The paper focuses on Reid's unique epistemological distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities and examines it in relation to other facets of his philosophy: his stance vis-à-vis the scientific inquiries of secondary qualities; his aesthetics; his analysis of the perception of the primary quality of hardness; his theory of learning. An inquiry into the primary/secondary distinction which takes into account such a broad context will reveal it to be far more sophisticated, dynamic and flexible than an analysis of (...) the distinction which solely takes into consideration the passages in which the Scottish philosopher directly and straightforwardly introduces it. (shrink)

Reid's discernment between a ‘relative’ and a ‘distinct’ conception plays a significant role in his theory of secondary and primary qualities and in his postulations on ‘instinctive’ and ‘rational’ aesthetic perceptions. However, relative conceptions and, hence, the relative/distinct conception discernment, are absent from one model of aesthetic perception which Reid endorses, as well as from his theory of ‘moral approbation’. This paper aims (1) to explore the importance of Reid's relative/distinct discernment for the conception of qualities and aesthetic features and (...) (2) to point out and explain the significance of a different model of conception, which excludes relative conception, embraced by Reid for a certain context of aesthetic perception and for moral approbation. (shrink)

We seek to probe into the question of whether it is moral to administer a punishment on a criminal both in his lifetime and posthumously. Is it moral to punish a murderer both during his lifetime by sentencing him, for instance, to life imprisonment, and posthumously—let us assume—by burial in a separate section of the cemetery exclusively assigned for murderers, which would perpetuate their ignominy? We consider that a discussion of this crux might raise valuable insights and questions regarding the (...) philosophy of punishment. We will aim to examine this issue from several perspectives: utilitarianism, retributivism, and expressivism. Moreover, we shall consider it as a means for preventing an exacerbation of the punishment by more cruel means. Furthermore, we will point out some problems which should be considered that may arise from the posthumous penalty. (shrink)

In Emile, Rousseau advances significant ideas about language, language learning and teaching: He posits a universal natural language that develops as the child matures; focuses on ‘private’ words invented by children, on the challenge facing children in their understanding of exceptions to general rules of the mother tongue and on recommended methods of teaching the mother tongue. The paper explores these notions, which feature at the end of Book I of Emile. It seeks to explain and interpret them as postulations (...) regarding language, language learning and teaching and, moreover, to show how they relate to Rousseau's general principles of education. (shrink)

I suggest two main ways of interpreting Reid's analysis of the perception of the quality of hardness: Reid endorses two distinct concepts of hardness. The distinction between the two lies in a profoundly different relation between the sensation of hardness and the concept of hardness in each of them. The first concept, which I term as a “sensation-laden concept”, is “the quality that arises in us the sensation of hardness.” The second concept, which I call a “non-sensational concept”, is “the (...) cohesion of the parts of the body with more or less force.” Reid is thinking like a developmental psychologist and postulates what I consider as a gradual development from one concept to the other according to which the initial sensation-laden concept of hardness, which we form during our early childhood, gradually develops into a mature non-sensational concept of hardness. (shrink)

Reid's principle of credulity may be interpreted as equivalent to a principle of charity, due to the nature of three beliefs it implies concerning the interlocutors, which are held by the person who attempts to acquire their language: They are telling truth in the sense that they are saying what they really think, perceive, feel, believe; they are veracious in the sense that what they say is objectively true; they use language consistently. This interpretation relies on Reid's straightforward remarks on (...) his principle of credulity and on his view of two related correspondences: One correspondence is between the principle of credulity and the principle of veracity. The other is between these two principles and the principles that create the ‘language of nature’ and guide us in our efforts to unravel it. (shrink)

The paper suggests that there are two different ways in which a legal system restricts an individual’s rights. It can either grant a power that revokes the legal protection of the right or it can acknowledge the infringement of a legal right and yet justify such an infringement by means of a criminal law justification. The distinction proposed by the paper has both expressive and practical implications and is useful in solving dilemmas arising in emergencies when constitutional constraints make it (...) impossible to grant the power to revoke legal protection of a basic right. In some of these situations a criminal law justification might support infringement of such a right. This claim is demonstrated by analyzing the ruling of the German Constitutional Court concerning the shooting down of a hijacked airplane in circumstances similar to those of September 11. (shrink)

Solidarity, Religious Freedom and COVID-19: The Case of the Ultra-Orthodox Sects in Israel The article discusses the tension between social solidarity and religious freedom as demonstrated by the refusal of the ultra-Orthodox sects in Israel to comply with COVID-19 regulations. The article provides a detailed description of the refusal to comply with the regulations restricting mass prayer services in synagogues and studying Torah in the yeshivas, thus interfering with the ultra-Orthodox religious life. The article suggests possible explanations for that refusal, (...) based on either religious beliefs or a socio-political claim to autonomy, and discusses whether the polity should be willing to tolerate such a refusal on the basis of the cultural defence. The article concludes that despite the drastic restrictions on religious life caused by the social distancing regulations, and the special importance of freedom of religion, reducing the pandemic’s spread called for awarding priority to solidarity over religious freedom, and the enforcement of social solidarity legal duties – the social distancing regulations – on all. (shrink)

. The nature of crime: A synthesis, following the three perspectives offered in the grammar of criminal law. Criminal Justice Ethics: Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 91-98.

In some instances, the criminal justice system is affected by a moral panic; that is, by an exaggerated social reaction to an assumed threat to moral values. When influenced by moral panic, courts...

Reflections on the various articles which will be published in the criminal law and philosophy dedicated to my retirement.

The paper argues for attaching a significant role to the dignity of offenders as a limitation on the scope of substantive criminal law. Three different aspects of human dignity are discussed. Human dignity is closely connected with the principle of culpability. Respecting the dignity of offenders requires that we assign criminal liability according to the actual attitudes of the offenders towards the interests protected by the offence. The doctrine of natural and probable consequence of complicity, which allows us to assign (...) liability for mens rea offenses to a negligent offender, violates the dignity of the offender; it treats the incautious offender as if she had willfully expressed disrespect towards the protected interest. The human dignity core of privacy is invaded by criminalizing the private possession of child pornography. By extending the prohibition of the creation, sale and distribution of child pornography to the private possession of pornography, the State attempts to control the way the individual expresses an essential part of the self—his sexual fantasies—within himself. Dignity demands that our actions convey an attitude of respect towards human beings. The expressive meaning of disrespect is culture-dependent. The historical association with totalitarian regimes explains our reluctance to impose a legal duty to report past crime: the individual who is legally required to turn a suspect into the police is viewed as an “informant.”. (shrink)

Taking as its starting point Miri Gur-Arye’s critical discussion of a legal duty to report crime, this paper sketches an idealising conception of a democratic republic whose citizens could be expected to recognise a civic responsibility to report crime, in order to assist the enterprise of a criminal law that is their common law. After explaining why they should recognise such a responsibility, what its scope should be, and how it should be exercised, and noting that that civic responsibility (...) must include a responsibility to report one’s own crimes; it discusses whether that civic responsibility could ground at least a limited legal duty to report certain types of crime. It then turns to the question of whether a civic responsibility to assist the criminal law’s enterprise of bringing wrongdoers to account could include a responsibility to arrest suspected or known offenders if the police cannot or will not do so—a responsibility to make a citizen’s arrest, and the legal power to discharge that responsibility: how far should citizens feel entitled, or duty-bound, thus to ‘take the law into their own hands’? (shrink)

In whose voice does the criminal law speak, and why does it matter? Miriam Gur-Arye argues that the answer to the first question depends on the kind of duty violated by the crime at issue. In some cases (say, election fraud or tax evasion), the criminal law speaks in the voice of the polity—but in other cases (say, murder or rape), it speaks in the voice of human beings. Or so argues Gur-Ayre. Not surprisingly, perhaps, a lot depends on (...) what one means by the voice of the criminal law. In this paper, I defend two related arguments. First, the criminal law typically claims to speak in the voice of the polity, even if, in practice, it often fails to do so. Second, where the criminal law does speak in the voice of the polity, its doing so can contribute to its own justification. (shrink)

In articles published ten years apart in 2011 and 2021, Gur-Arye argues that when considering an agent’s explanation for doing something that looks, prima facie, like a criminal offence, we should distinguish between a plea of justification, and an assertion that one acted within one’s power. The former explains an agent’s reasons for having committed a pro tanto offence (i.e., actus reus + mens rea). The latter is a denial that the agent committed any pro tanto offence at all. (...) In this piece, I build on Gur-Arye’s argument, suggesting that her claim about powers can be extended to all instances in which rights are displaced. I argue that in its expanded form, the practical significance of Gur-Arye’s claim goes well beyond what she identifies. It points to important and underappreciated points about the structure and classification of defensive claims in the criminal law, and helps identify errors in some arguments commonly made to support claims about disputed features of justifications. (shrink)

The renewal of Jewish sovereignty in 1948 created a grave challenge to Jewish tradition. As a system that was constructed in exile for a non-sovereign society, Jewish law was lacking "laws of state." The legitimacy of military action and the distinction between just and unjust wars are prime examples of fundamental issues that Jews did not have to confront for a very long period of time. This article examines contemporary Jewish legal responses to the challenges posed by the creation of (...) the Israeli military. It focuses on the efforts of Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the first Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, to create a modern corpus of Jewish law and ethics relating to war and the military. The Diaspora-based rabbinic literature seemed to oppose the use of force, reinterpreting Biblical references to military heroism as allegorical expressions of valor in the study of Torah. In an attempt to create an approach that legitimized the use of force while, at the same time, maintaining the rabbinic moral compunction regarding reliance on force, Rabbi Goren’s innovative corpus integrated Biblical and rabbinic sources, as well as pre-rabbinic apocryphal and historical sources. His writings on the subject are studied on a historical level, trying to uncover the various personalities and ideological positions to which he reacted. Rabbi Goren’s approach is examined through an analysis of his views on the proper treatment of the enemy and on the Peace for Galilee War in Lebanon. He advocated a balance between power and spirit, a balance that is also reflected in the personal internal harmony of Rabbi Goren himself: a merger of two worlds — the traditional student of the rabbinic study hall and the modern Jewish military officer — worlds by which he was influenced, between which he was torn, and that he tried to synthesize. (shrink)

Anliegen dieser Arbeit ist die Erhellung des Kunstbegriffs und des Sinns der ästhetischen Urteile unter Berücksichtigung der Problematik moderner Kunstströmungen. Die Antworten ergeben sich aus einer Auseinandersetzung mit verschiedenen zeitgenössischen Auffassungen. Insbesondere werden ästhetische Theorien analysiert, die auf folgende Denksysteme zurückgehen: Phänomenologie, Marxismus, analytische Philosophie, die Philosophie Wittgensteins - und ferner Semiotik und Informationstheorie.

This collection uses economic analysis to study some of the most pressing issues in corporate law. The last decade has brought certain corporate transactions and arrangements to the forefront of public attention and public debate. At the same time, a new mode of corporate law analysis has been developed - one that uses the tools of economics to identify the consequences and desirable features of corporate law rules. By bringing together work at the frontier of this method of analysis, the (...) volume provides a good picture of the power, current state, and future direction of the economic analysis of corporate law. Written by some of the most prominent contributors to the field, many of the chapters focus directly on the corporate control transactions that have recently attracted the most interest and controversy - corporate takeovers, buy-outs, recapitalizations, and reorganizations. (shrink)

I argue that general constraints on how humans think about humans produce universal features of the concept of mind. Some of these constraints determine how we imagine other people's thinking and action through our own. I formulate this in opposition to what I call the "theory theory". I believe this was the first use of this terminology, and this work was an early version of what has come to be called the simulation theory.

Models as Make-Believe offers a new approach to scientific modelling by looking to an unlikely source of inspiration: the dolls and toy trucks of children's games of make-believe.

Ilan Gur–ze’ev; Bildung and Critical Theory in the Face of Postmodern Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages.

Ilan Gur–ze’ev; Bildung and Critical Theory in the Face of Postmodern Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages.

In the past few years, the subject of AI rights—the thesis that AIs, robots, and other artefacts (hereafter, simply ‘AIs’) ought to be included in the sphere of moral concern—has started to receive serious attention from scholars. In this paper, I argue that the AI rights research program is beset by an epistemic problem that threatens to impede its progress—namely, a lack of a solution to the ‘Hard Problem’ of consciousness: the problem of explaining why certain brain states give rise (...) to experience. To motivate this claim, I consider three ways in which to ground AI rights—namely: superintelligence, empathy, and a capacity for consciousness. I argue that appeals to superintelligence and empathy are problematic, and that consciousness should be our central focus, as in the case of animal rights. However, I also argue that AI rights is disanalogous from animal rights in an important respect: animal rights can proceed without a solution to the ‘Hard Problem’ of consciousness. Not so with AI rights, I argue. There we cannot make the same kinds of assumptions that we do about animal consciousness, since we still do not understand why brain states give rise to conscious mental states in humans. (shrink)

In "Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow", David Lewis defends an analysis of counterfactuals intended to yield the asymmetry of counterfactual dependence: that later affairs depend counterfactually on earlier ones, and not the other way around. I argue that careful attention to the dynamical properties of thermodynamically irreversible processes shows that in many ordinary cases, Lewis's analysis fails to yield this asymmetry. Furthermore, the analysis fails in an instructive way: it teaches us something about the connection between the asymmetry of overdetermination (...) and the asymmetry of entropy. (shrink)

This book investigates law's interaction with practical reasons. What difference can legal requirements—e.g. traffic rules, tax laws, or work safety regulations—make to normative reasons relevant to our action? Do they give reasons for action that should be weighed among all other reasons? Or can they, instead, exclude and take the place of some other reasons? The book critically examines some of the existing answers and puts forward an alternative understanding of law's interaction with practical reasons. -/- At the outset, two (...) competing positions are pitted against each other: Joseph Raz's view that (legitimate) legal authorities have pre-emptive force, namely that they give reasons for action that exclude some other reasons; and an antithesis, according to which law-making institutions (even those that meet prerequisites of legitimacy) can at most provide us with reasons that compete in weight with opposing reasons for action. These two positions are examined from several perspectives, such as justified disobedience cases, law's conduct-guiding function in contexts of bounded rationality, and the phenomenology associated with authority. -/- It is found that, although each of the above positions offers insight into the conundrum at hand, both suffer from significant flaws. These observations form the basis on which an alternative position is put forward and defended. According to this position, the existence of a reasonably just and well-functioning legal system constitutes a reason that fits neither into a model of ordinary reasons for action nor into a pre-emptive paradigm—it constitutes a reason to adopt an (overridable) disposition that inclines its possessor towards compliance with the system's requirements. (shrink)

Moral distress has been widely reviewed across many care contexts and among a range of disciplines. Interest in this area has produced a plethora of studies, commentary and critique. An overview of the literature around moral distress reveals a commonality about factors contributing to moral distress, the attendant outcomes of this distress and a core set of interventions recommended to address these. Interventions at both personal and organizational levels have been proposed. The relevance of this overview resides in the implications (...) moral distress has on the nurse and the nursing workforce: particularly in regard to quality of care, diminished workplace satisfaction and physical health of staff and increased problems with staff retention. (shrink)

In this paper, I do a few things. I develop a (largely) empirical argument against naïve realism (Campbell, Martin, others) and for representationalism. I answer Papineau’s recent paper “Against Representationalism (about Experience)”. And I develop a new puzzle for representationalists.

I argue that the contrast between models and theories is important for public policy issues. I focus especially on the way a mathematical model explains just one aspect of the data.

The quest for freedom from hunger and repression has triggered in recent years a dramatic, worldwide reform of political and economic systems. Never have so many people enjoyed, or at least experimented with democratic institutions. However, many strategies for economic development in Eastern Europe and Latin America have failed with the result that entire economic systems on both continents are being transformed. This major book analyzes recent transitions to democracy and market-oriented economic reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Drawing (...) in a quite distinctive way on models derived from political philosophy, economics, and game theory, Professor Przeworski also considers specific data on individual countries. Among the questions raised by the book are: What should we expect from these experiments in democracy and market economy? What new economic systems will emerge? Will these transitions result in new democracies or old dictatorships? (shrink)

This chapter begins with an empirical analysis of attitudes towards the law, which inspires a philosophical re-examination of the moral status of the rule of law. The chapter analyses survey data from the US about law-related attitudes and legal compliance. Consistently with prior studies, it finds that people’s ascriptions of legitimacy to the legal system are predicted strongly by their perceptions of the procedural justice and lawfulness of police and court officials’ action. Two factors emerge as significant predictors of people’s (...) compliance with the law: (i) their belief that they have a (content-independent, moral) duty to obey the law (which is one element of legitimacy, as defined in the chapter); and (ii) their moral assessment of the content of specific legal requirements (referred to in the chapter as ‘perceived moral content of laws’). The chapter also observes an interactive relationship between these two factors. The authors then identify a parallel (similarly interactive) modality in the way that form and content mutually affect the value of the rule of law. They argue that Lon Fuller’s precepts of legality possess an expressive moral quality, but that the extent to which their expressive effect materialises is sensitive to the moral quality of the law’s content. (shrink)

This book reconceives virtue epistemology in light of the conviction that we are essentially social creatures. Virtue is normally thought of as something that allows individuals to accomplish things on their own. Although contemporary ethics is increasingly making room for an inherently social dimension in moral agency, intellectual virtues continue to be seen in terms of the computing potential of a brain taken by itself. Thinking in these terms, however, seriously misconstrues the way in which our individual flourishing hinges on (...) our collective flourishing. Green’s account of virtue epistemology is based on the extended credit view, which conceives of knowledge as an achievement and broadens that focus to include team achievements in addition to individual ones. He argues that this view does a better job than alternatives of answering the many conceptual and empirical challenges for virtue epistemology that have been based on cases of testimony. The view also allows for a nuanced interaction with situationist psychology, dual processing models in cognitive science, and the extended mind literature in philosophy of mind. This framework provides a useful conceptual bridge between individual and group epistemology, and it has novel applications to the epistemology of disagreement, prejudice, and authority. (shrink)

In the Typic chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant aims to enable moral judgment by means of the law of nature, which serves as the ‘type’, or formal analogue, of moral law. The present monograph is the first comprehensive study of this key text. It provides a detailed commentary on the Typic, situates it within Kant’s ethics and his theory of symbolic representation, and critically engages with the relevant secondary literature.

There are many philosophical questions surrounding the notion of lying. Is it ever morally acceptable to lie? Can we acquire knowledge from people who might be lying to us? More fundamental, however, is the question of what, exactly, constitutes the concept of lying. According to one traditional definition, lying requires intending to deceive (Augustine. (1952). Lying (M. Muldowney, Trans.). In R. Deferrari (Ed.), Treatises on various subjects (pp. 53?120). New York, NY: Catholic University of America). More recently, Thomas Carson (2006. (...) The definition of lying. Nous, 40, 284?306) has suggested that lying requires warranting the truth of what you do not believe. This paper examines these two prominent definitions and some cases that seem to pose problems for them. Importantly, theorists working on this topic fundamentally disagree about whether these problem cases are genuine instances of lying and, thus, serve as counterexamples to the definitions on offer. To settle these disputes, we elicited judgments about the proposed counterexamples from ordinary language users unfettered by theoretical bias. The data suggest that everyday speakers of English count bald-faced lies and proviso lies as lies. Thus, we claim that a new definition is needed to capture common usage. Finally, we offer some suggestions for further research on this topic and about the moral implications of our investigation into the concept of lying. (shrink)

Norms—that is, specifications of what we ought to do—play a critical role in the study of informal argumentation, as they do in studies of judgment, decision-making and reasoning more generally. Specifically, they guide a recurring theme: are people rational? Though rules and standards have been central to the study of reasoning, and behavior more generally, there has been little discussion within psychology about why (or indeed if) they should be considered normative despite the considerable philosophical literature that bears on this (...) topic. In the current paper, we ask what makes something a norm, with consideration both of norms in general and a specific example: norms for informal argumentation. We conclude that it is both possible and desirable to invoke norms for rational argument, and that a Bayesian approach provides solid normative principles with which to do so. (shrink)

In recent work, Stalnaker proposes a logical framework in which belief is realized as a weakened form of knowledge. Building on Stalnaker’s core insights, we employ topological tools to refine and, we argue, improve on this analysis. The structure of topological subset spaces allows for a natural distinction between what is known and what is knowable; we argue that the foundational axioms of Stalnaker’s system rely intuitively on both of these notions. More precisely, we argue that the plausibility of the (...) principles Stalnaker proposes relating knowledge and belief relies on a subtle equivocation between an “evidence-in-hand” conception of knowledge and a weaker “evidence-out-there” notion of what could come to be known. Our analysis leads to a trimodal logic of knowledge, knowability, and belief interpreted in topological subset spaces in which belief is definable in terms of knowledge and knowability. We provide a sound and complete axiomatization for this logic as well as its uni-modal belief fragment. We then consider weaker logics that preserve suitable translations of Stalnaker’s postulates, yet do not allow for any reduction of belief. We propose novel topological semantics for these irreducible notions of belief, generalizing our previous semantics, and provide sound and complete axiomatizations for the corresponding logics. (shrink)

I consider Glimcher's claim to have given an account of mental functioning that is at once neurological and decision-theoretical. I am skeptical, but remark on some good ideas of Glimcher's.

The book analyzes the sources of widespread dissatisfaction with democracies around the world and identifies directions for feasible reforms"--Provided by publisher.

In a series of recent papers, Simon Saunders, Fred Muller, and Michael Seevinck have collectively argued, against the folklore, that some nontrivial version of Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles is upheld in quantum mechanics. They argue that all particles—fermions, paraparticles, anyons, even bosons—may be weakly discerned by some physical relation. Here I show that their arguments make illegitimate appeal to nonsymmetric, that is, permutation-noninvariant, quantities and that therefore their conclusions do not go through. However, I show that alternative, (...) symmetric quantities may be found to do the required work. I conclude that the Saunders-Muller-Seevinck heterodoxy can be saved. (shrink)