There are five main claims that may be made about life after death: We are reincarnated in the self-same body we had in life. We are reincarnated in another body. We are revived, or continue to live in a disembodied form.

Grey zone attacks tend to paralyze response for two reasons. First, they present us with choice scenarios of inherently dilemmatic structure, e.g., Prisoners’ Dilemmas and games of chicken, complicated by difficult conditions of choice, such as choice under risk or amid vagueness. Second, they exploit our uncertainty about how much we do or should care about the things under attack¬—each attack is small in effect, but their effects accumulate: how should we decide whether to treat a given attack as something (...) meriting a serious response rather than a mere irritation to be ignored? This chapter brings standard decision theoretic tools to bear on the issues, tools such as the maximization of expected utility principle, and the precautionary principle. But it also develops three innovations. It shows that seeing it as possible to make choices not just of actions given our values, but also choices of values themselves, can extricate us from certain kinds of decision paralysis. It shows how we can rationally regard ourselves as having bright decision lines even when nothing in the circumstance of choice has these lines in its structure. And it shows how certain conflict escalation risks from the former two strategies can be managed by both parties seeing that cooperation can yield a sharable surplus of goods, and that cooperation can be rational upon a rationally defensible change in their values so that each comes to derive utility from the success of both parties. This yields cooperative solutions to what amount to Prisoners’ Dilemmas. The Cold War was prosecuted on the logic of strategic rationality and that part of game theory that is deterrence theory. We need a new logic from decision theorists for the games that constitute grey zone conflict. (shrink)

This book provides a thought-provoking analysis of the role of metaphysics within the Christian theological tradition. Douglas Clyde Macintosh argues that the tendency to prioritize abstract, speculative thinking over more concrete, practical concerns has been a major contributing factor to the decline of religious faith in the modern era. He proposes a return to a more grounded, experiential approach to theology, one that emphasizes the importance of community, tradition, and ethical action. A timely and compelling call to reconsider the (...) foundations of Christian thought and practice. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

To the normal reasons that we think can justify one in preferring something, x (namely, that x has objectively preferable properties, or has properties that one prefers things to have, or that x's obtaining would advance one's preferences), I argue that it can be a justifying reason to prefer x that one's very preferring of x would advance one's preferences. Here, one prefers x not because of the properties of x, but because of the properties of one's having the preference (...) for x. So-revising one's preferences is rational in paradoxical choice situations like Kavka's Deterrence Paradox. I then try to meet the following objections: that this is stoicist, incoherent, bad faith; that it conflates instrumental and intrinsic value, gives wrong solutions to the problems presented by paradoxical choice situations, entails vicious regresses of value justification, falsifies value realism, makes valuing x unresponsive to x's properties, causes value conflict, conflicts with other standards of rationality, violates decision theory, counsels immorality, makes moral paradox, treats value change as voluntary, conflates first- and second-order values, is psychologically unrealistic, and wrongly presumes that paradoxical choice situations can even occur. (shrink)

Autonomous and automatic weapons would be fire and forget: you activate them, and they decide who, when and how to kill; or they kill at a later time a target you’ve selected earlier. Some argue that this sort of killing is always wrong. If killing is to be done, it should be done only under direct human control. (E.g., Mary Ellen O’Connell, Peter Asaro, Christof Heyns.) I argue that there are surprisingly many kinds of situation where this is false and (...) where the use of Automated Weapons Systems would in fact be morally required. These include cases where a) once one has activated a weapon expected then to behave lethally, it would be appropriate to let it continue because this is part of a plan whose goodness one was best positioned to evaluate before activating the weapon; b) one expects better long-term consequences from allowing it to continue; c) allowing it to continue would express a decision you made to be resolute, a decision that could not have advantaged you had it not been true that you would carry through with it; d) the weapon is mechanically not recallable, so that, to not allow it to carry through, you would have had to refrain from activating it in the first place, something you expected would have disastrous consequences; e) you must deputize necessary killings to autonomous machines in order to protect yourself from guilt you shouldn’t have to bear; f) it would be morally better for the burden of responsibility for the killing to be shared among several agents, and the agents deputizing killing to machines can do this, especially where it’s not predictable which machine will be successful; g) a killing would be morally better done with elements of randomness and lack of deliberation, and a (relatively stupid) machine could do this where a person could not; h) the machine would be acting as a Doomsday Device, so that it could not have had its hoped for deterrent effect had you not ensured that you would be unable to recall it if enemy action activated it; i) letting it carry through is a necessary part of its own learning process, and you expect that this learning will have salutary effects later on; j) human intervention in the machine’s operation would disastrously impair its precision, or its speed and efficiency; k) using non-automated methods would require human resources you just don’t have in a task that nevertheless must be done (e.g., using land-mines to protect remote installations); l) the weapon has such horrible and indiscriminate power that it is doubtful whether it could be actually used in ways compatible with International Humanitarian Law and the Laws of War, which require that weapons be used only in ways respecting distinctness, necessity and proportionality, but its threat of use could respect these principles in affording deterrence provided human error cannot lead to their accidental deployment, this requiring that they be controlled by carefully designed autonomous and automatic systems. I then consider objections based on conceptions of human dignity and find that very often dignity too is best served by autonomous machine killing. Examples include saving your village by activating a robot to kill invading enemies who would inflict great indignity on your village, using a suicide robot to save yourself from a less dignified death at enemy hands, using a robotic drone to kill someone otherwise not accessible in order to restore dignity to someone this person killed and to his family, and using a robot to kill someone who needs killing, but the killing of whom by a human executioner would soil the executioner’s dignity. I conclude that what matters in rightful killing isn’t necessarily that it be under the direct control of a human, but that it be under the control of morality; and that could sometimes require use of an autonomous or automated device. (This paper was formerly called "Fire and Forget: A Defense of the Use of Autonomous Weapons in War" on Philpapers; the current title is the title of the published version.). (shrink)

This article focuses on the effectiveness of antihomophobia discourses and explores the process of teaching and learning about heteronormativity. The author offers an interrogation of the regulatory fictions within heteronormativity and frameworks of resistance and examines attempts to move beyond established views of sexual minority students and explore the ways in which queer research has, and continues to, bring a counternarrative to staid liberal notions of reform and the well-intentioned rhetoric of diversity and difference. This analysis raises critical questions about (...) the possibility of moving beyond standard antihomophobia curricula and questions approaches such as the one-off lecture format and other condensed discussions of heteronormativity and homophobia. (shrink)

Explains how and why laws against human germline modification will do more harm than good.

First Published in 1920. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC TIME AND MOTION J. J. MACINTOSH University ofCalgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada A. THOMAS'S STANDARD DOCTRINE: THE NEED FOR ASINGLE TIME. T HERE IS an under-discussed problem about time for St. Thomas. Most discussions of his views on time center around either the question of God's foreknowledge or around the notions of eternity and aeviternity. Even those discussions which deal directly with Thomas's views on (...) time ignore the issue I wish to discuss here.' The problem is this: St. Thomas held both that there is a single time, created by God, and that there are three distinct times: two for the angels, and one for the rest of creation. Moreover, he seems, fairly explicitly, to have been unwilling to adopt either of the obvious ways out of this apparent contradiction. Thomas believed, and often said, that time is unitary, and typically offered an Aristotelian reason for the claim: "the true reason why time is one, is to be found in the oneness of the first movement by which, since it is most simple, all other movements are measured. Therefore time is referred to that movement, not only as a measure is to the thing measured, but also as accident 1 See, for example, Piero Ariotti, "Celestial reductionism of time: on the scholastic conception of time from Albert the great and Thomas Aquinas to the end of the 16th century," Studia Internationale Filosofia 4 (1972): 91-120, and Antonio Moreno, "Time and Relativity: Some Philosophical Considerations," The Thomist 45 (1981): 62-79. I have referred to this problem earlier in "Time and St. Thomas" (in To Myselffrom Others, ed. David Miller [Warwick: University of Warwick, 1989)), and in "Aquinas, Ockham, and Prior (and the unexpected examination),'' Auckland Philosophy Papers, no. 1 (1990). 547 548 J. J. MACINTOSH is to subject; and thus receives unity from it."2 Moreover, such a doctrine is necessary if what he tells us about the foreknowledge of God, and God's inability to change the past,3 not to mention his views on the knowledge that angels and demons have of what is genuinely future, is to be correct. Briefly, those views commit him to a view of a single time that is linear past, and is nonbranching future as well.4 There is some exegetical question as to whether or not his views on time, contingency, and freedom led him to adopt a truth-gap account of genuinely future tense contingent propositions, but that the singleness of time is required has not been questioned.5 This is not the place to deal with the difficulties Aquinas faced concerning God's foreknowledge, but a brief introductory word is in order to show how central the singleness of time is for his thought in this area. Since all past- and present-tense truths have necessity per accidens (that is, they concern matters which are now irrevocable), the class of contingent truths is a proper subset of genuinely future-tense claims. A proper subset because 2 Summa Theologiae, I, q. 10, a. 6 c (hereafter cited as sn; English translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 vols., (1920; reprint, Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1981). This is the translation I have standardly used, sometimes with slight changes, but I have also made use of the translation by the Blackfriars (61 vols. [London: Blackfriars, in conjunction with Eyre and Spottiswood, 1964-81], hereafter cited as Blackfriars). 3 Thus, for example, "God can make the existence of an angel not future; but He cannot cause him not to be while he is, or not to have been, after he has been" (ST I, q. 10, a. 5, ad 3). 4 By contrast, Ockham, for example, adopted an implicit tense logic with branching future possibilities. As far as I know, no mediaeval thinker allowed branching pasts. For a discussion of that possibility, see John Mackie, Truth, Probability and Paradox: Studies in Philosophical Logic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). For a helpful general discussion of the issues involved, see R. Thomason, "Combinations of Tense and Modality," in D. Gabbay and D. Guenthner, eds., Handbook of Philosophical Logic, 3 vols. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1984), 2... (shrink)

This chapter criticizes several methods of responding to the techniques foreign powers are widely acknowledged to be using to subvert U.S. elections. It suggests that countries do this when they have a legitimate stake in each other’s political deliberations, but no formal voice in them. It also suggests that if they accord each other such a voice, they will engage as co-deliberators with arguments, rather than trying to undermine each other’s deliberative processes; and that this will be salutary for all (...) parties. It moots several methods for giving nations such a voice, ranging from inviting representatives of foreign powers to participate in debates in each other’s high-level elections, to having representatives of all nations vote in each other’s key elections or legislative bodies, or in international bodies constituted in recognition of the need for binding global deliberation about shared issues. (shrink)

The philosophical zombie is an imaginary being that is just like us in every way, except that philosophical zombies don't have experience. Elite athletes who are 'in the zone' also lack experience, therefore, while in a zone state they are similar to philosophical zombies.

In Warranted Christian Beliet Alvin Plantinga claims that “The Enlightenment looked askance at testimony and tradition; Locke saw them as a preeminent source of error.” Locke, Plantinga suggests, is the “fountainhead” of this stance. This is importantly wrong about Locke and Locke”s views, and an examination of the views of Locke’s much admired friend and slightly older contemporary, Robert Boyle, reveals that the claim is mistaken about him as well, reinforcing the view that Plantinga is in general mistaken about the (...) intellectual milieu in which Locke wrote. In this paper I consider the views of Locke and Boyle on demonstration, observation, experiment, and testimony with a view to showing what, in the case of science and religion, their views actually were. For Locke I draw mainly on the Essay, while for Boyle I draw heavily on the MSS in the Royal Society Library, as well as on the printed works. (shrink)

How may nations protect their interests in space if its fragility makes military operations there self-defeating? This essay claims nations are in Prisoners Dilemmas on the matter, and applies David Gauthier’s theories about how it is rational to behave morally—cooperatively—in such dilemmas. Currently space-faring nations should i) enter into co-operative space sharing arrangements with other rational nations, ii) exclude—militarily, but with only terrestrial force—nations irrational or existentially opposed to other nations being in space, and iii) incentivize all nations into co-operation (...) by redistributing some space-generated wealth to nations that might otherwise ruin space. Further, since all nations are rationally incentivized to ever greater dependence on space, and since each, by threatening space, can hold hostage its benefits to all, each can demand resolution of terrestrial discontents with other nations. So each has a rational interest in treating others morally both in space and on terrestrial issues. (shrink)

This chapter conceptually analyzes the post-traumatic stress injuries called moral injury, moral fatigue or exhaustion, and broken spirit. It then identifies two puzzles. First, soldiers sometimes sustain moral injury even from doing right actions. Second, they experience moral exhaustion from making decisions even where the morally right choice is so obvious that it shouldn’t be stressful to make it; and even where rightness of decision is so murky that no decision could be morally faulted. The injuries result of mistaken moral (...) self-evaluation. Methods of preventing and treating these injuries are defended, including training in self-forgiveness, moral off-loading of actions and decisions to persons and devices less likely to feel inappropriate guilt, and the use of drugs to prevent such guilt. The foregoing has been about moral injury erroneously resulting from the non-violation of a correct moral code. But the chapter then introduces the concept of moral pseudo-injury—felt moral injury that has in reality resulted from violation of a false moral code, so that no one has really been morally injured. This can be used as a method in warfighting. And since the injuries it produces are illusory, this would be morally superior to physical violence. For it causes less injury to its victims, and should cause less guilt in those who must inflict it. Historical precedents are considered. Finally, our enemies often use moral pseudo-injury against us, in the form of terrorist violence against civilians. Terrorism causes comparatively few harms, yet we mistakenly see it as more morally horrific than conventional combat that causes much worse loss of life among armed forces members. Here we need the nuancing and clarifying power of philosophy to restore a sense of proportion, thence to prevent or therapize the moral pseudo-injury we may experience from these sorts of attacks. (This is a pre-penultimate version of the published version, available from OUP at the external link, which contains minor variances. The paper was earlier known as "PTSD Weaponized: A Theory of Moral Injury"; that now superseded version is archived under "past conferences" on the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law website.). (shrink)

Hume said that the reasons that determine the rationality of one's actions are the desires one has when acting: one's actions are rational iff they advance these desires. Thomas Nagel says this entails calling rational, actions absurdly conflicting in aims over time. For one might have reason, in one's current desires, to begin trying to cause states one foresees having reason, in one's foreseen desires, to prevent. Instead, then, real reasons must be timeless, so that current and foreseen reasons cannot (...) conflict. I say the desire theory does not have absurd consequences. A rational agent's desires would rationally evolve, never requiring actions conflicting in aims over time, except where it was instrumentally rational for her to change in her desires, whence such conflicts are rationally appropriate. Further, whatever sorts of things count as real reasons, since reasons can rationally require their own revision, they cannot be necessarily timeless. (shrink)

In this paper I look at two connections between natural philosophy and theology in the late 17th century. In the last quarter of the century there was an interesting development of an argument, earlier but sketchier versions of which can be found in classical philosophers and in Descartes. The manoeuvre in question goes like this: first, prove that there must, necessarily, be a being which is, in some sense of "greater", greater than humans. Second, sketch a proof that such a (...) being is necessary. Move from the fact that there must be at least one such being to the conclusion that there is precisely one such being. Raise the question: could this necessary being be matter, the entire material universe, or must it be God? Produce an argument from natural philosophy to show that matter cannot be the required necessary being. Either explicitly or implicitly run the obvious disjunctive syllogism and conclude with a few remarks about the foolishness of atheism. The argument, which has classical roots, found a number of 17th-century exponents. Cudworth provided the most important version, and Locke, Bentley and Clarke adapted Cudworth's version with varying success. The argument touches on natural philosophy in two ways. First, the basis of the argument invites consideration of a problem in the philosophy of science - the relation between micro properties and macro properties - which was seen clearly enough in some contexts but which was overlooked in others, particularly when the theological aspect was uppermost. The second point of contact involves a direct application of a scientific result - the existence of a vacuum - to the theological issue. (shrink)

Abstract Boyle distinguished clearly between the areas which we would call scientific and theological. However, he felt that they overlapped seamlessly, and that the truths we discovered (or which were revealed to us) in one of these areas would be relevant to us in the other. In this paper I outline and discuss Boyle's views on the limitations of human knowing, Boyle's arguments in favour of accepting the revelations of the Christian faith, and his views on the kind of epistomological (...) standing that scientific knowledge claims have. Given this background I then consider the relation between hypotheses, theories and facts in Boyle's work, and consider a particular case, that of Boyle's Law, as an exemplification of the claims made in the rest of the paper. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I offer a necessary condition for members of a particular class of arguments to be acceptable asproofs. In the second section, I point out that a plausible extension of this principle reveals that a number of additional arguments cannot function successfully as proofs. Finally, I note that a number of theological arguments, particularly cosmological and ontological arguments, are suspect in the light of this extended principle. Standardly in the ontological argument, criticism falls on (...) the conditional, modality-enriching premise which involves a move from possibility to actuality. I offer two defences of this premise, and argue that—as the use of Moore's extended maxim shows—the problem lies with the premise that asserts mere possibility. (shrink)

J. J. MacIntosh; IX*—Leibniz and Berkeley, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 71, Issue 1, 1 June 1971, Pages 147–164, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

J J. MacIntosh; XI*—Knowing and Believing, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 80, Issue 1, 1 June 1980, Pages 169–186, https://doi.org/10.1093/aris.

Setting aside what might seem to be an overly pious and self-congratulatory tone in the above quotation, we are left with Aristotle’s expression of a sense of wonder and curiosity with regard to the human mind. Many things are worthy of investigation, but our own intellectual nature holds a special place, and this, urges Aristotle, is not simply narcissism. We are interesting. This volume seeks to celebrate and emulate Aristotle’s enthusiasm and sense of reverence, while recognizing, perhaps to an even (...) greater extent than did Aristotle, that we are a part of the natural world. (shrink)

In Religious Studies xxvi Harold W. Noonan and Charles B. Daniels severally take issue with my ‘Reincarnation and Relativized Identity’. Both make valuable points but both, I think, have somewhat missed the point of my original article. In that paper I singled out five different views on the possibility of life after death: that we are reincarnated in the self-same body we had in our pre-mortem state; that we are reincarnated in another — in a different — body; that we (...) continue to exist in a disembodied form, which may or may not culminate in re-embodiment; that pre-mortem life is a dream from which postmortem life is the awakening; that none of the above holds: there is no life after death. (shrink)