Joel Feinberg was a brilliant philosopher whose work in social and moral philosophy is a legacy of excellent, even stunning achievement. Perhaps his most memorable achievement is his four-volume treatise on The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, and perhaps the most striking jewel in this crowning achievement is his passionate and deeply insightful treatment of paternalism.1 Feinberg opposes Legal Paternalism, the doctrine that “it is always a good reason in support of a [criminal law] prohibition that it is necessary (...) to prevent harm (physical, psychological, or economic) to the actor himself.” Against this doctrine Feinberg asserts that when an agent’s sufficiently voluntary choice causes harm to herself or risk of harm to herself, this category of harm-to-self is never a good reason in support of criminal law prohibition of that type of conduct. (shrink)

Motivation to Permissibility 780 III. The Deception Accounts of Wrongful Discrimination 783 IV. Discrimination from Animus and Prejudice 787 V. An Objection 789 VI. Innocent Discrimination 790 VII. Disparate Impact 793 VIII. Suspect Classifications 795..

Critics charge that retributivists fail to show why the state should concern itself with ensuring that criminal offenders are punished in accordance with their ill deserts. Drawing on the notion that the state should attempt to equalize the realization of the interests designated by rights, it is argued that legal punishment restores the equality of condition, disrupted by criminal conduct, that all citizens are entitled to. While this equality of condition might be restored in various ways, it is argued that (...) the imposition of punitive losses is the most appropriate way to restore it in most cases. An account of the ill deserts of offenders, as a function of the harms their crimes produce and the extent of their culpability for those harms, is briefly elaborated. (shrink)

In ‘The Authorship of Sister Peg', David Raynor relies on circumstantial evidence, unsubstantiated hypotheses, and subjective analysis in an effort to dispute my article ‘Let Margaret Sleep' and claim the authorship of Sister Peg for David Hume. This reply focusses instead on the large body of documentary and testimonial evidence that has surfaced during the past forty years, which overwhelmingly and convincingly supports the attribution of Sister Peg to Adam Ferguson. New documentary evidence includes Ferguson's emendations in Sir Walter Scott's (...) copy of Sister Peg, an 1809 letter from Ferguson to Alexander Fraser Tytler and Tytler's response to it, and information about the early publishing history of the work – as well as a letter by Hume himself about his preoccupation with another project when Sister Peg was written. While no new contemporary testimonials alleging Hume's authorship have been discovered since the publication of Raynor's edition of Sister Peg in 1982, at least nine contemporary testimonials naming Ferguson as the author are now known. This reply refutes Raynor's attempts to discredit the most famous of these testimonials – the account of Ferguson's authorship in the memoirs of Alexander Carlyle – and shows that the others cannot be reduced to Carlyle’s influence. (shrink)

The Copernican revolution of the 1500s and 1600s was in large part due to new theories and discoveries, which indicated that the general view of the universe – the more or less Aristotelian, teleological view – was no longer viable. This revolution eventually resulted in a substantially different view on the sort of universe we inhabit. New discoveries in recent years, involving Bell’s theorem, quantum theory, and the outcome of carefully designed and replicated experiments, strongly suggest that the general view (...) of the universe we have had since the Copernican revolution is no longer viable. The main goals of this paper are (i) to present Bell’s theorem and the results of these recent experiments in a way accessible to a non-technical audience, and (ii) to explore the question of whether these new discoveries place us in a similar situation to that of our predecessors in the early years of the 1600s, or roughly, whether we are in the beginning stages of a modern Copernican revolution. (shrink)

Plotin ist der intensivste und kraftvollste Denker im Kontext spätantiker Philosophie, von großer unmittelbarer und geschichtlich weitreichender Ausstrahlung. Er kann als ein Paradigma metaphysischen Denkens gelten, welches nicht nur die in sich differenzierte Wirklichkeit im ganzen aus einem Ursprung entfaltet, sondern Philosophie ebensosehr als die bestimmend-bewegende und "heilende" Lebensform vorstellt. Beginnend in der sinnlichen Erfahrung und im Begreifen der Vielheit der Phänomene soll sich das Denken - durch Rückwendung ins Innere - seiner selbst und seines eigenen Grundes bewußt werden. Ziel (...) dieses denkenden, das eigene Sein in immer klarere Formen der Einheit verwandelnden Bewegung ist es, aus dem Vollzug eines mit sich selbst identisch gewordenen Denkens sich selbst zu überschreiten und sich mit dem Ursprung, dem Einen selbst, zu einen: Plotin erweist sich darin auch als Paradigma einer philosophischen Mystik. (shrink)

In the last decade there has been a pragmatic turn in the work of those doing Christian ethics, especially as represented by the work of Jeffrey Stout and Franklin Gamwell. The pragmatic turn represents a critique of the highly influential work of Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues for a strongly intra-church ethics. The pragmatists are correct in arguing that Christian ethics must engage the public sphere. However, I argue that they are deeply mistaken in their claim that this (...) engagement must rest on a weak or non-existent theology. I show that the claim that robust theology adds nothing to ethics, and that we can get along without it, is unsustainable. (shrink)

This paper is about difficulties in the normative justification of an unconditional basic income-difficulties which are related to the scope of egalitarian justice as well as the dimension(s) of the equalisandum. More specifically, it is contended that Philippe Van Parijs’s justification derived from the principle of Maximin real freedom runs into problems in environments in which scarcity does not offer a conceptual basis for a satisfactory account of social interdependencies. We discuss the following cases: (i) Scarcity is seen as a (...) general equilibrium phenomenon in a dynamic environment. (ii) Social forces of production (particularly non-rival and only partially excludable inputs) play a role in creating wealth. (iii) Informal exclusion mechanisms and patterns of ‘local justice’ matter. (iv) Certain forms of heterogeneity play a role. (shrink)

Pogge's proposal of a,global resource dividend' (GRD) is intendend to compensate the poor, commodity-exporting countries of the developing world for terms of trade losses and unequal exchange in trade with the industrialized North. It can be shown that it is unlikely that Pogge’s GRD will be successful. On the one side, increased financial flows from the GRD funds may seriously inhibit the structural transformaton of an underdeveloped economy, whereas on the other side the internal distribution problem associated with GRD payments (...) is not resolved. (shrink)

The central argument of this book is that it is necessary to adopt a naturalistic epistemology in order to overcome the dualism of activity and passivity in the conceptual framework of idealism. The problem, as Hoffman sees it, arises from the old dilemma of idealism. If knowers are active in knowing, that is, if they impose an a priori framework on the objects of sensation, then the objects themselves cannot be given as a reality independent of knowledge. But if knowers (...) are passive, if they merely receive reality in the form of some pre-conceptual intuition, then what are given in experience can never become objects of knowledge. Thus Hoffman contends that the idealistic theory of mental activity implies either that reality is dissolved in an a priori conceptual scheme or that it is unknowable. (shrink)

[Richard Wollheim] Any experiential view of pictorial meaning will assign to each painting an appropriate experience through which its mean can be recovered. When the meaning is representational, what is the nature of the appropriate experience? If there is agreement that the experience is to be described as seeing-in, disagreement breaks out about how seeing-in is to be understood. This paper challenges two recent interpretations: one in terms of perceived resemblance, the other in terms of imagining seeing. Neither view (...) gives a correct account of how the spectator distributes his attention between the marked surface and the represented object. /// [Robert Hopkins] I offer two, complementary, accounts of the visual nature of representational picturing. One, in terms of six features of depiction, sets an explanatory task. The other, in terms of the experience to which depiction gives rise, promises to meet that need. Elsewhere I have offered an account of this experience that allows this promise to be fulfilled. I sketch that view, and defend it against Wollheim's claim that it cannot meet certain demands on a satisfactory account. I then turn to Wollheim's own view, arguing that it suffers from crucial obscurities. These prevent it from meeting the explanatory commitments I describe, and are only exacerbated by the demands Wollheim himself imposes. (shrink)

The notion of ‘bipolar’ or ‘second‐personal’ normativity is often illustrated by such situations as that of one person addressing a complaint to another, or asserting some right, or claiming some authority. This paper argues that the presence of speech acts of various kinds in the development of the idea of the ‘second‐personal’ is not accidental. Through development of a notion of ‘illocutionary authority’ I seek to show a role for the ‘second‐personal’ in ordinary testimony, despite Darwall's argument that the notion (...) of the ‘second‐personal’ marks a divide between practical and theoretical reason. (shrink)

This volume collects a number of important and revealing interviews with Richard Rorty, spanning more than two decades of his public intellectual commentary, engagement, and criticism. In colloquial language, Rorty discusses the relevance and nonrelevance of philosophy to American political and public life. The collection also provides a candid set of insights into Rorty's political beliefs and his commitment to the labor and union traditions in this country. Finally, the interviews reveal Rorty to be a deeply engaged social thinker (...) and observer. (shrink)

Demonstrating Richard Rorty's breadth of scholarship and his influence on diverse issues across the social sciences and humanities, this comprehensive bibliography contains 1,165 citations. A unique reference work on neo-pragmatism, this bibliography is essential for anyone researching Rorty's work and its impact on philosophy, literature, the arts, religion, the social sciences, politics, and education.