P.F. Strawson famously argued that reactive attitudes and ordinary moral practices justify moral assessments of blame, praise, and punishment. Here we consider whether Strawson's approach can illuminate the concept of desert. After reviewing standard attempts to analyze this concept and finding them lacking, we suggest that to deserve something is to justifiably receive a moral assessment in light of certain criteria – in particular, eligibility criteria (a subject's properties that make the subject principally eligible for moral assessments) and assignment criteria (...) (particulars about the subject, act, and circumstances that justify assessments such as blame in a particular case). Strawson's analysis of the ordinary attitudes and practices of moral assessment hints at these criteria but does not unequivocally ground a notion of desert. Following Strawson's general naturalistic approach, we show that recent psychological research on folk concepts and practices regarding freedom, moral responsibility, and blame illuminates how people actually arrive at moral assessments, thus revealing the very eligibility criteria and assignment criteria we suggest ground a concept of desert. By pushing the Strawsonian line even further than Strawson did, by empirically investigating actual moral practice and folk understandings, we can illuminate desert and lend credence to Strawson's general anti-metaphysical position. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to Bolzano’s theory of grounding (Abfolge) in his Wissenschaftslehre. Bolzanian grounding is an explanatory consequence relation that is frequently considered an ancestor of the notion of metaphysical grounding. The paper focuses on two principles that concern grounding in the realm of conceptual sciences and relate to traditionally widespread ideas on explanations: the principles, namely, that grounding orders conceptual truths from simple to more complex ones (Simplicity), and that it comes along with a certain theoretical economy among (...) them (Economy). Being spelled out on the basis of Bolzano’s notion of deducibility (Ableitbarkeit), these principles are revealing for the question to what extent grounding can be considered a formal relation. (shrink)

reality is a complex affair. It comprises a huge variety of different elements. Importantly, though, reality is not a mere aggregate of its elements but rather a structured whole or system whose building blocks are not all on the same level. Instead, they form hierarchical networks ordered by relations of priority. In such networks, derivative aspects of reality obtain in virtue of their grounds, that is, in virtue of more fundamental aspects of reality that are prior to them.This picture of (...) reality as a structured whole is currently enjoying a renaissance in the works of philosophers such as Kit Fine, Jonathan Schaffer, and many others. But far from being a new picture, it has been widely endorsed throughout the... (shrink)

In these notes it will be argued that our text of Cicero's Philippics may be improved in nearly a score passages by printing manuscript readings that editors have repeatedly spurned. If my detailed arguments are accepted, this article will have also a wider import, serving as a reminder that when a manuscript tradition is bifid both branches should be taken seriously, even if one branch is in general more corrupt than the other, and showing how modern technology may be harnassed (...) as a powerful aid in the study of Cicero's idiom. (shrink)

An edition of the letters of Erasmus, regarded as one of the greatest humanist writers. All 12 volumes of this work have been reissued, complete with their scholarly apparatus of commentary and notes, as well as plates.

An edition of the letters of Erasmus, regarded as one of the greatest humanist writers. All 12 volumes of this work have been reissued, complete with their scholarly apparatus of commentary and notes, as well as plates.

The thesis of this paper is that games and sports that harm nonhuman animals are unethical because they exceed the permissible limits of optional harm and the more harm the game imposes on the nonhuman animal(s) it objectifies the worse the ethical transgression. Factors in the analysis include the nature of games and sports, the ontology of beings (i.e., human and nonhuman animals) in games, the mitigating power of informed consent among human game-players and its absence among nonhuman game players, (...) harm, and intent. (shrink)

This work is the first to demonstrate the differences and similarities between Plato's myths and the traditional kind of which he was critical. It also actively demonstrates the extent to which his own myths support or undermine the philosophical ideas of the dialogues in which they are set. It offers new arguments and criticism on point of detail concerning modern interpretations.

Patterns in Twentieth-Century European Thought contains interpretive essays in the history of the century's Marxism, psychoanalysis, quantum physics, logic, language theory, philosophy, art, literature, and theology. A concluding essay argues that the philosophy and social theory - not to mention the physics and theology - constitute a twentieth-century Counter-Enlightenment that has replaced the Cartesian- and Newtonian-based Enlightenment of the eighteenth century.