This is a critique of Timothy Hsiao’s ‘A Moral Defense of Trophy Hunting.’ I argue that Hsiao’s arguments on pain, consciousness, behavior, cruelty, and necessity all fail. More importantly, I argue against his broader conclusion that non-human animals ‘do not have any inherent moral significance.’ My conclusion is that Hsiao’s moral defense of trophy hunting fails.

My objective in this project is to explore the concept of moral luck as it relates to sports. I am especially interested in constitutive luck. As a foundation I draw from both Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel’s classic handling of moral luck, generally. Within the philosophy of sport are similar explorations of this nexus by Robert Simon and David Carr that also factor into the present work. My intent is to put a new lens in front of a puzzle drawn (...) from Torbjörn Tännsjö’s well-known article ‘Is Our Admiration of Sports Heroes Facistoid?’ Specifically, the idea that we might admire an athlete who excels without having worked hard for it. If we may call this puzzle ‘the talent problem,’ the questions driving the present work are as follows: what is the relationship between moral luck and the talent problem, and can this relationship provide a prescription for morally assessing the talent problem? The thesis that this exploratory work suggests that more complex games (and... (shrink)

Chapter Promising in Law and Morals Promissory and contractual obligations raise many issues of common interest to philosophers and lawyers. ...

We point out that, when the dimension of the Hilbert space is greater than two, Bell’s operators entering the Bell-CHSH inequality do exhibit inequivalent unitary matrix representations. Although the Bell-CHSH inequality turns out to be violated, the size of the violation is different for different representations, the maximum violation being given by Tsirelson’s bound. The feature relies on a pairing mechanism between the modes of the Hilbert space of the system.

Applying Bernard Suits’s conceptual definition of game-playing, and his outline of a conceptual definition of sport, I ask and answer the following question: can hunting be a sport? An affirmative answer is substantiated via the following logic. Premise one, all sports are games. Premise two, a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. Premise three, fair-chase hunters voluntarily accept unnecessary obstacles. Conclusion one: fair-chase hunting is a game. Premise four, a sport can be defined as a game that (...) requires the exercise of physical skill, has a wide following, and institutional stability. Premise five, some fair-chase hunts require physical skill, have a wide following, and have institutional stability. Conclusion two: fair-chase hunting that requires physical skill, has a wide following, and institutional stability is a sport. After substantiating each premise and conclusion I consider and refute several important objections. Primarily, that hunting lacks constitutive rules and that hunting lacks volitional engagement and thus cannot be a game or sport. (shrink)

The two-part thesis of this work is that Native mascots are morally wrong but that they do not warrant proscription. They are wrong because they propagate false or misleading beliefs about others and contribute to disrespectful misrelationships. This moral wrong lacks the weight to warrant proscription because of the countervailing weight of free-expression and the fact that Native mascots are mere offensive nuisances rather than profound offenses. Because Native mascots are morally wrong they ought to be challenged and resisted, but (...) without recourse to legislature. (shrink)

Herein I address and extend the sparse literature on deception in sports, specifically, Kathleen Pearson’s Deception, Sportsmanship, and Ethics and Mark J. Hamilton’s There’s No Lying in Baseball. On a Kantian foundation, I argue that attempts to deceive officials, such as framing pitches in baseball, are morally unacceptable because they necessarily regard others as incompetent and as a mere means to one’s own self-interested ends. More dramatically I argue, contrary to Pearson and Hamilton, that some forms of competitor-to-competitor deception are (...) similarly unacceptable. Specifically, I offer a ‘principle of caustic deceit’ according to which any strategic deception that divorces a game from its constitutive skills is morally untoward and ought to be met with negative social pressure at least, and/or legislated out of existence. The problem with these forms of strategic deception is that they treat one’s opponents, again in the Kantian sense, as a mere means to one’s own self-interested ends. (shrink)

The role of animals in the realm of sport is the focus of this special issue which delves into the nuanced intersections of sport, animals, and ethics. For millennia, humans have forged multifacete...

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.

Incompletely understood medical texts, like other kinds of technical writing, pose problems that require a multi-disciplinary approach. In addition, the etymological writings of ancient commentators hint at their own cultures priorities and limitations. Progress today, therefore, also depends partly upon how well we can harmonize our own thinking with the beliefs and practices of an alien culture, whose medicine may overlap with culinary and other social uses. A puzzling word may have been reshaped to reflect the supposed properties of the (...) entity denoted or the use made of it. Plant names, which figure strongly in such texts, are particularly liable to be passed from language to language as ‘culture borrowings’ and are thus especially vulnerable to this false rationalization process, commonly known as ‘folk etymology’. In a personal exploration I analyse some modern vocabulary and identify several varieties of the process and then illustrate its effects by means of toponyms and medicinal plant names from mediaeval Italy and ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Greece and Italy. Since no known language seems immune from etymologizing, the generic points that emerge are offered as a contribution to the decipherers craft. (shrink)

Even though integrity is widely considered to be an essential aspect of research, there is an ongoing debate on what actually constitutes research integrity. The understanding of integrity ranges from the minimal, only considering falsification, fabrication and plagiarism, to the maximum, blending into science ethics. Underneath these obvious contrasts, there are more subtle differences that are not as immediately evident. The debate about integrity is usually presented as a single, universal discussion, with shared concerns for researchers, policymakers and ‘the public’. (...) In this article, we show that it is not. There are substantial differences between the language of research integrity in the scientific arena and in the public domain. Notably, scientists and policymakers adopt different approaches to research integrity. Scientists tend to present integrity as a virtue that must be kindled, while policy documents and newspapers stress norm enforcement. Rather than performing a conceptual analysis through philosophical reasoning and discussion, we aimed to clarify the discourse of ‘scientific integrity’ by studying its usage in written documents. To this end, large numbers of scientific publications, policy documents and newspaper articles were analysed by means of scientometric and content analysis techniques. The texts were analysed on their usage of the term ‘integrity’ and of frequently co-occurring terms and concepts. A comparison was made between the usage in the various media, as well as between different periods in which they were published through co-word analysis, mapping co-occurrence networks of significant terms and themes. (shrink)

Comparative study on Śaṅkarācārya and F.H. (Francis Herbert) Bradley, 1846-1924.

Hunting is typically valued for its instrumentality for food procurement, wildlife management, conservation, heurism, and atavism. More importantly, some hunting is valued intrinsically. A particular form of hunting is a game and game playing, categorically, is often valued intrinsically. This view can be further supported with an application of a concept of caring and an accompanying argument that hunting generally, and fair-chase hunting in particular, is cared about deeply by millions of its practitioners. There are normative grounds for a shift (...) in the way that hunting is valued. While hunting as game playing is valued and cared about deeply by millions of fair-chase practitioners, which is far more important than any of its various instrumentalities, the position that such hunting is morally villainous can be sustained. (shrink)