In the original publication the title reads “The Right to Know and the Right Not to Know Revisited: Part One”. The paper consisted of both Part One and Part Two hence the title has to be corrected.

The traditional theory of the just war comprises two sets of principles, one governing the resort to war ( jus ad bellum) and the other governing the conduct of war ( jus in bello). The two sets of principles are regarded, in Michael Walzer’s words, as “logically independent. It is perfectly possible for a just war to be fought unjustly and for an unjust war to be fought in strict accordance with the rules.”1 Let us say that those who fight (...) in a just war are “just combatants,” while those who fight in a war that is unjust because it lacks a just cause are “unjust combatants.” (A just cause is an aim that can contribute to the justification for war and that may permissibly be pursued by means of war.)2 The most important implication of the idea that jus in bello is independent of jus ad bellum is that.. (shrink)

There may be circumstances in which it is morally justifiable intentionally to kill a person who is morally innocent, threatens no one, rationally wishes not to die, and does not consent to be killed. Although the killing would wrong the victim, it might be justified by the necessity of averting some disaster that would otherwise occur. In other instances of permissible killing, however, the justification appeals to more than consequences. It may appeal to the claim that the person to be (...) killed has acted in such a way that to kill him would neither wrong him nor violate his rights, even if he has not consented to be killed or to be subjected to the risk of being killed. In these cases, I will say that the person is liable to be killed. Although I borrow the notion of liability from legal theory, and although much of what I say will be informed by the literature on liability in both tort law and criminal law, my concern in this article is with moral rather than legal liability. (shrink)

This paper defends “moral individualism” against various arguments that have been intended to show that membership in the human species or participation in our distinctively human form of life is a sufficient basis for a moral status higher than that of any animal. Among the arguments criticized are the “nature-of-the-kind argument,” which claims that it is the nature of all human beings to have certain higher psychological capacities, even if, contingently, some human beings lack them, and various versions of the (...) idea that there is a special form of life that all human beings share but of which no animal can be a full participant. The paper concludes that none of these arguments succeeds in demonstrating that there are moral reasons to permit animals to be treated less well than members of our own species whose psychological capacities and potential are no higher than those of the animals. (shrink)

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Research on aggression and terror management theory suggests shortcomings in Nell's analysis of cruelty. Hostile aggression and exposure to aggressive cues are not inherently reinforcing, though they may be enjoyed if construed within a meaningful cultural framework. Terror management research suggests that human cruelty stems from the desire to defend one's cultural worldview and to participate in a heroic triumph over evil.

The dominant conception of brain death as the death of the whole brain constitutes an unstable compromise between the view that a person ceases to exist when she irreversibly loses the capacity for consciousness and the view that a human organism dies only when it ceases to function in an integrated way. I argue that no single criterion of death captures the importance we attribute both to the loss of the capacity for consciousness and to the loss of functioning of (...) the organism as a whole. This is because the person or self is one thing and the human organism is another. We require a separate account of death for each. Only if we systematically distinguish between persons and human organisms will we be able to provide plausible accounts both of the conditions of our ceasing to exist and of when it is that we begin to exist. This paper, in short, argues for a form of mind-body dualism and draws out some of its implications for various practical moral problems. (shrink)

Attempts to determine or to select what kind of person or people to bring into existence are controversial. This is particularly true of “negative selection” or “selecting against” a certain type of person—that is, the attempt to prevent a person of a certain type, or people of that type, from existing. Virtually everyone agrees that some instances of negative selection are objectionable—for example, that selection against healthy people would be wrong, particularly if this were combined with positive selection of people (...) with serious diseases. But some people believe that all negative selection is objectionable and therefore that all “selection for existence,” whether positive or negative, is objectionable. For if negative selection is objectionable, it seems to follow that positive selection is as well, since the attempt to bring a person of a certain type into existence is simultaneously an attempt not to bring into existence a person who is not of that type. In short, positive selection is implicitly negative as well. (shrink)

Many people who believe that abortion may often be justified by appeal to the pregnant woman’s interests also believe that a woman’s infliction of significant but nonlethal injury on her fetus can seldom be justified by appeal to her interests. Yet the second of these beliefs can seem to cast doubt on the first. For the view that the infliction of prenatal injury is seriously morally objectionable may seem to presuppose a view about the status of the fetus that challenges (...) the permissibility of abortion. The fear of being interpreted as implicitly endorsing such a view has thus led some defenders of abortion to be reluctant for tactical reasons to condemn the infliction of prenatal injury. In this they are encouraged by those who exploit the issue of prenatal injury in their campaign against abortion. When, for example, the House and Senate in 2004 passed legislation recognizing two victims of an assault against a pregnant woman, many viewed this as a tactic in a larger strategy to restrict access to abortion. This tactic is potentially effective. For people may find it compelling to infer that, if injuring a fetus is seriously objectionable, abortion must be even more objectionable, since killing is normally more seriously objectionable than merely injuring. (shrink)

Since the 1960's, work in the analytic tradition on the nature of mental and linguistic content has converged on the views that social facts about public language meaning are derived from facts about the thoughts of individuals, and that these thoughts are constituted by properties of the internal states of agents. I give a two-part argument against this picture of intentionality: first, that if mental content is prior to public language meaning, then a view of mental content much like the (...) causal-pragmatic theory presented by Robert Stalnaker in Inquiry must be correct; second, that the causal-pragmatic theory is false. I conclude with some positive suggestions regarding alternative solutions to the `problem of intentionality.'. (shrink)

In recent years, various attempts have been made to advance a project sometimes characterized as "discursive psychology". Grounded in what its proponents term "social constructionism", the discursive approach to the elucidation of 'mental' phenomena is here contrasted to an ethnomethodological position informed by the later work of Wittgenstein. In particular, it is argued that discursive psychology still contains Cartesian residua, notwithstanding its professed objective of expurgating Cartesian thought from the behavioral sciences. One principal issue has been the confusion of "conceptual (...) analysis" with the empirical study of speech practices. If these distinct enterprises are conflated, the critical achievements of conceptual analysis are obscured or even misconstrued. A different picture of how best to analyze human conduct and mentality emerges if the lessons of Wittgensteinian grammatical analysis are preserved and extended, one more compatible with several themes in ethnomethodology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Publics, Counterpublics, and the Promise of DemocracyMelanie Loehwing and Jeff MotterTheories of publics and counterpublics remain as contested as the issues, identities, and politics they serve. Across the disciplinary spectrum, scholars turn to publics and counterpublics to help elucidate problems of inclusion and exclusion, projects of social justice, and the waning promise of democratic politics. Such work often enters the scholarly conversation at the points of contestation famously (...) introduced by Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser: publics or counterpublics? While Fraser's influence in rhetorical studies usefully prompts us to think about challenges to dominant discourse, the particular sense in which democracy undergirds projects about publics lingers as a question in need of exploration and clarification. Many take Fraser's intervention as a corrective to the politically insufficient Habermasian theory found in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1991). We argue, however, for a return to the original point of theoretical contention in an effort to specify the different normative commitments of the two perspectives and reevaluate the role each envisions for rhetoric as a potentially democratic praxis.Many critics concur with Fraser in describing the normative commitments of the Habermasian theory of the public sphere as idealized or exclusionary, and as such, "the problem is not only that Habermas idealizes the bourgeois public sphere but also that he fails to examine other, nonliberal, [End Page 220] nonbourgeois, competing public spheres. Or rather, it is precisely because he fails to examine these other public spheres that he ends up idealizing the bourgeois public sphere" (Fraser 1997, 74). However, this position relies on a reading of Habermas that focuses on the particular historical examples he investigates, rather than the democratic potential he extends from such historical practices, however deficient critics may judge them to be. Nevertheless, the intervention initiated by Fraser and elaborated by rhetorical scholars compels us to consider in what ways advancing a normative justification of democracy grounded in specific historical practices asks markedly different questions than pursuing a realist project of scrutinizing "actually existing" political formations.Further, the role of rhetoric in rejuvenated democratic politics stands as an important component of public and counterpublic sphere scholarship, though little work beyond that of Robert Asen and Daniel Brouwer has been done to articulate the senses of rhetoric embraced by the two perspectives, or their compatibility with contemporary understandings of rhetoric as social praxis that constitutes the communities, ideologies, and citizenship of those it serves (Asen 2003; Asen and Brouwer 2003; Asen 2004; Brouwer 2006). It is our contention that while Fraser's vein of counterpublic scholarship asks how existing and future publics can be treated democratically, Habermasian public sphere theory inquires into the means by which publics create democracy, and this essay represents a first attempt at delineating the implications of adopting one perspective over the other.To do so, we begin by discussing Habermas's initial assessment of the shifts in political culture that lead to the reconstitution of publicity and authority in the bourgeois public sphere, as well as Fraser's critique of the Habermasian vision of the public sphere and the subsequent development of counterpublic scholarship. A comparison between the two allows us to consider what kind of function each imagines rhetoric to serve in the creation and maintenance of democratic culture. Moreover, the juxtaposition of these two theoretical perspectives prompts us to specify precisely what we refer to when we speak of rhetorical democracy and its relationship to public spheres, and we offer in the final section a preliminary discussion of how the specific problematic of publics and counterpublics sheds light on the broadly relevant theme of the intersections between democratic politics and rhetorical culture.Before proceeding, however, we want to note the long and troubled relationship scholars of rhetoric have had with Habermas's work. Given his sociological training and identifications with social scientific [End Page 221] disciplines, as well as his stated goal of extending the Enlightenment project (Habermas 1990), it should not come as much of a surprise that many rhetoricians find little reason to comb his vast writings for resources (though for notable exceptions to this tendency, see Goodnight 1992; Farrell 1993; Goodnight and Hingstman 1997; Hauser 1999... (shrink)

Michael Walzer suggests that our common beliefs about individual responsibility and liability become largely irrelevant in the conduct of war. In conditions of war, everything is changed. Political realists have claimed that war eliminates morality; Walzer claims that war collectivizes it. I believe that conditions of war change nothing at all; they simply make it more difficult to ascertain relevant facts. This is not to say that the principles and laws that do or should govern the activity of war are (...) identical to those governing relations among individuals. Just as domestic law cannot simply restate the principles of individual morality, because the declaration and enforcement of laws have effects that must be taken into account in the formulation of the law, so too the principles, conventions, and laws of war cannot simply restate the principles of individual or international morality. The rules of war have to accommodate our epistemic limitations and to be formulated with a regard for the ways in which their announcement is likely to affect people’s behavior. But they should otherwise reflect as closely as possible the.. (shrink)

McMahan challenges the assumption that respect for self-determination requires an almost exceptionless doctrine of nonintervention by first defining the notions of "intervention" and "self-determination," and then analyzing Walzer's doctrine of nonintervention.

This article seeks to show that Israel’s war in Gaza in 2023 and 2024 has been an unjust war because it has violated both the requirement of proportionality and the requirement of necessity. The article explains the nature of proportionality, arguing that the main form of proportionality in war is simply the limit to the amount of harm inflicted on innocent people that can be justified either as the lesser evil or, more plausibly, on the basis of the special relations (...) between combatants and their fellow citizens. The argument of the article is that, even on the basis of assumptions about moral justification and the numbers of innocent people who have been killed or saved by the war that are highly favorable to Israel, the war has nevertheless been highly disproportionate and morally unnecessary. (shrink)

Abstract. Scientists have long puzzled over how homosexual orientation has evolved, given the assumed low relative fitness of homosexual individuals compared to heterosexual individuals. A number of theoretical models for the evolution of homosexuality have been postulated including balance polymorphism, "Fertile females", hypervariability of DNA sequences, kin selection, and "parental manipulation". In this paper, I propose a new group-selection model for the evolution of homosexuality which offers two advantages over existing models: (1) its non-assumption of genetic determinism, and (2) its (...) lack of dependency on an inefficient altruism relation and family dynamics theory. (shrink)

The essay which follows is about the relationship between mind and language. Most recent thought about intentionality has it that mental states of individuals are largely, or in the most fundamental cases, independent of social facts about public languages, and these social facts are derived from, or constituted by, the mental states of individuals. The purpose of this essay is to challenge this individualist orthodoxy , and suggest in its place a communitarian picture of intentionality which gives public languages a (...) role to play in the constitution of thought. (shrink)

We have modified Aristotelian syllogistic logic in for use in introductory philosophy courses. Although the scope of Aristotle's syllogistic is narrowed by our modifications, its pedagogical value is increased in one crucial way: in 4-6 hours of class time, students with no background in argumentation progress to the point where they can evaluate the structure of condensed and extended arguments. Because the mechanics of the program are readily grasped, it is possible to focus class time on important, abstract notions such (...) as validity, soundness, relevance, etc. If successfully implemented, the program encourages good habits for analysing, assessing and formulating arguments. (shrink)

Offering a cautionary tale about the abuses of paradigm‐shift rhetoric in secondary school reforms, the paper shows potential misuses and ethical effects of the relativistic language‐game in post‐compulsory education. Those initiating the shift often shelter their reform from the criticism of non‐adepts, marginalizing expert teachers that adhere to ‘antiquated’ or ‘folk’ pedagogies. The rhetoric herds educators uncritically into the citadel of new discourses and policies that often lack practical foundations; consequently, teachers often dissimulate compliance to the reform in order to (...) evade surveillance within such disciplinary apparatuses as teacher training and regimes of inspection. Turning to Foucault, the author views education reforms in terms of power relations within a form of governance: ‘games of truth’, or political and veridical discourses in which dividing practices for sorting out ‘sound’ and ‘unsound’ teaching practices become institutionalised. Wittgenstein's attention to initiate training in practices points to an alternative to naïve forms of relativism; educators must incorporate the new techniques they gradually master and adapt within a viable, shared form of life. Instead of teachers’ normalization and subjugation in what Foucault refers to as education ‘blocks’, new pedagogic practices are better adopted ‘freely’ as arts of self‐transformation. With Hacking, Foucault and Wittgenstein's accounts of the true‐and‐false are blended into an ‘historical ontology’ of present and emergent paradigms: a critique of the limits set down within education reforms that sanction or legitimize certain conduct. Sympathetic to the journal call, this kind of philosophical investigation and genealogical critique of teaching practices gives us a perspicuous view of the local, contingent and at times arbitrary nature of change initiatives. Critical awareness of how our pictures of education can captivate us heightens respect for professional eclecticism. Without ignoring the mandates and official scripts of public education reforms, experienced educators need to be able to conserve their tried and warranted ‘best practices’, while negotiating ranges of tolerance for alternative means. (shrink)

This entry concerns disability, inequality, and justice. Disabled people suffer from pervasive inequalities. They face inequalities in opportunities and resources. Throughout the world, disabled people suffer from disparities in employment, education, transportation, housing, and healthcare compared to those not disabled. This entry introduces the necessary background to show how some philosophers have attempted to analyze and address disability inequality. To do so, I will first present some background information about understanding the concept of disability and natural and social inequalities. I (...) aim to show how these ideas matter for our thinking about disability and their relationship to questions about justice. Second, I provide an overview of how two main theories of egalitarian justice that have risen to prominence in the last 20–30 years – luck egalitarianism and relational equality – have attempted to understand and respond to disability disadvantage and inequality. (shrink)

SummaryDonald Davidson's account of the interrelation between attitudes, and linguistic and non‐linguistic behaviour is a thoroughly holistic one. The project of radical interpretation itself embodies a holistic approach to the interpretative task. Yet Davidson also accepts a degree of indeterminacy in interpretation. Davidson's commitment to both holism and indeterminacy can give rise to a problem in the Davidsonian position. That problem is explained and a solution proposed. The indeterminacy thesis is thereby clarified, as is the nature of Davidsonian holism.

Responding to criticisms raised by Christopher Norris, this paper defends an anti-relativist reading of the work of both Davidson and Heidegger arguing that that there are important lessons to be learnt from their example - one can thus be an anti-relativist (as well as a certain sort of realist) without giving up on Davidson or on Heidegger.

SummaryIn Davidson's Theory of radical interpretation the principle of charity plays a crucial role. However the principle is the subject of widespread misunderstanding. The author attempts to provide an overall account of the principle and in doing so details some aspects of the holism which characterises the Davidsonian approach to interpretation. Charity is shown as inseparable from that holism. Two aspects of the principle are distinguished and some objections to the principle are also considered.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Differences between Human Beings and Other Animals The Morality of Causing Suffering and the Morality of Killing Practical Issues.

Some philosophers, most notably Julian Savulescu, have argued that potential parents have a moral reason to do what they can to have a child with the highest expected level of well-being.1 This is not just a reason to do what will make a particular child better off than he or she would otherwise be but also a reason to choose, from among different possible children, the one that has the highest expected well-being. The claim that potential parents have such a (...) reason is then often deployed as a premise in arguments in support of genetic enhancement. Robert Sparrow has argued in response that this claim implies that potential parents have a reason to choose to have female children only, primarily because women are genetically disposed to live, on average, 3–7 years longer than men.2 He takes this implication to be a reductio of this particular form of argument in support of human enhancement. In her paper, Sexual dimorphism and human enhancement, Paula Casal seeks to rebut Sparrow's argument and then goes on to suggest that a better case for the selection of female children could be made on grounds of moral enhancement, since women are far less genetically disposed to be violent and aggressive than men.3 Recognising, however, that the creation of only female children would lead to human extinction, she concludes that the way to achieve the best outcome would be to use techniques of genetic modification, should they become available, to make men more like women in certain respects: smaller, less aggressive, less competitive, less violent, less obsessed with sex, less prone to taking great risks, and less likely to die early from accident, combat, or disease.Like Larry Temkin, I am largely in agreement with Casal on these matters. In this short commentary, I …. (shrink)

in Michael Doyle, Striking First: Preemption and Prevention in International Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

I am greatly honored that these four distinguished moral and legal theorists, who have all made substantial and important contributions to our understanding of the problems with which I am concerned in my book, have been willing to engage themselves so constructively with my arguments. The published book will be significantly better, or less bad, as a result of my having had to address their challenges. I find myself in substantial agreement with much of what each commentator has to say (...) and concede that on some points they have proven me wrong. But I am obstinate by nature, and perhaps a little obtuse, and thus am prepared to resist some of their suggestions, however sensible they may seem. (shrink)

How does one explain an interest in ethics? In my case the interest has never been “intellectual” or “academic.” I have never been drawn to metaethics. Rather, I have always been aware that there’s a lot wrong in the world and I have wanted to do what I could to help put it right. I grew up in the American south during the years of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. That gave me a lot to think about. (...) I still have a poster that I took o¤ a telephone pole near where I lived in rural South Carolina that reads “Don’t be half a man, join the Klan.”. (shrink)

There is much to admire in Michael Walzer’s discussion of terrorism and just war. I particularly applaud his insistence that liability to attack is a matter of action rather than membership or collective identity. “It is,” he writes, “the extension of violence or the threat..

ArgumentThis article documents the reasoning in a mathematical work by Mei Wending, one of the most prolific mathematicians in seventeenth-century China. Based on an analysis of the mathematical content, we present Mei’s systematic treatment of this particular genre of problems,fangcheng, and his efforts to refute the traditional practices in works that appeared earlier. His arguments were supported by the epistemological values he utilized to establish his system and refute the flaws in the traditional approaches. Moreover, in the context of the (...) competition between the Chinese and Western approaches to mathematics, Mei was motivated to demonstrate that the genre offangchengproblems was purely a “Chinese” achievement, not discussed by the Jesuits. Mei’s motivations were mostly expressed primarily in the prefaces to his works, in his correspondence with other scholars, in synopses of his poems, and in biographical records of some of his contemporaries. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Some business ethicists view agency theory as a cautionary tale—a proof that it is impossible to carry out successful economic interactions in the absence of ethical behaviour. The cautionary-tale view presents a nuanced normative characterisation of agency, but itsunilateralfocus betrays a limited understanding of the structure of social interaction. This article moves beyond unilateralism by presenting a descriptive and normative argument for abilateralcautionary-tale view. Specifically, we discuss hat swaps and role dualism in asymmetric-information principal-agent relationships and argue that the norm (...) of reciprocity can function as a moral solution to agency risks in adverse-selection and moral-hazard problems. Our bilateral cautionary-tale formulation extends the normative boundaries of agency theory, while leaving the fundamental economic assumptions of agency theory intact. (shrink)