Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value-bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only (...) a finite amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? (shrink)

"Who or what is God?," asks John Hick. A theist might answer: God is an infinite person, or at least an infinite personal being. Hick disagrees: "God cannot be both a person and infinite." Moreover, he says, the distinction between being a person and being a personal being "is a distinction without a difference." Thus, God cannot be an infinite personal being either. In this essay, I assess Hick's reasons for drawing these conclusions. I argue that, (...) even if some other reasons for drawing these conclusions are compelling, Hick's reasons are not. (shrink)

The case for longtermism depends on the vast potential scale of the future. But that same vastness also threatens to undermine the case for longtermism: If the universe as a whole, or the future in particular, contain infinite quantities of value and/or disvalue, then many of the theories of value that support longtermism (e.g., risk-neutral total utilitarianism) seem to imply that none of our available options are better than any other. If so, then even apparently vast effects on the (...) far future cannot in fact make the world morally better. On top of this, some strategies for avoiding this problem of “infinitarian paralysis” (e.g., exponential pure time discounting) yield views that are much less supportive of longtermism. In this chapter, we explore how the potential infinitude of the future affects the case for longtermism. We argue that (i) there are reasonable prospects for extending risk-neutral totalism and similar views to infinite contexts and (ii) many such extension strategies will still support the case for longtermism, since they imply that when we can only effect (or only predictably affect) a finite, bounded part of an infinite universe, we can ignore the unaffectable rest of the universe and reason as if the finite, affectable part were all there is. (shrink)

Kolakowski's... empathy, humor, and erudition are on full display in [this book], the first collection of his work to be published since his death in 2009"--Dust jacket flap.

In "The God Delusion", Richard Dawkins gives, but runs together, two criticisms of the argument from design. One is evolutionary and scientific; the other is a philosophical infinite regress argument. Disentangling them makes Dawkins' views clearer. The regress relies on the premiss that a designer must be more complex than the thing designed. I offer two comments about theists who might accept the regress, citing God's infinity. These comments defend Dawkins: but only by making him, when using his regress (...) argument, an atheist who knows (if his "complexity" premiss holds) that God cannot exist. (shrink)

John Wesley did not directly address the question, but he could have answered "Yes'" to "Was Jesus Ever Happy?" given his understanding of "happiness." His eudaimonistic understanding of happiness was that it consists in renewing and actualizing the image of God within us, especially the image of love. More particularly, it consists in actually living a life of moral virtue, love included, of spiritual fulfillment, of joy or pleasure taken in loving God, others, and self, and in minimizing (...) unnecessary pain and suffering, which we are morally obligated to do for others and even for ourselves. Jesus had it all most of the time, though not always, obviously not at the painful end of his life when he felt God-forsaken. -/- . (shrink)

How should you decide what to do when you’re uncertain about basic normative principles? A natural suggestion is to follow some "second-order:" norm: e.g., obey the most probable norm or maximize expected choiceworthiness. But what if you’re uncertain about second-order norms too—must you then invoke some third-order norm? If so, any norm-guided response to normative uncertainty appears doomed to a vicious regress. This paper aims to rescue second-order norms from the threat of regress. I first elaborate and defend the claim (...) some philosophers have made that the regress problem forces us to accept normative externalism, the view that at least one norm is incumbent on all agents regardless of their normative beliefs. But, I then argue, we need not accept externalism about first-order norms, thus closing off any question of how agents should respond to normative uncertainty. Rather, we can head off the threat of regress by ascribing external force to a single second-order norm: the enkratic principle. (shrink)

Au cours de la première moitié du XIIIe siècle commence à progresser le concept de l'infinité divine dans la théologie chrétienne, une évolution illustrée par des documents originaux.

This piece was written for performance and might be best enjoyed read aloud. It was an imaginative exercise based on a kind of intertextuality— combining my own story with the story of the God of the Genesis creation stories. Thus God became a Mother who was experiencing some of the things that mothers of teenage children might experience. It is a sort of poem, following the style of the first creation story but also provides an explanation of why things are (...) as they are, like the second creation story. It was first read at a weekend conference on Ethics. (shrink)

This article deals with algebraic logic. In particular, it discusses the theory of consequence operations and the general concept of logical independency. The advantage of this general view is its gr- eat applicability: The stated properties of consequence operations hold for almost every logical system. The notion of independency is well known and important in logic, philosophy of science and mathematics. Roughly speaking, a set is independent with respect to a consequence operation, if none of its elements is a consequence (...) of the other elements. The property of being an independent set guarantees therefore that none of its elements is superfluous. In particular, I'm going to show fundamental results for every consequence operation, and hence for every logic: no infinite independent set is finite axiomatizable, and every finite axiomatizable set has relative to a finitary consequence operation an independent axiom system. The main result is that in sentential logic every set of formulas has an independend axiom system. (shrink)

In order to reason in a non-trivializing way with contradictions, paraconsistent logics reject some classically valid inferences. As a way to recover some of these inferences, Graham Priest proposed to nonmonotonically strengthen the Logic of Paradox by allowing the selection of “less inconsistent” models via a comparison of their respective inconsistent parts. This move recaptures a good portion of classical logic in that it does not block, e.g., disjunctive syllogism, unless it is applied to contradictory assumptions. In Priest’s approach the (...) inconsistent parts of models are compared in an extensional way by consid- ering their inconsistent objects. This distinguishes his system from the standard format of (inconsistency-)adaptive logics pioneered by Diderik Batens, according to which (atomic) contradictions validated in models form the basis of their comparison. A well-known prob- lem for Priest’s extensional approach is its lack of the Strong Reassurance property, i.e., for specific settings there may be infinitely descending chains of less and less inconsistent models, thus never reaching a minimally inconsistent model. In the following paper, we show that Strong Reassurance holds for the extensional ap- proach under a cardinality-based comparison of the inconsistent parts of models. We develop and study the meta-theory of a class of nonmonotonic inconsistency-tolerant logics based on the extensional and the quantitative comparisons of their respective models, including important model-theoretic properties, such as the Löwenheim-Skolem theorems, as well as principles of nonmonotonic inference. (shrink)

Boethius is unique among Christian authors in late antiquity in that his account of deification makes no explicit reference to Christ. Instead, he develops a distinctly Neo-Platonic notion of deification, which he puts in the mouth of Lady Philosophy. According to Lady Philosophy, human beings are made divine through participation in God, who is understood as happiness itself, goodness itself, and unity itself. On the basis of this identification of happiness and God, Lady Philosophy concludes that the (...) happiness human beings desire can only be attained through deification. Although the argument of the Consolation suggest that a virtuous life, contemplation, and prayer are all necessary for attaining happiness and deification, there is no indication that they are sufficient for happiness and deification; nor does she specify what would be sufficient. The reason for her silence in this regard is presumably Boethius’ orthodox Catholic belief that salvation, and therefore deification, is only attainable through Christ. While Lady Philosophy, as Boethius portrays her, can identify that happiness is only attainable through deification, she cannot on her own sufficiently identify how to achieve deification. (shrink)

I argue here that self-deception is not conducive to happiness. There is a long train of thought in social psychology that seems to say that it is, but proper understanding of the data does not yield this conclusion. Illusion must be distinguished from mere imagining. Self-deception must be distinguished from self-inflation bias and from self-fulfilling belief. Once these distinctions are in place, the case for self-deception falls apart. Furthermore, by yielding false beliefs, self-deception undermines desire satisfaction. Finally, I argue (...) for the positive view that *honest imagining* can yield the psychological benefits that others have claimed for self-deception. (shrink)

Some moral theorists argue that being an innocent beneficiary of significant harms inflicted by others may be sufficient to ground special duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims, at least when it is impossible to extract compensation from those who perpetrated the harm. This idea has been applied to climate change in the form of the beneficiary-pays principle. Other philosophers, however, are quite sceptical about beneficiary pays. Our aim in this article is to examine their critiques. We conclude (...) that, while they have made important points, the principle remains worthy of further development and exploration. Our purpose in engaging with these critiques is constructive — we aim to formulate beneficiary pays in ways that would give it a plausible role in allocating the cost of addressing human-induced climate change, while acknowledging that some understandings of the principle would make it unsuitable for this purpose. (shrink)

Marie-Madeleine Dienesch, disparue en janvier 1998, appartient à la génération des jeunes parlementaires qui commencent une carrière politique à la Libération, au sein du MRP. Son élection dans les Côtes-du-Nord, en 1945, est un peu le fruit du hasard. Cet article étudie comment M.-M. Dienesch s’affirme comme l’une des principales responsables du MRP et comment son enracinement dans ce département breton lui permet d’accéder à des responsabilités parlementaires. C’est l’une des rares femmes à s’imposer durablement dans la vie politique française (...) sous la IVe puis sous la Ve République gaullienne et pompidolienne, et à participer aux gouvernements de 1968 à 1974. (shrink)

Constantin Radulescu-Motru, Scrieri Politice Editura Nemira, Bucuresti, 1998.

Aquinas may seem profligate in defining ‘happiness’ (beatitudo). He says, “by the name ‘happiness’ is understood the ultimate perfection of a rational or of an intellectual nature” (ST Ia q.62 a.1 co.). He also says, “‘happiness’ names the attainment of the ultimate end” (ST IaIIae q.2 pro.). He further says the following “definition of happiness” is “good and adequate”: “Happy is the one who has all that he desires” (ST IaIIae q.5 a.8 ad 3). So which (...) expresses what happiness really is? Which gives us the quid est of happiness? In this essay, I argue that his quid est definition of happiness is put in terms of “the attainment of the ultimate end.” I further argue that, once that definition is properly understood, it becomes clear that Aquinas thinks happiness just is intimately knowing and enjoying God. I close by focusing on one downstream interpretive effect that this interpretation could plausibly have; it may influence our understanding of the relationship between virtue and happiness in Aquinas. (shrink)

This essay discusses Paul Tillich’s concept of anxiety. In his book The Courage to Be, Tillich speaks of a correlation between an ontology of anxiety and an ontology of courage. The essay explains this relation against the background of the development of Tillich’s works. The roots of the correlation between anxiety and courage can be found in Tillich’s concept of religion on the basis of the doctrine of justification, which he continually worked out back to his early writings. He uses (...) this understanding of religion for his description of modern culture. Anxiety and courage are the two aspects in which God is disclosed in human consciousness. (shrink)

Erstmals thematisieren die Beiträge dieses Bandes Friedrich W. J. Schellings Münchener Akademievortrag »Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrake« (1815) in ihrem problem- und zeitgeschichtlichen Kontext und werfen so ein neues Licht auf dessen philosophische Entwicklung zwischen 1812 und 1817. In die Untersuchung werden Schellings Zeitschriften-Projekt »Allgemeine Zeitschrift von Deutschen für Deutsche« von 1813 sowie der von ihm im Jahre 1817 herausgegebene »Bericht über die Aeginetischen Bildwerke« Johann Martin Wagners einbezogen. Auf diese Weise entsteht anhand der kleineren Schriften Schellings ein bislang nur (...) wenig beachtetes Bild seines Schaffens in seiner ersten Münchener Zeit. The contributions in the volume deal for the first time with Friedrich W. J. Schelling's Munich Academy Lecture »Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrake« (1815) in its problem- and contemporary historical context, thus shedding new light on its philosophical development between 1812 and 1817. The study includes Schelling's journal project »Allgemeine Zeitschrift von Deutschen für Deutsche« from 1813 as well as the »Bericht über die Aeginetischen Bildwerke« by Johann Martin Wagner, which he published in 1817. In this way, Schelling's smaller writings provide a picture of his work in his early Munich period that has received little attention so far. (shrink)

Jacques Le Goff a accordé à Christiane Klapisch-Zuber pour Clio cet entretien le 8 décembre 1997 dans son bureau de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales dont il fut président de 1972 à 1977 et où il a enseigné pendant près de trente-cinq ans l’anthropologie historique de l’Occident médiéval. Nous avons, en accord avec lui, respecté la liberté de ton de cette conversation où ont été évoquées quelques facettes de l’œuvre et de la personnalité scientifique de Georges Duby, dont (...) il fut .. (shrink)

We tell a story where an agent who chooses in such a way as to make the greatest possible profit on each of an infinite series of transactions ends up worse off than an agent who chooses in such a way as to make the least possible profit on each transaction. That is, contrary to what one might suppose, it is not necessarily rational always to choose the option that yields the greatest possible profit on each transaction.