Since the inception of their subject as a distinct area of study in philosophy, environmental ethicists have quarreled over the choice of entities with which an environmental ethic should be concerned. A dichotomous ontology has arisen with the ethical atomists, e.g., Singer and Taylor, arguing for moral consideration of individual organisms and the holists, e.g., Rolston and Callicott, focussing on moral consideration of systems. This dichotomous view is ecologically misinformed and should be abandoned. In this paper, I argue that the (...) organization of the natural world, as viewed by some ecologists and evolutionary biologists, is structured on various levels that are not reducible to one another. This hierarchical view, expressed by Salthe and Eldredge, provides the most complete and accurate ontology for environmental ethics. (shrink)

The stereotype of the “ecologically noble savage” is still prevalent in European-American discourses. I examine the empirical justifications offered for this stereotype, concluding that we lack sound empirical grounds for believing in “ecological nobility.” I argue that the stereotype should be abandoned because it has negative consequences for native peoples. Instead of accepting questionable stereotypes, philosophers and others should focus on the lives of particular peoples in order to understand their philosophies as well as the relationships that they maintain with (...) their homelands. (shrink)

Consideration of the adaptive problems faced by our ancestors suggests functional reasons why people exhibit some biases in social judgment more than others. We present a taxonomy consisting of six domains of central social challenges. Each is associated with somewhat different motivations, and consequently different decision-rules. These decision-rules, in turn, make some biases inherently more likely to emerge than others.

This textbook offers a unique and accessible approach to ethical decision-making for practicing pharmacists and student pharmacists. Unlike other texts, it gives clear guidance based on the fundamental principles of moral philosophy, explaining them in simple language and illustrating them with abundant clinical examples and case studies. The strength of this text is in its emphasis on normative ethics and critical thinking, and that there is truly a best answer in the vast majority of cases, no matter how complex. The (...) authors place high trust in a pharmacist’s moral judgment. This teaches the reader how to think, based on ethical principles, not necessarily what to think. This means navigating between the two extremes of overly theoretical and excessively prescriptive. The cogent framework given in this text uses the language of competing duties, identifying the moral principles at stake that create duties for the pharmacist. This is the balancing act of normative ethics, and of deciding which duties should prevail in a given clinical situation. This work presents a clear-cut pathway for resolving ethical dilemmas encountered by pharmacists, based on foundational principles and critical thinking. Presents a clear-cut pathway for resolving the ethical dilemmas encountered by pharmacists, based on foundational principles and critical thinking. Jon E. Sprague, RPh, PhD, Director of Science and Research for the Ohio Attorney General. (shrink)

Jon Shields's finding—that certain evangelical pro‐life activist groups are more interested in deliberative discussions about abortion than are pro‐choice activists—is wrong on methodological, normative, and philosophical grounds. He generalizes about pro‐life civility from a small, trained sample group, and ignores possibly important variables that would explain pro‐choicers' incivility. Further, politeness is not necessarily a requirement of democratic deliberation—which entails not forcing one's own beliefs on the public, as pro‐lifers manifestly are trying to do, despite their calm demeanor. Conversely, some pro‐choicers' (...) refusal to engage in debates is not a deliberative failure, as Shields suggests, as deliberation includes such things as campaigning and canvassing. Lastly, Shields, and the pro‐lifers he has observed, use the weakest of the pro‐choice arguments, instead of focusing on the best academic work in the field. (shrink)

This paper proposes that both weak and strong NPIs in English are sensitive to the downward entailingness of their licensers. It is also proposed, however, that these two types of NPIs pay attention to different aspects of the meaning of their environment. As observed by von Fintel and Chierchia, weak NPIs do not attend to the scalar implicatures of presuppositions of their licensers. Strong NPIs see both the truth-conditional and non-truth-conditional (scalar implications, presuppositions) meaning of their licensers. This theory accounts (...) for the puzzling inability, noted by Rullmann and Gajewski, of Strawson anti-additive operators to license strong NPIs, as well as for the effects of Zwarts’s hierarchy of negative strength. Additional issues concerning comparative quantifiers, few, and proportional quantifiers are addressed. (shrink)

This paper pursues the suggestion of St. Anselm that action expressions can be parsed by saying that the agent makes a certain proposition true. Using the model syntax of Pörn and the relatedness logic of Epstein, it is shown how St. Anselm's approach can reveal the logical form of some common action locutions.

To read any book by Paul Weiss is to enter into an ongoing philosophical discussion. Emphatics is no exception. Here Weiss takes up some issues from previous work but from a new angle of vision. Much of what he says also moves beyond the content of earlier writings, which is as it should be. "A creative, systematic philosopher," Weiss says, "is somewhat like a poet rewriting a long poem, preserving some parts of earlier versions in later ones. What has been (...) done is not invalidated, but moved beyond" (37). Another characteristic Weissian feature marks Emphatics: it is difficult to read. The ideas themselves are difficult, and Weiss doesn't go out of his way to coddle his reader. Serving as... (shrink)

In this paper I explore informationalism, a pragmatic theory of modality that seems to solve some serious problems in the familiar possible worlds accounts of modality. I view the theory as an elaboration of Stalnaker's moderate modal realism, though it also derives from Dretske's semantic theory of information. Informationalism is presented in Section 2 after the prerequisite stage setting in Section 1. Some applications are sketched in Section 3. Finally, a mathematical model of the theory is developed in Section 4.How (...) many times have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? (Arthur Conan Doyle)You've put me in an impossible situation. (Anonymous)[N]othing we imagine is absolutely impossible. (David Hume). (shrink)

The authors' review of alternative models for reading is of great value in identifying issues and progress in the field. More emphasis should be given to distinguishing between models that offer an explanation for behavior and those that merely simulate experimental data. An analysis of a model's discrete structure can allow for comparisons of models based upon their inherent dimensionality and explanatory power.

Conscience in Thomas's understanding of natural law -- The objections of the ancient philosophers -- The objections of the Calvinist christians -- On the possibility of revising Thomas's teaching on conscience -- Those who deny the existence of human nature -- Those who deny the moral relevancy of human nature -- Those who deny the ancient understanding of human nature.

Bastiat claims that the individual rights to life, liberty, and property are natural rights. Further, he claims that these natural rights are a matter of natural law and are not mere conventions. However, he never offers a detailed account of the connection between natural law and natural rights. By outlining a neo-Aristotelian theory of natural law that consists of two poles—an individualized vision of human flourishing and a conception of individual rights as metanormative principles—it is argued that Bastiat’s core insight (...) is correct. Individual rights are the proper political expression of a natural law approach to ethics. They determine the ultimate purpose of human law.Bastiat affirme que les droits individuels à la vie, à la liberté et à la propriété sont des droits naturels. De plus, il envisage ces droits naturels comme relevant du Droit Naturel plutôt qu’étant de simples conventions. Cependant, il n’offre nulle part une explication détaillée des liens entre le Droit Naturel et les droits naturels. En mettant en avant une théorie néo-aristotélicienne du Droit Naturel composée de deux pôles — une version individualisée de l’épanouissement humain et une conception des droits individuels en tant que principes métanormatifs — cet article soutient que l’idée centrale de Bastiat est juste. Les droits individuels sont l’expression politique adéquate d’une approche de l’éthique en termes de Droit Naturel. Ils déterminent la finalité ultime de la loi humaine. (shrink)

During his lifetime, he saw his works translated into German, Swedish, English, French, Hungarian and Dutch. These works were widely read and frequently reprinted in numerous editions throughout the second half of the century.

The constructive functional calculus for a sequence of commuting selfadjoint operators on a separable Hilbert space is shown to be independent of the orthonormal basis used in its construction. The proof requires a constructive criterion for the absolute continuity of two positive measures in terms of test functions.

The existence of either a maximum or a minimum for a uniformly continuous mapping f of a compact interval into ${\mathbb{R}}$ is established constructively under the hypotheses that f′ is sequentially continuous and f has at most one critical point.

Two classically equivalent, but constructively inequivalent, strict convexity properties of a preference relation are discussed, and conditions given under which the stronger notion is a consequence of the weaker. The last part of the paper introduces uniformly rotund preferences, and shows that uniform rotundity implies strict convexity. The paper is written from a strictly constructive point of view, in which all proofs embody algorithms. MSC: 03F60, 90A06.