This work approaches international law as more than merely information contained in international legal norms, & does not view international law as a body of ...

As its title suggests, this book is a discussion of ‘three starting-points, three different ways of throwing light on what ethics is all about’ ; it asks the question: Is ethics basically love, law or language? The first chapter, ‘Ethics as Love’, looks critically at what is generally identified as the situationist approach—‘All you need is love’. The New Testament insistence upon the primacy of love over law is well-known; but this must be balanced by appreciation of the fact that (...) the law in question is the ceremonial law—Christ nowhere sets aside the moral law in favour of love. There remains the question of the status of moral rules; are they absolute or are they simply convenient rules of thumb suffering exceptions? The criticism of the latter view is searching without presenting anything novel. What is love? How does one know that an action is a loving action? To understand the meaning of love one must have experience—love is that kind of term. A consequence is that, even if we cannot positively describe all that is in love, we need at least to be able to state what love is not ‘however open-ended the term may otherwise be’. Love must exclude certain kinds of behaviour if it is to have any meaning; can sexual perversion or the killing of babies ever be an expression of love? On the other hand the word love is a ‘growing’ word and if its meaning occasionally outstrips semantic rules there must remain what the author calls a ‘revolutionary continuity between what love now means for us and what it used to mean’. Again, the idea of ‘situation’ is a good deal more complex than situationist theories sometimes allow. It is something more than the personal face-to-face encounter and must take in much wider fields of human relationship. Furthermore the individual usually finds himself in a number of overlapping situations the demands of which will frequently conflict. All this is well said; and it needs to be said, for situationism of the ‘only love counts’ variety is more prone than most theories to be content with re-assertion instead of meeting telling criticism. (shrink)

This interesting study in religious sociology takes as its subject the various attitudes of society towards death. These attitudes are reflected in the mass-media of communication. Ten daily news papers published in Paris in a given week in 1969 were systematically studied for references to death; likewise the 399 films shown in Paris-cinemas during 1968, the television programmes for the first six-months of 1969 and the popular songs broadcast from two selected radio stations. The result is found in three long (...) chapters. The first is devoted to violent death—murders, suicides, deaths in traffic accidents, etc. The second chapter takes up the more subjective attitudes in the face of death—scientific detachment, fear, horror, black humour. And the third chapter documents the commercial and business aspects of death—the economics of the pompes funébres. (shrink)

Few will deny that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is the best-known work on moral philosophy. It is a well-trodden field for the commentator. Indeed one occasionally has the feeling that it is the very proliferation of commentary that makes further guidance necessary and justifies a new commentator. But one hastens to add that the author of the present volume does very much more than simply sort out the differences between the interpretations offered by his predecessors in the field. That not unimportant (...) task he does very skilfully. But his main preoccupation is ‘to give an account of Aristotle’s main ethical doctrines, and to justify interpretations by the detailed scrutiny of particular passages, often very familiar passages’. He goes on to remark that in the study of Aristotle familiarity can be an obstacle to understanding. (shrink)

This volume is the first of a new series, ‘Traditio Christiana, Texts and Commentary on Patristic Theology’. The aim is to print the outstanding patristic texts, in their original Latin or Greek, on a given topic and to accompany them with translation and commentary. The specialist and the layman are thus put in a position of having direct contact with the sources of Church teaching. The aim is ecumenical, too; for here is common ground between the various confessions.

Joshua Greene has argued that the empirical findings of cognitive science have implications for ethics. In particular, he has argued (1) that people’s deontological judgments in response to trolley problems are strongly influenced by at least one morally irrelevant factor, personal force, and are therefore at least somewhat unreliable, and (2) that we ought to trust our consequentialist judgments more than our deontological judgments when making decisions about unfamiliar moral problems. While many cognitive scientists have rejected Greene’s dual-process theory of (...) moral judgment on empirical grounds, philosophers have mostly taken issue with his normative assertions. For the most part, these two discussions have occurred separately. The current analysis aims to remedy this situation by philosophically analyzing the implications of moral dilemma research using the CNI model of moral decision-making – a formalized, mathematical model that decomposes three distinct aspects of moral-dilemma judgments. In particular, we show how research guided by the CNI model reveals significant conceptual, empirical, and theoretical problems with Greene’s dual-process theory, thereby questioning the foundations of his normative conclusions. (shrink)

What is the status of research on implicit bias? In light of meta‐analyses revealing ostensibly low average correlations between implicit measures and behavior, as well as various other psychometric concerns, criticism has become ubiquitous. We argue that while there are significant challenges and ample room for improvement, research on the causes, psychological properties, and behavioral effects of implicit bias continues to deserve a role in the sciences of the mind as well as in efforts to understand, and ultimately combat, discrimination (...) and inequality. (shrink)

The current chapter provides an overview of research on responses in moral dilemmas where maximization of outcomes for the greater good (utilitarianism) conflicts with adherence to moral norms (deontology). Expanding on a description of the traditional paradigm to study moral-dilemma judgments (i.e., the trolley problem), the chapter reviews the most prominent dual-process account of moral-dilemma judgments, normative conclusions that have been derived from this account, and criticisms raised against this line of work. The following sections review advances in the development (...) of alternative approaches that aim to address shortcomings of the traditional dilemma paradigm as well as the implications of this work for psychological theories of moral-dilemma judgments and philosophical inferences about the normative implications of moral-dilemma research. The chapter concludes with a review of research on the links between moral-dilemma judgments and social impressions. (shrink)

We identify several ongoing debates related to implicit measures, surveying prominent views and considerations in each debate. First, we summarize the debate regarding whether performance on implicit measures is explained by conscious or unconscious representations. Second, we discuss the cognitive structure of the operative constructs: are they associatively or propositionally structured? Third, we review debates whether performance on implicit measures reflects traits or states. Fourth, we discuss the question of whether a person’s performance on an implicit measure reflects characteristics of (...) the person who is taking the test or characteristics of the situation in which the person is taking the test. Finally, we survey the debate about the relationship between implicit measures and (other kinds of) behavior. (shrink)

Based on a review of several “anomalies” in research using implicit measures, Machery (2021) dismisses the modal interpretation of participant responses on implicit measures and, by extension, the value of implicit measures. We argue that the reviewed findings are anomalies only for specific—influential but long-contested—accounts that treat responses on implicit measures as uncontaminated indicators of trait-like unconscious representations that coexist with functionally independent conscious representations. However, the reviewed findings are to-be-expected “normalities” when viewed from the perspective of long-standing alternative frameworks (...) that treat responses on implicit measures as the product of dynamic processes that operate on momentarily activated, consciously accessible information. Thus, although we agree with Machery that the modal view is empirically unsupported, we argue that implicit measures can make a valuable contribution to understanding the complexities of human behavior if they are used wisely in a way that acknowledges what they can and cannot do. (shrink)

Research on academic cheating by high school students and undergraduates suggests that many students will do whatever it takes, including violating ethical classroom standards, to not be left behind or to race to the top. This behavior may be exacerbated among pre-med and pre-health professional school students enrolled in laboratory classes because of the typical disconnect between these students, their instructors and the perceived legitimacy of the laboratory work. There is little research, however, that has investigated the relationship between high (...) aspirations and academic conduct. This study fills this research gap by investigating the beliefs, perceptions and self-reported academic conduct of highly aspirational students and their peers in mandatory physics labs. The findings suggest that physics laboratory classes may face particular challenges with highly aspirational students and cheating, but the paper offers practical solutions for addressing them. (shrink)

Student cheating has always been a problem in higher education, but detection of cheating has become easier with technology. As a result, more students are being caught and reported for cheating. While reporting cheating is not a negative, the rippling effects of reported cheating may be felt by some populations more than others. Thus, preventing cheating would be a preferable option for all involved.Identifying those at risk for being reported for cheating is a first step in developing preventive measures. Previous (...) research has attempted to do this through the use of self-report surveys, but such research takes considerable time and resources to conduct and suffers from low response rates and social desirability bias. To address this limitation in existing research, this study links existing data from records of other-reported cheating to university registration data in order to examine 6 cheating risk factors identified in previous research: maturity level, gender, grade point average, major, international student status, and fear of punishment. The results of the study suggest that international and transfer students, particularly those who are male, in high-risk majors, and have lower grade point averages, are in particular need of preventative education. Likewise, those faculty who teach in computer science, engineering and economics majors should do more to educate implement practices to reduce the likelihood of cheating. (shrink)

Recent reports of the discovery of a “God module” in the human brain derive from the fact that epileptic seizures in the left temporal lobe are associated with ecstatic feelings sometimes described as an experience of the presence of God. The brain area involved has been described as either (a) the seat of an innate human faculty for experiencing the divine or (b) the seat of religious delusions.In fact, religious experience is extremely various and involves many parts of the brain, (...) including some that are prehuman in their evolutionary history and some that are characteristically human. In the continuing integration of such experiences, spiritual formation takes place. Thus the entire human brain might be described as a “God module.”Such a process is only possible because of the brain's complexity. The human brain is the most complex entity for its size that we know of. As used here, complexity is a specialized term denoting the presence of a web of interlinked and significant connections—the more intricate the web, the more complex the entity. Complex systems develop only in a milieu that provides both lawfulness and freedom, and they tend to be self‐organizing, becoming more complex and more effective as a result of both inward and outward experience. The evidence suggests that both personal growth and spiritual growth are processes of complexification of character, and of the brain itself. This thesis is tested in light of the work of William James and James W. Fowler. (shrink)

This book highlights some of the most pressing safety, ethical, legal and societal issues related to the diverse contexts in which robotic technologies apply. Focusing on the essential concept of well-being, it addresses topics that are fundamental not only for research, but also for industry and end-users, discussing the challenges in a wide variety of applications, including domestic robots, autonomous manufacturing, personal care robots and drones.

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 63 Heft: 3 Seiten: 549-549.

Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, and Bertram Gawronski articulate a careful defense of research on implicit bias. They argue that though there is room for improvement in various areas, when we set the bar appropriately and when we are comparing relevant events, the test–retest stability and predictive ability of implicit bias measures are respectable. Edouard Machery disagrees. He argues that theories of implicit bias have failed to answer four fundamental questions about measures of implicit bias, and this undermines their (...) utility in further scientific research and policy making. In this article, I offer my perspective on this important debate. I argue that there is a theoretical mismatch in debating the merits of a research program on the terms of a specific theory within the research program. Nevertheless, the discussion allows us to see which questions are answered from within the perspective of a particular theory. I argue that the emphasis should be on whether implicit bias theories predict novel facts. (shrink)

How surprising is the insight, that being equals I in the 15th lecture of the Doctrine of Science 1804/II? It might have been indeed an unexpected turn for his contemporaries in Berlin listening to Fichte for the first time, but should it be surprising for us, having at least since 2012 (the year the last volume of [Gesamtausgabe] appeared) access to all his published and unpublished works? I want to propose a way of reading Fichte, which bypasses two popular and (...) contradictory interpretations of his philosophy in the post-Jena period: (a) the Absolute is the new first principle (hence the I is just a shadow of the much higher being) and (b) his system basically remains unchanged (hence the being is nothing more than the I). At first, I analyze the functions of later Fichte’s improved version of the Kantian and Reinholdian abstract subject-object-symbolism and assign specific content to it. This will shed light on the structure and the first principle of the Doctrine of Science 1804/II. In the second section I give reasons why Fichte calls both God and I “absolute” and “pure being” and explain their relation to each other referring to a thought experiment sometimes used by Kant—an analogy between the divine and human (pure) reason. The analogical thinking of this kind remains within the borders of transcendental philosophy as long as it is used only for certain didactic purposes. (shrink)

John Lockes Essay uber den menschlichen Verstand (zuerst 1690 erschienen) ist eines der einflussreichsten Bucher der Philosophiegeschichte. Es behandelt vorwiegend erkenntnis- und wissenschaftstheoretische Themen, nimmt aber auch Stellung zu Fragen aus der Philosophie des Geistes, der Religionsphilosophie und der Ethik. Locke war einer der Initiatoren und fuhrenden Kopfe der europaischen Aufklarung. Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Essay wird auch in der Philosophie der Gegenwart vehement fortgesetzt. Die elf Beitrage dieses Bandes, die Bibliographie und ein ausfuhrliches Glossar machen das Buch zu einem (...) wichtigen Begleittext zu Lockes Werk. Mit Beitragen von: Michael Ayers, Reinhard Brandt, John Colman, Bertram Kienzle, Heiner F. Klemme, Lorenz Kruger, Michel Malherbe, Rolf W. Puster, G.A.J. Rogers, Rainer Specht, Jurgen Sprute und Udo Thiel". (shrink)

This dialogue (trilogue) is an attempt to critically discuss the technoscientific convergence that is taking place with biodigital technologies in the postdigital condition. In this discussion, Sarah Hayes, Petar Jandrić and Michael A. Peters examine the nature of the convergences, their applications for bioeconomic sustainability and associated ecopedagogies. The dialogue paper raises issues of definition and places the technological convergence (‘nano-bio-info-cogno’) – of new systems biology and digital technologies at the nano level – in an evolutionary context to speculate, (...) on the basis of the latest research, future possibilities. The paper also reviews these developments within familiar landscapes of posthumanism and postmodernism, raises the question of political bioeconomy and the role of postdigital education within it. (shrink)

Der Raum ist ein eminent philosophisches Thema. Denn so selbstverstandlich es ist, dass wir in Raumen und im Raum leben, so unklar ist, was das bedeutet. Wie verhalten sich lebensweltliche Raume zu `dem Raum` uberhaupt? Gibt es bevorzugte Formen der Raumerfahrung? Wie verhalten sich Raum und Zeit zueinander? Was unterscheidet Nahe und Distanz, Bewegung und Aufenthalt?Die Beitrage des vorliegenden Bandes nahern sich der Philosophie des Raumes aus Richtung der Epistemologie, praktischen Philosophie und Asthetik. Dahinter steht die Uberzeugung, dass der Raum (...) nicht allein ein Thema der theoretischen Philosophie sein sollte, sondern Raumphanomene in allen Bereichen der Philosophie relevant sind. Im Zusammenspiel von klassischen und gegenwartigen Positionen ergibt sich ein Uberblick uber die Moglichkeit, eines der unscheinbarsten Phanomene uberhaupt zu thematisieren. Mit Beitragen von: Diego D'Angelo, Jocelyn Benoist, Christian Bermes, Georg Bertram, Steven G. Crowell, David Espinet, Michael N. Forster, Markus Gabriel, Volker Gerhardt, Tobias Keiling, Ole Meinefeld, Nikola Mirkovi'c, Inga Romer, John Sallis, Alexander Schnel. (shrink)

The doctrine of double effect has a firm, respected position within Roman Catholic medical ethics. Neil M. Gorsuch, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, believes that this doctrine also enjoys a central place within U.S. law. This essay examines and assesses Gorsuch’s thesis. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.1 (Spring 2011): 31–40.

This paper proposes a novel distinction between accounts of scientific representation: it distinguishes thin accounts from thick accounts. Thin accounts focus on the descriptive aspect of representation whereas thick accounts acknowledge the evaluative aspect of representation. Thin accounts focus on the question of what a representation as such is. Thick accounts start from the question of what an adequate representation is. In this paper, I give two arguments in favor of a thick account, the Argument of the Epistemic Aims of (...) Modeling and the Argument of the Normativity of the Practice of Modeling. I also discuss possible objections to a thick account: the Argument from Misrepresentation and the Objections from Model Testing. The conclusion will be that the arguments on balance support a thick account of representation. (shrink)

Radical ecology typically brings to mind media images of ecological activists standing before loggers' saws, staging anti-nuclear marches, and confronting polluters on the high seas. Yet for more than twenty years, the activities of organizations such as the Greens and Earth First! have been influenced by a diverse, less-publicized group of radical ecological philosophers. It is their work—the philosophical underpinnings of the radical ecological movement—that is the subject of _Contesting Earth's Future_. The book offers a much-needed, balanced appraisal of radical (...) ecology's principles, goals, and limitations. Michael Zimmerman critically examines the movement's three major branches—deep ecology, social ecology, and ecofeminism. He also situates radical ecology within the complex cultural and political terrain of the late twentieth century, showing its relation to Martin Heidegger's anti-technological thought, 1960s counterculturalism, and contemporary theories of poststructuralism and postmodernity. An early and influential ecological thinker, Zimmerman is uniquely qualified to provide a broad overview of radical environmentalism and delineate its various schools of thought. He clearly describes their defining arguments and internecine disputes, among them the charge that deep ecology is an anti-modern, proto-fascist ideology. Reflecting both the movement's promise and its dangers, this book is essential reading for all those concerned with the worldwide ecological crisis. (shrink)

This book is about the nature of sensory perception. Contributions focus on five questions, i.e.: (1) What distinguishes sensory perception from other cognitive states? Is it true, for instance, that perceptual content, in contrast to the phenomenal content of sensations like pain, always depends on the perceivers conceptual resources? (2) How do we have to explain the intentionality of perceptual states? (3) What is the nature of perceptual content? (4) In which sense do the objects of sensory perception depend on (...) the constitution of the perceiver? How, for instance, do secondary qualities like colours, sounds and smells depend on the perception of human subjects? (5) How can we account for the intentionality of misperceptions? These questions are addressed through the interpretation of classical historical texts as well as in the context of systematical reflections. With contributions by Margaret Atherton, Michael Ayers, Peter Baumann, Martha Brandt Bolton, Thomas Grundmann, Gary Hatfield, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Andreas Kemmerling, Bertram Kienzle, Martine Nida-Rümelin, Dominik Perler, Jay F. Rosenberg, Katia Saporiti, Ralph Schumacher, Gerald Vision, and Russell Wahl. (shrink)

After outlining why the notion of conscious control of action matters to us and after distinguishing different challenges to that notion, the contribution focuses on the challenge posed by the literature on unconscious goal pursuit. Based on a conceptual clarification of the notion of consciousness, I argue that the understanding of consciousness in that literature is too restricted. The hypothesis that the behaviors reported can be accounted for by nonconceptual forms of consciousness, such as emotions and motor experiences, rather than (...) by—conscious or unconscious—conceptual level intentions tends to be disregarded, even though it promises to be empirically fruitful. (shrink)

Russ Schafer-Landau’s ‘Moral judgement and normative reasons’ is admirably clear and to the point (Schafer-Landau 1999). He presents his own version of the argument for the practicality requirement on moral judgement – that is, for the claim that those who have moral beliefs are either motivated or practically irrational – that I gave in The Moral Problem (Smith 1994), and he then proceeds to identify several crucial problems. In what follows I begin by making some comments about his presentation of (...) the argument. I then confront the problems. (shrink)

Meta-ethical non-cognitivism makes two claims—a negative one and a positive one. The negative claim is that moral utterances do not express beliefs which provide the truth-conditions for those utterances. The positive claim is that the primary function of such utterances is to express certain of the speaker's desire-like states of mind. Non-cognitivism is officially a theory about the meanings of moral words, but non-cognitivists also maintain that moral states of mind are themselves at least partially constituted by desire-like states to (...) which moral utterances give voice. Non-cognitivists need a plausible account of what distinguishes whims, addictions and cravings from genuinely moral judgments. For while non-cognitivists maintain that in a suitably broad sense moral judgments just are constituted by desire-like states they also insist that not any old desire constitutes a genuinely moral judgment. Since the challenge is to demarcate what is distinctive about moral attitudes we might usefully call this the demarcation challenge. (shrink)

In 1939, under pressure to take a more definitive political position, the editors of the literary journal Scrutiny, under the leadership of F. R. Leavis, convened a symposium titled “The Claims of Politics,” on the question of whether political advocacy had a place in a journal dedicated to literature and the arts. This remains a salient question to the present day. This paper considers the circumstances that led to the symposium and specifically considers the contribution of conservative political philosopher (...) class='Hi'>Michael Oakeshott and his position that the introduction of politics into the arts would serve neither well. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Two Poems MICHAEL TROCCHIA SEE FOR YOURSELF The gods, in effect, have given Euenius the gift of inner vision…because he has lost his outer vision. —Michael Attyah Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece Come to a field of stones baking in the late sun. Drop your knee to the groundup earth and feel the warmth climb your thigh. Run your finger across a palm-sized stone, as if (...) inspecting the liver of the shegoat, the white one who follows you everywhere, always. Follow that old vision of yourself, its light dying in your eye as you look and look for one last rock one last time, its edge weathered into a fine and deadly thing. Hold the stone high—a red sun sinking behind you— and count down to the day’s complete darkness and in that completion between you and what will be arion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 64 two poems a darker endlessness, carve out the gift of sight, hearing only shivers of your own body, hooves running off. YOUNG CALCHAS SLEEPS And down he sat again as Calchas rose among them, Thestor’s son, the clearest by far of all the seers. —Homer, The Iliad Calchas, you dream of children dreaming of the sparrow’s head, of the bird’s eye deadened into view, of flutter and firelight, of the nest shredded at your feet and then spring again, berry, and leaf-meal and petalwind and whole glossaries of bone and egg bloodied in the hollow of your hand. But never a sure sign, no second sight clear and bright within the first order of things. No opening widening out of wing or song. Just the nearness of living, a feather suspended by a string, the halfmeaning of seeing the whole world suffer and sway— youth divined and past and forecast into the fray and saying this ruin and sacrifice again, this blueness sailing back in with the breeze. The world circles outside our window and light gives way to more light and you sleep soundly in a bed of down. Rise, Calchas, rise and walk out of the god’s mouth and see image after image fall away. See this life lifting out of one dream and into no other. Michael Trocchia 65... (shrink)

I present an interpretation of Adorno’s concept of nature that prompts a confrontation with both the domination of nature and the romanticization of nature. This interpretation would situate a normative stance toward human engagement with nature not in the idealization of a pre-social or pre-human nature, but in the (missed) possibilities of past human engagements with non-human nature. Experience of art, such as Edward Burtynsky’s photography, can push us toward such a stance. This stance forces a reconsideration of the dominant (...) form of self-preservation in most contemporary societies; nature cannot be realized until our species understands itself as a species. (shrink)

Let K be a finite set of finite structures. We give a syntactic characterization of the property: every element of K is injective in ISP(K). We use this result to establish that A is injective in ISP(A) for every two-element algebra A.

Cumming (2008) argues that his Masked Ball problem undermines Millianism, and that we must instead treat names as variables. However, although the Masked Ball does pose a problem for the Millian given a standard view about the meaning of `believes', that view faces difficulties for independent reasons. I develop a novel ``neo Kaplanian'' attitude semantics to address this problem, and go on to show that with this alternative semantics in hand, the Millian is quite capable of accounting for the Masked (...) Ball. (shrink)