Are liberalism and perfectionism compatible? In this study Steven Wall presents and defends a perfectionist account of political morality that takes issue with many currently fashionable liberal ideas but retains the strong liberal commitment to the ideal of personal autonomy. He begins by critically discussing the most influential version of anti-perfectionist liberalism, examining the main arguments that have been offered in its defence. He then clarifies the ideal of personal autonomy, presents an account of its value and shows that (...) a strong commitment to personal autonomy is fully compatible with an endorsement of perfectionist political action designed to promote valuable pursuits and discourage base ones. (shrink)

Many writers claim that democratic government rests on a principled commitment to the ideal of political equality. The ideal of political equality holds that political institutions ought to be arranged so that they distribute political standing equally to all citizens. I reject this common view. I argue that the ideal of political equality, under its most plausible characterizations, lacks independent justificatory force. By casting doubt on the ideal of political equality, I provide indirect support for the claim that democratic government (...) is only instrumentally justified. (shrink)

In Moral Creativity, John Wall argues that moral life and thought are inherently and radically creative. Human beings are called by their own primordially created depths to exceed historical evil and tragedy through the ongoing creative transformation of their world. This thesis challenges ancient Greek and biblical separations of ethics and poetic image-making, as well as contemporary conceptions of moral life as grounded in abstract principles or preconstituted traditions. Taking as his point of departure the poetics of the will (...) of Paul Ricoeur, and ranging widely into critical conversations with Continental, narrative, feminist, and liberationist ethics, Wall uncovers the profound senses in which moral practice and thought involve tension, catharsis, excess, and renewal. In the process, he draws new connections between sin and tragedy, practice and poetics, and morality and myth. Rather than proposing a complete ethics, Moral Creativity is a meta-ethical work investigating the creative capability as part of what it means, morally, to be human. This capability is explored around four dimensions of ontology, teleology, deontology, and social practice. In each case, Wall examines a traditional perspective on the relation of ethics to poetics, critiques it using resources from contemporary phenomenology, and develops a conception of a more original poetics of moral life. In the end, moral creativity is a human capability for inhabiting tensions among others and in social systems and, in the image of a Creator, creating together an ever more radically inclusive moral world. (shrink)

Jerry L. Walls aims to demonstrate in his book Hell: The Logic of Damnation that some traditional views of hell are still defensible and can be believed with intellectual and moral integrity. Focusing on the issues from the standpoint of philosophical theology, Walls explores the doctrine of hell in relation to both the divine nature and human nature. He argues, with respect to the divine nature, that some traditional versions of the doctrine are compatible not only with God's omnipotence and (...) omniscience, but also with a strong account of His perfect goodness. The concept of divine goodness receives special attention since the doctrine of hell is most often rejected on moral grounds. (shrink)

Jerry L. Walls, the author of books on hell and heaven, completes his tour of the afterlife with a philosophical and theological exploration and defense of purgatory, the traditional teaching that most Christians require a period of postmortem cleansing and purging of their sinful dispositions and imperfections before they will be fully made ready for heaven. He examines Protestant objections to the doctrine and shows that the doctrine of purgatory has been construed in different ways, some of which are fully (...) compatible with Protestant theology. In particular, while purgatory has often been understood as matter of punishment in order to make satisfaction for sins that have not been fully remitted, it can also be seen as the completion of the sanctification process, an account of the doctrine that is fully consistent with the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. Purgatory assumes not only continuity of personal identity but also gradual moral and spiritual growth between death and resurrection. Different theories of personal identity are examined and assessed in light of these assumptions. Walls also shows that the traditional doctrine of purgatory is not understood as a second chance for salvation, but goes on to argue that it should be modified to allow for postmortem repentance. He concludes with an examination of C.S. Lewis's writings on purgatory, and suggests that Lewis can be a model for evangelicals and other Protestants to engage the doctrine of purgatory in a way that is true to their theology. (shrink)

Walling and Hicks make a direct assault on the "Everest" of scientific mysteries. The authors trace the first glimmerings of consciousness in evolution and during emergence from anesthesia. There are no formulae or equations; all the difficult concepts have been presented as allegories and pictures. Unlike many philosophical books about consciousness, they have evidence to back up their ideas. This book is also an attempt to bridge the chasm between science and religion which the authors believe to be largely unnecessary.

Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible.

Examines the notion of passivity in the work of Levinas, Blanchot, and Agamben.

:The ideal of public justification holds, at a minimum, that the most fundamental political and legal institutions of a society must be publicly justified to each of its members. This essay proposes and defends a new account of this ideal. The account defended construes public justification as an ideal of rational justification, one that is grounded in the moral requirement to respect the rational agency of persons. The essay distinguishes two kinds of justifying reasons that bear on politics and shows (...) how they inform the ideal of public justification. It also decouples public justification from contractualist political morality. The result is a novel account of public justification that departs markedly from how the ideal is commonly characterized, but shows how it retains its distinctiveness as an ideal of politics. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.THE PURE THEORY OF PUBLIC JUSTIFICATIONVolume 32, Issue 2Steven Wall DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000170Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. THE PURE THEORY OF PUBLIC JUSTIFICATIONVolume 32, Issue 2Steven Wall DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000170Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. THE PURE THEORY OF PUBLIC JUSTIFICATIONVolume 32, Issue 2Steven Wall DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052516000170Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Three enduring models -- What constitutes human being? -- What is the ethical aim? -- What is owed each other? -- Human rights in light of childhood -- The generative family -- The art of ethical thinking.

Paul Ricoeur's understanding of the relations of faith, love, and hope suggests a unique approach to theological ethics, one that holds fresh promise for bringing together considerations of the good (teleology) and the right (deontology) around the notion of an "economy of the gift." The economy of the gift articulates Ricoeur's distinctively dialectical understanding of the relation of the human and the divine, and the resulting dialectical moral relation of the self and the other. Despite our fallen condition, Ricoeur suggests, (...) we are called by the divine to embrace the radical possibility of the reconciliation of human goods under the requirement of accountability to human diversity and otherness. (shrink)

Jerry L. Walls argues that the doctrine of heaven is ripe for serious reconsideration. He contends not only that the orthodox view of heaven can be defended from objections commonly raised against it, but also that heaven is a powerful resource for addressing persistent philosophical problems, not the least of which concern the ground of morality and the meaning of life. Walls shows how heaven is integrally related to central Christian doctrines, particularly those related to salvation, and tackles the difficult (...) problem of why faith in Christ is necessary to save us from our sins. In addition, heaven is shown to illumine thorny problems of personal identity and to be an essential component of a satisfactory theodicy. Walls goes on to examine data from near-death experiences from the standpoint of some important recent work in epistemology and argues that they offer positive evidence for heaven. He concludes that we profoundly need to recover the hope of heaven in order to recover our very humanity. (shrink)

Some of the ways in which the experience of mothering is shaped by the moral and cultural constructions surrounding breastfeeding discourse are examined using a critical deconstruction of recent Canadian health education material. Connections between the understandings surrounding breastfeeding and cultural constructions of nature and sexuality are raised, as is the overlap between breastfeeding discourse and a number of other social discourses including those surrounding child-centered parenting expertise, the remoralization of pregnancy, and the neoliberal preoccupation with individual responsibility and the (...) cost of social programs. Some of the implications that this understanding poses for mothers are examined. (shrink)

We theoretically discuss and empirically show how CEO power based on environmental expertise and formal influence over executives and directors, in the absence and presence of shareholder activism, spurs firms toward greener strategies. Our results support the idea that CEOs with informal power, grounded in expertise, reduce corporate environmental impact and this relationship is amplified when the CEO also enjoys formal power over the board of directors. Additionally, we found that any source of CEO power, whether informal or formal, is (...) a good catalyst for transforming shareholder activism into corporate greening. However, in the absence of such activism, only CEOs’ informal environmental expert power acts as a determinant of firm environmental performance. (shrink)

In the first edition of The Gay Science (GS), Nietzsche proposes that we treat knowledge as unconditionally valuable and life as a tragic quest for truth. In the second edition of GS, he seems to retract this proposal, suggesting that we substitute “incipit parodia” for “incipit tragœdia.” But Nietzsche does not say what he means by “parody,” or what role he believes it should play in our evaluative lives. This article proposes that by introducing parody into GS, Nietzsche intends not (...) only to correct the original text by mocking his earlier treatment of science as tragic, but also to designate parody as a basis for new tasks, duties, and values beyond what science can offer. This article speculates that parodic value creation might consist in the imitation of behaviors and practices associated with preexisting values without the reproduction of the beliefs and feelings corresponding to those practices. (shrink)

In a number of publications, Gerald Gaus has presented an ambitious account of political morality that gives the ideal of public justification pride of place. This article critically discusses Gaus’s characterization and defense of the ideal of public justification in politics. It also presents an account and an argument in support of first-person political justification.

The motive for late eighteenth-century proto-technics of photography and cinema was never quite mimetic representation: it was generating autonomous impressions of natural phenomena within the tradition ofNaturphilosophie. The article analyses a series of connections between ‘natural hieroglyphs’ (von Lichtenberg), Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles’s ‘megascope’, Wedgwood’s pre-photography, Lavater’s silhouettes and antecedents of Marey’s ‘graphic method’. The goal is to document precursor ideas, devices, setups and frameworks of photoimaging medias to show that the genealogy of photography and cinema intersected through many polymath transverses within (...) the ambit of natural philosophy (and the context of slavery). (shrink)

Moore's paradox is a paradox in which certain kinds of belief or assertion, such as a belief that ?it is raining and I do not believe that it is raining?, are irrational despite involving no obvious contradiction in what is believed. But is there a parallel paradox involving other kinds of attitude, in particular desire? I argue that certain kinds of desire would be irrational to have for similar, distinctive reasons that having Moorean beliefs would be irrational to have. Hence, (...) I argue that such desires, a desire that ?one have a particular desire that was frustrated? or a desire that ?some state of affairs obtain about which one was indifferent?, are a parallel Moorean paradox of desire. I further argue that this analogous paradox has implications for practical reasoning, in particular by presenting a problem for instrumentalism about the objects of desire. (shrink)

In a paper in this journal (Wall 2016), the author of the present paper critiqued Scott Forschler's attempt (2013) to establish that Jens Timmermann's argument (2005) against R. M. Hare's attempt (1981) to bridge the Kantian-consequentialist gap is unsuccessful. Forschler's thesis is that Hare's utilitarianism is strictly normative, not metaethical. In Hare's ethical rationalism, which is metaethical but contains no intrinsic ends (Forschler 2013), reason determines the proper ends, and preference satisfaction has no value prior to reason's determinations (Forschler (...) 2013). The present author responded that Hare's moral approach presupposes that preference satisfaction is the ultimate end (Wall 2016) and that an analysis of preference satisfaction in Hare's moral approach cannot be confined to normative ethics. Forschler's rejoinder (2017) suggests that Hare's moral theory was misinterpreted by the author, who now shows that such a judgment results from significant oversights concerning the foundation of Hare's moral theory and utilitarian foundations. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:This article provides an in-depth ethical analysis of living donor uterus transplantation, incorporating clinical, psychological, and qualitative study data into the discussion. Although the concept of living organ donors as patients in their own right has not always been present in the field of transplantation, this conceptualization informs the framework for living donor ethics that we apply to living uterus donation. This framework takes root in the principles of research ethics, which include respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. It incorporates (...) an analysis based on eight potential vulnerabilities of living donors: capacitational, juridic, deferential, social, medical, situational, allocational, and infrastructural. Finally, it recognizes that special relationships—such as that of the living donor advocate with the potential donor—require special responsibilities, including identifying vulnerabilities and engaging donors in a shared decision-making process. Directed and non-directed uterus donors require separate ethical analyses because their different relationships with recipients will influence the types of vulnerabilities, they are subject to as well as the potential benefits they may gain from donation. (shrink)

Weeter and Duvall were good friends and philosophical colleagues. Their friendship was served by the fact that they shared a number of important philosophical commitments. Both, for instance, were theists. Both also devoutly believed in possible worlds, propositions, and essences. And furthermore, both were ardent libertarians.

According to Gary Watson (1977), if we choose not to implement a judgment about what it is best to do then we must have changed that judgment. On those grounds he rejects an otherwise plausible account of akrasia, or weakness of will, that explains it in terms of the relative strengths of the agent's desires to act against and in accordance with their evaluative judgment. However, Watson seems to assume what I call a 'principle of closure of evaluation', a principle (...) that I argue can fail. The possibility of such failure of closure of evaluation means that Watson's argument can be resisted, allowing us to maintain this plausible account of akrasia. (shrink)

Introduction: the fingerprint of spirit -- The subject/object of cinema: The Maltese falcon -- "A deeper breath": from body to spirit in Kiss me deadly -- Negative dioretix: Repo man -- "Jackie Treehorn treats objects like women!": two types of fetishism in The big Lebowski.

In this paper, I draw on postphenomenology and material engagement theory to consider the material and emergent character of sociality in Homo faber. I approach this through the context of the bow and arrow, which is a technology that has received recent attention in cognitive archeology as a proxy for assessing criteria that made early human cognition distinct from that of other hominins. Through an ethnographic case study, I scrutinize the forms of knowledge that are required to use the technology (...) in the dynamic field of environmental practices that constitute the hunt. I demonstrate that the learning of the skill is a transformational process where beginners develop self and intentionality by attuning subjective capacities for sensory awareness and creative responsiveness. Through mutual participation, the bow and arrow aligns disposition and rapport among those whose life processes are shaped by the skill. As a mechanism of shared experience, the bow and arrow generates a community can together perceive and act creatively in an impermanent world. Through these observations, I argue that early human sociality was built not on a pre-evolved capacity for symbolic representation but on technical experience, and I consider important questions this raises about the nature of evolutionary processes at work in the development of communities through time. (shrink)

Enforcing Morality is written for scholars and graduate students working in the fields of philosophy, law and political theory. It provides both a critical overview of debates on the enforcement of morality and a defense of a distinctive position on the topic.

In recent work, Martha Nussbaum has exposed an important ambiguity in the standard conception of political liberalism. The ambiguity centers on the notion of “reasonableness” as it applies to comprehensive doctrines and to persons. As Nussbaum observes, the notion of reasonableness in political liberalism can be construed in a purely ethical sense or in a sense that combines ethical and epistemic elements. The ambiguity bears crucially on the respect for persons norm—a key norm that helps to distinguish political from perfectionist (...) versions of liberalism. Nussbaum contends that when political liberals affirm a construal of reasonableness that includes epistemic elements they run into trouble in formulating an account of their view that sharply distinguishes it from perfectionist liberalism. She contends further that perfectionist versions of liberalism should be rejected since they fail to offer an account of respect for persons. This paper responds to Nussbaum’s challenge. It argues that an adequate account of respect for persons must make reference to epistemic elements. This being the case not only explains why political liberals were correct to incorporate epistemic elements into their accounts of reasonableness but also why it is a mistake to think that perfectionist liberals themselves cannot present an appealing account of respect for persons. Nussbaum’s challenge merits careful study since it both sheds light on the nature of political liberalism and highlights an important faultline in its structure. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of a qualitative study that explored the organizational influences on moral distress for health professionals working in pediatric intensive care units across Canada. Participants were recruited to the study from PICUs across Canada. The PICU is a high-tech, fast-paced, high-pressure environment where caregivers frequently face conflict and ethical tension in the care of critically ill children. A number of themes including relationships with management, organizational structure and processes, workload and resources, and team dynamics were identified. (...) This study provides a rare and important multi-disciplinary perspective on this topic and the findings have implications for administrators and leaders who seek to improve the moral climate of healthcare delivery. (shrink)

This paper presents a way of thinking about how to respond to the pluralism of modern societies that avoids any commitment to contractualist norms of political justification. The argument developed appeals to the notion of a constitutional settlement. Constitutional settlements are complex on-going social practices that both express certain values to which political societies are committed and establish procedures for resolving disputes among members of these societies. As such, they are a product of both moral commitment and the balance of (...) power. The paper shows how constitutional settlements relate to issues of stability and non-subjugation in politics, and explains how they can ground a distinction between justice and legitimacy. (shrink)

In this study I defend an account of 'dispositional coercion' and coercive offers which hinges primarily on the intentions of both the coercer and the victim. In doing so I argue against various baseline accounts of coercion. ;Baseline accounts center on the victim's estimation of a proposal's effect, the determination of coercive threats and offers primarily hinging on the victim's beliefs and preferences. I believe that it is the intended action of the individual making the proposal that provides the core (...) consideration for defining coercive threats and offers. ;The following is my set of jointly necessary and sufficient conditions for 'dispositional coercion' wherein X coerces Y to do A: X threatens Y, that is, X intentionally attempts to create the belief in Y that X will be responsible for harm coming to Y should Y fail to do A. X's motive for attempting to create this belief is his desire to bring about a state of affairs in which Y's recognition of this possible harm to himself influences Y to do A. X successfully creates the belief in Y that Y may be harmed if he fails to do A, that is, X is successful in causing Y to recognize that harm may come to him should he fail to do A. Y intends to do A, and Y's motive for intending to do A is Y's desire to avoid harm to himself. Y does A. ;I also argue that X makes Y a coercive offer if and only if: ; X either intentionally attempts to create the following beliefs in Y, or for cases in which X believes that Y already holds beliefs and , attempts to create belief in Y: X is able to prevent some harm from coming to Y. Y needs X's assistance in preventing this harm. X will not assist Y in preventing this harm if Y does not do A. ; X's motive for attempting to create beliefs - in Y, or for cases in which Y already holds beliefs and , to attempt to create belief in Y is his desire to bring about a state of affairs in which Y's recognition of this possible harm to himself influences Y to do A. (shrink)

The fact that a number of popes have been bad in the sense that they did not even meet minimal standards of moral integrity and sincere piety poses a serious problem for Roman Catholicism. After surveying a gallery of these infamous popes, I hone in more exactly on just what the problem is. I then argue that the problem remains on both a weak providence view and a strong providence view. According to the former, there is no guarantee that the (...) man chosen pope is God’s will. According to the latter, deploying the resources of middle knowledge, God can make sure that popes infallibly avoid error and teach only truth by making sure the right man is chosen pope. Neither view satisfactorily explains how the papacy can be as important as Rome says it is while so many popes have been such unworthy holders of the office. (shrink)

Every day, we are confronted with a vast amount of information that all competes for our attention. Some of this information might be associated with rewards (e.g., gambling) or losses (e.g., insurances). To what extent such information, even if irrelevant for our current task, not only attracts attention but also affects our actions is still a topic under examination. To address this issue, we applied a new experimental paradigm that combines visual search and a spatial compatibility task. Although colored stimuli (...) did not modulate the spatial compatibility effect more than gray stimuli, we found clear evidence that reward and loss associations attenuated this effect, presumably by affecting attention and response selection. Moreover, there are hints that differences in these associations are also reflected in a modulation of the spatial compatibility effect. We discuss theoretical implications of our results with respect to the influences of color, reward, and loss association on selective attention and response selection. (shrink)

The struggle over legal abortion access in the United States is a religious controversy, not a scientific debate. Religious activists who believe that meaningful individual life (i.e., “personhood”) begins at a specific “moment-of-conception” are attempting to pass laws that force this view upon all pregnant persons, irrespective of their medical circumstances, individual preferences, or personal religious beliefs. This paper argues that such actions promote a constitutionally prohibited “establishment of religion.” Abortion policy in a secular state must be based upon scientifically (...) accurate biology, not unprovable theological presuppositions. The scientific facts regarding human pregnancy do not support the position that personhood begins with fertilization—at which point a pregnancy does not yet even exist. Abortion policy should regard the embryo/fetus as part of the pregnant individual’s body until delivery. We argue that individual “personhood” only begins when the _latent_ potentialities of the fetal nervous system are _actualized_ in the newborn after delivery. The paper argues that instantiating non-scientific beliefs concerning embryonic/fetal “personhood” into the law as the basis for abortion policy establishes a state-sponsored religion. The protection of religious liberty requires that abortion be decriminalized. Abortion should be treated like any other medical procedure and regulated similarly. To protect both religious freedom and sound medical practice, individual legal personhood should be recognized as beginning only at birth. (shrink)