This chapter contains sections titled: Weighing the Value of Meat Stalking the Essence of Hunting Same As It Ever Was The End of Hunting Notes.

I sometimes entertain my non-academic friends by telling them that, at the end of each course I teach, before I compute my students’ grades, I pause nervously while I wait to be graded by my students. This process can be described less paradoxically, but surely no more truthfully, as follows. In my department, and as far as I know all the departments at my university, each course ends with students anonymously filling out forms in which they evaluate the teacher and (...) the course. The form includes several questions in which the student is asked to rate the teacher in various respects (such as clarity and organization, availability outside the classroom, and so forth) along a numbered scale (in our case, from one to five); they are also asked one very general question in which they are told to rate the instructor’s overall effectiveness. They are also invited to write comments on these matters. Mean scores (in effect, grades) are calculated for each question and published by the university. In addition, these student evaluations of teaching (often called SETs for short) are used each year by the committee that decides merit pay increases for faculty. When the faculty member is being considered for advancement to tenure or promotion to the rank of Full Professor, these evaluation forms are supplemented by faculty evaluation of teaching, in which faculty members visit the candidate’s classes and report on her or his effectiveness as a teacher. Except for these two once-in-a-lifetime events, the student evaluation forms are the only way in which we judge the quality of teaching. In other words, teaching is for the most part evaluated by students and not by faculty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 273-295 [Access article in PDF] Billy Budd:Melville's Dilemma Lester H. Hunt I THE CHAIN OF EVENTS NARRATED in Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative)—how Billy is falsely accused of plotting mutiny by his Master-at-Arms, John Claggart, how Billy accidentally kills Claggart and, finally, is executed at the urging of the Captain of the Ship, Edward Fairfax Vere, despite Vere's personal conviction that (...) Billy does not deserve to be killed—is simple enough. The text itself, nonetheless, is troublesomely complex. It is a very difficult work to interpret with both honesty and confidence. Melville unflinchingly represents to us the moral horror of what Captain Vere does to Billy, and yet he also depicts Vere himself with a respect that borders on admiration. The attentive reader experiences a painful cognitive dissonance that can only be soothed by a coherent interpretation, and perhaps by a bit of philosophy.Given the way in which the text of Billy Budd emerged—it was assembled by scholars, long after Melville's death, from a confusing collection of manuscript pages he had left behind when he died—it may well be an unfinished work. It is possible that ill health and death overtook Melville before he had a chance to iron out the inconsistencies that inevitably arise as a book is written, and it is therefore also possible that some of our sense of dissonance is produced by this brute fact. 1 Whether or not this is the case, this book is, according to the view I will present here, at least very close to being coherent. The point of view it represents is actually quite appropriate to an unfinished work, and little damaged by textual indeterminateness. Billy Budd is about the inescapably dilemmatic nature of certain choices. It alleges the impossibility of resolving them in any comfortable way. Melville beckons us to [End Page 273] look through the window of Billy Budd into an abyss of undecidability, and perhaps a text that contains some chaos within itself will better serve as such a window than one that does not.The best way to begin trying to understand how we should take this work is to begin at its very beginning. The very beginning of a story is of course its title, and the title of this story, or more exactly its subtitle, tells quite literally what sort of story it is. It is an "inside" narrative. Of course, this immediately raises the question of what an inside narrative is. Inside what? Are we supposed to contrast it with an outside narrative? And what sort of story would that be?Melville does not leave us entirely without an answer to this question. Billy Budd does contain another story, one that contrasts so sharply with the main narrative that it might well be described as its opposite: it is virtually an inverted version of the book's plot. In an "authorized weekly publication" quoted at some length at the end of the book, the events of Melville's tale are briefly recounted. In this version of the story, apparently the only officially sanctioned one, Billy Budd is depicted as the ringleader of a genuine mutiny, who "vindictively stabbed" Claggart for exposing him. Claggart is motivated only by a "strong patriotic impulse" and Billy Budd by "extreme depravity."This account, Melville tells, us was written "for the most part" sincerely enough, "though the medium, partly rumor, through which the facts must have reached the writer served to deflect and in part falsify them" (1432.27-30). 2 It could be called an "outside" narrative in virtue of the fact that its author was not there and consequently was not in a position to know what actually happened. The most direct way to give literal meaning to the "inside" status of Melville's main narrative is simply to observe that it gives a view from inside the ship, from inside the Bellipotent. It represents things that were known by people who were there, and precisely because they were there.This... (shrink)

Developmental understanding of transpersonal experience and its diverse impact on human life has been bedeviled by the opposed, monolithic extremes of Freud's regression to infant "narcissism," on the one hand, and more recent views of the transpersonal as the sole endpoint for any "higher" or "postformal operations" development of human intelligence, on the other. Here it is shown that "higher states of consciousness" can be more specifically understood as developments of a "presentational" intelli-gence, thereby constituting one line of adult development (...) among the several open to our symbolic capacity. The demonstrated but relatively infrequent occurrence of transpersonal states in early childhood then becomes understandable as a developmental precocity akin to that shown in mathematical and musical prodigies. The overlap of this developmental line with some of the thematics and regressive states of psychoanalytic object relations theories of infancy follows from the experiential nature of pre-sentational intelligence. Early emotional traumata and deficits must reappear in transpersonal experience to the extent that they were internalized as part of the mother-infant dyad whose structure underlies our symbolic, dialogic consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thus Spake Howard Roark:Nietzschean Ideas in The FountainheadLester H. HuntIThe position I will be taking here will seem very peculiar to many people. I will be treating a novel as a discussion of the work of a philosopher—namely, Friedrich Nietzsche. Worse yet, I will be treating it as a discussion that is philosophically penetrating and deserves to be taken seriously. Still worse, the novel is Ayn Rand's early novel (...) The Fountainhead. I think it is safe to say that her reputation, among academics who discuss the works of philosophers, is very low. If the reader will only bear with me, though, I think I can make a case that Rand opens a line of inquiry about Nietzsche's ideas and values that is not only quite interesting in itself but one that ought to be pursued further by others.There has always been ample reason to associate Nietzsche with The Fountainhead.1 He is after all, the only philosopher who is more or less directly quoted in the book.2 Beyond that, Rand's novel has many other passages that students of Nietzsche instantly recognize as conscious references to him or deliberate echoes of his style. In addition, she revealed, in an introduction written for the twenty-fifth anniversary edition, that the following quotation from Beyond Good and Evil had originally stood at the head of the book when it was still in manuscript:It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank to—employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning—it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not [End Page 79] to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost—The noble soul has reverence for itself.—3She said, in the same introduction, that she removed the quotation (evidently, immediately before publication) for philosophical reasons, because of her "profound disagreement with the philosophy of its author." Nietzsche, she says, was fundamentally "a mystic and irrationalist," and even in this quotation, chosen for its content, insinuates a philosophical position that she regards as erroneous (namely, determinism). Even her statement of what she likes about this passage is rather constrained: "as a poet [ie., not as a philosopher], he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man's greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual terms."4It is of course true enough that Rand does disagree with Nietzsche, and for more or less the reasons that she suggests here, but it is also true that the passage she has quoted expresses some ethical themes—nobility, order of rank, the "pathos of distance," and (most obviously) the idea of self-reverence as a characteristic of the ethically good—which are at least as important in The Fountainhead as they are in Nietzsche's writings. Though Rand's spirited disclaimer serves to remind us of her deep differences with Nietzsche, the quotation itself suggests that there might be an interesting philosophical, not merely literary or emotional, connection between The Fountainhead and Nietzsche's ideas. What I would like to show here is that this connection merits a much closer look than it has ever been given heretofore. Not only is the presence of Nietzschean themes in Rand's novel deep and pervasive, but the book actually contains a very interesting and powerful internal critique of one of Nietzsche's most characteristic ideas, a criticism based in large part on values and assumptions that he shares. Before I can set out this critique, I will need to explore some of the positive thematic and philosophical connections.IIOne evening, rather late in the novel, Gail Wynand, the corrupt newspaper publisher and financier, surprises his wife, Dominique, with a present: he has had an architect design a house for them. The architect, she realizes with shock as she sees the drawings for the house, is her former lover, Howard Roark, a man with whom she is still in love. None of this is known to her husband, who innocently tells her that [End Page 80] Roark... (shrink)

The paper offers an account of co-parenthood according to which co-parents are parent and child to one another. The paper begins by reviewing extant theories of the value of being a parent, to see whether the value of co-parenthood is reducible to this. Finding that it is not, I briefly elaborate a theory of parenthood on which parents are those who create persons. Using Aristotle’s four causes as a helpful prism, I outline how parents are the cause of their child, (...) and how in causing a child together co-parents become parent and child to one another. For instance, since parents create children by offering themselves as models to be copied, co-parents should enjoy the best type of friendship with one another, each treating the other’s flourishing as a human person as their end. I suggest that co-parenthood contains parenthood virtually, that the co-parents’ love of their child is a manifestation of their love for one another, that the teleological fulfilled state of the friendship between parent and child exists in the friendship of co-parents. (shrink)

I examine how co-parents should handle differing commitments about how to raise their child. Via thought experiment and the examination of our practices and affective reactions, I argue for a thesis about the locus of parental authority: that parental authority is invested in full in each individual parent, meaning that that the command of one parent is sufficient to bind the child to act in obedience. If this full-authority thesis is true, then for co-parents to command different things would be (...) for them to contest one another’s authority. The only course that respects the authority of both parents is for co-parents to agree to command the same thing. Further, what is commanded must not result from a ‘capitulation’ by one co-parent, rather, it should result from a compromise. Parental authority involves a duty to deliberate about which commands it is best to give the child. If a command results from a capitulation, one parent will rightly think of themselves as not having fulfilled their parental duty. Parental compromises are not best understood as bargains or conflicts, but by the metaphor of gifts given by each parent out of respect for the other’s authority. (shrink)

This chapter describes the story of Ayn Rand's changing attitude toward Friedrich Nietzsche. One thing that can make the relationship between them difficult to understand is the fact that Rand's relation to Nietzsche changes considerably over the years. The history of this relationship can be divided roughly into three different periods. The first begins during her years as a student in Russia and ends with the completion of The Fountainhead (approximately 1921–1942). The second period follows upon the completion of The (...) Fountainhead and ends with the completion of Atlas Shrugged (1942–1957). The third and last period (1957–1982) follows the writing of Atlas and ends with her death. When people associate Nietzsche with Rand, as they often do, they are not thinking of the metaphysical and epistemological issues as determinism and the validity of reason. They are probably thinking mainly of ethical issues. (shrink)

Early in Peter Abelard's Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian, the philosopher and the Christian easily come to agreement about what the point of ethics is: “[T]he culmination of true ethics … is gathered together in this: that it reveal where the ultimate good is and by what road we are to arrive there.” They also agree that, since the enjoyment of this ultimate good “comprises true blessedness,” ethics “far surpasses other teachings in both usefulness and worthiness.” (...) As Abelard understood them, both fundamental elements of his twelfth-century ethical culture — Greek philosophy and Christian religion — held a common view of the nature of ethical inquiry, one that was so obvious to them that his characters do not even state it in a fully explicit way. They take for granted, as we take the ground we stand on, the premise that the most important function of ethical theory is to tell you what sort of life is most desirable, or most worth living. That is, the point of ethics is that it is good for you, that it serves your self-interest. (shrink)

Weberís sociology of inner-worldly mysticism, Almaasí recent synthesis of transpersonal and psychoanalytic object relations theory, and Jungís related metaphorical psychology of alchemy, are brought to bear on the development of Heideggerís evocations of the felt sense of Being between 1927 and 1946, understood as the noetic core of spirituality. In particular, Heideggerís assumption of the Nazi rectorship at Freiburg in 1933ñ34 is seen as a specifically spiritual crisis based on the "metapathological" grandiosity that can result from the miscarriage of self (...) realization in inner-worldly mysticism. In Heideggerís case, as in much contemporary spirituality, this crisis was intensified by pre-existent narcissistic vulnerabilities of character. Heideggerís later writings are considered as expressions of a more genuine spiritual or essential realization, which, while invaluable as a conceptual framework for transpersonal psychology, nonetheless stops short of a balanced personal integration. This analysis constitutes a specific example of how the combination of transpersonal psychology and psychodynamics can be used to understand the emotional conflicts stirred up by transpersonal realization and the resultant potential for distortion in modern spiritual development, as presented by Hunt. (shrink)

The principle that one cannot deliberate over what one already knows is going to happen, when suitably qualified, has seemed to many philosophers to be about as secure a truth as one is likely to find in this life. Fortunately, it poses little restriction on human deliberation, since the conditions which would trigger its prohibition seldom arise for us: our knowledge of the future is intermittent at best, and those things of which we do have advance knowledge are not the (...) sorts of things over which we would deliberate in any case. But matters appear to stand otherwise with an all-knowing agent such as God is traditionally conceived to be; for what an omniprescient deity ‘already knows is going to happen’ is everything that is going to happen; and if He cannot deliberate over such things, there is nothing over which He can deliberate. (shrink)

Health care providers (HCPs) are routinely placed into morally challenging situations that have the potential to cause moral distress. This is especially true for HCPs working in the military, whether they are on deployment outside their typical contexts of practice such as in disaster relief (e.g., Haiti and the Ebola missions in West Africa), or in more typically military settings such as peace keeping or armed conflicts (e.g., Afghanistan, Syria). Moral distress refers to “painful feelings and/or psychological disequilibrium” (Nilsson, Sjöberg, (...) Kallenberg, & Larsson, 2011, p. 50) that occur when an individual is aware of a morally appropriate action in a moral dilemma but obstruction prevents them from carrying it out, or when in a situation where they must choose between upholding equally treasured but conflicting moral values. Similarly, moral distress can occur when faced with a ‘tragic choice’ where all available courses of action require something of moral significance to be given up, such as surgical triage in a mass casualty event (Hunt, Sinding, & Schwartz, 2012). In the literature, moral distress has been connected to negative psychological effects and even stress related mental health issues including compassion fatigue, burnout, and post-traumatic stress disorder (Owen & Wanzer, 2014; Gustafsson, Eriksson, Strandberg, & Norberg, 2010; Litz, et al., 2009). (shrink)

In order to implement environmental policies for sustainable and resilient land use we need to better understand how people relate to their agricultural land and how this affects their practices. In this paper I use an inductive, qualitative analysis of data gathered from interviews with kiwifruit orchardists and observations of their orchards to demonstrate how their interpretation of their relationship with their orchards affects their management practices. I suggest that these orchardists experience their orchards as having agency in four different (...) ways—as wild, challenging, needy, and passive—and that these different perspectives result in practices which produce orchards that impact differently on sensory faculties—sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell. This finding implies that land use policies that seek to change sensory aspects of the land which are in conflict with producers’, farmers’, or growers’ sense of relationship with the land—and how the land “should be”—are unlikely to succeed. That these orchardists produce fruit which is compliant with two comprehensive audit systems—one of which is organic—and also serve an international market, indicates that the constraints of such systems still allow orchardists to exercise autonomy, express their identity, and make sense of their orchard activities in different ways, indicating a potentially resilient and sustainable production system. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Literature as Fable, Fable as ArgumentLester H. HuntIIn an ancient Chinese text we find the following exchange between the Confucian sage Mencius and one of his adversaries:Kao Tzu said, "Human nature is like whirling water. Give it an outlet in the east and it will flow east; give an outlet in the west and it will flow west. Human nature does not show any preference for either good or (...) bad, just as water does not show any preference for either east or west.""It certainly is the case," said Mencius, "that water does not show any preference for either east or west, but does it show the same indifference to high and low? Human nature is good just as water seeks low ground. There is no man who is not good; there is no water that does not flow downwards."1The subject of this colloquy is a familiar one in philosophy as we know it in the West. Its form and style are also vaguely familiar: it is a clashing exchange of theories, in which the speakers do not seem to be speaking merely to express themselves, but in order to persuade others that they are right. Yet at the same time it seems quite alien to us. It would be hard to find anything in it that a Western philosopher since the time of Plato would recognize as an argument. The participants seem to be speaking entirely in illustrative analogies and clever aphorisms, not in arguments at all. The style seems to be literary rather than philosophical. Yet what they are doing does look curiously like arguing. There is a rhythm of statement and counter-statement, in which each speaker seems to be answering the claims of the other.A related, though different, sort of ambiguity, in which the author [End Page 369] really does seem to be both arguing and not arguing, can be found in the following text, traditionally attributed to a Westerner of the sixth century B.C.:Between the North Wind and the Sun, they say, a contest of this sort arose, to wit, which of the two would strip the goatskin from a farmer plodding on his way. The North Wind first began to blow as he does when he blows from Thrace, thinking by sheer force to rob the wearer of his cloak. And yet no more on that account did he, the man, relax his hold; instead he shivered, drew the borders of his garment tight about him every way, and rested with his back against a spur of rock. Then the Sun peeped forth, welcome at first, bringing the man relief from the cold, raw wind. Next, changing, he turned the heat on more, and suddenly the farmer felt too hot and of his own accord threw off the cloak, and so was stripped.Thus was the North Wind beaten in the contest. And the story means: "Cultivate gentleness, my son; you will get results oftener by persuasion than by the use of force."2Here Aesop, to use the traditional name for the author of this ancient fable, is plainly doing something "literary": he is telling a story. But narration in the Aesopian mode is never simply telling a story, and in this case what is present in addition to the story seems to have something logical about it. Personally, I read this fable with a certain sense, however faint, that I am being enlightened by it. That of course is Aesop's aim. He is not merely expressing his opinion, but in some way showing us the truth of it. This is the sort of thing that, in philosophy, is done through argument. However, as in the text from the Mencius, it seems there may be no argument here.Clearly, we are dealing with forms of persuasion that are common at certain times in the development of a culture: namely, those periods when the philosophical muse is a mere suckling babe. We are looking, one might think, at a level of development so rudimentary that the distinction between argument as we think of it today and other forms of persuasion has not been made... (shrink)

Stanovich & West claim that the positive correlation between reasoning tasks negates the view that errors in reasoning are due to failures in information processing. This is not correct. They conjecture that errors in reasoning are associated with conflicts between intentional and associative reasoning. This interesting proposition suggests studies relating situational characteristics to the quality of human reasoning.

Accounts of scientific explanation disagree about what’s required for a cause, law, or other fact to be a reason why an event occurs. In short, they disagree about the conditions for explanatory relevance. Nonetheless, most accounts presuppose that claims about explanatory relevance play a descriptive role in tracking reality. By rejecting the need for this descriptivist assumption, I develop an expressivist account of explanatory relevance and explanation: to judge that an answer is explanatory is to express an attitude of _being (...) for being satisfied by that answer_. I show how expressivism vindicates ordinary scientific discourse about explanation, including claims about the objectivity and mind-independence of explanations. By avoiding commitment to ontic relevance relations, I rehabilitate an irrealist conception of explanation. (shrink)

This chapter offers an overview and analysis of policing, the area of criminal justice associated primarily with law enforcement. The study of policing spans a variety of disciplines, including criminology, law, philosophy, politics, and psychology, among other fields. Although research on policing is broad in scope, it has become an especially notable area of study in contemporary legal and social philosophy given recent police controversies.

This article discusses the approaches of utilitarianism and deontological ethics toward “conservation hunting.” Specifically, how each moral theory deals with issues regarding age and functionality, when ending the life of the individual. An example is studied. Utilitarianism does not provide a robust enough framework to deal with both facets of the question pertaining to the individual. However, Kantian deontological ethics, as developed by Korsgaard, posits that humans have direct duties to nonhuman animals. Thus, deontological ethics is the moral theory (...) that supports the view that humans have a duty to do better than hunt animals when trying to conserve them. (shrink)

John Blund's Treatise on the Soul is probably the earliest text of its kind: a witness to the first reception of Greek and Arabic psychology at Oxford and foundation for a new area of medieval philosophical speculation. This book contains Hunt's Latin edition with a new English translation and a new introduction to the text by Michael Dunne.

In this article I review attempts to define the term “ad hoc hypothesis,” focusing on the efforts of, among others, Karl Popper, Jarrett Leplin, and Gerald Holton. I conclude that the term is unhelpful; what is “ad hoc” seems to be a judgment made by particular scientists not on the basis of any well-established definition but rather on their individual aesthetic senses. Further, a hypothesis considered ad hoc can apparently be retroactively declared non–ad hoc on the basis of subsequent data, (...) rendering the term meaningless. (shrink)

We argue that Hamiltonian mechanics is more fundamental than Lagrangian mechanics. Our argument provides a non-metaphysical strategy for privileging one formulation of a theory over another: ceteris paribus, a more general formulation is more fundamental. We illustrate this criterion through a novel interpretation of classical mechanics, based on three physical conditions. Two of these conditions suffice for recovering Hamiltonian mechanics. A third condition is necessary for Lagrangian mechanics. Hence, Lagrangian systems are a proper subset of Hamiltonian systems. Finally, we provide (...) a geometric interpretation of the principle of stationary action and rebut arguments for privileging Lagrangian mechanics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article develops an Arendtian conception of resentment and shows that resentment as a response to injustice is in fact only possible within a community of persons engaged in moral and recognitive relations. While Arendt is better known for her work on forgiveness—characterized as a creative rather than vindictive response to injury—this article suggests that Arendt provides a unique way of thinking about resentment as essentially a response to another human's subjectivity. But when injury is massive, so beyond the (...) pale that the possibility of face-to-face human interaction is annihilated, the space for resentment is thereby destroyed. Ironically, while the absence of resentment might at first seem to be an unproblematically good thing, Arendt shows us that the loss of resentment actually signals the loss of the properly human realm. (shrink)

Western civilization has probably reached an impasse, expressed as a crisis on all fronts: economic, technological, environmental and political. This is experienced on the cultural level as a moral crisis or an ethical deficit. Somehow, the means we have always assumed as being adequate to the task of achieving human welfare, health and peace, are failing us. Have we lost sight of the primacy of human ends? Governments still push for economic growth and technological advances, but many are now asking: (...) economic growth for what, technology for what? Health care and nursing are caught up in the same inversion of human priorities. Professionals, such as nurses and midwives, need to take on social responsibilities and a collective civic voice, and play their part in a moral regeneration of society. This involves carrying civic rights and duties into the workplace. (shrink)

We argue that Hamiltonian mechanics is more fundamental than Lagrangian mechanics. Our argument provides a non-metaphysical strategy for privileging one formulation of a theory over another: ceteris paribus, a more general formulation is more fundamental. We illustrate this criterion through a novel interpretation of classical mechanics, based on three physical conditions. Two of these conditions suffice for recovering Hamiltonian mechanics. A third condition is necessary for Lagrangian mechanics. Hence, Lagrangian systems are a proper subset of Hamiltonian systems. Finally, we provide (...) a geometric interpretation of the principle of stationary action and rebut arguments for privileging Lagrangian mechanics. (shrink)

The paper begins with a description of a grey seal performing conspecific infanticide. The paper then gives an account of “nobleness” and “brutishness.” Roughly, a behavioural-disposition is noble/brutish if it is one that would be a moral virtue/vice if the possessor of the behavioural-disposition were a moral agent. The paper then advances two pairs of axiological claims. The first pair of claims is that nobleness is good and that brutishness is bad. The second pair of claims is about an axiological (...) interaction between nobleness/brutishness and well-being. That any non-human animal lacks well-being is bad. Yet, it is worse that a noble non-human animal lacks well-being, and not so bad that a brutish non-human animal lacks well-being. Lastly, the paper discusses some potential moral implications of these axiological claims, for instance that factory farming is especially wrong because it causes noble non-human animals to lack well-being. (shrink)

Critical legal studies is one of the most challenging developments in the contemporary study of law. Drawing heavily on the radical political culture of the period since the 1960s, critical legal studies assents the necessity of a politics of law - a politics which sees law, not as something apart, but as engaged in the multitude of arguments, battles and struggles which produce the human condition. Such a committment decisively rejects the dominant tradition of Anglo-American legal scholarship, the expository orthodoxy (...) or, more crudely, the 'black-letter law' approach. The essays in this book provide the first wide ranging exploration of the aims and scope of critical legal studies in Britain. They draw on a diversity of intellectual traditions, including feminism, Marxism, critical theory and deconstruction and explore the implications of the critical approach for important areas such as property, contract, company, and labour law. (shrink)

Lester Hunt argues that, despite its being too narrow in the topics it treats, Louis Torres and Michelle Marder Kamhi's What Art Is offers a fascinating account of Ayn Rand's views on art and, in addition, constitutes a major contribution to Objectivist aesthetics.

The phrase “gun control” has no very precise meaning. It typically refers either to prohibitions of or restrictions on gun ownership on the part of the civilian population. Such rules may apply either to guns in general or to some type of gun (such as handguns). More rarely, it can refer to legal restrictions, not on classes of weapons, but on classes of users, a sort of restriction that might be called “dangerous possessor gun control” (see Risk). In this case, (...) the state denies the right of gun ownership to some class of the population deemed – perhaps due to youth, mental infirmity, or prior criminal behavior – to be insufficiently trustworthy. Dangerous possessor rules seem to be per se uncontroversial: though there is disagreement about which users are sufficiently untrustworthy, no one seems to deny that there should be some restrictions on who may own these weapons. The philosophical literature that has developed in the past two decades is focused mainly on legal restrictions on guns, and not on users. (shrink)

Hunt asks a series of related questions about time in history. Why is time now again on the agenda, for historians and more generally in Western culture?

Patrick O'Brian, the Aubrey-Maturin Series of twenty novels (Norton, 1970-1999). My appreciation written for WIRED magazine: "I re-read this extraordinary series of novels because of the depth of portrayal of the major and minor characters, but also because they teach me so much about what science and technology were like two centuries ago. O'Brian shows you the world-that-was through the eyes of a Tory naval captain (Jack Aubrey), at sea since the age of 12, working his way up to admiral, (...) dealing with the height of 18th-century technology (sailing ships and celestial navigation). I identify more strongly with his liberally-educated, physician-scientist friend (Stephen Maturin), who went to medical school in Paris during the French Revolution. You see natural history turning into a biological science, bleeding-and-purging medicine starting to learn some physiology -- and, because Maturin is also an intelligence agent for the Admiralty, you see statecraft at work during the Napoleonic Wars. These books strongly remind you about what scientific ignorance and social conventions can do to your mindset, and how the future will likely judge us as well." -- William H. Calvin You can get them all at once, so you can: The Complete Aubrey/Maturin Series (20 volumes). Depending on amazon.com's current discount, this works out to US$15-20 each (and in hardcover). (shrink)

The paper argues that ‘All varieties of gratitude are only overall fitting when targeted towards agents,’ for instance that any variety of gratitude for the beautiful sunset is only overall fitting if a supernatural agent such as God exists. The first premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ For this premise, intuitive judgments are offered. The second premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is the paradigmatic variety of gratitude.’ For this premise, an aspect of the (...) common consent of philosophers about gratitude is noted and the metaphysical basicness of prepositional gratitude is argued for. This gives the intermediate conclusion that ‘The paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ The fourth premise is that ‘If the paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents, then all varieties of gratitude are overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ To supply the conditional of this premise, the Paradigmatic Fittingness Principle is offered, which states that ‘Paradigmatic emotions set the fittingness conditions for their non-paradigmatic varieties.’ This principle is argued for by noting that it vindicates some popular and plausible intuitive judgements and gives an error theory of why one might think that gratitude could be fittingly targeted towards non-agents, and by suggesting the absence of any other plausible source of fittingness conditions for non-paradigmatic emotions. (shrink)

The traditional doctrine of divine omniscience ascribes to God the fully exercised power to know all truths. but why is God’s excellence with respect to knowing not treated on a par with his excellence with respect to doing, where the latter requires only that God have the power to do all things? The prima facie problem with divine ”omni-knowledgeability’ -- roughly, being able to know whatever one wants to know whenever one wants to know it -- is that knowledge requires (...) an internal representation, whereas mere ”knowledgeability’ does not. I argue to the contrary that knowledge does not require an internal representation, and that even if it did, an omni-knowledgeable God would satisfy this requirement. omni-knowledgeability therefore represents a distinct understanding of God’s cognitive excellence while satisfying the traditional insistence on full omniscience. (shrink)

Blending evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness, and profanity, this unexpected guide will show you how to respond to your negative inner voice with one very important phrase: Move on, mother*cker (MOMF)!

Immanuel Kant mentions fate (Schicksal) in several places. Peter Thielke offers the only sustained interpretation of what Kant meant by fate. According to Thielke, fate is a “usurpatory concept” that takes the place of causality but fails to do its job. There are problems with this interpretation, relative to Kant’s philosophy and to the ordinary concept of fate. It is not clear why we only find a usurpation of causality and not the other concepts of the categories, or how a (...) usurpation of an a priori concept could occur. Thielke’s interpretation does not explain the way in which fate attributions are only made about events that have significance for human action or well-being, or fate’s teleological aspect. I outline the textual evidence that, for Kant, fate usurps providence, a postulate of practical reason, and then show how this interpretation preserves the strengths but avoids the weaknesses of its competitor. (shrink)

This is the first book to take nursing ethics beyond stock 'moral concepts' to a critical examination of the fundamental assumptions underlying the very nature of nursing. It takes as its point of departure the difficulties nurses experience practising within the confines of a bioethical model of health and illness and a hierarchical, technocratic health care system. The contributors go on to deal openly and honestly with controversial issues faced by nurses, such as euthanasia and HIV.

This is an English translation of Descartes' seminal discourse, with an original essay by Richard Kennington. This text is designed to provide the student with a close translation, notes, and a glossary of key terms, facilitating access to ideas as they originally were presented and helping to make the translator's work transparent. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of (...) the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Decartes' immediate audience. The Focus Philosophical Library publishes clear, faithful editions enabling access for modern students to the essential ideas and wisdom of the world’s greatest thinkers. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod (P&G) suggest that communicators synchronize their processing at a number of linguistic levels. Whereas their explanation suggests that representations are being compared across individuals, there must be some representation of all conversation participants in each participant's head. At the level of the situation model, it is important to maintain separate representations for each participant. At other levels, it seems less crucial to have a separate representation for each participant. This analysis suggests that different mechanisms may synchronize representations (...) at different linguistic levels. (shrink)

Technology permeates all walks of life. It has emerged as a global facilitator to improve learning and training, alleviating the temporal and spatial limitations of traditional learning systems. It is imperative to identify enablers or inhibitors of technology adoption by employees for sustainable change in education management systems. Using the theoretical lens of organizational support theory, this paper studies effect of institutional support on education management information systems use along with two individual traits of self-efficacy and innovative behavior of academic (...) employees in British higher educational institutions. Data for this cross-sectional study were collected through a questionnaire completed by 591 academic employees of 23 universities from 10 cities in the United Kingdom. Partial Least Square structural equation modeling was used to analyze data with smartPLS 3.2.9 software. Results indicate that institutional support promotes self-efficacy and innovative behavior that help develop positive employee perceptions. The model explains a 52.9% variance in intention to use. Post-hoc mediation analysis shows that innovativeness and self-efficacy mediate between institutional support and employee technology adoption behavior. As opposed to student samples in past studies on educational technology, this study adds to the literature by focusing on academic employees. (shrink)

—Grayson Hunt1In 2015, I visited Lake Cumberland in Kentucky for a day of boating and swimming with friends. At one end of the lake was an amazing waterfall. As I was swimming near it, I looked up and saw a man thirty feet above in the bushes on top of the falls. He waved. I waved back. Only he wasn’t boating; he was just standing there. So I stared at him, wondering what he was doing up there. Then I realized (...) he was masturbating. Stunned, I turned away to swim back to the boat, and I could feel shame sneaking into my chest and face. I began to feel responsible for what was happening to me, which was the very message I internalized after being sexually assaulted as a teen. This time, however, I decided that I... (shrink)

Period homeostasis is the defining characteristic of a biological clock. Strict period homeostasis is found for the ultradian clocks of eukaryotic microbes. In addition to being temperature-compensated, the period of these rhythms is unaffected by differences in nutrient composition or changes in other environmental variables. The best-studied examples of ultradian clocks are those of the ciliates Paramecium tetraurelia and Tetrahymena sp. and of the fission yeast, Schizosaccharomyces pombe. In these single cell eukaryotes, up to seven different parameters display ultradian rhythmicity (...) with the same, species- and strain-specific period. In fission yeast, the molecular genetic analysis of ultradian clock mechanisms has begun with the systematic analysis of mutants in identified candidate genes. More than 40 “clock mutants” have already been identified, most of them affected in components of major regulatory and signalling pathways. These results indicate a high degree of complexity for a eukaryotic clock mechanism. BioEssays 22:16–22, 2000. ©2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Siblings ought to treat one another specially – in other words, siblings qua siblings ought to treat one another in ways that they need not treat others. This paper offers a theory of why this is the case. The paper begins with some intuitive judgments about how siblings ought to treat one another and some other normative features of siblinghood. I then review three potential theories of why siblings ought to treat one another specially, adapted from the literature on filial (...) piety: the gratitude theory, the friendship theory, and the special goods theory. In each case, these theories fail to explain some of the intuitive judgments about how siblings ought to treat one another. The paper then proposes a familial belonging theory. The institution of the family has certain goals, which impose normative demands on family members. I suggest that one such family goal is that every member feel familial belonging towards every other member, a goal which grounds the ways in which siblings ought to treat one another specially. (shrink)

As its title suggests, the subject of this book is the nature of self-fulfillment, which the author defines as “carrying to fruition one’s deepest desires or one’s worthiest capacities”. It treats this subject as a specifically ethical one. The motivation behind it lies in the author’s conviction that all other norms and ideals have value only insofar as they serve to advance this one.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the police role from within a broader philosophical context. Contending that the police are in the midst of an identity crisis that exacerbates unjustified law enforcement tactics, Luke William Hunt examines various major conceptions of the police—those seeing them as heroes, warriors, and guardians. The book looks at the police role considering the overarching societal goal of justice and seeks to present a synthetic theory that draws upon history, law, society, psychology, and philosophy. (...) Each major conception of the police role is examined in light of how it affects the pursuit of justice, and how it may be contrary to seeking justice holistically and collectively. The book sets forth a conception of the police role that is consistent with the basic values of a constitutional democracy in the liberal tradition. Hunt’s intent is that clarifying the police role will likewise elucidate any constraints upon policing strategies, including algorithmic strategies such as predictive policing. This book is essential reading for thoughtful policing and legal scholars as well as those interested in political philosophy, political theory, psychology, and related areas. Now more than ever, the nature of the police role is a philosophical topic that is relevant not just to police officials and social scientists, but to everyone. (shrink)

Background: The search for genetic variants between racial/ethnic groups to explain differential disease susceptibility and drug response has provoked sharp criticisms, challenging the appropriateness of using race/ethnicity as a variable in genetics research, because such categories are social constructs and not biological classifications.Objectives: To gain insight into how a group of genetic scientists conceptualise and use racial/ethnic variables in their work and their strategies for managing the ethical issues and consequences of this practice.Methods: In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with a (...) purposive sample of 30 genetic researchers who use racial/ethnic variables in their research. Standard qualitative methods of content analysis were used.Results: Most of the genetic researchers viewed racial/ethnic variables as arbitrary and very poorly defined, and in turn as scientifically inadequate. However, most defended their use, describing them as useful proxy variables on a road to “imminent medical progress”. None had developed overt strategies for addressing these inadequacies, with many instead asserting that science will inevitably correct itself and saying that meanwhile researchers should “be careful” in the language chosen for reporting findings.Conclusions: While the legitimacy and consequences of using racial/ethnic variables in genetics research has been widely criticised, ethical oversight is left to genetic researchers themselves. Given the general vagueness and imprecision we found amongst these researchers regarding their use of these variables, they do not seem well equipped for such an undertaking. It would seem imperative that research ethicist move forward to develop specific policies and practices to assure the scientific integrity of genetic research on biological differences between population groups. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Mary Shelley (1797–1851) developed a ‘Romantic Spinozism’ from 1817 to 1848. This was a deterministic worldview that adopted an ethical attitude of love toward the world as it is, must be, and will be. Resisting the psychological despair and political inertia of fatalism, her ‘Romantic Spinozism’ affirmed the forward-looking responsibility of people to love their neighbors and sustain the world, including future generations, even in the face of seeming apocalypse. This history of Shelley’s reception of Spinoza begins with the (...) fragment of the otherwise lost translation of the Theologico-Political Treatise (1670) on which she collaborated. It extends through her journals, letters, poetry, and her second great work of speculative fiction after Frankenstein (1818): a post-apocalyptic novel set in the year 2100, The Last Man (1826). Through a creative synthesis of Spinoza with Plato, Cicero, Wollstonecraft, and Glasite Christianity, Shelley developed an anti- apocalyptic conception of love as apocatastasis: a cyclical restoration of an ethical attitude of stewardship toward the whole world and its necessity. Through this recovery of a vital chapter in the history of European ideas, Shelley emerges as a central figure in Spinozan philosophy, especially the ethics and political philosophy of love. (shrink)

Film audiences are no longer in a position to know for certain which images, or features of images they see on the screen were created by photography and which were created in a computer. Yet they are reacting to the advent of computer graphics as if it is merely a technical improvement, not a change in the nature of film itself. This would mean that one of the most influential early theories of film—realism—is wrong. It held that film is by (...) nature photographic and that its unique value is to afford the audience the physical connection with reality that photography, uniquely among pictorial media, brings. I argue that the audience is right about this. Even as applied to purely photographic films, realism was simply a mistake. (shrink)

One strategy in recent discussions of theological fatalism is to draw on Harry Frankfurt’s famous counterexamples to the principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) to defend human freedom from divine foreknowledge. For those who endorse this line, “Frankfurt counterexamples” are supposed to show that PAP is false, and this conclusion is then extended to the foreknowledge case. This makes it critical to determine whether Frankfurt counterexamples perform as advertised, an issue recently debated in this journal via a pair of articles by (...) David Widerker and John Martin Fischer. I suggest that this debate can be avoided: divine foreknowledge is itself aparadigmatic counterexample to PAP, requiring no support from suspect Frankfurt counterexamples. (shrink)

This paper seeks to rehabilitate St. Augustine’s widely dismissed response to the alleged incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and free will. This requires taking a fresh look at his analysis in On Free Choice of the Will, and arguing its relevance to the current debate. Along the way, mistaken interpretations of Augustine are rebutted, his real solution is developed and defended, a reason for his not anticipating Boethius’s a temporalist solution is suggested, a favorable comparison with Ockham is made, rival solutions (...) are rejected, and the aporetic nature of the problem is explained. (shrink)

This paper argues that it cannot be fitting to blame God. I show that divine immutability, even on a weak conception, implies that God's ethical character cannot change. I then argue that blame aims at a change in the ethical character of the one blamed. This claim is directly intuitive, explains a wide set of intuitions about when blame is unfitting, and is implied by most of the theories blame offered in the philosophical literature. Since blame targeted at God aims (...) to change God's ethical character, an impossibility, such blame is not fitting. I then draw on this conclusion to sketch a new theodicy. I argue that a necessary condition on being blameworthy is that one can be blamed under some possible condition. So, God cannot be blameworthy. Further, I argue that if someone cannot be blameworthy, then they cannot do wrong. Wrong actions tend to make us blameworthy, but since God cannot be blameworthy nothing can tend to make him blameworthy – God cannot do wrong. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that Platonic Forms are angels. I make this identification by claiming that Platonic Forms have the characteristics of angels, in particular, that Platonic Forms are alive. I offer four arguments for this claim. First, it seems that engaging in self-directed action is a sufficient condition for being alive. The Forms are, as teleological activities, self-directed actions. Second, bodies receive their being from their Forms, and some bodies are essentially alive. Third, in the Good, all (...) the types of goodness, including life, are identical. The Forms are appearances of the Good. Fourth, since the Good imparts as much goodness as it can, the Forms are alive unless there is some bar to their being alive. There are good reasons to think that there is no such bar. I then show that ethical vices do not give body to human form, but give body to other forms—those that are evil angels. Lastly, I provide a survey of the relationships that various religious traditions posit between ethical vice and the demonic. (shrink)