Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 147-150.

Bergin, Helen Review of: Priest, poet and theologian: Essays in honour of Anthony Kelly CSSR, by Neil Ormerod and Robert Gascoigne, eds,, pp. 253, $36.95.

This book defends the Humean Theory of Motivation, according to which desire drives all action and practical reasoning. -/- Desire motivates us to pursue its object. It makes thoughts of its object pleasant. It focuses attention on its object. Its effects are amplified by vivid representations of its object. These aspects of desire explain why motivation usually accompanies moral belief, how intentions shape our plans, how we exercise willpower, what human selves are, how action can express emotion, why we procrastinate, (...) and how we daydream. The Humean Theory also suggests a new account of moral judgment that upholds objectivity while understanding moral concepts in terms of our feelings. (shrink)

Neil E. Williams develops a systematic metaphysics centred on the idea of powers, as a rival to neo-Humeanism, the dominant systematic metaphysics in philosophy today. Williams takes powers to be inherently causal properties and uses them as the foundation of his explanations of causation, persistence, laws, and modality.

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.

The thesis that propositions of law are intrinsically arguable is opposed by the antithesis that the Rule of Law is valued for the sake of legal certainty. The synthesis considers the insights of theories of rhetoric and proceduralist theories of practical reason, then locates the problem of indeterminacy of law in the context of the challengeable character of governmental action under free governments. This is not incompatible with, but required by the Rule of Law, which is misstated as securing legal (...) certainty. Defeasible certainty is the most that is desirable or achievable. (shrink)

This paper presents an integrative, descriptive model of ethical decision making, with special attention given to issues of measurement. After building the model, hypotheses are developed from a portion of it. These hypotheses are tested in an exploratory analysis to determine if further research and testing of this model and the measurement instruments it employs are warranted.

Many expressivists have employed a claim about the practicality of morality in support of their view that moral convictions are not purely descriptive mental states. In this paper I argue that all extant arguments of this form fail. I distinguish several versions of such arguments and argue that in each case either the sense of practicality the argument employs is too weak, in which case there is no reason to think that descriptive states cannot be practical or the sense of (...) practicality the argument employs is too strong, in which case there is no reason to think moral convictions are practical. I also discuss and dismiss an attempted patch of such arguments provided by Humean Psychology. The conclusion is that expressivists need to look to sources other than the alleged practicality of morality to support their position. In concluding remarks I suggest one such alternative. (shrink)

A wealth of research documents the critical role of trust for social exchange and cooperative behavior. The ability to inspire trust in others can often be elusive, and distrust can have adverse interpersonal and ethical consequences. Drawing from the literature on social hierarchy and interpersonal judgments, the current research explores the predictive role of a structural paradox between high power and low status in identifying the actors most likely to be distrusted and monitored for ethical misconduct. Across four studies and (...) an internal meta-analysis, we found that the structural paradox was associated with distrust-related judgments and behaviors. In Study 1, high power-low status actors were judged as less trustworthy. In Studies 2 and 3, high power-low status actors were sent less money in a trust game, an effect fully mediated by feelings of dislike. Study 4 revealed that high power-low status actors were more likely to be monitored for cheating, an effect partially mediated by trust judgments. These findings contribute to business ethics research by identifying the structural paradox of high power-low status as a salient contextual influence impacting observers’ distrust and monitoring dynamics. Implications for reducing observers’ level of distrust of high power-low status actors are discussed. (shrink)

Central to the debate between Humean and anti-Humean metaphysics is the question of whether dispositions can exist in the absence of categorical properties that ground them (that is, where the causal burden is shifted on to categorical properties on which the dispositions would therefore supervene). Dispositional essentialists claim that they can; categoricalists reject the possibility of such ?baseless? dispositions, requiring that all dispositions must ultimately have categorical bases. One popular argument, recently dubbed the ?Argument from Science?, has appeared in one (...) or another form over much of the last century and purports to win the day for the dispositional essentialist. Taking its cue from physical theory, the Argument from Science treats the exclusively dispositional characterizations of the fundamental particles one finds in physical theory as providing a key premise in what has been called a ?decisive? argument for baseless dispositions. Despite sharing the intuition that dispositions can be baseless, I argue that the force and significance of the Argument from Science have been greatly overestimated: no version of the argument is close to decisive, and only one version succeeds in scoring points against the categoricalist. Not only is physical theory more ontologically innocent than defenders of baseless dispositions seem to appreciate, most versions of the Argument from Science neglect important ways that dispositions could be grounded by categorical properties. (shrink)

The search for meaningful work has been of interest to researchers from a variety of disciplines for decades and seems to have grown even more recently. Much of the literature assumes that employees share a sense of what is meaningful in work and there isn’t much attention given to how and why meanings might differ. Researchers have not only called for more research studying demographic differences in definitions of meaning :77–90, 2014), but also more research utilizing mixed methods to study (...) psychological concepts like meaningful work Handbook of multimethod measurement in psychology, American Psychological Association, Washington, 2006). This study specifically examines differences across generational cohorts on their prioritization of sources of meaningful work through qualitative, in-depth interviews followed by a more generalizable, quantitative survey. Findings from the qualitative study show that generational cohorts define the meaning in their jobs differently, and they hold negative perceptions about the lack of desire for meaning in each of the other cohorts. Study 2 maps generational cohorts on the comprehensive model of meaningful work designed by Lips-Wiersma and Morris :491–511, 2009) to reveal that although there are some differences in prioritization of sources of meaningful work, all generational cohorts share similar desire to “develop and become themselves” when asked about their definitions of meaningful work. Implications and future research are discussed. (shrink)

Those considering careers in medicine and other health and humanitarian disciplines as well as those concerned about the growing presence of militarized ...

ArgumentBetween 1838 and 1863 the Grimm brothers led a collaborative research project to create a new kind of dictionary documenting the history of the German language. They imagined the work would present a scientific account of linguistic cohesiveness and strengthen German unity. However, their dictionary volumes (most of which were arranged and written by Jacob Grimm) would be variously criticized for their idiosyncratic character and ultimately seen as a poor, and even prejudicial, piece of scholarship. This paper argues that such (...) criticisms may reflect a misunderstanding of the dictionary. I claim it can be best understood as an artifact of romanticist science and its epistemological privileging of subjective perception coupled with a deeply-held faith in inter-subjective congruence. Thus situated, it is a rare and detailed case of Romantic ideas and ideals applied to the scientific study of social artifacts. Moreover, the dictionary's organization, reception, and legacy provide insights into the changing landscape of scientific practice in Germany, showcasing the difficulties of implementing a romanticist vision of science amidst widening gaps between the public and professionals, generalists and specialists. (shrink)

It is commonplace among friends of irreducible causal powers to depict powers as producing their characteristic manifestations as a matter of metaphysical necessity. That is to say that when a power finds itself in those circumstances that stimulate it, it cannot help but be exercised: its effects must occur. The result is a metaphysic that depicts the world not as loose and separate but as united by the strongest glue; this is but one way in which the world as understood (...) by friends of powers differs from that of their Humean adversaries. However, this typical understanding of powers has recently come under attack. Schrenk and Mumford and Anjum have independently argued that metaphysical necessity is not up to the task of connecting a stimulated power with its manifestation. Employing the same devices friends of powers use in rejecting attempts to analyze power ascriptions in terms of counterfactual conditionals, Schrenk and Mumford and Anjum argue that any process a power elicits could be frustrated by way of interference or prevention, and thereby blocked. For example, striking a dry match against a rough surface will generally lead to its lighting, but as anyone who has attempted to do this can attest, a strong gust of wind can prevent the match from lighting, despite the striking having taken place. Hence, even in the presence of its stimulus, the power's manifestation is not ensured, and so the claim that powers necessarily bring about their manifestations is undermined. (shrink)

The biobank consent debate is one with deeply held convictions on both the ‘broad’ and ‘specific’ side with little sign of resolution. Recently, Thomas Ploug and Soren Holm have developed an alternative to both specific and broad consent: a meta‐consent framework. The aim here is to consider whether meta‐consent provides a ‘solution’ to the biobank consent debate. We clarify what ‘meta‐consent’ actually is (arguing that the label is a misnomer and ‘consent à la carte’ is more accurate). We identify problems (...) with Ploug and Holm's arguments, and some challenges for meta‐consent. We focus on whether there is any ethical obligation to provide consent à la carte. There may seem to be so, especially if we draw upon an unclear appeal to the ethical significance of ‘respect for autonomy’. Similarly, there might seem to be an intuitive inference from the fact that ethically legitimate research requires informed consent to the conclusion that it thereby requires consent à la carte. It is shown that this line of inference is mistaken. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the view that diseases comprise natural kinds and how this view is in conflict with the essentialist picture of natural kinds as championed by Kripke and Putnam. This essentialist depiction of natural kinds contends that in order for a class of entities to be a natural kind, it is required that all and only members of the class instantiate very specific properties that explain the presence of any other properties typically associated with being a member of (...) the kind; these privileged properties constitute the “essence” of the kind. The problem is that the essentialist picture provides only two options, none of which is desirable: satisfy the essentialist desiderata by locating some etiological feature both necessary and sufficient for kind membership, or reject the thought that similarity between disease instances can be understood in terms of natural kinds. (shrink)

It is argued that the proper way to construct and deliver a therapeutic sermon is to take a theocentric approach. Preaching, rightly understood, is proclamation of the good news that God has redeemed the world through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is by definition theological. Feeling pressure to be relevant, engaging and contemporary, a significant number of preachers fall into administering mini-doses of psychological self-help from the pulpit. Hans Urs von Balthasar’s homily, ‘Joy in the Midst (...) of Anxiety’, is offered as a positive alternative. The sermon is theologically and homiletically analysed to show why it is an excellent example of theocentric therapeutic preaching. (shrink)

Traditional notions of crime control often position the police against an individual, known or not yet known, who is responsible for the commission of a crime. However, with increasingly sophisticated technology, policing increasingly prioritizes the prevention of crime, making it necessary to ascertain who, or what class of persons, may be the next likely criminal before a crime can be committed, termed predictive policing. This causes a shift from individualized suspicion toward predictive profiling that may sway the expectations of a (...) police patrol. Classically, where a patrol officer forms reasonable suspicion prior to a stop, it is based upon his/her analysis of the situation taken as a whole in context. However, where a predictive profile is employed, information available to the officer accordingly adjusts his/her perception of context and affects the application of the reasonable suspicion standard. This article addresses the way in which new approaches to forming reasonable suspicion affect the due process protection of individuals’ fundamental rights. It argues that while an officer still operates with good faith discretion, using predictive profiling causes reasonable suspicion to be based on an augmented understanding of reality and as a result, due process guarantees are weakened. The rights to non-discrimination and the presumption of innocence are assessed and argued as illustrative of this weakening and shift in policing standards. The article ultimately argues that while predictive policing cannot be categorically labeled as inconsistent with criminal justice, changes as seemingly moderate as the manner in which discretion operates have larger effects on individuals’ rights. (shrink)

Violence is a necessary factor in Frantz Fanon's concept of anti-colonial freedom. What does Fanon mean by violence? Why does he think violence is necessary or good? Is he correct? This article defends the opening statement through an exegesis of primary and secondary literature on Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre, violence, and freedom. Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth is the central text under analysis. References to Black Skin, White Masks and A Dying Colonialism receive critical scrutiny only in relation to Fanon's (...) overall theory of violence and freedom. I argue that Fanon views violence as intrinsically valuable in the anti-colonial struggle for freedom. (shrink)

In the book’s first chapter, the topic of practical mind is approached via a brief survey of a number of important positions in the history of philosophy. The founding question for a philosophy of practical mind is raised by Aristotle when he asks what it is in the soul that originates movement. I discuss the answers to this question proposed by Plato, Aristotle himself, Hobbes and Hume, before rounding off the historical survey with a look at the introduction of the (...) notion of “pro-attitude” in the last century. The key question put to the various proposals concerns their capacity to give a unitary account of what it is that “moves” agents. Put in terms of the last of the suggestions discussed: is there a single pro-component that unites the diverse ways of being for something under one genus? And if so, is that pro-component the feature that moves us? (shrink)

"At its core, Yoga invites practitioners to live fully in the midst of hardship while staying open to the possibility of being transformed by life experiences of all kinds. A seasoned Yoga teacher and writer, the author confronts the ways in which modern Yoga has strayed from its original purposes, challenging current perspectives of practice, balance and peace. Drawing on the foundations of Yoga philosophy, this book provides guideposts for living a resilient life through deepening the understanding and experience of (...) Yoga. To redefine the popular understanding of Yoga, chapters provide practical and applicable tools to reclaim practice as a way to be fully alive and aware, thereby unpacking the resistance, judgment and impatience that stand in the way of living a resilient life."-Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Challenging Heidegger’s thesis that animals are poor in world while humans are world-building, in The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II, Jacques Derrida claims that each singular living being inhabits its own solitary world, its own desert island. There, he claims both, on the one hand, that animals share our world and may be world-building and, on the other, that we cannot be certain that human beings share a world or are world-building (at least not in Heidegger’s sense as set (...) apart from animals). In this article, I trace the ethical implications of Derrida’s seemingly contradictory claims that we both share a world, and that each singular being, like an island, is a world unto itself. (shrink)

Contemporary critics of Augustine, including many feminists, have often charged him with debasing the body by considering it to be the seat of sin, worthy of enmity and neglect. I argue that in several texts Augustine displays a marked effort to liberate his readers from precisely that position. I attempt to show that in De doctrina christiana and City of God, Augustine defends the body by shifting the blame for sin from the flesh to the soul. I contend that this (...) move does not amount to claiming that the body is inherently good, but only that it is not inherently worthy of contempt -or, at least, no more than is the soul. I go on to show that in the Enchiridion Augustine moves beyond a mere defense of the body: he argues for its inherent goodness. This claim results from his metaphysics of created being, in which all substances are good to some extent simply because they are creations of God. Thus Augustine both defends the body, by showing that it is not entirely responsible for sin, and redeems it, by showing that it is inherently good. (shrink)

This paper considers how Plato can account for the fact that pain features prominently in the intellectual pleasures of philosophers, given that in his view pleasures mixed with pain are ontologically deficient and inferior to ‘pure,’ painless pleasures. After ruling out the view that Plato does not believe intellectual pleasures are actually painful, I argue that he provides a coherent and overlooked account of pleasure in the Phaedrus, where purity does not factor into the philosopher’s judgment of pleasures at all; (...) what matters instead is the extent to which a given pleasure fosters the philosophical life. I show that to argue, as James Warren has recently done, that Plato thinks intellectual pleasures are not per se painful is less successful than the Phaedrus account at explaining philosophers’ lived experiences of pleasure, which often involve pain. (shrink)

Introduction: The many faces of human nature / Agustín Fuentes and Aku Visala Chapter 1. Off human nature / Jonathan Marks. Response I. On your marks... get set, we’re off human nature / James M. Calcagno ; Response II. Rethinking human nature : comments on Jonathan Marks’s anti-essentialism / Phillip R. Sloan ; Response III. Off human nature and on human culture : the importance of the concept of culture to science and society / Robert Sussman and Linda Sussman Chapter (...) 2. "To human" is a verb / Tim Ingold. Response I. Free and easy wandering : humans, humane education, and designing in harmony with the nature of the way / Susan D. Blum ; Response II. On human natures : anthropological and Jewish musings / Richard Sosis ; Response III. The humanifying adventure : a response to Tim Ingold / Markus Mühling ; Response IV. The ontogenesis of human moral becoming / Darcia Narvaez Chapter 3. Recognizing the complexity of personhood : complex emergent developmental linguistic relational neurophysiologicalism / Warren Brown and Brad D. Strawn. Response I. "Self-organizing personhood" and many loose ends / Lluis Oviedo ; Response II. A last hurrah for dualism? / Kelly James Clark ; Response III. Why the foundational question about human nature is open and empirical / Carl Gillett Chapter 4. Human origins and the emergence of a distinctively human imagination : theology and the archaeology of personhood / J. Wentzel van Huyssteen. Response I. Constructing the face, creating the collective : Neolithic mediation of personhood / Ian Kuijt ; Response II. Imago Dei and the glabrous ape / Douglas Hedley Chapter 5. What is human nature for? / Grant Ramsey. Response I. The difficulties of forsaking normativity / Neil Arner ; Response II. Some remarks on human nature and naturalism / Aku Visala Epilogues. Putting evolutionary theory to work in investigating human nature / Agustín Fuentes ; Moving us forward? / Celia Deane-Drummond. (shrink)

This paper focuses on how Soldiers make hard choices between competing options. To understand the psychological processes behind these types of decisions, we present qualitative data collected from...

Structural realists contend that the properties and relations in the world are more fundamental than the individuals. However, the standard model theory used to analyse the structure of logical theories can make it difficult to see how such an idea could be coherent or workable: for in that theory, properties and relations are constructed as sets of individuals. In this paper, I look at three ways in which structuralists might hope for an alternative: by appealing to predicate-functor logic, Tractarian geometry, (...) or cylindric algebras. I argue that the first two are problematic, but that the third is promising. (shrink)