As a member of the British Oxford Group, psychologist Richard Ryder marked the beginning of the modern animal rights and animal welfare movement in the seventies. By introducing the concept “speciesism.” Ryder contributed importantly to the expansion of this movement. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to Ryder’s moral theory, “painism”, that aims to resolve the conflict between the two predominant rival theories in animal ethics, the deontological of Tom Regan and the utilitarian of Peter Singer. First, (...) this paper examines the kernel and historical sources of Ryder’s painist theory, linking it to the work of John Rawls and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Second, it examines Ryder’s critique of utilitarianism. It is argued that his critique of Singer’s use of the word “sentience” is unconvincing and that his critique of utilitarian aggregation as not taking a full account of the metaphysical separateness of persons, has already been countered and dealt with. Finally this paper looks at some of the counterintuitive implications of Ryder’s theory and argues that utilitarianism might have more resources for dealing with its own alleged counterintuitive implications than Ryder acknowledges. (shrink)

I present an account of mental representation based upon the ‘SINBAD’ theory of the cerebral cortex. If the SINBAD theory is correct, then networks of pyramidal cells in the cerebral cortex are appropriately described as representing, or more specifically, as modelling the world. I propose that SINBAD representation reveals the nature of the kind of mental representation found in human and animal minds, since the cortex is heavily implicated in these kinds of minds. Finally, I show how SINBAD neurosemantics can (...) provide accounts of misrepresentation, equivocal representation, twin cases, and Frege cases. (shrink)

Textor reveals the roots of analytic philosophy in a great age of Austro-German philosophy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He introduces Brentano, Mach, and other key figures, and traces the development of the landmark ideas that there can be 'psychology without a soul', and that metaphysics lies beyond the limits of knowledge.

In the course of theorising, it can be appropriate to replace one concept—a folk concept, or one drawn from an earlier stage of theorising—with a more precise counterpart. The best-known account of concept replacement is Rudolf Carnap’s ‘explication’. P.F. Strawson famously critiqued explication as a method in philosophy. As the critique is standardly construed, it amounts to the objection that explication is ‘irrelevant’, fails to be ‘illuminating’, or simply ‘changes the subject’. In this paper, I argue that this is an (...) unfair characterisation of Strawson’s critique, spelling out the critique in more detail and showing that, fully understood, it is not undermined by extant responses. In light of both the critique and extant responses, I close by making some substantive comments about what explication can, and cannot, be used to do in philosophy. (shrink)

Many concepts are inadequate for serious inquiry, so theorists often seek to engineer new concepts. The method of explication, which involves replacing concepts with more fruitful alternatives, is a model of this process. In this paper, I develop an account of fruitfulness, the Relevant-Goals Account of Fruitfulness. The account is in the spirit of extant proposals, but develops and extends them in important ways. In particular, while it applies to explications in general, the account allows us to derive substantive details (...) for specific explications. This is achieved through a supplementary view, Contextualism, that specifies which theoretical goals are relevant in any given case. I close by discussing how the Relevant-Goals Account fits into the dynamic nature of inquiry. (shrink)

In his groundbreaking book, Thin Objects, Linnebo (2018) argues for an account of neo-Fregean abstraction principles and thin existence that does not rely on analyticity or conceptual rules. It instead relies on a metaphysical notion he calls “sufficiency”. In this short discussion, I defend the analytic or conceptual rule account of thin existence.

When it comes to using patient data from the National Health Service for research, we are often told that it is a matter of trust: we need to trust, we need to build trust, we need to restore trust. Various policy papers and reports articulate and develop these ideas and make very important contributions to public dialogue on the trustworthiness of our research institutions. But these documents and policies are apparently constructed with little sustained reflection on the nature of trust (...) and trustworthiness, and therefore are missing important features that matter for how we manage concerns related to trust. We suggest that what we mean by ‘trust’ and ‘trustworthiness’ matters and should affect the policies and guidance that govern data sharing in the NHS. We offer a number of initial, general reflections on the way in which some of these features might affect our approach to principles, policies and strategies that are related to sharing patient data for research. This paper is the outcome of a ‘public ethics’ coproduction activity which involved members of the public and two academic ethicists. Our task was to consider collectively the accounts of trust developed by philosophers as they applied in the context of the NHS and to coproduce an argumentative position relevant to this context. (shrink)

This chapter explores a case study in contemporary fanaticism. We adopt Katsafanas’s conceptualization of fanaticism to make possible an in-depth discussion of and evaluation of a diffuse but important social movement — the anglophone manosphere. According to Katsafanas, fanatics are fruitfully understood as members of a group that adopts sacred values which they hold unconditionally to preserve their own psychic unity, and who feel that those values are threatened by those who do not accept them. The manosphere includes several social (...) movements, including incels, men’s rights activists, and men-going-their-own-way. We show that many members of these groups are well-characterized by Katsafanas’s theory of fanaticism, and that they have forged their fanatical group identity using tools that philosophers have tended to associate with more benign social movements and the task of “conceptual engineering.” Indeed, we think that manosphere groups have in many cases been more successful than more palatable liberationist movements, and that this case study in the dark side of conceptual engineering may be both sobering and informative. (shrink)

Millikan and Her Critics offers a unique critical discussion of Ruth Millikan's highly regarded, influential, and systematic contributions to philosophy of mind and language, philosophy of biology, epistemology, and metaphysics. These newly written contributions present discussion from some of the most important philosophers in the field today and include replies from Millikan herself.

Reductive, naturalistic psychosemantic theories do not have a good track record when it comes to accommodating the representation of kinds. In this paper, I will suggest a particular teleosemantic strategy to solve this problem, grounded in the neurocomputational details of the cerebral cortex. It is a strategy with some parallels to one that Ruth Millikan has suggested, but to which insufficient attention has been paid. This lack of attention is perhaps due to a lack of appreciation for the severity of (...) the problem, so I begin by explaining why the situation is indeed a dire one. One of the main tasks for a naturalistic psychosemantic theory is to describe how the extensions of mental representations are determined. (Such a theory may also attempt to account for other aspects of the “meaning” of mental representations, if there are any.) Some mental representations, e.g. the concept of water, denote kinds (I shall be assuming this is non-negotiable). How is this possible? Unfortunately, I haven’t the space to canvass all the theories out there and show that each one fails to accommodate the representation of kinds, but I will point out the major types of problems that arise for the kinds of theories that, judging by the literature, are considered viable contenders.1 In general, the theories either attempt and fail to account for the representation of kinds, or they fall back on something like an intention to refer to a kind – not exactly the most auspicious move for a reductive theory. There are a number of problems that prevent non-teleosemantic theories from explaining how it is possible to represent kinds. A concept of a kind K must.. (shrink)

In _Knowledge, Art, and Power_ John Ryder develops a pragmatic naturalist theory of experience that posits the cognitive (knowledge), the aesthetic (art), and the political (power) as the most general and pervasive dimensions of all human experience.

According to Herman Cappelen’s Austerity Framework, conceptual engineering doesn’t involve concepts, and barely involves engineering. I begin by raising two objections to the Austerity Framework as it stands: the framework cannot account for important normative aspects of conceptual engineering; and it doesn’t give us an adequate response to Strawson-style objections that conceptual engineering serves only to change the subject. I then supplement the Austerity Framework with an account of semantic normativity, which builds on the speaker/semantic meaning distinction, and show that (...) so-supplemented the Austerity Framework successfully overcomes the two objections. I tentatively conclude that semantic normativity should play a key role in how we understand conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Michel Foucault was at times critical of the Marxist tradition, and at other times more sympathetic. After his dismissal of Marx in The Order of Things , he conceded the existence of a more compelling, non-humanist version of this discourse. Louis Althusser’s innovations are crucial for the existence of this second Marxism. While consideration of the relation between Foucault and Althusser varies between those who emphasize relations between State and capital, and conversely those who inscribe Marxist considerations into a micro-political (...) account, the distinction between the two thinkers takes place earlier in the development of their respective outlooks. Foucault initially emphasized Marxism as an anthropological eschatology; he revises this argument, commending the possibility of an epistemological mutation of history inherent in Marx’s thought. I locate crucial distinctions between Foucault and Althusser in the early work of the 1960s as inflecting relations in the seemingly more proximate work of the 1970s. In this approach, we can better examine Foucault’s non-Marxist contentions in order to consider the reciprocal distinctions and contributions between these two forms of anti-humanism, providing the necessary groundwork for debates regarding the nature of subjectivity, the State, and revolution. (shrink)

Reductive, naturalistic psychosemantic theories do not have a good track record when it comes to accommodating the representation of kinds. In this paper, I will suggest a particular teleosemantic strategy to solve this problem, grounded in the neurocomputational details of the cerebral cortex. It is a strategy with some parallels to one that Ruth Millikan has suggested, but to which insufficient attention has been paid. This lack of attention is perhaps due to a lack of appreciation for the severity of (...) the problem, so I begin by explaining why the situation is indeed a dire one. One of the main tasks for a naturalistic psychosemantic theory is to describe how the extensions of mental representations are determined. (Such a theory may also attempt to account for other aspects of the “meaning” of mental representations, if there are any.) Some mental representations, e.g. the concept of water, denote kinds (I shall be assuming this is non-negotiable). How is this possible? Unfortunately, I haven’t the space to canvass all the theories out there and show that each one fails to accommodate the representation of kinds, but I will point out the major types of problems that arise for the kinds of theories that, judging by the literature, are considered viable contenders.1 In general, the theories either attempt and fail to account for the representation of kinds, or they fall back on something like an intention to refer to a kind – not exactly the most auspicious move for a reductive theory. There are a number of problems that prevent non-teleosemantic theories from explaining how it is possible to represent kinds. A concept of a kind K must.. (shrink)

Introduction There are some exceptions, which we shall see below, but virtually all theories in psychology and cognitive science make use of the notion of representation. Arguably, folk psychology also traffics in representations, or is at least strongly suggestive of their existence. There are many different types of things discussed in the psychological and philosophical literature that are candidates for representation-hood. First, there are the propositional attitudes – beliefs, judgments, desires, hopes etc. (see Chapters 9 and 17 of this volume). (...) If the propositional attitudes are representations, they are person-level representations – the judgment that the sun is bright pertains to John, not a subpersonal part of John. By contrast, the representations of edges in V1 of the cerebral cortex that neuroscientists talk about and David Marr’s symbolic representations of “zero-crossings” in early vision (Marr 1982) are at the “sub-personal” level – they apply to parts or states of a person (e.g. neural parts or computational states of the visual system). Another important distinction is often made among perceptual, cognitive, and action-oriented representations (e.g. motor commands). Another contrast lies between “stored representations” (e.g. memories) and “active representations” (e.g. a current perceptual state). Related to this is the distinction between “dispositional representations” and “occurrent representations.” Beliefs that are not currently being entertained are dispositional, e.g. your belief that the United States is in North America - no doubt you had this belief two minutes ago, but you were not consciously accessing it until you read this sentence. Occurrent representations, by contrast, are active, conscious thoughts or perceptions. Which leads us to another important distinction: 1 between conscious and non-conscious mental representations, once a bizarre-sounding distinction that has become familiar since Freud (see Chapter 4 of this volume). I mention these distinctions at the outset to give you some idea of the range of phenomena we will be considering, and to set the stage for our central “problem of representation”: what is a mental representation, exactly, and how do we go about deciding whether there are any? We know there are public representations of various kinds: words, maps, and pictures, among others.. (shrink)

Richard Ryder recounts the birth of the term.

It is increasingly recognized that as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and pervasive in society and creates risks and ethical issues that cross borders, a global approach is needed for the governance of these risks. But why, exactly, do we need this and what does that mean? In this Open Forum paper, author argues for global governance of AI for moral reasons but also outlines the governance challenges that this project raises.

Can a constitution be treated as a recommendation rather than as binding and entrenched law? I argue that the answer to that question is Yes. With respect to the constitution in gross, that is, the total set of general provisions setting out both the structures of governance and the basic rights the constitution protects, the constitution as recommendation can serve as a focal point for ordinary political contestation which, because it unfolds in real time and is conducted by actors with (...) limited time and energy for such contestation, occurs within (largely) settled institutional forms. With respect to the constitution in detail, that is, brought to ground in judicial judgments in contested cases, the answer is more complicated. Ordinarily treating judicial judgments as recommendations is a prescription for instability (and for that reason inconsistent with the idea of institutional settlement). If the target of such a judgment makes a considered judgment that instability is worth it, the target is raising questions about the continuing value of remaining in the particular polity within which the principle of institutional settlement holds sway. (shrink)

Skeptical theism seeks to defend theism against the problem of evil by invoking putatively reasonable skepticism concerning human epistemic limitations in order to establish that we have no epistemological basis from which to judge that apparently gratuitous evils are not in fact justified by morally sufficient reasons beyond our ken. This paper contributes to the set of distinctively practical criticisms of skeptical theism by arguing that religious believers who accept skeptical theism and take its practical implications seriously will be forced (...) into a position of paralysis or "aporia" when faced with a wide set of morally significant situations. It is argued that this consequence speaks strongly against the acceptance of skeptical theism insofar as such moral "aporia" is inconsistent with religious moral teaching and practice. In addition, a variety of arguments designed to show that accepting skeptical theism does not lead to this consequence are considered, and shown to be deficient. (shrink)

This comprehensive collection, bringing together significant essays by leading philosophers of the twentieth century, represents one prominent school of American thought philosophic naturalism. Naturalism holds that nature is objective and can be studied to gain knowledge that is not determined by methodology, perspective, belief, or theory. For the naturalist, "nature" is an all-encompassing concept; nothing is other than natural and any notion of a supernatural realm is rejected. Naturalism, however, cannot be equated with materialistic reductionism or strict determinism. Certain nonmaterial (...) aspects of human existence thoughts, feelings, meanings, values, beliefs, ideals, and free will are included within the scope of the naturalist's approach. (shrink)

Kevin Scharp’s influential work on the alethic paradoxes combines an extensively developed inconsistency theory with a substantial conceptual engineering project. I argue that Scharp’s inconsistency theory is in tension with his conceptual engineering project: the inconsistency theory includes an account of concepts that implies that the conceptual engineering project will fail. I recommend that Scharp revises his account of concepts, and show how doing so allows him to resolve the tension. The discussion is important for ongoing work on conceptual engineering. (...) Firstly, it is important to get clear on whether Scharp’s conceptual engineering project is—or could be—successful. Secondly, the issues discussed herein may generalise to other conceptual engineering projects, such as explication and ameliorative projects. In particular, the discussion has implications for how conceptual engineers can think about concepts and their relation to how we use words. (shrink)

Ryder's engaging text welcomes students and practicing teachers into the intellectual framework of current education systems and pedagogy. Not assuming prior knowledge of philosophy, the book outlines general principles, acknowledges outlying factors, and presents a systematic and socially conscious approach to the practice of teaching.

Richard Ryder, one of the founding fathers of the modern animal rights movement, here explains his latest thinking about morality.

Richard Ryder created the term speciesism in early 1970 and shared the idea with Peter Singer, who popularised it in his classic work _Animal Liberation_. A key figure in the modern animal rights revival Ryder appeared on the first-ever televised discussion of animal rights in December 1970. He further promoted the ideas around speciesism in recorded discussions with Bridget Brophy, for the Open University, and in his contribution to the seminal philosophical work _Animals Men and Morals_ edited by (...) the Oxford philosophers Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris in 1971. From 1969 Ryder organised protests against animal experiments and bloodsports. He continued to promote his ideas about speciesism in leaflets and broadcasts, culminating in the publication of his _Victims of Science_ in 1975 - a book that provoked debates in Parliament and on television and was described by _The Spectator_ at the time as "a morally and historically important book". Dr Ryder was elected to the RSPCA Council in 1971, first becoming Chairman in 1977. In 1980 he was founding Chairman of the Liberal Democrat Animal Protection Group, and later ran for Parliament, was Director of the Political Animal Lobby and then Mellon Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tulane University. Ryder coined the term painism to describe his wider moral theory in 1990. He has several times broadcast on the BBC's Moral Maze. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titles: Proper Functions Representations: The Basic Teleosemantic Framework Concepts Externalism, Language, and Meaning Rationalism.

There is good evidence that the cerebral cortex is the seat of the human mind, so an understanding of representation in the cortex could help us understand the nature of mental representation. I argue that the cortex represents in the way that models do; it is an evolutionarily designed model-building machine. The cortex belongs to a general class of model-building machines that produce isomorphisms to structures in the environment by interacting with them. The representational content of a particular model produced (...) by such a machine is determined by the operational principles according to which the machine was designed, and the history of machine-environment interaction that resulted in the production of that model. ;I explore the possibility that the operational principles according to which the cerebral cortex was designed, i.e. aspects of its causal profile that were selected for, are those described by the SINBAD theory. The SINBAD theory implies that it is the biological function of the cortex to make its constituent neurons come to interact in a way that is isomorphic to regularities structured around "sources of correlation". In the context of this isomorphism, it is the function of a particular SINBAD cell to correspond to a particular source of correlation, the one that is responsible for that cell's tuning. In other words, the cortex builds models of environmental regularities structured around sources of correlation. ;Understanding mental representation as cortical representation of this kind allows us to explain a number of important and/or puzzling features of mental intentionality as we know it: the possibility of equivocation, misrepresentation, empty representation, and twin cases, the relation between concepts and inferential roles, how it is possible for us to acquire objective concepts and beliefs via our subjective and idiosyncratic senses, and the distinction between usefulness and truth. I conclude by outlining an account of the occurrent propositional attitudes as non-representational uses of a SINBAD model that has been built up through experience. Non-representational use is cashed out in terms of causal role. Together with an account of the non-occurrent attitudes, this yields an understanding of the nature of psychological explanation. (shrink)

Clinical psychologist Richard Ryder approaches three iconic celebrities -- Horatio Nelson, Adolph Hitler, and Diana Princess of Wales -- as though they were his patients and presents a short psycho-biography of each. Beneath their obvious differences he finds striking similarities in their backgrounds and early experience, especially being deprived of their mothers' love. In a short Epilogue the author asks what lessons might be learned for the future from these three famous figures of the past.

One of the barriers between ordinarily compassionate animal researchers and pro-animal ethicists is that the ethicists are usually seen as asking for far too much. They are perceived as demanding the complete abandonment of careers. In consequence, the ethicist is often ignored. Ethicists rarely give clear-cut rules to animal researchers as to how they can continue in animal research while at the same time adopting an increasingly moral approach. The purpose of this paper is to provide some rules to help (...) the animals by aiding conscientious researchers who are not in a position to give up their careers entirely. These are ethical rules and not, therefore, in quite the same category as Russell and Burch's or the proposal that experimenters should seek proper training and retraining in animal care, and in the skills of euthanasia, anaesthesia, and analgesia. Nor are ethical rules quite the same as the requirement that all experimenters should acquaint themselves with the latest techniques for improving the animals' quality of life or the need to keep themselves up to date in alternative research techniques that do not use animals. All these steps are of great importance and should be taken in addition to the ethical rules I propose. (shrink)

In a previous essay, Richard Ryder argued against Utilitarianism's aggregation of pains across individuals. He continues this argument and rebuts several criticisms of his moral theory of painism. Painism not only rejects the aggregation of pains across individuals, it also questions the trade-off of pains against pleasures.

Artificial intelligence ethics requires a united approach from policymakers, AI companies, and individuals, in the development, deployment, and use of these technologies. However, sometimes discussions can become fragmented because of the different levels of governance or because of different values, stakeholders, and actors involved. Recently, these conflicts became very visible, with such examples as the dismissal of AI ethics researcher Dr. Timnit Gebru from Google and the resignation of whistle-blower Frances Haugen from Facebook. Underpinning each debacle was a conflict between (...) the organisation’s economic and business interests and the morals of their employees. This paper will examine tensions between the ethics of AI organisations and the values of their employees, by providing an exploration of the AI ethics literature in this area, and a qualitative analysis of three workshops with AI developers and practitioners. Common ethical and social tensions will be discussed, along with proposals on how to avoid or reduce these conflicts in practice. Altogether, we suggest the following steps to help reduce ethical issues within AI organisations: improved and diverse ethics education and training within businesses; internal and external ethics auditing; the establishment of AI ethics ombudsmen, AI ethics review committees and an AI ethics watchdog; as well as access to trustworthy AI ethics whistle-blower organisations. (shrink)

This book scrutinizes recent work in phonological theory from the perspective of Chomskyan generative linguistics and argues that progress in the field depends on taking seriously the idea that phonology is best studied as a mental computational system derived from an innate base, phonological Universal Grammar. Two simple problems of phonological analysis provide a frame for a variety of topics throughout the book. The competence-performance distinction and markedness theory are both addressed in some detail, especially with reference to phonological acquisition. (...) Several aspects of Optimality Theory, including the use of Output-Output Correspondence, functionalist argumentation and dependence on typological justification are critiqued. The authors draw on their expertise in historical linguistics to argue that diachronic evidence is often mis-used to bolster phonological arguments, and they present a vision of the proper use of such evidence. Issues of general interest for cognitive scientists, such as whether categories are discrete and whether mental computation is probabilistic are also addressed. The book ends with concrete proposals to guide future phonological research.The breadth and depth of the discussion, ranging from details of current analyses to the philosophical underpinnings of linguistic science, is presented in a direct style with as little recourse to technical language as possible. (shrink)

Following Wittgenstein’s lead, Crispin Wright and others have argued that hinge propositions are immune from skeptical doubt. In particular, the entitlement strategy, as we shall refer to it, says that hinge propositions have a special type of justification because of their role in our cognitive lives. Two major criticisms are raised here against the entitlement strategy when used in attempts to justify belief in the external world. First, the hinge strategy is not sufficient to thwart underdetermination skepticism, since underdetermination considerations (...) lead to a much stronger form of skepticism than is commonly realized. Second, the claim that hinge propositions are necessary to trust perception is false. There is an alternative to endorsing a particular hinge proposition about the external world, external world disjunctivism, which permits us to trust perception, while skirting the difficulties raised by skepticism. (shrink)

The first paper in this pair (Bickhard in Axiomathes, 2015) developed a model of the nature of representation and cognition, and argued for a model of the micro-functioning of the brain on the basis of that model. In this sequel paper, starting with part III, this model is extended to address macro-functioning in the CNS. In part IV, I offer a discussion of an approach to brain functioning that has some similarities with, as well as differences from, the model presented (...) here: sometimes called the Predictive Brain approach. (shrink)

Fine (J. Philos. Logic 46(6):625–674, 2017a) sets out a theory of content based on truthmaker semantics which distinguishes two kinds of consequence between contents. There is entailment, corresponding to the relationship between disjunct and disjunction, and there is containment, corresponding to the relationship between conjunctions and their conjuncts. Fine associates these with two notions of parthood: disjunctive and conjunctive. Conjunctive parthood is a very useful notion, allowing us to analyse partial content and partial truth. In this chapter, I extend the (...) notion of disjunctive parthood in terms of a structural relation of refinement, which stands to disjunctive parthood much as mereological parthood stands to conjunctive parthood. Philosophically, this relation may be modelled on the determinable-determinate relation, or on a fact-to-fact notion of grounding. I discuss its connection to two other Finean notions: vagueness (understood via precisification) and arbitrary objects. I then investigate what a logic of truthmaking with refinement might look like. I argue that (i) parthood naturally gives rise to a relevant conditional; (ii) refinement underlies a relevant notion of disjunction; and so (iii) truthmaker semantics with refinement is a natural home for relevant logic. The resulting formal models draw on Fine’s (J. Philos. Logic 3(4):347–372, 1974) semantics for relevant logics. Finally, I use this understanding of relevant semantics to investigate the status of the mingle axiom. (shrink)

This is both a small and a large book. In number of pages it is modest, but it aspires to sort through a very large topic indeed. One of the challenges for a naturalist theology, which is to say a naturalist conception of the divine, and perhaps more importantly of the sacred, is to resolve the obvious problem of accommodating as an element of nature an entity that has for the most part been understood as supernatural. Yalcin’s book attempts to (...) do just that. Though I have some misgivings about this and that detail, which I will mention below, Yalcin succeeds, I would say, in articulating a coherent, plausible, creative, and wholly interesting understanding of the sacred on strictly naturalist grounds.It is... (shrink)

In recent years skeptical theism has gained currency amongst theists as a way to escape the problem of evil by invoking putatively reasonable skepticism concerning our ability to know that instances of apparently gratuitous evil are unredeemed by morally sufficient reasons known to God alone. After explicating skeptical theism through the work of Stephen Wykstra and William Alston, I present a cumulative-case argument designed to show that skeptical theism cannot be accepted by theists insofar as it crucially undermines epistemic license (...) to the very theism it is invoked to defend. I also argue that attempts to defend a theism-friendly moderate version of skeptical theism either fail to halt the spread of damaging skepticism, or lack philosophical validity. (shrink)

In his pioneering new book Interpreting America, John Ryder makes available for the first time to English-speaking readers Russian views of the full range of American philosophical thought. Using his own accurate translations, he clearly reconstructs a chain of core ideas, emphasizes the most essential concepts of each writer's work, and gives a multidimensional reconstruction of the arguments of each author.

Machiavelli almost succeeded in removing morality from European politics and, indeed, since his day it has sometimes been assumed that morality and politics are separate. Ryder argues that the time has come for public policies to be seen to be based upon moral objectives. Politicians should be expected routinely to justify their policies with open moral argument. In Part I, Ryder sketches an overview of contemporary political philosophy as it relates to the moral basis for politics, and Part (...) 2 suggests a way of putting morality back into politics, along with a clearer emphasis upon scientific evidence. (shrink)

The British Government has finally banned fox hunting. Richard Ryder explains why he believes it was the right decision.