Arguments for veganism don’t make many vegans, or even many who think they ought to be vegans, at least when they’re written by philosophers. Others — such as the one by Jonathan Safran Foer — seem to do a bit better. Why? To answer this question, I sketch a theory of ordinary moral argumentation that highlights the importance of meaning-based considerations in arguing that people ought to act in ways that deviate from normal expectations for behaviour. In (...) particular, I outline an eclectic theory, where we draw on a variety of moral frameworks and don’t assume that morality is generally overriding. I suggest that meaning-based considerations help us sort through the array of reasons available to us, as well as explain why, in a particular case, what we ought to do morally is what we ought to do all things considered. (shrink)

The novels of David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer are increasingly regarded as representing a new trend, an 'aesthetic sea change' in contemporary American fiction. 'Post-postmodernism' and 'New Sincerity' are just two of the labels that have been attached to this trend. But what do these labels mean? What characterizes and connects these novels? Dulk shows that the connection between these works lies in their shared philosophical dimension. On the one hand, they portray excessive (...) self-reflection and endless irony as the two main problems of contemporary Western life. On the other hand, the novels embody an attempt to overcome these problems: sincerity, reality-commitment and community are portrayed as the virtues needed to achieve a meaningful life. This shared philosophical dimension is analyzed by viewing the novels in light of the existentialist philosophies of Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Albert Camus. (shrink)

Can literature make it possible to represent histories that are otherwise ineffable? Making use of the Deleuzian concept of “the powers of the false,” Doro Wiese offers readings of three novels that deal with the Shoah, with colonialism, and with racialized identities. She argues that Jonathan Safran Foer’s _Everything Is Illuminated_, Richard Flanagan’s _Gould’s Book of Fish_, and Richard Powers’s _The Time of Our Singing _are novels in which a space for unvoiced, silent, or silenced difference is (...) created. Seen through the lens of Deleuze and his collaborators’ philosophy, literature is a means for mediating knowledge and affects about historical events. Going beyond any simple dichotomy between true and untrue accounts of what “really” happened in the past, literature’s powers of the false incite readers to long for a narrative space in which painful or shameful stories can be included. (shrink)

Can literature make it possible to represent histories that are otherwise ineffable? Making use of the Deleuzian concept of “the powers of the false,” Doro Wiese offers readings of three novels that deal with the Shoah, with colonialism, and with racialized identities. She argues that Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, Richard Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish, and Richard Powers’s The Time of Our Singing are novels in which a space for unvoiced, silent, or silenced difference is (...) created. Seen through the lens of Deleuze and his collaborators’ philosophy, literature is a means for mediating knowledge and affects about historical events. Going beyond any simple dichotomy between true and untrue accounts of what “really” happened in the past, literature’s powers of the false incite readers to long for a narrative space in which painful or shameful stories can be included. (shrink)

This original study examines Jean-François Lyotard's philosophical concept of the differend and details its unexplored implications for literature. it provides a new framework with which to understand the discourse itself, from its Homeric beginnings to postmodern works by authors such as Michael Ondaatje and Jonathan Safran Foer.

Life Is Short--Art Is Shorter is not just the first anthology to gather both mini-essays and short-short stories; readers, writers, and teachers will get will get an anthology; a course's worth of writing exercises; a rally for compression, concision, and velocity in an increasingly digital, post-religious age; and a meditation on the brevity of human existence. 1. We are mortal beings. 2. There is no god. 3. We live in a digital culture. 4. Art is related to the body and (...) to the culture. 5. Art should reflect these things. 6. Brevity rules. The book's 40 contributors include Donald Barthelme, Kate Chopin, Lydia Davis, Annie Dillard, Jonathan Safran Foer, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, Wayne Koestenbaum, Anne Lamott, Daphne Merkin, Rick Moody, Dinty W. Moore, George Orwell, Jayne Anne Phillips, George Saunders, Lauren Slater, James Tate, and Paul Theroux. (shrink)

Neither full belief nor partial belief is more fundamental, ontologically speaking. A survey of some relevant cognitive psychology supports a dualist ontology instead. Beliefs come in two kinds, categorical and graded, neither more fundamental than the other. In particular, the graded kind is no more fundamental. When we discuss belief in on/off terms, we are not speaking coarsely or informally about states that are ultimately credal.

Renowned moral philosopher Jonathan Glover confronts the brutal history of the twentieth century to unravel the mystery of why so many atrocities occurred. In a new preface, Glover brings the book through the post-September 11 era and into our own time—and asks whether humankind can "weaken the grip war has on us." _Praise for the first edition:_ “It is hard to imagine a more important book. Glover makes an overwhelming case for the need to understand our own inhumanity, and (...) reduce or eliminate the ways in which it can express itself—and he then begins the task himself. _Humanity _is_ _an extraordinary achievement.”—Peter Singer, Princeton University “This is an extraordinary book: brilliant, haunting and uniquely important. Almost 40 years ago a president read a best seller and avoided a holocaust. I like to think that some of the leaders and followers of tomorrow will read _Humanity._”_—_Steven Pinker, _New York Times Book Review_. (shrink)

Evidence is univocal, not equivocal. Its implications don't depend on our beliefs or values, the evidence says what it says. But that doesn't mean there's no room for rational disagreement between people with the same evidence. Evaluating evidence is a lot like polling an electorate: getting an accurate reading requires a bit of luck, and even the best pollsters are bound to get slightly different results. So, even though evidence is univocal, rationality's requirements are not "unique." Understanding this resolves several (...) puzzles to do with uniqueness and disagreement. (shrink)

Mammalian placental pregnancy is a neglected problem case for theories of organismality. This example is closer to home than those typically discussed within philosophy of biology. I apply evolutio...

Recently, some have attempted to reformulate debates in first-order metaphysics, particularly in the metaphysics of time and modality, for reasons due to Williamson. In this paper, we focus on the ways in which the likes of Cameron, Correia and Rosenkranz, Deasy, Ingram, Tallant, Viebahn, inter alia, have initiated and responded to attempts to capture the core of presentism using a formal, logical machinery. We argue that such attempts are doomed to fail because there is no theoretical core to presentism. There (...) is no single view or family of views that is presentism. (shrink)

A major work in moral philosophy by the noted Puritan divine.

What meaning does epidemiological evidence have for the individual? In evidence-based medicine, epidemiological evidence measures the patient’s risk of the outcome or the change in risk due to an intervention. The patient’s risk is commonly understood as an individual probability. The problem of understanding epidemiological evidence and risk thus becomes the challenge of interpreting individual patient probabilities. I argue that the patient’s risk is interpreted ontically, as a propensity. After exploring formidable problems with this interpretation in the medical context, I (...) propose an epistemic reinterpretation of individual patient probabilities as credences. On this view, epidemiological evidence informs medical uncertainty. (shrink)

Introduction : ethical economics? -- The sovereign consumer -- Two myths about economic growth -- The politics of pay -- Happiness -- Pricing life and nature -- New worlds of money : public services and beyond -- Conclusion.

Jonathan Bennett engages with the thought of six great thinkers of the early modern period: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. While not neglecting the historical setting of each, his chief focus is on the words they wrote. What problem is being tackled? How exactly is the solution meant to work? Does it succeed? If not, why not? What can be learned from its success or failure? For newcomers to the early modern scene, this clearly written work is (...) an excellent introduction to it. Those already in the know can learn how to argue with the great philosophers of the past, treating them as colleagues, antagonists, students, teachers. In this second volume, Bennett focuses on the work of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. (shrink)

Adorno’s subtle utopianism is often overshadowed by the sombreness of his work. In this article, I explore Adorno’s concept of utopia by reading him alongside Ernst Bloch, whose The Spirit of Utopia (1918) had a lasting influence on Adorno. Not least due to the unsteady nature of their friendship, the intellectual relationship between Bloch and Adorno has often been overlooked. I propose that Bloch’s utopianism can help us make sense of Adorno’s rare but distinct remarks on utopia and argue that (...) instead of being a pure negativist, Adorno entertains a “minimal utopianism” that is constitutive to his notion of critique. I conclude that reading Adorno with Bloch reveals utopia as an ineliminable focal point in Adorno’s work and urges us to rethink the importance of utopianism for any critical project. (shrink)

Full-length studies of individual books of Nietzsche have been lacking until now both because of the immaturity of the field and because Nietzsche's style itself seems to contraindicate them. Close reading, however, reveals a great deal of literary and philosophical unity. This holds good even of Human, All-Too-Human, Nietzsche's longest and most unwieldy work. The book represents Nietzsche's break with Schopenhauer and Wagner, as well as the birth of Nietzsche as we know him in the later works. The book's embrace (...) of science as conducive to culture follows the early works' vilification of science as anathema to culture. This reassessment is possible because science is now seen as a method and a discipline rather than an insatiable drive for knowledge, and culture is now a broad set of symbols and activities rather than a narrowly focussed "unity of artistic style." Both changes were motivated by Nietzsche's rejection of Wagner. Part of the help science provides culture is its release from restrictive metaphysical beliefs. Nietzsche battles metaphysics, principally that of Schopenhauer, by means of scientific arguments meant both to provide alternative explanations of phenomena and to expose the origin of countervailing metaphysical beliefs. However, even when combined in a two-pronged attack, these arguments still fall short of their goal of refuting metaphysics. The scientific world-view may nonetheless aid the development of "free spirits," whose unalloyed devotion to knowledge makes them science's paragons. The free spirits are the prototypes for the later works' strong individuals, yet here they are viewed as crucial elements in the cultural development of general society. Nietzsche seeks both to create them and to encourage their devotion to the needs of culture. Part of his effort to do this is the deployment of a terse, elliptical style which will involve the reader more thoroughly than can be done by means of argument alone. Study of the book's structure reveals that its core, Parts 1, 5, and 9, outlines the relation between science, culture, and free spirits. (shrink)

This article argues against the case for regarding bodies and parts of bodies to be property. It claims that doing so assumes an individualistic conception of the body. It fails to acknowledge that our bodies are made up of non-human material; are unbounded; constantly changing and deeply interconnected with other bodies. It also argues that holding that our bodies are property does not recognise the fact that we have different attitudes towards different parts of our removed bodies and the contexts (...) of their removal. The appropriate legal reform should, therefore, be to produce a statute which can provide a balance between the competing personal, social and interpersonal interests in different body parts. (shrink)

Key ideas from expectation-states theory, symbolic interactionism, dramaturgical analysis, power-status theories, attribution theory, and psychoanalytic theories are combined in an effort to generate a more general theory of emotional arousal in face-to-face interaction. The level of emotional arousal in interaction is seen to reflect the degree of incongruity between expectations, including expectations for confirmation of self, and actual experiences. Such arousal involves the conversion of primary emotions into first and second-order combinations. The nature of emotional arousal is, however, further complicated (...) by the activation of defense mechanisms and attribution processes. The composite theory is formalized into a series of propositions which can serve as hypotheses for empirical tests. (shrink)

[T. M. Scanlon] It is clearly impermissible to kill one person because his organs can be used to save five others who are in need of transplants. It has seemed to many that the explanation for this lies in the fact that in such cases we would be intending the death of the person whom we killed, or failed to save. What makes these actions impermissible, however, is not the agent's intention but rather the fact that the benefit envisaged does (...) not justify an exception to the prohibition against killing or the requirement to give aid. The difference between this explanation and one appealing to intention is easily overlooked if one fails to distinguish between the prospective use of a moral principle to guide action and its retrospective use to appraise the way an agent governed him or herself. Even if this explanation is accepted, however, it remains an open question whether and how an agent's intention may be relevant to the permissibility of actions in other cases. \\\ [Jonathan Dancy] My first four sections concentrate on the second section of Professor Scanlon's contribution, where he lays out his conception of moral principles and of the role they play in theory and practice. I will raise questions on the following issues: 1. Scanlon's initial introduction of the notion of a principle. 2. His rejection of the standard view that principles are concerned with the forbidding, permitting and requiring of actions. 3. His rejection of pro tanto conceptions of principles in favour of a conception of them as conclusive. 4. The resulting account of what it is for a principle to face and survive exceptions. Scanlon's discussion of these matters here both appeals to and is in some respects more detailed than the relevant section of his recent What We Owe to Each Other. The topic is interesting both for the role played by principles in Scanlon's present discussion of intention and permissibility, and more generally because of his account of wrongness: an act is wrong iff it is ruled out by principles that nobody could reasonably reject. The remainder of my contribution is concerned with the ostensible focus of IP, namely the relevance of agent-intentions to the permissibility of what is done. (shrink)

The article argues that the growth of religious service provision directed at the Muslim diaspora in Europe has led to greater professionalization and pluralism within the Islam state in Muslim countries. Contemporary Muslim governments have claimed a monopoly over public prayer and religious education and have heavily invested in a network of infrastructure and services – the Islam state. The recent breakthrough of Islamist parties into governments in Turkey and across North Africa poses a challenge to the continued ‘civilian control’ (...) over religion. What will become of the enormous Islamic Affairs ministries that Islamist parties have inherited – the hundreds of thousands of public servants of state Islam across the region, the tens of thousands of mosques and thousands of religious schools? Liberals demand the abolition of the Islam state because it violates the separation of religion and state; Islamists detest it for its repressive qualities. Despite progressive liberalization, governments in the past decade have not sought disestablishment, and have instead increased the resources and policing of state-run religion. I draw on the experience of Muslim governments in the competitive field of state–Islam relations in European countries to explain the modest beginnings of reform of the official religion apparatus in Muslim-majority countries. (shrink)

Of the many genes mutated on the road to tumor formation, few have received as much attention as p53. The gene has come to occupy center stage for the simple reason that it is more frequently altered in human tumors than any other known gene, undergoing mutation at a significant rate in almost every tumor type in which it has been studied. This association between p53 mutation and tumorigenesis has spurred a flurry of research attempting to delineate the normal function (...) of p53 and, by extension, the role of p53 mutation in tumor formation. At the cellular level, p53 has been shown to suppress growth. Recent efforts to further discern the function of p53 have centered on the underlying molecular basis for this growth suppression. In particular, research has focused on the identification of cellular molecules (specifically DNA and proteins) with which the p53 protein associates. p53 has now been shown to bind DNA in a sequence‐specific manner, and mounting evidence suggests that p53 acts as a transcription factor, perhaps regulating the expression levels of genes involved in the inhibition of cell growth. The logical next step in understanding p53 function involves the resolution of two questions: (1) what are the physiological transcriptional targets of p53, and (2) what cellular proteins regulate or mediate the ability of p53 to modulate transcription? Some initial clues to these puzzles are now emerging, and these form the subject of this review. (shrink)

This chapter addresses questions about commodification in the sphere of security and prisons. It surveys potential forms of commodification and considers arguments that aim to show that they are morally wrong or unjust. The chapter considers the relationship between commodification and privatization. It examines economic, legal and moral commodification arguments against private prisons and prison labor. The economic arguments against private prisons considered here focus on efficiency and perverse incentives. The legal arguments focus on dignity and the commodification of the (...) person. The moral arguments focus on human equality and corruption of important goods. The arguments against prison labor begin with the question of whether prison labor is market activity and then consider the possibility that prison labor may contribute to mass incarceration. The moral arguments focus on exploitation. The chapter also considers the relevance of the racial dimension of mass incarceration to arguments about commodification. (shrink)