First published in 2014. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Though some doubts about the principle that every proposition is either true or false were entertained even by Aristotle, both the number and the vigor of criticisms of this principle have been increasing in recent years. This paper attempts a restatement and a re-examination of the issues involved in this dispute, and in particular an evaluation of the effects on the argument of such recent discoveries as that of the “many-valued logics.”.

In English law there is a strong (though rebuttable) presumption that life should be maintained. This article contends that this presumption means that it is always unlawful to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from patients in permanent vegetative state (PVS) and minimally conscious state (MCS), and that the reasons for this being the correct legal analysis mean also that such withdrawal will always be ethically unacceptable. There are two reasons for this conclusion. First, the medical uncertainties inherent in the definition and diagnosis (...) of PVS/MCS are such that, as a matter of medical fact, it can never be established, with the degree of certainty necessary to rebut the presumption, that it is not in the patient’s best interest to remain alive. And second (and more controversially and repercussively), that even if permanent unconsciousness can be unequivocally demonstrated, the presumption is not rebutted. This is because there is plainly more to human existence than consciousness (or consciousness the markers of which can ever be demonstrated by medical investigations). It can never be said that the identity of the patient whose best interests are at stake evaporates (so eliminating the legal or ethical subject) when that person ceases to be conscious. Nor can it be said that the best interests of an unconscious person do not mandate continued biological existence. We simply cannot know. That uncertainty is legally conclusive, and (subject to resource allocation questions and views about the relevance of family wishes and the previously expressed wishes of the patient) should be ethically conclusive. (shrink)

Although Gaius Julius Victor has attracted scholarly attention due to his inclusion of letter-writing in his fourth-century rhetorical manual, his peculiar notion of sermocinatio or “impersonation” has gone largely unnoticed. Set against the backdrop of earlier accounts of sermocinatio as a technique of the grand style—including accounts in Quintilian and Cicero—Julius Victor presents impersonation as a method of subtle eloquence most germane to plain-style rubrics. Given Julius Victor’s coupling of sermocinatio and letter-writing, too, his manual suggests that the ascending importance (...) of writing tracks this stylistic reorientation, anticipating our own era’s evolving media and techniques for impersonating others. (shrink)

Preview: “America does not think much of its philosophers,” Douglas Anderson writes in his introduction to Philosophy Americana. “We do not teach philosophy in our high schools. A majority in America have no idea what philosophy is about or why it might be interesting, if not important.” Perhaps that lack of appreciation for philosophy is coeval with its beginnings when the ancient Athenians put Socrates to death. Anderson’s lament is clearly present from the supposed birth of Western philosophy, and vividly (...) so in 1486 in Italian humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s discourse known as The Dignity of Man, where he states, “The whole of philosophy is occasion for contempt and contumely, rather than honor and glory. The deadly and monstrous persuasion has invaded practically all minds, that philosophy ought not to be studied at all or by very few people; as though it were a thing of little worth to have before our eyes and at our fingertips....Thus,” Pico said six centuries ago, “we have reached a point, it is painful to recognize, where the only persons accounted wise are those who can reduce the pursuit of wisdom to a profitable traffic.” So it seems today in America and so it has apparently been and will ever be. Nevertheless, Anderson hopes to open a discussion about how philosophy does and does not manifest itself in American culture, how its practitioners remain “invisible,” and largely misunderstood “in rural, laboring, underclassed, and unschooled settings.” It is not his intention, at least in this book, to take up the issue of race in a discipline as overwhelmingly white as Western philosophy. Yet this has been for me, a black American philosopher, a lifelong meditation, which I will attempt to address in this essay. (shrink)

The question "When are research risks reasonable in relation to anticipated benefits?" is at the heart of disputes in the ethics of clinical research. Institutional review boards are often criticized for inconsistent decision-making, a problem that is compounded by a number of contemporary controversies, including the ethics of research involving placebo controls, developing countries, incapable adults and emergency rooms. If this pressing ethical question is to be addressed in a principled way, then a systematic approach to the ethics of risk (...) in research is required. Component analysis provides such a systematic approach. (shrink)

There are general aspects of mental life it is reasonable to believe do not vary even when subjects vary in their first‐person judgments about them. Such lack of introspective agreement gives rise to “phenomenological disputes.” These include disputes over how to describe the perspectival character of perception, the phenomenal character of perceptual recognition and conceptual thought, and the relation between consciousness and self‐consciousness. Some suppose that when we encounter such disputes we have no choice but to abandon first‐person reflection in (...) philosophy of mind in favor of a third‐person methodology. Such reaction is unwarranted. A reasoned assessment of phenomenological disputes that relies on first‐person reflection is explained, illustrated, and advocated. (shrink)

Healthcare ethics committees (HEC) have emerged as institutional forums for addressing bioethical dilemmas. Psychiatrists have important roles to play on these committees. Their skills in group process assessment, mental status examination, and character assessment have diverse applications. Psychiatrists can facilitate communication within the committee and as HEC-based clinical ethics consultants. HECs must be concerned with how they arrive at ethical decisions, guarding against political influence or individual monopolization. Psychiatrists can assist these efforts as organizational consultants to HECs. The perception of (...) psychiatrists as reflective, tolerant of ambiguity, humanizing, and approachable about ethical aspects of health care suggests they would make excellent committee leaders. Psychiatrists also have important committee roles to play as ethics educators and policy makers. More demographic data is needed to investigate psychiatrist participation on HECs. Studies of how they are perceived by their ethics committee colleagues may reveal new roles and potential pitfalls for HEC psychiatrists. (shrink)

The question a judge has to ask in deciding whether or not life-sustaining treatment should be withdrawn is whether the continued treatment is lawful. It will be lawful if it is in the patient’s best interests. Identifying this question gives no guidance about how to approach the assessment of best interests. It merely identifies the judge’s job. The presumption in favour of the maintenance of life is part of the job that follows the identification of the question.The presumption is best (...) regarded as a presumption of law. It has long been recognised as part of the way in which the English law discharges its obligations under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to life). But even if it is a ‘mere’ evidential presumption it cannot, on the facts of most cases involving applications for the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from patients in prolonged disorders of consciousness, be rebutted. (shrink)

Inner experience is proposed as a basis for self-interpretation in both children and adults, but young children's inner experience may not be comparable to our own. I consider evidence on children's attribution of inner experience, experience sampling, and the development of inner speech, concluding that Carruthers' theory should predict a developmental lag between mindreading and metacognition.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is Oedipus Smart?Charles B. DanielsWhat does it amount to, to ask whether Oedipus is smart, intelligent, clever? I take this to mean that he is quicker than most to gain understanding about difficult matters. Now, does Sophocles in Oedipus Rex portray Oedipus to be an intelligent, clever man?The Yes AnswerA "yes" answer to the title question may rest upon three grounds:Y1. Everyone in the play, including Oedipus himself (...) and the citizens of Thebes who have been his subjects for some 15 to 20 years, everyone, that is, save Teiresias, thinks that Oedipus is intelligent.Y2. In both legend and Sophocles' play, the only person smart enough to solve the Sphinx's riddle is Oedipus. Everyone in the play, as well as in the play's audiences, knows that Oedipus has solved the Sphinx's riddle. This is a major reason why everyone in the play, again excepting Teiresias, believes Oedipus to have a first-class mind. Oedipus is renown for this deed and thought by his subjects to be very clever in doing of it.Y3. John P. Carroll, in his interesting study of the extraordinary number of questions posed by Oedipus in Oedipus Rex (one in each nine lines of text uttered by him), concludes, "King Oedipus was endowed at birth with the heritage of the 'riddler's mind,' which by constant use throughout the course of his life he sharpened and brought to greater [End Page 562] perfection than it ever had had in his parents." 1 Oedipus is clever because he has a "riddler's mind": he asks lots of questions.Y1, Y2, and Y3, I believe, constitute the sole evidential textual base for the "yes" response to the title question. 2The No AnswerThe "no" answer, the view that Oedipus is not clever, rests upon four grounds:N1. The first consists of events from Oedipus' past that took place prior to the opening scene of the play and hence do not occur on stage. These are disclosed as the play progresses and its characters relate in dialogue what they believe to have taken place. We discover that Oedipus has lived his entire adult life with unresolved doubts about who his parents are. Worse yet, at the very beginning of his adult life, his inquiry at the Delphic Oracle met with terrible, enigmatic pronouncements that raised the ante on these doubts and made the tenor of his whole subsequent life up to the present worrisome to say the least. We learn of six questions of high moment to Oedipus—questions that touch him as profoundly as did the Sphinx's riddle, "What walks on two, three, and four legs?"—questions which he continues to be aware of and yet has not resolved, or in some cases even probed. A truly clever person, one with a "riddler's mind," would have done so. But the mature Oedipus we meet at the beginning of the play has yet to puzzle out correct answers to the questions:1. Where did the scars on my feet come from?2. Who are my real parents, Polybus and Merope, or some other couple?3. How can I best avoid doing the terrible things the Oracle foretells I shall do—killing my father and marrying my mother—given I am not sure who my father and mother really are?4. Is this old man who has just forced me off the road and arrogantly swatted me from his passing carriage my father?5. Who killed the king whose throne I have just been given?6. Is this widow I am about to marry my mother?The Oedipus we see at the beginning of the play is a man who has solved the riddle of the Sphinx, but has not solved a single one of these six questions from his own past life, which, it turns out, are easily of comparable importance to him. [End Page 563]N2. Another source of evidence in support of a "no" answer consists of failures on Oedipus' part to evince a quick wit concerning two puzzles that arise in the dramatic present among the events we see unfold on stage:7. The riddles... (shrink)

This paper details a three-credit-hour undergraduate ethics course that was delivered using traditional, distance, and compressed formats. OLS 263: Ethical Decisions in Leadership is a 200-level course offered by the Department of Organizational Leadership and Supervision in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Students in engineering, technology, business, nursing, and other majors take the course. In an effort to determine student perceptions of course and instructor effectiveness, end-of-course student survey data were compared (...) using data from traditional, distance, and compressed sections of the course. In addition, learning outcomes from the final course project were evaluated using a standardized assessment rubric and scores on the course project. (shrink)

Recent writings of Professor Frank raise basic questions concerning the nature of science and its relations to social, political, theological and metaphysical issues. This paper concentrates on several of these questions. What determines the acceptance of an hypothesis in the sciences? Is it explanation of the facts and confirmation by experimentation or is it the capacity of a theory to guide human conduct? Professor Frank's espousal of the latter criterion raises the question of whether this criterion can clearly be applied. (...) Equally important: it places on the scientist the responsibility of (a) reliably predicting the effects of a theory on human conduct and (b), deciding which effects ought to be achieved, assuming we could reliably achieve them. Another set of problems arises concerning the relation between scientific views and metaphysical, political and religious beliefs. Are the former relevant to the latter? If so, how? Does not scientific method at least involve the rejection of certain political and religious philosophies? We conclude that each and all of these difficulties could be relieved if not resolved by accepting a thoroughgoing empiricism. (shrink)

In this paper I will suggest an interpretation of Spinoza's ontological argument on which the argument, properly construed, is valid, and Spinoza, if granted the claim that it is possible that God exists, is successful in obtaining the conclusion of the argument. The interpretations given by H.A. Wolfson, G.H.R. Parkinson, and William A. Earle will then be argued to be deficient on textual and logical grounds. Leibniz’ assessment of the argument, namely that it “permits us only to conclude that God's (...) existence follows if his possibility is already proven,” is thus held to be correct. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 7, Page 956-976, September 2022. This article explores the role of practical political theory in the Black Lives Matter movement. I argue that BLM represents a multifaceted engagement with the complicated politics of redemption that lies at the heart of American democracy. In one sense, BLM stands for the integration of black life into the framework of political value, and thus for a redemption of the promise of ‘justice for all’. In another, it (...) is a challenge to the principles themselves, viewing justice as a threat to be managed, rather than as a principle to be redeemed. Exploring the praxis of this movement, organized both against and within the possibility of redemption, will enable us to more effectively characterize the limitations of a politics grounded in the theorization of justice and generate a richer understanding of the possibility for practical political theory to simultaneously employ and critique the politics of redemption. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s “perspectivism” has often invited the charge of relativism. I give a reading of GM III 12 in order to show, on the contrary, that perspectivism is in part a claim about how best to seek knowledge. I argue that perspectivism consists of two claims, one descriptive and one prescriptive. The first claim describes the nature of enquiry; it is that enquiry is guided and shaped by the affects. The second is a prescriptive claim about how we ought to enquire (...) given that the descriptive claim is true. It is that we can enquire better if we approach a subject-matter in a way that is affectively-engaged, rather than affectively-detached. I argue that affective-engagement can benefit enquiry in two ways. First, Nietzsche thinks that affective states cause us to adopt moral and philosophical views. By attending to our affects, we can gain knowledge of the states that give rise to those views. Second, we can gain knowledge of why we hold a given moral/philosophical view when, instead of ignoring our affects, or letting them guide us unconsciously, we attend to them directly. Thus, perspectivism involves an injunction to probe our intuitions about a given subject-matter for the sake of knowledge. (shrink)