David Bridges; Education, Women and Human Nature, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 136–143, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.

There have been many efforts to infer causation from association byusing statistical models. Algorithms for automating this processare a more recent innovation. In Humphreys and Freedman[(1996) British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47, 113–123] we showed that one such approach, by Spirtes et al., was fatally flawed. Here we put our arguments in a broader context and reply to Korb and Wallace [(1997) British Journal for thePhilosophy of Science 48, 543–553] and to Spirtes et al.[(1997) British Journal for (...) the Philosophy of Science 48, 555–568]. Their arguments leave our position unchanged: claims to have developed a rigorous engine for inferring causation from association are premature at best, the theorems have no implications for samples of any realistic size, and the examples used to illustrate the algorithms are indicative of failure rather than success. The gap between association and causation has yet to be bridged. (shrink)

Professor Arnold's reply to my reply seems not to have touched the substance of my argument. Perhaps I have been unclear. Arnold contends that any form of market socialism, if unchecked by central authorities, would revert to a system essentially undistinguishable from capitalism. Against this contention I have argued that a democratic, worker-controlled, market socialism that generates its investment fund by taxation exhibits no such tendency. Specifically, I argued that in such a society 1. there exists no tendency (...) for socialized property to revert to private property ; 2. the ability of private individuals to accumulate vast wealth is sharply curtailed ; 3. the authority structures within enterprises are much more democratic than under capitalism; 4. intra-firm income differentials will be far more egalitarian than under capitalism. (shrink)

This book evaluates the increasingly wide variety of intellectual resources for research methods and methodologies and investigates what constitutes good educational research. Written by a distinguished international group of philosophers of education Questions what sorts of research can usefully inform policy and practice, and what inferences can be drawn from different kinds of research Demonstrates the critical engagement of philosophers of education with the wider educational research community and illustrates the benefits that can accrue from such engagement.

It might be appropriate to begin my commentary by disclosing the fact that Brad Lewis and I are good friends. “Oh, no,” you might think, “this will be one of those cozy, mutual back-patting, insider sessions that so often take place in the American Philosophical Association group meetings.” But never fear. For one thing, I’m no insider to the intellectual circles represented in Dr. Lewis’ bibliog- raphy. Indeed, I’ve read only two of the 32 works listed there. (Depending on how (...) you look at it, that may make me either completely unqualified to comment on this paper or exceptionally well-qualified for reasons of critical distance.) Also, friendship and constructive criticism are entirely compatible in my book. And, to paraphrase a philosopher of some importance, “Brad is dear, but the truth is dearer.” I will begin my commentary by identifying some of Brad’s theses that I find interesting, important, and well-supported. The second part of my commentary will elaborate my major concerns about the paper. This part will be longer, not because my overall reaction is more critical than favorable, but because exploring different viewpoints generally takes more space and time than noting points of agreement. In my conclusion, I will suggest that many of the paper’s insights are likely to sail better if some of the baggage from postmodernism and cultural studies is thrown overboard. (shrink)

This article is centrally concerned with the sort of knowledge that can and should inform educational policy—and it treats this as an epistemological question. It distinguishes this question from the more extensively explored question of what sort of knowledge in what form policy-makers do in fact commonly take into account. The article examines the logical and rhetorical character of policy and the components of policy decisions and argues that policy demands a much wider range of information than research typically provides. (...) Either the research task or commission has to be substantially extended or the gap will be filled by information or thinking that is not derived from research. One of the gaps between research of an empirical kind and policy is the normative gap. In the final section the article points to the inescapably normative character of educational policy. Of course the values that inform policy can be investigated empirically, but this kind of enquiry cannot tell us what we should do. There is a role for research/scholarship and more rather than less intelligent and critical argumentation in addressing these normative questions as well as the empirical questions that underpin policy. (shrink)

My text is written to answer the questions asked at the APA Meeting's presentation of the book Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere by professors María Lugones and Eduardo Mendieta. The answer seeks to clarify that Lugones's infrapolitics position is not so distant from mine. I also address Mendieta's question directed more to the aesthetic domain. There, I seek to show how my position could be taken as a creative effort to extend some of Habermas's early work on (...) the public sphere, and to develop the thesis of the important relations between the aesthetic and the moral realms. (shrink)

According to Existence Monism, there is only one concrete object in existence—the world. This view is to be contrasted with Existence Pluralism, which posits multiple concrete objects. In a recent Analysis paper, Sider (Analysis 2007; 67:1–7) presents arguments against Existence Monism claiming that there are evident features of statespace, which the monist is at a loss to explain. Given that the pluralist can give plausible and satisfying explanations of these features, we have good reason to favor pluralism over monism, or (...) so Sider supposes. This article constitutes a response to Sider’s claims. I will show how, by appealing to the world’s properties as opposed to the world’s parts, the monist is able to explain these features of statespace perfectly well. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, David Rondel argues that symbolic (or semiotic) objections to markets hold significant argumentative force. Rondel distinguishes betweenIncidentalmarkets andPervasivemarkets, where Incidental markets describe individual instances of exchange and Pervasive markets comprise the social management of goods by an institutional market arrangement. In this reply, I specify a key insight that buttresses Rondel’s distinction. The distinction as it is currently characterized fails to identify when Incidental markets become Pervasive. This opaqueness allows scholars that (...) defend markets without limits to question the analytical distinctiveness of Incidental and Pervasive markets. I show that by incorporating the market’s price mechanism as an indicator of a properly Pervasive market, Rondel’s distinction is not only able to tackle the aforementioned retort, but also allows for important reflections on what types of institutions should be considered markets at all. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Evil as the Good?A Reply to Brook ZiporynDavid R. LoyI was surprised to receive this lengthy response to my short review—yet not displeased, for the important question is, of course, how much Professor Ziporyn's reply helps to clarify the issues at stake, which we agree deserve to be pursued. One of the many admirable aspects of his Evil and/or/as the Good is that, in addition to presenting (...) the Tiantai ethical position in its historical context, it argues forcefully for the validity and relevance of that approach today. Moreover, I am pleased at the way Ziporyn's response focuses the argument of his rich and dense book, so I welcome this opportunity to continue the discussion. And perhaps those who have read this far will also be pleased that I am able to present my main concerns somewhat more concisely.Ziporyn begins with the relationship between ultimate and provisional truth, usually the crux of the matter from a Mahāyāna perspective. In response to a point I make—that ethically the nondual 'ultimate' point of view needs to be supplemented by a provisional 'lower truth' that distinguishes between good and evil—he emphasizes that according to Tiantai "conventional truth and ultimate truth are actually identical" (his italics) and that the conventional truth embraces all possible assertions, beliefs, and positions. Later, he elaborates that "provisional truth is a portion of ultimate truth, in a peculiar omnicentric sort of whole/part relation in which each part in fact contains the whole." The important term remains identity, for according to Tiantai "the idea that two entities might be mutually implicative and dependent, not adventitiously but in their nature, and yet not identical, is logically impossible." Ethically, of course, this means something more than the interdependence of good and evil: it is not only that "the most horrible evils are ineradicable, built into the absolute unchangeable nature of all existence, and fully and eternally present even in Buddhahood," but that "greed, anger, and delusion would be seen to be identical with Buddhahood, in accordance with precisely this Tiantai doctrine of the interpenetration of good and evil."As in the original review, my main point is that this emphasis on the identity of conventional truth and ultimate truth is an important insight, but one that turns out to be quite problematic ethically. Its value is mostly epistemological and metaphysical: it helps us escape from the kind of dualism that often postulates some 'higher' transcendental reality corresponding to a 'higher' ultimate truth. Instead, the 'higher' is not separate from the provisional and conventional, but the truth (whether realized or not) is that the whole 'ultimate' is completely contained within each conventional part or provisional position.Dōgen somewhere makes the point that the goal is not to eradicate concepts (which is a dualistic approach to practice, seeking a purified mind that transcends language) but to liberate concepts. What becomes important is our ability to move [End Page 348] (and play) freely among the multiplicity of linguistic possibilities—in Ziporyn's terms, to 'recontextualize' without getting stuck in any particular context or conceptual system. Nothing is lacking in any of these possibilities; in terms of Indra's Net, each node manifests the whole. We are not liberated from language, except in the sense that we are not trapped in any particular language game; rather, we are liberated in language. We should not blame the victim: the problem is not language itself, but our tendencies to cling to some concepts, et cetera, more than others- including, for example, our dualistic tendency to discriminate between 'good' and 'evil' in order to identify with the former by annihilating the latter (a very timely topic, unfortunately).But good and evil for Ziporyn are more than interdependent. He claims that they are identical, and that is where difficulties arise. The epistemological point about the identity of the two truths becomes more problematical when we move into ethics, where the 'cash value' is somewhat more obvious and immediate, in the sense that we need ethics to help us cope with moral choices that we find ourselves required to make in daily life, in circumstances not always... (shrink)

The focus of this paper is on a variety of practices associated with the transfer of educational policy and practice from one national education system to another – practices sometimes referred to as ‘policy borrowing’. Its concern is with the ethical and political issues raised by these practices. In particular, it discusses concerns that these practices might be practically inappropriate, that they might be culturally insensitive or inappropriate, and that they might be impositional, exploitative perhaps or even oppressive. Such concerns (...) arise particularly in contexts in which the transfer is from relatively rich and powerful countries to relatively poor and less powerful countries. But policy transfer is a feature of relations between the rich and powerful too, and to some extent the issues are then turned on their head. Those engaged in the business of transfer become more clearly identified as service providers and they have to ask questions about to whom and under what conditions they might provide this service. Finally, the paper considers policy transfer as a form of pedagogy and asks whether the kind of ethical considerations which underpin any properly educational transaction might not provide a guide to behaviour by the agents of policy transfer. (shrink)

Although the basic ideas of the ontological argument can be found in Aristotle and Philo Judaeus, the argument received its classical formulation in Anselm's Proslogion and his Reply to the objections raised by Gaunilo. During the succeeding nine centuries the argument has had a chequered career. It was supported by some scholastic theologians but rejected by Aquinas. Descartes and Leibniz offered their own versions of the proof but Kant's refutation of the argument has generally been accepted as conclusive during (...) the past century and a half. Nevertheless, interest in the proof has never completely disappeared—perhaps provoked by Aquinas' suggestion that the proof may be valid for God even though it cannot be valid for us because of the inadequacy of our knowledge of God. Recently there has been a revival of interest in the ontological argument. J. N. Findlay put the argument into reverse to show the necessary non-existence of God in an article in 1948 but in later writings he has suggested that the argument may have positive significance. In 1960 Norman Malcolm published a paper in which he distinguished two basically different forms of the ontological argument in the Proslogion and defended the possible validity of the second of them. (shrink)

This paper replies to Fred Ablondi’s discussion of Descartes’s treatment of madness in the Meditations. Against Ablondi’s interpretation that Descartes never seriously takes on board the skeptical hypothesis that he might be mad, because to do so would be for him to undermine the logical thought processes required to realize his agenda in the Meditations, I contend that Descartes does employ madness as a skeptical device, by assimilating its skeptical essentials into the dream argument. I maintain that while Descartes does (...) not use madness to undermine logical processes, he does adduce other considerations that reveal him to be prepared to see those processes undermined. On the question why Descartes abandons madness in the Meditations, I argue that, despite its attractiveness as a skeptical device, the madness hypothesis involves methodological shortcomings that render it unfit for service in the doubt. (shrink)

In ‘The Authorship of Sister Peg', David Raynor relies on circumstantial evidence, unsubstantiated hypotheses, and subjective analysis in an effort to dispute my article ‘Let Margaret Sleep' and claim the authorship of Sister Peg for David Hume. This reply focusses instead on the large body of documentary and testimonial evidence that has surfaced during the past forty years, which overwhelmingly and convincingly supports the attribution of Sister Peg to Adam Ferguson. New documentary evidence includes Ferguson's emendations in (...) Sir Walter Scott's copy of Sister Peg, an 1809 letter from Ferguson to Alexander Fraser Tytler and Tytler's response to it, and information about the early publishing history of the work – as well as a letter by Hume himself about his preoccupation with another project when Sister Peg was written. While no new contemporary testimonials alleging Hume's authorship have been discovered since the publication of Raynor's edition of Sister Peg in 1982, at least nine contemporary testimonials naming Ferguson as the author are now known. This reply refutes Raynor's attempts to discredit the most famous of these testimonials – the account of Ferguson's authorship in the memoirs of Alexander Carlyle – and shows that the others cannot be reduced to Carlyle’s influence. (shrink)

Deductivism has been variously presented as an evaluative thesis and as an interpretive one. I argue that deductivism fails as a universal evaluative thesis, and as such that its value as an interpretive thesis must be supported on other grounds. As a reconstructive strategy, deductivism is justified only on the grounds that an arguer is, or ought to be, aiming at the deductive standard of evidence. As such, the reconstruction of an argument as deductive must be supported by contextual and (...) situational factors including facts about the arguer. Further, the plausibility of deductivism as a normative thesis is not tied to its plausibility as a descriptive or interpretive thesis. (shrink)

Some economists now predict that technology will eliminate many millions of jobs and lead to a future without work. Much debate focuses on the accuracy of such a prediction—whether, or at what rate, jobs will disappear. But there is a wider question raised by this prediction, namely the merits or otherwise of automating work. Beyond estimating future job losses via automation, there is the normative issue of whether the quality of life would be enhanced in a world where machines replace (...) humans in work. Economics makes particular assumptions about the value of work and the nature of well-being that can address this normative issue. But a deeper enquiry into the scope for living well in a possible automated future requires us to think beyond the limits of standard economic theory and to engage in matters of relevance to business ethicists. This paper shows how automation raises crucial concerns about work—its meaning and contribution to well-being—and how the ability to envisage a better future of work depends on bridging the gap between economics and business ethics. Overall, the paper aims to further understanding of automation as a possible mechanism to raise well-being within work and beyond it. (shrink)

ABSTRACTJason Summersell responded to my article – ‘Reclaiming reality and redefining realism: the challenging case of transgenderism’ – by suggesting that I have made an inferential error about ontology. In this paper, I refute his objection and argue that his position does not take seriously the unresolved public policy threat posed by the commercially-inflected and politicized world of trans ideology. The realpolitik of trans-activism contains legal and illegal processes that now suppress a necessary debate about a number of matters: from (...) common sense notions of sex and the findings of biological science; to the rights of women and children. (shrink)

Rodger et al 1 argue that ‘ethically defensible xenotransplantation should entail the use of genetic disenhancement if it is demonstrated that’ the pain and suffering of donor pigs ‘cannot be eliminated by other means’. The phrase ‘genetic disenhancement’ refers to genetic manipulation that would produce an animal that is either less able or entirely unable to experience pain and suffering. (The phrase is euphemistic because, on one possible reading, it suggests the removal of an existing enhancement, rather than what it (...) actually is, namely a diminishment relative to the species norm.) The authors acknowledge that genetic ‘disenhancement’ is not a ‘morally ideal ‘solution’, but argue that ‘it is morally better to prevent unavoidable pain until a viable non-animal alternative becomes available’ (p. 1). In advancing this argument, they explicitly state that they make no assumption that xenotransplantation is, in principle, morally permissible. They take no stand on that issue, which is beyond the scope of their paper. They assume only that ‘ (1) xenotransplantation research will inevitably continue and (2) causing pain and suffering requires sufficient justification’ (p. 1). However, in the absence of an assumption that xenotransplantation is, in principle, morally permissible, the authors have not established their …. (shrink)

I here defend some of the positions taken in National Responsibility and Global Justice against criticisms by Nils Holtug. I reinforce my suggestion that claims about national membership being ‘morally arbitrary’ are question begging and try to show how such membership can legitimately serve as a source of special obligations. I examine the claim that the problems involved in constructing a ‘currency’ of global justice also arise in the domestic context and suggest that appealing to ‘welfare’ as the relevant currency (...) is not a useful way of responding to cultural differences. Finally, I respond to the hypothetical case of an unequally distributed life-extending vitamin by arguing that the discovery of such a substance would change our understanding of a normal human life, and thereby raise the bar of sufficiency. Keywords: moral arbitrariness; obligation; national identity; global egalitarianism; sufficiency (Published: 16 September 2011) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 4 , No. 3, 2011, pp. 165-171. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v4i3.8489. (shrink)

John Wilson; Rationality and Moral Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 11, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 98–112, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-.

Computation is central to the foundations of modern cognitive science, but its role is controversial. Questions about computation abound: What is it for a physical system to implement a computation? Is computation sufficient for thought? What is the role of computation in a theory of cognition? What is the relation between different sorts of computational theory, such as connectionism and symbolic computation? In this paper I develop a systematic framework that addresses all of these questions. Justifying the role of computation (...) requires analysis of implementation, the nexus between abstract computations and concrete physical systems. I give such an analysis, based on the idea that a system implements a computation if the causal structure of the system mirrors the formal structure of the computation. This account can be used to justify the central commitments of artificial intelligence and computational cognitive science: the thesis of computational sufficiency, which holds that the right kind of computational structure suffices for the possession of a mind, and the thesis of computational explanation, which holds that computation provides a general framework for the explanation of cognitive processes. The theses are consequences of the facts that computation can specify general patterns of causal organization, and mentality is an organizational invariant, rooted in such patterns. Along the way I answer various challenges to the computationalist position, such as those put forward by Searle. I close by advocating a kind of minimal computationalism, compatible with a very wide variety of empirical approaches to the mind. This allows computation to serve as a true foundation for cognitive science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:GOD'S KNOWLEDGE OF FUTURE CONTINGENTS: A REPLY TO WILLIAM LANE CRAIG DAVID B. BURRELL, c.s.c. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana IT IS FORTUNATE that other duties kept me from responding to William Lane Craig's "Aquinas on God's Knowledge of Future Contingents" when it came out (Thomist 54 [1990]: 33-79), for my initial perusal found me at once impressed and dismayed, and quite unable to disentangle (...) the two responses. A more careful subsequent reading allows me, I believe, to pinpoint where he goes wrong in reaching the conclusion which he does, yet to do so in such a way as to send readers back to an essay which is otherwise quite remarkable in the way it learns from Aquinas and offers us useful ways to read him on these perplexing issues. In doing so, he corrects many a misreading, and amasses sufficient textual and conceptual clarifications as almost to correct his own misreading. And best of all, I can hope that my rejoinder will send readers back to Aquinas above all. Indeed, one cannot but feel that the current climate of controversy regarding the proper understanding of his nuanced synthesis in philosophical theology would please Aquinas far more than attempts earlier in this century to distill it all into a " doctrine." Craig's conclusion reads: In maintaining that God's knowledge is the cause of everything God knows, Thomas transforms the universe into a nexus which, though freely chosen by God, is causally determined from above, thus eliminating human freedom (79). I shall claim that he reaches this conclusion only because ( 1) he presumes God's knowledge to be propositional knowing (52-53), 317 318 DAVID B. BURRELL, C.S.C. even though he asserts that it is not (60, n.61); and (2) that such a presumption leads him to overlook the vast difference between scientia visionis and scientia simplicis intelligentiae, though he insists on the difference and formulates it nicely in parallel with practical and speculative knowing in God (40). Such presumptions about divine knowing are not uncommon, of course, and what they lead to is one's overlooking what Josef Pieper called the "hidden element in the philosophy of St. Thomas "-creation. Indeed, my critique could begin there, remarking how Craig's careful delineation of Aquinas on God's eternal knowing of contingent things proceeds oblivious of the central fact that God's knowing in such cases is that of a creator (" In summary, then, Thomas has appealed e%clusively to the tradition of God's timelessness in order to defuse the threat of fatalism" [61, emphasis mine]). The simple observation that the God in question is always the free creator of all-that-is would have allowed him to see that Aquinas does not make the relation of God to contingents turn solely on that of an eternal knower of temporal things, but that the eternity/time relation subserves that of creator/creature. (This ordering is the more crucial, we shall see, for its power to correct the endemic tendency to equate " eternal " with " timeless," which Craig manifests throughout.) And despite Pieper's reminder that creation is largely hidden, it remains sufficiently present to a careful reader that Craig must indeed confront it at the end. Yet by the time he does so, his earlier presumptions have led him to complain that Aquinas's insistence that "God's knowledge is the causa essendi of the things that are going to happen... seems nearly unintelligible " (73). Indeed what I shall offer as the key to resolving his crucial dilemmas, and so overturning his stated conclusion, Craig introduces as a " final issue [which] threatens to undermine Thomas's attempt to preserve contingency in the face of divine knowledge, [viz.] his doctrine that God's knowledge is the cause of its objects rather than the objects' being the cause of God's knowledge" (70-71). The theologian in me would prefer to begin right here, with the radical eruption into an Aristotelian world of a free creator, GOD'S KNOWELDGE OF FUTURE CONTINGENTS 319 whose relation to the universe is indeed such as to turn our sense of knowing inside-out.1... (shrink)

Replying to Finlayson, I defend analytic political philosophy from the charge that, by ignoring their historical context, it fails to grasp what is really at stake in the case of issues such as immigration. I also defend my own work on that topic from the charge that it is implicitly racist by virtue of using arguments capable of being appropriated by racists.

This book evaluates the increasingly wide variety of intellectual resources for research methods and methodologies and investigates what constitutes good educational research. Written by a distinguished international group of philosophers of education Questions what sorts of research can usefully inform policy and practice, and what inferences can be drawn from different kinds of research Demonstrates the critical engagement of philosophers of education with the wider educational research community and illustrates the benefits that can accrue from such engagement.

Recent initiatives from the Employment Department in the UK have promoted ‘enterprise education’. This paper discusses the relationship of enterprise education to the more established notion of a liberal education. It is argued that enterprise education should be understood not as replacing the aspirations of a liberal education, but rather as supporting or extending them. It does this (i) by helping pupils to understand what is arguably a significant form of life; (ii) by developing understanding of the economic conditions of (...) our social functioning; and (iii) by developing personal qualities which equip us practically to pursue our chosen paths in a competitive and sometimes hostile world. (shrink)

In his commentary, Oaksford makes two main claims: (1) that the externalisation method used by Green, Over, and Pyne (1997) enforces the correlation observed between probability estimates and selection, and (2) that these estimates support the prediction of a downward revision of P(p) when P(p) > P(q). In this reply, we rebut claim 1 by describing the instructions more comprehensively, and claim 2 by reiterating the importance of making certain theoretical distinctions which Oaksford does not make. Our interest is (...) the psychological process of reaching decision: externalisation methods provide a means of exploring this process and of assessing the value of Bayesian approaches. (shrink)

This chapter examines criticisms made by or on behalf of ‘disempowered’ groups against outsider research into their experience: that outsiders cannot properly understand and represent their experience and are exploitative and disrespectful, and that having outsiders articulate your views for you is intrinsically disempowering. I argue that ‘outsider research’ can contribute to the better understanding of the researcher, of the community engaged in the research and of the wider community. Nevertheless the claim ‘nothing about us without us’ expresses an ethical (...) and epistemological truth in educational research: as a statement about the kind of relationship which should obtain between researcher and participants. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 509 covered and interpreted. Depending on their interests and their theories of causation, historians may have any variety of single-facetcd or multi-faceted interpretations. Social history of ideas is one variety. Practitioners of each of the above willnotice omissions of subdivisions and may differ with my definition of their field. Such a reaction would further indicate that indeed there is a plethora of approaches. Such abundance is (...) needed to meet the spectrum of concerns of historically-minded scholars. In each approach the focus is different; an idea, a general topic, the transmission of ideas, a discipline, a specific social environment, an intellectual community, the spirit of an era, a whole society and culture, an event, the life and times of a writer. Ideas do in fact have meaning and function along this full spectrum of contexts. A methodology is chosen which will throw light on a particular kind of context; some of the best scholarship results from the utilization by one individual of complementary methodologies. Fortunately, to compensate for the limitations of individual scholars, we have other scholars! The tensions between the horiz0ntalists and verticalists and between the externalists and intemalists are healthy tensions. Only through communicationamong scholars utilizing differentmethodologies and through attempts by individual scholars to approach their subject from several perspectives can we hope to gain a multi-faceted comprehension of man's past. MARYANNE CLINE HOROWITZ Occidental College DESCARTES' INCONSISTENCY: A REPLY* In my paper, "Descartes on Unknown Faculties: An Essential Inconsistency,''1 I point out that Descartes claims on one occasion that he could have a faculty which is unknown to him (Claim A), but on a second occasion, within the same Meditation, claims the contrary (Claim B). I then try to show that nothing which Descartes achieves or says between A and B justifies this volte face on his part, and subsequently conclude that he is inconsistent in Meditation III, and that this inconsistency is in fact essential to his argument. Professors Brewster and Humphrey have raised objections to my view that Descartes is inconsistent.2 Here I wish to reply to these objections because I think they fail, though sometimesin quite subtle ways, and because I believe I can in this way clarity my earlier contentions. Brewster and Humphrey, as I understand them, have raised three major objections to my paper. These objections, in the order in which I shall take them up, are: I. That I do not have a prima facie case for my claim that Descartes is inconsistent, for * I wish to thank my colleague, Professor Jonathan Robinson, and Professor Donald Livingston of Northern Illinois University for their helpful comments on a draft of this reply. i "Descartes on Unknown Faculties: An Essential Inconsistency," Journal of the History of Philosophy, VI, 3 (July, 1968), 244-256. 2 Leonard E. Brewster, "How to Know Enough about Unknown Faculties," Journal o! the History of Philosophy, XII, 3 (July, 1974), 366--371, and Ted B. Humphrey, "How Descartes Avoids the Hidden Faculties Trap," ibid., 371-377. 510 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Claim A can be demonstrated to be false, and hence Descartes is justified in maldng Claim B. (Brewster)8 Ii. That I fail to note that Claim A is made in a limited context, namely, a discussion of the origin of only those ideas which are adventitious, while Claim B is made in a signilicantly different context, and hence the two claims are not inconsistent. (Humphrey) III. That I have failed to see that for Descartes Jacultiesare always dependent modes of substances, and hence that no faculty could have a power exceeding the substance of which it is a mode, which is to say that I have missed a crucial metaphysical distinction which accounts for the apparent differences in the two claims, and permits both to be made without inconsistency. (Humphrey) I. Professor Brewster argues that I do not have a prima fade case for the claim that Descartes is inconsistent. The "pivotal issue," he suggests, "is whether the possibility of the unknown faculty invalidates Descartes' first proof for the existence of God." He then suggests that this proof consists of three premises: (1) "Descartes' assertion that he possesses an... (shrink)

In the literature on persons and their identity, it is customary to distinguish the issue of the nature of personhood—“What is a person?”—from the issue of per- sonal identity—“What are the persistence conditions of a person over time?” In recent years, Eric Olson and Lynne Rudder Baker have brought to the forefront of discussion the related, but often neglected, issue of our essence: “What are we, most fundamentally (essentially)—human animals, persons, or something else?” -/- Attacking what he calls the Standard (...) View of personal identity, according to which personal identity consists in some type of psychological continuity, Olson contends that this thesis has highly implausible implications. Attributing the claim that we are essentially persons to the Standard View, Olson defends the alterna- tive thesis that we are essentially (living) human animals, members of the species Homo sapiens, and that our persistence conditions are biological, having nothing to do with psychology. At the heart of his critique is the contention that the Standard View lacks a plausible account of the relationship between a person and the human animal associated with her. Defending “person essentialism” and defining persons as beings with first-person perspectives, Lynne Rudder Baker responds to Olson’s challenge with the Constitution View: We (human) persons are constituted by, but not identical to, human animals. -/- After reconstructing Olson’s critique of the Standard View, I argue that Baker goes a long way toward meeting his challenge to account plausibly for the relationship between persons and human animals. Then I contend that her person-based Constitution View nevertheless has major difficulties: a “newborn problem”; a dubious ontology; and a problematic account of personal identity. I conclude with general reflections about this dialectic. (shrink)

: Those who are morally opposed to abortion generally make several pivotal assumptions. This paper focuses on the assumption that we have full moral status throughout our existence. Coupled with the assumption that we come into existence at conception, the assumption about moral status entails that all human fetuses have full moral status, including a right to life. Is the assumption about moral status correct? In addressing this question, I respond to several arguments advanced, in this journal and other venues, (...) by Alfonso Gómez-Lobo. Gómez-Lobo's reasoning resolves into two basic arguments: (1) an appeal to the practical necessity of early moral protection and (2) an appeal to our kind membership and potentiality. I respond to these in turn before offering further reflections. (shrink)

The liberal international order is being challenged today by populism and unilateralism. Though it has been resilient in the past, the current challenges from within the order are unprecedented. Without being too pessimistic, I expect the LIO will survive but retract to its original core states in North America, Europe, and Northeast Asia, shedding some of its universal pretensions. States that remain within the liberal order, in turn, will compete with an alternative Chinese-led international hierarchy built around all or part (...) of the current Belt and Road Initiative countries. While international institutions can facilitate cooperation, they do not bridge this emerging divide sufficiently to forestall conflict and, in any event, will not be sufficiently robust to prevent a new cold war. As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this brief essay sketches this argument and concludes with some possible ways of moderating future conflicts. (shrink)

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all (...) sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand. (shrink)

We have earlier shown by construction that a proposition can have a welldefined nonzero probability, even if it is justified by an infinite probabilistic regress. We thought this to be an adequate rebuttal of foundationalist claims that probabilistic regresses must lead either to an indeterminate, or to a determinate but zero probability. In a comment, Frederik Herzberg has argued that our counterexamples are of a special kind, being what he calls ‘solvable’. In the present reaction we investigate what Herzberg means (...) by solvability. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of making solvability a sine qua non , and we ventilate our misgivings about Herzberg’s suggestion that the notion of solvability might help the foundationalist. (shrink)

In his commentary on my paper, “Means-Ends Epistemology”, David Chart constructs a Riddle of Induction with the following feature: Means-ends analysis, as I formulated it in the paper, selects “all emeralds are grue” as the optimal conjecture after observing a sample of all green emeralds. Chart’s construction is rigorous and correct. If we disagree, it is in the philosophical morals to be drawn from his example. Such morals are best discussed by elucidating some of the larger epistemological issues involved. (...) “Means-ends Epistemology” sought a normative theory of hypothesis selection. I defined what it means for an inductive method to reliably and efficiently find a correct hypothesis from a set of alternative hypotheses. (In fact, I investigated a number of standards of empirical success for inductive methods.) Call such methods optimal. We may take optimal inferences to be those made by optimal methods. This defines a relation Optimal-Inference(h,e,H): “given the set of alternative hypotheses H, and evidence e, hypothesis h is an optimal inference”. One fundamental difference between the means-ends approach and traditional confirmation theory is that the latter has sought a two-place relation between theory and evidence alone, something like “hypothesis h is highly confirmed given evidence e”. From my point of view, posing the problem of induction as discerning the right relation between theory and evidence is elliptical because it leaves unspecified the set of alternative hypotheses under investigation (as well as other relevant factors, such as the scientist’s background knowledge, observational means, cognitive capacities and epistemic values). Chart’s Riddle highlights the fact that depending on the space of alternative hypotheses, means-ends analysis may select a different hypothesis on the same evidence: “all emeralds are green” in my Goodmanian Riddle, and “all emeralds are grue” in his. To my mind, his example.. (shrink)

This special issue aims to help bridge this gap: it provides a flavour of how philosophical translation in particular was conceived in Renaissance Europe. It is also meant to help stimulate a debate concerning the viewpoint of Renaissance practitioners of the art of «interpretation»: when working from Latin or Greek, did they see the activities of translation and vernacularization, for instance, as identical? Did they conceive of “vertical” and “horizontal” translations as separate, according to an influential distinction outlined by Gianfranco (...) Folena? Did they adopt a broadly similar approach to translation, regardless of whether they were dealing with literary, scientific, or religious texts? Did they think of translations as clearly separate from other forms of interpretation, such as paraphrases or other renderings? (shrink)

In a recent paper, David James argues for a new understanding of the compatibility of freedom and necessity in Marx's idea of a communist society. According to James, such compatibility has less to do with anything distinctive about the nature of labour and more to do with how communist producers organize the sphere of material production. In this paper, I argue that James provides a nuanced and plausible account of one part of Marx's story of the compatibility of freedom (...) and necessity in communist society but that his account misses another, and, in my view, more fundamental part of the story. The part I have in mind centres on Marx's claim that communist producers achieve their freedom through the performance of necessary labour—by helping others to satisfy their needs. I argue that Marx is committed to a stronger claim than James wishes to make, namely, that freedom and necessity are not merely compatible but that participation in the realm of necessity is required for human freedom. (shrink)

From Gillian Brock’s vigorous probing of my treatment of meeting needs in my book of that title I have learned a good deal; and from the article published in Dialogue, which concerns in particular the connection that I made between justice and needs, I have certainly learned how my arguments for that connection might have been expressed more cogently. Yet I think that the arguments I intended, and even the arguments I expressed, escape her criticisms. She quotes a number of (...) leading assertions drawn one by one from my text, but consolidates into one argument what are best regarded as three different, though connected, arguments, to the disadvantage of their respective strengths. She also disregards, to their disadvantage, the distinction between “respect for a person M’s position”—my phrasing, meaning M’s position under some assignment of benefits and burdens—and “respect for a person M”—a notion that does not come into the three arguments. (shrink)

Polish version, see Kuipers (2002) "O dwóch rodzajach idealizcji I konkretyzacki. Przypadek aproksymacji prawdy".

Mary Winsor (2003) argues against the received view that pre-Darwinian taxonomy was characterized mainly by essentialism. She argues, instead, that the methods of pre-Darwinian taxonomists, in spite of whatever their beliefs, were that of clusterists, so that the received view, propagated mainly by certain modern biologists and philosophers of biology, should at last be put to rest as a myth. I argue that shes right when it comes to higher taxa, but wrong when it comes the most important category of (...) all, the species category. (shrink)

This special issue aims to help bridge this gap: it provides a flavour of how philosophical translation in particular was conceived in Renaissance Europe. It is also meant to help stimulate a debate concerning the viewpoint of Renaissance practitioners of the art of «interpretation»: when working from Latin or Greek, did they see the activities of translation and vernacularization, for instance, as identical? Did they conceive of “vertical” and “horizontal” translations as separate, according to an influential distinction outlined by Gianfranco (...) Folena? Did they adopt a broadly similar approach to translation, regardless of whether they were dealing with literary, scientific, or religious texts? Did they think of translations as clearly separate from other forms of interpretation, such as paraphrases or other renderings? (shrink)

Responding to several leading ideas from a paper by Allen Buchanan, the present essay explores the implications of genetic enhancement for moral status. Contrary to doubts expressed by Buchanan, I argue that genetic enhancement could lead to the existence of beings so superior to contemporary human beings that we might aptly describe them as post-persons. If such post-persons emerged, how should we understand their moral status in relation to ours? The answer depends in part on which of two general models (...) of moral status—one based on respect and one based on interests—is more adequate. Buchanan tentatively argues that a respect-based model is preferable. I challenge Buchanan's view, along these lines: If we embrace a respect-based model of moral status featuring a threshold that divides persons, who are thought to have full and equal moral status, from sentient nonpersons, thought to have less moral status, then we should acknowledge a second threshold and a level of moral status higher than ours. A better option, I tentatively suggest, is to drop the idea of levels of moral status, accept that all sentient beings have moral status, and allow that some differences in interests and capacities justify some significant differences in how we should treat beings of different kinds. (shrink)

Resource extraction companies worldwide are involved with Indigenous peoples. Historically these interactions have been antagonistic, yet there is a growing public expectation for improved ethical performance of resource industries to engage with Indigenous peoples. (Crawley and Sinclair, Journal of Business Ethics 45, 361–373 (2003)) proposed an ethical model for human resource practices with Indigenous peoples in Australian mining companies. This paper expands on this work by re-framing the discussion within the context of sustainable development, extending it to Canada, and generalizing (...) to other resource industries. We argue that it is unethical to sacrifice the viability of Indigenous cultures for industrial resource extraction; it is ethical to engage with indigenous peoples in a manner consistent with their wishes and needs as they perceive them. We apply these ideas to a case study in the coastal temperate rainforest of Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia, Canada. In this case a scientific panel comprised of Nuu-Chah-Nulth elders, forest scientists and management professionals, achieved full consensus on developing sustainable forest practice standards by drawing equally on Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and Western science in the context of one of the most heated and protracted environmental conflicts in Canadian history. The resulting sustainable forest practice standards were later adopted by leading forestry firms operating on the coast. Our analysis of this scientific panels success provides the basis for advancing an ethical approach to sustainable development with Indigenous peoples. This ethical approach is applicable to companies working in natural resource industries where the territories of Indigenous peoples are involved. (shrink)

ConclusionWe remain perplexed why Loughlin and Pritchard chose to single out our study on lay views of mental health as a basis for attacking relativism generally within social science. We consider that political, epistemological and health policy grounds for a social scientific consideration of lay knowledge are so strong that they negate naïve objectivist critiques which appearl to the reason and thus reasonableness of professional knowledge. Reason and rationality, like reality, are not singular, clear cut and self-evident. Accordingly, it is (...) the responsibility of social scientists to explore the ambiguities and complexities of knowledge held and enacted by a whole range of social groups. (shrink)

Kagan argues that human beings who are neither persons nor even potential persons — if their impairment is independent of genetic constitution — are modal persons: individuals who might have been persons. Moreover, he proposes a view according to which both personhood and modal personhood are sufficient for counting more, morally, than nonhuman animals. In response to this proposal, I raise one relatively minor concern about Kagan's reasoning — that he judges too quickly that insentient beings can have interests — (...) before engaging the appeal to modal personhood. I challenge the thesis that modal personhood is relevant to one's moral status, first, by way of analogy to a kicker who misses a field goal though he might have made it; second, by casting doubt on implications for two impaired infants ; and, finally, by examining implications for dogs who would count as modal persons when genetic enhancements are capable of transforming them into persons. (shrink)

Does it signify morally whether a deception is achieved by a lie or some other way? David Bakhurst has challenged my view that it can signify. Here I counter his criticisms--firstly, by clarifying the terminology: What counts as a lie? Secondly, by exploring further what makes lying wrong. Bakhurst maintains that lying is wrong in that it infringes autonomy--and other deceiving stratagems, he says, do so equally. I maintain that lying is wrong in that it endangers trust--and other types (...) of deceiving stratagems do not do so equally. Lying to patients, I contend, is an abuse of their trust. Other forms of their intentional deception need not be so, although, in our autonomy-minded culture, they are likely to be so. (shrink)

In "Omniprescient Agency" (Religious Studies 28, 1992) David P. Hunt challenges an argument against the possibility of an omniscient agent. The argument—my own in "Agency and Omniscience" (Religious Studies 27, 1991)—assumes that an agent is a being capable of intentional action, where, minimally, an action is intentional only if it is caused, in part, by the agent's intending. The latter, I claimed, is governed by a psychological principle of "least effort," viz., that no one intends without antecedently feeling that (...) (i) deliberate effort is needed to achieve desired goals, (ii) such effort has a chance of success, and (iii) it is yet contingent whether the effort will be expended and the goals realized. The goals can be anything from immediate intentional doings, tryings or basic actions, to remote and perhaps unlikely consequences of actions, e.g., global justice. The thrust of the principle is that it would be impossible for a wholly rational self-aware agent to intend without a background presumption of an open future as concerns the desired state and the means to it. But this presumption embodies a sense of contingency which, in turn, requires an acknowledged ignorance about what the future holds, otherwise the future would appear closed relative to present knowledge with the desired state presented as either guaranteed (necessary) or ruled out (impossible). Regardless whether this self-directed attitude is accurate, it follows that intentional action precludes complete knowledge of one's present and future. Consequently, no omniscient or omniprescient being can be an agent. (shrink)

This article builds on Samantha Vice’s argument on the problem of whiteness in contemporary South Africa. I will explore the thesis of invisibility regarding whiteness and argue for its relevance to the rich per se. This thesis demonstrates how white privilege and affluence, despite being glaringly visible in a concrete sense, is rendered invisible together with the mostly black poverty by which it is contrasted. The invisibility of whiteness translates and flows into the so-called ‘invisibility of richness’, which involves anyone (...) who is economically affluent in this country and has the same effect of rendering poverty invisible. The massive and ever-growing divide between rich and poor means that both have fundamentally incommensurate experiences of life in this country, which is why post-apartheid South Africa is such a strange place to live in for all of its inhabitants. In the latter part of the article, a suggestion will be made about what the appropriate response to the injustices of this strange place might look like for whites. (shrink)

In “Weak Inferential Internalism” I defended the frequently voiced criticism that any internalist account of inferential justification generates a vicious regress. My defense involved criticizing a recent form of internalism, “Weak Inferential Internalism” , defended by Hookway and Rhoda. I argued that while WII does not generate a vicious regress, the position is only distinguishable from externalism insofar as it makes an arbitrary distinction between individuals who believe for the very same reason. Either way, WII is not a defensible internalist (...) account of inferential justification. In his “In Defense of Weak Inferential Internalism,” Rhoda has responded to my dilemma argument. He argues that it is mistaken to assume that WII must be incompatible with externalism, and that contrary to my claims, WII is distinguishable from externalism in several ways. In this reply, I explain why none of Rhoda’s replies suggest that there is a defensible internalist account of inferential justification. (shrink)

Many philosophers interested in the nature of moral or other normative truths and facts are attracted to response-dependence accounts. They think, in other words, that the target normative facts are reducible to, or constituted by, or identical with, some facts involving our relevant responses. But these philosophers rarely allow all of our actual responses (of the relevant kind) to play such a role. Rather, they privilege some..

In response to John Bishop's (2007) account of passionally caused believing, Dan-Johan Eklund (2014) argues that conscious non-evidential believing is (conceptually) impossible, that is, it's (conceptually) impossible consciously to believe that p whilst acknowledging that the relevant evidence doesn't support p's being true, for it conflicts with belief being a truth-oriented attitude, or so he argues. In this article, we present Eklund's case against Bishop's account of passionally caused believing, and we argue that it's unpersuasive, at least to those who (...) accept permissivism about evidence, that is, that it's possible for there to be more than one rational response to a given body of evidence. We do this through a novel application of a case of nurtured belief, that is, of a person holding a belief simply because she was caused to do so by her upbringing, and we use it to show exactly where Eklund's argument goes wrong. We conclude by drawing a general lesson drawn from this debate: if permissivism about evidence is true, then belief being truth-oriented is consistent with non-evidential believing being possible. (shrink)