The threat to the survival of humankind posed by nuclear weapons has been a frightening and essential focus of public debate for the last four decades and must continue to be so if we are to avoid destroying ourselves and the natural world around us. One unfortunate result of preoccupation with the nuclear threat, however, has been a new kind of "respectability" accorded to conventional war. In this radical and cogent argument for pacifism, Robert Holmes asserts that all war--not (...) just nuclear war--has become morally impermissible in the modern world. Addressing a wide audience of informed and concerned readers, he raises dramatic questions about the concepts of "political realism" and nuclear deterrence, makes a number of persuasive suggestions for nonviolent alternatives to war, and presents a rich panorama of thinking about war from St. Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr and Herman Kahn. Holmes's positions are compellingly presented and will provoke discussion both among convinced pacifists and among those whom he calls "militarists." "Militarists," we realize after reading this book, include the majority of us who live a friendly and peaceful personal life while supporting a system which, if Holmes is correct, guarantees war and risks eventual human extinction. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This article offers a critique of research practices typical of experimental philosophy. To that end, it presents a review of methodological issues that have proved crucial to the quality of research in the biobehavioral sciences. It discusses various shortcomings in the experimental philosophy literature related to (1) the credibility of self-report questionnaires, (2) the validity and reliability of measurement, (3) the adherence to appropriate procedures for sampling, random assignment, and handling of participants, and (4) the meticulousness of study reporting. It (...) argues that the future standing of experimental philosophy will hinge upon improvements in research methods. (shrink)

The very expertise with which psychologists wield their tools for achieving laboratory control may have had the unwelcome effect of blinding psychologists to the possibilities of discovering principles of behavior without conducting experiments. When creatively interrogated, a diverse range of large, real-world data sets provides powerful diagnostic tools for revealing principles of human judgment, perception, categorization, decision-making, language use, inference, problem solving, and representation. Examples of these data sets include patterns of website links, dictionaries, logs of group interactions, collections of (...) images and image tags, text corpora, history of financial transactions, trends in twitter tag usage and propagation, patents, consumer product sales, performance in high-stakes sporting events, dialect maps, and scientific citations. The goal of this issue is to present some exemplary case studies of mining naturally existing data sets to reveal important principles and phenomena in cognitive science, and to discuss some of the underlying issues involved with conducting traditional experiments, analyses of naturally occurring data, computational modeling, and the synthesis of all three methods. (shrink)

This volume provides a wide-ranging and lucid introduction to the major ethical theories found in the history of Western philosophy.

The prohibition against psychologizing has been a source of confusion to many Randians. Psychologizing is the practice of incorrectly or improperly inferring motives in other people instead of rendering moral judgment. Rand thought that it could manifest in two ways: inquisitorial and excuse-making. However, Rand's concrete examples are preponderantly of the excuse-making type; her bright line between psychology and philosophy is unsuccessfully drawn; and in offering extended, strongly condemnatory analyses of the supposed motives behind psychologizing, she yields to the very (...) temptation she claims to warn against. “Psychologizing” turns out to be an anticoncept. (shrink)

The personalistic theory of probability prescribes that a person should use personal probability assessments in decision-making and that these assessments should correspond with his judgments. Since the judgments exist solely in the assessor's mind, there is no way to prove whether or not this requirement is satisfied. De Finetti has proposed the development of methods which should oblige the assessor to make his assessments correspond with his judgments. An ideal Assessor is hypothesized and his behavior is investigated under a number (...) of such methods. The implications of these methods for the theory of personal probability are discussed. Finally, although the present interest is primarily normative, the practicability of the methods is also discussed. (shrink)

Two complementary biographies of Ayn Rand were published in 2009: Goddess of the Market, by Jennifer Burns, and Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne Heller. Burns focuses on Rand's influence on American political thought, while Heller's concern is Rand the screenwriter, novelist, and author of her personal mythos. Both books are meticulously researched and well written; neither author espouses Rand's philosophy or agrees with her politics. Such books establish that Rand's ideas have become part of American culture (...) and are no longer set over and against it. (shrink)

A standard objection to act utilitarian theories is that they are not helpful in deciding what it is morally permissible for us to do when we actually have to make a choice between alternatives. That is, such theories are worthless as decision procedures. A standard reply to this objection is that act utilitarian theories can be evaluated solely as theories about right-making characteristics and, when so evaluated, their inadequacy as decision procedures is irrelevant. Even if somewhat unappealing, this is an (...) effective reply to the standard objection. (shrink)

We can think about the use of controlled substances in the treatment of anxiety disorders in two simple but diametrically opposed ways. First, we can say that anxiety disorders are trivial and require only acts of willpower, or, if anxiety disorders do require treatment, they are better treated without the use of benzodiazepines. When BZs are used to treat anxiety, they pose grave risks of addiction to the patients to whom these medicines are prescribed; they relieve patients’ symptoms, but are (...) the equivalent of a pharmacological “roach motel,” a haven into which many unsuspecting patients enter, but from which few emerge without becoming addicted. Patients must then face terrible struggles to free themselves of dependence on BZs, and this compounds the problem for which they sought treatment. Furthermore, the large number of prescriptions for BZs are a threat to the public health because these drugs are widely abused by alcoholics and drug addicts. (shrink)

Leonard Peikoff brought into Objectivist epistemology the doctrine that what is asserted arbitrarily (without adequate evidence) cannot be true or false. In 2008 the author gave a detailed critique of the doctrine; it has not received a published response. But there have been restatements by Harry Binswanger, Ben Bayer, and Gregory Salmieri. Their re-presentations do not refute any old arguments; their new arguments make the doctrine worse. The doctrine is being used to justify ignoring known possibilities, and to “prove” that (...) the current president of the United States has a parrot's mind in a human body. Its public retraction is overdue. (shrink)

For years a debate has raged within the various literatures of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology over whether, and to what degree, the concepts that characterize psychopathology are social constructions that reflect cultural values. While the majority position among philosophers has been normativist, i.e., that the conception of a mental disorder is value-laden, a vocal and cogent minority have argued that psychopathology results from malfunctions that can be described by terminology that is objective and scientific. Scientists and clinicians have tended to (...) endorse the objectivist position, with some notable exceptions. (shrink)

“Futility of futilities,” said Kohelet, “futility of futilities, all is futile!” Once again we are exploring futility, a concept understood by humanity at least from the beginning of the written word. Our oldest written story, the Epic of Gilgamesh, reminds us of the futility of chasing immortality. At least a millennium later, yet still in ancient times, the Book of Kohelet teaches that all human pursuits, not only the pursuit of immortality, are futile or vain—terms once used synonymously. The ancient (...) Greeks introduced an element of punishment into their stories of futility—for example the Danaides sisters were condemned for the murder of their betrothed to use small urns to fill a leaky... (shrink)

Two studies tested the hypothesis that certain positive emotions speed recovery from the cardiovascular sequelae of negative emotions. In Study 1, 60 subjects (Ss) viewed an initial fear-eliciting film, and were randomly assigned to view a secondary film that elicited: (a) contentment; (b) amusement; (c) neutrality; or (d) sadness. Compared to Ss who viewed the neutral and sad secondary films, those who viewed the positive films exhibited more rapid returns to pre-film levels of cardiovascular activation. In Study 2, 72 Ss (...) viewed a film known to elicit sadness. Fifty Ss spontaneously smiled at least once while viewing this film. Compared to Ss who did not smile, those who smiled exhibited more rapid returns to pre-film levels of cardiovascular activation. We discuss these findings in terms of emotion theory and possible health-promoting functions of positive emotions. (shrink)

Recent discussions of the nature of mind, emotion, and self have often intersected with renewed interest in the sources of morals and morality. In this article I examine proposals on these matters by Charles Taylor and two of his interlocutors, Thomas Wren and Justin Oakley. I describe and compare the “holistic” epistemological approaches of these three in their searches for the “moral self,” and then evaluate the adequacy of their correlative ontological proposals. Finally, I discuss the meta-ethical implications of these (...) emotive views of selfhood in terms of the objective or subjective status of moral values to determine whether these views meet the philosophers' own criteria for moral plausibility. (shrink)

Critical thinking measures have often been empirically associated with other cognitive dimensions (e.g., achievement test scores, IQ scores, exam scores) but seldom with sociopolitical perspectives. Consequently, the current study examined the relationship of critical thinking to sociopolitical values reflective of political ideology, namely respect for civil liberties, emphasis on national security, militarism, and support for the Iraq War. In a sample of 232 undergraduates attending a Southeastern university, critical thinking correlated significantly with respect for civil liberties (.19), emphasis on national (...) security (-.29), militarism (-.25), and support for the Iraq War (-.28). A logistic regression analysis showed that the sociopolitical measures significantly predicted placement in high and low critical thinking groups, with support for the Iraq War being the primary predictor. A multivariate analysis (MANOVA) revealed that the sociopolitical means for the high and low critical thinking groups all differed significantly. The results suggest that critical thinking scores are generally predictive of liberal versus conservative political ideology. (shrink)