The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we argue that killing a Conditional Threat usually involves an unnecessary act of self-defense, so killing this aggressor is usually morally impermissible. We defend this thesis by showing that this case is fundamentally similar to a case involving an Unconditional Threat in which the victim can flee to safety although this involves incurring a minor cost. Second, we analyze the thresholds of maximal harm that victims are required to (...) bear before they are permitted to defend themselves by harming their aggressors related to the conditions of necessity and of proportionality. We argue that the maximal harm a victim is required to bear sanctioned by the condition of necessity is, all else being equal, lower than the maximal harm that a victim must bear sanctioned by the condition of proportionality. This result is relevant for determining in which cases victims may use lethal force against Conditional Threats, both in the individual case and also in the case of war. (shrink)

My dissertation, “Love, Self-Constitution, and Practical Necessity,” offers an interpretation of love between people. Love is puzzling because it appears to involve essentially both rational and non-rational phenomena. We are accountable to those we love, so love seems to participate in forms of necessity, commitment, and expectation, which are associated with morality. But non-rational attitudes—forms of desire, attraction, and feeling—are also central to love. Consequently, love is not obviously based in rationality or inclination. In contrast to views that attempt (...) to fit love into existing models of practical reasoning, I argue that love participates in a unique form of practical necessity, different from both moral and psychological necessity, yet bearing resemblances to each. Distinctive to this type of practical necessity is a direct appeal to another particular person that cannot be delivered in third-personal terms—that is, a non-moral yet normative type of expectation on another person. This type of expectation is predominant in loving relationships, but can also make better sense of the experiences of humor and beauty, as well as attitudes like forgiveness, gratitude, and agent-regret. I treat Immanuel Kant’s discussion of the experience of beauty in the Critique of Judgment and Christine Korsgaard’s work on self-constitution as fruitful starting points for this account of love. I conclude that our loving relationships enable us to have distinctive personal selves, and provide support for this account of love by offering a complementary theory of grief. In Part One of the dissertation, I focus on two prominent approaches to love characteristic of the sentimentalist and rationalist traditions. I begin with the work of David Hume, which treats desire (understood as something like a simple impulse or craving) as the paradigmatic mental state, and emphasizes our personal and affective dimensions. Hume has the valuable insight that loving someone affects our sense of ourselves. But Hume’s view becomes unsatisfying when he claims that love is essentially enfeebling, implying that to love is to be passive toward and readily overcome by another person. While this indicates Hume’s awareness that love involves being open and receptive to another person, the problem is that love is also a demanding attitude. Hume lacks the conceptual resources to offer a nuanced view of the self, in which we can—with one attitude—be both demanding of and vulnerable to another person. Hume’s model of a desire-based deliberative process has recently been revived in Harry Frankfurt’s discussions on love and rationality. Frankfurt, however, goes beyond Hume’s picture of the self by introducing a notion of “identification,” which he offers to make sense of our apparent ability to commit ourselves decisively to certain projects or people. I argue that active powers like identification and commitment cannot be accommodated within any basically Humean moral psychology. Such abilities, and with them the possibility of love, depend on something closer to a Kantian conception of rational agency. I next focus on the work of Kant, who provides the substantial counterpart to Humean-inspired moral theories, but is not known for his insight into our emotional lives. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant divides love into “practical love”—what we experience when we are morally motivated to help someone—and “pathological love”—what we experience when we feel fond of something. But in reality, we experience love neither as a mere preference for another person, nor as something that generates the kind of demands that would be binding on any rational creature. David Velleman attempts to remedy the deficiency of Kant’s dichotomy. Velleman offers a Kantian theory in which he describes love and respect as two ends of a continuum of attitudes that it is morally appropriate to have toward people. Velleman’s view has the peculiar implication that everyone deserves the love of everyone else, and I argue that this is a fatal flaw. Like Kant and Velleman, Korsgaard characterizes personal love as involving the treatment of other people as Kantian ends-in-themselves to a heightened degree. Korsgaard, though, also contends that our individual identities depend upon our personal relationships, and I take this position seriously for the remainder of the dissertation. Ultimately, however, characterizations of loving relations as subsets of moral relations can account for the authority of the demands of love, but not its particularity. The major conclusion of Part One is that any attempt to understand love primarily on a model of practical reasoning with which we are already familiar is doomed to fail. Our experience of love calls for a theory of a unique type of practical necessity. In Part Two I take seriously the possibility that love is simultaneously inescapable (in something like the way morality is supposed to be), and yet ineluctably personal. In love, we experience an engagement with a person as essentially particular, rather than as an instance of a rational agent in general. To make sense of this direct attachment to an individual, I argue that love involves distinctive forms of expectation and disappointment. When those we love let us down, they hurt our feelings, which is not a response to a failed prediction, but nor is it a reaction to a moral insult or offense. According to Peter Strawson and Stephen Darwall, second-personal moral reactive attitudes (such as resentment) always have third-personal analogues (such as indignation). In contrast, I argue that the type of hurt feelings associated with love is a second-personal reactive attitude that does not have a third-personal corollary. I take this as evidence that the expectations involved in love are not objective in the way that the moral is objective. Nor, however, is love a matter of mere preference. On my interpretation, Kant introduces this different type of expectation in the Critique of Judgment. Whereas he characterizes moral judgments as universally communicable, judgments of beauty implicitly involve only second-personal address: I appeal to your direct experience with a particular object. This provides the conceptual space for an account of love according to which it involves a uniquely second-personal form of practical necessity. I contend that the second-personal addresses we make in love are appeals to strengthen the intimacy implicit in the loving relationship, and I identify three interrelated dimensions of that intimacy. First, those we love have the standing to interpret us in a constitutive manner. We fine-tune and make determinate the character of our concerns and interests in part by accepting the interpretations provided by those we love. In that way, the people we love have the normative power to constitute who we are. Second, we share a perspective with those we love in a way that is not reducible to or derivative of our independent perspectives. Loving someone centrally involves the activity of forming concerns together, and we do this in a mode best understood on the model of playing a spontaneous game or improvising music. Finally, being loved enables us to see ourselves as distinctive and special, because the concern those who love us have for us does not track the objective merit of our characteristics. These dimensions of the intimacy that characterizes a loving relationship reveal what it is that we appeal for in love, and how we are hurt when our appeals are rebuffed. In broad terms, this dissertation advocates the recognition of a non-moral yet normative type of expectation, which is predominant in loving relationships. Humor and beauty, too, make more sense when understood in terms of this non-moral yet normative type of expectation, as they involve appeals to others that are more than mere predictions of, but less than rational demands for, a certain kind of response. Introducing this alternative notion of expectation into the discourse of moral philosophy can shed light on other common attitudes that are clearly normative, but defy translation into objective, third-personal terms. Such attitudes include certain experiences of pride and shame, apology and forgiveness, the bestowing of mercy, gratitude, agent-regret, and perhaps a basic sense of trust we have in others. Ultimately, I situate love in respect to grief, which demonstrates my theory’s ability to make sense of related dimensions of our emotional lives. The people we love and grieve over give us a sense of who we are as distinctive, particular individuals, as the three interrelated dimensions of intimacy in loving relationships reveal. Consequently, grief is best understood as a type of practical disorientation—namely, a disorientation that involves the loss of the personal self. I present my account of grief against the type of account that would draw philosophical conclusions about the nature of love and grief from empirical psychological data alone. In particular, these data indicate that we recover quickly from the deaths of loved ones, and Dan Moller draws the philosophical conclusion that those we love fulfill certain roles in our lives and are replaceable. In contrast, I contend that while we should acknowledge the truth of the objective judgment, made in the third-person, that we will likely recover after the deaths of those we love, it does not follow that we must affirm such a claim from the internal perspective of one person who loves another. As a result, the case of love and grief supports a general claim concerning the proper work of moral philosophy, which is that the understanding of ourselves gained through empirical data is not a substitute for the normative conclusions that are revealed through first-personal reflections on our relationships. (shrink)

Many scholars, including G. A. Cohen, Daniel Attas, and George Brenkert, have denied that a Kantian defense of self-ownership is possible. Kant's ostensible hostility to self-ownership can be resolved, however, upon reexamination of the Groundwork and the Metaphysics of Morals. Moreover, two novel Kantian defenses of self-ownership (narrowly construed) can be devised. The first shows that maxims of exploitation and paternalism that violate self-ownership cannot be universalized, as this leads to contradictions in conception. The second (...) shows that physical coercion against rational agents involves a profound status wrong--namely, their treatment as children or animals--and that this system of differential status and treatment (including self-ownership rights for rational agents) can be morally justified by our capacity for autonomy. (shrink)

Although the counterfactual comparative account of harm, according to which someone is harmed when things go worse for her than they otherwise would have, is intuitively plausible, it has recently come under attack. There are five serious objections in the literature: some philosophers argue that the counterfactual account makes it hard to see how we could harm someone in the course of benefitting that person; others argue that Parfit’s non-identity problem is particularly problematic; another objection claims that the account forces (...) us to see many harms where there is just one; a fourth objection is based on the claim that the counterfactual account makes mysterious the distinction between harms and mere failures-to-benefit; and a final problem arises from cases of pre-emption, in which the nearest possible world in which the harmful event does not occur is a world in which some other harmful event occurs. This paper argues that, properly understood, harm essentially involves a counterfactual comparison, and that these comparisons are sensitive to context in the manner typical of counterfactual conditionals, and that, augmented with two plausible distinctions, this account has the resources to provide satisfying responses to each of the objections that have been raised against it. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 9 If a threat is liable to be defensively killed, there is a defeasible justification for killing her. On certain prevailing assumptions about liability, which I accept, there are liability justifications for killing _any number_ of minimally responsible threats, each of whom would otherwise kill a single non-responsible victim. Absent harms to third parties, these justifications appear, counter-intuitively, to be undefeated. I argue that this counter-intuitive appearance is deceptive.

I defend pretence hermeneutic fictionalism against the Autism Objection. The objection is this: since people with autism have no difficulty in engaging with mathematics even if they cannot pretend, it is not the case that engagement with mathematics involves pretence. I show that a previous response to the objection is inadequate as a defence of the kind of pretence hermeneutic fictionalism put forward as a semantic thesis about the discourse in question. I claim that a more general response (...) to the Autism Objection is to deny the premise that people with autism cannot pretend. To motivate this response, I appeal to psychological studies suggesting that people with autism can understand pretence and they can pretend under certain conditions. Finally, I provide explanations for why it is the case that people with autism do not have a problem with engaging in mathematics whereas they have so much difficulty with other kinds of figurative language and pretence. (shrink)

Do we have the right to defend ourselves against innocent aggressors? If I amattacked in a lift by a knife‐wielding lunatic, may I kill or maim him to protect my own life? On one view the insane man’s plight is his bad luck and I am under no obligation to let it be transferred to me. On the opposing view it is my bad luck to be under attack and I have no right to transfer it to an innocent (...) man by killing him to protect myself. It is perhaps becauseneither of these opposing viewpoints is obviously preferable to the other that there is no consensus about the question. Nevertheless we can find considerations for favouring the first view over the second. (shrink)

In Chapter 7, “Dignity, Self-Respect, and Bloodless Invasions”, Saba Bazargan-Forward asks How much violence can we impose on those attempting to politically subjugate us? According to Bazargan-Forward, “reductive individualism” answers this question by determining how much violence one can impose on an individual wrongly attempting to prevent one from political participation. Some have argued that the amount of violence one can permissibly impose in such situations is decidedly sub-lethal. Accordingly, this counterintuitive response has cast doubt on the reductive individualist (...) project. Bazargan-Forward argues, however, that political subjugation involves an institutionally embodied form of disrespect that has been altogether missed. A proper appreciation of this sort of disrespect, he contends, morally permits much greater defensive violence against those attempting to politically subjugate us or others. (shrink)

David Rodin denies that defensive wars against unjust aggression can be justified if the unjust aggression limits itself, for example, to the annexation of territory, the robbery of resources or the restriction of political freedom, but would endanger the lives, bodily integrity or freedom from slavery of the citizens only if the unjustly attacked state actually resisted the aggression. I will argue that Rodin's position is not correct. First, Rodin's comments on the necessity condition and its relation to an (...) alleged "duty to retreat" misinterpret the law, and a correct interpretation of the law is not only compatible with, but implies a permission to resist the "bloodless invader," and this is also the correct view from the perspective of morality. Second, Rodin's remarks on the proportionality of self-defense against conditional threats focus on physical or material harm but implausibly ignore the severity of the violations of autonomy and of the socio-legal or moral order that such conditional threats involve. Third, I will address Rodin's claim that defensive wars against "political aggression" are disproportionate because they risk the lives of those defended in an attempt to secure lesser interests. I will argue that this take on proportionality misses the point in an important respect, namely by confusing wide and narrow proportionality, and makes unwarranted assumptions about the alleged irrationality or impermissibility of incurring or imposing lethal risks to safeguard less vital interests. Next, I will also show that while Rodin talks of a "myth of national self-defense" and of the necessity of moving beyond traditional just war theory and international law, it is actually his interpretation of just war theory and international law that weaves myths. Finally, I will argue that Rodin's views on national self-defense on the one hand, and "war as law enforcement" on the other, are incoherent. (shrink)

Human rights belong to individuals in virtue of their common humanity. Yet it is an important question whether human rights entail or comport with the possession of what I call group-specific rights, or rights that individuals possess only because they belong to a particular group. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says they do. Article 15 asserts the right to nationality, or citizenship. Unless one believes that the only citizenship compatible with a universal human rights regime is cosmopolitan citizenship in (...) a world state – a conception of citizenship that is not countenanced by the UDHR – one must interpret the human right to citizenship as a universal right to a particular group right. Other UN Conventions affirm the right of national minorities and indigenous people to cultural autonomy.[1] In these cases the right attributed to the group is understood as protecting an individually held human right to freedom of religion, association, or cultural expression. Because these individual rights are exercised collectively and exclusively, they ensure that individual members of a particular group have the freedom to act unhindered by outsiders. However, groups often view their right to freedom of religion, association, and cultural expression in an entirely different way. Not only do they wish that their individual members be free from outside interference but they wish to be freely self-determining as a group. That is, they wish to collectively define their own identity, including the identity of their individual members, according to the dominant views of the majority. This right to collective self-determination entitles a group to limit the full exercise of its members’ human right to act as they wish whenever the group determines that this exercise endangers the identity of the group. In these cases, the internal threat to the group’s cultural identity posed by the heterodox practices of its own members appears to be indistinguishable from the external threat to the group’s cultural autonomy posed by outsiders. I shall argue that groups are sometimes morally entitled to limit the exercise of their members' human rights under certain conditions.[2] In some respects the notion of limitation operant here is familiar to us from our own understanding of what liberal democratic societies legitimately demand of their citizens. No right – human or otherwise – is exercised unconditionally, since rights sometimes conflict with one another and their possession is contingent upon respecting the rights of others, which normally involves accepting some limitations on what may be said or done. Laws merely codify how the majority understands these limits. Also, many philosophers have argued that the meaning of human rights is far from settled, so that even a liberal democratic interpretation of rights of the sort that is contained in the first article of the UDHR is far from being universally accepted.[3] Leaving aside the possibility that human rights do not entail the extensive liberty associated with a liberal understanding of them,[4] I shall argue that groups can sometimes be morally justified to limit the expressive liberty of their individual members so long as they are both ontologically and morally legitimate and provide dissenters with reasonable opportunities for exit. [1] These include the Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries and the Declaration of Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities. [2] Following Thomas Pogge, I regard human rights as claims that individuals raise against institutions that are supposed to guarantee them the conditions and resources necessary for leading a minimally decent human life. Because institutions are imperfect and fallible, assessing their compliance with human rights involves weighing their overall success along a number of variables which normally preclude simple judgments that fall into the either/or of fully satisfying or fully violating a human right. An institution may perform reasonably well in insuring that almost all of the persons on whom it is imposed are relatively successful in enjoying human right X but not human right Y; likewise, it may insure that some persons on whom it is imposed have greater success in enjoying a human right than others. [3] Article 1 states that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” This article can be given a distinctly liberal interpretation if “equal” is understood as “same” and “rights” are understood in to include political rights to equal participation in government and “freedom to manifest his religion or belief in teaching practice, worship, and observance” “in public or private”. [4] There has been an extensive debate over whether human rights, understood as claims that individuals raise against the social institutions that are imposed on them, reflect a conception of individual self-assertion that is universally valid for all societies or only for liberal societies that have embarked upon a Western course of modernization. Some, like John Rawls, have sought to circumvent this impasse by defining the list of universally valid human rights minimally, and in terms that do not imply robust notions of freedom and equality of the sort associated with the Western liberal constitutional tradition. (shrink)

Public accusations of corruption leveled against public figures and institutions in Jordan have recently become a prominent feature of public discourse in the country. Informed by positioning theory as an analytical framework, this study focuses on public responses to such accusations through a discourse analysis of two major apologetic statements, or apologiae, issued in Jordan in 2018 and 2019: one by a controversial former royal court chief and minister of planning in response to public accusations of corruption and appropriation (...) of public funds, and the other by the Office of Queen Rania of Jordan in response to accusations of wardrobe extravagance and overspending. The analysis shows that these two apologiae employed discourses that not only positioned the accused as blameless, but also as victims of defamation. Reference to one’s history, such as public service to the nation and one’s accomplishments, was exploited. In contrast, the accusers were explicitly or implicitly positioned as unjust, biased, vindictive, or motivated by hidden agenda. A variety of discursive strategies were deployed, particularly invoking cultural moral orders, resorting to banal nationalism, expressing pride in one’s public service and allegiance to the monarchy, and invoking a constellation of religious, professional and national identities. In the case of the royal apologia, it was implicitly positioned in western discourses, such as invoking feminine ‘corporeal modernity’, to respond to the wardrobe overspending accusations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.1 (2005) 55-81 [Access article in PDF] Self-Knowledge in Descartes and Malebranche Lawrence Nolan John Whipple 1. Introduction Descartes's notorious claim that mind is better known than body has been the target of repeated criticisms, but none appears more challenging than that of his intellectual heir Nicolas Malebranche.1 Whereas other critics—especially twentieth-century philosophers eager to use Descartes as their whipping boy—have often (...) been uncharitable, Malebranche accepts many of the fundamental Cartesian doctrines, including mind-body dualism. But he argues that Descartes's position on knowledge of the mind is internally inconsistent. Malebranche agrees with Descartes that the existence of the mind is better known than that of body, but he vehemently denies that the nature of the mind is better known. This denial is based on his view that we lack a clear idea of the mind.2 [End Page 55]Malebranche's polemic has attracted much attention in recent scholarship.3 The growing consensus among commentators is that Malebranche develops a devastating internal critique of Descartes's theory of the mind. For example, Nicholas Jolley writes: "In his case for his negative thesis [concerning knowledge of the mind] Malebranche mounted a powerful, even annihilating, critique of Descartes. This critique embodies the remarkable insight that there is a serious muddle at the heart of Descartes's whole theory of knowledge."4 In a book-length defense of Malebranche's critique, Tad Schmaltz also emphasizes its internal character: "the interpretation here of Malebranche's theory presents it as fundamentally Cartesian, and thereby serves to reinforce his own view that he has provided an authoritative interpretation of the account of mind in the writings of Descartes and other Cartesians."5 Schmaltz also asserts: "Malebranche took his negative thesis concerning our knowledge of the soul to involve not so much a rejection of Cartesianism as an internal correction of it."6We think such remarks misstate the case. Indeed, we argue in this paper that Malebranche's polemic fails as an internal critique of Descartes's theory of the mind. Although we do not here aspire to defend Descartes's strong thesis—that mind is better known than body—we do think he can consistently maintain that we have a clear and distinct idea of the mind, and thus that our knowledge of the mind's nature is at least on a par with our knowledge of corporeal nature.7 While Malebranche's rhetoric would encourage us to think that the debate between him and his predecessor is being fought on common or neutral ground, the fact is that Malebranche often appeals to assumptions and aspects of his own theory of "Vision in God" that Descartes would reject. Once more, he interprets Descartes's theory of knowledge in ways that are misguided and sometimes even uncharitable. If Malebranche's critique succeeds at all, it succeeds only against a straw man—Malebranche's Descartes and not the historical figure.Ours is not the first effort to defend Descartes against this particular attack. When Malebranche first published his critique in Book Three of his first great work, The Search After Truth (1674),8 Descartes had been dead for over two decades, [End Page 56] but he was ably defended by the famous Cartesian Antoine Arnauld in On True and False Ideas (1683). In the ensuing debate Arnauld was clearly the superior dialectician, but while winning several tactical points, he appears not to fully appreciate the crux of Malebranche's argument, or at least that is the view of Jolley and Schmaltz.9 We have a somewhat higher opinion of Arnauld's side of the debate. Granted, some of his defenses are facile and can be easily dismissed; others however are quite compelling when properly developed. In at least one instance, we attempt to provide that development. At the same time we think it is a mistake to treat Arnauld as Descartes's surrogate or as if he had issued the final salvo from the camp of the orthodox Cartesians. Arnauld was a... (shrink)

Is shame social? Is it superficial? Is it a morally problematic emotion? Researchers in disciplines as different as psychology, philosophy, and anthropology have thought so. But what is the nature of shame and why are claims regarding its social nature and moral standing interesting and important? Do they tell us anything worthwhile about the value of shame and its potential legal and political applications? -/- In this book, Julien Deonna, Raffaele Rodogno, and Fabrice Teroni propose an original philosophical account of (...) shame aimed at answering these questions. The book begins with a detailed examination of the evidence and arguments that are taken to support what they call the two dogmas about shame: its alleged social nature and its morally dubious character. Their analysis is conducted against the backdrop of a novel account of shame and ultimately leads to the rejection of these two dogmas. On this account, shame involves a specific form of negative evaluation that the subject takes towards herself: a verdict of incapacity with regard to values to which she is attached. One central virtue of the account resides in the subtle manner it clarifies the ways in which the subject's identity is at stake in shame, thus shedding light on many aspects of this complex emotion and allowing for a sophisticated understanding of its moral significance. -/- This philosophical account of shame engages with all the current debates on shame as they are conducted within disciplines as varied as ethics, moral, experimental, developmental and evolutionary psychology, anthropology, legal studies, feminist studies, politics and public polic. (shrink)

Self-fulfilling beliefs are, in at least some cases, a kind of belief that is rational to form and hold in the absence of strong evidential support The rationality of such beliefs have significant implications for a range of debates in epistemology. Most startlingly, it undermines the idea that having sufficient evidence for the truth of p is necessary for it to be rational to believe that p. The rationality of self-fulfilling beliefs is here defended against the idea (...) that their rationality is incompatible with a compelling closure principle. (shrink)

According to proper functionalist theories of warrant, a belief is warranted only if it is formed by cognitive faculties that are properly functioning according to a good, truth-aimed design plan, one that is often thought to be specified either by intentional design or by natural selection. A formidable challenge to proper functionalist theories is the Swampman objection, according to which there are scenarios involving creatures who have warranted beliefs but whose cognitive faculties are not properly functioning, or are (...) poorly designed, or are not aimed at truth. In this paper, we draw lessons from cognitive science in order to develop a novel argument for the conclusion that the Swampman objection fails against proper functionalist theories of warrant. Our argument not only shows that the underlying, central intuition motivating Swampman-like scenarios is false but also motivates proper function as a necessary condition for warrant, thereby lending support to the claim that any theory of knowledge that lacks a proper function requirement is false. (shrink)

Purpose Children are becoming heavy users of communication and information technologies from an early age. These technologies carry risks to which children may be exposed. In collaboration with the Israel Ministry of Education, the authors launched a week-long safe online awareness program for school children in 257 elementary and middle schools in Israel. Each class independently composed a safe and ethical code of online behavior following two classroom debate sessions. The purpose of this study was to analyze these codes and (...) learn how school children perceive and understand the proper use of the network using thematic analysis. Design/methodology/approach A total of 8,181 students between the ages of 8 and 14 years in 303 classes from 257 schools participated in the program. These classes composed 303 ethical codes, which were decomposed into 2,201 elements. Using mixed-methods research combining quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the elements of the ethical codes were analyzed, interpreted, and classified to identify the dominant themes and discourses used by the students when addressing issues related to safe online use. Findings Findings indicate that Israeli students are aware of the dangers and risks of the internet, and these concerns are reflected in their own ethical codes. The students discouraged online self-exposure and encouraged precautions and wariness towards members of out-groups. The themes included sentences which asked for responsible, appropriate, and lawful use, expressed concern about privacy issues, and stated the need for adult involvement. Most of them reflected an “us against them ” perspective. Originality/value The current study presents an innovative “bottom-up” program based on wisdom of the crowd approach, that can be implemented in schools internationally in order to encourage reflexivity and teach children the necessary skills for safe online experiences. In addition, this study analyses the school children’s own views of the dangers of social media and learn about their perspective and understanding of internet use. (shrink)

It could be argued that tort law is failing, and arguably an example of this failure is the recent public liability and insurance (‘PL&I’) crisis. A number of solutions have been proposed, but ultimately the chosen solution should address whatever we take to be the cause of this failure. On one account, the PL&I crisis is a result of an unwarranted expansion of the scope of tort law. Proponents of this position sometimes argue that the duty of care owed by (...) defendants to plaintiffs has expanded beyond reasonable levels, such that parties who were not really responsible for another’s misfortune are successfully sued, while those who really were to blame get away without taking any responsibility. However people should take responsibility for their actions, and the only likely consequence of allowing them to shirk it is that they and others will be less likely to exercise due care in the future, since the deterrents of liability and of no compensation for accidentally self-imposed losses will not be there. Others also argue that this expansion is not warranted because it is inappropriately fueled by ‘deep pocket’ considerations rather than by considerations of fault. They argue that the presence of liability insurance sways the judiciary to award damages against defendants since they know that insurers, and not the defendant personally, will pay for it in the end anyway. But although it may seem that no real person has to bear these burdens when they are imposed onto insurers, in reality all of society bears them collectively when insurers are forced to hike their premiums to cover these increasing damages payments. In any case, it seems unfair to force insurers to cover these costs simply because they can afford to do so. If such an expansion is indeed the cause of the PL&I crisis, then a contraction of the scope of tort liability, and a pious return to the fault principle, might remedy the situation. However it could also be argued that inadequate deterrence is the cause of this crisis. On this account the problem would lie not with the tort system’s continued unwarranted expansion, but in the fact that defendants really have been too careless. If prospective injurers were appropriately deterred from engaging in unnecessarily risky activities, then fewer accidents would ever occur in the first place, and this would reduce the need for litigation at its very source. If we take this to be the cause of tort law’s failure then our solution should aim to improve deterrence. Glen Robinson has argued that improved deterrence could be achieved if plaintiffs were allowed to sue defendants for wrongful exposure to ongoing risks of future harm, even in the absence of currently materialized losses. He argues that at least in toxic injury type cases the tortious creation of risk [should be seen as] an appropriate basis of liability, with damages being assessed according to the value of the risk, as an alternative to forcing risk victims to abide the outcome of the event and seek damages only if and when harm materializes. In a sense, Robinson wishes to treat newly-acquired wrongful risks as de-facto wrongful losses, and these are what would be compensated in liability for risk creation (‘LFRC’) cases. Robinson argues that if the extent of damages were fixed to the extent of risk exposure, all detected unreasonable risk creators would be forced to bear the costs of their activities, rather than only those who could be found responsible for another’s injuries ‘on the balance of probabilities’. The incidence of accidents should decrease as a result of improved deterrence, reduce the ‘suing fest’, and so resolve the PL&I crisis. So whilst the first solution involves contracting the scope of tort liability, Robinson’s solution involves an expansion of its scope. However Robinson acknowledges that LFRC seems prima facie incompatible with current tort principles which in the least require the presence of plaintiff losses, defendant fault, and causation to be established before making defendants liable for plaintiffs’ compensation. Since losses would be absent in LFRC cases by definition, the first evidentiary requirement would always be frustrated, and in its absence proof of defendant fault and causation would also seem scant. If such an expansion of tort liability were not supported by current tort principles then it would be no better than proposals to switch accident law across to no-fault, since both solutions would require comprehensive legal reform. However Robinson argues that the above three evidentiary requirements could be met in LFRC cases to the same extent that they are met in other currently accepted cases, and hence that his solution would therefore be preferable to no-fault solutions as it would only require incremental but not comprehensive legal reform. Although I believe that actual losses should be present before allowing plaintiffs to seek compensation, I will not present a positive argument for this conclusion. My aim in this paper is not to debate the relative merits of Robinson’s solution as compared to no-fault solutions, nor to determine which account of the cause of the PL&I crisis is closer to the truth, but rather to find out whether Robinson’s solution would indeed require less radical legal reform than, for example, proposed no-fault solutions. I will argue that Robinson fails to show that current tort principles would support his proposed solution, and hence that his solution is at best on an even footing with no-fault solutions since both would require comprehensive legal reform. (shrink)

Burge's thesis is the thesis that certain second-order self-ascriptionsare self-verifying in virtue of their self-referential form. The thesis hasrecently come under attack on the grounds that it does not yield a theory ofself-knowledge consistent with semantic externalism, and also on the groundsthat it is false. In this paper I defend Burge's thesis against both charges,in particular against the arguments of Bernecker, Gallois and Goldberg. Thealleged counterexamples they provide are merely apparent counterexamples, andthe thesis is adequate (...) to its proper task. To think otherwise is simply tomisunderstand the thesis. (shrink)

My aim is to show that the development of self-defense skills functions as a means of overcoming bodily encoded limits to autonomy. Through this discussion, I hope to broaden our understanding of the embodied nature of autonomy by illuminating the connection between bodily training and responses such as self-confidence, self-trust, and self-esteem. My paper aims toward these goals in two steps. First, it shows that self-defense training is valuable for women because it provides (...) a security that one can avoid or counter personal violence directed toward oneself. Second, I develop an account of self-defense training as a source of self-confidence. For women living within a social network working to undermine their self-trust and self- esteem, it is important to cultivate self-confidence, particularly since elements of that network involve threatening displays of aggression or superiority. Self- defense training in my account is not simply a route to recovery in the wake of personal violence. Instead, and primarily, it is the development of skills aimed at preventing personal violence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Cross-Examining Socrates. A Defense of the Interlocutors in Plato’s Early DialoguesMark L. McPherranJohn Beversluis. Cross-Examining Socrates. A Defense of the Interlocutors in Plato’s Early Dialogues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 416. Cloth, $69.95.This book is a valuable and thoroughly-researched contribution to the study of Plato's Socratic dialogues. Its fine qualities stem in part from its cathartic motivations: for years Beversluis suppressed his ever-growing (...) reservations concerning the "standard picture" of Socrates's interaction with his various interlocutors (16). On Beversluis's account, this position naively takes Socrates's own apologia at face-value, portraying him as a self-sacrificing soul-therapist who treats his corrupt, one-dimensional interlocutors fairly, despite their many carefully drawn faults (e.g., stupidity, vanity, and violence, followed by face-saving exits). Beversluis aims to rectify this picture by retrying Socrates in a class-action suit on behalf of Socrates's interlocutors—who, he thinks, the standard account has quite unfairly maligned (while it has simultaneously ignored Socrates's "dark side"; e.g., his unscrupulous, hypocritical, and harmful tactics [esp. his conscious use of fallacy]).Beversluis's book contains a Preface, Introduction, and seventeen chapters, finishing with a very good bibliography, general index, and indexes of passages cited, names, and modern authors. Chapter 1, "The Socratic Interlocutor," examines the structure of Plato's Socratic dialogues and the role of their interlocutors. Beversluis contrasts Plato's dialogues with those produced by Augustine, Anselm, Hume, and Berkeley, arguing that a key difference between them lies in the fact that Socrates is presented as having no system to expound, championing instead the intrinsic value of philosophizing. Also, Socrates's interlocutors are drawn from a "narrow sociological group," (29) and are unprepared for their (unpleasant) encounters with Socrates (31).Chapter 2, "Elenchus and sincere assent," cogently argues that the "say what you believe" constraint on Socrates's use of the elenchus represents a consensus in need of critical reappraisal. In particular, Beversluis contends that Socrates often relies on qualified or uncomprehending assent, and that our texts do not support the idea that Socrates never argues with the soul-ignoring intention to win an argument using faulty argumentation and willful misrepresentation of the interlocutor's statements.The next fourteen chapters closely assess Socrates's encounters with Crito, Ion, Hippias, Laches and Nicias, Charmides and Critias, Euthyphro, Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, Hippocrates, Protagoras, Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. The book ends with a chapter on "The last days of the Socratic interlocutor," outlining the view that Plato's later work features non-elenctic spokesmen who are sensitive to the moral dangers of careless (i.e., Socrates's) elenchus-wielding.In his central chapters, Beversluis argues that "Saint Socrates" is in fact a philosophical [End Page 583] Jekyl and Hyde. Although scholars have celebrated the former philanthropic figure as a model philosopher, that has obscured his Hyde-like, predatory behavior towards innocents such as Euthyphro and Crito. However, here readers are themselves given a mixed bag: while Beversluis offers, for example, a detailed and smart defense of Cephalus against those who portray him as a petty-minded, superstitious, moral fraud (Chapter 9)—as well as sensitive, careful analyses of Socrates's less-than-clear arguments throughout—other chapters occasionally go overboard in their apologetic efforts. One example will have to suffice here.According to Beversluis, Euthyphro's typical characterization as a pretentious, dense, father-bashing, religious zealot who "would have done well in the Nazi Youth Movement," (R. F. Holland; 163), has drawn attention away from the fact that Socrates's treatment of Euthyphro is abusive and ineffectual. But although Beversluis rightly sees that the figure of Euthyphro is being used in a complex fashion by Plato, his account is marred in several ways. For example, although it is likely that Socrates does not himself possess complete definitions of virtue-concepts such as justice (164-169), unlike Euthyphro, Socrates can presumably provide elenchus-proof defenses of his own non-traditionalist claims. Again, while Socrates may overwhelm Euthyphro with his principles of proper definition (Eu. 5c-d, 6d-e), proceeding on uncomprehending, merely verbal agreement (169-177), Plato surely did not intend... (shrink)

This paper contributes to a debate that has arisen in the recent self-knowledge literature between agentialists and empiricists. According to agentialists, in order for one to know what one believes, desires, and intends, rational agency needs to be exercised in centrally significant cases. Empiricists disagree: while they acknowledge the importance of rationality in general, they maintain that when it comes to self- knowledge, empirical justification, or warrant, is always sufficient. In what follows, I defend agentialism. I argue that (...) if we could only come to know our judgement-sensitive attitudes in the way described by empiricism, then we would be self-estranged from them when we acquire knowledge of them. We would relate to our own attitudes as if we were watching the movies of our inner lives unfold. Given that this is not the position we typically inhabit, with respect to our judgement-sensitive attitudes, I conclude that empiricism fails. This is the self-estrangement argument against empiricism. I then consider a response that Brie Gertler, an empiricist, offers to the objection that empiricism fatally portrays us ‘mere observers of a passing cognitive show’ (2016, p. 1). I argue that her response is unsuccessful. Hence, we should endorse agentialism. (shrink)

In this issue of the journal Mark Brown has offered a new argument against my potential future of value theory. I argue that even though the premises of this new argument are far more defensible than the premises of his old argument, the new argument does not show that the potential future of value theory of the wrongness of killing is false. If the considerations to which Brown appeals are used, not to show that the potential future of value (...) theory is false, but to show that abortion is morally permissible, they are also unsuccessful. I also argue that Brown's clarified self-represented future of value account and Simon Parsons's account of the wrongness of killing are both subject to major difficulties. Finally, I show, in an appendix, that Brown's assertion that my discussion of his views suffers from major logical errors is false. (shrink)

Derek Parfit argues in Reasons and Persons that acting according to your present desires is more rational, or at least as rational, as acting in your long-term self-interest. To do this, he puts forward a case supporting a 'critical present-aim theory' of rationality opposed to the self-interest theory, and then argues against a number of possible replies. This article is a response to these arguments, concluding that Parfit's favouring of the present-aim theory is unfounded, and that (...) class='Hi'>self-interest is the better theory of rationality. (shrink)

Gordon's emphasizes that the process of prosecution is crucial to the idea of crime. One who commits a public wrong is properly called to public account for it, and the criminal trial constitutes such a public calling to account. The state is the proper prosecutor of crimes: since a crime is ‘our’ wrong, rather than only the victim's wrong, it is appropriate that we should prosecute it, collectively. The case is not simply V the victim, or P the plaintiff, (...) against D the defendant. It is brought, as the Americans properly have it, by ‘the People’, or by ‘the Commonwealth’, against the defendant. This is a useful way in which to think about crimes and criminalisation. This chapter tries to develop this conception of public wrongs a little further, which also involves complicating it more than a little. It works from a version of liberal communitarianism that rejects the metaphysical version of the individualist's ‘unencumbered self’; but the account sketched here should be compatible with all but the most radically individualist kinds of liberal theory. (shrink)

I defend a broadly Aristotelian account of the virtue of magnanimity against the objection that Aristotelian magnanimity is an expression of the vice of pride and so cannot be a virtue. I identify the essential features of magnanimity on Aristotle’s account and argue that Aquinas preserves these essential features while identifying additional necessary conditions of the virtue of magnanimity that illuminate the virtue and show it to be incompatible with pride. I also show where two other attempts (...) to defend Aquinas’s development of Aristotelian magnanimity against the pride objection fail. (shrink)

I argue that any successful account of permissible self- defence must be action-guiding, or practical . It must be able to inform people’s deliberation about what they are permitted to do when faced with an apparent threat to their lives. I argue that this forces us to accept that a person can be permitted to use self-defence against Apparent Threats: characters whom a person reasonably, but mistakenly, believes threaten her life. I defend a hybrid account of (...) class='Hi'>self-defence that prioritises an agent’s subjective perspective. I argue that it is sufficient to render the use of defence permissible if an agent reasonably believes that (a) she is morally innocent, and (b) if she does not kill this person, then they will kill her. I argue that the correct account of self-defence must distinguish between whether an agent is permitted to inflict harm, and whether the target is liable to bear that harm. (shrink)

According to an idealist theory of reference for proper names the reference of proper names is fixed by what name users express in their beliefs, intentions, thoughts, and so forth. My task is to show that an idealist can defend himself against the proponent of the causal theory of reference, who claims that reference cannot be fixed solely by what is expressed in name users' minds. An idealist can handle certain facts of reference the causal theorist believes (...) idealists cannot handle. Moreover, there are possible tales that undermine the causal theory and motivate an idealist one. The idealist can also gather the material he needs for his defense--essences--from the distinction between a theory of reference and a theory of meaning that causal theorists like to draw. Finally, unlike the causal theorist, the idealist does not leave ontology in the lurch. (shrink)

This monograph is a detailed study, and systematic defence, of the Growing Block Theory of time (GBT), first conceived by C.D. Broad. The book offers a coherent, logically perspicuous and ideologically lean formulation of GBT, defends it against the most notorious objections to be found in the extant philosophical literature, and shows how it can be derived from a more general theory, consistent with relativistic spacetime, on the pre-relativistic assumption of an absolute and total temporal order. -/- The authors (...) devise axiomatizations of GBT and its competitors which, against the backdrop of a shared quantified tense logic, significantly improves the prospects of their comparative assessment. Importantly, neither of these axiomatizations involves commitment to properties of presentness, pastness or futurity. The authors proceed to address, and defuse, a number of objections that have been marshaled against GBT, including the so-called epistemic objection according to which the theory invites skepticism about our temporal location. The challenge posed by relativistic physics is met head-on, by replacing claims about temporal variation by claims about variation across spacetime. -/- The book aims to achieve the greatest possible rigor. The background logic is set out in detail, as are the principles governing the notions of precedence and temporal location. The authors likewise devise a novel spacetime logic suited for the articulation, and comparative assessment, of relativistic theories of time. The book comes with three technical appendices which include soundness and completeness proofs for the systems corresponding to GBT and its competitors, in both their pre-relativistic and relativistic forms. -/- The book is primarily directed at researchers and graduate students working on the philosophy of time or temporal logic, but is of interest to metaphysicians and philosophical logicians more generally. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a significant moral difference between force applied against (imminent) attackers on the one hand and force applied against “threatening” people who are not (imminent) attackers on the other. Given that there is such a difference, one should not blur the lines by using the term “self-defense” (understood as including other-defense) for both uses of force. Rather, only the former is appropriately called self-defense, while for the latter, following (...) German legal terminology, the term “justifying defensive emergency” will be used here. The two justifications are not governed by the same criteria and thus lead to different results. The paper will proceed by providing first, in section (1), a brief sketch of the contours of the self-defense justification, putting particular emphasis on the necessity criterion. On the account presented here, the necessity criterion of the self-defense justification is particularly harsh on the aggressor (and thus not to be interpreted as literally requiring the employment of “the mildest means”) and its applicability is only triggered by an (imminent) attack, not by other kinds of threats. Section (2) will then further explain the differences between self-defense and justifying defensive emergency. A particularly important difference is that people who are subjected to justified self-defense cannot permissibly defend themselves, while people who are subjected to (extremely harmful or even lethal) justified defensive emergency measures can. Thus, in this latter case we have a “moral equality” (of sorts) of the involved parties: they can permissibly use force against each other. Section (3) will list and defend some conditions that a successful argument against the imminence requirement of the self-defense justification has to satisfy. In the light of these conditions, sections (4) to (7) will discuss a number of objections that have been adduced against the imminence requirement as well as proposals that have been made in support of alternative accounts. It will be argued that all these objections and proposals fail. Section (8) will provide a number of thought experiments in support of the claim that the harsh necessity criterion of the self-defense justification is only triggered by imminence while force against non-imminent threats can be justified with the help of the justifying emergency exemption, as well as for the claim that the justifying emergency exemption puts the person using preventive force against non-imminent threats on a shorter leash and makes him liable to counter-measures. Section (9) will explain the rationale for tying the applicability of the harsh necessity criterion of the self-defense justification to imminent attacks. Section (10) will discuss some special cases and show why they do not undermine the normative validity of this tie. (shrink)

The malicious acts of terrorism in New York and Washington emphasized the need for states to combat terrorism. Likewise, Israel has suffered various terrorist attacks since its establishment. There are distinctive features in contemporary terrorism which call for a new assessment of its nature and the status of terrorists in domestic and international law. In October 2000, a violent conflict erupted between organizations operating within the territory of the Palestinian Authority--an entity that is not a state but is a sovereign (...) authority--and the State of Israel. This is a new type of armed conflict, one different from that treated in the international law of armed conflicts. No clear view exists as to the rules which should be applied in such a situation. This is one of the questions that shall be raised in this article. As a result of the violence against Israel, Israel initiated a policy which the media has called 'Israel's elimination policy', but which I believe may be more appropriately described as 'preventive action' taken by Israel within the framework of a military policy aimed at neutralizing terrorist organizations by targeting the perpetrators or their commanders. In this article I shall examine whether this policy is legitimate as a matter of law and morality. (shrink)

The notions of acting against one's better judgment and self-deception are notoriously problematic. Often, they have been deemed incoherent in a tradition which may be traced back to Socrates. My inquiry into these notions, unlike many others, explicitly draws upon considerations pertaining to the interpretation of speech and action and the role which rationality plays within it, the nature of psychological explanation and the framework in which it is embedded. This work is motivated by the view that, if (...) carried out properly, a study of the mind which focuses on deviant phenomena will also improve understanding of standard cases of action and belief-formation. ;The possibility of acting against one's better judgment seems, prima facie, to be at odds with our notion of action. I begin by critically examining several arguments purporting to show that akrasia is in fact incompatible with the notion of a free intentional action. I show that, overall, an agent appears more rational, and thus more intelligible, if instances of local irrationality of this kind are acknowledged as such rather than re-interpreted as non-akratic actions. The position I reject represents the agent as significantly more inconsistent than necessary, and in some sense, undermines the endeavor of a psychological explanation. ;I proceed to argue that reasons play a unique role in the context of explaining actions. At the same time, the framework of action explanation must be expanded so as to include additional familiar elements such as emotions and fantasies in order to improve understanding of the choices we make. I argue that the causal influence of these elements cannot be fully captured as merely a source of reasons for actions; thus, some of the mental causes responsible for our actions lie outside the realm of reasons. Finally, I show how expanding the explanatory framework of actions makes the phenomenon of akrasia less puzzling in some respects; indeed, this expansion should incline us to expect that persons would act akratically on occasion. ;My discussion of self-deception focuses on two major questions: whether every case of self-deception involves the presence of an intention to form a belief and to what extent this phenomenon warrants a view of the mind as divided. With respect to the first question, I suggest that a view which refrains from interpreting every case of self-deception as involving an intention to form a belief is psychologically more plausible and accounts for some key cases for which the intentionalist view fails to account. As for the second question, I contend that there are at least two ways in which the mind may be properly seen as divided, yet divisions which introduce homuncularism should be rejected. What emerges from my discussion of self-deception, as well as the preceding discussion of akrasia, is a view of the mind that essentially incorporates both rational and non-rational elements. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga charges classical foundationalism with self-referential incoherence, meaning that that doctrine employs criteria for rationally acceptable propositions which exclude the criteria themselves. More specifically, the charge is that the criteria are neither properly basic nor supported by properly basic propositions. In section 1 the doctrine of classical foundationalism is briefly explained. In section 2, a defense against Plantinga's objection is provided showing how the foundationalist can provide arguments which ground the criteria in question in properly basic (...) propositions. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga charges classical foundationalism with self-referential incoherence, meaning that that doctrine employs criteria for rationally acceptable propositions which exclude the criteria themselves. More specifically, the charge is that the criteria are neither properly basic nor supported by properly basic propositions. In section 1 the doctrine of classical foundationalism is briefly explained. In section 2, a defense against Plantinga's objection is provided showing how the foundationalist can provide arguments which ground the criteria in question in properly basic (...) propositions. (shrink)

Robustness is a fundamental property of biological systems, observed ubiquitously across species and at different levels of organization from gene regulation to ecosystem. The theory of biological robustness argues that robustness fosters evolv-ability and that together they entail various tradeoffs as well as characteristic architectures and mechanisms. We argue that classes of biological systems have evolved to enhance their robustness by extending their system boundary through a series of symbioses with foreign biological entities . A series of major biological innovations (...) has been achieved by events consistent with this framework: horizontal gene transfer, serial endosymbiosis, oocytes-mediated vertical infection, and host-symbiont mutualism for bacterial flora. Self-extending symbiosis contributes to robustness because symbiotic foreign biological entities can enhance the adaptative capacity of the system against environmental perturbations as well as contribute novel functions. In addition, evolutionary history indicates that the degree of symbiosis achieved has substantially changed from tight integration into the genome to loose integration as bacterial flora . The most dramatic example can be seen in the symbiosis of host immune system and bacterial flora in which substantial function of host defense depends on the proper maintenance of bacterial flora and its adaptive capability. Biological systems following this type of evolutionary path might have attained high levels of functionality, robustness, and evolvability. Thus, robustness, evolution, and self-extending symbiosis may form essential system principles for biology. (shrink)

People have worried about the compatibility of anti-individualism and knowledge of the contents of one's thoughts. Skepticism about such knowledge rears its ugly head. The first—classic—response to such worries was Tyler Burge's contention that a subclass of judgments about one's own mental states are cogito-like: they are self-verifying, thereby guaranteed to be true. Finn Spicer has recently put forward an interesting argument against Burge's claim. In this paper, I defend Burge's account of self-verification against Spicer's argument.

Desire theories of well-being claim that how well someone’s life goes for them is entirely determined by the fulfilment and frustration of their desires. This thesis considers the viability of theories of this sort. It examines a series of objections that threaten to undermine these views. These objections claim that desire theories of well-being are incorrect because they have implausible implications. I consider four main objections over the course of this thesis. The first claims that these theories are incorrect because (...) they implausibly entail that self-sacrifice does not exist. The second claims that these theories are incorrect because they implausibly entail that severe depression does not diminish the well-being of those afflicted by this condition. The third claims that these theories are incorrect because they have implausible implications about the relative importance of fleeting desires, long-standing desires, and fluctuations in desire strength to well-being. The fourth claims that these theories are incorrect because they fail to capture the intuition that desire fulfilments which leave us disappointed and bereft of feelings of satisfaction do not improve well-being. In each of these cases, I find that desire theories of well-being have sufficient resources to refute these objections. The primary finding of this thesis is that many of the arguments against desire theories of well-being are unsuccessful. A secondary set of findings concern observations about the structure of human psychology. (shrink)

It is often maintained that co-referential terms can be substituted for one another whilst preserving truth-value in extensional contexts, and preserving grammaticality in all contexts. Crispin Wright calls this claim ‘The Reference Principle’ . Since Wright defines extensional contexts as those in which truth-value is determined only by reference, it is the assertion about substitution salva congruitate that is significant. Wright argues that RP is the key to understanding how Frege came to hold, paradoxically, that the concept horse is not (...) a concept, and to providing a resolution to the paradox .RP and Wright's application of it to Frege's Paradox have recently been criticized by Oliver . 1 Oliver argues that the syntax of natural languages is too complicated for the failure of two terms to fit into the same forms of speech to indicate a difference in semantic significance: RP is, he claims, an empirical falsehood.I shall argue that, although Oliver's arguments show that RP is false as it stands, a revised version of the principle, employing a more robust notion of substitution, is nevertheless correct. I shall end by outlining the implications of this revision for the appeal to RP and for Wright's resolution of Frege's Paradox.1. Referring terms and referential positionOliver's case against RP appeals to an impressive array of counter-examples. For our purposes it will be useful to regard these as being of three sorts. The first sort can be dealt with relatively swiftly: examples of the second and third sorts are more challenging.The first sort of counter-example involves referring terms that feature as parts of complex referring expressions. Oliver's examples include ‘William’ in the complex expression ‘William the Conqueror’ . The substitution of expressions co-referential with ‘William’ into sentences employing the complex referring expression often results in ungrammatical …. (shrink)

Humean accounts of natural lawhood have often been criticized as unable to account for the laws’ characteristic explanatory power in science. Loewer has replied that these criticisms fail to distinguish grounding explanations from scientific explanations. Lange has replied by arguing that grounding explanations and scientific explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which can be used to argue that Humean accounts of natural law violate the prohibition on self-explanation. Lange’s argument has been sharply criticized by Hicks and van Elswyk, (...) Marshall, and Miller. This paper shows how Lange’s argument can withstand these criticisms once the transitivity principle and the prohibition on self-explanation are properly refined. The transitivity principle should be refined to accommodate contrasts in the explanans and explanandum. The prohibition on self-explanation should be refined so that it precludes a given fact p from helping to explain why some other fact q helps to explain why p. In this way, the transitivity principle avoids having counterintuitive consequences in cases involving macrostates having multiple possible microrealizations. The transitivity principle is perfectly compatible with the irreducibility of macroexplanations to microexplanations and with the diversity of the relations that can underwrite scientific explanations. (shrink)

This chapter develops an account of enforcement rights against nonculpable intruders, and extends it to include rights against culpable violators. It extends the discussion to include enforcement rights to defend others. The extended account holds that an agent has an enforcement right to intrude against another if the defensive intrusion suitably reduces nonjust intrusion-harm to the agent or others, is no more harmful to the other than necessary to achieve the reduction, and imposes intrusion-harm on the other (...) that is proportionate in a specified manner to the reduction achieved. The crux of the theory comes from the proportionality conditions, which are sensitive to whether the individual will be intruding upon rights, the degree of responsibility for intrusion-harm, and the degree of culpability. (shrink)

This article examines Hilary Putnam's work in the philosophy of mathematics and - more specifically - his arguments against mathematical realism or objectivism. These include a wide range of considerations, from Gödel's incompleteness-theorem and the limits of axiomatic set-theory as formalised in the Löwenheim-Skolem proof to Wittgenstein's sceptical thoughts about rule-following, Michael Dummett's anti-realist philosophy of mathematics, and certain problems – as Putnam sees them – with the conceptual foundations of Peano arithmetic. He also adopts a thought-experimental approach – (...) a variant of Descartes' dream scenario – in order to establish the in-principle possibility that we might be deceived by the apparent self-evidence of basic arithmetical truths or that it might be ‘rational’ to doubt them under some conceivable set of circumstances. Thus Putnam assumes that mathematical realism involves a self-contradictory ‘Platonist’ idea of our somehow having quasi-perceptual epistemic ‘contact’ with truths that in their very nature transcend the utmost reach of human cognitive grasp. On this account, quite simply, ‘nothing works’ in philosophy of mathematics since wecan either cling to that unworkable notion of objective truth or abandon mathematical realism in favour of a verificationist approach that restricts the range of admissible statements to those for which we happen to possess some means of proof or ascertainment. My essay puts the case, conversely, that these hyperbolic doubts are not forced upon us but result from a false understanding of mathematical realism – a curious mixture of idealist and empiricist themes – which effectively skews the debate toward a preordained sceptical conclusion. I then go on to mount a defence of mathematical realism with reference to recent work in this field and also to indicate some problems – as I seethem – with Putnam's thought-experimental approach as well ashis use of anti-realist arguments from Dummett, Kripke, Wittgenstein, and others. (shrink)

Over the past years, in books and journals (this journal included), N. Maxwell launched a ferocious attack on B. C. van Fraassen’s view of science called Constructive Empiricism (CE). This attack has been totally ignored. Must we conclude from this silence that no defence is possible and that a fortiori Maxwell has buried CE once and for all? Or is the attack too obviously flawed as not to merit exposure? A careful dissection of Maxwell’s reasoning will make it clear (...) that neither is the case. This dissection includes an analysis of Maxwell’s ‘aberrance–argument’ (omnipresent in his many writings) for the claim that science implicitly and permanently accepts a substantial, metaphysical thesis about the universe, which then paves the way for his own metaphysical-realist hierarchy-view of science. This aberrance-claim, which Maxwell directs against a widely shared and harmful ideology of science called ‘Standard Empiricism’, generally has been ignored too, for more than a quarter of a century. Our conclusions will be that (i) Maxwell’s attacks on CE can be beaten off, and (ii) his ‘aberrance–arguments’ do not establish what Maxwell believes they establish, but (iii) we can draw a number of valuable lessons from these attacks about the nature of science and of the libertarian nature of CE. (shrink)

Criminal punishments are commonly imposed on those convicted of harming others, yet punishment is itself necessarily harmful. Although we suppose that there is a moral difference between the two types of harming, the precise nature of this difference is not at all obvious. The problem here can be approached by asking this question: in what situations is harming others most obviously morally justified? And the answer, intuitively, is that these are situations involving self-defense against culpable aggression. This (...) intuition provides a point of departure for explaining how criminal punishment is morally justifiable as an instrument of societal-defense. Developing this explanation requires identifying the principle of distributive justice that justifies harming others in individual self-defense, and then applying that principle to defensive actions by societies. (shrink)

Introduction This paper defends the moral significance of the distinction between killing and letting die. In the first part of the paper, I consider and reject Michael Tooley’s argument that initiating a causal process is morally equivalent to refraining from interfering in that process. The second part disputes Tooley’s suggestion it is merely external factors that make killing appear to be worse than letting die, when in reality the distinction is morally neutral. Tooley is mistaken to claim that we are (...) permitted to kill bystanders who had no fair chance to avoid being at risk of harm. We can support the significance of the killing / letting die distinction by considering the difference between what we are permitted to do in self-defence against those who are going to kill us, and what we can do against those who are going to let us die. I also suggest that we are less responsible for the deaths we allow than for the deaths that we cause, since we do not make people worse off for our presence in cases where we fail to save them. (shrink)

This study explored the effect of attitude towards entrepreneurship, need for achievement, risk-taking propensity, proactive personality, self-efficacy, opportunity recognition competency, entrepreneurship education, uncertainty avoidance, and entrepreneurial knowledge on entrepreneurial intention among university students in Malaysia. This quantitative study had adopted the cross-sectional design approach and involved 391 university students in Malaysia via the online survey. The study outcomes revealed that the NFA, PRP, and SLE significantly affect students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship. Moreover, entrepreneurship education and UNA significantly affect ORC. Finally, (...) ATE has a positive and significant effect on ENIN among university students in Malaysia. As entrepreneurship offers an alternative career path for people seeking economic prosperity and addressing social issues, including unemployment, the government should formulate effective policies and regulations that support entrepreneurship activities. Universities and other institutions should play a pivotal role in providing the proper exposure via entrepreneurship education while honing the essential traits for a career in entrepreneurship. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that, in order to account for the apparently substantive nature of definitional disputes, a commitment to what we call ‘Socratic essentialism’ is needed. We defend Socratic essentialism against a prominent neo-Carnapian challenge according to which apparently substantive definitional disputes always in some way trace back to disagreements over how expressions belonging to a particular language or concepts belonging to a certain conceptual scheme are properly used. Socratic essentialism, we argue, is not threatened by the (...) possibility that some apparently substantive definitional disputes may turn out to be verbal or conceptual, since this pluralist strategy, in our view, requires a commitment to more, rather than fewer, essences. What is more, a deflationary, metaphysically ‘light-weight’ construal of the essence-ascriptions in question leads to a peculiar conception of the pursuit of metaphysicians as behaving like deceptive (or self-deceived) grammarians pretending to be scientists. Moreover, this deflationary attitude, we argue, spreads beyond metaphysics and philosophy more broadly to apparently substantive definitional disputes in the sciences as well as other in other disciplines, such as art criticism. (shrink)

This paper defends physical becoming against Grünbaum's attack, by constructing three arguments in favor of physical becoming. Of the three, I rely primarily on an argument from the philosophy of language, and especially on the principle that tensed discourse involves presuppositions and commitments that Grünbaum's account of becoming cannot handle. I show that Grünbaum's analysis of becoming can provide only a very implausible reconstruction of the temporal coordination of speakers engaged in discourse.

Therapists and related theorists and practitioners of mental health tend to hold one of two broad views about how to help patients. On the one hand, some maintain that, or at least act as though, the basic point of therapy is to help patients become clear about what they want deep down and to enable them to achieve it by overcoming mental blockages. On the other hand, there are those who contend that the aim of therapy should instead be to (...) psychologically enable patients to live objectively desirable lives, say, ones that involve developing their inherent talents or exhibiting an authentic/strong/integrated self. In this chapter, I argue that neither of these prominent approaches is complete. Contra the former, sometimes what patients want deep down is not something to promote, and, against the latter, it can sometimes be reasonable for patients to want to sacrifice their own objective interests and for therapists to assist them in this regard. I argue that the category of meaningfulness does well at accounting for these counterexamples to the two dominant approaches, while capturing the kernels of truth in them. The proper aim of therapy, I suggest, is to enable patients to live meaningfully. (shrink)

In this paper I present a moral argument against capital punishment that does not depend upon the claim that all killing is immoral. The argument is directed primarily against non-philosophers in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Oddly, the moral argument against capital punishment has not been effective in the United States despite the biblical injunction against killing. Religious supporters of the death penalty often invoke a presumed distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘murdering’ and avow that God forbade the latter (...) but not the former. Self-defense and just wars are cited as cases of morally justified killing. Accepting these premises, I point out that when cases of justified killing in self-defense are altered to include an element of delay, disarming and premeditation, they too become murder. Since the death penalty clearly involves the elements of delay, disarming and premeditation, I conclude that the death penalty is murder in the biblical sense and ought to be abolished in any God-fearing society. (shrink)

This paper is about the meaning and function of identity statements involving proper names. There are two prominent views on this topic, according to which identity statements ascribe a relation: the object-view, on which identity statements ascribe a relation borne by all objects to themselves, and the name-view, on which an identity statement 'a is b' says that the names 'a' and 'b' codesignate. The object- and name-views may seem to exhaust the field. I make a case for treating (...) identity statements as sui generis instead of attempting to explain them by means of the idea that they ascribe a relation. My contention is that once we do this, no analysis is required. -/- I do not wish to insist that we stop saying that identity statements ascribe a relation. The point is that there is a fundamental disanalogy between identity statements and other two-termed statements which we overlook to our peril. This will be seen to parallel the more recognized disanalogy between existence statements and other one-termed statements. One way of registering the fundamental disanalogy is to say that identity statements are not relational, but this is not essential. Following my negative arguments in section 2, I employ some simple diagrammatical models in section 3 to exhibit the fundamental disanalogy. In a final section I respond to some possible objections which may be raised against this kind of approach. (shrink)