Can we reconcile the idea that we are free and responsible agents with the idea that what we do is determined according to natural laws? For centuries, philosophers have tried in different ways to show that we can. Hilary Bok takes a fresh approach here, as she seeks to show that the two ideas are compatible by drawing on the distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning.Bok argues that when we engage in practical reasoning--the kind that involves asking "what should I (...) do?" and sifting through alternatives to find the most justifiable course of action--we have reason to hold ourselves responsible for what we do. But when we engage in theoretical reasoning--searching for causal explanations of events--we have no reason to apply concepts like freedom and responsibility. Bok contends that libertarians' arguments against "compatibilist" justifications of moral responsibility fail because they describe human actions only from the standpoint of theoretical reasoning. To establish this claim, she examines which conceptions of freedom of the will and moral responsibility are relevant to practical reasoning and shows that these conceptions are not vulnerable to many objections that libertarians have directed against compatibilists. Bok concludes that the truth or falsity of the claim that we are free and responsible agents in the sense those conceptions spell out is ultimately independent of deterministic accounts of the causes of human actions.Clearly written and powerfully argued, Freedom and Responsibility is a major addition to current debate about some of philosophy's oldest and deepest questions. (shrink)

A thoughtful addition to the growing debate over public and private morality. Looks at lying and deception in law, family, medicine, government.

In this smart and timely book, the distinguished moral philosopher Sissela Bok ponders the nature of happiness and its place in philosophical thinking and writing throughout the ages. With nuance and elegance, Bok explores notions of happiness—from Greek philosophers to Desmond Tutu, Charles Darwin, Iris Murdoch, and the Dalai Lama—as well as the latest theories advanced by psychologists, economists, geneticists, and neuroscientists. Eschewing abstract theorizing, Bok weaves in a wealth of firsthand observations about happiness from ordinary people as well as (...) renowned figures. This may well be the most complete picture of happiness yet. This book is also a clarion call to think clearly and sensitively about happiness. Bringing together very different disciplines provides Bok with a unique opportunity to consider the role of happiness in wider questions of how we should lead our lives and treat one another—concerns that don’t often figure in today’s happiness equation. How should we pursue, weigh, value, or limit our own happiness, or that of others, now and in the future? Compelling and perceptive, _Exploring Happiness_ shines a welcome new light on the heart of the human condition. (shrink)

"Derek Bok's "Our Underachieving Colleges" is readable, balanced, often wry, and wise. This book should be required reading for every curriculum committee and academic dean.

In Common Values, now with a new preface, Bok writes eloquently and clearly while combining moral theory with practical ethics, demonstrating how moral values apply to all facets of life—personal, professional, domestic, and international. Drawing on a great deal of historical material, Bok also includes in her examination consideration of the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights; the World Parliament of Religions; the publication of Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II's proclamation on morality; and the International Commission of (...) Global Governance. Bok's defense of shared morality addresses a crucial topic for our time. (shrink)

Shows how the ethical issues raised by secrets and secrecy in our careers or private lives take us to the heart of the critical questions of private and public morality.

What should patients know about the degree to which their physicians may be impaired—unable, in the words of the American Medical Association, “to practice medicine with reasonable skill and safety to patients by reason of physical or mental illness, including alcoholism and drug dependence”? What patients do in fact find out about such matters as alcohol or other drug abuse by, say, the surgeon or the anesthesiologist in charge of their care is another matter altogether; most patients learn about such (...) impairment the hard way. But what should they know beforehand, if at all possible? (shrink)

The unprecedented outbreak of the novel coronavirus has led to a great shift toward online retailing and accelerated the need for contactless delivery. This study investigates how technological and health belief factors influence consumer acceptance of autonomous delivery robots. Anchored in four behavioral theories [i.e., technology acceptance model, health belief model, perceived value theory and trust theory], a synthesized model is developed. A total of 500 valid responses were collected through an online questionnaire in Singapore, and structural equation modeling was (...) conducted to examine the responses. The results revealed that perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, self-efficacy and cues to action have a positive and significant influence on consumers’ perceptions of the value of ADRs. The total effect analysis also showed that perceived VAL strongly affects consumer acceptance of ADRs. Academically, this study introduces both technological and health belief factors to explain consumer acceptance of ADRs. It also provides recommendations for policymakers and autonomous delivery robot developers on policy formulation, public communication, product design and infrastructure development. (shrink)

Individuals who would blow the whistle by making public disclosure of impropriety in their own organizations face choices of public v private good. These dilemmas, along with institutional and professional standards that might ease the way of whistleblowers, are explored.

Augustine's analysis and solution of the classical problem of free will and foreknowledge - as given in De libero arbitrio III 4-10 and De civitate Dei V 8-10 - stand out in their brevity and simplicity. His texts carry formulations which show an astonishing clarity not only in what they explicitly say, but also in what is implicitly said in them. Most recent discussions of Augustine's view, however, are unclear about this clarity, at least partly because they tend to a (...) deterministic position; they probably sense, unwillingly, that Augustine intends to rule that position out. In the discussions on the problem a dilemma seems to be unavoidable; one can only cling to one of its horns. Either God knows the future and then human volitions cannot be free , or the human will is free but then God cannot know its future volitions . In his analysis of this dilemma Augustine shows that both positions already presuppose an insight which cannot be taken for granted. The certainty of God's foreknowledge seems to entail that the object of his foreknowledge is necessary, but on close examination it does not. For it is sufficient to state: It is necessary that, if there is an object of God's foreknowledge, God knows it. Augustine's central sentences carefully formulate this kind of - implicative - necessity involved in prescience. Because of this 'necessity', he can consistently maintain that it is on the power of the will to sin or not to sin and yet, if a man will sin, God will know it, or if that man will not sin, God will know that. Thus the object of God's knowledge can be contingent, as in the case of future volitions, and still His foreknowledge can be certain. A deterministic interpretation of Augustine's analysis can be substantiated by the idea that God foreknows what the will itself will do, whereas his certainty is based on the supposition that the will is a natural cause of its volitions - just like the other causes in the cosmos. Although Augustine does not deal with this more specific aspect - he does not need to, because he showed that the certainty of God's knowledge can be guaranteed independent of the status of its object - we can conclude from his formulations that the will, as a cause of volitions, differs from a natural cause not only by producing them itself, but also by producing them in such a way that it can not-produce them. (shrink)

I will argue that this intuitive description is in fact accurate: that we can and do perform actions we know to be wrong simply because we fail to decide what to do. I will then try to show that once we recognize this fact, we can identify a character trait which any plausible moral theory which is not strictly self-defeating must require that we develop. Finally, I will sketch some implications of this argument for the role of virtue in moral (...) theory, and for the nature of moral objectivity. (shrink)

Montesquieu was one of the great political philosophers of the Enlightenment. Insatiably curious and mordantly funny, he constructed a naturalistic account of the various forms of government, and of the causes that made them what they were and that advanced or constrained their development. He used this account to explain how governments might be preserved from corruption. He saw despotism, in particular, as a standing danger for any government not already despotic, and argued that it could best be prevented by (...) a system in which different bodies exercised legislative, executive, and judicial power, and in which all those bodies were bound by the rule of law. This theory of the separation of powers had an enormous impact on liberal political theory, and on the framers of the constitution of the United States of America. (shrink)

This article takes up the challenge that the motto “Do What is Right Though the World Should Perish” invites for an answer to Kant's arguments in defense of the motto. His argumentation is discussed, as well as the underlying assumptions concerning the role of Providence, the rejection of moral conflict, and the prudential risks associated with abandoning moral absolutism. The first two are rejected, the third seen as only partially tenable. Finally, the question is taken up what to do about (...) moral prohibitions in a world in which they can quite literally prevent or bring about universal perishing. (shrink)

The source of all being cannot be envious. This is one of the basic ideas of Ancient philosophy and one of the central aspects of what A. Lovejoy has called the principle of plenitude. We may ask what kind of being is supposed to originate because of that most original generosity. This article presents some answers to this question – highlights in the history of the ideas from Ancient to Medieval thought – in order to give a close-up of the (...) last one. In Ancient philosophy ‘the other’ generously brought into being is the cosmos emanating from the One or Good. This emanation is as full or complete as it can be . The patres could not accept this ‘layered’ conception of the communication of being unless the crucial difference between God and world was taken into account. They looked for the other on two levels: the Son generated by the Father, the ‘fountain of the godhead’ and the ultimate source of all being, and the universe created by God and culminating in man made in God’s image. Moreover, the communication of being was increasingly considered as a communication not just of goodness , but of love . The fulfilment of this communication – the optimal realisation of the principle of plenitude – was located in the relations of the divine persons or in the creation and glorification of non-divine persons . There also seems to be a unique ‘in between’: Jesus Christ, God made man, supreme divine selfcommunication in a created being. The well-known Scotian notion of the absolute predestination of Christ claims that God, because of his love, wants to be loved. Out of this love, which is God’s most original motive, God was incarnated. So Scotus assumes that the incarnation – human nature taken into the unity of person with the divine nature – is the culmination of divine goodness communicating itself. Plenitude is attained in and through Christ. Thus the question is raised where the other as the final object of supreme generosity can be found: in the Trinity, in Jesus, or in creation ? The differences in view appear to depend on the respective analyses of the precise nature of the other required for the full communication of love . These analyses can be focussed on the concept of person . In this concept various aspects appear to be involved: independence, incommunicability , mindgiftedness , being-a-subject, and necessary existence. The body of this article is committed to the question whether Christ, or Christ’s human nature, can be the other intended by God’s love. I analyze Scotus’ christological concept of person . I will show, first, that in order to be able to respond to divine love the other has to be an individual, non-necessarily existing subject which is capable of knowing and willing . Second, I will investigate Scotus’ conception by asking, whether or not these aspects can, or cannot, be identified with various aspects involved in the specific constitution of person and nature in Christ. This investigation is grouped in two sets of issues: independence and some presuppositions of loving in response, and the neces-sity of the incarnation. My conclusion is that the other – a being having the aspects just mentioned – cannot be found inChrist . Moreover, since I think, like Scotus, that the other cannot be found in God either, the other must be located in creation. Consequently, the incarnation must be God’s well-chosen selfcommunication tothat human other: as an non-necessary offer of love capable of fulfilling man by calling for his non-necessary response. In this way the perspective of plenitude is not cancelled, but the communication of being motivated by generosity cannot fully be realised unless both divine and human freedom are involved. (shrink)

How practical can ethics be? To what extent is it possible to put ethics, in the words of Samuel Johnson? In Practical Ethics, Henry Sidgwick offers the distillation of a lifetime of reflection on how to relate moral theory and practice. This book provides both a model and a cautionary example. Its lucid, urbane, and broad-gauged approach to practical moral issues is exemplary; but its very lucidity also exposes the moral risks in Sidgwick's attempt to isolate deliberation about these issues (...) from fundamental moral premises, including the interlocking intuitionist, utilitarian, and paternalist premises buttressing his conclusions about legitimate practices of violence and deceit. (shrink)