I provide an argument from consciousness for God’s existence. I first consider a version of the argument which is ultimately difficult to evaluate. I then consider a stronger argument, on which consciousness, given our worldly laws of nature, is rather substantial evidence for God’s existence. It is this latter argument the paper largely focuses on, both in setting it out and defending it from various objections.

John Rawls raises three challenges – to which one can add a fourth challenge – to an impartial spectator account: (a) the impartial spectator is a utility-maximizing device that does not take seriously the distinction between persons; (b) the account does not guarantee that the principles of justice will be derived from it; (c) the notion of impartiality in the account is the wrong one, since it does not define impartiality from the standpoint of the litigants themselves; (d) the account (...) would offer a comprehensive, rather than a political, form of liberalism. The narrow aim of the article is to demonstrate that Adam Smith's impartial spectator account can rise to Rawls's challenges. The broader aim is to demonstrate that the impartial spectator account offers the basis for a novel and alternative framework for developing principles of justice, and does so in the context of a political form of liberalism. (shrink)

Several critics of realist theories of political legitimacy have alleged that it possesses a problematic bias towards the status quo. This bias is thought to be reflected in the way in which these...

Abstract:This article sets out two central theses. Both theses primarily involve a fundamental criticism of current contractarian business ethics (CBE), but if these can be sustained, they also constitute two boundary conditions for any future contractarian theory of business ethics. The first, which I label the self-discipline thesis, claims that current CBE would gain considerably in focus if more attention were paid to the logic of the social contract argument. By this I mean the aims set by the theorist and (...) method of reasoning by which normative conclusions are drawn in the contract model. The second, to which I refer as the domain-specificity thesis, argues that current CBE needs to be better adapted to its field of application and the specific goals which it aims to establish. I will substantiate these two theses on the basis of a comparative analysis of CBE with two earlier families of social contract theories. (shrink)

David Benatar argues that creating someone always harms them. I argue that his master argument rests on a conceptual incoherence.

Educators continue to struggle with how masculinities are performed and regulated in spaces of learning. In a time of rapid social change, there is a renewed impetus for gender justice reform in schooling, though these approaches themselves remain a shifting picture. Adding a new layer of complexity, we are now witness to educational policy recommendations around surveillance which are designed to counteract boys’ and young men’s vulnerabilities to be radicalised into the misogynies of the ‘manosphere’. These recommendations exist despite limited (...) research and significant gaps in our understanding regarding both the manosphere as well as the emotional lives of young men. The article intentionally shifts the conversation from reactive surveillance in schools to educative gender justice approaches. We focus, in particular, on the significance of ‘pedagogic discomfort’ in terms of fostering gender transformative dialogue which is critical of ideas associated with the manosphere. We consider how a constructive dialogue might be fostered with a particular focus on pedagogies that recognise the emotional intensities of gender justice work. (shrink)

Lethal organ donation is a hypothetical procedure in which vital organs are removed from living donors, resulting in their death. An important objection to lethal organ donation is that it would infringe the prohibition on doctors intentionally causing the death of patients. I present a series of arguments intended to undermine this objection. In a case of lethal organ donation, the donor’s death is merely foreseen, and not intended.

Through a study of Abhinavagupta’s deployment of the metaphor of a bee in search of nectar, this article reconstructs a model of religious education implicit in Abhinavagupta’s representation of his own career as a student and guru. Based on a brief examination of the symbolism of the bee in classical Sanskrit poetry, the article elucidates how Abhinavagupta creatively implements prominent themes in this trope. Abhinavagupta’s use of the bee motif powerfully evokes his own liberal engagement with the intellectual culture and (...) religious worlds of medieval Kashmir, and this educational ideal arguably carries prescriptive force for a qualified and sensitive audience. In considering the bee imagery across Abhinavagupta’s corpus, one encounters a vision of revelation that invites students to relish an all-encompassing truth present in all traditions as their essence, like a fragrance permeating a flower. (shrink)

This paper proposes an analysis of statements about universals according to which such statements assert nothing more than that the evidence we’d take to confirm them obtains, where this evidence is understood to consist solely of patterns in the behavior of particulars that cannot be explained by other regularities in the way things behave. On this analysis, to say that a universal exists is simply to say that there is such a pattern in the behavior of certain particulars, and for (...) any predicate F that is presumed to correspond to a universal, to say that a particular is F is simply to say that its behavior exhibits a pattern of this sort. I argue that there is no theoretical work that we want postulations and ascriptions of universals to do that they’d be unfit for if analyzed in this way, and consequently that there is no reason to treat such statements as asserting anything more than what the proposed analysis suggests. (shrink)

As graduates embark on the next phase of their lives, what better way to get them accustomed to the rat race they are about to enter than by introducing them to the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre? Cleverly told through the story of a pair of rats trapped in the labyrinth of existence, this allegory humorously conveys the key ideas of Sartre's existential philosophy in graphic-novel form - accessible for students and readers of all ages."--Back cover.

In education, character education is a burgeoning field; however, it is also the target of considerable criticism. Amongst criticisms of character education, the political criticism that character education is a form of indoctrination stands out. In particular, the charge is made against character education that it breaches the principle of liberal neutrality about the good. In this article I discuss liberal approaches to character education. I outline the two most prominent liberal approaches to character education in school, liberal neutralism and (...) liberal perfectionism, as we find it in the work of Clayton (neutralism) and Levinson (liberal perfectionism). I hold that the two standard liberal approaches do not distinguish carefully enough between two possible forms of character education – moral character education and intellectual character education. Drawing on recent work in virtue epistemology, I hold that the liberal position tacitly demands intellectual character education. Regarding moral character education, however, I hold that the picture appears different. In the final analysis, I advocate a new form of perfectionism regarding character education that I call ‘intellectual perfectionism’. According to intellectual perfectionism, schools should be perfectionist regarding children's intellects, but neutralist regarding their morals. (shrink)

Bruno Latour is not the only scholar to reflect on his earlier contributions to science studies with some regret and resolve over climate skepticism and science denialism. Given the ascendency of merchants of doubt, should those who share Latour's concerns join the scientists they study in circling the wagons, or is there a productive role still for science studies to question and critique scientists and scientific institutions? I argue for the latter, looking to postpositivist feminist philosophy as exemplified by Alison (...) Wylie and Lynn Nelson, among others, as a guide. Feminist philosophers of science who ground their analysis in a detailed understanding of scientific practice are not science's champions nor its antagonists, but they do stand in a distinct relationship to science. If not merchants of doubt, are they scientific gadflies or perhaps in scientific loyal opposition? Though these notions can underwrite useful approaches to science studies, neither captures the distinctive interdependency and interestedness of feminist philosophers and science. I suggest that we would be better served by the notion of trustworthy science criticism, building on the analyses of trust and trustworthiness by Annette Baier, among others, attendant to the dynamics of interdependency in trust relationships. (shrink)

In the rabbinic literature from the land of Israel the poor are depicted not as passive recipients of gifts and support, but as independent agents who are responsible for their own behaviour. Communal care for the needy was expected to go beyond their basic needs for food, clothing and shelter; the physical safety of the poor and the value of their time as well as their dignity and self-worth were also included in the scope of charity. In this monograph, Yael (...) Wilfand offers a comprehensive and contextual analysis of major rabbinic texts on poverty and charity composed during the first five centuries of the Common Era in the land of Israel, principally the Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Palestinian Talmud and midrashim. She shows that, for the rabbis, the poor were not necessarily considered outsiders; indeed, some students and rabbis in Palestine may have personally experienced poverty. Wilfand claims that such socio-economic diversity contributed to the thinking of these rabbis, who rarely saw poverty as a result of transgression (in contrast to the Babylonian Talmud). This book presents a number of contrasting viewpoints held by Palestinian rabbis over such questions as: Must communal administrators ensure applicants' eligibility for alms? Should the newly indigent from wealthy families receive exceptional levels of support? Might neighbouring gentiles qualify for economic assistance from Jewish communal sources? By examining Palestinian rabbinic sources within the contexts both of the hegemonic Greco-Roman (later, Christian) milieu and of the biblical heritage, this volume offers an absorbing account of some ancient approaches to timeless social challenges. (shrink)

Functionalists define a given mental state as a state that is apt to be the cause of specific effects and the effect of specific causes. Two tokens of the same belief, however, often cause and are caused by very different events: what makes them beliefs of the same type? Several answers, including the one relying on the identity of actual plus counterfactual causal relations, are considered and rejected. Functionalists did not notice that they have to specify how a state which (...) is to be identified as mental is to be individuated, but, given their theory, this cannot be done. (shrink)

In a series of publications I have claimed that by contrast to standard formal languages, quantifiers in natural language combine with a general term to form a quantified argument, in which the general term's role is to determine the domain or plurality over which the quantifier ranges. In a recent paper Zoltán Gendler Szabó tried to provide a counterexample to this analysis and derived from it various conclusions concerning quantification in natural language, claiming it is often ‘bare’. I show that (...) Szabó's example fails, and that even if it were successful his conclusions would not be supported by it. (shrink)

Committee decision making is examined in this study focusing on the role assigned to the committee members. In particular, we are concerned about the comparison between committee performance under specialization and non-specialization of the decision makers. Specialization (in the context of project or public policy selection) means that the decision of each committee member is based on a narrow area, which typically results in the acquirement and use of relatively high expertise in that area. When the committee members’ expertise is (...) already determined, specialization only means that the decision of each committee member is based solely on his/her relatively high expertise area. This form of specialization is potentially inferior relative to non-specialization under which the decision of each committee member is based on different areas, not just his/her relatively high expertise area. Given that the expertise of the committee members is already determined but unknown, our analysis focuses on non-specializing individuals whose decision is based on a decision rule that does not require information on the decision-making skills. Under these realistic assumptions, non-specialization is shown to be preferable over specialization, depending on the aggregation rule applied by the committee. The significance of our approach is not limited to the specific results that we obtain. Rather, it should be viewed as a first step toward a deeper examination of the role of individual decision makers in enhancing the performance of collective decision making. (shrink)

Does expertise have a place in ethics? As this question has been raised in moral philosophy and bioethics literatures over the past twenty years, skepticism has been a common theme, whether metaphysical (there is no such thing as ethics expertise), epistemological (we cannot know who has ethics expertise) or social-political (we should not treat anyone as having ethics expertise). Here I identify three common, contestable assumptions about ethics expertise which underwrite skepticism of one form or another: (1) a singular conception (...) of ethics expertise constituted by a core property or unity among multiple properties, (2) equivocation of ethics expertise and ethicists’ expertise, and (3) priority of moral deference as an unavoidable implication of ethics expertise. Taken separately, each assumption can have unpalatable implications for ethics expertise that make skepticism seem more attractive; taken together, the resulting picture of ethics expertise is that much worse. Each of these assumptions is vulnerable to criticism, however, and jettisoning them enables a pluralist approach to ethics expertise less prone to skepticism and better suited for the ranging functions of ethics expertise in healthcare and other contexts. (shrink)

"Where is it decreed that enlightenment must be free of emotion? To me, the opposite seems to be true. Enlightenment can properly fulfill its task only if it sets to work with passion." - Améry, At the Mind's Limits This statement, which concludes the preface to the 1977 reissue of At the Mind’s Limits, conveys the philosophical ambition of the book: to advance the enlightenment project, while revising the way we understand this project. The idea, rejected here by Améry, that (...) the enlightenment “must be free of emotion” owes most to its foremost proponent, Immanuel Kant. This paper picks up on this implicit allusion to Kant, and elaborates on Améry’s revision of the enlightenment by making the confrontation between them explicit. (shrink)

Proceeding of the Third International Conference of the French-Speaking Society for Theoretical Biology Content Type Journal Article Category Editorial Pages 1-2 DOI 10.1007/s10441-012-9156-2 Authors Slimane Ben Miled, ENIT-LAMSIN, Tunis el Manar University, 13, place Pasteur, Belvédère, B.P. 74, 1002 Tunis, Tunisia Journal Acta Biotheoretica Online ISSN 1572-8358 Print ISSN 0001-5342.

This article explores the shift in Rawls’ just savings principle away from an initial iteration that was indifferent to previous generational savings, to one in which past historical savings are the cornerstone of the motivation to save for future generations. Attention is given to the practical application of the revised principle in the field of the environment. The revised principle is argued to be an improvement on the initial one, because previous generations have an existence and identity that is more (...) tangible than yet-to-be future ones. (shrink)

In an essay entitled ‘The Nobility of Sight’, Hans Jonas argues that ‘[s] ince the days of Greek philosophy sight has been recognized as the most excellent of senses’ (Jonas, 1954, p.507). Seeking to account for the historical elevation of vision over other forms of sensory engagement with the world, Jonas contends that ‘[t]he unique distinction of sight consists in what we may call the image performance, where “image” implies three characteristics: (1) simultaneity in the presentation of a manifold; (2) (...) neutralization of the causality of sense-affection; (3) distance in the spatial and mental senses’ (ibid.). In the case of (1), what distinguishes sight from other senses is the fact that it can give us both dynamic and static reality: our eyes can survey a whole field of possible percepts as well as focus directly upon a fixed object (ibid., pp.508–9). In the case of (2), what further marks out vision is that it does not require the perceiver and the object of perception to be directly engaged — the ‘dynamic’ relation between the two is, in Jonas’ words, ‘neutralized’ (ibid., p.514). And in the case of (3), seeing’s inimitability is also guaranteed by its being ‘the only sense in which the advantage lies not in proximity but in distance: the best view is by no means the closest view’ (ibid., pp.517–8). (shrink)

In the present essay I address the apparently problematic status of epistemology in F.W.J. Schelling’s work. Given the overblown emphasis on Schelling’s anti-Kantianism, there would seem to be little hope in articulating anything like a theory of knowledge in Schelling’s thought. For the sake of brevity I emphasize knowledge’s spatial and navigational functions in Schelling’s texts. For Schelling, the navigational is that which locates, and constructively constrains, the capacity of the subject to synthesize. This is accomplished, I argue, via a (...) spatialized reading of Schelling’s concept of intellectual intuition. While this form of intuition initially resembles that of Fichte’s, Schelling transforms the term, using it in tandem with construction, in order to maintain both the sensory immediacy, yet abstract form, of intuition as the initial means a knowing subject, immersed in the activities of nature, comes to recognize its own capacities and begins to form claims about the world. (shrink)

In The Solace, Joshua Glasgow’s main claim is that life has “radiant value” and that death inherits some of that value; this provides us with a source of solace. He also argues that death is bad not only in virtue of depriving us of good things, but also in virtue of depriving us of opportunities for good things. I raise difficulties for these claims.

Reading noir and Lacan together can establish a structural corollary between the function of the signifier 'noir' in film criticism and the retroactive function of the point de capiton in Lacan's theory of language. Furthermore, at a narrative level, the function of the point de capiton can also be found in the retroactive constructions of film noir flashbacks. It is therefore possible to say that a retroactive 'noir temporality' is also the temporality of the Symbolic order. This article explores the (...) way in which the signifier 'noir' enables the analysis of a certain type of 1940s Hollywood film, and how a noir film such as Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) is concerned with the retroactive production of knowledge through narrative structure. (shrink)