Expressing views not easily placed within any one school of opinion, this collection of the papers of Tony Honore reflects the author's contribution, as both critic and participant in debate, to the study of legal philosophy over the last twenty-five years. His wide-ranging essays cover such topics as motivation to conform to the law, norms and obligations, and rights and justice, and conclude with an essay supporting the use of law to encourage or reinforce morality.

1 Responsibility and self-control................................. 1 Michael Smith 2 The capacity to have done otherwise: an agent-centred view 21 Philip Pettit 3 Private law and private narratives.............................. 37 Arthur Ripstein 4 Honoré on responsibility for outcomes........................ 61 Stephen R. Perry 5 Responsibility and fault: a relational and functional approach to responsibility 81 Peter Cane 6 Obligations and outcomes in the law of torts............... 111 John Gardner 7 Unpacking “causation‘....................................... 145 Jane Stapleton 8 Private law: between visionaries and bricoleurs............... 187 William (...) Lucy 9 Appreciations and responses................................. 219 Tony Honoré Index................................................... 241. (shrink)

If positivism is interpreted as requiring that nothing is law that does not conform to socially accepted criteria, it is inconsistent with positive law. This is because law purports to be morally in order. Hence it is always possible to argue against a certain interpretation of the law that it is morally indefensible and there is always a certain pressure within a legal system to render it morally defensible. In that way critical morality necessarily becomes a persuasive source of law.

This is a thoroughly revised edition of the only full-scale work about possibly the most influential lawyer of all time, the Syrian Ulpian. Ulpian wrote a massive survey of Roman law in 213-17 AD and the author argues that his philosophy of freedom and equality make him a pioneer of human rights.

An updated and extended second edition supporting the findings of its well-known predecessor which claimed that courts employ common-sense notions of causation in determining legal responsibility.

Here is an introduction to the intellectual challenges presented by law in the western secular tradition. Treating not just British law, but the whole western tradition of law, Professor Honore guides the reader through eleven topics which straddle various branches of the law, including constitutional and criminal law, property, and contracts. He also explores moral and historical aspects of the law, including a discussion of justice and the difference between civil and common law systems. The law, Honore argues, is mainly (...) concerned with the question of obedience to authority, and establishing the situations in which obedience is required and those in which it may be waived ought to be the central concern of all legal theorists. (shrink)

This collection of essays, published to coincide with Tony Honore's sixty-fifth birthday, focuses on the areas where Honore's thought has made the most significant contribution: Roman law and jurisprudence. Included are essays by P.S. Atiyah, Zenon Bankowski, John Bell, Peter Birks, John W. Cairs, Hugh Collins, David Daube, W. M. Gordon, J. W. Harris Nicola Lacey, A. D. E. Lewis, Detlef Liebs, G. D. MacCormack, Neil MacCormick, G. Maher, Pieter Norr, Alan Rodger, and Peter Stein.

The author proposes here “the first Romanian attempt at a hermeneutic systematization of the philosophy of European law”, a field that is approached from an organic, integrating perspective. It has to be seen as a synchronic lectio magistralis on the ineluctable role of the spiritual roots when deciphering and assuming national identity. The complicated “euronomosophical” discourse, whose beginning is an excellent page of self-history about the “Europe” of the author, voices an appeal to a deeper self-knowledge. A complex, dynamic reality: (...) from euromyth to euro-oniria and PaxEuropaea. Such incursions into the universe of law certainly involve an instructive and pedagogical side, building a patchwork of ideas, suggestions and themes that could be further developed. (shrink)

The traditional, intuitively appealing, test for causation in tort law, known as 'the but-for test' has been subjected to what are widely believed to be devastating criticisms by Tony Honore, and Richard Wright, amongst others. I argue that the but-for test can withstand these criticisms. Contrary to what is now widely believed. there is no inconsistency between the but-for test and ordinary language, commonsense, or sound legal principle.

Drawing on a social construction theory of ownership in biological material this paper discusses which differences in biological material might motivate differences in treatment and ownership rights. The analysis covers both the perspective of the person from whom the material originates and that of the potential recipient. Seven components of bundles of rights, drawing on the analytical tradition of Tony Honoré, and their relationship to various types of biological material are investigated. To exemplify these categories the cases of (...) a heart, a kidney, stem cells and hair are used. (shrink)

In a book contribution responding to H.L.A. Hart and Tony Honoré, Judith Jarvis Thomson casts a certain analysis of causation in an attractive light, but says that it unfortunately faces two objections. I draw attention to another objection.

Whereas previous discussions on ownership of biological material have been much informed by the natural rights tradition, insufficient attention has been paid to the strand in liberal political theory represented by Felix Cohen, Tony Honoré, and others, which treats property relations as socially constructed bundles of rights. In accordance with that tradition, we propose that the primary normative issue is what combination of rights a person should have to a particular item of biological material. Whether that bundle qualifies (...) to be called “property” or “ownership” is a secondary, terminological issue. We suggest five principles of bodily rights and show how they can be applied to the construction of ethically appropriate bundles of rights to biological material. (shrink)

Philosophers generally agree that gratitude, the called-for response to benevolence, includes positive feelings. In this paper, I argue against this view. The grateful beneficiary will have certain feelings, but in some contexts, those feelings will be profoundly negative. Philosophers overlook this fact because they tend to consider only cases of gratitude in which the benefactor’s sacrifice is minimal, and in which the benefactor fares well after performing an act of benevolence. When we consider cases in which a benefactor suffers severely, (...) we see the feelings associated with gratitude can be negative, and even quite painful. I conclude with a discussion of the implications negative feelings of gratitude have for the normative question of when gratitude is owed, and for the descriptive claim in positive psychology that gratitude enhances wellbeing. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked like Jesus, (...) at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

Gratitude, the proper or fitting response to benevolence, has often been conceptualized as a virtue—a temporally stable disposition to perceive, think, feel, and act in certain characteristic ways in certain situations. Many accounts of gratitude as a virtue, however, have not analyzed this disposition accurately, and as a result, they have not revealed the rich variety of ways in which someone can fail to be a grateful person. In this paper, I articulate an account of the virtue of gratitude, and (...) I use this account to explore various vices that can manifest in its absence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government a.d. 284–324T. D. BarnesSimon Corcoran. The Empire of the Tetrarchs: Imperial Pronouncements and Government a.d. 284–324. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. xv 1 406 pp. Cloth, $85. (Oxford Classical Monographs)The four decades between the accession of Diocletian on 20 November 284 and the abdication of Licinius on 19 September 324 witnessed profound changes in the government and administrative structure of (...) the Roman world. These changes are naturally reflected in the legislation of the period, which survives in relative abundance—indeed, a larger proportion of the emperors’ legal decisions and enactments probably survives from these four decades than from any previous period of forty years in the history of the Roman Empire. The high rate of survival is due in part to the activity of the commissioners who compiled the Theodosian Code in the 430s and the Codex Justinianus in the sixth century: the former set out to collect general laws and edicts of the Christian Roman Empire since the conversion of Constantine, while the latter included in their compilation a large part of two Diocletianic collections of imperial rescripts, the Codex Gregorianus and the Codex Hermogenianus. But the legislation of Diocletian and his imperial colleagues and successors is also known from a wide variety of other sources—papyri, inscriptions, nonofficial collections of laws, Lactantius’ account of the decade of Christian persecution from 303 to 313 in his On the Deaths of the Persecutors, and Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History. Moreover, Eusebius’ Life of Constantine quotes important documents from the last months of 324.Simon Corcoran includes all this varied and historically significant material in his purview, and he provides a reliable guide to it. His monograph is a revised version of an Oxford doctoral thesis which he began in 1987 under the supervision of Fergus Millar and completed in 1992 under that of John Matthews, and he has also taken advice from Tony Honoré. His work is technically proficient. I have not noticed any careless errors of any consequence, and Corcoran has used my work on the period of Diocletian and Constantine in the spirit in [End Page 145] which I intended it to be used: he has understood the underlying principles upon which it rests, then applied them critically, sometimes to reach conclusions which not only differ from my own but are superior to them.Corcoran begins with two introductory chapters which succinctly survey the subject and the evidence available. On interpolation in legal texts, he is cautious and sensible. He proceeds on the assumption that though “the transmitted texts are seldom identical with what the imperial chancery originally issued,” they have seldom undergone drastic alteration: “abbreviation is the most common fate of constitutions in the legal sources” (19). Yet he provides a salutary reminder and example of what can happen (16–18): whereas a rescript in the Fragmenta Vaticana denies that the temporary gift of estates subject to tax is valid (Frag. Vat. 283, si stipendariorum proprietatem dono de-disti,... donatio inrita est), the same rescript in the Codex Justinianus directly contradicts and asserts that such a gift is valid (CJ 8.54.2, si praediorum proprietatem dono dedisti,... donatio valet). On a priori grounds alone, it seems highly probable that something similar has happened to some texts which are known only through the Codex Justinianus—and where the alteration may not be at all obvious.What of the date and contents of the two Diocletianic codes? Corcoran confronts the problems of dating and attribution squarely and honestly. Most of his conclusions may not be new, but his discussion has been able to proceed from the fact that an Aurelius Hermogenianus, who can hardly be anyone other than the jurist, is now securely attested as praetorian prefect between 293 and 305 with Julius Asclepiodotus as his colleague (AE 1987, 456). Corcoran argues that Gregorius published the Codex Gregorianus in 291/2 or ca. 292, after serving as magister libellorum with Diocletian from 285 to 290: he accounts for the ascription of some later constitutions to this code by postulating a second edition compiled ca. 306, possibly at the court of Maximinus or... (shrink)

There have recently been various empirical attempts to answer Molyneux’s question, for example, the experiments undertaken by the Held group. These studies, though intricate, have encountered some objections, for instance, from Schwenkler, who proposes two ways of improving the experiments. One is “to re-run [the] experiment with the stimulus objects made to move, and/or the subjects moved or permitted to move with respect to them” (p. 94), which would promote three dimensional or otherwise viewpoint-invariant representations. The other is “to use (...) geometrically simpler shapes, such as the cube and sphere in Molyneux’s original proposal, or planar figures instead of three-dimensional solids” (p. 188). Connolly argues against the first modification but agrees with the second. In this article, I argue that the second modification is also problematic (though still surmountable), and that both Schwenkler and Connolly are too optimistic about the prospect of addressing Molyneux’s question empirically. (shrink)

This article investigates a puzzle about gratitude—the proper response, in a beneficiary, to an act of benevolence from a benefactor. The puzzle arises from three platitudes about gratitude: 1) the beneficiary has certain obligations of gratitude; 2) these obligations are owed to the benefactor; and 3) the benefactor has no right to the fulfillment of these obligations. These platitudes suggest that gratitude is a counterexample to the “correlativity thesis” in the moral domain: the claim that strict moral obligations correlate to (...) moral rights on the part of the person to whom the obligation is owed. The goal of this chapter is to determine whether the three gratitude platitudes are true, and, if they are, what they tell us about the correlativity thesis. Sections 1 through 3 argue for the truth of each of the platitudes. It is then argued that while benefactors lack standing to demand, they do possess an imperfect right to gratitude: a special and morally significant standing to remonstrate with ungrateful beneficiaries. These facts suggest the following modification of the standard correlativity thesis: moral obligations entail moral rights on the part of the person to whom they are owed, which may be perfect (demandable) or imperfect. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Representation -- The Transition -- The Sign-Systems of 1908 -- Rhetorical Concerns -- Interpretation, Worldviews and the Object.

In their important book, Causation in the Law, H. L. A. Hart and Tony Honore argue that causation in the law is based on causation outside the law, that the causal principles the courts rely on to determine legal responsibility are based on distinctions exercised in ordinary causal judgments. A distinction that particularly concerns them is one that divides factors that are necessary or sine qua non for an effect into those that count as causes for purposes of legal (...) responsibility and those that do not. Hart and Honore claim that this distinction is often one of fact rather than of legal policy, and that the factual basis is to be found in the ordinary distinction we draw between causes and 'mere conditions'. If this claim is correct, we may hope to illuminate the legal distinction by articulating the principles behind the ordinary one. This is a challenging task since, as in the case of most cognitive skills, we are far better at making particular judgments than we are at stating the general principles that underlie them. Hart and Honore devote the first part of their book to this difficult task. We have, then, two large projects. One is to articulate our ordinary notion of causation, especially the distinction between cause and mere condition. This is the project of constructing an 'ordinary model'. The other is to argue for what we may call the 'shared concept claim', the claim that the concept of legal cause is based on the ordinary notion of causation, that 'causal judgments, though the law may have to systematize them, are not specifically legal. They appeal to a notion which is part of everyday life' (1985, p. lv; all references to follow are from this edition). This essay will focus on Hart and Honore's ordinary model, rather than on their shared concept claim. In my judgment, Hart and Honore's case for some version of the shared concept claim is strong, so they are right to maintain that a better understanding of our ordinary notion of.. (shrink)

The criminal law presently distinguishes between actions and omissions, and only rarely proscribes failures to avert consequences that it would be an offense to bring about. Why? In recent years it has been persuasively argued by both Glover and Bennett that, celeris paribus, omissions to prevent a harm are just as culpable as are actions which bring that harm about. On the other hand, and acknowledging that hitherto “lawyers have not been very successful in finding a rationale for it,” (...) class='Hi'>Tony Honoré has sought to defend the law's differential treatment. He proposes a “distinct-duties theory” that in addition to the general duties we owe to everyone, we also owe distinct duties to a more limited collection of people and associations, specified by features of our relationship with them. Where a distinct duty holds, breach by omission may well be no better than breach by positive action. But absent a distinct duty, omissions, per Honoré, are less culpable. They are mere failures to intervene and improve or rectify things, whereas actions are positive interventions which make things worse. And, thus, the law has good reason to differentiate between them. (shrink)

Recently, there is a renewed debate concerning the role of perspective in vision. Morales et al. (2020) present evidence that, in the case of viewing a rotated coin, the visual system is sensitive to what has often been called “perspectival shapes.” It has generated vigorous discussions, including an online symposium by Morales and Cohen, an exchange between Linton (2021) and Morales et al. (2021), and most recently, a fierce critique by Burge and Burge (2022), in which they launch various conceptual (...) and empirical objections. Although Morales and Firestone (2022) have responded to them recently, and we are in agreement with Morales and Firestone in general, there are further problems in Burge and Burge (2022) that are worth highlighting. The main point of this comment is that what the Burge–Burge team call “viewpoint-dependent relational properties” are simply instances of what the Morales–Firestone team call “perspectival shapes”; the confusion arises from Burge and Burge’s misconstrual of Morales et al.’s claims. This shows that conceptually, the two teams are in large agreement, as Morales and Firestone (2022) also point out, and the focus should be put on the empirical disagreements, which has been covered by Morales and Firestone (2022). Relatedly, we argue that Burge and Burge (2022) misinterpret Morales et al. (2020) as supporting a new entity in perception science, and that this misinterpretation is a primary source of their apparent disagreement. This is worth pointing out because such misunderstanding generates many unnecessary quarrels that hinder progress. (shrink)

Legal philosophers and property scholars sometimes disagree over one or more of the following: the meaning of the word 'property,' the concept of property, and the nature of property. For much of the twentieth century, the work of W.N. Hohfeld and Tony Honoré represented a consensus around property. The consensus often went under the heading of property as bundle of rights, or more accurately as a set of normative relations between persons with respect to things. But by the (...) mid-l 990s, the consensus was under attack. Key figures in the attack were James Penner, a legal philosopher, and Thomas W. Merrill and Henry E. Smith, two highly regarded professors of property law. This article aims to repel the attack and argues for property as a set of normative relations between persons with respect to things. The positive case for this view of property pays special attention to the philosophy of language and the analysis of concepts. The positive case also maintains that the right to use and the power to transfer are as central to property as the right to exclude. It is possible that the virtues of Smith's modular theory of property differ from the virtues of a well-crafted bundle theory. Indeed, it may be the case that these two theories throw light on different features of property law and are not, save at the margin, competitors with each other. The label 'new essentialism' sometimes applied to the work of Penner, Merrill, and Smith seems inapt if property does not have an essence. Of course, they might refuse the label. (shrink)

The overflow debate concerns this following question: does conscious iconic memory have a higher capacity than attention does? In recent years, Ned Block has been invoking empirical works to support the positive answer to this question. The view is called the “rich view” or the “Overflow view”. One central thread of this discussion concerns the nature of iconic memory: for example how rich they are and whether they are conscious. The first section discusses a potential misunderstanding of “visible persistence” in (...) this literature. The second section discusses varieties of attention relevant to this debate. The final section discusses the most prominent alternative interpretation of the Sperling paradigm—the postdiction interpretation—and explains how it can be made compatible with a weaker version of the rich or overflow view. (shrink)

Clinical psychology is characterized by persistent disagreement about fundamental aspects of the discipline ranging from what mental disorders are to what constitutes effective treatment. Attempts to address the problem of epistemic disagreement have been frequently based on establishing the correct answer by fiat without identifying and addressing the sources of the disagreement. We argue that this strategy has not worked very well and the result is frequently ongoing and intractable disagreement, with each side in an argument convinced they are correct. (...) In this paper, we outline an epistemic disagreement procedural model intended to assist researchers and clinicians in the field of clinical psychology to identify, explore, and develop inquiry strategies that capitalize on situations where competing knowledge claims are made. The result is a flexible conceptual framework committed to a defensible epistemic pluralism, fallibilism, and contextualism, across the various research tasks constituting the field of clinical psychology. (shrink)

Signs and things -- How Shall a Sign be Called? -- Peirce -- Modes of Representation -- Medium Matters -- The Mute Poem -- Rhetoric of the image.

Substantial research examines the follower consequences of leader alignment of words and deeds, but no research has quantitatively reviewed these effects. This study examines extant research on behavioral integrity and contrasts it with two other constructs that focus on alignment: moral integrity and psychological contract breaches. We compare effect sizes between the three constructs, and find that BI has stronger effects on trust, in-role task performance and citizenship behavior than moral integrity and stronger effects on commitment and OCB than psychological (...) contract breach. These stronger attitudinal consequences run counter to our initial expectations, but they provide evidence of important conceptual distinctions and mechanisms that we articulate. BI theory suggests that BI’s greater performance impact is due to the notion that BI affects communication clarity in addition to attitudes. Results of meta-analytic structural equation modeling are consistent with this proposed dual path of BI’s impact. We highlight avenues for future research on BI and discuss how our findings inform the broader research on leader alignment. (shrink)

To take the idea of a non-anthropocentric ethic of nature seriously is to abandon morality itself. The idea of humanity is not an optional extra for moral seriousness. Non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists mistake the kind of value non-human entities may bear. It is not moral value, but aesthetic value.

It is common to hear that deep ecology “has reached its logical conclusion and exhausted itself” in a vacuous anthropomorphism and absurd nonanthropocentrism. These conclusions should be rejected. Properly understood, neither objection poses a serious problem for deep ecology so much as for the ethic of “ecological holism” which some philosophers—wrongly—have taken to arise from deep ecology. Deep ecology is not such an ethic, but is best understood as an aesthetically articulated conception of what, following Robinson Jeffers, may be called (...) “Wild Mind,” and such a Wild Mind is characterized—not criticized and condemned—by just that anthropomorphism and nonanthropocentrism critics focus on when they attack the ethic of ecological holism. (shrink)