Drawing on the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, Turner offers an original reconstruction of democratic individualism in American thought.

Providing the first extended analysis of Audre Lorde’s critique of the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada, this essay argues that Lorde’s critique models a form of anti-imperial consciousness that is still morally and politically instructive. Anti-imperial consciousness entails examining oneself for complicities with empire’s ravages, on the one hand, and solidarities with empire’s subjects, on the other. Lorde aims to generate in her readers (1) a sense of horror at the ways they may be morally implicated in U.S. imperial injustice (...) and (2) a more intense identification with empire’s non-U.S. victims. Lorde’s goal is to free her audience from what she calls the “mistaken mirage of patriotism” and propel them to anti-imperial action. Illuminating Lorde’s economic socialism and anti-imperialist internationalism—two subjects still overshadowed by her more famous work on anger, the erotic, and the master’s tools—the essay contributes to the ongoing elaboration of the Afro-modern tradition of political thought. (shrink)

Does Henry Thoreau have a positive politics? Depending on how one conceives of politics, answers will vary. Hannah Arendt famously portrayed Thoreau's commitment to the sanctity of individual conscience as distinctly unpolitical. More recent commentators grant that Thoreau has a politics, but they characterize it as profoundly negative in character. This essay argues that Thoreau indeed sponsors a positive politics-a politics of performing conscience. The performance of conscience before an audience transforms the invocation of consciencefrom a personally political act into (...) a publicly political one. The aim of the performance is to provoke one's neighbors into a process of individual self-reform that will make them capable of properly vigilant democratic citizenship and conscientious political agitation. I establish this claim through a sustained reading of a relatively neglected text that deserves wider attention in political theory: Thoreau's 1859 lecture defending insurrectionary activities by radical abolitionist John Brown. (shrink)

John Locke was considerably interested and actively involved in the promotion of Protestant Christianity among American Indians and African slaves, yet this fact goes largely unremarked in historical scholarship. The evidence of this interest and involvement deserves analysis—for it illuminates fascinating and understudied features of Locke's theory of toleration and his thinking on American Indians, African slaves, and English colonialism. These features include (1) the compatibility between toleration and Christian mission, (2) the interconnection between Christian mission and English geopolitics, (3) (...) the coexistence of ameliorative and exploitative strands within Locke's stance on African slavery, and (4) the spiritual imperialism of Locke's colonial vision. Analyzing evidence of Locke's interest and involvement in Christian mission, this article brings fully to light a dimension of Locke's career that has barely been noticed. In so doing, it also illustrates how the roots of toleration in the modern West were partly evangelical. (shrink)

Ralph Ellison offers crucial insight into the meaning of conscientious citizenship in American democracy. In doing so, he follows his nineteenth-century Transcendentalist forebears--Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman--who have become key figures in contemporary efforts to theorize liberal democratic character. At the center of Emersonian ethics is the idea of " awakening." " Awakening " is the Emersonians' name for honest and courageous confrontation with reality. Ellison broadens the Emersonians' vision by insisting that one cannot be "well awake" in America without confronting (...) the ways historical white supremacy shapes one's identity and chances in life. Political theorists who draw inspiration from the Emersonians in theorizing democratic individuality need to pay attention to Ellison--for he demonstrates that one cannot achieve democratic individuality without awakening to race. (shrink)

This article first summarizes research regarding the relationship between sports that intentionally structure multiple types of brain trauma into their practice, such as rugby and boxing, and the range of negative health outcomes that flow from participation in such sports. The resultant brain injuries are described as ‘now’ and ‘later’ diseases, being those that affect the child immediately and then across their lifetime. After highlighting how these sports can permanently injure children, it examines this harm in relation to existing British (...) laws and policies concerning child abuse. The conclusion drawn is that neither children nor adults on their behalf are legally able to give informed consent for participation, and that impact sport organisations effectively groom children into sustaining and accepting brain trauma. Adults providing brain-traumatizing versions of these sports are thus described as being complicit in a form of child abuse that we term brain abuse. The contradictions in existing sports policy are highlighted, where policy describes that children are to be protected from harm, and yet the very practice of such sports creates harm by design. Implications of the argument are that children should be prohibited from partaking in impact sports. (shrink)

The Australian Health Ethics Committee’s National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans (1999) expanded the health and medical focus of preceding statements by including all disciplines of research. The Statement purports to promote a uniformly high ethical standard for this expanded range of research, and is endorsed by, inter alia, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Academy of Science, and the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.High ethical standards should apply to all research involving humans. However, (...) uniformity in the review processes of disparate research endeavours is not a necessary condition for uniformly high ethical standards. Bringing the ethical review of all research under a model which has developed within the context of health and medical research ethics for over thirty years may be inappropriate and at times incoherent. The language, methods, nature and products of research in areas such as the Humanities are often very different from those of health, medical and other sciences.The Behavioural and Social Sciences Ethics Review Committee at The University of Queensland (UQ) had, since the mid-1980s, considered that the guidelines of the time did, in fact, cover all aspects of human experimentation. We describe the ways in which this position was implemented, how issues raised by the new wording in the National Statement have been recently managed by UQ’s research ethics committees, and point to outstanding questions. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America by Jack TurnerShannon SullivanJack Turner Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. xv + 199pp, incl. index.Don’t let the size of this slim volume fool you: Awakening to Race is chock-full of fresh insights and original arguments regarding individualism and race in the American democratic tradition. Individualism in (...) America often takes atomistic forms that are antithetical to a rich sense of the social constitution of the self. For that reason, individualism often is viewed as antithetical to a critical consciousness of how race and white racism operate. In Awakening to Race, Jack Turner boldly takes the bull of American individualism by its horns. He argues that the rhetoric of individualism can be used against, rather than in service of an allegedly colorblind society in which independent, post-racial individuals pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. The result of Turner’s skillful intervention into American political philosophy is to take back individualism from conservative forces and refashion it into a progressive tool for racial justice movements.Turner sets the stage for his intervention in chapter one, which provides an overview of the book. Beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Awakening to Race proceeds to focus on Frederick Douglass and Ralph Ellison and concludes with James Baldwin. One of the primary tasks of chapter one is to outline the book’s major Emersonian theme, which is that an individualist notion of self-reliance should lead a person to become more, rather than less aware of structural and social injustices. Properly understood, individualism should lead to an awakening to race, as Turner’s book is aptly titled, not to ignoring or failing to see it. An individual who wishes to be self-reliant should be wary and watchful of the ways in which she depends on social structures, including those of social injustice. An atomistic notion of the individual is not adequate to this task; an Emersonian democratic individual is needed instead. As Turner explains with reference to adherents of atomistic individualism, “their failure to awaken to the socially indebted nature of the self desensitizes them to structural—and thus racial—injustice” (11).Chapter two turns to Tocqueville, Emerson, and (to a lesser extent) Thoreau to flesh out this idea. In this chapter, Turner develops [End Page 170] Emerson’s notion of self-reliance as “a politically dynamic ethical ideal, one that can motivate and energize democratic political action” rather than withdrawal from society (29). To do so, Turner references Tocqueville’s analysis of race in the United States, which reveals an affinity between white individualism and white supremacy. White individuals could contrast themselves with black slaves to reassure themselves that they were free while simultaneously ignoring their dependence on social and legal structures of white supremacy to ensure their psychological and personal sense of personhood. Individual self-sufficiency can operate as a racialized marker of freedom that is in bad faith because it evades its dependence on race and racism. With Emerson, Turner argues that genuine self-sufficiency requires reckoning with all sorts of ways that one is dependent on and complicit with societal structures, including those of white supremacy. Drawing on Emerson’s anti-slavery addresses, Turner develops a theory of democratic individual responsibility that requires of genuine self-reliance that it not interfere with the self-reliance of others. This requirement obligates the individual to take political and other forms of action to ensure that his or her free, self-reliant life is not dependent on the exploitation of others (45).In addition to its nonexploitation obligation, democratic individualist responsibility includes a democratic egalitarian obligation. Turner develops the latter idea in chapter three through the work of Frederick Douglas. While Douglas’s notion of self-help often is read as atomistically individualist, Turner shows how it is instead tied to social responsibility. In the case of Douglasian self-help, “ought implies can” and so requiring of people that they help themselves means ensuring that they have the resources available to do so (62). While dominant notions of self-help have been used in the United States... (shrink)

Atlas, S. On the relation between subject and object.--Bamberger, B. Religion and the arts.--Bemporad, J. Man, God, and history.--Braude, W. C. The two lives of Hillel's sandwich.--Chapman, C. B. The health guilds, the public interest and the malpractice dilemma.--Feuer, L. Influence of Abba Hillel Silver on the evolution of Reform Judaism.--Hackerman, N. Ignorance, the motivation for understanding.--Hartshorne, C. Whitehead's metaphysical system.--Ogden, S. M. Prolegomena to a Christian theology of nature.--Sandmel, S. The rationalist denial of Jewish tradition in Philo.--Shakow, D. Educating (...) the mental health researcher for potential development in man.--Turner, D. An Ashendene dozen from the Levi A. Olan collection of fine books.--Olan, L. A. A preliminary summing up. (shrink)

It was the general practice until not at all long ago to look at Turner as one of the moderns, if not as one of the founding fathers of modern art. He was a man straddling the fence between two periods, but he was looking forward. In a history of art that marches through time, forever endorsing what is about to be forgotten, wrapping up, as it were, one style to open eagerly the package of the next, such a (...) position is most enviable for, no matter where the times may be going, it is a hallmark of greatness to be ahead of one's time. There were things to be explained, of course, Turner himself, a keen pessimist, did not approved of the future and had little use for the present.1 His love of art was schooled on Reynolds' Discourses, and he remained loyal to them; his poets were Thomson and Pope and, among contemporaries, the rather frigid but delicate Samuel Rogers, a classicist par excellence. Above all, however, Turner looked back to classical antiquity for training and guidance, and for the delectation of his heart. And the poetry of the ancients, such as he could obtain it in translation, was as important to him as their art. What does one do with a declared classicist whom a historicizing hindsight feels compelled to rescue as a man of the future by making him a Romantic? It is a challenge stylistic analysis likes to meet, for it goes beneath what it declares to be the surface of a work of art to find its style, the essence that must conform to the presumed spirit of the age in question. The triumphant result of such studies in depth is a forgone conclusion as much as it is a surprise to the uninitiated. The facade of the Louvre, for example, used to suffice to make it a building in the classical style; it took the acumen of a Wölfflin to prove that it really was "baroque." The more the artist struggled not to be of his time, the more, poor man, he betrayed to the analyst that he was of his time. The Louvre facade stands convicted of being "classicizing-baroque."2 · 1. On Turner's view of the modern art of his time see John Gage, Color in Turner: Poetry and Truth , pp.97-105. On his literary education and taste see the seminal essay by Jerrold Ziff, "Turner on Poetry and Painting, " Studies in Romanticism 3 no. 4 : 193-215. Turner's poetical writings have been edited by Jack Lindsay, The Sunset Ship: The Poems of J.M.W. Turner . For the most recent and also most elegantly practical introduction to the work and life of Turner, see the catalogue of the Turner Exhibition of the Royal Academy and the Tate Gallery, Turner, 1775-1851 . · 2. This is now a commonplace of art historical teaching. See, for example, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 6th ed. Horst de la Croix and Richard G. Tansey , p. 632. On the theory behind the application to the particular case, see Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History, trans. M. D. Hottinger . Philipp Fehl, artist and art historian, is currently preparing a collection of essays, Art and Morality: Studies in the History of the Classical Tradition. He is a professor in the department of art and design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Farewell to Jokes: The Last Capricci of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo and the Tradition of Irony in Venetian Painting" was published in Summer 1979 in Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Why Do We Climb? Why Should We Climb? Building the Best Person Climbing and Self‐Cultivation The Only Rule Is There Are No Rules (Except the Ones That Matter) Courage Humility Reverence for the Natural World Cultivating Virtue in a Domesticated World Why Climb? Notes.

This paper describes student outcomes from participating in a week-long out-of-school action civics program designed to increase students’ civic and political competence and engagement. Using analysis from four years of survey data, this paper presents findings related to changes in students’ civic competence as a result of participating in the program, including findings related to both first time and repeat campers. Data revealed that participants experienced gains in half of the civic competence construct variables, with first-time campers experiencing significant gains (...) in five of the civic competence construct variables. Data analysis suggests that iEngage, an action civics summer experience, was effective in increasing elements of students’ civic competence, including their ability to get people to care about a problem, organize and run a meeting, write an opinion letter or contact a media outlet to express their views, and contact an elected official or community leader to address an issue. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one logic. Logical normativism is the view that logic is normative. These positions have often been assumed to go hand-in-hand, but we show that one can be a logical pluralist without being a logical normativist. We begin by arguing directly against logical normativism. Then we reformulate one popular version of pluralism—due to Beall and Restall—to avoid a normativist commitment. We give three non-normativist pluralist views, the most promising of which depends (...) not on logic’s normativity but on epistemic goals. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 134-150 [Access article in PDF] Deception and Intentional Transparency:The Case of Writing Jeff Karon Intention never to deceive lays us open to many a deception. —La Rochefoucauld, MaximsWE LIVE IN DECEPTIVE TIMES. We anticipate the latest exposé of corporate greed, personal aggrandizement, or government cover-up, and yearn for yesterday's supposed truthfulness and integrity. Lies and other forms of deceptive behavior degrade our characters, (...) unravel the fabric of civil society, and threaten our progress toward the good life.We also fear the loss of public civility and etiquette, wishing instead that others still treated us with the respect we deserve. Deception is bad enough; now we must bear rude neighbors, supervisors, colleagues, merchants, and all manner of strangers. Yet deception and rudeness together generate a paradox: the lost standards we lament—ones that direct people to treat others as valuable ends rather than means—include specific forms of conduct that avoid inflicting unnecessary pain or creating unnecessary conflict. Whether in the personal or professional sphere, the written and unwritten rules of etiquette often bid us to employ euphemisms and other misdirections so that our listeners or readers will not be offended, thus maintaining the social fabric by means of benign deceit. How, then, can we possibly hope to live ethical lives without necessarily employing deception?The answer is that we cannot. By expanding the category of acts usually analyzed in ethics to include the extended writing act, we can appreciate how deception is wound tightly into the moral life, a result that is not widely accepted in moral philosophy. Sissela Bok's seminal [End Page 134] books Secrets and Lying, for example, advocate deception in extraordinary circumstances of personal or national security, but do not allow for its constant deployment to navigate life's daily vicissitudes. 1 The complex, everyday act of writing helps us see past this simplification.Recent books by David Nyberg, Jeremy Campbell, John Vignauz Smyth, Dariusz Galasinski, and Charles V. Ford attest to our fascination with social deception, providing philosophical, literary, linguistic, and psychological insights into real-life examples. 2 As instances pile up, we begin to appreciate how deception is woven closely into our lives. This point receives a brash formulation in Arnold Ludwig's 1965 The Importance of Lying: "[W]hen we find the lie, hypocrisy and deception used so widely by man, we are forced to wonder whether this behavior represents some moral failure or weakness or whether, in fact it plays some more important biological or survival role for man. Perhaps, without resorting to lying or self-deception, man would find life intolerable and existence impossible." 3 More recent authors have tried to rehabilitate deception by choosing familiar cases that seem benign in both intention and effect, thus avoiding a justification built solely on survival needs. The next step, however, should move us beyond the empirical question of just how common deception is to a different one: are there widely shared features that make these cases candidates for moral approval, even if subsequent events require that we ultimately withhold that approval? Writing, by its very nature, demonstrates that moral reasoning always must take account of deception by triangulating between an author's supposed intentions, supposed character, and the eventual reception in the world by a real audience. And as writing pervades our lives, so do the possibilities for justified deception. I Those who study deception rarely agree on any universal characteristic except one: lying, a particularly direct form of deception, always is intentional. A corresponding minimal assumption for writing would be the following: Writing, in the absence of some very peculiar story-telling, is intentional. This minimal assumption ought to be admitted, though one fashionable current in literary studies runs against it. Language works by itself, "deconstructs itself," for example, without the direct intervention of an agent. Language "speaks us," and so on, in lyrical, mystifying formulations that offer inspiration for the critic as an [End Page 135] explorer of a far, exotic land, but little solid geography for those who wonder at what point in the... (shrink)

This article addresses the long-standing problem of how to understand Mill’s famous harm principle in light of his failure to specify what counts as “harm” in On Liberty. I argue that standard accounts restricting “harm” to only certain negative consequences fail to do justice to the text, and that this fact forces us to rethink Mill’s defense of individual liberty. I then offer a new account of that defense in which “harm” is understood in an expansive sense, despite apparent problems (...) for such a view. (shrink)

Purpose The online economy has not resolved the issue of racial bias in its applications. While algorithms are procedures that facilitate automated decision-making, or a sequence of unambiguous instructions, bias is a byproduct of these computations, bringing harm to historically disadvantaged populations. This paper argues that algorithmic biases explicitly and implicitly harm racial groups and lead to forms of discrimination. Relying upon sociological and technical research, the paper offers commentary on the need for more workplace diversity within high-tech industries and (...) public policies that can detect or reduce the likelihood of racial bias in algorithmic design and execution. Design/methodology/approach The paper shares examples in the US where algorithmic biases have been reported and the strategies for explaining and addressing them. Findings The findings of the paper suggest that explicit racial bias in algorithms can be mitigated by existing laws, including those governing housing, employment, and the extension of credit. Implicit, or unconscious, biases are harder to redress without more diverse workplaces and public policies that have an approach to bias detection and mitigation. Research limitations/implications The major implication of this research is that further research needs to be done. Increasing the scholarly research in this area will be a major contribution in understanding how emerging technologies are creating disparate and unfair treatment for certain populations. Practical implications The practical implications of the work point to areas within industries and the government that can tackle the question of algorithmic bias, fairness and accountability, especially African-Americans. Social implications The social implications are that emerging technologies are not devoid of societal influences that constantly define positions of power, values, and norms. Originality/value The paper joins a scarcity of existing research, especially in the area that intersects race and algorithmic development. (shrink)

David Lewis defends the thesis of the asymmetry of overdetermination: later affairs are seldom overdetermined by earlier affairs, but earlier affairs are usually overdetermined by later affairs. Recently, Carol Cleland has argued that since the distinctive methodologies of historical science and experimental science exploit different aspects of this asymmetry, the methodology of historical science is just as good, epistemically speaking, as that of experimental science. This paper shows, first, that Cleland's epistemological conclusion does not follow from the thesis of the (...) asymmetry of overdetermination, because overdetermination is compatible with epistemic underdetermination. The paper also shows, contra Cleland, that there is at least one interesting sense in which historical science is epistemically inferior to experimental science, after all, because local underdetermination problems are more widespread in historical than in experimental science. (shrink)

Reporters' use of government data bases can create problems with serving justice and maintaining privacy. Although there are many advantages to the new reporting tool, problems can arise when the information is inaccurate or is misused for purposes other than originally intended. The ethical question of maintaining privacy while ful-filling the political function of the media is discussed. Suggested guidelines are given.

This article is an exercise in the virtue epistemology of the internet, an area of applied virtue epistemology that investigates how online environments impact the development of intellectual virtues, and how intellectual virtues manifest within online environments. I examine online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (Nguyen 2020, Episteme 17(2), 141–61), exploring the conceptual relationship between these online environments and the virtue of open-mindedness (Battaly 2018b, Episteme 15(3), 261–82). The article answers two key individual-level, virtue epistemic questions: (Q1) How does immersion (...) in online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles affect the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, and (Q2) Is it always intellectually virtuous to exhibit open-mindedness in the context of online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles? In response to Q1, I contend that both online echo chambers and online epistemic bubbles threaten to undermine the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, albeit via different mechanisms and to different degrees. In response to Q2, I affirm that both a deficiency and an excess of open-mindedness can be virtuous in these online environments, depending on the epistemic orientation of the digital user. (shrink)

Rule A: if it's metaphysically necessary that p, we may validly infer that no one is even partly morally responsible for the fact that p. Our principal aim in this article is to highlight the importance of this rule and to respond to two recent challenges to it. We argue that rule A is more important to contemporary theories of moral responsibility than has previously been recognized. We then consider two recent challenges to the rule and argue that neither challenge (...) successfully undermines the rule's initial appeal. (shrink)

Experimental examination of how the folk conceptualize certain philosophically loaded notions can provide information useful for philosophical theorizing. In this paper, we explore issues raised in Shaun Nichols' (2004) studies involving people's conception of free will, focusing on his claim that this conception fits best with the philosophical theory of agent-causation. We argue that his data do not support this conclusion, highlighting along the way certain considerations that ought to be taken into account when probing the folk conception of free (...) will. (shrink)

Logical consequence is typically construed as a metalinguistic relation between sentences. Deflationism is an account of logic that challenges this orthodoxy. In Williamson’s recent presentation of deflationism, logic’s primary concern is with universal generalizations over absolutely everything. As well as an interesting account of logic in its own right, deflationism has also been recruited to decide between competing logics in resolving semantic paradoxes. This paper defends deflationism from its most important challenge to date, due to Ole Hjortland. It then presents (...) two new problems for the view. Hjortland’s objection is that deflationism cannot discriminate between distinct logics. I show that his example of classical logic and supervaluationism depends on equivocating about whether the language includes a “definitely” operator. Moreover, I prove a result that blocks this line of objection no matter the choice of logics. I end by criticizing deflationism on two fronts. First, it cannot do the work it has been recruited to perform. That is, it cannot help adjudicate between competing logics. This is because a theory of logic cannot be as easily separated from a theory of truth as its proponents claim. Second, deflationism currently has no adequate answer to the following challenge: what does a sentence’s universal generalization have to do with its logical truth? I argue that the most promising, stipulative response on behalf of the deflationist amounts to an unwarranted change of subject. (shrink)

Recent work in cerebral neurology should be used to fashion a new synthesis with anthropological studies. Beginning with Paul D. Madean's model of the triune brain, we explore Ralph Wendell Burhoe's question whether creative processes result from a coadaptation, perhaps in ritual itself, of genetic and cultural information. Then we examine the division of labor between right and left cerebral hemispheres and its implications for the notions of play and “ludic recombination.” Intimately related to ritual, play may function in the (...) social construction of reality analogous to mutation and variation in organic evolution. Finally, we consider how our picture of brain functioning accords with some distinctive features of the religious systems dominant in human cultures. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one correct logic. Stei assumes that the correctness of a logic is a matter of the relation between the formal validity of a logical theory and extra-theoretic validity. I reject the assumption, on the grounds that it’s not clear that extratheoretic validity can be determined independently of formal validity. I formulate instead quietist logical pluralism, which is quietist with respect to the nature of extra-theoretic validity and its relation to formal (...) validity. Because of this, quietist logic pluralism needs a different correctness criterion for logic: correctness is a matter of a logic’s having normative upshot for deductive reasoning. I argue that this approach has the advantage of resisting the collapse of logical pluralism into monism. In particular, I suggest that deductive reasoning has two distinct roles, one with respect to the coherence of our attitudes and another with respect to how our attitudes are based on one another. I give two different normative principles that correspond to these roles; doing so requires abandoning the idea that normative bridge principles are universally quantified over all logics. That idea has been inherited from MacFarlane, but it’s not clear why the pluralist should accept it, as long as she can avoid giving principles that are ad hoc. By tying the principles to crucial roles of deductive reasoning, I aim to avoid both ad hockery and collapse. (shrink)

Prior research shows that reasoners' confidence is poorly calibrated (Shynkaruk & Thompson, 2006). The goal of the current experiment was to increase calibration in syllogistic reasoning by training reasoners on (a) the concept of logical necessity and (b) the idea that more than one representation of the premises may be possible. Training improved accuracy and was also effective in remedying some systematic misunderstandings about the task: those in the training condition were better at estimating their overall performance than those who (...) were untrained. However, training was less successful in helping reasoners to discriminate which items are most likely to cause them difficulties. In addition we explored other variables that may affect confidence and accuracy, such as the number of models required to represent the problem and whether or not the presented conclusion was necessitated by the premises, possible given the premises, or impossible given the premises. These variables had systematically different relationships to confidence and accuracy. Thus, we propose that confidence in reasoning judgements is analogous to confidence in memory retrievals, in that they are inferentially derived from cues that are not diagnostic in terms of accuracy. (shrink)

Polemicists and disciplinary puritans commonly make a sharp distinction between the normative, “prescriptive,” philosophical work of bioethicists and the empirical, “descriptive” work of anthropologists and sociologists studying medicine, healthcare, and illness. Though few contemporary medical anthropologists and sociologists of health and illness subscribe to positivism, the legacy of positivist thought persists in some areas of the social sciences. It is still quite common for social scientists to insist that their work does not contain explicit normative analysis, offers no practical recommendations (...) for social reform or policy making, and simply interprets social worlds. (shrink)

An agent S wants to A and knows that if she A-s she will also bring about B. S does not care at all about B. S then A-s, also bringing about B. Did she intentionally bring B about? Joshua Knobe (2003b) has recently argued that, according to the folk concept of intentional action, the answer depends on B's moral significance. In particular, if B is reprehensible, people are more likely to say that S intentionally brought it about. Knobe defends (...) this position with empirical facts about how ordinary people use the adjective 'intentionally.' Knobe's results are consistent with the thesis that the concept of intentional action is fundamentally evaluative. There is an alternative hypothesis, however, which can account for Knobe's data and which keeps the concept of intentional action within the purview of action theory. The current author suggests that the following conditions are jointly sufficient for a side effect E, produced by S's action A, being intentional: (i) S knows that E will (or is likely to) occur as a result of A-ing, (ii) bringing about E counts against A-ing (from the S's perspective), and (iii) S does not try to keep E from occurring. Known immoral side effects will always, from the folk's perspective, satisfy condition (ii) of this hypothesis. (shrink)

Contemporary interpreters have entered a new debate over Aquinas’s view on the status of human beings or persons between death and resurrection. Everyone agrees that, for Aquinas, separated souls exist in the interim. The disagreement concerns what happens to human beings—Peter, Paul, and so on. According to corruptionists, Aquinas thought human beings cease to exist at death and only begin to exist again at the resurrection. According to survivalists, however, Aquinas thought human beings continue to exist in the interim, constituted (...) by their separated souls alone. In this paper I offer a new argument in favor of corruptionism based upon Aquinas’s repeated discussions of a central though so far neglected topic: the death of Christ. To the question, “Was Christ a human being during the three days of his death?” Aquinas always answered, “No.” Examining his reasons proves that corruptionism, and not survivalism, is the right interpretation of Aquinas. (shrink)

This paper offers a paleobiological perspective on the debate concerning the possible use of biotechnology to bring back extinct species. One lesson from paleobiology is that extinction selectivity matters in addition to extinction rates and extinction magnitude. Combining some of Darwin’s insights about artificial selection with the theory of species selection that paleobiologists developed in the 1970s and 1980s provides a useful context for thinking about de-extinction. Using recent work on the prioritization of candidate species for de-extinction as a test (...) case, the paper argues that de-extinction would be a form of artificial species selection in which humans influence which species persist vs. go extinct. This points to a serious gap in our ethical theory: Much work has been done to clarify the value of biological diversity, but we also need theoretical guidance for decisions that amount to species sorting, and that will shape the macroevolutionary future. (shrink)

Anthropologists and sociologists offer numerous critiques of bioethics. Social scientists criticize bioethicists for their arm-chair philosophizing and socially ungrounded pontificating, offering philosophical abstractions in response to particular instances of suffering, making all-encompassing universalistic claims that fail to acknowledge cultural differences, fostering individualism and neglecting the importance of families and communities, and insinuating themselves within the “belly” of biomedicine. Although numerous aspects of bioethics warrant critique and reform, all too frequently social scientists offer ungrounded, exaggerated criticisms of bioethics. Anthropological and sociological (...) critiques of bioethics are hampered by the tendency to equate bioethics with clinical ethics and moral theory in bioethics with principlist bioethics. Also, social scientists neglect the role of bioethicists in addressing organizational ethics and other “macro-social” concerns. If anthropologists and sociologists want to provide informed critiques of bioethics they need to draw upon research methods from their own fields and develop richer, more informed analyses of what bioethicists say and do in particular social settings. (shrink)

This four volume major reference work covers the main issues, methods of analysis, and alternatives, of causality, including the classic texts applying these alternative concepts and methods to empirical cases. The volumes give a substantial historical and philosophical introduction relevant to the concerns of practitioners. As a whole, the volumes represent a complete guide to the literature on social science causality from the beginning to the present.

Cultural models of health, illness, and moral reasoning are receiving increasing attention in bioethics scholarship. Drawing upon research tools from medical and cultural anthropology, numerous researchers explore cultural variations in attitudes toward truth telling, informed consent, pain relief, and planning for end-of-life care. However, culture should not simply be equated with ethnicity. Rather, the concept of culture can serve as an heuristic device at various levels of analysis. In addition to considering how participation in particular ethnic groups and religious traditions (...) can shape moral reasoning, bioethicists need to consider processes of socialization into professional cultures, organizational cultures, national civic culture, and transnational culture. From the local world of the community clinic or oncology unit to the transnational workings of human rights agencies, attentiveness to the concept of culture can illuminate how patients, family members, and health care providers interpret illness, healing, and moral obligations. (shrink)

The Consequence Argument is a staple in the defense of libertarianism, the view that free will is incompatible with determinism and that humans have free will. It is often thought that libertarianism is consistent with a certain naturalistic view of the world — that is, that libertarian free will can be had without metaphysical commitments beyond those pro- vided by our best (indeterministic) physics. In this paper, I argue that libertarians who endorse the Consequence Argument are forced to reject this (...) naturalistic worldview, since the Consequence Argument has a sis- ter argument — I call it the Supervenience Argument — which cannot be rejected without threatening either the Consequence Argument or the naturalistic worldview in question. (shrink)

The Property Theory of attitudes holds that the contents of mental states --- especially de se states --- are properties. The "nonexistence problem" for the Property Theory holds that the theory gives the wrong consequences as to which worlds "fit" which mental states: which worlds satisfy desires, make beliefs true, and so on. If I desire to not exist, since there is no world where I have the property of not existing, my desire is satisfied in no worlds. In this (...) paper I argue that the problem can be solved with a suitable account of how properties as mental states fit worlds. The solution relies on a distinction between to kinds of property-instantiation at worlds inspired by Fine's distinction between "inner" and "outer" truth. (shrink)

Does the idea of human enhancement presuppose a goal or an ideal to direct technological modifications? In the absence of such an agreed ideal in today’s culture, can Christian theology help clarify the goal or the meaning of “perfection” when applied to human beings? A theological perspective rooted in scripture and in the writings of theologians such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nyssa suggests that theology instead of offering its own definition of the human ideal, theology rejects the possibility (...) of any defined human goal. An analysis of the biblical word teleios (“mature” or “perfect”), along with Gregory’s view of infinite ascent, leads to the conclusion that the human goal is found in relationship to the triune God and not in any anthropologically-definable status. (shrink)

My argument proceeds in two stages. In §I, I sum up the intuitions of a popular argument for 'satisfaction accounts' of Purgatory that I label, TAP. I then offer an argument, taken from a few standard orthodox Christian beliefs and one axiom of Christian theology, to so show that TAP is unsound. In the same section, I entertain some plausible responses to my argument that are prima facie consistent with these beliefs and axiom. I find these responses wanting. In §II, (...) I offer a sorites problem for TAP, given the orthodox Christian understanding of Christ’s parousia, showing that TAP and the intuitions driving it are faulty. To attempt something of a corrective, I end by offering some modest theological suggestions for thinking through “the logic of total transformation.”. (shrink)