require or support any notion of combatant moral equality. Nations rightly accept prohibitions against punishing enemy combatants without recognizing any legal or moral right of aggressors to kill. The notion of combatant moral equality has real import only in our interpersonal -- and intrapersonal -- attitudes, since the notion effectively preempts any ground for conscientious objection. Walzer is criticized for over-emphasizing (...) our collective responses to war conduct and slighting our personal, extra-political responses. (shrink)

To what extent do the moral principles of just war theory lend themselves to providing an account of the moral and political responsibility of citizens in general, and of public intellectuals in particular, in times of war? An analysis of Michael Walzer’s thought opens promising avenues for answering this question. It will be necessary, first of all, to re-examine the classic distinction between combatants and noncombatants – a thesis that Walzer defended but that several philosophers have criticized (...) in recent years. The problem will then be to construe citizens’ moral and political responsibility in times of war, and also to reflect on the precise role of a very specific category of civil society, namely public intellectuals. We will see that this responsibility does not appear sufficient for abolishing the distinction between combatants and noncombatants, which must be maintained. However, this responsibility must be examined more precisely, especially its relation to public debate and the role that it confers on public intellectuals in that debate. Using Walzer’s moral arguments pertaining to war while taking account of the objections that have been made to them, it is possible to read in Walzer’s thought a weak version of the responsibility of citizens and, conversely, a strong version of the responsibility of public intellectuals, in times of war. (shrink)

Cicero’s ethical and political writings present a detailed and sophisticated philosophy of just war, namely an account of when armed conflict is morally right or wrong. Several of the philosophical moves or arguments that he makes, such as a critique of “Roman realism” or his incorporation of the ius fetiale—a form of archaic international law—are remarkable similar to those of the contemporary just war philosopher Michael Walzer, even if Walzer is describing inter-state war and Cicero is describing (...) imperial war. But if it is clear that Walzer presents a detailed philosophy of just war, then I argue we should draw the same conclusion for Cicero. The result is a deeper appreciation of the insight and novelty of Cicero’s view of just war. The paper concludes by arguing against the claim that Cicero’s philosophy of just war is derivative from the Stoic philosopher Panaetius, whom Cicero drew upon in the organization of his On Duties. Just as Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars was written in response to America’s war in Vietnam, Cicero’s just war philosophy was written in response to the wars (both civil and external) of Gaius Caesar. (shrink)

Michael Walzer argues that except in cases involving genocide or mass slaughter, humanitarian intervention is unjustifiable because “citizens get the government they deserve, or, at least, the government for which they are ‘fit.’”Yet, if people are autonomous and deserve the government that rules over them, then it would seem that they are responsible for the government’s actions, including their nation’s wars of aggression.That line of thought undermines the doctrine of noncombatant immunity, which is perhaps the most important of (...) Walzer’s jus in bello principles. In this way, the concept of self-determination frustrates Walzer’s attempts to keep jus ad bellum and jus in bello considerations separate. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to make sense of the oft-invoked idea of 'public emergency' and of some of its (supposedly) radical moral implications. I challenge controversial claims by Tom Sorell, Michael Walzer, and Giorgio Agamben, and argue for a more discriminating understanding of the category and its moral force.

Just war theory − as advanced by Michael Walzer, among others − fails to take war seriously enough. This is because it proposes that we regulate war with systematic rules that are comparable to those of a game. Three types of claims are advanced. The first is phenomenological: that the theory's abstract nature interferes with our judgment of what is, and should be, going on. The second is meta-ethical: that the theory's rules are not, in fact, systematic after (...) all, there being inherent contradictions between them. And the third is practical: that by getting people to view war as like a game, the theory promotes its ‘aestheticization’ (play being a central mode of the aesthetic) such that those who fight are encouraged to act in dangerous ways. And war, it goes without saying, is already dangerous enough. (shrink)

Terrorist violence is often condemned for targeting innocents or non-combatants. There are two objections to this line of argument. First, one may doubt that terrorism is necessarily directed against innocents or non-combatants. However, I will focus on the second objection, according to which there may be exceptions from the prohibition against killing the innocent. In my article I will elaborate whether lethal terrorism against innocents can be justified in a supreme emergency. Starting from a critique of Michael Walzer’s (...) account of supreme emergency, I will argue that the supreme emergency exemption justifies the resort to terrorism against innocents to avert moral disasters such as genocide and ethnic cleansing, provided that the criteria of last resort, proportionality and public declaration are satisfied. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the notion which Michael Walzer calls jus ad vim might improve the moral evaluation for using military lethal force in conflicts other than war, particularly those situations of conflict short-of-war. First, I describe his suggested approach to morally justifying the use of lethal force outside the context of war. I argue that Walzer’s jus ad vim is a broad concept that encapsulates a state’s mechanisms for exercising power short-of-war. I focus on (...) his more narrow use of jus ad vim which is the state’s use of lethal force. Next I address Tony Coady’s critique of jus ad vim. I argue that Coady highlights some important problems with jus ad vim, but these concerns are not sufficient to dismiss it completely. Then, in the final section, I argue that jus ad vim provides an appropriate “hybrid” moral framework for judging the ethical decision-making outside of war by complementing other conventional just war distinctions. A benefit of jus ad vim is that it stops us expanding the definition of war while still providing the necessary ethical framework for examining violent conflict outside that context. (shrink)

A famous Indian argument for jus ad bellum and jus in bello is presented in literary form in the Mahābhārata: it involves events and dynamics between moral conventionalists (who attempt to abide by ethical theories that give priority to the good) and moral parasites (who attempt to use moral convention as a weapon without any desire to conform to these expectations themselves). In this paper I follow the dialectic of this victimization of the conventionally moral by moral parasites to its (...) philosophical culmination in the fateful battle, which the Bhagavad Gītā precedes. Arjuna’s lament is an internalization of the logic of conventional moral expectations that allowed moral parasitism, and Krishna’s push for a purely procedural approach to moral reasoning (bhakti yoga) does away with the good as a primitive of explanation and provides the moral considerations that allow us to see that the jus ad bellum and jus in bello coincide: the just cause is the approximation to the procedural ideal (the Lord), which is also just conduct. Jeff McMahan is correct in claiming that it is wrong for the unjust to attack the just. But it is also not obviously correct that it is the same set of moral considerations in war and peace that mark out the sides, for peace is largely characterizable by conventional morality, which all are forced to abandon in war. Walzer is correct that there are different sets of standards at play at war and peace, and that getting hands dirty in immorality is a price worth paying in war, but Walzer is thereby incorrect for a subtle reason: conventional standards by way of which jus ad bellum and jus in bello appear corrupt are themselves actually corrupt when the need for a just war arises. It is because moral parasites use conventional morality as a means of hostility and not as a means of fair, inclusive social interaction that conventional morality is corrupted and turned into a tool of the unjust. It is hence unjust to employ these standards to judge those whose cause is just, though such a judgement is conventional. Those who fight for a just cause thereby justly get their hands dirty by departing from conventional moral standards. But this is to the disadvantage of parasites who can only function in a climate where the conventionally good are constrained by conventional morality. Just war so understood deprives parasites their weapon of choice. (shrink)

This article asks whether states have a right to close their borders because of their right to self-determination, as proposed recently by Christopher Wellman, Michael Walzer, and others. It asks the fundamental question whether self-determination can, in even its most unrestricted form, support the exclusion of immigrants. I argue that the answer is no. To show this, I construct three different ways in which one might use the idea of self-determination to justify immigration restrictions and show that each (...) of these arguments fails. My conclusion is that the nature and value of self-determination have to do with the conditions of genuine self-government, not membership of political society. Consequently, the demand for open borders is fully consistent with respect to self-determination. (shrink)

The doctrine of the moral equality of combatants holds that combatants on either side of a war have equal moral status, even if one side is fighting a just war while the other is not. This chapter examines arguments that have been offered for and against this doctrine, including the collectivist position famously articulated by Walzer and McMahan’s influential individualist critique. We also explore collectivist positions that have rejected the moral equality doctrine and arguments that some individualists have offered (...) in its favor. We defend a non-categorical version of the moral equality doctrine, according to which combatants on either side of a just war sometimes (but not always) have equal moral status. On our view, some degree of culpability is necessary for liability, and non-culpable combatants may therefore sometimes remain non-liable even when they fight for an unjust cause. (shrink)

Louis Pojman and Robert Westmoreland have compiled the best material on the subject of equality, ranging from classical works by Aristotle, Hobbes and Rousseau to contemporary works by John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, Michael Walzer, Harry Frankfurt, Bernard Williams and Robert Nozick; and including such topics as: the concept of equality; equal opportunity; Welfare egalitarianism; resources; equal human rights and complex equality.

Contemporary just war theory is divided into two broad camps: revisionists and traditionalists. Traditionalists seek to provide moral foundations for something close to current international law, and in particular the laws of armed conflict. Although they propose improvements, they do so cautiously. Revisionists argue that international law is at best a pragmatic fiction—it lacks deeper moral foundations. In this article, I present the contemporary history of analytical just war theory, from the origins of contemporary traditionalist just war theory in (...) class='Hi'>Michael Walzer's work to the revisionist critique of Walzer and the subsequent revival of traditionalism. I discuss central questions of methodology, as well as consider the morality of resorting to war and the morality of conduct in war. I show that although the revisionists exposed philosophical shortcomings in Walzer's arguments, their radical conclusions should prompt us not to reject the broad contemporary consensus, but instead to seek better arguments to underpin it. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce an interpretive approach to examining the relation between information and communication technologies and the good life, based on Michael Walzer's view of social criticism.Design/methodology/approachThrough a discussion of Michael Walzer's view of social criticism, an interpretive approach to normative analysis of ICTs and the good life is introduced. The paper also offers an additional argument for the indispensability of prudential appraisals of ICTs in normative analysis of ICTs and the (...) good life, which in turn strengthens the basis for the Walzerian approach proposed in the paper.FindingsIt is argued that an interpretive approach to normative analysis of ICTs and the good life, i.e. the Walzerian approach, is as viable as – if not superior to – a theory‐driven approach. It is also argued that actual appraisals of ICTs and the good life must be taken into account in the normative analysis.Originality/valueIt is only recently that “the good life” has become more visible in normative analysis of ICTs. This paper continues this relatively new line of research and proposes an alternative approach – as opposed to a theory‐driven approach – to this research programme. (shrink)

Employers seeking to control employee behavior outside of working hours is nothing new. However, recent developments have extended efforts to control employee behavior into new areas, with new significance. Employers seek to control legal behavior by employees outside of working hours, to have significant influence over employee’s health-related behavior, and to monitor and control employee’s social media, even when this behavior has nothing to do with the workplace. In this article, I draw on the work of political theorists Jon Elster, (...) Gerald Gaus and Michael Walzer, and privacy scholars Daniel Solove and Anita Allen, to show what is wrong with this extension of employer control of employee’s outside of work behavior. I argue that there are ethical limits on the controls that employers may put on their employees’ out of work behavior, and that many of these limits should be enshrined into legal protections which would prevent employers from conditioning employment on the regulations criticized. -/- (Please note that the version of this paper on SSRN is a pre-publication version. Please cite and refer to the published version when possible.). (shrink)

Interest in just war theory has boomed in recent years, as a revisionist school of thought has challenged the orthodoxy of international law, most famously defended by Michael Walzer [1977]. These revisionist critics have targeted the two central principles governing the conduct of war (jus in bello): combatant equality and noncombatant immunity. The first states that combatants face the same permissions and constraints whether their cause is just or unjust. The second protects noncombatants from intentional attack. In response (...) to these critics, some philosophers have defended aspects of the old orthodoxy on novel grounds. Revisionists counter. As things stand, the prospects for progress are remote. In this paper, we offer a way forward. We argue that exclusive focus on first-order moral principles, such as combatant equality and noncombatant immunity, has led revisionist and orthodox just war theorists to engage in “proxy battles.” Their first-order moral disagreements are at least partly traceable to second-order disagreements about the nature and purpose of political theory. These deeper disputes have been central to the broader discipline of political theory for several years; we hope that bringing them to bear on the ethics of war will help us move beyond the present impasse. (shrink)

The article provides an account of the unlikely revival of the medieval Just War Theory, due in large part to the efforts of Michael Walzer. Its purpose is to address the question: What is a just war theorist? By exploring contrasts between scholarly activity and forms of international activism, the paper argues that just war theorists appear to be just war criminals, both on the count of aiding and abetting aggression and on the count of inciting troops to (...) commit war crimes. (shrink)

Scholarly critiques of the just war tradition have grown in number and sophistication in recent years to the point that available publications now provide the basis for a more philosophically challenging Peace Studies course. Focusing on just a few works published in the past several years, this review explores how professional philosophers are reclaiming the terrain long dominated by the approach of political scientist Michael Walzer. On center stage are British philosopher David Rodin’s critique of the self-defensejustification for (...) war and American philosopher Andrew Fiala’s skeptical assessment of the just war tradition in its entirety. Also considered is a collection of more narrowly focused critiques by philosophers and some highly relevant extra-philosophical studies regarding the social interconnections between authority and violence. (shrink)

The principle of non-combatant immunity protects non-combatants against intentional attacks in war. It is the most widely endorsed and deeply held moral constraint on the conduct of war. And yet it is difficult to justify. Recent developments in just war theory have undermined the canonical argument in its favour – Michael Walzer's, in Just and Unjust Wars. Some now deny that non-combatant immunity has principled foundations, arguing instead that it is entirely explained by a different principle: that of (...) necessity. In war, as in ordinary life, harms to others can be justified only if they are necessary. Attacking non-combatants, the argument goes, is never necessary, so never justified. Although often repeated, this argument has never been explored in depth. In this article, I evaluate the necessity-based argument for non-combatant immunity, drawing together theoretical analysis and empirical research on anti-civilian tactics in interstate warfare, counterinsurgency, and terrorism. (shrink)

Modern analytical just war theory starts with Michael Walzer's defense of key tenets of the laws of war in his Just and Unjust Wars. Walzer advocates noncombatant immunity, proportionality, and combatant equality: combatants in war must target only combatants; unintentional harms that they inflict on noncombatants must be proportionate to the military objective secured; and combatants who abide by these principles fight permissibly, regardless of their aims. In recent years, the revisionist school of just war theory, led (...) by Jeff McMahan, has radically undermined Walzer's defense of these principles. This essay situates Walzer's and the revisionists’ arguments, before illustrating the disturbing vision of the morality of war that results from revisionist premises. It concludes by showing how broadly Walzerian conclusions can be defended using more reliable foundations. (shrink)

Culture is a notoriously elusive concept. This fact has done nothing to hinder its popularity in contemporary analytic political philosophy among writers like John Rawls, Will Kymlicka, Michael Walzer, David Miller, Iris Marion Young, Joseph Raz, Avishai Margalit and Bikhu Parekh, among many others. However, this should stop, both for the metaphysical reason that the concept of culture, like that of race, is itself either incoherent or lacking a referent in reality, and for several normative reasons. I focus (...) on the following interconnected points: • The vagueness of the term allows a myriad of candidates to claim rights, and typically to the detriment of increased equality and environmental goals . • Cultural capital cannot be regulated in the way that political capital must be regulated without undermining the cultures supposedly being protected. And the possession of cultural capital is almost never democratically regulated. In particular, granting cultures political status creates intergenerational conflict, rewarding the elders and creating incentives to be conservative and restrict cultural mobility of the younger generation. •The notion of a group owning “its” culture is conceptually suspect and corrupted by the foregoing points about unequal cultural capital. In defending a group’s right to preserve its culture we do not defend equally the rights of the individuals that make it up , and we ignore altogether the rights of those who may be unfairly denied recognition as “members” of the culture. (shrink)

The paper aims to clarify the interpretation of Kantian morality and Hegelian ethical life given by Honneth and Habermas; it try in particularly to explain the several meanings and forms of Honneth’s relaunch of Hegel’s conception of Sitt- lichkeit. The Author aims at the same time to show some structural limits of this neo-Hegelian ethical perspective from a political point of view, also in relation to the concept of «immanent critique» adopted by Honneth, and differentiated by him from the concept (...) of «internal criticism» developed by Michael Walzer. The Author observes that the immanent approach of Honneth’s normative reconstruction and social critique seems to have some problems to take in account the plurality of different and con icting ethical-political orientations. (shrink)

Kierkegaard’s ideal supports a radical form of “deep diversity,” to use Charles Taylor’s expression. It is radical because it embraces not only irreducible conceptions of the good but also incompatible ones. This is due to its paradoxical nature, which arises from its affirmation of both monism and pluralism, the One and the Many, together. It does so in at least three ways. First, in terms of the structure of the self, Kierkegaard describes his ideal as both unified (the “positive third”) (...) and plural (a “negative unity”). Second, he affirms a process which brings together unity, as implied by the linear notion of “stages”, with plurality, in the form of “spheres of existence” (aesthetic, ethical, and religious). And third, the culmination of the process implies that we should embrace both a unified dialectic (“Religiousness A”) alongside the plural remnants of the ethical/aesthetic, that is, both the infinity of the former and the finitudes of the latter. Unsurprisingly, while Kierkegaard describes those who are able to exemplify his ideal in practice as “always joyful,” he also considers the ideal to be “extremely hard, the hardest task of all.” This is why those such as Hubert L. Dreyfus are wrong to claim that it provides an experience of bliss; on the contrary, those who realize it “are always in danger.” As I shall show, one form this danger takes is that it threatens to dirty the hands of those who manage to uphold Kierkegaard’s ideal. Moreover, it does so in ways that, I claim, tend to be missed by Kierkegaard himself. Nevertheless, the danger is also essential to the creativity of his approach, and I conclude by pointing out how this creativity makes it capable of tackling one of the profoundest challenges in contemporary ethics: that arising from what just war theorists call a “supreme emergency.” . (shrink)

Troubled times often gives rise to great art that reflects those troubles. So too with political theory. The greatest work of twentieth century political theory, John Rawls's A theory of justice, was inspired in various respects by extreme social and economic inequality, racialized slavery and racial segregation in the United States. Arguably the most influential work of political theory since Rawls—Michael Walzer's Just and unjust wars—a sustained and historically informed reflection on the morality of interstate armed conflict—was written (...) in the midst of the Vietnam War. It should be no surprise, then, that the bellicose period of the past 20 years should give rise to a robust new literature in political theory on the morality of armed conflict. It has been of uneven quality, and to some extent episodic, responding to particular challenges—the increased prevalence of asymmetric warfare and the permissibility of preventive or preemptive war—that have arisen as a result of specific events. In the past decade, however, a group of philosophers has begun to pose more fundamental questions about the reigning theory of the morality of armed conflict warfare—just war theory—as formulated by Walzer and others. Jeff McMahan's concise, inventive and tightly argued work Killing in war is without doubt the most important of these challenges to the reigning theory of the just war. This review article discusses McMahan's work, some of the critical attention it has received, and its potential implications for practice. (shrink)

In the age of globalization, and increased interdependence in the world that we face today, there is a question we may have to raise: Do we need and could we attain a world government, capable of insuring the peace and facilitating worldwide well-being in a just and efficient manner? In the twenty chapters of this book, some of the most prominent living philosophers give their consideration to this question in a provocative and engaging way. Their essays are not only of (...) wide theoretical interest but also provide a thought-provoking approach to this most timely and urgent issue. A wide range of perspectives are represented here. -/- The authors include Richard Falk, Michael Walzer, Thomas Pogge, Larry May, Alfred Rubin, Stanley Hoffman, Jan Narveson, Virginia Held, Pauline Kleingeld and Luis Cabrera. Jovan Babic is Professor of Ethics at the University of Belgrade and Visiting Professor at Portland State University. Petar Bojanic is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Law and Applied Philosophy (CELAP) as well as the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory (Belgrade). (shrink)

This book offers a detailed account and analysis of the academic scandal regarding the honorary doctorate awarded to Professor Michael Walzer by Belgrade University and the events that followed.

In this chapter, I add to the new body of philosophical literature that addresses African approaches to just war by reflecting on some topics that have yet to be considered and by advancing different perspectives. My approach is two-fold. First, I spell out a foundational African ethic, according to which one must treat people’s capacity to relate communally with respect. Second, I derive principles from it to govern the use of force and violence, and compare and contrast their implications for (...) war with other recent African views and especially with some prominent accounts in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. I argue that the approaches to military conflict prescribed by the Afro-communal ethic and its derivative principles differ, and in some prima facie plausible ways, from the views of thinkers that include Thomas Hurka, David Luban, Larry May, Jeff McMahan, and Michael Walzer. In particular, I conclude that the African perspectives ground some interesting and under-explored approaches to just causes for war that merit consideration, including the ideas that military conflict could in principle be justified in order to protect a people’s culture or to correct an aggressor’s vice. (shrink)

Since the 1980’s, a key issue in political philosophy has been the debate between communitarian philosophers, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer and Charles Taylor, and those who support forms of liberal individualism, such as that found in Rawls’s Theory of Justice. In this debate, reference has quite often been made to Aristotle. This is particularly so in the case of Alasdair MacIntyre, who is frequently seen as presenting a neo-Aristotelian view. Nevertheless, it is not (...) clear whether MacIntyre always presents a plausible interpretation of Aristotle’s arguments. What is most important concerns the historical foundations of the concept of the Aristotelian tradition. If, as I argue in this paper, MacIntyre articulates an unhistorical view of what he calls the ‘Aristotelian tradition’, then his is a forced view of methodology that must fail. However, if this ‘embedded’, historicist methodology fails, then MacIntyre’s argument loses its strength. He would have to support it by using rationalistic methodology, since all his historicist methodology is unhistorical, but this would mean using argumentative resources that he does not have, since he has rejected the possibility that philosophical theory must be based on recognised first principles available to us all. (shrink)

Analytic just war theorists often attempt to construct ideal theories of military justice on the basis of intuitions about imaginary and sometimes outlandish examples, often taken from non-military contexts. This article argues for a sharp curtailment of this method and defends, instead, an empirically and historically informed approach to the ethical scrutiny of armed conflicts. After critically reviewing general philosophical reasons for being sceptical of the moral-theoretic value of imaginary hypotheticals, the article turns to some of the special problems that (...) this method raises for appraisals of warfare. It examines some of the hypothetical examples employed in the construction of Jeff McMahan’s revisionist just war theory, and finds that they sometimes stipulate incompre- hensible conditions, lead to argumentative impasses of diverging yet uncertain intuitions, and distract attention away from the real problems of war as we empirically know it. In contrast, empirical and historical studies of warfare rein- force the deep connections between facts and values, and compel theorists to face uncomfortable moral ambiguities. Perhaps most importantly, the analytic method of focusing on imaginary hypothetical examples can not only be distracting, but it can also be genuinely dangerous. Hence, the article pays special attention to the way in which a seemingly innocuous fiction like the famous Ticking Time Bomb scenario can come to frame a new paradigm of inhumanity in the treatment of prisoners of war. (shrink)

discussion of 'The hundred most influential books since the war', TLS October 6, 1995 - seminal works published before and after the Second World War, from Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron and Kenneth Arrow, to Michael Walzer and Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus logico-philosophicus; Philosophical Investigations) .

I wish to propose a new doctrine called epistemological pacifism. According to the doctrine, our objective knowledge concerning hard facts about a given war and its context is far too poor to justify entering that war. Our best and most informative accounts of any pre-war situation are value-laden; the same is true of counterfactual claims about any event during, or after, war. Here we have three new types of what has been discussed under the label of fact/value entanglement. Realizing this (...) helps us understand why pacifists and their opponents never agree about so-called facts. Both parties bring to bear different values in their descriptions. Although this is legitimate for both sides, the values of the pacifist are more attractive than those of the bellicist. The recent war in Mali is a case in point, as I’ll sketch at the end of the paper. (shrink)

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, most legacy airlines filed for bankruptcy protection as a way to cut costs drastically, with the exception of American Airlines. This article applies the Principle of Double-Effect to the act of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for reasons of management strategy, in particular, cost-cutting. It argues that the Principle can be a useful tool for discerning the ethicality of the action, and demonstrates the usefulness by proposing three double-effect criteria that, when (...) fulfilled, argues for the ethical justifiability the action in question. (shrink)

This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and the most important and longest within the last year. Also I have edited them to bring them up to date (2016). All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as (...) presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., human ecology and psychology) in school, maybe civilization would have a chance. In my view these articles and reviews have many novel and highly useful elements, in that they use my own version of the recently (ca. 1980’s) developed dual systems view of our brain and behavior to lay out a logical system of rationality (personality, psychology, mind, language, behavior, thought, reasoning, reality etc.) that is sorely lacking in the behavioral sciences (psychology, philosophy, literature, politics, anthropology, history, economics, sociology etc.). (shrink)

The first group of articles attempt to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of theoretical delusions. In the next three groups I comment on three of the principal delusions preventing a sustainable world— technology, religion and politics (cooperative groups). People believe that society can be saved by them, so I provide some suggestions in the rest of the book as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers. (...) -/- America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century and now all of it due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests. This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. Hence my concluding essay “Suicide by Democracy”. -/- Those wishing to read my other writings may see Talking Monkeys 2nd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle 2nd ed (2019), Suicide by Democracy 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Stucture of Human Behavior (2019) and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

This collection of articles and reviews are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important (...) way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their constituents and so collapse into anarchy and dictatorship appears inevitable. -/- Since philosophy proper is essentially the same as the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior), and philosophical problems are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put it, due to the lack of perspicuity of language, they run throughout human discourse and behavior, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology. It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s. -/- Although I separate the book into sections on philosophy and psychology, religion, biology, the ‘hard sciences’ and politics/sociology/economics, all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problems as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, or that that they differ only in degree from drug and sex addicts in being motivated by stimulation of their frontal cortices by the delivery of dopamine (and over 100 other chemicals) via the ventral tegmentum and the nucleus accumbens, but it’s clearly true. While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth and their descendant’s future. -/- I hope that these essays will help to separate the philosophical issues of language use from the scientific factual issues, and in some small way hinder the collapse of civilization, or at least make it clear why it is doomed. -/- Those wishing to read my other writings may see Talking Monkeys 2nd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle 2nd ed (2019), Suicide by Democracy 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Stucture of Human Behavior (2019) and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

Although he died in 2008, prolific science novelist Michael Crichton – acting as a ‘ghost-writer’, so to speak – continues to add new titles to his oeuvre. Notwithstanding the death of the author, his novel-producing machinery refuses to come to a full stop, - although in this case Richard Preston (a science novelist in his own right, author of, among others, The Hot Zone, on viral infections) was recruited to finish the book. MICRO – a title that almost reads (...) like the acronym of the author’s name - has all the ingredients of the standard Michael Crichton formula. (shrink)

This paper concerns the relationship between two questions. The first is a question about inner freedom: What is it to be rendered unfree, not by external obstacles, but by aspects of oneself? The second is a question about agency: What is it to fail at being a thing that genuinely acts, and instead to be a thing that is merely acted upon, passive in relation to its own behaviour? It is widely believed that answers to the first question must rest (...) on or be partly explained by answers to the second. Here I argue that this is a mistake: losses of inner freedom are not, after all, explicable in terms of failures of agency. To establish this conclusion, I consider three familiar lines of thought that appear to tie ideas about inner freedom to ideas about agency, each relating to a different conception of inner freedom: absence of inner constraint, self-government, and absence of determination by external forces. I argue that, in each case, any apparent conceptual reliance on a special conception of agency is merely illusory, the result being that we must allow clear water between our theories of inner freedom and our theories of agency. This conclusion is of significance for contemporary theories of agency and personal autonomy, as well as for ‘positive’ conceptions of political liberty. (shrink)

Michael Crichton‟s latest novel Next (2006) is his third about genomics. Yet, whereas Jurassic Park (and its sequel The lost world) contained stories about sequencing, reconstructing and revivifying the genomes of (extinct) animals, Next analyses the impact of genomics in the biomedical sphere: its consequences for human life (health, labour, sexuality, family life). Gene patenting, and the philosophy of genetic determinism that inspired and legitimised this practice, is at the root of most of the soap-like absurdities Crichton stages in (...) his novel. (shrink)

It is argued that a subject who has an experience as of succession can have this experience at a time, or over a period of time, during which there occurs in him no succession of conscious mental states at all. Various metaphysical implications of this conclusion are explored. One premise of the main argument is that every experience is an experience as of succession. This implies that we cannot understand phenomenal temporality as a relation among experiences, but only as a (...) primitive feature of experience, or else as something analyzable into wholly non-phenomenal terms. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Hutcheson has a theory of obligation that is different in important ways from the views of his predecessors and that his theory may not be as problematic as critics have claimed. In section (I) I sketch a brief picture of the rich conceptual landscape surrounding the concept of obligation in the Early Modern period. I focus on the five figures Hutcheson explicitly references: Hugo Grotius, Samuel Pufendorf, their French translator and commentator Jean Barbeyrac, as (...) well as G. W. Leibniz and Richard Cumberland. In section (II) I offer an account of Hutcheson’s theory of obligation and illustrate that not only does Hutcheson have a view on what previous figures called the source, end, and object of obligation, he also focuses on the epistemological question of the origin of our idea of obligation as opposed to the metaphysical question of the efficient cause of obligation. Furthermore, although Hutcheson shares with his predecessors the idea that obligation implies a certain kind of necessity, he conceives of this necessity in a unique way, namely in terms of the necessity of a perception. In section (III) I defend Hutcheson’s theory of obligation against three objections: 1. that it makes a sham of obligation by locating its source within the human being, 2. that it is reducible to divine command theory, and 3. that, in the end, Hutcheson has no real or meaningful theory of obligation. My hope is that, at the very least, appraising these objections helps further clarify the theory of obligation that Hutcheson presents in his works. (shrink)

According to panpsychists, physical phenomena are, at bottom, nothing but experiential phenomena. One argument for this view proceeds from an alleged need for physical phenomena to have features beyond what physics attributes to them; another starts by arguing that consciousness is ubiquitous, and proposes an identification of physical and experiential phenomena as the best explanation of this alleged fact. The first argument assumes that physical phenomena have categorical natures, and the second that the world’s experience-causing powers or potentials underdetermine its (...) physical features. I argue that panpsychists are not entitled to these assumptions. (shrink)